Reading Matters

'Voice Over' by Celine Curiol

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 288 pages; 2008. Translated from the French by Sam Richard.

Celine Curiol's debut novel, Voice Over, is one of those books that can best be described as "dense" -- it's closely packed with ideas and is written in a complex style. And despite my initial reservations that the narrative was too slow, too meandering, I grew to very much like this story and the slightly kooky, incredibly naive young woman at the heart of it.

It is set in Paris at an unspecified time, although the lack of mobile telephones suggests it could be any time prior to, say, the late 1990s. The unnamed narrator is the "voice over" woman at Gare du Nord train station, which is sort of ironic given that she is struggling to find a voice of her own.

We don't know how old she is, nor anything of her family or educational background, but we learn that she has a crush on a friend, who is already attached to a woman called Ange. As the story develops the crush turns into an obsession and because we are only ever presented with her side of the story we never truly learn how the chap feels about her: does he consider her a hapless friend or someone he would consider leaving his current lover for?

Similarly, while we learn that her work colleagues don't much like her (she hears them talking about her in the staff toilets), we're never quite sure why she attracts so much unwanted attention from men (except, of course, for the one she really wants): is she strikingly beautiful, or does she simply send out the wrong signals? Much of the book documents her endless string of weird and occasionally disturbing encounters -- with men in nightclubs, bars, cafes and parks. Occasionally she finds herself in dangerous situations -- locked in a drug dealer's flat; mistaken for a prostitute by a high-ranking diplomat; running from strangers who want to mug her.

She seems astonishingly passive, unable to say "no" to anyone. This description of her walking through a busy street market seems to sum up her life:

Buying nothing, present in this atmosphere of harangue and transaction, engulfed, borne along by two opposing currents. She allows herself to be pushed along by the movement of the crowd, the sudden eddies, the halts, the momentary gaps. To be there like everyone else, but without a reason, without resisting.

And she's completely disconnected from the real world in the sense that she works in the travel industry, announcing train arrivals and departures, but has no clue about what lies outside of Paris: she's never travelled and doesn't even know what Big Ben is.

How did she get to be like this? Strangely enough there are clues: she refers to a "rite of passage" which, on candid admission to a friend, results in them falling out. Curiol very cleverly scatters these little hints, like breadcrumbs, at semi-regular intervals throughout the narrative, so that there's a reason to keep turning the pages: what was this incident and when did it occur?

In terms of prose style, Voice Over is complex. As James Urquhart writes in this very perceptive review in The Independent "Curiol deliberately blurs speech and thought in dense slabs of intricate prose to engender the same confusion in the reader as in her cripplingly unconfident protagonist". This makes it a disorienting read, but once you get your head around it (I found it helped to read the book in large chunks) it's actually rather mesmirising and hypnotic.

Voice Over was first published in France in 2005. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Independent Foreign Ficton prize.

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This book was chosen by Armen as part of our London-based face-to-face book group. It was an intriguing choice, which generated some great discussion. Here's some other posts written about the book by fellow members, which I'll update as they are published:

• Simon's review
  

• Claire's review

• Novel Insights' review

• Jackie's review

'The Death of Bunny Munro' by Nick Cave

Fiction - hardcover; Canongate; 304 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

If modern fiction has produced a more deluded, creepy, sex-obsessed "hero" than Bunny Munro I've yet to encounter him. If you'll forgive the crudity, Bunny Munro is a wanker -- a literal wanker. He's obsessed with "beating off", as he puts it, and he doesn't particularly care where he does it or how often.

If that's not enough, he sleeps with prostitutes, waitresses, clients, in fact anyone who succumbs to his lecherous ways and sexual magnetism.

And yet Bunny Munro is a married man, and, by his own account, a very happily married man, who loves his wife deeply but fails to truly understand her "medical condition". The book opens with her suicide, which seems to have very little emotional impact on Bunny -- when he discovers her body he notes that "her tits look good". It gets worse. Midway through her funeral, after eying up all the female guests, he's in the toilets masturbating. Later he has unsatisfying sex with the girlfriend of his best friend. 

But while he seems unable to feel any grief over the loss of his wife, as a reader you can't help but feel some sympathy for him. Perhaps the shock has rendered him emotionally crippled? Has her death not yet hit home?

It's when Bunny takes to the road, his nine-year-old son, Bunny Junior, in tow, that you get the true measure of the man. As he peddles cosmetics door to door, making desperate attempts to jump in the pants of countless depressed housewives up and down England's south-east coast, you begin to understand he's losing his grip. He's been a bad husband, a bad father and a truly awful salesman, but his shocking lack of self-awareness means he never truly realises what a terrible, treacherous human being he really is. It is you, the reader, who comes to realise he's unhinged, that his psychopathic tendencies are becoming more and more pronounced, and yet he's been so sympathetically drawn it's difficult to hate him.

Cave achieves this measure of pity by painting a much worse character in the form of the "Horned Devil", a knife-wielding murderer whose trail of death is being reported on the nightly news, and whom Bunny himself finds scary and unbelievable.

And it also helps that Bunny is a father, a terrible wayward father, but a father nonetheless, and that his son, a smart, academically inclined kid, hero-worships him. Bunny might be a creep who preys on vulnerable women, but he's human and even though you know he's going to meet his end at some point -- hence the book's title -- there's hope of redemption.

