sight reading

Last time I read a novel by Daphne Kalotay, I raved about it.  So my expectations were set fairly high when I picked up her more recent novel recently.  It was published in 2013, but I'm going to call it a new release anyway.

Sight Reading is a novel about relationships, which happens to be set in Boston, USA, and in the context of the classical music scene.  It takes a journey through three separate periods in the characters' lives, slowly unravelling the ways in which they develop, pull apart and come together again.

Nicholas Elko is a talented conductor and composer who is going places.  He comes to Boston with his wife Hazel and their young daughter Jessica in 1987, to take up a new job in the conservatory.  He meets Remy, the young, determined violin student - and they overwhelm each other.  Suddenly, the Elko family is broken up.

The novel is a story of how these relationships adapt over time.  How does a family learn to cope with functioning as separate units?  With sharing custody and the love of a child?  How will Hazel come to terms with the change in her situation which was no fault of her own, and how will she function, forced to remain on acceptable terms with her ex-husband and his new wife for the sake of their child?  What happens when Nicholas and Remy become used to each other and all their flaws?  What happens when they face their own disappointments and failings?

It is also a story that is interwoven with creativity and people who are creative in different ways (but most particularly in music).  As Nicholas gains more and more critical and popular acclaim, he continues to work on his symphony which he knows will be a masterpiece but which never quite seems to become coherent.

In the end, this is a story that explores the complicated meaning of family and how it can expand and contract painfully, but ultimately beautifully.  It explores the way in which art gives voice to and reflects things that words cannot express.

Sight Reading is very well-written and readable, and the denouément comes strongly and smoothly just when it is necessary.  I normally find books with such sudden leaps in timing more difficult to read, but this moved along smoothly and masterfully.  I have to admit, however, that at times I skipped over passages, particularly descriptions of music that I had no way of hearing.

It was nice to see the author trying her hand at a story with less epic drama than her last novel (Russian Winter) but just as much human interest.  The characters were quite well-rounded and vivid, and the story was engrossing.  I liked how the perspectives changed, and you saw how different people misunderstood each other.

Something wasn't entirely there, however.  I wonder if the characters were all too talented and creative?  Is it really normal to only have friends that do interesting and magical things?  I suppose it might be that way if you work in a music conservatory, but it just felt like normal people were missing somewhere...  I also found myself wondering quite often where the story was going, and what the purpose of some of its elements were.  Sometimes this became clear, and yet sometimes it did not.

I do think this was a very good book.  I wouldn't rate it as highly as Russian Winter but that's not saying much, given that I gave Russian Winter my highest rating ever.  It's the kind of book that you won't regret reading, I would think, and it definitely gave me some thoughts to mull over.  I liked it very much.

the cat's table

When I first picked up The Cat's Table, my only thoughts were: what a great cover. I didn't know that Michael Ondaatje was eminent or renowned in any way as a writer. It's only as I've come across a few reviews since I started reading it that it's become clear that this is the case.

And I'm glad I didn't know this, as I was able to read the book without expectations of any kind. As it happened, without being told that I should like the book, I was sucked into it from the start. It's odd, because usually I criticise books that don't have a clear, strong plot arc. And the structure of this is certainly not clear, but it is masterful. Moreover, the writing is amazingly precise and unpretentious while it is also compelling, beautiful.

The Cat's Table is the story of a different Michael, an eleven-year-old boy in the 1950s who crosses the oceans between Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) and London in the Oronsay, to join the mother he has not seen for four or five years. The journey is a mere three weeks - but it is remarkable for the people Michael studies and grows to understand as they sit at what is called 'the Cat's Table', the least important group of diners on board the ship. While Michael is 'bursting around the place like freed mercury' with his friends Ramadhin and Cassius, the journey is having an indelible effect on their lives to come.

I know now that this is Ondaatje's sixth novel. Apparently it is a "notable departure" from his other work. It also has an autobiographical tinge to it - Ondaatje himself took the same journey as a boy - but the writer explains: "Although the novel sometimes uses the colouring and locations of memoir and autobiography, The Cat's Table is fictional - from the captain and the crew and all its passengers on the boat down to the narrator."

