Book Reviews: 12 April
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LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, £18.99; offer price, £15.99)Life, for many, is a medley of pure joy mingled with regrets for what might have been, had other choices been made or alternative paths taken. Ursula Todd, the stolid heroine of Kate Atkinson’s masterly new novel, is given the opportunity to relive her life again and again. First encountered during a snowstorm in 1910, baby Ursula lives for a brief moment, expires, is reborn, and dies again as a small child, returning each time with several unpleasant experiences excised.
The enchanting family house, Fox Corner, stays fixed, as do her siblings’ personalities. Characters taking centre stage in one version are peripheral in another, and events change too – an illegal abortion becomes a spell in a psychiatric hospital, the illegitimate son of feckless aunt Izzie referred to throughout is fi nally made manifest, while objects take on varying degrees of signifi cance. History, though, cannot be altered. In an episode surely inspired by Violet Gibson who tried to assassinate Mussolini, Ursula shoots Hitler, and dies again.
This multilayered novel is not an easy read – at times, the information overload and jumps from decade to decade are confusing. Ursula’s horrific wartime experiences are particularly well done, however, and the period detail is perfect.
Sarah Crowden
DANCERS: BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE ROYAL BALLET by Andrej Uspenski (Oberon Books, £35; offer price, £31.50) This photographic record contains more than 200 black and white and colour photos of The Royal Ballet’s dancers, including some fascinating backstage images and shots of rehearsals that the audience never normally sees. The photographer who has had such privileged access is dancer Andrej Uspenski, who was born in St Petersburg and trained at the world-famous Vaganova Academy before joining The Royal Ballet 10 years ago.
His love of photography, coupled with his experience as a dancer, means the pictures have a rare intimacy. Images of a dancer bent double, resting on the fl oor while nonchalantly relaxing over her long legs thrust out in front of her, or the transformation from mere mortal to stage performer that takes place in the privacy of a dressing room, offer an intriguing glimpse of what it’s really like to be a ballerina.
Gillian Spickernell
THE POLITICS BOOK by various authors (Dorling Kindersley, £16.99, offer price, £15.29) Politics exist because people in societies want things they either haven’t got or cannot have. But how – or even if – politics work is a different matter. That’s the underlying thesis of this entertaining guide to understanding political theory and principle. It begins in ancient China and Greece and carries on to the 21st century via a brisk trot through medieval politics, rationality and Enlightenment (1515-1770), revolutionary thoughts (1770-1848), the rise of the masses in 1848, the clash of ideologies between 1910 and 1945, right up to our own troubled era where topics include feminism, Islamic war, perestroika and terrorism.
These are weighty subjects handled in an accessible way, from the jolly graphics and use of quotes to the arrows showing the progression of individual theories. It would make a great present for a newly fl edged politics student, or for anyone who wants an objective overview of how we arrived at the state we’re in today.
Theo Walden
A MILLION HEAVENS by John Brandon (Abacus, £13.99; offer price, £12.59)A child prodigy in a coma serves as the nexus of this uniquely woven tale. Brandon uses this device as a conduit to unfurl a multiplicity of accounts involving a constellation of characters that oscillates between the terrestrial, mystical and celestial. Their lives are refracted through their weekly vigil at the bedside of the unconscious boy – and distil a kaleidoscope of varied and interwoven narratives.
The interplay of fantasy and reality permeating this lattice of storylines renders this a richly nuanced and multidimensional read. And the ensemble narration invites enough curiosity to propel the reader on to see how these different lives are reconciled.
Cara Purvis
BOOK OF THE WEEK
I want to be aloneThis intriguing book uncovers the history of the fashion for hermits, says Buchan Hamilton
THE HERMIT IN THE GARDEN by Gordon Campbell (Oxford, £16.99; offer price, £13.99) If you are in possession of a garden shed and are a man who likes to spend lots of time alone inside it, then you are the proud modern upholder of an ancient 18th-century tradition – the garden hermit. The revolution in garden design during that era introduced follies into landscaped gardens, and those follies, notes Gordon Campbell, author of this intriguing book, ‘often included hermitages. In some circles it was deemed desirable to hire a hermit to live in one’s hermitage.’
Why did this custom arise? Campbell begins his search for answers at Hawkstone, the Shropshire estate of Sir Richard Hill, which included a hermit’s summer residence. ‘The hermit … venerable, barefooted, whose name is Francis, (if awake) always rises up at the approach of strangers. He seems about 90 years of age.’
Someone like Francis, asleep or awake, living in your garden, embodied the then fashionable ideals of solitary retirement and pleasing melancholy. Strangely, suitable candidates were not that easy to come by so landowners had to advertise. One, a Mr Hamilton of Painshill, Surrey, wanted a hermit to spend seven years in his hermitage, where he would be given ‘a bible, optical glasses, a mat for his bed, a hassock for his pillow and food from the house’, although he was under strict instructions ‘never to exchange a word with the servant, or cut his beard or nails’.
