AUGUST READING - Stars and Bars; Half the Sky; The Cast Iron Shore; The Wonder Spot

THE WONDER SPOT by Melissa Bank

February last year I read The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing by the same author and wasn't terribly impressed. It was all very Bridget-Jones-try-hard, Jane the main character was incredibly dull and I am just did not get it. In fact when the book was published, according to Wikipedia, Melissa Bank was compared to Helen Fielding (creator of Bridget) and held, along with Helen, for being the creators of chick lit. Maybe in America...So I wasn't terribly fussed about starting this one, but because I had actually bought it many many months ago, I thought I should at least start it.

And what a different type of book it is!

It is exactly the same plot line and structure as Hunting and Fishing. Beginning when the main character, Sophie, is a teenager, then moving onto college, work, friends, love life, inappropriate men, keeping family happy etc etc, it follows Jane's life almost to a T, right down to a frightful despotic female boss and terminally ill parent. So why do I like this one so much better than the first one? Sophie is a vastly more interesting person than Jane, very self deprecating, a biting wit and doesn't seem to be quite so desperate for a man. More like Bridget really (apart from the getting a man bit). Perhaps the author has matured a bit - Hunting and Fishing was published six years earlier. It is almost as if she has wanted to rewrite the earlier book, seeing its flaws and wanting to improve on them. There is a lot more depth to the characters, to the story and especially to the relationships. It is set, initially in a suburban Pennsylvania, but primarily in New York City with excursions into Brooklyn and other neighbourhoods; the author would appear to have great love of the city.

I really enjoyed this one, so much I may even be tempted to read her third novel, if there is a third.

THE CAST IRON SHORE by Linda Grant

Linda Grant has become a bit of favourite in our book club lately, starting with 'The Clothes on Their Backs' which was short listed for the Man Booker in 2008, and the non-fiction 'The Thoughtful Dresser'. These two books both reveal the author's very deep love and appreciation of clothes as more than just garments. She sees what you wear as crucial to self-identity, self-esteem, inner peace and harmony. Clothes are not just what we wear, but what we are.

So what does all this have to do with this particular novel, Linda Grant's first one, first published in 1996, and re-published last year? Although the story is not really about what we wear or what we look like, it is very much a central theme to the whole story and the raison d'etre of its main character, Sybil Ross and a number of other characters in the story.

The story begins in Liverpool, in 1938. Sybil is a teenager, living with her Serbian Jewish furrier father with his dark East European features, and her very stylish and beautiful mother, blond and blue eyed from Holland. Sybil has taken after her father in her looks and her personality although adores her mother with her gorgeousness and has considerable of appreciation of beautiful clothing and furs even as a 14 year old. Furs are a recurring symbol through the whole story and central to the essence of Sybil in her life.

The war changes everything. Liverpool is blitzed to bits, and on one the worst night of the blitz Sybil learns something about her parents that changes her view of the world and how she perceives her place in it. From then on she drifts, and that is really what the rest of the book is about - Sybil's drifting: through life, men, jobs, belief systems. And I don't think she ever really finds her true self either. Interestingly enough, after spending her life looking for whatever she is looking for, she ends up exactly where she started.

As soon as the war is over, just 21, she flees Liverpool plus all the things her parents stand for, and sails to New York, with her furs of course (the one thing she can't let go), in search of Stan, her Royal Navy boyfriend also from Liverpool. Stan has his own identity problems but he is a very snappy dresser - a spiv. She finds Stan and being both pretty and stylish she finds a job in a top department store. Big changes are afoot in the post-war world and Sybil finds herself drawn to the black community, persecuted and downtrodden in America much like the Jews had always been in Europe. Communism is on the rise and is seen as the vehicle of change for the black population. Sybil is soon immersed into the local red circle, despite her very bourgeois background, after falling for Julius, a charismatic black man. Naturally she has to give up her comfort blanket - her furs - and working in the store - the ultimate symbol of consumerism and capitalism and live like the other comrades. In other words owning nothing, completely divorced from anything remotely bourgeois, and unable to do anything that doesn't have the express approval of the committee.

Against her inner most judgement she goes with Julius to a grotty little working class town in the middle of the mid-West, Michigan or Minnesota - read middle of nowhere, works in a potato chip factory. Julius is 'chosen' for further training and education in Moscow, leaving Sybil alone and stranded. All this is happening during McCarthyism and the manic anti-communism witch hunts and persecutions that were going on in the 1950s. With Julius gone Sybil basically has to live an underground sort of existence for quite some time and eventually makes her way to the west coast, which had always been her goal. She has to make a few difficult decisions, but even then her continuing indecision about her life is infuriating to the reader. This endless drifting... More choices are made and after quite a lot more drifting Sybil finds herself living in England again having come full circle back to her bourgeois roots.

Satisfying read? Not really. Plot all over the place; not sure if the discovery on blitz night is really catastrophic enough to turn one communist; although can see how New York would be considerably more exciting than Liverpool in 1945; still don't really understand why she stayed in that horrible little town in the middle of nowhere with Julius who did not treat her at all well; can sort of see why she had to give up all her beautiful furs, but then why keep only one? All a bit messy and wishy washy for my liking! But having read two of her subsequent books, I love the way the author's love affair with how and why we dress was so important to her way back in her first book. Her books have definitely got better over time.

HALF THE SKY: HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl Wuduun

'Women hold up half the sky' - Chinese Proverb.

Although after reading this book you may wonder what went wrong with this worthy thought. It is well known that sons in China are more highly valued than daughters - it has 107 males for every 100 females, and in Pakistan and India the ratios are higher.

We females in the Western World really are the lucky ones, whether we hold up half the sky or not. We live in our comfortable homes, we eat good food, we are well educated, we have labour saving devices in our homes, fresh tap water and electricity, first class health care. We are productive and functional members of society. We have freedom of speech, of movement, of dress, we have financial independence, we have the law on our side, we are equal members of society with men. But we are unique: the majority of women in the world have none of these things, not one single one.

The authors are Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, both have been foreign correspondents and editors for the New York Times, so are well qualified to comment on the lamentable plight of the female sex in our world. Their research and investigation has shown that there are more females in sex slavery than there ever were men, women and children in slavery prior to the American Civil War of the 1860s. The authors write about women and girls in China, many places in Africa, India, Thailand and Cambodia on the subjects of prostitution, sex slavery, genital mutilation, maternal deaths and sickness in child birth and post natal, the lack of education and freedom, rape as a weapon - wide ranging, sobering and depressing subjects summarising the complete and utter powerlessness females have over their destinies in many societies throughout the world.

But, this book is littered with stories of women who have risen above the dreadful circumstances they have found themselves in, and this is what kept me wanting to read this book. We, in our comfortable little worlds, don't know what real hard work, determination, sacrifice and courage are - these women put us to shame. These women have gone on to do great things for the women in their local communities. The key, of course, is education, as the authors point out, which allows women to see opportunities, possibilities, and ways to achieve a better life.

The last chapters are a call to action, targeted mainly at the American reader, but equally applicable to readers in other countries. And a long list of websites of course to access! Like many commentators of the world we live in have noted, the United Nations has been completely useless in protecting or furthering the welfare of women and girls from these countries.

Despite it's unpleasant subject matter, this is a very readable book, very well written and very thought provoking. Much of it is not nice reading, but really I think quite essential for every woman to read and discuss openly with friends and daughters. Then maybe women really will hold up half the sky.

