Politics On the Edge is a political memoir by Rory Stewart, published in September 2023.

I don’t usually go in for political memoir, but I recall Rory Stewart taking part in the Conservative Party leadership contest in 2019. He struck me as an interesting person, an unusual combination of insider – Eton, Oxford, the Army, diplomatic service – and outsider, an uneasy presence in a sleazy political world, personified – caricatured might be a better word – by Boris Johnson.

Perhaps I avoid political biography because I feel it likely to be an extension of the author’s predisposition to campaign for their policy, or party. To adapt a quote often used to describe the difference between politics and academia – ‘political memoir is statement above argument, a good novel is argument above statement’. Instinctively, I seem to be an argument above statement person.

But I do see that statement people are more likely to do things, rather than just read about them.

Politicians like to present themselves as doing stuff. Rory is an incredible doer. I could only watch in admiration as our man governed Afghan provinces, planned flood response and broadband provision in Cumbria, ran ministerial departments, administered billions of pounds of foreign aid, pursued measures to help the environment, and tried to improve the prison system. I was exhausted just reading about his activities. And yet… he always seems to feel that in whatever position he finds himself, the real power lies elsewhere. After Afghanistan, he becomes a Harvard academic, trying to influence government policy by sitting next to prominent politicians at dinner and giving them advice. Those efforts come to nothing. So he decides to become a politician himself. When it turns out that backbench MPs can do very little except vote as directed, he thinks being a minister of state, or a member of the Security Council might help. But the frustrations continue.

It is this ambivalence that makes Politics on the Edge more like a political novel than a memoir. There’s a pervasive sense of mystery about who actually has the power to do things. This made me think of War and Peace, no less, where Tolstoy presents Napoleon not as a powerful man, but as an individual at the centre of a vast web of circumstance bearing down upon him, which in effect means he has less control over his life than a humble foot soldier in his army.

Yes, there are statements of opinion in Politics On the Edge, about Brexit, prisons, foreign aid, colleagues who are impressive, others who are disastrous. But ironically for a political author who is such a doer, there is also a sense of argument coming above statement. Some reviewers have seen this as a weakness, judging Rory Stewart as appreciating problems but presenting no real answers. I don’t see it like that. This is a rare political book where someone in the business of statements, writes a book of conflicting arguments and leaves you to think about them. A life of manic activity builds to the crisis of the 2019 leadership contest, and a televised debate, where migraine-racked and out manoeuvred by cunning political snakes, Rory’s promising leadership bid falls apart. This is followed by a kind of meditative peace. The early sections of the book might make you feel that running provinces in Afghanistan and trying to become prime minister is the only worthwhile course in life. And, of course, there is much to be said for being active and getting involved. But the book’s conclusion has an acceptance that you can do everything and still end up doing nothing. No need to brood on not doing well enough, not making your choice of university, not making defence secretary, not becoming prime minister, not keeping up with the Kardashians. Life isn’t about that.

‘I read about the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and The Tale of Genji, which makes me think about those Japanese councillors who retire from the court, to make gardens and prepare tea.’

Politics On the Edge is a compelling account of a particular moment in British political history, described by someone who was enough of an insider to take us in there, and enough of an outsider to stand back and show us what happened. The author is involved and doing, while also observing and thinking – a combination that makes for a fascinating book.

August Blue is a 2023 novel by Deborah Levy, book of the year according to the Guardian, Independent, and Time magazine. It tells the story of Elsa M. Anderson, a famous concert pianist who, mid-performance in Vienna, walks off stage, leaving behind the debilitating treadmill of what was meant to be a glamorous music career. Through her subsequent wanderings around Europe, she tries to come to terms with the relentless path on which her adoptive father/piano teacher had placed her at a very young age.

While pondering on Elsa’s odyssey, I happened to hear the Gary Jules version of Mad World by Tears for Fears. It struck me that if there were a literary version of Mad World then August Blue would be it. Like the song, the tone of the book is flat and peaceful, a peace that comes from exhaustion, rather than resolution. Any madness is not of the active kind, insufficient energy remaining for that. The atmosphere is one of passiveness and waiting. I found the book – in the words of Mad World – kind of funny and kind of sad. There are allusions to childhood angst, adoption, lack of parental love, ‘children waiting for the day they feel good’.

