Books REVIEWS
YOUNG ADULT FICTION LEMONY SNICKET Who Could That Be at This Hour? (Egmont) ●●●●● It may be unwise to judge a book by its cover, but in this case at least, the title is a good indicator. The intrigue generated by those seven little words continues into the i rst chapter and pretty much every page onwards, until we reach the denouement at 258.
Except, that is, we don’t. In true Lemony Snicket style, Who Could That Be at This Hour? is just the start of another glorious journey, following his enormously successful A Series of Unfortunate Events. This new series comes under the banner All The Wrong Questions, with three more future books promised. All of which is seriously good news, because the world we enter in this i rst volume is so off-beat and mysterious, you can’t wait to get back there.
The person asking all those wrong questions is Snicket
himself who, aged just 12, is working as an apprentice for a secret organisation. In order to prove his mettle, he’s taken to Stain’d-by-the-Sea, a once lively town now deserted save for a few oddball characters, where a straightforward burglary assignment turns into something far more complex and layered. An autobiography written by a i ctional character is a strange and slightly confusing concept. The fact that Snicket doesn’t actually exist, and is in fact the creation of author Daniel Handler, only serves to make the book more exciting. Snicket isn’t real, so when strange events happen in the equally strange world he inhabits, we just go with it. All the Wrong Questions volume two can’t come soon enough. (Kelly Apter)
SOCIAL DRAMA BARBARA KINGSOLVER Flight Behaviour (Faber) ●●●●● Named after a cheap wreath in the mistaken belief that it sounded like a name from the bible, Dellarobia Turnbow is a picture of redneck suppression. Stuck in a bloodless marriage with a fat imbecile whose parents control their lives on a struggling Appalachian farm, Dellarobia dreams of change and excitement. One day she witnesses what could be an ecological or biblical miracle or disaster in the forested mountains above the farm. What she sees brings visiting journalists, sightseers, opportunists and scientists to the area
and with them comes the possibility of escape.
GHOST STORIES JEREMY DYSON The Haunted Book (Canongate) ●●●●●
As the non-acting quarter of the League of Gentlemen and co-creator of the acclaimed West End stage hit, Ghost Stories, Jeremy Dyson knows a thing or two about scaring the bejesus out of folks. Curious, almost uncanny, then, that this Hallowe’en-timed offering should be so light on anything bordering a proper shock. To be fair, some mild chills do abound when
Dyson is approached by a journalist called Aiden Fox to fashion some paranormal discoveries into stylish prose; the yarns about a haunted recording studio and a ghostly red telephone do the trick, but
few hit the same mark of sinister intrigue. Flight Behaviour is a natural progression for prolii c novelist, essayist and poet
Among the selection of mostly unscary stories are segments from other so- called haunted books, perhaps Dyson’s attempt to camoul age the most glaring mystery in his own tale revolving around the secretive man who commissioned him. Rather disappointingly, you could read this in a gothic house near you and still get a very comfortable night’s rest. (Brian Donaldson)
Barbara Kingsolver whose previous books include The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna (about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo). Densely written, glacially paced, beautifully characterised and beholden of a deep humanity and eco- literate agenda, this is the work of a writer at the very top of her complex and unblinking game. (Paul Dale)
HORROR TALE YRSA SIGURDARDOTTIR I Remember You (Hodder & Stoughton) ●●●●●
Elbowing Iceland into the whole Nordic Noir hoo-ha, Yrsa Sigurdardottir presents her latest English-translated work. Part-way between a dark, depressive thriller and a mildly absurd, supernatural fable – distinguished by that unmistakable horror trait of characters expert at putting themselves in danger – I Remember You relays between two slowly-interweaving narratives.
One features three city slickers inexplicably renovating a derelict house on a deserted island who become stalked by a ghostly presence; the other has a mainland doctor investigating a
COLLECTED JOURNALISM JON RONSON Lost at Sea (Picador) ●●●●●
Will Self pretty well nailed it when he dubbed Jon Ronson as ‘one of the i nest comic writers working today’. Even when a subject appears on the surface to be deadly serious (the Self review was for Ronson’s last full work, The Psychopath Test), the Cardiff-born, New York-based journalist and broadcaster can’t stop seeing the lighter side of life.
It’s this admirable perspective that actually lends extra power to topics such as the Kidneys for Jesus campaign and a murder plot being hatched in the Alaskan town of North Pole where every
vandalised primary school and a strange suicide. These seemingly unlinked incidents tie in to the disappearance of the medic’s own young son and as these strands tighten and the intrigue thickens, the pages l y by. Ditching steady character development in favour of rapid chills, Sigurdardottir somehow pointedly ends every chapter on a cliffhanger, even if her often dozy protagonists are difi cult to sympathise with. The tome is both unputdownable and liable to be thrown at the wall in befuddled exasperation. (Malcolm Jack)
day is Christmas.
But there are just some things that it’s probably better not to laugh at, such as the conviction of Jonathan King, the death of a debt-ridden man and the mystery disappearance of a 24-year-old on a cruise. Ronson is highly adept at knowing when to take his foot off the comedy pedal, a skill which gives a collection such as Lost at Sea a solidity and pace. (Brian Donaldson)
50 THE LIST 18 Oct–15 Nov 2012