Some autobiographies are great to read whether you’re interested in the subject or not. My whole family loved Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, even though only two of us are interested in football. The Hitman unfortunately might not be so universally appealing – although boxing fans will surely enjoy it. Even those that aren’t particular fans of Ricky should enjoy the boxing descriptions and the humour.
Ricky Hatton – or, more accurately, his ghost writer, Niall Hickman (although he has captured Ricky’s ‘voice’ really well) tells some great stories, from Ricky’s life in and out of the ring. Describing what happens in a boxing match isn’t easy, but Hatton/Hickman brings every fight to life. He also treats his opponents with extraordinary respect, whatever the result. So many celebrities see a biography as an opportunity to bad mouth pretty much anyone they can. Hatton is nice about everyone. Even when he doesn’t get on with someone, he is as tactful as he can be, and never ignores their positive points. It’s very refreshing.
Ricky also has a great sense of humour. Some of his stories are hilarious, all of them extremely well told. It’s easy to imagine this is exactly how Ricky would describe it, word for word. The style is chatty but readable. He’s very honest, and, although confident in his abilities, he’s surprisingly modest. He seems like a really lovely man who really appreciates his fans, enjoying their company at least as much as their support.
The chapters in the book are called ‘Rounds’, which is appropriate in theory, but the thing about rounds is that they imply chronological order. Although Hatton clearly does have chronology in mind, he has a remarkable tendency to get sidetracked. He’ll start talking about a fight he’s preparing for, but then he’ll start talking about something that happened to him when he was a child that starts off being relevant, but then you get further and further from the subject in hand. Then he might go on to talk about his life as an amateur boxer… it’s all very interesting, but it’s sometimes frustrating when you’re looking forward to hearing about a fight, and Hatton will give you one really tantalising detail – and then you have to wait for ages to find out the rest.
Hatton does tend to assume that the people reading his book will know what’s going to happen before they read the book. It was probably reasonable for him to make the assumption that his book is not that likely to be read by people who don’t know who he is. His fight history includes just one defeat, and I should think all his fans will remember who beat Ricky, and when.
But I read the same books over and over again, and even though I know exactly what’s going to happen, I still get really excited and worried about what might happen. I get all caught up in the moment, and start hoping and dreading that something will/won’t happen. It’s the same with Ricky’s boxing matches. Each one is so thrillingly described – but, every so often, he will remind you (although not in a conceited way) of the fact he won it, and that brings the excitement levels down.
But in the end, Hatton seems to worked this out: the latest update, which includes Hatton’s fight against Floyd Merryweather in December last year, is wonderfully-written. I knew the result very well: I’d seen the reports, and would have watched the match if I’d had Setanta Sports. But it’s so vividly written, I kind of forgot all that and just got caught up in what Hatton was describing. It’s a shame Hatton didn’t write the whole of the book like this. But that doesn’t stop The Hitman from being a very good book.
Friday 19 September 2008
Sunday 14 September 2008
Angels (Marian Keyes)***
After reading Marian Keyes’ wonderful Anybody Out There, I was really excited to find out there were other books about Anna’s sisters. There are actually four in all, and reviews for Watermelon and Rachel’s Holiday will be posted when I get round to writing them. Angels tells the story of Maggie, the second of the five sisters. Maggie has grown up being the good girl, but she suddenly starts questioning whether this is something she really wants. So she leaves her husband Garv, and heads off to Los Angeles where her best friend Emily is trying to be a Hollywood scriptwriter.
It’s not a bad book at all, but a disappointment in comparison with the others. Maggie is, at least for me, by far the least likeable and the least amusing of the sisters. While it does sometimes take a while to learn to like Keyes’ characters, Maggie is someone I never really liked.
She’s just not a very nice person. She spends most of her time in Los Angeles getting drunk and sleeping with various people, and it never seems anything other than desperate and embarrassing. She’s self-obsessed, thoughtless, and a total slut. Or that’s the way it seems. Okay, yes, she thinks her husband’s having an affair, and she has just lost her job, and that’s enough to make anyone go a bit mad, but Maggie seems so neurotic and selfish all the way through the book, it’s much too easy to believe the affair is in her imagination and the sacking was deserved.
It has to be said, she gets into the bad girl lifestyle with no trouble at all, and maybe she seems happier and more alive when she’s being bad, but not really in an attractive way. And you just think: great, she’s found her true calling. She’s happier now. Let’s just leave her there and read another book.
