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Month: October 2010

Warehouse Project: Maximo Park Preview

Written by music on . Posted in Music.

This year’s Warehouse Project starts with one of only a handful of nights featuring live bands rather than DJs. The club’s opening night on the Thursday of Welcome Week features headliners Maximo Park, who boast two double platinum albums to their name, as well as sell out tours in the UK and abroad. Supporting them are Metronomy and Chapel Club, the former an entertaining if slightly odd band who will fit into the Warehouse Project like a hand into a glove; the latter an up and coming London band who are already being compared to the likes of White Lies and the Editors.

The Warehouse project doesn’t do things by halves, and if you like live music, this is certainly one not to be missed!

Michael Hoyle, Music Editor

Warehouse Project: Ian Brown Preview

Written by music on . Posted in Music.

Ian Brown is a certified Mancunion musical icon. Now seven albums down since the split of the Stone Roses, he’ll be playing his second huge Manchester gig of the year. While early June’s Platt Fields Park night was fantastic, the Warehouse Project gig promises even more. With Factory favourite Mike Pickering on beforehand, as well as Special Guests yet to be announced (most likely Scratch Perverts or UNKLE), it’s going to be a fantastic start to Warehouse’s last full weekend of gigs.

Sure, he may not roll through the Stone Roses hits like some want him too, but there’s more than enough in his solo repertoire to turn it into a truly epic night. Just ask anyone who was at that Platt Fields Park gig; or anybody in Fallowfield who could just hear the window rattling bass. Even they will have loved it. Not one to miss.

Charlie Rawcliffe

Warehouse Project: Doves Preview

Written by music on . Posted in Music.

Manchester band Doves are the second live band to headline the Warehouse Project this year.  The band, who recently released their greatest hits album, have been a favourite in the city since they were formed here in the early ‘90s. Doves said in a recent interview for The Daily Record that they plan to take a two year break, so this could be the last chance to see them live for some time.

Supporting Doves are ex The Beta Band singer Steve Mason, and Field Music, who reunited last year to record a third album, and have been personally chosen by Belle and Sebastian to play their Bowlie Weekender festival in Sussex in December. Regulars on the Manchester circuit, Mike Pickering and Now Wave DJs top off the bill.

Michael Hoyle, Music Editor

Music festivals round up: WOMAD

Written by music on . Posted in Music.

My friends and I are waiting in Paddington Station but one of the group looks disgruntled. Finally he utters, “why exactly are we going to a World Music festival?” The correct answer was that we had failed to get tickets to Glastonbury, or any other festival for that matter, but this is still a touchy subject so instead I tried, “it’ll be fun?!”, adding, “there’ll be cider?”.He looks unconvinced and I could understand why.

World music doesn’t exactly have a great reputation. What usually springs to mind is a form of African drumming supported by an audience of alternative types who have non-specific media jobs, live in Shoreditch and wear vegetarian shoes.

On arrival our fears quickly vanish. There is a spirit of fun that permeates the entirety of Charlton Park, setting WOMAD apart from other festivals. The people are in high spirits, pleasant and friendly, plus the evenings were not accompanied with a feeling of unease familiar at so many other festivals. The music helps too; you just can’t fail to find enjoyment in Rolf Harris, or in a rendition of ‘Shaft’ by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. It is not all whimsical either. The appearance of the likes of DJ Don Letts or Angelique Kidjo ensures that the festival still had an edge.

The concept of world music is frankly misleading. The line up consisted of a multitude of terrific pop and soul acts that successfully draw on a variety of influences, that made me consider the Top 40 in dismay.

Furthermore the performances were of unbelievably high quality, with artists understanding how to entertain an audience whilst also commanding great technical skill. A particular highlight was Ska Cubano on the BBC Three stage, hidden amongst a wooded part of Charlton Park. Their mix of Cuban and Jamaican influences coupled with a real sense of rhythm and exuberance meant that I couldn’t help but smile and dance into the night.

