Category: Fiction

Over My Dead Body by Hazel McHaffie

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Over My Dead Body by Hazel McHaffie is a novel that raises questions such as would you be an organ donor, or agree to donating your child’s heart, or eyes. I’ve never read a novel that considered these issues, so when Hazel McHaffie contacted me and asked if I would read and review her book it didn’t take me long to write back, ‘yes please’. She is very well qualified to write such a book – a nurse and midwife, with a PhD in Social Sciences, and a Research Fellow in Medical Ethics.

Synopsis (from Hazel McHaffie’s website):

Carole Beacham is in her mid-sixties and planning to leave her husband. Before she can do so her daughter, Elvira, and two little granddaughters are involved in a fatal road traffic accident. Then a stranger appears in the Intensive Care Unit claiming to be Elvira’s boyfriend, insisting Elvira wanted to donate her organs. But Carole has her own reasons for rejecting such a possibility: a dark family secret which has been hidden for thirty years.

She’s torn in two, but gradually her need to respect Elvira’s wishes overcomes her fear, and the transplants go ahead. Letters from grateful recipients bring comfort and Carole’s dread recedes. Then the barriers created to safeguard anonymity start to slip. A troubling communication from a publishing firm €¦ a moving poem from a teenager €¦ an ambitious would-be journalist €¦ and the family’s peace is in grave danger.

My view:

This is a fascinating, compassionate and informative book, the factual information fitting seamlessly into the narrative. The characters are realistic, so much so that at times I had to stop reading because their predicaments and situations were so poignant and difficult.

I’m familiar with some of the issues surrounding transplants, having watched Casualty and Holby City for years. But there is nothing to beat reading a book written by someone who knows the issues, writes with sensitivity and can go into much more depth than an isolated incident in a TV drama series can. The story is told through a number of the characters’ eyes and poses the questions, thoughts and fears they each have about organ transplants – from both the recipients’ and the donor families’ points of view. Carole fears that her daughter could recover or they could find a miracle cure and it would be too late to bring her back. Some people are worried about the personalities of the recipients – do they deserve the transplant, is their lifestyle healthy enough and so on.

Above all it is a moving story, well-told and with an element of mystery – just what is it in Elvira’s background that causes her family concern? From little hints that were dropped I guessed what it was, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. Over My Dead Body certainly gave me much to think about.

Hazel McHaffie’s other novels cover medical ethic issues such as Alzheimer’s and the right to die. Her non-fiction books are about life and death decisions.

The Shining by Stephen King

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

Years ago I read a few of Stephen King’s books, including Carrie and Christine but I didn’t read The Shining. I saw the film with Jack Nicolson, which is terrifying. I remember his crazed face as he rampaged through the hotel, the sense of evil and terror, and I decided that was enough – I wouldn’t read the book.

Recently I changed my mind and bought a copy on Kindle and began reading – it’s an ideal book to read for Carl’s R.I.P. challenge. It has a fascinating introduction by Stephen King, in which he writes about writing horror stories and how he came to write The Shining, which was a ‘crossroads novel’ for him. He wanted to go deeper than he had in his earlier books (The Shining was his third novel) and make his characters more realistic and therefore more frightening. In my opinion he succeeded.

The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance and his family as they move into the Overlook Hotel in the Colorada Rockies. The Overlook is closed for the winter and Jack, a recovering alcoholic is the caretaker. Just what impels him towards murder is horrifyingly revealed as the winter weather closes in on the hotel and they are cut off from the rest of the world. For terrible things had taken place at the hotel and as psychic forces gather strength ghosts begin to surface and both Jack and his five year old son, Danny are their targets. There are hints right from the start that the Overlook is not a good place to be and Jack is told that there have been scandals and suspicious deaths, and he soon discovers from records down in the basement just what has been going on. Also down in the basement is the boiler – that seems to have a life of its own – Jack has to control it, release the pressure to let off its steam.

Danny too, who has the gift of ‘shining’ was warned by Dick Hallorann, the hotel’s cook, as he was leaving, that bad things had happened in the hotel and if he should see something he should just look the other way and it would be gone. ‘Shining’ is a psychic ability – both Danny and Hallorann can hear people’s thoughts, and see visions of the past and of the future. He tells Danny to ‘call’ him if there’s trouble and he’ll come to help. Danny tries looking the other way, but it doesn’t work and he desperately needs Hallorann’s help. I didn’t remember this part in the film and as the tension built, just as the pressure in the boiler inexorably rose, I just couldn’t foresee how the book would end.

In fact there’s an awful lot of the film I don’t remember. I didn’t remember the hedge animals. These are blood-chilling as they come to life and move when you’re not looking – like the stone angels in Doctor Who! Truly terrifying. And the carpet in the hotel corridor with its deep jungle of blue and black woven vines and creepers, the light blue silk wallpaper with the embossed pattern of wavy lines and the wasps crawling and stinging again and again. Oh, no I probably couldn’t have watched that – and I couldn’t stand to watch the film again to see if these scenes were in it!

