MORE GREAT READS FOR MAY, 2014

Night Film, by Marisha Pessl

The remarks sheet on this library book had only one comment from a previous reader:  ‘weird’. 

And it is, in that the plot generates terrific momentum for a good two thirds of the story, then winds down to a conclusion that is hardly satisfying – at least for me.  The author’s intentions are clear (maybe!):  she has created her story as metaphor for the works of her shadowy and reclusive protagonist Stanislas Cordova, world famous film director, auteur and recluse, unseen since a 1977 Rolling Stone interview.  He specialises in the suspense and horror genre, maintaining that everyone should ‘travel to the edge of the end, for mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love.  It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are.  Will you step back and cover your eyes?  Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?’

Needless to say, Mr Cordova has a cult following, strengthened by his secrecy and the fact that all his films are made on a huge Gothic estate he owns in upstate New York – he is the perfect subject for famed investigative reporter Scott McGrath to delve into after McGrath receives a mysterious phone call telling him that ‘Cordova does bad things to children’.  Unfortunately, his curiosity earns him a career-destroying lawsuit, the breakup of his marriage and a wish never to hear the director’s name again – until he reads of the death of Ashley Cordova, the director’s 24 year old daughter, a possible suicide.

Call him fatally curious after all the wrath Cordova has already visited upon him, but Ashley’s death excites Scott’s interest again in a way that nothing has since his disgrace:  he HAS to establish to his own satisfaction that her fall down a lift shaft in an abandoned building was an accident, suicide – or murder.

As his investigation progresses (aided by her ex boyfriend and a hat-check girl, one of the last people to see her alive) dark magic starts to surface:  it appears that Ashley has been marked by the devil and her death was owed to the Evil One for services rendered to her father.  Ms Pessl by this time has the reader by the throat – she can generate suspense and a lowering dread with the best of them, and as an added fillip the reproduction of notes and photographs from Scott’s comprehensive files bring the reader deep into the story.  As a literary device this is quite a novelty.  I have never been more intrigued by a plot after seeing various photos of Ashley and reading newspaper reports (mock-ups of the New York Times and TIME Magazine, no less!) of her prodigious musical gifts and the Police Report on her death:  it gives a great verisimilitude to the plot – until Scott’s investigations lead him into a maze of false starts, dead ends and trails that bring him inexorably back to the beginning.  He is a hamster on a wheel.

And so is the reader, snagged in an insoluble mystery of the fictional film director’s own making.  Each discovered revelation obscures something else, right up to the final page – where all should be explained, but isn’t.

We are forced to draw our own conclusions, as in a classic Cordova film.  The previous reader thought that Ms Pessl’s book was ‘weird’, and I can understand why:  I’ve never read anything like this before either, but I salute the writer’s many attempts to flummox and trick us, at the same  time wondering if it was really necessary – her overuse of italics, too, nearly drove me mad!

Neverthless, her powerful imagery and her creation of a protagonist in Stanislas Cordova who dominates in spite of his absence, every page of this book, must be commended.  But how many readers will last the distance?  I am sure Ms Pessl enjoyed writing this book.  I wish I could say I enjoyed reading it. 

Heartland, by Jenny Pattrick

Donny Mac is on his way home to Manawa, a tiny village at the foot of Mt. Ruapehu on the central plateau of the North Island of New Zealand.  He has just served a six-month sentence for grievous bodily harm, charges brought by the overprotective mother of an old ‘schoolmate’, someone who has taunted and bullied him since he was a child – but Donny Mac doesn’t care now:  he has completed an anger management course;  still has his job as a shelf-packer at Manawa’s New World supermarket;  a little home his late grandfather left him and a place in the local rugby team, possible future winners of the regional championship.  His life is on an even keel again and he is happy – childishly so, for Donny Mac is regarded as slow;  ‘ a few sandwiches short of a picnic’ and ‘not the sharpest knife in the drawer’, but he dearly loves Manawa and everyone in it  - except for all the townies, who turn up during the ski season on Ruapehu, having bought up all the old mill houses for use as their holiday accommodation.  No local likes the townies who disrupt their quiet way of life with speeding SUV’s and raucous parties, but they accept them as a necessary evil, for Manawa is dying.  The timber mills are closed, there are no jobs and all the young folk have left to look for work in the big cities, as has happened in countless other once-thriving communities.  At least the townies spend money when they come to ski on Ruapehu, enabling the village to stutter along for another year.

Yes, Donny Mac can’t wait to get home – until he finds that his house has been appropriated in his absence by Nightshade, the local slut, drunk most of the time, and hugely pregnant – ‘ and the baby’s yours, you ##@$!!’  Which in all fairness, is drawing a very long bow:  given her non-existent reputation, the hapless baby could belong to any one of the local youths, but after being rejected by them all, she has settled on poor slow Donny Mac as a last desperate resort.  She has been abandoned by everyone.  He is her only chance of support.

And support her he does, much against the wishes and counselling of his true friends, people who love him and worry about him and wish that his life could be better, and that is the crux of this charming story:  the fellowship of a tight-knit community;  their heartfelt affection for each other regardless of blood-ties, and their wildly desperate solutions to frightening problems.

Jenny Pattrick is a firm favourite with New Zealand readers.  Her ‘Denniston Rose’ trilogy is fast becoming a classic of popular fiction, similarly the beautiful ‘Landings’ and while there are a couple of her titles that I thought weren’t up to her very high standard she has hit her mark once again with ‘Heartland’.  It is a heartwarmer of a tale in the very best sense of the word, and the only complaint I can make is that I finished it too quickly – I didn’t want to leave Donny Mac, Vera, Bull and the Misses Macaneny, finely drawn characters that will stay with the reader long after the story is finished.  Highly recommended.                

