Ripley. The TV series with Andrew Scott.

If M.C. Escher had written a whydunnit he might have called it Ripley.

I say this because the recent Netflix masterpiece starring Andrew Scott and written & directed by Steve Zallion (he of Schindler’s List fame – more on that later) is an Escherian nightmare of wrong turns, about turns, smart turns and climbs that lead to nowhere.

The plot (Patricia Highsmith’s genius cannot be overstated here) is one of the most elaborate and thrilling I have ever encountered. The world’s greatest crime writers thrown in a room together could not have conjured up anything more magical even if Jesse Armstrong had been put in charge of them. It’s not that it’s full of cliffhangers, as such, it’s the sheer chicanery that Tom Ripley demonstrates as he shape-shifts his way through the lives (and deaths) of himself and his unwitting benefactor Dickie (Deekee) Greenleaf that make this story so compelling.

But let’s start after Highsmith and look at what Steve Zallion brings to the party. Well, for a start, the script is terrific. I don’t know the novel so I don’t know if it’s laugh out loud funny – but this sure is. One might grumble at his mild mocking of Inspector Pietro Ravini’s occasional flaws with the English language, especially his pronunciation of Freddie Miles’ (Meeles) name, but Vittorio Viviani bring a wonderful blend of Inspector Clouseau and Poirot to the part that is delicious. His mild OCD is amusing and that is one of the themes that run through the movie.

Zallion can never have had as much fun making a film as here. He plays tricks with the audience from start to finish and his elaborate use of repetition (posting the mail, riffling through notebooks, application of pen to paper, placing of items on bureaux, zooming in on concierges, framing of the post office, police cars, the cat, stairwells, paintings, drinking (or not) wine, ashtray purchasing, mimicking of Caravaggio and Ripley) is bonkers and dazzling.

The central motif of climbing stairs is extremely interesting. I have two theories on this. 1) it represents class climbing – Ripley is a wannabe, a charlatan and a grifter. He aspires to greater riches and stature and is deeply uncomfortable in society situations such as at Peggy Guggenheim’s party in Venice where he is in real danger of being found out for not being one of ‘us’. He’s always climbing to attain his goal. 2) it represents the futility of the whole police hunt, the whole story, as Ripley outwits every character (even the reasonably savvy Marge) by shifting the sands, rearranging the staircases so that we reach that ‘going nowhere’ outcome that Escher so brilliantly portrays in his paintings.

And lastly there’s his choice of monochrome to create a film noire, but also a work of art. Art is a central metaphor of the series. Caravaggio’s work, his homosexuality and his murderous past are all reflections on Ripley’s own story. Ripley loves Caravaggio with a passion because he admires not just his work but his lifestyle. The fact that Greenleaf’s wannabe painterly skills are appallingly lacking is just a bonus.

The cinematography has to be seen to be believed. Mostly spot on (it’s occasionally a touch overexposed) by Robert Elswit (He’s PT Anderson’s go to guy and won an Oscar for There Will Be Blood – bosh!). It drives the mood and the beauty, aided by a strong soundtrack, and has its moment in the sun when he stunningly, and frankly hilariously, references Schindler’s List with a single step of blood red cat paw prints. One second of red in eight hours of monochrome. You know the scene I’m talking about in both productions, right? Episode 5 if you missed it.

And then theres the acting. Johnny Flynn I could take or leave, Dakota Fanning played her irritating role to perfection (entitled little Sylvia Plathesque romanticist that she is). I’ve talked about the marvellous Vittorio Viviani, but the stars of the piece are the deliciously camp and truly dislikable Eliot Sumer who gets his just desserts as Freddie Meeles and, of course, the joy of Andrew Scott.

What can I say about Andrew Scott that hasn’t already been said? In the last five years he has risen from nowhere to challenge Steven Graham as Britains top actor. I think he has more range than Graham but both are a delight every time they hit our screens.

In this Scott OWNS the screen. His arch, sometimes befuddled playing of the unintended villain that is Tom Ripley is extraordinary. He falls into his murders rather than premeditates them so that makes him OK, right? And we are desperate for him not to be caught, because Scott has intoxicated us with his charm, his humour and his intelligence, all hidden behind a relatively blank canvas of a face. In moments of stress you can see the brain ticking, by micro-movements of Scott’s demeanour. This is acting of the highest calibre and Ripley, not the victims, is our hero.

We love Andrew Scott, therefore we love Tom Ripley.

You might have guessed by now that I loved this. A straight 10/10.

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler: Recent reading.

This gets compared to the wondrous Stoner (an undiscovered novel of the 1960’s) by John Williams which I cannot recommend enough. It’s compared because like Williams’ classic this is the story of one man’s unremarkable life, told in an unremarkable way. And whilst this too is a beautiful (and recommended) read, it does not have quite the same depth, or class, of Stoner. Nevertheless it packs a punch like Barry McGuigan, light but lethal.

Unlike Williams’ opus this is a little read with a great deal of droll Germanic humour sprinkled throughout, despite the fact that it tells the story of a life of a largely sub-optimal life underpinned by frustration.

It’s Germanicness is at the heart of its appeal, because it feels so unlike most things I’ve read. And it packs a great deal into an almost tiny offering. Only 149 large-type liberally-spaced pages in and it’s done. Leaving you with a whiff of satisfaction and a little regret.

Its title is entirely descriptive, the whole life in question is that of an uneducated labourer in a German/Austrian lumber region that gradually transforms into a ski resort and walking hotspot. Our hero, Andreas, takes spartan opportunity and turns it into passable satisfaction with great dollops of misfortune (in the form of a bullying stepfather and a delightful wife who expires too early to make him truly happy) along the way.

It’s fundamentally bleak and yet, like Stoner, has an air of uplift in it, and it’s this effortless parable-telling that raises it up from almost mediocre content into a thing of pastoral beauty.

I really liked it. I think you will too.

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: Book review

This might be his slightest novel, weighing it at only 205 pages, but it’s his densest.

Another unreliable narrator – an old Japanese painter and teacher – Masuji Ono tells part of his life story, often repetitively (maybe he has dementia) and full of false modesty. He’s actually an arrogant old fuck.

It’s set in an unnamed Japanese city between 1948 and 1950 as the Empire is setting about post WWII rebuilding and the country is on its knees.

Ono-San was a celebrated pre-war artist, seemingly of a propagandist bent (and maybe in the pocket of the Emperor) but his star has faded and it’s causing some trouble in selling off his youngest daughter into arranged matrimony.

The book dwells fastidiously on the customs and mannerisms of a horrifically mannered and often obsequious Japanese cultural set of mores.

For a western reader (even though Ishiguro has long been a naturalised UK citizen), this makes for tough reading. There are many Japanese place names to contend with and his cast of characters is vast for such a small tome. What’s more, given the episodic, and sometimes rambling nature of the prose they pop up sporadically but with important things to say. It’s a laborious follow.

Like anything Ishiguro turns his hand too it’s quite brilliant in the quality of the writing and the slow release of information that just keeps one on track plot-wise, but it has none of the empathy of his other novels and certainly no playfulness at all. So it makes for a n endurance test, albeit a shortish one.

It was the least enjoyable of his books for me. But a weak(ish) Ishiguro beats 9/10 writers into a cocked hat and for that I recommend it. Just don’t make it your Kazuo debut.

