Simon Crump. A novelist like no other

My wife read it and said: "You should read this book (Neverland) by Simon Crump, it's got a very black sense of humour. You'll enjoy it."

I did. It was. I did. 

Neverland by Simon Crump. It's a very novel Novel. Is it like a collection of interlinked short stories, as some people believe? Yes. Well, no. Not, quite. It's more a collection of interlinked ideas, instead.

By the way, the dead hamster unicorn featured in the novel? I'm not entirely certain it was. Dead, that is.
Simon Crump takes several different ideas and places them in a very unique and out of place context. You can imagine Michael Jackson and Uri Geller together. (They are or rather, were friends in real life) You can imagine them being together in a shopping mall. You can imagine them having an argument. But then place them and their argument (and the stunning consequences thereof) in the Meadowhall shopping mall in Sheffield and it's as if your favourite aunt has taken your jumper, unpicked the stitches and turned it into a really funky Dr. Who Scarf. But not quite like that, perhaps.
 

Simon Crump decided to write a novel about Michael Jackson. It took him three years to complete. And -apparently this is true- four hours after he had finished writing it, Michael Jackson was dead.
Simon Crump's writing style is laconic, yet even so, there is a moving, other-worldly poetic feel to his writing.

He writes with a refreshing sympathy for all of his characters, Michael Jackson, Lamar who was Jackson's assistant and former Elvis bodyguard, The Broad, The Broad's lunatic husband and Michael Jackson's grandmother, to name but a few.
 

Simon Crump's subject matter is sometimes unpleasant, but it is of a realistic unpleasantness, and there is nothing gratuitous in his writing. Weird, odd, bizarre enough to make the Fortean Times look like a Haynes Car Manual, yes. But never gratuitous.
Other novels by Simon Crump are My Elvis Blackout and Twilight Time. Which have received rave or raving reviews, depending on the point of view of the reader.

(EDITOR: A different version of this review was published at Ciao)

One Red Paperclip

One Red Paperclip, by Kyle MacDonald was a genuine worldwide sensation, even before Kyle MacDonald had written one word of the book. Because, it seemed that just about everyone in the world had heard all about Kyle MacDonald and his one red paperclip.

The story about Kyle MacDonald is basically this.

Kyle MacDonald was looking for a job. Well, he should have been looking for a job, but somehow all he was doing was looking at a pile of resumes he should have sent out, feeling guilty that he was, basically, living off his girlfriend who he lived with. He wanted a house for them both. But how could he get one, with no permanent job?

What could he do? He was getting some gigs around Canada and the United States of America helping promote a special device that was designed to stop restaurant tables wobbling. (Great invention. I think it should be made mandatory for ALL eating places!) But that wasn't getting enough money to enable Kyle to pay his way at home. Kyle seemed to be a bit of a slacker. Well, perhaps if not a slacker, then he showed certain slacker tendencies!

As he sat there, he thought of a game he used to play as a child. It was the Bigger and Better game. The rules of the game were simple. You had to try to swap something you had for something that was bigger and better and owned by someone else.

Could he play something similar in adulthood? This set him thinking. What could he trade? Then he saw it.

Just one red paperclip holding together his resume. (That's a CV to us British folk!)
 

Why not swap that for something bigger and better?

Emboldened by the sheer scope of his idea, he put a posting on a website and soon swapped his red paperclip for a wooden pen which was made in the form of an animated fish.

After that, there was no stopping him!

He swapped the pen for a homemade doorknob, the doorknob for a camping stove and 14 swaps later (and some hilarious and some moving adventures all over the USA and Canada, he ended up (one year later) with a house for his girlfriend and himself.

The book contains some of Kyle's homespun wisdom, and although this does sometimes wear a little bit thin, generally they do add somewhat to the flavour of the book. And, after all, they do show some of the reasons as to why Kyle did what he did. Kyle is obviously a deeply thoughtful young man.

His girlfriend figures in the book (as one might expect) as does the workshirt of Kyle's brother. Which also leads to another swap that helped speed things along. Quite literally.

During his swaps Kyle meets and hangs out with Alice Cooper and actor Corbin Bernsen, and makes what seems on the face of it an utterly ludicrous swap, only to see it fit in with a rather weird foible of Corbin Bernsen, and thus proved to be a pivotal swap on the way to Kyle and his girlfriend getting that house.

