THE GUSTAV SONATA by Rose Tremain

I admit now, before going any further, I am a fan of whatever Rose Tremain writes. She is a marvel, walking the fine line between consummate story teller, and restrained, elegant, divine writing. Nothing is revealed too soon, but just enough from the beginning to set the tone, begin a story, beguile the reader with intriguing characters and behaviours. She writes with affection, not just of her story line, but her characters, the moral and ethical dilemmas they find themselves in, she creates real human beings, throwing life's troubles in front of them. I just love her work.

This latest novel is no different. Another reviewer made the wonderful observation that the book is composed in three parts, much like a musical sonata. And music features heavily in this novel. The first part begins in 1947, introducing Gustav, a five year old boy living in near poverty with his unhappy, unpleasant, non-maternal and morose mother Emilie in a small town in Switzerland. We have little knowledge of Emilie's circumstances and why there is no Dad on the scene. Gustav starts school, and meets Anton, a new comer to the area, shy, bit different from the other boys. Gustav and Anton develop a most unlikely friendship, Gustav being introduced and taken under the wing of Anton's wealthy parents. Anton is a very talented pianist, Gustav developing a great love of listening to Anton practise.

Anton's family is Jewish, upsetting Emilie who is anti-Semite, the significance and reason for becoming apparent in the second part of the book. This second part tells the story of the years before Gustav's birth, really Emilie's story, explaining quite sadly and poignantly why she is the mother she is to Gustav. Just another horribly sad war story really.

In the third part, Gustav and Anton are middle aged, Emilie is still alive but very elderly. The friendship between the two men has wavered over the years, depending on their life circumstances. Have they had good lives? It is hard to say. I suspect not, there is a lot of sadness in each of the two men. As they age however, they are brought together again, and the last few pages are just wonderful in what happens, and how beautifully it is written. 

STASI CHILD by David Young

The cover is so 'airport book shop' pick-me read - easy, light, thriller, a page turner, just the thing for a long flight. Or wet weekend. And the plot is also very easy and quick to come to grips with. Set in  East Germany in the 1970s you know already it isn't going to be a happy, cheerful, fun read. Corruption, bleakness, paranoia, spying, distrust and propaganda fill the pages of this very readable novel. It is definitely a step above that standard airport read, and I guarantee it will hold any reader's attention.

Oberleutnant Karin Muller is the highest ranked woman in the People's Police. She is a proud supporter of the political system she has been born into, happily accepting the propaganda about the West , its dysfunctional capitalism, its wastage and general depravity. She lives in a society where everyone is constantly under suspicion, who can you trust, wages are low, living conditions bleak and colourless, independent thought is actively discouraged with arrests and worse. Karin is married to a school teacher, Gottfried. Gottfried has already served penance at a reform school for watching Western movies and associating with a known communist. Hardly surprising the marriage is under strain.

Karin and her partner Tilsner are investigating the discovery of the body of a teenaged girl on the eastern side of the Wall, looking as if she was shot fleeing from the West. They are tasked by the Stasi to only find out the identity of the girl, not the identity of her murderer, which immediately raises the suspicions of Muller and Tilsner. Naturally things are never what they seem, and there are plenty of obstacles in the pursuit of the truth. Parallel to this detective work is the story of Irma , a young girl living in the reform school that Gottfried just happens to have been sent to. Irma is there for the sins of her mother, who is/was a prostitute. This is a truly horrible place, awful things happen which are tied up with the murder that Muller and Tilsner are working on. Gradually the two plot lines meld, Muller going beyond simply identifying the victim, naturally, but leading to the satisfactory conclusion. Although a number of loose threads.

Even better, this is the author's first novel in the Karin Muller series, so there were plenty of fish hooks dangling at the end to easily support another novel. She is quite a character, Karin Muller, although as another reviewer pointed out, she blushes way too often whenever attractive men are about. Hardly a characteristic you would think would be part of a senior toughened police officer. I can't Jane Tennison blushing in public!

WHITE HIGHLANDS by John McGhie

A really well written, gripping and vivid novel about a dark period in both Britain and Kenya's recent history. Those Brits doing it again - undermining the locals and destroying their way of life, with the locals fighting back. Author John McGhie is a journalist, having worked for the BBC and Observer newspaper, C4 News, and others. Primarily an investigative journalist he has also turned his hand to film making, his major achievement being a prize winning film he made about historical war crimes committed during the Mau Mau conflict in Kenya during 1952-1963. This would appear to be the background to his novel, the focus being on the Mau Mau reparation case, seeking an apology and financial reparations from the British government to Kenyans still alive from those times. Britain saying sorry to any nation is a gob smacking event, this settlement unprecedented when it finally happened in 2013.

