Reading Matters

'The Antagonist' by Lynn Coady

Fiction - hardcover; House of Anansi Press; 352 pages; 2011.

A misunderstood giant who confronts his past is the subject of Lynn Coady's Giller shortlisted novel The Antagonist.

The giant is Gordon "Rank" Rankin, adopted at birth by Sylvie and Gordon Senior, a well-meaning but mismatched couple — "The dad was a prick, the mom was a goddess" — who raise him in small town Canada.

A larger-than-normal child, Rank looks like a fully grown man by the age of 14. With this comes all kinds of complications — people treat him like an adult even though he's just a teenage boy — and he struggles to get on with his father, a short, angry man, whom he realises he "could've taken" at just age six "if I'd wanted".

Their relationship, which is largely the focus of this novel, becomes more strained when Sylvie is killed in a car accident, leaving Gordon Snr to raise 16-year-old Rank alone.

But Coady gives this tale of a difficult father-son relationship a new twist. She has Rank looking back on his troubled past from the perspective of a soon-to-be-40-year-old man who has supposedly changed his ways, although it's clear he is filled with resentment and has a special talent for holding grudges. It's written epistolary style, in a series of emails to a college classmate, over a three-month period in 2009.

The classmate in question has written a novel which bears striking similarities to Rank's life — and Rank's not happy about it. The emails are essentially one long diatribe, railing against the way his story has been stolen from him, pointing out inaccuracies and clarifying events. The bulk of the one-way correspondence is written in the first person, but towards the end — as the story builds to a dramatic and violent climax — it is written in the third person, almost as if Rank has hit his stride and is rewriting his classmate's novel for him.

The great strength of The Antagonist is Rank's voice — it's angry, honest and frank — but it is never predictable. There are little "reveals" dotted throughout the narrative which makes the reader question their own judgement of Rank's character. Is he really the crazy, antagonistic, guy from college whom everyone liked because he "livened things up"? Or is there a deeper, more emotional and misunderstood man underneath? Does he relish being a thug? Or does he not understand his own brute strength?

This is a fast-paced read, with rich and authentic descriptions of both small town and college life — and there's a rich seam of humour running throughout. It's set largely in the 1980s, of the generation to which I belong, so I quite enjoyed the music references. And if nothing else it so eloquently shows that you should never judge a person on appearance alone...

The Antagonist has been shortlisted for this year's Giller Prize. For another take on this novel please see KevinfromCanada's review. Please note, this book is not yet available in the UK  — many thanks to Kevin for shipping me this copy.

'The Night Circus' by Erin Morgenstern

Fiction - hardcover; Harvill Secker; 400 pages; 2011. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The circus arrives without warning.

So begins Erin Morgenstern's debut novel, The Night Circus, which arrived with more than enough warning, actually — I received an uncorrected proof at least four months before the September publication date. The book has received a mighty marketing push — complete with a rather fun-filled London launch last month — on both sides of the Atlantic. One might wonder at the fuss, but it's the type of novel that seems to have captured the imagination — of a lot of people in the book trade, at least. But this is also following through with readers, who love its sense of magic and wonder — or that's what the Amazon reviews seem to indicate.

I'm going to be completely frank and say that the book isn't what I would class as my usual cup of tea. But it's such a fun novel and so playful and mischievous that any misgivings I had about the subject matter — I detest the circus and I'm not much of a fan of illusionists and magicians — were swept away by the enjoyment of it.

The story is set in the late 19th Century. The Night Circus, which only appears at night, is a true fin-de-siècle. This is not a conventional circus: each black-and-white tent is filled with people performing magic tricks and illusions, but they are not really magic tricks and illusions, they are real — except the audience does not know this.

In this tent, suspended high above you, there are people. Acrobats, trapeze artists, aerialists. Illuminated by dozens of round glowing lamps hanging from the top of the tent like planets or stars. There are no nets. [...] There are girls in feathered costumes who spin at various heights, suspended by ribbons that they can manipulate. Marionettes that control their own strings. Normal chairs with legs and backs act as trapezes. Round spheres that resemble birdcages rise and descend while one or more aerialists move from within the sphere to without, standing on the top or hanging from the bars on the bottom.

The audience is comprised largely of devoted fans — rêveurs (French for "dreamers") — who identify themselves by wearing red scarves.

The circus is presided over by a mysterious man in a grey suit, who lends the tale a menacing overtone.

But The Night Circus centres on two young magicians, Ceila and Marco, who are unknowingly pitted against each other in a dangerous competition from which only one person can survive. When they fall in love there's an imminent sense of danger — and heartbreak. Can their deadly contest be called off before one of them dies?