Recent Reading: Maggie O’Farrell – This Must Be The Place and Instructions For A heatwave

I keep hearing good things about Maggie O’Farrell, the Irishwoman living in my native Edinburgh, and so I’d picked both of the above up in a charity shop some time ago, but left them languishing in my ‘to do’ pile. A conversation with my friend Victoria prompted me to start reading, and I’m glad that I did.

Both books share a strong sense of style. O’Farrell densely plots her novels so that there’s quite a long bedding in period in the story to establish exactly what’s going on. In that respect she writes like a crime/thriller novelist. But that effort is rewarded with depth of character and intriguing and clever stories.

In Heatwave we follow a family’s journey to uncover why their elderly father has simply upped and went one morning, right in the middle of the notorious 1976 UK-wide heatwave. O’Farrell captures the sweltering oppression of that one-off summer vividly and the story unfolds in very thin layers as we discover what both bonds and splinters this intense family. It’s a great read, although at times I felt she outstayed her welcome.

In the superior This Must be The Place another disappearance sets the story off, and another family saga. Again much of the action takes place in Ireland. But don’t think that makes her novels formulaic, they are anything but.

This time a stunningly beautiful and famous film actress with great artistic integrity (think Jennifer Lawrence) simply disappears overnight with the speech-impeded son of her and her auteur film-director partner. She flees to remote Ireland where she reestablishes her life before being stumbled upon by an American linguist with a troubling romantic life and a drink and drugs problem.

The attraction is instant but not eternal.

What follows is another heavily interweaving story covering the couples lives (including their past) and that of their own and shared children.

Each character is brilliantly drawn and the book’s multiple time lines gradually fall into place so that we are eventually left wondering if this is a romance with any real chance of making it through.

It’s a lovely story with real depth and quality of writing.

Clearly O’Farrell has an acute eye and ear for family life in all its complications. Both novels deconstruct the complexity of familial rivalry, sibling love (and the lack of) and the hierarchy of decision making in that unit.

It seems to me her writing is maturing with experience and that she continues to increase her personal writing ambition, with her latest, Hamlet, picking up many plaudits and book of the year nods. I look forward to reading that but, for now, she’s made a solid impression on me and I can recommend both books quite strongly, especially This Must Be The Place.

It’s yet another morsel of evidence that Irish writing is on fire just now – many of my favourite recent reads have come from that Isle (including Anna Burns, Colin Walsh and Paul Lynch.)

Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet: Book Review

Graeme Macrae Burnet rose to prominence with his Booker Shortlisted, His Bloody Project – a genuinely original historical crime novel, of sorts, that was transfixing from start to finish. He’s followed it up with this Longlisted Booker contender.

Again you could say it’s a crime novel of a sort in which no real crime takes place, but may have been autosuggested by the psychiatrist who plays one of the novel’s two central characters.

Arthur Collins Braithwaite is a brilliant lothario that stumbles on a career in psychiatry in the 1960’s in Oxford and London. A rule breaker, he actually has no formal qualifications but has some celebrity status and notoriety that keeps him in patients for a while. One of those patients, Victoria, is the sister of our second (and third as it happens) main protagonists – Victoria’s mousy sister, (unnamed throughout the book) and her alter ego Rebecca.

Victoria is the autosuggested victim, having thrown herself to her death from a bridge after a session with Braithwaite. Unnamed sister decides to visit Braithwaite to suss him out but undercover as a patient that she calls Rebecca.

What follows is a quite brilliant study of, I would say, Schizophrenia. So different are unnamed sister and Rebecca in so many ways that we have a clear Jeckyl and Hyde situation, although without the horror.

It’s a fascinating story based around Braithwaite’s case study notes of Rebecca and unnamed sister’s ferocious battle with herself to define her true identity.

In parts hilariously funny, but always with an undertow of sinister mental health issues it makes for a unique and unputdownable read.

Bravo Mr Macrae Burnet. Two smash hits in row.

The Zone of Interest: Movie Review

Four movies into his very slowly expanding movie CV (Sexy Beast, Birth and Under The Skin) Jonathan Glazer once again lands a punch that no-one could see coming. I mean, how could they?

It’s been ten years since the sublime and shocking Under The Skin (from a source novel by one of my favourite authors, Michel Faber) now he’s done it again with a novelistic source from Martin Amis. Having read a little about this it would seem that the movie and the book are barely related. Same theme and location, yes, but story-wise very different.

For a start it would be a push to say the movie’s narrative led. There is a slight thread holding it together but this is really an exercise in stylistic horror like you’ve never seen before.

The psychology of the holocaust has long fascinated me. How could an entire country apparently sign up to a dictator’s whims when his charisma, to me, seems so indecipherable. But worse, how could so many of his followers carry out such atrocities seemingly without question?

But this movie goes a step further still. How could the families of these monsters knowingly reap the benefits of this accursed man’s activities?

Sandra Hüller (who might win best actress at the Oscars for the incredible Anatomy of a Fall) stars as that very woman (Hedwig Höss). Living a life of privilege in an unattractive house with a cultivated, but not exactly stunning, garden in the lee of Auschwitz. Her husband, the camp Kommandant, played by Christian Friedel, is a snidely little creep who sleeps in a separate bed (his work done having sired five children to his despicable wife). At night he takes his pleasure with the Jewish housemaid, who’s always one dropped crumb away from the gas chambers that brood ominously just across the garden wall. Höss’s more than happy to remind her of that.

Höss takes her pick of fur coats, new blouses, diamonds concealed in toothpaste tubes as the apparent spoils of genocide filter regularly into their home. They party, they feed sumptuously, they swim in the river, they cough up the ashes of dead Jews – only a small blot on an idyllic lifestyle

Höss’s mother arrives, but soon leaves in disgust at this heinous way of living.

A young girl sneaks out at night to hide apples for the Jewish labourers – a death defying act that is momentously captured on night vision film. This stunning technique turns her into a lurid white spectre against what looks like a nuclear background, to the sound of an outrageous soundtrack by Mica Levy. Underscoring the score the Kommandant reads Hansel & Gretel to his younger children (it’s no coincidence that the evil witch is burned in the oven – although the story “cooks” her to soften the blow). Who this mysterious figure is is not revealed, but perhaps it’s the Kommandant’s oldest daughter. The one with a conscience. The only one. The Kindly one. 

It’s truly remarkable moviemaking.

The star of this colossal piece of work though is Johnny Burn, the sound designer, who brings Auschwitz to life without ever really seeing it. other than its rooftops.

On a side note. I’ve been to Auschwitz (which is actually three death camps not one) and the one that features in the movie, Auschwitz III is now a museum. These days it’s impeccably manicured and the buildings are entirely surprising, two or three story high red brick constructions that could be schoolhouses if we didn’t know better. It’s very disarming. The muddy, filthy wooden huts we all remember from the movies and the newsreels are in Auschwitz I, a short drive away. So this clean, Teutonic death factory is disarming and Glazer captures that strange orderliness of the setting as we often see the well-kept rooflines of the houses beyond. (Albeit with smoking chimneys and glowing fires)

What Burn does though is pull the rug away. The air of semi-respectability that we are seeing is subsumed by endless industrial groans suggesting boilers (certainly machinery we don’t want to think about too much) working at full blast. Gunshots echo out, but subtly in the distance, muffled shrieks, distant dogs barking, at one point a cold blooded murder. The steam train arriving with fresh cargo. 

