Carl-Johan Vallgren: Den vidunderliga kärlekens historia/The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love And His Terrible Hatred

This is one of the few Swedish books my sister owns. She got it from our aunt - most likely an open attempt to force her to read more in her second mother tongue, but it worked. My sister enjoyed it, to her surprise, so she recommended it to me when I last was on a borrowing spree.

Now, it's a skilful book - hang on, I just realised I was writing in English. I hadn't meant to - the curse of being bilingual! Well, I'm not going back to change what I've written, I'm too tired. It'll stay in English... so... adding the title for the translation... there, and here's the link to an "about the book" page. Back in business. By the way, this is the author's homepage, one of those monstrosities where they think we have they energy to wait for things to load. We don't. Like I was saying, skilful book, yet I wasn't that blown away because it reminded me of something else I've read and I can't pinpoint what. Possibly P O Enquist, and if so Enquist to my taste is much better, even though I had issues with the one book I've read  (ha ha ha) that I linked to there. So it didn't grip me altogether, plus I always hate when a storyline has a huge Catholic priest conspiracy with evil killer priests. Boring boring boring. I would recommend it though, it's worth a read, but it's very personal whether you really enjoy it or not I'd say.

Fredrik Falk: Överlevnadshandbok för cyklister

Lånade denna lilla skrift på måfå för att jag råkade gå förbi den på bibblan, och trodde att det skulle vara ett fyndigt litet debattinlägg. Men det är en ganska självgod, överdriven och ooriginell historia. Med en hel del goda poänger, visserligen, men alldeles för mycket "putslustigheter" av den typen som får mig att misstänka en överkonsumtion av Grönköpings Veckoblad.

Men jag ska skriva en sak jag gillade, och det var påpekandet att man ska betrakta övergångsställen som en fortsättning på trottoaren som råkar korsas av en bilväg. Det är med andra ord gångvägen som är huvudled. Ingen bilist skulle väl ha något problem med att väja för en huvudled avsedd för bilar? Man ska tänka om helt enkelt. Det var bra.

Boken är för övrigt försenad till biblioteket, tillsammans med Dannyboy och Kvacksalveri. Jäkla skit, jag har hyrt böckerna.

Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment

I quite liked this one - I think as a general rule I quite like the Discworld books with female main characters. He's quite the feminist our Terry and does a good job of describing a woman rebelling against her traditional lot.

In Monstrous Regiment we meet Polly who joins the Borogravian army, disguised as a boy, to try to find her brother Paul. Borogravia is a country forever picking fights with its neighbours and suffering under the increasingly arbitrary commandments of their god, Nuggan, who has condemned a million things. This includes women in the army, but also red hair and garlic.

Polly's new regiment includes a vampire, a troll and an Igor, apart from a selection of humans - one of whom is extremely religious and claims to speak to the Duchess (the by now almost mythical leader who acts as a go-between to Nuggan). Gradually Polly begins to suspect that she is not the only woman (this is not a spoiler, given the title of the book). They also discover they aren't doing so badly on the fighting front, and that someone is clearly frightened of them, and someone else looking out for them.

There are many very funny and clever bits in this Discworld novel, from the satirical portrayal of military brass and religion to the character spins - Pratchett's trolls and vampires are in their own league. My one quibble is that I didn't really understand the end, but I was in a rush then and skimmed it (not expecting him to want to Say Something). I may re-read it.

More on Trick or Treatment

Not being allowed to read (which I've done anyway, so I'm going to try to blog quickly now at work before my train leaves) led me to buy a woman's magazine for the crosswords. There are four or so main ones of this inexpensive type in Sweden. They contain recipes and some crafts, cheap serial stories (preferably with an historical theme), crosswords (natch), "ask the doctor", "ask the lawyer", "ask the therapist", "ask the psychic", true-life stories and pictures of people's grandchildren.

These magazines are always full of alternative cure articles. "I never thought I'd be rid of the pain, but [insert alternative therapy here] saved me!" Granted, there is always a doctor's opinion too, but in general these articles cater to these masses of women out there with aches and pains that the medical profession has ignored for years "because they're only old women". It annoys me to hell that all these people feel that alternative therapies are the only solution for them.

The article in my copy was about acupuncture increasing the chances of successful IVF treatment.

Happy Easter!

A quick pop-in to wish everyone a wonderful holiday, whether you celebrate or not. In Norway I know they have a tradition of reading crime fiction over Easter - sadly I can't participate because I'm still not allowing myself to read until I'm finished blogging about the ones that I have read. But I strongly recommend everyone to make Norway proud if you happen to have a few days off. Go for it.

Now - off to Mass. Soon!

Daniel Åberg: Dannyboy och kärleken

Den andra bokcirkelboken! Det är träff ikväll, så hög tid att blogga om den. För övrigt har jag läsförbud tills jag bloggat klart det som ligger och släpar. Numera finns det en Allers i väskan, för korsorden. Och en hög böcker hemma som väntar.

Det är inte ofta jag tar mig för att läsa ny (nåja, relativt ny. 2006 eller nåt, det är väl ganska färskt?) roman av en ung svensk författare, så det var roligt det här. Dessutom har romanen Uppsalaanknytning, och som bonus även Sandvikenanknytning, vilket är skoj om man har lite känningar i de trakterna. Vilket jag har, men mest min man. Som dock inte verkade fatta det roliga när jag bad honom läsa Sandvikenbitarna? Märkligt.

Huvudpersonen är kanske ett alter ego till Daniel Åberg, som själv är uppvuxen i Sandviken och har pluggat i Uppsala. Vi får inte veta hans namn, men senare i boken ett smek-/öknamn sedan gymnasietiden. Boken inleds med att han, i full frackmundering, springer genom Uppsala och hoppar på Stockholmståget utan vare sig pengar eller biljett. Väl i Stockholms tunnelbana stoppar han en tjej från att kasta sig framför tåget, och när de stulit Alexander Bards plånbok har de flera tusenlappar att lägga på en natts festande. Nutiden varvas med återblickar från hans studentliv i Uppsala (mestadels). På det här viset cirklar de runt varandras ursprungsproblem (varför flykten? varför självmordsförsöket?) och kommer slutligen till en insikt om att det inte går att fly.

Trots att jag hade rätt roligt när jag läste den känns det inte helt klockrent detta. I början fick jag definitivt lite "kartvarningskänsla" och upplevde att Åberg specificerade alldeles för mycket var någonstans i Uppsala vi befann oss - något jag avskyr - men den känslan avtog, så jag är inte helt säker på om jag bara inbillade mig. I slutändan vet jag helt enkelt inte om jag blev så intresserad. Det var kul, men inte så engagerande egentligen. Vad vill han? Hm, ska bli intressant att höra vad de andra tycker.

Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst: Trick or Treatment?

This is for one of the book discussion clubs. I nearly bought it, but the library had it in (in Swedish) so I borrowed it instead. It is the kind of book that theoretically is good to own, but after reading it I'm not sure I'm that bothered. I find the subject terribly interesting, but there was something lacking from the book. The idea of it all is that Singh and Ernst review different alternative health treatments to see if they have any effect or if people are just wasting their money. The basis for their review is a scientific approach and evidence based medicine, terminology which they explain quite thoroughly. Their target reader seems definitely to be the people who are more inclined to want an alternative treatment than conventional medicine, so they need to explain why we need to use certain methods - like randomized blind studies -  to discover if a treatment is working, and how history has shown that this is the better approach and not the traditional way of, well, guessing and trusting tradition. This is sadly repeated time and time again. Maybe it works better in English, the same way that inane pop lyrics work in English. I found it a bit repetitive. While I don't doubt their findings, I felt as though they didn't really trust me to understand them, and I would have liked a more science-paper-style book on the whole. With footnotes, so I could see where the source material came from, not just a reading list at the end. I would also have liked a more in-depth look at why people opt for homeopathy rather than actual medicine. The authors do touch on the idea that people are disillusioned with "scientific" medicine after scandals such as the thalidomide one, but I would have liked more. So maybe I'm not after more science then, maybe I'm after more philosophy.

Promising, but for me it didn't live up to the hype.

Terry Pratchett: Jingo

Another one from my little sister. She has looooots of Terry Pratchett, so I asked her to recommend a funny one because I find the quality varies. She likes the books about the guards of the Watch, so this is one of them. I have another one waiting that I'll start on tomorrow (but before you get to read about that one I have to blog about the two book discussion club books I've read inbetween).

This is one about an island mysteriously rising from the ocean, and how Ankh-Morpork and their neighbouring country Klatch both claim it. War brews. Assassinations take place under the eye of the Commander of the Watch. How to solve this.

Bits of this are hi-la-ri-ou-ssssss indeed. The butler going to war and switching between servile mode and rabid plutoon commander mode is very funny. In general though it can seem a little cramped. I'm not always sure I've grasped the whys and whatfors. Good entertainment though. Three cheers!

John Connolly: The Book of Lost Things

I had not heard of Connolly before borrowing this book from li'l sis, but apparently he has written some crime fic, and I'll be sure to check it out since the library has it in. (This book contains criminal acts, but since the crimes are mostly committed by a fairy tale character I think we won't call it crime fic even in the loosest sense of the word.)

Reading this after reading the similarly themed shambles that was The War of the Flowers was very interesting. This is a much more researched and well-planned book in many ways, utilising the dark horror of original versions of fairytales, giving them a bit of a spin, and weaving it all together into a story about growing up and about loss. And sorrow of course, sorrow comes with loss.

