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Maxine

The Specter of the Covington Fencibles ~ William Deen

Well, the old adage says that you can choose your friends but you can't choose your relations and I'm sure some families would like to bury the memories of some undesirables within their ranks.  But not so with William Deen, for deep within the Deen family tree roots there lies a very unlikable man and an abhorrent act, and now he's been revealed!

Living in Australia I'm not too knowledgeable about the Amerian Civil War, but I found that the opening imagery set the scene very well and the overall feel was like that creepy Clint Eastwood Civil War movie The Beguiled.

We follow Deen's ancestor from the Civil War into civilian life where times were tough and he was tough on his family, and the victim of the crime that he committed when fighting as part of the Covington Fencibles is waiting.......waiting.... and one can only imagine the weight of the guilt that the real life L B McGrew carried with him to have been so haunted on his death bed.

With one foot firmly planted in historical fact and the other tottering in the spectral realm I found this a nice tight creepy read before going to sleep.  I was was pleasantly surprised.

The Belly of Paris ~ Emile Zola

If a book can be written like an impressionist painting then this novel is it.  The plot itself is rather banal with its direction only becoming evident within the last few chapters, but it's the descriptions of the food in the markets that make the reading of this book so worth while.

The premise is simple—Florent, a wrongly convicted man, has escaped from Devil’s Island and returns to Paris.  The opening scene has him lying close to death in the road where he is rescued by a woman on her way to Les Halles markets with a cart-load of vegetables.

Florent re-unites with his brother who is a corpulent owner of a butcher shop, and married to the plump but ‘beautiful’ Lisa.  Welcomed with open arms, Florent soon finds his feet but is dissatisfied with how much Paris has changed and the greed and complacency of the well-to-do.  Rather than comparing the rich with the poor he looks at them as being the ‘fat’ and the ‘thin’.  Lisa and her husband are ‘fat’ and ‘plump’ whereas Florent himself is always described as being thin, skeletal or a ‘longshanks’ and his appearance give rise to some sort of fear, or alarm, to those around him.

Florent begins to spend his evenings with a group of equally dissatisfied friends, and between them they discuss the idea of a starting a revolution.  When the beautiful Lisa gets wind of this, she cannot stand to think that something could happen to change her comfortable way of life and, unbeknownst to her husband, plots to betray Florent to the authorities.

The story is totally centred around Les Halles markets and it’s various gossiping and bitchy stallholder’s and the butcher shop.  Zola truly ‘paints’ with wonderfully descriptive words the colours, sights and smells of all the food at the markets.  And, oh boy, I could certainly smell the fish market and it was quite disturbing to see how the food was stored and handled there without the knowledge of today’s food handling practices.

One morning as the light begins to illuminate the fish market Zola remarks:

“…… these precious colours, toned and softened by the waves—the iridescent flesh-tints of the shell-fish, the opal of the whiting, the pearly nacre of the mackerel, the ruddy gold of the mullets, the plated skins of the herrings, and the massive silver of the salmon.  It was as though the jewel-cases of some sea-nymph had been emptied there—a mass of fantastical, undreamt-of  ornaments, a streaming and heaping of necklaces, monstrous bracelets, gigantic brooches, barbaric gems and jewels, the use of which could not be divined.”

There are plenty of passages like this, one even describing the various tones and shades of the green vegetables.  It  certainly makes you look at your food in a different way. 

I can’t say I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, but I can say that I really appreciated the writing, and by the end of the novel I felt like a glutton myself for having been exposed to so much food. 

David Copperfield ~ Charles Dickens

David Copperfield has been on my ‘must read list’ for longer than I can remember.  I don’t know what took me so long to pick it up, but I’m so pleased that I finally did as it was truly a very enjoyable read.

I was expecting a tale of destitution and cruelty with life only coming good towards the end.  But it was not like that at all.  It was a linear tale of David’s life, told in remembrance by David  himself, commencing from the date of his birth when his Aunt Betsy Trotwood appears out of the blue to meet the new baby girl only to disappear just as quickly upon being told ‘it’s a boy!’  Betsy later redeems herself by taking care of the orphaned David and paying for his schooling and articling him to a proctor.

