Book of the year (so far)

A word on an absolutely astonishing new novel by Don DeLillo, Falling Man. American fiction has struggled to come to terms with the psychological and emotional dislocation caused by the trauma of 9/11. Exploring the tragedy through fiction seemed superfluous, self-indulgent and also largely impossible given how raw the terror continues to feel to this day. Yet DeLillo has written perhaps the first 9/11 novel that has been able to find the words to describe the violence and horror and make some sense of it all. The prose is breathtakingly beautiful in parts as the novel begins in the dust-filled moonscape of Ground Zero and charts the impact of the fall of the towers on the lives of a group of New Yorkers. Is it possible for literature to be cathartic? I don't know. But Falling Man suggests that while buildings fell and lives were shattered, there is something that endures in the human spirit. And American literature is beginning to play its part in exploring the pain and by so doing reducing it.

Grown up cinema

With cinemas nation wide about to be overwhelmed by pirates and gurning Keith Richards impressions, someone somewhere has been smart enough to release Jindabyne in an effort to provide alternative cinema-going for the majority of sentient homo sapiens. The plot is murky: a dead aboriginal girls turns up in the river during a fishing trip and rather than raising the alarm immediately the boys tie her up in the river and continue fishing for another day. Cue revulsion by the indigenous population, small-town outrage and a whole host of unanswered questions about why they would do such a thing. All this is set against a backdrop of a marriage between Gabriel Byrne and an impressive Laura Linney that is slowly falling apart. The film is not without its flaws -- it tries to tackle far too many issues at once -- but director Ray 'Lantana' Lawrence nonetheless reminds us that there remains space for serious, thought-provoking, adult cinema today.

Blair. Best.

So today was the day. The End. Or at least the beginning of it. Blair announces his intention to resign on 27 June 2007. PM for ten years, Labour leader for thirteen. Diana, Kosovo, Iraq, Olympics to the everyman. BoE independence, a minimum wage, SureStart, and record economic growth to the politico. In a world where political careers rarely end in success, the best you can hope for is an acquiescence on the part of the population. And a poll in today's Times shows that 44% of the population think he did a good job. 44%. After ten years. That's higher than Labour's share of the vote in 1997. Unashamedly centrist, with political instincts second to none, Blair was an original, unique. He had a political in tray more complex than any leader has ever faced. And he coped. He coped very well indeed in the circumstances. In fact, he made rather a good fist of it. And he did it with a certain style don't you think? The best leader we've ever had? Better than Thatcher? Better even than Churchill? You know it. And it was in our time.