Neverwhere

While this fantasy/horror by Neil Gaiman is set in an alternate London underground, it’s somehow so similar to Stardust that it’s practically the same book. There’s the goblin market, the quest, the dangers, the unusual girl who turns out to be more special than the girl at home, the references to myths and fairy-tales, and the clumsy boy who becomes a hero. I really don’t like in most fantasy novels, and didn’t like here, the horror elements – how writers can spend so much time on such disgusting things I have no idea – but I liked the idea of the Underground reflecting historical and imaginative aspects of the real world. The language was reminiscent of Terry Pratchett but with a slightly more American flavour. Clever, interesting – but like the previous book, not particularly deep or moving, and so I doubt I’ll be seeking out other books by this author.

Stardust

This fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman is something like The Princess Bride without the mocking flavour of that particular book (although like TPB, the film of Stardust is more tightly structured and therefore slightly better). Tristan Thorne is asked by a girl he’s keen on to go catch a falling star – and so he crosses the Wall into fairy-land and discovers that over there, stars are girls and magic is real. It’s a fun, clever, and well-written fairy tale, albeit with a rather modern American tone to it all. There’s the usual twists on the usual fairy stories, and some of the darkness of modern fantasy novels – an altogether good, if not deep or moving, read.

Where the Road Leads

From the ridiculous to the sublime – this is the story of Jean Calder, an Australian physical education teacher specialising in children with disabilities, who has worked with the Palestinian people in Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine, and will probably die there – she’s in her seventies. She adopted three children with disabilities, and has supported the care of thousands of others. At the same time, she’s promoted understanding of disability through inclusive education, training of workers, and training of parents. The story covers her life, as well as what has happened in Palestine, especially in the last few years – it finishes in 2006. It’s a straightforward read, and a fascinating one, about someone living in extraordinary circumstances and simply focusing on the plight of others, rather than worrying about herself – there’s little mention of any personal discomfort in the face of the everyday inconveniences of living in developing countries – no, it’s all about the children. An amazing story, and definitely highlighting some of the more ridiculous non-fiction I’ve read below.

Absolutely Faking It

This travel story by Tiana Templeman was one of the fluffiest things I’ve read – the story of how she won a trip round the world’s top hotels, but didn’t have the cash to live the lifestyle, so had to essentially backpack from one posh resort to the next. And that’s it. There’s no twist, no other story. She describes the hotels and the countries she visits, but as she spends about three days in each, it’s not even as deep as a lonely planet guide. The difficulties she finds are summed up in what she learned: “I can cope with any struggle now, such as smuggling a pizza into the Ritz hotel”. I suppose it’s interesting as a portrait of the average world knowledge of a regular backpacker – but it’s not much as a piece of literature.

What I Was

This was another disappointment by Meg Rosoff; I don’t know why I’m always so hopeful that the next book will be any better than the previous. This is a coming-of-age YA novel (with the word “bugger/buggery” in every second page, to try to keep it either hip or British) about a boy in a boarding school in the sixties who runs off and meets a boy called Finn who lives on a riverbank by himself. He’s increasingly attracted to Finn and his lifestyle and goes to live there during the holidays. Disaster strikes and (with no great surprise to the discerning reader) Finn turns out to be a girl, and some other boy drowns. I can see the vision Rosoff had, but it really isn’t realised in this book; neither the school, nor the characters, nor the landscape comes across in any genuine way, and at the end of the day it’s because she really isn’t a very good writer.

Those Faraday Girls

I’ve always enjoyed Monica McInerney’s books, and this one is no exception. It’s the story of five motherless girls who get a shock when the youngest falls pregnant at 16. They raise the child together, but separate when one of the sisters, Sadie, has a breakdown and leaves – taking the child away. While Maggie is soon returned, Sadie disappears, and never comes back, though the other sisters meet regularly. Years later, when Maggie grows up, she begins to discover all the lies that her life has been based upon, and she ends up finding Sadie too.

This is a plot-driven novel, plainly written – it’s not literature – but it’s a good, thought-provoking read about families. It doesn’t revel in pain, but it doesn’t give out bland happy endings, either. Some people are just horrible, and don’t turn out nice – that’s reality, even if they’re members of your family. I raced through this book as I race through all of McInerney’s books, because the characters are enticing and the story is well-told and it does what it sets out to do – entertain.

