www.list.co.uk/books
ESSAY COLLECTION DAVID SEDARIS
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
(Little. Brown) 0.0.
A criticism often aimed at writers once they reach the publication of their third or fourth book, is that they forget all the things that endeared them to the book-buying public in the first place, and either become wildly self- indulgent or stale and repetitive. It’s an accusation that could never be directed at David Sedaris, whose latest collection of humorous essays is as fresh and blithely funny as best-selling collections Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Anyone familiar with these earlier collections of deadpan memories and reflections will recognise many of the characters and settings here. There’s Sedaris’ punctilious father Lou who, in one segment, is discovered attempting to coax the young David into wearing a bow tie (“‘Come on,” he said. “Live a little!”’). Long-suffering, long-term boyfriend Hugh also appears frequently, with the parasitic worm that once inhabited Hugh’s mother Maw Hamrick’s leg providing the basis for the opening essay. Elsewhere, Sedaris indulges in a day-trip around his idealised Princeton University, and spins a hilarious yarn about his relationship with a former landlady, who shared his love of 405 couture. In one tale, Sedaris describes himself lying on the couch in his Parisian apartment, eavesdropping on the arguments of tourists in the streets below. It’s Sedaris’ capacity to transform the tiny encounters, everyday absurdities and fragmented recollections of life into warped but strangely familiar treatises that make him such a popular and compelling writer.
(Allan Radcliffe)
FICTION
GLEN NEATH The Fat Plan (PortObeIIO) O.
The trouble with writing a novel satirising the mundanity Of life and the mind numbing tedium of bureaucracy is. well. it risks being mundane and tedious. This second minimalist novel from Neath aims at the likes of Beckett or Kafka. but falls well short.
Our unnamed narrator is an obese man who takes a job working for a shady organisation which takes him to a cottage where he transcribes surveillance recordings made by his colleague Mona. The fat
THE
la
man begins imagining lives for the people On tape. as well as fantaSISIng about himself and Mona. and when he starts making up transcripts. things go horribly awry. From the boredom of this reality. The Fat Plan veers unsteadily into surrealism and fantasy.
but Neath fails tO engage With either style. passages either being utterly flat or annOyingly preposterous. plus the attempts at dry humour are limp and lifeless to boot. (Doug Johnstonel
POLITICAL NON-FICTION BARBARA EHRENREICH Going To Extremes: Notes From a Divided Naflon
(Grantal 0...
Although any balanced reader might browse the political essays and features of left—wing American commentator Barbara Ehrenreich and get a vague sense Of agitprop being deployed. perhaps
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LAND
that's just the author's bold and sometimes sarcastic style. Perhaps, but most pieces are three pages long. obviously produced previously as periodical columns (the author writes Or has written for The Progressive. The New York Times. Time magazine). and so must be punchy and attention-grabbing. Some sample titles: ‘Banish the Bloated Overclass'. ‘Minimum Wage Rises. Sky Does Not Fall'.
By this basis. the collection — originally published as This Land is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation in the US — is a coffee table read. a work to be nibbled at rather than devoured. On these terms it's excellent. with Ehrenreich examining America's widening financial divisions by bringing leftfield insight tO the representations Of Michael Mann's Miami Vice film. or whether greasy food is seen as a sign Of affluence or poverty. Beware. though. the writer's good-natured cynicism can be infectious if devoured all at once. (David Pollock)
SHORT STORIES DONALD RAY POLLOCK
Knockemstiff (Harvill Becker) 0000
Knockemstiff. Ohio. is SO deprived it doesn't register on maps anymore. This debut set Of interconnected shorts
‘ Klllllfill -EM -STIFF
i mmmrouocii;
TarantinO-esque territory. and the
‘ about its people by
former resident Donald Ray Pollock is unlikely to make anyone want to find the town quickly, even if the author does insist his neighbours were actually ‘good people'. When it comes to murderers. perverts and drug-crazies. fictional Or otherwise. why take the risk? ‘Dynamite Hole‘ sees
a draft-dodging loner
rape and bludgeon to
= death two young
Siblings he Spies
i committing incest; in
‘Lard'. bullies throw darts at a fat kid in
exchange for bong hits.
while ‘Bactine' finds a pair of losers snorting themselves stupid in a donut shop car park. AS if it needs stating. this is tragic. brutal. sad and
i depraved stuff. but
between the misery. there are deft rays Of humanity. dark humour and hope that shine like the Sun through pin pricks in a set of filthy curtains. marking Pollock‘s arrival as a fascinating new voice in American low-life literature.
(Malcolm Jack)
CINEMATIC THRILLER MAS
HETTCHE What We Are Made Of (Picador) 000
The blurb on the flyleaf Of Thomas Hettche's German Booker prize- Shortlisted novel likens his page-turning thriller to the films Of David Lynch and Quentin TarantinO. Certainly. Hettche's prose style is cinematic. not least in his use Of ‘jump cuts' to
juxtapose geographical ' and chronologically separated. but
thematically or narrativer linked.
events. For instance. an
early scene in which the book‘s protagonist - a German biographer named Niklas Kalf who's
‘ visiting New York tO
meet his publisher — discovers his wife has been kidnapped is intercut with a Speech about the war on terror delivered by President Bush on the eve of the invasion Of Iraq.
Kalf‘s subsequent road trip south to Texas in search Of his wife veers into violent
existential issues raised by his increasing disengagement with discovering what happened to her is Lynchian psyChOdrama. And beyond those filmiC thrills Hettche's very literary concerns address what it means tO be human in the bewildering post-9/1 1 world. (Miles Fielder)
5 TRAVEL BOOKS Ellle Nielsen Our Own Piece of Paris Subtitled ‘How We Fell in Love with the City of Light', this follows one woman's quest to find an apartment that oozes Parisian chic. Atlantic. Kapka Kassabova Street Without a Name Subtitled ‘Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria’, this Edinburgh-based writer returns to her homeland and uncovers some strange peOple and places. Portobe/Io. Dan Walsh These Are the Days That Must Happen to You The angry. narcotic- fuelled world jaunts of a columnist for Bike magazine. Century. Eric Welner The Geography of Bliss An anti-“axis of evil' voyage as this US writer drops in on some of the most contented Spots on the planet, Switzerland. Bhutan and Qatar among them. Black Swan. Brian Winter Long After Midnight at the Niho Bien A trip through Argentina's nice bits as the author follows his lifelong passion for tango. Heinemann.
17—31 Jul 2008 THE LIST 31