Ransom Riggs: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

From the blurb-
...a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine's children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive.
This book is illustrated with a collection of vintage photographs that were the inspiration for the children's various talents. While the said talents would be remarkable I didn't feel it was explained why that would make them dangerous and feel the author could have made more of the for-their-own-protection angle and increased the believability of the work. The story also throws up a number of logistical questions that I don't feel were adequately addressed, though it was good that the author at least acknowledged the difficulty of the situation (and I can't be less criptic without spoilers) and attempted to address it.
But perhaps I am being too picky. This is, after all, aimed at the young adult market and is the author's debut novel.
The story itself is well written and engaging. The hero is a little bland but the author captures the selfishness/thoughtlessness of his age well. The world building is a bit perfunctory but good enough as far as it goes.
After reading a lot of glowing reviews for this work in the mainstream press my expectations were quite high so maybe it was inevitable that I would come away a bit disappointed. And I am a little let down even though I did enjoy the story.-Lynn

Michael Crichton - Pirate Latitudes

Privateer Captain Charles Hunter has been hired by Jamaica's governor to explore the Mantaceros, an island fortress, where a treasure-laden (apparently) galleon awaits protection for her journey home to Spain.
Set in the mid seventeenth century, Pirate Latitudes is a significant departure on many fronts from Crichton's usual work, which tends to explore intersections of two or more of modern culture, health care, contentious issues, and emerging technologies. The manuscript was found on a computer and was apparently completed before his death, along with another novel (to be published in 2012, which suggests a lack of completion). I certainly found it less satisfying or engrossing than his other works, which I generally found absorbing and well-written. Unfortunately I just couldn't get into Pirate Latitudes, which I abandoned about 100 pages. - Alex

Tony & Susan – Austin Wright

When Susan Morrow receives a manuscript in the mail from her ex-husband Edward, it’s like hearing from a dimly remembered land. His writing was one of the, many in retrospect, reasons their marriage didn’t last – he took it very seriously, she viewed it as an indulgent hobby. And she’s afraid to read Nocturnal Animals, in case it’s terrible. So she puts the manuscript aside, remembering it only at inconvenient moments when it’s not to hand. Until Christmas, when the card from Edward’s current wife includes a note from Edward – he’ll be in Chicago for one night, providing an impetus and time frame for her reading. Her husband Arnold is going away the day after Christmas, so Susan has three days from then.

Tony Hastings is a mathematics professor. When his daughter, Helen, suggests he continue driving through the night toward their summer house in Maine he agrees, and so does Laura, his wife. But things quickly take a turn for the worse when, on a desolate stretch of Pennsylvanian highway, an altercation with strangers in a couple of cars quickly gets out of hand. Before Tony knows it, he and his family are in danger.

Tony & Susan alternates between Susan’s responses to her ex-husband’s first novel and the novel itself. As Tony struggles in an environment very different from the rarefied, civilised academic world he’s accustomed to, Susan recalls the beginnings of her relationship with Edward as a teen, through to the ending of their marriage. She analyses the novel for hints of the Edward she no longer knows, clues to the man he once was, and for an idea of how he sees her.

I picked Tony & Susan up at Heathrow and was caught by both the premise and the first chapter of Nocturnal Creatures, which conveys an amazing sense of suspense, danger and foreshadowing. I decided against buying the trade sized recent release, and was delighted to find, on returning to Melbourne, that my fabulous local library had it.

It is therefore doubly disappointing that I so disliked the novel as it progressed. I had issues with both halves of the novel, too. So I found the chapters of Nocturnal Animals, initially so engaging, increasingly frustrating – Tony is constrained from acting by his class and values, and the aftermath of the abduction just didn’t resonate at all for me. And good god, the focus on his identity:

He catalogued the idiocies of punks and hoods... who would play chicken with real cars on a highway and kidnap a college professor and dump him in the woods...

Tony Hastings was insulted but refused to be humiliated. My name is Tony Hastings, he said. I teach mathematics at the university. Last week I gave three students Fs for the course. I gave great pleasure to fifteen others with the grade of A.I have a Ph.D.

I get that holding on to his identity is a key component in his character, but enough already – those two extracts are from contiguous paragraphs, but the theme is hammered over and over throughout the novel. I wanted to kidnap him and leave him in the woods.

And there’s a lot of that full name business – he’s almost always Tony Hastings, and she’s almost always Susan Morrow, as though the reader might forget who the protagonists are. Not only is this the case when they’re being referred to in the third person, but they themselves frequently think about, address and are addressed by others in first and last name, so that Tony’s flirtation with a student is never with Louise but always with Louise Germane.

For the Susan sections my ire was directed more to the Literary writing style than the characterisation:

Electricity, like Selena at the picnic, Selena with the purring cat’s voice, whose matter seemed fully convertible to energy in the Einsteinian sense: e=mc2. Selena the electric, altered into Susan the electric, as if Arnold were a transformer, thinking how easy to be free, what delicious things could be done in Edward’s absence if you were the kind of person who did such things. Susan was not that kind. Susan was Susan, from Edgar Lane, teacher of Freshman English, well organized, coherent, grammatical, unified, with margins on all sides, always ready to revise and improve herself. This Susan had delicious wild thoughts full of mountains and forests and floating streams, with fish on the wing and birds at sea, thoughts concentric and phallic, with penis hunting in the mists and cave exploration in the hermaphroditic clouds, but they were only thoughts, unacted, unuttered, the absent underside of Susan the Good.

And then there’s the self-aggrandising sections, where Susan (Wright’s character) is marvelling at the brilliance of Edward’s writing (by Austin), and reflecting on the experience of reading his work.

