Talking to the Dead – Helen Dunmore

This year’s present from “Secret Santa” and an author that I hadn’t previously heard of, despite her winning the Orange Prize for an earlier novel.

The novel revolves around two sisters – Nina (the narrator) and Isabel. Nina has been called to stay by Isabel’s husband Richard, following the birth of  Isabel’s first baby. The birth has gone badly and Isabel is recuperating at home. Also at the house are Edward, Isabel’s friend, and Susan, a young nurse who cares for the baby.

The relationship between the two sisters is clearly strained – both claim to care for the other, yet they seem guarded or jealous of each other. They are described as very different: Nina is dark and a photographer artist who likes to live in the city. Isabel is blond and slender, has made her home in a remote and neglected house in the countryside, taming a large garden.

We are made to feel uncomfortable about both of the sisters. Isabel’s placidity seems to hide secretiveness and a manipulative nature. We find out that she is reluctant both to travel far from the house and also to eat, particularly in the company of others.

Nina in contrast loves to cook and to eat and is aggressively sexual. She has no hesitation in starting an affair with Richard and the two take advantage of her sister being bed-bound to meet for sex around the garden. Nina seems blank, emotionless, apparently using sex for excitement and to blot out reality.

It is obvious that there will be trouble ahead but there is another dimension. Spending more time with her sister is forcing Nina to look back at her memories and there is a shocking revelation when she recalls the sudden death of her infant brother Colin. As the book progresses, we worry about the safety of Isabel’s baby Antony and the potential for history to repeat itself.

The climax could almost be clichéd – the household prepares for a final celebratory meal and the weather finally turns to ensure that real storm clouds gather at the same time as the inevitable emotional crisis. However, there is still one more twist to come…

A beautifully written book, alternating great scenes of lyrical beauty along with horror and a mounting sense of unease.  The main characters are all flawed and the narrator herself is neither sympathetic nor entirely reliable. So this is not a book if you are looking for the feelgood factor, but is still a great if rther unsettling read.

At our meetings, we often conclude by offering marks out of ten. I would definitely give this a “9”.

 

Thankyou, Santa!

The Broker – John Grisham

OK, this one was started for the very weakest of reasons. The book was given away free on the cover of Mrs. Malcolm’s magazine, so I started with low hopes.

And sure enough, the book was much as expected. Its a ridiculous plot. A former high flying wheeler-dealer called Joel Backman has tried to get rich from selling state secrets and ended up in jail. At the beginning of the book, he is mysteriously pardonned and flown out of the country. He needs to stay hidden, because the secret services of a number of countries may well want to kill him. Unfortunately, he’s only been released as part of the CIA’s cunning plan to find out who “the bad guys” are by waiting to see which ones are successful in finding and killing our “hero”. (Huh)?

The characterisation is almost non-existent, with individuals sketched in as standard cliches.  The main character is amoral and power-crazed, the CIA are ruthless, the Italians love a good meal, the US President is an idiot and so on.  Much of the story takes place in Italy but despite some descriptions of the locations, the novel also failed to evoke a sense of place for me – again, it relied too much on shorthand (endless coffee shops and long lunches).

On the other hand, I was expecting a trashy read and quite looking forward to it. Every so often its nice not to have to think too hard about the book you’re reading. And having dispensed with characterisation, psychology and reality, I was free to enjoy the plot! Which, although ridiculous, does at least go along at a good pace and with a certain amount of suspense.  Will Joel escape his not-so-caring minders? How will he get away, with no money, no friends, no passport? What will happen when all the world’s top assassins are tipped off about his location?

Like I said, totally ridiculous. But I still found that once I’d started, I didn’t want to put the book down and I can’t be alone if the book jacket blurb “over a quarter of a billion books sold” is true.

The Tin Drum – Gunter Grass

I’ve been listening to this as an audio book. It’s a long book so total listening time was over 20 hours and it’s been a regular part of my commute for months!

