READING IN MAY : Snowdrops; Long Train in Winter; The Girl Who Fell From The Sky

SNOWDROPS by A.D Miller

You move to a new place - city, country, continent. No one knows you or anything about you. You can become anything or anyone you want to be. You can leave behind the detritus of your old home/city/country/life and start again. You can live a life different from the one you left. The more different the place, the more different you can become.

Nick Platt is 30-something, a lawyer, who is now in his fourth year working and living in Moscow. He speaks Russian fluently, knows the city and feels he has a pretty good handle on the place. In the early 2000s, when the novel is set, the former Soviet republic is in the throes of embracing capitalism, creating oligarchs and millionaires overnight. Nick works for a company that aids this process - setting up and managing deals between Western funds and Eastern resources. Moving faster than the pace of change can keep up, it is hardly surprising that moral and ethical lines are crossed, and that the lines between good and bad, legal and illegal, moral and corrupt are blurred until they become indistinguishable. How easy is it for someone born and brought up in a straight line place like Britain with its centuries old justice system and Christian ethic, to be corrupted by a society where all the rules have recently been thrown away, living on your wits, and trying to outdo your opponents is really the only way to get ahead?

Quite by chance one day, or is it by chance, Nick meets two beautiful sisters. An intense romance and love affair develops between Nick and one of the girls, Masha. In true capitalist fashion Masha works for a mobile phone company in customer services, and her sister is a student who also waits tables part time. Or are they. They introduce Nick to their elderly aunt, Tatiana, who lives in a flat gifted to her by previous regimes. She wants to leave Moscow and retire to a new apartment block in the suburbs of Moscow. Nick's services as a lawyer are enlisted to help the transactions go smoothly. It becomes apparent fairly early on to the reader that something is not quite right in this set up, and it is also apparent to Nick that every step he takes in his relationships with these women takes him further off the true north of his moral compass, but yet he seems incapable of getting himself back on track.

At the same time as this little scenario is unfolding, the company he works for is involved in brokering a deal between a US bank and the Cossack who is acting for an energy company looking at drilling oil off the coast and piping it overland. Alarm bells are ringing all over the place, but again Nick and his partner, who is Italian, simply allow it all to happen. It is almost as if they have now been in Russia long enough to have had all the moral and ethical vestments of their previous lives fall off them. This is most marked when about half way through the story, Nick goes back to England for Christmas to see his parents, his siblings and their families. Yes, just like all good Russian novels and movies, they all seem to be set in the depths of winter and no one seems to be able to do winter quite like the Russians. The title 'Snowdrop' refers to a corpse that has been covered by snow over winter, and then as spring begins, the thaw reveals the body.

At his parents' he just can't seem to find his feet or his heart for these few days. Now we all know family Christmas can be a fraught business but his attitude is one of such non-involvement that you can't help wonder if he really does have reason to hate his family. Getting back to Moscow of course, where he suddenly feels alive and at home, you then know that he has probably been there too long! If you were in the tropics, it would be called 'gone troppo', in Russia I don't know what they call it, but all I can think is that the heart and soul have been iced over.

So of course as we become more certain the house of cards is going to fall over, we watch with increasing fascination as Nick clumsily negotiates his way around, trying to deny what is going on but continuing to facilitate the process. He narrates the story in hindsight some years later to a person we assume to be his fiancee. Either he is talking directly to her or writing a letter, but however he is doing it, his means of story telling is almost like a confession, a complete unburdening of his soul, almost as if he is seeking forgiveness.

This is dark, foreboding writing. Nick has made a very small world for himself and in reading I almost felt a sense of suffocation as he finds himself sucked further and further into the vortex. The writer lived in Moscow for three years as correspondent for 'The Economist'. He writes beautifully of the city - its physical structure, and very atmospherically of its dark side, its underbelly, of which there is plenty. None of the characters with the exception perhaps of Tatiana and Nick's elderly neighbour, who represent the old Russia, are very nice people and I am glad I am not Russian. An unsettling story, touching on the dark side of our inner selves, and perhaps a morality tale on what can happen when you try to shed your old skin to take on a new one.

A TRAIN IN WINTER by Caroline Moorehead

War does not discriminate in its treatment of men and women. Those of the fairer, weaker sex are treated just as appallingly and brutally as their menfolk. Most of it of course we never get to hear about: war historically being men's business, women and children simply collateral damage. But from time to time, there emerges first hand accounts of small pockets of individuals who all suffered, with amazingly some surviving. Such a small group out of all the millions incarcerated and murdered in Nazi concentration camps during World War II were 230 women from France. Arrested in France, they found themselves imprisoned in small groups in a number of prisons in France, then in January 1943 brought together and transported by train to Auschwitz. Of those 230 women only 49 returned.

Through interviews with a few of the remaining living survivors and the families of those women no longer living, the author who has a background as a human rights journalist and is also a prolific biographer, has compiled an absorbing, harrowing, intensely sad, respectful and thoroughly researched biography of this group of women. This is the story of their incarcerations, their transport, their truly appalling time in Auschwitz and their ultimate survival. The key to their survival was the women themselves - their constant vigilance, care and support of each other, their shielding of each other from prison guards, their absolute determination that they would do their utmost to fight against what was going on around them.

The women were all ages, ranging from 17 years old to mid-70s. They were from cities, towns, villages, the countryside. Most were born in France, some born in Spain, Poland and Belgium who came to France when they married Frenchmen. They were school girls, farmers' wives, rich, poor, doctors, teachers, shop owners, writers, mothers, Christian, Jewish, communist - just like the myriad variety of women we have in our own communities. They really had nothing in common before the war, but once France was taken over by Germany (the first chapter gives an excellent and concise background to this take over) they were united in their hatred of the Germans, their pride in being French and their determination in making life as difficult as possible for the Germans. These women were all arrested by the Germans, essentially for crimes of resistance. From the 17 year old school girl seen dabbing an anti Nazi slogan on a wall, to operating a printing press, to distributing pamphlets, to harbouring Jews, escapees, allied airmen, to helping people pass over the demarcation line, to running errands, to simply being friends with the wrong people, completely arbitrary arrests in some cases.

Their time together in the prisons in France began the bond-building process that was to be so crucial to their survival in the Polish camps. Many of the women had their menfolk shot/hung by the Germans, most of them left behind children, a number of them were interrogated/tortured themselves. The 'getting-on' was not without difficulties as you would imagine bringing together such a disparate group of females in such trying circumstances. But by the time the decision had been made to send them en-masse to the camps, those bonds were firmly in place. And boy oh boy did they need them.

We know about the brutality of the camps, the appalling living conditions - these after all were death camps, you weren't supposed to come out alive. And yet reading about these camps again is just as awful and horrifying as every other time we have read or heard about them. That any of these women did is a miracle in itself. Some died the day they arrived in the camp - the shock being too great to bear; many of them died of dysentery or typhus in the first couple of months, many just simply collapsed in the snow and didn't get up again, many were beaten to death or just randomly picked to be gassed that day. The odds of anyone surviving or being in the wrong place at the wrong time were impossible to calculate.

For all the surviving women, their liberation was simply the beginning of the next huge struggle. Their physical and mental health would never recover, many had lost husbands and children, homes, livlihoods. The struggle to live after the war was probably as overwhelming as the struggle to live during the war. Many felt guilty for surviving.

This book brought home to me two things. Firstly the power of the human spirit and how we do need each other to survive and live well. Secondly how we need to be regularly reminded about the brutality of man to man. We may not be able to do anything about it, but at least it touches the humanity in us.

THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY by Simon Mawer

Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. That's one of the things that war does. And we wonder too, if we were placed under such pressures as having our country occupied by an enemy, would we too do find ourselves doing extraordinary things? Almost immediately after France was occupied by Germany in 1940, General De Gaulle, from his base in London, as head of the Free French movement, called on his compatriots in France to resist the German occupation at all costs so as to keep France free and restore the glory of France. Just a month later, the British Government formed the Special Operations Executive, a largely secretive organisation that was to undertake a variety of tasks including espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in Europe against Germany and its allies, and to use and aid the local resistance movements to achieve these aims. The SOE depended for its success on recruiting agents who could pass as natives of the countries they were placed into. Dual citizenship, years of living in the subject country, fluency in the language, an affinity with the country were all qualities highly sought after.

France was not the only country that the SOE operated in, but it is the subject of this novel, the latest by Simon Mawer, whose previous novel, 'The Glass Room' was short listed for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. Young Marian Sutro, with her English diplomat father, and her French mother has lived much of her life in Switzerland and also knows Paris very well. Marian works for the WAAF where her intelligence and steady nerves have her working in the Filter Room, a section of the Defence system where aircraft positions are plotted and recorded. She comes to the attention of a SOE recruiter. After having the dangers outlined to her, which are many, she agrees to join the SOE, and so her big adventure begins. She is sent to Scotland to a training facility where she undergoes a most extensive and intensive training course in all aspects of self-preservation, espionage, surveillance, wireless work and essentially survival.

