A remarkable pilgrimage is the basis for an engaging, no-holds-barred memoir
Wild: A Journey From Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed Atlantic PB/EB Out now Duluth, Minnesota, and a marital break-up are Cheryl Strayed’s starting points in this well-wrought memoir-
Calcutta by Amit Chaudhuri Union HB/EB Out February Calcutta is Amit Chaudhuri’s examination of the city after returning to it having lived in
Britain for many years. Chaudhuri covers vast swathes of the social and economic history of Calcutta, but always through the lens of his family and friends.
cum-travelogue. Aged 22 and with her marriage failing, Strayed (the surname was adopted after her divorce as part of the process of personal reinvention the book documents) unexpectedly lost her mother – “a 45-year-old vegetarian-ish, garlic-eating, natural-remedy-using, non-smoker” – to cancer. Bereft, she fell into bed with a number of men, one
Much like the portrait of a city that emerges, the book is sprawling and occasionally unfocused, but Calcutta works best when it’s personal – Chaudhuri is an engaging host who writes fluently and accessibly about big themes. Hundreds of years of history, local politics and social attitudes, for example, are background to the fashion in doors and windows, or the tea parties of a friend. It’s a rewarding glimpse into a deftly-sketched world.
of whom introduced her to heroin, and generally went off the rails before taking the snap decision to walk the Pacific Crest Trail. “It was,” she reflects, “an idea, vague and outlandish, full of mystery and promise.” As a matter of fact, the PCT is a 1,100-mile hike from the Mojave Desert, passing through “the real California, with its relentless wind and Joshua Trees and
An English Affair by Richard Davenport-Hines HarperPress HB/EB Out now An English Affair is a tale of the end of innocence in British society, a document of
the twin worlds of English civility and its seedy underbelly of call girls, spy networks and political cover-ups during the Profumo Affair. The scandal
rattlesnakes”, along the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains and up through Oregon to Washington state. Its course, as she soon discovers, is arduous to say the least. And Strayed, by no means an experienced hiker, was undertaking it solo back in 1995, when possibly only Mulder and Scully of The X-Files had easy access to SatNav. Mobile phones are another noticeable absence
concerned Secretary of State for War John Profumo, who had an affair with Christine Keeler, reputedly the mistress of a Russian spy. An English Affair’s two-part structure makes for a confusing transition between a cultural biography and an analysis of the Profumo trials, not always successfully achieving either. Nevertheless it uncovers the rife sexism, homophobia and corruption displayed by the courts and media of the Macmillan era.