Breathless. In Matisse: The Life, Hilary Spurling compresses her masterful two-volume biography into something more manageable for the general reader. I think she must have done it by simply removing all of the air and squeezing. Because the overwhelming feeling for the reader of Matisse: The Life is of a life – a very long life – lived at a fevered pitch. From his earliest days to his death eighty years later, Henri Matisse fought a battle with himself, his art, and his family. That Spurling is able to carry the reader along at breakneck pace across this landscape is testament to her ability as a biographer to present as much as possible for her reader and, otherwise, stay out of the way.

Perhaps every life of a great artist is filled with struggle. Here, each crisis is presented as a life crisis, whether it be the decision to break away from the grey palette of his northern youth, or to spend his last resources on an inspiring mounted brilliant blue butterfly, or to favour colour over conflict. This is the romantic, heroic life of self-inflicted penury, striving against norms, seeking within for some vision, which may only be appreciated fifty years hence. At the same time, Matisse clearly has a counterbalancing conformism, an almost bourgeois approach to the art business and to family. Spurling does not judge, though she clearly is in sympathy with her subject.

However interesting Matisse’s life might have been, what animates it for the reader is his art. Fortunately, Spurling is very good at describing works (the text includes a number of colour reproductions) and, most especially, at carrying the reader through the process of creation. Perhaps, like me, you will remain bemused by gestation periods of many years for certain paintings. But at least you will feel that there is probably something more there, just out of reach.

A long life worth living is filled with love and Matisse’s is no exception. Despite an early break with his father, the bonds of family remain rock solid. His relationship with his wife, Amélie, is completely integrated into his artwork. His children and later grandchildren are vital. He is at times irascible, petulant, domineering, childish, devoted, sanguine: in short, a man. One of the most delightful episodes, which here is passed over quickly without comment, occurs when Matisse, who had been looking after his new daughter-in-law’s dog while she and his son were on their honeymoon, refuses to give it back when they return. He had grown so attached to it that he could not bear to part with it the rest of its life. You cannot help but smile.

For readability, I might have preferred some spacing in this telling, a chapter here or there at a lesser pace in order to allow the reader to catch his or her breath. But perhaps that is asking too much. In any case, if you cannot spare the time for Spurling’s even longer two-volume work on Matisse, then I recommend you at least take up this compressed life. Just hold on to your hat.

The return of this most one-sided of double acts—the philosophers “Lars” and “W.”—is most welcome. The droll delights of Spurious are equalled here in the fretful eschatology of Dogma. It is the end of things: the end of humanity, the end of life, the end of the rat infestation of Lars’ damp digs and, worst of all, the end of the Philosophy and Religion department at the University of Plymouth which spells the end of W.’s desultory career. Only dogma can save them now. Or Plymouth Gin, which (except in America) is readily available.

Iyer has a fine comic touch. The almost silent character, Lars, recounts the interactions between himself and W. primarily through the reported speech of W. It’s as though Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy, were silently telling the tale of he and Hardy’s dependent-abusive relationship. It is a technique that forever wrong-foots the reader. But you rather expect pratfalls here.

Lars and W. travel to America, where they (that is, W.) are astounded by the aforementioned absence of Plymouth Gin. They follow the conference circuit to Oxford, where they (that is, W.) set out the rules of their intellectual movement, Dogma. They visit Lars’ damp abode in Newcastle and W.’s sorry Plymouth. And throughout W. maintains a steady stream of quasi-philosophical speculation, abuse, and drunken revelation. Despite the attraction, death is too good for them.

Narrative is frustrated. Character is besotted. Philosophical and religious ideas flit by like moths headed for an open flame. This is the intellectual picaresque. And it should raise a smile or two, with or without Plymouth Gin.

There is a great deal to like in Adam Mars-Jones’ extended essay on Yasujiro Ozu’s 1949 film Late Spring. Like the renowned benshi narrators who accompanied the virtuoso performances of silent films in Japan’s pre-talkie film era, Mars-Jones steps through Ozu’s film with us from establishing shot to final image. At times he offers almost a frame by frame study pointing up oblique glances or nuanced non-committal grunts from lead actor Chishû Ryû whose import might be lost on a first (or tenth) viewing. This can be illuminating. It makes Noriko Smiling well worth reading by Ozu fans despite whatever other drawbacks may be present in the text.

