GREAT READS FOR APRIL
The Stranger’s Child, by Alan Hollinghurst
Mr. Hollinghurst’s many
admirers have waited seven years for his next
book, and while his writing is still as elegant and incisive as before,
the story was a disappointment to this reader for its lack of impetus, and a
kind of languor that slows the plot further.
The author relies much on conversation, trivial and otherwise, to push
his story along, and as artful and witty as some of the characters are, none of
them are sufficiently strong or memorable to be up to the task.
The story begins shortly
before the First World War. The Sawles,
a middle-class family are expecting a weekend visit from son George, a student
at Cambridge and his new friend Cecil Valance, a fellow student and published
poet already being hailed as a new literary lion. George’s 16 year-old sister Daphne is
particularly dazzled by the handsome and aristocratic Cecil, ignorant as is the
rest of the family that George and Cecil are lovers. The account of this weekend is perhaps the
strongest part of the book, full of potentially satisfying plot developments
and strong characterisations – then we are moved along to 1926, on the eve of
the General Strike, and we find that Daphne is now married to Cecil’s younger
brother Sir Dudley; she is the mother of
two children, and the mistress of the Valance family home, the great house of
Corley Court. Cecil was killed in the
war by a sniper’s bullet, and thanks largely to his mother (whom both boys
unkindly referred to as ‘the General’)he has been lionised, anthologised ,
deified, and finally entombed under a marble effigy in the family chapel. Dudley also went to France to fight ‘but did
not have a good war’ and the marriage is foundering. There is much swilling of alcohol in an
attempt to drown unhappy memories, and as 1926 is the age of the Bright Young
Things there are lots of wild parties, and Gay young Blades are more openly
accepted than a decade before – in fact, Daphne runs away with one! Ah, how she has changed from the
impressionable, sheltered young teenager of 1913,
Cut to 1967: Daphne is celebrating her 70th
birthday. There are more children,
supposedly fathered by the Gay Blade, but only Daphne is privy to the truth,
and even the reader at the end of the book is unsure – as one could also be
uncertain as to whether ‘The Stranger’s Child’ is ultimately the story of the
unhappy union of the Sawles and Valance families , or a 100-year history of
homosexuality in Britain, evolving from The Love That Dare not Speak its Name
to the civil marriages of the early 21st century. The best thing I can say about Mr.
Hollinghurst’s latest is that it is like the curate’s egg: good in parts
Death
on Demand, by Paul Harris
Detective Ihaka is not known for toeing the line and
keeping a low profile – well, he couldn’t because of hi s enormous size -
but he managed to rub so many people the wrong way at Auckland Central,
particularly because of his conviction that the St. Heliers hit-and-run
investigation should be classed as murder, that he was exiled to the Wairarapa
for five years. Now, at the request of
the dying widower of the late businesswoman, he has been brought back to hear
What Really Happened. The widower wants
to confess. It is as Ihaka always
suspected: Hubby hired a hitman,
identity unknown, who carried out his orders most efficiently. Oh, Ihaka could wallow like a hippo in all the ‘I told you so’s’ but
is content to let his superiors at Central try to clean the egg off their faces
: he wants to track down the hitman
before any more contracts are undertaken, particularly as he has a nasty
suspicion that he might be the next victim.
Paul Harris has constructed a very competent and well plotted story; all the loose ends are satisfactorily tidied
away by the end of the novel, but the big attraction here is Mr. Ihaka, a
singular character in his own right. The snappy, riotously funny dialogue is
always a delight, and the sprawling, messy city of Auckland is portrayed so well
that it made this reader (an old ex-Jafa) quite nostalgic. This is the ideal airport or beach read; I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying it.
Empire
Day, by Diane Armstrong.
Sydney, 1948: the occupants of Wattle Street in Bondi Junction
are celebrating Empire Day as always, with fireworks and a bonfire. Their actions are viewed with confusion and
in some cases fear by new residents of the street, postwar displaced persons,
refugees from the carnage in Europe, all struggling to start life again after
the unspeakable horrors they suffered in the Camps; all trying to erase terrible memories and
cope with the loss of entire families -
and learn an incomprehensible new language on top of everything else. Fireworks and bonfires are completely outside
their experience.
