Book Reviews: 11 October
OUT NOW
THE OUTCASTS by KATHLEEN KENT (Headline Review, £13.99; offer price, £11.99) This Western-cumpsychological thriller features an epileptic prostitute with a talent for maths, a horsetaming Texas Ranger with non-violent leanings, plenty of cowboys and Indians, and a smooth-talking serial killer.
It may sound somewhat implausible, but it is still a gripping read: Moll Flanders meets The Horse Whisperer via Patricia Highsmith.
Suspend disbelief and enjoy.
Juanita Coulson
ALL THE BEST LINES by George Tiffin (Head of Zeus, £20; offer price, £16) This informal history of cinema’s best-loved quotations and celluloid moments by director, screenwriter and novelist George Tiffin, is a tribute to the art of screenwriting.
Divided into themed categories, it guides the reader through sorrowful goodbyes, classic put-downs, anecdotes and humorous quips, from the early days of cinema to the present day.
Dialogue is interspersed with a little film history and is also accompanied by film stills, posters and full-colour photographs.
Anyone with even a vague interest in cinema will recognise and appreciate these special screen moments, many of which are etched into our collective memory.
Elizabeth Fitzherbert
DEPORTMENT FOR DUKES & TIPS FOR TOFFS by Brummell and Beau (British Library Publishing, £7.99; offer price, £7.59) To which invitation should one give precedence: a week in Margate with a duke, or two months’ deerstalking with a colonial bishop?
This and many other conundrums on how to conduct oneself in fashionable society are answered in this concise compendium.
First published in 1900, this superbly illustrated guide has been reproduced in its original form.
A light-hearted parody of the Victorian craze for books on etiquette, with practical advice on how to behave at breakfast, mount your hunter and make polite conversation.
How standards have slipped.
Stephen Coulson
WAR DOG by Damien Lewis (Sphere, £12.99; offer price, £11.69) Heard the one about the dog that flew with the Royal Air Force pilot in the Second World War? The dog’s name was Ant and the pilot’s was Václav, changed to Robert when he left his native Czechoslovakia.
Forced to crash land and on the run from the Germans, Robert finds a puppy, abandoned by his owners as they fled from the Nazis. He can’t leave him, so they both take to the skies. There is a great true story here – Lewis had access to Václav’s original manuscript – but it is let down by giving Ant too much of a voice, and reads like a film treatment.
Adnan Sarwar
PRAYER by Philip Kerr (Quercus, £18.99; offer price, £15.99)Kerr has got his mojo back with this book. His imagination seems to have been asleep in the last couple of Bernie Gunther novels, but here he’s on fire. Special Agent Gil Martins works in counterterrorism and, although born a Catholic, has adopted his wife’s evangelical faith.
However, he is starting to lose it and with that, his marriage. The unexplained deaths of several prominent atheist intellectuals spark his interest.
His investigations are both terrifying and lonely – they deal with something much larger than he could ever have imagined. Excellent.
Victoria Clark
BOOK OF THE WEEK
Petal power SEVEN FLOWERS AND HOW THEY SHAPED OUR WORLD by Jennifer Potter (Atlantic Books, £25; offer price, £20)
This literary delight will surely become compulsory reading for flower enthusiasts everywhere. Forensically researched by horticultural historian Jennifer Potter, it charts the botanical and cultural evolution of the seven flowers the author considers most influential on society.
Potter developed her flower fetish at university in the late 1960s, partly encouraged by the emergence of the non-violent ideology of ‘flower power’. ‘Flowers became my emblem and the power of flowers my mantra,’ she says.
The book traces the often complex and contradictory history of the lotus, lily, sunflower, opium poppy, rose, tulip and orchid – each one leaving its mark on the world through the centuries. Pinpointing references to these botanical wonders from ancient Roman times up to the present day, Potter notes how their reputations and characters have changed and developed.
Laden with intriguing facts, the book also explores each flower’s connection to spirituality and mythology, as well as their influence on religion, art, politics and medicine. Blue lotuses, for example, were so revered by ancient Egyptians that Tutankhamen had them embroidered on his sandals and left instructions that their dried petals should adorn his funeral wreath.
Accompanied by magnificent colour plates and botanical etchings, this book is a voyage of discovery. A thoroughly rewarding read.
