Books
It's almost unthinkable to compare a Calvin & Hobbs cartoon to Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Although both have great merit in their own way (and, being a philistine, I'm a fan of the former if not the latter), they simply do not enter each other's sphere. In the same way, Salt and Saffron cannot approach The God of Small Things. Just because both books exist in that deeply seductive and endlessly intriguing exotic realm of fiction from "elsewhere" (i.e. anywhere that isn't bordering Yorkshire), that suffuses the longing imagination with half-forgotten spices experienced previously in take-aways, the colourless British system of judgement and assimilation embarks on its demeaning and reductive process of comparison...kind of like Salman Rushdie...almost like The God of Small Things...a sort of multi-cultural Nancy-Mitford...when, it isn't, it isn't, it isn't, it isn't, it isn't.
Salt and Saffron is a self-possessed little gem and thoroughly its own book, with its own distinctive Dard-e-Dil clavicle. As a family history, it's fascinating (I daren't say more for fear of ruining the delights of the curse of enot quite' twins); as a set of entwined love stories it's deeply satisfying and as an exotic and mystical tale to read yearningly under the Oxford sun, it's perfect. The plot has enough twists, turns and tweaks to appeal to the most attentionally deficient reader, although this does give the book a frustratingly fragmentary edge at times and characters tend to rush in and out of the plot, as if too important to be there, in a most disconcerting manner. But this is nit-picking. The loving attention to atmospheric detail and the exuberant wit that suffuses the pages will keep you distracted most of the time. Salt and Saffron is not the new God of Small Things. But it's still a thoroughly worthwhile read, particularly suited for a sun-drenched afternoon on the quad. It won't change your life but it'll certainly make the couple of hours it'll take you to read it more entertaining.
Kyra Smith
In spite of the rather uninspired title, Ben Nimmo's Pilgrim Snail promised great things - a young man walks from Canterbury to Santiago through two thousand miles of Belgium, France and Spain in memory of a friend murdered while working for charity in Belize, taking his trombone to indulge in plenty of jazz along the way. A great deal of Nimmo's experience is striking and I've got to credit his faith and interest in the people he meets along the way and his sheer commitment to the lifestyle he sets himself.
As a read, though, it's disappointing. We're told far too often that he's "come a long way" and learned so much without really understanding what that means. Nimmo follows medieval pilgrimage routes and labels himself and his companions "pilgrims" in the best Chaucerian tradition, fundamentally concerned with human nature, but there's little weight to most of his anecdotes beyond his assertions that people are "nice", all questing philosopher-poets.
Perhaps I can best explain my reaction with an anecdote in return. I've never undertaken anything approaching the scope of what Nimmo achieved, but last summer I had a brush with Spanish sites of medieval pilgrimage and it utterly awed me. Even among the overblown tourist trappings and easy accessibility for coach parties, the sense of tradition, history and faith in the monastery and shrines in the hills of Montserrat was staggering. Talking to people who had travelled from the Caribbean to Catalonia to touch an icon, who passionately wanted to express their beliefs without threatening your own was, for me, a moving and faith-affirming experience. So I was a bit surprised that in spite of all the discussions of philosophy that we're told went on along en route, Nimmo never shares them with us, or attempts to convey any interest in the institution - the Catholic Church - that shaped his route.
Still, he does tell some moving personal stories, although maybe the memories we're told are so significant could be presented more fully and with less focus on saying just that it was all very moving. What he undertook is seriously impressive and even inspiring - it's certainly given me a few more ideas for life after Oxford - but the style unfortunately means the story sometimes seems trivial when it shouldn't be.
Kathleen Goodwin
There is very little dignity to be had in giving a bad review. The reviewer reckons the author has needlessly consigned trees to the pulper in order that his tawdry wares can be displayed, and thus proceeds to dispatch more trees to the great Natural Trust Park in the Sky purely to inform a bunch of disinterested readers that it was indeed a big fat waste of paper. In addition to this, there is the nagging doubt that the humble reviewer is in no place to deride the product of a professional author who has invested huge swathes of emotion and care into producing his debut.
That would be my worry. Luckily, however, David Schickler has so evidently put the minimum possible effort into Kissing in Manhattan that one can feel fully justified in lambasting this trite drivel to one's heart's content. It's O.K. No one is getting hurt here, Shickler clearly holds the reader in just as much content as we do him. I mean you would at least make a pretence of trying to get your reader's attention with the title of your first work wouldn't you? Apparently not. The title Kissing in Manhattan - presumably chosen because the stories are set in Manhattan and feature kissing - sets the tone for the sort of sickening banality that one might suspect, but still be shocked to find in published literature one is expected to pay money for.
Perhaps I'm getting carried away, there is some progression. The short stories start off as vacuous develop to being both vacuous and stupidly gothic; Sex in the City meets Buffy, if you like, but entirely lacking the tacky self-indulgence one might associate with either. The use of recurring characters and points of reference might serve to link together and otherwise poorly juxtaposed description of incidents, but in fact, the continuity is so clumsily rendered as to make the reader think they have mistakenly re-read a story that they had already gainfully battled through.
Shickler, for some reason, also seem to has it in for men. His male characters, two dimensional at best, come off in poor second to the confident and headstrong fairer sex every single time. Of course, this is hardly an issue in itself, but it betrays a deeper fault in his work. Obviously the estrange but attractive' Checkers, inarticulate and brash is heading for a fall, but the extra-marital affair that the jingle writer Jacob Wolf has seems to be shoe-horned into the narrative just in case we were beginning to like him. Schickler appears profoundly insecure. Like the sycophant in the playground, he swans about trying to ingratiate himself to every set by mercilessly ripping everyone else until at the end of break he is left alone, without a friend in the school.
The press blurb claim - "that a book is the reason you learned to read" - is a sketchy proposition at the best of times, but in the case of Kissing in Manhattan, it is just laughable. It is more like the book one might get in order to learn to read. After all, it's got nice big print and plenty of wrist-slashingly descriptive dialogue. Thank goodness then, that in this country we still like our children enough to wean them on The Oxford Reading Tree Series, rather than resorting to Schickler's staggeringly un-entertaining debut.
Jake Eliot
Entertaining Ambrose is a surprisingly light read, given that it contains plot elements including bereavement and betrayal. Certainly the deaths in the novel don't prevent the sadly long anticipated ending of man and woman united in sunset. Perhaps the attraction is mainly one for the post-finals mind - capable of absorbing only the most mindless reading matter from genres of romance and crime fiction. Definately a far cry from the reading lists I have been given over the past 3 years! Perhaps also, however, Purcell has managed to create a heroine attractive even in her own unbelievability.
May, the central character, narrates her life-story to the reader in a tale riddled with tragedy of one sort or another, helped now and again by friendly angel Ambrose. While the guardian angel theme leaves something to be desired, May's own account (and its style) is poignant, even moving. Irrespective of the overall success of the character, Purcell creates in May a clear receptor of powerful base emotion and jealousy, grief and love. The focus remains on these emotions, and although the transition between them may seem sudden, the treatment of them retains authenticity. I was somewhat disinclined to find May convincing overall, yet her reactions in their subtlety and even occasional inarticulacy were the most distinctive part of the novel. I cannot altogether shake off the impulse to place Entertaining Ambrose amongst those low-brow glossy beach reads which magazines give away for free. Yet if such an assessment is fair, the novel is the very best of its genre. Admittedly short of originality and that something beyond which makes you read a novel again, it holds sufficient appeal to make a first reading short and enjoyable.
Nicki Taylor
4th Oct 2001