It all adds up to make Auschwitz a looming threat, playing out a murderous background soundscape, like a satanic orchestra, whilst in the foreground we see a sort of Utopia at play.

The movie is shot as a series of beautiful tableaux, often reminiscent of classical paintings, but interspersed with empty screens, red or black, and the mind-boggling night vision work. (it’s searingly black and white, not green, as you’ve come to expect). This creates a sense of tranquillity and opulence, and yet it’s backgrounded by the worst atrocities ever committed in Europe.

Jonathan Glazer has created his masterpiece. Few would imagine he could top his first three movies and yet this comes from a place that only he can truly understand. It’s not clear why he’s made this movie. It’s not actually telling us anything new and yet it feels like the most original take on a familiar tale we will ever come across.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: Book Review

Ultimately it became clear why Gabrielle Zevin is a children’s book writer, but it took a while.

It’s an accomplished book that wants to be more than the sum of its parts and can’t quite reach its lofty ambitions. For a start it chooses one of Macbeth’s most famous soliloquies as its title and that’s bold. Macbeth is grieving the death of his wife and wondering what’s the point. It’s all just another day.

That’s kind of the point of this novel. Unrequited love between the two central characters, Sam and Sophie who are gamers turned celebrated game-makers. They both love one another but neither can find it in themselves to declare that love and so tomorrows follow tomorrows as their lives gradually unfold, alone and apart.

It’s nearly a masterpiece, but it falls sadly short by believing its better than it really is and the characters become caricatures of themselves and eventually outstay their welcome so that, in the end, it becomes a bit of a drag to complete. There’s also a bizarre penultimate chapter that is so up itself its laughable.

But, it’s a good read. It’s fun and it’s fresh. It’s just not as good as it wants to be.

And no, it’s not Shakespeare.

(But it will be a smash hit movie.)

Poor Things: Movie Review

First off, I have to state that I adore Yorgos Lanthimos. I adore Emma Stone. I adore Mark Ruffalo and I adore Willem Dafoe.

That’s it then. Slam dunk. Movie of the year. (Or is it?)

I also have to say that I am a great admirer of Alasdair Gray who wrote the source novel in 1992 and won the Whitbread Prize for his efforts.

The novel is described as a post modern take on Frankenstein in which Dr Godwin Baxter (there’s a pun in the name) creates a very different and lovable monster that he essentially adopts – Bella Baxter – a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant.

Bella is played with outrageous abandon by Stone and as the (long) movie unfolds, she evolves from a ‘beautiful retard’ that can barely speak and has dysfunctional locomotion (plus is keen on a terrible twos tantrum on a regular basis), to a fully fledged young genius and palatable member of Victorian(?) society.

But the journey she takes is eventful, colourful and stunning as she visits reimagined Paris, London, Lisbon and Alexandria in houses (and brothels) that merge Willie Wonka with Wes Anderson and a bit of Jules Vernes thrown in for good measure.

Three suitors attempt to unravel Bella’s being with varying degrees of success but the stand out is Mark Ruffalo’s outrageously posh gigolo Duncan Wedderburn. Rufallo’s sublime English accent more than makes up for Dafoe’s in and out Scots Frankenstein and he steals the show repeatedly as he seduces Bella before falling on hard times.

Stone is remarkable, but I was troubled by the sexual politics at play here. In a book written by a man and a movie directed by a man the male gaze is on Stone throughout and her route to success is through prostitution. I’d be interested to know what my female friends think of this strand of the movie. Is it objectification or is it liberalised feminism boldly and proudly on show? I found it hard to decide at the time, although surely the latter is Lanthimos’s objective.

It’s a tough movie to capture the essence of. The story is actually a little thin and quite unremarkable, but the styling and much of the script is extraordinary, truly extraordinary. If, for nothing else, the succession of mutant hybrid farm animals – a duck with a full sized pig’s head for example. And all of the central performances are notable (especially Ruffalo).

But, I think it’s a movie to admire, not to love. But, as a piece of art, it’s sublime.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch: Book Review

This won the Booker Prize a few months ago and in quality terms sits alongside Colson Whitehead’s deadly duo of The Underground Railroad and Nickel Boys that won him the Pulitzer back to back. None of the three of them are what you would call easy reading, but each shares a love of humanity that shines through human anguish and strife like glorious beacons. In Lynch’s book, set in Ireland, a totalitarian government has rapidly insinuated the culture of the nation, turning its citizens into either patriots or rebels. Eilish, our central protagonist is a middle class mother of four married to the leader of the Irish teacher’s Union. The book opens with the Gardai at her door seeking the whereabouts of her spouse. Only a few pages later he is incarcerated, we know not where for, presumably, crimes against the state. And so begins a nightmare that threatens the whole substance and meaning of her life. Eilish, certainly not a patriot, finds herself shunned by her community. Slowly but surely the book ramps up Ireland’s descent into mayhem and the implications it has on all of Eilish’s family, including her newborn Ben who reaches toddler stage by the time of its heartbreaking denouement. The story is really about familial love in the midst of war torn chaos. It is directly inspired by the Syrian conflict that was the catalyst for the English Channel’s boat crossings but this is only one conflict in a constant global shifting sands of outrageous political, and religious, fervour. How a state as solid and secure as Ireland can implode quite is rapidly as it does is not really the point, but it’s shocking. The point is that poisonous aspects of nationhood and tribalism can spring up anywhere, any time. There are echos of the Wehrmacht that fully kicked off on Kristallnacht; it’s subtly portrayed in a horrifying passage half way through where it’s car windscreens, rather than Jewish shop windows, that take a battering. But the analogy is clear. Lynch’s prose is beautifully poetic and this conflict’s place in time is regularly referenced when he spells out that although we are reading a story set in Eilish’s present, it is rooted in both the past and will well-up again in the future, such is the certainty of the human condition. Lynch uses no para-breaks (see what I am doing here) nor quotation marks which renders the story breathless, echoing the turmoil and lack of headspace Eilish finds herself in, unable to make clear decisions because events constantly pile on top of each other. What’s more, her father is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is crumbling. Like many older people he is doggedly independent and in denial of his condition. And living on the other side of Dublin, across various frontlines, visiting him is a treacherous, verging on suicidal, undertaking. There is absolutely no let off in the accelerating heartbreak and injury that befalls Eilish and her brood as she seeks safety in some form or other. But ultimately that safety comes at a great price. It’s heart wrenching redolent of The Road but with less time for contemplation or consideration. It deserves to join the highest echelon of Irish novels, indeed any novels. I was broken-hearted that it had to end.

Kala by Colin Walsh: Book Review

Kala is the latest in a string of Celtic (Irish and Scottish) books that I have greatly enjoyed. In his acknowledgements Walsh puts this run of Irish writing successes down to the Arts Council funding he received and the impact of their funding on the Irish Writers Centre. The SNP or future coalitions in Scotland would do well to imitate this investment in the arts and culture.

This terrific thriller opens with ‘the gang’ 15 and foolish sitting on their bikes at the top of a steep hill goading each other on to ride down the hill towards a narrow gap in the wall that takes them across the main road between onrushing cars to the field on the other side. This death defying stunt is a metaphor for the rest of their lives a deep dark plunge into an abyss of fear and death.

