MONEY: THE TRUE STORY OF A MADE UP THING by Jacob Goldstein.

 

Well, we all know money doesn't grow on trees, it doesn't seem to grow anywhere, which is why we have to make it, then suggesting that it is a made up thing, just as the title says! This book is chock full of interesting facts, people and history about where money came from, how it originated and came to be this essential all-encompassing thing it is today, making our world go round, it not being love after all. I enjoyed it immensely, but I did have a feeling of disconnect with it which I couldn't really put my finger on. The book bounced around all over the place, and gave an overall picture of what this made up thing is, but there wasn't much depth to it all. I wanted to know more, and on reading some of the GR reviews it seems I am not the only one. Other readers put this down to the author's gift as a podcaster not transferring so well to being a writer. I can imagine him delivering these chapters in a pod cast way - they would be great - entertaining, interesting, scattershot. But not so much for a 'speak to the reader' way of each chapter moving smoothly into the next. I  also felt he was trying to be a bit like Malcolm Gladwell in his writing style, but it just does not quite hit the mark. Perhaps too much information and not enough expanding on some of the important ideas he presents? 

Despite this, I did enjoy what he had to say very much. I got a bit bogged down with the gold standard, and central bank theory, but there is plenty more to enjoy and learn from. Much of this of course is basic economics as societies grapple with how to place value on stuff. He takes us back to the ancient Greeks where it all began, the sophistication of China before the Europeans arrived on the scene, the early European economists and mathematicians who tried to make sense of the chaos brought about by expanding empires, then the industrial revolution. I particularly enjoyed the sections on how the Great Depression occurred, and the GFC of not that long ago. His explanations of these I thought were good, possibly over simplistic but when you aren't an economist or a mathematician, simple is good. 

FROM THE CENTRE: A WRITER'S LIFE by Patricia Grace

 

One of New Zealand's most celebrated and renowned writers has finally told her story. Centred on her traditional ancestral land of Hongoeka Bay, a little north of Wellington on the west coast, Patricia Grace tells her story, the view from her windows inspiring her own story telling, stirring her memories and letting us in to glimpse what makes a writer.  Growing up in a world where her Maori and her Pakeha heritages were of equal importance in shaping the young Patricia, she nevertheless faced plenty of prejudice through her life. Bright, confident, a gifted writer from childhood, growing up in Wellington and on her family's land just north of the city, she was surrounded by love, family, strong values, books and reading from a young age. Her father was in the 28th (Maori) Battalion during WWII, absent for some years leaving Patricia and her sister in the care of strong women. Her father's experiences were the inspiration for a number of her books and stories in later years. Never handed anything on a plate, Patricia and her husband have built their own strong and loving family, her maturity and growth as a writer coming from her life experience, her commitment to her ancestral land, her commitment to Maori land and women's issues shining through. As you would expect Patricia Grace's writing is beautiful and lyrical, cementing her place in this country's literary heritage as one of it's most enduring writers. 

HOSTAGE by Clare Mackintosh

This was a cracker of a read! A story line that we think we know where it is going - how much can you really do with a plane hijack - they either all die or they don't. But no, a good number of twists and turns in this thriller, right to the very last page. This is tightly held story, great variation in pace with the everyday taken over by the extraordinary, possibly all quite plausible which gives it a ring of truth too. 

Mina is a senior flight attendant, her next flight is special. She is one of the chosen few to crew the first non-stop flight from London to Sydney - some 20 hours in the air. This is a very big deal. Plenty of publicity, press exposure, important passengers, and not so important with their own reasons for travelling to Sydney. 

Mina is married to Adam, things haven't been going so well between these two in recent months, Adam moving out, but he does come home when Mina goes to work. Adam seems to be on some sort of path of self-destruction which Mina is increasingly unable to deal with. They have a daughter, Sophia. Now five years old, she was adopted by Mina and Adam. Her early life was not easy resulting in a child who is not easy to parent. But easy to love. She is a delightful child, unusual and challenging but comes across in the story as bright, curious, knowing. 

