Book Reviews: 14 June
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RED NILE: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST RIVER by Robert Twigger (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25; offer price, £20)Frequently the source of material for pub-quiz question masters, the Nile’s own source has always been mysterious – in the Ethiopian highlands or in the Kagera River, which flows into Lake Victoria and on into the Nile proper, or in Lake Tanganyika?
This is one of the previously unanswered questions tackled by Robert Twigger in this impressive book – a biography of the River Nile. Twigger, who married an Egyptian and saw the recent revolution at first hand, knows the geography of this region well and is equally au fait with its turbulent history.
Indeed, his book is called Red Nile because of the wars, massacres and deaths that have bloodied its banks – not to mention the bloodier deaths that are due to natural predators; the Nile hippo is a fearsome animal, almost as terrifying as the Nile crocodile, which has a stronger bite than the great white shark.
Twigger includes many entertaining snippets of information about previous Nile travellers – handy tips from the Victorian explorer Sir Francis Galton and notes on the contents of Agatha Christie’s suitcase as she cruised, with husband Max, along the river (‘A Burberry coat and skirt... a pair of ladies’ fleeced knickers bought from Dickins & Jones... hat guards, motor scarves, night socks and Japanese silk petticoats.’).
He also adds the information that Agatha Christie was ‘probably the first Englishwoman ever to have stood up on a surfboard’ during a visit to Hawaii – not the kind of information one generally associates with Nile travelogues.
Theo Walden
THE TIME BY THE SEA: ALDEBURGH 1955-1958 by Ronald Blythe (Faber and Faber, £15.99; offer price, £14.39)This is the poet and essayist’s account of his life in the seaside town of Aldeburgh during the 1950s, published to coincide with the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth. At the time, Blythe, a youngish man, was working for the Aldeburgh Festival, but became caught up in Britten’s circle of friends, including Peter Pears, EM Forster and John Nash.
Blythe, mostly known for Akenfield, his study of English village life, is the best possible voice to capture the charming but eccentric town of Aldeburgh, which, for those who go there regularly, seems not to have changed much since its Britten heyday. The book opens with Blythe, ensconced in a bungalow in Thorpeness, setting off along the beach to buy food in Aldeburgh. ‘It was still snowing but in a faint, whirling way, which hid the sea and the marsh. Coming from the opposite direction, blinded like me, an elderly man was stepping it out. It was EM Forster.’
Later a note appears from Forster asking him for a drink. The event takes place in a room strewn with bits of paper as Forster got to grips with the index of the book he was writing.
Vignettes such as these of Britten and his fellow festival artists are very appealing, and Blythe tells them brilliantly.
The whole is set against a background of sea and shingle, salt marsh and the raucous cries of wheeling sea birds.
Ella Swift
THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN by Lisa Jewell (Century, £12.99; offer price, £10.99)This is the haunting and compellingly disturbing tale of the Bird family, a happy unit torn apart by a tragic Easter event.
As the children of the family age or move away from home, they each reveal their idiosyncrasies. It is only when a shocking explanation for the tragedy that set them on their wrong paths is revealed that they each return to the family home united.
The eccentric mother Lorelei acts as the central force, repelling and attracting her four children, husband and lesbian lover in equal measure. Her habit of hoarding is detailed beautifully so that you almost begin to see the method behind her madness, while at the same time remaining shocked at her mental instability.
The narrative is split between the characters, giving a rounded view of events, and at the conclusion you feel as though a great mystery has been – rather satisfyingly – solved. At times painfully sad, but completely captivating.
Rebecca Maxted
BOOK OF THE WEEK
Cathedrals and conspiraciesThe Da Vinci Code’s hero is back in an enjoyably bonkers, ripping yarn, says Cecily Gayford
INFERNO by Dan Brown (Bantam Press, £20; offer price, £15.50)While reading Dan Brown’s latest thriller, Inferno, it occurred to me that Brown’s own fans form a sort of international secret order to rival anything in his own books: a vast network of otherwise-ordinary individuals whose devotion to his controversial writings of a reclusive billionaire remains a guilty secret.
But, however shamefacedly one might admit it, there’s something to look forward to in this latest instalment of zippy plotting and enjoyably bonkers alternative reality, in which the conspiracies of criminal elites bafflingly intertwine with obscure avenues of art history.
Inferno has all the ingredients of a classic Brown novel: it’s essentially a whistlestop tour of Europe’s biggest cathedrals, in which Renaissance history is spiced up with daring escapes from shadowy underworld entities.
The hero of The Da Vinci Code, Professor Robert Langdon, an expert in the invented discipline of ‘symbology’ is back: this time, he awakes in Florence with a nasty head wound and a case of amnesia. Within minutes, he’s on the run from a group called The Consortium, accompanied by a sexy, and resourceful, medical prodigy called Sienna Brooks. Langdon has just one day to decipher a Byzantine trail of clues through Dante’s Divine Comedy and foil the plot of Bertrand Zobrist, a demented scientist prone to blue-sky thinking about overpopulation.
