Reading Matters

'Pretty Monsters' by Kelly Link

Fiction - hardcover; Canongate; 400 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

That I would give this book a five-star review comes as quite a surprise to me, because this is not the type of book to which I would normally be drawn. First, it's a collection of short stories and novellas, and I generally have a preference for full-blown novels. Second, its target market is young adults/teenagers. Third, it's about monsters and ghosts and magic and all kinds of fairytale, fantasy and horror-type subjects. Fourth. Well, need I go on? 

This is, quite frankly, not my usual cup-of-tea. And yet when Pretty Monsters arrived unsolicited from Canongate I couldn't help but be drawn to it. It's an absolutely gorgeous-looking hardcover that has a real Gothic feel, owing to each page being edged in black. It features striking art-work by Australian-based illustrator Shaun Tan throughout (including the cover) and the weight of the book is perfect to hold in the hand, not too heavy and cumbersome as some hardcovers are wont to be.

But what about the content?

There are nine stories here, some of which have been published elsewhere in the past, and each one presents an intoxicating, hugely original world. "These stories will come alive, put on suits and wrestle you to the ground," says Alice Sebold on the back cover blurb. "They want you and you will be theirs." She's completely right. I've never read such a wacky collection of stories that gripped me, held me in their sway and slightly altered my perception of the universe when I came to each stunning conclusion. Where has Kelly Link been hiding all my life? She's bloody brilliant.

She's been described as "an alchemical mixture of Borges, Raymond Chandler and Buffy the Vampire Slayer". But I wouldn't be surprised to discover that she was the lovechild of Stephen King and JK Rowling. To give you an idea of the breadth of her style and imagination, here's a brief rundown of each of the stories in this collection.

The Wrong Grave
A black comedy about a teenage boy whose girlfriend dies and is buried with his collection of self-penned poetry. When he suddenly wants his poetry back he accidentally digs up the wrong grave.

The Wizards of Perfil
A magical story about children who are sold to wizards, whom live in very tall towers and are never seen.

Magic for Beginners
A thrilling tale about a cult-TV show called The Library which a group of teenage school friends become slightly obsessed by. This particular story, probably my favourite in the whole collection, received the Nebula, Locus, and British Science Fiction Association Awards and was a finalist for the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Hugo, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Award.

The Faery Handbag
An odd fantasy about an eccentric grandmother who owns a magical handbag that hides a village full of fairies. This story won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novelette and the 2005 Locus Award.

The Specialist's Hat
This is a classic ghost story set in a grand house with eight chimneys. Two ten-year-old twins, Claire and Samantha, are introduced to a magic hat by their babysitter. This one won the 1999 World Fantasy Award. You can read the whole story on Kelly Link's official website.

Monster
A creepy story about a school camping trip that attracts an unexpected campfire guest -- a foul-smelling monster.

The Surfer
A science-fiction story about a father and son travelling to Costa Rica to see a surfer who claims to have made contact with aliens. But their trip is waylaid when a flu pandemic hits and they are quarantined in an aircraft hangar.

The Constable of Abal
An almost old-fashioned fairytale about a mother and daughter, who turn out to be transsexual goddesses.

Pretty Monsters
This one involves schoolgirls, werewolves and romance.

These stories are unsettling, dark, disturbing, surreal, wacky, occasionally confusing, often laugh-out-loud funny, but always rewarding, enjoyable and fun. More please.

'The Preacher' by Camilla Läckberg

Fiction - hardcover; Harper Collins; 422 pages; 2009. Translated from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Camilla Läckberg is yet another Scandinavian crime fiction writer making it big on the international scene. The Preacher, her second to be translated into English, is set in Fjällbacka, the small Swedish fishing village where she was born.

The book opens with a six-year-old boy discovering the naked body of a young woman in a local beauty spot known as the King's Cleft. When police and forensics are called to the scene they discover the skeletons of two other women, who disappeared 20 years ago, lying underneath the body. Are these murders, committed two decades apart, linked and, if so, in what way? This is the puzzle that local detective Patrik Hedström must try to figure out. And, just to heighten the tension, he must do it before another girl, recently kidnapped from the area, turns up dead.

Suspicion is immediately cast on two warring branches of the Hult family, a clan of misfits and religious fanatics descended from Ephraim Hult, a distinguished and charismatic preacher and healer.

But Hedström's investigation is not straight forward. It's hampered by several red herrings, a long list of suspects, and a cast of hapless and incompetent colleagues from Tanumshede police station. 

This is a wonderfully refreshing take on the crime novel, not the least because Hedström lacks the bitterness and darkness which characterise so many other detectives in Scandinavian crime fiction. In fact, he's a committed family man -- he's about to become a father as his girlfriend Erica is heavily pregnant during the course of the story -- and much of the novel revolves around his contented, if occasionally chaotic, home life as a succession of unwanted house guests drop by to make the most of the hot Swedish summer.

Unfortunately, as much as I appreciated such a domestic focus because it allowed light moments to balance out an otherwise disturbingly dark story, I found it slightly cloying and cliched in places, and, at times, clumsily written. This could easily have been solved with some judicious editing (the book, at 422 pages, is very long) but I suspect there will be other readers who will disagree and claim this is what makes the Hedströms so likable and believable, because you get to know them quite well and see what makes them tick on the home front.

Either way, this is an intriguing crime story, with plenty of atmosphere -- you get a real feel for the hot Swedish summer and the idyllic tourist-driven community in which it is set -- and enough riddles to keep you guessing until the very end. 

According to Läckberg's own website, some 80,000 copies of the The Preacher have been sold in "pocket version" in Sweden alone. I rather suspect when this English translation becomes available in paperback those figures will skyrocket -- and, quite deservedly so, I might add.

'Bad Traffic' by Simon Lewis

Fiction – paperback; Sort Of Books; 372 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Last year Bad Traffic was named as one of 50 books that publishers felt deserved a wider audience. This week, mid-way through the book, I discovered that that list had been whittled down to 10 books to talk about and Bad Traffic had made the cut. I'm not in the least surprised. This is a brilliant edge-of-your-seat thriller and one that presents the English countryside in a dark and disturbing new light.

Set in modern day Britain, the book is about a Chinese policeman, Inspector Jian, prowling the mean streets of rural Norfolk looking for the gangster he believes has murdered his daughter. He is accompanied by an illegal immigrant, Ding Ming, who was smuggled into the country in the back of a lorry with his wife as part of a human trafficking operation. Now forcibly separated from his wife -- she has been made to "pick flowers" in an unspecified location -- a young and naive Ding Ming finds himself on the run from his captors.

