THE VAN APFEL GIRLS ARE GONE by Felicity McLean

The Van Apfel girls are Hannah, Cordelia both in their early teens, and younger sister Ruth who is 6. They are best friends with Tikka who is 11 and her older sister Laura, same age as Hannah. They live in a cul-de-sac in a town in Victoria, Australia. It is summer of 1992, the country is consumed with the release from prison of Lindy Chamberlain. Tikka, who narrates the story is intrigued by the story of a dingo who steals a baby, and Lindy taking the rap for it.

Despite the girls all being good friends, their home lives are quite different. The Van Apfel parents are very religious and conservative, with the rebellious and beautiful Cordelia challenging her father at every turn. One day, after a school concert, where Tikka has taken her obsession with the Lindy Chamberlain case to the stage, the Van Apfel girls disappear - all three of them. Despite extensive searching, questionings of everyone by the police, aerial and water searches the two older girls are never found. Ruth - well, you will have to read the book to find out what happened to her.

Tikka carries this tragedy of three vanished girls with her in her life. Twenty years later she returns home from the US where she lives to help her sister going through cancer treatment. Naturally, as they always do, they discuss the disappearance of the girls, visit the sites they used to play at, where the girls were last seen, what they could have done to prevent it, more analysis and reflection of that time in the their lives, what was going on in the Van Apfel house, the mystery that was Cordelia.

Because we see the story through the eyes of an 11 year old, we aren't subject to too much of the 'adultness' of suburban family life. On the contrary, we do see lots of the bickering, cattiness, spats, telling on that is just so normal for girls of this age. Tikka does not fully understand the world of the three older girls, stuck with Ruth most of the time who only wants to be with her sisters, but at age 6 is simply not wanted by them. This is writing that I expect all readers will relate to in some way. Plus the author writes about the Australian summer so brilliantly. It is hot, dry, the air almost crackles with the dryness of everything, endless summer days, swimming in the pool, hot walks to and from school.

Reviews have called this a cross between The Virgin Suicides and Picnic at Hanging Rock.  I did not get the Virgin Suicides, I didn't even finish it. I agree with the Hanging Rock comparison - the environment is its own character in that story with the rock always present, and the mysterious sinister tone of that story is also very apparent in this one.

FREEFALL by Jessica Barry

A brand new thriller writer! Woohoo. With just enough complexity and depth to take this above your average airport read, but not sophisticated enough to put it in the John Le Carre genre, this is a great page turner to get stuck into. There are some cliched/suspend belief aspects to the story line, but as we all know we never let this get in the way of a good read.

The novel is told in alternating first person chapters by Allison, a young woman living in California estranged from her mother, and Maggie, said mother who lives in Maine. The story opens with Allison having survived a plane crash in the mountainous terrain of Colorado. Fortunately, it is summer. Her pilot is dead. We find out pretty quickly that her life is in danger, and she is on the run. She has great survival instincts having, conveniently, done lots of camping as a child, so grabs enough food – muesli bars, first aid essentials, water, spare clothing and off she goes. 

In Maine her widowed mother simply does not believe that her daughter has been killed in a plane crash and sets about finding out what has happened, why there is no body. Her mother instinct is very strong – not only has she not seen or heard from her daughter for two years, she also quickly finds out that Allison’s life in California has taken an unexpected and alarming turn. 

It would be easy to turn this sort of story into something unrealistic and ridiculous, with far too much good and bad luck happening along the way, both in terms of the action, and of the relationship between mother and daughter. But it never does – always a story of integrity, toughness, courage and survival. There are a few ‘really?’ moments as Allison storms her way through the unforgiving terrain she finds herself in, one step ahead of the bad guy – bit like a female McGyver – but it is still immensely readable and riveting, with a great conclusion.  Already I can see a movie or TV series. It will be good! 

FRENCH EXIT by Patrick de Witt

So much to enjoy about this small and elegantly written novel. And yet also so much wrong with it.

It is a quirky story about a mother and a son and a cat, and possibly a cautionary tale about how money does not necessarily make you happy. Frances is in her sixties, a wealthy Manhattan social butterfly, suddenly widowed and penniless. She lives with her fairly useless and to me, waste of space son Malcolm, who is dependent on his mother for everything. The annoyance factor was beginning to show itself.  The cat is called Small Frank and is Frances' dead husband Frank reincarnated - quite a clever character, who holds the entire novel together.

