This week's paperbacks reviewed
The Blair Years: Extracts from The Alastair Campbell
Diaries
Edited by Alastair Campbell and
Richard Stott
Arrow, £9.99
Tony Blair's former media guru provides a day-to-day
account of New Labour's early years in office. Northern Ireland was
a major preoccupation and Campbell charts his boss's mood-swings
over the peace process. His account of Bertie Ahern's role in the
Good Friday talks differs considerably from the unionist version
and shows the outgoing Taoiseach in a more favourable light. There
is a hilarious account of a visit to Dublin with Mo Mowlam when
they had to share a hotel bathroom. Campbell does not suffer fools
gladly and found his work stressful but liked being at the heart of
the action - there are fascinating accounts of heart-to-heart
conversations with Bill Clinton and Sir Alex Ferguson in this
regard. The language is raw and the pace of events frantic. His use
of acronyms makes for confusion at times. His personal bias shows
but that's what spin-doctors are like. Highly recommended, but with
the odd grain of salt.
Deaglán de Bréadún
Tomorrow
Graham Swift
Picador, £7.99
Paula is a middle-aged mother of two teenage
children, facing into a long night as she contemplates how the
mysterious events of "tomorrow" will change her life and the lives
of her family members. Graham Swift is a master of ordinary voices
and Paula's is tender and almost embarrassingly honest as she
reconstructs the past as part of her preparation for the unnamed
event to come. For her twin son and daughter, Nick and Kate, she
describes meeting their father, the couple's hurtle into love and
the complex family backgrounds that shaped them as individuals and
then with their coupling came to shape the lives of their own
children in turn. Tomorrow is a book about parenthood, with subtle
ruminations on biology, inheritance and the nature of family, but
the page-turning device set in motion on the first page loses
momentum as the repetitions of its significance begin to grate.
When it finally comes, the revelation on which Paula's tomorrow
depends appears to have been so overplayed that it detracts from
any sympathies elicited for those involved.
Fiona McCann
The Last Empress
Anchee Min
Bloomsbury, £7.99
Historical opinion about Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi
divides into two camps. The traditional view is of a despotic
manipulator, who may even have had a hand in the death of her
Emperor son; the revisionist strand offers a more positive
alternative - a brave, charismatic woman desperate to preserve an
empire in tailspin. Anchee Min's fictionalised biography adopts the
more sympathetic perspective, beginning the story where her
previous bestseller, Empress Orchid, left off: after the death of
Tzu Hsi's husband, when her crucial period as acting regent began.
As well as an Empress, Tzu Hsi was a mother, and she lived to see
both the young Emperors she raised predecease her. For all her
power, she had to remain cloistered in the Forbidden City: a
minefield of shifting alliances and systematic assassinations, and
all under the stranglehold of the West. A vivid tale of power
games, intrigue, and tragic loss.
Claire Anderson-Wheeler
To Heal the Broken Hearted: The Life of Saint Charles of Mount
Argus
By Paul Francis Spencer CP
Ovada. €13.95
Was Fr Charles of Mount Argus a man of God or a
religious maniac? You might find some clues here, but you'll have
to look elsewhere for the answer. This is for devotees, for whom
the question was answered by Pope John Paul II in 2007, when he
canonised Charles. Spencer's prime source is the remarkable diarist
Fr Salvian Nardocci, who was a contemporary of Fr Charles for 20
years, and often his sternest critic. His diary entries give a
unique insight into religious life at the time and a glimpse at the
inner struggles of Charles. Always regarded as a holy man by his
Passionate confreres, Charles's celebrity as a healer grew after he
moved to Ireland from his native Holland. And the devotion, so
quickly gained, is still maintained for this devoutly solemn man.
Martin Noonan
Burning Bright
Tracy Chevalier
Harper, £7.99
Tracy Chevalier has here revived the structure of
her acclaimed Girl with a Pearl Earring, approaching a major
historical figure from the perspective of a minor fictional
character. Where a maidservant once introduced us to 17th-century
Delft and the world of Vermeer, here we meet William Blake through
two newly-arrived country bumpkins and a mischievous city kid. As
they skitter down the back alleys of Georgian London, we follow an
innocence to experience story emboldened by a serious amount of
historical research. Blake, with his free love and unpopular
politics makes for an entertaining subject, and the story is light
and pacy, but Blake's relationship with the children through whose
eyes we see him is underdeveloped. True to Chevalier's winning
style, this is a well-researched portrait of late-Georgian London
life for new arrivals, of the process of publishing Blake's poetry
and, incongruously, of circus life. There is plenty here to
intrigue fans of her historical fiction, but this doesn't burn
quite as brightly as her previous novels.
Nora Mahony