by Julia Kuttner
Finding Jack, by Gareth Crocker
In the course of my reading addiction I have come across several stories now about A Man and His Dog; nothing beats ‘Racing in the Rain’ by Garth Stein, but ‘Finding Jack’ is a worthy example of the genre, touching, funny, almost unbearably suspenseful and a six-hanky read: animal stories tug at the heartstrings whether one wants them to or not, and the protagonists of this novel have much tragedy to overcome before their lives take a turn for the better. In a prologue as notable for its prose of deepest purple (where was the editor?!) as for setting the scene, Fletcher Carson reveals to his good friend that after the deaths of his wife and daughter in a plane crash, he has joined the army to fight in Vietnam: it is January, 1972; his life is meaningless without them and he is hoping to die soon fighting for the defeat of Communism in South East Asia.
Six months later, he is still alive and fully involved in the hell that the rest of his platoon has to endure; throughout their daily ordeal they look after each other, creating strong bonds that can only be forged in war, and Fletcher comes to realize that even though he still doesn’t care about living, he cares about his fellow soldiers, and in particular about a wounded military dog who appears to have strayed from its unit: the labrador Jack can sniff out bombs and snipers when his wounds heal and saves the Platoon on numerous occasions - only to be abandoned as ‘surplus to requirements’ at war’s end when the American forces leave Vietnam. Here begins the main thrust of the novel – the lengths to which Fletcher will go to save his beloved friend, the only precious thing left in his life. You better have those hankies ready! I couldn’t put the book down until the end, and despite all the privations that Fletcher and Jack suffered, almost wept again with relief to know that they survived – and isn’t that an example of what a master storyteller Gareth Crocker is, to engender such emotion in the reader, and to paint a picture so convincingly of the hell on earth endured by good young Americans sent by their politicians to a war they couldn’t win. And it is a sorry footnote that of the several thousand life-saving dogs in the canine units sent to Vietnam, less than 400 were permitted to come home. We are fortunate that Man’s Best Friend hasn’t elected to transfer his affections somewhere else. Highly recommended.
A Man You Can Bank On, by Derek Hansen
To the dedicated reader, Derek Hansen should need no introduction; his first novel, ‘Lunch with the Generals’ generated a solid fan base (and I’m right there in the van!) who knows that subsequent novels will always be great reads, entertaining page-turners that are satisfying and well-plotted. ‘A Man You Can Bank on’ is no exception, and though the story takes on a Keystone Cops air and an element of farce, especially towards the end , Mr. Hansen controls the action and his characters admirably without once inducing the reader to mutter cynically ‘Yeah, right’. And that’s no mean feat, considering the plot:
The NSW outback town of Munni-Munni, hardly a dot on the map, is dying: mortgages are being foreclosed, Bank Manager Lambert Hampton has been forced into early retirement and his daughter Sophie, the town’s only schoolteacher, has been informed by the authorities that the school may have to close. Lambert’s beloved wife has recently died of a brain tumour and life appears to be utterly hopeless – until three desperate crims decide to bury their three million dollar haul from a bookie robbery and are observed doing so just outside the town: what a stroke of luck! Lambert uses the money to revive Munni-Munni and its inhabitants: they have robbed the crooks! With the huge cash injection new and successful small businesses are started; everyone drives a Toyota Camry; (Lambert got a good deal from Toyota); mortgages are paid off and there is a thriving business in Jack Russells; everyone has one and the litters fetch big money interstate. Fate has finally smiled on Munni-Munni – until the crims get out of jail 10 years later and return to disinter their loot, only to find it gone. Predictably, that’s when the brown stuff hits the fan: Mr. Hansen has created a fine cast of villains ranging from the ‘duh’ variety to the Boss Big Kev, all single-mindedly determined to get what’s ‘rightfully’ theirs after spending 10 years in jail dreaming about spending it, and a wonderful array of town and bush eccentrics equally determined to protect their investments, their town and their lives. This is indeed a great read, a you-beaut romp through the outback with more humour than you can shake a stick at, and a convincing story of a man’s devotion to his family, friends and sense of place. Great entertainment.
Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh
This novel is the first book of a trilogy, and an exhaustive account of Britain’s infamous Opium trade, poppies grown and manufactured into the drug in India and sold to China in a bid to unman and enslave both populations – until the Chinese Mandarins decide to block further imports of the poppy to their country, thus starting the Opium Wars in the late 1830s, a conflict championed by all ‘right-thinking’ British importers and supporters of Free Trade everywhere – or more correctly, a fight by them to retain the huge profits and enormous riches gained in living off the misery of others. This story is an ambitious undertaking; a great sprawling mess of a tale centred around the 1838 voyage of the Ibis, a two-masted schooner fitted out originally as a slaver, then altered minimally after the abolition of slavery to transport indentured Indian labourers to the Mauritius Islands. The Ibis’s next port of call is Canton, there to deliver its supplementary cargo of Opium, but such is the detail, the scene-setting, the sheer sweep of the story that at the end of Book One the Ibis is nowhere near Mauritius, but instead fighting a mighty storm, with an officer murdered and several escapees deciding to take their chances in a stolen longboat – Mein Gott! What an ending: I am nearly as much up in the air as the crashing waves and screeching winds so thrillingly described by Mr. Ghosh, and am still marveling at the ease with which he has brought an initially bewildering and polyglot array of characters (almost a cast of thousands, and every one has a backstory) into being, then pared them down convincingly until the remainder through many a different circumstance end up as voyagers on the Ibis. This novel is also notable for the almost unintelligible mixture of Hindusthani, Urdu, Lascar and old British slang used as dialogue, and I had great fun reading the origins of many of our English words still in use today. Mr. Ghosh has crafted an adventure story in the fine tradition of the great 19th century classics; he’s a worthy successor to Conrad, Defoe and Melville and I am looking forward with great anticipation to Volume 2, ‘River of Smoke’. A treat is surely in store, and I hope Mr. Ghosh is hard at work on volume 3. Highly recommended. 
I waited seven months to read Ken Follett’s latest Best Seller, such is his popularity with library members, and I’m happy to say that it was well worth the wait. He may never scale lofty literary heights but what a good storyteller he is, and how credible are his characters. He has produced (yet again) the consummate read – a rattling pace, Love (True and not so!), the horrors of war and revolution, and a meticulously researched account of the seeds that were sown to germinate the War to End All Wars, World War 1.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, refers to a little rhyme that Southern children learn to enable them to spell ‘Mississippi’ and with a name like that, any assistance would be helpful. The people of this story are much the same, tricky to read , complicated and full of twists and turns in this beautifully written novel from Tom Franklin – his marvelous imagery encompasses the land as well as his characters, and the reader is blessed to read such fine prose. He chronicles the lives of the inhabitants of the tiny, dying hamlet of Chabot, Southern Mississippi: naturally, everyone knows everything about everyone, including the fact that Larry Ott, the town outcast and mechanic whom no-one ever takes their cars to, probably – well, FOR SURE – killed a girl 25 years ago, but was so fiendishly clever at hiding the deed and the corpse that the law was never able to arrest him. Now another young girl has gone missing, and who else but Larry Ott could be the prime suspect, bearing the brunt of the finger-pointing, the name-calling and various acts of vandalism to his property: he done it FOR SURE!