The gang: Kala, Aoife, Helen, Aidan, Joe and Mush live in rural Ireland in a village called Kinlough. It’s not the sort of place you’d expect murders and disappearances, but this is exactly what transpires when days after the hill-cycle Kala disappears, never to return.

Brought back together some 15 or so years later Joe has become a pop superstar, Helen a Canadian Freelance journalist but the rest of the gang have stayed at home, and although still great friends, grudge the glamorous lives of these two protagonists. 

They’re back for a wedding that never happens because Kala’s murder is confirmed on the day of Helen’s arrival, when her bones turn up on a local building site.

The gang, led by Helen, attempt to understand what has happened and in the process discover a nightmarish underworld of low life scum. Something they were completely unaware of until now.

Told as point of view by Joe, Helen and Mush in alternating short chapters the story freely flows between now and their childhoods as the truth slowly reveals itself through a pretty hefty cast of 21 characters, mostly related to each other in some form.

In many ways it’s a procedural story, but the quality of writing (from award winning short story teller, Colin Walsh, in this his first novel) is considerably above average with outstanding descriptive prose that never misses a beat. He also nicely mixes the tenses with Mush and Helen speaking in first person and Joe in third person omniscient – which makes you think maybe he has stuff to hide.

It’s a great character study and a rip roaring yarn, so it’s difficult to imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this. So do yourself a favour. Go Irish this year. And then go see the movie, that it surely must evolve into.

And if you have room for more of an Irish bent I highly recommend (the much more complex but truly brilliant) Milkman by Anna Burns that recently won the Booker).

I’m Not With The Band (A Writer’s Life Lost in Music) by Sylvia Patterson: Book Review

I didn’t know of Sylvia Patterson, she was never really a big name music writer like Barbara Ellen or Miranda Sawyer but, as it turns out, she had quite the CV behind her.

Raised in Perth by an alcoholic mum and adoring dad her life story (Published in 2016 but evading me until now) is diaphanously explored through this wonderful book’s pages.

She’s a bit of a sorry soul in most respects; addicted to weed, a very heavy drinker and unable (mostly) to forge a real relationship, her housing situation in London is sub-optimal to say the least and she barely had two pennies to rub together – life as a music journalist, especially a freelancer, may be glamorous but it sure isn’t financially rewarding.

The book sort of evolves as it emerges into the light, starting out at the lite end of glamour in Dundee on Etcetra before graduating to Smash Hits (Ver Hits) in London then NME before Glamour magazine (fits your lifestyle and your handbag) as music editor, before going freelance.

We get real insights into all of these magazines as Patterson charts the gradual and terminal decline of the music press. My beloved NME being the most remarkable implosion.

But the meat of this extraordinary, and yes it is extraordinary, story is the interviews which she retells in forensic detail. She’s clearly kept the tapes which allows her to transcribe them in all of their gory glory.

Madonna, Prince, Spike Milligan, Blur (wankers especially Damon), Coldplay, Kylie (12 times), Spike Milligan, Eminem (utter cunt), Cypress Hill, Marc Almond (wanker), New Order, Oasis, Pulp, The Manics (bevvie merchants extraordinaire), Led Zeppelin, The Beckhams, Beyonce (as Destiny’s Child), Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Adele…The list is endless and all killa no filla. Most have at least a chapter each dedicated to them, all are analysed as artists and human beings. Some do not fare well.

The writing is brilliant, unique in style, relaxed, a bit gossipy but never show offy. This feels like a true expose of the music industry, a bit Kenneth Anger I suppose.

Patterson herself comes across as brave, bold, maverick, non-conformist but vulnerable and scatterbrained, so in no way is this a “look at me” self aggrandisement, but a slightly sad, slightly regretful summation of a career that feels terribly overlooked. If her journalism was as good as her book-writing she should have been the most famous music journo in the biz. Maybe spending too long at Smash Hits, which people like me sneered at, was part of her problem – although writing stars emerged from that stable. Perhaps her lack of ambition stimied her. I don’t know, but what I do know is I’d love to meet her and admire her tremendously.

Bravo Sylvia.

Columba’s Bones by David Greig: Book Review

David Greig has written some of my favourite plays. I will never forget his Macbeth addendum, Dunsinane. And The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart is a play like no other you have ever seen. Add to that The Suppliant Women (after Aeschylus) Solaris and Yellow Moon and you have a writer of significant importance. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg).

I bumped into him on Monday lunchtime on Lothian Road, and after chittery chattery he asked me if I was still writing this largely undiscovered colossus of writing magnificence. “Yes”, I humbly replied.

“Well, you’ll regret meeting me today” he proclaimed as he fumbled in his rucksack to fish out a copy of Columba’s Bones and thrust it into my hands. With that he disappeared into the fog.

It wasn’t foggy.

Gulping with fear I strode to Sainsbury’s for my Red Pepper and Lentil Soup, a bargain at £1.50 in these days of crippling extortion. Fear, because the thought of ploughing through a religious tale set in Iona in 825 was my idea of hell – I’d read the publicity and had abandoned the idea of purchasing this novel.

Fast forward 5.5 hours, to whence I sit on the #43 Lothian County Bus to South Queensferry. People are looking at me like I’m a leper as I guffaw at page three of this magnificent jewel.

It’s only 180 pages, it’s A5 in size, pocketable, and has big type for the hard of reading, so if it was going to be a chore it was going to be a manageable chore.

It’s not a chore.

Yes, it’s set on Iona. Yes, it’s 825AD (or whatever they call it now). Yes, it stars a monk, a viking and a widow. No, it’s not a turgid bag of fleapiss.

What David Greig does, and this cues me up to blow voluminous smoke up his beardy arse, is conjure up (based on an existing story I think) a truly great thing. Firstly, it’s hysterically funny (think Monty Python meets Mary Beard, pissed). Secondly, it’s properly engaging. In so few words Greig creates three characters that are at once unique and at the same time familiar. Thirdly it’s unputdownable.

It’s a story about revenge, love (of God, man and woman) and values. But mostly it’s just a right rollicking read. I’ll say no more because it’s easy to spoil it.

By Wednesday teatime, as I rolled off the #43, it was done. I will be extolling its virtues to all and sundry for many moons.

Not only must you read it. You must.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld: Book Review

In which Curtis writes a truly romantic novel that is laugh out loud funny. but it’s not a romantic comedy. Oh no. that would be vulgar.

Instead she writes a heartwarming love story about a mousy looking mid-thirties TV sketch show writer for Saturday Night Live who finds herself in a relationship with the hottest pop singer in the United States whilst writing a sketch for SNL about an unattractive man pulling a hot woman. (This is a common occurrence, usually linked to money. She appropriates it and calls it The Danny Horst Rule , which states that men from SNL can date way out of their league, but the same isn’t true for the women working on the show.)

Except, of course, they can, and she does.

Kinda meta.

Also it’s a favourite of writers to write about writing/writers but it’s the first time she’s done it and I think will land her her first movie. Just don’t call it a romantic comedy.

So that’s the premise. Hot musician pulls dowdy spinster.

It’s told in three acts. The first is a wonderful exposition of what goes on behind the scenes in a week at SNL (OK it’s called The Night Owls) and involves a guest host, Noah Brewster, of multi million selling Making Love in July fame who hosts the show and briefly falls for one of its best writers, Sally Milz.

