Written a decade or so after the Golden Age of crime fiction, Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop is a comic novel that delivers a devious mystery without ever taking itself seriously. Its hero is the self-regarding academic Gervase Fen who, in this case, comes to the aid of his friend, the poet Richard Cadogan.
The Moving Toyshop
Edmund [...]
I like David Foster Wallace’s fiction a lot but, aside from the odd essay here and there, I hadn’t really read any of his non-fiction until now. Consider the Lobster is a collection of ten essays (eleven in the print edition – I read the ebook, from which Host has been omitted because “it cannot [...]
During the last World Cup I read Ken Bray’s excellent How To Score, which examines football from a scientific perspective. I decided to warm up for the 2010 World Cup with this book, which offers an economist’s view of the game.
Why England Lose
Simon KuperHarperSport 2010, Paperback, 368 pages, £7.99
It’s quite clearly influenced by the success of Freakonomics [...]
“Beware of faking, people will believe you.”
The power of fiction, the need to create and, most of all, to believe something are all key themes in Foucault’s Pendulum, Eco’s second novel. It’s a kind of intellectual Da Vinci Code, one that piles conspiracy theory upon conspiracy theory but always with tongue in cheek.
Foucault’s Pendulum
Umberto EcoVintage [...]
Patrick Hamilton is probably best known for the plays Rope and Gas Light. The former was made famous on film by Alfred Hitchcock and the latter ran for three years on Broadway and was filmed twice. However, in recent years the reputation of Hamilton’s novels has been growing.
Hangover Square
J.B. Priestley (Introduction) Penguin Classics 2001, Paperback, 288 pages, £9.99
Hangover [...]
Published in 1930, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying follows Anse Bundren, his sons and daughter on their journey to bury Addie, Anse’s wife and the childrens’ mother. The story is a patchwork of the viewpoints of 15 different characters, each of whose ‘narration’ is simply a stream-of-consciousness monologue. The effect is as entrancing as [...]
Though her name is never mentioned in the text, the murderer of the title is Myra Hindley who, with her boyfriend Ian Brady, killed five children between 1963 and 1965. She died in late 2002, which is when this novel takes place. It follows Billy Tyler, the policeman tasked with standing guard in the mortuary [...]
I have an uneasy relationship with Don DeLillo’s work. Parts of Underworld, DeLillo’s masterpiece, are stunning, among the best prose that I’ve read. However, I just don’t find his characters convincing. They all sound the same and appear to be there not to have conversations but only to express ideas to each other, ideas that [...]
Race, music, education, institutions and the birth of hip hop are just some of the topics for which Jonathan Lethem finds room in this novel. The first half follows young Dylan Ebdus as he deals with growing up as one of the few white kids on his block in 1970s Brooklyn.
The Fortress of Solitude
Jonathan LethemFaber [...]
Eight years passed between Gold’s debut, Carter Beats the Devil, and this, his second novel. Carter Beats the Devil is a fictionalised story about Charles Carter, an American magician who was successful in the late 19th and early 20th century. It’s a very good book.
Sunnyside
Glen David GoldSceptre 2010, Paperback, 576 pages, £7.99
Sunnyside is more ambitious but, because [...]
