I had two books which I had to read over the last couple of weeks.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote for review on the radio and On Beauty by Zadie Smith for my book club.
As they used to say in the Matric: Compare and Contrast.

In Cold Blood, for those of you who weren’t reading in the Sixties, is the factual story of a family in small town America, wiped out , more or less without motive by two young men.
Truman Capote, at this stage a young author and reporter, decided to write this up in an attempt to understand this terrifying act of violence. The current film Capote (which I haven’t seen yet) is based on this.
It is a brilliant book, Capote writes so well that I would have been quite happy to drop everything for twenty four hours just to read.
He understands that to make this subject capture the reader it is essential that we engage with the two protagonists, we do this by a close examination of their backgrounds but principally by studying the minutiae of their lives and their relationship up to, during and after this crime was committed.
Capote is incapable of writing a duff sentence, every thing is telling and true but he uses a few tricks of the cinema to make this retelling more gripping.
He cuts backwards and forwards between the victims and the perpetrators of the crime, and then between the perpetrators and the pursuing police in a masterly fashion. I found it impossible to put the book down, and if I did my heart was thumping with excitement.
But of course there is a solid and humanising message behind the thriller.
Today it is commonplace to try to use understanding to forgive, this was more of a pioneering notion in the sixties and Capote makes this point well and without sentiment.

On Beauty, on the other left me totally cold.
Smith makes no secret of what she is attempting to achieve.
She declares in the introduction, that the book is a homage to E.M.Forster, and particularly to Howard’s End.
Unfortunately, as with most of the modern attempts of comedies of manners, she decides to set this in the hot house , not to say Mandarin atmosphere of an American University. This particular breed with their rivalries and pettiness I find a huge turn off. The rest of the book was read through jaundiced eyes as a result.
It was critically acclaimed when it came out and praised as a comedy.
I wish I could have found even one small moment of laughter in it.
She satirizes all of her principal characters and, frankly, I disliked the whole lot of them . As they were put through their various hoops I felt nothing except profound embarrassment. I think only a cynic could have laughed.
Her problem seemed a total inability to engage with any of her characters, and then of course neither could the reader.
Compare with Capote’s skilful, but unsentimental ability to make one sympathetic to even hardened criminals.
I have no doubt that Zadie Smith has a good book in her.
My advice to her would be to stop reading Forster and Updike and start reading Capote.