Review of Martha

A sympathetic biopic of Martha Stewart, that makes her seem almost nice. The bad parts aren't ignored, but they are spun and glossed. So we sort of know that she's horrible to minions, but it's OK because she's just a perfectionist, and everyone who was getting at her (like the SEC and the FBI and the DA) did it because she was a successful woman, not because she'd done anything really wrong.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of The Heartbreak Agency

Not-very-good German romcom - a woman starts an agency to help people suffering from heartbreak after break-ups, a journalist writes a mean article about it. He gets sacked by his new young boss because he won't retract, and finds himself grovelling for his job back which means he has to write another, nicer article, which includes receiving the heartbreak therapy...and he and the agency woman end up falling for each other, obvs...

The best bit is the location, which includes some stunning Baltic coastline, and now I want to go there. Someone seems to have described this as the "worst film ever", and it's not quite that bad.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of "Dreamland" by Kevin Baker

Wow, what a book. 

I bought this for my mum, in hardback, as a birthday present years ago - I looked at the subject matter, Jewish immigrants in New York City in the early C20th and thought she'd like it. I don't know if she ever read it, which is sad.

At some point I borrowed it from her, and put it in my bookshelf, and I didn't read it either, until now. And it's pretty amazing. A multi-threaded narrative with many characters, usually told in close third person but occasionally in first person. Many but not all of the characters are indeed Jewish immigrants, though not the pious, Americanising upwardly mobile ones that we are usually presented with in this sort of narrative. They're gangsters, prostitutes, union organisers, circus freaks...

It's very vivid in its descriptions of the city and its environs, especially Coney Island, the site of the eponymous theme park "Dreamland". 

I want to read the rest of the trilogy now, even though I had previously never heard of Kevin Baker. Disappointingly he's the same age as me, but he's written so much!

Review of "Silverview" by John le Carre

Not one of his best...perhaps because it's not entirely his. He died before he finished it, and his son completed it from extensive notes. It was a bit boring, with a not entirely believable ageing Polish  antifascist disappointed by Communism as the central character - the sort of ambivalent, ambiguous disappointed old guy that Le Carre usually does well, but not so interesting here.