Then Covid hits and their relationship is renewed via email in Act 2 before fully consummating itself IRL in Act 3.

The whole book wrestles with The Danny Horst Rule and explores the unlikeliness of this megastar falling for this ordinary woman. Except she’s not ordinary, she’s whip smart, experienced and very, very funny.

The whole basis of what grounds relationships, spoiler, it’s not looks, is explored over 300 page turning leaves.

I loved it. My seventh and now complete back catalogue of Sittenfeld’s (although the first signed one I have). It’s not her best, although it’s not far off, but it could be her most succesful when the movie goes stratospheric.

Great work Curtis.

Keep ’em comin’ please.

The Man Of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld: Book Review

In which Curtis follows up her dream debut, Prep with a bid of a dud. It follows the relatively uninteresting fantasy, and then real, love life of Hannah, starting when she’s fourteen and never been kissed.

It’s like Curtis took a breather after Prep which, as fairly obvious auto-fiction, was a book bursting to get out of her. But this, the difficult second novel, was something to keep her publisher happy. It’s unoriginal, uninspiring and fairly insipid. So bad is it, in fact, that I’m even struggling to remember the plot a month after reading it.

The boys and men are all cads of course and the only good one gets away. All a bit fucking Mills and Boon. (Certainly not Penguin standards although my copy was Picador published).

One to resist. I mean, the title kind of sends out big red distress flares, doesn’t it.

Go instead for her fabulous later canon which has established her at the top of living American women writers.

I’ll bore for Scotland about Curtis Sittrenfeld, just not this one.

The Young Team by Graeme Armstrong: Book Review

In the pantheon of great Scottish vernacular writers Graeme Armstrong has joined the podium. He stands alongside James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Ely Percy and Anne Donovan.

Maybe he is the gold medalist, but let’s see what novel #2 brings.

My only criticism of this amazing book is it could have been edited a little more tightly.

That critique aside, in the meantime we have a belter in The Young Team which is an auto-fictional story of life in brutal, and I mean really brutal, gang culture in Airdrie and the surrounds (Coatbridge, Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton).

Whatever, they’re awe shite.

The Young team tells of Azzie’s life as a wannabe gang leader through the ranks, to…well, you’ll have to read it

The grit in this story is that Azzie has a brain. Trouble is he uses it infrequently as his gang-inspired rage too often rules his heart over his head.

At times you grit your teeth so hard you can barely breathe as this horrific story unfolds. It’s not quite Glasgow’s Jimmy Boyle-esque razor gangs, but it’s not far short.

Life in North Lanarkshire’s schemes is awful, although interestingly Armstrong rarely suggests that, it’s just life.

Aggro, violence, wine (Buckfast) drugs and motherly love are the soothing embraces that make this land home. No matter what.

The drugs (or is it the violence – there’s plenty of that) centre the book. Azzie is close to being a junkie, but he’s also close to being a murderer (OK, manslaughterer).

He’s smart, but he’s also mental.

I wouldn’t want to meet him (although I would love to meet Graeme Armstrong). We read of his life from wannabe gang master to sensible 22 year old retiree. But the needle still skips.

It’s, to be honest, terrifying. But it’s written with the mind of a philosopher.

Azzie can escape, unlike most.

This makes it sound like a cliche but it’s anything but. Ignore comparisons to Trainspotting. That’s lazy and predictable. This is a far more serious, and more important, book.

“It’s shite being Scottish”, yes it is – in this den of iniquity.

The stories of rave culture add a bit of levity (but even these are horrifying in places). I wasn’t one of them (thankfully reading this) but levity is not a tonal reference of this book.

Many say it is funny like Irvine Welsh. (It isn’t). OK, it has funny moments. But it isn’t a comedy book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s much more Alan Warner than Irving Welsh in this respect.

So, don’t buy this for a laugh.

Buy it to , I dunno, I’m so middle class that I don’t want to say/admit it – feel better about your life?

Actually, naw, just revel in Graeme Armstrong’s writing skills.

It’s a belter. And it’s coming to a TV near you soon so get it read first.

And Away by Bob Mortimer: Book Review

The ultimate curate’s egg of a book.

I love Bob. The clown prince of comedy.

His latter career has actually escalated him to a higher status than Vic Reeves (Gone Fishing and Atletico Mince), but oddly the latter stage of the aforementioned is the most uninteresting part of this, in places, great book.

The first act, his childhood and early career is by far the most successful section of the book as he recounts his slow clamber out of painful shyness that cripples his ambitions. Once succesful, and telling the story we know, he tries too hard to write his way though it rather than simply storytelling. It exposes his weaknesses as a writer pretty badly.

Early on, his similes are laugh out loud funny, but they dry up. The real strength is his descriptions of laddishness and naivety that populate his early years.

The shyness he experiences feels a little laid on too thickly for me, but when he concludes the book he comes back to it and urges readers to overcome their own feelings of inadequacy, so maybe it is for real.

Either way it lurches from laugh out loud funny (the shoe waterfall) to banal.

I doubt I could cope with his novel which I fear would suffer from trying to be funny rather than naturally being so.

Edinburgh Festival and Fringe Reviews: Day 19

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better…

If Carlsberg did cultural festivals.

Two Fringe Firsts, a Five Star EIF Alvin Ailey part two, a performance art piece at the Talbot Rice art gallery, an hour’s talk and a signed book from Jesse Armstrong (Showrunner of Succession) and a preview of first works (x4) by young writers at Summerhall.

Let’s start with The Summerhall Surgeries, the last of four such one hour sessions funded jointly by Summerhall and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society in which four writers previewed 10 minute work in progress pieces to a small audience. A simply brilliant initiative and a peek behind the curtain of the writing process. My thoughts are captured below as all audience members were invited to do.

Next up I nabbed a return for Fringe First winning Ben Target (or Ben Target – with an acute to some – but WordPress won’t let me type an acute) and his show Lorenzo at Summerhall.

It’s a retelling of his inadvertent spell as a carer for his uncle (not uncle) Lorenzo Fong – there’s a clue somewhere in their respective surnames – during lockdown. His (not) uncle is nevertheless his most beloved extended family member since his childhood, which Target explores through the use of a shadow puppetry house (much better than Jesse Cave‘s incidentally).

Target is a stand up and repeatedly reminds us of his fall from a small height as winner of most promising comedian at the Fringe in 2012. And although this show is hilariously funny at times it’s really a sad story of death and palliative care administered in a truly DIY way, that gets close to euthanasia by Target and Fong, the Odd Couple of Death Row.

It’s entirely engrossing, spellbinding in fact, and Target should hopefully see a resurrection of his crumbling career as a result of this truly 5 star masterpiece.

I took a break at the University Courtyard and visited Jesse Jones‘ performance art piece called The Tower at The Talbot Rice. It’s rather lovely. The other show on just now isn’t.

Next to Zoo Playground (Blimey Zoo has had a great Festival) to see the third of their Fringe First winning shows. These included The Insider and Funeral, both reviewed earlier in the Fringe, But today’s winner was Beasts (Why Girls Shouldn’t Fear the Dark) a one woman play by Zimbabwean Londoner, Mandi Chivasa.

It’s a towering performance that charts the story of a young black London girl who is being followed through her neighbourhood by a man (although she describes him as a creature) at Twilight.

