This week's paperbacks
The Semantics of Murder
Aifric Campbell
Serpent’s Tail, £7.99
The biography on the cover of Aifric Campbell's debut novel is so enthralling you'd wonder why she bothered to venture into fiction at all: "as a convent schoolgirl her greyhound won the Irish Derby . . . a hymn she co-wrote won a national song contest . . . lectured in semantics at the University of Göteborg . . . spent 13 years as an investment banker". Thank goodness she switched career to creative writing via psychotherapy, however, because The Semantics of Murderis a highly readable thriller. Jay Hamilton is a successful, handsome psychoanalyst to the rich and famous in London. Dana Flynn is a biographer who's determined to get at the truth about the murder of his brilliant brother, a professor at UCLA. In the process, she churns up lots Jay would much rather keep under wraps. Campbell's debut is a page-turner with panache by the bucketload. Arminta Wallace
The Faber Book of Gardens
Edited by Philip Robinson Faber, £12.99
This is not a gardening book per se. But it is a delightful collection of prose and poetry culled from a surprising variety of writers and poets. We literally start at the beginning with the world's most renowned garden, Eden, and are then taken on a tour of some of the most exotic and mundane places imaginable – from enormous royal gardens to your more humble plot out the back. Unsurprisingly, in keeping with the birthplace of the majority of contributors, English gardens feature prominently. We hear from Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Chaucer, du Maurier, Kipling, Shakespeare and DH Lawrence. Not that Ireland is overlooked – we have a pieces from WB Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh. Readers might like it, gardeners will love it. Owen Dawson
Hope for Newborns
Rodge Glass
Faber, £7.99
Narrated by prudish Lewis Passman, last dutiful son of estranged parents, this Jewish-Mancunian family saga tells a none-too-subtle story of English decline, symbolised by the Passmans' wartime-themed barber's shop, once a place of complacent camaraderie, now apparently under attack from anti-war protesters. While Lewis's life is circumscribed by caring for his mute and reclusive mother, his older twin brothers have both gone west, one to fly the flag for Anglo-American values in the US army, the other to run a popcorn business with his boyfriend in Canada. Both periodically return for inconclusive family reunions and glimpses of their home town's sorry state, but neither are aware of Lewis's alternative virtual existence, where his dreams of romance and a role as a fifth columnist against western decadence are concentrated in a computer screen. The novel's biggest surprise is when this strand of the story unexpectedly blooms into twisted life near the end, and it suddenly seems a shame that what went before did not set things up more coherently. Giles Newington
Chicago
Alaa al-Aswany (trans Farouk Abdel Wahab)
Harper Perennial, £7.99
Beginning with the urban legend of the Chicago fire started by Mrs O’Leary’s cow, this novel goes on to weave a scheme for a political conflagration involving the Egyptian community in the present-day Windy City. Following the individual yet intersecting stories of several Egyptian emigres Aswany makes exhilarating use of cliffhangers and suspension of action. Although the language, actions and reactions of the Americans seem somewhat unauthentic, perhaps partly due to the translation, Aswany astutely describes the mindset, inner turmoil and social/political conflicts of Middle East nationals displaced into a newly hostile, post-9/11 US.
Despite a small opening for optimism, this increasingly bleak novel depicts Egyptians who come to realise there's no place like home – with the distinct feeling they're not in Cairo anymore. Christine Madden
The Age of the Warrior:
Selected Writings
Robert Fisk
Harper Perennial, £9.99
Regular readers of Robert Fisk's reporting from the Middle East (and elsewhere) will know what to expect. Those less familiar with his journalistic style may be unsettled by his blunt tell-it-as-I-see-it style. In other words, he likes to report from the "other" side. And as ever he does not disappoint. This book is a selection of his articles for the London Independentover the last five years.
Perhaps because, he suggests, we unconsciously accept war reports in the media at face value, we may not recognise the subtle way we are being manipulated: Did we want to believe Iraq had WMDs (probably yes)? When does torture become interrogation (when enacted by America)? When does assassination become targeted killing (when Israel attacks Palestine)?
If much of this book is given to matters of war, Fisk is most engaging when he occasionally deviates to topics such as books, cinema, his father and especially the misuse/abuse of English. His frugal use of words is a delight. This book is both provocative and engaging. Owen Dawson