I loved the book. It's very readable, very engrossing. The adventures of Michael and his comrades are absorbing and funny and sometimes shocking. I particularly enjoyed Michael's forays into thievery, and the time he and Cassius strap themselves spreadeagled to the ship in order to watch a storm.

This isn't just a list of amusing stories about three disobedient little boys, however. It's written thoughtfully, by an older man looking back and fighting to recover memories and questions from the time. Always, underneath what is going on, is Michael's broken family life, his hidden confusion, and his dislocation from his Eastern home and movement towards the most English city in the world.

The most interesting thing about the book for me was the way it records lessons that the boys learned, subconsciously, about the people that were around them. I loved the introductions to different characters, all of whom were considered with some depth for their most interesting qualities. The intriguing Miss Lasqueti. Mr Hastie, with his tall stories. The beautiful and generous Emily. The deaf girl, Asuntha. Sir Hector de Silva, the millionaire under a curse, travelling to England with a retinue of servants to find a cure for his hydrophobia. Mr Daniels, with his secret collection of plants hidden in the bowels of the ship.

In any case, it seemed to us that nearly all at our table, from the silent tailor, Mr Gunesekera, who owned a shop in Kandy, to the entertaining Mr Mazappa, to Miss Lasqueti, might have an interesting reason for their journey, even if it was unspoken or, so far, undiscovered. In spite of this, our table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting one another's significance. That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

The novel is just as remarkable for its writing, which brings moments before us like photographs or feelings. It is always possible to see through Michael's eyes, and to understand why a moment is beautiful or interesting to him. It is encouraging to read novels that are simply yet beautifully written, readable, unassuming - that don't try too hard to be clever - and still manage to be breath-taking.

It's four stars from me.

the flower to the painter

September is here, and with it a new edition of Halfway Down the Stairs!

See my Surviving History blog post for all my favourites and recommendations.

My contribution to Halfway Down the Stairs this time was a review of Gary Inbinder's new novel, The Flower to the Painter.

Gary is one of our previous authors. His story 'Her Reflection' was published in 'Time', our June issue of HDtS, and he kindly sent me a copy of his novel to enjoy and review.

It's the story of a young American woman in the late 1870s, who is left destitute in Italy after she is fired by the family which employed her as governess. Armed with nothing but her wits, she agrees to impersonate a man in order to apply for a job as an assistant to another American, an author called Arthur Wolcott.

As a woman, her artistic skills were never allowed to be more than "quite pretty", but when Wolcott discovers her talent, it becomes clear that her skills are much more valuable when she is disguised as a man. Wolcott leads her around Italy, France and England, introducing her to influential artists and wealthy patrons, and for a time it seems like she will become the "next big thing".

You can read my full review here.

I give the book three stars.

another lovely novel from Natasha Solomons

If just looking at that cover doesn't make you want to devour this book...

VIENNESE JEWESS, 19, seeks position as domestic servant. Speaks fluid English. I will cook your goose. Elise Landau, Vienna 4, Dorotheegasse, 30/5.

Elise Landau is a daughter, a beloved younger daughter, of an opera singer and a novelist. She loves her home, Vienna. She is also a Jew. And it is 1937. Believing that all her family will eventually be able to leave Austria, she advertises for a position in an English household as a domestic servant.

She arrives at Tyneford House in Dorset with a secret hidden in a viola, and gold chains sewn into the hems of her clothes. She will be housemaid for the enigmatic Mr Rivers and his charismatic son Kit. This novel is the story of her journey into womanhood at the same time as the world moves forward into war and as her parents try to join her in England. "The start of an affair. The end of an era." It's got romance, it's got history, it's got thoughtfulness, it's got setting, it's got joy and sorrow, and it seems to me like it's got everything.

I really, really loved Natasha Solomons' first novel, Mr Rosenblum's List. And so I was very excited to receive this in the post yesterday. Yes, I read it that quickly. It was very unhelpful when I am supposed to be poring over my thesis. Did it have to be so captivating?

Natasha Solomons writes really well. I think it's all in the detail. The book is full of enchanting descriptive passages which I do not skim over, as I normally would (to my shame). If I didn't really consider myself wanting to go to Dorset before, I do now.

