Book reviews: 26 October
OUT NOW
ARTHUR MILLER: 1962-2005 by Christopher Bigsby (Phoenix, £9.99)Christopher Bigsby is a world renowned authority on playwright Arthur Miller and American literature. Volume one of this very readable and definitive biography, already published, detailed Miller's early theatrical successes and his marriage to Marilyn Monroe; this subsequent volume looks at Miller's subsequent career.
Bigsby explores his marriage to photographer Inge Morath, his growing political engagement with student movements against the Vietnam War campaign and his preoccupation with the Holocaust. Miller wrote 18 plays in this period and remained a staunch advocate of freedom, social justice, democracy and humanity. This is a landmark biography of a playwright who often acted as 'America's conscience', drawing on hours of conversation and unpublished correspondence. SB
THE CUTTING SEASON by Attica Locke (Serpent's Tale, £14.99)This book's portentous title refers to the months of October through January which, in rural Louisiana, are the sugarcane harvest months. But this being a novel by the Orange Prize-shortlisted, Texanborn crime writer Attica Locke, cane isn't the only thing being cut.
It's a chill fall morning when the body of a cane-cutter is found on the historic Belle Vie estate, with throat slashed. Bordering the Mississippi, Belle Vie is a beautiful antebellum plantation, now preserved as a living museum, and overseen by mother-of-one Caren Gray. Caren's own distant ancestor, Jason, was once a Belle Vie slave – but, just after his emancipation, Jason mysteriously disappeared. Could this 140-yearold mystery be connected to the new murder case? And what secrets are Brylcreemed, brutal farm boss, Hunt Abrams, and Belle Vie's wealthy owners trying to protect? It's a puzzle that Caren can't help but be drawn into, and the situation is made yet more complicated by the reappearance of Caren's daughter's father.
This isn't the most pulse-racing of reads, but it is involvingly atmospheric, intelligently and thoughtfully conceived, and thoroughly satisfying.
While the past is and should be always with us, Locke suggests, it needn't be a prison.
Stephanie Cross
SILENT HOUSE by Orhan Pamuk (Faber and Faber, £18.99)Silent House by the Nobel Prizewinning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk is a slow burner, featuring multiple, inter-generational voices with compelling back stories, and set in a seaside resort where nothing much seems to happen.
Pamuk is somewhat ill-served by his translator. The careful scene-setting in the opening chapters, narrated from the perspective of an unusual servant, and his elderly employer awaiting the arrival of her grandchildren from Istanbul, are subsequently marred by American dialogue, wildly inappropriate when issuing from a nonagenarian's mouth – though the strength of the story and the fascinating characters surmount this irritant. Past casual cruelties are gradually revealed in the 'strange silent house', allowing the cacophony, violence and heat from the outside world to invade and break the silence. Thoughts that 'glide by like little paper boats on flowing water' keep the protagonists isolated from one another, as the tension builds to a shocking denouement.
Sarah Crowden
A NATURAL HISTORY OF GHOSTS: 500 YEARS OF HUNTING FOR PROOF by Roger Clarke (Particular Books, £20)There are apparently more ghosts per square mile in England than in any other country in the world. But why? In this intriguing, shivers-down-the-spine book, Roger Clarke (who grew up in a haunted house and who, aged 14, became the youngest member of the Society for Psychical Research) attempts some answers by delving into the art and science of ghost hunting. Why did medieval Britons see ghosts as shrouded dead bodies, while the Victorians glimpsed murderous apparitions?
There are three things that mediate our belief in ghosts, Clarke writes, 'religion, the media and social status. Since these change, our ghosts have changed with them'. While writing this book, he found himself 'talking to all kinds of people about ghosts... they've shown me photographs of ghosts on their phones and told me about hauntings in their houses... These tales are everywhere.' Doubtless this book will unearth a thousand more.
Malla Wickham
BOOK OF THE WEEK
Why the fork was inventedChristopher Hirst finds there is more to kitchen equipment than meets the eye
CONSIDER THE FORK: A HISTORY OF INVENTION IN THE KITCHEN by Bee Wilson (Particular Books, £20)Though not vital for the enjoyment of a book, it is gratifying to discover that an author shares the same likes and dislikes as yourself. While devouring Bee Wilson's fascinating exploration of culinary devices, I nodded sympathetically when she revealed that her love affair with the electric breadmaker was over: 'Such an ugly object and always a hole in the middle of the loaf from the paddle... I am returning to the low-tech business of buying sourdough bread from the baker or making my own by hand.'
I winced in painful recollection when she noted that the greatest danger of sharp knives comes not while slicing but when washing-up in sudsy water: 'You forget the knives are there – plunge your hand in and slowly the water turns red like a scene from Jaws.' I whooped at her ovation for the hand-held blender: 'One of the greatest kitchen tools... It is a marvel.' Best of all, Bee waxes lyrical about my latest culinary acquisition, the twin-handled knife known as the mezzaluna, used for chopping herbs, nuts and dried fruit: 'A thrilling object to use. It's like taking your hands for a swing-boat ride in some ancient Italian city.'
