tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30696289113579734922024-03-04T00:26:10.673+00:002606 Books and counting..........According to my life expectancy, I have 2,606 more books to read. The countdown starts now.Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.comBlogger260125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-17700089439820444442015-08-26T13:58:00.001+01:002015-08-26T14:01:36.035+01:002,213: Rasputin - A Short Life by Frances Welch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Despite (or maybe because of!) the awful '70s ear worm by Boney M, I, like millions of others have a fascination with the story of Rasputin, the hairy and insanitary but, apparently, sexually irresistible monk who came out of Siberia to wield extraordinary influence over the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia.</div>
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There's something almost Grand Guignol-esque about Rasputin's story, retold vividly by Frances Welch in this short and highly enjoyable biography. It's the story of a peasant from a village in the depths of Siberia who, one day, abandons his wife and children to go and stay in a monastery, from which he emerges as a religious mystic. Traveling to Kazan and then to Kiev, he attracts the attention of high-ranking Russian Orthodox clerics, including the splendidly monikered Theophanes of Poltava, occasional confessor of the Tsar and Tsarina. Theophanes then introduces him to the Grand Duchesses Milica and Anastasia who, buying in to his reputation as having healing powers, recommend him to the Tsarina as being able to help the Tsarevich, Alexei, a haemophiliac.</div>
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Although there is no evidence that he really was possessed of healing powers, Rasputin did actually appear to be able to help with Alexei's illness and he rapidly becomes a favourite of both the Tsar and Tsarina. Taking full advantage of this, Rasputin becomes notorious in St Petersburg for drunkenness and depravity, selling his influence with the royal couple for money and sexual favours from his "little ladies" and is thought to have Svengali-like influence over the Tsar and, especially, the Tsarina, whose lover he is rumoured to be.</div>
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Finally, having made enemies everywhere, he survives several assassination attempts until, on the night of 29 December 1916 (modern calendar), Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri, two former friends and associates of Rasputin, lure him to Prince Yusupov's palace where, having got him drunk, they poison him and then, when the poison seems not to be having any effect, Yusupov and another conspirator shoot him several times before the body is dumped in the river Neva.</div>
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Rasputin's story has all the ingredients of a good, schlocky melodrama - weird mystical villain, sex, violence, aristocrats and royals and it even has its own spooky sting in the tail as, shortly before his death, he wrote Tsar Nicholas a letter, in which he predicted:</div>
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<i>“If my death will be staged by your relatives, then none of your family members, none of your children or relatives will remain alive for more than two years. All will be killed by the Russian people. And I will be killed too. I’m not among the living anymore. Please, I beg you, be strong! Think of your blessed family.” </i></div>
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His death did, indeed, come at the hands of junior members of the Romanov family and, as we all know, on 17 July 1918, less than two years after Rasputin's murder, the Tsar, Tsarina and their five children were murdered by Bolshevik revolutionaries at the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg.</div>
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Of course, it is also this that turns Rasputin's story from melodrama into tragedy for, although blame for the October Revolution can hardly be laid at his door, his perceived influence over the royal family and, in particular, the lurid rumours of a sexual relationship with the Tsarina (and even one particularly virulent story that he had raped the Tsarina's children in their beds) became a kind of avatar for the alleged rottenness at the heart of the monarchy and helped the likes of Lenin portray revolution as a cleansing act for Russia, clearing out the corrupt aristocracy to give birth to a new order and, ultimately, the mythical ascetic New Soviet Man. The impact of Rasputin was seen as so great at the time that Kerensky, head of the provisional government formed after the Tsar's abdication, said:</div>
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<i>"Without Rasputin, there could have been no Lenin."</i></div>
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Part of the mystique that surrounds Rasputin is that there are so many stories and rumours about his life that it is difficult to know what is truth and what is fiction. This has allowed Frances Welch the freedom to take a judicious, and at times even humorous, view of his escapades whilst writing a vivid and highly readable biography. She interweaves the narrative with the wider story of the political struggles faced by the Tsar during the First World War, which puts the story into perspective and allows the reader to understand the corrosive effect Rasputin had upon the monarchy and, by extension, Russia.</div>
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She finishes the book with a wonderful excursion through Rasputin's cultural afterlife and finishes with a lovely bit of trivia - far from being the massively-endowed sex machine of legend, a medical examination of Rasputin in 1914 after another failed assassination attempt revealed that his genitals were so small that his doctor believed that it was unlikely he could ever, to put it crudely, "get it up".</div>
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So, there you go. To paraphrase the great Boney M, although he probably wasn't actually Russia's greatest love machine, he was indeed a cat that really was gone and it really was a shame how he carried on. And I recommend you read France Welch's biography to find out exactly how he did carry on.</div>
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-68300540768439959062015-08-19T13:47:00.001+01:002015-08-19T13:47:59.594+01:002,214: The Samurai Inheritance by James Douglas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I do have a bit of a penchant for thrillers that revolve around the hunting down of historical secrets or artefacts and so I was pre-disposed to enjoy <i>The Samurai Inheritance. </i>It is, I believe, the fourth in a series of thrillers featuring art recovery expert, Jamie Saintclaire, although it is the first in the series that I have read.<br />
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In this instalment, Saintclaire is hired by an Australian mining magnate to track down the preserved, shrunken head of a warrior from Bougainville, one of the Solomon Islands, which, somehow is alleged to have ended up in a German museum. Despite the assignment being a world away from his usual diet of finding Old Masters and other artworks, Saintclaire accepts the assignment. Being led to Tokyo in the company of an attractive museum curator, Saintclaire's quest gets entangled with a mystery surrounding the death in 1943 of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, architect of the attack on Pearl Harbour. All roads lead to Bougainville and a hidden war in the jungle.<br />
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<i>The Samurai Inheritance</i> is a Ronseal book - it does exactly what it says on the tin. Fast-paced with plenty of continent-spanning action, a plausible hero, some love interest, a World War II connection and a devious villain, it's a page turner that won't disappoint a thriller reader who picks it up in a bookshop or the library.<br />
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Equally, it's unlikely to convert non-thriller fans and it's not one of those books that lasts long in the memory. It was a fun read and, if I saw one of the other books in the series in a shop when I was looking for something to read, I'd probably buy it but I wouldn't go hunting one down.<br />
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Overall, it's a good, solid thriller for fans of the genre and none the worse for that.</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-90751569011110458812015-08-10T13:50:00.000+01:002015-08-10T13:50:22.992+01:002,215: The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As I seem to recall having written before, albeit in different ways, literary resurrections can be something of the proverbial curate's egg. Whilst some of the Bond revivals (which have been ongoing since the first John Gardner "continuation" novel) have been excellent, others have been limp and formulaic. Sebastian Faulks made a valiant attempt at a Jeeves and Wooster novel but, at least to me, was always doomed to fall just short. On the other hand, I am told that many of the continuation Mapp and Lucia novels are a joy.</div>
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Despite the recent rash of literary licences and continuation novels, Agatha Christie's literary executors had long held out against the phenomenon until, in 2013, it was announced that acclaimed crime writer Sophie Hannah had been commissioned to write a "new" Hercule Poirot novel. Cue outrage from Christie fundamentalists, paroxyms of joy from other Poirot fanatics (what would the Poirotesque version of a "Cumberbitch" be called, I wonder?) and a predictable avalanche of hyperbole from the publishing and literary PR worlds.</div>
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Having previously been guilty of letting the hubbub surrounding a hyped new book affect my judgement of it (and here I cite Madeline Miller's <i><a href="http://2606books.blogspot.ch/2011/09/2544-song-of-achilles-by-madeline.html">The Song of Achilles</a> </i>as exhibit one in the case against me), I decided to bide my time and display (as an unabashed Christie fan) Zen master-like patience, in waiting until recently to read <i>The Monogram Murders</i>.</div>
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And you know what? It's really rather good.</div>
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Set in the winter of 1929, we find Poirot having taken up residence in a boarding house, seeking a period of respite from the gruelling business of detection. Unluckily, maybe, for Hercule, Edward Catchpool, a young Scotland Yard detective, is also a resident. Catchpool has been assigned a new and baffling case: three bodies found dead in separate rooms in the same West End hotel. Each has been careful positioned after having been poisoned and a monogrammed cuff link has been placed in the month of each victim. As one might guess, such a curious scene is irresistible to Belgium's finest, especially once he surmises that cuff links usually come in pairs and that the absence of the fourth cuff link may suggest that a fourth killing is in the offing.</div>
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It's a classic Christie set-up and Hannah uses a number of Christie's favourite motifs and tricks throughout the novel. Poirot's investigation expands to include a reinvestigation of a separate death 15 years earlier (<i>Five Little Pigs</i>); Catchpool is a reasonable facsimile of the Hastings/Japp sidekick role; and Hannah, a psychological crime writer by trade, makes of Catchpool a far more rounded figure than either of Poirot's erstwhile sidekicks. She gives real depth to his inner thoughts and insecurities, to the point where I sagely nodded my head, saying, "<i>The Murder of Roger Ackroyd</i>" to myself. Was I right? You'll have to read it and find out for yourself.</div>
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But, with a character as iconic and ask over as Poirot, the nub of the thing is always going to be: Does she get Poirot right? And I think the answer is, pretty much, yes. There is a school of thought that maintains that Poirot was never a fully realised character but merely a detailed assemblage of quirks and characteristics, really just an entertaining delivery vehicle for the solution of the mystery. If this is your view, then Hannah ticks all the boxes. From his OCD-like love of order, to the random use of French and his sentence structure, the surface Poirot is present and correct.</div>
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If, on the other hand, you agree with David Suchet and other lovers of Poirot that, despite the quirks and character tics, Poirot is a humane and developed character, concerned not just with the solution but with the concept of justice, then you should still be satisfied with Hannah's rendition of the character. My only slight reservation (and, should you be interested, I come from the Suchet school on Poirot), is that, at times, Poirot's dialogue seems not quite as alive as in Christie's originals. I can't quite put my finger on it but I never felt that this could have been Poirot written by Christie. It wasnt a big thing and it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book - it just wast quite as good as some of Christies's best Poirot's.</div>
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As Hannah also inserts a goodly quantity of Christie style clues and red herrings and has created a satisfyingly twisty plot, although her writing style is more complex than Christie's and, I would claim, better than Christie's, this is recognisably a Hercule Poirot novel and a satisfying new "fix" for fans of Christie.</div>
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It's not perfect, of course. As I have mentioned, Hannah's style is more complex than Christie's and, although this could, under normal circumstances, be seen as a good thing (and Hannah is a highly talented writer), in <i>The Monogram Murders</i>, it, perversely, serves only to highlight Christie's real genius - her deceptive simplicity. The best of Christie's crime novels manage to deceive the reader and to divert one's attention from her clues within a very clean structure, without sub-plots or unnecessary intricacy. Everything is there on the surface and yet supremely hidden so that, when the denouement takes place, somehow it's all so blindingly obvious. Hannah's plot, although enjoyable and satisfying, lacks this simple intricacy, which I think is much more a tribute to Christie than a criticism of Hannah.</div>
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Finally, and this is my biggest issue is that I just didn't quite believe in the premise of the solution. One of Christie's qualities was that, despite the totally unrealistic circumstances of some of her novels (<i>Death on the Nile </i>and <i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> spring to mind), the solutions seem both logical and, at least once we know them, obvious. Here, I felt as if i were being asked to stretch to accept the premise on which the solution was posited.</div>
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Still, I really did enjoy <i>The Monogram Murders </i>and think Sophie Hannah has done a wonderful job in producing a readable and satisfying Poirot novel. I'd certainly read more Poirot by Hannah and the fact that <i>The Monogram Murders</i> doesn't quite have Christie's peculiar genius to it is no criticism at all.</div>
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-77125259807059072002015-08-07T17:22:00.002+01:002015-08-07T17:22:52.365+01:002,216: Late Fragments by Kate Gross<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>"Kate died at home in the room she'd chosen and prepared on 25 December 2014 at 6.29 am. Ten minutes before Oscar and Isaac asked 'Is it morning?' - so just long enough for Billy to hold her hand and say goodbye before stocking-opening, which, of course, cannot be delayed."</i></div>
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It seems strange to me, even a little perverse, that I have physically shed more tears for a woman I never met than for my own father. I don't know whether it's because the death of a parent leaving behind young children is inherently heart-breaking or whether the courage, honesty and warmth of this short memoir affected me unexpectedly deeply but, reading the above passage, from the book's epilogue, during a long, sleepless night recently had me in tears, wracked with great heaving sobs.</div>
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Kate Gross died on Christmas Day 2014, leaving behind her husband, Billy, and her 5 year old twins, Oscar and Isaac. Prior to her diagnosis two years earlier with cancer of the colon, she had been one of life's achievers - a First from Oxford, an adviser to two Prime Ministers in her 20s, the CEO of a charity supporting African democracies by 30 - whilst also marrying the man of her dreams and giving birth to two children.</div>
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But cancer is an equal opportunities disease. I have seen it take my grandfather within weeks of him being told he was in remission; it killed the gorgeous daughter of friends of ours within 6 months of diagnosis, just two days after her second birthday, and it stole our wonderful 80-something next door neighbour from his wife of nearly 60 years. It affects all ages, genders, races and income brackets and in December 2013, after operations and chemotherapy and a brief period of remission, Kate Gross was told that there was no hope after all, that the cancer was terminal.<br />
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<i>Late Fragments </i>is part memoir, part musing and part instruction book for her husband, sons, parents and friends. Kate herself says that she was "wired for happiness" and, rather than focussing on the misery of failed treatments and the sheer, awful unfairness of the hand life has dealt with, the book is remarkably warm and positive shot through with her own joy in life and the need to embrace it now, and not to wish it were somehow different:<br />
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<i>"What happens to you, uncontrollable or otherwise, isn’t the important thing. What matters is simply how you are with it. And you can always, always, choose that."</i></div>
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She writes engagingly of her own self-confessed control freakery - of organising substitute mother figures for her boys from amongst her friends and of recording Roald Dahl stories for them to hear her voice, and not forget it (and, yes, I cried here too). But noone, no matter how strong and optimistic, can stay upbeat all the time in the face of a terminal illness and Kate is unflinchingly honest about her sadness, periodic anger and even guilt:</div>
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<i>"I can’t shake this feeling that I am letting them all down. Wiping my parents’ decrepit bottoms in 20 years’ time was supposed to be my job."</i></div>
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I found the most moving parts of the book to be the sections where Kate looks forward into the future she won't see and anticipates what may happen. She muses on her children being brought up by a surrogate mother and her beloved Billy meeting someone else:</div>
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<i>"I want Billy to be happy and loved. I want someone to get the washing done, without the darks bleeding into the lights. If the two could combine in one washerwoman-cum-wife, ideally without my sparkling eyes and wit, perhaps I could look down on that content. But then I think about someone else … with my Billy, seeing my friends. I imagine her in my kitchen telling the boys off for some teenage incursion. My job. I am haunted by this non-existent woman."</i></div>
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<i>Late Fragments </i>could easily have become either overly sentimental or grimly downbeat and bitter but is actually a warm and thoroughly inspiring read, eschewing both unrealistic optimism and easy tearjerking. It's full title - <i>Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life) - </i>sums Kate's character up well. The book is engaging and, in the lightest possible way, a demand for us to grab every happiness we can from life</div>