Susan Morrow thumbs ahead, trying not to see the words, finds PART TWO not far ahead. How sad it is, she thinks. Sadness in the news to come, which nobody mentions but all expect. She gropes for the loophole Edward might have allowed, but finds none. Meanwhile, despite the sadness, she feels this energy and does not know if it’s her own chemistry or the book, Edward in a state of excitement, enjoying his work? She likes to see Edward enjoying his work, it sparks her up. She awaits the horrible discovery her soul deplores, she awaits it avidly.

Maybe I’m just not a very conscious reader, but I don’t think anything like that while I’m waiting to return to a book I’m excited about. Plus I found it a little self-serving, given that the work Susan is responding to, as described by Wright, is the book written by Wright (in the person of Edward). It all felt a little ego-driven, in a way I found grating but may have accepted if I liked either of the characters or felt compelled by the plot.

There are also endless little recaps by Susan as she picks the manuscript back up, which I found annoying – I remembered what had happened on the previous page, having an attention span occasionally longer than that of a parakeet.

I did finish Tony & Susan, though less out of any interest than a combination of mild curiosity, resolution, and discomfort about my recent run of unfinished reads. I did find the penultimate line amusing, albeit not (I suspect) in the way Austin intended:

She wanted to punish Arnold too, but the only thing she could think of was to make him read the book.

- Alex

How Starbucks Saved My Life - Michael Gates Gill

After a quarter of a century at one of New York's most prestigious advertising companies, 63-year-old executive Gill was taken out to breakfast by a protégé, and fired. After a privileged lifetime of never having to worry about money, and never having to interview for a position, Gill found himself unemployed and unemployable. In the space of a few short months he was also divorced, the direct result of an affair that unintentionally produced his fifth child, and diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, with no health insurance to cover the cost of specialist visits let alone surgery.
Unready to accept the changes in his life, Gill dressed every morning in a suit and tie, briefcase in hand, and set out the front door. And more often than not he wound up in Starbucks, where the people were friendly and the ambiance uplifting. When a woman sat next to him one morning and casually asked if he was interested in a job, he said “yes,” without thinking. And that act changed his life.
Subtitled A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else, this riches-to-rags-to-fulfillment bio epitomises the concepts that you make your own luck, happiness is unrelated to income, and that it’s never too late to change your life. Though not something that had at all occurred to him – Gill, unsurprisingly, had been looking at executive-level positions – he found he flourished in a position that required a substantially new skill set, had different priorities, and involved a very different population that his previous role. And while there were certainly small areas of overlap, for the most part Gill was a neophyte – he’d never cleaned his own home, but relished getting the public toilet of his store sparkling, and threw himself with gusto into every task. And in return he was rewarded – by a supportive management style, humane corporate policies, complete health care coverage, and the opportunity to shine.
How Starbucks Saved My Life is also an excellent advertisement for the Seattle-based coffee chain that’s had worldwide success - except in Australia, where 75% of stores closed within two years. I have to admit that I’m no fan of American chain corporations, who pay minimum wage, offer few benefits, and modify employment hours to reduce these still further. I also have a fairly cynical view of chains in general, and global American chains in particular; though I don’t drink it myself, Melbourne sees itself as a foodie mecca, and that includes some of the best coffee you can buy, so the opening of Starbucks here was greeted rather hostilely, even more so when a Starbucks opened in Italian-rich Carlton.
So I was pleasantly surprised by Gill’s description of the benefits Starbucks affords its employees, and by their humane policies – toward employees but also to indigent Guests.
Gill does a veer a little toward the evangelical on the topic, though. Indeed, the tone of How Starbucks Saved My Life is a little too unrelentingly positive for me throughout – there are only cursory mentions of Gill’s wife and children’s reactions to his affair and new baby, for example. And he has a decided tendency to paint himself in the most flattering of a lights – even when recounting an incident where he was less than sterling (as when he remembers the way he treated an affirmative action trial staffer) the spin is less on his poor behavior than his new-found excellence. I was also a little irritated by Gill's frequent recollections of the past, usually triggered by something in stark contrast, and frequently involving contact with the rich and famous, particularly writing. That said, I didn't find Gill self-aggrandising or at all self-important. I did find his open embrace of change and life lessons positive, and I feel a little warmer toward Starbucks, though not enough to go there. If you’re in the mood for something a little Chicken Soup for the Soulish or if, like me, you’re killing an hour in a Singaporean bookshop, this is excellent. - Alex

Jane Lindskold: Through Wolf's Eyes

When an elderly king’s heir dies the country’s noble families start jockeying for position all hoping the new heir will be selected from their stock. One minor noble, unlikely to be named heir, seeks to improve his standing by reuniting the king with his long ago disinherited son. In order to do this he heads across a mountain range into uncharted territory following in the footsteps of the renegade son and his entourage. What he finds there are the remains of a burnt out village and a wild teenaged girl. He believes the girl to be the king’s granddaughter and wants her to return to society with his small band of men.
The girl was raised by wolves and is more wolf than human. She agrees to accompany the men back to civilization on the proviso that a giant wolf keeps her company. They agree and after some initial training she is presented to the court where she is received by the other nobles with great suspicion.
Fortunately life amongst a pack of wolves has left her reasonably well prepared for life at court. She makes a few friends and carves out a place for herself.
As domestic political intrigue deepens, war breaks out on the boarders and the girl finds herself and her wolf-like skills in demand.
After a decisive battle peace is declared, the king treats with a neighbouring nation marrying his heir to theirs. The move garners much support from both nations but enemies are made as well and the question is left as to how long the peace might last.
This fantasy novel is first and foremost a tale of political intrigue. My brief synopsis here goes no way towards describing the complex network of personalities and alliances that make up the backbone of the story. Though there are several fantasy elements, including hints of magic and talking animals, they remain decidedly in the background. The setting is well described (my copy even had a map) and the world building excellent. There is also just a hint of romance. This is the first book in a series of six but could easily stand alone, with most of the big questions answered by the end of the story. There is no great cliff hanging ending forcing a reader to pursue the rest of the series in order to find answers to basic questions. This is a blessing in a genre that often asks more of a commitment from readers-here you can sample the author’s style in a satisfying manner and if you chose not to continue with the series you have still read a great story.
Though this is was not what I expected (I had thought there would me more of child raised by wolves and less of political machinations) and, to be honest, not something I would have read if the synopsis had been clearer as to the content, I still enjoyed it very much and may read the rest of this series at some point.-Lynn