A Watery Grave

This was a fairly dull read by Joan Druett, although that’s probably just because I don’t find all things nautical particularly interesting, especially when the entire book from beginning to end lacks a single female character (except the dead woman from the first page). The hero, a half-Maori half-American sailor during the nineteenth century stumbles on the mystery and while he’s sailing south with the navy endeavours to solve it. He does, because there really isn’t very much mystery to it at all. While the tidbits of information about being a pacific islander in an increasingly white world during the nineteenth century are interesting, they were too infrequent to hold my attention in this particularly pedestrian novel.

Shantaram

This book by Gregory David Roberts is like a wild dream, where things just get crazier and more unbelievable – and it’s also one of the best books I’ve read all year. In fact, after finishing part one, I was tempted to agree with the front cover and call it a masterpiece, but unfortunately the rest of it wasn’t as brilliant – it was still good though.

The story is based on the author’s life, although the narrative has obviously been tweaked (he calls it a novel). Roberts was an armed robber who escaped from prison and fled to Bombay. He met up with a variety of interesting characters, including the woman, Karla, who shapes much of the story. He ends up living in the slums and starting a clinic there, but after a tragedy, leaves and joins the Bombay mafia, and his hero-father figure, “Kaderbhai”. After getting involved in Bollywood, spending months in an Indian prison, and travelling all around the world smuggling, he follows Kaderbhai to Afghanistan, where he discovers to his horror that both his life, Karla’s life, and the lives of thousands of others, have been manipulated by Kaderbhai to support the war in Afghanistan. He returns alive – although Kaderbhai doesn’t – and sees the downfall of the mafia group. When the story ends, he’s planning to go join the war in Sri Lanka.

It’s not just the crazy action, the philosophy, and the lyrical language (sometimes a little too purple) that makes this story – there’s people returning from the dead, twins attacking the hero in a Queen’s darkened tower-room, incredible riches and incredible poverty – but the characters, fascinating, unique, real, and human. The women – including Karla – are neither ciphers nor princesses, the men aren’t angels either, and best of all the hero isn’t heroic. He runs away from the fire in the slum, from the pain of the people, from the worst of everything – it is the Indians who cope and survive and make plans and explain to him how to live. It’s a reverse City of God. He learns, because he’s humble, and that’s why it’s real, because anyone who has travelled knows that’s the real truth of travelling. It’s shocking, disturbing (there’s violence, sex, drug use, death), and tragic, but it’s uplifting because it’s about real people living a real life. Comparing this book to the stories below of sedate wealthy lives enlivened by canteen duty is almost impossible. This is an amazing book because the writer lived an amazing life.

Dreaming Water

This is a typical American novel, but it’s not too bad - Gail Tsukiyama being an adequate writer. I say typical because it has that forced simplicity, that focus on some issue or other (this time it’s both Werner syndrome and the Japanese interned during WW2), and the exploration of relationships. It’s a snapshot, in that the action takes place over two days, although the narrators (another sign of the typical American novel - using several narrators to carry the story) dip into the past, reminiscing. Basically Cate, in her sixties, is caring for her thirty-something daughter Hana who, having Werner syndrome, is like she’s in her eighties. She hasn’t long to live. A close friend, Laura, from the past comes to visit, with her daughters, showing that the end of one life can still make a difference – the mother has time to ponder her growing attraction to the family doctor, and Laura’s teenage daughter sees that difference can mean uniqueness and something beautiful. It’s a quiet read, a thoughtful read, but nothing particularly new or original.

Something Rich and Strange

This is a small sea-story by Patricia A McKillip, who writes fantasy. Megan and Jonah live near the beach somewhere in modern-day USA, running a shop full of sea-treasures like drawings (done by Megan) and fossils (found by Jonah). One day a stranger appears, offering them jewellery to sell in the store; luring them into the sea, so that Jonah is seduced by a siren and disappears, and Megan’s drawings begin to contain worlds she never knew existed. That part is good, but when they get down into the sea, it turns into an environmental message (pollution of the ocean/they’re sent back to bear witness) which really feels at odds with the rest of the book, and brings it down to a children’s morality tale. However, the writing is very beautiful, and the first part so mesmerising that you feel desperate to drop everything and go directly to the beach.

