Monthly Archives: April 2011

To review or not review?

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When I started this blog I promised myself I would review every book I read because my primary purpose for doing this was to help me remember the books I read. No review, no memory (yes it is that bad).

For the first year I kept my promise and dutifully reviewed every book, good or bad. I know many people don’t review books they don’t like but I thought it would help me to become better at selecting books I’m more likely to like (which it did). I also think that negative reviews (if they are constructive and not mean for the sake of it) provide help to other readers. I know myself that a well-placed negative review would have saved me a bit of money and reading time over the years.

Over the past year or so though I’ve become a little more selective about what I review. I still review most books I read (more than 90% of them) but there are a few that I’ve elected not to review. They fall into two categories

Category One: Middle-ground books that are neither very good nor very bad about which I can’t summon the energy to say anything much at all. A couple of recent books which fall into this category are

  • Alafair Burke’s Dead Connection which I listened to in audio format. It’s the first book in Burke’s Ellie Hatcher series, featuring a New York rookie Detective on the trail of a serial killer (of sorts). I simply cannot think of anything (not setting, characters or story) that distinguished this book from any other American police procedural featuring a serial killer (of which I have read more than a few).
  • Shelia Connolly’s Rotten to the Core is the second of a cosy mystery series featuring a Massachusetts apple grower as its heroine and while very cosy is not very mysterious at all. There is the discovery of a dead body followed by 200 pages of our plucky heroine learning how to live in her new home (driving a tractor, acquiring goats, spraying her apple trees, polishing her floors etc) and a quick last few pages revealing the glaringly obvious killer.
I don’t really worry too much about not reviewing this category of books.

Category Two: Books I was sent specifically for review by the author or publisher, which I have struggled through and about which I can find nothing positive to say. These are usually by lesser known authors and because of that I would feel guilty if I wrote what I really wanted to say. So I have applied the ‘if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing’ advice my father gave me all those years ago. It would defeat the purpose if I gave any examples of this category.

In a way I do worry about this category of non-reviews. Every time I see someone who can’t sing on one of those TV talent shows I wonder how it got to that point, how it is that no one ever told them they can’t sing? So shouldn’t I take the opportunity to have my say about books that aren’t up to scratch? The sad reality is that wanting to be something and working hard at it isn’t always enough. Not everyone can be a writer and if their families won’t tell them shouldn’t someone more objective do so? Probably, but my heart’s not in it.

Of course the problem with this category is finding a way to tell someone why their book won’t be reviewed here. I’m currently using the cowardly strategy of hoping they forget they’ve sent it to me and don’t come asking. If you can think of something a little braver do let me know. For the moment I’ve simply stopped accepting review copies all together. It’s not like I don’t have a gazillion books on my TBR shelves anyway, and I can do without the guilt.

Do you review everything you read? Do you have any categories that you don’t review? Do you have a nice way of saying “your book was bad” to hopeful new authors?

Review: Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin

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Relics of the Dead (also published as Grave Goods in the US) is the second selection for my face to face book club this month (we meet on Sunday) and I’m also counting it as my third book towards the Historical Fiction Challenge. I’ve actually read more than 3 historical books this year but I’ve used those for other challenges.

The book opens in 1154 as an earthquake engulfs Glastonbury Abbey and a dying monk sees people lowering a coffin into a fissure created in the earth. Did the coffin contain the body of the legendary King Arthur, long-thought to be merely sleeping in the nearby hills until his people need him again? Twenty-two years later the monk’s nephew, who was present as his uncle died, shares the information with King Henry II who has just quashed one Welsh rebellion and is desperate to rid himself of the legend of Arthur lying in wait to rise again. There has been a fire at Glastonbury Abbey and Henry orders the coffin to be dug up. He then commands the one person in his kingdom who has the skills to authenticate the bones as Arthur’s. Adelia Aguilar, the doctor who can ‘read bones’, reluctantly agrees to attempt to determine the age of the bones. With her daughter and faithful attendants she travels to Glastonbury, travelling part of the way with Lady Emma Wolvercote and her party who are on their way to lay claim to Lady Emma’s estate. Later, Adelia discovers she did not make it to her destination. Or did she?

As with the previous two books in this series, Relics of the Dead is first and foremost a good old-fashioned adventure full of brave Knights performing feats of derring-do while less noble souls engage in more prosaic acts. The legend of Arthur and Guinevere is woven artfully into the story unfolding around Adelia in the present day and there’s barely a moment for the reader to catch her breath with several action-packed threads playing out at once.