The characters are so well-drawn and so distinct. Their vulnerability, coupled with the way King gets inside each person’s head, increases the element of fear. There’s the horror of the father who has monsters inside his head, who still loves his son, but demands he should ‘take his medicine’; the evil is palpable. Then, the powerlessness of the mother to help either her husband or son makes it even more frightening. Even when it seems to have ended there is a further twist in the tale and it’s not the end. I read on breathless, almost.

It was only when I’d nearly finished read The Shining that I discovered that Stephen King has written a sequel, Doctor Sleep – I just have to read that!

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown: Book Notes

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I read Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol back in July and never got round to writing about it at the time, so I’ve forgotten much of the detail. For pure escapism I really like Dan Brown’s books. I know lots of people criticise his writing but I find his books hard to put down once I’ve started reading them – I’ve read The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons as well as this one. They’re not great literature but they are great entertainment, even though this one follows the same formula – it’s a breathtaking race over 24 hours as Robert Langdon follows the clues, to rescue the his friend, Peter Solomon, a Mason. Because it’s so formulaic I knew what to expect (although not the detail), it’s full of cliff-hangers and the characters are stereotypes.

It’s long and complicated, full of coincidences and improbable situations, all of which I had no trouble accepting, and a terrifying and crazy villain, Mal’ahk. It’s also packed with detail about the Freemasons,the art and architecture of Washington D.C., and Noetic Science – ‘a fusion of modern particle physics and ancient mysticism’,  all of which was new to me and I found it fascinating. It helped that I read the Illustrated Edition on Kindle which has many photographs and illustrations and I kept checking facts on the computer too.

I don’t think it’s as good as either The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons, but that may because the first had the novelty factor and the second is set in Rome, a place I’ve visited and know more about than Washington D.C. It did make me want to visit Washington D.C. though. And I do intend to read his next book Inferno. I’ve read some of Dante’s Inferno and I’ve visited Florence so I’m keen to find out where Robert Langdon’s race against time takes him and how Brown incorporates the details of the Circles of Hell.

Although I didn’t read this to take part in the What’s in a Name Challenge I’ve realised that it does fit into the category of book with the word ‘lost‘ in the title, making this the last book for me to complete the Challenge.

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’d included My Antonia on my Classics Club list of books to read because I’d enjoyed reading A Lost Lady a few years ago (my post on that book is here). So when it popped up in the Classics Club Spin as the book to read in August/September I was pleased.

I liked it, but not as much as A Lost Lady. I think it’s because it’s a bit fragmented, made up of  a series of short stories. But it’s beautifully written with vivid descriptions of people and places. Published in 1918 it’s set in America at the beginning of the 20th century – the story of immigrant settlers and in particular that of Antonia Shimerda and her family as told by Jim Burden. Jim and Antonia meet as children, when he had come to live with his grandparents on their farm in Nebraska. Antonia’s family is from Bohemia, speaking very little English and living in a sort of shed, little more than a cave. They spend a lot of time together as Jim teaches Antonia to speak English.

Jim recounts various episodes as they grow up together. Gradually they drift apart and lose contact, as Jim left for college eventually becoming a lawyer, whilst Antonia stayed in Nebraska. They meet again years later. It’s a story of hardship and suffering, of poverty, people struggling to make a living from the land, and of the attitudes towards immigrants, women and children. It’s also about being an outsider and the importance of belonging, which makes it most poignant that to her father Antonia is ‘My Antonia’.

But the thing that stands out for me is the beauty of Cather’s descriptions of the countryside and as I read I highlighted many passages – this for example:

Presently we saw a curious thing: there were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles the tongue, the share black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.

Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie. (page 186)

But it’s not just descriptive, it conveys the timelessness of human nature, of how people interact and think, their prejudices, unreliability and of their love for each other. I was struck by this definition of happiness:

I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep. (page 11)

Yet this is a sad book, full of nostalgia and poignancy. There’s such a contrast between the hardness of the life of the settlers and the loving gentle family life that Jim’s grandparents provide for him and their generosity towards their neighbours. Overall, though it is the character of Antonia that caught my attention and in the episodes that weren’t about her I lost interest somewhat. So, a mixed reaction – there are parts that I thought were outstanding and parts that left me rather unsatisfied.

Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Not the End of the World

Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre is a crime thriller set in Los Angeles at the end of the last century when people were in the grip of ‘1999 Syndrome’:

1999 Syndrome took plain old Things Are Getting Worse and changed it into Things Are Getting Worse Because The End Is Nigh. Crime used to be seen as instances of anti-social behaviour, sins against society. But now there was this resigned attitude at large that it was indicative of a greater, inexorable process of decay. Each crime now had to Mean Something, each new atrocity held up as the next marker on our descent into uncharted depths of stygia. (page 37)

Synopsis (from Christopher Brookmyre’s website):

The crew of an oceanic research vessel goes missing in the Pacific along with their mini-submarine.

