GREAT READS FOR AUGUST 2012

Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

Less than four years after engineering Henry Vlll’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon and remarriage to Anne Boleyn, not to mention the cataclysmic separation of England from the catholic church  – and the dissolution of the monasteries and forfeit of their considerable wealth to the King, Thomas Cromwell, ever Henry’s faithful servant, is again using his brilliance and considerable power to expedite his monarch’s wishes. 

Henry has tired of Anne; she is no longer the sparkling, mercurial young temptress he pursued obsessively for so many years;  her youthful bloom has gone;  she is ill-tempered and shrewish, and worst of all there is no male heir to secure the throne for the Tudors.  She produced a daughter, Elizabeth, and whilst the king professes to love his little girl – and his daughter Mary from Katherine of Aragon, he is becoming more disenchanted with Anne by the day:  where is the son she promised him?

He starts to look elsewhere, and once his gaze settles on Jane Seymour, Anne’s lady-in-waiting, it is Cromwell’s task to procure an annulment of his second marriage by whatever means available – and for a man of Cromwell’s huge intellect and reach, there are many.

Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize in 2009 for ‘Wolf Hall’, (see review below) her marvellous account of Henry’s  ardent courtship of Anne and his growing dependence on Thomas Cromwell, a commoner, a nobody guided up through the strata of power by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the best powerbroker in England and a fitting mentor for an ambitious man:  now, in this riveting sequel, Cromwell must deconstruct the fragile legal framework he built to surround the marriage of Henry and Anne, and find opposite legal reasons as to why that marriage  should end.

And as countless historical records tell us, Cromwell procured witnesses aplenty to testify to Anne’s supposed adultery with several courtiers favoured by the King, and worse still, incest with her brother:  a show trial is conducted in the Tower of London and all the accused are executed;  Anne is beheaded four days later, and Henry is free once again to wed his next love, Jane Seymour.

It gives this reader great pleasure to say that Book two is superb;  Ms Mantel’s characterisations are utterly convincing and she recreates time and place with consummate skill.  Her depictions of the power struggles between Thomas Cromwell –‘a jumped-up nobody’ – and the conniving, treacherous courtiers derisive of his lowly origins (for they are gentlemen all, and he is NOTHING) is masterly:  he exacts revenge in many ingenious ways.  I look forward to Book three – I know there will be a third book;  Ms Mantel cannot leave us in suspense with the story only half told.  Highly recommended.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel                   Reviewed October, 2009.

Thomas Cromwell:   Blacksmith, mercenary, international banker, cloth merchant, lawyer, indispensable assistant to the powerful English clergy – and king’s confidante:  at a court full of the powerful and the power-hungry, this layman of uncertain origins came to wield more influence with Henry VIII than all his royal dukes combined.  It was Cromwell who was the main architect in drafting the Reformation laws separating the English church from Rome, enabling the king to claim the wealth of the catholic monasteries and religious houses as his own, and finally abolishing the need for the Pope’s permission for the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon.  Brilliant, loyal Cromwell engineered for Henry the king’s heart’s desire:  marriage to Anne Boleyn. 

Hilary Mantel recreates admirably  the pomp, intrigue and hypocrisy of the time and the struggles for European dominance by the rulers of France, Spain and England, but most of all she breathes wonderful life into some of the most famous and notorious characters in history:  their stories have been told many times before but seldom so convincingly, or so well. 

And it has just been announced that Ms. Mantel has won the Man Booker Prize for 2009 for Wolf Hall.  There can be no greater recommendation. 

Inside Out & Back again, by Thanha Lai             Junior fiction

This is the story of one family of refugees from a terrible war, forced to make desperate choices that propel them into a new life and culture that seem as remote and alien as the farthest planet – and the chilling irony in this situation is that exactly the same thing is occurring to tens of thousands of people today:  history repeats itself with horrifying regularity.

 The year is 1975.  Saigon has fallen and the city is roiling with people trying to escape the North Vietnamese.  Ten year-old Ha and her three brothers have previously enjoyed a privileged life with their parents;  their father was a naval officer who has been missing in action for some time, but they all still believe that one day he will return – until the war is lost and the Americans leave everyone to their fate. Fortunately for the family, one of their father’s naval friends manages to smuggle them onto a ship that escapes the bombs and artillery fire, eventually delivering the refugees to Americans who bring them to a refugee camp on the island of Guam;  there they stay until sponsors are found for each family to bring them to the U.S.A.

Now their ‘new life of freedom’ begins:  in the course of the year this story covers the family must deal with racism – they are sent to Alabama in the deep South – must  learn a language that to Ha is ‘full of ‘S’s – did they all want to talk like snakes?’;  must  deal with a new religion, baptism being the ticket to acceptance in their community (Ha-Li-Lu-Da!); must start school and ‘change from smart to dumb’ because of the mysteries of the English language;  must depend on the donated cast-offs of everything from the neighbourhood; (Ha wears a warm flannel dress to school when the weather is cold;  she is unaware that it is a nightgown) and ultimately have to bear the taunts and name-calling that she can soon understand all too well:  ‘Pancake Face’, and BU-DA, BU-DA when she tries to explain about her country’s religion.  No:  some  children are not kind to those who are different, and Ha and her brothers must learn how to defend themselves as best they can.  And they do!  

This is a beautiful little story, written entirely in blank verse, eloquent and powerful in its imagery and a book that should become a modern classic, read by children of ALL ages.

‘Inside Out & Back Again’ is a work of fiction, but Thanha Lai experienced exactly the same culture shock that Ha and her family did, at the same time:  she writes most beautifully from experience, and has produced a story that should make everyone think twice when next they hear of refugees arriving on their shores.  This wonderful little book has already won two prestigious Children’s Literary awards in America;  It deserves more.  Highly recommended.

  

Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

Depression-Era Texas is a tough place in which to grow up, especially in a tiny settlement in the east.  Work is an impossible dream for most people and food is in short supply – but the local men still seem to find whatever money they need to fill themselves with the poisonous local moonshine and terrorise their families.

