A New Leaf

Let me just get this right: a tree was chopped down to make a bookshelf in the shape of a tree to hold books made from chopped down trees. It comes from a website that wasn't made from chopped down anything.

Book Now

Among the top ten book shops in the world named by The Guardian is none other than Glasgow's city centre branch of Borders. Sean Dodson says few readers can fail to be beguiled by its neo-classical facade. "People reading on the steps outside have become as much a feature of Glasgow as the traffic cone on the head of Wellington's statue."

Not any more. Legions of Goths have been swept from the steps and security guards now patrol them to ensure that Borders is a Goth-free zone.

The other bookshops on the list are also worth a second look. Among them, the reconstituted church that is the Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht (above) and the majestic Livrario Lello in Porto.

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I'm pretty sure these magnificent bookshops live up to their first impressions.

Season's Readings

As a coda to the festive season, here's my round-up of the books that accompanied me through the past twelve months.

2007 was the year I discovered Alan Bennett. I'd been aware of his work before, but it's only this year that I've come to explore and fully enjoy his writing. His short stories, monologues and plays have entertained and inspired me throughout the year, and I look forward to reading more from this brilliant writer in 2008.

But before closing the door on another year of reading, here, in reverse order of enjoyment, are my bite-sized book reviews of 2007.


Title: The Collectors
Author: David Baldacci
Review: A thriller that wasn't from a writer who couldn't. Awful.
Score: 1/10

Title: JPod
Author: Douglas Coupland
Review: Follies in geekland. Disappointing.
Score: 3/10

Title: This Book Will Save Your Life
Author: A. M. Homes
Review: Silly satire on Californian suburban life. Puzzling.
Score: 5/10

Title: The Edifice Complex
Author: Deyan Sudjic
Review: Deliciously gossipy insight into architecture as a weapon of mass seduction. Entertaining.
Score: 6/10

Title: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
Review: A youngster unravels a mystery left behind by his father when the Twin Towers fell. Moving.
Score: 6/10

Title: The Outsider
Author: Albert Camus
Review: Bleak story of a man who appears indifferent to his fate. Depressing.
Score: 6/10

Title: Be Near Me
Author: Andrew O'Hagan
Review: A parish priest's ministry turns tragic in a decaying Ayrshire town. Poetic.
Score: 6/10

Title: In God's Name: an investigation into the murder of Pope John Paul I
Author: David Yallop
Review: Dodgy doings at the Vatican. Compelling.
Score: 6/10

Title: The Plague
Author: Albert Camus
Review: Thought-provoking story of human responses to a deadly threat. Contagious.
Score: 6/10

Title: The Weather Makers: how man is changing the planet and what it means for life on Earth
Author: Tim Flannery
Review: An SOS for Earth. Convincing.
Score: 6/10

Title: And Now on Radio 4
Author: Simon Elmes
Review: Celebrating 40 years of a jewel in the BBC crown. Cosy.
Score: 6/10

Title: Basil Hume, the Monk Cardinal
Author: Anthony Howard
Review: Eminently absorbing biography of a man whom the Queen called "my cardinal". Insightful.
Score: 7/10

Title: Hatless Jack: the president, the fedora and the history of American style
Author: Neil Steinberg
Review: How JFK didn't kill the American hat industry. Offbeat
Score: 7/10

Title: Life of Pi
Author: Yann Martel 7/10
Review: A boy, a boat, adrift, alive. And a tiger called Richard Parker. Surprising.
Score: 7/10

Title: The Interpretation of Murder
Author: Jeb Rubenfeld
Review: History and mystery with a dash of psychology and a ration of passion. Excellent.
Score: 8/10

Title: Beyond Words
Author: John Humphrys
Review: Incisive and entertaining look at how language is shaping our lives. Revealing.
Score: 8/10

Title: Seminary Boy: a memoir
Author: John Cornwell 8/10
Review: Reflections on life inside a boarding school for trainee priests. Evocative
Score: 8/10

Title: Perfect Hostage
Author: Justin Wintle
Review: Powerful biography of Burmese prisoner of conscience, Aung San Suu Kyi. Inspiring.
Score: 8/10

Title: The Berlin Wall: a world divided: 1961-1989
Author: Frederick Taylor
Review: Scholarly, but highly readable story of an icon of the Cold War. Gripping. Score: 9/10

Title: Nul Points
Author: Tim Moore
Review: Bellowing Balts and likeable Liverpudlians go to Eurovision with the highest of hopes and return with the lowest of scores. Winning.
Score: 9/10

