Category: Review Page 5 of 8

The personal, it’s said, is the political, so let me just get the personal stuff out of the way before I get into the review of this book: I probably know more than I’d like about eating disorders, and care a bit more than is probably healthy, and the notion that people are suffering from them upsets me greatly, all for reasons I can’t fully articulate, though experience (inevitably) is a part of this.

So I was genuinely interested to read this book, as the cover flap claims it’s a memoir “which speaks to all women”. Given that one of the things I find so upsetting about eating disorders is the (for me) sheer impenetrability of the thought processes underlying them, I was keen to see if this book shed any light on them. It did not, and quite frankly proved by turns alarming, depressing, and annoying. Let me explain why.

The book is a mix of chronological recollections about Crewe’s life, and details about her current preoccupations with food, weight and the like. As such, I was rather hoping that there might be some clues or even analysis as to the point in her life when she started to feel a certain way about food and her self-image, and to factors which had triggered it. But these don’t appear; instead the worries seem to come along almost fully-formed in her early teens, and much of the time there are generalisations to suggest that most, if not all, women feel as she does. I often find this kind of generalisation faintly irritating (I want to know why so many women feel this way, not just that they do), but even moreso when the generalisation is one which just doesn’t sit at all with personal experience – the best example of this is on page 51, when referring to school dinners, she says, “Like many resourceful children down the ages, confronted with similar fare, when the teacher wasn’t looking I shoved it up my skirt, down my knickers and afterwards into the jaws of an appreciative lavatory”. Now, perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life, but I attended school (several, in fact), and ate school lunches, and never not once ever did I see, or hear tell of, anyone who shoved food in their pants (and this doesn’t just seem to be me, as I’ve asked a few female friends about this in the past few days and they’ve all looked at me as if I’m insane. So I think Crewe is alone on this one, and that her generalisation is extremely spurious).

That sort of thing was alarming, but more depressing material came in the form of Crewe’s comments about how her preoccupations with food and body image affect her daily life; she tells us how she tries to avoid eating breakfast wherever possible (p15), how she can’t settle in a room until she’s assessed who’s the fattest person in there (p82) and how she loves walls because “they hid the whole of one side of me. I have made use of them ever since” (p85). As I say, I found this depressing because the thinking underlying it is something I find utterly alien, and simply cannot grasp, and I just want someone to explain it to me, so I can understand it, if not necessarily agree with it.

Jumping ahead to the present in her life, Crewe tries to analyse where this preoccupation came from, and thankfully doesn’t give much credence to the received wisdom that it’s all the fault of men, saying they find “this mild lunacy… tedious and unsexy” (p200), though I feel she skirts the issue of whether it’s because of the judgmental eyes of other women, trying to assess which women. I’d say it’s more likely to be strangers than the known-to-me individuals which Crewe examines (friends, family, etc), but I’m guessing here. At least this section of the book has the benefit of feeling as if it’s actually analysing things, as opposed to just stating that this is how things are and not explaining them.

Then, Crewe tells us, she showed her husband the first draft of the first half or so of the book, and that he was upset, because he hadn’t realised that she was so unhappy. To which she replies that she’s not unhappy, and so she re-reads what she’s written, and says: “Looking at the narrative again… I realised that I was not actually writing about the immediate here and now but my distant and recent past” and “…I think I exaggerated or, rather, played a little freely with my use of the present tense” (p221). And then “What I did was to make out that I am still living by [those various habits, practices and beliefs] every day… While I admit that they do not malignly exist today as they once did, they have not entirely disintegrated.” Just in case those extended quotes are a little hard to understand, don’t worry, I’ll translate them into a three-word summary for you, paraphrasing Austen: Reader, I lied.

And this was a profoundly annoying section of the book for me, both as a reader and as someone who takes the use of words fairly seriously (despite often using them for flippancy). As a reader, I felt cheated, because the stuff that I had found so alarming in the first section of the book – about how she thinks x and that all women think x – turned out not to be true, which of course brings pretty much the rest of the book into doubt. She lied about her current preoccupation with food, so how do I know she wasn’t lying about the bulimia in her 20s? How do I know the academics she quotes from exist, or that they said what she claims they said? After the beautifully-phrased admission quoted above that what she said wasn’t actually true, you can see why I’d doubt it.

