William Manns title may suggest an X Factor-style handbook but it should really be called Liz Taylor: The Fabulous Years. Avoiding what he calls the painful gaucheries of Taylors later life, such as the trips to the Betty Ford Clinic and her eighth marriage to construction worker Larry Fortensky, Manns biography intensely researches choice moments from the stars most twinkling era (1941-81). Much of it is devoted to juicy on-set gossip from classic movies such as Cleopatra (where she stole husband No.5, Richard Burton, who, on their remarriage, also became No.6) and Giant (making Hersheys chocolate martinis with Rock Hudson). The Taylor that If Mark Twains Roughing It marked the wide-eyed birth of the great American travelogue, and the works of Cormac McCarthy the genres apocalyptic denouement, then music journalist The great American playwright Arthur Miller, in a Paris Review interview, admitted that he saved the things that take a kind of excruciating effort for his plays, and the short stories got what was left. But his introduction to 1967s I Dont Need You Any More the first in this collection of his three volumes of short stories reveals he enjoyed what he saw as the modesty of the form. The title story of this collection is just such an With debut novel Quiver having garnered good reviews, its clear that Michigan-based author Peter Leonard has now subscribed to the if it aint broke, dont fix it maxim of writing. As with Quiver, this is set in Detroit, contains lots of bad guys and loose morals (dad Elmore has clearly taught him well) and centres on a ballsy female. That girl is Karen, who after stumbling across two burglars who have broken into the home she shares with her soon-to-be-ex-fianc quickly seizes the opportunity to proposition the pair with a get-rich scheme to help her claw back the $300,000 she lost to a scamming ex- boyfriend. When her carefully laid plans go awry, the pace steps up a notch, and the novel spirals into a game of chase as Karen runs from her disgruntled cohorts. As crime novels go, this is breezy and easy-going rather than spiky and potent but Leonard writes with confidence and, crucially, his anti-heroine is an easy one to root for. Sharon Lougher dublins Daves Score: 0 out of 5 Dave Heads Listen to Daves World: Weekdays at 09:10am on Dublins 98 davehasnofriends@dublins98.ie DAVESWORLDD DAVESWORLD Let one rip! D DAVESWORLDD DOWN THE DUMPER This weeks fickle finger of fame pokes Preston January 16, 1982: Samuel Dylan Murray Preston is born. 2002: Forms pop band The Ordinary Boys. Some people go to see them. 2004: Their debut album Over The Counter Culture gets to No.19 in the UK charts. Things tick over... 2005: Release album Brassbound; gets to No.11. Jan 2006: Preston reaches the pinnacle of his fame by going into the Celebrity Big Brother house and canoodles with part-time Paris Hilton impersonator Chantelle Houghton. The public are enthralled even though Preston has a French girlfriend in the outside world. The Ordinary Boys single Boys Will Be Boys get to No.3 in the UK singles charts, their biggest hit ever. April 2006: Chantelle and Preston get engaged. August 2006: Chantelle and Preston have a lavish wedding and are paid 300,000 (325,000) by a magazine for the pictures. Kerching! Jan 2007: Preston wears a glittery cardigan and storms off Never Mind The Buzzcocks after smug funster Simon Amstell reads extracts from Chantelles autobiography and mocks her humble origins. The rotter. June 2007: Preston and Chantelle split up and are divorced in November. Chantelle later says Preston made her eat vegetables and wouldnt let her watch the telly in the evenings. Its mental cruelty! Preston puts a bit of weight on and later reveals he was drinking a bottle of wine a night. Sounds reasonable to us... 2008: The Ordinary Boys split up. August 2009: Preston launches solo career. He loses weight and gets a hair cut. Sadly, its not enough to propel him to solo stardom. His single, Dressed To Kill, peaks at No.168 in the UK charts. Sob. Scott Tenorman Trust Me by Peter Leonard Faber, 15 Book Of The Week How To Be A Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor In Hollywood by William J Mann Faber, 24 More Miles Than Money by Garth Cartwright Serpents Tail, 15 Presence: Collected Stories by Arthur Miller Bloomsbury, 30 Wednesday, October 7, 2009 metrolife 15 Garth Cartwrights More Miles Than Money pointedly positions itself somewhere in between. Though notionally a series of interviews conducted with various American musicians Cartwright considers noteworthy from Giant Sands Howe Gelb to Tejano queen Lydia Mendoza the book is as much concerned with their status as cultural representatives as their music specifically, while his warts and all account of traversing the States on the cheap is equally key. Cartwrights essential thesis is that Americas musical culture peaked sometime around the middle of the last century and is now in a terminal decline, a decline mirrored in the dangerous and denatured societies he encounters. His empathetic descriptions of under-appreciated musicians from a kaleidoscopic array of cultures and disciplines are engrossing, inspiring and frequently heartbreaking. Andrzej Lukowski experiment. Miller luxuriates in freezing small fragments of time and holding them up for inspection, and allowing characters to roam freely around their interior thoughts without searching out big themes and momentous conflict. There is a wistfulness to many of these tales, too: whereas lost convictions provoke sharp calls to action in his greatest plays, here they are accepted quietly. Presence (published posthumously in 2007) contains the prize of The Performance the tale of a tap-dancing Jew confronting Hitler in pre-war Berlin thats constructed with such pace and wild love for storytelling that youre swept along to the end. Siobhn Murphy emerges is gutsy, spoilt and foul-mouthed, with as voracious an appetite for diamonds and sex as the peanut butter and bacon sandwiches she kept in her handbag. I dont pretend to be an ordinary housewife, she once said and Mann doesnt want her to be. Instead he gallops to rescue Taylor from oft-repeated slurs as a home-wrecker, instead depicting her as a cipher permanently swathed in glamour, as befits a studio-manufactured child starlet who matter- of-factly declared that she couldnt remember ever not being famous, and whose birthdays, dates and even marriages were all controlled by MGM. This is supposedly an investigation of the mechanics of Taylors fame and the alchemy that assured her enduring celebrity; in other words, its a bonkbuster aimed at film buffs. Its hardly earth-shattering but it is an enjoyable and informative biography, ideal for those who know Taylor only as Michael Jacksons plump, fright- wigged friend. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh becoming a mother figure to young Julia (Denise Gough), a fellow refugee. But their fragile happy families routine is soon shattered as McPherson starts to plumb the darkest depths of the human psyche. Simon Bakers eerie sound design heightens McPhersons taut dialogue and direction, while Rae Smith and Paul Keogans lighting and set are appropriately claustrophobic, all action played out in the one grim room. The short, episodic scenes take a while to tune into but thanks to pitch perfect performances from the cast, the results are genuinely terrifying, the what if scenario lingering long after the curtain falls. Lucy White Until Nov 21, Gate Theatre, 1 Cavendish Row D1, 8pm (Sat mat 3pm), 27 to 35. Tel: (01) 677 8899. www.dublintheatrefestival.com index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html