Midas Dekkers - The Story Of Shit

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Badly flawed

I didn't like this book nearly as much as I had hoped to.  It's a genuinely interesting subject which, treated with real wit and the right tone can make a fascinating and readable book – as Richard Jones showed us in his excellent Call Of Nature.  As the style of the title here will tell you, Dekkers has written a rather different book.  New Scientist persuaded me to try this by saying that this "shows Dekkers once again to be in possession of a golden pen."  Well, maybe – but whatever his pen is made of, I wasn't keen on what he has written with it.

There are good things here.  Dekkers knows and has researched his subject, so there is a wealth of information on all sorts of aspects of defecation; the biological insights you'd expect, but also stuff about toilet paper, social aspects of toilet use, how defecating is treated in films and so on.  For me, though, this was swamped by the book's flaws.

One problem is  Dekkers's style which I found to be overblown and off-puttingly crude.  Obviously, this is not a delicate subject, and I can see that Dekkers is trying to break conventions and taboos – hence the deliberate coarseness of the title – but the book is so relentless in its use of crude language that it begins to grate, like a teenager setting out to annoy.  (This includes the c-word used as an anatomical descriptor, which, especially in a factual book from a male author, I find very questionable.)  Add to this a bombastic flow of sometimes very dodgy arguments and I really began to struggle.  Just as a single example:

"We still love with all our heart. That’s why we hate it so much when something goes wrong, and we’re willing to spend so much money to have our heart and blood vessels repaired. Heart surgeons and blood specialists share in the honour that accrues to their favourite organs.

Gastroenterologists gnash their teeth. They know that the only purpose of blood vessels is transport. Real life takes place in the intestines."

I'm afraid I find that plain silly.  We hate it so much when something goes wrong with our heart because it can kill us in short order – and then real life wouldn't be taking place in the intestines, would it?  Yes, the only purpose of blood vessels is transport, just as the only purpose of any vital organ is a small, specific but essential part of the complex processes of life – and that includes the intestines.  Dekkers asserts that "You are not your brain; you don’t love with your heart; and even the horniest man is more than his dick.  We are our intestines."  The first sentence is self-evidently true; the second is self-contradictory nonsense.  There was too much of this sort of stuff in the book for me to ignore.

So, not for me in either style or content.  The real and valuable science and analysis in the book were swamped by the flaws and I can't recommend it.

(My thanks to Text Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Alain Corbin - A History of Silence

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Slightly disappointing

I thought A History Of Silence was OK, but I expected more.  The book is a good idea and has a few nice illustrations, but it is essentially a large collection of quotations with only a little in the way of commentary.  Especially from a history professor, a greater degree of analysis and tracing of ideas would have made this a much richer book.

In his introduction…sorry, his Prelude, Corbin asserts that, "History has too often claimed to explain.  When it tackles the world of emotions, it must also and primarily make people feel."  Well, perhaps.  And even if true, I'm afraid Corbin didn't really do that for me.  There is a huge range of loosely grouped quotations about various aspects of silence, but presented in a way which, to me at least, was not so much about "making people feel" as showing how erudite the author is.  For example, on p.27 he paraphrases and quotes Saint-Exupery (a superlative writer who has often made me feel a great deal) on the silence of the desert: "When an aircraft flew over, the engine made a 'dense, all-engulfing sound behind which the landscape [streamed] by in silence, like a film '.  In the experience of this airman, the deepest silence was that of the telephone line signalling the loss of an aeroplane and its pilot."  Now, both elements of that are touching and thought-provoking, but the complete non-sequitur and lack of context of the telephone line robs it of almost all of Saint-Exupery's original power, I think.

When Corbin does analyse, it's by no means always credible, either.  On p.67, for example, talking of the present day: "A raised voice in a train is now seen as an irritant because travellers prefer peace and quiet.  This was not so right up to the middle of the twentieth century, when conversation in compartments seemed normal, even a sign of good manners.  Similarly, silence during a flight is welcome and breaking it can be seen as discourteous.  The same is true of the cinema."  Surely, few people object to normal conversations between neighbouring passengers; what is objectionable is the inconsiderate yelling into phones of people with no awareness of their immediate surroundings, but again Corbin fails to analyse or take context into account.  And bracketing the cinema with this is fatuous: we go to the cinema specifically to watch a film so it *is* discourteous to prevent others concentrating on or hearing that film.  It is wholly different from sitting on a train, where there is no common point of attention.

I could go on, but this review is already too long.  In summary, this is quite an interesting collection of quotations about silence, but little more.  As such, it's OK, but I can only give it a very qualified recommendation.

Colin Watson - One Man's Meat

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another Flaxborough gem

One Man's Meat, the ninth Flaxborough book, is another enormously enjoyable instalment in a marvellous series.

