ELIGIBLE by Curtis Sittenfeld

Imitation, they say, is the greatest form of flattery. And so the decision by Harper Collins to commission well known modern authors to rewrite six of Jane Austen's novels would seem to be a winner. On looking at reviews of the first three modernised novels - Emma, Sense and Sensibility,  and Northanger Abbey, this would appear to not be the case. Mixed reviews probably an understatement. This one, however, which in case you hadn't figured it out by the title, is Pride and Prejudice revisited, and is a marvellous read, overall favourably reviewed too by the good and the great of the book review world.

The P and P story is so well known, having made it to TV and film in many different versions, that we all have in our mind's eye how we visualise the characters to be. So naturally, we are constantly going to be making comparisons with the original story, and all the remakes since. But that is half of the fun of reading this - comparing and contrasting. Like being with an old friend who has modified and been modified over the years.

A number of things are different however. Firstly the setting. Not England at all,  but present day Cincinnati, Ohio where the author comes from. Mr and Mrs Bennet live in a nice suburb, in a very large inherited family home, with the three younger daughters - Mary, Kitty and Lydia. Mary is doing yet another on line degree; Kitty and Lydia as self obsessed and mischievous as they were 200 years ago.  Liz and Jane are 38 and 40 respectively, have successful careers and live in New York, Liz hopelessly in love with modern day rat Jasper Wickes, and single Jane going through a donor insemmination process. The Bennets' dire financial situation only comes to light when Liz and Jane return to Cincinnati after their father has open heart surgery. Next door to the Bennets live, surprise, the Lucas's and Charlotte of course. Mr Collins turns up in the form of a 'cousin' and IT nerd from Silicone Valley. Darcy and Bingley naturally, being the most desired men in the piece, have been recreated as surgeons who have taken up important positions at the local hospital. Chip Bingley made an interesting decision  a year or two before the story begins to go on the reality TV show 'Eligible' -  you guessed it - 'The Bachelor' renamed. Such a clever little plot device.

Aaah, the search for true love takes a many and varied form indeed. Even though the time difference is 200 years, the story is as timeless as ever. Reality TV, sperm donors, Cross Fit, friends with benefits, yoga, transgender, racism and bigotry, insect infestations - all the bits and pieces that are part of the modern chaotic world we live in are all here. The author is very clever with how she has kept the core story, and yet changed, tweaked and shifted that story into a very relevant, modern and easily relatable novel. The dialogue does not sparkle as much as Jane Austen's, at times I did have trouble finding the chemistry between Liz (I kept calling her Lizzie, such a nicer name) and Darcy, some of the plot developments were insane, but in the end I didn't really care. Because it is all such an entertainment, such a romp, and so delicious to escape into. Oh and one more thing, you must, absolutely must, read it with a glass of wine in hand. It is just that much better!

FELLSIDE by MR Carey

Fellside is a prison, a correctional facility for women to be precise, where three thousand women 'form a community committed to a practical ideal of rehabilitation'. Sounds idyllic. Not. A women's prison is not a place that many people get to see the inside of, but we sure get plenty of insight from programmes like Bad Girls, Orange is the New Black, and Wentworth. Really tough women, young and old, fighting to survive. Fellside is no different.

There have been a number of best selling novels in the last few years which have as their central premise a young woman who has suffered memory loss. Jess Moulson is yet another young woman in the unfortunate position of having her life dramatically affected by amnesia. The story opens with Jess regaining consciousness in a hospital bed, handcuffed to the bed, being treated for serious burns, smoke inhalation. Gradually she remembers that she was involved in a fire in her flat that led to the death of a ten year old boy who lived in the flat upstairs. Jess is a drug addict and has vague recollection that she set the fire for reasons that she can't quite recall. By page 25 she has been found guilty of murder, the subject of the most awful press coverage, and sentenced to Fellside. Her court appointed lawyer is doubtful that the full and factual story has come out but can't get Jess to see sense, her guilt at the death of young Alex completely overwhelming her.

So life in prison begins. Not a bed of roses. Now, I am not a fan of supernatural or fantasy fiction, I really just do not get it. But very cleverly the author who, under a pen name has written for Marvel comics and writes his own graphic fiction, introduces what can only be called a ghost character - a young boy who comes to Jess in her sleep, in her dreams, taking her with him to his world. She is convinced this is the spirit of Alex, and gradually realises that he is helping her to see what really happened the night of the fire. And so the mystery of Alex's death begins to be solved.

