LITERARY FICTION
NEW BOY by Tracy Chevalier (Hogarth £12.99) THE patchy Hogarth Shakespeare series, in which wellknown novelists are commissioned to retell some of the bard’s most popular plays, tasks Chevalier with reimagining Othello.
The white Girl With A Pearl Earring author attended an elementary school in Washington D.C. where the majority of the pupils were black.
Here she more than reverses that situation as Ghanaian diplomat’s son Osei Kokote arrives at a hitherto allwhite suburban Washington school.
What follows is Othello played out by 11-year-olds as the malevolent Ian, envious of the new boy’s sporting prowess and instant popularity, plots to undermine his burgeoning relationship with class favourite Dee.
That Desdemona’s strawberry-embroidered handkerchief is here replaced by a pencil case patterned with the same fruit is a clue to how dire and contrived the entire enterprise is, with the plot unconvincingly shoehorned into the chosen setting and the children unbelievable.
Nor does it succeed as a children’s or young adult book; these days they’re a lot more sophisticated than this.
THE NOTHING by Hanif Kureishi (Faber £14.99) THIS slight addition to the Hanif Kureishi canon, by turns funny, farcical and disquieting, is set in the twilight years of celebrated director Waldo.
He’s ravaged by the infirmities of old age, largely imprisoned in his London flat, dependent on — and ultimately at the mercy of — his beautiful younger wife Zee, the great love of his life.
But there are three people in this relationship, the interloper being frequent visitor Eddie, sometime film critic and general scrounger around the peripheries of the London movie scene; not exactly a friend of Waldo’s but someone he’s known for 30 years.
When Waldo hears what sounds like lovemaking emanating from his wife’s bedroom he suspects Zee and Eddie of having an affair, something all too obvious to the reader, as they frequently leave the old man alone while they go out together, with Zee bankrolling the penniless Eddie.
Eventually Waldo decides to catch them out and exact his revenge. It’s in a minor key, but exquisitely performed and moderately entertaining.
STRANGE HEART BEATING by Eli Goldstone (Granta £12.99) AFTER Seb’s Latvian-born wife Leda is killed by — what else — a swan, he discovers a cache of unopened letters written to her by a man back home whom she has never mentioned. In a variation of a well-worn plot, the widower sets out to uncover the secret life his partner shielded from him.
He travels to her remote Latvian village, where he meets a cast of characters from a kind of Baltic Cold Comfort Farm. Staying in a dismal B&B, where the landlady has designs upon him, he’s dragged along on hunting expeditions by Leda’s very rustic cousin, Olaf.
When he discovers that Leda’s name was actually Leila he begins to understand she was a different person in her former life. Everyone he encounters offers only pieces of the jigsaw.
The story grows increasingly bonkers but it’s an enjoyable trip, wryly amusing and touching, as Seb finds out as much about himself as the woman he loved.