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May. 25th, 2004 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllAmong this journal's purposes is to serve as an archive which I'm less likely to lose than I am scraps of paper, and which is more easily searchable. As such, I'm putting these (and any future reviews I do) on here for my own convenience as much as anything.
Suede: Love & Poison - The Authorised Biography by David Barnett is published in hardback by Andre Deutsch priced £17.99. Available now.
Suede were arguably the most important British band of the early nineties, laying the groundwork for the Britpop scene to which they nonetheless never really belonged, celebrating a distinctly English sensibility as opposed to the American rock ethic then prevailing. Given their significance, combined with the amount of sex, drugs and paranoia behind the scenes, telling their story was always going to present something of a minefield. It's a minefield Barnett negotiates marvellously. Many authorised biographies buy their access with tact; not this one. The sleaze is rendered in detail which ranges from hilarious to chilling and (perhaps more impressive) the artistic mistakes of the band's later career are also admitted. The story of why their last two albums were such a mess, for instance, is far more interesting than either record.
Entertaining though it is to hear of the disasters, it's for Suede's achievements that they'll be remembered, and Barnett writes compellingly of the early records' power, and convincingly of their impact on those who heard them and the wider scene. A self-confessed fan, his style is often hyperbolic but for it to be otherwise would betray the attitude and grandeur which defined Suede’s music. Here are the stories behind the songs, and of concerts which have since become close to legendary.
If the book has any failing other than the shoddy proofreading and inadequate index, it's in the absence of any contribution from former guitarist Bernard Butler, but this is only to be expected given the reclusive image he has always cultivated and the further accounts here of his awkward relationship with his former bandmates. It certainly doesn't prevent the book being one of the best music biographies available, and needless to say it's essential reading for any fan or (a much larger group) former fan of Suede.
Affairs at Hampden Ferrers by Brian Aldiss is published in hardback by Little, Brown priced £16.99. Available now.
Subtitled "An English Romance", Brian Aldiss' new novel takes place in "an absolutely average village". This is not by any means his first novel of our Earth, but he remains most famous for such science fiction classics as Helliconia and Hothouse, and here he seems sometimes to describe rural Oxfordshire in as much detail as an unknown and alien world; the novel's opening in particular is freighted with an excess of mundane minutiae. The exposition is well done but there is too much of it applied to matters too minor; the descriptions of Hampden Ferrers’ houses sing while those of individuals’ preferences concerning biscuits or toast sag. The dialogue, alas, does tend at times towards the unconvincing. In its convergence of mainly intellectual and mildly improbable characters, Affairs somewhat resembles Iris Murdoch; it lacks, however, the weight which encourages one to overlook the minor clumsinesses in her work, or indeed in Aldiss' better efforts.
From its realist (if unrealistic) opening, the book soon veers into magic realism, and then into ecclesiastical horror which resembles MR James via HP Lovecraft. The mixture is not a happy one; while perhaps intended to demonstrate that "there's no answer to the question of reality", or maybe that “life is like opera, there’s something magnificent about everything that happens”, it seems more like indecision by Aldiss as to what sort of novel he was writing. Indeed, there are times throughout when both the style and the novel's apparent message read as though they might be intended satirically, without ever giving enough evidence that this is the case. This is not a bad book; from a writer of Aldiss' undoubted gifts such a thing would be unlikely. It is, however, a confused book, and not one which demands to be read.
Darien Dogs by Henry Shukman is published in hardback by Jonathan Cape priced £12.99. Available on May 20th.
