2606 Books and counting..........

Literary Giveaway Blog Hop Winners....Could It Be You?

2012-02-23T16:49:00.001Z

OK…….the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop has finished so……….dim the lights, here we go, the Random Number Generator has voted and the winner of the 2606 Books and Counting Literary Giveaway 2012 is………………….

Stephanie Carmichael of Misprinted Pages

Stephanie graciously asked me to choose for her and so I have decided that she will be receiving a copy of The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse which will, online book stores permitting, be the rather lovely Everyman hardback edition. I don’t know whether Stephanie is a Wodehouse fan but I am rather happy at being able to spread the word on him.

I had also said I was going to give a mystery book-related gift to the author of the best comment but have instead decided simply to give that person their choice of book so that they’d be getting something they wanted. Anyway, the competition was stiff but, for making me chuckle aloud, the best (or, at least, most amusing) comment prize goes to…………………………..

Ellie of Musings of a Bookshop Girl

Ellie has requested a copy of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco in order to prevent her from degenerating into kleptomania and who am I to reject a plea from the heart.

Thank you to everyone who took part and left a comment and if you didn’t win anything here, I do hope you won something at one of the other participating blogs. Also, a big thank you to Judith at Leeswammes’ Blog for organising the whole shebang – I’m sure we are all looking forward to the next edition!

Literary Giveaway Blog Hop - come and get a book!

2012-02-18T17:11:00.002Z

Today marks the start of the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop, hosted by Judith at Leeswammes' Blog. With nearly sixty participating blogs, there are sure to be a veritable mountain of literary goodies out there up for grabs. The giveaway runs until the end of Wednesday, 22^nd February so please do stop by as many of the participating blogs as possible, enter the giveaways and check out the many wonderful book blogs of which I hope at least a few will be new to you. Assuming my computer skills are up to it (always a risky assumption to make), links to all the participants can be found at the bottom of this post.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can hear you saying – cut to the chase, what’s up for grabs? Well, being possessed of a butterfly mind and also being generally in favour of choice, I’m going to give you lucky people a selection of books from which to choose. Listed below are ten books that are currently sitting on my shelves in the basement of Falaise Towers. All you have to do is to leave me a comment saying which one you would like. If you can’t choose or enjoy surprises, just leave a comment to that effect and, if you are the lucky winner, I will make a selection for you. And, as a final enticement, the poster with the best comment (as decided by me, in my sole, despotic opinion) will win a mystery book-related gift. That’s all there is to it (although do feel free to follow the blog as well!). The winner of the book will be chosen at random and, although I'm happy to send anywhere, if you are a long way away from the UK, the book may take a while to get there!

The rules we’ve been given are pretty relaxed. The giveaway has to be book-related and if it’s a book, it has to have some literary merit. No romance, supernatural or urban fiction or YA. Non-fiction and poetry are also fine, as are standard contemporary fiction books and well-written mysteries or thrillers.

So, as you can see, it’s a pretty big universe from which to choose. I’ve not tried to be clever and theme the books in my list. Equally, I’m not claiming that these comprise my favourites or that they have any particular quality over and above the required literary merit, something which I believe can exist in non-fiction books. The only link between the books in my list is that each of them is about to catch my eye as I now take a break to go downstairs on this wet and grey London afternoon and make my choices – feel free to go and make a cup of tea, I shan’t be long.............

...................OK, I’m back, with a list at least twice as long as I had intended – spending time amongst bookshelves can be dangerous. So here are your choices, get commenting!

1. The Sword of Honour Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh. I really believe that this trilogy ranks as some of Waugh’s best work but it doesn’t seem to get the same attention as books like Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies or Scoop. It is the partially-autobiographical, blackly humorous yet touching story of Guy Crouchback, a middle-aged officer in the British Army during the Second World War. It’s probably my favourite Waugh.

2. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. It’s February 2012 and so it only seems fair to include a Dickens in this giveaway and Oliver Twist is quintessential Dickens and a incredibly vivid portrayal of the underside of Victorian London. It’s simply fabulous and Mrs F and I often used to pass Nancy’s steps in Southwark on our weekend walks on the South Bank when we lived in Bermondsey.

3. Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best by P.G. Wodehouse. Given my near religious devotion to Plum, it was pretty unlikely that I would be able to resist the temptation to include him in this giveaway. This is the complete collection of Blandings short stories. All the gang are here: Lord Emsworth, Gally, the Empress of Blandings and the rest of them. If Blandings isn’t your Wodehousian cup of tea, then I offer you as an alternative either a classic Jeeves and Wooster story – The Code of the Woosters – or, for the adventurous amongst you, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, featuring the incorrigible Earl of Ickenham.

4. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. I just love this one. The story of Phileas Fogg’s wager and race around the world pushes a lot of my hot buttons – travel, adventure, humour and Victorian clubland. Lovely and fun.

5. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. Another book about which I am quite evangelical and continuing the travel theme, Paul Theroux’s railway journey around the world is a true travel classic. If you’ve already read it, or would prefer a more contemporary account, you may instead choose Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, his recent revisiting of the journey.

6. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Probably his most famous novel, this medieval-set mystery with a heavy seasoning of Sherlock Holmes has oodles of secret codes, hidden manuscripts, grotesque characters and, in William of Baskerville, a memorable hero. It is completely and utterly satisfying.

7. Stamboul Train by Graham Greene. Stamboul Train is one of Greene’s earlier novels and, I think, is unfairly overlooked these days. It’s really a collection of loosely linked vignettes or short stories about a motley cast of characters who have gathered together on the old Orient Express which comes together to form a coherent narrative. Lots of political and social comment as well as elements of travelogue.

8. The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte. The protagonist, Lucas Corso, is a kind of literary detective, hired to authenticate a rare copy of The Three Musketeers and a 17^th Century manual for summoning the Devil. The more he investigates, however, the more the texts appear to be linked. Opinion in the blogosphere on this mystery set in the world of antiquarian booksellers and rare manuscripts is divided – some love it, some loathe it. I’m in the former camp.

9. The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata. On the surface, this is the fictional chronicle of a Go match between a revered champion and a younger challenger. Underneath, it is a treatment of the 20^th Century collision of values between Imperial Japan and the modern country. Kawabata was a Nobel prizewinner and it’s easy to see why. This book is both elegiac and suspenseful, almost peaceful in its style, whilsr dealing in deep emotions.

10. Documents Concerning Rubashov the Gambler by Carl-Johan Vallgren. So what would happen if one had immortality thrust upon oneself? Rubashov, a degenerate gambler finds out in this amazing picaresque novel, translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. It is New Year’s Eve, 1899 and Rubashov challenges the Devil to a game of poker. He loses, naturally but, instead of sending him to Hell, the Devil gives him immortality. The novel follows him through 20^th Century Europe and some of its best-known events.

So that’s your lot, I’m afraid. Tell me what you’d like and once you’ve done that, hop off and visit these other participants. Good luck!

2,502: Berlin Crossing by Kevin Brophy

2012-02-11T15:28:00.000Z

Berlin Crossing is a novel by Kevin Brophy, an Irish writer who spent time teaching in Germany in the period just after reunification and whose encounters with disenchanted Ossies were the inspiration for the novel. Most books that deal with East Germany and the fall of the Wall are written from the point of view of dissident East Germans or focus on the iniquities of the Communist regime and the evil of the Wall. The received orthodoxy is that the reunification of the two Germany's was a good thing for everyone other than members and informants of the Stasi.

Brophy approached the subject in from a different and refreshing perspective. His hero (or at least his focal point) is a teacher and former Party member from Brandenburg in the east. Michael Ritter's life before reunification had been successful and relatively privileged. Although not a member of the security or political apparatus, he was a fully paid up believer in the system and had been saddened at its collapse.

Reunification has not been good for Michael, something which might help explain the curious dislikeability of the character for much of the book. Dismissed from his job as an English teacher for being politically suspect (I.e. a former member of the Party), he also loses his mother shortly afterwards. Worse is to follow. His mother's dying words had been a request for him to find a pastor in another East German town, Bad Saarow, and the mention of Roland, a man whose name was not that of his father, who had died before Michael was born.

Having nothing better to do and piqued by curiosity, Michael makes the trip to Bad Saarow, which proves to be just the first step in a journey into the past both of Michael's family and East Germany itself. All of Michael's preconceptions are shattered as he is forced to confront the fact that his beloved country was not the place he thought it had been and Michael is not who he thought he was.

I was sent a review copy of this by its publisher, Transworld, with a publicity blurb that claimed that were echoes of le Carré. With due respect, and although the Cold War setting and the spy story plot device has a flavour of le Carré, I think this comparison is a little misleading. Le Carré's key themes are those of deception and its dehumanising effects and the manipulations of governments and their agencies. By contrast, Brophy's characters are, almost without exception, honest, even if wrong, and the deception that drives the plot is depicted as having been noble in its own way rather than the corrosive kind of lying that permeates the world of Smiley.

Berlin Crossing is a novel of love, sacrifice and of awakening. I keep wanting to describe it as redemptive in nature, due to Michael's realisation that he had been mistaken about the true nature of the East German state. This is not quite right though, as Michael has done nothing wrong himself and therefore does not have anything to be redeemed for, unless you count being on the losing side, or failing to celebrate the fall of the Wall, as a sin.

The structure of the book is interesting, incorporating a text within the text that acts as a device to flip from the central plot to the sub-plot that underpins the whole thing. It also allows for a shift in time from post-Wall to the height of the Cold War. As well as the clever plotting and structuring, the characterisation is strong and avoids falling into the trap of predictability or stereotyping. With one or two exceptions, the main characters show a mix of traits and motivations so they come across as believable and human. I particularly enjoyed the development of Terry Feldmann, brother of one of the central characters.

I would also say that Brophy's also creates a real sense of time and place, which is critical for a story that cuts back and forth across the late 20th Century and ranges across Europe.

Criticisms? Well, Brophy does have a bad habit of insisting on translating even the shortest German phrase he uses, which slows the story down and is a touch condescending. Frankly, most of them were comprehensible even to this non-German speaker and those that weren't didn't really add anything essential to the story.

Secondly, and more seriously, there is a certain credibility gap at one point in the story. A random Irish-German student is sent into East Berlin on a spy mission, despite having no training as a secret agent. Although I can understand the plot demanding this, it doesn't quite ring true. After all, the intelligence services couldn't really be that short of German speakers, could they?

These niggles notwithstanding, though, all in all, I found this an enjoyable , thought-provoking and evocative book which I would recommend, with the caveat that one should not approach it as a spy novel but as a piece of general fiction with some spy novel elements.

2,503: The Contract by David Levien

2012-01-29T16:17:00.000Z

The Contract (published in the US as 13 Million Dollar Pop) is, apparently, David Levien’s third novel featuring ex-cop and PI Frank Behr. Levien is a leading Hollywood screenwriter, with an impressive list of credits and nominations for Edgar, Hammett and Shamus awards for his writing so, when I was sent a copy for review by Transworld, I was happy to give it a try.

In this instalment, Behr is newly-employed at Caro, a prestigious Indianapolis investigation firm and is about to become a father again. Finding himself acting as a stand-in bodyguard for a wealthy local businessman, he ends up saving his client’s life from a hitman in an underground garage.

Despite being hailed as a hero at work, Frank is surprised when the police investigation appears to be given a very low priority, especially as his client has just been nominated to take over a Senate seat vacated by its incumbent. As this is a thriller, Frank ignores the wishes of his employer and heavy hints from the police and begins to investigate, ignoring his official case load.

