Fiction/memoir

Hide That Can
Deirdre O’Callaghan [Trolley]

Having already exhibited her photographs in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Gallery Of Photography in Dublin, Deirde O’Callaghan – whose work has also appeared in hotpress – has just published her first book, Hide That Can, featuring a foreword by Bono.

A moving record of life in Arlington House in London, what was once Europe’s biggest hostel for working men, Hide That Can concentrates on the predominantly Irish inhabitants who live there now. Few of them work and many are alcoholics.

Having gained their trust over some months, the men agreed to be photographed by Deirdre and, in many cases, to tell their stories, fragments of which are published as captions in the book. Thanks to an in-house project, some of the men also got the chance to visit Ireland for the first time in years. One such trip, to the seaside in Wexford, results in some of the book’s most remarkable images, as in the photo reproduced here, of Arlington residents getting a rare opportunity to walk a beach and breathe the salty air. In her book, Deirdre O’Callaghan writes: “To watch men that I had seen drinking on the streets of Camden strolling along the beach at Rosslare was incredible. One man met his sister who had believed for years he was dead. I will never forget the sound of her calling his name.”

That They May Face The Rising Sun
John McGahern [Faber & Faber]
Arguably the book of the year, this is John McGahern at his finest. His prose is spare and beautiful, and he has a marvellous gift for story-telling. Capturing the flavour of life in rural Ireland with brilliant empathy, he achieves the objective of any great art, illuminating the lives of his characters in a way that makes us feel that we know them – and the world they inhabit – intimately by the story’s end.

Lullaby
Chuck Palahniuk [Jonathan Cape]
The Fight Club author’s fifth novel marks a departure of sorts, but while Palahniuk may have attempted to rehabilitate the horror genre with Lullaby, the main ingredients remain the same: razor satire, bizarre factoids, true life myths, and wicked meditations on information overload and human obsolescence, all capped with the blackest humour. This time the protagonist is Carl Streator, a reporter investigating a series of articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, who discover that all the deceased children were read the same poem the night they died.

The Book Of Illusions
Paul Auster [Faber & Faber]
Fans of Paul Auster will be pleased to find that he is back in the zone explored with such haunting power in The Music Of Chance and Leviathan. Auster’s latest novel is deceptively and artfully reassured in its style. Beautifully written, it describes a world in which we are prey to the most arbitrary twists of fate – and to demons that lurk both outside and within. And yet there is depth, warmth and empathy here. A great writer, back in top form.

The Little Friend
Donna Tartt [Bloomsbury]
Almost a decade in the making, Tartt’s second novel switches location from The Secret History’s New England halls of academia to the snake-infested humidity of the Mississippi. The theme however, remains the same: murder, and those who committed it.

The 25th Hour
David Benioff [Hodder & Stoughton]
This high-class suspense novel set in New York comes primed with characters that take up lodgings in your brain for a month, plus a bullshit-free writing style that manages to combine an obvious love of high literature with what the studio boss in Barton Fink might’ve described as “da poetry of da street”. Spike Lee’s film adaptation, starring Ed Norton, goes on release next year.

The Black Veil
Rick Moody [Little Brown]
The Ice Storm author’s memoir of twenty-something depression, alcoholism and drug abuse, all culminating in a holiday in a New York psychiatric hospital. In language that melds high art with pop culture, Moody explores the ghosts of his own and New England’s past through the medium of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Running With Scissors
Augustine Burroughs [Atlantic]
Hilarious dysfunctional family memoir set in 1970s Massachusetts, this is the story of a 12-year-old boy whose disturbed poetess mother gives him away to be raised by a lunatic psychiatrist and his equally deranged family and friends. Author Gary Krist described it as “A dystopian sitcom – The Brady Bunch In Hell as directed by John Waters and David Lynch.” He wasn’t far off the mark.

My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk [Faber & Faber]
Published in paperback in 2002, Orhan Pamuk’s philosophical thriller is a magnificent achievement. Evoking the unfamiliar streets of Istanbul to superb effect, it also draws the reader into the arcane world of eastern art, and the work of the miniaturists who flourished from Turkey across to China. Told in an array of narrative voices it is funny, perplexing and, at times, deeply moving. A genuinely great work.

Non-fiction

A Cook’s Tour
Anthony Bourdain [Bloomsbury]
The same, but different. The Kitchen Confidential author goes in search of the perfect meal, bringing his hard-boiled eye to bear on the food cultures of France, England, Moscow, Tokyo and Cambodia. Apocalypse Now meets Naked Chef… or should that be Naked Lunch?

Nickel & Dimed – Undercover In Low Wage America
Barbara Ehrenreich [Granta]
Ehrenreich’s exercise in first person investigative journalism tells of waitressing, house cleaning and general skivvying in Florida, Maine and the mid-west. A hardcore inquiry into life on the breadline and the ethics of drudgework, and a pretty blistering indictment of corporate America.

