Scissors, Paper, Stone by Elizabeth Day

Scissors, Paper, Stone.

I wanted to start by explaining why I love the classic game and why it suited this debut novel so well, but the words just wouldn’t come. So I’ll just write a little about the book rather than delay any longer.

It begins so well.

A middle-aged cyclist has come off the worst in a collision and is lying, injured and semiconscious on the ground. Elizabeth Day put me there on the ground with him, and I realised there and then that she really could write.

But this isn’t his story. Charles Redfearn lies in hospital, in a coma, as the stories of his wife and daughter, of their damaged relationships with him and with each other unfold.

“They were two women whose growth had been stunted by the same man, whose confidence and sense of self had been warped by being planted in his shadow.”

Ann was at home, cooking, when the news of her husband’s accident came. She took it calmly, and she finished what she was doing before she set out for the hospital. A small but striking sign of independence, of resistance.

Ann had met Charles at college. She was pretty, under-confident and compliant. He was confident, charming and manipulative. Ann became a trophy wife, unable to admit that she had made a terrible mistake, and either unwilling or unable to do anything about her situation.

I understood her, sadly there are so many women like her, but I wanted to shake her.

Particularly when, early on. I learned that Charles treatment of his daughter had crossed acceptable boundaries, and that her mother had known but chosen to do nothing, to bury her head in the sand.

I understood too why Charlotte was estranged from her parents, and reluctant to visit her father’s bedside. And why she was so needy, and horribly demanding of assurance of her recently divorced boyfriend’s love for her. He was so patient but I wanted to scream at her that she could so easily drive him away.

Two flawed, fragile, utterly believable women.

Circumstances forced them together. They had to talk, had to deal with things. Neither understood the other, how they lived, the choices they had made. And so there was much misunderstanding, much miscommunication. It was compelling, and it rang horribly, horribly true.

Elizabeth Day managed her story well, moving between past and present stories seamlessly, and making her points quietly but effectively. Her plain and simple prose suited the story. Her storytelling was clear, objective and never lost its grip.

But I did wish that she didn’t feel the need to explain quite so much, to set out the reasons for every action, every gesture set out. Her characters were so well-defined, so believable that she really just had to let them speak and act.

The ending felt a little too neat, but I think that was inevitable. A novel has to end, but in life there are always things that can’t be resolved, can’t be accepted, wrongs that can’t be put right.

That ending, the whole book, made me think.

Because Elizabeth Day has handled dark and difficult subject matter that it would be so easy to sensationalize, with intelligence and sensitivity.

And that is something that I have to applaud.

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

I noticed Blacklands back when it was first published. I had a close look but I didn’t bring it home because the subject matter worried me.

“…a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a desperate child and a bored serial killer…”

It wasn’t that I thought the subject shouldn’t be written about, but it had to be handled carefully and I wasn’t sure if I should take the chance on a first time author.

But the case for reading Blacklands grew:

• I read many positive words.
• The CWA awarded this debut novel its Golden Dagger.
• I picked up Belinda Bauer’s second novel, which had an interesting but more tradition subject matter, and was impressed.

The case was made: when I was offered the chance of reading Blacklands for  The Great Transworld Crime Caper I took it. 

The sense of place, the atmosphere, the question in the very first paragraph pulled me in.

“Exmoor dripped with dirty bracken, rough, colourless grass, prickly gorse and last year’s heather, so black it looked as if wet fire had swept across the landscape, taking the trees with it and leaving the most cold and exposed to face the winter unprotected. Drizzle dissolved the close horizons and blurred heaven and earth into a grey cocoon around the only visible landmark – a twelve-year-old boy in slick black waterproof trousers but no hat, alone with a spade.”

Blacklands is the story of that twelve-year-old-boy, and the story of his family. A family still scarred by a crime that happened two decades earlier.

Steven and his family are still suffering from a crime that happened two decades earlier.

Eleven-year-old Billy bought a bar of chocolate from the local newsagent, just yards from his home, and was never seen again. The police believe that he was the victim of Arnold Avery, paedophile and serial killer. He must have been.  Avery did confess to killing six other children and burying them on the surrounding moors only months later.

But Billy’s Mum, Steven’s Nan, can’t or won’t believe it. She still waits by the window waiting for her boy to come home. His room, his things, are untouched, waiting for him.

Her daughter, Billy’s sister, Steven’s Mum, has to deal with that, has to deal with being the child who was left. She’s a single mother, struggling to keep the family together and to bring up Steven and his little brother.

Steven, a quiet child, unnoticed by his teachers, bullied by his peers, wants things to be different. He believes that he can put things right, that his family will love him more, that his schoolmates will take notice, if only he can find Billy’s remains. And so he spends every minute he can digging on Exmoor.

This picture, absolutely psychologically true, is built up over the first few chapters. Those chapters are so accomplished that I couldn’t quite believe that they were written by a first time novelist.

Steven was an intriguing character. Sometimes he seemed older than his years and sometimes younger, but I could see how that might have been the result of his circumstances.

It was a piece of school work that changed everything. Writing a letter. Stephen’s letter was praised, he was noticed. And that gave him an idea. That he would write to Arnold Avery, to persuade him to reveal where he had buried Billy.

This is where things could have gone horribly wrong. A boy initiating a relationship with a paedophile. And an imprisoned paedophile’s first contact with youth in years …. But Belinda Bauer handles things well, making it clear what Avery was without ever being graphic. It was disturbing and uncomfortable, as it had to be.

