Reading Matters

'The Emigrants' by W.G. Sebald

 

Paperback - fiction; Vintage; 256 pages; 2002. Translated from the German by Michael Hulse.

Winfried Georg ("Max") Sebald is one of those writers I've been meaning to read for years, but it wasn't until Robert McCrum, writing in The Guardian earlier this year, named him as one of three modern greats from the past 15 years, that I thought I really must get around to trying him. (Interestingly, The Guardian has an entire section devoted to Sebald on its website. His books The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz were also named on The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read list.)

The Emigrants, first published in 1992 and translated into English in 1996, heralded Sebald as a writer to watch. He apparently had a rather meteoric rise in the literary world, with all kinds of praise thrown his way, including a suggestion that he should win the Nobel Prize. But tragically all this came to nothing when Sebald was killed in a car accident in 2001, aged just 57.

Knowing of his tragic demise makes reading this book even more of a poignant experience, for The Emigrants is a melancholy book about grief and loss told from the perspective of four German Jews coming to terms with the events of the Second World War. It's a strangely beguiling book, a weird mix of fiction, memoir and history. To complicate matters further, it lacks a plot, all the characters are told through the prism of other character's memoirs, and the narrative meanders all over the place. The text is also littered with black and white photographs, none of which are captioned.

But despite these strange idiosyncrasies, the prose is eloquent and hypnotic, even if Sebald has a penchant for overly long sentences. And, somewhat surprisingly, it's also highly readable and addictive. I ate this one up hungrily in the course of a weekend.

The book is divided into four parts, each one telling the story of a different exile: Dr Henry Selwyn; Paul Bereyter; Ambros Adelwarth; and Max Ferber. Their individual tales are linked by the unnamed narrator (believed to be a thinly veiled version of Sebald himself), who explores their histories and eventually comes to realise the devastating and occasionally long-lasting consequences of the Third Reich on their lives. Suicide, depression and displacement are never far away.

This is a sober and moving book about what it is like to have your country stolen from you. It was my first introduction to Sebald; I'm confident it won't be my last.

'The Lonely Londoners' by Sam Selvon

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 160 pages; 2006.

One grim winter evening, when it had a kind of unrealness about London, with a fog sleeping restlessly over the city and the lights showing in the blur as if it is not London at all but some strange place on another planet, Moses Aloetta hop on a number 46 bus at the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to go to Waterloo to meet a fellar who was coming from Trinidad on the boat-train.

So begins Sam Selvon's bittersweet story about a group of West Indian immigrants living in 1950s London. It's a truly evocative look at a city through the jaded eyes of a black man, Moses Aloetta, a veteran Londoner who somewhat reluctantly welcomes newcomers from his homeland and shows them the ropes. ("I don't know these people at all," he tells one of his friends, "yet they coming to me as if I is some liaison officer, and I catching my arse as it is, how could I help them out?")

But having earned a reputation as a "good fellar to contact, that he would help them get place to stay and work to do", Moses finds himself taking Henry "Sir Galahad" Oliver under his wing. Galahad is irrepressibly upbeat and optimistic; he's also thick-skinned, turning up in the dead of a London winter wearing nothing but "an old grey tropical suit and a pair of watchekong" (crepe-soled shoes). He doesn't even have any luggage with him.

The Lonely Londoners follows the ups and downs of Galahad, and others like him, who arrive in London, thinking the roads are paved with gold, but then find that life is tough, that everything is expensive and that the white population is wary of black faces (or "spades" as they are called throughout this book) despite the "open door" policy of letting citizens from the colonies settle in Britain.

There's no real plot to speak of, because this is essentially a collection of vignettes about various immigrants and the different ways in which they adapt and change to suit their new environment. It's quite dark and depressing in places, as you come to experience each character's slow dawning that London is not the place they thought it would be, that it's a bleak, alien town, far removed from the sunnier climes from which they came.

There's a wonderful scene near the beginning of the novel which captures this sudden sense of alienation perfectly. Galahad is braving the morning rush hour for the first time and when he sees so many people bustling about the tube station "a feeling of fright and loneliness come on him all of a sudden".

