Anna Märklin's Family Chronicles, by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

I've been a bit remiss about getting to this book, but not for lack of trying. The author was kind enough to let me download a copy of the book from Smashwords, but neither of my electronic readers seemed to be inclined to take it. (A problem with the ereaders, not the publication.) I'd been away for awhile and decided to charge up my Kobo, and suddenly, voila, there it was.

I became acquainted with this Danish author's work first through her blog, then through some of her short stories, and finally through her mystery novel, The Cozy Knave, which I reviewed HERE. As the title implies, that book was written in the tradition of the British cozy and was a quite successful take on it. But Jakobsen's new book is from a different part of the genre spectrum all together.

It begins with the story of Anna Storm, who makes a shocking discovery in her neighbor Karin's apartment. We don't get to learn exactly what that discovery is right away, however, because the story then sets up in earnest a few months before this event. You know how Shakespeare writes "What's past is prologue"? Well, in this case, what's prologue is the future. I found this a bit confusing, but only because I am not expert enough on my Kobo to get back to the beginning and check dates.

Anna, our protagonist, is at a crossroads in her life. She is unemployed and having a lot of trouble making ends meet, and also seems to be feeling a bit ambivalent about her fiancé, Lars. Meanwhile, Anna receives the bad news that her father is dying and besides feeling grief, also realizes that this may well be the last chance she has to learn about her father's mother, or farmor, about whom her father has always been reticent.

This leads to the second major thread of the story, in which we are treated to the diary/sketchbook of Anna's farmor. Anna Märklin wrote and sketched in it when she was only a young teenager in Sweden. Although we can't see it, Anna describes what she draws effectively enough for us to visualize it. As her granddaughter Anna Storm begins her own quest to find out what happened, we also get to see the story unfold through Anna Märklin's eyes.

I was really taken with this book. I have had a lot going on in my own life in the last week or so, but I really found that I could hardly put it down. I had a suspicion about one of the several mysteries that this book reveals, but that hardly mattered. For me, the two biggest strengths of this book are the way Anna Storm's story is told, so that we both see and don't see what is going on, and secondly, the very beautiful passages in the girlhood diary of Anna Märklin, highly evocative and, as the story grows darker (as you know it will) very moving. In fact, I think some of these passages are the best work that Jakobsen has done.

And it's all very, very far from The Cozy Knave, which is neither a good thing or a bad thing, but only goes to show how impressive Jakobsen's range really is.


    

The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng

Another book that I read at the behest of my book group, but it was one I had heard some good things about before, so I was looking forward to reading it. Set on the island of Penang, which lies off the west coast of Malaysia and is one of its states, it takes place in the days building up to WWII, and continues through that war's unfolding. The narrator, Philip Hutton, is the scion of a successful British trading company in Penang who has just about the world at his fingertips, but for one thing. Half of his ancestry is Chinese. The only child of  a short second marriage, Philip lives his life on the fringes of his father's already well-established first family, finding it easier to live as a loner than to figure out his place in the familial scheme of things.

With the rest of the family away in England, a trip he wasn't interested in making himself, Philip is left to his own wiles, until one day, an older Japanese man approaches him, asking him for the use of a boat. Thus begins Philip's relationship with Endo-san, his sensei in more than just martial arts. In another culture, he might be termed Philip's guru, the link being a devotional one as well as educational. 

Of course, the Pacific War is looming, as we know, but Philip does not, and so, all bets are off.

There is plenty to like about this ambitious first novel, not least the skillful way in which Tan Twan Eng intertwines the plights of at least three cultures, and the extent to which he does this impartially. He also very successfully renders Penang and various other parts of Malaysia, and, as I visited the region for a short time many years ago, there was a nostalgic pull as well. If in some ways the novel is about Philip's quest to find balance between the various elements of his life, the book also helped me balance my own memories of my trip there. And of course it reminded me of what a fascinating place Penang is, with its mix of many cultures somehow co-existing more or less peacefully. Of course, I don't know what it is like now.

There were a few things that I felt to be weaknesses in the overall architecture of the book. I thought that the recounting of that distant time from an era more like the present kept me feeling a little more detached than I would have felt if he had just served up the story cold. Eng created a frame that I am not entirely sure needed to be there.

There is also a heavy dose of belief in past lives that I didn't think quite worked. It's not that it didn't have its place in the story, but I think that some of the plot points depended a little too much on the conviction certain of the characters felt about it.

Finally, I think the end of the war story was just a bit out of sync with the leisurely pace of the beginning of the novel. I can't really say that everyone would have the same reaction--after all, there is a war on, and everything gets racheted up by definition. Still, there was a slight feeling of changing genres.

On balance, though, these quibbles don't count for so much. I found so many things to like about this book, including the two main characters. I think there are probably not many people who actually could have written this novel and we are very lucky that there was a talented writer who was willing to find a way to do it.         

