The Descent of Man – Grayson Perry

Cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry sets out in print many of the ideas he presented in his “All Man” TV series.

He challenges the accepted norms of masculinity, questioning both their validity and usefulness of what he sees as out-dated values, and placing the blame for much of mankind’s woes – violence, crime and warfare – on them.

He also sees the damage ‘manning up’ can do individual men left unable to deal with emotional issues.

It is all very persuasive but there is no blueprint to fix the problem. Indeed he seems to accept there is a difficulty defining what the exact problem is, just that there is something wrong with the society’s current model. He really just issues a plea to allow men to be people rather than men, and find their own way unhindered by past generations’ baggage. Some hope!

It is a short thought-provoking work with, perhaps inevitably, the artist’s own pithy illustrations the most impactful feature.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe – Romain Puertolas

The preliminary stage of the journey made by the fakir (who is not so much a mystic as a con man) is straightforward enough, arriving at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport by a scheduled flight from India, thence by taxi to one of that city’s IKEA stores.

His mission there, to buy a new bed of nails, has a quirky if unlikely sound to it; his plan to pay for it with a photocopied (one side only) one hundred Euro note smacks of the ridiculous.  He uses the same note to temporarily pay his taxi fare, temporarily as he retrieves it from the driver’s wallet by means of an attached invisible piece of elastic.

Those readers amused by this premise and willing to suspend critical facilities may enjoy the remainder of the book, which continues in similar vein with improbable coincidences covering up a thinly worked plot otherwise full of holes.

The initial scene describing someone’s first experience of an IKEA store raises a smile but once trapped in his wardrobe and shipped of on his journey (more silly than extraordinary) the fakir’s facility for comic observation fades. Instead introspection grows as he bumps into both refugees and celebrities on his whistle stop tour of Western Europe.

On none of the potential levels - humour, satire or self-discovery – does the book really deliver. It is not laugh out loud, the satire doesn’t bite, and the morality tale fails to convince.

If, as claimed, it was a number one best seller in France then Guy De Maupassant, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo must be turning in their literary graves. Or maybe it just lost something, or quite a lot, in translation.

Killed at the Whim of a Hat – Colin Cotterill

Jimm Juree’s nascent career as ace crime reporter on the Chiang Mai Mail is ended by her mother’s sudden decision to sell the family home and move from the urban north to the rural south of Thailand. There each of the family find their own way to cope as new, mainly unenthusiastic, owners of the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant.

Her mother sits in the shop all day; brother Arny mainly works out on the beach; Ganddad Jah sits and watches out for passing cars; and Jimm guts fish and wonders if sister Sissi (who used to be brother Somkiet) got it right in refusing to leave Chiang Mai.

Then, in a part of the country where nothing ever happens, things begin to happen; criminal things much to Jimm’s delight. She’s soon back on the beat, investigating two skeletons found in a buried camper van, an unlikely murder in a Buddhist temple, the death of a dog and, closer to home, the truth about her absent father.

The first person narration works well and Cotterill’s writing as a thirty-something feisty Thai woman of independent outlook passes muster. The self-depreciating humour and a nice line in metaphor make the reading light and enjoyable. The barbs at officialdom, politics and corruption have a tone of resignation rather than indignation.

There is one good cop locally, and Granddad Jah stirs himself to help, so Jimm is not working alone. And as she makes progress in at least some of her enquiries she finds the country bumpkins don’t all fit in with her preconceptions. Maybe life down south would suit after all if she gave it a chance.

At nearly 400 pages the jaunty style of prose begins to wear thin towards the end and the technical denouement has much less charm than the excellent opening, but in the main an easy and passable read.