While The Death of Bunny Munro treads some dark territory, it's incredibly funny in places, which means you end up laughing at the "hero" rather than wincing at his every ridiculously audacious move. And those who are familiar with Cave's long musical career and Australian background will appreciate his in-house joke (although it does wear thin after several repetitions) in which Bunny Munro has a "thing" for Australian songstress Kylie Minogue. (There's an apology to her at the end of the novel.)

Reading this book is a bit like riding a rollercoaster, full of immense ups and downs, with unexpected twists and turns, and a cracking pace that threatens to derail it all. Whether you want to get on the ride depends on your constitution, because the only fluffy thing about this book is the bunny on the cover. Don't say you haven't been warned.

'Guardian Work' by Ian Carpenter

Humour - paperback; Beautiful Books; 222 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It's always nice to try something a little left-of-field when you're between novels and not sure what to read next, a "palette cleanser" if you will.

Guardian Work by Ian Carpenter popped through the post yesterday courtesy of the publisher and while it's not something I would normally rush out and buy, I was intrigued by the premise -- an Essex-based property manager decides to apply for every job listed in one issue of the Guardian newspaper to see what might arise. Earlier today I thought I'd read a chapter or two before getting on with other bits and pieces, and before I knew it a couple of hours had flown by and I'd finished the entire book! Yes, it's a quick and easy read, but it's also a very funny one.

Apparently Ian's "project"  was recounted via his blog over the six-month period that it took him to apply for all the jobs listed in the September 29, 2007 issue of the Guardian. Along the way he visited a Swiss banker who wanted to employ his parent's cat; got mired in an endless cycle of "telephone tennis" with a firm looking to recruit an operations manager; was invited to take part in a money laundering scheme fronted by a chap supposedly running an art gallery; and had a run in with a firm operating a covert operation which warned him not to pass on any information to anyone outside the enforcement community. (His reply, to the latter, was hilarious: "I withdraw my application for your job. It all sounds a bit cloak and dagger to me.")

He also applied for various high-profile positions that were not advertised in the newspaper, such as the manager of the English football team and head of the Liberal Democrats.

To be perfectly frank, the book doesn't break any new ground, because we've seen this "trick" done before. In fact, I think it's probably Robin Cooper's fault, because it was his The Time Waster Letters, published in 2004, which ushered in a whole new genre of books based on the kooky correspondence between bored men and officialdom.

But Guardian Work is still a rather enjoyable romp that had me tittering in quite a few places, especially as I have been on the receiving end of some questionable job applications in the past. I'm now beginning to wonder if the would-be reporter whose cover letter informed me she had the "ability to wake up beautiful every morning" wasn't winding me up for the purposes of writing a book like this one!

'The Poison That Fascinates' by Jennifer Clement

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 240 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Jennifer Clement is an astonishingly good writer. Her simple melodic prose style marks her out as a poet -- she has several anthologies published and is co-founder and director of the San Miguel Poetry Week -- and this, her second novel, is one of those books that holds you enthralled throughout and then leaves you bereft when you finish it.

Set in Mexico City (where the author, herself, lives), this is a story about loss: the loss of family, the loss of love, the loss of objects, the loss of a past way of life and, finally, the loss of sanity.

The third person narrative focuses on Emily, who lost her mother at a young age and was raised by her father, "a quiet and reserved man", in a big country house built by her great-grandfather "over one-hundred years ago when he came to Mexico from Britain". The family's fortune, now much diminished, was made from silver mining, and some of that money went in to the creation of a Catholic orphanage, where Emily now works part-time. 

Emily's life is relatively simple and ordered, as she divides her time between Rosa of Lima Orphanage -- which is headed by Mother Agata, a gentle woman of whom everyone is very fond, "the kind of woman who sees swans when she looks at geese" -- and the university, where she is studying history and is doing her thesis on the lives of saints. In her spare time she "collects facts like some people collect stamps, coins or stones".

She also likes to read about mysteries, detective stories and assassins, especially female assassins, and has two notebooks filled with facts on women criminals that she keeps in her bookcase in her bedroom. Emily knows that most women who kill are 'black widows' or 'medical murderers'. They kill for money, revenge, or commit 'mercy' or 'hero' killings. They are mostly gentle killers who prefer poison rather than risk physical confrontation.

Interestingly, Emily's "notes" punctuate the end of each chapter, so as you read the book the gentle peacefulness of Emily's life is seen in stark contrast to the murders upon which she is so fascinated.

But later, when Emily begins to discover objects mysteriously rearranged in her room -- drawers pulled open, pillows on the floor, a dress taken out of her closet and put on the bed -- it looks like her tranquil existence may be under threat. When her long-lost cousin Santi appears on the scene, bringing dark family secrets with him, it all comes to a rather shocking and unexpected head...

'The Other Hand' by Chris Cleave

Fiction – paperback; Sceptre; 378 pages; 2009.

Chris Cleave's The Other Hand was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Novel Award. It is one of those books I kept picking up in bookstores and then putting down. I was intrigued but also skeptical. The blurb, surely, was a marketing ploy?

This is what the blurb on my edition says:

"We don't want to tell you what happens in this story. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it so we will just say this: This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice. Two years later, they meet again -- the story starts there... Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds."

And then Valerie, who reads my blog emailed me, to suggest I might like it. "I expected to see it listed as one of the books you have reviewed," she wrote. "And when I didn't, I decided to email you.  It is one of those books you want to tell a friend about..."

