Authors know everythingIn a week in which the public has deduced from micro-scrutiny of Kate Middleton's family photograph that she is engaged in some sort of conspiracy...“I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.”
...so said the late Robert Mapplethorpe (whose many photography books include pictures of exquisite flowers and bracing S&M), in a reminder that of the many things you might criticise the royals for, being a clumsy editor of Instagram images is not really deserving of a full-scale enquiry. Buy the exquisite flowersBuy the bracing S&M
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Touching Cloth by Fergus Butler–Gallie. Penguin, £10.99
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This uplifting perspective on year one as a newcomer to the priesthood is out in paperback next week. Helping the public through their darker moments brings many unexpected pressures, such as discovering the heat-trapping properties of a heavy cassock while leading the prayers at a wake on a warm day, with the discomfort raised close to sauna levels when the congregation add their marijuana fumes to the send-off. At Christmas, midnight mass following directly after closing time is the sort of scheduling that some in attendance are literally unable to contain themselves over. But it's not all mop and bucket – as the title implies, it is a touching tale too, especially in the author’s exasperation at battling to make a difference to people in spite of a chilly church bureaucracy. And wouldn’t everyone prefer a vicar who joined the profession because he'd “heard that black was slimming”? Buy this book
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The Strong Words Hot List In search of some late-March American lit? Try these five new fictions…... |
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5.Scrap by Calla Henkel Sceptre, £16.99
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When a broken relationship and a nagging mortgage force artist Esther into the workplace, she takes a job creating a surprise birthday present for the husband of the ultra-rich Naomi. Esther’s job is to create a special scrapbook documenting the couple’s 25 years of matrimony, using everything that Naomi sends her. Secrecy is absolute, and Esther immerses herself in family lore through countless boxes of stuff, until the material turns into potential evidence when Naomi dies mid-project, and Esther suspects the husband. Buy this book
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4. Say Hello To My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet riverrun, £20
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When Izzy, 20, a Cuban immigrant to Miami, receives a fierce cease and desist message preventing him from professionally imitating the rapper Pitbull, he falls back on Plan B: to “remake himself” as Al Pacino’s creation of Tony “Scarface” Montana. He'll need an entourage, so in place of a pet tiger he wonders how he can get his hands on a captive killer whale called Lolita. While Izzy meditates on the mother he lost while making the sea crossing to America as a seven-year-old, the orca Lolita, snatched from her pod in 1970, also has deep missing-mother issues. Buy this book
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3. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange Harvill Secker, £18.99
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This multigenerational saga of the dismal lot accorded to American Indians begins in sorrow – with the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. Following this atrocity by the US Army, one mute survivor is packed off to the sort of institution designed to separate Native Americans from their culture by only mildly less brutal educational means. As the subsequent generations zip back and forth through multitudinous long-term hardships and unaddressed trauma, the older members reflect on how there must be more to life than just surviving, while the latest iteration of teenagers, in 2018 Oakland, get on with the day-to-day of being damaged. Buy this book
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2. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel Daunt, £9.99
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As eight lady boxers go toe to toe for the national under-18 title at Bob’s sweltering Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada, the author follows them like a sportswriter through the tournament, and like a novelist through their interior in-fight monologues. Then having reviewed their various backstories as they stop punches and split lips, she leaps forwards to life decades on, when events in Bob’s crummy warehouse are a distant, aching-knuckled memory. Buy this book
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1. Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman Serpent's Tail, £16.99
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At the minimum wage floor of the American jobs market, a series of characters labour at a Walmart-style mega-depot. The employees on “Team Movement”, the jolly label for the drones who unload the lorries and unpack the boxes, are so penny-pinched by their corporate overlords that most work two jobs. Trapped in a grim system, the workers contrive a plan – to get their hated boss promoted so one of them can take her position. Buy this book
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Strong words expected at "Young Writer of the Year" awards this Tuesday
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On Tuesday I’ll be at the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award at Brixton’s Canova Hall. I see award ceremonies mainly as an opportunity to work on meeting my monthly champagne quota, so wish me luck. But for those of more sophisticated intellects, there are four names on the shortlist: “… the novelists Tom Crewe, 34, and Michael Magee, 33, the poet Momtaza Mehri, 29, and the memoirist Noreen Masud, 34.” I’m in awe of anyone who can get a book into print, so congratulations to all for having gone way beyond. But I do have a couple of axes to grind.
Firstly, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, by what metric do at least three of these people count as “young”? The age of 34 is old enough to have grown nostalgic about one’s military career, to have been rejected by a child old enough to drive, to be able to bang on about one's memories of the previous century… I’m not having it. My suggestion would be to change the name to the Sunday Times Approaching Middle Age Writer of the Year Award. There's still time. My other bone of contention is this – here’s the ST’s description of its shortlist: “They are four debut authors breaking new ground in fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Crewe’s novel offers a fresh portrait of Victorian Britain inspired by a real-life scandal; Mehri’s poetry collection roams restlessly across Mogadishu, London and Lampedusa; Magee mines his Belfast childhood to reveal complex truths about post-Troubles Northern Ireland; and Masud’s vivid, unconventional memoir explores complex trauma through her love of flat landscapes.”