The plot is beautifully woven together. I really did not want to put the book down. It's a really lovely, bittersweet combination. Moments of profound sorrow mixed with moments of joy, moments to delight in life. It's another historical novel, like my recent favourite Russian Winter, which works as a story with roots in history, rather than history clumsily turned fictional.

There were a few moments that felt a little laboured, but I almost don't want to mention them, because they really don't matter. The book as a whole is wonderful. It's like something delicious that melts in your mouth.

the absolutist

My grandfather was a conscientious objector in the time of the First World War. He refused to take up arms, but agreed to support the troops, and so he went to France with the New Zealand forces as a medic, and he was wounded at Bapaume, in the battle of the Somme. He didn't really like to talk about it. One of the only things my dad remembers him saying is that he once saw an Allied solider shot for desertion. And that when he got home to New Zealand he went up to the Port Hills, sat on a special seat that had been erected in honour of the soldiers from his childhood school, and cried, because he was the only one of his school friends who had survived the war.

And so John Boyne's new novel, The Absolutist, holds a certain interest for me.

The novel is narrated by Tristan Sadler, a young man who survived the WWI trenches but whose friend Will Bancroft was shot as a traitor when he laid down his arms and declared that he could no longer be a part of the war effort.

Tristan, now twenty years old and living in England again after his return from the war, visits the town of Norwich to meet Will's sister, who grieves for a brother whom her town remembers only with scorn for his 'cowardice'. Tristan grieves for Will too, for the friend who was secretly much more than a friend, while he holds a different secret, a secret of his own actions on the battlefield which will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Tristan's flashbacks to the trenches are rather well done. Of course, in theory, you know that it was horrible. You've been told about the people dropping like flies around each soldier, and the meaninglessness of each advance, and the mud, rats, lice, and gore. But this novel certainly provides you with some moments of insight, knowledge that hasn't quite sunk in or stayed sunken in.

The crisis point for Will Bancroft, the moment of clarity for him, is very, very intense for the reader despite the simplicity of Boyne's writing style. I think John Boyne has done pretty well at describing quite fairly the range of people involved in the war and the effect it must have had on many soldiers - although, of course, how can anyone really know what it was like except the people to whom it happened?

The story of Tristan's past is almost as painful. His family's rejection of him at age fifteen after they discover one of his secrets ... well, it's just horrific. I would like to say the world has come a long way, but I know this still happens.

Despite the strengths of this novel, however, I cannot enthuse over some major elements of it. Roughly half of the book is taken up by the events and discussion of a single day in Norwich, with Will's sister Marian, and to me it feels rather amateur in comparison to the rest of the book. Marian came across as very clichéd to me. She was such a mass of overwrought dialogue that I just couldn't get a clear idea of her as I read. Maybe Boyne is not so good at writing in the past tense he uses here? Perhaps his simplistic language is better suited to description than to records of long conversations? I am unsure.

Also, the deep dark secret Tristan has hidden from everyone, even the reader for most of the novel, did not really work for me. It felt like this plot was trying to be Atonement, on top of being a story of sexuality and a story of conscientious objectors and a story of families and so on and so forth. Perhaps it was just too much at the same time. Again, I am unsure.

So for me this was a very interesting read with some strong redeeming features, but it was also confusing to me - the quality was so variable. About two thirds of the time, I wanted to read it; the rest of the time I had to force myself through. So from me it's two and a half stars.

top marks to Daphne Kalotay

My first impression of Daphne Kalotay's first novel, Russian Winter: Its absolutely beautiful cover. Something about the way a woman in a blood red coat is walking away from the reader along an aisle of trees, almost disappearing into the snow - it intrigued me. I normally feel a little reluctant to read thick books, like this one, but nothing like that on this occasion - I just wanted to start reading. This is definitely a good use of design.

Fortunately, this is a book that deserves the anticipation its cover produced. I loved it. I am so impressed that this is a debut novel. (Kalotay has also published a book of short stories.) There are so many reasons to love it.

Russian Winter is a story set into motion by a jewellery auction in Boston in the present day. Nina Revskaya was once a prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, and now grows old in Boston, still an icon of the dance world. She decides to auction off her extensive collection of jewellery for charity. Unexpectedly, an anonymous donor comes forward with an amber necklace that he claims is from the same set as some of her jewellery. Slowly, an astonishing story unfolds. It unfolds through Revskaya's memories of her life in Stalinist Russia and her marriage to Soviet poet Viktor Elsin, before her defection to the West. This is interspersed with the present-day detective work of Grigori Solodin, the donor, and Drew Brooks, an auction house associate.

