CITY OF SPIES by Mara Timon

 

Best character in this WWII spy thriller amongst an overwhelming list of characters is the city of Lisbon. Rich with history, old buildings, tiny cafes and atmospheric restaurants, hills, steep streets, beautiful views and outlooks, poky alleyways, people of all nationalities herded together in what was, at the time, known as the City of Spies. Lisbon was the last city of any size at the westernmost point of Europe on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Portugal was supposedly neutral during the war, although its president had definite Nazi leanings. It follows that the city was a melting pot of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, English, German, everything in between and many pretending to be what they weren't. A city of intrigue, depiction, danger. 

Into this comes a young English woman, employed by the SOE. She has been an operative in Paris, but with her cover blown, has had to flee Paris, making her way with a RAF airman she meets along the way, out of France. That is a great journey in itself, well worth its own novel. 

Once she gets to Lisbon, she runs into her godfather, and trusting him, takes on the identity of a young French widow - Solange - her job being to infiltrate local high society and see what she can find out. A most intrepid and courageous young woman, our hero does all of that and more. Plenty of traces of Nancy Wake and many other brave and fearless young women who belonged to the SOE, putting their lives at risk on a daily basis. 

It's a good read, but is probably a tad too long, with as I said, way too many characters. I was sort of expecting something along the lines of John Le Carre - there is a comment on the back cover that says 'Casablanca meets le Carre...', but it lacks the careful plotting, the subterfuge, understated action and complex characters of le Carre. Everything is too obvious in this, lots of action - there is never a spot of down time or waiting time - a hall mark of a suspense novel. And having been to Portugal I am staggered at the geographical range of territory Solange covers in her exploits. Fast paced, and delivers well on the pressure cooker atmosphere that a place like Lisbon would have been at this time - never knowing the true self of those around you. 

THE GOOD SISTER by Sally Hepworth

 

Fabulous gripping psychological thriller entwined around the unbreakable hold that twins have on each other. Fern and Rose - one tall, blond, beautiful, ethereal looking, with a sensory processing disorder and the other shorter, rounder, brunette, gifted with the smarts, who has taken on the role of looking out for her more fragile twin. Their childhood was difficult, with a volatile and unstable mother who moved them frequently  to avoid unpaid rents, accumulating bills. Never a father mentioned or seemingly even desired by the two girls... 

The story is told in alternate chapters by Fern and Rose, with much reflecting on their childhoods, their relationship with each other and their mercurial mother in the middle of it all. This will resonate with all readers who have siblings close in age. We all know how the same family event/discussion/activity/crisis is viewed and reported on completely differently by each person there. As if everyone is wearing a different pair of glasses. We are all biased towards one parent or the other, or one sibling more than the other, which also colours how the story is told. Rose is the twin who has the difficult and fraught relationship with her mother, endeavouring to protect Fern from their mother's moods. Fern is often bewildered, but is also easy going and trust worthy. So trustworthy that she is responsible for a terrible accident when the girls are about 12, that only Rose knows about. Like many siblings there are secrets, spoken and unspoken between the two girls. 

Now that they are in their late 20s, Fern is a librarian. Her world is small and safe, she likes order, routine, the not-too-noisy or visually unstimulating environment of the library. She takes everything and everyone at face value, talking to her colleagues and library users with that frankness and unselfconsciousness of small children who see and verbalise the world ever so slightly off kilter from the way adults do. She has a new friend in the library - Wally - who takes on greater significance in Fern's life when she realises that Rose, who is married to Owen is unable to have children. What is the greatest gift Fern can give to her sister who has always loved and looked after her? A baby!!!!!  What a good sister. Or is she... and how will Rose react to all this - a baby and the possibility that Fern will switch her allegiance and loyalties away from her to Wally.

Such a great story, with a plot going you-don't-know-where. How tentative the relationship with our brothers and sisters is, how twisted it can become. This is completely engrossing - perfect for filling in all that down time we are having foisted upon us. What a movie or series this would make. 

THE DRY by Jane Harper

 

What a cracker of a whodunnit this is, well, it is actually two whodunnits. Hundreds of reviews on line for this, so I won't get too carried away in plot description. This the author's first novel and first outing with Aaron Falk, your sort of everyman police/detective person, currently working in the fraud//forensic side of things. He has returned to his childhood home town of Kiewarra, a rural farming community suffering terribly from the drought that just will not go away. He left the town as a boy with his dad, under a cloud, and has now reluctantly returned for the funeral of his child hood friend Luke, wife Karen and son Billy. Ghastly. Naturally nothing is as it seems, and always looming over Aaron is the death of another school friend, Ellie, when they were teenagers, which the community largely blamed Aaron for, hence the leaving of town some years previously. 

