Book Reviews by 'Hand-Tooled Binder'

Book Reviews by 'Hand-Tooled Binder'

SUZI THE LITTLE TSUNAMI. Lavinia Bouquet. Methuen.
Wonderful stories for children aged 4-6 with lots of beautiful illustrations. Little ones can follow Suzi, a friendly natural disaster, on her adventures as she travels around the world at speed. Meet her friends, with whom she has fleeting relationships, and learn a little about all the places she visits, before she leaves them totally destroyed in her wake.

THE IRON PARENT. Dr Colin Belway-Holmes. Gannet.
Effective parenting skills for the modern multitasking family. Keep children from annoying overworked and stressed-out parents - it could be the best strategy all round in the end, says the doctor. After all, pushing a parent over the edge is probably not to anyone's benefit, and it's so easily done, isn't it?. Chapters include: "Chastisement without leaving marks", "The stair cupboard: out of sight, out of mind", "Just Say No. Now What's The Question?", "Boarding from 5 and up", "Toy dismantling and other withdrawals of privilege", and "Other people's children: how far should you go?". Above all, the emphasis is on deriving a sense of satisfaction, and even enjoyment, from disciplining young people, rather than guilt and frustration.

I WAS VANESSA FELTZ'S DOUBLE. Tara Klistgaard. Osprey.
Autobiography of envious fat slag who didn't earn Ł2.4 Billion p.a. and took VF's place for dangerous or tedious assignments. Sacked after catching dysentry while covering for Feltz on 'Wish You Were Here' on Alderney and losing too much weight. The story of her struggle to regain the 4 stone she needed to keep her job and appear on 'Celebrity Watercolour Challenge' within 3 weeks is heartrending. Do we need 2 of her anyway?

THE NEW WESSEX TALES. Gavin Ostler. Century.
It's hard to read stories like these and still harbour the old-fashioned view of Westcountry people as hopelessly parochial, in-bred bumpkins. Ostler has portrayed a different sort of people, a people whose way of life being threatened by the relentless influx of tourists and holiday-homers have acquired a hard-edged side, financially and technologically sophisticated, perhaps more so than the invaders they resent ('Grockles' and 'Furriners' are vernacular terms for tourists and outsiders - the latter being specific to Cornwall).
There are the divers who tip rusty scrap and rotten wooden beams out at sea and then sell their salvage rights to the 'ancient wreck' to visiting diving clubs.
There is the RNLI crew who are called out during their amateur dramatic society production of The Pirates Of Penzance, and board a stricken, and illegal, Spanish trawler, in full dress.
There is "Hardy's Wessex" theme park, the effect ruined somewhat by the penny-farthing rider, mobile phone clamped to ear, and the vagrant who breaks into the 'Casterbridge Time-Walk' at night and falls asleep amongst the life-sized dummies in a tableaux of 'Harvest Time', stirring the next morning to a group of children's utter terror.
One particular focus of hatred are 'New Lifers' straight from lucrative but stressful city jobs, eager for a fresh start, and a new livelyhood, in the sticks. There is almost unlimited contempt for their antique rustic cottage industries, and many scams abound to exploit their naivety. One pig farmer (cash-starved since the bottom fell out of the pet pot-bellied pig business) plants a couple of tiny truffles in a wood, then makes sure the newcomers get to see how quickly his trained pig finds them - he manages to shift a few pigs after this, well above prevailing livestock prices. One ex-London couple start a lobster and crabbing business - doomed from the start since they were sold Chinese plastic lobsterpots, which have a tendency to float. Another urbanite bought a mobile home park at a good price from a bankrupt, anticipating a guaranteed seasonal income. The park opened with full occupation, but unfortunately the reason for the bankruptcy soon became clear, and that there hadn't been enough money to reconnect the sewerage system at the park to the main sewer using piping at the correct gradient and bore, causing a backup, and floods of tears, amongst other things, over the entire site.
Almost unbelievable is the tale of the German marine, of the crew of the German Naval flagship Adenauer on a goodwill visit to Portland during Weymouth's D-Day 50th anniversary celebrations in 1994. Arrested for assaulting a British lad in a pub while ashore, he is held aboard Adenauer awaiting a suitable time to ferry him to Weymouth Police station to be charged. Meanwhile, still drunk, he escapes from custody and slips away from his ship in a dinghy in the dark. Not wanting to draw attention, he paddles rather than use the motor, hoping to find a secluded cove. Coming out of a fine sea-mist he sees he is just a hundred metres off the harbour, where the greater part of Britain's 2nd World War re-enactment groups have turned up for the D-Day bash. Through his binoculars he scans the lines of armoured cars, trucks, amphibeous vehicles, and soldiers of all Allied nations readying for invasion. Just one thought crosses his clouded mind: This time it can be different, this time he knows it's Normandy, not the Pas de Calais. Can he get back to France with this intelligence, save the Fatherland and change history? Fortunately for posterity, he tires, falls asleep, and the tide sweeps him into Bowleaze Cove where he is found by a windsurfer, and arrested by The Coastuard with a German Naval detachment.
Finally there is out and out crime. For some years lobster-pots have been used as dropping points for drugs. Boats from the Continent locate one and leave the goods in it, which are picked up by UK dealers either in cooperation with, or fronting as, a legitimate seafish operation. Nowadays using GPS, a pot can be located to within 10 meters, so can be one of a large cluster of pots, thus making detection much more difficult. Microlight aircraft can take off from a boat at sea, and land on a small beach or field, avoiding detection unlike normal aircraft, and these too have been used by drug operations exploiting the lengthy and mostly unpopulated Devon and Cornwall coastline. Selling bonds in Dorset tin mines was a great favourite until it was fairly common knowledge that all UK tin mining had stopped, and that there was never any tin in Dorset anyway. Such bond certificates have now acquired a certain value amongst collectors.
This book is full of great yarns, and although Ostler's preface insists that every story has at least a core of truth, he leaves you wondering whether you havn't been taken for a ride as good as Ruislip Waterworld's "Logslide Luge".

