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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 was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series. His books have won many literary awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the Costa Book Award. He was named a Granta Best Young Novelist in 1983, and in 2005, he was awarded the CBE. Boyd is married and divides his time between London and southwest France.
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