BRIGHT SHINY MORNING
James Frey
£
12.99, HarperCollins
You’ve got to give James Frey credit. For such a young writer he’s
had one helluva colourful career. Put it this way, not many people manage to
rile that seasoned evoker of the calm chat-show confessional, Oprah Winfrey.
After gifting Frey a lucre-laundering recommendation on her all-powerful book
club for his debut, A Million Little Pieces, a memoir about his past life of
addiction and all-round depravity, The Big O discovered he wasn’t exactly
the most reliable documentarian of his own life and a lot of the book was either
exaggerated or entirely made-up. Cue acres of column coverage, couch condemnation
from Winfrey and the end of any future writing career. The publishing world
loves a decent scandal, though – it means shifting more books – hence
reportedly receiving an advance of 1.5 million bucks for this latest.
So, was he worth it? Without one scintilla of doubt. Considering his shaky
truth track record, Frey has wisely opted for the completely fictional route
and in Shiny Bright Morning he snapshots the multi-layered sprawl of Los Angeles,
that vast iconic city that’s both a dreamer destination and a dumping-ground
for urban bottom-feeders. In fact, the novel teems with wildly differing characters
and what’s impressive is each one, including the cameo cast, is drawn
with such deftness you’re hooked into Frey’s LA story. He understands
the murky metropolis and is able to get under its skin. So when he writes about
the touching love between two runaways or a predatory closeted movie star and
his sham marriage, you believe the polar-opposite characters and visualise
the scenes. Brilliantly believable, Shiny Bright Morning is aptly begging for
the big-budget Hollywood treatment.
THE MOZART CONSPIRACY
Scott Mariani
£ 6.99, HarperCollins
Every time a PR hails an author as “The new Dan Brown”, I groan.
You might as well stick “Derivative old tat we hope will sell by the shed-load” right
on the cover. Despite The Mozart Conspiracy coming with the obligatory Dan Brown’s-next-coming
press release, it’s a much more original and engaging novel than its supposed
literary cousin. Yes, there are parallels vis-à-vis centuries-old closed-world
skullduggery, but whereas The Da Vinci Code went for full-on blockbuster schlock
Mariani is more measured in his approach resulting in a better-rounded book.
Essentially an old-skool whodunit, the central conspiracy of the title is: who
killed music genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Was he poisoned by a rival composer?
Was he killed for breaking the Freemasons’ code of silence? Or was a shadowy
historical order somehow involved in his death? Tracking the answers is ex-SAS
soldier Ben Hope, country-hopping around Europe trying to unearth the truth behind
all the cloak and dagger skullduggery, producing a narrative that is both genre-typical
relentless but also more restrained compared to your average ramble-on-ad-boredom
adventure thriller; it economically goes straight for the jugular and doesn’t
indulge in meandering padding. Action-packed, not empty-headed.
WHAT TO EAT NOW
Valentine Warner
£ 20, Mitchell Beazley
Valentine Warner. Now, there’s a name. It’s made for fame, isn’t
it? Which is just as well as he’s predicted to be The Next Big Thing in
TV cookery, even earning the dubious and weird description of being “the
Russell Brand of the kitchen”. Eh? Does he shag the food? Hopefully not – it
is BBC Two, after all – but these days with chefs crowding the glass bucket,
as well as the bookshelves, you do need a USP. So what’s Warner’s?
It’s his hilarious bumbling poshness. Whether it’s intentional or
just a schtick (with a name like that, whaddaya think?), it makes his writing
in the accompanying book to the much-touted series actually very funny. For instance,
he says things like, “Keen on a morning steadier, I will sometimes accompany
the kidneys with a tiny glass of sherry”, believing everyone has offal
and a snifter for brekkie as opposed to, say, an espresso and a ciggie. But beyond
the country-set upper-crustiness, there’s a real inventive originality
to him and his recipes that celebrates the joy of seasonal British ingredients
and honest-to-goodness home-cooked nosh. He was discovered by the same producer
behind Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver so don’t be surprised if world domination
ensues.
Jason Jones finds a tasty feast among the bookshelves