STARS AND BARS by William Boyd

I have just counted up the number of books written by William Boyd - 17 in the 30 years! That is prolific by anyone's standards. This novel is his 4th, published in 1984 and the 7th of his books I have read. Apart from Harry Potter books and Enid Blyton decades ago, I don't think I have read so many books by the same author. He really is very good. His stories full of interesting characters, trying to go about their normal lives but then finding themselves in difficult circumstances that somehow they manage to get themselves out of. And this story follows much the same theme, which you think you might actually start to get a bit sick of, but it really is like meeting an old friend - the stories are all different but also very familiar, and his plots and characters are so good you don't really mind!

So in this story, we meet Henderson Dores, a very English Englishman, art assessor, nearly 40, who has recently moved to New York to lend his considerable expertise to an art auction house. His personal life is in chaos - trying to rebuild his relationship with his ex wife, and a mistress on the side. He finds New York chaotic and is literally a fish out of water living there. Nothing seems to be going right. His chance to escape comes in the form of an unexpected assignment to the Deep South, Atlanta to be specific, to assess a rare art collection. And finds himself the middle man in a quite peculiar and dysfunctional family situation which threatens both his mental health and physical safety.

Through the ever more bizarre things that happen to him, including a crazy few hours in a theme hotel in Atlanta, and finding himself running for his life in the middle of the night in New York wearing nothing but some cardboard, he somehow retains his English-ness - his dignity, his manners, his impeccable dress sense. This just makes those all around him more buffoon like and madder than they already are.

I see the book was made into a movie in 1988, the screen play written by the author and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Henderson Dores. I think it would be well worth seeing!

JULY READING - Before I Go To Sleep; In A Strange Room; The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim; The Widow of the South; Lilla's Feast

LILLA'S FEAST by Frances Osborne

The author was 13 when her great grandmother, Lilla, died in 1982 at the age of 100. Anyone who lives to this age has a story or two to tell, and Lilla had many. Born in China at the height of the might of the British Empire, Lilla's life mirrors the upheavals that change the fortunes of Britain forever. Her life experiences would not necessarily be unique for a woman of her class and background, but regardless, they still make a great story and deserve to be recorded. The thing about Lilla, is that in many ways she was typical of her time and class and upbringing. But she also had incredible spirit, enormous personal dignity and a steely determination to survive no matter what.

Lilla's eventful life was shaped entirely both by being born in China and being of British extraction. And like many of the thousands whose families worked for the colonial governments and business enterprises, such British people were never really considered fully British. Aside from a short period of time in England and India, virtually all her life was spent in China. She married twice, had children, and devoted herself to the art of homemaking, thus ensuring the happiness and comfort of the men in her life, as she had been taught to by her mother. Not at all unusual for the times. The crises and tragedies were many, culminating in Lilla aged 60 and her husband in his mid-70s being incarcerated during WWII in a Japanese internment camp for three years where they almost starved to death. There, she finished compiling, amidst great deprivation, her cookbook which for a period of time was displayed prominently in the Imperial War Museum in London. This cook book was not, as one would expect, a wartime cook book, but one that was full of recipes from a time of plenty. And all put down entirely from memory. It is said that the memory becomes more acute in times of suffering, and I guess it is understandable that when starving, thoughts turn to food and one's memories of that food.

Lilla was undoubtedly a survivor. Wouldn't we all love to have a great grandma of such courage and determination. And what a legacy to leave your descendants. A really good life story, of a time not so far in the distant past, told with admiration, love and plenty of spirit

THE WIDOW OF THE SOUTH by Robert Hicks

For those of us, which I expect is most of us, who have grown up and lived our lives without war, it is very difficult to imagine how we would be in a war situation. Would we react to situations of danger or deprivation or horror as we think we would? Based on other people's accounts of what we have heard or read, or movies we have seen? Or would our reactions and behaviour be quite different? How deep would we have to dig into ourselves to deal with the chaos going on around us? Hopefully we never have to find out. Which is why reading about it is so interesting and with plenty of 'wow' factor.

Here in New Zealand, the American Civil War is not something we know a great deal about. 'Gone With the Wind', the slavery issue and the assassination of Lincoln are really the sum total for most of us as to what this war was. But to Americans this war is very real with memorials commemorating battles all over the country side.

One of these memorials is at Franklin, Tennessee which in November 1864 was the site of the greatest loss of life in battle that America has seen. In the space of five hours, 9,200 men died - 6700 from the Confederate army and 2500 from the Union army. This was more than the Americans lost at D Day and more than twice as many as at Pearl Harbour. A dark day. This battle took place on farm land on the outskirts of the town. Overlooking the battle field was (and still standing) the 'big house' of Carnton, owned for three generations by the McGavock family. Its occupants at the time of the battle were John, his wife Carrie, their two young children and a few black slaves. Once the fighting was over, the house became a field hospital for hundreds and hundreds of wounded and the fields became the burial ground for 1500 soldiers. Carrie McGavock worked alongside the army medical people nursing and caring for the many wounded and dying men. She made the men she had cared for and buried her life's work, resulting in the creation of a proper cemetery for the 1500 on the property that is today kept in pristine condition. The plantation and house have been extensively restored, the author of this novel being the driving force behind the restoration.

From reading the background to this novel, it would appear that after the war Carrie McGavock 'was transformed into a living martyr and curiosity' and according to Oscar Wilde 'the high priestess of the temple of the dead boys'. This book is well worth reading to get an insight into the reverence with which Americans cherish their war dead.

And yet very little is known about Carrie herself. Which the author attempts to redress in this fictional context.

Carrie is a desperately unhappy woman. She is 35, and in recent years has seen three of her five children die from illness. The type of illness is not known. She wears black, spends her days wandering from room to room mourning her children and is so absorbed in her grief she really does not know what is going on around her. It is hard to know what role her husband John has in her life. During much of the novel he appears to be absent and largely ineffectual. The arrival of the Confederate Major General Forrest on her doorstep the day before the battle to commandeer her house for a field hospital starts to lift her out of her gloom. She literally has only hours to organise the house for its new inhabitants. She is assisted throughout by Mariah, the black slave she has had since childhood and one feisty woman.

Carrie's new role, and her friendship with one of the soldiers she nurses, Zachariah Cashwell, change her life and give her a reason to live again. For anyone to survive their injuries and recover amidst so much horror would give the power of life back! The story continues after the war culminating with Carrie trying to find a way to protect the buried 1500 soldiers from being ploughed up by the person whose land they are buried on. The recovery from war is also symbolic of Carrie doing her own personal recovery, resulting in her finding her inner strength and succeeding in relocating the buried.

I found the narrative of the book a bit slow at times. But there is no doubting the power of the writer to give us plenty of visuals as to the horror of battle, the fear, the blood, the pain, the injuries, the dying etc. He also writes very well of the chaos of post war life - the poverty, the lawlessness, the despair of survivors. And the hope personified in Carrie herself. This book is uplifting, especially in light of the legacy she has left behind, not just at Carnton, but for the many, many cemeteries that sprang up around America after the war.

THE TERRIBLE PRIVACY OF MAXWELL SIM by Jonathon Coe

A slightly crazy story of a man from Watford (the author later apologised to the residents of Watford for portraying the city in a possible negative light), aged about mid-40s, on the verge of a breakdown, in fact I am not giving anything away by saying that is exactly what happens to him. The story is really a commentary on the type of society we live in - despite the endless variety of communication gadgetry we have at our disposal, we are probably more lonely and isolated as individuals than we have ever been. Poor Maxwell Sim (as in in sim card) has over 70 friends on Facebook, he admits most of them are complete strangers, whom he admits he is never likely to meet up with for a coffee, and anyway why would you when you can keep in contact virtually? The book is full of such observations, in fact you could almost say the social isolation so characteristic of how we live began with the invention of the car -'Cars are like people. We mill around every day, we rush here and there, we come within inches of touching each other, but very little contact goes on. All those near misses. All those might-have-beens.' The 'terrible privacy' is lonliness and how this lonliness can actually make us go mad, as it does for Max and another real-life person Max is introduced to - Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor who in the late 1960s decided to take part in a round the world solo yacht race, realising very quickly he was completely out of his depth, and to cut a long story short, descended into insanity and ended up killing himself. So Max never actually meets him of course, but comes to increasingly identify with him and his sadness while trying to make sense of his own misfortunes.

