Reading Matters

'The Space Between Us' by John MacKenna

Fiction - paperback; New Island Books; 282 pages; 2009.

At what point do you decide to abandon a book? I ask, because I came very close to abandoning this one. I struggled with the first 54 pages, not quite believing the dialogue (too verbose, too artificial) nor the characters (too one-dimensional, too false). But something convinced me to keep reading on, because who knows, maybe it would get better. And, thankfully, it did.

Reviewing this book proves somewhat problematic, however, because the plot has several key revelations which are best discovered by simply reading the book rather than reading this review. (And, whatever you do, don't read the review or "product description" on Amazon, because they're riddled with spoilers. I found this out the hard way, but even though I discovered what was going to happen, The Space Between Us still left me reeling at the end, part in shock, part in awe.)

The basic premise of the novel goes something like this.

A young architect opens the door to two police officers (or guards, as they are known in Ireland) who inform him that his wife, a solicitor, has been killed in a car crash. His reaction is not what one would expect. Instead of being overwhelmed with grief he's overwhelmed by relief -- their marriage had been floundering for a long time but neither party had had the courage to end it. Now, left alone to raise his two-year-old daughter, our unnamed narrator has been given a second chance to start afresh. When a married friend, Kate, confesses she's in love with him, there seems only one road to take...

The book then jumps ahead 17 years and we discover the narrator living in the same house, but alone. His daughter, Jane, is studying classical music at university, but comes home to spend her weekends with him and their dog, the impossibly named Rostropovich. The story then follows our narrator for a year, and in that year, we find him being tested on very many levels.

"You need to stop letting things happen to you and make them happen for you," his neighbour berates him one day.

"You need to be more passionate about life. And I'm not talking about shagging me. I'm talking about you and this way you have of sitting back and letting life wash over you. I've known you for twenty years and you've allowed yourself to just exist, you've lived without passion."

This seems to mirror something Beth, his late wife, once told him when they were on holiday in Amsterdam almost 20 years earlier. She thought a permanent move to the Netherlands would be the impetus needed to kick-start his career to the next level, "the move that gives you the grand design". But he's content designing houses in small-town Ireland and the idea doesn't interest him.

"I think you're afraid of the world," Beth said. I knew by her eyes she was serious. "I think you feel safe being the medium-sized fish in a tiny pond. But what happens if another fish appears in that pond?"

In essence this is a novel about the choices we make in life and the consequences of those choices. It's also very much about unrequited love, death, grief and the relationships between fathers and daughters. And I defy anyone not to read this and be incredibly moved by the gentle prose and the emotional story that unfolds but most of all by the powerhouse ending that turns everything else on its head. This book isn't what I expected, it's far more shocking and disturbing than I could have possibly envisaged, and I rather suspect anyone who decides to give it a try will concur.

Oh, and if anyone does read this book, please come back and let me know: I'm dying to have a proper discussion about it, as it throws up so many interesting topics and issues.

'Let The Great World Spin' by Colum McCann

Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury; 349 pages; 2009.

Anyone who has seen the Oscar-winning documentary Man on a Wire or read Philippe Petit's To Reach The Clouds will know of Petit's daring high-wire act between between the Twin Towers in New York City on August 7, 1974. It was an act that stunned the world but has taken on extra significance now that the Twin Towers are no longer standing.

Adding to the mythology of Petit's incredibly daring stunt (he walked the wire for 45 minutes, making eight crossings between the towers, and was arrested shortly after) is Colum McCann's equally ambitious novel. I say ambitious because it's fairly staggering in its scope, telling as it does the individual stories of a diverse group of characters living in New York, using Petit's walk as a kind of bridging link between them all. Does he pull it off? In my opinion, not quite.

Long-time readers of this blog will know I have a penchant for Irish writers and stories set in New York, so I rather suspected that Let The Great World Spin would be right up my street, seeing as it ticked both boxes. But there was something about this book that didn't gel with me and I've spent the best part of a week trying to figure it out.

I think the problem is not so much the scope and the huge canvas that McCann uses, nor the diversity of his characters -- an Irish monk, a prostitute and an Upper Eastside housewife among them, all expertly drawn -- but that the book reads very much like a collection of short stories strung together (pun not intended) by Petit's high-wire act. Some of these stories interconnect, others, such as the very brief chapter about Fernando, a 13-year-old subway graffiti artist, do not. And, as ever with books of this type, there is a danger that the reader will like some characters better than others, so that certain chapters become more exciting, or more dull, than others, leading to an inconsistent read.

But I don't want to sound too harsh, because there's no doubt that McCann knows how to write beautifully, painting pictures in just a handful of words, as this example shows:

I watched a long pink boa scarf get caught up in the wheels of a patrol car. It wrapped the wheelbase as if in affection, and bits of tufted pink spun in the air.

Similarly, his ability to get into the skin of so many different characters -- a rich house wife who's grieving over her son killed in Vietnam, a Jewish judge called to deal with Petit's legal case, a black hooker fighting to see her two grandchildren, a reformed drug user guilty of a hit-and-run fatality -- without chiming a wrong note is impressive. And his "bridging" segments about Petit are also a delight to read, particularly the section describing the high-wire itself:

The shouting, the sirens, the dull sounds of the city. He let them become a white hum. He went for his last silence and he found it just stood there, in the precise middle of the wire, one hundred feet from each tower, eyes closed, body still, wire gone. He took the air of the city into his lungs.

Interestingly, when I saw McCann at the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week, he confessed that he wanted the book to contain two very strong fictional characters, mirroring the Twin Towers, but that he accidentally killed one off before he really got started -- and he just couldn't bring him back. Whoops, I hope that wasn't a plot spoiler.

'Trauma' by Patrick McGrath

Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury; 224 pages; 2009.

I read Patrick McGrath's Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now last year and enjoyed it so much I made a note to read more of his work. Trauma, his most recent novel, was the ideal follow-up, mainly because it felt remarkably familiar to the final story, Ground Zero, in the previous collection.

Trauma is about a Manhattan-based psychiatrist, Charlie Weir, who is still coming to terms with the break-up of his marriage seven years earlier. Even though he treats patients who have gone through traumatic events, he seems largely unable to confront his own demons.

The opening line makes it clear that Charlie has a guilt complex about his mother:

My mother's first depressive illness occurred when I was seven years old, and I felt it was my fault. I felt I should have prevented it.

Having spent most of his childhood worried about her constant rages, depression and alcoholism, and forever trying to protect her from her suffering, he's self-aware enough to realise that he chose his profession because of his mother.

It is the mothers who propel most of us into psychiatry, usually because we have failed them.

But the psychological effect of his love for her, and her indifference to him, has been further complicated, or worsened, by the absence of his father, Fred Weir, who deserted the family when Charlie was eight years old. A tense, resentful and problematic relationship with an older brother -- Walt, a successful artist -- who never cared much for his mother but was clearly her favourite child, means Charlie's got a few family hang-ups.