Does August Blue go anywhere or say anything? Maybe not. Perhaps it’s not interested anymore in getting up bright and early for the daily races. Elsa’s meandering thoughts sometimes focus on her interest in the choreographer Isadora Duncan – who considered a dance not worth dancing if words could explain what the performance was about. Dance is a movement that doesn’t go anywhere in the M25 sense. The same is true of August Blue. The book has the peace of an Antarctic explorer who, giving up on a desire to reach some arbitrary, ice-blasted point on a map, has decided to lie down in the snow. If there is a development through the book, it comes in the slow metamorphosis of Antarctic explorer’s snowy repose, into relaxed beach goer’s sunny repose. In this story, progress comes in giving up on progress, reaching a goal by escaping the daily races.

Blue August is a stylish book, beautifully written, atmospheric and affecting. Whether you read to relax, or to think about themes, write essays, or post reviews, this book has something for you.

The Bee Sting is a novel by Paul Murray, shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Set mostly in a small Irish town not far from Dublin, it unravels the tangled history of the Barnes family, who have enjoyed decades of wealth and local influence, thanks to their VW dealership. Now, leaner times have arrived.

There is much looking to the past in The Bee Sting, and I’ll start with some personal nostalgia the book provoked in me. Believe it or not this involves the TV show Friends. Fairly early in my read through, I recalled the moment where Monica, squeakily indignant about something or other, causes Chandler to advise her, ‘only dogs can hear you now’.

Let me explain.

We begin in the present day, focusing on teenager Cass Barnes and her relationship dramas. For a few months, she has a boyfriend called Rowan, who, though no Oscar Wilde, does occasionally come out with some interesting facts. One of his observations involves dogs and their sense of smell. Dogs have a hugely better sense of smell than humans, which, as Rowan points out, would make their perception of past and future different to ours.

‘They must have a whole different understanding of time, because for them the past is literally still around. When a dog looks at the world it must see all these presences gradually fading out. Like a sky full of contrails.’

You could say the perspective of The Bee Sting is like that of Rowan’s dogs. In fittingly freeform writing which might lack full stops, or muddle together first, second and third person narration, things do not simply start and finish. Past hurts linger, hidden aspects of personality re-emerge, eccentric ladies with psychic abilities see events in advance, like a dog picking up a scent long before their human owners are aware of anything.

I pondered on this doggy outlook. Rowan thinks it’s a good thing, because from a scent-centric point of view, the nice times in our lives tend to stay with us for longer. There are also suggestions throughout the book that looser perception might make us more tolerant and collaborative. I thought this an interesting idea, but I did have some reservations. If you are taking dogs as a model, then forgive me if I come over as a canine pedantic, but they are pack animals just like humans. Their floaty, nasal insights don’t stop them snarling at each other and engaging in doggy violence. A lost owner is lost, even if their scent lingers. A bereft dog is still bereft. And as for the suggestion that thinking in terms of the olfactory, might give a pointer towards more openness and collaboration, well there’s the irony that a dog’s sense of smell is often involved in territorial marking. Picky? What can I tell you. The dog thing, which serves as a template for much of The Bee Sting, didn’t quite work for me.

Still I got the point. And there’s also the fact that dog perception isn’t simply held up as a standard we humans should aim for. When psychic Rose foresees bad things happening, these premonitions are characteristically marked by the appearance of a ferocious-looking black dog. Dogs are presented as ambivalent, both helpful and frightening. Maybe The Bee Sting, in the way of good novels, is not writing some kind of prescription for how we should see the world. It’s more a picture to be looked at from different angles. Seeing things in less defined terms is useful, until the potential for confusion brings its own problems.

I started out wondering if this was a book with a message that only dogs could hear, but ended up feeling that The Bee Sting could find an appreciative human audience. Though its central idea might be a bit of a stretch, generally speaking it’s a woof from me