SHIVER by Allie Reynolds

Somewhat long winded and wordy, but quite a good thriller with plenty of red herrings to send us all in a myriad of different directions. Great setting in a ski chalet in the French Alps in the middle of winter, plenty of blood sport, relationship conflicts, mysterious going ons, conflicted characters with unresolved issues in their past and present lives. And snow boarding! I know nothing about snow boarding, now I know a whole lot more - I wish there was a Winter Olympics this year instead of the madness surrounding this year's Summer Olympics. It is such an exciting exhilarating and horribly dangerous sport. Perfect back drop for winning at all costs - think Tonya Harding sabotaging Nancy Kerrigan.

Milla is the narrator of this story. Now in her early 30s, Milla receives an invite to a weekend in the mountains, along with four other fellow snowboarders. She hasn't seen any of these others for ten years when they were all competitors in a competition on the very same mountain. Missing from the invite list is Saskia who went missing on the day of the competition, her body never found. Now it is 10 years, and she has finally been declared legally dead by the authorities. So what do you think is going to happen? Is Saskia really dead? What are the secrets the four of them carry from the events of 10 years ago when they were desperate to be winners, to defeat all rivals, all that adrenaline driving them to the heights of snowboarding success. And the prizes, the sponsorship, the recognition, the fame. 

Milla is far from innocent in the disappearance of Saskia and the injuries another boarder suffered from. As the story unfolds it is apparent that Curtis, Dale, Heather and Brent are far from innocent too. Now they have been brought together to this chalet, no one else around, chair lifts suddenly not working, strange and unexplained happenings in the chalet. All of them under threat, feeling the danger. What is going on? Will any of them get out of this alive? And how sweet can revenge be?

It really is a great story, and competently written - the writer is a former professional snowboarder herself. But it is too long, too wordy, it gets a bit bogged down. However if you want to be pulled into the world of top level individual sport, and a dangerous one at that, this is great. 

CHINA ROOM by Sunjeev Sahota

 

One of my fellow book club girls bought this for her contribution. She reviewed it thoroughly but did feel that she didn't do a great sell on it. No one took it to read - except me. Two reasons - I am drawn to anything that centres on India, plus I really felt that there was a much better story in the book than what my friend was trying to convey. And yes there is! 

In Punjab in 1929, fifteen year old Mehar is married off to one of three brothers. On the same day the other two brothers are also married off, to similarly young girls. Barbaric by our moral standards, but normal for India. Mother-in-law Mai is the typical Indian MIL, very hard on the brides, controlling and dominating of her sons. They all live on a small farm in a busy rural community. Unsurprisingly the girls are expected to sleep with their husbands on demand, and the china room on the property is set aside for this purpose. It is always dark. Mehar, and the other brides, never see their husband's faces, never see their bodies, never talk to them. These are marriages designed to obey and produce sons. The brides are veiled with downcast eyes at all times when they are out of the small space they live in, so their husbands don't know who they are, and they don't know who their husbands are. Mehar wants one of the brothers to be her husband, falling obsessively in love with him, truly believing he is her husband. What unfolds is Mehar's awakening as a woman and a person in her own right, becoming courageous enough to decide her life on her own terms. This is all set against a background of rigid social controls, women as vassals of their husbands and husbands' families, as well as the changing political scene in India at this time - the presence of the British increasingly resented. 

Parallel to Mehar's story is that of her great grandson, who has no name in this story. He has grown up in England, went off the rails a bit, and has been sent back to his family's home town, moving to the farm, now derelict, that Mehar had lived on. This is the perfect environment for him to get his health back, grow up, find himself. He slowly finds his feet, develops relationships and friendships with the locals, and has his own love affair. 

You can see this latter paragraph is considerably shorter than Mehar's paragraph, and that is how the story is too. This really is Mehar's story, and it is achingly beautiful in its telling. Being a love story set in India in 1929 it is of course doomed, but we do know fairly early on with the move to 1999 that Mehar herself is not doomed. I do feel that the story could have stood on its own without the great grandson's story, and I am not sure why he doesn't have a name. But the writing of both stories is very accomplished, atmospheric, so much is said with a glance, with the way the young women carry themselves, the hard life they expected to live, the dry landscape of the farm, the busyness of the local town. As with anything of India in general, so much lies below the surface, beneath the veneer of social expectation and mores. I really did like this, it met all my expectations of a modern Indian novel. Good review for the next book club. 

A SLOW FIRE BURNING by Paula Hawkins

 

Famous for The Girl on the Train, that psychological suspense thriller that became a movie, a play - the author would never need to write again! How do you top such a hugely successful book? I really enjoyed that book, thought it well written, suspenseful, unexpected and thrilling. Not a 5/5 for me, but pretty good.

