Book Reviews: 7 June
OUT NOW
CRUEL CROSSING: ESCAPING HITLER ACROSS THE PYRENEES by Edward Stourton (Doubleday, £20; offer price, £16) Each July an annual trek across the Chemin de la Liberté in the Pyrenees commemorates the brave souls who between 1939- 1945 used these gruelling and treacherous mountain paths to seek the neutral Spanish border from occupied, wartime France.
Stourton, veteran broadcaster and one-time Today programme presenter, recreates, in what is a fascinating, largely oral history, the journeys of these often heroic but frightened ecapees – men, women and children – in a vivid, detailed and dramatic account with a great many maps.
Steve Barfield
CONSTANCE by Patrick McGrath (Bloomsbury Circus, £12.99; offer price, £11.69) Constance, a ‘devious’ woman, is an enigma. Her husband, Sidney Klein, attracted by her apparent fragility, is dismayed to discover that he has married into a family ‘incapable of telling the truth’. Constance threatens his peace of mind and seems deeply affected by an unhappy childhood in which she felt unloved, unlike her sister Iris, for whom she has felt responsible since the age of 12, when their mother died.
The action shifts between New York and Ravenswood, the family home, a tumbledown pile full of unpleasant memories, occupied by the sisters’ elderly father and his housekeeper. Secrets revealed explain why Iris is the favoured child, leading to a probable suicide.
Patrick McGrath’s luminous, nuanced writing lifts the novel out of the ordinary on occasion, though Constance and her ‘extensive structure of neuroses’ elicits not sympathy, but a fervent longing for the emasculated Sidney to deliver a stinging slap to his wayward spouse.
The demolition of Penn Station in New York acts as a symbol of the disintegration of the Klein marriage, yet the novel ends with a faint glimmer of hope and a suggestion of reconciliation amidst the unrelenting gloom.
Sarah Crowden
ANNE BOLEYN: THE QUEEN OF CONTROVERSY by Lacey Baldwin Smith (Amberley, £20; offer price, £18) The Princess Di of the Tudor age, in that she took on a Royal Family, changed a nation and met an untimely end, Anne Boleyn has become a recent fi gure of fascination for media historians and viewers alike. That’s largely due to Hilary Mantel’s bestselling novel Bring Up The Bodies, which deals with Boleyn’s downfall and execution at the hands of Thomas Cromwell.
But was Cromwell solely to blame? Baldwin Smith, an American historian, has some counter-theories to expound in this analysis of a riveting period in Britain’s past. Anne Boleyn was the ‘crucial catalyst for three of the most important events in modern history’, he writes. ‘The break with Rome, causing the English Reformation, the advent of the nation state, and the birth of a daughter whose 43 years on the throne stand as England’s most spectacular political success story.’
Ella Swift
ALL THAT IS by James Salter (Picador, £18.99; offer price, £15.99)
The New Yorker recently labelled octogenarian James Salter ‘the writer’s writer’s writer’: high praise, but what about the humble common reader? Is Salter’s fi rst novel for 34 years, for us ordinary folk as well? Yes, defi nitely – although I suspect it will be male readers of a certain age who will enjoy it most. All That Is opens in 1944 when 19-year-old US navy offi cer Philip Bowman is on his way to Okinawa. Shortly after, his ship is sunk and 3,000 men killed; Philip is one of the few to escape. The war ends, Philip obtains a Harvard degree, then embarks on a publishing career, all within the space of a few pages. The economy of Salter’s storytelling is part of his brilliance, as is the way in which he shifts the narrative focus in order to bring even minor characters to life: Salter’s pen portraits seem casual and yet are dense with colour and feeling.
Nevertheless, Philip’s sexual conquests (which provide the impetus for Salter’s loose plot) gradually begin to pall. The end result is a book that’s easy to admire; rather harder to love.
Stephanie Cross
BOOK OF THE WEEK
Playground powerGill Hornby’s school-run satire contains just the right amount of honey. By Emma Hagestadt
THE HIVE by Gill Hornby (Little, Brown, £12.99; offer price, £11.69) Gill Hornby’s comic debut will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever negotiated the politics of the school gate.
St Ambrose Church Primary is the setting – an idyllic establishment with views of the ‘luscious green belt’ and a playground shaded by ancient beech trees. It’s here that a group of mums linger to gossip and practise the gentle art of parental one-upmanship. Presiding over this seemingly benign sisterhood is Beatrice, the queen bee of the clique and all-commanding chair of St Ambrose’s fund-raising committee.
Structured around the school year, Hornby follows these yummy (and not so yummy) mummies as they busy themselves with car-boot sales, pot-luck dinners and the annual quiz night. Rachel is the mum whose judgement we come to trust best – a children’s-books illustrator and mother of two. Recently dumped by her husband, she also finds herself summarily dropped by Bea. But soon diverting her attention is the arrival of two ‘newbie’ mothers: Melissa, ‘a study in elegance from her clean, swinging bob to her pretty ballerina pumps’, and Bubba, a kitten-heeled refugee from the private sector intent on hosting the PTA’s summer ball on the shores of her own private ‘lake’.
