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

2,462: HHhH by Laurence Binet

2013-05-13T17:10:00.000+01:00

There is an inherent tension in writing historical fiction where the plot centres around real events and the characters are not just fictional constructs but real live (or, more usually, dead) people. An absolute sticking to the known facts is likely to produce at best a dull story and, more likely an incomplete one. After all, unless the characters have all produced autobiographies, who’s to say what they said or thought at the time. On the other hand, the more the author interposes him-or herself into the narrative the further away from historical and the closer to fiction the book moves until, in the worst case, the story becomes bad history.

This tension and whether historical fiction should actually be written and, if so, how, are the central concerns of Laurence Binet’s semi-autobiographical narrator in HHhH, his debut novel and winner of the Prix Goncourt - for those of you who aren’t familiar with the book the title is the acronym for “Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich”, or “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”, a popular jibe at Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and not known for his intellect.

The narrator of HHhH wants to tell the story of Operation Anthropoid, the plan to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich who, in 1942, was the acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia one of the more disingenuous titles in history as one of his other nicknames was the Hangman of Prague. In brief, two Czechoslovak parachutists, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabcík, were dropped into Czecvhoslovakia as part of a joint British and Czech operation. The two men ambushed Heydrich as he was driving to his office in the morning and, although the attack failed, Heydrich died a few days later of an infection caused by his injuries.

It is difficult to say whether the operation had any practical consequences other than removing one of the most repellent of all the Nazis from the world. Czechoslovakia would suffer under Nazi rule until May 1945 and Heydrich’s death came too late to prevent him from being one of the chief architects of the Final Solution. In any event, the assassination which had been designed to send a message to the Czechoslovak people that Czech resistance was still alive and to bolster the credibility of the Czech government-in-exile, resulted in the death and imprisonment of thousands of civilians as the Nazis extorted massive reprisals on the local populace. The reprisals culminated in the Lidice massacre in which the entire adult male population of the village of Lidice was shot and all but a few “Aryan” children were deported to concentration camps from which few returned after the War. In one of history’s crueller ironies, Lidice had been targeted as the result of a faulty intelligence report, claiming that one of the two assassins had family there.

Binet starts from the position that this was one of the bravest and most significant resistance operations of the War and so the responsibility to the truth of the author is correspondingly great. This gives his narrator the launching pad both for his increasing obsession with telling the story and for his meditations on the nature of historical fiction.

The narrator returns again and again to the ethics of inventing dialogue and scenes, arguing that to do so does the truth an injustice and detracts from the import of what actually happened. Nevertheless as the plot unfolds, he succumbs to the temptation, although from time to time, he plays with the reader by stating his intent to stick to the facts before inventing a scene and then confessing to this, thereby destabilising the narrative and showing us the ensuing loss of certainty in the story.

At times it descends into a kind of post-modernism by numbers effect but fortunately, the points he is making are generally interesting enough for him to get away with it. He discourses on the level of detail that it is necessary to include and whether minor descriptive details are valid, even if assumed or not verified. His narrator also veers off at various points to mention and criticise other books dealing with Operation Anthropoid specifically and historical events more generally. One particular attack on Robert Litell’s The Kindly Ones smacks a little too much of personal malice and actually detracts from his overall points.

It’s fair to say that the ideas and the historical story are the thing with HHhH and some of the dialogue and narrative is a bit wooden and, dare I say it, cheesy. Binet’s style when recounting events relating to the Holocaust and the death camps jars as being a bit insouciant and matter of fact for the subject matter - I suppose this might even be a deliberate technique to increase the reader’s discomfort as Binet tries so hard to play with the historical fiction form.

Nevertheless, with all the above caveats I couldn’t put HHhH down. He paces the action and the denouement of the operation nicely and the balance between the meta-fictional parts and the realist narrative works really well. I have to confess that I still can’t decide whether this is a great modern novel or a piece of post-modernism lite but I thoroughly enjoyed both elements of the book and would highly recommend it - I think it will be read for a long, long time to come. Full marks also to the translator, Sam Taylor.

For other bloggers' reviews of HHhH, please take a visit to:

The Book Smugglers, 1streading, Cathyreadsbooks, Bookmunch, Rowena Book Shop, Robin's Books, Annabel's House of Books and Winstonsdad's Blog.

If you've posted on HHhH and it's not here, do please let me know if you would like me to link to it.

2,463: The Song Before it is Sung by Justin Cartwright

2013-04-24T10:13:00.000+01:00

I haven’t posted much in a while, largely because work has picked up tremendously over the past few months and I haven’t had nearly as much time to write. I was, however, prodded into action for this post by the publication by The Times last week of the obituary of Clarita von Trott, widow of the late Adam von Trott zu Salz, one of the July 20 conspirators immortalised by a number of books and films, notably Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise.

The Song Before It is Sung is a roman à clef, telling a fictionalised version of the story of Adam von Trott, a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, his friendship with the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and his participation in the German resistance movement that led to his role in the July 20 plot, during which Hitler was nearly assassinated and which resulted in the execution (or murder) of some 4,980 people, many of whom had nothing to do with the conspiracy.

For those who aren’t familiar with the plot, a coterie of mostly aristocratic German armed forces officers and civil servants had, by 1944, become increasingly concerned that Hitler was leading Germany to complete destruction and that, by removing him, the Allies (or at least the Western Allies) would be open to a negotiated peace, thereby salvaging at least something from the wreckage of Germany. A number of assassination attempts were either made or aborted before Claus von Stauffenberg, a staff officer, planted a bomb during a briefing session with Hitler at his Eastern Front HQ. The bomb exploded but, due to its placement and the failure by Stauffenberg to arm a second bomb, Hitler escaped serious injury. The plot began to unravel as the plotters failed to take Berlin over before Hitler and Goebbels were able to reassert control.

Hitler’s vengeance was merciless and violent. Thousands of presumed plotters were arrested and either murdered out of hand or found guilty by a show trial in the Peoples’ Court and then executed. Some plotters committed suicide rather than face arrest. Even Rommel, a peripheral figure at best in the plot and a public hero in Nazi Germany, could not avoid his fate. Given a choice between arrest and a suicide to be covered up as death from illness, he shot himself. The relatives of many of the plotters were also touched by Hitler’s rage. Using Himmler’s concept of sippenhaft, or family liability, wives were sent to concentration camps and children to orphanages.

Von Trott himself was arrested shortly after the collapse of the plot, tried by the notorious Nazi chief prosecutor, Ronald Freisler, and was executed by being hung from a meat hook in Plotzensee prison in August 1944. Prior to that, he had been a member of the German foreign office and during the ‘30s had used his diplomatic cover to try and persuade the British and American governments to stand up to Hitler.

Although the July 20 plot is central to The Song Before it is Sung, the relationship between Ilya Mendel, Justin Cartwright’s fictional Berlin, and Axel von Gottberg, von Trott’s avatar, is the main driver of the book. Although close friends, Mendel is deeply suspicious of von Gottberg’s motives in opposing Hitler. One of the key events is a letter that von Gottberg writes to the Manchester Guardian in the mid-1930s, claiming that Jews are not being treated badly in Germany. This letter causes Mendel and von Gottberg’s friendship to sour as Mendel believes his former friend has become a true Nazi. When von Gottberg asks Mendel to vouch for him on a visit to Washington, Mendel writes to the American Secretary of State, alleging that von Gottberg is not sincere, contributing to the failure of von Gottberg’s mission.

As von Gottberg moves inexorably towards his fate, he behaves with great personal courage and integrity, culminating in his execution. Nevertheless, questions still remain as to his motivation with Mendel coming to believe that he was acting out of an exaggerated sense that he had a mission to save Germany from itself. Depending on your viewpoint, von Gottberg’s story is one of a man finding a purpose and committing to it totally or it’s one of an ultimately ineffectual fantasist.

The historical part of The Song Before it is Sung is confident and full of life, reading in part like a thriller. The parts dealing with the events of July 20 are taut and compelling and Cartwright’s recounting of his trial, contrasting von Trott/Gottberg’s dignity and Freisler’s fanatic ravings is striking. Unfortunately, though, Cartwright uses the same trick as Laurent Binet in HhhH and by several other historical fiction authors and frames the historical plot with a contemporary story whose protagonist parallels in some respect the protagonist of the historical story.

In this case, the contemporary figure is Conrad Senior, a former student of Mendel and the chosen recipient of his papers. A self-confessed “ideas man”, he is at the beginning of the book a bit of a hopeless drifter, caught in a failing marriage to a doctor who has begun an affair with a colleague. As he becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about von Gottberg and writing a book about the Mendel-Gottberg friendship, his marriage breaks up and he seeks solace in an affair with a slightly wild single mother.

Paralleling von Gottberg, it’s possible to view Conrad’s story as one of growth as he finishes his book and begins to get his life back on track or, alternatively, he remains a self-obsessed dreamer. You decide.

The peculiarity of the use of this technique in The Song Before it is Sung is that, although it feels necessary to anchor the historical piece and to give it a meaning beyond just a straight narrative, the contemporary plot thread felt flimsy and a bit limp and it was much less believable to me than the parts of the book set in 1944. I found Conrad deeply irritating as a character and some of the dialogue was stagey and contrived and I am sure this have contributed to me feelings about the book.

I’m also always a bit torn when it comes to the July plotters. They were, on the whole, indubitably courageous at a personal level but I can’t help feeling uncomfortable at praising them as resisters of Hitler. The truth is that they were conservative nationalists of the old Prussian school. They were anti-Semitic as were most of their peers – although they may have seen the Holocaust (to the extent they understood what was going on) as a stain on Germany’s honour, the plight of the Jews was not their motivation. Ultimately, they were most disaffected by Hitler’s military failures and not by the fact that he had started a war and so I’m afraid I can’t see them as moral heroes or symbols of the “good German”.

So, overall, The Song Before it is Sung is a good but flawed book. I can see where the author was going with the structure but believe that the contemporary plot needed to be stronger to balance the excellent retelling of the von Gottberg/Mendel friendship and the events of July 1944. I will, however, definitely read more by Justin Cartwright and would recommend it to readers with an interest in the Second World War.

Other bloggers who have posted on this book include She Reads Novels, To Be Read and Mystic Olive Reads and Thinks,

2,464: The Revenge of Moriarty by John Gardner

2013-04-10T12:26:00.000+01:00

If I were a betting man (which I’m not, largely because I’m too much of a coward to risk lots of money on something I have no control of), I’d wager a reasonably large sum of money that John Gardner (the British spy novelist, not the American literary novelist and critic) will not have appeared on many of the endless “top ten” lists that appear across the literary corner of the blogosphere. I’d probably go further and surmise that relatively few book bloggers have ever heard of John Gardner and that of those who are aware of him, most would know him only for his contributions to the James Bond canon as successor to Ian Fleming, Bond’s creator and yet the former marine, Anglican priest and alcoholic had built up a backlist of over fifty books by the time he died of heart failure in 2007.

As well as his contributions to the James Bond series, which were, to be fair, variable in quality, he created two characters of lasting appeal - the cowardly Boysie Oakes, who is mistakenly recruited into British intelligence as an assassin, and Herbie Kruger, a kind of quasi-George Smiley, whose shabby exterior conceals his true ability.

Of his other works, I’ve enjoyed the “Secret” trilogy, which is essentially a mash-up of a family saga and a fictional history of MI-6 up until the ‘70s, in that it traces its history through the fortunes of the Railton family, a British spy dynasty. The Director, a one off novel about the staging of a production of Othello is also well worth a read.