Darien Dogs' dustcover makes grand claims for it; it claims that the book’s portrayal of washed-up Westerners adrift in the developing world has "echoes of Graham Greene - but Henry Shukman's writing has an imaginative depth, an erotic, muscular charge and a dark, compulsive energy all its own". A bold statement given few would claim Greene lacked any of these qualities and, alas, one Darien Dogs does little to justify. Protagonist Jim Rogers has made a mess of his life, and sees in a dubious Panamanian deal the chance to salvage it. In a sense this is a story about redemption, but without Greene's majestically spiritual conception of the world the potential redemption lacks grandeur, which also saps the story's more sordid elements of their savour. In place of any grand vision of virtue and vice, all that is offered are competent but unremarkable accounts of unspoilt tropical islands and greedy developers. Indeed, there is a tendency towards lazy stereotyping throughout which one assumes is the narrator's, but which is never adequately confronted. Of the Cuna people whom Rogers comes to admire, he writes "these people were hard to understand. They seemed both childlike and more mature than westerners". Perhaps this is intended as a parody of travellers' 'insight' but if so, that is never really signposted. Nor are any of the supporting characters ever more than cyphers; this might not matter if the writing was weighty enough to render them archetypal but it seems to have no aspirations beyond reading-fodder for the beach, or perhaps those who would rather be on the beach.
The other four stories included in this volume alongside the eponymous novella are further evidence that, while Shukman can write serviceable descriptions of exotic locations, and might succeed as a travel writer, his fiction lacks power.
Mutants: on the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi is published in hardback by Harper Collins priced £20. Available on May 24th.
"We are all mutants, but some are more mutant than others." Though it should be stressed that this is not a book for the squeamish, nor is it the mere catalogue of grotesqueries its name might suggest. Instead it treats mutations from the extreme (conjoined twins) to the mildly beneficial (a double row of eyelashes) as a magnifying lens through which we learn how human life develops. We all know in a vague sense that each human life begins as a small number of cells; most of us are rather hazy on the details of how we get from there to ourselves. Having read this book, it makes a lot more sense, as do the processes of growth, life and ageing. The usual progression of these processes is shown by comparison with a cornucopia of anomalies: we encounter children who age too fast, for instance, or the poor soul who found herself changing skin colour in apartheid South Africa. And then, having acclimatised to her new life, began to change back. Facts which might seem arresting but trivial (“in 1994...not a single eight-year-old Swedish girl died”) are shown to be key to our understanding of human advancement. While this book is undoubtedly recommended to any connoisseur of the freakish, of lobster boys, bearded ladies and supernumerary breasts, it also addresses questions of more general interest; whether there is any objectivity to concepts of beauty and “are redheads mutants?”
The style is masterful: wry but not without compassion; learned but not obscure; accessible and engaging without condescension. Though it is to be lamented that there are no X-Men, Strontium Dogs or indeed anyone capable of firing energy beams from their eyes contained herein, this is emphatically a criticism of our world, where most mutations are depressingly ‘loss-of-function’, rather than of Leroi.
A Hat Full Of Sky by Terry Pratchett is published in hardback by Doubleday priced £12.99. Available now.
That Terry Pratchett is a very funny writer (or at least, humour being so subjective, that he is widely thought to be so) is now almost universally acknowledged. What is less seldom mentioned (simply because he writes about wizards and werewolves, Pratchett will never win the Booker) is that his books often contain passages of great wisdom and terrible beauty; he may at times be whimsical but never trite. When he began setting books for younger readers on his long-established fantasy planet Discworld, there was a worrying possibility that he might split his talents; the Discworld books, though given at times to a definite darkness of tone, had never exactly been inappropriate for younger readers in the first place. Thankfully, such fears were unfounded; this is the third such Discworld book, and just as those aimed at adults have retained their lightness of touch, so these have quite sufficient chills to provide an agreeable thrill both for Pratchett’s adult readers, and for children who are not too easily frightened.
A Hat Full Of Sky is a direct sequel to The Wee Free Men, though as with most Discworld books it can be read in isolation should one so desire. Concerning the training in witchcraft of eleven-year old Tiffany Aching, her battle with an ancient evil and her often fraught relationships with peers and mentors, its obvious readership would be fans of Harry Potter, though of course these themes have long been part of Pratchett's territory too. The chief difference is that while JK Rowling may raise a smile at times, she seldom causes embarrassing outbreaks of giggling if read on public transport; perhaps this explains her comparatively greater success among the non-geek population. Such dignified concerns notwithstanding, this is a gripping read which moves seamlessly between comedy, melancholy and adventure.
edit: So did the SB board implode because I was sticking up for the Great Satan?
And apparently the actor who played Dr Franklin in Babylon 5 is dead. @rse.
