"This is a remarkable memoir, but what is missing is any bridge between the controversialist and the connoisseur, the potty-mouth and the prig: it is almost as though the life of Henry James had been written by Roy 'Chubby' Brown." Craig Brown in the Mail on Sunday gave one star out of five to the second volume of Brian Sewell's memoir, Outsider II: "It is written with his usual verve, powered by exasperation … But his life remains a conundrum. On one level, it is all about the china-shop world of the connoisseur … delving into detail, developing a meticulous eye for suggestion and nuance. On another level, it is about gang-bangs and seething hatreds and releasing the bull into that china shop." According to Lynn Barber in the Sunday Times, the "book is of variable quality … Sewell's obsession with sex sometimes pays dividends – he talks of Lucian Freud studying women's pudenda 'as though he were a kitchen-boy looking for slugs in a lettuce' – but grows wearisome after a while." The Independent on Sunday's Matthew Bell pointed out that "Sewell has topped up his income by buying and selling pictures, so he knows how to market an asset. Certainly, he has done so with his books … dividing what could have been one volume into two." But there "is no shame in this, as he has an ample stock of anecdotes".
In Standing in Another Man's Grave, Ian Rankin's first Rebus novel in five years, the cantankerous detective leaves Edinburgh in search of an explanation for the disappearance of a young girl – though there are, noted Jake Kerridge in the Daily Telegraph, "plenty of passages in this book to remind us why Rebus and Rankin have become a cherished part of the city's incomparable literary heritage. I'm not sure the same will ever be said of Malcolm Fox, the cop Rankin has spent most of his time writing about since Rebus's retirement … reading future novels focusing on Fox will seem a bit like having to swig Appletiser when you know your host has a bottle of Glenmorangie hidden away." "Rebus is back," wrote Marcel Berlins in the Times with some relish, "only more so … Rankin and Rebus show themselves to be equally at ease in the bleak, unlovely parts of Scotland. The good news is that this novel is no fleeting visit back into Rebusland. The law has been changed so as to allow retired Scottish police officers to rejoin the force. Rebus intends to apply."
There hasn't been much love for Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography Total Recall, but then perhaps that's no surprise. Patrick Skene Catling in the Spectator looked on the bright side: "After wading through 646 pages of narcissistic gush and breathtaking vulgarity … I am consoled by the thought that the ordeal has not been entirely a waste of effort. Frequently able to put the book down, yet obliged every time but one to lift it up again, I have found the exercise has wonderfully enlarged, defined and beautified my deltoids …" Sandro Monetti in the Sunday Express was forthright: "For a book almost as huge as its subject's ego it is remarkable that there is so little self-examination … Of course, someone who describes himself as 'a tremendously disciplined superachiever' is unlikely to waste much ink discussing any faults." Camilla Long in the Sunday Times found him "an arrogant klutz who loves cigars and enormous cars and thinks Richard Nixon was 'terrific' … He behaves like a sulky robotic child in an enforced group-therapy confession session … He is such a bore."