Together the Chinese duo make for a hapless pair of vigilantes. Jian, who does not speak English, finds everything about Britain rather sinister and foreboding, and regards the local police force with much suspicion. Despite his own police badge, he becomes a kind of foreign outlaw, with just one goal in mind: to deal out his own form of justice regardless of the consequences.

Meanwhile, Ding Ming, struggles to come to terms with the fact that he's been sold a lie. He had thought coming to England would allow him to earn a lot of money to help his struggling family at home -- after he had paid the exorbitant fee to his smugglers first -- but now realises he has been caught up in a corrupt system run by corrupt men. 

And while Jian is hell bent on finding Black Fort, the man at the head of the smuggling ring, Ding Ming wants to keep his distance from him. This tension between the two characters makes the narrative work on a new level, because, as a reader, you're not sure which man to support and cheer on.

At times the plot strays into comedic territory as one or the other deals with an unfamiliar culture. For example, Ding Ming is especially scared of anyone in uniform, believing English police trade body parts of criminals for organ donation, until Jian points out that one set of uniforms belongs to an automobile roadside rescue firm and there's nothing to be frightened of.

I also enjoyed this exchange between the pair while travelling by car along a motorway. Jian begins by asking, "What are you looking at?":

"Cows."
"Where?"
"They're all over. You spot one and then you see lots, like mushrooms. I don't like them. They look selfish."
"What are you talking about?"
"One of those cows has more land than a Chinese family. It's disgusting. And another thing. I look out and all I see are cow fields. Where are the vegetables? And where are the factories and the mines? It doesn't add up."
"The fields and factories and mines are in other countries."
"They're cow people."
"What are you talking about now?"
"They're like their big stupid cows. Their life is the easiest it is possible to imagine: they wander around their lovely park all day  going munch munch munch. Nothing to worry about, just munching the stupid grass all day long in a lovely big field. And people like me, we are the rats. We live in the ditch and eat shit and watch out for the hawks, and our life is bitterness and struggle, and we're terrified all the time."
"Rats don't eat shit."

Ultimately, Bad Traffic is a brilliantly paced and well constructed story that speeds along at a terrific pace. It has plenty of thrills and spills throughout, but underpinning it all is a quietly disturbing and shocking expose on an issue I've not ever read about in contemporary fiction -- that of human trafficking and the terrible fate so many desperate people find themselves in. This is great entertainment, but there's a dark moral to this story and one that leaves a deep impression long after the heart-hammering conclusion has been reached. This is definitely a story that deserves a wider audience -- read it if you get a chance.

'Songs of Blue and Gold' by Deborah Lawrenson

Fiction - paperback; Arrow Books; 384 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the author.

Songs of Blue and Gold is one of those lovely, lush stories that transports you right into the heart of the Mediterranean, or, more accurately, the Greek island of Corfu. Best described as a "literary romance" it has all the hallmarks of a great read: lively, engaging characters; an intriguing back story and mystery to unravel; a strong sense of place; and a solid, believable plot. It's the kind of story you might imagine Maeve Binchy penning if she ditched the fluff for something decidedly more intelligent.

The book tells the story of 30-something Melissa, whose life is slowly falling apart in London. When Elizabeth, her ill mother, thrusts a book called Collected Poems by the famous writer Julian Adie into her hands, she does not understand the significance until she later discovers an inscription by the author: "To Elizabeth, always remembering Corfu, what could have been and what we must both forget".

When her mother unexpectedly dies, Melissa embarks on a voyage of discovery -- literally and figuratively. Fleeing her own crumbling marriage, she visits Corfu for herself, hoping that some much-needed sun may brighten her outlook on life. But here, in the beautiful horseshoe bay of Kalami, she finds out more about her mother than she could have ever imagined. It turns out Elizabeth had a clandestine and tumultuous romance almost 40 years earlier with the infamous womaniser that was Julian Adie.  And here, at the very heart of the affair, Melissa manages to discover a deadly secret that explains why her mother never mentioned Adie's name in her presence...

Lawrenson said she wrote the book based on the late Lawrence Durrell, an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist and travel writer, who "wrote beguilingly, drawing constantly on his own experience and his many subsequent moves across the shores of the Mediterranean".

Interwoven with this background were his many loves and four marriages. He seemed to pack so many different lives into one! And while he was a comet blazing, what of the women he collided with along the way, I wondered? How did their stories end? And what of those he met, whose lives he changed but who did not even rate a footnote in his biography? Soon I was busy inventing Julian Adie and Elizabeth.

But you don't need to know anything about Durrell to appreciate this hugely beguiling novel -- although I'm sure there is added meaning to be gained if you do.

I particularly enjoyed its exploration of biography and "truth" and how we present different images of ourself to different people. Lawrenson achieves this by breaking up the main narrative with various "texts" on Julian Adie's life. This includes official biography, Melissa's own "memoir" and an American academic's exposé of Adie's possible involvement in an unexplained death.

But what I liked most about Songs of Blue and Gold -- aside from the confident narrative -- was the rich, evocative descriptions of Corfu that fill the pages. Here's one of my favourites:

Every hour seemed to make her eyes open wider, her senses more acute. Each time she walked the tiny main road, effectively barely more than a lane, she noticed more: the powerful scent of jasmine escaping over a wall; bright globes in orange and lemon trees; the violet trumpets of morning glory winding through wire fencing; and everywhere the ancient gnarled olive tree, each composites of several intertwining trunks, some so holed and intricately braided you could see right through them. From the balcony of her apartment, she watched the sun set. The mountains across the water, in a reverse of the morning's display, burned red and peach, then pink to purple. Isolated wisps of cloud made brushstrokes of black on the evening canvas.

This is a thoughtful, entertaining read, and a much more literary book than the cover image or blurb conveys. I highly recommend it.

'Let The Right One In' by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 480 pages; 2008. Translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg.

Let The Right One In is by John Ajvide Lindqvist, a relatively new Swedish author who has made a name for himself as a horror writer.  This, his debut novel, was published under the title Låt den rätte komma in in 2004 and quickly became a bestseller in the author's homeland. Now translated into English by the independent, London-based publisher Quercus, the book is set to win over an international audience of horror fans.

