HOWZAT

Despite the inevitable incidences of dissolution and dissipation, Sledmere has not only survived but thrived. One reason is that although the Sykes have occasionally produced fast women, Sledmere has always produced fast horses. Its bloodstock is still sought. Unearthing many delights among the family, whether about bibulous butlers or peculiar Papas, Sykes has done his subject sterling service. The result is a refreshingly pure and straightforward biography, written in unpretentious prose, of one family and their home.

This charming book is a loving, sympathetic eulogy to a house that “lives and breathes”. You finish it hoping that the elegy of Sledmere will not be written for a very long time.

Page 2: Fiction by Christina Koning()

GHOST STORY
by Toby Litt
Penguin, £7.99
£7.59 (free p&p)

In the decade since the publication of his debut short story collection, Adventures in Capitalism, Litt has purveyed his own brand of jokey experimentalism — absurdist ideas given a popular spin. Ghost Story is a departure from all that: a sombre mood-piece, whose subject — the heartbreak of losing a baby — determines its spare, unpretentious style.

Introduced by a painfully honest autobiographical section describing the series of miscarriages suffered by the author’s girlfriend, the work then moves into a fictional reworking of the same topic. Traumatised by the death in utero of their second child, Agatha and Paddy move into a new house, near the sea. Here, they hope to re-establish their lives. But it becomes apparent that Agatha’s recovery is not a foregone conclusion. So haunted is she by thoughts of the child she has lost that she can no longer love her existing child, three-year- old Max, refusing to have him in the house.

Conventional as it is in form, the novel takes risks eschewed by some of the author’s more outré works. Unsurprisingly, given its subject, it contains very little humour — and humour is something one has come to expect from this writer. Its characters — depressed Aggie and over-protective Paddy — are often hard to like, coming across as no more than the sum of their anxieties. Much as one might admire the author’s bravery in tackling a theme so at odds with his usual preoccupations, it has to be said that this is not his most successful work.

I’LL GO TO BED AT NOON
by Gerard Woodward
Vintage, £6.99
£6.64 (free p&p)

Woodward’s Booker shortlisted sequel to his much admired debut, August, finds the Jones family staggering into the 1970s, with the now middle-aged Colette worrying about the alcoholic tendencies of her brother and her son — confusingly both called Janus — even though her own consumption of cigarettes and alcohol is far from modest.

Husband Aldous, still striving to establish himself as an artist, wins a lifetime’s supply of Tia Maria in a painting competition and then feels guilty about this inadvertent contribution to his son’s drinking habit. Best friend Bill — another heroic drinker — does his best to convert the family to Communism. Even younger son Julian has his share of eccentricities, converting his bedroom into a lending library, and observing the excesses of the rest of the family with a beady eye.

If the interminable boozing and bickering sometimes seems a bit exaggerated, this is offset by the subtlety of the descriptive writing, with its sharp evocation of down-at-heel suburbia. Drabness is transformed by the lyricism of the writing. Equally good is the way the author captures the rhythms of everyday speech, as well as the surreal things that people — especially these people — often say. Seldom can such a self-destructive crowd have been portrayed with such affectionate humour. There are some hilarious set pieces, too: the rancorous family funerals that bracket the novel being two of them.

THE FACTS BEHIND THE HELSINKI ROCCAMATIOS
by Yann Martel
Canongate, £6.99
£6.64 (free p&p)

Admirers of Martel’s Booker prizewinning Life of Pi will not be disappointed in this, his debut collection of short stories, first published ten years ago, whose quirky humour only heightens its darker themes. In the title story, two friends, one dying of Aids, spend the last months of the latter’s life chronicling the history of a fictional family, interweaving the events of their lives with the big developments of the 20th century.

We don’t actually get to read this work, but we can guess at its prevailing tone from the snippets of historical fact that introduce each episode, ranging from the outbreak of the First World War to the invention of the ballpoint pen. The second piece has the lengthy title, The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton, which is a short story in itself, and concerns a Washington caretaker who writes a brilliant concerto that is performed only once, to an audience of Vietnam veterans. In Manners of Dying the warden of an American prison writes letters to the mothers of those whose executions he has witnessed, describing their last hours. And in The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company, an old lady describes her first meeting with the man who is to become her husband, while demonstrating how mirrors are made to her grandson.

Clever, funny and moving, these stories offer further evidence — if any were needed — of the continuing vitality of the form.

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