Title: Martin Lukes: Who Moved My Blackberry?
Author: Lucy Kellaway
Review: Slick slice of office life, starring a sharp-suited bullshitter. Plausible
Score: 9/10

Title: Redemption Falls
Author: Joseph O'Connor
Review: Complex, confusing and utterly brilliant Civil War novel. Superb.
Score: 9/10

Title: Desperadoes
Author: Joseph O'Connor
Review: Drama on the road to Managua. Unputdownable.
Score: 10/10

Title: Four Stories
Author: Alan Bennett
Review: A funeral, a burglary, a hospital and a bag lady. Magnificence in the mundane. Outstanding.
Score: 10/10

Title: Talking Heads
Author: Alan Bennett
Review: Masterful monologues from the spectator of suburbia. Stunning.
Score: 10/10

As for 2008, I've already finished The Book Thief and a biography of Liberace, both excellent. Next stop is Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn - a very different kettle of fish.

Show and Tell

It’s not often that Marlene Dietrich, Marcel Proust, Ronald Reagan and Dante appear in the same chapter, let alone the same book. But here they are, in Darden Asbury Pyron’s biography of Liberace. The book, part of my holiday reading this festive season, reaches into every nook and cranny of the showman’s life. But it also makes some interesting diversions, such as an exploration of homosexual culture and the history of Las Vegas.

What’s most striking is how polarising a figure Liberace was. The adulation he received from his fans was only equalled by the revulsion of his critics. After interviewing Liberace, Edward R. Murrow remarked: “In your whole life did you ever see anyone so obnoxious!” The great reporter, who covered the devastation of war and the horrors of the concentration camps, seemed to find an over-the-top entertainer far more offensive. He need three scotches before he could utter another word.

Neither hatchet job nor hagiography, Pyron’s book gives a balanced account of the entertainer’s improbable life. And given the nature of the subject, that's an achievement in itself.

Phew, What A Scorcher!

My current reading has taken me across the airwaves of Radio 4, one of the BBC's crown jewels. "And Now On Radio 4" celebrates 40 years of the channel, and includes some behind-the-scenes stories from its presenters.

In the early days of Radio 4's World at One programme, reporter Sue McGregor was asked by presenter Bill Hardcastle to do a story about the sizzling heat that had been enveloping Britain that summer. But he wanted a different angle for the story, and insisted she take some eggs out to Piccadilly Circus and attempt to fry them on the pavement. Of course, nothing happened, apart from a gloppy mess.

"So I nipped into Boots and bought a bottle of meths and lit it and then fried the egg. It made a splendid noise, and I remember at that point there were rather a lot of unwashed hippies gathered round the base of Eros and they got very interested in all these eggs and scooped them up and ate them. And when Bill discovered that I'd cheated he was furious. He reckoned we'd let the listeners down. I thought it was rather funny."

You can imagine the furore such subterfuge would cause now. The papers would be in uproar over the great fried egg cover-up. "Is this why we pay our licence fee?", Mr Angry from Tunbridge Wells would rant, while The Guardian would worry about the waste of food and the Financial Times about the waste of money. And I can just see the headline in The Sun: "You Must Be Yolking!"

Albright, All Right

To many, Aung San Suu Kyi is a living saint. She’s certainly needed the patience of one. For the past two decades, she’s been waging war against the odious military regime in Burma. Most of that time has been spent under house arrest while hundreds of her supporters have been imprisoned, tortured or killed.

Her story is recounted in Justin Wintle’s book, “The Perfect Hostage”. It’s truly a tale of suffering and sacrifice. But her plight has not gone un-noticed in the outside world. The great and the good, from the Dalai Lama to Desmond Tutu have made continuous appeals for her release, and the book includes this quote from Madeleine Albright following her meeting with a SLORC (Burmese government) leader.


"Khin Nyunt expressed the belief that the SLORC had broad public support, and observed that the Burmese people smile a lot. I said that it has been my experience, in a lifetime of studying repressive societies, that dictators often delude themselves into believing they have popular support, but that people often smile not because they are happy, but because they are afraid."

Reading Lessing

Doris Lessing the 2007 Literature Nobel Laureate has lamented the death of reading among the young. In her acceptance speech to the Swedish Academy, she singled out the internet for special criticism:

“...it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some specialty or other, for instance computers...We never thought to ask how will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging."