Becca Luck

Music festivals round up: Glastonbury

Written by music on . Posted in Music.

Stevie Wonder, Muse, The Gorillaz, Snoop Dogg, Flaming Lips, The Pet Shop Boys, Fatboy Slim, Willie Nelson, LCD Soundsystem and Faithless all graced the two main stages at Glastonbury this year. Not bad work for a festival ruin by a bushy bearded farmer.

So who stole the show? Well Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips rolled atop the crowd in his giant hamster-ball during the band’s headline set on the Other Stage, before heading back to the stage so they could play an awe-inspiring set spanning the entirety of their near twenty year career. Stevie Wonder rolled out the hits as he closed the festival, finishing with a duet of ‘Happy Birthday’ to celebrate Glasto’s 40th Birthday. Muse brought the usual array of lasers, LEDs and giant screens, and even managed to fit in a cameo from U2’s the Edge amongst Matt Bellamy’s rabid guitar solos.

Mumford and Sons set the record for most teenagers crammed into a tent on the Friday evening, Laura Marling’s blissful set in the Park was made complete with the engagement of two members of the crowd partway through, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood staged perhaps the least secret secret-gig of all time, and were met by almost deafening cheers from their falafel-holding crowd.

There were disappointments, but at a festival of Glastonbury’s size that can hardly be avoided. The most high profile let downs were headliners Gorillaz, with Damon Albarn forgetting to introduce any of his thousands of guest stars, resulting in one crowd member mistaking Lou Reed for Fabio Capello. Damon’s voice was sketchy, and most of the crowd seemed to have only come for ‘that one with the fat bloke from the Happy Mondays on it’. Elsewhere the Pet Shop Boys managed to perform the most underwhelming set in the festival’s history, the BBC continued its tradition of ignoring the Park Stage (host of The xx, Laura Marling, Empire of the Sun and Stornoway amongst others) and for the second year in a row there was a disappointing lack of mud.

Overall though the fortieth year was another huge success, with the great performances far outweighing the poor, and speculation for next year has already begun, with U2, Radiohead and Kylie Minogue currently being the bookies favourites. But even if the artists are unclear, it’s bound to be another sell out when tickets go on sale on the 3rd of October, so if you’re planning on going, you’d better not blow all that student loan in Welcome Week!

Charlie Rawcliffe, Music Editor

Wild Animus

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

Wild Animus was originally released in 2004, so I presumed was at one point a big seller. However, Amazon.co.uk are selling the original at a meagre £0.01, and the re-vamped version, including the CDs, from the bargain basement price of £5.50.

If you were to read the blurb on the back of Wild Animus, and I do urge you to as it’s a hoot, you would find yourself even more confused as to what the book is about and what audience it is aimed at. The prominent review is by Climbing Magazine, and the feature extract is “The sweetest kiss leaves a chest wound” – what does this all mean?

I have a theory, profoundly based on the following two lines, “To tell his story, Shapero has crafted a new art form that intricately interweaves book and music. Contained in this box is the complete storytelling experiment: a novel, Wild Animus, and three CDs, The Ram, The Wolves and Animus.”

Within the above lines the word “experiment” leapt off the page with some force. Particularly as I was reading the book in an attempt to work out why they might be giving it away free at the Students’ Union. Now, we are a generation that have been technological guinea-pigs several times; the mobile phone and Facebook to name just two. Wild Animus was already giving me flashbacks to long forgotten evenings, sat listening to Roald Dahl tapes and reading the book simultaneously, when we were what, five or six?

Is this what authors now think we want to read/hear? I sincerely hope not because the only word I have been able to think of to describe it is “tosh”.

