10 to try: Book reviews

Time Out picks ten of the best fiction and non-fiction releases Discuss this article

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Daughter of Dust

Wendy Wallace
3/5
In Sudan, orphan girls are deemed in some way responsible for their misfortunes; Leila Aziz’s schoolmates contemptuously referred to her as a ‘daughter of sin’. She is now 40, a mother herself and a campaigner on behalf of other Sudanese orphans, but the scars of her experience are still very much in evidence. Journalist Wendy Wallace got to know Leila when working for the UN in Sudan; in this unconventional biography, she set out to document the tragic childhood Leila has overcome and the irreversible damage that this kind of uncertain start in life can cause.

Wallace has spent years in Sudan; she also has a nice feel for telling detail. So she shares with us Leila’s shy pride in knowing her age as well as the apologetic awkwardness of another child who is the only girl in Leila’s class who has not been subjected to female circumcision.

Leila doesn’t understand the simplest concepts: what a mother is, what marriage means. Asked by a friend’s mother whether she is hungry, she is bemused. ‘It’s lunchtime,’ she says, never having had reason to consider this before. ‘I must be.’

In Leila, Wallace has found an excellent centre-piece around which to arrange a discussion of the wider issues: the trials of exclusion from a deeply traditional society, the tensions between progressive and reactionary political forces and the cruelty, particularly of women to one another, in a misogynistic world. She may be over-involved with her subject; certainly she can stray into sentimentality. Leila’s early life is so thoroughly recalled that it raises doubts: could anyone remember this much? Still, this story of a woman born into misery who has had the guts and resilience to change her destiny provides a refreshing glimpse into a country often reported on, but rarely truly explored.
Jennifer Lipman
Simon&Schuster Dhs85 Available to order from Magrudy’s.

The Years of the Locust

Jon Hotten
2/5
Rick Parker’s dream was to sell a white heavyweight boxing champion. In this book, subtitled A True Story of Murder, Money and Mayhem in the Last Age of Boxing, Jon Hotten tells the story of how the first boxer Parker backed, golden boy Tim Anderson, ended up shooting him dead, and exposes the fixing and more serious criminality endemic in American boxing in the ’80s and ’90s.

Hotten has previously written about unlicensed British boxing, but this account is more disconcerting for being far closer to the big time: Anderson fought George Foreman and Larry Holmes and beat Jimmy Young, a former title contender, while Parker set up a heavyweight title match in Beijing for Bert Cooper, billed as ‘The Brawl on the Wall.’ Yet Parker preferred hanging out with heavies like the so-called Knucklehead Boxing Club, a group of 25 toughs paid to travel around losing fights under numerous aliases to boost the records of the boxers being promoted. Parker partied with them; they also did his dirty work.

It is remarkable that Anderson, who was, at that time, widely considered a good guy in a world that contained very few, associated with Parker for half as long as he did. Parker, Anderson alleges, owed him nearly US$200,000 (Dhs367,300), left him alone in South Africa to be beaten up before a big bout and offered him money to throw a fight against his new white heavyweight project, Mark Gastineau. During his rematch with Gastineau, he was poisoned and reduced to a wreck for several years – he was, he claims, only trying to establish what the poison was when he shot Parker. He is now serving a life sentence for the crime.

Presumably Anderson was blinded by Parker’s ability to talk big fights into being, but Hotten’s extensive chronicling of the period’s boxing obstructs real examination of his characters’ motives. At the same time, the internal monologues characterising Parker and dramatising the story obscure Hotten’s sources, making it impossible to sift evidence from allegation. The book does not wholly satisfy as an investigation or as a story: like Parker, it entertains and appalls, but one isn’t sure how trustworthy it is.
Tom Cameron
Yellow Jersey Press Dhs85 Available to order from Magrudy’s.

Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne

James Gavin
4/5
Thank goodness for YouTube. As various sources repeatedly claim in James Gavin’s meticulously detailed Lena Horne biography, the legendary African-American entertainer – still alive but reclusive at age 91 – has to be seen to be appreciated. This is due to the moody icon’s celebrated stage presence, which rarely translated to vinyl, and to her preternatural beauty.