She also noted how indifference towards writers in the developed world, contrasted with her native Zimbabwe, where she was met by hungry children clamouring for books. Referring to a pregnant mother of two “somewhere in southern Africa” who has to travel to procure scant water for her family and yet craves a copy of “Anna Karenina”, Ms. Lessing concluded:

“I think it is that girl and the women who were talking about books and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may yet define us.”

I agree with her, up to a point, about the internet. I certainly wouldn't want to see books abandoned for the sake of a blog or an online story. But reading is reading, and if someone of any age finds it more comfortable and enriching to read on-screen rather than turning the pages of a book, who am I to deny them that pleasure?

Don't Panic!

Asteroids, global warming, weapons of mass destruction. When should we start panicking about all of this? Never, say the authors of a new book called Panicology. The book, by two statisticians, Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams, is reviewed in the latest London Review of Books by Andrew O'Hagan, who worries that we should be taking things like bird flu much more seriously:

Au contraire, say the incrementally annoying Briscoe and Aldersey-Williams, ‘while bird flu has yet to claim a single human victim in Europe or the Americas, and has killed fewer than 300 people worldwide, it is perhaps worth adding that the familiar winter flu that nobody panics about claims at least 30,000 American and 12,000 British lives each year.’

Hmmph. How about terrorism, then? It’s clear if you go in a plane there’s every chance you’ll end up dead. There are security alerts everywhere and our governments are spending millions in an uphill struggle against the certainty of terrorists murdering innocent millions. No, say the out of order authors of Panicology: ‘In England and Wales, annual deaths from terrorism have been much lower than deaths from transport accidents (3000), falls (3000), drowning (200), poisoning (900), and suicide (over 3000) . . . It is pretty clear that, so long as you stay away from the world’s insurgent hotspots, the chances of being caught up in a terrorist event are minuscule.’

Phew, so that's all right, then.

Below the Belt

"O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise."

Not my words, you'll be relieved to know, but one of the contenders in this year's Bad Sex Writing competition. That one's from "Will" by Christopher Rush.

Other bad sexamples:


"She had on no knickers, and my heart went crash-bang-wallop and my eyes popped out. She hadn't shaved, and her fanny looked like a tropical fish or a bit of old carpet."
From Apples, by Richard Milward


"'You were built entirely for the space mission, right?' She nods and smiles. She is absurdly beautiful. I start to slip off my jeans and I feel her gaze as I stand in my bra and pants. Why am I embarrassed about taking off my clothes right in front of a robot? I pull the dress over my head like a schoolgirl, untie my hair, and sit down. She is smiling, just a little bit, as though she knows her effect.""
From The Stone Gods, by Jeanette Winterson


"That is to say, she rode me. It was all very classy and contemporary, like a modern-art survey course at NYU. I wanted to have the slogan I RODE MISHA VAINBERG imprinted on her T-shirt. "Yeah, do me," she kept saying, after issuing a few grunts so male and assertive they startled me into a brief homosexual fear, a fear compounded by one of her sharp nails digging into my tight rectum. "Do me, daddy," she said, her eyes closed, her thighs slapping against my upper and lower stomachs, my own tits making wet noises against my frame. "Just like that," she said, stealing a brief glance at me and then turning her head to the side so that I could lick her ear and plunge into her neck. "Just ... like ... that."
From Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart


"This is not pleasurable. How could anyone find having burning hot candle wax dripped onto the flesh of their belly pleasurable? But I don't want to tell her to stop cos the last time I told her to stop I got belted in the mouth. She wears an average of three rings on each finger. God, Mum was right, this lousy settee does stink. No wonder Dad's in hospital. I might well be joining him by the end of the night. I think I'm still inside her but, quite honestly, it's difficult to tell ..."
From The Late Hector Kipling, by David Thewlis"


But only one writer can cum first, and this year's winner is.....


Norman Mailer for this intimate moment from The Castle in the Forest:

"Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni's death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before."

Trouble in the Troposphere

Heatwaves, hurricanes, flooding, drought, extinction. No-one can accuse Tim Flannery of understating the effects of global warming. And there's no doubting his passion for the subject. Once sceptical about climate change, he's now a fully-paid up member of the global warming warning brigade. His chapter headings alone - "Peril at the Poles", "The Carbon Dictatorship", "Boiling the Abyss" - signal that he's nailed his colours to the mast. And those colours are all green.

