24 June 2012

Comically weird

I am really lucky. If I'd read Kate Atkinson's first novel before reading her mysteries, I might never have had the great pleasure of meeting Jackson Brodie and getting involved in the messy realities of his fictional life. That first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

That book didn't win any awards from me. I couldn't get through it.

But I really enjoyed reading the four mysteries she wrote. And I enjoyed the BBC rendition of a couple of them. I enjoyed them so much, that I picked up her third book when I was last at the library. It is Emotionally Weird, A Comic Novel.

Okay, I'll give it the comic label. There are some funny bits. Not many, but some. While reading the first half of it, I was reminded of what I've heard about Seinfeld. You have to understand, I've seen bits of Seinfeld, but never a whole half hour's worth. I've chuckled at some bits, but not many. I've heard it said that it was a situation comedy about nothing. As a very casual observer, I'll buy that. And Emotionally Weird, A Comic Novel is also about nothing -- at least in the first half that I read.

The narrator's boy friend epitomizes the book for me. She said in an early chapter:
I shut the door and went back to bed and the warm, slack body of Bob with whom I lived in urban squalor in a festering tenement attic in Paton's Lane...
Bob, known by some as "Magic Bob,"... was in fact an unmagic Essex boy Ilford born and bred...
Like me, Bob was a student at Dundee University... He seldom handed in an essay and considered it a point of honour never to go to a lecture and instead lived the slow life of a nocturnal sloth, smoking dope, watching television and listening to Led Zeppelin...
Bob's sense of humour... had been developed the Goons and honed by The Monkees. Bob's screen hero was Mickey Dolenz...
Bob was an unreconstructed kind of person... he had a complete lack of interest in anything that involved a sustained attention span... He was prone to the usual obsessions and delusions of boys his age -- the Klingons, for example, were as real for Bob as the French or the Germans, more real certainly than, say, Luxemburgers...
In the first half of the book, Bob is easily the most distinct character. If you read the quote above, you got a good taste of Atkinson's humor. And, for me, the description of Bob could be a description of the book.

Now, I can't assert that with any assurance because I didn't read the whole book -- just the first half. By page 200, I was tired of reading about an unmagic group of people who lived slow lives of nocturnal sloths. As much as I appreciate some science fiction fantasy and the craziness of The Monkees, I would rather have watched a Seinfeld marathon than finish the book about nothing.

Any chance that you have read Emotionally Weird, A Comic Novel? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.
Other reviews (there are distinct differences of opinion here)
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

11 June 2012

Living history

Forty-some years ago I had to do a quick study of a culture I'd never heard of: the Kalahari Bushman. That hunting and gathering culture was to be the "stand in" for prehistoric, stone age hunter-gatherers in a World Studies course I was to teach.

The ethnography of anthropologist Richard Lee and the teaching materials developed Malcolm Carr Collier and her team from the American Anthropological Society were wonderful. The Bushmen became the first unit of study for the course I taught for twenty years.

Over the years since then, the Bushman or San culture has come to my attention now and again as one of those quickly vanishing ways of life. Governments have tried to fence them in and get them to be farmers. Those plans were very difficult to fulfill since the people are independent and used to moving from place to place every few weeks and since the Kalahari is a great sandy desert.

Michael Stanley (Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) have used the Bushmen and their dying culture as a central feature in their latest Detective Kubu mystery, Death of the Mantis. Kubu, if you've forgotten, is a huge man with a huge appetite who, when he's not eating, is Assistant Superintendent of Detectives David (Kubu) Bengu in Botswana.

A number of suspicious deaths in the Kalahari bring Kubu into contact with a Bushman friend he'd gone to elementary school with. The deaths also cause Kubu to deal with a policeman who is convinced that Bushmen are amoral, lesser beings capable of any evil deed. Kubu, with an educated Bushman friend, sees himself above such prejudice.



As police procedures go, the big city cops in Botswana are as sophisticated and well-equipped as those in American cities. The small town cops, not so much. (Sound familiar?) With helicopters, GPS units, bullet proof vests, desert-ready four-wheel-drive Land Rovers, and satellite phones, they pursue the bad guys.

All the equipment doesn't keep them safe or guarantee they'll find the bad guys -- especially when there are at least a couple kinds of bad guys. But it all makes a very good story -- especially when mixed together with the desperation of people whose culture is dying before their eyes.

Once again, the Michael Stanley men have written an intriguing and entertaining story. Add to that the cultural insights offered by two South Africans with remarkable appreciation for the people and the landscapes of southern Africa. This is the third Detective Kubu novel. If you haven't read the others, Death of the Mantis is a good place to start, but you might want to begin witht the first book in the series, A Carrion Death.

 Have you read Death of the Mantis or another of Michael Stanley's books? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.
Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , ,

What a waste


I should be taking notes about how books get to my "to read" list. Books achieve standing because a someone familiar recommends them, because I're read an approving review, or because I've enjoyed reading another book by an author.

There was this mysterious entry on the list: A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley. I don't know how it got on my list, but somehow my system failed me.

On the other hand, maybe it's good for me to read a book I don't like once in awhile as a contrast to books I like.