I relented and bought myself a copy the next day. I'll admit I still wasn't convinced, and the letter from the editor, on the very first page, only raised my hackles. "Dear Reader," it began. "You don't know me. I'm Chris Cleave's editor, and I'm writing to tell you how extraordinary The Other Hand is. As publishers, naturally we only publish  books that we love, but every now and then something comes along that is so special it gives us goosebumps."

She then compares the novel to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark. By this stage the phrase "she doth protest to much" was running through my head.

Still, I was prepared to banish my preconceptions and give the book a fair go, and I raced through it in a matter of days.

Obviously, I can't tell you much about the plot, but I can tell you what I thought of the story.

Quite frankly, I didn't think it lived up to the hype. It's an interesting story and it moves along at a fair old pace. There are scenes that are truly shocking and others that are good for a giggle. The characterisation is good, although not entirely believable, and there's enough social commentary to give the illusion that you're reading something deep and meaningful.

But on the whole this is a book that feels manipulative. The "reveals" -- almost one per chapter -- are cheap tricks designed to give you a fright or challenge your assumptions. While they might add some excitement to the novel, they end up trivialising quite important subject matter -- illegal immigration, suicide and violence, to name but a few.

Perhaps Cleave didn't want to write a hard-hitting novel and that's fine, but as soon as your editor starts comparing you to Schindler's Ark, one of the most hard-hitting novels of the past 40 years, it creates a pretty monumental and, dare I say it, unrealistic expectation in the average reader's mind.

I suspect The Other Hand, which has been published in the USA and Canada under the title Little Bee, will resonate with readers who like quick, accessible reads about unfamiliar subjects, but for me it was too superficial, too cartoonish and too calculating to deliver on its promises. If you've read it I'd be interested in knowing what you thought. I've got a sneaking suspicion I may well be the only person in the world who didn't love it to bits...

'Diary of a Bad Year' by J.M. Coetzee

 

Fiction – paperback; Vintage; 231 pages; 2008.

The shock of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 had novelists scrabbling for cover. How could they possibly come up with invented characters, invented plots that could match this horrific event? All fiction suddenly seemed pithy and irrelevant by comparison.

But instead of sounding the death knell for literature, 9/11 ushered in a whole host of novels that addressed the event or, at least, used it as backdrop. The subsequent War on Terror has also became a common theme. I've read -- and enjoyed -- a handful of these post-9/11 novels, including Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist, Yasmina Khadra's The Sirens of Baghdad, and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I was therefore intrigued to see how J.M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, would deal with this theme.

Like Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World, which is a strange hybrid between fiction and non-fiction, Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year treads a similar path.

Here we have a main character, an elderly South African writer living in Sydney, called Juan Coetzee (which I understand to be a thinly veiled version of JM Coetzee himself), writing a series of essays pronouncing "what is wrong with today's world". These essays cover all kinds of post-9/11 subjects -- Al Quaida, terrorism, democracy, Tony Blair and political life in Australia -- and are to be part of an anthology called Strong Opinions commissioned by a German publisher. These essays, quite succinct and imminently readable, are published in full in Diary of a Bad Year and form the heart of the novel.

Then we have a second narrative thread in which Juan develops a crush on Anya, a young, attractive Filipino woman, who lives in the penthouse of his apartment block. Sick of "devising felicitous coincidences" to keep bumping into her in the laundry room, where their conversational exchanges are far too brief for his liking, Juan approaches her in a local park with an offer he thinks will be too good to refuse: will she be his personal typist?

The third and final narrative thread is told from Anya's point of view. Acutely aware of her attractiveness, she is at first wary of Juan's motivations, because she's far from an expert typist. But as she works on transcribing "the old man's" manuscript from notes and audio tape, she finds herself becoming increasingly curious of his past. Slowly, she develops a platonic friendship with her boss, but Anya's live-in-boyfriend, the exceedingly dull Alan, an investment consultant, is suspicious and hatches a devious plan...

As far as substance is concerned, this might all sound rather straightforward, but it's not. Coetzee does strange things with structure in this novel, so that all three narratives run parallel to one another. This means each page is divided into three unequal parts, with the essays running along the top, Juan's narrative in the middle, and Anya's at the bottom. This poses a dilemma for the reader: do you follow it page by page, or narrative by narrative? 

I did it page by page, until part way through, I realised I was now reading the narratives out of sequence, because they don't all flow at the same pace. I ended up juggling three different storylines in my head all at once, which made for a challenging read, but one I found particularly stimulating.

I rather suspect that Diary of a Bad Year won't be for everyone, particularly if you like your novels to be structured in a traditional manner. But I very much enjoyed the polemics presented here, even if I didn't much like the character -- too creepy, too much like a dirty old man -- purporting to be telling them.

I also found it fascinating to witness the growth in Anya's character, as she comes to terms with the fact that both the men in her life -- Juan and Alan -- are not the people she thought they were.

This is an interesting book: one that encapsulates the dangerous times in which we live, and experiments with the novel's traditional form. It's intellectual, sexual and playful by turns, a great read if you're looking for something meaty and clever.

'Burial' by Neil Cross

  Fiction - paperback; Simon & Schuster; 304 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

A good, thoroughly believable crime thriller doesn't come much better than this. In Burial Neil Cross has delivered one of those realistically chilling reads that makes your skin break out in goosebumps.