All this, by the way, is merely a backdrop to Charlie's real story, which begins with a tentative reunion with his ex-wife, Agnes, and their young daughter, after a seven-year silence. (The reason for their marriage breaking down and Charlie's subsequent solitude is a plot spoiler, so I won't elaborate further.) As the pair begin the long, drawn-out process of mending their relationship, Charlie acquires a new lover, Nora Chiara, and his life, finally, seems to be falling into place.

But, there are complications. He begins sleeping with his ex-wife, who is now married to another man, and then Nora begins freaking him out by behaving in irrational and unexpected ways.

As the tale unfolds it doesn't take long to see that the psychiatrist is becoming just as unstable as his patients.

What I liked most about this book was the fast and furious pace of the story-telling. Even though the narrative jumps all over the place, from past to present and back again, often within a matter of pages, it's easy to follow, and allows the reader to build up a picture of a man quite clearly troubled by past experiences and unable to deal with the consequences of his actions. He's morally dubious throughout, but at what point does the reader even trust his version of events? And who's to say Agnes, Walter or any of his family members are any better?

There's something dark and disturbing about the subject matter, but McGrath has an uncanny ability to really get to the heart of what makes people behave in the often strange and absurd ways that they do. This is the type of novel you race through then wish you'd lingered over the deliciously simple prose that little bit longer. I felt bereft when I came to the end of this book -- read in one sitting, I might add -- and I rather suspect it would make a great choice for a book group, as there's clearly so much to discuss, including psychiatry, family relationships, marriage, sex and jealousy.

'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' by Hilary Mantel

Fiction - paperback; Harper Perennial; 298 pages; 2004.

Take a look at Hilary Mantel's back catalogue and I defy you to name another living British author with such a diverse range of subjects and genres under his or her belt. I've only read two of Mantel's books -- the delicious black comedy Beyond Black and her critically acclaimed memoir Giving up the Ghost -- but have been keen to explore more of her work.

Eight Months in Ghazzah Street, originally published in 1988, came much recommended by visitors to this blog. It turned out to be a superb, insidiously creepy read, the kind of story that gets under the skin and has you throwing glances over your shoulder to make sure no one's watching you.

It's set in Saudi Arabia, a highly secretive and repressive society, where the religious police keep a close watch on everything, there are strict laws about what you can wear in public and women are not allowed to drive. Into this restrictive and claustrophobic world come British expats Frances and Andrew Shore. Andrew, an engineer, has a job working for a private construction company in Jeddah. Frances, a cartographer, is forbidden from working, because of her gender, so she must spend her days "keeping house".

Despite the fact that both are used to strange cultures -- they lived in Zambia, where poverty, violence and corruption went hand in hand, for many years -- Frances is immediately uncomfortable in her new surroundings. Instead of living in an expat compound, they've chosen to live among the natives, in an apartment block in a quiet neighbourhood. But everything is walled in and even one of the doorways has been bricked up, creating a cavern-like abode rarely penetrated by daylight.

Not long into their stay Andrew tells her about a psychiatrist's study into the stress on immigrant workers, and you know his words are going to be prophetic:

'When you get here and everything's so strange, you feel isolated and got at - that's Phase One. But then you learn how to manage daily life, and for a while the place begins to seem normal, and you'll even defend the way things are done here, you'll start explaining to newcomers that it's all right really - that's Phase Two. You coast along, and then comes Phase Three, the second wave of paranoia. And this time around it never goes.'

Leaving the house becomes almost impossible. Even a stroll down the street, wearing her "baggiest smock and sandals', is beset with unwanted attention from leering men:

A man in a Mercedes truck slowed to a crawl beside her. 'I give you a lift, madam?' She ignored him. Quickened her step. 'Tell me where you want to go, madam. Just jump right in.' He leaned across, as if to open the near door. Frances turned and stared into his face; her own face bony, white, suffused with a narrow European rage. The man laughed. He waved a hand, dismissively, as if he were knocking off a fly, and drove away.

With not much else to do, Frances befriends the Muslim women living in the building and finds herself unable to come to terms with the religious and cultural differences between them. She finds a similar discord with the expatriate community in which she is expected to socialise.

Before long paranoia takes ahold. Knowing that the apartment above her is empty, Frances begins to hear unexplained noises -- a woman sobbing, footsteps and furniture moving around. When she sees a strange presence in the apartment block's stairwell, she's convinced that something illegal is going on, but no one, including her husband, believes her when she voices her concerns. Perhaps she's going stir crazy after all?

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is a psychological thriller of the finest order. It reads like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but because Frances is an intelligent worldy-wise woman, you know that her fears aren't fickle. Mantel builds up the tension slowly but surely, revealing Frances' increasing sense of foreboding through diary entries that are interspersed throughout the third-person narrative. It's a highly effective device.

Interestingly, the story does not paint a very flattering portrait of Saudi Arabia, but Mantel, who lived in Jeddah with her husband, a geologist, for four years in the 1980s, makes no bones about this. In the reader's guide that comes with this edition, she writes: "When you come across an alien culture you must not automatically respect it. You must someties pay it the compliment of hating it."

You can read the first chapter of the book here [although you need to be registered with the New York Times website to do so]. But be warned, once you start you'll want to read the whole thing.

'Explorers of the New Century' by Magnus Mills

Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury; 186 pages; 2006.

Magnus Mills is a cheeky little scamp. With a big black beating heart. He lulls you into a false sense of security before dealing you a killer blow. And you can't help but love him for it.

Explorers of the New Century, his fifth novel, starts out as a rather fun, light-hearted story about two groups of explorers competing to reach the "furtherest point from civilisation". One group -- Scandinavian, small and efficient -- follows a dry riverbed; the second -- British, large and disorganised -- takes a different route across an endless landscape of scree.

The narrative plods along (pun fully intended) for what seems like forever. Not much seems to happen. (Admittedly, I considered abandoning the book, because it was so slow and dull.) The Scandinavians make good progress but are constantly worried they'll get pipped at the post, while the Brits get mired in bickering and make poor leadership decisions.

And then, somewhere around the half-way mark, Mills throws a curve ball that makes you rub your eyes and re-read the sentence to make sure you didn't misunderstand it. Suddenly the book takes a rather kooky and surreal turn, and you begin to realise Mills must have had a great time writing this book. Either that, or he was hallucinating when he cooked up the plot.

Then, just as you're coming to grips with this new turn of events, he delivers another surprise twist that turns everything, and I mean everything, on its head. The story, which began as a rather pedestrian (there I go with the puns again, sorry about that) narrative now becomes rather dark and sinister. It makes you see everything that's already happened before in a new and disturbing light. It's brilliant.