Set at the beginning of WW2, we meet David, a boy of about 12, just as his mother is dying. The disease works at her slowly and painfully, and David escapes into books and OCD, thinking that his counting habits and rituals will somehow protect her. His father meets another woman so soon that David subconsciously realises that the affair went on while his mother was alive, leaving him feeling that there is really no-one he can trust, who is on his side. When Rose, the new woman, becomes pregnant, they all move to her family's house outside London, since it's safer. It's a big house, and David gets the room in the attic that used to belong to a boy called Jonathan, who also loved to read and who tragically disappeared together with his foster sister, many years ago. The birth of a demanding baby brother creates even more tensions in the new family. David feels unwanted, and starts to hear the books talking to each other. He also sees a strange man sometimes, a crooked man whom he perceives as somehow threatening. One night David finds the crossing into another world and goes through. The fairytale land is not what he expected. Talking wolves, trying to be human, are ravaging the land, and there are other monsters. David's journey on the way to see the King becomes a quest. He grows up. On the way he meets many characters from stories and tales, but with a twist. Some are horrifying, and in general there is a lot of blood and gore in this book. It's not gratuitious though - the original fairy tales were much darker than the versions we read today, and this is what Connolly taps into. David finally reaches the King, and completes his quest and gets home. Getting home does not mean a happy ending though. The last chapter tells us how David's adult life turns out, and how all his loved ones do die in the end. It's terribly sad and moving, yet ends with a sweet hopeful scene. 

The second half of the book is an interview with Connolly about the book, and an explanation to the fairy tales behind some of the themes in the book, plus the original stories. It's very interesting on the whole. On the annoying level (there's always something) - sometimes the book feels "off", like it's anachronistic or something, but the only think I spotted for sure was David making a reference to a tingling in his hand that feels like poison ivy. Which surely is nothing an English boy has experienced? Anyway, recommended to anyone who enjoys fairy tales. I was reminded of when my friend E's husband, a teacher, once complained about their school librarian's stupidity in not understanding what books to order when the teachers were working with the students on fairy tales. Instead of getting original versions of Grimm's collections or similar, she got Astrid Lindgren. Lame! This book though would have made an good addition to the theme.

Tad Williams: The War of the Flowers

I have a younger brother and sister who unlike me got more into the fantasy reading after Tolkien, whereas I sampled some of it and decided that it was pointless, because it couldn't hold a candle to The Lord of the Rings. I read the first, maybe the first two actually, of a David Eddings' series for example, and got bored when I realised this would never end. Which is odd, because part of what you want when you read this type of escapist literature is for it to never end, obviously. But I think I saw the difference in quality between a trilogy that is really one book - where the different climactic, pivotal events are spread out so the series has a certain pre-planned tempo and their significance is well thought through - and a series that is really just a fantasy soap. Soaps can grab my attention for a short time, but I tire quickly. I resent being shackled to the story, I resent never seeing the end.

So anyway, my brother and sister felt differently and got into the entertainment that is fantasy serials. Through them I was introduced to the Otherland chronicles (note this: important fantasy term!), an earlier work of Williams's that really impressed me when I read it in.... well, I don't remember exactly... turn of the century sometime? (it is SO COOL to be able to write that about MY life!). The War of the Flowers is of a later date, but has the similar idea of a person/persons from our world being transported into another world, another kind of universe. Otherland is set in the near future, where we go online into a virtual universe, using avatars of ourselves to move about in a more literal version of real life - your avatar walks into the virtual shopping centre and takes things off shelves, etc. A wealthy group of individuals have created an incredibly varied and realistic virtual world, into which children are being lured (can't remember why, more on that later), causing them to become comatose in the real world. I thought it was very clever, having the fantasy part, the secondary universe, as a computer programme, and also I thought the description of the future was great - not too much difference (no hovercars), and based for the most part in Africa, thus allowing Africa to be something else than the mud-hut place of starving children.

In The War of the Flowers we meet Theo, who is too old, 30-something, to be the musician-waiting-for-a-break/delivery boy that he is. When his girlfriend miscarries, and his mother wastes away in cancer, Theo wants to reassess his life. Before he gets to do that, a Tinkerbell-sized fairy arrives and brings him through a portal to Faerie. He is wanted there by several factions, but nobody tells him why. Faerie is confusing and much violent and cruel than Theo had thought. He learns that the King and Queen died a long time ago, and that since then the seven most powerful noble families have taken control. All the other fairy species are under their thumb. To get the magic needed to fuel Faerie - magic that the King and Queen could generate by themselves - they use slave labour in factories, to suck the magic out of them. It's a not-very-thinly-veiled critique of our exploitation of the planet and fellow men, basically.

Anyway, so. Tad Williams. The man likes to write a lot of words. My sister lent me this and a pile of other books (so watch this space as I go through them - I'm on the next one in the pile now and it's another fantasy-trip-into-fairystoryland so comparisons are interesting!) and she said "well, his problem is that he's a bit wordy". And so he is. This book could EASILY have been half as long, without suffering for it. Also, if we're doing modern versions of mythology, let's just face it: Neil Gaiman does the best work. I'm not getting into the who was first debate though, they're both pretty contemporary. But Williams's violence and cruelty lack the bite that Gaiman's work has. Gaiman makes his characters more believable and true, so the reader cares more and takes it seriously. Theo is one of the most annoying characters ever. The sprite that brings him across calls him thick all the time, and she's right. Good God. He seems to exist purely to ask stupid questions so that stupid readers can get e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. explained. I find it very depressing that Williams finds his readers so moronic. For example, we come across characters with the surname Daisy. Then some called weft-Daisy. This is not explained. After some chapters something is mentioned on the aside about fathering children on the weft side. Since we are not idiots we now understand what weft means. Theo however goes another few chapters I think before asking outright and getting the full explanation. Why? Why bog down a fairly entertaining fantasy story with this? Was this in any way a loose end? No it was not. It was detail that helped us make up an imaginary, believable secondary universe. We wouldn't understand everything if you dropped us in Beijing either - you don't have to explain!

That is just one example of many many many. This tedious lengthening of the stories just causes me to forget heaps of details. Otherland deteriorated in the last few books (I think there are four?), so I can't remember what the actual point of it all was.

Okay, this is a bit more than the book deserves. I get a little worked up, and that's because it could be so much better. And because I liked Otherland despite it all, and this I can't like. Disappointing!

Katarina Wennstam: Alfahannen

Till min andra bokcirkel läste vi denna, och det var roligt att läsa en bok som är hyperaktuell just nu och som har satt igång eller i alla fall underblåst en massa debatt. Men som litteratur betraktat var vi rätt överens om att den inte var så mycket att ha, och vi grubblade en del över vad hon ville med den. Bästa teorin stod nog J för, som menade att den från början varit en mycket längre bok, men att förlaget strukit friskt för att få en bok som passade in i genren "deckare 300 sidor lång". Fast deckare är det inte. Faktiskt. Knappt ens en roman om ett brott, för den delen, märkligt nog.

Undrar när den blir filmad, för den är skriven som ett manus allaredan. Urk.

Miranda July: No One Belongs Here More Than You

This is for my first and original book discussion club. I understand that she is quite a popular author this July character, but this was my first encounter with her. She writes short stories that are at times too Carveresque for me to take them seriously as original works. I can see her talent, but to be honest I didn't go wild over this.Most often it almost felt calculated, but there were a few stories that tugged at my core. Unsure of this. Will be interesting to discuss it next week.

Adrian Mathews: The Apothecary's House

I borrowed a big stack of books from my sister today so I have to quickly get rid of my backlog. Starting with this, a book that turned up in our house I'm not sure how - must've been a spontaneous second-hand buy somewhere. I was seduced in by blurbs on the cover as per usual, and the information that Mathews won the Silver Dagger Award for his novel Vienna Blood.

Set in Amsterdam, we meet Ruth Braams. who is some sort of art historian - gosh what was it she was, I may look it up now - "finished her doctoral thesis on domestic typology in the work of Jan Steen" those were her qualifications, whatever that means. I think art historian is an okay term. Anyway, for an art historian working with determining rightful ownership of stuff the Nazis stole, she is remarkably uneducated in many matters, which means that her friend and colleague Myles (an Englishman in Amsterdam, who speaks Dutch, to his credit) has plenty of opportunities to tell her, and thus us, about events in history and so on that you'd think would be common knowledge. Then we have the classic problem of the novel being set in a place that is foreign to the author, cue several instances of people walking down blahblah street, to the left seeing the yadayada museum and to the right the intricate details of the statue of so-and-so.

Apart from that it's a very entertaining read in many places: hard to pinpoint now because I'm remembering mostly the faults to be honest. But oh yeah, Mathews writes great banter, I liked that. Most memorable thing for me was how Ruth gets her biscuit-dunking perfect by dunking the first one and counting until the bottom drops off, and then timing all subsequent dunks accordingly for maximum wetness without fallout.

If I find Vienna Blood I'm definitely going to read it, but for now I'm a little unsure as to why I read so many people on the Internet praising him so highly as a mystery/thriller writer, because in my opinion it could have done with some heavy editing really. A bit much and a bit messy. The end was very quoi? Could make a good film! If they skip the part where she skates down a canal to a clandestine appointment. Really.

Not not reading

I have been reading plenty, just not finding the time to sit and blog about it. I've also joined another book discussion club, which is interesting! Reread The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, to avoid starting another new book and lagging even further behind on the blog... I'll be back soon.

Robert Harris: Ghost

Mr Bani borrowed this thriller, probably because he'd heard of it being filmed, which always tends to make him interested in reading a book first. So he said it was quite entertaining, so I read it too. And it is that. Up to a point.