The sun shining, but Galahad never see the sun look like how it looking now. No heat from it, it just there in the sky like a force-ripe orange. When he look up the colour of the sky so chocolate it make him more frighten. It have a kind of melancholy aspect about the morning that making him shiver. He have a feeling is about seven o'clock in the evening: when he look at clock on top of a building he see it only half-past ten in the morning.

Anyone who has experienced a London winter for the first time will know this feeling well; the nights stretch into 17-hour extravaganzas and you're lucky if you see any daylight at all if you work in an office. This feels alien enough without having to worry about where you're going to live and work and whether you've got enough money for the bus fare!

Selvon describes this netherworld existence, including the cramped bedsits, visits to the dole queue ("a kind of place where hate and disgust and avarice and malice and sympathy and sorrow and pity all mix up") and the liming (a Caribbean expression for "hanging out"), so beautifully it's easy to get caught up in the lives depicted here. But the best part is seeing how the city eventually works it charms on them, so that, in the end, they find themselves feeling at home, or, as Galahad puts it, "when the sweetness of summer get in him he say he would never leave the old Brit'n as long as he live".

As you will have noticed from the quotations I've used, the book is written in a kind of Jamaican patois, or, as Shusheila Nasta writes in the introduction, "a creolized voice" which lends it a lovely, intimate, Calypso rhythm, and a sense that you really are in the heads of these Caribbean immigrants. 

The Lonely Londoners is part of a trilogy; I'm looking forward to reading the next two as soon as I am able.

'A Far Cry From Kensington' by Muriel Spark

Fiction - hardcover; Virago Modern Classics; 208 pages; 2008.

The late Muriel Spark is one of those writers whose back catalogue is so long and eclectic it's almost impossible to know where to start. I read Aiding and Abetting last year, because I was intrigued by the real life disappearance of Lord Lucan upon which the novel is based. Having seen KevinfromCanada's glowing review of A Far Cry From Kensington last month I decided this novel, first published in 1988, was the next to try.

I treated myself to a lovely Virago Modern Classics edition, featuring an introduction by Ali Smith, and found myself reading the entire book in just two longish sittings. To say I was utterly charmed by it would probably be an understatement. This is a deliciously enjoyable story that is so perfectly constructed it's almost impossible to find fault with it -- on any level. The prose is simple, the characters believable and the plot expertly drawn, so that you're never quite sure where it's going to take you and then feel overwhelmingly satisfied when you arrive at its destination.

The story is narrated by Mrs Hawkins, a war widow, looking back on her life in London some 30 years earlier when, in 1954, she lived in a South Kensington rooming house and worked in publishing. She was only 28 at the time but had a matronly air about her.

There was something about me, Mrs Hawkins, that invited confidences. I was abundantly aware of it, and indeed abundance was the impression I gave. I was massive in size, strong-muscled, huge-bosomed, with wide hips, hefty long legs, a bulging belly and fat backside; I carried an ample weight with my five-foot-six of height, and was healthy with it. It was, of course, partly this physical factor that disposed people to confide in me. I looked comfortable.

Even her boss, Martin York, of the struggling publishing firm Ullswater Press, confides in her, inviting her to his office for a minute ("A minute meant an hour, sometimes more"), where he would stand at his window, or sit in his leather armchair, and regale her with his thoughts. (Despite his confiding tone, he never reveals that he's carrying out fraudulent activities for which he's later arrested and imprisoned for seven years.)

But her forthright manner and her maxim that "no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest" lands her in hot water. When a purple-prosed would-be writer, Hector Bartlett, starts stalking her in order to get his work published by Ullswater Press, she tells him in no uncertain terms that he is a pisseur de copie, a French phrase for a hack writer who urinates copy. Unfortunately, for Mrs Hawkins, Mr Bartlett is having an affair with a well regarded author, Emma Loy, who has a lot of powerful sway in the book industry. You can guess what happens. Mrs Hawkins not only loses her job, her candid admission (and Mr Bartlett) follows her wherever she goes, and comes back to haunt her in more ways than one...

