The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina

For lovers of crime/thriller novels, the more of this genre they read the more predictable the plots become:  we end up wearily familiar with the brilliant but burnt-out supersleuth, the star of the show – which makes one wonder why writers feel they cannot stray from this old, tried-and-true formula;  there HAS to be a new variation just to liven things up a bit, and to prevent the reader from solving the murder/mystery in the very first chapter.  Well, I’m happy to report that this paragon has finally arrived, thanks to Denise Mina and her singular heroine, Detective Sergeant Alex Morrell.  Alex is nasty.  She’s spiteful and bad-tempered;  fiercely loyal to police hierarchy;  a product of a slum Glasgow upbringing; a brilliant analyst of human behaviour good and bad, and the enemy of hypocrisy and pretension.  She is also pregnant with twins and loves her husband very much.

‘The End of the Wasp Season’ is not the first time Alex has made an appearance, a previous novel being ‘Still Midnight’, but this book is easy to read as a stand-alone story, with enough references to her past to enable the reader to enjoy her current adventure with no distractions – which is vital.  How about this for a plot:  we know almost from the beginning that two privileged teenagers commit a dreadful, mindless murder, but it’s not until the very last page that we find out which one actually did the awful deed.  (And here I say that I was WRONG, I who can usually spot the bad ‘un a mile off).  There are no happy endings in this story;  it’s bleak and unforgiving of its characters’ shortcomings, but Ms Mina has a wonderful knack of getting to the essence of things:  she can deliver in a single sentence what other writers use a page to describe.   She is an exceptional writer and deserves all the superlatives heaped upon her, for Alex Morrell is a babe – foul-mouthed, bad-tempered but honourable and unforgettable.  Can’t wait for the next instalment.

Maine, by J. Courtney Sullivan

Three generations of women from the same family congregate at the old family beach house in Maine for the summer month of June – not because they planned to be together, but because circumstance dictates it.  Alice, the matriarch, first came to the property as a newly pregnant married woman nearly sixty years before;  her husband had won beautiful beachfront land on a bet with a friend and since then the family, now spanning four generations, have made annual pilgrimages to this lovely and cherished place.  Alice is in her 80’s, sharp as a tack, a devout Catholic with a tongue like a butcher’s knife – especially on matters of faith – and a defiantly heavy drinker.       

Alice’s granddaughter Maggie has also arrived to stay solo ‘for just a few days’;  the original plan of spending some idyllic time there with handsome but feckless boyfriend Gabe scuttled after a huge fight that has ended their relationship.  The problem now is that Maggie’s plan of confessing to Gabe that she is pregnant – in a setting guaranteed (she hoped) to introduce him gently and romantically to the responsibilities of impending fatherhood – has been thwarted:  she finds that at the age of thirty-two, she will have to soldier on alone.  Gabe informs her by email that he can’t deal with fatherhood ‘at this point in time’, which means it’s time to bite the bullet and inform the rest of the family, specifically her mother, Kathleen.

Kathleen is the oldest of Alice’s children, a former alcoholic and intentional rebel against everything that Alice holds dear:  thanks to several massive family confrontations, one involving the death from cancer of Kathleen’s beloved father Daniel, Alice and Kathleen are bitter foes.  Kathleen has sworn after her father’s death never to return to Maine – until she gets the news of Maggie’s pregnancy;  then she swoops in from California to take charge of her errant daughter and do battle with her detested mother.

And into this mix is added the long-suffering, martyred Ann Marie, Alice’s daughter-in-law, married to son Patrick (‘I am the ONLY one of this family who looks after YOUR mother and what thanks do I get?), who  has reluctantly arrived two weeks earlier than usual to keep an eye on Alice (and her drinking) because she couldn’t persuade Kathleen to come from California to do her family duty – until Kathleen gets the news of Maggie’s dilemma.  Ann Marie is furious.

The stage is set for family fireworks, and Ms Sullivan does not disappoint us:  she writes beautifully of fraught family dynamics, the struggles of successive generations to break iron-bound ties of faith and Irish conservatism, and the attempts by Kathleen and Maggie to be as unlike spiteful Alice as possible, without realising that they are more like her than they can possibly imagine.  No-one to their lasting regret has inherited Daniel’s sanguine and sunny nature, that calming and amiable influence that always steadied the family ship, and as Alice eventually reveals yet another bombshell guaranteed to shock her divided family to the core the reader is treated to the long-secret reasons for all the family slights and resentments.  Each woman has successive chapters to herself, a narrative device that works particularly well here, and by the end of this tender, funny and loving tribute to an American family, the reader feels as familiar with the Kelleher family as their own.  Ms Sullivan portrays beautifully ‘The importance of generations:  one person understanding life through the experiences of all the people who came before’.  Highly recommended.