The book is about a ghost writer, a writer creates moving autobiographies out of monotonous half-phrases uttered by semi-forgotten football players, musicians and actors. He gets recruited to write the memoirs of the former PM of Britain  for an exorbitant sum of money. A manuscript already exists, but the previous ghost writer, who was a member of the PMs staff, died suddenly and there is no-one to finish it. Our man takes the job, even though the deadline is a month. While he is there at Martha's Vineyard writing away, the former  foreign secretary has the former PM indicted at the International Tribunal of War Crimes for his involvement in the "war against terror". (I don't remember the names at the moment, we've returned the book.)

From here on it becomes so-so. The former PM is a thinly veiled Blair. His dominant wife - is this a faithful Cherie? The foreign secretary - Robin Cook? Everything becomes so obviously an angry rant at how the UK did whatever the US wanted. Which maybe has its place, it's just not terrific as a book, as a thriller. It becomes the usual tired conspiracy theory, with the CIA everywhere and no-one safe and "they can get you at any time".

The ghost writer himself is equipped with a sardonic sense of humour, so it's not an unfunny book. Like I said, entertaining. Good travel reading. But not really a great thriller.

Diana Wynne Jones: The Merlin Conspiracy

Oh I know. I'm ridiculous, really I am. But I'm get so obsessed with things, and it's so easy to just go "oh another one why not" because I feel so secure in knowing what I'll get. Plus I get to relive my childhood.

This is sort of a sequel to Deep Secret, focusing on Nick this time, and Roddy and Grundo, two wizard children from the alternative universe of Blest. Roddy and Grundo discover a plot of some sort, aimed at disrupting or changing the magic of Blest, and through twists and turns Nick turns up to help them, together with a rogue mage called Romanov.

It's not bad, but a bit more of the same.

Kate Thompson: Switchers

Picked this up on a whim at the library, hoping that the youth section would introduce me to more fun fantasy or science fiction that I missed when I was growing up. This seemed promising, if the cover quotes were anything to go by. Also, it was set in Ireland, which is always nice. But it was quite boring really. In fact, it's so disappointing I'm going to tell you all about it.

A girl called Tess has known from an early age that she could switch, i.e. become any animal she wanted. This is how she now spends any free time she has. She is an only child, her family moves around a lot, so she has become a loner. One day she is approached by a boy who is a Switcher too, and he claims that there is someone who wants to talk to them about the cold weather that is starting to threaten most of Europe with another ice age. Apparently they can help. They change into rats and travel to the country where an old biddy, who was a Switcher in her childhood, tells them that the cold is because the oil drilling in the Arctic have woken some dangerous beasts called Krools (incidentally, król means king in Polish. I'm just saying), who generate cold and destroy (eat) everything. Tess and Kevin travel north to combat the Krools, first as birds, then as polar bears. Then they realise that they can also change into animals they've never seen, so become mammoths and then DRAGONS and that's how they beat the Krools. Interspersed with this are scenes from the UN force out to combat the cold, who think that Kevin and Tess are part of the problem and try to kill them.

This is pretty much how it reads. Episode after episode plonked one after the other. No character development. No real pivotal moments. Nothing makes me care one iota about these people. Also, I don't even get a sense of Ireland. Very poor. I might have enjoyed this at the age of ten, but only in that mindless readreadread way one has at that age, not much more. How poor. And the cover quote compares it to The Golden Compass. Please. I didn't like the second and third books in that trilogy (also BORING), but The Golden Compass is fantastically imaginative and this is not. Not.

Thing is, it could have been better. With ten rewrites. Okay basic idea.

Edith Pargeter: Most Loving Mere Folly

I borrowed this thinking I hadn't read it, but it did seem familiar once I'd gotten into it, so I must have. Hardly likely that the library would have anything by Pargeter, a.k.a. Ellis Peters, that I hadn't read. This is a loosely a crime story, but it's more about the people around the crime and what the crime and suspicions do to them. Sort of as though Pargeter was experimenting with the format. It's not terribly successful though, she sort of drenches you in words.

In a small town/village near London, a talented artist and ditto potter lead a supposedly contented married life, until the artist in drunken happiness one night introduces his wife to a local garage mechanic. The wife and the mechanic fall wildly in love. One morning, shortly after finding out about the affair, the artist husband is found dead, poisoned. The wife is suspected, and tried, and acquitted. But one of the two, the wife or the lover, must have done it, surely. So who is it, and is the other safe?

It's not very tense or anything, more into the romantic side. And all might have been easier if the wife's name wasn't Suspiria. Such a mouthful.

The sorting of books

Today I stayed home with Minimus, who is sick, and on a whim decided to sort our books according to colour. Which is the only way to sort them if you're at all aestethic, I understand. I'm sort of a dormant aesthete myself. I want pretty, and it makes me feel bad when things aren't pretty, but I can't be bothered to make them pretty and I don't seem to have a great talent for it. If you see what I mean.

But anyway, I like this colour-sorting lark. It does make the whole clutter of books look more harmonious. Several problems did arise though - for example,  I agonized over whether to break the colour-coding rule and keep a series of books together anyway, but in the end I stuck to the rules pretty well. I decided on whites to beiges to yellows to oranges to reds to purples to blues to greens to browns to blacks to greys. Almost consistently.

Most books, I've discovered, have white spines. Quite a number have black. Red are not rare, but brown is. There are a surprising amount of yellows or peachy tones, and blues are often very mottled, not so many pure blues.. Purples may be the rarest. I'd have thought there'd be more greens... Make of this what you want.

Gillian Cross: Pictures in the Dark

I picked this up from the youth section in the library because I had this idea that I'd read something by Gillian Cross for adults, so it'd be interesting to see how she wrote for kids. But I must have been confusing Gillian Slovo and Amanda Cross or something... Anyway, this is quite good I thought, bar that Charlie, our hero, is maybe a little too good - gets a tad one-dimensional. Charlie loves photography and gets very excited when he thinks an otter lives in the river. If he could get photos of the otter it'd be quite a scoop. But why is the otter so closely connected to the bullied, strange boy, Peter - so closely that it seems to come from Peter's family's garden? And how crazy is Peter's father becoming over this, and is Peter in real danger? Etc. Quite readable. Checking out Gillian Cross's homepage I realise that I have seen The Demon Headmaster on the telly, so maybe that's where I recognized her from? Anyway, I was interested enough by this to borrow the other book that the library had, but it's for even younger kids so I might return it. On the other hand I might need it after finishing Beloved.

Toni Morrison: Beloved

I am not reading this exclusively, because I read mostly on the bus to work, and you can't read Beloved and arrive presentable. When you read Beloved your stomach contracts with tension and you cry and snivel madly. Many tissues are needed. So I'd borrowed these other books (kiddie books) as bus fare, but having finished one of them I put Beloved in my bag, and so spent an hour weeping this morning. We are steadily working our way to the central point of the story, the greatest tragedy. I don't know if I can stand it, and at the same time I'm riveted and I'm finding it hard to not think about the book. That said, it's not a depressing book, not really. There's just so much pain in it. It's a fantastic story of people who have been traumatized since the day they were born, and are trying so hard to put it in the past and keep it there, with little success. It's a tribute to the resilience that humans can have, the resilience that keeps people alive and good after terrible degrading things have been done to them. After they, too, have done terrible things.

This is one of the best books I've ever read, and it should be high up on every list of "greatest books ever written". It's wonderful. Read it.

Suzanne Collins: Catching Fire

My youngest daughter got a book from The Sisters Grimm series for Christmas and liked it, and eager to encourage this reading business I bought her the next two online, and couldn't resist buying The Hunger Games and the sequel, Catching Fire, for myself. Was very happy. Dove in immediately.

As with all sequels there is a slight tendency to be repetitive, but it's not too bad. Katniss is trying to settle back to her life after the Games, and work out if she loves Peeta or her old friend Gale, or no-one. However, she starts to discover that she is hailed as a frontperson for the new rebel movement, and needs to choose whether she wants to step up to that responsability or run. This becomes even harder when the Games celebrate an anniversary, and she and Peeta are forced to enter the Games again.

I was calmer about it this time, and can see some definite weaknesses, but I still love these books and look forward to the next.

Diana Wynne Jones: The Dark Lord of Derkhelm

The library didn't have that much by Wynne Jones that wasn't part of a series, so this was all I got. I enjoyed it, and it could, potentially, make a very interesting and slightly dark film, a bit Gaimanesque.... but it could also be completely ruined by a filmmaker, so I dunno... I'm thinking that a film could/would/should edit out some of the longer passages that get a little slow. (However, mustn't be too critical, she writes for kids).

A world of magic is held hostage by a businessman from another world (ours?) who forces them to arrange fantasy tours every year, something that disrupts everything. They're finding it harder and harder to bounce back from the havoc these tours wreck. By selecting the "wrong" people for key posts they hope to sabotage it enough to make the businessman uninterested and go away. Instead the effects become more far-reaching. Good, funny, sometimes disturbing. It'd be nice if she developed the darker bits more.

Annie Proulx: Fine Just The Way It Is

I'm falling behind, so I'm going to post briefly about the books I've read over the next few days. The posting, not the books. The books have been read, they're not going to be. Oh, you know what I mean.

This was my other Christmas book from my husband, and I, of course, liked it a lot. By now it's been weeks since I read it so I can't remember which short story was my favourite, sadly, but I do remember that my least favourite were the "funny" ones on the "Satan redecorates Hell" theme. Oh, now I remember my favourite, a really sad story about two youngsters at the end of the 19th century who get married and plan this great life in their remote cabin, and then it's all ruined. It's like a memorial over all those people in history who where nobodies and have never been remembered - only buried, if they're lucky. Very moving.

