Burton-Taylor biography is wild, gossipy, beautiful and shocking

When it comes to art I have, in general, a preference for brevity. Singles over albums. Sonnets over epic poems, A Bout De Souffle over Oppenheimer. 

It’s the same with fantasy fiction: Michael Moorcock before George RR Martin; Robert E Howard rather than JRR Tolkien.

So, part of me hesitates to recommend a book that is well north of 500 pages and that takes its own sweet time to get to where it needs to be. But Paolo Bacigalupi’s fantasy novel Navola turns out to be a rewarding slow-release pleasure. And the sex and violence, when they arrive, are suitably visceral.

Bacigalupi is better known as a science fiction writer. His debut novel The Wind-Up Girl won the Hugo and Nebula Prizes, while his follow-up, The Water Knife - a compelling near-future thriller that explores the looming issue of water-shortage -  is a Netflix box set in waiting.

What his latest novel shares with these predecessors is its convincing imagined setting. Navola offers an Italianate fantasy vision of mediaeval cities, nobles and warriors around a Game of Thrones-style narrative about scheming families and rivalries in which, it seems, every other character is a Littlefinger type. 

And, yes, there is a dragon in the story, but it’s used in an unusual, intriguing way. 

Navola tells the story of Davico, a boy coming of age in a world he doesn’t feel he’s cut out for. His father is a consummate strategist and plotter, heading up the Regulai bank. Davico, too credulous to be great at intrigues and schemes, fears he will never live up to his father’s example.

Bacigalupi spins this story out at a teasing, leisurely pace, introducing us to a huge cast of characters, all of them distinctively drawn. 

But while we accompany Davico on his meandering journey to manhood his creator is laying down everything that he needs to pull everything together in the last third of the book, when he suddenly accelerates the narrative and all the plots and intrigues come to the fore.

The shock and horror of the last 150 pages contrasts sharply with the pleasurably slow world-building that precedes it and has a real punch and power to it as a result. If anything, you close the book wanting more.

That seems a possibility. The conclusion, though satisfying enough, also surely sets us up for a sequel. If so, I guess I’m in it for the long run.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (Image: free)

BIOGRAPHY

Erotic Vagrancy, Roger Lewis, Riverrun, £12.99, out now

Just published in paperback, Roger Lewis’s joint biography of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor is also something of an epic (a chunky 650+ pages). Some 13 years in the writing, it’s a book about excess that is itself excessive - a wild, gossipy, beautifully crafted, at times shocking thing. The result is a bucking bronco ride through the extremes of 20th-century fame, wealth, guilt and vulgarity, full of the most wonderful, horrifying asides. (Did you know the bar stools on Aristotle Onassis’s yacht were covered in whale foreskins?)

My Family: The Memoir, David Baddiel, Fourth Estate, £22, out now

The comedian offers up the story of his parents, taking in his mother’s sex life and his father’s dementia. No such thing as oversharing in the Baddiel household.

CRIME

Imposter Syndrome, Joseph Knox, Doubleday, July 11, £18.99

Joseph Knox established his name with a trilogy of satisfyingly gritty police procedurals set in Manchester, but his last book, the standalone True Crime Story, felt like a real step up, a fresh and original approach to crime fiction. Has he kept it up with his latest book Imposter Syndrome? 

Sort of. Imposter Syndrome doesn’t have the shock of the new of True Crime Story  but it’s a compelling enough page-turner. You do have to get on board with the set-up though: A con-artist meets a woman who thinks he looks like her missing-feared-dead brother. He inveigles himself into her family and finds that there is a mystery to solve. That’s if he lives long enough.

Knox’s writing has a snap to it and if you can accept the premise this is a punchy thriller with a side order of paranoia.

Kapka Kassabova (Image: free)

NON-FICTION

Anima, Kapka Kassabova, Jonathan Cape, £20, July 11

Born in Bulgaria and based in the Scottish Highlands, Kapka Kassabova has written a series of fascinating, idiosyncratic, often poetic non-fiction books which deal with issues of place, culture and identity. Her latest book Anima sees her embed herself into the lives of an isolated community in the Alpine Highlands to examine the interdependence of people and their animals. Her goal is to find some solutions to mankind’s broken relationship with nature. That’s a marker of her ambition as a writer. And her writing is worthy of it.

Clay: A Human History, Jennifer Lucy Allan, White Rabbit, £20, July 25

“There is a reason there are so many pots in museums,” Jennifer Lucy Allan writes in Clay, “because fired clay is one of the most effective keepers of stories we have.” This book is a “love letter” to the material, tracing it back through time to prehistory. The first love poem was inscribed on a clay tablet by a Sumerian bride to her husband more than 4,000 years ago. Bit more impressive than a WhatsApp message, you’d have to say.

Storm Pegs, Jen Hadfield, Picador, £18.99, July 11

Subtitled A Life Made in Shetland, Jen Hadfield’s new book has already been praised as a potent and vivid description of the place. Hadfield moved to the archipelago in her late twenties, finding a world teeming with life. This is her beautifully written account of the flora and fauna she discovered.

Michael Longley (Image: Bobbie Hanvey)

FICTION

Teddy, Emily Dunlay, Fourth Estate, £16.99, out now

Now how could I resist that title? The Teddy in question here is not an ageing freelance journalist, but Teddy Huntley Carlyle, fresh off the plane in 1960s Rome with a new husband on her arm and a caseful of old secrets that might come back to expose her. One for those long days by the pool, even if you’re planning on going to Cowdenbeath rather than Cannes for your holidays.

POETRY

Ash Keys, Michael Longley, Jonathan Cape, £16, July 25

Belfast in the 1960s was a surprisingly fertile place for poetry. The Belfast Group - a poet’s workshop set up by Philip Hobsbaum in 1963 - helped nurture the writing of Seamus Heaney, Derek McMahon and Michael Longley. Heaney and McMahon are no longer with us, so all the more reason to celebrate the work of Longley who turns 85 at the end of this month. This new selection of his poetry, drawing on his 13 published collections, shows his range and power. He is one of the great poets of landscape, as well as a powerful, pained commentator on Northern Ireland’s troubled history. The best praise you can give him is that his work sits comfortably alongside that of Heaney, his great friend.

Marjane Satrapi (Image: Maria Ortiz)

GRAPHIC MEMOIR

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, Vintage Classic, £10.99, out now

Back in 2013 I organised a Herald poll of graphic novelists and cartoonists to name the top 50 graphic novels. The big surprise was that Satrapi’s bold, punky graphic memoir of her life growing up in post-revolutionary Iran came out on top, ahead of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. In 1995 Satrapi had been given a copy of Maus as a birthday present and proved an inspiration. In turn, Satrapi’s book has inspired a generation of young female cartoonists. This new edition - one of 20 books that are part of a Vintage Classics relaunch - gathers together Persepolis and its sequel in one edition. As we said back in 2013, if you haven’t read a graphic novel before, then start here.