Now, for obvious reasons, I can't reveal the exact nature of these two "twists", but I can say that Explorers of the New Century is one of those deceptively simple novels that is part allegory, part fable and stays with you long after you've finished reading it.

Crucially, there's a lot of deadpan humour in it too, which breaks up the monotony of the anorexic text. Most of it is quite subtle, but there was one exchange they caused me to laugh out loud. The British group has just set up camp and are fantasising about scones with "lashings of jam and butter".

The tent had four occupants. Sargent was in his normal position by the door. Next to him was Summerfield, already fast asleep. Then came Seddon, and at the far end was Plover. The latter had adopted his usual pose. He was lying on his side, outstretched with his legs crossed and his head popped on one hand, facing the doorway.
He waited a moment and then said, "I think you'll find that the  correct pronunciation is 'scones'."
"'Scones'?" repeated Sargent.
"'Scones,'" repeated Plover.
"Well, I've never heard that before. We've always said 'scones' where I come from."
"Same here," agreed Seddon.
"I assure you the word is 'scones'," said Plover. "You should look it up when you get the opportunity."

Trust Mills to capture the absurdity of English people arguing about the English language!

For what it's worth, this is a hugely enjoyable book which can be easily read in just a couple of hours, perfect if you're looking for a quick palette cleanser between novels. It's typical Mills fare, if a little darker than usual, so if you like this you're sure to enjoy his back catalogue, most of which is reviewed here.

'Personal Velocity' by Rebecca Miller

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 224 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Seven women, seven stories. That's the best way of describing the latest book from Rebecca Miller. Although this isn't actually Miller's latest book. Personal Velocity -- a collection of short stories -- was first published by Doubleday in 2002; Canongate republished it last week.

I didn't expect to like it very much, based on two reasons: short stories tend to leave me cold; and Miller's runaway success, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, didn't really do it for me when I read it last year. But I was prepared to be convinced otherwise, and so I took it to work and over the course of a week or so read a chapter each free lunchtime. (Interestingly, each chapter is perfectly digestible within an hour, which has me wondering whether I've been missing a trick when it comes to short stories: perhaps I should be reading them one at a time rather than back to back, as I usually do, which means they all run into each other and nothing seems to stick.)

The blurb of my edition claims that the stories here are a "brilliant portrait of the multi-faceted lives we all lead" but I didn't particularly recognise myself -- or any woman I know -- within the pages. What I found here were women trapped, whether by circumstances, marriage or insecurity. Most are troubled, even though it might not be immediately obvious. For example, my favourite story, the opener dubbed Greta, about an editor of rather lame cookbooks who scores the biggest coup of her career, has a rather sad tale about a disappointing, one-sided marriage at its heart. Greta finds the courage to leave her husband in the end, but it doesn't feel like a victory to be celebrated.

I found myself very much enjoying many of stories in this collection, particularly the tale of Delia, who escapes her abusive husband, and the inter-connected tales of rich and beautiful Julianne and her dowdy housekeeper Bryna. But, like any collection, not everything appeals and there were a couple of stories that had me going, so what?

For that reason, I found Personal Velocity a little hit and miss, but if you liked The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and enjoy short stories, it will probably appeal.

'The Journalist and the Murderer' by Janet Malcolm

Non-fiction - paperback; Granta Books; 163 pages; 2004.

Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer famously caused an outcry within the media when it was first published as a two-part article in The New Yorker in 1989. Its oft-quoted opening sentence -- "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible" -- seemed to lay down the gauntlet, calling the ethics of journalism into question.

But Malcolm is a journalist herself and so the book must not be condemned on the basis of this first line, nor should it be viewed as summing up the author's views. Indeed, it becomes clear upon reading The Journalist and the Murderer that Malcolm has mixed views about her profession, which I'm sure is true of most journalists today, myself included.

What this book really examines is the relationship between journalists and sources in the context of non-fiction books and the difficulties which face both parties. While the journalist must remain impartial in order to render the truth, he must do whatever he can to convince his subject to be frank and open with him. Meanwhile, the source must come to trust the journalist enough to share his or her most intimate secrets. Such unspoken rules are fraught with difficulty, because what happens if the journalist writes something that upsets the source but which he knows is correct and truthful? Most journalists would say that they are only doing their job - and that's the view I take, too.

But what if the situation was slightly more complicated, and the journalist agreed to write a book about the source and was given unparalleled access to him and his closest family, friends and colleagues? The dynamic might change, a close friendship might result, but surely the journalist still has a job to do and is honour-bound to remain objective and to write events as he sees them? After all he's not in the business of writing flattering, gratifying portraits (unless, of course, that's the "truth"), because he's not a publicist but a journalist.

Tricky, isn't it? And even more so if the source doesn't quite understand the rules of the game and mistakes the journalist's so-called friendship for a genuine intimacy, when it's essentially a means to an end: the journalist has wooed the source in order to extract information. Interestingly, Malcolm calls sources "victims" but she also points out that far too many "victims" are willing ones.

Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but in fact childish trust and impetuosity are far more common. The journalistic encounter seems to have the same negative effect on a subject as the psychoanalytic encounter. The subject becomes a kind of child of the writer, regarding him as a permissive, all-accepting, all-forgiving mother, and expecting that the book will be written by her. Of course the book is written by the strict, all-noticing, unforgiving father.

Malcolm really gets to the heart of this very thorny issue by examining the famous lawsuit between a convicted murderer, Jeffrey MacDonald, and a journalist, Joe McGinness, who wrote about the crime. 

MacDonald, a United States Army doctor, was accused of murdering his pregnant wife and their two infant daughters in 1970. Before the case had come to trial, McGinness, a hugely successful non-fiction writer, had secured MacDonald's co-operation in turning his story into a book on the condition that he would have complete editorial freedom. He also made arrangements to sit in on the trial, was given full access to McDonald's legal team and even lived with defense counsel and the accused during proceedings.

The book was published under the title Fatal Vision in 1983 (admittedly I read it when I was in my late teens) and turned into a TV mini-series starring Karl Malden in 1984 (I think I probably watched that too, but I couldn't be sure). MacDonald's misguided belief that the book would exonerate him in the eyes of the public did not come to pass. Instead, Fatal Vision states that MacDonald's guilty verdict is the correct outcome, describing him as a "womaniser" and "pathological narcissist". It even goes so far as to purport a motive for the crime: MacDonald killed his family in a fit of psychotic rage caused by amphetamine use.

A writ claiming McGinness had breached his contract was duly served, and it is this case, later settled out of court following a mistrial, which Malcolm dissects using actual court transcripts and her own behind-the-scenes interviews in The Journalist and The Murderer. It is absolutely fascinating reading, if only to see the duplicit lengths that a journalist will go to to get his story. And it would seem that the "morally indefensible" act to which she refers in her opening sentence is not about journalism per se but to McGinness's betrayal of his source: pretending that he believed MacDonald was innocent long after he became convinced of his guilt.

