Monthly Archives: January 2012

Thoughts on shopping as therapy

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When I have a bad day at work I escape the office and buy stuff I don’t need (because buying stuff I need isn’t relaxation, it’s more work). Yesterday was about a 7 on a badness scale of 1-10 so I needed a lengthy spell out of the office and consequently bought four books I don’t need (given I have about 150 scattered around my house or on various devices).

I realised as I shopped that this is something my local book store offers that its online competitors cannot compete with: the calming influence of immediate acquisition. Clicking and waiting for delivery just doesn’t cut it when it comes to retail therapy. Perhaps they should do a leaflet drop to all nearby offices.

My haul included a book each from Denmark, Iceland, Scotland and Sweden. I justify such largesse on the basis that it does the store good to know that people want these books (a fact they may be unaware of given there were four and a half shelves of James Effing Patterson books on display but that, friends is a rant for another day).

What’s your favourite form of bad day therapy? Do you have a favourite justification for buying more books than you need?

Review: THE HIDDEN CHILD by Camilla Lackberg

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THE HIDDEN CHILD is the fifth book centred around the summer tourist town of Fjallbacka on the west coast of Sweden featuring police detective Patrik Hedstrom and his true-crime writing wife Erica Falck. In this outing Patrik is starting paternity leave to look after the couple’s daughter Maja while Erica is looking forward to getting back to work and engaging in more adult intellectual pursuits after a year of looking after Maja herself. However when a dead body is discovered in town on the first day of Patrik’s leave he cannot resist the temptation to take a look at the crime scene, even though it means bringing one-year old Maja along. Erica is a bit miffed with Patrik for taking their daughter to a crime scene and for failing to grasp that looking after Maja does not mean leaving their daughter at home with Erica while Patrick goes shopping. But she too is soon interested in this crime as the dead man turns out to be the historian whom Erica visited when she discovered a Nazi war medal among her dead mother’s possessions. In fact the past has a particular pull on Erica as she also discovered some diaries her mother had kept as a teenager during the war years, and Erica keeps putting aside her own work to read the diaries in the hope they might provide some insight into her mother’s neglectful treatment of Erica and her sister Anna. When it becomes clear that Erica’s mother was friends with the historian who has now been killed Erica becomes involved in the investigation too.

From a criminal plotting perspective this is probably Läckberg’s best novel, incorporating two strong plots. The contemporary plot to determine the murderer of the historian is well thought out and doesn’t involve nearly as much police incompetence as the previous novels (though there is still a little). All the small police force play useful roles, including new recruit Paola who seems to fit in well, and the case explores some interesting issues including the rise of neo-Nazi groups in modern Sweden. But perhaps the book’s biggest strength is that this storyline links to a second one taking place in 1943-45, involving the recently killed historian, his brother who spent time as a prisoner of the Germans and several other Fjallbacka residents including Erica’s mother. Eventually the solution to the present-day crimes is located in the past though the nature of the connection is well hidden until the end of the book.

While the family lives of the characters in this series have always been a feature of the novels that I have enjoyed I do think this instalment went a little overboard with the minutiae of characters’ lives. Certainly not all the children are hidden in this novel. In fact the thing is teeming with pregnancies (five), births lengthily described (two), and assorted toddlers and teenagers not to mention yet another love interest for Patrik’s romantically unlucky boss Bertil, an encounter with Patrik’s ex-wife and assorted other minor dramas. It doesn’t feel like Läckberg has held much back for inclusion in the next instalment (aside from several more births I suppose). I do generally enjoy the lighter side of these novels though and it was nice to read a book in which pretty much everyone has a family life in the normal range (i.e. no dramas that can’t be sorted out with a good chat and no alcoholic/near suicidal loners lurking underneath the covers).

