Category: Fiction

Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh: A Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I’d planned to read Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh, which is from my to-be-read books and it seemed appropriate to include it in the books I’ve selected for the RIP IV Challenge. But as I read it I began to wonder if it really fitted into that category. Although the blurb on the back cover says it is ‘Loaded with Welsh’s trademark wit, insight and gothic charisma‘ the gothic elements are not evident in the first half or so of the book. It’s only as the story unfolds that the mystery element emerges and just a touch of the gothic and the occult comes to the fore.

Naming the Bones2
I found it a slow start as Dr. Murry Watson, an English literature professor from Glasgow University researches the life of a largely unknown poet Archie Lunan. Lunan had died thirty years earlier, presumed drowned off the island of Lismore, although his body had never been discovered. As Murray investigates Lunan’s life, talking to people who had known him, he begins to suspect that Archie’s death may not have been the suicide it seemed and as more deaths come to his attention the mystery grows and becomes more sinister.

Murray’s personal life is in a mess; his relationship with his brother has broken down following their father’s death and his work life is complicated by his affair with his boss’s wife. This is a detailed book, the characters are vivid and memorable and  each location is beautifully described, not only the sights and sounds but smells too:

Murray pulled back his hood. The scent of wood smoke mingled with the falling rain and the damp rising from the sodden earth. It was an ancient smell, the same one the earliest islanders who could be resting, preserved beneath the peat, had known a millennia or so ago. (pages 327-8)

It is when Murray arrives on the island of Lismore in Loch Linnhe on the west coast of Scotland that the pace picks up, and the tension builds. Here Murray finally meets Archie’s girlfriend, Christie and begins to piece together what had happened thirty years ago. The book ends with some ambiguities still to be explained, an ending which I found perfectly in keeping with the story.

I was taken with Welsh’s handling of biography, describing it as

… a paper facsimile of life hurtling towards death. (page 128)

Murray is hoping to discover how much Archie’s life had influenced his art, whereas his former tutor, Professor James, had insisted on the importance of divorcing writers’ lives from their work, thinking it to be reductive and simplistic. It is the work itself that is important and Murray wonders whether this is right and whether he should limit himself to a discussion of the poetry, rather than the man. Again Welsh leaves this open to the reader to decide.

Naming the Bones isn’t the book I thought it was going to be – it isn’t really ‘gothic’, or dark, or about the occult. It isn’t really crime fiction, either. Nor is it anything like the only other book by Louise Welsh that I’ve read – The Cutting Room, which is really gothic and dark. Once I’d got over my expectations I enjoyed the book for what it is – a mystery and a good one too.

  • Paperback: 389 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (3 Feb 2011)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1847672566
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847672568
  • Souce: I bought it

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Blonde is a work of fiction, not a biography of Marilyn Monroe. I had to keep reminding myself of that as I was reading, because it was so easy to believe in the characters.

Joyce Carol Oates makes it crystal clear in her Author’s Note:

Blonde is a radically distilled “life” in the form of fiction, and, for all its length, synecdoche is the principle of appropriation. In place of numerous foster homes in which the child Norma Jeane lived, for instance, Blonde explores only one, and that fictitious; in place of numerous lovers, medical crises, abortions and suicide attempts and screen performances, Blonde explores only a selected, symbolic few.

… Biographical facts regarding Marilyn Monroe should not be sought in Blonde, which is not intended as a historic document, but in biographies of the subject.

As you would expect it’s a tragic story, intense and shocking in parts. It begins with a Prologue – 3 August 1962 with Death hurtling along towards 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood, California. It then follows Norma Jeane Baker’s life in chronological sections from The Child 1932 – 1938 to The Afterlife 1959 – 1962. It switches from one narrator to the next, and from third person to first person perspective throughout. It’s brutal, tender and both lyrical and fragmented.

