Stieg Trenter: Aldrig Näcken

Jag minns inte vem det var som tyckte att jag borde läsa Stieg Trenter ... Eller borde och borde, jag tror vi pratade om deckare och Stieg Trenter nämndes som en klassiker… ja det kanske var att jag borde läsa honom då, eftersom han är en sådan klassiker. Så nu senast på det lokala biblioteket (förresten: ett bibliotek, men en bibbla. Eller hur?) plockade jag åt mig en som såg hyfsat gammal ut (enligt principen att de äldsta böckerna i en serie är de mest läsvärda), och som enligt kritikercitaten på omslaget var "det bästa han skrivit".

Nja.

Den här Trenterdeckaren är lite atypisk har jag förstått i det att det inte är hans hjälte Harry Friberg som är huvudperson, utan någon ung dambekant till den store mannen vid namn Eva nånting. Mattsson? Får väl hämta boken strax och kolla. Hon åker ut till en väninnas sommarställe för att hålla henne sällskap. Väninnan är gift med en mycket rik och svartsjuk man, en man som snart hittas död på en holme i närheten. Alla tycks ha alibin. Harry Friberg är som sagt mestadels frånvarande i boken, men närvarande i anden. Han kommunicerar med polisen (som har en sådan hög aktning för honom att det blir konstigt) och Eva via brev och telefon, och dyker upp på slutet för att röka cigarr tror jag det är och avslöja hela brottet.

Den har ett märkligt språk, som pendlar mellan slang - gammalmodig sådan - och ett ganska formellt språk. I synnerhet i dialogerna märks det, eftersom titulerandet lever och frodas. Samtidigt som han skriver dej och mej och som sagt lite slanguttryck som jag inte minns på rak arm nu, så frågas alltså om inte "Agda vill ha en smörgås" och dylikt. Så på sätt och vis illustrerar den väl väl en brytningstid i svensk kultur.Alla knaprar förresten tabletter hela tiden, vilket också är väldigt tidstypiskt. Leve de moderna lugnande medlen! Det är nästan så att jag undrar om författaren sponsrats av läkemedelsföretag ... Dialogerna kan för övrigt vara kvicka, vilket är skojigt. Trenter har lagt ner mycket möda på att beskriva naturen och miljön i den skärgård där boken utspelar sig. Det lär ju vara hans signum, fantastiska Stockholmsskildringar - här blir det naturskildringar då. Och jo, jag gillar ju sådant, det är ju det som är det roligaste med gamla deckare, att de ger en sådan god bild av ett svunnet samhälle, lite i förbigående sådär. Men men men… som ni märker är jag inte begeistrad. Den där Harry Friberg upplevs som en deus ex machina mer än något annat, och mordet sen! Suck. Ja ja, jag ska väl inte avslöja hur mördaren betedde sig med kroppen för att få den dit han ville, men jag tycker det är högst osannolikt att det inte skulle vara alldeles för lätt att avslöja.

Äsch, lite tråkigt mest. Jag blev inte så förtjust som jag hade hoppats. Jag kanske läser fler Trenters, men inte blir det för intrigernas skulle misstänker jag.

Kate Atkinson: When Will There Be Good News?

The third and so far last in Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series, as promised. Like I wrote before, I fell in love with the first one, was a little disappointed in the second - so I was fervently hoping that book three would bring us back to the form of book one. It does and it doesn't - it is more of a linear detective story than Case Histories, but it's not as knuckle-draggingly obvious crime fiction as One Good Turn... oh,knuckle-draggingly is perhaps a bit harsh, but I mean it just by the way of comparison, you understand. When Will There Be Good News has a lot more interesting characters and delves more into human sadness, yet it doesn't measure up to Case Histories. Maybe I just can't be surprised anymore, which means that Atkinson should abandon the crime fic project and find something else to wow me with... This is still a good novel though.