This novel is subtitled, "A Flavia de Luce Novel." Flavia de Luce is a precocious eleven-year-old who solves crimes. She's as obnoxious as the Sheldon Cooper ("I know everything.") character on television's The Big Bang Theory, but without comic double takes. She's as carelessly daring as [Sue Grafton's series heroine] but without a gun.

The setting is a run down country house in post-WWII rural Britain. A widower with three daughters whose most prominent characteristic seems to be his ability to write articles for a stamp collectors' magazine. Flavia is the youngest of the three daughters. The role of the older two seems to be confined to tormenting their younger sister.

There are clever thieves abroad in the countryside. A gypsy woman is murdered and her niece is attacked. Although the local police seem to be on scene and investigating, the pre-adolescent Flavia is the only one really able to identify suspects and locate clues.

Who reads this stuff? It's not Harry Potter fantasy. It's thin treacle poured over gruel. Literate eleven-year-olds aren't about to dive into the small type and dense text. Young readers aren't going to pick up this 400-page book about their little sister. Teenagers or young adults aren't going to spend time reading a book with no vampires or zombies. It's certainly not for adults like me. It's not a romance. The plot is inventive, but in my mind it's wasted on the characters and the setting. The writing is descriptive of both setting and action, but I never cared about either. Or the characters.

So why did I read it? That's a good question. If I'd bought it, I'd be sending it back to the author with a request for a refund. I read it because the weekend was rainy and windy. Television reception was awful and there really wasn't anything to watch. I'd finished two other books. I plowed on thoughtlessly. What a waste. I should have re-read the old Zane Grey that's on the shelf at the lake.

Do you have some thoughts about A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley? Write and tell this little bit of the world -- especially if you found reasons to like it. It is part of a series. Somebody must like them.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

29 May 2012

Damaged People (very damaged)

Dan Conrad mentioned that The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis was a compelling and well-written book.

Since he mentioned it, I added it to my to-read list and then, there it was, in the new book section of the library.

The book is set in Denmark and written by two Danes.

My paternal grandmother was Danish -- first generation born in the USA. I've always thought of Denmark as a mostly rural place with lots of small farms. Oh, there's Tivoli, wonderful pastries, open-faced sandwiches, Elsinore, the Louisiana Museum, Roskilde, the Little Mermaid, and lots of great domestic design. I've been there twice and those are some of the highlights of my visits. Those and the times I have been stopped on the streets of Copenhagen by tourists asking for directions.

I tend to overlook things like the Vikings -- merchants, seafarers, marauders, pillagers, invaders, and thieves. And that Norway for a long time was part of Denmark. And the World War II collaborators and the neo-Nazi Hells Angles motorcycle clubs and the anti-immigrant riots.

Denmark is a lot more complicated than my stereotypes. This book is full of more variety. Many varieties of damaged people. Somehow, damaged people aren't in my mental pictures of Denmark either. But, every character in the book is damaged -- some more damaged than others.

The main character is a nurse who is so damaged she can only function when she's ignoring her own family and rescuing someone else. She's the one who finds a three-year-old boy in a suitcase in a left luggage locker in Copenhagen's main train station. The boy is alive, but obviously damaged. The boy's mother (far away in Lithuania) is also damaged. Even the major evil people in the book are damaged.

It's a complicated story and a mystery-adventure, but it's not a police procedural. Most, but not all, of the characters do contact the police at appropriate times, but the police work goes on in the background. The stories include one about a mother trying desperately to find a kidnapped son, another about a rescuer trying to protect and learn the identity of a three-year-old who doesn't speak her language, and another about kidnappers trying to retrieve their hostage and get the ransom they've demanded. There are other stories and they do all come together at the end of the book.

This book almost wins a Heart of Gold award for improbabilities, but it's so well written and plotted that I didn't notice how large the stretches of reality were until I'd finished and begun reflecting on the book.

The book jacket says the authors' series has been translated into 9 languages. Series, eh? I did often feel that there were untold backstories and this book is probably not the first of the series.

This is one that kept me reading all through a rainy day at the lake. It's a bit frightening and suspenseful, but it is, as Dan said, well-written. I recommend it.

Anyone else read The Boy in the Suitcase? Or another in the series by Kaaberbøl and Friis? Write and tell us how you reacted to it (them).



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

24 May 2012

Reading Kate Atkinson at the lake

When last at the library, I picked up the "Jackson Brodie" mystery that I hadn't read yet. It was One Good Turn. It was actually the second of four books by Kate Atkinson, but I read them out of order. That's okay, they stand alone pretty well.

I had really liked the other three: Case Histories, When Will There Be Good News, and Started Early, Took My Dog. In addition, the BBC made a great mini-series of several stories from the books.

 Most of the stories in One Good Turn were not in the television series. That made reading it even more fun. If my memory is working, this book was as good as the first one and better than the last. There is also more humor, and some of the one-liners are very good.

I'd read about 50 pages when I remembered that Atkinson begins her books with lots of little episodes (not quite short stories) about lots of characters. The fact that I got that far into the book before getting confused about who was who means that I was paying better attention or Atkinson did a better job of distinguishing characters and events.

I read most of this while at the little cabin called Sidetrack on a tiny lake in northern Wisconsin. Between gardening, watching the eagles, feeding the hummingbirds, watching it rain a lot, and worrying about the severe thunderstorm warnings, I had time for reading (and napping). I even stayed up until midnight as I was trying to finish it. It also helped that the weather made TV reception ugly.