Pao, by Kerry Young

Yang Pao is 14 when he is brought to Jamaica from China in 1938 with his mother and brother;  their slain father’s best friend Zhang has made a new life for himself there and wants to look after his dead comrade’s family.  Chinese merchants have established themselves in Kingston, and Zhang has gained influence as a formidable ‘fixer’, a provider of protection against various dangers besetting the population of Chinatown (racist attacks being only one) and its denizens, and he is the owner of several gambling and smuggling rackets.  Zhang is a crooked character, but he has a way of inspiring respect without fear, (unless it is absolutely unavoidable!) and a credo drummed daily into Pao that in its own fashion is an honourable way of looking at the world.

As time passes, Pao flourishes in his new environment;  he makes strong, lasting friendships and it is generally understood that he will become heir to all of Zhang’s rackets, big and small;  he is happy with his new life and even more so when he meets the great love of his life, Gloria.  Distressingly, Gloria is a prostitute, an occupation that is not honourable according to Zhang – ‘We did not fight and die in Chinese revolution to put women to work to satisfy base needs of base men’ – and when it is time for Pao to marry, Gloria is not on Zhang’s list:  Pao must marry well, and so he does – he weds Fay, the daughter of a rich Chinese businessman. 

And does everyone live happily ever after?  Of course not!  Fay loathes Pao – he’s nothing but a small-time racketeer: she has been forced into marriage,  forced into giving him two children, forced into living in squalor with him in Chinatown instead of in her beautiful childhood home on the hill, and forced to tolerate the fact that he visits his whore three times a week – oh, life is not turning out according to Zhang and Pao’s plan at all.  Add to the combustible mix Fay’s obsessive dependence on the new, young and handsome parish priest, and the unpleasant solutions that Pao must employ to solve his many ‘business’ problems;  then the reader can’t help but feel great sympathy for Pao and an urge to give him good advice, for Pao is the ultimate ‘likeable rogue’.  First-time novelist Kerry Young has him narrate this great little story in his own inimitable fractured English, detailing honestly his many faults but revealing, too, his innate love and respect for humanity, family, friendship – and his adopted country Jamaica, for Pao’s story is set against the backdrop of Jamaica’s turbulent and bloody history;  it’s struggle for independence;  and its dogged attempts to meld all the diverse races on that little island into one entity:  a Jamaican.  This was a pleasure to read.        

GREAT READS FOR JANUARY 2012

by Julia Kuttner

Faithful Place, by Tana French

Undercover Detective Frank Mackey works for the Dublin Police;  he’s very good at his job – and an absolute disaster at personal relationships:  so far, so predictable for readers of suspense novels, but Tana French invests Frank with so much more than the usual Brilliant but Burnt-Out persona -   all too readily adopted by other writers -  that he is like a chilling but welcome blast of fresh and frosty air, holding the reader in his ruthless grip from the start of his story to the finish.

His life so far has had some huge disappointments:  his first love Rosie stood him up without any warning on the night they were planning to run away from their gothically awful families to start a new life in England together, and was never seen again;  his marriage has ended in divorce and the associated recriminations; and apart from his job, his life doesn’t have much focus – except for the precious gift of his daughter, 9 year old Holly .  Frank’s love for her is profound and complete and he constantly blesses the fact that she will never know the horrors of living with an alcoholic Da who terrorized not just Ma, but all five children of that blighted union, and that she has never met his terrible relatives – and nor will she – he thinks.  He hasn’t seen any of his family except his sister Jackie for 22 years,  until a derelict house undergoing demolition in Faithful Place, their street, reveals some secrets that require his professional attention, and to his horror, he finds that Rosie didn’t stand him up after all:  she was murdered.

This book is more than just a who-done-it;  it’s more than the usual tragic family saga of violence and dashed hopes:  it has more layers than an onion, and as each layer is peeled away more insights are given into each character and the terrible reasons for their behavior towards each other.  And before the reader decides that they wouldn’t touch all this tragedy with a barge pole, I’d like to lure them back in with the solemn (!) promise of a laugh on every page:  the uniquely Irish humour which has helped the entire race survive war through the centuries, famine and The Troubles  is here in abundance:  who else but an Irish author could write such great drama, and leaven it with such comedy.  This is a wonderful story:  don’t miss it.

Rangatira, by Paula Morris

Paratene te Manu was a great warrior, specially trained in the arts of war from childhood.  He fought alongside the ferocious and brilliant Hongi Hika, Nga Puhi Ariki , as one of his Ngati Wai allies and was himself a rangatira of great mana – and he is Paula Morris’s ancestor.  Who better to write an account of the ground-breaking trip he and a group of other rangatira made to England in 1863, but a loving and eloquent descendant  - and she has paid fitting and respectful homage to her forebear in this lovely book.  Paratene’s story is told in a series of flashbacks and reminiscences whilst he sits for his portrait by Gottfried Lindauer, the Bohemian artist who made paintings of many of the rangatira and kuia of that time, and despite Paratene’s offense that their moko was not always correctly depicted – how else were maori to recognize ancestry and region amongst the tribes if not for their moko – he recognizes within the painter a similarity to himself when he went to England:  they are strangers in a strange land.

