THE SHADOW SISTER by Lucinda Riley

 How easy is this series - The Seven Sisters - to read and enjoy. A guilty pleasure indeed and intensely enjoyable. The more I read of this series the more I like it. Each book is a little better than the last. They aren't going to win literary awards or prizes, but who cares, we want to be taken away to a different place and a different time. This is the third sister's story - Star, the quiet introverted young woman, totally dominated by her slightly younger sister CeeCee. The two women are living in London when their father dies back in Switzerland. On receiving the coordinates of her origins, Star begins peeling back where she came from. She is also left a Fabergé panther, and a name - Flora McKnight. It takes her a while, but eventually she makes her way to an antique bookshop in London, finding a kindred spirit in the bookshop owner/manager. We have landed gentry, the Lake District, Beatrix Potter, Edward VII, London high society, the finding of family, and above all Star finally finding herself. 

THE SYMPATHIZER by Viet Thanh Nguyen

This is a huge book, not just in its 500 paperback pages, but huge in its scope. It is a book to be greatly admired, and not surprisingly it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016. It is epic to read, and I found I couldn't read it at the end of the day as it would send me to sleep, but as a challenging day time read, it was excellent. I have read on GoodReads a review of this from a Vietnamese-American who was a refugee after the Vietnam war and he reckons it is the most authentic Vietnam to America experience he has read. I would say that is high praise. 

This novel is a history lesson in Western involvement in this region of Asia from the days of French imperialism - the book's lead character, the Captain, is the product of a French priest and a poor uneducated Vietnamese woman - to the disaster that was America leading the charge in the Vietnam War. It is also a story of being the chameleon that anyone of mixed race finds themselves in - neither one or the other, and yet able to move effortlessly between the two. So it is for the Captain - highly intelligent, astute, intuitive, he is a huge asset to both the Vietnamese and the Americans. He is educated in the US, graduating from Berkeley, immersing himself into the typical life of a young man in 1970s US. A good time. So here he is in the kingdom of capitalism, but at heart he is a committed Communist. It is not a great surprise, due to his unique  talents and makeup that he becomes a spy. 

The story opens in 1975 as the US is in a race against time to leave Saigon, everything gone horribly wrong, the Communists almost at the door, everyone wanting to get one of those final spaces on an American plane. The Captain is in the employ of a general, quite high up in the pecking order; he has the task of drawing up the lists of who goes on the planes. Including himself of course. It's certainly gripping reading, the evacuation of Saigon, depicted so brilliantly in movies like The Killing Fields. 

The telling of the migrant experience in America is riveting too. From being a general to being just a migrant working a low paying dead end bottom of the pond job cannot be an easy adjustment. Their lives may be saved, but their souls have a long way to go before feeling fulfilled and happy. Meantime the Captain continues to report back to his own hierarchy about what is going on. There are betrayals, heart break, tragedy. The Captain is intensely loyal to his non-communist school boy friend, and it is he who leads him back to Vietnam as part of a revolutionary unit to overthrow the communist regime. How you do this with out betraying yourself, and pretending to be what you are not, I just do not know but mind altering substances certainly seem to help.

This is not a book for the faint hearted, parts I did have to gloss over, it is graphic in its violence. But when your life is all about keeping yourself alive, then violence has to feature. What is so extraordinary about this novel is how much we learn about Vietnam, its history, its culture, the appalling treatment over the decades dished out by the French and the Americans to a beautiful country, a cultured and refined people, the constant fluidity that a mixed race person has to go through on a daily basis, conflicted in many many ways, how life really is for migrants from non-Western countries to Western countries. It is good, very good, but also very long, an experience to read, not one for the beach or holiday resort. But if you want to expand your brain and challenge your Western mind set, this is well worth it. 

ALL THE YOUNG MEN by Ruth Coker Burks and Kevin Carr O'Leary

 I was in my early 20s when the Aids epidemic exploded into the world, decimating, mostly, the male gay population, but also many many recipients of blood transfusions. All innocent in being infected with the HIV virus, but subject to the most appalling discrimination, abuse, vitriol, hate, disownment, exclusion by medical professionals, employers, funeral homes, churches, schools, child care centres, neighbours, friends, and families. Fortunately, here in NZ, I don't recall this degree of hate and discrimination towards people with HIV/Aids. I worked for an organisation with a high proportion of gay men also employed, and over the years saw their numbers drop. I remember feeling very sad when I heard that identical twin brothers, one of whom worked where I did, had died. Imagine being their parents. 

In the conservative and staunchly religious parts of the world, the treatment meted out to Aids patients was a terrible thing to see. Fear of course was driving much of the behaviour and attitudes, as was shame - being gay not considered natural, normal, permitted. HIV being a seen as a 'serves you right' disease. In the states of the American south, these attitudes were far too prevalent. It took a young single mother, Ruth Coker Burks, a woman with an extraordinary level of compassion, courage and balls to challenge the community she had lived all her life in and give these men dignity and love in their dying days. The more involved she got, the more of a crusade and his life's work this became. Her decisions around caring for and helping these abandoned men forced her to make some tough life decisions regarding her own life and that of her daughter. She could have had her child taken off her because of the work she was doing, she had no money, hardly any job, yet she kept going and going, her goal to help those less fortunate than herself. 

You can Wikipedia her, she is still doing great things in the community she lives in, and passed her own courage onto her now adult daughter and grandchildren. What a legacy to leave to the world.  I love to think that how this is written is exactly how Ms Burks speaks and goes about her daily life. A marvellous woman, funny too, fearless. For 10 years she cared for and buried Aids patients, only relinquishing this part of her life as medical and palliative care as well as social attitudes, improved for such patients. 