With the money rapidly running out, Frances selling everything she owns, the three of them decamp to Paris by cruise ship, to an apartment owned by Frances' oldest friend. There, they continue to spend the rest of the money, until there is none left. Along the way in their downhill journey to poverty, they meet an interesting collection of Parisians, also damaged and interesting.

Commentary about this novel talk about it being brilliant and darkly comic - it certainly has some very funny and ridiculous bits in it - witty, clever, bleak and funny, very much a modern comedy of errors. Much of Frances' existence is processing the death of her husband, who does not come across as a very nice person. But he has been a part of her life for many years, and so is inextricalbhy woven into the the person she has become - dependent and unhappy, with a son who has never felt loved or wanted by his parents. You see how money cannot buy you happiness - these lives have been wasted.

It is the characters whom I did not like or warm to in any way that have coloured my reaction to this novel. For funny, clever and really good writing read this. But if you want to engage with the people you are reading about, for me this was not a good choice. I must be too happy. 

THE SOUND OF BREAKING GLASS by Kirsten Warner

I grew up in the Hutt Valley with children whose surnames, and often Christian names were so obviously European and therefore foreign, with facial features ever so slightly different from my bog-standard British-derived features, many also musical and artistic. And yet in many ways they were the  same as the rest of us Lower Hutt school children. In later years I discovered that one or both of the parents of these children came to the Valley after the war, either as children themselves or young adults - Polish, Jewish, Dutch, Yugoslav. I never knew as a child the stories of these families, and really why would I? I never questioned the back story but there was always a curiosity about my fellow classmates. These children would now be around the same age as the author of this novel - early 60s/mid-late 50s - and a good number of them would probably fall into the category of Second Generation Survivors - children born to people who survived the horrors of the Holocaust. It is hard to imagine your entire family wiped out because someone didn't like what they were, hard to imagine having no grandparents, uncles, aunts because they simply are no more, hard to imagine what it must be like to hear your parent waking in the night from a terrible nightmare. Thank goodness for writers like Kirsten Warner, who through story telling, can give us some sort of idea.

This novel is not strictly about the Holocaust or about what happened to those taken away to the camps. It is a frame of reference around which this story has been created, and unsurprisingly the make up, the personality, the essence of the central character, Christel, whose Jewish father was a refugee and survivor of the camps. Much like the author's father, making the author herself a Second Generation. It has been shown that the children of survivors of extreme trauma have that trauma stamped in their own DNA, passed on by their parent(s), making them behave in ways that to someone without such DNA changes may well find difficult to understand, to empathise with, even live with. Aside from survivor's guilt, Christel also grows up in fear - that one day in Auckland suburbia, the door will be bashed down and the whole family carted away to who knows where; that there are bad people all around her; that there may come a time when there is not enough food. It is against this background that Christel has grown up.

The novel is set primarily in 1990s Auckland, with regular going back to the Parnell of the 1970s when she was a child/teenager. She is now married to Ted, has two very young children, and is a producer for a reality TV programme, by the sounds of it much along the lines of 'Fair Go' or 'Target'. She is also involved in a women's protest group called Women Against Surplus Plastic (WASP). Hardly surprising that she is very stressed, so stressed that she is really at breaking point. While trying to balance all these high demands, it seems that she really is losing her mind. Her imagination begins to work over time too, conjuring up a variety of ways to deal with the stresses in her life, so cleverly done, that at times I was sort of caught between what was real and what (patently) wasn't. She had her own encounters with trauma as a teenager, long buried, and now in her increasingly fragile mental state, her imagination, her coping strategies and the reappearance of a long forgotten person are threatening to bring everything crashing down.

But she is not the child of a Holocaust survivor for nothing! This is also a funny book - always look on the bright side as Eric Idle says. And Christel has a great sense of humour - her boss is the Fat Controller; the women in her WASP group are Rock Star, Celebrity Yoga Teacher, Madonna. There is Car Couple, Karate Man, Artist; her alter ego the Big C; and Milk Bottle Man. For anyone who has grown up in Auckland, or spent long periods living/working in the inner city area, the setting will be very familiar, and no doubt bring about long periods of contemplative nostalgia. From the Parnell Baths, to Coxs Bay, to the inner city, Remuera Road, Mt Hobson, Newmarket, Parnell.