And finally comes her big moment of being parachuted into France to begin her big adventure. To this point the story has trundled along at quite a leisurely unexciting sort of pace - really setting the scene for the second half. We are introduced to her fellow 'students' at the training camp, especially Benoit and Yvette. We are also introduced to her brother Ned who is a physicist and read about a Frenchman, Clement, a slightly older family friend who she had a mad crush on during her teenage years and who is now a nuclear physicist still in occupied Paris.

Once Marian, now Alice, and soon to take on a third identity, lands in France, we are immediately plunged into the adrenalin laced, terrifying, stressful, and exhausting life of the partisan/resistance worker. From the countryside of the still unoccupied south west France to German-infested Paris, Marian attempts to do the tasks she has been assigned. Which I won't divulge here! The contrast in the writing style is quite pronounced and the book very quickly becomes a page turner. While very much a tale of good vs evil, it is primarily the story of Marian's growth: from a young, naive, perhaps bit spoilt, bored girl into a highly trained, sophisticated, professional, self aware woman. And never once do you let your guard down.

The stories of women resistance workers have been told many times and in many different forms over the decades. But whether they are true as in the life of Nancy Wake or fictional as in Sebastian Faulkes' 'Charlotte Grey' or William Boyd's 'Restless' they still have the ability to make us wonder how we would behave, leave us in awe and above all humble us. A most worthwhile read.

Review copy supplied by Hachette NZ via NZ Booksellers.

READING IN APRIL - Georgy Girl; Cuban Heels; Salvage the Bones; Far To Go; They Shoot Horses, Don't They; Our Lady of Alice Bhatti.

GEORGY GIRL by Margaret Forster

'Hey there Georgy Girl, There's another Georgy deep inside, Bring out all the love you hide, and oh what a change there'd be, the world would see a new Georgy Girl'. Anyone growing up in the 1960s and 1970s would instantly recognise that song by the Seekers, from the film by the same name.  Being a little girl myself at the time, I always wondered about this Georgy Girl person, and then I found this book! This is Margaret Forster's third book, published way back in 1965 when she was only in her mid-twenties herself. Is any of it autobiographical? I sincerely hope not! I wonder if she knew people who had the characteristics of the people she writes about - maybe. They are certainly very diverse, and actually none of them particularly likeable.

First up there is Georgy's parents who are in the employ of the wealthy but childless James Leamington. They are bitter and disappointed about their lives. The only joy in their lives, if you could call it that, is their daughter Georgy, now in her early twenties, trying to make her own life, but with really no idea on how to go about doing it. Mr Leamington has always treated Georgy as his own child, paying for her education and helping set her up as a dance teacher. A sad and lonely man in his late 40s, he makes Georgy an offer that she refuses, wanting to make her own life for herself.

Georgy is actually quite a nice person and not stupid, but is a complete doormat for other people to walk all over. She flats with the truly awful Meredith, a narcissistic spoilt brat of a person who rather bizarrely is a classical musician. Meredith is pregnant to her boyfriend of the moment, Jos, with whom Georgy is madly in love. In a peculiar turn of events, Jos and Georgy end up together, looking after the baby that Meredith refuses to have anything to do with. In such circumstances the relationship is doomed from the start, with Georgy giving all her love to the baby, and none left over for Jos.

It sort of all works out in the end and Georgy would appear to be happy in the final decisions she makes. But I can't help wondering, in the new wave of feminism sweeping through the 1960s, if her decision really was the right one. It is almost as if she is caught between the very traditional and clearly defined values of post-war England and the new hedonism and opportunities available to young women of the post-war young generation. Maybe a sequel would reveal how the next few years of Georgy's life may have turned out.

Rather than enjoyable I did find the book interesting, but I didn't really find any of the characters very enjoyable! They were all really quite awful and unlikeable. Georgy could have been likeable, but I was annoyed at her because she didn't really like herself and spent most of her time trying to please others. It was really only towards the end that she did begin to find that other Georgy inside and begin to make decisions for herself instead of for others. Much more 1960s.

CUBAN HEELS by Emily Barr

Ah, chick lit. What a delightful little divergence from the realities of our usually mundane lives of work, children, family, friends, dog walking, food shopping,  peace and quiet, not necessarily in that particular order. Attractive, successful, slightly flawed heroine strikes a bit of a rocky patch; attractive, successful, not at all flawed hero in the background just waiting to pick up those broken pieces...a light frolicky bit of froth.

And then there are the slightly darker novels, which although distinctly still chick lit, have sinister overtones, characters who aren't what they appear to be, who do strange and peculiar things. As our heroine does in this particular story.

Poor Maggie's life has fallen to bits. Her long term relationship is over and she has moved from Edinburgh all the way south to Brighton. Her job at American Express is actually something else, her parents live in France, her very pregnant sister in Norwich: she is lonely, depressed, directionless. Quite by chance she finds she can eavesdrop on the lives of a young couple, Libby and David, who live in the building she lives in. Libby has just had their first child and is having some trouble adjusting from being a high-powered lawyer to being a new mum. Maggie listens into all this and begins to see the couple as her only friends and yet she finds she can not actually bring herself to introduce herself or even contrive a meeting.

David has the opportunity to learn Spanish for a year so that he can be in charge of his employer's Madrid office. And what better place to learn in than Cuba! Libby and David's decision throws Maggie into a complete tail spin and she resolves to also go to Cuba and become a part of this family who have become so important to her.

Bizarre behaviour by any stretch of the imagination! Despite the very peculiar and ridiculous coincidence of Maggie just happening to be in Cuba and learning Spanish at exactly the same time as her neighbours, life for all three of our characters starts off very well. The three of them get on extremely well and Maggie finally feels as if she has found a place to belong and people to belong to. But lingering over everything that Maggie says, thinks and does is the tragedy of her younger sister's death when Maggie was just thirteen years old. It takes a while for this to be disclosed to the reader, and as we find out more of what drives Maggie, slowly the delicate wall of self protection she has built around herself begins to crumble away.

All of course is satisfactorily resolved in the end, but it is a bit of dark and deadly path before we get to that point. I know chick lit is escapist, but at times this did stretch the imagination! It is a deeper story than your average chick lit, and actually quite well written. Characters are believable and well rounded, and the plot addresses a number of issues probably quite pertinent to many modern young women - relationships, ticking biological clock, adjustment to motherhood, sexual abuse, the nature of friendship, and how our modern lives contribute to loneliness and isolation in our communities.

I don't read a lot of chick lit because it can all be a bit fluffy and ridiculous, but this was a good story, with a number of unexpected occurrences and I really quite liked it. I now want to go to Havana - just as interesting a character as the real people in the story. Not so sure about Brighton however...

SALVAGE THE BONES by Jesmyn Ward

Remember Hurricane Katrina that hit the south east coast of the US in August 2005? This became the most expensive natural disaster in US history. Virtually all the media coverage we saw of this event was focused on New Orleans: the apparent lack of preparation, the flooded streets, floating corpses, the inability of the city to cope afterwards, the President's apparent lack of interest - I am sure you remember. But what we never really saw or heard about was the devastation in neighbouring states and communities. Especially Mississippi. This state was the hardest hit by the hurricane, with all areas suffering widespread damage. 235 people died, most of them in the coastal areas, which is also where the greatest damage and destruction occurred. In common with New Orleans and those images forever imprinted on our minds, is that it was the poorest who suffered the most. Mississippi, along with Louisiana and neighbouring Alabama are among the poorest states in the country. The effects of such a disaster are going to be much greater on the poorest than on others.

Such a family lives in the fictional Mississippi coastal town of Bois Sauvauge. Four motherless children left largely to bring themselves up: 17 year old Randall - way older than his years; 16 year old Skeeter who lives only for his fighter dog China in whom he sees the source of financial salvation for the family; 14 year old Esch, pregnant and desperately trying to deny it; and 7 year old Junior, who never knew his mother and is almost feral. Their father has never gotten over the death of his wife, and tries his absolute best to parent and provide for his children, but the family's hand to mouth existence makes this an almost impossible task.

Beginning twelve days before Hurricane Katrina strikes, Esch narrates the family's attempts to prepare for the storm which they know is going to be bigger than anything else they have had to deal with. The children try to stock pile food, their father works on getting bottles filled with water, and on ways to protect the house and shed, Skeeter proves to be a better mother to China and her pups than China is herself. Esch loses herself in morning sickness, her mad crazy love for the teenage father of her baby, and having no mother looks to the sorceress Medea from Greek mythology for inspiration and direction.

Each chapter is one of the twelve days. At the core of each chapter is the ominous threat of the approaching storm, the exhausting heat and humidity, the dirt and dust the family lives in, the constant hunt for food. But also the enormous love andhige reliance these children have on each other for the survival of their precarious family unit. Their father is really a background figure simply because he is so powerless and ineffectual, plus he is often drunk. Their relationships with each other, and with their peers in the local community are what are what drives them - the rivalries, love affairs, the graphically violent but beautifully drawn dog fights, and Skeeter's utter devotion to the dog.

This book won the National Book Award 2011. Very inspirational, it is a marvellous story. It is raw, it is violent, there is little stability in these kids' lives, but above all they have each other. And that is a difficult thing to tear apart, something not even Hurricane Katrina has the power to do, although she has a damn good time trying.