Fourteen men and women set out on their big adventure in February 1863, under the leadership of Messrs. Jenkins, Lightband and Lloyd, all of Nelson;  the rangatira had signed ‘a piece of paper’ guaranteeing them a sum of money each week, and the opportunity to see the big cities of England and learn about British culture.  After an uncomfortable voyage in steerage on the ‘Ida Zeigler’ – with the attendant weevily food – the party arrived in London, at first to great acclaim.  They were feted by London society and met the Prince and Princess of Wales and Queen Victoria herself, but gradually realized that Messrs. Jenkins et al were collecting a lot of money from people who came to gawk at them;  they were instructed to wear their cloaks all the time whatever the weather and were required to sing waiata and prance about doing the haka at every ‘meeting’.  To add insult to injury, photos of them were sold as postcards, the proceeds being pocketed by Mr. Jenkins:  this was not what they signed the piece of paper for!  Their gradual disillusionment and distrust of their pakeha ‘managers’, combined with the approach of a cruel English winter is beautifully described in Paratene’s voice by Ms Morris:  he is at pains in his narrative to be fair-minded and objective and recounts events to the best of his recollection, but he has to concede  eventually  that the whole exercise has been one of exploitation, principally by Jenkins, hoping to make money from the goggle-eyed voyeurism of the London public and the patronizing charity of liberal do-gooders.  He sums up their situation succinctly:  ‘Jenkin’s mana depended on his association with us, but ours did not depend on him.’ How true.  And how profoundly moving is this true story of people who influenced and shaped the thoughts, minds and directions of our young nation 150 years ago.  Ms. Morris has done her ancestor proud.  Highly recommended. 

GREAT READS FOR DECEMBER 2011

by Julia Kuttner

The Conductor, by Sarah Quigley

The Siege of Leningrad has earned its place in 20^th century history as one of the most horrifying events of the Second World War.  Much has been written to record a great city’s descent into starvation, death, and the barbarism that desperate citizens visited upon each other in their efforts to stay alive.  Leningrad, the City of Ghosts:  bombed and strafed night and day by the Luftwaffe and hammered mercilessly by the German troops on its borders, it is a miracle that there were still people alive and sane at the end of the siege, more than 800 days after it began.

Sarah Quigley ‘s novelized account of the Siege, and the reaction to it by the city’s cultural elite stands alone;  it’s more than just a story of the composition of a Symphony by Dimitri Shostakovich, his 7^th, called the Leningrad Symphony, his evocation of the horrors of war and his attempts to make sense and beauty of an ugly world;  it’s also a powerful and compelling tribute to the courage, tenacity and willpower of a group of starving musicians of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, led with iron resolve by the Conductor Karl Eliasberg.  A fellow student of the Conservatoire with Shostakovich, he could never hope to aspire to similar greatness, instead having to employ his more workmanlike talents to lead  the second-string orchestra of Leningrad,  perpetually battling his contradictory  feelings of envy for always being on the periphery of the elite social circle surrounding Shostakovich, and his true admiration for his genius.

It took this reader at least a quarter of the novel to engage with Ms. Quigley’s characters;  initially I felt that they were two-dimensional and forced, but as the story progresses and she finds her wonderful rhythm the events are revealed with a stark beauty and terrible clarity that nails the reader to the page;  there’s no escape from the horror and  tragedy besetting the Conductor (when the country’s leaders order Eliasberg and his orchestra to perform Shostakovich’s newly completed 7^th Symphony to boost the morale of the people, there are only 14 of his original musicians left alive – the rest have starved to death), he must find anyone who has the breath to blow a horn, and a huge reserve of determination within himself to complete the task – and survive. 

When Ms Quigley writes of music, the SOUND of it, she makes beautiful music herself;  In my reading experience there has been only one other writer who could do the same, and that was Anne Patchett in ‘Bel Canto’. What a singular gift this  is, and how fortunate we are to enjoy it.  As an added bonus, this book comes with an audio CD of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony – what a delight to listen to the music whilst reading the book.

11.22.63, by Stephen King

Stephen King has produced an astonishing body of work during the course of his career – 52 novels at last count – and all involved to a greater or lesser degree with fantasy, the supernatural and outright horror:  this time he decides to explore time travel, and the consequences of going back to alter cataclysmic events in world history.  What would happen, say, if someone was able to return to 1963 – and prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald?