Blacklands works wonderfully as a study of the long-term effects of crime on a family, with so many details of Steven’s life caught perfectly.

But the need to tell a bigger story created one or two problems. There are some unlikely events, and a horrible and quite unnecessary coincidence as events built to a dramatic conclusion. It was probably the right conclusion, but it felt muddled and then rushed at the very end.

That was disappointing after so much good: the psychology, the atmosphere, the sense of place, and such a different approach to a crime story.

Blacklands was, I think a book of two halves – a family study and a crime drama – that didn’t, probably couldn’t, quite work together.

But it was compelling, original, and a hugely promising debut.

Once Upon a Time

The words “Once Upon a Time” have always been magical, but the Once Upon a Time Challenge, now in its fifth year, adds an little extra stardust.

There are losts of options and I pondered lots of books, but in the end one outshone the others.

A big book that I began on holiday a couple of years ago, fell in love with, but drifted away from when I had to go back to work …..

“Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic …”

Between now and Midsummer’s Eve I shall be reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark.

And maybe, in between times, one or two of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s  Tales of the Elfin.

What will you be reading?

Crime Fiction Alphabet: L is for Läckberg

The Stone-Cutter is the third of Camilla Läckberg’s series of crime novels, set once more in the in the small town of  Fjällbacka on the Swedish Coast.

It’s a series that is growing and developing nicely, and I’m very glad I found it.

The style is simple and straightforward but it works. It works very well.

A dramatic and atmospheric opening chapter sees a fisherman finding the body of a child tangled in his nets. A horrible, tragic accident it seems.  Patrik Hedström, a detective in the local police force, has to break the terrible news to the parents of the eight year-old girl. A difficult job made harder because Patrik knows the family.

Charlotte, Niclas and Sara, the daughter who is now lost to them, have only recently moved home to Fjällbacka, and have been staying with Charlotte’s mother and stepfather while they look for a home of their own.

Patrik’s partner Erika formed a close friendship when their paths crossed while both were pregnant. Since then Erika has provided sanctuary when Charlotte needed to escape from the demands of her family, and Charlotte has offered support and reassurance and Erika struggles to cope with the demands of her first child. It’s not that Patrik is unsympathetic or unwilling to help, but work so often calls him away.

A post-mortem finds clear evidence that Sara’s death was not an accident, and so a murder investigation begins.

It is an investigation that reveals a great deal: bitter disputes between neighbours, long estrangements between family members, parents struggling to cope with difficult children, marital disharmony … any or all of these things may have a bearing on Sara’s death.

Past history may have a bearing too. The  story of the stone-cutter and his family, beginning in the 1920s, must be significant. Why else would it be there?! It’s rather more story-book than the other strands of the book, but still compelling. 

There’s a lot going on: the domestic life of Patrik and Erika, the workings of the local police force, the investigation and the lives it changes, and the old history. 

Fortunately the plotting has been well thought out. Each strand has plenty to hold the interest, and those strands are very nicely woven together to make a complete story.

The pacing is very well handled too, starting slowly and then building, building …

The mystery was less complex than most and I worked out the ending well ahead of time but that didn’t matter too much. Because it was the right resolution, and because I wasn’t quite ready to leave this book behind.

You see, the point wasn’t so much solving the mystery as following and understanding the human stories. Camilla Läckberg’s characters are simply and clearly drawn, but it is so easy to believe in them and empathise with them. Their situations, their emotions, their responses are so recognisable, and they ring completely true.

I wanted the right resolutions for them all.

And I would like to meet Erika and Patrick again. The events in the final chapter of this book whetted my appetite for more …

Translated by Steven T Murray

*****

The Crime Fiction Alphabet is hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise.

“Each week, beginning Monday 10 January 2011, you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week …”

So next week, M is for … ?

An A to Z of what’s ahead

I didn’t mean to disappear for quite so many days, but I have had a difficult week.

I finally left the job I used to love that had turned into a nightmare. I shall miss the staff team terribly and I shall always believe in the work we did, but there was a change at the top and … for the sake of my family and my sanity, I had to walk away.

But I don’t want to dwell on the negative, I want think about other things …

A is for AUNTS with birthdays in April. I’m knitting a lovely neckwarmer in Posh Yarn for one and I have in mind a cowl from some lovely Fyberspates DK that has been in my stash for so long for the other.

B is for BLUEBELLS. I love walking through the woods when bluebells are out, and they should be very, very soon.

C is for CLEARING THE DECKS. I have a final batch of books to introduce, a project page to update, and an update post to write.

D is for DEAD SMILE.  The only novel by C C Vyvyan, whose writing I fell in love with last year. It’s a very rare book but the Morrab Library has a copy that I can read there. That’s just what I plan to do before I find a new job.

E is for ETTA. I’ve not knitted a hat for a while but this one is calling and I have a skein of the recommended yarn that I could use.

F is for FILLING THE GAPS. I need to read those books I’ve been meaning to read for ages as well as new books and books to be cleared out. And I’m sure there are some posts I need to add to the project blog.

G is for GROOMING. Border terriers have double coats and twice a year they must have the harsh top-coat stripped to reveal the new coat beneath. So very soon Briar will be off to the groomers and she should look very smart, and feel much cooler, when she emerges.