That’s my reaction as a reader, but as user-of-words my annoyance is two-pronged: firstly, that a subject as serious and life-ruining as eating disorders is something that can be written about in a haphazard way, and secondly – tying in to that haphazardness – that the book wasn’t rewritten after that first draft elicited this reaction and Crewe realised that she hadn’t been telling the truth. If you’re a writer or editor with any integrity in that situation, you say ‘okay, well, now, that stuff wasn’t accurate, so I’ll take it out’ and then you do that. You don’t just stick in a bit at the end saying ‘the first draft contained lies which upset my test reader, but I’ve left them in and acknowledged them here, so that’s all right’, because it isn’t. It borders on contempt for your reader, their intelligence, and undermines the seriousness of any point you’re trying to make. In writing terms, it’s hackwork, an example of the ‘that’ll do, get it to print’ mentality, and it does nobody any favours.

As you can tell from this extended review, I feel strongly about this book (because I feel strongly about the subject). I have no objection whatsoever to books which mix personal feelings on a subject with cold hard facts and analysis, and on a subject as emotive as this I think it’s almost inevitable. But as a contribution to the examination of the rise of eating disorders and an analysis of the roots of it, this book is utterly worthless. As a personal memoir – and it’s more that than anything else – it’s very well-written, but since we later learn that the author hasn’t been telling the truth, it’s invalid on that count as well.

On the strength of my dislike for this book, you might feel a perverse inclination to check it out (it’s in hardback at the moment, so maybe your local library will have a copy). In no way do I suggest you do so, but if you do, consider yourself well and truly warned.

As far as I can see, there’s still an important book to be written on the issue of eating disorders, their social and cultural roots, their triggers and cures, and all the associated issues. It would need, to my mind, to be a mix of the anecdotal and the factual, possibly with autobiographical elements, possibly without. I haven’t come across such a book yet (though if you know of one, please let me know – usual e-mail address), and I sometimes wonder if I ought to write the damn thing myself. I’ll add it to the list of projects. With the working title of ‘WTF? I mean, W-T-F?’

Another book I bought on the cheap because it featured Istanbul as its setting, this is a thriller, and essentially a murder mystery.

The basic premise is as follows: an elderly Jewish man is murdered in Istanbul’s Jewish quarter, and a swastika drawn above the corpse in blood. There are a handful of characters presented as likely suspects, each with moderately plausible motives, and it falls to the central character, Inspector Çetin İkmen, and his colleagues, to find the killer.

The characterisation’s key here, and Nadel succeeds in providing a cast of notably different characters, as well as a likeably quirky lead. I found the opening ten pages or so a bit of a struggle, as we keep switching locations and characters without it being quite clear what’s going on, but once the relationships between the characters become apparent it’s genuinely interesting, and there’s some good dialogue and interior monologue.

However, having set up an interesting situation, the book falters in that something needs to happen in order to upset the status quo and allow İkmen to figure out who did what and when. And this comes, but in a rather heavy-handed fashion, almost as if Nadel realised that the set-up was so tight, and the characters so tight-lipped, that the only way to resolve the story was to drop a bit of a Deus Ex Machina plot device into it, rattling things enough to enable characters to make mistakes and for the detective to figure it out. Given how tightly written the book is generally, this felt like a bit of a fudge, though it does at least move the story out of the corner it seems to have written itself into.

But the writing’s generally of a very high standard here, with the characters feeling real and (in places) genuinely creepy or evil, and Istanbul is (to my mind rightly) portrayed as a city burdened by its own history, struggling to make a smooth transition to the present.

A shame, as I say, that the story’s resolution feels it was wheeled into place by plot levers being so blatantly pushed, but I only paid 99p for this book, and it was more than enjoyable, so I’d cautiously recommend it. Nadel’s written further novels featuring the same character, I understand, so they may well be free of the plot problems I felt this one had.

Background: I bought this book because it was 99p, and it featured Istanbul as one of the locations, and so I took it with me to Turkey on my recent holiday. The woman behind the counter – rightly – observed that the cover made it look like the Da Vinci Code, which we guessed wasn’t an accident, but now I realise that should probably have been a clue.

The book’s a thriller, but the ingredients aren’t really very thrilling, to be honest: an ex-thief being pressured to do ‘one last job’, an FBI agent trying to prove her worth, FBI bosses who won’t be convinced about the agent’s hunches or ability… you get the general idea.

Do I sound dismissive? Probably, and that’s because, even for 99p, this book isn’t really very good. The central premise is moderately interesting (though probably much more so if you’re a numismatist), but the writing’s really rather poor, so perhaps the resemblance to Dan Brown’s waste of trees isn’t a coincidence. The low quality of the writing really started to bite for me around page 84, where two characters are talking in a graveyard, though oddly enough we’re told that one of them “stared down at the floor as he spoke”. I think he means ground – in fact he definitely does, and he knows they’re outdoors, because on page 85, he tells us that one of the character’s “black brogues [sank] into the grass’s soft pile”. It’s a decent enough comparison, that grass is like carpet, but the use of the word ‘grass’s’ is horribly clumsy, and really should have been caught before the book went to print. And that’s on two pages of a book that runs to 549 pages, which is why, like the aforementioned other novel, I kept reading, and re-writing it in my head as I went to see how it could have been done. Which is not a good thing.