It’s told in rhyming poetry, although it’s kind of like a soft rap, that never stops the naturalism of the performance and often lifts it to glorious heights.

Appropriately in Edinburgh it almost feels like a riff on Jekyll and Hyde as our heroine Ruva changes role from victim (ignored by the police when she reports her uncomfortable experience) to victor as she assumes the persona of a lion-like ‘Beast’ and exacts revenge on the Creature. clearly a repeat offender in his stalking of young women.

It feels mythological, it’s somewhat fantastical but most importantly it’s riveting and Chivasa is a highly accomplished actor. Sadly only half full, despite its Fringe First, I’d highly recommend it.

The fourth event of the day truly was an EVENT.

Jesse Armstrong was in town for the TV Festival, but somehow the Portobello Bookshop had persuaded him to come to Port Town Hall to talk to 1,000 of us and sign his newly published scripts to Succession Season 4. To say he was entrancing was an understatement. The hour’s talk zipped by in an instant. My female companions were salivating.

Thank you Jesse. Like an audience with the Pope (as I told him while he signed my book).

And finally Alvin Ailey Programme 1. A step up from Programme 2 with Revelations again and pieces by Twyla Tharp (A jazzy Roy’s Joys) and another by Kyle Abraham (a funky hip hoppy Are You in Your Feelings?). Both were considerably better than the support pieces to Revelations the night before and rounded off an extraordinary day of culture.

But, man, am I bushed.

Johnson at Ten: The Inside Story by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell: Book Review

This is a journalistic review of The Johnson years as Prime Minister. The man I should just laugh at and write off as a fool and egotist beyond compare, but whom I actually despise with all my being.

In its lengthy account of a short period of power he is spared little in the way of criticism but not lampooned. Yet, the authors who have previous in this space are clearly holding back, although we are under no illusion that this man was entirely unfit for this, or any, office of state and that not only had he no moral compass but he actually had no compass at all.

So clueless was he in the job that the real Prime Ministers of this sad, pathetic ruin of a country (largely his fault) was not him but Dominic Cummings and his smart but desperately unlikeable wife, Carrie Simmonds.

The Cabinet had virtually no say in ANYTHING. But, you know, look at who that bunch of wankers were.

Johnson’s tenure is simply a series of flip flopping popularity policies, so desperate was he to recreate his popularity as Mayor of London where he had few “Big decisions” to make and the opportunity to make grandiose investments in infrastructure that made him look the great visionary he so strived to be.

He fucked up Brexit, then fucked up Covid, aided and abetted by so many muppets that he almost gets excused for some of the paucity of vision and insight. But the behaviour of number 10 during this period of national abstention was part of what brought him down, and of course, the lies.

It should be a big old schadenfreude read but the truth is it’s all a bit disappointing. It’s very badly written, and I mean awfully so. Many paragraphs are so badly constructed that you have to read them two or three times to get the point. (It was a rush job I think.)

And there’s a lot of f***ing redacting of swearing which drove me nuts.

So Daily Mail.

So, the experience of reading what should be a good old character assassination (and in a veiled way it is) is diluted by its lack of commitment and an attempt at fairness (constantly Johnson is complimented on his dealings with the Ukraine – he hardly won any medals of honour in his ill fated term at the Foreign Office though, did he.)

It’s not great. And wasn’t worth the time out of my life.

It could have been a lot shorter.

Let me have a go.

Chapter One

Boris Johnson got elected. He was a total cunt. He got binned by his inept cronies.

The End

Preferred Lies; A journey to the heart of Scottish golf, by Andrew Greig: Book Review

Andrew Greig is a poet, novelist, philosopher and climber. (He might even consider himself a golfer.)

After a near death experience he resumes the childhood sport that protected him from his abject misery at Dollar Academy.

Golf.

He’s clearly a decent golfer, but rusty. In this philosophical musing on his life and the merits of golf, whether competitive or solo, he visits 18 golf courses (nearly all in Scotland) from the bizarre and almost never played in the likes of Gigha, North Ronaldsay and Iona, via the better known but still relatively obscure Shiskine on Arran (personally my favourite golf course), to better know and championship courses like North Berwick, Nairn, Forres and Royal Dornach.

It’s not a sporting handbook and it’s not a philosophy on life. I mean it is a bit of both. But, taken in totality, it’s actually an inspiring self help manual on how to value life, love and, yes, sport so that golf can be something to inspire and fulfil your life rather than, like I do, break clubs in frustration.

I may learn from it. I hope so.

It’s an interesting read for anyone who harbours any sort of interest in this noble game.

Hings by Chris McQueer: Book review

The centrepiece of this extraordinary collection of short stories is called, simply, Bowls. It’s on an epic scale (for McQueer), stretching to nearly 40 pages and telling a class-driven story of Big Angie “a horrible overgrown ned” (middle aged and dressed in trackies and Rangers tops). Big Angie is a class bowler and an even classer Bingo player. The trouble is she hates everyone and everyone hates her. That is, until she strikes up an unlikely companionship with the wife of her male nemesis at the bowling club. This relationship having been established, McQueer can take this story wherever he likes, as he usually does.

Two belter lines that sum McQueer up drop in this tale and had me both laughing out loud on the bus but also quoting them in the office.

“Aw fuckin cheer up. We’re gawn tae Blackpool, no Auschwitz.”

“Look pal, if ah wanted tae hear an arsehole talk” looking the boy up an down “Ah wid’ve farted.”

His cast of characters in the book include ne’erdowells, rogues, daft laddies and talking budgies.

He brings a distinct lack of logic to his tales and, yet, they all make sense.

Some of them are even quasi science fiction.

I’m reminded often of James Robertson’s recurring Jack character in 365 Stories, a parody of daft Jack in Jack and the beanstalk. Many of McQueer’s characters are just as daft, but that lends them an air of charm.

There’s a story about people’s knees bending backwards, not forwards, and the hilarious havoc that ensues.

There’s a strange shark-like monster called Ethan (that talks – of course it talks) and befriends a rigger.

And it’s all written in hilarious Glasgow dialect – there’s nothing new about that having been put to great effect recently by Ely Percy in Duck Feet, and James Kelman has made a career out of it. But neither express themselves anywhere near as joyously funnily as this, and neither even approach the curse threshold, or maybe even 10% of it, that McQueer does. I love the way he portmanteaus anycunt on a regular basis to capture the genuine street rhetoric of Glasgow.

All in folks, this six year old collection from 404 Ink (Bravo) is a belter.

A pure belter in fact.

Enjoy.

Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus: Book Review

You’ll have seen its gaudy cover everywhere because its ubiquitous.

So, I’m not sure I can add much to the clamour about this universally loved phenomenon.

It feels like it’s written by a woman for women (a copywriter as it happens).

But I’m a gadgey, so here’s my take.

Although it screams women’s lib in CAPITAL LETTERS, as a man, I really liked it.

I was reading it on the back of my favourite American female writer’s Privileged (Curtis Sittenfeld) – also a take on girl power but from the 18th century transposed to the 21st.

It turns out to be a clever political read that challenges male dominance (including acceptable rape) and puts sand in the oyster.

That sand being Elizabeth Zott.

She’s a character.

She’s amazing.

She’s the book.

Everything about this novel is about Elizabeth Zott. Crazy name. Crazy girl.