Jackson Brodie is still an interesting character. Atkinson still delves into her characters and does a great job of telling me what they're feeling and doing. And she still weaves a bunch of disparate events and people in a unified story by the end of the book.

The stories in this book take place in Edinburgh during its Fringe Festival. Jackson keeps running afowl of the local police and crime scenes. Oh, and he's being chased by a hit man working for a local Tom Petters-like crook. (Details about Tom Petters are available at Wikipedia for non-Minnesotans.) As a matter of fact it's that enforcer who is one of the things that links the novel's characters together.

 I didn't finish the book until I returned home, but I really liked reading it.

Have you read One Good Turn or other books by Atkinson? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought about it (them).
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

22 May 2012

Change (and not in coins)

When I stopped at the Amery (WI) Area Public Library on Friday, I had to get a new library card. Like so much of life, things were changing there. What hadn't changed was the friendly greeting I got from the librarian who has recognized me over and over again during my infrequent visits. I'm not sure she remembers my name the way Hubert Humphrey did the second time I met him, but she knows I'm one of the summer people.

I spent some time checking my e-mail and looking at the available books. What I found is one that Chip Hauss has been urging me to read for years: When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong. 

The author, a Chinese poet, has lived in the USA since 1989. He earned an M.A. and a PhD in comparative literature in the states. He's also written mystery fiction.

While When Red is Black is a police procedural set in Shanghai, the book is really about social, political, and economic change in China during the 1990s. The title gives that away if you're more aware than I was about the labels people were given during the Cultural Revolution. Of course, during that time, to be labeled "red" meant you were political hero. To be labeled "black" was the ultimate of political incorrectness. That designation led to humiliation, persecution, imprisonment, and death. In the 1990s, the labels persisted, but the meanings had switched. Heroes of the Cultural Revolution were obstacles to the achievements of the Four Modernizations and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (otherwise known as crony capitalism).

The main characters are a Chief Inspector and a Detective charged by their political boss with finding out who killed a dissident (Red) writer and avoiding any bad publicity for the Party and the state. The political boss, whom Chief Inspector Chen might someday succeed, is more interested in a problemless resolution than justice. Chen and Detective Yu have other priorities. In the meantime, the two honest, patriotic, and hardworking cops are tempted by the changes going on around them and confronted with the political changes they see.

Chief Inspector Chen gets a commission from a successful real estate developer with mob connections to translate a proposal for American investors. Detective Yu has a real apartment he'd been assigned to taken away by the bureaucrats at the last minute. Chen begins benefiting from his connection with cheap appliances and an alluring young "little secretary." Yu's wife completes her month-long accounting job in a week and contemplates ways of making money in the other three weeks. The bankrupt state enterprise that Chen's mother worked for suddenly finds money to pay for her hospital bills. And Chen comes into possession of a manuscript by a talented "black" author who died during the Cultural Revolution.

The problem with the book is that even for me, who is interested in the history, the changes, and the politics, the telling of the story plods on ever so slowly. Ironically (?) one of the books discussed in the story is frequently criticized for including too much detail and "inside baseball" trivia. Guess what? When Red is Black includes too much detail and trivia. It seemed to me that every character was given the chance to ruminate about his or her actions and then go on to act. It just took too long to tell the story, even with the considerations of change in China.

So, don't expect a rip-roaring adventure. Not only is there reflection and detail, there's also lots of poetry -- well, just lines of poetry most of the time, but the Chinese characters seem to have memorized hundreds of poems and regularly find appropriate circumstances for quoting old poetry. What should I have expected when the author is a poet?

If you're interested in a change of pace mystery or in China or in cultural/political change or in ways people deal with massive change and if you're patient, this book might be one you'll like.

When you've read it, you can write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong.



Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , ,

Dead woman talking

As usual, I approached the fiction section of the Northfield Public Library with my reading list in hand. The list is alphabetical by author, so I intentionally look at things that are not at the top or bottom. No sense favoring Sarah Andrews over Qiu Xiaolong.

What I came across first was Åsa Larsson's Until Thy Wrath Be Past. A cop and a prosecuting attorney in a remote place in northern Sweden are starring characters. They both have histories (some of it told in earlier books) and they're both interesting and attractive characters. The Swedish author is a former attorney, so I assume she knows what she's talking about when it comes to the law and order part of things and her references to Scandinavian mythology.

However, I'm not so sure about other things. The book opens with a woman narrating her own murder. Almost the next thing I recall is that the dead woman appears to the prosecutor in a dream, offering important information about the crime. Give me a break! Give me Sherlock Holmes!

Last time I read a book narrated by a dead person, it was pretty awful. It was a best seller for quite awhile, but I was not a fan. So, I was put off by the beginning of Larsson's book, but I kept reading.

I discover that I can skip the supernatural messages (that thankfully are in italics) and still follow the investigation and the characters. The story really revolves around an old woman and her middle aged sons. There are links to Swedish cooperation with occupying Nazis during World War II, a Steinbeck-like pair of brothers, and an extreme case of school yard bullying that didn't stop at the school yard fence.