Imogen Robertson won the Telegraph’s first thousand words Competition in 2007 by submitting the start of this book, her first novel. It is a murder mystery, set in 1780, and the prose is as elegant and genteel as the characters and time of which she writes. She has researched thoroughly the political and social mores of country and city life and writes convincingly of the huge gaps between rich and poor, noble and base, and the glaring unfairness of gender inequality: her heroine, Mrs. Harriet Westerman, runs a prosperous estate in Sussex while her husband, a Naval Commodore, is at sea – she is forthright, independent and used to making independent decisions, but is constrained by society’s expectations of how a ‘Lady’ should comport herself. It is not socially acceptable for a woman to take on a murder investigation, even if the corpse was found on her land; consequently she has to enlist the aid of Gabriel Crowther, recently-arrived ‘natural scientist’, an anatomist whose reputation is illustrious and far-reaching, but a recluse who has secrets of his own. There is also a dissolute Nobleman (the main suspect), his dastardly steward and a cast of minor villains hell-bent on murder, and as the story progresses the corpses pile up in a most satisfactory way – one even gets his throat ripped out by a leopard! Oh, it’s all good Georgian fun, and the denouement when it arrives has a twist that surprises, as it should.
Swamplandia! Is the name of a run-down nature park owned and operated by the Bigtree family on an island in the Everglades in Florida. They Swim with the Alligators! Wrestle them into Submission! Take the tourists on Island Wildlife walks and Tours of the Bigtree Historic Family Museum ! And sell their captive visitors toxic refreshments and souvenirs from the only café, reluctantly staffed by the three Bigtree children who are home-schooled by their mother, Hilola, Alligator wrestler and swimmer extraordinaire, star of the show and of their hearts. Dad is Samuel ‘Chief’ Bigtree; he is the compere, works the lights, does all the repairs, and looks after his aged father, Grandpa Sawtooth, who started up the business – which is running on the smell of an oily rag and mortgaged to the hilt. There is not a drop of Native American blood in any of them, but it’s good for business and the tourists to think so, and as a business and a family the Bigtrees putter along until Hilola dies of ovarian cancer at the age of 36.
The Rapture, coming soon to a place near you! And this is what happens when it does. Tim Wilson has quite an important day job, that of U.S. Correspondent for TVNZ, but I’m happy to say that the ‘There’s a Great Novel Bursting to be Born from every Journalist’ cliché is very true in this case: Mr. Wilson has made a most successful first foray into the world of the Good Book – in subject and construction.
Sara Groen has already been justly acclaimed for her novel ‘Water for Elephants’, a wonderful story of an American circus during the time of the 30’s Depression, recently made into a very successful movie. Now she tries something completely different: a story of scientific experimentation – good and bad - with primates, in this case six Bonobos, (cousins of the chimpanzee) held at a laboratory and taught by sign language to communicate with scientists. Reporter John Thigpen is assigned to do a story on the apes and their ‘trainer’ Isabel Duncan, a scientist who regards them as family rather than mere animals – certainly they are more her family than anyone else - and she has made great strides in educating them and increasing her own knowledge of how the apes and their hierarchy function. Thigpen wishes to write a serious article lauding her singular achievements and does so – until he is usurped and his story stolen by an unscrupulous colleague. The apes’ laboratory is bombed, ostensibly by animal activists; Isabel is seriously injured and the apes are sold on to a Porn king who wants to make a reality TV show called, of all things, Ape House! Yep, a lot happens in a very short time and I have to say that there are more characters in this book than you can shake a stick at, some of them wildly funny and others who are superfluous to the plot; regardless, Ms Groen manages to keep all her literary balls up in the air and we reach the happy ending (and I’m so glad it was!) with every loose thread neatly tucked away. Ms Groen has done some very solid research into apes and their ability to communicate by picture and sign, and the story she has produced is both a damning condemnation of animal cruelty and abuse and a loving tribute to a species’ dignity, intelligence and innate integrity. This was a pleasure to read. ****
The year is 1865; the great Gold Rush is well under way and Hokitika is booming; there are 100 pubs throughout the town to slake the miners’ thirst – and relieve them of their hard-won gold, and everyone is trying to get rich quick by fair means or foul before the gold runs out and all the diggers move on to the next Big Strike. Into this hotch-potch of goodies and baddies comes Halfie – Half-pint, Harvey, Bedwetter, Monkey: these are only some of the names he answers to, this little maori boy who has run away from his tribe after the death of his beloved tuakana Moana. Being a resourceful and intelligent little boy he has decided to be a ‘coin boy’, and where better a place to earn coin than Hokitika town – he is sure that he will eventually accumulate enough coin to earn a place to sleep by the stove of the reclusive miner and drunk, Ludovic, with the hope that Ludovic will teach him English. He knows that ‘That Inglish is a langwich what don’t behave’ and he would appreciate some tuition so that he can get fair treatment from Whitey. Besides, he’s sick of sleeping up a ponga tree – that’s tolerable in the summer, but Hokitika gets a lot of rain and it’s coming onto winter, so he has to plan ahead.