OUR LADY OF ALICE BHATTI by Mohammed Haniff

This is the latest novel from Mr Haniff, writer of the brilliantly clever and satirical 'A Case of Exploding Mangoes'. This novel was set around the plane crash that killed Pakistani President General Zia in 1988, along with a number of other dignitaries. Long listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, this is a many faceted, ingenious, very tightly plotted and held together novel. Such a great read I couldn't wait to start this latest novel from Mr Haniff. Not quite in the same class I am afraid.

Once again, he takes a whole raft of issues that seem to characterise the complete inability of Pakistan to get its act together. Unlike India just next door. Primarily this is a novel about the lowly status of women in Pakistani society, but also takes up religion - Christianity vs Islam; corruption; the state of the hospital system; untouchables; the power of the police; crowd hysteria and riots - a huge variety of issues. Alice Bhatti is at the centre of the novel. Alice is a nurse, Catholic, she has a certain healing gift, and has just started a new job at the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments in a poor part of Karachi. She has to navigate her life around the usual list of misfits that are part of hospitals - corrupt doctors, injured criminals, officious supervisors, rich and poor dying mothers and their sons - and all the time really trying to do the right thing. She reminded me so much of the very human TV character Nurse Jackie.

She rather suddenly and unexpectedly falls in love with a most unlikely husband in anyone's book - Teddy Butt, about as unlike Nurse Jackie's husband as you could possibly get! Teddy is, I am afraid to say, thick. Not a brain in that skull of his. He is an apprentice to the Gentlemen's Squad of the Karachi police, in other words tidies up and disposes of the human messes that the Karachi police make in their daily line of work. I just did not understand this love affair, not at all. Its reason for being, the courtship, why she ever married him, the fact that the marriage takes place on a submarine!! It is just so fantastic as to be ridiculous.

Being considerably smarter than her husband, Alice cottons on rather quickly that her husband is not as ideal as she led herself to believe he would be and the storyl finishes fairly soon after that.

And that I afraid to say is all that goes on in this novel. Alice's daily life is used as a backdrop for the author's commentary on how Pakistan is doing in the 21st century, and it is not doing very well at all. It is not so much what he is trying to say, however, that is disappointing; it is that compared to 'Mangoes' it isn't said very well. This book really goes nowhere, I thought all the characters unrealistic and not well drawn, it felt very disjointed and jumpy to read, and parts of the plot were just plain silly - the submarine, the miracles that take place. All in all a most disappointing read.

THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY by Horace McCoy

This is a remarkable book. First published in 1935, and apparently never out of print since, at just over 100 pages, this novel brims over with suspense, desperation, and tragedy. At the same time we are shown a darker side of the Hollywood dream that so desperately captures young people across America and the world. The reason perhaps for this book's durability and continued relevance? That young people still pursue the Hollywood fame dream with as much determination, stubbornness, and stupidity now as they did then. How all this can be conveyed in just over 100 pages is really quite amazing, and yet not a single word is wasted, and there is not a single word too many. Beautiful and mesmerizing writing that haunts us long after the finishing.

It is during the Depression, Los Angeles, mid 1930s. Robert, the narrator, is in the dock about to be sentenced for the murder of Gloria. Both are drifters from small towns, both are following the American Dream of money, fame and success by coming to Hollywood and making it big in pictures. Desperate times call for desperate measures. We know from the first page it ends in tragedy.

Robert recounts how he meets Gloria in the street and she talks him into entering a marathon dancing contest. These dancing contests were a major form of entertainment during the 1920s and, increasingly the Depression of the 1930s. For the participants, some of whom became very successful and followed the marathon circuit around the country, they were a major form of income as the prize money was quite sizeable for the time. For the desperates and wannabees, taking part, developing a gimmick, becoming a crowd favourite were crucial to be noticed by promoters, movie agents, producers who would go to the contests looking for talent. These marathon dance contests would go on for weeks - the contest Robert and Gloria enters is for 2500 hours. It is hardly surprising that you would go slightly mad taking part in such an event, and that is probably what happens to both Robert and Gloria as they fight with every ounce of their beings to stay in the contest. The cover epitomises perfectly the desperation of each couple as at all times the dancers have to be on their feet and moving.

Even though this novel was written nearly 80 years ago it has as much relevance now as it did then. In the pursuit of money, fame and success people will always resort to desperate and dangerous methods. And at the same time there will be heartbreaking sadness and futility. Like one of Aesop's fables, such a strong message conveyed in so few words.

FAR TO GO by Alison Pick

From December 1938 to September 1939 approximately 10,000 Jewish children left the countries of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland and Germany for England on organised transports that came to be known as the Kindertransport. A number of different organisations and religions were involved in the huge project of saving the children's lives as it became apparent in the late 1930s that Hitler was determined to exterminate all traces of the Jewish race in Europe. The intention was that after the war the children would be reunited with family members, but of course only a very few of the children ever saw any family members again.

This is the story one such family who gave their son a second chance at life by putting him on one of the trains that would ultimately take the boy to a new and safe life in England. Pavel and Anneliese Bauer are a young couple of Jewish descent but non-practising. They live in a town in the Sudentenland, which prior to WWI was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. After the war, the area became part of the newly created Czechoslovakia. Being populated mostly by ethnic Germans, it was high on the list of priorities for Hitler to reclaim in the expansion of his German empire.

The Bauers live a very comfortable life with their five year old son Pepik and the boy's nanny, 21 year old Marta. The story is told from Marta's point of view. She would appear to have no family; she considers the Bauers her family and even though she is their servant she seems to genuinely love and care for them, especially Pepik. She is young, naive and finds herself increasingly conflicted as Hitler and his Nazi tentacles rapidly spread across Czechoslovakia. She is seduced by Pavel's married business partner, the latter realising how much he has to gain by being Pavel's friend and ultimately his betrayer. Marta is possibly typical of how many non-Jewish people found themselves behaving during these years. Jews had been part of their communities forever, and they now found themselves having to face actions and make decisions that they probably knew were wrong, but didn't know how to deal with.

As for the Bauers, they refuse to believe that the world as they know it is going to end and, as time goes by they realise they have left it too late to get out of Czechoslovakia. And so they have to make the heart breaking decision to send their child away, never knowing what may have happened to him.

Running parallel to Marta's story is the story of another woman, a researcher who, in the present day, is putting together the stories of the children who came to England on the Kindertransport. This character is important to the story, but it does take a frustratingly long time for the relevance to show itself. It is almost as if we are fed titbits, enough to keep us interested but not enough to tell us all!

I am not giving anything away by saying that, as one would expect, the story is heart-breakingly sad. Jewish parents left in Prague was never going to end well, and many of the Kindertransport children did not have happy childhoods in their new lives. The book is beautifully written; we feel the Bauers pain and confusion, Marta's conflicted life, and the sadness that is inevitable.

The author herself is half Jewish. Her grandparents fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and took five years to make their way to Canada. Still frightened they raised their children as Christians and it was not until the author was a teenager that she discovered her heritage. Her grandparents' pre-Holocaust life
inspired her to write this story which was long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2011.

READING FOR MARCH - Sideways on a Scooter; There But For The; Pigeon English; The Churchills

THE CHURCHILLS by Mary Lovell

It is quite a daunting prospect to review a book about such a monumental person as Sir Winston Churchill. Google his name and pages and pages of stuff are listed. Any one of these provides a potted biography, lists of his many outstanding achievements, the ups and downs of his political career, his talents and interests, his personal and family life, his memorable quotes, trusts, speeches and books he wrote. The latter a career in itself.

So the purpose of this review is not to tell you about Sir Winston's life, but about this particular book which sets out to document it. And what a book it is. It sheer size alone is huge - running to 670 pages, with the last 100 pages comprising bibliography, notes, appendices and a most impressive index; chock full of photographs; and a comprehensive family tree. All of which I regularly referred to.

Beginning with the origins of the family dukedom (awarded by Queen Anne in 1702), the first chapter gives a brief but fascinating history of the family up till about the middle of the 19th century and the time of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Sir Winston's father, Lord Randolph, was the third son of this particular Duke. From then on the book focuses in huge detail on the life of Winston, literally from cradle to grave.

The research the author has put into this book is quite staggering. I always find it quite remarkable how people in our recent past kept so much of their personal written correspondence. This is now such a rich source of information about daily life, issues, and relationships of those who until quite recently really were living amongst us. I am thinking of letters that Winston wrote at boarding school to his parents, or the heart felt letters and notes that he and his wife Clementine wrote to each other constantly through out their marriage. Not only has the author managed to find her way through all this material, but somehow she has the ability to put it all together in such a way that at times you feel as if you are invading someone's innermost thoughts, or being given permission to wallow in the salacious gossip and lurid details of the lives of the British aristocracy. Will email and Facebook ever provide us again with such a rich and thoughtful insight into lives?

