PACK IT IN
Scott Pack disparages Vikram Seth’s Two Lives as being about a one-armed dentist. In fact it deals with a young Indian man and a Jewish girl who fall in love and marry despite the social and cultural chasm between them. It didn’t set the charts alight because literary works do not sell well compared with chick-lit and jejune celebrity biogs.
Sam Banik, London
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P***ED OFF
Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals was a set text in 1961 at my school in India. Many years later I discovered, from watching the BBC’s adaptation, that ours was an expurgated version — Roger the dog appeared but all reference to the puppies Widdle and Puke had been removed. I am off now to buy a proper copy of the book.
Leela Grant, Bristol
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ANIMAL MAGIC
I am delighted to see David Bellamy advocating a renewed interest in My Family and Other Animals but Gerry’s earlier books are even better — Three Singles to Adventure, A Zoo in my Luggage and The Bafut Beagles (which my father read on radio, from which event we remained friends with Gerry and family until his death). His descriptions of catching hairy frogs at night, or of a field of flowers rising into the air (because they were in fact butterflies) paint pictures that few writers have bettered.
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Roger Slater, by e-mail
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BLUE NOTE
In his review of The House That Trane Built, John Bungey states that he would like to know “less about who played bass clarinet on track 5”. For this jazz lover, however much a track may excite, I can’t achieve absolute satisfaction unless I know the name of each performer and the date that it was recorded. Additional information such as where, and by whom, the track was produced is the equivalent of the cigarette after.
Ashley Kahn, Norfolk