Book Reviews: 11 January
OUT NOW
CLAY by Melissa Harrison (Bloomsbury, £14.99) The characters that people this deeply felt novel are familiar: the homesick Polish immigrant; the unloved schoolboy; the smug, middle-class couple with cottonwool- wrapped child; the fiercely independent widow. But there is another, rarer presence in Melissa Harrison’s book: the city itself, or rather, its green spaces. This is a love letter to parks, heaths and wast elands everywhere: places so familiar that we often fail to notice them.
It is these urban oases that connect Harrison’s cast and which bring truanting nine-yearold TC into the orbit of Jozef, once a farmer in Poland, but, in England, reduced to frying fast food. Both fi nd in the natural world a much-needed source of consolation and soon strike up a friendship – but it is one that, inevitably, attracts suspicion…
While Harrison fleetingly acknowledges that modernity has its up sides, her novel is essentially a plea to reconnect with the clay from which we come.
Reminiscent, at times, of Rose Tremain’s The Road Home, this debut has also been praised by nature writer Robert Macfarlane, and Harrison writes beautifully of the changing seasons. Set against their gentle progress, Harrison’s heartbreaking denouement, while predictable, is by contrast all the more shattering.
Stephanie Cross
THE DEADLY SISTERHOOD: A STORY OF WOMEN POWER AND INTRIGUE IN THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE by Leonie Frieda (Weidenfield and Nicolson, £25)Although I was not overjoyed by the title, which rather than ironic might easily be read as populist grab for a tabloid-style headline, there is a great deal to commend in this detailed, dramatic and colourful, yet scholarly book. It is an example of a narrative history by means of group biography that covers some 100 odd years.
These are the remarkable women of Renaissance Italy: Lucrezia Turnabuoni, Clarice Orsini, Beatrice d’Este, Caterina Sforza, Isabella d’Este, Giulia Farnese, Isabella d’Aragona and Lucrezia Borgia – often great thinkers, intellects and schemers as well as elegant, charming beauties.
Frieda sees the world of Renaissance Italy through them and in one sense their stories refl ect the vicissitudes of the quest for power and the corrupt courts of their age.
What is perhaps surprising is how important these strong women were for the states they led and that their lives show many of the same patterns as their better known male counterparts. These eight women experienced being rich, powerful and fortunate, but also suffered exile, impoverishment and notoriety and were often condemned by men for being successful women. Although there are connections between them, this is less a feminist account of sisterly solidarity than a description of ambitious individuals.
The hardback is well-illustrated and certainly offers a femalecentred alternative view to traditional portraits of Renaissance Italian courts.
Steve Barfield
THE FALL AND RISE OF GORDON COPPINGER by David Nobbs (HarperCollins, £14.99) A king of British comedy writing, David Nobbs’s career spans four decades. However, he is best known for The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin, the classic exploration of 1970s middle-class angst, disillusionment and rebellion.
This book is billed as a kind of witty, contemporary follow-up to Perrin, but it is a very much blacker comedy. The story of crooked, self-centred and supremely arrogant fi nancier Sir Gordon Coppinger’s fall from being a master of the universe at Canary Wharf – his skyscraper is nicknamed ‘the Finger’ – to the recognition that his entire life had been empty, selfi sh and vacuous, refl ects the grim times we live in.
David Nobbs does an outstanding job amidst the rampant comedy of showing us Coppinger’s gradual change of heart as his world unravels, but in the end I couldn’t feel sorry for this self-made fraudster.
Steve Barfield
BOOK OF THE WEEK
More than a romance Freya Langley finds Susan Fullerton’s dissection of the Bennet and Darcy families astute and an eye-opener
HAPPILY EVER AFTER by Susannah Fullerton (Frances Lincoln, £16.99)It’s the 200th anniversary of Pride And Prejudice this year. The book was fi rst published in January 1813, taking the then unknown writer, Jane Austen, 17 years to complete. Ever since, it has appeared regularly in polls as the favourite novel of all time, with a heroine generally considered to be the most charming character in literature who falls for one of the most romantic heroes ever created.
But Pride And Prejudice is not just a romance. When it was published, it was revolutionary in technique – employing the hitherto unknown device of ‘free indirect speech’. It was also ironic, stylish and witty, with a heroine who was completely unlike other contemporary female characters. All this is discussed here in Susannah Fullerton’s ‘biography’ of the novel – from ‘delivery’ of the first finished copies (‘I want to tell you that I have got my own darling Child from London’, Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra) to the prequels, sequels, adaptations and P&P merchandise on sale today.
Fullerton, who is President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia and author of Jane Austen & Crime, is well qualifi ed to guide us through the history of this sparkling book. Darcy, she notes, is tall and handsome, aged 28, Cambridge educated with one sister and no parents and £10,000 a year – a true ‘romantic hero… the supreme bourgeois female fantasy’. Lizzy Bennet, on the other hand, is thoroughly lacking in the recommended female traits of the day: reserve, modesty, silence, meekness. Instead, Elizabeth has a sense of humour, is witty and clever, physically strong (‘she crosses fi eld after fi eld at a quick pace, jumping over styles and springing over puddles with impatient activity’) and disconcertingly clever. ‘One knows exactly what to think,’ she asserts to those who doubt her intellect.