It’s a difficult book to summarise, as its a huge story encompassing a great many sub-plots. At its simplest, it purports to be an autobiography of Oskar Matzerath, born in the 1920’s near Danzig (now Gdansk, in Poland). Two important events then occur on his third birthday. One is the present of a tin drum – the first of many. But on the same day, Oskar throws himself down the basement stairs as a deliberate decision to stop himself from growing up.

So, for all of his childhood, Oskar has the appearance of a three year old. Even when he eventually grows, he remains a stunted dwarf, but with the addition of a pronounced hump.

Oskar plays his tin drum with great determination, using it as his protection against the world. He defeats anyone attempting to remove it from him with a piercing scream and soon realises that he can focus this scream to shatter glass. Whilst the reader will doubtless have heard of similar tricks by trained singers, Oskar’s expertise goes way beyond this. Oskar can break glass with precision – cutting neat circular holes in shop windows to allow an accomplice to steal valuable jewellery.

Oskar’s expertise on the drum likewise develops, allowing him to affect people’s mood. He even subverts the march at a Nazi rally by playing dance rythms from his hidden place. If this seems incredible, it is nothing to the point later in the book, when we are expected to believe that Oskar has used his drum to bring alive a statue of Jesus. No, really.

As Oskar grows into adulthood, he leaves behind petty crime and troublemaking to jump from job to job. He leaves home with a dwarf entertainment troupe, but later has spells as a carver of gravestones, an art model and a jazz drummer. He also has a varied and strange sexual life – seducing his first love with the aid of a sherbet powder, and going on to attract later women through the power of his hump. He idolises (or fetishises)? nurses, leading to an uncomfortable and bizarre episode where he breaks into his neighbour’s wardrobe and later attempts to have sex with her on the new hallway carpet.

There are many minor characters who are nearly as unusual as Oskar himself, including the gravedigger with his awful boils and Oskar’s arsonist grandfather.  There are some entertaining diversions and several bizarre deaths. We hear of a (homosexual) scout master who kills later kills himself within an incredible machine in his cellar. Even stranger, Oskar’s mother dies from eating too many eels – which in turn is preceeded by a horrific scene of eel – fishing. Oskar blames himself for a number of these deaths, including that of his mother’s lover – the man who he believes to be his father. The book ends with Oskar in a psychiatric institution, having allowed himself to be implicated in the death of another character.

So, what does it all mean? Clearly there must be more to this book than invention and larger than life characters. Oskar’s refusal to grow up is presumably linked to the political situation around the rise of Nazism and impending war. There are a number of historical references woven into the book, most notably a dramatisation of the defense of the Polish Post Office in Danzig – one of the first battles to herald the invasion of Poland and the start of WWII.

Here, it clearly helps to know some of the historical background. For example, the book refers repeatedly to Kashubia and Kashubians. This concerns an ethnic group now found in northern Poland. The Nazis considered Kashubians as being of German stock with potential for being assimilated although those supporting the Polish cause were executed. This is illustrated in the Tin Drum by Oskar’s two fathers, who take opposite sides in the run up to the war, one helping to defend the Post Office and dying, whilst the other sides with the Nazi Party.

I have to admit to great ignorance in such matters at the time of reading but have since been encouraged to look up some details. Wikipedia has a number of interesting articles linked to the Tin Drum story and its historical background, which have provided me with some of the detail above.

There is much else to ponder. Oskar often refers to himself in the third person and his account is clearly unreliable. There are also religious overtones with Oskar seeing himself as the devil and berating Jesus. Others (Wikipedia) suggest that a further theme is the power of art to defeat war and conflict.

You’ll just have to read it to decide!

Some last comments…

1. The audio format. Mine was Blackstone Audio’s unabridged reading by Paul Michael Garcia from a translation by Breon Mitchell. I’d downloaded this book in MP3 format but it clearly has been taken direct from another format. Each MP3 track is the length of a CD – over one hour long, meaning that if you lose your place, there is lots of tiresome scrolling to be done. A definite black mark against what was otherwise a very enjoyable listen!