There is plenty of scandal and gossip throughout this book. Quite startling too I have to say: a whole appendix devoted to whether or not Lord Randolph died of syphilis, for example. And one look at the extensive family tree, with Winston and his brother Jack in the center of it, shows that they are the only ones who were married only once. So much for 'till death do us part'. There certainly wasn't much of that around! Fascinating reading.

But it is not all social climbing, bed hopping, and saving face. I doubt whether Winston would have had the impressive career and political life he had if it had not been for the support, devotion and undying love of his wife Clementine. She herself was an amazing woman and became a life peer, as well as a Dame. Her own war service as president or chairperson of various service groups earned her enormous respect and recognition. Yet her role as Winston's life long partner will be what she is forever remembered for. As the saying goes, behind every successful man there is a great woman.

From childhood Winston set his sights on a career in politics. His love of toy soliders and battle planning meant a defence career was also a foregone conclusion. To make these subjects interesting and readable to the average reader is quite an achievement; there were perhaps only a few pages when I felt I had read enough about that particular political machination (plenty of them), or the intricacies of a certain military action. The one section that did have me riveted however was the appalling debacle at Gallipoli in 1915-1916 when Churchill was the First Lord of the Admirality. As a result he received much of the blame for the disaster. Coming from New Zealand, the battle of Gallipoli features very heavily in our history and national identity as it also does for Australians. We know a lot about this battle in this part of the world. So to have the author so vividly, concisely and simply tell the story, for me, was one of the main things I have taken away from this book.

What I also take away from this book is that the world is sorely lacking in leaders with the outstanding qualities that Winston Churchill had. I can't think of a single leader in recent years who has the ability to inspire people,to not be afraid, who, as the author tells it, is not in the job for personal glorification or sees the job as a means to his own ends. The author clearly loves her subject; her admiration for the man and what he achieved in his life time and for his country is enormous. Whether this is a failing of the book I do not know, as I have not done any research or previous reading of Winston Churchill. The author has however, compiled mountains of material into a most readable and fascinating account of Britain, Europe, its leaders, movers and shakers over almost ninety years and for that reason alone it is worth reading.

Mary Lovell has written biographies of some very interesting well-known and not so well-known people and families - the Mitford sisters, Beryl Markham, Amelia Earhart and Jane Digby, plus others. I have read two of these other biographies, both of which were easy, enjoyable and informative, but also large reads!

PIGEON ENGLISH BY Stephen Kelman

This book was one of six books to make the short list for last year's Man Booker Prize. So as with the Man Booker books, I was expecting a challenging, but not necessarily likeable read. And I got likeable, but not very challenging.

It is the story of Harrison Opoku, an 11 year old Ghanian boy and recent immigrant to London with his midwife mother and older sister. One can only imagine the culture shock this family would be feeling moving to live on the 9th floor of an apartment building on a London housing estate. The author grew up on a housing estate in Luton, so he has first hand knowledge and experience of life in a setting we generally associate with inner city poverty, ugliness, deprivation, violence, drugs, and anti social behaviour. In other words not a very pleasant place to live or raise a family.

The story is narrated by Harri, as he is known, trying to make sense of this very different world he is living in, the complicated relationships and pecking order, trying to sort out where he wants to be and who with, and in the process, finding himself doing and saying things he knows are wrong, but feels compelled to do just to belong.

It is a savage place he is living in. A teenage boy he knows from school - a half friend he calls him - is stabbed to death in the street. Harri didn't see the murder but does see all the blood, the policeman standing guard, the fear and sadness in the adults. He resolves to find the murderer and bring him to justice, and so like the Hardy Boys and the Famous Five before him, he amasses clues, makes careful observations with his newly acquired binoculars, sets traps until he finds his mark. Unlike the Hardy Boys and the Famous Five however, he also has to stay on the right side of the local estate gang - Dell Farm Crew: their petty violence and acts of intimidation, plus the usual teenage issues - drugs,alcohol, sex. Harri also has to deal with homesickness and his lack of knowledge about such things as CSI, his mother being called a fuzzy wuzzy, and why his aunt has no fingerprints.

As adults we generally respond well to books written through the eyes of a child. We may not have experienced old age, or illness, or a serious accident, or intrepid journeys, or careers as forensic detectives, magazine editors or prominent lawyers, or even parenting. But the one thing we all have in common is childhood. Reading such books reminds us of our own childhoods and how we saw the world of the adults around us. Books such as 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night', 'Room' and 'Spies' focus on very large issues that are totally beyond the realm of a child to comprehend; the child narrator being a major catalyst in the unfolding action of the story. I feel that the author is trying to do much the same thing here with this winning formula, but for me it doesn't seem to work as well.It is almost as if he is trying too hard. Not a lot happens in this book - Harri tries to stay a good boy, tries to find a murderer and tries to stay on the good side of the gang. That is it.

There is also the most annoying distraction - the pigeon, just one of many hundreds of pigeons that nest on/in the apartment buildings. Harri chooses one pigeon as his special bird, his guardian, and at random places in the story the pigeon gives his perspective on what is unfolding beneath him. It really adds nothing to the story, and other than one crucial piece of action towards the end, boy and bird do not have any direct contact with each other. The bird may be the symbol for some sort of guardian angel of the boy, but because the two don't actually communicate with each other it all seems a bit far fetched.

However, the despite all this, the quality of the writing saves it. As English is a second language for Harri and his family, his inner thoughts, his conversations with his mother and sister are strewn with his own language. Hutious, which seems to mean frightening/scary/weird and is the perfect word to describe much of the strangeness Harri sees around him; asweh for I swear; his sister constantly telling him to 'Advise yourself', a fabulous universal phrase which seems to mean anything from sort yourself out, stop lying, grow up, shut up, get out of my face! The conversations Harri has with his new friends are also funny, wry, very diverse and imaginative. Making sense of a playground sign that says 'Say No to Strangers', trying to make his cheap trainers look like Adidas ones, falling in love with a girl in his class. Now these would not be out of place in many children's world view.

But this is not a funny or happy book. It is worth reading to once again be reminded of the desperate lot of many immigrant families to Western cities and impoverished areas, the random violence that frequently occurs around us, the aimlessness of many young people with little education and few prospects. But then again you may not want to read it, because we have daily reminders of all this on the nightly news, the newspapers and You Tube. Better perhaps to read some escapist fantasy fiction or a bit of light chick lit.

THERE BUT FOR THE by Ali Smith

Well, this is a most peculiar book, very surprising and ingenious, quite different from anything you are likely to have read in the recent past or in the near future for that matter. Even the title leaves you thinking something is a bit odd...

The very meandering plot revolves around Miles Garth, an ethical consultant, somewhere in his forties, who, one night at a dinner party in Greenwich, gets up between courses, makes his way upstairs to the spare room and locks himself in. Indefinitely. You would probably get up and isolate yourself too if you were at a dinner party with guests such as were at this dinner party. Nevertheless we never find out why he takes this course of action, in fact the reason, whatever it may be, has no bearing at all on how the story unfolds. Almost overnight Miles becomes a cause celebre, with people camping out in the street to catch a glimpse of him, organising a food delivery by basket and rope (he is vegetarian and the owner of the house he refuses to leave only feeds him slim slices of ham slid under the door), and media swarming as media does.

Four people, closely and loosely associated with Miles narrate the four chapters - There, But, For, The. Anna met Miles on a bus tour of Europe some 20 years prior; Mark is Miles' boyfriend and had taken Miles with him to the dinner party; May is an elderly lady biding time and hating it in a rest home; and Brooke is a nine year old girl, highly intelligent, lively, bordering on precocious and loving it. There are other people too on the periphery such as the other dinner party guests, Mark's long deceased rhyme loving mother, May's husband and Brooke's parents as well as Jen, the dinner party hostess.

The message or theme of this book? Not entirely sure, but feel it has something to do with No Man Is An Island, or maybe he is, and one state or the other is neither a bad thing or a good thing. Confused?

So we play a bit loose with the point of the book but the real pleasure of this book, what stopped me from putting it down and thinking all a bit too odd really, is the writing. It is an absolute joy to read because Ms Smith is a master of words - puns galore (Brooke LOVES puns); witty clever dialogue used in such a way that the character of the speaker is revealed without us really knowing anything about them - the dinner party is fantastic reading (I read it twice); enlightening discussions about the word 'But' for example. Brooke is truly delightful, she would be an impossible child to have in a classroom, but her observations of the adults around her, her passionate interest in her home town of Greenwich as the place that Western time is measured from, (read symbolism for the time passing in the lives of the characters) marks her out as quite the most interesting character in the book.

The whole thing is really quite genius, I just loved her use of language, it dances all over and it all contributed to the package of what is quite an unusual book, but all in a good way. Even if I am not quite sure of its raison d'etre.

SIDEWAYS ON A SCOOTER by Miranda Kennedy

Yes, it is yet another book about India; there have been a fair few over the past four years since we lived there, and not all them have been reviewed! The country and its people baffle and intrigue, it frustrates and challenges, its all about globalisation and becoming an economic super power, yet deeply entrenched in its various cultures, religions and traditions. Its diversity and beauty and ugliness make your head spin. You can both love it and hate it several times a day, and yet, somehow, I don't know how, India gets under your skin, and stays there, forever.

