My Weekly Book

I love crime novels and my favourite crime writer is PD James – as, of course, must be true of a sizeable portion of the crime-reading population. So, imagine my delight on finding this book at St Pancras Station on one recent, rainy Friday evening at nearly 9pm, with a dreadful working day behind me, waiting for a terribly late , and with the prospect of a journey to Manchester via Sheffield in front of me that wasn't going to be over before 2am. This book leapt off the shelves of the station newsagent and into my hands. No arguments whatsoever. And having started it, I carried it in a rucksack for 80 miles along the Cornish coast, even though it was already half-read and though it bust the personal book allowance I had set myself – because I needed to know what happened.

The Queen of Crime is now 82 years old and the author of 16 published works. Detective Chief Inspector Dalgleish, first introduced at a village fete in 1962, is now Commander Dalgleish, with a spacious and tasteful office at New Scotland Yard and a Special Investigation Squad all of his very own to facilitate his involvement with interesting cases. And this is a good one – with security sensitivities present to explain and justify Dalgleish's involvement.

You can tell this is a book from an author of many, many detective novels and one that is at the top of her game. There's a certain knowingness about it, a feeling of the author being more than usually present, and of being more than usually frank with her readership. Her pitch goes something like this: “You and I have known each other for a while. We both know that this is a detective novel and that certain things will happen in it. In short, people are going to die. In novels such as this, it is customary for there to be a second and perhaps a third murder. So let's not beat about the bush.” On this principle, the novel is divided into four sections – entitled The People and the Place; The First Victim; The Second Victim; and The Third Victim.

Dispensing with the fiction that everyone mentioned in the narrative is going to come out alive and well enables the reader's attention to switch from the 'what will happen' (as if we didn't know) and even from the 'who will it happen to', straight to the 'how'. In the service of this narrative device, the reader is introduced to a bewildering selection of possible murderers with possible motives and, frankly, some of the ones who weren't responsible are considerably more interesting than the one(s) that is/are. I was personally convinced by one misleading clue I now believe to be a deliberate blind, and I am sure there are others.

When you eventually find out whodunnit, there is a feeling of disappointment akin to being a child in a sweet shop who knows it can only take out one, or at most two, crumpled paper bags representing its share of the contents of all those lovely, shiny jars on the shelves. I also kicked myself, because I think the killer(s) falls into the mould of killer(s) in other PD James novels and I felt that if I had kept my metaphorical eyes open, I would not have been drawn in by the authorial pitch and so might have correctly spotted the outcome.

Don't get the impression that I am suggesting that you shouldn't read this book. No, it is marvellous, and I am really just quibbling about details, even though Random did come to a lot of similar conclusions. The main achievement is the wonderfully Gothic atmosphere of the work, and its completely un-putdownable quality. It is also, of course, a thing of beauty in its plotting and construction. In fact, you are left to wonder how the principal victim reached the ripe old age (s)he did with so many enemies and so many people profiting by the death.

One other quibble, and this is a spoiler so look away now if you are likely to read this. James has for years resisted the temptation to pry into Adam Dalgleish's private life. Here she breaks the taboo, and it feels like an intrusion. It's an aspect of the plot that left me irritated in much the same way as when recently viewing the film Wimbledon – a perfectly good film about sport ruined by a lot of romantic nonsense. I accept this is probably just my personal take on things, however. Go read the book. It's magnificent.

Here are a couple of Guardian reviews:

* Gosh, this is posh

* Bricks and slaughter

PD James books that we don't yet own:
* A Certain Justice
* Time To Be In Earnest
* Maul and the Pear Tree
* An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
* The Children of Men

* Complete chronology of work

An afterthought for anyone who has ever wondered what happened to Cordelia Gray, in James' own words:

“She is a bit modeled on my younger daughter, in some ways. And she seemed right for the book. I would like to go on with her, but unfortunately, I let a film company make the Cordelia Gray television plays. They were a company I had a great respect for, because they had made the film Mrs. Brown. I told them that they could use the character rather as Collin Dexter had sold Morse. I'm afraid they were absolutely hopeless. They produced two quite appalling things. And the first actress got pregnant, and they made Cordelia into an unmarried mother and a totally ineffective and silly girl. They've rather stolen my character, really.

JAMES: Yes, I think I was. If she had been able to go ahead with properly made films with reasonable plots. In one way it was deeply depressing, because I had great hopes for that character, but it just didn't work out.”

Taken from this excellent interview.

She appears to be referring to this series.

It has come to me before now that I might be reading books in an insufficiently critical fashion. Reading back through the entries in this journal, there are very few listed that I didn't like. I feel that it might even be a fair criticism to say there is a certain element of cheerleading about it. This has worried me in the past, so I asked Beloved Other Half what he thought. He said: “That's because you don't bother to finish books you don't like.” I think he may have had a point. I always have a 'To Read' list with around 20 titles on it, and so I do regard life as too short to bother with bad books.

Which is why I vowed to press on with this book even when, a few pages in then about a third of the way through, I found I really didn't want to finish it. Recently I had read another in this select group of 'cult modern novels' – Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I really did 'get' that one – found it a wonderful read, imaginative and intellectually satisfying. But, reading through the Amazon customer reviews, for every 15 or so who loved it there would be an anguished soul crying “But what do people see in this?” It just hadn't clicked with them.

I felt the same when, despairing of continuing with this book, I went and looked at the customer reviews for it. Such a paean of uniform praise I do not remember seeing ever before. People moved to tears in every succeeding chapter, people's lives being affirmed and their religious faith being strengthened. Recommendations to read it with a box of tissues to hand, people who cannot get the story out of their heads, people who return to it again and again.