But it is definitely creepy, weird and unsettling. At the same time as Jess is moving between the real world and the spirit world, she has to adapt to prison life in all its ruthlessness, cruelty, bent prison officers, and survival of the fittest code. It is pretty grim. What was interesting and did help to soften the brutality was the back stories of the prisoners and how they came to be in Fellside, including Jess's own story. As awful as they all are, terrible things happened to the women that led them to prison, so it is hardly surprising the terror continues.

At nearly 500 pages, already one can see that there is lot going on in this novel. It is tricky to define what sort of novel it is - a psychological thriller?  murder mystery? supernatural? fantasy? horror? At times it does wobble, and for me, I did lose my way with all the wanderings Jess and Alex's spirit do in the pursuit of justice. But living in such a prison environment, wouldn't you too want to escape to inside your head?

If you get past all the spooky action, then this is actually quite a riveting story. Life in the prison is graphically depicted, all the characters are very well drawn with great depth, there are lots of twists in the plot and surprises. And in the end, justice is served.

BEING MORTAL by Atul Gawande

 This book is the third written by Boston based surgeon about medical matters close to heart - the ethics and morality of what modern day medical practice is all about. He is also a staff writer for The New York Times and a professor at Harvard. It is a rare person who can take the scary science of medicine, humanise and demystify for us ignorant saps what really drives doctors and surgeons in their high pressure, high stakes work.

Three certainties in life - birth, death, and taxes.  We don't remember our births, and nothing really of the first two years of life. Taxes, well, we know all about them, and nothing we can do about those. Death and with it getting old - we don't want to face all that ickiness, losing our memories, eyesight, hearing, mobility, senility, bodily functions. And what about disease and sickness? All far too scary. And who wants to go and live in a rest home - visions of old people shrivelled up in wheelchairs, sitting zombie like in front of tele, dinner at 5pm. Is this what our active, interesting and stimulating lives have been reduced to? And is getting old, and the process of dying something we can have some control of, something we can do about?

Well, we can't prevent it happening, but we can certainly make it easier for ourselves and our families, which is the author's focus in this book. As a doctor, he has been trained in the physical care of the elderly. But his experiences in dealing with elderly people, including his own grandmother and father, have shown him that good care is about so much more than prescribing medication, four walls and three meals a day. He identifies the three enemies of successfully managing old age - boredom, loneliness and helplessness. Any of these three have an immediate negative impact on one's quality of life. We already know this of course as it may affect us when we aren't elderly. But up until recently the options available for elderly care have been fairly limited - primarily rest/nursing homes - where these three afflictions have plenty of opportunity to flourish. So he advocates for community based care, retirement villages, pets both furry and feathered, and being active for as long as possible.

He then addresses terminal illness and the process of dying - not nearly as awful as one might think. Again, it is all about helping people maintain their dignity, giving them control over how their pain and illness is to be managed, having those 'conversations' that none of us want to have with our own selves, let alone with others we care about.

There is plenty of the personal memoir in this book, not only in his writing about patients and families he has dealt with, but also his own family. Which for the ignorant reader is really quite wonderful. Not only is the doctor showing how human he is too, just like the rest of us, but with enormous grace and humility is showing us how we can make old age different, better, happier, more productive. Compulsory reading for everyone, I loved it so much I bought my own copy.

THE READER ON THE 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didier Laurent

Delicious, joyous, uplifting and beautiful. Yet another translation into English, this time from the French - why is it that in the last few years, we are reading so many wonderful and captivating novels translated from Dutch, Italian, French that look at the human condition in such a different way from us native English speakers?

Guylian Vignolles has a truly terrible job - working in a book pulping plant, as the lead operator of the hideous pulping machine that daily gobbles thousands of books. His boss is a tyrannical maniac, as is his co-worker. Every day, his one fact of defiance is to rescue unpulped pages from the innards of the machine that he reads aloud on his daily commute train ride. His fellow passengers are entranced, the highlight of their day. This daily ritual, the act of reading aloud and so sharing what he has rescued gives Guylian a reason for living, a sense of purpose, and goes a tiny way toward him trying to make his life just a tiny bit bearable. One day he finds a USB stick of a diary belonging to a woman who seems to work as a cleaner of public bathrooms. Guylian is captivated by the writer of the diary, Julie, and in the process of his reading to his fellow commuters, something inside of him comes alive, and it is not long before he realises he has to track this person down. And so Guylian is set upon a path from which he cannot go back.