Not so long ago, climate change was confined to the inner reaches of scientific journals. Now it’s front page news. Hardly a day passes without another instance of wild weather being blamed on global warming. Flannery believes the changes we’ve seen in weather patterns, seasons, biodiversity and, above all, rising global temperatures have a single, man-made cause. Fossil-fuelled industrial development is the villain of the piece - from coal-fired power stations to the infernal combustion engine. So busy have we been in pillaging the Earth‘s resources that it’s only when the planet started fighting back that we woke up to the terrible consequences.

Of course, he’s aware that not all agree with this argument, and so he sets out to support it with an avalanche of evidence. At times, the reader risks being engulfed by statistics, and some of the scientific vocabulary requires both a deep breath and a running jump. Even so, Flannery’s genuine concern for all forms of life on the planet shines through.

But he has to tread carefully. Scary talk about runaway warming, may lead his readers to conclude that it's too late to do anything. Or, as Irving Berlin didn't write: there may be trouble ahead, but let's face the music and turn up the heating. Flannery insists the problem is still soluble, but tackling it will take action by every government, every business and every gas-guzzling, trash-tipping, pollution-pumping one of us.

After braving 200 pages of bleak prognostications, it’s a relief to reach an environmental success story. Flannery calls the 1987 Montreal Protocol the world’s first victory over a global pollution problem, and without it life on Earth would have been in deep trouble. A hole in the planet’s ozone layer risked exposing us to dangerous ultra-violet rays from the sun. The Montreal agreement banned the fluorocarbons that were eating away at this layer, and there are now hopeful signs that the hole is healing.

Despite this good news, Flannery insists prevention is always better than cure, a view that’s reinforced when turning his fire on the energy sector. Just as the tobacco industry spent many decades in denial about the link between smoking and lung cancer, he says, energy companies have been similarly sluggish in facing up to the impact of fossil fuels on the environment. But while he’s scathing about the automobile, Flannery appears resigned to the increasing volume of air traffic and believes aircraft will continue to spew carbon into the atmosphere long after other forms of transport have gone green.

At one point in this book, Flannery speculates that researchers investigating the impact of climate change on mountain regions may have given up because it was all too depressing. It's an odd observation, but if true, who could blame them? Global warming may be a hot topic, but talk of imminent catastrophe is enough to send anyone running for the prozac.

Yet, far from being alarmist or defeatist, Flannery is a convincing advocate of the need for urgent action. Perhaps, if enough of us heed his warning, a Tim Flannery of the future might be able to write a book telling the story of how we saved the planet.

Title: The Weather Makers
Author: Tim Flannery
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New Ed edition (3 May 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0141026278
ISBN-13: 978-0141026275

Pointless Pursuits

To its aficionados, the annual Eurovision Song Contest is a marvellous melange that blends pop and politics, fashion faux pas and flag-waving. To everyone else, it's a showcase for shite.

Polarising it may be, but Eurovision has no shortage of performers beating a path to its tinsel-decked door. And although only ABBA and Celine Dion have achieved post-Eurovision mega-stardom, nearly every entrant sees the contest as a springboard to the stratosphere.

For most, barely have their feet left that springboard than they find themselves plummeting, belly-first towards the sea of oblivion. As Europe delivers its verdict, dreams of greatness are quietly snuffed out. But for an unlucky few, each set of results painfully and publicly signals that they’ll be ending the contest as they began: with no points. Rejected and dejected, they can only limp home to rebuild the wreckage of their career and hope that the worst night of their lives will soon be forgotten.

Fat chance. Not with Tim Moore shining his gazillion watt spotlight on their misfortunes. In Nul Points, Moore sets out to uncover the underachievers who went to Eurovision with the highest of hopes and returned with the lowest of scores.

Since 1975, the Eurovision voting system has made it harder to score zero. But it didn’t take long for Jahn Teigen to make it look easy. Representing Norway in 1978, Teigen assaulted an unsuspecting song and strangled it with his vocal cords before dealing the fatal blow from a shocking, splay-legged leap. Europe’s response was sadly predictable.

But, as Moore finds when he visits Teigen in Oslo, the reaction in his homeland was rather different. Norway put out the red carpet for its zero hero, and he went on to enjoy if not public adulation then certainly the affection of a loyal fan base. After a rough patch in the eighties, Teigen is still performing and still submitting entries for Eurovision.

But while Jahn Teigen merrily wears his zero as a halo, others see their nil as a noose. After Finn Kalvik failed to score for Norway in 1981, his countrymen, perhaps thinking the joke had been stretched to its outer limits, sent his career into meltdown. But worse was to come.

