THE TYPIST by Michael Knight

THE TYPIST by Michael Knight

Yet another small book, 190 pages, that contains wonderful writing and a good story. Francis Vancleave is a very ordinary young man, from a very ordinary family in a very ordinary town in the state of Alabama. He does have one talent though - he can type, and type very well, taught by his equally capable mother. After Pearl Harbour, being a dutiful young man, without much of a future in the town of Mobile, Alabama, he signs up for the army. Because of his rare skills, he finds himself attached to the Officers Personnel Section of General MacArthur's headquarters staff. He goes to Australia, then Manila and finally Tokyo which is where this story begins, as America begins the process of helping Japan rebuild itself.

Van is a bit of an outsider, not an officer but rooming with Clifford who is, and so ends up socialising with other officers as well. Unlike many of his compatriots, Van is also married, a state that he is very neutral about, but surprisingly faithful to. He is a bit of an enigma to his colleagues not only for this, but for a rather strange friendship he strikes up with MacArthur's young son. It is inevitable through rooming with Clifford that he finds himself involved in the latter's shady dealings with the defeated Japanese, and there is a sense through the story that this is not going to end well. However, through the months that Van is in Tokyo, recording the process of rebuilding,  transmitting the correspondence, and generally observing what is going on around him, he actually finds himself. He is like a quiet center in the middle of a storm, and the writer Ann Patchett makes this comment on the back cover. I very much felt this when I was reading it - this quiet, thoughtful, ordinary man, in the midst of extraordinary events, other people's disasters and tragedies, and somehow it helps  him make sense of his own life.

PICAFLOR: FINDING HOME IN SOUTH AMERICA by Jessica Talbot

 PICAFLOR: FINDING HOME IN SOUTH AMERICA by Jessica Talbot

Review copy kindly provided via Booksellers NZ by Picaflor Press

Picaflor is the South American Spanish name for the hummingbird – ‘a snacker, nibbler, pecker of flowers’. When Jessica Talbot first arrived in Peru at the age of 32, she identifies immediately with this little bird, calling herself ‘a restless searcher of sweet nectar’ in her attempts to find some sort of meaning and contentment in her life, a place to call home. She has no idea if South America is it, but for this native New Zealander, her life as she has lived it to date in New Zealand and Melbourne has not brought her the peace and reason for being she so longingly craves.  As a psychologist she is well used to analyzing the human mind, but this does not help her in understanding herself. Since her early twenties she has been drawn to South America, and so one day, after a particularly difficult time in her life, she packs her bags and goes to Peru ‘because it seemed exotic and wild and mystical’ for a three month holiday of sorts, first working as a volunteer with street children in the city of Trujillo and for the last month travelling around.

Her gut instincts prove spot on. Everything about where she travels – Peru, Colombia and Ecuador completely captivates her. A holiday romance with the delicious sounding Paco ultimately leads to her packing up her life in Melbourne and moving to Buenos Aires. She learns Spanish, makes friends with the locals, retains her sanity with her other expatriate friends, falls in love with the equally delicious sounding Diego, marries and has a child. She has found her place to call home, living and working in Buenos Aires since 2004 and this book is the story of how she found that inner peace and stability. End of story, happy ever after.

This is not just a travelogue though. Although for anyone considering a move to South America, particularly for a woman, it is great reading. This book is very a much personal journey of self-discovery and growth that we could all take a lesson or two from.  After all, Jessica left a successful career, a comfortable life, family and many friends to go on some sort of wild goose chase in search of some sort of unknown intangible, based essentially on a gut feeling. But the way she tells her story, she was dead inside living in Melbourne, and realized for her own personal survival she did need to change something. This major decision that resulted in her life taking such unexpected and different paths also enabled her internal self to deal with a lot of long buried family stuff, resulting in some much needed resolution between herself and her family.

It would have taken some courage to write this book, and maybe that is why it has taken ten years from when she went to Argentina for her to do so. She works through a lot of ‘stuff’ in this memoir and would appear to come out a happier, healthier, more contented person. Most of us are not really in very deep touch with our inner selves, and her analysis /coming to terms with all this ‘stuff’ is just as interesting and touching as the family ‘stuff’. Being the type of person that prefers reading plot driven books, at times my eyes did glaze over a bit when she was yet again visualizing or angsting about something, for which there is no shortage of material.  I did find her ongoing ‘letters’ to her one time love Daniel annoying, but if this is what helped her process everything going on, then I hope it helped!

Despite my initial doubts, thinking it was going to be another ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, I did really quite enjoy reading this book. I got to like Jessica, and I know this because at the end I was smiling to myself, thinking how great it was that things had turned out for her, how far she had come since she got her picaflor tattoo in her second month. As she says in her author’s note at the very beginning – ‘my intention has always been to write a warm, human story about overcoming a difficult past and creating a brighter future’.

