Category: 2009

Categories
2009 Crime Thriller

Acts of Violence – Ryan David Jahn

I am always on the look out for a good new crime book so when @crimeficreader described Acts of Violence as the best debut of 2009, during a twitter conversation, I decided to read a copy. It’s a Crime! is one of my favourite crime fiction blogs, so if you’re after some more recommendations then head over there!

Acts of Violence is based on the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese; a crime which over 30 people witnessed, but not one acted to save her life. This crime prompted an investigation into the social psychological phenomenon which became known as the bystander effect and this book takes a look at the reasons behind their inaction – why did so many people ignore her cries for help?

The book begins by focusing on Katrina (the fictional character based on Kitty). We follow her journey home and witness the attack:

It –  he – seems to be pulled toward her, like a yo-yo on a string, seems to glide toward her rather than walk. She doesn’t notice the sort of lumbering broken-machine flump-flump-flump a man walking normally has when he shuffles from one place to another. He just floats toward her menacingly.

The book then flipped between various characters living in the surrounding appartments. We hear of their problems (ranging from a woman who thinks she has just run over a baby, to a suicidal Vietnam draftee and a man looking after his dying mother), but I struggled to believe that so many people in such a small area were all facing critical points in their lives at exactly the same moment. The number of violent acts taking place also seemed unrealistic to me.

The large number of characters meant that we could only glimpse into their lives, never having the chance to really get to know them. It was an interesting explanation of the bystander effect, but I would have found it more realistic if the characters had been normal people who were simply too tired or confused to phone the police.

The book was fast paced and gripping throughout, but the numerous story threads meant that the book felt disjointed to me. It was a glimpse into a few hours of their lives, but I was left wanting to know more – how they felt once they’d heard of the crime and whether they really knew what was going on.

I’d recommend this to fans of crime fiction who don’t mind books without a mystery to solve.

The thoughts of other bloggers

…the most outstanding novel I have read this year. It’s a Crime!

…doesn’t leave enough room to truly explore all the issues it raises. Follow The Thread

This is an excellent, thought provoking novel… Hack Writers

Categories
2009 2010 Orange Prize Recommended books

Hearts and Minds – Amanda Craig

 Long listed for the Orange Prize 2010

Hearts and Minds seems to be one of the most praised books on the Orange long list this year. It’s London setting appealed to me and so I decided to read it, despite the fact it didn’t make the short list.

Hearts and Minds gives a snap-shot of life in London today. Its range of characters shows the diversity of people living in the capital city and the problems faced by them. We see asylum seekers, teachers, prostitutes, taxi-drivers and a whole range of other people. I normally struggle to cope with this many characters, but the vividness of the writing meant that each one jumped off the page and I had no trouble keeping track of them all.

The book impressively manages to combine a murder mystery with literary fiction. In many ways it reminded me of The Road Home by Rose Tremain, but I actually think that Hearts and Minds is the better book.

The story is split into several narratives which at first seem independent, but as it progresses connections are made until everything comes together in the final poignant chapters.

This isn’t a pleasant read; we witness the worst of London society, but the power of the words had me gripped from beginning to end.

He thinks about how, all along the street, there must be flats like this one in which other girls have been raped and beaten, flats that are perhaps now occupied by happy couples or successful professionals or pensioners, all with the same sash windows and lumpy corniced ceilings; and yet this horror has happened here. A sensation of lives layered on top of each other, which he will never know about, overwhelms Ian momentarily.

I have no idea why this book didn’t make the Orange short list. It deserved to be there.

The Thoughts of Other Bloggers

…even more gripping and packs more of a punch than anything I’ve read in 2010 so far. The B Files

It is page after page of unrelenting misery. Books Please

….characters so well-drawn that they become so close to you It’s a Crime!

…somehow Amanda Craig touches on the reality and the truth of this and you really do want to weep. Dovegreyreader

Are you planning to read Hearts and Minds?

Why didn’t this make the Orange short list?

