A SEPARATION,
by Katie Kitamura,
Allen & Unwin.
After five years of
marriage,an
unnamed woman- we know only that
she is youngish,
British and works
as a translator - agrees to
separate from her husband Christopher,
who mysteriously asks her to keep their
separation secret, before he flies off to
Greece. The novel opens a month later,
when she gets a call from Christopher’s
high-handed mother, Isabella, who
commands her to go and retrieve her son - but she arrives to find he’s vanished.
His room is in disarray; she detects
strange currents running between the
hotel staff. A mystery story, then? In a
way, but this is no normal whodunit or
psycho-drama. Katie Kitamura’s real
interest in this cool-eyed, compelling
novel is modern marriage itself – what it
means, how it works, and what happens
when it fails.JB
LINES IN THE
SAND:
COLLECTED
JOURNALISM
by A. A. Gill,
Hachette.
A. A. Gill was not the
obvious choice to
cover humanitarian
disasters. Early on,
an editor implored
him not to go to a famine in South Sudan,
saying sending a food critic “was just bad
taste”. But this sophisticated, debonair
man, who died last December, had a depth
of compassion, clear-sightedness and a
talent for putting his observations in
writing. A chief of police in Greece is “a fat,
incandescent bully who stomps around
screaming, shoving and jabbing at the
refugees”, who placate him “like small
grandparents calming a huge, hysterical
toddler”. It’s rare we see refugees as
individuals, but inLines in the Sandthey’re
never a mass of faceless humanity. A
powerful book that demands to be read.LM
THE LONELY
HEARTS HOTEL
by Heather
O’Neill, Hachette.
Rose and Pierrot
are two children
growing up in an
early 20th-century
Dickensian
orphanage in
Montreal. Rose is
a delightful dancer with a steely core.
Pierrot plays the piano like a dream, but is
so lacking in guile he’ll be lucky to survive
his childhood and the cruelties of the
Depression era that await.The Lonely
Hearts Hotelis reminiscent ofWater for
Elephants, the 2006 bestseller by Sara
Gruen. Both tell a love story set in
desperate times, and feature a cast of
oddballs, villains and victims. ButThe
Lonely Hearts Hotelhas a little extra, a
puckish charm, and an optimism that
shines all the more brightly against the
background of poverty, drug abuse and
organised crime. Heather O’Neill’s writing
is spare and brisk but the story she creates
is as lush and magical as a fable.LMTHE OPPOSITE
OF EVERYONE by
Joshilyn Jackson,
HarperCollins.
Paula Vauss isn’t
thekind of woman
who goes around
“having swampy
feelings”. If her
boyfriend needed
to talk “wasn’t
that what AA was for?” She’s the kind of
divorce lawyer to give a cheating husband
nightmares. Her dealings with Atlanta’s
richest and most awful couples would be
a cracking novel butThe Opposite of
Everyonegoes deeper with the tale of her
childhood. Paula’s mother is a drifter. She
drags her from town to town as she loves
and leaves a series of no-hoper boyfriends.
She has little to offer other than stories of
her adopted religion, Hinduism, which she
relates with “the authority vested in her by
her flea market prayerbeads and lotus-
flower tramp stamp”. But they’re stories
that one day bring together a family.LM