David’s early life is happy enough until one day he is asked if he would like to go on a little holiday with his beloved nurse-maid Peggoty.  When he returns he finds that his widowed mother has  re-married, and life will never the same again. Mr Murdstone and his steely sister cast a gloom over the once happy home with physical and mental abuse, and David is sent away to a questionable school where he becomes friends with two boys who will play very different roles in his later life. 

There is plenty of drama and   tragedy and not all of it relates to David, but to some of the many people he comes to know from all walks and class of life – with the class divide being a major theme throughout.

This novel was Charles Dickens’ favourite, being semi-autobiographical, and it contains some very memorable characters such as Mr Wilkins Micawber and Uriah Heep, and I think it could well become my favourite too.

Fight Club ~ Chuck Palahniuk

This is now my third Chuck Palahniuk novel and he is well on his way to becoming an author I’ll be looking out for in the new release lists.

The genre is Transgressional fiction and though the subject matter he chooses could be distasteful it is not, and neither are the characters.  They are quirky and funny.

It’s hard to write about Fight Club without giving the plot away so if you think you might read this novel, and haven’t seen the movie, then just a warning that the rest of this review contains a plot spoiler.

The novel is narrated by a sleep deprived protagonist, telling the story about his troublesome friend Tyler Durden.  It is only as the plot progresses that it is revealed that Tyler is actually our protagonist's split personality who, when our protagonist is asleep, is running around America setting up ‘Fight Clubs’ and organizing ‘Project Mayhem’. 

Mayhem is what ensues in our Tyler’s life when he tries to stop what his other self has started.

Palahnuik crams so much of the story into each paragraph, starting at different points in time and weaving it backwards and forwards.  It keeps you reading at full pelt. I loved it!

Ben-Hur ~ Lew Wallace

Ben-Hur is a Biblical tale of betrayal and revenge set during the time of The Christ. 

Judah Ben-Hur is a wealthy Jewish Prince who is betrayed by his childhood friend, the Roman Messala, and during the course of the narrative Ben-Hur’s path runs parallel, and crosses, with that of Jesus Christ.

I found this novel to be a bit dated and over descriptive but hugely enjoyable.  Wallace suggests the foundation for the birth of modern Christianity and rather than being preachy he has just told a damn good story.

Some of the elements are a bit hard to swallow, such as the literal translation of the Christ's miracles and I only wish I could have got the image of Charlton Heston from my mind as Wallace’s Ben-Hur is way more gorgeous.

The only disappointment for me was  after the build up to the Circus, and the huge description of the stadium, the race itself fell flat.  It could have done with an injection of excitement of the kind written by Matt Reilly.

Ben Hur, however, is quite an achievement for the era that it was written in and well worth the read.

Keep it In Yor Knickers ~ J R Sanders

This was a light and surprisingly enjoyable read about the on/off relationship between 'Judi' and 'George' that spans across the continents.  It was ‘racey’ without being pornographic and I think that there are a lot of women out there who will be able to identify with an erratic roller coaster relationship though perhaps not on this Transatlantic/Pacific level, but may it be a lesson to us all as it smacks of desperation!

Based on actual events Ms Sanders said that the story was embellished a little to make it more exciting so I really hope that she didn’t give ‘George’ all those chances.  Actually I felt that she was a bit of a stalker, not letting go, sending emails trying to keep in touch and asking heartfelt questions after each break up.  It’s easy for someone to send a reply and tell you what you want to hear in an email – he could have been in bed with someone else whilst he was sending it!  I think it would be very interesting to have this story told from ‘George’s’ point of view!!

In some parts it comes across as very naive – I think I must be a bit of a cynic when it comes to men but truly they do love differently from women.  Women invest their heart and soul into a relationship but men (in my experience J) just want food and sex.  I think the amazing Tim Minchin sums up a man's point of view perfectly………….“If I didn't have you, someone else would do”!  Tongue in cheek?  They do say many a  truth is told in jest.