Max is on sick leave from his job suffering from depression after his wife took his daughter and left the marriage. The book takes place on journeys - a trip to and from Sydney that Max takes to visit his distant father; Donald Crowhurst's tragic yacht race; Max's road trip to the north of Scotland to promote a new environmentally friendly toothbrush, where his only meaningful relationship is with Emma (after Emma Thompson), his GPS; and finally his return to Sydney.

It is interesting that almost all the people Max comes into contact with in the story are also alone or lonely. His father, whose story Max manages to unearth during the course of his travels; a young woman, Poppy, whom he meets on the flight from Sydney to London and must have one of most tragic jobs ever - 'junior adultery facilitator'. You will need to read the book to find out exactly what that involves but it makes Max's job as an After Sales Customer Liaison Officer (ie returns clerk) sound positively enriching. Then of course there is the dead Donald, and an old childhood friend Alison who spends much of her time alone while her husband is on business. She also gets one of the best descriptions I have ever heard for getting ready to go out - 'upstairs making last-minute adjustments to her appearance' which as all us ladies knows can take anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour.

So I haven't said much about 'the plot', because the book is really more about the characters than the action and how people relate and inter-relate to each other, and also how to maintain your own individuality, your own sense of self, in the face of all this anonymous communication stuff we are surrounded with. I really liked this book. Despite being of a serious subject matter, there is some biting satire and comedy, the characters are interesting, and many of Max's conversations and internal dialogue are really quite funny, particularly his doomed relationship with Emma.

The ending however, is another matter altogether - most surprising, never seen done before, and ultimately disappointing.

IN A STRANGE ROOM by Damon Galgut

Damon Galgut is a South African writer. He started writing as a young man, and met with immediate success. This is his second Man Booker nominated and short listed novel. Much of his writing is set in South Africa and surrounds, and much of it also autobiographical. This novel is also partly set in Africa and may or may not be autobiographical. It could also be a book of travel writing of sorts too - he journeys to many of the countries of Africa, as far north as Morocco, and to India where the last part of the book takes place. It is such personal writing, with such personal insight and depth I almost felt as if I was intruding on someone's inner being. Such spare and beautiful writing deserves to be more widely read as it also allows us to look into our own selves.

This book is not just one story as most novels are, but more like three short stories, each from a different part of the narrator's life as he struggles to find his path in life. The chapters are entitled 'The Follower', 'The Lover' and 'The Guardian' and the narrator is each of these people. 99% of the story is narrated in the 3rd person, but so weirdly very occasionally, in mid sentence or mid paragraph he suddenly talks about 'I' and then immediately goes back to 'he'. I can't think of a possible reason why he would want to do this, it doesn't make sense. Damon is a loner, a young man who really does not know what he wants in life or how to get there. I get the impression money is not a problem as he doesn't really seem to do anything except travel aimlessly. Lucky him. In the third story, he would appear to be quite a lot older, settled and I would say now a successful writer. But he is still essentially a loner, still looking for that essence of peace and belonging.

I think every now and again we need to read books like this, beautiful writing, very spare, very reflective. It makes us think about relationships we have with people and how deeply affected we can be by the things we may say or do to those people - the subtle nuances of our friendships and relationships.

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP by S.J Watson

Christine wakes every morning next to a man she doesn't recognise who tells who he is her husband. She goes into the bathroom and, to her dismay, she sees a woman some 20 years older than she remembers. Around the mirror are photos of her and her husband with labels to help her identify where and when and who. She remembers during the day everything she learns that day, but next morning wakes up and has to start all over again.

Christine suffers from a rare amnesia disorder which manifests itself in not being able to remember anything from the past or form new memories, which means when she sleeps at the end of each day, her memory is completely wiped. But how or why did this happen, as it would appear from the photos in the bathroom and the fact she has a husband, she knows that she once had a life.

The other two characters in the story are her husband Ben, and a psychologist, Dr Nash. For reasons I could not figure out, Ben does not know Christine meets with Dr Nash, and of course every time she meets Dr Nash she is meeting him for the first time! Confused? It does feel a bit like that at times. Dr Nash tells Christine to keep a journal in which she is to write everything that happens during the day before she goes to sleep. He rings her each morning after Ben goes to work to tell her where the journal is so she can read what has happened in the previous days. Gradually she builds up a picture of herself, keeping it secret from Ben, because for some reason that she does not know, the journal says in big hand written letters 'Don't Trust Ben'. What's more the daily reading of her life and the time Dr Nash spends with her gradually begins to unlock some of her memories. What she learns does not equate with the reality of what Ben tells her about her past life and how she came to be an amnesiac.

Slowly the tension builds. The reader really does not know where the story is going so of course we keep reading! Very clever. The web is very intricate, especially as the daily journal gets bigger and Christine takes longer to read it and to write it as her brain begins to remember her past life. Who does she trust? Her husband? Her doctor? Her own confusing memories?

A thriller with a difference, really making you think about the power of memory, and how much trust we can place in our own memories. Read it and be afraid. Then go to sleep...

JUNE READING - The Beach; The Zanzibar Chest

THE ZANZIBAR CHEST by Aidan Hartley

If you just took a moment to think about the devastation wrought on Africa since the white man landed on its vast coastlines, you would weep. Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal, Russia, America, Spain, Turkey: they have all left their indelible and catastrophic mark on the continent. Once these countries have wrought their havoc, bled the place dry of its resources, its people and its essence they leave. And really in our little Western worlds we think very little and very infrequently of that vast and diverse land mass. Our interest is really only piqued when we are full on exposed to the ravages of famine and drought, the madness and tyranny of its leaders, or the blood and gore and horror of its wars. And who brings us this news, who ensures we have full frontals of these events, who piques our consciences? The foreign press, foreign correspondents, journalists. Virtually all the journalists we have anything to do with in our daily lives are those attached to our daily newspapers and nightly TV news entertainment - reporting on the mindless trivia of local and national politics, chasing 'celebs' for nothing meaningful, commentating on the latest sporting event, reporting on the day's court cases - you get the picture. But out there, a long way from our comfortable and tiny existences are the real journalists - those that report on stuff that does matter.

Aidan Hartley is one of those real journalists. He is in the incredibly unique position of actually being a child of Africa himself. Descended from a long line of adventurers, explorers, soldiers and men of action who variously contributed to the ever expanding British empire, he also has that urge to discover, explore, do something different with his life and see the world. From seeing news footage from Vietnam on TV one evening in his teens, he knew that being a journalist was what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it in Africa.

Due to his childhood in various parts of Africa and being his father's son, Aidan developed a very deep love for the land, its people and all the tragedies that have happened to it as a result of foreign intervention. As a young man he finally made it back to Africa and began his reporting career in 1988 as a stringer for the Financial Times in Tanzania. From that time on till the mid-1990s Aidan was on the spot to report, for our Western eyes and ears, on virtually every bit of conflict and catastrophe to hit Africa. And he pulls absolutely no punches about what he sees and how most of the mess that Africa is currently in is due to interference from the West and the total powerlessness and uselessness of the UN in 'mananging' the various conflicts. He sees too much death, brutality, hunger, poverty and waste. Including the deaths of many of his fellow correspondents and friends. He saves his worst for his reporting of the Rwanda massacres in 1997. Be prepared, it is not pretty reading.

