To start with I must apologise for being so late in posting this month’s blog. Two things have got in the way. The birth of a granddaughter. And the need to clear things out of the way before starting to write the 50,000 word novel for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). I’ve tried to do this in the past, but have never managed to complete the requisite 50,000 words. I’m determined this year. I’ve sorted out the beginning and end and roughly what needs to take place between them. You are allowed to do that before November starts according to www.NaNoWriMo.org . But you may not write one word of the novel itself.
However, back to September. Having recovered from travelling round New Zealand in a campervan for three and a half weeks in August, I started reading again with a vengeance.
I’ll start with the Non-Fiction. Douglas Palmer’s Seven million years was all about the evolution of Homo sapiens from his ape forebears to the present form of the species. It’s a fascinating book with plenty of good illustrations. After that I read Vook’s rather simple How to Draw People. But then, I need that sort of guidebook. And followed it up with Life in Cape Town by various denizens of the city. This gave a lot less than it offered.
To make up for that, however, I read Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere and Alfroxden Journals edited by Pamela Woof. William Wordsworth the poet should have an acknowledgement to his sister Dorothy not only on the back of the Title page, but also at the top of just about every poem he wrote. Her eyes saw things first and he then wrote about them. Apologies to all Wordsworth fans out there. But just read the journals and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve always loved John Donne’s poetry and have even read some of his sermons when they’ve been included in collections of his works. David L Edwards’s biography of him, John Donne, man of flesh and spirit made me want to read every one of his sermons as well as re-read all his poetry. It’s a wonderful portrait of the man and his age. In the second half of the 19th century Mikhail Bulgakov, qualified as a doctor and spent the first year of his qualified life deep in the Russian countryside. He recorded this experience in A Country Doctor’s Notebook.
William Fiennes’ brilliant autobiographical The Music Room is a superb and entertaining read, giving the reader the chance to see what life was like for a child living in a castle that was visited by the public. A book that is not necessarily to everyone’s taste is St Cuthbert, History, Cult and his community to AD 1200. It explores through a series of detailed and highly academic papers near enough everything related to the late 7th century saint, from his death right up to the establishment of the monastic community in Durham. It’s well worth reading a chapter at a time.
The last of my non-fiction books is about forced marriage. In Sold Zana Muhsen tells the story of how her Yemeni father in Britain sold her and her sister to Yemeni families as brides and her desperate struggle to escape from there. It brings tears to your eyes and anger to your heart.
Now for Fiction. Ann H Gebhart’s The Outsider is about a shaker community in 18th century America and how it struggles to force a girl/young woman to stay in it rather than join with the local doctor who she has fallen in love with. In the end she gets her man, but not without adventures. Vicento Blasco Ibanez’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the extraordinary story of a Brazilian family with connections to both Germany and France with the result that two brothers end up fighting on opposite sides during the First World War. JR Tomlin’s Freedom Sword is all about the 12th century history of Scotland when the Scots fought the English King Edward I was trying to occupy it as his own territory.
Freedom Sword
J R Tomlin
Smashwords, 2011; iii + 272
ISBN:
This is an historical novel set at a time of crisis in late 13th century Scotland. King Alexander has died without an heir and so the English king Edward has been asked to judge between two contenders for the throne. His choice is John Balliol.
The story starts in 1296 with Balliol’s Scottish army trying to stop an English advance. Andrew de Moray and his father are in a unit trapped by the English. They are wounded and taken captive. Balliol, in another action, is also taken captive but he is made to renounce the Scottish throne in favour of King Edward.
The Scottish prisoners are shackled and made to march south under heavy guard. When they reach Chester, King Edward orders Lord Lacey to keep Andrew de Moray prisoner on his behalf. He is locked in a dungeon where there is no light and is only given water and food in small quantities at irregular intervals. In the dark he manages to work a stone loose from the wall. When the guard next comes in, Andrew kills him with the stone, steals his clothes and manages to escape with a horse. He heads east rather than the north his captors expect him to go. In the end he reaches Elgin where his uncle is dean of the Cathedral. The monks treat a wound and help get him back to health. Then the English arrive and Andrew is smuggled out of the Cathedral to a leprosarium which the English soldiery will never dare to enter.
He makes his way back to his father’s lands which have been over run by the English. He hides in a cave with friends. With help from his uncle and some Elgin lay brothers they ambush an English supply train and capture an important English pennant which they can misuse to confound other English troops they come across. Then they take his father’s castle of Avoch from the English and use it as a base to recruit and train an army of peasants leavened with a few proper knights. They stockpile arms for this gathering army.
