Features

Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng

US: Penguin Random House, 2017

Pp. 336

Like Celeste Ng’s first novel, “Little Fires Everywhere” opens with a traumatic climax — a fire, and then pedals backwards to tell how things turned out that way. In “Everything I Never Told You” (2014), the traumatic event is the drowning of a teenage girl, but it remains unclear if it was suicide, an accident or a crime.

In “Little Fires Everywhere”, a veil of ambiguity is also thrown over the fire in the Richardson’s house, but it is more porous: Everyone assumes that Isabelle, the youngest Richardson daughter, has ignited the blaze which grew from small fires set in the middle of each family member’s bed — one of many bizarre details in the story. But this is gossip; one doesn’t know for sure if it was Isabelle, much less why she did it, until the end.

Though the plots are totally different, there are other commonalities in Ng’s two novels: Both have outsiders as major characters who have closely guarded secrets, and both focus on family relations, examining how members of the same family understand and misunderstand each other, and how they interact accordingly. In “Little Fires Everywhere”, however, the mother-child bond overshadows all other relationships. While in “Everything I Never Told You”, Ng examines how the drowned girl’s father being ethnic Chinese affected their family life, “Little Fires Everywhere” examines class differences as well. 

To illustrate this, Ng focuses not on one family or one point of ethnic difference, but rather contrasts two families of different social status and structure. Accordingly, “Little Fires Everywhere” has many more characters and a more complex plot. Just tying up the threads of the several subplots and structuring the story in retrospect is an achievement in itself.

“Little Fires Everywhere” is set in Shaker Heights, a planned suburban community in Ohio, whose residents pride themselves on living according to rational and progressive values, imagining themselves to be beyond racism and other forms of prejudice. Four mothers or would-be mothers figure prominently in the story. Mrs Richardson, mother of four, is emblematic of Shaker Heights, priding herself on always doing the right thing in an orderly way. “All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing.” (p. 161)

But the unfolding of the plot shows that “the right thing” is not always clear-cut, nor is reality fair to all. Mrs Richardson’s close friend, Mrs McCullough, for example, is suffering from being unable to have a child. 

Implicitly challenging the orderliness of these two rich women’s lives is Mia, an artist and single mother, newly arrived in Shaker Heights. Mia also lives according to her principles, but her principles are more about creativity and freedom than just following the rules. Having moved from place to place all during her daughter Pearl’s childhood, Mia promises Pearl that this time they will stay. For the first time, Pearl makes friends, and her best friends are the Richardson children. Soon many ties connect the two families, making the contrast between their lifestyles more pronounced: Mia rents a small house from the Richardsons and does Mrs Richardson’s housework, spending the rest of the time on her art projects, while Pearl excels in high school. But events conspire to make Mrs Richardson suspicious of Mia: “A sweet face. A young face, but not an innocent face. She didn’t care, Mrs. Richardson realised, what people thought of her. In a way, that made her dangerous.” (p. 138)

Things come to a head when Mrs McCullough and her husband try to adopt a female child abandoned by Bebe, a Chinese immigrant woman who was unable to provide for her at birth. But Bebe’s situation improves, and she wants to reclaim her baby. The resulting legal and moral battle cuts through family ties and friendships, as members of the two families, like the community as a whole, align either with the birth mother or the adoptive mother. 

Ng has a gift for revealing her characters’ inner thoughts and motivations, and for writing about lives lived both in affluence and stability, or off the beaten track. Under her pen, even bizarre human behaviour is rendered credible. She also poses questions that may be easy to answer in the abstract but more complicated in specific cases: Has the US reached a stage of post-racism? Is a child better off with her birth mother even if that mother is poor and marginal, or with parents who can give her a privileged life? Should a woman be deprived of her child for making one mistake? Is there always a right way and a wrong way to do things? One keeps thinking about these dilemmas and visualising the novel’s characters long after finishing the book.

“Little Fires Everywhere” is available at Books@cafe.

PARIS — Consumption of sugary drinks such as soda and fruit juice is linked to a higher risk of developing certain kinds of cancer, researchers recently reported.

The consumption of sugary drinks has exploded worldwide in recent decades and the high-calorie beverages have already been associated with a elevated risk of obesity — itself recognised as a leading cancer risk factor.

