| Book
shop
Words by Stephen Drennan
EX LIBRIS
JUST CAN’T
PUT DOWN...
Blood From A Stone
by Donna Leon
pub Weidenfeld
& Nicolson
Reviewed by Peter Guttridge, writer in residence at the
Jubilee Library, programme director of The Word &
crime critic for the Observer
US crime author Donna Leon’s Venice-set mysteries
featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti are massive bestsellers
across Europe – she’s translated into 20 languages
– but, oddly, she’s scarcely made a dent in
the American book charts. The 14th in the series, Blood
From A Stone, is being given a big push on both sides
of the Channel. An African street trader is murdered just
before Christmas as he sells his fake designer handbags.
Brunetti investigates and soon finds that this murder
is only the most obvious of the crimes relating to the
victim. As with all good crime fiction, his investigation
leads him to uncover a much more complex mystery. There
are entertaining domestic interludes with Brunetti’s
feisty academic wife, Paolo – whose character is
based on Leon herself –before the policeman plunges
back into the dingy back alleys of the city to track down
the wrong-doers. Blood From A Stone has Leon’s trademark
mix of atmospheric writing and cunning plotting. Terrific.
Donna Leon will be in conversation with Libby Purves on
March 8 in The Word, Jubilee Library.
THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAY
by Christian Wolmar
ATLANTIC
HBK £17.99
London just wouldn’t
be London without that familiar red/white/blue roundel
signifying an Underground station, or Harry Beck’s
famous stylised ups-downs-and-diagonals map. The Tube
played a huge role in opening out London, some of the
stations being the various suburbs’ first landmarks.
But today the system’s development is not all it
might be. Wolmar’s magnificent book, rich with illusrations
and photos, shows how the Tube proved the logical solution
to a super-congested capital – and how the network’s
history is undersung, something that this work will help
to rectify. Stephen Drennam
WHEELS OUT OF GEAR
by Dave Thompson
pub HELTER SKELTER
PBK £14.99
 In
1979, Britain lurched to the right, becoming a horrendous
place in which to be young. Soon-grown-enormous dole queues,
scary rumours of conscription and of impending nuclear
attack... The soundtrack to all this came out of Coventry,
courtesy of Jerry Dammers’ 2-Tone label. Thompson
tracks the histories of the Specials, the Selecter, the
Beat et al, placing the bands in context pop-wise, while
reminding us of the bigger picture: racist-murdered Asian
families, the SUS law, inner city riots and, that distraction
from chaos the Royal Wedding. SD
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK
CLUB
by Karen Joy Fowler
pub VIKING (PENGUIN),
HBK, £12.99.
Five women and a man meet
once a month to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Each
chapter focuses on one of the six characters, one of the
six months, and one of the six novels. The story is told,
to good effect, in the first person plural. This isn’t
a reworking of Austen’s material, but a novel about
the experience of reading (bound to interest the reader!).
Familiarity with Jane Austen is not necessary –
all the novels are summarised in the appendix, which is
as witty, playful and enlightenting as the rest of the
book. Katherine E Power
PAST MORTEM
by Ben Elton
BANTAM PRESS,
HBK, £17.99.
Ben Elton strikes me as
a writer who spent a lot of time thinking about what makes
a best-seller. His books, Past Mortem especially, are
easy to read and hard to put down. While investigating
a series of murders, detective Edward Newson logs on to
Friends Reunited – more like Bullies and Victims
Reunited – and re-immerses himself in his school
past. Past Mortem is light fun, but it also deals intelligently
with the longer lasting effects of bullying. On the negative
side, although who-did-it wasn’t obvious, it wasn’t
that hard to guess either. KEP
THE
SUN – A BIOGRAPHY
by David Whitehouse
pub WILEY £16.99
An intelligent, safety-goggles-on
look at that without-which star that’s intrigued
humankind since day one. “Popular science”
this might be, but BBC man Whitehouse never bubblegum-ises
his subject, save for breaking up his text into digestible
portions. We learn about sun worship, sun as time-marker,
eclipses, and astronomers’ shift to earth-around-sun
thinking – and how the sun was formed in the first
place. There’s also gen on medical stuff: SAD, rickets
and cancer, the monitoring of sunspots, solar energy and
the sun’s worrying influence on climate. Wide-ranging
and excellent. SD
BRIGHTON & HOVE BUS
NAMES
by Mike Cheesman & Adam Trimingham
pub POMEGRANATE PBK
£14.99
Crammed with potted biographies,
pics of those concerned, and tons of public-transport-in-action
snaps, this informative, shiny-paged softback will satisfy
the curiosity of all who’ve puzzled over the names
on Brighton & Hove’s bus fronts these last six
years. B&H-connected pop stars like Leo Sayer and
Dusty jostle for space with film pioneers, authors, politicians,
sportsfolk and other notables – like Magnus Volk,
Harry Cowley and artist Aubrey Beardsley. Long overdue
– unlike our excellent buses! SD
copyright The Insight 2004
|