These relishable opinions punctuate a book that reveals much about the most commonplace items in our kitchens. The invention of the cooking not only prompted humanity's switch from hunter- gatherer food to farmed cereals but also the survival of those who had lost their teeth. Arriving here shortly before 1700, the table fork is a relative newcomer. Though two-pronged forks had been used for centuries to hold joints while carving, it took the Italians to develop forks with three or four tines. The reason: pasta.
At the other extreme of the technological spectrum, Bee expresses enthusiasm for sousvide, the high-precision boil-inthe- bag method favoured by many celebrity chefs. In my view, this is misplaced. Sous-vide produces consistency at the expense of character and the equipment is too bulky for domestic kitchens. I also feel that eight pages on the etiquette of chopsticks is a little excessive when Bee omits certain appealing European gadgets such as the Portuguese cataplana (a pan with a clamped lid that retains the flavour of shellfish) or the French chestnut pan (like a frying pan with lots of holes).
Quibbles aside, this major contribution to the literature of gastronomy is far more readable than yet another cookbook.
MUST READ
A lot on his plateA RECIPE FOR LIFE by Antonio Carluccio (Hardie Grant, £20)
Depression, gambling, suicide attempts: not the usual events one associates with the name Carluccio. But this is what you get in this quite gripping autobiography that recounts, alongside descriptions of luscious food, the attempts the (seemingly) genial chef has made on his life.
The first was in the 1970s, when he discovered his girlfriend was having an affair. He tried to crash his car, then to throw himself off Battersea Bridge. Later, he married Priscilla Conran, opened the Neal Street Restaurant and then the chain of shops that bear his name. He's now divorced. Carluccio's life in extremis is incongruously set within a cookbook – he includes 14 recipes in these pages. Are you supposed to cook them? It's hard to imagine how, with visions of Carluccio trying to end it all in the background.
PAPERBACKS
GABBY: A STORY OF COURAGE AND HOPE by Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly (Simon & Schuster, £8.99)It's almost two years since Congresswoman Giffords was shot and gravely wounded in Tucson, Arizona. This account of her life, pre- and post-shooting, is told by her husband, commander of space shuttle Endeavour's last flight, and although the two themes, Gabby battling to overcome severe brain injury in hospital while Mark goes into orbit, occasionally seem incongruous, there's no doubting the love between them or the miraculous nature of her survival.
THE BRAIN IS WIDER THAN THE SKY: WHY SIMPLE SOLUTIONS DON'T WORK IN A COMPLEX WORLD by Bryan Appleyard (Phoenix, £9.99)
Appleyard writes better about the social impact and meaning of science than most because he isn't any simple technophile but as much at home with cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence and evolutionary biology as poetry and music (his book is titled after an Emily Dickinson poem).
In this passionate, vivid account he argues against what he sees as the current drive for simple solutions that will reduce human complexity, whether it is the new technology of consumerism, urging us to let computers decide our preferences, or scientific arguments that the mind and behaviour can be reduced to a materialist mechanism: a sagacious and timely riposte to contemporary thin king. SB
ALSO PUBLISHED
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND VOL II: TUDORS by Peter Ackroyd (Macmillan, £20)Part 2 of Ackroyd's ambitious six-vol history of England. The first part dealt with the Stone Age to the Tudors; here we get Henry VIII plus divorces, Elizabeth I and Edward VI, a 'godly imp', and bloodthirsty Mary.
TOTAL RECALL by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Simon & Schuster, £20)
Described in The Sunday Times as '600 pages of thundering Teutonic self-glorifi cation', this is the 'unbelievably true life story' of Arnie, bodybuilder turned action hero. The Kennedys, heart surgery and the Terminator all appear
CRIME ROUNDUP
Victoria Clark searches for new leads in serial stories
NOT DEAD YET by Peter James (Pan Books, £7.99)
The latest Roy Grace feels tired and formulaic, fragmented by so many plots. Sandy, Roy's mysterious wife who disappeared 10 years previously, makes erratic appearances that lead nowhere and minor characters come to dramatic ends destroying most of the Pavilion in the process.
Gaia, a rock star turned actress is coming to Brighton to film. She has received death threats and security is tight, with Grace in charge – but with the vast array of characters and action it is easy to lose sight of what is driving the book. There are too many distractions, which are tiring irritants. Both this and the Val McDermid feel like books published because a year had passed rather than something the authors wanted to write.
SAY YOU'RE SORRY by Michael Robotham (Little, Brown, £19.99)
Also part of an ongoing series, featuring clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin who has Parkinson's. The discovery of a dead girl frozen in a lake reopens an old case into two missing teenagers. Joe, who is in Oxford with his adolescent daughter, is drawn into the investigation. Robotham's characters still feel fresh, and, though influenced by real cases such as Natascha Kampusch, fact and fiction meld happily here.
THE VANISHING POINT by Val McDermid (Little, Brown, £16.99)
For a great deal of its length, this seemed to be a biography of Jade Goody. Scarlett Higgins, a reality TV star, survives public disgust at a racist rant during a game show, reinvents herself and becomes a multimillionaire. So far so Jade, but it is only three quarters of the way through that Val's imagination starts to kick in. At this point the tale becomes fantastical and irritating. There is plenty of imagination here but it is just not going in the right direction.