RECOMMENDED READ: A Life Less Ordinary

This month's recommended read is a biography of a controversial but fascinating American author

NORMAN MAILER, it's fair to say, isn't as fashionable as he once was. For much of his life he was considered a towering figure of post-war American literature. By the end of it, though-and especially since his death in 2007 he's more often been regarded as a regrettable macho relic, with his taste for booze, fighting and philandering his way through no less than six marriages.

Most notoriously, in November 1960, while optimistically standing for mayor of New York, he drunkenly stabbed his second wife, Adele, almost killing her. This, not surprisingly, ended his mayoral campaign-but such was Mailer's ego that he continued to think of himself as an important political force, whose advice would surely be sought by President Kennedy.

But of course, while all this (and plenty more) might well make him worthy of disapproval, it certainly doesn't make him boring-as Richard Bradford's new biography exhilaratingly and clearly proves.

Born in 1923, Mailer grew up in Jewish Brooklyn, entered Harvard at 16 and scored a huge bestseller with his first novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), based on his army experiences in the Second World War. From there he was soon launched into a level of literary superstardom that's hard to imagine now and into that unfailingly rackety adult life of his.

To be honest, Bradford's book isn't without flaws. For my money, it rather overdoes the moralistic finger-wagging and seems unwilling to admit that Mailer ever wrote anything worth reading. There are also some factual errors, including a confusion between Republican and Democrat candidates in presidential elections. Fortunately, the story itself is so gripping (even jaw-dropping) that it easily triumphs over such shortcomings. Take, for example, this typical passage...