The latest paperbacks on the shop shelves
His Illegal Self
Peter Carey
Faber, £7.99
It is 1972 in Grandma Selkirk’s New York residence: “when he was almost eight, a woman stepped out of the elevator into the apartment on East Sixty-second Street and he recognised her right away.” Seven-year old Jay is convinced Dial (dialectic?) – real name Anna Xenos, a Vassar professor with a history of 1960s radical terrorism – is his mother. Within a sentence, all three are at the perfume counter in Bloomingdales and Jay, now Che, takes her hand. The three split on Lexington Avenue. For Grandma “the first cab would always be theirs” while Dial and Che run for the subway – all within a few paragraphs. His wonder at public transport continues for the rest of the novel; it sustains Jay as he is rushed first to Philadelphia, then via many motels to California and, on orders from the Movement, to a commune in Queensland, Australia. All the time the boy thinks he is going to meet his father. As a coming-of-age work, His Illegal Self is convincing; as a tale of kidnap, there are holes (why Australia? Because the Australian author loves the landscape?). As a look back at the 1960s, the sharp writing spices up the nostalgia.
Kate Bateman
Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All
Rose Shapiro
Vintage, £8.99
From aromatherapy to zero balancing, Shapiro debunks the lot. The modern craze for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) has made fortunes for a host of chancers. Shapiro spares nobody, especially the well-heeled, articulate, middle-aged women who, she says, are CAM’s primary consumers. Shapiro’s central chapters on the serious dangers of chiropractic manipulation of the vertebrae and on the tragic cases of cancer sufferers who mistakenly opt for CAM-only treatment are full of depressing anecdotes. More light-hearted is her critique of techniques such as ear-candling, where the waxy residues turn out, unsurprisingly, to come from the candles themselves. Acupuncture, almost alone of CAM methods, is admitted by Shapiro to have some efficacy, while homeopathy is treated scathingly throughout. This book will reinforce the views of a sceptic but is unlikely to change the minds of those who, desperate for a cure or personal attention, turn to CAM.
Tom Moriarty
Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
Tony Judt
Vintage, £11.99
Are we indifferent to the past? Obsessed with evil and terrorism? Guilty of ideological tunnel vision? These are just some of the questions posed in Tony Judt’s extensive study of what he describes as the “paradoxical legacies” of the 20th century. Written over 12 years, these essays cover a broad range of subject matter – from French Marxists to the Cold War to Albert Camus and much more – to examine the way we are today. By arguing that we have entered into an “age of forgetting”, Judt looks at how we have become dangerously selective with memory. Touching on the works of Louis Althusser, Hannah Arendt, Edward Said and others, he wonders if we have lost touch with the power of ideas or if the role of the intellectual is now regarded as obsolete. In these times of 24/7 news updates and information overload, this timely, accessible read looks at the bigger picture, offering provocative insights and and fuel for debate.
Sorcha Hamilton
Blue Mauritius: The Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Stamps
Helen Morgan
Atlantic Books, £8.99
Mauritius is famous to most people as an exotic beauty spot, once home to the dodo. For philatelists, however, the tropical island has a special significance: with only 26 known today, examples of the first issue of stamps by Mauritius, in 1847, are among the rarest in the world and the envy of every collector. From their first use on the correspondence of the governor’s wife, Helen Morgan retraces the history of the surviving one- and two-penny stamps, which now command more than $1 million at auction. Her impressive detective work – researching commercial ties, shipping records and newspaper adverts to explain how the stamps turned up in writing desks in Bordeaux and markets in Bombay – introduces the uninitiated to the curiosities of chance which have sustained one of the world’s most popular pastimes for more than 150 years. For the expert, Morgan’s book throws light on the many mysteries still surrounding the stamps.
Nicholas Hamilton
The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession Andrea Wulf
Windmill Books, £8.99
The Brother Gardeners is 18th-century imperial and social history through the surprising prism of botany, and it’s a lively and very human story. Wulf brings her protagonists, botanists from Britain, Sweden and America, vividly to life, illustrating the struggles they faced and the friendships they forged in making botany a scholarly and commercial force. Ultimately, the networks established by the “brother gardeners” brought the world closer together, affecting colonial relationships and spurring voyages of discovery. Wulf traces how a very British pursuit, the preserve of an elite, became a popular pastime the world over. And just as the brother gardeners broadened botany’s appeal, Wulf creates entertaining reading from an apparently specialised subject.
Eimear Nolan