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Yes, I cried, which may or may not be down to my own newly developed sensitivity (or mawkishness) about death but it also left me feeling a need to embrace my life, to recognise its joys and to search out my happiness. I cannot recommend this highly enough - just don't read it in the lonely hours before dawn!</div>
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-82363092461432527052015-08-03T13:51:00.000+01:002015-08-03T14:17:36.720+01:002,217: The Corners of the Globe by Robert Goddard<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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One of the oddities of having been AWOL from the blogosphere is that when, as now, I want to refer back to a book I've reviewed as being one of my favourites from last year, I have to check myself and remember that I actually read it in 2013 (which seems eons ago now).<br />
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So, anyway, one of my favourite reads of <b>2013</b> was <i><a href="http://2606books.blogspot.ch/2013/07/2456-ways-of-world-by-robert-goddard.html">The Ways of the World</a> </i>by Robert Goddard, the first novel in a trilogy that follows James "Max" Maxted, a First World War veteran hunting down the killers of his father, a senior member of the British negotiating team at the Paris peace conference of 1919. If you haven't already read this excellent thriller, I hold warn you that the following may contain inadvertent spoilers. You have been warned.<br />
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Max has concluded at the end of <i>The Ways of the World </i>that the secret of his father's death is held by the German spymaster, Fritz Lemmer, an elusive yet seemingly omniscient presence who, seemingly like Professor Moriarty, <i>"sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organised."</i><br />
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<i>The Corners of the Globe </i>opens with Max apparently working for Lemmer and being sent on a mission to Orkney to retrieve a top secret document from the interred German fleet. Having managed to get hold of the document, Max becomes a hunted man, as he tries to deliver the document not to Lemmer but to Appleby, his contact in Special Branch. Cue a <i>39 Steps </i>style man hunt, full of narrow escapes, deaths and plenty of action, leading Max from the Highlands to Paris and beyond. And while Max is headed towards Paris, his friend and former batman, Sam, is already there, working as a driver for the British Embassy and getting caught up in a deadly power struggle within the Japanese delegation to the peace conference, a struggle that is directly linked to the murder of Max's father.<br />
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As you can probably tell from the slightly convoluted synopsis (and from the fact I haven't really said too much about the plot for fear of spoilers), <i>The Corners of the Globe</i> is frenetically paced, chock a block with characters and multiple plot strands. In truth, despite Goddard's undoubted talent, he doesn't quite bring it off.<br />
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Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy it and Goddard definitely keeps the pages turning. It just came across as very much the middle entry of a trilogy, a bit like <i>The Two Towers </i>(at least in my view and don't shout at me Tolkien obsessives - I love <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> as much as the next fantasy geek). There's a sense that it's purpose is to physically move the protagonists and the plot to their correct starting blocks for the final volume, almost as if the central plot is too much for two books but hasn't quite got the legs for three.<br />
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Again, let me be clear. It's a perfectly good book and there are some fantastic scenes in it. It's just not as good as the previous book and I'm glad that I'd read that first - not only does it make this one much more comprehensible, the quality of the first kept my interest in this one going until the end. I'm not sure that would have been the case if I'd come to this one first.<br />
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I have a couple of more specific gripes too - firstly, and I accept that this may be intentional (one of the characters is described as reading <i>The 39 Steps</i> and commenting that Max's adventures make it seem dull), the Buchanesque chase is just a tad too obvious and heavy-handed to avoid grating slightly. And secondly, the ending is gratuitously cliff-hangerish, much more melodramatic than necessary. But, and there's always a but, it worked, dammit. I can't wait to read the final volume (it's only my promise to Mrs F not to buy any more books for a while and my burgeoning TBR pile that has stopped me so far).<br />
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On the other hand, Goddard's characterisations are great. Max's character is developing real depth as his physical journey into the world of espionage is also taking him on a mental journey, forcing him to develop a harder, more cynical outlook on the world. He kills an innocent person to protect his identity and feigns ignorance of a down on his luck former school friend - both things the Max of <i>The Ways of the World </i>would never have done.<br />
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Overall? Well, I wanted to like it more than I did, whilst still liking the overall series well enough to really want to read the final volume. If you like spy stories or adventure stories or are interested in the historical period, it's definitely worth a read but do read the series in order.<br />
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Finally, I'd like to thank Transworld publishers for allowing me access to <i>The Corners of the Globe</i> via NetGalley.<br />
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-13875093107851813362015-07-22T12:36:00.000+01:002015-07-22T12:36:15.720+01:002,218: Autumn, All the Cats Return by Philippe Georget<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a serious backlog of books to review from my recent</div>
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period of purdah. And, of those, a small (but generally wonderful) number are books that were very kindly made available to me by publishers for review. I feel terribly guilty about this and so this, and the next few, posts will be my attempt to catch up on these.<br />
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The first of these is <i>Autumn, All the Cats Return</i>, a member of the Europa Editions' World Noir stable, provided to me by Europa so that I could write a piece for the equally brilliant Shiny New Books site. As is evident from the fact that Terence Jagger produced <a href="http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/fiction03/new-autumn-all-the-cats-return-by-philippe-georget/">this excellent review</a> for SNB, I singularly failed to do so (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!).</div>
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As I've not yet read a duff World Noir publication, I wasn't surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed <i>Autumn, All the Cats Return. </i>I like my Euro noir to reek of its home country and, from its preposterously elliptic title (and the original French, "<i>Les Violents d'Automne</i> is no better) to its gloriously laconic hero, Gilles Sebag, and its drippingly atmospheric setting in Perpignan, this novel is about as Gallic as Gauloises, Depardieu, Asterix and sneering Anglophobia. I loved it.</div>
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The book opens with the discovery of a murdered pensioner, executed in his home with a single bullet in the neck. Above him, the initials, "OAS" have been daubed in black paint. The OAS, of course, was the far-right paramilitary group, formed in the early '60s to resist any moves by France to give Algeria its independence, and which infamously attempted to assassinate General de Gaulle after he signed the Evian agreement that granted Algeria her independence.</div>
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But what does this all mean? Was the pensioner a former member of the OAS, killed by an Algerian immigrant? Or was this a resurgence of the OAS and a killing of one of its enemies? Soon after the killing a controversial monument to the OAS in Perpignan is vandalised and Sebag becomes convinced that the two are linked as part of a revenge campaign against the remnants of the OAS.</div>
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What ensues is a police procedural, combined with a wealth of noir tropes, all set against a rich Franco-Catalan background and interwoven with an exploration of the violent and complex history of Algerian independence and the OAS.</div>
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Sebag is almost your classic noir detective. As prone to inner monologues as any noir hero, Sebag is cynical and fatalistic. From the beginning, his disillusion comes across:</div>
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<i>The last few years, he’d found his work disagreeable. The routine, the violence, the lack of internal recognition, the citizens’ scorn. You had to put up with all that, and for what? When he’d enlisted in the police force, he’d imagined he’d be a kind of physician for a sick society. It took him a while to understand that he was no more than a minor nurse doomed to dress suppurating wounds with outdated ointments. Criminality would never stop, it couldn’t stop, it was part of human nature. </i></div>
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On top of this, Sebag is convinced his wife has been having an affair and is tortured by his internal debate as to whether to confront her about it or not.</div>
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About the only thing that stops him from being pretty much an archetype noir detective is the fact that, his suspicions (which may or may not be baseless) about his wife's fidelity apart, he is happily married with an adoring teenage daughter. This latter becomes important to the plot as she asks her father to investigate the apparent hit and run death of one of her friends, a death that Sebag comes to believe may be linked to his case.</div>
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Ever since I read <i>The Day of the Jackal</i> as a boy, I've had an interest in the OAS and France's retreat from Algeria and so <i>Autumn, All the Cats Return </i>was always going to appeal to me. What I didn't expect, though, was to find the hero so intriguing and likeable. </div>
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<i>Autumn, All the Cats Return </i>is the second in Philippe Georget's series of novels featuring Gilles Sebag. I haven't yet (and the key word is, "yet") read the first, <i>Summertime, All the Cats Are Bored </i>(and please don't ask what cats have to do with anything here because I haven't a scooby) but, although there are clear references back to it, <i>Autumn, All the Cats Return </i>is eminently readable without having read the earlier book.</div>
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Crticisms? Well, yes. I hate, absolutely hate, the title. Otherwise, it's a great read and another piece of evidence to support my growing conviction that I can simply pick up any World Noir publication, safe in the knowledge that it will be interesting and enjoyable.</div>
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Bravo, Europa!</div>
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-22631215099620103592015-07-21T14:00:00.001+01:002015-07-21T14:01:37.586+01:00Hello, I'm Back - Is Anyone Out There?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's been exactly a year since I last posted and, although I may have been totally idle in online terms, it has been a thoroughly eventful 12 months.<br />
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As those of you who have been kind enough to read this blog previously will know, my father passed away in April of last year and, for various reasons, the practicalities of getting probate and executing his will fell into my lap and ended up swallowing inordinate amounts of time, pretty much eating up the whole of summer. The strangest thing was that doing all this, and trying to support my mother, meant that I really didn't grieve or feel much at all emotionally about his death. until well into last winter. Even now, I'm not sure whether I've grieved and come through it, or whether it's still there, waiting to jump out and mug me when I least expect it.<br />
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After all this, I had been hoping for a quiet autumn, time to rest and recuperate and get back on an even keel but, in October, I was offered a fantastic new job, a real once in a lifetime opportunity.......in Switzerland. So, having visited the office (in between Zurich and Luzern) at the end of October, we managed to find a flat, register mini-Falaise for school, rent out our house in London, dispose of most of our possessions and stuff (fitting a large house-worth of stuff into a flat was never going to be practicable), go through the fairly traumatic process of mini-Falaise leaving her school, which she adored, and move, lock, stock and barrel to Switzerland, all of which we achieved by the middle of December, in time for a nearly white Christmas (it snowed on 27th December!).<br />
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Exhausted, discombobulated and unsure of how things would pan out, we saw in the New Year quietly, registered ourselves with the local canton, found that mini-Falaise had fallen in love with ice-skating but wasn't so fussed about skiing and got ready for the start of my new job and mini-Falaise's new school.<br />
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Well the good news is that my job seems to be going well and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Mini-Falaise's school, however, was the bad news. For reasons (both academic and social) which I'd rather keep private, it just didn't work for her and she was changing from a child who bounced out of bed to go to school in the morning to a thoroughly unhappy child. So, I packed Mrs F and mini-Falaise onto the train back to London, where they spent an uncomfortable few weeks until they could find a flat to live in. Luckily, her old school welcomed her back with open arms and she was very quickly back to her old self.<br />
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So, we now live an odd, split life. I live in Switzerland during the week whilst they live in London in term time. I fly back roughly two out of every three weekends and, as soon as term is over, they come out to Switzerland. It's not ideal for me and Mrs F, but mini-Falaise gets all the benefits of her school in London and being around her friends, whilst spending her holidays cycling, lake swimming skating and roaming free in Switzerland.<br />
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Mrs F and I are permanently exhausted - Mrs F from the stresses of being min-Falais'e sole carer during the week and me from the combination of a busy job and seemingly spending much of my life in airports on Friday and Sunday evenings and the odd very early Monday morning - but it won't be forever and my 15 minute walk to work along the lakeside, seeing the Eiger and the Jungfrau mountains in the distance is a definite compensation on a sunny day.<br />
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Apparently, losing a close family member, moving house, changing jobs and emigrating all rank amongst the most stressful things that people do and I did them all in the space of 9 months. But, of course, there are only so many hours in the day and so, some things have rather gone by the board -this blog being one of them.<br />
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Things now appear to have calmed down a bit and we are all getting into our new routine and so I am going to try and start blogging (and engaging with other blogs) again. I have a huge backlog of books that I haven't yet mentioned on here and so the original premise of the blog may have to be quietly shelved but I do hope to be much more active on here from now on.<br />
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-45191120148148266292014-07-21T16:15:00.002+01:002014-07-21T16:15:29.552+01:002,219: To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-CA">During this centenary year of the outbreak
of World War One, I’ve been reading a number of books about the War and its
causes. One of these, Adam Hochschild’s <i>To End all Wars</i> approaches the subject
of this terrible event from a slightly different angle to most. As is clear from the following quote,
Hochschild’s sympathies are clear:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-CA">“"If we were allowed to magically roll back
history to the start of the 20th century and undo one – and only one – event,
is there any doubt that it would be the war that broke out in 1914?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">To Hochschild, an historian of a pacifist
inclination, World War One was an unnecessary folly, from which no good but an
inordinate amount of evil came. His book
tells this story, and the story of the War, by focusing on those who stood up
to protest against the War or who refused to participate. The book’s subtitle is “How the First World
War Divided Britain” and the author attempts to demonstrate this be contrasting
the stories of dissenters with those of willing participants and supporters of the
War.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">Fascinatingly, many of the individuals he
features were linked together by ties of family or friendship. One of the book’s villains, Sir John French,
commander of the BEF was, to Hochschild’s mind, a snobbish incompetent, calmly
throwing away the lives of thousands of ordinary soldiers in misconceived
attacks. Yet his sister, Charlotte
Despard, a suffragette and socialist activist, was a bitter opponent of the War,
forming the Women’s Peace Crusade. What
is even more amazing is that the two siblings remained close and affectionate
throughout the War, only becoming estranged when French, as Commander in Chief,
Home Forces, suppressed the Easter Rising, much to the disgust of Despard, a
SinnFein member.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">Another tortured family relationship explored
by Hochschild was that of the Pankhurst sisters, all leaders in the suffragette
movement. Whereas Emmeline and
Christabel Pankhurst believed that the German aggression was a threat to all
humanity and felt that cooperating with the Government might also help their
cause after the War, Sylvia and Adela, Emmeline’s other daughters took the
polar opposite view. The family became irretrievably
fractured.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">But Hochschild also explores other,
lesser-known dissenters, such as the bizarre story of Alice Wheeldon, a
committed pacifist and second-hand clothes dealer in Derby. A forceful anti-war campaigner and a
harbourer of draft-dodgers, she, together with two other family members, was
convicted of plotting to assassinate the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, an
accusation that was, almost certainly, trumped up by Government agents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">Hochschild reinforces his message with the
grim and, even now, nearly incomprehensible statistics of death and
destruction. To give just some examples,
he points out that half of all Frenchmen aged between 20 and 32 at the outbreak
of war were dead by Armistice Day in 1918, that 9 million soldiers died and 21
million were wounded (including one of my great-grandfathers) and that nearly a
million soldiers from Britain and its Empire perished. One of the most shocking comments he makes is
that:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-CA">"If the British dead alone were to rise up and
march 24 hours a day past a given spot, four abreast, it would take them more
than two and a half days."<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-CA">To End
All Wars </span></i><span lang="EN-CA">is written with a passion and, indeed,
compassion, that makes it intensely moving and a pleasure to read. As a history of the War, it must be said that
it doesn’t add a huge amount to the forest of First World War histories on the
market but its account of British dissent during the War is a valuable
additional to the general literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">The main issue I have with it though is
that it doesn’t really reflect the truth.
