A choice of recent fiction

Paul Tebbs

A CLOUDED PEACE by John Cole

Weidenfeld, £12.99, pp. 265, ISBN 0297607219

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS by Dai Sijie

Chatto, £12.99, pp. 172, ISBN 0701169826

THE EARTHQUAKE BIRD by Susanna Jones

Picador, £12.99, pp. 224, ISBN 0330485016

THE SONG OF TRUTH by Helga Ruebsamen

Harvill, £14.99, pp. 356, ISBN 1860468330

The professional migration from successful public career to part-time novelist provides an entertaining, if slightly inexplicable, sub-genre in literary art. There are few surer routes to ridicule and few quicker ways to boost the remainder pile. Politicians and celebrity gardeners are particularly attracted to this mode of public indiscretion, because the important day job is inevitably plundered for the fictional context, and in the absence of any distracting literary merit conspiratorial musings over the author's motive

become the only intrigue.

John Cole, the celebrated former political editor of the BBC, takes Lord Hurd's literary lead by setting his novel, A Clouded Peace, in the thriller-friendly context of Northern Ireland. Unsurprisingly, the novel's 'hero', Alan Houston, is a Belfastborn journalist just like Cole. Cole makes his alter ego quit reportage to become an adviser to the British government in Belfast. Despite frequent checks on his courage, Houston improbably attempts to broker peace with the IRA.

To the author's credit, there are few attempts to wrestle with the dark complexities of sectarian hatred. Instead, the 'troubles' become the backdrop to Houston's ailing marriage and provide the final catalyst to its disintegration. Moving to 'backwater' Belfast has stalled his wife's career and the kidnapping of their youngest son proves a sacrifice too far.

Written in a jarring third person, A Clouded Peace does nothing to advance or retard the celebrity novelist's cause. Belfast can write itself as a dramatic setting and the story of love's decline through a partner's neglect is a familiar one. Cole takes a gentle swipe at his own profession, but this good work is eclipsed by the embarrassment of the book's ending.

Set at the height of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1971, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale about the power of story-telling and its capacity to liberate. The 17-year-old narrator and his best friend, Luo, are enemies of the state because their fathers are doctors. Sent to a remote mountain village to be 're-educated' by peasants, they fear their banishment is permanent. Possessing only a violin to remind them of their past, they convince the village headman not to destroy their 'bourgeois toy' by performing a pleasing sonata quickly named 'Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao'.

Cultural rehabilitation consists of carrying buckets of dripping excrement up and down cram/ mountain passes. Relief comes when the village headman, seduced by the boys' stories about films, sends them to the local cinema. On their return, they must perform the narratives they have witnessed. Their masterful renditions beguile the whole village and the roles of educator and educated subtly shift.

Their own education takes an unexpected and dangerous turn, when the boys steal a stash of forbidden Western literature from a fellow cultural outcast. Intellectually and emotionally awakened, they attempt to educate a beautiful seamstress through the writings of Balzac. But she has just as much to teach them.

Dai Sijie was himself separated from his family and 're-educated' in the 1970s. But this novel transcends personal tragedy and aspires to a universal significance. From a pernicious period in Chinese history Sijie has written a jewel of world literature.

Hailed as 'a novel of mystery', it is a little discouraging to find the prime murder suspect already arrested and being questioned on the first page of The Earthquake Bird. Immediately one fears a drably fashionably crime novel where suspense has been intentionally subdued in order to muster literary brownie points. But Susanna Jones is too good to waste her talent faddishly. Literariness and mystery conspire in this debut to produce an engaging narrative.

Earthquake Bird is the story of Lucy Fly, an insecure translator working in Japan. She is suspected of murdering her friend Lily Bridges, whose dismembered body is believed to have been found in Tokyo Bay. Since Lucy was the last to see Bridges alive, and Bridges was having an affair with Lucy's enigmatic lover, Teiji, the circumstantial evidence is convincing.

Disoriented and suspiciously reluctant to co-operate with her interrogators, Lucy drifts off into memories of her childhood in Yorkshire and gradually recalls the events that led to Bridges' murder. Lucy's past reveals a casual talent for fatal occurrences; 'so many people have slipped through my butter-fingers . . . that I no longer trust myself', she muses.

This is a tale of treacherous modern loving, played out by three wounded souls, not least, Teiji, who prefers to live behind a camera lens obsessively documenting water, smoke and his girlfriends.

In The Song and the Truth, Lulu plays on her own by day, trying not to upset her irritable mother. At night, she roams in the jungle in a fantasy world of gods and devils. Lulu is ten years old and lives on the island of Java with her conscientious Dutch father, narcissistic mother and the affectionate Auntie Margot.

Although told partly through an adult's hindsight, the novel's events are evoked through the charged imagination and perception of Lulu as a child. With the arrival of fun-loving Uncle Felix, more games and adventures are promised, but instead it is the beginning of a harsher reality. It is 1939, and the world is descending into the second great war. Lulu's parents decide they must return to their families in Europe. Eventually separated from everyone, Lulu and her father attempt to survive the war in a hide-out in Holland. As Jews, someone called 'Hitia' doesn't particularly like them.

The Song and the Truth is the first novel by Helga Ruebsamen to be translated into English, and we must be thankful for its publication. Lulu is not presented as a symbolic innocent in contrast to the harsh world. With unerring courage and composure Lulu faces the world and tries to understand it in her own way. As the war progresses, her ability to fantasise falters, but her perception of the complex, barbarous and sometimes virtuous adult world never diminishes. Ruebsamen's writing, its changing textures, vivid array of characters and controlled structure cannot be faulted.