Table for Two, by Amor Towles.

 

            I don’t usually read many volumes of short stories – not because they’re not an accepted form of literary endeavour, but because I prefer concentrating on one big story, with one particular set of characters.  There are very few authors who alter my mindset in that regard, Amor Towles being one of them.  After reading his previous novels, particularly ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ and ‘The Lincoln Highway’ I bit the bullet at the appearance of ‘Table for Two’:  he is such a sublime writer that I had to  give his latest book the attention his reputation merited.  And I’m so glad I did.

            As I said (I’m at an age where I repeat myself) I don’t enjoy chopping and changing characters and themes – until in The Ballad of Timothy Touchett I met the beautifully drawn and irresistible inhabitants of the antiquarian bookshop in New York, where aspiring (but not passionately enough) young author Timothy is employed by Mr Pennybrook, not only to sell first editions, but to practice signatures, at which Timothy excels, of famous, long-dead authors.  After he realises (it takes a little while; he’s not exactly dim but …) that Mr Pennybrook is making big money from Timothy’s ‘artistry’ a new rate is negotiated and all would have been well had not a contemporary author, still very much alive, realised that he didn’t sign that particular book in that particular place. Do heads roll, or not?

            In ‘I will Survive’, a young woman is asked by her mother to follow her stepfather to Central Park:  Nell’s mum is sure her husband is having an affair – then changes her mind and begs Nell to forget she ever asked.  But Nell is curious, and we all know where that leads – nowhere good, especially when his Central Park sojourn has nothing to do with romance.

            There are seven short stories altogether, the last one a novella which continues with a character from his first novel ‘Terms of Civility’:  Evelyn Ross is on her way home to Chicago from New York, but changes her mind at the last moment much to her parents’ consternation and heads to Hollywood instead.  It is the beginning of the 40’s;  she’ll try her luck in California before heading eventually overseas – and what luck!  Her decision to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel leads to fortuitous meetings with an overweight and ageing has-been Movie actor, and Olivia de Havilland, future star of ‘Gone with the Wind’ – if only Olivia can pay off a blackmailer!  Oh, it’s all gripping stuff, especially the blackmail outcome, and so superbly written that I didn’t want to leave behind any of characters in the seven stories:  What have you planned for us next, Mr Towles? I know it will be dazzling.  SIX STARS

           

           

 

The Mountain King, by Anders de la Motte.

 

            Scandy-Noir:  since Stieg Larsson conquered the world with ‘Girl With a Dragon Tattoo’, Swedish thrillers have gained a huge part of the crime novel market – and rightly so;  there aren’t many that fall flat, including ‘The Mountain King’ who does just the opposite, shocking the reader to the very last page – literally!  I’m still thinking (and reeling from it) and wondering if de la Motte has already written a sequel to release us from this tension or must we have to wait AAAAGES for the next one.  We are being forced to Watch This Space.

            A young couple have gone missing;  because the female of the couple is beautiful and her parents very wealthy, there is suspicion that her boyfriend has kidnapped her and a ransom will soon be demanded – he’s an impoverished student , not of good standing.  It’s an open-and-shut case if they can only find them.

            Enter the Long Arm of the Law, consisting of Leonore (known as Leo) Asker, a crack Detective Inspector with a very damaged past;  her reluctantly-learned survival skills drilled in by her mentally Ill father are actually advantages in her job and she expects to be the lead officer on the couple’s disappearance – until she isn’t, usurped by a Big Wheel from Stockholm:  she takes too many risks and breaks too many rules.  She is shifted sideways with a move downstairs into the nether regions of the police building;  she can preside over all the other failures and would-be rebels.  Whether she wants to or not.

            But her forced exile reveals that another detective was working on cases which seem to have an uncanny similarity to the current ‘kidnapping’, until he fell down his stairs with a heart-attack;  he is now in hospital in a coma, but he has left a huge repository of notes and theories.  Maybe being consigned to the basement isn’t going to be as onerous as Leo thinks, but the chilling conclusion she comes to after tracing at least four other people to their eventual disappearance is that a serial-killer is at work.  And he takes a ‘souvenir’ from his victims – and leaves one behind in the shape of a tiny plastic figure, just so that he can laugh at the police and their stupidity, for the police, especially the hot-shot from Stockholm have no idea of the significance of the figures – or that he’s a monster, invincible, and truly the Mountain King.

            Scandy-Noir has never been better, especially in the hands of Anders de la Motte:  hurry up with Book Two!  FIVE STARS  

 

 

Long Island, by Colm Toibin.

 

            Colm Toibin’s lovely novel ‘Brooklyn’ was the setting for young Irishwoman Eilis Lacey’s liberating trip to the United States in the late 50’s, a trip which enabled her to have a new and completely different life from the predictable, safe but dull village existence she would have had in her county in Ireland with her boyfriend Jim, being a wife and mum like all of her friends.  Going to the States had changed that outcome, for she has met young Italian Tony Fiorello and they are both smitten.  Life is more than exciting – it’s wonderful!  And they are both going to live happily ever after.