Well, all I can say is: why? Firstly, stories that start out with the meticulously-described sexual assault and brutal stabbing of a 14-year-old girl aren't usually high on my reading list, though I appreciate the urge of the author to tell this usually untold story from the point of view of the person that suffers it and can't speak out themselves. Once that is out of the way, we get into the main structure of the book – the disintegration of the girl's family and its eventual reunification eight years later. Susie, the victim and narrator, perpetually 14 years old, watches events on earth from a kind of heavenly antechamber, discovering that she is as unable to let go of her family as they are incapable of letting go of her, as well as discovering a limited potential to influence events on earth. As we perhaps should expect from the heaven of an adolescent, her heaven is a place of staggering banality – a high school where all the textbooks are fashion magazines, and anything goes, including lighting bonfires in the corridors.

This book does, at its heart, contain an essential truth. It is the same truth that was so painfully revealed after September 11, 2001 when broadcasters played over and over the messages left on answerphones for their loved ones by people who knew they were dying and would never see them again. That truth is that our loving relationships, with families, partners, children – are the only things that really matter to us in extremity. A simple and rather stark truth, which this book manages to load with such a weight of baggage and sentimentality that you almost start wishing it wasn't. Another thing that has me troubled is the mixed messages about women that it contains. Lindsey, sister of the victim. Intellectually gifted, capable of great athletic achievements. But shown as only truly fulfilled and happy and achieving closure when clutching a dear little baby at the end, after 'accidentally falling pregnant'. Spare me, Dear Lord, from this nonsense, I can feel myself getting cross again as I type.

Then there is the credulous process by which Susie swaps bodies with a former friend and returns to earth in order to have sex with a boy she had been forming a relationship with when she died. I think the intention is for the character to overcome the brutalisation visited on her by her murderer, and experience how men and women would normally relate to each other. However, granted a few precious hours back on earth, this is how she chooses to use them? And the ambiguous women of a generation back – Abigail, Susie's mother, who runs away from her family for eight years and seems not to develop one jot as a character during that time, who comes running back the minute there is a serious tug on the string. I appreciate the author is trying to create a portrait of a society in which the position of women is ambiguous, compromised and threatened – with the prospect of male violence constantly half-visible and indeed kept constantly half-visible in order that women should remember their place. But this to me has more to do with The Stepford Wives than any decent feminist critique.

When Susie does finally manage to loosen her ties to earth somewhat, she graduates to a higher circle of Heaven, to take an example from Dante. I found myself profoundly irritated here by the complete refusal of the author to engage in any kind of discussion about religious faith. You might say, and indeed be right, that it would get in the way of the story, but how can you possibly write a novel that has heaven as its central component without even acknowledging the theological possibilities? Here the ultimate experience seems to be the opportunity to spend time with those we have loved – dead pets, grandparents. Again, a fundamental truth but wrapped in such a confection of sentiment and nonsense that I at least, a confirmed atheist anyway, found myself hoping that death really is the end if this is the alternative.

Polemic delivered, allow me to find some nice things to say about this book (purely for the exercise). It is highly readable, and does well to get 300 pages or so out of very little actual action. The characters are, with the provisos mentioned above, well-drawn. Ruana Singh (I am no expert on Sikhism, and apologise to anyone who is, but surely her name would have been Ruana Kaur?), the yoga devotee and former dancer with an entirely absent husband for whom the act of baking apple pies seems to be the symbol of an uneasy integration with American life, was easily my favourite. The act of using a dead person as narrator in the story of their own events is a daring and interesting one – but hardly entirely original; off the top of my head I can think of two novels by Douglas Coupland in which it happens. But to my eyes, I am afraid, it is glaring in its faults and inconsistencies and often objectionable in its outlook. While touching on some very serious points about our values and about the status of women and children in society, I think that in the final analysis it shirks its responsibility to these issues and plunges into sentimentality and trite answers, often reinforcing the very values that I suspect it may have been seeking to question.

This is one of those books, like The da Vinci code, that the whole world seems to be talking about, and you start to wonder what you can possibly add to the cacophony. However, I was told that I should read this book and, having read it, I would be very glad that I had. I did and I was. [2008 update: it has, in fact, inveigled its way onto my 'best books ever read' list by now.]

So, what happens? Well, like The da Vinci Code, I am severely limited in what I can say for fear of revealing more than is reasonable. The book introduces Pi Patel, an Indian boy and the son of a zookeeper, who subscribes to at least three of the world's major religions. In the first part of the book, we meet Pi and his family and learn about his character and the circumstances of his life. In the second, we are shown how those circumstances are destroyed and that character put to the test. Then we are asked to decide between two alternative ways of looking at the events in the novel. It might be an idea to stop reading now if you want to remain entirely innocent of the events in it.

Basically, I think there are three ways of interpreting the book, although I have been told that my third option is a cop-out. Either the story is literally true, or it is a metaphor. There are reasons given in the text to doubt the literal truth of either of the two possible stories – things that make either impossible to add up to a nice, round number. The third alternative is to say that, since we can't ever be sure which is true, we might as well settle for a kind of Schroedinger's Cat approach – the box is sealed, so the cat inside is both alive and dead until there is more information available.

The book is beautifully and sensuously written – in that the sights, smells and flavours roll off the page. It has a lovely, accomplished style and a unique voice. It is very difficult to put down, and I read it in about two days. I didn't end up with a unique insight into the meaning of life, nor did I fall on my knees and start to pray. But I did come away feeling that which story I would far rather believe, and that my world-view was enhanced by the fact it was verging on the impossible. Hint: I like the wild and fantastic, and also the idea that human nature is redeemable; make of that what you will.

Just out of interest, here is a fascinating link: Les Piscines Auteil-Molitor

This is the fourth and most recent book to be written by Dan Brown, and the only one so far published to come after The da Vinci Code, although he is understood to be working on the literal follow-up right now. It has far more in common with his first book, Deception Point in that it is a tense, political thriller dealing with elements of the American intelligence and security communities.

