Category: Fiction

The Secret River by Kate Grenville: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Every now and then I read a book that completely captivates me and transports me to another world and The Secret River by Kate Grenville is one of those books. I know a book is a good book for me if I abandon any other books I’m reading and can’t wait to get back to it each time I have to put it down. This is one of those books.

It begins:

The Alexander, with its cargo of convicts, had bucked over the face of the ocean for the better part of a year. Now it had fetched up at the end of the earth. There was no lock on the door of the hut where William Thornhill, transported for the term of his natural life in the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and six, was passing his first night in His Majesty’s penal colony of New South Wales. There was hardly a door, barely a wall: only a flap of bark, a screen of sticks and mud. There was no need of lock, of door, of wall: this was a prison whose bars were ten thousand miles of water.

This is historical fiction, straight-forward story-telling following William Thornhill from his childhood in the slums of London to Australia. He was a Thames waterman transported for stealing timber; his wife,Sal and child went with him and together they make a new life for themselves. It’s about struggle for survival as William is eventually pardoned and becomes a waterman on the Hawkesbury River and then a settler with his own land and servants.

The novel raises several issues – about crime and punishment, about landownership, defence of property, power, class and colonisation. The settlers take land owned by the ‘blacks’ – the Aborigines – with the inevitable resulting conflicts and atrocities on both sides. It begins with confrontation between William and the ‘blacks’ as William tries to negotiate a relationship with the Aborigines who unknown to him owned the land he had been granted. But it’s not the only conflict he has to deal with because he also has to contend with some of the  other English settlers on neighbouring land who have a much more violent attitude towards the Aborigines. Although William has a longing for the land he does not have the same identification with it as the Aborigines do:

‘˜Jack slapped his hand on the ground so hard a puff of dust flew up and wafted away.  This me, he said. My place. He smoothed the dirt with his palm so it left a patch’¦ Sit down hereabouts.’ …

… there was an emptiness as he [Thornhill] watched Jack’s hand caressing the dirt. This was something he did not have: a place that was part of his flesh and spirit. (page 344)

It’s a well-paced narrative with good descriptive writing setting the scenes vividly in their locations. It’s rhythmic expressing moods, the differences in cultures and the mounting tension. There are some stereotypical characters, but the main characters, William in particular, are convincing. Their dilemmas they face come over as real as they struggle to come to terms with their situations.

I found this book difficult to put down and it has lived in my mind for days – a dramatic and vivid story and thought -provoking as well. There are two more novels by Kate Grenville about Australia’s history – The Lieutenant, published in 2008, and Sarah Thornhill, published earlier this year. I hope they’re as good.

Best Crime Fiction January-June 2012

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is collecting readers’ best crime fiction reads for the year up to the end of June. She asks for the title, author and year of publication of your best 10 (or so) reads. They do not need to be recent publications.

These are the titles that I’ve rated at least 4/5:

Crime Fiction Pick of the Month – June 2012

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The Crime Fiction Pick of the Month meme is hosted at Mysteries in Paradise by Kerrie. I read 5 crime fiction books this month and my pick of the month is:

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

Red Bones is the third book in Ann Cleeves’s Shetland Quartet. It’s set on Whalsay, where two young archaeologists, excavating a site on Mima Williams’s land, discover human bones. They are sent away for testing – are they an ancient  find or are the bones more contemporary? Sandy Wilson, Inspector Jimmy Perez’s sergeant is Mima’s grandson. He is visiting his family when late one night he finds Mima’s body. It appears she was shot accidently by his cousin Ronald, out shooting rabbits. Then one of the archaeologists is also found dead, and even though it appears to be suicide Jimmy and Sandy are not convinced, thinking it could be murder.

I really like these Shetland mysteries. They are complicated and slow-moving books that enable you to immerse yourself in the mystery. The characters have depth and the locations are superbly described. In this book Ann Cleeves explores both the history of the island, its close-knit community, its traditions and the intricacies of the close family relationships. In contrast to the rest of the series the novel is narrated by Sandy as well as Jimmy and consequently both their innermost thoughts and feelings are revealed.

Red Bones is currently being filmed for a two-part TV drama. More good news – Ann Cleeves’s website reveals that there is another Jimmy Perez mystery in progress  – Dead Water to be published in January 2013.

The four books in the Shetland series are:

Crime Fiction Alphabet: F is for Fatherland

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

This week it’s the letter F in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet. I’ve chosen Fatherland by Robert Harris.

It’s a fast-paced thriller set in Germany in 1964, but not the historical Germany of that date, because Hitler is approaching his 75th birthday, and Germany had won the Second World War ‘“ it’s historical fiction that never was ‘“ an alternative history. And yet many of the characters actually existed, their biographies are correct up to 1942 and Harris quotes from authentic documents in the book. The Berlin of the book is the Berlin that Albert Speer planned to build.

What is definite is that this is a murder mystery, beginning with the discovery of the naked body of an old man, lying half in the Havel, a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. The homicide investigator is Xavier March of the Kriminalpolizei (the Kripo) and the victim is Josef Buhler, one of the former leading members of the Nazi Party who had been instrumental in devising ‘˜the final solution’. As March digs deeper, despite being taken off the case by the Gestapo, he discovers  a larger conspiracy as more of the former leading Nazis are murdered.

March is in some ways a typical cop, disillusioned, sceptical and suspicious of authority. He’s also divorced and losing the respect of his son, with disastrous effects. He isn’t the only one investigating the deaths. Charlie Maguire, a female American journalist has her own reasons for wanting to uncover the murderer and together they travel to Zurich to inspect the private Swiss bank account of one of the victims.