Cross, who has a handful of novels to his name, including the 2004 Booker long-listed Always the Sun, knows how to create a rising sense of fear and paranoia. Not surprising, then, that he's been lead scriptwriter on the BBC spy-drama series Spooks for the past two series.

In this novel -- due for publication in the UK next January and Australia next May -- Cross tells what appears to be a perfectly ordinary story that goes off on a dark and disturbing tangent.

It's about Nathan, a young man, who attends a Christmas party, hosted by his boss, a late-night radio DJ, that turns out to be the worst night of his life. High on cocaine and booze, Nathan and his friend Bob momentarily leave the party with an attractive girl called Elise. In a car parked in the nearby woods they take turns having sex with her. But things go horribly wrong and Elise dies. The pair hatch a plan to bury the body and return to the party as if nothing has happened.

When Elise is reported missing by her family the next day, a police investigation ensues. Suspicion is cast on the DJ but no-one is charged with the crime -- and no body is ever found. Nathan and Bob seem to have got away with it, although their relationship is fractured and they make a deal never to see each other again.

Fast forward 15 years and one night there's a knock on Nathan's door. It's Bob with some bad news: developers are about to dig up the woods where they buried the body in order to build a housing estate. Their carefully constructed lives are about to be torn asunder...

The cover-up of a dastardly crime by two men who should know better might sound like a relatively straight forward plot, but there's a few additional complications which would spoil the story if I were to reveal them here. But what I can say is that the character of Nathan is brilliantly realised. He's a man with a guilty secret plagued by a conscience that won't let up. His remorse is so great that he becomes afraid of the dark and has to cover the bathroom mirror for fear he might catch a glimpse of Elise's ghost staring back at him. You get the very real impression that he's sorry for what he did, but not sorry enough to come clean to the authorities.

My only quibble is that the book does tend to read a little like a screenplay. There's a lot of telling and not much show, but who cares when you get to experience such a beautifully realised story arc? From its slightly slow beginning through to its meaty middle and perfectly satisfactory ending, Burial is a masterpiece of storytelling in the heart-hammering, sweaty palms vein. I very much enjoyed it -- and if it's ever turned into a TV drama I'll be the first to sit down and watch it!  If you're looking for a fast-paced, chilling read then definitely add this one to your list.

'Gents' by Warwick Collins

Fiction - paperback; Friday Fiction; 172 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

A book set in a public lavatory may not sound terribly salubrious; it may, in fact, sound downright sordid. But Gents is far from the grubby little tale I expected it to be, which is somewhat surprising given that it's a tale about three West Indian janitors working in a central London toilet that is frequented by cottagers.

The story begins with Ezekiel Murphy taking a new job at a subterranean lavatory where the punters must pay to use the facilities. By lunchtime he already realises that some of the customers are using the cubicles for casual sex, a concept which he cannot comprehend. "Why they do it here? Why not somewhere else?" he asks.

His boss, Reynolds, takes a practical view of the situation. "We don't ask why, man. We don't keep their conscience, we only keeping order."

Meanwhile Jason keeps order by putting a big stick under the cubicle door and rattling it about to encourage any "reptiles" to leave.

But while the "reptiles" are harmless in themselves, the attention they attract is not, and before long Reynolds is being ordered by the local council to improve the lavatory's reputation.  However, "cleaning out the swamp", isn't as straightforward as one might think...

Gents is a simple story well told. It works on two levels. There's a basic narrative that is entertaining in itself. But the real reason this slim volume -- easily read in one sitting -- hits the spot is its deeper psychological insights into the human character and how our attitudes are shaped by our cultural backgrounds, our experiences and our personality.

Through the relationship between the three protagonists Collins also shows how their response to the problem at hand is coloured by different views and outlooks on life. Even the ways in which Ez, Reynolds and Jason relates to their womenfolk at home reveals much about their individual personalities.

In many ways Gents is a parable about not casting judgement on others, about letting things lie and being careful about what you wish for. It explores many big themes, including homophobia, racism and religion, in such a gentle and subtle prose style that these issues might actually be lost on some readers. But it is the simplicity of the narrative and the things that are left unsaid that make it such an intelligent and humane read. Who would have thought that a tale set in a gents toilet could provide such food for thought! Salubrious indeed.

'The Well-Tempered Clavier' by William Coles

Fiction - paperback; Legend Press; 224 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of publisher.

This soon-to-be-released novel from independent book publisher Legend Press is set in Eton College, the world's most famous public school, during the height of the Falklands War.

It's 1982 and Kim, a 17-year-old boarder, dreams of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a soldier when he leaves school. But when he meets his new piano teacher, the beautiful India five years his senior, he falls instantly in love.

For the next few months the besotted school boy practises Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier -- India's favourite piece of music -- as if his life depends on it. His efforts pay off and the two embark on an illicit but passionate love affair. But Kim, who describes himself as an "emotional iceberg", becomes riddled with jealousy to the point that the relationship can no longer survive...

Written from Kim's perspective 25 years after the affair ended, The Well-Tempered Clavier is a nostalgic look back at a life-changing love.

Under normal circumstances this relatively straightforward story might be slightly dull, but Coles makes it feel fresh and interesting by setting it in Eton. His descriptions of the school and its old-fashioned ways brings an additional element that adds interest.

