Book Reviews: The Language Wars | Why Not Say What Happened? | Outrage

THE LANGUAGE WARS

BY HENRY HITCHINGS

(John Murray, £8.99) HHHH

“We are dogged by the notion that the English language is in terminal decline,” says Henry Hitchings. And if you don’t agree – if you like the English language as it develops and changes – this is a book you’ll love. Hitchings unpicks arguments with terrific flair. What about split infinitives? Well, he says, what about split nominatives? Good point! He makes us think about language – what it is, what it does, where it’s been. There’s a great bit on the modern use of “like”. It’s like, wow.

WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED?

BY IVANA LOWELL

(Bloomsbury, £8.99) HHH

At one point in this memoir, Ivana Lowell says: “Take away the alcohol, and I was just a damaged body sewn together with stitches of fear and pain.” Poor Ivana. She tells us about her childhood as the daughter of Lady Caroline Blackwood, a rebellious aristocrat, who drank a lot and had various husbands and loads of lovers, including the depressive poet Robert Lowell and the painter Lucian Freud. She describes this unhinged life with flinty precision and the book turns on her life’s central mystery: who is her father? Very unsentimental. – WL

Outrage

by Arnaldur Indridason

(Harvill Secker, £12.99) HHH

A young man, with Rohypnol in his pocket, hits downtown Reykjavik in search of a suitable date to rape. However, he is the one who ends up naked with his throat cut. With Erlendur, Indridason’s usual detective gone walkabout in the wilds of Iceland, the case is left to his colleague Elínborg, a married mother of three, to solve. The girl the dead man raped can’t remember anything and it turns out that the rapist had inexplicably taken Rohypnol, too. Elínborg, with her insomnia and passion for Indian cookery, is by no means as interesting a character as Erlendur but she is a good copper. Her subtle interviewing technique and instinctive empathy soon uncover a very nasty story that leads her to one of those remote villages so beloved of movie-makers, where everyone is suspicious of outsiders and seems to have something to hide. Such stately, well-mannered entertainment is not to be sniffed at. – MS