'Molly Fox's Birthday' by Deirdre Madden

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 221 pages; 2009.

Deirdre Madden's Molly Fox's Birthday has recently been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009. I had mistakenly thought it was a story about a little girl's birthday, but the title is deceptive: the Molly Fox named here is a thirty-something woman who never celebrates her birthday and what's more we never get to meet her. Instead we come to learn of her complex personality through the eyes of her long-time friend, who narrates the story in a cool, understated manner.

This is one of those mellow, beguiling reads that sneaks up on you, worms its way into your conscience and bathes you in a kind of gentle light. I found it almost impossible to put down and read it at every opportunity: on the tube, in my lunch hour, at home curled up in bed. And when I got closer to the final pages I tried to draw it out because I simply didn't want it to end.

And yet, if I am to explain what Molly Fox's Birthday is about, I find it difficult to describe. There is no straightforward narrative. It's written from the point of view of one woman, a successful playwright, recalling her relationship with Molly Fox, an actor regarded as "one of the finest of her generation" -- how they met, worked together and became firm friends -- and it effortlessly switches from the present to the past and back again, often within a matter of pages, in tune with the narrator's memories.

The narrator also thinks about her friendship with Belfast-born Andrew, a now-famous art historian, whom she met at university, and her older brother, Tom, a Catholic priest.

And all this is done over the course of a couple of days while she stays in Molly's house in Dublin -- a small redbrick Victorian house with  "immense charm" -- while Molly is away performing in New York. When she remembers that it is Molly's birthday she contemplates much about her dear friend, including why she never celebrates her birthday and why she is so protective of her younger brother, an alcoholic prone to depression.

This is a book about friendship: how tough it can be to accept flaws and foibles; how our relationships can be plagued by petty jealousies and secrets; and how important it is to our lives. But Molly Fox's Birthday is also a book about acting: how we play certain roles at certain times of our lives, and show different facets of our personality to different people. It's also about learning to accept the past in order to move into the future. It's a wonderful, atmospheric book and it will be interesting to see whether it wins the Orange Prize when it is announced early next month.

'Something Childish But Very Natural' by Katherine Mansfield

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 110 pages; 2007.

I'm not a great fan of the short story, but knowing that New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is widely regarded as one of the best short story writers of her generation, I was keen to read some of her work.

This collection, published as part of Penguin's Great Loves series, seemed the perfect opportunity to acquaint myself with her writings. Each of the eight tales revolves around the theme that "love can be innocent" and features one of her more famous short stories, "Something Childish But Very Natural", which was written in 1914 but published after her death.

In this sweet story we meet Harry, a young man ("nearly eighteen") who falls in love with a girl ("over sixteen") on a train, and begins a relationship with her. Unfortunately Edna is very distant with him and shies from his touch. "I feel that if once we did that -- you know -- held each other's hands and kissed, it would all be changed," she tells Harry. "And I feel we wouldn't be free like we are -- we'd be doing something secret. We wouldn't be children any more...silly, isn't it?"

This characterises the rest of their friendship: Edna wants to keep it purely platonic, but Harry, patient and caring, is desperate to take it to the next level. He must always keep his feelings in check, despite the fact he is desperately in love with Edna "with the marigold hair and strange dreamy smile that filled him up to the brim".

One day the pair stumble upon a lovely little cottage in the countryside and fantasise about living in it together. When Harry, in his eagerness to move in immediately, says,  "I have a feeling that it's dangerous to wait for things -- that if you wait for things they only go further and further away" you get the impression he's not just talking about the house.

I won't reveal how the story ends, but the course of true love does not run smoothly!

The other short stories in this slim volume are: "Feuille d'Album", "Mr and Mrs Dove", "Marriage à la Mode", "Bliss", "Honeymoon", "Dill Pickle" and "Widowed".

They are all quite similiar in showing how love can be one-sided and that even in the strongest of relationships there is always one person who loves his or her partner more than is reciprocated.

I particularly enjoyed "Bliss", about a 30-something mother who believes her life in London is completely perfect, until she hosts a dinner party for a small collection of haughty friends and unwittingly discovers that her husband is cheating on her with one of the guests. When she comes to realise what is going on beneath her nose, the reality of the situation is like a strong blow to the stomach. I thought it was a pitch-perfect story and I think I might have actually gasped out loud when I got to the denouement.

All in all, I enjoyed this brief introduction to Mansfield's work, but it hasn't made me rush out to read everything else she's ever written. I'm afraid my bias towards novels is too strong for that.

You can find out more about Katherine Mansfield here and here.

'Miles from Nowhere' by Nami Mun

Fiction - hardcover; Riverhead; 304 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Due for publication late next month in the USA and early next year in the UK, Miles from Nowhere is by first-time novelist Nami Mun.

As an adolescent runaway on the streets of 1980s New York, Joon finds herself in many dangerous situations in which she must live by her wits and be guided, in part, by the trusty survival instincts of her best friend Knowledge, who is three years her senior.

The book covers everything from Joon's stint living in a homeless shelter to her coming to grips with the eye-opening reality of escort work in a night club. Then there's her addiction to drugs and her love affair with a fellow addict that results, somewhere down the line, in an abortion. 

Every now and then there are glimmers of hope, as she tries to turn her life around, whether by getting a lowly-paid job -- in one case selling cosmetics door to door as an Avon Lady -- or trying to reconcile with her parents who don't seem to care too much about her plight.

But on the whole, this is a rather depressing coming-of-age story that covers already well trodden ground. There's no doubt that it's beautifully written, but I've read so many books of a similar nature -- see How the Light Gets In by MJ Hyland and Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill -- that I'm not sure this one manages to say anything that I haven't already heard before.

Still, it's an impressive debut, with some great characterisation (it's difficult not to feel sympathy for Joon and her cohorts, despite their hardened, street-wise and occasionally criminal personas) and a cracking narrative. And the ending, when it comes, lets you see that perhaps it is possible for a young person to survive a life in the margins after all and emerge that little bit stronger and wiser...

'Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North' by Stuart Maconie

  Non-fiction - paperback; Ebury Press; 368 pages; 2008. 

The North-South divide in Great Britain is the subject of this rather tongue-in-cheek travelogue by Northern journalist and broadcaster Stuart Maconie.

