Book reviews

Published on Saturday 19 September 2009 11:09

The Infinities by John Banville is published by Picador, priced £14.99

While Irish writer John Banville's previous novel The Sea won the 2005 Man Booker Prize, The Infinities failed to make this year's longlist, although it is arguably something of a modern classic.

Set over the course of one summer day at Arden, the sprawling family home of the Godleys, the novel is narrated by Hermes, the messenger god, who is watching over events from his heavenly post.

Esteemed mathematician and patriarch Old Adam lies in a coma

and with beautifully-wrought detail, Banville conjures the dying thoughts of the father, the mischievous and bawdy meddling of the gods, and the private suffering and elation of each character.

The Infinities also poses age-old questions about time and space, and ultimately what it means to be mortal.

8/10 Review by Kate Whiting

Moscow Sting by Alex Dryden is published by Headline, priced 19.99

Former intelligence operative Alex Dryden, who adds intrigue by writing under a pseudonym, has created an exhilarating and complex web of mysteries in the second of his Finn spy novels.

The follow-up to last year's Red To Black is immersed in the murky world of espionage that lurks beneath the increasingly strained relationship between modern Russia and the US and UK. The characters include an incredible marksman who picks off Russian billionaires from more than a mile away, a world-weary SIS chief keen to exact revenge for a murdered protege, and an extrovert CIA contractor who will stop at nothing to discover the secrets of a beautiful former KGB colonel.

Moscow Sting introduces us to some solid characters and dramatic events, and it's almost a job to turn the pages fast enough as Dryden's novel reaches its thrilling climax.

6/10 Review by Richard Mulligan

Transition by Iain Banks is published by Little Brown, priced 18.99

It's puzzling that this was not released as an Iain M Banks book in the UK when it is so inarguably science-fiction – in the US it is being published under the Scottish writer's non-mainstream fiction, secondary, moniker.

Transition, his 12th UK release as Iain Banks since his 1984 debut The Wasp Factory, is a factional struggle within a conspiracy group who jump between parallel timelines, meddling with history.

The promised story of "the long decade between the fall of the Wall and the fall of the Towers" is soon overshadowed by this fight.

As Banks has already anatomised that era in Dead Air, the main problem with this cross-time caper is that it's hardly an original set-up, and that it says little beyond itself.

There are some thoughts on the evils of capitalism and the "War on Terror", but it's all been done before – not least by Banks in other, better books.

Nevertheless, most of his narrators have sufficient verve to make reading the book a pleasure more often than not.

However, the one native of our world, wideboy Adrian, is unfortunately a tiresome caricature.

5/10 Review by Alex Sarll

Keynes: The Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist by Peter Clarke is published by Bloomsbury, priced 16.99

This timely book, by former Cambridge professor of Modern British History Peter Clarke, is a lively and entertaining look at the greatest economist of his age John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes, whose work is as often misinterpreted as his name is mispronounced (it's canes, not keens)

was a prolific writer and journalist as well as a member of the Bloomsbury group. He turned economic orthodoxy on its head in the early part of the 20th century and by the 1960s they had become accepted wisdom. They went out of fashion but the collapse of the banking industry and the global recession have found them new acolytes. Well written, if a touch academic at times, this is a thoughtful assessment of Keynes's relevance to the modern day.

8/10 Review by Jack Doyle