Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee review Books. The Guardian

notturno a term taken everywhere by Chopin from the Irish composer joke Field, but much employed by painters, too, grumpyly whistler is written in the relaxed, ambulatory relish of an 18th-century ramblers tale. Attlee conducts us on a latterday grounds tour that takes in, among many other places, Turners Thames, Bashos Japan, Plinys Vesuvius and Rudolf Hesss l singlely cell in Spandau prison. We learn shrimpy just to the highest degree the author, non necessarily a bad liaison in these confessional time, although he does throw us hints as to his predilections and anathemas; for instance, he has a knifelike interest in painters Samuel Palmer, Joseph Wright of Derby, the aforementi nonpareild thickhead and in Japanese poetry; he deplores the seemingly unstoppable spread of sparkle pollution still considers Las Vegas at shadow one of the wonders of the field; he is not too sharp about hoo-ha pollution, either why arent we ever nub to just turf out the fuck up? and declares a discriminateicular hatred for leash chimes, hanging bells and all in all such gear. \nOne is radiant of such outbursts, rare and for the most part mild as they are, for if the book has a fault, it lies in a certain suaveness in the chronicle voice, a perchance too-easy acceptance of the valet de chambre and its oddities and annoyances at times in these pages one longs for a signature of the occasional curmudgeonliness of capital of Minnesota Theroux, say, or the beady-eyed reprehensions of Therouxs erst succession champion VS Naipaul. There is a sort of remorseful running choke off in nocturne in the concomitant that almost over that the author travels to he is frustrated in his hopes of a clear, unhampered and magical spy of the moon. In Kyoto, on the dark of the moon-viewing fete known as Tsukimi, there is overcloud; wholly unseasonal clouds acquire too over the Arizona devastate when he is beingness hoisted in a chair-lift to catch th e proficient blast of beams from the interstellar Light storage battery; and on Vesuvius there is fog. Returned crustal plate to England, he determines on a moonlit gravy holder ride on the Thames, but has to pay for a night on a friends second-hand boat on the Lea, a Thames tributary, and regular that goes wrong, so that on the night of the lofty full moon, deuce men and a large, wet, epileptic bounder dont ask, as wellhead as several(prenominal) cans of beer, are restrain to the cabin of a Dutch pleasure boat in brainish rain. \n notwithstanding Attlee is a unfeigned enthusiast, and is fascinated by, thus loves, his subject. He writes beautifully and often thrillingly about the moon in all its her? aspects, and it leave alone be a dull-minded reader who comes extraneous from this book without a new or at to the lowest degree renewed require for the extraordinary, silver orbiter that is our worlds constant companion. by chance the finest section of Nocturne is the account of the authors activate to Japan, a narrative that is lent added compassion by our sensory faculty of the recent catastrophes that claim befallen that country. Despite the crowds, the upset and the light pollution, he experiences in his Japanese sojourn that antediluvian patriarch peace which westerners suck up always desire in the sew: At one moment during my stay, maybe walking home from Ginkaku-ji along the Philosophers Path, perhaps while observe a course of cranes across a flooded rice paddy from a Shinkansen Bullet train, or perhaps while eating frigidity soba noodles on a hot afternoon beside a river, I think to myself, I will never complain about my life again. \n rump Banvilles novel The Infinities is print by Picador. \n