If you like thrillers, it is a good read – having read four Dan Brown books in rapid succession, I am actually starting to experience RSI of the thumb. I would count myself as a huge fan of Mr Brown's both in terms of the Robert Langdon books and of the others.

And yet, and yet… dare I say that this book is actually pretty formulaic? For instance, he's used the same rough version of the hero and heroine in all four books, as far as I can tell. Also, you could see the villain coming a mile off in this one. Nevertheless, I don't wish to whinge. I don't feel my time was wasted in reading it, I just felt that the other three books were exceptional and this was just good. It has all the usual strengths – an excellent and intellectual plot, a lack of inhibitions about blowing everything on his stage sky-high, plenty of suspense and puzzles for the reader to solve.

I can see why The da Vinci Code would be a terribly hard act to follow. I just hope he can follow it, and it doesn't turn out to have been a peak.

[Jan 2008 update: of course, we are still waiting for that elusive follow-up, supposedly named The Solomon Key. It has so far been slated for release in both 2006 and 2007... Is Dan Brown ever publishing another book?]

When a certain individual accuses me of inveterate cultural snobbery I point out to him that I am an avid reader of fat thrillers. Now, a thriller does not come all that much fatter than The da Vinci code and it was rendered irresistible to me, as an earlier post will show, by pushing all the right buttons. Conspiracies, Renaissance art, esoterica, revisionist feminist spirituality, if such a thing exists – I felt this man had thought: “Now what will Astrofiammante want to read” before sitting down to write it.

Now, here I am, racing through his back catalogue, at the rate of a novel every 48 hours or so. These two books, however, are very different. Angels and Demons is The da Vinci Code's direct forebear, and features its hero Dr Robert Langdon. It's far more of a traditional thriller, with the threat of a major institution being blown sky-high counting down in real time as the book progresses. It combines this with an arcane quest for knowledge in much the same vein as its successor. As I expected of Brown even by his second book, there are some huge twists and turns – the plot seems to go through 90 degrees every 100 pages or so, and my pick for the top villain was in fact redeemed so the real top villain could step forward. It's a rollercoaster, very cleverly written, with lots of shameless cliffhangers and a bit to keep the brain busy as well – just what the doctor ordered, thanks very much, where's the next one?

Quite different, as it turned out. Deception Point would be recognised as a thriller by the most conservative reader of Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy. It involves the now-familiar Brown nascent couple, this time a government data analyst and a popular TV scientist, caught up in a political intrigue that affects the US government and civil service at the highest levels. This, too, pressed all my favourite buttons – set for much of the story in the high Arctic, and when the protagonists come south it is the ocean and its wonders in the spotlight. I will say that I found the plot of this one just a tiny bit far-fetched. The hero and heroine escape by the skin of their teeth from so many life-threatening situations, and have so much luck in their quest not to be assassinated, drowned or frozen to death that you start to suspect they must have their own personal team of Olympian deities intervening to keep them in the game.

But who am I to criticise? I read it over the course of about 30 hours then ordered Digital Fortress immediately from Amazon. What else is there to say?

Having come back from London a few weeks back armed with a fat copy of the Bryson science epic, I settled down to read it. Then I remembered that just a short while earlier I had found a copy of Down Under, the only other Bryson book I had never read, going cheap in a charity shop. Bryson truly is one of my favourite authors – I believe he speaks to me personally, we share a sense of humour and of the ridiculous, and of course the man is a journalist. Once a sub-editor, always a sub-editor. It's not a state of mind you can ever shake off – and rest assured that the above apostrophe is correctly placed.

Anyway, to un-digress, the only thing that had stopped me reading Down Under for this long had been a feeling of not much interest in visiting Australia. Like Ransome's Rod and Line, however, I was perfectly prepared to deal with uncongenial subject-matter for the sake of the author's company.

Before I'd read half of this excellent book I was wanting to book my plane ticket. Or should I say my train ticket, since it seems the land Down Under has long-distance rail journeys to please the most ardent enthusiast. He makes the country come alive, he offers delicious small servings of history, biology and politics along with the amusing anecdotes, and there is plenty of insightful analysis as well as humour. One thing that has happened to Bryson as his writing career has progressed is that the issues he cares about have come more and more to the fore – conservation being primary among them and this book is laced with a fair amount of polemic on this and other subjects – no bad thing at all, I felt.

I guess I feared 'Bryson does Oz' would just be a re-run of 'The young Bryson does Europe', 'The middle-aged Bryson does Britain' and 'The inept Bryson takes a long and dangerous hike'. And what would happen to the man when he ran out of continents to wander across? But the best thing about this is that it is not just 'Bryson does Oz' and for that reason, as well as all the others mentioned above, it comes highly recommended. Another thing I find refreshing about this book is that in a cynical, impervious world, Bryson actually likes and enjoys meeting his fellow humans. Perhaps things aren't so bad after all.

Now for another crack at 'Bryson does science'.

The more du Maurier I read, the more I am convinced she is an author of the stature of the Brontes, with who she has a lot in common. Now I have covered 'the famous five' (Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, Jamaica Inn, House on the Strand and My Cousin Rachel) plus the best of the short stories (The Birds and other stories). I hope the publishing of those terribly attractive new Virago editions brings here the status and reputation she so evidently deserves, rather than leaving her consigned in perpetuity to the Catherine Cookson saga shelf.

My Cousin Rachel is a dark, gothic tale with more than a little of Jane Eyre about it, which also strongly reminded me of the kind of thing being parodied in Austen's Northanger Abbey. Young Philip Ashley reveres his older cousin Ambrose, who has brought him up more or less singlehandedly at the family pile – the nurse was chased off when Philip was three – which the boy will one day inherit. But Ambrose has a weak constitution and is ordered to the Continent for the summer.