A YEAR IN BARNES. Auguste Bagh'Pousse. Faber.
Bagh'Pousse hails from the South of France, and drawn by the promise of a vibrant economy, organic produce, decent tailoring and warm beer, resigns his job as head of marketing of the local Telco, ups sticks and settles just south of the Thames. This semi-autobiographical novel recounts his Oddessy amongst the denizens of the 'Magic Isle', his early and fumbling attempts to communicate and fraternize, find gainful employment and settle himself, his wife and 7 children. Perhaps too pacey in parts, we would have liked to heard more from some of the colourful characters, mostly drunk, which pepper his tales, and maybe had a bit more build up to the more climactic incidents - particularly the occasion where his house is burnt down after France's Soccer World Cup victory. The great adventure ends with death-threats forcing the Bagh'Pousses back to Provence after Auguste takes all 10 wickets in a charity cricket match against a neighbouring pub and is a sad indictment of Anglo-French relations.

STAPLERS OF THE GODS. WAS GOD A BUREAUCRAT? Erik Van Donegan. Golancz.
Recent findings in Peru of ancient cuniform-inscribed gold leaves, held together by metal pins and held flat in stone caskets with spring-mounted lids, fuels this latest whacky outpouring from one of the World's great fantasists. Was Earth visited in the distant past by boring, form-filling aliens bent on arranging and categorizing the ancient world to fit their sense of order and purpose? Were the Pyramids, Nazca Plain, and Stonehenge built like that because they fulfilled no function but looked 'nice and neat'? Surely one of the most convincing explanations for the basis of human culture yet.

STARLIGHT SERENADE - WAS GLEN MILLER AN ASTRONAUT? Ulrich Von Heineken. Collins
Coded messages in the lyrics by Swing's greatest exponent betray his extraterrestrial origin. So says Von Heineken. Interviews with Miller's former colleagues also support the theory that he was 'Not Of This World' and his disappearance during a cross-channel flight was simply the return to his mother-ship. Low on evidence, high on something.

THE LAZY COMEDY SLAGS. Andrew Spatula. Puffin
An in-depth analysis of the power of repetition in comedy. Takes as it's cue the comedy duo Lee & Herring's serial sketch of the same name, where a simple comic motif (one's consistent failure to understand the motif) is re-interpreted endlessly in an ironic swipe at comedians 'lazy' enough to recycle such motifs. The lifecyle of some memorable verbal and visual catchphrases is investigated and the careers of some noteworthy, and not so worthy, laughtermakers is mercilessly re-assessed in the light of their dependence on such devices. Of particlular interest is the case history of the last series of BBC Radio's "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" in 1973, which openly attempted to extract humour from the deliberate and elaborate construction of a new catchphrase.

THOSE WHO CAN'T. Dr Wesley Siren. Everyman
Siren expounds the ludicrous notion that those unfortunates who are bereft of adequate talent, drive and self-confidence to participate in the competitive world of cultural or sporting endeavours must resort to criticism instead. This has become the good doctor's hobby horse over the past decade, years which have coincided with his many unsuccessful attempts to have his shabby playlet "Bells and Whistle-Blowers" (about the depression, alcoholism and ultimate suicide of a fictitious member of the team developing the world's first cellular telephone, and the issues leading to it) produced in a theatre of repute anywhere in the civilized world. Broadly liberal in outlook, Siren's observation that most critics would do well to be locked in a giant figure made of wicker and burned alive puts him firmly in the neo-Celtic 'brutalist' camp.

OBSERVER'S BOOK OF ENGLISH BARRISTERS.
All of the English Courts' top practising barristers, with identification marks, chambers of origin, style-notes, and approximate annual income. Now you can freeze-frame the TV news artist's impressions and build up a picture of who's in court and what's going on. See them without their wigs and other plumage, and in many instances also the appearance of their juniors to aid with spotting. (Reproductive habits are not covered by this volume).

Home