One of the goals of the project is to promote (so-called) young writers. And that being the case, this language needs some work.
Assuming that most people won’t have heard of all, or even any, of these writers, potential readers are going to be deciding whether to investigate further on the quality of information provided.
That process will play out as follows: “…scandal…” (*excellent – tell me more*) “…poetry…” (*this ice is starting to feel very thin*) “…Lampedusa…” (*I’m afraid you’ve lost me*) “…Northern Ireland…” (*didn’t a Channel 4 news reporter once call these the two most boring words in the English language?*) “…flat landscapes…” (*have you got anything by Dan Brown?*)
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A new reading hazard identified: over-enthusiastic participation in audio books...Dear Ed, thanks for the Sunday Book Club’s recommendation of Tracy Sierra’s Night Watching (Viking, £14.99). I am listening to it as an audio book and was so engrossed in the early pages, where a mother makes her children hide with her in a secret cupboard under the stairs while a frightening man walks around in their isolated house one night looking for them, that at one point I found myself wagging my finger at the kids who didn’t seem to grasp just how serious a situation they were in. Then no sooner had I reminded myself that I was not actually in this story than I started shushing them – out loud. I’ve never participated in a novel before, and am looking forward to finding out how I'll be joining in with the forthcoming chapters. Helena.Thanks Helena, good luck helping guide the family to safety with your repertoire of gestures and noises. Hope you get to make an arrest. EdReaders – have you ever become a little too involved in a novel? All instances of involuntary behaviour while immersed in a book, especially in public, to info@strong-words.comAnd in literary cuisine news...Ed, like you, I followed up reading Lottie Hazell’s brilliant wedding disaster novel Piglet (Doubleday, £16.99, see Strong Words issue 49) by making the recipe for Pasta alla Putanesca that she gives at the end of the book. I loved the book, but what will stay with me for ever is discovering how anchovies in hot olive oil just disappear completely, bones and all. It’s like the secret of invisibility (except they don’t come back). I now make it at least once a week, even though my husband has little time for anchovies, let alone capers, but it’s worth it just to see them vanish! More recipes please, Katrine O.I agree Katrine, I’ve never seen a fish make itself quite so scarce. It makes you wonder whether you even remembered to put it in. Is there a scientist among us who can explain the anchovy’s disappearing act? EdAll other reports on watching your dinner defy logic or otherwise act up, please, to info@strong-words.com.
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A health and safety message from a Soviet biochemistry lab...
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This week I've really enjoyed reading the reissue of Nicholas Borodin's 1955 memoir One Man In His Time, about being a scientist in Russia under Stalin between the wars.
It starts during the revolution, where the author becomes immune to seeing bodies everywhere in the streets, and carries on during the various purges, where he grows accustomed to his colleagues disappearing.
At one point he is training in a laboratory for infectious diseases: “The professor was never afraid of dangerous bacteria and handled their cultures with the self-confidence of a skilled microbe-hunter, making his pupils do the same.”
Among these handling techniques are the transfer of bacteria-enriched liquids to petridishes, which if you cast your mind back to school, was done with a pipette, the little glass tube with a bulb on the end. In Soviet Russia the rubber bulbs were inadequate to the task, so students had to transfer the deadly fluid by sucking it into the tubes with their mouths.
And in one of 1955's great understatements, Borodin writes, “Work with a pipette containing millions of germs had to be done quickly and very carefully.”
Unfortunately, “A young microbiologist, a girl-student, B, working for the first time with bacteria of anthrax, sucked too strongly at the liquid culture while filling a pipette and the cotton-wool plug was sucked into her mouth along with some of the pathogenic liquid.
“Professor! I have swallowed some of the anthrax culture’, the pale agitated girl reported to Gurvich. She was naturally very frightened. Anthrax is a very dangerous disease and often has a deadly effect.”
In spite of being given “a strong disinfectant” to rinse with, Girl B “bravely awaited the day when the first signs of infection might be expected to appear. ‘I have already got a temperature,’ she proudly announced one day. ‘I think it is coming.’ The next day she said that she had diarrhoea. It excited all the young people working in the laboratory. We looked at B. as if she was a human guinea-pig and waited for what should come next. She was flattered by all the attention.”
By day three more symptoms had appeared and she reported feeling very ill. “‘By the way,’ Gurvich said to B., yawning, ‘the culture you swallowed was not anthrax, but pseudo-anthrax. As you know, it is absolutely nonpathogenic. I always give it to beginners to make them more careful and to teach them to work out a proper technique for handling the real anthrax. I hope you had a nice lesson.’”
Buy this book
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How to subscribe to Strong Words
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If you'd like to subscribe to the magazine – six magnificent full-colour issues of new book magic every year – then you can make that happen around the clock by clicking on this link. If you prefer to conduct your business by telephone, you can call on weekdays at 01442 820580. If you're still having doubts given you've never actually seen the thing, hopefully the showcase of recent pages here will help tip the balance favourably. There's a variety of options whether you're ordering from the UK or overseas, such as one-off payments or deals that renew every six months or annually, but proving a big hit with domestic subscribers is the £4 a month deal. If you can think of a household essential or regular life-enhancer that comes in at under £4 a month, you may be trapped in 1997. So please sign up – Strong Words needs subscribers – by following this link.
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