Pure Hustle, by Kate Potts
Kate Potts has previously published a pamphlet, Whichever Music, and appeared in the Bloodaxe anthology of new poets, Voice Recognition, in which she was one of the stand-out writers. Pure Hustle is her debut collection and will not disappoint those who have previously encountered her work. Those for whom Pure Hustle is their first experience of Potts’ writing will find a poet with a keen and sensitive ear, combined with a wide-ranging imagination. Read more
Eoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer grew up in Wexford, Ireland. He first developed a passion for writing in primary school, reading Viking books inspired by his history lessons at the time. In 2001 the first Artemis Fowl book was published and he was able to resign from teaching and concentrate fully on writing. He now lives in Ireland with his wife and 2 children.
His first crime novel for adults, Plugged, has just been published. We asked him about it…
Jamrach’s Menagerie, by Carol Birch
Set in Ratcliffe Highway in 1897, a young boy named Jaffy Brown finds himself face-to-face with an escaped Bengal tiger. It is through Jaffy’s naivety, and therefore his fearlessness, that he walks up to the creature and pats it on the nose. Only by the intervention of the tiger’s owner, Mr Jamrach, who removes the boy from its clutches, does he escape relatively unscathed. Extraordinarily, as Birch points out in her acknowledgements, this event did in fact occur in real life! The vast majority of the story, however, is fictional.
‘Part 1’ (the book is divided into three parts) explores Jaffy’s life working in Mr Jamrach’s Menagerie, and his natural flair in dealing with animals. Birch’s colourful use of description creates a wonderful sense of the smells, sights and sounds of the filthy Victorian streets of Bermondsey, where Jaffy is forced to peel pennies from the walls of sewers; and of Wapping waterfront, squelching barefoot amongst the taverns and market stall squalor. From the title, this is the story I expected. A story based around the collection of ‘the world’s strangest creatures’, accepting the fact that Jaffy would at some point step aboard a ship, as the back of the book’s dust-jacket suggests. This, however, is where the menagerie element ends, and indeed Mr Jamrach himself does not feature again until the very end of the story. Read more
Splinter, by Sebastian Fitzek
Sebastian Fitzek is a Berlin-born journalist and thriller writer. Splinter is the fifth of his six books, and centres on bereaved husband and father Marc Lucas as he enters a cutting-edge programme that promises to erase his traumatic memories.
The premise is relatively standard science fiction fare, having been kicked around in innumerable Hollywood blockbusters (Vanilla Sky, Total Recall, Memento, etc.), and indeed dealt with by sci-fi titan Philip K Dick in his 1966 novelette We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. In Splinter, Fitzek breathes a certain amount of new life into the concept, inasmuch as he avoids the sci-fi pigeonhole and instead produces a largely psychological thriller with a dose of a crime for good measure. Read more
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
Jean le Flambeur made one mistake. One mistake, that took him from fabled thief at the top of his game to foolish prisoner in the virtual Dilemma Prison, continuously working towards a practically unattainable goal. Until Mieli appears with Perhonen, her spider-ship, and breaks him out to complete the one heist he never managed to complete. But first, he has to follow the trail of breadcrumbs left by his former self, to find his way back to the secrets he needs. Read more
Faulks on Fiction by Sebastian Faulks
Faulks on Fiction, Sebastian Faulks’ celebration of the British novel, is a companion to the recent BBC four part documentary of the same name. Within the series Faulks’ examines four character types: heroes, villains, snobs and lovers. He discusses the novel via these archetypal characters, using them to highlight the importance of certain novels to British fiction along the way. There is also a general discussion of the importance of these types of character at the beginning of each section and how they work within the pages of the book. The importance Faulks attaches to character allows us to believe that he places this element above, and as the driving force, of plot, setting, form and structure. Read more
Cotton Comes to Harlem, by Chester Himes
Thank God for Penguin and their Modern Classics, and thanks in particular for their re-releasing of Chester Himes’ Grave Digger and Coffin Ed series. In producing these new volumes, they have gifted the work of one of the greatest crime writers ever to a new generation, and indeed have fulfilled one of Himes’ final wishes, that his books not be allowed to die.