H is for HAYLE RUGBY CLUB. They have a weekly car boot sale. We’ve been a few times and now we’re decided to pay our £5 for a pitch and clear out some books and some other things that have been hanging around for far too long.

I is for INVENTION. The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders. I have been in the library queue for ages, but now I have had an email to say that it’s waiting for me.

J is for JAMRACH’S MENAGERIE by Carol Birch. I loved the look of this book when I saw it on the longlist for the Orange Prize, but the Cornish Library Service doesn’t have a single copy. Jennifer from Canongate was kind enough to send me a copy, and reading it is high on my list of priorities.

K is for KNITTING. It’s lovely to have a little more knitting time. First I shall finish the aforementioned birthday knits. Then I shall look at the other projects in progress and decide whether to finish or frog. And when I am up to date and organised I shall look at reducing my stash and my Ravelry queue.

L is the next letter is my Crime Fiction Alphabet. The book is read and a post should be appearing tomorrow.

M is for MALABRIGO. I have one lovely read skein, and it is calling loudly.

N is for NOTHING. I need to wind down and learn not to feel guilty about sometimes doing nothing at all.

O is for ORGANISATION. Needed on many fronts!

P is for PYM. On my last day at work I had to go to the bank to sort a few things out. Afterwards I popped into a nearby charity shop and spotted a collection of Barbara Pym’s writings that I didn’t know existed: Civil to Strangers and Other Writings. It was just 75p, so of course I snapped it up.

Q is for QUEUE. I am in the library queue for rather a lot of books at the moment. When I resigned I decided to line up a few books for when I wasn’t working, and then the longlist for the Orange Prize was published. I found more books that I wanted to read that weren’t in my library but could be ordered in from other libraries in the county …

R is for RIVER. I’m halfway through Invisible River by Helena McEwan and it’s lovely. I must thank Alice at Bloomsbury for letting me have a copy.

S is for SCISSORS PAPER STONE by Elizabeth Day. A debut novel that doesn’t seem to have received too much attention, but it should because it is very, very good. A post is formulating in my head …

T is for TIME. There are so many things that I can do with just a little more time.

U is for UNMATCHED MITTEN. Last time I wrote an A to Z post, quite a few months ago, it featured a single mitten. I still haven’t knitted its partner but I really must.

V is for VACCINATION. Briar has been summoned by the vet for her annual check-up and booster. She doesn’t like it, but it’s got to be done.

W is for WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT by Sarah Winans. A lovely debut novel, recommended to me by Helena at Headline.

X is for … I’m not quite sure what. I have possibilities for all of the outstanding letters in my Crime Fiction Alphabet but X is going to be tricky. There are a couple of possibilities, but neither of them are really calling me.

Y is for YARN FORWARD. One of my favourite knitting magazines, but I must remember that it has been renamed so now I need to look for Knit!

Z is for ZZZZZ. Well, it is getting late!

Clearing the Decks: The Penultimate Batch of Introductions

A quick reminder of the project:

I have too many books. Books on shelves, books in boxes, books in piles on pretty much every available surface …

So I have rounded up one hundred books that I think I will be happy into pass on, once I’ve read them and written about them. They are now my home library, stacked in a corner that I will turn to whenever I think I have nothing to read.

I’m a little distracted by Orange prize longlisted titles at the moment, but the project is working, and I’ll do an update at the end of the month to prove it. Results for the first quarter!

I’ve been introducing my hundred books in batches of ten, and I’d love to know if there are any you could particularly recommend. Or if there is a book you would particularly like, and I’ll pass it on to you if I can.

And here are books 81 to 90…

My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen

“In fin-de-siecle Copenhagen, part-time prostitute Charlotte and her lumpen sidekick, Fru Schleswig, have taken on jobs as cleaning ladies of dubious talent to tide them over the harsh winter of 1897. But the home of their neurotic new employer, the widow Krak, soon reveals itself to be riddled with dark secrets – including the existence of a demonic machine rumoured to swallow people alive. Rudely catapulted into twenty-first-century London, the hapless duo discover a whole new world of glass, labour-saving devices and hectic, impossible romance.”

Liz Jensen is a real one-off and a horribly under-appreciated author. I usually wait for her books to turn up in the library but I couldn’t resist buying this one.

Death Wore a Diadem by Iona MacGregor

“Edinburgh 1860: the occasion of an unexpected visit to Scotland by the Empress Eugenie of france. The last interminable year of captivity for rebellious Christabel MacKenzie at the Scottish Institute for the Education of the dughters of Gentlefolk. The Lady Superintendent is Margaret napier; bent on using the Empress’s visit for her own personal glory. When her careful pland are disrupted first by theft and then by murder, Mrs Napier is prepared to go to any lengths to suppress the whiff of scandal. But she reckons without Christabel, her least favourite pupil.”

I didn’t know author or title, but they suggested a historical mystery. That combined with the black and white striped spine of the Womens Press was irresistable. I didn’t warm to the book when I picked it up with letter I in my Crime Fiction Alphabet in mind, and so I put it to one side to try again another day.

A History of Insects by Yvonne Roberts

“It is early 1956 and the British Empire is crumbling. But for nine-year-old Ella, living with her parents at the British High Commission in Peshawar, Pakistan, the walls of class, snobbery and racism are still intact. Growing up is a lonely, painful experience, and Ella withdraws, recording the hypocrisy of adult behaviour in her diary, A History of Insects, where she hides a secret that could shatter the lives of the people around her.”