Well, I'm not going to tell you the answer, am I? But rest assured this is a lovely, intensely imaginative read. I suspect that because of its romantic and magic realism elements it will appeal more to women than to men, and teenage girls are likely to adore it.

Not surprisingly the film rights have already been sold (by the same people who made Twilight), because the narrative is so visually strong. I have to say that I found its functional descriptions — all tell and not much show — a little wearing after a while. Ditto for the entire story being told in the present tense.

But as a light, fun read, with a smidgen of adventure, a touch of history, a little danger and loads of magic and mystery, this is the perfect book with which to be swept away. Red scarf optional.

Do blog reviews boost book sales?

A couple of months ago I was "interviewed" via email by a postgrad student doing a dissertation on book blogs. One of the key questions was:

How effective do you think your reviews are in terms of enhancing book sales?

My response went something like this:

I think they may help make certain books known to a wider audience – but I have no idea if this has any impact on sales. Lots of people might comment and say they’ve added it to their wishlist, but I have no way of measuring whether this is translated into an actual purchase.

I was only reminded of this question on the weekend, when Lisa, from ANZ Litlovers, left a comment under my review of The Free World which said:

Bought it with one click, yay for Kindle!

Once-upon-a-time I might have been able to track sales via my affiliation with Amazon. But I cancelled my membership several years ago. And even then, I would not be able to see those readers who bought their books from other online retailers or bricks-and-mortar shops.

So this is where you come in. I'd be interested in hearing from any of you who have gone on to buy books based on a review you've seen here.

If so, what did you buy — or borrow from the library? Did you buy it straight away or simply add it to a wishlist and seek it out at a later date? Do you think book blogs enhance book sales? What is the deciding factor when you buy a book — a review, the blurb, the price or something else entirely?

'Gregory's Girl' actor John Gordon Sinclair turns crime novelist

Photo credit: Scott-39 on Flickr

It's not uncommon for journalists to pen novels, but how many actors do you know who write fiction?

Well, OK, Ethan Hawke has a couple of novels under his belt, as does Gene Hackman and Steve Martin. And next year there will be a new thespian joining their ranks: Scotland's own John Gordon Sinclair.

Sinclair, who is best known for his role in the 1981 film Gregory's Girl, will have his first novel published by Faber in September 2012. It's called Seventy Times Seven and is set in Northern Ireland and Alabama.

How do I know all this? Well, I met Sinclair at Faber's crime fiction party last Thursday evening. He was there alongside nine other crime writers who are publishing books with Faber in 2012.

I spied him in the crowd, knew the face but couldn't work out why he was in attendance. Then, when he was invited to take the rostrum, the penny dropped. He was there to promote his novel (which I believe is part of a two-book deal).

Afterwards I worked up the courage to introduce myself and I had a lovely chat with him. He's incredibly down to earth, friendly, approachable — and genuinely excited about having his first book published.

I asked him what provoked the switch from acting to writing and he said it was a chance to stay at home with his young children while doing something productive.

I'm looking forward to reading the novel when it's finally released. I will be especially interested in seeing the cover design. Why? Because midway through our chat, his two agents joined us and started asking me questions about what sorts of covers I liked. I suggested I'd always pick up something with a moody classic black-and-white image — with the title in white or silver Helvetica typeface — and tended to shun those with lots of red or garish colours. So... if Seventy Times Seven turns up looking just like that you'll know who to blame! And the consultancy fee will be in the post.

World Book Night 2012 titles unveiled — and how to apply to be a book giver

The World Book Night organisers have released the names of the 25 titles that will be given away by volunteers on World Book Night 2012.

They are as follows (hyperlinks take you to my reviews):

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Player of Games by Iain M Banks
Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Take by Martina Cole
Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell
Someone Like You by Roald Dahl
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Room by Emma Donoghue
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Misery by Stephen King
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Let the Right One In by John Ajvde Lindqvist
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
The Damned Utd by David Peace
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak

Applications are also open to volunteer your services as a book giver. There are a few rules and regulations which you must abide by. For full details visit the official website. Good luck to all those that apply!

Quick links for a Monday

• Love the idea of Meanjin's Tournament of Books in which "Australian canonical novels written by women" are pitted against each other "in a bloody fight to the literary death"!

• Paperback Reader is hosting a Persephone Secret Santa for the third year in a row. Update: Verity from Cardigan Girl Verity is co-host!

