Paperbacks reviewed by Brandon Robshaw from Love + Hate to My Life in Houses

Love + Hate by Hanif Kureishi, Faber & Faber £9.99

Hanif Kureishi is not a writer who wants you to get too comfortable. Reading this collection of his stories and essays is a bit like sitting with a warm purring cat on your lap which, occasionally and when you least expect it, sinks its claws into your flesh.

In the essay “I Am the Future Boy”, Kureishi writes of his father: “He’s long dead but every day I am in conversation with him. I’d like him to be here now so I could kiss him or kill him.”

Fathers and sons is indeed one of the main themes here: “His Father’s Excrement” is a long essay about Franz Kafka’s screwed-up relationship with his father and how it influenced his work.

The essays cover a range of personal, political, and philosophical reflections, discussing amongst others Freud, Lewis Carroll, ER Braithwaite, the English Romantics, and Plato. The final essay is a fascinating account of how Kureishi lost all his savings to a con-man, and the complex relationship he had with the man.

But the essays are sometimes rather diffuse in style; the stories on the other hand are almost painfully sharp and focused. In “Flight 423” a passenger is trapped on a plane which cannot land because of cyber-terrorism; it circles for days, refuelling in mid-air, as provisions gradually run out, social norms disintegrate, and a Hobbesian state of nature comes to prevail; JG Ballard would have been proud of it.

“The Racer” tells the story of a grudge-match running race between a man and his husband on the day of their divorce; “This Door is Shut” is the story of a Pakistani woman who emigrates to Paris after her husband is beheaded by the Taliban. It’s a great collection: witty, readable, engaging, with very sharp claws.

Trumpet by Jackie Kay, Picador Classics £8.99

A reprint of Jackie Kay’s 1998 novel, this is the story of the legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody, told from a variety of viewpoints after his death, but principally those of his wife and son.

At his death an extraordinary secret about Moody was revealed, which only his wife knew.

I won’t spoil things by revealing it here; but the reader learns it as early as page 21, and the interest of the story doesn’t rely on suspense but on the gradual filling in of the canvas that was Moody’s life.

His blackness, his Scottishness, and his roles as musician, lover, husband, father, band-member, and son are all examined from different viewpoints. So convincing is the portrayal that I actually felt impelled to Google Joss Moody just to verify that he wasn’t a real person.

The prose is spare and simple, yet Kay conveys different characters through it effectively: the grieving voice of his widow, the angry voice of his son.

It’s a meditation on race, art, culture, gender, family, and identity. And the ending is very moving.

Hammer of the Left by John Golding, Biteback Publishing £10.99

The Labour Party is led by an elderly, principled left-winger who is deeply loved by the rank and file, although he has no serious chance of winning a general election.

Behind the scenes, far-left operators are infiltrating and taking control of the party machinery, making that chance even smaller .... This is the Labour Party of the early Eighties, when Golding, an MP of the centre-right, helped to take on and defeat Militant Tendency, paving the way to Labour becoming electable again.

Golding evokes the atmosphere of intolerance and intimidation well.

It’s not very stylishly written, but it’s clear, plain, reportage. Does it have lessons for Labour today? Well, er, it might do.

My Life in Houses by Margaret Forster, Vintage £8.99

In this lovely, unsentimental memoir, Margaret Forster charts her whole life through the houses she has lived in.

From the council estate house in Carlisle where she was born, to the house in Oxford where she lived while studying, to her first rented flat in Hampstead, to the house where she will die in Boscastle Road, north London – this last where she lived and wrote and brought up her children with fellow-writer Hunter Davies, and after interludes in Portugal and the Lake District, returned to.

She writes of family life, of work, of the seasons, of the toil and joy of making a home.

Ticket to Childhood by Nguyen Nhat Anh, Overlook Duckworth £7.99

Ticket to Childhood was a cult classic in Nguyen Nhat Anh’s native Vietnam, becoming that country’s bestselling book ever. One can see why: it is full of charm.

The narrator re-inhabits his eight-year-old self, describing his friendships, rivalries and crushes, his love for instant noodles, his Uncle Nhien’s hat, his games of hunting for buried treasure, his synaesthesia.

He constantly reminds us that he is now an adult with children of his own, and all his childhood friends are now adults too; yet he always takes the side of his child-self, as if that was his real self which he’s striving to get back to.

A witty, playful book. I read it in one go while on a railway journey and it made the trip seem very short.

It’s an extraordinarily effective way of conveying just how much stuff, both physical and emotional, a life contains.