The Herald - The Herald Magazine
A window on two worlds
GERONIMO STILTON #1: LOST TREASURE OF THE EMERALD EYE Elisabetta Dami
Scholastic, £4.49
What is the book about?
Geronimo Stilton is a hardworking and dedicated mouse who runs a newspaper. His sister Thea finds a treasure map and his first adventure begins. They set off to an island to find the treasure and encounter many twists and turns along the way.
GEMMA McLAUGHLIN
Who is it aimed at?
answers because we haven’t and never will. This is a gospel of love, and doubt, that everyone can practice – especially atheists.
For that I’m truly grateful to Holloway for codifying what I’ve innately felt throughout my life. It’s brought a flicker of light into a darkened world.
Holloway brings a message of spiritual hope for all – and for that, a few hundred years ago, this very wise and very kind man would have been burned to death at the stake.
That makes him a hero in my eyes, and so and I say, God bless him.
This series is mainly aimed at those from five to ten with another series with longer and more complex books for older readers.
What was your favourite part?
I loved all the aspects that come into play to make it such an easy and smooth read, especially the font which is fun and bright and some key words stand out by being a different colour or style to highlight their importance and correspond to their meaning.
What was your least favourite?
Though it’s a lighthearted book, at times the humour based around the world of mice and cheese started to feel repetitive.
Which character would you most like to meet?
Geronimo’s sister Thea. I loved her sense of adventure.
Why should someone buy this book?
This series developed my reading habits when I was younger.
ARDNISH
Angus MacDonald
Birlinn, £8.99
It’s 1944, and Donald John Gillies is dying of pneumonia. If his son, Donald Angus, doesn’t come back from Canada, the population of the Ardnish peninsula will be reduced to zero. The time has come for Donald John to make his final confession, which means casting his mind back to 1900, when poverty forced him to leave his family and fight the Boers. To his old friend Willie MacDonald, Donald John is the epitome of a Highland gentleman: “Understated, polite, intelligent, kind and brave.” But his experiences in South Africa cast a shadow over him, which, at the end of his life, he must finally face. The concluding part of MacDonald’s
Ardnish trilogy, but chronologically taking place earlier, this opens a window on two worlds, shining a light on the experiences of Highland regiments in the Boer War while commemorating traditional Highland culture, evoking both of them vividly in wellcrafted, deceptively simple prose.
BORROWED TIME Sue Armstrong
Bloomsbury Sigma, £10.99
If a species of shark can live for 400 years and a certain type of jellyfish is functionally immortal, why should humans be stuck with their allotted lifespan? Sue Armstrong, a writer and broadcaster on science and health issues, presents a discussion of current research into the process of ageing, and there appears to be no single answer. Told mostly through interviews with scientists investigating their own specialist spheres, and incorporating both scientific research and ethical and philosophical debates, her overview ranges across the accumulation of cellular damage, the shortening of telomeres, free radicals, traits which are useful in early life but detrimental later on and a variety of other factors. A large part of the second half of the book is devoted to Alzheimer’s and potential treatments for it, highlighting the point that ageing research may be a vital resource for increasing the quality of life, if not its length.
LIVE; LIVE; LIVE Jonathan Buckley
Sort Of, £11.99
Lucas Judd is a suburban psychic, able to hear the voices of the dead and locate missing people. We see him through the eyes of his neighbour, Joshua, a young man fascinated by the quirky, precise, aphoristic enigma next door. Lucas takes an interest in Joshua and invites him into his life, no doubt aware of Joshua’s desire to track down his own absentee father, but the arrival of a young woman upsets the balance between them. Buckley stealthily reels us in from the first page, kindling our curiosity about this odd man, who is undoubtedly a comfort to the people he helps, and who presents himself as a benevolent soul who must always use his gift responsibly. But there’s an ambivalence around him, hinting at darker motives beneath the façade or tragic, unintended consequences of his abilities. It’s an atmospheric, downbeat and understated novel, but consistently compelling and beautifully crafted.
ALASTAIR MABBOTT
BETWEEN 1973 and early 1975, John Lennon split with Yoko Ono, took up with his assistant May Pang and embarked on a period of intense creativity and outrageous behaviour. He produced three albums and lived between Los Angeles and New York City, dabbling in alcohol, and other things, alongside a cohort of mischiefmakers like Harry Nilsson.
Lennon later described this time as his “lost weekend”.