This novel then, takes place in both the present and the past. It is 2008 and Samantha Seymour is one of the team of lawyers sent from London to talk to the claimants about their cases and their allegations against the colonial government of the time. She knows her grandparents lived in Kenya during this time, met and married there, and that there was something very murky about her grandfather's involvement in the Mau Mau rebellion that no one ever talked about it. She goes to Kenya with an open and curious mind, seeking to learn more about her family history.

Back in 1952, her grandfather Johnny Seymour has recently arrived in Nairobi, still traumatised by what he saw in the camps at the end of WWII in Europe. He has since become a journalist/photographer, working with his old army boss Grogan Littlejohn,  for the Government Information Office. He doesn't really like the culture of the British colonial that he is forced to live and work in, preferring the wide open spaces of Kenya, but he quickly becomes smitten with Tansy, a nurse who has lived most of her life in Kenya, and would appear to be Grogan's girlfriend. But it is his work as a photographer that exposes him to the underbelly of the great British colonial might, and before long he is fighting his own battle to stay alive, record what is going on around him, and save the lives of both Tansy and their Kenyan driver.

Great characters, both flawed and honourable, terrific story development and a most satisfying conclusion. Excellent book.

WHEN THE MOON IS LOW by Nadia Hashimi

Average I am afraid to say. I loved her first novel, "The Pearl that Broke Its Shell", and thought I was onto a winner with this equally heartfelt story of an Afghan mother and her three children, making the horrendous and treacherous journey to her sister in England. This refugee themed story has been told numerous times, tragically sad and beyond comprehension for all of us in our comfortable and safe homes, but all too real for thousands of people in the Middle East. You would think it would be easy for a good story teller to convey all that in her writing, and yes, there is plenty of that in this story. But I really felt quite disengaged from it all. The story, the characters - I just did not have that feeling of being with Fereiba who is the mother, in her awful journey, there was a huge disconnect there.  Fereiba's story is narrated in the first person, and as a mother myself, I was trying very hard to relate to her, but it just was not happening. The parallel story of her 13 year old son who is separated from his mother and siblings while in Athens was even more dangerous, but again, I simply felt I was reading about this child's life from a far away place. This was more so, as for whatever reason, Saleem's story is narrated in the third person.

Lots of things happen to this small family, much of it awful, there is plenty of tension and suspense, but it just did not grip me in the way I felt it should. There is danger everywhere, but often I didn't feel the immediacy and horror of that danger. I don't think it is due to over saturation, after all we are absolutely awash in novels set in WWII, and these are stories we need to hear. But it is such a shame that for such a great subject matter, where I really wanted to be engaged, enraged, uplifted and humanised, that I simply wasn't. 

LILAC GIRLS by Martha Hall Kelly

The endless but necessary publishing of books about WWII, fiction, fact and mixtures of both continues at a relentless and consuming pace. Little known stories and characters emerge as great stories full of people of extraordinary bravery, kindness, determination and humanity. Novels like this one showcase the best and worst of human nature and behaviour, in appalling circumstances.

Here we read about three women. Two were real people  - Caroline Ferriday, a New York Broadway actress who at the beginning of the war is working in the French Consulate, doing her best to help French orphans, refugees, trying to keep the lines of communication open. The other actual person is a German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, who takes up a job in the Ravensbruck camp, doing unspeakable things to women prisoners. The third character, Kasia Kurzmerick, although fictional, is based on a number of Polish women who were interred in the camp and subject to medical experimentation. These women became known as the Rabbits - for being experimented on and because they all ended up with a limp, hopping around the camp. It wasn't until after the war that Caroline Ferriday became aware of these survivors of such brutality and used her many connections in New York to ensure they received reparations from the German government.

Fact and fiction are effortlessly woven together, with well rounded characters. The awfulness of the war is always present, its brutality. It is amazing really that any women survived Ravensbruck, let alone those weakened and deformed by the experiments. For what she did at the camp, Herta Oberheuser was the only female doctor tried at the Nuremberg war trials. She is perhaps the most intriguing character, brainwashed like so many Germans were, but also a doctor, pledged to care for the sick, and yet she is able to justify and rationalise her actions in the camp. She can leave, but chooses not to, money being the prime motivation for her to stay. Very disturbing.

And the lilacs? Caroline's favourite plant, and also in Kasia's parents' garden in Lublin, Poland, that were still growing at the end of the war, a symbol of endurance and rebirth. The story of how the author came to write the book is in itself also a great story, and I think she has written a marvellous tribute to Caroline Ferriday and above all the women of Ravensbrook. 