All of this is accompanied by engrossing information about the historical period, so you feel like you’re learning something while being thoroughly entertained. Under her real name (Diana Norman) Franklin has researched and written extensively about Henry II and her affection for the man is evident in this book. His faults are talked about, but Franklin generally tends to highlight his foresight and modern thinking by introducing such things as trial-by-jury and other innovations. Having read three of these books now, I’m beginning to develop my own crush on Henry Plantagenet.

Although some people argue that Adelia is an unbelievable character for her time, Franklin makes a a good case that women in her situation would have had more scope to fend for themselves than the true upper class women that Adelia sometimes mixes with. And even if she is not entirely credible for her time, she’s wonderful: strong, loving, loyal and smart. Her loyal attendants from the previous books, Mansur and Gyltha, are again excellent in their supporting roles and of course the Bishop of St Albans, the father of Adelia’s child, makes another trouble-filled appearance. There are some unforgettable new characters in this tale too, not least of which is the old woman who runs the Pilgrim’s Inn at which Adelia and her party stay while in Glastonbury. Franklin is a dab hand at developing very strong, memorable characters quite quickly.

Sadly Diana Norman passed away earlier this year and I have not heard of any unpublished manuscripts lying about so I only have one last book in this series to read, which I think I shall save for some time. I thoroughly recommend this installment of the series to anyone who loves getting absorbed in well-written adventures full of memorable characters.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Relics of the Dead has been reviewed at Euro Crime and Mysteries in Paradise

I have reviewed the first two books in this series Mistress of the Art of Death and The Serpent’s Tale

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My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.arianafranklin.com/
Publisher Bantam Press [2009]
ISBN 9781409084334
Length 251 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series #3 in the Adelia Aguilar/Mistress of the Art of Death series
Source I bought it

That tingly feeling

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With nearly 200 unread books lying around on shelves, eReader and iPod it takes a lot to get me excited about a new release these days. Especially as, living in Australia and not owning a Kindle, I am rarely prepared to shell out the $33 a new release will cost me (in print or eBook format).

But I must admit I am getting that tingly feeling about a book due for release here (and the rest of the world I think) at the end of the week (officially Sunday though as there are no deliveries then I am hoping to snaffle a copy on Friday which I can read while everyone else is watching some silly wedding).

The book that I’m planning to walk into an actual bookstore and hand over mad cash for next weekend is Geraldine Brooks’ Caleb’s Crossing which is, if the blurbs are to be believed, a historical fiction work with a basis in fact (similar to one of her earlier books Year of Wonders).  The publisher’s synopsis is

In 1665, a young man from Martha’s Vineyard became the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. From the few facts that survive of this extraordinary life, Brooks creates a luminous tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure.

The voice of Caleb’s Crossing belongs to Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny island settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. Possessed of
a restless spirit and a curious mind, Bethia slips the bounds of her rigid society to explore the island’s glistening beaches and observe its native inhabitants. At twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other.

Bethia’s father is Great Harbor’s minister, who feels called to convert the Wampanoag to his own strict Calvinism. He awakens the wrath of the medicine men, against whose magic he must test his faith in a high-stakes battle that may cost his life, and his very soul. Caleb becomes a prize in this contest between old ways and new, eventually taking his place at
Harvard, studying Latin and Greek alongside the sons of the colonial elite. Bethia also finds herself in Cambridge at the behest of her imperious elder brother. As she fights for a voice
in a society that requires her silence, she also becomes entangled in Caleb’s struggle to navigate the intellectual and cultural shoals that divide their two cultures.

I’ve really enjoyed most of what Brooks has written in the past (Year of Wonders is one of my all-time favourite books even though I absolutely hated the ending) so I’m reasonably sure that it won’t be a dud. Once upon a time I would have waited until the price comes down but given I spend a lot of leisure time hanging out in the book blogosphere I don’t think I’d be able to avoid seeing other people’s comments and reviews about the book for too long, and it’s one of those books I want to read without being encumbered by other people’s thoughts (I’m one of those strange people who likes reading reviews after I’ve read a book).

So, depending on when I manage to get my hands on Caleb’s Crossing, I’ll be taking a break from crime fiction in the next week or two and am really looking forward to reading what world Brooks has managed to create this time.

