THE PEOPLE ON PRIVILEGE HILL by Jane Gardam

Jane Gardam started having her writings published when she was in her 40s. Now in her mid-80s, she is still writing and publishing. She seems to like writing books and stories about older people, people who have seen something of life, have fears and insecurities brought on by disappointments and failures. As do we all. The glass is not really half full anymore, but life is not yet over and there be some living yet to do. She has the most acute eye in her story telling and characters. This book is a collection of short stories, really just about ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, and then having a bit of curve ball thrown at them that they have to deal with. Sometimes well with a good outcome, and often not so well with not such a good outcome. It could become depressing and maudlin, but because her writing is more about the human condition than about the human subject of her stories, it never really feels too awful and sad. It's wonderful stuff, the stories are short, incisive and observant, and just the right amount of pathos. But she is such a good writer, and I have now read three of her books, I think anything she wrote would be well worth the time taken to read and enjoy and savour. 

THE TERRORIST'S SON: A STORY OF CHOICE by Zak Ebrahim

This extraordinary and powerful story is told in just 93 pages. At the age of seven Zak Ebrahim's family life as knew it came crashing down. He lived with his American born mother, Egyptian born father, and his siblings in New York. His father was a devout Muslim, his mother had converted, and Islam, naturally, was a very important part of the family's life. But his father was becoming increasingly radicalised, becoming angrier and more frightening to live with. Along with his fellow radicals, he was the one who gunned down the Jewish leader of the Jewish Defence League. Sent to Rikers Island Prison, his father then became the mastermind behind the bombing of the World Trade Centre three years later in 1993. For Zak, his mother, and his siblings, the rest of his childhood was basically spent on the run. They would find a new town to live in, but it would never take very long for their true identities to be discovered, with bullying, unwanted publicity and racism constantly directed at them. It would be very difficult to not come out of all this with a level of resentment, anger, hate and despair, all fuelled by his radical uncle and others of his father's support groups. But surprisingly, growing up in this atmosphere, produced quite a different young man. He realised that the way of the adults around him was not right, and he vowed to be a different man from his father. To hate is a choice, a consciously made choice, as is tolerance and understanding. His choice was not hate, but tolerance and peace. He has made this his life's mission. This book arose out of a TED talk he gave in 2014, following his selection from a 2103 TED talent search. His message is very important, and it will not take too much of your time to read these inspiring and humbling 93 pages. 

MY SALINGER YEAR by Joanna Rokoff

I chose this book to read not because I am a die hard JD Salinger fan, but because it made the GoodReads list of top reads for 2014. What I probably should have realised is that GoodReads is primarily an American site, JD Salinger is an American writer who has a God like status amongst millions, and so I expect this memoir made the favourites list simply because it was read by many, many JD Salinger fans. There is plenty about JD Salinger in the book, but it is not actually about JD Salinger. Slightly misleading title maybe?

Still, for those that don't know, JD Salinger is the author of the famous coming of age tale 'The Catcher in the Rye'. Unlike America, this novel is unlikely to ever make compulsory reading in New Zealand high schools, but having said that, I do remember reading it for English at school way back in the 1970s and being sort of impressed by it - teenager Holden Caulfield giving the finger to everything and running away to New York.

This book is a memoir. Joanna Rakoff is now a successful writer in the US, but once upon a time she was a starry eyed university graduate looking to become a writer or at least get a foot in the door somewhere in the New York writing business. She lands a job as the assistant to the boss of a very successful and well established writers' agency in New York.  One of the many, many writers the agency represents is JD Salinger,  famously reclusive, who wanted all his correspondence from fans from all over the world to go through the agency, as he simply was unable to deal with it all. Amongst Joanna's numerous tasks was to reply to these letters - a fascinating task as the letters are really quite wonderful. She immerses herself into Salinger and his books, she talks to him on the phone, she finally meets him when he comes into the agency one day. He becomes her guiding light,  and his magic keeps her sane during her first 12 months in New York.

But the Salinger year is not just about JD Salinger. It is really about Joanna's year making it on her own in the Big Apple - earning money, finding somewhere habitable, her writer boyfriend, finding herself. And it is good, very readable. But, I am not sure if it is really enough to have made the top read list. However, I do want to read 'The Catcher in the Rye' again and remind myself why it is still such a great book.  

