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OUR GUIDE TO THE BEST CRITICS: BOOKS

A HUNT FOR PASSION, SEVERITY AND HUMOUR | March 7th 2008

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This is our first instalment of "Reviewers revered" (read our introduction to the series here). Blake Morrison, Ian Jack and others name their favourite book critics. James Wood topped the list; John Updike was left out ...

  JAMES WOOD

(The New Yorker, roughly once a month)

Critics aren't there to award stars or confirm what you already think-or to show off. Their job is to inform, provoke, educate and entertain. James Wood's fiction reviews are always severe and often annoying, but he has a passion for realism--brilliantly expounded in his new book "How Fiction Works" (Cape), which is both a high-minded essay and a how-to primer. ~ BLAKE MORRISON

The thrill of Wood is that he believes in criticism in the old-fashioned sense--as an art in itself, as an activity with moral weight. He moves easily from rigorous close reading, to career arcs, to the wider cultural context, and back; he is unafraid of sacred cows. ~ AIDA EDEMARIAM

JOHN CAREY

(The Sunday Times, most weeks)

Because he has the ability to make almost anything interesting and because we share some prejudices--eg, that Virginia Woolf was wrong about Arnold Bennett and that modernism was a sneaky way of keeping art beyond the comprehension of what we shall have to call ordinary people. ~ IAN JACK

As a student, I was electrified by John Carey's lectures on Tudor England: he made history come alive as a context for literature. It's a gift that shines out of his reviews, too. He has a sharp eye for the bogus, and his frankness can seem harsh, but it is the flip side of his scrupulous honesty. ~ REBECCA WILLIS

CRAIG BROWN 

(The Mail on Sunday, every week, though not online)

Brown is the funniest writer in British journalism. But he's much more than that. His weekly lead book review for the Mail on Sunday is always surprising and perceptive, making telling, serious-minded points. Oh, and it's usually very funny. ~ MICK BROWN

Brown, best known as a satirist, combines a light touch with sure-handed authority. ~ SIMON GARFIELD

 JOHN LANCHESTER

(London Review of Books, several times a year)

Lanchester is a London-based novelist whose industrial-scale reading takes him into the murkiest areas of contemporary life-climate-change sceptics, subprime derivatives, Alastair Campbell. Lucid, precise and unstuffy, Lanchester emerges from his desk-bound research trips with verdicts that are satisfyingly tough and tidy. On climate change: "there is one school of thought and a few nutters". On derivatives: "the most powerful and the most complicated financial instruments ever devised". On Campbell: "a total prick". ~ ROBERT BUTLER

MICHIKO KAKUTANI

(The New York Times, about once a week) 

Not because I think she's always right but because she's forthright--not afraid, not compromised by friendships with writers, publishers and literary agents. I've never seen her at any literary event. Among book reviewers (many of whom are also book writers), this makes her rare. ~ IAN JACK

NICHOLAS LEZARD

(The Guardian, every Saturday)

I've been a dedicated reader of Lezard's paperback choice ever since reading a column of his on Sven Lindqvist's "Exterminate All the Brutes" (Granta). It was a discovery--a remarkable piece of writing that really influenced my thinking. I still recommend it to friends, and I've remained a fan of Lezard's engagingly candid style. ~ JO GLANVILLE

ADAM BEGLEY 

(The New York Observer)

Imagine the New York uncle you never had--braces, bow-tie, the dish on everyone who walks into the room--and you have Adam Begley, the New York Observer's  literary editor, who rolls up his sleeves every week or so to write his tipsheet on whatever masterwork is doing the rounds: DeLillo, Updike, Roth, Coetzee. He is informed without showing off, feline without being catty and he never lets his nose for good prose throw him off the hunt for great story-telling. ~ TOM SHONE

JESSA CRISPIN

(www.bookslut.com/blog/ every weekday)

Crispin left her job as a fund-raiser for Planned Parenthood in Austin, Texas, to review books from a flat in Chicago. Erudite, fantastically opinionated, truly eclectic, her blog communicates an unpretentious passion for books new and old. ~ AIDA EDEMARIAM

AL ALVAREZ

(New York Review of Books, a few times a year)

Alvarez has been posting epic reviews and essays for the premier critical publication since the 1960s. He is brilliant on all forms of risk, be it poker or alcoholism, and reserves special approval for the suicidal poets and depressive novelists who dare to send back dispatches from the edge of oblivion. The prose has forensic heft, but also an unostentatious levity. ~ JASPER REES

RON ROSENBAUM

(Slate.com about twice a month; pajamasmedia.com/xpress/ronrosenbaum/ about twice a week)

An American journalist-author who is underrated compared with, say, Malcolm Gladwell, Rosenbaum writes brilliantly original books ("The Shakespeare Wars", 2006; "Explaining Hitler", 1998; both Random House). He's a wonderful writer, very eclectic, who should be better known. ~ ROD WILLIAMS