If the National Maritime Museum's new Sammy Ofer Wing is known as the "toast rack" then deep in the basement is the freezer.
High Arctic, the first installation in a new exhibition space, is not what you would expect from what we could now reasonably call Maritime Museum Classic.
Along the corridors, back in the old space, an exhibition of about the quest for the North West Passage displays rust cans, mangled eyewear, compasses and worn leather journals covered in spindly writing.
High Arctic - designed by United Visual Artists - conjures the same sense of desolation and cold without a label or artefact in sight. In fact, the room is in virtual darkness, its curious cubist stalagmites picked out by the visitor with a UV torch.
This is art of a very modern kind and so a fitting one for a slick new wing that values experience and authenticity equally (a statement typified by the new Voyagers gallery that has a wall of old-school highlights behind a sweeping 25m wave projection conjured by soothing sound and rushing words).
High Artic deserves an explanation if only because it is so unusual. But an explanation will not adequately serve to conjure the experience because the immersion will be what you bring to it.
The visitor navigates clusters of oblongs, each carrying the name of a glacier, while evocative prose and poems conjure the raw beauty of the icy landscape.
On the floor there are what can only be described as a wild scattering of ever-shifting pixels. Some coalesce to represent snow scapes, others become glaciers dragged ever in one direction, some are maps and others are blizzards.
They seem inevitable and permanent but the UV torch allows the visitor to interact: pushing and breaking up the glaciers, changing the wind, moving the map. A landscape that seems impervious and impersonal warms to the touch. It is both a gently soothing experience and ruggedly unnerving.
Next in this space will come Prof David Starkey's River Thames spectacular in time for the Olympics. One imagines his vision will be robust and grounded, in contrast to this nebulous blizzard of light-touch sensations.
– From July 2011
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Book review: Where The Bodies Are Buried, by Chris Brookmyre
Chris Brookmyre, another product of the Scottish crime school/production line, stood out from the crowd with a series of pitch black tales that revelled in the macabre doings of its villainous characters.
Tired, presumably, of churning out (high class and fun) pulp fiction, Brookmyre feels he has paid his dues and wants to produce something with more heft.
His latest book is an orthodox police procedural that takes his lead characters into the dark heart of Glasgow's drugs gangs.
Brookmyre is setting himself up for a series, apparently, so this first story is heavily laden with back story, character explanations, geographical descriptions and the sort of stuff that in films that is jammed in before the credits so you know who you're dealing with when the action proper starts.
And therein lies the flaw. The story itself - which sets grizzled detective Catherine McLeod and newbie private investigator Jasmine Sharp on two converging paths - fails to grip sufficiently to make all the back story baggage worthwhile.
Sharp's hunt for her uncle and McLeod's gang-busting zeal take an age to come to fruition and the pay-offs are too downbeat for the time we've spent in the protagonists' heads and homes.
It is wonderfully written and Brookmyre cannot curb his instinct for gallows humour - somewhere down the line this series could jump into life. But this isn't that book.
– From July 2011
Tired, presumably, of churning out (high class and fun) pulp fiction, Brookmyre feels he has paid his dues and wants to produce something with more heft.
His latest book is an orthodox police procedural that takes his lead characters into the dark heart of Glasgow's drugs gangs.
Brookmyre is setting himself up for a series, apparently, so this first story is heavily laden with back story, character explanations, geographical descriptions and the sort of stuff that in films that is jammed in before the credits so you know who you're dealing with when the action proper starts.
And therein lies the flaw. The story itself - which sets grizzled detective Catherine McLeod and newbie private investigator Jasmine Sharp on two converging paths - fails to grip sufficiently to make all the back story baggage worthwhile.
Sharp's hunt for her uncle and McLeod's gang-busting zeal take an age to come to fruition and the pay-offs are too downbeat for the time we've spent in the protagonists' heads and homes.
It is wonderfully written and Brookmyre cannot curb his instinct for gallows humour - somewhere down the line this series could jump into life. But this isn't that book.
– From July 2011
Spiral Notebook: No time to stand and stare
Psychogeography is an actual thing, a proper area of research, and not just some pseudo course dreamt up by the Hanger Lane Gyratory School of Further Studies to con Arabs out of £9,000.
