The Man Booker Prize 2008
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The Man Booker Prize
The handbag team give their verdict on the 2008 Man Booker Prize longlist, including this year\'s winner Aravind Adiga\'s The White Tiger.
Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
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Sea Of Poppies
Review by Adrienne Wyper
The detailing of the intertwined lives in this tale set in India 200 years ago is richly detailed and compelling. The opium trade is the common factor, with every level revealed, from the poverty-bound village growers being ripped off to the factory bosses, the owners and crew of the ships that transport the drug, and the end consumer – the addicts. However, there\'s slightly too much 19th-century seafaring slang (English and Laskari) to make it an easy read; footnotes or a glossary would have helped. Here’s a taste: \'Avast with your launderbuzzing... or I\'ll stuff your laurels between your teeth... tear out your jaunties... chowder your chutes... damned luckerbaugs and wanderoos!\'
Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, RRP £18.99 (£12.34) from amazon.co.uk
A Case Of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
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A Case Of Exploding Mangoes
Review by Carol Muskoron
In real life General Zia ul Haq died in a plane when it went down in flames in 1988, killing everyone aboard. A Case Of Exploding Mangoes takes place just prior to the crash and sets a scene where just about everyone is trying to kill the General. I know the author, Mohammed Hanif, was trying to be funny but I didn’t laugh out loud. And I know he was trying to be heartfelt but I felt nothing in my heart. There are no women at all in the book until about page 100 – and then, oh, the relief to meet the First Lady (the General\'s wife)! Mohammed Hanif writes episodes really, really well but for me this just didn’t flow - I could almost see him sitting down and plotting it and at times I resented the fact that he knew what the hell was going on in the book and I didn\'t (it was hard to care about the characters he presented as we were never really told all that much about them). I\'m not a chick lit girl, I read all kinds of books - I loved Catch 22 (which also had very few women but was an astoundingly funny and important novel). A Case of Exploding Mangoes should have been in that league - it wasn’t.
A Case Of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, RRP £12.99 (£7.79) from amazon.co.uk
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
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The Northern Clemency
Review by Bernadette Fallon
It’s a kitchen sink version of a great Russian epic, moving from the 1970s to the 1990s, and from London to Sheffield and back. Mixed-up personal relationships are played out against the backdrop of political and social unrest, from the miner’s strike to a wife’s infidelity, from childhood longings to adult breakdowns.
And it works until almost the last page when the writer brings it right up to the post-modern end of the 20th century with a literary trick that almost had me throwing the book across the room in disgust.
But I can just about forgive it; a good read.Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher,
RRP £16.99 (£8.49) from amazon.co.uk
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
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The White Tiger
Review by Katie Cocoran
This is a dark comedy written in the form of a letter by the main character Balram. We follow his life from a young boy in a rural village to a struggling working man within the bright lights and corruption of Dehli taking a murderous twist en route! Though there may be chuckles along the way, due in part to the blasé and uneducated way Aravind writes as Balram’s voice, the underlying messages of this book are of the ongoing battle between rich and poor, political manipulations, police cover ups and the often unobserved underworld of India. Aravind takes us into Balram’s mind in such a way that this book becomes a real page turner as the gritty life he leads takes twist after twist. Although this book may have a slightly slow beginning, you can\'t help falling in love with it.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, RRP £12.99 (£7.79) from amazon.co.uk
The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant
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The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant
Review by Bridget March
Don’t be fooled by the obvious fashion imagery into thinking that this is a book for a stylista. Unfortunately the plot never really justifies the clothing connection, but that’s not to say it isn’t an interesting read.
The narrator, Vivien Kovaks, is a Hungarian Jewish immigrant living in London with her shy and secretive parents. When she discovers her estranged uncle with his flamboyant nature and morally alarming past, she simultaneously discovers her rich family history and some truths about herself.
Their relationship lies at the forefront of this easy to read novel with an insightful socio-political portrait of the ’70s as the backdrop.
The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant, RRP £11.99 (£7.20) from amazon.co.uk
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
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Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Review by Veronica Kirby
Smith’s debut novel is an original and fantastically thrilling tale. Set in the Soviet Union during 1953, a tale of murder unravels under Stalin’s iron grip and the Ministry Of State Security, a brutal secret police force whose existence is anything but a secret and whose rules mean that a child murderer is free to keep on killing.
Once a war hero and dedicated officer of the Ministry, Leo Demidov is disgraced and exiled with his wife to a town in the country. Leo there realises that everything he once believed in is a lie and he has in fact helped to cover up the evil work of this killer. He risks everything in pursuing the killer, making he and his wife enemies of a deadly state…
Child 44 is a thriller but told with great sensitivity through its characters, making this original plot a real page turner.
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, RRP £12.99 (£6.93) from amazon.co.uk
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
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The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Review by Bernadette Fallon
Set in the repressed isolation of a desolate west of Ireland landscape, the story is told from the perspective of an ageing asylum patient and her psychiatric doctor. Sounds cheery, what? You won’t get a barrel of laughs from this one but you will get some of the most deftly written, sensitively handled and most arresting storytelling to come out of Ireland – or anywhere – in years.
Beautifully paced, it builds to a very moving end without anyone – including you – wanting to kill themselves.
He was shortlisted for the Booker two years ago and this one has got winner written all over it.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, RRP £16.99 (£8.49) from amazon.co.uk
A Fraction Of The Whole by Steve Toltz
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A Fraction Of The Whole Steve Toltz
Review by Natalie Glock
Firstly I am amazed that this is Toltz\' debut novel. Never mind the vitality of the prose and perfectly judged moments of pain and joy, his real achievement with A Fraction Of The Whole is how he has managed, through the depiction of a father and son\'s relationship, to analyse how and why we become who we are.
