This week the Mirror Book Club reviews a fascinating memoir by a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who has spent much of her career working with violent offenders.
The author of Boy Swallows Universe is back with a lyrical, mesmerising mythic quest story.
Meanwhile, there is a hypnotic quality to Jackie Polzin’s perceptive and moving debut - about caring for chickens.
And Rahul Raina has penned a cynical, very funny portrait of an India rife with corruption and inequality.
Read on for more - and don't forget to join the Mirror Book Club.
The Devil You Know, by Dr Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne
Faber & Faber, £16.99
Gwen Adshead is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who has spent much of her career working with violent offenders.
When she tells people what she does for a living, she often receives a ticking off for wasting her time on such “monsters”. “Nowadays,” she admits, with a typical mixture of candour and humour, “I’m inclined to tell them I’m a florist.”
She has written this memoir to shed light on the purpose of her much-misunderstood work. The book comprises a series of case studies, with each chapter devoted to one patient, ranging from a serial killer to a paedophile (these are not real people but “mosaic portraits” assembled from various cases).
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Dr Adshead explains that her job is not to make her patients feel better but to encourage them to “know their own minds”. Most of the chapters end very movingly as, through a mixture of hard grind and detective work, Dr Adshead gets to the bottom of what triggered their criminal behaviour – in most cases, childhood trauma – and sets them on the hard road to salvaging their lives.
It doesn’t always work out, however. One middle-class woman convicted of stalking remains incapable of recognising that she needs help.
There is also an account of the ethical dilemma Dr Adshead faced outside of her criminal practice when a patient revealed to her that he was guilty of a serious crime.
The book will be compulsive reading for those fascinated by the perennial question of what makes people commit horrific crimes. I found it slightly less illuminating than The Mind Of A Murderer by forensic psychiatrist Dr Richard Taylor which was more interested in opening up the brain and using neuroscience to explain criminal behaviour.
Where Dr Adshead really scores, however, is in her skill in bringing people and places to vivid life, such as her description of a women’s prison: “The atmosphere is a cross between a girls’ school and an aviary filled with raucous tropical birds calling out to each other.”
Peppered throughout the book are diatribes against governments that make false economies by cutting mental health funding.
Read this fascinating memoir and you’ll surely agree that, compared with strides made in treating physical illness, when it comes to mental illness we’re still in the Dark Ages.
By JAKE KERRIDGE
All Our Shimmering Skies, by Trent Dalton
Borough Press, £14.99
As Japanese bombs rain down on Darwin in 1942, motherless Molly,12, takes stock. Her dad is a drunken gravedigger, her uncle Aubrey is a violently unpredictable grave robber and sorcerer Longcoat Bob has placed a curse on the family as revenge for stolen gold.
Molly, imaginative and chipper despite a gruelling upbringing, believes the skies can give answers to her daily dilemmas. So when an explosion wrecks her house and kills her father, she looks to the skies for guidance, then embarks upon a journey to find the sorcerer and beg him to cancel the curse.
She takes an old mining pan of Aubrey’s, engraved with a riddle that will lead her to Longcoat Bob. Her uncle’s girlfriend Greta, an actress, reluctantly comes along to protect her.
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The duo are joined en route by absconding Japanese pilot Yukio who proves his trustworthiness in the dangerous situations they encounter.
It’s a perilous journey of shaky bridges, crocodiles and strange encounters with questionable strangers. And psychopathic Aubrey is in hot pursuit, not only of Greta but also that stolen pan because its map shows the location of hidden gold – and he’s determined to dispose of the nuisance that is Molly.
This is a lyrical, mesmerising mythic quest story from the author of Boy Swallows Universe.
By EITHNE FARRY
Brood, by Jackie Polzin
Picador, £14.99
A woman’s attempts to care for four chickens may not sound like the most compelling premise for a novel but there is a hypnotic quality to Jackie Polzin’s perceptive and moving debut.
Our unnamed American narrator suffers all the anxiety of a new mother, aware that “chickens die suddenly and without explanation”. How can she ensure they survive when it’s minus 40 degrees outside? How best to protect them from the predators that lurk around their coop? Why don’t her chickens lay eggs? Who knew that chickens have ears?
But, of course, there’s more to our narrator’s preoccupation than meets the eye. We learn that six years ago, she suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage. She is now of an age where her hopes of motherhood are dashed.
Once you see her devotion to the chickens through the prism of thwarted parenthood, her account of nurturing, feeding and protecting takes on a painful poignancy.
When her husband Percy lines up a job at a university where the chickens aren’t allowed, the narrator must carve out another future for them – and for herself.
Though quietly moving, our narrator tells her story with a dry wit, and fans of Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler will devour it.
By CHARLOTTE HEATHCOTE
How To Kidnap The Rich, by Rahul Raina
Little, Brown, £14.99
Ramesh Kumar, narrator of this debut novel set in Delhi, describes himself as an “Educational Consultant”. That means that Ramesh, a youthful-looking clever clogs in his 20s, is paid by rich parents to impersonate their dim children in exams and secure them good marks.
When Ramesh takes an exam on behalf of spoilt teenager Rudi, he scores the highest mark in India. Rudi becomes a celebrity and Ramesh becomes his manager, ensuring their deception is not exposed.
Ramesh’s smarts are tested further when he and Rudi are targeted by kidnappers. But they turn the tables on their abductors and, as the kidnapees become kidnappers, the plot becomes a riotous whirl.
This is a splendidly enjoyable farcical crime caper, given a sober edge by Ramesh’s memories of his boyhood growing up in near poverty.
And there is more of a ring of truth to this novel’s cynical – and very funny – portrait of an India rife with corruption and inequality.
By JAKE KERRIDGE
Join the Mirror Book Club
We have a brand-new book of the month – All The Lonely People by Mike Gayle.
In phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun and friendship.
But he is lying. He hardly sees a soul.
So when his daughter announces she’s coming to visit, Hubert faces a race against time to make his real life resemble his fake life.
Read along with us at facebook.com/groups/mirrorbookclub and let us know what you think.
