Books of the month: From Matt Haig’s latest novel to Lee Child’s short stories
Martin Chilton reviews the biggest books for August
Frank Zappa offered his pregnant wife Gail two choices of name for the daughter she was carrying: Moon Unit or Motorhead. Moon Unit, who was born in 1967 and became a child star at 14, certainly knows about life in the limelight and her autobiography Earth to Moon (White Rabbit) examines growing up in the dysfunctional world of what she calls her “dad void”. She is down-to-earth and witty about some bizarre experiences.
Another quirky memoir from a woman with an unusual past is also out in August. New York-born filmmaker Desiree Akhavan, who created the Channel 4 series The Bisexual, deals with her London dating life and the “s***tiness of my sex-capades” in sections of her memoir You’re Embarrassing Yourself (4th Estate). She employs caustic humour to describe the men she dated in England, including “a 25-year-old with mommy issues who looks like (I swear to God) a sexy Mr Bean”.
Memory is clearly fallible says novelist Sarah Moss, who deals with the theme of contested recollection in her memoir My Good Bright Wolf (Picador), a thought-provoking excavation of childhood from a furiously curious mind.
Finally, one of the most remarkable (and hidden stories) in modern popular music is the transformative work that Catherine and Darius Brubeck, son of “Take Five” jazz legend Dave, did in furthering education in apartheid-blighted South Africa. The inspiring story of this married couple’s arduous and troubled work is told in Playing the Changes: Jazz at an African University and On the Road (University of Illinois Press).
Novels by Benjamin Myers, David Peace, Matt Haig and Donal Ryan, along with short stories by Lee Child, are reviewed in full below.
Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers ★★★★☆
In Rare Singles, troubled wife and mother Dinah contacts a long-forgotten washed-up musical hero, Ealon “Bucky” Bronco, “the great lost hope of American soul”, and invites him to fly over from Chicago to Scarborough.
Durham-born Myers brings to life the strange charm of a fading English seaside town – the seagulls that sound like sirens, how the salty residue of the sea gets everywhere, the rain falling with “timeless Northern fury” – in an uplifting tale of friendship, grief and honesty. It’s also a book that captures just why music is so magical. Music pulses throughout a novel that, in part, reads like a love letter to the timeless American classics of Chess Records, Stax and Motown. Despite their heartaches, it’s fun to spend time with Dinah and Bucky, who get on “like two sides of a single: A-side and B-side”.
Rare Singles covers a lot of ground, including opioid addiction, trauma, the joys of whisky, dancing and even (pity those too young to have known them) knickerbocker glories, and if you want a heartwarming summer read, I definitely suggest you give Rare Singles a spin.
‘Rare Singles’ by Benjamin Myers is published by Bloomsbury on 1 August, £18.99
Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan ★★★★☆
Heart, Be at Peace works as a compact standalone novel, although it is perhaps best read as a companion to Ryan’s impressive 2012 debut novel The Spinning Heart.
The format is the same: the tale of an Irish village told through 21 different narrators in 21 short, sharp chapters. The heart of the story is again Bobby Maho but we see what has happened to other villagers in the interim – including the dodgy local developer, Pokey Burke and the Siberian labourer Vasya – who reveal in their own accounts what a battering they have taken from bad love affairs, violence, drink and mental illness.
The lives of the characters fit together in strange ways and Ryan once again fashions the tales into an astute mosaic. Add to that Ryan’s gift for capturing the foolishness and fakery of human nature and the lyrical power of Irish small-town gossip (“that bitter little strap of a wife”, is one insult) and you have a portrait of modern Ireland through a series of hard minds and sometimes kind hearts.
‘Heart, Be at Peace’ by Donal Ryan is published by Doubleday on 8 August, £16.99
Munichs by David Peace ★★★★☆
Peace, author of The Damned Utd, a brilliant biographical novel about Brian Clough’s ill-fated 44-day reign as manager of Leeds, returns to football with Munichs, a fact-based novel about one of the worst tragedies in British sport.
On the freezing afternoon of 6 February 1958, British European Airways Flight 609 stopped at Munich to refuel after Manchester United’s trip home from a European Cup fixture in Belgrade. Twenty-two passengers were killed instantly when it crashed on a third take-off attempt. Others, including Duncan Edwards, the boy wonder footballer of his age, died later. Edwards clung on bravely for 15 days, before losing a gruelling battle to survive in hospital.