There he meets Rachel, a woman of dubious reputation and combined Cornish and Italian descent. They marry, Ambrose dies. But not before the deranged man has had time to send a couple of highly ambiguous letters to his young heir and cousin. And, when Rachel comes to England, how will a naive boy of 24 resist the overtures of the worldly, 35-year-old, twice-married, impoverished Rachel?

The best thing about the book is its complexity and ambiguity. Du Maurier said, apparently, that she didn't actually know which of the two possible outcomes presented for the reader is true. Characterisation is superlative, as is the slow building of suspense and a story that delivers a kick on the final page. Another masterly novel.

Intriguingly, it is said to be based on a portrait of a young woman called Rachel Carew at Antony House near Saltash, who married one Ambrose Manaton of Kilworthy in 1690. And the family pile is yet another example of Menabilly being used in her work. As someone that finds themselves in Cornwall nearly every time I pick up a pen or put finger to keyboard, I find this identification with that place and the overall sense of place fascinating.

Oh, and it starts with the image of a murderer's corpse swinging from a gibbet. You can't get more gothic than that, can you?

Well, I appear to have read this 600-page novel in not much more than 24 hours, during some of which time I was supposed to be at work. And I cannot honestly remember having read anything like it before, so much so that I am unsure what to write about it, especially given the fact that I oughtn’t to give away too many plot details.

I loved it because it tapped into several different things that I enjoy – fat thrillers, esoterica, murder mysteries, intellectual arguments, codes and conspiracy theories. There have been comparisons with Harry Potter, which I distrust whenever they appear on the cover of a book, but this is less wild than most – it's to do with the exercise of offering readers a series of mysteries and puzzles to solve, rather than any overt similaries in plot or character, and I think that is valid.

Also extremely amusing is the lather that the Catholic church, self-appointed literary critics and assorted other Christian nutters have got themselves into over the supposed 'blasphemies' and inaccuracies contained in the book. This is funny because the author very cleverly takes lots of elements with an existence in the real world – the works of Leonardo da Vinci, the secret society The Priory of Sion, the Catholic sect Opus Dei – and works them into a narrative that he states quite clearly on his own website is supposed to be fiction – as follows:

“The Da Vinci Code is a novel and therefore a work of fiction. While the book's characters and their actions are obviously not real, the artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in this novel all exist (for example, Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings, the Louvre pyramid, the Gnostic Gospels, Hieros Gamos, etc.). These real elements are interpreted and debated by fictional characters. While it is my belief that the theories discussed by these characters have merit, each individual reader must explore these characters' viewpoints and come to his or her own interpretations. My hope in writing this novel was that the story would serve as a catalyst and a springboard for people to discuss the important topics of faith, religion, and history.”

As to all the refutations and the attempts to prove or disprove the different theories presented, well, there's nothing like an opportunity to make money, is there?

I can see that some people will find the premise presented in this book profoundly irritating, and others will love it for presenting something closer to their own world view – I am one of those latter people, and a reader of thrillers to boot, so this book was like Christmas to me. I don't think the characters were particularly one-dimensional when judged by the standards of thrillers. I accept that it’s not the best-written book ever but do not believe that it deserves most of the opprobrium that is heaped on it from people that are, frankly, being snobbish about a wildly successful piece of popular fiction. I am not personally convinced that the plot hangs together completely – I need to go back and read it again, when I am not in such a desperate hurry to find out what will happen. I am sure there are lots of clues and secrets that I missed, and I look forward to going back and finding them. I shall be recommending it to all and sundry, however, and am already looking forward to swelling the numbers at one or two tourist locations benefiting soundly from their appearance in this book.

Dan Brown's website (link above) is highly recommended for background information on the books and for the codes, puzzles and challenges that it offers for fans to crack.

The fifth volume in the incomparable adventures of Mma Precious Ramotswe does not fail to satisfy. Like the others it is seemingly slight, easily read and lingering long in the memory.

It may also be the last we get for a while, with one particularly long-running storyline tied up in the final pages and the author seemingly taking a break to write something else for a change.

That is to be welcomed, if it keeps the series fresh, and will give new readers a chance to catch up with Mma Ramotswe's adventures before she embarks upon the Next Big Adventure, which I really hope the author intends to tell us about.

I read The Salmon of Doubt a few months ago, and was bowled over, which was one of the reasons I was unable to resist this biography when it leapt off the shelf of the Charing Cross Road Waterstones and into my already overcrowded arms. However, now having read both, it's a bit disappointing to once again find myself in strong disagreement with the majority of reviewers on both volumes. I think a vast disservice was done to The Salmon of Doubt by subtitling it 'Hitch-hiking the Galaxy One Last Time'. It contains a fragment of a Dirk Gently novel that Adams seemed to feel contained ideas that would have worked better in the Hitch-hiker's 'trilogy' – how he would have worked them in is an intriguing puzzle, given how thoroughly the loose ends were tied up in Mostly Harmless and how sick he was of the whole Hitch-hiker's gig.

The novel fragment is, in many ways, the least satisfying element in a wonderfully eclectic selection of Adamsian writing about music, computers, science and a dozen other subjects. They are remarkable for two things rare as pearl-bearing oysters in a cultural milieu that considers Big Brother worthwhile entertainment, the quality of the writing and the quality of the thinking. Which is why they should probably have a far wider currency than they would get stuck in a book with 'the last Adams novel' and labelled 'suitable for die-hard fans only'. This isn't true. The only reason I can see for not immediately putting them on both the GCSE and A-level syllabuses is working out what subject they would come under. Still, what am I complaining about? At least they are in print.

It is the perfect complement to the biography, about which snotty reviewers in The Guardian and The Independent proclaim: “Yes, but what did Douglas Adams actually do, except have one good idea in about 1973?” and criticise Nick Webb for the crime of having known his subject well and therefore not tearing him to shreds vigorously enough. Oh yes, and for not including enough salacious details about his sex life.