There are more than 100 boys, nattering and chattering, a black wave of twitching adolescence. It's Chambers, the only time in the day when you can be guaranteed to find a master -- useful for chits that need signing and work that needs handing in. Inside the School Hall, the scores of gowned Masters -- or beaks -- are small-talking and sipping tea. When they are done, they exit the hall to face the black-and-white sea of schoolboys. The tourists, who roll past in their air-conditioned coaches, watch in amazement.

Given this is a tale about a teenage student being seduced by his teacher, it's a little risque in places. But you have to wade through more than half the book before their relationship is consummated and even then it's written relatively tamely with little resort to crudity.

We were a writhing mass of wet boots, steaming jumpers and slippery coats, her hands all over my back, my chest, curling up round my neck, and, from nowhere, I don't know how, her bra is unclipped and her shirt is open over her taut stomach. I stop kissing her and lift my head back to gaze at the wonder that lies beneath me.

But there is a lot of repetition (how many times does a reader need to be told it is 1982, or that boys at Eton are starved of female attention?) that I found annoying but which could be easily sorted out with a little judicious editing. And as much as I enjoyed this book, racing through it in a matter of days, I found Coles' narrative style slightly grating, as if he was trying too hard to draw out a storyline that didn't warrant it (boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy ruins it).

Despite its lack of emotional depth, The Well-Tempered Clavier is an entertaining read. The ending packs a good punch but the story as a whole won't shatter your world although it will brighten up a rainy day or, as in my case, a long-haul flight.

'Theft: A Love Story' by Peter Carey

Fiction - hardcover; Faber and Faber; 274 pages; 2006.

The wonderful and intriguing world of art forgery is explored in Theft: A Love Story, the Booker shortlisted novel by Australian author Peter Carey.

In my experience, reading anything by Peter Carey can be a bit of a hit or miss affair. There are certain books by him that I love (Jack Maggs, Oscar and Lucinda) and certain books I've struggled with and eventually abandoned (The Illywhacker, The True Story of the Kelly Gang). Fortunately, I found Theft: A Love Story to be immediately accessible and highly entertaining. I loved it's balance of humour and melancholy, and the twist at the end was a joy.

The story follows the lives of two very different Australian brothers -- Michael "Butcher" Bones, a wayward artist, and his "damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound" brother, Hugh -- who take turns to narrate their escapades chapter by chapter.

Their various run-ins with art dealers, collectors, critics and curators covers rural Australia, Sydney, Tokyo and New York. Accompanied by the mysterious Marlene, a woman with an eye for a genuine work of art, the brothers get themselves into all kinds of "situations".

It is, at times, laugh out loud funny and at others slightly distressing. But above all it's a fun read about a world characterised by deception and dishonesty, where no-one can tell the difference between the real thing and a fake, and where the road to artistic fame and glory is paved with criminal intent.

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This book was chosen for discussion in Reading Matters Online Book Group (Session 11) in June 2007.

Click here for reading group questions and discussion.

'Lost Souls' by Michael Collins

Fiction - paperback; Phoenix; 292 pages; 2003.

Dark, depressing and claustrophobic. These are the words that best describe this unconventional crime novel set in the heartland of industrial America, where "the smell of sulphur made the air taste bitter, a haze of pollution hanging in the wintry light, the chimneystacks breathing fire".

Into this "crouched, grand, sad and burned out landscape" dotted with factories, shopping malls, dilapidated motels and highways, Lawrence, a divorced policeman, discovers the body of a three-year-old girl lying face down in a pile of autumn leaves by the side of a road. It appears as if the toddler, who is dressed as an angel, has been the victim of a hit-and-run accident during the town's busy Halloween night festivities.

But why was she by herself? And why did the driver fail to stop and give assistance?

During the ensuing investigation, the town's star quarterback, a 17-year-old schoolboy called Kyle, emerges as the chief suspect.  But in a soulless town desperate for heroes a cover-up takes place to ensure the teenager's promising football career remains untarnished.

Lawrence, his sense of right and wrong dulled by his own personal and financial problems, becomes an unwitting pawn in the mayor's plan to "fudge" the investigation. When he later finds his own life threatened by an unknown assailant, Lawrence begins to question his role in the power games being played out by those around him. His actions, fuelled by fear, loneliness and paranoia, only serve to turn him into a suspect in the very case he is supposed to be investigating...

Lost Souls is a sombre, moody novel that explores some very dark places in the human psyche. The main character, Lawrence, is a sympathetic one, even if the reader may question his morality and, indeed, his sanity. But his malcontent voice, depressed, pained and vitriolic, is so claustrophobic you wish it could be broken by some light relief -- perhaps a dash of humour every now and then -- but sadly there is nothing to ease the burden on the reader.

But that's not to say that this book, the fifth by Irish author Michael Collins, is not worth the effort. Despite the bleak prose and subject matter, Collins has an uncanny ability to dissect America into its many dysfunctional components to convey a country on the brink of social breakdown. He also has a keen visual eye, and describes many scenes befitting of a high-octane screenplay.

However, it is the slow burning plot that makes Lost Souls such a satisfying read. So much happens in this book beyond the initial crime that the riddle of the toddler's death seems unlikely to be resolved. But then in the best time-honoured tradition of hitting the reader over the head with an unexpected climax, Collins delivers a wonderful ending that reveals who did it -- and why.

I can't say I enjoyed this book. I found its eerie atmosphere too heavy for that. But the narrative was intelligent, insightful and well written and for those reasons Lost Souls is a worthwhile and satisfying read.