Munichs is full of potent descriptions, including the bravery of goalkeeper Harry Gregg amid the carnage and confusion, and Peace has a skilled way of revealing the full horror and tragedy of the crash through small imagined/real details, such as the stunned and frozen stewardess, unable to move, standing barefoot in the snow (lots of the victims had clothes ripped off by the force of the impact).
He also expertly details the tiny acts of inspirational kindness – including when the owner of the newspaper shop nearest to Bobby Charlton’s mother, Cissie, rushed to tell her what had happened before the news went up on the placards outside the shop. Peace brings empathy and insight into his account of the pilot, Captain Jim Thain – unfairly made a scapegoat by the press and German investigators – along with the sorrowful story of the club officials and journalists who also perished on that fateful day.
Munichs is, at times, a sentimental novel – but it’s a deeply moving one and stirringly told, including a memorable scene in which the widow of a young player confronts the manager, Matt Busby, about why he allowed the players to get back on a plane that had twice failed to take off on a runway full of snow and icy slush.
‘Munichs’ by David Peace is published by Faber on 29 August, £20
Safe Enough by Lee Child ★★★☆☆
A Jack Reacher book is sold somewhere in the world every nine seconds and Coventry-born Lee Child has become a global name for his action novels, pacy plots and gritty style. So, what is he like with non-Reacher short stories? In truth, Safe Enough (Bantam) – a collection of 20 of his non-Reacher stories – is an enticing snack-like book, full of jaunty tales, twists and violence. It has a slight feel of a modern Tales of the Unexpected and some of the plot twists feel a little predictable.
The villains are compelling, though. In “The Greatest Trick of All”, Child’s protagonist is a breezily amoral assassin, who boasts: “I could have brushed past you in a crowd and you wouldn’t have known your throat was cut until you went to nod your head and it rolled away down the street without you.”
I enjoyed the quirky unpredictability of the best of the tales, especially “Natural in Every Way”, about an oddball 1950s filing clerk for the San Francisco Police Department, whose unheralded work helps solve tricky murder investigations.
For what it’s worth, I always have more requests from friends and acquaintances to pass on a Child proof than for any other book I am ever sent. Safe Enough doesn’t pretend to be highbrow but it is an entertaining read and shows why Child has such a strong following.
‘Safe Enough’ by Lee Child is published by Bantam on 29 August, £22
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig ★★★☆☆
When 72-year-old former Maths teacher and widow Grace Winters is left a dilapidated house in Ibiza, she uproots her life for a new start. Grace has been left the property by a long-vanished colleague and as she searches for answers about her late friend’s life, she is drawn into the mystery of the hidden forces of the universe, despite being adamant that she is “not great at believing in the mystical”.
Haig has a superb track record and has called The Life Impossible “my big life-and-love-and-the-universe novel”. It’s part mystery, part love letter to Ibiza (a place he has lived), part magical realism and full of secular homily nuggets in a way that (to me) echoed Mitch Albom and Tuesdays with Morrie. Indeed, The Life Impossible kicks off with Grace writing to England to answer a plea for help from one of her young, former students.
Grace is a great character (“stubborn as the wind”) and Haig deals deftly with her past grief and the loneliness of missing a loved one who was “a shock absorber to the madness of experience”. To really enjoy the novel, you possibly need to be drawn into the telepathy, aliens and paranormal capabilities that are the heart of the story. I’m sure Grace is right when she says “We are never at the finishing line of understanding” but I’d want more from Haig’s mystical sea force La Presencia (linked to aliens and the planet Salacia) than to wake up believing that Fleetwood Mac’s song “Everywhere” was “the most beautiful, lush, intricate sound I had ever heard”.
The novel has laudable themes of saving the environment (although I was unconvinced by the villain Art Butler) and I’m sure sales will be out of this world, because Haig’s writing is as assured and appetising as ever. I’m just sorry that the book didn’t really get me hook, line and sinker.
‘The Life Impossible’ by Matt Haig is published by Canongate on 29 August, £20
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