Categories
2009 Books in Translation Chunkster Historical Fiction Other Prizes Recommended books

The Kindly Ones – Jonathan Littell

 

Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell

Winner of 2006 Prix Goncourt and the grand prix du roman of Académie française, Literary Review’s bad sex in fiction award 2009, 2010 Best Translated Book Award: Fiction Longlist, 2010 long list Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

The Kindly Ones is one of the most controversial books written in recent years. The book is a fictional biography of Max Aue, a senior SS officer, present during the Holocaust.  His job is to compile recommendations for future Nazi policy and so he travels to see the execution of the Jews, the German front line and finally the concentration camps. The fictional characters are weaved together with real people like Göring, Speer and Hitler; producing a well researched, compelling version of WWII.

The Kindly Ones is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. I have read a few individual scenes in books like A Fine Balance or Fugitive Pieces that almost equal the horror of the milder sections in this book, but the descriptions of the Holocaust were so intense and prolonged that I found this book very hard to read. There were times when I could only read a page or two before having to put the book down and do something else. Sometimes even that wasn’t enough and so I started skim reading sections. I found this didn’t help much as I was still painfully aware of what was happening, so I reverted to the slow, painful pace I had started with.

The whole book is like driving past a car crash – you know you shouldn’t look, but you do anyway  –  unable to resist the temptation to see how bad things really are.  I was gripped throughout, an amazing feat for a book so long. The prose is easy to read, but I did get a bit confused by some of the German military terms (most of which are explained in the back, but as I don’t really understand the British equivalent that didn’t help much!).

I expected the plot to emphasize the fact that the people involved in these terrible events had no choice in the matter – that it was basically ‘do or die’.

The man posted to a concentration camp, like a man assigned to an Einsatzkommando or a police battalion, most of the time doesn’t reason any differently: he knows that his free will has nothing to do with it, and that chance alone makes him a killer rather than a hero, or a dead man.

I was therefore surprised to see many opportunities for Max Aue to avoid ending up on the path he took. Initially I wondered why the book was written in this way, but then I realised how clever and realistic it was. The events leading up to the atrocities are obvious with hindsight, but to the people involved each step was so small that they were unaware of the final consequences. Many questioned the actions and were given what seemed to them to be reasonable justifications. For this book to change the way I view the Holocaust is an incredible achievement.

The Kindly Ones also contained many poignant scenes. I was particularly touched by this passage:

“I started sobbing: the tears froze on my face, I wept for my childhood, for a time when snow was a pleasure that knew no end, when a city was a wonderful space to live in, and when a forest was not yet a convenient place to kill people.”

Overall I’d describe this book as a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in the Holocaust, but the length and graphic descriptions of human suffering mean that most people should approach this book with caution. I will remember this book for the rest of my life and although I sometimes wish I could erase some scenes from my memory, on the whole I think it is helpful to remember that these events happened.

Do you want to read The Kindly Ones?

Categories
2009 Mystery

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a delightful cozy mystery. The book is set in a small English village in the 1950s and the story begins with 10-year-old Flavia de Luce finding a dead snipe on her doorstep. The bird has a postage stamp impaled on its beak and her father’s reaction to the discovery implies that this is a warning of worse to come. His fears are confirmed when a man is found dying in a cucumber patch.

Flavia de Luce is a budding chemist with access to a laboratory in her country house. She enjoys learning about poisons and other chemical reactions – I loved her! She was such a wonderful, quirky character and I liked reading about the preparation and effects of various poisons. She wasn’t entirely believable as a ten-year-old, but then much of the plot was a bit far fetched so I don’t think realism is the key aim of this book!

“I wonder, Flavia,” Inspector Hewitt said, stepping gingerly into the cucumbers, “if you might ask someone to organize some tea?”
He must have seen the look on my face.
“We’ve had rather an early start this morning. Do you think you could manage to rustle something up?”
So that was it. As at a birth, so at a death. Without so much as a kiss-me-quick-and-mind-the-marmalade, the only female in sight is enlisted to trot off, and see that the water is boiled. Rustle something up, indeed! What did he take me for, some kind of cowboy?

The plot was fast paced and entertaining. It needed little concentration – I read much of it on a train journey, a time when I find the noise prevents me from reading anything too deep. The ending wasn’t earth-shattering, but the light mystery was well resolved.