The Towers of Trebizond

The title of this book by Rose Macaulay is incredibly familiar to me as one of those classics that everyone should read; and yet it turned out to be nothing like I expected, and the sort of book that I can’t see lasting into the future. It’s ostensibly a comedy about a woman who accompanies her elderly aunt Dot into Turkey, is separated when Dot goes to visit (communist) Russia, and returns to England with Dot’s camel and her own ape to await her return. What it’s actually about is religion; the narrator, like the author, is in a long-standing affair and cannot see a way out of it, is an agnostic and can’t see a way into the Anglicanism of her ancestors, and struggles with both things constantly. The end is both tragic and unexpected, and in a way unresolved. It’s a very interesting – and well written, in a very Cold Comfort Farm voice – story, especially for lovers of Turkey, comedy, and travel stories in general, but it’s a story of its time, and I can’t see it lasting as a classic into this century.

Faust

I was attracted to this novella by Turgenev because I love the Faust story, and indeed this is a sort of variation on the myth. A young man meets a girl who has been brought up in isolation, never having read anything fictional, never hearing any stories. He’s attracted to her, but her strong mother suggests that they’re not a good match; humbled, he agrees. Years later, when the girl is married, they meet again; this time her mother is dead. He introduces her to Goethe’s Faust, and she’s altered irrevocably.

It’s a great idea, but while Turgenev is supposed to be one of the great Russian writers, I wasn’t touched by it – it lacked that spark that the other authors have, that real passion – it felt more like a writing exercise than anything that the author really felt, even though apparently he was a great fan of Goethe. Great writing of course, but it didn’t grab me.

The Secret of Lost Things

This novel by Sheridan Hayes is not very good. It’s a coming-of-age story about a Tasmanian girl who goes to work in a bookstore in New York. It’s set in the eighties, though it took me three-quarters of the book to work that out, because it doesn’t sound like the eighties at all, and the girl is not anything at all like a modern teenager; I’d guessed it was the twenties. The characters don’t sound American (e.g. asking for black coffee!) and are caricatures (someone likes Dickens, evidently). None of the lost things are eventually found – the secret is obviously that lost things are lost – and while the girl somehow gains some kind of understanding, it was lost on me. Derivative, and not very interesting – it really didn’t feel as though the author put too much of herself into this one.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

More like books than book, this collection by Italo Calvino parodies books, readers, publishing, ideas and his own works, all at the same time. The Reader picks up his book – discovers in a printing error he’s reading a different book – goes to correct the error at the bookshop, university, publishing house, more and more places, each time being given a completely different book, and each time wanting to read it but being thwarted. He meets a fellow Reader – the Other Reader, Ludmilla – and a cast of other odd characters including writers and ghost-writers and professors and critics – and in the end the Reader, you, finally end the book, even if it’s not the one you started with – although of course it is, because it’s his book.

The Last Days

This is a YA novel by Scott Westerfield, and it’s a sequel to Peeps which I reviewed earlier. Set nowish in NY, more people have caught the vampire virus, and there are more signs of the underground worms who are going to eat everyone. A couple of young people put a band together, and get signed up to play at a massive concert. Their unique sound not only draws a crowd, but calls up the worms, too. They end up going round the world calling worms out of the ground so everyone can kill them. Obviously, it’s an end of the world novel, but it focuses on a small bunch of people and while it’s simple, it’s not simplistic. It’s slightly depressing, although the obvious fantasy element does engender enough disbelief to stop the reader wallowing in it. The author introduces some basic ideas about viruses and civilisation, in a less complex way than in his previous book, which is food for thought, even if he doesn’t elaborate on it.

Talyn

This tale by Holly Lisle is one of those thick fantasy books, with the usual fantasy-lands, violent action, great heroes doing deeds that at first everyone reviles them for but in the end rewards and cheers them on, magic and magicians, and very nice horses. Talyn is a magical soldier in a permanent war; when the ceasefire is declared, she’s suspicious. She gets involved with one of the Peacekeeper race, finds out they’re bent on mind control and destroying everyone, and joins up with a former enemy to take them down. It reminded me a lot of Farscape, and also of a sort of justification for xenophobia and the US imperialist policy. Better the war you know than the peace you don’t, is the theme; but there’s also the idea that while you’re fighting the familiar enemy, several more unfamiliar ones are lining up unexpectedly at your border. It was fairly well-written and made me want to read to the end, but without that real depth that would lead me to seek out more by the same author.

