The Wind at My Back: A Cycling Life
Paul Maunder
Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp272
In a two-wheeled response to much great current writing about man and landscape, Paul Maunder’s engaging memoir argues that cycling, because of its innate connection with civilisation, is a perfect cipher for our feelings about the natural world. There’s a little too much analysis about the art of writing, but it does make you want to get on your bike.
Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan
Corsair, £8.99, pp512 (paperback)
After Egan’s daring Pulitzer prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad (in which one chapter was written entirely in Powerpoint slides), Manhattan Beach is relatively straightforward. Set in New York during the depression and second world war, it features Anna, a ship-repair diver in Brooklyn’s naval yard caught up in a world of mobsters and family secrets – a likable heroine battling against the social mores of the time. Despite some over-researched sections on shipwrights and their craft, it’s a story to relax into and enjoy.
Miss Laila, Armed And Dangerous
Manu Joseph
Myriad Editions, £8.99, pp224
Manu Joseph’s third novel, set in the world of Indian politics, police and bureaucracy, is caustic, occasionally comic and determinedly controversial. But there’s a thriller lurking beneath too: a man is found trapped in the rubble of a collapsed Mumbai tower block, whispering about a young Muslim couple about to carry out a terror attack. References are made to the real-life Ishrat Jahan case from 2004, in which a group of “suspected” terrorists were killed by police. Joseph regularly jolts the reader out of his fictional world, though not always successfully, ultimately making the novel easier to admire than to love.
• To order The Wind at My Back for £14.44, Manhattan Beach for £7.64, or Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous for £7.64, 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