It's like a modern day fairy tale: an ordinary man trying to get to grips with the complicated world around him, finding and devising ways to manage what life throws at him. Truly delightful. 

HEROIC MEASURES by Jill Ciment

Alex and Ruth Cohen have been married 45 years, lived all that time in New York City, and now with the frailties of older age beginning to become apparent, have put their much loved apartment on the market, to hopefully be replaced by one in a building with an operational lift. So open homes to organise, and open homes to attend. Realtors to deal with in their selling and more realtors to deal with in their purchasing. As if that is not enough to be going on with, their adored pet dachshund Dorothy has seriously injured her spine, resulting in partial paralysis and two elderly people rushing as quickly and as urgently as they can to the local veterinary hospital. It is Friday evening and their passage through the city is hampered by traffic gridlock following a tanker being abandoned in a tunnel, throwing the whole city into complete chaos. In these post 9/11 days the threat of a terrorist attack is never far away, and with the driver on the loose, who knows how this will end. It is interesting the power of paranoia, because from memory I don't think the reader is ever told how the tanker came to be stopped in the tunnel.

So over the course of the weekend, Alex and Ruth agonise over buying and selling in a frightened city, the tanker driver/terrorist successfully eludes the authorities, and Dorothy undergoes surgery and post operative recovery. This is a snap shot of ordinary people living ordinary lives, doing the best they can with the struggles that old age brings, the slower thinking processes. It is also the most gorgeous and touching love story; not only Alex and Ruth's long and enduring relationship, now in its sunset days, but also their love for their little Dorothy, the light of their lives, and in turn her love for them. Because unusually and brilliantly, chapters of this book are also written from the point of view of Dorothy, prior to her operation and after. We feel her fear, her uncertainty at where she is, the sickness and injuries of the cats and dogs around her, her focus on Alex and Ruth returning to pick her up and take her home.

I loved this: such a joy to read, not at all complicated, no great earth shattering moral or ethical dilemmas to be solved, no navel gazing or self-pondering. Just sheer enjoyment in being part of a very small family getting on with the business of day to day living. 

THE QUALITY OF SILENCE by Rosamund Lupton

Imagine, just for a moment, you decide to take a drive across the north of Alaska in winter. No, you wouldn't really would you, even imagining it is rather horrifying. You would have to be nuts, right? As if that isn't nutty enough, in this book, Yasmin also takes her deaf ten year old daughter. Yes, you will have to suspend disbelief in this mystery-thriller-missing person novel, and if you can do that you will be rewarded with an exciting, frightening, beautifully depicted and chilling (ha, ha) ride through the bare, icy and windswept landscape of Alaska, the race against time to find Yasmin's missing husband, and above all the sheer terror of being alone in this environment, the elements and a pair of mysterious blue headlights that never go away.

Yasmin arrives in Alaska with her daughter Ruby from England to reunite with husband and father Matt, a wild life photographer. Things have been a bit rocky between Yasmin and Matt, and there is some trepidation on Yasmin's part as to why she is doing this, but her gut instinct is telling her this is what she needs to do. That gut instinct is going to be working very hard over the next 300 pages, so it is reassuring that she trusts it so much! Ruby, like many little girls of ten, adores her father and has a wonderful relationship with him. Despite being deaf from birth, Ruby is highly intelligent, with a very enquiring  mind, has no trouble communicating with her parents, is an expert with computer and social media technology, and in her silent world leads a very rich and imaginative life. She even has her own blog - Words Without Sounds - and when the novel starts she has 630 followers. In her blog she describes the world around her, but in her own unique and very beautiful way.

On their arrival at Fairbanks airport, they are told that the village Matt was staying in has been destroyed by a fire, killing all 23 Anaktue residents, plus Matt. His wedding ring is produced as proof of his demise. Yasmin does not believe he is dead, not for one single minute, and with Ruby in tow promptly sets about finding a way to get into the Alaskan interior to find him. Really I hear you say? How ridiculous with a ten year old, insufficient gear, clothing, survival skills etc. Disbelief suspended....

