The Bone Tree, by Airana Ngarewa.

 

            I was glad to finish this book.  Not because it was a rubbish read, poorly written – just the opposite:  it is a towering, brutal story of the sadness and violence endured by children of poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand;  the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness engendered by their terrible vulnerability – and the remedies some of them will employ in order to survive. 

            This is NOT an easy read for any New Zealand European as it delves mercilessly into our doubtful colonial history, different versions of which have been taught in schools for more than a century;  only in the last decades has the Maori language been recognised as the second official language of our country, and Te Reo is now being used extensively in everyday speech, to the joy of Tangata Whenua:  the language is alive and well!

            Sadly, teenager Kauri (or Cody, as his Irish dad and the welfare organisation reps call him) knows his father will not live much longer;  Kauri nurses him faithfully but doesn’t actually care if he dies;  he has been the victim of many vicious beatings when his dad came home drunk and raging against Kauri’s Maori mother ‘who woke up dead one day’ from a wrongly diagnosed illness.  Nah, good riddance to the old bastard - even though Kauri looks after him to the best of his ability, he certainly won’t be missing him.

            But Kauri’s main worry is his little brother Black – who is anything but, being as pale as milk and a stranger to schooling of any kind, making him a perfect target for the pakeha welfare guys who have been sniffing around too much lately;  Kauri has seen what happens to kids who get ‘uplifted’ by the Welfare – they turn out broken, and he can’t have that for his beloved little bro.  When the old man dies, Kauri will go on a quest to find his relatives –there must be some family left out there who will help them find their place in life, their ancestry, their place of belonging, their turangawaewae.

            And Kauri’s search leads him to the nearest city, and family to which he would never have dreamed of associating – a whole church full of them, not to mention a fallen sinner who introduced Kauri to all these Holier-than-Thous – every one of them pious to a fault, but never acknowledging their family connections.  In his efforts to find his family, Kauri also learns some very big life lessons about those who want to be found, and those who don’t.

            It was hard going reading this story.  It made me deeply ashamed of our country’s bloody history and the glossing-over of terrible mistakes made by the early colonial powers that are now finally being acknowledged.  Thank you, Airana Ngarewa, for this great and timely story.  SIX STARS. 

                 

 

A Better Place by Stephen Daisley.

 

            This is the third of Stephen Daisley’s novels that I have read and once again, I am in awe of his seemingly effortless talent to evoke myriad emotions from the reader as they journey through his characters’ lives, completely involved and living each experience, good or bad, with them – and there are so many searing, tragic experiences, for Stephen Daisley writes about war, and he doesn’t pretty it up for the reader:  in spare, short sentences he tells the story of twin brothers from New Plymouth in New Zealand’s North Island who, at the age of twenty enlist in the Army at the beginning of the Second World War.

            Roy and Tony Mitchell are jacks-of-all-trades.  They are identical twins, but Tony is an idealist and artistic.  Roy is relentlessly practical:  what you see is what you get.

They have had a rough start to life:  their father was given land by the government when he came back from the First World War but he also came back broken and turned to the drink.  Their mother left them to fend for themselves without a backward glance when they were fourteen.  She’d had enough.  After working for keep and learning stock handling, fencing and all the other backbreaking toil associated with hard-scrabble farming, the twins decide it’s time for a change:  might as well go to war!

            So they do, and end up at Maleme on the island of Crete with their Battalion, retreating from a huge German Offensive in which Tony the Introvert is believed lost.  Bloody good Joker Roy is understandably shattered, but he feels even worse because he ran away like a coward, leaving his brother behind, and when he returned, could only find Tony’s leg, shattered and shredded at the listening post where he left him.

            The fate of both brothers is masterfully revealed;  Roy is shipped to Italy with his regiment, and Tony becomes a Prisoner of War.  He is shown  compassion by his captors, while Roy sees the worst side of the enemy:  a whole village annihilated as the Allied troops came to liberate them:  the feelings of the hapless reader (me!) are trampled into the ground;  this is how it was, and this powerful, terrible story should – but won’t – act as a terrible, sickening example of what war does to the world, how long it takes for nations to recover, and the tragic fact, as evidenced by the Ukraine and Gaza, that nobody learns War’s lessons.  SIX STARS.    

 

Killing Moon, by Jo Nesbo.

 

            Harry Hole.  Ah, Harry Hole, Jo Nesbo’s brilliant alcoholic Norwegian detective, adept at solving the heinous crimes of serial-killers, but just about done-for by the time this story starts.  Harry is in Los Angeles, determined to drink himself to death or, when his money runs out, to finish everything off by his own hand – and gun.  To join his beloved Rakel, cruelly murdered by a friend who wanted the ultimate revenge – but fate (or karma) has other plans for Harry:  he rescues an elderly lady from death by her creditors, but there’s a time limit on their generosity:  he has a week to find nearly a million dollars, or Lucille, whose kindness to Harry has been legendary, gets a bullet.

     Coincidentally, he receives a call from Oslo with a job offer:  working as a private detective to prove the innocence of a multi-millionaire who is facing murder charges after the bodies of two young women were found within a week of each other, the second one beheaded.  Suspicion has fallen on the millionaire because they were both guests at a lavish cocaine-addled party he threw in his penthouse on the night the first girl died and despite the fact that his wife provides an alibi for him, there is evidence that this is not the case. 