2. The BBC has a podcast of an interview with the author. I’ve not listened yet as I wanted to commit my own thoughts first. But I’ve downloaded the recording and will be looking forward to this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/wbc/all

“Let it Bleed” – Ian Rankin

7^th of the Inspector Rebus series. According to the author’s notes, the book is named after a Rolling Stones album and with a definite pun in mind – it’s the hero’s poorly working radiators that need bleeding. Thankfully, Rankin is a better plotter than comedian.

The book starts with a dramatic car chase of suspected kidnappers through night-time snow. This is rapidly followed by two dramatic instances of suicide that are mysterious enough to prompt Rebus to start digging into the backgrounds of the former petty criminals and no-hopers involved. As the book progresses, our inspector solves the mystery of the kidnapping but finds himself increasingly enmeshed in stories of questionable business development and dirty politics. The resolution sees Rebus moving back and forth between ex-offender hostels and stories about rent fiddles and country estates with people involved in multi-million pound deals.

By this point in the series, we have an easy familiarity with the main characters. Some from earlier stories are now coming back in new, more responsible roles, but Rebus of course is just where he has always been. If anything, he is in danger of going backwards, career-wise. I personally found it a disappointing cliché to find him being asked to take a holiday but continuing to work on the case – too reminiscent of any number of cop shows it seemed. I was also uncertain about the reality of the ending, which included a rather unbelievable meeting with all the main players from the top of business and government.

However, these are niggles – the pace of the novel was excellent, drawing me in from the beginning and not letting go until the end. A great holiday read.

Going Postal – Terry Pratchett

OK, this is another Discworld novel, and one of the later ones (around 29^th in the sequence, if I’ve counted correctly)⁽¹⁾. So those of you who don’t like Discworld (most of my book club considers the humour to be too obvious) can turn away

… now!

Going Postal introduces a new character by the name of Moist von Lipwig. A ridiculous name but this doesn’t really matter as Moist has spent most of his life under a wide range of aliases. For Moist is a consumnate con artist, who probably enjoys the process of conning people more than the money that flows from it.

At the beginning of the book, Moist is on Ankh Morpork’s scaffold, about to be hanged for his misdemeanors. He is saved – just – by the city’s ruthlessly benign dictator, Lord Veterinari. It rapidly becomes clear that his life has been spared for a purpose. Which seems to be to take a responsible job, to resurrect the city’s derelict postal service and to get letters delivered. The fact that all recent Postmasters have died in mysterious circumstances may have something to do with Veterinari’s choice of candidate. Also in Vetinari’s mind is the desire to see effective competition with the “clacks” (semaphore) service that has changed from a speedy wonder of the modern (Disc)world into a corrupt monopoly more concerned with making money than with keeping its employees alive.

At the Post Office, Moist finds everything in ruins. The staff is reduced to two members – the senior but hide-bound Mr Groat and the junior Stanley, whose only real aptitude appears to lie in his obsessional hobby of collecting pins⁽²⁾. The post office itself is piled high with undelivered letters from years gone by. Hoarders and procrastinators everywhere will recognise the warning from Mr Groat’s explanation – whenever there were a few letters that couldn’t quite be delivered, they were put down to one side for later … only later never came, so the piles grew to fill whole rooms and corridors.

Over the course of the book, Moist recruits new postmen and women (mainly by re-appointing all the old ones), re-establishes delivery services and beats the Clacks. Most of this is achieved by re-applying his skills in persuasion – by dressing right, appearing confident and taking unwinnable chances. This almost sounds like the lessons of a modern self-help book, albeit twisted into Discworld’s bizarre logic.

Compared to other Discworld stories, this one has remarkably little magic. Wizards do play a small part at the end of the book, but this is largely to get in a “Lord of the Rings” joke relating to a giant red eye in an all–seeing “omniscope”. There are other magical aspects (Moist can “hear” the undelivered letters) but the functioning of both Post Office and Clacks is logical, and the way in which Moist wins is related more to human motivations and behaviour.