Mina begins her work day, stressed out by what is going on at home, Sophia unsettled by her loved nanny unexpectedly leaving, the replacement nanny still not yet part of the furniture. Not long into the flight Mina is given a note - the plane is being hijacked, and if she wants to see her daughter again, alive, then there is something she has to do. If she doesn't, they all die. What do you do? Save your daughter, or save a plane load of hundreds of people? A dilemma to be sure.

What follows is tension ridden, especially when it becomes clear who the hijackers are, how they behave and interact with each other, the passengers and the crew. It is very very good. We have all flown long distance, especially when you are from NZ - 12 hours to Los Angelos is just what you have to do. This is all very realistic and relatable. And how little do we really know about the passengers around us? So much blind faith.

Meanwhile, back home, Adam is having troubles of his own, managing Sophia, the new nanny, and finding that his gambling debts are catching up with him. Who is going to come out of this alive? 

Terrific stuff. And what a movie it would make! 

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL by Deborah Moggach

 

In my quest to seek out books that are not dark, murderous, violent, grim, dystopian - too many similarities to the current world - I found this sitting on a shelf at home. The perfect antidote for lock down claustrophobia, drizzly weather and general slothness. This book is what the movie was based on, originally published in 2005, some years before the movie. The original title was 'This Foolish Thing', a song from 1935 and covered countless times since, translated into French, all about lost love. So the wrong title for this book - doesn't capture at all what this all about, so glad it was changed - far more enticing to take an intrepid journey to India than dwell on foolish things.

So you know the story - ageing impoverished British pensioners are lured to a an ageing run down hotel in an Indian city to live out their remaining years, in a warm benevolent climate, no NHS, a chance for a new beginning, or at the very least a changed beginning. The film is great, lovely, uplifting, happy, warm, a real boost to the spirits. The book is too, but just so much better, and like most book/film comparisons so much more than the film, deeper, more complex and really very good. And being India, of course, the complexities are diverse and more complicated than what you can put into a film.  And darker. But like the film, the book is also joyful, with the delight and otherwise of meeting of new people, building a different type of family, acceptance of new circumstances and the  wonders of a new life. You will feel happy after finishing this. 

 

MOTH by Melody Razak

 

The Observer newspaper has put this non-Indian first-time novelist into its Ten Debut Novelists list 2021. This is an exceptional novel by anyone's standards and for a writer not of Indian descent to write so sensitively, vividly, knowingly of the whole scar of the 1947 Partition of India, and in such a nuanced way is just terrific. Strangely the writer was a pastry chef and cafe owner before becoming a writer. How one goes from living and breathing delicious food and making people happy in the process, to writing about a dreadful time, horrific ethnic and racial violence, with the indifferent British at its heart is really quite a segue way.

Being about the Partition, it is definitely not a pretty read, the violence implied on the first page telling you that you know where this is headed. However, do not let this put you off from reading this memorable novel of a family in Delhi coming to terms with the upheavals going on around them. 

It is 1946, in Delhi, where, like many cities, towns, villages and communities in India at this time Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs have lived fairly amicably side by side for a very long time. But of course the times are a'changing, the British are leaving, and leaving an even bigger mess in its wake. Alma is a 14 year old girl, full of the silliness and romantic notions that 14 year old girls are full of. She lives with her 8 year old sister Roop, a child overflowing with character, imagination, intelligence. Their parents, Brahma and Tanisie, are teachers at the local university, where the exchange of ideas, viewpoints is prolific and vocal. They are a Brahmin caste family, at the upper point of the Hindu caste system, which tightly regulates how Hindu society operates and functions. Brahma's mother also lives with them, as does a young Muslim woman who is like a nanny to the girls. There are a couple of servants too. Their lives behind the walls of the house are peaceful, fun, orderly. 

However, sectarian violence, rising Hindu nationalism, continuing ineptness of the British, have Alma's parents very concerned for her safety and virtue. As in all wars, targeting violence at women and girls is the easiest and most demoralising way to defeat an enemy. A marriage has been arranged for Alma with a young man from Calcutta, and this is all Alma can think about. Until events take over, and her dreams are blown away. She is a headstrong young lass, deciding that she needs to get away from Delhi, to go live with an aunt in Bombay. 