The Last Summer (of you and me)

Ann Brashares really does have her finger on character, which is why I like this YA book. It’s unusual, in that she’s taken a real place, and a real place she really loves (an island called Fire Island off NY where rich people spend summers) and weaves a story about it which isn’t entirely happy. Alice and Riley are sisters, and have spent every summer on Fire Island; now they’re in the early twenties and embarking on life. Paul’s the guy next door who has spent every summer with them. This is the last summer of the three of them because Paul and Alice fall in love, and because Riley gets sick (and eventually dies).

The first half of the novel was great, and I really enjoyed it, but I wasn’t so sure about the second half. The idea of the young person not entirely engaged in life dying – and she brings it on herself, like a Peter Pan refusing to age – doesn’t sit too well with me as something real – it’s more like a cop-out, a way for it to be not so bad. The first half was slowed down, really analysing character; the second half sped up and went many places. It was still enjoyable, but if the novel had just been the first half, it would’ve been just as good. Brashares reminds me of Melina Marchetta, with a real feel for that coming of age period. It’s a very good book, perhaps even better than her Sisterhood series.

Terrier

I’m never sure with Tamora Pierce, because some of her books are dull; but this, like her Trickster series, was great. Beka is a “puppy”, which is a trainee police officer in this alternate world; she’s got to survive the streets of the Low City, which is ruled by slavers, thieves and child-killers. She also has to deal with the way her family sees the low status of her job, the new relationships she’s forming, and the ghosts that she hears in dust-devils and pigeons.

Pierce has got a good feel for the messiness of life. The job isn’t perfect, the relationships are untidy, and the way things pan out isn’t going to suit everyone. Yes, Beka’s a hero, but she does make mistakes. The “dogs” take bribes, and the man she likes is a Rogue, which is something like a thieves’ guild (I think – it wasn’t so clear to me). The writing was fast-paced and full of fun Aiken-like language, and the world was believable. This is one of her best, and I’m hoping there’ll be a sequel.

The Careful Use of Compliments

Not Alexander McCall Smith’s best title - it’s a bit too cutesy – but I picked it up because it’s the next in the Isabel Dalhousie series, which I love. Interestingly enough the bit he gets right this time is the mystery, which is well put together and well resolved. The character bit, which is usually so enticing, was a bit uneven this time. Isabel has had her baby and is still with Jamie although she won’t marry him yet; Cat, her niece, won’t speak to her or acknowledge the child; and she has been fired – properly – from her editorship. It’s full of the little ponderings which make Isabel so fascinating a character, but the bit that falls flat is the child, who is a cardboard baby and just sleeps and eats – little crying, no dirty nappies, no sleepless nights etc. The odd relationship between Jamie and Isabel continues being odd, which I suppose is all right, but slightly frustrating. However it is all tied up very nicely at the end, even if Isabel does make a decision worthy of an entire article in her own journal of ethics.

First Among Sequels

I picked up Jasper Fforde’s latest with fear and trepidation, because his Nursery Crime books have been so terrible – but I needn’t have feared, this was very good. It’s sixteen years on and Thursday is still dabbling with both in SpecOps and BookWorld duties, while trying to be a good wife and mother at the same time. There’s all the fun of weird time, Spike and his demons, bookjumping and carpet laying, with lots of not-so-subtle asides about the reality tv era and corporate madness. Best of all he’s shoved in some cool twists that I really didn’t see coming. While this isn’t on par with the first two of the series, which are, I think, the best, it’s still very good, thought-provoking and – finally – a good comedy.

Salvation Creek

This rambling biography by Susan Duncan is a kind of sea-change book. She suffers the death of her brother and husband in the same week, soldiers on, breaks down, moves house, loses her cat and her dog, has a devastating affair with a married man, gets cancer – and then finds a house in Pittwater, or, more accurately, a community of people there. She makes friends, learns to live in the moment, and eventually falls in love and gets married. It’s well told, although it could be more cohesive, and her habit of giving away what’s going to happen in two years’ time, then not referring to it for chapters, is a bit irritating. Again, it’s about wealthy people and their lives – I suppose wealthy people are the ones who are free to make the changes and write the books. And there’s an enormous amount of alcohol – I never realised how much people drank. Too much about dogs, too. But very readable, even though it makes you realise that there must be a lot of people who wait too long to realise life is short, if there are so many books like this being published.

Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

This is a quite interesting YA book by Adam Rapp, who is also a playwright and movie director. Steve Nugent is in an institution for teens who have mental health problems – either addicts or attempted suicides. He’s writing a journal as part of his healing process, covering where he started – in a school for the gifted – to where he ends up, in the institution. While it’s not really new stuff, there’s something about the writing that really draws you in; probably the casual nature of it. He loses his mum to cancer, his brother to suicide, takes some drugs (and you almost feel as stoned as he is during those parts) and ends up walking the streets and then poking his own eye out. While this seems sad material – and there’s no resolution to it all, except he falls in love with another girl in the centre – it is more thought-provoking than really depressing. It’s a portrait rather than a journey (although perhaps it’s supposed to be a journey – I’m not sure) and it’s a good one.

Romanitas

The concept of this book by Sophia MacDougall is interesting; the Roman empire never fell and still rules to this day. It’s just that the execution isn’t particularly well thought through. It’s the Roman empire just with technology. And the story – the heir is in danger of getting killed cause he wants to end slavery, so he runs away – doesn’t really hinge on it being now rather than two thousand years ago, so, seeing that the planes and cars and so forth only appear sporadically, you don’t usually remember it is supposed to be now. Which is a waste, and as you read you can’t help but nitpick – that Latin would have remained the same over two thousand years, and all the customs, and the clothing etc – the only change is that there’s electricity. The idea of then but now has been done before and done better, so it’s a real pity the author didn’t revel in the challenge. Anyway, the characters are well-drawn and interesting, the story races along and is written fairly well (except for the chopping and changing from place to person and back again) and it’s resolved at the end despite being a trilogy. A good concept, but a wasted one.

The Ballad of Les Darcy

Peter Fitzsimmons was fortunate enough to have this book commissioned by the Books Alive people, to be given out free, which is how I got it. It’s the story of a boxing legend during WW1 who refused to join up and was vilified for it. He became champion in Australia at only twenty, and died at 21 of an infection brought on from a boxing injury. While the historical aspect was interesting, in the large segment of society that was not so keen on joining up and becoming bullet fodder, the idea that Darcy was an utter hero and legend just because he was a boxer doesn’t really cut it with me. The author, clearly aware of his audience, uses an overly-conversational style, including phrases like “see,” to start every other paragraph, almost as though he’s aware we’re not really going to get why Darcy was so great. I wouldn’t have read this if it hadn’t been a free book, but as a snapshot of Australian history, it was quite interesting.

Fat, Forty and Fired

This is the comedy I sought out, by Nigel Marsh, and although it is funny in parts, it was also very irritating. For one thing, the title is a lie; he wasn’t fired, he was given the choice of a new job or a very generous retrenchment package, so generous he was able to live on it for a year – so long as the nanny and the second car went. Yes, he is and was a very, very wealthy man, and the worst part was that he scarcely seems to realise it. In his year off, he travels through Europe – and not backpacking, let me add – has a few other trips in Australia, and spends every day swimming at the beach, as well as doing the school run. His wife doesn’t work either (they have four children between four and six) and must be very long-suffering, as he admits to being an alcoholic with anger management issues – which return in less than a year, when he accepts another generous job offer and goes back to being a CEO. Yes, there’s definitely some funny segments in this book, and yes, it’s nice that he takes some time off to reconnect with his family. But this rambling memoir can’t be taken seriously, simply because most people would never find themselves in that situation. Fat, forty, and fired, yes; able to take a year off and sustain a family of six in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney based on a retrenchment package, with the knowledge that a job would appear whenever one feels up to it again? Unlikely. This guy hasn’t got a clue, and that’s what I really didn’t find very funny at all.

Resilience

Here’s the last in my depressive reading list; a book about resilience by Anne Deveson, which of course is about bouncing back after adversity, but can’t help really be about adversity, all the different kinds. There’s Rwanda and Ethiopa, the Holocaust, human rights abuses in Turkey and South America, the Stolen Generation, child abuse, homelessness, mental illness, disability . .. and then how people managed to rise above them. Throughout the whole story is another, her own – not only the story of her son with schizophrenia from her earlier book, Tell Me I’m Here (which I must have read fifteen years ago) – but also the story of a man she met through writing this current book, fell in love with, and who died six months later in her presence from cancer. It was inspiring to hear of sixty-somethings falling in love, but weird to have it turned into an example for her book – such intimacy, but I suppose that’s what journalists do. While this was a very interesting book, full of quotes, it did lack depth and it did lack real critical discussion, perhaps because it wasn’t written by a philosopher, just by a journalist who has taken a lot of different examples. It’s about the level of a long article in the Good Weekend, but still a great read, unless you’ve just read the long litany of woes beneath. I really need to find a comedy next.

