Jim Crace’s 12th novel isn’t a detective story, as such, but it certainly brings out the Hercule Poirot in you. The identity of the book’s omniscient narrator is only revealed towards the end – and even then we don’t get a name.
Crace also enjoys a cat and mouse game with his readership regarding where and when The Melody is set. When I typed in the clues I thought might help, Google was largely unforthcoming, so my best guess would be a seaside town in Italy somewhere between 1912 and 1950.
Tantalisingly, knowingly, the author has left a trail of breadcrumbs which appears to lead nowhere. This is strangely pleasing though; a deftly-executed ruse.
The book's plot centres around the trials of Alfred Busi, "Mister Al", a well-known local singer and songwriter who is mourning the recent loss of his much-loved wife, Alicia.
Described as "a calm, distinguished man" in his sixties, Busi is childless and lives alone in a crumbling but picturesque villa by the sea. He has carried a gryphaea or Devil's Toenail fossil in his pocket as a talisman since he found it age 12, but now grief has crushed him.
“His wife had carried off his songs,” Busi comes to realise. “His appetite for performing had been cremated with her bones.”
From his wrought-iron balcony at the end of the town’s promenade, Busi can see “the bosk”, a “tangled, aromatic, salt-resistant maze of sea-thorn, carob and pine scrub.” Some in the town believe this forested headland still harbours a pocket of feral human beings, and these “primeval anthropoids” are also rumoured to descend into the town at night in search of food.
Busi’s already deep sense of unease increases late one night when, investigating the tinkling of Persian bells that signals the opening of his larder door, he is attacked and savaged by what he believes to be a feral child.
We readers are never quite sure if these wild inhabitants of the bosk are the stuff of myth, allegory or fact, but they enable Crace to develop one of The Melody's key themes, namely fear of the outsider, of otherness. But Busi, unlike many in his town, does not condemn the bosk-dwellers. Indeed, he fully understands their predicament and needs.
The book only has a few other key characters but each of them are beautifully drawn. Terina, for example, is the impeccably dressed sister of Busi’s late wife, Alicia. Terina and Busi are close, but their familial relationship is complicated by the fact that she and Busi once had a fling prior to he and Alicia becoming an item. Terina’s son Joseph, meanwhile – at one point described by Busi as “a moneyed loud mouth and a fool” – is also a pivotal character.
Although he claims to have his uncle’s best interests at heart, he actually has designs upon Busi’s villa. Joseph and his fellow investors need to oust Busi, albeit temporarily, so that they can redevelop his property and the adjoining villa as The Grove, a proposed plush housing complex to be sold for exorbitant prices.
The way in which the (sometimes) heavy hand of gentrification can erase memories, traditions and even lives, is another of The Melody's key themes. And when the seamy journalist known only as Sobriquet interviews Joseph about the town's marginalised poor, Joseph's expressed prejudices are shocking even before Sobriquet re-tools them for maximum sensationalism ("He was not a writer who kept his distance from the trite or the theatrical," writes Crace, himself a former journalist, distilling Sobriquet's essence into a single line).
Throughout the book, Crace’s measured, subtly captivating prose is often exquisite. Waves on the sea are as “stiff and eggy as meringues”. Fearful vagrants foraging for food “lift the lids and turn the bins as carefully as maids unpacking porcelain”, and Sobriquet’s cat “raises the eyebrow of his back at every passer-by”.
Various heartbreaking misunderstandings between Busi and Terina are also masterfully sketched as the pair blunder along, each of them all the other has, really, but obliged to maintain a certain amount of distance and propriety for the sake of the late Alicia’s memory.
The book’s singular atmosphere is maintained right until the end, when Busi, Terina, Busi’s young next door neighbour Lex and the story’s mysterious narrator head off on a picnic for Busi’s 70th birthday. It is finally time to scatter Alicia’s ashes, which have hitherto sat in an urn atop Busi’s piano, and naturally the day ahead is full of memories and portents for the widower.
