Hibernation hoard

>> A survivor's preview to winter reading

by JULIET WATERS

Forget summer, winter is when you really need a good book list. Who knows when there'll be a weekend, or even a month, between now and June when you won't want to leave the house? So, here's a survivor's preview to books you'll be hearing about this season.

It has nothing to do with couples or supermodels, but Island, by British novelist Jane Rogers, has been getting a lot of press. This is partly due to Rogers' growing reputation and partly because of a unique if heavy plot. A 28-year-old woman discovers where her abandoning birth mother lives, and subsequently plots her murder. Also about island life and an abandoned child, The Fish Can Sing is a recent translation by Magnus Magnusson of the Icelandic classic by Halldor Laxness. It's less bleak and cynical than Rogers', and it has an interesting first sentence: "A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father." Readers looking for a more temperate climate might try Dirty Havana Trilogy, by Pedro Juan Gutierrez, who seems in many ways to be Cuba's answer to Charles Bukowski, in this picaresque tale of survival and sex on the streets of Havana.

The Parrot's Theorem, a huge best-seller in France, has recently been translated. A first novel by science historian Denis Guedj, it's about a deaf boy from a dysfunctional family who finds a lost parrot capable of discussing math with anyone who'll listen. It's all fun and learning until the household gets caught up in a race to keep vital theorems from falling into the wrong hands. Then there's The First Holy Chameleon, by ex-hairdresser Maggie Gibson, a comedy of errors set in Dublin involving biker nuns, suicide, TV soaps and, of course, adopted children.

Thrills to ward off chills

Thrillers are the best way to get through the worst of winter. The most intriguing is a glamorous, witty European spy novel by the underrated Alan Furst. Kingdom of Shadows is set in the pre-war, demi-monde of Paris and follows the affairs of Hungarian playboy/secret agent Nicky Morath through Eastern Europe. Turnstone, by Graham Hurley, sounds good if only because it gets high praise in a blurb by Furst. Set amidst the poverty, violence and drug-dealing of Portsmouth, it's a mystery for police procedural junkies. The Beach Road, by Sarah Diamond, is more of a psycho-chick suspense novel along the lines of Single White Female. And Strange Ways, by Luc Lang, about a French prison cook who gets more than his fair share of sex and murder one eventful week, looks tasty.

Readers who want to be left alone with their non-fiction will appreciate The Girls: Sappho goes to Hollywood, by Diana McLellan. This exploration of bisexual movie goddesses of the Golden Age centres around the affair between Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. McLellan theorizes that this romance might have been the major reason for Garbo's obsession with privacy.

For something completely different there's That Satire That Was about the British comedy boom of the '60s. Dennis Potter biographer Humphrey Carter explores the seeds of Beyond the Fringe, the review that launched satirists like Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett. When you're finished with that you might want to try This Is Modern Art. Based on the Channel 4 T.V. series of the same name, it's an eccentric, entertaining tour through the classics of 20th-century art, described by one reviewer as "a kamikaze free fall through art." It's unpretentious and highly readable.

Finally, while I tend to stay away from the conspiracy theory tone of much of the millennial quest for the historical Jesus, I'm very impressed by the opening chapters of Saint Saul. Donald Harmon Akenson creates a vivid picture of Israel around the first century after Christ. It's a crazy time of prophets, savants and god-drunk fanatics. But it's a lot warmer than mid-January Montreal two millennia later.