There is absolute no doubt that his experiences have scarred him deeply. On his father's death, Aidan discovers a wealth of other stories in his father's Zanzibar chest and he intersperses his modern day observations with the tragic story of his father's close friend who also loved Africa intensely.

This is a remarkable book for the author's passion in telling his story, the catharsis such writing must have been for him, his ability to convey the horrors he saw, the sheer futility and waste of money, life, and energy that was going on around him, and the infinite variety of good and bad humanity he was exposed to. He does come out the other side, but it is a long and difficult road to that point. He has come full circle however; living happily with his wife and young children in Kenya. This is a very big book and will stay with you for a long time after you finish reading it.

THE BEACH by Alex Garland

The best thing about belonging to a book club is that you are exposed to books you would never normally pick up, let alone read. This book had been sitting on the table for a few months, and you know how you sort of get a gut feeling to take a second look, well I did, and then the person who owns the book told me I should read it without really saying why, so I took it home, looked at for a while then after a week or two, started to read it. Wow, what a read. I never saw the film 'The Beach' with Leonardo di Caprio as the lead character mainly because the reviews were pretty mediocre and the subject didn't really appeal - sort of Lord of the Flies (which I never liked) crossed with Blue Lagoon (too ridiculous).

The book, however, is more of a psychological dissection of what can happen when idealistic young backpackers, fueled with the local grass of choice, discover Utopia. You just know before you reach the bottom of page 1 that it aint going to end well! I was hardly surprised when I read that the author's mother was a psychoanalyst; this book is a fantastic study of the young back packer mind - the thrill of adventure, relying on one's own resources, the excitement generated by the discovery of new places, people and things, and the inevitable disillusion that sets in when this life is really not that much different from the life left behind.

Richard is English,in his early 20s, on what I guess is a gap year. With a life long interest and morbid fascination with the Vietnam War he decides to head to South East Asia, the story opening with his arrival in Bangkok in a typically seedy backpacker-ish part of town. It doesn't take him long to meet people, including one who gives him a map of the beach and where it is. Within a few short days he finds himself on The Beach - an unspoilt strip of shore line surrounded by cliffs and commercially grown and heavily guarded marijuana fields; the beach itself occupied by 30 other similarly footloose backpackers who live communally in harmony, surviving from the land and the sea, with the occasional foray back to the mainland. For quite some time the beach life is very peaceful and cooperation reigns. But the modern twentieth century world cannot be held at bay forever. It transpires that the arrival of Richard and his friends is the catalyst for everything to fall apart. Which it does in a most spectacular fashion.

It is fairly apparent that all the people on the beach have become slightly mad with the isolation, the communal nature of their hunter/gatherer existence, and the endless supply of drugs to smoke and probably poisonous own-brewed liquor to drink. Richard's obsession with the Vietnam war, video games, and his relationships with his equally strange fellow residents contribute to his own downward mental and emotional spiral. It is absolutely fascinating watching the inevitable train crash happening.

The author wrote the book based on his own back packing adventures in Asia, mainly the Philippines. He is very scathing of what Western style tourism has done in a short period of time to the beautiful coastal areas of this region, choosing to target his criticism at the beach resorts of Thailand. It is a little ironic that when the movie was made, the beach chosen as the site for the film was extensively excavated to produce the required look, and was apparently restored to its natural state by the 2004 Tsunami.

A truly worthwhile book to read, especially if one has ever done back packing of any kind, or spent time living in a 'tropical paradise'.

MAY READING - Have The Men Had Enough; Secret Daughter; To Heaven By Water; The Return of Captain John Emmett

THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN JOHN EMMETT by Elizabeth Speller

Shell shock - psychological disturbance caused by prolonged exposure to active warfare, especially being under bombardment, origin - First World War (Oxford Dictionary).

This novel is about the effects of shell shock on soldiers, and how very misunderstood these effects were by the military, the medical profession and families. This was a war unlike any form of war before and it changed forever the way wars were conducted. But as with all war, it is not the generals and commanders who bear the brunt of it, but the soldiers themselves who desperately try to deal with it, and their families who have absolutely no idea what their son or husband has been through.

In a what goes on tour stays on tour sort of way, this novel looks at the long term effects of the secrets of war business. In this case execution for desertion and/or cowardice by a firing squad comprised of fellow soldiers. Over 300 British and Commonwealth private soldiers were executed during WWI and of these only 3 were British officers. There were over 3000 soldiers including officers who were found guilty of desertion/cowardice but the sentences were generally commuted. It was extremely rare for an officer to be punished by fellow officers.

Now, a century later, we know about the horrors of WWI and trench warfare and the truly miserable frightening experience it would have been for anyone, regardless of whether they were a private or an officer. And this book pulls no punches in its descriptions of these horrors. Is it any wonder ordinary men placed in these extra- ordinary circumstances had complete breakdowns, and found themselves paralysed with fright.

This novel takes the real life executions of two soldiers and combines them into the story of an officer killed by firing squad. In 1920, Lawrence Bartram, ex-Western Front himself, recently widowed, aspiring writer of a history of English cathedrals, is living a life in limbo. He is approached by Mary, the sister of an old school friend, Captain John Emmett, who has recently died, apparently by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mary thinks a lot of things about the death don't add up, including the bequests John left in his will, and she approaches Lawrence to help her unravel her brother's complicated life. It soon becomes apparent that a string of apparently unconnected deaths are in fact all connected to John, a group of war poets, and the events that resulted in the execution of the officer.

This book is a number of things - a murder mystery, an analysis of the psychological effects of battle, a love story, but mainly a tribute and attempt to understand what the average man had to endure during and after the war. And all that is very good. But because there is so much going on, and so many tails to keep track of, the story, for me was slow moving, at time ponderous and it felt like it was taking an absolute age to get through. The author has a lot to say about the war, too much perhaps, which results in some complicated and possibly unnecessary plot lines and characters as she tries to tell us as much as she can.

Her characters, however, are very believable, although the mysterious Captain John Emmett does perhaps come across as a bit too good to be real! We really only know about him after his death, and maybe, like we do with our memories of people who die, we tend to only focus on the best parts of that person and associated memories. The phrase 'looking through rose-tinted glasses' springs to mind!

Despite this the book is very evocative of what immediate post-war civilian life could have been like - listlessness and lack of direction, many many people dealing with terrible grief, trying to create something that resembles pre-war normality.

TO HEAVEN BY WATER by Justin Cartwright

Symbolism, symbolism and more symbolism: this book is overflowing with it! Even before starting the story, the title sets the ball rolling. The title refers to the ferryman, Charan, from ancient Greek mythology who ferries the dead across the River Styx to the afterlife. This 'life after death' idea dominates the novel and pre-occupies the thoughts and actions of the main character, David Cross. David is middle aged, recently widowed, recently retired, and is really wondering what he is here for, what does he do now, and where is love. Dylan Thomas and his epic 'The Waste Land', Dr Faustus who sold his soul to the devil, amongst others dominate David's thoughts. I actually wonder if he is slightly depressed, but he comes across as bemused or puzzled rather than depressed. Prior to retirement he was a bit of celebrity, having been a long-standing and highly regarded news anchor/journalist, and in his younger days a fearless and exacting foreign correspondent.

