NON-FICTION

Another Point of View:

A Little Book of Big Ideas by Lisa Jardine Preface, £7.99 £7.59; 178pp The Point of View slot on BBC Radio 4 provides British independent-minded public thinkers with ten minutes each week in which to reflect wittily and wisely on a current issue. Lisa Jardine’s conversational tone, when she broadcasts her own point of view, is deceptively casual: her mind is eclectic, ecumenical, associative and rigorous. Her talks, on such matters of common concern as knife crime, the credit crunch, national identity and climate change, are informed by her historical knowledge and experience of past crises. In short, these published essays hold up well beyond the spoken voice.

The Marvelous Hairy Girls by Merry Wiesner-Hanks Yale, £18.99 £17.09; 248pp Hypertrichosis universalis, known as Ambras syndrome, a rare genetic condition that results in the sufferer being completely covered in thick hair, is very rare. In 16th-century Europe, the Gonzales family — father, sons and three daughters — was afflicted but, far from being shunned, they were welcomed into the highest society as court pets and dramatic subjects for artists. This fascinating book not only sets the “dog-faced” Gonzales girls in the context of Renaissance culture but also comments on a recent instance of Ambras syndrome in our own culture, which is no less raptly interested in so-called freaks of Nature.

The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica by Ian Thomson Faber & Faber, £14.99 £13.49; 370pp Jamaica – knee-jerk responses include Ian Fleming, Noël Coward, rum and sugar, Rasta culture, music — and, uh, slavery, gangs, drug culture, emigration, homophobia, police brutality, political corruption, poverty: Utopia and dystopia in one small island. Thomson makes the points that for long enough Jamaica and Britain had a symbiotic relationship that contributed to the wealth of many British people and that of late it has become unrecognisable as their homeland for many who emigrated from there to Britain in the postwar years. Thomson brings back traveller’s tales that we need to hear from a Third World basket case.

FICTION

Kneller’s Happy Campers by Etgar Keret, trans. Miriam Shlesinger Chatto & Windus, £6.99 £6.64; 86pp It’s knowing and slightly twisted, with an off-the-wall charm. Mordy, the narrator, is dead. He exists in a part of the afterlife populated by people who killed themselves and carry around their bullet-holes and hanging-burns (unless they are “Juliets”, who took poison). It is not Heaven. “Mostly,” Mordy says, “it reminds me of Tel Aviv.” Existence is a bit pointless — hanging out in bars, Friday night suppers with his friend’s parents who both committed suicide — until he hears that the girl he loved on Earth has also killed herself, and he sets out to find her. Keret is one of Israel’s most original writers and film-makers, and this novella is like nothing else.

Friends, Lovers and Other Indiscretions by Fiona Neill Century, £12.99 £11.69; 388pp Neill had a huge hit with The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy, her hilarious take on modern motherhood. This is every bit as funny, and packed with observations of wince-making accuracy. A group of middle-class friends is about to hit 40. Laura is longing for a third baby but her husband is making secret inquiries about a vasectomy. Her friend Janey is about to give birth to her first child, with a man who dislikes her old mates. Jonathan, meanwhile, is about to hit the big time as a TV chef, but can’t control his totty-chasing. These three couples decide to go on holiday together and, soon, friendships and relationships start to unravel. Superb entertainment.

Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane Heinemann, £12.99 £11.69; 332pp The Montreal Gazette called this “A rich variant on Cormac McCarthy’s biblically cadenced western noir and Flannery O’Connor’s Southern gothic”. So beware — you will not laugh, or even smile, for 332 pages. The lugubriousness is incredible. We begin with a man called Elmer Stark burying his infant daughter somewhere remote in British Columbia — she narrates part of the story from her grave. Then we leap forward to 1958, and the lives of her brothers, Tom and Eddy. Tom is serious and fearful, Eddy is wild, and both are adrift on a sea of utter misery. Lane is an award-winning Canadian poet, and some of the writing is beautiful, but this is a novel for emos.

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