www.list.co.uk/books POLITICAL THRILLER JIM CRACE All That Follows (Picador) ●●●●●
Reviews Books ALSO PUBLISHED
With a slew of nominations and wins after his name (Whitbread, Booker, Guardian Fiction, National Book Critics Circle) Jim Crace’s latest offering has a lot to live up to. By contrast his protagonist in this near- future tale of political and familial drama does not. A timid middle- aged, saxophone player who has always preferred daydreams of courageous deeds to real-life action, is drawn into the political machinations of a long- lost comrade in this examination of the definition of valour.
Crace’s transparent prose belies the tangled guises of the tragically dithering Leonard and his struggle to do the ‘right’ thing without risking his comfy status quo. Flavoured with jazz terms (hot, cool, hip, blue) that lend unobtrusive colour to the pallid innards of Leonard’s mind, tensions swell and dissipate without ever offering the catharsis of an apex and resolution. The result is akin to a one-note performance rather than a daring virtuoso improvisation. (Suzanne Black)
RELATIONSHIP DRAMA MICK JACKSON The Widow’s Tale (Faber) ●●●●●
Your enjoyment or otherwise of Mick Jackson’s third full-length novel will rely heavily on your fondness for his narrator. Our unnamed first-person has recently found herself widowed, and on a grief-laden whim rushes off to a Norfolk cottage where she muses on her future and mourns her past. But it’s not necessarily her life partner she pines
for, but the disappearance of many unfulfilled years with a husband she seemed to love a little less as each year dragged by. As she unveils little
details of her semi-happy marriage, kookily putting her woes into the context of Cary Grant screwball movies and sombre Hans Holbein portraits, the scorn begins to drip as she reveals herself to be nothing less than a reconstructed Victoria Meldrew. And amusing as some of those bitter observations are, the mood becomes relentless and sympathy ultimately drains as her final meltdown looms. (Brian Donaldson)
SCI-FI COMIC MIKE COSTA & VARIOUS Resistance (Wildstorm/Titan) ●●●●●
Films based on videogames are usually pretty awful. Unfortunately the same rule applies to comics based on games, but there are a few notable exceptions. There have been a few creepy moments in the Silent Hill titles and there’s fun to be had with the Street Fighter manga for example. Resistance is based on
the popular first person shooter on the PS3 (and PSP), and while some knowledge of the game is useful, you can pick this up even if you’ve never handled a joystick. Set roughly in the 50s,
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HISTORICAL DRAMA RODDY DOYLE The Dead Republic (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
The Dead Republic constitutes the final part of Roddy Doyle’s historical trilogy, The Last Roundup, which attempts to address a century of Irish history through the irascible figure of Henry Smart. When we meet Henry, his days of participation in the Easter Rising and Irish revolution are long gone. Instead, he’s a bitter, troubled, middle-aged man with a wooden leg and a job as ‘IRA advisor’ to legendary Hollywood director John Ford. There’s some fun to be had in the friction between a curmudgeonly old
Celt and Hollywood glamour, and Doyle uses the situation cleverly to examine questions of history and myth, looking at how we make up the stories that suit us to serve current political and cultural ends. Rather strangely, though, Doyle’s typically terse dialogue and characterisation lack his usual charm here, and he seems a little overawed by the presence of real historical figures in his tale, something that contemporaries such as James Ellroy or Glen David Gold handle much better. The action moves to smalltown Ireland where Henry, now a school caretaker, is caught up in a UVF bomb blast, inadvertently becoming an icon for the Provisional IRA in their fight for Northern Ireland. Undeniably big in scope, there is something elusively disappointing about The Dead Republic. The feelings of nostalgia and melancholy that pervade the story eventually become wearing, and alongside some highly improbable plot devices, it makes for something of a frustrating read, one which doesn’t live up to the ambition of its author. (Doug Johnstone)
FAMILY DRAMA LOLA SHONEYIN The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (Serpent’s Tail) ●●●●●
with an engrossing portrayal of a polygamous household, in which four wives fiercely compete for their husband’s affections and go to great lengths to bear his children. The emotional damage that this ultimately wreaks isn’t purely imagined: Shoneyin’s own grandfather had five brides and her childhood was filled with stories of the sadness this caused her grandmother, his first wife. Shoneyin – an
In her debut novel, Lola Shoneyin presents us acclaimed poet and now a teacher in
Nigeria – grants each of her principal characters their own narration in alternating chapters. However, the cacophony of voices she presents don’t quite convince, and the story itself straddles an uncomfortable line between farce and tragedy. Nevertheless, the drama is buoyed by her keen imagination as she gradually builds up a rich portrait of a family on the verge of collapse and an uncompromising image of the grief that polygamy can cause. (Yasmin Sulaiman)
5 BOOKS TO GET YOU ‘EXCITED’ ABOUT THE ELECTION Christopher Harvie Broonland Subtitled ‘The Last Days of Gordon Brown’, you can pretty much guess where this analysis of the current PM’s career is pitched. The author is an SNP MSP and no fan of the New Labour project laid down by his old pal. Verso. Colin Hughes (ed) What Went Wrong, Gordon Brown? More Broon-bashing in a tome subtly subtitled ‘How the Dream Job Turned Sour’ featuring a bunch of Guardian profiles, analyses and editorials. Guardian Books. Phillip Blond Red Tory This ‘Progressive Conservative’ (and Daniel Craig’s brother- in-law) espouses a ‘Red Toryism’, monetarist ideals but with a strong sense of community spirit. Thatcher will be spinning in her grave. Wait, is she still alive? Faber. Lance Price Where Power Lies: Prime Ministers v The Media This ex-Labour spin doc writes about the often thorny relations down the decades between the occupant of No 10 and the press barons. Simon & Schuster. Suzie Mackenzie Gordon Brown And back to Broony as we get, presumably given the access she has been granted, a more simpatico portrait of our beloved leader. Bloomsbury.
Resistance has a WWII- esque backdrop to a brutal alien invasion, as a specialist unit attempts to recapture the atomic bomb from ferocious galactic invaders. Ramón Pérez provides the majority of the dark angular art, while writer Mike Costa keeps things interesting (if a little clichéd) until the final stand against the extraterrestrial threat. (Henry Northmore) 1–15 Apr 2010 THE LIST 35