by Julia Kuttner
Based on historic events, Mr Ebershoff’s novel contains parallel memoirs set 100 years apart, dealing with the Mormon pioneers and their first charismatic leaders Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and the disillusionment and fall-out visited by their polygamy on their contemporary descendants. Ann Eliza Young, Brigham’s ‘19th’ wife, escaped Utah and her husband’s dictatorship in 1873 and thereafter campaigned vigorously through lectures and print to expose the cruel subjugation of ‘plural wifery’. More than a century later,
Twenty-year old Jordan Scott, excommunicated and dumped by the side of the road with nothing at the age of fourteen by his family’s defiantly polygamous breakaway Mormon sect returns to Mesadale in 2006 because his mother – his father’s 19th wife – is in deep trouble: his father has been shot dead, his mother has been arrested for the murder and the death penalty still applies in Utah.
Mr. Ebershoff is a very skillful writer; the action never flags; his research is painstaking and accurate; he presents his characters in the fairest light and he has written a fascinating historical page-turner where the murderer is not revealed until the very end. Which is exactly as it should be!
Highly recommended.
In the 50’s, everyone in 12-year old Gwenni’s Welsh village has secrets to which she wants answers: the trick is to be super-watchful, a discreet listener and to have the ability to ask the nonchalant but leading questions - sometimes people will let their guard down enough to satisfy her curiosity as to (1) why her mother seems perpetually irritated by Gwenni’s very presence; (2) why her mother has an intense dislike for Gwenni’s favourite person, her schoolteacher, who is married to the village wastrel, and (3) why, when the wastrel disappears (and everyone says ‘good job!’) her mother appears devastated by this turn of events.
Mari Strachan’s debut novel is a tender and funny evocation of childhood and village life, where no-one had secrets but thought they did. As with all immensely satisfying stories there is a twist to the tale at the end, and Gwenni, that singular, kind and determined little girl, will remain with the reader long after the book is finished.
Thomas Cromwell: Blacksmith, mercenary, international banker, cloth merchant, lawyer, indispensable assistant to the powerful English clergy – and king’s confidante: at a court full of the powerful and the power-hungry, this layman of uncertain origins came to wield more influence with Henry VIII than all his royal dukes combined.
It was Cromwell who was the main architect in drafting the Reformation laws separating the English church from Rome, enabling the king to claim the wealth of the catholic monasteries and religious houses as his own, and finally abolishing the need for the Pope’s permission for the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Brilliant, loyal Cromwell engineered for Henry the king’s heart’s desire: marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Hilary Mantel recreates admirably the pomp, intrigue and hypocrisy of the time and the struggles for European dominance by the rulers of France, Spain and England, but most of all she breathes wonderful life into some of the most famous and notorious characters in history: their stories have been told many times before but seldom so convincingly, or so well. - And it has just been announced that Ms. Mantel has won the Man Booker Prize for 2009 for Wolf Hall.
There can be no greater recommendation.
Shanghai, the Paris of the East, in 1937 glamorous, notorious and home to Pearl and May Chin, cosseted and pampered daughters of the wealthy owner of a chain of rickshaws. Life is perfect until their father reveals that he has gambled away the family fortune and has sold the girls into arranged marriages to clear his debts. Then the Japanese bomb Shanghai and the ignominy of their union to two strangers, Chinese American brothers, pales into insignificance as the sisters fight for their very lives in their attempts to leave their beloved city and travel to the Great Unknown, the Gold Mountain: America.
Lisa See weaves a fascinating tale of families, natal and adopted, and the inflexible obligations expected of them: love, respect,and above all unshakable loyalty to each other in the face of racism and discrimination, both overt and hidden. She evokes unforgettable images of California in the 40’s and 50’s, liberal and cosmopolitan on one hand; mortally afraid of Communism and the Yellow Peril on the other.
The story ends inconclusively, which surely indicates a sequel: One hopes Lisa See has already embarked on Part 2 – the reader musn’t be left in such suspense!