Over time, Andrew’s forces steadily re-conquer the principal castles of NE Scotland from the English. While all this has been going on in NE Scotland, William Wallace has been similarly active against the English in SW Scotland. Andrew and Wallace meet and coordinate their activities. At Stirling, on 11th September 1297, the Scottish army defeated the English. But the hero of this book, Andrew de Moray, is so badly wounded that he dies.
The Appendices to this novel are useful and very helpful. The map on page 294 shows the effectiveness of a well-designed and simple map. It is a model I wish more cartographers would follow.
Niccolo Ammaniti’s Me and You is the sad story of a brother and half-sister in Italy.
Me and You
Niccolo Ammaniti
Translated by Kylee Doust
Canongate, 2010; v + 156
ISBN: g978-0-85786-197-9
The main part of this novel is set in Rome in 2000. It is framed by two short sections set in Guidale del Friuli in 2010.
The narrative starts with Lorenzo in Guidale del Friuli holding a piece of paper his half-sister Olivia gave him on 24th February 2000 when he was 14 and she 23.
In 2000 Lorenzo is a troubled child who lives entirely in his own dream world. He is alienated from all the other pupils at school and has been from a very young age. His parents, very worried by this, have sent him to psychiatrists top unravel his problems. But it hasn’t worked. It’s just that, at secondary school, he can hide his alienation more effectively.
You can imagine his mother’s joy when he tells her he’s been invited by a school ‘friend’ (real) to go skiing with her family for a week. She can’t do enough for him. However, the skiing trip – while real – doesn’t involve him as he’s invented the invitation. Instead, he plans on spending the week in the family’s store room in their apartment block’s basement. He has a bed, TV, radio and food and drink supplies. His mother phones any number of times asking to speak to his friend’s mother. Only every time he says she’s otherwise occupied. After a couple of days his mother starts to get a bit suspicious.
In the middle of the night Lorenzo is woken by his sister Olivia breaking into the store room. She is high on drugs she has bought after having sex in a car park with a man for money. She lies on a couch and sleeps to start with. Lorenzo feeds her. The truth is that she is a drug addict who has decided to go cold turkey after the experience with the man in the car park. After two terrible days she tells Lorenzo to get some sleeping tablets so she can sleep through the withdrawal symptoms. He manages to get some from his grandmother’s bag. But he is unable to get back into the basement without being seen for ages. By then, Olivia has ransacked the furniture and clothes stored in the room and found something that will serve as a sleeping pill. When she has recovered from the withdrawal symptoms, Lorenzo persuades her to pretend to be his friend’s mother the next time his mother phones. That keeps her happy for the rest of the skiing week.
Lorenzo and Olivia talk at length about their families because they haven’t seen each other for years. She really hates their father which is the main reason he has seen her so rarely. Eventually they go to sleep. When Lorenzo wakes Olivia has gone. She leaves him a sheet of paper saying that she can’t cope with goodbyes. She also promises him that she will never take drugs again.
The novel ends in 2010 in Guidale del Friuli where he has an appointment. He is taken to the morgue to identify Olivia who has died in a bar from a drug overdose.
This is a well written (or should that be well translated?) novel that keeps you reading right to the end. I just wish I knew more about what happened to Lorenzo in the ten years between the two dates of the action. Will we ever learn more?
Vassily Grossman’s Forever Flowing is a strange soviet novel in which the bulk of the text is given over to criticising, if not damning, the whole of the soviet social and economic structure. It’s a fascinating book and a good follow up to Life and Fate, for those who’ve read it.
Donna McDonald’s Dating a Cougar is a good romance to read in the autumn evenings. Sylvia Day’s Catching Caroline is two short stories about vampire love. It’s very definitely a good and entertaining read. Myne Whitman’s A heart to mend is another good modern romance as is Lucy Kevin’s Sparks Fly. Justine Elyot’s Erotic Amusements is a good story mainly about corruption and human exploitation.
Erotic Amusements
Justine Elyot
Carina Press, 2011; vi + 192
ASIN: B005CRQ41S
The focus of this novel is corruption, how deeply embedded it can become in a small seaside town called Goldsands and how the innocent can be drawn in.
Flipp is a pretty girl without a family, background or references whop is employed by Charles Cordwainer to man the kiosk in an amusement arcade. He has numerous businesses in the town, knows everyone who is anyone, and has designs on developing a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Flipp meets Rocky when he comes to the arcade. He does all sorts of odd jobs for Cordwainer and warns Flipp about him and tells her to get another job. They enjoy each other’s company and end up falling in love.
