The dual narrative works fairly well with both stories being well drawn and convincing. The book delves back into Roger’s past as his defence team try to get behind his own silence on the matter and discover what really happened that drove one brother to betray another. As they do so they uncover a story of love that surprises them and confounds their expectations. The modern day love story that unfolds is perhaps a little predictable but it is good to see a strong female character in charge of herself and the situation, even if she does go weak at the knees for her handsome co-lawyers.

I however, had the unfortunate experience of reading this book in the same week as I read Aharon Appelfeld’s superlative Blooms of Darkness, a book also set in the shadow of the Nazis and one that has just won the author the Independent Prize for Foreign Literature, and deservedly so. Blooms of Darkness is a beautifully written, understated exploration of how people can still live and love even in the most oppressive circumstances. The Things We Cherished is not a terrible book, and in places it is gripping and interesting (it’s clear that Pam Jenoff is knowledgeable about both the historical and legal contexts of the novel), but it is not one that particularly illuminates our understanding of what it was like to live through such terrible times.

Of course, this is a thriller and has no pretensions to being a profound analysis of human nature, but I suppose that in essence I find myself uncomfortable with the fictionalisation of the holocaust when it seems purely to be with the aim of making the stakes of the thriller higher – the betrayal that Roger is accused of is so very terrible because it endangers the lives of so many (fictional) children. We know of course that such things probably did happen as undoubtedly individuals were put in terrible positions and of course authors are entitled to revisit history in whatever way they see fit. However, if holocaust thrillers are to become a genre (and I sincerely hope this is not the case), you won’t find this reviewer reading any more of them.

The arc of Braun’s story is familiar; the childhood abuse by a figure of trust, the resultant shame and torment, followed by escape attempts through the abuse of increasingly potent substances.  Its familiarity needn’t breed contempt though.  Braun is candid without being self-indulgent.  The abuse is covered graphically but briefly, and is never used as an attempt to legitimise Braun’s later behaviour.

From this harrowing beginning, the story takes a turn for Beat Generation country.  Not Burroughs though, but Kerouac.  In the early stages of the book, Braun recounts his speed fuelled, itinerant lifestyle at the time in a manner which is reminiscent of On The Road.  Despite the obvious desire on Braun’s part not to sugar coat or glamorise any part of his story, his amphetamine period is hardly nightmarish, either in terms of physical dependency or social consequences.   The horrors only fully kick in when heroin comes into Braun’s life – and horrors they are.

As many an addiction memoir will attest, the life of a junkie is grimly mundane, an endless cycle of scoring, scrounging, stealing, and occasionally sleeping.  Hammered gets this point across well.  While on heroin, Braun sets everything else in life aside; his mother becomes little more than a cash point to him, and his days become filled with a rinse-and-repeat cycle of dealing and using.  The characters who come into Braun’s life are two-dimensional, with his drug experiences more memorable than the people he shared them with.

The superficiality of supporting characters fits well with Braun’s no-nonsense style.  His prose is uncomplicated, unvarnished.  This, perhaps, is the only appropriate style in which to tell such a grim tale. There is no melodrama, even when the vultures of police and social services begin to circle.  Anyone seeking Shakespearean tragedy should look elsewhere – Braun’s business is solely to report the facts.

The question with any addiction memoir is one of its purpose.  Some chronicle the user’s relationship with their drug of choice; some bear witness to the ways an addict may throw their life down the metaphorical toilet; some are social comment, looking outward more than inward.  Hammered is firmly in the second category.  While we understand Braun’s need to escape, the particular appeal of heroin is never really explained.  While policing policy is dealt with inasmuch as it affects Braun, he readily acknowledges that he, not society, was responsible for his behaviour.

Overall, this is a cautionary tale, meticulously honest, self-aware and un-glamorous.  In a world where a line of coke is a fashion accessory, Hammered is a reminder of the Emperor’s nudity.

The loosed dogs are killers, fighting in a competition reminiscent of a cock-fight to see which can kill the most rats in a strictly timed bout. Nasty stuff, with a lot of money riding on the outcome. Cheating is suspected and late on the opening night a murder is done.

William, on enforced leave of absence because of his sister’s recent demise, is informed that his despised father is in prison, convicted of the crime and due to hang within a few days. His father does not remember what happened or whether he’s guilty or not and asks William to investigate. Torn between wanting his father to hang and wanting to be certain of the truth he does, and delves unwillingly into more of the sordid underside of nineteenth century Toronto.

