The Comfort of Saturdays by Alexander McCall Smith: Book Review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I do like the Isabel Dalhousie books and this one The Comfort of Saturdays is so good. What I find so fascinating about the series is that whilst not a lot actually happens, a lot goes on in Isabel’s head. Isabel is an ‘intermeddler’ … She imagined the dictionary definition:one who meddles in affairs that are no business of hers. (page 153) She can’t resist appeals for help and tries to do the right thing.

In The Comfort for Saturdays her main concern apart from her relationship with her family, Jamie, the father of her son, Charlie, and her niece, Cat, is trying to discover the truth behind Dr Thompson’s disgrace on resigning from all medical work. He was an infectious diseases specialist carrying out a drugs trial on a new antibiotic, which was going well until two patients developed serious side effects and then another patient died. He was accused of falsifying figures and producing a misleading report. His wife asks Isabel to clear his name as she believes he is innocent. Dr Thomas has sunk into a deep depression, too ashamed to go out of his flat.

Isabel is also struggling with the dilemma of whether to include a paper by Professor Dove in the Review of Applied Ethics, which she both owns and edits. Earlier she had dismissed Dove from the editorial board and on the one hand she doesn’t want to appear petty in rejecting his paper, which she doesn’t think meets the Review’s standards and on the other, she needs to show that Dove is treated equally with other people who submit papers.

Issues that interested me as I read the book included thoughts on the existence of otherwise of God and Hell, agnosticism, the possibility of ‘killing’ God, the existence of a merciful creator, and justice:

She had never been able to understand how anybody could reconcile the existence of Hell with that of a merciful creator; he simply would not have embarked on us in the first place to send us to some Hieronymous Bosch-like torture chamber or its more modern equivalent (a place of constant piped music, perhaps). Hell might be an airport, she thought lit with neon and insincere smiles. No, she told herself; she was prepared to accept the possible existence of a creator, in the same way she was prepared to accept curved space, but he or she would not invent Hell, whatever twists and turns on the subject of free will and choice were resorted to by the concepts apologists. (page 70)

She goes on to recognise, however, that although people relish the idea of eternal justice we should be careful about abolishing Hell, and also that we should accept that because the wicked more often than not get away with their wickedness and much as we would like a perfect world ruled by perfect justice, this is not the way it will ever be.

Other themes that arise are jealousy, guilt, and the nature of freedom – between people in a relationship – trust, values, and money. Yet all this thinking doesn’t make the book tedious, far from it, because McCall Smith writes in such an engaging style, mixing in events and descriptions of the location along with what I think of as Isabel’s meditations that keeps me turning the pages to find out not only what will happen next, but also what Isabel thinks about it.

One more quotation that made me smile is this:

There were things, she thought, which were probably true, but which we simply should not always acknowledge as true; novels, for example – always false, elaborately constructed deceptions, but we believed them to be true while we were reading them; we had to, as otherwise there was no point. One would read, and all the time as one read, one would say, mentally, He didn’t really. (page 42)

I do believe The Comfort of Saturdays is true – even though I know it’s all a figment of McCall Smith’s imagination.

The title? Well, Isabel liked Saturdays, but not quite so much, she thought if she had to work. And yet even a working Saturday seemed subtly different from a weekday … (page 175) Saturday was her favourite day.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky: Book Review

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’ve recently finished reading Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. Set in 1941-2 it is a novel of the personal lives of the ordinary people of France under the German occupation of their country.

Némirovsky intended it to be a work in 5 parts. In Appendix I she wrote that her idea was for the whole to ‘unfold like a film’ (page 350), but wanted the book as a whole to ‘give an impression of only being one episode … which is really what is happening in our time, as in all times of course.’ (page 360) It was an ambitious project and one she never finished because she died in Auschwitz in 1942.

The first section, Storm in June, follows a number of families as they flee from Paris as the Germans invaded France. Némirovsky wrote that

the historical, revolutionary facts etc. must be only lightly touched upon, while daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides must be described in detail. (page 363)

So it is people who are the focus, and I learnt so much about what the war meant to the French. Storm in June is full of pace and tension and there are so many people, contrasting their lives and attitudes to their circumstances. It’s overwhelming, so much so that I stopped reading it and only recently began again with the second part, Dolce.

Dolce is quieter, more controlled, still full of tension as it’s about a small village occupied by the Germans during 1941. What is so amazing about this part is the balance that Némirovsky achieved in portraying the tightrope that the French had to walk in their relationships with the occupying troops. There are no caricatures, the French and the Germans are shown in detail as both compassionate, caring people, swept up in the consequences of war, largely beyond their control.

It is, of course, what happened to Irène Némirovsky that dominated my thoughts as I read this book, including the Appendices. Appendix I is a transcript of her handwritten notes on the situation in France and her plans for Suite Française, taken from her notebooks. Appendix II is a selection of correspondence 1936- 1945 and is so painful to read as it reveals how Irène was interned in France because she was of Jewish descent. Despite all their efforts her friends and family were unable to find out where she was sent and her fate in Auschwitz was not known until after the end of the war.

