The Truth Commissioner,David Park, Bloomsbury, £7.99
The nature of truth is one of the oldest, thorniest questions in philosophy. Its exploration can also be one of the most tedious. But there isn’t even one second of tedium in this multi-layered, post-
Troubles novel, set in a Belfast attempting to come to terms with the horrors of the recent past. In fact, once you pick it up, you’ll be most reluctant to put it down again until you’ve turned the final, shiver-inducing page. The tale, which has more twists than an alligator in an aquarium, is told through the eyes of four protagonists: Francis Gilroy, veteran Republican turned government minister; James Fenton, retired RUC man; Danny, one-time activist who has fled to America; and the eponymous commissioner, Harry Stanfield. Each story within the story is gripping; everybody engages our sympathy; everybody is lying. Park’s accomplishment is to hold it all together as worlds turn and, eventually, collide. It is unquestionably, as another Northerner used to say in another context, a cracker.
Arminta Wallace
Polanski,Christopher Sandford, Arrow, £9.99
"I couldn't make him out. I thought he would either be a cretin or a man of genius." So said Roman Polanski's kindergarten teacher of her most precocious pupil. To go by this absorbing and scrupulously even-handed biography, Polanski was and is a measure of both: an often fiendishly talented director of both mordant art films and trivial entertainments whose moral compass was irretrievably shattered after his pregnant mother, a Polish Jew, was gassed at Auschwitz. Restless, charming, a serial adulterer and an egotist beyond measure, Polanski the film-maker eventually made it to Hollywood, where he had big successes with Rosemary's Babyand Chinatown. In between came the horrible murder of his pregnant second wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson Family. Then, in the 1970s he was arrested in Los Angeles and pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, a 13-year-old girl. He fled to France, where he has lived ever since. Notoriety has never hurt Polanski professionally: Sandford observes the number of movie stars who stood by him publicly and still clammer to work with him.
Kevin Sweeney
The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West, Edward Lucas, Bloomsbury, £8.99
Edward Lucas paints a disturbing picture of modern Russia under Vladimir Putin and his allies in the Kremlin, a regime that is based on “crony capitalism and pipeline politics”. Originally written in 2007, Lucas has updated the book in light of the Russo-Georgian conflict last year. The New Cold War powerfully articulates Russia’s shadowy business dealings, corrupt politics, and the menace posed to the West as Russia substitutes the threat of its Soviet war machine with a new, energy-enriched economic arsenal. Lucas argues this war is being fought with cash, natural resources, diplomacy and propaganda, a war the West is losing through a loss of moral authority and confidence. The author takes a confrontational approach to his subject but never edges toward hysteria in a pertinent, excellently researched and written polemic.
Rory Tevlin
The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression,Darian Leader, Penguin, £8.99
With characteristic style and clarity, psychoanalyst Darian Leader takes on contemporary approaches to depression. The drug treatments and cognitive behavioural therapies favoured by healthcare services, because of their economy and rapid results, are criticised for treating superficial symptoms while ignoring root causes. Leader calls for a more nuanced understanding of mental health that takes account of the unconscious life of the individual. Taking his lead from an essay by Freud, he identifies loss as the source of depression and proposes a re-engagement with the unfashionable states of mourning and melancholia as the key to a better understanding of the condition. This is an illuminating work, elucidated by case studies and examples from contemporary culture
Nicholas Hamilton
The Wagner Clan,Jonathan Carr, Faber, £12.99
Basically an account of the battle among Richard Wagner’s descendants for control of the Bayreuth festival, which he initiated in 1876, this book is a sorry tale of greed, jealousy, plotting and scrapping, but told at pace with verve and wry humour. Wagner’s widow, Cosima, was strongly guided by her son-in-law, the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose anti-Semitic writings influenced the Nazis. Her son, Siegfried, married another English oddity, Winifred Williams-Klindworth, who became infatuated with Hitler as early as 1923 and remained a devotee until her death in 1980. She took control of the Bayreuth festival when her mother-in-law died in 1930. Hitler was a strong supporter of the festival and a frequent visitor to her family home. The war closed the festival but it reopened in 1951 and has remained in the control of the Wagner clan. They never repented of their close association with Nazism. Despite that tie, Wagner’s music remains understandably popular.
Brian Maye