Monthly Archives: March 2012

Review: THE ROPE by Nevada Barr

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THE ROPE is Nevada Barr’s 17th novel featuring nomadic National Parks Service ranger Anna Pigeon, though in a timeline sense it is the first of Anna’s stories. Without any gimmickry or awkward flashback-filled plot devices Barr simply opens this prequel to her popular series in 1995 when Anna has taken a summer job at a national park near Lake Powell, Arizona. She has left her job as a stage manager but still wears the black clothes her former life demanded and, struggling to come to terms with the recent death of her husband, Anna has been distant with her colleagues and new neighbours. So no one is particularly surprised that she and all her belongings disappear one day; all assuming she has returned to New York or moved on to some place that suits her more. In reality, while out hiking on her day off, Anna gets lost then stumbles across a crime in progress which turns out to have very sinister consequences for her  She wakes up groggy and naked and realises she is trapped in a dry well from which there appears to be no escape.

THE ROPE has many of the qualities that I have come to expect from this series including the spectacular setting which is, once again, so deftly described that I feel I too have climbed the canyons and cruised the lake and learned a little more about this poor old planet of ours and the damage we seem determined to do to even the prettiest bits of it. Characters, especially the women, are another strong feature of Barr’s books and this one showcases three very different women. Anna is basically the same person as we see in later books: determined, independent and prone to not doing as she ought though, naturally, not quite as fully formed as she becomes. She remains one of the few fictional characters I’ve ever thought I would like to meet if such things were possible. Her boss for the summer is Jenny Gorman whose job involves collecting the alarmingly large amount of poo the park’s summer visitors deposit where they shouldn’t and trying to educate those same campers on proper poo-managing etiquette (this was an aspect of managing a national park I had never considered but now can’t stop thinking about). Jenny is an intense character whose own dark history is revealed as the story progresses as is her developing love for Anna (she acknowledges that this will be an unrequited love as Anna is not gay though she fleetingly dreams of things being different). The third woman to feature heavily in the book is Bethy, wife of one of the Park Services’ office employees Regis Candor, who, like Anna, undergoes something of a transformation throughout the book. Her husband and the other male characters are less successfully drawn, being somewhat two-dimensional and using awkwardly inserted language that doesn’t feel right for the situation (or maybe it’s just me who has never heard an adult use the word ta-ta’s in a non-ironic sense).

On a less positive note I did find THE ROPE slow, indeed almost glacial for the first half though it picked up a little. This is, I think, due to the book being almost ‘literary’ in the way it focuses on the inner lives and thoughts of Anna, Jenny and Regis & Bethy rather than being driven by complex plotting (honestly the plot is straight-forward and, I thought, fairly predictable). Even though I like Anna I was a little bored by her time in the dry well which lasted a very long time and had almost no suspense at all as it was a given she would escape so she could go on an star in the rest of the series. The other factor that spoiled the book a little for me was that it had one too many near-death escapes for our heroine. On my informal ‘believability scale’ one such escape from almost certain death is required, two is borderline acceptable and three, especially where the situations are very similar, pushes the story into pure fantasy territory. Perhaps this is only because I was listening to it, but by the end, when Anna portentously heads off for what is a blindingly obvious (to everyone but Anna) trap I started thinking of the story as a children’s pantomime where the audience is meant to yell “look out, he’s behind you” at appropriate points. In fact I’m not quite sure that I didn’t actually mumble this under my breath while on public transport.

I did like the book and enjoyed meeting a younger, slightly more vulnerable Anna than I have come to know from later stories but THE ROPE won’t make it to my favourites of the series. If you are an existing fan I’m sure there’s lots here for you but I wouldn’t recommend it as the first place to start for those new to the series and its heroine. I can however recommend the book in audio format, this time ably narrated by Joyce Bean who seems to have permanently (and very competently) taken over narrating the series from Barbara Rosenblat.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE ROPE has been reviewed at Kittling: Books (by Cathy who is a true aficionado of the series and was the reader who introduced me to Anna Pigeon.

My other reviews of Nevada Barr’s books are HUNTING SEASON (book #10) FLASHBACK (book #11), BORDERLINE (book #15) and BURN (book #16)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Narrator Joyce Bean
Publisher Brilliance Audio [2012]
ASIN B006VFKYUY
Length 12 hours exactly
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #17 in the Anna Pigeon 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.

I’ll be especially grateful from now on

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“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” G.K. Chesterton

I have always been a reader. Someone for whom reading is not just something to do when there’s nothing else but an activity deliberately chosen, squeezed into even the busiest days, accompanying me on even the most exotic holidays. Someone for whom picking up a book and becoming lost in another place or time is as natural as getting dressed in the morning. So being unable to read for several weeks had a distinctly unpleasant feel to it.