It is a fascinating story. It is a historical novel that seems effortless, unlike so many of the genre. It is beautifully researched - as a student of Soviet history, nothing stood out for me painfully - everything flowed as if it were the record of a true story, narrated by someone who lived it. It is the perfect fusion of historical drama with a strong story based around individuals, whose lives take place in a historical situation but revolve around personal relationships. I approve very, very highly. Another thing I really admire is that Kalotay manages to humanise the victims of the Stalinist terror. To give them a fictional face.

It is also a wonderfully-paced story - something that historical novels don't always achieve. I can't remember a single moment in this book in which I wasn't completely engrossed. Most nights this week, I suddenly realised it was past midnight and I should probably go to bed, after what seemed like only half an hour of reading, tops. This is a love story, with a secret. Kalotay masterfully draws out the plot, revealing bits and pieces, in this work of literary detection. She also manages to weave in some compelling sub-plots in a completely satisfying way, such as the personal lives of Grigori and Drew. There are clues from the beginning about what is coming, and yet contradictions emerge - finally, the end completes everything, even as it turns some expectations upside down. It is incredibly satisfying, and very enjoyable.

Kalotay also writes really well, without any sort of pretension but with skill and fluency. It is a very readable novel. Her characters are full-bodied, and they are written with perception and sympathy and much imagination. I felt they were real. Her poet, her composer, her ballerinas are all fictional. But I felt like googling them after I had read about them!

This is a must-read. I enjoyed everything about it. And so I am giving it my highest rating ever: four and a half stars.

a little coffee shop in Kabul

[Australia/New Zealand cover]

I have just finished reading The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, by Deborah Rodriguez - otherwise known as A Cup of Friendship in the US of A. (An aside: why do books get published with different titles for different locations? I have been trying to understand, and no good reason occurs to me!)

Set in a city which sits constantly in the shadow of the threat of violence, this is a novel based on experience. Deborah Rodriguez first went to Afghanistan in 2001, and stayed on, eventually starting the Kabul Beauty School, as well as her very own coffee house. She married an Afghan man, finding out later that she was his second wife. After she wrote a memoir about her experiences in Kabul, rumours spread that she had, proverbially, Made It, and as plots and threats began to abound, she was forced to leave the country, returning to her native USA.

This book is fiction, but it could only have been written by someone who really knew what it was to live in Kabul as an expat, but had also gained some insight into the life of Afghan women. It is about five women who gather at the coffee house, who become family to each other in an environment normally so stark and unforgiving to women.

Sunny, the proprietor, who worries about keeping her customers safe and about the choice she needs to make between two men in her life. Yazmina, a young pregnant widow who was kidnapped from her northern home and abandoned in the streets of Kabul. Candace, an outgoing American who left her diplomat husband to raise funds for Wakil, a wealthy Afghan philanthropist. Halajan, the sixty-year-old owner of the building, whose secret love affair seems destined to failure. And Isabel, the British journalist, who is beginning to discover her passion for helping Afghan women.

I thought this was a good read. It's very interesting. I feel introduced to a place and to people whom I could never have imagined before, in a way that news stories or imagination alone cannot, and isn't that one of the fundamental purposes of literature? Rodriguez is very sympathetic to the people she writes about - every individual Afghan character is developed and complex and positive in some way - and to the country and the city she is describing. It has moments of beauty and goodness unimaginable in a Western context. And yet, at the same time, the reader is constantly aware of the feeling of restrictedness that life in this city presents, for women, for someone who has done something culturally unacceptable, for Western expats.

It's also a good read in the sense that it promises a rollicking plot, attractive characters and juicy sub-plots. It doesn't fall into the trap of politicising everything. I have to admit, it's no great contribution to the canon of modern literature. The characters sometimes seemed a bit vague, too. So, it has faults. All the same, it's a solid effort, a good novel, an enjoyable and eye-opening read. I would recommend it to anyone who likes chick lit with serious currents. Three stars from me.