GREAT READS FOR MAY, 2014

An officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris

France, January 1895:  convicted spy and traitor, army Captain Alfred Dreyfus is publicly humiliated before a crowd of thousands, there to watch him being stripped of his military insignia, sword broken and spirit crushed by the righteous condemnation of all French citizens.  Unfortunately the French army, who had hoped its popularity -  so diminished by their defeat and loss of Alsace/Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 -  would soar after the capture of this Jewish turncoat, is forced to witness an impassioned statement of innocence from the accused:  ‘Soldiers, they are degrading an innocent man …. Soldiers, they are dishonouring an innocent man …. Long live France …. Long live the army’.  Then he is marched along each of the four sides of the huge square, enduring the abuse and hatred of all,  before being taken to prison.  His public degradation is complete.

A reluctant witness to Dreyfus’s shame is Major Georges Picquart, there at the wish of the Minister of War, who, unable to attend the event by protocol, wants a full and frank account of proceedings.  Picquart makes such a good impression on the Minister that he is promoted to Colonel and given command of the Statistics Department, a euphemism for France’s intelligence operations.  He is delighted!  He is now the youngest colonel in the army and he applies himself to his new duties with all the zeal of the new broom – and therein lies his downfall:  he becomes too good at his job.

Georges starts innocently enough, reviewing the intelligence work of his ailing predecessor but his diligence gradually reveals alarming discrepancies in the evidence against Dreyfus, and the emergence of another army officer who appears to be in the pay of the German Embassy.

Georges is not an advocate, nor even an admirer of Dreyfus who has by now been sent to Hell in the shape of Devil’s Island in the North Atlantic, there to suffer as the only prisoner unimaginable torment from the elements, lack of contact with his beloved family and complete silence from his guards – but despite possessing the same anti-semitic bias as his contemporaries Georges has his own code of honour:  something is badly amiss in his department and the wrong man has been suffered an appalling fate.

However, all efforts to alert his superiors to the dreadful miscarriage of justice fall on stony ground.  At first he is gently admonished to let ‘sleeping dogs lie’, but when he exposes the real spy he is threatened with the end of his army career – the worst of fates for Georges;  the army is his life, his love and the air that he breathes – until the air becomes foul.

Robert Harris’s novelised account of France’s Great Shame is narrated by Georges Picquart, a complex figure who rose to great heights in the Army and plummeted to huge depths in his efforts to expose the terrible injustice perpetrated on the wrong man, relentlessly exposing the army General Staff in their attempts to cover up their shoddy errors, ineptitude and anti-semitism.  Mr Harris’s fine writing and exhaustive, impeccable research brings every character to thrilling life and illustrates perfectly the prevailing French view of the time: ‘Hmph – a  Jew traitor – and a rich one:  what can you expect?  They’re all the same, loyal to no-one but themselves.’

Highly recommended.

The Gospel of Loki, by Joanne Harris

For lovers of fantasy, here is the ultimate:  a retelling of the old Norse legends of the Gods led by Odin the One-eyed, master of disguise and ruler of Asgard, glittering and all-powerful sky-kingdom, impregnable against attack from its many enemies – until Odin after a secret journey to the underworld, returns with Loki.

Loki, father of lies;  Loki, the mischief-maker;  Loki, uncontrollable essence of Wildfire;  Loki, plotter par excellence – you get the picture?  The introduction of Loki into Asgard was not a good idea!

Joanne Harris is known for a body of work that is completely different:  the smash hit novel and film ‘Chocolat’, its sequel ‘The Lollipop Shoes’ followed by ‘Peaches for Monsieur le Curé’ (see 2012 review below) and various other novels that have a great readership.  Now she tries her hand at recounting a story already told myriad times – with a 21^st century twist:  Loki is a good dude!  Just a little misunderstood is all, and any mischief that points to him (and there is SO much) is inclined to brushed off with ‘So shoot me.  I can’t help it.  It’s my nature.’  Which is absolutely right, but according to Ms Harris’s version – sorry, Loki’s;  he’s the narrator – Loki burns with resentment at the less than tepid welcome he receives from the established Gods of Asgard, who treat him like the upstart and outsider that he will always be, even after he demonstrates considerable intelligence and guile in getting them what they want.

They want what he can get them, but they don’t want him.

Loki has his own descriptions for the Gods he calls the Popular Crowd:

Thor, the Thunderer.  Likes hitting things.  Not a fan of Yours Truly.

Balder, god of peace.  Yeah, right. Known as Balder the Fair.  Handsome, sporty, popular.  Sound a little smug to you?  Yes, I thought so too.

Freyja, goddess of desire.  Vain, petty and manipulative.  Will sleep with practically anyone as long as jewellery is involved.

Frey, the Reaper.  Twin brother of the above.  Not a bad guy, but a fool for blondes.

Mani, the Moon.  Drives a cool car.

Sol, the Sun.  Drives a hot car.

And so on.

Yes, Loki has their number and in time decides to bring those ingrates to heel, to teach them a lesson as only he can.  Odin swore to be a brother to him when he lured him away from the underworld, but hasn’t fulfilled this vow to Loki’s satisfaction:  the twilight of the gods is nigh, and Loki, Bringer of Light – and Destruction – will be the instrument of Ragnarok:  oh, it’s going to be a Conflagration felt in every corner of the Nine Worlds and absolutely EVERYONE will be sorry they were’nt nicer to Loki, so there!

Ms Harris has given us a rollicking, amoral anti-hero in her version of Loki the Destroyer;  he is shameless, hedonistic, ruthless (so shoot me, it’s my nature), but never less than enormously entertaining:  he’s, like, totally FUN!

Highly recommended.

Peaches for Monsieur le Curé

This is the third of Joanne Harris’s novels about Vianne Rocher, that beautifully eccentric, fey and footloose weaver of magic and maker of superb confections.  We first met her in ‘Chocolat’, Ms. Harris’s 1999 runaway best-seller, where she opens a chocolaterie in French village Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, only to gain the hatred of the local priest, who convinced himself that she was a witch – and he wasn’t entirely wrong. She also finds love with Roux, a gypsy who travels the waterways of France before they both move on to Paris and another chocolaterie in ‘The Lollipop Shoes’.  In that story Vianne and her little family are threatened with great harm but survive to continue charming peoples’ palates and dreams with her wonderful chocolates – until she receives a message from the dead to bring her back to Lansquenet: the curé, father Reynaud, the enemy who drove her on from that village is now in sore need of help – hers.  Not that he would ask.