He had a life, and now that he is out of the public limelight, he really just wants to know what he wants to do with the rest of it. So he appears to be going through what his adult children consider is a mid-life crisis. He joins the gym - spends a lot of time pondering on the rowing machine, changes his dress style, starts to wear bracelets, becomes a bit too 'thin', doesn't seem to be missing his recently passed wife, only feeling a little bit guilty about it and not really understanding why. And naturally, he wonders about love.

The absolute highlight of his life was a summer break in Rome in 1967, when as an aspiring actor, he finds himself in the inner circle of Richard Burton who is making a movie in Rome in the title role of Dr Faustus. The new Mrs Burton is also there, captivating every man in the place. Naturally David falls in love with a girl he meets on the set, and this relationship sets the tone for the rest of his life.

His two adult children, Lucy and Ed, are also trying to sort out their own lives. Ed is a lawyer, married to an ex-ballet dancer who is desperately trying to conceive a child, and Lucy is dealing with a stalker boyfriend while cementing her career as an expert in ancient coinage.

An odd bunch of people really you might think! But probably going through all the various crises and issues that we all may face from time to time. What I really enjoyed about this novel was David himself. He could be totally unlikeable really considering the kind of high profile life he has had, quite selfish and self absorbed, and there are elements of that to his character. But he does have considerable empathy for his friends, his children, and in probably some of the best writing of the novel, his relationship with his brother. This is not a novel of action, but a very insightful study of why we do what we do, and what we think we may be here for.

SECRET DAUGHTER by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Sitting in our comfortable living rooms, watching the nightly news, reading the daily papers or trawling through the internet, we often find ourselves exposed to 'life in the third world' - civil wars, famine, poverty unlike anything we would ever know or experience, disease and epidemics, women treated as economic chattels whose sole purpose is to produce a son, illiteracy and superstition, the list goes on. But with the push of a button, the turn of the page or slide of the mouse, we can escape that world and remain in our safe, warm, food-filled and healthy world.

This novel forces us to think further about these differences by focusing on two couples - Kavita and Jasu Merchant from a poor village in rural India, and Somer and Krishnan, medical doctors from San Francisco. What unites them is a child, a baby girl, second unwanted female daughter to Kavita and Jasu, at least unwanted by Jasu. In a society obsessed with producing sons, Kavita sees the only way to save her brand new baby's life is to walk miles from the village to an orphanage in Mumbai and, heart breakingly leave her baby there. Kavita returns to the village, in enormous emotional pain and continues with her life, never forgetting her child.

Meantime on the other side of the world, in San Francisco, Somer is desperate to have a baby but continually has miscarriages. So, after some soul-searching, she and Kris go to his home city, Mumbai, with the express purpose of adopting a baby girl. Asha, named by her mother and meaning hope, becomes Usha meaning dawn. By a stroke of fate a child's destiny is changed forever.

The novel moves easily chapter by chapter between the four main characters and Asha as she grows up, between the two countries and between the two very very diverse lives the two families lead. As you would expect the contrasts are huge. Essentially they rest on poverty vs privilege. Anyone who has spent any time living in a third world country will understand exactly the huge gap between the two. The lives of Kavita and Jasu are notable for constant financial hardship and struggle, and also a very deep love and commitment to each other. In America on the other hand where all material needs are more than adequately met, it seems more energy is spent on emotional and mental needs, so it is then the relationships between people that suffer. Somer struggles with being a mother trying to maintain her professional identity, plus also struggles with the Indian-ness of her daughter and her husband. Kris, on the other hand finally has someone he can be himself with and passes on much of the richness of his Indian upbringing to Asha. Asha, herself, grows into a young adult torn between the two cultures and her parents, culminating in her travelling alone to India so as to find herself and where she came from.

It is a complicated thing to do, to adopt, and even more complicated to adopt outside your own culture. This story will have enormous relevance to anyone who is adopted or an adoptee, or even growing up in a culture alien to one's own family. A great range of issues and themes are covered in the story and the whole thing could easily dive into a many armed beast with the all the potential conflicts and clashes that are brewing away. I think the author manages this by having fairly one dimensional characters, stereotyped to a certain extent, but it does allow the issues to come forth without being overtaken by complicated personalities. The characters are a little predictable as a result, and I did feel like giving Somer a jolly good shake from time to time, but it doesn't really detract from the overall story.

Having lived in India, my interest in reading the book was more in the cultural differences, the huge socio-economic extremes, and how the two somehow find some middle ground. I was also interested in reading this as I know families who have adopted children from other countries, including those who have adopted girls from China and Korea. Now I don't know if these children are products of the one child/son at all costs way of doing things, but you can't help wonder. How different the lives of these girls would have been if they had stayed in China and Korea.

HAVE THE MEN HAD ENOUGH by Margaret Forster

It is probably something that most of us think about from time to time, and then very quickly put it away far back in the 'think about it next year' slot in our brains - what will I be like when I am old? How long will I live? Will I be a burden on my family? Will I lose my marbles? This is likely to be an increasing social problem too: with the first of the baby boomers now turning 65, there is going to be a population explosion of senior citizens in the next few decades.

Margaret Forster writes about families, in particular the women in families - mothers, daughters, grandmothers - their conflicts, the pressures, the bonds and the intense love that binds them all. She continues with the theme in this story. The family is headed by Grandma, Mrs McKay. Grandma is old, she still lives independently, her spinster nurse daughter, Bridget lives in the same house but in a separate area. Around the corner is her son Charlie McKay, his wife Jenny, and teenage children Adrian and Hannah. Nearby is her other son Stuart, his younger second wife and two young children.

Grandma is one tough lady, her life has not been easy. As a result she is fiercely independent, outspoken and difficult to please. However she is becoming increasingly senile and unable to look after herself, thus creating enormous difficulties for her family. They all love her dearly and want to do the best by her. But, as we all know, in any situation where the heart can rule the head and emotions are continually running high, trying to marry Grandma's independence with her mental and physical needs is not easy.

The story is narrated in alternate chapters by daughter-in-law Jenny and granddaughter Hannah as they deal with the gradual deterioration of Grandma. As is the norm in family crises such as this it is the women who rise to the fore, who instinctively know what to do, and generally run the show. Unfortunately the men in the family just either do not know what to do, do know but do not want to do it, or are simply in denial about it all. The author has not portrayed the men in this family in a very flattering light, yet so skilful is her writing and characterisation that the reader does feel considerable empathy towards Charlie, Stuart and Adrian. Just what would we do in a similar situation, how would we feel with our parents in their last years. And how would we like to be treated by our own children as we gradually lose touch with reality.

This is an extremely compassionate and loving account of a family in crisis. It doesn't shy away from the difficult decisions, the moral and emotional quandaries that people find themselves in with dealing with those they love. I imagine that it would be a difficult read for someone who had recently seen their elderly parent go through such a decline. Nevertheless it is a worth while read because such writing does make us think about our families, those we love and how best to deal with difficult decisions.

APRIL READING -Dancing With The Devil; Navigation; From A Clear Blue Sky; The Room

THE ROOM by Emma Donoghue

Imagine living in a space 11 feet by 11 feet, with only a very high up sky light for natural light, and a door that you cannot get out of. Imagine being kidnapped off the street at 19 years old and living in this for 7 years with no other company apart from your abusive captor, a television, and eventually a baby who grows into a lively and intelligent little boy. Imagine, creating a world, the world that you remember and crave for that little boy, Jack, within that 11ft by 11 ft space. Because he has never known any other type of existence, unlike his mother, he never sees Room as a prison. Until one day, the inevitable happens. When Jack is 5, he slowly begins to realize that Outside is not just what he sees day in day out on the television. Outside actually does exist.

