The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain (Vintage, £8.99)
Living in Switzerland after the Second World War, little Gustav and his mother find it hard to make ends meet. His father died, according to his mother, “saving Jews”, and her resentment bubbles to the surface when Gustav brings his new Jewish friend Anton home from school. That Anton comes from a wealthy banking family doesn’t help. Unlike the highly-strung Anton, Gustav is encouraged by adults to develop a tough shell against adversity, or to be like Switzerland and stay “separate and strong”. Gustav and Anton’s lifelong friendship lies at the heart of the novel, though Tremain jumps back in time to help us better understand his mother and the painful emotional distance between her and Gustav, whose role in life is to sublimate his own needs and provide emotional support to others. Although it is a shade on the bleak side, The Gustav Sonata is a novel to savour, full of interestingly flawed characters and brought by Tremain to a masterful resolution.
The Brewer Of Preston by Andrea Camilleri (Picador, £8.99)
Originally published in Italy in 1992, this early Camilleri work has been translated into English in response to the popularity of his Inspector Montalbano series on BBC4. An earthy comedy set in the 1870s, it’s very different to what his readers have come to expect. The inhabitants of the Sicilian town of Vigata, stubborn and resentful after the unification of Italy, are in no mood to cut their new government any slack. They’re an individualistic lot, and have no patience with their prefect, Eugenio Bortuzzi, least of all his admiration for a minor, sub-Mozartian composer named Luigi Ricci. When Bortuzzi insists that the Vigata opera house stages a production of Ricci’s dire opera The Brewer Of Preston, the local people are determined to do all they can to ensure it’s a disaster. Arson and death ensue. It’s a riotous, bawdy farce with a buffoonish cast, and Camilleri joins in the anarchic spirit by arranging the chapters in a virtually random order.
Anatomy Of A Soldier by Harry Parker (Faber, £7.99)
Like his subject, Captain Tom Barnes, Harry Parker lost both his legs after stepping on an IED in Afghanistan. He could have simply written a straightforward account of his experiences, but, commendably, has taken a more ambitious and literary path. He tells the story of Captain Barnes’s injury and convalescence obliquely, from the perspectives of 45 inanimate objects. A tourniquet, his body armour, a boot, even the fertiliser used to make the bomb – all have something to say, providing an omniscient, panoramic view that doesn’t just tell us about Captain Barnes but about the men who attacked him, those he’s there to protect, their attitudes and the realities of their lives. Parker’s chosen method of telling the story also reflects how Barnes is depersonalised throughout his treatment, and the non-chronological structure makes explicit the shattering effect on his life. It’s an experiment that works extremely well, taking its readers far beyond the limits of the conventional war memoir.
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