A team of researchers in France wanted to assess the associations between heightened consumption of sugar drinks and the risks of overall cancer, as well as several cancer types, including breast, prostate and bowel cancers.

They surveyed more than 100,000 adults, with an average of age of 42, 79 per cent of whom were women.

The participants, who were followed for a maximum of nine years, completed at least two 24-hour online validated dietary questionnaires, calculating their daily consumption of sugar and artificially sweetened beverages as well as 100 per cent fruit juices.

Researchers measured the daily intakes of sugary drinks against those of diet beverages and compared them with cancer cases in participants’ medical records during the follow-up period.

They found that just a 100ml increase per day of sugary drinks was associated with an 18 per cent increased risk of cancer, and with a 22 per cent increase in breast cancer.

Both sugar-sweetened drinks and fruit juices saw a similar higher risk association.

During a follow-up, researchers found 2,193 cases of cancer were diagnosed, the average age at diagnosis being 59 years.

Authors of the study, which appeared in the BMJ medical journal, stressed their work was based on observation and so could not establish the cause of cancer prognoses.

But the sample size was large and they adjusted for a number of other influential factors.

Its authors suggested that, based on their findings, taxing sugary products could have a significant impact on cancer rates.

“This large, well-designed study adds to the existing evidence that consumption of sugary drinks may be associated with increased risk of some cancers,” Graham Wheeler, senior statistician of the Cancer Research UK said of the study. 

Women who like to wake up early every day may be less likely to develop breast cancer than women who prefer to sleep in, a recent study suggests. 

While previous studies have linked inconsistent sleep schedules and getting too much rest to an increased risk of breast cancer, researchers haven’t looked as often at how much women’s wake-up time might impact this risk, researchers note in the BMJ. 

For the current analysis, researchers analysed genetic variants associated with three sleep traits: sleep duration, insomnia, and a so-called morning or evening chronotype, referring to early or late risers. They looked at data on 180,216 women in the UK Biobank study and 228,951 women in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC) study. 

In the UK Biobank study, among every 100 women who were early risers, there was one fewer case of breast cancer than among every 100 women who were late risers. But there wasn’t a clear connection between breast cancer and sleep duration or insomnia. 

In the BCAC group, women who woke up early also had a lower risk of breast cancer. In this study, sleeping more than the recommended seven to eight hours a night was associated an increased risk — 19 per cent for every extra hour. 

“The findings of a protective effect of morning preference on breast cancer risk in our study are consistent with previous research highlighting a role for night shift work in the development of breast cancer,” said Rebecca Richmond, lead study author and a researcher at the University of Bristol in the UK.

“One particular mechanism which might explain the link, known as the `light-at-night’ hypothesis, involves the suppression of melatonin levels in women exposed to artificial night at light, which in turn influences various hormonal pathways which might increase risk of breast cancer,” Richmond said by e-mail. 

But women shouldn’t rush to reset their alarm clocks to lower their breast cancer risk, Richmond said. 

“Our main findings were based on women’s reported morning or evening preference, rather than actually whether they get up earlier or later in the day,” Richmond noted. 

Another drawback is that participants were all of European ancestry, and results might differ for women from other racial and ethnic groups. 

Most women who get breast cancer develop these tumours after age 50, and they may be more prone to these tumours with a family history, certain genetic mutations, dense breast tissue, early puberty or late menopause, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. 

While women can’t control any of those risk factors, there are other risk factors related to lifestyle that can be altered, according to the CDC. These include being physically inactive, overweight, drinking alcohol, having a first pregnancy after age 30, not breastfeeding, and taking some forms of hormonal birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy for menopause symptoms. 

Sleep might also increase the risk, along with smoking, exposure to certain chemicals, and hormone changes caused by night shift work, according to the CDC. 

The current analysis wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove that specific sleep habits might directly cause breast cancer. 

It’s also not clear from the study whether women’s preferred early or late wake-up time (conformed) with their work hours, said Dr Eva Schernhammer, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Being an early riser might make women’s wake up time better match a typical nine to five workday that is common for many jobs. 