Overall then I enjoyed THE HIDDEN CHILD and thought the translation up to the usual good quality even though duties have switched from Steven T Murray to his wife Tiina Nunnally. I think it interesting that my two favourite mysteries to be solved by Läckberg’s fictional characters are the ones where Erica takes more of a central role in the investigation (my other favourite is the first book in the series, THE ICE PRINCESS in which Erica really takes centre stage) and wonder if she’ll continue taking more of a proactive role in future novels.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve reviewed all of the earlier four books in this series THE ICE PRINCESS, THE PREACHER, THE STONECUTTER and THE GALLOWS BIRD (mini review)

THE HIDDEN CHILD has been reviewed at Euro Crime (Maxine) and Nordic Bookblog

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Translator Tiina Nunnally
Narrator Eamonn Riley
Publisher Harper Collins [this translation 2011]
ASIN B0056GUO4U downloaded from audible.com
Length 17 hours 34 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #5 in the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedström series
Source I bought it

Dabbling in writing by Australian women #2

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In trying to involve myself in the community component of the Australian Women Writers Challenge (not just the reading and reviewing) I’m doing a semi regular round-up of reviews and other discussion posts that have caught my eye.

Elizabeth Lhuede asked What’s All the Fuss about Geraldine Brooks’ CALEB’S CROSSING, and even though it was one of my favourite books of last year I didn’t take umbrage at Elizabeth’s critique of the book :) (see I can be polite mum). Indeed the post posed some very interesting questions about what makes a book Australian and what things we should expect to see from our Australian writers and what books are deserving of awards for their Australian-ness. I’m still pondering my thoughts on some of these topics.

Jenny Schwartz reviewed NOTORIOUS AUSTRALIAN WOMEN by Kay Saunders and discovered why she prefers autobiographies to biographies. I found this fascinating because I prefer the reverse. I also note that Jenny is a steampunk author so I will pay close attention and maybe I will learn what the term actually means one day.

At The Australian Bookshelf Jayne Fordham bills  SHARP TURN by Marianne Delacourt as Australia’s answer to Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum and is exciting, funny and slightly outrageous.

Meanwhile at Bookstore off Euclid Avenue we’re reminded of one of the classics of Australian fiction, Miles Franklin’s MY BRILLIANT CAREER, the semi-autobiographical tale of a woman whose full name was Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin. In the review the book’s heroine, Sybylla is described as “a cocky teenage girl, all slang and rebellion. She is stubborn, intelligent, and uncompromising”. Given that definition is spot-on I guess it’s not surprising that I can still remember my teachers’ grimaces when I listed Sybylla as my all-time favourite literary character in an essay-writing contest when I was 13 :) The review also reminds us of Franklin’s consummate skill at describing our unique physical environment.

The review of Alice Pung’s memoir UNPOLISHED GEM at a blog called Wallaby has inspired me to add the book to my own wishlist. It deals with Pung’s life as the child of immigrants, straddling the cultures, inheriting the memories of her ancestors.

Meanwhile at Tony’s Reading List I discovered a book called EVERYMAN’S RULES FOR SCIENTIFIC LIVING by Carrie Tiffany which I had never heard of but am now very keen to read. Set in rural Australia of the 1930′s Tony describes it as a book about two people who fall in love, decide to start a farm based on scientific principles but struggle through the Depression and the two cope with their failures differently. Tony says the book isn’t perfect but is compelling and for some reason I really like the sound of it.

It’s not all reviews though, why not check out Tara Moss in conversation with Kerry Greenwood? Two of Australia’s most successful contemporary women writers spend a bit over ten minutes discussing writing, female heroes, being shocked by your own characters and the adaptation of Kerry’s most famous creation, Phryne Fisher, for television.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of reviews and other posts that have been written in the first weeks of the Australian Women Writers challenge 2012; to date 164 reviews are linked at the challenge’s website. It’s not too late for you to join in, or if you can’t do that at least head on over to the challenge website and check out some of the review links. You’re bound to find a recommendation for some great writing by Australian women.

Review: THE WINTER OF THE LIONS by Jan Costin Wagner

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THE WINTER OF THE LIONS is a peculiar book.

On one level it is a police procedural in which Finnish police seek to work out who killed a pathologist then a puppet maker then attempted to kill the television personality who had once interviewed both men on his highly rated chat show. But it’s hard to imagine any police force in the world operating as this one does, with little actual police work being done. Instead the lead investigator, one Kimmo Joentaa, makes a random, I might even suggest far-fetched, guess about the probable motive for the crime and proceeds to narrow down the pool of suspects his guess leads to in a fairly haphazard and not terribly successful manner (given that the culprit eventually shows up on their own virtually shouting “look at me over here, I’m the one”). So the book isn’t recommended for people who like their crime fiction to involve puzzles solved in a linear fashion with oodles of evidence.