And well they should not. Himes is considered by many, this reviewer included, to be the equal of Raymond Chandler, and Cotton Comes to Harlem is testament to the fact. However, while Chandler exhibited all the racial sensitivity of a young Bernard Manning, peppering his work with racial epithets, Himes’ work provides an excoriating critique of race relations in mid 20th Century America, as complex as it is searing. For this reason, and for the brilliance of his writing, Himes’ work has been elevated beyond the level of mere essential reading, and can be considered ‘important.’ On its release, Newsweek cited Cotton Comes to Harlem among their list of fifty books that “define our times.”
Kim Newman on the world of Anno Dracula
The premise of my novel Anno Dracula is that Count Dracula defeated Van Helsing and his circle of followers and conquered Britain in 1885, marrying Queen Victoria and becoming Prince Consort. This encourages the world’s vampire population to live openly among regular humans (‘the warm’) and fosters the spread of Dracula’s own bloodline of vampirism among all sections of 19th Century British society, from the palaces to the slums. In addition to historical characters like Oscar Wilde, Jack the Ripper and the Elephant Man, the book includes familiar figures from Victorian fiction, like Dr Jekyll and Dr Moreau, Professor Moriarty and Mycroft Holmes … along with all the other vampires of literature and film, including Lord Ruthven (from Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’), Varney the Vampyre and (in one of the subsequent books in the series) the Count from Sesame Street.
Many readers have enjoyed the large casts of the books, and some have made lists of the borrowed characters, tracking them down to their original authors or spots in history. I enjoy the game aspect of the books, too – though I tend to cast around for someone who’ll fit rather than stop the plot to allow for a guest star appearance. When I needed a particularly loathesome vampire for the job of Governor of the Tower of London in the Dracula administration, I had a choice of many pre-existing monsters and went with the Graf von Orlok, from the 1922 movie Nosferatu, as the sort of rat-faced human stick insect even Dracula might not be comfortable sharing a room with (the more so in that von Orlok is literally a shadow Dracula, created to stand in for the Count in an unauthorised adaptation of the novel). When I wanted a prostitute/Jack the Ripper victim to reminisce about a stuffy, hypocritical client, Henry Wilcox – from E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End – fit the bill, and in fact the backstory Forster gives him dovetailed perfectly with the requirements of my own plot. I did feel the need to do a few simple jokes, like the one with Anne Rice’s posy vampire complaining that his shirt got ruined in a riot … but even that is worked into a strand about a new breed of fashionable vampire who’ve only been undead for five minutes but already own six velvet cloaks and a silk-lined coffin and generally act the goth part (which, in the Anno Dracula world, inspires Gilbert and Sullivan to make fun of the trend the way they satirise Oscar Wilde and the aesthetes in Patience). It all feeds back into the story, and the exploration of the imagined, alternate, satirical mirror-world.
Which means I’ve a bunch of off-cuts that didn’t get into the book because there was no place for them (some might yet worm their way into the forthcoming Johnny Alucard – but some will get left out again). So, here are elements of the Anno Dracula world you can take as canonical but, for one reason or another, haven’t made it into the books (yet).
- The Hound of the Baskervilles. In Anno Dracula, I establish that Sherlock Holmes is viewed as a dissident and has been clapped up in a concentration camp (Devil’s Dyke) in Sussex. What I didn’t have room to explain is that this means he and Dr Watson weren’t available to investigate the persecution of Sir Henry Baskerville on Dartmoor. Unimpeded, the dastardly missing black sheep of the family Rodger Baskerville (posing as Stapleton the butterfly collector) pulled off the trick with his luminous dyed dog and drove Sir Henry to his death on the moors, then came forth to claim Baskerville Hall, inherited the fortune and lived to a ripe old age surrounded by his family. However, his own heirs inherited his disposition, so at least he was finally poisoned in 1953 by great-grandchildren who injected puff adder venom into his breakfast egg.
- The Producers. In 1967, the New York production company of Bialystock and Bloom set out to mount a surefire loss-making Broadway disaster and stage The Count and I, a musical about Dracula’s marriage to Queen Victoria starring Jim Morrison and Dom DeLuise. It runs for twenty-eight years, two years longer than the sentence B&B receive when their accountancy practices come to light. The hit songs are ‘The Pain in Vein’, ‘Coffin With the Fringe on Top’ and ‘Spring-Time for Dracula’. A 1970 big-screen adaptation, directed by Michael Winner, with Anthony Newley and Barbra Streisand is an epochal loss-maker for Hollywood.
