Summary
The novel is set in vividly realised Hong Kong and Shanghai, where the worlds of espionage, political intrigue and exotic women shadow militant Islamic groups being groomed to wreak havoc at Beijing's Olympics. Les Dawson's Secret Notebooks (JR Books, £15.99), overlooked by the review pages, is a treasure trove of bons mots to enliven even the stiffest lunch party. Many of Daw son's jokes have the compressed energy of poetry, playing tricks with the imagination by delivering a bizarre image to the reader and then forcing him to assemble it: "I wouldn't say the room was small but you had to buy bananas ready peeled."
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Extract
Holiday Reading
Books
Stephen BayleyTwo remarkable new books have just come my way. The first is Ophelia Field'sThe Kit-Cat Club - Friends Who Imagined a Nation (HarperPress, £25), about the group of Whig luminaries that included Vanbrugh, Congreve, Addison and Steele. The second is Em and Lo's Sex: How To Do Everything (Dorling Kindersley, £18.99). I like Field because it is the sort of brainy, literate history that most publishers have forsworn. It reminds you of an England where values were not determined by retailers. As for Sex, it's "written" by sassy New Yorkers with a popular website for those in search of inspiration in matters of penetration. It is both explicit and coy, thus noteworthy. I will take it away as a powerful anaphrodisiac, a specific against lust inflamed by rosé, heat and dust.Lucy BeresfordOften on holiday, it takes days to...See the full content of this document
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