To finish, some trivial detail:

This is one of very few Discworld novels divided in to chapters, presumably to allow Pratchett to give an author’s synopsis at the beginning of each chapter (“In which our hero…” and so on). This harks back to an older style of writing, in keeping perhaps with his nostalgic championing of the Post Office and older ways of tradition.

–x–

(1)   which I probably haven’t

(2)   Stanley (of course) loses his interest in pins during the course of the book, to champion a new craze – for collecting stamps. Stamp collectors everywhere will appreciate Pratchett’s choice of name for this minor character.

Mortal Causes – Ian Rankin

A book read last year … the draft review had been languishing until  I  stumbled across it just now!

This is the 6th Inspector Rebus book, and probably the one I’ve enjoyed most to date. By this point in the series, Rankin seems to have developed his style well – the plot is tight, the sense of place (Edinburgh) is excellent and it all comes together neatly.

The story starts with a body found in bizarre circumstances – apparently tortured and left in an underground passage. According to the authors own notes, the idea for this came directly from a visit to this particular location. Its interesting to also read Rankin’s claim that he has to have the book’s title before he can start. In this case, “mortal” is a deliberate pun, following one of Scotland’s many slang expressions for being drunk.

The plot twists together several strands. Much is linked to terrorism – drawing on Scotland’s links to Northern Ireland and imagining a protestant splinter group  threatening the Edinburgh fringe. Also drawn in is the criminal underworld, with a reappearance of Cafferty, the murderous villain of the last book. And much the action set against repeated visits to a youth centre in one of Edinburgh’s toughest and most deprived housing estates. In case this isn’t grim enough, there is also evidence of police corruption, whilst the flawed hero is unfaithful to his partner and not a particularly sympathetic character.

“Year of Wonders” – Geraldine Brooks

The second of three books read over the Christmas period; this one was a gift, courtesy of my book club’s “Secret Santa”.

It is a book that otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have picked up, by an author I hadn’t heard of. This reflects more on my ignorance than anything else, especially given the local interest of the story, which is based on real events in the village of Eyam during an outbreak of the Plague in 1666. At this time, the bubonic plague was a much-feared killer with no cure and no understanding of how it was spread. The only preventative measure was to run from its arrival, and those with money and ability to do so, often did exactly that.

Eyam, however, is known as the village that chose to isolate itself from the outside world when the Plague arrived. The villagers were persuaded to hold fast by their rector, going into quarantine to avoid spreading the disease further.

The Year of Wonders mixes fact with fiction to tell the story of this isolation. It is told from the viewpoint of Anna Frith – a fictional character, who starts the book as a young mother and widow of a lead miner. She helps to keep the house of the rector and his wife and becomes a key figure in helping to care for those who fall sick of the plague as it spreads through the village. This gives us first hand descriptions of the illness and its terrible and unstoppable effects. Depressingly, most of the characters we meet are dead by the end of the book.

The descriptions of the plague and many other aspects of 17^th century life are well done and kept my interest. However, I found some of the interface between fact and fiction a little jarring – it felt sometimes as if the plot was being directed simply to get us from one historical point of interest to another. So we are given examples of herbalism and witchcraft, religious fanaticism in the shape of scourging, and even two inexperienced women successfully mining a considerable quantity of lead to avoid the loss of the mine. I enjoyed the detail behind each episode but was not convinced about the ways in which they were introduced to the narrative.

I also struggled to believe in the back-story around the relationship between the rector and his wife and the ending of the book, which sees Anna travelling to a completely new life in Algeria. The author’s end-notes do however give some rationale and justification for this travel, as well as some interesting notes both on the historical details behind the story, and on her inspiration for writing it.

Overall then, an interesting read, particularly for anyone with interests in Eyam itself. I understand that several of the features described in the book can still be seen, and more is to be learned in the local museum.

