Let's get the story out of the way first. Theodore Everett is dying. An old man now riddled with cancer, he looks back at his life at the helm of Everett and Sons Coffee, which for a time, dominated world trade in this most addictive of commodities. Teddy has been married a couple of times but his heart was always Lucy's, the girl who emerged from the Ethiopian forest at the age of fourteen carrying a Zippo lighter in one hand and a coffee bean in the other. It was the early 30s and Teddy, not yet a teen, was living on one of the many family plantations in what was then Abyssinia pre-the attempted Italian invasion, in a house which started to fall apart from the day it was built, ignored by his completely peculiar parents, in the thrall of the perpetually plotting Marxist foreman, a blind seer and his sexually adventurous wife, and his shadowy silent alter ego Kewibe Abi.

Teddy's coffee story unfolds in the ramblings of a dying man, getting more and more elliptical as the drugs take hold. Peter Salmon's characters are magnificent - Simon the Big Nose (Teddy's grandfather), Ibrahim Salez the infinitely sleazy go-between in Alexandria who deals in everything fake and authentic from Pharaoic treasures to hashish, Susu the silent bean grinding servant who is perhaps as prized for his brewing skill as his silent acquiescence to the unwanted advances of his patron, Teddy's unnamed first wife and her preposterous Cuban revolutionary lover Carlo (himself an offsider of Castro), his grandmother Adelaide of the Suitcase, his father's body guard (the villain of the piece), Siobhan his palliative care nurse with whom he falls in love.

But it is his prose that is the real star of this completely engaging novel. It swoops and loops.  Salmon's use of language and construction are both clever and well thought through. There is plenty to laugh out loud about in this book, but there is also plenty to be bedazzled by. Although I read it over two rainy days, I stopped often, re-reading particular passages aloud for the sheer pleasure of the tumble of words and ideas. As an aside, Salmon is also a tour de force of invective.

This is a novel of ideas. Big ideas. History and histrionics, sex and suicide, communism, capitalism, fascism, pan-Africanism, colonialism and no doubt a few more "isms" I have neglected to mention here. Oh, and Scientology. It is also a novel about the personal, about a young boy whose life was irrevocably scarred one day when four bullets found their mark. More than anything else it is most definitely a story about coffee.

Coffee novels have always held a fascination for me, and this one is head and shoulders above David Liss' admirable The Coffee Trader. Nonetheless, it is tempting to describe  Salmon's first novel as The Coffee Trader meets  DBC Pierre's Lights out in Wonderland but if I said that I would probably be giving it the kiss of death. Perhaps it is because I grew up on stories from Africa, including a six degree of separation episode with the aforementioned Lion of the Tribe of Judah himself, it was inevitable that I would take to this book. Put together with sizzling prose,  a wild ride through the peaks and troughs of twentieth century history, a very original concept and very nifty execution, I can't recommend The Coffee Story highly enough.

If you like your fiction adrenaline fuelled, check out this for a selection.
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The long-awaited fifth volume                               
in the greatest epic work of the modern age is almost here.

New York Times #1 bestselling author George R. R. Martin has won widespread praise for his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. In this new addition to the series, A Dance with Dragons, Martin continues the most mesmerising saga since The Lord of the Rings . The future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance...

Daenerys Stormborn, the last of the Targaryens, has brought the young dragons in her care to their terrifying maturity. Now that her general whereabouts is known, many are seeking Daenerys and her dragons, among them the dwarf, Tyrion Lannister, who has escaped the city of King's Landing with a price on his head.

To the north lies the great Wall of ice and stone - a structure only as strong as those guarding it. Eddard Stark's bastard son Jon Snow has been elected the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, but he has enemies both in the Watch and beyond the Wall, where the wildling armies are massing for an assault.

On all sides, bitter conflicts are reigniting, played out by a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves. The tides of destiny will inevitably lead to the greatest dance of all.

 

This is not the way my day was supposed to start, waking a couple of hours before dawn and then reading compulsively until I reached sobbing stage at the final few pages of Patrick Ness' stunning new book. As it was, I had been up late having started, and then devoured, this visceral, original tale of love and loss, or rather, the fear or loss.

A Monster Calls reminds us of what the very finest of young adult fiction can be. Its story is both imaginative and grounded, ranging from fantasy to reality. It proceeds with both inevitability and unpredictability. It is both dark and redemptive.

The experience of reading this book is augmented by its presentation. A finely produced hardback with beautiful end papers and dust jacket, the book is liberally peppered with stunning illustrations from pen and ink illustrations from Jim Kay. The illustrations are as integral to the story as the words. There is much to linger over, but I must confess that the tug of the words compelled me to keep turning those pages. Think Monster Blood Tattoo, The Invention of Hugo Cabret and the now sadly unavailable adaptation of Frankenstein by Margrete Lamond and Drähos Zak. To get an idea of what I mean, go here to see some internal page spreads.

That Patrick Ness should write another gripping tale should be no surprise. This much lauded author for young adults (Chaos Walking series) has a huge and growing following, principally because he never thinks of having to go down a register in order to write for younger people - which means of course that adults find his books equally as satisfying. The genesis of A Monster Calls is a story in itself. Ness was approached by Walker Books to flesh out a story from Siobhan Dowd's notes, after the author's sad and premature death from cancer.

"The thing about good ideas is that they grow other ideas", says Ness in explanation.

"Almost before I could help it, Siobhan's ideas were suggesting new ones to me, and I began to feel that itch that every writer longs for: the itch to start getting words down, the itch to tell a story.

"I felt - and feel - as if I've been handed a baton, like a particularly fine writer has given me her story and said Go. Run with it. Make trouble....Here's what Siobhan and I came up with. So go. Run with it. Make trouble."

Run with it we do. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

 here for preschoolers

 here for 6 - 12 year olds

 here for young adults