Book Reviews: 12 July
OUT NOW
KISS ME FIRST by Lottie Moggach (Picador, £14.99; offer price, £13.49) Twenty-something Leila isn’t like most girls her age: she’s more interested in philosophy than Facebook, she’s never had a boyfriend and she’s never even been kissed. Then again, Leila has spent most of her young adult life caring for her MS-sufferer mum.
It’s after her mother’s death that Leila joins an online debating forum, rapidly progressing from the status of ‘Newly Enlightened’ to ‘Elite Thinker’ as a result of her intellectual abilities.
However, the founder of the site, Adrian Dervish, has another test in store for Leila: to assume the online identity of a manicdepressive named Tess, after Tess herself has committed suicide. As Adrian explains, if Tess’s family believes that she is still alive, Leila will be sparing them the pain of bereavement. But will Leila be able to keep up the deception?
Billed as ‘The Talented Mr Ripley for the online age’, Kiss Me First promises to be an edge-of-the-seat read that raises compelling ethical questions. But while Lottie Moggach (daughter of novelist Deborah) is a darkly humorous writer, Leila’s lack of sophistication is somewhat unbelievable and the high-concept, pulse-racing plot twists that one might expect never emerge.
Stephanie Cross
CHILDREN OF THE JACARANDA TREE by Sahar Delijani (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99; offer price, £11.69) This moving story – set in post-revolutionary Iran, from 1983 to 2011 – describes how lives have been affected by revolution. It begins with Azar, who is blindfolded, handcuff ed and in labour. She is interrogated just before being handed over to doctors to give birth to Neda in Evin Prison.
Based on the author’s experiences – Delijani herself was born in Evin Prison in Tehran – this debut novel is harrowing yet beautifully written, as it carefully links three generations who have had to build a future from a diffi cult and painful past.
Lizzy Greenhalgh
ISLAND SUMMERS: MEMORIES OF A NORWEGIAN CHILDHOOD by Tilly Culme-Seymour (Bloomsbury, £16.99; offer price, £13.99) This memoir – complete with maps and photographs – tells the story of an island purchased by a visionary woman in exchange for a mink coat. It is written in three parts: the first, a dedication to the family matriarch, Mor-mor, who purchased the island; the second, a narrative of the grandchildren’s time on the island, peppered with detail about Norwegian culture; the third, a summary of a very special, adventurous winter and the nostalgia caused by losing a family legacy. Unfortunately, it is sometimes rather flat and reads in parts like a holiday-home brochure.
Ijeoma Onweluzo
BOOK OF THE WEEK
A heady danceISADORA DUNCAN: MY LIFE (Liveright, £12.99; offer price, £11.69)
The casual observer may know Isadora Duncan as the woman dressed in a diaphanous white tunic who ran barefoot across the world’s stages in free- flowing dance in the early 20th century. Born in San Francisco in 1877, her first idea of movement ‘came from the rhythm of the waves’. Her autobiography documents in gripping detail the highs and lows of a life lived on the forefront of artistic endeavour. Hating the restrictions of ballet technique, which she considered unnatural, she pioneered a modernist dance style in harmony with the natural world.
Originally banned, then heavily censored, this is a new, fully restored edition. The New Yorker’s dance critic Joan Acocella supplies an introduction, which rediscovers Isadora Duncan the person, and in particular her views on the status of women. Never would Duncan ‘lower’ herself to the ‘degrading state’ of marriage. She took lovers when it pleased her, became obsessed with the works of Richard Wagner, founded her own dance school in Berlin, gave birth to two children who later drowned in the River Seine with their nanny, then a third who died after birth, as well as touring endlessly for her art.
She aroused devotion and revulsion in equal measure, yet by the time she died at the age of 50, the glamour was long gone. Her death, however, is the stuff of legend: as she tossed her scarf over her shoulder, it got caught in her car’s wheels before the vehicle drove off, instantly breaking her neck.