‘Room’ is a totally gripping and compelling tale of survival, both physical and mental. Survival of the teenage girl in her jail; giving birth and bringing up a child; teaching that child to read and write; explaining Outside through the medium of TV; and then survival once Outside becomes the new reality for mother and child. It is fairly clear that the story was inspired by the real life imprisonment of Elizabeth Fritzl in Austria who gave birth to a number of children to her captor.

The story is narrated entirely through the eyes of 5 year old Jack. And what a story it is. I read the first half in one sitting, finally making myself turn the light out at 3am, and then I had a couple of nights of very disturbing dreams. Jack’s friends are Door, Bed, Wall, Rug, Light and other items in Room. Outside is like how I imagine us outsiders would see outer space – something out there that we really have no concept of or likelihood of ever seeing that we know about through television and other media.

The way Jack describes his life in Room takes a bit of getting used to. But it forms the backbone to the story once he and his mother are back in the real world. He is completely naïve and ignorant about virtually everything we take for granted in our daily lives, such as how to go into a shop, choose an item then exchange money for that item; or wear a pair of shoes for the first time; or learn how to climb stairs.

When they finally do make it Outside, unsurprisingly, Jack wants to go back to Room. His poor mother, who naturally does not want to go back to Room, but after seven years being locked away and not finding the harsh reality of Outside easy, doesn’t know what she wants.

I think this story should be compulsory reading. It is extremely relevant to the world we live in. It provides absolutely no comfort to parents of teenage girls, and also shows, like all tragedies how suddenly and irrecoverably lives can change. Despite that it is a story of hope and an attitude of never give up, a mother’s powerful love for her child that compels her to get up every day and try to make a life, and most importantly the pure joy and unending curiosity that children find in virtually everything around them.

FROM A CLEAR BLUE SKY by Timothy Knatchbull

The amazing thing about belonging to a bookclub is that you are exposed to books you would never normally choose to read. I was just 17 when the IRA blew up a boat off the west coast of Ireland, just south of the line separating north from south. Way down at the bottom of the world in New Zealand, I distinctly remember the event, and the international horror and outrage at this act. I gathered the main target was a very important person but no real idea of who he was or what he had done. And that is basically all I remember of the incident.

All the focus, naturally was on Lord Louis, grandson of Queen Victoria, cousin of the Queen, godfather of Prince Charles. As well as being royal, he had a very distinguished naval war career, Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia, took Burma off the Japanese and ended up being Admiral of the Fleet. For his service, he was appointed the last Viceroy of India, and was instrumental in the handing over of India back to the Indian government in 1947.

On that boat was a family group out for a day fishing and general mucking about. The principle target, Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed, as were his 13 year old grandson Nicholas, Nicholas's paternal grandmother Lady Brabourne, and a local lad, 14 year old Paul Maxwell. Also on the boat were Lord Louis' daughter Patricia and husband John, and their other 13 year old identical twin son Timothy. These three, due to the quick thinking and actions of the locals, miraculously survived the bombing, and although severely injured did, in their own way, recover.

So a book written by the surviving twin finds itself on the bookclub table and suddenly I feel compelled to read it - the story behind the headlines.

Timothy and his parents were too ill to go to the funerals of their parents/grandparents/son/brother. So there was no real sense of closure for him, and in the days before full scale trauma counselling such as is available today, in many ways he was simply left to get over it and get on with his life. Some 20 years later he decides to confront the past, the result of which is this sensitively written, very forgiving, gracious, and mostly cathartic book. Timothy's story has three parts to it - the family and its history that Timothy belongs to, the events leading up to the bombing and its immediate aftermath; the path of Timothy's life and how he does his own investigation into the bombing, the IRA with personal visits to Ireland; and most significantly the devastating effect of the death of his identical other on his own life. I would say one of the key drivers in his survival and which comes through very strongly in the book, is how close knit and functional this particular family is.

As well as all the family stuff, there is a considerable amount of writing about the conflict in Ireland and the Troubles which reached their peak in the late 1970s. Many people have no sympathy at all for the IRA and its ilk. We would all forgive Timothy if he expressed hate and bitterness for those responsible, but he doesn't. He may not agree with their methods, but he understands their cause. He discovers that his grandfather had been a target for quite some time, and seems to accept that it was really only a matter of time before something happened.

A most interesting and emotional read about a troubled time in recent history and how there really are no winners in any of these conflicts.

NAVIGATION by Joy Cowley

'Greedy Cat', 'Mrs Wishy-Washy', 'The Silent One': how many people in New Zealand and around the world too, have grown up with the wonderful stories of Joy Cowley? In fact, after reading this memoir, you would almost suspect that she is more famous outside of New Zealand than inside. What a remarkable woman, with really quite a remarkable life, and yet also such a very ordinary life.

Rather than be confined by the structure of an autobiography, Joy Cowley has chosen to write a memoir: a collection of anecdotes encompassing the special events, people: 'the gifts of life that make a person'.

One of the most remarkable things about Joy Cowley is that as a child she struggled with learning to read and just did not get it. It was not until she was nine that one day, while looking through a pile of picture books at school, she did get it, and from that moment on she was hooked. Anyone who is s passionate reader well and truly will understand that moment when a book hooks.

Her love of reading, the sense of magic and escape that comes from a great story and then wanting to impart that magic to everyone else are the main drivers in her career as a writer of children's books and later young adult/adult books. I am sure her struggles with reading as a child enabled her to empathise with a similarly struggling child and so know exactly hot to go about writing to that child. What I enjoyed reading about the most was where the ideas for her stories have come from. 'Greedy Cat', the cat, for example was real, but didn't come to fruition until some time later. At all times she praises the talents of her illustrators who so beautifully bring her characters to life and into the imaginations of the child reader. And let's not forget the adult reading the book to the child.

Her life is not simply about books and reading. She shares her family life, her relationships, her children, her travels: not all of it plain sailing and she would appear to have had more than her fair share of pain and suffering. Yet by the time I had finished reading all I felt was her joy in life, her gratitude for what she has accomplished and the people who have helped her and be so enriched.

Joy Cowley is a true national treasure. In the mid-1980s I found I was one of the flatmates in the house she owned in Khandallah in Wellington. The house had not long been empty, it was old, run down, quite empty as we were the first tenants, but it did have a lovely comfortable feel about, it set in a rambling sort of garden and lots of sun. Quite regularly, the mail for our flat would consist of business envelopes addressed to Joy Cowley that, in hindsight, probably contained royalty cheques (before the days of internet banking), which we would dutifully re-address to her new home in the Marlborough Sounds. It did feel rather strange reading about this part of Joy's life, and somehow contributing to it in a very teeny tiny way!

DANCING WITH THE DEVIL by Christopher Wilson

The irresistible combination of royalty, money, sex, and scandal- continually fascinating and intriguing. But why? Well, we don't really know the answer to that, but we still soak up the bizarre and self-destructive behaviours of the rich and famous. And in the 1930s there were none more rich and famous and self- destructive or self-absorbed than the Prince of Wales, David, and his complete infatuation with the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. So infatuated was he that when he became King on the death of his father, he threw it away for this woman. And was she even a woman? Plenty of rumours and speculation over that question! As for the ex-King, it would seem his sexual proclivities tended towards the unusual too. A marriage made in heaven you might think. Until the appearance on the scene of the grandson of Franklyn Hutton, founder of the Woolworths empire. Jimmy Donahue, by all accounts was a truly beautiful young man, homosexual, promiscuous, hedonistic and the epitomy of the poor little rich boy, as was his cousin Barbara Hutton, subject of a famous biography called Poor Little Rich Girl. This family is a shining example of how money cannot buy happiness.