What Frank doesn’t know is that the attempted assassination has been arranged by Waddy Dwyer, a sociopathic Welsh hitman and former special forces soldier. Dwyer will stop at nothing to clean up the mess and, in particular, collect more money from the man who asked for the hit to be made. The two are set on a collision course that will lead to an explosive climax, leaving corpses and broken dreams along the way.

The first thing to say about The Contract is that it pretty much does what it says on the tin. It’s a solid, workaday thriller, with some good set pieces and tense moments and a couple of satisfyingly nasty villains. Levien throws in a couple of interesting sub-plots and, to counterpoint Frank’s maverick and dangerous investigation, we get to follow his partner, Susan, her pregnancy and her desire for a more stable and normal life with Frank. Anyone who likes action thrillers can pick this off the shelves in the bookshop and know that they won’t be disappointed.

But that’s about where it ends. The flip side to The Contract being a solid, workaday thriller is, I’m afraid just that. There’s nothing that really lifts it out of the ordinary. I found it difficult to engage with Frank Behr as a conflicted hero, which is the way he is drawn, as he himself seemed a bit too unemotional. Maybe I’m missing something because I’m not familiar with the backstory and haven’t followed him through the first two books in the series but, although he appeared to be aware of the consequences of disobeying his boss and running up against the police investigation, he didn’t seem to feel any more than a fleeting hesitation in doing so. I just didn’t get the sense that he was all that torn. In fact, at times, he comes across as being a bit selfish in failing to take Susan’s needs into consideration. There is definite potential in the set-up but Levien doesn’t quite hit the mark. Suffice it to say that during the climax to the book, I actually wasn’t really bothered whether Frank lived or died, which is not a good way to feel about the hero.

The other issue I had with The Contract relates to the two villains, Waddy Dwyer and his sidekick Ricky Powell, an English former soldier. Although they are suitably scary and psychotic and, in that sense, decent bad guys for this kind of novel, Levien hasn’t quite got the hang of how British people speak or, indeed, the differences between how the English and Welsh speak. There are some awkward and clumsy efforts at dealing with this but the characters end up sounding like a mash-up of British and American speech patterns, mixed in with some references that feel like they’ve been grabbed from a hasty trawl through a thesaurus to create an impression of Britishness. For example, at one point, one of them makes a comment that another character is like a “National Peace Scout”, whereas anyone from the UK would refer to a “Boy Scout”. I appreciate that this is a minor quibble but it detracted from two otherwise decent characters.

Overall, though, this is a decent, but not an excellent, action thriller which would definitely help a thriller fan while away a few hours. I’m not sure, however, that it would tempt a non-fan into the genre and I can’t say that I will be rushing to buy any of David Levien’s other books.

2,504: Catch Me by Lisa Gardner

2012-01-21T12:17:00.001Z

I should probably preface this post by confessing that, had I not been kindly sent a review copy of Catch Me by Lisa Gardner by its publisher, Headline, I would not have bought or read this book. Although I read a lot of crime fiction, I tend to be rather picky in my selections – not in terms of quality, I hasten to add, but more in the kind of books in the genre that pique my interest – and police procedurals (even ones with a strong suspense element such as this) set in the modern day just don’t tend to jump off the shelf for me. Nevertheless, as part of the point of this blog is to encourage me to break out of my self-imposed reading habits, I decided to give it a go.

Catch Me follows two separate investigations by Boston Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren and her unit. The first involves a young woman, Charlene Grant, who was a victim of appalling abuse by her mother as a child, which has left her deeply damaged. On January 21^st in each of the previous two years, one of Charlene’s two closest childhood friends has been murdered in their own homes, with no signs of forced entry and no signs of a struggle. It is now 17^th January and Charlene approaches D.D. to explain that she believes that she only has four days left to live. In the interim, Charlene has trained herself to fight and to survive.

D.D. is intrigued by the young woman and begins to dig into her past, uncovering Charlene’s secrets. Soon it becomes apparent that Charlene may be more than a potential victim as she becomes the prime suspect in D.D’s second investigation, that of a series of murders of paedophiles in Boston.

Given that this isn’t my usual type of crime novel, I initially became even more doubtful as the book opened with a description of Charlene’s childhood abuse, followed immediately by the introduction of the paedophilia theme. I may well be a bit of a wuss but ever since the birth of mini-Falaise, I have found those kinds of theme upsetting in literature.

Slowly but surely, though, the story began to grip me until I was totally hooked and it turned into one of those books I both wanted to end so I could discover the identity of the murderer but also didn’t want to end as I was enjoying it so much.

Gardner’s great strength is her ability to create a sense of suspense and build it up through the book, using some clever twists and plot devices to keep the reader off balance and heighten the uncertainty. She also very cleverly dangled a number of plausible solutions before (and please excuse the mixed imagery here) pulling the rug from under the reader and supplying a wholly-unexpected, yet totally logical explanation.

I’d also highlight the sub-plot involving the Internet grooming of Jesse, the young son of a single mother, by a paedophile. Not only did it have me mentally screaming, “NO! Don’t do it!” on several occasions but it also had me seriously contemplating getting rid of every Internet-enabled item in the Falaise household to try and keep mini-Falaise completely wrapped up in cotton wool.

This is Gardner’s fourteenth novel, five of which feature D.D. Warren. Nevertheless, it never felt anything other than a complete, stand-alone novel even though there were scenes focusing on Warren’s personal life and new motherhood and the relationships between her and the members of the unit which were clearly the development of the character arc from earlier in the series.

Fans of this kind of combo procedural and suspense thriller will thoroughly enjoy this story and it was gripping enough to keep a more casual reader of this type of book engaged with it. From being just another name on the shelves of the crime section of the bookshop, Lisa Gardner is now someone definitely on my radar for further investigation.

2,505: The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi

2012-01-15T15:27:00.000Z

The battered body of a young, married woman lies dead at the foot of a cliff on the Greek holiday island of Thiminos. The corrupt local Chief of Police has taken a bribe to determine the death an accident and to sweep it under the carpet as quickly as possible. And there, matters might have rested save for the arrival on a ferry from the mainland of Hermes Diaktoros, Anne Zouroudi’s Greek Detective.

Hermes announces his intention to investigate the death of Irini, making vague comments about the authority under which he is acting. Soon he begins to strip away the veneer of the local populace and to discover a web of petty intrigues, infidelities and deceptions that pervades the island and has led to misery, family breakdown and, ultimately, murder. Using methods that are unconventional to say the least, Hermes imposes his own brand of justice, meting out punishment to those he holds responsible for Irini’s death, as well as the actual killer.

The Messenger of Athens is one of the most unusual crime novels I have read in recent years. Readers looking for a conventional
whodunit that follows the rules of detective fiction and challenges them to solve the puzzle may be disappointed. This is emphatically not one of those types of detective story. Instead, it inhabits a space somewhere in between crime writing and literary fiction. By interweaving two narrative threads, separated in time and by using multiple points of view, Zouroudi focuses as much, if not more, on the corrosive and misogynistic social beliefs of the islanders and the tough lives that they lead once the summer sun fades and the tourists go home, as she does on the process by which Hermes uncovers the murderer.

Hermes himself does not fit the profile of your typical fictional detective. Admittedly he has the requisite quirky habits (in Hermes’ case, this entails wearing white tennis shoes with an expensive suit, continually whiting out marks on said shoes and smoking old-fashioned cigarettes) but these didn’t really work for me. His character and motivation are kept deliberately vague and his near omniscience and unclear status makes him almost like a deus ex machina, which impression is only heightened by the unorthodox retribution he metes out to those he deems guilty. Unlike detectives like Poirot (of whom there are some faint echoes in Hermes), he sets himself out as judge, jury and executioner as well as investigator. Nevertheless, he is a sympathetic character who shows real kindness to those who have suffered and the lack of clarity around his character only makes me more curious and interested in him.

If I’m being perfectly honest, most of the other characters (with the honourable exceptions of Nikos, Sofia and Lukas) are as grubby a bunch of spiteful, bigoted and small-minded individuals as you could hope to find and, despite its extra-legal nature, Hermes’ justice seemed appropriate and highlighted the difference between legal and natural justice.

Zouroudi’s real strength, though, is in the sense of place and the atmosphere she creates. I was reminded of Little Infamies by Panos Karnezis, a wonderful collection of short stories about life in a Greek village, in the portrait Zouroudi draws of a fundamentally isolated and inward looking community and the perasive gossip and everyday deceit that permeates the island. Her pacing is leisurely, enabling her carefully to tease out the individual stories that make up the plot and slowly pulling us to its conclusion and I can’t help but think that there is some similarity between Zouroudi and Georges Simenon when it comes to creating atmosphere.

I suspect that if you come to The Messenger of Athens expecting a classic detective story, you may end up being disappointed but, if you look at it as a novel that happens to have a detective and a crime at its centre, it is excellent and well worth your time. I have already downloaded the sequel, The Taint of Midas, to my Kindle and I am looking forward to getting better acquainted with Hermes Diaktoros.

Top Ten Tuesday: Just Write Some More, Already!

2012-01-10T14:38:00.002Z

For my first Top Ten Tuesday of 2012, as brought to us by the Broke and the Bookish, I present to you a list of ten authors whom I wish would write another book. Some of them are just bone idle, some are just too damned good and can’t be blamed for failing to keep up with my insatiable appetite for their work and some have, quite selfishly, died. Which is a little problematic from the perspective of wanting them to pick up their pen again.

Anyway, without further ado, here is my list:

1. Charles Dickens. I suppose this is stretching the theme a little bit because I’m not overly fussed about him coming back to write a new book. What I’d really like is for him to come back and finish off The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Preferably with the murderer being a ninja-trained hit squad comprising Tiny Tim, the Artful Dodger and Pip. Or maybe a vampire Little Nell. No-one would see that one coming, would they?

2. J.K. Rowling. With due respect to all the great children’s authors out there, both past and present, Rowling’s sequence of novels featuring some chap called Harry Potter changed the face of children’s publishing and gave children of that time a magical (no pun intended) reading experience. Mini-Falaise, now three, has a few years to go before she gets to the right point but I would love her to get some of the excitement and even sense of community that the Harry Potter novels and films produced. I know there are other writers but why change a winning formula? So, Ms Rowling, please dust down the notebooks and get cracking. Mini-Falaise and her cohort are waiting.

3. Paul Theroux. To be fair to Mr Theroux, he does have a pretty regular output. Unfortunately for me, not all of his output concerns railway journeys and I need more.

4. P.G. Wodehouse. I want more Jeeves, I want more Blandings, I want more of the Oldest Member and Ukridge and Mr Mulliner and Psmith and I just want more. His world is the cozy, happy place I go to when times are tough and things go dark and I think we could all do with a little more Wodehousian sunshine in our troubled times.

5. Iain Pears. Another author who is still in regular production so maybe I shouldn’t berate him like this but he’s stopped writing his art theft detective stories featuring Jonathan Argyll and Flavia di Stefano and I want some more please.

6. Lawrence Sanders. He wrote only two books featuring Timothy Cone, a scruffy private investigator working for a corporate intelligence firm. I just love those stories and I wish he had done more with the character.

7. Bram Stoker. I’m not sure I actually do wish he had written more but I bet he’s looking down at Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer and the nameless host of authors of vampire stories and thinking, “Damn, wish I’d written those Dracula sequels after all.”