Aside from the story line itself, the author has honed in on the minutiae of daily life for this family - food preparation, how they dress, their reliance on the newspapers for the news, their conversations with each other, others outside the home. This is a genteel family, how they live and are in a total contrast to the chaos and violence going on outside the walls of their home. 

I have read a review of this book by an Indian woman. She has high praise for the author, commending this non-Indian writer for her "impeccable research, the atmosphere she creates with her sense of time and the place". There is also the possibility of a happy ending too which is a relief. A rich and absorbing book. 

BEFORE YOU KNEW MY NAME by Jacqueline Bublitz

 

A teenage girl's body found dumped on the rocks beside a river in New York City. Could there be a more anonymous or clichéd murder mystery to solve than this? And yet we know who the dead girl is from the first page, because she narrates the whole story. She is furious about what has happened to her, how dare some angry narcissitic bloke take her life away because he doesn't get what he wants. She is going to do all she can to bring her killer to justice. It sounds creepy, and a bit of the horror genre, but it is the complete opposite. There is nothing macabre about this at all. It reminded me very much of reading The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, turned into that beautiful movie by Peter Jackson. 

18 year old Alice Lee has run away to New York from some obscure nowhere place in Wisconsin, escaping an increasingly unpleasant situation she has found herself in with her school teacher. Alice has no parents to speak of, the only person truly looking out for her being her best friend. Why does she choose New York? It is the most far way place she can think of to go. And so she does. With the terrific optimism and hope that young people have, she finds a place to live - with a reclusive older man. The alarm bells would be clanging big time in the minds of us oldies, but no, it is a perfect place for Alice, allowing her to find a bit of herself, see a future, make some plans. 

But then it all goes wrong, and within weeks of arriving in New York, young, beautiful, talented and fearless Alice is dead. She was discovered by another runaway - 36 year old Ruby. Ruby is going through her own crisis, having uprooted herself from Melbourne to New York. Again because it is far away from everything she knows and she has never been before. What an adventure. Unlike Alice she has money so can live somewhere half way decent. But she knows no one, is depressed, disoriented, uncertain. Until she finds Alice. Ruby wants to know who this young woman was, how she came to be where she is, and with some magic direction from Alice, watching in the shadows, wanting her soul to be at rest and peace, she 'helps' Ruby bring the murderer to account. 

It is gripping, thrilling, quite different from any type of murder solving book you will ever read, and just terrific. I loved both these women - courageous, determined, true to themselves, united in the quest. It will make the best movie or TV series. 

WILD SEAS TO GREENLAND by Rebecca Hayter

 

Rebecca Hayter has been immersed in boats and sailing since she was a child. Her father Adrian Hayter was an adventurous and solo ocean going sailor, sailing around the world single handed in the 1950s. He wrote his own book in the process, inspirational to his daughter as a writer and as a sailor. Rebecca herself then, is deeply knowledgable about boats and sailing, having done her own share of off shore sailing, and been the very successful and awarded editor of NZ Boating magazine for a number of years. But the pull of the sea is always there. In a most strange pairing of two fascinating people, Rebecca finds herself undertaking a journey, the aim being to sail the North West passage - up near Greenland - with one of NZ's most charismatic, gifted, tough and hard working sailors this country has had the good fortune to produce - Ross Field. You can google his name, and all the info and background you need to know will pop up. If I say competed in numerous Whitbread Round the World races and won his class in one of them, will that make you sit up?

I know Ross personally, and not from sailing, so it has been extra entertaining, insightful and jaw dropping to read this book and see the man, the legend, or as Rebecca calls him the old war horse, in his natural environment, at one with the elements, the boat. It sounds cliched, but it will leave you with a sense of wonder, especially if like me you know very little about sailing. This could well put one off reading such a book, and yes there is plenty of technical stuff, sailing jargon, boat parts, weather words, an endless variety and number of sails, with equally endless names. But I just glossed over much of that, because all it told me was how fastidious Ross was in his planning and preparation and I never felt bogged down in it. Which of course is the talent of the writer, to give you just enough to let you know this is important stuff, but not enough to bore the brain out of you.

