books
BOOK OF THE MONTH
REPARATION Gaby Koppel (Honno Press)
Author Gaby Koppel, born and bred in Cardiff suburb Rhiwbina, has utilised her extensive knowledge of the city for her debut novel. Reparation takes us not only around Cardiff, but to London and Budapest along the way. Journalist Elizabeth finds herself investigating the disappearance of a girl from London’s Hasidic community. Privately, meanwhile, she is dealing with the fallout of her father’s death – including her mother’s coping habits, alcoholism, dementia and the stresses of juggling a job and a relationship. With her mother also seeking answers about her childhood, Elizabeth eventually finds herself in Budapest, where all of her dilemmas are about to come face-to-face as she digs for clues to her mother’s past and answers about the little girl. Koppel’s work on Crimewatch has clearly been a valuable tool for her, as the crime aspect of the book is very well thought-out, researched and presented – while her own recollection of being brought up in Cardiff by refugee parents provides the inspiration for Elizabeth’s story. Indeed, Elizabeth’s mother Mutti is directly influenced by Koppel’s own mother. An outstanding debut novel that deals with love and loss, whilst providing a thorough examination of what it is to be a mother, all set against a backdrop of a contemporary crime novel. With just a drop of dark humour also thrown in, Reparation appeals on multiple levels. CHRIS ANDREWS Price: £8.99. Info: www.honno.co.uk
BINDLESTIFF Wayne Holloway (Influx Press) Film director Wayne Holloway takes a cinematic approach to novel writing. His debut, Bindlestiff, blends prose with screenplay in a tale set in both present-day Hollywood and a dystopian USA in the not-so-far-away future. A metafictional satire of the movie industry, race and identity in contemporary America, Holloway’s style mixes the drug-fuelled escapades of Hunter S. Thompson with the subversive flair of Colson Whitehead. But despite being original and inventive, Bindlestiff is sometimes too ambitious for its own good. The manic mishmash of genres and self-referential flourishes is not executed as adeptly as it could be. Nevertheless, this is a fresh, riotous and innovative novel, published by a small press who clearly have an eye for exciting new ventures in contemporary fiction. SP Price: £9.99. Info: www.influxpress.com THE LOST MAN Jane Harper (Little, Brown) Australia’s new queen of crime is back with her third slice of life and death in the outback under burning skies. Nathan Bright and his brothers, Cameron and Bub, live with their families on three farms adjacent to each other, miles from civilisation. It’s Christmas and the temperature is 120 degrees in the shade, except there isn’t much of it: only that thrown by the headstone on the grave of an old stockman who died a century before. And that’s where the body of Cameron is found after he goes off the radar, burnt to a crisp by the sun. How and why did he get there all alone? So much for tidings of comfort and joy. This is a terrific book. Part crime novel, and part family saga (and what a family). There are more skeletons in the closets of this little lot than you could cheerfully shake a stick at. Couldn’t put it down. MTi Price: £12.99. Info: www.littlebrown.co.uk BUZZ 46
HAPPENING Annie Ernaux, trans. Tanya Leslie (Fitzcarraldo) French writer Annie Ernaux was just 23 when, in 1963, she discovered she was pregnant and decided she could not keep the child. Living in France when abortion was illegal, she made a failed attempt to administer one herself with a knitting needle, before seeking out a backstreet abortionist in Paris – an experience that put her life at risk. Forty years later, Happening is a confessional memoir in which Ernaux reveals the story behind those traumatic months, in a style that is honest, meticulous and unflinching. Ernaux’s prose is unadorned with moral defence or literary decoration, and instead speaks the simple and shocking truth about a subject that many still hold taboo. This is a brave and important book that illustrates the potentially fatal consequences of criminalising and demonising abortion. SP Price: £8.99. Info: www.fitzcarraldoeditions.com THE TAKING OF ANNIE THORNE C.J. Tudor (Michael Joseph/Penguin) Crime meets psychological suspense meets out-and-out horror in The Taking Of Annie Thorne, C.J. Tudor’s follow-up to the best-selling The Chalk Man. Joe Thorne returns to the small town where, when he was a boy, his sister Annie vanished, then returned a few days later, never quite the person she was before. Now, a mysterious email pops up in his inbox, hinting that the same thing could happen again. Meanwhile, a single mother murders her son then shoots herself. Joe fears that a bogeyman is haunting the streets he grew up in, only to flee when he could no longer bear to be there or relive that time. From the stomachchurning first chapter to the grand guignol ending that is as shocking as it is surprising, Tudor racks up the nastiness, like thumbscrews being tightened until bones snap. Another hit, I think. MTi Price: £12.99 Info: www.penguin.co.uk
THE RAIN WATCHER Tatiana de Rosnay (Thorndike Press) Franco-British author de Rosnay, best known for the smash-hit novel Sarah’s Key, is feted across the Channel for her readable melodramas, but has largely flown under the radar in the UK. In The Rain Watcher, a Paris in the grip of a natural disaster is the backdrop for a strained family reunion. Stranded in a city where it won’t stop raining, members of the Malegarde family are forced to confront secrets long hidden, which float to the surface with the rising tide of the Seine. While de Rosnay’s clean prose makes for an effortless read, readers may feel cheated by the abrupt ending, which leaves a little too much to the imagination. That aside, this is a compelling study of the complexities of family life and, ultimately, love. AH Price: £12.99 Info: www.gale.com
WAVES Eduard von Keyserling, trans. Gary Miller (Dedalus) Originally published in 1911, and now rereleased over a century later, the world Eduard von Keyserling describes in {Waves}– of an aristocracy weighed down by generations of tradition and rigid moral codes – seems more distant than even 100 years ago. Rippling with an undercurrent of melancholia, the book is set in an unspecified Baltic Sea fishing village during a summer in the pre-war years. We follow a group of upper-class Germans as they swim, squabble, and strive to interact beyond the boundaries of their strict upbringings. A distant era it may be, yet Keyserling imbues his characters with the mistakes we continue to make, and his vivid descriptions of the interplay between sunlight and sea are gorgeous – a simpler beauty, perhaps, in the midst of a coming storm. DH Price: £9.99. Info: www.dedalusbooks.com