That said, I enjoyed it a lot.

Part of that enjoyment invariably stems from the fact it didn’t tread the familiar path of a million police procedurals before it. I really do like authors who take interesting risks with the genre’s tropes, even if they’re not always successful. And there’s no doubt I was hooked by Kimmo’s approach to the case and was never not desperate to know who the culprit was and whether or not they would be found before more deaths occurred (something that never felt like a sure thing).

The characters are very strong too, though they do generally conform to the melancholic  stereotype associated with Scandinavian crime fiction. In fact Kimmo Joentaa could have been the prototype of the lonesome, introspective detective on which all others are based. His wife died some years ago and he is clearly still coming to grips with that, a fact borne out I think by his becoming somewhat bizarrely and immediately attached to a woman whose name he doesn’t even know. But perhaps my thinking this relationship an odd one says more about me than it does about Kimmo. Either way it added intrigue to the book.

We also meet the murderer fairly on in the book; though we don’t know who it is we know it is someone who has been involved in a tragedy and lost someone close to them. I’m normally not much of a fan of ‘seen through the eyes of the killer’ scenarios but here it was not sensational and offered some insight into how people cope (or don’t) with the traumas they experience. In fact the entire book could be looked at as a treatise on this subject, with Kimmo still suffering from his wife’s death and then losing his friend the pathologist who was killed at the outset of this book. And the television star who is the subject of the attempted murder is also a study in the kind of mental impact such a thing might have on a person.

Perhaps I was just in the right mood for peculiar (and cold, I did enjoy all that snow as I read the book during our sweltering summer) but I enjoyed THE WINTER OF THE LIONS more than I thought I might based on some of the reviews I read. Things surreal are not normally my cup of team but this one was just ‘normal’ enough to have me lapping it up and planning to go back and read the earlier books in the series (now that I have committed the cardinal sin of reading out of order).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE WINTER OF THE LIONS has been reviewed at Crime Pieces, Euro Crime, International Noir Fiction and Mrs Peabody Investigates

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Translator Anthea Bell (from German)
Publisher Harvill Secker [2011]
ISBN/ASIN 9781846553462
Length 268
Format paperback
Book Series #3 in Kimmo Joentaa series
Source Borrowed from library
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid

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Having complained often and at length about authors who write the same book over and over again I chose to TRICK OF THE DARK up precisely because it was clear from the disparity of opinion about it that, if nothing else, McDermid had written a different book from her previous work. My main exposure to her writing has been through the Tony Hill books which are a bit bloody for my taste though I do like her writing so I was keen to try more of her standalone novels.

There were lots of things I enjoyed about TRICK OF THE DARK though my relationship with the book didn’t start well as the main character, psychiatrist Charlie Flint, is angst-ridden about whether or not to cheat on her wife Maria with another woman. I groaned audibly I think as the ‘to cheat or not to cheat’ storyline is a particular annoyance of mine both in real life and in fiction (cheat if you must but don’t bend my ear about your vacillation is my motto). But even though that thread does run throughout the novel I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of this complicated and fast-paced book.

As well as considering embarking on an affair, Charlie is in professional disgrace as the book opens due to an assessment she had made in a criminal case. Although something of a side thread I found this quite fascinating as it explored the notion of guilt and whether or not people can or should be prevented by society from committing crimes they’ve only thought about. One morning she receives some curious news clippings in the mail about a murdered bridegroom she doesn’t know. After some plot contrivances she works out that the clippings have been sent by one of her tutors from her time at Oxford and the widower of the bridegroom is Magda, whom Charlie knew as Maggot when she used to babysit her some years ago. When she gets in touch with the tutor, Corinna, she is is asked to investigate Magda’s husband’s murder. Corinna doesn’t think the two people who have been found guilty of the murder were responsible, instead she blames Magda’s new love interest, a woman called Jay who is also a former student of Corinna’s and is now a very wealthy business woman. Corinna tells Charlie that if she does not investigate and find evidence of Jay’s guilt Corinna will do whatever it takes to protect her daughter from the woman she perceives as evil.

