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UV )Hi’fxi’fflC/‘i Uf’fif/ira MARI AKASAKA Vibrator
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Don‘t be taken in by the titillati'ig title. Mari Akasaka's slim novel ilflli‘. doWn to that vrithenng chestnut the ‘.‘J()lll£lll going spectacularly off the rails because she wasn't given enough love as a
ALSO PUBLISHED
Professor John Mackenzie (ed) People. Nations and Cultures A guide to the myriad ethnic and cultural groupings that have inhabited the planet over the past 6000 years. Wei'denfeld 8. Nico/son.
Mark Dunn lbi'd: A Life A case study in innovation, this follow- up to Ella Minnow Pea is constructed from the margins of a fictionalised lost book. Meffiuen.
Lesley Lokko Saffron Skies The fortunes of three women. from childhood friends to let-setting adulthood. are followed across Europe. America and Africa. Orion.
Dr Raj Penaud The Motivated Mind The telly medic tells us how we can all get what we want from life while av0iding “supernova burnout' like the plague. Bantam.
Lionel Shriver We Need to Talk About Kevin The worries of parenthood and some traumatic consequences are at the heart of this disturbing novel which Split US readers right down the middle last year. Serpents Tail.
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\i‘v’h:|e the meat of her story is slow to inaterialise. Akasaka certainly excels at burrovring right under the skin and into the mind of her {lllflf‘il’lllldOll body obsessed heroine. Indeed. the book's relentless. subiectiwty is also its biggest drawback: it takes stamina to accompany Rei the length of her painful journey. (Allan Radcliffei
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SHORl STORIES MATTHEW KNEALE
Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance (Picador) O.
Matthew Kneale garnered much acclaim for his last book English Passengers. an epic. nautical adventure novel. Five years on and this rather limp set of short stories seems like something of a let-down. a poor follow- up to the thrills and Spills of his earlier work. The dozen stories here are rooted in the present and deal primarily \‘v’llit the safe. comfonable world of upper middle-class. white England.
The problem with this is indicated in the book's title: are we really Supposed to care about the minor indiscretions and mediooe adxentures of people SLll’OLll‘iOeO by
32 THE LIST 1331 Mar 3005
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URBAN lAl l S VARIOUS AUTHORS Naked City iRoute tfii OOO
Anthologies of short stories by up and coming writers promise manifold new feats of the imagination and stylistic innovation. And a chunky compendium of urban tales inspired by and set Within Britain's resurgent proVincial cities is a tantalising prospect indeed. The collection opens strongly wrth Malcolm Aslett's 'Crumpet', a well observr—zd. blackly funny slice of bedsn life centred around the faltering courtship between a Geordie rough diamond and a sniffy southerner whose divergent Views on the buttering of breakfast crumpets lead to their downfall.
Other highlights include the powerful 'Muff—DIVing Over the Fish Market' by Char March and Steve Dearden's funny. enigmatic Percentages". Elsewhere. there's a depressing homogeneity in terms of SUDJC‘Cl matter. At least four entries are bleak relationship dramas starring some inadequate, \'lOi€lll male and stOical. unhappy female. These are involving enough. though the samey-ness rather contradicts the
si ioni stonii s TIM WINTON
The Turning (Picador) 0....
In America, the small town represents what happens to those who fail to make it to the metropolis. In The Turning, Tim Winton makes the small town a central expression of modern Australia. Here, the fictional town of Angelus becomes not only the place where his broken characters experience their epiphanies but a wider metaphor for Australia as a whole. Angelus is so isolated, so abused and so abusing that it doesn't feel like the antithesis of the big city, or indeed like anything other than a place in which the historian Robert Hughes’ description of Australia‘s years as a penal colony — a vicious, brutal prison created in an earthly paradise - lives on as extended metaphor.
Winton himself has described this as a collection of short stories but with Angelus and a certain Vic Lang (‘the copper's kid‘) at the heart of several of these tales, it reads like a fragmentary novel. His collection of broken middle-aged loners invariably return to the town that they tried to leave, from a teenage rites of passage party at a place called Massacre Point and the humbling expanse of the sea beyond. Winton has not only captured the tragic significance and the sheer wonder of one man‘s difficult adolescence but of a town and, by extension, a whole country. Winton's Cloudstreet, published in 1991, is commonly considered the Great Australian Novel. ‘Big World‘, which opens The Turning, could well be the great Australian Short Story. (Tim Abrahams) publisher's claims that Still. it". always fun to there are 'eight million stories in the naked city'. (Allan Radcliffei
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SERIALISE l.) NCVll ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH 44 Scotland Street (Polygon) 0.0
disturbing his natural rhythm as a novelist has cost some of the delicate inagir, that usually comes sr, easil, There are several strands to the story. all linked by one l0 dinburgh New Town flat. its inhabitants and their associations,
While the plot isn't desperately compelling. some of the characters are clever realisations of Edtnburgh types ’lan Rankin actuall, iriakes a came-oi and the .‘ll‘tl,’ ()i)Sf-3l‘.’€1ll0llfi niakr; pleasurable reading. But unl'ke l‘lS Alta/11ft 8":'l(;.';, there is a lot 0‘ sadness
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