I picked this up purely out of curiosity, to see what kind of novel would have such a title. I was intrigued, and so the book came home.

The Lighthouse Stevensons by Bella Bathurst

“‘Whenever I smell salt water, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors,’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in 1880. ‘When the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father!’ Robert Louis Stevenson was the most famous of the Stevensons, but not by any means the most productive. The Lighthouse Stevensons, all four generations of them, built every lighthouse round Scotland, were responsible for a slew of inventions in both construction and optics, and achieved feats of engineering in conditions that would be forbidding even today. The same driven energy which Robert Louis Stevenson put into writing, his ancestors put into lighting the darkness of the seas.”

Lighthouses fascinate me, and with a classic author in the mix too this was irresistable.

The Blackest Bird by Joel Rose

“In the sweltering New York City summer of 1841, Mary Rogers, a popular counter girl at a tobacco shop in Manhattan, is found brutally ravaged in the shallows of the Hudson River. John Colt, scion of the firearm fortune, beats his publisher to death with a hatchet. And young Irish gang leader Tommy Coleman is accused of killing his daughter, his wife, and his wife’s former lover. Charged with solving it all is High Constable Jacob Hays, the city’s first detective. At the end of a long and distinguished career, Hays’s investigation will ultimately span a decade, involving gang wars, grave robbers, and clues hidden in poems by the hopeless romantic and minstrel of the night: Edgar Allan Poe.”

This came from LibraryThing early reviewers. I did start to read but I was underwhelmed, and so I stopped. But I did hang on to the book to give it another try.

Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton

“This is the story of Mina, a girl at a Sheffield call centre whose next customer in the queue is Peter, a Cambridge geography don who has crashed his car into a tree stump when swerving to avoid a cat. Despite their obvious differences, they’ve got a lot in common — both single, both parents, both looking for love. Could it be that they’ve just found it?”

I feel bad about this one, because the author sent it to me and then my mother swiped it. I got it back in the end, and my mother says that it’s very good.

The Rebels by Sandor Märai

“It is the summer of 1918. As graduation approaches at a boys’ academy in provincial Hungary, the senior class finds itself in a ghost town. Fathers, uncles, older brothers—all have been called to the front. Surrounded only by old men, mothers, aunts, and sisters, the boys are keenly aware that graduation will propel them into the army and imminently toward likely death on the battlefield. In the final weeks of the academic year, four of these young men—and the war-wounded older brother of one of them—are drawn tightly together, sensing in one another a mutual alienation from their bleak, death-mapped future. Soon they are acting out their frustrations and fears in a series of increasingly serious, strange, and subversive games and petty thefts. But when they attract the attention of a stranger in town—an actor with a traveling theater company—their games, and their lives, begin to move in a direction they could not have predicted and cannot control.”

 A couple of years ago my fiance and I took part in a book drop to promote the library. This was one of our books, and I was so tempted to keep it, but I was good and left it for somebody to find in Newlyn Art Gallery. In this case it seems that virtue was rewarded, because a copy turned up in a charity shop the following weekend.

The Shakespeare Secret by J J Carrell

“A modern serial killer – hunting an ancient secret. A woman is left to die as the rebuilt Globe theatre burns. Another woman is drowned like Ophelia, skirts swirling in the water. A professor has his throat slashed open on the steps of Washington’s Capitol building. A deadly serial killer is on the loose, modelling his murders on Shakespeare’s plays. But why is he killing? And how can he be stopped?”

One of my aunts loves thrillers, and so I bought this one for her birthday a couple of years ago. She said it was very good and so I picked up a charity copy for myself.

Pilate’s Wife by Antoinette May

“A daughter of privilege in the most powerful empire the world has ever known, Claudia has a unique and disturbing “gift”: her dreams have an uncanny way of coming true. As a rebellious child seated beside the tyrannical Roman Emperor Tiberius, she first spies the powerful gladiator who will ultimately be her one true passion. Yet it is the ambitious magistrate Pontius Pilate who intrigues the impressionable young woman she becomes, and Claudia finds her way into his arms by means of a mysterious ancient magic. Pilate is her grand destiny, leading her to Judaea and plunging her into a seething cauldron of open rebellion. But following her friend Miriam of Magdala’s confession of her ecstatic love for a charismatic religious radical, Claudia begins to experience terrifying visions—horrific premonitions of war, injustice, untold devastation and damnation . . . and the crucifixion of a divine martyr whom she must do everything in her power to save.”

I read a lot of good reports about this one, so I added it to my BookMooch wishlist, and eventually a copy turned up.

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

“In his monthly accounts of what he’s read – along with what he may one day read – Nick Hornby brilliantly explores everything from the classic to the graphic novel, as well as poems, plays, sports books and other kinds of non-fiction. If he occasionally implores a biographer for brevity, or abandons a literary work in favour of an Arsenal match, then all is not lost. His writing, full of all the joy and surprise and despair that books bring him, reveals why we still read, even when there’s football on TV, a pram in the hall or a good band playing at our local pub.”

I bought this for last year’s Bibliophilic Books Challenge but I didn’t get to it in time. This will be the year!

… and that’s the end of this batch … Any thoughts?

Crime Fiction Alphabet: K is for Kelly

The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly looked very promising. A Virago Modern Classic (#449) and a CWA Gold Dagger winner (from 1961). I have a feeling that’s a unique combination.