What a steaming heap of shit this is. Let's just scrape the surface of Douglas Adams' achievements: collaborations with The Pythons; a cross-genre series of novels that changed the way we view the world we live in and was marvellously accessible to anyone that picked it up off the shelf; an ability to foresee the stupendous impact that information technology and the Internet was going to have not only on human communication but very possibly the evolution of the human brain; tireless work to publicise the impact of human depredation of the biological diversity of this planet; the very rare ability to cross the divide between the arts and sciences in his thinking; presiding over the development of a computer game with a language engine so sophisticated that you could talk to it for 14 hours without it repeating itself; bequeathing the H2G2 website to the world plus selling the BBC the software that keeps its online communities going – hence the letters 'DNA', his initials, in the URLs, in case you are wondering. Oh, and keeping dozens of restaurants in business. Presumably the reviewers who say this somehow isn't enough to justify all the adulation he gets would like to explain how they have brokered world peace, found the cure for AIDS and divined the true function of black holes into the bargain.

I do, however, think that the point about Nick Webb writing a very affectionate and not necessarily very critical portrait is a good one. A publisher-turned-writer, he knew Adams in his professional life and appeared to have become a good friend, to the point where the two would have long boozy lunches to discuss the meaning of life and gossip about mutual acquaintances. He has also won the trust of the vast, extended Adams-and-related family sufficiently to ensure a contribution from them to this book. There is undoubtedly another, less sympathetic book to be written. But it will lack the insight of personal knowledge and very possibly the co-operation of the family.

This is a bit of a must-read, really, for anyone who wants to come away understanding a bit more about the British comedy scene in the 60s and 70s, the thought processes of a great thinker, the process by which writers write, the inside story of the dotcom boom, the biodiversity crisis facing the planet or to have their general intellectual horizons expanded. So do you have to be a fan to read it? Probably not, although those with less of an interest in Adams' work might prefer to dip in rather than read from end to end.

This book has to do something very difficult, which is to follow up Fatherland. The premise is, on the surface, quite different – rather than being set in an alternative reality where history worked out differently, it is firmly rooted in post-Cold War Moscow, with the former Soviet Union crumbling round the ears of its protagonists, still unsure of its new place in the world.

Historian Christopher 'Fluke' Kelso is a thoroughly flaky figure with a 'resting' career, money troubles and a lot of enemies in academia. He thinks he has the answer to all his problems when a labour-camp survivor comes to see him with a tale of Stalin's diary and private papers buried in a cherry orchard. Of course Fluke, who has always been lucky hence the name, thinks he is onto a winner.

He embarks on a ham-fisted and whisky-fuelled attempt to find them which naturally gets him into much hotter water than he had thought possible. Of course, it's all a huge conspiracy on a continental scale, and the historian is so out of his depth that he's done the equivalent of going for a refreshing little dip over the Mariana Trench. Without giving away too many vital plot details, the unravelling tale does turn out to have a couple of striking similarities to Fatherland – and is none the worse for it.

I could not put this thriller down, which is the way I like them, and the way they should be. Highly recommended reading, Harris truly is a master of the genre. And so on to Enigma.

Some long-awaited news from BBC Online:

Author reveals sixth Potter title

Author JK Rowling has revealed the title of the sixth book in the Harry Potter series.

The next book will be called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

As Rowling announced the news on her website, she also hit out at those who spread the rumour it was called Harry Potter and the Pillar of Storge.

She gave no indication of when fans can expect the next instalment of the boy wizard's adventures. There was a two year wait between books four and five.

The hardback version of the fifth book, The Order of the Phoenix, was released in June 2003, becoming the fastest selling book of all-time.

The paperback version will not be published until 10 July.

Writing on her website, Rowling said the only plot detail she would reveal was that Half Blood Prince did not refer to Harry or the evil Lord Voldermort character.

Rowling has previously said she had considered the title for the second book, but instead plumped for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

[Jan 2008 note: We went to the Kingston branch of Borders and queued up at midnight to buy this - and I took it straight home, read it and hated almost every word. It was the point I had to admit that I hadn't enjoyed a single Potter book since Prisoner of Azkaban and stopped counting myself a fan of the series. As for Deathly Hallows - I haven't read it, and don't plan to.]

In April, I went into a very pleasant branch of Ottakar's Booksellers in Truro, Cornwall, where they had a succubus in the form of a three-for-two offer. I left with a copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (as yet unread but definitely on the list), a book on the wartime invasion of Malta for and – I don't know how it happened, it just slipped into my hand – Douglas Coupland's new novel Hey! Nostradamus.

As outlined at great length in an earlier post, Coupland used to be among my favourite authors, then he wrote a turkey in the shape of Girlfriend in a Coma and an unsatisfactory follow-up in the shape of Miss Wyoming. I became stuck in a terrible loop – unable to read any more of his books, unable to stop buying them then arranging them in pride of place on the shelf next to Harry Potter.

I embarked on therapy by forcing myself to read each of them in turn, and so coming to terms with the complete volte-face that had left, to me and I believe many other Coupland fans, the genius behind Life After God and Microserfs, writing unrecognisably badly. Well, I got through that first one, but I didn't enjoy it:

“There are glimmers in there, certainly. But, by God, it's silly. What happens is silly. Jared the angel – ridiculously silly. The apocalypse scenario – you know what I'm going to say, now, don't you. The ending… wait for it…

And it doesn't speak to me in the way the others do. And I think he's already achieved what he set out to achieve in this book in Microserfs, which is a bit of a pinnacle of literary achievement. I tell you, I waited eagerly for this book to come out in paperback, and then I read it, and I was heartbroken by how bad it was.

But at least I've read it now, so hopefully that particular demon is exorcised and I'll be able to progress through the next three.”

