Quick Round-up: Books

I seem to have whizzed through a handful of books in the last few weeks, including Madonna: An Intimate Biography (J. Randy Taraborrelli, 2002) which does what it says on the cover, up to the Drowned World tour in 2002 anyway. With Madonna's MDNA proving to be all kinds of danceable I decided to finally pull this book off the shelf before it got even more out of date (I was hoping the library would have the more up-to-date edition, but sadly not) and find out a bit more about the Queen of Pop. Taraborrelli seems to have had excellent access to friends and family, as well as having a healthy regard for the successes and failures that Madonna has experienced in the worlds of music and movies in her life. My over-whelming impression was that she was a bit of a bitch with a single-minded desire for success and infamy, but that a lot of the bluster of Madonna comes from her experiences as a child, losing her mother young and seeing her father remarry. Reading about Madonna's life gave me a greater understanding of some of her lyrics, why she went in certain directions, and how hard it must be for a man to be in a relationship with her. The biography was an easy, enlightening read, full of gossip and intrigue but without being salacious or tawdry.

Slightly different non-fiction, but I suppose still dealing with a mythical creature, The Natural History of Unicorns (Chris Lavers, 2009) was the very first book I've taken out of a (public) library. It caught my eye as I browsed the shelves as it seemed like such an odd concept that I had to know more. Lavers traces the history of the unicorn in ancient texts from disparate parts of the world, through representations in the Bible and Christianity, to treks into Africa to hunt the fabled one-horned creature. In trying to uncover the real life animals that prompted belief in the unicorn, and the mystical attributes given to 'alicorn', the name given to the horn and the substane it is made from, Lavers provides a natural history of the narwhal, the okapi and various antelope and goats that could have inspired the myths. While on occasion the text seemed to veer too far away from unicorns in parsing ancient bits of writing, Lavers creates convincing arguments to point to how unicorns were/are real, they are just amalgamations of living animals combined with the desire and belief of humans that such a divine being can exist.

On the fiction front I polished off Buried (Mark Billingham, 2006), in which DI Thorne, who I haven't caught up with in a while, investigates a kidnapping in his own inimitable, realistic and humorous style; and Murder Suicide (Keith Ablow, 2004) which sees forensic psychologist Frank Clevenger trying to understand whether a brilliant inventor committed suicide days before life-changing surgery, or whether he was murdered by one of the many suspects in his life. Thorne and Clevenger are typical crime heroes in that they are somewhat maverick-style loners with flaws, yet Billingham and Ablow steer clear of cliché with tightly plotted mysteries that are all about character and character development of their leads. So Thorne continues to grapple with the death of his father a couple of books ago, while Clevenger has an adopted teenage son to mentor and protect. Billingham and Ablow are writers I am always happy to come back to.

In a break away from detective fiction I took another long-term resident from the book shelf and finally cracked the front page on The Princess Bride (William Goldman, 1973/99). I had seen the movie version some time ago and must admit that I didn't really get it, so I was intrigued by what the book would be. It's an oddity. Goldman is supposedly so enamoured with a book that his grandfather read to him as a sick child, written by S. Morgenstern of Florin, a country supposedly existing in Northern Europe, and so he sets out to translate an English abridgement for his own son. Thus Goldman and his 'family' are characters in the background of the telling of the tale of Princess Buttercup, her suitor Wesley, evil Prince Humperdinck, giant Fezzik and swordsman Inigo Montoya, and Goldman regularly breaks into the story to explain parts, tell you what he cut from the Morgenstern text and to reassure the reader when it looks like a favourite character may die. It's a tricky way to write a book, and I'm not sure I really bought it and the reasons for it. It is funny in the parody aspect of fairy tale heroes and adventurous derring do, and the plot is engaging and warm hearted, I just can't help but feel that perhaps it doesn't have quite enough bite to really work as a spoof.

My second library loan was Remembrance of Things I Forgot (Bob Smith, 2011), a book that has rattled around in my mind for days after reading. The premise is fantastic - John Sherkston plans to break up with his boyfriend, who has just invented a time machine for the US Government in 2006, when evil Vice President Dick Cheney hits a switch and sends John back to 1986, where he teams up with his young self and young future-boyfriend to try and prevent his sister from killing herself in 15 years, as well as to prevent George W.  Bush from becoming President and screwing the country. How could this set up not reap huge rewards? And it truly does, for the most part. Smith has a fantastically ascerbic wit that had me really laughing out loud, and the time travel plotting is intricate and well constructed, full of what ifs and ponderous questions like, if you could go back and time and change something, would you. Nowhere is this question better explored than in John's attempts to save his father from drinking himself to death, and his sister from shooting herself - his interactions with his family as a middle-aged man are touchingly portrayed, adding much depth and emotional heft to the novel. Initially, the idea of an evil Cheney running around 1986 trying to stop John from changing the future is hilarious and the liberal bias of the character and writer is screamingly clear. Unfortunately, I found the continued attacks on Cheney and Bush became wearying and a little repetitive, and the characters' plans to frame Bush in a sex scandal thereby preventing his presidency is funny but on occasion the barbs are just out right nasty. I mean, I understand that their time in office wasn't the best - yes there were wars, people died - but they were not super villains without conscience (or Syria's Assad). Luckily things get back on track by the end of the book and the bad taste doesn't linger as long as the exciting ideas thrown up by the time travel plot - chief of which involves the confusing sexual attraction between John and his 26 year old self ('Junior'), a quirk that wouldn't have been possible had the lead been heterosexual, and a very enticing quandry it is at that.