Bookmarks: Reviews in brief

• Was there some unintended irony in Philip Roth's titling of The Humbling (Jonathan Cape, $38.99, hbk)?

At first the storyline for this disappointing novel offered potential.

Simon Axler, formerly a leading stage actor, but now fading and unsure of himself, has a breakdown and a loss of artistic confidence.

Was Roth going to use this to explore the nature of creative genius? Yeah, right! After leaving rehab, Axler takes up with a much younger lesbian, Pegeen, and sets about converting her to heterosexuality.

Their increasingly unrealistic actions, which include threesomes and use of a green dildo, fill up the second half of the book, graphic in true Roth style, but without much humour, spark or, to be frank, interest.

At times I felt I was overhearing an old man's sex fantasies, so I wasn't surprised that The Humbling was short-listed on the 2009 Bad Sex Writing Awards.

Review by Gavin McLean

• Michael Meehan's Below the Styx (Allen & Unwin, $35, pbk) is a somewhat tiresome exercise in upper-class twaddle from a respected Australian author and academic, which has family violence at its heart.

Once again it is male against female, this time on the head with a heavy object, an epergne.

Even with the narrator's explanation, I'm not clear what this is, though this one has native Australian connections, a perfect metaphor for the book in general.

With murderer Martin incarcerated in jail awaiting trial and with the assistance of Petra, a researcher, he finds solace from his immediate hell in the writings of Marcus Clarke, a young English immigrant to Australia in the 1800s, who, like Martin, was a man of many parts.

But Clarke is no fiction.

Indeed, Below the Styx includes a bibliography referencing sources the author used to quote Clarke's writings.

The carrot that Meehan dangles to get readers past page 3 is the possibility that Martin didn't swing the epergne, but it swung him.

P. G. Wodehouse did this sort of thing, but a lot better.

Now there's twit for you!

Review by Ian Williams

• The Shakespeare Curse by J. L. Carrell (Sphere, $36.99, pbk) is a tempestuous mystery novel which probably most profitably will be savoured by readers steeped in Shakespearean lore, rather than lay people for whom the inventiveness of the great bard is also something of a mystery.

Carrell, a female author whose novel, The Shakespeare Secret, preceded this work, has done much research and capitalises on the theatrical superstitions that are part and parcel of Shakespeare's Scottish play, Macbeth.

I will not attempt to sketch the somewhat convoluted plot but will note that much evil, witchcraft, terror and a reasonable ration of death are in attendance as the action flows.

It is a quite complicated read, owing much to curses and demonic spirits with which the author invests the novel to satisfy those who appreciate a reasonable amount of spine-chilling narrative.

After her story has ended, Carrell notes: "For the most part, the historical characters are fantasies on fact. The modern characters are all fictional."

Though there is an abiding eerie quality about The Shakespeare Curse, I found it not to be an horrific tome by any means.

Its main attraction is the aura and add-ons generated by the central subject, Shakespeare's superstition-suffused offering, Macbeth.

The bard's admirers, in particular, should enjoy this fictional offering, which at times veers towards the pedestrian.

Review by Clarke Isaacs

• Family violence and its aftermath is obviously not confined to New Zealand, and readers interested in an American survivor's perspective will enjoy (I use the term loosely) R. S. Meyers', The Murderer's Daughters (Sphere, pbk, $38.99), a first novel that appears to be heading for bestseller lists in several countries.

Lulu and Merry are 9- and 4-year-old daughters of working-class parents who are unsuited to each other as, well, chalk and cheese.

Chalk is Mama, a lazy, spendthrift, bitchy woman, given to endlessly changing her toenail polish and spending the family's hard-earned cash on fripperies.

Cheese is Papa, a hard-working, handsome, but quick-tempered man, who is tossed out of the family home by his wife, and then has to endure her raiding his bank account and taking in man friends.

But she doesn't deserve to be stabbed to death with a kitchen knife, which is then turned on Merry, who survives literally scarred for life.

How Meyer manages to inject this scenario with humour is a tribute to her Jewish perspective, as Lulu and Merry take turn-about to tell the story of their lives.

Papa gets a life sentence and the girls are sentenced to living with grudging relatives, then a home for girls, and finally a foster home with the Cohens, their springboard to a relatively normal life and successful careers.

I've quoted this Jewish family name to remind readers this is an American story, and is naturally a fiction.

In real life family violence seldom has happy endings.

Even so, The Murderer's Daughters is engrossing reading.

Review by Ian Williams