It becomes a thriller having started out as a character study but really, it’s just a about humanity, and love.

I could tell you about the grief, bullying, corruption and all that.

But all that matters is you love this beautiful, strident, complex woman and her battle with convention, with scientific prejudice (essentially women didn’t do science in the 1950’s) and with the television industry that, even then, objectified women – no-one though was going to objectify Elizabeth Zott, unmarried mother, scientist and hater of domesticity.

Gramus does a great job of constructing a spider’s web of a plot that all comes together beautifully in the end and creates a character that we all fall in love with as her difficult battle with integrity unfolds in 400 delicious pages.

Recommended.

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld: Book review

I have Romantic Comedy, Sittenfeld’s latest, teed up to go – but first I read this.

Now anyone who follows me knows just how highly I rate Curtis Sittenfeld.

Her book before last Rodham (my discovery book of hers) was book of the year for me, that year.

American Wife is a masterpiece and I don’t understand why it’s not better known.

Sisterland is a good read but I’d say her only average book, but even average isn’t average in the hands of Curtis.

Prep, her debut, is a cracking read.

So what of Eligible?

Like Bridget Jones, I suppose, it’s a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice.

So far so what?

She sets it in Cincinnati among the super rich but, of course, our heroine Liz is not super-rich. She’s a late thirties, and pretty decent magazine writer with a bit of fame behind her. She suffers a hideous but hilarious racist, classist, pretty much everything-ist hag of a mother, a disenfranchised and long suffering, but realistic, ailing father, one great, pregnant sister and three brat sisters.

The title comes from the name of a Love Island type of show in which sister Jane (the other nice pregnant one) has fallen, mutually, in love with the star. Until he finds out she’s pregnant, but not to him.

Liz, meanwhile, is in love, not in love, in love, not in love with a super rich surgeon called Darcy Fitzwilliam (bit of a clue there to the source material) – the Eligible star’s bestie.

What makes the book so great is the fact you know she is honouring, but piss-taking, the Austen classic but in such an uproariously funny way that I constantly caused my fellow bus passengers to turn and look as I bellowed form the back seat of the number 43.

It’s absolutely fucking hilarious. Now, Sittenfeld does a good line in humour.

The whole premise of Rodham is built on that, but this is another league. It’s spit your wallies out funny. It’s choke on your own phlegm funny.

I need say no more other than just read this MF, and don’t worry about the Bridget Jones comparison.

Hungry Beat. The Independent Pop Underground movement (1977 – 1984) by Douglas Macintyre, Grant McPhee with Neil Cooper: Book Review

Oh dear. There was so much to desire from this book. A history of my informative years in which two Scottish Labels (Fast and Postcard) were making Scotland the centre of the musical universe, right here in my own back yard. It was an amazing time.

Add to that the fact that the two central characters, the svengalis of the scene, were Bob Last and Alan Horne and that I know Bob well (indeed he is chair of the Leith Theatre on whose board I serve) and you have a recipe for greatness.

To be fair no stone is unturned in the research and there are thousands of interview snippets from the likes of Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice, Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera, Davy Henderson from Fire Engines, Phil Oakey et al from the Human League – alongside contributions from Altered Images, Josef K, Scars, Rezillos, Gang of Four, Joy Division, The Bluebells, Associates, and many more including Geoff Travis of Rough Trade.

Between these myriad interviews is a good, strong chronological narration of the times but, the trouble is, the interviews themselves are often flabby and repetitive with sometimes several renderings of the same topic. It can get really tedious.

Putting that to one side, and it’s a big put-aside, the story is great with Last coming out of it all as a hero and Horne a bit of a dork.

Consequently it can only possibly be of interest for a thin sliver of the boomer post-punk generation and even then it’s a marathon, not a sprint. If it comes out in paperback I’d recommend a tortuous visit to the editor’s room.

But, for those interested in the scene it is a must read. I just wish it had been leaner.

The Girls by Lori Lansens: Book review

Having brushed the tears from my eyes as I put this truly magnificent novel to bed I now have the task of explaining to you why it is so irridescantly beautiful, without gushing. But I’ve blown it already.

A made up story about craniopagus twin sister (that’s conjoined twins joined at the head) has the potential to be exploitative (some might even go as far as to say sick).

This is anything but.

Rose the bigger, stronger of the two essentially carries the smaller, clubfooted, Ruby. They’ve never seen each others’ faces joined, as they are, looking away from one another. They are close, as you would expect, but they fall out, they get jealous, they go through puberty in very different ways, they have very different metabolisms.

Ruby gets terribly car sick and this narrows their horizons, but deep down these two are tremendous explorers.

The midwife, Lovey, that delivered them to a 17 year old girl, unmarried and entirely incapable of raising them, adopts them with her crazy Slovakian immigrant husband Stash, and so life begins on a Canadian farm.

The story takes us to Slovakia and the Northern USA but mainly plays out in in rural Canada, in a small town community where the girls are beloved by the community. It takes the form of an episodic retelling of their lives with all the joy and tragedy that they experience in their 30 years, which makes them the oldest surviving craniopagus twins in the world.

Along the way the full arpeggio of emotional experiences any ‘normal’ pair of twins might encounter is rendered in a mix of humour and pathos, but it’s never pathetic.

The class in Lansens’ writing is of the unfussy variety. She’s a natural storyteller and avoids over sentimentalising this genuinely extraordinary story.

My love for Ruby and Rose deepened with every page. I suspect yours will too.

I often say things are masterpieces, that’s because I choose well. This is Lori Lansens’ masterpiece, because I very much doubt she can trump it.

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino: Book Review

This is not of general interest I would have to say.

It’s long, rambling, full of obscure B movie, C Movie and D movie references.

It’s about exploitation, blaxploitation and trivia that won’t make you look any cooler in your local bar if you could even remember it.

It’s a reference book with little or no real reason for existing.

A very, very large % of the population – about 99.83 I’d say – would consider this utterly self indulgent wank.

And they’d be right.

Even 88.9% of Tarantino fans will hate this.

100% of the moral majority would bristle at it.

It’s full of long lists of actors, directors and critics I just don’t give a damn about.

But.

I’m glad I read it.

When he’s not listicalling he can be thrilling with his put downs.

Most of the films he chooses to “review” (or speculate upon) he derides, yet they are his favourite films. ( Taxi Driver, Paradise Alley, The Funhouse, Bullit, The Getaway).

He has a fucking OBSESSION about The Searchers and its influence on nearly every movie in this textbook.

It’s a thing of great paradoxes. The films he loves he slates quite often.

What’s even more amazing about it is that my son bought it for me. Tom is emerging from a 28 year cocoon of non-reading to alight upon shit like this.

He liked it. Sort of. I liked it. Sort of.

You know what? It’s a male-bonding, sonofabitch, kinda wanky motherfuckery that you might just like.

Just read the goddam thing.

Then sue me.

The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell: Book Review

Three characters slug it out for superiority in the dark storytelling stakes.

A 12 year girl, Nelly, with an unusual line in Queen’s English.

Her 15 year old worldly wise genius sister, Marnie, who cannot hope to ever conform and is shagging a drug dealing ice cream van man in the back of his vehicle.

And an outed, ageing, gay (‘paedo’) recovering from the death of his long time lover.