Diane Armstrong chronicles
a year in the life of several of these families, and the effect they have on
the true-blue, Dinky Dye Aussies who are their neighbours. She is well-qualified to do so, arriving in
Sydney herself in 1948 with her family from Poland, so writes with utter conviction
of the hurdles they faced: bland food
and the inability to buy the food they were accustomed to; a colloquial, every-day language entirely
different from the formal schoolroom English they took such pains to learn on
the ship voyage to Australia, and worst of all, suffering discrimination - being called ‘Bloody Reffos and DPs’ because they dared to speak their own language
to each other in public. Their new life
is hard, a leap into the deep end of the unknown – but it is SAFE: the bloodshed and slaughter are over. The monsters who haunt their dreams are far, far away, never to be seen again –
until Ted Browning, an idealistic young newspaper reporter starts investigating
one of his neighbours, originally from Latvia, the father of the girl he has
fallen in love with. Through his
research he is horrified to discover that a number of war criminals have been
accepted as refugees with the tacit approval of the government, the proviso
being that these former fascists, members of Death Squads, SS et al, spy and
report on communist affiliations among the refugees. The government is more worried about the communist
threat than the sheltering of war criminals in its cities.
Sadly for the reader, Ms
Armstrong doesn’t develop this theme to a satisfactory conclusion and there are
other plot devices which are simplistic in the extreme – however! She is still a good enough storyteller to
absorb us completely, especially in her account of everyday life back in the
Forties: New Zealand and Australia were
so similar all those years ago; the
children played the same games, the family life was the same, with mum at home
boiling up the copper and bluing the wash on Mondays – and Dad weaving home
after being tipped out of the pub at 6PM.
‘Time, Gentlemen, Please!’ I’m
not sure if those were the good old days or not, but Diane Armstrong has
captured them expertly.
The
Berlin Crossing, by Kevin Brophy
In the Germany of 1993,
the infamous Wall has fallen, and in the
Eastern part of the country, previously the German Democratic Republic
‘liberation’ by the West is in full swing;
there are no longer two Germanys;
instead all those previously enslaved under the Communist yoke are
encouraged to embrace the New Order. Incomprehensibly,
there are some who don’t see the ‘Wessies’ as their saviours; they functioned very well under the old regime
and are defiantly proud to say so. One
such loyal party member is Michael Ritter, a young man previously lauded as a
respected academic with a PhD in English from Rostock University – until he
upsets his new western bosses at the Gymnasium where he has taught for years, by his outspoken disapproval of the new
system. He is summarily dismissed, but
that’s not his only problem: his wife
has thrown him out and he is forced to return to live with his mother in her
tiny flat near the railway station in Brandenburg. His humiliation is complete.
Michael’s mother is dying
of cancer. They have always had a
love/hate relationship; his mother abhors
his ardent embrace of the communist system, consciously and carefully doing
nothing at all to draw party attention to herself; she has flown below the communist radar all
of their lives together. Now she has
reached the end of her life, and in her last hours begs Michael to visit an old
Pastor who knows the secret of Michael’s ancestry; the identity of his father. It is her last hope that her son will see the
fatal errors in his thinking, see the GDR for the monstrous system that it
always was, and gradually come to embrace and learn to live in a fully unified
Germany.
Michael’s reluctant
journey into his origins is never less than fascinating and the flashbacks to his parents’ great and
fatal love and its consequences are
convincingly written, suspenseful and always absorbing.
I was impressed with this
story. It places an entirely different
slant on the two Germanys of the early 90’s:
the Wessies want to show those gutless East Germans, so lacking in
ambition and initiative, how to catch up with them and the rest of the world –
and are shocked to the core to find that there are many inhabitants of the
former GDR who liked things as they were, thankyou very much, SO JUST LEAVE OUR
LIVES ALONE!! Highly recommended.