Suellen’s Daddy is one such man; he and his Good Ole Boy friends poison fish during the day and drink at night, then Suellen has to lock her bedroom door and sleep with a knife;  she is sixteen now and loathes the way her Daddy looks at her.  Her mother is worse than useless, lying in bed all day in a ‘Cure-All’ stupor.  Life, and the mess she has made of it so far, has utterly defeated her.  Fortunately, Suellen has three good friends, May Lynn, so beautiful she dreams of going to Hollywood to be a movie star, Terry, a pretty boy everyone calls a sissy, and Jinx, a black girl far too sassy for her own good – ‘Don’t that nigger know her place?’.  Their loyalty to each other and vague dreams of a happier future sustain them until May Lynn is found dead in the local pond, tied with wire and weighted down with a sewing machine.

They also discover that May Lynn knew the whereabouts of a secret stash of money that her late brother, a thief, had hidden – oh, this plot is thickening so much the spoon is standing all by itself! – and in their efforts to find the loot, the three friends fall foul of May Lynn’s evil Daddy, not to mention Suellen’s.  It’s time to leave their homes in a hurry – and they do, by hijacking a raft and poling it down the Sabine river, hoping to make the next big town before their pursuers can figure out where – and how – they are travelling.

In true Huck Finn fashion they – and Suellen’s mother, who has found the gumption and requisite willpower to leave her ugly existence – keep moving, stopping here and there to cast themselves on the kindness of various strangers and surviving reasonably well until they hear that May Lynn’s Daddy has enlisted the horrendous services of Skunk, so called because that’s how he smells, to recover the money and despatch them all to the hereafter.

Up until now, none of the locals really believed that there was a Skunk – his reputation and tales of his savagery were so awful that everyone thought he was a ghastly invention of parents to scare their children into being good:  unfortunately for the hapless raft-dwellers, Skunk is all too real, and he is coming for them. 

I have read a number of Mr. Lansdale’s books, and while there is a certain similarity in characters and places, he is always entertaining and savvy enough for the reader to look forward to the next novel. He is a smart and intelligent writer and he has a very nice line in description i.e. ‘Uncle Gene was fat as a hog but without the personality’.  Don’t that all just sum it up! 

Does Skunk lay waste to our fearful, courageous little band or not?  There’s only one way to find out.  Yep, read and enjoy this great little story.

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The Hanging Shed, by Gordon Ferris

  The year is 1946:  Scottish Douglas Brodie is a decorated soldier;  he has fought a hard war and has distinguished himself by bravery on the field.  The trouble is Civvy Street – his Demob clothing doesn’t fit, nor does the reality of postwar London adjust to his expectations.  He is a lost man, trying to sublimate into peacetime all the aggression and hatred that necessarily sustained him for six years, and he is fighting a losing battle – until he receives a phone call from a childhood friend, a friend who betrayed him when they were teenagers by stealing the love of Douglas’s life.  Brodie has never forgotten or forgiven Donovan’s treachery;  therefore it is beyond shocking to hear from a man who is begging for his help – for Donovan is in a Glasgow jail, charged and found guilty of murder, and due to hang in a month’s time ,unless Brodie can magic up a miracle on his behalf, because he is innocent,  innocent of the heinous, unforgivable crime of child rape and murder, even though the evidence is ‘incontrovertible’.

Donovan’s war has been cruel – he was the rear gunner on a bomber that was blown up by the Luftwaffe;  he survived but wishes he hadn’t:  his injuries have made him into a nightmare figure, and the resultant pain has turned him into a junkie.  He doesn’t care if he dies, but he does care that people know that he couldn’t, WOULDN’T commit the crime of which he is accused.

In his pre-war life, Brodie was a Detective with the Glasgow Police Force;  he is ideally qualified to delve into the evidence both real and manufactured that he is presented with by Donovan’s despairing lawyer:  the question is, does he want to do this favour for his old nemesis?  He loathes Donovan for calling on the far-off memories of staunch childhood friendship, and loathes himself even more for not being able to put past treachery behind him.

Unfortunately as the story progresses, Mr. Ferris allows  his story to get away from him like a stampeding horse;  plot twists vary from unbelievable to bizarre to say the least – the villains are so awful they are almost comic-book caricatures, but he is a wonderfully acute observer of his fellow man, and I defy anyone not to recognise thee and me in the utterly authentic characters he creates.  He can set a scene with the best of them and generate enough action to make me feel that I shall be doing a disservice to myself If I don’t check out his other titles.  So many books, so little time!

Pegasus and the Flame, by Kate O’Hearn                                          Junior Fiction

What a lovely s tory - and what a great introduction to the Greek Myths for children who would not otherwise come in contact with these marvellous legends.  Kate O’Hearn is doing more than she can possibly know to stimulate children’s interest in the timeless and ancient tales of the Gods and Heroes of Olympus, and I couldn’t approve more, especially with the amount of excitement she can generate in her plotting and her true blue characters.

Emily Jacobs is 13 years old.  She is trying to deal with the loss of her beloved mother who died of cancer three months before.  Her father is a member of the New York City Police force, and he has to leave Emily alone on a night when a particularly bad storm is raging.  She is not really afraid of being alone;  her grief troubles her more than solitude – until she hears thumping and bumping on the ceiling, and it is even more worrying when the plaster starts to crack and flake!  Now, if that were me I would rush to the bedroom and hide under the bed, but Emily is brave enough to go up onto the roof to find out what – or who – is going to crash through to her level.  (Obviously she is braver than this mere mortal!) And what does she find but a beautiful horse, breathtaking in its magnificence, and even more unbelievable:  it has WINGS.  And it’s badly wounded.  How can she help him, especially when she realises that he is Pegasus, beloved of the Gods, and bearer of Zeus/Jupiter’s thunderbolts.  Pegasus has come to earth to search for ‘The Flame’,  a descendant of Vespa, keeper of the Sacred Flame of Olympus, now extinguished by enemies.  If it is not reignited soon, Olympus and all the Gods will perish.

Ah, this is thrilling, and things get better and better as the plot advances – the characters are positively Olympian in more ways than one;  Ms. O’Hearn has an excellent knowledge of  Greco-Roman mythology and she weaves this brilliantly into her story of young people dealing with grief and loss, not to mention her love of animals, particularly horses – and even better still, the story doesn’t end with this book:  the next title is ‘Pegasus and the Fight for Olympus’.  What a neat treat to look forward to:  can’t wait.

Other People’s Money, by Justin Cartwright

The 2008 financial crash has left everyone reeling, not least the family of Trevelyan-Tubal, patrician investment bankers who have owned and operated their iconic bank, Tubal’s in the City of London, for more than 400 years.  They have taken a huge hit with the failure of one of their hedge funds – ‘but I paid Seven million quid to a Nobel Laureate to tell me that mathematically, our investments couldn’t fail!’ shrieks Julian, current head of the bank in the absence of his older brother, (no banker’s life for him:  he travels the world looking for adventure á la Bear Grylls) and the incapacitation of his father, Sir Harry, by a massive stroke.  Julian is extremely unhappy in his role as default family and business head, and does what he considers he must to prop up the bank until it can be sold (he hopes) to a huge American investment bank owned by Cy Mannheim, a self-made man if ever there was one, and don’t you forget it!  ‘I came from NOTHING on Coney Island – now look at me:  amazing, huh?’  What else must a chap do but agree, especially if he wants Cy to buy the old Firm – so that Julian can pay back all the family and investment trusts he has raided to make the bank look solvent for the scrutiny of due diligence by the various authorities.

Needless to say, the best-laid plans of mice and men go right down the tubes;  a computer hacker does his stuff, steals incriminating evidence of financial wrongdoing, then leaks it to a young blogger for an obscure Cornish newspaper;  various people great and small begin to make enquiries as to why their subsidies from various Tubal charitable trusts are no longer going into their bank accounts; and  Sir Harry’s much younger Trophy wife Fleur is feeling more than a little insecure.  She is astute enough to know that Sir Harry’s sons have never really accepted her into the family, and now, as Sir Harry’s death occurs from a second stroke she is terrified that her affair with Morné, her personal trainer and a hairy, sexually fascinating (to Fleur) South African rugby player will be discovered.  She could end up with nothing at the age of 43 – it doesn’t bear thinking about!  What to do, what to do?

For all Mr. Cartwright’s drollness – and there is much delicious wit in this book;  the dialogue is incisive and sparkling – there is also a strong underlying lesson to be learnt yet again, should anybody bother:  that even the richest, the most lofty in society can be brought down and exposed for the rogues that they have become (however reluctantly, in Julian’s case) by those who still have the honour lacking in their targets – and those who wish they were just like them.

‘In the dealing rooms they would shout ‘OPM’ gleefully as a deal went bad:  Other people’s money.’  Well, it’s not other people’s money now that the Trevelyan-Tubal family are worried about (if they ever did):  it’s their own, not to mention their previously stellar and unsullied reputation .  Justin Cartwright serves up truth most beautifully as fiction.  This was a pleasure to read.         

               

GREAT READS FOR JULY 2012

The Inquisitor, by Mark Allen Smith

                      

Geiger is in the ‘information retrieval’ business, a euphemism for torturing certain people into supplying information – not always with physical cruelty, but by brilliant psychological manipulation of the terrified victim’s worst fears.  He is a master at what he does, his ‘clients’ are very powerful, he employs utmost discretion, and he ALWAYS has a 100% success rate. 

His business is fronted by Harry, a hand-picked computer whiz;  their combined fees are astronomical – but they’re worth it:  no client has ever voiced dissatisfaction or demanded their money back for a job less than well done.  Geiger is at the top of his game – and he is also a terribly damaged man with recurring nightmares and migraines that a lesser mortal would beg release from:  the torturer is tortured from within.

Geiger has only one rule in his fearsome business:  he never deals with children.  Not ever.  So he is horrified to find that, instead being presented with a man accused by the ‘client’ of stealing and hiding a priceless work of art, he is given the man’s son – a mistake, the client’s representative states, but perhaps Geiger could work on the son to reveal the whereabouts of his father?

Until this point I felt little empathy with Geiger and Harry, his P.A.  Despite Mr. Smith’s obvious talents as a writer he failed to connect with me for the first 50 pages – until the appearance of the child Ezra, 12 years old and terrified out of his wits:  the child’s rescue by Geiger and the bond formed between the unlikely pair as they try to escape their ruthless pursuers is the main thrust of the plot.  Geiger is forced by terrible events to face his past, a time so horrific that he had completely blocked it from his consciousness, turning himself into little more than a cipher to do so.  Now he is compelled to confront old demons so that he can conquer the new – and keep Ezra, Harry and himself from being killed.

Mr. Smith has had much experience in film-making and screenwriting and this is his first novel.  He has made an excellent debut into the difficult genre of suspense and thriller writing – so many who tell such stories are distressingly formulaic and predictable, but Mr. Smith has presented us with a different kind of protagonist:  not only can he inflict pain, but he is also capable of bearing it, and despite the moral questions posed by his actions throughout the story it is impossible for the reader to feel that Geiger is anything less than heroic in his intentions.  The novel’s ending is suitably ambiguous, which makes me hope that Geiger and Harry will meet again in the future – fingers crossed!

Talulla Rising, by Glen Duncan

I have been waiting for Glen Duncan to write his sequel to ‘The last Werewolf’ for what seems like ages, but It wasn’t, really :  he has turned out #2 in record time because (he says in a very funny interview in the NYTimes) that he needs the money – presumably to keep the wolf from his door (sorry, sorry!) -  and fair enough, as long as the quality of writing doesn’t suffer.  Well, I’m happy to report that all is well in Mr. Duncan’s anarchic and bloodthirsty world of monsters big and small.  He brings a refreshing literary talent to the relatively new ‘bonk and bite’ book style – there are so many of them these days that very few  break the bounds of boring predictability:  Duncan’s 9 foot killing machines and smelly vampires are a breath of fresh air (if it wasn’t so laden with blood) in what is fast becoming a very tired genre.

Jake Marlowe, The eponymous Last Werewolf, was killed at the end of the first book;  unbeknownst to him, his lover Talulla Demetriou manages to survive the attack that ends his 200 year-old existence – and she is pregnant with his twins.  She is helped to hide from countless enemies by Cloquet, a former enemy and perennial loser who becomes her helpmeet and staunch ‘minder’;  she gives his life the sense of purpose it has always lacked – after all, it’s a big job to find a suitable victim for slaughter every month when the moon rises.  Not everyone can do it!

Unfortunately for Talulla, word of her pregnancy has reached some very unsavoury (and smelly) ears:  it is believed by a certain cult of vampires that the consumption of a werewolf baby at a certain time of the year will give them the ability to march around in daylight, instead of dissolving into an odiferous puddle of ash as soon as the sun hits them.  Talulla is a marked woman/werewolf, captured and completely disabled by the nasties as she is giving birth and forced to watch helplessly as the vampires make off with her little son. Luckily (depending on which way you look at it) the kidnappers were unaware – as was she! – that another child was on its way:  Talulla’s little girl is spared the same fate as her twin.

Thereafter begins a mad pursuit through Europe to try to track down Talulla’s enemies before they destroy her child, and on the way she encounters to her utter astonishment other werewolves,  all new -  it seems Jake was a little careless in his ‘relations’ with a certain prostitute, who in turn managed to infect several other people:  Werewolves rule, Dude!

Mr. Duncan’s plotting is bombproof:  in case the reader wonders where our hairy heroine gets the money to charge around the planet recruiting allies and helpers, well, Jake left her his considerable fortune, amassed over two hundred years, for a start.  No matter how many times I looked for a ‘Yeah, right!’ slipup I never found one;  the action never flags and some great new characters have been added to the mix.  I’m happy to say that this is that rare thing:  a sequel that packs just as much punch as the first, and is just as engaging.  And Glen Duncan can’t end things there because (by his own admission) he needs the money!  All to the good, I say.  Highly recommended.

Peaches for Monsieur le Curé

This is the third of Joanne Harris’s novels about Vianne Rocher, that beautifully eccentric, fey and footloose weaver of magic and maker of superb confections.  We first met her in ‘Chocolat’, Ms. Harris’s 1999 runaway best-seller, where she opens a chocolaterie in French village Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, only to gain the hatred of the local priest, who convinced himself that she was a witch – and he wasn’t entirely wrong. She also finds love with Roux, a gypsy who travels the waterways of France before they both move on to Paris and another chocolaterie in ‘The Lollipop Shoes’.  In that story Vianne and her little family are threatened with great harm but survive to continue charming peoples’ palates and dreams with her wonderful chocolates – until she receives a message from the dead to bring her back to Lansquenet: the curé, father Reynaud, the enemy who drove her on from that village is now in sore need of help – hers.  Not that he would ask.

It has been eight years since Vianne left Lansquenet and much has changed.  New people have arrived to settle in the village:  Muslims.  At first, all was well:  Lansquenet is not intolerant and while not rolling out a brass band welcome to strangers is not shunning the new arrivals either.  Everyone rubs along well enough – until Monsieur le Curé objects to the creation of a minaret in an old water tower:  it breaks local noise regulations, he says, but really he finds it a personal offence to hear that foreign chanting in competition to his church bells.  The priest and the local Muslim leader are on a collision course.

More sinister events occur – the curé finds that his position as village priest is being eroded from within when dissatisfied parishioners feel that they need a ‘21^st century man of God’:  father Reynaud feels the winds of change and they are chilling.

Ms. Harris writes very well of bigotry and racism.  She does not shy away from examining the actions and reactions of one culture as it pits itself against another, and portrays only too clearly the evil that men can perpetrate in the name of religion.  Her countless fans will find this third ‘episode’ in Vianne Rocher’s travels as satisfying as the first two, but I have to say that a very pat and convenient fate for two of the major characters was a disappointment and less than worthy of a writer of Ms. Harris’s talents:  my first thought was that she had grown tired of her story and wanted to give it a quick and tidy ending.  So far I haven’t changed my mind.

Briefs Encountered, by Julian Clary

Happily gay star of stage and TV screen Julian Clary has written his third novel, ‘Briefs Encountered’, in part an homage to Noel Coward, towering icon of 20^th century British theatre, but more a mystery story concerning Coward’s beloved home of thirty years in Kent,’Goldenhurst’ and the influence, pernicious and otherwise, the house had on him and subsequent owners – including Mr. Clary!

Yes, our Julian doesn’t resist making himself one of the characters in the book – being himself of course, one would think, but making himself low-rent enough to cause shudders of disdain amongst his queenly contemporaries in alternating ‘modern’ sections of the story, where he owns ‘Goldenhurst’ for barely a year (re-naming it with a snigger ‘Priest’s Hole House) before selling it with indecent haste for a knockdown price to Richard Stent, a celebrated actor renowned for his uncannily accurate portrayal of Coward in a filmography of the great playwright. 

Stent is initially thrilled with his new purchase;  despite his fame he knows that his career is finite and is fully aware that with approaching age satisfying dramatic roles will eventually dry up, but he gets a huge boost from the fact that he is now living in a house that once belonged to his idol – the trouble is, there seem to be a lot of other occupants as well, Things that go Bump in the Night kinds of occupants:  this house is not a Happy Home!

Unfortunate events start to occur at an alarming rate, as they do in alternating chapters for Noel Coward and his great love American stockbroker Jack Wilson.  ‘Goldenhurst’ has a unique way of showing its disapproval for those it doesn’t like, and Jack is one of them.

So is Jess, Richard’s wonderfully efficient but possessive P.A.  It is patently clear to everyone but Richard, that though he is as gay as a hat (yes, this story is crammed to the gunnels with very merry people!) Jess is unhealthily obsessed with her unsuspecting boss – oh, absolutely everybody can see the writing on the wall:  it’s all going to end in tears.  And it does, but as this is a story about a celebrated actor, playwright, musical star and wit who modestly admitted that he ‘had a talent to amuse’, there are also more delicious one-liners and tart humour than a body can memorise in a bid to pass off as her own at the next dinner potty.  How tarsome, but what a pleasure to read such sparkling dialogue. 

Having said that, I have to say that Julian, the dear boy, will never become a literary Giant:  he needs a better editor than he has – or perhaps this was the best his editor could do with what she was given:  either way, there are some pretty clunky passages in his narrative.  Even so, Mr. Clary manages to move the plot along at a cracking pace;  his characters (except for the villains) are loads of fun, celeb names are dropped like sequins and importantly, comparisons are drawn between sexual morés of the nineteen twenties and thirties when to Mr. Coward’s perpetual fear and dismay, it was illegal for two consenting males to engage in sexual activity, to the present day, where same-sex couples may join together in civil union.  Regardless of its flaws, Mr. Clary’s latest is an entertainment extraordinaire, worth reading for the humour alone. Lashings of fun.

Snowdrops, by A. D. Miller

As everyone knows, snowdrops are those charming white flowers that appear every spring looking like ballet tutus trimmed with green spots:  in Moscow, ‘Snowdrops’ is also a nickname for corpses caught up in frigid winter snowdrifts, not making an appearance until the spring thaw and the smell of corruption herald their last resting place.

A. D. Miller’s superb first novel reveals corruption on many different levels. He spent several years as the Moscow correspondent for The Economist, so is eminently qualified to describe in the most eloquent and brutal terms the loss of Russia’s moral compass  - which has probably been missing in action for generations.

In 21^st century Moscow anything and anybody can be bought for a price, and that ruined, tawdry and fascinating city’s inhabitants have turned confidence trickery and fraud into an art form – and they don’t stop at fleecing gullible foreigners:  their own compatriots are fair game, too.  Everyone is on the make and on the take;  everyone wears a mask of false friendship and bonhomie, especially whenever some poor gullible fool is paying the bill, and reality, when it finally rears its judgmental head, is merciless.

The story is narrated by Nick, a British lawyer approaching forty, sent by his London firm to represent them in Moscow to oversee deals connecting banks to Russian ‘investors’ in oil-rich Siberia:  there is an indecent amount of money to be made by banks lending startup money to finance new oil terminals;  they  are falling over themselves to advance money to the new breed of Russian entrepreneur, and Nick’s firm is there to do the legal work and charge huge fees.  Money for jam, until he and his colleagues start dealing with the Cossack, an oligarch with a shadowy past and a talent for being out of contact in matters of urgency.  They begin arranging the finance for him to construct a new terminal in Murmansk, advancing hundreds of millions of dollars – oh, life is going well, there will be fat bonuses for all, with a possible partnership for Nick, and everyone is just about swimming in all the vodka tossed back in the many toasts to their success.

Nick has also started the romance of his life with Masha, a beautiful damsel in distress that he prevented from being mugged in the Metro;  she has been suitably grateful since and she and her ‘sister’ are his firm friends, especially when they find out that he is a lawyer.  And at that point Nick’s slide into corruption begins – gradually but inexorably, he is involved in a scheme to remove an old lady from her desirable central Moscow apartment, shifting her to a new high-rise flat on the outskirts of the city.  Nick completes all the tedious legal work, even advances a hefty loan himself to expedite matters, all in the name of Love, only to discover eventually, predictably, that he has been conned – out of his money and out of his reputation, and left only with the bitter, guilty realisation that he ignored all the warning signs (and there were many) in a futile bid to hang on to his ephemeral romance.  More unpleasant revelations follow, and life for Nick will never be the same again:  his naiveté has been his downfall.

A.D. Miller has written a superlative modern morality tale, examining venality and abandonment of principle from many angles.  He also peoples his work with great characters, beautifully observed and entirely convincing, and as a bonus – in case the reader will think that the story is an unmitigated tragedy from start to finish – there is a rich vein of humour throughout the novel, and the lasting impression that people the world over will do what they must – and what is easiest – to survive.

And the very last word must go to someone who summed Nick up most succinctly on the Remarks sheet inside the library book:  ‘Naïve fool – shouldn’t be left walking around loose.’

That person stated in a single sentence what has just taken me a whole page!  Ah, it’s a dreadful thing to be a verbal diahrroetic.

The Beginner’s Goodbye, by Anne Tyler

Pulitzer Prizewinning author Anne Tyler has written another little gem:  this writer never fails to be consistently good;  an excellent observer of all the foibles and eccentricities that make us all so different – and so much the same.

Her latest protagonist is Aaron Woolcott, an editor who works in the family business set up by his father, a firm that specialises in Beginner’s Guides to every conceivable thing, and a vanity press for those paying to publish their own work.  He has been handicapped since a childhood illness deformed his right arm and leg and has fought ever since against his overprotective mother and sister for his right to take  care of himself – he truly believes that, though he is living with very big disadvantages in his life, he is still ‘pretty happy’.  And he becomes happier still when he meets Dorothy Rosales, a radiology specialist. (he’s checking out contributors to the Beginner’s Guide to Cancer.  DON’T SPEAK!).  Dorothy views him with suspicion:  she is sure his interest in her is because she would be the ultimate caregiver, given her obvious medical skills and his obvious disabilities.  She is not the least bit interested in that kind of relationship and it takes some time to convince her that he wants her because she DOESN’T wish to take care of him.

Eventually, Aaron prevails and they marry four months after meeting, embarking on a marriage that turns out to be unsatisfactory for both of them – until Dorothy is killed in a freak accident.  Aaron then has to deal with all the stages of grieving, the anger he feels towards her for leaving him, and his own guilt when he realises that there is a yawning gulf between being cared for and cared about.  The reader journeys gladly with him through this big, painful learning curve, for Ms. Tyler fills her pages with lovely minor characters, each trying to help Aaron in their own different ways to survive – the casseroles and advice pile up at an astonishing rate! – and her sure touch for comedy in the most unlikely circumstances increases the reader’s enjoyment in every chapter.  Highly recommended.   

  

         

 

GREAT READS FOR JUNE 2012

The Golden Mean, by Annabel Lyon                                                          It is the year 343BC and Aristotle, revered student of Plato’s academy, superb logician, philosopher and teacher, has arrived in Pella, capital of the northern Greek city state of Macedon to greet and pass on messages to his old childhood friend and liege lord Phillip, king of Macedon.  Aristotle has recently married and is anxious to bring his new (and very young) wife Pythia to Athens, the cultural centre of the universe;  he frets that she will tire of him before their marriage has properly begun – he feels he must beguile and bribe her with new experiences and fine things in order to keep her with him.  Unfortunately for Aristotle, Phillip ‘requires’ him to stay on to be tutor to his 13 year-old son Alexander, and ‘no’ is not an acceptable answer.  On one hand, Aristotle hopes and prays that Pythia will not get restive and disgruntled after the exciting life he has painted for her does not immediately materialise, and on the other he is fascinated by his new student, a brilliant, relentlessly curious young boy who wants to be EVERYTHING:  an intellectual, a warrior, an athlete, an explorer of unknown lands – and the greatest conqueror of the known world.

Thus begins a relationship that lasts for years, Aristotle always attempting to instil within his headstrong charge the virtue of moderation over extremism in all things, the perfect balance between the two – the Golden Mean – with only partial effect.  Aristotle’s teachings are undermined on several levels by court intrigue from other, lesser tutors, and Alexander’s mother Olympias ‘s sick dependence on her beautiful son, not to mention the prince’s own dreams of glory.   He is gradually forced to relinquish all influence on Alexander and eventually is compelled to watch in horror as King Phillip is assassinated.  Though the prince is never blamed for his father’s murder, many fingers are pointed at Olympias as the culprit, but Alexander does not care:  he is now king and can embark on his life’s course.

Canadian writer Annabel Lyon writes beautifully of these great figures of history.  In spare, elegant,

sometimes bawdy prose she constructs the life and times of a militant people with great care and skill, and with almost ridiculous ease breathes thrilling life into ancient heroes of culture and war who have remained a huge influence on the world for more than 2000 years.  Highly recommended.

The Chemistry of Tears, by Peter Carey

Peter Carey is one of Australia’s most famous and prolific novelists;  he has won numerous literary awards, including the Man Booker Prize (twice!), and each new work is greeted with delight by his legions of admirers – including me:  after reading his marvellous comic novel ‘Parrot and Olivier in America’, (scroll down all the way to China to read that review!) I am a committed fan, and while there is much of a mechanical bent that went right over my head in this latest book, there is also much to savour and admire;  his wonderful facility for dialogue;  his great flare for mood and nuance, and the complete credibility of his characters.

Catherine Gehrig is a Conservator and Horologist for one of London’s many museums, the fictional Swinburne.  She restores and repairs all manner of clocks and antique mechanisms, and has had an all-consuming love affair for the last 13 years with a curator of Metals at the same institution, Matthew Tindall, a married man with two grown sons. Weekends and holidays with her lover, and her profession are all she needs to feel whole and a perfectly functioning, happy woman – until Matthew dies suddenly of a massive heart attack.  Catherine is reeling, unmanned, shocked to the core – and she can’t turn to anyone for sympathy, for her great love affair has been kept secret from her work colleagues, and she has no family she can turn to.  She is completely, frighteningly alone – she cannot even attend his funeral, for the official, despised ‘wife’ will be centre stage as chief mourner.

Catherine hits the booze for the next few days;  she can’t concentrate at all on her work, that of restoring a beautiful French clock, and vodka is the only thing that can get her through the nights - until her Head of Department, Eric Croft, presents her with a challenge that will eventually rouse her from her terrible grief sufficiently enough to start functioning again:  the restoration of an automaton, constructed in the 19^th century for a rich English manufacturer, Henry Brandling.  His young son Percy was ailing and tubercular;  after embarking on many different and desperate cures, Brandling decided that an automaton, a mechanical duck, would be the last, greatest entertainment for his precious little boy.  Brandling’s journals are included with the huge jumble of parts, and the account of his trip to Germany in 1854 to find the very best Black Forest clockmaker to construct his dream enthrals Catherine:  Henry and Catherine narrate alternate chapters and the reader is enthralled too by Henry’s account of the man who eventually constructs for Henry not a duck, but something much more:  is he a liar, a conman, a visionary, a genius – or all of those things?

Peter Carey writes movingly about the grief suffered by both his protagonists:  the reader has great sympathy for them even though they are not always likeable, but the last third of the book is most memorable for the thrill that starts to build as the automaton, splendid and awe-inspiring, nears completion, and the gradual taking of centre-stage by Catherine’s gorgeous young Sloane Ranger assistant, who has started to manifest some worrying problems of her own.  There is also a last, final mystery for the reader to chew on, and this reader certainly didn’t solve it – engines big or small have always stayed under the bonnet for me, but the historical enigma intrigued me greatly, and probably will for a long time.  Highly recommended.

Wulf, by Hamish Clayton

Hamish Clayton was recently announced as the winner of the prize for the NZ Society of Authors Best First Book, and deservedly so:  he has written an extraordinary, mesmerising account of early 19^th century New Zealand traders and their dealings with the brilliant and ruthless Te Rauparaha, using that feared Rangatira’s exploits as a modern retelling of the 10^th century poem ‘Wulf’, a verse that has resisted clear translation by scholars ever since it was written – and shall probably continue to do so, because of the myriad shades of meaning in so many of the Old English words.

Here we have Mr. Clayton’s interpretation of the poem underlying factual events in 1830 when the merchant brig ‘Elizabeth’ sailed to New Zealand from Sydney to trade with Te Rauparaha.  At that time, Te Rauparaha was so powerful that he held sway over the lower North Island, and had ambitions to conquer Ngai Tahu who had a stronghold on Banks Peninsula.  Te Rauparaha himself had captured Kapiti Island and turned it into a fortress, unassailable to war parties of any number due to the brilliance of his military tactics.  He was justly feared and had fully earned his title ‘The Napoleon of the Pacific’.   His mana was held in awe by ‘the white goblins’ as well as all Maori, for this chief also held the monopoly over a huge region in the trade of flax and whale oil, for which he received tools, blankets – and muskets.

The ‘Elizabeth’s voyage is narrated by a nameless crewmember, a man aghast at the strangeness and beauty of this new and savage land, it’s cruel weather in winter turning into searing heat in summer, trees which in winter were black and green and gloomy, bursting in the new warmth into bloody riots of red:  everything seems to become its opposite.  The crew is entertained and enthralled during their trip down the coast to Kapiti by Cowell, the ship’s trading master, a young man fluent in Maori who has already met Te Rauparaha and is happy to relate stories of the great man’s exploits – and his utter ruthlessness when dealing with his enemies.  Cowell baptises him ‘The Wolf’, and the name takes hold.

Cowell is indeed a bard, a great spinner of tales to entertain and inform – but he is not able to counsel his captain and first mate against entering into a deal to receive enormous amounts of flax if they would consent to take Te Rauparaha and 120 of his warriors south to Banks Peninsula, hidden on the ‘Elizabeth’ there to capture by trickery  the Ngai Tahu chief Tamaiharanui and his family.  The predicted bloodbath ensues, and everyone is dishonoured by the outcome, including the captain of the ‘Elizabeth’:  as a last act of treachery, Te Rauparaha reneges on the fifty tons of flax he promised and the brig is forced eventually to return to Sydney and ignominy – and criminal charges against captain and crew for being accessories to the murder of ‘native New Zealanders’.

Mr. Clayton has told this story so convincingly that the reader journeys willingly with his beautifully realised characters every step of the way:  his juxtaposition of the old ‘Wulf’ with the new is clever and intriguing and it is satisfying to know that New Zealand literature has a superlative new voice to tell our stories.

The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsay Faye

The city of New York in August, 1845:  it is high summer and all, especially the poor, are suffering from the dreadful heat and the illnesses that flourish in the noisome, rancid downtown tenements.  Despised Irish emigrants, arriving in their thousands from a home country that can no longer feed them – the Potato Famine has started – are clustered in rat-infested ghettos, wondering if they have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire:  their children are starving and the only work they can find is that which no ‘native’ will do.  Fires start easily in such conditions and a huge one, destroying several blocks, razes the accommodation, job and hopes of Timothy Wilde, barkeep, aged 27.  He has saved his wages for years so that he can eventually feel prosperous enough to offer marriage to charity worker Mercy Underhill, virtuous daughter of a protestant minister renowned for his tireless efforts on behalf of the poor – as long as they are not Irish catholics.  There is constant friction between Mercy and her father;  he lost his beloved wife to the cholera she contracted nursing those Irish savages and he can’t bear to think that his cherished girl would meet the same fate.  Mercy defies him at every turn, and Tim’s adoration of her knows no bounds.

  Sadly, he feels no such admiration for his elder brother Valentine who has looked after him (minimally, he feels) since the death of their parents in a farm fire when Tim was 10.  Valentine indulges all his animal appetites, is totally unscrupulous – and has just been made a captain in the newly created Police force, a fledgling organisation founded by Justice George Washington Matsell in a desperate attempt to instil some kind of lawful order to a city that wallows in chaos and anarchy.  Valentine ropes Tim in as a Roundsman for the 6^th Ward, giving him a Copper Star to wear to signify he is on the side of right:  Tim hates his big, bluff brother even more but is forced to comply – he has lost everything in the fire and unless he wants to starve he must adapt to his new circumstances.  And what circumstances they are!

On his way home to his new lodgings he is nearly knocked over by a terrified little girl clad only in a pretty nightgown – it is soaked in blood not her own and there begins a mystery as fascinating and sordid as the great city itself, particularly when Tim establishes that the child is an escapee from a brothel, where there are other child prostitutes, all of whom are coerced into selling themselves because  ‘the madam provides fresh food’.

His police work uncovers the graves of twenty children, all with their rib cages opened like the sign of the cross:  it appears that a serial killer is abroad, intent on stoaking religious and racial hatred for whatever ends he desires, and the sacrifice of little children means nothing if they are all Irish.

This story is so fast-plotted and such a page-turner that I had to keep reading until the very end;  then I was sorry there wasn’t more.  (And it will take some time to guess whodunit:  this tale has more twists and turns than the reader can keep track of.)  Ms. Faye is a storyteller extraordinaire, evoking an excellent sense of time and place and characters that are utterly credible.  An added bonus for me was the ‘flash talk’, the thieves’ argot that has existed since the 17^th century, evolving here into an 1840’s version and the forerunner to so many of our colloquial expressions – yep, a bloke was still a bloke in those days;  he hadn’t evolved into ‘dude’!  Highly recommended.      

           

               

GREAT READS FOR MAY, 2012

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer (Young adult reading)

Children’s librarian Wendy Fraser recommended this book to me, and as she’s seldom wrong in her reading choices (we have to agree to disagree about Nalini Singh) I’m happy to give this the ravingest (ravingest??) endorsement possible:  WHAT A STORY! 

The tale of Cinderella – yep, Cinderella, her nasty stepmum and the two stepsisters – is transferred hundreds of years into the future.  Cinderella is now Cinder, living in New Beijing with a family who are, to say the least, most reluctant guardians.  She is a mechanic (truly!) and a Cyborg, to her shame, having been fitted out with a steel hand, leg and inbuilt computer screen after a terrible childhood accident.  Cyborgs are the future’s Untouchables, considered fit only to perform the most menial and degrading of tasks, but Cinder is such a good mechanic that a Royal prince visits her to have his tutor android repaired, and after that visit she and the reader are lost:  she to alien romantic impulses (she is not programmed for this!)and a reluctant involvement in a life and death experiment -  and the reader to being nailed to one spot until they have reached the last page.

To add insult to injury, the hapless reader finds that after a thrilling journey at a breakneck pace through more clever plot twists than a pretzel, there are three more books to come – and they haven’t been written yet!  To say I feel cheated is an understatement and the withdrawal symptoms are dire, but I also say with complete confidence that ‘Cinder’ will be the next big Blockbuster book/movie series:  you read it here first.

Waiting for Sunrise, by William Boyd.

    

I have been a devoted fan of William Boyd’s since I read ‘Any Human Heart’.  He is a writer of elegance and style, and also has the exceptional gift of effortlessly generating suspense and mystery in his plots without belonging to the thriller genre.  One reviewer called him an expert writer of ‘the literary thriller’ and that is certainly true of ‘Waiting for Sunrise’.

It is 1913, the setting is Vienna, and Lysander Rief, a young British stage actor of middling success has decided to visit the Austrian capital because it is currently the centre of the daring new medical science of psychoanalysis:  he has a worrying sexual problem that he hopes will be resolved so that he doesn’t disappoint his new fiancé when they eventually consummate their union.  Sadly, Lysander disgraces himself utterly by a series of ill-considered decisions, and eventually breaking his engagement turns out to be the least of his worries.  He must call on the help of an attaché at the British embassy to help him flee the country, and is aghast to find upon his return to Britain that his saviours expect financial repayment for their assistance – but all will be forgotten if he will carry out a small intelligence mission for them.  He is asked in such a way that refusal is not an option;  his descent into espionage and life-threatening danger reveals a cunning and ingenuity he wasn’t aware he had, and a distressing, conscious lack of honour and conscience when ‘up against it’ which can be rationalised away  - except when he dreams. 

Mr. Boyd has created with great assurance the lowering atmosphere of Europe on the brink of the Great War, and the disintegration of one man’s shaky hold on principle and decency in his efforts to survive – he does, but at enormous personal cost.  Highly recommended.

Wild Thing, by Josh Bazell.

Peter Brown, former Mob hitman turned State’s evidence is on the run again.  Those Mafia heavies will NOT leave him alone to lead a respectable life undercover as a doctor in the witness protection programme and his mentors have had to remove him from danger yet again, (read Beat the Reaper review below) this time jacking him up a job as a physician on a cruise ship.  And THAT’S not all it’s cracked up to be – far from lolling around in a deck chair working on his tan, Peter finds that it’s 24/7 drudgery;  he and the rest of the crew have no say at all in their working conditions or lack of them, let alone a union to represent them – in short, the job stinks.  To add insult to injury he has been given a new name that sounds like a nasty medicine.  He is not happy!  But (in the best tradition of wildly-plotted novels of this type) salvation is at hand:  his mentor requires him on another more important job, this time to join an expedition financed by a reclusive billionaire (hereafter called Rec Bill) to explore the veracity of a claim that a creature similar to the Loch Ness Monster is terrorising people in a remote lake in Northern Minnesota.  Peter is recruited as part of the team so that he can test the truth of the claim, and to provide security and protection of a sort to the Palaeontologist sent by Rec Bill to verify whether the ‘Monster’ is real or a hoax.

Violet Hurst is not your usual idea of a Palaeontologist:  she is loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed and she bad-mouths;  she is half-drunk most of the time because she can’t bear to face our polluted and overpopulated world sober;  she is a doomsayer and a naysayer and her lack of belief in everything ordinary people (what are they?) hold dear gets her into some unenviable situations, but she is a very good scientist, can scale cliffs like a mountaineer and shows a resourcefulness under pressure that Peter can only describe as admirable: together they could conquer the world!  Or at least, find a prehistoric monster if it exists.

And from here, things start getting silly, not to say absurd;  the plot thickens to the extent that even Sarah Palin makes an unlikely appearance -  it’s obvious that Josh Bazell doesn’t like her or the Republican Party – but the plot could well have done without her inclusion.  There is the usual plethora of footnotes (some of them VERY funny) to clarify science for the reading masses, and Mr.Bazell has even included an appendix to prove all the assertions and theories Peter and Violet espouse in the book.  I found some of this so bewildering my brain was in danger of exploding, but having said that (now that I have come up for air!) ‘Wild Thing’ whilst indeed a wild read, was also a FUN read, with the right amount of suspense at the right time, and characters that remain so likeable and engaging that we look forward to meeting them again.  And Messrs. Lincoln and Child, those former masters of the absurdist crime genre, must be looking very sour at the advent of Josh Bazell, New Kid on the Block.

Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazell.

Peter Brown is a first-year hospital doctor in Manhattan.  He is chronically tired, an arch-cynic, prone to taking all sorts of dubious meds to keep himself awake and firing, but he loves medicine and respects his Hippocratic oath.  He is a good and dedicated Medical practitioner.  And in a former life he was a ruthless hitman for the Mafia.  This is the first paradox in Mr. Bazell’s hugely entertaining novel:  the trained killer is now saving lives.  However, Peter’s former occupation is, naturally, a big and constant worry, especially as he fell foul of his Mob bosses and testified against them, gaining himself a much-needed place in the Witness Protection program.

Unfortunately, Peter is not the sort who fades into the background;  he’s enormous, a cross between Godzilla and Attila the Hun, but after six years of medical school and nary a sighting of his former employers, he is confident enough in his new identity to lead what passes for a normal life, as an overworked and underpaid member of the medical staff at Manhattan Catholic Hospital – until one of the ‘made men’ turns up for cancer surgery in Peter’s ward.  In a horrifyingly short time, Peter is on the run, and only his previous expertise at killing people can save him – oh, the corpses stack up at an alarming rate, and there are so many novel ways for the baddies to die:  did you know that the tibia in one’s leg can be removed (provided it’s done competently, without damaging the knee and ankle);  it’s not weight-bearing, and appears to be of no earthly use at all until Peter removes his own tibia, entirely without anaesthetic (naturally!) - to stab the arch Mafia villain in the heart.  What a warrior!  And Lincoln and Child, creators of Aloysius Pendergast, that peerless paragon of Right over Might, must be writhing with envy that they didn’t come up with anything half as outlandish.  Yep, the reader’s credulity is stretched to the utmost, but there is also much to admire in this story;  there are fascinating medical and historical footnotes, a huge and ironic twist in the tale towards its conclusion, and more humour than a body has a right to expect. 

On the library’s remark sheet at the front of the book, one person has written ‘Stupid’.  Fair enough, but another has written ‘awesome read, and that’s the one I’M going with

Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn West.

This story is narrated by Esch Batiste, aged 15 and the second youngest child of a black scrap-dealer in a small Louisiana town near the Mississippi River delta.  She has two older brothers, Randall aged 17, and Skeetah, aged 15.  Junior, the youngest at 8, survived childbirth, but their mother didn’t, and the family has not managed well without her:  each carry their own memories of her loving ways and try to exist on them like a precious food that will soon run out, and they each have their defences against the harshness of their existence, Randall in his athleticism and the hope that he will eventually be eligible for a free school basketball training camp which could lead to a college scholarship, and Skeetah to make money for the family by breeding pups from his beloved pitbull, China.  Esch loves to learn and reads prodigiously, particularly the Myths of Greece, and one story, that of Jason and Medea, strikes her as having a similar parallel to her own hopeless yearnings for Randall’s best friend Manny.  The person most adrift is their Daddy, unmanned and helpless without his life’s partner.  He turns inward and away from his children, giving the new baby entirely into their inexperienced care;  for the next eight years he puts food on the table but very little else.  His heart has turned to stone.

Despite their poverty, the Batiste children still have their goals and aspirations - until  terrible unplanned events wreck their hopes:  they are floored by fate’s cruelty and don’t believe that things could get any worse – until they do, with their father bedridden by an awful, fluky accident, and Hurricane Katrina about to hit the Louisiana coast.

Ms. West’s account of the Hurricane alone is stark and terrible:  we are there trying to shield ourselves in our pathetic little shelter from the howling, roaring wind and waterfalls of rain;  we are completely given over to our gutclenching fear in the face of such a huge, elemental power, and watch in terrified disbelief as the water floods our mean little dwelling and threatens to drown us all.

I cannot remember when I last read such splendid prose.  Ms. West is a true wordsmith;  she paints compelling, unforgettable pictures with her beautiful language and her characters are so strong and true that I didn’t want her lovely book to end, for despite the parallels to Greek tragedy, the story ends on a triumphantly hopeful note:  the Batistes and their friends survive, and they survive because they love each other enough to make all the right sacrifices.  They now have even less than before, but what they have gained is immeasurable.  FIVE STARS!!!!!