Michel Faber: Under The Skin

At long last, the last of my birthday books! I settled in expectantly to this story about a woman who daily cruises the roads of Scotland, obsessively picking up male hitch-hikers - if they meet the right physical specifications. Why, one wonders, and to tell you even a little bit of the because is to spoil it a bit, so I'm actually going to SPOILER ALERT, because you never know, there may be someone out there surfing for reviews who'd be upset by too much revelation. Okay? Highlight to read.

What for the first chapter or so seems like a serial killer novel with a twist turns out to be science fiction. I saw it coming, but I am accquainted with the genre, of course. Someone not used to it would probably be more surprised. It is also a moral story. A modern Animal Farm some reviewer has called it, and one gets a strong feeling that Faber is a vegetarian. For me as a science fiction lover the morality takes over a little, because like all true aficionados it is the Other Culture that really thrills me when I read - and I want my moral lessons to be more of a backdrop. It feels a little obvious, here. But the Other Culture is very well thought out, and not too overtly explained. And the strength of the story lies in the descriptions of the people in it, all of them. The woman, Isserley, and her quenched hopes and desires and suppressed pain, and the men she abducts, with their same feelings; not that Isserley knows. She thinks them dumb and slow, and doesn't probe further.

I love finding science fiction where I didn't expect it, and I can heartily recommend this. It is brutal and emotional while remaining detached, and despite the otherwordly slant it's one of the most realistic ideas I've come across. Recommended.

Diana Wynne Jones: Deep Secret

I have read Howl's Moving Castle at one time, but other than that I'm not accquainted with Wynne Jones and her writing. (Do have a look at the link there, to a Wynne Jones website. It's rather ugly but they've put up some of the talks she's held for example, and they are both entertaining and interesting!) Inspired by Spufford (I copied out a long list of authors that he mentioned in his book) I've decided to indulge my love for children's/young adults' fiction and read a fair bit of Wynne Jones - a good choice, because the library happen to have several of her books.

Wynne Jones has a great sense of humour and a fair bit of bite in her writing. She doesn't shy away from introducing something really dark, for example children being murdered. There's also a lot of respect for the reader, in that not everything is explained straight away, but instead introduced in bits and pieces to be more fully explained later. Sadly, in this book I did feel a bit too much of the "question-answer" method being used. You know, a one-page lecture from someone explaining things in full and filling in the details for another character who isn't in the know. This gets a bit tedious. I remember Howl's Moving Castle as being a lot tighter, as though it had, basically, been better edited and superfluous bits taken out.

The story is that there are multible universes, more or less aware of magic, and a certain number of magids who can control this magic and use it to influence events. One of these magids has to search for an apprentice, and narrows it down to a list of a few names. To test the candidates he arranges for them all to be at a science-fiction and fantasy convention. Events are more complicated than he anticipated though, and magic starts to get loose, as it were.

Entertaining on the whole, but the good ideas get a bit lost in transport, so to speak. Some bits are a bit dull frankly, but it's okay to skim.  I'll definitely be reading a bit more, I enjoyed myself.

Vinterträdgården, del 2

Ha, ingen annan gillade boken heller.

Christine Falkenland: Vinterträdgården

Utan bokcirkeln hade jag inte läst den här boken, det är jag säker på, och det är ju bland annat det som är så roligt. (Vi har träff ikväll, därav inlägget.) Jag tror inte att jag blivit intresserad av en författare som först och främst gjort sig ett namn som poet, eftersom jag inte läser poesi. Alltså ... jag läser ju allt. Men jag väljer inte att plocka upp en poesibok bara sådär, för jag har svårt att ta till mig lyrik. Kanske för att jag läser för fort, så jag missar mycket. Jag har mycket lättare att ta till mig enstaka, kortare dikter som får möjlighet att "drabba" mig. Till exempel har jag uppskattat Szymborska väldigt mycket - fast, återigen, jag söker inte upp henne. Poängen är lite också att jag därmed har svårt att avgöra vad som är bra och dåligt, om det inte är rätt uppenbart. Detta gäller speciellt med modernare, obunden lyrik.

Och med det har vi kommit in på ett problem för mig med romanen - den innehåller väldigt mycket poesi. Laura är snart 40 år, barnskötare, och bor med sin far i barndomshemmet i Skövde. Hon har övertalats att börja på en skrivkurs, och börjar skriva ner sina korta dikter i anteckningsboken. Det blir alltså väldigt mycket dikter. En ny pojke börjar på förskolan, och Laura och hans mor, Sharzad, blir vänner och sedan älskande. Passionen är något nytt för Laura, och hon både omfamnar och värjer sig mot den, men slutligen underkastar hon sig totalt. Vad Sharzad känner vet vi mindre om. Laura exotiserar (är det ett ord?) henne, gör henne till sitt Höga Visan-objekt. Laura själv erkänner detta, men det känns inte riktigt som om det blir något av det - jag får inte relationen riktigt klar för mig. Enligt vad jag läste på nätet förklarar Lauras poesi förhållandets och Lauras utveckling, och framförallt det åtta sidor långa brev i diktform hon skriver till Sharzad när denna är på besök i Iran. Lilla jag förstår inte det där. Den enda gången jag begrep att Falkenland nog är en stor poet är när skrivarkursen avkräver Laura en haiku, och den är riktigt bra. Jag har alltid avskytt det där med att tvingas skriva haikudikter i skolan och så, och trott att det är för att formatet inte passar vårt språk utan är så specifikt japanskt (något Laura också säger). Men romanens var ju faktiskt inte dum alls! Det var en glimt av förståelse jag behövde, men den räckte inte.

Jag ser verkligen fram emot de andras åsikter ikväll, för det här var inte min grej. Utan cirkeln hade jag nog bara konstaterat det och lagt boken ifrån mig och aldrig funderat mer på den. Jag upplever inte att jag får något grepp om personerna, jag bryr mig inte. Laura framstår som tjatig där hon går och rackar ner på sig själv och dyrkar Sharzad. Jag saknade en förtätning, en spänning, fördjupning - finns den där förstår jag den inte. Hm. En del åsikter på nätet går ut på vad fantastiskt det är med en Falkenland-roman i nutid, men jag tror att man redan måste ha läst hennes tidigare romaner för att se den röda tråden där. Jag ska kanske prova med Trasdockan någon gång. Det lär ju inte ta mycket tid i anspråk i alla fall.

Helen Fitzgerald: Dead Lovely

One of my Christmas books! As you may recall I had high hopes for this one, and so I am sad to say that I was disappointed. It's too uneven, the end is rushed, it changes narrative perspectives throughout in an unpredictable manner that doesn't seem thought-out... and it doesn't even give me a great sense of Scotland, which would have been a bonus. The story focuses on two best friends, Krissie and Sarah, who have stuck together since childhood. Sarah married one of Krissie's best friends, Kyle, and has since become obsessed with trying to conceive. When Krissie becomes pregnant willy-nilly (oh, I couldn't resist that one) it's a hard blow for Sarah. Her marriage is cracking already. Krissie finds it hard being a single mother. The three of them all go on a camping trip for a much-needed break, but everything goes wrong, and there is MURDER. On a personal note I found it hard that Krissie is so neglectful of her son - that always makes me unhappy. From a literary point of view though I am more unhappy that her PND and feelings aren't very well fleshed out, so it becomes a bit odd when she turns and becomes Caring Mum.

Fitzgerald might write a much better book some day though, she has plenty of experience in social work and as a parole officer. And she can be very witty, there are some funny episodes alright. Bit more balance and I'll like it more. I think mostly I'm disappointed because I'd been anticipating something better.

Francis Spufford: The Child That Books Built/Hur jag läste böcker och lärde mig leva

I've read this in translation, but decided to post about it in English anyway. It was another one of those accidental finds, I liked what the cover told me, that Spufford writes about all his favourite children's books and how they've helped shape him etc. However, the cover wasn't entirely truthful. I expected a trip down memory lane, sharing a few memories of books I'd read too, perhaps getting some idea of what I'd missed growing up in Sweden... well, there was that too, but there was also a lot of rather serious stuff like discussion of different theories on child development yada yada yada. It's not quite what I had in mind, and I was tired - reading on my night job or on the way home - and when one is sleep-deprived theoretical stuff like that is not really what makes you happy. But the bits I liked I did like. I liked that Spufford defends all the books he liked. He's shown me why a child can love the Narnia books passionately - I never did, but I now understand why. He makes no excuses for wandering into sci-fi as a young adult, and describes really well why LeGuin's books are better if they're early, but why they were criticized by feminists among others.

I found the translation a bit heavy, not that there was anything wrong with it really, but I kept translating back, inside my head. Annoying that! I have gotten lots of reading tips out of this too, so I'll have to make a list and start reading children's books again.

Recommended!

Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin

Atwood prefaces The Blind Assassin with three quotes: one from Kapuściński's book Shah of Shahs, one from Sheila Watson's Deep Hollow Creek, and one from a Carthaginian funeral urn. It's this one that struck a chord in me. First of all, I only recently happened to see the second half of a TV programme about Carthage. Some Cambridge (?) scholar who is a bit of a prodigy I gathered wandered around North Africa and searched for the lost culture. Without watching this I'd have understood less of the inscription quoted, which reads:

I swam, the sea was boundless, I saw no shore
Tanit was merciless, my prayers were answered.
O you who drown in love, remember me.

It's an absolutely lovely thing to have on a gravestone - or urn, in this case. So beautiful and sad. (That's the second reason for the chord-striking, of course.) Thanks to the programme I know that Tanit was the main goddess in Carthage, and that they most likely did not sacrifice children there. I love how life is composed of such coincidences - I haven't thought about Carthage in years, not since latin class probably, and here two instances pop up quite close together.