This latest novel of Paula Hawkins, I enjoyed much more. She seems to have moved on from the Gone Girl style of novel of her first to something more complex, more careful in its plotting, more interesting and diverse characters, a very slow burn as indicated in the title. I don't know much about how writers grow and develop from book to book, but for me, she has definitely upped her game with the quality of the writing in this novel. 

The beginning of the novel introduces us to a diverse range of characters who at first seem completely disconnected to each other. But like all slow burns, bit by bit, the links between the characters become apparent. Daniel lives on a rundown boat tied up on the canal. Next to his boat, lives Miriam on her immaculate well cared for boat. Miriam is a writer who has a major beef with successful author Theo, whom Miriam accuses of plagiarism, stealing an autobiographical account of a traumatic event when Miriam was a teenager. Theo is married to Carla who is Daniel's aunt, still reeling and mourning the death of her sister Angela, Daniel's mother. Irene is an elderly lady who lives next door to Carla, and hears a lot through the paper thin walls. Then there is Laura. Your heart aches for this young woman struggling to make a life for herself. She too has been though some awful traumas, and finds herself in more trouble when Daniel is found murdered in his canal boat. 

You can see it is already a bit of a mess, or going to become a mess. I loved how it slowly unravelled, how the relationships between the characters unwound - because, in effect, the story is told in reverse- we begin with Daniel's murder, and then rewind through the days, weeks, months, years to the why of all this. And I fully expect this to become a movie or series too. 

A BITE-SIZED HISTORY OF FRANCE by Stéphane Hénaut and Jeni Mitchell

It does say 'bite-sized' so don't open this thinking you are getting a full-on history of France beginning with the Romans right up to now. No way would that fit into 352 pages, ha ha. And then you throw zillions of food history too! Ooh la la, impossible ! What else would you expect from one of the great cuisine country's in the world? Nothing less. I found this hugely enjoyable, a bit of romp racing through the major elements of French history, the massive complexity of its population make up - Gauls, Romans, Normans, Moors, Spanish, Dutch, English, African, Vietnamese, Melanesian mixed up with all the cuisines and unique foods and tastes each of these populations and many others bring to the table. Food of course is at the center of it - different types of cheeses from different regions, wine, oysters, bread - and how important food is in the history of a people and how they live. This is highly entertaining, so interesting, simple in its telling, and just a great read. If you like travel, history, and food, this is the book for you. 

THE PERFECT LIE by Jo Spain

 Quite a compelling thriller, with a ripper first few pages which sets in motion a roller coaster of a ride as our lead lady tries to figure it all out. Erin is married to Danny, a detective in the local police department. They have been married for just on a year, happy as, life is going very well. Then Danny is dead - in the first few pages. What the...? His detective partner Ben is of no help and it seems Danny was being investigated for some unexplained matters. Erin, in her extreme grief is left completely on her own to try and figure out what on earth has been going on, and more importantly who her husband really was, what, if anything, was he hiding, and how come she didn't see any of this. 

Parallel to this line of story, is one that took place a few years prior at a residential house attached to Harvard University. A young woman student is attacked, her life destroyed by the attack and the aftermath as she seeks help. 

Then there is third story line concerning Erin, who some 18 months after Danny's death, is on trial for the murder of her husband. Huh? Yes, it is a little puzzling. During the previous 18 months, Erin has found some new friends who have taken her under their wing, helping her in her quest to find out what was going on with Danny, and then her defence team after her arrest. 

It is quite a trip this thriller. Clever in its make up, plot development, and with so many balls to keep juggling, it all holds itself together quite well. I liked Erin, I liked her lawyer Carla. I found Danny a bit of an enigma - we only see him from Erin's point of view and I guess if you are madly in love with someone it is easy to overlook any flaws, and possibly difficult things going on their lives. Nevertheless, I did think this was a good read, with some great twists. 

THE VANISHING SKY by L. Annette Binder

 

You know what, I wish that the leaders of countries who want to wage war on each other, would just lock themselves up in a room somewhere and just sort it out, instead of involving millions and millions of ordinary and blameless people in their power games. Because the war is never fought in the leaders' dens, bunkers, high rise buildings, flash offices. It is fought and felt out there in ordinary citizen land. Conquerors and conquered - all lose much to get the result. 