The True Deceiver, by Tove Jansson

I assume most people come to know Tove Jansson through her Moomintroll books, but for whatever reason, they never came to my attention when I was a child. So my introduction to her was through the New York Review of Books reissue of The Summer Book , which we had a very nice discussion of over at Goodreads awhile ago. And in some ways, I don't think True Deceiver quite meets the mark of The Summer Book, which seems to me a  near perfect thing. But that's not to say that there isn't plenty of treasure to be found in this short novella.

The novella essentially revolves around three characters--well, four if you count the dog, as you probably should: Katri Kling and her younger brother Mats, her nameless German shepherd, and a famous children's book illustrator, Anna Aemelin. As the story opens, Katri is living over a shop with her brother, but she doesn't get on with the shopkeeper, and is looking for a way out of her predicament. When she realizes that there is plenty of room in Anna's big old family home, she finds a way to work herself into Anna's household.

Katri is the kind of prickly personality who doesn't really have friends. She is perhaps too singleminded to want any. I feel that this is a kind of female character that we have seen before--she reminds me a bit of Temple Grandin as played by Claire Danes. Based on what I read about Jansson last time around, it may not be very far off from Jansson herself. At the same time, though, Jansson's own life must figure in Anna Aemelin's as well, as the serious artist who has somehow been overtaken by her childrens book creations. (In the story it's adorable bunnies, painted with flowers).

 

The more I think about it, the more I think that there's a level to this story that is about different parts of the psyche coming together. There is a way in which all the characters have to incorporate parts of the other, or take the advise of another to move beyond their current state. I found myself particularly intrigued with what Katri offered Anna. Anna is living frozen in time, at least until spring when she can begin to make her intricate study of the forest floor again. Katri helps her get rid of some of her immobilizing past--the weight of the family history--not by sorting through it, but by just taking a whole pile of old furniture out on the ice, ready to sink beneath the surface once the ice melts. Talk about your decluttering.

Anna has also been negligent about her finances, carelessly letting people do her out of her profits. Anna is getting by okay without it, but Katri helps her see that what she is really doing is turning a blind eye to the potentiality that money represents. But in the end, as this seems to be a book about finding balance and perspective, Katri herself wonders if she has gone to far.

This isn't a heartwarming book. It is really the story of how three highly individual people acclimatize themselves to each other, and in some ways, how they don't. It has a lot to say about the life of community, both in the household form and in the larger community sense, and if it's a bit cynical in that regard, well, it is a winter story...

There's a nice piece by novelist Ali Smith on the book, which you can read HERE . 

  

Prophecy, by S. J. Parris

Prophecy is the second in a detective series featuring the historical figure of Giordano Bruno, following Heresy, which I wrote about longer ago than I thought. (Parris writes novels faster than I get around to blogging about them, apparently. The third book, Sacrilege, is already out in paperback.) .

This second book takes Bruno to London, just in time for the Great Conjunction "Year of Our Lord 1583", when two powerful planets, Jupiter and Saturn, are heading for alignment, heralding the death of one age and the beginning of another. While you might think this could mean any number of things, it's all bad news for Queen Elizabeth the First, with prophecies of her downfall and plots from the Continent to make England Catholic again.

Bruno, secretly employed as a spy, finds himself implanted in the French ambassador's court, as do a fair number of other non French people, each with his own agenda. Bruno is also consorting with that Renaissance man Jonathan Dee, who has made himself the queen's astrologer and is also dabbling in dark magic on the side--a very risky hobby. Like Dee, Bruno is continuing on the trail of a lost book that contains the secret of immortality, among other things. Obviously, they aren't the only ones looking for it.

Things start to go bad when one of the queen's maids of honor is found dead. And Bruno of course finds himself at the heart of the investigation.

As with the previous book, I find Bruno an engaging and interesting character, and as also with that book, I would like to have more of his own thought, this 'humanist dangerously ahead of his time" as Publishers Weekly has it. But the story is well crafted and the scholarship of the "author who is S. J. Parris" shows through. I'll be reading Sacrilege as well.

I Hear the Sirens in the Street, by Adrian McKinty

 I'm a little tardy in getting a post out about this novel by British standards, and a little early by American standards. The truth is, I read this book in an earlier prepublished form and it's taken me a while to buy and get to the official version. Anyway, as a bridge between English and American editions, I'm probably roughly in the right place, though wholly by accident, which is typical.

I've written quite a few posts now about McKinty's books, as you can see HERE. But what I thought I'd talk about in relation to I Hear the Sirens in the Street is something that I don't find commented on in better reviews than my own. Here's an example of one such (be careful, though, as its a bit spoiler heavy). Yes, we can all see the descriptive accuracy, the lyric gift, the deep themes of revenge, the very occasional heart-stopping violence. I think I've even mentioned that they are often very funny, in that dry Northern Irish sort of way.