Ooh, I almost forgot to mention one of the cool features of this novel. It comes with tips for a Little Coffee Shop themed book-club event, including recipes, which is a great idea, I think. Some of the delicacies on offer are Afghan dishes such as baklava with saffron rosewater syrup, delicate butter cookies, and sweet bread, with drinks idea such as chococino coffee and cardamom tea. They sound exceedingly attractive!

[US cover]

dolci di love

[Australia/New Zealand cover]

Dolci di Love, by Sarah-Kate Lynch, is the story of Lily Turner, a "Manhattan workaholic" who discovers her husband is not only cheating on her but has another family in Tuscany. What does she do? She gets drunk and buys a plane ticket to Italy. She arrives in the tiny town of Montevedova, unaware that she is being watched by a troupe of ancient widows - the Secret League of Widowed Darners - who are planning her happy ending. 

The basic premise is pretty familiar. I don't know about you, but I've come across rather a lot of marriage-in-crisis, hop-on-a-plane-to-Tuscany stories, whether they are rom-coms or chick-lit or finding-myself-memoirs. I thought this might be rather a fun read, but nothing particularly special.

Well, in many ways I was right. This is a fun read. Sarah-Kate Lynch's writing style is gregarious, conversational and rather delightful. It's funny. It's sweet. I was hooked from the very. First. Sentence. Tuscany is brought alive to the page. This is definitely one of the most enjoyable books I've reviewed since starting this blog.

All the same, I was fundamentally wrong when I thought that because the premise was familiar this book couldn't be special. There is much more to Lily Turner than we are first told, and there is more to her cheating husband. This is also a story about the pain of being childless, and the effect it has had on a marriage. As enjoyable as the story is, it is also very thoughtful and actually quite a profound portrait of a character. I am encouraged again in the revelation that literature doesn't have to be highbrow or inaccessible to have depth. I also enjoyed the number of clichés set up by Lynch, like the gorgeous, wealthy and melancholy Alessandro, only to be dashed in pieces to the ground. It's not so familiar a premise after all.

I really enjoyed this book. I was a little disappointed with the excessive tidiness of the ending, so I'm not rating it quite so highly as I would otherwise have done, but I really liked this novel nonetheless. It was a breath of fresh air after the dark and intense weeks following the earthquake in Christchurch and the disasters in Japan - exactly what I needed to cheer me up again. I give it four stars.

[American cover]

fosterling

"A young man is found unconscious in a remote forest. He is over seven-feet tall, his skin covered in thick hair, which reminds onlookers of an animal's pelt. When he wakes in a city hospital, he is eerily uncommunicative.
"Speculation begins."

Fascinated by the myths of the yeti or the sasquatch, and the Maori near-equivalent of the maero, Emma Neale has written this novel, Fosterling. It explores the possibility of an outsider who stumbles into human society, and how humans will respond. Bu, the young man in question, has lived almost his entire life in the lush native forests of South Westland (New Zealand) with his parents, who hid from public view after bringing their adoptive son home from Nepal. Now, he arrives in the city of Dunedin, determined to learn about the world and about his own origins. Unsurprisingly, in the fashion of all classic outsider stories, he encounters difficulty after difficulty, and disappointment after disappointment.

I'm not surprised to learn, after reading the novel, that Emma Neale is a poet, because this book is written beautifully. Her writing style is very lyrical, very flowing, even as it is easy to read. It never jars and it is not at all laboured - no one phrase sticks out disproportionately, but all the sentences come together as a whole that is obviously lovely. It's a gift that can't be taught, I think. And she has it.

I liked the possibilities Neale discusses. I like the way she shows up the problems with our own society or the potential problems of shielding children too much, without ever saying these things out loud or giving easy answers. Her main characters tend to be quite vivid, larger than life, and easy to imagine.

Despite all these strengths, however, something didn't click for me. And it's hard to explain why, because so many of the components of this novel are right on target. Here are some ideas, though.

- The novel doesn't seem to go anywhere. It is, perhaps, lacking the classic story arc in all its strength. Neale spends time building up one part of the story, and one other character as if this is her story as well, and then this part and this character disappear. Other things happen. And then other things happen. And then the novel ends.