It is no easy thing to return to Oslo with all its wonderful and terrible memories – and all the familiar drinking holes, not to mention all the colourful characters from Harry’s past, including his former police colleagues, some of whom are less than pleased to see him, but Harry is on a time limit and time is of the essence:  he knows that Markus Røed is probably innocent of the crimes with which he is charged, but he’s guilty of crimes just as destructive and believes that power and money can buy anything, including Harry Hole, who is singularly unimpressed:  just tell him the truth and show him the money.

But Markus has rampaged through his life without a thought for the people he crushed under his hand-made shoes on the way – until one of them decides to strike back, and fashions a revenge that is truly Biblical. 

And I, who pride myself on guessing whodunit from early on in the piece, was  truly tricked into thinking it was someone else entirely – I could have taken my pick of all the red herrings on offer and still came up crook, so Jo Nesbo has done it again:  given us a truly thrilling page-turner, with wonderful supporting characters and a protagonist who has endeared himself permanently to every reader to the extent that there would be an international outcry if Harry Hole did indeed decide to end it all.  SIX STARS.   

 

Did I Ever Tell You This?  By Sam Neill.                               Memoir.

 

            New Zealand actor Sam Neill tells the reader more than once in his graceful and hugely entertaining memoir that he is ‘a jobbing actor’:  he will say that he does it to feed himself and his family, about whom he is always loving and touchingly proud.  It soon becomes obvious to the reader, however, that while he has more than earned enough to put food on the table for family generations to come, he has also gained a world-wide reputation as a celebrated actor in a myriad different roles, from battling dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movies to dazzling 17^th century London as King Charles the Second.

            And he is also battling cancer.

            About which he writes baldly and bravely, with no trace of the ‘Poor-Me’s’, an indication of his upbringing in a loving but no-nonsense family.  Sam, baptised Nigel to his eternal regret after his birth in Ireland, was the second son of a New Zealand military officer  (‘your father,’ says an aunt in pointed reference to Sam. ‘Now he was a handsome man.’)  As proven by an absolutely stunning photo of Sam’s dad.  Sam’s mum was an equally photogenic young Englishwoman and, after producing daughter Juliet, the family eventually moved to Dunedin after a wonderful, wild start in Ireland, and Sam was despatched to the delights of boarding school in Christchurch.  Whether he wanted to go or not – ‘nothing wrong with a Boarding-School education, it’ll do you good!’ Or not.  As Sam was more academically inclined than sporty (he loved acting, surprise surprise!) he wasn’t regarded with great interest by his teachers. But.

            Fate intervenes, when after university Sam gets a job with the National Film Unit (‘New Zealand’s least cool film makers’) and he is eventually cast in ‘Sleeping Dogs’, a pioneering feature movie that interested people in Australia, and  was the start of His Brilliant Career.  Sam and the camera fell in love and have been thicker than thieves ever since.  Only his family is more well-loved than acting – and wine-making:  thanks to his superior ‘jobbing’ talents, Sam is also a vintner of some note – the Pinot Noir produced at Sam’s South Island Two Paddocks vineyard has an international reputation:  not bad for a weedy little kid called Nigel – who changed his name to Sam when he was small because all the best guys in cowboy movies were called Sam.

            The last word shall go to Sam’s little daughter Elena who visited him in his trailer when he was upholstered magnificently in his royal raiment as King Charles the Second:  Sam was waiting for her cries of admiration but all Elena could say was ‘but Daddy, where are the Dinosaurs?’ This was the perfect way to end a lovely book written by a gentleman, and a gentle man.  SIX STARS.       

 

Night Will Find You, by Julia Heaberlin.

 

          Vivvy Bouchet has had a number of disadvantages in her life as she grew up, not least being the daughter of a Psychic who gives readings true and false in an effort to support Vivvy and her elder sister Brigid;  they sometimes have to leave town in a hurry – especially when the body of a dead woman is exhumed in their back yard which their Mum claims to have foreseen:  this event signifies a big increase in income, but removes permanently any privacy they had growing up.  A shift to the Lone Star State of Texas, proud home of myriad conspiracy theorists and gun-toting Trumpsters is not the safe haven it could have been, and reaching adulthood for both girls is something of a triumph – especially as Vivvy has managed to achieve her childhood goal of becoming a respected scientist – an astrophysicist, no less, the pride of her small family.  There’s just a couple of things wrong with that rosy picture:  Vivvy is obsessive-compulsive, and she has inherited her mother’s doubtful gift of second sight.

            A very odd combination of a relentlessly factual scientific mind married to an equally unassailable group of ‘feelings’.  For that reason Vivvy works alone on her exploratory Space studies, supported by a prestigious university grant – until her brother-in-law Mike, a detective, asks for her psychic help with a group of photos he wants her to see:  could any of the subjects be still alive?  If they are dead, any vibes as to where their bodies are?