John Stone, an immensely wealthy and powerful Industrialist has fallen to his death from the second- floor window of his home – everyone believes it to be an accident except his wife, who knows of his aversion to heights and his care never to be near an upper-floor window: she is convinced he was murdered and turns to a young journalist for help in her quest for answers. Thus begins one of the most intriguing mysteries I have read in years, told in a series of flash-backs which cover several fascinating periods of 19th century history. No-one is what they seem, particularly Stone’s lovely wife Elizabeth, an elegant, titled and fiercely intelligent woman who bewitches effortlessly every man she meets, including the hapless journalist. Her origins are cloaked in mystery; is she truly Hungarian Nobility – or could she be a clever guttersnipe, whoring her way to a position of great power? Iain Pears draws us inexorably into the convoluted pathways of his plot; he is a master of lucidity, and offers a fascinating study into the nature of finance and the great global power of money as a backdrop to the machinations of his unforgettable characters, both real and fictional, for the consequences of Stone’s fall could also lead to the fall of the European banking systems – and Governments. FIVE STARS
Liam Pennywell is 61 years old and has just been ‘downsized’ from his job teaching a Grade five boys’ class at a second rate Baltimore Private School; he’s a widower from his first marriage, divorced from his second wife, and regarded with tolerant exasperation by her and their three daughters. He’s not exactly a loser, but loserdom is closing in fast, especially when he downsizes himself into a cheaper apartment in a poorer area, then is attacked and concussed by a burglar. (He forgot to lock his door.) The memory-loss of the event distresses him more than his family thinks it should; why does he try so obsessively to recall a traumatic experience that any rational person would strive to forget? Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Tyler explores Liam’s search for his memory and himself, the young philosophy student so full of hope and promise, with great subtlety and wit, peopling this gentle, funny novel with characters and situations that we can all readily recognize, and the realization that no-one can remain a spectator to the drama of their own lives; one has to become involved eventually, whether they like it or not! This was a great pleasure to read, as are all of Ms. Tyler’s novels.
Berlin, Christmas 1946: the once-proud capital of Hitler’s Reich is vanquished, bombed to smithereens , its inhabitants barely surviving in one of the coldest winters on record, and reduced to dog-eat-dog methods of survival. The narrator of this story recounts how Pavel Richter, supposedly a decommissioned GI and language expert who decided to stay on in the ruined city, becomes unwittingly involved by his best friend in the murder of a mobster who has a secret, information that the British and Russians desperately want. An almost farcical element is introduced by the fact that the mobster is a dwarf; there is a nod to Dickens with the introduction of a cast of street waifs ruled by an Artful Dodger-like character; the arch-villain is florid, torrid, hugely corpulent and most satisfyingly brilliant at crossing his I’s and dotting his T’s, and lastly, Pavel’s eventual love-interest is Sonia, The Whore with the Heart of Gold, terribly used and humiliated by the war, and willing to do anything to survive, like war victims everywhere. Sonia is drawn to Pavel’s old-fashioned aristocratic air, his courtliness and intellectual gifts – he could never kill anyone except as a combat soldier, for any reason at all, least of all in cold blood – or could he? As Vyleta’s wonderful debut novel draws to a close, we realize that Pavel is much more than the sum of his parts, and very different from surface impressions: whose side is he on? Who is giving him orders? The reader, like the characters, is inexorably drawn into the enigma that is Pavel, and what a satisfying, beautifully written mystery it is. Highly recommended.
This is a novel, based on factual events and singular women, who dared at the beginning of the 19th century to challenge male domination of science and paleontology, not because they wanted to change the accepted order of things, but because their lives as spinsters made them courageous and different, emboldened by their shared curiosity and awe at the wondrous fossils they uncovered on England’s Southwest coast at Lyme Regis. This is a story of a unique and precious friendship, that of a crossing of class barriers; Elizabeth Philpot, upper class, genteel but comparatively poor – until she meets Mary Anning, ‘a working girl’, doomed to subsist at the bottom of the heap, until her remarkable gift of hunting fossils or ‘curies’ as they were named, brings her success and fame of a kind, but not the happiness she desires. Tracy Chevalier blesses us yet again with another beautifully crafted story in the spirit of ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, the prose lucid, clear as a bell, and just as magical. As always, she brings to life with great verve the times and the historical figures of which she writes , and as always, we are reluctant to reach the end of the tale. A beautiful story, superbly written.
Ms. Wong’s debut novel is a story of morals and prejudice at the start of the 20th century in Wellington, New Zealand; prejudice against ‘the yellow peril’, Chinese immigrants allowed to enter the country to work – but not to bring their families, unless they could pay £100.0.0. poll tax, an enormous sum and virtually impossible to accomplish within any acceptable length of time. It is a story of inflexible moral standards, particularly towards women and what was regarded at that time as ‘respectable’; the fact that one’s husband beat a woman black and blue was to be expected and silently endured. If the husband drank away all the family’s money that was also no cause for complaint: the man was ruler in his own home; the king of his castle. Double standards were the norm. This story exposes the hypocrisy of the times, and recounts with great lyricism and subtlety a forbidden love which must end in tragedy. The author has researched widely and well to recount some of the signal events of the times; events which, jaded even as we are, still have the power to shock us with their savagery. Ms. Wong is a poet and her mastery of the language and the beauty of her prose are to be savoured and enjoyed. A very fine first novel. I look forward to the next.
