Books Monthly Volume 13 No. 11 | August 2011 | Welcome to booksmonthly.co.uk - I hope you enjoy your visit.
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Anyone who's fighting to keep Britain's libraries open - it's unthinkable that anyone could even contemplate this - there is a Facebook page, just search for "save our libraries" and the UK page will show up...
CAROLINE SANDRY: SHAPE UP AT HOME Written by expert personal trainer Caroline Sandry, this brand new guide brought to you by Health & Fitness magazine reveals the easy, effective and fun ways women hoping to shape up can develop the tone, lean body they crave. Spanning techniques from Pilates to Bootcamp routines, featuring step-by-step instructions and pictures explaining every move, as well as great advice on using household objects to help you tone up, this expert written MagBook is a must have for all health conscious women. Extra features include guides to assist healthy weight loss and practical advice on developing healthy and sustainable eating patterns. The most comprehensive and well-illustrated book on home exercises on the market. You've taken the first steps to losing weight and bringing your body back under your control, now let Caroline Sandry help you with a series of exercises you can do at home, using just a handful of pieces of equipment that might bust the monthly budget but will bear fruit in the long run. Warm-up and cool-down exercises start this fascinating book, and then you're into the grind. The illustrations are second-to-none, guiding you through every step, every move of the arms, legs, head, torso. It's a fitness DVD you can sit and read at your leisure before starting the warm-ups and getting on with the serious busy of toning your body. This is beautifully written and expertly illustrated. I can't fault it.
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Watching the Detectives - first in a new series
Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie - Case Histories
by Paul Norman
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CASE HISTORIES is the six-part dramatisation of Kate Atkinson's brilliant private detective series about Jackson Brodie. Played by Jason Isaacs, Draco Malfoy's father in the Harry Potter films, Brodie is a complex character surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune as he tries to unravel a series of unconnected cases. The series is set in Edinburgh (even though the first novel is set in Cambridgeshire), with a strong cast including Amanda Abbington and Natasha Little. Each two-part story has a fair share of humour and tragedy, mistery and intrigue. Black Swan are publishing TV tie-in editions ofn the first three books, CASE HISTORIES, ONE GOOD TURN and WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? The fourth Brodie novel, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, is also published by Black Swan along with Kate's other books. Kate was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh.CASE HISTORIES won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster. WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? was voted Richard and Judy's Best Read of the Year, and CASE HISTORIES carries a ringing endorsement from Stephen King.
The books:
CASE HISTORIES
Case Histories is Kate Atkinson's first foray into crime fiction, and
introduces the popular Jackson Brodie, who returns in One Good Turn, When
Will There Be Good News? and Started Early, Took My Dog. A six-part
BBC1 drama series starring Jason Isaacs as Jackson Brodie and set in Edinburgh
is scheduled for transmission in autumn 2011.
A sweltering, unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet – Lost on the left, Found on the right – and the two never seem to balance. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, Jackson attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected…
Three sisters with a terrifying secret - their fourth sister went missing several years ago, along with her cuddly toy, and the police drew a blank. Theo, an overweight lawyer, whose beloved daughter was slaughtered by a knife-wielding maniac; a young husband whose head was severed by an axe; there separate cases all taken on with some reluctance by Jackson Brodie, ex-policeman and pending divorcee. The characters are brilliant, there's an underlying edge of humour and tragi-comedy, and the streams of consciousness as Kate reminisces about these various people's pasts makes this first Brodie novel nothing short of un-put-downable. I didn't know whether to postpone the July issue of Books Monthly while I read the books or to confine my reading, as always, to my "leisure time". It was a close call. The book has a strong pull on me - it doesn't matter that I know what happens because I saw the first two epidoes of CASE HISTORIES on BBC 1 (I've watched all six episodes, of course!). This is a sensational debut crime novel by Kate and deserves all the accolades and prizes it has received. It's highly original, brilliantly readable, and just fantastic! Private investigators rarely work on TV, let alone in modern novels. Jackson Brodie does. I have to say that the book is better than the TV series, but that's inevitable. It's rarely otherwise. I can't recommend this first Jackson Brodie novel highly enough. It is sensationally good, and the Black Swan team have done an awesome job in this tie-in version. Now on to ONE GOOD TURN...
ONE GOOD TURN
It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a
road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved.
Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent
bystander - until he becomes a suspect.
With Case Histories, Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In One Good Turn she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson what each one actually discovers is their true self.
Unputdownable and triumphant, One Good Turn is a sharply intelligent read that is also percipient, funny, and totally satisfying.
WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?
In rural Devon, six-year-old Joanna Mason witnesses an appalling crime.
Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison.
In Edinburgh, sixteen-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a G.P. But Dr Hunter has gone missing and Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried.
Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is an old friend -- Jackson Brodie -- himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.
This was definitely the best of the three TV episodes (shown in two parts over two nights, Sunday and Monday) and the book itself is evidence that Kate was warming to Jackson Brodie the more she wrote about him. The characters are absolutely first-rate, as diverse as anything you could wish for in a modern novel - quirky but still totally believable. The Jackson Brodie of the TV series is the Jackson Brodie of Kate's novels, except for the silly Grecian 2000 on his hair. I don't recall seeing any reference to that in the books, and it simply wasn't necessary!
STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG
A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a
purchase she hadn't bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for
Tracy's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life
replaced by fear and danger at every turn. Witnesses to Tracy's Faustian
exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering
on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his
home county in search of someone else's roots. All three characters learn that
the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished. Kate Atkinson
dovetails and counterpoints her plots with Dickensian brilliance in a tale
peopled with unlikely heroes and villains . Started Early, Took My Dog is
freighted with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence. It confirms Kate
Atkinson's position as one of the great writers of our time.
Just received - review later...
The TV series:
Apart from the settings (the first story was set in Cambridgeshire, only the second in Edinburgh) the dramatisation has been surprisingly accurate. Theo in the first story, playes by Phil Davis, was obviously not the obese man from the book, but he was utterly convincing, as was the remainder of the cast. This is one of the most enjoyable TV detective series for a long time, although quite why it was necessary to make Isaacs's hair so black and unnatural-looking is beyond me. I've rediscovered this sensational series of books through watching the TV series, and I'm delighted to be able to say that they are terrific. Kate Atkinson has created a cast of characters who are real, funny, tragic and just plain brilliant. I'll be adding my reviews of all four Jackson Brodie books as the days go by, so check back to see what I have to say!
TV 'TEC SCORE 8/10
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