Targeted by Norwegian satirists, Kalvik was subjected to ridicule every week on national television. His response -- part Heather Mills, part Howard Hughes -- only exasperated the situation, driving him to the brink of suicide. Moore’s encounter with Kalvik on a sun-kissed beach in Thailand suggests the Norwegian is still running to escape his past.

At this point what Moore might have intended as a jolly jaunt through la-la-la land becomes something more of an exploration of the human psyche. Realising that he’s confronting human beings with their own failings, he abandons the idea of inviting them to reprise their losing songs. There’s only so much knife-turning a wound can take.

Initially, his subjects adopt an air of carefree insousiance. In Helsinki he meets an upbeat Kojo, who scored zero for Finland at the 1982 contest. These days Kojo manages a successful sports development company. But when the subject turns to that fateful night in Harrogate, storm clouds gather across Kojo’s face. “You know a sports match that finishes with no goals? You know what they call such a match here? A 'Kojo-Kojo'. This is what people say, even today, twenty-some years after."

No doubt, Gunvor Guggisberg harbours similar bitterness. In a classic tale of poppy-cropping, Moore charts Guggisberg's path from golden girl to national pariah. Even as it celebrated her selection as Switzerland’s 1998 Eurovision entrant, an unwholesome Swiss tabloid was preparing to dish the dirt on the singer’s past as a sex worker. A dismal result at Eurovision released a reservoir of revulsion, and subsequent attempts to rescue her sinking career have come to nothing.

Unsurprisingly, Guggisberg turns down Moore’s invitation to revisit her painful past. But even the no-shows can’t escape his Google-powered searchlight, and some thorough detective work reveals much about the post-zero lives of performers from Austria and Spain. There’s also the troubling suggestion that a Turkish singer’s failure to come to terms with failure may have led to his sudden death.

And so it continues: from Lisbon to Lithuania, Moore finds that scoring zero in Eurovision is rarely taken lightly. Even in the UK, which reserves special derision for Eurovision, Jemini’s point-less performance in 2003 provoked agonised hand-wringing. Meeting the likeable Liverpudlians, Moore learns that false economy, coupled with an anti-British backlash against the bombing of Iraq, sowed the seeds of a barren crop.

It’s not all gloom. Some artists, such as Iceland’s Daníel Ágúst and Tor Endresen from Norway (yes, again), have managed to airbrush Eurovision out of their biographies or to transcend defeat.

But for the most part, Nul Points is a catalogue of shattered dreams, failed relationships, boozing, bankruptcy and brothels. Amidst such a grim landscape, it’s a relief to find Moore’s customary sense of humour shining through, harnessed to his astounding way with words.

Towards the end, however, he does falter, inversing the running order of the UK and Icelandic entries in 1997 and incorrectly asserting that Switzerland have failed to qualify for every Eurovision final since 1998. But such lapses are not to be too harshly treated. After all, the oxygen-depleting experience of immersion in 50 years of Eurovision is enough to drain the most agile of brains.

Full marks for Nul Points.

Title: Nul Points
Author: Tim Moore
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage Books; New Ed edition (June 5, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099492970
ISBN-13: 978-0099492979

This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com.

Hard Times for the Hardback

Picador has caused what some are calling a seismic change in the world of books. From next year, the UK's 8th largest book publisher will by-pass hardbacks and launch almost all of its new novels in paperback. Other publishers are expected to follow, although some aren't so sure:

"Kirsty Dunseath, publishing director of Weidenfield & Nicholson, said the move could lessen the prestige of the novels. "Coming out in hardback is a statement of confidence in a novel and gets the reviews," she said. "It doesn't say much for your confidence coming out in paperback. Anyway, £12.99 isn't such a high price to pay - you'd happily pay that for a CD."

My experience is that hardbacks are bulky, while paperbacks are a lot easier to carry round and to read on the move. And Dunseath's comment about price doesn't ring true with me. Most of the hardbacks I'd like to read are priced in the £15 - £20 range, and I'm usually happy to wait until the paperback version appears.

Of course, money is behind the move. Although booksellers have been discounting hardbacks, sales are still falling, while paperbacks continue to be best-sellers.

Boris: Not Good Enough

Boris Johnson has a new book of poetry out - The Perils of the Pushy Parents. I'd no intention of reading it, even before seeing this review by Stuart Jeffries.