- In the 1940s, when actual vampires are comparatively rare in California, a new style of vampire movie catches on in Hollywood, often created by European filmmakers like Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock who have real experience with the undead in their homelands, showcasing living actresses like Barbara Stanwyck, Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth and Marlene Dietrich, who compete to seem paler and more pointy-teethed in a line of vampire-style evening gowns with flared collars, shoulder-pads and slit skirts. In movies like I Wake Up Bleeding, Double Interment, The Big Bite and Dead Women Are Dangerous, living private eyes are ensnared by predatory females and wind up bled dry in the gutter. The first movie star to turn vampire was Greta Garbo, who emerged from retirement to star in The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1947 and won her sixth Oscar as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate in 1967 before settling in to a long run as the matriarch on Dynasty.
- It is rumoured that the Beatles only progressed as a band after John and Paul drove a stake through Stuart Sutcliffe, their lone vampire member, to prevent him leeching off them forever. Their first hit record was a vampire-themed novelty track ‘I Want to Bite Your Hand’. The band broke up when John married Lady Misraki, the vampire from Anne Billson’s novel Suckers. Before that, they went on a spiritual pilgramage to the Temple of the 7 Golden Vampires in China and were rumoured to have drunk vampire blood during the recording of the Red Album. In 1974, Ringo produced Count Downe, a satirical vampire movie starring Harry Nilsson as the Son of Dracula, but it was suppressed by the Lord Chamberlain as a libel against a member of the British Royal Family and he was stripped of his O.B.E.
- In 2008, Will Smith stars in I Am Legend, the horrific story of seemingly the last vampire in a world overrun by living humans … persecuted every night by his former neighbouts and searching for his own kind amid the ruins left when civilisation has to rely on regular people to get by. All the reviews say the film isn’t as good as the Richard Matheson novel it’s based on, and note that none of the previewed endings are satisfactory.
Sympathy for the Devil, by Howard Marks
Howard Marks is a gifted man. Beloved by millions as the avuncular poster boy of pot, Marks is a former international drug king-pin turned writer, film-star, entertainer and arguably the king of Welsh cool. He has a voice like Richard Burton and the vitality of Sir Tom, and with this crime fiction debut, adds yet another string to his bow. His autobiography, Mr Nice, was a frank and thoroughly entertaining account of his criminal career, and laid out Marks’ skill as a writer for all to see. For this reason, and because of his cult status, Marks is well aware he could put his name to a book of carpet samples and still see enviable sales figures. Fortunately for us, he’s opted not to shamelessly cash in on his appeal, and has instead produced a sublime piece of crime writing. If Marks is going to gatecrash the world of crime fiction, be assured – he’s here on merit.
The book introduces us to Detective Catrin Price, a Cardiff lass who has spent the last twelve years working undercover in the London BDSM scene, investigating drug dealers and fleeing the memory of her ex-boyfriend Rhys, a fellow police officer who deserted her for both drugs and another woman. The opening stages of the book set the mood and establish the character perfectly. We see Catrin’s life with Rhys in flashback, a series bittersweet memories soaked in regret, which have informed her life ever since. Ultimately, the years following Rhys’ departure from her life see him disintegrate personally, professionally and physically, until 12 years later his heroin-addled corpse is washed up in the waters of Cardiff Bay. His death is listed as an accidental overdose, but Catrin refuses to accept the official line, and begins her own investigation. Read more
The Hollow Man, by Oliver Harris
The Hollow Man is the opening salvo in a planned new detective thriller series from North London’s Oliver Harris. Harris is a consummate student of literature, with a first in English Lit and two Masters degrees (one in Shakespeare studies, one in creative writing), and is now working towards a PhD in psychoanalysis and Greek myth. Despite his abundant achievements in academia however, this is his first foray into the world of the full-length novel. Read more
Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent. After university she worked for fifteen years as a primary school teacher in London. Her first collection of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was published in 1986. In 1987 she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry and in 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award for light verse.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy isn’t for everybody. His style of writing can take some getting used to, and many find his lack of punctuation bewildering. If a reader can get past the initial confusion, then they may find the writing style serves to set a kind of rhythmic pace. It is a facet of storytelling not commonly utilised, and adds another dimension to the reader experience. All the Pretty Horses has a kind of loping step – not unlike riding a horse – and The Road has a sort of stiltedness suggested by short sentences, not unlike shuffling along a road, eking out life moment by moment.