8. Sir John Mortimer. Creator of one of the immortal literary characters, Horace Rumpole, I was truly saddened when I read of his death. I have all of the Rumpole books and I would probably even sell a portion of my soul for there to be some more. Maybe there are a couple of stray manuscripts hiding out in his papers. I do hope so. The Old Bailey needs his humanity and wit.

9. Ian Fleming. However many authors add to the James Bond canon, none of them can hold a candle to Fleming. Wouldn’t it be great to have a couple more ‘original’ Bond novels. Especially if they had the kind of gambling scenes he wrote in Casino Royale and Moonraker.

10. J.R.R. Tolkien. Because we could all do with some more hobbits.

2,506: The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen

2012-01-09T15:42:00.000Z

The First Folio was the original “Complete Works of Shakespeare”. It was compiled by two of Shakespeare’s actor colleagues, John Hemminges and Henry Condell and includes all of the plays today recognised as belonging to Shakespeare other than Pericles, The Two Noble Kinsmen and the two “lost” plays, Cardenio and Love’s Labours Won. It is generally believed that approximately 750 copies were originally published and, although there is some argument as to whether the publication was a financial success or failure, the First Folio rapidly became a most sought after book.

Today, it has, of course, assumed iconic status as a direct line from the modern reader to the mind of Shakespeare and it remains the sole source of 18 of his plays, including the perennial favourites The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and, most dear to me, Macbeth. Many theatre people believe that the First Folio, with its particular formatting and structure provides the best guide to how Shakespeare intended the lines to be read. (For a great description of this, you should check out Ben Crystal’s Shakespeare on Toast).

Of the original 750 or so copies, 228 are known to still exist, according to the most recent census. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, has the highest number and the second largest collection resides in a specially constructed room at Meisei University in Tokyo.

Eric Rasmussen is a noted Shakespeare scholar and led the team that carried out the most recent First Folio census, following on from a census taken by Sir Sidney Lee in 1902, which identified 160 copies. This team went on an obsessive journey around the world, tracking down and examining every copy of the First Folio to which they could get access. The fruits of their labour can be found in The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue, which describes in detail the physical condition of each copy as well as details of any marginalia found therein.

As this volume is both dryly academic and would set the reader back around £225, it is likely that most people will find The Shakespeare Thefts more to their taste. This slim volume is a combination of anecdotes about the First Folio, memoir of the taking of the census and discursion on extreme book collecting.

Rasmussen’s hook is that, of the 160 copies of the First Folio identified by Lee, 14 of them have since gone missing, mostly through theft. Some of these thefts are discussed in the book, including Durham University’s copy, which turned up in the possession of a self-proclaimed millionaire who actually lived with his old mum in a North-East terraced cottage and an American copy stolen so that it wouldn’t end up in the hands of Hitler.

The slight snag, however, is that most of the book is about copies that weren’t actually stolen but just have interesting stories attached to them, such as the RSC’s copy that was accidentally purloined by the Pope or the Meisei copy that has a bullet hole in it or…I could go on but that would start to spoil it for you.

One of the most fascinating nuggets of First Folio lore recorded by Rasmussen is the fact that there are missing copies that were once owned by the Herbert brothers, the dedicatees of the First Folio and William Beeston, son of Christopher Beeston, a member for a while of Shakespeare’s acting company. As so many of the First Folios contain marginalia by their owners, who knows what may have been written into these copies. Notes on Shakespeare’s stage directions? Emphasis marks on the “To be or not to be” line in Hamlet? Although they may well have been lost forever, there is still the tantalising possibility that they lie, undiscovered, in an English attic, abiding their time.

The Shakespeare Thefts is a gossipy, light, easy read about the First Folio and bibliomania in general. That is both its strength and weakness. I would have liked more meat in it and less froth. Many of the stories are skipped through more rapidly than they deserve and there is almost an air of this being a set of magazine articles or notes for an as yet unfinished book about it. There is also a little too much unnatural levering in of stories about Rasmussen and his team which I felt distracted from the book as a whole (and that is no disrespect to the amazing work they have done). Nevertheless, the cast of reprobates, eccentrics, bibliomaniacs and historical figures who parade through this book make it an entertaining read for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare or book collecting.

2,507: Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño

2012-01-05T13:51:00.000Z

There are very few people who can claim to have lived twice. Indeed, only Jesus, Lazarus and, at least according to Fleming’s title, James Bond spring to mind. But in a literary sense, it would appear that Roberto Bolaño could be added to that list, having emerged into the consciousness of Anglophone readers only after his death in 2003.

Nazi Literature in the Americas was, in fact, one of his earlier works, although Chris Andrews’ wonderful translation appeared after the translations of several of his later and more well-known works. It is actually the first piece by Bolaño that I have read and I have a sneaky suspicion that I would have been better off attempting either The Savage Detectives or 2666 first so as to be able to set this in better context.

I’m not even sure whether it is correct or fair to describe Nazi Literature of the Americas as a novel as it consists of around 30 mini-biographies of fictional American literary figures, all of whom are linked by extreme right-wing beliefs. The book is structured as a mock-academic literary gazetteer, complete with a glossary of minor figures referred to in the text and a bibliography of the works of his fictional subjects.

On the surface, then, this all looks like a clever literary joke or game. The individual entries are written in a seemingly disinterested manner by a narrator with a dry, waspish sense of humour. The counterpointing of straightforward biographical narrative with almost throwaway comments about the bizarre and often repellent ideas or character traits of his subjects serves to highlight both their outlandish personal and political beliefs – “ [he] advocated, among other things, the re-establishment of the Inquisition; corporal punishment in public; a permanent war against the Chileans” – and some of the self-referential and pretentious views on writing and art that can be held by avant-garde or minor literary figures.

Bolaño is highly inventive in the characteristics he gives to his fictional writers. They vary from leaders of Buenos Aires football gangs to Chilean military pilots and junta killers and from a Haitian journalist who plagiarises French poets to a science fiction writer who was “the creator of the Gunther O’Connell saga, of the Fourth Reich saga, and of the saga of Gunther O’Connell and the Fourth Reich, in which the previous two sagas fuse into one.” They range from talentless individuals to figures of real genius and stretch over different geographies, times and social classes, linked only by a certain world view and an obsession with writing and, in particular, poetry. There is a pleasing whiff of the Daily Telegraph obituary column about it, with its collection of oddball characters and the sometimes euphemistic, sometimes gently mocking tone of the narrator.

If this were all there was to Nazi Literature in the Americas, however, it would be a joke dragged out too far, and one with an odd coda, as the last story – of Carlos Ramirez Hoffmann, a Chilean pilot and serial killer who becomes one of Pinochet’s death squad killers – has a very different tone and even a change of narrative point of view. Indeed, Alberto Mangel’s review in the Guardian dismisses it as such and he is generally scathing about the book and of much of Bolaño’s other work.

Bolaño, however, has other ideas. As well as teasing the Latin American literary world for its pretensions and self-importance, he also makes us address questions relating to the link between literature and political philosophy. Some of the characters he creates are actually likeable or sympathetic until we recall their views. Some of them are drawn as genuinely talented. Can we divorce our enjoyment of a writer’s work from his or her political views? Can we divide a writer’s character from their books?

Looking from the other side of the glass, he also brings to our attention the willingness of many authors to turn a blind eye to repression, to co-habit with it to avoid suppression or even to embrace it enthusiastically. And, make no mistake. Bolaño may use the Right as his vehicle but change “right” for “left” or “fascist” for “socialist” and the same would hold true. Their may be particular resonance for this viewpoint in the context of Latin America in the late 20^th Century but it is also a general point.

And Bolaño is not setting himself up as an occupant of the moral high ground here. There are plenty of instances in the book of empathy and even sympathy from the narrator for his subject. His creations persist with their lunatic theories and deranged books even when times have moved on and they are reduced to voices crying out in the wilderness. I think Bolaño can understand the lure of complicity and the compulsion to write in his characters.

I prefer this reading of the book to Mangel’s dismissal of it, although his critical function is considerably greater than mine! As I wrote above, however, this is my first Bolaño and it may be that I would view this differently if I were more familiar with him and his work.

One final point: there are numerous references to real literary personages and, in particular, Latin American figures. I’m pretty ignorant on this and so I would imagine that if you have a working knowledge of the Latin American literary scene, you may well get much more of Bolaño’s wit.

Clearing the Backlog for the New Year

2012-01-04T15:35:00.000Z

As alluded to in my post yesterday, I have a long list of books I read last year but never got round to reviewing. There are about fifteen or so that I feel I actually do want to post about in due course but there are a number where I could write something but have no great desire to do so and, therefore, in the spirit of starting the year with a fairly clear review slate, here they are:

2,521: Origins of World War II by A.J.P. Taylor. Fascinating and beautifully written account of the run-up to the outbreak of war in September 1939. This is one of the classic accounts and is a “must read” for anyone interested in the period.

2,520: Vendetta by Michael Dibdin. Second in the Aurelio Zen detective series, this instalment sees Zen sent to Sardinia to investigate the murder of a politically connected businessman. High quality detective fiction, majoring on the deceit and corrupt nature of Italian politics.

2,519: Cabal by Michael Dibdin. In this Zen novel, Aurelio has to get to grips with the intrigues and conspiracies of the Vatican. Another top class outing for one of my favourite fictional detectives.

2,518: Moral Combat by Michael Burleigh. Highly readable and authoritative history of the Second World War from a moral standpoint. The book does, therefore, present a different narrative arc than most general histories of the war with some major events dealt with briefly and more attention given to other aspects of the war with more moral complexity or ambiguity. Burleigh is particularly good in his refutation of moral equivalency arguments.

2,517: Three Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger. Through the prism of a single three day mid-season series between the Chicago Cubs and the St Louis Cardinals, Bissinger analyses the mind of manager Tony La Russa and baseball in general. Not as good as Bissinger’s classic Friday Night Lights but well worth a read for any baseball fan.

2,516: Dead Lagoon by Michael Dibdin. In Zen’s fourth outing, he goes home to Venice, ostensibly to investigate the disappearance of an American resident of the city, but, in reality, to get away from issues in his personal life in Rome. He ends up having to deal with his past in a book that marks a shift in Dibdin’s coverage of deceit and hypocrisy in Italian life from the institutional to the personal.

2,515: Zoo Station by David Downing. Above-average spy novel set in 1939 Germany and featuring an English journalist resident in Berlin who is forced to become a spy both for the Soviet Union and for Britain. Not as good as either Philip Kerr or Alan Furst, it is OK but the loose ends were tied up a little too easily and there was not as much tension as I would have liked.

2,514: The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 by Antonia Fraser. This narrative history of the events leading up to the Plot and the aftermath was informative and readable. Fraser examines the extent to which Robert Cecil, King James’s First Minister, knew of the Plot beforehand and the roles played by the individual conspirators and their families. I hadn’t realised how minor a figure Guy Fawkes really was, compared to Catesby. Fraser is also very interesting on the role of women in Anglo-Catholic families of the time.

2,513: First Into Action by Duncan Falconer. Colourful account of one man’s life as a trooper in the SBS. Interesting if you are into military stuff, otherwise not worth the time.

2,512: Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. The first in her detective series featuring wise-cracking, feisty PI Victoria “VI” Warshawski, this one sees VI investigating the murder of the son of a prominent Chicago banker and the disappearance of the daughter of a union leader. Warshawski is one of the fictional feminist detectives of the 1980s and Paretsky is sometimes a little heavy-handed about discussing feminist issues through the storyline but it’s good stuff anyway.

