SLEEPING ON JUPITER by Anuradha Roy

Beautiful descriptive writing, the taste and feel of India drips off the page, but not a nice story.

Exquisetly written and totally evocative of modern day India, still caught it would seem between the demands of the consumerist 21st century, and the deep rooted spiritulism at the core of what India is all about. I loved the writing, the drawing of the characters, the small and minute detail of each of them and the exchanges that take place between them. Amidst the chaos of modern day India, it is the intimacy of the relationships between people, the ties that bind, that stand out so much in this story.

But it is not a nice story, and throughout there is an undertone of menace, of impending disaster, and as the Guardian reviewer put it, 'violence and misogyny abound'. Such a prevalent theme in novels of India.

Nomita, now a young woman, has returned to India, having left at about the age of 12, when she was fostered/adopted by a woman in Norway. When she was about 6 or 7, she lost her entire family during a time of violence, was rescued with a number of other young girls from a boat and they were all placed in the care of a highly respected and adored spiritual leader at his ashram. His good name is of course a cover for a range of abuse that takes place at the ashram and the girls are among the victims. Nom's whole childhood is pretty grim, including her time in Norway, and now as a young woman she wishes to find some closure by returning to the ashram, abandoned and derelict. The town itself is still a major pilgrimage destination and floods of tourists visit.

As a result Nom runs into other characters in the story including 3 elderly women travelling together to make a once in a lifetime pilgrimage, a photographer travelling with Nom who is also using the visit to make a documentary about the town and its sacred sites, a young man who is a tourist guide at the very famous temple everyone is visiting, a chai-wallah and his young assistant. All around is the dust, the noise, the crowds of people, the colour of saris, the smell of spices, as the interactions between all these people unfolds. There isn't a great deal of plot, and the whole thing is really pretty grim, but as I say, the writing is gorgeous.

NEW FINNISH GRAMMAR by Diego Marani

The theme of reading books that revolve around amnesia continues. Why I keep reading these books, I don't kow, but this is certainly one of the more interesting ones doing the rounds. Apparently it was a best seller in Italy, and the translation into English has also received loud and probably deserving praise. Because it is very beautiful to read, the language is very lyrical, the imagery is strong and memorable, and the actual plot line is terrific.

It is WWII, a man wakes up in a hospital bed in the Italian port city of Trieste, with no idea of who he is or how he got there. He has no language, no identity, no idea about anything at all. His doctor, an exiled Finnish neurosurgeon, thinks that he is Finnish, based on a jacket the man is wearing with the label Sampo Karjalainen in it. So the doctor assumes, understandably that the name matches the man. As part of Sampo's therapy, the doctor starts to teach him Finnish, and eventually the patient is shipped out to Helsinki where it is assumed he is from. It is not hard to feel sorry for Sampo as he spends the rest of the book trying to figure out who or what he is, and he finds his solace in learning the Finnish language, believing this is the key to a future. All of this in 186 pages. 

Unfortunately however for me, this excellent plot line never reached its full potential. Poor old Sampo  never figures out what is going on around him, he never really understands the language, his life never gets underway again, and all that we read about are the ravings of a Finnish priest who takes it upon himself to teach Sampo the language through the telling of Finnish myths and legends which is all tied up somehow in a symbolic way with the war, the Russians invading, and the conflicts within Finland. With all this in mind, the ending when it comes is hardly a surprise - just more confusion on top of an already confusing landscape. Yes, the writing is exquisite, but it is just not enough for me.  

THE AMERICAN LOVER by Rose Tremain

She writes like a dream, does Rose Tremain. Short stories aren't normally my thing, but Rose Tremain writes novels as if she is magic so I took a punt that her short stories would be just as stunning. And this collection is. I am in awe as to the diversity of her stories and where she gets her ideas from - the arrival of Leo Tolstoy on his death bed at a in-the-middle-of-nowhere railway station; the real Mrs Danvers from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca; a woman farwelling her young child off to boarding school; an elderly couple deciding to run away; a man and his dog boarding kennels. Some of the stories are happy, others are sad, some disturbing. If there is any common thread or theme here, I am far too unanalytical to spot it or try finding it! Each story is carefully crafted, complete in its own way, some longer than others, some more memorable than others. And all showing a slice of life, a baring of the soul of the narrator. Just wonderful.