I understand now that it was a difficult transitional novel for the author and that my sympathy for this fact, while extending to the need to keep reading his work, does not have to extend to liking this book. My problems in the past had continued with Miss Wyoming which I had a game stab at but gave up on because its picture of the state of the human condition was so bleak, so unredeemed, that I just didn't feel able to go on with it. However, I steeled myself and gave it another look:

“This didn't strike me so much this time – it turned out I had, as predicted, packed up reading at more or less the nadir. But the plot was, in its way, as far-fetched and unsatisfying as its predecessor, despite being, in my view, generally a better book.

It seems to me to be the same old theme of redemption through love and through shedding the redundant that was done to perfection in Microserfs and which seems to be getting a more or less extreme rerun in each subsequent book. Moreover, the ending of this one is every bit as unsatisfactory as Girlfriend in a Coma. In both, the narrative just stops dead after the life-changing experience and there is no hint of whether the characters can make a go of their new lives. I must look at Microserfs actually, and see how that compares.

But maybe, reading this back, I am being rather negative. This was a book I am glad to have read, although I can't see myself returning to it with the anticipation of much of the early stuff. The experiments with time and with narrative are fascinating, and I think Coupland carries this difficult trick off. It read very much like 'classic Coupland' in a way that GiaC didn't – that dragged instead of soaring. This at least took off.”

So things were looking up by the time I got myself along to the space party for All Families Are Psychotic. Despite having some issues with the way the plot is structured (see below) I found it a lot easier to find good things to say about this one:

“As far as writing and characterisation go, it's witty, sparkling and original. Particularly notable is the complete break with the Gen X'ers – this story focuses on a character in her 60s. The plots, however, are out of the window. Bizarre coincidences and incredible happenings are heaped upon the bones of odd situations and things that will make you shake your head in disbelief.

This does stretch your patience a bit as a reader, but it also leaves you wondering whether it's actually not a failing on the part of the author, but quite deliberate, and part of his grand plan for the novel. Which leaves me wondering how I am supposed to react, a problem that I haven't got to the bottom of yet.”

- – - – - – - – - -

So, onto Hey Nostradamus and the conclusion. Well, I liked it a lot. I would go so far to say it is well on its way to being classic Coupland. I don't mean that in the bad way of 'this author has failed to make any forward progress,' but rather in the good way of 'this is as good as the better/best things he wrote.' Things I liked very much were the novel's structure of four first-person characters in a narrative spanning a couple of decades. As you would expect, no single one of them has the whole story for any one part of it. The characters themselves are well-drawn and make me recall something I observed the other day on the receipt of a new CD by Morrissey, that artist (highly relevant in the context of Coupland, actually) formerly known as frontman of The Smiths. It is this: it is consoling to know that those artists who have been around to help you through the difficult periods of your teens and twenties are now doing you the same service for approaching middle-age.

The plot is, to my mind, a lot better-organised, although wild improbabilities still play their part, and don't expect anything as obvious as a resolution at the end. The joy of it is in the writing, which has that lovely poignant, stream-of-consciousness quality again that says to me Life After God. In fact, this book seems to be more or less a linear descendant of that one in the same way that Girlfriend in a Coma seemed to be related to Microserfs – a Jekyll and Hyde situation if ever there was one.

So, I've got Douglas Coupland back in return for just a little pain and I would say to former fans that it is actually worth the struggle to get up to speed – if there are any of you out there that have taken as long as I have about it.

To new readers, I would say the following:

* Don't take too much notice of the 'high school massacre' controversy about this novel – it's the jumping-off point rather than the whole story, although its reverberations carry through to the end.

* Don't start Coupland with his later oeuvre – find out what the earlier fuss was about first. My personal picks would be Shampoo Planet, Life after God and Microserfs which many readers believe will be the Coupland novel that makes it into literary canon, not Generation X.

* Oh yes, Gen X. The book that reputedly drove Coupland to depression and stopped him writing. I like it, a lot, and I would recommend reading it. But the problem is that it is given a disproportionate amount of attention – it was, after all, the poor man's first novel, and he did have to watch its message being successfully and cynically subverted by the very people it was aimed at.

* So try to see it in context with the rest of his work and don't necessarily read it first, unless you are a stickler (as I am, actually) for things in order.

There. Just my humble opinion, Ma'am.

2008 update: This was ultimately an exercise in futility. Coupland’s attempt to disavow his back catalogue and state that everything other than his last novel but one is complete rubbish, and that by extension people like me who like his back catalogue have worthless views, has finally exhausted my patience. Part of being a published author is accepting that once something is published, it has left your control and you can’t recall it and rewrite it because your perspective has changed in the meantime. If you don’t like this, don’t sign that contract with the devil. I loved Hey! Nostradamus but thought Eleanor Rigby was abject. I hate the premise of jPod and have finally lost my faith.

I have just finished an excellent biography of JK Rowling by Connie Ann Kirk, and I would recommend it. (You probably need to be quite a big fan, however, because it is pretty expensive.)

What is so good about it is that it is a calm ordering of all the existing facts about JK Rowling’s life and background with no attempt to put any spin on them, sensationalise them or to ferret out facts that are not already in the public domain. It is written from an academic perspective, and there is also no attempt to impose any kind of external narrative – one of the reasons fandom seems to have rejected Marc Shapiro's books, for one, that and the basic factual errors that littered them.

[Spoiler alert] One of the extraordinary facts we learn early on is that JKR, Harry Potter and Daniel Radcliffe all share the same birthday – July 31. I realise any two of those would not be particularly extraordinary, but all three is another matter. Also, you come to realise the role that luck played in getting the books published, then in creating the extraordinary buzz that resulted in the phenomenon we all know and love (in some cases, anyway) today.

For instance, one publisher was sent the manuscript of Philosopher’s Stone – but the person who was due to read it was off sick, so it had to be returned to the agent unread. Apparently JKR was advised that she’d never get rich writing children’s books. And paramount to the success of all this seems to be the wonderful tale of JKR living on income support while she wrote the masterpiece that would make her a millionaire – except I guess it wasn’t so wonderful at the time.

