the times | Saturday April 30 2022 saturday review 21
bestsellers
Paperback Fiction
1 (1) How to Kill Your Family
Bella Mackie Borough £8.992 (3) Lean Fall Stand
Jon McGregor
4th Estate £8.99
3 (2) It Ends With Us
Colleen Hoover
Simon & Schuster £8.99
4 (5) The Lamplighters
Emma Stonex
Picador £8.99
5 (4) Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro Faber £8.99
6 (6)The Seven Husbands of Evelyn
Hugo Taylor Jenkins Reid
Simon & Schuster £8.99
7
(new)November 9
Colleen Hoover
Simon & Schuster £8.99
8 (8)Ugly Love Colleen Hoover
Simon & Schuster £8.99
9 (—)Verity Colleen Hoover
Sphere £8.9910
(new)Reminders of Him
Colleen Hoover
Montlake Romance £8.99Hardback Non-fiction
1 (1) Why Has Nobody Told Me This
Before? Julie Smith
Michael Joseph £16.99
2 (2)Freezing Order
Bill Browder
Simon & Schuster £20
3 (3)Northerners: A History, from the
Ice Age to the Present Day
Brian Groom HarperNorth £20
4 (10)Super-Infinite: Transformations
of John Donne
Katherine Rundell Faber £16.995 (5)Prep Yourself Slim
The Meal Prep King
Michael Joseph £20
6 (4)The Shortest History of the
Soviet Union Sheila Fitzpatrick
Old Street £12.99
7
(new)Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack
2022 Wisden £57
8 (6)Taste Stanley Tucci
Fig Tree £20
9 (8)Butler to the World
Oliver Bullough Profile £20
10 (7)Nistisima Georgina Hayden
Bloomsbury £261 (1) Young Mungo
Douglas Stuart
Picador £16.99
2 (3) Lessons in Chemistry
Bonnie Garmus
Doubleday £14.99
3 (4) The No-Show
Beth O’Leary
Quercus £14.99
4 (2)With This Kiss
Carrie Hope Fletcher
HQ £12.995 (7) The Atlas Six
Olivie Blake Tor £16.99
6 (6)Amongst Our Weapons
Ben Aaronovitch
Gollancz £18.99
7 (8) Galatea Madeline Miller
Bloomsbury £6.99
8 (5)Elizabeth Finch
Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape £16.99
9 (9)Wild and Wicked Things
Francesca May Orbit £12.99
10 (—)Gallant VE Schwab
Titan £17.99Hardback Fiction
1 (1) Spring Cannot Be Cancelled
Martin Gayford, David Hockney
Thames & Hudson £14.99
2 (2)Happy Mind, Happy Life
Rangan Chatterjee
Penguin Life £16.99
3 (3) Putin’s People
Catherine Belton
William Collins £9.99
4 (5)Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
Vintage £9.995 (4)Playfair Cricket Annual 2022
Ian Marshall Headline £10.99
6
(new)The Wim Hof Method
Wim Hof Rider & Co £8.99
7 (6) Wordle Challenge Ivy Press £7.99
8 (7)The Power of Geography
Tim Marshall
Elliott & Thompson £9.99
9
(new)Burn After Writing
Sharon Jones Pop Press £9.99
10 (—)We Are Bellingcat: An
Intelligence Agency for the
People Eliot Higgins
Bloomsbury £9.99Paperback Non-fiction
THE NUMBER IN PARENTHESES REPRESENTS CHART POSITIONS LAST WEEK. DATA SUPPLIED BY WATERSTONES FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 23audiobook
of the
we ek
The Pillow Book of
Sei Shonagon, read
by Georgina Sutton,
Ukemi, 11hr 9min
Written in 10th-century
Japan by one of the
Empress Teishi’s ladies,
this is a succession of
observations of nature,
gossipy tales of goings-on
at the imperial court,
poems and lists of things
good and bad.
“Elegant Things: A
white coat worn over a
violet waistcoat. Duck
eggs. Shaved ice mixed
with liana syrup and put
in a new silver bowl. A
rosary of rock crystal.
Wisteria blossoms.”
The author is snobbish
and opinionated: “Small
children and babies ought
to be plump. So ought
provincial governors...
for, if they are lean and
desiccated, one suspects
them of being ill-
tempered.” Letters are
“the elixir of life”.
Some of her
observations are cruel,
some tender, none dull: “I
greatly dislike a woman’s
house when it is clear that
she has scurried about
with a knowing look on
her face, arranging every
thing just as it should be.”
Georgina Sutton evokes
a memorable sound
picture of Sei: mature,
clever, modishly dressed,
sexually adventurous.
It is an extraordinary
listening experience, a
stream of consciousness
that evokes Ulysses and
Mrs Dalloway but is far
more fun than either.
Christina Hardyment
Looking for magic?
Alex O’Connell finds
your next fantasy fix
Skandar and the
Unicorn Thief (9+) by
AF Steadman, Simon &
Schuster, 388pp; £12.99
The first in a new
fantasy series about
deadly unicorns has
been hyped to the
heavens. The publishingdeal was “world record-breaking”; the
film rights have been bought by Sony
Pictures for a seven-figure sum. I feel
sorry for these stories built up like Jenga.
It’s not the next Harry Potter, another
claim, but AF Steadman, below, a
former lawyer from Kent with a deep
love of fantasy, has created an
engrossing world that certainly
brings to mind JK Rowling,
Philip Pullman’s daemons and
Veronica Roth’s Divergent series.
Skandar Smith, a boy who
lives on the Mainland with his
dad and sister, is desperate to
get a ticket to the Hatchery,
a place on the Island
where, aged 13, children
who pass an exam are
allocated a magicalunicorn with which they form a forever
bond. Each pairing has a common
element — fire, water, earth or air.
Skandar dreams of being a unicorn
rider and competing in the Chaos Cup.
He is stopped from taking the exam, but
then receives a visit from an old lady
who flies him, illegally, to the
Hatchery to join the other riders.
Skandar, an outcast at his school,
gets in and bonds with his
unicorn, Scoundrel’s Luck. Soon
he makes three friends who are
in on his secret while avoiding
unkind Amber, whom he
fears will dob him in.
The reason for the
subterfuge? Skandar
does not have one
element, but five. Healso has the spirit or “death” element,
for he is a spirit wielder — rather like
Roth’s multitalented divergents — and
these folk tend to be locked up.
You can see why spirit wielders induce
panic. Another one, the Weaver (a sort
of Voldemort character; I hope the film
producers have prepped Ralph Fiennes)
is busy stealing prize unicorns and
forging new bonds with them. Only
another spirit wielder who can see these
bonds can stop him: enter Skandar.
Steadman has a vast imagination, her
world-building is a joy, the battle scenes
are thrilling and her characters charm. Is
this a language-rich novel from a highly
original voice? Probably not. But if you’ve
finished Harry Potter or Pullman’s
trilogies and are looking for your next
read, you are sure to lap this up.children’s book
of the week