If, like me, one of your pet hates is seeing people listening to music through earbuds while reading a book (how can they possibly be giving both art forms the requisite attention?), you’ll sympathise with the two main protagonists of Magnus Mills’s latest comedy.
The book’s unnamed narrator and his mysterious friend James are the founders of the Forensic Records Society, a club which meets in the back room of their local pub, the Half Moon, to listen to vinyl records in the most stringent of circumstances. Comment or critique is strictly forbidden during each meeting. Instead, each of the club’s all-male members simply takes turns playing the singles they’ve brought with them to a rapt handful of fellow devotees.
Broadly speaking, Mills is clearly satirising the geeky quirks and foibles of your typical vinyl-obsessed bloke. To that extent, one is reminded of Nick Hornby's 1995, record-shop set novel High Fidelity. But with its deadpan wit, and its typically Millsian knack for finding the absurd in the everyday, The Forensic Records Society is a more subtle, eccentric and skilfully-rendered read. Like many of Mills's novels, it's a farce of sorts, each little plot twist further endangering the teetering house of cards that is the book's titular club.
The first sign of trouble for the forensics comes when a record-listening group that allows – indeed actively encourages – discussion announces it will hold a rival night at the Half Moon on Tuesdays. The Confessional Records Society, as it known, is run by Phillip, a charismatic and ultimately somewhat messianic figure whose motivation, we understand, has something to do with James not allowing him entry to a previous forensics meeting when he was a few minutes late.
Much to James’s chagrin, the Confessional Records Society – “Bring a record of your choice and confess!” runs its simple credo – instantly proves much more popular than the Forensic Records Society, and is also a huge hit with the women, who return from the Half Moon’s back room wearing T-shirts proclaiming “I confessed.”
The way that Mills’s latest book demarcates the different ways in which men and women tend to consume music is insightful and amusing, the point being that, generally speaking, women’s relationship with popular music seems to be more joyful and far less anal-retentive.
James, who is at one point found attempting to play his entire record collection in alphabetical order, perhaps captures it best: “She thinks we’re all emotionally retarded”, he says, relaying a comment that Alice, a singer-songwriter and barmaid at the Half Moon, has made about him and his fellow forensics.
As further factions emerge and James and the book's narrator struggle to preserve what they see as the impeccable standards of the Forensic Records Society (and its ever-shrinking membership), Mills continues to delight the reader. It's a neat device that all of the records played in the book are only ever referred to by their song titles. Thus you find yourself stupidly pleased, just as a member of the forensics might be, when you know who recorded one of the more obscure records mentioned, or when Mike, one of their number, says "What's all this about leaving a cake out in the rain?" and you know he is referring to the gnomic lyric of American songwriter Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park.
As is typical for Mills, each character in the Forensic Records Society is painted with the broadest of brushstrokes. We don't know what they look like, far less what their back stories might be. Mills's unique and addictive literary style engages through other means. Teasing and delayed gratification are firm favourites, hence the thing you expect/want to happen only happens much later or doesn't happen at all.
The author also elicits a strange pleasure through repetition. His characters often repeat the same action or return to chunks of dialogue they’ve already said. The effect is like an exploded catchphrase or an in-joke, but you welcome it.
If you’ve ever obsessed about records, you’ll find plenty to laugh at here, but Mills’s masterful comedy also alights on little pockets of profundity. Musing on the differences between the attendees of the Confessional Records Society and the beleaguered bods of the Forensic Records Society, the book’s unnamed narrator reflects thus: “For reasons of their own, they regarded records in a completely different light to us. They viewed them as little more than props and accessories, and saw no intrinsic value in the records themselves. Accordingly there existed a gulf between the two persuasions which could never be bridged.”
James McNair is a frequent contributor to The Review.
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
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Q&A with Dash Berlin
Welcome back. What was it like to return to RAK and to play for fans out here again?
It’s an amazing feeling to be back in the passionate UAE again. Seeing the fans having a great time that is what it’s all about.
You're currently touring the globe as part of your Legends of the Feels Tour. How important is it to you to include the Middle East in the schedule?
The tour is doing really well and is extensive and intensive at the same time travelling all over the globe. My Middle Eastern fans are very dear to me, it’s good to be back.
You mix tracks that people know and love, but you also have a visually impressive set too (graphics etc). Is that the secret recipe to Dash Berlin's live gigs?
People enjoying the combination of the music and visuals are the key factor in the success of the Legends Of The Feel tour 2018.
Have you had some time to explore Ras al Khaimah too? If so, what have you been up to?
Coming fresh out of Las Vegas where I continue my 7th annual year DJ residency at Marquee, I decided it was a perfect moment to catch some sun rays and enjoy the warm hospitality of Bab Al Bahr.
Company Profile
Founders: Tamara Hachem and Yazid Erman
Based: Dubai
Launched: September 2019
Sector: health technology
Stage: seed
Investors: Oman Technology Fund, angel investor and grants from Sharjah's Sheraa and Ma'an Abu Dhabi
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
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More on Quran memorisation:
Brief scoreline:
Crystal Palace 2
Milivojevic 76' (pen), Van Aanholt 88'
Huddersfield Town 0
The bio
Studied up to grade 12 in Vatanappally, a village in India’s southern Thrissur district
Was a middle distance state athletics champion in school
Enjoys driving to Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah with family
His dream is to continue working as a social worker and help people
Has seven diaries in which he has jotted down notes about his work and money he earned
Keeps the diaries in his car to remember his journey in the Emirates
HIV on the rise in the region
A 2019 United Nations special analysis on Aids reveals 37 per cent of new HIV infections in the Mena region are from people injecting drugs.
New HIV infections have also risen by 29 per cent in western Europe and Asia, and by 7 per cent in Latin America, but declined elsewhere.
Egypt has shown the highest increase in recorded cases of HIV since 2010, up by 196 per cent.
Access to HIV testing, treatment and care in the region is well below the global average.
Few statistics have been published on the number of cases in the UAE, although a UNAIDS report said 1.5 per cent of the prison population has the virus.
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
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MATCH INFO
Karnataka Tuskers 110-5 (10 ovs)
Tharanga 48, Shafiq 34, Rampaul 2-16
Delhi Bulls 91-8 (10 ovs)
Mathews 31, Rimmington 3-28
Karnataka Tuskers win by 19 runs