As it did for journalist Miranda Kennedy in her five years living in Delhi, as Super Reporter Girl, fearlessly going where no female reporter had been before in this conflict-ridden region. Already you can see she has the capacity to laugh at herself. The core of the book really is this huge self awareness and self knowledge that she uncovers about herself, and completely without arrogance reveals to the reader. So not only are we reading a book about a young woman's life in a vastly different place from New York, we are also seeing her grow up, learn from what is going around her, develop deep respect for a culture and society so alien from hers, compassion for the people around her, with the final result being a totally different woman from the one who moved to India five years prior. In her family there is a strong wander lust with her great aunt having been a missionary in India for many years, and both her parents in their youth having spent time travelling there. She also draws a lot on the writings of Isak Dinesen who wrote 'Out of Africa' about a Danish woman living in Kenya during the early 1920s-1930s.

Of course such a 'journey' or OE as we say in this part of the world, short for Overseas Experience, could take place anywhere in the world that is not home. But to do it in India just makes it that much more intriguing, drastic and fascinating.

Being young and single, love and relationships feature fairly heavily in one's thoughts. From the beginning Miranda is struggling with her marital situation or lack of. Being young, female, single, working, living alone is a big fat no-no in India. So in the first chapter we learn of her problems in finding somewhere to live - no one will rent an apartment to her! To get a roof over her head she calls herself a married woman, her 'husband' making infrequent and increasingly difficult visits to her from New York. Of course that part does not end well, but she does have somewhere to live!

Her own search for love carries on behind the scenes with occasional and brief references, but the main subject matter is the concept of love and marriage in modern-day India. By far the majority of marriages continue to be arranged, although now, unlike a couple of generations ago, many such marriages have input from the young people themselves. Love marriages are still frowned upon, even by educated upwardly mobile middle class families. In poorer/less educated families, arranged marriages where the couple barely talk, if at all, before the marriage are still normal. Then there is the whole dowry question, the enormous expense to the bride's family, the idea that daughters have to be married off in birth order, the myriad problems for the new wife as she moves in to live with her in-laws, also still the norm. Let's not forget the issues around inter-caste marriage, young Indians from America returning to India for a wife - should she be modern or traditional or somehow combine the two? And what about the role the astrologer has in all this, with choosing the right pairing, the most auspicious day for the wedding, and so on. And all us Western girls have to agonise over in comparison is the dress!

Miranda develops very close friendships with two 'modern' girls - Geeta and Parvati and her two 'traditional' maids - Rahda and Maneesh, as well as a group of women she meets at a ladies only Muslim gym. Not only are we privy to their love or loveless lives, but Miranda opens our eyes to modern urban Indian life, where the majority of people are trying to retain the customs, traditions, beliefs and many rituals that are so much a part of any religion, all along caste lines against the 'Globalisation' taking place around them. Rahda for example is of high ranking Brahmin caste, and even though quite poor and having to perform maid duties, flat refuses to have anything to do with handling rubbish which is Maneesh's job as she is from the untouchable caste. Through their time being employed by the author, they learn to get along, which even fifty years ago would never have happened. They simply would never have had anything to do with each other.

As well as depicting the lives of the people around her and her interactions with them, in true journalist fashion, Miranda also gives lots of information about modern day India itself and its recent history. There is plenty about the institution or business of marriage, the caste system, Bollywood, women's place in society and much more.

Having lived in the place it is always good and reassuring to read that there are others with similar experiences to yourself. Even though she is totally unlike me in that she is a young, single, and working, lived there for 5 years rather than my 1, many of her experiences of day to day living ring true and are probably universal amongst the female expatriate population of a large Indian city. But I think anyone with a curiosity about women in other cultures, countries, and economic settings would enjoy this book.

READING FOR FEBRUARY : Tolkien's Gown; Miss New India; In the Sea There Are Crocodiles

IN THE SEA THERE ARE CROCODILES by Fabio Geda

Even if you don't read this review please do read the link on the author's name in the side bar.

You are a ten year old child. The last things your mother ever says to you before you go sleep one night are to never use drugs, never use weapons, and never cheat or steal. Then you wake the next morning and she is gone and you are totally alone, dependent only on your wits and the kindness of strangers for survival.

This book is that story. The author is an Italian novelist who works with children who have suffered immense hardship. In his work, he came across sixteen year old Enaiatollah Akbari, originally from a small village south of Kabul, and now recently granted political asylum in Turin, Italy.

The author in a his note at the beginning of the book calls this a work of fiction rather than a factual account as told to him by Enaiatollah. This is mainly due to the fragmented nature of the young man's memories resulting from the various traumas and events he went through, and the length of time covered in the story - some five or six years. He says it is a 'recreation' of Enaiatollah's experiences, with the journey 'painstakingly reconstructed'.

The story opens with ten year old Enaiatollah fleeing Taliban rule in Afghanistan with his mother for Pakistan, where he finds himself abandoned. It takes him five years to finally make it to a safe place in Italy. In the meantime he makes his way from Pakistan, to Iran, Turkey, Greece and finally Italy. At all stages he is subject to the whims of people traffickers, has to avoid border control, finds himself shipped back to Pakistan only to have to pay to get across back to Iran. He knows he has to keep going west, and he is always motivated by the occasional story he hears of boys from his home area, or of boys who have already been where he currently is who have made it to Italy. He endures the most dangerous and frightening border crossings that others in his group do not survive.

Once again, we can only marvel at how much endurance and hardship the human spirit can take, and in one so young. We marvel at the determination and tenacity to find peace and a safe place. At no point does he ever consider giving up, and maybe it is because he is so young, so naive, so filled with youthful optimism and energy, not yet damaged by lies, manipulation, dishonesty and fatigue that he simply keeps going, putting one step in front of the other. It also makes you think he must have had a guardian angel watching over him as he would have been just one of thousands of abandoned children trying to survive. And yet strangers are unbelievably kind to him and he does have some very good luck.

This is a very inspiring story, very humbling, and makes you wonder if you too would offer assistance to a dirty, bedraggled foreign child whose path you crossed.

MISS NEW INDIA by Bharati Mukherjee

All those off shore call centres - don't we just love to hate them and for all sorts of reasons. But probably what is the most annoying thing is they claim to be speaking to you from your home town and you just know that aint so. And do we ever think about the person behind the voice so desperately trying to sound Kiwi, American, English, Australian? Not really, because we just know that the voice is just another Indian voice out of probably a million voices in that vast land mass working in a call centre. Google 'call centres India': reading what is there will provide a most informative backdrop to this story.

But this story is not about call centres and not really about the people who work in them. It is about a young girl who wants to work in one, who thinks that once she has that job with a steady income, she has made it, she has escaped. Escaped from her preordained provincial rural small town life, escaped from the marriage that her parents are desperately trying to arrange for her, escaped from the tyranny of a future mother-in-law, domestic drudgery, and the chance to use her intelligence and sparkling personality.

And this is the core of the story and of so much of what modern day Indian society is like, especially for young women with some education and expectations. How do you marry the past with the future? Often one gets these sorts of conflicts when people from one culture or ethnic group move into another and the younger generation rebels against the values and expectations of their parents. But in India, this is happening within the country itself, as young people are better educated than their parents, see the Western consumer culture infiltrating all aspects of their lives, and want a piece of it.

So who is Miss New India? She perfectly captures this conflict. She is Anjali Bose, second and unmarried daughter of a traditional lower middle class couple who live in a small town in India's poorest province Bihar. Her father has always been a lowly clerk in the enormous and cumbersome bureaucracy of one India's many bureaucracies. His over riding mission is to have Anjali married off, and unlike his older daughter who was married and left her husband and whose name is now never mentioned, he hopes his daughter will be happy, that the marriage will be fruitful and that when he dies there is a son-in-law to preside over his funeral in good Hindu tradition. In her head however, Anjali is Angie. Beautiful, irresistible to men, perfectly poised to take on the world thanks to her excellent education from an American man who has lived and taught in the town for many years. He sees the potential in his young student and encourages her to take control of her life. Which she does.

After a 'journey', she finds herself in Bangalore, or Bang-a-lot as it is called by the young who have migrated from all over the country to escape the lives their parents have carved out for them. In Bangalore they have jobs, money, Western clothes, cell phones, a phone number, plenty of eating and drinking places to go to, some even a car, and no one to curb or manage their behaviour. No wonder the place is called Bang-a-lot.

So Angie finds herself literally thrown in the deep end of this very cosmopolitan, over populated, fast moving and to her eyes very sophisticated call centre city. She finds life is not quite as peachy as she has been led to believe it would be. How surprising. Constantly she is having to marry what she sees going around her with whether she should be doing it or not, what her parents would think, what her teacher would think. In fact I think she even stops thinking at times and just does! The New India is really quite a different place from the Old India.

So her life experience might be completely different from mine, but I found Anjali/Angie intensely irritating and stupid. Her whole life as she wants it to be has been learnt through Bollywood movies, although how she knows what to do on her first kiss when those movies never actually show one I don't know! As one would expect she is incredibly naive, having come from some little town in the middle of nowhere, and I really expected with her innocence of the world, and her misplaced trust in those around her, that more bad stuff would have happened. Parts of it are so fantastic it is ridiculous, and just like a Bollywood movie there is something momentous going on all the time.