The book concerns the Albacores, a family whose parents insist son and daughter should not watch telly. The da d, especially, is a crackpot who teaches his toddlers Zeno's paradox when they should be eating dirt and shanking each other with plastic cutlery. When Mr Albacore sees the pair watching TV, he takes action rendered thus by Johnson: "He'd zap the programme off and holler/ 'Go and read some Emile Zola.'" As you will notice, Johnson has a gift for assonance not heard since Alexander Pope wrote the Rape of the Lock (this will be the quote they use on the paperback edition - just see if it isn't). By which I mean, there are lots of duff rhymes.

And there's more:

You might well think I am being unfair and that, like Gordon Brown's loathing for David Cameron, there is an element of class hatred behind my bile. You got the second part right. I refuse to be charmed by this gaffe-prone berk (he lost his wedding ring within an hour of getting married), this inventor of quotations (for which he was fired from the Times), this witless calumniser of scousers, witless calumniser of Papua New Guineans, this bad novelist, this brazenly buffoonish poetic dabbler. It is important, as Byron recognised when he wrote English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (now that was a vibrant piece of satirical verse), that we castigate rubbish: "Degenerate Britons! Are ye dead to shame,/ Or, kind to dulness, do you fear to blame?" We deserve better than Johnson, certainly better than Johnson the oompa loompa, pouring his chocolatey goo into our Christmas stockings.

Katrina Recalled

I haven't read any of James Lee Burke's books, yet. But I might take a look at his latest - The Tin Roof Blowdown, which is set in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina batters into the city.

On BBC Radio 4 this morning, Burke described Katrina as

"the worst scandal in American history....people drowned for three days while the most powerful men in this country were fishing." "There is no mystery to the human personality. Forget Freudian analysis, people are either what they do or what they don't do."

Burke's books reflect his native Louisiana,littered with corruption and
organised crime and set in its fevered climate and swamps. The state, he says, is a gift from God for a writer because the American past is replicated there as a microcosm.

"Look for the larger story in the smaller. Study one grain of sand to discover the nature of the coastline."

Banville as Black

Interesting piece in today's Metro about John Banville's new novel. The Silver Swan is a break from his usual literary output. It's a thriller, based on something that happened in his local Dublin neighbourhood. Writing as Benjamin Black, Banville has set the novel in the 1950s, exposing the dark side of Ireland, where church and state ruled with a grimness rivalling regimes behind the Iron Curtain. Says Banville,

"Up until the mid-1950s, Ireland was absolutely lost in permafrost. We were ruled by an iron ideology and there were some utterly dreadful people in charge."

Adopting a different style seems to have helped Banville get back on track with the style which won him the Booker in 2005 for The Sea.

"...I wrote the Black books, which are all about character and plot, to give myself a bit of a kick. "

It seems to have worked - he's 6000 words into a new Banville novel, although he says that, for a writer, all that matters is writing the perfect line:

"Each time I sit down to write, I think of Bart Simpson inscribing on the blackboard "I must write a better sentence." And I'd sacrifice anything to get a sentence right."

The Thriller That Wasn't

Before reading any of his books, I was all set to become a David Baldacci cheerleader. With twelve New York Times bestsellers to his name, 50 million books sold in 80 countries, plus glowing press and reader reviews, he seemed an ideal candidate to join my pantheon of favourite authors.

But then I read The Collectors

With a mixture of disappointment and disbelief, I ploughed through page after page, hoping that at some point it would turn into a thriller. But, far from the diamond-sharp dialogue and pacy plot I’d been expecting, the book turned out to be as thrilling as a damp dishcloth.

The main story surrounds an investigation by a group of conspiracy theorists into a death at the Library of Congress in Washington. Elsewhere, a gang of con-artists sets out to relieve a notorious mobster of his fortune. These plots intertwine and the rest of the book unravels the consequences.

So far, so good. But right from the start Baldacci’s clunky writing gets in the way of the story. In his world, people don’t just say things. They say them “bitterly” “solemnly“, “eagerly” “breathlessly“, or even “matter-of-factly”. This outbreak of adverbs is profoundly annoying, but it’s by no means the only problem with The Collectors.

The paper-thin characters are a mixture of the unremarkable and the unbelievable. Baldacci may have intended con-artiste Annabelle Conroy to come across as a clever and classy broad with a will of steel and a heart of gold. But before too long, I was tiring of this James Bond in tights. The reader is meant to gasp in wonder at her skulduggery and subterfuge as she takes the mean and the greedy for a ride. But how can we admire a character whose actions lead to the innocent getting killed? Or are we supposed to dismiss these casualties as collateral damage?