2,511: Deadlock by Sara Paretsky. In this instalment, VI investigates the death of her cousin, former ice hockey star, “Boom Boom” Warshawski, who had been working in the grain shipping industry on the Great Lakes. Good stuff.

2,510: Killing Orders by Sara Paretsky. For good or ill, the Catholic Church is always a good setting for a thriller or detective story and Paretsky makes good use of it by linking theft and forgery in a Chicago priory to a local gang boss.

2,509: Bitter Medicine by Sara Paretsky. In this episode in the Warshawski series, Paretsky uses her detective to discuss the politics of abortion in 1980s America and the consequences of a private healthcare system. Fortunately, Paretsky is skilled enough to let the story take precedence over the politics and social commentary.

2,508: Decline and Fall by Chris Mullin. The second of three volumes of diaries by former Sunderland MP, Chris Mullin, this instalment deals with the end times of the Blair-Brown governments. As with his previous volume, this is full of sharp character sketches, witty commentary, warmth and generosity of spirit and should be read by anyone with an interest in British politics even if you don’t agree with all his views. Highly enjoyable.

2,522: Mr Dick or The Tenth Book by Jean-Pierre Ohl

2012-01-03T16:39:00.003Z

When Charles Dickens died in June 1870, he left behind him the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood (or the MED, as fans are, apparently prone to refer to it). Ever since then, frequent attempts to uncover the murderer of the mysterious disappeared title character have been made, both by contemporaries or near-contemporaries of Dickens or by more modern authors either in scholarly papers or in novel form.

Mr Dick or The Tenth Book is French debut author Jean-Pierre Ohl’s contribution to Droodiana and was awarded a number of French literary prizes before being translated into English by Christine Donougher.

Ohl’s main narrator is François Daumal, a Frenchman who, following the collapse of his parents’ marriage goes to live with his mother and maternal grandmother in a small French town. One day he discovers the key to the attic of the house and enters the room in which his late grandfather had become a recluse before his death. Daumal finds that the room is filled with badly bound books that his grandfather had collected and, whilst browsing, comes across a copy of Dickens’ David Copperfield which captivates him.

Daumal quickly develops an obsession with Dickens which leads him to become friend and then bitter rival with Michel Mangematin, a fellow student at the university in Bordeaux. The two are fascinated by the unfinished MED and the lust to uncover the true conclusion drives both their lives in very different directions until the truth is revealed and lives and even identities are broken.

In truth, the very generalised synopsis I’ve just written (which is deliberately vague so as not to spoil the book for any of you who wish to read it) could equally lend itself to a run-of-the-mill pot-boiler. Instead, Ohl’s book is a very post-modern construct, in which the lines of reality and fantasy are blurred and which contains some marvellous mock scholarship. The ending, in particular, featuring a party at a replica of Gad’s Hill Place, at which the attendees dress as characters from Dickens' novels and which Daumal describes whilst in a drunken state, verges on the surreal. A standard "who killed Edwin Drood?" novel this ain't.

There’s a Russian doll feel to Mr Dick as Ohl uses the technique of intertextuality to gradually draw together the various plot strands to the climax of the story. At the core is the narrative of Daumal but this is interwoven with the journal of one Évariste Borel, supposedly a former protégé of George Sand, who tells of his visit to Dickens at Gad’s Hill Place shortly before the latter’s death, and an account by Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, that one) of his first attendance at a séance, at which the participants try to discover Dickens’ intentions for the MED.

Ohl also gives the book undertones of Dickens’ writing, despite the plot being set in the 20^th Century. Many of the characters are as baroque and unusual as those of Dickens, like Daumal’s sadistic grandmother, Sitting-Pretty, and the strange bookseller, Krook, who sits almost at the centre of Ohl’s narrative web in a Bordeaux bookshop that is hugely redolent of a Dickensian location. There is even an echo of a key Dickens theme in the impoverished childhood of Daumal and his struggles to make a way for himself in life.

The book also takes a few swipes at the French literary preference for elegance and form over the cruder, bawdier but, arguably more vivid approach taken by Dickens. Ohl has said in interviews that Dickens is viewed in France as little more than a children’s author by comparison to French figures such as Flaubert – a view Ohl himself disagrees with.

Mr Dick is a novel that requires the reader to concentrate and to think. It is uneven in parts and the final few chapters seem a little rushed and confused but it is a rewarding and entertaining read. I suspect that readers with some knowledge of Dickens will get more out of it than someone with no knowledge (although I will admit to not having read the MED) and, if post-modernism aggravates you, this may not be to your taste but otherwise, I would recommend it, especially in this bicentenary of Dickens’ birth. It has piqued my interest in the MED and its derivative sub-culture.

And the winner is....................

2012-01-03T12:43:00.001Z

In my last Top Ten Tuesday post of 2011, I offered a prize of one of the books from my list of the ten books I'd like to give as Christmas presents. The random number generator picked out Broche E.B. Fabian who said she'd like either Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries or Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar.

Broche - if you email your address to 2606books@gmail.com, I will arrange for your prize to be delivered to you, with my best wishes for a Happy New Year.

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

2012-01-03T11:23:00.000Z

Well, it’s all over for another year. The Christmas decorations are down, the presents have been put away, the chocolates, cheese and alcohol has been converted into excess weight and I am back at work. It’s all a bit deflating really. Falaise Towers looks bare without the tree, cards and baubles and, given the overwhelmingly negative and gloomy predictions, I am not exactly jumping for joy at the advent of 2012, despite it being the year of the London Olympics and Dickens' bicentenary.

On a brighter note, the Falaise Christmas was thoroughly enjoyable. Santa Claus did his best to single-handedly revive the UK retail sector, my cooking seemed to go down well (even if I do say so myself) and the proverbial good time was had by all. As for mini-Falaise, well she is in for a big shock this week as things get back to normal. She has consumed her bodyweight in chocolate, received enough presents to transform her playroom into a Hamley’s warehouse and been treated to numerous theatre, panto and other outings. She has also become a “face” at our local gastro-pub, where her stock order of sausages and chips, followed by strawberry ice-cream with a pot of sprinkles on the side with apple juice (and a separate cup of ice) gets punched into the order terminal as soon as she bundles her way over the threshold. And woe betide the hapless server who gets any of it wrong, as mini-Falaise has developed a hard stare of which Paddington would be proud.

But enough about her great holiday season, let’s talk about me, me, me. The Big Man in Red did me proud by leaving an iPad under the tree and it is fantastic. He also managed to arrange for a cover and a wireless keyboard which will make my luggage on business trips much lighter as my chunky laptop can now stay home. He also brought clothes, after-shave, kitchen gadgets and the complete Poirot on DVD. It’s a sign of how sedate and middle-aged I have become that my first thought was how much I would enjoy watching them tucked up in bed at night. How rock and roll am I? Not very much at all.

Of more interest to you all, though, I am sure, is the literary booty that came my way. And, in no particular order, my Christmas haul comprised:

1. The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje. Although I have a slightly ambivalent attitude to Ondaatje, the idea of the long passenger ship journey from Ceylon to England as seen through a boy’s eyes appeals to me very much.

2. Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño. I’m intrigued by this one as it has a very odd structure, being a fictional encyclopaedia of Latin American right-wing writers with Nazi sympathies or affiliations.

3. The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen. Of the known 160 Shakespeare First Folios catalogued in a 1902 census, 14 were subsequently stolen, of which only two have been recovered. Rasmussen, a Shakespeare scholar, has written of the journey he has taken around the world to try and find out about the stolen copies. Hopefully, this should be fun.

4. The Myth of the Eastern Front by Ronald Smelser and Edward Davies II. This one should be interesting but probably not fun. It is a study of the way the Eastern Front of World War II was portrayed in American popular culture after the war and, in particular, the Cold War and German efforts encouraged a mistaken view that the Wehrmacht had fought a mostly “clean” war in the Soviet Union.

5. Leith’s Vegetable Bible. In an attempt to eat more healthily and to set mini-Falaise a better example, Mrs F and I are going to be trying to eat more veg this year and, in particular, be meat and fish-free three days per week. Mrs F bought me this so I can get some more exciting ideas on how to make this interesting and tasty for us, as we are big meat eaters by choice.

6. Vegetarian Dishes from the Middle East by Arto Der Haroutunian. Does what the title suggests. For reason, see 5 above.

In addition, I have been taking full advantage of Amazon’s Kindle daily deal and the 12 days of Kindle Christmas to fill up my Kindle with interesting looking books. I have been trying to exercise restraint but, at between 99p and £1.99 per book, I am fairly easily persuaded not to do so.

I’ve give up with the whole New Year resolution thing. Over the years, I’ve moved from classic resolutions to more limited goal setting to vague intentions but, having looked back at this time last year and, in particular, my stated reading and blogging intentions and aims, it is clear that I am absolutely hopeless at sticking to them. So, rather than holding out hostages to fortune, I am simply not making or saying anything about this kind of thing in 2012.

I will, however, be doing a bit of mental spring cleaning to draw a line under 2011. I have around 30 or so books that I read last year but didn’t post about. Whatever my intentions may be, I am being realistic and accepting that I will never catch up with these properly so, with the exception of ten or so for which I have a specific idea, I will be putting up a post in the next few days, listing them so that they get included as part of my 2,606 books but will not bother writing a full post on any of them, thereby leaving me with a largely blank slate for this year.

I hope you too had a wonderful holiday season, that you received some good books and that you also managed to fit in some reading time around the festivities. I’d also like to thank you for reading this blog in 2011 and to wish you all health, happiness and success in 2012.

2,523: The Informationist by Taylor Stevens

2011-12-16T11:56:00.002Z

I was sent a copy of The Informationist by its publisher, Crown Publishing, for which I am very grateful despite feeling a little handicapped in my ability to review it. You see, the book’s heroine, Vanessa ‘Michael’ Munroe, is being pushed as an alternative Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson’s monster-selling trilogy but, as I haven’t read this, I can’t possibly assess whether the comparison is fair or accurate.

Munroe is an “informationist”, someone who is highly skilled at obtaining information and analysing it. A traumatic childhood in Africa has left her physically and mentally scarred but has made her a killing machine with an ability to blend into any culture. She is also a naturally gifted linguist, being apparently able to speak 22 different languages.

On the advice of Miles Bradford, a mercenary and business associate of Richard Burbank, CEO of Titan Exploration, an American oil company with interests in West Africa, Munroe is hired to investigate the disappearance of Burbank’s daughter, Emily, in southern Africa.

Having accepted the assignment, Munroe follows her own instincts and knowledge to look in a completely different African country for traces of Emily and, in doing so, is forced to face up to her own demons and past. As the body count mounts, Munroe will stop at nothing to find the truth, which turns out to be completely unexpected and opens up both old and new wounds.

As one would expect from a debut novel, The Informationist is a mix of the good and the bad of thriller writing. On the positive side, Stevens has come up with a good, solid plot and is strong on action scenes and pacing. This, together with the frequent twists and turns in the story, makes for a real page-turner and I was continually wanting to know what happened next or, more often, why what things had just happened.

Stevens also conveys a real sense of the African countries in which the majority of the book is set, both in terms of the physical environments and the political and cultural life of those places. She clearly has a good knowledge of West Africa and, interestingly, makes that part of the world come alive much more than the American and European locations she uses.

Unfortunately, the strengths of Stevens’ plotting and scene-setting aren’t matched by her dialogue. Although she mostly avoids the trap of having her characters deliver lengthy pieces of exposition, much of the dialogue is pretty wooden and her characters speak indistinguishably from each other so that a Cameroonian document forger does not sound markedly different from an American executive.