            Well.  Mike must be desperate if he is asking for her help, but he can’t ask his mother-in-law – she has recently died of natural causes, so Vivvy is the next-best thing.  And she proves her worth:  a three-year old girl who disappeared from her home eleven years ago is not dead, despite her mother being jailed for her ‘murder’.  She’s alive – but where?

            Julia Heaberlin has written a marvellous thriller – not just superior plotting and characters, but her ruthless honesty in depicting today’s America, that land of endless opportunity bogged down with misinformation, disinformation, climate deniers, and the podcasters and newscasters frothing at the mouth to spread more fantasies to people who want to believe – need to believe – in something, the more unbelievable, the better.  Through her heroic character Vivvy she lays bare illnesses that infect a proud country, in the meantime giving us, in the best thriller tradition, shock after shock as exposes bad guys we never suspected, and a glimpse of a MAGA world we’d rather not see. SIX STARS. 

 

Kala, by Colin Walsh.

 

            Colin Walsh has already made his reputation as a prize-winning short-story writer:  this is his first novel and he may cover all the bases of a competent thriller, but it takes an extraordinary talent to elevate efficiency to brilliance, and Colin Walsh has it in spades.

            The reader is spared no mercy as we are subjected to every good, bad and ugly emotion throughout this story of solid teenage friendship that has disintegrated into reluctant acquaintance fifteen years after the disappearance of Kala Lanann, the heart and soul of the little group.  Her boyfriend Joe is now a famous rock star;  her best friend Helen has returned to Ireland from Canada to attend her father’s forthcoming wedding to Pauline Lyons, mother of Aidan, Joe’s mate and drummer in their little rock band, and Mush – Mush is Aidan’s cousin, horribly scarred and doomed to be his Mam’s assistant in their Cafe in the tourist town of Kinlough till death do them part.  Kala’s staunch-to-the-death friends haven’t survived well without her, and no-one – NO-ONE, wants to revisit the last time they saw her:  each of them know that they could have behaved differently.  Kala was in trouble;  she needed them, and they let her down.

            But her body has never been found, so that should surely mean something, especially to her poor, wheelchair-bound  grandmother with whom she lived – until her bones are discovered on a local building site in a gym bag.  Her badly broken skull is on top of the bag, with a photo of two young girls positioned beneath.  Are they the next targets?  And why was Kala, a vital, fearless, talented 15 year-old murdered?  What did she know or discover to cause her horrible death, and could her friends have prevented it?

            The nature of friendship casual or deep is relentlessly explored in this searing exposé of the corrupt underbelly of a seemingly prosperous and scenic Irish seaside town:  the police control law and order – but who controls the police?  To their consternation, the broken, wounded adult versions of Kala’s much-loved friends discover that everything has its price and for some, it is too high to pay.

            With this outstanding debut novel, Colin Walsh proves that he can carry on admirably the great literary tradition of Irish storytelling:  it’s all wonderful craic and I can’t wait for the next example of his brilliance. Will he make me laugh and cry again, and recoil in horror at the cruelty his characters visit upon each other?  I shall be waiting because I must, but I hope he doesn’t go on his holidays!  SIX STARS.

 

    

             

 

Killing Jericho, by William Hussey.

 

            How many Crime novels have you read where the protagonist is a burnt-out investigator, near the end of his tether but with still-enviable skills at detecting and smelling rats of all kinds?  William Hussey’s main man Scott Jericho is all of these things, but he’s also of a different stripe:  he’s a Traveller – a Pikey, a Gypo, part of the travelling fairs of Gypsies who still visit different locations in Britain – and he’s gay.

            He also won a scholarship to Oxford, experienced contempt from every class of student because he was a traveller, and found love with a fellow student, Harry Wainhouse, who was the one ray of sunshine in his bleak, unlovely life.  Naturally, with his luck, everything eventually becomes unstuck, especially his precious relationship, and after a time of booze, pills and doubtful employment in ‘security’ he eventually finds salvation of a sort:  as a policeman, causing great consternation to his travelling family, who don’t take kindly to coppers, who have never taken their side, even when they should!

            His mentor is a Detective Inspector Garris who sees great promise in Scott’s cleverly deductive reasoning of various crims and crimes, and for a time Scott Jericho is almost happy in his work, until a particularly hideous crime involving the burning to death of three small children causes him to snap and try to beat the perpetrator to death.  His punishment is severe, with a degrading jail term and damages awarded to the perp:  when he is released he is ready to die;  his life means nothing any more – until his old mentor Garris needs his thoughts on a case which appears to mirror an awful historic event concerning his own travelling family:  three people have already died in dreadful copy-cat killings of a tragic event that occurred one hundred and fifty years before.  Nothing accidental or suspicious – all bloodthirsty murders, every one.  Scott cannot resist his good friend’s plea.  He will help if he can and all he can:  it’s time to come back to the world again.

            Except that the more he delves into the crimes, the worse they become, and will he solve the myriad puzzles they present with every turn, or will he become another victim?

            William Hussey comes from a travelling background and knows whereof he speaks;  he has created a very plausible, flawed hero (who does get the guy at the end!), and there will be more Jericho novels to come.  I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but I’m pretty sure you won’t figure out Whodunnit until that fact is revealed, and you’ll have to keep reading the series (as I will) to find out if the monster is finally bought to justice.  FOUR STARS.

