Reviews
CULTURAL TRACT AA GILL The Angry Island
(Weidenfeld & Nicolsoni O...
In The Angry Island, AA Gill has written a ‘collection of prejudice'. This is how he justifies his inbred need to hunt the English nation in all its ‘lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beefy-bummed’ tribalism and while the book is certainly less than the sum of its parts, what great parts. Better known for his satanically witty newspaper features and columns, Gill (an Edinburgher who left the capital aged one) seems to have switched into his alter ego Angry Angus for the entirety of this sustained kick against his many
perceived pricks.
The dominant English talent, according to Gill, is for establishing rules, conventions and etiquette because, as a nation, England is in a state of permanent repressed fury. Remove these regulations, and the desire for hooliganism rises in your average recalcitrant son of Albion. Gill is a delightful, funny polemicist, with a seamlessly unlimited gift for stunning sentence construction and refined but deadly hectoring. But for the first half, it’s difficult to see the point of this venture. The ranting seems petty at worst and unimportant at best.
Things do fall into place across three quite remarkable chapters on war memorials, humour and his past alcoholism, which is so full of unsentimental heartbreak it bristles with comparisons to Nick Hornby or Blake Morrison at their best. We may all have been better served had he written a straight autobiography instead of this eulogy to all the hateful memories he’s stored away. Still, superiority complexes were never supposed to be this amusing. (Paul Dale)
ACTION DRAMA CHARLIE HIGSON Blood Fever
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For the second in this YOung Bond series. the future seer 3t agent and philanderer cuts loose from stuffy old Eton and makes for the exotic Climes of ore-war Sardinia. Already developing an affiliation with danger. the young James Bond s soon caught up in an art the‘t ring With ambitions to rebuild the tyrannical glories of Rome.
With thrills or a slightly more modest scale to 007's adult adventures. The Fast Show's Charlie Higson has turned out a
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REVIEW OF
THE YEAR
Literary editor Brian Donaldson picks his highlights of 2005
I The bookish year belonged to the Smiths. Our very own Ali and London dominatrix Zadie both produced storming novels based around dysfunctional families and were rewarded with features in The List and, by way of a second prize, a slot on the Booker shortlist. They ended up being gazumped by John Banville whose winning book, The Sea, received an almighty one-star review from us. Funny lot, judges. And reviewers. Ali Smith’s The Accidental featured a mystery woman called Amber who infiltrates the Smart family and begins to influence its members out of all recognition. Zadie Smith’s On Beauty revolves around two warring Bostonian clans, the liberal Belseys and the conservative Kippses.
I Other honourable mentions should go to Salman Rushdie for another spellbinding doorstopper with Sha/i'mar the Clown while Aussie scribe Tim Winton seduced us with his collection of 17 overlapping stories. The Turning. Judging by our Hot 100 (and the outside arts world in general) the geek has finally inherited the Cultural earth, and by way of marking that, you could do worse than digging out Neil Feineman's addictive and exhaustive dictionary. Geek Chic.
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.i.i" v THE LIST 45