For non-Brits, the divide is not an exact line, but one which refers to the economic and cultural differences between southern England and the rest of the country, including Scotland. It involves many stereotypes, including the belief that Northerners are thick and Southerners are posh. Or, as Maconie, a Northerner transplanted to the South, puts it:

Good or bad, 'the north' means something to all English people wherever they hail from. To people from London -- cheery costermonger, cravated fop or Shoreditch-based web designer on stupid scooter alike -- it means desolation, arctic temperatures, mushy peas, a cultural wasteland with limited shopping opportunities and populated by aggressive trolls. To northerners it means home, truth, beauty, valour, romance, warm and characterful people, real beer and decent chip shops. And in this we are undoubtedly biased, of course.

The enchantingly entitled Pies and Prejudice takes us on a wonderful tour of the North, with the erudite and charming Maconie as our host. Having watched Maconie on a many a TV show, I couldn't help but hear his Wigan accent as I read this book, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. (Indeed, I hope that at some point he turns it into a documentary series, as it would make fascinating viewing.)

As one would expect from a journalist who champions pop music, the book is littered with musical references, such as this:

The Smiths' songs drip, like an evening drizzle off the Moors, with references to Manchester and its environs. Rusholme, Strangeways, Southern Cemetery, Whalley Range, the Holy Name Church. Morrissey has a video called Hulmerist, a wry reference to his childhood home. In an early interview, he said of his artistic self, 'I am forever chained to a disused railway line in Wigan'. While Thatcher, witchlike, cast the north into outer darkness, The Smiths' songs illuminated it anew with northern light and fireworks. We loved them for it.

But it's also clear that Maconie enjoys history and architecture and food, because these subjects are constantly referenced throughout as he makes his way across the country. Each chapter is littered with fascinating facts and figures and snippets of trivia, all delivered in the writer's trademark witty prose style, which is rather reminiscent of Bill Bryson.

His greatest skill, however, is bringing rather drab places to life. He has a certain knack of saying so much in just a few sentences, lovely thumbnail portraits, if you will.

Where Bury Market excels, though, is food. In the new Fish Market you can gaze, slightly unnerved, at the dead, sightless eyes of row upon row of sea bass and snapper, mackerel and trout lying in state on funeral dais of crushed ice and parsley. The stalls are staffed by either blonde girls in full make-up who you just know are dying to get out that white coat and into their skimpy glad rags this weekend or cheery rubicund men holding up what look like conger eels and joshing in ribald style with housewives. All of them adhere to Maconie's first law of market trade: cheeriness is proportional to the gruesome nature of the wares being handled. The grislier the fare, the gayer the banter.

By the time I got to the last page I felt bereft: it was that same kind of sad feeling one experiences when a much-enjoyed holiday draws to a close. Having learnt so much about the northern regions of England in Maconie's company, I was itching to go out there and visit these places myself. Highly recommended, whether you are from North, South or somewhere else entirely!

'Giving up the Ghost' by Hilary Mantel

Nonfiction - paperback; HarperPerennial; 252 pages; 2004.

Hilary Mantel is an award-winning British author of whom I only have a passing acquaintance. I read her last novel, Beyond Black, in early 2006 and very much enjoyed its dark inventiveness, especially her quirky characters and the descriptions of a rather dull and dreary suburban England populated by ghosts.

Giving up the Ghost is her much-lauded memoir, released in 2004 to critical acclaim, and how, having read it, I can see many aspects of her character in Beyond Black's narrator, Alison Hart, an overweight psychic. Mantel never goes into specifics, but it's clear that she has some psychic tendencies, too. On the first page of her memoir she claims to have seen her step-father's ghost. "I am not perturbed," she writes. "I am used to 'seeing' things that aren't there."

The book is peppered with other unusual claims, including her sighting of an undefined "creature" in the back garden when she was seven that "has wrapped a strangling hand around my life, and I don't know how, or what it was".

There are large gaps in her life's account, and the narrative, while largely chronological, does jump around a bit. "But in this book I didn't aim to tell the story of my life," she writes in the afterword, "just the story of two aspects of it, my childhood and my own childlessness. It was never meant to be the whole story. Stories are never whole."

This is a good summation of Giving up the Ghost, which can, effectively, be broken into two halves: the first tells of her childhood growing up in a working-class Catholic family in the grim suburb of Hadfield in Manchester in the 1950s; the second of her rather traumatic adulthood filled with a string of misdiagnosed illnesses which render her unable to have children.

By turns the book is funny and sad; it's often witty but never mawkish; and I came away from it feeling that Mantel had lead a very tough but somehow inspirational life. From the outset Mantel's childhood was riddled with family secrets -- her father disappeared; her mother moved her lover into the house and then moved suburbs to avoid a community scandal -- that caused her to live in an "emotional labyrinth". Even when she escaped the family home and moved to London to begin her university law course, the dark ghosts of the past would not let her go...

By the time I was twenty I was living in a slum house in Sheffield. I had a husband and no money; those things I could explain. I had a pain which I could not explain; it seemed to wander around my body, nibbling here, stabbing there, flitting every time I tried to put my finger on it.

Written in a clear-eyed prose style, it is, at times, so honest as to be painful. Mantel, herself, admits that she struggles to write much of it. "Once you have learned the habits of secrecy, they aren't so easy to give up," she confesses mid-way through the book.

She is particularly frank about her various illnesses, which lead to her stacking on the weight and "accumulating an anger that would rip a roof off". And the ways in which she comes to terms with her infertility is also painfully candid, the hurt seemingly oozing off the page.

This is not a particularly cheerful read, but it is an inspirational one about chasing dreams, seeking answers and forging your own path in life. I loved it and now that I know more about Hilary Mantel's life I hope to read more of her fiction very soon.

'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee' by Rebecca Miller

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 233 pages; 2008.

I bought The Private Lives of Pippa Lee back in May, intrigued by the pretty cover and the promise of reading about a "thoroughly modern heroine". Not long later the book was listed as part of Richard and Judy's Summer Read and suddenly I went off the whole idea. I know, I know, sometimes I can be a complete book snob.

I then discovered that the book had been optioned and the author, who is better known as an actress and film director, was going to be directing it. Hmmm, did this mean I'd paid good money to read a screen play rather than a fully worked up piece of literature?

Things were not boding well. Still, needs must. And so on Sunday evening I cracked open the pristine cover of my large format paperback and began to read... with an open mind.

The story is about a woman, Pippa, who marries a successful book publisher 30 years her senior. The pair, who have a set of adult twins, have just moved to a retirement village so that they no longer have to worry about the upkeep of their Manhattan apartment and their Long Island beach house. But the move unsettles 50-year-old Pippa, who begins to realise her husband's life is drawing to a close and that it won't be long before she is left all alone.

Her well-ordered life is further shaken when she discovers that 'intruders' are continually making a mess of her kitchen -- peanut butter spread on slices of chocolate cake one morning, eggs everywhere the next -- while they sleep. I know, it's not exactly Gorky Park, is it?