But nevertheless, despite the contrived story line, there is actually a very good message in this book. The author is Indian herself. Fortunately for her, her parents saw the value of a good education and she now lives in America, as a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. I would say she is very well placed to be able to write such a story, having a foot in both worlds. Having lived in Bangalore myself, I was instantly drawn to reading this book. I can see exactly where the author is coming from and felt how she wrote about the city was very real. But I just wish she had chosen a character more believable and smarter than she thinks she actually is!

TOLKIEN'S GOWN by Rick Gekoski

This man is something else. He has been able to combine his mad passionate love of books and everything linked to them with the buying and selling of them for what could be regarded as ridiculous amounts of money. He is a dealer in books and associated paraphernalia such as manuscripts, chapters, and items such as JRR Tolkien's old college gown. Way back in 1982 he found it 'more fun to buy and sell books than to keep them. That way you kept acquiring interesting things, could suck the pleasure out of them, sell them, and move onto something new'. And that is what he has spent the last 30 years doing and, if this book is anything to go by, having an absolute blast in the process.

This little gem of a book takes a number of his best encounters with books and their writers and gives us a potted history of how the book came to be written and how he came to acquire a particularly valuable copy of the book - usually a first edition, or a copy annotated by the author with the special message to the recipient such as 'For Virginia Woolf from the author T.S Eliot' or 'For Rick Gekoski, the book which women like, from Graham Green'. Modern literature gold!

The author writes just like a child let loose in a sweet shop. His enthusiasm, his mad crazy energy, his marvellous sense of humour shines through in bucket loads and most importantly he doesn't seem to take himself at all seriously. On the book's endpapers there is a gorgeous photo of him in a tuxedo having a laugh with Dame Edna Everage and she features in one of the essays in the book. He adores what he does, and he loves telling people about it. These essays are based on a BBC radio series called Rare Books, Rare People that he broadcast on Radio 4. I would love to have heard him tell his stories, it would have been excellent entertainment.

There is nothing conventional about any of the authors selected by Mr Gekoski. They were/are all outstanding and memorable individuals whose books have created a stir/fuss/outcry/stampede/made a mark on the twentieth century landscape. And you will learn the most interesting stuff such as where the inspiration for Peter Rabbit came from, that JRR Tolkien designed the cover for 'The Hobbit' himself, that Jack Kerouac wrote 'On the Road' in six weeks on a 120 foot roll of teletype paper, that Graham Greene was also a mad passionate collector of rare books.

This is such an easy, entertaining and relatively quick read that will leave your head reeling with all sorts of interesting bits and pieces and lamenting the fact that becoming

a rare book collector could well have been the perfect career choice.

JANUARY READING - Cause of Death; Colour; The Hare With Amber Eyes; Remember Me; Caleb's Crossing

CALEB'S CROSSING by Geraldine Brooks

It has taken some days to come up with a review of this book; I still really haven't figured it out! I live in a country, that like the east coast of America was colonised by English missionaries. The arrival of more and more settlers led inevitably to conflicts over land use and accessibility, resulting in the indigenous population becoming increasingly marginalised and deprived. In fact reading this book is a timely reminder, here on our national day as I write this, that the early history of this part of America was very similar to the early colonial history of New Zealand. Uncomfortably so actually.

This story of early English/Indian relations is based on a real person and an actual sequence of events. In 1636, the institution that came to be known as Harvard University was founded. A few years later, a group of Puritans left the main settlement of Massachusetts Bay for the island now known as Martha's Vineyard, where a number of Indian groups also lived. Interaction was inevitable. Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk was a young Indian boy, who along with four other young Indian scholars, went to a grammar school in Cambridge, next to Harvard, with two of them being admitted to Harvard around 1661 when Caleb would have been around 15 or 16 years old. He was the first Indian to graduate from Harvard and was one of only 465 graduates of the college before 1700.

Caleb features heavily in this story, but the novel is actually more about a young Puritan girl, Bethia, who is the daughter of the minister who has made it his life's mission to convert the Indians on the island. Bethia is a girl of intelligence, with an inquiring mind who does not want to be merely a subservient wife and mother with all life knocked out of her. When she is about 12, she and Caleb meet quite by chance and immediately strike up a friendship based on curiosity about each other's lives. Caleb's intelligence quickly shows itself, and before long he comes under the wing of Bethia's father and eventually in Cambridge. Through all this Bethia, by virtue of her sex, always knows that she is not destined for the academic life, and yet manages to get herself to Cambridge too where she works as a servant in the house that the students live in. By this means she continues her 'studies' by observation and eavesdropping on the Latin, Greek, religious instruction and philosophy that ensure her happiness and continued contentment.

Being a spirited and intelligent girl, she does not fit the prescribed model of young Puritan womanhood. She continually finds herself in trouble with her elders ie the men in her world, for her opinions and general non-submissiveness. She is however a most admirable young lady, trying to please those around her, and yet also retaining her sense of self and independent thought. To have that strength of character in such a society takes some beating.

The beauty of this book however, lies in the style of writing. It is as if the author has travelled back in time and taken dictation of the language spoken, the phraseology used, the very proper turns of phrase. If you have read 'Year of Wonders' you will know what I mean. Like that story, this also is narrated in the first person. As a result we get a very keen insight into the mind and heart of Bethia.

I wouldn't say this is my favourite Geraldine Brooks novel, 'People of the Book' takes that position. But for an insight into a little known part of history, it really is quite fascinating. As an aside the most interesting fact I took from this book was the brief mention of a woman who lived in these times, Anne Hutchinson. She was a woman of fierce religious conviction and got herself into all sorts of trouble with the religious authorities. She died in a massacre by Indians, along with a number of her children - she had 14 of them. According to Wikipedia she is descended from Edward I of England and in turn his parents Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her descendants through her children that did not die in the massacre, incredibly include past presidents Franklin D Roosevelt and the two George Bushs, plus current Repbulican Party candidate Mitt Romney, two US Supreme Court judges and various other key figures. What a legacy. Now that would be a story worth reading about.

REMEMBER ME by Derek Hansen

A child's world is an extraordinary place. At once small and insular with defined physical boundaries, and yet the possibilities of the imagination create whole new worlds and ways of looking at the same world we adults live in.

In 1956, New Zealand is indeed a very small and insular place. Ultra conservative and British to its core, the population is still dealing with the fall out of World War II. In the search for normality and stability, conforming is the key. Those with 'war issues' are expected to keep them close to the chest and deal with them in their own way - alcohol, religion, denial, violence. You get the picture. Yet as we know, the issues that these behaviours cover are never far from the surface.

But we live in an ever-changing world, and children of course have no knowledge or experience of war, hunger, deprivation, losing limbs, POW camps, battle and so
on. They take what they see going on around them and interpret it in a way that may not quite meet with the universal approval of those around them.

The narrator in this gem of a book is a twelve year old boy, nameless as it so happens although I didn't realise this until quite some time after I finished. Like many twelve year old boys, he has a sense of adventure, an inquiring mind, and best of all an extraordinary gift for writing. He lives with his Mum and Dad and two older brothers in an ordinary suburban street in Auckland. He goes to school, has good friends, knows almost everybody in his local community, loves fishing, rides a bike and totally loves his life. His teacher Mr Grainger, regularly sets the class essay topics which our young hero embraces with huge energy, seriousness and diligence. The story he writes to the topic "The Burden of Responsibility" is a great story our young man bases on a man in the community. Any twelve year old boy would fall over themselves to know such a story, but it has the potential to rip apart this little suburban community, and turn upside down their preconceptions and prejudices.

But not only is this a jolly good yarn. It so brilliantly captures the tone and character of what 1950s post war New Zealand society would have been like, packed with the details and nuances of daily life. The author grew up in a place in New Zealand just like this in the 1950s. It is almost as if he has found his own diary from boyhood and built his story around it. He is also a very astute observer of behaviour and how people interact with each other. I really enjoyed this story, and think it would be great reading too for younger readers.

THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES by Edmund De Waal

Edmund De Waal is a very well-known and highly regarded English potter and ceramicist. In keeping with many great artists his passion and dedication to his art was apparent from a very young age and once he earned his first class honours from Cambridge University he turned his energies and focus to his art. His specific interest appears to have laid in Japanese porcelain and to this end he studied in Japan, where coincidentally his great uncle, Ignace Ephrussi had lived for many years. Uncle Iggie fled Austria in the late 1930s for America and ended up in Japan after the war helping with the reconstruction process. He never left. What also remained with him till his death when they were inherited by Edmund, was a collection of 264 tiny hand carved wood and ivory carvings - netsuke - small enough to fit in the palm of a hand or a trouser pocket. And more importantly small enough to be moved around and kept safe.

