THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett

This is a surprisingly good book, with way more depth and considered thought than I anticipated.  It's all about identity, race, racism, fractured families and what it is that holds us together. I expect that any person of mixed race who reads this will immediately identify with the issues, emotions, attitudes and daily living of being comprised of two halves. Not only race, but also gender/sexuality, a financially privileged upbringing vs a much poorer upbringing. So many issues poured into no more than half a dozen characters. 

The small town of Mallard in Louisiana does not exist, but according to the author is based on a town her mother knew. It is a town that was established and has grown around the idea of light skin - the lighter the better. By the time this story starts  - 1980s, there has been so much intergenerational breeding, that it is possible for people who live there to get away with being white. For identical twins Desiree and Stella this becomes a reality when one night, these 18 year olds decide to run away, knowing that in the wider community they will always be seen as black. They decide to take a chance and see if they can find success in the city. Some years later Desiree, escaping a violent marriage,  returns to Mallard  to live with her widowed mother. She also brings a daughter - Jude - who causes sharp intakes of breath in the town - she is very dark. Meanwhile Stella has disappeared, no one knows where she went, who she is with, what she is doing. Desiree has moved on from her sister's abandonment, totally focused on remaking a life in Mallard, with her distinctly out of place daughter. 

Jude is an extraordinary young girl, who grows into a talented athlete, winning a scholarship to a university in Los Angeles. She meets and falls in love with a fellow student, Reese, a young trans man from Texas. Together they plough the mine field of university, totally secure in their love for each other, complete acceptance from their friends and colleagues. Reese is a wonderful character, determined that he will make the transition from woman to man, with the devoted support of Jude. 

By chance Jude meets Kennedy, spoilt entitled beautiful blonde blue-eyed daughter of the missing Stella. These  two are drawn to each other, although Kennedy has no idea why, Jude of course knowing but not knowing what to do about it. Good things take time, and over the course of the years the two sisters do find each other and there is a reconciliation of sorts. But Stella has spent her entire adult life lying to herself, and to her husband, daughter, friends, associates about who she is and isn't, passing these huge insecurities onto her daughter. It is up to Jude and Kennedy now to keep the ties of family held tight,  allowing Kennedy to break free from the secrets that her mother has kept. 

There is exploration within these characters as to who or what they really are. The dilution through the generations of the colour barrier has created almost a new population group, one that is still finding its place in a country which literally, does operate on a level of people being either black or white. Throw in the gender issues as well in a world where, again you are one or the other - male or female, and the melting pot threatens to boil over. 

ISLANDS OF MERCY by Rose Tremain

 

Only a master story teller and writer of exceptional ability could hold and juggle so many different types of characters, somehow making it all come together in a satisfactory and meaningful way. Every character is carefully crafted and developed - none are the same at the end as they were in the opening chapters. They are all integral to the story as individuals, and in their interactions with each other. And the setting - the world in 1865 - the gentrified town of Bath, the glamour, luxury and hedonism of Paris, the extreme poverty and despair of Dublin, the tropical lushness, lurking dangers, humidity and heat of Borneo. Through it all weaves the manners, mores and expectations of the times, dictating how men and women behave to each other, where their place is in society and the pecking order. But all the characters are fighting against the expectations of the times, in many different ways.. 

Clorinda Morrissey has escaped the life set down for her in Ireland. She has come to Bath to make a better life for herself, using a ruby necklace bequeathed by her mother to set her on her way. She opens a tea shop which quickly becomes a popular place for ladies and gents to partake of tea and cake. One day Jane Adearne is having tea with Valentine Ross, when the latter asks Jane to marry him. She promptly declines his proposal and leaves. Marriage, it would seem, is not for Jane. Even if, in her early 20s, this is what she should be well and truly thinking about. But not Jane. Jane is a nurse, nicknamed the Angel of Bath, for the wondrous ways she helps the sick and infirm who come to the town to take the waters. Her father, Sir William Adearne is the local doctor, and whom Valentine, also a doctor, works with. Valentine has a brother, Edmund. Edmund is a botanist and makes the alarming decision to go to Borneo to discover new plants to bring back to England, and thus make his own fortune. He makes the long journey to Borneo, in search of Sir Ralph Savage, a self styled rajah who has created his own little empire in the jungle. And then there is Julietta and her long suffering husband. Julietta is a most beguiling temptress, with whom Jane falls hopelessly in love. Is she merely a distraction, or will Jane be able to follow her heart?