Although the dissenters and objectors were impassioned and brave and,
although a case can be made (albeit not a conclusive one) that they were,
ultimately, correct, they didn’t truly divide Britain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">One of the standard narratives of the War,
influenced probably by the ubiquity of the likes of Owen, Sassoon and Graves on
British school syllabuses, is that of an initially enthusiastic country
becoming more and more disillusioned and hostile to the War as the casualties
mounted and the horrors of the trenches became known. But, nevertheless, the country and the army
held together until the end. There was
no serious risk of giving up; Hochschild’s sub-title simply isn’t borne out by
the facts. The dissenters may well have had
a case but they had very little substantive impact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">Despite this flaw, <i>To End All Wars </i>is a worthwhile read. It may give undue prominence to the anti-War
movements but it reminds us of the suffering caused by War and the global
tragedy of a generation cut down in its prime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-79202683827073629172014-07-15T15:50:00.001+01:002014-07-15T15:50:42.260+01:002,220: Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span lang="EN-CA">It’s August 2011 and,
on a patch of wasteland somewhere in Berlin, a disoriented Adolf Hitler is just
waking up, dressed in full uniform and with his last memories being of sitting
with Eva Braun in the F</span><span lang="EN-CA">ü</span><span lang="EN-CA">hrerbunker
and showing her his gun. He also has an
odd headache in his temple. As the back
cover of <i>Look Who’s Back</i> says, “He’s
back…and he’s Führious.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-CA">Look
Who’s Back </span></i><span lang="EN-CA">was a surprise bestseller for author
Timur Vermes in Germany, selling 1.5 million copies. It’s a satire on the media, both print and
screen, and on contemporary German politics (although the point of the satire
could be equally applied to many Western democracies).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">As Hitler emerges from his 65 years or so
of hibernation, he is, not unnaturally, assumed to be a Hitler impersonator
and, owing to the fact that he is, actually, the real McCoy, a brilliant
impersonator at that. He quickly
attracts the attention of the producers of a sketch show presented by a Turkish
immigrant and is given a guest slot. His
rants, perceived to be witty commentary on modern Germany, are an instant hit
and his popularity goes from strength to strength, although his insistence on
remaining in character causes some unease and frustration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Much of the comedy derives from the belief
of the TV executives that Hitler’s rants about immigrants, modern Germany and
his plans for the future are actually clever skewerings of those who actually
do think that way. One highly effective
episode has Hitler doorstepping the HQ of a German far-right political party
and, by raging at the spotty youth who works there and its corpulent and
ineffectual leader, unintentionally ridiculing it. His bosses at the TV company are delighted
both at his success and at the controversy he stirs up, including some who
believe he is a Jewish comedian, sending Hitler up with his bizarre
perorations, in which he declaims with Messianic fervour before concluding on a
truly banal note.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The venality and ingratiating nature of
contemporary politicians also come in for some attention from the author. Following a hilarious TV interview with a
leading Green politician, Hitler is amused (but not surprised) to find himself
being wooed by all the major German parties.
His views may be distasteful but he is popular after all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">One of the issues with <i>Look Who’s Back</i> is the slightly scattergun approach to its
satirical targets. Is Mr Vermes going
after the media (there is a suitably bilious portrayal of <i>Bild</i>, the influential tabloid), the politicians, the German
far-right, Hitler himself or modern German society? It’s a little unfocused and, I believe,
suffers as a result. At times, it’s
unclear who we’re supposed to be laughing at.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">This problem is most acute in the depiction
of Hitler himself. Far from a monster,
he comes across as a curmudgeonly and slightly loopy grandfather type, bemused
by the new Germany and bewildered by the sight of women clearing up after their
dogs with plastic bags and teenagers glued to their phones. In particular, Vermes struggles with the
elephant in the room in any portrayal of Hitler - the Holocaust. He attempts to deal with this by creating a
running motif of an exchange between the TV people and Hitler, using the
phrase, “The Jews are no laughing matter.”
In the eyes of the TV people, this indicates that you shouldn’t joke
about the Holocaust. Hitler takes it to
mean that the Jews are a serious problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Other than this, though, the author makes
as few references to Hitler’s anti-Semitism as he feels he can get away with,
thereby reducing further the evil in his character and implicitly emphasising his
love of animals and the care he shows his assistants. This underplaying of the Holocaust is
uncomfortably shown in an episode where Hitler’s secretary resigns, having been
told by her grandmother of how most of her family died in the camps. On hearing this, Hitler goes to visit the old
lady where, it appears, all it takes to make her change her mind about him are
a few compliments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Overall, <i>Look Who’s Back </i>is an intriguing but patchy satire. I can see why it would have been so popular
and controversial in Germany where there are laws on the use of Nazi symbols
and the way in which the Nazis and the Holocaust are portrayed but, to this British
reader, it wasn’t shocking. Although
there are some very funny patches, the plot never really develops much beyond a
series of confrontations between Hitler and people who believe he’s an impersonator
and the ending is anti-climactic, trailing off limply. In summary, it was a little bit bland and a
bit frustrating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-29838095268829231562014-06-16T14:14:00.000+01:002014-06-16T14:14:07.438+01:002,221: Once Upon a Timepiece by Starr Wood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj82_2USuHSIDb6pwGaowx6J0BhmJxGDAGNIEtMHYElMoZKjBKZFttkTfIm8z1tpWSAgZ33AQS7-TTFaqDteOnrIZ_7-Iba-7e8Ko3KiWpcXP26qdGCxaiDsexG1bn9bYQxa2GzfxxAZAjp/s1600/onceupon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj82_2USuHSIDb6pwGaowx6J0BhmJxGDAGNIEtMHYElMoZKjBKZFttkTfIm8z1tpWSAgZ33AQS7-TTFaqDteOnrIZ_7-Iba-7e8Ko3KiWpcXP26qdGCxaiDsexG1bn9bYQxa2GzfxxAZAjp/s1600/onceupon.jpg" height="320" width="208" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<i>Once Upon a
Timepiece,</i> the debut novel of Starr Wood, a journalist who has written for
august publications such as <i>The Economist</i>,
features an unusual central character of a 1946 rose gold Breitling man’s watch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
At the outset, it is owned by one Conrad Sands who, in
January 2012, determines to return it to the ex-girlfriend who had given it to
him 20 years previously. This sets off a
loosely connected series of events over the following 12 months in which the watch
gets passed from one stranger to another.
During the year, as the publisher’s blurb says:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;">
<i>“The watch passes through the hands of a
gold-digger, a journalist, an enchantress, and a professor. It touches the
lives of a rogue art collector, a domestic helper, and an environmental
campaigner. It influences a reverend's apprentice, a kept wife and a self-made
man. All of them are strangers, yet all are intricately linked in ways that
none of them see.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
There is, of course, a
debate to be had for those who are so inclined as to when a novel ceases to be
a novel and becomes a collection of short stories. Not that I’m overly interested in the
distinction but it seems to me that it has a lot to do with the level of
interconnectedness between the chapters or events in the book. If push ever came to shove, I’d probably agree
that Tom Rachmann’s episodic <i>The
Imperfectionists</i> falls just on the novel side of the line whereas <i>Once Upon a Timepiece</i> falls just on the short
story side.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
Some of the stories and
in particular the one concerning a self-righteous journalist getting taught a
valuable lesson gave off strong whiffs of Roald Dahl’s adult short stories with
their unexpected turns and themes of unpleasant individuals getting their
come-uppances. On the other hand, the
importance Mr Wood gives to the twist in the tail brought Jeffrey Archer’s
short stories to mind (and this is not a negative comment - regardless of the
quality of his writing, Archer has an ability to tell a story that Mr Wood
largely shares).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
As may only to be
expected in a debut, there is a certain unevenness to the book, with some of
the less successful stories feeling a little strained, as if the author were
reaching for a twist or link that wasn’t quite there, but, at its best, <i>Once Upon a Timepiece</i> offers some highly
entertaining stories with clever plot twists.
I particularly enjoyed the story of the rogue art collector (even if I
did guess the twist early on) and the story of the kept wife was, indeed,
reminiscent of some of Dahl’s most bitter efforts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
Mr Wood’s writing style
is clear and direct, as befits the journalist that he is, although this puts a
lot of pressure on the plotting which, mostly, bears up well. All in all, <i>Once Upon a Timepiece</i> is an entertaining debut from a promising
author and I will be very interested to see where Mr Wood goes next.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
I’d like to thank the
publisher, BoTree Books, for sending me a copy of <i>Once Upon a Timepiece</i> for review.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-77191102576608517972014-05-27T16:53:00.000+01:002014-05-28T12:37:29.233+01:00A Personal Post<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span lang="EN-CA">You may (or, indeed,
may not) have noticed that this blog has lain idle for well over a month now
and I have a mountainous backlog of posts to write, including a number of books
I have kindly been sent for review (and to those who’ve sent me books, I can
only apologise for the delay).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">This time last month, it was a sunny Sunday
afternoon. Mrs Falaise, mini-Falaise and
I had been out and about in the morning and had come down to our local in the late
afternoon to meet friends for a drink and then to have an early dinner. Our food had just arrived when my mobile
rang, showing my parents’ number. I
assumed it was one or other of them relying to my text asking them to babysit
mini-Falaise later that week so we could go to her parents’ evening at school.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">So, I answered it cheerfully only to be met
by my mother’s shaking and near hysterical voice:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">“Falaise.