Rufus Wainwright, now 46 and a father, has embarked on his fair share of lost weekends across two decades in music, living the life of a rough-andready troubadour in New York and further afield. Like Lennon, he emerged a different person, slowly solidifying into one of America’s pre-eminent songwriters along the way.
“I’ve lived the lost weekend – I’ve done the lost year as well,” he laughs in his lilting voice from his home in Los Angeles. With John Lennon it’s a whole lot more tragic because he died right when he was at peace with the world.
“But it’s more this concept of not trying so hard to impress everybody all the time, of just being willing to just add to the beauty of the planet and leave it at that. When you start off you have this aggressive attitude, you have to want to bust people up.
“You want to shake the cage – and that’s important. But eventually you just want to find the key to the cage and actually open it.”
The Canadian-American – the son of folk artists Loudon Wainwright III and the late Kate McGarrigle – appears to have left that world behind.
His upcoming ninth album of original material, Unfollow The Rules, is a paean to fatherhood and responsibility, inspired by the music of Frank Sinatra, Leonard Cohen and Lennon, of course.
“These were all people who in their 40s or late 30s really became themselves. Prior to that they had a questioning period of trying to create, to transform, and eventually they hatched as these mature singing birds, or eagles!
“I’ve also thought of myself as a man in that predicament. I’ve definitely hit a point where my powers are more – how can I say this – complex in terms of what I have to offer.
“It’s not just about feral youth and trying to smash the world. It’s actually about trying to figure out the situation, which is a little more tricky.”
Yes, life has changed in the Wainwright household. Now based in Los Angeles with his husband, German art director Jorn Weisbrodt, and nineyear-old daughter, Viva, life is different. Los Angeles was the city which launched his career, where he recorded his eponymous 1998 debut, where he steeled himself before setting out to conquer the world.
At home, he works on opera (he has written two) as well as his more conventional pop outings. And since lockdown he has taken to performing tracks from his extensive back catalogue, in a dressing gown, on Instagram. He calls them “Robe Recitals” or “Quarantunes” and dedicates them to friends, including Marianne Faithfull, who was recently released from hospital after a coronavirus diagnosis.
“I have found this period incredibly fruitful,” he admits.
“Partially because of how frightening it is. There’s a definite kind of apocalyptic sensibility that I hope passes, but nevertheless there’s this kind of very dramatic ambience.
“When you watch the news or when you think about what’s really happening, especially in America with the politics as well, it’s definitely invigorated my creative sensibilities. “Fortunately, I thrive off chaos.” Unfollow The Rules was born from Wainwright’s forays into the world of opera – a genre that has been at the fore of his baroque-pop and elegant songwriting for decades.
“When I initially went running to the world of opera and theatre I thought it would be this creative gold mine for me and that I would feel really appreciated and valued as an artist.
“What really happened is that it was I was just struck immediately by the brutality of the opera world.
“It’s very dry, it’s very cold, it’s very difficult – so what happened is that I ended up writing a lot of songs because songwriting became a refuge for me.
“So over that 10-year period I generated a lot of material, because it was one of the only areas – being alone
KEITH BRUCE
THE CHICKS
Gaslighter
Gaslighter sees The Chicks return with a new name and a renewed vigour for taking on contemporary issues. Current band members Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire’s new material seems keenly attuned to the politics of today despite their 14-year recording hiatus.
As the band released protest song March March last month amid the Black Lives Matter movement, they announced they were dropping the word Dixie, which has ties to Confederacy in the US, from their name. The song is the album’s standout track and
Boyzone and Westlife – two of the biggest boybands to emerge from Ireland during the 90s, both manufactured in the Louis Walsh popfactory, both charting numerous number ones.
More than two decades later, after sundry line-up changes and reunions, we have this: an album from Boyzone’s Keith Duffy and Westlife’s Brian McFadden.
Revisiting their respective triumphs is the order of the day.
Strings Attached, with its half-joke of a title, features orchestral versions of nine UK number one songs from their groups’ respective back catalogues, accompanied by the famed Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Undeniable classics like Flying Without Wings and Unbreakable benefit from an orchestral arrangement, while songs that demand a lighter touch, such as You Needed Me, are swallowed by the grandiosity.
Today Duffy is 45 and McFadden 40, and their fanbase has grown with them.
Strings Attached is for that fanbase. It’s an unashamed nostalgia trip that adds little but a dusting of contemporary glitz.