Although you couldn't describe The Melody as a page-turner per se, it certainly has its own curious momentum. A fine book about ageing and grief and the way in which the folkloric can impact upon real life, it's another choice example of this twice-Booker-nominated English writer's unique gift.
Learn more about Qasr Al Hosn
In 2013, The National's History Project went beyond the walls to see what life was like living in Abu Dhabi's fabled fort:
TOURNAMENT INFO
Women’s World Twenty20 Qualifier
Jul 3- 14, in the Netherlands
The top two teams will qualify to play at the World T20 in the West Indies in November
UAE squad
Humaira Tasneem (captain), Chamani Seneviratne, Subha Srinivasan, Neha Sharma, Kavisha Kumari, Judit Cleetus, Chaya Mughal, Roopa Nagraj, Heena Hotchandani, Namita D’Souza, Ishani Senevirathne, Esha Oza, Nisha Ali, Udeni Kuruppuarachchi
Drivers’ championship standings after Singapore:
1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes - 263
2. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari - 235
3. Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes - 212
4. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull - 162
5. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari - 138
6. Sergio Perez, Force India - 68
Williams at Wimbledon
Venus Williams - 5 titles (2000, 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2008)
Serena Williams - 7 titles (2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2016)
Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Colomba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe
Gordon Corera, Harper Collins
India squads
T20: Rohit Sharma (c), Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Sanju Samson, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant, Washington Sundar, Krunal Pandya, Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, Deepak Chahar, Khaleel Ahmed, Shivam Dube, Shardul Thakur
Test: Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant
What is an ETF?
An exchange traded fund is a type of investment fund that can be traded quickly and easily, just like stocks and shares. They come with no upfront costs aside from your brokerage's dealing charges and annual fees, which are far lower than on traditional mutual investment funds. Charges are as low as 0.03 per cent on one of the very cheapest (and most popular), Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with the maximum around 0.75 per cent.
There is no fund manager deciding which stocks and other assets to invest in, instead they passively track their chosen index, country, region or commodity, regardless of whether it goes up or down.
The first ETF was launched as recently as 1993, but the sector boasted $5.78 billion in assets under management at the end of September as inflows hit record highs, according to the latest figures from ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five largest providers BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisers, Deutsche Bank X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
While the best-known track major indices such as MSCI World, the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, you can also invest in specific countries or regions, large, medium or small companies, government bonds, gold, crude oil, cocoa, water, carbon, cattle, corn futures, currency shifts or even a stock market crash.
Strait of Hormuz
Fujairah is a crucial hub for fuel storage and is just outside the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route linking Middle East oil producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond.
The strait is 33 km wide at its narrowest point, but the shipping lane is just three km wide in either direction. Almost a fifth of oil consumed across the world passes through the strait.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait, a move that would risk inviting geopolitical and economic turmoil.
Last month, Iran issued a new warning that it would block the strait, if it was prevented from using the waterway following a US decision to end exemptions from sanctions for major Iranian oil importers.
About Proto21
Date started: May 2018
Founder: Pir Arkam
Based: Dubai
Sector: Additive manufacturing (aka, 3D printing)
Staff: 18
Funding: Invested, supported and partnered by Joseph Group
The biog
Mission to Seafarers is one of the largest port-based welfare operators in the world.
It provided services to around 200 ports across 50 countries.
They also provide port chaplains to help them deliver professional welfare services.
Match info
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'Young girls thinking of big ideas'
Words come easy for aspiring writer Afra Al Muhairb. The business side of books, on the other hand, is entirely foreign to the 16-year-old Emirati. So, she followed her father’s advice and enroled in the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s summer entrepreneurship course at Abu Dhabi University hoping to pick up a few new skills.
“Most of us have this dream of opening a business,” said Afra, referring to her peers are “young girls thinking of big ideas.”
