Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch

An extraordinary cover!

As soon as I saw it I knew that it just had to hold adventure, colour, drama … many great wonders … didn’t it?

Yes, it did!

‘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.’

The words were just as compelling. And yet I started and stopped, started again and stopped more than once, before I finally read the book right through.

Because this is a book that requires the right moment, the right mindset. Because the words are as vivid, as colourful as that cover, describing every sight, every sound, every smell … every single sensation.

It’s powerful, but sometimes its too much.

In 1857, on the streets of London, young Jaffy Brown comes face to face with an escaped tiger. It is an encounter that will change his life.

The animal’s owner, Mr Jamrach, traveller, menagerie-owner and dealer in the extraordinary creatures, is impressed by Jaffy’s handling of the situation, and offers him a job.

For a while Jaffy works at the menagerie, but that is just the beginning. He is offered the chance to go to sea, to join the expedition searching for the rarest creature of them all.

At first it is an adventure, but the voyage becomes a nightmarish struggle for survival.

I lived through the adventure and the nightmare. It was exciting, it was painful, and at times I had to look away. It was too dark, too painful.

I saw how little man understands nature and the world around him, though he thinks he does. How small man is in the scheme of things, though he thinks that he is big. How much damage he can do.

I saw human nature at its best and at its worst. I saw friendship, camaraderie, rivalry, superstition, fear, the survival instinct …

It was incredible, it was horrible at times, and yet I believed every word.

And I can understand why Jamrach’s Menagerie has beguiled the judges of the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize.

It is a coming of age story, an adventure story, a story of Victorian England, like nothing else I have ever read.

Hope …

It’s been a difficult day …

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

by Emily Dickinson

Isn’t it wonderful what a difference the right words at the right time can make?

Paris in July: The Soundtrack

I didn’t really mean to do another music post, but I found this last night and I couldn’t resist.

Nouvelle Vague remake classic new wave singles with a little electronica and a little bossa nova. It sounds strange but, trust me, it works.

And whoever thought of setting their cover of Dance With Me to footage from Jean- Luc Goddard’s sixties classic Bande à Part is a genius.

It really was too good for me to resist.

Far to Go by Alison Pick

Czechoslovakia. 1938. War is coming, and invasion by Germany seems inevitable.

Pavel and Anneliese Bauer think that they will be safe. That their young son, Pepik, will be safe. They are affluent, successful, good people.

Yes, they are Jews, but they are secular Jews, not practicing the faith.

But of course they won’t be safe. And they will have to make painful decisions about what to do, about how best to protect their son.

Alison Pick tells their story simply and clearly. She picks out details beautifully. Day to day details of an ordinary family that has to carry on, through a terrible period in their country’s history.

Telling her story in the third person, through the eyes of Marta, Pepik’s gentile nanny was, I think, a wise decision. It pulled me away from the story just a little, and allowed me to see it more clearly.

And it was the most effective way to show so many different emotions and reactions.

At first Pavel wanted to stand his ground, acknowledge his Jewish heritage, believing that right will prevail.  Anneliese was more pragmatic, eager to cast off her Jewishness and escape. And Marta worried about her young charge, and about her own future. And she made some bad decisions.

They all made bad decisions. Bcause they were in an impossible, unprecedented situation. Because they had no idea what their futures might hold.

Their characters were so well drawn. They were utterly believable, complex, fallible human beings.

My heart nearly broke when Pepik was sent away to safety on the Kindertransport. I understood why, but he didn’t understand, he didn’t want to go and, like so many other children, he had to be torn away.

The whole story was painful to watch, because the situation was so impossible.  And yet the pages turned quickly. Because, though I feared the worst, I had to know.

There was just one weak link: the contemporary framing story. It lacked the clarity of the main narrative, the different styles felt mismatched, and I really wasn’t sure what was going on.

In the end though it made sense, and I understood what the author was doing.

A flaw, but not a fatal flaw.

Far to Go is a moving, human story. A different view of a period that has been written about so much.

Alison Pick has built well on both her own family history and her research.

A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I’m still a little surprised to find myself writing that I really liked A Visit From The Goon Squad.

But I am !

I was less than thrilled a few months ago when I saw Jennifer Egan’s name on the longlist for the Orange Prize. I just didn’t get on with The Keep, or with Look at Me. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. And I really didn’t really think that a book by the same author about American record company folk would be the book for me.

But what do I know?

I read a great deal of praise, and some of it came from people who hadn’t expected to enjoy the book. And then A Visit From The Goon Squad won the Pulizer Prize.

Curiosity got the better of me at that point, and I placed an order. And I am so glad that I did, because A Visit From The Goon Squad really is a tour de force.