So it was interesting to read the online reviews by readers of this novel about a very ordinary German family living in a semi rural community in the south of Germany during WWII. The author is German, but has been living in the US since a child. This story is based on events and stories told in her own family that took place during the war. And probably typical of millions of other families throughout all of Europe at this time. Quite a lot of reviews are damning of the book because it doesn't address at all the complicity of the German people in the terrible things that happened to populations the high command wanted to get rid of - Jews, gays, gypsies, communists, mentally ill and impaired and others. The list is huge. We ourselves don't really know how much the general population knew about what was really going on, and in a time where all news was strictly controlled, propaganda was the name of the game, you had to be careful who you expressed opinions to, it may well have been that the average person, especially out of the towns and cities did not fully know what was going on. 

In this novel, it is the latter stages of the war. People don't really know but the war has started to turn in favour of the allies,  the German war machine has been fatally damaged, but that is not stopping the hierarchy from eking every ounce of blood and muscle from every male in the country, young, old, infirm, ill. The Huber family consist of mother Etta who is doing the absolute best she can feeding her family on rations, keeping her morale up as much as possible. Husband Josef fought in WWI, and has never fully recovered from that trauma. They have two sons Max who has just arrived back home on some sort of leave from the army. He is severely traumatised, a shadow of his former self. But there is little or no means of giving him the care he needs. Younger son Georg is at Hitler School, only 15 years old, being trained up to be a perfect third Reich soldier. The chapters move primarily between Etta and Georg as they deal with the grimness of their predicament. Etta is determined to keep son Max from going back to the front line. Survival of the fittest is the name of the game for Georg, as he seeks to find a way out of the hopeless and dangerous living situation he is in. 

Being war of course, with Germany at its centrepiece, we already know the outcome of this story is not going to be a happy ever after ending. But it is a story so heartbreakingly magnificent in its telling, so tragic and sad. The struggle every day Etta has to make life as normal as possible for herself, Josef and Max; her neighbours and friends all struggling together to make life bearable, food of course being at the heart of all this effort. For Georg, his awakening sexuality causes its own problems, and then his own struggle for survival, the kindness of strangers. It is like so many WWII novels that have come out in recent years of the lives of the ordinary people. But not many have been written sympathetically from the German point of view. I really liked this. It got better as it went along, I especially liked Georg's story.  As for the comments from reviewers about the lack of acknowledgement in the story of what Germany did in the war, this isn't actually what the story is about. It's about a family, trying to survive, pure and simple. 

HOW THE ONE ARMED SISTER SWEEPS HER HOUSE by Cherie Jones

 

Baxter's Beach, Barbados - tourist holiday heaven - delicious sand, beautiful beach to laze and sun on, warm gentle waters to bathe in, holiday homes larger than the average house, cafes, restaurants, beautiful people. And like all holiday tourist spots the world over, the lush exotic exterior only lightly covers the sleazy, dangerous, violent and poor underbelly. 

The title refers to a local legend concerning what happens to young women who disobey their mothers and become bad girls. She is then burdened for the rest of her life of having to do everything with only one arm - handicapped for her impetuousness, her foolishness. No morality tale of course for young men who get themselves into trouble. Nothing changes the world over!

The young woman in this story is Lala, who works the beaches braiding hair for the tourists. She has been brought up by her grandmother - the story of what happens to her mother is told through the story. As you expect, life is tough for the women in this family, burdened with useless and appalling husbands and fathers. Lala is now married to her own awful man - Adan - and in the first few pages of the story gives birth to her daughter. The birth takes place against the back drop of an act of violence with Adan breaking into one of the huge holiday homes, where he is confronted by the owners - local woman made good Mira and her wealthy British husband. A shot is fired. 

Adan is clearly unhinged, too many drugs, crazy, unable to control himself or his urges. Lala is clearly abused, a home of violence is her normal, and she sees no way out. A terrible incident involving the baby leads to a whole new catastrophe in Lala's life, with Adan hell bent on finishing off his bungled burglary. His partner in crime is Tone, a gigilo who works the wealthy women coming to Baxters looking for a good time. Tone is actually a good man, and to up the anti in this little morality tale, deeply in love with Lala. 

Well, you can see a whole bunch of different world views heading for a full on collision in this story. And let's not forget the local head policeman hellbent on solving at all costs the shooting referred to above. There is a pervading air of powerlessness in this whole story, for all of the characters, even the bullet proof Adan. For poor and powerless people, life is never really going to reach the heights of the wealthy tourists they pander to. But one of these characters will make it out, will have the courage to see a future for themselves. And this, in the end,  is what makes the story so powerful and successful. 

The writing too is wonderful. Written almost in the wonderful way people from the Caribbean speak, not just the dialogue between the characters, but also in the story telling. I loved the way it was written: you can feel the heat, the humidity, see the palm trees, the delicious sea, the sand. This book won't be everyone's choice purely because of the subject matter, but it is still a marvellous and vivid read.