Book reviews: 2 November

OUT NOW

THE HOROLOGICON by Mark Forsyth (Icon Books, £12.99)
Mark Forsyth wrote the bestselling Etymologicon, a collection of verbal curiosities. So, if you like the sound of that then you should rush out to buy this one – a day's jaunt through the lost words of the English language arranged chronologically, or as Forsyth puts it, 'a book of the words appropriate to each hour of the day'. How does that work? Well, Forsyth starts at 6am with dawn, where he tells you about the Old English word 'uhtceare', meaning 'lying awake before dawn and worrying' and expands from there. 'The Old English used to cure their uhtceare by going to listen to the monks singing', after which they could witness the 'day-raw' (the opening streak of red in the dawn sky).

By 11am, Forsyth is ready for elevenses (Kentish dialect), 'dornton' if you come from the North or 'elevener' if you happen to be in Suffolk. Either way, you'll want a little 'quidnuncery' (gossip) to accompany it, relayed in a 'quother' (low voice) by a 'rawgabbit' (someone who speaks in confidence on a subject about which he knows nothing).

By midnight, you may well be in a state of 'apodysophilia' (a feverish desire to undress), be 'discalcing' your shoes (taking them off) and peering under the bed looking for 'snudges' (one who lurks under a bed to watch an opportunity to rob the house, 1699), which may or may not prevent you from an attack of uhtceare the following morning. A terrific book, in other words. Theo Walden

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HAVISHAM by Ronald Frame (Faber and Faber, £16.99)
It was inevitable in the bicentenary year that there would be Dickens productions aplenty in theatre and on television, and indeed, these have focused, in the main, on the iconic Great Expectations. Now there is the novel, Havisham, by the versatile Ronald Frame – an apologue on the spinster of Satis House. Frame illuminates, in a lead-up to her mental and physical collapse and beyond, the life and times of Catherine Havisham, a brewer's daughter (elevated by money and portable property, but nonetheless 'trade'). Motherless Catherine, striking, but not pretty, is determined to make her way in the world. Her sequestered childhood, despite a servant confidante, is lonely; her early adulthood disturbed by the bastard half-brother foisted on her by their distant papa. An Austenesque sequence, where she is sent to be 'finished' at the house of some minor aristocrats, teaches her more than she bargained for. In this beautifully drawn milieu, she meets the questionable suitor Charles Compeyson, and her fall into the abyss begins. Frame's skilful interweaving of his story and Dickens's, culminates in a definitive ending for Great Expectations.

However, there are numerous occasions, once the narratives run parallel, where Frame comes off worse, so deeply embedded is Dickens in the nation's consciousness.

The familiar figures of Jaggers, the awful relatives, Pip's fruitless pursuit of Estella and an overlong conclusion engenders a longing to return to the original, where time stays, too, at 'twenty minutes to nine' forever.
Sarah Crowden

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THE SMALL HOURS by Susie Boyt (Virago, £14.99)
Family life isn't always a rosesaround- the door situation. Of course, most of the time families are filled with love, but sometimes there are arguments and heartache – and these can wreak havoc and pain.

Boyt's new novel shows this conflicting emotional world wonderfully. Harriet's determination to open a junior school for girls, providing its pupils with the perfect childhood, shines a retrospective, and merciless, light on her own less than lovely upbringing. Is Harriet's ambitious venture a subconscious bid to cancel those early traumas? Boyt weaves an engaging combination of psychological insight and piercing black humour to produce a thoroughly engaging, thought-provoking
story.
Mel Clarke

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VIKINGS: A HISTORY by Neil Oliver (Orion Books, £20)
The latest archaeological discoveries have led Scottish historian and TV presenter Neil Oliver to embark on the trail of real Vikings. If this is your first foray into the world of Vikings, a word of warning – Oliver can be a little technical. But this wonderful book is completely worth the
effort. MC

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BOOK OF THE WEEK

Debs and Nazis
Daisy Leitch  nds much to enjoy in Rachel Johnson's new novel
WINTER GAMES by Rachel Johnson (Fig Tree, £14.99)
Daphne may not speak German but one word she does understand is koedukation: it means boys. And Daphne, a cloistered 18-year-old in 1930s England, has hardly ever met a boy. So when her father, Jacob Linden, a philandering Oxford don, tells her he is packing her off to a Bavarian fi nishing school, her eyes light up.

Her father may have Jewish heritage, but he's also a well-to-do Englishman – and in the mixed-up, Mitfordesque world of 1930s high society, it all seems like a jolly good idea. He believes there's no chance of another war – 'not even the Hun wants to live through two' – and so Daphne finds herself among the snowy peaks and bracing air of Bavaria, with her best friend Betsy Barton Hill – a 'distinguished nymphomaniac'.

Together they take German classes, go skiing and to the opera – and flirt with two young Germans, Otto and Siegmund, a budding young Nazi. The four of them travel to the opening of the Fourth Winter Olympic Games at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in February 1936 where the Führer himself is present 'in a tatty old coat' and dramatic events unfold.

Seventy years later Daphne's granddaughter, Francie Fitzsimon, is a journalist living in Little Venice, west London. She's married to Gus who runs an ad agency – but has a desperate crush on her caddish boss at Event Magazine – the irresistible, irredeemable Nathan.

