SLICING THE GORDIAN KNOT: Freeing Grace by Charity Norman

Freeing Grace by Charity Norman


An English-born African teenager gives birth and then flees, terrified by what is happening to her body, to be almost instantly killed by a drug-crazed driver. Her beautiful mixed-race baby, Grace Serenity, is all set to be adopted by clergyman David Edmunds and his beautiful English-born African wife, Leila, both desperately in love with each other, but equally desperate for a child.

It seems the sensible solution. The baby’s father, Matt, a pot-smoking seventeen-year-old school dropout, is terminally depressed because an accident has banned him from rugby—“the game they play in heaven.” On his weekly parental visits to the social welfare home, however, he becomes besotted with Grace. This is where the crazy rules of government Social Welfare come into play—as the parent, he has the right to keep her, if his mother can be persuaded to leave her lover and their idyll in Africa, rejoin her deeply dysfunctional family, and take on the role of caring grandmother.

Jake Kelly, a rugby-playing New Zealander who has just quit a London job that made him pots of money, is co-opted to fly out to Nigeria to fetch the errant mother, Deborah. Stunned by sun and scenery, bemused by the obvious devotion of the lovers, he is unconditionally amazed when she agrees. So he flies back to foggy England with Deborah, and the comedy begins.

And it is a comedy. Most of the vividly drawn characters who swarm through this rich book, from the feckless Jake to Imogen, the well-intentioned social worker who is terrified of her boss and tied up with constricting rules, are tragic to some degree, and yet I often found myself laughing out loud.

This is an astounding novel, completely engrossing, so confident, adept and assured that it is hard to believe it is a debut. It is a story about communication, and about rules that beg to be broken, but most of all it is a story about people—readily identifiable people, people you come to care about, people who live on after the last page is read. Allen & Unwin are the publishers, and it hits the New Zealand bookstores at the end of next month. Grab it, even if you have to queue.

JUNK COVERED WITH GUNK

Every now and then the day is enlivened by the addition of a catchy new word or phrase.  A letter in this week's New Zealand Listener provided this, as part of a discussion of heating and insulating houses, and ways of keeping them warm and dry.  (Timely reminder:  it is winter down here.)

Well, says Terry Broadbridge of Te Awamutu, heat pumps are fine, but thermal drapes don't deserve their reputation.  The term "thermal drape" was coined by marketers to describe a curtain product "that coated cheap fabric to give it more body."  Rather wonderfully, it is known in the trade as "junk covered with gunk."  It was merely meant as a built-in lining, but the name caught on, with connotations of insulating qualities.

Coated fabrics, he said, are fine in their way.  They have developed and improved since the first ones came out, and perhaps don't really merit that word "junk," but insulate from the cold (or heat), they do not.

To achieve good insultation, he reommends adding a separate lining, which effectively provides a pocket of air between the cold (or heat) and the room inside.  

Good advice, interesting information, and a great new phrase.  What more could one want?

WAR IN AFGHANISTAN, TOLD BY SEBASTIAN JUNGER

Giles Whittell reviews the nonfiction master's latest in The Sunday Times.

A number of years ago, I met Sebastian Junger -- not that he would know me from a bar of soap, as the saying goes.  It was a very brief encounter in a bookstore in Maine.  He was on the way out of the store after promoting his book, and I was on the way in, to promote mine.  A mutual friend introduced us.  Mr. Junger looked haggard and exhausted, as if he had trudged away from a war zone (rather like his picture, above).  That, I learned, is what intensive book tours do to you.  "I have to give it my best shot," he said (or words to that effect).  "It will never happen again."

The book, of course, was The Perfect Storm.  Not only did he introduce the phrase "perfect storm" to the wider language, but his sales created a perfect storm on the bestseller lists. Junger is a very nice person.  With money from the book, he created a foundation to give educational opportunities to the children of those who make their living on the sea:  The Perfect Storm Foundation.

Junger is also a man who enjoys taking risks.  His specialty is hunting out the men who make their living in dangerous ways, sharing their hazardous existence for a while, and then writing in honour of their work.  His epic story of the ordeal of a Gloucester fishing schooner was supposed to be just one of several chapters in a collection of these tales, but his agent was shrewd enough to see it as a book in itself.   The rest of the stories were published as Fire, which is a nail-biting series of adventures, including fighting forest fires, witnessing the horrors of Kosovo, investigating the blood diamond business, and escaping guerrillas in Kashmir. The final chapter is a 2001 interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud, legendary fighter during the Russian occupation in Afghanistan.  In many ways it is a prequel to Junger's latest book, War.