It takes place a few years after One Good Turn, when both Jackson and the DCI Louise Munroe have gotten married - not to each other, mind. Jackson accidentally (in both senses of the word) turns up in Edinburgh, and is roped in by the young girl who saves his life to help her find the woman she babysits for, who has disappeared with her son. This woman lost her family in a murder when she was a child, and has heroically created a new normal life for herself. The book compares her to another woman who is a victim of domestic violence, as Munroe wonders whether it's possible to let go of such a violent start and put it behind you, as Joanna Hunter seems to have done. And so it floats along, with no terribly surprising turns but some good character description - until the very end when we get two or three great little twists, one of them slipped in almost by the by. I did like it a lot. Recommended!

Dennis Lehane: A Drink Before the War

This is from the Kenzie-Gennaro series, about two private eyes in Boston. It's a lot about class, poverty, race - reminded me a bit about The Wire actually, but I think The Wire is better. This novel was a bit hero-worshipping, and I don't think it should have been. I mean it worshipped its heroes, even though the one is a philandering man and the other a woman who despite knowing better stays in an abusive relationship (which, btw, her partner does not report to the police). I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but it really wasn't Lehane at his best. Too hard-ball noir cool detective. Example:

I hung up and felt a slight swell of warmth in my chest, like hard liquor on a cold night before the bitter kicks in. With Bubba and devin around, I felt safer than a condom at a eunuchs convention.

One-liners galore. I'll probably read others from the series, but I was disappointed.

Story: Patrick Kenzie is approached by a politician to find his former office cleaning lady, who has disappeared with some "important documents". Turns out this is stretching the truth of course, and then there's a gang war with plenty of shooting. Ta-da!

Annie Proulx: Accordion Crimes

Oh, this book is the best yet. Where Postcards was a little disorganized, what with the postcard bits being both hard to read and a little random, and The Shipping News a little bit too happy, this one is just about perfect. And imagine, when I started reading it, I didn't really want to, I struggled a bit. I wanted to read something less challenging I think, something that wouldn't dig into my soul. But very soon this had me hooked, and I couldn't put it down.

In the late 19th century a poor Sicilian makes an accordion (from bits he's stolen from his previous job), and when he emigrates to the USA with his son the accordion goes with him. The instrument is going to make his fortune, that's the plan, but his life comes to a violent and sad end, and the accordion passes on. And so we get a story of America, of immigrants who cling to their culture and language and music, of minorities whose families have been on the continent a long time now but who are still not yankees, and of the African-American tragedy, the ones who were first (well, second) but who never counted. It's just beautiful. The woman can write about polka music and make it sound like the most heart-wrenching dramatic thing ever.

I wrote on the scrap of paper I was using as a bookmark that there was one passage I wanted to quote, because it sums up so well why Annie Proulx is such a wonderful writer:

That poor man a machine for working, the bruised hands crooked for seizing and pulling, for lifting boxes and baskets, for grasping. The arms hung uncomfortably when work stopped. He was made for work, eyes squinted shut, the face empty of the luxury of reflection, mouth a hole, stubbled cheeks, a filthy baseball cap, wearing a cast-off shirt until it rotted away. If there was beauty in his life, no-one knew it.

That really moved me. I think she's Nobel Prize material.

Warming the cockles of a mother's heart

My eldest daughter who is 14 is reading Pride and Prejudice, and asking which other ones we have that are sort of like it. I have to give a big hand to the makers of the recentish film starring Keira Knightley and what'shisname, because it was after watching that one evening last week that she took the plunge. "Well, I don't understand that much and they use lot's of words I don't know, but it's good. I like when there's, like, intrigue." What greater praise is there - Harold Bloom, eat your heart out. I am working on my Jane Austen post, and this encourages me even more.

I'm running about three books behind on the blog, especially now since the littlest Bani slipped on a wet bathroom floor this Saturday and got a spiral fracture to his right leg. He occupies the computer during his waking hours, demanding Moomin films from YouTube. Poor little thing - and poor the rest of us I suppose!

Neil Gaiman: Anansi Boys

As you may have noticed, I do read Neil Gaiman, but I seldom seek him out. I don't know why actually (and it may change now), but I suspect I was scarred from the Sandman comi... sorry, graphic novels, a genre I do not understand at all. However, Gaiman is a bit of a genius actually. I should really have borrowed American Gods first, since this was his first foray into novels (not comics) on the theme of modern mythology and what-would-the-gods-be-doing-now type of thing. But the cover of Anansi Boys said it was funny, so I went for the comedy.