It’s your Dad. He’s
collapsed. He’s not breathing. He’s turned purple. The paramedics are working on him now. I think he’s dead.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">Now my mother has been known to overdramatise
before and so, although I was perturbed, I tried to soothe her and told her to
call me when things were clearer. I
suppose I thought that he’d probably had a heart attack and that the paramedics
were stabilising him before taking him to hospital. So I carried on with my dinner, distracted
and numb to its taste.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">And then, a few minutes later, the phone
went again and I heard her say:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">“………I’m sorry, Falaise,………….he’s dead……….”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">And with those words, the world changed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">The rest of that evening is a patchwork of
dark impressions. Having to tell my
little sister that her beloved father, on whom she still depended for so much,
was dead. Phoning to inform my aunt that
her brother was gone. King’s Cross
station in a gloomy twilight. Trying to
find a funeral director to collect his body from home. My mother, utterly bereft. His body, lying on his study floor, his face
surprisingly relaxed, the suspicion of a smile on his face. Covering the bloodstain on the floor where he
had fallen. Kissing his cold forehead
and saying goodbye before he was taken away.
Telling him for the first time in oh so many years that I loved him,
just when he could no longer hear me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">The next few days were even worse as the shock
and numbness wore off to be replaced by raw grief. There was a succession of appalling
moments. Sitting mini-Falaise down to
tell her that her adored granddad was dead; knowing that I was about to break
her heart and then doing it anyway.
Taking my mother to the funeral directors’ to discuss burial or
cremation and types of coffin. A whole
string of people and organisations to inform, each one requiring me to have to
say, “my father died on Sunday” and to reply appropriately to the routine expressions
of condolence. Watching my mother
struggle against overwhelming pain and loss as over fifty years of marriage vanished
overnight has been almost unbearable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">And then the funeral. Seeing the coffin, peculiarly small for a
grown man. Forcing myself to give the
tribute whilst seeing family members sitting there in tears and, worst of all,
watching his coffin being lowered into the grave forever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">In short, it’s been grim. With the additional responsibility of sorting
out his affairs, I’ve had little time to sit down and deal with my own
grief. I find myself veering from acceptance
to sadness, regret and occasional anger, sometimes in a matter of minutes. I think I’m most upset that mini-Falaise and
her cousins won’t get to spend more time with him and that he will miss out on
the rest of their childhoods but I’m also appreciative that each of them got to
know him and spend time with him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">He was 72 when he died - old enough for it
not to be freakishly young, but young enough for me to feel somehow cheated. Maybe it shouldn’t have come as such a shock;
after all, he had undergone a triple bypass in the late 1990s but it was
nevertheless a bolt from the blue. However,
he went painlessly and quickly whilst still sound in mind and body, sat in his
study on a sunny Sunday, having just watched his football team win and he will
never suffer the torments of dementia, stroke or any other debilitating illness,
which he would have hated. For this, I
will be eternally grateful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">But his death has had a huge impact and in
some unexpected ways. I seem to be
totally unable to concentrate for more than a short space of time. I don’t sleep. I can be getting on with things when a stray
thought or sight can have me wanting to slump to the ground in a damp puddle of
tears. The other day, mini-Falaise asked
me about his birthday. I said that he
wouldn’t be having any more birthdays but that we could think about him
instead. She replied, “that’s OK, Daddy,
he can have a thinking birthday then.”
And it took every bit of strength in me not to break down in front of
her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: inherit;">The two strangest feelings I have though
are of liberation and adulthood. My
father was very much the patriarch of the family. He wanted me to have a very conventional
professional career and I suppose I’ve also always sought his approval. So, now he’s no longer here, I feel a strange
sense of freedom - that I can be more of my own man, that the only approval and
acceptance I need now is mine and those of Mrs F and mini-Falaise. Above all, though, is a feeling that I have
now really grown up. It may seem strange
- after all, I’m a 44 year old with a family of my own and a responsible job -
but I guess I must have always had a feeling of comfort in the back of my mind
that he would be there if anything went wrong.
He’s no longer there and this new feeling of adulthood has given the lie
to my previous belief that I was all grown up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I miss my father immensely but I know that
things will work themselves out. I’m not
depressed - I’m sad but for a perfectly sound reason and thing will get better
with the fullness of time and I have the consolations of a host of happy
memories of him to comfort me and the knowledge that he lived a full and
satisfying life.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-58072387861913666622014-04-12T16:36:00.001+01:002014-04-12T16:36:16.617+01:002,223: The Gift of Darkness by V.M. Giambanco<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivrZoA99C_cdWTdEfunCqYTOTgYrim3yX-MPECd0KwGi9CTQ_2qwaEVrYZBBIJcjDVx5bQKbhfokwQM5nNNz8EwW3WC3eh9F0zTCPzHJfFD1YYGTXTCDptEwEjJ_RBLXz0DIGhG-i9_reU/s1600/The+Gift+of+Darkness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivrZoA99C_cdWTdEfunCqYTOTgYrim3yX-MPECd0KwGi9CTQ_2qwaEVrYZBBIJcjDVx5bQKbhfokwQM5nNNz8EwW3WC3eh9F0zTCPzHJfFD1YYGTXTCDptEwEjJ_RBLXz0DIGhG-i9_reU/s1600/The+Gift+of+Darkness.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If ever I receive a free copy of a book (whether solicited
or unsolicited), I’m pretty scrupulous about disclosing the fact in my review
of it but I don’t necessarily make a point of disclosing right at the beginning
of the post. I do feel, however, that
with <i>The Gift of Darkness</i>, V.M. Giambanco’s
debut thriller, I should be very open about the fact that Mrs Falaise knows the
author, that the author and I have been known to communicate on Twitter and that
my copy of the book was given to me by her.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Given this, I was actually half-hoping that there would be
some flaw in it that would enable me to hand down some righteous constructive
criticism and, thereafter, point to it to demonstrate my simon-pure
character. Unfortunately Ms Giambanco
has signally failed to oblige and has delivered an excellent police procedural which
promises to be the first of many.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Detective Alice Madison has only been on the Seattle Police
Department Homicide squad for five weeks when she and her partner, Sergeant
Brown, are called to a crime scene. It’s
not pleasant. Inside, an entire family
has been murdered, the father being forced to watch his wife and two young children
being shot. Each of them has been
blindfolded and a cross drawn on their foreheads in blood. The words, “Thirteen Days”, have been scrawled
on the wall of the bedroom, also in blood.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The father, James Sinclair, is also a survivor of the Hoh
River kidnapping 25 years earlier, in which he and two other boys had been
kidnapped. Only two of them survived – Sinclair
and John Cameron, a man now wanted for numerous murders. There are sufficient clues at the scene to
make it a seemingly open and shut case but Madison and Brown soon begin to have
doubts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It does need to be acknowledged that <i>The Gift of Darkness</i> is a doorstopper of a book, clocking in at a
touch over 500 pages and around 143,000 words.
It is sufficiently heavy to have made it an uncomfortable read on the
Tube but the length allows Ms Giambanco to fill in the back stories of the main
characters and to set the plot up in detail.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Arguably, the first half or so of the book could have been pruned a
little as Ms Giambanco gives highly detailed scene descriptions, probably due
to her background in the film industry - but which could have left more to the
reader’s imagination – and the nature of the police procedural sub-genre. Having said that, I quite enjoy seeing a
satisfying plot reveal itself little by little and it certainly allows for a steady
increase in tempo as the story builds to its climax as well as a gradual ratcheting
up of the tension.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many of the tropes of the genre appear in <i>The Gift of Darkness</i> and it’s much to Ms
Giambanco’s credit that she stops well short of falling into cliché territory –
in fact at one point I groaned as she dangled a classic genre plot device that made
me (a lifelong half-wit at guessing the identity of the killer) think both that
I’d spotted the murderer very early on and that the book was about to become
quite dull. Foolish me, as it became
apparent shortly after that my guess couldn’t possibly have been correct. What the reader actually does get is some interesting
twists on the tropes she uses and a story that flows naturally from whodunit
into whydunit and keeps firm hold of the reader’s interest by some ingenious
plot devices and hooks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Aside from the plotting, Ms Giambanco’s main strength appears
to be in characterisation. The central
protagonists all have rich back stories and are satisfyingly nuanced – there are
no cardboard cut-outs or characteristics dressed as characters here – although I
would say that Ms Giambanco is better at bad guys – they tend to the cold and
creepy and John Cameron, in particular, is one of the more intriguing villains
I’ve come across recently.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s also noteworthy that the large cast of detectives,
crime scene technicians and prosecutors are also drawn so as to give them
individuality and the promise of development into a real ensemble in the
future. Holding it all together is
Madison, a gutsy and determined cop, and her relationship with her partner and
mentor, Brown.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t suppose <i>The
Gift of Darkness </i>will convert non-crime fiction fans but it’s a highly
accomplished debut that I thoroughly enjoyed and would unhesitatingly recommend
(unless you’re a fan of “cozies” who struggles with anything darker.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Madison and Brown have all the hallmarks of series
protagonists and there is a pretty elephantine unresolved issue at the end of <i>The Gift of Darkness </i>that practically
screams for at least one sequel and probably more so I hope that Ms Giambanco’s
publishers do the decent thing and sign her up for more – I for one will happily
blow the cobwebs from my wallet and shell out for more of this.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-83295829006222298892014-04-10T16:18:00.002+01:002014-04-10T16:18:44.779+01:002,224: Moranthology by Caitlin Moran<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpLhnrYb22E06wz0cLtkK8LGtN1uGkhX3rJxxtzYzQ02h11nVmqzrSzCpsXSdxi4j0aFEUWCxW3fFIiyzADQ62Wm4TKvZrm9UWszCHFfS5sd3Bi3J375Vph7zfB33YyQw94o-d5t21CJGA/s1600/moran.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpLhnrYb22E06wz0cLtkK8LGtN1uGkhX3rJxxtzYzQ02h11nVmqzrSzCpsXSdxi4j0aFEUWCxW3fFIiyzADQ62Wm4TKvZrm9UWszCHFfS5sd3Bi3J375Vph7zfB33YyQw94o-d5t21CJGA/s1600/moran.jpg" /></a></div>
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I feel as if I should open this post with a caveat, as a
sort of health warning for anyone who may feel an inexplicable urge to treat my
opinion as something worth paying attention to.
If you remember, in July 2010, <i>The
Times</i>, Caitlin Moran’s employer, decided to erect a paywall to prevent
non-subscribers (such as me) from accessing its online coverage. I was outraged and swore an oath of utmost
fearsomeness that I would never, ever be prepared to pay to read a newspaper
online and that henceforth <i>The Times </i>would
be a stranger to me (unless I found a copy on the Tube or in the loo at work).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, that lasted all of a fortnight or so before I
grumbling input my debit card details and signed up for an online
subscription. It wasn’t for the news;
after all I can get that anywhere. No,
it was for the columnists and the features and, if I’m being totally honest,
for Simon Barnes and Caitlin Moran. Put
simply, I valued the enjoyment I get from reading their pieces enough to plonk
down cash on a regular basis.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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And so, it will come as no surprise that I thoroughly
enjoyed <i>Moranthology</i> which, as its
name suggests is a collection of some of her <i>Times </i>columns. In fact, I
enjoyed it more than I expected as I would have already read most of the pieces
when they first appeared in the paper.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The collection is a positive cornucopia of Moran’s thoughts
on subjects as diverse as Sherlock, Dr Who, Downton Abbey, Gay Moon Landings, austerity,
libraries, Aberystwyth, Paul McCartney, Boris Johnson, trolling, the Eurozone
crisis, drug abuse, the Royal Wedding and Pollock.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My favourite Moran columns tend to be those that deal with
popular culture where she takes a subject and then riffs on it in a deceptively
effortless and hilarious fashion. I’m
also a big fan of her imagined late night conversations with her long-suffering
husband, rock critic Peter Paphides (himself a highly talented journalist).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Indeed, if that was her limit, that would be sufficient but,
in addition she is an excellent interviewer as shown in this collection in
pieces about Keith Richards and a manically wonderful trip to a sex club with
Lady Gaga. These pieces are almost worth
the price of the book on their own.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And there’s yet more.
Over the years, Ms Moran has become more confident and vocal about
speaking out on social issues, often linking them back to her own childhood in
the West Midlands. In this book, there
are serious pieces on benefits cuts, the closure of libraries and the nature of
poverty. I can’t say that I always agree
with her views but they are expressed here clearly, cogently and persuasively.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I believe that good humorous writing comes across as apparently
effortless but needs huge skill from the author and I’d hold Ms Moran’s serious
pieces up as evidence of her talent. As
well as the columns I’ve mentioned above, her obituaries of Elizabeth Taylor
and Amy Winehouse are poignant and deeply moving and demonstrate real quality.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
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Although I’m not entirely sure that Caitlin Moran would approve
of me, I’m a huge fan as you may have guessed by now. In summary, she’s funny, bright and a deceptively
serious social critic and I can do no better than to urge you to go out and buy
this book (or borrow it from the library!).