It focuses on need, on Norma/Marilyn’s need for love and acceptance – to be loved as a person and acknowledged as an actress. She wanted to be good. ‘Marilyn Monroe’ was a role she had to play:

A light must have shone in Norma Jeane’s eyes. An electric current must have run through her supple, eager girl’s body. She was “Marilyn” – no she was “Angela” – she was Norma Jeane playing “Marilyn” playing “Angela” – like a Russian doll in which smaller dolls are contained by the largest doll which is the mother … (pages 256-7)

She took drugs to help her sleep, and drugs to give her energy.She couldn’t cope with ordinary life, it baffled her without a script to follow and no guidance about what was happening, or why. She was driven, desperate to have a baby, desperate to know her father, calling her husbands ‘Daddy’, moody, childlike, fragile, always wanting to do and be better.

Joyce Carol Oates has got really inside this character, so much so that I could believe she’d had access to Norma/Marilyn’s thoughts and feelings. The other characters are intriguing, sometimes just given initials, Mr Z, W, C and so on, others are recognizable through their nicknames – The Ex-Athlete, The Playwright, The Prince and the President for example. But Marilyn is the star. In the Author’s Note Oates lists the sources she has consulted, not just biographies but also books about American politics, Hollywood and books on acting. Marilyn had kept a journal and also written poems, two lines of which are included in the final chapter; the other poems apparently by her are invented. Some of the text is taken from interviews and some is fictitious. But it’s all woven together so skilfully that it’s hard to tell what is from real life and what is not.

For me this ranks as one of Joyce Carol Oates best books, although I have by no means read all her books. The ones I’ve read have all had the power to move me. In addition to the ones I’ve written about on this blog I’ve also read The Tattooed Girl, Middle Age, Solstice and The Falls.

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

In Evil Under the Sun Poirot is on holiday in Devon staying in a seaside hotel – a seaside mystery instead of a country house mystery!

Here’s the blurb:

It was not unusual to find the beautiful bronzed body of the sun-loving Arlena Stuart stretched out on a beach, face down. Only, on this occasion, there was no sun! she had been strangled. Ever since Arlena’s arrival at the resort, Hercule Poirot had detected sexual tension in the seaside air. But could this apparent ‘crime of passion’ have been something more evil and premeditated altogether?

My thoughts:

It’s August, the sun is hot, people are enjoying themselves, swimming and sunbathing and yet Poirot remarks that the sight of the recumbent figures on the beach reminds him of the Morgue in Paris, ‘the bodies – arranged in slabs – like butcher’s meat!’  The other guests remark it’s an unlikely setting for crime but Poirot disagrees:

‘It is romantic, yes,’ agreed Hercule Poirot. ‘It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun.’

And so it turns out, with the discovery of Arlena’s dead body. Arlena, who Major Barry describes as ‘a personification of evil’.

‘She’s the world’s first gold-digger. And a man-eater as well! If anything personable in trousers comes within a hundred yards of her, it’s fresh sport for Arlena!’

Her step-daughter, Linda hates her and wants to kill her, wishing she would die.

Arlena was strangled. Poirot  maintains that her murder has resulted from her character, and his investigations revolve around understanding exactly what type of person she was. The suspicion of guilt is cast over one person after another; either a man or a woman could have been strong enough to strangle Arlena and there are plenty of suspects. And even Poirot is puzzled because from the beginning it had seemed to him that one person was clearly indicated as the murderer but at the same time it seemed impossible for that person to have committed the crime.

Poirot describes the murder as a ‘very slick crime‘ and indeed it was perfectly planned and timed. At the end he explains at length how he collected together all the isolated significant facts and events to make a complete pattern to discover the identity of the murderer. Although I enjoyed this book I did think the explanation was too long and the characters  were a bit sketchy and sterotypical. It all seemed to be more of a puzzle solving exercise, than a captivating mystery.

Agatha Christie wrote Evil Under the Sun during 1938 and it was published in 1941, having first appeared as a serial in the USA at the end of 1940. I read it on my Kindle.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 416 KB
  • Print Length: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Harper (14 Oct 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B0046H95QS
  • Source: I bought it

Reading this book completes the What’s in a Name 4 challenge.

