The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Big cat’s eye
The case was dropped after the alleged victim declined to testify in court, having received death threats after her name had been leaked. Bryant paid her to settle a civil action, adding in a statement that he understood “how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter”. This cannot be construed as a protestation of innocence. The district attorney on the case remarked: “I’m 100% certain. He did it.” The lead detective added: “There’s zero doubt in my mind. He raped her.”
But Bryant remained free to continue a spectacular, lucrative career. He matured as a player, accepting he needed others to win. He grew as a personality, devoting time and huge chunks of money to various philanthropic causes.
At his death, aged 41, his conspicuous sporting success and his charitable work were lauded with the reference to his sexual assault case viewed as disrespectful, even malicious. It was neither.
Pearlman has written a highly entertaining book, but an important one that has significance beyond the basketball court. Without preaching or any pretension to moral superiority, he has investigated the notion of heroism. He has in consequence told us much about Bryant and something of ourselves in that fame can not only corrupt the celebrity but blind the observer. (riverrun, £8.99)
The former Edinburgh zookeeper went to Siberia and studied tigers for this, her second novel, which is split among four characters. First is Frieda, a bonobo researcher selfmedicating with stolen morphine after a violent attack, whose habit gets her sacked. Relocating to a private zoo in Devon, she bonds with a Siberian tiger. Then there’s Russian conservationist Tomas, sent into the wilderness by his father to ensure that there will be footage of a tigress and cubs to show a government representative. Also in Siberia is Edit, a woman who has left her people and taken her daughter to live in the wilds. Finally, Clark knits all their strands together with a section told from the perspective of a tiger trying to survive and look after her cubs. All are, in their own ways, dealing with isolation, and there’s some accomplished writing from Clark as she strives to divine the workings of a wild animal’s mind.
THE REVISIONARIES AR Moxon
(Melville House, £14.99)
The Michigan-based Moxon’s unclassifiable meta-novel drops us headfirst into Loony Island, a post-industrial urban area named for its psychiatric hospital. A political decision has resulted in all the patients being released, and priest Father Julius is doing his best to protect them from the predatory local gangs. One particular gang leader, with the help of his red-robed, swordswinging followers, is determined to capture a patient named Gordy, who has a habit of fading in and out of existence. There’s a wild, scattershot imagination at work here, a relentless inventiveness that extends from the memorable characters and weird goings-on of Loony Island to the fractured narrative and the text itself (which also fades out at one point). It’s indulgent, but in a good way, as Moxon draws on a veritable library of obscure sources to explore the idea of the author as God in one of the weirdest and most unique novels of the year.
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS AN EASY JOB
Kikuko Tsumura
(Bloomsbury, £12.99) A nameless 36-yearold woman goes to an employment agency with some specific requirements for a job: it has to be near her home, involve no reading or writing and require as little thinking as possible. She wants some meaningless work after the stresses of her former employment. She is given a series of strange jobs, including watching surveillance footage of an author suspected of dealing in contraband goods, and writing facts to be printed on packets of crackers. As time goes on, she realises she wants something more meaningful than just mindless tasks. Tsumara’s first book to be translated into English is a charming, drily witty novel about finding fulfilment in a capitalist system, written from a Japanese perspective and set in a world which is very like our own but with absurd, idiosyncratic twists that throw our lives, and what we expect from them, into sharp relief.
ALASTAIR MABBOTT