Me and You

Fourteen-year-old Lorenzo Cuni hates people. Having seen a documentary about a type of fly that makes itself look like a wasp in order to protect itself, he has learned how to fit in by appearing to be like those around him. In order to stop his mother in particular by turns nagging at him and worrying about him, he has told her he is off skiing for a week with some classmates. In fact, he heads down to the cellar with his headphones, his Playstation, some tins of tuna, and a fake tan spray. He hasn’t counted on his half sister Olivia turning up  . . .

The setting is ripe for comedy, and there are amusing moments in this short but thoughtful book. However, taken as a whole there is more here that is sad than funny. The larger picture is painted in apparently simple brush strokes but, looked at closely, reveals telling details of a broken family and some damaged people. At times the narrative threatens to veer slightly into soft terrain, but manages to stay the right side of schmaltz.  The ‘me and you’ of the title, for example, becomes a poignant refrain when Olivia recounts an incident from Lorenzo’s childhood that he himself has forgotten, and he is patently struck by the idea that at one moment at least he was not alone:

‘Then the motorboat took off. And me and you, we stayed down in the cabin where it smelled of bilge and everything was shaking and rocking.’

‘Me and you?’

‘Yes.’ She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘Me and you.’

A one-sitting read that will repay a second visit.

From the ship’s rat, scurrying between the pages (‘follow the food, follow the food’) to the businessman Bruce Ismay (‘Why clutter a ship’s deck with lifeboats? / First-class passengers would rather see the sunrise’); from Harold Bride, the Spark, overjoyed to be appointed to Titanic’s message room with her new technology (‘For the next six days, we will be Titanic’s only ears / Titanic’s only voice’) to Captain E. J. Smith (‘My career has been uneventful. I am content / to run the straightest line between the two coordinates’), Allan Wolf has conjured twenty-four voices from the Titanic and taken a fresh and very different approach to the events surrounding the sinking of the ship in April 1912. The novel moves back and forth between short monologues, drawing you in from the opening page. The various portraits are sensitively imagined.  The research is here, unobtrusively. (All the people named were actually on board the vessel.  The sources are presented at the back of the book.) Where facts are scarce, Wolf has filled in the outlines plausibly; where they are known, they are presented by the by, discreetly.  Yes, we know what happens in the end. But these pieces with their touching human details bring you on board with the various ‘characters’ and make you hope that somehow it won’t. And throughout the whole thing whispers the most compelling voice of all – that of The Iceberg, a villain of decidedly Shakespearean cast:

‘Within my frozen mass I cannot find / an equal to the heart of humankind. / I’ll have my heart when ship and ice align. . . . The ice will have his pick of human hearts / as soon as fair Titanic plays her part.’

If you’re a Titanic buff, this is a creative new angle on familiar material; if you’re someone who wants a gripping story that happens to be true, it’s a moving, memorable and, yes, respectful piece of work.

Susan Hill was one of the 2011 Booker judges whose priority for prizeworthiness was “readability”. It has to be said that the woman practises what she preaches. The Woman in Black is hugely readable, atmospheric, absorbing and subtle. Read it before the big screen ramps up the melodrama and adds a soundtrack that the eerie stillness of the book really doesn’t require.

Jacket Synopsis:
The year is 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the Pemberley nursery, Elizabeth’s beloved sister Jane and her husband Bingley, live within seventeen miles, the ordered and secure life of Pemberley seems unassailable, and Elizabeth’s happiness in her marriage is complete. But their peace is threatened and old sins and misunderstandings are rekindled on the eve of the annual autumn ball. The Darcys and their guests are preparing to retire for the night when a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley’s wild woodland, and as it pulls up, Lydia Wickham, an uninvited guest, tumbles out, screaming that her husband has been murdered.

In a pitch-perfect recreation of the world of Pride and Prejudice, P.D. James elegantly fuses her lifelong passion for the work of Jane Austen with her talent for writing detective fiction.

Our Rating: ★★★¼☆ 

Miller beat bookmakers’ odds-on favourite, poet and debut biographer Matthew Hollis for his work Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy for The Bees, debut writer, Christie Watson, for Tiny Sunbirds Far Away and first-time author, Moira Young, for Blood Red Road, to win the overall prize and a cheque for £30,000 at the awards ceremony.

Jacket Synopsis:
It’s the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead – charismatic loner and college Darwinist – suddenly turns up in a seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged relationship with him. At the same time, her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus – who’s been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange – resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his wife. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle graduate from college and enter the real world, they will be forced to re-evaluate everything.

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, pre-nups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

Our Rating: ★★★½☆ 

The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am,

Best described as a novella of sorts, this is a quirky piece recounting the life of a woman, Mathea Martinsen, who is pondering her death and the many wasted and lost opportunities that she has missed out on due to her fear of people and living. When she ponders her life to date upon the death of her husband Epsilon, and decides that she has not lived enough, she obtains a box and makes a time capsule which she buries outside her apartment so that when it is found, people will know that she existed.

It is a sad account dealing with issues that we all face in life, regardless of age, such as isolation and loneliness. As the title suggests, the more this frightened and nervous woman tries to engage with life and find meaning, the less relevant she feels. The prose is simple yet very effective and it is truly a heart-wrenching account, though oftentimes peppered with comic moments such as this one -

I talked Epsilon into buying a rabbit, but didn’t tell him it was because I couldn’t be alone in the apartment anymore. He wouldn’t understand. ‘I just love animals,’ I said. ‘Almost as much as Hitler did.’”

Jacket Synopsis:
Judith Hearne is a single woman of modest means, a middle-aged Catholic spinster who teaches piano to a handful of students. Her only social activity is tea with the O’Neill family, who secretly dread her weekly visits. But when she moves into yet another Belfast bedsit, her lonely existence appears to be at an end. Here she meets the lively and debonair James Madden, recently returned from New York. Charmed by what she sees as his amorous pursuit of her, Judith begins to dream of a brighter future – is she too late for love, or dare she let herself hope?

Jacket Synopsis:
“Late in the nineteenth century, a beautiful young art student from Copenhagen arrives in Paris, breathless with excitement and longing to become a painter. Surrounded by artists in bustling cafés, Marie is swept away into a vivid and colourful world of mistresses and fourth wives, painted fishermen and cramped Parisian studios, ultimately leading her to the acclaimed painter Soren Kroyer.

But despite the friendship that grows between Marie and fellow artist Anna, Marie is always on the outside of Kroyer’s artistic circle, unsure as to whether she can ever become more than a painted lady.”

Chair of Judges, Stella Rimington said it is a book that deserves to be read two or three times, as it is so crammed with information that you don’t necessarily take it all in on a first reading. It has -

the markings of a classic of English Literature. It is exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading.”

When accepting the prize, Barnes commented on his book as being an object of beauty and the importance of this.

Those of you who have seen my book, whatever you think of its contents, will probably agree it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we’ve come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the ebook, it has to look like something worth buying, worth keeping.”

Click here for our review of The Sense Of An Ending.