ROAST BOOKS

http://bookchase.blogspot.com/2009/09/selling-light.html

Peter Cooper is one of those rich young men who wake up every morning wondering what the world can do for him today. Self-centered to the degree that he truly believes he has been placed upon the Earth simply to enjoy himself, Cooper surrounds himself with people who acquiesce to his supposed superiority. That he will one day cross paths with George, the lighthouse keeper, and young research student, Briege, is unfortunate but not so surprising.

After all, when George decides to use the internet to sell his life, who is more likely to purchase it than someone like Peter Cooper? George, filled with personal despair, is ready to sell, and Peter, who will buy anything he thinks might amuse him, has the money to buy George’s life on a whim. And that is exactly what happens.

Meanwhile, Briege goes merrily along studying crabs and other assorted creatures offered up by the little seaside village. Briege, though, is no ordinary researcher. Rather, she comes to know the crabs she studies as individuals, even to drawing their personal portraits in her notebook, naming them, and recognizing them as individuals with personalities when she spots them again days later. Briege’s problem is that she relates better to the crabs than she does to people.

Effie Gray’s Selling Light offers a glimpse into the lives of people who are totally unprepared for what they find and feel when they stumble into each other. Gray often uses humor to make her point about the nature of modern relationships in a world in which so many find it impossible to form long term connections, but her message is both serious and sad.

Selling Light is another in the Roast Books series of Great Little Reads, books designed to be read in one or two sittings spread over a couple of hours. As usual, the back cover of the book contains its “List of Ingredients.” This time around those ingredients are: “Dilapidated Lighthouse, Obsessional Research Student, Identity Crisis.” Effie Gray brews up a complicated and entertaining little story from those ingredients.

It’s always a bit nerve racking waiting to hear the ‘bloggers verdict’ on a new title, so we must thank Evagation for being one of the first to comment on its imminent release…

Talking of blogs, Lizard has been reviewed on Nik’s blog Here, with an interview of author, Leonore Schick

Charles Lambert, author of Little Monsters: Bristling with intelligence and invention, often drily hilarious and occasionally chilling, this collection of interconnected stories is both a joy to read and the most appealing and effective primer of political thought I’ve come across for some time. AC Tillyer’s 26 possible worlds, arranged alphabetically from Archipelago to Zero Gravity Zone, insistently probe the meaning of power and its misuse, the rise of prejudice and authoritarianism, the role of capital, the lies we tell ourselves and each other in order to survive as societies – and they do so in an authoritative, highly readable fashion, with more insight and wit than many books ten times the size of this collection. Each small tale is both a parable and a perfectly realized world; taken together they turn into reflecting facets of a single world, that of Tillyer’s remarkable imagination, irreducible to mere allegory, a world that contains bog-people and multi-storey car parks without embarrassment. Echoes of writers as diverse as Swift and Tolkien, Borges and Magnus Mills, only reinforce the originality of Tillyer’s take on how we live – and fail to live – together. An impressive and thought-provoking collection by someone who deserves to be widely-read.

Many readers will be familiar with Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, which is almost essential reading in order to understand this brilliant parody and satire on the financial worlds. Piers Black is the ultimate charismatic tycoon ‘revered by men and universally desired by women, a legend in his own Armani suit’, and has his own ruthless and calculating message to deliver to a packed audience of shareholders. He speaks in turn on a variety of topics, suggested by members of the audience such as profit, greed, mobile phones, work, adversity and even accountants, takeovers, clothes (you are what you wear), cars, sex and money. When it comes to love, the text is the greatest travesty of and contrast with Gibran: ‘Love brings powerless confusion to those whose purpose and direction was as unshakable as a mountain.’ Piers sees love as a monstrous web and maintains that the greatest love of all is self-love. Just as he reaches a peak of eloquent rhetoric, the voice of his father rings across the hall, asking him what has become of ‘the time to be kind and long-suffering and loving and generous’. This incident creates a crisis from which he makes a nearly full recover, reverting to his self-assured arrogance. This is a great book to take on holiday and will surely make you laugh out loud as someone asks enquiringly ‘speak to us of cars’ and Piers launches forth with soaring metaphors and high-flown but utterly cynical prose.