It’s not that I suddenly went blind (for if I did there would be my audio book collection) but rather that I allowed myself to become out of sorts with reading when I failed to enjoy (or even finish) a book from a favourite author (no more about that here, you can read about my grumpiness over here if you have a masochistic streak). In the wake of that I simply found myself unable to get my usual relaxation, escape or comfort from picking up a book (or turning on my iPod). And while I’m sure my reading withdrawal wasn’t quite as extreme as the experience of someone undergoing physical withdrawal from alcohol or another drug to which they are addicted it was noticeable to me and to those around me (causing a greater than usual crankiness on my part).

Last Friday I forced myself to start a new book by a new to me author by promising myself an end-of-week glass of wine only if I read for 30 minutes first. I’m not sure if it was the promise of a drink or the passing of time or the moon being back in the right quadrant for my particular biorhythms but it worked. I am, once again, a reader. And I am newly grateful for the return of my old friend.

The book I chose turned out to be an excellent new novel from Wendy James. It’s called THE MISTAKE and I’ve reviewed it at my other blog because Wendy is an Australian author. It’s a ripper read and I highly recommend it to all.

I’ve been on a bit of a kick since then, finishing the second book in Shamini Flint’s marvellous series featuring Inspector Singh of the Singapore police. In A BALI CONSPIRACY MOST FOUL the Inspector is sent to Bali in the wake of the 2002 bombings there which killed 38 local people and 164 of the tourists who have flocked to the island for years. The Inspector feels a bit superfluous as he doesn’t have any experience investigating terrorist activities but he becomes useful when one of the people originally thought to have died in the bombings is shown to have been killed before the bombs went off. Singh investigates this murder with the help of a brash Australian cop who has also been seconded. The book has just the right mix of gentle humour and sensitivity to set a fictional murder mystery against the backdrop of the all-too-real events and it is a great read.

My current print book is Peter May’s THE BLACKHOUSE which I have been itching to read since I saw this review at Petrona. I am a sucker for the remote island setting. I’m also back into audio books and listening to Anne Holt’s FEAR NOT which is one of the titles eligible for this year’s International Dagger for translated fiction. I have become a bit addicted to having translated books read to me as the narrators get all the people and place names right (which I am sure I never do).

I’m about a third of the way into both of these and thoroughly gripped. Just like in the good old days. In fact so thoroughly gripped that I’m going to wrap this up and go read. Very, very gratefully.

She gave up on me first

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I was struggling with Sara Paretsky’s BREAKDOWN due to the overtly political nature of the book’s content. After putting the book aside for a week or so I picked it up again last weekend and persevered for another week before giving up for good yesterday. For someone who normally reads 2-3 books a week only managing 73 pages of a single book in a week is an indicator that the two of us are never going to get along. One of the reasons I tried to struggle through to the end was so that I could feel able to review it properly but as the book glowered at me from the bedside table for the last week I realised I needed it gone from my life more than I needed to prove a point.

By the time I gave up on the book Paretsky had made me both sad and cross. About the only experience I can liken reading BREAKDOWN to is going to a meeting of Get Up (an Australian left-leaning multi-issue political group similar to Move On in the US or 38 Degrees in the UK). I admit I have only been to a couple of meetings but I found them full of people believing fervently in their own moral superiority on just about every issue you can think of yet so full of vitriol for anyone who dared to have an opposing opinion that I could not wait to leave. I saw little evidence of the tolerance and thoughtfulness the group demands from its opponents. I felt the same way as I picked up BREAKDOWN every night this week and read a few more pages of Paretsky’s didactic, lengthy prose on a variety of subjects that had little to do with the story she was meant to be telling and her thinly disguised and mean-spirited caricatures of real figures from current public life in America As soon as I opened the book each time I couldn’t wait to put the book down again.

I’m sure it would have been harder, but someone as intelligent and well-educated as Paretsky has the potential to write a book which makes all sorts of people stop and think about their view of the world. Instead it feels to me like she’s taken the easy route in which she’s given words of encouragement and succour to the people who already think like she does and treated everyone else like a child. Or evil personified. It’s like she’s given up trying to change the world through her writing and is happy to reinforce the stereotypes and divisions she sees. She’s certainly forgotten how to tell a ripping yarn.