“The Accidental” – Ali Smith

OK, New Year, New Resolution … not to let this blog thing slide away! I read three books over Christmas and this was one of them…

According to its cover, “The Accidental” won the Whitbread Novel Award in 2005 and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes.

The plot is simple and based on a rather unbelievable construct. The Smart family (ironically named, I feel) is on an extended holiday. One day, a stranger called Amber turns up, claiming that her car has broken down. Due to misunderstandings (each of the adult Smarts assumes that Amber is here to see the other) and Amber’s reluctance to clear them up, Amber stays with the family for a period of time, during which time she indirectly causes great change in each family member.

Each of the Smarts is self-absorbed and each is hiding some secret or inner anguish. The youngest is the daughter Astrid. At the start of the book, she is obsessed about cleanliness and filming her surroundings – especially trying to capture the exact moment when night turns to day. She is hiding the loss of her mobile phone to school bullies but more fundamentally, has also been hurt by the loss of her biological father.

Astrid’s brother, Magnus, is a troubled teen. He made a serious mistake in using his expertise with photo software to help what was effectively cyber-bullying, leading to the death of a girl at his school.

Michael Smart is the children’s step father, and a cliché of a college lecturer who seems to consider it his right to sleep with many of his students. Amber rejects Michael but seduces Magnus, arranging regular meetings for sex in the attic or the local church.

The mother, Eve, is a writer of historical fiction. She spends much of the holiday shut into the garden office, apparently working on the next book but in reality suffering from a writers block and questioning her worth and ability.

Amber makes everyone look at things differently. Astrid becomes much more self confident and challenging, whilst Magnus begins to open up and to tell others of his inner demons. Michael meets the inevitable as he is suspended from college, yet even this seems to offer a positive new start. He is forced to take more responsibility for his family as Eve has abandoned her book to travel to America and to seek out her own buried past. As the book closes, Eve’s experience echoes Amber’s own appearance at the beginning, as Eve is herself mistaken and taken in by a strange family.

As to Amber herself, we are given much less information. She describes the dramatic circumstances of her own conception and explains her need for rootlessness on a tragic accident within her past. However, much is mystery and she clearly wants to keep it that way, taking care to destroy Astrid’s camera before it can record her own existence. We never really know of Amber’s motives – is she a healer, chance, chaos or just out for her own ends?

This is a fascinating book that gains extra interest by being told in sections by each of the main characters and in their own voices. Ultimately, the plot device that places Amber within the Smarts is of less importance than the complexities behind the characters and the ways in which they view their worlds.

Much enjoyed!

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest – Ken Kesey

What a great book – and what a terrific reading!In short, it’s a book about a group of men on one ward of a mental hospital. Here, a cruelly controlling regime is challenged when a new patient – a loud, wild, uncontrollable individual called Randle Patrick McMurphy – is admitted and starts upsetting the status quo.

I hadn’t previously read this book, though I had seen the film adaptation several years ago. I could only remember two things about the film, one being that Jack Nicholson played the lead role and the other being that there is a major surprise, when the supposedly deaf and mute Chief Bromden (a native Indian) suddenly speaks out loud.

In the book, it is Chief Bromden who acts as narrator, so we know from the outset that he is faking deafness in order to give him a less challenging time in the hospital. Everything we see and hear is interpreted by Bromden, which allows us an insight into his thoughts and feelings. This also adds a layer of interest as we are also forced to wonder just how reliable his interpretation is.

A major theme of the book is about how sane or insane the patients may be. Most seem to be in the hospital for the weakest of reasons. One character has a chronic stutter, one seems effiminate, others are epileptic. Most seem to be insecure and lacking in confidence, often apparently due to their relationships with their mothers or wives. Chief Bromden is able to describe everything he sees with clarity and perceptiveness, so it is difficult to think of him as less than sane. Yet it seems he also suffers from delusions or paranoia – he is convinced that the nurses have electric devices in all the walls, that they can control a “fog” that reduces patients ability to see clearly and describes everything as stacked up against him by “the combine”.