Edmund is a direct descendant of the extremely wealthy and very upwardly mobile Russian-Jewish Ephrussi family whose fortune was made from humble origins as grain merchants in Odessa. By the 1860s the family had become the greatest grain exporters in the world, extremely wealthy and influential. The family had branched out into finance with their own banks and extensive business interests through Europe. In the 1870s the two sons were sent respectively to Paris and Vienna to further develop and cement the family's interests in Europe. Despite being incredibly rich and influential in many areas of high society the family was nevertheless Jewish and subject to many of the prejudices and antisemitism that were so prevalent at the time. It all came to a a head of course in the 1930s with the family in Vienna in particular losing literally everything they had ever possessed including their own identities. But miraculously, for the most part, they survived. Edmund's Uncle Iggie was one of the survivors. As was the collection of netsuke which had made its way to the Paris of the 1870s when they were first purchased by man about town/art collector/writer and critic Charles Ephrussi to Vienna to Japan and finally to Edmund in England. And that is all I will say about the story of the netsuke because this is story you need to read for yourself.

This is such a great read because of the way it is told. Edmund, as the custodian of the netsuke including his favourite the hare with amber eyes, feels enormous responsibility for the collection he has inherited. He is captivated by the collection's history and how it is integral to the history of his own family. And so he finds the story taking over his own life as he travels to Odessa, Paris, Vienna and Tokyo uncovering the lives of his family in these places. It would be easy to turn this story into a strict narrative with family anecdotes, and the horrors of war and antisemitism that we are so familiar with. But no, the author loves these family members of his, he wants to get beyond what they do, gets under their skins, becomes incredibly intimate with them. His artist's eye, with its intensity and impeccable eye for detail has given us a portrayal of a family and its history, surrounded by limitless wealth and beautiful things that nevertheless never really finds full acceptance into the society it wants to be accepted in. And the only constant is the netsuke collection that becomes the one remaining link between Edmund and his own young family, and the Ephrussis who left Russia with such huge hopes in the 1870s.

As a book of writing it is not perfect. Edmund is a tad indulgent of some of his predecessors, especially Charles in late 19th century Paris. In fact a lot of this was lost on me - I have never read Proust, and some of the artists I have never heard of, but Google has been working over time since filling me in.

This is a book club book so it is not mine, but I will be finding my own copy. It is the type of book, when you want a few moments to be reminded of beauty in the world, you can pick this up, open any chapter and be swept back into a time and history we have lost, with love and strength of family at its core. For me the one line review on the back cover by A.S Byatt sums it all up - 'Weird, strange and gripping'.

COLOUR - TRAVELS THROUGH THE PAINT BOX by Victoria Finlay

I remember when I was a child getting a box of paints in small tubes. I was fascinated by the names of the colours, words I had never heard of before - vermillion, magenta, aquamarine, cochineal, carmine. They might have been only shades of orange, purple, blue and red, but those exotic names gave those paints just a little more magic. Didn't do much for my art work, but never mind.

Victoria Finlay would appear to have had a similar early interest in colour when her father took her to Chartres Cathedral. She noticed the beauty of the stained glass window crafted some 800 years ago, only to be gob smacked when her father told her that no one actually knows how to make that beautiful blue in the window anymore. And so began her interest in discovering where colours come from and ultimately this book.

Part travelogue, part science text, part art history, part general history, the author has brought together a huge number and variety of facts and experiences and people into this rather large book of 440 pages, not including bibliography, notes and index which together run to another 60 pages! It could be very easy to have complete confusion in amalgamating all this material into a readable book. Probably the only way to do it with a subject such is colour is to organise it by colour. So she starts at the beginning with the colour of the earth - ochre - the first colour used for art and decoration. She goes to Australia, to an Aborigine community where ochre has been used continuously for 40,000 years. Imagine.

She then moves onto black and brown made from soot, coal, fish excretions, graphite rock, wasps, as well as giving us snippets about mummification and the history of printing. The next chapter, white, is mostly about lead which was used to make white paint, and especially make-up resulting in the early and painful deaths of many fashionable ladies. Following the colours of the rainbow, the next seven chapters take us all over the world. From cochineal bugs on cactus plants in Chile (red), to Stradivarius violins in Cremona (orange), to urine gathering in India and wars over saffron (yellow), to exploring caves in China (green), visiting the Bamiyan Buddhas not long before they were blown up (blue), harvesting indigo plants in India and Mexico (indigo) and going to Lebanon to search for the source of the power of purple in ancient Rome and Egypt (violet). And these are only a few of the stories that the author crams into her book.

If there is any criticism of the book it is perhaps that there is too much information, too many stories and adventures, making it hard to catagorise exactly what type of book it is. I would say, quite simply, it is a personal journey of a subject close to her heart that she wants to share with as many people as possible. It is an absolute treasure trove of action and inquiry and I learnt so much about all sorts of stuff! So glad I picked this book up from the shelf of a second hand book shop!

CAUSE OF DEATH by Patricia Cornwell

So here I am - summer holidays, in a rented bach by the sea, and it is raining. No sun, swimming, walking or feeling the warm air. What to do but raid the owners' holiday book collection, always so different from what is in one's own collection or pile to read. Not much there actually. So time to take the plunge and pull one off the shelf, a well known and by all accounts highly regarded author not yet read...Patricia Cornwell! Nothing like a bit of murder, body count, forensics and blood to take one away from the rain.

Published in 1996, I understand this is her 7th novel featuring that wonder woman Dr Kay Scarpetta - Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia and consultant to the FBI. One New Year's Eve she receives a strange phone call concerning a body found on an anchor rope attached to a decommissioned navy vessel. What follows is a barely credible escapade into poisonings, brutal murders, a group of neo-fascist lunatics, computer wizardry and robotics and of course Dr Scarpetta intimately involved in saving the day and apprehending the perpetrators. All very fantastic and superb escapist holiday reading.

But the book is not only murder and mayhem. Never having read anything about Dr Scarpetta before, I did manage to learn an awful lot about her and her life. I guess she is in her forties, lives alone, but with a complicated personal life that returns to haunt her in this story; she has a brilliant young computer science niece who coincidentally works for the FBI and is still coming to terms with her lesbianism. Plus there are what I gather are some old hands from previous books such as Marino, who is probably the most real person in this story. As I read in one review of this book, he is so well drawn that you can almost smell the spilt egg from breakfast on his tie. And he has the best lines too!

I gather from reading about this book on Amazon that it is not Ms Cornwell's best Kay Scarpetta. Compared to her others it would appear to lack depth, have little character development, in fact almost stereotypical characters, and most importantly missing that 'extraordinary, can't-go-to-bed-til-you're-finished suspense' (Publishers' Weekly) of the previous six Scarpetta novels.

Nevertheless for a first read of this author I enjoyed it very much. Going in eyes wide open I had nothing to compare her to, or really any knowledge of the author and her character at all. If the other books in the series are better I look forward very much to reading some more in the future. I read that Angelina Jolie has been signed to play Scarpetta in a series of films - look forward to seeing those in due course. Great wet day holiday reading.

DECEMBER READING - The Tiger's Wife; State of Wonder; The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake; The Villa Girls

THE VILLA GIRLS by Nicky Pellegrino

What more can one ask for over the summer/Christmas holiday period than lying down with a bit of chick-lit. How blissful and escapist! I had forgotten how intensely enjoyable a bit of relaxing, romantic and light reading can be. And you can read extraordinarily quickly which enables you to move onto the next one...

And, to take the bliss one step further, how about a setting of southern Italy, to an olive estate, owned and operated by the one family for some generations - oh the history, the family intrigues, the wine, the food, the olives!!!! The bliss goes on and on.

Rosie is a school girl in London when the story begins. She has recently lost her parents in a horrific road accident and is living unhappily and aimlessly with her aunt and uncle. She still goes to school and quite by accident strikes up a friendship with an Italian girl from school, Addolorata who takes her under her wing slowly introduces her to life. The first step in this process is a holiday at a villa in Spain with two other girls from school. Surprisingly this goes extremely well, and Rosie gradually begins to find her feet, ably assisted by Addolorato and her Italian family who own and run, none other than an Italian restaurant! Quelle surprise!

At the same time as Rosie is coping with the curve balls of life, in Italy Enzo is being groomed to take over the management of the olive estate from his father at some time in the future. Despite the estate being run by the men in the family, it is Enzo's fiery and strong grandmother who really runs the show and is determined that the estate will retain its prestigious international reputation. There is pressure on Enzo to find a young local woman to marry, but he continually resists.

Inevitably of course, as in all good chick lit, Rosie and Enzo are destined to meet, and this is on a second villa holiday that the girls decide to take two years after the first. And as in all good romances there are complications and difficulties until, naturally the inevitable happens and the two are reunited.

Oh yes it is all so predictable, and delicious and gorgeous, but who cares! The writing is delightful - the gloom and oppression of London vs the sunshine and brilliance of the Italian country side. And the food - Mamma Mia! I don't know if the writer has a background in food, but she writes about Italian food with love, joy and passion. Although from Liverpool and now living in New Zealand, her father is Italian and surely this must have something to do with it!

So to take you away from your ordinary life, a little bit of Italy and romance and food combined could be the perfect recipe.

THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE by Aimee Bender

How many times do we wish that we could read someone's mind, to understand exactly what is going on in there? I expect men and women say it to themselves about each other all the time! Imagine then how weird it would be to be able to taste the emotions of the person who has prepared food for you!

Rose is nine years old. She lives in the middle of Los Angeles - between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose. She lives in a house with her lawyer father, her homemaker mother and older brother, goes to school, has friends, arguments with her brother. All very ordinary and unremarkable. Until the day of her ninth birthday when she bites into a piece of lemon-chocolate cake that her mother has just made. Wham, instantly Rose can taste her mother's emotions and her life is changed forever. She sees that her mother is very unhappy and as her mother is the only one in the house who prepares the meals, Rose is confronted all the time with her mother's turmoil; all the food tastes bad. This is just the beginning, and Rose finds her life dominated with finding food that has as little human involvement in it as possible because it seems to her that everyone has a level of unhappiness, despair, anger, boredom in them that she is forced to experience every time she eats. Her obsession with eating only processed food would seem to most people like a case of child neglect, but of course to Rose, as she grows older and tries to come to terms with this affliction, it is a matter of simply surviving.

Her heightened sensitivity, however, leads her to finding things out about people, especially in her family, and unsurprisingly affects her relationships with them and others in her life. Her brother Joseph, in particular, whom she has always adored and looked up to, is a particularly troubled boy. But no-one, not even Rose can figure out what is going on with him. As Rose gets older however she does eventually come to terms with and accept 'gift', but not without considerable trauma. Perhaps the most beautiful part is her finding a restaurant where she can taste the love and happiness of the chef in the food and ends up finding a life for herself in this particular small suburban LA restaurant - the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

And yet it is a very disturbing story. It starts out so promisingly with a child in possession of an unusual ability, trying to make sense of other people's lives, and then very suddenly becomes just plain weird. At that point, for me, all the carefully crafted credibility came crashing down. Fortunately the 'weird' happens about 3/4 of the way through, so I did finish reading to the end, really to find out where it all came from. Still don't know.

It seems to be quite in-vogue at the present time for authors to put a certain amount of magical realism in their stories, just enough fantasy and magic to tip us a little over the edge of the story we are reading about - The Twilight series, The Tiger's Wife, books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabelle Allende. It seems that the magic in these stories is based on already known myths and legends that the authors cleverly weave into their plots, thus perhaps making it easier for the reader to accept the magic stuff that does happen. But in this story I am not aware of any precedent anywhere for someone to be able to taste the emotions of someone through food. Then how on earth that is connected to the very strange happening that I cannot tell you about I really do not know. It really is just too weird. I think what makes it all so disturbing, is that unlike the books and authors previously mentioned, this author is simply unable to tie it all together and make sense of it. She doesn't even seem to be able to make sense of it herself. Mind you, her setting being a stone's throw from Sunset Boulevard, is probably fairly appropriate.

However, before it all went pear shaped for me, I did enjoy the writing. It is such an odd thing to write about and because we have all been children, and I am sure believed in magic in some form or other, reading about the world through a child's eyes is always fascinating. Wouldn't it be great to know if Mum was in a good mood while preparing dinner so you would know the right time to ask to borrow the car or stay out late! Poor wee Rose however spends all her time trying to make child sense of all that adult stuff she is tasting. Worth reading, but borrow it rather than buy it. This might be good for a book group too, as I am sure it will provoke plenty of discussion.

STATE OF WONDER by Anne Patchett

It must now be about 10 years ago that I read 'Bel Canto' by this author. I can still remember reading that book, the story as it unfolded, her outstanding writing, all in a book that is not very big at all. So when 'Run' was published some 4 years or so ago, I thought another winner. But no, it left no impression on me at all. So little impression that I have had to Google it to be reminded of the plot line - too complicated and too many characters. When 'State of Wonder' was introduced into book club, I was a bit sceptical, bit wary, bit sitting-on-the-fence. The plot synopsis was certainly intriguing - Amazon setting, cutting edge scientific research, people disappearing - plenty of mystery and curiosity to lure the cautious reader.

And what a book it is, really quite outstanding - the unfolding of the story, full of surprises and twists, the depth and complexity of the characters, the alienation of being alone in a foreign city, the beautiful and frightening descriptions of the Amazon and the rainforests, the range of emotions expressed.

Marina Singh is a pharmaceutical researcher working for a large pharmaceutical company in Minnesota. She started off as a medical student under the tutelage of Dr Annick Swenson. Dr Swenson is a brilliant, enigmatic and totally fearless doctor who is now deep in the Brazilian Rio Negro developing a wonder drug that, if successful, will change how women manage their fertility. Dr Swenson, however, is not very good at keeping her employers up to date with her progress. So Marina's lab partner, the mild-mannered family man Anders Eckman is sent off to Brazil to find out how things are going. Unfortunately, as it very succinctly states in the first six words of the book - "The news of Anders Eckman's death...", things don't turn out too well and the upshot is that Marina finds she is the one sent to Brazil to find out what happened to Anders and more importantly to find Dr Swenson.

The search is far from easy, with Marina having to deal with difficult people, language problems, coping with the climate, illness, and then when she finally gets to the doctor's camp the natural environment - the dirt, the heat, the insects, spiders, snakes, undergrowth, the food, her lack of clothing, the oppressiveness, the native people. The challenges are huge, especially for a woman in her early 40s, who has lived virtually her entire life on the open plains of Minnesota. It is not only the physical challenges that Marina faces. What she finds deep in the Rio Negro change her forever and leave her questioning what sort of life she really wants.

I have no idea if the author has ever been to the Amazon rainforest area. However the magic of her writing is such that you can feel that you are there - the heat, the isolation, the expanse of the water and the rivers, the inaccessibility, the bugs and forestation. It is scary. Her characters are very human, and as in 'Bel Canto' she makes the reader sympathetic to the characters we aren't even supposed to really like. And how amazing it is that your impression of someone changes as you get to know them, just like in life. This is an incredible book, and a great holiday read for the beach. You'll be glad you are there and not floating lost on a river in the Amazon.

THE TIGER'S WIFE by Tea Obreht

A second book about tigers! And even more amazing I started reading this on holiday in Thailand where there are...tigers! Not that we saw any unless you count three white tigers caged in a hideous indoor cage in a ghastly cultural theme park, all white, no foliage, just a few logs, and thousands of gawping tourists. At the same place you could also have your photo taken for an obscene amount of baht with a very small baby tiger being bottle fed, again in front of hundreds and hundreds of tourists in a hot humid room. This particular experience made me feel ashamed to be a tourist at this establishment and lent greater depth to my reading of this book.

The author was born in the former Yugoslavia in 1985. She grew up a child of the war that ripped apart this region, pitting the peoples of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and others with all their various ethnicity and religions against each other. Her story is set in a fictional region in the Balkans just like Yugoslavia after such a devastating civil war.

Natalia is a doctor. The war is officially over and major adjustments are still going on. With her friend Zora, also a doctor, they are on a charitable trip to an orphanage in what is now on the other side of the new border with a truck load of vaccinations. Natalia has always had a very close relationship with her grandfather, also a doctor. Natalia is the only one he has told about his terminal cancer. But she is very surprised when she gets a phone call from her distraught grandmother advising the sudden and mysterious death of her grandfather in an unknown town, that Natalia realizes is surprisingly close to the town where the orphanage is. She takes it upon herself to arrange for her grandfather's body to go back home, and to take care of his personal effects. In particular she wants to recover a tattered and battered copy of Rudyard Kipling's 'The Jungle Book' that has been an inseparable part of her grandfather as far back as she can remember.

Over these few days, Natalia, in her grief and sadness, reflects back on her relationship with her grandfather and the extraordinary man he was. From a very young age she knew of his deep love and respect for the tiger. But there was much more to this love than just regular visits to the zoo with him, and his love for 'The Jungle Book'. She grows up with the most marvellous stories told by her grandfather and there are two stories in particular, which as Natalia tells it, are integral to the understanding of the type of man her grandfather was. One is the story of the tiger's wife and the other is the story of the deathless man. These stories are a masterful blend of regional myth and folklore, plus actual events that shaped the man he became, and stayed with him till his own death.

The back story to all this, of course, is war and its devastation of this region over the decades. Specifically World War II when grandfather was a child and first met the tiger's wife, and the more recent war which started when Natalia was a student. Even in the modern day, folklore and superstition still dominates much of the way of life, and in her search to uncover her grandfather's mysterious death so far from home, Natalia also finds herself getting caught up in the stories from her grandfather's life. The tiger becomes a symbol for all that has been lost through the conflicts that blight this part of the world, and by the end of the story there was a tear or two in my eye.

The story moves easily from present day to various times in the past. At times it is almost like reading a fairy tale and reminded me very much of the magical realism of the one or two books I have read by Isabelle Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The author is only her twenties, and yet her writing is so rich and sumptuous, especially in her telling of the stories of the past. I loved, just loved, the section when a young boy finds himself exploring the Pasha's Hall of Mirrors - beautifully visual writing.

This is a wonderful story, perhaps a trifle too long, but so much to escape into and go back to read and enjoy again.