In the early 1950s Jimmy and Wallis began a passionate and public affair that lasted four years, making a complete fool of the Duke of Windsor in the process, and yet there was nothing he could do about it other than hope it would run its course. Which eventually it did. The interesting thing is that, despite their ostracism from respectable English society, the Windsors were hot property in the US. Society hostesses competed with each other for the company of the couple in their various social settings. None was more competitive than Jimmy's mother Jessie, daughter of Franklyn Hutton and so extremely rich with money, literally, to throw away. For some years Jessie effectively financed the extravagant and greedy lifestyle of the Windsors, thus giving Jimmy unrestricted access to the couple. Yet none of this money came to Jimmy himself; he was reliant solely on his mother for his own luxurious lifestyle. Sadly, because of this control his mother had over him, Jimmy never actually accomplished anything, even though he was desperate enough and probably good enough to have become a theatre producer.

The meeting of these three unhappy and unfulfilled individuals, as you can imagine was never destined to end happily. Reading this book I was struck by how money cannot buy happiness, and what incredibly wasteful lives these people led. How much they could have accomplished if they weren't so focussed on spending on lifestyle. And what fabulous lifestyles these people led, as detailed by the author. I lost count how many times Jimmy crossed the Atlantic by ship, the number of different beautiful residences and hotels he lived in in New York, Florida, the south of France, Paris, Italy. The lifestyles of the Windsors were much more extravagant - the descriptions of the jewellery, the clothes, the cars. Just fantastic. And makes the tragedy of their lives so much more poignant.

There is an awful lot of detail in this book of all the incidentals such as the ocean crossings, and which society hostess said what about another hostess, and which nightclub they were in one night, and what nightclub the next night. All a little tedious but when you put it all together as the author has done, it presents a drop jaw picture of the lives of such incredibly wealthy and privileged people from about 1920 through to the 1950s. To have money is marvellous and to have more than you need also marvellous, but to have so much that you know you will never ever run out, I think, is really more of a handicap than a joy.

MARCH READING - Dreamers of the Day; The Tulip Virus; Silent Scream; Family Album

FAMILY ALBUM by Penelope Lively

Wow, two Penelope Lively books in as many months! This woman is such a great writer, weaving her characters - all from the same family of course - with each other, casting different interpretations on the same events, relating past events to present situations. She weaves a delicious web; slowly, gently uncovering the mysteries and things that happen in families, all under the veneer and appearance of everything being 'normal'.

In this little gem, the children, all six of them, are returning to the family home, Allersmead - a large and rambling, run down suburban house, perfect for a large family and extras. The parents are Charles and Alison, respectively a successful but reclusive anthropology writer, and a mother, a domestic goddess actually, devoted to the provision of food, beautiful food and plenty of it for her family.

In a family of this size, naturally, the personalities are very diverse and the interactions and relationships between all of them just as interesting diverse. Naturally too there are secrets which Penelope Lively unfolds and discloses in such a gentle and intricate way. The biggest secret of all becomes fairly obvious soon enough in the story, but the unfolding and acceptance of the situation is just so beautifully handled that it all just seems like the most natural thing in the world.

I loved the characters, all of them, and just like real humans they are likable and unlikable with their good and bad points. I loved the writing and the unfolding of the story and the way the relationships develop and work. All in the name of family love. Wonderful and inspiring.

SILENT SCREAM by Lynda la Plante

Who could forget DCI Jane Tennison as played by Helen Mirren in the ITV series Prime Suspect. A riveting woman playing a riveting character - flawed, ambitious, driven, trying to balance her private life with her professional life. La Plante is a very successful script writer for TV, starting in the 1970s on a children's programme, and moving onto adult drama in the early 1980s. Prime Suspect began in the 1990s, and started her on her crime/police fighting wave with strong women at the helm. It would seem like the next step, with such a successful formula, to begin writing books.

'Silent Scream' is the fifth book in the DI Anna Travis series and the first one I have read. And what a read it is. True to her Prime Suspect formula, Anna Travis is feisty, highly intelligent, likes to work alone, the lone woman operating at her level in her work place, prone to polarising those around her, and has a relationship just a bit too close with her superintendent. And it goes without saying that she is extremely attractive! I didn't feel like I had missed out on anything about Anna by not reading the first four novels. So if you are a die hard fan, this will be like meeting an old friend.

Anyway the story. Beautiful, young, rich, successful but very troubled actress Amanda Delaney is found murdered in her brand new apartment. Naturally the suspects are many and various and naturally, it falls onto the shoulders of DI Travis to solve the murder. Which, naturally, she does!

Riveting reading, plenty of red herrings, unsavoury characters, interspersed with Anna trying to live her own life. And because it is fast paced and action packed, there is no time or chance for boredom or tedium. An easy read perfect for a weekend curled up on the couch or sun lounger by the water.

THE TULIP VIRUS by Danielle Hermans

Way back in the 1600s, in Holland, the humble tulip bulb took over the world. Generally considered the first speculative economic boom/bust event, tulip mania made many fortunes, and just as dramatically lost them again. The ironic thing about the passion for tulips, is that the most highly prized and sought after ones, with their beautiful colour combinations and markings, were actually as a result of a virus.

The author, who is Dutch herself, has taken tulip mania into the modern day. Her novel is set primarily in the present, but she draws on the events of the 1630s to create her story. The story moves between the two time periods, and shows that the deadly sin of greed has not changed its shape and size over the last 500 years. A murder in 1624 is strangely repeated in 2007. The murdered man, also a Dutchman, is found by his nephew Alec, with a small book from the 17th century of beautiful tulip illustrations. This book becomes the key to Alec and his friends figuring out why his uncle died and the shadowy people behind the murder. Like all good thrillers, there are a number of red herrings and suspicious characters before all is resolved. Or is it.

The parts of the story that take place in the 1600s give the reader the background to the madness that took over the Dutch and the traders. They were the equivalent of the traders we have today who make and lose on the future prices of various commodities. In view of the almost collapse of the world economy just a couple years ago, primarily because of the sub prime mortgage market in the USA, where what was being traded were things that didn't actually exist, this story is very timely and could almost be seen as a modern day parable.

I am not sure if it really works as a murder thriller. There isn't that edge of the seat, page turner thing going on that we have are used to in our modern day thriller. The book has been translated from the Dutch, and I wonder if some of the urgency, fear and horror has been lost in the process. It is neither a thinking thriller nor a pot boiler thriller, and may be considered by some to be quite staid. But the historical aspect keeps the story alive and certainly makes you want to keep reading till the end.

DREAMERS OF THE DAY by Mary Doria Russell

About 2/3 of the way through this book there is a black and white photo taken in 1921 at the Cairo Peace Conference in Egypt. This conference was convened by Winston Churchill to work through implementing the mandates Britain had been awarded with regards to Iraq, Palestine and Jordan - in other words the creation of the modern Middle East. As we all know the Middle East is not the only area in the world where the repercussions of Britain's past attempts to redraw maps and boundaries are continuing to cause problems for all involved.

The photograph, taken at this very significant conference, shows a group of people sitting on camels in front of the Sphinx. Winston Churchill, his wife Clementine, Gertrude Bell, Lawrence of Arabia, the British ambassador to Egypt, and amongst others, two women standing next to an Arabian. Names known or unknown, the author of this novel has taken one of these two women, given her a name and a story that makes you want to pack your bags and head off to discover this very ancient and very beautiful, mysterious country.