Except for the unnecessary messages from beyond the grave, it's an integrated story that's well-told. You might even like the voice of the dead helping to narrate things. Oh, and one of the murderers is set up as a figure like the Biblical Job. Well, I can see how Larsson frames that, but I really thought that a key element of the story of Job was that his suffering was unearned. The suffering shlub in this story is anything but innocent.

Well, if I can ignore voice of a dead woman and resist insisting on a more accurate Biblical analogy, I liked reading the book. I'd like to suggest that an unintentional witness, unknown to either the criminals or the police would be a better vehicle for moving the story along or adding details than the ghostly whispers of a dead woman. A dead woman who is ushered off this earthly stage at the end of the book by the equally dead spirit of her grandmother.

So, have you read Until Thy Wrath Be Past? Did you like it? How did you react to the spirits? How did you react to the plot and the story telling? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

12 May 2012

Psychotherapy in a sweat lodge


When Dan Conrad said he was reading Vermillion Drift by William Kent Krueger, I asked him to let me know how he liked it. He did.
 
One: I was pretty sure he'd like the book. Krueger is a very good story teller.

Two: Krueger is such a good story teller that when sets out to write about suspense and danger, he can keep me from sleeping.

When I wrote about Thunder Bay three years ago, I noted that there were "frightening moments" and murders. The action in Boundary Waters kept me reading through a bunch of implausibilites a few months later. Nearly a year later, I almost didn't make it through Mercy Falls, but I was up at the lake and could get by without much sleep that night.

A few months ago, I noticed a review of one of Krueger's new books that was set in the wilderness of the northern border of Minnesota. It seemed to involve the main character and his daughter, stranded by a huge storm and hunted by someone evil. I said to myself, "No thanks."

That's why I wanted to know what Dan thought of Vermillion Drift. Dan was right that most of the murder, mayhem, and threat happened half a century before the primary story. As a retrospective, the resolutions of the old mysteries were less frightening. The main character does have to resolve some issues involving repressed memories and the childhood loss of his father, but those didn't keep me awake at night. I was especially impressed by B. Morrison's observation (in her blog linked below) that the absence of physical threats and danger allowed Krueger to focus on emotional conflicts and their resolutions.

It's a very well-told story. The bits and pieces fit together and the only improbabilities involve the aged Native American "witch," who is a long-time friend and father figure to the main character. I can live with that. I really liked reading Krueger's story telling in this book.

I discovered I missed another of his books along the way. It's referenced in Vermillion Drift. In that unnamed book, the main character's wife (an important part of the earlier books) is killed in a plane crash, and the widowed main character becomes prey as he searches for the wilderness site of the crash. I doubt I'll go back and read that one.

Have you read Vermillion Drift? Have you another of Krueger's books to recommend? Or recommend that we avoid? Write and tell this little bit of the world.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

11 May 2012

Surreal fiction

René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter, has entertained me for years. I always said he was my favorite Belgian surrealist. (Salvador Dalí is my favorite Spanish surrealist.)

Other surrealists have entertained me as well. Bertolt Brecht would probably have denied it, but he was a surrealist in my mind.

And what's all this early 20th century art history about?

In my vague memories of past reading, I recall being entertained by a mystery about a couple of Amsterdam detectives. The memory might even be real. It might be surreal.

In any case when I found Janwillem van de Wetering's mystery The Mind-Murders on the library shelf, I picked it up in hopes of being entertained once again. 

Well, this mystery is indeed about two Amsterdam detectives, Henk Grijpstra and Rinus de Gier. However, this novel seems to be at attempt at comedy and surrealism. It begins when Adjutant Grijpstra orders his sergeant de Gier to take off his clothes and jump into the unhealthy water of one of Amsterdam's canals and rescue a man who is beating off another rescuer with a crutch. It goes downhill from there.

That scene is comedic, but not funny. I didn't find anything else funny in the half of the book I read. Most of what I read was suffused with surrealism. The actions of the main characters and their thinking seems based in some alternative universe. They spent an inordinate amount of time in a bistro that appears normal, but is anything but.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. I know there are days when the Marx Brothers are hilarious and other days when they are as dumb as the Three Stooges.

But maybe this book is just as dumb as the Three Stooges.

Do you remember reading The Mind-Murders? Or something else by van de Wetering? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought. Or you could tell us who your favorite surrealist is. Or whether the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges are ever funny to you.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

03 May 2012

Stories almost as old as I am

The stories told in the latest Stephen Booth mystery I read begin with the crash of an RAF bomber near the end of World War II. As you might expect, over the decades, the stories spread out like a river flowing into a large delta. Six men died in the crash, one survived, and one went missing. Sixty years later, descendants of three of those men are involved in more deaths and more mystery around the mountain where the plane crashed.

It didn't take me long to get back to another Stephen Booth book. That's in part because I enjoyed reading the two earlier books and in part because the mysteries in the library are arranged alphabetically. This one is Blood on the Tongue.

Once again, I appreciated Booth's ability to portray characters in print in ways that make them seem more than imaginary place holders. Ben Cooper, native of the English Peak District is the central character once again. And I learned more about him and his life in this book. The rising star of the constabulary, Diane Fry is also a main figure, and she becomes more enigmatic as I learned more about her. She seemed to me to be jealous of Cooper's ease with the people and places he'd grown up with. She also seemed more determined to undermine his strengths. He seemed to be baffled by her and yet to seek understanding. It's certainly not the way I'd respond to her enmity. Ah, but the tension is part of what kept me interested in the book.