Once we start getting flashbacks to Maggie’s life before she left Garv, her behaviour starts to make a bit more sense, and I wasn’t totally unsympathetic to her after that. But instead of her history seeming like a reason for her to go to Los Angeles, it seemed more like a reason for her to go home. As soon as possible. Ideally before she does something else stupid. She’s not going to solve the problem by sleeping around. She really isn’t.
Keyes is usually magnificent at characterisation, and her books are usually full of wonderful people, but there aren’t really any here. Maggie’s friend Emily is amazingly saintly, considering the crap she puts up with from Maggie – surely the last thing she wanted was Maggie moving into her flat and making demands on her time when she has a script to write. Maggie somehow gets involved in all aspects of Emily’s life, muscling in on her work and her social life, and ends up monopolising them completely. The friendship between Maggie and Emily never quite rings true for me. They don’t really have much of a rapport, and they barely seem to share any common interests besides getting drunk. Emily is a workaholic and Maggie is a sexaholic, and it’s difficult to see why they’re friends.
The flashbacks provide a bit of plot, but the main story seems more like a series of adventures. All Keyes’ books are full of adventures, but there’s usually a sense of heading towards something. But not here. The best parts are when Maggie’s bonkers family gets in touch.
But the rest of the series really is great.
It’s not a bad book at all, but a disappointment in comparison with the others. Maggie is, at least for me, by far the least likeable and the least amusing of the sisters. While it does sometimes take a while to learn to like Keyes’ characters, Maggie is someone I never really liked.
She’s just not a very nice person. She spends most of her time in Los Angeles getting drunk and sleeping with various people, and it never seems anything other than desperate and embarrassing. She’s self-obsessed, thoughtless, and a total slut. Or that’s the way it seems. Okay, yes, she thinks her husband’s having an affair, and she has just lost her job, and that’s enough to make anyone go a bit mad, but Maggie seems so neurotic and selfish all the way through the book, it’s much too easy to believe the affair is in her imagination and the sacking was deserved.
It has to be said, she gets into the bad girl lifestyle with no trouble at all, and maybe she seems happier and more alive when she’s being bad, but not really in an attractive way. And you just think: great, she’s found her true calling. She’s happier now. Let’s just leave her there and read another book.
Once we start getting flashbacks to Maggie’s life before she left Garv, her behaviour starts to make a bit more sense, and I wasn’t totally unsympathetic to her after that. But instead of her history seeming like a reason for her to go to Los Angeles, it seemed more like a reason for her to go home. As soon as possible. Ideally before she does something else stupid. She’s not going to solve the problem by sleeping around. She really isn’t.
Keyes is usually magnificent at characterisation, and her books are usually full of wonderful people, but there aren’t really any here. Maggie’s friend Emily is amazingly saintly, considering the crap she puts up with from Maggie – surely the last thing she wanted was Maggie moving into her flat and making demands on her time when she has a script to write. Maggie somehow gets involved in all aspects of Emily’s life, muscling in on her work and her social life, and ends up monopolising them completely. The friendship between Maggie and Emily never quite rings true for me. They don’t really have much of a rapport, and they barely seem to share any common interests besides getting drunk. Emily is a workaholic and Maggie is a sexaholic, and it’s difficult to see why they’re friends.
The flashbacks provide a bit of plot, but the main story seems more like a series of adventures. All Keyes’ books are full of adventures, but there’s usually a sense of heading towards something. But not here. The best parts are when Maggie’s bonkers family gets in touch.
But the rest of the series really is great.
Monday 8 September 2008
A Hidden Life (Adele Geras)****
Adele Geras is a brilliant writer. Her style is both poetic and very gripping; she can be very funny, and A Hidden Life, like a lot of her stories, has some really great twists: the type that could fall flat but never do. Her characters are really lovely, and even some of the dodgy ones are quite appealing.
A Hidden Life also manages to get away with something I usually really don’t like writers to do. One of the characters is a writer, and A Hidden Life includes a number of excerpts from the character’s book. I usually don’t like this because my brain would rather not be keeping an eye on two such completely different storylines at the same time, and the fact that the second storyline is in a book immediately makes it seem unreal. And, as it is unreal, I’d usually prefer not to waste my time with it.
But Geras has a reason for doing this, and it’s a reason that works because she does manage to make it real. The book sections tell you something important about the character who wrote them, and they therefore become an important part of the book. Still, I don’t think it’s something authors should try too often.
All the main characters seemed a lot older than me, including the one who was supposed to be about my age. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I am quite immature anyway, so most characters would seem older than me, but I didn’t identify with the characters as much as I usually like to. The person my age, Lou, is a very nice girl, and her story is very interesting, but even though we have quite a lot in common, I don’t really identify with her. I love her name, though.