Here, following a death on a funfair ride which may or may not have been an accident, an elaborate story of marital disharmony, deception, double-crossing and skulduggery in the dog-food business unfolds.  It's perhaps slightly more of a crime mystery and less of a comedy than some of Watson's earlier books, but it's still very amusing and a great read.  Many of our favourite characters are here, doing what they do best – including the magnificent Miss Lucilla Teatime, who is a simply wondrous creation.  Watson's penetrating humour and shrewd, skewering observations are well in evidence and the book is written in his lovely, witty, readable prose,

If you've read Watson before, you probably won’t need me to tell you how good One Man's Meat is.  If you haven't, don't hesitate; this works fine as a stand-alone book but my advice is to begin at the start of the series with Coffin, Scarcely Used and savour the whole lot.  The series has been a truly joyful discovery for me and I can recommend this and all the others very warmly.

(My thanks to Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Matt Haig - The Last Family In England

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not Matt Haig's best

I thought How To Stop Time was outstandingly good and I also enjoyed The Dead Fathers Club very much, but I'm afraid The Last Family In England didn't really do much for me.

The book is narrated by Prince, a Labrador who lives by the Labrador Code of Duty Before Pleasure and protecting his (human) family at all costs.  These tenets are challenged as other breeds undermine them and his family suffers emotional problems and comes under threat.  It's a good idea, which is loosely based on Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, and Matt Haig's humanity, compassion and insight are all there as he explores ideas of duty, responsibility, sacrifice and how far we can rely on faith and received wisdom.

Given all this, I'm not exactly sure why the book didn’t quite work for me.  Partly it's having a dog as narrator; I didn’t really find Prince's voice convincing - and I certainly wasn't convinced by the family cat, either.  If even Kipling couldn't pull off a book in a dog's voice (even this admirer of Kipling's writing would strongly advise avoiding Thy Servant A Dog) it must be very difficult indeed.  Also, I somehow didn’t find the outsider's perspective on the family persuasive, although it's something that Haig does brilliantly in other books.  Whatever it was, I found myself surprisingly unengaged.

There is a lot that is good about the book so it may well be worth a try if you like Matt Haig's work, but I can only give this a very qualified recommendation.

(My thanks to Canongate Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Simon Lelic - The Liar's Room

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

Most other reviewers loved The Liar's Room, but I'm afraid I really didn't.  Although Simon Lelic can write very well, I found this unconvincing and a little formulaic, in spite of its rather original structure.

A new client arrives in a counsellor's office and quite quickly it emerges that he is there to torment the counsellor with her past and with other threats.  Both have been untruthful in many ways – hence the title – and the ensuing dialogue is a battle of wits between them as some ghastly truths emerge, with the obligatory present-time peril, of course, and some jumping between voices and timescales.

Perhaps it's just me, but I just couldn’t get involved. The set-up seemed implausible, the voice of a teenage girl's diary didn't ring true at all and the inevitable and frequent "She remembered…" episodes just seemed tediously formulaic.  I'm sorry to be critical, because I thought that Lelic's first novel, Rupture, was powerful and original.  However, that came from a place of real rage about his subject (bullying) while to me this is just another manufactured psychological thriller.  As such, it's decently done but it didn't offer me much in the way of new insight and didn’t really grip me in the way it seems to have done with other reviewers.

If you're a fan of psychological thrillers you may well enjoy this far more than I did, but it wasn't for me.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Colin Watson - The Naked Nuns

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another cracker from Watson

The Naked Nuns is another excellently written, very enjoyable Flaxborough mystery – the eighth in the series.  As always, the mystery is well done and quite quirky, but the chief pleasure is Colin Watson's dry, witty and beautifully written take on his characters and the milieu they inhabit.

This time, there's a feud between two prosperous local businessmen, some dodgy goings-on at the club owned by one of them and anonymous letters from the USA warning of an impending "hit" in Flaxborough.  Watson has a lot of fun skewering the absurd use of language by Management Consultants, the shallow fakery around "mediaeval-themed" events and so on, plus some amusing involvement by American gangsters and the now traditional cameo appearance by the magnificent Miss Lucilla Teatime.  Eventually, after some engineered mayhem during a "Mediaeval Banquet" at the club, a body turns up and the redoubtable Purbright and Love work on the case.

It's classic Flaxborough.  Although perhaps not one of Watson's very best, it's readable, involving and hugely entertaining.  Personally, I'd recommend beginning at the start of this series with Coffin, Scarcely Used and reading them in order, but this will work as a one-off, too.  Whichever you choose, this is warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Francis Spufford - The Child That Books Built

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A delight

I think The Child That Books Built lives up to its reputation; it is readable, evocative, funny in places and extremely insightful about the activity of reading itself and the effects it may have.

This is more than a memoir of childhood reading.  Spufford does tell us about how he learned to read and became an obsessive bookworm, but there is also a lot of erudite and very interesting stuff about developmental psychology, philosophy and so on and the light they may (or sometimes may not) shed on children and reading.  I found the whole thing fascinating and engrossing, and the prose is beautiful. 

I think anyone who enjoys reading and can remember (or wants to be reminded) of the pleasures of being read to and then learning to read with the wonderful worlds which opened up for us would enjoy this book.  Very warmly recommended.