'Soldiers of Salamis' by Javier Cercas

Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury Publishing; 224 pages; 2004. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean.

Soldiers of Salamis is one of those strange novels which blurs fact and fiction, so that the reader is never quite sure what is true and what is not. Such confusion is compounded by the author placing himself in the story as one of the major characters.

The book revolves around an incident that occurred in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War in which a prominent writer and fascist, Rafael Sanchez Mazas, escaped execution by firing squad. While on the run in the forest, Sanchez Mazas stumbles upon a soldier, who should have killed him but decides to turn and walk away instead. Who was this soldier and why did he make this decision?

Some 60 years later, these questions -- and the botched execution -- haunt a Spanish journalist, Javier Cercas, who decides to find out what really happened.

The first part of Soldiers of Salamis tells of Cercas's investigation of the event; the second is the resultant biography of Rafael Sanchez Mazas based on the anecdotal evidence he has acquired; and the third is the journalist's quest to track down the soldier, so that he can ask him why he chose to spare Sanchez Mazas' life that fateful day.

I have to be honest and say that I struggled to really get to grips with this book. I had tried to read it three times previously and, on each occasion, I had not got past the first 30 pages. But I made a special effort this time around, if only because I was determined it would not get the better of me.

There's no doubt that Soldiers of Salamis is an important and original detective novel. It's an interesting, if weighty, read. It's quite droll in places but punctuated by unexpected humour that lightens some of the darker moments.

But as much as I enjoyed the book's themes -- myth, memory, compassion, integrity and what makes a war hero -- I found it too bogged down in detail (it is filled to the brim with historical references), not helped by my scant knowledge of the Spanish Civil War and its major players. The translator's afterword, which illuminates much of the events of that time, is, unfortunately, at the back of the book. (As strange as this might sound, if you chose to read Soldiers of Salamis I would recommend reading the afterword first, particularly if you're not a Spanish Civil War buff.) Similarly, a series of explanatory notes at the back of the book would have been better placed as footnotes dotted throughout the text to aid reader comprehension.

Still, the Soldiers of Salamis, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004, is not so difficult that you cannot gain some enjoyment from it. I found part three particularly exciting and raced through it at speed. It's just a pity that the rest of the book was not as well paced or as entertaining.

'The Saffron Kitchen' by Yasmin Crowther

Fiction - paperback; Abacus; 270 pages; 2007.

Set in London and rural Iran The Saffron Kitchen examines how the country of our birth and the culture in which we are born can have long-lasting effects on our values and sense of self. It also looks at how our relationships -- with family, friends and lovers -- can shape our past, present and future lives.

Told from the view point of an Iranian-born mother and her London-born daughter, the novel also reveals how difficult it can be to start a new life in a foreign land when you do not know the language and have no support network to guide you. How does one fit in? And what do you do if you feel you don't truly belong?

These questions haunt the main character of this intriguing novel. Maryam Mazar is an Iranian-born woman who fled to England when her father, a strong military man, disowned her. Here she met Edward, an Englishman, married him, had his child and settled in the leafy, affluent London suburb of Richmond. But over the course of their long married life Maryam was haunted by her past, particularly her father's brutality. Although she kept these concerns to herself, Edward was always suspicious that it was not just the pull of the snow-capped mountains and windswept plains of her homeland that were causing her restlessness and dramatic mood swings.

It is only when Maryam's daughter, Sara, suffers a miscarriage that Maryam must truly face the demons of her past. Desperate to find solace among her own people she flees to the remote Iranian village of her childhood where she must face another dilemma: should she return to her husband in London or live out the rest of her days in her homeland?

There's no doubt that The Saffron Kitchen is an enjoyable, entertaining read and that Crowther is an accomplished writer. But I had some problems with it.

First, the book's structure seemed a little odd. Parts of the storyline are told through Maryam's eyes (in the third person), others through Sara's (in the first person) and the switches between the two narratives often felt clunky.

Second, there was a slight tendency towards melodrama, with some of the scenes -- and much of the dialogue -- feeling forced and unnatural. A bit more polish and perhaps another draft might have ironed this out.

Finally, I'm not sure that Maryam would really have made the decision she made at the end. Of course, I can't really say more than that without revealing a major plot spoiler, so you'll have to trust me on this!

But on the whole The Saffron Kitchen brings to life the stark differences between staid, safe England and the confusion and turbulence of Iran's political past, and for that reason alone it is worth a read.

'The Colombian Mule' by Massimo Carlotto

 

Fiction - paperback; Orion, New Ed edition; 184 pages; 2004. Translated from the Italian by Christopher Woodall.

"Somehow the Colombian knew he was fucked the moment he met the cop's gaze."

So begins Massimo Carlotto's hardboiled Italian noir novel The Colombian Mule, which opens with Arias Cuevas being detained at Venice airport with a belly full of cocaine. When Cuevas describes his drug-smuggling contact -- "about fifty, medium-height, a bit fat, with light brown hair" -- the Italian police arrest the wrong man. Is it a case of mistaken identity, or are the police bending the law for their own means?

Enter Alligator, an unlicensed private investigator, and his band of borderline-corrupt cohorts, who wants to discover the truth behind the arrest and bust the drug smuggling ring in the process. But in this seedy underworld peppered with shady characters -- greedy, violent and immoral -- the normal rules of engagement do not apply.

