Books in the Media: Washington's Palaver and Brandreth's tale of a bear close out 2025
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear: A Biography of AA Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh (Michael Joseph) by former Conservative MP and "lifelong Pooh" fan Gyles Brandreth was reviewed in the Times. Laura Hackett found it to be a "comprehensive portrait of Milne, going all the way back to Alan Alexander’s idyllic childhood".
With the birth of his son, Christopher Robin, in 1920, Hackett notes that "the business of being a father was vital for Milne’s literary imagination", although their relationship in later life was fraught. "Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear is at its most touching when it moves away from the sniping of the Milne family and looks at the ordinary people who have been touched by Winnie-the-Pooh’s story."
Writing in the Guardian, Michael Donkor found that Palaver (Atlantic), the new novel from US author Brian Washington, explored themes familiar to readers of his earlier novels, Memorial and Family Meal: "Culture clashes, conflicted conversations, oppositions and exchanges are principal interests for Washington."
Palaver centres on two estranged protagonists: an expat son who has lived in Toyko for a decade or so, teaching English as a foreign language, and his Jamaican-American mother who still lives in Texas. When his mother arrives unexpectedly on her son’s doorstep in Tokyo, "mother and son edge around reckonings with their bitter past of familial dysfunction, and make their way towards something resembling rapprochement".
Donkor noted that "the determined sparsity and downbeat mode of the narration, signatures of Washington’s oeuvre" and that "the narrative is glued together by the themes of alienation, exile and the challenges of creating and sustaining a sense of home". He concluded that "fans of Washington’s work will have much to enjoy here".
Continues…
Read More
In an interview in the New York Times, Washington explained the title of his novel: "One definition for ‘palaver’ is ‘an improvised conference between two groups, typically those without a shared language or culture’. The protagonists embark with seemingly little in common, despite having come from the same place…
"But as their story progresses, so does their palaver – the time they spend together, and the time they spend in the world apart, allows them to mold a new language and way of being that’s amenable for them both; one less attuned to how they ‘should be’ than how and who they actually are."
Also in the Guardian, Jeevan Vasagar reviewed The Land Trap: A New History of the World’s Oldest Asset (Hodder) by journalist Mike Bird, The Economist’s Wall Street editor, describing it as a "a masterly introduction to the economics of land ownership" and a "history of [our] most basic asset" which ranges from colonial America to present day China.
It is published "at an opportune moment", given the return of the issue to land ownership to the political agenda for parties on the left and the right, and "charts the return of land as a central economic and political force".