Fullerton’s dissection of the Bennet and Darcy families is astute and her views on modern incarnations of the book – film and TV adaptations, modern translations (it’s available in Albanian, Arabic, Korean, Lithuanian, Spanish, Tagalog and Urdu, amongst others) – are eye-opening. You can buy Pride And Prejudice maternity wear, skateboard ramps and even bunting made from recycled pages of the novel.
What on earth would the author have thought of it all? On the whole, Fullerton thinks, she would have been ‘astonished, amused and possibly also appalled… but she’d have been the fi rst to appreciate any revenue it brought her way.’ A true writer…
MUST READ
BRINGING THEM UP ROYAL by David Cohen (Robson Press, £20) As history has spectacularly proved, there is no more dysfunctional unit than a royal family, so David Cohen’s entertaining book on how the Royals brought up their babies from 1066 onwards makes riveting reading. Even more riveting this year because we’re about to get another glimpse into how a mini prince (or princess) is groomed for world consumption. But why are royal families so barmy? Cohen’s trawl through the monarchy (Elizabeth I: mother beheaded by father; Caroline of Ansbach arranged for another man to sleep with her daughter-in-law to get her pregnant; George III smashed his heir’s head against a wall) provides plenty of examples, but lacks real explanation. Lack of cuddles? Too many court yes-men? One piece of advice for prospective royal parents he does come up with: go to parenting classes and send child to state school.
PAPERBACKS
THE FALKLANDS INTERCEPT: MI5 SURETECIA by Crispin Black (Gibson Square, £7.99) This analytical espionage thriller may be closer to reality than most, as the author served in the army and worked in Whitehall. A ‘most secret’ investigation into an offi cial’s mysterious death, leads inexorably to South Atlantic confl ict amidst Anglo-French rivalries. SB
AUSPERITY by Lucy Tobin (Heron Books, £7.99)
A collection of money-saving tips by an award-winning fi nancial journalist whose belief is that you should live the life you want, but spend less doing it – ‘ausperity’ in other words: living a prosperous life on an austerity budget. Tips include ways to cut heating bills, raise cash and have free days out. Lola Sinclair
THE BEAUTIFUL CHILD: A GHOST STORY BASED ON A TALE BY HENRY JAMES by Emma Tennant (Peter Owen Publishers, £9.99)
This uncanny ghost story, told as a tale of literary detection, attempts to explain why the great writer Henry James mysteriously left unfi nished his strange story: The Beautiful Child. In Henry James’s story a couple begs a painter to depict the child they never had. Like The Turn Of The Screw, Emma Tennant narrates a tale within a tale, with many surprises and twists; it culminates in a truly chilling denouement that may keep you up at night. SB
ALSO PUBLISHED…
INTO THAT FOREST by Louis Nowra (Egmont, £10.99) A first-person narrative that is a gripping and vivid account of two little English sisters orphaned and lost in Tasmania, saved and adopted by Tasmanian tigers. Although these animals are long extinct, Louis Nowra’s imagination potently conjures up the detailed world of the primordial forest world of the tigers. Original and moving, it mixes the qualities of a poetic fable, a pioneer adventure story and a tale of sisterly love. SB
DIETING ROUND UP
NEW YEAR BOOKS WITH ATTITUDE by Lola SinclairAs you might expect, two of the sparkiest get-fit, get-thin, getgoing books designed to bully you into the new year are written by Americans. Their can-do attitude gives a much-needed boost when it comes to throwing off the frowsty threads of winter and leaping into a cool and glamorous spring.
Eileen Daspin’s The Manhattan Diet (Quercus, £7.99) comes with the exhilarating tag, ‘lose weight while living a fabulous life’. Daspin’s life does, indeed, sound fabulous: she lives in Manhattan, is an award-winning magazine editor and has worked for publications ranging from The New York Times to W Magazine. She’s married to a ‘New York celebrity chef’, Cesare Casella, and has been dieting since ‘I was 12 years old and… I can ballpark the calories of pretty much anything, with maybe a five per cent margin of error.’
Her book is a Manhattanite’s view of the world, which may not chime with life in the Welsh borders, say, but it also contains some quite sensible advice, as well as dieting plans and recipes, Manhattan Diet Secrets (start cooking your food, use olive oil, buy good ingredients and keep it simple) and dieting tips from celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker (‘eats everything from lamb shanks to bagels with cream cheese’) and Anna Wintour (lunches of rare red meat and a salad). The whole thing is jolly, no-nonsense and a joy to read, even if you don’t want to get thin.
By contrast, The First 20 Minutes by Gretchen Reynolds (Icon, £12.99) who writes an exercise column for The New York Times, is pretty high tech. It aims to use science to design the kind of exercises that keep you healthy and thin enough to fi t into a pair of jeans, but which only take a few minutes a week to achieve. Her USP lies in showing readers how to employ physiology, biology and psychology to ‘train smarter, recover quicker and achieve your fi tness goals’. Her conclusion: a little exercise is much better than none – and even fi dgeting helps…