Cape Town set to be open book

Short, sharp guidance and observations from a journalist with attitude. All books available from Exclusives

IF YOU READ ONE THING THIS WEEK

The Reversal, by Michael Connelly (Orion) R110

CONNELLY certainly churns them out. His 23rd, The Drop, will be in stores by mid-November, in time for the holidays.

This one, a legal thriller about attempts to keep a murderous child molester behind bars, is just out in paperback, and sees his popular LAPD detective, Harry Bosch, teaming up with his half-brother, defence attorney Mickey Haller, who Connelly first introduced in his 2005 bestseller, The Lincoln Lawyer. Another Connelly character, FBI profiler Rachel Walling, also puts in an appearance. Familiar faces, then, but welcome nonetheless.

THE ISSUE

Cape Town's Open Book Festival, from September 21 to 25, is not exactly holding back in the modest ambition department, is it?

A quick run through the programme reveals an embarrassment of riches when it comes to highlights.

Here's a taste: the launch of Jeanette Winterson's autobiography, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?; the launch of Gods Without Men, the new novel by Hari Kunzru (one of Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists"); and performances of Bussmann's Holiday, the award-winning comedy show by Jane Bussmann, whose The Worst Date Ever was the funniest book I read last year.

In addition, JMG Le Clézio, Paul Harding, Earl Lovelace, Patrick Gale, Patrick Ness, Neel Mukherjee, David McCandless, Veronique Tadjo and Alain Mabanckou have confirmed their attendance. Those are the international highlights. Local writers will be there by the truckload. See http://openbookfestival.co.za for the full programme and booking details.

CRASH COURSE

Comedy fans and movie buffs of a certain age will fondly recall the moment in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein when an over-the-top Gene Wilder screams at Igor, "Damn your eyes", prompting the immortal response from the hunchback: "Too late!"

Those who haven't seen the movie, or don't know that Igor was played by Marty Feldman, won't get the joke. But the forthcoming Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comic Genius, by Robert Ross (Titan Books), sets out to prove there was more to the man than those bulging eyes, the product of Graves disease and a hyperactive thyroid.

Before Hollywood success, Feldman worked as a carnival boxer, a jazz musician and a comic writer for British television. With stardom, though, came the familiar self-destruction and eventual early death. Writing in the London Sunday Times, the critic Stephen Armstrong suggested that while younger comedians barely mentioned Feldman these days, they "remember his face, of course - the face he tried so hard to escape".

Until Ross's book hits the shelves, revisiting Young Frankenstein is recommended.

THE BOTTOM LINE

"A monkey is a lot more like a mouse than a grasshopper is like a flea." - Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language From the Insect World, by Marlene Zuk (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

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