I’m not going to make any overblown claims about Gardner’s literary merits or where he may or may not stand in the ranks of spy and thriller writers. I think the most telling comment on him that I’ve read is a quote from a Toronto Globe and Mail crime critic, Derrick Murdoch:

"John Gardner is technically a highly competent thriller novelist who never seems to be quite at ease unless he is writing in the same vein as another writer. (He has worked John le Carré and Graham Greene this way, and it's what makes him so well qualified to continue the James Bond saga.)"

Ultimately, I believe that Gardner was a good, but not great, thriller writer, who managed to create two minor classic characters but whose best work is almost pastiche (or, in the case of Boysie Oakes, parody) or, “continuation” if you like. All of which leads me nicely to the real subject of this post.

The Revenge of Moriarty is the second of three novels by Gardner set in the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes. As you might by now be expecting, Gardner does an excellent job of capturing the feel of Conan Doyle without being a straight copy and creates an authentically Holmesian Victorian atmosphere but the real trick, and the thing that makes the novel so appealing is that it is written from Moriarty’s perspective and not from that of Holmes. Indeed, Holmes himself makes relatively few appearances.

The plot centres on Moriarty’s scheme to subjugate the four leading continental European criminal masterminds to his plan to create a pan-European criminal network and, in the process to avenge himself on Holmes, his nemesis, and on Inspector Angus McCready Crow of the Yard.

Although at times, there’s a slight implausibility about the resolution to certain of the sub-plots and episodes, it’s a highly enjoyable read and Gardner maintains a decent level of tension and the altered point of view to that of Moriarty stops it from being just another Holmes continuation story. He also pulls off the neat trick of making the reader almost want Moriarty to succeed, despite being an appallingly evil man, whilst still making Holmes’ ultimate triumph the desired outcome

As I mentioned above, The Revenge of Moriarty is the second in a trilogy and has recently been re-released. Gardner himself in his preface states that, although the book is the second in the series, it can be read as a standalone novel. This is absolutely true as I haven’t yet read The Return of Moriarty, the first in the series. Nevertheless, I did find myself wishing that I had read them in order and there are inevitably some spoilers for those who haven’t.

I was sent this by the publisher, Pegasus Books, via Netgalley and I am very grateful to them for allowing me to read it. It is a fun addition to the Holmes canon and, unless you are a Conan Doyle purist of the most extreme kind, you will enjoy The Revenge of Moriarty if you like Sherlock Holmes.

On a more general note, I do believe that Gardner’s non-James Bond novels deserve a bit of a revival. They are, perhaps, slightly dated but the ones I have read have been enjoyable, undemanding reads and well worth a couple of hours of one’s time, especially if you enjoy a spy novel.

2,465: Among Others by Jo Walton

2013-03-21T06:52:00.000Z

Welcome to the Among Others Blog Tour, celebrating its paperback publication today by Corsair. Written by Montreal-based writer and poet, Jo Walton, Among Others won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2012. So she must be doing something right, mustn’t she?

Among Others tells the story of Morwenna (Mori) Phelps, a Welsh teenager, who has recently suffered a terrible tragedy in which her twin sister was killed and she herself had suffered a bad leg injury. Running away from her home, she goes to live with her father, Daniel, who had left her mother whilst she was a baby. Daniel and his three sisters with whom he lives (and for whom he works) pack Mori off to boarding school in the English countryside.

Mori tells her story in diary form over a period of about 6 months in 1979 and 1980. Being Welsh, not particularly wealthy, part-crippled and totally unfamiliar with the customs and practice of English boarding schools, she becomes an archetypal outsider, enjoying the friendship of only a couple of other outsiders and retreating into the worlds of science fiction and fantasy novels, of which she is a prolific and precocious consumer. Gradually, she finds a mentor at school and a sanctuary in the local book circle where she finds acceptance and a boyfriend.

As this period and geographical setting seems to correspond to Ms Walton’s own background and as she has said herself that Among Others is her most autobiographical work, it would be tempting to view the book as a bit of a roman á clef, a thinly fictionalised version of her own adolescence. If so, it would be OK but not much more than that - Mori is a strong protagonist but there are school novels and growing pains novels aplenty out there.

But that would be a total injustice as there are two elements that lift Among Others well above the run of the mill. It turns out that Mori is not your average schoolgirl. In fact, she has the gift of magic. You see, Mori’s mother is a mighty and evil witch who was responsible for the death of Mori’s twin and is out to get her too. Or is she?

The way in which Ms Walton treats magic and its effects is highly sophisticated. With the exception of one scene where Mori’s new boyfriend Wim claims to be able to see the same faeries with whom Mori appears to be in frequent contact, we only have Mori’s word for its existence. Even the remainder of her family don’t appear to acknowledge that her mother is a witch. So, as the book progresses, the reader is left with a growing sense that, maybe, Mori’s magic is all in the mind. After all, she has been through the trauma of her sister’s death and her own injury. Maybe Mori is retreating into a dream world to cope with this and with the upheavals in her life. The magic we are shown could be explained away as coincidental to events that could have occurred naturally and the big showdown between Mori and her mother at the climax of the book is open to different interpretations. It is even open to interpretation whether Mori's mother is a witch or just a disturbed woman, struggling with her circumstances.

I’m not familiar with Ms Walton’s other books and so can’t say whether this is a theme or idea she likes to explore but it gave the book real depth and complexity. I still can’t decide whether Mori is really magic or whether she merely believes she is.

The second unusual element has been much ballyhooed in the book’s publicity, which describes it as a “brilliant diary of first encounters with great novels”. Indeed, amongst the blurbs from the great and the good of science fiction and fantasy is this, from the acclaimed author, Robin Hobb:

“If you love SF and fantasy, if reading it formed your teen years, if you do remember the magic you used to do, if you remember the absolute joy of first discovering those books, then read this.”

As I mentioned earlier in this post, Mori is a prolific reader of science fiction and fantasy and much of her diary, and hence the book, is taken up with discussion of the various books she has been reading. To a point, it’s fun. I suspect most of the target audience of Among Others will identify at least one book, if not more, that they discovered as a child. Ms Walton also captures the authentic certainty of judgment of the precocious teenager. After a while, though, it does get a bit overpowering and I felt that the amount of time spent expounding on the books she was reading threatened to unbalance the story and didn’t really have any plot function other than to explain why she spent so much time in the library and at the book club and to give some colour to Mori.

All in all though, I don’t think this is likely really to trouble the reader as he or she is more likely to be spotting the books they’ve read and maybe reliving the memory of the first time - I certainly did.

Among Others is an excellent novel that deals with the concept of magic in an interesting and thought-provoking way, making it far greater than a straight “genre” novel. It works as a novel about magic, as a novel of growing up and as a novel about being an outsider.

I’m very grateful to Constable & Robinson for giving me a copy and even more grateful that they are kindly offering to give away three copies of Among Others. So, if you'd like to be in with a chance to win a copy, just drop me an email at 2606books [at] gmail [dot] com

If you’d like to read more about Among Others, please do pay a visit to the other stops on this book tour:

Monday 18th March

The Speculative Scotsman

Tuesday 19th March

Civilian Reader

Wednesday 20th March

Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews

Friday 22nd March

The Book Smugglers

Saturday 23rd March

Jan Edwards

Sunday 24th March

Fantasy Faction

Monday 25th March

Curiosity Killed The Bookworm

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Super Sleuths

2013-02-19T14:36:00.003Z

I wasn’t sure what genre to choose for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday from the Broke and the Bookish, which requires us to list ten favourite characters from a chosen genre but, in the end, I plumped for detective fiction as I am quite partial to a good mystery.

So, eyes down and here we go………….

1. Sherlock Holmes. Even more “Da Man” than Tiger Woods, Holmes is an icon, the archetype master detective who bestrides the genre like a colossus. Can you tell that I like him?

2. Hercule Poirot. I’ve been a fan of the dapper Belgian and his legendary little grey cells ever since I was a young boy, devouring Agatha Christie novels as quickly as I could get hold of them.

3. Father Brown. Another classic detective, although the stories focus more on the human condition and issues of personal morality than on the “whodunit” element.

4. Lord Peter Wimsey. He may be a bit posh but he’s another classic. If truth be told, as with many of the classic detectives, I actually tend to prefer the short stories over the novels (with the exception of Gaudy Night).

5. Commissario Guido Brunetti. The Venice-set novels of Donna Leon are a treat and especially so for the foodie bits and the relationships between the recurring characters. Some of the more recent ones have been a little hit-and-miss as Leon has occasionally focused more on the themes she wants to explore and less on the storytelling. Nevertheless, one of my favourites and one of the few authors whose books I always pre-order.

6. Bruno, Chef de Police. Bruno, the village policeman of St Denis, in La France Profonde, is a relatively new discovery for me but a real joy. Martin Walker’s novels are gentle and ooze with local atmosphere. He is also very good on food descriptions (which, as you can tell, is a subject close to my heart) and on the relationships between the series regulars. If you haven’t read anything by Walker and you like detective stories, you should try one.

7. Dr Siri Paiboun. A 60-something ex-Laotian revolutionary and Laos’ sole coroner in the era immediately following the communist overthrow of the French and royalist regimes, the hero of Colin Cotterill’s series is disreputable, unruly, inhabited by the spirit of a 1000 year old shaman and very, very enjoyable. An easy read, the novels make for excellent light reading.

8. Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Despite the 1990s TV adaptation with the excellent Patrick Malahide, Ngaio Marsh’s aristocratic copper remains out of fashion and, in my opinion, unfairly ignored.

9. Dave Robicheaux. Recovering alcoholic and good old boy from the Louisiana bayou, Robicheaux is the star of James Lee Burke’s phenomenally good series, set in and around New Orleans. They are dark, occasionally violent and absolutely drip with local colour and atmosphere.

10. Tim Cone. Cone is the hero of two books by Lawrence Sanders, set in 1980s. Cone is a scruffy, rough-edged PI who investigates financial crimes in New York. He’s a little unusual but a great character of whom I wish Lawrence had written more.

Argh, this is terrible. I’ve had my ten and haven’t even scratched the surface of my favourite detectives. No room here for the likes of Tintin, Jonathan Argyll and Flavia di Stefano, Hawk and Fisher, Inspector Singh, Hemes Diaktoros, Cadfael, Morse or any of a hundred others. Can we do this again sometime, please?

2,466: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

2013-02-18T15:09:00.000Z

Nominally, The Imperfectionists is a novel set in a failing international newspaper, based in Rome but staffed mainly by expat Americans. Owned by a wealthy but, in the main, absent or dilettante-ish, family, the paper has been allowed to meander its own sweet way through the second half of the 20^th Century, starved of proper investment and singularly failing to adapt to the digital world.

In reality, though, it’s the story of a dysfunctional family, filled with failures, has-beens and eccentrics, held together by the apparently fragile but actually strong bond of the newspaper. Tom Rachman’s excellent first novel gives us eleven slices of the newspaper’s life, held together by a narrative of the paper’s history. It’s funny, sad and a vein of acid runs through it.

I enjoyed the way the separate stories, each capable of their own existence, were entwined with each other through the medium of the characters’ relationship to the paper and to each other - although each story has its own lead character, they appear and reappear through the pages, interfering in or observing the lives of others on the staff.

Rachman’s stories extend beyond the world of the paper into the secret lives and dreams of the protagonists. We see the break-down of marriages, the deaths of careers and the realisation of failure but, underlying all of these, the near addiction of the journalists and editors to their craft, an art that is slowly being killed by the explosion of the internet and the rise of the citizen journalist and blogger.