All the Murdochs have been good: this one beats them all.

Blow on a Dead Man’s Embers

The protagonist of the novel is twenty nine-year-old Rhiannon Davies, known to all as Non. She is the wife of Davey, a man who fought in the war and returned to Non in an almost unrecognisable state: ‘The War has taken her husband as surely as if it had killed him, and returned a stranger to her in his place’.

Non wakes one morning to find Davey crouched beneath the kitchen table, ‘shouldering an imaginary rifle’ and reliving the terrors which he was catapulted into during his time in the trenches. She desperately tries to keep this occurrence from their children – teenagers Wil and Meg from Davey’s first marriage, and seven-year-old Osian, a ‘shadow child’, taken in by the family when his young mother died. Osian shows little emotion and does not communicate with those around him, a fact which Non and Davey try greatly to ignore. Wil is kindly and compassionate, always trying to make those around him as happy as possible, but Meg seems his antithesis in many ways. She is a selfish girl, seen by others as ‘too young, and too cross and too silly’.

The novel has an impressive scope, seemingly aiming to highlight the effects of war upon a multitude of different people. Since the war began, the lives of the Davies family have altered greatly. Davey, once softly spoken and kind is snappy and headstrong on his return, and Non holds many secrets. Her situation is sad at times: ‘… she has no idea how to begin to fight back, how to begin to find the Davey who loved her’, but she is not always a likeable character. She is judgemental of everyone around her and is rather cruel and selfish at times.

A third person present tense perspective has been used throughout Dead Man’s Embers. Although this technique gives Strachan the ability to follow several characters and highlight their thoughts and feelings, Non is the sole focus of the narrative. Other characters are included only when they interact with her, making them flat and unrealistic in consequence. Every last one of the characters seems lacking, not fully developed enough to be believed. A good example of this can be found when one takes Davey’s mother, Catherine Davies, into account. She is referred to by her full name without fail throughout, and is consequently seen as a remote character. This third person perspective is distancing and the reader is unable to know any of the characters because of it.

Strachan evokes a somewhat chilling atmosphere from the outset. She perfectly captures the fear which has so encompassed Davey and the way in which his new persona has affected him and his family. Although the novel starts off in an intriguing manner, the rest of the story falls flat in comparison. Throughout, Strachan does bring in many questions and observations appropriate to the period, including Ireland’s fight for independence, the role of women following the war, and politics. Rather than being expanded upon, however, these elements are merely touched upon and lack any real significance when placed into the story.

Elements of the novel seemed a little far-fetched and do not really work with the story, and the novel’s twists are both unexpected and unrealistic. Some of the included scenes are rather tedious, particularly with regard to the filling in of the census form. The dialogue is not as good as it could be. Some of the exchanges seem a little too modern in their structure and are not reminiscent of the period in which the novel is set. Grammatical mistakes can be found in several places throughout the novel which detracts from the writing style.

Sadly, Dead Man’s Embers does not come alive as The Earth in B Flat does. The writing is not as spellbinding and the story is not as well executed. The prose does not sparkle and seems rather mundane in many instances.

Harstad uses a brief prologue to set the scene. Unnamed NASA officials discuss plans to activate a long-abandoned secret moon base. Their discussion hints at a past disaster. Eager for funding, they come up with a plan to generate global interest – they will hold a lottery to send three teenagers to the moon for one week. This Willy Wonka-gimmick could probably have been better handled. The pros and cons are not debated, when the cons (the teenagers dying in space) are obvious. Nevertheless, once the reader accepts the premise the rest of the novel flows easily.

The three teenagers are Mia (Norway), Midori (Japan), and Antoine (France). The first part of the novel shows the reasons why they entered the lottery, either to promote their fledgling rock band or escape a stifling future or failed love affair. Curiously, none of them thinks too much about going into space, which takes teenage self-absorption to new levels. Nevertheless, the characters are attractive in their own ways, with Mia taking centre stage as the tough, spiky heroine. Occasionally throughout the first section Harstad drops hints of some supernatural evil waiting for them, preparing the reader for the gripping second section on the moon base.