The narrator is Nicholson, a private detective, and he is investigating the theft of designs, almost certainly by an employee from a long-established, family-owned pottery. Shentall’s of Stoke.

The investigation is covert, with the fiction being that Nicholson has been hired to write a history of the pottery.

One employee draws particular attention. Corinna Wakefield: the only employee not born and bred in Stoke. She is a handsome middle-aged woman, seemingly in the world. She is independent and a little aloof, but she is always professional, and very, very good at her job.

Corinna is a compelling character, by far the strongest of a very well drawn ensemble. Not always sympathetic, but it is clear that her life has not been easy nor is her situation, as an outsider and a woman in a man’s world. She has had to be tough and independent to cope. A leading lady to admire maybe, certainly a leading lady to make you think.

And Corinna is on the spot when a dead body is discovered in a vat of molten clay. Murder!

Nicholson doubts Corinna’s innocence, but he is drawn to her …

The mystery, and the investigation of two crimes that may or may not be linked, is very well handled.

And everything is underpinned by utterly believable human relationships and some clear psychological insight. Things that make for the best mysteries, I think.

The story unfolds in three acts:

• What Happened
• What Happened Before
• What Happened After

It’s interesting, and just a slightly more structured approach to the way many works of crime fiction have been written. The opening was certainly attention-grabbing but, for me, the history of what happened before the murder was a little slow and the events after a little rushed.

But that’s a minor quibble, and there was much here to enjoy

The sense of place was wonderful. The pottery lived and breathed, and I had no doubt that Mary Kelly had done her research, and that she had used it well.

The sense of period was perfect too. I would have known that the book was set in the early sixties without reading the date and without any specific references to dates or events in the text. And the author marshalls her characters well to make some subtle but telling points about the their lives and choices.

Nicholson’s character was my only other quibble. I found him to be a little inconsistent, but I’m prepared to write that off to the conflict between his personal and professional instincts as pretty much everything else was very well done.

The world that Mary Kelly created, the characters she created, and the story that she told were fascinating.

And I have to say the The Spoilt Kill is more than worthy of its Golden Dagger and a fine addition to Virago’s list.

*****

The Crime Fiction Alphabet is hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise.

“Each week, beginning Monday 10 January 2011, you have to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week …”

So next week, L is for … ?

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

A strange one this.

A debut novel longlisted for the Orange Prize two years after its author’s second novel was longlisted for the very same prize. There is no question over the books eligibility as it was first published in the United Kindom in  July last year, but it does feel odd.

And the book itself has a certain strangeness.

“One night,” I begins and close my eyes, “my father, he was very handsome, he walked into the ocean. That was eleven years ago. He hasn’t come back though and even though the police found the place on the beach where my father’s footprints disappeared into the water they never found his body. So my mother and I have been waiting. We often sit and wait on the beach just where my father’s footprints disappeared into the water. Sometimes I wait alone. We always thought he would return…”

The unnamed narrator lives with her mother and her grandfather in a seaside town. A bleak seaside town set against steep cliffs. A town that feels like a prison.

She’s still at school, dreaming of becoming a scientist and making a little pocket-money as a chambermaid. And she loves, to the point of obsession,  a sailor nearly twice her age, Jude.  She loved him before he left for Iraq, she waited, and she still loved him now that he has returned with Post Traumatic Stress. Jude is a down at heel, womanizing alcoholic, but he still keeps her close. But not too close.

At home her mother waits for her husband, still married in both heart and head. And her grandfather, her mother’s father, a retired typesetter, spends his days planning and typesetting dictionaries that will never be published, and filling his granddaughter’s head with wonderful words

And the girl, whose departed father told her that she was a gift from the sea is drawn to the water.

I’d lie down in the tub instead of my bed. At first my mother would wake me up and make me move back into my bed but after years and years she finally gave up and let me sleep there. I liked it in the tub because from the window I could see the stars and the ocean and sometimes, if it was calm, I could see the stars in the ocean. I liked the tub. If I slept with my ear against the drainpipe I could hear my parents’ conversations at night, long metallic talking that made its way up through the plumbing.

Samantha Hunt presents all of this beautifully. Her prose is light, lyrical, idiosyncratic and quite wonderfully awash with watery imagery. The melancholy of the isolated seaside town is tangible. Her characters are lightly and perfectly drawn and each one – from the lonely girl believes she will become a mermaid to the troubled veteran who can’t find his place in his hometown – has their own distinctive voice, their own role to play.

As obsessive love and the call of the ocean push the gentle storyline to a dramatic turn. It pulls all of the strands of the story together very, very cleverly, but for me the writing lost something at that point, and the magic never quite came back as the story rushed to an ending that I didn’t think quite worked.

There is considerable magic in the pages of this little book, wonderful ideas, wonderful emotions. It’s just that Samantha Hunt couldn’t quite pull off everything at the same time, couldn’t quite see things through to the end.

But such potential … maybe one day …

Sacrifice by S J Bolton

I wondered about Sacrifice for quite some time. I had heard a great deal of praise and I liked the sound of both setting and heroine. But it was, to my way of thinking, a little too hefty for a crime novel, and I suspected that it might be a little too dark, a little too gory for me.

But then I had a chance of a copy courtesy of The Great Transworld Crime Caper, and I took it as a sign that I should read this book. And I did.

