STEVE JOHNSON recommends a beautiful album of songs that celebrate summer, from May Day onwards
The Stopped Heart
by Julie Myerson
(Jonathan Cape, £12.99)
THIS is anything but an enjoyable book. Yet it is technically highly accomplished and its compelling and brutal psychological honesty make it arguably Julie Myerson’s greatest literary achievement to date.
The Stopped Heart draws together two of the predominant themes in the author’s previous output — the often unspoken linkages between people who have inhabited the same house throughout the generations and the impact of bloody violence on otherwise safe and mundane lives.
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
MARY CONWAY is spellbound by superb performances in Arthur Miller’s study of the social and personal stress brought about by Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MANJEET RIDON relishes a novel that explores the guilty repressions – and sexual awakenings – of a post-war Dutch bourgeois family