It has been eight years since Vianne left Lansquenet and much has changed.  New people have arrived to settle in the village:  Muslims.  At first, all was well:  Lansquenet is not intolerant and while not rolling out a brass band welcome to strangers is not shunning the new arrivals either.  Everyone rubs along well enough – until Monsieur le Curé objects to the creation of a minaret in an old water tower:  it breaks local noise regulations, he says, but really he finds it a personal offence to hear that foreign chanting in competition to his church bells.  The priest and the local Muslim leader are on a collision course.

More sinister events occur – the curé finds that his position as village priest is being eroded from within when dissatisfied parishioners feel that they need a ‘21^st century man of God’:  father Reynaud feels the winds of change and they are chilling.

Ms. Harris writes very well of bigotry and racism.  She does not shy away from examining the actions and reactions of one culture as it pits itself against another, and portrays only too clearly the evil that men can perpetrate in the name of religion.  Her countless fans will find this third ‘episode’ in Vianne Rocher’s travels as satisfying as the first two, but I have to say that a very pat and convenient fate for two of the major characters was a disappointment and less than worthy of a writer of Ms. Harris’s talents:  my first thought was that she had grown tired of her story and wanted to give it a quick and tidy ending.  So far I haven’t changed my mind.

  

     

EVEN MORE GREAT READS FOR APRIL, 2014

My Notorious Life, by Kate Manning

Madame X, as all the newspapers of the day called her, was a notorious midwife and abortionist plying her dreadful trade in Nineteenth century New York.  Constantly reviled by the Press, her name was connected to all kinds of crimes, even murder:  she was eventually arrested but committed suicide before she was forced to stand trial.  After her death it was discovered that she and her husband had amassed a huge personal fortune – not only from ‘murdering the innocent’, but manufacturing and successfully selling all types of potions for ‘female complaints.’  By the end of her life, Madame X had profited handsomely from the misfortunes of her gender, but was powerless to withstand the united opposition of the entirely male medical profession, men who believed without question that women were put on earth only to bear children – and serve men.  Nothing and no-one should try to change the status quo.

Kate Manning has taken up the cudgels on behalf of Madame X, transforming her real-life travails into a gripping novel narrated by Ann ‘Axie’ Muldoon, called Axie because she is always asking questions.  She and her sister and brother are the children of impoverished Irish immigrants, come to New York to find the crock of gold but experiencing instead poverty and discrimination much worse than that which forced them from Ireland.  The slums in which they live teem with filthy, starving children, desperate women and men who drink away their little money so that they won’t have to face the dire straits in which they live.

When the story opens, Axie and her two siblings are begging outside a bakery shop.  Their father has died in a work accident and their Mam has been terribly injured by a mangle at a laundry and it has been days since any of them have eaten – until a kind gentleman buys them bread at the bakery, then takes them back to see poor Mam in the evil tenement:  Mam’s condition is dire, and she consents to her three babies being  taken to an orphanage, then sent ‘out West’, to be adopted into kind families who are childless but will love them as their own.  What choice does she have?  Reverend Brace of the Children’s Aid Society is there to offer a solution, but poor Mam implores Axie not to let her brother and sister out of her sight:  they must all stay together, promise, promise!  And Axie does, making the promise that will haunt her for the rest of her life, for the promise is soon broken ‘out West’;  brother and sister are taken to separate homes, but nobody wants Axie:  at twelve she is no longer malleable – and she has a mouth on her that people don’t like:  she is sent back to New York city as a malcontent.  She will have to find work, and her own way in the world.  And that is the stuff of this marvellous novel:  Axie’s attempts to survive – and prosper;  her ceaseless quest to find her lost brother and sister so that she can fulfil the vow she made to her beloved Mam, and to try by whatever means possible to make the lot of women less onerous – she is one of the very early advocates of birth control and is not afraid to expose the male hypocrisy of sowing the seed but avoiding the harvest.

Kate Manning has created a wonderful protagonist in Axie Muldoon.  She is the perfect herald of changing times; she is hilarious, bumptious, loud and vulgar – but true to herself and her loved ones in heart and mind.  Well done, Ms Manning:  Madame X and her times have been well served.  Highly recommended.

The Chase, by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

Oh dear.  I was so sure that Book # 2 would be a vast improvement on Book # 1 (see September 2013 book review below) that I looked forward to reading ‘The Chase’ and the return of FBI agent Kate O’Hare and her impossibly attractive nemesis Nicholas Fox, allies in the war against crime, despite the fact that Nicholas is on the FBI’s Most Wanted List of Criminals.  The first book had a lot of rough edges, not least the uneasy differences in prose styles (‘you can take over now, Lee – it’s my coffee break.’) which should never have been so obvious;  in the second book the seams are not showing as much but:  WHERE’S THE ACTION???

I am the first to admit to being picky when it comes to pacing and plotting, but when you consider that the authors have lined up heavy artillery (literally!) in the shape of rocket-launchers and drones, the action should have been incendiary, to say the least.  Sadly, the reader doesn’t get beyond an amble to the final page, with only an occasional snicker at one-liners that don’t appear often enough.

