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November 21, 2007

Nul Points

To its aficionados, the annual Eurovision Song Contest is a marvellous melange that blends pop and politics, fashion faux pas and flag-waving. To everyone else, it's a showcase for shite.

Polarising it may be, but Eurovision has no shortage of performers beating a path to its tinsel-decked door. And although only ABBA and Celine Dion have achieved post-Eurovision mega-stardom, nearly every entrant sees the contest as a springboard to the stratosphere.

For most, barely have their feet left that springboard than they find themselves plummeting, belly-first towards the sea of oblivion. As Europe delivers its verdict, dreams of greatness are quietly snuffed out. But for an unlucky few, each set of results painfully and publicly signals that they’ll be ending the contest as they began: with no points. Rejected and dejected, they can only limp home to rebuild the wreckage of their career and hope that the worst night of their lives will soon be forgotten.

Fat chance. Not with Tim Moore shining his gazillion watt spotlight on their misfortunes. In Nul Points, Moore sets out to uncover the underachievers who went to Eurovision with the highest of hopes and returned with the lowest of scores.

Since 1975, the Eurovision voting system has made it harder to score zero. But it didn’t take long for Jahn Teigen to make it look easy. Representing Norway in 1978, Teigen assaulted an unsuspecting song and strangled it with his vocal cords before dealing the fatal blow from a shocking, splay-legged leap. Europe’s response was sadly predictable.

But, as Moore finds when he visits Teigen in Oslo, the reaction in his homeland was rather different. Norway put out the red carpet for its zero hero, and he went on to enjoy if not public adulation then certainly the affection of a loyal fan base. After a rough patch in the eighties, Teigen is still performing and still submitting entries for Eurovision.

But while Jahn Teigen merrily wears his zero as a halo, others see their nil as a noose. After Finn Kalvik failed to score for Norway in 1981, his countrymen, perhaps thinking the joke had been stretched to its outer limits, sent his career into meltdown. But worse was to come.

Targeted by Norwegian satirists, Kalvik was subjected to ridicule every week on national television. His response -- part Heather Mills, part Howard Hughes -- only exasperated the situation, driving him to the brink of suicide. Moore’s encounter with Kalvik on a sun-kissed beach in Thailand suggests the Norwegian is still running to escape his past.

At this point what Moore might have intended as a jolly jaunt through la-la-la land becomes something more of an exploration of the human psyche. Realising that he’s confronting human beings with their own failings, he abandons the idea of inviting them to reprise their losing songs. There’s only so much knife-turning a wound can take.

Initially, his subjects adopt an air of carefree insousiance. In Helsinki he meets an upbeat Kojo, who scored zero for Finland at the 1982 contest. These days Kojo manages a successful sports development company. But when the subject turns to that fateful night in Harrogate, storm clouds gather across Kojo’s face. “You know a sports match that finishes with no goals? You know what they call such a match here? A 'Kojo-Kojo'. This is what people say, even today, twenty-some years after."

No doubt, Gunvor Guggisberg harbours similar bitterness. In a classic tale of poppy-cropping, Moore charts Guggisberg's path from golden girl to national pariah. Even as it celebrated her selection as Switzerland’s 1998 Eurovision entrant, an unwholesome Swiss tabloid was preparing to dish the dirt on the singer’s past as a sex worker. A dismal result at Eurovision released a reservoir of revulsion, and subsequent attempts to rescue her sinking career have come to nothing.

Unsurprisingly, Guggisberg turns down Moore’s invitation to revisit her painful past. But even the no-shows can’t escape his Google-powered searchlight, and some thorough detective work reveals much about the post-zero lives of performers from Austria and Spain. There’s also the troubling suggestion that a Turkish singer’s failure to come to terms with failure may have led to his sudden death.

And so it continues: from Lisbon to Lithuania, Moore finds that scoring zero in Eurovision is rarely taken lightly. Even in the UK, which reserves special derision for Eurovision, Jemini’s point-less performance in 2003 provoked agonised hand-wringing. Meeting the likeable Liverpudlians, Moore learns that false economy, coupled with an anti-British backlash against the bombing of Iraq, sowed the seeds of a barren crop.

