Act of Oblivion, by Robert Harris.

 

 

         The execution of King Charles the First on January 30^th, 1649 was the highlight of the English Civil War between the Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliamentarians (Roundheads); a great victory for the Puritans led by Oliver Cromwell against Godless, dissolute voluptuaries, all Catholics to a man, slaves to Popish Rome.  England was finally to be a republic, ruled by the English.  For a time.

            Internationally famous author Robert Harris, who has covered just about every world-changing epoch in history, has now turned his attention to the turbulence and tragedy of England after the ascension of Charles 2^nd, and the newly founded Puritan States in the great, unknown and largely undiscovered land of America.  And what is hugely notable about Mr Harris’s recreation is that every character – with the exception of The Manhunter – is authentic;  each person has a recorded existence.  Which is not to say that there wasn’t a manhunter:  as Mr Harris says, there had to be a man who mercilessly tracked down each man responsible for signing Charles the First’s death warrant.  When Royalty was restored anyone who had not fled to Europe or the American Colonies was rounded up, flung in the Tower and hung, drawn and quartered in front of the masses on a well-advertised date.

            And those who were in Europe were tricked into coming out of hiding at the prospect of fictitious meetings with their beloved families, only to find that Richard Nayler, The Manhunter, had tricked them:  they were all going to die by the cruellest death imaginable: ‘to be hanged until the point of unconsciousness, cut down, revived, castrated, disembowelled – the entrails dragged out and burned in front of the living victim – then beheaded and his body cut into four quarters for public display’.

 Nayler is very pleased with his tally of Regicides so far, but two men have continually escaped him by fleeing very speedily on one of the first ships after the punishments were announced, to the Puritan Colony of New England,  on the East Coast of North America.  Despite one fruitless trip to America where his prey, Puritan Colonels Edward Whalley and William Goffe successfully eluded him, Nayler has not forgotten them, for their righteous cruelty resulted in the loss of his loved ones:  he will stop at nothing to see them dead, for as we all know, revenge is a dish best served cold.

Mr Harris is an enormously competent writer, bringing to life beautifully the lives and times of characters great and small, and his descriptions of the great, hospitable, perfect new land and its indigenous occupants at the mercy of its Colonisers brings a lump to one’s throat today, three hundred and sixty years later:  Man, the wrecker.  FIVE STARS.  

     

 

The Light in Hidden Places, by Sharon Cameron.             Young Adults

 

    

      Countless books have been written on the Second World War, and everyone knows of the atrocities committed by thousands in thrall to Hitler and his Third Reich and his attempts to eradicate every Jew from the face of the earth.  It is common knowledge, too, that more than six million people were ‘exterminated’ because of their racial impurity, their inferiority to all right-thinking Aryans.  Gott im Himmel:  Hitler was trying to do the world a favour!

            But some still clung to the irritating Old Ways, not bothered by the fact that Jews followed Moses as Catholics followed Jesus Christ, and such a one is Polish teenager Stefania Podgorska, who starts her first job in the grocery shop of a Jewish family, the Diamants.  Stefania, nicknamed ‘Fusia’ lodges with her sisters who work in Przemysl and she’s thrilled to be away from the farm, and her mother – the freedom is intoxicating!  And her acceptance into the Diamant family is complete;  she is their new little sister – differing religions are easily accommodated, and all is well.  Until the Germans bomb Przemysl and turn up in person days later with all their weaponry.  And cruelty.  All Jews are rounded up, their businesses closed and apartments ‘given’ to Christians.  They are herded into a ghetto by the railway station, there to wait for the trains to take them to ‘work camps’.  It doesn’t take long before people find out what happens at the work camps.  Hitler’s campaign of extermination has begun.

            And Fusia is outraged that her second family is dragged off to the Ghetto – by great chance, she and her little sister Helena are able to stay in the Diamant’s apartment and it isn’t long before she hatches a plan to aid the people she most loves, first with food judiciously bought and bartered, then – most audacious of all, to help some of them to escape from the Ghetto and hide them in new, larger accommodation (it has an attic that will take a false wall) that she has found on the other side of the city – which is wonderful!  God and the Blessed Virgin have heard her prayers!  She thinks. Until she is ordered to share her accommodation with two German nurses from the Military hospital across the road, who are unaware that there are thirteen Jews hidden in the attic above.  Natürlich.

