Books REVIEWS
CRIME THRILLER STUART MACBRIDE Birthdays for the Dead (HarperCollins) ●●●●●
A standalone diversion from his Logan McRae novels, Stuart MacBride once again demonstrates grit and brutality in Birthdays for the Dead. Set in the fictional town of Oldcastle, the story begins with DC Ash Henderson waking to check his teeth are still there from the fight the night before, and opening his daughter’s birthday card. Within is a photo of the same daughter being tortured to death after her abduction five years previously, a vicious memoir sent on her birthday every year since she vanished. That Henderson is
investigating the serial killer and hasn’t told anyone about his own involvement for fear of losing his chance of revenge is compelling enough, but MacBride’s precise, rough-edged prose style barges the story along with grim efficiency.
In a world of grey, rain-streaked bypasses and grimy council estates, Henderson is revealed as a damaged man with a noble cause, a brute that’s still among the best MacBride’s nasty world has to offer. (David Pollock)
SOCIAL ESSAYS MARCUS BERKMANN A Shed of One’s Own (Little, Brown) ●●●●●
What is middle-age? Is it a fixed number or a fluid miasma of values, outlooks and opinions? Marcus Berkmann believes it could strike at any time (you could even get a middle-aged teenager) but is perhaps more prevalent now given that everywhere you look, the fountain of youthfulness is celebrated.
But by the time he gets to his ‘Culture’ section, Berkmann simply sounds like a grumpy middle- aged man. You could write this compartmentalised chapter yourself: music, films, TV and, oh, everything just isn’t as good as it used to be.
Although A Shed of One’s Own is not as wildly
funny as it promises to be, Berkmann is occasionally in possession of an exquisite turn-of-phrase: ‘becoming middle-aged hardens your attitudes, as well as your toenails’ being one such beauty. The final chapter on the Grim Reaper and our complex attitudes to the death of people both older and younger than ourselves also goes some way to redeeming the book. (Brian Donaldson) 48 THE LIST 5 Jan–2 Feb 2012
SOCIAL DRAMA EDMUND WHITE Jack Holmes and His Friend (Bloomsbury) ●●●●● Edmund White has never shied away from putting himself on the page, scribing autobiographical fiction and memoirs for over 30 years. Jack Holmes and His Friend is no exception. White attended boarding school in the American Midwest, studied Chinese at the University of Michigan in the late
1950s, worked as a journalist in New York City in the 60s and, following years of promiscuity, dedicates time and effort to AIDS charities. So too Jack Holmes. But while the line between where White ends and Holmes
begins is blurred, the book’s eponymous character has a set of emotions and traumas all his own. Not least his heartfelt, but fruitless love for Will Wright – the ‘friend’ – whose voice delivers almost half the novel. Intriguingly, the sections seen through Holmes’ eyes are written in the third person, while the pages dedicated to Wright are in the first, perhaps affording White more distance from the character we’ll all assume is based on him. Despite this disparity, both men are imbued with enough detail to make them live and breathe: the outward traits of Jack revealed during Will’s chapters, the inner hopes and fears reserved for his own and vice versa. The disparate sexual exploits of Holmes and Wright – one gay, the other straight – occupy much of the novel. Graphic details are readily forthcoming, be it between a man and woman, two men or a combination of the two at an orgy. And why not? White writes sex well, without a hint of toe-curling cliché. Indeed, in the absence of any great reveals, sex in a changing world is the wave that this poetic and beautifully written tale of male friendship coasts along on. (Kelly Apter)
FAMILY DRAMA SAMANTHA HARVEY All is Song (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
Following her stirring debut The Wilderness, Samantha Harvey brings it down a notch with this breezy follow-up. All is Song contains some seething tensions and long-standing familial grudges, but they don’t quite set the pulse racing. After the death of their father and separation from
his partner, Leonard takes refuge in the home of brother William and his family. There is sibling love there, but the pair’s differences are all-too apparent: Leonard worries about dipping into a semi-permanent wine haze while William is a vegetarian who can stub cigarettes out with his
bare feet. But Leonard is not just here for a place to lay his hat; on behalf of their dead dad, he is tasked to discover William’s actions during the Poll Tax Riots, a quest which helps further splinter the family. Harvey’s prose is once more deftly controlled and exquisitely measured, but her
tale fails to grip largely due to an all-too grey cast. (Brian Donaldson)
MODERN FABLE ALI SHAW The Man Who Rained (Atlantic) ●●●●●
After the success of The Girl With Glass Feet, Ali Shaw provides another fable with a folkloric romance set in a small, superstitious American town. But Thunderstown is not as it first appears when Elsa Beletti arrives to start afresh following a relationship break-up and the death of her father. We join the 29-year-old New Yorker ‘at the start of starting over’ with Shaw’s vivid, dream-like descriptions perfectly conveying her grief and trepidation. A sense of adventure and new beginnings is soon tempered by brushes with the
uncanny. Beletti has a lot to contend with as she battles an intense range of emotions triggered by family memories and her experiences of this mysterious place with its vivid cast of creatures, deities, spirits and part-weather people. Fantastical elements apart, however, The Man Who Rained is ultimately a tale of liberation and impossible love and it’s this, along with Shaw’s economical yet enchanting way with words, that works the real magic here. (Camilla Pia)