Our sexually repressed crime-fighters (no, nothing has happened yet, despite Nick’s determined efforts:  Agent Kate has her tin nickers on, and he doesn’t have a can opener) are now on the trail of a fine art thief who used to be White House Chief of Staff – he is also the Boss of Bosses of a huge security firm called BlackRhino (does that ring any bells?) and he is utterly ruthless in his pursuit of his own wicked ends.  Just like real life!  Our crime-fighting duo must bring him to justice, the only fly in the ointment being Nick’s inherent love of crime:  all the wonderful art that has been purloined has a fatal fascination for our arch-criminal, and it is up to Whiter-than-white Agent O’Hare to restrain him from temptation.  Absurd as this plotting may sound, it could have worked (even the presence at the climax of Kate’s elderly Mission Impossible Dad and his seedy old mates) if the plot hadn’t sprung a slow leak somewhere along the line.  I haven’t had the pleasure of reading Mr Goldberg’s solo efforts, but I feel that either of the authors would have fared better if they hadn’t combined their talents.  I am sure there will be a third book, for Ms Evanovich’s name is a powerful drawcard  but can’t say if I will send myself to sleep for a third time – thrillers should have the opposite effect.   

The Heist, by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

I have been a devoted fan of Ms Evanovich and her bungling bounty hunter Stephanie Plum (not to mention Stephanie’s sidekick ,former ‘Ho Lula, now an inept filing clerk but magnificently unaware of her shortcomings:  what a neat character!) since ‘One for the Money’.  Ms Evanovich has now reached # 20 in the series, the latest being ‘Takedown Twenty’, a treat I have yet to enjoy.  In between times, she tries her hand with other characters and now she has teamed up with Lee Goldberg (so sorry, Mr Goldberg – despite the stellar qualifications you enjoy in the book jacket notes you are a man of mystery to me) to produce a new set of ongoing characters in ‘The Heist’, the story of goodies and baddies collaborating in an uneasy partnership to catch the ultimate Ponzi schemer, an investment banker who has skipped the U.S.A. with $500 million.  His whereabouts are now unknown.

All well and good:  the bones of the plot are sound.  the FBI figure that it takes a conman to know one and help them apprehend Mr Banker, so make a deal with Nick Fox, a crook they have just jailed, thanks to the determined -  not to say obsessive - efforts of their agent Kate O’Hare to Bring Him to Justice:  a phony escape is arranged and Mr Fox makes his getaway as part of the deal.  The only fly in the ointment is that no-one kept Agent O’Hare in the loop:  she is dancing with rage – puce with it, and decides that that S.O.B. is not going to get away from her.  He is not going to outsmart her.  Even if she has to kill him she will bring him back alive!

Fair enough.  The only problem is the writing.  The first chapters are just about the klunkiest things in print:  Agent Kate is slim, trim,  an ex-Navy seal, trained to a standstill in myriad different ways to kill.  Naturally, she is blonde and possesses sparkling blue eyes.  As an added bonus her Dad is also an ex intel operative, with favours owed to him all over the globe from his many secret missions on behalf of the U.S.  He rescues her a lot, which is good because it keeps his clandestine skills honed and besides, it gets him out of the house.

Nick Fox is charming, irrepressible and a lover of the high life.  Naturally, he has windswept brown hair, dark brown eyes and a lazy smile.  And formidable, crooked skills that enable him to pull off breathtaking crimes of absurdity.  Just like real life!

The only requirement to make all this silliness work is that the writing must be credible – and seamless, and that doesn’t happen until at least chapter six, before which it is almost possible to tell when either or is saying, ‘well, you can have a turn now’.  Because I am so familiar with Ms Evanovich’s style it was pretty easy to work out when she was at the helm, and as always, the minor characters are great fun, and fans of hers take heart:  there are twenty seven more chapters to go and it does get better.  Despite the wild plotting (including lightning fast trips to Greece, Berlin, Bali and other more remote Indonesian islands, where Agent Kate’s Dad gets to quote geographical info about each destination with Wikipedia-like ease – oh, the joys of cutting and pasting!) Nick and Kate Get Their Man, no-one gets rubbed out except the bad guys, and Kate’s dad has so much time away from home that he’s looking forward to his former life as an Old Fart.

It’s a sure thing that a sequel will be planned; I just hope that by the time it appears, all the rough edges of this new partnership will have disappeared and what was a fun concept becomes a great series.   

GREAT READS FOR APRIL, 2014

Shame and the Captives, by Tom Keneally

August, 1944:  in a Prisoner of War camp on the outskirts of the New South Wales town of Cowra, Australia an uprising by the Japanese captives occurred.  When it was eventually subdued, more than 200 lives had been lost and 500 prisoners had escaped into the surrounding farmland, to be recaptured eventually by soldiers and local inhabitants.  The instigators of the rebellion had ordered that no prisoner must harm any townspeople or farmers if they were to come into contact with them, and this was honoured, but the main reason for the uprising seemed to be a mass death-wish;  an attempt to force the barbarians who held them captive to kill them, rather than experience any longer the humiliation of captivity.

Booker Award-winning author Thomas Keneally brings powerfully to life the whole episode, transplanting the P.O.W. camp to the fictional farming town of Gawell and expertly re-creating characters and situations to evoke the harshness of the winter environment – ‘this barbarous country where it is so cold but it never snows’ – the boredom and resentment of thousands of angry men;  and the yawning gulf in cultural understanding between them and their captors.

Tengan is one of the Japanese elite;  a destroyer pilot who was forced to crash-land his faltering bomber off the coast of New South Wales, only to endure the unimaginable shame of being captured by aborigines and turned in to the local authorities.  He is one of the first to be sent to the camp at Gawell, followed by other soldiers who had fought in the Chinese campaign in Manchukuo and the Pacific, warriors all who expected to die in battle as the emperor and the Gods instructed:  to exist in ignominious captivity is a shame too great to be borne.

There are other nationalities imprisoned at the camp:  several thousand Italians, Formosans, Indonesians and Koreans, but their philosophy and cultural make-up is different and more accommodating - the Italians are considered so reliable that local farmers can apply to have them as farm workers – ‘ Yair, they’re not bad jokers for Dagoes’:  yes, every other nationality in the camp tolerates their imprisonment markedly better than those who expected to die gloriously for the Gods and the Emperor.  Unless they can mount a last suicidal attack against their despised captors, the Japanese prisoners will not only have disgraced their families and country, but also their ancestors:  the die is cast.