Exciting episodes of rebellion and reprisal are interspersed with more lyrical and dreamlike thoughts and dreams about Bromden’s past. We are never clear how he ended up in the hospital, although there are possible insights from his stories of how his tribe was deprived of his land and hints about his war service.

The character of McMurphy is complex and fascinating. On one level, he is loud and brash and it is clear that he is looking out for himself. He has managed to get transferred to the hospital to get out of a more onerous prison sentence. Now he is keen to follow his main interest of making money by gambling. Yet he clearly also develops strong sympathies for the other inmates and takes huge risks in order to help them – the price of rebelling can be treatments including electro shock therapy and even lobotomy.

There are a couple of elements that may feel uncomfortable. One is the racist language that is used about the black orderlies. However, in this hospital they are the ones who wield power and act as oppressors – the language does not in this context as offensive.

Similarly, the author’s treatment of women may be questioned. Female characters are divided between: nurses (all but one are weak or tyrannical), mothers and wives (potential causes of the mental illnesses), and prostitutes (fun lovin’ gals). I guess that as the plot revolves around a mens’ ward, there may be a logic in this, but it would be interesting to know if the author gives women any more sympathetic treatment in other books.

Overall, I’d say this is a stunning book. Great story telling, fascinating characters and layers of interest. I listened to the audio version, which is read by Peter Marinker. According to the credits, he’s a stage actor who has also appeared in films including Judge Dredd. But don’t hold that against him (!) as his reading here is excellent – the slow drawl seems to suit the book really well.

Published by Chivers Audio Books, copyright BBC audiobooks.

Playing time 11 hours, 18 minutes.

Available at Belper Library on cassette.

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I’d say this rates as one of the ”classics” of science fiction. The book takes a simple idea about where society could go, chucks in a reluctant hero who can’t quite understand why things are as they are, then follows it through to a logically satisfying ending. And on the way, we see other little facets of this future society which make us think “hmm, not too dissimilar from what’s going on now then”. Its also a relatively short book, weighing in at around 150 pages. So no unecessary padding or drawing out of the story.

The book reveals a future where the state has ruled that all books are dangerous, given that the vast range and diversity of authors throughout the ages has resulted in many confusingly different and contradictory messages about the world. Much better than reading books is that everyone gains a mind-numbing happiness by watching giant, immersive and interactive televisions, ideally covering all four walls of your viewing room. Or by listening to “shells” – audio plugs that fit into the ears and which burble away continuously into the subconscious.

In a world where books are outlawed, the roles of firemen (yes, they do all all seem to be men in the book) are reversed. All dwellings have been fireproofed, so there is no longer a need to combat accidental fire. Instead, firemen are employed by the state to burn any books that may be harboured by dissident citizens.  This gives the title of the book: according to the frontispiece, paper will burn at 451 degrees fahrenheit.

Our hero is Montag, who is employed as a fireman and starts the book acknowledging the excitement of his job. Then he meets a young woman who behaves strangely – she enjoys to walk and to look at the night sky rather than to be confined to her home, her family prefers conversation over the all-embracing television. Montag also attends a job where, shockingly, a householder refuses to leave her books and so is burned along with the house. Montags convictions are shaken, yet he too has been harbouring a secret. I won’t give away too much more, except to say that Montag is not a fireman at the end of the book, and there is a lot of action before the final resolution.

One other invention of the book that I enjoyed is the robotic “dog” used by the firemen. This is a machine that has been devised to track down dissidents using an infallible analysis of their scent molecules. The dog is a scary creation, able to travel quickly and silently before despatching its quarry with a hypodermic. And it will be tracking Montag before the book ends.

Written in 1951, this is a book that can still be enjoyed today. The only things jarring for me were trivial. Some of the names seem strangely old-fashioned (Montags wife is “Mildred”). And the description of the dog occasionally brought Doctor Who’s K9 to my mind – not the fault of the author, but it did somewhat lesson the dog’s air of menace for me!

A book that will be appropriate for anyone who loves books, so go get a copy!