Book reviews: The Submission | The Cold Cold Ground | Bullfighting

Published on 04/08/2012 03:39

WILLIAM LEITH reviews the latest paperback releases

The Submission

by Amy Waldman

(Windmill, £7.99)

Rating: ****

New York, soon after 9/11. A committee meets to discuss the Ground Zero memorial. There’s been a competition to design the memorial; architects have entered, anonymously. The committee decides on a winner but there’s a problem: the winner is an architect called Mohammad Khan – not a religious Muslim by any means – but this suddenly becomes a very sensitive issue. Should the committee reconsider? Soon, the story leaks to the press, and from that point on we have a rollercoaster of a novel. Waldman draws the characters beautifully.

The Cold Cold Ground

by Adrian McKinty

(Serpent’s Tail, £7.99)

Rating: ***

Sean Duffy is a detective in Belfast in 1981. He is a cop but also a Catholic – and hence a marked man. He is bright, decent, cynical, and he likes a drink. Bobby Sands has been dead for a week. The second hunger striker, Frankie Hughes, has just died. There are riots.

One night, just as Duffy is about to go to bed, he gets a call. A body has been found. So he rushes out to the crime scene. The dead guy has been shot, twice. On top of that, one of his hands has been sawn off. Duffy then meets forensic specialist Dr Cathcart – who is, of course, an attractive lady. Highly readable.

Bullfighting

by Roddy Doyle

(Vintage, £7.99)

Rating: ****

These short stories flow beautifully yet there is something very sharp and crisp and understated here, too. You whizz through, then you read them again, and they’re even better the second time. We have several characters in middle-age. There are grey hairs, and medical emergencies. 
There are funerals, and memories. Marriages are teetering. In one story, a man listens to his wife talking on the phone, and is inhabited by the sudden feeling that his relationship is rubbish.
 In another, a man’s wife says she wants them to split up. And then she has sex with him. And then disappears. And then she comes back again.