It is the study of the effects of the environment on the emotions and behaviour of its inhabitants.
Anyway, the point is, Canary Wharf has got some screwed-up psychogeography.
I know about the grid layout and the green spaces and the slice of Manhattan etc. But something's wrong.
It's not organic. It demands that humans follow its straight lines rather than meander and cluster and drift and huddle in secret like real humans like to do.
So everybody dashes from A to B at a fast rate of knots (Canada Place Mall is like a parade of army ants - ruthless, purposeful, joyless and fast).
Anywhere that is not on the beaten track feels lost and isolated. Bars are either heaving, or empty.
In his book Walk The Lines, author Mark Mason talks to City Of London planning officer Peter Rees who has a refreshing take on what he can achieve in his job. "London's unplannable," he says. "I say that as a planner and I'm thrilled by it."
He goes on to say that the primacy of the City of London as a financial centre is based on narrow alleys and confused, illogical streets.
"It's like a collection of beehives. The bees are going out of their banks and cross-pollinating and coming back with the nectar to make honey.
"You don't get that in Canary Wharf and American cities. They're too organised. People are compartmentalised into their own buildings."
Canary Wharf needs some hidden places, secret nooks and really awkward cornering where insider traders can randomly congregate to bitch about Madge in accounts or conspire to ruin small Third World countries without interruption.
– From July 2011
It is the study of the effects of the environment on the emotions and behaviour of its inhabitants.
Anyway, the point is, Canary Wharf has got some screwed-up psychogeography.
I know about the grid layout and the green spaces and the slice of Manhattan etc. But something's wrong.
It's not organic. It demands that humans follow its straight lines rather than meander and cluster and drift and huddle in secret like real humans like to do.
So everybody dashes from A to B at a fast rate of knots (Canada Place Mall is like a parade of army ants - ruthless, purposeful, joyless and fast).
Anywhere that is not on the beaten track feels lost and isolated. Bars are either heaving, or empty.
In his book Walk The Lines, author Mark Mason talks to City Of London planning officer Peter Rees who has a refreshing take on what he can achieve in his job. "London's unplannable," he says. "I say that as a planner and I'm thrilled by it."
He goes on to say that the primacy of the City of London as a financial centre is based on narrow alleys and confused, illogical streets.
"It's like a collection of beehives. The bees are going out of their banks and cross-pollinating and coming back with the nectar to make honey.
"You don't get that in Canary Wharf and American cities. They're too organised. People are compartmentalised into their own buildings."
Canary Wharf needs some hidden places, secret nooks and really awkward cornering where insider traders can randomly congregate to bitch about Madge in accounts or conspire to ruin small Third World countries without interruption.
– From July 2011
Book review: The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson
This is not, as innocent browsers may assume, a multiple choice government issue pamphlet - although we may all be a little safer if there's an increase in self-diagnosed loons signing up to be sectioned.
Instead this is a tour of the red end of the mental health spectrum delivered in Ronson's signature jaunty style that manages to meander and move briskly at the same time.
Ronson's thesis is not clear at the beginning (when he sets out on a MacGuffin mystery tour to Sweden) and perhaps less so at the end, when he detours into an alarming summary of the chemical coshing of awkward kids.
But with a blend of compassionate curiosity, an eye for an oddity and a full cast list of insiders, exponents and critics, Ronson manages to lodge enough uncertainties about the ability of the experts to spot and treat psychopaths to make a walk around Canada Square Park all the more hairy.
(Some psychos make Broadmoor, but many make the boardroom, he discovers.)
Although he doesn't satisfactorily tie up all the flapping strands of the sprawling subject matter, the effortless ease of his prose and his endless inquiry make for a jolting and breezy tour of the behaviours between normal and dangerous that cause all the problems.
Some call this territory benign eccentricity but for the pharmaceutical companies and mind doctors, it represents a no-man's-land to colonise, cure and exploit.
– From July 2011
Instead this is a tour of the red end of the mental health spectrum delivered in Ronson's signature jaunty style that manages to meander and move briskly at the same time.
