3117 August 2019 THE WEEKARTSIn 1935, as Agatha Christie’sMurder
on the Orient Expresswas flying off
the shelves, the British public became
gripped bya“real-life shocker”, said
Sinclair McKay in The Spectator.
Francis Rattenbury,adistinguished
architect in his late 60s, was sitting in
the living room of his Bournemouth villa
when an intruder bashed his skull in withamallet. It emerged
that the culprit was Rattenbury’s 18-year-old chauffeur, George
Stoner, who apparently killed his boss ina“spasm of confused
jealousy”: formonths, he’d been having an affair with the
architect’s wife, Alma, 42 (pictured). To protect her lover, Alma
initially claimed responsibility, and “what followed was an
extraordinary double murder trial” at theOld Bailey, culminating
in Stoner’s conviction and Alma’s acquittal(followed, immediately
afterwards, by her suicide). Written in “sensitive and affecting
prose”, Sean O’Connor’s account of this “weird and savage
killing” is both gripping and powerful.
The case certainly bore all the hallmarks of the “great English
murder”, said Thomas Grant in The
Times–includinga“loveless marriage”
and a“suburban mise en scène”. But it
also transcended the backdrop of 1930s
England, beinga“case study in human
frailty, jealousy and desire”. No wonder,
then, that it so captivated the public,
who thrilled to the sensational details:
the fact that in an attempt to revive her
husband, Alma had jammed his false
teeth (which were knocked out by the
mallet blow) back into his mouth; or that
after committing the murder, Stoner had
changed intoapair of silk pyjamas and
got into his lover’s bed. While O’Connor
isn’t the first writer to chronicle the
murder, hisaccount stands out for its
meticulous “psychological perspicacity”.
O’Connor’s decision to make Alma the lead character is also
wise for she was, in many ways,a“brilliant” woman, said
Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times. Originally from
Canada, she wasaprecocious violinist who performed to large
audiences asateenager and was subsequently decorated for her
work with an ambulance unit in the First World War. Ultimately,
O’Connor argues, she becameavictim of misogyny, and was
tried as much for “immorality” as for “criminality”. Yet for all
that the author strives to analyse the wider politics of the case,
he can’t get away from the fact that its appeal is “primarily
voyeuristic”. What lingers most in the mind is the “harrowing
comedy: the false teeth and the crêpe de Chine pyjamas”.The Fatal Passion of
Alma Rattenbury
by Sean O’Connor
Simon&Schuster 496pp £20
The Week Bookshop£15.99
Review of reviews: BooksBook of the week“What is it that makes us human?” asks
neuroscientist Shane O’Mara at the start ofIn
Praise of Walking.There’s language, of course,
and our use of tools; but O’Mara–you may have
guessed–proposes another candidate, said Tom
Whipple in The Times: bipedalism. Initially, it
may seem hyperbolic to place walking on two
legs –anability shared with emus and flamingos –
on apar with talking and the ability to make fire.
However, O’Mara doesagood job of persuading us otherwise. Bipedalism, he
points out, “allowed our hunter-gathering ancestors to holdaspear and exhaust
the animal they wanted to throw it at”: we can’t run as fast asadeer, but we have
more stamina. It also helped with the “gathering”, too. (“Try going blackberry-
picking on all fours,” he suggests.) More than this, it defined many aspects of
the way we came to live, from our ability to “walk side by side, scanning the
horizon while talking to each other”, to our capacity to eat while on the move.
Besides showing that walking was crucial to our past development, O’Mara
wants to convince us of its present-day benefits, said Helen Davies in The
Sunday Times. Although many thinkers have recognised this (for Hippocrates,
it was the “best medicine”; Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that “only
thoughts reached by walking have value”), we are at risk of forgetting it in
our “increasingly sedentary” world. O’Mara “companionably” takes us through
the latest science, citing studies which suggest that walking can protect and
repair organs, act asabrake on the ageing of our brains, and “boost creativity”.
In Praise of Walkingis peppered with insights and facts: did you know, for
instance, thatatoddler takes on average 2,368 steps, and travels 701 metres,
while learning to walk? It is both “convincing and compelling”.
In Praise of Walking
by Shane O’Mara
Bodley Head 218pp £16.99
The Week Bookshop£13.99
Novel of the weekThe Nickel Boys
by Colson Whitehead
Little, Brown 224pp £16.99
The Week Bookshop£13.99Colson Whitehead hadatough job following
upThe Underground Railroad,his “once-in-a-
generation slave-era fantasia” that won “pretty
much every accolade going” in 2016, said
Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times.
Its successor, however, is “another triumph”. Set
in the segregated “Jim Crow South” of the early
1960s, it centres onabrutal reform school for
juveniles–The Nickel Academy–towhich
Elwood Curtis,ablack straight-A student, is sent
after erroneously being arrested for car theft.
Whitehead’s academy is closely modelled
on an actual institution, the Dozier School in
Florida, where unmarked graves were discovered
in 2014, said Tim Adams in The Observer. His
portrayal of its “enclosed world”–with its
endemic racism and punishment block dubbed
the White House–is“ both highly detailed and
emotionally exacting”. Yet, despite being rooted
in fact, this is “not justapiece of documentary
writing”, said Philip Hensher in The Spectator.
Instead, it finds its justification ina“marvellous
play” between reality and artifice. It is, quite
simply, “heartbreakingly good”.To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweek.co.uk/bookshopor speak toabookseller on020-3176 3835
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