A GOD IN RUINS by Kate Atkinson

This writer, Kate Atkinson, just keeps getting better and better. Every novel she has had published I have read and enjoyed enormously. And she has done it all again with 'Life After Life' which I read exactly a year ago, and now this companion story to that one. 'Life After Life' told the what-if story of Ursula, born in England between the two great wars, and how her life unfolded or may have unfolded depending on if she took the left fork in the road or the right fork. This very clever and slick way of telling the story however does not detract from what the novel was acutally about - the appallingness of war on ordinary people, and in the case of the English ordinary person, the incredible stoicism/stiff upper lip/just get on with living attitude that prevailed.

The author continues this theme in this latest novel, which is primarily about Teddy, Ursula's younger brother, who becomes a Lancaster bomber pilot during the war, and then after it seeks to escape the merest suggestion of excitement by trying to live the quiet life. He marries his childhood sweetheart, Nancy, they have one child, the truly awful Viola, and she in turn has two children, Sunny and Bertie. I mention their names because as characters they have just as much of a story to tell as Teddy, and as the novel is about Teddy and his family, including his parents and siblings, really they should all be mentioned.

The story moves effortlessly between the years of Teddy's long life, with a number of different narrators as Teddy's life unfolds. As with Ursula's story, it is very clever narrative technique, and never once feels like it is losing itself. But the true marvel of this book is the writing about the war of a bomber pilot - essentially that every time you go flying you probably won't come back. The bibliography at the back of the book gives you an indication of the depth of knowledge the author has brought to her writing and the tragic waste of all life that occurs in wartime. The peacetime though, for many is no easier, and the reverence and grace with which Teddy's post war life is told is almost overwhelming.

I loved this very much, I didn't want it to end. If you haven't already done so, read 'Life After Life' first, then this one. Together they are just wonderful.  

THE YEAR OF FALLING by Janis Freegard

Falling - falling from grace, falling in love, falling out of love, falling over, falling down, falling apart, the harder you fall.....so many quotes about falling, and they could all apply to the characters in this first novel from Wellington poet and short story writer Janis Freegard. Such a clever and simple idea to build a story around.
The lives in various stages of falling are those of two sisters, Selina and Smith. Their mother deserted them and their father when Selina was just a toddler and Smith was a teenager. Even though their father did the best job he could raising his daughters by himself, the absence of their mother has affected both girls in quite diverse ways over the years since.
Selina is now 29, a graphic designer working for an advertising company in Wellington city, single, living alone in a flat in Brooklyn on the property of her landlady, Quilla, a semi reclusive older woman with her own story to tell. Selina is, quite frankly, a bit of mess. She drinks too much, is unreliable in her work, recently broken up with her boyfriend, her much loved father and his wife are in the process of moving to Australia. At the same time as porcelain dolls begin turning up on her doorstep, she begins an affair with  a celebrity chef who not long afterwards disappears.
Smith, being somewhat older that than her sister, has never been able to move away from the surrogate role of mothering Selina. She has sacrified many opportunities in her life to look after Selina through her various issues, and is now living in Takaka in a house bus, part of a cooperative community, finally having found some peace in her life. Ever the carer, she is also caring for a young woman who is terminally ill, and the woman's nine year old son. With all this going on, she has taken it upon herself to also try and find her and Selina's mother.
Selina is the central character in the story, and well over half is told in her voice, with Smith and Quilla in alternating chapters. The characterisations are terrific, well rounded, flawed, trying to live a life and hold themselves together. We also get to see each character viewed through the eyes of the others which gives quite a different dimension to each woman. All three women and the minor characters all felt like real people - the likes of Selina could easily be in your workplace, and Quilla is instantly recognisable as the elderly neighbour living alone, keeping an eye on things.
The locations of the story also feature highly. Wellington in particular I enjoyed very much reading about, hailing from that city myself. I can see the winding streets of Brooklyn, the houses perched on the slope down off the road, or up steep driveways, the bush of the town belt as an ominous and slightly threatening backdrop. By contrast, the author writes about Takaka in a completely different way - the natural beauty of the place comes shining through, symbolic of being far better for one's mental and emotional health than Wellington. And for a place of complete difference and contrast - Iceland!
This is a story of searching for one's self, trying to identify and then hold onto the important things, and finding a place to call home whether it be a physical place or simply in your own head and heart. There is hope, forgiveness, joy and love. It is a wonderful story, I very much enjoyed reading it. I really hope this book gets widely read and promoted, because it certainly deserves to.