Set in Venice and the grimy industrial surrounds of Mestre, this short but action-packed novel delivers a deftly woven storyline that blurs the line between those who break the law and those who enforce it. It is a dark, violent but ultimately compelling novel  told in a clear, succinct style that grips from the first carefully measured word.

Think The Sopranos meets Goodfellas -- without the Americanised gloss -- and you might get some idea of the beauty and brutality contained within the pages of this not-for-the-faint-hearted novel by an Italian master. Just don't expect to view (romantic) Venice in the same way again...

'Death's Dark Abyss' by Massimo Carlotto

 

Fiction - paperback; Europa Editions; 152 pages; 2007. Translated from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

If you were the victim of a horrendous crime in which your spouse and child were murdered and you were later given the opportunity to dole out your own form of justice, would you do it?

This is the premise behind Massimo Carlotto's dark and disturbing Death's Dark Abyss, which is released in the UK by Europa Editions, an Italian independent publisher, later this week (February 8).

In this short but captivating novel, we meet two men -- Raffaello Breggiato and Silvano Contin -- bound together by a savage crime that took place 15 years earlier in which Breggiato murders Contin's wife and child as part of a bungled jewellery robbery.

A decade-and-a-half into his life sentence, Breggiato is diagnosed with cancer. He writes to Contin from his prison cell, seeking a pardon so that he can live his last days as a free man.

But what ensues is a tale of twisted morality in which the victim, sick of turning the other cheek, seeks his own form of justice and retribution -- with unexpected results.

Carlotto, who is billed as a "major exponent of the Mediterranean Noir novel", is himself a former convict, having spent eight years in prison for a crime he did not commit. No wonder then that this book, his ninth, holds no punches when it comes to indicting a legal system in which victims are betrayed and criminals left to flounder without hope of rehabilitation.

I found Death's Dark Abyss to be deeply disturbing if only because it portray a brutal, violent world in which it's difficult to determine the difference between the good guys and the bad. But the prose -- short, sharp, swift and stylish -- and the plot -- full of twists and turns -- is so gripping I churned through the pages at such a furious pace it's a wonder they did not burst into flames from the friction.

Crime afficiondos, especially fans of American hardboiled noir, will find much to admire in this ruthless novel. But others who like their literature to be thought-provoking will find Death's Dark Abyss, which raises more questions than answers about why ordinary people do extraordinary things, hard to resist.

'Grey Souls' by Philippe Claudel

Fiction - paperback; Phoenix; 184 pages; 2006. Translated from the French  by Adriana Hunter.

This is a deeply mysterious, brooding novel set in a small French village during the First World War.

The unnamed narrator, a melancholy soul with secrets of his own to keep, reflects on the investigation of a young girl's murder in 1917.

Swinging backwards and forwards in time, the narrator explores the town's leading figures -- the judge, the public prosecutor, the school teacher et al --  and shows how the murder affected them, socially, professionally and emotionally.

At the same time, he examines his own life -- the ups and downs and great pains he has borne -- in order to get at the real truth: was justice delivered when a soldier confessed to the crime?

I read this book holed up in bed with the worst chest infection known to man and I can't say that this book lightened my mood any. It is very well written, if somewhat meandering to begin with, but the subject matter is quite heavy and depressing and the narrator's voice bordering on suicidal.

At times I found it difficult to work out in which direction the story was going, but the prose is so free of abstractions and beautifully restrained that I didn't mind too much: I just enjoyed the writing.

Grey Souls is definitely not a light read, but certainly a thought-provoking one. And the ending is positively astonishing, if somewhat appalling.

'Play Little Victims' by Kenneth Cook

Fiction - paperback; Futura; 87 pages; 1978.

I first read Play Little Victims as part of my Year 9 English class at school -- way back in the 1980s. It was one of those quirky little books that I much enjoyed at the time and has stayed with me ever since.

Long out of print, I have searched high and low for this book over the years. Recently I found it on Amazon Marketplace for 20 pence (!!) and ordered it straight away.

Re-reading it as an adult, the brilliance of this story has not diminished in any way. If anything, it resonates much stronger now that I am more aware of my own mortality and of mankind's road to self-destruction.

It's basically a macabre satire about two mice that survive the end of the world. Adamus and Evemus (geddit?) start being fruitful and multiply -- and multiply and multiply -- until it's quite apparent there's an over-population problem.

An official governing body is set up, which then spends the rest of the book trying to work out ways of solving this problem. With the Word of Man to guide them -- a bible and 4,268 editions of the New York Times -- they systematically introduce wars, pollution, abortion, road-death, alcohol and cigarettes to stem the ever-increasing numbers of mice living in Earth's one remaining habitable valley.

When they stumble upon the final solution -- revealed on the very last page of this novella -- it is more horrifying than one could possibly imagine. It makes your skin crawl and your spine shudder.

The beauty of this charming and intelligent fable is its polished brevity. It's also laugh-out-loud funny in places, startling and morbidly dark in others. It says so much about the state of the world right now I find it amazing that Play Little Victims has never been reprinted: it would garner such an audience today. Perhaps because it is by an Australian, little known outside of his homeland, it just never gained the international attention it deserved. I'm sure that would not have been the case had he been a Brit or an American...

'Jessica' by Bryce Courtenay

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 676 pages; 2000.

