Karina Machado: Spirit Sisters

From the back of the book-
Spirit Sisters illuminates the very personal ghost stories of ordinary Australian women. Journalist Karina Machado has listened to many of these stories and within these pages captures the sorrow, fear, comfort and hope that go along with them. Here she passes on their secrets and shares those incrediable moments when someone leans in to whisper their tale and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
Whether you believe in the afterlife or not, reading this book will lead you to question your reality and wonder...maybe?
I sought out this book after reading its follow up Where Spirits Dwell  and just as expected Spirit Sisters offers more of the same. Reading them out of order didn't seem to make any difference both being simple collections of retold experiences.
The strengths and weaknesses of the book remain unchanged. The stories themselves are again related in a mundane language that requires quite a bit of imagination if the reader is to get a sense of the emotions claimed in the blurb but is no less interesting for that. Perhaps sometimes you really do need to be their if you are to truly understand.
Not bad but don't expect scary-Lynn.

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures - Vincent Lam

From the cover:

Dr. Vincent Lam's literary debut delivers an unflinching portrait of his profession, following a group of four ambitious young doctors as they move from the pressures of medical school into the intense world of emergency medicine, evacuation missions, and terrifying new viruses.
Through the eyes of Fitz, Ming, Chen, and Sri, Lam finds conflict - and humanity - in the most surprising moments. Together these doctors test the bounds of intimacy as they cope with exam pressure, weigh moral dilemmas as they dissect cadavers, confront police who assault their patients, and treat schizophrenics with pathologies similar to their own.

Subtitled Stories, this is a collection of interconnected short stories that combine to create a complex narrative whole greater than the sum of its parts. And the parts all sound completely up my alley - health care, the evolution of practitioners, exciting scenarios realistically portrayed, ethico-moral decision making, and even interaction with the dead (my current research focus).
Sadly, I was unable to enjoy the panoply of the whole, because I found the trek into Lam's literary debut entirely too arduous a journey to complete, stopping at page 69, roughly half way through the third story. I therefore can't render a review of the whole, but will quite happily discuss the parts I managed:
The first story, "How to Get into Medical School, part 1" is about Ming and Fitz. He's American, she's the daughter of Chinese migrants who have very traditional beliefs which don't include their daughter either distracting herself from her pre-med studies or her dating a white boy. Though Ming pretends to herself that she's only spending time with Fitz to improve her study, she's really attracted to him, and knows he is to her. what Fitz doesn't know - what nobody knows - is that Ming is dirty, and her academic success rides on the back of sexual abuse.
"Take All of Murphy" picks up when Ming, Chen and Sri are partnered together in the cadaver lab. They're cautioned to treat their cadaver, who they name Murphy, with respect; they're also expected to dissect him with care and according to the text book. But the text book doesn't include an ornate and clearly symbolically important tattoo right over an intended dissection site. The students have to decide whether respect for Murphy trumps their academic requirements.
"How to Get into Medical School, part 2" picks up Fitz's narrative - he didn't get into medical school with Ming, and since she started they barely speak. He feels as driven by his need to see her as by his desire to study medicine/be a doctor, until a chance accident gives him the first peace he's known in months. I have no idea how that ends or him, though, as I put Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures down at that point and just couldn't bring myself to pick it back up.
This was for two reasons. The first is that I didn't connect with any of the characters, and so I just didn't care at all what happened to them. I found Lam's creations self-oriented, relatively two-dimensional, with tragic histories included not as extra depth but in lieu of character development (Ming's aforementioned abuse, Fitz's motherlessness). This might have been alright if there was an emphasis on plot, but Bloodletting is Literature, so (at least in the part I read) plot isn't a huge narrative driver.
The second issue is that I was frequently snapped out of the book by the writing. Fitz in particular is overly analytical, self-conscious and introspective, his every move accompanied by an exploration of its deeper meaning and possible interpretations:

Fitz picked up a shrimp chip by its edge, dipped it in the peanut sauce with red pepper flakes, and crunched. His face became sweaty and bloomed red as he chewed, the n coughed. He grasped the water glass and took a quick gulp...
He coughed to his right side, and had difficulty stopping. He reminded himself to sit up straight while coughing, realized he wasn't covering his mouth, was embarrassed that his fair skin burned hot and red, wondered in a panicky blur if this redness would be seen to portray most keenly his injured emotional state, his physical vulnerability in choking, his Anglocentric intolerance to chili, his embarrassment at not initially covering his mouth, his obvious infatuation with Ming, or - worst of all - could be interpreted as a feeble attempt to mask or distract from his discomfort at her pre-emptive romantic rejection.

A couple of page later, after Ming has gone and Fitz begins to drown his sorrows,

The pain of rejection was a significant shade different from the longing of desire, he noted, though drawn from the same palette. This somber phase could generally be gotten through withal few more, and therefore justified the third drink. A washroom break. With the third pint came the brink between anger and the careless release that could sometimes be attained and was the goal of the drinking. Fitz tired to will himself into this easy release, to tip over the meniscus of anger that grew like water perched higher than the rim of a glass, but it didn't work today.