Like most new horror writers who achieve some measure of commercial success, Lindqvist has been compared to Stephen King. There's no doubt that there are some similarities. Aside from the subject matter, there's a complex cast of characters, a small-town setting and a child protagonist, all of which come straight out of the Stephen King school of fiction writing. But Lindqvist manages to capture something that King doesn't. There's an intelligence that resonates off the page. And maybe because it's Swedish, there's a sense that the author is making some kind of social commentary about the places and the circumstances in which some people are forced to live. The book, set in a depressing sink estate, is populated by drunks, glue-sniffers and people on disability benefits.

Lindqvist also tackles a specific element of the genre that King, to my knowledge, has never tackled: the vampire.

On the cover of my edition, the Daily Express says that "Lindqvist has reinvented the vampire novel". Normally I wouldn't hold much stead in anything a British tabloid newspaper said about a book, but in this case I concur. It's got a delightfully different twist, one in which you find yourself egging on the vampire to get away with its despicable blood-sucking habits.

The vampire is actually a pretty girl called Eli. She looks 12 but is actually more than 200 years old. She lives with her 'father', a teacher turned paedophile, in an apartment in Blackeberg, a fully planned suburb on the western outskirts of Stockholm.

One evening Oskar, a 12-year-old boy who lives next door, befriends her in the playground. She warns him that they can never be friends and that he should stay away from her.  But Oskar, who is bullied at school, wets his trousers and is estranged from his drunken father, is desperate for friends and won't take no for an answer. 

Together, the two of them send Morse code messages through their shared bedroom-wall, and forge an unlikely alliance.

Meanwhile, the residents of Blackeberg and surrounding suburbs are living in a state of fear following a series of strange murders. The paranoia grows when the corpse of a missing man is found in a frozen lake. And then things take on an even more frightening twist when Virginia, a 50-year-old woman, is attacked by a child who drops out of a tree and wounds her neck.

Cue more chills and spooky music when Eli's father, who murders children to supply her with fresh blood, is caught abusing a young boy in a cubicle at the local swimming pool. He douses his face with acid to ensure he can't be identified, but manages to survive even though his face has been reduced to a mass of burnt flesh, with just one eye and a black hole for a mouth.

It's all very creepy, but it does take a long time for the narrative to really take effect, perhaps too long, because Lindqvest seems to take forever to set everything in motion. The reader must reach page 248 before Oskar twigs on to the fact that Eli is not all that she seems:

What's wrong with her?
The thought had come to him even as he was in the cellar gathering the bottles together and wiping the blood away with a piece of cloth from the garbage: Eli was a vampire. That explained a lot of things.
That she was never out in the daytime.
That she could see in the dark, which he had come to understand she could. [...]
That she had needed an invitation to come into his room. [...] And he had invited her in. A vampire. A being that lived off other people's blood.

Once this realisation occurs, the momentum does pick up, and the last 100 or so pages are particularly thrilling as the book reaches its gruesome climax.

Although there are many passages of disturbing, stomach-churning violence, for the most part the narrative is quiet and understated. It's so quiet and understated that many readers may find it too dull and plodding.

The vast array of characters, many simply introduced for the purposes of a vignette and never to reappear again, also contributes to a mild sense of confusion and an unwarranted complexity. It doesn't help that some of the major characters, such as the drunks that live on the estate, are very thinly drawn so that you don't get a proper sense of who they are.

But one of the book's strengths is its period setting. The year is 1981, and, unlike David Mitchell's Black Swan Green which is set the year after, the period references are not laboured, but dropped in every now and then just to remind you: Oskar buys a Walkman; he has the double-album Alive by Kiss but thinks Destroyer is better; he plays with a Rubik's cube and watches The Muppets on TV; the school bullies make him scream the catch-phrase from the movie Deliverance; and a Soviet submarine runs aground on the Swedish coast. It's subtle but effective.

Of course, the friendship that develops between Eli and Oskar is also another of the book's strengths. It's the unexpected tenderness that gives the story its special flavour. Ditto for the terrified schoolboy fascinated by violent acts (Oskar keeps a scrapbook of news stories about serial killers) struggling to reconcile his love for a vampire who carries out such acts.

This is an intelligent, knowing novel, not short on thrills and chills, but one which requires patience and commitment on behalf of the reader. But if you'd rather watch the movie, you shouldn't have too long to wait. According to wikipedia, it won the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature and collected the Rotten Tomatoes Critical Consensus Award at Edinburgh Film Festival. I've posted the trailer from TerrorFeed.com below:

 

Oh, and just for a bit of trivia, the author is a huge fan of the British singer Morrissey, from which he "stole" the name of the book, although the Morrissey song is actually called Let The Right One Slip In. Perhaps an error in translation, then?

'The Summer Before the Dark' by Doris Lessing

Fiction - paperback; Flamingo; 236 pages; 2002.

Having recently got over my fear of reading Doris Lessing, I decided to try another book by this Nobel Prize-winning author.

The Summer Before the Dark was first published in 1970. At the time it must have been a very contemporary novel, and perhaps a little controversial, because its central theme is the role of women in society. The main character, Kate Brown, is a domestic goddess who spends one summer rediscovering herself and her place in the world after some 20 years of marriage and motherhood.

It might sound like a relatively dull premise for a novel, but in Lessing's hands the book sings with great story-telling, intellectual insight and drama. Kate Brown is no dull housewife: she's a complex woman suffering what can be best described as empty-nest syndrome. Her grown up children are getting on with their lives and her husband is working in America for an extended period, leaving her to her own devices for a summer.

Good at languages -- Italian, French and Portuguese -- she accepts a temporary translator job at a conference in London for an organisation called Global Food. She does so well and enjoys the work so much, her stint is extended and she is promoted. Before she knows it she is one of the main organisers of another conference, this time in Istanbul, and it is here that she embarks on an illicit affair with a younger man and goes on a European road trip with him.

The affair, however, is disappointing, and stuck in rural Spain with a lover who has fallen ill, she returns to London alone. Here she holes up in a hotel -- the family home has been rented out for the summer -- only to become drastically ill herself. Lonely and depressed, Kate's sanity begins to crumble and there are a few wobbly moments when she tries to make sense of who she is and why her life no longer holds a meaningful purpose.

It's not until she takes a room in a house occupied by a much younger woman that Kate is able to confront her demons and find the courage to forge on with a new life in which her husband and children are no longer her sole focus.