            Twenty years later, the happily ever after has produced two teenagers, and the entire family – Tony’s parents and his brothers, plus wives and kids – have shifted from Brooklyn to a Long Island town, in a four-house cul-de-sac, almost like a compound, with everyone dropping in and out when they feel like it.  Which is a lot more often than Eilis would like, but she doesn’t really seem to have much say in the matter.  She is now in her 40’s and has come to the realisation that excitement and wonder have passed her by.

            Until she receives a visit one day from a stranger – an Irishman – who informs her that his wife is pregnant to her husband.  Tony is a plumber by trade and it appears that he added services to the job that were not normally required.  The betrayed husband tells Eilis that when the baby is born, he is bringing it to her to do with as she sees fit, but HE won’t be having it in the house.

  And neither will Eilis!

            She is appalled at her husband’s infidelity and it’s not long before the rest of the family knows about it too, but the worst thing – the worst thing! – is that her Mother-in-Law announces that she will raise the child, because it is a Fiorello, after all.  Eilis’s feelings and opinions are worth nothing in the face of family solidarity.  Which leaves Eilis little choice but to go back to Ireland ‘for an extended holiday’ for the first time in twenty years, ostensibly for her mother’s 80^th birthday, but to hide out and plan her next move.  And what sort of reception will she get back home, especially from her mother, her erstwhile best friend, and spurned boyfriend Jim?

            Colm Toibin has written another beautifully realised and poignant story of the different reactions to a massive lifestyle event, where no-one gets off scot-free.  There are many unanswered questions at novel’s end, which must mean there HAS to be a sequel – has to be, or the literary world will be in a very dark place!  SIX STARS    

 

The Trees, by Percival Everett.

 

            Southern trees bear strange fruit

            Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

            Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

            Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

 

The verses of the song above help Percival Everett walk the fine line between horror and satire with great success in this novel of the complicated revenge struck by Black people for the killing – mainly lynching – of Black people for more than a century.  His portrayal of the murders of the Good Ole Boys whose families were responsible for the lynching of 14 year-old Emmet Till in Mississippi back in the day is chilling, especially for the fact that each corpse had his testicles removed, clutched in the hand of a dead Black man, also at the crime scene.  The redneck local Sheriff assumes, as anyone would, that said Black man is the killer, even though he was shot in the back of the head:  murder/suicide.  Wrap this up, guys.

            Except that the killing doesn’t stop:  more bodies are found further afield, along with their presumed Black killer clutching testicles, causing the redneck Sheriff to suffer the indignity of having to accept assistance from two Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, followed by a frightening Black woman agent from the FBI – cain’t they even be left to clean up their own crap??  Apparently not.

            In fact, no-one can, for the country is in for a reckoning:  there have been so many hate crimes and racially based murders that Black spirits are not the only victims calling ghosts to Rise;  Asians are hearing the call of Genocide, too.  How will it all end, especially when the current leader in the White House (in this story Donald Trump) gets jammed under his desk and can’t get out, discovering wads of chewing gum stuck in his hair, a sure sign that his VP had been trying out the desk for size – while he was Making America Great Again!

            Mr Everett paints a frightening, shamefully true picture of the woeful state of race relations in America, overlaid with superb, satirical humour from  characters who speak truth in every sentence:   every country needs such a chronicler.  Even though the truth hurts and is frequently unpalatable, it’s always preferable to lies.  SIX STARS.

 

 

 The Space Between, by Lauren Keenan.

 

 

 

              

            Early 1860:  the British Crown has signed a Treaty with Maori and colonisation is in full swing;  settlers by the shipload have been arriving under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, new government agents (of a kind) charged with the immigration of those wishing to throw off the shackles of the stifling class system in Britain, hoping to make something of themselves and their families, and prepared to work hard to have a better life.  If only, for the class system has travelled on the ships with them:  it will take many, many years to shake off humble origins.

            In New Plymouth (called Ngamotu by those Maoris), a gentleman and his mother and shamefully spinster sister are trying their hand at farming.  George Farrington has been forced to leave England supposedly because their father lost all their money, then died – what was a man to do?  The Colonies seemed to be the only answer for someone so short of cash - the problem being that George was not a natural-born farmer, or a lover of the land, and his sister Frances, jilted cruelly by a ne’er-do-well called Henry White 12 years before has been raised as genteel – it is an entirely new experience for her to have to tend to fowls and milk cows, for their mother refuses to do anything that does not befit her station. 

            And to add insult to grievous injury, who should Frances meet outside Thorpe’s General Store but Henry White himself, there to meet his Maori wife Mataria – and Mataria shouldn’t have been there anyway because all Maori need a pass issued by the Military;  they are undergoing the laborious, humiliating process after their trip for supplies to the store.  Life has suddenly taken an equally harrowing turn for Frances and when brother George sees Henry and his wife talking with Frances he contrives to get the couple put in jail – no pass, no freedom!

            A military conflict is brewing, too:  the settlers want to expand the boundaries of New Plymouth and are dealing with a Maori representative who does not have tribal permission to sell any more land, but such is their desire to own more acres, they are arrogant in their belief in the rightness of their cause.  Of course!