An evangelical media star holds a rally next door to a convention in LA devoted to ‘nubile’ cinematic entertainment.

The cops know there’s going to be trouble and they are not disappointed. What they didn’t foresee was the presence in their state of a Glaswegian photographer with an indecipherable accent and a strong dislike of hypocrisy or of a terrorist who seems to have access to plutonium as well as Semtex.

My View

I became absorbed in this book as I read it. The plot is tightly constructed but the novel is interspersed with details of the main characters’ backgrounds and how they came to have their beliefs and personality traits, which slows down the action somewhat. However, this does flesh out the characters – the tension and drama slowly comes up to boiling point.

Larry Freeman of the LAPD is overseeing security at the Pacific Vista Hotel where the American Feature Film Market is being held. Just over the road the Evangelical Festival of Light is being held, including the Mission of Purity and the American Legion of Decency, led by the TV evangelist and ex-Presidential candidate Luther St John. St John has predicted that time is running out, the countdown has begun and a tidal wave is going to hit LA as God’s punishment for all the evil man has committed. St John’s wrath is also aimed at the ‘Whore of Babylon’, the porn actress Madeleine Witherson, whose father is a Republican Senator. Steff Kennedy is a Scottish photographer who falls in love with Maddy and gets mixed up in the whole scene and the result is chaos. Add into this mix diatribes against fundamental religion and this is the book in a nutshell.

I enjoyed it, but could have done with less detail about the characters’ backgrounds. Brookmyre’s style is snappy, cynical and wise-cracking, although in places I thought it was too wordy. I really liked the ancient history references to the Minoan eruption of Thera (Santorini), one of the largest volcanic eruptions of all time, a ‘devastating caldera eruption’, resulting in one of the largest seismic waves in history. I’d like to find out more about that!

Not the End of the World is Christopher Brookmyre’s third book. He is a Scottish novelist whose novels mix politics, social comment and action with a strong narrative. He has been referred to as a Tartan Noir author.

Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

As soon as I’d finished reading The Death Maze I began Ariana Franklin’s third book in her Mistress of the Art of Death series, Relics of the Dead. Now this one was more to my liking and I enjoyed it very much.

The date is 1176, the setting is Glastonbury where the monks, after a fire had destroyed their monastery, discovered two skeletons buried in their graveyard. The question is  – are these the remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere? The problem is that Henry II needs evidence that they are not – that the legendary Arthur is indeed dead and not the ‘Once and Future King’, sleeping but waiting for the right time to lead the belligerent Welsh against him. Henry’s solution is to send Adelia Aguilar, the anatomist, to examine the bones for evidence, preferably to establish that no one can say that the bones are not that of Arthur and his queen. Given that this is the 12th century and the technology wasn’t there to prove the age and identity of the bones, Adelia assisted by Mansur, does a pretty good job in her investigation, despite attempts on her life.

Where Relics of the Dead stands out is in the depiction of Glastonbury, a mysterious, spiritual place, ‘one of the world’s sacred centres, a place where the division between man and God was thinner than anywhere else‘, a place where ‘there was a special magnetism that pulled people to worship a presence her long before Christ had set foot on his native heath.’ But Adelia, that down-to-earth, practical woman couldn’t feel it – for her all mysteries had to have an explanation. And she was determined to find it.

I’ve always liked the stories about King Arthur and the beliefs about his life and death, about Excalibur (which does feature in this book), about Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot,  and the Holy Grail (which do not). As well as a strong sense of place and atmosphere the characters are well-drawn and believable, even if some aspects of the plot required quite a hefty suspension of disbelief (which I managed easily enough).

Similarly I wasn’t bothered by Franklin’s use of modern language – in her Author’s Note, she had noted that she was sometimes criticised for making her characters use modern language and explained that ‘in 12th century England the common people spoke a form of English even less comprehensible than Chaucer’s in the 14th, the nobility spoke Norman French and the clergy Latin. Since people then sounded contemporary to each other, and since I hate the use of what I call ‘Gadzooks’ in historical novels to denote a past age, I insist on making them sound contemporary to us.’ If she had used such ‘gadzooks’ language I don’t think I’d have got very far into the book. And, it didn’t occur to me that her dialogue was anachronistic.

Franklin also used a lot of terms common to the age, such as ‘Mort d’Ancestor’, which she did explain within the text, so that that too did not bother me. In fact I liked it, I think it added to the atmosphere and I did enjoy looking up such terms for more information in a book I used to use a lot when I worked in a local archive repository – The Local Historian’s Encyclopedia by John Richardson, a fascinating book.

Ariana Franklin was the pseudonym of Diana Norman. She died in 2011. The last book in the series is The Assassin’s Prayer (published as Murderous Procession in the US), continuing Adelia’s story.