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EXPERIMENTAL TALE ALICE THOMPSON The Existential Detective (Two Ravens Press) ●●●●●
When a work opens, as The Existential Detective does, with the lyrics to Pat Ballard’s ‘Mister Sandman’, followed by an extract from ‘The Sandman’ by ETA Hoffmann, you just know it’s going to be spine-chilling. And this is Alice Thompson we’re dealing with, a writer renowned for her unpredictable tales of the uncanny. So that’s settled then, we’re more than guaranteed a little spooking.
For her fifth offering, the Edinburgh-based author tries her hand at a completely new genre, and with the seedy bars and arcades of Portobello as a backdrop, she introduces us to William Blake, a private detective charged with finding a missing woman. But as the story unfolds we find he’s much more than just your average investigator, and as a result this book is so much more than your standard whodunit. For a start, Blake is led by his emotions and visions instead of cold, hard logic, and despite his protests that he won’t be drawn into the tale, it’s not long before he is piecing together clues that could only be about him. Or are they?
The Existential Detective is a deeply moving and compelling read, packed with mysterious goings-on and bloodcurdling shocks, all counterbalanced by the author’s trademark subtle and elegant prose. The story is intricately woven and Thompson wastes no time in conjuring up an eerie atmosphere that makes even a simple act seem loaded with meaning. Of course, it’s a departure of sorts for Thompson too, and she subverts the crime fiction genre with aplomb, breaking new ground while still retaining her distinctive voice. Remarkable. (Camilla Pia)
MUSIC FICTION TIM THORNTON Death of an Unsigned Band (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●● The internal wranglings of unsigned indie bands is fertile territory for dramatic tension, as well as self-aware comedy, and so it is with this second novel from Tim Thornton, a veteran of plenty contract-free groups himself, apparently. Our bandmates in question are arrogant singer Jake, laidback drummer Ash, ice-cool bassist Karen and anally- retentive guitarist and songwriter Russell. While he is the driving force of the band, Russell’s musical vision
atmosphere and music well enough, but there’s not a whole lot pushing the narrative forward, and in the end his protagonist is a tad dull and safe, making it hard to care much one way or the other. (Doug Johnstone) BLACK COMEDY LARS HUSUM My Friend Jesus Christ (Portobello Books) ●●●●●
Before authoring this, his first novel, Danish writer Lars Husum worked at filmmaker Lars von Trier’s Copenhagen production company Zentropa as a script doctor. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that My Friend
struggles to achieve reality at a string of shitty gigs and fraught rehearsals. When the band
replace one asshole singer with another and enlist bullshit-monger manager Barry, things seem to be taking a turn for the better finally. Thornton evokes the
Jesus Christ has something of the feel of one of his old boss’ Dogme films: character- driven, spare of style,
occasionally shocking and often darkly funny. It concerns the
redemption of a very rotten young orphan named Niko – who drives his devoted sister to suicide – through the intervention of the saviour’s son. Breaking into his Copenhagen flat one day, JC, who looks and acts like a hippy biker, sends Niko back to his roots in rural Jutland, where the boy’s dead popstar mum comes from, to sort his useless life out. Husum’s tale would make a decent Dogme-style film. Happily, Zentropa’s cousin Nimbus, producer of Festen and Mifune, has optioned the screen rights. Mads Mikkelsen as Jesus, anybody? (Miles Fielder)
FAMILY DRAMA KEI MILLER The Last Warner Woman (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) ●●●●●
Skipping effortlessly through a host of complex characters, with this searching and lyrical work Kei Miller achieves an incredibly engaging range of voice from the outset. Gently dropping through three generations of Jamaican women – a fierce grandmother, a kindly, open-eyed mother and a stalwart, elderly fosterer – Miller finally delivers the reader at central character Adamine Bustamante, born inside one of the island’s last leper colonies.
Left alone to care for the group, Adamine finds herself in the grips of a Revivalist Church, where she discovers her gift for prophecy. Her doomed forewarnings are no longer
Reviews Books ALSO PUBLISHED
5 DEBUT NOVELS Deborah Kay Davies True Things About Me Welsh poet and short story writer with a debut novel about an unnamed woman whose life is unravelling through a tale of lust, obsession and violence. Canongate. Jean Kwok Girl in Translation Based partly on the author’s own life experience, an 11-year-old girl moves from Hong Kong to New York with her mother and struggles to cope with their new lifestyle. Fig Tree. DJ Connell Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar A comic story set in 1960s Tasmania in which the eponymous schoolboy is a born entertainer looking for an audience on his way to the big time. Blue Door. Anjali Joseph Saraswati Park Featuring the lives of a suburban family in Bombay: a letter writer who dreams of becoming an author, his wife and their painfully shy teenage nephew. Fourth Estate. Jonathan Lee Who is Mr Satoshi? Reclusive photographer Rob Fossick is forced into the outside world of a chaotic Tokyo with a parcel addressed to the enigmatic Mr Satoshi. William Heinemann. recklessly flaunts government regulations, lining his pockets with stupendous wealth. In Fanning’s rural home town, where he’s thrown up a ‘casino of a house’, he clashes with his batty neighbour Charlotte Graves, an eccentric ex-teacher with a burning hatred of Fanning and his kind, in a microcosm of idealism vs capitalism and individual vs marketplace. An immersing – if at times improbable – tale of impressive scale and vision. (Malcolm Jack)
entertained, however, when the warner woman migrates to England and is committed to a mental hospital. Told simultaneously from the point of view of a mysterious ‘Mr Writer Man’ and Adamine, now an old woman, the tale is unravelled as a tissued, multifaceted beast. Laced with issues of migration, family, faith, and most impressively, the imperceptible politics of storytelling, Miller has spun an indelible yarn. (Rosalie Doubal) SOCIAL DRAMA ADAM HASLETT Union Atlantic (Tuskar Rock) ●●●●●
The post-9/11 landscape of Massachusetts in 2002 is the canvas upon which Pulitzer- shortlisted author Adam Haslett places his debut novel. With some style, he foreshadows the culture of greed and moral bankruptcy in the American financial services industry and its toppling of ‘the invisible architecture of confidence’ in our global economy.
Doug Fanning is a cold-hearted investment banker for the titular Union Atlantic. As a remorse-free naval officer in the Persian Gulf he was party to the shooting-down of an Iranian passenger jet in the 1980s and with similarly wilful ignorance of culpability, he
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