            This true story reads like a thriller.  The suspense is palpable, even though we know the outcome for, with the family’s permission, Ms Cameron has written Fusia’s heartbreaking, magnificent story as a novel, which has given it all the drama that a historical account would lack.  Stefania Podgorska is a true heroine, named with her sister Helena as  Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, and rightly so, embodying perfect goodness at a time when evil ruled.  SIX STARS.    

 

Day’s End, by Garry Disher.

         

    

      Demoted South Australian Detective Paul Hirschhausen has (after three action-packed books) settled satisfactorily into small-town life in Tiverton as the local constable with a huge rural beat;  his patrols around the local farms can take all day – a huge amount of driving, but necessary to establish relationships with those who live in remote areas by choice and/or necessity.  Like rich newcomers Sam and Mia Dryden, who have purchased a huge spread which was the last point of contact between Professor Janne Van Sant and her son Willi, on a backpacking holiday in Australia.  Professor Van Sant has come from Belgium to search for Willi because he has not emailed or phoned;  in fact he has disappeared without trace.  The Dryden property was his last known place of employment:  she needs to know – and see – where he went missing and Hirsch is her escort for the day.

            And all should be well, for the Drydens explain that Willi and his girlfriend just up and left one day as young people do, so sorry, can’t help.  But attached to the gate at the beginning of the long drive is a new notice:

 

Unvaccinated visitors welcome here.  We refuse to enforce unlawful directions from a government that would microchip its people.

 

              It would appear that not only are the Drydens anti-vaxxers, but about as Far Right as it’s possible to be, and as Hirsch investigates further into the nasty underbelly of mis-and-disinformation (even the regional police station has ‘believers’!) he is also appalled to find that various criminal acts attributed to a new family of no-hopers in town have shown that they will stop at nothing – even murder – in their efforts to gain a foothold in a sleepier, safer, less-policed place than Adelaide.  Hirsch’s plate of calamity is full!

            But Hirsch’s problems multiply a hundred-fold with the report of the disappearance of a light plane used by local Pete Aronson for his aerial photography business:  he and his plane haven’t been seen for twenty-four hours.  Something is wrong, and when the downed plane is finally found, crashed and burned-out, Pete’s incinerated remains are found in the tiny cockpit.  An accident?  Maybe – until bullet holes are found:  Pete’s little plane has been shot out of the sky.  What did he see that cost him his life?

            As always, Garry Disher does a wonderfully competent job of keeping up the suspense, and he portrays with his great characters the sorry state that the world Post-Covid is in at the moment – I say at the moment because I hope against hope that previously rational, reasonable, logically-thinking people will eventually stop believing nasty fairy tales and start living without fear again.  I hope.  FIVE STARS.   

 

Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng.

 

 

           In an author’s note at the end of her explosive novel of racial hatred and discrimination, Celeste Ng is careful to stress that the themes she writes about are nothing new;  racism against Asian Americans is as old as immigration – The Yellow Peril lurks around every corner, as old and frightening as The Bogey Man, and when her story opens, those of mixed race are particularly vulnerable.

            Such a child is Bird, whose Chinese American mother Margaret fell in love with Ethan Gardner when they were students at Harvard.  They married and made a life for themselves in an Ivy League town;  Margaret was a published poet, and Ethan had tenure as a professor of Linguistics – and this section of the story is particularly beautiful, for Ms Ng uses language like notes of music, making gorgeous melodies as Bird’s parents educate him in the origins of stories, the meaning of words and the magic of fairy tales – until the Crisis.

            The Crisis is a world-wide economic depression which results in massive unemployment, huge, countrywide protests and a gradual belief that China, who seemed to get off lightly compared to the rest of the world, is behind the terrible reversal of U.S. fortunes.  Eventually, the government decides on a solution:  PACT.  ‘Protecting America’s Culture and Traditions.’  Which covers a multitude of behaviours that would have been unthinkable before the Crisis:  the censoring of what is taught to children in schools;  the banning of books considered inflammatory and ‘Un-American’ in libraries;  and worst of all, the removal of children from their parents, sent who-knows-where because the parents were no longer considered fit to nurture them as good little Americans.

