Daily Mail - 23.08.2019

Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019 Page 59

and the police were wonderful. As Sheridan

shows all too vividly, it was anything but.

DEAD OPPOSITE

THE CHURCH

by Francis Vivian

(Dean Street Press £9.99,

168 pp)

THE title itself is a bit of a

puzzle, suggesting a story

about a homicidal vicar. instead, the plot

centres on a provincial newspaper where the

loathing of an aggressive editor leads to his

early demise, stabbed to death, we are led to

assume, by one of his disaffected reporters.

With his eye for sharp dialogue, Francis

Vivian leads us on a rollercoaster chase with

the chief reporter, a prime suspect, match-

ing wits with a good cop/bad cop partner-

ship intent on giving the newsroom a hard

time. A suspicion of there being more to the

killing than professional angst is confirmed

by a dispute over the ownership of the paper,

a highly profitable enterprise.

if this sounds unlikely in the social media

age, keep in mind that this was over half a

century ago. Those were the days.

operation that goes spectacularly wrong. As

with all good farce, the speed of action

deceives the senses. But no matter. Sit back,

relax and enjoy a feast of black humour.

INDIAN SUMMER

by Sara Sheridan

(Constable £8.99, 352 pp)

WE ArE still in 1950s Brighton

but this time the mood is much

darker. Heading a debt-collect-

ing agency, Mirabelle Bevan

has a social conscience that leads to trouble

with the criminal fraternity and police. Her

curiosity is aroused by the secrecy surround-

ing a children’s sanatorium where there’s

more on offer than home comforts and fresh

air.

When a local priest, a frequent visitor to the

sanatorium, is found dead, Mirabelle is up

against a conspiracy of silence that takes in

police corruption. Meanwhile, she has to sort

out her troubled love life and drink problem.

Sarah Sheridan has few rivals in racking up

tension but her distinctive skill is in exposing

the myth of 1950s Britain as a haven of

stability where everyone knew their place

BOOKSFICTION

THE MAN WHO SAW
EVERYTHING
by Deborah Levy
(Hamish Hamilton
£14.99, 208 pp)
READING Deborah Levy’s
stylish new time-slip novel,
longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize,
feels like being spun around while blind-
folded. Switching between the period
before German reunification and the
immediate aftermath of the Brexit
vote, it holds up a mirror to recent
European history, only to smash it and
jumble the shards.
We follow Saul, an eyeliner-wearing
historian who is hit by a car and dumped
by his artist lover, Jennifer, while in
London in 1988; later, in East Berlin, he
has a fling with a translator, Walter,
whose arrest by the secret police he
inadvertently brings about.
But when we cut suddenly to 2016,
Saul is knocked down again, à la Ground-
hog Day, and figures from his past
recur, transformed...
As ever with Levy, the crystalline clarity
of the prose rubs up against our
perplexity about the bigger picture,
which is part of the peculiar fascination
of a book that demands, and bears,
repeated re-reading.

SHELF LIFE
by Livia Franchini
(Doubleday £12.99, 288 pp)
NARRATED by a 30-year-old
nurse, Ruth, this intriguing
debut ends up weirder and
more structurally adventur-
ous than its chattily plain-spoken
opening leads us to expect.
It kicks off amid her gloom following a
break-up with Neil, her accountant
boyfriend of ten years, who turns cold
when she rejects his proposal of an
open relationship.
Our hunch that she’s better off without
him is confirmed once the narrative starts
to be told from his perspective too,
ranging back and forth in time to focus as
much on his sinister proclivities as on
Ruth’s post-monogamy singledom.
We see how Neil schemed to seduce
her after first sleeping with her high-
school frenemy, Alanna, whose daiquiri-
splattered hen night Ruth dutifully
arranges in the present.
A morally twisty incident at the care
home where Ruth works, involving a
lecherous old patient who gets
more than he bargained for, makes
for a provocative climax to an
unpredictable exploration of 21st-cen-
tury sexual mores.

BEYOND THE SEA
by Paul Lynch
(Oneworld £12.99, 192 pp )
THERE’S a perverse relish to
be had from just how bad
things get in this cheerless
story of two men in a boat.
Unfolding in rugged, austere
paragraphs adrift in white space (one
page just reads ‘Storm’), it follows two
Latin American fishermen, Bolivar and
Hector, who, shipwrecked in the Pacific
Ocean, cling onto life by drinking their
own urine and scavenging barnacles
from passing debris, occasionally tucking
into a slice of raw turtle.
Their salt-stung tale grows nastier still
when the men turn on each other, harsh
words leading to vengeful violence.
When, needled by Hector, Bolivar
examines his guilt over an abandoned
daughter, the question of their survival
recedes as the focus shifts to more
everyday trials of masculinity.
But while the novel tries to overcome
the in-built stasis of its scenario by drum-
ming up interest from Bolivar’s painful
backstory, the abiding sense of sea-
bound fog hanging over his characteri-
sation can’t help but dull the impact.

LITERARY FICTION

by ANTHONY CUMMINS

Passion in dog days of summer

Illustration: IVAN BATES

CONTEMPORARY

SARA LAWRENCE

CLASSIC CRIME

BARRY TURNER

VERY NICE

by Marcy Dermansky

(Bloomsbury £14.99, 304 pp)

THIS smooth, sexy and sharply

hilarious read is a million

times better than very nice —

it’s totally fabulous.

Rachel Klein didn’t intend to

kiss her creative writing

professor or look after his dog

for the summer but the latter

swiftly follows the former.