The Life of Charlotte Bronte

This is an excellent biography by Elizabeth Gaskell, not just because it’s about the most unrelentingly tragic family ever, but because she’s an exceptional writer. There’s long descriptions of Yorkshire – historical and geographical – and interesting details about incidents that inspired various parts of Jane Eyre and Shirley. I never realised, either, what a complete nutcase the Bronte father was, nor what a complete loser Branwell was. And then of course the heaping up of horrors which was Charlotte Bronte’s life – poverty, mental instability (I don’t think any of them were free of it) and death after death. It’s almost an essay arguing against the whole “suffering is good for one’s character” case; Gaskell even mentions how ridiculous the philosophies of Day (who tortured some poor girl in hopes she’d turn out to be a good wife for him) were, in connection with some of Patrick Bronte’s actions. Of course, perhaps we would never have got Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights had their lifestyle been slightly more comfortable; but who knows – perhaps we would have got even better, if they hadn’t all died young and horribly at that. It’s interesting how even back then the Bronte’s story was seen as ridiculously tragic, although it does serve to remind you that only a hundred and fifty years ago, England was as diseased and poverty-stricken as the most underdeveloped country today. Charlotte Bronte does come across as slightly more prim and pious than in her books, but that may be because Gaskell was extremely religious herself. There are inaccuracies – deliberate changes and omissions, for example the Hegel situation – but it’s a brilliant piece of writing, even if terribly tragic to read.

The Poisonwood Bible

This novel by Barbara Kingsolver is quite good and very readable; it’s the story of a missionary family – a couple and four daughters - who end up in the Belgian Congo (later Zaire, later Congo) during the sixties. The father is predictably slightly mad, and goes madder; the girls are equally predictably the ones who get on with things and discover that maybe things aren’t as simple as they’d assumed. In the end each person has a different reaction to what has happened.

Each chapter is narrated by a different female, one of the daughters or the mother, and they have easily distinguishable voices. It flows well, and there’s a good build-up to the climax or the disaster which forms the centre of the novel. On the other hand, a lot of it is commonplace; surely by the 21st century we’ve read enough Heart of Darkness clones, and realise that the westerner entering Africa isn’t going to change it for the better, or even want to. There was definitely still the theme of “missionary evil/aid worker good” (and after Rwanda, you’d assume people would have begun questioning this – and interestingly enough, although the Rwanda horror set off the Zaire coup, there’s no mention of it). The whole “backwards” thing with the child with hemiplegia was grating, and I wonder what people with cerebral palsy would think of the easy cure the writer decides upon! In short, the writer does want you to question, but only so far, and I do wonder how far she has gone herself in thinking outside the boundaries.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

This book by Khalad Hosseini is more a potted history of Afghanistan, than a novel; it’s a member of the “life sucks for women” book club, and the “life sucks for people in non-Western countries” book club, too. Mariam is the unwanted daughter of a rich man and his housekeeper; she’s married off against her will at fifteen to Rasheed, is beaten by him, and miscarries every child. Laila, who has had a liberal upbringing, gets pregnant at fourteen to her childhood love Tariq, who goes to Pakistan just before her parents are blown up by a bomb. So she ends up quickly marrying Rasheed, having her lover’s daughter, and then a son by Rasheed. A close friendship develops between Mariam and Laila, and Mariam ends up giving up her life so Laila can have the freedom she never knew.

It’s a fast-paced novel, without much complexity. The details are interesting to me – many of the Farsi words are so close or the same as the Kurdish ones, and they also have the Titanic craze back in 1999 which swept Bangladesh and India. But in general it’s more a way of covering a lot of history through the lives of some poor suffering women. At least it has a happy ending, although I think the hopefulness of the little family at the end at the future of the new Afghanistan may be slightly misplaced – but then, hope is all they have.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I felt a sense of unease which grew as I read this seventh book by J K Rowling. It wasn’t the bad writing, as someone suggested – it’s pretty much the same as her previous books, with her derivatory storytelling and her difficulty with cohesion – but something else. The entire series is a coming of age story, but a very different one. The usual COA style is to have the hero discover life, bigger than the world he knew, have a few sexual experiences, and discover something about himself along the way. This is quite the opposite. The writer has made Harry’s journey a slow discovery of death – and that’s why I felt quite uncomfortable, considering it’s a children’s book.

