Australian Book Review, December 2015

My bedside table is stacked with old comedy – Alan Coren, P.G. Wodehouse – but my three favourites of 2015 are much to do with loss. Clive James’s Latest Readings (Yale) is a witty, wide-ranging, and poignant series of essays on the books he is enjoying. James is candid about his mortality, and his great passion for literature flames the harder for it. Murray Middleton’s When There’s Nowhere Else to Run (Allen & Unwin, 8/15), the Vogel’s Award-winning collection of short stories, conveys raw and broken characters in tight, smooth prose. And Jonathan Bate’s masterful biography Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life argues convincingly that Hughes was defined, both personally and poetically, by his love and grief for Sylvia Plath. Bertie Wooster, on the other hand, was defined more by purple socks and flung bread-rolls. So it’s to him that I return.