JJ Lumsden: The Hidden Whisper

A parapsychologist visiting a small town for his grandfather’s funeral is asked to investigate a series of unexplained events at a neighbour’s house. The neighbours, recently advised that their house sits on an ancient Indian burial site (no, really), are attributing the events to the supernatural. And the events certainly demonstrate stereotypical poltergeist phenomena. But why have things started now after over twenty years of habitation, and can it be stopped?
With only a week to get to the bottom of the haunting the parapsychologist throws himself into the case. But the more he investigates, the less likely a paranormal explanation becomes. Are the events really of ghostly origin or are they the work of a much more mundane nuisance? Either way, he will have his work cut out for him to prove the case. Though, needless to say, he manages to do just that.
I strongly suspect (though don’t know for sure) that this is a self published work and so I was a little reticent about reading it. In my experience there is usually good reason why publishing houses reject manuscripts and as a reader I have seen those reasons made flesh in self published works. However, given the niche this story is aimed at, I gave it the benefit of the doubt-after all market forces play their part as well.
What drew me to the work in spite of my misgivings? The inclusion of an extensive reference list (14 pages) and detailed end notes (68 pages). The author is an academic who obviously knows their stuff and is able to present it well. Indeed, I found the end notes to be of greater interest than the story itself. Perhaps, given my suspicions, I was being overly critical as I read, but the story, to me, seemed to be the enthusiastic work of a competent amateur.
It appeared the author wanted to include every aspect of paranormal research they could think of. To that end the story is riddled with expository dialogue (of exceptionally poor quality) the only purpose of which is to introduce subjects that are then addressed in the end notes. This gave the work a disjointed feeling.
The characters are two dimensional and the hero is not a particularly likable (or believable) guy.
There is a decided lack of atmosphere throughout. For example, I got absolutely no sense of unease from the victims of the haunting, let alone fear.
The pacing was off, the plot simplistic and the surprise twist ending flagged so far in advance as to be redundant. Though I did like the ending, even if I saw it coming.
This would be a solid first draft of a story. But it needs a good editing and extensive rewrite before I would recommend it. A great idea poorly executed, skip the story and go straight to the end notes-that’s where the value lies-Lynn.

Unlocking Mysteries with Solomon’s Key

Subtitled A Companion Guide To “The Lost Symbol” (Dan Brown’s New Novel), this mag-book claims to help readers ‘understand the secrets of ancient symbols and their meaning’.
I had always believed that the purpose of a companion guide was to explain concepts, language, ideas and so forth that the book in question either doesn’t adequately define or doesn’t delve into deep enough for the more committed reader. If this particular example is typical of the genre then I have been labouring under a major misunderstanding, for this does none of that.
Solomon’s Key was actually published before The Lost Symbol and doesn’t so much explain or examine the concepts of that book as it does speculate as to what might be included within its best selling pages.
While a few of the articles were interesting, all were superficial and none provided particularly new insight into the topics they addressed-many of which have been the subject of books (both fiction and non-fiction) themselves.
I can see how fans of Dan Brown might be interested in a short biography of the author. Indeed, I can see how they might appreciate the biography of the main character (which is much the same thing-Mary-Sue anyone?). But did they really need to include a précis of the other works and detailed lists of how the movies made from those books differed from them. And exactly how does the history of the director of those movies enlighten readers in any way about the, at that time, unpublished book.
The full colour plate photographs are not enough to offset poor editing (singularly annoying are unfinished sentences). And the speculation as to what might have been included in the book was quite a bit off the mark.
Not being the greatest fan of the author I was reading this guide for a laugh and I got it but had I truly wanted a guide to The Lost Symbol I would have been extremely disappointed.-Lynn

Kitchen Literacy - Ann Vileisis

Subtitled How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and How to Get it Back, this work traces the pattern of American food preparation from the early days of settlement to the current day, focusing primarily on changes in food sourcing, markets, marketing, advertising and pre-packaging.
Kitchen Literacy reads very much like an academic thesis - the points Vileisis makes are well supported, and she draws heavily on American diaries and cook books from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds to contrast modern supermarket shopping with home cooks who planned months in advance in order to plant vegetables or raise livestock.
I found this significantly outweighed accessible reading - the tone is scholarly and the arguments (primarily that it would be better for the planet and for ourselves if we were more invested in food production locally) are less strongly made than I'd like. For example, she speaks of the advantages of organic produce, including the increased consumer investment in the way the food is grown and transported, and she mentions the new choices savvy consumers have between (for example) local produce and imported organic produce, but doesn't argue either way.
Perhaps I should have paid less attention to the title, which is a little misleading, and more to the neatly encapsulating subtitle, because I was expecting a book that concentrated more on food preparation than sources.
However, perhaps because I had farming grandparents, I found little of the revelations very surprising. Vileisis' references several times to the inherent presence of fauna in home-grown produce - the role of insects and their presence in one's food particularly stood out.
I read the first two thirds of Kitchen Literacy then flipped through the remaining text, skipping the extensive (64 pages) notes and references and the 15 page index. If I were interested in this discipline I think Kitchen Literacywould be an excellent resource; as a woman interested in eating better and cooking differently, I found it less useful - Alex