 “The majority of women are neither morning or evening types, but somewhere in between on that spectrum, hence, any potential risks are likely to affect a relatively small proportion of women,” Schernhammer said by email. “However, sleep and work timing might be more important than previously thought.”

WASHINGTON — US regulators have approved a $5 billion penalty to be levied on Facebook to settle a probe into the social network’s privacy and data protection lapses, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The newspaper said the Federal Trade Commission approved the settlement in a 3-2 vote, with the two Democratic members of the consumer protection agency dissenting.

According to the report, the deal, which would be the largest penalty ever imposed by the FTC for privacy violations, still needs approval from the Justice Department before it is finalised.

Although details have not yet been released, the deal will likely include restrictions on how Facebook is able to use personal data.

Charlotte Slaiman of the consumer group Public Knowledge thinks it is unlikely the restrictions will be overly harsh.

“We don’t yet know key aspects of the settlement: whether Facebook must make any changes to its business model or practices as a result,” said Charlotte Slaiman, the group’s Competition Policy Counsel.

“By itself, this fine will not be sufficient to change Facebook’s behaviour.”

The outlook was more optimistic at the Centre for Democracy and Technology, whose president Nuala O’Connor said the fine underscored the importance of “data stewardship” in the digital age.

“The FTC has put all companies on notice that they must safeguard personal information,” O’Connor said.

Facebook did not immediately respond to an AFP query on the agreement.

Unlikely to hurt

The FTC announced last year it reopened its investigation into a 2011 privacy settlement with Facebook after revelations that personal data on tens of millions of users was hijacked by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which was working on the Donald Trump campaign in 2016.

Facebook has also faced questions about whether it improperly shared user data with business partners in violation of the earlier settlement.

The leading social network with more than two billion users worldwide has also been facing inquiries on privacy from authorities in US states and regulators around the world.

The settlement would be in line with Facebook’s estimate earlier this year when it said it expected to pay $3 billion to $5 billion for legal settlements on “user data practices”.

The fine is unlikely to hurt Facebook, which logged a profit of $2.4 billion on revenue that climbed 26 per cent to $15.1 billion in the first three months of this year.

Facebook’s stock value increased 1.8 per cent after the fine was announced, closing at nearly $205, the highest it has been all year.

Break up Facebook

Some Facebook critics have argued the company should face tougher sanctions including monitoring of its data practices, or that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg should be personally liable for penalties.

Faced with criticism, Facebook’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, called on governments to do more to regulate social networks, instead of leaving the work to companies.

“It’s not for private companies, however big or small, to come up with those rules. It is for democratic politicians in the democratic world to do so,” Clegg said in a June 24 interview with the BBC.

But there are increasing calls to dismantle the massive social network.

In May, one of Facebook’s co-founders called for the social media behemoth to be broken up, warning that Zuckerberg had become far too powerful.

“It’s time to break up Facebook,” said Chris Hughes in an editorial for The New York Times, saying it had become necessary to separate the social network from Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp services.

Zuckerberg’s “focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks”, said Hughes.

LOS ANGELES — “Beyoncé has to come.”

“She’s not on the tip sheet.”

“There’s no way.”

You couldn’t take a step down the red carpet at Tuesday’s “Lion King” world premiere at the Dolby Theatre without hearing whispers from the news media, fans, publicists and celebrity guests alike about a possible Beyoncé appearance.

The singer returns to the big screen July 19 as the voice of lioness Nala, opposite Donald Glover’s Simba in Disney’s reimagining of the 1994 animated classic. “The Lion King: The Gift” album, produced and curated by Beyoncé, drops the same day as director Jon Favreau’s remake.

Of course, just minutes before the carpet closed, the superstar made her grand entrance. Queen Bey and her princess, Blue Ivy Carter, stepped out in matching black and silver suits.

The deafening cries commenced, echoing a quarter mile down the Hollywood Boulevard city block. My ears rang for minutes.

Working with Beyoncé was simply “iconic,” said her costar Glover on the press line.

“They don’t make them like Beyoncé. She’s kind of like the last of the Johnny Carson stars, like people you have to see,” he said beneath an ombre orange tent. “I just learned and listened to her. I tried to put my best foot forward.”