The book is incredibly moving in places -- you really get to feel Kate's pain and anguish as she comes to terms with growing older. But it's Lessing's wry and insightful observations of a woman's sexuality -- and of its often unspoken importance to a woman's sense of self -- that this book comes into its own.  There's a very telling scene in which Kate goes to a restaurant, just prior to the lunch time rush, and finds that her age and her sex have rendered her invisible.

She sat by herself and waited for service. In front of her stood the unvarying British menu. At the other end of the room, a waitress was talking to a customer, an elderly man. She was in no hurry to come over. When she did come she did not look at Kate, but scribbled the order down hastily on a small pad, and went back to talk to the customer, before shouting the order through a hatch into the kitchen. It seemed a long time before the food came. Kate sat on, invisible, apparently, to the waitress and to the other customers: the place was filling now. She was shaking with impatient hunger, the need to cry. The feeling that no one could see her made her want to shout: 'Look, I'm here, can't you see me?' She was not far off that state which in a small child is called a tantrum.

Later she realises that to receive attention, from both men and women alike, she must dress and groom herself appropriately, to put on her 'Mrs Brown' face. Other revelations quickly follow.

The Summer Before the Dark, had you not already guessed, isn't exactly a cheery or pleasurable read, but it's an enlightening one. As a reader not far off Mrs Brown's age (she's in her early 40s) but the product of a different time (I chose a career over children), the book presented me with many issues to cogitate on. I suspect it would make a rather good book group read, because it throws up so many topics for discussion, many of which are still relevant almost 40 years after it was written.

'The Fifth Child' by Doris Lessing

  Fiction - paperback; Flamingo; 160 pages; 2001.

Doris Lessing is one of those authors you know you ought to read but never do. A case in point: I've had both The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist in my possession for more than three years and never once cracked them open. The sheer size of the books and the weight of the subjects contained within, combined with Lessing's awesome literary reputation, have made me doubt my ability to understand and enjoy her work. Easier, then, to leave well alone.

That was until I read John Self's review of The Fifth Child followed in due course by another review of the same book by Isabel from Books and Other Stuff. Maybe it was time to take the plunge? A slim book -- just 160 pages -- seemed the perfect introduction to her work.

And so this is how I came to read my first Doris Lessing last week.

The Fifth Child is billed as a horror story but it's not from the Stephen King school of horror -- it's slightly more subtle but oodles more menacing because of it.

It's about two people -- David and Harriet -- who meet at an office party in the 1960s and get married shortly after. Lessing describes them as "freaks and oddballs", not least because they have old-fashioned views about sex at a time when the sexual revolution was in full swing. But also because in each other they saw what they were looking for:

Someone conservative, old-fashioned, not to say obsolescent; timid, hard to please: this is what other people called them, but there was no end to the unaffectionate adjectives they earned. They defended a stubbornly held view of themselves, which was that they were ordinary and in the right of it, should not be criticised for emotional fastidiousness, abstemiousness, just because these were unfashionable qualities.

With their minds set on living in a big house within commuting distance of London, they purchase a "three-storeyed house, with an attic, full of rooms, corridors, landings... Full of space for children in fact". And then waste no time filling it with offspring -- four children in ready succession -- even though they can barely pay the mortgage.

Fortunately, David has a rich father who helps with the bills, while Harriet's mother, Dorothy, is able to move in on a semi-permanent basis to help with the childcare. This enables the pair to create a welcoming, cosy home visited by a steady stream of relatives. Christmas and Easter become big family events that stretch into week-long parties. It seems an idyllic kind of life on the surface, but underneath there are sores that are beginning to fester: David has to work longer and longer hours in the city to pay for his children's upkeep; Dorothy finds herself being taken for granted and brands the pair "selfish and irresponsible"; and Harriet becomes more and more exhausted with each pregnancy.

It is only when Harriet falls pregnant for the fifth time that things take a turn for the worse. The unborn baby is a "wrestler", causing Harriet so much pain and discomfort she starts taking sedatives on the sly.

The drugs did not seem to be affecting her much: she was willing them to leave her alone and to reach the foetus -- this creature with whom she was locked in a struggle to survive. And for those hours it was quiet, or if it showed signs of coming awake, and fighting her, she took another dose.

When she eventually gives birth to 11-pound baby Ben she notices that he doesn't look quite right. He had a "heavy-shouldered hunched look" and a strange hairline. "He's like a troll, or a goblin or something," she tells David.

This feeling of having produced a non-human baby continues when Ben continually tears at Harriet's breast, roars and bellows to the point of turning white with rage, and stares at her with cold malevolent eyes.

To say anything more would ruin the plot of the book, but essentially Ben's mental development stalls, which has consequences for the entire family. Much of the story hinges on Harriet's relationship to her child and raises that age old dilemma of whether it is nature or nurture that shapes who we become.

If you are thinking that The Fifth Child sounds like a disturbing read, you'd be right. But it is also a memorable, thought-provoking one. The brevity of this book does not make it less interesting or less controversial than a more page-heavy novel, because within this slim volume there are so many issues worth debating: does class structure affect our family lives? to what extent should a mother take responsiblity for her child's misbehaviour? is it responsible to have so many children when you must rely on help to raise them?

Personally, I found the narrative immediately gripping although the fast pace left me breathless at times. Everything seems to move so quickly, and Lessing is brilliant at hurrying things along with a minimal of detail or explanation -- which is a necessity if you are to cover one couple's life from courtship to raising teenage children in the space of 160 pages. I thought it was a rather effortless read and it has now given me enough courage to delve into Lessing's rather extensive back catalogue, the first of which is likely to be the sequel to this book, Ben in the World, which looks at how Ben copes with life as a strange, inhuman adult. Fascinating.

'The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life' by John Leake

Non-fiction - hardcover; Granta Books; 347 pages; 2007.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and no more so than in the case of Jack Unterweger, a convicted murderer hailed as Austria's greatest example of criminal rehabilitation. While serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of 18-year-old Margaret Schäfer in 1976, Jack developed a flair for writing poetry, fiction and non-fiction. His work was so well received he became the darling of the literary elite who campaigned, successfully, for his early release in 1990.

But despite his apparent reform, everything was not quite as it seemed. When four prostitutes disappeared from Vienna's red light district in the first year of Jack's release he was one of the first to write about the crimes. He ingratiated himself with the local police chief and interviewed many of the city's street workers for articles that were published in the press.

