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Book Reviews

Dark Circle
by Linda Grant
pub Little Brown £8.99
Shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, Linda Grant’s latest novel now in paperback is set in postwar 50s London, pitted with bombsites and pallid with austerity, where Jewish East End twins Lenny and Miriam Lynskey glow with energy and love of life. Lenny swaggers through Soho in his Italian suit, while Miriam provides glamour as Mimi in a Mayfair florist’s. But when Lenny goes for the medical that his Uncle Manny will be fixing to get him out of national service, he finds that the fix was unnecessary - he has tuberculosis, and so has Miriam. Their experience in a remote Kent sanatorium, at the time when traditional cures were still followed but when there were rumours of a “miracle drug” from the US, (streptomycin, possibly a cure but also with occasional alarming side effects), forms the body of this absorbing novel. The prejudices and preoccupations of the period are vividly depicted, as the fledgling NHS starts to make its mark on a hitherto divided society.  An interesting and lively read with engaging characters, a strong sense of period and a knowing glance at present day issues.
'This is a novel whose engine is flesh and blood, not cold ideas ...Grant brings the 1950s - that odd, downbeat, fertile decade between war and sexual liberation - into sharp, bright, heartbreaking focus' - Christobel Kent Guardian

Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship
by Andy Friend
Thames & Hudson £24.95
In the 75 years since Eric Ravilious’s untimely death in the Second World War, he has become one of the most popular and important artists of the twentieth century. His association with Edward Bawden is well known, but his wider circle included artists, friends and lovers who influenced and supported each other in many different ways. Mainly brought together by Paul Nash’s teaching at the Royal College of Art, the group included his wife Tirzah Garwood, åPeggy Angus, Enid Marx, Helen Binyon and others. Andy Friend’s fascinating and ambitious group biography traces the links and influences between them, giving more prominence to the women in the group than has perhaps been done before, and illuminates the shared experiences that gave rise to some of the finest art and design of the period. Plentifully illustrated, this book is as beautiful as it is enthralling.

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life
by Peter Godfrey-Smith
William Collins £20
Our nearest common ancestor with an octopus is a small worm-like creature that lived 600 million years ago. They are very, very distant cousins on the evolutionary tree of life. And yet they have around 500m neurons, similar to a dog, or a young child. It turns out that it is only our own hubris and failure of imagination that leaves us unable to conceive that a creature so unlike ourselves, without a central nervous system, could contain an intelligence measurable against our own. Recent scientific work and a change in attitude towards the natural world has led to several books (What a Fish Knows by Jonathon Balcombe, The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman among others) that give us a far richer picture of the creatures we share the planet with, and knocks mammals off their perch as the only intelligent life.
 Peter Godfrey-Smith’s wonderfully compelling investigation into the evolution of intelligence in octopuses is clear, elegant and thought-provoking. Brilliant! 

Defender of the Realm
by Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler
pub Scholastic £6.99
Screen-writers for TV shows like Octonauts, Danger Mouse, Shaun the Sheep and 'Thunderbirds Are Go', these two writers, one of them hailing from Lewes, have now produced the first in a series of extremely readable books for children aged 8-12, with book two coming out in June.  Fun and fast-paced with plenty of action, the stories have a modern day setting but call on historical myth and legend to create a fantasy twist so convincing that one can almost believe that an evil serpent is actually threatening London and that its adversary the superhero Defender of the Realm is actually the King of England. A very good PR job for the monarchy and the Divine Right of Kings but republicans might take comfort from the fact that life is extremely perilous and burdensome for the monarch, and the heir to the throne is a wonderfully underconfident and accident prone schoolboy, made the butt of jokes by his peers and hounded mercilessly by the press, until…….. Great stuff!

Evie’s Ghost
by Helen Peters
pub Nosy Crow £6.99
Evie has been sent to stay with a godmother she has never met while her mother goes on honeymoon. Gloomily lying in bed in the creaky old house she spots a strange figure at the window. Cue for some time travel! Going out to explore she finds herself in 1814 dressed as a housemaid and her adventures begin as she discovers that she has gone back in time for a special purpose. Great storytelling for children of 9 + from the author of The Secret HenhouseTheatre.
And Helen’s new title in her animal stories for 6-9s, A Sheepdog Called Sky, comes out at the beginning of June.

Old Hat
by Emily Gravett
pub Macmillan £11.99
A new picture book by Emily Gravett is always a treat and here we have a clever and beautifully realised idea.  Poor little dog Harbet can never get his hat right. Constantly one step behind in hat fashions, his latest purchase is always “Old Hat”. Luckily he finds that it’s much more fun when he stops caring and finds his own style. Charming and funny with gorgeous colours. Age 2-4
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