Twenty-five years ago, Nala and Simba were voiced by Caucasian actors, Moira Kelly and Matthew Broderick, respectively. The casting of Glover, Beyoncé and recently Halle Bailey (a Beyoncé mentee) as Ariel in Disney’s upcoming live-action “Little Mermaid” exemplifies how the studio has been trying to add more diverse voices to its remakes of classics.

(Though some attempts to course-correct have highlighted previous missteps, like the quietly deleted casting couch scene in Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 2”.)

The directors of the 1994 original version of “The Lion King”, Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, attended Tuesday’s premiere. Speaking with The Times, they described the casting of the new iteration as a “great evolution”.

Niles Fitch, who starred as young Simba in the Broadway adaptation of the film and who plays a teenage Randall Pearson on “This Is Us”, was also celebrating.

“It’s a cartoon, so I don’t believe there’s one certain look, especially when it’s voice-over,” Fitch said. “And with Ariel, there’s a lot of different Caucasian princesses, and I know how impactful it was for my sister to watch Tiana when she was younger.”

Tiana, the lead in 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog”, was the ninth Disney princess and first to be of African American heritage.

Glover put it this way: “I think anything that gets people used to seeing different types of people is good. I think labelling things as diversity for the sake of diversity, I actually don’t agree with.

“I think diversity of thought and diversity of representation is just an important part of growing as a culture, and I don’t think people should be afraid of it,” he added. “I think people should try and embrace it and just understand different things feel different to different people, so it’s important to just have it.”

Glover proudly shared that the original “Lion King” is his 3-year-old son Legend’s favourite movie. It’s a full-circle experience for Glover; when he was a kid, the 1994 film actually inspired his music career.

He recalled watching the videocassette, which included a segment with the child voice actors performing the “Lion King” tunes. Seeing them made him realise he could sing too.

Glover, who performs under the stage name Childish Gambino, said his love of the movie made dueting on “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” with Beyoncé all the more emotional.

“I felt very close to that song. You try and do it the way it felt to you when you were a child.”

Sharing some of the giddiness of the event’s screaming fans, he added, “It’s crazy. It’s Beyoncé.”

IOWA — New US research has found that video games such as Minecraft may help increase creativity when players are given the freedom to play as they want, with no instruction.

Carried out by researchers from Iowa State University, the new study looked at 352 students at the university who were randomly assigned to one of four groups.

Two of the groups were asked to play Minecraft, a virtual Lego-style game where you can build anything that you can imagine. But while one of the groups was asked to play as they wished for 40 minutes, the other group received the instruction to play as creatively as possible.

A third group was asked to play a different style of video game, a racing car video game, which doesn’t allow players to be as creative as Minecraft, while participants in the fourth group were asked to passively watch a television show.

After 40 minutes of each activity, all participants were asked to complete several creativity tasks, one of which involved drawing a creature from another planet.

The more human-like the creature, the lower the participants scored low for creativity, and the less human-like the creature, the higher the creativity score.

The findings, published in the Creativity Research Journal, showed that the participants who were randomly assigned to play Minecraft without any instruction received significantly higher scores on the creativity task compared to those who played Minecraft with the instruction to “be creative,” as well as those who played the driving game and those who watched television.

The researchers commented that the results indicate that the effect on creativity is not just down to the type of game played — Minecraft being a good example of a game with few rules, a high amount of player freedom, and which encourages creative expression — but also the way the player plays.

“It’s not just that Minecraft can help induce creativity. There seems to be something about choosing to do it that also matters,” said study author Douglas Gentile.

Lead author Jorge Blanco-Herrera added that for the Minecraft players who received an instruction, “Being told to be creative may have actually limited their options while playing, resulting in a less creative experience.”

“It’s also possible they used all their ‘creative juices’ while playing and had nothing left when it came time to complete the test.”

Previous research on playing video games has provided mixed results on whether it has a harmful or beneficial effect on health and mental well-being. The team say that the new findings suggest that video games could have the potential to be an engaging way to learn and increase creativity.

“The research is starting to tell a more interesting, nuanced picture. Our results are similar to other gaming research in that you get better at what you practice, but how you practice might matter just as much,” Gentile said.