If the 1945 plane crash was the ultimate beginning, one of the episodes in this book begins when the granddaughter of the plane's pilot receives her grandfather's medal, mailed anonymously from the village nearest the crash site. Another episode involves the body of a long-dead infant almost buried under part of the plane's wreckage. There are three other tales told in this book.

At the beginning, it seems that all of them are related. However, the relationships are indirect and tenuous. The resolutions are not all clear cut and neatly done. To me it seems more like real life than the crisp packages that some mystery writers wrap up in their final chapters.

For me, Booth did it again: created and described characters that were interesting and believable; told stories that were intriguing; and connected them in realistic ways. I'm hesitant to go on to book four in his series because Ben Cooper has a weakness in evaluating women and he keeps seeing redeeming qualities in the nasty piece of work who is his superviser. I don't want to see her redeemed. I don't even want Cooper to save her life if she's threatened.

Have any of you read Blood on the Tongue or another of Stephen Booth's "crime novels? What did you think about it or them? Or how did you feel about it or them? Write and tell this little bit of the world.
The book was published in 2002. It's available for a free download if you search for online.
Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , ,

22 April 2012

Dale Stahl wrote

Since basketball season is done and the rush to Advanced Placement exams is just beginning, Dale had time to drop a note to this little bit of the world.

Jo Nesbø is really good. His main character is a Nowegian detective, flawed but liekable, Harry Hole, alcoholic and a guy you just like despite it. Series of books starting with The Bat, which I have never found, including The Redbreast and The Devil's Star and The Snowman. Loved those three and highly recommend them.

I like this guy (Hole) better than Mankel’s Wallander (at least the later versions; Mankel getting a bit pedantic in his old age!)

The latest book by Nesbø is The Headhunters. My wife is currently enjoying it and I am eager to grab it when she is done! Not Harry Hole but intriguing suspense.

Read a great book by Fred Vargas featuring Commisarie Adamsburg, French Detective. Liked him, liked his team, liked the story of a monstrous old superstitious belief fueling a modern killer, and am going to read some of the older books in this series. French cops, like in Louise Penny’s novels in Montreal area, are always eating and drinking something delectable; makes one want to sip a drink and have a snack while reading!

Finally, if no one has done this, I highly highly recommend reading all of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet’s works. The Thin Man, outstanding period piece. Great dialogue, great mystery great picture of America in 1932 or so. Chandler is the definitive hard boiled mystery writer. Philip Marlowe is my hero. I love every one of those books. The Long Goodbye, The High Window, The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely. Dialogue amazing, stories intriguing, must reads for any mystery fan!


Bird Loomis and I wrote about The Snowman and Jo Nesbø, and we both liked it. So did most critics.

Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, aka Fred Vargas 

I'll have to add Fred Vargas to my "to read" list. When I saw her photo, she wasn't the Fred I expected to see. She's also an archaeologist.

As for the classics, I remember well going back and reading The Thin Man books. I think it was in the days of actually-printed-on-paper-and-mailed newsletter, Reading. It was a treat as are the old movies. And the old movies of the Chandler books are also wonderful. I second the recommendations.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Event telling (not story telling)

You've probably read that I like good story telling. I also like well-created characters. Karin Fossum has created and described some good characters, primarily her "hero," Norwegian police Inspector Konrad Sejer. She has also told some very good stories. I read the first one in 2006 and liked it. I've gone back and read several others. Some better and some not as good.

 In the best of her books, the story telling and the characterization are equally well done. She's written ten books featuring Inspector Sejer. The one I checked out from the Northfield Library was The Indian Bride, published in 2007. Strangely, there's not much there about Sejer, except for a routine interaction with his old, cancerous dog. And there's not much story either. And when I finished the book, I wasn't sure the story was over or the mystery resolved.

You don't have to accept my reaction. The Los Angeles Times gave it a LA Times Book Prize, so somebody thought it was better than I did. That's not unusual or unexpected.

 The Indian Bride's story centers on a Norwegian bachelor farm equipment salesman. At the age of 51, enchanted by a photograph in a book, he flies to India to find a bride. And he finds a bride. After a whilwind courtship, the happy couple is married. He returns to Norway. She settles things in Bombay and follows him. But, the groom's sister is in a car accident and he's attending her in the hospital when his wife arrives from India. The cab driver sent to meet her misses the incoming bride. The bride finds her way to the village of her future and then disappears.

Inspector Sejer is called in when a body is found just outside the village. As you might expect, the rest of the book is a combination of police investigation and Sejer's meditations about who, among the suspects, was most likely guilty.

The most interesting story is the trip to India by a small town Norwegian, but even that isn't well told. I think that if Fossum had found a middle aged, parochial Norwegian from a small town and taken him or her to Bombay and shared the physical and cultural shock, she'd have had a lot to tell. There's some mention of the discomfort of the heat, but that's about it. And what about the courtship? How does this large Nowegian man make enough conversation with the waitress at the tandoori restaurant to convince her to marry him? What is there about her and her life to make running off with the big guy attractive to a 30-something Indian woman? How do they communicate given his limited English and non-existent Hindi? Oh, there are stories to be told. But they're not in The Indian Bride.

