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HISTORICAL DRAMA CHRIS HANNAN Missy
(Chatfo 3;. Windus)
“5...”. r“"'£
Missy is the first novel by award-winning Scottish playwright Chris Hannan but on this evidence, he should most definitely return to the theatre. Set in 1860s California, we follow the trials and tribulations of Dol, a young prostitute working out of saloons in the old Wild West. While heading east looking for a new start, Dol interrupts the attempted suicide of Pontius. an act which will set in motion numerous unfortunate and unpleasant events.
It’s an uneven novel and one that feels not a little self-indulgent. Early on Dol refers to herself as having enough self- pity ‘ballooning up inside her to refloat Ophelia’ and it’s this incongruity of language from its central character, coupled with a failure to evoke the
SPORT HISTORY
JOE HUMPHREYS Foul Play
(Icon Books) 000
atmosphere of 19th century American mining settlements, that stops the reader from immersing themselves in the character. Delving into Dol’s world ultimately makes for a somewhat lacklustre expenence.
(Gordon Eldrett)
POETRY ANTHOLOGY PATIENCE
AGBABI
Bloodshot Monochrom (Canongate) 000
There’s definitely something about the label ‘radical feminist bisexual performance poet’ that conjures up images of a woman with multiple axes to grind. Luckily, Patience Agbabi, a former Eton writer-in-residence and regular Edinburgh Book Festival speaker, is too busy showing off her verbal gymnastics to linger too long on the ball—breaking or ranting. Straddling the literary divide between high- brow and low—brow, this third poetry collection from Agbabi playfully imagines an agony
aunt's conversation wrth celebrated poets like Robert Frost. Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. before taking a modern day channel flick through botched Gaydar romances. casual racism, feeder boyfriends and the birth of her baby son. Her love of the English language. and finding new ways she can subvert it, shines through. Honest, darkly funny and endlessly creative, she takes the sonnet, chats it up, tattoos it, gives it some motherly advice then sends it away again. (Claire Sawers)
SPIRITUAL MEMOIR MARY A WINKOWSKI When Ghosts Speak (Hodder Mobius)
0.
Mary Ann Winkowski has spent the last 50 years assisting earthbound spirits in their passing into The Light, and has more recently acted as a paranormal consultant for popular TV show Ghost Whisperer. In this book she endeavours to set the record straight on the precise nature of these phenomena. Covering the extent of Winkowski’s personal and professional experiences in the field, this memoir turns self- help book in the final chapters, setting out the symptoms of ghostly
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With the protests surrounding the Beijing Olympics going into overdrive, disgraced sprinter Dwain Chambers seeking a new career in rugby league and the integrity of referees, umpires and line judges being called into question every single week, Foul Play: What’s Wrong with Sport? seems like a timely tome. Yet, as Irish journalist Joe Humphreys readily notes, greed, scandal and corruption have been bedfellows of sporting endeavour from the very first whistle and even the seemingly whiter than white likes of WG Grace occasionally showed that the Queensbury Rules were there to be flaunted.
As Humphreys argues, sport has now landed a knock-out blow to religion in delivering a belief system and facilitating a series of rituals which guide the daily lives of fanatics. Legendary, yet deeply flawed, individuals such as Zinédine Zidane, Mike Tyson and Ben Johnson fulfil our need for leisure-time messiahs, and these days we seek divine intervention from the technical areas rather than the pulpits; when Pope John Paul ll’s funeral was broadcast in Ireland, twice as many viewers tuned in to the Republic’s game with
Switzerland.
Humphreys isn’t just content to list the multitude of sins perpetrated by sport, but is happy to take a controversial line on doping and steroids (ach, what’s the harm?) and to insist that watching sport rots the brain. But he loses the plot slightly by insisting that the bamboozlingly dumb comments made by football managers such as Kevin Keegan (actually, mainly Kevin Keegan) are far preferable to listening to intelligent minds delving deeper into formations, tactics and the offside rule. Yellow card for Humphreys.
(Brian Donaldson)
70/147; (7.," A?! C? "I
incursion and offering various curative and preventative measures to try for oneself.
Even for those willing to accept wholeheartedly her accounts as testament to a truth that ghosts walk amongst us, there is little here to entertain. Though plain and direct, Winkowski doesn't write with any real personality as she rolls through assertions and their supportive accounts. Her chief claim is that the existence of the earthbound spirit is quite mundane; this message comes across loud and clear. (Mark Edmundson)
TEEN DRAMA JOANNE PROULX Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet (Picador) 000
Hot on the heels of Academy Award— winning comedy Juno comes another enjoyable tale of a smart—mouthed North American trying to make sense of the adult world. Joanne Proulx’s debut
centres around Luke Hunter who. in the opening scene. 'bullshits' his best pal bx telling him exactly when and where the friend is going to die. When fate calls Luke's bluff and events unfold exactly as he foretold. Luke is terrified. and recoils from his friends and family as any number of interested parties start staking their claim on him.
JOANNE FRUULX
As in Diablo Cody‘s literate script for Juno. Proulx succeeds in overturning the caricature of the morose, inarticulate teenager, to create a first person narrative voice that, while colloquial, is richly detailed and highly nuanced.The compassion and insight Proulx extends to her troubled young protagonist is also striking, while the black humour she draws from Luke’s daily struggle to carve out his own identity is extremely infectious.
(Allan Radcliffe)
ALSO PUBLISHED
5 DEBUT NOVELS
new Kaddour Waltenberg A bumper espionage thriller between World War I and the Benin Wall‘s collapse featuring a German author, an American singer and a French journalist. Harvi/i Seeker.
Jane Kotaplsh Salvage Narrated by a woman who has decamped from Manhattan to rural Virginia suffering from some childhood demons. And her mother isn't helping. believing herself to have links to saints in the Dark Ages. Faber Alex Chance The Final Days Set in Utah, this one features a psychologist who receives letters from a kidnapped child and goes in hot pursuit of a dangerous cult. William Heinemann. Theresa Rebeck Three Girls and Their Brother A family gets sucked into a whirlwind of agents. managers, parties and paparazzi in this showbiz tale. HarperCo/lins.
Aifric Campbell The Semantics of Murder In London, a psychoanalyst is troubled when a patient steals a baby. Serpents Tail.
10—24 Apr 2008 THE LIST 31