To give you a flavour of the stories without spoiling the twists in the tale that most of them have, Rachman tells us about the washed up news hack living in Paris, cuckolded by his wife but endlessly chasing that one big scoop that will turn his life around. We meet the American ingénue, wandering around Cairo like a lost lamb auditioning for a minor job with the paper. The paper’s business writer is so desperate to keep hold of her boyfriend that she puts up with him stealing from her. A junior sub-editor is so starved of affection that she ends up stalking a man who kissed her once.

At times, The Imperfectionists reads almost like an elegy for a lost era of journalism. There’s a gentle melancholy that pervades its pages and colours the lives of its protagonists. It’s prevented from slipping into a kind of maudlin “had one too many drinks” tone, however, by a pleasing touch of acid in the twists that accompany each story. I had almost finished it when I suddenly realised why there was an air of familiarity about it. Have you ever read Roald Dahl’s adult short stories such as Switch Bitch and Tales of the Unexpected? Each of those has the same kind of acid and the same kind of twist as The Imperfectionists. I can think of few greater accolades for Rachman than to say that he shows a similar finesse to Dahl in the way he avoids descending into cruelty to his characters for the sake of it - there’s a lovely balance between humour, humanity and sharpness.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Imperfectionists and would recommend it unreservedly.

If you’d like to see what other book bloggers thought of it, try these: Book Diva's Book Reviews & News, Lara's Book Club, Rhapsody in Books, Leeswammes' Blog, Avid Reader's Musings, Literary Lindsay and The Sleepless Reader.

If you have also posted on The Imperfectionists and would like me to link you here, please let me know.

2,467: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

2013-02-12T15:10:00.000Z

For the benefit of those of you outside the UK, January saw two new adaptations of favourite authors of mine hit the nation’s TV screens, courtesy of the BBC. One of them, Blandings, based on the P.G. Wodehouse Blandings Castle stories was, I’m afraid to say, simply execrable and only served to reaffirm my belief that Wodehouse is almost impossible to capture authentically on screen, with only Fry and Laurie’s Jeeves and Wooster having come close.

The other, however, an adaptation of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, was actually quite watchable and drove me to dip into the original stories again to see how faithful the TV series had been (answer: not very, but just about enough). Sitting next to my copy of The Complete Father Brown on my Kindle was my copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes and, my memory having been jogged, I’ve begun to re-read the Holmes canon, starting at the very beginning with A Study in Scarlet.

The first time I read it, getting on for 30 years ago now, I’d struggled with it, finding it awkward and heavy going and, although it seemed an easier read now (maybe because I read the second half in the middle of the night during a bout of insomnia), I still don’t think it’s the best introduction to the great detective as a novel, save that the actual introduction of Holmes to both Watson and the reader is a classic moment in literature.

I can’t help but see a similarity between A Study in Scarlet and “origin” stories in superhero films and comics or introductory episodes in TV series. Although I have no idea of whether Conan Doyle intended at the time that Holmes would be a recurring hero, the book’s main purpose seems (at least in retrospect) to establish Holmes and Watson and to create the tropes of Holmes’s persona. As well as the first glimpses of his extraordinary powers of observation and deduction (including the legendary first meeting of the pair), there is a lengthy internal discussion by Watson of Holmes’s character traits and areas of knowledge. As a detective novel, however, even allowing for the infancy of the genre and accepting that A Study in Scarlet is more influence on the genre than influenced by it, it is, frankly, not great.

For a start, it singularly fails to comply with the accepted rules of classic detective fiction, especially rule number one of S.S. van Dine’s celebrated exposition of those rules:

“1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.”

Not the case here - indeed, the reader is not even introduced to the murderer until Holmes captures him and the religious background that creates the motive for the murders isn't revealed until after the unmasking of the perpetrator.

Now, I don’t actually ever consciously attempt to solve the crimes in the detective novels I read; I much prefer to follow the detective’s journey than to make my own. So, I can forgive this solecism, especially as A Study in Scarlet was written at the beginnings of the genre.

What I find much more annoying, however, is the sudden switch from Watson’s first person narrative to the all-seeing third person narrative of the second part, a transition that also sees Conan Doyle adopt a slower, more descriptive and, let’s face it, duller style when describing the events in the American West that formed the genesis of the murders in England.

Leaving aside the virulently hostile treatment of the Mormon church, this section weighs the book down and acts as a brake on its momentum. It’s interesting to note that if this section were removed and the pertinent facts somehow incorporated into the remaining text, we’d be left with something more like an extended short story or a novella than a full-fledged novel which I would cite as support for my view that Conan Doyle and Holmes are usually more comfortable within the structure and length of a short story than they are in the four full-length Holmes novels.

I was, however, glad to be reminded that Watson is nothing like the dull-witted but loyal friend he has often been depicted as in screen adaptations. Indeed, he is actually portrayed as being an intelligent individual as well as being courageous and decent. It may be that directors and screenwriters are over-zealous in drawing both Holmes and Watson as distinct characters and creating easy identifiers for viewers, but the truth is that both are more subtle than we tend to give them credit for.

Overall, A Study in Scarlet is notable for the first meeting of detective fiction’s leading partnership and for its standing as an influential early detective story but it is somewhat flawed and, I would contend, far from the best of Holmes and Watson.

2,468: Ghostman by Roger Hobbs

2013-02-06T16:19:00.001Z

“There are maybe thirty people on earth who know I exist, and I am not sure if all of them believe I’m still alive.”

I’m not an envious person by nature. I don’t tend to covet things or feel jealous of the success of others or their lifestyle. I am, however, just the teensiest bit jealous of Roger Hobbs, who has produced an absolutely first-class thriller as his debut novel, at the tender age of 24. I would love to have a distinctive and mature writing voice like him. I’d really love to have his originality and sense of structure. And I’d really, really love to have come up with the concept of Ghostman by Roger Hobbs, which was kindly sent to me by Transworld and which will be published in the UK by Bantam Press on 14^th February.

Ghostman (for we never learn his real name) is a bank robber by trade. His particular speciality is becoming invisible by adopting different characters and personas. In fact, he is so invisible that no one really knows who he is. Once the job is done, he vanishes, leaving no traces. No one knows his name, where he lives or even what he really looks like. For much of Ghostman he is known as Jack so we’ll stick with that for now.

The story begins with an Atlantic City casino robbery gone wrong and the robbers either dead or seriously wounded. The brains behind the robbery (known as the “jugmaker”) is a man to whom Jack owes a favour and so he is despatched to find out what went wrong and to clean things up so the robbery can’t be traced back to its planner. But, arriving in Atlantic City, he immediately finds himself watched by the FBI and caught between two crime lords, one of whom is chillingly ruthless.

I’m not going to say any more than that about the plot as I don’t want to risk spoiling it for those of you who are going to read it, which should be any of you who enjoy heist thrillers.

Hobbs has come up with a nice twist in having a “bad guy” as his hero. Jack is a career criminal who is perfectly capable of wounding and killing if necessary. Although he won’t kill unless he has to, he is not some kind of rough diamond or criminal with a heart of gold. He’s cold and amoral - it’s just that his enemies are much worse. One of the reasons this is such a good book is that despite all this, we end up rooting for Jack to win through.

Although there’s plenty of high quality action - car chases, shootouts and the like, all of which are well-paced and judged, the real pleasure is the attention given to the mechanics and tradecraft that Jack employs as a ghostman, both in Atlantic City and in his backstory, which is told in flashback and is cleverly split up through the narrative.

As I mentioned above, Hobbs is a 24 year old college graduate and this makes the believability of the novel even more remarkable. The level of detail and apparent background knowledge would lead one to believe that Hobbs had done some pretty in depth research. Whether he has or not, I totally bought into it.

For those of you who are interested in that kind of thing, the film rights have already been acquired by Warner Bros for almost a million dollars and I can see why - this will make a storming film provided they cast Jack right (i.e. NOT Tom Cruise, for the love of God!)

I haven’t felt so enthusiastic about a thriller in ages - this is absolutely first class and if you read thrillers and don’t buy this, you will really be missing out. Hard-hitting, clever and wildly original, I think we will hear a lot more from Roger Hobbs in the future.

Top Ten Tuesday: Shhhh, I'm having a moment

2013-02-05T16:59:00.000Z

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, brought to us by the Broke and the Bookish, requires us to list ten of our top bookish moments. So, in no particular order……….

1. Christmas with Orwell. I’ve posted about this before here, but one of my fondest childhood bookish moments was waking up in the early hours of Christmas morning to find that Santa Claus had left a stocking containing not only a copy of Animal Farm but also a torch. The combination of surreptitious reading under the covers and discovering Orwell for the first time is difficult to beat. Thanks, Santa.

2. A Day at the beach with Agatha. From the ages of about 10 to 13, I was hooked on Agatha Christie and I can remember one particular summer holiday, in Cornwall, during a particularly “English” summer. My parents bought me a copy of Poirot’s Early Cases (the one with the Affair of the Victory Ball) and I absolutely devoured it while huddling on a chilly beach or sitting in the car on interminable journeys around the South West. I have very fond memories of that holiday and a Christie book still transports me back to a lovely time in my childhood.

3. Other people read Tolkien too. Having loved The Hobbit as a child and then having discovered The Lord of the Rings by half-inching (stealing, for all you non-Brits) The Fellowship of the Rings from my parents’ book cabinet, I soon was completely obsessed with Middle Earth. And then, I went on a prep school trip to Switzerland for a two-week intensive French course. The group from one of the other participating prep schools included a few kids who were into Dungeons and Dragons, which I had never even heard of at the time, and I wound up in a massive argument with one of them about the physical appearance of orcs during the course of which I discovered that he and the others in the group had all read LotR too. I was amazed. Other people read Tolkien? It had never crossed my mind that he could be anything other than my own personal secret. I was half-delighted and half-appalled but the feeling of revelation has stuck in my mind. Rereading this, I must have been a complete nerd. Oh well.

4. Chewing the fat with Hunter. Up until 2006, Charing Cross Road was the home to one of London’s best bookshops. Actually, it was, and is still, home to several of London’s best bookshops but the one I’m thinking of was Sportspages, which did exactly what the tin said and specialised in books about sport and exercise. For me, one of its main attractions was its collection of books and magazines on US sports (of which I am a big fan - Celtics, Dolphins, Red Sox and Bruins if you’re interested). Anyway, one afternoon, I was in there and noticed that Hunter Davies was talking to one of the assistants whom I knew slightly. For those of you who haven’t heard of him, Hunter Davies is, in my opinion, one of the best British generalist journalists and authors of the late 20^th Century. As well as writing the only authorised biography of the Beatles, he wrote one of the most acclaimed books about English football, The Glory Game, and for many years was a brilliant columnist for Punch (which is where I first came across him). I shamelessly inserted myself into the conversation and spent a splendid ten minutes chatting about the then soon-to-be-published autobiography of Paul Gascoigne, which he had ghost-written. Great writer, lovely man, nice memory.