Bitter In The Mouth

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

The title of Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth comes from the protagonist’s “auditory-gustatory” synaesthesia, a rare condition that causes Linda Hammerick to literally taste the words she hears. Her own name evokes the taste of fresh mint, while other words and their unpleasant tastes — characterpickledwatermelonrind or prunescallion — she attempts to avoid entirely. The title, however, could perhaps also refer to the bitter secrets of the Hammerick family that hang tangibly in the air but are rarely spoken about openly.
One of the novel’s strengths is how judiciously these ‘secrets’ are revealed to the reader. Divided into two sections, CONFESSION and REVELATION, the novel’s final pages deliver several exposés that entirely change everything the reader has learnt up to that point. Such a narrative structure makes the basis for an intensely enjoyable novel: its pace is slow, but the thorough examination of one girl’s family and its skeletons creates a vibrant, detailed picture of dysfunction and diaspora in 20th century southern America.
The main focus of the novel is arguably what it’s like to grow up different from your family and friends. Linda’s synaesthesia is a burden that prevents her from true emotional intimacy, the only person who knows about it is her childhood best friend Kelly, whose short-lived attempt to catalogue the ‘incomings’ fizzles out quickly. While Linda’s great-uncle’s homosexuality is never discussed, leaving him to live his life in ashamed solitude. The two characters are painted as unlikely life companions: both are described as each other’s “first loves”, and both act as each other’s confidantes through the years, but there are some secrets that even these two feel they cannot share.
Linda and ‘Baby’ Harper bond over their mutual exclusion from the family mainstream, and one of the novel’s legacies is its undeniable assertion that, while blood is supposedly thicker than water, the taste it leaves is undeniably bitter.

Inheritance of Loss

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

Kiran Desai’s 2006 award winning novel The Inheritance of Loss, is the story of a few connected individuals based in a small hill station Kalimpong, located in North East India in the 1980’s. Having been to Kalimpong myself and lived for long summer vacations in hillside towns, I find Desai’s descriptions and eye for detail nothing short of extraordinary.
Sai is an orphaned teenage girl who lives with her grandfather, a retired judge who studied in Cambridge, in what was once a mansion high in the mountains. She falls in love with her mathematics tutor despite their different backgrounds and upbringing. Also involved in the narrative is Biju, the son of the judge’s cook. Biju is an illegal immigrant working in New York City, desperately moving from one job to another in search of a better livelihood.
Part of the book’s magic is Desai’s seamless transition from describing small town India and New York City in the 1980’s, to pre-second world war England. Desai describes the judge’s life as a student in England, where he feels socially inadequate due to him being born and raised in a village in India. Upon his return to India, to join the civil service, he suddenly finds his wife and others in his family backward. As a stark background to the narrative, Desai tells of the separatist movements which engulfed India at the time. One of which, the Nepalese Ghurkha movement, Sai’s tutor and lover Gyan becomes involved in.
Each of the characters in the book have an air of desperation around them; the cook longing to see his son, Sai determined to leave Kalimpong to travel the world, and the judge desperate to forget his past which continues to haunt and humiliate him. Desai captures this brilliantly and as the tales unravels, the reader tends to feed of their desperation as well.

Hotel Iris

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

Not one for the fainthearted, Yoko Ogawa explores exploitative sexual politics and power relations in her newest novel Hotel Iris. This dark and dreamlike novel illuminates the clandestine, sadomasochistic relationship, of seventeen year old Mari with a sixty seven year old man, the ‘translator’.
The narrative is laden with symbolism, as Ogawa subtly establishes the reasons for their particular sexual roles. These carefully placed hints and suggestions, which act as explanations for the characters attraction to each other, are slightly overshadowed by the graphic sexual scenes that verge on the voyeuristic. Coupled with the dramatic age gap between the characters, this can make for some uncomfortable reading.
However, I would not box it off as flatly pornographic. The depth of the novel is demonstrated by the intricate power relationships that go on in a small Japanese tourist village. These influences shape and mould Mari’s need to submit, and the translator’s need to dominate. Their contradictory insecurities are broken down, inverted, and recreated continually as the scenes change from bedroom to restaurant. As the relationship develops Ogawa seems to question who the truly dominant character is. The binary between strong and weak is a constant theme in the novel. From small interactions to larger, the more significant meetings each character is embroiled in shifts the power. Everything is a struggle of either domination or submission. However, power is fluid in the novel and never rests with one character for long. The binary between sadist and masochist is not so fixed at Hotel Iris.

