2007-11-24 A worthy addition to the series

I'll admit I was a little disappointed when I first read North Face of Soho, but after reading it a second time I now feel it makes a perfect addition to the series. Getting over the disappoint was just a matter of taking the book on its own terms. At times it does feel like a different book from its predecessors, but there are good reasons for this (James himself discusses them at the end of the third volume) and the differences don't detract from the usual levels of style, story-telling and entertainment we've come to expect.

The main differences relate to the book's focus, which James feels has to be narrower than before. He operates a strict media blackout when it comes to his family so we sadly get almost nothing of Clive James the husband or father. But James more than compensates by giving us a superbly engaging account of his professional development: his first successes in literary journalism and television, the failures that inevitably accompanied them, the people who influenced him, and the slow but steady rise to stability and stardom. We might be sorry that he rarely strays beyond these limits, but, as usual, we can't fault him on the story that he does tell.

Aside from different content there is also a change in overall tone, with the author's sense of the clock running down informing much of his commentary. His impressions as he occupies `the waiting room' can tend towards the fatalistic at times, but the old sparkle is never far away; the funny moments may be slightly fewer and further between, but they are certainly there and when they arrive they are as painfully funny as you would expect. (And if the author sounds a little more serious, we can hardly begrudge this in a book about growing up.)

James is an older man now and it's no surprise if he isn't writing exactly the same kind of book he was writing ten or twenty years ago. But the current volume of memoirs displays an impressive continuity with its predecessors and there's every reason to look forward to the next. Read this one in the context of the other three, accept that it will have a slightly different feel to it, and you won't be disappointed.