This month I’ve had an essay entitled Losing the Space Race published in Gastronomica. It features my mother, purple mini-skirts and the Smash robots and has made me very happy. Just call me Nigel Slater …

And yes, I am also very happy to have been longlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award.Of course I am! If I’ve failed to thank anybody for their good wishes, please accept a public apology – I did get an awful lot of emails and calls and I might have slipped on responding – it’s not intentional, and I’m really grateful to everybody who congratulated me. but ask me again how I feel on 7 March when the shortlist is made public, then I might be a bit less chipper, or maybe, even more so!

Mini book reviews:

Betrayal by Karin Alvtegen published by Canongate - yet another book that’s feeding my current addiction to Nordic writers. Sadly, it’s not been a vintage 2010 for me and the Nordic crime scene. I struggled more than a little with The Quiet Girl by Peter Hoeg and I’m going to re-read it because I’m pretty sure that being migraine-walloped in the middle of the reading process might have cocked up my ability to master the narrative chronology. On the back of this novel the blurb compares Alvtegen with Highsmith, a view with which I would concur although regular readers will remember that Ms Highsmith is not one of my favourites. So … this novel is interesting, cold, analytic and well-paced, but either a translation error or an editorial hole in the final quarter destroyed my suspension of disbelief. It relates to one of the three protagonists thinking about something that neither she, nor we, have been told about. I had to re-read the previous two chapters to be sure it hadn’t been mentioned and that I’d missed it. It hadn’t, I hadn’t, and the narrative fell away from me then as I spent the rest of the novel wondering what else might have slipped out of the story that would have helped it make more sense. Also, there’s a pov jump at the very end which is somewhat disconcerting. Allowable but not smooth, is how I’d characterise it.

All in all, I can’t recommend the book, at least in this edition, because of this small but irritating plot lacuna, but I enjoyed it enough to think that I’ll seek out another of her novels.

Fury by Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape – Rushdie at his best is superb, but this book, rather like some Philip Roth, is more evidence of how a great writer can conceal the blankness at the heart of a novel than a novel in itself. There are quite heart-stoppingly lovely and clever riffs in this narrative – especially on the nature of duality, but Solly Solanka, the protagonist, is a rather hollow construction that (in Rushdie’s world) appeals to a series of beautiful and talented women but manages to lose them all. The central conceit is that of the furies, but I have to say that Rushdie makes them a bit more like furries!

Cadillac Jukebox by James Lee Burke, published by Phoenix Editions – if there’s a special pleasure to be found in the episodic adventures of crime novels, with the slow unfolding of the personal lives of the ‘hero’ or ‘anti-hero’ then there’s a truly perverse pleasure to reading such a series out of sequence. And I am confused to find that one reviewer says this is the sixth in the series, another the ninth. No matter, James Lee Burke has an almost hallucinogenic beauty to his prose when he describes Louisiana, which sits perfectly beside his terse but complete descriptions of the appearance and life histories of the various criminals who cross the sight line of Dave Robicheaux: policeman, AA member, Vietnam veteran and general good(ish) guy. While the body count piles up and the deaths get more and more gory, the moral underpinning of this story holds true and, as far as I can tell, the procedural elements are flawlessly described. Burke exposes both the nitty and the gritty of life as a criminal or crime-stopper in a small town in a rural area where Klu Klux KIansmen used to ride. And his scenery, whether pastoral, human or inhuman, is elegantly exposed to our view.

Mini book reviews and other literary things

I had the most amazing time at West Sussex Writers’ Club! If the assembled members enjoyed themselves even half as much as I did, then a good evening was had by all. Now I’m looking forward to judging their romantic novel opening competition.

I do have something I wish I could talk about, but I can’t yet, so I won’t. Prepare to be amazed at my reticence when I finally can though!

Books I’ve read this week:

Anarchy and Old Dogs by Colin Cotterill, published by Soho Crime

A thoroughly entertaining crime caper, with deft dialogue and fascinating insights into the revolutionary cycles of Laos, a country of which I know nothing but with which am now enamoured. It’s sharper and more cynical than Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana crime novels, but similarly affectionate in many respects. Dr Siri is the only coroner in Laos, a (reluctant) shaman of sorts and a rather disreputable old man, which makes him an excellent central character for a crime novel. I found the beginning of the book a little over-larded with back-story (it’s the fourth in a series) but by a third of the way through I was actually laughing out loud – not a normal behaviour for me when reading fiction! Highly recommended.

