SOURCE: Clark, Alex. Review of Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades, by Claire Tomalin. Times Literary Supplement, no. 5097 (8 December 2000): 32-3.

In the following review, Clark compliments the “precision” and “clarity” of the essays and reviews in Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades.

A collection of book reviews might, at first glance, seem like turgid stuff; fragments of journalism tied not to great events that the reader can grasp on to, but to books that themselves have in some cases faded from view. The pleasure to be extracted from Several Strangers is, in consequence, both somewhat unexpected and wholly refreshing; Claire Tomalin was, and remains, a great critic. These pieces, spanning the period from 1971 to 1995, encompass Tomalin's career as neophyte reviewer, after her first job as a publishing junior, her Literary Editorship of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times and, latterly, as a writer herself, the author of...