Mr Keneally writes masterfully of war, his novel ‘The Daughters of Mars’ (see review below – what a great book!) being a perfect example, and he doesn’t fail us here.  His characters are compelling, not least the young woman with a P.O.W. husband in Austria, who, whilst living with her farmer father-in-law embarks on a doomed affair with their Italian prisoner farmworker;  the fraught relationship between the camp commandant and his second in command;  and the utter contempt felt by the Japanese for any kindness shown by their captors.  Mercy can be only regarded by them as weakness.

Mr Keneally is a writer of superlative quality, and each book is a pleasure.  Highly recommended.

The Daughters of Mars, by Thomas Keneally

It is 1914 and Australia, as a Commonwealth member country loyal to the British Empire, is gearing for war.  Country nurses Naomi and Sally Durance are sisters but Naomi has moved to Sydney from their farming home to work in a  big city hospital while Sally works in the local hospital of her home town.  They are rivals, not least because their parents appear to favour Naomi in Sally’s eyes, and she is also resentful that her elder sister is living a life she wishes for herself.  Sally is not happy to be regarded as the family spinster, consigned to the care of her dying mother while their father buries his concern in farm work, and when the call for nurses to sign up to care for any wounded in ‘the War that Will be Over by Christmas’ is issued, Sally takes her chance:  both sisters are accepted, but leave for Cairo weighed down by their mother’s death and an act of mercy in which they are both complicit:  for Sally at least, mercy weighs heavy and sleep is troubled;  even the novelty of their new, alien surroundings in Cairo fail to blot out the secret she and Naomi share -  until they are posted onto the hospital ship ‘Archimedes’ and sent to Gallipoli, that tiny Turkish peninsular where all the brave Diggers ‘each one worth ten Turks!’ are sent to scale the cliffs from the beach and win the peninsular, in theory gaining a good foothold against their Turkish adversaries.

Thus begins one of the cruellest debacles of World War One, forever deplored and enshrined in Australia and New Zealand as a Day of Remembrance:  Anzac Day.

The battle for Gallipoli is a disaster from the start, men being used as cannon fodder by inept and arrogant commanders, fighting for territory that is impregnable and defended by experienced Turkish soldiers fighting on their home ground, secure in the belief that each Turk is ‘worth ten Anzacs!’

For the sisters and their colleagues, trying to care for the floods of wounded ferried out to the ‘Archimedes’ in a constant stream is like a perpetual waking nightmare – never in their experience have they been confronted with such horror, such terrible wounds – such anguish.  Life and death become reduced to the barest essence, and overriding everything is the grief all feel for the senseless, sinful waste, the slaughter of patriotic eager young men by commanders who have inherited their ranks but not the intelligence to match, for nine months later, the Gallipoli campaign is over ( ‘didn’t succeed, don’t you know)’ and all remaining troops are withdrawn, only to be sent to the Western Front.

The sisters and their colleagues are sent too, plunged again into the awful mayhem of agony and destruction, but with the results of a new weapon to contend with:  poison gas.  The adage ‘War is Hell’ has never been more true.

Mr Keneally writes with great power of this terrible time in history;  his prose is starkly beautiful and his characters are vivid and all too human, especially the men Sally and Naomi eventually pledge themselves to:  the dreadful art of war has never been more finely portrayed and ‘living for the moment’ has never held more urgency.

Mr Keneally has written a literary masterwork that has been a privilege to read:  not to be missed.

LAST GREAT READS FOR MARCH, 2014

The Last Days of the National Costume, by Anne Kennedy

Auckland city, 1998.  A huge power outage has occurred, shutting off electricity to thousands of residents, and bringing Auckland to the unwelcome attention of the world:  ‘I mean to say, what modern first-world city on the planet blacks out its entire CBD?  And for weeks on end?’

GoGo Sligo (yes, I know;  awful, isn’t it,  but there is an explanation for Megan’s ghastly nickname – I just don’t know why the author stayed with it.) and her husband Art (Arthur) Frome live in the inner city, in a grace-and-favour villa provided by his wealthy parents.  He is a PHD student nearing completion of his dissertation and GoGo, a university drop-out, occupies herself with a small business, repairing and embroidering various garments for private customers and designers.  Their life is comfortably secure and pleasant, not least because every month a cheque arrives from Art’s grandmother the family matriarch, ensuring that living on the smell of an oily rag is both unseemly and unnecessary.

Life is good, pre power-outage:  GoGo’s business is humming along well enough, and because she works with her hands, she allows her mind free-range speculation about her clientele:  ‘Blouse, cream silk, torn front placket’ translates into ‘Desperate hurry, sex.’  ‘Jacket, man’s sports, navy, cigarette burn’ becomes ‘Late night, yacht club, gazing at woman.’  ‘Blazer, school, torn front panel’ is ‘Boy, innocent.’  And so on.  She is almost always right, for GoGo’s customers usually end up confiding in her – her honest face?  The calming atmosphere of her little workroom?  Who can say, but GoGo takes a certain mordant pleasure in her powers of deduction, and when an Irish national costume is brought in with a ripped shoulder seam by a punky woman who could hardly be described as the owner of the costume, GoGo is suitably intrigued.  The customer has no information about the costume which is obviously old, an heirloom that needs extensive repair to restore it to its former glory, but GoGo takes on the job, certain that she will ferret out its mysteries sooner or later.

The mysteries reveal themselves all too soon:  she is visited first by a business man who wants to collect the repaired costume, and while he is there his wife also arrives, demanding to know if GoGo has had an Irish national costume in for repair:  it is an heirloom for her daughter and she saw a person of her husband’s acquaintance wearing it in the supermarket!  For reasons inexplicable to her GoGo denies she has the costume and doesn’t reveal the presence of the woman’s husband in her workroom:  she is now complicit in Punk and Businessman’s deception and morally no better than they who practised the deceit.

