Gods and monkeys to keep you cool

Published on Sunday 22 July 2007 00:09

SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE

Austin Grossman

Michael Joseph, 16.99

GODS BEHAVING BADLY

Marie Phillips

Jonathan Cape, 12.99

BAD MONKEYS

Matt Ruff

Bloomsbury, 10.99

I'LL let you in on a little secret. Peacocks have resplendent tail-feathers, baboons have brightly coloured bottoms and humans have, among other things, books. But they all serve the same function: clear signals to advertise our excellence to potential lovers, allies and foes. So, if you want to look cool, hip, in or interesting this summer, here are three titles that will make you stand out in the crowd. Forget the delta-males with their Sam Bournes and the gamma-gals with their Bridget Jones clones: these books are seriously smart, funny and sophisticated.

The title of Austin Grossman's debut, Soon I Will Be Invincible, lets the reader know what kind of tome this is: an ordinary, everyday tale of super-heroes and villains (or "the enhanced community" as they now call themselves). It is narrated in alternate chapters by Fatale, a female cyborg with body issues, drafted into the world's crack team of heroes, and Dr Impossible, genius, megalomaniac and perpetual loser. He's free, to multiple sighs of 'Again', and this time he's going to take over the world with only a mirror, a book, a toy and a gun. Grossman has a beguiling wise-cracking style, part pure fanboy, part Ally McBeal pop psychology - Doctor Impossible wonders "whether the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life" and mistily recalls when he realised that "It was time to stop punishing myself and time to start punishing humanity".

Clichs are subverted everywhere; as the maniac says "when life gives you lemons you squeeze them, hard... make an acid poison. Fling it in their eyes". It has a sweet, serious edge - the desire to be someone special and the desire not to be different are human, as well as "meta-human" qualities. But Grossman's genius trick is to invest the genre with memory. If, for us, the Sixties were flower power and the Seventies were kipper ties, for the superheroes they were atomic mutation and alternate realities.

In 'real' superhero comics, the characters rarely refer to their previous adventures; here, they're always talking, with weary resignation, about the past. When one hero pompously refers to the predictability of evil, another counters with a litany of the routinely unpredictable they've encountered, from travelling back in time to change the Punic Wars, to teaming up with aliens, parallel dimensions and fungus armies. As an added bonus, the geeky reader can have lots of fun spotting the references (CoreFire is clearly Superman; Blackwolf is modelled on Batman, and so forth), and it's hard not to have a vicarious thrill when Dr Impossible finally gets to open a can of whoop-ass on his nemesis. It's an exhilarating and hilarious read.

If the 20th century had superheroes, the fifth century BC had deities. In Marie Phillips' absolutely delightful novel, Gods Behaving Badly, the Olympians are still around, in much reduced circumstances, in a exceptionally grotty north London pile. Aphrodite now runs a phone sex line, Dionysus is a DJ, and Apollo is a TV psychic, except when he's turning young women into eucalyptus trees if they refuse to sleep with him. The engine that turns this into a novel rather than a clever conceit is a cleaner, Alice, and her sort of boyfriend Neil. In one of her typically petulant revenges, Aphrodite has made Apollo fall hopelessly in love with Alice, while binding him in an oath not to harm her.

Part of the charm is in the juxtapositions - the gods are arrogant yet nave, foul-mouthed but innocent, powerful but pointless. They're particularly cross with Eros, who's joined the Christian Union and gets to throw exquisite tantrums where he wishes that the Virgin Mary was his mother. None of the Gods can understand Athena's management speak and Zeus, the king of the gods, is locked in the attic, going a little gaga and thinks Doctor Who is a relation. When it becomes necessary for them to create a hero, the hapless Neil is pressed into service, taken on a trip to the Underworld, and, for a while, the Scrabble-obsessed engineer with a Judge Dredd collection holds the fates of gods and mortals in his slightly sweaty hands. There's enough mordant tang to keep it from becoming just silly, and, at moments, a frisson of real horror (Apollo is bemused that rape is so unacceptable these days). This has all the classic - no pun intended - comedy reversals, and given the wealth of Greek mythology, I can easily imagine their ongoing exploits becoming a regular summer feature.

Jane Charlotte, the protagonist of Matt Ruff's Bad Monkeys, is also a hero of sorts. Copious drug-ingester and inveterate trouble-maker, she is in the Clark County Detention Centre, nut-wing, accused of murder. This she readily admits, with the caveat that she is a member of an ultra-secret organisation, code-named Bad Monkeys: the "Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons". In short, she kills killers. Talking to the psychiatrist, she reveals a vast conspiracy dedicated to fighting evil, which includes micro-cameras on dollar bills, scary clowns (one of whom - serial killer John Wayne Gacy - went Awol) and heart-attack guns. Particularly gruesome and inventive is the Panopticon division, that places miniature, contact lens cameras on the eyes of semi-naked children in clothes catalogues in order to track those who are looking at the pictures too intently.

The twist in the plot is a simple one. It is a version of the Pynchon Paranoia Paradox: is she telling the truth (in which case the world is mad) or is she herself mad - and if so, what trauma caused this delusion? Ruff constructs an elegant and inventive series of Chinese boxes, double-bluffs and deliberate misdirections, that unlock with satisfying precision. It nods at Philip K Dick (whose sister, who died in infancy, was called Jane Charlotte) and The Matrix, and, crucially, none of the many revelations undercuts the reader's enjoyment of the previous layers of narrative. It is a fantastic, unputdownable thriller.

In each of these novels, the reader has as much fun as the author evidently had in writing them. They tackle big themes - from loneliness to heroism to madness to moral responsibility - with an enviably light touch. This isn't to say that they are merely sweetening the pill of "serious literature": the sheer joy of invention palpable in these books is more than a recommendation in itself.

Feast of fantasy

STUART KELLY

AMLIE NOTHOMB Sulphuric Acid

The stiletto-sharp Belgian writer is in top form with her new fable, in which Pannonique is kidnapped and forced to take part in the most extreme new reality TV show: Concentration. Referred to only as CKZ 114, she becomes the object of Kapo Zdenka's attentions and a nation's hope for redemption.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Consider The Lobster

One of the great modern essayists. Whether he's discussing the Maine Lobster Festival, John Updike's attempts at science-fiction, whether or not Franz Kafka has a sick sense of humour, 9/11 or the Porn Oscars in Las Vegas, Foster Wallace is humane and humorous, alert and alarming.

KAREN RUSSELL, St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves

Russell, one of Granta's best young American writers, proves herself the heir to Angela Carter in this simply dazzling collection of short stories. With macabre humour, dark fantasy and a haunting tone this is unforgettable stuff - even just titles such as 'Lady Yeti And The Palace Of Artificial Snows' are staggering.

TOBY BARLOW Sharp Teeth

You might think that a novel in which a kindly dogcatcher and his lycanthropic girlfriend are caught in a turf war between werewolf gangs in LA would be quirky and curious enough. But Barlow's novel is also entirely written in poetry, winking at Homer as much as at The Howling.

BEN DOLNICK Zoology

A highly recommended novel that has won a great deal of US acclaim, Zoology is a bildungsroman about Henry, who wants to be a jazz saxophonist but settles for working in a zoo. His unrequited love is confided in his best friend and star of the novel... a goat called Newman.