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Books REVIEWS
MYSTERY NOVEL LOUISE WELSH The Girl on the Stairs (John Murray) ●●●●● While that title may suggest Louise Welsh has swerved into Richard Curtis- esque romcom territory, a swift glance at the front cover tells a very different story. Ever since Nic Roeg stuck a killer dwarf into a red mac for his psycho- chiller Don’t Look Now, the mere mention of a similar rouge garment in
a piece of culture can only mean one thing: spooky terror is afoot. And so the sight of a young girl (symbolising the story’s precocious 13-year-old Berliner) staring up at us through a flight of stairs sets a chilling mood that Louise Welsh rarely lets up in this wonderfully atmospheric novel. Heavily-pregnant Glaswegian Jane Logan has moved to
the German capital with her partner Petra, a Dietrich-esque businesswoman who heads to Vienna for a week’s work just at the point where Jane’s paranoia reaches its zenith. Everywhere she looks there are subtle threats and suspicious characters, none more so than her neighbour Alban Mann, a gynaecologist who seems to have an overly cosy relationship with the local prostitutes. His daughter Anna is the titular little red riding hoodie who may or may not be the subject of domestic abuse and whose missing mother remains an unsolved mystery; though the confused pensioner downstairs is convinced that Greta Mann is buried in a makeshift grave nearby.
The initial shades of Rosemary’s Baby and The Turn of the Screw are skilfully wielded by Louise Welsh and moulded into some fresh and horrible terrain, with the wartime ghosts of this haunted city rising up as old Germany clashes against the shock of the new. (Brian Donaldson)
HISTORICAL FABLE NED BEAUMAN The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre) ●●●●●
Egon Loeser, handsome, charming and clever, just can’t seem to get laid. He’s had girlfriends and the occasional fumble with a prostitute, but in a bid to conquer the luscious Adele Hitler (no relation), he continually fails to make the grade.
The premise for Ned Beauman’s second novel is a semi-surreal quest to conquer science, history and the art of seduction. Moving from Berlin and Paris to Los Angeles and spanning 1679 and 1962, Loeser chases the unattainable Adele, while simultaneously seeking to uncover the mystery of set designer Adriano Lavicini and his teleportation
FAMILY DRAMA HERMAN KOCH The Dinner (Atlantic) ●●●●●
An English translation of a Dutch bestseller, The Dinner is audacious, bone dry in its humour and a gripping addition to the disturbed-teen-destroys- family genre. The difference here is the lengths to which the family will stoop in order to keep itself together. Two brothers prepare for a dinner with their wives at an exclusive Amsterdam restaurant, a terrible secret threatening to destroy one’s candidacy for Prime Minister and more besides. Narrated by retired teacher Paul, whose irritation
with his sibling is evident immediately, every aspect of the dreadful meal, from the manager’s
over-elaborate descriptions of their food onwards, is rendered with detailed distaste, the sense of imminent disaster never far from the surface. This is Herman Koch’s main achievement but Paul’s unreliability and the novel’s gradual drip feed of key information feels too manipulative, even if there’s an undoubted pleasure in being toyed with so skilfully. (Jay Richardson) device. At times like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and at others a Monty Python sketch, Beauman’s style and imagination save The Teleportation Accident from becoming a farce and create instead an energetic, more readable Ulysses in Loeser’s journey of self-discovery. A novel that turns everything on its head, Beauman’s book is critical, funny and deliciously deviant. (Jen Bowden)
THRILLER NOVEL JOHN J NIVEN Cold Hands (William Heinemann) ●●●●●
There aren’t many books that make you want to read through your fingers, but Cold Hands is one of them. This grisly thriller – the first by Kill Your Friends author John Niven with an added middle initial – has all the gory details of a Saw film. But nestled amongst the depictions of blood, bare bone and the wintry Saskatchewan landscape is a moral quandary: does Donnie Miller, initially so likeable, actually deserve the agony he’s dealt? Donnie lives in this prairie province with his loving
wife and child. But when he finds their dead dog ravaged in the snow, he worries that the past he’s been running away from is catching up. Niven deftly switches between the harsh Canadian winter where Donnie’s story unfolds and his troubled youth in Ayrshire. The story zips along, quickly reaching its brutal denouement. And while the final scenes feel over-played, Cold Hands is certainly one of the year’s smartest thrillers, as well as its most blood-soaked. (Yasmin Sulaiman)
MODERN SATIRE MARTIN AMIS Lionel Asbo (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
Lionel Asbo has produced considerable hot and botherment, due to Amis’ privately-educated finger-poking fun at the British working classes. In this case, it’s the kind for whom money is plentiful, but none of it obtained (to quote Amis) ‘by work of mind’.
The eponymous Asbo is a violent and troubled twentysomething, the youngest of seven children, all born before their mother was 19. We view him through the eyes of his sensitive young nephew, Desmond, a character who we actually care about – something sorely missing from Amis’
previous novel, The Pregnant Widow. A lottery win of £140m takes us into the cult of modern celebrity writ large, but with enough truisms to counterbalance the clichés, and enough tenderness to calm the hatred. Undeniably light entertainment, Lionel Asbo is still a masterclass in structure, vocabulary and style, with the added benefit of being a genuine page-turner. (Kelly Apter) 19 Jul–2 Aug 2012 THE LIST 41