And things don’t improve:  the inner city power outage occurs, knee-capping her business (sewing machines can’t work without power);  she lies to the businessman, telling him that the costume is not ready because she hopes at first that he will confide (as they always do) in her about his adulterous relationship – she makes him return several times with the promise that it will be ready – and confess he does, but he tells her his family history, his Irish childhood in Belfast – and completely ensnares her mind and her heart, until GoGo is a Gone Goose.  (Well, what a stupid name.  Anyone called GoGo deserves everything she gets.)

Anne Kennedy has given us a story of very uneven quality.  GoGo is a charming, gossipy narrator, witty and sharply observant of everyone’s foibles but her own;  however, I found her reasons for delaying the return of the costume entirely unconvincing – certainly insufficient on which to hang the plot.  Conversely, her client’s narrative of his Belfast childhood and the family’s reasons for leaving were gripping heart-in-the-mouth stuff, and her account (all true) of a big city without electricity is first class.

GoGo’s husband Art, privileged young scion of the squattocracy is absent for large parts of the story, despite the importance to the plot of his family’s eventual fall from wealth and grace.  For Ms Kennedy’s story to succeed on all levels he should have been given the spotlight he deserved:  he is a character just as fallible as GoGo and the businessman, but more likeable.

It is a shame that such a good plot has so many glaring inconsistencies.  If Ms Kennedy’s characters had been more credible (GoGo:  give me a break!!) this good novel would have been much, much better.

By Blood we Live, by Glen Duncan

With his first two novels in this trilogy, ‘The Last Werewolf’ and ‘Talulla Rising’ (see July 2012 review below) Glen Duncan raised the bar for all aspiring horror writers:  no-one does bloody and gory better than he, nor do his characters enjoy themselves more as they rip and chomp their way through hapless humans with mindless delight – there ain’t nothin’ like it, especially as feeding on humans is vital to their existence.  By Blood We Live:  there is no other way.

Unfortunately, humans are starting to resent being torn to pieces at full moon, and they are even less enthused at being drained of blood by vampires every three days.  (Vampires have a withering contempt for werewolves; they regard them as merely part-timers, not serious in their vocation.)  Yes, humans are starting to strike back in the form of the Militi Christi, the Soldiers of Christ, an organisation funded by the Catholic Church and bent on exterminating with silver bullets and wooden stakes every monster it can lay its hands on.

Needless to say, this is nothing new – monsters have been fair game for hundreds of years, hunted by various arbiters of good versus evil – but this time the Militi Christi (thought by uncharitable monsters to be formed by the church to take the heat off all the accusations of child abuse)  seem to have vast numbers and superior intelligence-gathering that the werewolves in particular find baffling and devastating, especially when they are felled by silver bullets.

It is time for werewolves and vampires to unite in a common cause:  survival.  

Remshi, the oldest vampire in existence (20,000 years and bowing under the weight of all that ‘life’ experience) is looking for werewolf Talulla Demetriou, not only to form a future alliance, but because he is convinced that she is the reincarnation of one of his lovers from long ago;  his great and only love, despite feeling enormous affection for his ward Justine, an abused young prostitute he rescued from the streets.

As with the first two books, the action never flags, and Mr Duncan rubs the reader’s nose in all the sins of the world;  there is no escape from human degradation – in fact, the monsters come off, if not squeaky clean (how could they, butchers all?) but a lot more honest and free from hypocrisy in their lifestyle.

Having said that, I still found the continuous action, the ‘search and destroy at all costs’ to be overkill:  Mr Duncan’s enormous intellectual skill and delight in presenting his monsters as the good guys is intriguing, though hardly unusual in the ‘bonk and bite’ genre;  despite his wonderful, anarchic characters and their predicament, there will be an all-out war:  will evil prevail?  And who are evil -  the monsters or the Soldiers of God?  WHAT is evil?  Mr Duncan asks all these questions, but provides no satisfactory answers.  Regardless, he has produced yet again an enormously entertaining  book, perhaps not an ideal end to his trilogy, but commendable and highly readable.  You be the judge.             

 Talulla Rising, by Glen Duncan

I have been waiting for Glen Duncan to write his sequel to ‘The last Werewolf’ for what seems like ages, but It wasn’t, really :  he has turned out #2 in record time because (he says in a very funny interview in the NYTimes) that he needs the money – presumably to keep the wolf from his door (sorry, sorry!) -  and fair enough, as long as the quality of writing doesn’t suffer.  Well, I’m happy to report that all is well in Mr. Duncan’s anarchic and bloodthirsty world of monsters big and small.  He brings a refreshing literary talent to the relatively new ‘bonk and bite’ book style – there are so many of them these days that very few break the bounds of boring predictability:  Duncan’s 9 foot killing machines and smelly vampires are a breath of fresh air (if it wasn’t so laden with blood) in what is fast becoming a very tired genre.

Jake Marlowe, The eponymous Last Werewolf, was killed at the end of the first book;  unbeknownst to him, his lover Talulla Demetriou manages to survive the attack that ends his 200 year-old existence – and she is pregnant with his twins.  She is helped to hide from countless enemies by Cloquet, a former enemy and perennial loser who becomes her helpmeet and staunch ‘minder’;  she gives his life the sense of purpose it has always lacked – after all, it’s a big job to find a suitable victim for slaughter every month when the moon rises.  Not everyone can do it!

Unfortunately for Talulla, word of her pregnancy has reached some very unsavoury (and smelly) ears:  it is believed by a certain cult of vampires that the consumption of a werewolf baby at a certain time of the year will give them the ability to march around in daylight, instead of dissolving into an odiferous puddle of ash as soon as the sun hits them.  Talulla is a marked woman/werewolf, captured and completely disabled by the nasties as she is giving birth and forced to watch helplessly as the vampires make off with her little son. Luckily (depending on which way you look at it) the kidnappers were unaware – as was she! – that another child was on its way:  Talulla’s little girl is spared the same fate as her twin.

