Books REVIEWS
SOCIAL DRAMA IAIN BANKS Stonemouth (Little, Brown) ●●●●● For those Iain Banks fans not overly keen on his sci-fi work, it will be a blessed relief to see no mention of a middle initial ‘M’ in his name here. For those who loved the prickly relationships and family machinations in the smalltown Scotland of The Crow Road, it’s time to crack open a fine malt. That previous book was set
in Gallanach, here it’s ‘Stonemouth’, a fictional but highly recognisable locale pitched near Aberdeen. For the lovelorn Prentice McHoan, read Stewart Gilmour,
banished from his home town after betraying Ellie who just so happened to be the daughter in the scary Murston clan, all laden with troubled beauties and psychotic males. He’s now back with Papa Murston’s permission to attend a funeral, but is this merely a chance for terrible vengeance to be wreaked?
A page-turner for sure this, but there are a fair number of questions and objections raised which might distract you from the narrative’s natural flow. Would Gilmour really be willing to put himself back in the firing line simply on the reassuring word of a dangerous crimelord? In his descriptive sections, Banks can barely let a noun go by without chucking a colour before it and he throws so many subsidiary characters into the mix that you spend too much time trying to work out exactly who will be integral to the book’s central mystery.
Still, if there’s one valuable life lesson to take away from this
novel it’s this: don’t let young kids go wild with cameras at a wedding and then show an uncensored selection later on a big screen. It can only lead to disaster. (Brian Donaldson)
SOCIAL DRAMA PETER CAREY The Chemistry of Tears (Faber) ●●●●●
Grief haunts the pages of Peter Carey’s new novel, the twice Booker-winning author painting a compelling picture of all-consuming love in the 19th and 21st centuries. Catherine Gehrig is a museum conservator who, after the sudden death of her lover, is tasked with reconstructing a mysterious automaton, commissioned by an aristocrat as a present for his consumptive son 157 years earlier.
The project is initially intended to keep Gehrig focused while her personal life unravels, but pretty soon it becomes an obsession, with Carey’s main
characters buffeted by sadness and their drive to complete at any cost.
The Chemistry of Tears is yet another triumph for its creator, breathcatchingly beautiful and tender in places, with strange and shocking revelations slowly revealed. But perhaps most impressive is the Australian writer’s ability to evoke emotion through human recollection, engrossing us in the mania of two very different narrators. (Camilla Pia)
ILLUSTRATED GUIDE GAVIN PRETOR-PINNEY Clouds that Look Like Things (Sceptre) ●●●●●
As founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, Gavin Pretor-Pinney knows more than a thing or two about cirrus and cumulus. And all the other ones. The trouble with this collection is that some of the pictures are, frankly, not very convincing and having to read the caption to discover what we’re supposed to be looking at is a little bit like an impersonator telling you who they’re about to mimic. It’s a case of seeing what you want to see in a lot of instances (Sherlock Holmes in Turkey: where?), but that cloud in Arisaig really does look like a tennis player in action (but specifically Andy Murray?).
‘No other organisation could have come up with a set of images like these,’ Pretor-Pinney announces proudly. That’s undeniable. On flicking through the Scout Association’s Annual Report 2011, you will find absolutely no pictures of clouds that look like things. While he insists that finding curious shapes in the sky is an antidote to modern living, he is honest enough to acknowledge that such endeavours are ultimately ‘pointless’. Unless you want to put a book together. (Brian Donaldson)
VIDEOGAMES HISTORY DAVID KUSHNER Jacked (Collins) ●●●●●
This ‘unauthorised’ history of Grand Theft Auto traces the game’s development from its early beginnings in Dundee to become one of the highest selling videogames of all time. The most fascinating element of the GTA saga is not the groundbreaking gaming experience but its cultural impact. Vilified by the Christian right, GTA became the poster boy for violent videogames and their perceived threat to society.
Much like comics, VHS and heavy metal before it GTA found itself demonised, stirring up a political storm in America. Kushner gives a human face to
DYSTOPIAN THRILLER JULI ZEH The Method (Harvill Secker) ●●●●● German author Juli Zeh’s translated 2009 novel is an Orwellian vision of the near future in which civilisation adheres to the stark principles of The Method. Priority is given to physical health over mental freedom with sexual partners being selected on the basis of compatible immunology, while exercise and cleanliness are state regulated and DNA evidence is irrefutable proof of a crime. Biologist Mia Holl has always carefully followed The Method, but when her brother commits suicide after being found guilty of murder and rape, she starts to
question her rational outlook on life.
this ideological conflict by setting up Sam Houser as the dogmatic head of Rockstar against equally blinkered moral crusader Jack Thompson. Kushner has a tendency to favour sensationalist language but it helps propel the story forward, turning what could be a dry, technical history lesson into an entertaining, if hyperbolic, read. (Henry Northmore)
Tightly plotted, philosophically enquiring and disturbingly plausible, The Method convincingly corresponds with current social and political trends. Holl’s nightmare escalates with compelling speed and the confrontations she has with her chief persecutor, journalist and witchfinder general Heinrich Kramer, are riveting intellectual and emotional duels. (Jay Richardson)
50 THE LIST 29 Mar–26 Apr 2012