Meanwhile, the group of conspiracy theorists, known as the Camel Club, owe more to Hanna-Barbera than to Hitchcock. They’re not so much amateur detectives as shamateur defectives. Led by Oliver Stone (I kid you not), these misfits bumble their way across Washington with all the finesse of a herd of elephants on roller skates. Especially irritating is Caleb Shaw, the wimpy librarian. Baldacci gets exactly no prizes for fishing him out from the dressing-up box of tired old stereotypes.

As for the mobster, Jerry Bagger, he’s an unbelievably stupid pantomime villain. Far from masterminding his way to owning a string of casinos, a dodgy character like Bagger wouldn’t get past the doorman in my local Tesco.

With little of interest in terms of plot and character, the reader should at least have been able to admire the scenery. An attractively drawn map of Washington, D.C. on the first page suggests that this monumental city will play a significant part in the story. Yet, aside from passing references to the Mall and the White House, we might as well be in Grimsby. Even the magnificent Library of Congress, where much of the action (I use the word guardedly) takes place, is described in the most fleeting of terms.

Early on, we’re told that the Camel Club saved the world from Armageddon in a previous adventure. This incredible claim should have set alarm bells ringing, but I pressed on, expecting an eventual resolution to the story. But not in another book.

Baldacci couldn’t have been less subtle had he placed a photograph of a cash register on the final page, with a little banner declaring: “So long, suckers, see you in the sequel“. It was an appropriately fraudulent end to a so-called thriller that delivered not so much a tightness in my chest as a lightness in my wallet. Baldacci is on record as saying that he strongly identifies with Annabelle Conroy. Having conned me out of my hard-earned cash, I can say (truthfully, angrily, heatedly, furiously) that he’s well on the way to emulating his heroine.

Perhaps I was just unlucky. Other reviewers have claimed that this isn’t Baldacci at his best, and it could be this wasn't the right place to start on his books. But it’s definitely the right place to stop. Rather than risk another mugging, I’ll be steering clear of this particular author. From now on, my bookshelf is a Baldacci-free zone.

Title: The Collectors
Author: David Baldacci
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Pan Books; New Ed edition
Date: 2007
ISBN-10: 0330444085
ISBN-13: 978-0330444088

Up Against The Wall

Nearly two decades since its demise, the Berlin Wall has largely faded from our thoughts. But Frederick Taylor's latest book revives memories of a time when it seemed the Wall would never fall. Much more than the biography of a barrier, Taylor's book profiles a structure that's had a lasting impact on individuals and families, statesmen and nations.

Taylor sets the scene with an invigorating sprint through Berlin's history, culminating in the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. With the Soviets occupying its eastern half, and American, French and British forces in the western sectors, Berlin was suddenly the embodiment of the post-war world's great divide. West Berliners had to come to terms with the additional shock of finding themselves on a capitalist island deep inside a Stalinist republic.

Before long, thousands of young East Berliners were streaming across the open border to take up better education and employment opportunities in West Germany. Watching with alarm, the über-zealous leader of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Walter Ulbricht, turned to Moscow for help. Compared to the sabre-rattling Ulbricht, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev is depicted here as a model of restraint. Like John F. Kennedy, Khruschev was reluctant to see Berlin become a flashpoint for a third world war. But by 1961, two million East Germans had deserted their country and radical action was required.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in August 1961, East Germany suddenly closed its border with the West. In Berlin, first barbed wire and then concrete barriers appeared, prompting a wave of desperate escape attempts. It's here that Taylor's powers of narration come into their own as he relates the valiant and foolhardy bids for freedom. Some took to the icy waters of the river Spree, some crawled through sewer pipes, while others chose the no-less nerve-jangling route of crossing the frontier with forged papers. Moments of ingenuity are highlighted, such as the man who sped under the checkpoint barriers in a sports car. Others were not so lucky. After being shot by East German guards, eighteen-year-old Peter Fechter lay dying for an hour before his body was recovered just a wall's width from freedom.

Amid the tension and tragedy, there are some flashes of levity. Taylor recounts how Vice-President Lyndon Johnson arrived in West Berlin to boost morale in the days after the borders were closed. Following a hero's welcome and much pressing of the flesh, Johnson asked West Berlin Mayor, Willy Brandt about the possibility of shopping for some quality porcelain during his visit. Brandt apologetically explained that as it was a Sunday, the shops were closed. "Well, goddammit! What if they are closed", exclaimed the furious Texan. "You're the mayor, aren't you?" Johnson got his porcelain.