- The story switches between narrators every few pages. Much of the time it is Bu, and secondary characters, and then sometimes it is an entirely new character who we will never see again. I can certainly understand why Neale has chosen to write the novel this way. If it were all written in third person narrative, we wouldn't get glimpses into Bu's mind in such an immediate way. But if it were all written in Bu's perspective, we wouldn't understand how he appears to other people. So it seems an obvious choice to change narrators reasonably often.

This approach can work. It's a standard tool of classic Victorian authors like Bram Stoker or Wilkie Collins. However, for me, in this novel, it created a disjointed, jumpy feeling, which was especially evident in the ending. Despite the flowing prose, the plot and the structure did not flow well.

Anyway, in the end, although I think this is a novel that is worth reading, for its prose, for its characters, for its ideas, it is not entirely successful in the end. I am a little bit sad about this, because it seemed so promising. So I have given it two and a half stars.

overcoat inspiration

My review of Sue Orr's From Under the Overcoat is now posted on Halfway Down the Stairs. If I have to take it down I will re-post it on here! (I've been naughty and made a late addition to the March issue - hopefully my co-editors will not object!)

This is a short story collection that I loved - both for its interesting inspiration and its fulfilment in ten short stories. Find all the details of my love for it on HDtS. My one minor gripe with it is that almost all of its stories are called 'New Zealand stories' - however, they are all set in the North Island. As a southerner, I object!

However, parochialism aside, this is a really enjoyable collection of stories, and I recommend it highly. I give it four stars.

the swimmer

I have just finished reading Roma Tearne's new novel, The Swimmer. I am intending to write a full review for Halfway Down the Stairs, which I will link to at the start of March, so I will keep this brief, but I want to say something about it now.

That something is: This is a lovely, absorbing book. I came out of it feeling a little overwhelmed, and caught up in the lives of a few people who happen to be fictional but who could quite easily be real, I suspect.

It is the story of a man and a woman from very different backgrounds who meet in a small English village - one a refugee and illegal immigrant, one an acclaimed poet - and fall in love. It is also the story of a mother, dealing with loss, and later a daughter, dealing with unexplained history as well as her own loss. The three female narrators intertwine, but it is not for me to show you how. I can only recommend that you read this book. It's not a beach read, it is eye-opening, it engages with politics and difference and hate and resentment and distrust - but it isn't horrible. It is based around strong human relationships and sympathetic characters.

I give it three and a half stars.

birthday sisters

The Good Daughters, by Joyce Maynard, is a story of two girls from New Hampshire who were born on the same day to very different families - 'birthday sisters', says one of their mothers. The book follows Ruth Plank, the daughter of a farmer, and Dana Dickerson, daughter of an artist and an unreliable optimist, through their lives and through their relationships, which diverge, intertwine, back and forth. They are very different women, but they share a sense of displacement in their families. This book chronicles their gradual journey to an understanding of their roots.

Warning: This review will not contain spoilers, but it necessarily hints at the direction of the novel.

This is a very readable book. It's written fluently and well. It is nice, unpretentious writing. It has no moments of brilliance, to be honest, but perhaps more importantly, it doesn't have any moments that grind against the reader's ears. The story switches between its two narrators often, and builds up some momentum, giving it a pace that is easy to get caught up in. It is the sort of book which could be a good beach-read for many, many people. It's not a BAD book, and for this reason, I don't want to be too mean...

But...

I just didn't really enjoy it. I wish I could say that I did, but it never really grabbed me.

These are the reasons:

1. The story meanders along through fifty or sixty years of Ruth and Dana's lives, working itself slowly towards a big, shocking denouément which would be completely satisfactory - if it weren't for the fact that it was obvious right from the beginning of the novel what the shocking hidden truth is.
It's probable that Maynard intended this. I can recognise that. But I still think this doesn't work well. The foreshadowing is too overwhelming; there is nothing to look forward to.

2. For some reason, Ruth was much more interesting as a narrator than Dana. I feel that this shouldn't be the case, when the narration is shared between them equally.

3. The ending, after the denouément, seems way too neat, and so it is a little disappointing after all the untidiness of their lives up to that point.