In another part of the town, Michelle and her husband once owned a B & B which Cordwainer has now bought. She runs it during the day for him but is required to do other services for him at night. He calls her Miss Object when she is tied down to a table and caned in front of town worthies meeting in a room above the amusement arcade. They all also have sex with her afterwards. Cordwainer then gives Michelle to Councillor Trewin for him to treat her as he wishes.
Michelle meets a journalist on the local paper and, after discovering that he has already discovered a lot about the corruption in Goldsands gives him some detailed information about Charles Cordwainer. His editor refuses to touch it without concrete evidence to back up what he says. Michelle eventually provides this and the story is published, much to the discomfort of Cordwainer.
Rocky and Flipp, warned about the article, go into hiding in a campsite. Michelle also goes there to hide. However, the man Rocky has asked to provide a boat for them to go to France with, has told Cordwainer. So when they go to escape in the boat, Cordwainer’s men as well as the police are there to catch them. Cordwainer is shot but not killed. Rocky is wounded. And Flipp finds herself taken by a metropolitan policeman who had her in his abusive care for three years before she managed to escape.
Finally, all comes good. Rocky and Flipp get together for good. Laura disowns her father when the truth about his involvement with Cordwainer’s sex group emerges as well as his ownership of Michelle. And the Met officer gets his just deserts.
I really enjoyed this well-written book. It is no ordinary romance. With all its twists and turns, the story you hooked from page one and never lets go until the last page.
Joely Sue Burkhart’s Golden is a short novel inspired by a Chinese original that keeps your attention from beginning to end.
Golden
Joely Sue Burkhart
Carina Press, 2011; iv + 68
ISBN: 978-14268-9214-1
Two ideas lie at the centre of this novella set in China: friendship and loyalty. It starts with a woman with amber eyes who, from the age of about 8, had been trained to please the Emperor in whatever way he chose. When she first came to court he had gifted her to his oldest son as a wife. Her husband preferred other women to her right from the start of their marriage and so there were no children.
The woman at the centre of this story had a mentor called General Wan. Before she came to court he had trained her to the highest level in sword and bow and in court etiquette. He had also provided her with some secret knowledge about the emperor. Before the emperor reached the throne, he and his close friend, General Wan, had been fighting a war. On one occasion they won a battle but lost many of their own men. The Emperor was grief stricken by this. In the end he took out his rage on a woman by beating her severely with a leather strap and then having violent sex with her. His conscience made him reward her generously. At the same time, he sent General Wan to govern at the edges of the empire.
The woman, who ended up as wife of the oldest son, had also been trained to withstand considerable pain. After a time she learned to gain pleasure from it.
She came to his attention in the court because of her kindness to her servants. He asked her to come and talk to him once a week because she was clever and this entertained him. Their relationship slowly develops and they start to have sex. She then suggests he beat her. And things go on from there. Meanwhile, her husband has become incandescently jealous of her. He believes she is being unfaithful to him and that she won’t reveal who her partner is. He takes her down to the punishment courtyard and orders his men to savagely whip her until she reveals her partner. The Emperor intervenes, but not before she has been badly injured.
The empress and her son, the current heir, as well as her husband plot to kill the woman. Luckily for her, she is able to use the weapon training she received as a girl and ends up alive while her enemies are all dead. The Emperor ends up marrying her.
This lovely story is based on a Tang Dynasty (AD 618 – 907) tale. The Tang period is the Golden Age of Chinese poetry and a high point for short story fiction. If this story is anything to go by, let’s have lots more of them rewritten in English.
I really enjoyed Janet Mullany’s Tell me more about the trouble a radio presenter gets into as a result of phone conversations when she is on air.
Tell me more
Janet Mullany
Spice, 2011; vi + 339
ISBN: 978-0-373-60558-3
This is the story of Jo Hutchinson who presents a late night programme of classical music on the local radio station. The story starts with her parting from her ex-boyfriend and meeting Patrick who is to become the tenant of part of her house.
At the radio station she has regular quiet phone conversations with a Mr D while the music is playing. These start out innocently enough, discussing the music. But over time they become more intimate and, ultimately, end up with mutual masturbation over the phone lines. She agrees to meet Mr D and is drawn into a complicated love life involving orgies, mutual stimulation and voyeurism. She sort of enjoys all this and signs a contract with an innocent sounding Association which is the cover name for a sophisticated sex club.
