Reviews
EXISTENTIAL TALE GWENDOLINE RILEY
Joshua Spassky (Jonathan Cape)
Young Mancunian writer Gwendoline Riley is much-praised in literary circles. but it's hard to see why from this turgid sliver of immature existential angst. A young female novelist from Manchester (hmrnm) and an older American playwright hook up in smalltown America to see if there's anything to their relationship besides the odd drunken fling they've had in the past. Cue lots of excruciatingly unrealistic dialogue in which the thoroughly unlikeable and painfully self- conscious pair talk past each other and generally do an unhealthy amount of navel-gazing.
And. well, that's about it. Nothing actually happens in Joshua Spassky. which wouldn't necessarily be
POLITICAL ESSAY
a problem. except Riley provides little else in the way of character, description or prose to keep the reader from falling asleep. Ultimately. it‘s just impossible to have any empathy with such a duet of self- centred and narcissistic central characters. making Joshua Spassky. even at a measly 164 pages. a real struggle.
(Doug Johnstone)
SOCIAL DRAMA HELEN OYEYEMI The Opposite House (Bloomsbury) .00
Helen Oyeyemi's family left Nigeria when she was four and she draws on this experience and themes of cultural dislocation for her second novel. The Opposite House follows pregnant singer. Maja. as she tries to find 'her Cuba'. a place she last saw at the age of five. Cuban mythology and music infuse guotidian London reality. haunting Maja and her mother. challenging the academic precision of her father. Maja's
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH
Bad Men
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson) 0000
Clive Stafford Smith has been privy to some horrible maltreatments of human beings down the years. As a Cornishman with dual UK/US citizenship, he is seen as a saviour to the many Death Row prisoners he has tried to rescue from lethal injections, gas chambers, electric chairs or any other of the appalling fates which are decided by custodians in the Land of the Free. But surely nothing could have prepared him for the stories of disgusting abuse he learned of when meeting a batch of new clients shackled in the Cuban hell of
Guantanamo Bay.
Bad Men is partly a treatise on the pros and cons of torture, or ‘human resource exploitation’ as the US have gently coined it in the post-9/11 era. But mainly it’s a painful first-hand account from the naive innocents at the business end of the War on Terror, who have suffered horribly at the hands of a nation and its leaders who conveniently ignore the constitutional rights and human decency they once held so dear. While the military thugs attempt to break down the detainees using a mixture of psychological terror and physical brutality, Stafford Smith watches in shock and awe as the Pentagon spins out of control, claiming the three suicides of inmates last June are ‘an asymmetrical act of war’ and ‘a good PR move’. Above all, this is a succinct argument on how the US and UK are continually messing up foreign policy, losing the support of citizens and governments around the world who would be natural allies. (Brian Donaldson)
confusion about her unplanned pregnancy and sense of identity are heightened by elements of magic realism.
The ‘somewhere house'. on the other side of the reality wall. has innumerable rooms. some 'no more than fancies. sugar cubed afterthoughts' which could serve as a description of the book as a whole. At times the infrastructure can be unsatisfying: a case of too many rooms and not enough corridors. Still. the rush of Oyeyemi's imagination eases the narrative flow and her imagery can be arrestineg original. (Hannah Adcock)
POLITICAL DRAMA ELSIE BURCH DONALD
A Model American (Doubleday) 0.
ln Elsie Burch Donald's study of US foreign policy in 1970s Cambodia. there is little doubt the author is inviting parallels with the current crusade for democracy in the Middle East. To this end she has conjured a gaggle of debating protagonists to inform the reader of contemporaneous opinion according to the learned. post-colonialist Europe. brash baby- boomer Republicans and simple land- working. progressive political natives.
The tale of two self- made wealthy
Americans being downed in the jungles of Cambodia shortly before Kissinger and Nixon's bombing brought the country into the Vietnam war is a diverting and well- intentioned one. but whose developments prove rather too convenient. with a plot that is laboriously padded out with patronising political musings. Donald's characters fall marginally short of stereotype and aren't easy to care about. with the book itself all too easy to put down. (Mark Edmundson)
SOCIAL DRAMA CHRIS ABANI The Virgin of Flames (Jonathan Cape)
0
Los Angeles. California. Black is a busy man. By day he collects racist and sexist jokes from toilets for his mural (one from Buckingham Palace via Sharon Osbourne). while being stalked by Archangel Gabriel. and obsessing
over transvestite stripper, Sweet Girl. By night he stands atop his spaceship in Iggy the psychic tattooist's wedding dress, letting devotees believe he is the Virgin Mary.
The Virgin of Flames is so self-consciously edgy. it's painful. Maybe I'm a cynical conventionalist, but I'm not sold on this cast of self-obsessed artistes. expecting you to be as enamoured of their nonsensical ramblings as they are while they
.» it ' CHRIS ABM“
babble on about ‘changing the psychic landscape' of LA by painting it without the religious buildings. I did learn something: transvestite strippers hide their genitalia through careful manipulation and strategically placed surgical tape. Should you want to know how it feels. Black's ‘bliss. breathlessness and the onset of terror' probably covers most eventualities.
(Katie Could)
Books
ALSO PUBLISHED
5 AUDIOBOOKS Stef Penney The Tenderness of Wolves Set in the wilds of Canada during the 18603, a man has been brutally murdered while a 17- year-old boy disappears. Siobhan Redmond reads this romance/thriller. Ouercus.
Alan Bennett Tn'ple Bill If something was ever made for audiobooks, it’s the soothing tones of the iconic playwright. Three plays are here with Patricia Routledge also involved. BBC. Chlmmanda Ngozl Adlche Half of a Yellow Sun Adjoa Andoh reads this Richard and Judy- friendly tale set against the backdrop of the Biafran War. HarperCo/lins. Dickie Bird Best of Dickie Bird A compilation of the legendary cricket umpire’s memories of test match jiggery pokery and leg before wicket mayhem. Hodder 8 Stoughton. Voltalne Candide Andrew Sachs lends his voice to the unabridged story with a naive protagonist whose view that ‘all is for the best in this. the best of all possible worlds' is put to the test. CSA Word.
26 Apr-10 May 2007 THE LIST 25