Book of the Week - Peter Grimsdale, Perfect Night

Perfect Night is a debut thriller by Peter Grimsdale which has received good reviews. After joining the BBC in 1980, Grimsdale became editor of Crimewatch and produced documentaries on a range of subjects including the Tamil uprising in Sri Lanka. In 1994 he became Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Features and Religion, winning Royal Television Society Awards in both genres, before returning to the BBC in 1999 as Head of the Independent Commissioning Group, responsible for all of the BBC's independent programming. In 2000 He was back commissioning at Channel 4 where among other things he took charge of Big Brother. In 2004 he moved to the internet as Editorial Director for Yahoo Europe, where he overhauled all that portal's content operations, and then returned to television a year later as Controller for Science for Channel Five.

When ambitious young documentary film-maker Nick witnesses the death of a notorious arms dealer in Sri Lanka, he's lucky to escape with his own life. He was on his way to interview him on his yacht when it was blown to smithereens. But the head injuries he receives destroy his memory - and his burgeoning career. Years later, working as a film archivist, he uncovers an image in a forgotten reel of film that seems to totally rewrite the incident that derailed his life. But as he starts to search for the other pieces of the puzzle, he quickly realizes that this single, explosive piece of film could destroy him all over again. Soon he's on the run from people who want the lid put very firmly back on the past. His only option is to restore his memory - however painful it turns out to be - and find the whole truth before it kills him.

Man Booker Prize - the most difficult novels

As announced earlier in the week, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga won the man Booker Prize. The announcement seems to have been greeted mainly with surprise. Nonetheless, as I noted back in May, first novels set in India have done very well in the prize in recent years. The White Tiger is widely available as a first edition. Prices are currently rather high, but if you are prepared to wait for a while they will undoubtedly fall again once the initial excitement is over, as this is not an uncommon book.

The Clothes on their Backs looks destined to join the list of the most difficult to obtain Booker novels from a collector’s perspective. I have assembled over quite a few years a full collection of the winners and shortlisted books. The ones I found most difficult to obtain in the UK first edition were the following:

1) Gordon M.Williams, Scenes like these. Secker and Warburg, 1968. An exceptionally uncommon book - none available online at the moment. Paradoxically, may be cheap if encountered. I have two copies, each of which cost under ten pounds. However, many collectors would pay much more.
2) TH Wheeler, The Conjunction, Angus and Robertson, 1969. Again, exceptionally uncommon in the original first edition, with no copies available online at present.
3) JL Carr, A month in the country, The Harvester Press, 1980. The first edition is currently unavailable online, although reprrints are relatively common.
4) Stanley Middleton, Holiday, Hutchinson, 1974. The 1974 winner eluded me for several years. However, there are now several copies available via ABEBooks, albeit at a minimum cost of £1000!
5) Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop, Duckworth, 1978. Shortlisted in 1978, a small print run went mainly to libraries. Again available via ABEBooks, at £300 or ablve.
6) Keri Hulme, The Bone People, 1985. Probably the most surprising winner over the years, and complicated from a bibliographical perspective. The true First British Edition of this Booker Prize winning novel is distinguished on the title page by the statement: 'Spiral in association with Hodder and Stoughton Auckland, London, Sydney, Toronto'. Typeset in Christchurch, New Zealand; printed and bound in Singapore. In format it is slightly larger and thicker than the later Spiral/ Hodder impression which appears to be a first edition but unlike the true first edition also has the “Shortlisted for the Booker Prize” on the dustjacket.

Book of the week and bibliography - Zoe Heller, The Believers

The Believers is the third novel from Zoe Heller - it seems likely to feature in prize lists later in the year. Heller was born in London in 1965 and educated at Oxford University and Columbia University, New York. She is a journalist who, after writing book reviews for various newspapers, became a feature writer for The Independent. She wrote a weekly confessional column for the Sunday Times for four years, and subsequently wrote for the Daily Telegraph, winning the title 'Columnist of the Year' in 2002. She is the author of two novels: Everything You Know (2000), a dark comedy about misanthropic writer Willy Miller, and Notes on a Scandal (2003) which tells the story of an affair between a high school teacher and her student through the eyes of the teacher's supposed friend, Barbara Covett. It was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for fiction, and subsequently released as a feature film, starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench. Zoe Heller lives in New York.