If The Informationist was intended to be a stand-alone novel, all this would be fine and I’d be happy to recommend it as an above-average thriller with an unusual setting and premise. Munroe is, though, intended to be the heroine of a series and this causes me a little concern. She is depicted as sexy, talented, an invincible fighter, capable of killing without remorse either in cold blood or with a kind of berserker-style rage but, in the next minute, becoming a passionate lover, albeit one who is always in control. My nearest comparator to her would be Jack Reacher, from Lee Childs’ series which I used to look out for but in which, in recent years, have lost all interest.

The main reason for this is that Reacher is, to all intents and purposes, unbeatable and a little too perfect to make an interesting lead character and I think that there is a risk that Munroe will also fall into this category. Taylor Stevens, the author of The Informationist, like her heroine, had a traumatic and much-travelled childhood and, without wanting to pretend to be some kind of pop psychologist, I can’t help wondering whether Munroe may be her fantasy alter ego, someone who, from an equally unhappy background, has emerged as a kick-ass, don’t-mess-with-me individual. Having already faced her demons in this first instalment, I’m not sure that Munroe will stay as interesting as the series progresses. Steven’s plotting skills will need to be in tip-top condition to make this happen.

Overall, I’d still happily recommend this. Africa is an under-explored region in thriller-writing, there’s plenty of action for aficionados and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The sequel, The Innocents, is out later this month in the UK and I will be buying (although probably not until it comes out in paperback). Only time will tell, though, whether Vanessa ‘Michael Munroe has the metaphorical legs to enter into the pantheon of thriller heroes and heroines.

Top Ten Tuesday: What can I get Santa to deliver to you?

2011-12-13T13:10:00.001Z

A brief trip into the dark heart of London’s West End at the weekend both indicated to me that the Christmas period is well and truly upon us and provided further evidence of the madness of crowds as the frenzied shopping seemed more reminiscent of the carefree days from before 2008 than today’s age of austerity. Either people have restricted their spending all year in anticipation of a festive splurge or there are going to be some more households in trouble come the middle of January when the credit card bills drop through the letterbox. I fear the latter.

The Falaise household is sticking to its pre-planned level of expenditure this year, however, and the vast bulk of the gift shopping has been completed, with only Mrs F and my brother-in-law not yet having been dealt with. I can, therefore, say with confidence that none of the books that form part of this list of ten books we would most like to give this Christmas, as requested by the Broke and the Bookish, will actually be given by me this Yuletide.

But, not so fast! I will be giving one of these books away - as a post-Christmas treat to one of you. Just leave a comment below, stating which book you would like and, on December 31, my trusty Random Number Generator and I will make a pick and, delivery charges and availability permitting, one of you will have a nice literary start to 2012.

I should here point out that I am wilfully disobeying the rules of this Top Ten Tuesday by not specifying to whom I would give these books so as to avoid embarrassment either for me or them. Instead, it is a list of books I love and would like to se someone else enjoy. And , as it’s Christmas and people just want to relax, I’ve not included anything too heavy.

1. The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. I’m not a big reader of children’s/YA books but this series of five novels, themed around Celtic and Arthurian myth is simply brilliant. I’d happily give it to anyone but especially to imaginative kids. If you want to suggest this as your giveaway prize, I should point out that the limits of my generosity are such that you will get the first two in the sequence. You’re on your own after that, I’m afraid.

2. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It’s the right time of the year for it, it’s a good read and, as next year is the bicentenary of his birth, it would whet the appetite for the celebrations and events that are planned. Also, most people are only familiar with the story from TV or film versions so it suits my literary snob side to get someone else to read it.

3. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. A present for a keen reader, this is a collection of essays about books, language, reading, book collecting and all matters bookish. It’s a joy to read.

4. Achtung Schweinehund! by Harry Pearson. Is there a British middle-aged male in your life? If so, then this is effectively a user’s guide to said man. Pearson’s memoir of a childhood of model making, war comics and Action Man has so many echoes of that of me and my friends at the time that I’m not sure whether to be relieved at the ubiquity of the experience or worried at the general immaturity of British manhood!

5. The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. Nigel Slater’s journal of a year in his kitchen is crammed full of tempting recipes that are eminently manageable by even cooks as hopeless as me. Even if you are not a cook, he writes in a style that makes your mouthwater and it can definitely be read as a book rather than just as a cookbook.

6. Animal Farm by George Orwell. The subject matter isn’t at all festive but, as I explained in this post, this book is indelibly associated with Christmas for me. It’s a perfect little allegorical gem. Everyone should read it and it would be an ideal gift for a young person just getting into history or politics.

7. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a bit of Agatha on the TV or to read by the fire. This is one of the classics and one of my all-time favourites. I’d give it to an aged relative, except they’ve probably already got it.

8. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming. When I were a lad (say this in a broad Yorkshire accent for maximum effect), there was always a Bond movie on TV on Christmas Day afternoon, just after the Queen’s Speech and it was one of the centrepieces of the programming schedules. What with DVDs and satellite TV, that’s not the case any more but I’d happily give a Fleming novel to someone to read during the afternoon instead. I’ve picked Casino Royale because I think it is probably the best from a literary point of view but I’d also think about Moonraker for its brilliant gambling scene in M’s London club. And it’s nothing like the frankly trashy movie version.

9. The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse. I can’t think of many more enjoyable ways to spend part of Christmas Day than Wodehouse, a glass of claret and some good cheese to nibble on to fill up any corners untouched by turkey and trimmings. The Code of the Woosters is one of the best Jeeves novels and I defy anyone not to chuckle while reading it.

10. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. Probably my favourite piece of travel literature and a book I’d love to give to everyone. Every time I read it, I just want to jump on a train and start off round the world.

And as a bonus stocking filler, I’d want to make sure everyone on my gift list had a copy of one of the Rumpole books as this great Old Bailey hack barrister is a fictional national treasure, a gently amusing triumph and a comfort in our turbulent world.

Which of these would you like to receive?

Top Ten Tuesday: Some old school tales from back in the day

2011-12-06T12:49:00.001Z

It’s all gone a bit retro over at the Broke and the Bookish for today’s Top Ten Tuesday. In a reprise of the first ever Top Ten Tuesday, we’re all going to dust off a few of our childhood favourites.

I don’t suppose it will come as any great surprise that, similarly to all of you, I was a voracious reader as a child, draining my parents’ bank balance and annoying the hell out of our local library. I can’t possibly rank them so here is a selection of some of the books I enjoyed before I moved on to more adult fare.

1. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I have recently bought a gorgeous Folio Society edition of this in hardback for when mini-Falaise is ready for it in about 5 years time (you may call it obsessional, I call it good planning). An all-time classic and a springboard to The Lord of the Rings. And if she doesn’t like it, I’ll have the book back!

2. `Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. If I were a betting man, I’d stake a considerable amount of money that this will feature on a large number of lists today and, if it doesn’t, it should. Neither of the films has done it justice. Also, the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, shouldn’t be overlooked.

3. The Adventure Series by Enid Blyton. I know she was an old-fashioned racist, sexist, classist so-and-so but I loved her books as a child and can’t help feeling slightly uncomfortable at the various bans and bowdlerisations that have taken place. I could easily have put down the Famous Five or the Secret Seven instead and do rather like the idea of the Secret Seven’s clubhouse and their lashings of cake and ginger beer. Mini-Falaise’s great-grandparents have bought her the first four Famous Five books for when she’s older and I will have no problem with her reading them – after all, it’s my job (along with Mrs F) to make sure she grows up with a decent set of attitudes and not Enid’s.

4. Tales of the Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green. I was addicted to mythology as a child and Lancelyn Green, a former Inkling, produced a number of children’s versions of both Greek and Norse myths and versions of the Arthur story and the story of Robin Hood, all of which I devoured. I don’t know if they are still in print but this one in particular inspired a love of Greek myth that led me on to The Iliad and The Odyssey and eventually on to studying Classical Greek at school and reading the literature in the original.

5. The Jennings Series by Anthony Buckerdige. Even before I went to prep school, I loved the Jennings and Darbishire boarding school novels. I guess the social and maybe even moral attitudes they describe are outdated today but they were fun and there was an innocent subversiveness about them. They led me on to the more satirical world of Molesworth, who still delights me now.

6. The Adventure Series by Willard Price. Another from my apparently extensive back catalogue of childhood favourites with distinctly dodgy cultural undertones. Price’s heroes were a pair of teenage zoologist brothers, Hal and Roger, who travelled the world getting embroiled in a series of wildlife-related adventures. I particularly loved the underwater themed ones. They’ve been recently re-released here in the UK (although, oddly out of sequence) and I have bought a couple for my eldest nephew, aged seven. Also, and here’s an odd piece of trivia, Price was, allegedly, a CIA agent.

7. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. Oh, how I loved this tale of children sailing dinghies and camping out on an island in their summer holidays. It was a world away from my suburban upbringing and seemed so exciting and fun. Even in the 1970s when I read it, it had a wonderful period feel, something of a time gone by, a more innocent time. I can’t help feeling that we need books like this even more today, when childhood seems to be a more stressful, pressured and commercialised time than back in my day.

8. The Professor Branestawm series by Norman Hunter. I used to wonder at the Renaissance –man qualities of Norman “Bite yer legs” Hunter who apparently combined his role as the hard man of Don Revie’s legendary Leeds United defence with a successful career as a children’s author, until I realised it was a completely different Norman Hunter. Anyway, despite the shattering of my childhood illusions, Hunter’s stories of the absent-minded professor and the chaos caused by his incredible inventions were favourites of my youth. I think some may still be in print but they are definitely worth a look.

9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I blame Lewis for encouraging me to climb into every wardrobe I could find at home or in any home I visited for a while, just checking that there was no door to Narnia in there. I never really got into the sequels, funnily enough, but this one also gave me a life-long love of Turkish Delight. Yum.

10. The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper. My list wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of this series, given that I have banged on about it often in these lists. Even more excitingly, the Folio Society has begun to publish beautiful editions of these books too, which will be added to mini-Falaise’s growing shelf of classics for when she gets a little older.

I could have gone on forever with this one. I can’t believe I haven’t found room for books like James and the Giant Peach, Stig of the Dump, the Silver Sword, Paddington, Fantastic Mr Fox, Agaton Sax, Watership Down, Tarka the Otter, the Moomins, Where the Wild Things Are, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh or The Phantom Talbooth. Makes me want to be a child again so I would have an excuse to read them and many others again. Mini-Falaise, watch out, your bedtimes are planned for the next few years!

2,524: The Big Red Train Ride by Eric Newby

2011-11-30T13:07:00.000Z

I’ve always enjoyed long train journeys. I like the feeling of being close to the country through which you are passing and having the leisure to observe it without having to concentrate as one does whilst driving. It’s less antiseptic and homogenous than modern air travel, where one airport could be another, and far less strenuous than cycling. Some of my favourite train journeys have been the overnighter from Moscow to Leningrad I did in 1987, the trip down the East Coast and South of the US I made a decade later and the journey I made from London to the Swedish part of the Arctic Circle I did with Mrs F on our honeymoon a few years ago.

One trip we haven’t made though is the Trans-Siberian (or Trans-Manchurian if you drop Vladivostock and head down through Mongolia to China) Railway and this remains an ambition of ours, a trip we hope to do when and if I finally get to retire. It’s probably the most famous railway of them all, stretching nearly 6000 miles from Moscow to the Russian Pacific coast and passing through seven time zones. As Eric Newby described it in The Big Red Train Ride, “The Trans-Siberian is the big train ride. All the rest are peanuts.”

