Jo Nesbø

 

Turn the page

Alfred Hickling, Jane Housham and Laura Wilson on Paper | Hobson's Island | Piano | The Devil's Star

Saturday 19 November 2005

Paper by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani (Bloomsbury, £7.99)

One of the weirdest instances of grave robbing occurred in the mid-19th century, when Egyptian mummies were exported to America so that the rags could be pulped in the paper mills of Maine. The Persian writer Bahiyyih Nakhjavani includes this among reams of fascinating paper-related facts (interesting to note that the very first paper mill was established in Baghdad in 793) in a poetic account of a Persian scribe's quest to find the perfect sheaf. Nakhjavani's dream-like fable is peopled with a drifting cast of mullahs, moneylenders, envoys and emperors. The frequent passages of paper-fetishism have a fleeting, musical sensuality without ultimately making very much sense: "Each sheet was impeccably trimmed, and as wide as a hand span of hope. Each page was no longer than belief and as cool as the human soul." But as the use of print becomes increasingly prevalent, the scribe finds there's a declining market for exquisite calligraphy inscribed with a sharpened thumbnail: "As the scribal bonds between books and men began to break, Persia became paperless." Wasn't that supposed to have happened in offices about 10 years ago?

Alfred Hickling

Hobson's Island by Stefan Themerson (Dalkey Archive Press, £8.99)

The eccentric Polish philosopher Stefan Themerson, who died in 1988, is best known for establishing a chair of decency at the University of Leyden, and for being a close friend of Bertrand Russell, who praised his books as being "nearly as mad as the world". Hobson's Island, his seventh and last novel, begins with the rescue of a deposed African president by a party of French computer salesmen, who sell him to the captain of a passing vessel for 78 bottles of whisky. It then develops into a cerebral shaggy dog story peopled with numerous eccentrics from Themerson's earlier books, which means that, for the newcomer, it's incredibly dense though intermittently droll - witness the instructions for the care of the unseated potentate: "You'll go to Savile Row and buy him some suits, you'll go to Jermyn Street and buy him some shirts and underpants, you'll go to Hatchard's to buy him some books and you'll go to Marks and Spencer and buy a few yards of red carpet." Yet is it ultimately any great surprise to discover that a novel containing a chapter entitled "Tee- hee-hee Ha ha ha Hoo hoo hoo" isn't all that funny?

AH

Piano by Jean Echenoz (Vintage, £7.99)

Echenoz has given his playful novel an appropriately punning title. A concert pianist who drinks to dull his stagefright, Max Delmarc lives a quiet life in Paris and longs - quietly - for a woman whom he last saw 30 years ago. Shades of Dante and his Beatrice, then, which become more pronounced when Max is killed and finds himself in a Purgatorial "hotel" awaiting triage to either Heaven or Hell, both of which he can see from his window. Highly filmic, this offbeat fable is enjoyable, if a touch insubstantial. It's tempting to look for allegory in every sentence, but the book's quirkiness resists this impulse - Dean Martin and Peggy Lee may be on the staff in Purgatory, but it's impossible to draw any significance from it. Echenoz gently subverts his form, inserting divertissements on the uses of a metro ticket or the pleasures of folding sheets - a Gallic Nicholson Baker. For Sartre, Hell was "other people", and here, similarly, it's a return to the same Paris Max lived in before, but with subtle provisos: a change of identity, a new job. Hell seems perfectly passable, maybe even preferable to life, but, pian piano, darkness falls.

Jane Housham

Old Filth by Jane Gardam (Abacus, £6.99)

Edward Feathers, a "Raj orphan" sent home by his indifferent father, has managed to deaden and absorb most of the pain he has been subject to since birth. Feathers long ago became "Old Filth" ("Failed in London Try Hong Kong"), a successful advocate who lived an insulated life of wealth. Recently widowed, he finally allows himself to peep cautiously at the past - and so his life unfolds. Ancient colleagues in the Inner Temple mutter that "Nothing ever seems to have happened to him", but there are enough wrenching events and wistful coincidences to make an irony of the remark. Jane Gardam, always the supreme novelist of young girls, also does old age brilliantly and proves that she can penetrate the male psyche convincingly too. She is on top form here: words come at you from startling angles; time shifts and shunts. It's the view from the crow's nest of old age: the distant past is more real than yesterday and insights intrude violently on the old routines. Over her past one or two books it had seemed Gardam's grip might be slackening; now she has reached for the most ambitious material and made it absolutely her own.

JH

The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbo, translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker, £11.99)

The ingredients seem, at first glance, wearyingly familiar: one serial killer who leaves bizarre souvenirs on victims' bodies; one maverick, alcoholic cop with broken relationship and trauma in past; one exasperated boss threatening dismissal; one corrupt fellow policeman; and several passages in italics that take us into the mind of the monster. However, such is Nesbo's skill as a storyteller that none of this matters. The Devil's Star is a well-crafted rollercoaster of a book. It's the first outing in translation for this Norwegian writer, introducing Detective Harry Hole (guidance on pronunciation would have been helpful). Hole is assigned, against his will, to investigate the case of a woman found murdered in her Oslo flat. One finger has been severed from her left hand, and a tiny red diamond in the shape of a star has been pushed beneath her eyelid. Before Hole can discover its significance, another corpse is discovered, decorated in the same fashion. Nesbo sets a cracking pace, the shambolic Hole is exasperating and endearing by turns, and a series of spectacular plot twists lead to a thrilling finale. Highly recommended.

Laura Wilson

THE GUARDIAN