www.list.co.uk/books Reviews Books
Niffenegger’s new offering requests from her readers some suspension of disbelief. When bookseller Elspeth dies, she leaves her plush Highgate flat to her American twin nieces, the daughters of her own twin sister, before returning to haunt both them and her desolate partner. Even if you do buy into the book’s ghostly conceit, the author’s shallow characterisation means that it’s hard to be convinced by its increasingly absurd storyline, though a sub- plot about a neighbour with crippling OCD is affecting. Where Niffenegger
succeeds is in her tumultuously realistic mapping out of London, reducing the sprawling city to a clutch of tube stations, landmarks and popular brand names while still conveying some sense of its deep history. The depiction of Highgate Cemetery and its inhabitants is haunting too, and meticulously researched, a triumph cheapened only by the ridiculous twists and turns of the novel’s ending. (Yasmin Sulaiman)
HORROR COMIC IAN RANKIN & WERTHER DELL’EDERA Dark Entries (DC/Vertigo) ●●●●●
Ian Rankin isn’t the first author to turn his hand to comics, with names
as diverse as Jodi Picoult and Michael Chabon all having had a go. In fact he isn’t even the first Scottish crime writer to script a John Constantine story, with Denise Mina having written 12 issues of Hellblazer in 2006. However Rankin is a massive fan of the medium and his style perfectly suits such an occult detective. Dark Entries is a
modern twist on the haunted house scenario, set in the world of reality TV, with producers calling on the talents of Constantine after some spooky incidents. But with the news that Big Brother is being axed, it already feels dated, though Werther Dell’edera’s scratchy black and white art captures the mood. What you get here is an above average Hellblazer story, but perhaps we expected too much from Rankin’s first foray into graphic novels. (Henry Northmore)
MEDIA ANALYSIS DAVID DENBY Snark (Picador) ●●●●●
There’s little doubt that the information superhighway, as no one calls the internet these days, has revolutionised the way we communicate, think and act. But for each benefit to any seismic social shift, there are a myriad of downsides which need to be addressed. For New Yorker critic and author David Denby, the thing that gets his goat is ‘snark’, written abuse that is neither big nor clever, neither satirical nor perceptive, but are instead attacks on individuals of a personal, below-the-belt, snide and culturally-aware manner. The anonymity
ALSO PUBLISHED
5 CRIME NOVELS Stieg Larsson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest The third volume of the bestselling Millenium Trilogy has Lisbeth Salander fighting corruption as she is set to face trial for three murders. Maclehose Press.
Ruth Rendell The Monster in the Box Wexford is back with a case from the start of his career involving a psychopath named Eric Targo returning to haunt him. Hutchinson.
Stella Rimington Present Danger MI5 officer Liz Carlyle is sent to Belfast to monitor dissident Republican groups who are stubbornly refusing to accept the peace process. Quercus. Bernhard Schlink Self’s Murder From the man who brought you The Reader comes another in his detective series featuring Gerhard Self who is enlisted to research the history of a private German bank, only to uncover money-laundering and murder. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Louise Penny The Brutal Telling When a nameless man is found bludgeoned to death, Canadian cop CI Gamache sets out to discover his identity and catch the killer. Doing his job, in other words. Headline.
which the web provides has facilitated a sea of crass commentary which, according to Denby, ‘is the angry fanfare attending journalism’s decline’. In this entertaining but rather trim US-focused essay, Denby tracks the origins of literary snark from the drinking dens of ancient Athens through to the New York Times columns of Maureen Dowd. It’s pretty safe to assume that snarkophiles will have a field day on this book. (Brian Donaldson)
24 Sep–8 Oct 2009 THE LIST 33
SOCIAL DRAMA LORRIE MOORE A Gate at the Stairs (Faber) ●●●●●
Lorrie Moore is a writer who doesn’t exactly believe in rushing things. Not only is A Gate at the Stairs her first book since her 1998 short story collection Birds of America, but it seemingly takes an eternity to get anywhere, steadily and earnestly setting out the inner workings of her characters, before showing us her hand with some devastating twists and revelations. These segments are so harsh that Moore has admitted to crying her way through the writing of them.
Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin is a potato farmer’s daughter who has fled the rural backwaters of the Midwest to embroil herself in the whirl of university life in a town called Troy. There she works part-time as ‘nanny’ to a dysfunctional couple with a sad past who are desperately trying to adopt a child while she harbours deep concerns about her brother who seems fixed on joining the army. And little wonder she is worried. The book is set in the autumn of 2001 and America’s post-9/11 fear and suspicion is sprinkled throughout before being tackled head-on in its latter sections.
It’s a book about war, children, hate and notions of what ‘America’ means, but mostly it’s about showing off the array of talents which make Lorrie Moore such a bold and addictive literary writer. The wholly admirable A Gate at the Stairs is packed with allusion and smothered in imagery, but the journey to its bitter ending is often too cluttered to fully savour. (Brian Donaldson)`
CULTURAL STUDIES PETER SILVERTON Filthy English (Portobello) ●●●●● Swearing is a universal phenomenon. The delivery, meaning, intent and pitch may vary – some might mouth a silent ‘fiddlesticks’ while
others erupt with a string of expletives so incomprehensible it’s difficult to discern the exact meaning – but we all do it to a greater or lesser extent. This is the subject of Peter Silverton’s Filthy English, subtitled ‘The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing’. From the figurative communion wafers Spaniards hurl at each other, the Yugoslavian ‘march on your mother’s Chinese cunt’ and Yapese ‘you have no foreskin’, to the many flavours, colours and textures of genitalia, Silverton investigates the ways people find to insult each other.
It’s an exhaustive piece of research that, as a textbook of linguistic and cultural curios works well. What it lacks is humour. It could have been an entertaining romp through the break from social niceties that swearing represents, but instead is more a repetitive tome of infinitesimal detail. (Kate Gould)
GHOST STORY AUDREY NIFFENEGER Her Fearful Symmetry (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
Like her debut novel The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey