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Essays and Criticism
by William Boyd
“Plant one bamboo shoot—cut bamboo for the rest of your life.” William Boyd’s prolific, fruitful career is a testament to this old Chinese saying. Boyd penned his first book review in 1978—the proverbial bamboo shoot—and we’ve been reaping the rewards ever since. Beginning with the Whitbread Award–winning A Good Man in Africa, William Boyd has written consistently artful, intelligent fiction and firmly established himself as an international man of letters.
"At 500-plus pages, this volume is perfect for a bedside table, to be read for sustained excellence of observation and lucidity of prose." - Publishers Weekly.
"Does William Boyd write effective prose? Not often. He is neither an intellectual nor a stylist, and in the absence of rigour or sparkle Bamboo is not an enjoyable read." - The Guardian.
"Bamboo is solid stuff, and occasionally inspiring, but too big. Aphorisms and metaphors (such as his touching use of "dogged" as a technical term of art criticism) recur too regularly when these decades of work are squashed between two covers. Boyd is undoubtedly a substantial writer but this block of journalism confirms the mighty labour of his workaday career, rather than the more memorable flights of fictional transcendence." - The Independent.
"The essays on art and artists are distinctive and interesting; everything else is pretty generic." - Kirkus Reviews.
This information about Bamboo was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eamonn McCabe
William Boyd has received world-wide acclaim for his novels. They are: A Good Man in Africa (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize) An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, 1995), Armadillo (1998) and Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). His novels and stories have been published around the world and have been translated into over thirty languages. He is also the author of a collection of ...
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