Thereafter begins a mad pursuit through Europe to try to track down Talulla’s enemies before they destroy her child, and on the way she encounters to her utter astonishment other werewolves,  all new -  it seems Jake was a little careless in his ‘relations’ with a certain prostitute, who in turn managed to infect several other people:  Werewolves rule, Dude!

Mr. Duncan’s plotting is bombproof:  in case the reader wonders where our hairy heroine gets the money to charge around the planet recruiting allies and helpers, well, Jake left her his considerable fortune, amassed over two hundred years, for a start.  No matter how many times I looked for a ‘Yeah, right!’ slipup I never found one;  the action never flags and some great new characters have been added to the mix.  I’m happy to say that this is that rare thing:  a sequel that packs just as much punch as the first, and is just as engaging.  And Glen Duncan can’t end things there because (by his own admission) he needs the money!  All to the good, I say.  Highly recommended.

     

MORE GREAT READS FOR MARCH, 2014

Then We Take Berlin, by John Lawton

John (known as Joe) Holderness is a Cockney wide boy, a thief trained to the nth degree by his grandfather Abner, who adopts him when his alcoholic mother is killed by a German bomb whilst enjoying a lunchtime G and T at the local pub.  Joe has many things stacked against him, not least his East End origins and the bestiality of his father, a soldier who returns infrequently from battle to take out the horrors and evil of war on his 13 year old son.  Life, especially during the London blitz would be unendurable were it not for the home of sorts provided by his grandfather, and Joe’s love of reading – the best form of escapism ever.  (And I’m sure every dedicated reader knows that.)  He is a ‘word child’:  he has a gift for languages ; he can imitate successfully any accent;  he is  a boy of ferocious intelligence but devoid of scruples – in short,  he is the perfect apprentice thief.  And he is an apt pupil.

All continues as normal in Joe’s world until Abner has a fatal accident, and necessity dictates a change of address;  the war has come to an end but Joe’s draft papers arrive, and he is sent to the Royal Air Force, there to stir up so much trouble that he is constantly in ‘the glasshouse’ for insubordination – until his many and doubtful talents come to the attention of Lt. Col. Burne-Jones, an intelligence officer who sees in Joe his true calling:  cat burglar and spy for the British Secret Service.  After a crash course in German and Russian, he is despatched to Hamburg, ostensibly as a clerk, but also to check on various citizens who swear they endured six years of the Nazis without becoming one of them.

Germany:  broken country of ruined cities and a vanquished and traumatised population – the perfect breeding ground for rackets and the black market.  Joe the Chancer is in his element.  There is money to be made, quite apart from his clandestine activities on behalf of His Majesty.  He’s as happy as the proverbial pig in shite – and then he meets Nell.

Nell, short for Christina Helene von Raeder Burkhardt, patriotic Berliner and aristocratic German , and at twenty already a victim of tragedy at the hands of the Nazis is trying to atone for the terrible sins of her countrymen, witnessed first hand at Belsen.  She occupies a high moral ground, ultimately inaccessible to Joe the Rogue;  he finds her principled view of the world amusing, strange and naïve:  his experience of life has taught him that principles mean nothing – there is only money, and everyone has his price, including himself.

Mr Lawton has given us a gripping read, a searing account of man’s inhumanity to man, and characters that live and breathe on the page.

Joe is the Artful Dodger of the Second World War, endearing, charming, amoral, and bent as a corkscrew.  No good can come of his liaison with Nell, his polar opposite, but the reader hopes until the bitter end that the impossible will happen – this is a novel, after all!  Regardless of the outcome, John Lawton has written a page-turner par excellence:  highly recommended.

A song for the Dying, by Stuart MacBride

As always, I found after starting this story that there was a previous work, ‘Birthdays for the Dead’.  Lots of awful things happened in the first book, including the murder of main protagonist Detective Ash Henderson’s daughters and his imprisonment for the murder of his brother – a frame up:  to say that Ash has had a rough ride is a euphemism of the first order, and at the start of book two there is only one thing on Ash’s mind:  revenge.

As this story unfolded I found myself glad that I had missed Book One:  the various tragedies that Detective Henderson has to live with are almost too horrible for this craven reader to contemplate;  in fact it was all I could do to stop myself from physically recoiling at the gruesomeness of the current plot, let alone roll around in the bloodbath of Plot One – I know, I know, it’s only a story, but I have never been very good at reading about cruelty and sadism, especially when it involves children:  it is then that I wish that I was a fan of Mills and Boon!

Having said that, I must also state that I could not put this book down.

Mr MacBride has created a nightmare landscape in the Scottish city of Oldcastle, a classic battleground of good and evil where the goodies are sometimes worse than those who commit the crimes.  In his long experience Ash sees the new order of PCness and criminals having – and knowing – their ‘rights’ as an unforgivable delay in the capture of bad guys, and a further erosion of the rights of decent people – the victims.  Not that he can do anything about it from Inside, languishing on his trumped-up charges and attending futile meetings of the Parole Board.  Until …..

Until he is suddenly released from Jail by the head of a new crime unit established to find a serial killer of nurses whom everyone thought had disappeared eight years before.  Prior to his misfortune, Ash had had some success at investigating the killings and was known for his ability to think outside the square.  His skills are needed in the latest investigation, for ‘The Inside Man’ has struck again:  Oldcastle is in a panic.

There are more twists and turns to this plot than a pretzel!  I can only admire Mr MacBride’s expertise in keeping all the balls in the air without dropping a single one.  I  found Detective Ash (despite his obvious bitterness and thirst for blood) to be a lot more credible than most of his counterparts in crime fiction.  He is also completely professional, eventually finding the killer – and you’ll never guess, EVER, who it is! – before he goes after the people who put him in prison, which is exactly as it should be.  His reluctant team mates – he is a jailbird, after all – are carefully drawn and individual delights, but if I have an ongoing criticism it is this:  it rains in Oldcastle ALL THE TIME.  Couldn’t the reader have enjoyed a few rays of sunshine as relief from Mr MacBride’s Shakespearean blasted heath?  A little bit of sun never hurt anyone;  as it is, we must rely on the warmth and relief of clever, funny dialogue and gallows humour to light up the gloom, and that’s no bad thing;  in fact in a story like this it is vital.  Highly recommended.   

