First They Took Rome
David Broder
Verso, £16.99
There’s an important book to be written on the populist surge of Lega and Matteo Salvini in Italian politics; this is not it.
David Broder's prose is clunky, cliche-ridden, and cobbled together (I've never encountered "indeed" being leaned upon so lazily in a book). There's much telling here but little analysis; the author never rising above the prosaic. It's too slight for an historical account, too muddled to work as a polemic, there are no original quotes or people included for any immediacy or reportage (strange for a Rome-based author). The left has been criticised for having gone missing in communities in recent years. Those who like to espouse socialist ideas and with the privilege of a book commission could bear this in mind, too. NJ McGarrigle
The Channel
Charlie Connelly
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
From Dunkirk, to the English occupation of Calais, to Matthew Webb's great scarlet swimming trunks, the English Channel is brimming with stories. The rich history of this body of water is captured by Charlie Connelly, amateur swimmer, broadcaster and all-round funny fella. Quippy anecdotes are woven with historical reference, and geographical context to give full colour to "that strip of sea which severs merry England from the tardy realms of Europe" (as the Church and State Review put it in 1863). What is notable is the length humans have gone to, to find ways of traversing this, often times treacherous, strip of sea; swimmers smeared with porpoise oil, balloonists, pilots, sailors, émigrés, the channel tunnel. Connelly's buoyant enthusiasm brings each story to life. Brigid O'Dea
Deniable Memories
Vanessa Pearse
Vulpine Press, €11.99
Vanessa Pearse's debut literary novel has a multi-layered origin story. Based partly on Pearse's own experiences as a volunteer in Sudan in the late 1980s, the novel tells the story of Martha, a woman struggling with her troubled relationship with an emotionally distant family who seeks a dramatic change when she decides to commit herself to a new life in war-torn Sudan. Martha is well-drawn and her emotional experiences provide a compelling core for the novel but Sudan itself, while presented as a dynamic and vibrant place, sometimes feels almost circumstantial. Pearse makes a valiant attempt at representing the various complexities of Sudanese life and the sometimes fraught relationships between Western volunteers and the communities they have set out, in their staggering naivety, to save. An interesting debut from a promising new voice. Becky Long