Suite Française is written is beautiful prose, translated by Sandra Smith, capturing the fragility, pathos, terror and hopes of the times.

I’ve quoted from Suite Française in two other posts – see HERE and HERE.

Weekly Geeks – Shiny Book Syndrome

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The Weekly Geeks’ topic this week is from Tara SG (25 Hour Books). She writes:

In case you don’t know me, I like to make up medical sounding names for my book obsessions. For example: P.A.B.D.. I’d now like to introduce Shiny Book Syndrome. This is usually accompanied by a book hording problem yet to be named.

So what is Shiny Book Syndrome? It is when a person only wants to read their newest book and leave piles of poor unread books on their shelves to collect dust.

What can you do to alleviate the symptoms?

My first suggestion would be to make a list of all the books you own. I use GoogleDocs. I start by creating a form and then can organize the spreadsheet to see what I have and if I’ve read it yet or not. (For more info on how to do this, go here).

My immediate reaction to this topic was that yes I have Shiny Book Syndrome, but when I looked at the list of books I’ve recently finished I realised that although I may think of reading my newest acquisition, I don’t actually do it.

I am tempted to read new books as soon as possible, and sometimes give in but mostly I wait until I’ve at least finished the books I’m currently reading. By that time the urge to read that newest book has faded, only to be replaced by the next book/s.

At the end of last year I joined Emily’s Attacking the TBR Tome Challenge and have been making quite a few inroads into my unread books (I’ve read 18 of them since December!) and I try to balance my reading – reading some from the TBR shelves, then some of the new books and slot in reading library books somewhere in between. Other challenges may help, if I can slot in some of the TBR books, but often they don’t, so these days I’ve backed off from some challenges.

Borrowing books from the library is one  reason I don’t get round to reading my own books, because I’ll often read a library book in preference merely because it’s due back and I’ve reached the renewal limit.

Most of my books are catalogued in Library Thing, unread books tagged TBR. It’s very useful as I can quickly see all the books I’ve yet to read, but that doesn’t make me pick one up and read it. Why is it that once I’ve owned books for a while they no longer have the same attraction they had when I bought them? There are always more books to attract me – that’s it – I keep on finding more books I want to read.

But, it’s not really a problem, because I read as the mood or interest in a book takes me. It would be a problem if I was left with no books to read as I would feel deprived and irritable – that would be much worse than too many.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Death on the Nile is a pre-Second World War novel, first published in 1937. It shows Agatha Christie’s interest in Egypt and archaeology and also reflects much of the flavour and social nuances of the pre-war period. In it she sets a puzzle to solve –  who shot Linnet Doyle, the wealthy American heiress? Although the novel is set in Egypt, an exotic location, it is essentially a ‘locked room mystery’, as the characters are passengers on the river-steamer SS Karnak, cruising on the Nile. Amongst them is the famous Hercule Poirot, a short man dressed in a white silk suit, a panama hat and carrying a highly ornamental fly whisk with a sham amber handle ‘a funny little man (pages 37 – 38). Linnet is the girl who has everything, good looks and wealth:

A girl with golden hair and straight autocratic features ‘a girl with a lovely shape’ (page 3). She was used to being looked at, being admired, to being the centre of the stage wherever she went. (page 41)

Linnet has recently married Simon Doyle, who was previously engaged to her friend, Jacqueline. This sets in motion a series of events that results in Linnet’s death. When Jacqueline follows them on their trip down the Nile she is the obvious suspect, driven by her jealousy of Linnet. Also on board are an imperious American, Miss Van Schuyler, her niece Cornelia Robson and Miss Bowers, her companion; a novelist Mrs Salome Otterbourne and her daughter, Rosalie; Mrs Allerton and her son, Tim; Linnet’s American solicitor, an excitable Italian archaeologist, a radical English socialist and a young English solicitor.

Poirot is on holiday, but he finds himself discussing the nature of criminals and motives for murder with Mrs Allerton. He says the most frequent motive is money:

that is to say gain in its various ramifications. Then there is revenge, and love, and fear ‘and pure hate, and benefice’. (page 83)

The motive in this case seems straightforward, looking at who gains from Linnet’s death, but this is a complicated plot (when is one of Christie’s books not complicated?) and following on from Linnet’s murder, her maid is also found dead, Linnet’s pearls are missing, several characters are not what them seem and with the arrival of Colonel Race, a member of the British Secret Service, it seems there is also an international murderer and agitator on board. Poirot knew

that Race was a man of unadvertised goings and comings. He was usually to be found in one of the out-posts of Empire where trouble was brewing. (page 120)

It does seem a very unlikely plot, dependent on precise timing, but Poirot works his way through the significant facts and arrives at the truth. He tells Race that

This is a crime that need audacity, swift and faultless execution, courage, indifference to danger and a resourceful, calculating brain. This crime wasn’t safe! It hung on a razor edge, It needed boldness. (page 272)

All in all, an enjoyable puzzle to solve, most of which I’d worked out along with Poirot.