MORE GREAT READS FOR AUGUST, 2017
Early Birds, by Laurie Graham.
Laurie Graham is famous for writing immensely readable
‘social comedies’ as the book blurb says, and her latest novel is no
exception. It’s always a pleasure to
settle down to enjoy each of her stories as they appear; there are always great, true-blue characters
that we can all recognise and identify effortlessly with what happens to
them: ill-health, tragedy, ageing and
the ailments pertaining to; precious,
lifelong friendships sustained until the last gasp, and most importantly, lots
of laughs.
Early Birds is the sequel to ‘The Future Homemakers of
America’, Ms Graham’s 2001 story of the
young wives of American Airmen stationed in Norfolk, England in the 1950’s. They weathered many an emotional and physical
storm together, especially Lois, married to Herb, the best, most faithful
husband anyone could wish for, but choosing instead to take an English lover
who was anything but stable – the resulting child from that unhappy liaison
being raised by Herb as his own.
Now
it is 2000 and the young women have become elderly; Peggy Dewey, who narrates their latest
adventures, has had a chequered career of her own: her marriage to Airman Vern Dewey collapsed
when he retired from the Air Force; she
bowed out because she objected to having the living room furniture thrown
across the room – at her. Now she and
her inadvertent companion Grice, a much younger Gay man, have been asked to
assist in the care of Vern, whose second wife has died: Peggy’s daughter Crystal has been trying –
and failing – to look after Vern, who now has Alzheimer’s. Would they PLEASE get their selfish asses out
of Texas and come to Maine to give her some help? PLEASE??
So
they do. For their living circumstances
in Texas are anything but ideal. They
are between the classic rock and the hard place – surely, looking after Vern so that Crystal can work
at being a taxidermist (!) and work at her shaky marriage to vegetarian Marc
can’t be that difficult. Can it?
Ms
Graham writes beautifully of family relationships, fractured and
otherwise: Lois and Herb come to visit
to give some respite care for those at the coalface of Vern, only for Lois to
extend the visit by breaking her hip in a fall – which is common in ladies of a
certain age, but she is anything but common, and certainly not a docile
patient. Then the huge, nation-wide
tragedy occurs: the attack and collapse
of the Twin Towers, with its accompanying terrible loss of life shocks the
world and conspiracy theories abound, even in Maine: Vern’s stepson Eugene has constructed a bunker
and fills it with canned food – all very well and good until the shelves
collapse while he is underneath. Things
are only middling! (As my dear old
Granny used to say.)
Peggy
begins a very cautious and tentative relationship with one of their remote
‘next-door’ neighbours; it literally
takes years to progress to the point where Grice says ‘Remember. If you marry him you must promise to adopt
me.’ Well, he is such a fabulous
character that I would adopt him myself if I could! Funny, touching and tender, this lovely
story’s feel-good factor is guaranteed. FIVE STARSü
Look
Who’s Back, by Timur Vermes
His uniform is grubby but intact; he seems to possess all his excellent faculties; his mind functions with its usual brilliance,
and he is ready to lead the German Volk with his customary unerring genius –
the only problem being that the Volk, in the shape of some kids kicking a ball
around close by speak a language that is entirely unfamiliar to him: ‘ ‘Hey
guys, check this out!’ ‘Whoooooa, major
casualty!’ ‘ Then, ‘ ‘You alright, boss?’
‘ All this without the Nazi salute! It
was obvious they wished to return to their game, but show him to the street
when he demands directions from the tallest boy, who must have been their
Hitler Youth leader. (Hitler is
gratified to see that the boy’s mother, a flower of good German Womanhood, had
sewn the boy’s name to his shirt.) ‘ ‘Hitler
Youth Ronaldo! Which way to the street?’
‘
So begin Hitler’s adventures in 21st century
Germany, narrated by the man himself. A
kind News Vendor offers him shelter in his kiosk – even lending him a pair of
‘Genes’ so that he could get his uniform drycleaned, and introducing him to
some of his customers, producers of comedy shows on local television. Hitler is unimpressed with their attempts to
find out who he really is, and finds
tiresome the fact that he has to keep repeating himself all the time: he is Der Fürhrer,
for Pity’s sake! It is not his fault if
they have trouble accepting that. What
HE has trouble accepting is that it appears that he is the only one who has
made this puzzling journey through time – none of his staff is here (what he
wouldn’t give to have good, faithful Bormann by his side!) and he must carve
out a new life for himself – and eventually, the Volk: if he can gain exposure on this wonderful new
invention of TV - even as ‘a Hitler Impersonator’ – well, that’s a start, and
when his appearances go viral on YouTube ‘on the InterNetWork’, Herr Hitler is
well pleased. His powers of oratory have
not left him: thanks to the InterNetWork
he now has a global audience. World
domination on behalf of the Volk will again be within his grasp!
Until
the ultimate irony occurs: Der Führer
receives the beating of his life one night by some Far Right louts, who called
him ‘a dirty Jew’. The nerve of them! But he understands their feelings: as he agreed with the Head of the TV company
to whom he is now contracted when she said ‘The Jews are no Laughing
matter”. He succinctly replies ‘You are
absolutely right!’
Mr
Vermes has written a brilliant satire which has since been made into a film. It ruthlessly explores the hard-fought
freedoms that everyone enjoys today without a thought, and exposes the shameful
currents of racism and greed that underlie communities everywhere. The old prejudices still apply. He is a brave, honest and disturbing writer –
and a very funny one. SIX STARS!!