Emma Holly: Prince of Ice

When a disgraced royal demon scheming to regain power by bearing the emperor a child, dies before her plans come to fruition, the daughter she leaves behind is raised alongside a young prince. That is until his affection for the girl starts to worry his parents who turn her out of their house.
Prospects are not good for the unwanted orphan, so when she is given the opportunity to make her fortune as a courtesan she takes the chance.
Her first protector is none other than her childhood friend. But he is no longer the sweet boy she remembers and she is no longer the carefree child she was all those years ago. Not only that, but their stations in life are greatly changed and their interaction is governed by a strict code of behaviour. The two fall in love and as a result face charges of treason and potential death sentences. But the girl’s family blackmail the emperor into accepting banishment rather than execution and the couple leave the isolated world they know to carve a future together in the human world.
I picked this book up because it was supposedly set in the same alternate Victorian universe as The Demon’s Daughter but while the story is set in the same universe, it takes place entirely in the isolated demon world. For all intents and purposes it may as well have been set in the Far East. Everything from the characters’ names and interests to the social structure scream eighteenth century Asia. The technology was entirely modern and while I knew this aspect of the demon world, I was disappointed that the steampunk elements that so attracted me to the first book were missing here.
There is plenty of Holly’s trademark erotica to be found within the pages which is technically well done but I feel wasn’t quite up to her usual standard. The ruling class genitalia and hormone cycles seemed both unnecessarily complicated and unbelievable (the royal males are physically different to common males but status is at the whim of the emperor-hmmm?).
Overall, not a bad book, particularly if you are a fan of the friends-to-lovers storyline, but certainly not what I had hoped for.-Lynn

Making the Cut - Mohamed Khadra

Subtitled A Surgeon’s Stories of Life on the Edge, Making the Cut is the “impressionistic memoir” of an Australian surgeon, from the first time he incised a patient in theatre, through his own journey as a patient, to his decision to retire from clinical practice and teaching.
I generally enjoy reading about medical practitioners – though Atul Gawande is far and away my favourite in the genre, he is not alone. I rarely buy books now, but Making the Cut was on my wanted list for a long time, and when last year I decided to cheer myself up before having hand surgery, I bought a small stack of new works, including Khadra’s

collection of impressions and retellings that are meant to raise issues about health, surgery, death and dying…[featuring] amalgams of characters and events and fictionalised places and names…I have tried to imagine for the characters a persona and a life outside my contact with them so as to accentuate their humanity to the reader… based… on conversations and snippets of insight I gleaned from my interactions with the doctors who cared for these patients, or with my conversations with these patients themselves.

Believing doctors should be well rounded and educated, Khadra insisted that his students open their tutorial sessions with a poem, and each chapter of Making the Cut does so too.
At times Khadra well encapsulates the frustrating aspects of medicine – the utter exhaustion of long hours and high pressure, unnecessary and futile attempts at resuscitation, intervening in the deterioration of a respected colleague, the tension in private practice between generating revenue and exposing patients to as little risk (ie surgery) as possible, the ease with which mistakes can be made, and the awful consequences of these mistakes.
But he has several points he’s at pains to make. Chief among these is his dissatisfaction with the Australian health care system, from the change in equipment purchasing from surgeons deciding what they need themselves to large expense panels, to the kinds of meals served in public hospitals and refurbishment (or lack thereof) of patient facilities. As a cardiac inpatient Khadra pities the lay patients who “were not armed with the knowledge to influence their passage through the health system… the number to call maintenance to grease the squeaky door… the supervisor to call to ensure [their] bathroom was kept clean.” Reading these sections without having any knowledge of the Australian public health care sector would paint a very dark picture, and one that is almost wholly incongruent with my experience.
He also has very definite ideas about nurses – though he acknowledges that a good (“experienced and sensible”) nurse can make life easy, Khadra has no time for the new breed of university educated nurses, “custodian[s] of quality, the barometer of good care… bureaucrats rather than carers.” In Khadra’s view, if “you are a good clinical nurse then you get promoted to administration, the worst-paid job is to look after the patients” – by default, floor nurses must not be good clinicians. I don’t disagree with all his positions, and certainly agree that by qualification hospital trained nurses “had seen a lot of illness and health and certainly knew what a nurse does for a living” while university educated graduates come out with different knowledge. But I think his perception that newer nurses’ focus on charts and tools and instruments of measurement comes from a lack of awareness of patient care is misplaced – it comes from administration requirements that, though they take away from time on the floor, apparently improve patient outcomes and for which nurses are responsible in addition to all their other jobs. And while some students may think they’re above bed making, few and far between are newly graduated nurses who are allowed to believe that.
Women in general do not come out well, particularly the greedy, grasping wife of one surgeon, whose focus on money and things inextricably leads to his premature death. It’s in vignettes like this that I was particularly uncomfortable with the knowledge that many of these cases are both hearsay (or ‘retelling”) and embroidered with fictionalised additions. There are few female surgeons (and no male nurses), and though the most sympathetic treatment received is to a pre-op male-to-female transsexual, Jo is referred to throughout as “he.”
Khadred discusses the stresses on doctors, referring to the hospital as a “hell zone” that family moments (like a child opening a present or a wife showing off a new nightgown) bring back in full force (the parent who’ll never see their child’s joy again, the patient who died in a similar nightgown). I agree that there’s a lot of pressure on doctors, that their suicide rate is unreasonably high and unaddressed, as is their rate of alcohol and drug abuse, and that a great deal of this pressure is internal. And, in what I suspect is an inadvertent reflection of this within the profession, Khadred recounts two suicides by doctors and references at least two more, with little sympathy or surrounding detail. He also

to this day look[s] down on doctors who take time off. For me, the worst offenders are those that take stress leave, whatever that may be. I have always lived by the aphorism ‘stress is good for you, it flushes the coronary arteries.’