In the three-week class, pupils are challenged to come up with a business and develop an operational and marketing plan to support their idea. But, the learning goes far beyond sales and branding, said teacher Sonia Elhaj.
“It’s not only about starting up a business, it’s all the meta skills that goes with it -- building self confidence, communication,” said Ms Elhaj. “It’s a way to coach them and to harness ideas and to allow them to be creative. They are really hungry to do this and be heard. They are so happy to be actually doing something, to be engaged in creating something new, not only sitting and listening and getting new information and new knowledge. Now they are applying that knowledge.”
Afra’s team decided to focus their business idea on a restaurant modelled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each level would have a different international cuisine and all the meat would be halal. The pupils thought of this after discussing a common problem they face when travelling abroad.
“Sometimes we find the struggle of finding halal food, so we just eat fish and cheese, so it’s hard for us to spend 20 days with fish and cheese,” said Afra. “So we made this tower so every person who comes – from Africa, from America – they will find the right food to eat.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
Euro 2020
Group A: Italy, Switzerland, Wales, Turkey
Group B: Belgium, Russia, Denmark, Finland
Group C: Netherlands, Ukraine, Austria,
Georgia/Kosovo/Belarus/North Macedonia
Group D: England, Croatia, Czech Republic,
Scotland/Israel/Norway/Serbia
Group E: Spain, Poland, Sweden,
N.Ireland/Bosnia/Slovakia/Ireland
Group F: Germany, France, Portugal,
Iceland/Romania/Bulgaria/Hungary
Pakistan World Cup squad
Sarfraz Ahmed (c), Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq, Abid Ali, Babar Azam, Haris Sohail, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Hafeez(subject to fitness), Imad Wasim, Shadab Khan, Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf, Junaid Khan, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Mohammad Hasnain
Two additions for England ODIs: Mohammad Amir and Asif Ali
Four reasons global stock markets are falling right now
There are many factors worrying investors right now and triggering a rush out of stock markets. Here are four of the biggest:
1. Rising US interest rates
The US Federal Reserve has increased interest rates three times this year in a bid to prevent its buoyant economy from overheating. They now stand at between 2 and 2.25 per cent and markets are pencilling in three more rises next year.
Kim Catechis, manager of the Legg Mason Martin Currie Global Emerging Markets Fund, says US inflation is rising and the Fed will continue to raise rates in 2019. “With inflationary pressures growing, an increasing number of corporates are guiding profitability expectations downwards for 2018 and 2019, citing the negative impact of rising costs.”
At the same time as rates are rising, central bankers in the US and Europe have been ending quantitative easing, bringing the era of cheap money to an end.
2. Stronger dollar
High US rates have driven up the value of the dollar and bond yields, and this is putting pressure on emerging market countries that took advantage of low interest rates to run up trillions in dollar-denominated debt. They have also suffered capital outflows as international investors have switched to the US, driving markets lower. Omar Negyal, portfolio manager of the JP Morgan Global Emerging Markets Income Trust, says this looks like a buying opportunity. “Despite short-term volatility we remain positive about long-term prospects and profitability for emerging markets.”
3. Global trade war
Ritu Vohora, investment director at fund manager M&G, says markets fear that US President Donald Trump’s spat with China will escalate into a full-blown global trade war, with both sides suffering. “The US economy is robust enough to absorb higher input costs now, but this may not be the case as tariffs escalate. However, with a host of factors hitting investor sentiment, this is becoming a stock picker’s market.”
4. Eurozone uncertainty
Europe faces two challenges right now in the shape of Brexit and the new populist government in eurozone member Italy.
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG, which has offices in Dubai, says the stand-off between between Rome and Brussels threatens to become much more serious. "As with Brexit, neither side appears willing to step back from the edge, threatening more trouble down the line.”
The European economy may also be slowing, Mr Beauchamp warns. “A four-year low in eurozone manufacturing confidence highlights the fact that producers see a bumpy road ahead, with US-EU trade talks remaining a major question-mark for exporters.”
