Colson Whitehead on a heist gone wrong; a revisionary study of the footballing Charltons; and Donal Wilson’s latest fictional vignette of small-town Ireland. The Observer, August 2022
Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead
Little, Brown, £8.99, pp336 (paperback)
Whitehead won Pulitzer prizes for his previous two books (The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys); the remarkable atmosphere and period detail of Harlem Shuffle is equally impressive. In 1960s Harlem a seemingly upstanding furniture salesman (Ray, the son of a hoodlum) gets mixed up in a heist that goes badly wrong. That’s only the beginning of Ray’s travails as he comes into contact with a cast of bent cops, lowlifes and crime lords. A fine novel with much to say about race, class and power structures.
Two Brothers
Jonathan Wilson
Little, Brown, £20, pp320
There are plenty of stories and biographies about World Cup-winning footballers Bobby and Jack Charlton, but Wilson eschews the anecdotes of sporting success and sibling rivalry. Instead, he posits the intriguing idea that their different attitudes to football – Bobby traditional, Jack more forward-thinking – were representative of a sport and wider culture in flux in mid-20th century England. In that sense, this is a social history, yet surprisingly moving as it chronicles two remarkable lives.
The Queen of Dirt Island
Donal Ryan
Doubleday, £14.99, pp256
Over five novels, Ryan has regularly taken us into the lives of people in the Irish market town of Nenagh. His sixth, a loose follow-up to Strange Flowers, is no different. This time, four generations of Aylward women battle the cruelties of the modern world, their feisty attitude to the small betrayals they experience masking the love and loyalty they have for one another. A mother and daughter-in-law relationship is particularly well explored and Ryan’s prose is magical throughout.