Suede: Love & Poison - The Authorised Biography by David Barnett is published in hardback by Andre Deutsch priced £17.99. Available now.
Suede were arguably the most important British band of the early nineties, laying the groundwork for the Britpop scene to which they nonetheless never really belonged, celebrating a distinctly English sensibility as opposed to the American rock ethic then prevailing. Given their significance, combined with the amount of sex, drugs and paranoia behind the scenes, telling their story was always going to present something of a minefield. It's a minefield Barnett negotiates marvellously. Many authorised biographies buy their access with tact; not this one. The sleaze is rendered in detail which ranges from hilarious to chilling and (perhaps more impressive) the artistic mistakes of the band's later career are also admitted. The story of why their last two albums were such a mess, for instance, is far more interesting than either record.
Entertaining though it is to hear of the disasters, it's for Suede's achievements that they'll be remembered, and Barnett writes compellingly of the early records' power, and convincingly of their impact on those who heard them and the wider scene. A self-confessed fan, his style is often hyperbolic but for it to be otherwise would betray the attitude and grandeur which defined Suede’s music. Here are the stories behind the songs, and of concerts which have since become close to legendary.
If the book has any failing other than the shoddy proofreading and inadequate index, it's in the absence of any contribution from former guitarist Bernard Butler, but this is only to be expected given the reclusive image he has always cultivated and the further accounts here of his awkward relationship with his former bandmates. It certainly doesn't prevent the book being one of the best music biographies available, and needless to say it's essential reading for any fan or (a much larger group) former fan of Suede.
Affairs at Hampden Ferrers by Brian Aldiss is published in hardback by Little, Brown priced £16.99. Available now.
Subtitled "An English Romance", Brian Aldiss' new novel takes place in "an absolutely average village". This is not by any means his first novel of our Earth, but he remains most famous for such science fiction classics as Helliconia and Hothouse, and here he seems sometimes to describe rural Oxfordshire in as much detail as an unknown and alien world; the novel's opening in particular is freighted with an excess of mundane minutiae. The exposition is well done but there is too much of it applied to matters too minor; the descriptions of Hampden Ferrers’ houses sing while those of individuals’ preferences concerning biscuits or toast sag. The dialogue, alas, does tend at times towards the unconvincing. In its convergence of mainly intellectual and mildly improbable characters, Affairs somewhat resembles Iris Murdoch; it lacks, however, the weight which encourages one to overlook the minor clumsinesses in her work, or indeed in Aldiss' better efforts.
From its realist (if unrealistic) opening, the book soon veers into magic realism, and then into ecclesiastical horror which resembles MR James via HP Lovecraft. The mixture is not a happy one; while perhaps intended to demonstrate that "there's no answer to the question of reality", or maybe that “life is like opera, there’s something magnificent about everything that happens”, it seems more like indecision by Aldiss as to what sort of novel he was writing. Indeed, there are times throughout when both the style and the novel's apparent message read as though they might be intended satirically, without ever giving enough evidence that this is the case. This is not a bad book; from a writer of Aldiss' undoubted gifts such a thing would be unlikely. It is, however, a confused book, and not one which demands to be read.
Darien Dogs by Henry Shukman is published in hardback by Jonathan Cape priced £12.99. Available on May 20th.
Darien Dogs' dustcover makes grand claims for it; it claims that the book’s portrayal of washed-up Westerners adrift in the developing world has "echoes of Graham Greene - but Henry Shukman's writing has an imaginative depth, an erotic, muscular charge and a dark, compulsive energy all its own". A bold statement given few would claim Greene lacked any of these qualities and, alas, one Darien Dogs does little to justify. Protagonist Jim Rogers has made a mess of his life, and sees in a dubious Panamanian deal the chance to salvage it. In a sense this is a story about redemption, but without Greene's majestically spiritual conception of the world the potential redemption lacks grandeur, which also saps the story's more sordid elements of their savour. In place of any grand vision of virtue and vice, all that is offered are competent but unremarkable accounts of unspoilt tropical islands and greedy developers. Indeed, there is a tendency towards lazy stereotyping throughout which one assumes is the narrator's, but which is never adequately confronted. Of the Cuna people whom Rogers comes to admire, he writes "these people were hard to understand. They seemed both childlike and more mature than westerners". Perhaps this is intended as a parody of travellers' 'insight' but if so, that is never really signposted. Nor are any of the supporting characters ever more than cyphers; this might not matter if the writing was weighty enough to render them archetypal but it seems to have no aspirations beyond reading-fodder for the beach, or perhaps those who would rather be on the beach.
