Other People's Countries by Patrick McGuinness

A memoir from a Belgian backwater doesn't sound promising. And the contents page, listing titles like 'Boxes' and 'My Suits,' does little to counteract the apprehension. But for Patrick McGuinness memories are electrical storms of the mind. His collection of stories and poems transforms Bouillon from a sleepy town close to the French border into a Belgian Ballykissangel. His cast includes eccentric relatives, unsavoury oddballs and Kevin Keegan. The football legend provides an unlikely connection between the author's Belgium and the north-east of England. While manager of Newcastle United, Keegan signed a player from Bouillon. The move spawned a cult of Kev in the town, and these days teenage Kevins rub shoulders with the more customary Philippes and Marcels. McGuinness's fondness for his maternal hometown shows up in his lyrical observations of the everyday. Croissants are regarded as new-fangled; the local gendarme's policing is so light-touch 'it could have been carried out by a modest breeze.' And he doesn't shrink from its difficult past – Bouillon's most famous son became Belgium's Nazi leader. But McGuinness knows Bouillon can take the rough with the smooth. As he says himself, 'Less is not always more; sometimes it's everything.' [James Carson]