Harstad’s writing, like most young adult novels, is clear and uncomplicated. This makes it difficult for him to really evoke the experience of being in an alien environment like the moon but is an asset when the plot accelerates as the reader just wants to follow the action. Mysterious supernatural forces begin to plague the base.  Harstad refrains from explaining everything, which creates some significant plot holes but also adds to the fear of the unknown. The three teenagers realise the mission has gone wrong and they may not make it back to Earth. Unlike in other young adult novels, the teenagers do not suddenly morph into superheroes. Having stretched the bounds of probability with the premise, Harstad keeps his characters acting in believable ways, which adds to the tension. Gradually, you begin to wonder if any of them will make it back and the novel keeps you guessing until the very end.

The book is attractively designed with black-and-white images from the story (lottery advertisements, still shots of the moon, maps of the base, etc.) interspersed with the text. The publishers describe it as a cross between the films Alien and Moon, which is largely accurate as it combines frightening thrills with a sense of distance and alienation. Adult readers may find its writing too spare and its characterisation rather flat, but I wish this book had existed when I was a teenager.

Opposed Positions

Opposed Positions is the first book I have read by Gwendoline Riley, so it took me a few chapters to warm to her distinctive and quite unique writing style. There is not an overload of detail, it is straight to the point and gives a good, brisk impression of the characters.

However, it is not over explanatory as to when and where events are taking place, and who or what is being discussed at points, leaving me to do a bit of guess-work. The story doesn’t have a clear beginning, middle and end to leave readers satisfied. The narrative jumps a few years here and there, putting Aislinn with new people and in a new place, yet having said this; there would be no story if it all took place in only a month or so. But having warmed to it, I was able to focus on the novel, which I finished within a day.

To write a book about reality and family life and relationships, it is important to make it as realistic as possible. This is something Riley deals with very well; she doesn’t shy away from difficult family situations, for example, Aislinn’s father. He is obviously going to be a very unlikable character from the beginning, but he is still her father, and as we all well know, you can’t change who your family is. You can only avoid them – a tactic Aislinn uses to her advantage.

But perhaps this is not a novel for enjoying but a book exploring people, the difficult situations they must overcome and the various places life takes them to. Opposed Positions is a short book, but it is told thought a fresh new voice and a talented writer. I look forward to future work from Riley, and hope to see a sequel to Opposed Positions one day.

Ramadan has an impressive CV and pedigree. He is a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford and the director of the Centre for Islamic Legislation and Ethics at Doha. On top of that, his family tree includes great-uncle Gamal al-Banna (the liberal Muslim reformer) and grandfather Hassan al Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt). Ramadan’s father was exiled by Nasser from Egypt to Switzerland, where Ramadan was born and raised. Thus, one would think that he is uniquely placed both by education and birth to explain how Islam can positively influence the emerging democracies in the Middle East in a book aimed primarily at Western audiences.

The main goal of the book is “to gauge what role Islam as a reference will and can play at this critical moment in the evolution of the Arab world.” Ramadan wishes to show that Islam can and must be a positive source of values and ethical frameworks in the development of democracy in the Middle East. This is a laudable aim, but Ramadan never comes close to achieving it. He spends most of his time attacking Western preconceptions and never shows us the rich world of Islamic and Arabic social, political, and legal theory. His sentences are calculated soundbites with a halo of engaged intellectualism and an absence of substance. For example:

The Arab peoples, like those of the Global South, cannot and do not want to disregard the cultural and religious traditions that have defined and nurtured them. It is to be hoped that in the name of the shared values to which people aspire – freedom, justice, equality, autonomy, pluralism – they will find, within their own references, the modalities that govern the production and application of these values.

This sounds wonderful, but actually undermines his entire thesis. ‘Freedom,’ ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ do not have universal meanings. Even in the West their meanings are hotly disputed; for instance, does ‘equality’ mean equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? Does a woman’s ‘freedom’ to choose deny ‘justice’ for the unborn child? The declared goal of the book is to investigate the history of Islamic thought on the meanings of these ‘shared values’ but it never does so. Ramadan does a lot of telling about what an Islamic reference might achieve, but very little showing. His cardinal reference points remain strictly Western conceptions of liberty, democracy, and equality.

The only major point that’s well done is the difference between Western and Arabic concepts of the secular state. As Ramadan points out, secularism in the West emerged as a way to defuse religious tensions by separating church and state, the private and the public. In the Arab world, secularism meant control of religion (and everything else) by a dictatorial state. Hence, in Islamic culture, demands for secularism are often equated with tyranny, not freedom, and appeals for secular government from the West do not translate well onto the Arabic street.