Really, a 'meniscus of anger'? I found the writing style pretentious, the characters flat, and felt that insufficient use was made out of potentially strong scenarios. Of course, this is a literary work, and these elements aren't exactly out of place in this genre.
It probably didn't help that my expectations going in were more in line with a House of God type work, perhaps without the awful first chapter of that classic work, and I anticipated the lucid writing of some of my favourite medical authors (like Gawande, Groopman or, if we're going for the purely literary fiction, Klass). This is my own fault, and not that of the author, for whom my expectations were raised by the reviews favourable and plentiful.
And I'm clearly in the minority - Bloodletting has not only been compared with medical television dramas like ER, Grey's Anatomy and House, it's been optioned as a similar series itself. With, I can only assume, significant changes. - Alex

Belle De Jour: The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl

This chronicle of a year in the working life of a professional sex provider is taken from the author’s blog. It relates how she got into the business, what she gets up to with clients and the trials and tribulations of her personal love life (as opposed to her professional sex life).
There is always a delightful sense of voyeurism in the reading of somebody’s diary-even if they’ve made it public-and I don’t think I would be alone in expecting this particular diary to be a little more titillating than others. However as a representation of life as a sex worker I found it offered nothing that hasn’t already said elsewhere before. I suspect the reason this diary got the attention it did was due to its being kept in a public forum in the form of a blog.
First for the good: This particular diary has a fun and friendly tone to it making it very easy to read. The author is unrepentant about the nature of her work and talks about the business without trying to make it sound particularly glamorous or onerous.
Then for the bad: It really gets quite samey very quickly and ends rather abruptly (probably a result of it being pulled from a blog which continued on after the book ends).
Overall an inoffensive read but not one that has left me with an urge to read any of the many other publications of this author.-Lynn

The Gates of Zion - Bodie Thoene

American Ellie Warne is still finding Palestine overwhelming - she's hoping that her work for her archaeologist uncle will lead to a professional career in photography, and is enjoying a flirtation with her uncle's assistant Moshe, despite his disinterest in wider global issues. And they're hard to avoid, because it's 1947: the aftermath of the Second World War is still settling, Jews are being forbidden entry to Britain, and the British army - spearheaded by its politicians - is closing its eyes to egregious acts from the increasingly militant Muslim population in Palestine. Fomented by Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the previous harmony between Jewish, Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the ancient city is being torn apart. For those wise and astute, the coming Partition Resolution, dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arabic states, is not a cause for celebration of the creation of Zion but the trigger for what would become civil war.
Ellie is unaware of any of these tensions, and is instead focused on opportunities for career-making photographs. The first of these is a scroll, brought to her uncle's home by an elderly Bedouin tribesman and his grandson. Though she suspects the antikas are not particularly valuable, she is somehow drawn to the ancient writings and the story that the boy found them in clay pots in a cave while herding goats in the desert. She convinces the men to leave the scroll with her for a few days, and photographs them carefully - an act that contributes to her being embroiled in people smuggling, arms smuggling, and at the forefront of seething political unrest.
I hadn't previously heard of Thoene or her husband and researcher Brock. Though not at all New Agey, I did feel as though I was lead to reading something Judaic, as my eyes fell in quick succession on several Jewish-themed novels at the library, before landing on the Zion Chronicles, of which this is the first. And it includes several elements that I am drawn to, including the era, theology, comparative religion in general, Judaism in particular, the opportunity to learn more about Islamic beliefs and practices, and the impact of the Second World War of American feminism.
The Gates of Zion is necessarily complicated - the setting is convoluted to begin with, and Thoene has done a capable job of combining historical events with a fictional narrative that includes real people, places and events. The work is clearly well sited and researched. But I found reading The Gates of Zion a real slog, for two reasons. The first was that the writing tilted strongly to the hyperbolic, with overwrought portrayals of emotion - crumpling into silent sobs, uneasiness transforming into brutal awareness, fighting off feelings of horror, That, I realise as I write this, is indicative of a larger issue I had: the writing style is a little heavy on telling over showing, which I found undermined the emotional impact many of the scenes would have otherwise had.
The second problem for me was the heaviness of the religious themes. The Gates of Zion is clearly, in retrospect, a strongly Christian Message text, which I didn't realise when I began reading it. There is a very hefty dose of unsubtle theological preaching at alongside the larger plot, and a strong sprinkling of deus ex machina-like coincidences that I might have been prepared to suspend disbelief for in the absence of other glaring flaws.
With one exception, a high-profile rabbi who collaborates with the enemy, the Jewish characters come out well, including the rather large percentage of neo-Christian Jews who believe Jesus was the Messiah but his message has been co-opted by Christianity:

"I am Moshe Sachar, and I am a Jew who believes that the one we call Yeshua is the Messiah. In this I hope with a hope that knows the truth; He will come again to my people and they will know Him for who He is and find pardon and the joy of knowing Him as a loving and merciful Savior. And for you, dear Ellie, I hope that you will reach out to Him. For I know He cares so much for you." His face was full of emotion as he stepped toward Ellie and wrapped his arms around her.
"What do I do, Moshe? How can I know Him too and have hope?"
He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. "Just talk to Him, my love. Just ask Him to make you everything you can be. Give Him your heart."
"But it's broken, Moshe; my heart is broken." She buried her face against him.
"He knows all about broken hearts, Ellie. And our King David writes that your broken heart is just the kind of sacrifice He will accept."