Life of Pi

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

It has been eight years since Life of Pi was published to international critical acclaim, and won the 2002 Man Booker Prize. Martel’s novel shot to the top spot in lists and charts, flying off the shelves in airport bookshops, later to be spotted wherever there was sea, sand and sun. Sometimes with excessive hype there is the inevitable disappointment, the feeling of dread that a book simply cannot live up to your heightened expectations. However, there are some books which somehow manage to exceed your hopes. A story which makes you forget the reason you picked it up in the first place, whisks you off, and doesn’t drop you until you’ve finished the last page. Life of Pi is such a one.
Suspending your disbelief is a relatively important factor when reading the synopsis, but as with all fantastic novels, this is usually done for you with no conscious effort on your part. We spend the majority of the book on a boat, drifting about the Pacific Ocean with a sixteen year old Indian boy, a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a Bengal tiger. Stranded, after the cargo ship they were travelling aboard was destroyed in a storm, Pi is forced to co-habit with animals in possession of ever-growing appetites. As he fights hunger, thirst and delirium, the conviction of Martel’s writing ensures the reader is never left questioning the ridiculousness of the situation. The book ends on a marvellous twist, which, as all good twists do, alters your entire perception of the novel up to that point. A modern masterpiece.

Rowling vs. Bronte

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

An online survey of the Top Five female authors (albeit a survey with very few votes), has placed Sophie Kinsella and J K Rowling in its Top three. When considering the ‘Top’ authors, it seems that some people have forgotten the greats, the classics, the timeless masterpieces, in favour of those with recent places on bestseller lists and Hollywood success. Can we really brush aside the likes of Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Bronte, whose greatest works have endured centuries and show no signs of losing popularity, to make room at the top for Becky Bloomwood and Harry Potter?
Have a gander at http://www.makefive.com/categories/entertainment/books/top-5-female-authors

Jump!

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

Cooper’s Jump!, pulls to the front of the reader’s mind the likes of Francis Drake and Julian Fellowes, as she creates a world revolving around equine activity and class-climbers.

The crux of Jump!, is the trials faced by a recently widowed granny, whose children selfishly enlist her to take care of their spoiled children, and force her to give up her house and live a life of misery with them. It is impossible to dislike our shy, rosy-faced granny, particularly when she discovers an abandoned filly who she nurses back to health.

The tale proceeds to take place around the courses at Cheltenham and Aintree; the nouveaux riche who stalk it, and the upper class who run it. It is these sub-groups who supply the frisky business, what with hastily ripping off jodhpurs and lovers named ‘Valant’.

Jump! is a good read for the characters alone, yet lacks where Coopers peers succeed in plot.

Mrs Dalloway

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

In times of bitter rejection or ultimate betrayal, nothing is more satisfying than imagining the punishment you dream to deal your cold-blooded nemesis.
It’s my belief that nothing would be more painful or uncomfortable, than forcing your victim to read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, famous for its ‘stream of consciousness’ narrative mode ostensibly used to build an intricate picture of character development, and inter-war social structure.
Sentences that take up a whole page, extreme abuse of the semi-colon and a supreme lack of action combine to create a laugh-a-minute novel that’s about as exciting as a Susan Boyle album, and far more time-consuming. Such extended sentences demand full concentration; which would be fine, if the reward at the end was in any way desirable. Instead, Mrs Woolf takes three paragraphs to describe a man sitting on a bench, or multiple pages to wonder whether a car driving past a flower shop has the Queen in it.
No matter how determined your mindset when you start this book, sooner or later the age-old question inevitably sinks in: who cares? Maybe I’m too simple, or maybe I’m too old-fashioned, but when I read a book, I expect a plot and a light at the end of a 200-page-long novel.