5. Lying for Asterix. I love Asterix and Obelix. Always have done. In book form, album form and film form. Tintin comes a close second but Asterix is my favourite comic strip character. Unfortunately, my parents, being quiet strict on that kind of thing did not approve of comics. I was allowed an educational magazine called Look and Learn (which had one sneaky little comic strip in the middle) and football magazines but no comics. Not the Beano or Whizzer and Chips. Not Spiderman or Superman. Not even Commando or Dandy. But Asterix nevertheless gave me two great moments. The first was on a shopping trip when my Mum offered to buy me a book. The shop had some Asterix books. Not the usual large album format but in a paperback book format, compact and with the illustrations in black and white. I picked up Asterix at the Olympic Games and accompanied Mum to the till, taking care to keep hold of the book until it was time to hands it over to the assistant. And then, dear Reader, unlike George Washington I told a lie. On questioning from the female parent, I successfully claimed that it wasn’t a comic strip but a written Asterix story. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

6. Sneaking off with Arthur Dent. I went to a prep school in a small village with plenty of countryside around it. There was a local drag hunt (no foxes involved!) that sometimes used to ask the school for a couple of volunteers to follow the hunt to make sure that none of the hounds got separated from the pack and lost. One Sunday, a friend and I volunteered and duly set off. After an hour or so (it was a cold autumn day), we decided we’d had enough so we bunked off. Fortunately, my friend lived close by and so we went back to his farmhouse, where, after getting hold of tea and biscuits, he put on a tape recording of some the BBC radio adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a wonderful afternoon and my first introduction to Arthur, Zaphod and Marvin.

7. Getting wrecked with the Inklings. Well not the Inklings themselves, obviously, but with their shades at any rate. The Eagle and Child (or Baby and Bird as it was, ever so wittily, known to us students) on St Giles in Oxford was the pub where Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and friends would convene for beer and the reading of their manuscripts. I used to go there occasionally during my student days and, just occasionally, would get a little thrilled feeling at sitting in the same place where the great men had sat 40 years earlier.

8. Can I bend the rules a little for Lord Peter? I think I’m stretching the topic a little far with this one but here goes. During those same student days, I read all of Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books. Gaudy Night was a particular favourite, set as it was in Oxford and Edward Petherbridge, a wonderful actor, had only recently played Wimsey in a TV adaptation of that novel. I had decided to attend a Hallowe’en party in the guise of Dracula and wanted to do it properly so I hired a heavy black cape from a local theatrical dress shop to go with the evening wear, make-up and fangs. On the evening, I was about to put it on when I caught a quick glimpse of the label inside. On it was written the word, “Petherbridge”. Not a common name, I suspect and so I think I was not acting unreasonably to believe it was the cloak worn in the programme. I have to confess, this really did chuff me and I’m still quite tickled by it now. Odd really.

9. A new family tradition. This is actually a few moments wrapped into one. Every Christmas Eve since she was born, I have sat mini-Falaise on my lap on the rocking chair in our living room and solemnly read her The Night Before Christmas. Although she enjoys it, I suspect I enjoy it more, just the feeling of my over-excited and still innocent daughter snuggled up with me on the eve of Christmas. Very special and I am not looking forward to the time when she decides she’s too old for it.

10. The dawn of a new age. Recently, I decided to see if mini-Falaise was at a stage where she was prepared to start having a longer book as her bedtime story, spread over a number of days. I chose Roald Dahl’s Matilda as my experimental book as she loves the story and is obsessed with the character. Well, it’s been working and I got all choked up the other day when I came home and she demanded “more pages of Matilda” with some force. We’ve nearly finished and she has already decided she wants Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one of my childhood favourites, next.

2,469: 1,001 Book Challenge - Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia

2013-01-31T13:54:00.000Z

Ricardo Piglia’s Money to Burn was billed as a novelistic account of a real-life robbery that took place in Argentina in the 1960s and the ensuing siege of the robbers’ hideout in Montevideo, Uruguay. In summary, a group of four men - Malito, the Blonde Gaucho, Kid Brignone and Crow, together with various hangers-on and acquaintances come together to rob a payroll truck filled with millions of pesos. Their getaway is disrupted when some policemen spot two of them changing the numberplates on the getaway car and, following their escape to Uruguay, three of them are tracked down to an apartment to which the police lay siege for 15 hours. Eventually, the crooks burn the loot before the police finally manage to kill two of the gang and seriously injure the other.

There you have it - a seemingly straightforward crime thriller, if maybe a little spiced up by the fact that it is based on truth. Nothing more to see here, let’s just move along. Only that would be a big mistake because to describe it as I have done above is a little like describing Animal Farm as an everyday tale of farm animals or saying that The Hobbit is about someone going for a long walk.

Piglia uses the factual framework of the robbery and siege with witness statements, official reports and newspaper articles to create a near stream of consciousness that jumps from reportage to impressionism to a quasi-mysticism that comes out when he delves into the broken minds of the gang members and Gaucho and Kid Brignone in particular. It moves at breakneck speed and in a kaleidoscope of imagery that gives it the feel of an adrenaline rush or a drug hit that meshes perfectly with the dependency that the robbers have on almost every kind of narcotic you can think of.

It’s particularly skilful the way that Piglia skates along the edge of chaos and confusion, highlighting the sense of confusion that always surrounds events like the robbery, without turning the narrative into a mess. He jumps around in time and from viewpoint to viewpoint but manages to keep the central thread from getting lost.

He makes an interesting motif of the seeming randomness and casualness of the low-lifes and the flotsam and jetsam of society - prostitutes, washed up singers, shady crooks with links to political extremists - who get caught up in the heist and suffer its consequences. For example, the teenage girlfriend of Crow Mereles ends up being tortured for information by the police and Fontan Reyes, the failed singer, is murdered for his minor involvement.

But, in a sense, Gaucho, Kid, Crow and the rest are as much the heroes of the piece as the villains. Despite their nihilistic violence and their sexual transgressions - rape, under-age sex and prostitution pervade the book - there is a fundamental honesty about their relationships with each other and a clarity of outlook on life that Piglia compares almost favourably with the police and the authorities. These are, for the most part, corrupt, immoral and petty creatures who could even be said to be facilitators of the events through taking bribes and pay-offs from the gang.

And here Crow, Gaucho and Kid get their revenge by burning the loot and thereby both denying their conspirators their pay-offs and share of the booty and, in an environment where money is scarce, they deliver the ultimate two-fingered salute to the society from which they are outcast. Not even their most gruesome acts can prevent the reader from a bit of grudging admiration for their defiance, even as the mob of spectators outside the besieged apartment try to lynch Kid Brignone as, grievously wounded, he is carried from the building at the end of the affair.

In amongst all this, Piglia explores the circumstances and events that have made Kid Brignone and the Blonde Gaucho into the damaged creatures we see and it is here that the writing becomes almost mystical as we get to read the thoughts and memories of the pair and gradually to recognise the strange but genuine love the two have for each other which, although consummated sexually, is more an emotional love.

This is meaty fare and not for the delicate or faint-hearted. It is, however, loud, brilliant, thought-provoking and guaranteed to give a rush. I don;t think this is nearly as well known as it deserves to be or as it would, I suspect, be if the author had been British or American. If you do read it, don't top before the epilogue as there is a cool anecdote about how Piglia came to write it. And, as a final note, it is wonderfully translated by Amanda Hopkinson who , despite a couple of clunky Anglo-Saxon slang words, manages to preserve the spirit and voice of the author.

2,470: 1,001 Book Challenge - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

2013-01-29T12:37:00.001Z

When The Tenant of Wildfell Hall popped up as one of the next five in my 1,001 Book Challenge, I have to confess that I was definitely underwhelmed by the thought of it. This may have been exacerbated by the fact that the Random Number Generator had only just thrown up Claudine’s House by Colette, a memoir by one of my least favourite authors ever. So, having failed to get past page ten of that one, I would have put a big chunk of money (or at least a fiver) on me failing to get much further into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall……….

……….which sum of cash I would have proceeded to lose. No, I’m not going to proclaim that I’ve seen the light when it comes to the likes of the Brontë’s or Austen or that I’ve joined the serried ranks of their fans in blogland but, having lost my Victorian female author virginity (figuratively only, I should point out), I’m prepared to concede that it wasn’t too much of a hardship to finish it and, moreover, I won’t be dreading the next one to come up in the reading plan.

For those of you out there who are unfamiliar with it, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a melodramatic tale of spousal abuse, frustrated love and the abominable marital mores of early 19^th Century England. It is documentary in form, in part epistolary and in part diary.

As told by its main narrator, Gilbert Markham, it concerns a mysterious widow, Helen Graham, who, unannounced, comes to live with her child in part of the run-down Wildfell Hall, a property owned by Frederick Lawrence, a local squire. This being the countryside, her solitary life soon gives rise to all sorts of malicious rumours which Gilbert, having fallen in love with the said Mrs Graham, refuses to believe. Continuing to press his suit, he is rejected and, having accused her of loving Lawrence, is given Helen’s diaries which explain not only the nature of her relationship with Lawrence but also how she has come to be at Wildfell and why she cannot marry Markham.

Without wanting to spoil the story for any of you who have not read it and may wish to do so, it turns out that Helen, whose real name is Helen Huntingdon, is the victim of vicious abuse and betrayal by her husband from whom she has run away to save both herself and her son from his calumnies. Now, what with this being the 19^th Century and all, this would have been scandalous in the extreme as children were considered to be the property of the father and, what’s more, married women were not legally allowed to own property in their own name or to petition for divorce. And, had the knowledge of Helen’s absconding become public knowledge, Mr Huntingdon would have been socially embarrassed, not so much because of his behaviour but more because he would have been seen as having been disobeyed by his wife and as having required her to earn her own living.

Eventually, of course, all ends well for Gilbert and Helen as Mr Huntingdon dies and a chance meeting ends in them professing their love for each other and, ultimately, getting married and living happily ever after, as they say.

On its publication, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an instant bestseller, successfully shocking polite society and it was so controversial that, after the first edition sold out, Anne’s sister, Charlotte, had the reprint suppressed. The book is seen as one of the first feminist novels and, given the way it treats Helen as a character and the way it deals with the legal consequences of marriage at that time certainly supports that view. Indeed, almost all the male characters are either wicked, weak or carry some other character flaw. Even Gilbert, the male hero, is a tad self-obsessed and a bit of a prig.

Even so, the reality is that, other than Helen (who is almost a caricature of a “perfect” woman), the vast majority of the female characters are also a pretty hopeless bunch. Helen’s aunt is continually trying to push her younger female relatives into bad marriages, Eliza (the former object of Gilbert’s affections) is a spiteful little cow, most of Gilbert’s female acquaintances and family are gossips and that’s even before we get into Lady Lowborough, Mr Huntingdon’s lover and a thoroughly unpleasant specimen.

Personally, I believe The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a forthright attack on the egregious marital politics of the time and also an overtly Christian tract, with the excessive piety of Helen being ultimately richly rewarded with a happy marriage, great wealth and the preservation of her son’s good character. By comparison, those who have displayed un-Christian values and behaviour (gluttony, debauchery, slander, vanity, adultery etc.) all seem to get their come-uppances.

It was an interesting light on the prevailing codes of behaviour of the time, both in terms of the explicit sexism of most of the male characters and the complex demands of social intercourse and, I will confess, I was made to keep turning the page to find out what happened next. But, as a novel, it really wasn’t to my taste. As well as the overly-melodramatic tone of the writing and plotting and the too neat and tidy ending, I found the whole premise frustrating and most of the characters cartoonish and one-dimensional.

I suspect I am just too set in my beliefs and too much a product of my own time but I found the behaviour of both Helen and Gilbert to be both unbelievable and incredibly annoying. I struggled with the idea of a woman not being able to move out, initiate a divorce and obtain financial relief. I struggled even more with the part where Mr Huntingdon becomes ill and she goes back to him to nurse him. Really? Even allowing for the period in which the story is set, would anyone really act like that?

Although I can see why it’s a great book to study as there are many themes and issues that can be extracted from it, and although I can appreciate why it is loved by many, it didn’t really do it for me. I’m glad I’ve read it and it has taught me that the Brontë’s are not as unenjoyable as I had feared but I doubt I will ever pick it up again - unless mini-Falaise has to read it at school!