Inferno is undoubtedly silly, but it’s also a good ripping yarn, in which revelations are announced with ‘My God, that’s it!’ and Brown can be unexpectedly funny (as when Langdon’s publisher, improbably in possession of a private jet, tells his desperate author to come back when he’s written 50 Shades Of Religious Iconography). It’s not quite as good as some of his previous books, in particular The Da Vinci Code; a few plot twists too many leads to a unsatisfactory solution where no one really seems sure what side they’re on any more. But it’s nearly summer, and if you want something to keep you turning the pages on the beach, you could do worse than follow the example of Langdon, who wears a ‘collector’s edition’ Mickey Mouse watch as a reminder to take life less seriously.
MUST READ
Swimming with whales THE SEA INSIDE by Philip Hoare (Fourth Estate, £18.99; offer price, £15.99)
Philip Hoare’s book Leviathan, or the Whale, documented the sad decline and destruction at the hands of man of these extraordinary, intelligent creatures. Whales feature again in The Sea Inside; this time Hoare travels to distant oceans to swim with whales and dolphins, describing these experiences in ways that might persuade even the most hardened dissenter to dive in and join the fun. It’s not all underwater, however; Hoare also notes the works – literary, artistic, scientifi c – of those who have lived in or visited these places. He refl ects on, among much else, the change in attitude towards ravens in Western history, the fate of the Tasmanian tiger and the life and passions of TH White, whose book The Goshawk was an account of his attempt to train a bird. The Sea Inside is a strange, uplifting book.
PAPERBACKS
ALL I WANT IS YOU by Elizabeth Anthony (Hodder Paperpacks, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)Downton-esque tale of Sophie, a scullery maid at Belfield Hall whose dream is to exchange scrubbing floors and scouring pans for life as a dancer in London. Trouble is, she’s already fallen for the heir to the house and this inconvenient fact sets up a chain of scandalous events.
THE BLACK COUNT by Tom Reiss (Vintage, £8.99; offer price, £8.54)
Reiss’s book about Alex Dumas, father of Alexandre and inspiration for The Count Of Monte Cristo, is a swashbuckling tale. But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Dumas père was that he grew up among slaves (the son of a marquis and a black slave), before becoming a general in the French army, and succumbing to Napoleon.
THE CLEANER OF CHARTRES by Salley Vickers (Penguin, £7.99; offer price, £7.59)
‘As was often the case when a temporary replacement was needed, it was Agnès who had come to mind.’ Thus Vickers sets the scene for this beautifully written tale of mysterious Agnès, who becomes the cleaner for Chartres Cathedral. Vickers’s book is mystical and compassionate.
ALSO PUBLISHED
CANADA by Richard Ford (Bloomsbury, £8.99; offer price, £8.54)If you missed it the first time round, here it is in paperback – Ford’s marvellous tale of the Parsons family, an archetypal American married couple of the 1960s who inadvertently become bank robbers. The writer, John Banville, called this novel ‘a masterpiece’.
COUNTRY GIRL: A MEMOIR by Edna O’Brien (Faber and Faber, £9.99; offer price, £9.49)
Too glamorous… too talented? The writer Edna O’Brien looks back on her transformation from country innocent to glam writer in the 1960s and the pain (her husband Ernest Gébler was jealous of her talent), as well as pleasure it brought her.
THE KILLINGS
Crimes of the past and presentVictoria Clark’s choice covers 1940s Russia and present-day Hampstead
The ninth outing for Berlin detective Bernie Gunther. It is 1943 and Bernie is working for the German War Crimes Bureau. Bones have been uncovered in a forest near Smolensk and there are rumours that a mass grave has been found. Working directly for the Minister of Propaganda, Bernie sets out for Russia. Intertwined with the enquiry is his discovery of a plot against Hitler organised by incompetent aristocratic Army offi cers. Although fans of Bernie Gunther will enjoy the novel, as his adventures now backtrack in time they are based more on real historical fi gures and events. The result is more faction than crime and the lightness of touch and humour, which distinguished the earlier novels, have faded.
THE CHILD’S CHILD by Barbara Vine (Viking, £18.99; offer price, £14.99)
Grace and her brother Andrew have inherited a house in Hampstead, which they split down the middle and share. All runs smoothly, until James moves in with Andrew and the balance of the house alters. Grace is busy with her thesis on illegitimacy in English literature. There is little sense of a life outside the house or her relationship with her brother and his lover. Then she is given a manuscript by an acquaintance. Set in Devon between the wars, it is a tale of illegitimacy, homosexuality and bigotry that seems to mirror Grace’s own circumstances. Vine uses the technique of a novel within a novel to underline how little attitudes have changed over the years. Vine’s strength is this creation of an unpleasant world that is too absorbing to put down.