Elizabeth Fitzherbert
COFFEE TABLE BOOK
FROM MARIE-ANTOINETTE’S GARDEN: AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY HORTICULTURAL ALBUM by Élisabeth de Feydeau (Flammarion, £29.95; offer price, £24.95)
Marie-Antoinette – originally Austrian – had a passion for gardens, indulged by her besotted husband, Louis XVI of France. He gifted the Petit Trianon to his wife in 1774, stating: ‘To you who love flowers so, I present this bouquet.’
Unlike the formal parks of Versailles, styled as jardin à la française, Marie- Antoinette created a rural retreat in an informal, naturalistic garden, filled with a profusion of fl owers and medicinal herbs – often new and exotic imports.
Here, de Feydeau has created a richly illustrated herbarium, with beautiful contemporary plates of the garden.
Steve Barfield
PAPERBACKS
THE SILENT TIDE by Rachel Hore (Simon & Schuster, £7.99; offer price, £7.59) This beautifully written, engrossing story of family secrets depicts London’s publishing past and present, highlighting the diff erences but also the similarities. Two young women from contrasting worlds discover their lives are connected in their search for truth, love and happiness.
Natasha Howe
THE BODY HUNTER by Najat El Hachmi (Serpent’s Tail, £8.99; offer price, £8.54)
Catalonian El Hachmi delves into the deepest recesses of the female mind in this exploration of desire, observing the paradoxically emancipating and damaging eff ects of physical desire upon women. This intrepid novel, in which men remain nameless, questions the meaning of female liberation.
Lulu Trask
MILO’S SCALE by Jane Chipperfield (Village Times Productions, £8.99; no offer price available)
In a world dictated by market forces and consumerism, this thriller asks what would happen if the real value of every product could be ranked on an universal scale. An intriguing concept that is never well interrogated in this cat-and-mouse thriller – a race to make the scale law before those who oppose it start to kill.
Matthew Leopold
ALSO ON THE SHELF
A HEART BENT OUT OF SHAPE by Emylia Hall (Headline Review, £13.99; offer price, £11.99)Hadley moves to Lausanne to study and befriends the beautiful Kristina, who is then tragically killed in an accident. He resolves to find out what happened to her.
Haunting and full of vivid prose, this is a bewitching tale of love and friendship – a novel to be devoured in a couple of sittings.
Rebecca Maxted
3 BEST BOOKS: ABOUT DANCE
- Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
- My Life by Isadora Duncan
- Dancing For Degas by Kathryn Wagner
AUDIO BOOK OF THE WEEK
SAILORS’ YARNS: Stories Of Sea Dogs And Shipwrecks by various authors, narrated by Cathy Dobson (Red Door Audiobooks, £24.99)These stories by Poe, Conrad, Kipling and others conjure up the bleak beauty and drama of the seafaring world. One to listen to on a stormy night, with the lights out. JC
ESSAYS FOR BIBLIOPHILES
Thought-provoking and incisive, these reflections by eminent critics are designed to challenge and delight the avid reader
THE FUN STUFF by James Wood (Jonathan Cape, £18.99; offer price, £14.99)
James Wood, the British-born literary critic of the New Yorker, is not someone you’d want to get on the wrong side of if fiction is your trade.
Of the novelist Paul Auster, Wood remarks that ‘there are many things to admire in Auster’s fiction, but the prose is never one of them’ – this in an essay entitled ‘Paul Auster’s Shallowness’. The Fun Stuff, however, is not a collection of hatchet jobs but the work of someone who cares passionately about words, for instance: the use of ‘juicy’ in War And Peace; translators opting for ‘lush’ or ‘sappy’ missing the mark.
As well as Tolstoy’s epic – no knowledge of which is required to enjoy this critique – there are also essays on The Road, Never Let Me Go, Thomas Hardy and Ian McEwan. A book lover’s delight.
FORTY-ONE FALSE STARTS by Janet Malcolm (Granta, £20; offer price, £16)
‘A lot of journalism is a bedtime story you are sleepily hearing for the hundredth time, but with a piece by Janet Malcolm you never know where things will lead.’ So writes Ian Frazier in his intro to Malcolm’s essays, whose subjects include the Bloomsbury Group, the young adult Gossip Girl novels, and the German photographer Thomas Struth’s approach to snapping the Queen.
However, perhaps most intriguing are Malcolm’s reflections on the difficulties of turning from journalism to her autobiography: ‘It isn’t easy to suddenly find oneself alone in the room.’
Stephanie Cross