2,471: Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse

2013-01-18T14:06:00.001Z

I do believe that, given the glorious Wodehouseaness (d’you like my neologism?) of Psmith as a character, the Psmith novels comprise a very rum collection. Taking them in order, Mike and Psmith only introduces him in the second half and is really the ending of his boarding school phase. Psmith in the City is the closest Wodehouse ever really got to autobiographical writing (and is by far the best Psmith novel. Psmith, Journalist we will turn to shortly and Leave it to Psmith is as much a Blandings novel as a Psmith novel.

So what is Psmith, Journalist’s peculiarity? On the surface, it seems a typically Psmithian plot. Accompanying Mike Jackson on his cricket tour of the east coast of the USA, Psmith happens to come across one Billy Windsor, editor of a particularly saccharine weekly magazine. With typical gusto, Psmith appoints himself Billy’s assistant, sacks the magazine’s dreadful columnists and sets about transforming the magazine into a crusading investigative publication.

In pursuit of this, Psmith and his new friends begin a campaign against one of the Rachman-like slum landlords and the condition of his tenement empire. This set up leads nicely into a lively series of capers involving boxers, gangsters and other assorted characters. All in all, a worthy Psmith plot and, seemingly, a classic Wodehouse story.

And yet, Psmith, Journalist is unusual. You see, one of the hallmarks of Wodehouse’s work is his steadfast refusal to engage with the real world and real world issues. In many ways, it can even be difficult to put a date on any given Wodehouse book just by reading the text. His last books still inhabit the same golden fantasy England of his first novels. Granted, there is the occasional reference to changing times and the odd character, such as Spode, an explicit dig at Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. But, on the whole, social and political issues are strangers to the pages of Wodehouse.

Apart from in Psmith, Journalist, that is. In this one book, Wodehouse raises and tries to deal with the social ills of slum housing in New York where, even at this relatively early stage of his career, he was spending much if his time. There is one passage in particular, where Psmith and Billy are walking through a tenement, in which even Wodehouse’s light, humorous style cannot disguise the outrage.

And guess what? It doesn’t really work. Of all the Psmith novels, even taking into account their respective oddities, Psmith, Journalist is clearly the weakest. Wodehouse’s talents simply do not lend themselves to serious matters. The outrage is smothered in the writing and he just isn’t able to make the bad guys really bad. So it becomes too un-Wodehousean to be funny and too Wodehousean to be a serious novel.

Unfortunately, there’s more. For someone who spent a lot of time in the US (and who would later live there and take out citizenship), the New York of Psmith, Journalist is strangely unbelievable and even a bit cheesy. It’s inhabitants seem mostly to speak with weirdly contorted accents and, even allowing for changes in social attitudes and linguistic usage, it comes across as uncomfortable and even borderline offiensive.

Of course, Wodehouse being Wodehouse, it’s not wholly bad – funny in parts and with some moments of authentic Wodehouse genius. It’s just not one of his best, although it’s still worth reading, even if only as a curiosity.

2,472: Eight Pieces of Empire by Lawrence Scott Sheets

2013-01-17T17:40:00.000Z

In first part of Lawrence Scott Sheets’ memoir cum reportage of the two decades immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sheets tells of his first visit to the then-USSR in 1987 where, as a student of Russian, he lodged with a couple in one room of a collective apartment in Leningrad. Coincidentally, I was also in Leningrad in the spring of that year.

The difference, of course, is that Sheets was a serious language student who went on to live and work in various parts of the Soviet “inner” empire, reporting on many of the ethnic conflicts and political disputes that arose in the years after Mikhail Gorbachev’s formal dissolution of the USSR on Christmas Day, 1991. Me? Well I was a teenager on a school trip, more intent on ensuring that the hotel bar stayed open long enough for us to get trollied every night than on the internal workings of Russia. And I was never going to become a de facto war reporter.

Eight Pieces of Empire is divided, as the title hints, into eight sections dealing with different aspects of the collapse of the Soviet Union. These include Georgia’s dispute with Abkhasia and then Russia itself, the Chechen struggle against Russia, the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, the new “sultanates” of central Asia and post-Chernobyl Ukraine.

I’m happy to say that I found it a fascinating book and I raced through it. Given the sheer size and complexity of the former Soviet Union, Sheets was only ever going to have been witness to a fraction of its post-collapse life and Eight Pieces is a little like a pointiliste painting, where individual anecdotes sit together to make up a larger picture when one steps back to take an overview of the whole. By telling the stories of people caught up in the post-imperial seizures of the USSR, Sheets has drawn a compelling picture of the FSU’s recent history.

I would point out that most of the book deals with the Soviet periphery and little deals directly with Russia itself. Driven by Sheets’ journalistic assignments, it cannot deal with everything and so there is almost nothing on the wholesale theft of Russia’s resources by Yeltsin’s and Putin’s cronies or about Putin’s rise to power and his gradual undermining of the rule of law and reversion to repression. This is a book that focuses on the warlords of the Caucasus and the new dynasties of the likes of the Aliyevs and the Nurabayevs in central Asia.

It’s also a memoir of Sheets’ life as a correspondent and, compelling as his reporting is, his personal reminiscences are just as fascinating as are his kaleidoscopic group of contacts and acquaintances. It’s also sobering to read of a series of his friends dying as a result of the conflicts they are reporting on or otherwise caught up in.

For, ultimately, no matter how exciting the action seems or how much humour Sheets manages to extract from the situations he finds himself in, much of Eight Pieces of Empire deals with human tragedy, of innocent deaths, of the destruction of homes and the displacement of families. The consequences of the artificial imposition of boundaries and the forced deportations and resettlements ordered by Stalin are still being played out and, without Communist repression to restrict them, ethnic and national resentments have led to war and misery.

There’s not a great deal of hope or optimism here. Most of the conflicts on which Sheets has reported have not really been resolved and there are still more, in places of which we in the West have never heard, that are still to come. Sheets himself has, by the end of the book, grown weary and, maybe, even a little traumatised by his experiences. It is salutary to note that he has given up journalism and is now the director of the South Caucasus Project for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organisation.

I was sent a copy of the paperback edition of Eight Pieces of Empire by the publishers, Crown, for which I am very grateful.

2,473: 1,001 Book Challenge - Chess by Stefan Zweig

2013-01-14T14:51:00.000Z

Last autumn, I was at a conference in Rio de Janeiro (it’s a hard life but someone’s got to do it!) and the main conference dinner was held at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, a rather beautiful 1920s grand hotel, overlooking the beach. On our way up to the ballroom for dinner, I noticed a “rogue’s gallery” of photos of famous guests on the walls of the corridor. Most were recognisable - assorted royals, politicians, Hollywood icons and rock aristocracy - but one picture, a bespectacled late middle-aged man, totally foxed me until I checked the name plate. It was Stefan Zweig.

This acted as a reminder that I needed to get this post done (a reminder that obviously had little effect, given the time it has taken) and was a bit of a curiosity as I was unaware at the time that his flight from the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany had eventually led him to Brazil, where he was ultimately to commit suicide in 1942.

Chess is a novella, published in 1942, very shortly after Zweig’s death. The unnamed narrator is a passenger on a ship headed towards Argentina from New York. Recognising a famous chess master on board, the narrator persuades a fellow passenger by the name of McConnor to play a game of chess against him in the hopes of luring the master into a match.

With this ploy having been successful, the hapless McConnor is being beaten by the master when an unknown stranger approaches and starts giving McConnor instructions on how to play, which result in McConnor being able to turn the game completely around and to salvage a draw from a seemingly hopeless position. The novella then veers off on a tangent to give a potted biography of the mysterious stranger, a Doctor B. from Austria, before returning to the shop and to the two games Dr B then plays against the master and their fateful consequence.

There is at least one, if not two, decent books fighting for space within Chess but, unfortunately, Zweig didn’t seem able to realise either of them. On the one hand, there is a nice psychological mystery, centred on the game of chess itself and on the identity of the mysterious Dr B. On the other hand, there is also a novel examining the psychological and emotional consequences of torture, isolation and obsession, revolving around Dr B’s imprisonment by the Nazis, following their takeover of Austria in the 1930s, and their reprisals against those, like Dr B., who had been close to the Hapsburg monarchy. The obsession part of the mix arises from the tactic Dr B uses to combat the effects of isolation - a tactic I won’t reveal as it is the key plot point in the novella.

Either of these books would have been compelling if Zweig had fully written them and, to be fair, the novella in its published form is an enjoyable read (especially, if like me, you find Nazis and games to be hooks in stories!). There is an authentic air of fear and suspense running through it, stemming from the fear of the Nazis that Zweig would have felt as an Austrian Jew who went into exile in the 1930s and it could also be read as a study of the two different approaches to chess of the master, an apparent idiot savant, and Dr B., the ultimate book-taught player. Nevertheless, it felt almost like a skeleton from which something better could have been constructed.

I should finish by saying that this view isn’t necessarily shared by other, more qualified, readers and many people view Chess as one of Zweig’s masterpieces. I don’t, but can see that his other work could be very interesting to read.

2,474: Ukridge by P.G. Wodehouse

2012-11-29T15:22:00.000Z

Stanley Featherstone (pronounced “Fanshawe”) Ukridge is not the first Wodehouse character who would spring to the mind of a casual reader but he is one of the minor Wodehousian protagonists, like Uncle Fred, whom I count as a secret pleasure. Other than Love Among the Chickens, Ukridge is a denizen of Wodehouse’s short stories, appearing in nineteen of them over the years, of which ten constitute Ukridge.

For those of you unfamiliar with him, Ukridge is a large, untidy kind of fellow who is forever scheming to make his fortune in a variety of improbable manners, without having to go to the inconvenience of actually doing any real work. Whilst waiting for his plans to come to fruition, he survives by sponging off his redoubtable Aunt Julia, a novelist, and various long-suffering friends, notably Jimmy Corcoran, the narrator of the stories in Ukridge, and George Tupper, a well-meaning, if too earnest, member of the Foreign Office.

Ukridge seems both to annoy and charm his social circle in equal measures and, despite his friends knowing full well that he is both impecunious and a bit of a blagger, he never fails to persuade at least one of them to pay for supper or to invest in his latest scheme. He floats through life with sunny optimism, interspersed with disappointment as his best laid plans for wealth fail dismally.

There is much amusement and enjoyment to be had in reading an Ukridge short story and watching how the implausible plan at first seems, against all logic, to be proceeding nicely, before the inevitable happens and he loses everything. There’s no serious message here or exploration of emotional themes, just pure fun.

To give you a flavour of Ukridge’s world, his schemes involve running a dog training college, in which he intends to train dogs to appear in music hall productions and to live off rentals from the music hall owners. This scheme turns to dust when his aunt discovers he has purloined the dogs from her.

Other doomed plots involve him acting as manager to an immensely talented but soft-hearted boxer and a conspiracy to take advantage of an accident insurance policy by having the beneficiary, an acquaintance of Ukridge and Jimmy, deliberately get injured. The plot backfires spectacularly when the chap in question gets run over but, on waking can’t remember the existence of the conspiracy and keeps the payout himself.

Despite Ukridge’s moral failings, one can’t help rooting for him and I would recommend these short stories to anyone who’d like an undemanding but amusing read.

2,475: The Fear Index by Robert Harris

2012-11-20T16:22:00.000Z

I downloaded The Fear Index some time ago as part of an Amazon special offer and I am so glad I did as had I paid full price for it, I would have been quite resentful rather than just mildly disappointed.