Fat Charlie Nancy learns that his father is dead, which doesn't upset him at all, since the old man was always making a spectacle of himself and playing practical jokes on people, including him. But at the funeral he learns that not only was Daddy a god, the spider god Anansi, but Fat Charlie has a brother, who leans more to the magical side of the family. Getting to know brother Spider unleashes the supernatural into Charlie's life, and gets them both chased by an ancient enemy of the Anansi bloodline.

I'm quite thrilled with this book, thrilled to the point where I'm pondering whether it shouldn't be required reading in schools, to introduce kids to the wealth of African storytelling and mythology. Gaiman manages something which many (white) authors fail at: he writes about African mythology and black people without falling into the trap of making either of them extra-sweet and super-heroic out of some sort of sense of guilt. The book is suffused with the joy of storytelling and a genuine admiration and respect for the oral traditions of black culture. But people are people, with weaknesses and all. He also is clever enough to never specify someone as black Black's the default. I love that he thought of that - perhaps it even came naturally to him? I have to admit that I would have had to make a conscious decision to not specify race unless white, so more credit to him if he didn't have to. Also, although there is a hint of someone who either enjoys the cinema and writes with that in mind or someone who is an author of graphic novels, he NEVER goes too far. He never puts in a load of one-liners as though desperate for Paramount to make a call. I LOVE THAT. (According to Wikipedia someone wanted to film it but make it "white", and Gaiman turned it down. If so, well done. I'd like to see this filmed, but not by just anyone. A subtle touch is needed.)

P.G. Wodehouse: Summer Moonshine

Ha, am I Mrs Update or WHAT? I borrowed this not-in-a-series Wodehouse because my li'l sis said that they're the best ones. And yes, it's quite rather very satisfying as a novel, I have to say. It's funny, it's amusing, it's witty, its dialogue sometimes sparkles. Good summer reading! Story: a penniless baronet owns a hideous house that he hopes to sell to an American widow. She has two stepsons, one who is not disowned, who while staying at the house falls in love with the Baronet's secretary, and one who has been cast off, who has just become a successfull playwright and has by chance fallen in love with the Baronet's daughter, who is in love with the widow's toyboy. Phew.

What I especially find sweet is the US-Anglo angle in Wodehouse. In such a natural way the twain mix and mingle.

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Kate Atkinson: Case Histories and One Good Turn

It was completely by chance that I first saw One Good Turn at the library. I was convinced there was nothing and oh well, maybe I could get a few Agatha Christies anyway. Instead I brought home a pile of ten books, no Christies among them at all. Ha. I saw One Good Turn on the paperback shelf and thought hm, I do like Atkinson, why not? and when I read the back I saw that she'd turned to crime writing, and that this was the second one, so I got the first too and read them in order. And oh, was I impressed with Case Histories. I couldn't put it down and I cried and I cried. This is not crime fiction, this is a novel about crimes, with the red thread of the private investigator Jackson Brodie as a means to tell us the stories of several people who've met with tragedy and pain and loss, all gradually revealed as the book progresses - so that when all is told at the end we find out that some of our presumptions were wrong, altogether. If you like crime fiction at all you must read this book!

While I was reading I was thinking of what to write to convey that feeling of melancholy, the pervading sadness in the novel, but now I've read the second book and another in between so I've lost the words - just trust me, it's worth it. In contrast, the second one is more like a classic crime novel. I think Atkinson might have been playing around with the genre a bit, but I don't think it's a complete success, I'm left feeling a bit "meh" all the same. I didn't love it as much, it felt too much like Part Two, it was more obviously funny in parts, and we weren't confronted with people's personal loss as forcefully as in Case Histories - here, the murders were of people we didn't get to know, and if we did, we didn't like them. I hope the third book swings back, and I hope she doesn't get stuck in a crime series genre. I'll be reading no. 3 as soon as I can, and in the meantime I've got my fingers crossed.