THE ORPHAN TRAIN by Christina Baker Kline

Way back before governments put in place some sort of social welfare safety net for its most vulnerable, to say orphaned or unwanted children had a pretty tough time of it is an understatement. From the work house in the UK, to mass shipments to the colonies, to state or church funded orphanages, the future for such children was pretty bleak. In the US from 1854 to 1929 thousands of children in east coast  cities were put on trains  and sent to the farm lands of the mid west. The trains would stop in small towns, met by anyone looking for a child - to adopt, to find a servant, a farm labourer, a nanny, a general dogsbody. Young teenage boys were the first to go, then babies, then all the others. Those not wanted in that town would be put back on the train and move onto the next town. Some 'adoptions' were successful, many were not. Life was tough for these children, 'supervision' of their adoptions by the overseeing authority very fluid - for example they were supposed to go to school, but many did not.

This novel tells the story of Vivian, a young Irish migrant girl, orphaned when her parents and siblings died in a fire in New York in 1929. At the age of nine she is put on the orphan train and travels to an uncertain and unknown future in Minnesota. Some ninety years later she is in Maine, now very elderly but still very sharp, living in a house full of memories. Into her life comes Molly, a teenage girl of native Indian descent. Molly has had a pretty rough road so far too, and as part of a community sentence she finds herself helping Vivian clean out her attic. Vivian's story slowly unfolds, and as the relationship between the old lady and the troubled Molly grows, Molly herself changes and grows, finding her own internal strengths and resilience.

It is a marvellous story, beautifully told, with a number of twists and surprises in it. The beauty and strength of this story lies in what the true meaning of family is, the relationships we form, the kindness of those around us, and how these truly define and cement our place in the world. Wonderful reading. Warning  - have tissues handy. 

THE LAST DAYS OF THE NATIONAL COSTUME by Anne Kennedy

I so wanted to like this. Firstly it is written by an NZ author and set in the city I live in - so definitely got to show support for that. Secondly, it has an historical element to it, and features story telling; thirdly, it focuses on hand craft, the pleasure that can be derived from working with one's hands. However, it was far too long, and as a result got bogged down in all sorts of stuff that just got more and more complicated. I really was quite over it by the last page, finding it all  quite strange and far too long.

It starts off well. In an inner city suburb of Auckland, Megan Sligo runs a mending and alteration business from her home. She has married into money, and lives a pleasant sort of existence, her pleasure in her work coming from finding out the stories behind the people and the clothes they bring in for her to work on. On the day that Auckland  suffers a catastrophic power cut that leaves the inner city area without power for five weeks, a young Irish woman comes to Megan with an Irish dancing costume to be repaired. Megan, being an astute judge of character by now, quickly realises that the young woman, like many of her clients, is having an affair with someone she shouldn't. Before long she meets the lover who also happens to be Irish, and then his wife, and so begins the next stage of this story. Despite herself, Megan is drawn to the guilty husband, attracted by what the Irish dress represents, and the stories the husband tells. Throughout this book however, there is a sense of unease about the husband that Megan does not want to see. And taking place against the surreal world of Auckland city basically turned into a ghost town, Megan finds herself disoriented, confused, unsettled. But then so does everyone else.

This surrealism - a large city completely incapacitated without power, residents, businesses and people leaving in droves, and yet some remaining, living without hot water, power, air con, shops, cooking facilities - is what I actually did enjoy reading about. A very weird sort of existence, and it is not surprising that those who remain, such as Megan and her husband, do find things get a little distorted and out of sorts. But really, it is just too long, too repetitive, and unfortunately was not able to hold my interest. 

A TREACHEROUS PARADISE by Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell is the creator of Inspector Kurt Wallender, very famous in the Scandanvian countries and immortalied on TV and movie screens. In recent years the BBC has introduced Wallender to an English speaking audience with the flawless Kenneth Branagh in the title role solving gruesome murders and dealing with his own demons. And captivating stuff it is.  But the author does not write only mystery thrillers set in Sweden. He has a deep affinity for Africa, in particular Mozambique, beautifully illustrated in this historical novel set in the early 1900s when Mozambique was in it's Portuguese hey day. This story has a tiny thread of truth to it, in that the author found a mention in some archival material that one of the largest taxpayers in the colony in the early 1900s was a Swedish woman who owned nine brothels. What a gem of an idea for a story! How on earth did a Swedish woman come to a Portuguese colony and end up a rich woman owning nine brothels!

