Reading for pleasure

Stanley Tucci (Fig Tree: £20; e-book £7.99)

Don’t go food shopping when you’re hungry, they say – you’ll blow your budget. For a different reason, I counsel against starting this book when you’re peckish. If you do, raging, ravenous pangs will soon follow.

If, like me, you’re not much of a movie buff, you might not immediately place Stanley Tucci, though you’ll probably recognise the face. I remember him from The Devil Wears Prada, and, perhaps most fittingly, from Julie and Julia, in which he plays Paul Child, husband of culinary trailblazer and heroine to most foodies, Julia Child.

This is an autobiography with a twist – and also with a dash, a pinch and a soupçon. The subtitle tells it all. Tucci is a man who always seems to be hungry: one who, damn his teeth, maintains an immaculate figure despite that. He was at one time a model, for God’s sake. Born in the States of Italian parentage, his first wife died young. He now lives in Britain with his second wife and has travelled widely for work and gastronomic reasons. He seems to have been influenced as much, if not more, by the latter than the former.

The multinational food background enables him to cast a wry eye on all sides. You will chuckle at the reaction of his Italian parents to his English wife’s way of roasting potatoes. (I don’t think we Brits will take many medals from the Italians in the Culinary Olympics, but that category is a sure fire gold for us.) While he may have been brought up filling his face with peanut butter sandwiches during the day, Italian dinners inculcated in him a love of good food. Good does not mean fancy. Know anything of la cucina italiana and you will understand that simplicity is queen, allied to quality of produce.

Unlike many who purport to write about lives through food, Tucci’s memoir isn’t an endless reminiscence about haute cuisine dinners – though it has its share of memorable meals. And unlike the autobiographies of many famous personalities, it is completely without ego or self-aggrandisement. The self-deprecating style is a delight, and I really, really want to try some of the many recipes which he gives. There is great warmth; there is great style. I would love to have Stanley at my dinner table.

If you do pick this book up late afternoon, make sure your ragù is bubbling gently and that your pasta water is simmering, ready to come to the boil at a moment’s notice.

John le Carré (Penguin Random House: £20; e-book £7.99)

Julian Landsley has got out of the rat race, at least the one with which he was familiar. His City job behind him, he has acquired a small bookseller’s business in a seaside town in East Anglia.

Before we meet him, there is an odd encounter between Procter and Lily. The latter has lugged her toddler to London in the most clandestine way to deliver a letter by hand to the former. We learn that Procter is of the Service (could hardly be a le Carré novel otherwise, I suppose), and that Lily’s mother, whence the message comes, is dying.

Back to East Anglia. Julian has a series of encounters with the suave Edward Avon, who comes up with a myriad ideas to develop the bookshop. Very sadly, we learn that Edward’s wife Deborah is suffering from an incurable disease. Aha! You’re one jump ahead of me, I can tell.

The fact is that one is never ahead of the author in a book by John le Carré. You probably know that this one was published posthumously. The manuscript was apparently finished before his death, requiring only some tidying up, which was undertaken by his youngest son, Nick, himself a novelist.

The themes are familiar to aficionados. Combinations of innocence and duplicity; of murky pasts and shifting loyalties; of old certainties and moral ambivalence. All are to be found here. Extraordinary to think of this as the last bow. It’s as fresh as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was 60 years ago. More combinations: great pleasure in reading a very fine novel, and great sadness in knowing that this well is dry forever more. Ave atque vale, John le Carré.