However, this narrative seems to me to be the thing that sold the whole saga. One myth that is exploded is the idea of JKR having to spin out one cup of coffee for hours at a time in Nicolson’s Café – it turns out her brother-in-law owned it at the time, so she was unlikely to come in for too much trouble from the staff. [/spoiler alert]

The only downside I could find was a number of an annoying errors made due to the fact that the author was an American who (perhaps fairly enough) didn’t appreciate certain things about growing up in England in the 1960s and 70s, but that’s certainly not enough to stop anyone reading it. Less forgiveable, however, was the premise that a train journey from Manchester to London should only take 40 minutes. I reckon a couple of hours is nearer the mark.

And, in the strictly neutral spirit of this book, some of the more unreasonable criticisms of JKRs work made by nasty sourpusses are left unchallenged – but if that’s the price we pay for this cool, neutral treatment of the facts, then so be it. It is a fascinating volume by someone that, despite the carefully balanced tone of the book, I believe is probably pretty much under Harry Potter’s spell herself.

>> Visit the author’s website

Having belatedly got round to reading Night Watch, Terry Pratchett’s kind-of latest novel – at least, his latest Discworld novel in paperback, there, that should cover it – I find myself feeling a bit discomforted, as I seem to be the only person in the whole world with even the slightest feelings of ambiguity about it.

Mr Random, as I write, is giving a fulsomely positive opinion. Everybody who submitted a review to Amazon loved it, without exception, and many thought it was the best Pratchett, nay book, that they had ever read.

So I feel a bit like one of those teens in a peer pressure experiment, because I thought it was good… but not that good. I thought I detected a certain didacticism of tone, some jarring notes during those “beast within” passages. I found the quality of the writing awkward in places. I would be very interested to know what anyone who has actually been a police officer thinks of it all.

This is because its predecessor, The Truth involved journalists. Now, Mr T Pratchett, and Mr Random and myself are all (in the sense that once you are, then you always are) journalists. (Actually, I put fingers to keyboard and wrote an actual feature today, for an actual newspaper, but that’s another story altogether). That book was one long string of hilarious journalists’ in-jokes – like the sub-editor who doesn’t give a damn what a headline says, as long as it exactly fills the space available.

As far as I am aware, Mr Pratchett has never been a policeman. Not that I am saying for one moment that you should only write about things you have experienced – if that was the case, I would have been out of a job a decade ago. But he makes a lot of mileage out of “a copper is symptomatic of the human condition” argument, and I found much of it to be a lot of sweeping generalisation that didn’t ring true.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Terry Pratchett. Night Watch, its 26 Discworld predecessors, the Bromeliad Trilogy and assorted odd volumes, bits of merchandise and graphic novels are occupying more than their fair share of shelf space in this flat – up to and including the three china Clarecraft witches that stare intimidatingly at us every time we go into our office. The books get re-read quite regularly on a kind of rota basis.

It is pretty unarguable that Pratchett can get flaky – Lost Continent, subplot of Reaper Man, Hogfather – but that at his best he is a genius. My 21-book desert island selection includes Small Gods, and I could nominate anything up to half a dozen running it very close. I thought Jingo and The Fifth Elephant were a magnificent return to form, and quite a way beyond that and I recommend anyone who hasn’t read The Last Hero to go out and buy it now, right this very minute.

It’s just that I refuse to put Night Watch up there in the same category, tight, well-handled plot, excellent characterisation, fascinating insight into past lives of existing characters and competent handling of difficult time-travel theme notwithstanding. And I’ll tell you another thing. Pratchett once complained that Granny Weatherwax had got away from him – she was unbalancing the books because she was too powerful. I fear Sam Vimes has gone the same way, and that this might prejudice opportunities for his appearance in the future.

Mind you, Monstrous Regiment sounds good. It apparently features A New Character – one Polly Perks, a feisty young woman who sticks a pair of socks down the front of her pants, and goes to join the army. Out in paperback soon, I hope.

This is a very difficult journal entry to write, because this is a very difficult book to take seriously, and yet… I managed to keep reading, to get to the end and I would even say that I enjoyed it – by taking it on my terms, rather than its own. (From here onwards there might well be spoilers, so you might want to skim it if you care about details being revealed.) It tells the true(!) story of a series of researches into past-life experience carried out by Barbara Lynne Devlin (now, incidentally renamed Mary Devlin, and all over the Internet if you care to look for her) on America's west coast in the 1970s, with all that implies.

Now I'm going to spell out what she claims to believe about her past lives. When you have read this, the chances are you will avail yourself of that unique opportunity provided by the Internet of clicking on the little cross-shaped button up in the top right-hand corner. And possibly throwing the book away too, if I decide to release it, and you find it. I'm asking you to please read on, whatever you may think of the next paragraph, because I want to go on to make a point about reading in general and Bookcrossing in particular which is a lot less stupid than the plot of this book. So please have patience.

As far as I can work out, Barbara/Mary claims that she first came to the earth around 72 million years ago as one of a band of 'higher beings' that seem to have been sent here to facilitate the evolution of the human race. She claims to have accessed her pre-Earth incarnation through past-life regression. She further claims to have been reincarnated as a member of the civilization of Atlantis, as a Palestinian woman who met Christ (one of the more convincing stories), as a member of Robin Hood's band of outlaws (a young minstrel called Thomasina), as the mistress of one of the youthful Princes in the Tower, as Mary Shelley and as a pioneer woman who went west in the middle of the 19th Century to a new life in New Mexico. She further claims that the other members of the same band of extra-terrestrials who were sent to earth with her shared all those incarnations. So the beings that we know as the Romantic poets Byron and Shelley were (if I have this right) Will Scarlet and Allan a Dale respectively, and also the Princes in the Tower as well as having some kind of Atlantean existence.