There is plenty of humour throughout however, though I think the story would have benefited from a bit more depth with regards to the travel locations (they interested me much more than the sex) and I think an editor would have been worth the effort (Ms Sanders said she didn’t use one) as apart from some grammar and punctuation errors they would have picked up on the heinous spelling of Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sahn’.

I was reading Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks in tandem, which could not have been further from the other end of the scale as far as sexual liberation for women is concerned and I found that I was picking up Knickers more often to read than Desire.  So, in summary, Keep it in Yor Knickers is certainly a roller coaster ride of sex, love (?), heartbreak, a lot of travel and a warning of what not to do when trying desperately to hold onto something that is not really there.  Be broadminded or you might be shocked with the opening chapter; it’s a fun read with plenty of aspects within it that one can identify with. However, if I do find myself free and single in my 50s, this story will inspire me to do things much more gracefully than our fifty and fabulous 'Judi'!

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf ~ Victor Pelevin

Never judge a book by its cover – or its title!  When I saw this on the Guardian’s 1000 Books on Twitter I just had to get it from the library.  Whilst it was entertaining, a lot of it also went over my head.  Perhaps if I read more philosophy and Russian literature/history I would have appreciated it a bit more.

On the surface it’s a love story between a were-fox and a were-wolf, it’s very unusual and in places quite funny, but it’s not a horror novel which I was expecting and it’s not a light read.  Actually in places I felt like I was reading The End of Mr Y (although I found that novel to be much more pretentious than this one).

It is a departure from the other Russian novelists I have tried; but as far as being on a must read list – well, you’d have to judge for yourself.  

Martin Chuzzlewit ~ Charles Dickens

It is always a satisfying feeling finishing a Charles Dickens novel and Martin Chuzzlewit was no exception. 

Initially I found it difficult to get started on it as names such as ‘Pecksniff’ really put me off.  I also found the United States saga boring and unnecessary for the plot, although it was illuminating and it’s no wonder the Americans were ‘up in arms’ about it when it was first published.  I believe Dickens spoke the truth but they just could not see it.  Thank goodness things have progressed since then.

The plot is centralised around a common theme, that being of selfishness.  Most of the characters are tainted with this trait, with some coming good and others coming to a nasty end!

Pecknsiff, who I had the most trouble with at first, was a wonderfully horrible character.  He believes himself to be good and true to the extent that this belief rubs off on others who know him well.  Those who briefly meet the hypocrite can see him for what he is, and through the course of the novel his beloved daughters see this too.  What a disappointment he becomes for them.

Jonas Chuzzlewit was the character I loved to hate.  He was horrible from start to finish, and I would have liked this character to have suffered more at the end.  The diabolical act that he commits was well enacted by Dickens, and quite chilling.  The fear of discovery that he goes through brought to mind Dostoyevsky’s characterisation of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read but, as with most Dickens novels, there were some ridiculous characters and the ever present 'benevolent gentleman'. But, I am surprised that this is one of his least popular novels as there are a few unforgettable characters contained within the many pages. I guess I found the ending a little trite and too good to be true, but perhaps in Victorian England a happy ending was good for the soul. 

Water for Elephants ~ Sara Gruen

Set during the Great Depression,  Water for Elephants  gives you an insight into how      desperate men will do anything to remain in work even if it is with the unscrupulous Uncle Al,  the owner of The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

This is also a love story, and the love interest is in the form of the talented Marlena whom Jacob, our narrator, is very attracted to.  Marlena is married to August the head animal trainer.  August is a paranoid schizophrenic and a very unlikable character indeed. 

The novel is told by Jacob in the present remembering his life in the past, he is 90 or 93 - he's not too sure - and lives in a nursing home.  When a circus comes to town it triggers his memories.

Not generally a fan of love stories, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed this novel.