Is there a particular author’s work that gives you that tingly ‘must get hands on new release’ feeling? Or do you routinely buy new releases and are therefore immune to the tingly feeling? Is there a book you’re really hanging out for in the next little while?

Review: Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker

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As always when I hit a bit of a rough patch in the reading department (more about that later) I turned to a recommendation from the ever-reliable Maxine for something that I could nearly guarantee would be a good read.

Bruno Courrèges is the Chief of Police in the town of St Denis in the Dordogne region of France, population just over 3000 people. Bruno’s job is to know everyone in town, understand their business and family connections and maintain a balance between upholding all the laws of the land and being realistic when it comes to some of the more oppressive requirements of the European Union. In order to draw readers into this world, one which most of us would have little first-hand knowledge of, Walker introduces the town and Bruno as almost equally important, and delightful, characters. We learn a lot about their respective histories and their current activities. The town is trying to retain its unique traditions while joining in the new ‘single Europe’ and so there are funny, but insightful, incidents that involve skirting around the regulations for cheese-selling and other such important issues. At the same time Bruno is establishing a home for himself, having been a soldier and orphaned at a young age, and has refurbished a house (which sounds delightful) and become involved in local sporting clubs.

This rather idyllic (though realistic) setting receives a jolt one day when an elderly Arab immigrant is brutally murdered, with a swastika carved on his body. This event, assumed to be a race-related crime, is outside the scope of Bruno’s expertise so a regional squad is brought in to investigate, though they rely on Bruno’s local knowledge so he remains involved in the investigation. For a book that some might see as a ‘cosy’ kind of tale, it tackles head-on one of the hot-button political issues of our time, large-scale immigration by people of a different ethnicity or religion. Walker deals with it intelligently and in a balanced way, outlining legitimate and realistic concerns on both ‘sides’ of the issue, and I couldn’t help but think it’s a shame more news services aren’t so erudite and thoughtful in exploring this topic.

Without giving away too much I have to mention the resolution to the book, which gave it an extra half a star on my scale. Bruno and his boss, the Mayor, have to consider whether or not to identify the culprit(s) to the wider community and the other police authorities involved to ensure a prosecution. The older I get the more I like seeing this kind of theme explored as it seems to me our various legal systems don’t always produce the result that does the most good. I liked the way Walker tackled this idea here; his characters did not develop a sudden and fervent belief in vigilantism, nor did they take action without carefully considering the implications of not informing the higher authorities for everyone, not just the immediate victim and culprit(s). Would that such things happen more in real life.

Bruno, Chief of Police is a thoroughly engaging and surprisingly thought-provoking novel that I recommend to readers (or listeners) of any sort as I think it offers something for everyone and Ric Jerrom’s narration is superb. There’s little overt violence (Bruno is proud of never having used his service weapon) but tough and somewhat dark issues are addressed alongside the lighter side of life, including descriptions of several meals that are guaranteed to have your mouth watering. This one’s a keeper and I’ve already lined up the second one in the series to listen to soon.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Bruno, Chief of Police has been reviewed at DJ’s Krimiblog and Euro Crime

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4/5
Author website http://www.brunochiefofpolice.com/
Narrator Ric Jerrom
Publisher BBC WW [this edition 2009, original edition 2008]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 8 hours 10 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #1 in the Bruno, Chief of Police series
Source I bought it

Review: Bait by Nick Brownlee

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This is the second book of the African leg of this year’s global challenge. Set in Kenya, it’s written by a British journalist and I was prompted to listen to it after hearing a rave about Ben Onwukwe, the narrator of the audio version

Bait is a story of violence. It opens with a young boy gutting a white man on the bow of a fishing boat off the coast of Kenya. The boat is then blown up with the body of the white man and the live young boy on board. Subsequently there are more violent deaths (several shootings, a harpooning, an attempted murder by crocodile and probably a couple more I’ve forgotten), several near-deaths and other violent outbursts. Amongst all of that is the story of Jake Moore, an ex-cop from Britain, and his partner Harry who run an ailing business offering big game fishing trips to rich tourists. They get caught up in the violence via several threads, not least of which is Jake’s encounter with Mombassa’s only honest cop, Detective Inspector Daniel Jouma. Initially investigating a disappearance Jouma (with help from Jake) eventually ends up on the trail of the nastiest kind of crime you can imagine.