Maine English teacher Jake Epping is provided with the opportunity to do just that in 2011, through the existence of a time portal in an old diner soon to be removed to make way for a national chain store.  He is introduced to this phenomenon by the terminally ill manager of the diner and begins his mission very reluctantly, first trying out a ‘dummy run’ of going back to 1958 to alter the fate of a person very dear to him, the janitor at the school in which he teaches.  To anyone who grew up in the 50’s, Mr. King’s version of those years is solid and sound;  his ear for idiom and his eye for detail is as sharp and funny as always and, as always, he can build suspense and dread within the fluttering heart of any reader with effortless ease.

This book covers a lot of emotional and historical ground;  it’s a whopper in size, feeling and scope, and it poses some fascinating questions, including what state the world would be in if Kennedy HAD survived his assassination – would the Vietnam war have really been avoided, and hundreds of thousands of lives saved – or would something even worse have happened, because as Jake finds out more than once, history is obdurate:  it doesn’t like to be tampered with, and will throw up many obstacles in the path of anyone who will try to do just that.  This is an exceptional story from a very fine storyteller.  Highly recommended.   

Wouldn’t it be presumptuous – but fun! -  to have a Horowhenua Library Best Reads of 2011?  After all, it’s that time of year when all the august publications –  TheNew York Times, Time magazine (and don’t forget The Listener!) et al present their lists of the crème de la crème of contemporary writing.  Well, a cat may look at a king, so I shall take it upon myself to compile my very own highly subjective list of the best of  the titles  I reviewed for the Library for 2011.

1.       Agaat, by Marlene Van Niekerk

2.       The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht

3.       The Passage, by Justin Cronin

4.       The Wake of Forgiveness, by Bruce Machart

5.       Swamplandia, by Karen Russell

6 & 7 Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh

8.       Hokitika Town, by Charlotte Randall

9.       La Rochelle’s Road, by Tanya Moir

10.    The Larnachs, by Owen Marshall

11.    A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

12.    The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan 

13.    The Conductor, by Sarah Quigley

14.    11.22.63, by Stephen King

        

I f anyone requires more detail (and my usual verbosity) about any of the above titles, just scroll down;  they are all below in  various monthly sections.  And I’d like to say this:  isn’t it great that we have a library that punches waaay above its weight, providing us with such excellent reading choices.  Levin is fortunate indeed.  Happy New Year to all. 

GREAT READS FOR NOVEMBER 2011

 

by Julia Kuttner

The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan

‘It’s official,’ Harley said.  ‘They killed the Berliner two nights ago.  You’re the last.’  Then after a pause:  ‘I’m sorry.’

And that’s how Jake Marlowe discovers that he is indeed the world’s very last werewolf .  Not that he wants to be a 9 foot killing machine every full moon, but two hundred years ago he was inadverdently ‘turned’ and has since satisfied The Hunger every month.  He greets the news  that he is next on the list with relief:  he is tired of his immortality, of his victims’ souls clamouring inside him, and the very solitariness of his long existence .  He will welcome his death at the hands of the son of one of his victims, now a high-ranking officer in WOCOP, an acronym for World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena – a modern version of the eighteenth century secret society The Servants of Light :  yep, brave men have been fighting monsters for centuries, but Jake is tired of running and hiding;  he will welcome his death at the next full moon.  Or so he thinks, until his unerring olfactory senses pick up the irresistible perfume of another were – and a young female, to boot!

And what happens next is the plot of Glen Duncan’s wonderful novel.  I have never read anything quite like this: rhapsodic, scholarly, subversive and screamingly funny, his prose veers from lyrical heights to obscene depths, all in the space of a paragraph.  There are enough f’s and c’s to sear the eyeballs of a bishop, but the language whether high or low is all relevant to events  that Mr. Duncan controls with superb precision and a brilliant knack for exposing society’s hypocrisies.  By the end of the novel the reader is hoping that Jake and his lover survive – he’s unique, even if he does tear a hapless human limb from limb once a month – but all is not revealed until the very last page, and even then many questions remain unanswered but are ‘for another story’.  I certainly hope so:  Mr. Duncan (who looks pretty wolfish himself in the jacket photo) owes it to the reader to finish the tale, and even if he takes several books to do it, that will be fine by me.  Highly recommended.

River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh

This is the second book of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy.  At the end of  ‘Sea of Poppies’( Book one)  the Ibis, a converted slave ship carrying indentured Indian labourers to Mauritius, is caught in a huge storm.  Two condemned prisoners and three Lascars murder an officer, escape the ship and are thought drowned :   the ship’s first mate is held responsible, not for the loss of life of those worthless monkeys, but for the danger that was caused to the main shipment, a huge cargo of opium on its way to the Chinese port of Canton. 