Ronson's thesis is not clear at the beginning (when he sets out on a MacGuffin mystery tour to Sweden) and perhaps less so at the end, when he detours into an alarming summary of the chemical coshing of awkward kids.
But with a blend of compassionate curiosity, an eye for an oddity and a full cast list of insiders, exponents and critics, Ronson manages to lodge enough uncertainties about the ability of the experts to spot and treat psychopaths to make a walk around Canada Square Park all the more hairy.
(Some psychos make Broadmoor, but many make the boardroom, he discovers.)
Although he doesn't satisfactorily tie up all the flapping strands of the sprawling subject matter, the effortless ease of his prose and his endless inquiry make for a jolting and breezy tour of the behaviours between normal and dangerous that cause all the problems.
Some call this territory benign eccentricity but for the pharmaceutical companies and mind doctors, it represents a no-man's-land to colonise, cure and exploit.
– From July 2011
Book review: In The Plex, by Steven Levy
Google is the world's greatest producer of computers. For a company that wants us all in the cloud and builds its phenomenal fortune and success on algorithms and esoteric maths, it has become a very worldly corporation.
One of many fascinating facts emerging from Steven Levy's book - vital reading for anyone who uses a Google product which, if the great monopolists have anything to do with it, will be everyone shortly.
The book falls into two parts. The first witnesses the bright and breezy deconstruction of business norms as two Rollerblading geniuses Sergey Brin and Larry Page, with limited resources but unlimited ambition, turn the world upside down with a hippie vibe and an obsession for finding you the right answer.
Meanwhile, they treat their staff like royalty and plot (Virgin-like) the break-up of traditional industries such as phones, TV, office computers with the simple trick of giving it all away free.
In the second part, the plucky little Davids become the Goliath and their mantra "Don't be evil" develops a tainted odour.
Steven Levy gives a compulsive and comprehensive survey of the history while not revealing too much about the enigmatic Brin and Page.
He has rare access to the Plex (Google's offices) and this book has the feel of an insider's account - although he pays a heavy price.
While he's happy to lay bare Google's missteps (China, books, social networking) he is happier as an apologist.
If Page is such an insightful genius and champion of openness, for example, how come he is always portrayed as bemused and hurt when the secretive plunder of people's privacy causes rancour.
Sympathy wanes as Google amasses its billions and persuades itself to compromise its principles.
However, wonder at the brilliance and ambition remains undimmed.
– From June 2011
One of many fascinating facts emerging from Steven Levy's book - vital reading for anyone who uses a Google product which, if the great monopolists have anything to do with it, will be everyone shortly.
The book falls into two parts. The first witnesses the bright and breezy deconstruction of business norms as two Rollerblading geniuses Sergey Brin and Larry Page, with limited resources but unlimited ambition, turn the world upside down with a hippie vibe and an obsession for finding you the right answer.
Meanwhile, they treat their staff like royalty and plot (Virgin-like) the break-up of traditional industries such as phones, TV, office computers with the simple trick of giving it all away free.
In the second part, the plucky little Davids become the Goliath and their mantra "Don't be evil" develops a tainted odour.
Steven Levy gives a compulsive and comprehensive survey of the history while not revealing too much about the enigmatic Brin and Page.
He has rare access to the Plex (Google's offices) and this book has the feel of an insider's account - although he pays a heavy price.
While he's happy to lay bare Google's missteps (China, books, social networking) he is happier as an apologist.
If Page is such an insightful genius and champion of openness, for example, how come he is always portrayed as bemused and hurt when the secretive plunder of people's privacy causes rancour.
Sympathy wanes as Google amasses its billions and persuades itself to compromise its principles.
However, wonder at the brilliance and ambition remains undimmed.
– From June 2011
Film review: Bridesmaids (15)
They'll have you believe, these marketing types, that Bridesmaids is The Hangover for the ladies.
And evidence for their claim is everywhere. The master of blowing chunks with charm, Judd Apatow, is on producing duties. There are bodily functions misfiring at timely intervals (girls poo shocker!), there are untoward happenings beneath - and above - the sheets and a plane journey is pretty much wrecked by pills, alcohol and lashings of girlie back-biting.
But at its heart this doesn't stray too fair from the chick-flick-gal-pal formula that Sex And The City so successfully created then so dismally destroyed.