Agnes Shanklin, indeterminate age (about 40 perhaps?), spinster school teacher in Cleveland, Ohio, finds herself an heiress of moderate means and decides to travel to the Middle East where her sister and husband who were missionaries had known T E Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia. Agnes finds herself staying at the same hotel as the Conference participants and thus drawn into the day to day goings-on of the conference and the officials there. Naturally she falls in love, and who wouldn't want to be in love in such a place. But this is not really a love story, more a story of self-discovery. Agnes's self discovery is also our discovery of the rich history of Egypt and the background to the way that part of the world is now. Quite sad actually, and the author pulls no punches in what she thinks about the history of British involvement in this much troubled region. Agnes is an observer in the narrative rather than a participant, and this device makes it very easy to put in lots of history and commentary on the history taking place. I know this device to tell a story has been used before, and this story reminded me very much of 'Any Human Heart' by William Boyd, and it works.

I really liked Agnes, I would love to think that I could have been so intrepid way back in the 1920s to leave the middle of America and my nice safe life and step on a boat that takes me, literally and figuratively to the other side of the world. We don't often read novels that as well as enriching us through the story, also teach us and give us background to the world around us.

FEBRUARY READING - The Library of Shadows; The Hand That First Held Mine; The White Earth;

THE WHITE EARTH by Andrew McGahan

The winner of the 2005 Australian literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, this is a stunning novel set in the Darling Downs, a diverse farming region west of Brisbane. Prior to European settlement, because of its lush indigenous grasses,the region was important as a food source and culturally to the local Aborigine tribes. The arrival of the European farmers in the 1820s and 1830s put a stop to that, and the Downs quickly became the food basket for the region. Farming communities and towns quickly developed, as did large stations and homesteads which dominated their local communities. The indigenous people, as happened many places elsewhere, were displaced and effectively disappeared.

With this background in mind, the story begins in 1992 with 9 year old William's father having an unfortunate accident on the farm, resulting in his death. Forced to leave the farm, William and his depressed mother are taken in by an unknown great-uncle, John McIvor, who owns what is left of one of the big stations, Kuran station established by the White family. He lives in the huge original and now very derelict homestead. The motives for this altruistic act become fairly clear as John attempts to mould, some would say brainwash, young William into his heir. It also becomes fairly clear that John is quite mad, with an unwavering obsession to keep the property in family ownership. This, of course, makes for quite a dangerous situation for a 9 year old boy to be in. No father and a non-functioning mother means he finds himself slowly being drawn into the spell his great uncle is weaving.

At the same time, law changes are taking place that will give local Aborigines greater claim to lands that were traditionally used before European settlement. John knows secrets about the land the station is on that pertain to this, and he is determined that no one else will find out about them, thus safeguarding the property for his own interests.

Sinister yes, and spooky yes, underlying tension and danger oozing throughout the narrative, with young William being manipulated beyond his childish understanding. And yet, the uncle never comes across as evil. His whole life has revolved around Kuran station, he loves the land with a deep passion and enormous respect, and although he doesn't have the financial resources to make it productive again as it once was, he does not want to see it destroyed. The gift of the clever writer is that you actually do feel sorry for the old man as he tries to protect all that is important to him.

Any 9 year old child left to their own devices will project their own imagination and childish perceptions of the world onto what is going on around them. As William comes more and more under the spell of his great uncle's dream, he almost begins to operate in a parallel universe so that as the reader, at times you don't quite know yourself what is real and what is not.

The story is cleverly told, with chapters alternating between John's story which essentially tells the history of Europeans in the area since the 1820s and how he came to be at Kuran; and William's story. There is always a sense of impending doom, with the two symbols of 'white' and 'fire' constantly threading themselves through the story. The third character in the story is the land itself. What a love for the land this author has - the vast pastures, the hills, the water holes, the dryness, the dust, the rain when it occurs. I read an interview with the author which I now cannot find. He grew up on the Downs so has this deep seated love and respect for the land plus a number of things that happened in the book also happened to him.

My only criticism of the book is that I did feel at times, William was much older than 9 years old. He has to deal with a lot, and some of his perceptions and reactions are way beyond what I think a 9 year old's brain would process. Nevertheless this is a marvellous story of Australia and the continuing conflict between the traditional owners of the land and the European new comers.


THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE by Maggie O'Farrell

A beautifully told and poignant story of the universal themes of love - romantic love, marriage and motherhood.

In the early 1950s, 21 year old Lexie Sinclair is desperate to escape her boring, house bound life in the country lanes of Devon. Out of the blue appears the divine Innes Kent. Naturally they fall instantly in love, and he whisks her off to a new exiting life in London. Which for a time it is, then naturally things start to unravel.

Running parallel to the lives of Lexie and Innes, are the lives of Elina and Ted, also living in London, but fifty plus years later. Elina has just given birth prematurely to a baby boy, Theo, and almost lost her own life in the process. Elina struggles with motherhood as do many new mothers - the loss of her former identity, the physical and emotional demands of a very young baby, the lack of time to give to herself. Ted feels guilty for having got her pregnant in the first place, and finds that fatherhood unearths very deep memories of his own childhood and certain things that don't quite match up.

In alternating chapters, the stories of these two women and the men in their lives are gently and lovingly told. There may be fifty odd years between the lives of Lexie and Elina, and different challenges and crises happen to both of them, but throughout is their unconditional love and devotion to their babies which is what makes them get up in the morning and get on with the day. And thus have a life.

I loved this book. Lexie and Elina, Innes and Ted are very real people, they could be anyone that we may know. Strangely the whole story is narrated in the present tense which gives the reader the sense of being a fly on the wall, as if we are actually in the room watching a day unfold, or listening to a conversation. It is also very descriptive of life in London in the 1950s, from the streets, to the office buildings, to the clothes to the houses. Not so much description of course of modern day settings, but the writing is just as rich.





THE LIBRARY OF SHADOWS by Mikkel Birkegaard

Jon Campelli is a lawyer in Copenhagen, ambitious and doing quite well. He lives in an inner city apartment, drives a Mercedes and has a very good life. This is turned completely on its head when Jon's estranged father, Luca, who owns a second-hand bookshop in the city, dies very suddenly and violently. Jon, as the only surviving relative, inherits the bookshop and the staff, and very quickly discovers that things are not as they seem at the bookshop or with the staff. The bookshop is the base for a very secretive society of bibliophiles who have certain powers - either to transmit or receive communications through the power of reading. It does sound rather bizarre and peculiar, but when it emerges that there is an enemy of the group determined to take over control of the bookshop and hence the powers it holds for nefarious purposes, things take on a very sinister turn, and we have a true blue thriller, race against time on our hands.

Interspersed with this of course, is the requisite love story, self-discovery and self-improvement, plus some suspension of reality, which makes for a great story and plenty of tension. It takes the concept of 'talking books' to a new and very imaginative level and could almost put this story into the fantasy genre, if it wasn't so well grounded in the modern urban world that we all live in.

As readers we all know the power that books can have over us - escapism, knowledge, entertainment, opinions. Reading takes us to places and ideas that we may never have been exposed to, and so enrich us and empower us. This story greatly develops the idea of books being all powerful, and like all powers, can be used for good and evil purposes.

I enjoyed the imagination the author has used in writing his story. It is a bit clunky at times; far too much dialogue and conversation for a time of crisis and suspense when the future of the world is at stake! But there is plenty of tension, interesting characters, and you never quite what is going to happen next.