THE LAST DAYS OF RABBIT HAYES by Anna McPartlin

THE LAST DAYS OF RABBIT HAYES by Anna McPartlin

What a wonderful, heart rending, joyful, incredibly sad and superb story! Who needs to go see the movie to be emotionally strung out, when the writing will bring out the tissues, and more than once.

A family in crisis, gathering in 40 year old Mia 'Rabbit' Hayes' home town in Ireland to say good bye to their daughter, sister, mother, aunt and firiend. Rabbit has only days left having done her utmost over the previous few years to fight the cancer that has taken over her body. But not yet her heart or her soul. Told simultaneously through the eyes of Rabbit, her mother, father, 12 year old daughter, best friend, sister and brother the story of Rabbit's life unfolds over the remaining nine days of her life. If there is such a thing as a good death, then Rabbit is certainly on the way to it. The love, the unbreakable bonds of family, literally ooze out of the pages, as does the richness and complexity of all these people. At the very core of Rabbit's story is the charismatic Johnny Faye, the one true love of her life.

The back cover blurb says it all really . "Here is a truth that won't be forgotten: this is a story about laughing through life's surprises and finding joy in every moment". Wonderful stuff. PS don't forget to have the tissue handy. 

THE CHILDREN ACT by Ian McEwan

THE CHILDREN ACT by Ian McEwan

For me, this novel is classic Ian McEwan. Sublime writing, unexpected and difficult conflicts between flawed and haunted characters, and not always a neat and tidy ending. In just over 200 pages of generous line spacing and font size, all of these Ian McEwan traits are well and truly apparent. To write about so much in such a compact manner is a quality writer.

Fiona Maye is 59 years old, childless, lives with her husband of many years, Jack, in London. She is a High Court judge, presiding over cases in the family court, renowned and respected for her sensitive and judicious handling of many difficult and heart rending cases that come before here. Two cases are detailed in the introductory chapters showing us the delicacy and ethical/moral conflict she deals with on what at times must seem like a daily basis. The first invovles the separation of Siamese twins - does one let one twin die to save the other, or is it better to allow both to die so as not to be seen to be 'murdering' the weaker. The second case involves the custody and education of two girls whose father belongs to a very conservative sect of the Jewish faith, and their mother who wishes the girls to have a mainstream education so as to not be bound by the conservatism of the life she has left. But these two cases pale into insignificance when Fiona finds herself the judge in the case of an 18 year old boy who has leukaemia and is refusing life saving blood transfusion on religious grounds. But is it a case of the boy making this decision for himself, or is he being unduly influenced by his devout parents? The judgement she eventually makes is never going to be an easy one, and it does come back to haunt her.

Meanwhile she has her own moral dilemmas to deal with. Her husband has announced that he wants to have an affair with a much younger woman, still declaring that he continues to love Fiona and will never leave her. Does she call his bluff or does she not? Is it the end of the road for this couple or will they both realise that some things are worth saving?

All of this in just 200 pages. I love that so much can be said, explored, touched upon, left unsaid  and still produce a compelling and surprising story.

DAVID AND GOLIATH: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

DAVID AND GOLIATH: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, journalist, best selling writer and TED speaker, takes the every day, the things in life we take for granted, the things we never question. He turns them up side down and inside out, looks at reasons why things happen, the bizarre phenomena of what goes on around us. He makes us think about stuff, all sorts of stuff. Much of his writings have not had good press or good reviews with researchers, academics: he misrepresents facts and figures, oversimplifying the research. But if you go into reading his books knowing that there are plenty of experts sceptical about what he writes, then you will probably enjoy them even more. In the times we live in where we are constantly being fed a diet of reality TV rubbish, political spin doctors, multinational spin doctors, the excitement of celebrity lives, we need to question the world around us. It is so refreshing to be able to read something that challenges the brain, and may even lead us to question further the society we live in. I have loved the author's other books - Outliers, The Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw, and Blink. Easy to read and digest, interesting topics, loads of research, wonderfully engaging writing style - what is there not to like?

This is Mr Gladwell's latest offering, and is as entertaining and interesting as his other books. Opening with the story we have all grown up with, David and Goliath, he turns the story and the reason for its outcome inside out with some great revelations as to why a tiny undernourished shepherd boy was able to knock down and kill a giant of a man, a professional soldier, with a stone fired from a sling shot. Another chapter looks at how it may well be better for your child to go to a school or university which is not in the top ten highest achievers/prestigious etc. Your child could well do much better being a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond. Or that sometimes the rule book does need to be thrown out with the bath water, that peaceful resistance can work. He writes about some successful business people who have not let learning disabilities they were born with hold them back. Instead these people had to find other ways, less conventional and even slightly alarming ways, to over ride their disabilities and achieve. Many of the people in his book are ordinary, average, people next door type of people. But they have all become extraordinary in their lives for being able to think outside the square and trusting their own gut intuition. 

It is inspiring to know that, if we just think a little bit around the problem, rather than looking at head on, then the odds may well not be stacked against us as much as we initially thought.