The setting captured me first:  Shetland, subarctic archipelago more than one hundred miles north-east of the Scottish coast. A land of granite and peat bogs, lying under rainy grey skies and battered by wind and waves. It is so vividly captured, so right for the dark, almost gothic, storyline, and its character and legends will become part of that story.

The story opens dramatically, on a stormy evening with the light slowly fading. A woman is determined to give her beloved horse a proper burial, but as she digs into the peat she finds human remains. A woman with runes carved into her skin and her heart cut out.

Tora is tired and upset, but she is determined to uncover the truth about what has happened so close to her new home.

Shetland was her husband’s birthplace, but it is new to Tora. She is struggling to find her feet, an outsider at the local hospital where she works in obstetrics, and often left alone when her husband’s work calls him away.

But now she has a mission. The invasion of her home, her professional instinct, and her nascent maternal instinct drive her forward. She was reckless, she took risks that only a fictional character would, as she began to doubt that there was anyone she could trust.

She wasn’t the most obvious heroine, but I liked her, I believed in her, and I wanted to follow her.

Her story that unfolded was dark and compelling, cleverly weaving many strands together, and with more than enough twists and turns to keep things interesting.

The darkness was palpable, but the brutality of the killing was not dwelt upon and that darkness came more from the evil that men do. Evil that was horribly believable, and had much to say about the human psyche.

If I have a complaint it is that the book was a too long. It was well structured and  there was nothing that didn’t feed into the main storyline, but there was rather too much exposition for my liking and I am quite sure that the story could have been told much more economically and just as, maybe even more, effectively.

But I have to say that Sacrifice does what it sets out to do very well, and that its fine blend  of gothic mystery, ancient history and myths, action and adventure quite captivated me.

Which is why now, quite against my expectations, I think I’m going to have to look out for S J Bolton’s other books …

The Longlist for the 2011 Orange Prize

I have loved the Orange Prize from the very beginning, and it has steered me towards some wonderful book over the years.

The longlist for 2011 was published today and, as ever, there were a few familiar names, some new and unfamiliar names and some surprising omissions. I was disappointed not to see Maggie O’Farrell, and I was so sure that Mr Chartwell would be on the list that I ordered a copy thinking I would beat the rush. Wrong!

It’s always the way. And some writers – most notably A S Byatt – don’t allow their books to be put forward because the dislike the concept of a prize for women only. So who knows who has opted out and who has been omitted?

There are more books than usual that I didn’t know before I saw the list, but I do  like the look of this year’s selection. It seems less historical and more international last year. I’ve only read two of the books, but I have several more on order from the library, and a few more that I’d really like to track down.

And here is the list:

Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

“Set in 1950s Sudan, this is the story of the powerful and sprawling Abuzied dynasty. With Mahmood Bey at its helm, the family can do no wrong. But when Mahmood’s son, Nur – the brilliant, charming heir to his business empire – suffers a near-fatal accident, his hopes of university and a glittering future are dashed. Subsequently, his betrothal to his cousin and sweetheart, Soraya is broken off, another tragedy that he is almost unable to bear. As British rule is coming to an end, and the country is torn between modernising influences and the call of traditions past, the family is divided. Mahmood’s second wife, Nabilah, longs to return to Egypt and leave behind her the dust of ‘backward-looking’ Sudan. His first wife, Waheeba, lives traditionally behind veils and closed doors and resents Nabilah’s influence on Mahmood. Meanwhile, Nur must find a way to live again in the world and find peace. “

I know the author but not the book. I’ll look out for it, but there are other books calling me a little louder.

Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch (Canongate)

“‘I was born twice. First in wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames, and then again eight years later in the Highway, when the tiger took me in his mouth and everything truly began.’ 1857. Jaffy Brown is running along a street in London’s East End when he comes face to face with an escaped circus animal. Plucked from the jaws of death by Mr Jamrach – explorer, entrepreneur and collector of the world’s strangest creatures – the two strike up a friendship. Before he knows it, Jaffy finds himself on board a ship bound for the Dutch East Indies, on an unusual commission for Mr Jamrach. His journey – if he survives it – will push faith, love and friendship to their utmost limits.”

I love the sound of this, but the library doesn’t have a copy and I’m not buying books until I find another job, so I am going to have to wait.

Room by Emma Donoghue (Picador)

“Jack is five. He lives with his Ma. They live in a single, locked room. They don’t have the key. Jack and Ma are prisoners.”

A book that needs no introduction, and it’s the first of the two I’ve read. Of course it had to be on the list!

The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi (Bloomsbury)

“August, 1968: Babo Patel arrives in London from Madras, with curly hair, jhill mill teeth and dreams of becoming a success. When he meets the beautiful, auburn-haired Sian Jones, he falls in love instantly. She, like him, is in search of something bigger than what the home she left behind can offer. But when Babo’s parents learn of his intention to marry ‘some girl from God knows where’ he is given an ultimatum: he can only marry Sian if they agree to live in Madras for two years before returning to London. As the years pass by, the calamities, quirks and heartaches of first love, lost innocence, and old age unfold across cultures and generations of this mixed-up family in a topsy-turvy world.”

I love the sound of this, and I’ve ordered it from the library.

Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty (Faber & Faber)

“I stare at the photo. I try to read his gaze, each fold on his face, the slight frown. I study the photo in the same way that a spy might study the face of a counterpart in a rival organization. I am calm as I make this promise: I am going to find out what you love, then whatever it is, I am going to track it down and I am going to take it away from you. Two police officers knock on Laura’s door and her life changes forever. They tell her that her nine-year old daughter Betty has been hit by a car and killed. When justice is slow to arrive, Laura decides to take her own revenge and begins to track down the man responsible. Laura’s grief also re-opens old wounds and she is thrown back to the story of her passionate love affair with Betty’s father David, their marriage and his subsequent affair with another woman. Haunted by her past, and driven to breaking point by her desire for retribution, Laura discovers the lengths she is willing to go to for love.”

This is the second of the two books I’ve read, and I’m a little surprised to see it on the list. For me it started brilliantly but lost its way.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Corsair)

“Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years.”

I’m afraid I haven’t got on with Jennifer Egan’s writing in the past, so I’ll take a careful look at this one if I come across a copy, but it’s not a priority.

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury)

“Freetown, Sierra Leone: a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with terrible secrets to keep. In the capital’s hospital Kai, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a university professor who recalls the love that obsessed him and drove him to acts that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer by Adrian, a British psychiatrist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the centre of their stories.”

Wisely praised and forecast to be on the list and here it is. I don’t doubt the quality of the book but I’m not sure it’s the book for me. Again though, I will look carefully when I come across a copy.

The London Train by Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape)

“Paul lives in the Welsh countryside with his wife Elise, and their two young children. The day after his mother dies he learns that his eldest daughter Pia, who was living with his ex-wife in London, has moved out from home and gone missing. He sets out in search of Pia, and when he eventually finds her, living with her lover in a chaotic flat in a tower block in King’s Cross, he thinks at first he wants to rescue her. But the search for his daughter begins a period of unrest and indecision for Paul: he is drawn closer to the hub of London, to the excitements of a life lived in jeopardy, to Pia’s fragile new family. Paul’s a pessimist; when a heat wave scorches the capital week after week he fears that they are all ‘sleep-walking to the edge of a great pit, like spoiled trusting children’. In the opposite direction, Cora is moving back to Cardiff, to the house she has inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage, and the constrictions and disappointments of her life in London. At work in the local library, she is interrupted by a telephone call from her sister-in-law and best friend, to say that her husband has disappeared. Connecting both stories is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and for Cora.”

I’ve liked – if not loved – a couple of books by Tessa Hadley, and this one has had a lot of praise, so I’ll definitely look out for a copy.

Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson (Sceptre)

“This isn’t an ordinary love story. But then Grace isn’t an ordinary girl. ‘Disgusting,’ said the nurse. And when no more could be done, they put her away, aged eleven. On her first day at the Briar Mental Institute, Grace meets Daniel. He sees a different Grace: someone to share secrets and canoodle with, someone to fight for. Debonair Daniel, who can type with his feet, fills Grace’s head with tales from Paris and the world beyond. This is Grace’s story: her life, its betrayals and triumphs, disappointment and loss, the taste of freedom; roses, music and tiny scraps of paper. Most of all, it is about the love of a lifetime.”

I’ve seen this in the library and thought I might give it a try one day. And I will the next time I see it.

The Seas by Samantha Hunt (Corsair)

“The narrator of “The Seas” lives in a tiny, remote, alcoholic, cruel seaside town. An occasional chambermaid, granddaughter to a typesetter, and daughter to a dead man, awkward and brave, wayward and willful, she is in love (unrequited) with an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior. She is convinced that she is a mermaid. What she does to ease the pain of growing up lands her in prison. What she does to get out is the stuff of legend.”

Strange, but interesting. Hopefully I’ll be able to track down a copy.

The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna (Faber & Faber)

“It is Vienna, 1865: Dr Ignaz Semmelweis has been hounded into a lunatic asylum, ridiculed for his claim that doctors’ unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. The deaths of thousands of mothers are on his conscience and his dreams are filled with blood. It is 2153: humans are birthed and raised in breeding centres, nurtured by strangers and deprived of familial love. Miraculously, a woman conceives, and Prisoner 730004 stands trial for concealing it. London in 2009: Michael Stone’s novel about Semmelweis has been published, after years of rejection. But while Michael absorbs his disconcerting success, his estranged mother is dying and asks to see him again. As Michael vacillates, Brigid Hayes, exhausted and uncertain whether she can endure the trials ahead, begins the labour of her second child.”

Another book that had been widely praised and forecast to be on this list. It’s been on the “one day” list but it hasn’t turned up in the library. Maybe I should place an order.

Great House by  Nicole Krauss (Viking)

“During the winter of 1972, a woman spends a single night with a young Chilean poet before he departs New York, leaving her his desk. It is the only time they ever meet. Two years later, he is arrested by Pinochet’s secret police and never seen again. Across the ocean, in the leafy suburbs of London, a man caring for his dying wife discovers a lock of hair among her papers that unravels a terrible secret. In Jerusalem, an antiques dealer has spent a lifetime reassembling his father’s study, plundered by the Nazis from Budapest in 1944; now only one item remains to be found. Connecting these lives is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or give it away. And as the narrators of “Great House” make their confessions, this desk comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared.”

I’m afraid that I was the one person in the world who didn’t like The History of Love, so this isn’t a priority.

