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Sara Paretsky: Ghost Country

I have some issues with this novel. This is sort of the basic storyline: at a wall in Chicago, a homeless woman thinks that the rusty water leaking through a crack is the blood of the Mother of God. When the management of the hotel, who own the wall (but not the sidewalk) try to drive her away, she is joined by two more homeless women, an idealistic young doctor, an alcoholic former opera diva and a young woman who has run away from an oppressive grandfather. When suddenly a non-speaking, hugely buxom and higly erotic woman called Starr appears, everything really kicks off. Miracles happen around Starr. A local church and some of it's more strident members get more and more annoyed. Ok, so it paints a picture of Chicago that is different, more... fantastical?... than in the Warshawski novels. Fair enough. But the distinct impression I'm left with is that it's an experiment in the genre "what if Jesus came back as...". Starr in this case being Jesus - a non-speaking, extremely sexual creature who can tongue-kiss a woman back to life on an altar. And there is a little bit too much written about her huge bosom and how much she has sex singly and grouply for me to think it altogether flies - simply because I find it unnecessarily "provocative". Possibly I'm just being churlish and over-thinking things.

I really don't like the breast bits though. It's some sort of odd mix between Swedish "sommarbuskis" and US titty bar. I don't get it. I'm missing the love I felt in Bleeding Kansas.

Sara Paretsky: Bleeding Kansas

I have been having a really bad day, for no other reason than a) I'm just feeling very down at the moment, and b) I'm trying to drill three holes in the living-room wall, with less than stellar results. Let's not go there. At one in the afternoon I broke down in tears and decided to take a break and write this blog entry instead to take my mind off wall craters. The instant I sat down my middle daughter rang and wanted me to pick her up from school because she wasn't feeling well. Now it's half-past ten at night, I sit down again, and at the first click of the keys my husband leans over to say that he took a facebook test to determine which ordinary thing he is (apparently he is sliced cheese, which is actually rather funny).

But I haven't lost my train of thought yet. I may if he speaks to me again.

Paretsky writes in the foreword that she grew up in Kansas, something I didn't know. It shows however that she's writing about ... how should I put it ... about people she understands and respects and loves, about a part of the world that she has deep feelings for. Unlike in a Warshawski novel, the main characters here aren't very savvy or politically aware, but "simple" farmers who take a "simple" pride in growing food that feeds people. They are patriotic and trust that the news is reported correctly and that the government knows its business. They are religious and church-going, and incorporate this into their daily lives. This doesn't make them idiots or despicable. There is no sarcasm here, no cynicism. I found this very endearing, very moving, and it gripped me all the way to the end.

The novel centres on three Kansas families that long ago settled together, worked together and fought slave-owners together, but now are estranged. The main families are the Grelliers, the "normal" family, and the Schapens, members of a deeply conservative church and run by a xenophobic and hate-filled matriarch. The main subplot is the birth of a red heifer at the Schapen farm, something with deep significance to a group of Orthodox Jews and to the conservative Christians (seriously, this is, what, the third novel I read featuring a red heifer. I should have kept track and added labels. Mental note.). There are a lot of other little plots and ideas - like how ludicrous it is to imagine that you can live in solitude in the country, where everyone talks about your affairs, how the Iraq conflict tears families apart, how grief can destroy a person, how religion can be twisted.... It's quite boxily written, yetI really liked it. There is something so true and respectful at the base of it. The boxiness is part of the whole aura. Oh, I can't explain myself, I can see that. Forget the literary criticism (attempts at). I actually cried reading this. I was touched at the pain the parents felt when their son died in Iraq. The simplicity of it, the way the world is changed for everyone and they don't know how to handle it - it's well described without in any way being too political and righteous. I would have expected Paretsky to be more cynical towards these Bush-following Republicans, but no. She understands, she respects, she grieves with them. When they sin, she doesn't judge. She tells the story. I had a great reading experience with this. Objectively, I can see that this is not the most astounding novel the world has seen - emotionally, it struck a deep chord. Funny how that happens. I'd recommend it now to anyone.

Christmas special

Unlike other bloggers I can't seem to get my act together enough to post seasonally, but I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you all the best for the New Year too.

I've had a myriad ideas for blog entries but they slip between my tired fingers. Too much work and no internet working on my own little laptop, sadly. Was looking at my e-mail and saw that I'd sent myself a reminding e-mail from work (where I have no other internet access, the stingy feckers) about a new edition of Frankenstein that's out - one with notes on the differences between Mary's original writing and Percy's additions and changes. I read about it in Dagens Nyheter, but the book is here. I'd quite like to read that. Another e-mail to myself was a reminder about a book called Lubiewo by Michal Witkowski - not for myself so much as for mr Bani. But I couldn't find it in Polish, so it was struck off the Christmas list, which it had admittedly been added to at the very last moment. Most excitingly, Sara Paretsky (see link to her blog on your right) has a new novel out - I have my feelers out for that one! Oh, and that was just some ideas of many... I don't have time to read properly, so no wonder there's no time to blog. However, I'm going to start working nights soon, and hopefully that will mean reading time. Library, here I come! Soon.

