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8th October 2008

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Most reviewed: Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter

14.07.08 Anna Richardson

BBC Radio 4 favourite Jenni Murray was last weekend’s most reviewed, with her Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter (Bantam Press) dominating the literary review pages. As the presenter of “Woman’s Hour” Murray has a great fanbase and reach, and the publication of her account of the year leading up to her father’s death, interwoven with memories of her upbringing, had the media coverage to match.

In the Guardian, Michele Hanson praised Murray’s “fearless examination of her ‘love-hate’ relationship with her mother, the confused feelings of betrayal that go with success, and the family dynamics and tensions”, and in the Sunday Telegraph, Sue Gaisford found the book “subtly and seductively constructed” and Murray’s account of her father’s death “as powerfully raw and moving as anything I’ve ever read”.

Many of the reviewers noted Murray’s writing style, with Sarah Vine describing it in the Times as “brusque, practical, keep-your-lamps-lit”. With reference to the Simone de Beauvoir allusion of the book’s title, Jane Shilling in the Sunday Times wrote that “Murray is less fluently introspective than de Beauvoir. She tells her story with admirable condour, in clear, workmanlike prose but with a slight edge of detachment”.

Vine added, however: “The true joy is the full emergence of the emotion that Murray often hides behind her professionalism and which here flows free and unfettered.”

Hilary Spurling was more barbed in her Observer review. In her eyes, Murray uses “a breathless, flavourless, humourless form of speed-writing that works better on radio or TV than on the page”.

Spurling concluded: “Brisk and relentlessly upbeat, written in a style at once worthy, stolid and slapdash, Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter is worth reading mainly for its unsights into the changing lives of women and its extremely uncomfortable subtext.”

MOST REVIEWED (11th to 13th July):

Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter by Jenni Murray
(Bantam Press 9780593058664 £14.99)
“Fearless” Guardian
“Powerfully raw and moving” Independent on Sunday
“Brisk and relentlessly upbeat” Observer
"The real meat is a heady mixture of love and loathing that Murray expresses for her mother" Times
"She tells her story with admirable candour" Sunday Times

America America by Ethan Canin
(Bloomsbury 9780747597452 £17.99)
“Restrained but gripping” Daily Express
“Compelling” Sunday Times
“Canin writes in big, easy sentences, freighted with earnest intent” Observer
“Has none of the linguistic athleticism or insight of Philip Roth or Joyce Carol Oates, nor the imaginative reach of Annie Proulx or Don DeLillo” Sunday Telegraph

The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky
(Cape 9780224082457 £16.99)
“Am not certain [Kurlasky is] cut out for apocalypse literature” Observer
“There is a laziness in his approach” Sunday Telegraph
“I cannnot understand why a person who writes so well would choose to showcase a talent that he so obviously lacks” Times
Sunday Times

Media Anna Richardson Most Reviewed Jenni Murray