LOS ANGELES — After two weeks of dominance, Disney’s “Toy Story 4” was knocked from the top spot at the weekend box office by Sony and Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home”.

The third Marvel Cinematic Universe release of the year, “Far From Home” opened with $39.3 million on Tuesday before earning $93.6 million Friday through Sunday for a cumulative $185.1 million through the weekend, according to estimates from measurement firm Comscore, well above analyst predictions of $125 million.

Internationally, it’s earned $395 million since opening June 28, for a global cumulative of $580 million.

The result is a rare win in what has so far been a summer dominated by franchise fatigue. While movies such as “Men in Black: International”, “Dark Phoenix” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” have disappointed both critically and commercially, Marvel’s films have consistently performed well, with “Avengers: Endgame” continuing to do business after 11 weeks in theatres.

“Far From Home” follows this year’s Marvel blockbusters “Captain Marvel” and “Endgame”, picking up the MCU narrative where the latter left off.

The second solo Spider-Man outing starring Tom Holland as the web-slinger cost an estimated $160 million to produce and introduces Jake Gyllenhaal as new character Mysterio. It earned positive reviews from critics, with a 92 per cent “fresh” rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

The previous entry in the franchise, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, opened with $117 million in 2017 before going on to gross $880 million in global receipts.

In second place, “Toy Story 4” added $34.3 million in its third weekend for a cumulative $306.6 million. Internationally, the picture earned $43.1 million for a worldwide cumulative of $650 million.

Universal’s “Yesterday” came in at No. 3, adding $10.8 million in its second weekend for a cumulative $36.9 million. It currently stands at $57 million in global grosses.

In fourth place, Warner Bros.’ “Annabelle Comes Home” added $9.8 million in its second weekend for a cumulative $50.2 million and $134.8 million worldwide.

Rounding out the top five, Disney’s “Aladdin” added $7.6 million in its seventh weekend for a cumulative $320.8 million and $921 million globally.

Also new this weekend, A24’s “Midsommar” earned $6.5 million over the weekend after its Wednesday opening for a cumulative $10.9 million, within range of analyst projections of $8 million to $10 million.

Directed by indie horror filmmaker Ari Aster, the movie follows a young couple who find themselves on a pastoral Swedish retreat that grows increasingly more sinister. The psychological thriller earned an 82 per cent “fresh” rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but a lacklustre C-plus CinemaScore.

Aster’s directorial debut, “Hereditary”, opened with $13.6 million in June 2018 before earning $79.3 million in global grosses. The film was a critical and commercial hit, and it remains the highest-opening picture for A24.

In seventh place, Universal’s “The Secret Life of Pets 2” added $4.8 million in its fifth weekend for a cumulative $140.7 million.

At No. 8, Sony’s “Men in Black: International” added $3.6 million in its fourth weekend for a cumulative $72 million.

In ninth place, Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame” added $3.1 million in its 11th weekend for a cumulative $847.9 million.

Rounding out the top 10, Paramount’s “Rocketman” added $2.8 million in its sixth weekend for a cumulative $89.2 million.

“Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love”, Nick Broomfield’s documentary on singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and muse Marianne Ihlen, led the specialty openings with a per-screen average of $11,078. The Roadside Attractions release brought in $44,311 on four screens in New York and Los Angeles.

Also in limited release, Sony Pictures Classics’ “Maiden” expanded into 18 additional locations for a total of 24, earning $147,467 in its third weekend, for a cumulative $224,216.

Neon expanded “Wild Rose” in its third weekend to 63 locations from 16, earning $209,000 and a cumulative $380,770.

Greenwich Entertainment’s “Echo in the Canyon” expanded into 144 locations to $336,132 for a cumulative $2 million.

CBS Films expanded the documentary “Pavarotti” into 250 theatres in its fifth weekend to $470,000 for a cumulative $3 million.

A24’s “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” is playing in 188 locations (up from 155 last week) and added $332,899 for a cumulative $2.7 million.

ArtAffects Entertainment’s “The Other Side of Heaven 2” added $177,975 in its second weekend for a cumulative $966,425.

This week, Paramount releases the horror film “Crawl”, and Fox opens the action comedy “Stuber”. In limited release, A24 reveals the comedy drama “The Farewell” starring Awkwafina, and Bleecker Street unveils the Jesse Eisenberg comedy “The Art of Self Defence”.

