Morning
Allan Jenkins
4th Estate, £12.99, pp176
In this philosophical hymn to the pleasures of waking early, Observer Food Monthly editor Allan Jenkins says that dawn is an enchanted world behind a hidden door, a time where you can be anybody you want to be, because the rest of the world is asleep. A collection of his diary entries marvelling at the natural world as it wakes, Morning also features reflections on early rising from writers such as Lemn Sissay and Ian McMillan, actors, artists, fishermen and, er, Jamie Oliver. It steadily becomes incredibly persuasive. The point of being awake at 5.15am, for Jenkins, is that there’s a golden period to do the things that are otherwise impossible in our busy lives. Seize the day indeed.
Elmet
Fiona Mozley
Hodder, £10.99, pp320 (paperback)
Fiona Mozley might have been the surprise debut author on last year’s Man Booker prize shortlist, but her story of a bare-knuckle fighter who retreats to a Yorkshire copse with his children is thought-provoking and deserving of the attention it received. Elmet taps into an ethereal, visceral and almost mythological natural world where “Daddy” shapes his children to be “more like an army than a family”. Its politics are fascinating too – Elmet centres on a dispute about a piece of land and there’s much to chew on here about how we define community and the disenfranchised. Yet Elmet is compulsively readable and entertaining – very much the “Yorkshire western” the prodigiously talented Mozley wanted it to be.
The Long Forgotten
David Whitehouse
Picador, £14.99, pp304
An unexplained plane crash, a protagonist in 80s New York who keeps cheating death in his quest for rare flowers, and a strange love triangle - The Long Forgotten has all the ingredients of an enjoyable mystery. But Whitehouse attempts something more ambitious with his third novel, which is told through troubled orphan Dove, who begins to remember a past that isn’t his own but the flower hunter’s. All of which opens up plenty of thoughtful passages about the nature of memory, family and solitude – and though the heavy foreshadowing makes for a rather convoluted tale, there’s enough heart here to overcome its less credible moments.
To order Morning for £11.04, Elmet for £9.34, or The Long Forgotten for £12.74 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
