www.list.co.uk/books PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION OSSIAN BROWN Haunted Air (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
Former member of Coil, Ossian Brown, clearly has an intense fascination with spooky Americana, having collected up these images of anonymous people posing for snaps around Hallowe’en between 1875 and 1955. The sepia tone adds an extra layer of menace while the masks are rough and raw; there are a fair number of blacked-up faces and costumes are simple or complicated but always effective: this is a world away from those who’ll just stick on a Jedward mask to head off trick or treatin’. In mainly rural settings, there are junior witches, fallen angels and tiny gargoyles, posing on porches, beside picket fences or in the woods. David Lynch provides a foreword in which he informs us that he had a coffee and cigarette while deciding he liked these photos very much, while a prologue from Geoff Cox offers a more atmospheric and literate portrait of the unsettling images within. (Brian Donaldson) FANTASY DRAMA PAUL MAGRS The Bride that Time Forgot (Headline Review) ●●●●●
The Bride that Time Forgot is a curious book. It’s part tale of a cosy little town, part time travel (via pinking shears and a
watercolour), part vampire hunt, part spoof, and part touching tale of undying friendship among the undead and the not quite dead. Set in Whitby – a town populated largely by otherworldly creatures, many of them undead vampire victims called ‘Walkers’ – it’s the story of Brenda and her best friend, Effie, as they battle bloodsuckers, the perils of the exotic, dangerous land of Qab, and the book group turned cult that has formed around it.
Zany and fun though the book is, it isn’t particularly original. Vampires and vampire- hunters, goddess cults, and lands where the women rule while the men are slaves have all, frequently, been done before. If fantasy is Paul Magrs’ chosen genre then he needs to be a little more fantastical in his creations. (Kate Gould)
FILM BIOGRAPHY YUNTE HUANG Charlie Chan (WW Norton) ●●●●●
Chinese-American academic Yunte Huang’s biography of the popular Oriental sleuth, star of six bestselling novels published from the mid- 1920s on and upwards of 50 Hollywood films that followed, proves to be a pretty solid piece of investigation in its own right. Huang unearths the not-at-all obvious link between the American midwestern caucasian author of the novels, Earl Derr Biggers, and the Hawaii-based Chinese policeman, Chang Apana, who was the inspiration for the detective who brought his own unique brand of china cookie wisdom to crime solving. In doing so, Huang
ALSO PUBLISHED 5 PAPERBACK THRILLERS Tony Park Silent Predator Terrorism, kidnapping, sex and torture in Africa’s game parks from an Aussie author who is being compared to Wilbur Smith. Quercus. Marcus Sakey No Turning Back Fed up with just getting by, four pals decide to help themselves to a big share of the money-pie with a failsafe, victimless plan. Yeah, right. Corgi. Jane Casey The Burning A psycho- thriller from the author of The Missing in which a serial killer sets fire to victims in secluded areas of London parks. Ebury. Douglas Preston Impact There’s something sinister afoot in this race- against-time thriller involving strange gemstones, brilliant meteor lights and a crater on Mars. Pan.
makes a bold case for rescuing Charlie Chan from being vilified as a racially stereotyped Chinaman and, beyond that, he outlines a compelling narrative of the Chinese-American experience. The book’s only weak link is its author’s unnecessary attempt to personalise the story by writing himself into it in a series of relatively dull field research trips. (Miles Fielder) COMIC GEOFF JOHNS & IVAN REIS Blackest Night (DC/Titan) ●●●●●
The first Green Lantern (aka Alan Scott) was created by Bill Finger
REVIEWS Books
FAMILY DRAMA PAUL AUSTER Sunset Park (Faber) ●●●●●
It’s nearly 25 years since New Jersey boy Paul Auster wormed his way into the literary psyche with the unnervingly brilliant New York Trilogy. The existential mysteries and metaphysical puzzles he set up and explored seemed fresh and exciting. His critical report card has been largely spotless since then, but with Sunset Park, he has merely offered up a mildly diverting, sub-Franzen slice of Americana with a lightweight emotional thrust and a lack of literary oomph. The story revolves around the Heller family, whose grown-up son
Miles has fled his NYC home after overhearing his parents discussing their faltering relationship with him. This self-imposed exile is partly driven by the guilt he still feels over his step-brother’s death many years earlier. When he finally returns to the city as part of an upmarket squatter project, the day of family reckoning looms.
Auster has declared himself to be going through his ‘innocence of youth’ period and there’s an awful lot of extinguishing of early life going on here whether it’s through abortion, suicide or Bobby Heller’s death; and it can’t be an accident that one of the squatters is obsessed with William Wyler’s 40s weepie, The Best Years of Our Lives. This is a novel infiltrated by ghosts. As well as the fictional mortalities, characters are obsessed with the real-life tragedies of actors and baseball stars. But the (hopefully temporary) demise of Paul Auster is the saddest one here. (Brian Donaldson)
and Martin Nodell in 1940. But it was the introduction of Hal Jordan in 1952 that was the birth of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic police force who wield a power ring (fuelled by their own force of will) to bring justice to the universe. Geoff Johns continues to reposition the Green Lantern at the centre of
the DC Universe with an eight-issue crossover that is perhaps the darkest tale in the history of the Corps, as the Black Lantern arrives on Earth with the power to resurrect the dead. This is an epic story drawing on a multitude of heroes (living and dead), and while horror and capes aren’t always an easy mix, Johns
manages this precarious balancing act by keeping the heroes in the forefront and never pandering to any zombie clichés. The art throughout is suitably stunning, featuring some wonderfully detailed multi-character double page spreads brought to vivid life by Ivan Reis. (Henry Northmore)
21 Oct–4 Nov 2010 THE LIST 33