When New York radical lawyer Joel Litvinoff falls gravely ill, his wife Audrey uncovers a secret that forces her to re-examine both her belief in him and her commitment to their forty-year marriage. Meanwhile, her adopted son Lenny is back on drugs again and her daughters, Karla and Rosa, are grappling with their own catastrophes and dilemmas. Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary socialist, has found herself increasingly beguiled by the world of Orthodox Judaism; now she is being pressed to make a commitment and must decide if she is really ready to forsake all her cherished secular values for a Torah-observant life. Karla, an unhappily married hospital social worker and union activist, falls into a tumultuous affair with a conservative shop-keeper: can she really love a man whose politics she reviles? And how to choose between a life of duty and principle and her own happiness?

Bibliography

Everything you know (Viking, 2000)

Notes on a scandal (Viking, 2003)

The Believers (Fig Tree, 2008)

Man Booker prize shortlist - an update

This week will see the announcement of the winner of the Man Booker Prize. The favourite (with UK bookmakers) is either Sea of Poppies or The Secret Scripture. As an Irishman, my sympathies lie with the latter, which is certainly a fine book. All of the novels are fairly readily available ahead of the shortlisting, with the exception of The Clothes on Their Backs (as previously noted). The only copy I can currently find for sale is a signed copy from Ben Sheddling books at £225. A number of other copies have disappeared at prices from £100 to £150 in the last couple of weeks. It is probable that dealers will get some more signed copies this week, but if Linda Grant wins these will be at a premium, and The Clothes of Their Backs is likely to joint the select group of Booker Prize novels which are most difficult to obtain - a topic to which I will return in the next few days!

Book of the week and bibliography - Julian Stockwin, Treachery

Treachery is the ninth novel in the Kydd series by Julian Stockwin, and the tenth and eleventh books in the series are already well advanced. This series is increasingly collectible, but still looks good value. The books are full of period detail, and are also informed by the author’s nautical background. The author has an excellent website, and in recent years has sold special editions of the books directly, although they can also be picked up from the major dealers.


1. Kydd (2001, Hodder and Stoughton)
2. Artemis (2002, Hodder and Stoughton)
3. Seaflower (2003, Hodder and Stoughton)
4. Mutiny (2004, Hodder and Stoughton)
5. Quarterdeck (2005, Hodder and Stoughton)
6. Tenacious (2005, Hodder and Stoughton)
7. Command (2006, Hodder and Stoughton)
8. Kydd: The Admiral's Daughter (2007, Hodder and Stoughton)
9. Treachery (2008, Hodder and Stoughton)
10. Invasion (2009, Hodder and Stoughton)

Some light holiday reading - Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

I have just returned from travelling to various far-flung corners of the world, and am delighted to be back in computer contact. I managed to read a number of books while I am away, and am just finishing the last of the Booker Prize shortlisted novels, "A Fraction of the Whole" by Steve Toltz. It is an exuberant and very funny first novel, which has at times had me laughing out loud. The humour is dark, and the plot has many unexpected twists and turns......

Jasper, having inadvertently been the cause of the death by suicide of one of his teachers, is asked to read a Psalm at the funeral. Instead, he reads the following from "The City of Dreadful Night" by James Thomson:

Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace.

The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred
Malignant and implacable! I vow

That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
For all the temples to Thy glory built,
Would I assume the ignominious guilt
Of having made such men in such a world.

He finished and looked up. The priest was gnashing his teeth, just as it's described in his favourite book.

Book of the Week - Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I am travelling again for the next three weeks, so mainly catching up with books I picked up earlier in the year but haven't had a chance to read yet. At the moment I am reading (and thoroughly enjoying) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) was a Swedish writer and journalist, who wrote three detective novels (The Millenium Series) prior to his sudden death from a heart attack in November 2004. "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (2005, UK release in January 2008), "The Girl Who Played With Fire", (2006, UK release in January 2009) and "Castles in the Sky" (working title) (2007, English title not confirmed, UK release in January 2010). Before his career as a writer, Stieg Larsson was mostly known for his struggle against racism and right-wing extremism. In the middle of the 1980’s he helped to start the anti-violence project “Stop the Racism”. This was followed by the founding of the Expo-foundation in 1995, where he later became Chief Executive. From 1999 on, he was appointed the chief editor of Expo, a magazine published by the organization Expo.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has had multiple reprints, and the first edition hardcover by Quercus is now uncommon, but worth picking up if you can find a copy at near cover price (£14.99). "Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history."