It’s a complex book and leads March into a very dangerous situation as he discovers the truth. It’s a real page-turner, full of suspense and consequently I read it very quickly, eager to know what happened next and what lay behind the murders. The ending is suitably ambiguous – it’s not the sort of book where all the loose ends are neatly tied up. Neither is the alternative history element dominant, although I did find all the little details fascinating. For example Churchill and the Royal Family have gone to Canada and Joseph Kennedy is the US president. It is predominantly crime fiction, that makes you think about the nature of good and evil and about the ways in which society handles corruption.

Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

All week Gaskella has been hosting the Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week and I’m just in time to join in.

Beryl Bainbridge (1934 – 2010) was made a Dame in 2000. She wrote 18 novels, three of which were filmed, two collections of short stories, several plays for stage and television, and many articles, essays, columns and reviews. Five of her novels were nominated for the Booker Prize, but none of them won it. Years ago I read two of her books, historical novels, one being According to Queenie, a novel about the life of Samuel Johnson as seen through the eyes of Queeney, Mrs Thrale, and the other Master Georgie, set in the Crimean War telling the story of George Hardy, a surgeon.

This week I’ve read A Quiet Life, first published in 1976 before she wrote her historical novels.

Synopsis from the book jacket:

Alan, a schoolboy living in a seaside village after the war, is concerned about the behaviour of his sister Madge. She has been seen talking to a German prisoner on the beach. Gradually her nightly disappearances affect the whole household. The parents become bitterly estranged, the wireless is turned up full volume so the neighbours won’t hear the rows and the slamming of doors. Inexorably, Alan’s conscience and his love for his family lead to disaster. Does time distort or clarify events in the past? After twenty years can one ever be sure they took place at all?

My Thoughts:

I didn’t know before I read it that it is a semi-autobiographical novel, using her own childhood and background as source material. I was struck immediately by the claustrophobic atmosphere pervading the novel. The family live in a small house, their living arrangements reduced by the fact that the rooms were full of furniture and ornaments and they kept the freezing cold lounge just for visitors of which they had very few. And Alan had to have his mother’s permission to use the dining room to do his homework. They lived on top of each other in the kitchen where the armchairs in front of the fire made it difficult to enter and move about.

Most of the time they spent escaping from the house – Father to the garden, Mother out, thought by Father to be having an affair, Alan to school, church or youth club and Madge to the pinewoods or to the beach with her German. As Madge says Alan ‘keeps everything bottled up, … anything for a quiet life.’ Whereas Alan realised that Madge ‘came out with things for precisely the reasons he hid them – to avoid embarrassment.’

Alan’s embarrassment is increased when he gets a girlfriend, Janet and is made worse by Madge’s behaviour – she gets away with much worse than he ever can. There are some wonderfully vivid scenes, such as Alan scrambling up a sand dune and seeing Madge and the German caressing each other behind a small hillock. Then there is Father hurling the arm of his father-in-law’s chair out of the house onto the lawn, followed by him manhandling the chair out of the house, lurching across the grass with it to the greenhouse and then setting fire to it. The whole episode is rendered farcical when his false teeth fly out of his mouth into the fire and Mother squealed with laughter, the sound carrying across the ‘bleak and desolate gardens.’

There’s pathos and dark humour and I found it moving and disturbing. Madge in particular seemed a problem for her parents and Alan, at one time manipulative and at another understanding and sympathetic. It expresses the pain of living with parents who don’t get on, the frustrations caused by rigid code of behaviour and class structure of the period, the shame they would suffer if the neighbours ever discovered what was happening, and the rows, stress and unhappiness they all endured.

I was interested to know more about the book and found this fascinating interview between Beryl Bainbridge and Anthony Clare in August 1983. I was intrigued to hear that so many of the descriptions and incidents in A Quiet Life were based on her own experiences. In fact she said that her creative urge was fuelled by what happened to her and from the age of 9 or 10 she had started to write about her parents and her background. She described herself as a child as an ‘awkward little devil‘, and I could see so much of that in the character of Madge – even down to the bad cough she could bring on at will.

My verdict: A brilliant book. She doesn’t waste any words, but still clearly sets the scene, portraying the everyday dilemmas, disasters and scandals of her eccentric characters. I’ll be reading as many more of her books that I can find.

A Weekend with Mr Darcy by Victoria Connelly

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I don’t normally read romantic chick-lit fiction, but this book was a gift, described as a light easy read and it is. I didn’t expect too much from it but I quite enjoyed it. A Weekend with Mr Darcy takes place at a Jane Austen conference, attended by Katherine Roberts, a university lecturer who doesn’t want her colleagues to know she is a Jane Austen fan and Robyn Love, a Jane Austen fanatic who is stuck with Jace,a boyfriend from her childhood who dislikes anything to do with Jane Austen.

They meet at the conference at Purley Hall in Hampshire, not far from Jane Austen’s birthplace, Chawton Cottage. Katherine is hoping to meet the novelist Lorna Warwick, famous for her risqué Regency romances, but Lorna who has been writing to Katherine is reluctant to go, not wanting Katherine to find out that she is in fact a man, Warwick Lawton. (This is not a spoiler as it’s revealed early on in the book.) But as Warwick he goes to Purley Hall and the inevitable conclusions follow. Robyn is desperately trying to ditch Jace, who has insisted on driving her to Hampshire and staying at a local pub. Chaos follows as Robyn falls in love with Dan, who she thinks is ‘totally beautiful’.

The attraction of the book for me is in the Jane Austen references and in particular the Jane Austen quiz. The book may not be entirely my cup of tea, but it has made me keen to re-read the Jane Austen novels I haven’t read for many years, such as Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility and in particular Northanger Abbey which I haven’t read since I was at school.

For a more detailed and enthusiastic review than mine see this post on the Austenprose blog.