The latest titles reviewed
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury, £7.99
Elegant, original, highly sophisticated and very funny, this Faustian fantasy debut, chronicling one magician's efforts to revive magic in Napoleonic war England, is a triumph of sustained storytelling, as well as a welcome celebration of formal English. Clarke's flair lies in her grasp of the normal. No one in her graceful, high speed romp has any difficulty accepting magic as part of Regency London life. Beautifully written, with a convincing sense of period, the influence of Austen and Dickens echoes throughout. The real versus the imagined is brilliantly explored through a group of characters who are fully developed, possessed of their respective demons and desires. Readers of all ages will enjoy engaging with a vibrantly subversive imagination committed to the still inexhaustible possibilities of the 19th-century English novel.Eileen Battersby
Mao's Last Dancer, Li Cunxin, Fusion Press, £10
Back in the bleak days of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, Madame Mao decided a classical ballet company was needed to display to the world the greatness of communist China. By lucky chance, Li Cunxin, a young boy living in Qingdao in the Shandong province, was plucked out of obscurity and unimaginable poverty to attend an elite institution for intensive dance instruction. His delight at being fed proper meals and sleeping in his own bed matched his initial dismay at the rigorous training - until he finally twigged this was his big chance to escape poverty and bring glory to his family. He travelled to the Houston Ballet and experienced the reality behind the propaganda he'd been swallowing for years - and he defected to the West. This simply-written tale is an enthralling personal narrative as well as insightful social history. Christine Madden
In Praise of Slow, Carl Honoré, Orion Books, £7.99
Our daily struggle to squeeze in all the deadlines, e-mails, phone calls, quality time with the kids (if they're lucky), fast food, espressos, and newspapers (if we're lucky) begins with an alarm clock, which says it all. When speed is king, slowing down sounds like quitting. Honoré's readable and persuasive book looks at the worldwide effort to slow down, or rather, to achieve a sensible balance between fast and slow living. The Slow Food movement in Italy started it all (take time over meals), and we catch up with people who are encouraging Slow Cities (more pedestrianisation), Slow Sex (tantric), Slow Learning (fewer exams)and so on. Overall, the emphasis is on promoting calm and eliminating counter-productive haste rather than rejecting speed outright, and it is virtually impossible to read Honoré's book without deciding to take things, you know, a little slower from now on. Davin O'Dwyer
The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson, Picador, £7.99
The men in question are members of a top-secret US military squad. The goats are the unfortunate animals each of whom is expected to stand still while a soldier tries to stop its heart just by staring at it. Ronson's exploration of the wackier side of these army experiments throws up much that is laughable. So traumatised were they by the Vietnam War, for instance, an army battalion was set up to walk into battlefields while holding lambs and playing soothing music to the enemy.
Yet, the smile drops when Ronson investigates how some of these radical experiments led to the conflagration at Waco and some unsavoury interrogation techniques in Iraq (most notably playing Barney the Purple Dinosaur over and over). Even if you caught Ronson's Channel 4 series, his book offers plenty of extra detail as he moves between amusement and disgust. Shane Hegarty
Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia, Leslie Chamberlain, Atlantic Books, £14.99
As you would expect from a work of philosophy that parallels the histories of Russian and European (especially German) thought from the 1820s, this is a dense work. However, like much else about it that is unclear, we are not told why this date was selected, and it is difficult to discern the intended readership; a serious scholar might resent the thin treatment of the many, many Russian thinkers cited by Chamberlain.
For the lay reader (ie the non-scholar) the work certainly has several interesting sections and observations; those dealing with Russian
and English writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Iris Murdoch are insightful. Much of the writing is peppered with works and names but information enabling a reader to contextualise and make full sense of the comparisons offered is scant. Kate Bateman
Big Bang, Simon Singh, Harper Perennial, £8.99
Want to sound impressively knowledgeable about an expanding universe, great physicists or the history of scientific thought? Then Simon Singh's captivating book is a good place to start.
At 500 pages this is hardly a bluffer's guide, but Singh keeps the reader hooked with an engaging narrative, revealing anecdotes and humorous asides as he relates how our understanding of the universe has developed.
He traces the origin of cosmology's most glamorous theory, the Big Bang, to ancient Greece where a shift in allegiance from mythology to logic set modern science on its way.
From there Singh canters towards the present, saluting innovative minds and explaining relevant theories. His account provides a fascinating, accessible background that will arm any dinner-party guest called to debate. Claire O'Connell