Meanwhile, back at the rooming house, one of the tenants, Wanda, an immigrant Polish dressmaker, receives a poison pen letter accusing her of "not declaring your income to the Authorities". Wanda almost has a nervous breakdown over this, because she's petrified of being deported back to her homeland. This is where the ever-dependable Mrs Hawkins steps in to do a bit of detective sleuthing to see who might write such a nasty letter. Her efforts come to nothing. It's only when the letter writer phones Wanda to warn her off, that things take a sinister turn for the worse and Mrs Hawkins finds herself being accused of the very crime she's trying to investigate.

So what A Far Cry From Kensington delivers is a two-pronged narrative, one that focuses on the book publishing industry in 1954 and Mrs Hawkins' career as an editor (this makes fascinating reading in itself), and another that focuses on a sinister campaign to frighten a lodger out of her wits, but to what end?

What makes this novel work so wonderfully is, of course, the detail that brings the book trade and post-war London to life. But it's also the sparkling wit (I laughed out loud several times), the delicious characters (Hector Bartlett, for instance, seems as frightful as his prose) and the seamless weaving of two different narratives that are expertly drawn together right at the very end to deliver a really satisfying conclusion.

'The Murder Farm' by Andrea Maria Schenkel

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 181 pages; 2009. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell.

There were four things going for Andrea Maria Schenkel's The Murder Farm even before I started reading it: it's a crime novel; the author's won several awards for it; it's foreign; and it's from Quercus, one of my favourite publishers. So, when I cracked it open earlier this afternoon, I expected to enjoy it. I just didn't realise how much I would enjoy it.

Yes, this is one of those books that draws the reader in and takes you to an unfamiliar time and place. It's so believable you can feel the story or its setting -- in this case an isolated farm in Germany in the 1950s -- on your skin.

But what's most intriguing about this debut novel is its structure, a refreshing take on the crime genre in which the story is told via a series of "testimonies" conducted by an unnamed narrator. From these we learn that the Dankers -- a husband, wife, adult daughter and two young grandchildren -- have never been well liked, so when they are found slaughtered in their home, along with their new maid, there are plenty of likely motives for the crime. But even the village grapevine, which goes into overdrive, is filled with conflicting theories and stories, so it's hard to distinguish fact from gossip.

Like the best crime fiction, Schenkel offers a steady drip feed of information, dotting little clues here and there to give the reader a reason to keep turning the pages in the hope to discover exactly what happened and who might have done it. The prose style is clinical and clipped throughout, but that only adds to the bleak atmosphere of the book, helped in part by beautiful descriptions of the weather:

There's a milky white veil over the landscape. Mist, typical for this time of year. The first swathes of it are drifting over from the outskirts of the woods towards the meadow and the house. It's late afternoon and the day will soon be coming to an end. Dusk is slowly gathering.

Such vivid scene-setting makes the story seem all the more chilling, as does the period in which the story is set. It might be ten years after the end of the Second World War but people are still closed off, still blind to the very things going on under their noses, because it's easier to get on with your own life that way.

The Murder Farm is fiction but it's highly reminscent of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, so if you read that book and liked it, you're sure to enjoy this one just as much. It's a cracking read-in-one-sitting type of book, and one that marks Schenkel as a writer to watch.

'The Aran Islands' by J. M. Synge

 

Non fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 208 pages; 1992.

At the turn of the 19th century, Irish poet and playwright John Millington Synge made numerous visits to the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland. He had been encouraged to make his first visit in 1897 by his friend, William Butler Yeats, who told him: "Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression."

I wanted to read this book, because I had imagined it to be one of those oh-so authentic travelogues that would tell me what it was like to live in a remote place at a time when tourism was not commonplace. And that, my friends, is pretty much exactly what I got, along with a healthy dose of fairy stories and some wonderful descriptions of breath-taking scenery.

As Tim Robinson points out in the introduction, the book is completely self-sufficient in the sense that Synge never explains why he went to the Aran Islands nor what impact it was to have on the rest of his life. But we know now that he spent his first summer there shortly after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease (then completely untreatable) and that after his final visit, some five years later, he achieved extraordinary success with his play The Playboy of the Western World first published in 1907, the same year as The Aran Islands was published. He died just two years later.