But I was intrigued enough to keep reading to see how the story would unfold. However, by page 30, I was bored witless by the dull prose, one-dimensional characters and the choppy dialogue. This example is fairly typical:

Pippa came to a bedroom door. They were in there. She could hear them. She knocked tentatively. The voices went silent.

'Dot?' she said.
'Who is it?' It was a man's voice.
'It's Pippa Lee... I was looking for Dot.'

I mean, could I take another 200 pages of this clunky, go-nowhere prose? I very seriously considered giving up on the book completely. In fact, I wanted to throw it against the wall in anger and frustration. But a little voice in my head kept telling me it might just get better...

And you know what? It did.

Part two is written in the first person (as opposed to the third-person narrative of the opening section) and suddenly the reader gets to find out what it is really like being Pippa Lee. She takes you right back to her haphazard life as a 16-year-old and the traumatic, strained relationship she shared with her overbearing, too clingy, drug-dependent mother.  We find out about her illicit affair with a school teacher (although the details are perhaps a little too sketchy) and her new exotic life living in New York with her lesbian aunt.

Slowly but surely, and in a style reminiscent of MJ Hyland's wonderful How the Light Gets In, Miller builds up a portrait of a slightly disturbed young woman trying to find her way in the world. Her wild, on-the-edge lifestyle as a twenty-something is in stark contrast to the strait-laced, domestic life she leads now, and I wanted to keep reading to find out how the two would reconcile with each other.

Of course, when Miller returns to the third-person narrative in part 3 some of the momentum is lost, but I felt that the narrative was much stronger now that I knew some of Pippa's secret past.

As a whole though, I'm not sure Pippa's private life is actually that private or that much different from a large majority of the population who have experimented with drugs and sex in their youth. Perhaps this book is merely about one woman coming to terms with the prospect of growing older, learning from her mistakes and trying to make the best of her present circumstances.

This isn't a novel that will rock your world, literary or otherwise, but I'm sure it will make a damn fine movie. And it's also proof-positive that sometimes it's worth persevering with a book even when you're convinced it's not worth the effort.

'Borderlands' by Brian McGilloway

 

Fiction - paperback; Pan Books; 312 pages; 2008.

I picked this book up at my local Books Etc on the strength of a staff recommendation. I was looking for something that I could read during a three-hour flight and this seemed to fit the bill perfectly, not least because of its compact size (yes, I'm ashamed to say that was one of my priorities) and its interesting subject matter: the discovery of a teenage corpse on the border between the north and south of Ireland.

Borderlands, which is billed as the first Inspector Devlin mystery (the second, Gallows Lane, is currently available in hardcover), was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association New Blood Dagger in 2007. And it's easy to see why.

The writing is effortless, the mood suitably dark and sombre, and the storyline moves along at a good pace, with some interesting and unexpected twists in the plot line.

The characterisation is superb, and Inspector Benedict Devlin is a likable if somewhat flawed lead character, far from the aging and troubled grumps that seem to populate the Scandinavian crime fiction to which I've recently become enamoured. But he feels no less human than them and, if anything, tends to tread a much blurrier line between right and wrong, vengeance and justice.

The story itself is a straight police procedural that opens with the discovery of a teenage girl's body on wasteland a few days before Christmas. The only thing she is wearing is a pair of white cotton underpants, turned inside out, and a distinctive gold ring set with a moonstone surrounded by diamonds. It is this ring which provides a valuable clue in tracking down her killer.

Not long after the police investigation, led by the Irish Republic's An Garda Siochana, gets underway another teenage body is discovered, this one in a burnt out car. 

Are the two killings linked? And how does the disappearance of a local prostitute 25 years earlier fit in?

This is a disturbing but strangely compelling read. The case is complex enough to keep the reader guessing all the way to the end, and coupled with the hint of police corruption, there's a good dose of moral outrage to be had as well. I thoroughly enjoyed Borderlands and will certainly hunt out the paperback version of the next in the series.

'The Iraqi' by J.A. Mulholland

Fiction - paperback; Stamford House Publishing; 399 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Although I generally prefer modern literary fiction, I pride myself on having fairly eclectic reading tastes and will happily try genres and authors I haven't read before. If a book is set in an exotic location, particularly if it’s a place that hasn’t featured in any other novel I have read before, it will immediately pique my interest.

And I am always very happy to read first-time novelists, often preferring them to more established names.

The Iraqi, by J.A. Mulholland, ticked all these boxes.

Admittedly, I had my doubts about the premise -- an English woman going on "a secret mission into occupied Iraq to save a man she has only met by email" – but felt that the Middle Eastern setting would make up for this.

I was wrong.

Aside from the wooden dialogue and the clunky prose style, the main character, Jo Huxley, is intensely unlikable. She’s a London-based 20-something telecomms worker (whatever that is) who’s not only vain and shallow, she’s incredibly naïve to the point of stupidity. What right minded individual responds to a potential spam email with the subject line “They going to kill me!! Why you not helping?”

But that is what Jo does and, over a very short space of time, develops an online relationship with Kamaal, a Shia Muslim, who is supposedly holed up in a Kurd area of Iraq fearing for his life and desperate for Jo’s help.

How this man has access to email is anyone’s guess, but Jo questions very little about this man’s circumstances. Indeed, she seems to live in a little bubble in which the world revolves around her and her adulterous boyfriend, James, whom is not all he is cracked up to be.

When Jo accidentally picks up one of James bank statements and discovers he is “collecting” vast sums of money – for instance, £412,000 – and confronts him about it, the issue of her invading James’ privacy is not even raised.

The ensuing arguments all seems rather lacklustre and not very realistic to this reviewer’s eyes. Ditto for Jo’s unscheduled “rescue mission” to Iraq, which she arranges on the back of a legitimate work trip to Damascus. It’s a highly dangerous excursion into war-torn territory and there are glimpses of real tension in the narrative, but, for the most part, the writing is superficial. It’s all tell and no show, as this extract reveals:

We must have walked for more than a few hours before we stopped for a drink. We sat on a ledge of the mountain overlooking the most beautiful and magical sight I had ever laid my eyes upon. It completely blew Crib-y-Ddysgl out of the window. The size and shapes of the landscape around us brought me to tears. The mountains held a sense of mystery and magic. It made me question what our life on earth is all about, I was unsure of what part I had to play in the next phase of my life. Right now I had no concrete direction in which to head and that scared me.

Unfortunately this example is characteristic of the entire novel, a novel I so much wanted to like but which I found incredibly tedious and so riddled with holes you could drive a double-decker bus through them. It doesn’t help that this book can’t quite work out if it is a thriller or a romance, and while neither genre should be mutually exclusive The Iraqi turns out to be a poor mix of both.

On the whole this is a very disappointing debut novel, but which couldn't be fixed with a good, healthy rewrite or two. I expect people who read very little or have no critical judgement will love it.