Robert Harris is, you see, one of my favourite authors. Other than The Ghost, which is sitting on my shelves waiting to be read (due to a general irritation with Tony Blair, the PM on whom the main character is loosely based), I have read every single one of his novels with pleasure. From Fatherland via Archangel to his Ancient Roman novels, I have found them intelligent, thought-provoking and entertaining. You can almost feel the quality and depth of research and the fully-formed ideas that underpin the plots.

And then there is The Fear Index. Set in Geneva, the main human protagonist of the story is Alex Hoffmann, a cookie-cutter nerd-turned-quant, who has made “a billion, billion-two” from the hedge fund he set up with his partner, another stereotype, this time of a hedge fund manager.

The plot is based around Alex’s new invention, VIXAL-4, a "machine-learning algorithm". To the likes of you and me, that boils down to a computer that trades without instruction and which learns from analysing real time data, not only on markets and trades but on world news unfolding events. The extra twist is that the basis of the algorithm is fear; Alex’s theory is that fear is the strongest human emotion and that trading patterns are driven largely by fear. By analysing the overall level of fear in the markets, VIXAL-4 should be able to predict market movements and, therefore, enable Alex’s firm to make even more pots of cash.

So far, so good. But then, strange things start happening. An unordered antique book arrives for Alex, apparently paid for by him. The entire first exhibition of art by Alex’s wife, Gaby, is bought by a single buyer, humiliating her. The mysterious buyer appears to be Alex, although he claims not to know anything about it. There is a break in at Alex’s luxurious Lake Geneva house. And, more frighteningly, VIXAL-4 appears to be doing things no machine could. Like predicting plane crashes and trading outside the limits that have been set for it.

Alex’s life rapidly goes from bad to worse, losing his marriage and becoming involved with a sexually perverse murder. In the space of a day, he is driven from successful hedgie to a near-madman. It’s actually nice and fast-paced and quite an enjoyable read……..right until the big reveal, which turns out to be massively disappointing and hastily wrapped up. I actually want to tell you all about it as it is one of the main reasons the book disappointed me so much, but I don’t want to spoil it for you, should you choose to read it.

To be fair, nothing Harris writes could be all bad. As I mention above, it is nice and fast-paced and it’s an easy read. He makes a pretty good fist of explaining hedge funds and he manages to create a decent sense of fear and tension. It’s just that there’s so much more he could have done with his premise. It feels as if he hasn’t really thought it all out or that he couldn’t be bothered to explore it in any great depth and then lost interest and tried to wrap it up too quickly. The characterisation too is all a bit glib and cardboard and nothing like his previous books.

It’s frustrating. There is an excellent thriller in here somewhere; it’s just a shame that Harris couldn’t bring it out. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he’s back on form next time.

2,476: Another Time, Another Life by Leif GW Persson

2012-11-19T15:45:00.000Z

For those of you who have read my post on Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End (BSLWE), the first in Leif GW Persson’s “A Story of a Crime” trilogy will, no doubt, be unsurprised to find that this post on its sequel is equally positive.

Having based BSLWE on the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, Persson again blends a real life crime, in this case a siege of the West German embassy in Stockholm in 1975, with his fictional crime, in this case, the murder of a Swedish civil servant in 1989, to create a launch pad for another densely plotted, well-written and slyly humorous novel.

Although Another Time, Another Life also has a complex interweaving of storylines, I believe that it is actually more accessible than its prequel which featured a telescoping of the investigation of a single crime by two separate groups of police. In Another Time, Another Life, the interweaving is between the two different crimes and it is much easier to see how the strands come together. It is much more tightly plotted and is a more conventional read.

One of the features of Persson’s writing that I am coming to love is his cross-pollination of characters from his other work. Although Lars Martin Johansson is the nominal hero of both these books, other characters from Persson’s oeuvre such as the hilariously unpleasant and incompetent Backstrom, who is the anti-hero of his own series of books by Persson. Other characters from BSLWE also make more or less welcome reappearances.

Another Time, Another Life is, at first glance a police procedural style novel, focussing on the nuts and bolts of the police investigation into the civil servant’s murder and featuring beat cop Backstrom, whose ham-fisted and bigoted attempt to turn it into a “gay-slaying” case completely confuses the issue. However, Persson is not “merely” a crime writer and uses the format to explore other issues relating to Swedish society and, in particular, the self-justifying and perpetuating nature of Sepo, Sweden’s “closed” or secret police whose leadership has, fortuitously for the reader, been assumed by Johansson.

What this means is that the plot moves more into political thriller territory by adding an additional layer to Johansson’s investigations: not only is he trying to find the killer of the civil servant but he must also work out who within the Swedish establishment wants the victim’s possible link to the embassy siege to be found or, indeed, covered up.

As this is Persson, we are also given a wry look into the nature of Swedish society and the culture of its law enforcement agencies. Persson doesn’t shy away from exposing the sexist, racist and right-wing tendencies that can flourish in what, from the outside, can look suspiciously like a model society. If it weren’t for Persson’s sense of humour, this could, no doubt, be quite dispiriting. I especially enjoyed the bitter irony of the ending where the appalling Backstrom manages to have his “solution” to the 1989 murder accepted and the murder ascribed to a gay serial killer.

I’m no expert when it comes to Scandinavian crime fiction which is all the rage at the moment but I am a bit surprised that Persson’s novels aren’t better known. They are deeply satisfying and thoroughly absorbing and I’d recommend them highly to anyone.

Many thanks to the publishers, Transworld, for sending me a copy.

2,477: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

2012-11-07T16:20:00.000Z

The Orphan Master’s Son is a wonderfully written novel with a complex and, at times, confusing narrative structure that may not make it everyone’s cup of tea. Nevertheless, and without needing to resort to the flip comment that it is, undoubtedly, the best novel set in North Korea this year, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys an intelligent novel that requires the reader to commit to it.

We first meet Jun Do, the principal actor in the book, in a remote orphanage in North Korea. He believes that he is the son of the master of the orphanage and a beautiful woman who has been transferred by the regime to Pyongyang, the capital. The narrative does, however, leave open the possibility that this is a fantasy created by Jun Do to help him create a sense of identity and, indeed, the nature of identity in a totalitarian state runs as an undercurrent throughout the novel, emerging as a major theme in the second half.

Upon reaching manhood, Jun Do is conscripted into the North Korean armed forces, the fourth largest in the world believe it or not. Orphans, or those like Jun Do who end up being treated as orphans, are given the hardest and most dangerous jobs in the military and Jun Do becomes a tunnel fighter, trained to fight hand to hand in the total darkness of the tunnel system dug by the North Koreans under the Demilitarised Zone.

His toughness and prowess in this most demanding of roles is Jun Do’s first step in a varied career that leads him from tunnel fighting to kidnapping Japanese on behalf of the state and from monitoring English language radio broadcasts on board a trawler to taking part in a bizarre trade mission to Texas.

This first half of the novel is somewhat picaresque and is a collection of episodic stories, a kind of Orphan’s Progress. Jun Do is, largely, carried along by events, conforming to the state’s demands of him and not really questioning things. His identity is given to him by the government and his only real complaint is that people insist on identifying him as an orphan despite his adamant belief that he is not.

At this point, there is a major shift in the structure and plotting of the novel which is quite confusing at first and, I suspect, could alienate many readers. The chapters of the second half of the novel are divided between chapters telling the continuation of Jun Do’s story and chapters written from the viewpoint of the public address systems that continually blast out propaganda to the people of Pyongyang and which tell Jun’s story from an entirely different perspective, highlighting the warped alternative narrative that the totalitarian system imposes on the lives of its citizens. The shift in structure is magnified by the author’s decision to begin the second half midway through its timeline and to fill in the gaps gradually through the remainder of the story

We are introduced to Commander Ga, a military hero married to Sun Moon, North Korea’s most important actress. However, it soon becomes apparent that Commander Ga is, in fact, our old friend Jun Do. And, most bizarrely, no one other than Sun Moon and her children seems to be aware of this. Although we are slowly told how this peculiar situation has come to pass, it was quire disconcerting and, once we know that Jun Do has killed Commander Ga in prison and assumed his identity, it is a shocking reminder of how a totalitarian regime can alter history and force its citizens to accept lies and deceit.

From here, although the narrative is complex, the basic plot becomes a relatively straightforward one in which Jun Do plots to help Sun Moon and her children escape the madness and oppression of Pyongyang and defect to the USA. The growing assertion by Jun Do of his own ability to choose his identity and fate turns the novel into an existentialist text for me as Jun Do ceases to be a passive acceptor of his life but takes positive action to determine his ending.

In reading the second half of The Orphan Master’s Son, Sartre’s Les Mains Sales came to mind, in which Hugo, the protagonist, having been pretty supine for much of the play exerts his will and lays claim to his existence by rejecting the chance to save his life when targeted by assassins in order to show that a murder he had committed had been carried out for political reasons rather than personal jealousy. Given the option to save himself by accepting the latter, he cries “non recupérable!” (not salvageable) and seals his own fate. In enabling Sun Moon’s escape, Jun Do also shows himself able to claim his own will rather than permanently bending to the will of the state.

Although the soft part of me was desperately hoping for a happy ending for Jun Do afgter all of his hardships, the lack of one did not prevent The Orphan Master’s Son from being highly readable and enjoyable. Although the author had only visited North Korea once, the respected author Barbara Demick, an expert on North Korea, has praised the book for its portrayal of North Korean life. It also says a lot about the barbarity and surrealism of everyday life in the Hermit Kingdom that it is difficult to tell which of the appalling details are factual or the author’s artistic licence.

The Orphan Master’s Son is, by necessity, a dystopian novel, redolent with echoes of 1984. It is also, as well as a novel of ideas, a spy story and a love story. It isn’t perfect - oddly enough, I found the episode set in Texas to be far less believable that the rest of the novel, despite the fact that the author is American - but I believe it is an excellent novel and certainly one of my favourite reads of 2012.

Many thanks to the publisher, Random House, for allowing me to read a review copy from Netgalley.

2,478: The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg

2012-11-05T16:14:00.000Z

The Victory Lab, a copy of which was kindly sent to me by Crown Publishing, tells the story of how academics and computer experts have gradually come to play a major role in the way political campaigns in the USA are run. It features a cast list of political scientists, campaign managers and statisticians who, between them, have come up with a cornucopia of analytical techniques and tools to determine whether you vote, how you vote and, more importantly, how to get you off your sofa, into the polling booth and putting your mark against their candidate’s name.

On the whole, it is a fascinating read, taking a historical view of vote analysis and showing how tools and techniques have been introduced and refined over the years. As is to be expected, there is an emphasis on recent campaigns, particularly those of Bush Senior, Clinton, Bush Junior and Obama and it is the last of those in particular that are of special interest, given that, as this is posted, America will be about to go to the polls to choose between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

Although one of the criticisms of The Victory Lab is the way it jumps from topic to topic without a great deal of connection, one of the key underlying themes is the shift from precinct based analysis, in which all voters within a single political unit are, essentially, treated the same, to the concept of micro-targeting, in which analysts can identify individual voters in otherwise unpromising locations who are worth spending time on. Micro-targeting also allows for very specific messages to be crafted for small sub-groups of voters for whom not all of a candidate’s views may be well received.

Underpinning this shift is, of course, the rise of the computer and of processing power, which allow the analysts to process huge quantities of data through their algorithms, enabling them to measure human behaviour and identify exactly which voters they need to get out on the day, as well as how to do this. The first Obama campaign appears to have been the apotheosis of this approach, using the available analysis to create a kind of mass-participation campaign hitherto unfamiliar to US presidential campaigns. Some of the details of this campaign are truly amazing, including the mind-boggling view of a senior Obama aide that the computer models had become so sophisticated that, for undecided voters, the computer could determine which way the voter would jump even before the voter knew.