4. Sex, or coming to terms with sexuality, is a constant feature of the novel, but it mostly seems to feature in a very derivative way. There were a couple of lines in particular which, unfortunately, made me giggle, because they were so similar to Mills and Boon. I don't think that was the effect she was going for.

5. A large number of the characters are irreparably tainted by cliché. Including the narrators, especially Dana.

6. Finally, as a reader who has grown up in a complicated family and knows that blood ties aren't always the be-all-and-end-all of getting along together or loving each other, I couldn't help being annoyed by the implications of Maynard's presentation of the two families in the story. I can't say more without ruining the plot, but I wish she had thought through the relationships she writes about a little more carefully. They didn't need to be so black and white.

To sum up - this is not a bad book. I think a lot of people would enjoy it. If you enjoy Jodi Picoult or writers like her, you would probably like this. I just can't summon up any enthusiasm about it myself. My verdict: one and a half stars.

chasing the devil

I've never read a single thing about West Africa before. I watched Blood Diamond but unfortunately the fact that it was set in Sierra Leone is one thing that I completely missed. I've heard the name Charles Taylor somewhere. What I'm trying to say: When I started reading Tim Butcher's new book, Chasing the Devil, I didn't have a clue what I was going to find.

Chasing the Devil is the record of the trek Butcher took through Sierra Leone and Liberia, following the same path that the author Graham Greene took in 1935 with his cousin Barbara. Greene's book Journey Without Maps is about this trip. When the Greenes went on their journey, Sierra Leone was still run by the British colonial powers, and Liberia was still run by the African-American elite. It was before any of the coups, before the civil wars, before the upheaval, before the unbelievable violence that has taken place over the last thirty years or so. So in many ways it was a very different place. But in many ways it is the same.

The book is not only a record of the expedition. Before Butcher and his travel companion David Poraj-Wilczynski even got going on their long walk, I felt I was given a brief, sophisticated overview of all the crucial facts about the history of these two countries. It didn't feel like I was reading a dry history book, but a racy, action-packed story of tragedy and hope and more tragedy. I became acquainted with Butcher's career as a journalist for the Daily Telegraph and his past experience in this area of the world, covering the end of the Charles Taylor regime and a whole bunch of other things too. I admit to wondering as I began reading this if the trek was ever going to happen, but as the book went on it became very clear that everything needed to be there.

It's also a book that is about books. Butcher really brings the Greenes to life. He delves into a number of other books, too, which have been produced over the last few centuries by other European travellers to West Africa. One of my favourites, and one which I have already put a request on in the local library, is described here:

Perhaps my favourite early Liberian explorer was an adventurous aristocratic Englishwoman, Lady Dorothy Mills, who completed an impressively arduous trek in the mid-1920s, described in her book Through Liberia. It is full of the effortless insouciance of the early white outsider in Africa.
'The climate of Liberia is . . . quite healthy as long as you have a well proofed and ventilated house, and do not go out in the heat of the day, and do not take a stroke of unnecessary exercise except in the very early morning, maybe, or during the hour before sundown to give you zest for your cocktail and cold bath,' she wrote after being carried by hammock for hundreds of miles through the jungle.
In spite of this occasional gaucheness, she was clearly a formidable traveller. She lost her last cigarette papers in a swamp and took to rolling her tobacco in pages torn from her notebook, making roll-ups that would burn so fast they singed her lips. When she ran out of dried biscuits, she ate foie gras with banana, and when she irreparably damaged her sun umbrella by bashing one of her hammock bearers over the head, she took to stuffing the back of her blouse with banana leaf fronds that were so large they would reach above her head to cast shade.

However, it is really about Butcher's trip through the African jungle, following the Greenes, and the trip is absolutely fascinating. Encounters with corrupt officials, encounters with village people, encounters with dancing "devils", encounters with isolated mission workers, encounters with the sinister local spiritualism which has such a firm grip on the Liberian interior... As he writes and as I read, I could almost feel the intense heat the small party of travellers had to deal with, and all their exhaustion.

Butcher writes with humour and grace. This is definitely an enjoyable read, much of the time. But it is also a discussion of some of the darkest, most gruesome deeds that have taken place, whether in the political conflict across both countries or in the much less well-known but equally real ritualised murders taking place in the background.