            Lauren Keenan has portrayed events of the time with great clarity backed by strong historical research and her own tribal affiliation to Te Atiawa ke Taranaki.  She creates a superb portrait of a time that contained horrors that we can barely guess at – and the frail, perennial flowers of compassion, hope and affection that are essential for all of us to carry on.  SIX STARS.     

               

 

Joe-Nuthin’s Guide to Life, by Helen Fisher.

 

  

          Neurodiversity:  the 21^st century’s current euphemism for the many  psychological illnesses and anxieties that beset modern society.  In the ‘Old Days’, anyone who was afflicted with a mental illness was just that:  mental, but these days there has been a concerted effort to bring the neurodiverse into daily life, to integrate them into ‘normal’ society, thus helping them to live their very best lives.

            In theory, for ‘normal’ society can be anything but. 

            Such a person  is Joe-Nathan.  He calls himself  that (his proper name might be Jonathan) because two names are like Dinner and Dessert – should anyone ask.  Joe lives with his widowed mother Janet, and works for the Compass Store, a big supermarket whose Boss Hugo sees the Brownie points accruing for employing Joe, who has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but comes to like and admire him anyway, not only for his ruthless attention to detail, but also for the fact that Joe-Nathan is a lovely young man, stricken by a cruel syndrome, but with the help if his indomitable Mum, making the very best of things.

            Except for workmates Mean Charlie and his mate Owen:  they delight in calling him names – Joe-Nuthin – and threatening to open cans of red sauce because they know that anything red upsets him terribly – BUT!  Joe is not without friends who will defend him, particularly workmate Chloe, whose language is so bad that Joe makes her a swear-box that he calculates will make her rich within a year.  Chloe puts Mean Charlie in his place with a physical attack so violent Boss Hugo is forced to consult HR, resulting in Mean Charlie’s sacking.

            Job done!  Time for all to live in happy diversity ever after, but life, particularly these days, seldom follows the best script:  Joe’s darling mum has a fatal heart-attack and Joe is forced to face vast, monstrous changes in his life, living alone being just the first;  however, Janet has anticipated life for Joe and his struggles after her death and to that end has left two books of instructions, the first a ‘how-to’ cook, clean, repair etc’, and the second more important advice about friends and how to treat them, particularly if one wanted to keep them – which makes Joe think of Mean Charlie and the fact that he might have more sadness in his life than everyone thinks, particularly when Joe inadverdently sees all of Charlie's bruises.  It’s time to make a new friend, and Joe has decided that for good or ill, Mean Charlie is the one!

            Helen Fisher has written a beautiful story on friendship, the courage to be ‘other’, especially when there is no choice, and the beauty and necessity of humanity’s desire for affection.  My heart was full at story’s end.  Thanks HEAPS, Ms Fisher!  SIX STARS          

 

Knife, by Salman Rushdie.                       Memoir

 

        

    In 1989, acclaimed author Salman Rushdie was sentenced to a Fatwa by Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini –a  death sentence executed by any pious Muslim, for writing a novel called ‘The  Satanic Verses’, deemed to be contemptuous and scornful of Islam.  For the next several years, Rushdie was kept under 24 hour surveillance and reluctantly lived the life of a recluse, a fugitive who never knew when and where death would strike – until, finally, he became tired of living his life in the shadows;  he needed to feel the sun again, travel as he pleased, and socialise with his friends and loved ones:  to hell with Fatwas – he’d take the risk and live his life as he wanted to, in freedom.

            Until August, 2022, Salman Rushdie did just that.  Life was good;  he’d fallen in love (and it was reciprocal!); his new novel was about to be published, and he’d agreed to give a lecture at Lake Chautauqua, upstate New York on the importance of keeping overseas writers from harm, those in danger from fanatics from their places of origin.  What an irony for, as he was introduced on stage a black-clad figure rushed towards him brandishing a knife – a knife that inflicted numerous serious wounds before his assailant was overpowered and prevented from continuing.  Rushdie was taken by helicopter to hospital, and not expected to survive.

            ‘Knife’ is Rushdie’s personal account of his ordeal;  his grievous injuries – he has lost the sight of his right eye, and his left hand which he lifted in defence as the assailant rushed towards him has permanent damage to the tendons, not to mention numerous cuts and scarring on his body – are testament to an iron determination not to be a soon-to-be- forgotten  victim of religious bigotry and fanaticism, but to survive and still live his best life.  He pays grateful tribute to his family, friends and loving wife, all of whom never left his side – once they’d got there;  one of his sons had the misfortune to have a fear of flying, so had to come by sea from the UK, much to his chagrin, but he did it!  Meantime, the would-be assassin had pleaded not guilty to all charges, despite a packed auditorium of witnesses.

            Which prompts the victim to imagine several conversations with his would-be killer, none of which persuades a change of heart or mind:  Rushdie is evil and must be removed from the earth.  Okay then!

            But not yet.  Salman Rushdie has produced from awful personal experience  a darkly humorous, irrefutable treatise on religious tolerance, his own atheism and his unshakeable conviction that though knives are lethal, the Pen is always Mightier than the Sword.  FIVE STARS.