            Such a fate is narrowly avoided for Bird when his mother decides to flee before she is betrayed by a neighbour or ‘friend’ (very common these days), and her loving husband is forced to denounce her to anyone who will listen so that the authorities will not remove Bird from his custody.  Because of his wife’s disgrace he has been hugely demoted and now earns a pittance shelving books in the university library, but he doesn’t care, as long as he and Bird are still together, even though Bird’s oriental eyes mean he must wear sunglasses to avoid the bullies.

            But Ethan has reckoned without Bird’s natural curiosity, especially when he receives a mysterious communication by mail – a picture of cats, seemingly innocuous to the Post Office censors, but to Bird, a message from his mother after three years of silence.  She is in New York.  No matter what the danger, he must travel there to see her.  To find out why she left him, for his father has never said.  To find out why she left him behind.

            Ms Ng’s prose is like a shower of gold coins:  in words of great beauty she writes of a terrible, dystopian society that good, rational people despair of ever repairing, especially (as she has already said) what has occurred in the novel has already happened in real life.  Every thinking person should read this book.  SIX STARS.

              

                 

 

Playing Under the Piano, by Hugh Bonneville.       Non-fiction.

 

            The only people who haven’t heard of the smash-hit TV series (with two full-length movies also snaring huge box-office returns) ‘Downton Abbey’, must be a lost tribe of the Amazon.  Seldom has a between-the-wars tale of British Aristocracy, complete with love between the classes, scandal, heartache and tragedy been so successfully brought to the screen, and universally loved by millions – of all classes.  And apart from being the wonderful scripts of Julian Fellowes, it fell to the perfectly-cast actors to cement the reality of their screen lives indelibly with viewers in every episode:  who hasn’t heaved a sigh of frustration at the thought of having to wait a whole week to find out the fate of Lady Mary or Lady Edith, or their darling little sister, who dies in childbirth, the child being the daughter of the chauffeur!

            And now we are fortunate to have a charming memoir written by Hugh Bonneville, who plays the aristocratic father of those three gels and, true to form, explains that no-one, least of all the cast, could predict the runaway popularity of the show but, needless to say, everyone was predictably delighted to have long-term work, for regardless of reputation, an actor’s life will never be 9-to-5, every week until they retire.

            Mr Bonneville is a very funny man.  And a wonderful writer, especially as he recounts his early years as a trainee Shakespearean  actor, along with such other hopefuls as Ralph Fiennes, receiving an excellent grounding in the classic plays of British literature at elite theatres - after attending Cambridge University with a half-hearted wish to study law, or Religion with a view to becoming a minister.  Yes, truly!  Our hero was a man without a clear mission until he caught the acting bug, and lucky for us that he did, for he has appeared in some memorable plays and films, all of which are entertainingly covered here, including ‘Notting Hill’ and the charming Paddington Bear films.  He shares wonderful memories of the luminaries he has worked with (and they are Legion), with never an unkind word from or for anybody, yet still imparting cosy, gossipy, charming little anecdotes that humanise such greats as Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, both of whom left him ‘awestruck’. 

            He explains the ‘mechanics’ of acting that allow the actor through his expertise –sleight-of-hand? – to lull the audience into thinking that every move and direction is natural, unforced on stage or before the cameras:  acting is indeed a precise and suble art, and Hugh Bonneville, once so unknown that ‘he couldn’t get a table at MacDonalds’ is now a literary luminary, as well as an acting one.  Big Macs, anyone?  SIX STARS.         

 

Paper Cage, by Tom Baragwanath.

            Tom Baragwanath’s debut novel is notable for several things:  it is the recipient of the Michael Gifkins prize;  it’s a fast-paced, satisfying thriller that follows all the good crime-story rules – non-stop action, credible characters, and more twists and turns than a pretzel as we move towards WhoDunnit;  and it’s set primarily in the Wairarapa town of Masterton, on the East coast of New Zealand’s North Island – which is bound to give all Kiwi readers a very satisfying buzz of recognition.

