Rupert Christiansen
Michael Ignatieff's The Russian Album (Chatto, £12.95) is the painful study of the marriage of his grandparents and their expatriation from Russia after the Revolu- tion, beautifully reconstructed from family papers and set amid reflections on the nature of loyalty, inheritance and continui- ty. Ignatieff's style is exquisitely sensitive without a trace of preciousness and his intelligence high. Andrew Motion is also obsessed with the theme of family affec- tions; his new collection of verse, Natural Causes (Chatto, £4.95) has more sinew and irony than his previous work, and 'This Is Your Subject Speaking', an elegy to Lar- kin, is profoundly memorable.
Joseph Horowitz's Understanding Tosca- nini (Faber, £20) could not be called an elegant piece of writing, but it is one of the most forceful and original essays in the sociology of music I have ever encoun- tered. 'E. V. L. and G. M.'s' What a Life! (Collins, £5.95) is the long-overdue resur- rection of a classic of English surreal humour.
I don't quite know what to say or think about Ian McEwan's The Child In Time (Cape, £10.95) except that its bizarre intensity haunts me uncomfortably; and that I found its ecstatic climax emotionally overwhelming.
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