The setting is the most distinctive thing about the book for me. Brownlee has depicted Kenya following the post-election riots of 2007; tourism has significantly reduced and crime and corruption has flourished. The wealth and luxury enjoyed by the owner and visitors to the Marlin Bay Hotel where much of the action in the novel is set is juxtaposed well with the extreme poverty endured by those outside the five-star compound.

Ultimately though this felt like a film script more than a book to me. It’s full of action and imagery (most of it bloody) but not a great deal of substance and the characters were a bit too stereotypical and shallow to really engage me (the rich man is evil, the South African is a racist etc). To be fair I think perhaps if I was an occasional reader of the genre I would have liked it more, but as it stands the book fell into my ‘meh’ category which I broadly describe as a ‘book that’s OK to read but barely distinguishable from a hundred similar tomes and will be quickly forgotten’.

Given that I really did enjoy the narration from Ben Onwukwe the book probably would have scored 3 stars despite its flaws but for the very end. There’s a wrap-up where one of the characters explains the message of the book, in essence explaining in words of one syllable why it’s called Bait, that I found particularly patronising. When you add that to the colossal amount of violence and other elements I’ve described it’s just not a book I would recommend ahead of other African crime fiction such as Deon Meyer’s excellent South African books.

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Bait has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise (where Kerrie enjoyed it more than I did) and The Game is Afoot (where I think Jose Ignacio had similar feelings to me though he is more polite).

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My rating 2.5/5
Author website http://www.nickbrownlee.com/
Narrator Ben Onwukwe
Publisher Whole Story Audio Books [2009]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 8 hours 6 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #1 in the Jouma and Jake series
Source I bought it

Review: Bound by Vanda Symon

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A man is shot through the head in his Dunedin home while his wife, bound to a chair and struggling to breathe through the gag in her mouth, watches helplessly. The couple’s son returns home to an unthinkably awful scene. Local police, including newly promoted Detective Sam Shephard, soon realise that there must be more to this home invasion than first appearances might suggest.

This is the third book in the four-book series that I’ve read, and while the others haven’t been any slouches this is the best one so far. As she did with Overkill Symon has created the kind of dramatic and memorable opening to a novel that draws you in immediately.  Fortunately the plot which follows does not disappoint; it’s a ripper. There are several unpredictable twists and a swag of threads that flow nicely, with Sam Shephard as the unifying element tying it all together. Sam is initially given the job of liaising with the surviving victims of the home invasion, a job she finds increasingly difficult as she is forced to keep going back and intruding on people’s recovery and grief. I thought this was depicted very credibly, with Sam’s boss finding it easy to demand more as he’s not the one having to intrude while Sam has an internal battle, knowing they need more information but also feeling empathy for the family. When Sam’s role expands to other duties she notices some discrepancies in the case that Police are building against their suspects and her working life becomes even more awkward than it usually is given that she doesn’t get along too well with her boss.

Sam is a terrific character, a basically good person and cop who sometimes lets her big mouth get her into trouble (perhaps I like this as it’s a trait I can definitely identify with). She’s also funny and pretty-much devoid of the demons that haunt many fictional detectives (though she is only young and perhaps has time to develop some psychoses of her own). In this outing I thought Symon got the balance of time spent focusing on the case and Sam’s personal life just right, especially as there are a couple of significant personal issues playing out behind the scenes, both of which were handled credibly. There are other good characters too, including Sam’s troubled colleague Smithy and the wives of two of the suspects in the case are both sensitively depicted and a kind of character you don’t see a lot of in crime fiction.

I read this book in two sittings and it was a real joy to read: a fast-paced, engaging and credible story and even the ending did not disappoint (a rarer thing than it should be). I can’t think of too many people who would not get a kick out of meeting Sam and getting lost in a top quality story like this one. I think it would be easy enough to pick the series up with this book (Symon provides enough back story details for you to get a flavour of Sam’s past trials and tribulations) but you could always go back and start at the beginning. The books are even available electronically to people outside Australasia!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Bound has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise

I’ve reviewed two of the three earlier novels in this series: Overkill and Containment

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My rating 4/5
Author website http://www.vandasymon.com/
Publisher Penguin [2011]
ISBN 9780143565277
Length 314 pages
Format Paperback
Book Series #4 in the Sam Shephard series
Source I borrowed it from Kerrie (thanks)

Crime Fiction Alphabet: O is for Old People

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Perhaps my inability to really get into YA novels has more to do with the sad reality that I’m closer to receiving my senior’s card than I am to having had a student bus pass.  Anyway, I do rather like old people, both in real life and in my fiction. I know some of ‘em are crotchety and curmudgeonly but I was born that way so I fit right in, and I like the fact they know lots of stuff. There are a surprising number of old people in crime fiction who aren’t doddering or silly and they are some of my favourite characters of all.