Overall I enjoyed my journey back into the charming life of 1950s England and while I won’t be rushing out to buy the next in the series (The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag ) I’m sure I’ll get round to it at some point.

Did you enjoy The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie?

Which is your favourite cozy mystery?

Categories
2009 Other Prizes Recommended books

I Do Not Come To You By Chance – Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2010, Best First Book: Africa.

The short list for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize was announced last month and I was immediately drawn towards this book which centres on the world of a Nigerian email scammer. I am really pleased that I impulsively read this book, as I found it fascinating.

I Do Not Come to You by Chance follows Kingsley, a young Nigerian man who has a good education and a promising career ahead of him. His world is shattered when his father becomes ill and the family is unable to afford the treatment needed to save his life. Desperate to help his father, Kingsley turns to his mysteriously wealthy uncle and gets drawn in to the bizarre world of the email scammer:

At first, it was difficult. Composing cock-and-bull tales, with every single word an untruth, including ‘is’ and ‘was’. Blasting SOS emails around the world, hoping that someone would swallow the bait and respond. But I was probably worrying myself for nothing. They were just a bunch of email addresses with no real people at the other end anyway. Besides, who on this earth was stupid enough to fall prey to an email from a stranger in Nigeria?

The plot was quite simple and the writing wasn’t particularly beautiful, but the insight into the life of an email scammer had me hooked. I was fascinated by their activities – continually amazed by what they managed to get away with. I’d love to know how many of the events in this book had actually occurred. This is one of those books that I was telling everyone about, unable to believe that people actually respond to those dodgy emails we all get.

This book also had a very African feel to it. I loved the snippets of African mythology, all presented in a way that was easy for me to understand. It also raised some thought provoking questions, mainly revolving around whether or not it is OK to steal from the gullible rich, to give to the poorest in society.

Overall this was an amusing, insightful and ultimately uplifting tale about an underground world I previously knew nothing about.

Highly recommended.

Are you planning to read anything short listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize?

Categories
2009 Orange Prize

The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

 

Long listed for Orange Prize 2010, Short listed for Guardian First book Award, Winner of the Betty Trask Award

I had heard The Rehearsal mentioned a few times in 2009, but when it was included on the Orange long list this year everyone started talking about it. The Rehearsal seems to divide opinion, with a roughly equal split between those who love the book and those who hate it. I must admit that the premise didn’t appeal to me, but I don’t like being unable to join a heated book discussion and so I reserved a copy from my library.

The book centres on a sex scandal involving a teacher and his pupil. The narrative travels forwards and backwards in time, following a group of pupils who gossip about the event and members of a drama school who decide to put on a play about the sex scandal.

The book is quite confusing to read, as you are never really sure which scenes are part of the play and which are ‘real’. I’d read about 50 pages of the book when I re-read Claire’s review in which she pointed out that chapters starting with a day of the week were about the school pupils and ones titled with a month were set in the drama school, but although this information helped a lot I was still confused about many things.

The book realistically portrays teenagers, managing to capture that uncertainty and awkwardness. I was particularly impressed by the insecurites of a younger sibling:

No, Isolde says, ‘I will make the same mistakes, but by the time I do they won’t seem interesting because you’ll already have done it, and I’ll only be a copy.’

The teenage banter was witty and insightful, but the plot was almost non-existent. I was particularly disappointed by the ending, as the book just stopped without reaching any real conclusion.

I am still trying to decide if I liked The Rehearsal or not.  I can’t work out whether this book is genius, or just trying too hard to be clever. If The Rehearsal  had been written in chronological order I suspect it might have been a fairly average read. Does confusing your readers make a book incredibly good, or does it just hide any flaws in a cloak of confusion?  Despite my uncertainty The Rehearsal is the most impressive book I’ve found on the Orange long list so far and I’d be happy to see it win. 

Overall I enjoyed reading this book for the individual passages, but it was too clever to work as a novel for me.

Did you enjoy The Rehearsal?

Can a book be too clever?