Fantastic writing, just enough tension to keep you on edge, but never terrified, plenty of red herrings - it would seem there are any number of people who could have been responsible for the deaths of Luke and Ellie, including Luke and Ellie themselves. It is time for deeply buried secrets to come out, alibis to be tested, childhood haunts and friendships for Aaron to familiarise himself with. This will keep you reading much longer than you intend - with short chapters it is very easy to say to yourself just one more chapter, just one more. Better than binge watching Netflix - although would not be surprised at all to see this turned into a series. Well deserving of the many awards it has received. The author has now written three novels, apparently this is the best of the three. 

THE PARIS MODEL by Alexandra Joel

 

Big leap of faith to go from farm girl in the New South Wales interior to lead mannequin in the House of Dior, Paris in the late 1940s. But apparently this is based on such a true story. Amazing. Just think of the culture shock Grace Woods would have dealt with in her sudden changed circumstances. No books to help one through the process then....

So, immediately we have an intriguing story unfolding as we read. Grace is a farm girl, living with her parents, growing up in a close rural community, her best friend on a nearby farm, and falling in love with the boy from another farm. She has an uncle who lives in Sydney, and loves her infrequent trips to the big city. Then the war comes along, ruining everything. The boy comes back a changed man, her uncle who went off to war fails to return. In Sydney and Melbourne,  Grace does a stint of modelling for the Christian Dior fashion show, and discovers a devastating secret forcing her to flee her unravelling life, going to - where else - Paris! As you do. 

Following her success during the tour to Australia, she is welcomed at the House of Dior becoming a huge success. Paris is wonderful, a beautiful magical place to be, but her main mission is to find her uncle. Naturally she falls in love, there are numerous challenges along the way, mistakes made, and there is a happy ending. What else would one expect! 

However, don't think that this is a syrupy frothy love story. Grace is a great character, with plenty of courage and personality. She is also prone to jumping to conclusions which leads her into all sorts of misunderstandings, that in the end of course are all ironed out. Paris is written about with joy and love, as are the workings of the House of Dior. What a wonderful immersive and fascinating environment to be working in. Famous clients of Dior pop up - Princess Margaret, Jacqui Bouvier, Wallis Simpson - lending the story an air of authenticity. Most enjoyable story. 

THE WEIGHT OF A PIANO by Chris Cander

 Homage to a piano - it is unusual for a novel to have as its centre character an inanimate object well over a century old. Despite what the plot says, this is actually the story of a piano and the stories it contains within its handmade spruce and iron frame, 220 strings, 88 keys, from the Bluthner factory in 1905 - piano number 66,825. Whew, a lot of pianos I hear you say. And over a hundred plus years, more than 1 owner.

The owners this story focuses on are Katya, a wonderfully gifted and instinctive musician who inherits the piano from a blind old German man living next to her and her parents in an apartment building in the city of Zagorsk, north east of Moscow. It is the 1960s, walls have ears, food is scarce, people do not live well. A piano however, can be a tool of magic, transporting players and listeners alike far away from the grimness of daily life. Eventually Katya migrates to the US with her husband and child, but the piano has to be forfeited along the way. For Katya to be separated from her life force almost destroys her.

In alternate chapters, Clara lives in Bakersfield, California. She is an auto mechanic, having been brought up by her aunt and uncle following the tragic death of her parents in a house fire. She also grew up with a piano, that one day mysteriously appeared in their house, and that her father played. By a strange twist of fate this piano was the only item from the family home that didn't burn in the fire as it just happened to be stored elsewhere at the time. Clara is having boyfriend troubles, and moves out to an apartment on her own, taking the piano with her. During the move her arm is injured and in her fury, plus to get some cash, she lists it for sale, and it sells. Her change of mind does not sit well with the purchaser and so begins a rather strange journey connecting Clara to Katya to the piano. 

An intrepid journey to Death Valley, some hours drive away from Bakersfield, takes up much of the second half of the book, where the connections between Clara, the piano, and the purchaser gradually become clear, but not before some weird occurrences take place. I found a lot of this part just a bit too strange really, Clara's obsession with not letting the piano out of her sight, leading her to make some potentially unwise and unsafe decisions. Despite this lapse in plot and story telling, overall I really did enjoy the story. It just reinforces to me, yet again, the power of music to transport us, anywhere, to calm the mind, placate the soul. 

HOW TO LOOK AT A PAINTING by Justin Paton

 Like all art forms our reaction to any of it is entirely subjective. You like it, you don't, you feel drawn to it but you can't explain why, it is mesmerising, it does nothing. In this gorgeous little treat of a book - A5 size, 125 pages, nicely printed, nice paper, and coloured glossy illustrations - one art writer/art curator has given us his views. Even he admits part way through that his favourite paintings at any one time may well be different from what they were a short time previously. And this may well be why looking at paintings, going to art galleries, standing around with people who give the illusion of being art experts is all such a negative experience - we are supposed to like or judge a work by what those around us think. 

