Not-quite-new Book Round Up; How Should A Person Be? by Sheila Heti, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

The rather peculiar title is because these are not 'brand new' published novels but from earlier in the year. They did however all cause a certain amount of chat in the book world and I am only just getting around to reading them myself.

First up is Sheila Heti's How Should A Person Be? 
 
An unusual memoir style book, Heti ruminates in a philosophical way on her life as she contemplates how it should be lived. She does this through the 'character' Sheila, a playwright with a failed marriage who searches to find herself again with arrival in her life of artist friends Margaux and Israel.   Oftentimes crude in her very personal revelations, it is obviously the voice of a young woman who considers life in her own very unique way. Heti herself calls it a "novel from life". It was first published in 2010 in Canada before it was revised to be published in the U.S in 2012 and in UK/Ireland in early 2013. It was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

Heti's book identifies that uncertainty of identity that lurks in us all, seeing how a friend behaves and wanting to emulate them or seeing someone pass us on the street and thinking that we'd like to dress like them. And it challenges that aspect of our insecurity. But it is the disconcerting openness in her talk on sex, which is in no way sexy, that sometimes just takes away from the real argument that Heti puts forward which is ultimately one on art and ugliness. There are many ideas to consider in this book, and it is a challenging read, but the author's voice sometimes just jars too much.

How Should A Person Be by Sheila Heti is published by Harvill Secker

Next in the round-up is Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. Published in March, it was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.
  
A clever concept, the main protagonist Ursula Todd born in 1910 during a snowstorm has multiple chances at life. The baby dies at birth, but no, the next chapter rewrites her fate in life and she lives to take her next risk in life. This double, sometimes triple take on one event is surprisingly easy to adjust to in the reading of this novel. Set at a turbulent time in history, all these major events are brought to the tale. The characters are masterfully drawn and the reader is quickly sure of the personality of the Irish housemaid, the cook, Ursula's siblings and her parents. Kate Atkinson fans will not be disappointed.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is published by Doubleday.

My final book in this round up is Dave Eggers A Hologram for the King which was published in February.
 
This book had me under it's spell from the start. The main character, a fifty-something divorced and nearly bankrupt businessman is banking on the success of his most recent project with a Saudi Arabian King. With his daughter's place in college under threat if the fees can't be paid and with friends and businesses owed money, the importance of this last ditch attempt is clear. But despite being sure from early on that this is a rocky road with little chance of a good outcome, we are behind him and feel protective when he is put down by his father on a long-distance phone conversation. His exhaustion with the path life has dealt him as manufacturing in the modern world moved rapidly to where it could be produced most cheaply brings a feeling of sympathy from the reader. Sure he's a bit of a loser, but we want to like him anyway. Tom Hanks is to star in the film version of this book and he is sure to be able to bring a convincing hang-dog element to this role.

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers is published by Hamish Hamilton.

Dublin Live Art Festival 25-29 September 2013

I've just received a press release for this very interesting sounding festival

DUBLIN LIVE ART FESTIVAL 2013


"Dublin Live Art Festival 2013 (DLAF13) is a week-long series of events that brings together some of the most exciting live performance artists and curators from both Ireland and abroad.

Running from 25th to the 29th of September in The Backloft, Dublin 8. The Dublin Live Art Festival 2013 will assemble an eclectic selection of Irish live performance artists, alongside some very special guests from overseas, to showcase their work in one fantastic city centre location.
  

Visitors to DLAF13 will experience a series of unique performance art events reflecting the growing public interest for the genre and showcasing the high caliber of artists, working within Ireland, who consider live performance art central to their practice. DLAF13 will highlight the excellent standard of live art work being produced, both in Ireland and by Irish artists worldwide.

Many nationally and internationally acclaimed artists will be performing during the festival including Liz Aggiss, Bjorn Neukom, Áine Phillips, Alan Delmar and Weeks and Whitford. To complement the performances DLAF13 will also present a number of artists’ workshops and weekend seminar events allowing our audience to further experience and engage with this exciting art form.
 