Not a lot of scope for support there.
Although he acknowledges we should consider quality of life over (or perhaps instead of) longevity, Khadred reports that he stopped exercising when he read that, for each hour spent exercising in youth, an hour is added at the end "when there is a good chance every day would be a prayer for death." This view of cardiovascular health is certainly unusual in a health professional, not to mention what it says of his perception of the aged and aged care.
This is not to say that I disagree with all of Khadra’s opinions. I agree that we make poor decisions about end-of-life care, though I think the statistic that “about 70% of the health budget is spent on caring for patients in their last six months of life,” though accurate, is misleading – the picture most people have, of old people being medicalised to the last breath, is not always the case; some of that 70% goes on patients whose first six months is also their last, on patients battling potentially survivable cancers, on previously well patients who present in terminal distress of one kind or other, and on trauma patients.
I found Khadra unsympathetic, and Making the Cut disappointing and depressing. As mentioned, I disagree with his portrayal of the Australian health system, though I acknowledge that my experience of it has been primarily with one institution and rarely as a patient. I also found his tone irritating, and didn't really understand what the point of Making the Cut was or at which audience the book was aimed. In parts a plea for economic rationalism in health care, in others an uninspiring autobiography, and at times an insider's portrayal of modern medical practice, it somehow failed to be even as much as a sum of its parts. I think a return to Gawande is in order - Alex

A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell

Opening at an unnamed British public school in 1921 and closing during his first year at university, A Question of Upbringing begins the story our narrator, Nicholas Jenkins. We learn little of his own life and family, as Jenkins strings together reminiscences of his school days with the romantic Charles Stringham, daring Peter Templar (who is sent down after a string of practical jokes), and the plodding and clueless Windmerpool, branded an outsider his first day, when he wore "the wrong kind of overcoat." Through the course of the novel Jenkins' path randomly crosses his old school friends and Widmerpool, along with those of other characters, most notably during Jenkins' stay at La Grenadière in France to hone his French.
Starting the year off the way I intend to continue, I have not only started with a non-library book but the first in the acclaimed twelve-part series A Dance to the Music of Time, with the intention of reading one each month. God help me. Because I just didn't get the attraction. A Question of Upbringing is certainly not a strongly narrative or plot-driven novel, and nothing much seemed to happen. Neither is it character-driven, for I learned little about Jenkins and only glimpses about the other characters he encounters. There is certainly a strong sense of time, place and above all class, but that doesn't so much grab me.
I've been told that the books become more interesting and intricate with each installment, and that analysing each novel separately robs the narrative as a whole of its complexity, subtle nuance and character development. We shall see. - Alex

Ever - Gail Carson Levine

From the moment she sees the lithe servant at her uncle’s wedding, Kezi is attracted to him. But she has only a month to live, thanks to a vow her father made to Admat, the one true God in exchange for saving her mother’s life. That Kezi is to be sacrificed is a terrible and unforseen calamity that has her parents despairing, but one cannot break a vow to Admat and there’s no room for negotiation.
Olus has infiltrated a wedding to be closer to Kezi. With power over the winds, Olus is the youngest of the Akkan gods by many centuries; restless, he has left his homeland in search of diversion and connection with mortals. He had watched Kezi for some time before she stepped in, sacrificing herself rather than allowing her aunt to unwittingly be involved in the vow. He goes in search of this god, Admat, hoping to reason with him, but can find him nowhere.
This is new territory for Levine, who generally works within more Western myths and fairytales, and I was initially a little disappointed not to be reading one of her cleverly twisted. reimagined variants. Although I didn’t feel as involved with Ever as I have with other of her works, I did enjoy this novel of a very different world and clash of cultures, particularly the contrast between monotheism and an uninvolved (possibly non-existent) God with a pantheistic culture where the gods are decidedly present. I’d rather read her more traditional work, though. - Alex

A Crack in the Line - Michael Lawrence

Alaric lives with his father at Withern Rise, a remote English country house. Since the death of his mother after a horrendous train crash it's just been the two of them - the house, and their relationship, are slowly falling to pieces. One snowy day while his father's away on business and his interfering but well meaning aunt is trying to restore order, Alaric ventures into a forgotten part of the Victorian mansion and rediscovers a miniature of Withern Rise his mother made. When he touches it he feels searing pain, and when he opens his eyes Alaric is in a cleaner version of home, with a strange girl who seems to think he's the intruder.
Naia tries not to think about the terrible time when she and her father didn't know if her mother would survive the injuries from a devastating train crash two years ago - the doctors said it was fifty/fifty, and the odds were on their side. Alone one snowy day she's shocked to discover a strange boy in her living room, a boy who seems to think she's in his house rather than the other way around.
The first in a trilogy, A Crack in the Line explores the idea of parallel universes - Alaric and Naia are similar in almost every respect, except gender, and their lives continued on near-parallel tracks until the accident two years earlier. Alaric and Naia are somehow able to cross into each other's lives through the model of Withern Rise that was carved from the wood of a massive tree on the property. For Alaric, the sight of his mother restored to life is a painful joy.
I was unprepared for A Crack in the Line to so completely end on a cliffhanger - although I knew it was a trilogy going in, I had expected something of a full narrative with ends to be tied up later. There is, however, no resolution of any aspect of the plot, and I found this so profoundly irritating that it has coloured my perception of the novel as a whole, so that I cannot appreciate the awe it's inspired in others - unlike Sarah Meador I certainly haven't spent the intervening time since reading it "in a stupor, scared and searching for one of the alternate realities lying on the grounds of the Victorian mansion in the title."
I will, however, borrow the rest of the series from the library; I hope that the knowledge that I can read it as though all three volumes comprise a single text will allow me to better appreciate the complexity and thoughtful fears that Meador detected. - Alex