The other four stories included in this volume alongside the eponymous novella are further evidence that, while Shukman can write serviceable descriptions of exotic locations, and might succeed as a travel writer, his fiction lacks power.
Mutants: on the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi is published in hardback by Harper Collins priced £20. Available on May 24th.
"We are all mutants, but some are more mutant than others." Though it should be stressed that this is not a book for the squeamish, nor is it the mere catalogue of grotesqueries its name might suggest. Instead it treats mutations from the extreme (conjoined twins) to the mildly beneficial (a double row of eyelashes) as a magnifying lens through which we learn how human life develops. We all know in a vague sense that each human life begins as a small number of cells; most of us are rather hazy on the details of how we get from there to ourselves. Having read this book, it makes a lot more sense, as do the processes of growth, life and ageing. The usual progression of these processes is shown by comparison with a cornucopia of anomalies: we encounter children who age too fast, for instance, or the poor soul who found herself changing skin colour in apartheid South Africa. And then, having acclimatised to her new life, began to change back. Facts which might seem arresting but trivial (“in 1994...not a single eight-year-old Swedish girl died”) are shown to be key to our understanding of human advancement. While this book is undoubtedly recommended to any connoisseur of the freakish, of lobster boys, bearded ladies and supernumerary breasts, it also addresses questions of more general interest; whether there is any objectivity to concepts of beauty and “are redheads mutants?”
The style is masterful: wry but not without compassion; learned but not obscure; accessible and engaging without condescension. Though it is to be lamented that there are no X-Men, Strontium Dogs or indeed anyone capable of firing energy beams from their eyes contained herein, this is emphatically a criticism of our world, where most mutations are depressingly ‘loss-of-function’, rather than of Leroi.
A Hat Full Of Sky by Terry Pratchett is published in hardback by Doubleday priced £12.99. Available now.
That Terry Pratchett is a very funny writer (or at least, humour being so subjective, that he is widely thought to be so) is now almost universally acknowledged. What is less seldom mentioned (simply because he writes about wizards and werewolves, Pratchett will never win the Booker) is that his books often contain passages of great wisdom and terrible beauty; he may at times be whimsical but never trite. When he began setting books for younger readers on his long-established fantasy planet Discworld, there was a worrying possibility that he might split his talents; the Discworld books, though given at times to a definite darkness of tone, had never exactly been inappropriate for younger readers in the first place. Thankfully, such fears were unfounded; this is the third such Discworld book, and just as those aimed at adults have retained their lightness of touch, so these have quite sufficient chills to provide an agreeable thrill both for Pratchett’s adult readers, and for children who are not too easily frightened.
A Hat Full Of Sky is a direct sequel to The Wee Free Men, though as with most Discworld books it can be read in isolation should one so desire. Concerning the training in witchcraft of eleven-year old Tiffany Aching, her battle with an ancient evil and her often fraught relationships with peers and mentors, its obvious readership would be fans of Harry Potter, though of course these themes have long been part of Pratchett's territory too. The chief difference is that while JK Rowling may raise a smile at times, she seldom causes embarrassing outbreaks of giggling if read on public transport; perhaps this explains her comparatively greater success among the non-geek population. Such dignified concerns notwithstanding, this is a gripping read which moves seamlessly between comedy, melancholy and adventure.
edit: So did the SB board implode because I was sticking up for the Great Satan?
And apparently the actor who played Dr Franklin in Babylon 5 is dead. @rse.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-25 05:44 am (UTC)the news abouut dr. franklin is upsetting.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-25 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-25 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-25 11:42 am (UTC)Or unsupervised use of the alien healing-device, as it may be
Betty if you call me, you can call me Al.
Date: 2004-05-27 04:06 am (UTC)Hmmm.
Date: 2004-05-27 04:09 am (UTC)