Ursula K. Leguin: Rocannon's World

This is one of LeGuin's earliest novels, and she places it at the beginning of the Ekumen books, if only for that reason. The Ekumen doesn't exist yet, instead we have a League of Worlds, that isn't as respectful and non-interfering as the Ekumen at all. They have interplanetary wars and everyfink. This is the book I picked up for 20 kr in a second-hand book dealer's in Stockholm, and the fecking thing was falling apart as I was reading. What a waste of money! But speaking of spending money, apparently there's an edition with this book, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions all in one, and that would be quite nice to have. Although, to be honest, I'd have to read the latter two first for free, because maybe (backtracking!) they're not that good and I don't want to own them. Hm, tricky and pondersome.

So first I read the blurb on the back of the book, and my, was it funny. It's so funny I have to quote the whole thing. Ready?

"On the far planet of Fomalhaut II, where three races lived in uneasy peace, the Starlords had landed generations back in their great ships to levy tribute on behalf of the League if All Worlds. Now disaster had struck, and Rocannon, the expedition leader, was marooned on that distant world, eight years away from the nearest planet.

His friends murdered and his spaceship destroyed, Rocannon led the battle to save Fomalhaut II, in strange alliance with the three native races - the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia and the warrior-clan Liuar. And in that desperate battle against an alien foe the myths were born and the legends grew. They were not his people, but the place became Rocannon's World."

Isn't it hilarious? You can almost hear the deep voice intoning it for the sci-fi special on Friday night. This is an interesting mix between science-fiction and fantasy, since the warrior clan are, well, just that, and speak like something from the more high-falutin' pages of Tolkien, all while they hack at people with swords. I'm not sorry I read it, but it's not fantastic. Bits of it are though. Bits are GREAT.

Alexander McCall Smith: The Careful Use of Compliments

This is "an Isabel Dalhousie novel", as the cover helpfully states. Isabel has her baby, doesn't live with nor want to marry the baby's father, Jamie, because even though she loves him it doesn't feel fair to him since he's so much younger. She wants to buy a painting, but is it a forgery? And if so, who painted it?

That's about it for the storyline, really. Like I've said I'm not as fond of the Edinburgh books as I am of the Botswana books. Probably McCall Smith's writing is too naivistic to appeal to me in a Western setting that I can relate to. Possibly I'm such a colonialist. I find it interesting though how the Dalhousie novels feel so much more melancholic, even though nothing like it really is expressed in words...

Ian McEwan: Black Dogs

My favourite McEwan so far I think, because there was nothing in it that seemed left hanging, or superfluous, or whatever it's been that's slightly bothered me about his books. This is just all the best of him. He has this wonderful way of writing a book about one event while adding on all these other bits that might not be that relevant, but that combine to make a lovely literary experience. Here, the narrator is a man who was orphaned early and spent a lot of time cozying up to other people's parents, so when he finally marries he is very keen that his wife's parents should get along again, despite them having been more or less estranged for years. The black dogs of the title attacked his mother-in-law on the honeymoon, and were responsible for a spiritual experience that set her off in a different direction than her husband. So that's really the story, more than half of it is the narrator describing his life, and how he talks to his parents-in-law, ponders their estrangement, tells us how he meets his wife, relates how he tries to write a biography of his mother-in-law, and thus how he gets the full story, and with that story he ends the book. It's very likeable and somehow, despite the scattered events in it, very succinct. I liked it a lot.

Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games

I read about this book in the paper ages ago - oh I know, it was before Christmas, because I remember saying to my sister-in-law that I thought my eldest would like it. She didn't get it, however, and I forgot about it, until a few weeks ago in the library when I happened to see it. Immediately I remembered the favourable review and how it had seemed like My Thing, so I borrowed it and got stuck in a few days later.... and couldn't put it down. This is a real page-turner, I was delighted. It is a book written for "young people", so it runs a risk of being too simple, too explicit and explanatory, but Suzanne Collins walks on the right side of the line and I love her for it. For me as an adult reader the book would have been just that little bit better if things weren't spelled out quite as much, but in all fairness it really isn't overdone and I totally accept it.