'Prime Time' by Liza Marklund

Fiction - paperback; Pocket Books; 432 pages; 2006. Translated from the Swedish by Ingrid Eng-Rundlow.

One of my pet hates is the trite "sells" or subtitles that endorse book covers for no other reason than someone in a marketing department thinks they might hook a potential reader. Prime Time by Liza Marklund is a good case in point. In my opinion, adding the words "Thirteen people. One Murder. Twelve Suspects" underneath the title simply detracts from the book's credibility rather than boosting it.

Which is a shame, because Prime Time is quite a good thriller that doesn't need to be cheapened by marketing hype. The novel stars a gutsy heroine, the crime reporter Annika Bengtzon, who has appeared in three previous novels -- The Bomber, Studio 69 and Paradise -- none of which I have read. According to the author's wikipedia entry the books haven't been written in chronological order, so it probably doesn't matter. As it was, I felt the book was a good, stand alone read but as someone who enjoys exploring an author's back catalogue from the beginning there's always the nagging feeling that I might have missed out on something...

The book opens with Annika preparing to go on a Midsummer's Eve trip to visit her in-laws with her partner Thomas and their two children, Kalle, 3, and Ellen, 1. But at the very last moment, Annika is called away to work on a breaking story -- the possible murder of a TV celebrity, Michelle Carlsson -- and Thomas, angry and upset -- "Are you serious? Are you really going to work?" -- is left to cope with the children alone.

As Annika leaves to begin her shift on the newspaper Kvallspressen, she feels a mixture of guilt (for leaving her family behind) and relief (for not having to deal with the in-laws that prefer Thomas's first wife).

Once at the scene of the crime -- Yxtaholm Castle, where Carlsson was starring in a TV series called Summer Frolic at the Castle -- Annika sets about trying to solve what appears to be a classic "who dunnit". She discovers that Ms Carlsson had been shot in a mobile control room, her brains splattered all over the console and recording equipment, during a rowdy, drunken party celebrating the end of the series shoot. Twelve people involved in the recording of the show have been detained by police for questioning -- and all of them have a motive for killing the star, including Annika's best friend, Anne Snapphane, a broadcast journalist working on the program.

This is fairly standard fare, reminiscent of Agatha Christie, and it is Annika, rather than the police, who the reader follows as she investigates the crime for her newspaper. This investigation has Annika, a very resourceful journalist, always a couple of steps ahead of the authorities.

A secondary storyline involving newsroom politics -- was the executive editor involved in some insider trading? -- balances out the main narrative quite nicely and adds some extra journalistic flavour to the novel. As a journalist myself, I quite liked reading about Sweden's newspaper ethics which appear to be considerably more robust than anything you'd find in the British press.

But I found the denouement didn't quite live up to expectations. After such a big build up -- more than 400 pages worth -- I expected to discover a quite shocking revelation, but instead I was left thinking, so what?

Ultimately, Prime Time is a fast-paced mystery (rather than hardboiled noir) featuring a feisty, all-too human heroine. I especially liked the authentic newsroom setting and for that reason alone, I'll probably explore the rest of the "Annika novels" in Marklund's back catalogue. But if you like your crime fiction more on the police procedural side, this is probably not the book for you.

'Nefertiti' by Michelle Moran

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 528 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of the author's publicist.

Nefertiti is one of ancient Egypt's most legendary rulers. She was the Second Wife of the heretic king Akhenaten and, as Queen, had just as much influence and status as her husband. Renowned for her extraordinary beauty, she was more than a pretty face -- as this compelling novel by Michelle Moran demonstrates.

In fact, the Nefertiti presented in this book is not exactly the most likeable of characters. She's manipulative, calculating and shrewd. Despite the fact she was chosen to marry Akhenaten because everyone believed she was level-headed enough to tame his erratic, egotistical tendencies, she does the exact opposite. When her husband marks his rule by elevating a minor god, Aten, to a position of power, obliterating Amun and destroying all of Amun's temples, she doesn't bat an eyelid but actually encourages him to make further irregular and unpopular decisions.

And if that wasn't enough, she's riddled by jealousy over the Pharoah's First Wife, Kiya, who has already given birth to a son and heir, and does whatever she can to bed her husband in an attempt to produce the next prince -- with mixed results.

All the while Nefertiti's younger sister, Mutnodjmet (Mutny), is treated like a slave who must obey the Queen's every whim. As she watches Egypt become besieged by religious and cultural changes that she is powerless to stop, Mutny dreams of the day she can escape the clutches of the Royal Family so that she can live a quiet life, growing herbs and other plants in her own little oasis. When she falls in love with the General Nakhtmin, she thinks she may have found her "get out clause", but alas, Nefertiti doesn't exactly see it that way...

This is a dramatic family saga that is full of corruption, intrigue and dirty tricks that kept me on tenterhooks throughout. Mutny is a delightful narrator, patient and wise, who charts her sister's rise from teenage Queen to Egyptian goddess. And while I'm not sure how historically accurate Nefertiti's portrayal is, this book certainly captures the flavour, sights and sounds of ancient Egypt so that it's easy imagining yourself sailing down the Nile, or tucking into platters of honeyed nuts, plump figs and pomegranates, or wandering the altars draped in gold and crowned in myrrh.

The style of story-telling reminded me very much of Anita Amirrezvani's The Blood of Flowers, which is also about one girl's journey from innocence to adulthood, although Nefertiti is less about the subjugation of women and more about the subjugation of an entire race of people, male and female alike.

This is by no means high-brow literary fiction, but it's an entertaining, fast-paced and thoroughly enjoyable romp, with a smidgen of romance, a touch of war and a little bit of double-dealing thrown in for good measure. I found the ending surprisingly suspenseful but despite the 460-odd pages I didn't want the story to draw to close, and I was genuinely sad when I reached the final page.

I had a lot of fun reading Nefertiti and I suspect many others will do so too.

'The Scheme for Full Employment' by Magnus Mills

Fiction - hardcover; Flamingo; 255 pages; 2003.

Reading a book by Magnus Mills is a bit like stepping into a parallel universe: everything looks and feels the same but there's something a little off key that you can't quite put your finger on. The Scheme for Full Employment, Mills' fourth novel, is no exception.

The Scheme is essentially a distribution business in which goods are transported from depot to depot in a vehicle called a UniVan.

The UniVan was a glorious creation! With its distinctive gunmetal paintwork and silvery livery, its bull-nosed profile, running boards and chrome front grill, it had become a celebrated national icon, recognised and loved by all! Moreover, it represented a great idea that not only worked, but was seen to work!

Becoming an employee on The Scheme, which runs like clockwork and offers eight hours' pay for eight hours' work, is held up as a pinnacle of achievement. What better way can one earn a living than driving a van in a courteous, efficient and timely manner from depot to depot delivering unspecified goods to a rigorous and ordered schedule?