Capitalising on new found celebrity, Jack then went to California to research a magazine article about crime in LA. He accompanied  police on their patrols of the city's red light districts. During the time of his visit three prostitutes were brutally murdered. Their deaths, in which they had been beaten, tied up and strangled, bore striking resemblances to the deaths of the Viennese prostitutes.

This book by American journalist John Leake traces Jack's life and the painstaking lengths that police on two continents undertook to charge him with the murder of 11 women. It is an absolutely fascinating story about one man's ability to hoodwink society into thinking he had put his criminal past behind him while living a secret life as a serial killer. What emerges is a portrait of a sociopath who was so careful and clever at carrying out these despicable crimes that it took police many years of hard work to catch him.

The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life is creepy and spine-chilling in places, with so many twists and turns in the narrative that it seems almost too unreal, too fantastical to be true, but Leake never resorts to sensationalism or cheap literary tricks. The tone of this thoroughly researched book (Leake had privileged access to Jack's diaries and interviewed all the major players) is restrained but never dull. It's a well plotted, cleverly crafted investigative piece of non-fiction that had me enthralled from the first page to the satisfying -- and wholly unexpected -- conclusion on the last.

'Venice: Tales of the City' edited by Michelle Lovric

 

Fiction & non-fiction - hardcover; Little, Brown; 448 pages; 2003.

Venice is one of those wonderfully intriguing cities that has inspired artists and writers alike for centuries. London-based author Michelle Lovric is no exception. She has penned several novels set in the watery Italian city, including Carnevale and The Floating Book, but this time around she leaves the writing to others and selects some of her favourite poetry, fiction pieces and non-fiction extracts and brings them together in this varied collection.

"In this anthology," she writes, "the voices of today's Venetians mingle with those of their ancestors, just as they still do on the streets of the city". And she is right: some of the writings included here date back centuries (several have been translated in English here for the first time) and others were written as recently as the late Twentieth Century.

Divided into 14 neat sections (under very specific themes), including "The Watery City" (which looks at how the mythical town was built), "City of Venetians" (which looks at the character of the Venetians) and "City of Flavours" (which looks at Venetian cuisine), Lovric does a brilliant job of bringing together a diverse collection of voices each of whom has something interesting to say about Venice whether fictionalised or rooted in reality. Everyone from Hans Christian Andersen to Ezra Pound is featured -- and they are all introduced in Lovric's charming and easy-to-read style. In fact, I found her biographies of each writer more interesting than their respective writings, which is a shame given that wasn't the purpose of reading this book.

As much as I love Venice, I found this collection a little too broad and lacking depth. I think it might have been a more enjoyable book if there were fewer writers and if the featured extracts were longer -- some here were little longer than a page so I never really got a chance to get a "handle" on the writing. Still, if you're a Venice buff and want something you can dip in and out of (instead of reading it cover to cover as I did) this book will be a worthy one to add to your collection. And it will act as a useful "taster", either for many of the featured writers or Venice herself.

'Ghost Story' by Toby Litt

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 226 pages; 2004.

Agatha and Paddy move into a new house on the south coast. They have a two-year-old son called Max, but Max doesn't live with them. Instead, he is being cared for by Agatha's mother. Why? Because Agatha is grieving for the loss of her daughter Rose, who died in-utero, and is having trouble coping with day-to-day life.

While Paddy commutes to London each day to work, Agatha stays at home and begins to go slightly mad. The bereavement, which is a kind of unspoken pain between the couple, is the cause of Agatha's mental anguish. And in a Yellow Wallpaper type of way, she begins to think that the house is breathing...

Ghost Story is a harrowing read. It's a dark, brooding novel with little light or joy to be found within its 226 pages. But its perfect prose, it's clear-eyed portrayal of a married couple's relationship and it's realistic analysis of how bereavement can overshadow life, makes it worth the effort.

Coupled with the book's preface -- Litt's non-fiction account of his girlfriend's miscarriages -- this tale of love and loss is a particularly heartfelt one.

I wouldn't, however, recommend this to anyone thinking of starting a family or if you are recently bereaved: the pain in these pages might just be too realistic to bear.

Other Toby Litt books reviewed here: deadkidsongs

'The Atom Station' by Halldór Laxness

 

Fiction - paperback; The Harvill Press; 180 pages; 2004. Translated from the Icelandic by Magnus Magnusson.

The Atom Station was first published in 1948 at a time of great political upheaval in Iceland. The American Military had been resident since 1941 (during World War Two) and was in the process of establishing a permanent military base at Keflavík in the south-west of Iceland. This was considered by many Icelanders to be incredibly controversial, not least because it would make the country a potential nuclear target at a time when the horror of Hiroshima was very much present in people's minds.

This is important background detail for anyone wishing to tackle this novel.

It's also important to realise that Iceland has rich -- and very old -- literary roots. The Icelanders' Sagas from the Middle Ages are constantly name-checked -- and helpfully footnoted -- throughout The Atom Station.

This political and cultural history form the backbone of what is essentially a sharp, often witty and sometimes laborious, satire. The story is told through the eyes of a young peasant girl, Ugla, who moves to Reykjavík to take up the position of a house maid for a politician.

In this ever-busy household Ugla is exposed to a world very much foreign to her rural roots. Here she discovers socialism and falls in with a group that is campaigning for the establishment of a childcare nursery paid for by the state.

She also develops a strong feminist streak, later vowing that she wants to be regarded as a "person" and not a "woman".

"What do you mean, a person?"

"Neither an unpaid bondwoman like the wives of the poor, nor a bought madam like the wives of the rich; much less a paid mistress; nor the prisoner of a child which society has disowned. A person amongst persons. I know it's laughable, contemptible, disgraceful and revolutionary that a woman should not wish to be some sort of slave or harlot; but that's the way I am made."

"Don't you want to get a husband?"

"I don't want to get a slave, neither under one name nor another."

Ironically, headstrong Ugla falls pregnant and returns to her country home. But having experienced a taste of city life, she is soon drawn back and becomes reacquainted with her past employer, whom, she later discovers has "sold" the country to the United States. I'm not sure what this book is trying to say: that the state is more powerful than the individual and hence there's no use fighting it, or that capitalism, in the end, corrupts us all?

