SKELETONS AT THE FEAST by Chris Bohjalian

SKELETONS AT THE FEAST by Chris Bohjalian

There seems to be no end to new books, both fiction and non-fiction about the Second World War, and I seem to be reading a lot of them. Almost without exception, they are very powerful, well written, and good reads, and mostly from the point of view of Germany and Germans being the enemy. This novel, written by an American, focuses on the disaster the war brought to the people of Germany. Not the SS or the prison guards or Hitler and his entourage. But the average German man, woman and child, whose lives were destroyed. Millions of people throughout Europe were forced to fleel their homes with few belongings and no one to help them. We don't seem to have much writing from the average German person's point of view, having been conditioned to collectively seem them all as the enemy, and all complicit in Hitler's vision and its enactment. It is refreshing to read another side of the terrible story of this war.

This novel tells the story of a wealthy farming family in the part of Germany that bordered with Poland - East Prussia. The advance of the vengeful Russians in 1944 into Germany, with all their brutality and thirst for revenge, led to a mass exodus west from this area in an attempt to reach the Allied lines before the Russians caught up with them. The author has taken the diary of an East Prussian woman who kept a diary from 1920 to 1945, parts of which documented her family's fleeing and turned it into this story.

Eighteen year old Anna is the story's narrator. With her mother, her younger brother Theo, and a Scottish POW, they flee with as much of their belongings, and food for themselves and their four horses. It is winter, the journey is long, cold, dangerous and terrifying. Parallel to this story is that of a young Jewish man, Uri Singer, who managed to escape from a train taking him and his family to Auschwitz. His story of survival may or may not be true, but what he goes through says a lot for the power of the human spirit. A third story line centers on a group of women who are in a labour camp, and the forced march they undertake across Germany to escape the Russians. An equally horrible story of cruelty, hunger, cold and what it takes to keep on living.

It's a great story, well written, brutal in parts, and heartbreaking. In places not nice to read - the author doesn't beat around the bush with the horrors facing the refugees, the terrible winter cold, the daily fight for survival. But maybe I will leave WWII stories alone for a while, and read more uplifting stuff.

THE REHEARSAL by Eleanor Catton

THE REHEARSAL by Eleanor Catton

Before The Luminaries, there was this novel. A fraction of the size thank goodness, as I actually found it considerably more difficult to read than The Luminaries. Ms Catton was only 23 when this was published, and it is extraordinary writing for one so young. Not only in her plot and its development but in the depth and complexity of her characters. I can't say I enjoyed reading this, there is so much going on, her characters are more complex than most people I know, I am not even really entirely sure what it is all about! But being  Eleanor Catton writing, out of sheer respect for her I did read it to the end. None the wiser really I am afraid. However I can very clearly see where the magic that is The Luminaries has come from. There are plenty of sections of writing in the book that are stunning and beautiful, the joy of writing and the joy of words are everywhere. From reading on-line reviews there are plenty of people out there who really like this earlier novel of hers.

The story centres on two groups of young people - girls at a girls' school, where an older teacher and a 17 year old student have been found out. There is plenty of angst, hand wringing and teenage girls trying to find their own sexual selves in the emotionally ridden atmosphere that results. And a second group of older teenagers - 1st year drama students who are competing with each other for attention from the instructors in voice, movement, mime. The two groups do come together, but it is all really quite strange. I venture to suggest that perhaps this book is about teenagers finding themselves, the search for identity, what fitting in really means, first love, first sexual experience. 

But really to be truly honest, I don't think I got it! It is confusing, I am not sure where it was supposed to be going to, and despite my perserverance it just did not come together for me.  Glad I read The Luminaries before this.

SPARKLING CYANIDE by Agatha Christie

0

SPARKLING CYANIDE by Agatha Christie

Isn't she wonderful, the most widely published author in the English language after the Bible and Shakespeare! She isn't called the Queen of Mystery for nothing. Imagine having this fantastic storyteller as your grandmother. Bedtime stories sure would be something else! I haven't read Agatha Chrisite for years and years, and ambling through the library one day recently, waiting for something to pop out at me, this did! Like so many of her stories, this murder involves just a small group of people, intimately linked to the deceased, with more than likely one of the remainings to no longer alive at the end of it all. So as well as pondering over who did it, you are also left pondering who isn't going to make it.