Newby, the author of many travel books, including the classic A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, made the journey with his Slovenian wife, Wanda, in 1977. Back in those days, of course, the Soviet Union still existed and the Communist authorities tightly controlled the travel schedules of those foreigners it permitted to enter the country. The Newbys were therefore required to travel with Otto, a German photographer, and Mischa, a guide from the official Intourist travel agency, whose role was not only to help them but also to shepherd them and ensure they saw only what the authorities would want them to see.

The Big Red Train Ride is a bit of a curate’s egg. On the positive side, it is an interesting historical record of the way in which foreign travellers in the Soviet Union were treated during the Communist era and also a picture of life in rural Russia at that time. There are evocative word portraits of the limited availability of food stuffs and consumer products and some amusing vignettes of bizarre official visits arranged for the Newbys and Otto by Intourist.

There are also some entertaining passages detailing life on the train and, in particular, the attitudes of the female train conductors, some of whom appeared to be acting almost as guards, attempting top prevent the Newbys from getting access to the other part of the train where the travellers were Russian.

However, Newby runs into the problem that writers are almost bound to experience when writing about train journeys. Trains are, by their very nature, closed environments and make finite stops for limited periods of time. This can make for limited source material for the hopeful author. Writers such as Paul Theroux gets round this problem either by using a number of train journeys in their books (The Great Railway Bazaar, Riding the Iron Rooster) or by making extended stops along the way (The Old Patagonian Express). Unfortunately for Newby, he has neither of these opportunities. The Trans-Siberian is a single train for the length of its journey, with the same passengers for most of the way and, at the time he weas writing, he was only allowed to alight at certain specified stations and then only for eh amount of time Intourist would let him.

It may be that a Paul Theroux could still have made something of this, especially in light of the wonderful descriptions of his travelling companions on the Orient Express in The Great Railway Bazaar but, to be honest, I don’t think Newby is in the same league as Theroux as a writer and, in any event, he was pretty much restricted to being with his wife, Otto and Mischa for much of the journey and there is only so much one can do with such a limited cast.

What this means, though, is that Newby has to pad the book out somewhat with potted histories of not only places he visits but also places the train just happens to be passing and, although some of the information is interesting, there is is just too much of it for a travel book.

Overall, this is a patchy book, worth reading if you are interested in Russia, train travel or the Trans-Siberian itself but eminently skippable if you are not.

2,525: An Open Secret by Carlos Gamerro

2011-11-29T15:11:00.000Z

I’ll get the full disclosure bit out of the way up front. I was sent a review copy of the new English translation of Carlos Gamerro’s 2002 novel, An Open Secret by Pushkin Press, its publisher. I’m very grateful to them for this as it is not a book that I would probably have come across otherwise and, as such, is an object reminder to me to step outside my usual literary territory once in a while.

During the so-called Argentine “Dirty War” in which the ruling military junta violently repressed political dissidents, trades unionists and other opponents of the regime, thousands of individuals were illegally detained, tortured and often murdered. Many of them were drugged, loaded onto airplanes, flown out over the South Atlantic and thrown into the ocean to drown. As there were no dead bodies to evidence their deaths, the junta was able to deny that they had been killed. They became known as Los Desaparecidos – The Disappeared. According to the various estimates, between 9,000 and 30,000 Argentineans were disappeared between 1976 and 1983, either in this way or other equally terrible ways. Pregnant women who were detained by the junta had their newborn children snatched from them at birth to be given to childless couples who supported the military government.

Fortunately, those times have ended and Argentina is now a civilian democracy but the memories live on and the plight of los desaparecidos is a perennially popular topic for Argentine novelists.

In An Open Secret, Carlos Gamerro has chosen to examine those times by focussing on a single (fictional) incident. His protagonist, Fefe, is a young veteran of the Falklands War (or Las Malvinas, if you are from Argentina or other parts of Latin America). He has returned to Malihuel, the small town where his grandparents and parents were from and where he spent his childhood summers to investigate a disappearance that took place in 1976, on the same weekend as one Diego Maradona made his debut for Argentina’s national football team.

Ostensibly collecting material for a novel, Fefe interviews many of the town’s notables about the events that led to the disappearance of one Dario Ezcurra, the town lothario and also an activist left wing journalist. Slowly, a dark, sordid story of complicity and murder emerges from the mass of lies, evasions and self-serving memories that Fefe’s questions reveal until the unpalatable truth of Ezcurra’s “disappearance” is uncovered, as are the secrets of Fefe’s own parents and grandparents.

It would have been easy for Gamerro to portray Ezcurra as a poster-boy for protest journalism but this would have made the story much less textured and thoughtful. Instead, he paints Ezcurra as a self-obsessed womanizer who leaves a trail of outraged and bitter fathers and (less so) mothers behind him. In so doing, he shows forensically how the personal grudges of the townsfolk dovetailed with the political forces of the police and government to seal Ezcurra’s fate. Instead, the people of Malihuel are complicit in his murder. It is a nuanced characterisation that goes beyond a wish to varnish los desaparecidos as simple heroes but shows a desire to get at the naked truth.

Complicity is a common theme in many countries where totalitarian repression has taken place. In both Nazi Germany and Stalin’s

Russia

, for example, a similar cocktail of personal hatred and fear of the authorities combined to keep the populace not only quiet but also as silent participants in the repression.

This unwillingness to denounce or admit to the crime in their midst is sometimes referred to as a conspiracy of silence but, as Gamerro points out, it is anything but that. Indeed, the inhabitants of Malihuel are only to happy to admit that, really, they knew what was happening and who was responsible. Not a conspiracy of silence, more a “conspiracy of chattiness”. At times, the flood of self-serving claptrap served up to Fefe by the self-justifying locals feels overwhelming, a sensation created in part by Gamerro’s clever, but irritating, decision to omit most punctuation in his characters’ speech.

What the locals also unwittingly reveal is that each and every one of them was more than a scared observer. Ezcurra’s murder and the subsequent murder of his mother, killed because she wouldn’t stop protesting about his murder, could have been stopped if any of the local notables had objected to the police superintendent. Yet they didn’t and thus prove the local military commander right when he says that the disappearances are perfect crimes because they are “committed in the sight of everyone—because then there are no witnesses, only accomplices.”

Gamerro also introduces some subtle touches of symbolism – Ezcurra’s body is dumped in the town’s lagoon, an echo of the dumping of victims in the Atlantic, and his mother is the only one to protest his death, an echo of the mothers of los desaparecidos who formed a protest group, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – and the laconic way in which Fefe reports the self-serving nature of the locals is damming – in particular, there are two paragraphs in which rival hoteliers denounce each other for the same fault where every word other than their names and hotel locations is identical.

An Open Secret is a forceful exposition of the hypocrisy and cowardice that allow things like forced disappearances to occur and the long-term effects that they have. It is a thought-provoking and powerful read and well worth the effort of getting hold of a copy.

Top Ten Tuesday: What do I want to read this winter?

2011-11-29T10:54:00.000Z

It’s getting to that time of year already. I love Christmas time. Time off from work without people loading up your inbox for your return. Family. Good food and drink. Twinkly lights and decorations. Over-excited children. Fantastic. I’ve surprised myself this year by being pretty well-organised. The puddings have been made and are maturing away. The turkey and ham have been ordered in time to get a good price from the butcher. I’ve already bitten off a big chunk of the present buying and I’ve even managed to get the requisite family feud out of the way early! So I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself so far. And with work beginning its seasonal winding down and a manageable number of seasonal lunches, dinners and drinks parties in the calendar, I can look forward to battening down the hatches on Christmas Eve with relative equanimity.

There is one small issue, however, as after Christmas comes the end of the year. A time to look back and reflect upon the triumphs, failures and general events of the past twelve months. Although the year has been quite a good one from a personal perspective, the turmoil in the outside world and the uncertain outlook for the global economy and for many people around the world will, I am sure, cast a shadow over the New Year celebrations. And the good folks at the Broke and the Bookish have decided to kickstart the reflection process by asking us to list our Top Ten books to read from the TBR pile/list for winter. If I were a glass-half-full kind of guy, I could list ten books I’m really looking forward to reading or ten books that will be coming out soon but, as I’m in a glass-half-empty mood and it’s the look back at 2011 time of year, here are ten books I intended to read in 2011 and never got round to.

1. A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes. This is a hefty monster of a book, one of the leading histories of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the immediate aftermath, despite the controversies that dog its author. It’s been sitting in my TBR box for a while and the only thing that has been putting me off is its sheer length. It’s also appeared in not one, but TWO of my Top Ten Tuesday posts this year as a book I was going to read this year and, guess what. Haven’t. Even. Opened. It.

2. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. This is a novel about the lives and dreams of the staff on an English language newspaper in Rome, whose future looks grim. It was described by the New York Times as a cross between Waugh’s Scoop and Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I said I was going to read it this year in my New Year’s resolution Top Ten Tuesday. Still haven’t even bought a copy.

3. Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka. A debut novel, published in the

in June, this novel has cricket as a central element, with the Chinaman of the title being a type of spin bowling. The book’s protagonist is a retired cricket writer who spends the last months of his life being unpleasant to his family and tracking down a spin bowler who has disappeared and who he considers to be an unsung genius. The novel is not just about cricket but also about modern

Sri Lanka

and has been described as “one of the most imaginative works of contemporary Sri Lankan fiction. I was so excited about this, I pre-ordered the hardback which duly arrived at my office on the day of publication, where it still sits today.

4. Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian. This is the second in the Aubrey and Maturin series and, surprisingly, for a naval series, much of the action takes place on land. O’Brian’s admiration for Jane Austen is often commented on and this particular volume is sometimes said to be his particular tribute to her. I planned to read this on my summer holiday where, instead, it ended up as just another bit of extra baggage. I really do want to read this and don’t know why I haven’t done so yet.

5. A Clockwork Christmas by Various. This is a collection of four Christmas themed, steampunk tales. I got an electronic review copy from Netgalley, thinking it would make a good pre-Christmas read as I’m curious to read more steampunk. The clock is ticking though. Look out for a review soon.

6. At Home by Heston Blumenthal. I’ve got a review copy of Great Britain’s favourite mad scientist chef on my Kindle and I’m just waiting for the apposite moment to read it. I also promise to cook one of his recipes and blog that as well, to see whether they really do work for your common or garden home cook.

7. The Fear Index by Robert Harris. I’ve loved each and every one of his novels so far and this one has been sitting on my Kindle for a while, shouting “read me”. Soon. Soon, I promise.

8. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. When I was younger, I used to re-read it annually but have fallen out of that habit over the past few years. I noticed it on the shelves at home the other day and suddenly had a hankering to read it again, which I think I might well do during the Christmas break.

9. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I have singularly failed in my resolution to crack on with my 1,001 Books challenge and have read pitifully few of them this year. I want to get this read and An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro before the end of the year to retain any vestige of self-respect.

10. The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore. Slight cheat this one but I am looking forward to reading it again this winter because when I do, it will mean that it is the evening of Christmas Eve, mini-Falaise will be about to go off to bed with visions of reindeer and Father Christmas in her head, the front door will be locked and Christmas will be upon us. Can’t wait.