Muslims, on the other hand, are uniformly treacherous, malevolent, unreasonable and sadistic. They are also portrayed without depth or other motivation, and I found this weakened their impact, making them cardboard villains.
It's not just religion that determines personality, though - race, too, plays a strong part. Brits (or Britishers, in the text) are biased, myopic and anti-Semitic, while Americans are either sympathetic and intelligent but often naive, or anti-Semitic and cruel. This simplification of a really complex issue does little to serve the book or engage the reader.
And that's a real shame, because the era and the story are fascinating. A glossary would also have been useful, rather than having to try to infer meaning from context alone, and a brief overview of actual events in which this was set would also have been useful for readers unfamiliar with the history and consequence of these events.As I wrote at the beginning, there are many elements in The Gates of Zion that appeal to me, not least of which is a mildly distorted version of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But, thought this is the first in a series of five (followed by the six-part Zion Legacy series), I doubt I'll be returning to the Thoene fold any time soon. - Alex

A Buyer's Market - Anthony Powell

In the second chapter of A Dance to the Music of Time we pick up with narrator Nick Jenkins, who has finished his education and is now a member of adult society. In addition to the reappearance of familiar characters like Templer, Stringham and the ubiquitous (and no more likable) Windmerpool, we meet a new cast. The first of these, introduced in the first sentence, is unsuccessful artist and old family acquaintance Mr E. Bosworth Deacon, brought to mind many years later by Jenkins' seeing his work at an auction.
In the style of the series, Jenkins then reflects on his interactions with Deacon, from a chance meeting in Paris as an adolescent, to seeing his work half-hidden at the home of Eleanor Walpole-Wilson, cousin of Jenkin's school friend Peter Goring. And this takes us through a series of debutante balls and a dance with an assortment of characters, threaded through with Deacon and his rather disreputable lady friend Gypsy Jones (who dallies with both Windmerpool and Jenkins, though at different times).
Perhaps because I had a better idea of what to expect, I found I quite enjoyed A Buyer's Market, certainly more than A Question of Upbringing - the key is not to expect a traditional narrative with a plot, or the introduction and explanation of characters. The narrative style is instead more like a stream of consciousness, where one thing reminds our guide of another. Like the title suggests, the reader is danced in a complicated by seemingly random (though planned) pattern, interacting with and parting from various people new and familiar.
It's quite difficult to extract a part from the whole to give a flavour of the writing, as it's all so intricately intertwined. I doubt I'll be able to keep track of the vast cast, particularly as on a first reading there's no way to tell who will recur or be important and who is there as an extra. I now understand why repeated readings would increase the enjoyment of the series, as there are certainly things already that I'd pick up differently from both the first books on a second encounter.
I had a better sense of the comedy threaded through the writing this time, as well as the nuances in the writing, and Widmerpool's heavy presence more strongly indicated his importance in the overall narrative. We also learn a little more about Jenkins, those these glimpses are usually incidental and used to illustrate the character of others - for example, Jenkins gives Widmerpool his work address (not in the City), certain he'll never call by, to which Widmerpool

made some formal enquiries about the firm, and seemed rather disapproving of the nature of the business.
'Who exactly buys "art books"?'

We are, however, left with very clear impressions of how Jenkins sees those around him, particularly potential rivals for the women he (so far quite ineptly) fancies.
There's no question of the writing being a product of both its class and time (both when the novels are set - A Buyer's Market apparently takes place in 1928/29 - and when they were written - copyrighted 1952), as the terms "Jewess" and "negro" and the line "a plump man with a hooked nose and black curly hair, perhaps an Oriental" make clear, quite apart from the minimal role of women. The easy, familiar references to classical art and literature reminded me of Stephen Fry's similar sensibility, and the contrast between this and contemporary novels set in the past was interesting.
I think I'll enjoy my self-imposed task of finishing the series over the year more than I expected, but I doubt I'll preempt a month and read the next installment sooner than planned. - Alex

War Reporting for Cowards - Chris Ayers

Subtitled Between Iraq and a Hard Place, this tells the story of LondonTimes financial-turned-entertainment reporter Ayres' embedment with the US Army's 2nd Battalion 11th Marines artillery squadron.

I really like Ayres' voice, from his contemplation of Marine codes for contact with the enemy:

'Contact', in the language of the Marines, where all emotion is surgically removed to avoid collateral damage to troop morale, means being attacked by the enemy. When fire is returned it becomes 'engagement'. A nuclear exchange, presumably, is a white wedding.

Ayres was not a born war correspondent, and he's admirably honest about his complete disinclination to cover the war in Iraq. In fact, I was struck more by his candour than anything else in this well-written and absorbing book. This is nowhere more striking than in his account of September 11 - an Englishman in New York, Ayres sets the scene with his arrival in America some months earlier, and is open about his utter failure to grasp the impact of the event initially - unhappily caffeine free, and hypochondriacally worrying about his gall bladder after reading the New York Times lead story on arsenic poisoning,

I stepped into the lift at precisely 8:50 a.m.

"Down?" I asked.

"Did you hear anything about the trade center?" came the unexpected reply...

At first the words 'trade center' didn't mean anything to me. It was early, after all, and I hadn't had my morning espresso...

I wondered if this was a news story. If so, I was ill-equipped to cover it: I kept all my pens and spiral-bound notebooks at work...

