An incendiary tale of the clash between two families reinforces a blazing talent
stop being impatient with her.
“Darling Pru is getting a little less sure of herself all the time; only a little, perhaps, but I ought to be constantly on the lookout.
“She insists on doing tricky things, because she loves it, but of course needs constant encouragement; so getting irritable with her is the worst thing I can do,” he writes.
Away from the canal journeys, he’s still acting, attending theatre festivals, poetry readings, charity
larities to Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander series: both Jana and Lisbeth are extremely secretive characters, who have suffered abuse at the hands of men and are seeking justice for other victims.
Sadly, many of Schepp’s characters are overdrawn and stereotypical and much of the dialogue is exposition-heavy and unrealistic.
But she does manage events and appearing in TV dramas. “Pru doesn’t act now. She can do a poetry programme. We sometimes read things together in public,” he adds.
For now, he doesn’t have any more TV canal journeys planned, although he would like to go to the Nile and perhaps the Suez and Panama Canals.
His wife, he says, remains blessedly free of depression and distress about her condition.
“Off camera, we will get back to our own beloved boat, in Braunston, and take off for a few days, just pottering along and tying up somewhere to read a book and open a bottle of wine.”
Our Great Canal Journeys: A Lifetime of Memories on Britain’s Most Beautiful Waterways by Timothy West, published by John Blake, £20
to move the plot along at a quick pace, jumping between several sub-plots and bringing them all together in the final, bloody showdown.
This is certainly not the new Millennium series, but Nordic noir fans will enjoy Schepp’s books for the description of the snowy Swedish landscapes alone. Celeste Ng’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, reads not so much as a successor to her first, Everything I Never Told You, but as more of a companion piece.
Ng( right) adopts a similar narrative structure in each, beginning with a catastrophic event — in Everything I Never Told You it was the discovery of the body of a 16-year-old girl; here in Little Fires Everywhere it’s a raging house fire — before swiftly travelling back in time in order to start at the beginning, following the chain of events that each led to these tragic conclusions.
Central to the story played out in Little Fires Everywhere is the clash between two families: the Richardsons — whose large picture-perfect house in Cleveland’s progressive Shaker Heights neighbourhood, with its four cars in the copious driveway, is the one going up in smoke when the novel opens — and Mia Warren, a previously nomadic artist, and her 15-year-old daughter Pearl.
Mother and daughter are Mrs Richardson’s tenants, but then
Alan Parks’ debut is the first in a new series of Scottish noir novels. Taking us straight into the dark, grimy streets of 1970s Glasgow, we’re introduced to police detective Harry
McCoy and his new apprentice, Wattie.
Highly cynical and unethical, Pearl strikes up a friendship with the Richardson clan, after which Mrs Richardson, seeing herself as something of a philanthropist, insists that instead of paying rent each month, Mia take on housekeeping duties for the larger family.
Ng is brilliant at observing the small but significant shifts this dynamic entails, complicated further by switched allegiances on either side: Pearl’s increasing closeness to the Richardson kids, anti-hero McCoy has an on-off relationship with prostitute along with Izzy — the youngest, who’s regarded by the rest of her family as a troublemaker – finding refuge in laid-back, bohemian Mia’s company.
Not to mention the growing tension between the two women as they come down on opposite sides of a custody battle that’s making the local news, Mrs Richardson’s annoyance at what she’s sees as Mia’s “perverse pleasure in flaunting the normal order”.
At its heart, it’s a story about motherhood — surrogacy, abortion, adoption, the trails of a flesh and blood relationship, all versions are considered: “It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?”
Ng paces her narrative like a pro, consummately entwining multiple threads until each and every character is implicated in the denouement. Deeply satisfying to read.
Janey and is complicit with crime boss Stevie Cooper, an old reformatory school friend.
Investigating a series of murders — one of which happens in broad daylight, right in front of their eyes — leads McCoy deep into a secret high-society sex and drug ring.
Dark and violent, Bloody January embraces the brutal, offering an authentic and gritty account of Glaswegian crime.
A dark and gripping winter read.