It was cruel of Mr. Ghosh to leave the reader in such suspense, but ‘River of Smoke’ answers all the questions raised in the first novel, and presents us with a host of fascinating new characters to enjoy.  There is a welcome reintroduction to some of the main protagonists of Book One, but some take a back seat as the action shifts from Calcutta to Canton.  Mr. Ghosh writes of his characters with gusto and verve and it is nothing less than a delight to follow their adventures, framed against the background of Britain’s iniquitous embrace of the Opium Trade, all in the name of ‘free’ enterprise.  Exhaustive research has been undertaken to present an authentic account of the everyday life and business in ‘Fanqui-town’ enclave of the  fabulously rich British Traders:  not permitted to reside in Canton itself, they nevertheless carve for themselves fiefdoms that ignore Chinese laws completely, believing themselves in their monumental arrogance to be above and beyond the control of the heathen devils.   Chinese objections to the enslavement of their population to the poppy go unheeded until a powerful new High Commissioner is appointed by the Emperor – a scholar, an intellectual, a poet -  and worst of all incorruptible,  he  takes up the cudgels on behalf of his people and engages the traders in the first battle of what is to become known as the British Opium Wars. 

Mr. Ghosh’s meticulous attention to fact and his great gifts for imagery and characterization make this story a winner;  my opinion after reading ‘Sea of Poppies’ was that he is a worthy successor to the great 19^th century adventure novelists, and this still holds true with ‘River of Smoke’:  when Book Three is read, I know that I will regret this great trilogy coming to an end.  Highly recommended.

Hell to Heaven, and Heaven to Wudang, by Kylie Chan

For those among us who love the utter escapism of Fantasy novels, Australian writer Kylie Chan ticks all the boxes;  she has combined Kung-fu action with Chinese mythology so successfully that there is a waiting list for each of her books – we just can’t get enough of Emma Donahoe, originally hired to be a nanny to the daughter of enormously rich (and handsome, naturally) Chinese ‘businessman’ John Chen – who turns out to be Xuan Wu, the Dark Lord, God of war and martial Arts, and through her love for him, Emma metamorphoses into the Dark Lady, champion of Good, and battler extraordinaire against demons and baddies of every stripe.  Oh, it’s great stuff:  the various deities she befriends or has contact with are a very motley and amusing lot with particular powers of their own, and they’re not above using their gifts for their own selfish ends; deals are constantly being made,then broken, but when the going gets tough, they are still loyal enough to rescue Emma from all sorts of ghastly situations – and there are many:  she has variously  been turned into a snake, infected with demon essence, burned to a crisp in an effort to get rid of it, and don’t forget an inadverdent dose of HIV – for heaven’s sake:  this is more than Australian girls usually have to contend with on their OE !  It would be an impossibility to summarise her latest adventures, and anyone who would like to embark on these action-packed, mile-a-minute tales should start at the very beginning with the first book, ‘White Tiger’  (If you start in the middle you won’t know whether you’re Arthur or Martha or Wun Bung Lung),  you won’t be sorry:  Ms Chan will never win any great literary prizes -  in fact at times her writing is shamefully clunky, but she can tell a bewdy-rippah story with the best of them.  These books are the perfect airport or beach read:  these books are FUN.  

Great Reads for October 2011

by Julia Kuttner

The Larnachs by Owen Marshall

Owen Marshall is one of New Zealand’s foremost writers, and demonstrates his unique literary voice once again as he chronicles in his latest novel the successes and tragedies of the Larnach family of Dunedin.  He is careful to stress in a foreword that his book is a fictional account of events that happened to real people, but such is his skill in drawing convincing portraits of his characters  that the reader has no choice but to believe every word he writes.

The story is narrated in alternating chapters by Constance de Bathe Brandon,  and  Duggie, favourite son of Constance’s husband William Larnach, politician and enormously wealthy property speculator.   Constance is in her mid-thirties when she meets and in 1891 marries William, twice- widowed and at 57, still full of vitality, joie de vivre and the strutting self-confidence that comes from humble beginnings and hard-won success.  His ostentatious social position is epitomised by the construction of Larnach ‘Castle’, symbol of his power and standing.

Constance is also very sure of her place in society.  Raised and very well- educated by her father, one of the country’s early MPs, to consider herself equal in all things,  she decries womens’ inability to vote and agitates whenever she can to bring about change – but only within her own social sphere;  while she feels an intermittent sympathy for ‘the lower orders’, it does not prevent her from ruling her staff with an iron hand, and she is glad to have a married woman’s influence among her contemporaries, previously  denied to  her as a spinster.

William’s adult children from his first marriage detest Conny;  she is an interloper and thinks far too much of herself;   only Duggie treats her as a friend – a friendship that eventually turns to love and a full-blown affair destined to create a scandal of catastrophic proportions and ongoing tragedy for all involved.