My favourite character is Vanessa – she seems fun, and I really like the way her relationship with Mickey (a girl) is described very simply without any fuss. Kissing girls is really no different from kissing boys except girls are better kissers, so there’s no need to make a big drama about it. Coming-out books are fine, and they probably are important and encouraging for people who are thinking of coming out themselves, but you can often learn more about same-sex relationships when they’re not part of the main story - because, most of the time, the fact you’re gay isn’t the most important factor in your life. Life is about how you relate to each other and to outside events, and A Hidden Life is mostly about outside events. While Vanessa is concerned about coming out to her family, her relationship is something for her to enjoy, and to derive comfort from – but not something for her to worry about especially. The main theme of any book is what the characters are most worried about.
It was disappointing in a way that Vanessa’s girlfriend had a male name because it does tend to make the girl-on-girl thing less obvious (NOT that I was getting turned on by it), but maybe it helps readers who might feel uncomfortable reading about lesbians if they can half-pretend she’s a man. They really did have a lovely relationship.
The men were a bit annoying, though. There was only about one man in the whole book who wasn’t unfaithful, and he never really got the chance to be because he only showed up about halfway through, and only got into a relationship later on. Still, in a way it kinds of makes you feel, no wonder Vanessa became a lesbian if that’s what all the men she knows are like. And I’d really prefer to think she is with her girlfriend because she really likes her rather than because there aren’t any decent men around.
But, as usual, Geras has created lots of really good characters, and it’s very easy to remember who’s who. I think I liked just about every character by the end. Phyl can be annoyingly pathetic, but I couldn’t help admiring her for not being even worse. Harry is absolutely adorable, a proper romantic-novel hero, and the fact he does have his imperfections makes him a lot more human than most romantic heroes. Even the people who aren’t actually alive when the book takes place are very powerful characters. A Hidden Life really is an intelligent and intriguing novel.
A Hidden Life also manages to get away with something I usually really don’t like writers to do. One of the characters is a writer, and A Hidden Life includes a number of excerpts from the character’s book. I usually don’t like this because my brain would rather not be keeping an eye on two such completely different storylines at the same time, and the fact that the second storyline is in a book immediately makes it seem unreal. And, as it is unreal, I’d usually prefer not to waste my time with it.
But Geras has a reason for doing this, and it’s a reason that works because she does manage to make it real. The book sections tell you something important about the character who wrote them, and they therefore become an important part of the book. Still, I don’t think it’s something authors should try too often.
All the main characters seemed a lot older than me, including the one who was supposed to be about my age. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I am quite immature anyway, so most characters would seem older than me, but I didn’t identify with the characters as much as I usually like to. The person my age, Lou, is a very nice girl, and her story is very interesting, but even though we have quite a lot in common, I don’t really identify with her. I love her name, though.
My favourite character is Vanessa – she seems fun, and I really like the way her relationship with Mickey (a girl) is described very simply without any fuss. Kissing girls is really no different from kissing boys except girls are better kissers, so there’s no need to make a big drama about it. Coming-out books are fine, and they probably are important and encouraging for people who are thinking of coming out themselves, but you can often learn more about same-sex relationships when they’re not part of the main story - because, most of the time, the fact you’re gay isn’t the most important factor in your life. Life is about how you relate to each other and to outside events, and A Hidden Life is mostly about outside events. While Vanessa is concerned about coming out to her family, her relationship is something for her to enjoy, and to derive comfort from – but not something for her to worry about especially. The main theme of any book is what the characters are most worried about.
It was disappointing in a way that Vanessa’s girlfriend had a male name because it does tend to make the girl-on-girl thing less obvious (NOT that I was getting turned on by it), but maybe it helps readers who might feel uncomfortable reading about lesbians if they can half-pretend she’s a man. They really did have a lovely relationship.
The men were a bit annoying, though. There was only about one man in the whole book who wasn’t unfaithful, and he never really got the chance to be because he only showed up about halfway through, and only got into a relationship later on. Still, in a way it kinds of makes you feel, no wonder Vanessa became a lesbian if that’s what all the men she knows are like. And I’d really prefer to think she is with her girlfriend because she really likes her rather than because there aren’t any decent men around.
But, as usual, Geras has created lots of really good characters, and it’s very easy to remember who’s who. I think I liked just about every character by the end. Phyl can be annoyingly pathetic, but I couldn’t help admiring her for not being even worse. Harry is absolutely adorable, a proper romantic-novel hero, and the fact he does have his imperfections makes him a lot more human than most romantic heroes. Even the people who aren’t actually alive when the book takes place are very powerful characters. A Hidden Life really is an intelligent and intriguing novel.
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