Now, I am prepared to accept that there is some compelling evidence for past-life experience. But I don't accept this. It is plainly nonsense, and an alarming demonstration of what self-delusion humanity is capable of, at that. The most shocking thing about it is the way that the group working on these regressions applies no rigour, and demands no reasonable standard of proof of its conclusions. If that's what someone thinks, and the key group members find it reasonable, then it stands, simple as that.

I picked up this book at the excellent Julian Graves OBCZ in Norwich on what was, frankly, a quiet day. There was not much in, to say the very least. But it did occur to me that had there been a volume of science fiction, or fantasy, something by Terry Pratchett or Ursula le Guin, I would have grabbed it happily and read it at once.

I'll swallow six impossible things before breakfast if they are flagged up as fiction or fantasy, so why not this? Read as a fictional narrative, which has fallen into my hands through the serendipity of Bookcrossing, it is a rollicking good tale, with the lives of the Romantic Poets, of Robin Hood's Sherwood and of Royal politics in Tudor England brought realistically to life. It does not surprise me one bit to learn Ms Devlin has gone on to write historical novels. Equally, the arrival on Earth and Atlantean sections make convincing sci-fi.

And, for bibliophiles, the book is in a lovely edition – one of those late-70s paperbacks with a swirly font and the edges of the pages coloured yellow. What I am saying is that with a bit of open-mindedness (if not necessarily of the sort recommended by the author) you can find something here for you.

Only I might put this in my permanent collection because 1) The subject of past-life regression does interest me; 2) because I'd have a job ever finding this again if I wanted to re-read it and 3) I doubt the reactions of other Bookcrossers to it. I haven't decided yet. Let's see what happens.

Read the Bookcrossing journal entry for this book

Mary (Barbara Lynne) Devlin links:

• The Romance Club
• Authors’ Den
• Article: Female Mystics and the New Millennium

The philosophy of The Idler is simple, and really quite political too. It is that we have forgotten the importance of leisure and relaxation in this society of ours, in the relentless drive for money, status and productivity, and that we quite urgently need a readjustment of attitude.

I came across a copy in Borders of Kingston just before going away to spend a week lying about on a boat and, always a sucker for an attractive publication, decided to give it a whirl.

It’s a quarterly, the size of a decent novel, and costs £11.99 per issue. It’s a real miscellany and therefore inevitably has some absolute tosh as well as some good stuff in it. However, so far, I have felt that I got good value for money out of issue 33, with a theme of ‘Ladies of Leisure’.

To find out more, you can visit the website at http://www.idler.co.uk.

This is one of those books that makes you want to recklessy throw around the words ‘towering achievement,’ although these are obviously not words to be used lightly.

Seierstad, who is a Norwegian foreign correspondent, spent four months living with a Kabul family shortly after the fall of the Taleban. This is an account of her time there. It is a fascinating insight, naturally, but this isn’t the book’s great strength.

That is Seierstad’s anger at what she witnesses – what stands out most is the treatment of women in Afghan society, but gradually you realise that it’s not just the women but everyone involved in a set of strictures so rigid they can barely breathe enough fresh air to survive.

This is highly recommended reading.

Asne Seierstad links:

• Biography of Asne Seierstad from World Press Review
• A feature on the bookweb.org site
• What’s happening to this book on Bookcrossing.com
• Virago – Seierstad’s publisher

A week on a boat gives you, theoretically at least, plenty of time for reading. In practice, you may well be too tired to do anything but sink gratefully into your sleeping bag. However, a number of books have been consumed since the last update to this site.

The Coupland experiment continues apace, and I am glad to report that it has definitely been worth persevering past Girlfriend in a Coma and Miss Wyoming. This latest book is an odd one, nonetheless. As far as writing and characterisation go, it’s witty, sparkling and original. Particularly notable is the complete break with the Gen X’ers – this story focuses on a character in her 60s.

The plots, however, are out of the window. Bizarre coincidences and incredible happenings are heaped upon the bones of odd situations and things that will make you shake your head in disbelief. This does stretch your patience a bit as a reader, but it also leaves you wondering whether it’s actually not a failing on the part of the author, but quite deliberate, and part of his grand plan for the novel.

Which leaves me wondering how I am supposed to react, a problem that I haven’t got to the bottom of yet. Still, I’m glad to have cracked my Coupland problem. Three novels out of the problematic four read, and I think that my conclusion will be that he is, once again, an author I will want to read.

But, sadly, no longer one I will rush out to buy the minute he comes out in paperback. I sense that it is also pretty generally acknowledged that Hey! Nostradamus, while controversial, is maybe not quite such a difficult book as its predecessors. Which means the only way is up, I suppose. Hurrah!

Yesterday I bought and read, within the space of about an hour, a little copy of Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van. It’s an amazing tale, and if I didn’t know for an absolute fact that it is true (I remember seeing newspaper reports) then I would have had trouble deciding whether it was fact or fiction.

Here is what the BBC, promoting its recording of the story, has to say:

…the strange story of his unusual neighbour as heard on BBC Radio 4. An eccentric old lady moves into a quiet street in Camden Town. There she remains, installed in her van in glorious self-sufficiency until the council instructs her to move on. A kind home owner invites her to live in his garden. A bizarre tale in itself but even more bizarre when writer Alan Bennett is the homeowner and the woman stays for fifteen years. What kind of bond could two such different people possibly form? Both fascinating and moving, Bennett recounts the unlikely story of Mary Shepherd, the nomad who took a unique place in his life for well over a decade.

I’d also recommend Three Stories, which I read on holiday in St Ives last year in the space of one evening. It’s deceptively light and entertaining. I think you’d enjoy it.

• Screen Online: Alan Bennett
• BBC profile of Alan Bennett
• The Madness of King George