Fiction

Land of Marvels, by Barry Unsworth Land of Marvels is so topical, and so cute, that its title can only be read with some irony. A tale of oil, archaeology, and impending war in Mesopotamia (it’s the first world war, but Barry Unsworth clearly intends us to ponder the parallels with more recent history), it is the sort of novel that has its characters deliver explanatory lectures as a matter of course. It’s also the sort of novel that concludes with a spiffy afterword letting us know what became of the main characters — those, anyway, who were not consumed in the fireball that marks the end of the novel proper. That fireball, we are told in the afterword, ‘featured prominently in the press for some days, and provided material for at least one novel’.

In these hard times it is gratifying to find one Christmas present which has remained virtually unchanged in price for the last seven or eight years — the children’s book. Most of the illustrated books for the very young and the increasingly elaborate pop-ups and stories incorporating various pockets, inserts and DVDs are produced in the Far East. They are well made and extremely good value. Christmas represents the last stand for the hardback, with the opportunity for children to enjoy a book as an object, not just for its contents. There are two new titles in Sarah Garland’s series for pre-school children, Going Shopping and Doing Christmas, both £6.99 from Frances Lincoln.

Susan Hill reappraises Charles Dickens’s classic You may be sure you have done more good by this little publication, fostered more kind feelings and prompted more positive acts of beneficence than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom. So wrote the Edinburgh critic, Lord Jeffrey — not an easy man to please — to Charles Dickens. Thackeray said: ‘It seems to me a national benefit and to every man who reads it a personal kindness.’ And as A Christmas Carol was first received so it has continued: 6,000 copies were snapped up on its first day of publication and it still appears in some new edition almost every year. The total number sold round the world since 1843 must run into billions.

‘It looks to me like Boris the Blue Whale,’ said Rightwayup Bird. ‘I have read all about him. He is one hundred feet long and weighs 150 tons.’ Astonishing prescience for 1981? Willy and the Killer Kipper — like the first of Jeffrey Archer’s two ‘Willy’ books, Willy Visits the Square World (1980) — is full of delights. A submarine has stalled on the ocean floor, and Willy and his teddy bear, Randolph, set out on the back of the Rightwayup Bird to save it from Konrad the Killer Kipper. On the way they are helped by Sybil the Seagull, an aspiring author and correspondent for the Bird Times who talks loftily about how humans are always plagiarising her articles.

When does a novel stop being a novel and become a crime story? It’s often assumed that there is an unbridgeable gap between them, but that’s not necessarily so. When does a novel stop being a novel and become a crime story? It’s often assumed that there is an unbridgeable gap between them, but that’s not necessarily so. When Will There Be Good News? (Doubleday, £17.99) is a case in point. It is the third of Kate Atkinson’s novels about Jackson Brodie, a former policeman who is crime-prone in the way that other people are accident-prone. Here he is involved in a train crash in Edinburgh, which brings him again to the notice of Louise Monroe, a hard-bitten Scottish CID officer.