Sometime in an undetermined future the United States is no more (neither, I take it, is most of its current coastline). Instead we have a tyrannical state called Panem, consisting of a centre, the Capitol, and twelve tributary districts, who were subdued after an uprising a century or so ago. Almost everything the districts produce goes to the Capitol. And every year the cruellest sacrifice is claimed - a boy and a girl from each district has to go to the Capitol and fight each other to the death in a kind of reality show, set in a climate-controlled wilderness with added dangers. One of the poorest districts is the twelfth one, in what is now Appalachia. Its children hardly ever win the Hunger Games. Katniss, our heroine, volunteers to fight, and is joined by Peeta, whose feelings she is unsure of. During the Games, Katniss rebellious spirit is kindled, and she starts to wonder if there is anything she can do to change the outcome.

I read somewhere that one of the great things about the book is how it caters for both sexes, as it has descriptions of stylists and outfits aswell as fights and deaths. It may be so, and if so it's even more to Collins's credit that she can write about a girl and still find her male readers. I loved this, and am already looking forward to the second book. Oh, and another great thing? The way the book ended, it wasn't completely obvious that there would be a second one. Subtlety. I like it.

P.G. Wodehouse: Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves; Jeeves in the Offing; Jeeves Takes Charge; Carry On, Jeeves

When I picked up this lot (in June I think, ahem) I immediately started to feel suspicious. I had only read one of these short story collections, remember, yet the illustrations on the covers of this new lot of books seemed to be about stories in that first one. And hey ho, suspicions confirmed: some idiot at Vintage press sometime or other thought it a great idea to print Wodehouse collections with the same story featured more than once, i.e. in more than one of the books. So you carry home books that are worth say 30 stories but you get 20, the same 20 mixed up in different constellations.

Eejits. It's a nice pleasant read alright but I won't be (unless I really really have to) borrowing books from this particular edition series any more.

Dennis Lehane: Coronado

This is a collection of short stories, and one play, the title's Coronado. The play is based on the second-to-last story, About Gwen, a story Lehane reworked and rewrote into a play for his brother's theatre company. I will confess that I won't read the play, I find reading plays an awful chore because I lack imagination. I enjoyed all the stories though, and will only repeat that Lehane is wasted when being labelled a crime writer solely. As a matter of fact I was repeatedly reminded of Annie Proulx. It's something about the way they both tell us something about America, about Americans.

Marcello Fois: Den försvunne fåraherden och Blod från himlen

Jag upptäckte att jag skrivit upp den här författarens namn i min kalender, vilket måste innebära att jag läst något fördelaktigt om honom i en tidning någonstans och ville komma ihåg honom. Alltså lånade jag hans tre deckare om advokat Bustianu från biblioteket innan jag skulle på en veckas semester, med tanken att dessa tre vore alldeles lagom att läsa ut på en vecka med familjen (de är inte särskilt omfångsrika). Men så när jag höll på att packa ångrade jag mig - tänk om jag inte skulle gilla dem alls? Då skulle jag inte ha någonting! På tåget! Så jag packade Jane Austen istället och del två i Ariana Franklins medeltidsdeckarserie. Mer om detta följer. Det visar sig nu att jag gjorde rätt, för visserligen går det alldeles utmärkt att läsa dessa romaner (Fois alltså - varning förresten, länken går till författarens usla hemsida med musik och allt), men de griper inte tag i mig ett skvatt.

Den första börjar i tredje person, som någon som berättar om advokat Bustianu efter vad hans far berättat för honom, men växlar plötsligt till första person, dvs advokaten själv beskriver och berättar. Dessa delar är bättre, får mer känsla. Så i bok två verkar han ha övergått till första person helt och hållet, men jag tror inte jag kommer att läsa ut den för jag blir helt enkelt inte intresserad. Problemet är egentligen inte historien, utan diverse manér i skrivsättet - en tendens att avsluta repliker med tre punkter vaddetnuheter ( ... ) till exempel. Det stör mig, det stör min läsupplevelse. Sedan tror jag inte översättningen fångar texten riktigt. Det är bara en misstanke, vad kan jag för italienska utöver tutti frutti... Men med all respekt för Helena Monti känns det fel att människor i slutet på 1800-talet säger att "fåraherden råkade i trubbel", samtidigt som texten peppras med "förvisso" och "sannerligen". Återigen - detta stör min läsupplevelse. Jag upplever boken som lite styltig, och tror helt enkelt att den bör läsas i original. Om jag får tid och lust kanske jag läser en engelsk översättning någon gång för att jämföra, vi får se.