PS Rosie is a legend J

The Wasp Factory ~ Iain Banks

The teenage narrator of the Wasp Factory reminded me of Tom Ripley from The         Talented Mr Ripley - Frank Cauldhame is a psychopath or a sadist but you  get to like him like you do Tom Ripley.

I liked the way the novel unraveled the events from the past which shaped Frank's present, and the revelation that even Frank is not what he seems. 

It is very well written, but it is also very violent and graphic and it would probably be wise not to read it if you are an animal lover.  I had to keep telling myself - it's only a story, it's only a story..........

World War Z ~ Max Brooks

I was about a quarter of the way through this novel when I realised that there were was more to it than initially met the eye, so I went back to the beginning and paid more attention to what I was reading.

Told in a ‘documentary’ format, this could have been any war in history that was being discussed and dissected.  Told by various survivors it covers the initial source of the zombie infection, the inability of governments to act on the intelligence given and the how the aftermath of the plague was being handled ten years later.

The enemy in all wars is given a nickname ie Jerry for the Germans and in this case the zombie is known as Zack by the defending forces.  The dialogue used by the military interviewees really made this story feel believable!

Overall, I thought it was an intelligent well thought out novel, and definitely a stand out in this genre. 

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Lightkeeper's Wife ~ Karen Viggers

If you are feeling a bit 'down', don't read this novel.  It is as grey and morose as the Tasmanian weather where it is set.

The book blurb states that "The Lightkeeper's Wife is a moving story of love, loss and family."  Well, it's a theme that has been done to death, and a lot better too.  For a start it's more about the Lightkeeper's son, not the wife, and there Viggers is totally unable to write a sympathetic New Age male character without him coming across as pathetic and feminine.

I was completely bored with this novel and frustrated with it's whining monotone.

Howard's End ~ E M Forster

This story is mainly about the division of the British classes at the turn of the century.  It took a while for me to get into the story, I felt at the beginning there was a lot of unnecessary back story to build up the plot, and although the tragic Leonard Bast was a main part of the plot I found his character to be the least well developed.

As well as focusing on the division between the social classes in 1910, it also looks at the generation gap which probably became more apparent with the advent of the motor car.  The younger generation would take to this over walking or taking a carriage. 

When a motor car runs over a cat Margaret, the main protagonist, makes an interesting observation that in their class the women hide behind their men and the men hide behind their servants for it is easier for them to send one of the servants with some cash to pacify the owner of the cat.

I did enjoy this novel but it just didn’t quite have the charm I was expecting.

Plague ~ Albert Camus

I had really been looking forward to reading this novel as I’d heard great things about other Camus works.  Whilst this was a good read, I didn’t feel that it was a great read, maybe I am missing something?  I was of the understanding that the narrative was in the same vein as Kafka, but I’ve read Kafka and I didn’t think this was the case.

The novel centres on Oran, a town in Algiers in the 1940s, and is a fictional account of a plague epidemic that strikes the population and results in the town being quarantined.  I liked the way that Camus built up the tension with the discovery of the dead rats, and the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.  As the plague sweeps through the population the town is isolated and then we follow the emotions of a group of men as they deal with separation from their loved ones, the desire to escape the town and their duty to help the afflicted. The graphic description of the final hours of a young boy will stay with me for a long time.  It was sheer suffering.

Diary ~ Chuck Palahniuk

A dark satire about an island legend that is re-enacted every third generation.  It's a story about re-incarnation, torture and ritual sacrifice, and it really should be my cup of tea but I didn't like the way it was written.  The  novel is a 'coma diary', but it just doesn't read like a diary.  There is another diary is the story which is owned by the  protagonist's (Misty Wilmot) mother-in-law who claims to know what Misty is thinking or how she is feeling because it is 'in the diary'.  The reason for this becomes apparent towards the end of the novel. 

As in Choke, there was a repeated phrase throughout.  This one being 'Just for the record' or 'Just for the record the weather today is.......' with the weather being Misty's current mood.  It was quite a claustrophobic novel, and the vibe was very much The Stepford Wives.  

