The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Like all short story collections, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher has its ups and downs. There are a few that could be autobiographical ("Sorry to Disturb" and "How Shall I Know You?"). There's what may be a vampire story (or just an extended meditation on mortality) in "Terminus", and there's a story that was possibly written to indulge in a grammatical pun ("Comma", because of course).

There's at least one story in here that I'd never like to read again, which is "The Heart Fails Without Warning." (which, incidentally, is an incidence that occurs in one of the other stories) It's a look at a family dealing with one of their daughter's eating disorder, and it's unsettling as hell.

The class of the lot is the title story, which is (I believe) the only piece in this collection that was not previously published. It's oddly fascinating to read, given that it's a revenge fantasy for a certain class of British intellectual, and it's not played 100% straight (thankfully, because even if you believe Thatcher is odious, you have to wink a little, or it comes off as psychotic.)

This is very much worth reading -- the prose is both memorable and limpid, I knocked this out relatively quickly.

The Anabasis

On the one hand, this is a classic. On the other, it's a disjointed mess. I'm not even sure it's this particular translation -- Xenophon is occasionally mentioned (in passing) in the first half of the book, before being prominently featured in the second. This isn't an epic (so there's no divine intervention), but there's a lot of sacrifice -- Xenophon will hardly leave his tent without having the diviners tell him what he should do.

It's one of the original adventure stories, but I would not recommend it.