 

The Sparrow, by Tessa Duder.                Young Adults

 

            Auckland writer Tessa Duder dedicates this book ‘to the memory of the women and girls cruelly and unjustly convicted, transported and imprisoned 12,000 miles from their homeland, to those who died and those who, against all odds, survived.’

            And one such survivor in 1840 is Harriet, convicted at the age of 10 of stealing an apple at a market in her Sussex home town:  she didn’t steal the apple;  her jealous older brother connived with his friend to get her arrested by the local constable for theft – that would teach her to think she was better, and better-loved by their parents who, regardless of their desperate attempts to save their little girl from her fate, were powerless to stop her being transported to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania).

            As if the sea voyage weren’t horrific enough, the destination is even worse, and an attempt by Harriet to escape brings even more punishment raining on her cruelly shaved head.  She will die soon:  she knows it - except for the human kindness we all should have, shown to her by one of the jailors.  She engineers a successful escape for a little girl whom she feels is not destined to die in such a hellhole and Harriet, eventually disguised as Harry stows away on the very same ship that transported her to Hobart:  she’s desperate to return home to her parents, but a side trip first to New Zealand is a compulsory exercise – she can hardly go to the captain as a stowaway and demand to be taken back to England.  But once more she meets kindness in the shape of an Irish seaman who discovers her hiding place and provides her with food and advice – lots of it, to the effect that when she arrives in Auckland, her boy’s disguise complete, she has no problem becoming a messenger boy and earning coins from all the Big-Wigs who have arrived to establish Auckland as the new capital of New Zealand.

            Along with material for a 16-room mansion for the new Governor, the class system has been imported, too – there are clear guidelines as to where everyone should settle:  manual workers at Mechanics Bay, Officials at Official Bay, and business people at Commercial Bay.  And everyone in their little tent villages is supplied with food and vegetables by ‘the natives’.  Who are not to be trusted.  Just because.  They are brown, have tattoos, are half-naked, and don’t speak English.  Never mind that they provide most of the food the settlers eat – that’s immaterial.  They are not to be trusted.

            Ms Duder’s account of our early years as a nation is ruthlessly honest and uncompromising, and she has created in Harriet the same qualities, along with courage and resourcefulness.  This story was a pleasure to read.  SIX STARS.  

 

 

 

Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane.

 

It is Summer, 1974.  In Boston, Massachusetts, a judge has just decreed that public high schools be desegregated:  black teenagers will travel by bus to white high schools – but only in the poorer areas.  Prosperous suburbs with private schools will be exempt.  In the predominantly poor Irish district of Southie racism is rearing its ugly head:  if the rich want desegregation, let them bus all the niggers to their own schools!  The mood is ugly, and there have already been demonstrations, engineered by the local criminals;  they don’t want competition from any nigger gangs on their turf.  The atmosphere is explosive, and the weather is not helping.  Everyone is feeling the heat, not least the mayor, the judicial system, and the police:  something will have to give.

Mary Pat Fennessy is a hard woman – hard-faced, hard to like, and hard-done-by in her personal circumstances:  her first husband, father of her children and a small-time criminal, died in suspicious circumstances;  her beloved son succumbed to heroin’s charms and died as a result;  her second husband Ken has recently left her, and her cherished remaining child, 17 year-old Jules, didn’t come home last night. And a young black man has been found dead overnight in Southie, too, and the police are making a lot of enquires.

 Jules’ mutton-headed boyfriend Rum says that he hasn’t seen her and left her to walk home by herself.  Oh, really?  Rum is unprepared for Mary Pat’s ‘physicality’ when Mary Pat tracks him down, for Mary Pat is a dirty fighter whose main advantage is surprise – surprise and shock that a little woman could turn herself into a bone-breaker, and in Rum’s case, a testicle-cutter – not fatal, you understand, but so painful and bloody that Rum begs the investigating police to keep him in a cell so that she can’t get him – and in return he’ll tell them what he and Jules did on their last date.

Dennis Lehane doesn’t let the reader move an inch away from the page as he holds us all in a stranglehold of suspense, first as to Jules’ fate, then the nature of Mary Pat’s terrible revenge.  And hubble-bubbling away like a dirty underground stream throughout this explosive and powerful story is the racism that never goes away, never changes, and certainly never disappears, even though fifty years have passed.  This was a hard book to read, (including all the f-bombs!) hard because of all the uncomfortable truths that it exposes, especially about how we, as children, are taught to hate:  this is a great book.  SIX STARS.   

 

After That Night, by Karin Slaughter.

 

I’ve done it again:  started reading a series at the end instead of the beginning, to my eternal shame.  Ms Slaughter’s latest book is advertised as a Will Trent thriller and I thought ‘no problem – there will be a backstory’.  And there is, but so many Will Trent novels have preceded this one, with so many truly great permanent characters, that I spent most of the time while I read trying to figure out relationships, friendships and families, and my lasting regret is that I’ve missed out (unless I trawl through the Will Trent Canon, and will I live that long?) on a continuing story that embodies perfectly the thriller genre.  Even though I’m lacking in previous details, especially concerning Will Trent’s early life, I’m so fortunate to finally meet him.  Better late than never!