And the police investigation takes place mostly "off-screen." Sejer ruminates about the various suspects. And about the time an arrest is made, a couple of the regulars at the village cafe speculate reasonably about the guilt of someone who hadn't been a suspect earlier. Was the case solved? Or will it come back to haunt Sejer in another book?

So this wasn't a Fossum book that was wonderful for me. It won't deter me from reading another if I see her name on the spine of a book on the library shelf, but it won't send me purposefully searching for another.

If I'd looked carefully at the ReadingBlog entries, I'd have seen that Dan Conrad wrote a couple years ago that he didn't like The Indian Bride.

Have you read The Indian Bride? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

21 April 2012

A twofer

Dan Conrad mentioned he was reading a William Kent Krueger novel. I've enjoyed a couple of Krueger's books, but found others too intense for my bedtime reading. (If I can't get to sleep after reading a chapter or two, I know I won't enjoy the rest of the story. Yes, I know I could read before 9:00 pm and do it in a chair instead of in bed, but that would require a yoga-like flexibility that I have trouble with.)

Dan was reading Vermillion Drift, and I asked him to let me know what he thought of it. He did and added a bonus.
You asked me to write and tell you what I thought of William Krueger’s Vermillion Drift. What I think is that it is a well written, highly engaging and satisfying tale. There was some of the gruesomeness you noted in his other books, but since it mostly took place 40 years earlier it was not particularly disturbing. I enjoyed the novel, and particularly that the main character’s links to the Native American community and culture are critical to unraveling the mystery.
Now, that's what I like to hear. I think I'll add this to my "to read" list.

Then Dan added:
But that’s not really why I’m writing. I next picked up another book from the library and began reading. What happened next, occurs about once in a hundred books. About 1:30 a.m. I looked at my watch and said: “It doesn’t matter. There’s no way I can go to sleep until I’ve finished.” And so I read on to the end. The book is titled The Boy In The Suitcase by two Danish women, Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, and is the first of their “Nina Borg” series to be translated into English.
Nina Borg is a Red Cross nurse in Denmark, but that has little to do with the story which is about her going to a public locker at the request of a friend and finding there a three year old boy, naked and drugged, in a suitcase!
The rest of the story is told in a series of short chapters, each chronicling the actions of the four or five main characters. Unlike some such frameworks, each chapter moves the story forward and never feels like sidestepping or going backward. Gradually you learn the who, how and why as you move, with rapidly increasing pace, to the denouement. If and when the next in the series is translated, I will have my reservation in on the first day!
Now, there's a great recommendation. The Boy In The Suitcase is also going on my "to-read" list, and probably above Vermillion Drift. Have you read either of these? How did you react? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.
On the left are links to buy books. On the right are links to buy e-books.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

The literati are abuzz

Bird Loomis sent me a link to Ann Patchett's response to the Pulitzer Prize Board's decision not to award a prize for fiction this year. The New York Times op-ed was "And the Winner Isn't..."

Patchett, who had a book eligible to compete this year, said that "It’s fine to lose to someone, and galling to lose to no one." And, as a book store owner, she "can’t imagine there was ever a year we were so in need of the excitement it [a Pulitzer Prize] creates in readers."

She also bemoans about an American culture where "book coverage in the media [is] split evenly between Fifty Shades of Grey and The Hunger Games. She'd prefer "to have people talking about The Pale King, David Foster Wallace’s posthumous masterwork..." [I pretty sure she meant it was published after Foster's death, not that he wrote it from an afterworld.]

Patchett ends with a standard cultural defender statement: "Let me underscore the obvious here: Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

"Unfortunately, the world of literature lacks the scandal, hype and pretty dresses that draw people to the Academy Awards, which, by the way, is not an institution devoted to choosing the best movie every year as much as it is an institution designed to get people excited about going to the movies. The Pulitzer Prize is our best chance as writers and readers and booksellers to celebrate fiction. This was the year we all lost."

What do you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world.



And while you're at it, here's the list of Pulitzer Prizes for fiction (before 1947 it was for novels):

    •    1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
    •    1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
    •    1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
    •    1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
    •    1951: The Town by Conrad Richter
    •    1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
    •    1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
    •    1954: No award given
    •    1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
    •    1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
    •    1957: No award given
    •    1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee (posthumous win)
    •    1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
    •    1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
    •    1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    •    1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
    •    1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner
    •    1964: No award given
    •    1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
    •    1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
    •    1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
    •    1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
    •    1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
    •    1970: The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford
    •    1971: No award given
    •    1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
    •    1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
    •    1974: No award given
    •    1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
    •    1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
    •    1977: No award given
    •    1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
    •    1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
    •    1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
    •    1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    •    1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
    •    1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
    •    1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
    •    1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
    •    1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
    •    1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
    •    1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison
    •    1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
    •    1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
    •    1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
    •    1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
    •    1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
    •    1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
    •    1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
    •    1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford
    •    1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
    •    1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
    •    1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham
    •    2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
    •    2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
    •    2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo
    •    2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
    •    2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones
    •    2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
    •    2006: March by Geraldine Brooks
    •    2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
    •    2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
    •    2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
    •    2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding
    •    2011: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
    •    2012: No award given.

