http://www.louisepenny.com/books.htm
An Inspector Gamache novel set in Francophone Canada. The setting is current day but this particular story is very traditional in setting – a hotel where the guests and the staff form a limited pool of suspects – it’s a version of a cosy crime country house mystery.
Has potential as a series, in the Inspector Wexford vein of avuncular lead detective working in a picturesque setting. It would have been nice to have had more of a sense of the Canadian setting.
http://www.iain-banks.net/fiction/the-wasp-factory/
Frank – no ordinary sixteen-year-old – lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank’s mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric’s escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother’s inevitable return – an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.
Bizarre. Disturbing. Shocking. Surprising. Riveting. Just plain weird. I loved this book, then felt unclean for enjoying something quite so unpleasant, and then loved it anyway.
A DI Tom Thorne mystery
Finding the body used to be the worst part of the job. Not any more. Now each time a body is found, Thorne must live with the knowledge that somewhere out there is a second victim, waiting to be discovered.
The book as a whole doesn’t quite live up to the excellent misdirection in the opening chapter or the central conceit of the pair of killers.
Scores highly on my cliche-o-meter with:
Essentially a First World War novel, but with shifts in time and location with the prelude of a love affair in France prior to the war and then a modern segment set in the 1970s of a young woman learning about her family’s history.
I was sceptical when I read the introduction by Faulks outlining the purpose of his structure – to contrast France before and during the war, and to connect the reader to the historical element of the narrative through the eyes of a more modern character – but it was very skilfully done and I was gripped from start to finish.
The segments of the story that have attracted the most attention from reviewers are the descriptions of war, human suffering and degradation, and these are indeed incredible and shocking, but what also struck me was the effectiveness of the contrast with the descriptions of the more mundane. Faulks has written rather perceptively about the life of a single, professional woman, Elizabeth, in describing going to the cinema alone or avoiding the curiousity of men in a bar, or:
She had grown accustomed to people’s responses to her. Many of them assumed that there was a polar choice between marriage and work and that the more enthusiastically she embraced her job, the more vigorously she must have rejected the idea of children or male partnership. Elizabeth had given up trying to explain. She had taken a job because she needed to live; she had found an interesting one in preference to a dull one; she had tried to do well rather than badly. She could not see how any of these three logical steps implied a violent rejection of men or children.
One of the interesting things about this novel, given its war theme, is the defining role played by women. Female choices and male reactions to them, whether in 1910 or 1978, provide a good deal of the motive emotional force.
A readable group biography of the Mitford sisters. A gripping story to which the author did not always do justice – no explanation was attempted of the emergence of the differences of view within members of the same family, and the story of the less controversial sisters disappeared at points. Better on the Mitford girls than on the Mitfords as women. Nevertheless, Im tempted to find better biographies on the subject.
A bit of a red theme to the weekend – friends who had recently ‘had their colours done’ are now insisting, tongue in cheek, that everyone can wear red.
Orhan Pamuk, My name is Red
An absolutely wonderful read. Set in Istanbul in the sixteenth century, this is a romance, a mystery and a series of fables told from a range of perspectives – including the main protagonists, a group of manuscript illustrators, as well as those of a dog, a horse… and the colour red:
‘My dear master, explain red to somebody who has never known red.’
‘If we touched it with the tip of a finger, it would feel like something between iron and copper. If we took it into our palm, it would burn. If we tasted it, it would be full-bodied, like salted meat.If we took it between our lips, it would fill our mouths,. If we smelled it, it’d have the scent of a horse. If it were flower, it wqwould smell like a daisy, not a red rose.’
Rothko – the late series, Tate Modern
The highlight for me was the assembled Seagram murals – the Tate’s holdings combined with a number of pieces on loan – an artificial construction, admittedly, as it is not clear which panels Rothko intended to be used – but effective nonetheless. In the previous, smaller, Tate Rothko rooms, the overall impression given was of a cell for meditation. In a larger space and hung higher, as Rothko is said to have intended, the cumulative effect of the panels is more monumental and impressive.
Individually, the apparent simplicity of the works is misleading – as another room, in which Rothko’s paiinting techniques are examined illustrates – there is a varied use of texture and of layers of colour – so that, for example, a halo or eclipse effect separates out blocks of colour. In the panel shown above, the differentiation comes from what appears to be a pale ‘bloom’ on the background, which pushes the more solid block into the foreground.
Reading a recent post on OUPBlog got me thinking (yes, I know…)
Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, has been published by Perigee, so go check it out in your local bookstore.
There is a particular strand in publishing (and for that matter, TV) relating to the unusual or quirky challenge tied in with a book deal/TV show relating the ‘journey’ – from Michael Palin’s Around the World in Eighty Days to Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack or Charlie Connelly’s Attention all shipping.
Now I realise that I am unlikely to get a book deal to track the trials and tribulations of a year in higher education quality management or a year spent servicing committees, so I’m procrastinating from this morning’s ’stuff to do’ by thinking about what my challenge would be? What would be the quirk/USP? What would be the ultimate coffee, book, film, travel or shoe challenge?
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: books, challenges
A parody of golden era crime fiction, specifically Agatha Christie, featuring author Evadne Mount and retired police inspector Eustace Trubshawe. This time they are drawn together to investigate the murder of an actress on a film set, the victim, of course, of cyanide.
I appreciated the layered artifice – the references to Christie both within and through the text, as well as the characters of Trubshawe and Mount with their own fictional alter egos, Alexis Baddeley and Inspector Plodder.
It was an easy read but I couldn’t help feeling that there were a couple of more interesting books trying to get out. The elements of Hitchcock parody were far fresher than the cosy crime pastiche. There was also a potentially far more interesting strand about the isolation and boredom of two ageing characters.
The most recent in the Adam Dalgliesh series, investigating the death of a journalist at a private clinic.
The exploration of individual human isolation is the interesting part. The tail end of the Dalgliesh romantic sub-plot carried on from previous books and the big red herring thrown in half-way through the book are not.
A late instalment in the country house, cosy crime tradition rather than a current day police procedural - when ‘real world’ concerns intrude, the two parts seem incongruous partners.
The first in the Inspector Sejer series set in Norway.
A fairly standard set-up – exprienced detective with young sidekick investigating a murder in a small community.
What is nicely done is the piecing together of the ‘real’ girl behind the image of the victim. Nothing extraordinary but certainly readable while sitting in the garden on a crisp, sunny autumn afternoon.