This best-selling novel is set in outback Australia during the early 20th Century. Jessica Bergman, the heroine of the book, is a tomboy who helps her father, a Danish immigrant, run the family farm. Meanwhile her elder sister, the beautiful but stuck-up Meg, dreams up plans, with the help of her mother, to wed the local rich boy.

When a brutal murder is carried out at a neighbouring farm, Jessica helps the killer survive a lynch mob hell bent on delivering their own form of justice. This one act of compassion has long-term implications for the rest of Jessica's life - and she is banished from her family, from society and, later, from her child, who is born out of wedlock.

Ultimately this is a relatively sappy and sentimental tale, albeit it an easy to read one. (I was trapped on a long-haul flight with it, and read pretty much the entire 676 pages on the plane.)

While it's supposedly based on a true story, Courtenay offers no explanations, no historical footnotes or afterword to back this up. I'm inclined to think that the murder and Jessica's role in its aftermath may, in fact, be the only true elements and Courtenay has fabricated the rest, which is fine, because it's fiction after all, but as a reader I would have liked to have known what was true and what was not.

That's not my only problem with Jessica. I found much of it sloppily written and in need of some strong editing. It's at least 300 pages too long.

The story meanders all over the place and goes off in unexpected tangents. I would not mind this if those tangents were neatly drawn together at the end, but they are not. Instead, it's like the author made things up as he went along - and no one, not even the editor he so generously thanks in his acknowledgements, bothers to pull him up on this.

The author also has a tendency to hector his readers with his own views (on the treatment of women, on the treatment of aboriginals) instead of letting the reader make up their own mind. I found this patronising and it irritated the hell out of me.

Some of the scenes are overworked and repetitive, much of the dialogue is false (including the colloquialisms, which grated) and the characterisation poor and based on stereotypes (the mother, for instance, is like the Wicked Witch of the West and Jessica may as well have been Cindarella).

All of this is a shame, because there's a brilliant novel in here just dying to get out. A second, possibly third, draft might have ironed out some of these problems.

All in all, Jessica has confirmed what I have thought all along: that this best-selling author is really not for me. Although, judging by his sales figures, I'm probably quite alone in this view. And if you look at the favourable reviews on Amazon.co.uk I suspect I'll be lynched for giving this book just two stars. Oh well.

'The Final Solution' by Michael Chabon

Fiction - paperback; Harper Perennial; 127 pages; 2005.

The disappearance of a young boy's African grey parrot forms the centrepiece of this intriguingly old-fashioned detective novel by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon.

Set in 1944 war-time England, the bird, Bruno, speaks German, spouting numbers one to nine in no particular order for hours at a time. Could he be revealing a classified enemy code or the number of a secret Swiss bank account?

When someone is killed and the parrot is nowhere to be found, a once famous but now elderly police detective comes out of retirement to help track him down.

Has the bird been stolen by a money-hungry bird trader? Or an analyst seeking to decipher the numbers spoken "in a soft, oddly breathy voice, with the slightest hint of a lisp".

The old man's investigation - which is inspired by his affection for the young boy, a mute escapee from Nazi Germany left bereft without his feathered friend - covers the Chalk Downs of rural Sussex to the bombed out city streets of war torn London. Along the way various clues - and dead ends - are explored until a satisfactory and delightfully elegant solution to the case is finally discovered.

This thoroughly English detective story owes much to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It is clever, witty and touching. Each sentence is beautifully crafted so that not one word is wasted or out of place. A quick, entertaining read, it will have you turning to the start again to see whether you can spot all the various clues that you might have missed. I loved it.

'Breakfast At Tiffany's' by Truman Capote

 

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Books; 160 pages; 1998.

Despite being a long time Truman Capote fan, Breakfast at Tiffany's was one of those books that I just never got around to reading. I've never seen the film either, although I cannot think of Audrey Hepburn without seeing her in my mind's eye as the fabulously glamorous Holly Golightly. When a character from a book becomes 'known' to you in this way, I think it's fair to describe that character - and indeed the book - as iconic.

Perhaps, in some small way, I did not want to read the book for fear of spoiling the illusion. I needn't have worried. Breakfast at Tiffany's is a gorgeous light read (I was going to say frivolous, but I don't think there is really anything frivolous about this book).

Holly Golightly, a young woman drifting through life as if it was one long holiday, is feisty and determined, if a little naive. Alone in New York City she blazes her way through the social scene, living it up in bars and holding parties in her east side apartment. But she unwittingly gets caught up in a Mafia plot and before you can say 'boo' she's in trouble with the law.

On the face of it, Breakfast at Tiffany's could be described as a fairly straightforward story about one girl's adventure in the big city. But I think that's too simplistic.

Written in 1958, it portrays a world in which women were invariably best seen and not heard, and totally reliant on men for money and worldly comforts. And yet Capote has created a female character that is largely independent and emotionally strong, although she's vulnerable too (loneliness, depression and desperation are hinted at). While she might be having a lot of fun, she's also on the run from a past that is forever trying to catch up with her as she tries to find a place that makes her feel as happy as Tiffany's does.

All in all, this short novella is a joy to read. Capote's writing is typically rich and lyrical. He describes this woman in such a way that you get the sense he has moulded her on someone that intrigued him, that held some allure or had an aura of mysticism that left a deep impression.

My edition also contained three equally crafted, highly entertaining and unforgettable short stories - House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar and the supremely moving and heart-felt A Christmas Memory - which demonstrate that Capote is not just a master of the novel.