Following early car-based off-roaders like the Lada Niva, Matra-Simca Rancho and AMC Eagle, the Honda CR-V first arrived in 1994 and became the defining model in what was then referred to as a “soft roader” but now known as the ‘crossover’ segment. 

A trendsetting early adopter to the now highly popular automotive segment, which since spanned many competitors of different sub-categories, the CR-V has itself grown slightly bigger and become more advanced and overtly aggressive in design, yet has retained its practical daily drive sensibility.

Not quite as bigger than the original CR-V as its bulging body suggests, the fifth generation CR-V is, however, decidedly more aggressive in design, and now sports a big hexagonal grille, muscular bumpers, protruding wheel-arches, pronounced sills and scalloped bonnet.

Contrasting to earlier models in overall aesthetic effect, the CR-V long ditched the first two generation models’ big upright glasshouse in favour of a low arcing window profile, higher waistline and smaller glasshouse for a hunkered down aesthetic most pronounced in the latest generation.

Prodigious and efficient

Behind its chunky upright grille and under its ridged clamshell bonnet, the latest CR-V is powered by an entry-level naturally-aspirated 2.4-litre engine or a more powerful, efficient and downsized turbocharged 1.5-litre 4-cylinder unit coupled to a continuously variable transmission (CVT) for all-wheel-drive versions.

Producing 190BHP at 5,600rpm and 179lb/ft torque throughout a broad 2,000-5,000rpm band, the CR-V’s prodigious 1.5-litre engine carries its 1,598-1,705kg mass through the 0-100km/h benchmark in a reasonably quick 10-seconds and onto 200km/h, and can return restrained 7.1l/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency.

Quick spooling and responsive, with scant little turbo lag from idling, the CR-V’s engine well reconciles a flat, broad torque curve with progressive power delivery that makes it feel that there’s more on offer. Despite peak power arriving somewhat low, the CR-V’s engine nevertheless has a peaky and free-revving feel compared to most turbo engines. Its CVT transmission is meanwhile well-tuned to match its revvy engine and more readily allows it to reach for redline than most CVTs, and has a less elastic feel through ratios.

Smooth and eager

Smooth and efficient in managing engine speed and ratio changes, CVT transmissions aren’t usually the sportiest or most rewarding, but the CR-V’s system is one of the better such systems, and in sport mode, takes a more aggressive and responsive profile. A rewarding drive by usually uninspired mid-size crossover standards, the CR-V’s high rev engine noise has a slight but pleasant rasp. Meanwhile its electric-assisted steering is quick, direct, sharp and tidily eager into corners with a quick flick of the wrists and little under-steer.

Driving the front wheels under normal conditions and kicking power to the rear as needed to maintain traction and stability, the CR-V, however, proved agile for its segment. Happy being hustled along at brisk pace through switchbacks, the CR-V well controls body lean for a high-riding vehicle and is eager to shift weight to the outside rear wheels to tighten a cornering line, if asked to through tight fast corners. Smooth and stable with good grip, the CR-V is settled over crests, dips and road imperfections.

Generous quarters

Reassuring at speed and well-refined from road noise and vibrations, the CR-V rides comfortably with its unexaggerated 235/60R18 tyres in higher EX specification, but would be more supple over sudden sharp bumps with the lesser LX specification’s higher sidewall 235/65R17 tyres. 

Comfortable inside, the CR-V’s highly adjustable driving position offer commanding front views spacious and space, with its low console storage area allowing for an airy ambiance and good horizontal knee room. Meanwhile its infotainment screen menus and controls are user-friendly, and its instrumentation clear.

Particularly noteworthy is the CR-V’s generous second row seating, with roomy legroom and headroom for tall passengers, and wide rear door swing angles for easy access. Boot space meanwhile expands from 561-litres to 1,756-litres with rear seats folded. 

