And I found this review of Any Human Face waiting for me when I turned on my laptop this afternoon… Here’s a taste of it.
This is an unusual book in that it has everything – love, suspense, moral conflict, social criticism, psychological acuity, and crack writing – but none of it is expected.
Any Human Face had its official UK launch yesterday evening in the Travel Bookshop, a place I wholeheartedly recommend for all your reading needs should you be in or near Notting Hill, and probably worth a specific trip for. (It is a travel bookshop, after all.) I was accompanied by Simon Barraclough, who pulled some fine Italian-focused work from his poetic hat, and introduced by my friend and agent, the poet Isobel Dixon, so I couldn’t have been happier. I also had the chance not only to see some old friends – including one I haven’t seen for 33 years (hello, Sara!) – some newer ones (hello, Katy!) and some very new ones ( hello Essie!), but also to cement some previously virtual ones (hello Rob! hello Anne!).
I’ll be reading from Any Human Face on Saturday, 3 July, at The Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill, London. Even better, I’ll be accompanied by Forward shortlisted poet Simon Barraclough, for an Italian-themed evening. This is the cover of Simon’s fine collection. I haven’t added mine because I’m sure you’re all more than familiar with it by now.
Forgive my absence. If this blog were a different kind of open book from the one it is, I’d have a lot to tell, but, post-Diana, and unfashionably, I’ve opted for discretion. Which means that all I’m using it for at the moment is the most fleeting self-promotion. For anyone who’d like to see some translations of the poetry of Jean Genet that I committed, with adolescent hubris, many years ago, I recommend the third number of the always-excellent Cambridge Literary Review, just out, and worth considerably more than the cover price. You can find out more about it here.
I’ve just discovered that Amazon knows – and registers – whenever Kindle users highlight a passage on their Kindles, and it reminded me of something I saw many years when John Wilkinson and I were on a walking (actually, hitch-hiking) tour of western Scotland and the Hebrides. We were holed up in the north-westernmost youth hostel of the British Isles, a stone’s throw from Cape Wrath. Among the other hostellers was a fierce-browed woman with a copy of Edgar Allen Poe’s collected stories. She was reading the book with a red pen in her hand and, every now and again, with a stifled grunt, she’d ring something in the text. When she left the room, presumably to pee, I couldn’t resist. I sneaked a look to see what she’d been marking.
I can’t be the only person who remembers that wonderful, exhilarating, fuck-you-all moment from a documentary on Louise Bourgeois when the interviewer, appalled, watches the artist smash a sculpture he’d, inappropriately in her opinion, praised. I’ve just found out about her death from Baroque in Hackney’s typically astute post. I hope to find some time before too long to add a few words myself.
Rob Spence reviews Any Human Face on Topsyturvydom, his highly recommended blog. It’s a great thrill when someone whose opinion you respect gets it, and Rob certainly gets it here. This is a taste of the review:
This novel is, in concept, an excellent, disturbing, stylish thriller, but one with aspirations beyond the working out of a criminal act. It uses most of the thriller conventions, but goes well beyond them, to offer a story which deals with universal themes, particularly of man’s inhumanity to man, and the dark heart of loneliness at the centre of many lives.
An excellent review of Any Human Face in The American in Italia. This is the best bit:
Andrew’s solitary life suddenly becomes a thriller in itself, as Lambert takes the wraps off dangerous and age-old Italian conspiracies. Yet the larger tale belongs to Andrew himself. Through colloquial, reflective prose, “Any Human Face” drags the reader into intimate contact with Andrew and his loneliness, while slaughter and a long-secret kidnapping conspiracy keep the plot racing.
Lambert’s novel provides powerful insight into the sinister nature of Italian power, and into human solitude.
Well, Any Human Face is now officially launched in its home city of Rome, in the Trastevere studio of Paola Casalino, just round the corner from the setting of the first chapter and a five minute walk from Andrew Caruso’s first cold-water garret. I had a wonderful time and I hope everyone else did. You can see some photos of the event, taken by my friend Maika, here. I’ll be posting a short film very soon…
CHARLES LAMBERT 