There were probably much bigger stories to be worrying about, I thought. What with the arsenic in the water supply, this would probably make only a few hundred words: a photo story, perhaps.

The account that follows is vivid and traumatised, and brought back the full horror I felt watching events unfold in the middle of the night in Melbourne. In New York but not of it, Ayres speaks with shock, removed from the situation by shock and otherness - when he notices the proliferation of American flags he realises that he's "in a foreign country at war. The US had never really felt foreign to me: it did now."

His reporting of the first days on the invasion of Iraq is as vivid, honest and raw, which is not to say that it's in any way unpolished or unsophisticated. I found War Reporting for Cowards by chance while looking for follow-up works after reading The Faith Club. I'm glad I did, though I don't recommend reading it in public if you're liable to get chocked up revisiting the events of September 11. - 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

The Real Bravo Two Zero – Michael Asher

In January 1991 an SAS helicopter dropped an elite eight-man team into the Iraq desert. Laden with somewhere between eighty and a hundred kilos of pack each, unprepared for the frigid temperatures of the desert in winter, and with faulty communication equipment, the mission was an abject failure. Discovered by the enemy on the second day and split up in the ensuing confusion, three men died, four were taken captive, and one escaped into the relative safety of Syria. Two of the survivors, escapee ‘Chris Ryan’ and captive ‘Andy McNab,’ wrote memoirs of the mission and have since parlayed their fame into non-fiction and military adventure fiction writing careers. They lay blame, along with a third member of the Bravo Two Zero force, on a number of bodies, including intelligence and the SAS hierarchy. But blame is also laid, particularly by Ryan, on one of the dead platoon members, Sergeant Vince Phillips.
When former SAS member turned author Asher read the accounts, something didn’t quite ring true. The versions differed in significant detail, and some of the aspects, particularly about the local people, didn’t cohere with Asher’s experiences as a volunteer teacher in the Sudan or his consequent time living with a Bedouin tribe. So, with the blessing of Sergeant Phillips’s family, and with a BBC film-crew in tow, he set off to retrace the team’s journey, almost ten years later.
I knew very little about the initial mission and sequela, though I’d heard of both McNab and Ryan as writers of military fiction (the former particularly for a YA audience) and had some vague awareness of military backgrounds, the SAS and heroism. The rapid immersion into the events was a little overwhelming but generally compelling, and I felt Asher was even-handed though with sympathies inclined toward Phillips from the outset – justifiably, as it turns out. He explores the possibility that his findings, from interviews with key Iraqi figures to the geography, may be untrue, falsified or manipulated by the Iraqi government (his research was conducted pre-September 11), and he given strong reasons in support of believing these versions over the textual ones.
That the men displayed feats of heroism and amazing endurance is never questioned, but many of the significant details are strongly called into question. As Asher concludes,

Their true heroism is only marred… by the dubious nature of much of what they have subsequently written. So why was the basic story not enough?
The blame must lie not with McNab and Ryan, but with us, the reading public, who demand of our heroes not only endurance, but the esolution of all problems by force.

I was interested in how strongly shaped the mission was by lack of understanding of what they were headed for, and of the essential nature of the majority of people they would encounter – Bedouin rather than Iraqi. As a social scientist I was fascinated by the idea of conducting this kind of operation without any sociological briefing, or with even one member of the party being able to speak any of the languages of the region. The SAS members’ attitude was heavily influenced by the kind of propaganda common in war, of the enemy as inhumane and brutish, and this is mirrored in the authors’ accounts of events. Asher compares the captured men’s treatment with that meted out by the Gestapo and by the Korean army during those wars, ending this section with:

it has to be said, in all fairness, and without excusing them in any sense for their brutality, that in retrospect the SAS might have done far worse than to fall into Iraqi hands. If it had been the Provisional IRA into whose clutches they had fallen, it is most unlikely they would have survived.

The comparisons between McNab and Ryan’s texts reminded me at times of theological comparisons of the Gospels, particularly John Shelby Spong's marvellous but somewhat inaccessible work surrounding the Crucifixion and Resurrection, which was unexpected. This is not intended to any way minimise the courage of the soldiers nor the strength, courage and endurance they demonstrated, but I found The Real Brave Two Zero all in all an interesting and well-written investigative piece into an event that has been mythologised in British military lore, and am interested in reading the two original versions of events.- Alex

Michael Baigent: The Jesus Papers

From the back of the book:

• What if everything we have been told about the origins of Christianity is a lie?

  What if a small group had always known the truth and had kept it hidden…until now?

  What if there is incontrovertible proof that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion?

  What were the most influential social and political events of Jesus’ day?

  Who could have aided and abetted Jesus and why?

  Where could Jesus have gone after the crucifixion?

  What is the truth behind the creation of the New Testament?

  Who is working to keep the truth buried and why?