Another funny thing is that we apparently bought The Blind Assassin for my father once, but I'd forgotten. I had a massive Atwood phase in my teens, read all she's written that the library had, but then I dropped her. Like with most such infatuations I'm afraid to revisit them, convinced that if I was so enamoured in my youth it can't be that good. But The Blind Assassin is very very good. Never spotted it when we cleared up Daddy's things, or I might have nabbed it.

The Blind Assassin is a novel in this novel, written by Laura Chase and published by her sister Iris after Laura's suicide. The novel has become a cult book and Laura acclaimed as an iconic modernist author. An old woman now, Iris wants to tell the truth and share the complete story about herself and Laura. The only one left who has a right to it is her estranged grand-daughter Sabrina, so in the hope and fantasy that Sabrina will read it, or perhaps even suddenly appear on her doorstep, Iris starts writing her memoirs. There are three stories in the story then, Iris now, Iris's story in the past, and exerpts from the fictional The Blind Assassin. The latter is the story of a married woman who meets her lover in secret. The lover is clearly on the run, living in various places and scraping by, and the woman is wealthy and afraid of her husband. He starts to tell her a story, about a planet far away, where children who go blind when weaving sumptious carpets for the rich become assassins for hire. It's a science fiction/fantasy story, which, I've understood from reading a bit online, has annoyed some readers, because they think it breaks the flow of the book. It doesn't fit in. Well, I think it does. This escape into the imagination is a wonderful contrast to the starkness of Canada during the Depression, of a loveless, exploitative marriage, of a drunken, idealistic father who gradually loses everything, of the relationship between two sisters who have nobody but each other really.

There was this bit I wanted to quote, from where Laura's and Iris's mother dies. I found it painfully truthful.

(What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us ti stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves - our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies. Now that I've been one myself, I know.)
[ . . . ]
I wanted to say that she was mistaken in me, in my intentions. I didn't always try to be a good sister; quite the reverse. Sometimes I called Laura a pest and told her not to bother me, and only last week I'd found her licking an envelope - one of my own special envelopes, for thank-you notes -  and had told her that the glue on them was made from boiled horses, which had caused her to retch and sniffle. Sometimes I hid from her [ . . . ] Often I got away with the minimum required.

But I had no words to express this, my disagreement with my mother's version of things. I didn't know I was about to be left with her idea of me; with the idea of my goodness pinned onto me like a badge, and no chance to throw it back at her (as would have been the normal course of affairs witha  mother and daughter - if she'd lived, as I'd grown older).

Exactly.

As we read we start to guess what the truth is, the truth that Iris wants to share before we die, yet it still comes as a catharsis. It's also a great description of Canada during hard years, a country of which I frankly have dim ideas -  apart from Degrassi High of course. I feel so strongly for Iris and Laura, growing up under the weight of their parents' idealism and the notion that the family has money more than the actual fact. A housekeeper/servant is the true mother figure for the sisters. Her aphorisms and sayings have stayed with Laura her whole life and she is the only one who is truly loyal to the girls. In the end Iris feels like she has betrayed both her sister and surrogate mother. There is such a powerful sense of loneliness about Iris, it's almost tangible. Great book, highly recommended. I might have to go on a new Atwood binge soon.

Many happy returns of the holiday season to one and all! Also Raymond Carver: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

I've had a lovely quiet Christmas at casa Bani, and my beloved husband gave me two books: Annie Proulx's Fine Just The Way It Is and another called Dead Lovely by Helen Fitzgerald. Very excited obviously by the former, but actually almost as excited by the latter, since it may turn out to be quite a find if the cover quotes live up to what they promise. I've never heard of the woman, but it seems promising. It's very sweet of him, and here's me only after getting him a box of chocs and running trousers (that turned out to be too big). The shame.

Fittingly I shall conclude by writing about another gift, one of the books my cousin sent me for my birthday, namely Raymond Carver's collection of short stories. Reading up a bit on Carver on Wikipedia (can't be bothered to link now because I'm at work and the computer is soooo slow) I learned that there are apparently two versions of this collection, or at least of many of the stories in it; one being a sort of author's cut since he was unhappy with his editor's heavy editing. It would be interesting to read Carver's preferred version some time. A quote from the Times Literary Supplement on the back cover calls the stories "brilliant shards", and that is an excellent description - they are short, often only describing the centre of something much longer, so you are left to imagine what led up to it and what might follow and why it happened, and they feel as translucent and brittle as glass shards too. I liked some better than others, as is always the case, but in general the whole is still one of the best books I've read. I think the first one, Why Don't You Dance? might be my favourite. It stuck with me most. Very much recommended.

Sara Gran: Dope

What. A. Find. Stumbled across it, and borrowed it thanks to the endorsements on the back cover. Kate Atkinson says that it's "a perfect noir pastiche but with a life and character all its own." Lee Child says that "If Raymond Chandler knew then what we know now, he might have written a book like this. Highly recommended." Someone called Robert Rayner says it's "A thrilling, heartbreaking journey through the heroin underbelly of 1950s New York. I was more than hooked. I was blown away." And Robert B Parker (whoever he is) says that it's "Tight and polished and exquisitely crafted."

All these statements are true. It's a really intelligent and moving little novel, about a former heroin addict and small-time criminal who thinks she's gotten her big break when she's hired to find a rich man's daughter. The daughter has become a "dope fiend" and since Josephine Flannigan knows the world of the dope fiends she has been suggested as the best detective. While Joe starts digging she discovers that the job isn't as clearcut as she'd thought, and that the past will always catch up with you. It's definitely noir, but with an edge that makes it anything but parody, it's beautifully sad and heartbreakingly dirty. Loved it. I'm definitely reading Sara Gran's other books - and on her website you can read the first two chapters of Dope if you want to see how good it is.

Some things I've thought about

I read about a Swedish woman caught smuggling cocaine in Brasil, who was sentenced to community service. Apart from working one hour a day in some sort of rehab clinic, she is to spend her time reading Selma Lagerlöf and Harry Martinsson in the court's library, and then present some sort of essay or something to the judge.

There are worse ways to spend three years, I hope she enjoys the literature and profits from her studies.

I think if I do another crime fiction splurge (I think this one is almost over) I want to read books set in Uppsala. There's some sort of exhibition thingy at the library so I picked up a leaflet with reading tips. The leaflet was put together by the former librarian and author Thomas Brylla, who sadly died a little while ago. I have to say that I once read one of Brylla's own detective stories and hated it, but I'd gladly honour his memory by reading one of his favourite genres like this. Of course, Kjell Eriksson is worth it, and so is Kerstin Ekman (she only wrote one book set here though). As for the rest, we'll see.

First I might maybe maybe indulge in something that is apparently called skämslitteratur - that is, books you're ashamed to own/have read. Namely, Jean M Auel. I never did read that last one. I think I want to. When I was a teen I read the sexy bits, obviously, now I enjoy the parts where she describes how they make stuff, and stuff. I'm honestly not ashamed to have read Auel, but possibly a little hesitant to own the influence the books had on me there for a while...

Amanda Cross: Honest Doubt

Now, I like Amanda Cross. So obviously I was delighted to see a Cross I hadn't read on the shelf and immediately brought it home. Last time I read one of her books was in February 2006, and I've had her simmering on the back burner of my brain since, hoping to come across a new one. This is why my disappointment in Honest Doubt is so acute. I didn't enjoy it at all. And I hate that I didn't. [cue violins and sobs]


It's a very recent book, from 2000, and therefore feels slightly anachronistic. My last forays into the world of Kate Fansler were set in the mid-eighties, and this book has that air of really being set in an earlier time, just not. This is the same problem that P.D. James has sometimes, as I've said. Unlike the other Crosses I've read it's not written from Kate's perspective, but as a first person narrative of a private detective known as Woody, who has been hired to solve the murder of a much disliked, mysogynistic college professor who specialised in Tennyson. (Hey, that was a long sentence!) Woody, for some reason that just feels contrived, needs some expert insight into the workings of an English department, so is recommended Kate as a sort of consultant. So from here the story potters on. Woody interviews suspects, on her own or with a local policeman who is very helpful. She is baffled by the intricate mysterious workings of both the department itself and those intelligent academics who talk and talk about academic things until she gets confused and only realises later that she's been distracted. It's just very unrealistic, and has a very uncomfortable air of an academic trying to blow her own trumpet. Unlike! It all ends with Agatha Christie playing a part in solving it all. 


I dunno. Was rather bored to be honest. Of course, I'll read anything else I can find - goes without saying. I've not given up on her.

Marian Keyes: This Charming Man

Okay, not crime fiction. But there are crimes in it.


My soft spot for Marian Keyes continues to be pokeable. As soon as I saw this I nabbed it - and I was the first reader, too! The first to crack the spine. That makes two in one library trip. Almost as good as buying new books!

It's a real brick of a book, must be her thickest yet, and tells the story of three women - well, four really, but the fourth is more minor - who have had a relationship with a politician called Paddy de Courcy. They each get their own section: stylist Lola's is written in the sort of diary style made popular by Bridget Jones, journalist Grace's and her twin sister Marnie's are more traditional narratives (can't remember now if one was first person, don't have the book here and really not important). Interspersed are short paragraphs describing an abusive episode, with no names mentioned. As the book unfolds we find out which woman was being beaten and by whom. The first woman to have her say is Lola, and after ten pages or so I started worrying that the whole book would be in this style, because it's rather tiresome to read. Diary type books are fundamentally flawed, because surely no-one ever writes diaries like that. You don't abbreviate in absurdum yet relate dialogue, you just don't. Like I said, I don't have the book here, but a passage could go something like this:

"Why you here, Dermot" I asked.

"Am here for film night, Lola" replied.

"No film night, Dermot. Have done away with film night. Am tired. Want sleep."