You really won’t regret it.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-204080384459891842014-04-09T16:05:00.002+01:002014-04-09T16:06:16.789+01:002,225: By Its Cover by Donna Leon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozDwM8bVHxush620Wi5TWKNwWw_jPC1YmENhNREaUHx3HDg0_pCsqYulz58wtoPZlX-ouv-X-j_wiB2e0ZP55hHyqpNEa1wuF4rhri8iyH0A6WGkoUfO6LO4KOqU6yK1Sk8h6-ICNWgXN/s1600/by+its+cove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozDwM8bVHxush620Wi5TWKNwWw_jPC1YmENhNREaUHx3HDg0_pCsqYulz58wtoPZlX-ouv-X-j_wiB2e0ZP55hHyqpNEa1wuF4rhri8iyH0A6WGkoUfO6LO4KOqU6yK1Sk8h6-ICNWgXN/s1600/by+its+cove.jpg" height="320" width="199" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I come across a crime series I enjoy, there’s a certain
pattern to my reading. At first, I
devour instalments one after another until I’ve eventually caught up with the
author. After that, there’s usually one
or possibly two instalments that are due out shortly after I’ve caught up and
then, finally, I slip into a tormented pattern of longing for the next one to
be published and cursing any diversion by the author into writing books that
don’t form part of the series.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so it has been for a long time with Donna Leon’s
Brunetti series. I eagerly anticipate
each new book and pre-order them so as to get my grubby mitts on them as soon
as possible. Recently, however, I’ve
noticed a certain unevenness in the series, with some episodes seeming a little
lacklustre.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I would guess that part of this is down to the sheer
longevity of the series. With a central
cast that rarely changes (the rise in prominence of officers Pucetti and
Griffoni being the only additions of recent note), there’s a limit as to how
fresh the books can be and, if truth be told, I do appreciate the familiarity
that long acquaintance brings. One of
Leon’s hallmarks is the centrality of Brunetti’s family life to the stories and
so the regular passages set around the dinner table or in their living room are
very much like settling into an old pair of slippers - comforting and to be
luxuriated in.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The other “Leon factor” if you like is her concern with the
social and political issues Italy, and Venice in particular, is faced
with. At her best, Leon brings these out
and debates them by means of plot elements, subtle dialogue and background
cameo scenes. At her worst (and, I
suspect, most enraged) they end up being either a little bit ranty or
thumpingly didactic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>By Its Cover</i>, the
23<sup>rd</sup> Brunetti novel, sits somewhere towards the better end of the
Leon range. At its beginning, Comissario
Guido Brunetti of the Venice police is contemplating the onset of spring whilst
dealing with an altercation between two water tax drivers. He is interrupted by a phone call requesting
his presence at the Biblioteca Merula, where it soon becomes clear that a thief
has been at work, stealing valuable works and even cutting pages out of other
rare volumes. Suspicion soon falls on an
American researcher who has been working at the library, although Brunetti is
also intrigued by the library’s other regular, a former priest known as
Tertullian for his apparent love for the writings of the fathers of the Church.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Inspired by the ongoing Italian problem with art theft and
by the massive theft of books from the Girolamini Library in Naples by its own
director in 2012, <i>By Its Cover</i> is
likely to engage any book lover, as well as crime fiction fans. Leon uses the novel to explore not only her
customary themes of Italian bureaucracy and institutional corruption but more
esoteric issues that will probably only engage book lovers, such as whether
books are valuable for themselves as objects or for the texts that they
carry. For the record, I, like Guido, am
on Team Text - although a particular book may have an extrinsic value through
its production or its historicity, ultimately, the book only exists as a means
to transport the text to the reader.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Over the years, Leon’s books have moved from pure detective
stories to explorations of social issues using the form of the detective story
as the structure within which to do so.
She has also given the city of Venice itself and the personal lives of
Brunetti and his circle increased prominence to the extent that there is no
murder (and, like it or not, murder is the overwhelming raison d’etre of almost
all crime fiction) until halfway through the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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It’s mainly for this reason that I would recommend new
readers to begin at the beginning with <i>Death
at La Fenice</i> and carry on through. The
existing fan can be assured that this is an excellent entry in the Brunetti
series, albeit one with a lightly abrupt and unusually loose ending. There are few detectives with whom I enjoy
spending time more and I must now endure the long wait for Leon’s next book.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-53141422334689431872014-04-08T16:03:00.001+01:002014-04-08T16:03:47.083+01:002,226: A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQxAdCwAfyMNy2TZfzAFt9qjQgdh6eVEF4DJJT1pjobIIbKOXVYiWsK3-nOhfeljqGaX1CHbvhZyYMC4WCTAbMA1j7vqKZ5-xStjwmgUARVv3b6ySuDGXBAm6WSy8GzDQLwgt1SL9G3ky/s1600/manwithout+breath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQxAdCwAfyMNy2TZfzAFt9qjQgdh6eVEF4DJJT1pjobIIbKOXVYiWsK3-nOhfeljqGaX1CHbvhZyYMC4WCTAbMA1j7vqKZ5-xStjwmgUARVv3b6ySuDGXBAm6WSy8GzDQLwgt1SL9G3ky/s1600/manwithout+breath.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<i>A Man Without Breath</i>
is the ninth outing for Philip Kerr’s stained white knight, Bernie Gunther, and
is closer in spirit to the darker, more morally ambiguous <i>Field Grey</i> than to the enjoyable but lighter detective story of <i>Prague Fatale</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
The story opens a few short months after the German
disaster at Stalingrad and, yet again, Bernie has got himself a new job. This time, although retaining his rank in the
SD (the security branch of the SS), he is working for the War Crimes Bureau of
the Wehrmacht which is, in essence, a German effort to portray itself in a better
light by investigating alleged Allied war crimes. Staffed by former Prussian judges, it is a
small anti-Nazi enclave within the German armed forces and a place where Bernie
first comes into contact with a small group of aristocratic army officers
plotting to assassinate Hitler.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Being at a loose end following the collapse of his
investigation into the alleged British sinking of a German hospital ship, as a result
of the principal witness dying in an RAF air raid on Berlin, Bernie finds
himself packed off to Smolensk in Russia to investigate claims that a large
number of Polish army officers had been killed by the Russians in a nearby forest;
a place called Katyn. If such a thing
could be proved, not only would it be a boon for German propaganda, but it could
also be used to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western
allies. As such, Bernie finds himself
uncomfortably backed by Josef Goebbels himself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Unfortunately for Bernie, he finds himself stuck in
Smolensk at the end of winter and the ground is too hard to begin digging at
the suspected mass grave. Indeed, it’s
doubly unfortunate both because Russia in 1943 is a pretty unsafe place for a
German but also because he happens to be the nearest thing to a detective
available when two members of a German signals regiment are found with their throats
slit. For Bernie, life becomes more
uncomfortable still as his own inimitable brand of investigation soon garners
him a number of enemies, including Field Marshall Günther von Kluge, the
local German commander who wields almost unfettered power in his theatre of
operations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
If one were to group together books like Philip Kerr’s
Bernie Gunther novels, Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series, Sam Eastland’s
Inspector Pekkala books, William Ryan’s Alexei Korolev stories and Rebecca
Pawel’s Carlos Tejada works, there appears to be identifiable a sub-genre of
detective stories featuring honest detectives trying to do their best to seek
justice against the background of repressive and corrupt regimes. Gunther is typical of this, ideologically
opposed to the Nazis but forced to operate within the state’s machinery, trying
to remain as uncompromised as possible in an environment that corrupts or
breaks all whom it touches.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Kerr is adept at drawing out some of the insanities of the
Nazi outlook. At one point, Bernie notes
the lunacy of investigating and hanging two German soldiers for rape and murder
of two Russian peasants when only a few miles away, an SS <i>einsatzgruppen </i>has just murdered 25,000 Russian Jews. He also doubts whether publicising the Katyn
massacre of 4,000 Poles is really going to deflect attention from the mass
killings of Jews in Eastern Europe by the German forces.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
As always, Kerr’s knowledge of the period and its
personalities is exemplary. One of the
joys of a Bernie Gunther novel is the appearance of actual politicians and
soldiers of the time, in this instance ranging from Josef Goebbels to July
Plotters General von Tresckow, Hans von Dohnanyi, Fabian von Schlabrendorff,
Wilhelm Canaris and Rudolf von Gersdorff.
Kerr’s historical notes at the end of each Gunther novel are also
fascinating, revealing the fates of the individuals he introduces as
characters.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText">
In combining historical fiction with a hard-boiled detective
theme, Kerr takes the Bernie Gunther stories to a deeply satisfying level. Morally complex and ambiguous, entertaining
yet melancholy and revealing both the resilience of the human spirit and the
depths to which humans can sink, they are amongst my very favourite crime
novels. Best read in order, they are “must
reads” for any crime fiction or, indeed, historical fiction enthusiast and,
although his most recent books are not Bernie Gunther stories, I am counting the
slowly passing days until the return of Bernie, a deeply flawed but attractive
hero.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-44622544048799830492014-03-05T14:31:00.001+00:002014-04-09T16:08:38.707+01:002,227: Bryant and May and the Bleeding Heart by Christopher Fowler<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivzQ3IXEIm601WC8UscEZTtK2upf1Dla9K4Dz0ECge8xV4X_Ovj99IVtZO6z2jSFrNfoSpRi_C8j3O9v9cAcfv9m15sltb2I2QNXHauHxv0iB4pwE4_ZaaWJW2RnVME33NRVYQS7TORPR1/s1600/cover43022-medium.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivzQ3IXEIm601WC8UscEZTtK2upf1Dla9K4Dz0ECge8xV4X_Ovj99IVtZO6z2jSFrNfoSpRi_C8j3O9v9cAcfv9m15sltb2I2QNXHauHxv0iB4pwE4_ZaaWJW2RnVME33NRVYQS7TORPR1/s1600/cover43022-medium.png" height="320" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Bryant and May and the
Bleeding Heart </i>is the eleventh outing for one of the oddest detective duos
in literature. Since the last
instalment, <i>Bryant and May and the
Invisible Code</i>, Arthur Bryant and John May, together with the other members
of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, have been moved from the Met to the City of London
Police, a force more accustomed to solving financial crime. A fresh start?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or maybe not, as their new, PR-savvy boss, Orion Banks sees
the PCU as a potentially embarrassing anachronism and OAP detectives Bryant and
May as being ripe for retirement. On top
of this, the first crime they begin to investigate is definitely not the kind
of thing Orion thinks proper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two teenagers have, apparently, seen a dead man rising from
a grave in a London graveyard, something which doesn’t look much like a real
crime, even when one of the teenagers is killed in a hit and run accident a few
days later. Nevertheless, the interest
of the PCU has been aroused and Bryant’s curiosity is even more piqued when it
transpires that the dead youth’s shirt has been swapped between the moment he
was last seen alive and the moment his body is discovered.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Frustratingly for Bryant, he is banned from investigating
this situation and is, instead tasked with finding out who has stolen the
ravens from the Tower of London, something which leads him to cross paths again
with Mr Merry, a kind of Welsh Aleister Crowley.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, the two crimes are destined to connect with each
other and our two detectives end up getting involved with some 21<sup>st</sup>
Century bodysnatchers, a dodgy waste disposal company and trying to figure out
what the secret of Bleeding Heart Yard has to do with things, whilst Bryant is forced to confront his fear of being buried alive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For various reasons, I’ve been picking up the <i>Bryant and May</i> books piecemeal and in no
particular order, which is a shame as they do benefit from being read in
order. I have promised myself to go back
and read (or, in some cases, reread) them from the beginning as I have become a
little addicted to them, with this new episode being the best I’ve read so far.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The interplay between the members of the PCU is entertaining
and often amusing and there is a real life to the characters, centring on
Bryant and May themselves whose different but complementary personalities have
created a distinctive and engaging partnership.
They are, in essence, old-fashioned detectives who would fit perfectly
into a Golden Age novel but who are forced to deal with the modern world, with varying
degrees of success, as Bryant’s tendency to destroy technology demonstrates.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On top of this, Christopher Fowler enriches the stories by
steeping them in the arcana of London’s thousand year history. The books almost scream London and I have
rarely read books that have such a strong sense of place and of belonging.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All this only goes so far though and Fowler’s master trick
is to underpin the eccentricity, the arcana and the whiff of the occult that
suffuses the <i>Bryant and May</i> books
with a solid police procedural and a proper investigation. This grounds the novels and stops the other
elements from turning them into implausible fantasy tales.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Bryant and May and the
Bleeding Heart</i> is an excellent detective novel. It is, like the detectives themselves quirky
but solid. Superior stuff.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would like to thank Random House (UK) for allowing me to
read this via Netgalley.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-25757111995981469812014-02-12T15:02:00.002+00:002014-02-12T15:02:48.419+00:002,228: The Watchers by Jon Steele<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirxmmFeQY66tSdIO9ErJMNt_Nw44Q5yZvZ2rr69AHCLt1spf1ddtCn83WT6SbKQSkgczCrG05zNWrRolOtrso2FIqrdnoK9lrOQYvNURjCzyUkhI-u7RSxav8mFU28W3Ujm-DTV8oJhUH/s1600/the+watchers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirxmmFeQY66tSdIO9ErJMNt_Nw44Q5yZvZ2rr69AHCLt1spf1ddtCn83WT6SbKQSkgczCrG05zNWrRolOtrso2FIqrdnoK9lrOQYvNURjCzyUkhI-u7RSxav8mFU28W3Ujm-DTV8oJhUH/s1600/the+watchers.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
In trying to organise my thoughts on <i>The Watcher </i>for this post, I did a cursory scan of a few other
reviews and was fascinated by the number of authors, genres and books that have
been referenced. Dan Brown, The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, detective noir, Jason Bourne, Neil Gaiman, magic realism,
Paradise Lost, John Connolly, the list goes on.
