Reviews
BIL/«TITMSHIP[JPN/121 ANNE MACLEOD The Blue Moon Book 'Luatf: Pressi DO.
Anne MacLeod's second novel is a complex tale of love. memory and langut’tge. and it is an often lyrical piece of work. lhe story is at heart a very odd love triangle. Jess is a Journalist and, shortly after starting a romantic fling Wllli Michael. an expert on Pictish stones. she suffers a horrendous accident. leaVing her suffering from amnesia and aphasia (loss of language). Not realismg what has happened and thinking he's been snubbed. Michael returns home to England leaVing Dan. Jess' estranged partner. as the only thing she has to cling to from a past life she doesn't know.
MacLeod handles the emotions of her numerous characters well, although there are several plot convolutions that stretch credibility to its limits. Ideas of how language and the past shape us are explored well, but the structure and mechanics of the story somehow detract from an othenvise atmospheric piece of writing.
(Doug Johnstone)
CRIME THRILLER ROBERT MCGILL The Mysteries iJonathan Cape)
0...
If North American and Canadian literature is a forest on the edge of town. there is always a body festering somewhere beneath its boughs. Ontario-born Robert McGill's The Mister/es is the latest novel to explore the leitmotif that iust won't leave us alone. Someone has
44 THE LIST j—lo Dec 20C;
disappeared in the small ton". of Sunshine and the to .'.'nspeopie are eager to ccnceal ug‘, reality. as far as possible. Thankfully. the no.e|'s uncon/entional structure makes this in‘possible. The OII‘IIISCIE‘III narrator inter/(ates severall,. and each suspect gets his Or her day in tne narrative court.
While the ripples of suspiCion over a young woman's death permeate and unsettle the town. a tiger — a ‘culturally determined animal'. as McCiII describes it — roams the area. The author imbues the beast With an otherworldly duality not diss‘imilar to that found in Blake's The Tyger. transforming an absurd plot distraction into the malevolent spirit presiding over the community struggle between concealment and honesty.
(Johnny Regan)
COMIC DRAMA GRAHAM REILLY Saigon Tea
(1 1 :9) OD.
We like to think we'd do anything for our family. But a phone call demanding we jet out immediately to Vietnam to son out a Siblings gambling debts w0uId probany be pushing it a bit for most of us. For Frankie Canyon. however, blood comes first every time. and so we're swept along by a fast-paced tale of love. friendship and revenge as he embarks on a mission to save his
brother Sac".
tten " an gag/rig: ar‘d chatty. stub Granary e<,-:.,.‘<; s packed ‘.ili cf a”: flatll‘ ,9? "RUSTIC depictions of Glasgc life and. as a rescit. Séi/QO" Tea gets off a gooo start. holding cur attention with a constant flow of tantalis‘ing SIOTylllif; ilibliS. Bill .‘Hlt‘. Our imaginations stretched a little too far by the novel's cwentuai outcome. it becomes impossible to see it as anything more than a sweet but ultimately rather silly read. iCamilIa Piai
WAR HISTORY DAVID FISHER The War Magician iWeidenfeld and Nicolsoni COO
MAGIEIAN
This book tells the true story of Jasper Maskelyne. a British magiCian and illtiSionist who enlisted at the start of World War II to employ his unusual skills in the effort to defeat Hitler. Maskelyne is something of a forgotten hero. although that's preSLimably abOut to change as Tom Cruise plays him in the forthcoming biopic. Posted to Egypt. Maskelyne developed some extraordinary camouflage and espionage tricks that helped to swmg the war in Noith Africa the way of the Allies. In charge of a small group informally called the Magic Gang. Maskelyne managed to 'move' the port of Alexandria. hide the Suez Canal and even Create a whole dummy army to confuse Rommell's forces at the battle of El Alamein. All good stuff. but DaVid Fisher makes heaty weather of the action at times. leading to a book that isn‘t as interesting as its SUbJeCt matter warrants. (Doug JohnstOnei
PROSE COMPILATION PAUL AUSTER
Collected Novels: Volume 1
(Faber) CO...
It’s probably very easy to have a swing at Paul Auster. ‘All he does is existentialism for toddlers, his stories have little real emotional impact, everything happens blandly on an artificial surface. Maybe he thinks he’s Don DeLillo; well buddy, he has as much depth as Donald Duck.’ I’ve never actually heard anyone say any of these things, but as you read an Auster novel, you can never be quite sure whether what you’re reading is sinister, subtle genius or facile drivel. But at some point, you have to decide which side of the fence you’re on. For me, the moment of revelation came with him being the only writer I’ve ever been forced to study who I went back to for simple pleasure. While this collection offers up the excellent Moon Palace, a multi- generational jaunt through the last century from the Wild West to men on the moon, and the visceral In the Country of Last Thing, where ‘the self’ finds no place in a futuristic post-apocalypse, it's The New York Trilogy which ultimately makes this opening gambit of greatest hits fly. Starting off with an anonymous phone call and ending in empty, existential torment, the three novellas - City of Glass (to be turned into a graphic novel in 2005), Ghosts and The Locked Room — are a precise reinvention of the detective genre, an astonishingly vibrant dissection of the hidden terrors of cityscapes and an eerie portrait of obsession and desire. Masterly.
(Brian Donaldson)
CRIME DRAMA DES DILLON
The Glasgow Dragon lLuath PresSi 0000
the rilasiim
dragon
0‘“ Olilt'i".
Christie Devlin is a Glasgow gangster
WHO
has relied heavily on "/IOIOTICC‘ and intimidation to serabble to the top of the pile. Now with the aid of a Triad pact. he plans to monopolise the local drug trade completely and take Glasgow as his own.
But with a feisty teenage
daughter. a reSurfacing alcohol problem and a mysterious figure bent on his ultimate destruction. he has dragons of his own to slay.
Des Dillon's turn at gangland thriller is an intelligent. brutal and
very Scottish (,‘XEHT’IIIHIIOH of the drug trade. With an exi’iilarating iiiiir‘edia’,/. the violence is unflinching but II‘~:‘."';T celebrated. and a cause and effect approach brings the social issues at play tc the xer,’ heart of the story. No character — iTQlT Triad godfather to desperate ILIT‘ile - is :ei‘t in two dimensions arid '.‘/hl|6‘ the protagonist might be offered Our Sympathy. he iS by no means let off the hook.
iI/lark Edmundscni