This is an interesting point, but it stands out because it’s the only one done with any depth. The reader is mostly treated to meaningless generalities that hint at interesting ideas without ever developing them. Ramadan repeatedly calls for more nuanced, complex, sophisticated understandings of contemporary events and then fails to provide any. One disappointing element was the absence of authoritative sources. His discussion of the aims of US foreign policy draws primarily on opinion pieces by left-wing pundits rather than official documents, scholarly books, or influential articles in major journals like Foreign Affairs. He over-indulges in anti-capitalist rhetoric with no analysis of Middle Eastern economics, the history of trade among Arab peoples, or possible paths to future development that don’t involve engaging in free market activities. Ramadan tends to cite people as authorities because they agree with him rather than because they are recognised experts in their field. Surely he doesn’t let his students at Oxford get away with that?

The book is quite short, and even then is too long for what’s in it. Having showcased his credentials as the anti-capitalist Muslim that Western liberals can love, Ramadan adds almost a hundred pages of his articles and blog posts as an appendix so the editor of The Guardian can see his shorter work. I must say, he does a good line in moral indignation and vague solutions; no one wrings his hands for ‘the people’ so tirelessly. I’m sure he would be a passionate and engaging dinner party guest at soirees across London. Perhaps he will get that op-ed column after all.

Hannibal is not the subject of this book. He barely figures at all. There’s a bit of besieging in Spain and crossing of Alps with elephants and cracking of big rocks with heat and water but even then he barely gets a mention. Hanno the Carthaginian is the book’s subject. Hanno, however, does no besieging in Spain or crossing of Alps with elephants or cracking of big rocks with heat and water, that joy is left to his elder brothers.

Hanno much prefers going fishing with his friend Suniaton to observing his father’s political meetings of very self-important elderly Carthaginian person’s. Narrowly evading this horrible fate they take to the water and quickly catch a respectable load of fish. Pleased with themselves they then consume an amphora of wine between them. And fall asleep. Next thing they know there’s a storm blowing and they’re washed out to sea, barely survive, and finally flag-down a passing ship to rescue them.

They didn’t choose the ship they flagged-down wisely. The pirates, with a penchant for selling Carthaginian things to the Romans and Roman things to the Carthaginians, took them on a rather unpleasant sea cruise to the Roman slave market and sold them, one as a trainee gladiator, the other as a farm slave. You’ll be pleased to hear that on their next visit to Carthage things didn’t go entirely the pirates’ way. After being relieved of various parts of their anatomies, they met sticky ends. Not much help to Hanno and Suniaton though.

The opening description of Carthage is brilliantly evocative of the city and its people at its height, and some of the battle scenes are well done and historically accurate. The fast pace kept me reading through the duller chapters and almost overcame the somewhat contrived plot.

If you like action stories of the ancient world and need commuting reading, this is a good one.

It seems though that Grey can’t stay away from Ana, despite what he told her, and it isn’t long before Ana finds herself getting very close to the sexy man. But while Ana is new to love affairs and sex, Grey is a very troubled man who claims to be incapable of having normal relationships, hates being touched and demands to be in full control of both Ana and their relationship. What Grey wants is a relationship where he will be the Dominant to her role as a Submissive and he’s drawn up the contract to control how that should work. Ana finds herself very confused. While she is extremely attracted to Grey and experiencing great pleasure every time they get together, the idea of being dominated and having to endure pain scares her and makes her want to run away. At the same time another part of her thinks that she might be able to safe this man from the demons that haunt him.
Both Ana and Christian will find themselves experiencing a lot of firsts during their time together, but is their obvious attraction to each other enough to overcome the huge differences between them?

Phew, what to say about this book? From all the attention this author and her books have been receiving lately, I had a pretty good idea what to expect and it is safe to say I got just that. Yes, this is one very steamy story with lots of rather graphic descriptions of far from ordinary sexual relations. Yes, the similarities between Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight and this book are clear. Both books deal with an innocent young girl falling for a man with a very obvious dark-side who she should probably stay well away from but is incapable of ignoring. And yes, this book is unlikely to ever win a literary prize.