And, paradoxically, whilst the genre-bending nature of the book makes it
fresh and interesting, the sheer volume of Jon Steele’s ideas end up weakening
the narrative.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
There’s a quote from Terry Pratchett’s <i>Wyrd Sisters </i>that strikes as quite apt
here:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Particles of raw inspiration sleet through
the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive
mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light
bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through
their lives without being hit by even one.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Some people are even more unfortunate. They
get them all.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
It’s a phenomenon I’ve
noticed in a number of debut novels - the author has a whole bunch of brilliant
ideas and <i>really </i>wants to share them,
leading either to a messy narrative or, as in the final third of <i>The Watchers</i>, a seeming rush to get
everything in and wrapped up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
The first two-thirds
(or there or thereabouts - I don’t count pages) is fantastic. Steele expertly weaves together three
narratives, each focusing on one of our trio of protagonists - Jay Harper, an
amnesiac detective straight out of Chandler (see, even I’m doing the reference
thing now), Marc Rochat, the physically and mentally damaged <i>guet </i>(or watcher) of the cathedral of
Lausanne, and Katherine Taylor, a high end escort, seeking sanctuary from the
US tax authorities in Switzerland.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
Steele slowly, almost languorously,
begins to reveal the plot, dropping in subtle clues and pieces of information as
he goes along, drawing the reader in.
Although the initial pace is leisurely, it is a real page turner. We discover that Rochat believes that his
life’s purpose is to rescue an angel in distress and that he has identified
Taylor, somewhat improbably, as that angel.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
For her part, Taylor,
who is thoroughly enjoying a life of luxury as an escort to members of the exclusive
Two Hundred Club of rich and powerful men, is about to find out that her gilded
life comes at a price. Harper, who finds
himself working for the IOC as a security consultant with no memory of his
previous life, is investigating a possible new and dangerous drug which gradually
leads him to cross paths with both Taylor and Rochat as the plot begins to become clear.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
I don’t want to say too
much about the plot here as much of the joy of the book lies in experiencing
the plot unfold. So let’s leave it that
the plot has some supernatural and biblical elements to it. As these supernatural themes and plot elements
become more apparent though, the book begins to lose some of its subtlety and
ambiguity and becomes a more straightforward and more action-based narrative,
which makes it less gripping.</div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
At the
same time, Steele throws in a whole load of ideas and details which, to be
fair, he couldn’t really have done before but which don’t get the treatment
they probably merit. This gives the
climax a slightly rushed and skimpy feel and doesn’t live up to the quality of
the first part of the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
Overall, I’d recommend <i>The Watchers</i>. Steele’s writing is rich and subtle and the characterisation
has real substance (with the exception, oddly, of Katherine Taylor, who is a
bit wooden). There are some excellent
ideas in the book and his prologue, set in the trenches of World War One, is a
truly fine piece of writing. It's the first in a trilogy, of which the second is
definitely on my TBR.</div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div align="left" class="MsoBodyText">
I was sent a copy of <i>The Watchers</i> for review by Transworld,
for which I am very grateful.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-56539246470052756202014-01-27T14:23:00.001+00:002014-01-27T14:23:43.714+00:002,229: Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFTG0jBejkiSObocjt2pxH3S5HJOj4iJaykNLt5CMScgp4xpeCXGk2h-QnJ1mfeDBbXPZOk1v0lq7j_TmKhnMG7c6aZ1dQID01ca7LadWUYbcPpxOfqr5ponqBTO1oTuZNugBluulKlGKg/s1600/storyteller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFTG0jBejkiSObocjt2pxH3S5HJOj4iJaykNLt5CMScgp4xpeCXGk2h-QnJ1mfeDBbXPZOk1v0lq7j_TmKhnMG7c6aZ1dQID01ca7LadWUYbcPpxOfqr5ponqBTO1oTuZNugBluulKlGKg/s1600/storyteller.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you read any of my series of posts on my favourite childhood
books, you will appreciate how important Roald Dahl’s stories were to me as a
child. I’m also delighted that
mini-Falaise appears to be equally as taken with books like <i>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory</i>, <i>James and the Giant Peach </i>and <i>Fantastic Mr Fox</i>. Her absolute favourite, though, is <i>Matilda</i>.
Book, film and musical versions have all been a massive hit with her,
although I was surprised that I had never come across it as a boy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is actually an easy and obvious answer to this, of
course. It was first published in 1988,
when I was at university and it would probably have been a little odd had I
been rushing to Blackwells to pick up a copy (and given the minor disagreement
I was having with them at the time over the size of my unpaid account, they
probably wouldn’t have sold me a copy anyway!).
In my own childishly self-centred way, I had always seen Dahl as being a
figure of my own youth, a writer who must, surely, have stopped writing at
about the time I stopped reading him!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, when I came across Donald Sturrock’s biography of Dahl, <i>Storyteller</i>, I was curious to learn more
about the author who has given two generations of my family so much pleasure.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a bit of a clich<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">é
</span>(or truism?) to note that those whose lives make the best biographies
tend to be the more complex characters and that the most complex characters
aren’t always the most likeable and so it proved with Dahl.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sturrock was a friend of Dahl (and, given the difference in
ages between the two, a bit of an acolyte as well) and was appointed to write
this biography by Ophelia, one of Dahl’s daughters. Consequently, with this being as near to an
authorised biography as one can get of a dead man, one has to suspect that
Sturrock is likely to be sympathetic to his subject. If so, Dahl really must have been a prize
shit at times.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even without his mass of conflicting virtues and vices, Dahl’s
life would have been fascinating. A
Norwegian immigrant, his father died when Dahl was just seven. After an unhappy schooling at Repton and a
short spell working for Shell in Africa, he became an RAF pilot in World War II. Having crashed on his first operational
flight and having suffered a serious back injury, he was posted to Washington
as a member of a British intelligence unit.
There he began his writing career and also enjoyed the US capital’s
social scene.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the revelations of<i>
Storyteller </i>was how, after initial success, Dahl tried and failed to become
an adult novelist, ending up writing dark (and sometimes distasteful) short
stories for American magazines. Indeed,
it wasn’t until the end of the ‘50s that he turned his hand properly to
children’s fiction (and even then supplemented it with partially successful
script-writing for Hollywood).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the key motifs of Dahl’s life was his habit of
falling out with people, especially agents, editors and publishers. He seems to have been hideously egocentric
and ungrateful to people such as Sheila St Laurence, his American agent and the
person who persuaded him to try children’s fiction. Sturrock reports how, when he ended his
relationship with Random House, staff in their New York office stood on their
desks cheering with relief. When added
to the fact that many of the key literary figures in his life contributed much,
much more to the detail of his books than he ever gave them credit for, it adds
up to a not-very-pretty picture.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He actively portrayed himself as a secluded writing genius,
sitting in the shed at the end of his garden in Buckinghamshire to produce his books,
something that was far from the truth.
This self-mythologising was also evident in his “creative” retelling of
his childhood and RAF experiences in <i>Boy </i>and
<i>Going Solo</i>. In particular, Sturrock doesn’t shy away from
examining Dahl’s near-fictionalisation of his wartime plane crash (although
does theorise on the medical consequences in a way that probably gives Dahl
more credit that he was due).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As well as a rich and turbulent professional life, Dahl’s
personal life was also packed with incident and tragedy. His son, Theo, was left brain damaged after a
road accident in New York at the age of four.
Worse still, his eldest daughter, Olivia, died of encephalitis when she
was just seven and his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal suffered a major
stroke at the age of 39 that had doctors writing her off as a vegetable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And this is where the more heroic side of Dahl comes
in. Frustrated by the inadequacy of the
shunt that was needed to drain fluid from Theo’s brain, Dahl drove the
development of a more efficient device that is said to have saved the lives of
several thousand children (including the child of one of his editors). After Neal’s stroke, Dahl pushed her to an
almost miraculous recovery, following which she was able to resume her career
(and outlive him by 13 years).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, just when one begins to admire him again, Sturrock suggests
that Dahl was actually quite relishing the sense of no longer being in his
Hollywood star wife’s shadow and the sense of control he had over her. And, in the end, while she was still in a
vulnerable state, he was to leave her for his second wife, Felicity Crosland,
with whom he had been having a decade-long affair. Here Sturrock, in my view, tends to gloss
over the devastation that the affair must have caused Neal and Dahl’s children,
with most of whom he had a difficult relationship. In fact, Tessa ended up burning her school
down to get his attention.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the whole, Sturrock does a good job of treading a line
between offending the Dahl family that had given him the mandate to write <i>Storyteller</i> and whitewashing the dark
and unpleasant side of Dahl’s character.
Even more impressively, he manages to fit in some decent analysis of
Dahl’s writing and its influences in between telling the story of Dahl’s life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Something I hadn’t realised at all was the level of hostile
criticism that was directed at Dahl’s children’s fiction. In truth, he was transformative in giving a
voice to the dark and wild impulses that lie within children and of writing
stories that would appeal to them rather than stories written from an adult’s
perspective extolling appropriate behaviours and morals. All sorts of critics and organisations
(including the American Library Association) lined up to criticise this
approach which, despite Dahl’s irascibility and argumentative nature often
being his own worst enemy, seem ludicrous today. Sturrock faithfully chronicles this fascinating
argument, including a particularly poisonous comment from Ursula LeGuin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Generous, loving (at least to Felicity), argumentative,
possibly anti-Semitic, womanising and thoroughly difficult, I found it hard to
warm to Dahl the man but remain in love with his books and unable to deny the
profound changes he wrought in children’s literature which have transformed the
genre for the better.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sturrock ends this excellent biography by noting how strange
it is that Dahl only won one major award for children’s literature in his
lifetime and by quoting a comment that Dahl made shortly before his death:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Sometimes it gives me a funny feeling that my writing arm is about six
thousand miles long and that the hand that holds the pencil is reaching all the
way across the world to faraway houses and classrooms where children live and
go to school. That’s a thrill all right.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quite so.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-55745026774175512652014-01-24T15:28:00.003+00:002014-01-24T15:28:22.330+00:002,330: The Classics Club - The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrNGBHFbyYh6pl7JT0WGd0Z13KkS8MZooXAUUJOkHZELwsKVFdFTpqa5IFkLI_lUJG_Q_Djn2zgx_f9cxPUEDrEq2roKhFvjYwgJznKV_Xjvnk0K-Q73EGqmceOFtk30yAqImeW2c3gpm/s1600/39+steps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrNGBHFbyYh6pl7JT0WGd0Z13KkS8MZooXAUUJOkHZELwsKVFdFTpqa5IFkLI_lUJG_Q_Djn2zgx_f9cxPUEDrEq2roKhFvjYwgJznKV_Xjvnk0K-Q73EGqmceOFtk30yAqImeW2c3gpm/s1600/39+steps.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a><span lang="EN-CA">I can remember the
first time I read <i>The Thirty Nine Steps</i>. I was thirteen and was immediately hooked. Over the course of a single weekend, I
devoured all five of the novels that featured Richard Hannay. As part of my Classics Club list, I’ve recently
re-read it to see if my views have changed.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Written in 1915 and set on the eve of the
First World War, <i>The Thirty Nine Steps</i>
was the first of John Buchan’s novels to feature Hannay, a Rhodesian mining
engineer who has returned to the old country having made some money. Having become somewhat bored with the London
scene, Hannay gets involved with a peculiar, self-professed spy, Scudder, who
claims to have secret information about a nefarious plot to assassinate a Greek
politician, Karolides, in London and cast Europe into war. Hannay gives Scudder shelter in his flat,
only to find him murdered there some days later. Driven both to avoid being arrested for
Scudder’s murder and to stymie the plot, Hannay escapes to the Highlands, pursued
by police and plotters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">There ensues a hectically paced series of
chases, captures and escapes, featuring stereotyped Scottish labourers,
politicians and one of the genre’s classic gang of villains, the Black Stone,
and its leader:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA"><b>“As he spoke his eyelids seemed to tremble and to fall
a little over his keen grey eyes. In a flash the phrase of Scudder's came back
to me, when he had described the man he most dreaded in the world. He had said
that he 'could hood his eyes like a hawk'.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Of course, after a string of exciting
escapades, Hannay solves the mystery, thwarts the plot and saves the day,
enabling Great Britain to enter the First World War still in possession of its
military secrets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">On a re-reading, I could immediately see
why I loved it so much as a child. It’s incredibly
fast-paced with plenty of action and a series of mini-cliff-hangers. Hannay is drawn as an uncomplicated and
old-fashioned sort of hero, thoroughly decent, dashing and brave, with a stiff
upper lip and a willingness to “play the game”.
By contrast, the Black Stone are evil and deceitful, the worst kind of
baddies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">On top of all that, Buchan adds a liberal
dose of conspiracy theory and international intrigue. Scudder describes his discovery of the plot
in suitably melodramatic terms:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA"><b>“I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in
Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in
the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little
bookshop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. I completed my evidence ten days
ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for it's something of a
history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to
disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit.<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA"><b>I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I
sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student
of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a
cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of
pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till
yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy.
