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The Shameful Peace
Frederic Spotts
Yale £12.99
What did French artists, writers and musicians do under the German occupation? Some fled; some, the collabos, collaborated; others, the attentistes, coped and waited; a few risked their lives. Their stories range from those of reprehensible anti-Semitic collabos such as the intellectual Robert Brasillach, later executed for treason, to the heroic Jean Ballard, editor of Les Cahiers du Sud, a haven for refugee writers, including Jews. Indeed, it is the writers who did both the most damage and the most good. The latter include the extraordinary Jean Galtier-Boissière, “muckraking journalist”, freethinker, bon vivant and peerless diarist of the occupation. Spotts’s comprehensive study of the period is presented in an attractive, effervescent style. He uses telling quotations from the protagonists and has an ear for the bon mot: his excellent section on the refugee artist community in Marseilles includes the noted author Roland Dorgelès’s observation that “Paris melted into Marseilles like a piece of ice in a glass of pastis”.
Tom Moriarty
This Is How
MJ Hyland
Canongate, £7.99
When Patrick Oxtoby moves into a boarding house in an English seaside town he leaves his parents, abandons his university degree and moves away from his fiancee, who has broken off their engagement. Though he tries to start anew and build a better life as a mechanic, Patrick fails entirely and commits a shocking crime. The questions of how and why the crime was committed plague those at the trial, and Hyland, a former lawyer, skilfully describes the minutiae of law. But while the first-person present-tense narrative brings the reader as close to Patrick as possible, he remains an opaque character; there is no solace for his mother’s “how”, only Patrick’s emotional inarticulacy. The second part of the novel, which takes place in the prison, is a brilliant juxtaposition to Patrick’s previous life: in the limited confines of his cell, Ox, as he’s called, ultimately finds a life, “shrinking to a size that suits me more”. A well-observed psychological drama.
Emily Firetog
Who Really Runs Ireland? The Story of the Elite Who Led Ireland from Bust to Boom . . . and Back Again
Matt Cooper
Penguin Ireland, €9.99
This updated edition has a new conclusion, taking us right up to Nama and the Government’s efforts to reach a deal with the unions, and a postscript detailing the current fortunes of some of the main players in the book, including Seán Quinn, who the author says “was seduced by property” and “by Anglo Irish”. The story, as told by the sober and forensic Cooper, is the same: how a cabal of bankers, builders, developers and investors crashed themselves, and much of the economy, on a rock of greed, speculation and hubris; how this super-wealthy circle gambled fortunes on property and shares; how this same group cast a spell over an awestruck and thankful political class – many of whom they regularly socialised with at race meetings, fundraisers, football matches and dinner parties – who greased the wheels through tax breaks and legislation; and how their critics were excoriated for daring to question the excesses of these so-called wealth creators.
Tim Fanning
Trotsky: A Biography
Robert Service
Macmillan, £9.99
This portrait may not only raise the hackles of Trotskyist idolaters but also irk those who regard the revolutionary figure with even the most slender degree of appreciation. Robert Service has endeavoured to be as uncompromising as possible in his depiction and evaluations of the subject, even occasionally allowing his dislike for the man to spill into the text. What is abundantly evident, however, is the sheer scale of meticulous, exhaustive research that has gone into producing such a complete biography. Regardless of the political outlook of the reader, and the author’s latent negativity towards Leiba Bronstein, this is an articulate work driven by a coherent narrative. Service has written an expansive history of Trotsky’s life that is both readable and succinct. While not quite the definitive account, it is nonetheless a must for anyone even remotely curious about this fascinating man.
Sebastian Clare
Harare North
Brian Chikwava
Vintage Books, £7.99
Books about marginalised immigrants struggling in mainstream society are nothing new, but Brian Chikwava’s wildly unreliable, unnamed narrator in Harare North – Zimbabwean slang for London – is a brave new antihero whose timely and gripping story is a must-read. Told in pidgin English, the narrator’s story begins as he lands in London claiming to be seeking asylum. He eventually moves into his childhood friend Shingi’s cramped Brixton squat. He refers to newspapers that denounce “his excellency” Mugabe as propaganda machines, and it soon becomes clear that the asylum seeker is really a member of the Green Bombers youth brigade – that is, a pro-Mugabe thug. His goal in emigrating is to get $5,000 to pay off a police bribe back home. Despite his exploitation of those around him, the narrator is an astute observer of London immigrant life. Chikwava can be funny as well, finding humour in the worst situations – humour that ultimately heightens the undercurrent of menace and despair.
Emily Firetog