The Handmaid’s Tale

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state. The Republic has resorted to assigning fertile women, to the society’s prominent figures to ensure its survival after the plummeting birth rates. The reader is exposed to the harsh reality of the community through the narration of Offred, a handmaid who serves the Commander and his wife Serena Joy, in their attempt to produce a child. As she desperately clings to her previous identity, Offred discovers that her body is her only chance of surviving a regime wrought with corruption and deceit at every level. While Atwood’s style is easy reading, she doesn’t shy away from some graphic descriptions, which emphasise the oppression within the dystopian society. This is certainly not an emotionally uplifting read, yet Atwood’s tale will leave you contemplating whether aspects of Gilead already exist in our modern society?

The Female Eunuch

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

At its heart The Female Eunuch is a call for freedom from a constricting conformity that still exists. Although flawed and occasionally quaint today, it’s a furious book that’s far from obsolete.
It’s at its best when angry, which is often. The strongest chapters, such as ‘The Object of Male Fantasy’ and ‘The Stereotype’, are those that attack social conventions, particularly the doll-like ideal of passive femininity. Here the writing is both elegantly mournful, ‘It still comes as a surprise to most people to learn that Marilyn Monroe was a great actress, most pitifully to Marilyn herself, which is one of the reasons why she is dead’, and viciously witty, in gleeful lines like ‘No woman wants to find out that she has a twat like a horse collar’. Its combination of detail and vitriol makes it both academic and engaging.
There’s a lot to digest; slang, class, communism, marriage, education, employment, violence and, of course, sex. Inevitably there are weaknesses. The statistical and psychoanalytical sections feel irrelevant now, some parts are too anecdotal, and occasionally Greer tries too hard to be controversial; ‘Hopefully, this book is subversive’. However, these flaws don’t affect the force of the book’s main arguments.
The final chapter, on revolution, is optimistic, and since its publication in 1970 much has improved. However, as long as ‘c*nt’ remains the worst word one can say and politicians have to defend being unmarried, The Female Eunuch will remain powerful and unsettling.

Judge a Book by its Cover – The Death of Bunny Munro

Written by Clair Gordon on . Posted in Books.

Judge a Book by its Cover – This week The Mancunion Literature section decided to have a little experiment, and see if the classic theory of ‘judging a book by its cover’, really does work.

Clair Gordon, a 2nd year Linguistics student, was sent into a bookshop and told to pick up the first one that grabbed her attention. First of all Clair headed for the Erotic Fiction section, but was gently steered away to the tamer, good old fiction section and this is what she found.

Meet Bunny Munro, a self-centred, chain-smoking, irresponsible sex addict who “just found this world a hard place to be good in”. After his wife kills herself, Bunny hits the road with his nine year old son going from door to door selling all sorts of beauty products, to women he tries his level best to sleep with.

Despite being a tragic story in many ways, I found it difficult to sympathise with Cave’s protagonist, a man that comments on the fact that his wife’s “tits look good”, whilst she lifelessly hangs from the security girdle in the bedroom of their council flat in Brighton. However, after having time to reflect on the mess of a man that is Bunny Munro, I guess his awful attitude and one-track mind is what makes him interesting.

The relationship between Bunny and his son is where the heart and emotion of the story lies. The boy is a quiet, intelligent and adorable splash of colour, in the cold and raw illustration of Bunny’s life. Despite Bunny being a terrible role model, Bunny Junior adores his father and, unfortunately, you get the feeling he wants to be just like his Dad when he grows up. I wanted to pluck the boy out of the book and take him under my wing. As Bunny Junior is left alone to his thoughts whilst his father drinks, smokes and pursues anything with a vagina, he begins to see his mother’s ghost from time to time and the conversations he has with her are moving, but I wanted more.

On reading the blurb I expected a father, son relationship similar to that of the characters in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but unfortunately I found it was lacking. It was more about the two Bunnys’ separate experiences of one life, and I would have liked more attention paid to them as a family unit.