Also, the ‘twist’ at the end is easy to guess (I did so on page 238, so when it came on page 482, imagine my smug boredom), so the drama of the ‘reveal’ is almost non-existent, as is that of the epilogue.

According to the author biography, James Twining’s working on another novel featuring the same protagonist, and I wish him well with it, but I certainly won’t be buying it, because I really can’t recommend this book, even as a spot of light reading.

This book is Mason’s account of his life and times as a member of Pink Floyd, from its very beginning until the recent Live 8 reunion. As the only person who’s been a member from the start until the present day, Mason’s arguably well-placed to give a sense of the bigger picture.

And he does so pretty well; from the swirly psychedelic start at UFO and other London underground clubs to the grottiness of touring, he gives decent insights into the way various albums (and sometimes individual songs) evolved, with an amusingly dry modesty. The book wouldn’t be complete without references to the departures from the band – Syd Barrett and Roger Waters – and he doesn’t take the opportunity to pretend to be blameless in either situation, which I feel is a good thing. The book ends on a happy note, with the paperback containing an epilogue about the Live 8 reunion, but even without this it would be a good read, and it’s interesting to note just how the Floyd went from being improvisational and free-form to very ordered and regulated in their work (the overabundance of that from Waters sounding like the problem when it came to ‘The Final Cut’ album, I fear).

A very decent read, thankfully free of muso-style pretension or similar excesses of music writing, and definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of the band in any of their incarnations (I like most of it, though the Waters-led period suits the often rather adolescent nature of my concerns, but if you like the Barrett or Gilmour eras, these are just as well covered).

Postscript: Just this weekend (though I didn’t attend), Mason was special guest as Waters performed The Dark Side Of The Moon in Hyde Park. Nice to see the rapprochement continuing. But I would question the appropriateness of the heading under which this concert took place (see picture above) – Ambassadors of Rock? Rock doesn’t have ambassadors, with their polite diplomacy and Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Rock comes in without being invited, drinks milk from the bottle in the fridge, puts its hand on your bum without apology, and wipes bogies on the curtain before leaving, the door banging as it goes.

‘Ambassadors’. Tch. Rock’s not like it used to be in my young days, clearly…

Asked by Men’s Health magazine to write an article on internet dating, Thomas did so, and wrote this book to tell all. As you’d expect, it’s pretty funny in places (certainly aided by his candour), but it’s also surprisingly touching in others, and even insightful when he thinks about exactly what in his life has made him like certain things in women (height, income etc), and not like others. Would that we could all think this over so well.

However, a few niggles, and they’re petty-ish, but they broke the flow of reading, which is always irritating; Thomas (or his editor), like many people, doesn’t seem to realise that ‘infer’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘imply’ (and it’s always embarrassing when people use it wrongly – better not to use it at all,I feel), and there are several typos, the worst of which is where the name of a girl referred to several pages previously is wrongly substituted for that of his current girlfriend. As I say, minorish things, but they break the spell of reading, and whilst I’ve come to accept that UK reprints of USA-originated novels aren’t going to bother correcting spellings of ‘color’ and the like, I think a book from the UK ought to be better proof-read than this. Hmph.

Hmph-ing aside, it’s a pretty good read – Thomas is likable and honest, and his musings on certain sexual peccadilloes are both frank and funny. Worth a look, though it probably gives away a few things about male thinking which women would rather not hear confirmed (as much as they suspect them to be true).

A very short novel from Pulitzer-Prize winning author Chabon, this features a mystery in a small English village in the last years of World War II. It’s investigated by an old man who used to be a detective, but now more concerned with looking after his bees. If you don’t know who I’m referring to by now (and the book doesn’t name him) … well, then you might not appreciate it as much as I did, I guess. And frankly shame on you.

Anyway, as I say it’s a short book (126 pages), which means you can rattle through it quickly (an afternoon was enough for me), but it’s a good one, with some nice bits of characterisation and a good sense of pace, as well as a genuine feeling that WWII looms over the action like a shadow. In the paperback, there’s also an additional section containing an interview with the author, in which he makes a reasoned (not to say spirited) argument in favour of genre fiction. As Chabon won his Pulitzer for a book covering superheroes and the history of American comics, and this latest book is a murder mystery, I’d say he was well-placed to comment on, and argue about, this issue, but this may be because I agree with him wholeheartedly.