"Sebastian Junger spent a year with US troops in the most violent valley in Afghanistan," begins the Sunday Times review.  This cleft in the heart of inhospitable terrain was Restrepo, a fifteen-man outpost named after a platoon medic who was killed in action.  Until the troops pulled out in April, it was one of the most dangerous postings in the US military.  What is inspiring about this blood-drenched, compelling book is the fierce camaraderie of the young soldiers -- fifteen men from Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade who depended on each other every second of every day to stay alive.

Characteristically, Junger has set up a web site in honor of these men and the film, Restrepo, that has been made about them.  Take a look.  Whatever your feelings about the war in Afghanistan, you come way feeling humble.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

A letter from great illustrator John Tenniel to new author Lewis Carroll has shed new light on Through the Looking Glass and the relationship between two great Victorians.

The letter, held for many years by an American collector, and to be auctioned today, reveals that Lewis Carroll turned to Tenniel for advice -- and paid attention to the answer.

Dated July 1, 1870, the letter refers to what is now known as "the lost chapter" of Through the Looking Glass. This little episode was an encounter between Alice and a grumpy "wasp in a wig," and was probably a play on the saying "a bee in his bonnet." 

When he read it, Tenniel was less than impressed.  The writing did not have the same sparkle as the rest.  "Don't think me brutal," he wrote, "but I am bound to say the 'Wasp' chapter doesn't interest me in the least.  I can't see my way to a picture.  If you want to shorten the book, I can't help thinking - with all submission - that there is your opportunity.  In an agony of haste.  Yours sincerely, Tenniel."

Carroll paid heed, and removed the chapter.  Galley proofs that surfaced in the 1970s revealed that it was a near-run thing, as it was included up to the last moment.  Now the letter confirms why it was removed.

The letter is expected to fetch between fifteen and twenty thousand pounds.

IS YOUR IDENTITY SAFE?

Lose the details attached to your banking or share-trading, and you could lose all your money.

And that applies to your social security number or your birth date, too, according to Brian Freemantle's rather odd thriller, The Namedropper.  The protagonist, Harvey Jordan, specializes in stealing rich people's identities by acquiring details of their lives, including addresses and bank numbers, and then raiding their piggy-banks.

Once an honest, hardworking chap with a computer business, he reinvented himself into a goldplated crook after being cheated of everything, and is so successful at this that he can afford posh holidays in expensive seaside places in Europe.  Indulging himself in this fashion, he picks up a lovely lady (who just happens to be the wife of one of those infamous share-traders who have cost ordinary folks so much money and peace of mind).  They enjoy a brief fling before parting at the airport without exchanging addresses.  Imagine his horror, then, when he finds himself cited (under his real name) as the co-respondent in a divorce case.  In a word, he has been set up -- by a financier who does not know about his special talents.  Faced with costs that could reach millions, he wreaks revenge in the way that he knows best.

It is an appealing scenario, which is the reason I picked it up in the first place.  The characters are not particularly well drawn or likeable, and the editing is about the worst I have ever seen, with awkward sentences and inconsistencies galore, but the plot is tantalizing enough to keep the pages turning.  It is also fascinating (and perhaps a bit dangerous) to learn the details of how identity theft is carried out, and how the money can be laundered later.

A feature in today's paper reminded me that the book is based on brutal reality.  CASE EXPOSES SHOCKING SECURITY FLAWS runs the headline.  Just by a fluke, a local sharetrader found that two crucial numbers -- his CSN, or common shareholder number, and his FIN, or faster identification number -- had been purloined, and he was about to lose three million dollars. Except for one stray impulse, he would now be as broke as the rest of us.

NOVELIST HAS PIG NAMED AFTER HIS BOOK

Ian McEwan comic novel has a pig named in its honour.

It is even better than the Booker!  McEwan's "brilliantly funny" novel, Solar, has won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize, which honours novels in the PG Wodehouse genre.

As part of the prize, a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig will be named "Solar" at the Hay Literary Festival. 

McEwan, whose book tells the comic tale of a Nobel prize-winning physicist who gets the chance to save the world from environmental disaster, will also scoop a jeroboam of champagne and a set of PG Wodehouse books.

DEBUT BOOK SHORTLISTED FOR NONFICTION PRIZE

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize shortlist has been announced.