The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone (Chatto & Windus)

“ Some call it China’s Wild West – a boom town on the border with Burma. In the new Chinese economy of the late 1980′s, the frontier at Wanting is a magnet for outcasts and opportunists. Or the desperate – like Na Ga. To Na Ga, the town of Wanting represents not the beginning of a new life, but the end of the road. Will, her American lover, has thrown her out – as she always expected he would – leaving her with painful memories, a dollar bank account and a one-way ticket back to Burma. Burma, however, holds no appeal for Na Ga. She may have been born in its hills, but she has left them far, far behind. Yet, caught in a cycle of yearning and betrayal, she finds herself inevitably on a home-bound path. Taking the reader on a journey from the remote tribal villages of northern Burma, to ex-pat life in Rangoon under a grim military regime, and then, in shocking scenes, to the brothels of Thailand and the hedonism of Bangkok.”

I must admit that I hadn’t heard of this one before today, but I do like the look of it and so I have ordered it from the library.

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

“A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina. His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall. But for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic – Shere Khan awoken from the pages of The Jungle Book. Natalia is the granddaughter of that boy. Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages after another war has devastated the Balkans. On this journey, she receives word of her beloved grandfather’s death, far from their home, in circumstances shrouded in mystery. From fragments of stories her grandfather told her as a child, Natalia realises he may have died searching for ‘the deathless man’, a vagabond who was said to be immortal. Struggling to understand why a man of science would undertake such a quest, she stumbles upon a clue that will lead her to a tattered copy of The Jungle Book, and then to the extraordinary story of the tiger’s wife.”

This one had a lot of attention and it is calling me loudly. Sadly though the library has no copies and I am not letting myself buy new books until I have a new job. So please keep your fingers crossed that one turns up!

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (Viking)

“In September 1937 Andras, a young Hungarian student, leaves his family and heads for Paris on a scholarship to study architecture. Before he sets off he is given a mysterious letter to post on arrival in Paris. It is addressed to an Hungarian woman and no reason is given why it cannot be posted from Budapest. When Andras arrives in Paris he becomes vitally aware of his poverty, particularly when he enters the home of a richer Hungarian emigre Klara Morgenstern. She is a young widowed woman, and he finds himself falling in love with her. As they begin to meet regularly it is clear that Klara is hiding a terrifying secret, related to the mysterious letter that Andras posted on arrival, which means she is trapped in Paris as war looms closer. And, as Andras and his fellow students’ lives become ever more vulnerable in the shadow of war, the group must shatter in order to survive. Andras is forced home to a labour camp, his brother disappears and Klara risks everything to return to Hungary to be close to her lover.”

Again, I hadn’t heard of this one before today, but as I like the look of it and  I have ordered it from the library.

Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile (Serpent’s Tail)

“A secretive child by nature, Susanna makes a covert list of everything she knows about her absent father, waiting for the day that she is reunited with him. Deeply unhappy at home, living with her overbearing mother and promiscuous sister, she stays out of the house as much as possible. When she finally discovers her father’s name and seeks him out, in the free and unconventional atmosphere of 1970s Chelsea, she conceals her identity, beginning an illicit affair that can only end in disaster.”

I’m not sure about this one but I know the library has it and I will give it a try.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Chatto & Windus)

“The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline and Swamplandia!, their island home in the Florida Everglades and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as The World of Darkness. Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve year old, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamplandia!’s legendary and beautiful star attraction, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her Grandpa Sawtooth has been sent to the mainland to an old folk’s home; her brother has secretly defected to The World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep the family afloat; and her father, the Chief, is AWOL. To save them, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.”

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin (Serpent’s Tail)

“She is the fourth wife of a rich, rotund patriarch, Baba Segi. She is a graduate and therefore a great prize, but even graduates must produce children and her husband’s persistent bellyache is a sign that things are not as they should be. Bolanle is too educated for the ‘white garment conmen’ Baba Segi would usually go to for fertility advice, so he takes her to hospital to discover the cause of her barrenness.”

Now this sounds interesting, but there are others on this list calling louder. But I would be grateful if the Cornish Library Service would invest in a copy or two.

The Swimmer by Roma Tearne (Harper Press)

“Forty-three year old Ria is used to being alone. As a child, her life changed forever with the death of her beloved father and since then, she has struggled to find love.That is, until she discovers the swimmer. Ben is a young illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka who has arrived in Norfolk via Moscow. Awaiting a decision from the Home Office on his asylum application, he is discovered by Ria as he takes a daily swim in the river close to her house. He is twenty years her junior and theirs is an unconventional but deeply moving romance, defying both boundaries and cultures — and the xenophobic residents of Orford. That is, until tragedy occurs.”

I have heard a lot of praise for Roma Tearne, so I’m pleased to see her on this list, but I’m not sure she is going to be my kind of author. But I will have a closer look at her books when i come across them now.

Annabel by Kathleen Winter (Jonathan Cape)

“In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador in the far north-east of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people share the secret – the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to go through surgery and raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows up within the hyper-male hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self – a girl he thinks of as ‘Annabel’ – is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. As Wayne approaches adulthood, and its emotional and physical demands, the woman inside him begins to cry out. The changes that follow are momentous not just for him, but for the three adults that have guarded his secret

I’ve heard mixed reports and this one really isn’t calling me at the moment. But maybe one day.

*****

 What will win? What will be on the shortlist? I have no idea! But I’m aiming to read a few of those books that are calling me before the shortlist is published, so then I may be able to offer an opinion.

But now tell me – what do you think of this year’s twenty books?:

Is there anything you’d recommend?

Is there anything that you think shouldn’t be there?

Is there anything that should be there, but isn’t?

And which books are you curious about?