In terms of value for your money, this is pretty poor (£6.99 for 140 pages or so), so you might well want to see about getting a library copy, but I recommend you do so, as it’s a very good read. And I recommend mulling over Chabon’s comments about genre as well.

Pretty much as the title suggests, this book is about the quest by former drummer in The Damned, Rat Scabies, to find the Holy Grail – specifically by looking into the mysteries surrounding the small French village of Rennes-le-Chateau.

Dawes, a former music journalist and friend of Scabies, gets drawn into this despite his reluctance, and writes about it well; his précis of the Berenger Sauniere mystery is admirably succinct, and saves the reader the trouble of reading the Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln book on the same theme, as it’s summarised in about a dozen pages. He does well at explaining the whole bloodline-Merovingians-Poussin-Plantard tangle, though he’s sceptical about it all (rightly, to my mind).

The back cover of this book suggests it’s a ‘testament to the bizarre nature of friendship’, which I wouldn’t wholly go along with, but if you want to have a fun read, this certainly fits the bill.

This book was a present (thanks, Jess), and a darned good one at that.

The story’s simple enough, really, dealing with the relationship between Amir and Hassan, two young boys growing up together in Afghanistan in the 1970s.

And yet it’s really much more complex than that, dealing with children’s friendships and the complex emotions underlying them. The prose is almost sparse, but this is definitely an asset – in order to make you understand what a character’s feeling or thinking, Hosseini provides the bare bones, allowing the reader to draw on their own experience to flesh it out, and this sense of reader-involvement makes it more affecting.

There are one or two slightly contrived plot occurrences – though you could say the same about ‘Candide’(and indeed I did) and that’s held in high regard – but the general pacing and emotional resonance of the book is strong enough to make these forgivable, and there are some passages which seem so perfectly crafted it’s hard to believe this is a first novel.

Very good stuff indeed, and definitely recommended.

The autobiography of Mason, as per the subtitle, contains confessions – he’s craftily waited until the (US) statute of limitations has passed on a number of jewel thefts before admitting to them in this book.

Mason stole large numbers of jewels over a number of decades, though invariably from the rich (mainly American celebrities who are less well known here), and he was strict about not using guns or other violence, making the opening sections of this book read like a real-life Raffles or Fantomas. Many of Mason’s thefts are accomplished appallingly easily, as he frequently points out that people have elaborate security systems which they don’t turn on, or heavily-reinforced sliding doors which they don’t lock. If nothing else, the book acts as a reminder to lock up after you go out.

However, from about the halfway point onwards, Mason spends a lot of time writing about his attempts to stay out of jail, and this is far less interesting. Perhaps it’s because the exact nature of legal wrangles is pretty alien to a limey like me, or because Mason becomes less sympathetic when he’s out on the town drinking with his lawyers and leaving his wife and kids at home, but I found this section pretty uninteresting. When he gets sent to jail – and he does, despite some fairly insane courtroom machinations – he writes well about this, providing some good insights into life behind bars and dispelling a lot of myths.

Overall, not a bad read, but I found myself plodding a bit through the legal stuff which dominates the middle and onwards. It’s well written on the whole, with Mason coming off as pretty likeable despite his open admissions of being a criminal, and it’s refreshingly down to earth, unlike most crime-based TV or films. You might want to check this out – it’s an American book, but it’s been published by Bantam Press in the UK, so though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you buy it, your local library might have a copy.

This horror film is, pun inevitable and intended, pretty decent. A friend recommended I watch it late at night with as few lights on as possible to get the best effect, and I can see why.

It’s a simple enough tale – a group of female potholers find themselves in a perilous situation underground, and as they struggle to get back on course, come to realise that they may not be alone in the caves. The film’s got a good number of jolts in it, there’s some good dialogue, and the characters are all fairly well-written and acted.

My only gripe would be that though the film doesn’t outstay its welcome (the running time, according to the box, is 95 minutes), I found the supernatural threat element of it, coming so late in the film, was almost superfluous; there are some genuinely tense scenes of people in very claustrophobic situations, and they’re well acted and directed to the extent that when we start to get the idea there are creepy things in the darkened corners of the caves, it’s almost unnecessary, as the environment itself is threatening enough.

But it was worth a view, and if you do watch it at home, I’d echo the recommendation that you do so at night with little lighting, so as to emphasis the disorienting effect of events onscreen being illuminated solely by headtorches and emergency flares.