The Girl in a Swing - Richard Adams

Alan Desland, a dealer and lover of porcelain figurines, is middle aged and resigned to bachelorhood. Somewhat reclusive, his self-image is highly coloured by having overheard at a young age that he was unattractive. On a routine trip to Copenhagen Alan meets Karin, a beautiful young secretary/clerical worker and is instantly smitten by every aspect of her. Filled with trepidation and precipitated by fear of not seeing her again, Alan delays his return to England and asks Karin out.
He is delighted to find her receptive and after a whirlwind romance proposes. Karin accepts, on the proviso that they marry in England, and agrees to move there with him. After a discussion with his minister, however, Alan thinks the three week wait will be too long and thanks to one of Alan's American clients the loving couple fly to Florida to wed instead. they have a joyous honeymoon in Gainesville, initially marred by Alan's inability to perform but finally consummated.
Though the wedding occurred before anyone had met Karin, she soon charms his friends and family. She is, however, reticent to discuss her own history and makes no effort to contact her own friends or family.
Though he relates Karin's intermittent crying and nervousness, Alan does not seem to see the import of these and other behaviours. He has some hinted at psychic abilities as a child, and though he manages to ignore the many signs Karin displays, Alan acknowledges, or at least senses, a spectre of darkness hanging over them, though. His concerns tragically come to fruition- an event unsurprising to the reader, for we know from the outset of Alan's narration that Karin dies. Throughout the novel we see Alan's idealisation of Karin, a vision he grimly clings to despite mounting conflicting evidence that Karin is not the alabaster figure he envisions.
A marked change from Adams's earlier, and more well known work (Watership Down and the more adult, darker themed The Plague Dogs), The Girl in a Swing is unquestionably a literary novel, with Gothic overtones. Alan is trilingual and possessed of a classical education - he and Karin quote philosophers, poets and writers in a variety of languages, which tended to break my connection with the narrative, being monolingual and clearly not the productive of an English prep school education.
The Girl in the Swing is in many ways a product of its time - the terrible price Karin paid for their love would almost certainly not be necessary now. On a related but less controversial note, I've often thought, though I think not written here, about the move from to-day/to-morrow to the conjoined form we use, and if there was debate about the transition the way there is about linguistic shifts. Anyway, Adams is of the first camp, at least in the edition I had, which was given to me when I was ten or eleven. I can only imagine that the parent of the child who gave it to me was going on the reputation from Watership because it's very much not a children's book. The darker themes, the impotent angst and the sex scenes (which are far more literary than erotic) aside, the writing is aimed at an adult, literary audience.
There's an interesting insight into impotence from a male perspective, wherein Alan compares "that great field of life dominated by Aphrodite - the area of sexual passion

to those of a miner descending the shaft or a soldier approaching the front: "the frightening realisation that here all life-long assumptions - the safety and predictability one had always taken for granted and come to rely upon - did not apply. Continuous danger and uncertainty affect the very eyes through which one saw the world and affected everything I thought and did."

It was Karin's great beauty that so affected him, combined with a sense of disentitlement, that this vision of loveliness could indeed be for him. But her tactful, gentle handling of the situation reassures him. However, the rapid, inexplicable romance and the fact that he knows virtually nothing about Karin causes Alan no alarm, and throughout the novel his beloved remains a cipher.
The title of the novel comes from a porcelain figure of intriguing provenance, which is discussed in the novel and a variation of which can be seen here.
I love the line, as Alan arrives back in London, that could have "gone chasing the hares on the grass between the runways" - it's not only indicative of his buoyant mood but also a far more bucolic image than arrivees to London see now!
Vogue is blurbed on the cover as saying of this little known work that it is "a novel of beauty, calm, sensuality, anticipation, horror and nightmare" - with all of which I concur, but I also found it overly literary, unsatisfying and anticlimactic. - Alex

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt

A Northern writer visits Savannah in the last 1970's and, over a period of months, gets to know some of the more colourful and influential residents of this traditional and unique Southern city. When Danny Handsford, a young hustler, is shot and killed by an influential older man, there's some expectation that it will be swept to one side, which is consistent with related events. Instead antiques dealer Jim Williams is charged and tried. As our narrator covers the subsequent events he finds himself discovering a new side of a town he's come to love.
Based on real events but tweaked, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is written in first person and presented as wholly factual. Far more a character study than murder mystery, Berendt introduces readers to a variety of eccentrics from the lauded Lady Chablis (a lounge singer who sometimes takes a break from the hormones and goes by Frank); disenfranchised Luther Driggers (who's supposed to have a vial of concentrated poison that could wipe out the town through the water supply), and voodoo priestess Minerva (who gives the book its title). The central character, though, is Georgia's Savannah, and Berendt weaves a picture of eccentric independence and the presence of the past into his narrative.
I'm surprised Midnight was such a success but suspect that, like some other surprise best sellers, it tapped into a zeitgeist that passed me by. It's certainly more a literary novel than it is murder mystery - the pace is languid, the pivotal event occurs around half way through, and if you're reading for content rather than ambiance you'll find yourself wondering what the point of much of the atmospheric writing is. Indeed, had the shooting not occured I would have been hard-pressed to find a narrative spine in the book. It didn't read to me as though the death of Handsford was in the front of Berendt's mind when he began writing, and there's nothing that flags the lead up as significant.
Yet, despite this, none of the events seem shocking or even surprising - everything unfolds at a languid, low impact pace that I suspect reflects the society he depicts. Even the unusual people seem drawn in pastel or sepia tones, removing much of the significance of even quite shocking revelations. And while we learn a little about the city of Savannah and her people, I came away from the book with no sense of the author, where he came from, why he spent so much time in Georgia, what drew him to Savannah, or even what he thought about any of it.
Perhaps that's what influenced my feelings of neutrality. Midnight is one of the many books I've had languishing about for years and have brought with me overseas to read before allowing myself to buy anything new. All I knew about it going in was that I'd had it for years, it was set in the South, had some vague connection with voodoo, was well received, and had been made into a film. I come away from it feeling much the same. I certainly didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, I wasn't connected to it, and I don't feel altered by it. I understand that some people love it, and am sure they have their reasons, but for me it will be part of the background wallpaper of my 2009 reading list. - Alex