So much going on! And it is a very big and intricate book. The style of writing is very much of the nineteenth century  - think sentences with many words, very descriptive of place, movement, how people are, how they think and do. It is certainly not sparse writing, but as the story went on I stopped noticing the old fashioned and at times laboured writing. The whole thing is so wonderfully held together, balanced and worthy of complete attention, the style just became part of the whole. A marvellous story celebrating the need to follow one's own heart, not to be defined by the expectations of society, or your supposed place in it. 

THE WEDDING BEES by Sarah Kate Lynch

 It's been out for quite a few years now - 2013 - that is quite a few years in books - but who really cares when it is such a delightful, uplifting and cheerful read. And bees are such a thing at the moment, so a story where bees take a leading role in determining the outcome, as well as make honey on the side, is just such a gorgeous premise. 

Sugar Wallace is a young woman whose closest companions are her bees. She now has a 6th generation queen in charge of her bees, descended from the queen owned by her grandfather way back in Charleston, South Carolina. A true southern girl, our Sugar. Sugar is estranged from her family for reasons that gradually reveal themselves, and has been for some years. Using a map of the US and her queen bee, every year she moves to a different place, makes life there, then moves on. Now she has landed herself in New York City. She finds a tiny apartment in a building with a few other tiny apartments. She sets her bees up on the small balcony and the magic begins.

First of all there is Theo.  It is obvious from the first day they meet that they will end up together. So obvious it is not a spoiler. Then there are the other people in the apartment building who live closely together but are miles apart. Some are plain cranky but why? One is anorexic, desperately thin. Another has a balloon shop - odd - and a young child. How she makes that work I will never know. There is Nate, gifted chef but people adverse. And George, dear George who Sugar takes under her wing and gives him back a life. She has this knack does Sugar of realising good things for the people she meets in her travels around the country. And she does it again in New York. With the bees to help her. But what about Sugar - can she continue going through life running away once things get a little uncomfortable? There is so much going for her in New York, who wouldn't want to stay there and settle. But will she? 

So it's light, it's fun, it's happy. Just what we need right now. Plus, I learnt a lot about bees. Buzz buzz. 

EASTERN APPROACHES : The Memoirs of the Original British Action Hero by Fitzroy Maclean

 How to sort the men from the boys... that's what we are sort of lead to believe going to war does to people - boys to men. It would seem that every now and again someone misses the boy stage, war turning the man into a superman. We don't have any heroes in our current society, people with extraordinary makeups, resilience, focus, optimism, leadership skill, people who dazzle us, who inspire  us, make us want to do better. This is that person - Sir Fitzroy Maclean and this is his story in his own words. 500 odd pages only covers eight years from 1937 to 1945, but this is a lifetime when you think about everything that happened in those eight years. Living at the bottom of the world I don't feel too surprised that I have never heard of this man, but looking at online reviews of this autobiography it seems most of the readers hadn't heard of him either. His life, his exploits, his composure, his achievements, his understated and humble manner completely belie the brilliance of this man's mind and intellect. Apparently he was the inspiration for Ian Fleming's character of James Bond - fearless, strong, manly, handsome, charming, a survivor!

The title makes this sound a bit like a school boy romp,  a boy's own sort of thing, with a bit of a rake telling stories. It is not. Born into Scottish landed gentry, raised in a strong military family, well-educated, an action life was on the cards from birth. He became a diplomat, determined to get a posting to Moscow so he could fulfil a long lived dream of travelling through the lesser known parts of the USSR. Through various dubious means and sheer determination he does get to travel around - for once the journey is every bit as interesting and fascinating as the destination - and finds himself in Moscow during one of the worst purges of the Stalin regime. His account is terrifying and blinding in how it unfolds. 

He then decides he wants to go to war rather than sit in an office being diplomatic. Using his endless charm he wrangles his way into the army, and after basic training, becomes part of the newly formed SAS,  setting out on his next big adventure to Cairo and the desert war. Fantastic fly on the wall stuff, so much sand, Germans around every dune. It's riveting. His exploits catch the eye of PM Sir Winston Churchill, who appoints Fitzroy his personal envoy to work with General Tito and the communist partisans in order to oust the Germans. This section is also fantastic, his writing totally understating the terror, the hand to mouth existence they lived, the fight to the death courage of the partisans.

