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ALLEGORICAL TALE KEVIN BROCKMEIER The Illumination (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
The Illumination is an intriguing third novel from Arkansas author Kevin Brockmeier. Shot through with chilling and fantastical nuances, this enlightened rumination focuses on our relationships with illness, pain, mortality and each other. Set against the backdrop of a global supernatural
phenomenon wherein light radiates from every ailment and injury – from the dim-lit sliver of a hang-nail to the glaring sunburst of terminal cancer – this tale spans several protagonists including a missionary, bullied child and homeless bookseller.
Each of these character studies is dove-tailed into a poetic conclusion, and linked together by a journal of love-notes. Brockmeier’s third-person narratives are scattered with intimate proclamations from the ever-present book of love, which always come as a welcome relief. These gentle notes instil a sense of humour and hope in a world that is full of darkness even when it is bathed in light. (Nicola Meighan)
Books REVIEWS
FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY DAVID BADDIEL The Death of Eli Gold (Fourth Estate) ●●●●● A comic meditation on the death of ‘the world’s greatest living writer’, the destructive selfishness of male desire and the passing of the ‘great man’ as a species, David Baddiel’s fourth novel further explores his preoccupations with love, sex and commitment from multiple
viewpoints. You soon intuit that the narrative is essentially dictated by the eponymous, coma-held Eli Gold, an American literary leviathan in the vein of Bellow, Roth and Updike, whose cultural prominence and libidinous insatiability has ruined the lives of his various wives and children.
But the novel reads less as an elegy for a succumbing übermensch in a New York hospital than a cautionary tale for all pornography-corrupted, middle-aged wrecks like Harvey, son of Eli’s third marriage. Harvey’s is only one perspective though, alongside that of Eli’s infirm first wife, the nine-year- old daughter of his final marriage, and a vengeance-seeking former brother-in-law. Baddiel clearly retains a regard for the old bastard and the supremacy of great art, but his heart lies firmly with those cast off; Eli’s ironic wit is less amusing than Harvey’s grasping weaknesses, the father’s tragedy less noble than that of the pathetic son.
If Baddiel had perhaps stayed the course, opted neither for love nor literature, and forsaken a rather dissatisfying ending featuring a presidential cameo, it might have made for a more memorable book. The most compelling passages remain the most tantalisingly opaque, specifically the notes of a police interrogation surrounding a suicide pact, where Baddiel reveals more and yet somehow less of Eli’s conscience; far less than the author permits himself. (Jay Richardson)
FAMILY DRAMA KAREN RUSSELL Swamplandia! (Chatto & Windus) ●●●●● A debut novel from another one of those clever- clever New Yorker magazine’s ‘20 under 40’ types that we just have to be reading, the premise of Swamplandia! is certainly attention-grabbing. Teenager Ava Bigtree has just lost her mother to cancer, a traumatic event in itself, but more so when she is then left in charge of the Bigtree’s company. But this is no ordinary family-run business: the clan own an alligator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades.
Although Russell possesses a light wit, some passages aim for profundity, but come across as lumpen: ‘the Beginning of the End can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it’ we are told at the start while later, ‘what I did next was all instinct as if my muscles were staging a coup’. Russell’s previous publication, St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was a delicious short story collection, from which this novel has evolved. Stretched to its very limit at times, the tale would have benefitted from staying exactly where it was. (Brian Donaldson)
SOCIAL DRAMA STEPHEN KELMAN Pigeon English (Bloomsbury) ●●●●●
Penned with that unburdened lightness of touch perhaps only a writer who never believed his words would make it to print can muster, it’s not difficult to see why Stephen Kelman’s debut sparked off a 12- way publisher bidding war.
Harrison Opoku is an 11-year-old Ghanaian immigrant who lives in a derelict inner-city London tower block with his mum and sister. Following the fatal ‘chooking’ (stabbing) of a schoolmate, he launches his own investigation into the murder,
MUSIC HISTORY DORIAN LYNSKEY 33 Revolutions Per Minute (Faber) ●●●●● While acknowledging that the protest song has its roots way before the 20th century, music journo Lynskey kicks off his extensive history book in 1939 because ‘that is where things get interesting’. This was the year of Grapes of Wrath, Gone with the Wind, British appeasement, and the climax of the Spanish Civil War. It’s also the moment when a 23-year-old Billie Holiday crooned ‘Strange Fruit’, delivering a tune about lynching straight to the doors of the masses.
while observing with hilarious and touching naivety the peculiarities of sink-estate life and its ubiquitous characters: local gang members, assorted alkies, even the manky pigeon that visits his balcony (and adopts a guardian angel-like stance). An innocent abroad who draws Adidas stripes on his pound-store trainers and
dreams of a simplistic, football-friendly heaven, Opoku’s plight is both heart- warming and heartbreaking, as his actions unwittingly speed the inevitable cruel crash of manhood into his quietly contented world. (Malcolm Jack)
From there, he gives us detailed chapters about Woody Guthrie, Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, The Clash, Public Enemy and Green Day, including a cage-rattling section on the ‘puzzling politics’ of John Lennon. Even with a book of such breadth and heft (the index closes proceedings on page 843), it’s never going to please everyone. Wisely, Lynskey has sought to undercut the inevitable whining with an appendix of a further ‘One Hundred Songs Not Mentioned in the Text’. (Brian Donaldson)
3–31 March 2011 THE LIST 45