That’s about as simply as I can summarise the early part of the book and it gets more complicated from that point on but it’s surprisingly easy to follow. Though perhaps that’s just because McDermid has the skill to make such twists and turns look easy. The book does require the suspension of disbelief but I had no trouble doing that, quickly getting caught up in the whydunnit aspects of the novel and the lives of its three main characters.

In some ways I thought Charlie the least interesting of the three (though admit that’s mainly because I was bored by the whole cheating thread). Jay Stewart, whose point of view much of the story is told from, would be intriguing I think even if you weren’t always wondering in the back of your mind if she is a serial killer. She has already published one book, a misery memoir of her horrid childhood, to much acclaim and has been persuaded to write a second biography. This volume will focus on her more recent life of ‘triumph over tragedy’ and we learn about her life as she writes different chapters though readers are always aware of the unreliable nature of Jay’s ‘recollections’. It would be a terrific sign of society’s maturity to be able to write about this book without mentioning that the three main characters (and several minor ones) are lesbians but the women’s sexuality is a significant factor in the stories. Their various experiences of coming out (or not doing so) and being on the receiving end of homophobia significantly colours the lives of all the lesbians in the story and so is an integral part of the book. Unlike some of the more vitriolic reviews on Good Reads and Amazon I thought this aspect of the book was handled sensitively and intelligently.

TRICK OF THE DARK managed to draw me into subjects and worlds I have no experience of including the cloistered atmosphere of Oxford college and its lingering pull on all who attend, as well as the tribulations of being gay and hated for that fact (in my bubble world I like to think we’re all grown up about such things now but clearly not). Having had somewhat ambivalent expectations of this book through reading very positive and very negative reviews I was pleasantly surprised and would recommend the book to those who can suspend their disbelief in the interests of a ripping, and thought-provoking yarn.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

TRICK OF THE DARK has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime, Euro Crime (2), Petrona and Savidge Reads

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4/5
Author website http://www.valmcdermid.com/index.html
Publisher Hachette Digital [2010]
ISBN 9780748117017
Length 362 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Trackers by Deon Meyer

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It’s hard to know how to talk about TRACKERS without giving away too many of the book’s surprises which come from both story and structure so I shall err on the side of caution. I don’t think it’s letting too much out of the bag to say that there are three distinct books here, and though the reader assumes the stories will eventually intertwine most connections are not made until almost the very end so you are really reading three independent stories. While this maintains suspense it does require more than the usual amount of small-detail retention on the part of the reader, something that proved quite challenging with the audio version of the book.

The first and most prominent of the three stories centres around a woman called Milla Strachan who, when we meet her, is just coming to the decision to leave her violent, philandering husband and their boorish, spoiled son. Although she trained to be a journalist she has not worked for many years and struggles to find a job until she spies a small newspaper advertisement. That leads to a report-writing job with a government agency. In the second book we meet a young freelance bodyguard called Lemmer who is hired for the seemingly innocuous job of escorting two endangered rhinos being smuggled into the country from Zimbabwe on behalf of a wealthy and slightly dodgy farmer. In the final book of TRACKERS we follow the trail of former policeman Mat Joubert as he starts his new job as a private investigator and takes on the case of a missing husband whose wife is unsatisfied with what she perceives to have been a fairly cursory investigation by police.

All three stories are compelling in their own right though I have to admit to finding the first one a little tough-going in parts. Although the audio narration was excellent I found the very complicated plot a little hard to follow in this format and did have to rewind quite a bit which is something I very rarely need to do. I had no such problems with the other two books within this book and perhaps for that reason I enjoyed those two stories slightly more than the first.

There are several elements which link the books, the most obvious being that each depicts some version of tracking; be it people, animals, objects or something less tangible.  This could have been clumsy in a less talented author’s hands but Meyer is a terrific storyteller and manages to use this device almost without the reader noticing it’s being done. Another theme common to the stories is that the main character in each one is at something of a crossroads in his or her life and the events cause, or force, them to learn something not entirely comfortable about their own makeup. Milla Strachan’s case is probably the most dramatic of the three but these threads are all fascinating and provide part of the depth of this book.