• Sebastian Barry talks about his latest novel On Canaan's Side in a lovely podcast hosted by Faber (via dovegreyreader)

• "If she were a man, the chances are that she would be spoken of in the same breath as Sebastian Barry and Joseph O’Connor." The Irish Times interviews Irish author Christine Dwyer Hickey.

• New York's Centre for Fiction has announced a Crime Fiction Academy beginning next February.

• The new issue of literary magazine Shelf Unbound is out — and available to read online.

• Author Andrew Wilson reveals how you can make a million writing your own e-book.

• It's the last week of Sheffield's Off the Shelf Festival — check out the programme here.

'The Free World' by David Bezmozgis

Fiction - Kindle edition; Penguin; 368 pages; 2011.

Imagine being stuck in a figurative "no man's land". You can't return to the country you just left and you have no idea which new country will let you in. That is the dilemma experienced by the wide cast of characters in David Bezmozgis' debut novel, The Free World.

Set in the late 1970s, the book tells the story of a family of Russian Jews fleeing the Soviet Union. Samuil, the patriarch, isn't convinced of the need to emigrate — "In the war you ran from the enemy. Now who are you running from?" — and he is even less convinced when his war medals are seized at the border as "property of the state".

But to his wife, Emma, and their sons, Alec and Karl and their wives Polina and Rosa, it is a chance to start afresh in a yet-to-be-chosen destination. The choices are relatively limited: they can go to Israel, direct from Vienna — where the book opens — with no need for additional paperwork, or they can go to Rome, another transit point, and sort out documentation for the USA, Canada or Australia.

Alec isn't sure which destination is best. He just knows he doesn't want to go to Israel — and with good reason:

They had gathered at the office that morning to present themselves before a caseworker. The Joint would not furnish them with their stipend if they didn’t file papers for a destination. Rosa continued to agitate for Israel, even though two days before, Begin had officially rejected Sadat’s latest peace proposal. While in Beirut, the Syrians were shelling the Christians, and Israel was massing troops on its northern border. Alec, having successfully avoided the worst of Soviet military service, wasn’t aching to go from Ben Gurion Airport to boot camp. Getting killed or maimed in Lebanon, or Egypt, or wherever the bullets were flying, seemed to defeat the whole point of leaving the Soviet Union.

In the event, they go to Rome, but the decision about their onward destination is rushed. When they are forced to fill out their forms after waiting weeks for an appointment, Samuil is as grumpy as ever — "This is how you decide your family’s future, ten minutes in a stairwell?" — but even Rosa has her doubts.
 

—Just like that you’re prepared to go and say Canada? What do we know about it? Rosa continued. —What do we know about anyplace? Karl said. You watched the Olympics. You liked what you saw of Montreal. And in 1972 they also showed something of Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. —You’re talking about the hockey games? Rosa asked incredulously. —Da, da Canada; nyet, nyet Soviet, Alec said. —If you have nothing intelligent to add, Rosa said. —It’s more European than America, and more American than Europe. —What does that mean? Rosa asked. —It means, Alec said, that a person can eat and dress like a human being, watch hockey, and accomplish all this without victimizing Negroes and Latin American peasants. —Basically, Karl said. Their dollar is also strong. —It doesn’t concern you that we will have to stay for months in Italy? Rosa asked. —That’s a reason against Canada? —It’s something to take into account.

But this isn't a story about what happens when they arrive at their destination. It is a story about what happens while they remain in limbo, their lives effectively on hold, as they wait for the bureaucratic red tape to untangle.

It is here, in Rome, that we are introduced to each character — Alec, the philanderer; Samuil, the grump with a painful family history; Polina, deeply troubled by having left her sister behind; Karl, the entrepreneur; Emma, keen to reconnect with her forgotten Jewish religion — and learn their complicated back stories. It's almost as if under the strain of the immigration process, cast adrift in an alien environment, that each character must address the past before moving into the future.

I particularly enjoyed Samuil's back story — in which we discover that his own father and grandfather were "trapped and murdered in their Ukrainian shtetl" — and Polina's letters to the sister she left behind, which are equally moving and eloquent.

Bezmozgis's strength is not on plot — there is little of that, perhaps mirroring the stasis of the family's situation — but on character. Similarly, his detailed vignettes, some of which are deeply moving and others that draw on a rich seam of humour, are perfectly rendered.

He is also very astute at capturing that lovely sense of awe as his new immigrants move from the constricted lives of Soviet Russia to the wonders of the free world. This is summed up nicely when they go to the cinema to see a film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof:

—It’s a wonderful production, a middle-aged woman behind them offered. Believe me. This is my eighth time watching. I’d watch it another eight times. In Russia, God forbid they should ever have a Jewish character in a film. But in America they made a whole movie about us.