About the Festival
'Dublin Live Art Festival 2013 is the first festival of its kind within in the capital to recognise the wealth of live performance art being produced at home and to celebrate the huge surge in interest and curiosity surrounding the art-form. Whether you are a seasoned visitor to live art events, or someone who is unsure exactly of what ‘Live Art’ is, this is the perfect opportunity to witness this exciting art form in many different ways. Expect to be surprised, stimulated, inspired, moved, stirred and shaken up as DLAF 2013 brings together the best of contemporary live performance art. he Dublin Live Art Festival 2013’s week-long programme of events promises to have something for everyone.’
Festival Director Niamh Murphy

Artists who will perform at Dublin Live Art Festival 2013 include; Áine Phillips, Liz Aggiss (UK) , Bjorn Neukom (CH), Weeks and Whitford (UK), Hillary Gilligan, Noel Arrigan, John Freeman and Elizabeth Matthews, Francis Fay, Eleanor Lawler and Alan Delmar among others. A highlight of the event will be Workshops with Liz Aggiss and a Masterclass facilitated by Nigel Rolfe (tickets required). The Weekend Seminar will include Jonas Stampe (CH), as well as talks, lectures and presentations.

For the full festival line-up visit: www.dublinliveartfestival.blogspot.ie
Irish Live Performance Art
The Backloft, Saint Augustine Street, Dublin 8
25th-29th September 2013

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

It's not often that a book comes along where you genuinely don't want the story to end, but Night Film is one of them. The blurb on the back of the book reads:

       "Everybody has a Cordova story. Cult horror director Stanislas Cordova hasn't been seen in public since 1977. To his fans he is an enigma. To journalist Scott McGrath he is the enemy. To Ashley he was a father.
         On a damp October night the body of young beautiful Ashley Cordova is found in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Her suicide appears to be the latest tragedy to hit a severely cursed dynasty. For McGrath, another death connected to the legendary director seems more than a coincidence. Driven by revenge, curiosity and a need for the truth, he finds himself pulled into a hypnotic disorientating world, where almost everyone seems afraid. The last time McGrath got close to exposing Cordova, he lost his marriage and his career. This time he could lose his grip on reality."


Night Film is an edgy, dark and thrilling read. An middle-aged investigative reporter and his two cohorts, Nora- who has a touch of the Holly Golightly crossed with a punk about her, with her aged parakeet that travels everywhere with her in its cage, and Hopper, a disheveled but none the less still glamorous loafer, who between the three of them are determined to get tot the bottom of the mystery of Ashley Cordova's death. Pessl tells the tale in a assured and confident voice with a strong blast of creativity that shows itself by the use of media to add depth to the story. In her acknowledgements Pessl thanks those who helped her "to push book design in a new direction" and this has been done by the inclusion of web pages, emails, newspaper reports and photographs. It makes for fascinating reading.

Referencing the poetry of Eliot, in particular 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', Pessl also makes frequent reference to the use of social media in our lives now; texting, updating our status and the one way relationship dealing with a screen- indirect comments on the state of modern society.


Night Film is as addictive as the very films and the director that the reporter is chasing. It draws you in and the story builds in strength like a river as its tributaries add more to its size until it bursts into the open sea. And, like Scott the reporter, just when you think you have the mystery explained she brings more mystery to the tale to take you deeper down again. Unsure of where the real world and the imagined draw their lines the reader is brought on a chase to find an elusive person, a director who stays in the shadows, Hitchcock-like but with a darker twist.

Possibly the best book I have read this year, it follows Pessl's best selling first novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Don't let the size (599 pages) put you off- you'll find yourself loath to put it down as you race to its thrilling and equally mysterious close.

Night Film is published by Windmill Books www.windmill-books.co.uk .

Royal Babies and all that Jazz.

Amy Licence's timely publication of Royal Babies: A History 1066-2013 will fill a gap in the book market for all the lovers of all things royal, but also for those with a general interest in history. Because of course marriage and royal births in history past were deeply political, drawing countries together with the pacts that they created.



Nowadays a royal birth is considered a public interest story, and there is no doubt that the young couple William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have brought a new injection of hope to the flagging British royal family. But Amy Licence's book is not really about the most recent birth. Covering a grand total of twenty-five royal births from Matilda in 1102 up to what Licence calls 'Baby Windsor' due to the baby not having been born when her final chapter was written, this is an interesting look at the story of the impact a royal birth has had on European history down through the ages.

   
Matilda b.1102                       George b.22 July 2013

Of course, the interest in the new royal birth is that this newborn will inherit the throne; third in line, and the first time since 1894 the British monarchy has had three generations of heirs in waiting. Amy Licence's book is an informative and enjoyable read.

Published by Amberley Press www.amberley-books.com