One of the world’s best-known and most-loved elderly solvers of mysterious puzzles is Agatha Christie‘s Jane Marple, who appeared in 12 novels and around the same number of short stories. The second novel in which she appears, The Body in the Library (1942), is probably my favourite. In St Mary Mead, the village where Miss Marple lives, the body of a woman in evening wear is found in the library of the home of Colonel Bantry and his wife. Both the Colonel and his wife claim to have no knowledge of the woman or how she came to be strangled in their library but village gossip makes their lives difficult. Eventually, after several other (younger) people muddle around, Jane Marple’s shrewdness and ability to observe human nature unravel the complicated story.

Dorothy Gillman‘s series featuring a grandmother turned CIA agent seems to have been written purely to confound the stereotypes normally associated with old people. In The Amazing Mrs Pollifax (1970) our intrepid heroine travels to Istanbul to make contact with a Russian spy who is a double agent for the Americans but must survive a swag of near-death experiences before arriving home safely.

Before her Vera Stanhope novels and the Shetland Quartet Ann Cleeves wrote 8 novels featuring retired civil servant George Palmer-Jones and his wife Molly who had been a social worker before the pair retired and devoted their time to bird watching and crime solving. The first of these is 1986′s A Bird in the Hand in which Tom French, one of the best bird watchers in England has his head bashed in George and Molly have to untangle a morass of rare sighting claims, unrequited love and various other elements of human nastiness.

In 1993′s Dead Man’s Island Carolyn Hart introduces Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins (known as Henry O) a retired journalist who seems to be able to do anything she puts her mind to. I didn’t actually like Henry O as much as I wanted to (a little too full of herself for my taste) but it is always good to see an older person being portrayed as intelligent and non-dithering. In this book she’s really put to the test as a group of people are marooned on an island in the middle of a hurricane and the storm isn’t the only thing trying to kill them.

I recently listened to The Water Room (2004) which is the second book of the Peculiar Crimes Unit series by Christopher Fowler. The two protagonists are John May and Arthur Bryant who should both have retired some years earlier but they have been retained due to their particular skills. In this book they investigate a series of deaths which no one is sure for some time are murders but alongside the main narrative there is an intelligent exploration of the aging process and how old people are treated by society.

Colin Cotterill‘s series featuring Dr Siri Paiboun is one of my very favourite to have an old person as its main character. We first meet him in The Coroner’s Lunch (2004) when Dr Siri is 72 and has been appointed, very reluctantly, as Laos’ first Coroner. As Dr Siri and his able assistants investigate a series of peculiar deaths we are treated to flashbacks of Dr Siri’s life as a doctor, communist activist and husband which is one of the nicer aspects of having old people as protagonists: they have lots of experiences to share with readers.

These are just a few of my favourite ‘old people’ of crime fiction. Do you have any favourite crime fiction tales to feature old people in a more flattering light than the stereotypes would suggest? Are you comfortable with the term ‘old’ or do you think we should refer to ‘the elderly’ or ‘seniors’? I feel like claiming the word old back from its stereotype-laden inferences which is why I deliberately chose it for ‘O’ week but I do draw the line at ‘geezer-lit’ – that is a term I just don’t like and won’t use.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week. Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

Aussie Authors Month

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April has been designated by someone as Aussie Authors Month, a fact I have been neglectful of here at Reactions to Reading. But over at Fair Dinkum Crime, the blog I host with fellow Aussie crime fiction fan Kerrie to focus only on Australian crime, mysteries and thrillers, we have been celebrating in style.