It’s not all gloom. Some artists, such as Iceland’s Daníel Ágúst and Tor Endresen from Norway (yes, again), have managed to airbrush Eurovision out of their biographies or to transcend defeat.

But for the most part, Nul Points is a catalogue of shattered dreams, failed relationships, boozing, bankruptcy and brothels. Amidst such a grim landscape, it’s a relief to find Moore’s customary sense of humour shining through, harnessed to his astounding way with words.

Towards the end, however, he does falter, inversing the running order of the UK and Icelandic entries in 1997 and incorrectly asserting that Switzerland have failed to qualify for every Eurovision final since 1998. But such lapses are not to be too harshly treated. After all, the oxygen-depleting experience of immersion in 50 years of Eurovision is enough to drain the most agile of brains.

Full marks for Nul Points.

Posted by nbennett at 06:20 PM

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Nancy Springer is a noted fantasy author, but here lately she’s been re-writing some of her -- and my -- favorite childhood characters. I’ve always been partial to that Outlaw of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood, but who knew he had a daughter? Nancy did. In fact, she’s written five novels about Rowan Hood and her merry band.

Morgan Le Fay has always been one of those strong woman, and evil, from Arthurian legend. But who knew her childhood stories? Nancy did. She wrote two featuring the young Morgan Le Fay.

When I think of private detectives, I always think of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Mycroft Holmes. But who knew that Sherlock and Mycroft had a younger sister? Nancy did. And she’s just now penning the curious adventures of Enola Holmes, the 14-year-old younger sister of the Great Detective.

I first met Miss Enola Holmes in the novel, Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess. I found her to be utterly brilliant, like her older brothers, and quite given to solving mysteries. Her deductive reasoning is a delight, as is her particular views on society.

Regrettably, young Enola is not a proper young lady. She loves traipsing through forests, wearing men’s clothing, and having hideouts that require journeying through streams and across muddy earth. She’s also quite fearless and knowledgeable about a great many things.

The first-person narrative of the novels revealed a lot of Miss Holmes’s character to me within a few short pages. I found her to be, not so much a carbon copy of Sherlock Holmes, but rather a young lady with all of Sherlock’s best qualities who was also equipped with the vision of youth and feminine perspective.

There are a great many puzzles in Miss Holmes’s life. Not in the least of these is the reason why her mother abandoned Miss Holmes on the morning of her 14th birthday. As much as that bothered and stymied young Miss Holmes, it also burdened me with curiosity and speculation.

But Miss Holmes’s mother left many messages behind for her young daughter. They shared a passion for puzzles and curiosities. Miss Holmes’s first name, Enola, is actually "alone" spelled backward. Once you understand that, you begin to worry at what prompted her mother to name her such. The name, though, offers hints as to how to solve the other mysteries her mother left her. The interpretations are so obvious when the solution is given.

After she discovers she’s been abandoned, Miss Holmes puts the police to searching for her mother, but at the same time she knows that if her brothers find her alone and uncared for they’ll ship her off to a young ladies’ finishing school. That’s not something Miss Holmes wants.

Before long, she figures out a way to escape the watchful eye of Mycroft as he stays there to set his mother’s affairs right. Then she’s on her way to London, the Greatest City in the world, on her trusty bicycle. Along the way I was treated to a great many descriptions of the time and land that were truly amazing.

It also doesn’t take Enola long to come across a mystery that haunts her all the way to London. While at the estates of the Marquess of Tewksbury, Enola takes the case long enough to figure out what happened to the young boy. She doesn’t dream that this endeavor will follow her all the way to her destination and place her squarely in the path of the worst danger she’s ever known amid London’s seedier alleys.

Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess is a wonderful book for the 9-12 year old minds. It’s small and compact, not overly long, and physically fits into small hands quite well. Not only that, but the cover art is outstanding. I also liked the fact that the cover is printed right on the hardcover under the dust jacket.

The second book is called Enola Holmes and the Case of the Left-Handed Lady, and is already out. Enola Holmes and the Case of the Bizarre Bouquets is coming in January 2008. The first two books would make excellent gifts for the upcoming Christmas season.

Nul Points

Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess

Due Considerations - Essays and Criticism

Bride of the Water God (Vol 1)

Cybermancy