 

CONSTANT RADICAL by Jenny Chamberlain

Bad girl of NZ politics - Sue Bradford. It seems like she has been part of the scene forever,  born to a life of revolution, and this has been her whole life.  Sue is almost to the day exactly 10 years older than me, so I grew up with this angry, confronting woman, all those communist left labels attached to her. The media and politicians of the day did a great job of demonising her! I gradually came to respect her enormously for her courage, her staunchness, her self belief, her complete commitment to social justice.  And then suddenly she was almost mainstream and everyone wanted to hear from her. Her success in bringing about the anti-smacking law will always be hers, what an achievement. 

This excellent biography by veteran journalist Jenny Chamberlain is much much more than the chronicle of a life, still being lived. It is a potted history of New Zealand since the very early days of European settlement in this country, when Maori and Pakeha first interacted. She takes the reader on a social, political and economic history of this country from those days in the 1820s, when Sue's forebears first arrived here in the capacity of missionaries. And why is all this early history necessary? Because if we want any understanding of this powerhouse of a woman, who has challenged the white middle class establishment of this country, who has put herself through numerous arrests, who has endured some really tough times, who has pages and pages of her actions meticulously detailed in NZ's secret service files and who never, ever gives up, then we really do have to go right back to those first footsteps in NZ's early settlement days. 

Sue's early life was a combination of middle class bohemian intellectualism. Two brilliant parents, Sue the eldest child of 4, the only girl, herself intellectually brilliant, was always going to be 'trouble'. School was difficult, her relationship with her father was never easy, her mother having lost her spirit, Sue became the stroppy female from a young age, easily open to politicisation and making a difference And it just grew from there. Her life has been so intense, so rich, so busy, and would have crushed many, but no, she gets back up and just keeps going. 

I grew up in a household the complete antithesis of Sue's: a compliant and dutiful first born child, in a family conservative and proper. I loved this book, am in complete awe of Sue, what she has achieved, her work ethic, her own immensely strong core values, her own unwavering devotion to her family - I just find her dazzling. Her political career may not have panned out as she wished, but it seems that she earned the respect of almost every politician she worked with, I can only imagine how terrified and/or scathing most of them would have been with her entry into parliament. 

 Chamberlain's research is huge, the list of names in her acknowledgments and the 100 plus items in her bibliography letting the reader know that this is not just the story of a life, but with the detailed background, it is also the story of a society and how we came to be as a country. The book is equally about the writer - she has turned all this material into a hugely readable and interesting book. I know that, as a journalist this is what she is trained to do, but this is nearly 400 pages of A5 size book, densely written, I hope she also is proud of what she has written. Such a great book. 

OLD MAN AND HIS GOD by Sudha Murty

 

Sudha Murty has spent her life helping people - teacher, writer, social worker, Married to the co-founder of Bangalore-based multinational information technology company Infoys  Ltd, she is the chair of the Infoys Foundation, the public charitable trust arm of the company. Her extraordinary intelligence, compassion and innate understanding of human nature has allowed her entry into many different and diverse communities. And yet people still surprise her, which is what this little book is all about - her encounters, often quite random, with people who challenge her expectations in surprising ways. Many of her short succinct stories have ethical dilemmas at their heart, the author's own humble attitude and generous spirit giving her the ability to analyse, perhaps not understand, but able to take us with her in her journeys. I really enjoyed this, and having lived in Bangalore a book such as this just gives mea little more insight into India and the enormously diverse conundrum of a place it is. This book was actually a farewell present from an Indian friend I had in Bangalore. I thought of her while I was reading it. 

WE WERE NOT MEN by Campbell Mattinson

 

In the opening pages of this novel, two small boys, 9 year old twins Eden and Jon, are orphaned. Both suffering injuries, physical and emotional, in the accident that took their parents away from them. Dealing with her own grief from the recent death of the boys' grandfather, their step grandmother Bobbie, takes the boys in. You are already wondering how is anyone going to come out of this as a fully functioning human being. But children as we know are surprisingly resilient and ever-adaptable to the challenges around them It seems as long as there is just one person who they know cares for and loves them, then things tend to have a habit of turning out ok. 

So it with Eden and Jon. Jon is the narrator, the observer. The story covers the years from  the accident - age 9 till their late teens - ten very formative years for these two. For a start they never really know if Bobbie actually wants to be their 'mother', if she is capable of loving again after her losing her husband, then her step-son, his wife, leaving two badly little boys with no one else to take them in. Such a responsibility and sheer work for a not-so-young woman. The boys find huge comfort in each other, but most of all it is water that provides the most comfort. Eden's injuries and recovery mean that land based pursuits are hard on his body, so the medium of water and swimming comes to save the mental and emotional lives of these two. Gifted swimmers, all that each other needs, they are instant winners on the local swimming circuit. The pressure, expectations, enormous discipline, sacrifices mind games and exhaustion of high level sport are insightful to read, the minutiae of the swimming races tense and exacting, the competition between two people who love and need each other more than anything fascinating to see. 

And naturally along comes a complication that threatens to unravel completely the bond between the two. Being Australia let's not forget a bush fire either that threatens everything they boys have left. Like a lot of writing coming out of Australia in the last few years, it is not simply a story being told in matter of fact straightforward language. Authors like Tim Winton have paved the way for a greater sensitivity in writing, especially by male authors. Like Markus Zusak's Bridge of Clay,  this story rocks the family love, the bond and tenderness between brothers, the world through a child's eyes, the search for purpose. It is almost as if it has become 100% ok for Australian men to finally explore and be comfortable with the softer, more nuanced sides of themselves, to be ok with being emotional and fully engaged with feelings. One doesn't have to be that tough, mean emotionally disengaged man we so often see. If you liked Bridge of Clay you will love this.