The remainder of that depth comes from the other thing which links the books which is the  ever-present commentary on life in modern South Africa. It is almost as if Meyer has written a non-fiction book underneath the fictional one in which he is depicting a year in the life of his country. Setting the main part of the story in the time leading up to the country’s hosting of the football (soccer) world cup offers scope to show how the country and its residents want to be seen on the all-important international stage, while the disparate stories within TRACKERS allow a broad cross-section of ‘routine’ lives to be depicted which helps readers build up a real picture of the country today. Again it is something you almost don’t notice until the book is finished when you suddenly realise you have such a detailed picture of the place that you feel like you could walk into the pages and feel at home.

I think I’ve only scratched the surface of all that is good about TRACKERS so can only recommend you read the book for yourselves, though I’d only recommend the audio format to seasoned listeners. It is an intelligent, compelling thriller with a fantastic range of characters and an absorbing sense of place. At a time when many successful writers seem content to write the same book over and over again Meyer is to be applauded for continuing to stretch himself and his readers.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Trackers has been reviewed at International Noir Fiction, Mysteries in Paradise, Petrona, The Game’s Afoot and was chosen as one of 2011′s best thrillers by Kirkus Reviews

I’ve reviewed three of Deon Meyer’s other books Devil’s Peak, Dead at Daybreak and Thirteen hours.  There hasn’t been a dud in the bunch.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.deonmeyer.com/
Translator K.L. Seegers (from Afrikaans)
Narrator Saul Reichlin, Rupert Degas, Sandra Duncan
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton [2011]
ASIN B005OSUOAE (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 17 hours and 55 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What Price A Comeback?

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I know I’ve ranted before (and at some length) about book pricing here in Australia but it’s a topic I like to re-visit every now and again; mostly to see if the issue is still the same giant mess. There’s always the slim chance that someone fixed it up while I wasn’t paying attention right? I’d hate to waste my ranting about things that aren’t problems anymore when there are so many rant-worthy subjects to be found :)

What prompted this particular post was seeing a tweet from Jon of Pages & Pages book store in Sydney saying that Peter Corris’ brand new release, COMEBACK, is only $9.99 in his store’s eBook outlet. The rest of the world might cringe at that price for an eBook but it’s damned cheap for a traditionally published, new release title by an Australian author regardless of the format. Was it a sign of a new regime of sensible pricing or an inexplicable aberration I wondered and was, as ever, bemused by what I found when I checked the price in other outlets (all prices in Australian dollars):

Kobo (kobo eBook) $7.99
Pages & Pages (ReadCloud eBook) $9.99
Readings (Booki.sh eBook) $9.99
Amazon (kindle edition) $14.99
Booktopia (Google eBook) $22.50
Booktopia (trade paperback) $23.95 + shipping
Boomerang Books (trade paperback) $26.99 + shipping
Dymocks (google eBook) $29.99
Dymocks (trade paperback) $29.99

At this stage the physical version of the book is not available from overseas outlets (neither Book Depository nor Amazon).

So I guess I have learned I can still rant about this subject without looking like an out of touch crazy lady, though for the moment I’m all out of rant. So if you are a publisher (particularly the publisher of this title) consider yourself slapped with a wet fish.

For the record I did purchase a copy of the book from Pages & Pages. I could have gotten the book $2 cheaper but I’m happy to pay a small surcharge for dealing with an Australian company. Especially given that the Pages & Pages ReadCloud store is the only eBook store that I’ve used (and I have used about 2 dozen such stores in the past 18 months) that rivals Amazon for ease and speed of use and download. If you are a reader of ePub books you should definitely check it out (and no Jon hasn’t paid me to say that but if you’d tried as many complicated checkout/download operations as I have, you too would be raving about something that offers speed and simplicity without assuming all customers are criminals in waiting).