The Free World has been shortlisted for this year's Giller Prize. For other takes on this novel please see KevinfromCanada's review and The Mookse and the Gripes' review.

Nominations for Irish Book Awards 2011 announced

Given all the Irish fiction I read it would be remiss of me not to mention this year's Irish Book Awards.

The shortlists, which were announced yesterday, are decided by an expert panel of Irish booksellers and librarians, and then voted on by members of the Irish Literary Academy — comprised of authors, publishers, booksellers, journalists, academics, critics and reviewers — and the general public.

There are nine different categories, but the two categories I'm most interested in are as follows (hyperlinks will take you to my reviews):

Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year

• The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
• Mistaken by Neil Jordan
• The Cold Eye of Heaven by Christine Dwyer Hickey
• City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
• Solace by Belinda McKeon
• On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry (review forthcoming)

Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award

• The Reckoning by Jane Casey (on my TBR)
• The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan
• Bloodland by Alan Glynn (review forthcoming)
• Taboo by Casey Hill
• Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke
• A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black

I'm also pleased to see Belinda McKeon has been shortlisted for Best Irish Newcomer of the Year.

A full rundown of the awards is available to view on the official website.

The winners will be announced on November 17.

KevinfromCanada on the airwaves!

Got a spare 25 minutes? Then please do settle down, make yourself a cuppa and listen to this wonderful podcast in which KevinfromCanada discusses all things bookish on Canada's CBC Radio. It's a real treat.

Jonathan Cape's delayed response to their man winning the 2011 Booker prize

There were bigger Booker Prize parties in town last night — the publishers Atlantic, Canongate, Serpent’s Tail and Granta all banded together to host a giant one, for instance — but I was kindly invited to the winning one, hosted by Jonathan Cape, a division of the Random House Group.

Of course, when I made my way to Brydges Place — London's narrowest alley, near Trafalgar Square — and scuttled up the staircase to the private club in a Georgian townhouse at a little after 8pm, I didn't know it was going to be the winning party. Did anyone even think Julian Barne's novel, The Sense of an Ending, was going to win the Man Booker Prize after all the controversy this year's prize generated? (You'll note, I refrained from commenting on the hoo-ha — there were enough column inches, blog posts and God knows what else without me adding to the clamour.)

It has to be said that the party was, well, cliquey. I didn't know a soul.

There were a lot of people crammed into two smallish rooms (a third room was set aside for people to dump their bags and coats) and it didn't take long before the windows steamed up, it was so hot and stuffy. But there was plenty to drink — red wine and white wine, but you had to hunt down a waiter if you wanted a glass of water — and tray after tray of delicious canapes.

As time for the impending announcement drew near, the excitement became palpable. But sadly there was no TV in sight, but a radio, in the main room, was turned up loudly for everyone to hear — although it wasn't quite loud enough for those of us squished in the back.

What no one realised was that the radio announcement was a delayed broadcast. The winner had been revealed several minutes — possibly 10 minutes? — earlier. And in the funny way that the Brits don't like to cause a ruckus, most of the people standing around me had already found out the name of the winner via Twitter on their smartphones, but no one said a word. It was all hush-hush, with everyone pretending to strain to hear what the Man Booker chair Stella Rimmington was banging on about during her speech even though everyone must have been jumping out of their skin with excitement.

Our man had won!

When Barnes was named the winner — on the radio — the party erupted into cheers and riotous applause, but those few minutes between the Twitter news silently coming through on handheld devices and the party hearing it over the airwaves were quite surreal.

I had a lovely time and enjoyed the evening a lot. It was wonderful to finally meet the utterly charming Leo Benedictus, author of The Afterparty and Triple Choice Tuesday participant, and his editor. And as much as I enjoyed the champagne that began to flow after the winning announcement, I'm not sure my head agreed this morning when I had to get up and go to work! I suspect there were far worse cases than me, though — I was tucked up in bed by midnight, probably when the party was in full swing.

Oh, and if you are looking for my review of Julian Barnes' winning title, you'll have to wait a bit longer. The book has been sitting on my bedside table, unread, for months. How typical.

'Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial' by Janet Malcolm

Non-fiction - hardcover; Yale University Press; 155 pages; 2011.

I do like a good non-fiction narrative that looks at the darker side of humanity — and Janet Malcolm's Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial is one of those books that could best be described as my cup of tea.

The book's title has its roots in Greek mythology. Depending on which version of the myth you hear — and there are several — Iphigenia was the innocent daughter that Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces at Troy, had to sacrifice to appease Artemis, whom he had offended. Iphigenia's mother, Clytemnestra, was so upset by her daughter's death that she kills her husband as an act of vengeance.