What is also notable from the text is how little the candidates themselves appear to be involved. Although they, and their manifestos, set the framework, it seems that the voting models and persuasion techniques operate almost independently, although this impression may be distorted by the focus of the book.

There is also very much of a flavour of an arms race between Democrats and Republicans, with each side eagerly adopting innovations made by the other side and ramping up the money and resources given to this new breed of political operative.

The Victory Lab is a truly fascinating book that I would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in the machinery and process of politics. In a way, it is a shame that I am currently disenchanted with pretty much every British political party as I would very much have liked to deliver a copy of this book to my preferred party. As I suspect the UK is behind the US in this kind of thing, it would be interesting to see how the tools could be adapted to a British general election and what kind of effect they would have on what is likely to be another close fought campaign.

Literary Blog Giveaway Hop - The Winners

2012-11-01T12:15:00.000Z

As ever, it has been a pleasure to participate in the Literary Blog Giveaway Hop, organised wonderfully by Judith at Leeswammes' Blog. As you will recall, I offered two chances to win a copy of one of the books in my list of novels by Oxonians.

The winners are......................

Flip and Lisa May!!

Flip chose Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers.

And Lisa May chose Stamboul Train by Graham Greene.

I have emailed the two lucky winners to get mailing details so that I can have their prizes sent to them.

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Heroines Who Rock

2012-10-30T11:18:00.000Z

After a long absence caused by too much work, too many commitments and just a smidgen of lack of enthusiasm for blogging, I’m back (at least for a while) and ready to engage with this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, as set by the Broke and the Bookish……..my top ten literary heroines.

It’s a sign of the historic male-centric nature of literature (or maybe just my own reading preferences) that, whereas a list of ten literary heroes would just trip off the tongue, a list of heroines has given me much pause for thought and contemplation. It probably has something to do with the books I’ve read or, more importantly, not read - for example, I have always tended to avoid the likes of Austen and the various Brontës. I also believe that, unlike the male hero, for whom there is a philosophical template of the central character who faces challenges, whether physical, mental or emotional and who overcomes them by facing them and doing “the right thing”, there seems either to be a relative lack of female central characters who fit this model (at least until recently) or a lack of a recognisable template. In any event and in no particular order, here is my list of literary heroines, at least according to my lights. One note: although I have nothing against her, I’m not including Hermione Grainger on a point of principle.

By the way, if you haven’t already done so, please feel free to enter my Literary Blog Hop Giveaway by clicking here.

1. Matilda. Confession time: Matilda isn’t my literary heroine, she is mini-Falaise’s first real literary heroine. To me, Roald Dahl’s magical little girl is an irritating know-it-all who could do with a good metaphorical squashing. To mini-Falaise though, she is the girl she wants to be. Play-time in our house currently tends to involve her being Matilda, Mrs Falaise becoming Miss Honey, mini-Falaise’s invisible friend, Lavender and me being relegated to Un-named Child in Matilda’s class.

2. Lady Macbeth. OK, I know this is a little perverse as she is generally held up as one of Shakespeare’s villains and she did, after all, egg her husband on to commit regicide but, hey, what’s a little murder between friends? More importantly to my mind, she was an incredibly strong (if evil) female character at the very beginning of the 17^th Century, when most female characters would have been passive characters to whom events happened. Not something one could say about the Lady.

3. Mary Poppins. She supercalifragilisticexpialidociously makes this list for two reasons. Firstly, her saccharine sweet screen version both keeps mini-Falaise entertained now and again on DVD and, secondly, her less sickly novelistic incarnation introduced the stuffy Edwardians to the idea that children should, just maybe, be both seen and heard from time to time, in contrast to the views of their Victorian forefathers. To be honest, there are times I wish that genie had been kept firmly in the bottle but, on the whole, it’s a good thing!

4. Mrs Justice Phyllida Erskine-Brown. If you are not an aficionado of John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey books (and if not, why on earth not?), this may be a new one for you. Through the series, the young Phyllida Trant survives the tender mercies of a pupillage with, and later marriage to, the weaselly and wet Claude Erskine-Brown, the outdated customs and views of the English Bar of the ‘70s and ‘80s and a number of court room and chambers clashes with Rumpole to become firstly, a QC, later a Recorder and, finally, a High Court judge. Bright and feisty, she also has the advantage of having been played on TV by the lovely Patricia Hodge.

5. Eowyn. Despite my almost unbounded admiration for him, I can’t deny that Tolkien wasn’t so good on the female character side. Not only are they pretty lacking in number, but they’re not exactly heroine material. Indeed, Hollywood had to spice Arwen Evenstar up pretty heavily for the LotR movies to get any kind of gender balance in there. The shining exception to the Tolkienian rule, however, is Eowyn, the hard-riding, ass-kicking daughter of niece of King Theoden of Rohan. Indeed, so tough is she that she manages to kill the mighty Witch-King of Angmar. Yeah‼!

6. Tinkerbell. She may be a little bit spiteful, a little bit prone to jealousy and a little bit flighty but she’s a spirited little fairy and her loyalty to Peter Pan is fierce. I’d much rather mini-Falaise wanted to emulate her than the prematurely-middle-aged and slightly dull Wendy.

7. V.I. Warshawski. If I’m honest, the heavy-handed ‘80s feminism of Sara Paretsky’s series can get a little much but V.I. Warshawski, Chicago’s finest female private investigator, never gets stale. She’s tough, smart and very independent. In short, she rocks.

8. Lyra "Silvertongue" Belacqua. She’s her own girl, she’s sparky and she can use an alethiometer. She knows what she believes and she’s the star of the His Dark Materials trilogy. We like her.

9. Irene Adler. OK, so she’s not really a heroine. In fact, she’s more of a villain. And she only actually appears in one short story. But, tell me, how cool must the woman be who can gain the respect (and even a little bit of love, maybe?) from the cold and, frankly, pretty misogynistic Sherlock Holmes? So she makes this list - after all, it’s my list, my rules.

10. Thursday Next. Thursday gets the nod for the final spot on my heroine’s roster for managing to keep it all together whilst dividing her life between two different worlds, being a Jurisfiction agent as well as SpecOps, having a pet dodo and keeping her marriage going despite the fact that, for at least part of the series, her husband doesn’t actually exist. She takes multi-tasking to the next level. And she’s pretty cool. And unlike Lady Macbeth, Tinkerbell and Irene Adler, she’s unmistakeably a heroine.

Literary Blog Hop Time - Come And Get A Book While They're Hot!

2012-10-29T15:41:00.003Z

Seeing as I’m giving away free books, I’m sure no one will mind that my entry to the latest Literary Giveaway Hop, run by Judith at Leeswammes' Blog, is just a couple of days late. As with my previous hop giveaways, I’m offering each of two of you a book of your choice from the list below. The rules are simple - all you have to do is to read the list, choose which book you’d like to receive if you win and leave a comment below, telling me your choice and leaving some way of getting in touch with you. The deadline for leaving comments is 6:30 a.m. on Thursday 1^st November, the chosen hour being the time when mini-Falaise is likely to rouse me from my slumbers. I'm happy to deliver to anywhere Amazon does! If you haven’t already done so, I’d also recommend you visit the other participants in the hop and see if you can gather up more from this instalment of the hop.

And, so to the list. I was torn between two themes for this instalment - books written by fellow graduates of my old university and books about food. In the end, I’ve gone for the former, in part because Oxford has produced so many authors that it won’t take me much effort to come up with a list of ten and, given the lack of time I’ve had to blog over the past couple of months, time is very much of the essence for me. So, here are the ten books written by Oxonians from which you may choose:

1. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a classic, the film is soon to come out and Tolkien was not just an Oxonian but a fellow Exonian to boot so what more excuse could I need to offer one of the great children’s novels of all time. Really, you should read it; you know it makes sense. I’ll tell you what. Seeing as how, deep down (verrrry deep down), I’m a kind and generous soul, if you’d prefer The Father Christmas Letters by the great man, you can choose that instead. After all, it’s less than two months away now!

2. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Having claimed the distinction of having been at the same college of Tolkien, I’m going to double down on specious connections by pointing out that Mr Pullman is also an alumnus of Exeter College and offering you the first volume of his wonderful His Dark Materials trilogy. It’s even more appropriate for this list as it is part set in Jordan, a fictionalised Oxford college.

3. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Now, I bet you were thinking I’d put C.S. Lewis, Tolkien’s fellow Inkling, into this list but I bet you didn’t think it would be The Screwtape Letters, his epistolary Christian novel, in which Screwtape gives a novice devil, Wormwood, a set of advice on how to tempt human beings into sin.

4. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Really straining my claims to fame, Evelyn Waugh and I were at the same prep school, albeit several decades apart. Brideshead is probably his best-known novel but, if truth be told, is neither the best nor my favourite of his works. Nevertheless, sticking with the Oxonian theme, feel free to choose it. But, if you prefer, you can go for the Sword of Honour trilogy or Scoop, both, in my humble opinion, much better novels.

5. Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. A Lord Peter Wimsey detective novel set in Oxford, this fits right into my theme as well as being a favourite of mine. It’s a good one, trust me.

6. The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. Apparently this was his only novel and a pretty good one at that.

7. Stamboul Train by Graham Greene. Although nominally a novel, it’s really a collection of linked short stories, telling the tales of a number of passengers on a trip on the Orient Express. It’s also one of my favourite Greene books.

8. The Wimbledon Poisoner by Nigel Williams. A hilarious novel about a solicitor from Wimbledon who decides to poison his wife, with unexpected consequences, I can thoroughly recommend this one.

9. The Secret Pilgrim by John le Carré. The structure of this novel is that of a series of reminiscences by Ned, a former senior member of the Circus, le Carré’s fictional MI6. Like Stamboul Train above, it’s more akin to a series of short stories. For those who don’t like spoilers, this reveals the identity of the mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and the ending of The Russia House.

10. Watership Down by Richard Adams. Confession time: when my mum took me to see this at the cinema I cried. Real tears and everything. Anyway, it’s a true classic of children’s literature and if, like me, you have the misfortune to be in possession of a small person, you owe it to both them and yourself to introduce them to this…..and then cook them rabbit stew for tea.

Now, you know what to do. Leave a comment below and go and check out these other fabulous giveaways!

2,486-2,479: The Dr Siri Paiboun series by Colin Cotterill

2012-10-15T17:02:00.000+01:00

One of the joys of owning a Kindle is the regularly refreshed £2.99 or less offer on Amazon. Not only does it give one the occasional rush of snagging a book from the TBR list at a bargain basement price, but it also throws up hidden gems that would otherwise slip beneath the radar.

Colin Cotterill’s Dr Siri Paiboun series of detective stories is just one of these. Set in 1970s post-independence Laos, I am genuinely surprised that they are not much better known amongst lovers of gentle, slightly humorous detective fiction. I could probably best describe them as a little bit like Alexander McCall Smith’s No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels but but less gentle and more detectivey and funny. And set in South East Asia rather than Southern Africa, obviously.

Dr Siri Paiboun, the hero of the eight (to date) books in the series is a 70-something, French trained doctor who has spent much of his life as a Communist insurgent in the Laotian forest, fighting first against the French colonialists and then against the corrupt Royalist and US-backed regime. Cynical, wise and not remotely ideological, his hopes of a comfortable retirement in Vientiane have been dashed as the new Pathet Lao government decided they needed a national coroner and promptly appointed Dr Siri, despite his total lack of training as a pathologist.