I shall go to sleep tonight hoping that COMEBACK’s price is a sign of our publishing industry’s maturation on pricing issues, but I shan’t hold my breath :)

Review: A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths

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In the fourth book to feature forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway the mystery starts early on. Ruth has been asked to attend a local museum for the opening of a coffin which was found at a construction site and is thought to contain the remains of a medieval Bishop. She arrives to find the museum’s curator lying on the floor. Not being certain if the man is alive or not she phones an ambulance and the police. The man is pronounced dead on his arrival at hospital and the police investigation steps up a notch which introduces DI Harry Nelson to the action.

Of course anyone who has read the previous novels in this serious would have been waiting for this meeting as Ruth and Harry have a personal history which was left at a rather dramatic point at the end of The House at Sea’s End. I’m trying not to give spoilers to this or previous books so I won’t say much more, other than to reflect that I thought Griffiths did a good job of capturing the awkwardness realistically. She’s also done a good job of encapsulating the essence of the personal lives of Ruth, Harry and their friends and colleagues so this would be a decent place to start the series if you are interested in trying it out but don’t feel you have the time or energy to read the three earlier books.

The mystery element in this novel is stronger than has been the case in the previous novels which, while entertaining, were all fairly easy to stay ahead of, especially for seasoned crime readers. Here there are several threads that need to be sorted out including the very basic question of whether or not the museum curator was murdered or not. There do prove to be two potential motives including a possible connection to claims being made for the repatriation of Australian Aboriginal bones and skulls in the museum’s custody. Ruth’s old friend Cathbad is a member of a group which has requested the items be returned to Australia for a proper burial, as is her new next door neighbour who is an academic visiting from Australia. He is also a member of the same tribal group to which the bones belong so he has a personal stake in the repatriation of the items. The issue of such repatriation is becoming increasingly vitriolic in the real world but Griffiths handled its complexity and sensitivity well. In particular Ruth’s needing time to weigh up the pros and cons on a personal and professional level rang very true. I’m always a little wary of ‘foreign’ books which throw in Australian characters or tackle other subjects I am familiar with but Elly Griffiths has done well on both counts here.

It’s fair to say that most fans of this series are at least as interested in the personal stories of Ruth, Harry and friends as they are in the whodunnit aspects of the books and those fans will not be disappointed with this instalment. Ruth’s daughter has her first birthday in this book but Ruth still frets about her mothering skills and seems a little preoccupied at times so she is not quite the dominant character in this book as she has been in the past and Harry’s dry humour is also quiet for a while when he undergoes a particularly nasty trauma. While I did miss the presence of my favourite two people a little, there were many developments in the lives of the lesser characters to keep me interested. I have quite a soft spot for Cathbad who is a lab technician at Ruth’s university but is also a Druid and seems willing to participate in any vaguely spiritual ritual he thinks suitable for a given situation which often has unforseen circumstances.

I look forward with much anticipation to the arrival on my doorstep of the annual instalment of this series and, once again, the reading experience lived up to my expectations, providing a very enjoyable and satisfying read with just a hint of what might happen in the next book.. I read A ROOM FULL OF BONES in a single day (again the housework was neglected) and had a very contented smile on my face upon completion, you can’t ask for better than that.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Room Full of Bones has been reviewed at Euro Crime

I have reviewed the first three books in the series: The Crossing Places, The Janus Stone and The House at Sea’s End

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Quercus [2012]
ISBN 9781849163699
Length 344 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #4 in the Ruth Galloway series
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Dabbling in writing by Australian women #1

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Because I’ve only signed up for one reading challenge this year I feel I have enough time to check out what other participants are reading and saying about their challenge experience which is something I’ve been pretty slack about in my reading challenges in other years. Part of my reason for diligently checking out as many posts as I can is that I challenged myself to dabble in a few genres for the challenge so I’m actively looking for recommendations for non-fiction plus historical, literary and contemporary fiction that I might like. But I’m also just curious to investigate the breadth of writing by Australian women and I thought I’d occasionally share the posts that interest me most over the course of the year.

One of the challenge’s main champions, Shelleyrae from Book’d Out hosted a visit from contemporary fiction author Lisa Heidke who talked about her horror at seeing her first book cover (which she had no control over). It must so painful for an author to know their work is going to be judged by lots of people based on some aspect that the author has had no say in themselves.