This is a somewhat exhausting read, with so much going on, such intensity, continuous moving between Christel's present and her childhood, examining the complicated relationship between her parents, coming to terms with her father's and hence her own past. But it is also satisfying, clever and rich in its writing, particularly its characters, its unusual and unexpected conclusion. I hope that through writing this novel, Kirsten Warner also got some peace and personal resolution in her own life story as the child of a Holocaust survivor.

THE BEEKEEPER OF SINJAR by Dunya Mikhail (trans from Arabic by author and Max Weiss)

The Yazidis are a Kurdish religious and ethnic minority from northern Iraq, as well as parts of Syria and Turkey. In 2014 ISIS was on the rampage, murdering, massacring, raping, pillaging any community that did not follow or convert to Islam the way it did. The Yazidis were in the firing line. You can do any Google search you want to find out the details of the genocide that occurred, no need to go into that here.

What this book does however is tell the stories of some of those who survived, those who escaped, those who helped and  were not going to let ISIS win. One of these was Abdullah Shreem, a beekeeper who sold his wild honey across the mountainous region of Sinjar where many Yazidis also lived. All this changed after ISIS had rampaged through the villages and communities of the Sinjar area. Most of the men were massacred, as were many elderly women and young children. Boys were taken away to military camps. Women and girls were kidnapped, trucked away and sold into slavery mostly in Syria. Abdullah was instrumental in rescuing dozens of women and girls from their fate, through the secret networks he established smuggling them back into Iraq or into refugee camps, including members of his own family. All of it done at huge risk to themselves.

The stories of the women are told either by Abdullah and transcribed by the author, or by the women themselves after they have been saved. This is not pretty reading, but like so much of what we read, whether it be fact or fiction, these are stories that must be told. What stands out for me is the kindness of strangers in helping these women as they attempted to escape the terrible existences they were living. What also stands out is how integral mobile phones were to effecting communication between Abdullah, his team and the women themselves.

The author herself is Iraqi, working as a journalist in Baghdad before she had to flee, making her way to the US where she is a university lecturer and a published poet. It is hardly surprising that her writing is exquisitely beautiful, her factual story telling interspersed with poetry, celebrating courage, family, hope, and loss. This is not a big book, but with so much brutality and humanity in it, it is plenty big enough. 

THE GIRL THEY LEFT BEHIND by Roxanne Veletzos

The author's mother was a girl left behind. It was in January 1941, Bucharest, Romania. Yet another pogrom against the Jewish population of the city is underway - desperate people in very desperate times. A little girl is left, abandoned with only a note pleading for her to be saved. Her parents disappear, never heard from again. The little girl ended up being adopted by a couple, loved, cared for and always knowing that she was left behind.

The author grew up with this mystery, it forming the backdrop to her own life. Now she has written this novel which is a mixture of what she knows of her mother's story, what she thinks the story could have been, and the also the story of many other Romanian Jews during the war and the 50 years of communist rule afterwards.

This is such a beautifully told story, acknowledging loss, abandonment but never dwelling on it or squeezing it for emotional effect. The is as much the story of the little girl, called Natalia in this story, as it is the story of the couple who adopted her - Anton and Despina - the author's real life adoptive grandparents. They are brave, resourceful and above all loving to the little girl they were blessed to raise as their own. There are beautiful photos at the back of the book of Anton and Despina and the author's mother - the story is ever more poignant knowing that the characters are based on people who lived through these times.

The people of the communist bloc countries had a terrible time in the years after WWII, Anton and Despina no exception. The constant need to be vigilant in who you spoke with, who you met with, rationing, starvation, fear of the authorities, and at all times people wanting to flee, escape to anywhere else. It is only in recent years that their stories are beginning to come out. This is one of those. Inspiring and uplifting. 

