The Mirror Book Club’s reviewers take a look at five top reads out in stores this week.
They include an unorthodox biography of The Beatles which discards anything the author finds uninteresting – to good effect.
Meanwhile Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain has written a warm and inspiring memoir.
One Two Three Four: The Beatles In Time, by Craig Brown
4th Estate, £20
No other band – no, not even One Direction – has had the same cultural impact as The Beatles achieved.
Craig Brown’s last book, Ma’am Darling, was a “biography without the boring bits” of Princess Margaret, with bits other biographers may have thought essential chucked out if not interesting.
Now Brown has done the same with the Fab Four. There are 150 chapters, many very short, that explore a particular aspect of the group, from the band’s beginnings as The Quarrymen in 1957 to their 1970 split. As you’d expect, there are detailed chapters on the sacking of drummer Pete Best and the group’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
But there are many imaginative touches too. Some chapters look at reproductions of fan letters, from the sweet to the borderline psychotic.
Others are devoted to a public figure – Margaret Thatcher, Rolf Harris, Charles Manson – and how the Beatles affected their lives.
Anybody Brown doesn’t find interesting is out so there is barely a mention of Linda McCartney, while there’s page after page sending up poor old Yoko.
This brilliant writer brings the Fab Four’s personalities to glorious life in a book crammed with fascinating facts and intriguing ideas.
BY JAKE KERRIDGE
The Bookshop On The Shore, by Jenny Colgan
Sphere, £8.99
Life is tough for Zoe – she’s cash-strapped, tired of London and anxious about the fact that her three-year-old son Hari refuses to speak. So when she’s offered a job working as an au pair in a Scottish manor, she seizes the opportunity, picturing herself as a Highland Maria von Trapp. The reality – draughts, dirty dishes and three feral children – is very different. But slowly Zoe, Hari and the people around them help each other to heal.
BY ANDREINA CORDANI
On Chapel Sands, by Laura Cumming
Vintage, £9.99
One day in 1929, Laura Cumming’s mother Betty – then aged three – was snatched away from Chapel Sands beach in Lincolnshire. Betty’s mother raised the alarm and the police were called but, for five frantic days, there was no news. Then she was discovered in a house 12 miles inland. She was so young that she had no recollection of it, but to her daughter Laura, the kidnapping demanded investigation. And she discovered that it held the key to her mother’s identity, and unlocked family secrets.
BY EITHNE FARRY
Magpie Lane, by Lucy Atkins
Quercus, £16.99
We know from Inspector Morse that the families of Oxford academics are far more dysfunctional than those on the most run-down council estate. The point is further proven in Lucy Atkins’s fourth novel which begins with Felicity, the eight-year-old daughter of the Master of an Oxford college, going missing. Events are recounted by her nanny Dee who has been keeping a sardonic eye on her employers. But in this deliciously enjoyable mystery, we discover that Dee herself is far from perfect.
BY JAKE KERRIDGE
Finding My Voice, by Nadiya Hussain
Headline, £9.99
Since winning The Great British Bake Off in 2015, Nadiya Hussain has become a household name as a cookbook writer, author and television presenter. Her memoir is a warm and inspiring tale of a young woman who never felt that opportunities were open to her, and the story of how she defied the way society tried to pigeonhole her. Hussain also delves into her issues with anxiety, addressing the subject with the openness that makes her so relatable. The result is an honest, engaging read.
BY HANNAH BECKERMAN
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