Suffice it to say, over the course of the book, each of the mothers will receive their just desserts – and not just the soufflés au chocolat et au Grand Marnier served up in Melissa’s perfect kitchen. There’s a shocking sting in the tale awaiting Bea, while we’re left to speculate who’ll end up in the arms of the dishy new headmaster, Mr Orchard.
While the maternal lot has been more waspishly portrayed by such top-of-the-class talents as Rachel Cusk, Meg Wolitzer and Helen Simpson, Hornby’s highly entertaining satire always remains just the right side of sweet.
MUST READ
Of maps and monstersSEA MONSTERS ON MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MAPS by Chet Van Duzer (The British Library, £20; offer price, £18)
What is a sea monster? Chet Van Duzer, in this gorgeously illustrated book of the watery beasts that appear on ancient maps, defi nes them as ‘aquatic creatures that were thought astonishing and exotic, regardless of whether they were real or mythical’.
He’s included some of the most important and impressive examples: the lobster-like octopus holding a man in its claws; the fourlegged walrus from 1539; and a very friendly-looking marine pig-dog found on a Venetian map in 1567.
One of the four British maps made by Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk who lived between 1200-1259, recounts the history of England from the Creation to 1259, including a legend about sea monsters in the Atlantic – a ‘vast sea where there is nothing but the abode of monsters’.
Paris’s map seems designed to deter explorers – perhaps one reason why these fi ne, imaginary drawings are so plentiful.
PAPERBACKS
THE ETYMOLOGICON by Mark Forsyth (Icon Books, £8.99; offer price, £8.54)The hidden, often surprising, connections that link quite separate words in the English language compiled by a man who is obsessed with etymology. A glorious compendium to do with everything from butterfl ies, puddings and sausages to alcohol and capucchino monks (named after capucchinos or little hoods in Italian). Fascinating.
THE LAST DANCE by Victoria Hislop (Headline Review, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
Ten Grecian vignettes set in Athens or in the squares and houses of tiny Greek villages, often in the winter months when the tourists have disappeared, evoking life in this beautiful but troubled country.
MARIA AND THE ADMIRAL by Rachel Billington (Orion, £8.99; offer price, £8.54)
Rachel Billington’s intense and moving novel recounts the tale of Maria Graham, a young British widow who, marooned in Valparaiso in Chile in 1822, falls for Admiral Lord Cochrane, hero of the Napoleonic wars.
ALSO PUBLISHED
THE LAST TORPEDO FLYERS by Arthur Aldridge with Mark Ryan (Simon & Schuster, £14.99; offer price, £12.99) At the outbreak of the Second World War, Arthur Aldridge, aged 19, left Oxford to volunteer for the RAF. He was sent on missions so dangerous they were almost certain to end in death. Aldridge, now aged 91, survived and became a teacher at a boys’ school. This is his incredible story, told with Ryan, a former pupil.
JUST MY TYPO compiled by Drummond Moir (Sceptre, £8.99; offer price, £8.54)
Hard to suppress the snorts of laughter when reading this jolly collection of spelling mistakes, sub-editing disasters and misprints. ‘On page 8, line 7, “state zip code” should read: “pull rip cord” noted the publisher of the Easy Sky Diving Book. And decades of unemployment await the job seeker whose CV revealed he had ‘worked for six years as an uninformed security guard’.
ANTIQUARIAN BOOK FAIR
Reclaiming the bookStephanie Cross on how rare books have become more appealing than ever
With the rise of the eReader, many dire predictions have been made about the future of the printed book. But the mood among the nearly 200 exhibitors at the 56th London International Antiquarian Book Fair is far from gloomy. It seems our Kindles and Kobos will only make us savour curling up with an old-fashioned paperback even more.
‘People are reclaiming the book not so much as a tool for learning or getting information (that happens online) but as a space for rest and refl ection,’ says Justin Croft of Justin Croft Antiquarian Books. ‘It’s no coincidence that publishers are capitalising on that trend and producing editions that are beautifully designed, with tactile paper and appealing covers. They recognise that people are looking to the physical book for more than just the sum of its contents. It means that older, rare or “antiquarian” books have become more appealing than ever before.’
The library of an 18th-century French comtesse, featuring works by Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and Milton, is among the items Justin Croft will be offering for sale; other highlights include a fi rst edition of The Great Gatsby (£120,000) and a rare edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses (£30,000).
But bookworms with a more modest budget are also amply catered for, while a programme of talks and workshops will offer plenty of guidance for those inspired to start their own library.
The London International Antiquarian Book Fair is at Olympia National Hall, Hammersmith Road, London W14, from 13 to 15 June. Tickets available on the door at £10 or £15 for two, or apply at the website. For details of exhibitors, opening hours and travel to the venue: www.olympiabookfair.com