Reviews
Hle i lCilC/N
KAAVYA VISWANATHAN How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life
fl'irrit: Warner) 0.
As the title does a pretty
thorough Job of apprnxuiiating. Opal is a teenager who, followuig her parents' lead. is hell bent on a Harvard education and has spent her exrstence working towards that f3|llgll|£ll goal. When she
CULTURAL ESSAY
G BRUCE BOYER Rebel Style
(Assouline) 0..
If your abiding memory of Marlon Brando is of an overfed aesthete whose
-: I . .,
is told in her early application to the college that some eVidence of perSOnal development will also be
reduired. the family sets about a convoluted. regimental plan to accomplish said life.
At first, it's difficult to identify With the priVIleged Harvard prospective. torn between her geeky kin and bitchy lt Girl peers in this coming of age comedy. Still, Scots- raised Kaavya Viswanathan espouses a plucky, disarming charm and a wry slant on American school cliques. popular culture and Indian tradition that
final contribution to the world was sitting about at his son’s murder trial
and mugging around in The Island of Dr Moreau, then it might be time for a
re-evaluation. While the man was considered by many to be the greatest
actor of all time, he was also cool as shit. You can tell this, not just by the way he used his walk, but for the manner in which he leers sidelong from the cover of Rebel Style, making even an army parka look effortlessly
good.
Fashion writer G Bruce Boyer has gathered up a modest selection of off-
set shots and film stills from the work of Brando, the peers he shared cult status with (Monty Clift, Jimmy Dean, Paul Newman) and those who were
merely padding along in his wake (Penn, Travolta, Eminem). To accompany
all this stark machismo, he has scripted an all too short yet entertaining musing on the context to the rebel years. 1955, it seems, was the benchmark. Ginsberg wrote Howl, Dean became the Rebel Without a Cause, the first McDonalds opened for business and the King of Rock’n’Roll made his first pelvic shimmy onto America's television sets. The honeymoon post-war period was over in the States and a new battle had begun on every front: the birth of cool had smashed the white picket
fence establishment and the assumed moral welfare was under siege. With
icons like Brando in full swagger mode, there was only ever going to be one winner. (Brian Donaldson)
iniects a iittle substance to the story. While a fair debut from a young writer. the question this tale of middle-American SOCial strata really raises is what audience Will be moved by its less than evergreen themes. (Mark Edmundson)
SPORT MEMOIR ANDREW GREIG
Preferred Lies (Weidenfeld 8. Nicolson) 0..
Andrew Greig is best known for his many novels. but you get the feeling that this book Will have a speCIal place in his heart when he looks back on his career. Written shonly after the author SUNIVBd a brain operation, having gone into a coma, Preferred Lies is ostensibly a book about golf, but really it's about life and death and the meaning of it all.
ANDREW GREIG
amnion-urban”,
Greig's time in hospital was clearly life-changing as well as life-saving, and this thoughtful book blends descriptions of the 18 golf courses he visited while recuperating with ruminations on relationships, family, the past and how we face our futures. It's a nicely balanced read. blending a typically bleak Scottish east coast sense of humour with more serious observations. plus there's a good whack of amateur golf chat thrown into the mix. Thought-provoking and moving. this is certainly a cut above the average sport book. (Doug Johnstone)
TRUE CRIME
The Black Dahlia Files (Time Warner) 0” The ‘Black Dahlia' murder in 1947 may not be at the forefront of memOry banks this side of the Atlantic. Yet. the brutal slaying and
DONALD N WOL"
dismemberment of a wannabe Hollywood starlet named Elizabeth Short sent seismic shivers through the popular imagination StateSide to rival the chills effected by Jack the Ripper. Donald H
Wolfe. author of The
Assassmation of Marilyn Monroe has embarked on a Similarly exhaustive investigation into the notorious unsolved Crime. unearthing links to the mob, corrupt cops. press barons and some of Hollywood's most glittering stars.
'Bugsy' Siegel is Just one of the names on the cast list in this cluttered whodunnit. which proves a pacy page- turner thanks to the sensational SUDJBCI matter and Wolfe's clipped. compelling prose. Some of the crime scene detail is not for the faint-hearted.
and you might forget the
human tragedy at this saga's heart. For those who love their true crime mired in seedy glamour, this is irresistibly salacious.
(Allan Radcliffe)
HORROR COLLECTION READ BY DAWN Read by Dawn: Volume 1
(Bloody Books) eee
The folk behind the
Read by Dawn proiect (an offshoot of Edinburgh's annual Dead by Dawn movie
festival) certainly put
their heads on the
chopping block with this
first volume. Not content
with unleashing a torrent of new writing upon us.
they have simultaneously put out Classic Tales of Horror, in which blood-Curdling exponents such as Henry James, RLS. and Poe get to spook us all over again. Against such stiff competition (is it actually possible to write a horror review without
ALSO PUBLISHED
Ray Banks Saturday's Child The Fifer gives us his first UK novel. a sordid tale of a casino dealer who has fled with a pot of dough. Polygon.
Anna Maxted A Tale of Two Sisters For the Marian Keyes set. this fluffy story concerns siblings whose personalities and lifestyles couldn't be any more different. William Heinemann. Margaret Atwood Curious Pursuits A collection of scribblings by the Booker winner from 1970 to the present day. Time Warner. Richard Lewis The Magic Spring The writer of the Encyclopaedia of Cult Children '3 TV brings us a look at the weird ways of English folk. Atlantic.
Berle Akunln Pelagia and the White Bulldog The first of a trilogy about a nun who solves crimes purely by the power of her intuition. Weidenfeld 8 Nico/son.
using the imagery of death?) the new breed make more than a fine, blooded fist of it.
Not Wishing to shoehorn some themes into this 27-strong collection, but the young and old really do get it firmly in the neck, particularly the zombie pensioner in ‘Popee' and the troubled weans of ‘The Little Girl Who Lives in the Woods'. Often the diverse ages suffer in the same story. as with Katherine A Patterson's ‘Lessons'. which also takes the prize for having the set's most harrowmg tWist. (Brian Donaldson)
READ: ' \ DAWN
Cu..- ‘
11—25 May 2006 me “81' 29