            Lorraine Henry narrates the story;  she is a pakeha (European) woman whose life has been blighted by much tragedy.  She has lost almost everyone she holds dear through a series of tragic accidents – except for her beloved niece Sheena, daughter of her late sister, and the apple of her eye, Bradley, Sheena’s little son to Keith, the head of a Mongrel-Mob gang chapter in the town.  Lorraine always worries about Sheena’s association with Keith, for he runs the local Meth business and apart from the huge illegality of his ‘business’, Lorraine fears for Sheena’s will-power around all that poison, not to mention Bradley’s exposure to it and, because of Lorraine’s long-time job as a file clerk at the local police station, the hostility she always faces from Keith whenever she visits.  Which is often;  they don’t live far away.  And she loves them – they are her reason for getting up in the morning.

            And one can never be too vigilant at the moment because Precious Kingi, a young Maori girl has vanished from her home in the nearby town of Featherston;  she comes from a deprived background and her dad is also mixed up in the Meth business – some would say ‘Well, what would you expect?’ but Lorraine grieves for her parents, whom she knows:  how can they bear it?  And the cops don’t seem to be doing anything much about it – until a second Maori child disappears, then a Wellington detective finally turns up from the Big Smoke, one who specialises in the disappearance of children – and wondrously, he thinks that Lorraine’s experience and photographic memory of the criminal files in the basement might be more useful than the Mr Plod tactics of the Police Chief.  Especially when Lorraine’s worst nightmares are realised and Bradley goes missing.

            As if the suspense isn’t wound tight enough, Tom Baragwanath ratchets up the pace some more with two murders and a villain who thinks he is acting with the best of intentions. Most intriguingly, the lines between good and evil become somewhat blurred.  There are no winners in this raw, clever story.  FIVE STARS.

  

 

Less is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer.

 

            It is an infinite pleasure to welcome back Arthur Less, hapless hero of ‘Less’, Andrew Sean Greer’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.  He hasn’t changed much;  he’s still a minor American novelist;  he’s still shy and blushes easily, confidence a fleeting visitor in his life and work, but!  He is still with his great love, Freddie Palu, living in the tiny house of his famous poet ex-lover (recently deceased) in San Francisco – but.

            For a number of obscure reasons, Arthur is unsure of Freddie’s devotion, especially as Freddie, a high school teacher, has removed himself to Maine on a three-month sabbatical, taking a university course in narrative form.  Arthur plans to join Freddie as soon as possible, and make a start on his next novel.  It’s no fun living alone in their hilly little eyrie, and having to attend the ex’s last rites with the ex’s widow Marian who, after years of hating him for stealing her husband, now relies on him to be her emotional and physical support at the great man’s funeral.  Life is full of ironies, big and small.  And bombshells delivered by Marian, in the shape of monies owed by Less for the aforesaid Eyrie – for which he has paid no rent of any kind for at least ten years – and a time limit of one month in which he has to find the money ‘so that the will can be probated, then the Eyrie will be his’.  When the news is relayed to Freddie, he is aghast:  how can someone never think to question whether he owes rent?  ‘The subject never came up,’ says Arthur uncomfortably.  Even he sees that this is taking trust too far.

Strong action must be taken:  no trip to Maine to see outraged Freddie – he must go on the Southern speaking tour and the PrizeGiving Committee that his agent has commanded he attend, and oversee in Savannah the turning into a musical (!) of one of his short stories about his boyhood:  if he slogs his way through this Southern Odyssey, he will have earned enough to clear the debt.

And here Mr Greer has a wonderful time – and so do we! -  with Arthur’s adventures in his borrowed van which, the farther South he travels, seem to call for ever more U.S. flags and bumper stickers (he even wears a cap and grows – not very well – a beard), but never seems able to disguise his gayness, for he is always asked ‘are you Dutch?’  But faint heart never won Fair Freddie, and Less, fired by love, has the stoutest heart of all.  His quest is laugh-out-loud funny, and Greer’s wonderful facility with language is a perpetual pleasure, for Less will always be more than the sum of his parts.  FIVE STARS.