Byline: HEPHZIBAH ANDERSON
Mercy by Lara Santoro (Portobello, [pounds sterling]7.99)
ANNA is an ambitious foreign correspondent eager for a challenge. When her American editor suggests that she forsake Rome for a posting to Nairobi, she packs up her Armani jeans and Gucci shades, and steels herself for daily atrocities.
'Give us the ray of light in the dark,' her editor commands but after two years there, that ray has dwindled to a pinprick. Meanwhile, Anna's personal life is a wreck.
Involved with not one, but two, highly unsuitable men, she finds herself drinking until dawn ... and starting MLB_Fan_Shop again well before noon.
The woman who steals the title and much of the story itself is Mercy, 'a giantess miraculously squeezed into a pink halter-top and fake patentleather pants'. Appointing herself Anna's housekeeper, Mercy hectors her about missed deadlines and drinking, while her own body harbours untold danger. This exuberantly written novel weaves boozily this way and that, but the spectre of the African Aids epidemic gives its centre a deadly calm.
tag heuer watches Tom, Ned And Kitty by Eliza Pakenham (Phoenix, [pounds sterling]9.99)
WHEN Eliza Pakenham decided to write a book, she needed to look no further than her own family tree for material. It betrays something of her grandeur that her inspiration came not from leafing through a family photo album but from gazing up at lavishly painted portraits hung on a diningroom wall. In fact, Pakenham is the granddaughter of the seventh Earl of Longford, and with a father, aunts and cousins who also write, it's a wonder she wasn't pipped to the post.
Rummaging for hidden records and chasing down the slightest lead, she has produced a comprehensive study of her family's fortunes through the Napoleonic wars and Irish revolutions.
Three characters shine brightest: Tom, the second earl of Longford and father to three illegitimate children; war hero Ned; and Kitty, Duchess of Wellington and a real-life romantic heroine. In spite of Pakenham's workaday prose, there is plenty in the private lives of this public family to pique a curious reader's interest.
Under A Blood Red Sky by Kate Furnivall (Sphere, [pounds sterling]6.99)
EARLIER this year, Tom Rob Smith used Stalinist Russia as the backdrop to his compulsive thriller, Child 44. Now along comes Kate Furnivall to haul the epoch into another genre: the romantic saga. Her briskly told doorstop begins in 1933 in the Davinsky Labour Camp, where a fond friendship has kept two women alive against all the odds that Siberia can throw at them.
Until now, that is. When Anna Fedorina's fragile body is wracked with a deathly sounding cough, Sofia Morozova vows to escape the camp and return to release her friend. Once on the run, Sofia heads for Anna's hometown, intent on tracking down Vasily, the dishy revolutionary who was Anna's childhood companion and love, Coach and who filled the tales she told in the camp.
Sofia keeps her promise, braving hardship and treachery, but it's when she finally meets Vasily that she faces her biggest challenge.
While you won't find much to surprise you, the narrative rattles along convincingly..
Other articles:
http://blog.eastday.com//fghmnbv/art/1102466.htmlhttp://fghmnbv1.blog.sohu.com/155165025.html