Fond tributes to a giant among critics
Just as when a giant oak falls in the forest, the world of letters lost something unique when the 90-year-old critic and author Frank Kermode (below) died in August. Now the London Review of Books,where he wrote for more than 30 years, has gathered tributes to him (LRB Vol 32 No 18; lrb.co.uk). Stefan Collini sums it up: "For decades Frank had set the benchmark for the review- essayist's trade: it will be a long time before we stop wondering, faced with a new book, how he would have handled it ." Adam Phillips remembers how Kermode had the wildest curiosity of anyone he had ever met and that being intelligent and widely read was, for Kermode, about being genial, not intimidating. James Wood writes that The Sense of an Ending was his central book, because for the next 40 years he kept on returning to its questions: "Like everyone else, I thought this father who would not stay the same would go on forever." Collini recalls a last outing to watch some cricket with Kermode, when, weakened by throat cancer, he slipped his arm in Collini's for support, easily and affectionately, so they processed around the boundary like a stately Italian couple out for their passeggiata. "He knew he would never again go to a cricket match; he was doing most things for the last time now, silently grieving about transience and loss. I still find it hard to say what I felt as he companionably slipped his arm through mine: 'pleased' seems feeble, 'proud' seems absurdly self-important. Perhaps simply 'moved'? Whatever it was it proved too strong for me quite to cope with, because after delivering him back at his flat I found that, even before I got home, I had started to cry."
Emma Donoghue gears up for the Booker ceremony
Only days before the nerve-racking awards ceremony in London, on October 12th, the Irish Man Booker-shortlisted author Emma Donoghue will make a public appearance in Dublin. She'll be reading from her page-turning shortlisted novel, Room, which draws on real-life tales of female abduction and abuse and was described on these pages by reviewer Declan Hughes as at times almost unbearably moving: "Part childhood adventure story, part adult thriller, Roomis above all the most vivid, radiant and beautiful expression of maternal love I have ever read. Emma Donoghue has stared into the abyss, honoured her sources and returned with the literary equivalent of a great Madonna and Child. This book will break your heart." The event, at which the novelist will also be taking questions from the floor, is in the Edmund Burke Theatre at Trinity College Dublin next Saturday at 1pm. This free event is organised by Unesco City of Literature in association with TCD's Long Room Hub. Book on 01-6744873; e-mail dublinpubliclibraries@dublincity.ie.