You see my point? I was a bit relieved when the point of view changed to Grace's. However, Lola's parts are needed, because they provide the comic relief necessary between the heavier parts that are Marnie's alcoholism and Grace's worries on that subject (and other things). The Lola bits do feel more "traditional" Keyes, more in her light-hearted style.

The book has a theme subject, and that is abuse of women. All the women have been abused. Your first guess at who the culprit is is probably correct, but it's a bit more clever than that: there are little hints dropped to make you wonder if more of the men featured in the book are sadists, and if you're first assessment of the situation was wrong. It's painted with a broad brush, admittedly, but nevertheless it's well done, because that is what women often face - a perfectly normal-seeming man who isn't.

The "charming man" referred to in the title really isn't, in my opinion, and that is a flaw. There's no way it seems believable that anyone would ever fall for that sleaze, frankly. Charm does work better in person. But I liked the book, several bits were very funny indeed if you know Ireland at all, and the abuse parts made the laughter stick in your throat. As usual the descriptions of an alcoholic sinking way down are fantastic. Marian Keyes may write books with neatly tied up and happy endings, but the fact that she has been through hell always shows. It's never completely rosy and she knows first-hand about the dark side.

2 x Lee Child

Lee Child was recommended to me by a former colleague, and I didn't have high hopes at all because said collegue also likes Camilla Läckberg, and I was flipping through one of her books that he'd brought to work and oh no, is that a waste of space. But I'm running out of stuff to read on my crime extravaganza, not to mention that I'm getting plain bored with it - see how I've evolved? I want real literature! - so am a bit choosy. But I decided to give Child a try, and got the two books that the library had (in English). They happen to be the two last ones in the series, no. 12 and 13. By chance I also read them in the right order, not that it matters much with this series.

Child's hero is a former military called Jack Reacher, who left the army and is now a vagrant, by choice. If you read that link you find out everything about him, which frankly spoils the books. I've now read the two last ones, and don't know that much. This is a Good Thing, because it's one of Child's strengths as an author - he doesn't feel the need to repeat stuff he's already written about. He can be repetitive in other ways, but he doesn't for example explain in every book exactly why Reacher left the military, why he has money (it's enough for him to choose to never do laundry, but instead just buy new clothes when needed, and to leave quite generous tips), why he drifts. I'm kind of wanting to read the link now, but kind of not. If I come across more of these books I'd read them, and then discover more as I go along. It's a bit of a novelty in this type of fiction to be presumed intelligent enough to follow a plot without having all the background information shoved in my face.

So among the bits I know about Reacher is that he's had a career in the army, as a Military Police. He's been around the world, has been injured several times. He's had some sort of disenchantment with the military, so that's probably why he left, I don't think he was kicked out. He now roams the US and comes across crimes or odd situations which he decided to solve or fix or change, like a one-man hurricane. He's a big man who just plunges into fights and wins. Reading the first book I was quite hooked. You just get flung into the story, and Reacher ploughs through to the end. However, reading the second I could see where he repeats himself (another attractive female police officer that Reacher has sex with for example), so it got a bit less interesting. Plus there were more things that annoyed me in that book, more on that below. There are a few inconsistencies: in Nothing to Lose Reacher comments on all the cups of coffee he drinks - a good brew, a nice cup, but in Gone Tomorrow he says that he doesn't care what the coffee is like really, it's just about the caffeine.

So in summary, much more entertaining reads than I'd thought, but not unflawed.

Nothing to Lose: Reacher is hitch-hiking, and has plotted out a course he wants to follow, a course that takes him through the town of Despair. To his surprise the townspeople act like something out of the Wild West, are openly hostile and kick him out. He goes back to the sister town of Hope and starts looking into what the problem is in Despair, enlisting the help of the sheriff (female, attractive - etc.). I was, as I said, very pleasantly surprised. A good thriller.The red heifer is mentioned, btw.

Gone Tomorrow has Reacher in New York, where he notices a woman on the subway displaying all the signs of a suicide bomber. When he tries to talk to her she kills herself. This drags Reacher into a post-9/11 mess, where he is questioned and detained without his rights. He teams up with the dead woman's brother and an attractive female police officer (natch), and tries to find out why she died. I was more annoyed with this book, because despite it being quite critical of the Terrorism Act and in general of the post 9/11 paranoia, the general conclusion seems to be that the Afghani mujaheddin became Taliban or Al Qaeda, are very viscious and cruel - not to mention a bit crazy - and to sum up the whole thing feels more than a little speculative. Meh.

Charlaine Harris: From Dead to Worse

Let me reassure you that I didn't go from Herta Müller to Sookie Stackhouse - no no, I don't think that would have been bearable. I read this a while ago, actually. I saw it in the library and couldn't help myself - seems like I have a compulsion to read one of each heroine, so since I haven't read an Aurora Teagarden it ain't over yet. But it really is - to me! - hardly readable. And what makes it sour is that, like I said, the books could be so much better if better editor and given more time. Charlaine Harris is, according to this interview, a rape survivor herself, and one does get that shot of true feelings being tapped into here and there. But without better flow to the stories it's just mediocre. Which makes me sad, I want to like her. She seems like a nice person. But so far the most I've gotten out of her books is finding out (via the interview via her website)that Elaine Viets has a pair of custom-made vampire fangs that she uses instead of a gun or pepper spray to deter unwanted attention. How wonderful is that?

This one is about... um... Sookie's brother has marital problems, the werecreatures have some sort of power struggle and vampires from Las Vegas move in and take over the vampire community. I think that's most of it. Wow, she packs in a lot of blood and sex. But she's not the greatest at it that I've come across. Quite interesting though how Sookie is church-going Methodist (or Baptist?) yet has carnal relations very freely and is all into supernatural things and world. Oh, and this isn't the first book, it's the second-to-last one, so one isn't exactly slowly lulled into the alternative universe here. It's full on fantasy supernatural political summaries from page one, and I almost laughed out loud thinking what Nick Hornby would have made of it. Vampire queens, werecreatures and synthetic blood, all in earnest. Ha.

Herta Müller: Hertztier/Hjärtdjur/The Land of Green Plums

I have had the great honour and pleasure of being invited to join a book discussion club. They've been reading together for a few years and recently decided to invite some more people, and I'm honoured to have been one of them. Hardly surprisingly the book of choice for the December meet was one by our latest Nobel Prize winner, so I interrupt the regular programming of crime fiction for a bit of Culture. I read the book in a Swedish translation, but I decided to write about it in English anyway. Y'know, for that international touch.

The novel seems to be largely autobiographical, echoing events in Müller's own life. It is a largely linear story, with some flashbacks or glimpses of the future here and there, but told in episodes rather than a straight line. I was reminded of P.O. Enquist and Jeanette Winterson.  The way I understand the linear story is as follows: the narrator, who grew up in a village, comes to the city to study, sharing a room with five other girls. One of them is a troubled soul, desperate to find a white-collar man. She joins the Party, which in combination with some selfish habits leads to tension in the shared room. After her apparent suicide the narrator becomes friends with three young men who oppose the regime, and collect unpermitted literature in a secret place. At one point they are all taken in for questioning. Later they find work, but it becomes difficult for them to work with their political views. They are fired. Three of them leave the country, and two of them end up killing themselves. Interspersed with this are short episodes from the narrators childhood, which are written in a slightly more fantastical fashion, leaving the reader more unsure of what is real and what is childish imagination.

Right, so did I like it? I'm not sure. I felt as though I was missing something. Some sort of background information. There was imagery I didn't fully get, such as the green plums referred to in the English title - when she is a child the narrator's father says that green plums will kill her, and as an adult she keeps pointing at this eating of green plums and how the guards of the totalitarian state eat green plums always. I don't really understand this. Why would anyone eat green plums at all, they're vile. I must be missing something. It's going to be really interesting discussing this tomorrow, and I'll probably update the post then. I'm wondering if it's a translation issue, but I don't think so, the translation seems good. Is it just that I'm unfamiliar with her work, and this is best read in conjunction with earlier books?

Update after just arriving home from club: it was indeed very interesting to read what the others thought about the book. Some opinions we shared, like that it was generally not easy to read, but in some we differed. Got some new ideas on the green plums issue that were interesting. Has made me determined to re-read book at later date. I had so much fun!

Now would you look at this!

I borrowed The Hanging at the Hotel the other day (by Simon Brett), but I think I've read it. Not that I'd know from the blog, because apparently I never wrote about it. Arse. Then how'll I ever keep up? And then I found this post and there's more I never wrote about. Damn damn damn.

Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders

I know I know, I'm not that keen on Christie. I borrowed this on whim because I recognized the title but hadn't read it, and I was desperate for some vintage.

As stories and plots go this one is actually quite good. A serial killer challenges Poirot before he starts murdering people in alphabetical order. He signs his letters ABC and leaves an ABC railway guide by the corpses. There are intriguingly modern discussions on the motivations of a serial killer - a well-known alienist is called in to do what we today would call a profile on the killer. Nothing new under the sun, eh? However, Poirot is such an annoying character and Hastings really doesn't improve things. Bleurgh. The end did surprise me a good bit though. If you're into this type of stuff I recommend it.

3 x P.D. James and a long ponder about coffee in crime fiction

Remember I  said that I wanted to read an old P.D. James to compare with the new ones? Well, I did, I went back to the library and borrowed the newest, The Private Patient from 2008 and Innocent Blood from 1980, and then I realised that Innocent Blood wasn't a Dalgliesh novel so thus not perfect for comparisons, so I went back again and borrowed Shroud for a Nightingale from 1971, which I at first had discarded because I had such a distinct memory of reading it - whereas I have a far more vague recollection of, say, Cover Her Face - but I took it in the end because all the others were taken.