These four novels based on Chinese classical mythology will never win any prestigious literary prizes: they are brash, predictably plotted and blood flows in torrents – BUT! (as we know, there’s always a but) - Australian Kylie Chan has hit upon a winning formula, skillfully combining modern kung-fu action with themes of warfare of the most savage kind amongst the ancient Chinese Gods, all recounted by a very exceptional (well, of course!) Australian girl who happens accidentally upon all the Heaven and Hell conflict by applying for a Nanny’s position in a very rich Hong Kong Chinese household. Over the course of the novels, Emma Donohoe becomes imbued with semi-magic powers herself and battles the forces of evil with a fine supporting cast of Gods, demi-Gods, dragons and demons (and I’m here to tell you that the Demon King is pretty hot stuff!) - but even the ‘good’ Gods are quarrelsome, promiscuous and can’t be trusted an inch. There is a fine vein of irreverent, outrageous ocker humour permeating the series, and while we know that the old Kylie is about as serious as Pauline Hanson’s last attempts to change the face of Australian politics, it must be cheerfully admitted that each book is a breathless page-turner. Ms Chan’s novels are FUN.
Rich, Dickensian and picaresque, Peter Carey’s latest novel is a delight, a masterly tale of an unlikely relationship between Olivier de Garmont, the scion of a noble French family, and the older, lowly son of an English printer, John Larrit, called Parrot because he is able to mimic perfectly the accent and language of anyone he hears. Olivier is in mortal danger for fomenting dissent and sedition in post-revolutionary Paris, and it is decided by his family to send him to America, out of harm’s way with Parrot as his secret protector, coerced and bribed into being his reluctant general factotum, but also instructed to spy on Olivier by his mother. De Garmont’s character is loosely based on Alexis de Toqueville, the French Aristrocrat who journeyed throughout America and produced an account of the mores and customs of the New Order in the New World. The cachet of de Garmont’s noble birth allows him automatic entrée to the budding salons of the new society, but it is not known if de Toqueville had a manservant similar to Parrot, who abhors Olivier’s utter lack of practicality and wishes constantly that he were elsewhere – regardless, after many shared experiences and misadventures they develop for each other a mutual respect and dependence: Olivier’s mother, the Comtesse need worry no more about her sickly, woolgathering son: Parrot, that conniving, opportunistic adventurer, is also steadfast and true; he will always be there (reluctantly!) for his aristocratic friend. A Great Read, indeed.
The Times Literary Supplement judged this novel to be one of the best books of the Decade. Written in prose as stark and beautiful as the Norwegian landscape, Mr. Petterson tells a tale of families, what keeps them together and what drives them apart, as the book’s narrator Trond, an elderly widower, surveys the memories of his boyhood just after the war. After much reflection and self-examination he solves at last some of the mysteries connected with his final summer holiday at the age of fifteen with his beloved father, a partisan and war-time member of the Norwegian Underground. Unbeknownst to Trond, his father is about to leave the family for the neighbour’s wife and this betrayal will destroy both families permanently, as does a tragic accident in which a child dies. These two shattering events are the fulcrum on which the story revolves, and Trond’s elegiac journey back to boyhood is masterfully conveyed. One reviewer said that Petterson makes each sentence do the work of ten: there can be no truer or greater praise. ‘Out Stealing Horses’ thoroughly deserves the Times Literary Supplement’s accolade.
The Wasted Vigil tells the poignant story of a British convert to Islam who has lived in Afghanistan with his muslim wife for decades. Their beloved daughter is forced to flee into hiding after trumped-up charges by the local imam put her life in danger, and thereafter begins the pattern of their lives, times of great beauty, unbearable pain and the savagery and ruthlessness of a war which has no victors. Mr. Aslam’s prose is lyrical and superb; seldom have I read of evil deeds written so beautifully, or delighted in the honeyed imagery of love, atmosphere and landscape that he depicts so well. Horrific and poignant; superlative and full of grace: don’t miss it.
Robert Harris has long had a well-deserved reputation as a writer of superior thrillers, ‘Fatherland’, Enigma’ and ‘Archangel,’ to name a few: now he turns his attention to Ancient Rome and the Republic, its consular leadership soon to be corrupted and vanquished from within by those men for whom matchless wealth and fame no longer hold excitement: ultimate power is the drug.
TALES OF THE OTORI by 
Sookie Stackhouse works in a bar in Bon Temps, Louisiana. It’s a redneck little town with a motley population – including shape-shifters, maenads…and vampires, who have now revealed themselves to the human world, thanks to a synthetic blood derivative, TrueBlood, invented by Japanese scientists which saves vampires from having to feed on their traditional human prey. Sookie is pretty unusual herself: she is telepathic, making her a very reluctant reader of whatever people are thinking in her presence – she can’t regard this unique power as a gift – it’s a curse!