I think that if I had read the actual book instead of listening to it I may have enjoyed it more than I did as the narrator, Martha Plimpton, had a rather dull bland voice.

Kafka on the Shore ~ Haruki Murakami

This was a wonderful read, and I can thoroughly recommend it.  There was not one character in the novel that I didn’t like. 

The parallel stories of Kafka and Mr Nagata are, whilst riveting, totally different from one another. Fifteen year old Kafka’s father tells him that he (Kafka) would murder him, and ‘be’ with his mother and sister (who had both left when he was just a small boy), this is the same as the Oedipus curse in the Greek legend.  Kafka does not want to fulfill this prophecy and so he runs away from home, but it all plays out against his will anyway. 

  

Mr Nagata’s storyline is just wonderful.  He can talk to cats and his quest is so mysterious that even he doesn’t really know what it is until he’s in the right spot or the right thing happens.  Along the way he becomes friends with Hishino, a young truck driver, and due to Nagata’s resemblance to Hoshino’s grandfather he decides to help him. There is a lot of subtle humour between these two characters which really brings a smile to your face.  Hoshino is a really nice laid back young man, and Mr Nagata has quite a profound life changing effect on him.

The story shifts between the two characters, with Mr Nagata's being the more complex as there is the added mystery of what happened to him as a child.  Kafka's storyline is beautifully written, it’s mystical and poetic and I loved the way the narration occasionally shifted perspective.

This will probably be the read of the year for me, alongside A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Dance, Dance, Dance ~ Haruki Murakami

I was disappointed with this novel after reading Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  It felt like Murakami was regurgitating the same theme of abandonment with what felt like recycled characters, however Dance, Dance, Dance was written before these novels.

Basically the protagonist is in search of a girl he used to live with who seems to be sending him psychic messages which draw him to the old Dolphin Hotel.  The old hotel is no longer there, but a new hotel has been built in it’s place and bears the same name.  It is however the gateway to an alternate reality where there are six skeletons and as the novel progresses we find out who each skeleton belongs to, as death seems to follow the protagonist very closely.

This is as surreal as Murakami's other novels, and whilst he apparently enjoyed writing this one the most, it isn’t as beautiful or poetic as Kafka on the Shore, and mostly I felt bored with it.

A Prayer for Owen Meany ~ John Irving

This has been my first John Irving novel and it has far surpassed my expectations.

It is a story that is narrated with much love for Owen Meany, but it is also bound in a scathing attack on US politics and the Vietnam War.

The narration follows two time lines, that of the narrator and his childhood friend Owen and that of the narrator's life after Owen's death.  The scenes from their childhood are wonderfully written, and very touching, with Irving capturing the essence of childhood perfectly.

Oskar Matzerath

Owen is an unusual character and was created in tribute to Gunter Grass' Oskar Matzerath (The Tin Drum) and although there are similarities, this story stands alone and I found that I enjoyed it much more than The Tin Drum.

Owen believes that he is the instrument of God and the last few chapters read like a book of 'revelations'; and the way the story all comes together in the end really has a touch of brilliance.

The characterisations are wonderful throughout (although the narrator is a trifle boring), and I found it a truly  enjoyable read to the end.  A must read, put it on your list now!

Something Wicked This Way Comes ~ Ray Bradbury

Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are more like brothers than best friends, born just one day apart they live next door to each other in a small American town.  The novels opens with the promise of fun that only a child can see as Autumn begins, but a dark cloud is about to hover over them as an ancient carnival pulls into town.  The boys realise that something is very wrong with the carnival when they see one of its operators Mr Cooger ride the carousel backwards and so watch him grow younger and younger until he is a small boy.

Mr Dark, the illustrated man, seduces adults with promises of youth and his body is covered with the images of those he has lured.  What the adults don't realise is that to be young again will mean giving up all their friends, and finding themselves alone so frightens them when they have become a child that they beg to go back on the carousel.  They are promised that they will be given back their lives but first they must travel as freaks within the carnival.