Firstly, we introduced a new feature to the blog, our version of an author interview which we call the Fair Dinkum Baker’s Dozen.  We provide the authors with 13 beginnings and, like the creative geniuses they are, they turn them into sentences (or paragraphs, or full blown essays should the urge arise). We’ve been very fortunate to have a wonderful selection of five Aussie crime writers share their thoughts with us so far. Do head over and learn about their worst jobs, biggest fears and the truly terrible things one of them has done to chickens:

We’re also running a quiz, offering your choice of several recent Aussie crime titles as prizes. The quiz is open worldwide so you’re all welcome to participate. We did go to some effort not to make all the answers entirely ‘googlable’ but we hope you’ll have a go anyway. We’ll give away the prizes even if no one gets all the questions right so you’ve got a decent shot at winning.

Both Kerrie and I are trying to fit in some reading of new (to us) Aussie crime fiction too. So far Kerrie has reviewed Katherine Howell’s Cold Justice and I’ll be reviewing Michael Duffy’s The Tower later this weekend. I think we both hope to finish and review at least one more book by an Aussie Author before the end of the month.

Have you done anything to celebrate Aussie Authors Month? 

A review (of sorts) and musings on a strange (to me) phenomenon

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I’m normally clueless about what is and isn’t fashionable but even I have glommed on to the fact that YA (short for young adult literature) is very ‘in’ and not just for young readers. Most adults I come across are either reading it or writing it (seriously it seems that you could fit all the world’s authors who aren’t writing a YA series into a medium-sized elevator). I don’t really ‘get’ this new fashion but that’s not surprising as I am just not a fashionable gal. However when one of two choices for my book club this month was a YA novel (here in Australia it was published as YA, in the US it wasn’t) I chose to give it a go, at least partly to see if my ‘why would I want to read stuff written for teenagers?’ paradigm is causing me to miss out on some great reading.

The book is Helen Grant’s The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. As opening lines go “My life might have been so different if I had not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded” was a good start at drawing me in. The story which follows is narrated by Pia Kolvenbach, who at 18(I think) is telling of events that took place when she was 10-11 years old (a neat way of getting around the fact her narration contains the occasional word or concept that a 10-year old is unlikely to express). She lives in the small German town of Bad Münstereifel with her German father and English mother. It is the sort of town where everyone knows everyone else and so it seems unthinkable that a child could disappear. Therefore when fourth grader Katharina Linden vanishes one Sunday, the parents and authorities of Bad Münstereifel start to worry. When a second child goes missing a few weeks later real panic sets in.

After her grandmother exploded Pia became something of an outcast with only one friend, Stefan, who is a fellow outcast for reasons that I must have missed. The two embark on a rather leisurely ‘investigation’ into the disappearances which mainly involves visiting one of the town’s elderly residents and listening to his stories about the town’s history, usually a mixture of fact and legend with a healthy smattering of ghosts and demons thrown in for the children’s amusement and/or moral edification.

I enjoyed the gentle humour of the book, such as when Pia is doing a school project on ‘where she comes from’ and when she gets to the bit about what products that place is known for she asks her mother what Middlesex has a lot of, to which the reply is ‘roads’. I enjoyed the character of Pia too, she is a likable and thoughtful kid whose tribulations are realistically depicted. At one point someone in the town is ‘identified’ (through rumour and innuendo) as the person responsible for the missing children and a mob mentality takes over most of the adults. Depicting this from a child’s perspective, who takes the words they hear more literally than an adult would, is both realistic and thought-provoking. The book also touches lightly (but intelligently) on the theme of a young girl growing up and having to do some adult-like things for the first time.

Overall though I feel a bit ho-hum about the book and in the end I still don’t really ‘get’ the allure of YA for people who aren’t young adults themselves. In summary I was mildly entertained but thought it a bit slow and I spent a lot of time wondering what the adults where thinking and doing while Pia and Stefan bumbled around. What was going wrong with Pia’s parent’s marriage? What were the police doing about the missing children? How did the teacher who let a child get kidnapped from under her very nose cope with the guilt she must surely have felt? Based on this experience I can’t really imagine making a habit out of reading this kind of thing.

In trying to get a handle on the phenomenon of adults reading YA I came across this blog post giving 5 reasons why one adult reader loves YA and started to realise why this particular fashion just doesn’t do it for me. The blogger lists 5 things she loves about YA three of which I don’t really get into (close/first person point of view, plot tropes such as high school dynamics and life as a series of firsts), the fourth of which I do like but didn’t find in this book (fast pacing) and the last of which (kick-ass female protagonists) I love but find plenty of in the ‘adult’ literature I read.

