Books in the Media: critics turn to memoirs by Susanna Crossman and Moon Unit Zappa
This week non-fiction triumphed with memoirs from Susanna Crossman and singer Moon Unit Zappa alongside an evaluation of Britain’s education system.
Crossman’s "vivid and painfully honest" memoir Home Is Where We Start: Growing Up in the Fallout of the Utopian Dream (Fig Tree) was reviewed by Christina Patterson at the Sunday Times. Crossman’s account of growing up as "part of a social experiment" was hailed as "mesmerising". Patterson concluded: "It’s serious and poetic. It’s delicate and wise. It’s a multilayered excavation, a rich but also careful unfolding of the truth." Matthew Reisz at the Observer called Home Is Where We Start a "powerful" memoir, highlighting the "vivid and poignant details" of Crossman’s writing.
The Financial Times’ Melissa Benn called headteacher Sammy Wright’s Exam Nation: Why Our Obsession with Grades Fails Everyone—And a Better Way to Think About School (Bodley Head) "a deeply absorbing book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand how our current [education] system really works—or rather, about the many many ways in which it doesn’t". Benn wrote: "Wright deserves the highest marks for giving us deep insight into his considerable experience in the classroom and elaborating on all these complex themes with subtlety and a keen intelligence." Writing for the Times, former Conservative education secretary Michael Gove called Exam Nation a "thoughtful and considered analysis of our education system which asks searching questions about what school is for".
Earth to Moon: A Memoir (White Rabbit) by singer Zappa, daughter of rock star Frank Zappa and his manager Gail, was reviewed by the Times’ Will Hodgkinson, who wrote that the memoir is "lifted up because Moon Unit is, beyond the therapy-speak, very funny. ‘Growing up, I was just like you,’ she tells us. ‘I had a rock star for a dad, two invisible camels for playmates and daydreamed about my future following in Frank’s footsteps by helping people and making them laugh, only I’d be dressed like a nun.’" Ian Winwood at the Telegraph called the book an "unusual" memoir: "Earth to Moon makes for engaging and charitable company. Even allowing for the memoirist’s habit of proclaiming happiness by the final page, I nonetheless found myself wishing her well."
Harriet Constable’s "glittering" début novel The Instrumentalist (Bloomsbury) was commended by Philippa Malicka at the Telegraph. Set in 18th-century Venice, the novel follows Anna Marie, a young female violinist, and her tutor, the composer Antonio Vivaldi: "Constable’s novel never feels heavy on its historic details; instead, they’re weaved into a captivating narrative that’s as tightly tuned as a thriller. Her account is a heartening tribute to a group of formidable women who, in real life, often had to play behind curtains for fear of inciting too much passion in the male audience."
Benjamin Myers’ latest novel Rare Singles (Bloomsbury), which takes place over a single weekend in Scarborough, was called a "deceptively simple tale that dares to tackle existential crises" by Nick Duerden at the Observer. Stuart Kelly at the Spectator called the novel a "pleasure".
Pat Barker’s The Voyage Home (Hamish Hamilton), the third in the author’s trilogy on the women of Homer’s Iliad, was called a "rousing story of female resistance" by Kate Maltby at the Financial Times. Maltby commended Barker’s "genius for world-building" in her reimagined tale of the prophetess Cassandra and queen Clytemnestra, narrated by Ritsa, an enslaved healer. Barker’s Troy trilogy has been "a necessary corrective to centuries of callous male scholarship", the review concluded.
