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FICTIONALISED HISTORY DAVID PEACE Occupied City (Faber) ●●●●●
The theme of defeat has been central to the work of David Peace but has never been more potent in this, the second of his Tokyo trilogy. The Damned United featured loss at the heart of Brian Clough’s 44 days in charge of Leeds United while GB84 probed the disintegration of Britain’s working class at the hands of a wilfully destructive Tory government. In the background to Occupied City, the stench of Japan’s wartime defeat comes right off the pages while he fills up the foreground with the hellish tale of a mass poisoning in the capital city’s Teikoku Bank in 1948. An artist called Sadamichi Hirasawa was subsequently sentenced to hang, but his fate was never fully sealed and he died in prison in 1987, doubts lingering to this day that a miscarriage of justice had taken place. Such conspiratorial talk may have dragged Peace towards this crime and
he boosts the sense of paranoia by throwing in other shadowy contexts: the city’s occupation by the victorious Americans, the biological experiments conducted upon Japan’s POWs, and some shady police work (an echo to his Red Riding Quartet and its corrupt Yorkshire coppers). Peace couches this already complex story in an increasingly dense Rashomon-like narrative in which a dozen characters voice their own version of events. At times the book is frustratingly impenetrable, but is also never anything other than blazingly inventive. The contemporary literary world should be glad to have Peace in our time. (Brian Donaldson)
ADULT FANTASY MATHIAS MALZIEU The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (Chatto & Windus) ●●●●●
Perhaps the most fantastical thing about this book is its depiction of an Edinburgh where a tumble-down old house owned by a woman who births the children of prostitutes and unfaithful women sits at the top of Arthur’s Seat. In any event, it’s the wintry, gothic character of the city that Mathias Malzieu has adopted, rather than its geographical precision. Malzieu, as the lead singer of the eccentric
French band Dionysos, has been described as ‘a genius’ by Eric Cantona and ‘Francois Truffaut with a band’ by Iggy Pop. This Tim Burtonesque fable is based on his group’s concept album La Mécanique du Cœur and concerns a dispossessed child who
must be saved shortly after birth by the implantation of a cuckoo-clock motor in his defective heart. It’s a short read about growing up which should resonate with all ages, couched in beautiful description and metaphor that weathers the translation process well. (David Pollock) FAMILY THRILLER GEORGE DAWES GREEN Ravens (Sphere) ●●●●●
It has been 14 long years since we were gripped by George Dawes Green’s best- selling novel The Juror, so this follow-up has
plenty to live up to. Thankfully, Ravens delivers – and then some. Set in the deathly quiet US town of Brunswick, it tells the tale of the lottery- winning Boatwright family, whose happiness quickly turns to horror as they undergo a
terrifying ordeal as a result of their financial success. Weighty and complex characters are cleverly depicted – tough girl Tara and the twisted Shaw McBride perhaps provoking the most intrigue – and the writing is pithy and no-frills, which makes for a compelling read immediately. Most interestingly, however, is Dawes Green’s ability to conjure up a nagging sense of foreboding and tension throughout the work, with some parts of the story genuinely chilling. Dark, unconventional and smart, Ravens is far from your average thriller and is subsequently a must for fans of the genre and the uninitiated alike. (Camilla Pia)
SHORT STORIES AL KENNEDY What Becomes (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
Glasgow writer and sometime comedian AL Kennedy does nothing to overturn her reputation as a miserablist in this latest collection of short stories. Through a litany of everyday tragedy, marriages crumble, feelings are trampled on and lives are lost as physical and mental cruelties are wreaked from sources both internal and remote via death, the economy, lust, war and toothache. As Kennedy asserts in ‘Whole Family with Young Children Devastated’, ‘huge and harmful forces stalk
Reviews Books ALSO PUBLISHED
humanity unopposed’. Versions or parts of each of the 12 stories have previously been published separately, but the similarity in tone works towards a cohesive whole. Taking turns to fully inhabit each victim’s persona, Kennedy’s deft descriptions, accomplished turn of phrase and impressive range of styles are all present. Thankfully, so is her mordant wit. Her restraint in avoiding the temptation to offer explanations or consolations is admirable, and the final tale, ‘Vanish’, ends with only a bittersweet solace and camaraderie in defeat. (Suzanne Black)
RIOT GRRRL COMIC JAMIE HEWLETT & ALAN MARTIN Tank Girl: Three (Titan Books) ●●●●●
Back in the 90s there was one woman who encapsulated the spirit of the age, the epitome of cool that was Tank Girl. This irascible, boozing, bonking and brawling babe who took no shit from nobody sprang from the fevered minds of writer Alan Martin and the pen of Jamie Hewlett. And while Martin’s scripts created this harsh, but very funny, post- apocalyptic landscape, it was Hewlett’s instantly recognisable art that really captured the imagination: a winning formula that helped
5 MEMOIRS Roland Chambers The Last Englishman The all-true story of Arthur Ransome, who was caught up in the Russian Revolution while working for British intelligence and became a double agent. Faber. J Randy Tarborelli The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe You might have thought that no fresh material could be eked from Norma Jean’s mental problems, relationship with the Kennedys and complex family history, but oh no. Sidgwick.
Gretel Wachtel & Claudia Strachan A Different Kind of Courage This tells how a brave German woman helped to protect those being hunted down by the Nazis during the 40s. Mainstream. Martin Stannard Muriel Spark: The Biography Having written a widely praised biog of Evelyn Waugh, the grand Dame invited Stannard to write her story back in 1992. This is the result. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Christopher Sandford Imran Khan The ‘definitive’ memoir subtitled ‘The Cricketer, the Playboy, the Politician’. HarperCollins.
catapult Gorillaz to the top of the charts. This third
compendium – collecting the final run of stories form the original Deadline magazine – leaves you with the nagging suspicion that it was a strong case of style over substance. Martin was perhaps at his funniest and most cynical by this stage and Hewlett’s graphical work is so wonderful it’s hard not to get sucked into Tank Girl’s anarchic world of marsupial boyfriends, ultra violence and large armoured vehicles. (Henry Northmore)
6–13 Aug 2009 THE LIST 17