The year is 2060. Time travel has been perfected and it is now possible for scientists and historians to travel back through time to ‘observe’ and experience defining times in world history. Oxford University is home to a thriving laboratory of highly skilled technicians who can send scholars anywhere to a century and an event that they wish to study and experience, complete with authentic clothes provided by wardrobe, and mannerisms, accents and information implanted for the period of time they will be away. Nothing can go wrong; all contingencies have been covered – except for a slight problem of ‘slippage’, the hours or even days that the arrival and departure times might be erroneous. Nevertheless, it’s considered a minor inconvenience and three historians travel back to 1940, to London and the Blitz, experiencing at terrifying first-hand the sleeplessness and fear, the grief of losing friends and loved ones, and the indomitable courage and collective good cheer of a people under terrible siege. Ms Willis describes the bombing raids to such good effect that the reader feels right in the thick of action that she really would never want to experience; there are many well-drawn and engaging characters, in particular two cockney child evacuees, dreadful but wonderfully engaging and Ms Willis, in spite of her American origins, gets all the accents and idioms right for the most part - any errors left can be attributed to careless editing . This is a rattling good read and we are inexorably drawn on to the sequel ‘All Clear’ for at the conclusion of ‘Blackout’, the worst has happened: the three historians’ access to their own time has been blocked; ‘The Drop’ is no longer working. They are trapped.
Ten years ago Jonathan Franzen wowed the literary cognoscenti with his superb novel ‘The Corrections’, and that world has been waiting with breathless anticipation ever since for the next opus. Jonathan Franzen writes about families: in ‘The Corrections’ he explored the lives of two protagonists in a very long marriage, and the relationship between them and their children to hilarious and stunning effect; the American nuclear family at the turn of the century was laid mercilessly bare by his astute and incisive observations, but all was softened by his wonderfully Dickensian humour.
Now: Your first requisite for reading this book is strong wrists – it’s a doorstopper. Your second is a complete suspension of ‘yeah, right!’ comments as I recount my heavily-abridged version of the plot, for this is a novel on the grand scale as well as huge physical size; it’s a tale of a scientific experiment gone dreadfully, fatally wrong, conducted by the U.S. Army in a remote location in the mountains of Colorado, the scientific objective being to create a race of ‘Super Soldiers’, impervious to heat, cold, disease and virtually indestructible, thereby conquering America’s terrorist enemies in Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent. There would be no more wounded and dying to be returned home ‘eating up the defense budget in the veterans’ hospitals’; in short, it would be the answer to the Pentagon’s prayers – all that had to be done was to inject a new-found virus into chosen candidates, and after a short period of illness, a new, invincible warrior would be born. 
There is no end to Ms. French’s myriad talents – quite apart from her superb comic skills as an actress she has now proven that she is also a writer of insight and wit, capturing effortlessly in her amber the 21st century family: Mum Maureen Battle (Mo), capable and efficient, on-to-it child psychologist – except when it comes to her own children, about whom she clearly hasn’t a clue: Dad or ‘Husband’ as Mo invariably refers to him, hovering lovingly in the background, keeping the wheels turning in ever so subtle ways in his efforts to provide a loving and stable environment for his family. He has a job, ‘doing something with computers’, but everyone seems to be vague as to its specifics: Dora, about to turn 18 and full of teenage angst and self-loathing, is fretting about the humiliation of being dumped by her small but perfectly-formed boyfriend, being a virgin, being less than interested in a future career, and being FAT! Last but not least, Peter: call him Oscar please, as he is such a disciple of Mr. Wilde that he is sure he is his reincarnation. Peter is also tall, cherubic, flamboyant, academically brilliant and gay as a hat – and proud of it - no gender angst for Mr. Peter; in fact the only thing he agonises over is having to live in Pangbourne, the most deeply unfashionable place on earth.
