It’s Pamela Stirling’s first issue as new editor of the Listener, and the good news is that the protracted Kidman-Grimshaw spat seems to be nearing an end.

It’s certainly reached the ‘Attempting To Get The Last In Word In’ stage. Perhaps sensing that such a public airing of differences is doing no one any favours, Kidman signs off her latest missive with the words:

I have no wish to engage in further correspondence and hope this puts the matter to rest.

If you’re still sufficiently interested to see which point of order is currently being debated, the full text of the letter is halfway down this page.

On a more constructive note, Nancy Cawley departs from her usual travel writing beat and heads the Books section. She's written a potted history of Dunedin’s Longacre Press, started in 1994 by Barbara Larson, Paula Boock and Lynsey Ferrari.

Catherine Chidgey (The Transformation) reviews The Dante Club, the bestselling historical mystery by young Harvard graduate Matthew Pearl. The book is loosely based on actual meetings held in 1865 by a small group of elite scholars intent on translating The Divine Comedy. Chidgey concludes:

The Dante Club is, in the end, about the interpretation of literature – and about the perils of getting it wrong. This novel is original and challenging, and ye who enter should not abandon all hope: with perseverance comes reward.

Somewhat late in the day, Paula Morris (Queen of Beauty) is given Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake to review: “…a New World novel of manners, poignant and engaging, rather than a Dickensian saga.”

Rachael King checks out Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland:

This is Coupland at his most melancholy and meditative. Flashes of dark humour are at work, but mostly this is a poignant novel about loss and how people deal with it: a lot of soul-searching and sinking into the blackness of one's own mind; exploring one's inadequacies and occasionally looking for someone to get angry with.

And finally, Terry Snow tackles The Alphabet: Unravelling The Mystery of the Alphabet from A To Z by David Sacks. Sacks is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, and has compiled a series of columns on the history of the alphabet. Snow, the resident Listener expert on matters linguistic, rather drily concludes:

Despite the dog's breakfast of the book's design – panels, boxes or sidebars can extend to 10 pages, and have two-page italic caption sections interrupting – there are lively moments.