There is a substantial difference, though, from those by rote Aniston-athons and J-Lo-downs.
This has heart, originality, recognisable characters, belly-creaking laughs and a staggering performance from Kirsten Wiig as the woman whose life, loves and friendships crumble like the cupcakes she used to bake before life started kicking her in the teeth.
Wiig plays thirtysomething Annie, whose hapless descent into shambles and lonely bitterness is slowed only momentarily by the impending nuptials of best pal and childhood partner in crime Lillian (Maya Rudolph). Annie is put on maid of honour duties and has to rustle up the requisite rounds of carousing and weepy nostalgia.
Should she slip up, in the wings stands newcomer, perfectionist and perennially pretty Helen (Rose Byrne), an uber-bitch with a unfortunate line in excellent taste, mind games and easy wealth. As the battle for the bride's favours begins, Wiig finds herself in line for some lessons in humility.
The party of five each get a chance to shine with tubby Megan (Melissa McCarthy) finding plenty of meat in her character to steal a scene or two. And when Annie's lame link-up with Mad Men's Jon Hamm goes south, charming cop Chris O'Dowd is on hand to rescue her from loveless oblivion.
Aside from a curious cameo from Matt Lucas and the sugar sweet sentimentality at the end, there's rarely a wrong note anywhere. The comic setpieces are tuned to excruciating perfection and Wiig's race to the bottom punctuated with face-pulls and laughter lines that simply hit the spot every time.
This is Wiig's film by a mile (and not only because she was co-writer) and I doubt there'll be a better female performance all year.
She has come from bit-part obscurity but, after this showing, her diary will be full for a few years yet, (starting with a Bridesmaids sequel) leaving the likes of Applegate and Aniston ruing the dearth of accomplished scripts which prefer brutal truths to stale do-overs.
– From July 2011
And evidence for their claim is everywhere. The master of blowing chunks with charm, Judd Apatow, is on producing duties. There are bodily functions misfiring at timely intervals (girls poo shocker!), there are untoward happenings beneath - and above - the sheets and a plane journey is pretty much wrecked by pills, alcohol and lashings of girlie back-biting.
But at its heart this doesn't stray too fair from the chick-flick-gal-pal formula that Sex And The City so successfully created then so dismally destroyed.
There is a substantial difference, though, from those by rote Aniston-athons and J-Lo-downs.
This has heart, originality, recognisable characters, belly-creaking laughs and a staggering performance from Kirsten Wiig as the woman whose life, loves and friendships crumble like the cupcakes she used to bake before life started kicking her in the teeth.
Wiig plays thirtysomething Annie, whose hapless descent into shambles and lonely bitterness is slowed only momentarily by the impending nuptials of best pal and childhood partner in crime Lillian (Maya Rudolph). Annie is put on maid of honour duties and has to rustle up the requisite rounds of carousing and weepy nostalgia.
Should she slip up, in the wings stands newcomer, perfectionist and perennially pretty Helen (Rose Byrne), an uber-bitch with a unfortunate line in excellent taste, mind games and easy wealth. As the battle for the bride's favours begins, Wiig finds herself in line for some lessons in humility.
The party of five each get a chance to shine with tubby Megan (Melissa McCarthy) finding plenty of meat in her character to steal a scene or two. And when Annie's lame link-up with Mad Men's Jon Hamm goes south, charming cop Chris O'Dowd is on hand to rescue her from loveless oblivion.
Aside from a curious cameo from Matt Lucas and the sugar sweet sentimentality at the end, there's rarely a wrong note anywhere. The comic setpieces are tuned to excruciating perfection and Wiig's race to the bottom punctuated with face-pulls and laughter lines that simply hit the spot every time.
This is Wiig's film by a mile (and not only because she was co-writer) and I doubt there'll be a better female performance all year.
She has come from bit-part obscurity but, after this showing, her diary will be full for a few years yet, (starting with a Bridesmaids sequel) leaving the likes of Applegate and Aniston ruing the dearth of accomplished scripts which prefer brutal truths to stale do-overs.