Cave’s crude narration and explicit descriptions, “he dispenses a gout of goo into a cum-encrusted sock he keeps under the seat”, are slightly too much at times but rather amusing all the same. “A potentially hot Arab chick…(oh, man, labia from Arabia)”, is a personal favourite. I enjoyed Cave’s writing style, but the excessive mentioning of Avril Lavigne’s vagina, and Kylie Minogue’s famous behind, was just unnecessary in my opinion.

Despite being touched by Bunny Junior’s character, and having the occasional giggle at Cave’s unusual style, I wasn’t satisfied when I came to read the last page. I enjoyed the book, it was different, but what I thought would be an intricate story of father and son turned out to be a fairly two-dimensional read. The cover grabbed my attention, but unfortunately the book itself didn’t.

Perhaps I would’ve been better going for the erotica section after all.

An Idiot Abroad

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

As many of you will no doubt already know, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant sent their pal Karl Pilkington around the world to see The Seven Wonders. ‘Ah, isn’t that lovely’, I hear many thoughts a’thinking. Well no, it was very cruel as both the series and the diary Karl kept on his travels portray. However, Karl’s nonchalant approach to life, even in Mexico, Egypt and Jordan his main concern is running out of Monster Munch, makes the book worth a read. Even if it obviously is scripted sixty per cent of the time, with the diary entries matching what is said in the series almost word for word.

Gervais’ reasons for sending Karl the ‘round, empty-headed, part-chimp manc’, to see The Seven Wonders is to fulfil his desire to provoke Karl to his limit. A task at which he succeeds in, as Karl is a home-bird and not particularly adept to change of any sort. Gervais and Merchant conclude that, ‘He’d’ve been happier in medieval times in a village where you didn’t travel beyond the local community. That would’ve been fine for him.’
‘Yeah, making up his own theories about the moon.’
‘Terrified because he doesn’t know where it goes during the day.’

Perhaps the funniest of Karl’s entries is during his trip to Petra, where he meets ‘Jesus’. Prior to his meeting with ‘Jesus’, Merchant explains to Karl what the condition, Jerusalem Syndrome is, and that he will be meeting a man who is ‘pushing at the very parameters of consciousness.’ Karl’s response, ‘What does the ‘H’ stand for? People always say Jesus H. Christ- what’s his middle name?’ The meeting between Karl and ‘Jesus’ completely surpasses all expectation in its hilarity, and it is these gem-like entries that make the book worth reading, as it really doesn’t matter that it’s scripted when you’re falling off your seat laughing.

Whether or not Karl is a Gervais creation, which I dearly hope he isn’t, appreciate it for what it is and laugh heartily.

The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

As a newcomer to the world of Charlaine Harris, I began reading with an open mind and high expectations due to the excitement that has previously surrounded her novels. The first mystery in the series is ‘Real Murders’. The reader follows the life of a young female librarian, Aurora Teagarden; an unlikely character to have avid interest in historical murders. Aurora is easy to warm to, as her fascination in murder is contrasted with her plain appearance and nervous disposition.
The plot moves slowly and simply through the first part of the book, following the brutal murder of a member of Real Murders; the club that Aurora belongs to in which they exchange stories and views on high profile murders. Harris doesn’t over embellish her writing, often making the chilling subject matter appear comical and light hearted. However, this style makes the storytelling itself seem realistic, in a way that murder mysteries of this kind occasionally are not.
The mood darkens as it becomes clear that the death of the club’s vice president was not an isolated case, and Aurora becomes more involved in solving the mystery. Nothing is left for the reader to realise for themselves, as Harris details every aspect and possibility of the developing plot. This makes for an easy read and certainly not a challenging one. As Aurora comes closer to discovering the member of her small community responsible for the horrifying, copy-cat murders, she enters herself and her family into situations far more dangerous than her character at the beginning of the book could have imagined. The murders she has read about become real life, and are more frightening than the reader expects Aurora to cope with. The ending, as in any mystery worth reading, is an exciting and unexpected conclusion to an enjoyable read.
The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Omnibus 1, is a series of four stories; Real Murders, A Bone to Pick, Three Bedrooms One Corpse and The Julius House.