Surprisingly, modern hermitages do exist, Campbell reveals. ‘The fi nest example is the one in the wilderness garden at Elton Hall on the Cambridge-Northamptonshire border, but perhaps the most prevalent modern reminder of this eccentric tradition lies in the garden gnome whose antecedents reach back to the statues of dwarfs in the gardens of the Renaissance. That was before Disney and Snow White ushered in a whole new world of dwarfi sh fi gures.
‘Previously, gnome-like statues had represented a link with the natural world. But,’ notes Campbell, ‘it may not be altogether foolish to see a succession that extends from the living garden hermit… and the garden statue to the early garden gnomes collected by gentry families.’ Or even to the man in your garden shed…
MUST READ
The will to survive THE GENERAL by Ahmed Errachidi (Chatto & Windus, £12.99; offer price, £11.69)
Ahmed Errachidi was a cook in London. In 2001, needing to fi nance his sick son’s treatment in Tangier, he went to Pakistan to buy jewellery to sell.
Watching the refugees streaming out of Afghanistan to avoid the bombing, he decided to cross the border into that country to help. In the chaos, he was stuck there. He eventually got back to Pakistan, was arrested, sold to the Americans, and sent to Guantanamo. He spent fi ve and half years there, accused of training in an al-Qaeda camp. When his lawyers were fi nally given this information, they could prove that at the time in question he’d been in a kitchen in London. He was released.
In Guantanamo he became known as The General for his ability to organise his fellow inmates. His book is both uplifting and terrifying, dealing with fear and torture, as well as the determination that kept this ordinary man going in extraordinary circumstances.
PAPERBACKS
COMMUNION TOWN by Sam Thompson (Fourth Estate, £7.99; offer price, £7.59) The stories in this debut novel, capturing the experience of metropolitan living, are told in elegant prose that is at once surreal and punchy, gritty urban Gothic. A book to make you think again about the cities you know.
Steve Barfi eld
BURYING THE TYPEWRITER by Carmen Bugan (Picador, £9.99; offer price, £9.49)
This is the story of Bugan’s childhood spent under the eye of the Romanian secret police after her father is imprisoned for protesting against the regime. ‘One in three people is an informer,’ she writes. A chilling account of the cost, and the importance, of her father’s heroism.
Peony Makepiece
I AM FORBIDDEN by Anouk Markovits (Vintage, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
An unusual, beautifully written novel about the life of the ultra- Hassidic Jewish community. At its core is the story of two women, Mila and Atara. Atara escapes the community for freedom and independence, while her adopted sister Mila remains in her faith. When they meet years later, amidst terrible family revelations, Mila is torn between love and the long-held convictions of her faith.
SB
ALSO PUBLISHED…
21ST CENTURY GIRLS by Sue Palmer (Orion, £12.99; offer price, £9.99)Not a chick-lit tale as the title suggests, but a follow-up to Palmer’s book, Toxic Childhood, published in 2006. This time round, her aim is to ensure that girls become happy, healthy adults. How? Reclaim motherhood is her answer…
SELF-PORTRAIT AS A YOUNG MAN by Roy Strong (The Bodleian Library, £25; offer price £20)
Roy Strong fought his way out of the repressed post-war suburbs to become the youngest ever director of the National Portrait Gallery. This touching account of how he did it is both one man’s struggle and a social history.
THOSE WERE THE DAYS
A twist in the tale The latest historical novels. By Peony Makepiece
Set during the American War of Independence, Taylor’s wellconstructed novel involves both revolutionary and racial politics, espionage and a love story between the British protagonist, Edward Savill, and American Arabella Wintour, the enigmatic mistress of the house in which Savill is lodging in New York.
THE MALICE OF FORTUNE by Michael Ennis (Century, £12.99; offer price, £10.99)
This is an intelligent historical thriller involving the philosopher and diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli, who is sent to a small Italian town where Cesare Borgia is plotting the overthrow of Florence. The philosopher’s quest is complicated by a serial killer who is strewing the streets with the body parts of butchered women. Macchiavelli joins forces with Leonardo da Vinci, temporarily employed by the Borgias and Damiata, a cultured courtesan, to stop the killer’s murderous progress.
SHE RISES by Kate Worsley (Bloomsbury, £12.99; offer price, £10.99)
A gloriously twisty novel, in which two parallel 18th-century storylines – involving a maid, her mistress and a teenage boy press-ganged into service with the Royal Navy – slowly collide. He’s off to the West Indies with the usual attendant dangers of rum, sodomy and the lash; the two women, on the other hand, embark on a lusty affair. An enjoyable, action-packed debut.