But the rigour and order with which The Scheme is renowned comes under threat by revelations that some workers aren't doing their full eight hour days -- some are being signed off for an "early swerve" on a semi-regular basis, so instead of finishing bang on 4.30pm some are going home a half-hour earlier! This authorised skiving is not approved by those employees who believe that such actions will destroy The Scheme's regimented order they love so much, and a strike -- the first in The Scheme's history -- ensues.

It's not hard to see that The Scheme for Full Employment is actually a parody of the capitalist system, poking fun, as it does, at everything from unionised labour to the sheer monotony of many people's working lives. It's peopled by characters that derive meaning and purpose to their existence by the dullest of jobs and responsibilities. And it calls into question the hollow nature of businesses, which are set up purely to keep someone in employment.

The monotonous routine of The Scheme is echoed by Mills' own dead-pan humour, his repetitive writing style and his often dull descriptions of people and places.

Just as his earlier novels -- The Restraint of Beasts, All Quiet on the Orient Express and Three to See the King -- featured a working-class narrator as the unwitting hero of the piece, The Scheme for Full Employment offers up a similarly lovable if naive (unnamed) person trying to make sense of a strange and alienating world.

While not as humorous and a tad more symbolic than previous efforts, this is still a recommended read for those who want to try something deliciously -- and strangely -- different.

'Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now' by Patrick McGrath

Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury Publishing; 256 pages; 2006.

I have long wanted to read something by British-born New York-based writer Patrick McGrath if only because his subject matter, often dark and Gothic, intrigues me. I bought this one on a week-long trip to Manhattan last October when I prowled the city's book stores looking for novels set in New York. This one practically leapt off the shelf at me, so I bought it, but not without reservation: I'm not a huge fan of the short story.

I needn't have worried. The three stories in this collection could best be described as novellas (63 pages, 112 pages and 68 pages apiece) and each was incredibly gripping in its own distinctive, haunting way. Each first-person narrative is set in Manhattan, but at different time periods, beginning with the American Revolution and ending in the days following 9/11.

The Year of the Gibbet is told through the eyes of a man dying of cholera in 1832 looking back on his childhood. "It is fifty-five years since my mama died, and I have no doubt but that I will follow her before the week is out," he tells us on page 2. Here, on his death bed, he comes to terms with the guilt he feels for his mother's death, for it was his suspicious behaviour as a boy that lead to her capture by the British Army. She was later hanged for being a traitor.

The second story, Julius, is also told by a narrator looking back on past events. In this case, a woman tells the tale of her grandfather, a painter, whose eye was gauged out by a student of his who lost his mind and was put in an asylum for 20 years. The student came from a very wealthy family. When he fell in love with an artist's model -- an Irish woman from the wrong side of the tracks -- his father cruelly stepped in to prevent the union.

The final story, Ground Zero, revolves around a psychiatrist treating a male patient, Dan Silver, who has problems sustaining intimate relationships with women. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, Dan tells his shrink that he has fallen in love with a Chinese prostitute, Kim Lee, who has problems of her own. Kim lost her lover in one of the towers but believes she still sees his ghost walking the streets.

Each story is written in stark, clear prose, but there are flashes of brilliance on almost every page, which meant the book took twice as long to read as normal, because I kept going back to re-read bits that impressed me. (One of my favourite lines was this, from page 157: "More glances flitting around the table like little birds in a conservatory, all atwitter with questions.")

But it's the descriptions of Manhattan that I liked best, particularly this scene describing the city as it was in 1859:

All over New York buildings were going up, others coming down, some no more than ten years old, but in this impatient town where nothing ever has a chance to decay, ten years was practically an eternity. [...] For him the din and chaos of a city engaged in an unending turmoil of construction was nothing more than a spectacle provided for his amusement. It was theatre, and this being a period when increasing numbers of Europeans were arriving in Manhattan every day, the streets became more diverse, more colourful and exotic with every ship that discharged its cargo of humanity at the Battery.

There are common themes throughout the stories, namely death and ghosts and the terrible things people do to one another at times of extreme duress. The city, too, is a malevolent presence, where only the toughest inhabitants survive. Indeed, the opening line from a story set in the late 18th century -- "I have been in the town, a disquieting experience, for New York has become a place not so much of death as of the terror of death" -- could almost be its closing sentence describing the days after 9/11, too.

All in all, a thoroughly superb trio of elegantly spooky stories, and a great taster for McGrath's work.

'Long Way Down' by Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman

Non-fiction - hardcover; Sphere; 352 pages; 2007.

Three years ago fellow actors and biking buddies Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set off on a voyage from London to New York the long way round. The resultant 10-part TV series following their 20,000 mile road trip across Europe and Asia proved a huge hit, as did the book that accompanied it. I came to the whole Long Way Round phenomenon quite late, having stumbled upon a repeat screening of the series on Sky TV about 18 months after it had been made. But I was immediately enraptured and thought it was one of the most entertaining travel documentaries I'd ever seen. I promptly went out and bought the DVD and the book.

Fast forward a year and the double-act were back on board their motorbikes, this time traversing the globe from top to bottom -- from John O'Groats at the northernmost tip of Scotland to Cape Agulhas on the southernmost tip of South Africa -- in a new 15,000-mile adventure being billed as the Long Way Down. The popularity of the first series had obviously paid off for them: this time the trip was being documented on a live website and the resultant TV series was being screened on BBC 2 during prime time Sunday night viewing.

I watched the series, although I didn't think it was as good as the first. It didn't seem quite as magical or as fresh as the original. In fact, in places, it just seemed too knowing, too calculated -- and there were far too many participants involved. It wasn't so much as two men and their motorbikes, but two men, their motorbikes, one wife, a dozen various "fixers" and a five-member support crew. Hmmm.

The book doesn't really add to much to the TV series, other than you get a chance to find out a bit more about some of the UNICEF projects they visited and you get a better sense of the African people they met along the way. Like the original book, it fills in some useful gaps that weren't explained or were simply skimmed through on TV.

At times it does read a bit like a stuck record, with both of them complaining over and over about the too-fast schedule and their inability to spend time in all the places they wanted. Coupled with Charley missing his wife and children all the time, and Ewan banging on about how privileged he is to do the trip, it began to wear thin in places.

Nonetheless it's a light, entertaining read, funny in places, moving in others -- a bit like the TV series. But it's lack of intellectual insight or deep thinking about African history means this is really only a book for the fans. If you loved Long Way Down, chances are you'll enjoy this one too, but if you'd rather just watch the TV series you're not going to miss out on anything if you don't bother with the book. And you could perhaps save yourself a lot of time by simply reading the tongue-in-cheek condensed version on The Guardian's Digested Read, which isn't so much a piss take but a crystallised version of the truth.