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| Set 1: four books that were made into famous films starting on Friday, March 9 THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER by Alan Sillitoe Still seething, still boiling with energy and indignation. After 50 years, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner remains a forceful work. Sillitoe had reason to be one of the original Angry Young Men. His childhood was spent in a cramped terrace house in Nottingham with a long-term unemployed father. “We lived in a room whose four walls smelled of leaking gas, stale fat and layers of mouldering wallpaper,” he told one interviewer. He had written for almost a decade and suffered rejection and indifference until Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was published in 1958. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner was written at a similar time. He made Colin Smith, the novella’s antihero (later superbly played by Tom Courtenay in the film version), a cauldron of restlessness and resentment. Smith is clear, always, that life is “us” and “them”. The “them” are the staff at the borstal where Smith is sent for breaking into a bakery, but it could easily be the police, the school, the State. Sillitoe cleverly allows his poetry to still reach for the sky. He writes of Smith smelling “green grass and honeysuckle” as he embarks on a run. The borstal governor, meanwhile, is a “half-dead gangrened gaffer”. The book frames the finest angry prose of its generation. MARK HODKINSON ANITA AND ME by Meera Syal Syal’s jolly coming-of-age story, which was shortlisted for the Guardian fiction prize in 1996 and adapted for film in 2002, displays the wit and sharp social observation familiar from her TV series Goodness Gracious Me and, more recently, The Kumars at No 42, in which she plays an Indian granny very like the one in her novel. Set in the 1970s, in a drab village on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, her book describes the growing pains of nine-year-old Meena Kumar and her attempts to blend in with the locals, despite what she regards as her parents’ unfortunate tendency to stand out – not only because they are the only Indian people in Tollington, but by virtue of their charm, intelligence and sophistication. Meena does her best to combat these embarrassing tendencies by joining forces with Anita Rutter, the neighbourhood bad girl. Soon, she is learning to lie, steal and swear like Anita – much to the consternation of her parents and their extensive social circle of “uncles and aunties”. This, of course, makes Meena all the more determined not to become like her dutiful cousins, Baby and Pinky. The arrival of her Punjabi grandmother puts paid to this rebelliousness, as Meena realises that she doesn’t have to conform to stereotypical notions of Englishness in order to be happy. With its loving evocation of Indian family life, and its irreverent humour, Anita and Me offers a sharply evocative account of a provincial childhood . CHRISTINA KONING MESSIAH by Boris Starling It is a pure, but appropriate coincidence that the author of Messiah bears the same surname as the woman FBI agent who plays dangerous mind games with Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The evil villain of Messiah is no cannibal, but he is just as super-clever a murderous psychopath as Lecter – and just as frightening. The London serial killer’s first victim is found hanged; subsequent ones are beaten to death, decapitated, and skinned alive. Others follow, each dying in a different manner. There seems to be nothing to connect them. The killer leaves no clues, but has imposed one common gory signature on all his handiwork. He has cut out the tongue of each of his victims, and placed in his bloody, mutilated mouth a silver spoon. In charge of the investigation is Detective Inspector Red Metcalfe, Scotland Yard’s expert in catching deranged killers by looking into their minds. The crucial link between the tongueless is discovered halfway through the book – astute readers can work it out as well, although it is not easy – but the action doesn’t slow down. Who will be next to die? By what means? And whose warped mind is responsible? The solution is a real shock. Messiah – filmed for the BBC in 2001 – is not a book to be read alone at night, nor by those with weak hearts or stomachs. everyone else will find it an intelligent, tense rollercoaster ride with a steely grip. MARCEL BERLINS BEE SEASON by Myla Goldberg Eliza Naumann, the heroine of this superb piece of American Gothic, is 11, the youngest and least significant member of a high-achieving family. Her father, Saul (played by Richard Gere in the 2005 film adaptation), is a cantor in a suburban synagogue, immersed in mysticism. Her mother, Miriam, is a brilliant lawyer and control freak with a shameful secret. Her big brother, Aaron, seems destined for spiritual and scholarly greatness. Eliza, however, is a “student from whom great things should not be expected”, and her strange, obsessive parents feel free to ignore her – until she reveals an amazing talent for spelling. In America, the competitive Spelling Bee is a part of national life; an arena in which a weedy but brainy child can collect trophies for an ambitious parent. When Eliza wins contest after contest, Saul notices her for the first time. He is convinced that her talent for spelling impossible words is a sign of greatness – and this upsets the family’s delicate balance. Myla Goldberg writes with profound understanding of what happens when the tectonic plates of a family shift. During the “bee season” Aaron, once the favoured child, finds himself upstaged by his sister, and his lonely quest for God leads him to some startling places. Miriam’s secret begins to get out of hand. With great skill and humour, Goldberg takes us through an extraordinary process of unravelling, to the point where only Eliza can avert total disintegration. KATE SAUNDERS |
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| Collect them all With 20 titles in five genres, there’s something for everyone in our 99p books offer. Look out for a new book every Friday from March 9 at WHSmith Biography Set 2. Biography GIVING UP THE GHOST Hilary Mantel TOAST Nigel Slater BAREFOOT IN MULLYNEENY Bryan Gallagher BERTIE, MAY & MRS FISH Xandra Bingley Set 3: Travel IN XANADU William Dalrymple THE HARMONY SILK FACTORY Tash Aw MR GOLIGHTLY’S HOLIDAY Salley Vickers TWO IN A BOAT Gwyneth Lewis Set 4: Book groups MARCH Geraldine Brooks WE WERE THE MULVANEYS Joyce Carol Oates THE THIRD POLICEMAN Flann O’Brien THE AMERICAN BOY Andrew Taylor Beach reads Set 5: Beach reads THE PORTRAIT Iain Pears THE TORMENT OF OTHERS Val McDermid SHE MAY NOT LEAVE Fay Weldon A DARKENING STAIN Robert Wilson |