The Embiggened O # 297: Which Witch? Bookwitch!

We’ve never been compared to Roddy Doyle before, possibly because he’s a devilishly handsome cove who happens to write bestsellers, but the Bookwitch – aka Ann Giles – has remedied that omission in no uncertain fashion, to wit:

“I’ve just read The Big O. It’s rather like The Commitments, hardboiled … The Big O is about an interesting group of people, who are all more or less into crime of some sort. It’s not so much black and white, as various shades of grey. But they are very likeable, even though they use the f-word most of the time … I’m not going to give away the plot, which centres on kidnapping, but I can tell you it all builds up to a hilarious ending.”

Bleedin’ rapid, as Jimmy Rabbitte might – and in fact does – say himself. Why not hitch a ride on a broomstick all the way over to Bookwitch, folks, and tell Ann we said she’s the sweedest Swede we know …

Donovan But Not Quite Dusted(ovan)

Gerard Donovan, author of the rather superb Julius Winsome, releases Sunless on October 4, an intriguing tale of soulless pill-popping and the malaise that lies at the heart of so much contemporary illness. And if that sounds suspiciously like Donovan’s Doctor Salt from 2004, then – ta-dah! – it is! Well, more or less, according to this excerpt from Jessica Crispin’s interview with Donovan at Book Critics’ Circle, to wit:

Q: Sunless used to be Doctor Salt, which was already released in the UK. Can you explain what caused you to rewrite the book, and how it's different?
A: “As I look now at the final manuscript of Sunless, I realize that it’s the novel I set out to write almost four years ago. I would go so far as to say that Doctor Salt, which was published in 2004 in the UK, was a first draft of Sunless. I wrote it too fast, and the sense I was after just wasn’t in the novel. When Peter Mayer said last year he wanted to release Doctor Salt in the US, I saw the chance to write the real novel, if you like, and this I hope I’ve done in Sunless. Sunless is vastly different from Doctor Salt. Where there were two narrators in the first novel, now there is one. The plot is simpler, a linear line from the young boy who loses his brother to the teenager who begins to experiment with his mother’s tranquilizers, to the criminal who loses his mind to meth. The language changes with the narrator’s state of mind, as if the reader has also taken a pill and is trapped with the results and must sit and watch the novel change. And in Sunless the relationship between politics and the commercial peddling of drugs to Americans is better articulated, or articulated for the first time. The novel suggests how drug companies essentially invent disorders in order to sell drugs to cure them, and how this practice reflects a wider willingness on the part of people to believe what they are told and what they are sold. But in the end it’s a novel of loss and the effects of loss on a human being. That you can’t cure grief with a pill.”

Glad that’s cleared up. Oh, and anyone uttering the words ‘cherry’ ‘bite’ ‘of’ and ‘second’ in a grumbly tone will be summarily lashed to a gurney and sedated until Christmas. You have been warned.

Flick Lit # 312: Out Of Sight

Elmore Leonard’s ability to manipulate conventional morality is best illustrated in Out of Sight: despite the fact that he has never used a gun or even threatened violence, Jack Foley is a legendary bank robber. He is also, as the novel opens, serving time in a maximum-security prison in Florida. He breaks out, only to run into US Marshal Karen Sisco just beyond the wire. Foley takes Karen hostage to make good his escape, until she manages to elude his clutches. The fix is in, however, and the cat-and-mouse game of pursuit is infused with a potent sexual tension. Charmed by the con’s irreverent attitude, the reader wants Foley to escape, even if convention dictates that Karen must recapture him. A more powerful dynamic than either is the desire to see Foley and Karen get it together, if only to see how they might manage to bridge the vast chasm between them. Leonard’s usual quota of quirky minor characters aid and abet the pair as the story meanders north to Detroit and the inevitable denouement. As always with Leonard, however, it is not what happens that matters as much as the how and why. The precision of his streamlined plots is such that Leonard creates the time and space to render his characters believable, sympathetic and quietly heroic. When the end comes, it leaves the reader feeling the same way as all of the Leonard’s novels do, vaguely dissatisfied that it has ended at all. Out of Sight (1998) was not the first time Leonard’s novels had received the big screen treatment. Mr Majestyk, Get Shorty and Rum Punch, re-titled Jackie Brown, had all been critical and commercial movie successes. However, Steven Soderbergh seemed an unlikely candidate to translate a best-selling novel to the big screen. His previous credits included sex, lies and videotape, Kafka and King of the Hill, all of which were projects that were critically lauded but failed to impress the public at large. Further, Soderbergh’s casting of his leads was somewhat idiosyncratic. George Clooney was best known either as a handsome but limited TV actor or the humourless ham from the Batman and Robin farrago. Jennifer Lopez, as Karen, was an MTV babe making her movie debut. Given that Out of Sight depended on the chemistry between its two charismatic characters, both represented risky choices. Not content with that, Soderbergh also decided to chop up the storyline, mutilating Leonard’s story with an elliptical narrative that depended heavily on unheralded flashbacks constantly interrupting the flow. The result was a tour de force. Out of Sight was smart enough not to have to proclaim its own greatness (e.g., the multiple ending in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown), sassy without degenerating into vulgarity, and sexy without resorting to crude exploitation, the dynamic between Clooney and Lopez a triumph of implausible casting. What Soderbergh read between the lines of Leonard’s novel was that Out of Sight had all the classic elements of both a crime caper and a screwball comedy. A seamless blend of They Live By Night and Pillow Talk, Out of Sight simultaneously raised the bar for romantic comedy even as it redefined the crime caper movie.- Michael McGowan