I'm sure that more highly attuned political minds than mine would have much to say about The Atom Station. But I found it impossible to like, although I tried to like it very much. I appreciate its worthy aims and its high ambitions and the fact it was borne from an important era in Iceland's recent history, but I struggled with the narrative, which occasionally went off in strange tangents. Perhaps a proper understanding and familiarity with the sagas might have helped me with this.

I loved the character of Ugla, however. She was forthright, strong and had a questioning mind. But even she wasn't enough to make me fall in love with this book in the same way that I fell in love with Iceland when I visited it several years ago...

'Acqua Alta' by Donna Leon

Fiction - paperback; Pan Books; 399 pages; 1996.

Acqua Alta is the fifth book in Donna Leon's series of crime novels set in Venice starring Commissario Guido Brunetti.

In this book we are re-acquainted with American art historian Brett Lynch, who appeared in Leon's first book Death at La Fenice, and her lesbian lover, the beautiful operatic diva Flavia Petrelli.

Brett, who organised a recent exhibition of Chinese pottery in Venice, is brutally attacked by two men, who warn her off keeping an appointment with Dottor Semenzato, the director of the museum at the Doges Palace.

While Brett recovers in hospital, Guido Brunetti launches an investigation, seeking a motive for the crime. Amid the winter rains that lead to acqua-alta (high tide), he slowly unravels a network of lies and corruption in the art world...

Once again Leon delivers a wonderfully evocative novel in which Venice plays a central -- and memorable -- role. In many ways the city itself is like a main character, complete with its own distinct and quirky personality.

And while her characterisation and story-telling abilities are good, the writing itself is fairly mundane -- this is no literary masterpiece. Nonetheless it's an exciting read, with enough surprises and action-packed drama to keep the reader turning the pages.

The violence is restrained, so if you like your crime novels to be a little more hard-hitting and realistic, this book will only appeal as a 'light' read. Personally, I would not recommend these books to crime fiction aficionados, but if you rarely read crime books I expect they will appeal enormously.

Other Donna Leon books reviewed on this site: Death at La Fenice and A Noble Radiance.

'An Accidental Terrorist' by Steven Lang

Fiction - paperback; University of Queensland Press; 330 pages; 2006.

An Accidental Terrorist is a debut novel that was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2006 and has recently earned Stephen Lang the UTS Award for New Writing in the 2006 NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Even before publication it won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Manuscript from an Emerging Queensland Author 2004.

So I had relatively high expectations when I first began reading this story, which is set in a small town on the southern coast of NSW (in Australia).

Here, amid the old growth forests, tensions are running high between a logging company, forestry workers and local conservationists, a distinctly Australian story that hasn't been much explored in popular fiction (as far as I am aware).

Kelvin, a young 20-something, who has lead a somewhat depressing and rootless existence on the edge, finds himself returning to his home town, where he shacks up with the beguiling Jessica, a lawyer turned would-be writer. On a neighbouring property Carl, an American with a mysterious past, offers Kelvin work building fences on his land.

But when Kelvin makes some unlikely alliances at The Farm, the name of a communal house where a group of hippies live, he risks losing his newfound sense of security and future happiness.

Without wishing to spoil the plot, let me say that the climax is worth waiting for. Unfortunately, because it is told from too many points of view, the tension dissipates amid the readers' confusion.

That said, Kelvin's foray into the bush, on the run, is beautifully told: you are never quite sure whether he is going to survive the escapade or not.

On the whole An Accidental Terrorist is a well paced novel that richly captures the beauty and wonder of Australia's old growth forests. Some of Lang's descriptions are so evocative you can almost smell the eucalyptus wafting up off the page.

His characterisation is also spot on, and Kelvin's back story, revealed in dribs and drabs like a slowly dripping tap, is very well done: slightly disturbing and full of pathos without sentimentality.

But there are flaws in this novel too. The reader is never quite sure whose story this is: is it Kevin's, or Jessica's, or Carl's? There are too many different points of view all vying for attention.

Similarly, the reader is given few clues as to the era within which the book is set. It threw me completely when, about a third-of-the-way through, I realised it was the early 1980s, as I had mistakenly thought it was set in modern times.

But the thing that puzzled me most was this: what was Kelvin's motivation for getting involved with the lads from The Farm? What made him do what he did? And was it really an act of terrorism or merely an act of vandalism?

If nothing else, this book asks more questions than it answers - often a sign of a good book, although in this case I feel that such questions may have been nothing more than oversights rather than any deliberate attempt to get readers thinking.

Finally, a quick word on the format of this book. At 135mm wide by 180mm high it is a delightfully "squat" book that's easy to hold and weighs very little despite it being 25mm thick. I've not seen this size of novel before, and wonder if it's typical of UQP?

'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' by Marina Lewycka

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Books; 336 pages; 2006.

When 84-year-old British-based Ukrainian widower Nikolai Mayevskyj announces that he is in love with a woman young enough to be his daughter eyebrows are raised. But when he marries the object of his affections - the delightfully eccentric Valentina, a gold-digging Ukrainian with a pair of over-sized breasts, bottle-blonde hair and a rocket-like mission to obtain a British passport - all hell breaks loose.

Nikolai's daughters, the upstanding divorcee Vera and the left-wing sociologist Nadia, put their lifelong differences aside to protect their father from his own stupidity. The pair band together to thwart Valentina's less than honourable schemes - with mixed results.

As Valentina bleeds Nikolai dry in pursuit of her much-desired Western lifestyle, the ostrich-like Nikolai concentrates not on reeling her in but in continuing to write his book about the history of tractors (hence this novel's title).

Set in the Fenlands of England (more specifically Peterborough), A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a delightfully comic novel about sibling rivalry, family ties and the secrets we keep.

But there's a darker edge to this book, too. There's plenty of social and political issues to give the story some gravitas - illegal immigration, spousal abuse and the greed and consumerism of the West to name but a few. The back story regarding the Mayevskyj family's arrival in the UK, having survived internment in a German war camp, also provides much food for thought and is a nice balance to the slapstick comedy and social satire that permeates much of the book.

My only concern is that the novel is not entirely politically correct. For instance, Valentina, while a hilarious, if somewhat nasty, character is slightly stereotyped. However, given the author's own Ukrainian background I think she has licence to poke fun at her own people, so I will forgive her this one foible!

Interestingly enough, I found A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian to be in a similar vein to Carrie Tiffany's Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living - right down to the weird book title, Orange Prize nomination and agricultural references! Both are enjoyable reads with plenty of laughs and a touch of pathos.