John Harwood: The Seance

A young woman with few prospects is surprised when a distant relative dies and leaves her the beneficiary of a large estate. She is even more surprised by the reaction of the lawyer who delivers news of her windfall: he warns her that the house is cursed, the grounds are haunted and suggest that she might not the be natural daughter of her parents but that of a scandalous cousin accused of murdering her husband then running away with an unnamed lover never to be seen again.
Fascinated, she begins to research the history of both the house and the family. She soon comes to believe that the murder never happened, that the accused were set up and the supposed victim still alive and well.
At this point she is approached by the Society for Psycical Research, who wish to hold a séance at the house. She agrees and during the society’s examination of the premises certain evidence is found that prove her suspicions are correct.
This knowledge puts her life in danger but she finds she cannot rest until she clears the name of the supposed murderess, which might just be her natural mother, and exposes the fraud of the supposed victim, who may be her natural father.
This book, while a little slow to start, turned out to be an interesting historical novel full of intrigue.
Refusing to plod the predictable path, the story twists and turns, seemingly setting up one situation only to deliver another.
Though it wasn’t quite what I had expected, from the title and blurb I had anticipated more of a ghost story rather than a crime mystery, it did not disappoint. It kept me guessing even beyond the point when I had worked out what had actually taken place but didn’t spring a completely unanticipated culprit on the unsuspecting reader in the way of historical crime writing.
Authentic to its era and entertaining too-Lynn.

Change the Way You See Everything through Asset-Based Thinking - Kathryn D Cramer & Hank Wasiak

If you change the way you see the world, particularly how things affect you and how you interact with it, then you can change your life. The authors of Change the Way You See Everything have created a technique they call Asset-Based Thinking (ABT) which, unlike Deficit-Based Thinking (DBT) focuses the individual on success, achievement and possibility. With this, they say, anything is possible.
I agree, but only to a point. I'm not averse to self help books in principle, and believe that NLP can change the way you think. I’m also not opposed to the principles Cramer and Wasiak present, so there’s clearly something else I’m reacting to. There are exercises and success stories, but though I really, really tried I just couldn't get further than half way in. When I say I tried - I extended my library loan twice, paid a late fee, and reborrowed it, which is dedication. And I got nowhere. It seemed more saccharin and new age fluffy each time I picked it up again. On substantial reflection, I think think I would have been more convincingly swayed that they had something new to offer if the book wasn't laid out like a combination of inspirational posters and the kind of letters my friends and I would write in year ten. The book has a strong "inspirational poster” feel, complete with pithy but abstract slogans, combined with style over substance and the notion that they’re presenting a wholly new concept to the world.
The third photo, for example (after an arty black and white hazy mountain range, and an iris) is of an arm extending from the ocean with a glass angled so a rainbow appears to end in it, and it just goes on from there. The prose has selective colour highlighting particularly inspirational sections (that'd be the "year ten" part).
Opening at random I find: a glossy pastoral photo of a cow (no horns) on the left facing a business-suit-clad man holding what looks like a red curtain still attached to its rod but is supposed to be an oversized matador-style cape. The text reads:

Get a Charge Out of Conflict
Make Opposition Matter
Conflict magnifies and illuminates who you are. It seizes and startles you into seeing what makes you uncomfortable. It pushes your boundaries – intellectual, emotional, and physical. Conflict, if treated properly, offers the chance to change your mind altogether.
When faced with conflict, explore the possibility that opposing forces can both be true simultaneously. Taking this perspective immediately dissolves animosity and piques curiosity. You find yourself wondering, “What’s their truth? Where is the value on their side?” When you finally give up the belief that yours is the only truth, it changes the game forever. Now you’re in a position to see what new truth you can create together. (pp. 72-73)

As I said - useful but nothing new or significant. I’ve discussed this book several times with long-suffering Lynn, who hears “acid-based” every time I said “Asset-Based.” That lends a quite different, and not unpleasant or inappropriate, flavour to the text. – Alex