A US bestseller charting the financial crisis, by firsttime author Andrew Ross Sorkin (pictured) is one of the list of six.  The others include a treatise on North Korea, a maths-made-simple book, a description of the life of King Charles II, a fishing and coming of age book, and a look at cooking and cavemen.

The list:

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea, but Barbara Demick
Blood Knots, by Luke Jennings
A Gambling Man, by Jenny Uglow
Alex's Adventures in Numberland, by Alex Bellos
Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human, by Richard Wrangham

Evan Davis, chairman of the judges, said that the shortlist was "an extraordinarily eclectic" collection.  "Perhaps the only common feature of these books is the passion and sheer enthusiasm of the authors for their subjects."

 

In my experience, that can be said of all good nonfiction writers.

FAST FICTION AND C.K. STEAD

Well, lo and behold, the Sunday Times continues the New Zealand theme that I picked up in the TV review (see post below).  I found a blog by Serena Kutchinsky, with a post on "Writer's Rituals" that features our own Karl Stead.  Reason?  He won the Sunday Times short story award.  Many congratulations, Professor S. -- who, according to his remarkably sunny responses, writes 1,000 words a day, depending on the circumstances.

He is even smiling in his photograph!  And confides a self-deprecating story.  He once was struck by writer's block, so took the practical path out by writing a novel -- about a novelist with writer's block. 

It was called Secret History of Modernism, and "got some of the best reviews I ever had and sold hardly at all."

SEXED UP SPARTACUS

Immersing myself luxuriously in the the online London Times newspaper for the first time, I was intrigued and very amused to read the review of a new sandals-and-toga epic series that is about to hit British TV screens.  This is SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND, which, apparently, is guaranteed to be banned in America.

By sheer coincidence, a couple of nights ago we hauled out our old DVD of the mumbling Russell Crowe version of the Roman arena, Gladiator.  I had forgotten the actual amount of gore, though the tigers did strike a chord of memory.  Crowe's gladiator, Maximus, had a great motive for being a great gladiator -- revenge on the suitably effete and ghastly Commidus, who looked more Italian than the rest of the cast put together.  And Spartacus had an equally heart-touching reason for slaughtering on the sand -- to save his wife from slavery.

This TV extravaganza features the early life of the hero, which, being almost completely undocumented, is supremely eligible for conversion to the flat screen TV.  And gladiators had the same sexual appeal as All Blacks rugby players (though they might not have had the haka, they had the same commitment to photogenic muscles), which gives a great excuse for plenty of nakedness and sex.  Hence the likelihood that it will be banned in the US. 

The reviewer, though I suspect with tongue in cheek, recommends it -- well, he reckons it is better than all the other Romanesque stuff that is hitting the screen.  It was low budget but spectacular, so naturally was shot in New Zealand.  This, says he very thoughtfully, "might explain the surprisingly large number of Maori gladiators to be found in this version of Italy in the 1st century BC."

It's bound to be a huge hit, here.

THOSE LISTS OF "THE BEST"

Yesterday, I received an email from a fellow blogger (a stranger by the name of Todd Jensen), who runs his blog from a site intriguingly called "forensic colleges".  A poison analysis lab?  The imagination runs riot.

Anyway, what Todd said was: "We would love to share with you an article that we just posted on our own blog 25 Best True Crime Books." 

Todd confidently believes that it "would be an interesting story for your readers to check out and discuss on
your blog."

Well, we shall see.  I have to admit that apart from Truman Capote and Mr Whicher, I haven't read any of them.  And the best true crime book I have ever read -- by many a country mile -- is The Ability to Kill by Eric Ambler    But these opinions are so personal, and don't really bear arguing about unless both parties have read all the books, plus several hundred more in the same genre.  By sheer coincidence I have just been loaned a book by a friend who is true-crime addict. It is called The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, the real Moriarty and is by Ben Macintyre. My friend says it is the best true-crime book he has ever read. So you see how idiosyncratic these things are. They are only the top 25 in the mind of the writer.

Tongue in cheek, I wrote to Todd, "I can't resist it -- I wrote a well received true crime book myself, and it is not on your list!!!"

The book is called IN THE WAKE OF MADNESS and is the true story of a whaling voyage where the captain was a serial killer. The ship was the sister ship of the whaleship Melville sailed on, Acushnet, and was in the Pacific at the same time. The story of this terrible voyage was a prime inspiration for Moby-Dick.