The literary device of having each lover narrate a chapter is clever:  Mr. Marshall’s characterizations have such veracity that it is a pleasure to follow Conny and Duggie through the highs and lows of their great love;  one eager to tell the world of his delight in finding his life’s partner, and the other thrilled to experience the physical and emotional love she thought would ever be denied, but fatally unwilling to give up her social status.  Mr. Marshall has recreated the morals, life and times of a fledgling NZ society with consummate skill and great empathy.  Highly recommended.

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

Since its publication last year this novel has generated extraordinary praise, not least being included in Time magazine’s top 10 books for 2010 and this year winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  Even Oprah endorsed it.  (Is that good or bad?) I approached it with trepidation:  was it too great for mere mortals to read?   ( I have been caught before).  Oh me of little faith:  All the reviews are true.  This story fully deserves every accolade lavished by the literary pundits – and anyone else  who wants to have a wild ride through time with Ms Egan as she explores through her characters the different selves we all become at different times of our lives.  Through a dizzying series of flashbacks and leaps forward, the reader follows Bennie Salazar, failed music producer and his personal assistant Sasha, ‘capable in every way but for her kleptomania’ as they are moulded and buffeted by the forces of time, and the influence and effect they have on their world through the connections they make, both intimate and tenuous, with the people they meet.  There is a host of different characters here, and sometimes it takes the reader a little while to connect the dots, but when that happens, a wonderful pointillist portrait  emerges of our flawed and ailing contemporary society – (there’s even a powerpoint presentation!), and an irrevocable truth that time rules us all:  the onrush of it;  its implacability;  and how peoples’ lives are helpless before it and the inexorable changes it makes.  In Ms. Egan’s novel time is a Goon, and no-one escapes a visit from the Goon Squad, but Bennie, after a lifetime’s vicissitudes is no fool:  he knows the score – ‘ Time’s a goon – are you going to let time push you around?’  No, sir!  This is a great book.

Cold Vengeance, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

 And now for something completely different:

Guess who’s back!  Messrs. Lincoln and Child have been working their little tails off to provide fans with the next instalment of the intrepid adventures of FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, that peerless paragon of perfection in all things, arbiter of funereal fashion excellence – he always wears black designer suits, giving him ‘the look of a wealthy undertaker’ -  and lethal weapon in the perpetual battle against the forces of evil.  As always, the reader is transported to places near and far, starting in the Scottish Highlands where Pendergast has been shot and left for dead in a swamp by his wicked brother-in-law.  He cannot possibly survive shooting and drowning – or can he?  Mere mortals would long be contributing to the swamp gases, but not our Aloysius :  he manages to haul himself out of the muck and crawl 12 miles (truly!) to shelter and the devoted nursing of a reclusive auld biddie who lives on the wild moors (this is Scotland, remember), gradually returning  to good health, thanks to his cast-iron constitution, burning desire for revenge, and the new-found knowledge that his beloved wife Helen, killed twelve years before by a lion (!) is actually still alive.  And as the ultimate plot device, Lincoln and Child have brought in the Neo-Nazis in the shape of a diabolical organization called The Covenant.  What CAN one say?  Except that you’ll just have to keep on reading all this glorious silliness to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.  These books are seriously good fun and I can’t wait for the next one:  will Aloysius be reunited with his wife, captured by said evil Neo- Nazis?  Will Aloysius be able to sustain yet another gunshot wound? (He is now more ventilated than a Swiss Cheese.) Will his ward Constance Green reveal where she has hidden her baby, the son of his mad brother Diogenes?  Oh, the questions are endless and had better be answered soon, otherwise the enormous cult following of Agent Pendergast - he has his own webpage – will suffer terminal withdrawal symptoms.  Funeral garb never has never been more cool, and the FBI”s reputation has been burnished quite undeservedly. Trashy escapism of the very highest quality, and entertainment par excellence.

Near Misses:

 

The Burning Soul, by John Connolly

The tenth novel of the adventures of Charlie Parker, haunted – literally – private detective,  starts as always by instilling within the reader a lowering sense of dread:  a young girl has disappeared in a remote coastal town in Maine, and people are frightened:  this is not the first time it has happened.   No-one can set a scene like Mr. Connolly;  he creates atmosphere and mood perfectly;    he writes wonderful dialogue and all his characters, particularly those who have appeared in previous books are a pleasure to meet again – but this time something has gone wrong with his usual sure-fire recipe:  the plot becomes so labyrinthine and unwieldy that its impetus is lost and when all is FINALLY revealed, the reader is glad to have waded through to the finish.  Not one of Mr. Connolly’s bone-rattling successes, but it won’t stop me from looking forward to his next opus – with the hope that it will be back to his old high standard.