– From July 2011
Stage review: Government Inspector, Young Vic
Imagine finding a rat scrabbling around a tin of Quality Street. All the corruption and chaos set against a such a gaudy backdrop.
That is how visionary director Richard Jones sees the Russian town in Nikolai Gogol's Government Inspector. Not as a grey, provincial sinkhole of petty jealousies (although it is that as well) but as an Alice in Wonderland tumbling circus of increasing madness.
The potential in the story's central conceit is gloriously realised and the result is a full night of comic nourishment with dazzling performances set against a dancing backdrop.
The story centres on a forgotten town that makes not a spittle blip on St Petersburg's radar - until a government inspector is sent to check on the mayor's regime.
Eager to locate the inspector, who is travelling incognito, the bumbling bureaucrats chance upon a visiting low-ranking Walter Mitty official. His folie de grandeur chimes wonderfully with the townsfolk's view of a cosmopolitan city slicker.
So follows a rising auction of flatterers and flattered exposing the hypocrisy and vacuity of both parties - but not before revolution is fomented, love is won and lost and the townsfolk turn politics to pantomime.
Julian Barratt, as the Mayor, visibly pales during the performance. He appears uncomfortable in his skin and, while betraying lack of theatrical experience, he offers a thoroughly enjoyable performance full of knowing nods and winks.
He channels a greasy David Brent while maintaining a menace that hints at a vast well of cruelty beneath the sweaty exterior.
As his frustrated wife Anna, Doon Mackichan has the low cunning of a wannabe Wag, the desperation of a Mrs Bennett and the dress sense of Hamley's Christmas window.
But this is Kyle Soller's show. As Khlestakov, the semi-delusional debtor, he finds himself in an hallucination with a parade of officials stuffing roubles in his pocket while pale provincial women offer him their hearts and truffles.
His manic escalation as he rises physically from sofa to mantlepiece and mild-mannered exaggeration to rampant flights of self-aggrandisement is a masterly display of choreography, timing and tension. Like a Swan Vesta, he has a bobble of red atop a rake thin frame and he juts and poses like a Dickensian caricature.
Among the flawless support Amanda Lawrence's Postmaster receives most laughs while Jack Brough and Fergus Craig as Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky perform an unnerving Tweedledum and Tweedledee double act.
Invention comes throughout the evening, from the audience's arrival through the front door of a Russian house to the rats running the picture rail, and while Jones underplays the indictments of corruption that was Gogol's purpose, he skewers the comic scenes with an unerring sharpness.
As farce becomes nightmare, Government Inspector becomes a 19th century version of The Hangover.
– From June 2011
That is how visionary director Richard Jones sees the Russian town in Nikolai Gogol's Government Inspector. Not as a grey, provincial sinkhole of petty jealousies (although it is that as well) but as an Alice in Wonderland tumbling circus of increasing madness.
The potential in the story's central conceit is gloriously realised and the result is a full night of comic nourishment with dazzling performances set against a dancing backdrop.
The story centres on a forgotten town that makes not a spittle blip on St Petersburg's radar - until a government inspector is sent to check on the mayor's regime.
Eager to locate the inspector, who is travelling incognito, the bumbling bureaucrats chance upon a visiting low-ranking Walter Mitty official. His folie de grandeur chimes wonderfully with the townsfolk's view of a cosmopolitan city slicker.
So follows a rising auction of flatterers and flattered exposing the hypocrisy and vacuity of both parties - but not before revolution is fomented, love is won and lost and the townsfolk turn politics to pantomime.
Julian Barratt, as the Mayor, visibly pales during the performance. He appears uncomfortable in his skin and, while betraying lack of theatrical experience, he offers a thoroughly enjoyable performance full of knowing nods and winks.
He channels a greasy David Brent while maintaining a menace that hints at a vast well of cruelty beneath the sweaty exterior.
As his frustrated wife Anna, Doon Mackichan has the low cunning of a wannabe Wag, the desperation of a Mrs Bennett and the dress sense of Hamley's Christmas window.
But this is Kyle Soller's show. As Khlestakov, the semi-delusional debtor, he finds himself in an hallucination with a parade of officials stuffing roubles in his pocket while pale provincial women offer him their hearts and truffles.