The Peshawar Lancers – SM Stirling

In the late 1870’s a string of meteors hit Earth, destroying cities, changing the environment and reversing the course of history. Acting on the advice of her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria authorised the evacuation of as much of London as possible, relocating in India. A hundred and fifty years later England is a backward wasteland of cannibalistic savages, and technology has for decades taken a back seat to survival, so boats are steam powered, cars are a novelty, and flight is only by dirigible. The British Empire, now centred in India, rules over most of the globe, while the Imperial Czar heads Russia and is the other major world leader. Eventually there will be a significant conflict between the two super powers.
His Majesty King John II has a loyal army, with no more dedicated soldier than Captain Athelstane King. As a chain of events unfold, Captain King will play a pivotal role in the outcome of not only a covert plot against the British Empire but also in the lives of the royal family.
I’ve enjoyed all of Stirling’s alternate history novels, preferring his Change series to the Massachusetts trilogy but finding all of them quickly absorbing. This is unusual for me – I have most often found alternate history fantasy overly militaristic and dull. While neither of these qualities apply to The Peshawar Lancers, I did find it considerably less accessible than Stirling’s other work. Part of this is undoubtedly because of the more significant world building required - the other series consist of present day Americans either going back in time and changing events themselves, or going forward after the world is changed for them, whereas this novel is set in a world that has diverged from ours at a significant point in history.
There are several interweaving narratives and I found it difficult, particularly at the beginning, to keep track of when we were, what was happening, and how the characters and plots connected. I think some of this would have been eased had Stirling written a prologue then jumped forward instead of having the nineteenth century events and response appear as the vision of a twenty-first century psychic. Similarly, while it makes sense within the context of the novel that place names would have changed, a table of comparisons and perhaps a map of who controls where, would have been helpful, along with a glossary of Indian words – while some of them were evident from the text others weren’t, and I’m sadly monolingual. Stirling has included a list of the King Emperors of the post-Fall British Empire and five appendices – a detailed description of The Fall and its effects, a timeline of the exodus and post-Fall aftermath, a description of the Angrezi Raj/British Empire, some notes on Imperial English and other languages (focusing on pronunciation), and an explanation of technology and the economy. Some of this information would have been more useful at the beginning rather than in retrospect, and some of it I found irritating – I appreciate thorough and internally consistent world building but (like sausages and laws) don’t want to be aware of how it’s done.
Perhaps it was that my expectations of Stirling were a little too high. Certainly I enjoyed The Peshawar Lancers, at least for the most part, and I did finish it with a smile, but for the first half of this ~460 page (plus notes) book it was something of a struggle and on a couple of occasions I persevered primarily because I had no other books available. Fortunately I’ve found two more novels in the Change series, so this will not be my last Stirling experience. - Alex

Susan Schanchterle: The Bitch, the Crone and the Harlot

From the back of the book-

How do women enter the second half of life? For many, the assumption is that midlife marks the end of their most powerful period, when their sexual intensity, emotional vitality, and persuasiveness was at its peak. Not so, shows author Susan Schachterle in this warm, funny, and gorgeously written book. Using incidents from history, case histories from her counselling work, stories from her life; and examples from her corporate and non-profit consulting career, she shows that midlife in fact represents a time when women’s sexuality, wisdom, and power can come into full bloom.

This book wasn’t exactly what I expected it to be. I had anticipated more of an examination of these three archetypes, how women relate to them in midlife and why such associations are a good thing. Instead the author attempts to redefine these labels, partly trying to bring back original meanings and partly attempting to force positive attributes onto negative images. While I appreciate the concept of reclaiming the words I really don’t see that attempting to change their commonly understood meanings can be successful. If that makes me part of the problem then so be it. I don’t see these labels, as they are currently understood, as necessarily being a bad thing.
That being said the book did provide a number of interesting recounts of middle-aged women who had changed their attitudes and self concepts and consequently changed their lives for the better. These stories were inspiring even though I couldn’t relate to many of the personalities presented.
The book also suggests a number of exercises designed to help the reader get in touch with her inner bitch, crone and harlot. I am not inspired to try them but if you’re a fan of the self help book they could be worth a go.
The study of women’s midlife experience usually is from the perspective of physical change and the negative emotions that can accompany those changes. I’m pleased that somebody is examining the subject from a positive psychological and spiritual perspective.-Lyn

Mary Gentle: 1610-A Sundial in a Grave

Astrologer and predictive mathematician Dr Robert Fludd has seen what the future holds for mankind and it isn’t pretty. He calculates that disaster can be averted if he acts now to change the course of history. His unwilling tool is a disgraced aristocrat and spy escaping France after failing to prevent the murder of its king.
Together with a young duellist and a shipwrecked samari, the spy is manipulated to achieve Fludd’s end. But not everything can be calculated for and this spy is not the puppet he pretends to be. He throws Fludd’s plans into disarray not understanding how his actions are changing the future of the world.
Eventually he comes to believe in the truth of Fludd’s abilities. This results in a transglobal chase of Fludd, his capture and imprisonment.
Having his eyes opened to the bigger picture the spy and his companions start to work with Fludd to form a secret society (the Rosicrucians) that can monitor the world and steer events so as to avoid future calamity.
There is a passing reference to a sundial but never is one found in a grave.
This is more a work of alternate history rather than the historical fantasy it claims to be. The only fantasy element I could identify in the story was the reality and accuracy of predictive mathematics. Once it became clear that I was not reading a typical fantasy and adjusted my mindset I should have liked this book but it simply left me flat.
It was extremely slow to start and though the pace picks up a little during the second half of the book it simply moves from glacial to snail’s pace. There are a number of seat edge action sequences interspersed with very long periods of nothing much happening. The historical detail seems accurate and is well blended into the description but there was far too much of it in my opinion. Excess description made an already slow pace drag.
Hints of sexual perversion sparked my interest and could have given the characters more depth but they are never followed up. And the inconsistency of one particular character irritated me somewhat.
For all that this isn’t a bad book, if you like a long wallowing tale. I liked it enough to not only finish it, eventually, but also to read the Hic Jacet. But, personally I think it could have been three hundred pages shorter (it clocks in at over 700pp) and would have been the better for it.
This book was a lot of work for little pay off and left me thinking Eh.-Lynn