The Quiet Twin, by Dan Vyleta      

Dan Vyleta’s first book ‘Pavel and I’ was a wonderful debut novel, set in Berlin at the end of the Second World War with marvelous characters and a great plot - how I wish I could similarly endorse his  second effort but this time he has missed the mark, and that is a great shame as Mr. Vyleta is a talented writer;  consequently it is a disappointment not to enjoy this book. 

Set in Vienna at the beginning of the Second World War,  the plot concerns the inhabitants of an apartment building, all examples of Hitler’s Inferior Races policy:  there is a hunchbacked child, a homosexual, a gypsy, a severely catatonic woman, and a hypochondriac, not to mention various minor characters, all most unpleasant.  The reader could handle all the intentional squalor if there appeared to be a point to all the dirt and depravity  -  starting with the early introduction of four unsolved murders and the deliberate butchering of an elderly dog -  but Mr. Vyleta’s plot goes nowhere, instead becoming weighed down by Freudian slips, slaps and slops.  At the novel’s end, nothing is resolved, the murders aren’t solved, and the reader is left with the uneasy thought that some of these awful characters may appear in a sequel:  I hope not.  A second-class novel from a first-class writer.

Great Reads for September 2011

by Julia Kuttner

Dreams of Joy, by Lisa See

It has been a great pleasure to read the long-awaited sequel to ‘Shanghai Girls’, Lisa See’s epic novel of 1930’s China, detailing the appalling betrayal of Pearl and May Chin’s father as he sells them into marriage to two brothers, peasants who live in ‘The Gold Mountain’, America, so that he can pay his gambling debts.  The sisters’ escape from Shanghai and the attacking Japanese Army produces lasting scars and horrific memories  - and a baby girl to May, the result of a passionate affair with an artist both women love:  there is much sorrow to overcome before the girls can reconstruct their lives in in Los Angeles with their new husbands;  they are the keepers of many secrets which they expect to stay hidden -  until 1955, when terrible and tragic events expose everything to Joy, the child born of war and privation, irretrievably  fracturing the relationship the sisters have as aunt and mother to her, their beloved.

In vengeful retaliation and bravado, Joy steals her college fund and flies to China to search for her biological father, only to eventually discover that the Chinese Peoples’ Republic is a vastly different beast from that depicted by her ardent socialist-leaning fellow  college students.  Finding her father proves to be relatively easy ;  he has become an artist famous for his portraits of Mao Tse Tung and posters of the Chinese people celebrating their glorious revolution, but she is mystified that he has been ordered to spend six months in a remote country collective,  giving art lessons to the villagers – what kind of work is this for a man of his repute?  It takes a long time and many adverse experiences for Joy to lose her naivete, and when Mao starts his mighty agricultural experiment, his ‘Great Leap Forward’, which results in the eventual starvation and death of millions, her disillusionment is complete.  Lisa See has carefully and exhaustively researched this terrible time;  her characters endure tragedy and horrors barely imaginable, based on authentic accounts by people who were real-life sufferers of Mao’s terrible failure;  who managed to survive to tell their dreadful stories and it is a tribute to her literary skill that the reader hangs on to every word until the story ends.  One also hopes that Ms See doesn’t abandon her singular characters:  The novel’s conclusion is still in the 50’s, which means that there are oodles of time yet left for a third book, still time for more life experiences for the brave, tenacious Chin women and their loved ones.  Fingers crossed!

THE PARIS WIFE, by Paula McLain

 20^th century literary lion Ernest Hemingway had four wives.  This is a story of his first, ‘the Paris wife’, Hadley Richardson, eight years his senior, introverted and shy when they first met in Chicago, and perfectly ready to be swept off her feet by Hemingway’s handsome looks, fierce intelligence, and his utter conviction that he would make a great career as a writer.   Ms McLain paints a compelling portrait of their life and times, well-researched and empathetic to Hadley’s unenviable role as The Wife, caregiver, helpmeet, organizer and factotum to her man’s Great and God-Given Talent, and humble admirer of her husband’s many friends , of solid literary repute themselves:  Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein (and her own wife and helpmeet, Alice B. Toklas), Ezra Pound and his ménage a trois, Ford Madox Ford, Archibald MacLeish and their respective wives and mistresses – all portrayed against a background of Paris in the ‘20’s;  damaged and frenetic after the war but still a city of endlessly exciting literary and artistic possibilities. 