Thirteen chapters.

Each had a different style, a different viewpoint, a different point in time, a different narrative trick. Never before have I seen such variation in one novel.

With all of those differences, with characters appearing and disappearing, this could have felt more like a book of short stories than a novel. And yet it didn’t.

Because although I couldn’t identify with the characters, although I didn’t particularly like them, they were so well drawn, they had such depth, that I was always intrigued.

Because the prose and the storytelling was so clever, so compelling that I just had to keep reading. Jennifer Egan balanced characters, stories, styles and tricks exceedingly well.

Because recurring themes tied everything together. How we deal with the passing of time. How lives can move in directions we didn’t expect, didn’t want. How we have to adapt to survive. Big questions.

There were things I didn’t like. I found the chapter with extensive footnotes difficult to read.

But there were many more strokes of brilliance. The first chapter moved between two different perspectives, two different times more elegantly than I thought possible. And the much discussed Powerpoint chapter dazzled me. It had such clarity, and it quickly decided that it was the perfect medium for that perspective, that particular story.

A Visit to The Goon Squad isn’t a book for everyone.

It takes work. To keep track of characters as the stories shifted backwards in time. To take in so many different things. to fill in the gaps.

It is a book for the head much more than the heart.

And it is very modern. Very experimental.

In theory I shouldn’t have liked it. But in practice I did.

13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro

A novel spun around an inherited box of mementoes, gathered over the course of a life.

It sounded lovely but I thought it might be just a little predictable. I found though that it was anything but.

“She will give him the office with the tall, useless empty file cabinets in the corner. He will probably not think to open all the drawers and look at them his first day on the premises. But he will, eventually, discover a box tucked all the way into the darkness at the back of the bottom drawer, innocent looking yet unexpected. How could one see such a thing and not take a little peek inside?

She wonders what effect it will have on him.”

Josiane is the leaver of the box, and Trevor is the finder. He is an American in Paris. A visiting professor. A scholar of 19th century French literature.

Words and language intrigue Trevor. Double meanings. Ambiguities of translation. All of that is that is reflected in lovely, readable prose, and in very clever storytelling.

And the contents of the box intriguing too. Relics of one woman’s life, lived in Paris between the wars.

There are photographs, letters, so many small things that hold memories. They appear in between the words. And they don’t just illustrate the story, they are the very heart of the story.

Trevor is intrigued, and the more the looks. the more he thinks, the more his interest grows. He begins to construct the story of Louise Brunet.

The daughter of a jeweller, who was the apple of her widowed father’s eye. A girl whose first love was her cousin, a young man who lost his life in the great war. A young woman who married her father’s apprentice. A bored wife who fell passionately in love with another woman’s husband …

I knew that I wasn’t reading about the real Louise, that the Louise I met was a construct in Trevor’s head. But at the same time I liked her, I believed in her, and I wanted to know what her future held.

It felt strange, but I was impressed that I could believe in a woman created by a man created by a woman author!

And I was intrigued by the mixture of Louise’s real artefacts, Louise’s invented life, and Trevor’s rambling letters to his supervisor.

As the story progressed its focus changed. From a family story to a passionate romance. And I began to wonder if maybe it was reflecting Trevor’s emotions as his relationship with Josiane evolved.

The present day story was sparsely told, and so for a long time I wasn’t sure. But when past and present stories came together in a sudden and unexpected ending I decided that I had been right.

That ending was both clever and intriguing, but I must confess that I was disappointed to leave Louise’s story when there was more drama to come.

Maybe though I should look at her mementoes again, and fill in the gaps myself.

13, rue Thérèse is an intriguing little book.

A literary curio maybe.

Paris in July: The Soundtrack

Comment te dire adieu by Françoise Hardy

I hesitated before posting this, because it’s very short and it stops rather suddenly. But I love the singer, I love the song, and I love the look. It definitely says Paris to me.

Herring on the Nile by L C Tyler

Hooray for the return of Ethelred and Elsie!

I anticipated a clever mystery and a fine entertainment, and that’s just what I got.

Ethelred is a middle-aged crime writer, scraping a living by writing three different series under three different aliases. Or rather he was. Ethelred has received an unexpected inheritance. He has a new lady friend too. And those facts might just be linked…

He books a Nile cruise: a holiday with his new love and a research trip for a new novel. But then he is jilted.

Elsie, his literary agent, is quick to invite herself along for the trip instead. But it is a decision she lives to regret.

There are threats, murder, kidnapping, and terrorism. There are misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and much confusion. And there are twists aplenty.

Yes, there’s plenty of plot. And a fine cast of characters to play it out.

