Orbital and other books and TV
28 Thursday Nov 2024
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ORBITAL AND OTHER BOOKS AND TV
Fall in love with the earth
In my continuing search for books to recommend to you, a few months ago I read Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital. Just two weeks ago, it won the Booker. Never say I don’t have influence…
(If you want to see last month’s selection of books and TV for the long nights click here)
Booker prize-winning books rarely live up to their hype. Orbital is an exception. It’s an exception in many other ways too. Short – not much longer than a novella – it seems on the surface to have little plot, yet it zips by as fast as an orbiting space station.
We follow six astronauts as they take sixteen orbits around the earth. They try to survive the worst environment any human has to face, watch a typhoon grow, mourn loved-ones whose funerals they can’t attend, fall in love sixteen times with the beauty of the jewelled planet rotating beneath them.
It is, as some have said, a love letter to the earth. And a poetic message to those of us who are caught up in the horrors down below. Give it a try.
A dark Christmas miracle
Equally appropriate for Christmas, at least as far as the setting is concerned, and Booker-shortlisted in 2022, is another short novel, one which has just been made into a film. Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These performs a minor Xmas miracle, in telling a dark story yet not in a dark way.
William Furlong runs a business delivering coal and wood for fires. But when he takes fuel to the local convent in the days before Christmas, what he discovers threatens to turn his life upside-down. Keegan’s story deals with the scandal of the Irish Magdalene laundries, but her writing is so delicately poised and her characters so beautifully drawn, that most of the darkness is below the surface – and all the more moving for that.
I don’t know how it will translate to the screen, and part of me doesn’t want to know. There’s an old adage in the business that bad books make good movies and good books make bad ones. It would take real Christmas magic to capture Keegan’s elegantly poised prose in pictures and sound. If you see it, tell me what you think.
Irish mystery
Staying in Ireland, we find Colin Walsh’s Kala. We’re in the seaside village of Kinlough. Twenty years ago, six teenagers were inseparable. But then one of them, Kala, disappeared. Now, twenty years later, human remains have been found.
The five reassemble, each with their own reasons, each with their own memories of their vivacious friend. And when two more girls go missing, they have to confront the past, in the hope of saving them.
Kala draws you in to a small yet lovingly drawn world and into lives which will never be the same again. Well worth checking out.
A pair of jewels
For many years, I’ve put off reading The Girl with the Pearl Earring. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I’d seen the movie. Perhaps I was put off by the hype that surrounded Tracy Chevalier’s breakthrough bestseller.
Well, if you have also been put off – don’t be. It’s a gem of a book. Chevalier is possibly unique among living writers in her ability to convey the experience of creating art.
By coincidence, this month I was commissioned to interview her and write a newspaper review of her latest novel The Glassmaker. Did it come up to her high standards? You can find out here.
Short and Sweet
One of the best books I’ve re-read this year is the masterful Get Shorty. You may have seen the film or even the TV series. Give yourself a treat. The original novel, by Elmore Leonard, is a joy.
Super-cool Miami-based loan-shark Chili Palmer discovers his street-wise skills are ideal for pitching movies in Hollywood. But, attracted by the bright lights and bezaz of Tinseltown, it’s not long before he finds himself swimming in more dangerous waters.
Funny and gripping, it’s also beautifully structured. Every set-up is neatly paid off by the end.
On the money
From one crime master to another, I found Ed McBain’s Killers Wedge on my son’s crime shelf. McBain is another of those authors I’d heard much about but never got round to reading, so this slim volume was just the thing.
Believe it or not, it’s book 7 of his 87th Precinct series, which runs to a total of 52 novels. One day, Virginia Dodge turns up at the precinct armed with a gun, a bomb and a bottle of nitroglycerine. Her aim, to kill the series’ lead detective when he returns and she’s prepared to take the squad-room hostage while she waits.
Gripping and tightly wound, the writing is still fresh, despite being written seventy years ago.
Cancel Culture
A couple of TV series to stream, before I finish. The first is a half-recommendation. Douglas is Cancelled begins with a great premise: star TV news presenter Douglas Bellowes (the always-watchable Hugh Bonneville) finds himself under attack on social media for supposedly telling a sexist joke at a wedding. He says he can’t even remember what he might have said, but that doesn’t stop the pile-on. Trying to defend himself, things go from bad to worse.
It’s a tremendous idea, at exactly the right time. OK, Steven Moffat must have written most if not all of it before BBC top presenter Hugh Edwards crashed and burned, but cancel culture has been a hot topic for some time now.
So, why am I only half recommending it? It’s one of a number of series I’ve watched recently which never quite comes good on its original idea. Comedy, counter-intuitively, often works best when played seriously, but the production here pushes too hard for cheap laughs. It’s a shame, because there’s so much good material that gets sidelined while good actors ham it up.
Nevertheless, it’s still well worth a viewing – and you’ll want to watch (or at least skip) to the end to find out what really happened to kick the whole affair off.
How do you like them apples?
By contrast, a rare series that does come good on its premise is the Annette Bening starrer Apples Never Fall. Developed by Melanie Marnich from the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty, it centres on the disappearance without trace of wife, mother and ex-tennis player Joy Delaney.
Prime suspect is husband Stan (Sam Neill). An angry, frustrated would-be top tennis coach, why did he pretend for days that she was still at home? What grievances are their grown-up children nursing? And who’s the mysterious cuckoo in the nest Savannah who took their place?
Tremendous performances from all and a plot that constantly keeps you guessing. Find it on a streaming platform if you can.
Christmas gifts and stocking fillers
If you’re looking for seasonal presents, you could do worse than any of the books above.
And if you’re still looking for ideas, why not consider my political thriller The Breaking of Liam Glass? An award-nominated bestseller, it’s available in hardback and paperback from Amazon or on order from your local bookshop.
Reviews: ‘Utterly gripping, darkly realistic and endlessly entertaining,’ and ‘A fast-paced ride from start to finish.’
Room 15 is a psychological mystery bestseller, hailed as a ‘gripping psychological thriller‘ and a ‘compelling, fast-paced psychological crime thriller, that’ll keep you in suspense with every turn’.
Also in paperback from Amazon and bookshops.
And for a fun stocking filler, you couldn’t do better than my little gift book Police Slang. A pocket-sized compendium of the off-beat, sarky and plain funny slang used by police among themselves.
It’s a fun way to decode TV cop shows and police novels, or just as a quick read. “So so funny.” “My husband loved this.” “Brilliant book.”
Shop now for Christmas reading treats
Read more
Glass war – Charles Harris talks research and love of colour with novelist Tracy Chevalier