Then—“</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Now it may be thirty years since I first
read it, but I haven’t really changed all that much. I still like a good adventure story, still
love the idea of the amateur spy lurking in dark and exotic corners of the world
and remain partial to the atmosphere and style of pre-WW1 Europe. So I should still have enjoyed <i>The Thirty Nine Steps</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">And I sort of did. But not totally. In fact, I felt quite uncomfortable at
times. Buchan was a product of the Victorian
age, an Establishment figure, having served as an MP in Great Britain and,
later, as Governor General of Canada. He
therefore was imbued with the attitudes and beliefs of Empire, including views
on racial issues that are, fortunately, totally unacceptable and reprehensible
today. By way of example, Scudder
describes the forces behind the political unrest in Europe thus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA"><b>“The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make
fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no
fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than
hell.<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA"><b>'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years
they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The
Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take
any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man
you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks
Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get
behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the
manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers
the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to
the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew
in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is
ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar,
because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location
on the Volga.’”</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Now there are some commentators who claim
that Buchan is just reflecting the views of Scudder, who is pretty disreputable
and discredited figure. But the general
tone of contempt for other races and nationalities is continued elsewhere in
the book. Hannay comments upon the
planned assassination of the Greek Prime Minister:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA"><b>“The
fifteenth day of June was going to be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny than
the killing of a Dago.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">And so on and so on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">I’ve commented in the past about seeing
distasteful and outdated views in literature in the context of the time the
relevant book was written but, for some reason, the appearance of overt and
casual racism in <i>The Thirty Nine Steps</i>
gave me a far stronger emotional reaction than equally abhorrent views in books
that I liked less. Maybe it is that
juxtaposition of an old favourite novel with views with which I disagree so
strongly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">In any event, <i>The Thirty Nine Steps </i>remains a classic adventure story that I
found still enjoyable but far less so than it was thirty years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-9383324444852560272014-01-22T17:02:00.001+00:002014-01-22T17:06:00.983+00:002,331: Whatever happened to Billy Parks? by Gareth Roberts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJEI1StaooSR_R4SN2hxlqslnZSmA3ygM1M_BZfgFuftK-9MTZiXUxIZ0469sTKjEI1wXJKbUhQW4pOvFD6q4YynhQrkYHmFfudXWqz45xrANdpT_4L2nGo7108yW9KpSWTuwSRYnkMjcD/s1600/billy+parks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJEI1StaooSR_R4SN2hxlqslnZSmA3ygM1M_BZfgFuftK-9MTZiXUxIZ0469sTKjEI1wXJKbUhQW4pOvFD6q4YynhQrkYHmFfudXWqz45xrANdpT_4L2nGo7108yW9KpSWTuwSRYnkMjcD/s1600/billy+parks.jpg" height="320" width="206" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Billy Parks, the titular hero of <i>Whatever Happened to Billy Parks? </i>is a
washed-up<i> </i>ex-footballer from the ‘70s
who threw his talent and career away into a sea of booze. Now, he’s a broken alcoholic, divorced and
estranged from his daughter and grand-son and reduced to telling old stories
for drinks in pubs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">But, what if it could be different? What if there was one thing that, if it could
be changed, would make everything OK again? What if there could be redemption for Billy
Parks? And, in <i>Whatever Happened to Billy Parks?, </i>there might just be something.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">So, let me take you back to 17 October
1973. To Wembley Stadium. To England’s final qualifying match for the
1974 World Cup. To a match that has
haunted England fans for 40 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">England needed to beat Poland to qualify,
whilst a win or a draw would work for Poland.
In a now infamous quote, Brian Clough had described the Polish
goalkeeper, Jan Tomaszewski, as a “clown”, a comment that would come back and
bite England. As the match progressed, England
were dominating possession but couldn’t score, being repeatedly denied by an
inspired Tomaszewski. Against the run of
play, the Poles then took the lead on a counter-attack, leaving England two
goals to the bad. A dubious Alan Clarke
penalty saw England pull level with 30 minutes left on the clock but Sir Alf Ramsay,
in what would turn out to be his last game in charge, dithered over a
substitution, leaving it to the 88<sup>th</sup> minute before bringing on Derby
County’s Kevin Hector. With only seconds
to go, Hector had a certain goal cleared off the line and England were out of the
World Cup, sending the nation into trauma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">But, what if? What if, instead of Hector, Sir Alf had brought
on a different striker? In fact, what
might have happened if his finger had pointed at Billy instead? How would life have been different?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">On that awful, awful night for English football,
the unpredictable genius of Billy Parks was left on the bench but now the
Council of Football Immortals is offering Billy the opportunity to go back in
time, take Kevin Hector’s place and score the goal that would make everything
right. The catch? Well, the Council has to choose between Billy
and Kevin Keegan and to be chosen, Billy will have to justify his life to the
Council.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">Whatever
Happened to Billy Parks? </span></i><span lang="EN-CA">is one of those rare
beasts, a truly good novel about sport.
It manages this by being, first and foremost, a fine story about how
people cope with fame and success, the nature of genius, alcoholism and,
ultimately, the power of not only redemption but also the mere hope of
redemption.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">On top of this, Gareth Roberts layers an
almost historical story of football in the ‘70s with a cast of the greats and
not-so-greats of English football of the time.
Bobby Moore, George Best, Sir matt Busby and Brian Clough all pass
through the pages of the book as Mr Roberts paints a picture of the era.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">There are relatively few really top notch
sports novels that spring to mind: <i>This Sporting Life</i>, <i>The Damned United</i>, <i>Chess </i>(if
you allow chess as a sport), <i>The Master
of Go </i>(which really stretches the definition of sport) and that’s about all
that come to mind, so it’s a real pleasure to come across another one. The concept is highly original and, with the
caveat that the supernatural or fantastical elements to it may make it
difficult for potential readers or booksellers to categorise, it will,
hopefully, do very well.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">Whatever
Happened to Billy Parks? </span></i><span lang="EN-CA">is nostalgic, melancholy, full
of footballing atmosphere and, if you want to know whether Billy finds
redemption, I recommend you buy a copy now.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-CA">I'd like to thank the publisher, The Friday Project, for allowing me to read <i>Whatever Happened to Billy Parks?</i> via Netgalley.</span></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-36887946025817926202014-01-06T13:51:00.000+00:002014-01-06T13:51:56.358+00:002,332: Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsw2CVjLssqCy_O-dwvaBH39TkUH0tFIzYEa1nakpASnP8tEbZqG7HlpaQtE4P3zf6mBNTSVBwWjfnWT8Lz6TOgxmcgtt7wv9XWZ13R2VBL-TeXy5KjC6NQZkZlP01vBVyqTSgqYFsu6Ar/s1600/Greenshore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsw2CVjLssqCy_O-dwvaBH39TkUH0tFIzYEa1nakpASnP8tEbZqG7HlpaQtE4P3zf6mBNTSVBwWjfnWT8Lz6TOgxmcgtt7wv9XWZ13R2VBL-TeXy5KjC6NQZkZlP01vBVyqTSgqYFsu6Ar/s1600/Greenshore.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Eh bien, mes amis, could this really be a new Agatha
Christie? Could this really be a lost
Hercule Poirot story, published for the first time by Witness Impulse,
HarperCollins’ digital mystery imprint?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Well, yes and no.
For, in truth, the story goes something like this. Back in 1954, Ms Christie agreed to write a
story, the proceeds of which would be donated towards the purchase of new
stained glass windows for her local church. <i>Hercule
Poirot and the Greenshore Folly</i>, a novella featuring the great Belgian himself
was the result. So, why is it only now
being published, I hear you cry. Well,
dearly beloved, this may come as a shock but, what with it being that awkward
beast, a novella, neither short story fish nor novel fowl, not even Agatha
herself could get anyone to publish it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
She liked the story though and turned it into a
full-length novel, <i>Dead Man’s Folly</i>,
with the church receiving the proceeds of <i>Greenshaw’s
Folly</i>, a Miss Marple story in its place.
And that’s the rub for, although technically a new story, <i>Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly </i>will
be immediately recognisable to anyone who has read (or seen) <i>Dead Man’s Folly.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
For those who haven’t, the story opens with M. Poirot
receiving an urgent cry for help from his friend, the mystery writer Ariadne
Oliver. Rushing down to the titular
Greenshore House, he finds that Mrs Oliver is engaged in devising a murder
mystery for the village fete and that the most serious thing that has actually
happened is that she has had a premonition.
Of course, the premonition is borne out when the lady of the house goes
missing and the fake corpse in the murder mystery turns out to be very dead
indeed. Cue Poirot and cue a classic
Christie mystery.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<i>Hercule Poirot and
the Greenshore Folly </i>has all the ingredients of a Christie mystery: an
English country house, lots of red herrings, some nicely antiquated snobbery,
caricature suspects and, of course, Poirot himself. There is also some amusement to be had from
Ariadne Oliver, a thinly-disguised parody of Christie herself, and her musings
on the detective story process. Christie
uses Oliver and her fictional detective, the Finn Sven Hjerson (a clear
allusion to Poirot) to poke fun at herself and to vent her frustrations at
Poirot whom she had grown to dislike - she once described him as a “detestable,
bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Although it’s only half-true to describe it as a lost
work, <i>Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore
Folly </i>is a thoroughly enjoyable short read that will appeal to lovers of
Golden Age detective novels as well as to Christie fans. Just make sure you haven’t read or watched <i>Dead Man’s Folly</i> recently.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText">
I’d like to thank Witness Impulse for allowing me to read
this via Edelweiss.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-7488051349207584662014-01-03T12:04:00.001+00:002014-01-03T12:06:04.483+00:002,333: The Rules of Acting by Michael Simkins<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqU4_VD5mhGYo4mGSaMCgWBmT2EOSQNYP4KA4MjswkjC-1DUXafcQiCxdJcxAlSb3f4ib0170T3LlAXWnL49RX-OLmauGNhMUQ3QbGlGB9QAz044yh-0Xd3auC4HQG5Hekykz2_Oe5VBGw/s1600/The+Rules+of+Acting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqU4_VD5mhGYo4mGSaMCgWBmT2EOSQNYP4KA4MjswkjC-1DUXafcQiCxdJcxAlSb3f4ib0170T3LlAXWnL49RX-OLmauGNhMUQ3QbGlGB9QAz044yh-0Xd3auC4HQG5Hekykz2_Oe5VBGw/s1600/The+Rules+of+Acting.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Michael Simkins is one of those actors whose face you’d
recognise but whose name may well elude you.