The Mysterious Case Of The Pointless Pseudonym

So why did John Banville take the Benjamin Black pseudonym for Christine Falls? Books to the Ceiling wanders off on an interesting tangent whilst reviewing Barry Forshaw’s The Rough Guide to Fiction, to wit:

"In his thoughtful foreword, Ian Rankin asks if it is possible to hope that crime fiction is finally getting the respect that has long been owing to it. He is pleased that the genre is getting increasing coverage in the major media, and yet “…when a famous prize-winning literary novelist recently turned his hand to crime fiction, he felt obliged to put it out under another name.” My (educated) guess is that Rankin is referring to Christine Falls by Benjamin Black, alias John Banville. I think we can also consider the possibility, where this particular example is concerned, that Banville wants this projected series to be more readily identifiable by being issued under his pseudonym. Certainly no effort was made to conceal his true identity; the inside jacket flap proclaims Christine Falls to be “the debut crime novel from Booker Award winner John Banville.” (The sequel, The Silver Swan, is due out in March of 2008.) The other way to look at this phenomenon is to ask the question: what is the next (really bracing) challenge a Booker-winning literary novelist would want to take on? Why, writing quality crime fiction, naturally! (So take heart, Ian.)"

Hmmmm. A noble thesis, Mr Books to the Ceiling, sir – but only if you’re prepared to overlook the ‘quality crime fiction’ of Mefisto, The Book of Evidence and The Untouchable. Ah, that pimpernelish Mr Banville, he eludes our vain grasping yet again …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 343: Eoin Hennigan

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Hammett’s Red Harvest.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Jim Thompson.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Killing off one of my favourite characters in her first scene!
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’ve been living outside Ireland for a long time so I’m not too familiar with the scene.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Although it’s not a novel, I’d love to see Paul Howard’s The Joy inspire an Irish prison movie.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst – Finding the energy after a long day at work. Best – the satisfaction of getting something on paper with that energy!
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Actually working on two right now, one is a mystery told from 15 different POVs, the other a hardboiled reverse narrative.
Who are you reading right now?
The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Hardboiled, experimental and deceptive.

Eoin Hennigan’s The Truth, It Lies is available in all good bookshops

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Once upon a time there was a young boy who was fascinated with fairy tales, myths and legends (once upon a time, most young boys were). This young boy grew up to become the writer of best-selling novels that blend crime fiction and supernatural horror, whose most affecting novel to date has been The Book of Lost Things. Set in the early years of WWII, its hero – very much in the classical sense – is David, a 12-year-old boy mourning the death of his mother who, on the night of a German bombing raid, somehow slips sidewards into a parallel universe teeming with characters from the worlds of mediaeval folktale, Greek myth and Romantic legend, and not a few monsters dragged up from the pit of the Freudian abyss. If Andrew Lang had written a novel, it would very probably have resembled The Book of Lost Things: told in the form of a quest, the story also functions as a commentary on and deconstruction of myth and fable, subtly exploring the reasons why such story archetypes have remained so important to the human race. In David can be found race memories of Gawain and Jason and all the wandering princes of folklore, in particular – to this reader’s mind – the hunted hero of I Am David, Anne Holm’s classic children’s novel of WWII. The deceptively simple prose allows Connolly to convincingly inhabit his thoughtful young hero’s mind and mimic the direct thought processes of an intelligent and questioning mind on the threshold of maturity and only now beginning to engage with adult issues such as betrayal, compromise, love and death. The result is a modern classic, and the novel that will probably prove Connolly’s enduring legacy.- Declan Burke