His manic escalation as he rises physically from sofa to mantlepiece and mild-mannered exaggeration to rampant flights of self-aggrandisement is a masterly display of choreography, timing and tension. Like a Swan Vesta, he has a bobble of red atop a rake thin frame and he juts and poses like a Dickensian caricature.
Among the flawless support Amanda Lawrence's Postmaster receives most laughs while Jack Brough and Fergus Craig as Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky perform an unnerving Tweedledum and Tweedledee double act.
Invention comes throughout the evening, from the audience's arrival through the front door of a Russian house to the rats running the picture rail, and while Jones underplays the indictments of corruption that was Gogol's purpose, he skewers the comic scenes with an unerring sharpness.
As farce becomes nightmare, Government Inspector becomes a 19th century version of The Hangover.
– From June 2011
Stage review: American Trade, Hampstead Theatre
Brace for impact. Hampstead Theatre has become a debauched nightclub for sleazemongers on Red Bull.
Tarell Alvin McCraney's stab at restoration comedy slaps street slang into baroque excess to make a greasy neon soup and the result is a frenetic assault on the senses that comes at you like a poke in the eye from Sid James.
The story, such as it is, centres on Tunji Kasim's light-on-his-feet rent boy Pharus who flees his New York hip hop sugar daddy for a plum job at his aunt's PR firm in London.
On the way he accrues an entourage of immigrant grotesques who come to rely on him for their betterment.
But he cannot escape his past and the lure of a quick buck and fumble derails his ambition.
Meanwhile, a power struggle at the PR agency leaves sharp-tongued Valentina (Sophie Russell) picking up the pieces of a D-lister's clash with the press.
But it's all surface shine and played for laughs with pointless scenes salvaged from backs of envelopes and tossed into the mix for effect rather than balance.
It's as though McCraney - given the RSC to play with - wants to see what he can make them do, like the kid who taps 58008 into his calculator to get teacher to say "boobs".
But it's played with gusto and eye bulging, last-day-of-term relish by guys who knows what it takes to sell a line.
Veterans such as Geoffrey Freshwater and Sheila Reid cast care (and clothes) to the wind for some lascivious romping against the graffiti'd backdrop while Debbie Korley as Super Girl almost steals the show with a two-minute turn as a typical TfL gloom-monger.
Nothing gets too deep, and despite the flesh on show, no characters emerge and after about 15 minutes the realisation that it's never gonna stop is an epiphany of soul-sapping enormity.
– From June 2011
Tarell Alvin McCraney's stab at restoration comedy slaps street slang into baroque excess to make a greasy neon soup and the result is a frenetic assault on the senses that comes at you like a poke in the eye from Sid James.
The story, such as it is, centres on Tunji Kasim's light-on-his-feet rent boy Pharus who flees his New York hip hop sugar daddy for a plum job at his aunt's PR firm in London.
On the way he accrues an entourage of immigrant grotesques who come to rely on him for their betterment.
But he cannot escape his past and the lure of a quick buck and fumble derails his ambition.
Meanwhile, a power struggle at the PR agency leaves sharp-tongued Valentina (Sophie Russell) picking up the pieces of a D-lister's clash with the press.
But it's all surface shine and played for laughs with pointless scenes salvaged from backs of envelopes and tossed into the mix for effect rather than balance.
It's as though McCraney - given the RSC to play with - wants to see what he can make them do, like the kid who taps 58008 into his calculator to get teacher to say "boobs".
But it's played with gusto and eye bulging, last-day-of-term relish by guys who knows what it takes to sell a line.
Veterans such as Geoffrey Freshwater and Sheila Reid cast care (and clothes) to the wind for some lascivious romping against the graffiti'd backdrop while Debbie Korley as Super Girl almost steals the show with a two-minute turn as a typical TfL gloom-monger.
Nothing gets too deep, and despite the flesh on show, no characters emerge and after about 15 minutes the realisation that it's never gonna stop is an epiphany of soul-sapping enormity.
– From June 2011
Book review: Dark Matter, by Juli Zeh
"Why are you looking at me so strangely," Maike asks.
"I'm watching you exist."