The plot is basic – Harry and his pals have to destroy certain magical objects, defeat the Dark Lord, and win back the Kingdom (yes, it’s straight out of Diana Wynne Jones’Tough Guide to Fantasy-Land). The plot of the series is similar, except in every book, right from the first, Harry’s knowledge of death is deepened. Firstly, he discovers his parents’ deaths and his own near-death; it moves on to several close calls as he faces dangerous situations (and creatures!) and faces the possible deaths of himself and his friends; then the possible becomes actual, with more and more characters dying in each book; and finally this last book, where the grounds of Hogwarts are littered with bodies. However, it’s not just that sort of knowledge Harry discovers. From the first book, where he meets ghosts and sees his dead parents in a mirror, through to seeing dead friends and family conjured up by his wand and then through the shadows, to finally hanging around in the land of the dead – Harry really does get an intimate knowledge of “the deathly hallows”. Even his “sexual” experiences are both tainted with death and sorrow. And then there’s the messianic overtones with the hero having to die, rather than having to live.

I personally felt that the book, and the entire series, was incredibly grim and morbid, in the same way the Phillip Pullman series was, and therefore quite disappointing. The initial three books, while definitely introducing these ideas, didn’t dwell on them to the same extent the last four books did. They had a sense of fun and joy – the Quidditch, the four-poster beds and feasts, the boy finding a home. Any fun or happiness in the last books were all “in spite of” – in spite of looming fear and danger. There’s a definite early 21st century feel, that the world is coming to an end, that the good old days are gone because of terrorism and environmental destruction and so forth. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but feel comparisons with John Buchan, Kipling and Conrad’s Lord Jim; a sort of Boy’s Own feel, do it – whatever ugly thing must be done – for the country, and all will be well. Unfortunately Kim would not be pleased if he checked in on Afghanistan lately; perhaps that’s why the mild coda certainly didn’t make up for – or even fit well with – the rest of the book or series.

Midwinter Nightingale

This was written towards the close of Joan Aiken’s life, which is perhaps why it’s also preoccupied with aging and death – it fits in with the other Wolves books, but is a bit more gruesome – there’s death after death from people being eaten alive, shot, falling off cliffs, being shut in boxes, and being covered by molten silver. While Dido retains her usual matter-of-fact survival sense, she does end the book by weeping – weeping because Simon is now King of England and it will destroy their relationship. She probably does get over it, knowing her, but I don’t know if we’ve seen her cry before. It is just as clever, with the same play on language and the same interesting characters, but there’s a definite sadness throughout the story which perhaps was the author knowing she was going to have to say goodbye.

The Namesake

This is Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel, and it’s not bad. It’s the story of Gogol who was named after the Russian writer whose writings, his father believes, saved his life. Gogol is a second-generation Bengali immigrant to the US, and this story is as much about the different aspects of American culture as it is about Indian (Hindu) Bengali culture. Gogol hates his name, and gets it legally changed, and it takes half his life to accept both his name and his heritage.

This story is mostly narrative, with few chunks of dialogue, which gives it a very calm but also a cautious feel – there’s no strong emotions. It’s well-written, and entertaining, even though only a few of the characters – Gogol and his parents – are really fleshed out. His wife, Moushoumi, remained a bit of a mystery to me, partly because their break-up is revealed second-hand. The other women in his life also fade away without fanfare, although they’re described well, and their differing lifestyles are really interesting. All in all, it’s a good read, especially for a first novel.

Maisie Dobbs/Messenger of Truth

These old-fashioned mystery novels by Jacqueline Winspear are in the style of Sayers and Allingham, even though they're modern. It's set in the 20's, but reverts occasionally back to the Great War, with the theme that what happened then had consequences which went on and on. Maisie Dobbs is the female investigator who solves mysteries using her psychological training and a bit of ESP; she's more interested in the human element than the solving of the puzzle.

It’s rather commonplace – the cockney servant, the emancipated woman and the convoluted mystery which is resolved easily in the last chapter. The writing is pedestrian, and she has a habit of telling us twice, rather than showing us once, what is going on. While it’s reminiscent of the early mystery classics, it lacks the depth of thought and the eye to detail, too – for example, historical characters think and speak in ways which would have been quite foreign to them. It has interesting moments, but it’s definitely not my kind of book.