This novel is not for the faint-hearted. It’s themes are as unforgiving and brutal as the Texas landscape in which the story is set – but WHAT a story: starting in 1895 with the death in childbirth of the beloved wife of Vaclav Sala, a Czech immigrant cotton farmer. The baby, the fourth son for the couple, survives but Vaclav is completely unmanned and embittered by his loss. His heart turns to stone and he regards his sons, particularly the youngest as intolerable reminders of what he once had. He becomes famous in the district for treating his horses better than his sons – in fact, he races his horses and makes his sons pull the plough in front of him, no better than human livestock, with all four reaching adulthood with permanently deformed necks. His sons hate Vaclav (not that he cares) but they are staunch in their love and support of each other – until their father accepts a wager from a very rich Spaniard newly arrived in the district: a horse race between Vaclav’s best mount, ridden by 15 year-old Karel, the youngest, despised cause of his wife’s death, and the Spaniard’s beautiful thoroughbred, ridden by his spirited youngest daughter. The prize if Karel wins: 600 acres of land. If he loses, the three eldest brothers must wed the Spaniard’s daughters. The brothers are ecstatic! It’s a win-win situation for them – escape from their tyrannical father, and legal union to three comely girls: what could be better – provided Karel will only lose. And Karel finds that he doesn’t want to, indeed can’t, because Vaclav threatens him with a terrible punishment if he dares to throw the race; he is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and Mr. Machart doesn’t spare us as he draws us inexorably onwards to the terrible conclusion of the wager and the end of the brothers’ loving alliance against their terrible parent.
What a great pleasure it was to read this debut novel, judged to be one of the New York Times’ 10 best books of 2010, for Mr. Goodwillie has produced that rare thing; a superior literary thriller which combines great suspense with searching moral and ethical questions: which person or event provides the fire to the touchpaper of radicalism from within? What ‘last straw’ finally breaks the back of tolerance in an age of disillusionment and impotence? For Paige Roderick it is the death by friendly fire of her brother in the Iraq war – for Aidan Cole, jaded and going-nowhere-fast failed journalism student turned blogger, (phew, glad I wasn’t holding my breath when I wrote that) it is merely the fact that he wishes to rescue Paige (she’s a serious hotty, quite apart from her lofty ideals!) and keep her safe from the radicals she hitherto supported, after it becomes clear that they no longer want to blow up buildings: they want to kill people too. This novel is beautifully constructed, a split memoir with each chapter narrated by Aidan or Paige; Aidan has a very nice line in black humour, describing his New York lifestyle with ruthless honesty. Paige is also honest, remaining true at great cost to her integrity and ideals: she had firmly believed ‘that America had passed an invisible tipping point, strayed too far from the noble tenets of its founding; taking it back would require drastic measures.’ Now her radical friends have reached a tipping point of their own – radicalism has turned into terrorism and she knows too much for them to allow her to live. Mr. Goodwillie has written the thinking man’s thriller, fast-paced, highly suspenseful – and unafraid to ask the uncomfortable questions of a complacent, apathetic society. *****
This is the story of a newspaper, a newspaper founded in the 50’s in Rome by an industrial tycoon who had enough money to indulge himself in a flight of fancy, that of providing a superior international news organ for English speakers in Europe. