A selection of reviews by Irish Timescritics
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoBy Junot Diaz Faber, £7.99
Oscar de Leon, the hero of Junot Diazs Pulitzer prize-winning first novel, is an overweight and nerdy first-generation American of Dominican decent. Obsessed with science fiction and unlucky in love, Oscars actions are shadowed by the weight of Dominican history and the disasters fated to beset that countrys emigrants - "fukú americanus", or "the Curse and Doom of the New World". Told through a polyphony of voices and in an array of styles, the book moves between three generations of Oscars family and between America and the Dominican Republic. Diazs sense of magical realism is as poignant as his Spanglish slang which permeates the prose. But the novel is also about books and reading, with allusions not only to fantasy writers like Tolkien, but to Ovid and (in the heros name and the books title) Wilde and Hemingway. Oscars story, in turn, becomes a meditation on the power of authorship in the face of assimilation. It is funny and heart-breaking, a fantastic read. Emily Firetog
Gods that Failed: How the Financial Elite Have Gambled Away our Futures. Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson. Vintage, £7.99
John Maynard Keynes summed it up: " . . . individualistic post-war capitalism is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. And it doesn't deliver the goods". Elliott and Atkinson, Economics Editors of the Guardian and the Mail on Sunday, respectively, explain where it all went wrong for the fat cat bankers and, sadly, for the rest of us too.The book is written from a British perspective, of course, but the British economys over-dependence on the property boom and the financial services sector has strong resonance in Ireland. After an extensive, thoroughly researched, and sometimes technical trawl through the history of the economic downturn since 2007, the authors offer their solution: a return to honest, decent, non-greedy middle-class values allied with a good dollop of government control of the financial sector. FDRs New Deal and the post-war Labour government of Clement Atlee are re-assessed and emerge favourably from the comparison with latter-day "Anglo-Saxon super-charged capitalism run riot". Tom Moriarty
Charlotte Brontë : A Passionate Life. Lyndall Gordon. Virago, £9.99
"A figure of pathos in the shadow of tombstones" or a "determinedly professional writer with an unquenchable fire"? In this perceptive biography, Oxford academic and award-winning biographer Lyndall Gordon seeks to demonstrate that Charlotte Brontë deserves to be remembered as the latter. The familiar details of her life – her harsh upbringing in the rectory at Haworth, her time as a governess, and the deaths of her siblings – are recorded, comprehensively, with a wealth of entertaining detail, such as her sharp judgement on Emma: "the Passions are perfectly unknown to Miss Austen". Gordon draws a crucial distinction between the limited role allotted Brontë by Victorian society and the independence she achieved through her literary talent. In Jane Eyre, Gordon asserts, Brontë demonstrated that "ordinary" women could be heroines, and in so doing posed questions about women's lives which are still relevant today . Freya McClements
Three Letter Plague. Jonny Steinberg. Vintage, £8.99
Sizwe is a young man in the remote South African village of Ithanga, and it is his story that Johnny Steinberg uses to examine the dynamics of a country struggling to face up to the realities of Aids. As Sizwe debates whether to be tested for the virus, the attitude and culture surrounding the condition and its treatment is laid out in illuminating detail. In particular, the story of Dr Hermann Reuter, who demonstrates how effective local clinics can be in treating the disease as opposed to centralised hospitals, is fascinating. This book begins strongly on personality, with much of the analysis coming later on, as Sizwe's story unfolds, and it contains equal parts science and superstition, a tremendous balance of local lore and medical opinion. Laurence Mackin
Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museumby Richard Fortey. Harper Perennial, £8.99
This book aims to give the reader a peek at what goes on behind the massive mahogany doors of the British Museum of Natural History, and the palaeontologist-
turned-science-writer Richard Fortey is a terrific guide. Knowledgeable and methodical, he has a keen ear for a good story or a snippet of gossip; more importantly, perhaps, he knows just how much straight science we can take before sloping off in search of coffee and the gift shop.
Alongside dinosaurs, beetles and jars of pickled snakes he introduces the people – some dedicated, some eccentric, some plain mad – who have studied them over the years. Fortey is well aware of the irony inherent in the work of naming and describing species when so many of them are disappearing so rapidly; this, he insists, merely makes the enterprise more urgent.
Our own survival as a species may, after all, depend on our understanding of how our planetary ecosystems fit together – and where (and whether) we fit in. Arminta Wallace