Last week, Freight Books read...

Tarantula, by Thierry Jonquet. It’s always odd reading a book after seeing an adaptation of it. Thankfully, I remembered little enough of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In to fully enjoy the twists and shocking reveals in Thierry Jonquet’s novella Tarantula (Mygale). The ‘book versus film’ debate is one which has been long argued and never concluded, but in my opinion Tarantula beats its adaptation hands down (apologies if you enjoyed the film). Not only that, but the story is different enough to work even if you do love the movie, with only the main reveal and minor details remaining the same.

To describe this book as a thriller would be an understatement. It’s hard to talk about any specifics without giving away the horrific twist and finale of the story, but Tarantula is essentially the story of three characters and the shocking way in which the human desire for revenge causes their lives to intersect. The core story follows Richard, a renowned plastic surgeon, who is keeping a woman, Eve, locked up in his mansion for unknown reasons while routinely subjecting her to extreme sexual and physical abuse and degradation. We also meet Alex, a criminal who decides to have his face surgically altered after shooting a police officer and Vincent, an art student who has been kidnapped by a mysterious figure he names ‘Mygale’. When Alex decides to abduct Eve in a bid to blackmail Richard into performing his desired surgery, the three stories begin to come together in increasingly appalling and horrifying ways.

The final reveal is so shocking it will stay with you long after you’ve finished the book. Whilst some may be able to guess the true reality of the story before it is explicitly stated, following the way in which each twist becomes clear to both us and certain characters is enough to maintain the suspense even if you think you know what’s coming. The psychological and physical effect of what comes to light is highly effective as Jonquet doesn’t rely on cheap thrills or stereotypical scares. Instead Tarantula shows the true horror of humanity and what people are able to do to each other, and the lengths some people will resort to in order to achieve revenge. It isn’t an easy read, but it’s worth the perseverance and the novella’s short length makes the story all the more effective.

Tarantula is one of the most effective horror stories I’ve read and the translation by Donald Nicholson-Smith doesn’t detract from the simplicity and effectiveness of the original text. It’s brilliant to see a novella survive translation so intact and is testament to Jonquet’s skilled writing that Tarantula remains one of the most affecting books I’ve had the pleasure (or displeasure) to read.

Last week, Freight Books read...

All the Birds, Singing, by Evie Wyld (Jonathan Cape). This has shot to the upper rungs of my best reads of 2013. Jake is a woman with a Past, living in self-imposed isolation on an island off the British coast, being a grumpy shepherd. Something is killing her sheep, however, and it is giving her the willies.

How is this for an opening paragraph;

Another sheep, mangled and bled out, her innards not yet crusting and the vapours rising from her like a steamed pudding. Crows, their beaks shining, strutting and rasping, and when I waved my stick they flew to the trees and watched, flaring out their wings, singing, if you could call it that. I shoved my boot in Dog’s face to stop him from taking a string of her away with him as a souvenir, and he kept close by my side as I wheeled the carcass out of the field and down into the woolshed.

Wow, eh? That is some powerful stuff. And I love that her dog is simply called Dog. There are so many touches to this novel which just thrilled me - delicate little movements that make it alive. The series fo events that follow on from this moment are only half the story, however. We are also taken back to her life in Australia, which without giving too much away was pretty Dark. I have begun to groan at dual stories; they seem to be everywhere at the moment, and there is usually always one strain that is carrying the other, and I always end up rushing through the weaker strain to get to the good bit. Well, here it is all good bit. What is a little stroke of genius (and which makes this dual-story really work) is that whilst the main thread, with Dog and the murdered sheep, develops in the usual manner, the Australia part goes backwards in time. So what you get at the end of the novel is the beginning and the ending simultaneously. It was fantastic. And it also means that you are looking for different things in each thread - the beginning in one and the end in the other.

Buy it and read it. You will love it.

Last week, Freight Books read...

Feral, by George Monbiot. I've been meaning to review Feral since I finished reading it at the beginning of the summer, but never knew quite how I'd tackle it. Instead I bought it for nearly everyone I knew, and this sated my desire to shout about it a bit. However, the late arrival of All the Birds, Singing last week means I haven't finished it yet, so I am left with a perfect Feral-shaped gap to fill.

This book changed the way I viewed the countryside. Utterly. I grew up in a very rural environment, surrounded by crops, grass, cows, chickens, foxes, thick hedges and thicker accents, to name but a few (only two of those things stayed the same when I moved to Glasgow, and boy was it a shock).

Oh and sheep.Lots of sheep.

I see sheep very differently now. In fact, you could probably sum Feral up in one phrase as a crusade against sheep. It would be wrong to do so, as he talks about many other things, but the sheep do stick in the craw somewhat. It is like this. Most of our National Parks are all about the rolling hillsides, the carefully managed land, all open to the wide skies and populated with heather and moorland and sheep. But this was not always the case; indeed only a few hundred years ago these hillsides were covered with mixed woodland and thick scrub, home to all sorts of plants and animals that are now lacking. Monbiot lays the desertification of these areas wholly at the door of the sheep. Like the rhododendron, it is an alien species that our native plants have no protections from, and as such cannot recover from such insistent grazing.

But there are plenty of other aspects to this book that are as entertaining and possibly more interesting than Sheepwrecked, as that chapter is called. The most lyrical sections are auto-biographical moments from Monbiot's life, fishing for mackrel in a kayak, for instance, and these pulled strongly on my homesickness strings. We are also given an insight into the frankly awful figures surrounding land ownership in Britain, and Scotland in particular. When taken on a tour of re-introduction programs, particularly that of the European wolf (introduced into every country in Europe, barring Britain and the ROI), I was particularly struck by one near-throwaway comment. That we spend so much money and put so much pressure on developing countries to protect and live alongside dangerous animals (tigers in India, lions and hippopotami in Kenya) and yet kick up a fuss if there is any suggestion of any remotely dangerous animal being returned to our shores.

Monbiot advocates the reintroduction of predators and other mega fauna into our wild spaces, which should then be allowed to go wild - to be set free to mutate freely rather than 'conserved' at the state our great-grandparents left them in.

There are problems with his argument, but then the subject he chooses is massive, and above al it is a book designed to create a dialogue that does not begin and end with the National Trust.