Between the lines

The comfort of strangers

There is something far too conventional about the way books are reviewed and discussed in our newspapers and cultural magazines. In spite of the power and reach of the internet, including online superstores like Amazon, the process by which books are selected for review and then evaluated remains largely unchanged from 40 years ago. It is extremely unusual for a new book not published in Britain to be sent out to British titles for review, even those American titles that are already so much part of the wider political discourse. Instead we have to wait…