But in Malcolm's true-life tale, "Iphigenia" is a four-year-old child that is "sacrificed" as part of a divorce settlement. The father, having won custody, is later killed — by a hit man. The book does not focus on the finer details of the custody dispute, but on the abhorrent murder which happened following it and then the machinations of the subsequent trial.

The case goes something like this. A 34-year-old mother and physician, Mazoltuv Borukhova, is accused of hiring an assassin to kill her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov, a well respected orthodontist. The "hit" occurred in broad daylight, at the gates of a playground in the Queens district of New York, within feet of the couple's four-year-old daughter, Michelle. The motivation for the crime is claimed to be vengeance: a month earlier Malakov had been granted custody of Michelle, despite claims by Dr Borukhova that her husband sexually abused their daughter.

This is a murky case — Malcolm describes it as an enigma, because Dr Borukhova "couldn't have done it and she must have done it" — but the author's focus is not so much on the events leading up to it, nor the motivations, but the way in which justice is played out in the courtroom.

Most of us understand the adversarial system of justice in which the prosecution presents the evidence and the defence disputes it. But few of us have seen it in action firsthand. Malcolm gives us a ringside seat as Borukhova and her hitman, Mikhail Mallayev, are put on trial at Queens Supreme Court in 2009 and dissects what is happening with rare insight.

"A trial is a contest between competing narratives", she writes.

If any profession (apart from the novelist's) is in the business of making things up, it is the profession of the trial lawyer. The "evidence" in trials is the thread out of which lawyers spin their tales of guilt or innocence.

This evidence, she suggests, is often highly malleable. The likelihood of a successful prosecution also rests on jury selection — which isn't always impartial — and which judge presides over the case. In this instance, the trial judge, Robert Hanophy, had such a long track record of rarely acquitting anyone on the stand that he had been nicknamed "Hang 'em Hanophy" (Malcolm's portrait of him is not particularly flattering, and she even goes so far as to call him a "petty tyrant".)

Of course, how the jury — and the media — perceive the accused has a role to play, too. Here's Malcolm's description of Borukhova:

She was a small, thin woman of arresting appearance. Her features were delicate, and her skin had a gray pallor. At the hearings, she was dressed in a mannish black jacket and a floor-length black skirt, and she wore her long, dark, tightly curled hair hanging down her back, bound by a red cord. She looked rather like a nineteenth-century woman-student revolutionary. For the trial proper (perhaps on advice), she changed her appearance. She put her hair up and wore light-coloured jackets and patterned long skirts. She looked pretty and charming, if undernourished.

What makes this book so readable is Malcolm's narrative. This is not a dry, coolly distant analysis: it's raw and immediate and feels all the more compelling for it.

Reporting the case for the New Yorker, where Malcolm is a staff writer, she includes her own views and reactions to the events happening in the court room. At at one point she even inserts herself in the story — "something I have never done before as a journalist" — by alerting the prosecution to the fact that Michelle's court-appointed guardian, David Schnall, had admitted some rather kooky ideas in an interview he granted her (one of his ideas was the the world was a "place of hidden evil under the control of a Communist-like system" among other rants).

Malcolm also puts her journalistic skills to good use by befriending Borukhova's family, not an easy thing to do given they belong to a rather closed, insular community of Bukharan Jews living in Forest Hills, New York. (Her visits with them are highly reminiscent of Helen Garner's visits with Jo Cinque's family in Joe Cinque's Consolation — once she wins their trust, they reveal a lot of pain, confusion, anger and bitterness.)

But as much as I enjoyed this book, it felt too short — the ending is especially abrupt — and there are some aspects that could have been fleshed out. Still, it's a slightly unnerving read, and I came away from it, not quite sure whether justice had, indeed, been done. And I rather suspect that's exactly how Malcolm feels about the case, too...

The Night Circus rolls into town

Back in June an enticing (unsolicited) package arrived from Harvill Secker promising all kinds of magic and mystery. It remained unopened for quite some time, not because I wasn't interested in the contents, but because it just looked too pretty to destroy.

Then, just a week or two ago, a beautiful invitation popped through the door offering "unlimited admission" to Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.

Join us at nightfall for punch and popcorn, it beckoned, and rendez-vous at St Pancras in the foyer of the Renaissance Hotel.

