Harriet Waugh
The only two books that have given me unalloyed pleasure this year have been Robert Gray's The King's Wife (Seeker & Warburg, £17.95) and the poet Paul Dur- can's new volume, Daddy, Daddy (Black- staff Press, £5.95), which has deservedly won the Whitbread Prize for poetry.
Robert Gray's studies of five Queen consorts (Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henrietta Maria, Catherine of Braganza, Caroline of Brunswick and Mary of Teck) came out to ploddingly respectful reviews. What the reviews failed to mention was how hugely entertaining they are. The book abounds with wit and splendid jokes. You laugh the whole way through and then cry whenever a royal hits the dust. A masterpiece.
As for Paul Durcan's Daddy, Daddy it is the latest volume by him of some of the best poetry being produced in the last 20 years. A good deal of his poetry is auto- biographical, taking the reader on a psychological as well as a physical voyage of his life. He also has an unusual gift of empathy towards those whose lives he glimpses in passing and transforms into fictional surreal truth. These are funny and moving, usually all in one. There are fewer of these stories in Daddy, Daddy, but a richer and more complex thread to the poems instead. Even so, for those who particularly enjoy his brand of surreal farce there are some wonderful offerings. Parti- cularly good are `Hommage a Cezanne' and 'The Dublin-Belfast Railway', and as for more picturesque comedy I do not think he has ever written anything better than 'The Pine by the Sea'. Altogether a terrific book.
The best detective novel of the year is Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill (Col- lins, £12.95).
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