Sunday at Borders, 27 August 2006 - Special Monday Edition

Traveling over the weekend, so this is a day late. Sorry. Among the new and reviewed this week:

Historical Fiction
The Law of Dreams, by Peter Behrens, reviewed by Ron Charles in the Washington Post. Peter Behrens makes his literary debut with a story of the Great Famine of 1847 (more popularly known as the Irish Potato Famine). The story looks interesting, even if reviewer Charles seems enthralled by just how many ways to describe hero Fergus O'Brien's suffering.

Sovereign, by CJ Sansom, reviewed by Jane Jakeman in the Independent. The third in a series starring Matthew Shardlake, the hunchbacked lawyer in Henry VIII's court. Jakeman praises Sansom's evocation of "contemporary horrors ... [t]his is no herbs-and-frocks version of Tudor England." Because, Lord knows, we've all seen entirely too many herbs and frocks 'round these parts.

The Pure Land, by Alan Spence, reviewed by David Isaacson in the Independent. Shogun with a Scotsman, in which "action takes precedence over character." Pity.


History
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution, by David Quammen, reviewed by Adrian Desmond in the New York Times, and by David Brown in the Washington Post. Oh look, another Darwin biography ... Desmond spends half the review on "the Darwin industry" (which he's working on joining himself), but says this latest edition is a "plucky condensation." Brown just tries to tie it into yet another summary of the debate over Intelligent Design.

Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, edited by Caroline Moorehead, reviewed by Francine du Plessix Gray in the New York Times. Gellhorn was apparently the "greatest female war correspondent of the mid-century decades," which may be the greatest quoted superlative in an August linkblogging entry. The letters themselves sound interesting, though, combining the substance of a war correspondent's correspondence with what Gray says is Flaubert-level prose.

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII, by Sarah Helm, reviewed by Selwa Roosevelt in the Washington Post. Atkins worked for Britain's Special Operations Executive -- a wartime covert intelligence outfit -- despite the fact that she was of Romanian birth herself, and therefore "technically an enemy alien." She served as a spymaster for female agents in World War II. If that description hasn't sold you, check yourself for vital signs.

Waxing Mythical: The life and legend of Madame Tussaud, by Kate Berridge, reviewed by Marianne Brace in the Independent. The infamous mistress of waxworks predated PT Barnum by more than a century. And Brace seems to think Tussaud could teach him a thing or two.

Shakespeare and Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story, by Stanley Wells, reviewed by Simon Callow in the Guardian. Oh look, another book about Shakespeare ... But Simon Callow wrote the review, so go read it.