2,526: Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr

2011-11-28T17:16:00.000Z

Prague Fatale is the eighth book in Philip Kerr’s series of novels featuring Berlin detective Bernie Gunther. The books, although they jump back and forth in Bernie’s timeline, roughly follow his career as, firstly, a Berlin police detective in the 1930s, through his short-lived stints as the hotel detective at the Adlon, one of Berlin’s finest, and private detective, and back to being a police detective, albeit under the Nazis and with a technical commission in the SS. The novels are an engaging blend of historical fiction and hard-boiled detective fiction, with Bernie as a Germanic Philip Marlowe.

In this new instalment, Bernie is back at his desk in Berlin. It is 1941. The Wehrmacht is fighting its way into the Soviet Union and the persecution of Germany’s Jews is reaching its pre-Final Solution zenith. Bernie is trying to help the two Jewish sisters living in the same block as him by taking them tinned food when he comes upon an attempted rape, which he prevents. With this being a Bernie Gunther story, the victim turns out to be a wise-cracking beauty with whom he begins an affair.

So far, so good. But there is a problem just around the problem in the form of Bernie’s ultimate boss, one Reinhard Heydrich. Recently promoted to Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich is worried both about a group of Czech resistance fighters known as the Three Kings and threats to his own personal safety. Heydrich makes Bernie an offer he simply can’t refuse (especially given his own known lack of Nazi feelings). Bernie becomes Heydrich’s personal detective and moves to Prague, along with his new lady friend.

Murder indeed does happen but Heydrich is not the victim. At a weekend house party at Heydrich’s castle in Prague, one of his adjutants, a homosexual who was sent back from the Eastern Front in disgrace for refusing to take part in the murder of Jews, is found dead in his locked bedroom, both drugged and shot. Bernie takes charge of the investigation to unmask the killer.

Prague Fatale begins like previous Bernie Gunther novels as a World War II set hard-boiled detective story. Although over the course of the series, Bernie has moved from being wise-crackingly cynical about the Nazis and Germany’s situation to being a little more melancholic, there is still plenty of fast-talking , a wealth of urban Berlin detail and some nice historical touches, particularly a clever snapshot of Bernie going through Heydrich’s diary and finding an entry scheduling a meeting at Wannsee in Janary 1942. As World War II aficionados will appreciate, this is a reference to the infamous Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was promulgated and adopted. It is a nice idea, merely making a throwaway reference to such a significant event and lends added historical authenticity to the book.

About halfway through, though, the entire style seems to change and we shift into an Agatha Christie-esque country house murder, which then morphs further into a classic John Dickson Carr-type locked room mystery. Now, none of this throws Bernie off his stride, especially as the suspects are all high-ranking SS and SD officers, whom Bernie thoroughly enjoys interrogating. Our hero unmasks the killer but, being Bernie, there is a typically downbeat ending for him.

I found Prague Fatale both better and worse than its predecessor, . It has a cleaner, more cohesive story line and avoids both the jumping around in time of Field Grey and some of the internal inconsistencies that it introduced into Bernie’s backstory. I can appreciate that some Bernie fans will get irritated at the introduction of soft-boiled detective themes into Prague Fatale but I actually quite enjoyed the excursion. I am also unable to resist the image of Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, as an inveterate fan of Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie’s novels. I have no idea whether there is any basis in fact for this but it makes for an unsettling, if amusing image.

On the down side, there is less meat to Prague Fatale than any of its predecessors. Although Field Grey was flawed as a story, it was an interesting examination of Bernie’s character and the nature of the compromises required in the Third Reich. Prague Fatale has no such depth and is merely a clever detective story. Bernie is far less complex here, with none of the moral ambiguities of earlier books in the series.

It’s probably fair to say that the original trilogy, published in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s are superior to the later books (and may well have been intended to be a complete series in themselves) and Kerr may well be jumping back and forth in time to fill in gaps and make sure he has squeezed all he can from Gunther but, even so, this is one of my favourite detective series and well worth a look (but start at the beginning, not the middle).

2,527: Smiley's People by John le Carré

2011-11-24T13:33:00.001Z

Although I’m a big fan of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, I can’t help but think that they have done spy novels a tremendous disservice. Even though they are far less shallow than the films, they still slide over the heart of espionage, skipping over subtleties with a gadget, a fight or a perfectly made cocktail.

Not so with le Carré. His novels strip away all the illusions we may have about the glamour of spying, exposing the corrosive effects of lives of constant betrayal and suspicion. Even Smiley, probably one of the drabbest heroes of literature, is not immune to this, suffering from the acid drips of repeated lies, exploitation and treachery. Like its predecessors in the so-called Karla trilogy, Smiley’s People is an unemotional exploration of the darker side of human nature and the effects on otherwise decent men of being required to live and work on that side.

At the end of The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley has been outmanoeuvred by the odious Saul Enderby who, together with Sam Collins applies a stiletto to Smiley’s back and replaces him as Head of the Circus. This state of play continues to exist at the beginning of Smiley’s People, with George in enforced retirement and again deserted by his errant wife, Ann.

But old spies never truly retire and Smiley is pressed back into service, albeit on a totally deniable basis, by Enderby and Lacon, a senior civil servant with no distinguishing virtues. A relic of the Circus’ past, an Estonian émigré who had once led a spy network controlled by George has turned up dead on Hampstead Heath, having tried to re-establish contact with the Circus.

Although Lacon and Enderby merely want the matter swept under the carpet by George, he begins to investigate and finds a connection to a old Russian woman living in Paris, whose daughter’s identity has been taken by the KGB to use as a “legend” to insert an agent into Western Europe.

Smiley slowly pieces together the puzzle by forcing former colleagues and agents to give him information and himself travelling through Europe to assemble the clues. It becomes apparent that the “legend” has been used unofficially by Smiley’s nemesis, Karla, to get his illegitimate daughter out of the Soviet Union and into a hospital in

Switzerland

There’s a different feel to Smiley’s People than the other two books in the trilogy. Although the pace of the story remains deliberate, Smiley is a much more active character, not being content to pull strings from behind the scenes but actually getting out there to find information and manage a sting that enables him finally to make contact with Karla.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy began the trilogy by telling the story of Karla’s greatest victory over Smiley by infiltrating the Circus through Bill Haydon and encouraging Haydon not only to betray Smiley but also to have an affair with Ann, adding a second betrayal. Smiley’s People, therefore, provides a satisfying conclusion as Smiley uses Karla’s own techniques against him, using the leverage of his knowledge of Karla’s weakness – his daughter – to force him to defect. At the very end, we see Karla walking across a bridge from East to West Germany. Symbolically, as he arrives in the West, he drops the cigarette lighter that he had taken from George in Tinker, Tailor, the lighter inscribed from Ann to George and which hinted at George’s weak spot.

Yet Smiley’s revenge is hollow. He leaves the lighter on the ground and takes no pleasure in his incredible coup. He is even diminished by his success. He is less of a man for having lowered himself to Karla’s level by using his daughter against him. I was left with an empty feeling at the end, that there were no winners, only men beaten by the demands of the secret world. Smiley has served his country faithfully, despite the politics and the treachery within his own service and has been left broken in spirit, an anonymous casualty of the Cold War.

I could leave it here and simply say that Smiley’s People and the Karla trilogy as a whole are supreme examples of the true spy novel, setting a standard that hasn’t yet been matched by any Western writer, although Robert Littell and Alan Furst come quite close, Graham Greene would definitely be up there if one considers some of his books to be spy novels and Charles Cumming is also treading some of the same ground.

But I don’t think that is fair. Like Greene, le Carré deals with the human condition. He counterpoints professional treachery and deception with the personal. Each of the books in the Karla trilogy has his characters suffering on a personal level, with Smiley himself suffering repeatedly from the cheating of his wife. In Smiley’s people, there is an awkward scene where Lacon takes George for dinner and spends the meal trying to get George to give him relationship advice as he too is facing losing his wife. Never a strong character, this leaves him looking even more foolish and ineffectual than ever.

In some ways, I think le Carré almost uses the world of espionage as a prism through which to explore these aspects of the human character, to show what happens to people who both perpetrate the lies and are also the victims of hem. It is notable that all of the former agents and colleagues whom Smiley involves in his investigation in Smiley’s People are somehow damaged or reduced by their involvement with the Circus, from Toby Esterhase, eking out an existence as a shady art dealer to dear old Connie, an alcoholic wreck, living in squalor with her partner. There’s not a great deal of hope or happiness in le Carré’s writing, just a sense of the futility of it all.

Top Ten Tuesday: Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

2011-11-22T14:42:00.000Z

I suppose the honest answer to this week’s Top Ten Tuesday from the Broke and the Bookish would be for me to submit a blank page. Unfortunately, being British, I won’t be having a Thanksgiving dinner and so have nothing to which I could invite anyone, let alone cool authors.

I've always assumed that Thanksgiving was one of those American things, something culturally specific, like American Football (played using the hands – go figure), and thus to be appreciated by me as an observer rather than as a participant. What I didn’t realise though was that it isn’t just Americans who celebrate it. Oh no! I knew that Canadians do, albeit earlier in the month but I didn’t know that Liberians (as opposed to librarians) do Thanksgiving, as do the inhabitants of Leiden in the Netherlands, apparently to celebrate the raising of the Siege of Leiden in 1574 (God, Wikipedia is good.). And, of course, we mustn’t forget the good citizens of Norfolk Island, who will be sitting down to whatever feast they have at Thanksgiving on 30^th November this year.

So lots of different people have their own versions of Thanksgiving. But not us Brits. The closest we get is Harvest Festival, which used to be quite big when I was at primary school but about which I don’t hear much these days. I do seem to remember it as a day when we all had to collect food to give to the less fortunate. I’m not sure what the local poor made of the random collection of tinned beans, potatoes and mushy peas that my classmates and I would hand over, supplemented by some more exciting (or dangerous, depending on your views on health and safety) past their sell-by-date items. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to invite any of my favourite authors to eat our old Harvest Festival comestibles for fear of killing them or, at the very least, giving them indigestion.

But it would be unfair of me to leave you with a blank page to contemplate, as you have been so kind as to come over for a visit so I will assume that my parents had followed through with their plan to leave Merrie Olde England in the early ‘70s and, instead of landing in Canada as intended, had made landfall south of the 49^th parallel, thereby ensuring that I ended up with a US passport. With whom shall I share my turkey and pumpkin pie then?

I’m going to give myself a bit of flexibility. As I’ve adopted a fantasy nationality and will be sitting at an imaginary table, with unreal food, I’m going to allow myself to invite both the quick and the dead and to provide each of my guests and me with a universal simultaneous translator, to ensure that we can all enjoy ourselves. So, who has made the cut for my fantasy Thanksgiving dinner?

1. Dorothy Parker. As a founder member of the Algonquin Round Table and a famous wit, I think Dorothy would be an entertaining dinner guest, especially as she was fond of a drink or three. Anyone who can write this verse is certainly value for a free meal:

“Love is a glorious medley of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Romania.”

2. Oscar Wilde. Decadent, brilliant, witty and with a hell of a back story, what dinner table wouldn’t be enlivened by Oscar?

3. Colette. Despite being responsible for the execrable Le Blé en Herbe, which I was required to read for my French A-level, she gets an invite to my turkey supper for probably having a fund of stories about her life of scandalous excess, yet still managing to become the first French woman to be awarded a state funeral.

4. Evelyn Waugh. If you’ve ever read his diaries or letters, you’ll know that, as well as being one the great 20^th Century British satirists, he was a hilariously malicious gossip. Assuming he was on good form, he would be an asset to any gossipy dinner party.