One such freak is the blind Dustwitch - one night Mr Dark sends her out in a monstrous balloon to find the boys.  The sound of the balloon billowing in the wind and the blind freak holding out her hands to sense the boys is very creepy. They know the secret of the carnival and Mr Dark needs to silence them.......................  make no mistake, this is not a childrens book.  It is brilliantly told from a child's perspective, and I love how Will's opinion of his father grows.  He initially sees him as an old janitor at the library, but as the novel progresses Will realises that he seems taller and stronger - dependable and more importantly, he believes.  

Northanger Abbey ~ Jane Austen

As with all the Jane Austen novels I have read the main theme is about getting married, and marrying well. But the joy of her novels is in the dialogue and her observations of genteel life. 

Catherine Morland is a young girl heavily into reading gothic novels.  Unfortunately this increases her already vivid imagination and when she is invited to spend some time at Northanger Abbey she is thrilled.  Living in a modern day abbey is not as chilling as in the gothic novels, but the father of her love interest would make an excellent character in one of them.  Whilst not as sinister to murder his wife as Catherine supposes he has, he is a very disagreeable man, and Catherine inadvertently falls foul of him.  

There are some wonderful characterizations in this novel, one being the selfish Isabella Thorpe.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Psycho ~ Robert Bloch

This is not the graphic horror that I was expecting, and it’s not particularly long, and because the story is so well known the revelations did not surprise, but I can expect it would have been an excellent read when first published in 1959.

Bloch does an excellent job of building the character of the self loathing Norman Bates.  There are three fractured characters, Norman the man who runs the Bates Motel, Norman the child who needs his mother, and then there’s Mother herself.  Mother is insanely jealous and when Norman shows an interest in a young lady who’s traveling alone it only spells danger.  The problem is the young woman is on the run with an investigator after her and it doesn’t take long to track her movements down to the Bates Motel. 

The famous shower scene is very disappointing— Mary is in the shower and when she sees the butcher's knife Bloch says it “was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head." Not a great deal of drama and horror there is there?!

What I liked about this novel was the question  it asked—how well do we know somebody?  And even—how well do we know ourselves?

Not a bad read at all but it shows what a great job Hitchcock did with the movie.

Disgrace ~ J M Coetzee

I only wish that this novel was longer than the 215 pages that it is.

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, it is a very human look at how quickly one can fall from grace and the effects of the anger that has continued from apartheid.

Lucy, the protagonists daughter who lives away from the city, understands the ways of the blacks and how it is she who must fit in with them, but even this does not spare her from the terrible assault on herself and her father David Lurie.  After David's resignation  from his University position (due to an indiscretion with a student) he stays with Lucy to escape the fall-out.  There he spends his time helping on her small farm and assisting in an animal clinic, but the vicious assault changes everything.

David does not understand his daughter's attitude towards what has happened to them, the local blacks and even herself, but he is from another generation.  However, towards the end of the novel he finds himself willing to try before he loses everything important in his life.

I think you would have had to experience life under apartheid and it's fallout to fully understand the range of emotions portrayed in his novel, but Coetzee writes it very simply and very well. I found it hard to put down.

Earth Abides - George R Stewart

Why I had not heard of this author prior to reading this novel amazes me.  When I googled it and checked out the forums it seems a lot of people did it at school in their English Literature Classes.  Why could I have not gone to one of those schools!  I had to do Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare!!

The godfather of the modern disaster movie, George R Stewart is famous for his novels such as Fire and Flood where the disaster is the central character.  However with Earth Abides, written in 1949, he has written an enduring post apocolyptic tale of survival and hope for mankind.

The inspiration for Stephen King’s The Stand I could see many parallels but rather than a supernatural tale what we have here is a matter of fact chronicle of what will happen when man loses his footprint on the Earth. The central character Isherwood Williams is a post graduate Geography student, recovering from a snake bite he obtained whilst taking a break in the mountains, when a plague decimates most of the world’s population. 