So the journey. There is nothing on earth that would make me get on a yacht and do a trip like this, to about as close to the North Pole as you can get with the ever present threat of icebergs, storms, polar bears, the cold, the tedium of it all, let alone being in a confined space with Ross Field for so many days. But the writer does. This is an opportunity she may never get again. She admits she is scared, but she has 100%+ trust in Ross, and the journey is navigated and sailed without any mishaps. As with anything successful, it is all in the preparation - the outfitting of the yacht Rosemary, sorting food, clothing, wet/ice weather gear, the technical mastery of navigation, weather, radar which is done with Ross' son Campbell based in Lymington. And then the journey itself - leaving Lymington, the Irish Sea, getting to Greenland, sailing through the fjords, the North West passage not panning out as planned.  But I don't really detect too much disappointment about this as the whole trip, even as a reader is truly amazing. What it must have been like to experience the rawness and untouched beauty of this region.  The landscape is beautiful, bleak, white, icy, cold, sparsely populated, hard to live in, where in the middle of summer it never gets dark. How disorienting would that be day after day. Rebecca is an outstanding writer, bringing all this to life, and the photos - so many photos - in this unusual 24 hour light. 

As well as being a 'diary' of her journey, this book is a homage to Ross, his extraordinary talents and intense love for what he is doing. In turn she is also honouring her own father, who although he never did this particular journey, he did do two huge ocean going journeys. This book is sprinkled with quotes from her father's writing, Rebecca being the link, the conjoint between these two mercurial, talented and tough men. I loved this, I surprised myself how much I liked it, Ross's daughter telling me to read it. Sailing and water sports are not really my thing, but this is just terrific, increasing my respect for people like Rebecca and Ross who take the world by the horns and give it a jolly good shake. 

STILL LIFE by Sarah Winman

I loved this, quite easily one of the most enjoyable, full circle, rich and satisfying books I have read this year. I have been trying to move away from the overload of gloomy, negative, sad, violent, depressing themed novels that seem to be saturating the market in recent months. It seems that during difficult times, such as we have with Covid at the moment, the tone of our reading changes to suit. Being recently published, this novel is already defying the theme of the age! It's glorious and beautiful, full of love and even a type of magic. I think now, when for a lot of people, hope and having things to look forward to is hard to find, a book like this is sheer joy, something beautiful and uplifting to read, and with plenty of wry humour to help. 

The story opens in 1944, Florence, the Allies recently arrived to liberate the city and clear out the Nazis, a few of whom linger snipering as they go. Evelyn Skinner is a middle aged adventurous spinster who happens to be in Florence, in the capacity of an art historian helping with recovered and rediscovered art wonders. She  also happened to live in Florence for a time as a young woman, and it has always been a place close to her heart. As you would expect in Florence. A chance meeting with a young British soldier, Ulysses Temple, ignorant of the stupendous art environment he finds himself in, creates an instant and lovely connection, that haunts them both for years to come, shaping the course of both their lives. As do the consequences of an extraordinary act of courage that Ulysses undertakes during this time. 

After the war Ulysses is back in the East End, back to the local pub with its wonderful, endearing, complicated, damaged cast of residents and regulars, including his wife Peggy. These two were children together, that somehow ended up marrying. Separated by the war, Peg falls in love with an American servicman who promises her the sky, the earth and everything in between, but naturally fails to deliver, leaving her pregnant. A child is born, into an instant family at the pub, which also includes Claude - the parrot depicted on the cover of the book.

Some years later, as a result of what happened in Florence in 1944, Ulysses is back in Florence. How he gets there is almost a story in itself so I can't reveal that here!  A wonderful love story with the city and his little slice of paradise begins to unfold, the city weaving its magic not only over Ulysses, but the rest of his pub family, and finally Evelyn herself. 

I love the characters the author has created. Such real people, full of the worries and anxieties, hopes and dreams that we all have, derailed by life events. There is a love of art and beauty, possibly hard to find in post war East End, London, which affects them all deeply, opening them up further to the world and the possibilities in it. It is a beautifully told tale of connection, memory, what makes a family, and love.