The Aran Islands records the day-to-day lives of Irish peasants living in small fishing communities on one of the most rugged and windswept islands in the world. Here's Synge's first impression of the island as he wanders along its "one good roadway":

I have seen nothing so desolate. Grey floods of water were sweeping everywhere upon the limestone, making at times a wild torrent of the road, which twined continually over low hills and cavities in the rock or passed between a few small fields of potatoes or grass hidden away in corners that had shelter. Whenever the cloud lifted I could see the edge of the sea below me on the right, and the naked ridge of the island above me on the other side. Occasionally I passed a lonely chapel or schoolhouse, or a line of stone pillars with crosses above them and inscriptions asking a prayer for the soul of the person they commemorated.

But while a great deal of this book is about the landscape and the terrain and the ever-present roaring sea, it is also about the people whom he befriends along the way. And here, huddled around turf fires, he not only perfects his Irish but collects stories and folklore from local residents. On his first visit he meets a blind man who believes in the "superiority of his stories over all other stories in the world".

Afterward he told me how one of his children had been taken by the fairies.
One day a neighbour was a passing, and she said, when she saw it on the road, 'That's a fine child.'
Its mother tried to say, 'God bless it,' but something choked the words in her throat.
A while later they found a wound on its neck, and for three nights the house was filled with noises.
'I never wear a shirt at night,' he said, 'but I got up out of my bed, all naked as I was, when I heard the noises in the house, and lighted a light, but there was nothing in it.'
Then a dummy came and made signs of hammering nails in a coffin.
The next day the seed potatoes were full of blood, and the child told his mother that he was going to America.
'That night it died, and believe me,' said the old man, 'the fairies were in it.'

Synge also records the harsh conditions in which the island's tiny population lives and the difficulties that confront them in terms of feeding and clothing themselves adequately. His description of poverty-stricken villagers is, at times, heartbreaking. But he also enjoys experiencing the primitiveness of the culture, such as sailing on the ocean in a curagh -- "a rude canvas canoe of a model that has served primitive races since men first went on the sea" -- and using handmade articles from natural materials -- cradles, churns, baskets and the like -- which "seem to exist as a natural link between the people and the world that is about them". I particularly loved his descriptions of the island's fashions:

The simplicity and unity of the dress increases in another way the local air of beauty. The women wear red petticoats and jackets of the island wool stained with madder, to which they usually add a plaid shawl twisted around their chests and tied at the back. When it rains they throw another petticoat over their heads with the waistband around their faces, or, if they are young, they use a heavy shawl like those worn in Galway. Occasionally other wraps are worn, and during the thunderstorm I arrived in, I saw several girls with men's waistcoats buttoned around their bodies. Their skirts do not come much below the knee, and show their powerful legs in the heavy indigo stockings with which they are all provided.

Because Synge makes several visits over a five-year period he is able to notice small changes to the culture with each visit he makes. Take this example, written during his fifth and final visit, in which he realises that progress has made its mark, and not necessarily in a good way:

I am in the north island again, looking out with a singular sensation to the cliffs across the sound. It is hard to believe that those hovels I can just see in the south are filled with people whose lives have the strange quality that is found in the oldest poetry and legend. Compared with them the falling off that has come with the increased prosperity of this island is full of discouragement. The charm which the people over there share with the birds and flowers has been replaced here by the anxiety of men who are eager for gain. The eyes and expression are different, though the faces are the same, and even the children here seem to have an indefinable modern quality that is absent from the men of Inishman.

The Aran Islands is a fascinating account of another culture in another time confronted by development, or, as the blurb on the back of my Penguin edition so eloquently puts it, "the passionate exploration of an island community still embedded in its ancestral ways but solicited by modernism". Not necessarily an easy read, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

If you're interested in reading the book for yourself, a free version is available online at Google Books.

'The Monster of Florence' by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

Non-fiction - hardcover; Virgin Books; 336 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Last year I read an amazing true-crime book called The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life by John Leake about a journalist who reported on the brutal murders he himself had committed. It was one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" books -- and I loved it.