I've only read half of dozen of these. The Old Man and the Sea and To Kill a Mockingbird were the ones I liked best. Chabon's mysterious brick, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was my least favorite.

What have you read? What did you think? Is this a list of America's best fiction from the last 65 years? Or just a committee's award to get us excited about reading fiction?   Write and tell this little bit of the world.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

15 April 2012

Good cop, bad cop, worse cop

It didn't take me long to get back to reading another "crime novel" by Stephen Booth. I was impressed with Black Dog, so on my latest trip to the Northfield Library, I picked up Booth's second book, Dancing with the Virgins.

Characters and characterization were big attractions in the first book, and remain important features in this one. Here's how important they were to me: there were times as I was reading this mystery, that I nearly forgot about the plot and the mystery and wondered about the characters.

The main people in Black Dog are for the most part the main people in Dancing with the Virgins. There's the local boy following in his father's footsteps on the police force. There's his nemisis, the rising star imported from the big city, who beats him out for a promotion. The other officers in the local cop shop are there, with a couple additional people mentioned for the first time.

Oh, and the virgins? They are large upright stones on the moor that local legend says were young women of ancient times who danced on the Sabbath and were turned to stone as punishment. In the midst of the circle of 9 "virgins," a 21st century woman is found murdered. The victim was a "mountain biking" cyclist, attacked not far from where a hiker had been attacked a week earlier. The quiet, rural community is alarmed and demanding that the quiet, rural cops do something about the crime wave.

There are other things going on as well, but it takes a long time for the stories to develop and merge. Maybe that's why I became more interested in the people at times.

The young detective and his nemisis are polar opposites. He operates on gut instincts and an almost religious belief in finding justice. She relies on logic and the presecribed routines of the police manual. She plots her statements and actions like a military campaign. He responds to the needs of the people and the situations around him. Both of them have secrets in their pasts. Both of them wonder about the other and can't imagine how their opposite mangages.

But several of the other characters in Booth's book get pretty extensive development. The poor farmer for whom everything is falling apart; the attack victim whose face is badly disfigured by scars and whose being is disfigured by partial memories; the murder victim, who seemed alone and isolated (like the main characters); a park ranger whose 30-year "career" as a caretaker of his aging mother ends with her death; and a pair of sad-sack misfits who get violently dragged into the story because the VW van they're living in breaks down in the vicinity of murderous violence.

I liked this book. Stephen Booth's ability to profile the people in his stories is at least as good as his ability to craft the stories. He's now written a dozen books. However, I find it difficult to imagine reading that many more books centered on the people in the first two. Booth is not Tony Hillerman and the wilderness of the Peak District is not the wilderness of northern Arizona and New Mexico and Booth's detectives are not Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. I'm hoping that the next Stephen Booth book I pick up will have different characters and settings.

Have you read Dancing with the Virgins? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought about it.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

13 April 2012

Once upon a crime

Okay, I've never been there. I've driven by, but never stopped. But this sounds like a place I ought to go given my penchant for reading mysteries.

Once Upon a Crime Mystery Bookstore offers good reads, great service
When you first step through the door of Once Upon a Crime, located on W. 26th Street just off Lyndale in Uptown Minneapolis (only five minutes away from Metropolitan State University’s Minneapolis campus), the word “cozy” comes to mind. First, you inhale the instantly relaxing smell of paper, ink, and aging wood. Waiting to be petted is the store dog Shamus. The Border Collie-Dalmatian-Lab-German Shepherd mix lies on his stomach by the door, carving a bone with his canines. And of course there are the mystery books—in total 20,000 to 30,000 of them. This abundance of hardcovers and paperbacks sit on bookshelves that line the walls and fill parts of the small room’s interior.

Always at the ready to help navigate you to the book of your dreams are the owners of Once Upon a Crime: Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze. The two bought the store from former owner Steve Stilwell on August 1, 2002…

In the spring of 2011, Once Upon a Crime was nationally recognized for its promotion of mystery literature with the Raven award. According to Once Upon a Crime’s website, “the award recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.” Frovarp and Shulze received the trophy raven at a ceremony in New York City...

Minneapolis bookstore publishes mystery anthology
"Write of Spring," an anthology published by the folks at Once Upon a Crime bookstore, will be published this spring by Nodin Press. The book is a collection of mystery stories by Brian Freeman, Ellen Hart, David Housewright and a whole slew of other local writers; it was compiled to mark the store's 25th anniversary.

Gary Shulze and Pat Frovarp, bookstore owners, won the Raven Award two years ago from the Mystery Writers of America. They promise that this book is not just their first, but also their last, venture into publishing.

The book will launch at the store's annual Write of Spring celebration, which runs from noon to 4 p.m. April 7 and brings in dozens of mystery writers in one-hour shifts. (The store is at 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.) All royalties will be donated to Memorial Blood Centers.

