Yesterday I finished reading An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah. My copy, via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer’s Programme, is an uncorrected proof and is not for quotation, so no quotes in this post.
This book has one of the most attractive covers I’ve seen for a while – the colours as well as the trees receding into infinity.
I sometimes don’t get on very well with collections of short stories but these are long enough for the characters to be more developed and the stories to be more satisfying than others I’ve read. But several I though would be even better developed as full length novels. They are about the lives of people in Zimbabwe, struggling to live with escalating inflation, where a loaf of bread costs half a million dollars, of corruption, scams, disappointed lives, unfulfilled dreams and broken promises. They paint a bleak picture of the resilence and resistance of people in extreme circumstances, coping with despair.
Something Nice From London is one of the most poignant tales. Relatives living in England often sent something special to their families back home but one family are waiting at Harare airport for something different – the arrival of Peter who died in London. His cousin, also living in England keeps promising his body will be on the flight. Peter was the golden boy and much was expected of him. This is the story of unfulfilled ambition and expection. Because you’re not allowed to speak ill of the dead, the family have to forget how he bled them dry with constant demands for more money to pay his fees and provide accommodation and food as they mourn his death. Eventually the body does arrive, but not how they expected.
I also enjoyed Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros, the story of a diplomat conned by an internet scam. In At the Sound of the Last Post, a politician’s widow at her husband’s funeral ponders the corrupt society they’re living in as his collegues bury an empty coffin – her husband was not the national hero he was made out to be. Death and sickness figure quite prominently in most of the stories and the book as a whole, although laced through with ironic humour, is a lament – a lament for Zimbabwe and its suffering people.
But I did manage to squeeze in Emily Bronte’s 
by Ian Rankin. This is set in Edinburgh where a university student Philippa Balfour, known as ‘Flip’ to her friends and family has disappeared. DI Rebus and his colleagues have just two leads to go on – a carved wooden doll found in a tiny coffin at The Falls, Flip’s home village, and an Internet game involving solving cryptic clues. Rebus concentrates on the tiny coffin and finds a whole series of them have turned up over the years dating back to 1836 when 17 were found on Arthur’s Seat, the extinct volcano within Holyrood Park, east of Edinburgh Castle. DC Siobhan Clarke meanwhile tries to solve the cryptic clues.
biographies of Iris, which I found rather uncomfortable reading with maybe too many personal details for my liking. Iris had died in February 1999 after suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. I’d also read 
A N Wilson’s biography is very different yet again and all I noted was that it was interesting because of that. This book received some very critical reviews, but I didn’t know that when I read it. It made me want to read more of her books so I then read 
very long and in places too wordy, but excellent in character description, analysis and plot development. I’d seen it on TV but long enough ago to forget what the characters looked like so it was easy to use my own imagination. Lots of different characters and much social background of 19th century England.” I still dislike having TV or film adaptations of books intruding into my own vision of how the characters look.
The last book I wrote about in January 2004 was 
BooksPlease 