 

Review: THE POTTER’S FIELD by Andrea Camilleri

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Although I haven’t read all the books in this series I have read enough of them to both know what to expect when opening the front cover of a new one and to eagerly anticipate my expectations being met. Happily I was not disappointed with the 13th instalment of the Inspector Salvo Montalbano series. At the centre of this book and its predecessors is an intelligent, introspective protagonist who loves good food, gives credence to his dreams and is in an unhappy struggle with the ageing process. Here he is called out to a rain-sodden crime scene where a body – or at least parts of one – has been discovered in a bin bag. When all the pieces of the poor individual have been collected it turns out to have been a middle-aged man but he is difficult to identify. As Montalbano grapples with the beginnings of the case several other troubles bubble to the surface including a beautiful woman reporting her husband missing and the behaviour of Montalbano’s faithful deputy Augello becomes increasingly erratic.

In its review of this novel Kirkus recommends the book for “mystery readers who enjoy the journey more than the solution” and I think that is a perfect description of who should read this book. The solution to the mystery is actually quite obvious from relatively early on but what kept my interest was watching how the case affected Montalbano and to see if things could be resolved so that those near and dear to him remained unhurt without causing lasting damage to Montalbano’s own integrity. And along the way there is the usual mixture of irascibility, good food and bad driving as well as some provided by the police station’s linguistically challenged desk sergeant and Montalbano’s own cynical side shining through such as when he muses that

“Ingrid’s husband was a known ne’er-do-well, so it was only logical that he should turn to politics”.

Amongst all the gentle humour and stopping for long, delicious lunches there is some meat to the novel as it explores the nature of betrayal and its many guises. In turn this pushes the always philosophical Montalbano into consideration of more biblical references than I have seen him do in the past but they fit well into the story. In fact the only somewhat clunky cultural reference came from the self-referential scene in which Montalbano reads an Andrea Camilleri novel that turns out to have an indirect relevance to the case. This and the novel’s many purely slapstick moments prevented it from being the best of this series for me though perhaps these are the elements others look for.

Irrespective of any minor quibbles I thoroughly enjoyed THE POTTER’S FIELD which was, always, deftly translated by Steven Sartarelli whose notes at the end of each novel are almost as much of a treat as the story itself. It mixes humour and seriousness with ease and is just surreal enough to be surprising without stepping into absurd territory. Fans of the series won’t want to miss it though I probably wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point for people new to the series (its predecessor THE TRACK OF SAND would be a better place to start).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE POTTER’S FIELD has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Murder by Type and The Crime Segments

I have also reviewed August Heat, The Wings of the Sphinx and The Track of Sand

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Translator Stephen Sartarelli
Publisher Penguin [this translation 2011, original edition 2008]
ISBN 9780143120131
Length 277 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #13 in the Inspector Montalbano series.
Source borrowed from the library


Books of the Month – February 2012

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Before I hit my reading slump in the second half of February I did read THE CALLER by Karin Foussm which I thought an outstanding novel. It is about a small community in Norway where a teenage boy starts playing horrid pranks on people (such as publishing a death notice for an elderly woman who is still alive).The impact of these pranks on the victims are profound and the book really did unsettle me in the way it explored the fragility of the lives we create for ourselves, My first 5-star read for the year.

In the end I did finish 11 books for the month including

  • AGENT 6 by Tom Rob Smith (3 stars)
  • CARTE BLANCHE by Carlo Lucarelli (3 stars)
  • SURRENDER by Donna Malane (4 stars, top notch New Zealand reading)

THE CONFESSION by Charles Todd, WHITE HEAT by M.J.McGrath, WILD HORSES by Dick Francis and NIGHT ROUNDS by Helene Tursten were all part of my reading slump (not terrible books just not great) which I finished off by re-reading Christos Tsiolkas’ thoroughly bloody awful THE SLAP, a book that paints a more depressing picture of humanity than any crime fiction I have ever read.

The Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012

I’m now up to 4 books by Australian women this year, though neither of these really falls outside my ‘comfort zone’ of genres so I’ll have to dabble some more next month

Other, non-review related posts this month

I didn’t manage a lot of other blogging in February though did manage to have a whinge about the overt politics of Sara Paretsky’s BREAKDOWN, a book I still haven’t finished.

Next month?

A wise man suggested Andrea Camilleri might get me out of my reading slump and I happened to be next in the queue for the library’s copy of his latest novel THE POTTER’S FIELD and I am already feeling kindly towards reading again. I also picked up Gail Jones’ FIVE BELLS (an Aussie women writer for me to dabble with) and Craig Johnson’s THE COLD DISH on the same trip to the library.

What about you…was February a good reading month? Did you have a favourite book? Or did you acquire anything you’re itching to read? Any issue you need to get off your chest?

If you want to see other people’s crime fiction picks of the month head over to Mysteries in Paradise for the Pick of the Month meme