The novel spans through Ish’s lifetime as he comes to terms with the loss of his family, civilization and learning.  As nature recovers from Man’s dominance, those that are left find that rather than trying to reclaim civilization they slip back to a simple laid back existence, scavenging from the supermarkets and clothes stores. Relationships are formed and children are born and Ish becomes more of a tribal leader, much revered due to his learning but also a figure of awe who is rarely seen without the hammer that he had found in the mountains (and which becomes a symbol of superstition for the younger members of the tribe).

The University Library is taboo, and Ish’s last link to his life as a student, but as he grows older he realises that studious learning is no longer important. Practical knowledge of  how to hunt without bullets and how to make fire without matches are the only way to survival as the last links of civilization rust away or are burned to the ground.  Ish was lucky in a way that he still had his books, as you have to wonder with the advent of electronic resources and with book stores now closing their doors what would there be left if such a plague took place is our distant future?

Jake: Thank you so much for recommending this novel to me, I enjoyed every word.

Frantic ~ Katherine Howell

Are there things worse than death?  Well Katherine Howell has shown us that perhaps there are.  The plot is a fast paced race against time to find the kidnapped son of a paramedic.  

Having been called out to a birth that went horribly wrong, she believes that the patients husband has taken her son in retribution.  But, there are more elements to this story which Sophie will learn to her peril, and which keeps the reader guessing until the end.

The writing style is simple, with no wasted words or waffle.  The settings and characters are realistic, but I did think that Howell was merciless towards one character and although Sophie's extreme actions show just how far a mother will go to protect her child let's hope in the real world someone with Sophie's training would not really take matters into their own hands in opposition to the police investigation. 

This is a quick read, but if you enjoy the medical-crime genre you will be impressed with this debut novel from a home grown author.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ~ Haruki Murakami

How do I begin to review a novel that is as bizarre as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?  Whatever I say won’t really do it justice; it truly is a strange collection of stories in the form of a novel.

The premise itself is simple, Toru Okada’s cat has gone missing and then his wife Komiko leaves him under mysterious circumstances.  In the search for his cat he meets the weirdly wonderful fifteen year old May Kasahara and the psychic sisters Malta and Creta Kano.  In the search for his wife he meets the equally strange Nutmeg Akasaka and her mute son Cinnamon.  All but May are using pseudonyms.

Toru also becomes acquainted with an old soldier called Lieutenant Mamiya, who tells him war stories from World War II.  These stories are very disturbing, and one of his experiences inspires Toru to utilise a dry well in the garden of an abandoned house to search for Komiko in an alternative reality.

It is the individual stories that each character has to tell that are so amazing in this novel.  Lieutenant Mamiya’s description of watching a man being skinned alive would work well as a stand alone piece in any unsettling fiction anthology, it truly gave me goose bumps.  Nutmeg has war stories to tell too, based on her father’s own war experiences and they link back to Lieutenant Mamiya’s.  She tells two stories of a massacre at a zoo – one involving the animals, and the other involving a group of Chinese men dressed in baseball outfits.

There are several connecting themes throughout Toru’s reality, his alternate reality and the various ‘short’ stories, and they are the dry well, a baseball bat and a blue/black mark that Toru finds on his face after spending a night in the well.  Each story has a dreamlike quality to it, they are strange, some are rambling but ultimately they are hypnotic, taking you away so that you feel you are there. Some stories are told to Toru by a character, whilst others are in letter form.

There is a kind of linear sequence to meeting each character but May Kasahara features throughout the novel.  She will rank as one of my all time favourite literary characters.  I would love to know who Murakami based her on, because she just had me laughing out loud.  She’s so dark, obsessed with death and suicide, but at the same time she is outrageously funny.  I did this novel as an audio book, and I think the narrator captured her brilliantly.  She is such a contrast to the boring Toru and when we came to each one of May’s scenes, I’d turn up the volume and just revelled in her eccentricities! 

If you enjoy the author Franz Kafka, or appreciate the work of David Lynch then you would really enjoy this.  If you like your novels to make sense then forget it!  You have to completely suspend your disbelief and just immerse yourself in the bizarre break from a mundane life that Toru experiences.  I for one cannot wait to read more of this fabulous author’s work.

