Reviews
FXISIENTIAI DRAMA SIMON INGS The Weight of Numbers
(Atlantic) .0
(wuss l of
‘The opposne of fate is the weight of numbers.’ it says rather portentously on the Jacket of this weighty. sprawling novel by Simon lngs. a writer who has preVIously written both soience fiction and SCience fact. That premise acts to hide a multitude of plotting Sins in this rather overambitious work which tries to expose the interconnectedness of all things. throwung in some half-baked stuff about the ability to describe nature through mathematical theOry. but which really just ends up as a bunch of passably interesting stories With some irritating comcidences overlapping them.
The story jumps in time and place from the moon landings to
SOCIAL DRAMA
LORRAINE ADAMS
Harbor (Portobello) .0”
As an investigative journalist for the Washington Post, Lorraine Adams witnessed first-hand the flawed understanding the FBI has of young Muslim Arabs. Here, she has turned to these experiences as the basis for her masterful debut novel. Narrative lynchpin Aziz arrives on Boston harbour soaked, frozen and badly burned from several weeks in an asbestos- lined hold and sets about trying to make contact with the one person he knows (if not trusts) in the land of the free. What unfolds is the tale of immigrants endeavouring to make a life in exile, to stay on the fringes of an indifferent society and perhaps forget the horrors that brought them to America.
Blissful escapism it may not be but the splintering life stories that follow are told unsparingly yet with compassion, poetry and gentle humour, capturing the camaraderie, shifting dynamics and allegiances of a group of fellow nationals caught between rocks and hard places. Meanwhile the Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist presents an FBI that is over-dependent on surveillance at the expense of human intelligence, ensnaring the naive innocent and bungling the shrewd guilty. Set at some point in the late 90s, this is a novel more about Western attitudes towards immigrants and the Muslim world than America’s War on Terror. But there may be no more timer or even-handed tome that throws a high beam on the human faces of our fraying international and inter-religious relations.
(Mark Edmundson)
revolution in Mozambique. people trafficking in modern Britain and the travails of modern celebrity And while there is some nice characterisation scattered around, there is neither energy to the storytelling nor clarity to the exploration of theme. making this a deeply frustrating book (Doug Johnstone)
SHORT STORIES JAMES SALTER Last Night
(Picador) 000.
While hardly a household name. James Salter is one of the most respected American novelists and short story writers of the last half century. This wafer-thin story collection is a fine exemplar of the octogenarian Salter's clear eyed inSIght into the more offbeat aspects of relationships. In each of these stories. the central character is pulled out of his or her complacency by the
sudden appearance of some exotic person or thing
A man. happin settled at the heart of a wealthy. extended family. grows deranged by his infatuation fOr a beautiful young UN worker A lonely Wife is drawn to a boorish drunk she meets at a party and begins liVing Vicariously through his canine companion. A lover of poetry inVites the obiect of his affection into the family home. Salter's prose is clean. clear and unflashy to the point of inVIsibility. while his ability to communicate the rich complexities of romantic love in a dozen pages is remarkable. (Allan Radcliffe)
THRIl l ER DRAMA PATRICK QUINLAN Smoked
(Review) 000
The everyday tale of a bombmaker. martial artist. hired killer and pornographer. Patrick Quinlan's debut makes for quite the caper. And it's a caper that unfolds through cause and effect as each character pursues the other to fulfil their ends. Smoke Dugan. the one time pyrotechnic expert you‘d call to get into that bank vault. is IiVing out his quiet retirement in a sleepy seaSide town. haying turned his
back on the mob Now he and his kick ass girlfriend are being hunted down by an assassin who himself is beginning to question his own taste for killing. and a pair of ()DDOFUJHISIK, serial rapists on the make Despite being a cat and mouse thriller With no small amount of Violent incident. there is great heart in Oiiinlans writing. The cast is an accountable. at times amiable lot. and between abductions. brawls and executions. Smoked is a perfectly pleasant read, (Mark Edmundsonl
FXPPRIME NTAl RAY
HOLLINGSWORTH Dirty Blond at the Cash Machine
(Kiss Production) 0...
Former art director and typographer Ray Hollingsworth is that most curious of British artisans. the cult poet. His prewous three
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Dirty Blond at the Cash Machine is undoubtedly hi“. fill int daring work to date Made up of triple gatefolding, spiral bound pages, this tale of urban heartbreak and self pity is a trial of opaque poetry. odd haikus and black and white ph(’)lography It is. however a trial )liil wading through. soaked as it is iii more grime and Wide eyed grit than we have the right to expect from a man in his 50s (Paul Dale)
Jeremy Isaacs Look Me in the Eve The guy behind Channel 4 and who brought The Sweeney into our lives reflects on his life in telly 1 mm. Brown Alexei Saer The Weeping Women Hotel The former Young Ones landlord releases another comic novel into the community about class. corruption and the changing face of Britain. Sceptre, Jack McLean Hie Compendium of Nos/i A very rough gLiide to the weird and wonderful things that have gone down Our throats throughout history. John Murray Margaret Forster Keeping the World Away A 100 year long adventure of an early 20th century painting and the women whose lives it touches. Chatto 8. Windus.
Ian McGuire Incredible Bodies From a guy tipped to be the new Jonathan Coe comes a novel of alienation. adultery. plagiarism and Pampers. Bloomsbury
1&30 Mar 2006 THE LIST 35