Well, of course, I couldn't resist an invite like that — just the promise of a peek inside the hotel was enough to attract me. So, in preparation for my visit, I thought I better read the book that had originally started all this intrigue. Before I knew it I had been swept away by a dazzling tale of magic and human circus tricks set during the Victorian era. (I am yet to come to the end of the novel, but I will review it shortly. In the meantime, do check dovegreyreader's and Jackie at Farm Lane Books for their thoughts.)

Even so, when I turned up to last night's event, I wasn't really expecting the suitable and appropriate mystery of it all. First, I couldn't find the room where it was staged, and even the security staff at the hotel seemed suitably perplexed. Eventually, after one chap emptied his pockets looking for a map and a list of event bookings, I was told to "walk up the staircase and take a right", only to find the staircase wasn't any old staircase, but a beautiful winding one with lush carpet and gorgeous bannisters. It was so big and impressive that trudging up it made me feel as if I was about two inches tall. I also felt decidedly under-dressed, because surely the best way to climb a staircase like this would be in a long Victorian gown where I could hear the swishing of my silk skirts as they trailed along behind me.

Never mind. Once in the room — ornately decorated with gold-gilded ceilings, Corinthian columns, mahogany woodwork and black marble fireplaces — I was handed a glass of delicious ice-cold punch. I hadn't so much as taken a sip through the straw when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder, and thinking it was someone who might know me, I turned around only to be met by air.

And then I spied the statue.

Yes, she was like that all night — and frightening the life out of guests as they walked in and she unexpectedly moved or touched them.

There was also a contortionist bending herself into all kinds of impossible positions on a chair.

But the highlight was the arrival of two very tall women dressed in full-on Victorian garb, who mingled with guests and chatted in character. I even had to help one straighten her silk skirt because "I do hate it when my skirt hoops show"!

There was plenty of popcorn on offer and loads of interesting guests. I met some lovely fiction-buyers from Waterstones (what a great job that would be), a BBC radio producer and spied one or two famous faces in the crowd (hello Arthur Smith — he asked me if I'd seen his bag — and Stuart Evers, who seems to pop up at all these book-related events although I'm yet to exchange a word with him).

I even worked up the courage, no doubt inspired by four-glasses of lovely gin-filled punch, to introduce myself to Natalie Haynes, who regularly appears on The Review Show. We had a lovely chat about all kinds of stuff, although I hope she didn't mind me grumbling about Kirsty Wark's inability to chair The Review Show properly — she just lets all the guests talk over the top of one another and it is rather a bugbear of mine!

Finally, after a lovely speech by Harvill Secker editor Rebecca Carter on how she discovered the book and gave her staff half a day to read it in order to do a deal by lunchtime, the author got up and thanked everyone for attending. Erin Morgenstern is a tiny slip of a thing and what's more she'd never left the USA until a couple of weeks ago, when she went to Canada and "apparently that doesn't count". How awesome to launch your book in a venue that actually features in the novel — she chose the hotel on the basis of a Google search, because she needed a Victorian era hotel next to a railway station!

Afterwards, I made a beeline and asked her to sign my copy. I think she was caught a little off guard — "Are we going to be doing any official signings?" she asked her editor — before I mentioned I was a blogger. Her reaction? "I LOVE BLOGGERS!"

Oh dear, I'll have to write a good review now...

'The Forgotten Waltz' by Anne Enright

Fiction - hardcover; Jonathan Cape; 230 pages; 2011. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

In the immediate afterglow of having read Anne Enright's The Forgotten Waltz way back in May, I was positive it would be at least longlisted for this year's Booker prize. After all, she'd won it in 2007 — with her extraordinarily grim and disturbing The Gathering — and this one felt just as accomplished, passionate and lyrical, if not more so. But alas, it didn't make the cut.

I found it to be one of those novels that totally engrossed me from start to finish. It revels in language — the sentences are languid one minute, biting the next and occasionally wry and always eloquent — and the circular plot, which begins where it ends, is completely absorbing.

The story is essentially about adultery, told from the other woman's point of view, but it never strays into sentimentality, nor does it cast judgement. The first person narrator, Gina, is a 30-something IT professional, who lives in Dublin. She's articulate and intelligent.

When the novel opens she is looking back on the affair she conducted with Seán, a married colleague she met years earlier at a barbecue hosted by her sister, during Ireland's financial boom. She dissects events leading up to their secret relationship, and how, knowing it was wrong — she was married and in love with her husband Connor, "who wore too many clothes [...] and farted hugely when he stood in the bathroom to pee" — still went ahead and did it anyway.

Gina is deeply flawed, but the beauty of The Forgotten Waltz is that she knows it — and is not afraid of self-analysis, without pity.