Narrated in the first-person by Hadley in beautifully lucid sentences, she recounts with a singular lack of self-pity all the dramas of her 6-year marriage to Ernest:   the birth of a beloved son;  the great highs and terrible lows of life with a man who was everyone’s friend, loyal, true, generous and staunch – until he wasn’t;  the agonizing inadequacy and sorrow she was forced to endure as far more attractive women than she doggedly pursued her husband, who stayed faithful – until he didn’t.  Hemingway’s shameful treatment of his friends (portraying them cruelly as thinly-veiled characters in his books was the least of his sins) is well documented;  his adultery with Hadley’s good friend Pauline Pfeifer, who was to become his second wife, was at first suggested by him to Hadley as perhaps a situation that could be workable – his very own ménage-a-trois?  After all, so many of their friends had similar arrangements which seemed to be successful;  couldn’t they give it a try?  Such is the ability of Ms. McLain to recreate the desperation and agony in Hadley’s own voice that the reader is not disappointed in her for attempting to live in a situation that was utterly repugnant to her, but to give her top marks for trying, and to applaud her for finding the courage to abandon Ernest, selfish bastard extraordinaire, and the woman determined to become his muse.

Hadley must also have the last word, a classic summation of their lives in the Twenties :  ‘We called Paris the great good place then, and it was.  We invented it after all.  We made it with our longing and cigarettes and Rhum St. James;  we made it with smoke, and smart and savage conversation and we dared anyone to say it wasn’t ours.  Together we made everything and then we busted it apart again’. A  Five star story.

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

When I first read the publisher’s blurb for this book I felt that I was about to begin a highly improbable ‘Perils of Pauline’-type novel;  in fact, trying to summarise Ms. Patchett’s story WITHOUT straining the reader’s credulity is a major task, but such is Ann Patchett’s literary skill that she can present  fantastic and impossible situations with utter conviction.  It’s fair to say that any dedicated reader will be hooked from the first page.

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist for a big Minnesota drug conglomerate is sent to the Amazon by her CEO (also her lover) when her colleague and friend, Anders Eckman -  dispatched first to check on company financed ground-breaking medical research by formidable and reclusive scientist Annick Swenson, dies suddenly of a fever:  his wife wants his body (to prove that he is really dead – she can’t believe it) and the company wants proof that their investment is proceeding according to plan.  Marina’s trip to Brazil and the jungle is predictably hellish, and she has an added burden:  the formidable Dr. Swenson was her professor and mentor when she was a student majoring in obstetrics 12 years before, until a terrible mistake and its subsequent repercussions drove her into the safety of chemical research.   Marina is naturally reluctant to meet Dr. Swenson again, to be reminded of the past and its terrible sorrow;  she can hardly wait to complete the tasks assigned, collect Anders’ ‘few effects’ (according to Dr. Swenson’s terse announcement of his death), and bring them home to his widow.  Needless to say, nothing turns out to be as it seems;  complications arise at every turn and a lot of water flows down the Amazon before Marina can  return to Minnesota, irrevocably changed thanks to, or in spite of her experiences.

 This is not the first time Ms. Patchett has written of South America and its fatal beauty;  the lyrical  ‘Bel Canto’ (2001) was first, and once again she has created memorable characters that  react plausibly and naturally to unnatural circumstances.  Dr. Swenson commands the reader’s attention from the first time she appears ;  ruthless, terrible, relentlessly honest, and utterly selfless in her devotion to science – and humanity.  Ann Patchett has done it again;  she has pulled another rabbit out of her literary hat, enthralling us with big ideas, big adventure and big characters.  Which makes this book a BIG success.

Started Early, took my Dog, by Kate Atkinson

 Jackson Brodie is a solitary man;  an ex-policeman, an ex-paratrooper -  and  he doesn’t have a very good record at personal relationships either, being the ex-husband and ex-boyfriend to several women, one of whom fleeced him for every penny.  At the start of this novel, Kate Atkinson’s 4^thfeaturing his misadventures, he’s half inclined to get ‘I don’t understand’ tattooed on his forehead:  how could his life be so mismanaged – by himself – without him even trying?  He is now reduced to tooling round the English Midlands, playing at being a private detective,  half-heartedly pursuing an adopted New Zealand woman’s request to ‘find out where she came from’, a task that leads him into predictably dangerous and murky waters, and the unveiling of a tragic murder and police cover-up lasting 35 years .  Sounds like the usual familiar stuff, doesn’t it – except that Ms Atkinson is not just a crime novelist per se; she is superb at constructing plots that are straight out of left-field:  the reader doesn’t know what hits them until it arrives with a swipe across the head.  Her characters are always beautifully observed and true, and her dialogue and description is a delight:  in spite of the disturbing elements of the story, there is a much-needed element of wry humour – just what the reader needs to combat the murder, mayhem and squalor of society’s sub-strata.  It’s a rough old world out there, especially for the children – and the dog(!) - in this story, but fortunately for them, Jackson Brodie, their unlikely rescuer, turns up once again to solve the case and save the day with the help of some great supporting players.  A library member who read this before me wrote on the comments sheet:  ‘riveting’.  That sums it up beautifully.    

GREAT READS FOR AUGUST 2011

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 19^th 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.