The extraordinary thing about this book is how Ruby depicts the physical world around her through the veil of silence. She sees what we see, but through a totally different lens. The natural beauty of Alaska, its wildlife and the night sky of which there is a great deal (!) are already stunning, and enhanced so much more by Ruby's observations and commentary.

This is a great novel, narrated alternately by Yasmin in the third person, and Ruby in the first person. This does not detract at all from the pace or the characters. The combination of Ruby's more passive and observation driven narrative with Yasmin's mum-in-charge-on-a-mission narrative, provides the perfect balance to make this so much more than thriller mystery. 

LOVE AS A STRANGER by Owen Marshall

I have never read Owen Marshall before. I don't know why as he is certainly well known in New Zealand writing circles, well reviewed and favoured by many. His speciality would appear to be short stories, many short stories written and published over the years, acute observation of behaviour and motivations. So with knowing virtually nothing about the author I opened this nearly 300 page novel and began.

The central premise behind the story is the quote "When love is not madness, it is not love", penned by seventeenth century Spanish poet and writer Pedro Calderon de la Barca. We are saturated with love stories gone wrong - usually involving young and/or sexy lovers. We think of the madness, craziness and recklessness of new love as being the domain of the young - think Romeo and Juliet. Very rarely do we hear of wild, crazy, obsessional love applying to older people, people who maybe past their physical prime, people facing difficult questions relating to ageing. This is exactly what Owen Marshall tackles in this novel.

Sarah is in her late fifties. She and Robert have been married for many years, mostly successfully, sometimes not, but to their credit seem to have stuck together, lived a good married life, and are now planning on growing old together. However things aren't so rosy at the moment, with Robert having chemotherapy treatment for a cancer. They have moved from Hamilton to Auckland for the duration of the treatment, living in an inner city apartment. They don't know many people in Auckland, so their daily lives revolve around Robert's treatment programme, and his need for rest. Sarah is quite literally at a loose end, which gives her plenty of time for long walks, contemplation, partaking of coffee in the many city cafes. She is observed by Hartley, early sixties, recently widowed, and understandably lonely, slightly disoriented and also at a bit of loose end. One day while walking through the Symonds St cemetery, Sarah stops at a grave for a 17 year old girl, murdered by a spurned lover way back in 1886, when Hartley, as a random stranger also walking through the cemetery,  happens to join her. So begins a friendship that very quickly becomes a love affair. This is a first for Sarah, and for a while she fully embraces the excitement, the anticipation, the attention, the flattery, the subterfuge. Until she senses that things are tipping over slightly from a good fun time into something a little more obsessive and disquieting. She has to make the decision between her husband Robert or her new lover Hartley. Naturally there are consequences, none of them good, of whatever decision she makes.

My plot summary gives the impression that this is Sarah's story, but it is actually more the story of Hartley, with Sarah and the love affair being the catalyst for the madness of love that develops. The tone throughout out the book is slightly menacing and sinister, you know, really, from page two and the words on the headstone in the cemetery that something is going to to badly wrong somewhere: it is really just a case of wondering where and to who. Owen Marshall keeps the reader in an increasingly tightly wound grip, precisely paced with really well drawn and complex characters. This has also been greatly aided by the ominous illustrations at the beginning of each chapter - a long dark grey shadow of a suited man randomly placed onto a lighter grey background. It is a love story, but not really as we know it, and I am not sure if young(er) people would get as much out of this novel as perhaps older people. It is about mature love, and love in the hearts of people who have different pressures on them than young lovers do. Sarah, for example has to consider not only her seriously ill husband, but the effects of her actions on her own children and grand children, and the 'family' unit she and Robert have made over the years. Things that would not enter the consciousness of childless, mortgage free, financially independent young(er) things! But in a population that is ageing and living longer, marriages and relationships facing different pressures from those faced by just one generation back, there is quite a lot of reality here.

This really is a very good story, well written, suspense and interest maintained throughout, with above all very believable characters - they could quite literally be your next door neighbours, or your work colleagues. It is the characters who make the story - there are only three of them - facing questions and issues, having to make decisions that many of us could be now facing and may quite possibly face in the future.