            GBI special agent Will Trent is engaged to Sara Linton, a brilliant Doctor who is working in the Emergency Department of an Atlanta hospital.  They are planning their wedding in a month’s time and both are thrilled to be starting their new life together, until a young woman is brought into the E.D. in terrible condition.  She has driven a late-model Mercedes very gently into an ambulance parked outside the hospital, then collapsed.  Her injuries are horrific and eventually fatal despite everyone’s efforts, but it is also obvious that she has been brutally raped.  Which awakens terrible memories for Sara:  fifteen years ago, the same terrible, animal thing happened to her, and after that night, nothing in her life would ever be the same, including injuries so bad she can never have children.

            But that’s not all.  An investigation turns up cold cases, rapes and fatalities that remain unsolved, all involving young women of approximately the same age, usually students – with the same knife-markings on certain  parts of their bodies – and always missing a left shoe:  the cases are all connected, but actual evidence is thin on the ground, until Sara and Will piece together fragile clues linking her assault and the dying girl with the Mercedes, all linking however tenuously to a group of her fellow medical students, now prosperous specialists, trailblazers in medicine and powerful men in their own right – but spectacular failures in their personal lives.  They took the Hippocratic Oath:  they pledged to do no harm.  They couldn’t be mixed up in this sadistic cruelty:  could they?

            Ms Slaughter leads us competently through the story, never letting the reader up on the suspense and examining sometimes minutely the sacrifices that people (particularly parents) will make for those they love – and those they don’t:  think medical staff and police.  As always she gives us HEAPS to think about – and regret:  wish I’d read all the backstories!  FIVE STARS.    

   

Pet, by Catherine Chidgey.

 

        
    Catherine Chidgey proves that the acclamation earned by ‘The Axeman’s Carnival’ and her earlier novels was fully justified.  Her boundless imagination and dazzling skill at creating characters that are all too horrifyingly credible is beautifully realised in the story which opens in 2014 when Justine Crieve is visiting her father in Dementia care:  the new carer who is helping her father looks just like someone from her childhood that she would rather forget, generating harsh memories of a class of 12 year-old children who happily come under the sway of their new teacher, Mrs Price.

            Mrs Price is almost impossibly glamorous.  She drives a white left-hand drive Corvette (it only has two seats – how exciting is that!), wears the latest fashions, calls everyone darling, and generally captivates all (except the overweight mums, who are inclined to mutter nasty asides to each other about her not being all that she should be), and she goes to Sunday Mass as a teacher at a Wellington Catholic school should.  There are rumours that she has been the victim of a tragedy;  her husband and little daughter died in a car accident in Auckland, but no-one wants to ask her any questions – who would want to resurrect such sorrow?  Regardless, every child in her class wants to be her ‘Pet’, that exalted, favoured position whereby certain children are allowed to clean the blackboard and dusters after school, tidy the stationery cupboard, dish out papers to the mere mortals, and generally bask in the warmth and outright favouritism of being Special.

            Justine Crieve and her best friend Amy Fong would both love to be Pets, but know it will never happen:  Justine has seizures and her Mum died of breast cancer a year ago.  Her dad isn’t managing at all well and is drinking a lot.  Amy is Chinese;  her family owns the fruit and veg shop, but much as they try they’re not fitting in;  instead both girls imitate (unkindly) the Pets.

            Until Justine is brought home by Mrs Price after a seizure, and the two adults find they have much in common, including prior tragedies.  And it’s not long before Justine becomes a Pet – at the expense of her friendship with Amy, who thinks Mrs Price is a thief:  she saw her pinch Jasmine Tea from her parents’ shop!  And what about all the stuff missing from the classroom since Mrs Price started?  Justine refuses to hear anything nasty about her heroine, for Mrs Price and her father are getting married – and taking her on their honeymoon!  Amy can go and get forgotten about.

            Catherine Chidgey has created a thriller which has more twists and turns than a pretzel, all of them clever and unexpected.  And tragic.  The sadness doesn’t end, right down to the last word.  FIVE STARS.       

 

Fatherland, by Burkhard Bilger.                       Non-fiction.  Memoir.

 

 
           Burkhard Bilger is a respected writer for The New Yorker, and has contributed many times to other publications – The Atlantic, Harper’s and the New York Times among them.  Born in Oklahoma, he is also of German ancestry;  his parents emigrated to the USA after the Second World War.  Bilger Senior was a Physicist and his mother was a schoolteacher who eventually returned to university to qualify as a historian:  life was full of promise – the American Dream was possible for all in the sixties in Oklahoma (provided your skin was white.)

            But Burkhard wasn’t so much concerned with skin colour eventually, as much as the gaps in his parents’ reminiscences of their early lives in the Germany of the War years spent in the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest near the southern border of France and the Swiss border:  there was, among the fairy-tale sounding stories of Wurst und Speck and snow up to the eaves in winter, absolutely no mention of the War, or the fact that Burkhard’s mother’s father, his grandfather, was a longtime member of the Nazi party, and Nazi Chief representative in Bartenheim, a small southern village on the Rhine.   Originally a school teacher, Grandfather Karl Gönner embraced as did so many others, the new prosperity promised by Hitler.  After so many years of poverty and inflation when Germany and its remaining wealth was parcelled out to others in the infamous Treaty of Versailles, it was now time to take back what had been stolen.  It was time for the ascension of The Third Reich:  Sieg Heil!