5. Jan Morris. To my mind, she is one of the very best travel writers of the modern age. In particular, her book on Venice manages to be an absolutely beautiful read whilst still painting a true picture of the city. Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza is co-hosting Venice in February and I suggest that, if you haven’t already read this, you sign up for the challenge, if only as an excuse to read it. Jan gets an invite so she can enthral us with tales of the faraway.

6. Hunter S Thompson. So far, my table is looking witty, interesting but relatively civilised. Every self-respecting dinner party should have at least one token drug-bingeing, drunken lunatic to liven up proceedings and everyone’s favourite gonzo journalist fits that bill nicely. I just hope he leaves his gun at home.

7. Mary Shelley. Having written Frankenstein after a house party with Percy Shelley, Byron and Polidori, I wonder what she could come up with after an evening with this lot. And I bet she’d have some stories to tell.

8. Stephen Fry. Now officially a British National Treasure, he is highly amusing, polymathic and even seems to be a nice chap so he gets an invite. He also once played Oscar Wilde in a film so it would be fun to see their conversation.

9. Rebecca West. As a journalist and author, I think her reputation has faded a little unfairly in recent years and certainly since Time magazine called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her combined travel and history work about

Yugoslavia

in the 1930s was described in the New York Times as “not only the magnification and intensification of the travel book form, but, one may say, its apotheosis." I also love her memoir of the Nuremberg War Trials, a topic of endless interest to me and so I would love to talk to her about her coverage of the trials over the Thanksgiving repast.

10. Ernest Hemingway. My favourite literary wild man, I’d love to see him and Hunter Thompson going head to head over dinner……..even if there’d be a hell of a mess to clear up afterwards.

It's Stir-up Sunday!

2011-11-20T19:41:00.002Z

Christmas has officially arrived early at Falaise Towers. Unofficially, of course, it has been here for a while, with mini-Falaise having been asking about it for a couple of weeks now, especially after being cast as a star on the Christmas tree in her nursery school nativity play. Although tedious at times, there are some compensations for the constant questions about Santa Claus as the big man is also an excellent disciplinary tool – as in “If you don’t behave, I’ll call Santa and tell him not to come.” Works every time between November and December 25^th.

Anyway, on a more official note, today is Stir-up Sunday and we joined with tradition in making our Christmas Pudding this morning. We all took our turn stirring the beast, youngest first and we all made our wish. I’ve not made a Christmas Pud before and have gone for Nigella’s recipe, using extravagantly expensive Pedro Ximenez sherry as the alcohol of choice. To be fair, it is smelling very Christmassy and Nigella has always been a favourite of mine, despite her recent descent into self-parody and the ridiculous mendacity of pretending that her TV studio is really her home and that the demographically perfect gang of renta-mob –extras supplied by her casting agent are really her bosom buddies.

Nevertheless, Nigella is OK with me for the simple reason that her recipes work for me. I find that I can cook her food, whereas some other writers, such as Saint Delia of Norwich City, just don’t work when I try their dishes. Rick Stein does, Simon Hopkinson does, Nigella does and Raymond Blanc does. Unfortunately, neither Delia nor Gordon Ramsay do. Noone’s fault, just the way it is.

Back to Stir-up Sunday, which always falls on the last Sunday before Advent. Back in the old days, the 1549 Book of Common Prayer dictated that the Collect for this Sunday began:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

This, allegedly, reminded the ladies of the congregation, and their cooks, that it was about time to get the Christmas pudding made so that it would have time to mature before the big day. Consequently, the making of the pudding became associated with this day.

Unsurprisingly, there is a distinct lack of cooks or other domestic staff at Falaise Towers and so it fell to me, assisted (in the loosest sense of the word) by mini-Falaise, to make the pudding. All three of us gave it the traditional East to West stir and made a wish. I have no idea what Mrs F’s is and mine will remain a secret but mini was very keen to explain that she’d wished for a Jessie from Toy Story toy for Christmas. She’s not slow, is our Mini-Falaise. She’s not very subtle either.

Hopefully you too have managed to get your’s done. Here’s a picture of the mixture before it went in the steamer – it looked and smelt a lot better after three hours of steaming!

2,528: The Odin Mission by James Holland

2011-11-18T14:07:00.000Z

I don’t know if they are still around but, when I was a little boy, thee used to be these little comics, with titles like Commando or Battle. The stories in these comics were all set during the Second World War and featured heroic, salt of the earth Tommies battling against villainous Nazis, whose vocabularies was largely limited to variations on “Achtung!” and “Schweinehund”, or Japanese, who were depicted as, basically, a collection of racial stereotypes. They were exciting but morally simplistic. I loved them but rarely got to read them as my parents were generally disapproving of comics.

James Holland’s The Odin Mission has something of the better side of Commando comics in it. Billed as a Sharpe for the Blitz years, it is the first in a series of tales featuring Sergeant Jack Tanner of the fictional King’s Own Yorkshire Rangers. Set during the disastrous campaign to defend Norway in 1940, following the German invasion, Tanner and his group of barely trained squaddies finds itself cut off from Allied lines and with the responsibility of shepherding a Norwegian scientist to safety. He is hampered in this task not only by the efforts of the Germans, who are keen to seize the scientist and his secrets, but also by an arrogantly inept French officer, Lieutenant Chevannes, and his platoon of mountain troops.

If you are looking for a sensitive look at the effects of war on men or a richly drawn, character-driven novel with a deep psychological undertone, you should probably turn away now. This isn’t it. If, on the other hand, you are in the mood for a fast-paced, action-packed tale where the good guys are heroic paragons and the bad guys might as well be wearing black, then this may well be one for you.

This was the fourth and final book sent to me by Transworld as part of their book group reading challenge and it obviously got to me at just the right time, as I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was definitely in the mood for some blood and thunder action and this provided it to me in spades.

James Holland is a military historian by trade and it shows. The Odin Mission is filled with historical fact and period slang. There is a real feel of the period about it, even if he is less good at making his Nordic setting come alive – his skill is clearly in the pacing and the plotting.

There is nothing remotely subtle or deep about his characters. Tanner, the hero of the series is improbably heroic, despite vague hints of a disreputable past. His sidekick, Sykes, is a classically chirpy Cockney who, despite a criminal past, is on the side of the angels. By contrast, the Germans, and especially Hauptmann Zellner, who appears set to be Tanner’s nemesis in the series, are melodrama-worthy villains. Zellner establishes this beyond doubt in the first couple of pages, shooting an unarmed Norwegian farmer dead in front of his wife. Lieutenant Chevannes, Tanner’s French rival, reflects so clearly the stereotypical British view of the French that he may as well be wearing a beret and a string of onions whilst humming the Marseillaise and smelling strongly of garlic.

To see this as a criticism, however, would be, I think, to miss the point. This is, and I believe is intended to be, a Boy’s Own story, to be enjoyed but not taken too seriously. On this evidence, Jack Tanner is not a Sharpe for the 20^th Century as Bernard Cornwell’s creation was more rounded in characterisation and his conflicts were as much about his position in 19^th Century British society with its rigid class structure, as they were about his fighting ability. The Odin Mission is Holland’s debut, however, and so maybe Tanner will develop and grow as the series progresses.

Overall, this was fun and easy light reading, just right for the mood I was in when I read it, although had I been in a more thoughtful mood, I may have found it a bit shallow. Maybe the final word ion this is that I have already bought the second Jack Tanner book, Darkest Hour, and am looking forward to reading it when next I am in a light reading mood, although I do feel sorry for poor Sergeant Tanner, whom I fear is going to dragged on a circuit tour of the more unpleasant parts of World War II.

I’ve now finished the four books I chose as part of the Transworld Book Group Challenge and would like to thank Transworld for the opportunity to read some new authors.

Top Ten Tuesday: What's Hiding In The Pile?

2011-11-15T14:24:00.000Z

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from the Broke and the Bookish taps in to our secret need for confession. Yes, my friends, let us stand up and admit to the world what has been sitting on our bookshelves, waiting for us to pull them out and read them.

I know I’m not alone in having two TBR piles – a real one, with real books that I have already shelled out for, and a virtual one, comprising books I want to read but haven’t yet got round to buying. I suppose that the former pile is the one that should cause more guilt as it is a continual reminder of my financial profligacy. It’s also a kind of memorial to bygone short-lived enthusiasms – the collection of books on mathematics, for example – and periodic fits of worthiness – the set of E.M. Forster’s novels gathering dust bears mute witness to this.

Oddly enough though, it’s the aging tail end of my virtual TBR pile that tends to cause me more trouble. A quick scan through my Amazon wish list in moments of boredom will have me thinking, “Why haven’t I got round to this one yet?” or “Ooh, really must read this one soon” before financial prudence takes over or another (metaphorical) shiny bauble catches my eye.

So, anyway, here is a mix of items from my TBR pile that have been wistfully waiting for a while to catch my eye:

1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. This is one of those “Big Daddy” type books that “everyone” has either read or is about to read. I’ve been in the latter camp for about ten years now. My Penguin classics copy sits on my shelves, still looking shop-fresh. Shame on me.

2. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. Doesn’t have quite the same length of tenure on the shelf as Don Quixote but is still a long-term resident. I just know I will enjoy this when I do get round to this…….it’s just that there’s always something more immediately appealing.

3. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. My name is Falaise and I am a wuss. I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed both Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife but I know that sad things are going to happen in The Amber Spyglass and I don’t think I can take it. And, no I really don’t think that is a pathetic view for a grown man to take. Honest.

4. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. This was put on my Amazon wish list in April 2008 and has still not managed to make its way to South West London. I recall I was going through one of my periodic ancient history phases which ended up getting stalled halfway through Caesar’s Civil Wars. One day, I will be back in the mood for some Roman history and then, just maybe, Suetonius will have his day in the sun.

5. Mr Dick or the Tenth Book by Jean-Pierre Ohl. Translated from the French, the basic idea of this novel is that two students become obsessed with Dickens and are trying to discover the ending of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, whilst living their lives through Dickens. I love the concept of this one and it has made it up two floors of my house, from basement bookshelves to bedside table which may mean it is nearly time to open it up.

6. Men of Mathematics by E. Bell. I hinted at a dark passion for maths above and this is pat of the evidence. Why, exactly, did I buy a collection of potted biographies of old mathematicians? Your guess is probably as good as mine and I don’t need a crystal ball to foresee that this one will be staying on the shelf a while longer.

7. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne. The only reason I can think for this still being on the shelf is that it’s a hard back and not well-suited for Tube reading. I’m tinkering with the idea of joining the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen challenge for 2012 that is currently going around the blogosphere, in which event, this will finally get an airing.

8. A People’s Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution by Orlando Figes. This is another one that’s been sitting on the shelf for more years than I care to admit. I’m fascinated by Russia and its history, I’ve enjoyed several of Figes’ other books so why haven’t I finished this one by now? It’s just soooo big and heavy. Like Robert Fisk’s The Great War of Civilisation, this is crying out for a Kindle edition, if only to stop me from getting a strained wrist trying to read it.

9. The Third Reich at War by Richard Evans. The third and final part of Richard Evans’ magisterial history of Nazi Germany is also a denizen of the Falaise basement bookshelves. I want to read it but it’s never quite the right time. Maybe soon.

10. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Part of a Dickens boxed set I bought a decade or more ago, I simply have never mustered the enthusiasm to read it. Don’t know why and I’m sure it’s a dreadful reflection on me but I’ve just never fancied it. It’s the 200^th anniversary of Dickens’ birth next year so maybe I’ll read it then as my homage to the great man. Or maybe not.