Pleasant in cabin design and using good materials and plenty of soft textures, the CR-V EX specification is well-equipped with safety and convenience features, including particularly useful reversing camera, parking sensors and blindspot warning, and dual-zone climate control, sunroof, and 8-speaker sound system with 2 USB ports and 7-inch screen.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.5-litre, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 73 x 89.5mm

Compression ratio: 10.3:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, direct injection, DOHC, variable valve timing and lift control

Gearbox: Continually variable transmission (CVT), four-wheel-drive

Transmission ratios: 0.405-2.645

Reverse/final drive: 1.265-1.859/5.641

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 190 (193) [142] @5,600rpm

Specific power: 126.8BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 118.9BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 179 (243) @2,000-5,000rpm

Specific torque: 162.2Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 152Nm/tonne

0-100km/h: 10-seconds

Top speed: 200km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined:8.6-/6.2-/7.1-litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 162g/km 

Fuel capacity: 57-litres

Length: 4,600mm

Width: 1,855mm

Height: 1,689mm

Track, F/R: 1,601/1,629mm

Luggage volume, min/max: 561-/1,123-1,756-litres

Unladen weight: 1,598-1,705kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Steering ratio: 12.3:1

Lock-to-lock: 2.34-turns

Turning Circle: 11.4-metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multilink double wishbone

Brakes, F/R: Ventilate discs/discs

Tyres: 235/60R18

Price, starting from/as driven: JD32,500/JD36,500 (on-the-road, third party insurance)

PARIS — By landing on the Moon in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin arrived at a place which, up until that point, had been the stuff of fantasy.

But even after they transformed fantasy into fact, it is a place that continues to capture the imagination of storytellers, as it has for centuries.

Literature, novels, cinema... from antiquity to the present, the Moon has been the object of any number of imaginary expeditions.

As far back as the second century BC, the satirist Lucian of Samosata, in “True Stories”, imagined a voyage to the Moon that saw the author and his fellow travellers find the King of the Moon caught up in a war with the King of the Sun.

In the 17th century, French writer Cyrano de Bergerac — the real one, not the character in Edmond Rostand’s famous play — wrote a tale titled “The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon”.

Baron Munchausen travelled to the Moon in a flying boat in German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe’s 1785 fantasy.

And the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler imagined demons on the Moon in his story titled “The Dream”.

In more modern times, science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells imagined a sophisticated race of insect-like creatures living below the satellite’s surface in “The First Men on the Moon”.

Wells’s adventurers reached the Moon using a substance that negated the forces of gravity.

Verne, in his 1865 tale “From the Earth the Moon”, was a little less fanciful, shooting his travellers across space in a giant cannon.

A century or so later Armstrong, travelling back from the Moon, referred to Verne’s tale in one of his television broadcasts.

More recently still, one of Herge’s 1950s Tintin adventures featured a visit to the Moon — and even Snowy, his loyal dog, got a spacesuit.

Cinema versions of the Moon have been equally fanciful.

In George Melies extraordinary 1902 work “A Trip to the Moon”, the travellers find giant mushrooms and excitable natives.

He follows Verne with a cannon-propelled space capsule — and a splashdown at sea on their return.

As technology brought the possibility of a lunar flight closer, that seemed to dampen the market for the more fanciful lunar tales.

Classic sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein still used the Moon as the setting for his 1966 novel “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”.

But by this time, humans inhabit it — and Heinlein’s tale is about the revolt of the lunar colony against rule from Earth.

And just a year before the real Moon landings, Stanley Kubrick’s epic 1968 film “2001” has astronauts at an outpost on the Moon finding a mysterious obelisk there.

Here, as in Clarke’s original story, the Moon has become little more than the stage for something far more important.

Perhaps what the 1969 Apollo mission to the Moon did was not so much end the telling of tales about the satellite as change the kind of stories being told.

After the Apollo landings, the Moon became a focus for pop culture.

The heroes of the achingly kitsch 1970s science fiction television series “Space 1999” are based on the Moon — and have to cope with a nuclear accident that knocks it out of orbit and sends them hurtling into space.

The Moon also featured in any number of comic-book adventures and cartoon series from the 1970s onwards.

David Bowie released his Kubrick-inspired classic 1969 single “Space Oddity” the same month as the Moon landings.

A generation later, in the 2013 version, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield played his cover version of the song from the International Space Station.

And in 2009 Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, broke into the cinema mainstream with his cult hit — sci-fi puzzler “Moon”.