The Road follows a man and his son travelling the road across the post-apocalyptic landscape of America. We are not told what apocalypse has befallen, though the infinite grey ash and scorched background is suggestive of pyroclastic flow or nuclear devastation. We are not even told their names. It’s just a man, and his son, surviving day by day in a cruel and desolate world of withered corpses, scarce food and water, and murderous scavengers willing to kill to survive.
Read more
Vespasian: Tribune of Rome, by Robert Fabbri
Tribune of Rome is Fabbri’s first novel after a career in film and television in a variety of assistant directing roles. He has worked on historical and contemporary series’ across a twenty-five year span. As such it was with interest that this reviewer approached this début novel, given the arguable glut on the market of Roman fiction (both good and bad) as well as the apparent enthusiasm for the period that is implied from Fabbri’s biography.
Tribune of Rome does not disappoint, it is a strong first foray into the cut-throat world of historical fiction, sounded written and apparently well researched. The novel follows the predictable approach of this kind of series – beginning with the young life of Vespasian from childhood through to the first years of adulthood. Despite following what is interestingly a genre “formula” of demonstrating a coming of age story, Tribune of Rome does not feel formulaic. Indeed there is a freshness to Fabbri’s writing, in that he uses the political intrigues of ancient Rome well, pulling his young character convincingly from rural obscurity into the homes of Rome’s influential men and women.
Read more
The Illumination, by Kevin Brockmeier
It could be argued that one of the driving forces of human progress over the past two hundred years has been in terms of how we’ve dealt with pain. Where, for instance, would modern medicine be if not for the discovery of anaesthesia? The modern world has effectively been able to put pain at arm’s length. And as a result, perhaps we’ve spawned a culture in which pain is now viewed as weakness or failure; perhaps we’ve even become typhlotic to those who suffer. Got a headache? Take aspirin. Back giving you trouble? We’ve all got a bad back, so keep the noise down. Read more
Howl: A Graphic Novel, by Allen Ginsberg & Eric Drooker
There are arguably three works that best exemplify Beat literature: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Alan Ginsberg’s Howl. While all three of these works share a celebration of non-conformity and free expression, they also share a controversial journey to prominence. First published in 1956, Ginsberg’s Howl is now widely considered to be a prophetic masterpiece, but it had to overcome censorship trials and obscenity charges before becoming one of the most widely read poems of the century. An epic raging against a dehumanizing society, Ginsberg declares his motivation in writing Howl to be:
“In publishing Howl, I was curious to leave behind after my generation an emotional time bomb that would continue exploding in U.S. consciousness, in case our military-industrial-nationalist complex solidified into a repressive police bureaucracy.” Read more
Palo Alto, by James Franco
An examination of youth spent in a northern California town, Palo Alto, the debut short story collection of James Franco, traces the lives of a group of teenagers as they experiment with adult vices (drink, drugs and more than a little casual violence), struggle with their families and each other, and succumb to wanton self-sabotage and destruction.
The stories collected in Palo Alto certainly don’t provide hope for the future of American civilisation; the young citizens of Palo Alto seem to be perpetually bored and, all too often, fatally stupid. In ‘Halloween’ a feckless youth, amped up by the thought of beating up a rival, kills a woman while drunk driving, but even that doesn’t shake off his ennui and in a matter of years he has managed to forget completely the significance of that particular stretch of road. In ‘Killing Animals’ a wannabe gang of toughs roam the streets vandalising anything that doesn’t move and shooting, either with a slingshot or a BB gun, anything that does: “We shot animals and people. But they were all small animals and we didn’t kill anyone.” Read more
Where was Nelson? Robert Wilton on the relationship between fact and fiction in an historical thriller
August 1805: Tom Roscarrock, apparently working for British Government’s Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey but with his loyalties increasingly suspect, was operating in northern France. Napoleon’s Army of the Ocean Coasts was poised at the Channel, ready to invade and destroy Britain as soon as the conditions were right. The fate of the British Empire was increasingly bound up in the question of Roscarrock’s motives and his affiliations, and how they overlapped and interacted with the movements of the French fleet of Admiral Pierre Villeneuve, sailing northward to escort the invasion fleet. This is the history being re-told in The Emperor’s Gold, out now from Corvus Books. It’s an amazing story of intrigue and deception – but for the researcher/author it presents a challenge. For The Emperor’s Gold is based on the archives of the Comptrollerate-General, discovered in the basement of the Ministry of Defence in London, and I can’t change history simply because it would make my writing easier.
