LITERARY FICTION
A STATE OF FREEDOM by Neel Mukherjee
(Chatto £16.99) BOOKER-SHORTLISTED Neel Mukherjee’s third novel comprises loosely linked stories set in India. In the first, a wealthy Indian man who lives in America takes his six-year-old son to see the sights in Agra, where the atmosphere becomes increasingly threatening.
The other stories all concern the grinding poverty of the sub-continent. Renu lives in a Mumbai slum and works six jobs as a cook to support her nephew’s university education. Bright little Milly’s educational aspirations end at the age of eight, when she begins life as a live-in servant and is imprisoned in her employers’ flat.
Lakshman sees the acquisition of a bear cub as an opportunity to free his family from poverty by exhibiting the animal as a dancer. It would be hard to say who suffers most, as the scheme badly misfires.
The beauty of Mukherjee’s prose sucks the reader into an alternative world, where misery, deprivation and the struggle to exist another day are normal.
NO GOOD DEED by John Niven
(Heinemann £16.99) WHEN successful food writer Alan Grainger encounters a homeless man who turns out to be his best friend from school 25 years ago, he finds it impossible to pass by on the other side. He takes Craig home for a shower, a night’s sleep in a bed and some clean clothes. But then what?
Feeling guilty about the contrast to his own life — nice wife and kids, well-paid job, big house — Alan invites him to stay until he can get back on his feet.
The trouble is that Craig is more than grateful, he’s envious, too, and would quite like to have more than just handouts — namely Alan’s life.
What follows, as Alan’s perfect existence begins to disintegrate faster than a cardboard box in the rain, is a funny and painful examination of the kind of male friendship where camaraderie marches step by step with festering rivalry.
It’s not especially profound, but it’s a very entertaining read.
EUREKA by Anthony Quinn
(Cape £14.99) IT’S 1967, Sgt. Pepper has just been released and London is swinging. Or maybe not, in Anthony Quinn’s new novel. Nearing 40, narcissistic screenwriter Nat Fane sees his future all behind him, with only flops since his Oscar success some years back. So he leaps at the chance to write German wunderkind Fassbinderclone Reiner Werther Kloss’s new movie — an adaptation of a Henry James story.
Filming proceeds, as Nat struggles to finish the script, with a collection of characters including debutante actress Billie, dying veteran actor Vere Summerhill, an East End gangster backer and Nat’s old university friend Freya.
Born in 1964, Quinn is too young to claim he can’t remember the Sixties because he was there — and they are unconvincingly evoked here, with pop music limited to The Beatles and references to Mr Fish fashion and hula hoops feeling tacked on.
The book is padded out with excerpts from Nat’s film script. Let’s hope it never gets made — it’s as flimsy as a go-go dancer’s miniskirt.