So I dove into P.D. James-land, old and new, and tried desperately to pay attention to what I was thinking while I was reading, so I could relate those thoughts later. For what it's worth. I remember noticing how, in the older books, she often mentions the clothes using expressions like "made from good wool", whereas she seems to use less of these qualifiers in the newer ones, choosing instead to describe the clothes and perhaps say something about "from an expensive brand" or similar. Which I think is quite telling. We aren't as good at telling quality anymore, we just know brands. Expensive has become good in itself. But it's interesting how she uses clothes to describe people, to define them. In Shroud for a Nightingale of course the nurses' uniforms too say a lot about them - one chooses to wear a more old-fashioned cap, another sticks to the army nursing uniform she was trained in.

Another thing: when reading Innocent Blood I was suddenly struck by the fact that people in P.D. James' world always drink such great coffee. And then I started noticing and remembering that this is true of lots of crime fiction I read (in English, Swedish is a whole other kettle of java folks) - they're forever taking beans out of the freezer and grinding them to make fresh, strong coffee. From John Grisham to Caroline Graham, not to mention the much older ones. It's EVERYWHERE. Once I started thinking about it I couldn't help but be really struck by it. Now, my experience of Anglo coffee culture is a jar of instant and the electric kettle beside it. I have no personal experience of American coffee, but all my reliable sources (i.e. friends who have been there) say that the stuff people in general drink is vile. So where does this love of bean-grinding come from? Is it an attempt to convert people? Is it just that crime writers somewhere somehow pick up excellent coffee habits and can't imagine their characters drinking anything else? Is it some sort of inside joke? Or is it a class thing - have the middle to upper middle classes (and above) always had good coffee? It just tickles me that there is no middle ground. It's either crap instant coffee OR freshly ground beans and the infusion method. To me there's an intermediate level, and that is buying coffee ready-ground and a drip-style coffee maker. Which is what we have, like, I'd wager, most Swedes. In fact, even though I have a few friends who have oh-la-la espresso makers, I doubt they grind their own beans to be honest. Anyway, P.D. James is a great one for good coffee. It honestly doesn't seem to cross her mind that anyone would make coffee any other way. Oh, I didn't bring the books now (am at work) so I can't check for sure. This is from memory. Possibly the odd jar of instant pops up, but then it's a Telling Thing, I'm sure, like the quality of their clothes. (No prize by the way for guessing what I want for Christmas now.)

I also realised what has bothered me a lot when reading P.D. James - I have time issues. I don't get a clear sense of the time, the when we are talking about. This is silly, because she states the "when" very clearly. Often the book is divided into sections that are dated, so we know where in the investigation we are (July or 10 Aug for example). And the year is the Now, it's not a distant past or anything, just think Now and you're there. But I'm still disoriented. I think it's partly because she creates characters that are not really contemporary. They seem vaguely timeless - if music is discussed it's always the classics, ditto for books, and somehow there is such an emphasis on class that I don't know when I am. And then there's the classic problem of the never-aging detective. In Shroud for a Nightingale Dalgliesh's obnoxious side-kick Masterson thinks of Dalgliesh as "the old man", and Masterson himself is 28 or so. So surely Dalgliesh should be at least 50? Or nearly so anyway. Nevertheless, he seems to be about 50 in The Private Patient too. Or alright, maybe 60. A little closer to retirement. Coupled with the slightly archaic feel to a lot of her characters I end up feeling decidedly lost. It wouldn't happen if she wasn't actually a very realistic writer, someone I take seriously. There are some writers were I don't even notice anachronisms if there are any, but with James I would.

So do I actually really and truly like P.D. James? I think I have to answer yes, because it's impossible to say no. Shes' still one fo the greatest. But I don't, or at least very seldom, feel a strong compulsion to read something she's written. It doesn't really warm the cockles of my heart. It's somewhere in between. Hm.

Innocent Blood, first, is a stand-alone, one of those crime novels that are acclaimed for being "real literature" and not just detective stories. A young woman, Philippa Palfrey, has always known that she is adopted, and as soon as she legally can she finds out who her biological parents are. To her shock she discovers that she is the daughter of convicted murderers - her father raped a 12-year-old girl, and her mother strangled her. Her father died in prison and her mother is just up for release. Philippa decides to spend the summer with her mother in London. Meanwhile, the father of the murdered girl is looking for them, to take the revenge he promised his wife before she died. It's a novel about the repercussions of crime, and how people cope - and thankfully not so much about whether "bad blood will tell". A lot of commentary on the political tension of the times, and the shift to a gentler, sociological attitude towards criminals, and whether this is right. I can't really fault the book, but it's not a favourite of mine. I don't understand the way the characters behave (apart from the father of the murdered girl). None of them really touch me. I am more interested in the descriptions of a London that is now gone, how Philippa hunts for a flat and so on. One of my problems with P.D. James is clear in this book, and that is how people tend to speak the same way. Granted, she'll have a few of the lower classes talking slang, or with an accent, or what have you, but the middle class she writes about tends to all use the same language. It just annoys me a little that Philippas mother, who isn't supposed to be very educated, talks with much the same vocabulary as Philippa. Another thing which is interesting is that she doesn't really focus on the horror of a paedophile raping a young girl, not the same way as we'd do now. As a matter of fact I get the distinct feeling that the girl sort of has herself to blame? Unpleasant, but something is definitely off.

Shroud for a Nightingale is also interesting for its historical value, as it describes a shift in nursing education and the general view on and attitude towards nurses and nursing. Not in great detail you understand, but there is information there. The nurses in the book still wear more elaborate uniforms and some of the older ones emphasise the ideals they were trained under - in retrospect the descriptions in McEwan's Atonement were useful to me; I didn't even write about the passages on Briony's nursing training at the time, but now I think I get it. Oddly, I started thinking about an old Ladybird book I had as a child - still have it somewhere. It was about nurses and very retro. Without having read that I don't think that I'd understand all the things she writes about uniforms, spinsterhood as a requirement, staff housing for nurses etc. Ladybird books... oh, I'm having an acute nostalgia attack. They just aren't the same anymore. I must give them a blog entry sometime. Anyway, storyline: in a private hospital with a nursing school attached, housed in an inappropriate old formerly private house, one of the nursing students is killed during a demonstration. Later another is found dead in her room, and then Dalgliesh is called in. The very unsympathetic officer Masterson functions as a contrast to Dalgliesh, the gentleman. This is good detective story, with no dead bits and a bit of a surprise at the end. I remember liking it last time too. I did get a bit overwhelmed by an abundance of names though, but I just went with it. It's not James, it's me, I'm easily distracted.

The Private Patient is also set in a hospital, but I didn't think of that when I was choosing the books.Rhoda Gradwyn, an investigative journalist, has decided to remove a very disfiguring scar. She opts for the surgeon George Chandler-Powell, and decided to go to his private clinic in the country instead of having the operation in London. During the night after the operation she is killed, and it's evident that someone connected to the clinic did it.

I really enjoyed this book, and I agree with all those who think that it's James's farewell novel. She wraps up all loose ends and lets everyone be happy (pretty much). It's one of the most hopeful of her novels. Maybe that's why I liked it, because even though the melancholy is there it's offset with love and dreams for the future. So read this if you haven't! It's a good-bye from one of crime fiction's best.

Jeffery Deaver: The Broken Window

I haven't, according to the blog, read a novel by Jeffery Deaver since 2006. (I have also misspelled the label - "Jeffrey" -  so I may try to fix that now). I had a bit of a phase then and was quite taken with him. Now, the saying is that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in the case of revisiting formely pet writers this is not necessarily true. Reading The Broken Window I was more annoyed than I remember being before at how repetitive Deaver is when he fills the new readers in how background info, like that Rhymes is paralysed. And that he peppers the text with cliffhangers. It also felt obvious when he led us to red herring assumptions into who the killer really was - so obvious that I realised it must be someone else that we'd never thought of.

Nevertheless Deaver is a very skilled thriller writer who puts together an entertaining read. When I spotted this brand new paperback at the library (I was the first reader! The spine will never be the same) I was happy to pick it up. The theme of this book is that we, in our new computerized society, sprinkle small bits of information about ourselves all over the place, and that the people who can access all this information have, potentially, enormous power. In this case a serial killer uses the information to stalk victims and frame innocents as their murderers. He knows his victim's interests and can disarm them by liking the same things, he knows what brands the would-be murderer favours and can plant evidence at their house. I have to confess that I am ignorant and am  not sure if there really is a private company that collects ALL such information about us so they potentially can sell a complete dossier on us to anyone, but sure, there might be. It's a sobering thought. Although I can't help feeling a little incredulous about it, since my first reaction is "why would anyone bother?". Except perhaps (a plot in the plot) the government looking for terrorist affiliations. But on the whole I'm not into conspiracy theories - well, I mean I'd read about them as fiction, but I don't believe them to be true.

Perfect book to read when travelling. Just long and engrossing enough, but not too complex.

Alexander McCall Smith: The Miracle at Speedy Motors

I haven't read any of McCall Smith's books for ages, since I was a little tired of them to be honest. But I saw this at the library and thought "oh it's the newest one" and borrowed it, only it's not the newest one, is it, there are two more after this one if you count Mma Ramotswe's Cookbook. I'm clearly a little behind the times. This one is about Mma Ramotswe receiving threatening letters, and Mr J.L.B. Maketoni hearing of a doctor that might be able to help Motholeli, their foster daughter, who is lame. (As in: unable to walk. Stop sniggering at the back.)

