Book reviews: The Fall At Home, by Don Paterson | Where Epics Fail, by Yahia Lababidi

Does anyone except an aphorist care about the definition of an aphorism? Most likely not, but it is a question that I thought pertinent while reading these collections. In some ways it is easy to say what an aphorism is not, rather than what it is. It is not a proverb – “the wit of one and the wisdom of many”, as one definition has it. Proverbs tend to be anonymous and have an air of being self-evident; although many hands make light work while too many cooks spoil the broth, and you should look before you leap but strike while the iron is hot.