To The Last Page

Cloth Girl is set in a British West African outpost in the 1930’s/1940’s, against the backdrop of the Second World War and one nation’s struggle for independence and self determination. The story’s real drive however is in it depiction of the lives of two very different women and their fortunes. Mathilda is a young fourteen year-old native schoolgirl, starting English lessons and excited about her future, when she is forced into a marriage as Second Wife to the illustrious lawyer Robert Bannerman, a native of the country who has been educated at university in England. Apart from having her prospects taken out of her hands, Mathilda, still a child, has to endure the jealousy and humiliation of the lawyer’s First Wife, the sophisticated and cruel Julie. We also follow the fortunes of Audrey, the new wife of Alan Turton, an assistant to the Governor at the Colonial Office – in many respects also having her life brought to a standstill, finding it impossible to adjust to either the tediou...

The cover of the proof copy of Sarah Waters new novel comes adorned with what might well be the subtitle of the book: “ A Lot Of People Who Lived Through the War Don’t Like to Talk About It ”, but it’s not just the war that is discreetly pushed aside by each of the characters, it is their unwillingness to face up to who they are, to the secret lives they were forced to lead and the terrible actions that each of them were driven to during a very turbulent time in their lives. Opening in 1947 after the war, each of the characters has a dark secret they wish to block out. Helen and Viv work together in a London dating agency on Oxford Street. Helen is in love with Julia, a writer of mystery fiction, but the necessity of keeping her love secret and her own jealousy is tearing their relationship apart. Viv is having an affair with a married man, Reggie – a relationship that is doomed as he is never going to leave his wife. Viv’s brother Duncan was imprisoned during the war years over an inc...

When Rome is invaded in 1527 by a pillaging army of Spanish and German Lutheran troops, the high life is over for Fiammetta Bianchini, a beautiful, young, high ranking courtesan who could count Vatican Cardinals among her select clientele. Shorn of her hair and her riches looted bar a few gems she has managed to swallow, she escapes with Bucino, a dwarf in her employ, and together they travel to Venice, hoping to make their fortunes again. Once in Venice, and with the aid of a local witch La Draga to help her recover the charms she has lost on their long journey. Fiammetta hopes to build up a new client base in Venice, but apart from the fact that her looks have lost their lustre, there are other obstacles that prevent her from establishing herself as a new courtesan, not least the appearance in the city of the Roman poet Aretino, an old acquaintance and rival who could destroy her reputation with a stroke of his pen. Aretino however has a reputation to keep himself and Fiammetta and B...

Adam Miller is a US-Army war-crimes investigator in 1946, just after the war, investigating and gathering of intelligence on the Nazi perpetrators of the horrors of the concentration camps and attempting to bring them to justice. On leave and visiting his widowed mother in Venice, he is horrified to discover that she is engaged to a distinguished Italian doctor, Gianni Maglione, suspecting – despite the advice of his mother’s friend Bertie that she in love with the man and has never been happier – that he is really after her money. Adam meets Claudia at a party, a young Jewish girl who suffered at the hands of her captors in one of the camps and when they meet Gianni, she believes she recognises the man who handed over her sick father to the occupying German forces during the war, to die in a concentration camp, or more likely since he was so ill, on the train on the way there. Using his contacts in intelligence, Adam investigates Gianni’s background and finds some suspicious activitie...

In July 1980, the author of Shantaram Gregory David Roberts, a modern day Ned Kelly, a heroin addict who had been involved in some serious crime and armed robberies to support his habit, escaped from a maximum-security prison in Australia. While in the prison he was subjected to all kinds of torture and abuse and his escape during broad daylight made him Australia’s most wanted man for ten years until his capture in 1990. This part of Roberts’ background is principally covered in the first page of this almost 1000 page novel, and if that can be passed over so quickly you just know that what he has to say about his 10 years of freedom must be worth reading. It is, without any shadow of a doubt. The novel opens with the narrator arriving in Bombay, under a false passport bearing the name of Lindsay. He immediately has the good fortune to meet Prabaker, an Indian who is to be his guide into everything there is to know about Bombay and being Indian. He also gets to know and falls in love ...

There are quite a few surprises in store for the reader of The Secret Purposes . It’s not so much the fact that David Baddiel confounds any expectations you might have of him from his TV comedian persona or that he shows himself here to be a first-class writer and storyteller – what’s more surprising is that, barring one or two concessions to modernity, this book remains so resolutely old-fashioned with the kind of storyline that would not be out of place in an old 1930’s or 1940’s black and white movie melodrama like ‘Waterloo Bridge’. The novel is set against the background of the forced internment of German nationals to the Isle of Man in 1940. Most of the German nationals resident in the UK just happen to be Jewish refugees fleeing from the persecution that is beginning to escalate against them in Europe. At this stage however, the scale of the Nazis’ genocidal activities is not yet fully comprehended and it’s deemed more important to minimise risks and just lock-up anyone who migh...

Fassin Taak is a slow seer, who undertakes delves, explorations of Dweller culture and knowledge. The Dwellers are inhabitants of gas giant planets and are among the most ancient and long-living creatures in the galaxy. While investigating some of their library materials, Taak unwittingly uncovers a clue to a legendary network of wormholes, rumoured to be secretly used by the Dwellers in their incredibly long excursions through the universe. It’s immensely valuable information that is in danger of being misused if it gets into the wrong hands, but word of its existence has leaked out. The whole system is on the brink of war, with attacks already being launched by troublesome Beyonder and E-5 Disconnect factions and a particularly bloodthirsty character, the Archimandrite Luseferous. Taak is charged with finding out the key to the conflict that his clue has uncovered, taking him on a journey to the far reaches of the galaxy. The plot of Iain Banks’ new novel is fairly straightforward an...