The title refers to the means of death - cyanide in a glass of French champagne. Rosemary Barton is the first deceased, whose death at the dinner table, with previously mentioned small group of people, opens the story. The remaining characters are her older husband George, her younger sister Iris, her husband's personal assistant Ruth, her lover Stephen Farraday, another male 'friend' Anthony Browne and lastly Sandra, the wife of Stephen Farraday. All with their intriguing back stories, and their motives, but do they have the means? And who else won't be left standing by the end?

Brilliant stuff, such insight and understanding into the human condition, what motivates us, and why we behave in certain ways. And she writes so easily, making her novels very readable and compelling. With the last of the Hercule Poirot TV movies starring David Suchet being made this year, hopefully interest will be revived in the marvellous and timeless books written by Agatha Christie. 

THE PARIS ARCHITECT by Charles Befloure

  THE PARIS ARCHITECT by Charles Befloure

What's not to like about a story that involves people trying to outwit the Nazis? This is a great story, a really good read written by an architect about an architect living in Paris in 1942. Paris is occupied by the Nazis, everyone is soley concerned with staying alive and out of the way of the occupiers. Jews are being hunted and rounded up and sent away. Everyone is suspicious of everyone else, people are on rations and hungry, life is not easy, collaborators are everywhere, the Germans are quite random in their use of violence, and the search for Jews, espcially rich ones, is relentless.

Lucien Bernard is a very talented architect. A patriot to the core, he hates the Nazis, but also knows he needs to stay out of their way. He has little time or energy for the Jews of the city, but when he is approached by a wealthy industrialist to design very secret hiding places for Jews on the run in return for being able to design buildings for the Germans, and thus earn money and prestige, he has to swallow all his misgivings. His secret hiding places are a success, and against his will he finds himself doing more such work. Over the course of the story, his conscience, his survival instinct and his very humanism are constantly fighting against each other.

Being an architect himself, the author has peppered the story with all sorts of interesting architectural and design detail. One finds a new appreciation for buildings as works of art. So iit is a book that informs as well as entertains. I wouldn't say he is the best writer in the world, and that his talents perhaps lie more with a drawing pencil rather than a writing one, but this is a terrific story. Well told, very real characters, and like many books that have been inspired by WWII, make us question how we would behave in a similar set of circumstances.

MOCKINGJAY by Suzanne Collins

MOCKINGJAY by Suzanne Collins

Well, number three in The Hunger Games trilogy, and 17 year old Katniss Everdeen is out there fighting for her life...again. Surprised that girl does not have grey hairs strewn through that beautiful blonde braid. Plus the ever present Peeta and Gale - who to trust, who not to trust. Certainly gives a different perspective on the life of a teenage girl than those reading these books could ever lead. And yet despite her toughness and outstanding attributes as a hunter and master of weapons, her unwanted destiny as leader and figurehead, she still manages to retain the angst and anguish of being a teenage girl, especially with regards to boys. Is this the real secret of the amazing success of these three stories? That beneath the horrific plot lines, sickening themes and all round ghastliness of it all, there lurks a normal teenage soul, that makes her so relateable to her audience?

And yet, something has been lost in this last chapter in Katniss's fight against the Capitol and President Snow. Yes, it has a gripping plot line, full of surprises and the unexpected. Characters we have grown to love and admire die -  violently. In fact I don't think one single person dies a peaceful death in the whole series of books. Where would be the fun in that. but as a whole this book lacks the page turning intensity and frightening suspense that was on every page of The Hunger Games, and almost every page of Catching Fire. There are many pages in this last book where nothing happens, and it actually got just a little boring. When Katniss was in fighting/survival mode, it was marvellous stuff, but the reader has to read a lot of pages before the Katniss we know and love asserts herself.