This is another offering from the best-selling co-author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail-first published over twenty years ago and used as a source for Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code (just thought I’d get that fact in nice and early-not that the introduction labours the point or anything).
I’ve always loved a conspiracy theory and a well presented, well argued and well supported religious conspiracy theory is not to be passed by. My memories of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, distant though they are, are for the main part positive so I went into this book with expectations of finding reasonable speculation with a possible, if unsubstantiated, logical base.
And it is there in the claim that (mysteriously disappeared) documentation exists strongly suggestive of Jesus’ survival, but in nowhere near the detail I had hoped to find it.
Much of this book is devoted to chronicling the known history of the period-interesting enough in itself but by no means necessary for even a casual scholar of the period. There is also some rehashing of old arguments about whether Jesus was really a victim of the Jews or the Romans (for the sake of this argument there is no question of his existence in appropriate place and time). Nothing revolutionary here. A nod is given to the creation of the New Testament by the church and mention made of much that was left out. Again, hardly a new, or controversial, idea.
The bulk of the book focuses on Egyptian mystery cults and the possibility that Jesus was an initiate. And while it is an interesting theory, evidence is thin on the ground and discussion is predominantly about the cults, not about Jesus’ possible association with them.
Certainly I didn’t see any incontrovertible proof that Jesus survived the crucifixion, any indication of who may have aided and abetted him or where he might have spent the rest of his life.
Part way through the book the author does go off on an unexpected tangent about his travels in Baia. I am yet to see how this relates to Jesus in any way.
Reading the above you could be forgiven for thinking I didn’t particularly like this book. The truth is, it’s not that bad. I just felt that it didn’t fulfil the promises it made by way of answering the questions it posed on the jacket. For a newcomer to Christian conspiracy theory it’s a good enough place to start. But, honestly, there’s little here that hasn’t been seen before. -Lynn

Sold – Patricia McCormick

Lakshmi’s Nepalese family is struggling to survive, thanks in no small part to her step-father – unable to work because of an arm that was fractured and not set in childhood, he instead spends all day gambling. Lakshmi is the star pupil at her small school, and helps her mother with growing the meagre crops they need to survive. She hopes her baby brother will live long enough to have a name, unlike the sons who died. She is promised in marriage to a boy her own age, and though they don’t talk she from time to time glances shyly at him and thinks he looks at her, too.
When a glamorous woman comes to her small village, Lakshmi’s step-father sends her off to work in the city in exchange for enough money to repay their debts, buy a new outfit for her mother, and maybe even a tin roof that won’t leak. Lakshmi is sad to leave behind her mother, brother and baby goat, but pleased to be able to help her family. She hopes to return home to visit at festival time, but very soon learns that she’s been sold for a very different purpose than she imagined, and will never see her home again.
This story of child slavery and forced prostitution is powerful and clearly well researched. Lakshmi has a clear voice, and her narration is consistent (at least as far as I can tell) with her age, experiences and background. The cultural mores are reflected without comment –

a son will always be a son... But a girl is like a goat. Good as long as she gives you milk and butter. But not worth crying over when it’s time to make a stew

and

even a man who gambles away what little we have… is better than no man at all

– which just increases their impact on a Western reader. The various strategies for keeping child prostitutes from fleeing are described from the perspective of the enslaved children, and the bleakness and depression of the situation are intelligently portrayed in a fist person narrative.
Yet for some reason I didn’t really connect with Sold, and though I’ve spent some time thinking about it I can’t work out why that is. Part of the reason probably lies in the close reading proximity of this to Identical, which deals with related, powerful themes in a way I connected strongly too. Perhaps, too, though abhorrent and though I contribute money to organizations fighting this practice, there were no surprising revelations that struck me when reading Sold.
The novel concludes with factual information about human trafficking and child prostitution in the developing world, with a note specifically about Australia (where some three hundred women a year are trafficked too, and an estimated 1,000 are currently sex slaves) and some information about Nepal. I can see Sold being used as a set text in schools, and as an aid for workers in the field. But, despite its strong and important message, it just didn’t resonate with me. - Alex

We Have to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

Franklin and Eva Khatchadourian were in almost every way polar opposites - a location finder, he was staunchly American, Republican, and saw no need to leave home and see the rest of the world. Eva, on the other hand, was a Democrat who loved to travel and created one of the first budget travel guides for young Americans going overseas. Despite this they were deeply compatible and deeply in love. Until the decision - almost wholly Franklin's - to have a child.
Three days before his sixteenth birthday, their son Kevin went to his school armed and shot adults and children. In a series of deeply honest and revealing letters to her absent husband, whom she still deeply loves, Eva explores how this happened, alternating a fairly chronological sequence with more contemporary events, including visiting Kevin in jail. In the process she discusses and analyses their marriage and discloses details about her relationship with and attitude toward Kevin that Franklin had not previously been told about. As the letters go one way, Eva projects Franklin's responses to some of her reports and replies to them, so at times there's almost a dialogue through which we learn more about the polarising effect of Kevin's presence on his parents.
This is one of the most difficult reviews I've written in a long time, primarily because the unfolding details are an integral part of the narrative style so I've tried to balance plot description with keeping surprises intact. We Need to Talk About Kevin is perhaps the most gripping and fascinating book I've read this year. Eva's voice is opinionated and merciless, filled with tart asides and commentary, and she would certainly be difficult to live with. Far from a 'born mother' she dislikes virtually every aspect of motherhood, a confession that is both markedly contrary to community expectation and familiar to many women.
The unrelieved first person account is a magnificent example of the unreliable narrator - hers is the only perspective we have of Kevin; though she includes Franklin's increasingly starry-eyed view of his beloved son, Eva makes it clear that she thinks he's unable to face what she sees as the truth. I was compelled by her interpretations of Kevin's behaviour, from infancy to adolescence, which never allow for anything but malice. At the same time I increasingly asked whether he was really born bad or if it was Eva's unrelenting hostility that created this annihilating child, and this tension forms an integral part of the reading experience.
After writing my review I checked what other readers had written, and was struck by how many Amazon reviewers disliked the book because Eva was unsympathetic. She's certainly not warm and fuzzy, but for me that was an intrinsic part of the novel's attraction. In some ways her unsentimental pragmatism and clear outlook reminded me of Lynn, which may have made me more sympathetic toward her. Well, that and my own perception that gestating fetuses are parasitic, babies are the more egotistic creation on earth, small children sometimes go out of their way to be annoying, being a mother is ludicrously difficult, and instant mother-child bonds are vanishingly rare.
Provided you can be comfortable with a protagonist who shares these, and even harsher, opinions about her own offspring then you, too, may find We Need to Talk About Kevin a fascinating, resonant and compelling read that deserves its prominent position on best seller lists and book group schedules. If, however, you prefer your mother figures doting and cosy, you may prefer to pass. - 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

Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain

In 1914 Vera Brittain was twenty and about planning to study at Oxford, but a chain of events precipitated a war the likes of which the world had never before seen, and four years later the world, and Vera's generation, had changed in ways unimagined and unimaginable less than half a decade earlier.
The first volume of an autobiographical trilogy, Testament of Youth is Brittain's lauded reflection on that period of time. A great and lengthy work, it is not only a classic account of the Great War years but of feminist literature - it not only reflects on her own experiences but follows the impact of that war on a generation.
Or at least that's what the references to Testament of Youth that lead me to seek it out say. However I just couldn't get into it at all. I'm not sure if it was the style, the length, or just that I picked the wrong time to attempt it, but I skipped over much of the laudatory introduction and still couldn't make it to chapter 2 (entitled "Provincial Young-Ladyhood").
A taste, from pp. 27-28:

It would not, I think, be possible for any present-day girl of the same age to even imagine how abysmally ignorant, how romantically idealistic and how utterly unsophisticated my more sensitive comtemporaries and I were at this time. The naïveties of the diary which I began to write consistently soon after leaving school, and kept up until more than half-way through the War, must be read in order to be believed.

Not so much interested, but I appreciate the offer. - Alex

The To Do List - Mike Gayle

British author Mike Gayle is married, mortgaged, with a daughter and a child on the way. Yet, on the eve of his 36th birthday he still doesn't feel like a proper adult, at least not in comparison with his new and unquestionably grown up neighbours. He and wife Claire are fairly certain Derek and Jessica don't leave milk spilled under the fridge for weeks on end, or still wear undies over a decade old. Long a list writer, Mike writes an oberlist that ends up being 1,277 items long - it ranges from "eat more salad" to "clean windows" (numbers 1 and 1,277 respectively), and covers aspects of family life ("fly kite with child"), friendship ("have John and Sue over for dinner"; "post Jackie and Mark's unposted Christmas card"), love ("write love letters to wife like I used to"), self improvement ("read something by Freud"; "get to know cheese") and fiddly bits of business ("finish Guardian quick crossword begun in April").
To ensure he stuck to it, Gayle emailed all his friends with his intention to do all of his list within a year, giving them permission to tease him unmercifully if he failed. He inadvertently included his agent in the mass emailing, who approached a publisher, which is not only how Gayle stuck to it but also how The To-Do List became a book.
Gayle's voice is straight-forward, funny and honest. From the first page I found points of reference, from the unread (but once longed-for) DVD box sets to the evil siren call of procrastination and the arduousness of tackling War and Peace.
The book combines his attempts to meet his aims with reflections on his life, and the year he spent between birthdays was more than a pursuit of adulthood - it was an opportunity to reconnect with friends and family, reassess relationships, and take stock of his life. As an inveterate writer of many undone To Do lists I was inspired to create my own, far more modest 250-item version that I similarly hope to achieve by this time next year. One item is writing reviews of books in a more timely manner - Alex

Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford

Love in a Cold Climate returns to the decade between the First and Second World Wars. Like its forerunner, The Pursuit of Love, it is narrated by Fanny. This time the emphasis is less strongly on her Radlett cousins, though they and the other members of the family certainly appear. We learn more about Fanny's adult life, and the beginnings of her marriage to Alfred, an academic at Oxford. But the main focus is on the Lord and Lady Montdore, neighbours of Uncle Matthew and Aunt Sadie. Their beautiful and only daughter Polly creates an unthinkable scandal shortly after the death of her aunt, resulting in her outraged and jilted mother cutting off all contact.
The property is entailed, and though the heir (an American) has never expressed an interest in the stately home, the Montdore's contact him. In no time Cedric replaces Polly in Lady Montdore's affections - articulate, aesthetic and effete, Cedric manages to revamp her image and brighten her life.
A longer and more rounded novel than its' predecessor, Love in a Cold Climate is justifiably better known, but reading the Pursuit of Love first does enhance ones' enjoyment. As in the first novel misconceptions that some things are modern inventions, from children's awareness of sex to promiscuity and homosexuality, are disabused. This is a joyous, absorbing and fascinating novel, deserving of its status as a literary classic. - Alex