Some of the challenge is just inert factual accuracy: when did Napoleon’s Army of the Ocean Coasts become the Grande Armee? When did the word ‘saboteur’ enter the language? Some of the challenge is what you might call historical logistics: I need Tom Roscarrock and Richard Jessel of the Comptrollerate-General to fit in three meetings with agents between the 23rd and the 25th of July; plenty of time, but how far can a man travel in a day’s riding from London, without over-tiring his horse? That means one of the meetings is going to have to happen somewhere like Aylesbury, but was Aylesbury big enough to have an inn in 1805, and if so what was the inn called? Oh, and the nice bit of evening atmosphere I’ve just written is going to have to become a bit of dawn atmosphere instead.
Read more
November, by Sean O’Brien
The titles of works of literature carry a certain amount of weight beyond mere semantic content by virtue of their privileged position alone; in works of poetry, where words are subject to particularly fierce interrogation, that weight is increased. November, the title of Sean O’Brien’s new collection, inevitably carries with it connotations of conclusion and hebetude: the year has all but passed, yet there are still two months remaining in which to look back at it; it is the metaphoric month of old age. O’Brien, at 58, is not yet old aged himself and this is not a book concerned with ageing in the way that recent works by Heaney and Walcott were. However, the consequences of time passing are returned to frequently in elegiac poems for people and opportunities passed. Recalling Hardy’s ‘Faintheart in a Railway Train‘, as well as films from cinema’s golden age, O’Brien writes that: “a man may have to choose between a woman / And a train”.
O’Brien mourning the death of, among others, Peter Porter, Michael Donaghy and Archie Markham, as well as looking back at books unwritten, sleep unslept, girls and railways long-gone. However, O’Brien’s elegies do not weep for the departed, rather they remember them and memorialise them with dignity; this prevents November from becoming a bleak or depressing book. There are even light moments to be found, most notably a short full-rhymed poem opening: “There are two tribes this world can boast – / The Marmite lovers and the damned.”
Read more
Brian McGilloway
Brian McGilloway is author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin series. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. After studying English at Queen’s University, Belfast, he took up a teaching position in St Columb’s College in Derry, where he is currently Head of English.
His first novel, Borderlands, published by Macmillan New Writing, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2007 and was hailed by The Times as ‘one of (2007’s) most impressive debuts.’ The second novel in the series, Gallows Lane, was shortlisted for both the 2009 Irish Book Awards/Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2010. Bleed A River Deep, the third Devlin novel, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of their Best Books of 2010. The fourth novel, The Rising, will be published in paperback in May 2011 alongside the new standalone novel, Little Girl Lost, featuring DS Lucy Black.
Brian lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife and their four children.
Paris Metro Tales, translated by Helen Constantine
A sequel to Helen Constantine’s Paris Tales; Paris Metro Tales is an anthology of twenty-two short stories linked to metro stations around Paris. Stories and authors range widely in age and style; some modern prose, some historical legend; but all are loosely related to certain landmarks and stations of Paris such as Les Halles or the Opéra. Each story is illustrated by a photo of the area and should readers wish to read the stories surrounded by the inspiration and scene, there is a Metro map and suggested itinerary around Paris beginning at Gare du Nord and finishing at Lamarck-Caulaincourt.
Fans of short stories will love the differing styles of prominent authors such as Zola, Simenon, Maupassant and Colette, which together provide a refreshingly varied read. Stories range in style from a 15th-century account of the miraculous Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, to Paul Fornel’s ‘Story’ told from seven perspectives; a man, woman, boy, concierge, waiter, canary, and flowers. Frederic Farjardie’s thoughts of a man staggering from a blow in a civil riot – his memories weaving from past demonstrations as a militant leftist – are convincing as the coherent incoherence of a man with brain injuries. Anne Saumont’s story, beautifully crafted and narrated by ‘Therese’, is unencumbered by punctuation or speech marks as it rattles off narration, but is perfectly pitched to gradually reveal the nature of a confusing situation. Gérard de Nerval evokes the bustling market in Les Halles in the 1850s, now regretfully dismantled; while Colette recounts her involvement in a traffic accident near the Opéra.
Read more
NewsNow
Literature News 24/7-
The Bookgeeks Interview
Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
-
Latest Competition
Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
Latest Bookbitz reviews