Gillian Spickernell
COFFEE TABLE BOOK
MAGIC 1400s-1950s by Mike Caveney, Jim Steinmeyer, Ricky Jay and Noel Daniel (Taschen GmbH, £44.99; offer price, £40)
This visual history of the varied performing arts of illusion conjures up a wondrous world, which until relatively recently has been ephemeral; like the circus, it has remained shadowy and suspect when compared to the high art of theatre.
What is most effective about this lavish book is the sheer mass of illustrative material that has been collected and reproduced from a range of far-flung archives. There are a thousand-odd posters, photographs, handbills and engravings – as well as paintings by artists such as Hieronymus Bosch and Caravaggio – that are used to narrate the story of how magicians evoked a potent fantasy world. SB
PAPERBACKS
WHEN IN ROME by Nicky Pellegrino (Orion, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)How do you survive in a city where your mother is a prostitute and you are being groomed to take over? Destiny ushers Serafi na, a beauty both of looks and heart, into a diff erent life. I was expecting playful chick lit; instead I was reaching for tissues halfway through.
IO
DELICIOUS by Nicky Pellegrino (Orion, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
In this delightful yarn, Maria Domenica Carrozza challenges convention and thus begins the story of three generations of women passionate about food and life. Bursting with Italian food references, one might fi nd oneself salivating, or rushing to the nearest Italian restaurant.
IO
A fine collection of eight plays of diff erent genres created by members of the Actresses Franchise League (1909-1913), which are clever and often very comic. These unjustly neglected plays recall the passion and bravery of that remarkable political struggle.
SB
THE PERFUME COLLECTOR by Kathleen Tessaro (HarperCollins, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Grace Munroe is a listless, 1950s housewife whose world is turned upside-down by a mysterious Frenchwoman, Eva d’Orsey – a perfect stranger who bequeaths her a fortune. As Grace unravels her benefactor’s identity and the mysteries of the art of scent, she discovers a shared, hidden history. Tessaro’s rhapsodic, seductive prose creates a Proustian evocation of lost Paris.
SB
ALSO ON THE SHELF
THE PRICE OF INEQUALITY by Joseph E Stiglitz (Penguin, £10.99; offer price, £9.89)The celebrated, Nobel Prizewinning economist analyses and demonstrates what is wrong with the current model of American capitalism’s neoliberal laissez faire – in concentrating on inequality it stifl es innovation and the spirit of enterprise. However, this situation could be positively transformed.
SB
3 OF THE BEST NOVELS: ABOUT BRITISH INDIA
- A Passage to India by EM Forster
- Kim by Rudyard Kipling
- The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
AUDIO BOOK OF THE WEEK
LEARNING TO TALK by Hilary Mantel, read by multiple narrators (Whole Story Audibooks, £15.31; offer price, £13.78)A witty, sometimes gothic set of short stories that explore how a young woman transforms her life and gains independence from her family.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS FOR SUMMER
It helps to have some books to hand to brighten rainy days
Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt And Colouring Book by Johanna Basford (Laurence King, £9.95; offer price, £9.45) is a beautifully detailed and delightful interactive activity book in the form of a black-andwhite wonderland. (For ages 5 to 10 years.)
Shhh! Don’t Wake The Royal Baby! by Martha Mumford, illustrated by Ada Grey (Bloomsbury Children’s, £6.99; offer price, £6.64) is a topical, amusing book for the under-fives.
AA Milne’s Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace (Egmont, £12.99; offer price, £11.69) collects together some of Milne’s memorable, timeless poems about Britain with EH Shepard’s illustrations.
Goblin Secrets by William Alexander (Margaret K McElderry, £6.99; offer price, £6.64) is a bold fantasy that will suit those older children who liked the Harry Potter books
Francesca Simon’s Horrid Henry’s Nightmare (Orion Children’s, £4.99; offer price, £4.49) is also available as an audio book read with relish by Miranda Richardson, will beguile Henry’s many fans.
RSPB The Great British Wildlife Hunt by Anne Harrap (Bloomsbury, £10.99; offer price, £9.89) will foster your budding naturalists. Finally, bestselling children’s author, Sally Gardner, has released a half dozen audio books of her successful
Magical Children series of novels, read by actors Andrew Sachs and Emilia Fox, which will be very popular with children aged 5 to 10.
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