Distinguished fiction debut

AND DARKNESS FELL Christian S Tait Shetland Library, £8.50

Jamie Jacobson couldn’t wait to escape the constrictions and piety of Shetland and get out into the world, where he could be himself. He was a difficult boy with a hellraising streak and his family were somewhat relieved to see him go. But now it’s 1917 and Jamie has been sent home from the war to recover from shell shock. His family are wary but do their best to welcome him back.

People are learning about the new phenomenon of shell shock, so they try to be as sympathetic as they can. What they don’t fully appreciate is that behind the infirmity Jamie is the same calculating, violent sadist who hid his true nature from them when he was younger. This is a distinguished fiction debut with an excellent cast of characters, evocative island setting and enthralling premise.

MEDIEVAL BODIES Jack Hartnell Profile/Wellcome, £12.99

Much ink has been expended in recent years to challenge the popular view of the Middle Ages as a mud-encrusted time of stagnation, ignorance and blind superstition. Medieval Bodies is the latest book to demonstrate how complex, sophisticated and diverse the era was, drawing on centuries of culture from the post-Roman

Empire civilisations of Europe, Byzantium and Islam. Making sense of human anatomy and biology was, to the Medieval mind, indivisible from making sense of the universe, so Hartnell’s accessible examination of how the human body was regarded in those days provides a window into a rich and colourful system of thought. It branches out into many areas: discussion of the heart, for example, inevitably leads to attitudes towards love, both human and divine. And there are many digressions in this endlessly fascinating book into such bizarre matters as court farters.

THE ONLY STORY Julian Barnes Vintage, £8.99

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more, or love the less, and suffer the less?” This hypothetical question is Barnes’ way of leading us into his tale of a mismatched love affair. Paul, 19, falls in love with married 48-year-old Susan at a suburban tennis club, and the ensuing relationship is the only story Paul reckons is worth telling about his life. Barnes splits the book into three parts, starting with Paul’s account of the start of the affair. In the second, Paul is still relatively young but Susan is in alcoholic decline. Finally, now alone, he looks back with regret, feeling that the most important part of his life is over. It might seem like Barnes is stepping back into his comfort zone after the ambitious Shostakovich book The Noise of Time, but his facility for writing artfully conceived and executed novels about unfulfilled, disappointed lives has risen to almost unassailable heights.