Great Escapism

Opted for a little light reading recently by buying Goodnight Steve McQueen the first novel from Sleeper It-Girl-Turned-Lit-Girl Louise Wener. Some excerpts I'd read online didn't seem that promising but I quite enjoyed Sleeper as it goes, so I thought I'd give it a try.

The plot in a nutshell sees 29-year-old loafer and would-be rock star Danny McQueen given an ultimatum by his long-suffering girlfriend to either make it big in 6 months or give up his dreams and take a sensible job. Like her band, Wener's book is neither original or heavyweight: it borrows much from the Nick Hornby oeuvre and the characterisation and humour rarely rises above the level of a seventies cheeky-chappy sitcom.

Nevertheless, Wener's own first-hand experience of touring the country's toilets does add enough detail and authenticity to keep the book readable, and if it isn't exactly ambitious she writes well within the limitations of the rom-com genre, and I enjoyed some of the running jokes (such as the lead singer's obsession with Kevin Rowland).

Recommended then as a beach read for your younger cousin who still thinks that Blur's 'Parklife' is the benchmark album by which all others should be judged. Incidentally, Wener's second book is due out tomorrow - a book about high-stakes poker featuring an agorophobic on the road, suggesting that Wener is both stretching her wings and on nodding terms with Scarlett Thomas' 'Going Out'...

Meanwhile, Dirty Pretty Things represents a return to gritty small-scale British film for acclaimed director Stephen Frears, and it shows he hasn't lost his touch for extracting human drama from the unlikeliest of scenarios (cf. My Beautiful Laundrette).

The film's subject matter (the vulnerability of immigrants working illegally in the UK) has been given heightened topicality by recent news stories but it is the emerging love story between a doctor-turned-cabbie and a hotel chambermaid (played by Chiewetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou respectively) that stays with you long after the film's end.

Ejiofor and Tautou excel at the film's climax where much is left unspoken and all has to be conveyed by the minutae of facial expression. These are scenes that can only be captured on the intimacy of film, and British cinema hasn't smouldered so much since Brief Encounter...