Tunnel Vision - Sullivan McLeod

At the age of 29, after much travelling, "a lifetime of silly ideas" and the odd bit of stand up, Sully McLeod decided, while in a Norwegian sauna, that he was going to try to make it as a professional surfer. Okay, he was overweight, unfit, broke, and hadn't surfed since he was eleven, but it was an idea.
Subtitled The true story of my probably insane quest to become a professional surfer, Tunnel Vision is the story of the nine months McLeod spent training (mostly drinking) in his home town of Margaret River, funding (persuading a brother to add on to the size of a business loan), and competing (see 'training) in Indonesia, South Africa, England, France Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Hawaii. Along the way he meets a variety of predominantly agreeable people, has almost everything he own stolen (including his boards), and winds up in a detention cell because he entered a country without a visa.
This is a highly entertaining and genuinely interesting tale that made me nostalgic for the misspent, impulsive youth I managed to avoid. The irreverent tone and 'she'll be right' attitude could only be Australian, and I found McLeod's take on his homeland as interesting as his account of the circuit, with the added bonus that it wasn't complicated by surf speak (there's a handy glossary at the back, though). I particularly liked his description of Melbourne as a place where, if you distilled its essence you'd have "a young woman with pink beads in her hair who studies law during the day and karate at night."
There aren't any great insights or life changing events, and this travel book has much in common with others written by young globe trotting men in their twenties, but it was amusing and the quest was absorbing enough that I almost feel bad McLeod won't get anything from my having read it, as I polished off Tunnel Vision in a spare hour or so between meeting a friend for coffee and meeting my parents for dinner. - Alex

My Voice Will Go With You - Sidney Rosen (ed)

Milton Erickson was a psychotherapist who used stories as an integral part of both teaching and conducting therapy. The stories often seemed spontaneous and unrelated to the problem at hand, but were in reality carefully constructed therapeutic tools.
Subtitled The Teaching Tales of Milton Erickson, in My Voice Will Go With You Ericksonian acolyte Rosen has gathered some of his most well known and pivotal case studies and stories. Rosen contextualises each section or story, and suggest reason why each one is effective, or how is demonstrates Ericksonian theory, providing insight Erickson's process - a proponent of neurolingusitic programming (NLP) and hypnotherapy, Erickson used metaphor and indirect suggestions to influence his patients' outcomes, emphasising rapid therapeutic change in a comparatively short period of time.
The language he used was key, and Erickson utilised individual facts about his patients (from their backgrounds, beliefs, history, habits and the metaphors they themselves used) to tailor his approach to the individual - he believed that the unconscious was always alert and, provided there was resonance with what was said, hypnotic suggestions could cause therapeutic change even without the patient having any conscious knowledge that a suggestion had been made. Rosen notes that the written word is a poor substitute for the full effect of hearing Erickson speak, as cadence and tempo significantly influence the impact of his words.
Though I had heard of Erickson, I had no idea of anything about him beyond the fact that he was a therapist. I read My Voice Will Go With You because my mother recommended it, and had no particular expectation of the book. I was fascinated by the concept and the execution, and the key idea of Erickson's that prescribing problem behaviour can diminish its power. There are two examples of this that stayed with me - the first was when Erickson's (then school-aged) daughter told him that everyone else at school bit their nails and she needed to do the same. Erickson told her she could easily catch up if she bit her nails for fifteen minutes every hour, making the activity a chore that she decided not to do. The second story involved a patient who cycled her weight between a hundred and a hundred and eighty pounds - she came to Erickson to keep the weight off permanently, and he told her to gain weight until she was two hundred pounds, insisting she reach this target even when she was only two pounds away from the weight he set. In a similar story a woman who could never stick to her diet for more than three weeks was told that she had to binge on the twenty-first day of a diet, then start anew on the twenty-second day, turning her previous (problem) behaviour into compliance.
My Voice Will Go With You is the first book in many years that I have wanted to re-read as soon as I finished it. This was partly because the stories and the concept are powerful, partly because I'm using narrative as a methodology in my research, and significantly because I feel differently about a number of aspects of my life (including weight, activity and food) since finishing the book. I most certainly didn't expect to reap a therapeutic change just from reading the text, and it's still early days, but it's a very interesting effect. I'm also intrigued by Erickson and suspect I'll be reading more, so watch this page. - Alex

