A round-up of the latest paperback releases
The Pleasant Light of Day
Philip Ó Ceallaigh
Penguin, £8.99
If this volume of stories contained nothing more than The Alchemist,a laugh-out-loud pastiche of a certain wildly popular author from Brazil who shall remain nameless, it would be worth the purchase price. But there's lots more to enjoy as Ó Ceallaigh continues to sharpen the skills he revealed in his award-winning debut, Notes From a Turkish Whorehouse. He has a fondness for the shabbiness of the post-Cold War spy scene, as is evident from My Secret Warand In Another Country. He creates a whole new kind of travel writing – the kind that has tourist boards gnashing their teeth – in a trio of stories set in Egypt: You Believe in God?, Tombstone Bluesand the title story itself. Light – real and metaphorical, absent and present – is the leitmotif which links many of these pieces. The conceit reaches a climax in the final story, High Country, a minutely observed recreation of a solitary trek which will have hill-walkers nodding in recognition at every turn. A sinewy, sturdy, sometimes stomach-churning collection.
Arminta Wallace
The Missing
Tim Gautreaux
Sceptre, £7.99
A missing child called Lily, with cute blonde hair and a voice "like a tiny fiddle", drives the plot of this adventure novel set in 1920s Louisiana. Sam Simoneaux, recently returned from wartime France, was working at the department store when Lily was abducted and feels compelled to join in the search. Leaving behind his devoted, if solemn, wife, he takes up work on a pleasure cruiser on the Mississippi with Lily's family, hoping to uncover some clue leading to the missing girl. Amidst all the dancing, jazz and moonshine on board the Ambassador, Simoneaux is drawn into a dark world of lawlessness and criminality. Memories of his dead son and his own upbringing as an orphan begin to surface as Simoneaux's determination to find Lily takes him into dangerous moral territory. The Missingis an engrossing read – if a little drawn out – which delves into some timely, if uncomfortable, questions about parenthood, family and adoption.
Sorcha Hamilton
Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie – Letters and Diaries 1941-1973
Edited by Victoria Glendinning with Judith Robertson
Pocket Books, £8.99
“How can you or I live without love?” wrote Elizabeth Bowen in 1945. “Without that, one feels like an exile any place that one is.” Bowen was writing to the Canadian diplomat, Charles Ritchie, with whom she had been having an intense affair since 1941. Their often rocky romance would continue until Bowen’s death in 1973. This compelling book includes Bowen’s passionate, funny letters to her lover; Ritchie destroyed his own letters, but his detached, sardonic and elegant voice is preserved here in extracts from his diaries from the same period. The candour of his diaries (he is often convinced the affair means more to Bowen than to himself) is in stark contrast to Bowen’s effusive letters, which are also full of fascinating details of life in both rural Ireland and post-war London. This leads to a sense of imbalance, and one can’t help wondering what Ritchie wrote to Bowen, and what Bowen would have written to herself.
Anna Carey
Stalin’s Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky
Bertrand M Patenaude
Faber, £9.99
Sadly, Trotsky helped to construct the frightful regime of which he himself eventually fell victim. This is the story of his last years in Mexico (1937-40) and it is told in fascinating and dramatic detail. To explain how he ended up in Mexico and why he was important enough to be murdered, much of the book recounts his life, which can be confusing at times as it moves back and forth, putting all the pieces of the jigsaw in place. His role in the 1917 revolution and subsequent civil war, how he was outmanoeuvred by Stalin and finally exiled are all covered, but the real strength of the book lies in how it reconstructs the hothouse atmosphere that existed in Trotsky’s hideaway as the noose tightened. He emerges as a complex personality, utterly devoted to his naive, optimistic, idealistic belief in “permanent revolution” at the expense of those around him – even his own family.
Brian Maye
We Are All Made of Glue
Marina Lewycka
Penguin, £7.99
Marina Lewycka’s third novel, in which beleaguered London heroine Georgie Sinclair, while trying to keep her family from unravelling, finds herself caught up in an eccentric elderly neighbour’s battle to save her house, is a fine comic creation. Equal parts social satire, historical mystery and farce, with a dollop of Middle East politics thrown in for good measure, this 415-page tome of disparate elements is woven together seamlessly by the engaging, and frequently hilarious, conversational voice of its narrator. Much of the book’s strength lies in its depiction of the culture clash between Georgie’s newfound circle of ethnic friends and the madcap conflict that arises when they are thrown together. Their evolution from caricatures to affecting symbols of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Georgie’s eyes is well observed. Unexpectedly, it is this conflict, rather than the sexual misadventures or teenage angst, that is most skilfully and originally described.
Dan Sheehan