This is a big book, very detailed and vivid in its telling. Definitely not bed time reading as a bit of concentration is required to absorb all the brilliant detail. But so worth the time taken in reading it. What a man, what a life, amazing.  

 

OUR BODIES, THEIR BATTLEFIELD by Christina Lamb

 I think this woman, Christina Lamb, is incredible. She has her own Wikipedia page! And an OBE! She is one of a rare breed - a female war correspondent who somehow seems to combine the telling of the horrors and truly awful stuff of war with intense compassion and humanity for the people she writes about. She tells it all with a remarkable sense of urgency, which make her stories compelling, almost taking your breath away. And leaving you drained if you read too much in one go! I have read a number of her books, each one is better than the previous. I was living in India at the time of President Benazir Bhutto's assassination - to me her return to Paksitan seemed like a death wish; lo and behold such a short time later she was dead. I later found out that Christina Lamb was with President Bhutto when she was killed, and reading her account of this awful day made the whole catastrophe so much more powerful. 

In this book, with its brutal title and beautiful cover, she has tackled the ghastly business of rape as weapon of war. Not only to brutalise the victims - both male and female, although she focuses almost entirely on females - but to also defeat, destroy complete populations and communities with the damage done to women and girls. I am sure I read somewhere in this book that in no time previous has rape been used as an instrument of war so extensively as it has in the 20th and 21st centuries. This is very sobering and at times painful reading, but also compelling, knowledgable, and as Christina Lamb does so well, involving herself in the communities/camps/war zones/villages/hospitals she is privileged enough to enter. 

Yet again we are horrified by the awful awful things human beings do to one another. No age or stage of life is immune from being raped in some way by men. Her geographical reach is diverse, extensive and yet the female population is the same the world over, as are the avenues of power that men have. Argentina, Bosnia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Congo, Burma, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Spain, Syria, Yazidi. You already know by these countries the types of conflicts taking place, and the terrible subjugation of the local populations. 

She records the stories of survivors, visits the sites of the atrocities, speaks to organisations and individuals involved in helping, her support of campaigns to even get the initial and vital step of rape recognised as a war crime, the success and otherwise of the war crime prosecutions. She says this is a battle that she will never stop writing about or investigating. Even recent decisions in some US states to overturn women being able to access abortions has made her fear for the health and rights of women in supposedly the most advanced economy/society in the world. 

We know, as women, that females will always be used as a pawn, as a weapon, as a second class citizen with minimal rights in many many societies. We may be enlightened in our safe Western world, but millions and millions of women and girls are not. They won't have heard of #MeToo.  It is unlikely we can do anything really to change the situation, but at the very least, by reading a book such as this,  we are informed. 

CITY OF VENGEANCE by D.N. Bishop

We love a detective with an irascible personality, an interesting and possibly dodgy back story, often a loner, burdened with a challenging underling or offsider, challenging crimes to solve, sometimes involving dangerous situations to sort it all out. And when the writer gives you a setting that is quite outside the usual scenario, we may well have a winner of a novel, and in this case, perhaps a new series  featuring this new detective. 

This novel is set in Florence, the winter of 1536, with the Medici family cementing their rule of the city. Alessandro is the first hereditary Medici ruler, and spends much of his time juggling the various threats to his rule, the court and its manipulative minions and the people of the city itself. Our hero is a former soldier, now an officer of the greatly feared criminal court, going by the marvellous name of Cesare Aldo. He lives in  rooms attached to a brothel, he has few friends and has his own juggling of threats to his existence to contend with. 

The story opens with him escorting an elderly Jewish banker on a journey back to Florence after some business in another city. An ambush immediately alerts Cesare to something sinister going on with the banker, and then when he is later found murdered, Ceasar is charged with finding out who is responsible. In the process he also unearths a plot to assassinate the Duke, which no one seems to want to know about, leaving him and his offsider to try to prevent the assassination occurring. 

So a great story line, with intriguing and well formed characters. But wait there is more. The setting of time and place is wonderfully depicted and described. Living in a Renaissance city was a horrible existence for 90% of the citizens. Poverty, squalor, disease, complete lack of hygiene, brutal. All the ghastly stuff. There is a character who is a doctor - fascinating to read how daily medical care was carried out, how an operation was done. This author has a terrific eye for putting the reader in the story, almost living and breathing the ugliness and violence of it all. I am very much looking forward to Cesare Aldo's second outing.