However, I also found this to be an entertaining story that kept me turning the pages. If you read beyond the sex scenes this is basically a love story about two people who desperately want and need to be together but are being kept apart by differences in their backgrounds and expectations, that they may or may not be able to overcome. I guess E.L. James just uses a different, and rather more graphic than usual, device to point those differences out. While I’m sure there would have been a lot of other ways in which Christian’s need to control Ana could have been depicted, the author has chosen one which, while graphic, also makes quite clear how deep-seated his issues are.

I have to admit that there were a few things in this book that had me exasperated. The references to Ana’s “Inner Goddess” and “Sub-conscious” got old very fast after the first few mentions. Yes, the girl is having a rather lively debate going on inside herself about the sense in having a relationship with this obviously very complicated and damaged man, but do the two sides of that argument really have to have separate identities as if they are extra characters in the story?

I guess there comes a time in any book reviewer’s life when they have to reflect on the standards by which they actually judge a book. Is it literary merit? Is it the quality of words and sentences used? Is it just a question of whether or not the book delivers a good and/or captivating story? Is it a little bit of all of those or does even that depend on the book they happen to be reading? I decided that for me, with this book, judging was to take place purely on whether or not I enjoyed the reading experience. And I did.

Readers can be divided into a whole host of categories. For the purpose of this review I’d like to highlight two; those who enjoy (explicit) sex-scenes and those who don’t. Any reader falling into the later category would do well to steer clear of this book since there are at least as many descriptions of, rather unorthodox, sex as there is overall story. Anybody who enjoys reading such scenes, for whatever reason, will get more than their fill in this story.

This is probably the first time ever that I almost feel the need to apologise for enjoying a book. Objectively there is so much wrong with this book while subjectively, I found myself unable to stop turning the pages and forced to buy the two sequels. I guess this book should be filed under the label: guilty pleasures.

Nabokov’s style is the primary reason to read any of his works, but the concept of Pale Fire is witty and erudite. Nabokov states it clearly at one point: “Man’s life as commentary to abstruse unfinished poem.” The novel revolves around a long poem in rhyming couplets by the deceased (fictional) poet John Shade. There is a foreword by an eccentric editor, Charles Kinbote, then the poem itself, followed by a long commentary on the poem. Kinbote, however, like a lovelorn teenager listening to a song about heartbreak, is convinced the poem is about him and fills the commentary with his outrageous life history. A single word in the poem, such as ‘often’, can be the starting point for one of Kinbote’s memories: “Often, almost nightly, throughout the spring of 1959, I had feared for my life. Solitude is the playfield of Satan.”

Kinbote is an excellent comic creation. He is an eccentric, volatile egotist with no self-awareness and an abundance of indiscreet homosexual lusts. It will come as no surprise that he is a European aristocrat in exile. A skit by the university’s drama students portrays him as “a pompous woman hater with a German accent, constantly quoting Housman and nibbling raw carrots.” Upon discovering that he is nicknamed the Great Beaver, Kinbote remarks: “Of course, I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald’s bowtie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers.” In Kinbote’s world, insults are an excuse for self-regard and childish behaviour is worldly and sophisticated. In another age, he could have had a lucrative career as a merchant banker in the City of London.

His complex past and dramatic escape from the fictional country of Zembla are made ridiculous through his camp, melodramatic behaviour. To aggrandise his adventures, he befriends John Shade in the hope his life will inspire an epic poem. When the poem emerges, Kinbote is shocked to find it has nothing to do with him. Undeterred, he steals the poem and reveals his life history in the commentary. The way he bends Shade’s lines to reflect himself is a continual source of amusement.

Of course, the danger with such a plot is that it has no narrative drive. Nabokov deals with this by punctuating the commentary with news of the approaching assassin, who is coming to kill Kinbote but will somehow kill Shade instead on the day he finishes the poem. This supplies some narrative tension and as the commentary is broken into short sections it’s easy for the reader to read just another little bit, and then another. The writing isn’t as lyrical as in Lolita, but the poem by Shade is excellent and demonstrates Nabokov’s astonishing felicity with language.

Overall, Pale Fire’s playful approach raises interesting questions about narrative meaning and the role of the reader. Kinbote abuses the intention of Shade’s poem, but then perhaps I have misrepresented Nabokov’s intentions in Pale Fire? No matter – as Kinbote reminds us, “for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”