My Best Friend Has Issues - Laura Marney

Alison, Scottish and friendless, has moved to Barcelona to change her life. Still recovering from a severe bout of glandular fever that not only left her organs vulnerable but also caused a dramatic and attractive weight loss, Alison casts the events around her as imaginary postcards to her former 'best' friends, who are lumpen, hateful, and trapped in dead-end lives back home in Cumbernauld, near Glasgow.
Alison hopes for glamour, and an end to her virginity. When her initial search for accommodation that is neither ludicrously expensive or disgustingly filthy is aborted by the discovery of a blood-covered body on a flight of stairs, Alison flees, certain (for some unknown reason) that she'll be charged with the murder of a man she'd never met. Rescued by American heiress Chloe, Alison discovers a very different life - Chloe allows her to stay, rent-free, is generous with her possessions, and asks only that Alison water maria (her colony of dope plants) and tend to her dog Gita (and her eight new puppies).
Leaving aside the medical inaccuracies (long-term liver impairment is not a complication of mononucleosis/Epstein-Barr virus/glandular fever, a fact easily checked), My Best Friend Has Issues is a very odd book. The cover portrays not only a pair of tanned legs with ankle floaties and high heels against a blue-skies-and-green-water backdrop, but also the tag line "If you suffer from giggle incontinence, beware!" I grant you this is something on a par with 'romp' as an indicator that no humour lies within, and in that I was not betrayed. However I think I could be forgiven for believing that My Best Friend Has Issues was at least a fairly light hearted holiday read.
It's not, though it's hard to say what it actually is, as Marney seems unsure about her target genre. Certainly not light (or any) comedy, chick lit or romance, there are elements of coming of age (that don't come off), an interesting but half-hearted revenge, shades of SWF in the unequal and increasingly bizarre relationship between the women, and a really unexpected, disjointed and shocking (not in a positive way) epilogue that made no sense to me at all. The epilogue reverses several aspects of both Alison and Chloe but, unlike well-crafted twists, there was no 'a-ha!' moment wherein puzzling pieces fell in to place. I found no hint of the twist in the preceding novel, and it served merely to add to my dissatisfaction with the novel as a whole.
And if you think I'm being too harsh, try this sample from the text on for size:

Weeks ago, resisting the temptation to invite the buck-toothed Frank into my hospital bed, I'd decided that the first man I slept with would be gorgeous and sexy. Was Ewan a worthy recipient of my favours? The criterion, like my gloriously intact hymen, was tight.

Need I say more? - Alex

A Darker Domain - Val McDermid

It seems like the coldest of cold cases when DI Karen Pirie is asked to locate a man missing for almost quarter of a decade, but Mick Prentice's daughter is desperate to find a potential bone marrow match for her dying child. She and her mother had closed their hearts to Mick since the night he, and five other scabs, vanished from the mining town of Newton of Wemyss in the middle of the 1984 national miner's strike; anonymous envelopes of money begin arriving shortly afterward, postmarked Nottingham. It was, according to all account, atypical for a man so devoted to the cause, but emotions and tension were high, and the devastating effects of Thatcher's union busting strategies had left many families in despair. Only, when Karen looks, Mick isn't in Nottingham with the other scabs...
At the same time as Mick's disappearance, a young mother and her infant child were kidnapped in nearby Fife. The only child and grandchild of wealthy Sir Broderick McLellan Grant, they were worth a small fortune, a price Grant was prepared to pay. However, in the handover process something went awry, and Grant's daughter was shot dead, his grandson vanished, and his wife died by her own hand shortly thereafter. Two decades on Grant is remarried, with a young son, but his first family have never left his mind. When journalist Bel Richmond discovers a clue to the mystery while in Tuscany, the case is reopened.
There is an interesting duality throughout the novel - two cases, two places, two mysteries, two very different social landscapes, and two eras - as the text switches between between police and journalistic investigations, and between 1984/85 and 2007. In general, as a character references events in the past the text takes us there, providing a concrete example (which I'm usually so poor at doing) of what sets McDermid's work above the usual mystery hack's efforts.
I particularly liked the neat and integral incorporation of the social contexts of the strike action - the consequences for miners at the time, the corruption of the union, and the pressures on both those who stayed and those who left. Markedly different from her well-known Wire in the Blood series, A Darker Domain is ambitiously complex and it's all show no tell, gripping and nuanced, with a spectacular pay off.
These strong elements make the obvious connection between the cases, and the length of time it takes Karen to discover them, all the more disappointing. As I've said before, I don't read mysteries with the intention of discovering what happened for myself, so when I do I'm usually displeased. I was waiting for a twist to reveal that I'd been mislead, but instead the novel concludes with a character acting without forethought and in unnecessary panic. Many of the characters were at least partly unpleasant, leaving me nobody to root for.
However, McDermid sub-par is still better than many of her colleagues, and for the most party I did enjoy A Darker Domain, and look forward to more of her work. - Alex

QBVIII - Leon Uris

Once a prisoner in Poland's notorious Jadwiga Concentration Camp, Dr Adam Kelno fled England when, though defeated, a false charge of sadistic medical practice there resulted in extradition charges to his homeland. Takign his wife and children Kelno practiced in a remote colonial outpost in Borneo, bringing a degree of civilisation to a backward and remote tribe. After much pateint work with the tribe he was able to bring about significant changes, changes that resulted in international publication, and he felt it safe to return to England, only to discover that he's been named as a Nazi collaborator, the emsculator (without anesthesia) of some 15,ooo fellow prisoners. Outraged, Kelno sues, and "one of the greatest fictional trials of the century" unfolds - first Kelno's story and then, damningly, his accusers'.
Apparently. Because I really tried but Kelno's personality was so unpleasant, and so persistently anti-Semitic, that I couldn't develop any interest in him at all, and I found the text choppy and similarly unengaging. The testimony is written, at least in the copy I read, in all caps, which I found distracting and unhelpful, as well as difficult to read.
All this is a shame, because I found the underlying premise fascinating, and am interested in many of the aspects of the book - the aftermath of the War on survivors, the the factors that allowed people to cooperate with the camps (on all sides), collaboration, resistance and, particularly, medical professionals subverted to the interests of their captors.
If you're interested in what happened after page 72, check out the Wikipedia entry - that's where I stopped. - Alex