January 2007 Archives
Unlike recent reads, I really enjoyed this Aurelio Zen mystery, although the man himself didn't make an appearance until well past page 40. Set in the independent minded mountain borderlands between Italy and Switzerland, this Zen outing provides a darker by more credible plot stetching back 30 years, and Zen's sleuthing reveals relationships and careers based on lies and deceit. Zen seems at his best when he's an outsider, and when Michale Dibdin keeps Zen's personal life playing a remote second fiddle to his detective work and police force politicking.
Amazon.co.uk link: Medusa - Michael Dibdin
I've read a lot of Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series, but Thanksgiving is a very different book. For starters, it's more of a novella, and its plot is less finely/densely woven. The narrative jumps in time, location and voice, but each chapter builds on and informs the last to produce a though provoking tale of love, loss and longing. A tale that lingers in the memory and a title that accumulates meaning along the way. Recommended.
Amazon.co.uk link: Thanksgiving - Michael Dibdin
A confession - I am a sucker for this kind of London love story chick lit, and I read this at one sitting (or lying, seeing it was an evening-and-into-the-night bedtime read).
The lure with these novels is that they feature characters and situations that are similar to those encountered in my 30-something world, and it's all the more so in Vince & Joy which follows the relationship between the two main characters from 1980s first love holiday romance through 20 something loves and lives in the 90s and up to the present day. Strong characters and situations provide depth and emotion, and whilst there is always going to be a happy ending, you know the path to it is not going to be straighforward.
Amazon.co.uk link: Vince & Joy - Lisa Jewell
I really wasn't sure about reading Jonny Bealby's account of his first trip to Pakistan/Afghanistan - I'd borrowed it from the library before going on the Wild Frontiers' trip to the Hindu Kush, and not read it for fear of spoiling my own first encounters, or jinxing the long awaited and much looked forward to adventure.
Fortunately I decided to give it a whirl after the event, and I am very glad that I did too. This book is not merely an account of Jonny's trip to a difficult part of the world, but it's also an account of his ongoing personal journey to come to terms with his girlfriend's death many years before. The combination is extremely powerful and I am sure I'm not the only reader who cried at various poignant moments.
It was lovely hearing Jonny describe his first meeting with Saifullah and the Kalash at the end of his journeys, and his descriptions of the arduous route he took there - from Dehli to Peshawar, over the Khyber Pass and into the Afghan side of the North West Frontier - deliberately echo Kipling's tale of The Man Who Would Be King, which first inspired the trip. It provides a fascinating insight into the region in the period preceeding 11 September 2001, and leaves you even more aware of how remote and independent the area is, and its people too.
A fantastic book.
Amazon.co.uk link: For a Pagan Song: In the Footsteps of the Man Who Would Be King - Travels in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan - Jonny Bealby
Another thoroughly enjoyable piece of historical chick lit from Elizabeth Chadwick in a richly evoked, detailed setting which I have come to expect in her novels.
As ever, the novel features a pair of star crossed lovers, although it takes a while for Annais and Sabin to grow up enough to recognise their destiny. Even then the path to true love does not run smooth in this tale which takes the reader, and the characters, from the dour Scottish borders to the vibrant and voilent Crusader Kingdoms of the 12th century, showing how close these two distant areas were brought by the Crusades and the people involved in them, on both sides.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Falcons of Montalbard - Elizabeth Chadwick
This novel charts the rise to power of the last Empress of China, from provincial governer's daughter to the establishment of her small son as Emperor in the 1860s.
At times it felt like a thinly veiled piece of academic work, which sat uneasily with the added shots of sexual and political intrigue. Still, I learned at lot about the workings of the Imperial Court and the Forbidden City in the declining years of the Manchu Qing dynasty, and their attempts to deal with predatory manoevrings of the western powers during the Opium Wars.
Amazon.co.uk link: Empress Orchid
At last - I spotted the latest instalment in Sue Grafton's alphabetised crime series featuring Californian Private Eye, Kinsey Millhone.
S is for Silence sees Kinsey sleuthing away from her Santa Theresa base, travelling to the small inland town of Serena Station to investigate the whys and wherefors of the disappearance of good time girl, Violet Sulivan, on 4th July 1953..... Did Violet run off to escape her abusive husband or to be with an unknown lover, or was she killed - and if so, why?
Flashbacks to 1953 provide the background on the community's characters, motives and events, and the focus is much more on the lives and loves of people other than Kinsey. It's not that I don't enjoy following Kinsey's personal story, but it must be difficult for Sue Grafton to come up with fresh plotlines for our feisty heroine.
Now I only need wait another year or so for T is for .....
Amazon.co.uk link: S is for Silence