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Today I finished reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. It has taken me several weeks to read it and I fancy a complete change and a shorter book!

So, I’m thinking of reading No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe, which begins:

For three or four weeks Obi Okonkwo had been steeling himself against this moment. And when he walked into the dock that morning he thought he was fully prepared. He wore a smart palm-beach suit and appeared unruffled and indifferent. The proceeding seemed to be of little interest to him. Except for one brief moment at the very beginning when one of the counsel had got into trouble with the judge. (page 1)

This is my copy which I bought several years ago from a second-hand bookshop somewhere, after reading its predecessor Things Fall Apart, whose hero was Obi’s grandfather. I thought Things Fall Apart was an amazing book and one that had made a great impression on me, so why haven’t I read No Longer at Ease before now?

From the blurb on the back cover I see that Obi has returned to Nigeria from studying in England. He is a civil servant with a respectable job and a fiancée, but despite the expectations of his family and tribe he falls victim to the corruption of Lagos. It promises to be a study of the cultural change in Nigeria during the 1950s.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy, at ‘˜A Few More Pages’.

The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Hanging Wood (Lake District Mysteries 5)The Hanging Wood is another great book from Martin Edwards. It’s his 5th Lake District Mystery, and although each one can be read as a stand-alone, I think it’s good to read them in order of publication. Full details of his books are on Martin’s website.

Historian Daniel Kind is carrying out research at St Herbert’s Residential Library where Orla Payne works. She is obsessed by the disappearance of her brother Callum,  twenty years earlier when he was a teenager and she was a child of seven. When her uncle was found dead in Hanging Wood, the police assumed he had committed suicide after killing Callum, even though his body was never found. Daniel encourages Orla to speak to DCI Hannah Scarlet, who heads the Cold Case Review Team at Cumbria Constabulary about her brother’s disappearance. However, a drunken Orla fails to convince Hannah to reopen the case and it is only after Orla’s death that the police decide to review Callum’s disappearance. As Hannah tries to discover what happened to Callum, she begins to think their deaths are connected and were not accidental or suicide.

I really enjoyed this book, with its interesting characters and atmospheric Lake District setting. The Hanging Wood itself with its towering wych elms, rowan, ash and oak trees, and old paths obscured by grass, heather and brambles is not a pleasant place:

The sun was barely visible through the canopy of leaves and there was an earthy primitive smell in the air. Even on a day like this, the Hanging Wood had the odour of decay. Purple foxgloves supplied a scattering of colour, but for Hannah, the flowers conjured up sinister memories. They were poisonous, and when she was small, a thoughtless uncle warned her that nibbling the stems in his garden would kill her. She’d spent the rest of the day in a state of terror. She remembered his name for foxgloves: dead man’s bells. (location 2225)

The case is intriguing and cleverly constructed. I thought I’d worked it out and I did, but only after several red herrings threw me off track for a while. I like the mix of cold and new cases, the sense of history and the characterisation – a most satisfying read.

I also like the sub-plot of Hannah and Daniel’s relationship. Both of them are now living on their own, but Marc is still trying to patch things up with Hannah and Hannah is just not sure. I think for this strand of the novels it really does help to read the books in sequence.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 518 KB
  • Print Length: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Allison & Busby (25 July 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B005C1AMFU
  • Source: I bought it

Character versus Plot – Musing Mondays

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

This week’s musing from Miz B at Should Be Reading asks’¦

Do you prefer character-driven stories, or plot-driven stories?

I can’t chose, because for me a book has to have both well-defined characters and a good plot.  I prefer to have a balanced book which is both character and plot-driven.

There’s not much left to say really, but I suppose that I couldn’t believe in a plot-driven story without well-defined characters, so maybe I would prefer character-driven stories. For example, not a lot happens in One Fine Day by Molly Panter Downes, and I loved it.  But then it’s a psychological novel, being more about mind than action, about the pleasures and tragedies in life and there is plenty of reflection in it about sociological and cultural changes.