The Monday Review: Yet More Hup-Ya Frippery From The Interweb Margins

Good vibes for Eoin McNamee’s 12:23 this week, to wit: “Although McNamee’s in-between of fact and fiction is blurred – with some characters from real life, some fiction and others hard to tell – its blend is part of its skill, and the novel is more than just an entertainment using the princess’s death as a point of commercial departure. In keeping with McNamee’s previous explorations of the unaccountable worlds of secret intelligence, it offers a serious meditation on the nature of conspiracy,” says Chris Petit at The Guardian … They’re inclined to agree at Reading Matters: “Despite the roller-coaster of emotions that this book delivers, this is not an easy read. It’s written in the cold, emotionally distant manner of a spy thriller, employing language that is clipped, dry and very sparse … But McNamee has a way with words and is able, through just a handful of phrases, to evoke all manner of dark emotion.” Meanwhile, Tom Adair of The Scotsman comes over all historical: “The text of his story is flawlessly polished, you can’t see the join between documentary and invention, though some of the spooks are reminiscent of Graham Greene’s finest early creations.” Lovely stuff … “I am not the first to remark on the importance of plot in Glenn Meade’s books, and The Devil’s Disciple could not carry on at the speed and length it does if was not tightly plotted, and if every character did not have surprising secret or at least was capable of being suspected of having some surprising secret,” reckons LJ Hurst at Shotsmag … But stay! T’would appear Critical Mick has allowed a shaft of sunlight into his deep, dark dungeon of Critical Mickism, to wit: “[Andrew] Nugent’s narrative was told in a good-humoured, hopeful, and sincere voice that gradually charmed even my cranky heart. By its conclusion, The Four Courts Murder had won me over, snakes and bell-ropes and all. How could I, of all people, forget: the one rule is that there are no rules, it is whatever an author can make work.” From the monk to the priest: Publisher’s Weekly is impressed with Andrew M. Greeley’s latest Blackie Ryan outing, The Bishop at the Lake: “A few chapters … jar, but strong character development, snappy dialogue and a multilayered plot make this one of the better entries in the series,” quibble they via Amazon US … The Library Journal of Review likes Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome: “This novel of great emotional impact is enthusiastically recommended,” they say rather tersely via Powell’s Books, where you’ll also find Mr and Mrs Kirkus offering a glowing report thusly: “Donovan’s command of language is astonishingly precise, eerily reflecting Julius’s disarmingly mild-mannered pathology as it ascribes no more importance to the cold-blooded shooting of a hunter than to going into town for groceries. Finely tooled outsider fiction, as chilling as it is ultimately humane.” Which is nice … “The New Heroes must remain the superhero series of choice for the sophisticated young reader, bringing many disparate and literary elements to the much-maligned and often ill-served genre,” says Write Away of Michael Carroll’s latest, Absolute Power … Love Reading loved reading Declan Hughes’ The Wrong Kind of Blood, to wit: “A great new voice in the thriller genre, gripping and authentic, and even when you get close to figuring out ‘who’ you have to read to the end to understand ‘why’. Ed Loy is the central character and we can’t wait for the next in the series – make sure you don’t miss out.” Message received and understood, folks … “His most visceral, satisfying effort yet …[Adrian] McKinty writes masterful action scenes and he whips up a frenzy as the bullets begin to fly,” says Publishers Weekly of The Bloomsday Dead over here … Finally, some Ken Bruen / Ammunition hup-yas to start the week off in traditional pirate fashion: “This reviewer’s reaction to the novel is ambivalent. The writing is interesting, characterizations poignant. Yet the story is confusing, except for the main theme of the shooting and Brant’s reaction to it … the other players and their stories are less meaningful, and, more important, perplexing, at least to me,” reckons the comma-crazy Theodore, Feit, at, Films and Books … Happily, Book Reporter was a little less baffled: “Like McBain, [Bruen] can make you laugh at human foibles and absurdity one moment and then bring you right back into the random terror of modern life the next … Bruen is a master of noir, taking that very American genre and putting a unique Irish twist on it. Books like Ammunition are quick, fun reads, excursions to the dark side of the street. If you haven’t read them, then search out the entire series.” And, so, say, all, of, us – except, Theodore, Feit, obviously …