The outfall of their affair is cleverly drawn. Seán's daughter, Evie, plays a key role — she witnesses their first kiss and claps with glee at the sight — because it makes the relationship real, in the sense it is no longer about two people, but three.

The fact that a child was mixed up in it all made us feel that there was no going back; that it mattered. The fact that a child was affected meant we had to face ourselves properly, we had to follow through.

The irony of this is that Gina embarked on the affair to escape the trappings of a normal suburban life in which her and Connor would be expected to buy a house and raise children. They had the house — "The place was going up by seventy-five euro a day" — but Gina found the mortgage terrifying. She doesn't exactly state it, but I rather suspect that she found the prospect of children equally daunting. That she ends up in an adulterous relationship in which she comes second, not to Seán's wife but to Seán's child, seems iniquitous.

The book is set during the big freeze of 2009 — during which Ireland experienced uncharacteristic heavy snowfall and blizzard conditions — and it's hard not to think of this as a metaphor for Gina's life, cast out into the icy wilderness for daring to follow her heart and not her head.

At its most basic level, The Forgotten Waltz is about infidelity, but dig deeper and you'll see it's also about one woman navigating a complicated, messy life full of contradictions, tangled emotions and family loyalties. Above all, it is a very human tale about passion, secrets and lies.

Giller Prize 2011 shortlist is announced — could deWitt or Edugyan win the Giller Prize and Man Booker double?

The Giller Prize shortlist was announced today. Chair of the Shadow Giller jury KevinfromCanada has the lowdown, including links to all the reviews we have managed so far.

For the record, the official list looks like this:

• The Free Word by David Bezmozgis (my review is coming later in the week)
• The Antagonists by Lynn Coady
• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
• Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (I've got this on the Kindle ready to go)
• Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner
• The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

Given the amazing range of books on the longlist, the shortlist is a fairly conventional one. But it does present an interesting possibility — either Patrick deWitt or Esi Edugyan could potentially win the double — the Giller Prize and the Man Booker — in the same year, a feat which has never been acheived before.

A trip to the theatre to see JM Synge's 'The Playboy of the Western World'

I don't normally talk about theatre productions on this blog. And, to be honest, I'm not much of a theatre-goer. But I couldn't resist going to see a production of JM Synge's The Playboy of the Western World currently running at The Old Vic here in London — and Mr Reading Matters kindly treated me to a premium seat for Saturday evening's performance.

Synge, of course, was an Irish playwright —  even if you have never read any of his work, you may be familiar with him via Joseph O'Connor's latest novel Ghost Light in which he has a starring role — who is best known for this particular play. (He also wrote a fascinating book about the Aran Islands, which I've read and reviewed here.)

But first a bit of history: when The Playboy of the Western World was first staged at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907 there were riots in the street. It seems Synge's portrayal of the Irish — the play is set in a public house in County Mayo, on the west coast — wasn't particularly favourable. There's lots of drinking and swearing — and drinking and, well, more drinking, plus a little bit of romance and a violent fight at the end. And the language is full-on Oirish, by which I mean it's a kind of over-the-top interpretation of how the Irish speak.

According to Wikipedia, the Freeman's Journal described it as "an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men, and worse still upon Irish girlhood".

But the play is witty and lively and fun. And it also delivers a moral message — that it doesn't pay to be a liar.

The basic storyline goes something like this: Christy Mahon stumbles into a shebeen one dark night seeking refuge. He claims to have killed his abusive father. Instead of condemning him, the locals are intrigued by his tale and turn him into a hero. The local women find him terribly romantic as they all jostle to win his affection. But it is the landlord's daughter, Pegeen, with whom he falls in love. Of course, things don't go to plan when Christy's father returns from the dead...

I have to say that Saturday's production was stunning. The stage set is wonderful — the centrepiece is a stone shebeen which revolves, allowing the actors to perform inside it or outside it, depending on the scene. The lighting and sound are used to brilliant effect, so that it really does feel like you're out in the wilds of Ireland's remote and rugged west coast.

And the acting is top-class. The lead role is played by Robert Sheehan (that's him pictured above), who apparently is a bit of a film and TV star, although I'd never heard of him before. In the play, he is effectively the Playboy of the Western World, and he throws himself into the role with incredible gusto. By the end of the performance he looked absolutely shattered, as if he'd done ten rounds with Mike Tyson!

Ruth Negga, who plays Pegeen, was similarly energetic and feisty, while Niamh Cusack — she of Heartbeat fame — did a terrific turn as the local widow on the prowl for a new, younger husband.

To be honest, the entire cast was fabulous — I particularly enjoyed Pegeen's rather camp and weak-willed suitor Sean — and the music they performed to open each act was wonderfully Irish and upbeat.