'Motherless Brooklyn' by Jonathan Lethem

 

Fiction - paperback; Vintage Books USA; 336 pages; 2000.

Motherless Brooklyn opens with a small-time mobster, Frank Minna, dying of fatal gunshot wounds, leaving his limo service cum detective agency rudderless. One of his underlings lands in jail and two others vie for his position.

Lionel Essrog, one of four orphan boys taken in by Frank years earlier to help run the 'agency', feels his world falling apart. Determined to find out who killed Frank - and why - leads him on an unforgettable and highly dangerous adventure involving gangsters, Japanese monks, the victim's angry widow, a giant and a garbage cop.

To complicate matters further, Lionel has Tourette's syndrome, so that he cannot just blend into the background: everything he does is peppered with gunfire verbal barking and annoying repetitive motions (for instance, touching people's collars over and over). Is it any wonder he is known as the Human Freakshow?

Eventually, after following several false leads, Lionel begins to realise how he has been conned by a man who was not the fine upstanding citizen he had lead the orphans to believe he was. But still Lionel plods on to discover the truth about Frank's (life and) death while trying to avoid the bullets and the bashing that may bring his own life to a distinct and bloody end.

All in all, Motherless Brooklyn wasn't the book I had expected it to be. How I had wanted to love it! I had heard so many good things about it, I was totally convinced that I would find it difficult to put down.

But, for one reason or another, this novel failed to live up to my (high) expectations. Which is a shame.

In many ways, the surreal nature of this book reminded me of Chuck Palahniuk's stuff. The writing is highly inventive and, at times, laugh out loud funny.

The characters are quirky, if a little on the creepy side, but totally convincing. Similarly, the plot is well structured and believable.

The setting is also authentic and perfectly captures the seedy, watch-your-back side of Brooklyn life. It feels suitable grungy, dangerous and unpredictable.

What, then, was the problem?

As a reader I think I just failed to identify with any of the characters. I did not feel for Lionel's predicament, I did not really care whether he solved the crime and so, when I put this book down I found it difficult to pick up again. There was nothing propelling me to read on.

While I appreciated Lethem's ability to capture Lionel's verbal tics so very well (a literary feat in itself, twisting the language in clever, unexpected ways), the 'trick' wore thin after awhile and began to bore me. It felt a little like a one-trick pony.

And as much as I always enjoy reading about other worlds, the world presented in this book was a little too full-on male - violent, macho and red-blooded - for me.

'A Noble Radiance' by Donna Leon

Fiction - paperback; Arrow; 289  pages; 1999.

This is book number 7 in Donna Leon's crime series featuring Commissario Brunetti, but only the second one that I have read.

In this book Brunetti reopens an investigation into a kidnapping that was never solved. The badly decomposing body of the victim, a young man from a noble Venetian family, has been discovered on farm land in the Italian Dolomites several years after his disappearance.

Brunetti has the difficult task of breaking the news to the victim's family and then sets about trying to work out who murdered him and why.

As a story it is a relatively interesting and fast-paced one. But I had some problems with the book as a whole.

**Please note there are spoilers below**

Perhaps because I have only read the first book in the series and then skipped ahead five books to read this one I have missed some of the subtleties in characterisation that Leon has introduced in each novel as the series has progressed.

For instance, this was my first introduction to Signorina Elletra, the Vice-Questore's secretary, and she seemed too good to be true, saving Brunetti much leg work because of her connections (mainly old boyfriends!) and ability to use a computer. I wanted her to falter somewhere along the line, to come across some kind of "road block" that would test her perseverance and problem solving abilities, but it never happened - it made me wonder who was the real detective here: her or Brunetti?

I also found some of the dialogue pointless, and one thread of the narrative - Brunetti's father-in-law reveals that his daughter is unhappy in her marriage - turned out to be an unnecessary red herring that quite frankly pissed me off. I'm still not sure what Leon hoped to achieve by introducing this additional complication and then resolving it in such an unsatisfactory manner other than to annoy her readers.

There were some aspects of the investigation that seemed a little lacking too. Aside from the fact that a lot of Brunetti's leg work is done by his superior's secretary (see above), when he does venture out to do some investigation of his own, he seems to let his interviewees walk all over him. One man even tries to shoot at him and his colleague and gets not so much as a warning. Perhaps that's the done thing in Italy?

Venice itself was also relegated to a minor role in this book, which is a shame, because it added so much atmosphere to Death at La Fenice. But perhaps this was largely due to the fact that the crime under investigation happened outside of the city - it only fell to Brunetti because the family were Ventian. 

That aside, the book isn't entirely awful. The pacing was good (not too drawn out) and the twist at the end was a nice surprise and packed a powerful punch. But reading this has, in some ways, confirmed why I don't normally read detective serials: they don't really stretch me as a reader and I don't think they stretch the writers much either, because they can sit back and rely on using characters that they've already invented without putting terribly much effort in. Or am I being overly harsh?

Still, I haven't given up on the series. I will read another Leon book, but I think it might help if I stick to the order in which they have been written.

'A Gesture Life' by Chang-Rae Lee

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Putnam Inc USA; 356 pages; 2000.

Every so often you come across a book that makes you rejoice in the sheer beauty of the English language and the power of the novel to change your perspective on so many different things.

In A Gesture Life Chang-Rae Lee has delivered one of the most elegantly restrained pieces of fiction I have ever read and yet, despite the unhurried prose, it brims with suspense, so much so I was reluctant to put the book down and read it within a matter of days.

It's a rare, almost perfect novel that provides such an eloquent insight into the nature of human relationships that I don't honestly know how to condense the magic of this profoundly moving and deeply unsettling story into one short review that will do A Gesture Life any kind of justice.

In fact, I'd argue that the blurb on my Penguin edition, doesn't even come close to explaining what this story is about, and I suspect that most people would overlook the book entirely should they stumble upon it in a bookstore or library. Personally, I can't even remember why I bought it, other than the ringing one-word endorsements - "Stunning," New York Times Book Review; "Unforgettable," USA Today; "Mesmerising," San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - on the front cover must have spoken to me on some deeply unconscious level. Even so, this book lay unread in my bedside cabinet for nine months before I decided to pick it up.

And once I picked it up, I was taken on a sagacious journey that allowed me to walk in another man's shoes. The fact that that man was an elderly Japanese-American speaks volumes for Chang-rae Lee's abilities as a story teller.

