the soap box

Blacklist, Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky, Blacklist: A V.I. Warshawski Novel, Signet Books, 2004.

 I hadn't read a Paretsky book in a while, and picked this from a pile a book club mate had brought to pass along at our last meeting.  It's interesting to me that this book is also about fear, fear on a national level, about the success of terrorism not being what many of us might not have imagined in the recent past.  Terrorism wins in our heads, and perhaps more often there than in the senseless suicide bombing attacks, or the ongoing senseless wars.

Paretsky has created a wonderful character in V.I Warshawski.  I've always liked her, and found her engaging.  And as with many of the mystery writers I most enjoy, Paretsky always has something for us to think about.

The blacklisting of progressive writers and artists in the 1950s is still a huge blot on the escutcheons of the government of the United States.  The reminder this book provides about what happened then and why is timely to say the least.  Homosexuality was anathema to right wing counter-progressives, but not talked about by those who fancied themselves progressives [partial progressives?].  Paretsky shows us how the present day is reflected in the mirror of the past.  Gave me the creeps.

A good story, page-turner as usual.  Worth a read on a plane, in a train, or before you go to sleep.

The Lace Reader

Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader, William Morrow, 2006

This is a book I wanted to like.  As it is, I don't quite know what the point was.  Is this a problem of reading the book in fits and starts?  Perhaps.  Is this a problem of a plan/plot which simply doesn't succeed.  Perhaps.

Ipswich Lace features in the story.  Interesting.  Witches, contemporary and historical are also key elements in the story.  Also interesting.  The consequences of violence against women and girls, rape and sexual abuse, are a strong part of the narrative.  Difficult, but interesting, too.  

Half the time, from page 1 to about the middle of the physical book, I couldn't quite figure out what was going on.   And by the time I got to the end of the book, I wasn't at all sure what had happened, what was in real time, what was not.

People were not actually present, characters were part of dreams, part of dissociations too I think.  

It's also possible that this is simply a form I don't get.  That's ok, but won't make me recommend this to others to read.  It's one of the selections for the book club I'm in, which I love.  There's every possibility I'm going to see this all differently after I hear what others have to say about it.

Currently reading Betty Keller and Rosella Leslie, Bright Seas, Pioneer Spirits:  A history of the Sunshine Coast.  This, along with The People's Water:  The Fight for the Sunshine Coast's Drinking Watersheds, [Daniel Bouman & Andrew Scott] is making me appreciate much more what the story is of this place where I now live.

Half A Crown

Jo Walton, Half a Crown, 2008, Tor Books, NYC

There may well be thousands of novels about how a people becomes paralyzed with fear, public fear. Half A Crown  is one of them.  It is the last in a trilogy of counterfactual novels about England after peace is made with Hitler and the Blitz is ended.  Hitler captures Europe, and continues the program of murdering Jews.  Homophobia is commonplace.  

No protest.  Hiding.  Lying. The trilogy cannot of course tell the whole story of what happens in this counterfactual universe - partly because it is not the universe, it is a tiny number of relationships which exemplify the times.  

P.A. Carmichael is the central figure.  He has secrets.  And there are people who know his secrets, and some to whom such secrets would never have occurred.  Carmichael's secrets have cost people their lives and their liberty.  They may cost him the heavy price.  However, as with many books about a people's fear, the characters' putting down the fear, taking action, speaking out and refusing to be afraid anymore ease the readers's sense of despair blooming.  No, we realize, this will work again.  The people will save themselves, life will go on, the sun will come out and the children will not inform on us to the police.  Perhaps.

Ragged Company

Richard Wagamese, Ragged Company, 2008, Random House of Canada

when i first picked up 'The Book of Negroes' i was surprised that so big and thick a book could be so light in weight.  the paper is thick and i guess it has lots of air in it.  in sharp contrast, Ragged Company, is a small tight took, heavy, smaller print, on smaller pages, and with the smallest page numbers i've ever seen in a book.

Ragged Company is about community, how we live in them, or not.  how we make them and break them, and need them.  need each other.  the characters are beautifully drawn, revealed to the reader slowly.  there are lots of movies in the book.  oddly, you might think, the book is about being homeless, in a variety of ways.  i mean that it is about homelessness in some fascinating and startling ways.  homelessness isn't only about poverty in the economic sense, it is sometimes about richness in the emotional sense.

There are moments which will make your breath catch in your throat, bring tears spilling down your cheeks, and make you laugh out loud.  you will be mad at some of the characters some of the time.  and at other times you will be gobsmacked by the simple and enormous beauty of this book.

read it.

now reading last of trilogy by Jo Walton, Half Crown.

The Book of Negroes

Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes, Harper Collins Canada.  Novel.

Chosen the canada reads book in 2009 on  cbc radio one.  

A couple years ago I learned about the document called 'The Book of Negroes,' in which more than 3,000 people's names were written who were escaping to Nova Scotia, from what was soon to become the United States of America.  

In Nova Scotia the escapees were not slaves, nor were they provided with redress, compensation, the land they were promised or recognition as humans.  The novel begins by telling us we are reading a woman's life story, a woman who is dying, who is very old and ill.  This is Aminata.  

Read this book.  Think about the slave trade, trafficking in humans.  Think about what it means, meant, to be the possession of someone.  Think about slavery.  Listen to Mrs Falconbridge.  See what people say.  Understand what people do.  Read this book.

*** 

Next book, for the book club:  Richard Wagamese, Ragged Company, 2008, Random House of Canada

People of the Book

Brooks, Geraldine, People of the Book, Penguin Group, 2008.

Geraldine Brooks has written two of my favourite books, Nine Parts of Desire and Year of Wonders.  She has the capacity to write a world, invite the reader in, and give the reader the delightful gift of the completely imagined work.  