Since leaving RADA in the late 1970s (he was a contemporary of the
wonderful Timothy Spall), he has had a varied theatre, film and TV career,
appearing in the likes of <i>Mamma Mia!</i>,
<i>Chicago</i>, <i>Richard III</i>, <i>Yes Prime
Minister</i>, <i>Foyle’s War</i>, <i>East Enders</i>, <i>A Touch of Cloth</i>, <i>V for
Vendetta</i> and <i>The Iron Lady</i>. In addition, he writes regularly for a number
of newspapers and has carved out a little niche in gently humorous, often
self-deprecating, books.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The latest of these, <i>The
Rules of Acting</i>, is ostensibly a guide to aspiring actors, designed to help
them through the various stages of a jobbing actor’s life, from drama school
onwards. Drawing on his own experiences,
he dispenses advice on all aspects of the thespian life, such as learning
lines, firing an agent, attending the Oscars and, most importantly, why failing
to read a script to the end can result in horrendous consequences, like having
to simulate sex with a pig.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In reality, it is much more of a ramble through his own
career and much the better for it. Although
dispensing some sound advice, it is all tempered with a wealth of anecdotes,
some of which are wry and others belly-laugh-inducing. As an actor who has worked with almost
everyone who is anyone in showbusiness (from Meryl Streep to Kelly Osbourne!),
there are plenty of tales to tell.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, Simkins is an outlier in the theatrical
profession in having built a successful and prolific career. As he points out, acting is a profession with
an unemployment rate at any given time of some 92%. Indeed, Simkins himself has had to supplement
his acting work with presenting safety training workshops for sewage workers
and working as a crate smasher in a car factory. His first piece of advice for aspiring actors
is actually to find another career and towards the end of the book, there is a
salutary account of Simkins’ search for the members of his class at RADA. Other than the aforementioned Spall and
Sinkins himself, virtually none of his other contemporaries had managed an
acting career of any note and most were out of the industry altogether. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reading <i>The Rules of
Acting </i>feels like spending an evening in the pub with SImkins whilst he
regales one with theatrical tales. It’s
great fun as well as being understatedly instructive for aspiring actors and I’d
heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in showbusiness. If your interests tend more towards sport,
Simkins’ account of his obsession with cricket, <i>Fatty Batter</i>, is also simply wonderful and I would recommend this
too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’d like to thank Random House’s Ebury Publishing for
allowing me to read <i>The Rules of Acting</i>
via Netgalley.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-25212248023739340242014-01-01T17:03:00.001+00:002014-01-01T17:03:46.151+00:002,334: Poirot and Me by David Suchet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixe5Faiz78bJbSZno8U17ynAQJBTbwyUvL1fF1uwZ8HeTn3Cv18chf2UxsjV89ZBx4X3kQN7kJnTNJaDvsTqwoKY8BjljUmhB7-UgQQf8vTrm2v8AIFhl0XVYIbqnwQNVlYjxDpZ1LSjXV/s1600/Poirot+and+Me.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixe5Faiz78bJbSZno8U17ynAQJBTbwyUvL1fF1uwZ8HeTn3Cv18chf2UxsjV89ZBx4X3kQN7kJnTNJaDvsTqwoKY8BjljUmhB7-UgQQf8vTrm2v8AIFhl0XVYIbqnwQNVlYjxDpZ1LSjXV/s320/Poirot+and+Me.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may sound rather silly but I’ve still not been able to
watch it. It sat on my Sky+ box for
weeks before being replaced by a DVD version just before Christmas and now
rests on the DVD shelves awaiting the call but, for some reason, I’m just not
ready for it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m talking about <i>Curtain</i>,
of course, the last ever episode of <i>Agatha
Christie’s Poirot</i>, with David Suchet as everyone’s favourite Belgian. It started nearly 25 years ago in January
1989 with <i>The Adventure of the Clapham
Cook </i>and ran for 70 episodes, covering every Poirot novel and virtually all
of the short stories. It’s a great achievement
as the main characters remained constant throughout the whole run and Suchet’s
Poirot is, surely, now the definitive Poirot, standing head and shoulders above
other cinematic Poirots, including those of Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As well as this, it has been one of my personal favourite
series, having started whilst I was at university and having been an on-and-off
companion throughout my adulthood. There
is something peculiarly comforting about Suchet’s humane and affectionate portrait
of Poirot and, even now, if I’ve had a tiresome day, I will slip an episode
into the DVD player after Mrs F has fallen asleep and allow it to soothe me
like a nice mug of hot chocolate.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oddly enough, though, I had completely missed just how loved
the series was by the general public and had, for some strange reason, thought
it was just another TV detective show that I happened to have developed a
peculiar fondness for. Not so. Not by a country mile as, come last November,
in the run-up to the final episode, there was a blizzard of media coverage of
the event, David Suchet became a staple of the interviewer’s sofa and the man
himself published <i>Poirot and Me</i>, a
memoir of his time as the great detective.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a very engaging read and Suchet comes across as a
serious character actor who ended up identifying with Poirot maybe a little too
much and becoming driven to complete the cycle and to portray the character in
the way he felt would realise Christie’s vision of Poirot. Incidentally,
he also appears to be a genuinely nice man, with the merest touch of thespian
vanity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The book opens with Suchet’s account of how he came to get
the role, including a meeting with Christie’s daughter the (now late) Rosalind
Hicks in which she admonished him not to mess it up and the advice he received
from his brother, the ITV newsreader John Suchet – don’t touch it with a bargepole!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fortunately, David ignored this well-intentioned fraternal
advice and prepared for the role by listing 93 character traits of Poirot that
he needed to reflect, which is actually reproduced as an illustration in the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As well as containing reflections from Suchet on pretty much
every episode he appeared in, <i>Poirot and
Me </i>is stuffed with fascinating anecdotes, on and off the set. We hear about disagreements between star and
directors, changes in production team, his fellow actors and actresses and the
struggles in achieving the full cycle.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although obviously focussing on Poirot, the book is also an
interesting account of the life of a character actor and it is immensely to
Suchet’s credit that, despite becoming so closely identified with Poirot, he
managed to maintain a flourishing career away from the series and has become
one of Britain’s best character actors.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
All in all, if you loved the series or have an interest in
TV or the stage, I am sure you will enjoy <i>Poirot
and Me</i>. And frankly, it’s worth the
purchase price just for the story of Suchet, the mango and the Royal………. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-76257080562297974032013-11-20T14:35:00.000+00:002013-11-20T14:35:03.563+00:002,335: The 500 by Matthew Quirk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl8Yd2W1e2Uo83kjNlk_mqYjWO4lZOZaudF-tc8_DsmCtdvXhPv0nIUF-hyhl8fmCVOCAsaQa0aJAhWg-SSrq783z_8uxd76jXJyFOI020SxDgwWz5utgJlrO01yEB6QAFfBeiXr2PfcRw/s1600/the+500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl8Yd2W1e2Uo83kjNlk_mqYjWO4lZOZaudF-tc8_DsmCtdvXhPv0nIUF-hyhl8fmCVOCAsaQa0aJAhWg-SSrq783z_8uxd76jXJyFOI020SxDgwWz5utgJlrO01yEB6QAFfBeiXr2PfcRw/s1600/the+500.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Mike Ford, the hero of <i>The 500</i>, journalist Mathew Quirk's debut novel, has a troubled family history - his father’s in jail
for burglary and his mother’s dead. But
Mike has drive, ambition and brains so he’s managed to work his way through
Harvard Law School and he’s landed an extraordinary job in a strategic consulting
firm in Washington DC. It pays well, his
every need is catered for and all he has to do is to keep churning out the 90
hour weeks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
There’s only a couple of slight snags - his two bosses,
immediate supervisor William Marcus and founder of the firm, Henry Davies, are
a little mysterious, a bit cloak and dagger and some of the things the firm
gets up to seem just a little close to the edge. And as Mike begins to stick his nose into
things he has been expressly warned off, it soon begins clear that the Davies
Group is not just sailing close to the wind, it is involved in some very nasty
and very illegal activities.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Now, at this point, I would be amazed if any thriller readers
over the age of about 30 amongst you are not screaming “It’s just like <i>The Firm</i>”. And, indeed you’d be correct. For much of <i>The 500,</i> the plotting similarities between this and John Grisham’s
genre classic are so apparent that they come very close to spoiling the book -
especially as one of the blurbs (by James Patterson, no less) on the front
cover expressly refers to Grisham’s book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Personally, I think this is a slightly risky strategy,
given the success, both critical and financial, of <i>The Firm</i>. It invites
comparison and sets a tough benchmark for <i>The
500</i>, which it doesn’t quite meet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
It’s a gripping read, nicely paced and with plenty of
action. I whipped through it in pretty short
order and it held my attention until the last page. Mike comes from a criminal background and is,
himself, a reformed thief. Quirk uses
this background well, giving convincing descriptions of the craft and skills of
the burglar and con-man. There’s also an
authentic feel to the scenes in which Davies Group staff use their leverage to
influence politicians and other influential Washingtonians and, although I’ve
only visited DC once, <i>The 500 </i>has a
strong sense of place.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
On the downside, Quirk ends up relying too much on Mike’s
history and criminal skills to get him out of trouble, which becomes slightly repetitive
at times; it’s almost as if he’s got all this knowledge and really wants to
share it which is all well and good, but, sometimes, less is more.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
There is also a little too much coincidence and
convenience in the plotting - at one point, Mike breaks into a storage unit he
had previously broken into years earlier and finds that the owner is still
using it to store the same burglary tools. The revelation of key pieces of information is
also a little heavy-handedly planned out, with characters knowing just the
right kind and amount of information for that point in the narrative.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText">
These flaws don’t make <i>The
500</i> a bad book - it’s a well-written, enjoyable thriller and much better
than the average genre novel. What they
do result in, however, is a thriller that doesn’t quite match up to <i>The Firm</i>, a classic of its type. Which isn't a bad result at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
I'd like to thank Headline for sending me a review copy of <i>The 500</i>........and apologise for the inordinate amount of time it's taken for me to get round to reading and reviewing it!</div>
</div>
Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3069628911357973492.post-71064893716457565602013-11-17T09:47:00.000+00:002013-11-17T09:47:11.761+00:002,337-2,336: Two Books on Psychiatry and War Crimes Trials<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two things first opened my mind as a teenager to the
possibility of becoming a lawyer: the incomparable Rumpole of the Bailey, John
Mortimer’s Falstaffian defender of freedom, lost causes and the Timson clan and
the Nuremberg war trials, which formed the subject of my History O-level
project.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLD9tvoVcBYxndy1hHRvmtZ6K9CUNif0e0G-PLYcuA8s0Bz5hXjBdzTMey9NevQNZrYabZKXTZh2GUfeCO2WFrVfdmDyR8rpRtso_hgVnhvzgHHIIFe8N7JEWgHgcbyjYp-32-e2iqEmNm/s1600/Nazi+and+Psychiatrist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLD9tvoVcBYxndy1hHRvmtZ6K9CUNif0e0G-PLYcuA8s0Bz5hXjBdzTMey9NevQNZrYabZKXTZh2GUfeCO2WFrVfdmDyR8rpRtso_hgVnhvzgHHIIFe8N7JEWgHgcbyjYp-32-e2iqEmNm/s1600/Nazi+and+Psychiatrist.jpg" /></a>The Nuremberg trials, as well as being fascinating from a
legal point of view, given the novelty of both the idea of such a trial and
some of the charges with which the defendants were charged, were a
crystallising moment in history, a period where the crimes of Hitler’s Germany
were first brought to the attention of the world and were documented in
forensic detail. To those of us now accustomed
to seeing archive footage of the concentration camps and other atrocities, it
may be difficult to grasp the shock and impact of this but the showing of film
of the camps at the trial formed one of its most dramatic events – a moment
where some of the chief architects of Nazi Germany were confronted with their
most obscene ‘achievements’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Douglas Kelley was a US Army psychiatrist assigned the task
of maintaining the mental health of the defendants before and during the
trial. A driven achiever with a complex
family background, he also assigned himself the task of analysing the
defendants to try and determine whether the leading Nazis were mentally
abnormal, implying that the Nazi regime was a unique historical phenomenon, or whether
they were, in fact, normal, raising the chilling conclusion that, given the
correct conditions, regimes similar to Nazi Germany could arise almost
anywhere.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jack El-Hai’s <i>The Nazi
and the Psychiatrist</i> deals admirably with this argument, whilst also
containing a biography of Kelley who, in an eerie echo, was to commit suicide
by cyanide, the same method as his chief patient at Nuremberg, Hermann Goering,
had used to cheat the gallows.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Given that Kelley’s personal background and life was so full
and complex, and that his tenure at Nuremberg and interactions with the Nazis
could itself have filled a book, it should come as no surprise that <i>The Nazi and the Psychiatrist</i> is, whilst
an excellent read, slightly unsatisfying, falling somewhere between a number of stools, being part-biography,
part reportage and part analysis.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Everyone who reads <i>The
Nazi and the Psychiatrist</i> will find something of interest, whether in
Kelley’s life, his relationships with Goering and Hess or the conclusions he
draws. I was less interested in Kelley’s
personal life than in an objective account of his work at Nuremberg. In particular, having read both his account
of his time there and the account written by his colleague and rival, Gustave
Gilbert, I was most interested in the account of their rivalry and the
different conclusions they reached about the defendants. Gilbert viewed the chief Nazis as psychotic
and abnormal, giving a comforting message to America that Nazi Germany was
unique. Kelley concluded the opposite
and spent much time lecturing and speaking on how similar things could happen in
America and elsewhere. El-Hai’s synopsis
of the controversy and its development over the years is excellent.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgunTVvB5FGxPfMilUEcV80WuAFpkHHRpY00okmAW5EBWjlw5paxPav4w7t9JMRsK1qKx96oWyEE6JaynYiNfF4-Sl9sMbBmE7W82G7sFVXpmkkrz5NWFiXjNGgOVlHrmj5NPKcO5taPknw/s1600/Curious+Madness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgunTVvB5FGxPfMilUEcV80WuAFpkHHRpY00okmAW5EBWjlw5paxPav4w7t9JMRsK1qKx96oWyEE6JaynYiNfF4-Sl9sMbBmE7W82G7sFVXpmkkrz5NWFiXjNGgOVlHrmj5NPKcO5taPknw/s1600/Curious+Madness.jpg" /></a>By contrast, <i>A Curious
Madness</i>, sticks more closely to the personal. Its author, Eric Jaffe, is the grandson of US
Army neuropsychiatrist, Daniel Jaffe.
After having served in Germany during the final months of WWII, Jaffe
was posted to Tokyo, where he was asked to determine whether Okawa Shumei, a
leading Japanese nationalist thinker, was mentally fit to stand trial at the Tokyo
war crimes trial, the ‘other Nuremberg’ about which we in the UK at any rate,
know far less. Although initially
indicted, Shumei’s behaviour in custody had been erratic and, when, during the
first days of the trial, he slapped former Prime Minister Tojo on the head, the
President of the Court ordered a psychiatric evaluation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jaffe determined that Okawa was unfit to stand trial and he
was transferred to hospital, where he completed a Japanese translation of the
Koran and made a seemingly miraculous recovery.
Re-examined by two psychiatrists who came to different views on his
mental state, there has always been a school of thought that believes Okawa was
feigning madness and fooled Jaffe.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The starting point of the book is Jaffe’s attempt both to
find out more about his grandfather and finally to answer the question of
whether his grandfather’s assessment had been correct. <i>A
Curious Madness</i> develops into the interwoven biographies of both Daniel
Jaffe and Okawa Shumei and touches on many broader and fascinating subjects
such as the early days of psychiatric engagement by the US military and its
theories on the treatment of combat fatigue and the development of Japanese
conservative nationalist thought in the period up to WWII. Jaffe’s focus is clearly on his grandfather
which enables him to maintain the balance of <i>A Curious Madness</i> towards the biographical.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If I’m perfectly honest, I preferred <i>The Nazi and Psychiatrist</i> to <i>A
Curious Madness</i> (although both are well worth reading). In part this is because I am so much more
familiar with the Nuremberg trials and the personalities of the former – I may
have enjoyed the latter more had I read more on the Tokyo war crimes trial
first. I was also less interested in the
personal biographies of the psychiatrists and more interested in their work and
conclusions – readers with more of a biographical bent may have a different
view. Consequently, although I believe
Eric Jaffe does a better job of focusing his story, I found El-Hai’s book more
to my taste.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For those interested in World War Two or the development of
criminal psychiatry, these books are well worth reading and thoroughly
recommended. For the more general
reader, they may be a little specialised and off-beat, although they are still
good reads and should also appeal to the general lover of biographies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I would like to thank Scribner and Perseus Book Group for
allowing me to read <i>A Curious Madness </i>and
<i>The Nazi and the Psychiatrist</i>
respectively via NetGalley.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Falaisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01296217731383114462noreply@blogger.com0