Unlike most fictional pathologists and forensic scientists, Siri is hampered by the poverty of 1970s Laos and a serious lack of equipment. His team comprises Nurse Dtui, a “larger” lady, hooked on forbidden Thai celebrity magazines and Mr Geung, a Down’s Syndrome adult whom Siri is painstakingly trying to teach to read. The series opens with The Coroner’s Lunch, in which we are introduced not only to Siri and the team but also to some of the other recurring characters in the series - Judge Haeng, Siri’s boss and nemesis, Civilai, a member of the ruling politburo and Siri’s best friend, and Phosy, a police inspector.

Siri also has a secret. You see, his body is occupied by the soul of a 1,000 year-old shaman, Yeh Ming and so he frequently has visions of the spirit world that help him in his quest for justice. This spiritual element, derived from traditional Laotian beliefs form a central theme to the books as Siri doesn’t only benefit from his spiritual alter ego but is often endangered by the evil phibon spirits that are trying to kill Yeh Ming by destroying his physical host - Dr Siri.

As the series progresses, the lives of the central characters develop and new characters join the crew including Madame Daeng, 60-something former spy and the best noodle seller in Laos, and Auntie Bpoo, a middle-aged transvestite fortune teller - yes, really.

Between them, the murders they solve range from that of a Party - member’s wife to the female victims of a serial killer and three young women, each stabbed with an epée - a weapon almost wholly unknown in Laos.

As well as being solidly crafted detective stories, there is an authentic sense of place to them which isn’t particularly surprising as Colin Cotterill has spent much of his adult life living and working in the Mekong Delta region. He also examines the effect of the Communist takeover on the country and the impact of it on the fate of the Hmong, one of the main indigenous tribes and, in Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, he takes the reader on a short but unpleasant trip to Pol Pot’s Kampuchea.

The real joy of the books, however, is the interaction of the main characters and their growth through the series. Siri, Madame Daeng and Civilai, in particular, come across as teenagers trapped in senior citizens’ bodies, with their disrespect for authority and their proclivity for practical jokes.

Having acquired the Coroner’s Lunch from the Amazon £2.99 or less section, I’ve bought and read the remainder of the series in very quick succession and am now in the invidious position of having no more to read until the publication of The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die next year. If you’re a detective story fan and you haven’t tried these, I’d recommend you do so as they are strangely addictive. The full list is:

1.         The Coroner’s Lunch
2.         Thirty-Three Teeth
3.         Disco for the Departed
4.         Anarchy and Old Dogs
5.         Curse of the Pogo Stick
6.         The Merry Misogynist
7.         Love Songs from a Shallow Grave
8.         Slash and Burn

2,487: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dnlop

2012-09-14T14:18:00.000+01:00

To write an outstanding book in one genre may be unusual, to write one that is outstanding in two genres may be rare but to write one that is outstanding in three genres is just a little bit unfair to other authors. Yet, that is exactly what Fuchsia Dunlop has done with the excellent Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, an excellent memoir, food book and travel book.

Fuchsia Dunlop was a sub-editor for the BBC when, having travelled in China, she was awarded a British Council scholarship to study in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. Soon tiring of academia, she talked her way into becoming the first Westerner to be accepted as a student on the three month professional cooks’ course at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine.

Having completed this course, she spent the following years immersed in Chinese food, travelling in Sichuan, Hunan, Xinjiang and Yangzhou, writing two excellent regional cookbooks – Sichuan Cookery and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook - and becoming, almost certainly, the leading authority on Chinese cuisine in the UK.

Food writing needs to make me want to rush out and immediately stuff my face with the kind of food that features in the book and Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper did that in spades, giving me an almost desperate urge to run to the nearest Sichuan restaurant, which, unfortunately, was not practicable, given that I was reading the book on the Tube on the way to work or in the evening at home. Fuchsia Dunlop has the gift of being able both to describe dishes accurately but also to make the flavours and smells leap off the page in mouthwatering fashion. I was particularly gratified that she gave a fascinating description of being taught how to cook fire-exploding kidney flowers, which was, coincidentally, the first Sichuan dish I ever ate, at the great Bar Shu in Soho.

However, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper doesn’t just excel in its descriptions of dishes and ingredients, it is a fascinating treatise on regional Chinese cuisines in its own right, initiating the reader into the very different cuisines and eating habits of the various parts of China that Ms Dunlop travels in, from the spicy, complex dishes of Sichuan to the delicate tastes of Yangzhou and the central Asian cuisine of Muslim Xinjiang. I learned a huge amount from this and, having read this, I appreciated the wonderful recent BBC TV series, Exploring China, even more.

But Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper is not only a fine piece of food writing, it is also a great travel book as she describes and considers the changing nature of China during the years she has spent travelling and working there. She writes evocatively about the speed with which the country has urbanised, tearing down old parts of cities and towns to be replaced with modern, concrete building and high rise blocks. To mention Exploring China again, I was struck by the difference between the description of Chengdu in the early ‘90s in Sharks’ Fin and Sichuan Pepper by comparison to the soulless concrete megacity of 2012, shown on TV.

As well as this, Ms Dunlop talks passionately and unsparingly about how pollution and other environmental issues are affecting China and, in particular, its food resources. She also addresses corruption and the way in which municipal funds are stripped away by local officials from the locals who really need them.

But, underlying the mouth-watering descriptions of food and the fascinating portrait of a changing China, maybe the most profound journey the book describes is that of Ms Dunlop herself. Because, gradually, as the book progresses we see her shuffling off not just the culinary shibboleths of her Western upbringing but also many other cultural paradigms until she finds herself “thinking Chinese”. To illustrate the way in which she grows accustomed to the omnivorous nature of Chinese life, in which almost any animal protein appears up for grabs, there is a very personal section of the book where she describes being at home in England and, upon finding a caterpillar in some salad, eats it to see whether she has left her Chinese eating habits in China. Of course, she finds that eating caterpillar is unexceptional.

By the end of the book, Ms Dunlop appears to be almost split between two cultures in which she paradoxically appears both at home and a visitor. Interestingly, she talks about Hong Kong, that former colonial jewel, as being a kind of decompression chamber for her between her two worlds.

I love this book and have also enjoyed each of Ms Dunlop’s cookbooks and so I am self-confessedly unobjective in writing about it. Its subject matter is also so far within my wheelhouse that two of my family, completely independently, have bought me copies of Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper but, nevertheless, I cannot recommend this highly enough to anyone with an interest in food, travel or China.

A Tale of Two Armstrongs

2012-08-26T17:03:00.001+01:00

The newspapers this weekend have been full of stories about two men who, though not related, share a surname. I am, of course, referring to the two Armstrongs, Lance and Neil. Until recently, both men have represented something noble and uplifting about the human condition and both could, if they were so inclined, lay reasonable claim to the status of icon. But the news of the past few days of Neil’s death and Lance’s disgrace has confirmed one as a hero for all time and the other as a hypocrite, liar and cheat.

Professional road cycling is an incredibly tough sport where races like the Tour de France routinely break strong and highly trained athletes, both physically and mentally. In extreme cases, such as that of Tommy Simpson, the sport can, quite literally, kill. If you are in any doubt about this, just have a read of books like Paul Kimmage’s Rough Ride, an autobiography of a journeyman professional, whose role in life was to do whatever was necessary to assist the stars of his team.

In this light, Lance Armstrong’s achievements appeared to be superhuman. After all, this was a man who not only won more Tours de France than any other man, who had rewritten the record books of his sport and had totally eclipsed greats of the sport like Eddie Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain but he had done all this after having recovered from life threatening cancer and having undergone severe chemotherapy. This was life-affirming stuff, a lesson in the ability of humankind to suffer and to overcome huge adversity. Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation quite rightly managed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to become the second largest funder of cancer research in the US after the federal government.

But even after all of this, he was probably only the second most famous bearer of his surname. Neil Armstrong is, of course, famous for being the first man to set foot on the Moon but he was also a highly skilled pilot who flew almost 80 combat missions in the Korean War before becoming a test pilot and, ultimately an astronaut. Undoubtedly a possessor of Tom Wolfe’s Right Stuff, the grainy TV pictures of his one small step and that hair-tingling commentary are amongst the most iconic images of all time.

A very private individual, Neil Armstrong became a professor at a university in Cincinnati after his moon landing and later retired to a farm in Ohio. His public appearances were infrequent and he did not court the attention that could have followed him everywhere. He was about as far removed from today’s celebrities as is imaginable.

In 1999, on the 30^th anniversary of the moon landing, Armstrong gave his view on what his achievement (and those of his fellow astronauts and the support teams at NASA) meant to the world. He believed that it was significant because it signaled that humankind was not forever bound to the earth but could free its shackles and move beyond it. This view, whilst accurate, was also, as was typical of the man, too understated. His real achievement was to remind us all of our potential to challenge our limits and to do the seemingly impossible. In breaking new frontiers, Armstrong revealed to us the best of our natures.

For Lance, it all started to go wrong in the late 2000s when allegations of performance enhancing drug use first began to circulate. Notoriously litigious, Armstrong was always happy to sue and fiercely denied any wrongdoing, often attacking the character of those who challenged him. He also benefited from the unwavering support of team mates and management and from his power and influence within the sport. But, at the beginning of this year, four of his former team mates unilaterally emailed the USOC to ask not to be selected for the US cycling team at the London Olympics. The reason soon became clear.

In pursuing a federal investigation into doping in cycling, the FDA had forced a number of cyclists, including members of Armstrong’s former team, US Postal, to give evidence. Although the agency had dropped its investigation, the US Anti-Doping Agency had become aware of the testimony of the cyclists and started its own investigation. Knowing that USADA was already aware of their previous testimony, Armstrong’s team mates couldn’t go back on their evidence. USADA determined that Armstrong had been guilty of systematic doping and stripped him of each of his Tour de France titles. Although the worldwide governing body of cycling, the UCI, could challenge this decision, it appears unlikely to do so.

With evidence and testimony continuing to build up against him, Armstrong last week decided not to contest the USADA charges and to accept the stripping of his titles. Let’s be clear here. A man like Armstrong does not quit fighting just like that. Despite trying to portray himself as a victim, his decision can only be seen as a tacit admission of guilt. Armstrong is not the comic book hero his PR portrayed him as, defeating cancer and the cycling competition. He is a cheat and a liar. He is also a hypocrite, having been outspoken in his condemnation of doping.

If I’m honest, if all Armstrong had been guilty of was doping, I wouldn’t have been so angry. The sport of road cycling was rife with doping during the ‘90s and 2000s. Indeed, it is probably true to say that it would have been exceedingly difficult to beat a doped up field without resorting to it oneself. Since Armstrong’s retirement, two of his successors to the yellow jersey of the Tour champion, Floyd Landis and Alberto Contador have also been banned for doping. Landis has spoken eloquently of the environment of the sport and the US Postal team, in which it felt normal and not immoral to dope. I can empathise with this and with the pressure a young athlete must have felt.

What makes me angry are the lies, the hypocrisy and the smearing of those who bore witness against him, such as Michelle O’Reilly, the US Postal team therapist, whom Armstrong called a mentally disturbed prostitute in court, abusing the privilege granted to court evidence. And most of all, the damage he has done to the belief that we, the human being, can really do such amazing things by challenging our limitations.

Which brings me back to the other Armstrong, Neil. It was announced yesterday that he had died, aged 82, after having suffered heart problems. Unlike Lance, he never wrote an autobiography. Unlike Lance, he will forever be, not just an American hero but a hero for humankind, a man who opened our minds to humankind’s potential to open new frontiers and challenge its limitations. Even more wonderfully, by never claiming to be superhuman or special, he showed us that this potential lies within us all. The words of John Magee’s poem, High Flight come to mind:

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
………..
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

RIP Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012