At the moment I'm re-reading Lord of the Rings. It is, as I've said before, one of the most important books in my life. I've been wanting to do a series of posts on books that have meant a lot to me, but I need some time and space to do them justice. The list is varied and ranges from Taikon to Tolkien to Austen to Brontë to Auel to Lindgren... One day perhaps.

Slowly catching up

I started writing this blog post on the 21/9, but because my home is the way it is and I am the way I am I was interrupted and didn't finish. Sad, isn't it? But here we go again, I have a lot of books to write about, and I'll just have to take them one step at a time.

The lovely and generous E gave me a most marvellous care package, containing not only lovely chocolates, sweets, a cd, bubble bath and more but also a load of books she, well, I guess she needed to clear out. ;-) Anyway, I was thrilled to bits. I got the latest Sara Paretsky, plus the earlier one (Blacklist) which I've read but apparently not blogged about. Also a few non-fiction intellectual ones (fun! the sort of stuff I never choose myself otherwise because I'm lazy) and more. I will be blogging about them all. And it is better to write about one at a time than about none, so I'll start with:

Sara Paretsky: Fire Sale

The latest Sara Paretsky is a crack-down on Walmart. In this one V.I. returns to the South Side to coach basketball when her own old coach gets cancer. The neighbourhood used to be poor, but people had work back in V.I.'s youth, when the mills were open. Now, the biggest employer is the discount supermarket By-Smart, owned by fundamentalist Christian family Bysen. By-Smart systematically keeps employees on part-time contracts (thus being able to refuse them health insurance and other benefits), and is also pressuring local contractors to work more for less. Being practically the only employer left the company has enormous power. V.I. soon gets sucked into (pro bono) drama.

This is one of the best Paretsky's I've read. I like how V.I. has mellowed since your man what's-his-name (can't remember at the moment and can't be bothered to go and find the book) came into her life. She seems more her age now, and I like that. A more believable character, somehow. The intrigue worked well, even if the solution and conclusion was a bit far-fetched - then again, the Knutby incident right under our noses has taught us that nothing really is... The social criticism gives food for thought, as usual in a Paretsky novel, and works very well with the story. Recommended.

2 x Sara Paretsky

Was very happy to find two early Paretsky novels at the library. I have read several of hers, but I did feel I had missed out on some background since the first ones have been unavailable. I think I'm going to have to do a more thorough check for novels by my favourites in the library catalogue, to see if more are lurking in the suburbian branches.

So I found a volume with Indemnity Only and Killing Orders, no. 1 and 3 in the Warshawski series. Funnily enough I think I have read Deadlock, which is no. 2. I read the synopsis on http://www.saraparetsky.com/ though, and I'm not sure. Not 100 %. I love Paretsky's novels dearly, but to be quite honest I don't always understand the plots, and that tends to make it hard for me to remember them. Not that they don't make sense, oh no, just that they often boil down to some sort of financial trickery and I tend to blank out at that. This time I made a very conscious effort to understand what was going on, but I still think I may have failed.

Indemnity Only introduces V.I. to us. She has been working as a P.I. for maybe 8 years, if my memory serves me correctly, dealing mostly with financial crimes. One night a man turns up at her office asking her to find his son, who has disappeared. V.I. goes looking, finds the son (dead), discovers that the man who hired her is not the father, and starts unravelling a complicated insurance fraud scam with union ties. Well, it might not be complicated, like I said, I'm financially stupid.

I like this one; it flows well, plot is solid and good, interesting characters. Having read the later V.I. novels it's interesting to see how she has developed and changed. She's very much a hard-ass here, she's a little cooler later on in life. Also, a lot of her habits are presented and explained -stuff that I've noticed in the later novels without really getting. Like the obsession with baths and exercising after getting beaten up.

Killing Orders has V.I. taking on a problem for a much-hated aunt, involving forged share certificates belonging to a Dominican priory. The aunt quickly changes her mind and sacks her, but once V.I. has started researching something she doesn't quit, even when she is attacked with acid. (Side note: why doesn't she quit? Surely she should have enough with all those other cases? Why take on a thankless task she won't get paid for? I never really get that. I think in every novel she gets the boot but keeps at it, and I'm not sure I know why.)

Funny quote:

"I stopped for a breakfast falafel sandwich [...] The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world."

Have I ever mentioned, by the way, how greatly instructive detective stories can be? I know, thanks to Ms Paretsky, that there is a roundabout road in Chicago called "The Loop", for example. Stuff like this comes in handy, I'm sure. In Swedish it's called allmänbildning.