WOMAN AT SEA
Catherine Poulain (Jonathan Cape, £12.99)
French author Poulain has never been afraid of hard work, finding employment in Icelandic fish farms, Canadian fields, Hong Kong bars and American shipyards. But it’s her decade as a fisherwoman in Alaska that she distilled into her first novel. It follows the inexperienced Lilli as she arrives in Kodiak and lands a job as the only woman on the fishing vessel Rebel. Forcing herself to her limits to get the other crew members to accept her, Lilli is swept into a life of punishing physical labour and the all-consuming intensity of an existence on desolate, treacherous seas. The corresponding downtime on shore is no less vividly evoked, a tedium of uncertainty in which it’s hard not to slip into the habit of drinking one’s days away. That there isn’t much plot to speak of is scarcely important, or even very noticeable. Poulain’s visceral account of what it’s like to live such a heightened existence is gripping enough in itself.
FRANKENSTEIN IN BAGHDAD
Ahmed Saadawi (Oneworld, £9.99)
In the 200 years since she dreamed it up, Mary Shelley’s monster has been an almost inexhaustible source of metaphors. An ad hoc solution stitched together from the remnants of failed ideas. A creation that turns on its creator. Something that just won’t die. Ahmed Saadawi creatively applies it to the state of his home country, Iraq, in this allegorical novel shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. In gathering up body parts from people killed in the streets of Baghdad and sewing them into a composite corpse, junk dealer Hadi is trying to send a message to the government to treat the victims as human beings and give them a decent funeral. He hasn’t anticipated that it would take on a life of its own and wreak vigilante justice on those responsible for the violence in Iraq. Frankenstein in Baghdad is a bold and bleak satire combining dark comedy, horror and pointed social commentary eloquently expressing Saadawi’s view of his homeland.
PEACOCK’S ALIBI
Stuart David (Polygon, £8.99)
With Scotland now well established as a nation producing world-class crime fiction, the time felt right to allow a few shafts of fun and silliness to penetrate the murk, and Stuart David’s plucky anti-hero Peacock Johnson rose to the challenge. A founding member of Belle & Sebastian, David introduced the petty criminal and Glasgow’s self-proclaimed “best-dressed ideas man” back in 2001, but he’s firing on all cylinders in this outing, in which Peacock’s arch-nemesis, detective Duncan McFadgen, is determined to put him behind bars, by any means possible. McFadgen’s tortuous attempts to prove that Peacock murdered another Glasgow lowlife to cover up for a previous crime are as entertaining as his quarry’s evasions of them, but with no one else fighting his corner, the amiable, resourceful underdog is left to his own devices to solve both crimes and clear his name. The insertion of Ian Rankin himself into the action raises this pacey page-turner to another level.
ALASTAIR MABBOTT
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