            Bartenheim during the war years was, as always, an uncomfortable mixture of die-hard French inhabitants, and equally intransigent Deutsche counterparts – which was nothing new, for every time the two countries went to war, the victor always determined which language took precedence all along the French/German border, only this time the Nazi troops were much more trigger-happy, more ruthless in fact, than in previous times. Which meant that there were a lot more informers and turncoats all ready to turn someone in for money – or spite.  Grandfather Karl, in his capacity of local headmaster but ultimately Chief Nazi Officer of the area, turned out to be fair game for those local politicos with a grudge once the tide of victory had turned – and there were many.  He was sent to prison at the end of the war.

            His grandson Burkhard’s sterling efforts on several trips to Germany to peel back the layers of history to get at the plain, unvarnished truth;  his hours, weeks and months of research, delving through archives miraculously still available, and all the heart-rending  personal interviews have produced a beautifully written family history, a deeply affecting account of a nation’s guilt, shame and redemption – and the posing of the worrisome question in the wake of today’s world situation:  have we learnt anything at all?  FIVE STARS.   

 

Yellowface, by Rebecca F. Kuang.

 

          With the exception of the author, only those in the Publishing industry are fully aware of the enormous amount of effort that is expended to produce a novel , let alone a best-seller:  the eventual reader – the Mark – is blissfully ignorant of the fact that so many have laboured for so long to bring life to a story that will absorb and enchant, that he will line up to buy – until the next Blockbuster.  Rebecca Kuang enlightens us all with her brutal, brilliant warts-and-all portrayal of the industry and Social Media, how it can uplift and deify some writers (particularly after they die) and completely bury others just as good:  Death by Twitter.

            Juniper Song Hayward is a white Yale graduate whose mother named her child in her Hippie days.  She is friends with Athena Liu, a Chinese American who has it all:  gorgeous looks, a slender model’s figure and a writing talent that has already propelled her onto the Bestseller lists.  June is a writer who has already been published, but her autobiographical novel ‘Over the Sycamore’ sank without trace months after publication;  now she’s inclined to think that Athena’s looks have aided her as much as her way with words;  that luck has had a huge amount to do with Athena’s success and, even though it’s hard to admit, perhaps Junie is just gut-churningly jealous.  Not of Athena’s writing!  No, June has enough confidence in her talent to know how good she is, she just hadn’t had the luck.

            Until one night a horrible, freak accident occurs at Athena’s apartment resulting in Athena’s death, and June becomes the custodian of her friend’s last rough manuscript, a potentially brilliant story of Chinese indentured labourers sent to France by Britain during the First World War. No-one knows of this work except June, and after a huge amount of work transcribing and rewriting, June presents the work as her own to her agent. With predictable results.  The Publishing world is taken by storm, she is the new Flavour of the Month, and she is on the Bestseller lists at last.

            Until AthenaLiu’sGhost pops up casting aspersions on Twitter, and bona fide Asian writers want to know how a white woman could trick everyone with her name – Juniper Song – then write of Chinese history with such convincing authority.  June has reached the summit, now it’s all downhill.

            Rebecca Kuang takes no prisoners in her portrayal of Yellowface racism in the publishing industry:  ‘Sorry, we won’t publish that because the author’s Asian and we already have an Asian writer’ and with regard to Athena and her supposed success, they only wanted books from her on an Asian theme.  She was their token Asian author.  Well, Kuang has turned the tables on them, writing as a white woman trying to plagiarise her Asian friend’s work.  This story is as much an exposé of racism in the publishing industry as it is in society.  To our shame.  FOUR STARS.      

 

The Art of Prophecy, by Wesley Chu.

 

   

         This is the first of Wesley Chu’s fantasy martial arts series involving Wen Jian, destined as a child to fulfil the ancient prophesy of his people:  to vanquish and destroy the Eternal Khan and the hordes of Katuia, enemies of the sacred Kingdom.  To all intents and purposes, it should be a pretty straightforward battle between Good and Evil – you know:  the usual villains encountered in odd places;  a touch of the supernatural to push the story along, and an eventual happy ending – at the end of the series, naturally.

            Instead, we have a visit by Ling Taishi, War Artist Grandmaster appointed by the five Dukes who run the country,  to Wen Jian’s luxurious palace where he resides in splendour and comfort with all his War Arts tutors;  she will assess his progress, not just in combat, but formal education and court etiquette.  His education must be complete if he is to rule according to the prophecy.  In a perfect world.