But I think that one thing few reviewers have made enough of is their quality of delight. If I say they are delightful, you'll think I mean that they are charming and sweet and cozy, which would definitely be giving the wrong impression. What I mean, though, is that the language itself consistently gives your brain a delicious little dose of something that it wasn't expecting. It's not in the plotting, it's not in the jokes, it's not in the casually thrown in erudition--or not alone in them. It's the sensibility behind the story that provides it.

With "The Troubles" trilogy (which is so far just "The Troubles" duo) it's been interesting to see that some reviewers favor the first over the second, and some the second over the first. Personally, I think this is probably like asking, which Game of Thrones (technically, A Song of Fire and Ice) novel did you prefer? It's one story, people! Two crimes, sure, but basically, one story of  guy who finds himself in a Northern Ireland whose hopes and dreams are fading fast, on the outside of more things than he's on the inside of--and yes, you can take that as saltily as you want to--smart enough to know it makes sense to leave, and still--not leaving. Not permanently. Not yet.

In the meantime, though, Sean Duffy is islandbound. He starts out on a routine police investigation and is immediately shot at by an aged security guard. Things don't really get better...

Another shotgun blast.

The security guard had taken the time to reload and was determined to have more fun.

“Stop shooting!” McCrabban demanded again.

“Get out of here!” a voice replied. “I’ve had enough of you hoodlums!”

It was a venerable voice, from another Ireland, from the 30's or even earlier, but age gave it no weight or assurance - only a frail, impatient, dangerous doubt.

This, every copper knew, was how it would end, not fighting the good fight but in a random bombing or a police chase gone wrong or shot by a half senile security guard in a derelict factory in north Belfast. It was April 1st. Not a good day to die.

“We’re the police!” McCrabban insisted.

“The what?”

“The police!”

“I’ll call the police!”

“We are the police!”

“You are?”

I lit a cigarette, sat down and leaned against the outer shell of the big turbine.   

 

You can actually read tons of the beginning of the novel on McKinty's blog--that is, if you're the mistrusting sort who isn't going to take my word for the thing. Go on ahead--I'll never know.   

 

My guest post at Untreed Reads

Jay Hartman of Untreed Reads recently put out the call to Untreed writers, asking if they'd like to contribute a blog post for March ebook week. As someone who works in a bookstore, I've had a lot of thoughts about all this over the years, so I thought this was a good time to write them up. You can find what I came up with HERE .

I've been reading through the other posts there and its proving quite a good forum on the subject of digital vs. print. Several of the other writers have experience of both print and epublication and it's interesting to get their take on the rapidly changing world of publishing.

March also happens to be the third anniversary of Untreed Reads, so they've decided to feature author blog posts all month. Do check them out.

 

Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis

I had an unusual reading experience with this book. I picked it up as part of the New York Review of Books reading group choices over on Good Reads. It was one I'd heard about for a long time, and knew a few people who had found it very funny. Still, I'd never gotten around to it, and decided this would be a good time to check it off the list. The story of a struggling young academic, under the thumb of a dunderheaded old professor and entangled with an older woman whom he doesn't really love or even like very much held up well in some ways, less well in others. Misogynistic is one of those words that was overused at one point and draws suspicion when used now as a result, but let's just say the story isn't kind to women unless they are quite young and very beautiful.

On the other hand, I think most of us can remember being young and struggling to make our way, and so Jim Dixon does make for a kind of Everyman, even if he is not that compassionate toward Everywoman. He isn't the most noble character, and is not intended to be, but most of his pranks are relatively harmless, even if there was one involving insurance policies that I wasn't so sure about. And in the end, perhaps I was convinced that Margaret, the entangler, was more of an emotional vampire than I initially gave her credit for.

I found Keith Gessen's introduction to this edition illuminating, claiming as it did that Lucky Jim was really a combined portrait of Amis and his close friend, the poet Philip Larkin. Originally conceived as a fictional portrait of Larkin, it was Larkin himself who apparently wrote back and suggested that Amis take himself as a model for it--as he was the one with the habit of pulling faces.

My funny experience with the book was that I looked around from the table I sit and have my coffee at in the morning, and there was another copy of Lucky Jim, which was must have been sitting there all along. It was an old battered Penguin paperback that I must have picked up used somewhere, thinking I would get around to it someday. The funny thing was that, as I opened it at random here and there, I was suddenly able to see its funniness and freshness, and perhaps especially its excellent sentences a good deal more clearly. Was it just a matter of reading the lines out of context? Or was it that reading it in a nostalgic old copy, I was now reading it in the right context? I don't know.

At the time of its publication, Gessen says, Larkin had begun to garner some acclaim for his poetry, but Amis had not for his prose. He expressed his frustration in letters to Larkin and it is the kind of frustration that can be empathized with from many angles. Without wanting to give away too much of the plot, it's fair to say that Amis's title is not ironic in the long run. And the solutions to Dixon's problems are of a nature that might seem improbable in a more serious work.

However, it's fair to say that Amis himself, in the writing of the book, fashioned just such an improbable denouement for himself. He wrote the right book at the right moment and his fortune was made.

Lucky him.