Despite public condemnation, the West privately acknowledged little could be done about the Berlin Wall. As mayor, Willy Brandt wrote an angry letter to Kennedy demanding a robust American response to the crisis. But as Chancellor of West Germany, Brandt adopted a more conciliatory stance with the GDR. Taylor observes that during the 1980s, even as a deep freeze set in between the superpowers, the thaw between the two Germanys continued. During a visit to West Germany in 1987, East German leader Erich Honecker allowed himself a rare moment of melancholy, suggesting the borders between the two countries were not as they should be. By this time, East and West Berlin were divided by a sophisticated system of barriers, traps and checkpoints of which "the Wall" formed only the final frontier. Escape attempts had dwindled, and it seemed as if the East Germans had finally come to terms with life under a grim, brutal regime. But something was stirring.

No-one was prepared for the speed with which events moved. On the night of November 9 1989. Mikhail Gorbachev, who had loosened Moscow's grip on its satellite states, slept soundly as thousands breached the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, making a visit to Poland's new Solidarity government, discovered he was "dancing at the wrong wedding." Taylor's description of that night is enthralling. His minute-by-minute account captures the confusion surrounding a botched East German press conference and the subsequent euphoria at the newly-open border. Missing from this section, though, are the eyewitness accounts of ordinary Berliners which made the earlier chapters so vivid.

It might have been tempting for Taylor to end with jubilant Berliners dancing on territory where only hours earlier they would have risked being shot. But his final chapter, The Theft of Hope, examines the fallout from the Wall's fall. So successful had East Germany's ruling elite been in disguising the parlous state of their shambolic economy that Chancellor Kohl underestimated both the scale of reconstruction and the cost of making two Germanys one. East Germans themselves emerged blinking into the light of freedom, only to suffer effects familiar to the institutionalised. Cosseted by a cradle-to-grave welfare system, free education, full employment and little crime, they discovered the brave new world of capitalism had some nasty surprises in store.

However, Taylor finishes optimistically, noting that Berlin's city council is now governed by a coalition of reformed Communists and Social Democrats under the leadership of an openly gay mayor, while Germany itself is led by a Chancellor born in the GDR.

Taylor set himself a daunting task to follow his compelling book about the firebombing of Dresden. But, if anything, The Berlin Wall is even better. Gripping and authoritative, scholarly and highly readable, Taylor's latest work will appeal to all who enjoy a dose of drama with their history.

Title: The Berlin Wall
Author: Frederick Taylor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; New Ed edition (3 Sep 2007)
Date: 2007
Language English
ISBN-10: 0747585547
ISBN-13: 978-0747585541

This Book Won't Save My Life

Just finished reading A. M. Homes' This Book Will Save Your Life. Some of the reviews I've read about it are almost embarrassingly crouching in their adoration. "Funny and engaging... "packed with unexpected pleasures" says The Guardian, and, from what I can make out, The New York Times loved it too. Stephen King says "it could be come a generational touchstone, like Catch-22 or The Catcher in the Rye."

But The Washington Post seems more tuned into my way of thinking about it:

This tepid satire about modern America begins with Richard Novak, a wealthy day trader, having a panic attack and being rushed to the hospital with "incredible pain" all over his body: "He lay there realizing how thoroughly he'd removed himself from the world or obligations, how stupidly independent he'd become: he needed no one, knew no one, was not part of anyone's life. He'd so thoroughly removed himself from the world of dependencies and obligations, he wasn't sure he still existed."

That existential crisis could lead to great pathos or great comedy, but over the next 300 pages, Richard meanders through a series of chance encounters, reaching out with new interest and generosity to strangers who never become much more than their costumes. There's the Middle Eastern owner of a donut shop, the housewife crying in the grocery store, the handsome movie star, the reclusive '60s novelist. Richard befriends them all with low-key good cheer and somehow manages to change his life completely with about as much effort as I've expended switching shampoos.

I can only agree. If I'd bought a few of the delicious-looking donuts that appear on the book's cover, my money would have been better spent.

School Outing

From New York comes the news that one of the characters in the Harry Potter books is gay. Responding to a question during a US book tour, JK Rowling revealed the sexuality of Dumbledore, the Hogwarts headmaster.

"Dumbledore is gay," she said, adding he was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, who he beat in a battle between good and bad wizards long ago. The audience gasped, then applauded. "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy," she said."

A spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall said:

"It's great that JK has said this. It shows that there's no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster."

Is it me, or is someone having a problem distinguishing fantasy from reality?