50/50 Killer by Steve Mosby, published by Orion

The premise of this novel is at first hard to accept – a serial killer who captures couples and makes one partner declare that the other should be the one to be tortured to death, but Mosby certainly makes it work via some complex head-hopping and deft reveals and twists. The narrative becomes progressively darker and is definitely not one to read if you’re in doubt about the quality of your relationship or hearing strange noises from your loft! The pace is excellent, and the final scenes are beautifully handled, and nothing like the usual ‘case closed’ denouement that often feels a little pedestrian. Highly recommended.

Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord, published by Gallic – full review to follow next month.

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, published by Vintage Classics – book club assigned book for discussion next week, review to follow after club meeting.

Why small presses don’t get many books reviewed

Today I am not happy. I have the comet’s tail end of a migraine, complete with weird black floaters and the sense that if I didn’t have my wonderful medication, I would also have pain. A world of pain. On Friday I had the full-blown, shutters-down start of a migraine, during which even my own breathing hurt my ears and my own pulse irritated me so much that I tried to work out how to suffocate myself with a cushion. So I missed hearing my story being read aloud at the New Brunswick Theatre. I am, to say very little, disgruntled about this.

Saturday was lost to slow motion movement and medication. Sunday was mainly spent talking like a Dalek (side effect of tablets) and staring at things that wouldn’t come into focus properly.

Monday is the day I get all my senses back, more or less, just in time to start work again. And as I have plenty of unhappiness to spread around, I am going to start with small presses.

I review books for small presses. I’ve never asked to do this, and often turn down proposed books because I think they would be a waste of my time. I also review self-published books which people insist on sending me, although the author who invites me so to do is a pretty brave author, and most decline my review when I contact them and say that I can’t be positive about their book.

And I know that small presses complain about the quantity of reviews they get compared to the big publishers, so I try to be sensible and positive about the subject, because I am a writer and I’ve been published by small presses so I know how tough it can be to get any kind of coverage.

But why do small presses dick around so much?

• Press 1 – emails me to ask if I’ll review an anthology. Of course I will. They don’t send it. I email, querying. They reply that it’s in the post. It doesn’t arrive. Repeat this sequence four times. I give up.
• Press 2 – sends me a short story collection. I ask if they can convey some questions to the non-English speaking author. They say they can. I email them the questions. Nothing happens. I email, querying. They reply, offering to send me another copy of the book. I beg them not to, asking if they can (a) send the questions to the author or (b) confirm that this isn’t possible so I can post my review without author commentary. No reply. I give up.
• Press 3 – sends me a book I didn’t ask to review (fair enough, I don’t have to review it) and a list of books I might like to review. I email, saying I’d like to review one of the books on the list. Nothing arrives. I email again. No answer.
• Press 4 – rings me (ooh, a telephone call, how exciting!) to ask if I will review an anthology of short stories. I will. Nothing arrives. I call to query (ooh another telephone call!) and can’t speak to their PR person. I get an email - as I am not a professional reviewer, would I accept a pdf instead of a printed book. No I bloody wouldn’t: my eyes are my livelihood and I don’t read pdfs unless I’m being paid for it. I reply, saying that I’m happy to take a ‘proof’ copy or a printed galley if they are worried that I might try and flog the book on Amazon and do them out of income. No reply.

Can you see a pattern emerging? A pattern that mainly involves me, a writer, who is trying to help other writers, being quietly ground down by small presses who whinge about not getting publicity.

I review a couple of dozen books a year that I have bought with my own hard-earned writing income, because I believe in supporting good writing. I review about another eight or ten that are sent to me because I think they are well-written and should be better known. No, I’m not a professional, but I’m giving my time in reading the material, my intellectual capital in constructing the review, and my support in blogging about, for free. And I feel dissed, I really do.

So from next month, a change. I will review books that I enjoy and I will review small presses and publishers that fail to deliver on their promises. I suspect this may make me unpopular in some circles, but writers need to know if they are being let down in the tough world of publishing and I’m miserable enough right now to have decided that I’d rather be unpopular than put upon. Watch this space …