Wednesday 18 October 2006

Cruel. But fair.

The Guardian's John Crace on Break no bones by Kathy Reichs.
A dead body turns up. Unexpectedly. Amid a slew. Of short sentences.

"Why does it always. Start like this?" Tempe Brennan said out loud, as she uncovered the rotting. Five-year-old corpse. With the strange mark on the C-6 vertebra.

"It ratchets up. The non-existent tension," drawled the sinister Southerner. From Charleston.

"Who are you?" snapped Tempe.

"The sinister property developer," sneered Dupree. "The one. You're meant to think. Is the baddie."

"I'm dying of cancer," sobbed Emma, the local pathologist.

"Well that kills two. Birds with one stone," Tempe shrugged. "Now I'll have to stay. In town to solve. The crime. And I'll have to hook up with my ex, Pete."


He also took on the Booker Prize shortlist, so now you don't have to read any of them. Not even the winner.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai:
The description of the mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of the Himalayas possessed of ocean shadows and depths told Sai that she had inadvertently found her way into a lyrical evocation of post- colonial multiculturalism. She picked up a copy of National Geographic. "That should add a nice post-modern ironic nod to globalisation," she reckoned.