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AFTER a quarter-century of nimble and witty provocations, Hanif Kureishi has kept his entire mischievous gift for insight and outrage. Uniting public affairs with affairs of the heart, this novel of London life and lust takes its psychoanalyst narrator on a journey into his, and his culture’s, tangled past. Jamal Khan confesses the secrets — disturbing, erotic but always touching — behind his progress from a conflict-ridden suburban youth in the 1970s to a cheerily chaotic inner-city middle age. Kureishi fuses social comedy, humane sympathy and a unique ability to get under the skin of baby-boom bohemians. Frank, fearless and funny, this novel will live in readers’ minds long after its politer cousins expire of respectable boredom. Biography AS much a book about the trickiness of writing biography as it is the story of the famous writer’s life, this is the official life of Alasdair Gray, written by his barman, typist, secretary and puzzled friend. There is hardly any modern Scottish writer who does not now claim to be influenced by Gray, and Glass, his employee and biggest fan, is no exception. Beginning with a delighted invitation from Gray to "be my Boswell", he continues through his own confusion and Gray’s obfuscation to reach an approximation of the kind of guy his mentor is — with a little help from Gray’s novels, which the biography skims at the kitchen table as an aide-memoire.
Starting as a single photograph seen by an easy-to-amuse cat owner, becoming a website, then a blog and finally a worldwide cult with millions of daily hits, I Can Has Cheezburger? and the lolcats phenomenon now look like becoming a surreal, Christmas best-seller. Basically, some cute pictures of cats with captions in lolspeak (or pidgin kitty), the book is introduced by Professor Happycat and is stupid, brilliant and far more ridiculously funny than it has any right to be. Fans (who have already produced a lolspeak dictionary) will find that the language becomes maddeningly addictive. Don’t get it? Don’t let on: Ceiling Cat is watching you. Cinema & TV THE new biography by the professional Yorkshireman is one of an unusual crop that has stormed the best-seller charts this year: celebrity memoirs that were actually written by the person whose name is on the cover. Parkinson’s style turns out to be funny and self-deprecating and just as laid-back as he is on camera, starting with the obligatory poor childhood in a mining town ("I remember thinking it wouldn’t bother me, provided I could marry Ingrid Bergman and get a house much nearer the pit") and ending up in the telly stratosphere. Fans will be pleased to hear that Meg Ryan and Emu are well covered, but in fact the early chapters about his childhood and mother are most compelling.
Amazon is surely another step towards Bruce Parry’s coronation as a national treasure — a kind of Michael Palin with a greater openness to impromptu facial piercings and weird psychotropic experiences. The book, like the television series, covers more than 6,000 km of Amazon river, mostly by foot and boat, starting at its source in the Peruvian Andes and ending in the Amazonian rainforest, as well as meeting some remarkable characters along the way. On paper, Parry is just as committed as on film, but by its nature the book is softer and more reflective than the onscreen version. How Parry resists judging people is anyone’s guess, but greatly to his credit.
DOES Nation merely count as a children’s novel? As with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Gulliver’s Travels, delighted readers of whatever age will swiftly cease to care. Here, Pratchett forsakes his Discworld for a stand-alone fable of conquest, civilisation and enlightenment — with a bumper crop of gags on the way. In a slightly twisted universe that parallels Europe’s imperial past, shipwrecked Daphne meets Mau, the last survivor of his nation, on the island that his people used to inhabit before a tsunami. Mau must free himself from the iron grip of traditional belief; Daphne, of the shackles of race and class prejudice. Cue a wisely hilarious excursion through ideas of community, identity and belonging, all wrapped up in Pratchett’s sublime silliness. Art IT could well be, as the age of art bling turns to bust, that Sarah Thornton’s acute and zesty tour of the market and its movers will soon read like past history. No matter: her book will survive as a hard-thinking but high-spirited memorial to that strange millennial period when contemporary art offered a glittery rendezvous for talent, ambition, hype — and shed loads of free-floating cash. From decision time at the Turner Prize to a hot auction night at Christie’s; from a frenzied selling souk in Switzerland to the grandiose village fete of the Venice Biennale, Thornton swoops with a trained eye and sharp claws on the makers and breakers of reputation. She brings to light the bizarre machinery that keeps studio showbiz on the road, and in the headlines. — By arrangement with The Independent
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