Gavin, who proved himself a consummate researcher with his previous bio of Chet Baker and the New York cabaret scene encyclopedia Intimate Nights, has really outdone himself with Stormy Weather. Tracing Horne’s legacy – her bourgeois Brooklyn childhood, her unstable adolescence, and her ascent from Cotton Club chorine to Hollywood starlet to nightclub doyennne – the author deconstructs her myth while honouring her talent, and chronicles the appalling prejudice faced by African-Americans during the 20th century. With her mixed heritage, Caucasian features and showbiz stature, Horne became a symbol for her race, and thus a prisoner. No wonder she had a lifelong identity crisis.

Those familiar with Horne’s version of her story – especially her angry rants about the indignities she suffered at MGM – will be surprised to learn how much she plain made up. Gavin unearths incredible archival material (a skin-lightening cream endorsed by Horne) as well as extensive quotes from friends, fans, family and foes that shed a harsh spotlight on the icy diva. Still, he’s careful to contextualize even her worst qualities. The book may not be a love letter to the lady herself, but his adoring descriptions of her vocal abilities will inspire passionate searches for online clips.
Raven Snook
Atria, Dhs107.50 Available to order from Magrudys.

The Confessions of Edward Day

Valerie Martin
3/5
As Edward Day lays bare his feelings in Valerie Martin’s new fictional memoir, The Confessions of Edward Day, he reveals himself to be a recognisable urban type: The attractive, smug up-and-comer who tells you he loves you and he’s bored with you in the same sentence, or who cuts in line at a crowded bar, then flashes you a s**t-eating grin. Confessions is set in the East Village of the low-rent ’70s, and Ed plays himself, a struggling actor who longs for larger audiences. Another actor, Guy Margate, rescues Ed from drowning during a trip to the Jersey Shore, but the two men soon become enemies, competing for the same woman (another actor) and a better résumé.

Martin is aware that her readers will find ample reason to loathe her antihero. Still, despite a number of choppy passages and an awfully rushed ending, she maintains a thrillerlike pace and keeps her plot twists dark. It’s a relief that Ed’s gaze isn’t so firmly affixed to his navel that he can’t evaluate the foolishness of his professional and personal pursuits. ‘We hold ourselves aloof from the people we need and seek the approval of those who have no use for us,’ he says, contemplating his relationship with Madeleine. ‘Or at least I do.’ Many actual memoirs these days are by authors who prefer to sound cool instead of human. It is because of this that the flaws in Confessions make it seem that much more real.
Sharon Steel
Doubleday, Dhs100 Available to order from Magrudy’s.

Noah’s Compass

Anne Tyler
3/5
The logic behind this slightly oblique title is exemplary, and will come as no surprise to Tyler fans. The Noah in the book is Liam, 60 years old, divorced and now downsized as the inevitable end to an academic career that has consistently resembled a gentle downward slope. He has moved into a smaller home, but on the first night there he winds up in hospital, concussed by a would-be burglar. The actual invasion of his premises doesn’t disturb Liam too much: two wives and three daughters have accustomed him to aggression and interference.

In fact, as his ex-wife points out (wife number one is long dead), he tends to side with the aggressor. ‘You never argue with people’s poor opinions of you,’ Barbara says. ‘They can say the most negative things – that you’re clueless, that you’re unfeeling – and you say, “Yes, well, maybe you’re right.” If I were you, I’d be devastated!’ Yes, well: maybe they’re right. The crowding, unfeeling family is a Tyler fixture, as is the lost, irritatingly passive adult in need (but not in search) of revelation. She is the master of the middle-aged bildungsroman; Liam, however, may just be too old to change.

The burglar may not bother him but the fact that he remembers nothing about being burgled does, although no one around him (not the most empathetic bunch in any case) really understands why. This is the most interesting aspect of the book – after all, if you lose a memory that probably wouldn’t be pleasant, it is still a chunk of yourself that has gone with it – but Tyler is more interested in human interaction than in the powers and problems of mindfulness. Liam’s obsession leads him to Eunice, a sweet but shambolic thirtysomething whose job as human aide-memoire to a local tycoon gives Liam the obscure feeling that she may be able to help him. And, one way or another, she does.

But, unlike Noah, who was directionless through ineffable decree and so could literally float through life, Liam is in dire need of a compass. As always with Tyler, the prose flows sweetly from page to page, conjuring up characters so believable you frequently long to thump them. But her best work infuriates in order to soothe; in this book, she supplies the reality of crumbling lives without the magic of renewal, and fans could be forgiven for feeling mildly cheated.
Nina Caplan
Chatto & Windus Dhs103 available at Magrudy’s.