I wasn't really prepared for this story. For a start I was not wreathed in the smoke from a spindly Gauloises nor had I nurtured on my chin a tenuous goatee upon which I could drum the soundtrack to existential confusion.
This is a book and a half. The attention to detail - the authenticity of place and character is hypnotic, occasionally irritating but always consistent.
Essentially it is a crime novel with a murder and a kidnap in the centre, told by the supposed perpetrator and the eccentric cops on his tail (one dying, the other just, well, odd).
Physicist Sebastian is told he must kill a man to secure the release of his beloved son. What happens after that is very much a very different part of the spectrum from good old cause and effect.
We enter the realm of quantum uncertainty, the many worlds theory and scientific rivalry in the shape of Sebastian's ally-and-foe Oskar.
I am not a great fan of translations. They read so much like translations. ("Clever clogs" may be the nearest translation to the German original but there are handier, less clunky phrases available in our language.)
However, the distant, one-step-removed Zen language in this book adds to the curious air of dislocation.
This is a novel that will draw a particular kind of reader who will rave as fiercely as others will scratch their heads.
"I'm watching you exist."
I wasn't really prepared for this story. For a start I was not wreathed in the smoke from a spindly Gauloises nor had I nurtured on my chin a tenuous goatee upon which I could drum the soundtrack to existential confusion.
This is a book and a half. The attention to detail - the authenticity of place and character is hypnotic, occasionally irritating but always consistent.
Essentially it is a crime novel with a murder and a kidnap in the centre, told by the supposed perpetrator and the eccentric cops on his tail (one dying, the other just, well, odd).
Physicist Sebastian is told he must kill a man to secure the release of his beloved son. What happens after that is very much a very different part of the spectrum from good old cause and effect.
We enter the realm of quantum uncertainty, the many worlds theory and scientific rivalry in the shape of Sebastian's ally-and-foe Oskar.
I am not a great fan of translations. They read so much like translations. ("Clever clogs" may be the nearest translation to the German original but there are handier, less clunky phrases available in our language.)
However, the distant, one-step-removed Zen language in this book adds to the curious air of dislocation.
This is a novel that will draw a particular kind of reader who will rave as fiercely as others will scratch their heads.
Exhibition: Summer exhibition, Royal Academy
If the disparate array of sculpture, painting, photography and architecture is an insight into the national psyche, one message rises above the clamour: we're not going down without a fight.
This adroit collection is an antidote to the age of austerity and dreariness and, while it acknowledges cataclysm, there are plenty of bright colours that surround an explosion (notable in Keith Tyson's Deep Impact).
Co-ordinator Christopher Le Brun, explaining the lack of video, said he didn't want darkened rooms. "Daylight everywhere!" was his mantra.
And so it does. Electric colours and a neon buzz lift the spirit. Works are brimming with life, and endlessly fascinated by human lusts, foibles, amusements and nightmares.
Even the world of work has a spring in its step. Chris Orr's London sees us worker bees in a Richard Scarry carnival of life while David Mach's Liquidation has Canary Wharf as a decadent playground.
Veterans of the summer exhibition will note a new lay-out, a more coherent approach and interventions allowing works to talk to each other.
This is a royal celebration of the modern RA alongside the best of the potting shed wannabes making glorious art in the shadows and savouring their moment in the sun.
– From June 2011
This adroit collection is an antidote to the age of austerity and dreariness and, while it acknowledges cataclysm, there are plenty of bright colours that surround an explosion (notable in Keith Tyson's Deep Impact).
Co-ordinator Christopher Le Brun, explaining the lack of video, said he didn't want darkened rooms. "Daylight everywhere!" was his mantra.
And so it does. Electric colours and a neon buzz lift the spirit. Works are brimming with life, and endlessly fascinated by human lusts, foibles, amusements and nightmares.
Even the world of work has a spring in its step. Chris Orr's London sees us worker bees in a Richard Scarry carnival of life while David Mach's Liquidation has Canary Wharf as a decadent playground.
Veterans of the summer exhibition will note a new lay-out, a more coherent approach and interventions allowing works to talk to each other.
This is a royal celebration of the modern RA alongside the best of the potting shed wannabes making glorious art in the shadows and savouring their moment in the sun.
– From June 2011
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