Heartstone

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

Heartstone is the fifth novel in Sansom’s best-selling ‘Shardlake’ series; Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign and Revelation. However, do not think that it necessary to have read the first four before embarking on the fifth. Heartstone does not require a previous, in-depth knowledge of the characters involved as the crux of the tale and those involved are explained as the story unfolds.
Heartstone is not an easy-going read, it takes a certain level of commitment to get through the first two chapters in-particular, as the reader is hurled in to the 16th century and King Henry VIII’s invasion of France. It is summer, 1545, and the hero of the tale is Shardlake; an un-likely hero, with a hunch-back, and unacceptably sympathetic for a lawyer in the severe King Henry’s rule. Shardlake is to look into a case of ward-ship, as a favour to the Queen, Catherine Parr. This is quickly revealed to be no ordinary case as it begins with suicide, or possibly murder, and as Shardlake is attacked in an attempt to have him desist his inquiries in to the already disturbing state of affairs.
Shardlake and his clerk Barak, must out-wit slimy lawyer Dyrick who they suspect to have something to do with Shardlake’s attack, and Master Hobbey his client, whose ward-ship of Hugh Curteys is under investigation as requested by the Queen. The plot is thickened by Shardlake’s acquaintance with Bedlam inmate, Ellen Fettiplace, who was sent to Bedlam nineteen years prior, after she was raped aged sixteen. Ellen should have been discharged the following year, yet someone continues to pay her fees and she refuses to leave, claiming agoraphobia to be the cause. As Shardlake, Barak, Dyrick and his clerk the puritanical preaching Feaveryear, travel from London to Hoyland, the home of Master Hobbey and Hugh Curteys, more of Ellen’s history is revealed as Shardlake asks questions around her home-town of Rolfswood.
Sansom merges historical fact with fiction seemingly effortlessly, as what is a complex web of information is kept linked together by Shardlake’s narration. The narration from our hero has the added bonus of allowing a certain amount of informality in the more serious situations, and is often

Mini Shopaholic

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Books.

Reading Sophie Kinsella’s newest novel, ‘Mini Shopaholic’, I attempted to reserve judgement about the book based on the front cover graphics of mother (Becky) and toddler (Minnie) laden with shopping bags all displaying designer names. Obviously, a book has more to it than the front sleeve. Surely. Maybe Becky Brandon would be a more complex character than this picture would give credit for, and overturn the limited characterisation of women as only being interested in shopping. Sure she wants a ‘shopping friend for life’ in her two year old daughter, and can’t stand those mothers who wear ‘crocs over nubbly homemade socks’. ‘Nubbly’? I know, I’m not too sure what that means either. My hopes weren’t high.
The novel is set against a ‘silly’ financial crisis, which keeps getting in the way of Becky’s plans of spending copious amounts of money on designer clothes. Which are described in detailed bracketed sentences alongside Becky’s stream of consciousness, acting as some sort of literary subtitles to the, almost inert, action of the plot. Becky herself is never given an extensive physical description, and Kinsella states that this was a conscious decision so that ‘anyone’ could identify with her. I guess most women spend £110 on a cardigan then. The disparity of descriptive detail between Becky and her clothes generates a voyeuristic emphasis on what she is wearing. The reader cannot picture Becky, but does know exactly what colour of Burberry bag, Louboutin shoes and Dior sunglasses she is wearing. She is not a character but a walking clothes horse which the reader is invited to jealously drool over. The woman disappears behind the clothes, literally becoming ‘all fur coat and no knickers’.
However, limitations to her shopping habits pushes Becky towards engaging in an empowering project to prove to her friends just how resourceful she can be – a surprise birthday party for her husband. With what could be called ‘Stepford suburban reserve’, the trials and tribulations of this feat somehow manage to last the entire book. Fear not prospective housewives it does not all end in tears. The label obsessed shopping stereotype lives on, men are from mars and women are from Harrods?