I’m glad I tried this book, it was quick read, I didn’t hate it by any stretch and I have satiated my curiosity about this relatively new phenomenon. But I won’t be hurrying to read any more.

What about you? Are you an adult reader of YA books? Do you get something out of them that is missing in ‘adult’ literature? Am I missing the point entirely?

Review: What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn

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This is my favourite book of the year so far. It’s a bit early to tell but I suspect it will be hard to beat for the rest of the year. It might even be my favourite book of the decade. Or the century. Or …you know…of forever.

It is I suppose one of life’s cruel ironies that the books I love most are the ones I find it most difficult to write about. I have even wondered if there is something sinister at work in my subconscious. Do I perhaps not want to explain it properly so that I won’t tempt you to read it too and then I can keep all its luscious wonderfulness to myself? Honestly I don’t know the answer to that (and I daren’t go near a psychiatrist to find out) but I’ll try to tempt you to read it in spite of my evil other self.

The first part of the tale introduces us to 10 year-old Kate Meaney. It is 1984 and Kate lives in Birmingham in England, has recently opened her own detective agency and even received her first commission (to investigate sweet pilfering at the local newsagent’s). Her trainee partner is Mickey, a stitched monkey wearing a pin-striped gangster suit and spats who travels in a canvas army surplus bag. We are given details of Kate’s day-to-day life (school, home, her surveillance work, how she would advertise her agency on the bus etc) which might sound dull but I was utterly gripped from the beginning. Although there is sadness in Kate’s life it never overwhelms her because she is so dedicated to making a go of being a detective, an element of the novel which is portrayed so deftly that as a reader I accepted this rather ludicrous premise without a second thought. I was so absorbed in finding out how the agency, and Kate, would flourish I completely forgot the book was ostensibly crime fiction. Until Kate vanished into thin air.

The next part of the book takes place twenty years later when we meet two new characters. Kurt and Lisa don’t know each other though both work at Green Oaks, a large shopping centre. Kurt is a night-shift security guard and Lisa is a duty manager at a music mega store. Neither of them planned to spend their lives at such work and we slowly learn what has led both of them to be there and we get some insight into their less than fulfilling jobs. Green Oaks is the place where Kate Meaney used to undertake much of her surveillance work and one night Kurt spots a small girl with a stuffed monkey on his CCTV monitor which, eventually, makes him the subject of ridicule by the centre’s staff as they all, including Lisa, hear about his encounter with a phantom. Or was it?

The way the story is told is clever but not too clever if that makes sense. There is tension and suspense but it never goes over the line into melodrama, and the way that the various threads and tangents are drawn together is intelligent, compelling and unpredictable. It was one of those books I took every opportunity to read more of, and ended up being 45 minutes late for work so I could finish it. At the same time as the terrific story unfolds we’re treated to a series of beautiful, funny and astute observations about the people of this part of Birmingham and the horror that is Green Oaks. The encounters that the protagonists all have with the shopping centre’s customers are superbly accurate (it’s clear O’Flynn has worked in retail) and her broader wistfulness at the loss of community that such centres have induced is also evident, though never in a preachy way.

I’m running out of superlatives but the characters are tremendously engaging too. They’re not soppy or sentimental even though all of them have sadness in their lives. This is somehow balanced though by the humour and warmth and what my Aunt Nell would have called pluck so that the reader is not burdened by sadness for them. I have really vivid images of them all in my head, helped I think by Colleen Prendergast’s narration which is outstanding.

Another thing I loved about the book is its length. At 6 hours and 33 minutes the only shorter books of the 112 I’ve listened to since I started keeping track of such things are four Agatha Christie novels and Ken Bruen’s The Dramatist. The reason I mention length is that sometimes I feel like authors are being paid by the kilo for their output with the result that half the words in some books are superfluous, detracting from rather than adding to the reading experience. In this book each word adds something to the whole and not a single one is wasted or unnecessary.

I don’t really feel as if I’ve managed to properly convey what made the book such a rewarding reading experience for me (perhaps evil Bernadette prevails) but I really do hope I’ve tempted you to read one of my new favourite books of all time. And that you enjoy it just as much as I did.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

What Was Lost has been reviewed at Euro Crime,

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Narrator Colleen Prendergast
Publisher ISIS Audio books [this edition 2008, original edition 2007]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 6 hours 33 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it