We Are All Made of Glue by Marina Lewycka

Fig Tree
Glue? Really?
Our heroine, Georgie Sinclair, is a freelancer on Adhesives in the Modern World. But the glue thing is more about how we, like, bond.
Who’s Lewycka?
Pronounced Levitzka; she wrote A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian (a surprise hit) and Two Caravans (less so). Her million-selling books are hilarious, but about deeply serious subjects. In this case, that includes Israel and Palestine.
This is a stick-’em-up?
Of human bondage. Georgie, daughter of a gritty North of England Commie (“If they ‘adn’t shut all t’pits, they wouldn’t be so mad for oil now, would they?”) has split up with her nerdy husband, and needs human contact.
She finds a new man?
She finds an old woman. Mrs Shapiro lives in a spooky mansion with seven cats. “When you see a good man you just grebbit quick,” she advises Georgie.
Rock steady
But Mrs S falls on the ice and a social worker plots with an estate agent to sell the mansion and grab a profit.
Sticky situation?
She’s sending desperate messages from the ‘care home’ - but Georgie has fallen into the Velcro-handcuff clutches of devilish Mark Diabello, the estate agent.
A demon lover?
Things start to go suspiciously wrong in the absent Mrs Shapiro’s house, and Georgia calls in Mr Ali the handyman. “Jews live here?” he asks, looking at the mezuzah on the door.
You’re giving it all away!
Not. There’s much more - brilliant, funny, and you’ll learn about Israel and Palestine, the Holocaust, the Danish Jews who were saved -
And the pusscats?
Lewycka writes great animals. The rapist Wonder Boy, delicate Violetta, The Stinker and the other cats are as real as the Palestinians, the surprise Israeli, the Jesus-freak son, angry husband and the rest.
But is it good?
Better than good. Get the flu just so you can stay home, tucked under a duvet with a warm fire and a mug of spicy chicken soup and gobble up this book.

One Day by David Nicholls

Hodder & Stoughton

The latest fashion across the water?
One Day is a Brit hit, a wry love story told through 19 years, set on St Swithin’s Day every year.
Et pourquoi, ca?
Symbolism, don’t you know - traditionally the English weather on that saint’s day, July 15, is a predictor of the weather for the next 40 days; if it rains it’ll be a summer of rain, if it’s sunny it’ll be glorious.
Hope it keeps fine for them
When we meet them Emma has just got a brilliant degree. Dex isn’t too bright, but is gorgeous, a more useful talent.
She soars, he sinks?
Oh no. Soon he’s seducing his way around South Asia, TEFLing (Teaching Eroticism as a Foreign Language), bronzed, slim and having a great time. Emma gets a dismal job in a greasy caff. They write letters, each dazzling the other. They sorta plan to get together at 40 if they haven’t found anyone else.
Eejits - why don’t they just get it on?
Wouldn’t make a satirical novel then, innit? Dex sinks inexorably towards his destined career, as a TV presenter on a laddish show called largin’ it. Emma rises briefly, becoming a teacher, but then, alas, writes a series of teen novels.
Why do I sense an unhappy ending?
Somethin’s gotta give. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of awfully BBC humour. Emma gets off with Ian, a comedian working days in the caff. Dex weds a terrible Tory and they have a daughter, Jasmine. There’s an Irish sandwich tycoon in there too.
Lovely people?
She’s a misery-guts; he seduces every woman he meets. I have no doubt that we’ll soon be picking up the hit DVD of the TV version.
And this David Nicholls chap is?
Kind of a political lads’ chicklit writer - his first, Starter for Ten, was about a working-class Marxist kid trying to get off with a rich gel and on to a TV quiz show.
Should I buy it?
More of a lads’ book, I’d say. But if you love those chirpy English comedies, go for it.

Agatha Christie: Hallowe’en Party drawn by Chandre

Harper €13.49
MURDER in the English style, complete with house parties, cosy vegetable gardens, proper tea in teapots - it has to be Agatha Christie.
But hold - is that a graphic novel? It is!
The story comes from the Agatha Christie stable, and trots along with the familiar gait: discontent with the growing permissiveness of society - it was published in 1969; approval of unimaginative, conformist, tweedy, caste-bound lives.
The victim is a liar and a fantasist, a young teenager who claims to have witnessed a murder long ago.
No sooner are the words out of her mouth than her head is in the apple-bobbing bucket, and that’s all she wrote.
Hercule Poirot, moustaches a-twitch, is soon on the scene and discovering a village awash with dastardliness.
The drawings owe a lot to the styling of the Agatha Christie’s Poirot TV series. They don’t make up for the lack of Christie’s own hackneyed but compelling descriptions.
This is one of a series of Christie’s most famous murder mysteries re-imagined as graphic novels.
It’s an idea that has its parallel in Belgium, where a series of Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu offered, well, a recherché charm.
It can only be weeks before someone brings out Finnegans Wake, The Graphic Novel, Penned by Shem.
Publisher's site

Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz

Snakehead
Anthony Horowitz
(Walker Books €??)

BACK in the days, I contracted rheumatic fever, and spent some weeks in the boarding school infirmary, far from human contact.

I was infectious, so all the books I read had to be burned after they touched my nasty hands. In a feverish, hallucinatory state, I discovered Victorian penny dreadfuls.

These usually had evil Oriental or Central European villains with moustaches and devilish cunning.

There tended to be a slightly iffy sexiness about them, with daring young heroes being stripped off and tortured, wrestling bad guys, and having awfully strong relationships with male mentors.

And the villains were great - ahh, Fu Manchu, with his drooping moustache, and his beautiful daughter who left a lingering scent of mimosa in her wake.

Alas, all this is gone - but wait, no! Young Alex Rider to the rescue.

Alex no sooner splashes down in a space capsule in Snakehead when the Australian secret service recruits the 14-year-old, and within a breath he's in a wrestling ring in Thailand, wearing only silk shorts and showing off his karate skills, greasy with sweat.

The villain, Major Winston Yu, with his unhealthy love of England and his mum who put him through Harrow by working as an assassin, has the dastardly plan of killing off a bunch of wealthy do-gooders including a pop star and a billionaire property developer who plan to 'Make Poverty History'.

All 14-year-olds, of whatever age, will enjoy this.