Being not as enchanted with McCall Smith now - not the same way I was when he was new to me and I first read him -  I noticed his repetitiveness more, which is what gets annoying if you read a lot of his books in a row. But what the hell, I still like it. I like reading a book as friendly and positive as this; friendly and positive even though it deals with sorrow sometimes. I find it immensely hopeful.

Caroline Graham: Faithful Unto Death

All in all, Caroline Graham has written twelve books it seems, and our library has four (in English that is). Sad. Considering how immensely popular the Midsomer Murders is here too, you'd think there'd be more. With Faithful Unto Death I think I've read them all now. I have to say that I've enjoyed this one more than any of the others, and since it's been so long since I've read the others I can't be sure if this is due to some actual literary merit or just a case of Graham hitting the spot for me just now. I really revelled in her wittiness, even laughing out loud sometimes.

The storyline starts out fairly simple, with a woman disappearing, her husband acting increasingly odd, and then being found dead. On the face of it it seems to be an all too ordinary case of a jealous possessive man abusing his pretty, subdued and frail wife. There are twists to it though, some of which I guessed, but some I didn't. The plot hung together very well on this one I thought.

I started reading and before I'd come thirty pages even I'd found several bits I'd like to quote here, which stressed me as I didn't have a pen at the time to note them down with. Sadly this marred my experience somewhat, until I decided to let it go, I couldn't bloody well quote the whole book anyway. Allow me to laboriously type out one passage though. Mrs Molfrey (a former star of the stage, living out her last days in obscurity), visits Barnaby to report that her neighbour, Simone Hollingsworth, appears to have vanished:

'She vanished last Thursday. Into thin air, as the saying is, though I've never understood why. Surely if a person is to be concealed the air would have to be extremely thick. Rather like the old pea-soupers.'

'If you could - '

'Don't chip in, there's a good fellow. When I've finished I'll give some sort of signal. Wave my handkerchief. Or shout.'

Barnaby closed his eyes.

'I became suspicious the very first evening. I remember it precisely and I'll tell you why. The sunset, from which I usually derive considerable refreshment, was a great disappointment. A dreadful common colour, like tinned salmon. Cubby was feeding my onions - renowned, I might add, for their splendour - and I was rootling around with my little hoe anticipating a word or two with Simone. She would usually come out around that time to call her cat and we would exchange pleasantries, the latest bit of viillage gosspi from her side of the fence whereas I would discuss the progress of my plants, curse all winged and crawling predators and inveigh against the weather, the way all gardeners do.'

Barnaby nodded. He, too, was a keen gardener and had been known to inveigh againt the weather in his time in a  manner so robust it caused his wife to slam the French windows with such vigour the panes rattled.

Oh, that'll do. It's a very funny book in many places. As I've said, she writes miles better than the TV series, which is not at all as cynical and wicked, but instead rather bland and boring. It's a really clever blend of the modern and the old-fashioned, in that she is writing these village whodunits basically, but she is contemporary. Like, as we say on Facebook.

Ellery Queen's Book of Mystery Stories by 25 Famous Writers

I found this secondhand aaaaages ago - in the summer? BEFORE the summer? Long ago, anyway. Like it says on the tin, it's a collection of stories by authors normally not associated with crime fiction. I decided when I bought it (for a pittance, by the way) that it would be fun to jot down a few notes after reading each story, and then posting everything on the blog. Ha ha. What followed was that I read 3/4 of the book and then got tired of taking notes, so left the book "to rest" for a good few months. Also, I suspect that the notes are not that thrilling to read. But it has the bonus of me listing ALL the authors and ALL the stories, and that may be of some historical interest. Perhaps there's a desperate Googler out there just waiting for this blog entry, who knows. In my recent determination to have a crime fiction spree I've finished this now, so here goes.

Sinclair Lewis: The Post-Mortem Murder
Pearl Buck: Ransom
Nobel Prize? First one rather dull. Overly dramatic delivery of lines. Buck better, but v. fanciful - Grey Squad from FBI etc. Strong silent men etc. Wtf? [I later happened to see a TV-programme on Hoover, and learned all about how he promoted the educated FBI agent that popularly became known as a G-man, and that became an almost super-hero figure, including comic books. So that explains the Grey Squad in the short story and the hero-worshipping.]

Somerset Maugham: Before the Party
V. good.

Edna St. Vincent Millay: The Murder in the Fishing Cat
From a time when Americans could write in French and assume they'd be understood.

John Galsworthy: The Juryman
Depth, moving, well described. Man more involved with status and material comfort learns that empathy and understanding more important, and that his marriage is empty if they cannot talk really talk about such things. He feels admiration for her but they are not close.

John Steinbeck: The Murder
Most impressed by Jelka Stepiz - those where the days when an American author could write diacritic signs and get them printed. Now US gets special edition of Harry Potter so US kids don't have to wonder what a jumper is.

William Faulkner: Monk
Quote the bit in §1! [I have no idea what I wanted to quote now. Introduction to story mentions several books I have to read though.] Monk name of criminal - is the tv series a joke?

Rudyard Kipling: The Limitations of Pambé Serang
True to imperialist form, but he is a great story-teller.

Louis Bromfield: Prime of Life
"Really American story" [according to introduction] - maybe so, v. good story-telling.

Ernest Hemingway: The Killers
Terse and hard-boiled.

Charles Dickens: Hunted Down
Curiously disappointing. Starts off well, but finishes bla bla bla all the tension gone from story.

Willa Cather: Paul's Case
Pulitzer prize winner deservedly. Example of American writing. Little gem. Imaginative boy unable to accept ordinariness, ultimate escapist - perhaps all criminals are?

Mark Twain: The Stolen White Elephant
Stolen elephant. Humorous but not really my thing.

Aldous Huxley: The Gioconda Smile
Flirty ladies' man accused of poisoning wife. Mostly about his inner workings, crime by the bye. Not bad.

Guy de Maupassant: The Hand
Funny how an Englishman plays pivotal role in French detective story - set in Corsica, no less. After all typically English genre. Almost Poe-ish.

C.S. Forester: The Letters in Evidence
Wife abuse. A little chilling at first but the endearments start to feel silly. Letters. Clever.

Ring Lardner: Haircut
Friend of Fitzgerald. Barber tells customer the tale. Interesting.

Walter de la Mare: An Ideal Craftsman
A bit too long and too intent on conveying in minute detail some sort of gothic feel. Less is more. Doesn't describe the boy's reasoning terribly well?

James Thurber: The Catbird Seat
Nice! English in flavour, mildly humorous.

R.L. Stevenson: Markheim
Moralistic. Reminds me of Poe, but less goffik.

H.G. Wells: Mr Brisher's Treasure
What's a taproom?

Damon Runyon: Sense of Humour
Cute funny mob story - must have inspired lots of people. Twisted macabre ending.

Frank Swinnerton: The Verdict
3 women discuss a friend's death. Liked! But odd ending? Good but not sure I get it.

James Gould Cozzens: Clerical Error
V short story on blackmail. Ok.

Fannie Hurst: Guilty
Another writer v popular in her day. About heredity of mental illness. In bits excellent, but author has annoying mannerisms like writing . . .  at end of sentence. Super descriptions of way of life. [Read the short Wikipedia article! What a woman. And now all but forgotten.]


I can't tag the post with all the authors' names, which irks me, but there you are. Hopefully all my hard work will benefit some curious soul some day...

Each short story has an introduction of the author at the beginning, and often those introductions are the bits I find most interestingin this type of book, since they praise authors now forgotten and mention in passing those that have now become cult classics. I wish I had the energy to type in lots of examples, but I don't because a) I don't, and b) I'm writing from work (have Internet access of sorts!!!) and haven't got the actual book here now. But I reoommend this heartily for any crime aficionado!

Janwillem van de Wetering

Another random library choice. I think I was struck by the author's name, that is its similarity to the name of the policeman hero, van Veeteren, in Håkan Nesser's books. (Remind me to give those books a proper try some day. Have read the odd one that's all.) Looking the cover over I saw it was full of superlative quotes, the most memorable being from someone called John Leonard:

He's doing what Simenon might have done if Albert Camus had sublet his skull.

Now, with an endorsement like that i just had to read it, obviously.

This is a part of a series, the Grijpstra-de Gier series, but our library only has this one book, and I don't think it's the first one either. I don't know if the book would have been more immediately appealing if I'd read the series from the beginning, but as it was I had a hard time getting into it. About half-way through I started to quite like it, and now I feel like I might at some point read more of van de Wetering's. Perhaps not actively hunt for them, but if something fell into my lap, like, I wouldn't shy away from it. My initial reaction was that here was someone trying too hard to be quirky and original, leaving his characters more like caricatures than people. I was proven wrong towards the end, as I said. There's definitely more feeling in his writing than I first thought. I think van de Wetering might be quite a Big Deal, but I'd never heard of him before. Apparently he wrote in Dutch and English, and this book was previously published in a Dutch version - I just love that, that he wrote different versions of the books instead of translating them!
de Gier has moved to a small town in Maine and rented a house in an attempt to find himself after he and Grijpstra quit the police. Now he rings Grijpstra in a panic because his lover is dead and it looks like de Gier murdered her. Nobody knows yet, and can private detective Grijpstra please come and help him? So his old partner does, and discovers a more complicated town and situation than what he'd expected.

My favourite bit is that the man who comes to pick Grijpstra up at the airport in a small aeroplane is called Ishmael. And that Ishmael has an old warehouse in which he has a collection of What. It's worth reading the whole book just for Ishmael's theories on owning, losing, having and not having, and what is worth collecting. I'm not going to explain what a collection of What is, that would spoil it if you want to read it, and it's too wonderful to spoil.


I didn't think I'd recommend it, but I do. I don't LOVE it, but it's appealing.