 

BY BREAD ALONE by Sarah-Kate Lynch

I love Sarah-Kate Lynch's novels. They have at their core an item of food or drink - cheese, champagne, bread, baking, honey, or have a backdrop of food - and love. All so delicious, a tasty treat, with surprises and a bit of magic thrown in.

In this story, it is the sourdough starter which is the magic ingredient - 'the living, breathing, bubbling mixture of the past and the present that ...  added to every batch of flour and water to turn it inot the future.' It is the starter that forms the link for Esme between the most beautiful summer of her life, in her late teens, when she falls madly in love with a young baker in a small village in France, and her life fifteen years later, when things aren't quite so rosy.

Now Esme is married to Pog, they have a young son, they live in the House in the Clouds in Suffolk, her father-in-law lives with them, as does her grandmother. It is fairly clear early on in the story that something awful has happened to this family, and it is just not talked about, which is why the reader never finds out till the end either. The constant through the last fifteen years has been Esme's daily sour dough breadmaking, still using that same starter she created that summer in France. Esme simply cannot help herself focussing on the happy times in her life, just to get her through her days. And of course the memory of her summer with Louis is at the forefront of that.

A chance meeting with Louis threatens to completely derail Esme, or does it offer her the unbelieveable opportunity to start her life again with the man she can never forget? And off we go on a breath holding will she or won't she? Yes do it, you say to yourself, surrender to love and Louis, then no, don't leave Pog, make more bread, someone save her!!!!

A lovely frothy treat of a read, with a very worthy message at the end - Man, or woman for that matter, cannot live by bread alone. Cryptic I know, but all will become clear. Now, off to make my own starter - the recipe at the end of the book is not the one used by Esme, but according to the author is the best she has tried, and it would seem she tried a few.

THE EXPATS by Chis Pavone

Sometimes when you are reading a book, you do really have to wonder if the author is having just one great big laugh. How ridiculous can he make his plot line, how far can he fool the reader, how much fun can he have in making his story believable. You just want to keep on reading to see how preposterous it can all get. And yet it is still a compelling and highly readable novel. How strange can fiction get?  After reading this it would have to be a great bit of fact to be stranger than this story!

So, Kate is a wife and mother married to an IT financial security expert called Toby. They live in Washington DC, have two young sons, and life seems pretty rosy. But Kate has a secret, a secret so big her husband does not even know. Her job as a researcher is actually just a cover for being a CIA agent, now tied to a desk but in her past she was an active field agent with some dark secrets to protect. She resigns from the CIA when Toby gets the job of a lifetime as a top notch security analyst for a big bank in the European tax haven of Luxembourg. Hooked yet? So the family upsticks to the idyllic city of Luxembourg and Kate becomes the cliched expat wife. Overnight. Hardly surprising she struggles a little with her new role as non-working, financially dependent wife/mother. Is all her CIA training and instincts telling her that there are things in her new life that aren't quite right, or is she so bored and frustrated that she is looking for trouble, or is she simply paranoid? It would seem that the expat life is not all coffee mornings, play dates, cocktail parties and weekend breaks in exotic locations. Nothing or anyone is what they seem, and before long we are all dragged into the web.

It is however all a bit long and tedious. For someone who has spent her life being an action woman Kate is tiresomely indecisive, overly self analytical, and not as intuitive as the likes of the CIA agents we see on the tele. But if you can take the whole premise of this story with a very large grain of salt it is actually quite enjoyable, with twists and turns, red herrings galore and plenty to look forward to in the inevitable movie.