So, with all this said and done you’ll probably want to know did the cat come back?  Well…….. you’ll have to read it and find out J

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Labels: 1001, Modern Lit

Middlemarch ~ George Eliot

Cover Illustration shows the
birthplace of George Eliot

It’s rare to read a novel where the characters are so richly imagined, and the progression in their lives so well documented.  Even the minor characters are fully embodied.

Set during a period of three years and ending just prior to the first reform Bill in 1832 we meet and grow to love the inhabitants of Middlemarch.  From the well to do Brookes' and the manufacturing Vincy’s to the working class Garth's.

This provincial town isn’t without its gossip, scandals and dogmatic principals and moving forward with the times can be a little difficult as the new age Dr Lydegate finds out to his peril when he moves to Middlemarch in 1829 (the year the novel opens).

The story is told mainly through the lives of Dorothea Brookes and Tertius Lydegate, and they both have a common story in that both have marriages that do not fulfil the ideal and both want to do so much more than they are able to.

This novel is also a political statement of the times, and it would be recommended to research a little on the political environment leading up to the Reform Bill.  However, I found the biggest message in Middlemarch was how important it is for someone to have something to do and a goal to reach for especially when it relates to the betterment of people other than yourself; I don’t think that Eliot would have had much respect for the idle rich. 

Don’t pick up this book if you are after a light read, but if you enjoy immersing yourself into a novel and enjoy full characterisations that grow and develop as one does in real life then I can fully recommend Middlemarch.

Violent Exposure ~ Katherine Howell

What starts out as an apparent domestic abuse case turns into something much much more.

Howell has crafted a pretty good mystery revolving around the paramedics who attend the initial domestic abuse case to the detectives who attend the subsequent murder.  The prime suspect, the victim’s husband, is not who he seems to be and the detectives find the leads take some unexpected turns.

I liked the snappy dialogue, and the banter between the work colleagues  The paramedic scenes were very realistic and obviously drawn from experience, but the story involving the suspect I found a little hard to believe. 

Having been bogged down with some heavy Classics lately, I found this was a quick enjoyable read.

This novel is Howell’s fourth and although it is good as a stand alone read, you would benefit from reading Frantic first.

The Celtic Dagger ~ Jill Paterson

An eminent University Professor is murdered with an antique Celtic Dagger and with the Professor’s brother James Wearing being prime suspect, the race is on to clear his name. The premise is intriguing but Jill Paterson has presented us with a murder mystery which unfortunately does not deliver. 

The plot itself is workable, but each plot pointer is only briefly touched upon, leaving the reader with no sense of anticipation or drama. The third person narrator is used like a bad director and even worse ‘he’ tells the story and ‘his’ delivery would make Ed Wood proud. Any story is better told via character dialogue, which in turn develops the character; you then get into the characters head and you begin to care about them. The narrator should just gently steer you into each scene. The characters in The Celtic Dagger are one dimensional, and I also had trouble with their names which caused me to recap several times to confirm who I was reading about. 

The narration and dialogue is very stilted and I have now developed an aversion to the phrase “At that moment” along with its variation “At that same moment”. I was starting to shriek every time it was used, which was just about every other page.

There were two scenes that could have contained heightened drama: The Cliff Scene and The Stairwell Scene. But, again they are brushed over with a few lines and then the narrator switches us over to a new scene. I have read short stories that have got my heart pounding and Jill Paterson could have done so much more here to create some excitement level; the lack of it really affected my reading experience.

The love interest concerning the Inspector could have been expounded towards the end, I thought it was a nice touch, although Wearing’s imminent romance was a little corny (but I’m not much of a romantic) and as the novel is set in Australia I would have liked to have had more back story to the locations involved. The characters travel around a bit and if you are not familiar with the area it is very hard to visualise.

In summary, the ideas are there, but the author’s writing skills definitely need some work.