Then she and Patrick spend a weekend skiing and fall in love. She tells Mr D that she wants to leave the Association. He reminds her that to do so is problematic as she will have to pay £10,000.
She and Patrick attend a formal dinner organised by the Association. Everyone wears a mask. What Jo and Patrick don’t know is that they are the entertainment for the evening. They retire to bed in the room they have been given and have uninhibited sex. The others watch through two-way mirrors. Patrick discovers this and storms out. Jo thinks she has lost him forever and is extremely upset not only about this but also because she thinks Mr D and the Association have lied to her.
After a misunderstanding, Patrick storms up to the radio station while Jo is on air. They have a furious row which involves some explicit sexual content. This is accidentally broadcast.
At home, Jo gets a legalistic letter from the Association demanding £10,000 if she leaves. She manages to get Patrick to help her respond to it. He writes an appropriately worded response and demands a meeting to discuss the matter. As a result, the Association lets Jo leave without having to pay their penalty.
Jo’s friend Kimberley leaves the radio station to work raising money for a local shelter. She asks Jo to join them to deal with the media and marketing. Which she does. Jo doesn’t realise that Patrick helps them out with free legal advice. Then she goes home, strips naked, lies on her bed and phones Patrick, starting a new phone conversation like the one she had with Mr D …….
The story is told in good, literate English. Descriptions of buildings and the landscape are excellent, as it the scene setting. The multitude of twists and turns lead you all over the place. And, best of all, it is only at the end that you realise that the nice Mr D of the beginning is actually pretty evil. Patrick, on the other hand, …..
Claude Lambert’s On Pets and Men is a very entertaining collection of very short stories which focus on animals. H G ‘Buzz’ Bernard’s Eyewall is very definitely a different kettle of fish. It’s a real adventure story/thriller with a bit of romance on the side.
Eyewall
H W ‘Buzz’ Bernard
Bell Bridge Books, 2011; vi + 232
ISBN: 978-1611940015
If you didn’t know the detailed mechanics of a hurricane before opening this book, you certainly will by the time you close it. The story tracks the crew of a Hercules C-130 that is sent to fly through a Category 1 Hurricane in order to collect meteorological data. The pilot – a reservist who loves nothing more than flying - is on his last flight because his wife has forced him into resigning. The flight should be completely routine and he should be home in time for his daughter’s birthday. However, a meteorologist at a local TV station has noticed some anomalies on satellite photos and realises that the hurricane is going to be much more powerful than currently predicted and that its landfall will be on the Georgia coast rather than where originally suggested. He goes on air to warn about the coming threat and suggests evacuation in areas not currently under compulsory evacuation orders. The station owner is furious at this and sacks him on the spot. He and a female colleague leave the station and talk about what he’s seen.
Data fed to the hurricane centre from the Hercules show that the TV prediction of a Category 5 Hurricane and its revised landfall are correct. The plane gets trapped inside the eye of the hurricane after it loses the tip of a wing and then two out of its four engines fail. The meteorologists are recalled to the TV station after having been promised reinstatement and increased salaries.
As a result of the earlier broadcast people along the Georgia coast and the very low lying island of St Simon have already started evacuating inland. One family on the island is waiting for the oldest daughter to return from a date, only she has got trapped. They set off in their car, rescue her and then discover that the sea has surged and cut off all causeways to the mainland. Trapped themselves, they go to the highest point on the island, the airfield. In the howling wind and rain they are very surprised to see a Hercules landing on the runway. It’s the only chance the pilot has to save his crew. They rescue the family. Then they see a man and woman holding a baby. The pilot and co-pilot go out into the hurricane to rescue them. In the end the co-pilot is killed and the pilot injured, though the baby is saved.
There are happy endings for the co-pilot and the on-board meteorologist and the two weather forecasters on the TV station who also force the owner to formally reinstate them and increase their salaries.
The way this book is organised in time sections helps make the whole story gallop along. It is, in any case, an excellent thriller with romance thrown in for good measure.
I only read a few murder-mysteries and thrillers this month. I can’t think what is coming over me! To start with, Sheila Quigley’s Living on a prayer is a captivating police-procedural in which a fake religious group is investigated and found seriously wanting. It involves grooming young teenagers, sex and murder. All the fears of a parent. Philip Kerr’s A Quiet Flame follows the further career of Bernie Gunther’s career solving crimes and murders in the Third Reich. I am, I’m afraid addicted to this series of books, largely because I love Gunther’s way of thinking and doing things. And last of all, Martha Perry’s Hide in Plain Sight a clever suspense combined with romance.