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make money; what mattered most was that it be a benchmark always for the highest journalistic standards – and a means of being close to his one true love, the woman he installs as joint editor – with her husband. So begins Tom Rachman’s charming novel of the experience of living and working in Rome, producing a newspaper for English readers. He knows the business intimately, having worked as a correspondent and editor for Associated Press in New York and Rome, and for the Herald Tribune in Paris; in fact his characters have such a ring of truth about them I have to wonder how thinly veiled they are: how many of his former work colleagues recognize themselves in this book? There is the Editor-in-Chief, hugely intelligent, driven, and driving everyone else before her in a breathless attempt to produce a daily newspaper that people will read despite competition from the relentlessly encroaching electronic media; sadly, she also drives away the men in her life with her harsh judgements and scathing opinions of their worth. Her second in command Craig Menzies is a workaholic, living with a much younger woman whom he adores. He can’t believe that she wants to stay with him permanently – how could someone like him ever be THAT lucky? Through a tragic miscalculation of his own, he is eventually proven correct. Arthur Gopal, son of one of India’s greatest writers is in charge of ‘Puzzle Wuzzle’ and Obituaries; he knows he has more to offer the paper than the tasks to which he is set, and through a series of carefully calculated underhand moves manages to get the promotion he always dreamed of: culture editor, over and above the former holder of that title, Clint Oakley, a loudmouthed braggart and racist who is demoted in turn, to his fury and dismay, to Puzzle Wuzzle and Obits! Mr. Rachman’s debut novel is a delight, witty, convincingly written and peopled with great characters who are all linked by the work they do for the paper – which cannot last; the bosses in Atlanta are ready to pull the plug, with tragic consequences for one of their own. This is a very funny book, but the reader still gets sucker-punched along the way. I’m still thinking about some of the shocks I never saw coming, and this is how fine writing can be and should be. *****
Here’s something different in the Whodunnit category, and what a welcome – and different – breath of fresh air it is: Emily Tempest, the novel’s protagonist, is a half-aboriginal woman whose stamping ground is the Northern Territory. Her white father has worked in the mining industry all his life and never remarried after the death of his aboriginal wife 20 years earlier. Emily has received a unique upbringing in that her father has encouraged her to embrace both cultures ; consequently she is responsible, educated ( well, nearly: she went to Uni to study Earth Science, not with the intention of getting a degree but to understand better the ancient land that has its roots in her heart. When she felt she had learned all she wanted to know she left. Without the degree.), and fearless to a fault: her aggression and disrespect for authority is legendary, especially if she sees injustice – ‘that bint has got nice tits and a mouth like a blowtorch!’ – is a common opinion held by Emily’s suffering work colleagues, the local constabulary. For Emily is the district’s Aboriginal Community Police officer – a ‘Clayton’s Cop’, she calls herself, but conscientious in her representation of her people, those sad, aggressive, drunks and no-hopers who subsist in the humpies on the edge of town. Mr. Hyland doesn’t give us the hearts and flowers version of the uneasy alliance between the People of the Dreaming and the white usurpers; imbedded racism bubbles away under the surface and spills over it too; ‘those bloody abos’ contribute diligently to their own degradation, but the story is infused with great insight (Mr. Hyland worked for 10 years with aboriginal communities in Central Australia) and hope; with Emily as their champion ‘those bloody abos’ have more rights than they were aware of, and a reason to return and protect the great red land of their ancestors from something evil that is poisoning it and everything it sustains. An old miner is murdered before he can reveal what that poison is, and Emily relies on her prescience and instincts as much as her intelligence to solve the crime – along with a cast of Outback characters that put ‘Dad and Dave’ to shame. This is the third Emily Tempest novel; I hope the library will give us the treat of the other two: ‘Moonlight Downs’ and ‘Diamond Dove’: the action is hectic; the corpses pile up everywhere; the ducks are all lined up in a row at the conclusion, and the Ocker humour is unbeatable. One of the characters stops to think and ‘He gave a fair imitation of a budgie trying to pass an emu’s egg’. Can you top that? I don’t think so. ****