            Instead, she finds a spoilt brat, confused by too many cooks spoiling the broth and barely able to recognise the characters of his own name.  And it doesn’t take long for the Dukes to start questioning the prophecy and its veracity – and the fact that they can govern the country extremely well without an upstart boy who knows nothing – or won’t for some considerable time.  Wen Jian must die.  Very discreetly, of course, for the country’s religion has been founded on his existence.  Fortunately for Jian, Taishi takes pity on him, not least because of her War Arts principles, but because it is unthinkable for her to aid in the death of a potential God-child.  She and Jian escape death thanks to her Grandmaster expertise and secret contacts among old lovers and friends:  Jian is hidden in a War Arts school as a kitchen boy and novice pupil, and Taishi goes on the run – the Dukes have put huge prices on their heads and if they want those heads to stay on their respective shoulders, then this is the only solution.

            Wesley Chu’s writing is a bit rough around the edges;  I can’t see him winning a Pulitzer anytime soon, but what a fantastic storyteller he is!  His villains are enjoyably nasty – especially Qisami, a manic bounty-hunter, the opposite to Salminde, highly principled Viperstrike of the Katuia who is horrified and furious to learn of the betrayal of her people by their leadership:  both these women warriors want Jian’s death – Qisami for the bounty, and Salminde for the destruction of an enemy Icon.  They will have to get past Taishi first. And what a stunning cover!  Hurry up, Book Two.  FOUR STARS.      

           

             

               

 

Independence Square by Martin Cruz Smith.

 

            Senior Moscow Police Investigator Arkady Renko is tired.  Tired of his job, tired of the endless corruption he deals with at every turn, and very definitely tired of his boss Zorin, who has made an art out of toadying and feathering his own nest to the extent that he is virtually untouchable – as are most of the Would-Be’s if they Could-Be’s scrabbling to be on the various strata of the Kremlin.

            And he also knows that those he holds dear are never really safe;  they will always be vulnerable, always be potential victims as long as he remains honourable and a straight arrow:  his foster son Zenhya, and his long-time love, fearless international journalist Tatiana (now writing for the New York Times) who, as always has left Moscow on the trail of a sizzling exposé of Putin’s plans for war in the Ukraine.  No, he’s not flavour of the month with the Kremlin, but he has to soldier on, as they all do, accepting as a distraction a request from ‘Bronson’, so-called because that’s who he looks like, to find his daughter Karina, a classical musician and first violin of a string-quartet ‘because the assholes he hired to find her haven’t gotten anywhere.’  Could Renko investigate?

            It is ironic to think that Bronson, who runs most of the protection rackets in the city and has been jailed multiple times wants to hire the only incorruptible investigator in Moscow, but stranger things have happened – we just don’t know what they are yet.  So, Arkady and his loyal sidekick Viktor (every detective has one!) start with Karina’s apartment, which she shares with her friend Elena, also a member of the quartet.  Nothing is revealed except that both women are followers of Forum, a new and noisy political group whose leader is Leonid Lebedev who, at a rally Arkady attends announces that he is going to run for Mayor of Moscow – oh, really?  Good luck with that, thinks Renko.  And as the story develops and Arkady and Elena search for Karina farther afield, the body count starts to rise, beginning with the would-be mayoral candidate, and a naïve friend of Arkady’s foster son.  Will Zenhya be next?

            The bodies keep falling, and Arkady’s investigative powers are compromised by an unexpected illness – he is diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease before he leaves Moscow for the Crimea and a meeting with the elusive Karina.  And this is not a touch of melodrama for the sake of it:  Smith was diagnosed with the same disease and knows only too well whereof he speaks.  Regardless, he can still ramp up the suspense and heartbreak with the best of them, and his portrayal of contemporary events is fair and true, just like his mighty, world-weary protagonist.  FIVE STARS.

              

 

 Duffy and Son, by Damien Owens.

 

              Eugene Duffy and his son Jim live in a little Irish town south of Dublin.  Eugene has retired from his small business, a hardware shop, which is now run by Jim (as independently as he can; his Da took an age before he stopped making ‘just passing by’ drop-ins).  Eugene’s pretty but bored wife Una left when their kids – there’s an elder daughter, Eleanor – were just teenagers and hasn’t been in contact since, leaving, she said, for a more exciting life with another man who wasn’t a stick-in-the-mud like Eugene and, as this was not her first infidelity, it was time for Eugene and the kids to bite the bullet and face life without her.

            Eugene honestly concedes that his life has always been as predictable as Ireland’s rainfall;  he has always had the same job, lived in the same house – but it gradually occurs to him that son Jim is following in his safe but boring footsteps:  living in the same upstairs bedroom he occupied as a child;  going to the same school; and coming into the family business as a matter of course.  All meant to be!  But where’s the romance?  Eleanor has married Adrian,  whom Eugene detests, eventually producing Miles, a strange little boy who likes biting people (Eugene’s thigh, once attacked, still tingles at the thought), but Jim is nearing forty and, as far as Eugene can deduce, has no girlfriend on the horizon. At all.  Could he be gay?

            He could not!  Was the outraged response after a timid enquiry, thereafter giving life to a nascent plan cooked up with Eugene’s friend Frank to get Jim out into the dating world – which is not large in their little town:  Salsa lessons at the church hall will have to do for a start;  Eugene even bravely attempts the Salsa in an attempt to show  some male bonding, sadly his two left feet let him down – BUT – something happens:  Jim starts caring more about his appearance.  He goes out – ‘with the lads’ – more often.  Something’s happening!  Then Eleanor makes an announcement:  she has been in contact with her mother on Facebook:  after twenty-five years of silence Mam is coming to see them ‘just for a few days’.