The book is well written, well illustrated with photographs of the various swaps, swappers and swappees and is well worth buying. 

The Origin of Everday Things

The Origin of Everday Things does exactly what it says, It details the origins of many everyday items and things that you and I probably take for granted.

Researched written and edited by the team of Johnny Acton, Tania Adams and Matt Packer, the book details well in excess of 400 everyday items, and gives some pretty comprehensive anecdotes and tales about them all.

The book is filled to the brim with some highly entertaining and fascinating facts and details. For example did you know that the first aerosol dispenser can was invented in 1899 by German scientists Helbling and Pertsch?

Or that the Babylonians devised a prototype and extremely clever form of air conditioning?

That the first car vehicle safety airbag was developed in the early 1950s by American naval engineer, John W. Hetrick?

Or how many of us knew that the first automatic fire alarm and smoke detector was developed by a Birmingham electrical engineer called George Darby? And which highly unusual component was used as the heat detector in this amazing device that was, arguably, years ahead of itself? You will find the answer on page 20 of this highly enjoyable and most entertaining book.

Also, discover the location of the first bank ATMs, how bowling was developed, how the first electrical burglar alarm was invented as long ago as in 1852, how World War 1 played a part in women's beauty in the 1920s and how Rugy developed into the sport that we know today.

The book is copiously illustrated with very well executed line drawings and covers everything in alphabetical order from aerosol cans right through to Zipper, nearly 320 pages later.

It is hardback, and published by Think Books at a cover price of £14.99. 

Newton a Very Short Introduction

Newton a Very Short Introduction, is exactly what it says. A very short introduction in to the life of one of Britain's greatest scientific minds of all times, Sir Isaac Newton.

The book is small, only comprising 144 pages, so the writing style is brief. The book is part of the Oxford University Press "A Very Short Introduction" series of books covering not only biographies on figures such as Newton, Marx, Socrates, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche and Buddha, it also covers historical and philosophical themes such as The Celts, Journalism, Stuart Britain, Roman Britain, Ancient Philosophy, etc., etc.

But what of the book on Newton?

We find that he was described by people who knew him as a very moral man, a man who hated and detested persecution, who loved the concept of mercy to both beast and mankind, and who was often moved to shed a tear when a sad or moving tale was related to him.

However, other people, we read, had different views of Newton. He was described as an heretic. In fact, he was thrown out of Cambridge for his allegedly heretical views.

We also read of a breakdown of some type that he suffered in the early 1690s.

The first writings on Newton were by the husband of Newton's half-niece, Catherine, John Conduitt. These put Newton in a very favourable light.

However, as is often the case, others came forward with very different versions of the life of Sir Isaac Newton.

So, was Sir Isaac Newton a saint or a sinner? A good man or a monster to people who, perhaps, he didn't agree with?

In his work, Newton a Very Short Introduction, Rob Iliffe makes a very good effort at trying to disentangle the man from the myth and to establish which, if any of the criticisms of the man actually held water.

As well as covering Newton's scientific work and research it also touches on his religious philosophies and religious researches and his role as probably one of the last great alchemists.

This book will be of very great interest and value to students who need to find out about Sir Isaac Newton and people who are interested in the biographies of great scientists of the ages.

It is priced at £6.99 ISBN978-0-19-929803-7 

Murder at Deviation Junction

Jim Stringer always wanted to be an engine driver but a series of unfortunate events (described in the previous books in the series) robs him of this ambition and ruins his chances of working as an engine driver.

However, he is spotted as a good man with a keen eye and a sharp mind so he becomes a railway policeman, a detective in the force.

It is December in the year of 1909. There is heavy snow in Yorkshire that winter, so it is of no surprise when a train runs smack into a snowdrift and becomes stuck.

What does cause a surprise is when the gang of railworkers who are given the task of clearing the line of snow discover a body hidden at the side of the track.

It should be a simple case, but it all goes terribly, horribly wrong. And Jim's life is put in grave peril.

Why does the case involve a giant steel works?

Who is the murdered man? What connection is there to an exclusive railway dining club that mysteriously and abruptly ceased operating sometime prior to the discovery of the body?

Why does the case interest a reporter from a railway magazine, who seems to know more about the case than he should? And what, exactly, is the reporter so anxious to find?

The novel takes Jim Stringer away from his warm home and his loving wife and child and the familiar surroundings of of the police office at York station to an appointment with a grim and grizzly fate on the be-snowed Scottish Highlands.