But don't take my word for it: The Telegraph gave it four stars (out of five), as did the London Evening Standard. And my resident Irishman, Mr Reading Matters, who studied the play for his Leaving Cert thought it was brilliant as well!

If you live in London and want to visit the theatre for a night out, I highly recommend this show. It runs until November 26. There's more information about it on The Old Vic website.

'Solitaria' by Genni Gunn

Fiction - Kindle edition; Signature Editions, 256 pages; 2010.

Genni Gunn's Solitaria opens in dramatic style: workers restoring a dilapidated Italian villa discover a body on the site. It turns out to be a male murder victim and his name is Vito Santoro. He has been dead for some 50 years.

But this is not a crime novel — it's a family history. And the decaying villa is a metaphor for the Santoro family:

And family, too, can become the rubble around you, the millstones and boulders, the pebbles and stones – a virtual quarry impeding your every step.

Thanks to the help of the television show Chi l’Ha Visto?, which reports on unsolved crimes, the victim's family — an assorted collection of brothers and sisters who live in Italy, Australia and Canada — is tracked down. Each of them thought Vito, the eldest sibling, had emigrated to Argentina — and Piera, the eldest sister, has correspondence from him to prove it.

But Vito is a dangerous character, the one whom everyone has a tale to tell, and even in death he looms large over the family.

As often happens in families, once a child’s character is set, he is forever viewed through that filter. So Vito became our black sheep, the scapegoat loaded down with our frustrations and our fears. After always hearing himself accused, Vito began to do the things of which he was accused. He was the one who would skip classes, climb into the windows of an abandoned house, who would settle schoolyard arguments with his fists and win, the one who stole almonds and figs and walnuts from the fields and was viciously beaten for it by Papà, even though all us children had eaten the stolen fruits. He became dangerous and we both loved and shunned him.

The story is split into two narratives, which are interleaved. The first is told in the third person and focuses mainly on Vito's nephew, David, a professor and translator, who lives in Canada. David travels to Italy with his mother Clarissa, a world famous soprano, to attend the funeral — but he's been invited along mainly to try and coax Vito's sister Piera — with whom he has a close relationship — out of the room in which she has locked herself away.

The second is told in the first person from Piera's perspective. (The title of the novel actually refers to Piera, who has become reclusive — what the Italians call solitaria.) She is the closest in age to Vito and out of all the siblings she knows him best. But did she know he had been murdered?

She tells her side of the story — what it was like growing up in Fascist Italy, how Vito was always clashing with their father, the ways in which she had to grow up faster than her younger siblings to help her poorly mother raise them — in a series of confidential conversations with David. These were, by far, my favourite aspects of the novel, probably because of their immediacy and Piera's engaging voice.

But, of course, we cannot tell how much of what Piera shares is true or exagerrated. Certainly her experiences and deeply held beliefs — that she sacrificed her own happiness for the security of her siblings, is a case in point — are in stark contrast to the ways in which the rest of the family see her. It's fair to say that her immediate family, but especially her daughter-in-law Teresa (Vito's wife), who lives in the apartment below hers, rather detests her and thinks she is prone to melodrama.

In many ways, that charge could also be laid at the second half of this novel, which strays occasionally into soap opera/kitchen sink drama territory. The too-neat denouement is particularly dramatic — and predictable.

But the strength of the novel lies mainly in its examination of a complicated family history and how it is never quite possible to shake off those ties that forever bind us to our siblings and our parents.

I also quite liked the recurrent theme of what it is to leave your homeland — in this case Italy — for foreign shores even though the old country still beckons. David was raised in Canada by an Italian mother, took Italian lessons as a child and visited Italy often, but he feels Canadian (he occasionally has to correct relations who call him "American"). His mother, by contrast, feels that...

...Italy is home, though she hasn’t touched ground in this place herself for years. In Canada, her version of Italy is one of colours and shapes, one that lacks the stories of human interaction, the past being something she does not discuss.

Compare this to David's outlook. When he stumbles upon some Roman ruins, he cannot believe something so old can be left in its natural habitat.

“It seems so…deserted,” David says, thinking that in Canada, a small piece of a Roman bridge would be preserved in a museum, garner oohs and aaaahs and admission fees for viewing. Here, the past exists with the present. No glass between them.

On the whole, Solitaria is an engaging tale about thwarted desires, of what happens when you live your live according to the way others want you to, rather than following your own path. It has has been longlisted for this year's Giller Prize.

For another take on this novel please see The Mookse and The Gripes review.