För den som är intresserad handlar bokserien om en advokat på Sardinien, under slutet av förrförra seklet, som skriver poesi och hyser ett passionerat rättvisepatos. Karaktären har tydligen en förebild i verkligheten. Det är ganska korta berättelser med lite nostalgisk karaktär. Inte oläsvärt, men jag slutar nu.

Dennis Lehane: Shutter Island

It may surprise you to know that it was actually my husband who borrowed this from the library - I can't remember why, maybe because he saw the film trailers? or maybe it was just recommended to him by an accquaintance? No matter. He read it and quite liked it, but he complained of there being a twist that he saw coming a mile off. So I read it too, and I did not see the twist coming. More fool me, perhaps, it's not a strikingly unusual nor original sort of twist, but I was quite prepared to take the story at face value. The twist therefore came as a bit of a surprise to me, and I found myself reluctant actually to accept it. More so since something is said in the prologue that makes it possibly that the twist is not true. (I'm being purposefully oblique here because I really wouldn't want to spoil the read for anyone…) So I liked this quite a bit. Lehane is a good writer, and he made a refreshing break from The Unconsoled (ha!) which I was "reading" at the time. I tend to pass by the Lehanes at the library, for no good reason at all finding myself going "nah" and choosing something else. Perhaps I should make it my objective to read them this summer. I have read Mystic River too, and liked it. His books are generally placed in a crime or thriller genre, but he is skilled enough to give them something more, really literary qualities. In fact I was thinking of this after finishing the book and looking again at the cover, which is black and disturbing with the title in a jagged script and Lehane's name overshadowing it all - had the cover been a plain beige with a plain title, and had the print of the whole novel been smaller, thus making the volume slimmer - well then it would be considered a different type of book altogether.

Story: on the isolated Shutter Island stands an asylum for the criminally insane. Two federal marshals arrive to conduct an investigation into the disappearance of one of the prisoners, a woman convicted of murdering her children. Gradually they start to see that all is not what it seems, and that something else is going on on the island. There, that could be a blurb that, but it really doesn't do the book justice. Nor can it if I don't want to risk spoiling it.

Anyway, I've already borrowed Coronado by same author, so I'll be back with opinions.

Edited 11th July:

Right, here's an opinion I forgot, that reading Coronado reminded me of: one of the things I liked best about Shutter Island is how wonderful Lehane is at describing men's emotions. He really goes all out and allows men to love, totally and overwhelmingly, and then despair utterly and bitterly when they've lost their love. It's not that often that I see that in a book (possibly I read the wrong kind of books, you say). His descriptions of emotions don't feel trite, pretentious or made up, ever. He also allows his characters to admit to their feelings. Hm, what I want to say seldom comes out when I sit down at the keyboard, but I'm trying to convey an idea that writing like that helps liberate men from a stereotype where you either don't connect with your emotions at all or distance yourself from them with a certain debonair cynicism. Do you see what I mean?

Just a note to remind myself...

... that this is a book I'll want to read.

The Gentleman's Daughter by Amanda Vickery

Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss

I read about half of this, so I think a blog entry isn't uncalled for. I didn't finish it though, and since it was overdue at the library I had my husband return it the other day. There is no good reason why I didn't read it all. It's a very good book, really, and it should have pushed all my buttons - yet it just never grabbed me hard enough. Who knows why these things happen or don't; the silliest books can end up being the most meaningful you've ever read, and books that you can objectively see are great do nothing for you. I'll probably return to this some day, I find myself thinking more about it now that it's not in the house…
There were two parallell story lines. One is about a young woman, living in her grandfather's crumbling mansion somewhere near the border to Nepal since the death of her parents. The other is about their cook's son, who is trying to make a living in America.
I recommend it even though I got restless with it. According to this blog (in Swedish) it picks up pace towards the end, and also the blog author loves Desai's first one more. So I might get that one instead first.