Book reviews roundup: Coalition; Stars, Cars and Crystal Meth; Hot Milk

What the critics thought of Coalition by David Laws, Stars, Cars and Crystal Meth by John Sutherland and Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

“Osborne’s unravelling budget gives added relevance to David Laws’ book,” wrote George Parker in the Financial Times of Coalition by the former minister. The book’s major lesson was that the Lib Dems’ role in government had been “saving the Tories from themselves”: “the Lib Dems repeatedly stopped Cameron and Osborne from inflicting damage on their own vaunted ‘compassionate conservatism’ as they struggled to balance the books.” In their absence, argued Parker, “it was left to Tory MPs to stop Osborne enacting his promised £12bn of welfare cuts, his budget imploding last week.” For Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times, the book was “packed with remarkable verbatim accounts of the arguments between the men at the top ... Laws sometimes appears to have been lying under his leader’s bed, like a loyal pet.” Possibly the most shocking revelation he noted was Laws’ claim that George Osborne is amusing and self-aware. “This book reeks of political halitosis” wrote Lawson, “and is none the worse for that.” In the Mail on Sunday, Simon Walters called Coalition “brilliant”. “No made-up tosh about pigs-heads ... this is the real thing: page after page of first-hand accounts of rows, feuds and cover-ups.” He concluded that “if, like me, you think plots and personalities are as important as policies in understanding the way we are governed, this is the book for you.”

Some puzzlement greeted the publication of the critic and academic John Sutherland’s latest book. Entitled Stars, Cars and Crystal Meth, it is a biography of his son Jack, a former Hollywood driver, now in recovery from addictions to alcohol, drugs and sex. “This is the unlikeliest confection,” wrote Lynn Barber in the Sunday Times. “This book is a fascinating literary exercise – John Sutherland claims to have been inspired by Raymond Chandler – but somewhat queasymaking if you think of it as a father writing about his son, recording his spiralling downfall and all his gruesome sexual exploits.” In the Independent, David Hepworth mustered only limited sympathy for Jack. “Having read his adventures with one eye closed, I can only wish him well in his new sobriety,” he wrote. “I was rooting for the father who took dictation.” In the Daily Telegraph, Robert Hanks wondered “what impelled Faber, the house of TS Eliot, to publish this rambling, uneven narrative? Was it just John Sutherland’s name? Or is this Eliot’s territory – the waste land for real?”

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