This book is completely without judgement, snobbery, pretence, arty-ness. Gently he takes us through the process of looking at a painting, not just glancing at it, but really looking at it - the texture, the elements that first catch the attention, perhaps starting from the left hand side of the painting, and following across, the sense of mystery or discovery that may be in the picture. He has included paintings in the illustrations to help us with this process. He talks about museums and art galleries that we all feel obligated to visit when we go to famous galleries, whereas in fact we really don't know what we should be looking at, while we are surrounded by many others who probably feel the same way. He trails around the art dealerships in Auckland, although this may be a bit out of date seeing the book was published in 2005, but it helps if you are looking at getting into purchasing art for your home or office. He writes about a huge painting by NZ art icon Colin McCahon, analysing its message and how McCahon has portrayed that message. I have never really got Colin McCahon's art, but I did learn from this, and will  look at his works with a different eye, even if I still don't get it or like it! He lists his 10 favourite paintings and why they move him so much, and there is an extensive list of books about art at the end. Plus so much more. 

I learnt so much about art appreciation from this little book, and it helps enormously that the author is a writer - not just an enthusiast or expert asked to write about his subject. The man knows how to communicate with the non-arty among us, not treating us like philistines or cultural retards; the result being that after reading this, you actually feel equipped to be able to look at art with a different type of eye. 

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MUM AND DAD by Jean Kittson

Quite by chance I read a review of this, and thought how opportune. Having ageing parents who are living in an opaque bubble, semi-oblivious to their increasingly infirm state, not interested in hearing about powers of attorney, if the house is too big, worries about falling and breaking hips, drivers licence renewed again.... and so it goes on. 

The author, Jean Kittson, is well known in her home country of Australia as a writer, comedian, performer on TV, radio and in print. I haven't heard of her here in NZ, but it makes no odds, and in fact is a good thing as I had no idea what to expect with this book. Because I didn't know anything about her I could focus solely on what she had to say rather than having her public persona in the back of my mind as I read this. Imagine Kim writing about Kath and Kel's old age care. 

Jean Kittson has elderly parents and has found the entire experience of navigating the health system, the geriatric care system, her siblings, her own parents' increasingly frail and mental states very difficult, frustrating and trying. So, being the sensible woman she is, she has now turned her experiences into a hand book. And it is very good. If you don't live in Australia, don't let the information and frustrations with the Australian providers put you off. Because the problems with ageing that your parents and yourselves have are exactly the same world over, and there is plenty of information and ideas and common sense advice plus sharing of experiences for this book to be very helpful. And did I say funny? 

From sorting out the legals - wills, powers of attorney, to getting on with the doctor, to dealing with your brothers and sisters, to making sure your parents are able to clean and feed themselves, getting them to talk about the ridiculous possibility of having to downsize, dealing with aged care organisations, rest homes and retirement villages, illness, palliative care and the death of a parent - it is ALL here. Written with plenty of wit, personal anecdotes and those of friends and acquaintances - funny, alarming, gently humorous, this book will help enormously with your own parental processes. And the decision making around your own future years. Totally recommend this for everyone to read. 

 

AUE by Becky Manawatu

You thought Once Were Warriors was a harrowing and disturbing read, too close to the truth for many New Zealanders to read. Well, people, try this one for size. Recent winner of the NZ Ockham Book Awards, this is Becky Manawatu's first novel, and what a power house it is. Maori gang violence, Maori domestic abuse, Maori poverty - once again we are having this very dark side of NZ society shoved in our faces. There is a factual basis to this too, the author having family members who have suffered themselves, resulting in a novel of passion, anger, plenty of love, and above all hope.

This is the story of a family with two brothers at its centre - 8 year old Arama and late teens brother Taukiri, both tragically orphans following the recent deaths of their parents. In the first few pages, Taukiri has dropped off/abandoned Arama to the care of his aunt Kat and her abusive husband Stu who live on  a farm near Kaikoura. Taukiri, in his enormous grief and as the only survivor of the accident that killed their parents drives off, making his way to Wellington, to the underbelly life there. Arama is just a little boy, with all the innocence, wonder, imagination and beauty that young children have. This is a most uncertain and lonely life for him, so to find that next door lives a girl his own age - Beth - and a dog is the most marvellous thing to be happening to him. Beth is also living with trauma and grief, her mother having died, leaving her with her dad Tom. 

Arama's chapters are told alternately with those of Taukiri, surviving and living on his wits in Wellington, and the stories of their parents - Jade and Toko, Aroha and Jack.  So all pretty heart breaking and disturbing, but what a story teller this woman is. And how beautifully and sensitively she enters the hearts and souls of the two children desperately trying to make sense of the awful world they find themselves living in. We are also confronted with the terrible things drugs - P/meth - do to people, and how their best intentions at trying to live a healthy and good life are too often ripped away from under them. 

