Tokyo Vice first skulked across my radar last summer when Jake Adelstein spoke at the Frontline Club. I had tickets to the event but at the last minute, circumstances intervened and I missed out. It was a crying shame: this is the kind of memoir that, lively and engaging in book format, would verily crackle [...]
Jeannette Walls’ memoir is the story of a childhood spent moving from town to town and hovel to hovel, propelled along an increasingly unhinged adventure by her father and hero, Rex.
Dreamer, drinker, and erstwhile architect of the titular house of sand, Rex Walls has charisma to burn. That he does so, to the ground, is [...]
Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera bookends his memoir on life growing up in Wolverhampton with a letter he’s battling to write to his protective, ultra-traditional Punjabi mother. We don’t know what this letter contains, beyond the fact that it’s going to break her heart and it’s got Sanghera swigging neat vodka while he tries to write [...]