Welcome to the website for ONCE UPON A CRIME MYSTERY BOOKSTORE
Pat and Gary at ONCE UPON A CRIME are informal, low-tech, and happy to provide the best customer service around. They carry thousands of new mysteries, thrillers, and crime fiction and also have a large collection of rare, used, and hard-to-get volumes. They can order almost any book. Feel free to call ahead to check to see if the book you want is in stock: 612-870-3785 or EMAIL. Please drop a note if you would like to be on the e-mail notification list for information about upcoming appearances.
Posted by at 1 comment:

08 April 2012

Degrees of separation

"This little bit of the world" got a little smaller this winter. Jeanette Hohman died at age 92. It's not just that this little bit of the world is already small enough, it's also that Jeanette was a remarkable and interesting woman. I say that even though I just barely knew her and met her only twice, I think.

When I stopped publishing Reading on paper, Jeanette was one of the people for whom I printed out web pages. She was the person who, last fall, asked me why I seemed to read only mysteries. Then she suggested The Postmistress by Sarah Blake.

When I was last at the Northfield Library, I found Blake's book in the fiction section and remembered the title. Now I've read it. And I wish I could call Jeanette and talk about it.

In many ways it's a well-written book. But...

There's a good short story at the beginning of the book that would be great if you added in some of the characterization that shows up at the end of the book. It's about finding adulthood and confidence of self. It's a tragedy, but one that raises important questions.

There's another short story in the middle of the book about a reporter trying to make sense out of a randomly cruel and deadly European world in 1940. The fact that the young woman is an American, acting with American impulses and assumptions makes it more tragic.

There are a couple of unfinished short stories in the book as well, but like the American reporter who seem unable to find the end of the stories she reports on, Sarah Blake seems unable to finish the stories. One of them is about childhood and loss while another is about seeking the future and death.

There's an ingenious plot device in the middle of the book which appears to tie the early short story to the incomplete short story about the reporter in Europe, but Blake abandons the device and portrays her character staring out to sea from the town on the end of Cape Cod. This from a young woman who is quoted as saying, "'Whatever is coming does not just come... It's helped by people willfully looking away. People who develop the habit of swallowing lies rather than the truth. The minute you start thinking something else, then you've stopped paying attention -- and paying attention is all we've got.'"

Maybe I was supposed to see the unfinished stories and the unused plot links as part of what Sarah Blake was writing about. Maybe I was paying attention to the wrong things. But, I am too dense to recognize Blake's topic. Maybe Jeanette knew.

It seems to me that this is almost a novel. But when I finished, I wondered what it was about.

Oh, and the title? The postmaster in that small town at the end of Cape Cod wondered what effect she could have on her community if she simply didn't deliver some of the mail. It turns out it wasn't her, but the visiting reporter, trying to recover from her war time experiences, who refused to deliver some mail. But, in the end, it didn't matter.

Have you read The Postmistress? What did you think it was about? Do you think Blake had a message? Or was she just telling incomplete stories? Come on. Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions. (And recruit a new reader to this little bit of the world.)


Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , , ,

02 April 2012

Saturday dilemma

I had a book I thought I'd read last weekend. It turned out to be engaging enough that I finished it late Saturday afternoon (not late Sunday). The library was closed. I didn't have any other books on my bed side pile. No! Was I to be banished to television land? Yikes! Did I have to talk to the family gathered here. Luckily, we went out to dinner -- great Japanese scallops for me and equally good food for everyone else. And we talked to one another. We even continued talking to each other after dinner. At bedtime I resorted to a collection of sermons by John Cummins, one the two preachers who has made me think and feel.

The book that encouraged conversation by being good enough that I finished it before I expected to? Black Dog by Stephen Booth. I don't know how Stephen Booth's name appeared on my "to read" list, but there it was when I was last at the library. I looked at several books and chose Booth's first, Black Dog.

The title is a red herring. There's a black dog in one of the stories, but it's a bit of distraction. Booth tells stories well, and there are several in this book. And, in a self-proclaimed "crime novel," it's the characters, not the stories that stand out.

The main character is a local boy doing well, hoping like his father to become a police sergeant in the Peak District of northern England. However, he's haunted by his father's sainted memory in the community, in part because his father died bravely in the line of duty. The supporting cast includes an ambitious young detective constable who has been newly assigned to the district and is an unexpected competitor for the sergeant's position. There's the Dickinson family, headed by Harry, who keeps acting guilty because he has secrets to keep. His granddaughter seems to be a potential love interest for the main character, but she seems secretive too. The local "aristocrat" might be the recipient of sympathy and concern because his daughter has been killed, but he's a nasty piece of work who, as a self-made man, never understood noblesse oblige. There are others, in the village and in the cop shop, who appear and leave an impression. But the characters make the story work.

I know I've said I like story telling, but a decently told story with interesting and engaging characters makes a book a pleasure to read. And I enjoyed reading this one. Somehow Booth never lets the description of characters get noticeably in the way of telling the stories, and the characters never obscure what's going on in the stories. As I said, I spent more time reading on Saturday afternoon than I intended and finished the book after the library closed.

It was the first time I sort of wished I had an e-book reader so I could download another book.

So did you recommend Stephen Booth to me? If so, many thanks. After all that character development, I expect to read about these people in more "crime novels."

Have you read Black Dog or another of Stephen Booth's books? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reaction.
The author's web page
A summary of 478 ratings at Good Reads
Maddy Van Hertbruggen's review at Reviewing the Evidence
Luke Croll's thumbnail review at Murder Express
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)