THE TOBACCONIST by Robert Seethaler

A quiet and gentle read set in turbulent times. It is 1938 in Austria. Seventeen year old Franz lives with his mother in a quiet settlement some distant from Vienna. He does nothing, has had a very sheltered upbringing, and is very naive, which I found a little strange, as in a rural community, I imagine there would have been plenty for a strong healthy young man to do. Never mind. His mother's circumstances change, and she is forced to send him off to Vienna to the care and employ of an old friend, the tobacconist Otto Trsnjek - the relationship between the two adults is never fully explained, and I often wondered if he may have been Franz's father. Otto lost a leg during WWI and now owns the shop that sells newspapers and magazines as well as tobacco and cigars.

Franz's eyes are opened to an entirely new and different world, which he slowly gets used to, and in the process develops a personality, because there certainly wasn't one there initially! One of Otto's customers is Sigmund Freud with whom Franz develops an unusual friendship with. The arrival of Hitler completely upends Franz's new life, the city of Vienna and the people who live in it. Franz finds he also has to make choices. As an aside to all this, he falls passionately in love with an interesting young woman with a mysterious life! The ending is a surprise, and strangely enough also satisfying.

So this is a very uneven plot description, because the book itself is quite uneven in much of its narration and its characters. However despite that, which may of course be a reflection on the uncertainty of the time it was set in, I did like it very much. The writing is beautiful - translated from German; Franz's changing relationship with his mother as he grows from young boy to young man is lovely to see. There is a strong message that comes through - determination to be good and find goodness when evil is all around - a message as timely now as it was then. 

SELFIE by Will Storr

I am not being overly dramatic when I say that we are living in a time of increasing levels of mental illness and challenges to emotional health, actual and attempted suicides, unhappy and unfulfilled people, over whelming pressures to be someone that we may not be internally programmed to be. These have always been issues in our communities through the centuries, but in the last fifty years or so there these issues have jumped to the fore of the lives of many many people in our world. But why? And what can we do about it?

This book takes a look at the very complex issue in two ways -  how us humans have become so self-obsessed and, what exactly it is doing to us. Such a complicated subject cannot be easy to write about and the result is quite a complicated, wide ranging, energetic and fascinating exploration into what makes us, and our own individual self. On the flip side, this is a very long book, there is an enormous amount of very detailed information which at times is too much. Plus, for me, way too much space given to long-word-for-word conversations between the author and his interviewee. Some more vigorous editing would not have gone amiss. All of this does make for a book that you need to concentrate on while reading - this is one of my 'read in the daylight hours' books, rather than a  'read before going to sleep' book, because you do have to be concentrate.

The author himself is an investigative journalist, whose life and career is very, very interesting and successful. In this book, he is very open about his own suicidal thoughts, his perceived dissatisfaction with his own self.  After looking at his website, with its diverse range of articles he has written, and his bio listing his achievements, you wonder why. But this is why he is perhaps the perfect person to write such a book. After all he has made it in his field, so what the hell is wrong with him? For these reasons alone this book is excellent as it is written with self interest at its heart, full of passion and that most important ingredient - curiosity.

He firstly sets the scene by looking at why people commit suicide or try, then takes us back to the beginnings of human civilisation when we lived in tribal groups, and conformity/sameness was the way the tribe survived. Then he takes us to Ancient Greece, where a beautiful and perfect physical form was such a crucial part of the philosophy of the times. The rise of Christianity /Catholicism with its rampant notions of guilt planted the seed for self doubt, inability to meet expectations. A long period of time passes till we get to mid 20th century USA with the beginnings of liberalism, the power of the individual, decline of collectivism, which have since evolved into the current latest greatest piece of economic thinking that benefits a few at the top of the money tree, and negates everyone below - neo-liberalism, epitomised in its most raw form as I see it in zero hours contracts. I still can't get my head around employing someone, but not guaranteeing them any work. Tied up with this is a hilarious and almost unbelievable chapter about the 'self esteem' industry in America. That was an absolute revelation for me! He then moves into the frightening world of Silicon Valley, start ups, venture capital, Google and the like.

Finally, the last chapter - how to stay alive in the age of perfectionism - where it is all supposed to come together, but for me doesn't! The only message I got out of this chapter, is that if you are unhappy in your life, things aren't going right, you are overwhelmed and not coping, do not try to change yourself. We are essentially programmed from birth to react to situations in a certain way - how do you explain children brought up exactly the same way reacting differently to a life changing event. Because the answer is that you can't change yourself - there goes the self help industry, cognitive therapy etc. What you have to do is change the world you live in, which translates as change your job/profession, where you live, how you live, who you live with. Easier said than done, but what this solution does is take away that you yourself are 100% responsible for your negative self-perception, and gives you the power to fix things in another way.

Well worth reading, and keeping for future forays. The ten page index is excellent, and the notes/references take up another 50 pages. Whenever you hear or read about why people self harm, you wonder if someone maybe a narcissist, what really went on in those hippie retreats in the 1960s, how Donald Trump got to be in the White House, pick this book up because it explains a lot.