FANTASTIC FICTION – Escapes to other places and other times

Ever since the publication of Bravo Two Zero in 1993 SAS Sergeant Andy McNab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_McNab) has had an ardent following for the gritty realism of his military action thrillers. The gripping 2012 follow-up to the bestselling War Torn has the following synopsis. Writing with Kym Jordan, Andy McNab has created a stunning sequel to his bestselling novel […]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man This is Joyce’s semi-autobiographical portrait of his alter ego Stephen Dedalus as he struggles free from his Irish Catholic heritage and of his eventual abandonment of Ireland. The portrait begins with Stephen as a young child, listening to the talk around the dinner table of Irish

The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age  The Professor of Human Biology at Stanford (http://nathanwolfe.net/) tells a chilling tale. The virus has probably been around since the evolution of the first cell. This is a teensy bit longer than humans have been around. Three and a half billion years longer, actually. So

Scotland’s own Val McDermid writes what has become known as ‘Tartan Noir’. Some of her offerings are seriously not for the faint hearted. They hover, with lovingly painted detail, over graphic scenes of violence and torture. For a gentle introduction to her oeuvre try The Last Temptation. The plot goes as follows. A twisted killer

A memoir hovers over the pre-occupations of its author in contrast to an autobiography which attempts something more structured and comprehensive. Lorna Sage’s pre-occupation here is the thought that children carry, like an imprinted curse, the full range of the joy and angst of their forebears.  Rather than develop from a freshly minted individual Sage had

In Mike Leigh’s wonderful film Secrets & Lies the audience is gradually shown all the ‘unknown knowns’ (to use a phrase of Donald Rumsfeld’s) which have been hidden from the characters. It’s a disconcerting thought that there may be dozens of truths about our circumstances of which we are blissfully unaware, many of a personal

Prolific Lee Child (http://www.leechild.com/) struck again in 2012 with another Jack Reacher adventure. Jim Grant (the author’s true name) was actually born in Coventry but manages to set his yarns convincingly all over America. Child has a huge and enthusiastic following. If you’ve never been tempted by a thriller this is as good as any. The brief summary

Flight Behaviour (2012) is the latest novel from Barbara Kingsolver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kingsolver and http://www.kingsolver.com/), who grew up in eastern Kentucky. It is in running towards a rendezvous with a lover that the principal character, Dellarobia Turnbow, a farmer’s wife, encounters what looks like a hillside on fire. In fact it is the sight of clouds of orange

Mrs Bridge (1959) is an inspired novel set in the years around World War II that testifies to the sapping ennui of an unexamined suburban life (in Kansas City, in this case). India Bridge, the eponymous character, has three children and a meticulous workaholic lawyer husband. She defends her dainty, untouched guest towels from son Douglas, who has

Traffics and Discoveries (1904) is a collection of short stories, mostly South African or technological in emphasis, and with accompanying poems. ‘The Captive’, ‘A Sahib’s War’, and ‘The Comprehensions of Private Copper’ reproduce the flavour of Kipling’s early stories about the lower ranks in the context of the Boer War. The same knowing narrator who recorded

Staying On (1977) is about post colonial India. Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pangkot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the

After a chance encounter on a train the English teacher William Bradshaw starts a close friendship with the mildly sinister Arthur Norris. Norris is a man of contradictions; lavish but heavily in debt, excessively polite but sexually deviant. First published in 1935  Mr Norris Changes Trains piquantly evokes the atmosphere of Berlin during the rise

After a decade in one South Seas mission, a London bank-clerk-turned-minister sets his heart on serving a remote volcanic island. Fanua contains neither cannibals nor Christians, but its citizens, his superior warns, are like children—immoral children. Still, Mr. Timothy Fortune sets out for Fanua.  After three years, he has made only one convert, and his devotion