Zahid Azzam, aforemen-

tioned professor, didn’t expect

to spend the entire break in

his student’s family home

but finds it impossible to leave

the sparkling swimming

pool, delicious dinners and

beautiful interiors.

Rachel’s recently separated

mother, Becca, thought she

was done with men but could

never have predicted the

effect Zahid would have on

her, nor how obsessed she

becomes with his dog.

As we know, the most

carefully prepared plans may

go wrong but here they do so

in spades, making this the

most addictive rollercoaster

ride. It’s the best thing I’ve

read in ages.

SARONG PARTY GIRLS

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

(allen & unwin £8.99, 320 pp)

SINGAPOREAN Jazzy is 26 years

old and works for a western

creep who looks up her skirt

during meetings.

She doesn’t mind because

her sole focus is on hooking

(her word) a white husband

and his financial benefits.

Jazzy’s mother is disgusted by

her daughter’s partying life-

style, different men, foul mouth

and complete disinterest in

anything to do with her

heritage. The only time Jazzy

shows any interest in her own

culture is when she thinks it

might appeal to the expat men

she is obsessed with.

This powerful, occasionally

astonishing story about

materialism, status and

manipulation is written in

Singlish — a Singaporean

English patois — which takes

some getting used to but

adds extra authenticity to the

experiences of these girls

trapped between two

different worlds: struggling to

work and party in a Western-

ised city when the home

tradition expects them to be

married. Fascinating.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

by Sophia Money-Coutts

(HQ £12.99, 384 pp)

I ADORED this author’s debut

so am delighted to report this

second novel is just as funny

and beautifully written.

Lil had no idea she was about

to be dumped by the boyfriend

she thought was ‘the one’ but

there are plenty more fish

online so she gets swiping

and has her first date in

eight years.

Max is a handsome, funny

and kind mountaineer who is

a great conversationalist and

lives in a stunning flat in Hamp-

stead — where they end up

after too many drinks. What

Lil doesn’t know is that her

birth control has failed.

Then Max won’t reply to her

messages. It’s only when she

tells him she’s pregnant and

going to keep it that he gets

back to her, not exactly

thrilled. I loved it.

THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY

by Lynne Truss

(Raven Books. £12.99

304 pp)

grAHAM grEEnE set the

tone for post-war Brighton as

the heartland of crime and

corruption but now Lynne

Truss performs a reverse roll to give us a

knockabout farce of mayhem and murder

centred on the town’s constabulary.

As the brightest of the force, novice

Constable Twitten is painfully aware that

the mastermind of all that is crooked in

Brighton is right there in police HQ.

But who else would believe that the

motherly charlady, dispensing tea and buns,

has a dishonest thought in her head?

Certainly not inspector Stein who will go to

any lengths to persuade himself that a

heinous crime is no more than a delusion.

The plot takes in a confidence racket, a

beachside murder and an undercover

YOUR DUCK IS MY

DUCK

by Deborah

Eisenberg

(Europa

£12.99, 240 pp)

THE characters in

Deborah Eisenberg’s complex,

compelling, subtle short stories

inhabit a disintegrating world.

There’s old age to contend with,

fractured families, faltering

relationships and a fierce fear for

the planet where all this

miscommunication and discon-

nection takes place.

in the titular story an insomniac

artist, who’s the guest of rich

couple ray and Christa, says:

‘it’s not so hard to figure out why

SHORT STORIES

EITHNE FARRY

i’m not sleeping. What i can’t fig-

ure out is why everybody else is

sleeping’, a telling observation as

she watches a marriage implode

and ‘ravenous flames devouring

ray’s eucalyptus, where there

once had been small farms and

living crops’. it’s smart, spikey

and funny, shot with a persistent

pessimism that sets the tone for

the other stories.

in Cross Off And Move On, the

much put-upon narrator deals

with her mother whose difficult

life and constant ‘gloating, dole-

ful predictions’ provide an

uncomfortable reminder of all

that’s expected of her daughter.

While in the final story, the

lovely, melancholy recalculating,

a nephew discovers the truth

about his uncle, ‘a secret per-

son... who had just slipped right

out of the family picture’, leaving

behind the ‘uniform sunlight’ of

the American West, where ‘it

pleased god to monitor your

soul for any fleck’, for the shadow

and dazzle of Europe and a

different, fulfilling way of life.

FLY ALREADY

by Etgar Keret

(Granta,

£12.99, 224 pp)

THErE are 22 sto-

ries in the enthusi-

astic Fly Already,

translated from the original

israeli, an antic, anarchic collec-

tion that pitches yearning,

bumbling, bamboozled

characters into situations where

salient life lessons are difficult

to come by.

Bizarre events happen — but,

with no handy moral attached,

the characters are forced to fall

back on a breezy, matter-of-fact

acceptance of the inexplicable

nature of their worlds. in To The

Moon And Back, a beleaguered

dad’s trip to the candy store with

his small son turns sweetly

farcical when the child demands

the shop’s cash register as a gift

and ends with the line ‘there’s

nothing nicer in this stinking

world than the sound of a

kid laughing’.

in Ladder, a vaguely

discontented and very bored

angel tries to come to terms with

heavenly serenity, all the while

longing for more mortal

pleasures: ‘the smell of sweat, of

fresh laundry... the sweet,

scorched smell of cake left in

the oven too long; the smell

of something’.

who
inad
Bu
Saul
hog
recu
As
oft
per
whic
ofa
repe

ous
ope
Itk