Dido and Pa

Joan Aiken is definitely the best writer for children, ever. This is another story in the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, and it’s a good one. Dido has returned to England after her travels and meets up with Simon, who is now Duke of Battersea. Unfortunately she also meets up with her Pa, who lures her away and forces her to work for the enemy, training an impostor to speak like the new Scottish King. But with the help of a number of curious characters the King, Simon, his sister and even the impostor is saved, as well as a poor slattern called Is.

You can’t help but love a book that ends with a young lady sewing a penguin, with a girl crooning, “I love little Kitty, her coat is so warm/And if I’m not kind she will chew off my arm”, where the enemies are stoned to death by children and it’s all done with seriousness and good fun (unlike many modern books which seem to laugh at, not with, their child readers). The utter richness of the language is something unique and lovely, again reflecting the respect the writer has for her readers. And the story always comes together in a satisfactory way, with Dido not marrying the Duke, and feeling rather sad about her Pa getting eaten by wolves.

Somewhere More Simple

I’m often whinging about books being given too good a rap by publishers and critics, but this is the opposite case; Marion Molteno is an exceptionally good writer, and yet most of her books are out of print, and this, her latest, was stuck up on a back shelf and not even put with “new arrivals” in the store. She reminds me of Melina Marchetta, because her books are all about character, and there’s something so intimate about the writing – you feel as though it’s been written by someone you know.

Cari decides to take a maternity leave locum on a small island off Cornwall – an island where she spent an idyllic summer as a child. Her boring husband agrees, and they settle there, meeting the locals including Anna, a bereft mother, and Hugh, a local farmer whose wife has left with their son. Cari and Hugh fall in love, and she has to choose between him and her husband; Anna has to get over blaming others for her grief; and Hugh has to deal with his own control issues. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s filled with a kind of beauty which really is simple, and really is human. I have to say I didn’t truly buy the Hugh-Cari relationship, because it seemed more a vehicle for them both to deal with their issues rather than an issue itself, but apart from that I loved it, I really did.

Robins at the Abbey/Stowaways at the Abbey

I’ve got a few of these books by Elsie J Oxenham, collecting them randomly in the same way as I collect other British Girls’ Stories of the 1920-1950 period. They’re a little slice of history, where the pinnacle of life is to marry and have sets of twins (in Robins, one poor damsel has two sets in one year!) and where there’s an impassable gap between the working and the landed classes. These stories are set near an old Abbey, where discoveries are made such as buried bells, loot from highwaymen, collapsed tunnels and the like. The girls all attend an English Dancing club and have very mild adventures. These two volumes – where one female Robin meets a male Robin and fall in love, or where a boot-boy is a stowaway in the Abbey and is reconciled to his master by one of the girls – are fairly tame, especially as most of the action is “off-camera” and is just retold by one girl to another, interspersed with announcements of more twins. They are nothing to the Chalet School, where the girls have a constant brush with death every other chapter, but as a piece of history they’re fairly interesting.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle magazine, had a stroke which left him completely paralysed apart from one eye. By blinking while the listener recited the alphabet, he was able to communicate and write this short memoir. He was a father of two young children, and he lived only a few days after the publication of this book. It’s full of longing, full of hope, both angry and humorous, and extremely human.

He writes about one perfect day he shared with his children; writes about the day that his stroke occurred; writes about the history of the hospital, about how he feels about his carers, about the things he imagines as well as the things he experiences. He was only forty-three, and he lived less than a year after his stroke, but this book isn’t a book of grief but a book of life.

Invisible Cities

The idea of this book by Italo Calvino is that Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan (and actually they were contemporaries during the 1200s) and describes to him the cities he has visited; cities where the people worship the buckets and pulleys of a well, where everything is underground or high in the air, cities which contain the faces of the dead, or where everything is reflected and so the reflection is more important than the reality. Which is the meaning of these sketches, that the cities are invisible because they’re actually Venice, or not-Venice, or not-the city of the reader.

Definitely reminiscent of Borges, definitely both eerie and beautiful, and the sort of book where occasionally there’ll be an “ah-ha” moment; like the city where the unborn have their memorials and their worshippers like the graveyards of the dead, like the city of signs where only the sign is visible and perhaps there’s nothing there at all.