books

LAST TRAIN FROM LIGURIA

Christine Dwyer-Hickley (Atlantic Books)

The best-selling Irish author’s latest offering is a heart-wrenching and at times thoroughly depressing tale set across three generations and more than 60 years. The book starts with a bang in the form of a drunken killing of a woman in a Dublin pub and the rapid escape of her murderer. Though this beginning appears to be at odds with much of the rest of the book – which is told at a slow and considerate pace – the way in which Dwyer-Hickley transports you into the mind of her characters in this early passage is one of the true triumphs

of Last Train From Liguria as a whole.

After this gruesome beginning, the lead character Bella, a dour and sensible spinster, sets out for Mussolini- era Italy to become the teacher of a young Jewish boy. However, European politics are shifting ominously and the reality of the young boy’s vulnerability becomes quickly apparent. Bella and the enigmatic Edward King – the murderer that arrived so hastily into the story in its opening pages and who has, perhaps implausibly, now moved to Italy – are forced to become the boy’s surrogate parents. Their battle to transport him from the country where he is at risk is told beautifully by Dwyer-Hick- ley, whose ability for considered description is unmatched. Many of the lines in her depiction of 1930s Italy are almost poetic. Where Last Train From Liguria may seem to fall down is the part of the story set in the mid 1990s where Bella is seen through the eyes of her tearaway granddaughter. This sub-plot feels a little shoe-horned at first and if you were to turn directly to it from the opening few pages, you would think that you had stumbled across a completely different book. However, it does shed light on the events of the main story and through this it becomes clear that the leisurely pace of Dwyer-Hickley’s writing has been a deliberate ploy to tell the story like a hand slowly peeling back the page to reveal what is beneath. ANDREW PAPWORTH

POETRY IN (E)MOTION

Scroobius Pip (Titan Books)

Best known for his collaboration with Dan Le Sac and the irritatingly brilliant hit Thou Shalt Not Kill, the Bard of Stanford-le-hope’s first book is a surprisingly effective collaboration with various followers of his MySpace page who had been invited to illustrate his words. The one-time David Mead has produced an entertaining mix of graphic novel, social commentary and auto- biography. Hundreds of artists of different styles and varying levels of expertise sent in art to complement the words of Mr Pip. Waiting For The Beat To Kick In is given the backdrop of a film noir take on New York; Magician’s Assistant is illustrated by the kind of collage you could imagine opening a particularly grim David Fincher film. For those of us who never really progressed beyond drawing stick men, the lyrics to Rat Race are accompanied with an agreeably anarchic and childlike set of drawings. Each of the pieces is introduced with an explanation of Pip’s original intentions and motivations for writ- ing these pieces. Talking about his school and musical educations, his discovery of hip hop and spoken word pioneers such as Gil Scott-Heron, Pip writes with affable enthusiasm and humour. Lyrically speaking, old Scrooby is a mix of street poet, grizzled punk and old school B-boy and, for a lot of people, this may well be the first poetry they will ever buy. He writes about difficult themes with tremendous energy and an honesty which is reflected in the vibrant originality of much of the artwork that follows. Visually, these varying facets of Pip’s work are complimented by a range of artistic influences from the post-war comic mythology of Roy Lichtenstein and Steve Ditko through to more contemporary artists such as Banksy. This book won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but Pip’s accessibility, positivity and can-do message is well reflected here, and can only be a good thing for the future of poetry and the spoken word. I don’t know why Nick Frost was asked to do the staggeringly unfunny foreword though. It feels a bit desperate, a marketing tactic completely at odds with the wilfully DIY aesthetic that makes this book such a treat. PAUL JENKINS

PEACE

Richard Bausch (Atlantic Books)

An American sergeant shoots an unarmed woman before leading three of his men in a dangerous ascent of a mountain. The men push themselves beyond their physical, emotional and moral limitations and slowly lose themselves in the mists of the mountain and the fog of war. Set in the aftermath of the allies’ Pyrrhic victory at Cassino, this is an unbearably tense, lyrical and timely exploration of the effect of war upon man that does for the Second World War what Cormac McCarthy did for the Wild West. PJ

ALWAYS THE LOVE OF SOMEONE

Huw Lawrence (Alcemi) Always The Love Of Someone is multi-

award winning Huw Lawrence’s first short story collection. The Welsh writer has compiled fifteen genial stories based on love and relationships. None of them are soppy, though; instead, they are snapshots of what really happens when two people share a moment with each other, including people of mixed ages, diverse classes and differing ethnicities. Wales provides the backdrop to many of the touching tales, making them seem like documented every- day occurrences in the community. APW

SECURITY

Stephen Amidon (Atlantic Books)

If you like your stories to be neatly tied to- gether at the end, Security is probably not the right read for you. Having said that, Security focuses on characters and their development rather than trying to unravel a potentially scandalous accusation. It is therefore to be expected that the story may suffer at times. Fortunately, Amidon is the master of character creation and this allows the book to shine above its fitful and incomplete plot line. APW

MICROFICTION: TELEPHONES

MY mother had a thing about telephones. She liked them. She collected them. There was a box at the bottom of her wardrobe that contained every telephone she’d ever owned; an avocado-coloured rotary phone with hunks of dust trapped under the plastic fingerboard, a novelty telephone fashioned on a Tiffany lamp that she’d used once and then deemed “too quiet”, a phone with implausibly big buttons, designed for the partially sighted that she had bought at a car boot sale, countless cordless grey handsets, their batteries run down. All her life she rejected face-to-face conversations in favour of telephone calls. In my childhood memories she sits on the padded stool in the hall, the receiver stuck to her face, as if it has taken root, as if it is part of her bone structure. When I needed help with my homework or I’d fallen and cut my knee, she was busy, inevitably, talking on the phone. When I moved out she rang me three times a day without fail, to relay the goings-on at her house. She’d tell me what programmes she’d watched on TV, what food she was going to prepare for my father. I started doing something my brother had been doing for years; gently placing the receiver down on the sill mid-conversation and reading the next chapter of my book. When I picked it up again she’d still be talking, oblivious to the lapse in our exchange. On the day she died the first thing I thought about, with sorrow but relief too, was how she’d never ring me again. Then, two days after the funeral I came home to find a message on my answer machine. Just one word. ‘Alright?’ Her voice slightly tart, as if she was trying to make a point. I listened to it 462 times, my skin goosy. I’d heard of clocks stopping, power tripping, never of poltergeists picking the phone up.

THE LIFE OF REBECCA JONES (O! TYN Y GORCHUDD)

Angharad Price – Translated by Lloyd Jones (Gomer)

Originally written in Welsh, The Life Of Re-

becca Jones has enjoyed a serious amount of critical acclaim, winning every prize available for Welsh language fiction. Now translated into English, this fictional au- tobiography reveals the life of the author’s great-aunt, from a child to an elderly lady. It’s full of description of both the location in rural mid-Wales and Rebecca’s large family, and, although not an exhilarating read, it is an interesting one. AB

Rachel Trezise’s latest novel, Sixteen Shades Of Crazy, is out this month, published by HarperCollins. Rachel is also appearing at this year’s Hay Festival (see page 14)

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