After the death of his father Martin, Jasper Dean recounts their difficult lives with honesty and a lot of humour, using his father\'s diaries directly at times to allow us an insight into his utterly paranoid and cynical world view. It\'s through these diaries that the reader learns about the tragic unfolding of Jasper\'s infamous outlaw uncle Terry, who from a young age was the polar opposite of Martin: athletic, charming and free of the worries that plagued his younger brother. It\'s no wonder that the novel stretches over 700 pages, as the Deans’ story is one that takes them from their home in the Australian outback to the cafes of Paris, Thailand\'s jungles and back again. It’s also filled with a cast of equally obscure yet charming characters who play their own part in Jasper\'s mission not to turn out like his old man.
I loved this book, how it trod the line between tragedy and comedy, how you felt like you were on adventure with two of the most unlikely heroes ever imagined and how it ultimately questioned how you qualify life - does it really need to be understood or simply enjoyed?
A Fraction Of The Whole by Steve Toltz, RRP £17.99 (£10.79) from amazon.co.uk
Girl In A Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold
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Girl In A Blue Dress
Review by Alaina Vieru
First time novelist Gaynor Arnold wrote Girl In A Blue Dress to represent the largely voiceless Catherine Dickens (wife of Charles), who once requested his letters to her be preserved so “that the world may know he loved me once”. Christened Alfred and Dorothea Gibson, the story of the couple’s union, family life and eventual cruel estrangement is narrated by Dorothea on Alfred’s death. Victorian England is described in absorbing, fascinating detail, but we are reminded that “modern” afflictions such as celebrity obsession and post-natal depression existed even then. A perfect book for snuggling up with a cup of tea and getting lost in.
Girl In A Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold, RRP £9.99 (£6.59) from amazon.co.uk
Netherland by Joseph O\'Neil
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Netherland
Review by Danielle Radojcin
Joseph O’Neill is a Dutchman with perfect English (he read law at Cambridge) who lives in the fabled Chelsea Hotel in New York with his wife Sally Singer, an editor at American Vogue, and their three sons. The narrator in Netherland, O’Neill’s third novel, is Hans van den Broek, who also lives in the Chelsea Hotel but is separated from his wife with whom he has one son. Lonely and frustrated, he befriends a Trinidadian immigrant who goes by the remarkable name Chuck Ramkissoon, who introduces him to the subculture of cricket – a virtually unrecognised sport in the US – played by a team of immigrants on a disused airstrip. O’Neill, who has said that he likes to keep his fiction as close to real-life as possible, is at his best when contrasting English and American cultural differences, summing up a feeling in a sentence with humour and a light touch (when describing how he and his ex-wife first got together, van den Broek notes dryly, “We courted in the style preferred by the English: alcoholically”). While the story races along at a compelling pace, it is through the game of cricket, used as a metaphor for America’s difficulty at coming to terms with this post-9/11 lifestyle - when the smallest part of the world can be found on Google maps but the perpetrator of this atrocity cannot be found – that O’Neill has deftly combined a comment on the politics of modern life with a touching tribute to the modern Western family.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, RRP £14.99 (£7.79) from amazon.co.uk
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
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The Lost Dog
Review by Kate WrightThis book holds a simple and touching tale told in a complex, sometimes overly fussy way. Heavy on description and multifaceted metaphors, The Lost Dog tells the story of Tom Loxley, a writer and university lecturer who falls for a beguiling, odd ball artist, Nelly Zhang. While held up in Nelly’s holiday cottage trying to finish a book on Henry James, Tom loses his beloved pet dog while walking in the bush. Interwoven into the missing dog narrative is a tapestry of intriguing side stories, including a whodunit mystery, a love story and a depressing glimpse into the horrors of old age. Time travelling somewhat serenely between past and present and leaping across two continents (Asia and Australia), The Lost Dog is beautiful and frustrating book. There are moments of literary genius - reading some passages is comparable only to slipping into a bath of warm melted chocolate. At other times the prose is so overwritten that it makes you want to tear your eyeballs out of their sockets and put them in backwards, just so you don’t have to read another pointlessly illustrative sentence. Perhaps it’s a grower? Upon finishing The Lost Dog, I immediately felt compelled to re-read the whole thing again – perhaps to understand a little more about what exactly it is Michelle de Kretser is trying to say. I imagine that after a second or third reading there will still be new discoveries to make, whether it be a missed nuance or another chocolaty bathing sensation.
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser, RRP £16.99 (£10.19) from
amazon.co.uk
From A to X A Story In Letters by John Berger
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From A to X
Review By Dan Cleeve
John Berger\'s book has won high praise for its interesting and clever take on storytelling. The story is presented as a collection of love letters, found in an old prison cell. The letters were sent by A\'ida to her imprisoned love Xavier and through her writings and his notes on the letters we\'re told the story of love and human spirit in times of economic struggle, political unrest and oppression. Needless to say laughs are few and far between. It\'s cleverly done, expertly written and certainly a worthy book, but one you\'d want to read again and again? Once was enough for us.
From A To X: A Story In Letters by John Berger, RRP £12.99 (£10.39) from amazon.co.uk
The Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie
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The Enchantress Of Florence
Review by Anneke Hak
The Enchantress Of Florence is a mix of many stories about women attempting to control their own destiny in a man’s world, and considers the usual Rushdie topic of East meets West along with sex, adventure and fantasy. Although difficult to read, the book does have a certain enchantment to it, and challenges the reader to give it their full attention. Full of omens, enchantments, potions and curses, The Enchantress Of Florence is a great read if you can get used to Salman Rushdie’s interesting use of language - which could leave even a Professor of English Literature scratching his head in confusion.
The Enchantress Of Florence by Salman Rushdie, RRP £18.99 (£11.34) from amazon.co.uk