The book as a whole consists in one long essay that, apart from the scene-by-scene and near-shot-by-shot description, canvasses the wide range of commentary that has been written on Ozu, and Late Spring in particular, by film critics, Japanologists, and even historians of censorship. It is clear that Adam Mars-Jones is well versed in the critical background. But at this point a couple of unfortunate habits of his post-modern essay style come to the fore.

He repeatedly disavows any specialist knowledge, frequently (apparently) undercutting his authority by appealing to Wikipedia and the buzz on Internet to support his points (or to rail against). Sometimes these come in the form of asides, sometimes in the form of explicit (proud?) claims to ignorance. None of them can be taken seriously, and cumulatively they present as a kind of argumentative tic or, since they are clearly deliberate, posturing. The effect is not unlike a famous American academic philosopher from Harvard giving a talk on metaphysics but with an “ah-shucks, I’m just a country boy, y’know” patter. Maybe it works on radio; in print it just looks silly.

The other aspect of the book which, I think, many readers will find distasteful is Mars-Jones’ invariable need to belittle, mock, chastise, and outright dismiss every critic to whom he refers in the course of the essay. That kind of camp snarkiness might work in short doses on BBC Radio 4 (where you can sometimes find Mars-Jones appearing) but in an essay over 200-pages long, it just comes across as shrill.

I said above that these were unfortunate habits. They are unfortunate because they are unnecessary, contributing nothing to Adam Mars-Jones’ eventual interpretive stance, and distracting, since one might well suspect that it is the snide comments that are the real point of writing such an essay. In the end, Mars-Jones has a useful interpretive suggestion for how to read Ozu’s Late Spring. And while I disagree with it, I won’t do him the same disservice that he offers other critics of dismissing it out of hand and then repeatedly mocking the person over the ensuing text. I’ll just let you decide for yourself.

If you can ignore the stylistic dross, then Noriko Smiling is well worth reading, whether or not you ultimately agree with Adam Mars-Jones’ interpretation.

One imagines a sensitive novelist of particularity, such as Carol Shields, measuring herself in the process of writing this short literary biography of Jane Austen. For what better measure might there be? Now two hundred years since their initial publication, Austen’s novels continue to delight and surprise. Writing in obscurity away from the bustle of the writerly world of “workshops”, “MFAs”, “public readings”, “writer circles”, and “literary festivals”, without the input of her literary contemporaries, without the lucrative compensation of a hefty advance or a well-publicised book tour, with only the modest praise and encouragement of family and a few close friends, Jane Austen made the novel form her own. Shields strikes precisely the right tone here – respectful.

Shields’ prose is crisp and insightful, with just enough facts drawn from Austen’s correspondence and other sources to gently move along the progress of her life, whilst keeping the focus where it ought to always be, on Austen’s texts. A literary biography succeeds when the reader finishes it and wants immediately to immerse himself or herself in the subject’s texts. Reader, the desire to plunge headlong into a rereading of each of Austen’s novels is nearly irresistible. Delightfully recommended.

Set aside the wartime heroics, the picaresque buddy story which undoubtedly has its roots in Cervantes, the burgeoning of love in mid-winter. Set it all aside and just admit that this is a story about the power of literature to raise us beyond ourselves in order to create something new. In the prologue to City of Thieves, David Benioff’s grandfather, in response to his grandson’s importuning questions about his time during the siege of Leningrad, exhorts him: “’David,’ he said. ‘You’re a writer. Make it up.’” It’s good advice. And also lucky for us as readers because the story he goes on to make up is compelling, thoughtful, witty, and tragic. In short–brilliant!

Teenager Lev Beniov is forcibly paired with Kolya Vlasov, a verbose private from the Red Army who has inadvertently gone AWOL. Colonel Grechko tasks them with securing a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake. They can find the eggs or die. Of course since they need to find these eggs in the besieged city of Leningrad, whose inhabitants have been starving for the past ten months, both options look to amount to the same. Fortunately Kolya considers their being alive to be already an improbability, so they might as well get on with the task.

Kolya leads Lev from one adventure to another in the few days they have been given to complete their task. Along the way they debate Russian literature from Goncharov’s Oblomov to Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Relevancies abound but are never laboured. Benioff maintains a light touch that keeps the action to the forefront and lets the erudition coast along in the wake. It lets the story be enjoyed on many levels at the same time. This is ‘making it up’ the right way. Highly recommended.