A Song for Drowned
Souls, by Bernard Minier
This
highly-coloured page turner is a sequel to Mr Minier’s ‘The Frozen Dead’ (see
2015 review below). Once again, sad
burnt-out Commandant Martin Servaz is the main protagonist, trying to make
sense of a senseless crime: the murder
of Claire Diemar, a wildly popular and beautiful young teacher at an exclusive
prep school in a rich town near the Pyrenees.
Her
body has been found in her bath trussed up with metres of cord tied in
complicated knots, and a small torch has been jammed down her throat: still turned on, it gleams under the water
like a tiny headlight. And Mahler’s 4th
Symphony has been set up to play on the stereo downstairs, a fact which makes
Servaz’s blood run cold: the escaped
serial killer from Book One was a great Mahler aficionado – surely this can’t
be his work, especially as one of the corpse’s 17 year old pupils, Hugo
Bokhanowsky, is found sitting by the garden swimming pool off his head on
God-knows-what. It is up to Servaz and
his team to refrain from seeing it as an open-and-shut case with Hugo as the
killer as the local Gendarmerie believe, until the evidence makes it so –
especially as Hugo is the son of Marianne, the great love of Martin’s
youth.
The
plot thickens! Especially when the
Commandant meets Hugo’s mother in the course of his investigations and realises
that her allure is still as powerful as ever, meaning that he will move heaven
and earth to prove that her son is innocent – he hopes.
As
his investigations progress and no stones are left unturned, Servaz is faced
yet again with many more questions than answers. True to form he is threatened,
beaten up and shot at more times than a body should rightly have to endure
(partly his fault for not having his gun with him, then being a lousy shot when
he does), but he stubbornly presses on, not least because of pressure from his
bosses On High: this murder at such an
exclusive Prep school (teaching Tomorrow’s Leader’s, for God’s sake!) could
make a big stink if the killer isn’t caught soon; political lives and reputations depend on it,
especially as one of the rising stars of the ruling party was having an affair
with Claire Diemar – while his wife was at home, quietly dying of cancer.
Mr
Minier spares no-one in the police force or politics; his characters display a scathing disrespect
for their judicial and political rulers that made this reader wonder if such
real-life institutions in France are really in such a weakened and corrupt
state. One certainly hopes not.
There
are many sub-plots in this book; the
prose is quite purple at times and there are a host of minor characters
described with more detail than their importance requires. Once again the plot has more twists and turns
than a pretzel, BUT! Mr Minier keeps us
turning the pages at a hectic speed: he
knows how to draw the reader in – and teach us all a few unpleasant societal
home-truths at the same time. And there
will be a Book Three: the evil serial
killer is still around and has not been brought to justice. Servaz is on the hunt! FOUR STARS.
The
Frozen Dead, by Bernard Minier
Swedish Noir has been at
the forefront of thriller writing for the last decade: now, a worthy challenge to its dominance has
emerged from France. This is the second
novel (the first being Michel Bussi’s ‘After the Crash’) I have read recently
that employs all the tried and true elements necessary for the success of
Nordic dread; lowering skies, brooding
mountains (the Pyrenees), and a labyrinthine plot, solved brilliantly by the
archetypal burnt-out detective – but in this case, Martin Servaz is more
fallible than usual: he is a lousy shot,
and frequently leaves his police weapon in the glovebox of his car when he most
needs it; he is constantly on the
receiving end of all sorts of criminal attempts on his life and survives only
because other people fortuitously appear to rescue him; BUT!
His saving grace is what makes every excellent investigator above the
norm: an incisive intelligence and
intuition and an incomparable ability to think outside the square.
And he certainly needs
to after being despatched from Toulouse to the small ski resort town of
Saint-Martin in the Pyrenees, there to investigate the killing of …. a
horse. A horse?? Yes, but not just any horse – this animal was
a thoroughbred belonging to one of the richest men in France, a powerful man
who demands answers after his beloved animal was beheaded, then partly flayed
before being strung up on a ski-lift. It
is a grisly crime, the ultimate in animal abuse, but hardly worthy of the huge
numbers of police seconded to investigate – except that Servaz feels that this
crime will be the start of worse things to come, especially when his enquiries
lead him to a secluded psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane in the
district, jam-packed with any number of likely candidates for the atrocity, if
only the building and grounds weren’t as impregnable as Fort Knox.
His worst fears are
confirmed when the first human victim is discovered hanging from a bridge, then
another is murdered almost in front of his eyes in a carefully engineered trip
on another ski lift: his job is getting
more impossible by the minute, especially when political pressure is exerted
from high places. The longer these
crimes remain unsolved, the worse it looks for those in power.
Fair enough – except that the higher-ups aren’t at
the coalface, and Servaz and his offsiders are faced with many more questions
than answers – until random clues start falling
into place, and the eventual shocking outcome reveals villains that no-one could have
suspected at the start of the investigation.
Which is as it should be: the
recipe for a superior thriller/crime novel is that (obviously) the reader
shouldn’t figure out the solution until the end, and the pages should turn at a
furious rate before one gets there. ‘The
Frozen Dead’ ticks all the boxes. There
could be a sequel , too, because the most homicidal villain escapes the long
arm of the law, so I live in hopes of reading that he gets what he surely
deserves in Book #2. FIVE STARS
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