Untold Story

by Monica Ali

Doubleday, $39.99

Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

I’ll admit to rolling my eyes a bit when I first heard about this book. After all Monica Ali is a UK writer known for her middlebrow literary fare so what on earth did she think she was doing writing a novel about the late Princess Diana? Was she being ironic? Attempting a patronising pastiche? Or launching a career change into chick lit? Having read the book I’m still not sure but I’ll admit I found it entertaining.

Untold Story imagines what might have happened if Diana had survived the car crash in the Alma Tunnel and, in a desperate bid to escape the insanity of her existence, gone on to fake her own death with the help of a loyal private secretary. Diana is never actually named. Instead we meet her 10 years later, a pretty but unremarkable woman called Lydia Snaresbrook, who is living in the small American town of Kensington, working at an animal shelter and being very cagey about her personal details with even her closest friends.

Purely by chance Lydia’s old nemesis, paparazzi snapper John Grabowski, turns up in town. He’s supposed to be working on a book of his photographs but when he spots Lydia’s distinctive ultramarine eyes suspects he’s stumbled on the scoop of his career.

This fantastical story is told mostly from three angles. There’s Lydia’s tale of the wrench of leaving her beloved sons and her struggle to create her new, rather mundane, life after extensive plastic surgery. There are diary entries from Lawrence Standing the fictional private secretary who facilitates her “little plan” and then there is the paparazzo’s telling of his role in what happens next.

It’s a pacey, soapy, potboiler of a read. While I didn’t find it in particularly bad taste, I suspect some diehard Princess Diana fans might. But I remain confused as to why Ali felt she had anything new and illuminating to add to the legend, as really this is nothing more than a rehash of everything we’ve already heard with a great big “what if” label stuck to it. Ali never convinced me that a woman who adored her sons would have abandoned them for purely selfish reasons…or that a woman who didn’t care for dogs would end up doting on them…or that Diana really could have managed without the oxygen of publicity. However, had Untold Story not been written by an author of her pedigree then I might not have expected it to.

The book can be enjoyed purely for what it is - a page-turner, suspenseful and imaginative, amusing, girly and undemanding.

Footnote:

Nicky Pellegrino, a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction, The Italian Wedding was published in May 2009, Recipe for Life was published in April, 2010, while her latest The Villa Girls, was published three weeks ago and is riding high on the NZ bestseller list.

She is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 29 May, 2011 as were the Book Watch and Booklover columns below

Book Watch

Carole Beu owns and runs The Women’s Bookshop (www.womensbookshop.co.nz) on Auckland’s Ponsonby Rd. These are the top picks from her recent reading:

I’m sure many of us are still suffering from “over-stimulated-brain syndrome” as a result of the sensationally successful Auckland Writers & Readers Festival. What a buzz! While A A Gill made us laugh and Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish moved us to tears, there were many other quiet gems. Australian Gail Jones, with her tiny voice and huge intellect, was utterly entrancing.  Her novel Five Bells  (Vintage, $37.99) gently draws you in to the lives of four individuals who all visit Circular Quay, in sight of the famous Opera House, one radiant Sydney Saturday. Each of the four carries their own complicated personal history from elsewhere, and each will face the burdens of the past.

A tiny woman with a huge voice is vividly brought to life in No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf by Carolyn Burke (Bloomsbury, $39.99). This rich, detailed account of Piaf’s personal and musical life is brilliantly researched and told with compassion and respect. With warm enthusiasm Carolyn Burke shared Piaf’s life with us at the festival, from the child street-singer to the famous woman with lovers too numerous to count. A delightful touch was Piaf herself up on the big screen singing to us all.

An extraordinary novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Described in various American newspapers as “remarkable”, “edgy”, “ground-breaking”, “wildly ambitious”, and a “tour de force”, this is one of the most amazing novels I have ever read. 

It leaps about in time and place, and from character to character - some of whom never appear again and some of whose offspring do. All are fascinating and quirky, and some of them you wouldn’t want to meet in real life! Technically clever, it is bitterly funny and utterly captivating.

Another Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks will be in New Zealand in June to promote her stunning new novel Caleb’s Crossing (Harper Collins, $39.99). This is a fascinating exploration of early contact between Puritan settlers and the Native American inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard. It brilliantly imagines the life of the first Native American to attend Harvard University, and his childhood friendship with the irresistible Bethia to whom education is denied because of her gender. Brooks is the author of Year of Wonders, March (about the missing Mr March from Little Women), and People of the Book. She will speak in Auckland at 8pm on Thursday 9 June. For tickets and enquiries phone 3764399.

Booklover

Jeanette Aplin leads an isolated life with her husband on D’Urville Island in the Marlborough Sounds and has recently written about raising kunekune there in The Price of Bacon (CapeCatley)

The book I love most is........................ I've had many favourites but perhaps the most enduring, apart from Winnie-the-Pooh, is The Rich Mrs Robinson by Winifred Beechey. It offers a gentle, but exquisitely clear and word-perfect story of her childhood in Britain during and after World War 1. As in most families, her mother, the Mrs Robinson, is the central figure. A strong but gentle woman she starts up a little clothing shop to provide for her growing family....  

The book I'm reading right now is.........................Hole In The Sky a book of short stories with varied settings by Nelson's Adrienne Frater. Lubricated with gentle humour, Frater's deceptively simple, slice-of-life stories slide into your consciousness, giving you the happy feeling that you are a privileged observer and leaving you with surprising and thought-provoking insights.

The book I'd like to read next is.................................Michael King's Tread Softly – For You Tread On My Life. Having read the preface I expect it to have all kinds of gems for a writer.

The book that changed me is.............................Winnie-the-Pooh and A.A.Milne's wonderful books of childrens' poems, Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young. I have one of my older sisters, Pauleen, to thank for her joyful and expressive reading of these books to me at bedtime throughout my early childhood. They inspired in me an appreciation of language, drama, humour, and humanity.  

The book I wish I'd never read is.............................Even though we have an almost nil library service on D'Urville Island, and I therefore read almost anything that comes my way including the Weetbix packet, and many old and out of date books, and some of those many times over - I can't remember any book that hasn't given me something worthwhile.

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