   

GREAT READS FOR MARCH, 2014

Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen has been called the funniest crime novelist in print by many reviewers, with complete justification:  he has a long list of novels to his name, all best-sellers, and all set in Florida, his home state.  He has a fan base of millions, not only because he produces with each new story a fast-paced, hilarious plot with great characters, but he also has an important ecological and environmental message to deliver:  he is a major voice protesting against the overdevelopment of Florida’s beautiful wild places;  the despoliation of the environment by big corporations and the destruction of rare animals thanks to loss of habitat.  He is a champion of creatures great and small and the places they call home, and what better way to skewer corporate greed than with a pen.

The bad monkey of the title resides with Neville, an elderly fisherman in the Bahamas who has just been deprived of his idyllic beachside home and land by an unscrupulous Miami fraudster who has faked his own death by having an arm surgically removed (!), then bribing a fishing mate on a cruiser to have it fished up by an unsuspecting tourist.   After his ‘death’ is declared an accident, he will be free to develop Neville’s home as a luxury timeshare resort where he and his pudgy wife will live a life of sinful pleasure on their ill-gotten gains – they think.

Neville, however, is not without initiative.  He consults the local voodoo woman, a disreputable old hag who demands his body and the use of as payment for the powerful spell she will cast to rid him of the fraudster – a bridge too far for Neville:  he has his standards!   Even copious quantities of alcohol would not be able to disguise his revulsion – instead, as a second option he reluctantly hands over his monkey, much to that bad-tempered creature’s dismay, then waits for the fraudster to meet a horrible fate.

It doesn’t happen.

Enter Andrew Yancy, disgraced former Monroe County detective demoted (by his boss for an act of public violence against his girlfriend’s husband)  to restaurant inspector, a job guaranteed to put anyone off their grub.  He is deeply unhappy but the only thing that sustains him is that something smells fishy (sorry, couldn’t resist) about the lone arm dragged from the deep, and the chain of murders (including an attempt on him) that follows:  he sees a way back to his boss’s good graces and his return to detective status if he can follow up and make sense of the clues that reveal themselves.

Oh, it’s all happening in ‘Bad Monkey’, with the monkey playing an important part in the downfall of the baddies, and an eventual satisfactory ending for the goodies, but the overarching message is clear:  don’t foul your own nest!  Which is what is happening with distressing frequency everywhere.  Bless Mr Hiassen for highlighting this in every book that he writes.  Highly recommended.

The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd.

On her eleventh birthday in 1805, Sarah Grimke is given a ten year old slave, Hettie ‘Handful’ to be her waiting maid.  Sarah is the daughter of wealthy Charlston plantation owner and judge John Grimke and his imperious wife Mary;  it is high time she left the nursery and had her own proper room (fortunately vacated by one of  her older brothers, sent off to college to be a lawyer) and Hettie has been taken away from her mother Charlotte the enslaved family seamstress to learn the duties of looking after a young lady.

Unfortunately, Handful lives up to her name – she is disobedient and sassy, earning without effort cruel punishment for her misdeeds.  She pines for her mother, and instead of sleeping on the floor outside her young mistress’s room – in case she be summoned during the night – she constantly sneaks back to the slave quarters to be with the only person she loves in the cruel world they are forced to inhabit.

For her part, Sarah is appalled to be given another human being as a gift and tries to free Handful, much to the outrage of her family:  her carefully crafted document of manumission is ripped apart and flung into her room and intensive instruction in the duties and future expectations of young ladies is commenced.  In its own way South Carolina aristocracy has imprisoned Sarah as much as the slaves that are vital to its way of life;  the role of the Southern gentlewoman was that of wife, mother and housekeeper:  she owned nothing, was not allowed to vote and her opinions were not sought on any subject by the patriarchal society in which she existed.  And it didn’t do to rattle the cage!

Regardless, Sarah still champs at the bit, especially as she has a lively intellect and is clever enough to know that her plain looks will not easily snare her the husband her family wishes for her:  indeed, her younger sister Angelina has much better success in that area and would be married ten times over were it not for her regrettable and forceful opinions on emancipation.

  Sarah’s only means of escape is to journey north to New Jersey as companion and general dogsbody to her ailing father, who as a last resort has been prescribed bracing doses of Northern sea air;  she is astounded to experience the North’s differing political viewpoints, and when her father dies having received no benefit from the climate Sarah decides to stay in the North, eventually making a life for herself with the Quakers, who are devout and staunch believers in the emancipation of slaves – but not of women.

Angelina eventually joins Sarah, and her fiery eloquence, combined with Sarah’s irrefutable logic gains them fame – and notoriety – among the first abolitionists to tour the Northern States lecturing on the evils of slavery, until their message comes unhappily close to calling for the emancipation of women as well as slaves.  Their male counterparts are not happy!

And neither is Handful:  with the departure of Sarah her protector, Handful’s life has become almost unendurable;  she is terribly crippled as a punishment for attending a Black African church, despite having permission to do so but far from breaking her spirit and being the good nigger that her owners expect, she becomes more determined than ever to make her escape, or die trying.

Ms Kidd writes with great power of the iniquity of slavery and she has based her novel on the true life story of the Grimke sisters, early and fearless champions of emancipation for all.  She has researched assiduously the Southern way of life and its ingrained and casual cruelty to the human beings who kept it wealthy before the Civil War, and she illustrates beautifully the courage born of desperation needed to take the first steps in defence of the enslaved.  Above all, this is a novel about sisters, the love they have for each other, black or white, and the wings they have to invent for themselves so that their spirits may fly.  Highly recommended.