It's a discussion about the formidable weight of history on these countries, the horror of which is very, very fresh. And I can't say I finished the book with any great sense of optimism (although I'm not saying I came out of it weighed down with depression) - so it surprises me that there is a commendation on the back by Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Chasing the Devil shows the power of good to prevail over evil. Where once there was cruelty and conflict in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Tim Butcher finds grounds for hope. An inspirational account of humanity's wonderful spirit to survive.
As much as I would love to feel the same way, I find myself, with the author, nervous about the future of these two countries. This doesn't mean there is no hope. West Africa has clearly come a long way. Many of the individuals who appear in the book are strong, clever, promising, driven people it's impossible not to like. Any country would be lucky to have them. But the divisions which produced conflict are still there, the strength of the spiritualist leaders remains undiminshed, and corruption pervades the administration.

I don't think I'm selling this book very well. I don't think I can reproduce in one review all the features which I loved. All I can say, to finish up, is that this is the most intriguing book I've read in a while. A really, really wonderful book, about fascinating things. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone. If you're stuck, unable to think of a present for that difficult family member - this is it. (It would also be a great Christmas present for the family members who aren't difficult too!)

I give it four stars. I know I haven't been writing this blog for very long, so you will be unacquainted with my standards, but I assure you that I am determined to give ratings that high only to very good books. Loved it.

zombie romance

The December issue of Halfway Down the Stairs is out! HDtS is a quarterly e-zine which I help edit, and this time around I decided to review Isaac Marion's very new novel, Warm Bodies. This is a novel about a zombie who falls in love with a girl.


As you will see if you read the review, I didn't expect much from it. And there were a few small issues with it that I felt I had to mention. All the same, I ended up loving it and I don't think the issues mattered that much by the end - a surprising experience for me. The sum of this book was more than its parts (although it has some lovely parts).

Definitely check this book out if it's available on bookstore shelves near you. I am no fan of zombie stuff in general, but it's one of those genre books that is accessible to a wider audience than its genre normally commands. It's a fun read, a thoughtful read, and ultimately quite a sweet (though suitably grisly) read. I give it three and a half stars.

It's not coming out in the US until March next year but is already being sold in the UK (and obviously New Zealand, since I got a review copy).

surprise and Audrey Niffenegger

I have to give Audrey Niffenegger credit - she's pretty prolific at producing ... prose. (I am an alliterative machine.) The Time Traveler's Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry, The Three Incestuous Sisters, and now, The Night Bookmobile.

I hated The Time Traveler's Wife, finding it manipulative in its efforts to make the reader bawl - they worked on me but I did not enjoy the migraine that followed! I had high hopes for Her Fearful Symmetry but ended disappointed with it and angry at its characters.

And so I did not expect much from her new graphic novel, The Night Bookmobile. It had the advantage, of course, of being short. Other than that, I did not anticipate enjoying it.

Except that, somehow, I did!

The Night Bookmobile is about a woman who comes across a mobile library as she wanders the streets of her town in the small hours. She enters at the invitation of the librarian, and discovers all the books of her life - everything she has ever read. It is a safe place for her, a place for rediscovery, and she leaves wishing she could stay forever on the night bookmobile. This leads her to make some drastic decisions which I can say no more about for fear of spoiling this whimsical little story.

So yes - I loved it. The artwork is alluring, the story restrained, minimalist, and the words well-chosen and simple. They bring out the pathos of the story much more eloquently than words like "pathos" and "eloquently" might.

I loved the twists and turns of the story. Niffenegger does do twists well, a hallmark of the novels I hated, but perhaps being forced to expend less words on the twists suits her better. It's bittersweet and I'm not quite sure how to feel at the end, but I like feeling this!

Niffenegger's graphics are deceptively simple. I love the way each page is composed. I love the way the light shines off the bald head of the librarian, and the way the lines of the bookshelves swallow you up. I like the way the story is not illustrated obviously, but with little hints at what is happening.

I hereby grant The Night Bookmobile three stars. As many as three because I really did enjoy it. As little as three because part of my pleasure in it was the surprise. I do recommend this book, however, and I expect that I will pick it up fairly often again and enjoy a peaceful fifteen-minute read.

Thanks to Random House New Zealand for the review copy.