To The Last Page

Written in the form of a medieval folktale compiled from various manuscripts and accounts, The Sad Tale recounts the true fate of the Grossbart Brothers, Manfried and Hegel, two of the meanest villains central Europe has ever seen. Their family background of petty thieves and graverobbers is nothing to be proud of, but having been abandoned by the uncle who brought them up, the brothers remain convinced that their family heritage and fortune lies in the sandy deserts of Gyptland and start their journey. Not without first settling accounts with a local farmer who once beat them in their youth for stealing turnips from his field, but taking revenge a little too far on his family, they end up being pursued by the farmer and other townfolk. That's the least of their worries as the Grossbarts encounter all sorts of medieval horrors on their journey, both human and supernatural, plague-infested villages, lustful witches, man-eating half-man-half-beasts, devil-possessed hogs and the foul...

There's no doubting the originality of the South African setting of Lauren Beukes' post-cyberpunk futuristic science-fiction, and although the language is in places a little heavy on buzzwords and invented tech-speak, the novel's underlying purpose and satire of a society reliant on technology to the point of oppression is clear and not so removed from the present day. It's a novel that is very much to do with social attitudes, authority, corporate interests and in particular how they apply to youth and specifically youth in South Africa. It takes its view from a group of young people very much in tune with the rapidly changing world and its use of technology, some of them radical artists, photographers and graffiti painters, others expressing their ability and creativity in other less socially acceptable forms of protest against the establishment (sometimes from within the establishment), through hacking of corporate billboards and through streaming or posting footage ...

There’s an unapologetically strong Nationalist/Republican slant in Patricia Falvey’s story of the revolutionary years in Ireland that might not be to everyone’s taste. Taking in the 1916 Rebellion and the political and social turmoil in the subsequent years leading up to the formation of the Irish Republic and the partition of Northern Ireland, with a few explanatory history passages at relevant points, the novel certainly seems like it has an eye on the Irish-American market, but there’s also a human story to The Yellow House that is involving, relevant and has a ring of truth to it. The emphasis is certainly however on the suffering of decent, hard-working poor oppressed Catholics, represented here by Eileen O’Neill, a young woman who has seen her mother and father and their glorious Yellow House in Glenlea, Co. Armagh fall victim to the prejudice and hatred of a bigoted Protestant population, everyone of them hard, dour and authoritarian, acting out of bitterness and fear of what H...

Stevie, the somewhat disturbed central figure relating events in Kaaron Warren's fantastically readable novel, is a young woman with a few emotional and behavioural problems that stem from her relationship with her parents - a mysterious father, a cop killed at a young age in the line of duty, and her mother, who Stevie has accidentally killed in a car crash. The author nonetheless makes Stevie, for all her problems, her abrasiveness and her particularly twisted view of the world, real and sympathetic - a kind of twisted Holden Caulfield character who has the ability, or curse, to see through the phoniness of people and their behaviour, but who is wonderfully unable to prevent herself from speaking her mind about it. She has an idea of how the world should be and how things should happen, but like the back garden that she imagines one day being filled with jasmine, the reality is a rotting pile of manure and some troubling objects that lie buried beneath the surface.  Stevie's ...

Henry Murger’s original 1851 novel, which was to be the basis for operas by Leoncavallo and, more famously by Puccini, is rather different in form and content from the focus of the opera (in Puccini at least) on the relationship between Rodolfo and Mimi. The four bohemians are indeed all there however; Rodolphe, Schaunard, Colline and Marcel, four starving artists, a poet, a musician, a philosopher and a painter, who come to share accommodation, gather for drinks at the Café Momus, help each other out when necessary and encourage each other in appreciation of their respective talents, confident that their artistry will be eventually reach its public and be handsomely rewarded. The playful attempts of these four men to entertain each other while struggling to make enough money to survive and eat in the meantime, indulging the occasional extravagance that is beyond their means only make it through to Puccini’s opera as colourful background scenes, but they are the main focus of Murger’s ...

Ryan David Jahn’s first novel is based around the notorious real-life murder of Kitty Genovese (one also fictionalised in a short story by Harlan Ellison, The Whimper of Whipped Dogs ), the author here however using it as the central incident to examine the lives of a number of what was reported to be 38 people who witnessed the crime and failed to do anything about it. What could possibly be going on in the lives of these people that it is too much trouble to even lift a phone when a woman is attacked outside her house? Acts of Violence manages, in a pulp-fiction manner that is entirely appropriate to the setting and the period, to depict the feverish mindsets of a range of characters whose only thing in common would seem to be that they are all in the same neighbourhood and all of them are living in fear or despair. Taking in loners contemplating suicide, alcoholism, unhappy marriages in crisis, child abuse, sordid scenes of adultery and wife-swapping, people living in ill-health, c...