But who can Jim Trust? The strange Scottish giant called Small David? The reporter, Bowman?

The novel sets a cracking pace and Andrew Martin paints excellent word pictures to set the scenes of story. So well that you'll swear you can smell the smoke and steam and feel the chill that gnaws at the bones.

The list price is £10.99, but I paid considerably less with Amazon.
ISBN 978-0-571-22965-9

Elsie and Mairi Go to War

This book by Diane Atkinson is the story of how two women find themselves working together in a field station so close to the enemy lines in World War 1 Belgium that they were subjected to enemy bombardments and gas attacks and could, at times, see and speak with German soldiers in their positions.

Elsie Knocker was a divorcee and Mairi Chisholm a well-to-do young lady from the Clan Chisholm. Elsie's childhood should have been a relatively prosperous one but circumstances conspired to destroy her young life, whilst Mairi's life was one of comfort and luxury.

What brought them together was a love of motorbikes and motorbike racing. And the need for volunteer ambulance drivers and volunteer nurses in the theatre of war.

It is a story of excitement, adventure, danger, death and misery caused by the first truly industrial scale war that the world has ever seen, of bureaucratic inertia and red tape, of petty jealousies, of ultimately breathtaking betrayal and a friendship forged in the heat of battle and probably destroyed by one careless 'white' lie and what can only be seen as more than one example of high-handed religious and social intolerance and pridefulness.

Diane Atkinson's book is an extremely well researched work, and she is meticulous in citing her sources. It is a very well written account of how two women, often by themselves, and woefully under-resourced, relying on public fund-raising, made a tremendous difference to the lives of soldiers, many of them severely traumatised and badly wounded in the hell that was World War One.

The book also reveals some interesting facts. That, despite later attempts by some authors to whitewash events, stories of German atrocities against French and German civilians and allied troops were not merely allied propaganda and that, pre-World War 1, there was a thriving and growing sub-culture of women's motorcycle racing, in which Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm had both played an active and important part.

The book relates the somewhat different lives of the two women after the war and, sadly, reveals how and why their friendship did not survive the war. It is an unfortunate fact that this does not really reflect well at all on one of the two women.

Published by Preface.

ISBN-13: 978-1848091337

The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is the little brother to the better-known Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is a small volume, but still found to be stuffed full of useful quotations from the great, the good, the witty, the clever and some ordinary folk who said at least one thing in their life that was memorable enough for someone to write down or record in some way and for other people to say: "Gosh, I wish I had said that!"

The book is 476 pages in length and, although small, is, at 476 pages, quite a well-padded little volume. It is relatively easy to hold, yet I can't help wonder if it could have been just a few centimetres larger? Still, that's a minor quibble and a point that does not, ultimately, detract from the over all enjoyment and usability of this small volume.

The forwards to the first and fourth editions are included and in them the editor Susan Ratcliffe goes some way to explain the purpose of the book.

There is then a list of subjects that the book covers literally from A to Z. (Did you see what I did, there? a rather pointless and only marginally funny pun. Sorry!) From Ability right through to Youth. So in truth, it is not, exactly from A to Z.

Next comes the quotations, followed by a highly useful index of those people who are quoted within the tightly packed work.

There are quotes you will probably be familiar with, quotes which, now you know them, you will remember for the rest of your life and quotes which will serve a purpose in a wedding speech, a magazine article, a college essay or the like.

And for those of us who like to trawl through books like The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, there are nuggets of pure gold and some that, although being nuggets of pure gold, are poignant and somewhat ironic.

For example in the section The Body artist, art lecturer and musician Ian Drury is quoted as saying:
"The leg, a source of much delight,
which carries weight and governs height,"

had problems with his legs due to suffering polio as a child. He sometimes had to take to the stage wearing leg irons in order to support his limb when it was particularly bad. (A minor point is that Susan Ratcliffe lists Drury as a British rock singer. He was, of course, much more than that!)

Also, we find that the Eton Boating Song lyrics were written by English poet William Cory.
There's a poem about entrails by poet Connie Bensley and you can find the source of the saying about 'death and taxes.'

The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is a fantastic little book and will make an ideal gift for the student, the author, journalists or anyone who uses words in their day to day life. Well, just about anyone, I suppose.

The published price is £9.99 ($15.95 USA) but will be available for much less on Amazon.
The ISBN is 978-0-19-954330-4.