Weaving dual narratives, set a generation apart, Lee is able to build up a rounded portrait of a man, Franklin 'Doc' Hata, who spends his life adapting to a new culture by behaving with abject politeness in order to be accepted, first, as an orphaned Korean boy adopted by a Japanese family, and then as an immigrant in America where he runs a medical supply store in a well-to-do suburb of New York.

Here in Bedley Run 'Doc' leads a quiet, tranquil and commercially successful existence. He buys an expensive house, adopts a Korean girl, Sunny, and becomes romantically involved with a local widow.

But 'Doc's life, his passivity, his politeness, covers a much deeper malaise that is revealed through a series of seamless flashbacks. These reveal the horrors he confronted while a medical officer with the Imperial Army during the Second World War. While interned in a Burmese camp he oversaw the health of a group of 'comfort girls', young Korean women held captive to 'service' the soldiers, which deeply disturbed him.

I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that it is these expertly written flashbacks that make this novel what it is. They are superbly paced and enrich the present story by giving the reader little nuggets of information that help illuminate Doc's modern-day behaviour: the shaky rapport he has with his daughter, why he values his standing in the Bedley Run community, how he cannot allow himself to be emotionally frank with his lover - or anyone else for that matter.

The impact of the flashbacks is heightened by the horror of the narrative which focuses on some astonishingly brutal, gruesome and obscene scenes, some of which reduced me to tears. This is in stark contrast to the suburban melancholia that characterises the rest of the book.

A Gesture Life is a beautifully moving novel that weaves the past with the present. The longing, regret and sadness resonate off the page. But it's not without hope - friendship, forgiveness, redemption and atonement are all explored. And by the last page you can't help thinking that Doc's pain might have been worth it in the end...

'Death at La Fenice' by Donna Leon

Fiction - paperback; Arrow Books; 338  pages; 2004.

Until very recently I was not aware that Donna Leon's books were set in Venice. I had seen her books cluttering shelves in every book store I've ever haunted but for some weird reason I had never been inclined to pick one up, much less read one. Silly me.

Death at La Fenice, first published in 1992, introduces us to Leon's creation, the quiet family man and police detective Guido Brunetti. It also introduces us to the mysterious, romantic beauty of Venice's canals and alleyways, her bridges, beautiful buildings and sense of history.

In this crime tale, Brunetti investigates the murder of a German conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer, who is poisoned during a break in the performance of the opera La Traviata at the world famous opera house La Fenice*.

Wellauer, much admired in classical music and opera circles, has clocked up many enemies because of his right-wing views, homophobia and extra-marital affairs. But who was motivated enough to kill him? This is what Brunetti must find out.

I quite enjoyed this book, although I feel it suffered somewhat because I was reading Arnaldur Indriðason's Tainted Blood at the same time, and the two books, while crime novels, really shouldn't be compared.

Leon's novel was more pedestrian and written in a slightly old-fashioned way, in the sense that the story moved forward chapter by chapter with little back story and no parallel narrative. Her main character, Brunetti, was far less flawed and troubled than Tainted Blood's Inspector Erlendur and hence seemed less developed (although I'm sure with nine other books in the series, there's plenty of time for him to evolve).

All in all, Death at La Fenice was an enjoyable romp through Venice, even if I did guess the ending long before it was revealed. I'll be intrigued to read more books in Leon's series.

* The same opera house that burned down in 1996 and was the focus of John Berendt's recent non-fiction book City of Falling Angels, also reviewed on this site.

'I Know This Much is True' by Wally Lamb

Fiction - paperback; Harper Torch/Regan Books; 894 pages; 2003.

This book, originally published in 1998, is an epic family drama that is difficult to put down.

It opens with Dominick Birdsey's twin brother, Thomas, committing an atrociously disturbing act in the Three Rivers, Connecticut  Public Library. It is October 1990 and the act is a form of protest against the impending Gulf War.

From here the reader is transported into a world of pain, longing, confusion and anger. By jumping backwards and forwards in time we learn of the Birdsey twins' upbringing, about their lives with a miserable, abusive step-father and their weak-willed defenseless mother. Intertwined in this narrative is another about the Birdsey's maternal grandfather, an Italian immigrant whose arrogance and misogynist ways richochet through the generations.

Much of the book centres on Dominick's fight to rescue the schizophrenic Thomas from a barbaric mental health institution. Throw in one doomed relationship with a floozy a decade younger than himself, a failed marriage, a cot death, a mother dying from cancer and a couple of horrendous accidents (in a car and off a ladder) — sounds like a soap opera, doesn't it? — and is it any wonder that the narrator spends most of this tale in therapy? 

I Know This Much Is True is very reminiscent of Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides. It's a heart-wrenching tale about one man's search for forgiveness and of how he comes to terms with a dark, emotional past. It's received rave reviews, been added to Oprah's Book Club and topped the New York bestseller list — with good reason. This is not so much a book to read but to live with and absorb. I thought it was brilliant.

'To Die For' by Carol Lee

Nonfiction - paperback; Arrow Books; 287 pages; 2004.

Not my usual cup of tea, but I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into an unfamiliar world. Carol Lee writes candidly about her friend-come-substitute-daughter's battle with anorexia. She charts Emma's difficult childhood and tries to examine the reasons for her strange and dangerous relationship to food.

During the acute part of her illness Emma hovered close to death; when she was 15 years old she weighed just a little over five-and-a-half stone. Over the next five years her weight fluctuated up and down, in radical increments, as she swung between bingeing on hidden sweets and other foodstuffs, and then starving herself. This had a negative impact on almost all facets of her life, especially her fraught relationship with her mother who seemed unable to give Emma the love and attention she craved. Ultimately, Emma found herself unprepared for the real world, barely able to function as a young adult because she lacked the confidence and the skills to do even the simplest of tasks like deciding what clothes to wear and how to buy stamps in the post office.

By interspersing entries from Emma's diaries, all of which are heartbreakingly revealing (it almost felt wrong to be reading them because they were so painfully frank), Lee builds up an almost complete picture of Emma's illness and her battle to recover. The only aspect missing, I felt, was Emma's mother's side of the story: how did she feel about this? and how had it changed her?

All in all, an honest and revealing look at a terrible disease. It blows away many myths and should be required reading for anyone who is suffering, or knows someone who is suffering, from an eating disorder.