The girls’ parents are both dead and rotting in the garden, where they buried them on Christmas Eve. They’re sort of living with the ‘paedo’ who has taken them into his care and turns out to be a lovely bloke.

The social services, an alcoholic, psychotic grandfather and a ripped-off drug dealer who the girls’ dad has £70k of cash from, are all closing in on them.

And it’s all set in a poor part of Glasgow against the backdrop of a series of amusing secondary characters; boyfriends, school friends, dogs and teachers.

It’s a black and hilarious comic conceit, spitting its venom in tiny short chapters each helmed by the girls and the old man, Lennie, in equal turns.

I laughed out loud a lot at this filmic tale, and although it has many flaws its originality and devil may care attitude to convention make me recommend it.

It’s filthy fun.

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld: Book review.

This was my fourth Curtis Sittenfeld novel and whilst it ranks fourth in her extraordinary canon of work that in no means consigns it to mediocrity. Far from it.

It’s a 500+ page story about twin sisters from St Louis who lead different paths in their lives (different attitudes, different body types, different adoption of their inherited skill).

The larger and more free spirited of the two. Vi, has embraced her psychic abilities while the more repressed (annoyingly repressed and uptight) sibling, Daisy/Kate, is attempting to bury it in her past and her subconscious as she rears her perfect children (actually one’s a fucking brat) and coddles her perfect husband, being psychic does not feature favourably in that scenario.

All hell breaks loose though when between them, after a small earthquake, they predict a potentially armageddon-like follow up, on October 16th precisely that could lay ruin, to St Louis.

This prediction has consequences.

Vi embraces the situation with gusto and becomes a minor media star (she’d definitely make I’m a Celebrity) and so a period of anticipation populates the rest of the book as the two sisters and their extended friend and family group deal with the consequences, the event itself and the aftermath.

Like all Sittenfeld novels it has beautifully readable prose, considerable humour but an underling tension that keeps the book meaningful.

Not her best, as I say, but her least best is better than most writers’ best best.

Want the real Curtis, on fire? Rodham and American Wife are your go to’s. Prep is bloody great too.

Klara And The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro: Book Review

Kazuo Ishiguro is famous for his ‘unreliable narrators’, central protagonists that tell their tales in such a way that you can’t be sure that what the story they are relating is true or manipulated to protect their side of it (most famously in the Remains of The Day, and a Pale View of Hills). Thus his seemingly simplistic narratives are riddled with undercurrent, red herrings and blind alleys, although none of them are crime stories.

In this he sets up perhaps his most unreliable narrator of all, because the narrator isn’t even human, she’s an Artificial Friend (AF), or, technically, a robot. She has been created through robotics, for sure, and powered by AI to act as a companion for rich kids of the future who live lonely existences in what is a privileged but fairly nihilistic lifestyle.

You’d think that, as a robot, she wouldn’t have emotions, but she does, and these develop as the novel does (that’s AI for ya!). The keenest of all, the hardest to describe and the least reliable of them all, is love. Not romantic love, but familial and caring love. The love of a devoted nurse, or ‘Agape’ (the love of God for Man and Man for God).

In the beginning Klara is for sale in an AF shop and we learn that she is acutely observant, the best AF The Manager of the shop has ever had in fact, despite the fact that she’s a lowly AF2. The far more advanced AF3’s are bossing the sales charts and she’s in danger of being remaindered – something this novel never will be.

Despite her lower spec something about Klara resonates with Josie, a silly teenager, who has her eye on her and the first part of the book is a cat and mouse relationship that results in Klara eventually being sold to The Mother of Josie. All characters are capitalised by Klara and referred to in the third person throughout. The same applies to The Sun.

Part two (of six) sees the unfolding of a love story between the increasingly poorly Klara, her platonic boyfriend Rick, who has lived next door since childhood, The Mother and Klara.

Gradually the significance of The Sun unfolds and its role in the story. In the simplest of terms Klara is solar powered so needs The Sun for energy but in the book The Sun is also God and Klara believes The Sun has the power to make Klara well again. How she became unwell is not revealed for some time but is an important part of the story as it is a consequence (and a risk) of creating her elevated position in the novel’s society.

It’s futuristic, but not terribly so. This is part of Ishiguro’s skill in that he creates a science fiction setting (rather like in Never Let Me Go) without going all flying cars on us. It’s no Blade Runner. Rather, Ishiguro uses science fiction merely as a means of lifting his astounding character studies into a heightened sense of reality, so that he can play with language, allegory and emotion (or a form of it) that would be impossible in a conventional setting.

The richness of Klara’s characterisation is impossible to overstate. Despite her fairly rudimentary language and her unsophisticated emotional range he succeeds in creating a protagonist that the reader falls in loves with and feels every bump of her personal road as she tries to navigate life in a heartless, selfish, frankly dystopian society. A society where, a subtle subplot suggests, fascism is waiting to spring into life, that would probably manifest itself in some form of Krystalnacht that lies two or three hundred pages into an extended version of the book.

This almost reads like a Young Adult novel, it’s incredibly pacy if you want it to be, but I found myself going back and forth making certain that I’d grasped the significance of many of the scenes and themes in the book: love, hate (in the form of fascism and societal exclusion), a dying planet, religion and the role of God in a secular society.

It’s bursting with ideas, with energy, with pathos and for me stands as Ishiguro’s greatest achievement yet in a canon of work that few can match (that’s why he’s a Nobel Laureate).

Your children could read and enjoy this, you could simply take it at face value and enjoy this, or you could take a little more time and really love it.

Love, after all, is what we are all surviving and striving for.

One last point. I cannot wait for this to be interpreted in movie form.

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The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez: Book Review

This is the second Argentinian book I have read recently and it seems the country has a rich seam of dark writing talent.

Enriquez’s book is a collection of short stories that stem from the macabre, but are tempered in her writing, such that it is suggestive rather than gratuitous in its pot pourri of horrors.

Ghosts, witches and disappearances are the staple diet for Enriquez with the disappearances, I assume, as a metaphor for the Junta that dictated Argentina for so long. Children and vulnerable adults often feature.

She has a languid style, even though the stories are short and she has a skill in capturing conversation and description that feels naturalistic (despite the fact that the book is a translation).

I very much enjoyed this slight but powerful collection and I suggest you do too.

The Things We Do To Our Friends: Book Review

I must be a feminist because this new novel is described as a seductive feminist thriller, because it places significant, albeit dubious, power into the hands of its largely female cast (and I say cast because it has movie rights written all over it) as they exact retribution on bad men, very bad men.

It’s also described as The Secret History-esque, which is actually why I bought it

It’s not.

All that said, it’s a gripping page turner set in Edinburgh and France and features a clique of super rich students who invite the rather less wealthy main protagonist, Clare, into their midst to help them in their untoward aspirations.

Clare has a dark secret that the author, Heather Darwent, in her accomplished debut, successfully hides for a large part of the novel.

What Darwent skilfully executes is a gruesome story that isn’t actually that gruesome, but features a strong storyline and an ever interesting bunch of protagonists that interact with each other in increasingly unpredictable ways. It is skilfully plotted, very fast paced, genuinely intriguing and a classic page turner. I finished it in three days which must be some sort of record for me in recent times.

Highly recommended, although hardly life changing and no, it’s not as good as The Secret History.

Little is.

Also, a very good cover, but don’t judge it on that.