THIS MORTAL BOY by Fiona Kidman

It is hard to believe in the New Zealand we currently live in that 63 years ago the death penalty still happened. It had already been abolished, and with a change to a more conservative government, amidst fears of an increasingly undesirable youth element, it was reintroduced. This I learnt from reading this novel based on the real life second to last legally endorsed execution in this country in 1955. The massive public out cry from both the trial and the hanging led to its abolishment in 1961. There had been a hanging not long before this one that also resulted in protest and public petitions.

There is no doubt that 21 year old Irish born Albert Black did kill a fellow young man, Johnny McBride. But the circumstances of the killing, the prejudices of the legal system of the day and most of the jury towards young Irish emigres, or just young men with no proper jobs or fixed abodes in general should have resulted in a case of manslaughter at the very least, and probably a mistrial. But no, neither of these things happened.

Dame Fiona takes us back to Ireland where Albert was from, his 10 pound pomme journey to NZ, his not terribly successful attempts at getting work, the people he met, friendships he formed. He was very well liked, came from a loving family, and had a good head on his shoulders. But he was alone and lonely, very homesick for Ireland and his family, a young man of little direction or the means to get himself a good start in a new land. He comes to Auckland, drifts into a group of people similar to himself, and things go very badly wrong resulting in a killing.

She tells a great story, using the facts and her extensive research to show us what Wellington and Auckland were like in the early 1950s, what people were wearing, eating, the night life, where they lived. It was also a time of moral panic, people were genuinely frightened of how out of control a certain element in our society was becoming. I think nowadays we would equate them to boy racer culture perhaps? Hence the crack down on law and order and anything involving immoral behaviour, excess drinking, partying etc etc.

You have to feel sorry for Albert. By all accounts he was a very nice young man who happened to get caught up in the wrong crowd. How many times do we hear that story. This is a beautifully told  and sensitive handling of a what at the time was a very difficult issue. Dame Fiona has yet again written an outstanding book, telling the stories of the people of this country. I wanted to cry when I finished it, not just for the subject but also for the quality and beauty of the writing and finesse of the story telling. 

PRAGUE SPRING by Simon Mawer

Old fashioned story telling, combining history, romance, spies, war, goodies vs baddies, all set in the beautiful city of Prague - high on my wish list of places to visit. In fact Prague is the stand out character in this novel with its river, beautiful buildings, rich cultural, political and cultural history. This is a city the author clearly loves.

In 1968 however it was going through some pretty tough times. Increasing tensions between Prague and Moscow, with student activists at the forefront is the backdrop for the story focussing on two couples. Sam is a British diplomat in the embassy in Prague, fluent speaker of both Russian and Czech, walking on hot coals to  maintain good relationships with both sides of the looming conflict. He falls in love with a student, Lenka, who introduces him to a bunch of fellow activists. Hardly ideal activity for a senior diplomat to be engaging in.  At the same time he finds himself caught up in helping two Russians seeking political asylum.

The other couple are two very young English backpackers on summer holidays from their studies at Oxford. Working class James is crazy in love with privileged, spoilt, self absorbed  and intensely annoying Ellie who is taking the whole 'summer of love' thing completely literally. In true live-in-the-moment fashion they decide where their next travel stop will be on the flip of a coin, hence their arrival in Prague at the worst time. James is trying to be a decent caring thoughtful young man, but in some ways is as annoying as Ellie. I do wonder why they were even in the story, because other than giving an 'English' view, they contribute very little. And as for personal growth coming out of their Prague experience, maybe a little.

With all this emotion and star crossed lover stuff going set against an atmosphere of impending gloom, the ending was a huge disappointment. Sam and Lenka are left dangling somewhere high above the Czech medical system in some sort of limbo land, with James and Ellie still doing a coin toss. The only thing I can think of is that the author is plotting a sequel where James himself becomes either a diplomat, an investigative journalist, an activist, or the founder of some new free love commune; Ellie either marries a diplomat, becomes a rock group groupie, or slips into obscurity; Sam either continues his relentless rise up the diplomat ranks or becomes a double agent; Lenka sticks with Sam as his diplomat wife or flees the country with or without him to continue her fight against communism on the other side.

It is a light read, but also a good introduction to an event we know little about, and the power of the communist machine to destroy any form of resistance to its dogma and existence, something we are continually reminded of at the moment with the ongoing unrest in the Ukraine and Crimea region of the old USSR.