Nine Parts of Desire  is a journalists description of the situation of women living in fundamentalist Islam.  Karin, my wonderful neighbour, radio producer, and great devourer of books, recommended it [among other wonderful recommendations, including, for example David Beers' book about his father, Blue Sky Dream and the space program, successfully explaining one generation to another].  Although it's been more than a dozen years since I read it, I believe that Brooks was successful, in good measure, in telling western women about women living under fundamentalism.  I found the information useful.  and i followed it up by reading a book of Fatima Mernissi's - who's amazing.  she wrote a memoir about her life as a little girl in harem in Morocco.

Year of Wonders is such a success, so completely populated and described a world.  A marvelous novel. 

I haven't read the Pulitzer Prize winning March, the story of the father of Jo and Amy and their sisters. 

The two books of Brooks' I have read so far overshadow People of the Book.  I remember reading a review of People, and thinking that the reviewer might be unduly harsh.  Alas, not.  it's a good story, and the subject is interesting.  but i have to say it reminded me of reading [inhale and hold breath] The DaVinci Code [Phew.].  I was interested to read another book with a connection to Sarajevo; I'd just finished The Cellist of Sarajevo.  Two quite different Sarajevos.  The book, the Sarajevo Haggadah, a real book, must be beautiful.  I could almost see some of the paintings Brooks makes for us.  But the plot is really kind of limp.  Unlikely things happen.  

Now, this is a book that got read a few pages at a time, as i was going to sleep.  It's possible that a 2nd reading would reveal a completely different book.  And for that reason I suggest to you that you read it.  There's enough here to be valuable experience for a reader.

Now reading The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill.  

Farthing & Ha'penny

Jo Walton, Farthing, 2006, Tor Books, NYC & Jo Walton, Ha'penny, 2007, Tor Books, NYC

Friends are packing up their place to rent it while they go on a long trip.  David sent me a box with three books in it, recommending them to me.  I've now read two of them, and enjoyed them very much.

Walton has imagined a world in which England negotiated 'peace' with Hitler just after the Blitz.  Fascists appear to be running the country, persecution and murder of Jews and other 'outcasts' from the Reich is widespread, anti-Semitism is commonplace in England.  These are mysteries, of the police procedural kind.  Carmichael and his sergeant Royston work at New Scotland Yard.  They are as different as chalk and cheese; their differences work well together though, as there is a great deal of respect between them.

I'm not going to describe the plot or the characters, as they are the frame upon which Walton builds her stories.  There are characters which appear in both these books, and I suspect, in the third one which I shall read soon, Half A Crown.  I like the structure of the books, too.  Every other chapter is about Carmichael and the police side of the puzzle with a third person narrator, and the other chapters are in the voice of one of the people key to the mystery to be solved.

I was born in 1946, soon after the end of the Second World War.  I've often wondered what the world would be like if the Nazis had been able to capture all of Europe, the British Isles and Russia.  These novels tell me some of that story. 

Will the series continue?  I'll be eager to find out.  Thanks, David!  

Continuing reading.  I went away for four days beginning last Friday evening, and there wasn't much left to read of People of the Book, so it remains to be finished in the next couple of days, or perhaps this weekend.  I started The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.  Completely amazing writing and wonderful story.  It's about slavery and abolition, so far.

The Pied Piper

Ridley Pearson, The Pied Piper, mystery thriller taken up in the middle of reading The People of the Book.  

i like a good triller.   i'm not usually put off by much, even in a badly written book, unless the story is also simply awful [like for example, Pig Island].

the thing about the thriller, the mystery, is that generally they don't really stay with me.  i know i've read other books by Ridley Pearson.  but i don't remember the plots of any, nor the main characters.  this isn't the case with say, P.D. James or Sue Grafton.  most of this kind of book take up temporary residence in my mind, waiting quietly on the table beside the bed, for the moment at the top of the pile of books being read.  they provide the mind soothing fodder which calms the excited little grey cells, as Poirot calls them, so i can go to sleep.

another one has now been read.  engaging, well plotted, with characters i liked - because i got to know enough about them in the 400+ pages of the mass market sized paperback.  tonight i'll be back to the interesting tale of the hagadah from sarajevo.  i'll climb into the cool sheets of the bed, pick it up, settle into the pillows and read for a while, moving back and forth between centuries, in and out of brief accounts of anti-semitism through centuries, and learning a bit about the craft of book binding.  then, i'll have achieved the correct body temperature which essentially knocks me out ...

people of the book - geraldine brooks

a short review - and incomplete, as i've not finished reading the book.

I was prepared to like this book, and i'm liking it.  I like the story of the haggadah passing through families' with the passage of time.  it has become a character itself, really.  a very engaging read so far.  like most books there are some flaws, but the stories woven into a whole are peopled by interesting characters and relationships.  certainly enough to keep me reading on nights when i thought i'd be asleep in minutes.

Pig Island - a very brief review

don't. waste. your.time.

Mo Hayder writes a good thriller, try Birdman, or The Treatment.  The Devil of Nanking was interesting for a while, but far too odd in the end for me.  Pig Island is dreadful, really.  Takes almost 500 mass market paperback size pages to get to a totally unsatisfying conclusion.   The characters are unbelievable and for the most part entirely unlikeable.  

I learned long ago it wasn't necessary to like everyone in a book for it to be a good book, or even a valuable book.  But this book approaches the worst of Patricia Cornwell, dull, weird unbelieveable plot, and people you neither care for nor like one bit.

just.plain.no.

Next up?  Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book.  If you haven't read Year of Wonders, get a copy and read it now.