She is sent to write a travel piece about a mountain spa in Bavaria. It's a place where the top echelons of the Nazi party used to frolic. But Nathan wants puff, not politics, and especially no mention of Nazis.

However, a chance glimpse of an old sepia photograph forces Francie to explore the dark past, and her own connection with it. It shows the Führer with two English admirers before the war in Nuremberg. It stops her in her tracks. One of the women is her grandmother, Daphne.

Francie is thrust into Martha Gellhorn mode, resolving to discover the truth. Her grandmother can't be interviewed, her health is failing rapidly, but she's left Francie a box of mementos. In it is Francie's father's birth certificate, which raises yet more questions.

Told with style, wit and pace this is a completely gripping story, which will have you entertained and surprised throughout. It's a story of naive women falling for devilish men, of turbulent times and mixed-up morals echoing across 70 years as a granddaughter goes in search of her grandmother's past – and her own identity.

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MUST READ

A life revealed
JOHN KEATS: A NEW LIFE by Nicholas Roe (Yale, £25)
Keats – but not as you know him. Roe returns the Romantic poet to the streets of London where he grew up. His father kept a livery stable opposite the Bedlam asylum, and Keats, rather like a sinkestate hoodie today, spent his time wrestling classmates and watching prizefi ghts. Later, Keats's medical training involved long hours in an operating theatre where he was employed to mop up blood and remove amputated limbs. In 1819, the first signs of the TB that was to kill him at the age of 25, made an appearance. Roe thinks that the 'lucent syrops' in the Eve of St Agnes reflect Keats's subconscious desire to soothe his symptomatic sore throat.

Keats emerges from this excellent biography as a wise and complex man, tender towards those who needed his care, ardent in love and a brilliant poet.

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PAPERBACKS

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS by Miral al-Tahawy (Faber and Faber, £12.99)
A book about the dreams of change, self-fulfi lment and love for an Egyptian, newly divorced immigrant in Brooklyn. Egyptian author Miral al-Tahawy's novel is a shining account of the immigrant experience. Ultimately, this is a tale about a woman trying to find her place in the present while reflecting on her past. MC

THE VIRGIN CURE by Ami McKay (Orion Books, £7.99)
Most books about Victorian slums are set in England, so it's refreshing to see how Victoriana slums in America compared. McKay's latest novel follows the journey of Moth, forced to live in the murky world of pickpockets and prostitutes. Moth inevitably meets the owner of a brothel, but this is where the story takes a very dark turn. MC

BIG QUESTIONS FROM LITTLE PEOPLE: ANSWERED BY SOME VERY BIG PEOPLE by Gemma Elwin Harris (Faber and Faber, £12.99)
Why is the sea salty? How far away is space? What makes me me? Children like to ask some very big questions, which normally go unanswered by frazzled parents. Not here: Harris has asked very big people, such as Sir David Attenborough, to answer all the above, plus other queries from children aged five to 12. An entertaining read. MC

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ALSO PUBLISHED

THROUGH THE WINDOW by Julian Barnes (Vintage, £10.99)
Seventeen essays and one short story by 'our best essayist', according to the FT. In this short book, Barnes reflects on fiction – what it means and how we experience it. Penelope Fitzgerald, Kipling, Orwell, Ford Maddox Ford and Gustave Flaubert all get a look-in.

THE SIGNAL AND THE NOISE by Nate Silver (Allen Lane, £25)
This book is a statistician's attempt to rationalise the world. Silver, 34, gave up accountancy to make a living playing poker; now he's moved on to sport and politics. Read his book for an analysis of climate change, banking, earthquakes and who's going to win the American election.

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COOKBOOKS

SAVOURING THE FINER THINGS by Carolyn Hart

Cookbooks this year have marked a return to the written word, as opposed to collections of glossily produced photographs of food you'll never cook. Pierre Koffmann's Memories Of Gascony (Mitchell Beazley, £30) is a case in point. It was first published more than 20 years ago, and is now reissued in a gorgeous new edition, printed on thick paper and stuffed with family pictures of the chef and his grandparents.

'This is a book about my childhood,' writes Koffmann in the prologue. 'It grew out of... my memories of my grandparents' farm in a small village in central Gascony.' Koffmann's grandparents were peasant farmers – so this book is all about country food – ducks and hares roasted on spits, soups made in a thick iron pot, quails wrapped in vine leaves and jams and preserves. The recipes are mouthwateringly lush, especially when you get to autumn, where the quails in vine leaves make an appearance. 'I think they were the last real, wild quails I ever ate,' notes Koffmann.

Fergus Henderson, of the famed St John restaurant in London, has published a massive compendium of all his cookbooks. The Complete Nose To Tail (Bloomsbury, £30). It's a great brick of a book containing all the old favourites as well as some new. It starts with directions on how to make a Campari and white wine – 'a cleansing glass to get the juices going' – the perfect introduction to Fergus's particular brand of cooking.

New boy on the block is Magnus Nilsson, chef at Fäviken, a restaurant in a small hamlet in Northern Sweden (Fäviken, Phaidon Press, £35). Nilsson specialises in a kind of extreme cooking – scallops cooked over burning juniper branches, pine bark cake and linseed crisps that look like pieces of black lace. It's inspiring and otherworldly and it makes you want to jump on a plane to the far North immediately – a suitably seasonal desire...