When the story begins, Hanna Restrom is 18 years old. She lives a pretty bleak life in rural Sweden, until her recently widowed mother arranges work for her in the home of a family friend some distance away in a coastal town. For Hanna, life begins when she says farewell to her mother and makes the long journey to the new town. It isn't long before she gets the opportunity to work as a cook on a ship that transports timber to Australia - and yes, apparently this did happen and was not unusual. Within three short months, she is married and widowed, and unable to bear her predicament any longer, she basically jumps ship when it docks at Lourenco Marques, Mozambique. Here the events unfold that lead to her becoming a wealthy woman and brothel owner. But as suddenly as she appears in the old colonial ledger books, she also disappears. And this forms the rest of the novel.

Hanna recreates herself several times during the few years she lives in Lourenco Marques, and as a white woman in a largely black population under rigorously enforced Portuguese control, she is in a very privileged position. It does not take her long to see the injustices going on around her, with the way the local populace is treated, and the attitudes of disdain and prejudice that prevail. This conflict, and her increasing unwillingness to tow the line, become the key drivers in Hanna's  life, and in her dealings with her employees, house servants, and others. As you have probably gathered it does not end happily.

The story itself is well worth reading, but the writing too is quite bewitching. We feel the overwhelming African heat, the loneliness and isolation Hanna feels in her highly unusual position in the local society, her constant feeling of alienation in this very foreign environment, the menacing undertone at the imbalance of power between native African and white interloper. It is very good, and lingers for quite some time after finishing. I really look forward to reading more of this author.
 

THE SILKWORM by Robert Galbraith

Robert Galbraith is really JK Rowling, of Harry Potter fame. I am not sure I really understand why she took another name to write adult private investigator novels because it didn't take long for her to be sprung. But like the name she chose, this work is totally different in every possible way from the Harry Potter series. As you would expect!

Cormoran Strike (she always has great names for her characters) is a private investigator, a man who has had an interesting career in the defence forces and the police, and now working for himself. Assisting him in his one-man band business is his wonderful assistant, Robin, dying to become a private investigator herself, following and observing every move Cormoran makes. To be honest, she has way more smarts than Cormoran, and is far more instrumental in solving the case.

With a name like Cormoran Strike you would have to be a bit of a maverick and he now walks a rather blurry line between the wrong and right side of the law as he attempts to help helpless citizens in their pursuit of justice. Most of his work is domestic related - spouses suspecting spouses of misbehaving and engaging Cormoran to tail, photograph and report back. In the midst of all this bread and butter stuff, he is approached by a woman who happens to be the long suffering wife of a famous author. The writer has gone missing, she suspects foul play, and Cormoran finds a routine missing person case becomes considerably bigger and more awful than he could have imagined.

And this is actually the problem for me with the novel - the imagination. The author who is missing, Owen Quine, writes quite bizarre and disquieting books. Not a nice man, and neither are any of the seven people closely associated with Quine that Strikes finally identifies as suspects. The seven people have been redrawn as fictional characters in Quine's latest controversial manuscript, entitled Bombyx Mori -the scientific name for a variety of silkworm.  In this manuscript, the protagonist, Bombyx, is a writer who is "repeatedly abused, tormented and ultimately eaten alive by the people in his life whilst going to extraordinary lengths to capture and preserve his talent for their own selfish gains." Does it sound weird? Well, it is, really weird. As I said way too much imagination. The whole thing becomes so convuluted and complicated and dare I say it ridiculous that I just could not take any of it seriously. And so it lost me. Apart from the very real Robin, I couldn't engage with any of the characters - all self absorbed back stabbing narcissists - makes it even harder to work out who is the villain, as they are all vile. And I just thought Strike was a bit of clown - the usual failed detective, with a sad lonely life, living in the tiny decepit flat above his offices, drinks too much, has a crap diet, rude and grumpy. Plus the whole thing is very, very long. The ending when it comes, is a massive relief, and not much of a surprise, as  I said the baddy could have been any of the seven.

Having adored all the Harry Potter books, marveled at them, Cormoran Strike is just one great big massive disappointment. Which saddens me. Maybe I will try JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, written under her own name - apparently it is good, and I don't want to give up on her just yet!