At Whispering Gums I found a review of Francesca Rendle-Short’s BITE YOUR TONGUE, a fictionalised memoir from the daughter of a woman who was an anti-smut campaigner. Starting life so unwillingly absorbed in someone else’s agenda always seems to me to be a tough break and it’s interesting to see how this plays out.

Marg from Adventures of an Intrepid Reader wrote a lengthy review of Anna Funder’s ALL THAT I AM, a historical fiction novel set in Germany in 1930′s as Hitler came to power. The book is one that you see everywhere in book stores here and I must have had it in my hands a half-dozen times but I’ve never walked out of the shop with it, despite the accolades it has received. Marg’s review is not ultra negative but it does take a critical look at the book and I think I’m convinced to try something else instead.

Coleen Kwan assured us all that Jessica Rudd’s CAMPAIGN RUBY isn’t full of political backstabbing and I can’t be the only one who breathed a sigh of relief. For overseas readers Jessica Rudd is the daughter of our most recent ex-prime minister and therefore it was not unreasonable to wonder if the tawdry mess that was his deposing got written into the book but apparently not. Even for a politics junkie like me this would not have been interesting as we all lived through it once :)

Maree from Like the World reviewed Favel Parrett’s PAST THE SHALLOWS which is one of the books I was thinking about when I decided to dabble in genres other than my usual crime fiction for this challenge. It’s literary fiction set in Tasmania and is the story of three brothers who live with their embittered father. The book is by a young Australian woman and everyone was talking about the book last year. Maree has made it very tempting saying “it completely immerses you as family secrets unravel and the boys’ lives are revealed with quiet urgency. This is the kind of book you read in one greedy sitting”

This is just the tip of the iceberg of reviews and other discussion posts that have been written in the first weeks of the Australian Women Writers challenge 2012. It’s not too late for you to join in, or if you can’t do that at least head on over to the challenge website and check out some of the other links. You’re bound to find a recommendation for some great writing by Australian women.

The Stranger House and other stories

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I finished Reginald Hill’s The Stranger House about a week ago but haven’t been able to write an even vaguely coherent review of it. Not because it’s not good but because I couldn’t think of anything new to say about how much I like and admire Hill’s writing and approach to the telling of stories. I’ve reviewed three of his books here (A Cure For All Diseases, Midnight Fugue and The Woodcutter) and on looking back I’ve been fairly repetitive in my gushing praise. I simply couldn’t think of a different way to say that I love the way this man tells a story.

The Stranger House is a standalone novel set in a remote Cumbrian village and tells the tale of two travellers, their ancestors and the village that ties them all together. A young Australian mathematician called Samantha (Sam) Flood goes to Illthwaite looking for information about her biological grandmother who she believes might have lived there before moving to Australia and adopting out the baby that was to become Sam’s father. Miguel (Mig) Midero is a Spanish man with an English mother who was studying to be a priest before ceasing his studies and embarking on a quest to uncover the details of his ancestor who was last heard of when setting sail with the Spanish armada in the 1580′s. Both Sam and Mig’s searches uncover dark secrets, recent and ancient, about the village and its families in a book that is epic in scope and somewhat gothic in feel. Above all it’s a marvellous story full of the larger than life characters, wit and intelligence that I’ve come to expect from Hill.  I think the thing I admire most is that he never seemed to be ‘phoning it in’. He was trying new things, taking risks, having fun with writing styles and genre conventions right to the end. The Woodcutter (published in 2010 when Hill was 73) is simply a perfect example of the art of storytelling.

If you’d asked I probably wouldn’t have called myself a die hard fan of Hilll’s because I don’t think I’ve read even half of his books and I haven’t liked all of the ones I have read. But two of the three books mentioned above appeared in my top ten books for the year I read them and the last one missed out by only the slimmest of margins. There isn’t another author who has appeared so consistently in my lists of favourite books. So it kind of snuck up on me while I wasn’t looking but it turns out I am  a real fan of Reginald Hill which probably explains why waking to the news of his death this morning made me very sad. I will however be forever grateful for the hours of escape, entertainment and joy that he has provided, and I will take comfort knowing there are some of his books I’ve yet to read.

RIP Reginald Hill, and thank you.