Reviews
FAMILY DRAMA ZADIE SMITH On Beauty (Hamish Hamilton) 000.
Top news: Zadie Smith has come back. With her last novel, The Autograph Man, there was a sense that one of the greatest young writers of her generation had been lost to us. That book had forgotten about the good storytelling and brilliant characterisation of White Teeth, instead plumping for a tricksy, clever-clever kind of prose that was as much interested in putting strange graphic devices on the page as it was making us turn those pages. We might call this post-Eggers fiction, after Dave, the dude- king of American alt.literature, a scene with which Smith has formed tight
bonds.
With On Beauty, Smith has returned to core principles, crafting a novel that is, simply, a great, funny and life-enhancing read. It centres on the family of Howard Belsey, a fiftysomething British academic teaching art history at a university on the American east coast. His black American wife and his three children tolerate his idiosyncrasies, his pet hates, his Englishness and his silly feud with a fellow academic, until an unfaithful Belsey causes it to all come crashing spectacularly in on them. With vivid, dextrous aplomb, Smith writes wonderfully from the perspectives of Belsey, indomitable but melancholic wife Kiki, eldest son Jerome (a born again Christian), studious daughter Zora and youngest son Levi, a would-
be ‘street’ hip hopper.
Yes, there are insights into the tensions between race and class and nationality, and treatises on the nature of beauty. But mainly, most memorably, On Beauty is an elegantly told tale of a family, in love and in
crisis. (Craig McLean)
SOCIAL DRAMA LISA DIERBECK One Pill Makes You Smaller
(Canongate) on.
Alice Duncan is an 1 1- year-old girl who could easily pass for 16. It's the 19703 and she lives with her drug—addled young aunt Esme in a faded old manor house in New York. Her artist father is in a nuthouse. her mum has disappeared and she spends her summer holidays doing collages
and avoiding the advances of JD. one of her aunt's boyfriends. All
this changes when Alice
‘ y
wins herself a place in an artistic commune for exceptionally gifted students. As she starts to deceive all around her about her real age she gets to experience things that no one of that age should. Invested with a clear passion for Nabokov novels Lolita and Pnin. Lewis Carroll's A/ice books and the avant garde fluxus and performance movements that developed on the 705
US east coast. Dierbeck‘s delightful debut is a sexy. perverse and deeply moving read. (Paul Dale)
COMEDY ANALYSIS OLIVER DOUBLE Getting the Joke (Methuen) 000
{xiiiittzm . ._ Subtitled ‘The Inner Workings of Stand—Up Comedy'. this really does do what is says on the crumpled flyer. Oliver Double runs a stand-up comedy module at the University of Kent. though curiously doesn't appear on the Chortle website's A—Z of comedians: so can we trust the guy? Though perhaps more crucially. can we really buy into this book which says that the art of stand-up comedy can be taught?
Certainly seems so if the tales of informal educational gatherings between legendary comedians revealed here are true but is it really a subject ripe for dissecting in a lecture hall or in a book like this? Brushing up your technique is one thing; having that red raw talent is surely another. Still. as a sprint through the comedy from American vaudeville through to the sweaty comedy caves we chuckle in today. it's entertaining enough. Yet perversely. there's barely a laugh to be had in its 320 pages.
(Brian Donaldson)
BLACK COMEDY ALAN BISSETT The Incredible Adam Spark
(Review) 0000
Alan Bissett's second novel is one of those crafty tragi- comedies that lure the reader into a false sense of security before neatly whipping away the carpet of expectation. The opening scenes introduce us to Adam Spark. 19. fast food
Books
worker and deeply impressionable. cared for and kept from harm's way by his beloved sister Jude. their parents having ‘gone to 01'. There's more than a hint of autism in Sparky‘s obseSSion with Queen and superheroes. and his near-violent reaction to having his routine disrupted. but Bissett wisely leaves his hero's implied learning difficulty unspecMed.
Following an accident. Sparky believes he has acquired superpowers. including the ability to alter the pace of time. The comic book pastiche and Sparky's vivid. authentic voice allow Bissett to explore difficult questions of 'good‘ versus ‘evil' Without falling back on easy answers. while the developing relationship between Adam and Jude. as she sets out to Cut the umbilical chord. is movingly depicted. (Allan Radcliffe)
LITERARY STUDY STUART KELLY The Book of Lost Books
(Viking) on
A self-confessed obsessive. Stuart Kelly has compiled synopses on the books that are no longer and some that never were. with their endless possibilities and the lives and quirks of their hapless authors. Presented in chronological order. early discussion of the
hypothetical greats of the ancients is worthy and interesting to a point. but somewhat dry. The reward for what increasingly becomes a trudge through the volumes that have left only the faintest trace begins to materialise as we approach the likes of Shakespeare. becoming altogether more tangible nearer the last couple of centuries.
Here. tales of the lost. unstarted and unfinished potential of more accountable literary greats are spiced with a greater knowledge of their personal lives and literary habits. The Book of Lost Books, though appealing to the pedant in us all. does not always capture the magic and wonderment of the subject: the ones that got away.
(Mark Edmundson)
ALSO PUBLISHED
Alexander McCall Smith Friends, Lovers, Chocolate When a chap with a brand new heart meets Isabel Dalhousie. she gets wrapped up in an odd case indeed. Little, Brown.
John McGahern Memoir The acclaimed Irish scribe gives us his own recollections of childhood loss and love. Faber
Allan Foster The Literary Traveller in Edinburgh As part of the World City of Literature campaign, a guide to the birthplaces. burial spots, tours and bookstores of the capital. Mainstream. Peter Lamont The First Psychic The true story of Daniel Home. who took it upon himself to spread the gospel of ‘modern spiritualism' and in so doing became a ‘notorious \fictorian wizard’. Little, Brown. Paul Whitelaw Belle and Sebastian: Just a Modern Rock Story The first ever biography of everyone's favourite shyly fey Glasgow pop stars. He/ter Ska/fer.
8 1’? Sci) 7005) THE LIST 2'7