This is a book not to be read lightly, but to be thought about, and savoured. Because aside from the subject matter, from beginning to finish the writing is magnificent. Her descriptions of people, their emotions, navigating of relationships,  the drama of the east coast landscape and the farm where the children live, the escalating tensions, the grief for lives once full of promise and certainty. It is stunning, powerful, a real page turner, and a novel of contemporary New Zealand. 

SEX AND VANITY by Kevin Kwan

Complete escapist fiction, silly and frothy, but entertaining and enjoyable. Not as good as Crazy Rich Asians, but same formula of two young people from diverse Asian backgrounds meeting, love story ensues with annoying and difficult family members thrown in, expectations and prejudices also in abundance. The author writes in a very chatty, gossipy way; his text full of footnotes that are more like asides and quips to the reader about the characters, events, historical accuracy and detail. I don't think they are necessary, certainly not adding to the story or to our perception of the characters. But they aren't doing any harm either. So take your pick as to whether you like them or not. 

Kevin Kwan has taken the 1908 classic Room With a View, setting it in the present, but with the same characters - Lucy, Charlotte, George and Cecil, their personalities essentially unchanged too. So then you wonder how original a tale this really is. I thought it more like Pride and Prejudice. The setting is also in Italy, but here we are on the island of Capri where the young and quite naive Lucy and her older aunt Charlotte been invited to Lucy's close friend Isabella's extremely extravagant and over the top wedding to some enormously wealthy young Italian man. Lucy herself is half Chinese, her aunt is not which creates some confusion amongst the guests. However Lucy and Charlotte are both descended from a blue-blood New York family which arrived on the Mayflower. Making them very important people in New York social circles. And very wealthy.  The opulence of the wedding festivities over a few days is completely intoxicating to everyone attending, and Lucy finds herself drawn to a young Chinese/Australian man George. And of course there is an upset of sorts which threatens to derail her social standing. 

Some years later Lucy has recovered her equilibrium, back living in New York, working for an art gallery and romantically involved with the boring, self absorbed Cecil. What a silly man he is. And horrors, his family is new New York blood, not of the same ilk as Lucy and Charlotte's line of descent! But oh so wealthy, beyond comprehension wealthy. He and Lucy become engaged, and then, wouldn't you know it, George reappears on the scene. Oh dear, what will happen now!   

It is a most enjoyable book to read, great for beach or curling up somewhere. I have added Capri to my list of places to see - it sounds like paradise not just with the money being tossed around, but in its natural beauty too. I still think Crazy Rich Asians is better, but can see this making an entertaining movie too. 

THE LOST PIANOS OF SIBERIA by Sophy Roberts

I knew I would l love this unusual book - it has everything I adore in a book  - travel, social history, music, discovery, wonder, pathos, more music, fascinating people and their stories, a tormented and desolate landscape. And a brilliant writer, telling her own story of months and months travelling through the extremely unglamorous, uncomfortable, unappealing land that we know of as Siberia. Always looking for pianos. And dealing with the bureaucracy. I had no idea how important the piano was to Russian society at all levels over the past couple of hundred of years. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Russians took to the piano in droves, it being normal and almost expected that every household have a piano. The classical music repertoire overflows with words by Russian composers, and brilliant musicians, still going on now. And somehow hundreds and hundreds of pianos ended up in Siberia too. The banishment and exile of thousands began long before the days of Stalin, the pianos accompanying the punished to their new and gruelling life. In all the despair and horribleness of the gulag and the basic settlements that evolved in Siberia, the sound of a piano playing, plus the joy and escape of being able to play would surely have calmed the Russian soul.

The story of how the author came to find herself on this odyssey is also amazing. By chance she meets a very talented young Mongolian pianist, and with a bit of encouragement from others decides to find this young woman the perfect piano, last seen somewhere in Siberia. So off she goes. A detailed map at the beginning of each chapter has the author in a different part of Siberia - every map looks the same, but if you look carefully you can see where she goes. Her search takes her into some of the coldest places on earth where in the not too distant past gulags existed, with appalling stories of how cruel humans are to each other, and yet the spirit of survival and hope continues to flourish. She goes to towns and communities where music has thrived for decades, where Russian jazz began, where talented and extraordinary people have made their lives, many actually choosing to live there. She goes to Ekaterinburg where the last Russian Tsar and his family were executed, searching for the piano that the Tsarina had with her while imprisoned. 

And so on, and so on. Every chapter, town, community with another story about a piano, the people who built it, played it, how it got to Siberia, where it is now, the love that the Russian people have for music, how it is played and listened to, how it feeds the Russian soul. One of the best books for me this year.