            Damien Owens has made much out of little – the ‘little’ being the well-worn grooves that many people travel throughout their lives in an attempt not to experience any more hurt than they can endure, and ‘much’ being his wonderfully comic and humane characterisations of ordinary people doing just that:  trying not to be hurt – and being laugh-out-loud funny along the way.  SIX STARS.     

  

                 

 

 

Old Babes in the Wood, by Margaret Atwood.

   

          

            No-one knows more about being an old babe than Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist, poet, essayist and artist extraordinaire:  she is now eighty-three years old, and well-qualified for Old Babeism, with all the life experience (good and bad), wisdom and wonderful ability to recount stories in her graceful, effortless prose of times past and experiences yet to come.

            What a pleasure it is to read this latest collection of short stories that cover a span of seventy-odd years, loosely joined by the long, mostly happy union between Nell and Tig, a marriage that has weathered many changes-of-scene, diversity of friends and countries of residence, but always has held together by rock-solid affection – until Tig starts leaving, little by little.

            In between times, Ms Atwood entertains us enormously with imaginary conversations with George Orwell, brought into temporary being through a medium hired by Ms Atwood:  she is thrilled that he has appeared;  he is thrilled to be called – and to be speaking to someone ‘still in their meat envelope’, an expression that temporarily pauses the interview as the Great Man attempts to explain that throw-away line – and other faux-pas further along as he refers to ‘women’s books’ and is taken to task by one of the greatest writers of ‘women’s books’ for trivialising women’s literature.  Orwell responds airily ‘he hopes he hasn’t caused offence.  Women do sometimes get their backs up over trifles.’  Indeed!  He also wishes he could see Ms Atwood, but the medium has her eyes closed – ‘if only these mediums could operate with their eyes open.  As it is, this is like the telephone, with an undependable line at that’.

            We leave Mr Orwell for ‘Impatient Griselda’, a fairy tale read to a group of Earthlings by a very reluctant alien People-Minder, sent to earth as part of an intergalactic-crises aid package to deal with a plague that is sweeping the planet:  the alien informs its human charges that it’s not having a good time either for, being an entertainer and thus low-status, it is tasked with looking after them, and providing food (no, I do not have snacks for vegans.  What is vegan?) and blankets whilst it tells the story, in its own inimitable alien way, a fairy story about Griselda and her twin sister, both of whom end up eating everyone in the fairy palace. The End.  What do you mean you didn’t like it?  You even stopped whimpering.  Now you must excuse me as there are several other quarantine groups on my list who need attention.  I hope the plague will soon be over too.

            Ms Atwood’s stories are that mix of comedy and tragedy, pleasure and pathos, just as our lives are.  How blessed are we to have her chronicle so beautifully the pain – and the joy.  FIVE STARS   

   

  

 

The Empire, by Michael Ball.

 

            British singing star Michael Ball is justly famous for his starring roles in many of the great musical productions of the West End over several decades;  now he tries his hand at authoring a novel about what he loves most:  the English theatre, a particular theatre, and everything connected with it, from the theatre watch dog (Ollie) to the megarich owners – the Lassiters.

            It is 1922;  people are still reeling from the Great War and the world-wide flu epidemic.  They are all trying to recover from their losses, and what better place to start the healing process than the Empire Theatre, a lush, beautiful setting for live performances of every kind, the perfect place to make people forget their troubles for a short time.  The Empire is a true Palace of Dreams, not yet overwhelmed by the Talking Pictures, as yet in their infancy and, when faced with unfair and overwhelming competition designed to bankrupt them by a would-be buyer (he knows a good thing when he sees one!) the enthusiastic and committed staff led by the semi-absent manager’s efficient secretary Grace Hawkins and Jack Treadwell, new doorman and Ollie’s right-hand man, decide to produce a musical of their own.

            Which is an excellent idea, except no-one has a clue how to do so!  But as we all know, a journey starts with the first step:  Grace is wrangled into providing the story and musical lyrics for ‘Riviera Nights’, the adventures of a hotel-owner and his guests on (you guessed it) the Riviera:

 “ ‘I don’t know what to write for her!’

Ruby’s hand strayed around the piano again.  ‘Don’t worry, dear.  It will come.  Glamour – that’s what we want.  And make it funny.  But sad, too, of course!  With the sort of ending that people feel down into their boots.  And real, so it speaks to people’s hearts.  But light.’

‘Is that all?’ 

‘A rags-to-riches story is always good.  And of course, lots and lots of romance.’  Grace groaned.”

Which sums up the plot succinctly,  and Mr Ball’s marvellous characters, some of them endearingly larger than life.  Very few are contemptible and cruel;  even his villain follows a certain code of ethics – up to a point before he orders the blood to flow, but this charming debut novel has all the ingredients previously described and required, and there is just enough mystery at the end to hope that we can expect a sequel.  PLEASE??  FIVE STARS.