Taking up right where Catching Fire finishes, Katniss, unsurprisingly, is a bit of a mess, with her home destroyed and her life upside down. She doesn't know who or what she is. In common with many 16/17 year old girls and boys. Maybe it is because she is now nothing more than a pawn or a tool  in the war between the rebels and the Capitol that it seems like this. She is continually torn between Gale and Peeta, her mother and sister don't seem to need her as much, her best relationship seems to be with her sister's cat Butterscotch. She doesn't seem to like anyone else, nor they her.

Still as expected the Good Guys win, the Bad Guys don't, and there is some Happy Ever After. It is a good story, but somehow to me, it just all seems a bit tired. Hope the movie is better.....

IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote

IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote

No review from me will ever do this book justice. I can't say marvellous, fabulous, fantastic and all those other uplifting and positive words, because the book is about murder most horrible  - in cold blood  no less. But as a quality book, a well written, put together and very memorable book to read, it is, for me, right up there with the best. There are many, many very interesting and insightful and passionate reviews on Goodreads and other places about this book. The most memorable review I read was by a man who grew up in the state of Kansas. It was near the small town of Holcomb in south west Kansas, that one night in November 1959, the Clutter family of four were tied up, tortured then shot in their beds by two petty criminals looking for a safe full of money. The reviewer met a librarian who grew up not far from the Clutter farm, and vividly remembers her father putting locks on all the outside doors of the house after the murders. She sounds scared when she is telling the reviewer this some 55 years later. Truman Capote also conveys very vividly this fear that the local people had about what had happened in their small safe farming community.

The book is subtitled 'A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences'. It marked Capote's first foray into what we now call the non-fiction novel, a new genre at the time he wrote this book in the 1960s. After the murders occurred Capote and his friend Harper Lee travelled to Kansas and interviewed as many people as they could about the family, the community, the murder and so on. Smith and Hickock, the two killers, were eventually hanged for their crime. But not before Capote also spent time interviewing them. His book also tells their stories and how they came to be killers. Apparently some of the things in the book are not strictly correct, but it does not detract from what is a captivating read, the perfection of his character portrayals, the whole horrifying next door feel about it all. It is a book of horror, chillingly so, made more so by it being written in the neutral tones of reportage. 

THE VIRGIN AND THE WHALE by Carl Nixon

THE VIRGIN AND THE WHALE by Carl Nixon

How appropriate to read this in the year of the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI. And such a great tribute to the ordinary people - the survivors of the fighting, their families and the people who worked hard to rehabilitate them. This is a really good story, in fact it is several stories really, and centers itself around the power of memory in narrating those stories. Not just the stories we tell each other, but as Oliver Sacks puts it in an opening quote - our 'inner narrative', our own personal story.

Set in 1919, in the city of Mansfield, (very recognisable as Christchurch, NZ), Elizabeth Whitman is a very capable nurse who has worked with injured soldiers, injuries of both physical and mental nature. She has a husband, presumed missing, and a four year old son. She lives with her parents in some sort of limbo zone, unsure of how to proceed with her life.  Lucky is one such very damaged soldier who she finds herself assigned to look after and try to discover what, if anything, can be done to fix him. It becomes very quickly apparent that all of his memories prior to a head injury he received while in the trenches have been completely obliterated. Elizabeth realises this fairly quickly, but has considerable trouble convincing Lucky's wife and medical team that this is the problem, and that he is not schizophrenic needing to be locked up.

Alongside the stories of these two people, Elizabeth is narrating to her young son the story of the Virgin and the Whale, the lead character being the Balloonist, supposedly representing the missing husband and father. How else do you explain to a four year old that no one knows where Daddy is.  Nothing like a bit of magic.

Yet another story comes out of this. The author himself, also takes on the role of story teller. He opens his novel with the story of how this story came to be. He was approached by the son of Elizabeth, with the very attention getting line, 'My mother fell in love with a man who had no memory'.  The author tantalises us with whether this could be true or not, and in the end it does not really matter. Because the story he weaves between the chapters set in 1919 keeps our own thought processes alive and engaged, and the hold that memory has in our own understanding of ourselves.