The Last Opium Den
Nick Tosches [Bloomsbury]
In this slim volume, Tosches goes in search of the last opium den on the planet, taking in a brief history of the vapour of the gods, some nifty travel writing, and brief meditations on the works of Dante, Pound and De Quincey. Some might say he exaggerated the trials of his odyssey, but the writing’s a dream.

Stud – Adventures In Breeding
Kevin Conley [Bloomsbury]
Taking his cue from Bourdain’s expose of the restaurant racket, Conley’s book takes us into the strange, not-so-subculture of multi-million dollar horse breeding, from the stud farms of California and Kentucky to the sheik and bookie-haunted auction halls of the world’s nag-dealing hotspots.

American Scream – The Bill Hicks Story
Cynthia True [Sidgwick & Jackson]
In time, Bill Hicks’ story will be told by a better writer, but right now, this is the only account of his life on the market. True is a solid enough reporter and researcher, and only a downright incompetent could make the legendary comedian’s saga less than compelling.

Music

This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk And Disco
Garry Mulholland [Cassell]
A 7"-sized 455-page monster which will provoke much nostalgia/discussion/ fisticuffs, especially among men of a certain age. From Josef K’s ‘It’s Kinda Funny’ to Eminem’s ‘Stan’, all the greats are analysed in satisfyingly trainspotter-ish detail.

On The Road With Bob Dylan
Larry ‘Ratso’ Sloman [Helter Skelter]
Republished version of the 1978 account of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, timed to coincide with the release of the Bootleg Series recordings from the same period. Sloman favours a gonzo-meets-new journalism approach (there’s a rather daft switch from first to third person halfway through) but gives a fine fly on the wall view of perhaps Dylan’s most legendary campaign.

A Love Supreme: The Creation of John Coltrane’s Classic Album
Ashley Kahn [Granta]
Kahn does for Coltrane’s 1965 holiest of holies what he did for Miles’ Kind Of Blue last year – that is, put the creation of a jazz masterpiece under the microscope, eliciting contributions from the players, the producers and the surviving members of Coltrane’s quartet.

Labrynth: The Truth Behind The Murders Of Tupac Shakur And Biggie Smalls
Randall Sullivan [Canongate]
In the full, unexpurgated version of last year’s Rolling Stone story, Sullivan traces loose leads in the murders of Tupac and Biggie via LA detective Russell Poole. This is a downright scary noir-style investigation into links between Death Row, gang war and corruption in the LAPD.

Journals
Kurt Cobain [Viking]
Whatever about the ethics of rifling through the diaries of the deceased, there’s no disputing their appeal. Cobain was a complicated guy: funny, morbid, self-obsessed, ambitious, and these journals tell more about the man than all the biographies of the last decade – put together.

Keith Richards – The Unauthorised Biography
Victor Bockris [Omnibus Press]
Keith Richards is one of rock’n’roll’s most talismanic figures. It isn’t just that he plays the scuzziest and most effective rhythm guitar on the planet: he is also a fascinatingly loose character, with verbals that border on beat poetry and the looks of a battlehardened bird of prey. In this update of his 1992 opus, Bockris captures the spirit of the man and of the music of The Rolling Stones with both affection and finesse. A fine if indulgent rock read.

Further recommended reading...

All The People, All The Time – Declan Lynch [Townhouse]
Sex Lines – Olaf Tyaransen [Hot Press Books]
In So Many Words – The Best Of Con Houlihan – Con Houlihan [Mercier]
The Secret History Of The IRA – Ed Moloney [Penguin]
Niall Quinn: The Autobiography – Niall Quinn and Tom Humphries [Headline]
Tragically, I Was An Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook – edited by William Cook [Century]
The Essential Spike Milligan – edited by Alexander Gates [4th Estate]
The Office: The Scripts – Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant [BBC Publishing]
Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About –
Mil Millington [Flame]
Rolling With The Stones – Bill Wyman [DK]
Shaky: The Authorised Biography of Neil Young – Jimmy McDonough [Random House]
Smokescreen – Robert Sabbag [Canongate]
Porno – Irvine Welsh [Jonathan Cape]
The Man Who Walks – Alan Warner [Jonathan Cape]
Platform – Michel Houellebecq [Heinemann]
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides [Bloomsbury]
The Autograph Man – Zadie Smith [Hamish Hamilton]
The Blank Slate – Stephen Pinker [Allen Lane]
Stupid White Men – Michael Moore [Harper Collins]
Fences And Windows – Naomi Klein [Flamingo]
News From No Man’s Land – John Simpson [Macmillan]
Doodah: The Balletic Art Of Gavin Twinge – Ralph Steadman [Bloomsbury]