Browsing the Bookshelves

Edward Trencom's Nose by Giles Milton

Edward Trencom’s Nose, debut novel from the popular history writer Giles Milton, is funny, witty in a neo-Wodeshousian sort of way and full of delightfully engaging characters.  The Trencom family have been the acknowledged masters of cheese for 10 generations, running their London cheese shop since before the Great Fire of London and passing it done from father to son for over 300 years.  Each eldest son also inherits a remarkable nose, a large aquiline nose with a prominent bridge and an extraordinary talent for smelling cheese, which Milton exploits too capacity.  Weight-watching cheese-lovers should avoid this book or the numerous evocative, aromatic scenes describing the finest cheeses from around the world will have you diving to the fridge for more than one too many wee morsels. 

This is a novel fashioned with style and elegance. An elaborate plot structure is interwoven with an account of Greco-Turkish conflict and delicately balanced with a narrow group of amusing, if somewhat one-dimensional, characters.  The plot develops as Edward, the current owner of Trencom’s Cheese Shop and possessor of the finest nose in generations, discovers a package of family papers in the cellar. His discoveries, together with the machinations of friends and foes, start him off an a path of adventure – adventure that is in 1960s middle class sub-urban style – which eventually both exposes and ties him to the fate of his forebearers. And here we come to the weakness of the novel: the way in which Edward’s adventures play out is utterly, utterly ludicrous and the farcical denouement is deeply unrevelatory – a brave and not wholly unsuccessful attempt, one suspects, to match the well conceived plot to the mindset of its average players.  Yet the overall result is unsatisfying.  Make no mistake, this is a good and fun book to read, with lots of laughs and lots of cheese throughout, but the ending just doesn’t quite live up to expectation.  Read the book for the pleasure of the journey, but don’t expect to enjoy the party when you reach your destination.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Brockmeier’s second novel, The Brief History of the Dead, is as intriguing and eerie as its title suggests.  The dead live in a city, not unlike a normal city, accept that it doesn’t seem to have any boundaries and all its habitants know they have died.  Each has his own story to tell of how he arrived in the city and each is affected in different ways by the experience of death.  Brockmeier manages to present the myriad, entrancing possibilities within a few short pages, hooking the reader from the very first.  The city, and its population, is intimately linked to the world of the living, and, indeed, the even numbered chapters of the book recount a story of the living while alternative chapters trace the changing fortunes of the city of the dead.  As the novel’s lyrical and harmonic qualities reveal themselves, Brockmeier weaves the two stories, and the characters, together in a way which ultimately, satisfying if a little predictable.

The premise of The Brief History of the Dead may seem like fantasy, but this is no typical fantasy saga. It is a tightly worked, highly structure novel which presents first, a picture of the very near future on earth that is as unsettling as is believable, and second, a hopeful, somewhat idealised view of another life.  If it seems a little over-worked at times, this is a same fault compared to the pleasure of reading a highly original and thought-provoking novel.

The Girls by Lori Lansens

This is, as Arthur Golden says on the front cover, a remarkable book.  Remarkable because it is the utterly engrossing story of two extraordinary conjoined twins. They are not extraordinary because they are conjoined – although that in itself is remarkable enough – but because they are such warm, lively and sympathetic characters. Lansens device of distinguishing between the voices of Rose and Ruby works very well, so well in fact that the different type face employed for each sister really isn’t necessary: they are so clearly each their own person.

Rose and Ruby, born in the midst of a tornado, are abandoned by their natural mother and taken in by the nurse, Aunt Lovey, who delivered them. (I want an Aunt Lovey of my own please.)  Aunt Lovey is married to Stash, a Slovak immigrant to the United States: his history and distinct cultural identity give the novel a greater scope than is often found in popular fiction and Larsen’s makes good use of it.

There’s no denying I enjoyed reading The Girls.  Despite the sometimes disturbing subject matter and a continually growing foreboding of untimely death, there is little hint of darkness, and Larsens navigates the reader through the ups and downs of Rose and Ruby’s childhood with such skill and warmth, that it becomes a celebration of life rather than a tale of illness and death.  Yet, put the book down for a moment or close the pages for the final time, and there seems to be something a little thin, a little hollow, about the whole. A missed opportunity, perhaps? Or a sense that there really could have been so much more. Or perhaps it’s just a general sadness that there’s no going back to meet two such wonderful people again.  I doubt that this is a ‘great’ book, as some reviewers have claimed, but it is touching and tender, and good: a novel that will linger in the mind for a long time.

The Dangerous Sports Enthanasia Society by Christine Coleman

Reading The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society is a rare treat.  It is a joyous celebration of the ageing process as a liberating experience, with a cast of engaging, eclectic and eccentric characters. It isn’t always entirely believable: there is a series of remarkable co-incidences which, should one analyse it too closely, makes the plot incredible. But if you are the sort of reader who can just go with the flow and enter into a world that isn’t quite the one we think we know, curl up with Christine Coleman’s novel and you’re in for a real treat.  (As an aside, I would recommend that you start reading early in the evening, otherwise you will find yourself propping your eyes open in the wee small hours as, on top of its other qualities, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society is quite unputtdownable: the story motors along with such verve and vitality that leaving Agnes, or Jack, or Felix, in the midst of their latest drama would seem like treachery.)

Agnes, seventy-five next Tuesday, gathers all her courage together to overcome her fear of heights and flee from the care home in which her loving but unthinking and repressed son, Jack, has placed her.  She sets off in search of her grandchildren with whom she has lost contact following the break-up of Jack’s marriage. Through a series of bizarre and hilarious encounters with good people who have all lost their way somehow, Agnes not only casts aside the shackles imposed by society on the elderly but also her own fears: she learns to live life and to love doing so. 

There are elements here that reminded me of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, not least the unusually satisfying and life affirming denial of being old and the side-splitting wit with which subjects such as death and emotional betrayal are handled. But where A Short History fails, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society succeeds with style and aplomb. The story is not artificially weighted down with pop psychology nor overlaid with memories of political conflict. It is simply what it is: a witty depiction of the third age, full of hope, full of vitality and brimming over at the edges with humanity.