THIS WEEK’S NEW BOOKS REVIEWED | FEATURE
A BRIGHT RAY OF DARKNESS
Ethan Hawke (Penguin)
For those of us of a certain age, Ethan Hawke will forever be the doomed young student in Dead Poets Society, caught in the headlights between personal desire and family expectation. Hawke’s first novel in 20 years features a protagonist in a similar predicament. His narrator, William Harding, is an A-lister who appears to have it all: a glittering career in blockbuster movies, the world’s most beautiful pop star for a wife and children who adore him. After a one-night stand on location pulls the red carpet from under his marriage, William hurls himself into the greatest professional challenge of his life, a gruelling run of Henry IV on Broadway in which he will play Hotspur.
Believing this role to be the key to saving his marriage and restoring his reputation an actor, our narrator battles with the technical demands of performing Shakespeare amongst colleagues both jealous of his success and scornful of his abilities. With the wild despair of the role he does not yet fully understand, William seeks shelter in whisky and women. A tale of the search for personal salvation and professional pride, Hawke blurs the boundaries between past roles and autobiography and brings a world of fame, longing and oblivion into sharp focus.
Price: £16.99. Info: here
words PAUL JENKINS
THE MIRROR DANCE
Catriona McPherson (Hodder & Stoughton)
If you enjoy a classic-style whodunit set in the past, one that allows you to escape from reality, then you will love The Mirror Dance by California-based Scot Catriona McPherson. An excellent murder mystery story, set amongst the publishing houses of Dundee, I came to this book having never read any of the previous 14 titles in the Dandy Gilver series, named after their everpresent crime-solving protagonist – but found it easy to read in a standalone content.
Told from the perspective of Gilver and tracing the motive behind the murder of a Punch & Judy puppetmaster, McPherson’s writing is beautifully descriptive and highly evocative. Comparisons to Agatha Christie are by no means too bold – fans of Christie, you imagine, will also love this. Full of red herrings and unpredictable plot twists, The Mirror Dance’s plot is dark – though not too disturbing – whilst remaining exciting and gripping. The perfect cosy mystery to spend an afternoon tucked up in your favourite chair: thoroughly enjoyable.
Price: £21.99. Info: here
words SARAH BOWDIDGE
OPEN WATER
Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking)
An emotional, lyrical debut novel from Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water is a potent story of race, masculinity and mental health, following the narrative of two black British artists living in South East London. Above all, it is a depiction of what it means to fall in love whilst being dragged downwards by an anchor of trauma.
Nelson wastes no page, his writing flows and is vulnerable like poetry. He has spoken on how his love for photography has influenced him: this translates into his writing, with our protagonist using photography as a tool to capture those he feels are most concealed by society. The second-person perspective throughout provides the reader with a delicate sense of intimacy inviting them inside the narrator’s mind, with emotions inevitably floating to the surface even when language fails to provide the words.
The author explores trust, continuously coming back to the metaphor of a shattered joint (“when we love, we trust, and when we fail, we fracture that joint”); the relationship between the two individuals is intense, yet brutally honest and eye-opening. A tender love story and a tribute to black artistry, whilst simultaneously expressing the heartbreaking frustrations of systemic violence, being looked at but not ‘seen’ and coming to terms with living in a city that both celebrates yet rejects them.
Price: £12.99. Info: here
words COBY BARKER
REALLY SAYING SOMETHING: OUR BANANARAMA STORY
Sara Dallin & Keren Woodward (Hutchinson)
As kids, Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward [pictured, top] hatched a plot to break each other’s ankles because plaster casts and crutches were a surefire way of causing a fuss in the schoolyard. “When this proved unsuccessful we realised we’d just have to find other ways of getting noticed.” Forming a record-breaking pop group, together with Siobhan Fahey, turned out to be a much sounder bet.
Their joint memoir is in many ways a personal history of the shifting musical sands of the 1980s. They began the decade slumming it in the Sex Pistols’ Denmark Street HQ, before going on to appear on Top Of The Pops with post-Specials outfit Fun Boy Three, party with the Blitz Kids, contribute to Band Aid, crack America, team up with Stock, Aitken & Waterman and tour the world. The departure of Fahey, then her replacement Jacquie O’Sullivan, wasn’t the end for Bananarama, though – as the book underlines, they’re still very much a going concern, and Dallin and Woodward remain inseparable friends.
The pair don’t entirely swerve serious subjects such as motherhood, depression, sexism in the industry, the split with Fahey and the tragically premature deaths of close friends George Michael and Keith Flint. But Really Saying Something is less candid reflection and more gossipy recollection, a lively tale of two women fortunate enough to find themselves living out all of their teenage fantasies in the company of a colourful cast of characters – everyone from Boy George, Shane MacGowan, Lemmy and Prince to Delia Smith, Andy Warhol, Mike Tyson, the Queen of Thailand and, yes, Robert De Niro. (He kept them waiting, in case you’re wondering.)
Price: £20. Info: here
words BEN WOOLHEAD
A YEAR WITH SWOLLEN APPENDICES
Brian Eno (Faber)
Recent interviews have seen producer, musician, activist and maverick artist extraordinaire Brian Eno commenting that lockdown has left his diary blank for the forseeable future. It seems he is enjoying a breather, though: intermittently releasing some stark ambient material made with his brother Roger a while back, as well as compiling his soundtrack work into an album. Which, compared to Eno’s regular schedule, amounts to very little.
A Year With Swollen Appendices, his diary covering 1995 and published the following year, has long been out of print and expensive to buy second-hand. Faber’s updated version has a new introduction by Eno, as well as a stack of essays and a discography, beautifully bound in a chunky hardback edition. Growing up, Eno witnessed his father falling asleep at the dinner table after a day’s graft and vowed to never end up in such a repetitive work cycle, yet his ‘95 schedule as described here would probably floor a platoon let alone one individual. He’s in the studio with David Bowie for the Outside album, U2 on what became the Passengers project and James at the first stirrings of 1997 LP Whiplash; remixing Massive Attack and collaborating with Jah Wobble – and with all these projects running simultaneously, and not always as planned. Not forgetting childcare, creating art installations, travelling to Bosnia, Dublin, New York, Africa, as well as being an active patron of War Child and creating his own music. Eno never seems to stand still or switch off.
A Year… is a fascinating glimpse into the mind and life of Brian Eno, whose life at that point was a complete contrast to the slow, drearily unproductive, groggy and brain-numbing groundhog days of lockdown.
Price: £20. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT
