The Waiter, by Ajay Chowdhury.

 

 

           London writer Chowdhury is the winner of the inaugural Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland crime writing award – not bad for a debut novelist who ‘kicked around for ten years’ the idea of a disgraced Kolkata detective moving to London, before turning his thoughts into a suspenseful, well-plotted story from which Book Two has just been published (the Fates and Covid willing).

            Ex-Detective Kamil Rahman has been forced to leave his Kolkata home thanks to his utter disgrace in digging too deep into his first big murder case;  sadly, by trying to emulate his remote, austere father, retired police commissioner Adil’s impossibly high principles, he has exposed unbelievable levels of graft and corruption – nothing new about that, except that his investigations (even when forcefully ordered by his boss to look the other way) reveal the rot at the highest level.  He is sacked from his position – on charges of bribery and corruption(!) – then informed that it would be better if he left the country.  If he knows what’s good for him.

            So much for principles, thinks Kamil, as he waits tables in family friend Saibal’s Indian restaurant in London.  Life couldn’t get much worse, he thinks, as the family prepares to cater for the 60^th birthday of Rakesh, millionaire family friend and benefactor – ‘I worked my way up from Kolkata’s slums, now it’s my chance to help my friends!’ – and Kamil prepares for a night of mindless boredom filling people’s glasses and plates, only to be shocked by the fury displayed by Rakesh when he sees Kamil, who has never met him, then by a hysterical phone call from Rakesh’s young trophy wife at the end of the night, urging the restaurant family to return and help her, for Rakesh had suffered ‘a terrible accident!’  Which turned out to be no accident, but murder most foul.

To make matters worse, Kamil can’t resist examining the crime scene before the police arrive, taking pictures of various interesting anomalies – then inadverdently polluting the crime scene, almost making himself a suspect to the police.  So much for his ‘detection’ skills:  maybe a waiter’s job is all he deserves!

            Mr Chowdhury does a great job of portraying the teeming, vital, colourful society within a society in East London;  his character drawings are a delight and his plotting, composed of flash-backs to Kamil’s initial disgrace followed by his current situation, is very good indeed.  Most of all, the reader is entertained, and that’s not easy to do in this genre. Book #2, ‘The Cook’, has just been published.  Can’t wait!  FIVE STARS.  

              

 

Again, Rachel, by Marian Keyes.

 

          Queen of the Chick Lit genre Marian Keyes needs no introduction;  it’s a safe bet that whichever of her titles one reads, the entertainment factor will be sky-high – as it should be, for Ms Keyes has a knack that other writers would kill for:  the Unputdownable-till-it’s-finished factor, and ‘Again, Rachel’ ticks all the boxes.

            We return to Ireland and the Walsh family, Mammy, Daddy and their five incorrigible daughters, not to mention the next generation, soon to generate stories of their own.  Third daughter Rachel is happy with her life now;  after several false starts (and stops), she has moved on and is head Counsellor at The Cloisters, the rehab centre which set her on a better path (Rachel’s Holiday).  She has a new house, new interests (GARDENING!!  Who knew??) and a hot new man – well, not so new anymore;  they’ve been seeing each other for two years and are starting to think of moving in together.  Life is good.

            Until she is informed that her ex-husband Luke is returning from the States for his mother’s funeral.  It is expected that she pay her respects by attending.

            Luke Costello was the love of Rachel’s life, but he left her after an unimaginable tragedy:  she doesn’t want to mention his name, let alone see him again.  But she does, because it’s the right thing to do.  And he brought his girlfriend with him, but hey!  She has a new man, so who’s to care?  Except that her sisters think he’s wonderful, as does her Mum who is planning her 80^th birthday SURPRISE party, and wants him to come along.  As if all the tragedy, tears and heartache never happened.  Well.  That’s okay – he can come, but Rachel won’t, so there!

            This is what Ms Keyes does so well:  intersperse sorrow with marvellous Irish humour in ways that stops the reader’s heart from becoming too full.  All her characters – and there are many, for we meet Rachel’s charges at the rehab centre, too - are beautifully drawn portraits of want and need and lack – and hope, for none of them want to be an addict.  But they are. Ms Keyes walks the talk here, for she is a recovering alcoholic, and ‘knows the condition well’.  No-one could ever accuse her of not knowing her subject, likewise I’m sure, with her wonderful Walsh family:  we can recognise in every one of them similarities to ours.  This is feel-good, heartwarming writing at its best.  FIVE STARS.        

 

 

 

 

 

A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting, by Sophie Irwin.

 

  

          What enormous fun this story is, similar as it is to the product of all the august lady-novelists of yesteryear – you could say that it is Jane Austen-Lite but, whilst it follows all the rules of their choosing (independently-minded heroine, haughty but noble hero) Ms Irwin’s research paints a sad but true picture of just how important it was to make an advantageous marriage – for either sex – in 1818.

            Kitty Talbot is the oldest, at 19, of five sisters when she and her 17 year-old sister Cecily journey to London from Dorsetshire to stay with Aunt Dorothy Kendall, with the sole objective of finding a rich husband for Kitty during the Season – rich enough to pay off the debts their dead parents have left, and kind enough to continue the education of her younger sisters.  They have two months for Kitty to snare herself a gentleman of independent means, and no-one is more determined to succeed.  Fortunately, she is of handsome looks – and a shrewish tongue, but no-one need know that till afterwards.   

            Aunt Dorothy is a staunch friend and conversant enough with the foibles of High Society (thanks to employment of doubtful origin when she was younger) that she can advise the girls of correct behaviour and address, and it is not long before the young sisters are launched into the lower echelons of polite society, soon rising to higher levels, thanks to Kitty’s quick thinking loss of her shoe in the park, requiring the assistance of Archie de Lacy, younger son of an Earl, and about to come into his majority – and inheritance!  Kitty loses no time practising her feminine wiles (she discovers it’s very hard to look upwards through one’s eyelashes but gamely tries, anyway), and Archie is soon In Love, the silly boy.  BUT!

            The only fly in the ointment is his elder brother, Lord Fairfax:  he sees effortlessly through Kitty’s blushing ardour and calls her out on her behaviour. After several pages of wounding wordplay, he agrees to give her information as to the income and reputation of the gentlemen she meets at the various balls and functions they attend during the Season – as long as she leaves his brother alone.  Naturally, his brother is heartbroken, and finds other, more dangerous pursuits to console him.

            We all know what will happen next, and there’s nothing like a happy ending in these troubling times, but Ms Irwin has given us a very clear and damning picture of the strata of society in that era – and the hypocrisy.  This is a most charming story.  Book Two is on its way!  FIVE STARS.

 

Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn.                 Young Adults.

 

 

           16 year-old Black girl Bree Matthews is suffering.  Her mother was killed in a hit-and-run three months before, and Bree’s grief is all-consuming, except for the prospect of a huge change of scene:  a scholarship for a year’s  Pre-college study at North Carolina University.  Her best friend is going too, and Bree is grabbing at the distraction and new environment like a lifeline:  Anything to help her forget the terrible yawning emptiness in her life, and the fact that her last words to her mother were cruel.

            At first, the new setting works – until she and her friend Alice go to an Off-Campus outdoor party, and what started out to be pranks and loutish behaviour turn into a situation that Bree has trouble believing:  monsters suddenly materialising, and being just as quickly vanquished by the companion assigned to her by the Dean to keep her on the straight and narrow. (Thanks, Dad!)  As if that weren’t bizarre enough, Nick and his companions are called Legendborn and belong to a highly secret society made up of pages, vassals and knights whose duty it is to protect the ‘once-born’ (ordinary people) from said monsters of every stripe trying to find gates to enter the normal world to feast on the once-born.  The fact that once-borns are spectacularly unaware of Legendborns’ existence testifies to their success.

            Brie is, naturally, staggered.  Who knew that the education she is receiving has nothing to do with what she signed up for.  And to make matters much worse: she is the only Black girl – not in the college;  there IS diversity of a sort – but to be invited to join (if she gets through the trials) this WHITE-male-dominated secret society which hails back to the days of King Arthur.

            Brie is proud to be Black.  She’s proud of who and what she is and she doesn’t need favours from anyone.  She decides to go along with things, but only for a time – until she discovers the truth about her mother’s death;  there are too many unanswered questions about the where, how and why of it.  If they want to use her for any reason, well, she’ll use them right back!

            Ms Deonn has written a thriller which, maze-like, dense plotting aside (not to mention an army of minor characters – and all those monsters!) has the reader staying up to the wee hours to find out What Happened Next, and When:  I was very glad to finish it – not that there was anything resolved – bring on Book Two! – but I could finally get a good night’s sleep again!  (And at my age, that’s very important.)  FIVE STARS.   

             

 

Harbouring, by Jenny Pattrick.

 

  

        Jenny Pattick’s tenth novel is set in 1840, in the fledgling settlement of Port Nicholson founded by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his brothers, proprietors of the New Zealand Company – a business set up in Britain to sell ‘country acres’ to wealthy investors, and single acre lots to those providing commerce and the means to house and feed those well-heeled investors who felt adventurous enough to make the four-month journey to this new and exciting land by ship, a journey fraught with discomfort and danger;  even more so for the migrants and their young families who travelled in the bowels of the ship, enduring terrible hardship and privation, all so that they could be servants to said investors – if they made the journey alive.

            Huw and Martha Pengellin of Wales are a just such a ‘steerage’ family; they are forced by grinding poverty and political unrest into considering the unthinkable:  to make a start in the Great Unknown, or starve, cheated out of what they own by English overlords.  When she arrives in New Zealand, Martha will be a washerwoman, but Huw travels first;  he is useful to the Wakefields for his quartermaster skills;  they have heard that the natives will sell land for all manner of implements, but muskets are preferred – the more a tribe is armed, the more powerful against its enemies.  Huw has a good ear for languages, too, and learns Maori from Rere and Te Whaiti, two crew members on his ship, but he is dismayed to learn that after their arrival, there appears to be different versions between Maori and the Wakefields as to what actually is for sale:  in Port Nicholson, survey pegs are hammered into Maori vegetable gardens and long-established Pa.  It is not long before hostilities arise – and pakeha diseases spread:  it doesn’t take long for drinking water from streams to be polluted when night soil is emptied into it.

Ms Pattrick, as always, enthrals us with her wonderful characters, each of whom narrate their chapters and propel the plot forward at dizzying speed;  such is her artistry that the reader feels the joys of a new world – and its tragedies – as they happen.  And it is thrilling for this reader to recognise in the nascent settlement of Port Nicholson the bones of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand’s capital city.  And the ‘native’ point of view is exemplified by Hineroa, a slave whose tribe was conquered by Te Rauparaha and his bloodthirsty nephew Te Rangihaeata.  She was given to whalers, one of whom taught her to read the Bible, and her future hand-to-mouth existence and life-choices are the gripping heart of the story.  Bravo, Ms Pattrick.  SIX STARS.                  

              

 

The Fish, by Lloyd Jones.

 

            The fish is not a real fish.  The fish is the family nickname for him, because that’s what he looks like;  bulging eyes, thick lips and no neck – he’s slow, too – can’t spell for toffee, and this family prides itself on its spelling and its erudition in knowing the Latin origins of particular words, according to his teenage uncle, the narrator of Lloyd Jones’ transfixing novel. 

No, the fish is not Piscean, an ocean-dweller, but his family, regardless of the public front they preserve for the neighbours, wish that his mother, their youngest daughter (Older sister Carla is the glamorous one but she is modelling in Sydney), a teenage rebel in the 50’s well before it was fashionable  had at least known about birth control, thus preventing the birth of a severely disabled and disadvantaged child.  And she’s not saying who the father is.

            Regardless, the family rally around, trying to help the new mum who lives with her newborn in a battered caravan (‘I need my privacy!’) at a motor camp, but she doesn’t make a good fist of things, and Mum and Dad have to come to the rescue after the new mother overdoses and has to be institutionalised and rehabilitated.  The fish and his hapless mother come to live with the family, and his young uncle reluctantly assumes child-minding duties whether he wants to or not as the fish’s mother deteriorates further into self-loathing, despite the heroic efforts of her agonised parents who cannot prevent her inevitable destruction.  Fish’s mother doesn’t want to live.     

            It is now up to Mum and Dad to bring up the fish as best they can and, while he can’t write legibly (or spell) the fish proves unexpectedly clever and helpful in Dad’s scrap metal business, knowing with uncanny accuracy where everything is stored, and the price of everything:  it seems there is a useful place for him in life:  who knew it would be in the scrap metal business?  And who knew that more tragedy would ensue with the death of Dad from a heart attack caused by a breath-holding competition underwater with the fish one day at the beach:  the family reels from one tragedy to another, until good news at last:  glamorous model Carla visits (finally!) from Sydney, and makes a huge effort ‘to get to know’ her nephew, taking him for a week to the South Island – and returning on the overnight ferry ‘Wahine’ – on April 10^th, 1968, a day tragically engraved in New Zealand history when the ferry sunk in Wellington Harbour with the loss of 53 lives:  Carla survives, but the fish is never found.

            This is a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions, a tale of woe of a family where everyone has secrets and no-one is anything like the façade they present to the world – and so beautifully written.  Lloyd Jones is a master of prose.  His account of the ‘Wahine’ tragedy was powerful and mesmerising;  whether I wanted to be or not, this reader was right there with those who survived – and those who died, like the fish.  SIX STARS.     

 

Remember Me, by Charity Norman.

 

 

           Emily Kirkland’s comfortable life in London as a children’s book illustrator is changed irrevocably when she receives an absurdly early morning phone call from her father’s next-door neighbour – in New Zealand.  And the next-door neighbour is widow Raewyn Parata who, with her son Ira, Emily’s childhood best friend, runs a farm on the block next to Felix Kirkland’s. 

            Early morning phone calls seldom presage good news, and this is no exception:  Emily’s Dad has Alzheimer’s disease, diagnosed when he recently crashed his car and his symptoms were found to be more than concussion.  Could Emily return to Aotearoa to care for him for a little while, and to decide with her twin siblings the best solution for future care of their dear Dad, once a respected family Doctor in Tawanui, the small East Coast town to which the family migrated from England, and now suddenly a confused old man who doesn’t remember anyone.

            Fair enough.  Emily will do her duty.  She’ll stay for three weeks, long enough to ‘arrange things’.  She had never felt close to her father anyway;  he was always very remote from his supposed Loved Ones, preferring to give his respect and attention to his patients to such an extent that when his last child left home, Emily’s Mum left, too.  Yes, Emily will do her bit, but she is already looking forward to leaving her unhappy beginnings in Tawanui (before she has even arrived!), for her memories also include a very rare Cold-Case:  the disappearance of Raewyn Parata’s brilliant daughter Leah, who went walking in the Ruahine Ranges on a scientific exploration – and never returned.  Emily was the last to see her alive.  She does NOT want to relive those memories!

            But her father changes her mind.  Swinging wildly in behaviour between not recognising her at all, and in his attempts at normalcy revealing horrifying, long-kept secrets, Emily knows she must stay and care for him until HE decides his fate, despite huge opposition from her siblings who are screeching for Power of Attorney so that they can sell his property and shunt him off to the local rest home.

            Decide his fate he does, and that is what makes Ms Norman’s story so clever:  she writes in clear, beautiful, everyday prose of ordinary people trying to make sense of a disease that we all greatly fear – the horror of forgetting who we are, our very selves – and weaves a stunning suspense plot into the mix as well.  And sibling rivalry has never been so baldly portrayed.  FIVE STARS.