And there’s more: intelligence, wit and lovely details. Too many wonderful things to pick out, but I must commend Ethelred for continuing to provide answers to the interview questions from local newspapers at Elsie’s behest. They reflected his changing circumstances, they reflected his life as a writer, and they were an absolute joy.

The similarity of the title of this book to a certain novel by Agatha Christie is not a coincidence. There are echoes of that story in this book, but there are differences too. it is a fine tribute, but a fine book in its own right too. Not a pastiche, but a modern novel following in a fine tradition.

I had a lovely time travelling with Ethelred and Elsie, and I’m hoping to meet them again in the future.

A Dog Blogs: Blocking

Hello. It’s me, Briar!

I am branching out and writing a knitting post. Jane and I are both interested in knitting. She likes to do it and I like to sit on it.

Two days ago Jane finished knitting a shawl. She said to tell you that the pattern is Simmer Dim by The Shetland Trader and the yarn is Macushla by The Yarn Yard and the shade is Mischief.

She was very happy when she was knitting, because the pattern was very good and the yarn was very lovely. I can vouch for the yarn, because I did some sitting on it.

Today we did blocking. Jane soaked the shawl and then she pinned it out.  On the futon mattress in front of the aga. That shawl had the best seat in the house!

I love to sleep on the futon, and so it seemed like a good idea to go and have a little lie down next to the shawl. I wasn’t sitting on it, I was keeping it company. Honest!

Crime Fiction: The A to Z

When I set out on Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet I promised myself two things.

The first was that I would read nothing just for the sake of filling a slot, that I would only read books that I would have picked up sooner or later anyway.

I’ve managed that, though I did have to bend the rules a little for the difficult letter X and I had to throw in an emergency short story when the book I’d picked for letter Y let me down.

The second was that I would mix things up, and choose some familiar and some less familiar books.

And so my list is made up of:

• Persephone books for H and X, and a classic short story by a Persephone author for G.
•  A Virago Modern Classic, and a winner of the CWA Gold Dagger to boot,  for K.
•  A wonderful anthology of new writers at W.
•  Victorian crime for S and Victoriana for U. I would have liked to read more of both, but I ran out of time and letters.
•  Crime fiction in translation at L and V.
•  A Cornish book, set in very familiar countryside, at B.
•  Agatha Christie re-reads at A and F. A for Agatha seemed to be the perfect place to start, and once I had re-read one book a number of others called me.
•  Neglected woman authors, who were published in numbered green Penguins, at E, M, P and R. If I have learned one thing through the alphabet, it is always to look carefully at green Penguins as there are some real gems there.
•  Male authors from the middle of the last century, who aren’t as lauded as some but really should be, at I, N and Q.
•  A lovely range of contemporary crime fiction at C, D, J, O, T and Z.
•  And that excellent, emergency short story at Y.

Mission accomplished, I think!

Here’s the A to Z in full.

A is for Agatha	The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
B is for Bolitho	Framed in Cornwall by Janie Bolitho
C is for Crombie	Where Memories Lie by Deborah Crombie
D is for Darkside	Darkside by Belinda Bauer
E is for Ethel	The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White
F is for Five	Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
G is for Glaspell	A Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell (short story)
H is for Holding	The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
I is for Innes	Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes
J is for Jane	The Burning by Jane Casey
K is for Kelly	The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly
L is for Läckberg	The Stone-Cutter by Camilla Läckberg
M is for Mary	Death and the Pleasant Voices by Mary Fitt
N is for Not	Not to be Taken by Anthony Berkley
O is for Other	The Other Half Lives by Sophie Hannah
P is for Potts	The Man with the Cane by Jean Potts
Q is for Question	A Question of Proof by Nicholas Blake
R is for Roth	Shadow of a Lady by Holly Roth
S is for Study	A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan-Doyle
T is for Tyler	The Herring in the Library (and others) by L C Tyler
U is for Unburied	The Unburied by Charles Palliser
V is for Van der Vlugt	Shadow Sister by Simone Van Der Vlugt
W is for Written	Written in Blood: a Honno Anthology
X is for Expendable	The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes
Y is for You	You are a Gongedip by Sophie Hannah (short story)
Z is for Zouradi	The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi

And that really is the end of the alphabet.

So where does my crime fiction reading go now? Well, I have The Quarry by Johan Theorin, A Herring on the Nile by LC Tyler, Now You See Me by S J Bolton, and two books by Erin Kelly in my library pile. My own green Penguins and my Agatha Christie collection are calling too, Plus those authors I discovered, and rediscovered, along the way and want to read again. And recommendations I picked up from others along the way ….

No end of possibilities …