The Monster of Florence is another true-crime book hugely reminiscent of The Vienna Woods Killer. A collaboration between an American crime thriller writer and an Italian investigative journalist, the book traces a series of brutal double-murders in and around the hills of Florence between 1968 and 1985 and then, in a bizarre twist of fate, reveals how the authors themselves became suspects. The fiction writer, Douglas Preston, is interrogated, accused of being an accessory to murder and of planting false evidence, and told to leave the country; the journalist, Mario Spezi, is thrown into jail and accused of being the Monster of Florence himself.

The book opens with Preston explaining how he moved to a stone farmhouse in Florence with his wife and two children in August 2000. He planned to write a murder mystery set in Italy, but when he met Mario Spezi, a local crime reporter (in order to learn more about Italian police procedures) he discovered something that made him change his mind. Apparently a serial killer, dubbed the Monster of Florence, had murdered two young lovers in the olive grove outside Preston's front door. His interest was piqued: perhaps it might be more interesting to write a true-crime book.

The first half of The Monster of Florence tells the story of the seven couples -- fourteen people in total -- murdered while making love in the hills surrounding Florence by a serial killer who has never been found. As a crime reporter, Spezi made a career out of investigating the murders and their subsequent police investigations, and had garnered unparalleled knowledge and expertise on the crimes. But he also became a thorn in the side of the police, often showing up weaknesses in their investigative procedures and calling their credibility into question.

The second half takes on a new twist, explaining how the authors, working in tandem, had discovered new evidence which they believed pinpointed the killer.  The police, already annoyed that Spezi was continually stealing their thunder, turned the investigation onto their detractors, with devastating consequences.

This is a rip-roaring read, more exciting than any crime thriller Preston could make up himself, and it barrels along at lightning quick pace. I overshot two lunch hours because I was so caught up in this too-weird-to-be-true story.

But, more importantly, this is a book that highlights the dark underbelly of Italian society and the shadowy, often corrupt world of the Carabinieri, which polices both the military and civilian populations, the Italian police and the judiciary. It's also an important book about freedom of speech and how one journalist put his life on the line because he believed so strongly that the truth must come out.

The Monster of Florence, which hit the New York bestseller list upon publication in the USA earlier this year, will be published in the UK on January 29, 2009.

'Leadbelly' by Andrew Rule and John Silvester

  Non-fiction - paperback; Blake Publishing; 288 pages; 2005.

Between 1995 and 2004 there were 34 underworld killings in Melbourne, Australia. Yes, 34. I don't think there were that many deaths in six-and-a-half series of The Sopranos and that has to be one of the most violent TV shows ever broadcast.

According to the authors "the size of the death toll varies from source to source because opinions vary about when the 'war' began and who are casualties and who are not". Even the concept of 'war' is disputed, because not all the murders are related, some are simply one-off hits to settle old scores. But police did establish that the bulk of the killings were part of a deadly feud between two rival gangs: the New Boys and the Carlton Crew.

Having followed this string of brutal and bloody murders from afar (I left Australia in mid-1998) via Melbourne's The Age website, I was anxious to read this book to piece all the crimes together in my head as one long narrative. Unfortunately, the book's structure doesn't work like that. Instead, what you get is 29 self-contained chapters that look at each crime in isolation. I imagine they were written like this for newspaper publication, but even so, I found it annoyingly repetitive in places -- explaining who characters are and how they are linked to each other and what terrible crimes they have committed -- which wears very thin very quickly.

And the prose style is terribly tabloid, surprising given that it's written by two journalists for whom I have the utmost respect (Andrew Rule's Strict Rules, a non-fiction account of his time touring the outback and staying with aboriginal communities, is extraordinarily good and worth tracking down if you get a chance, while Silvester's day-to-day reporting for The Age on the crimes covered in Leadbelly has been thorough, tenacious and imminently readable over the course of this ongoing gangland feud). Still, I wonder how much of this "dumbed down" style is simply a reflection of the market to which this book is aimed. It's not so much sloppily written, but it's riddled with unwarranted editorialising that I found patronising.

But if the objective of Leadbelly is to take the "glamour" out of the underworld and to expose these criminals for the violent sociopaths that they are, then perhaps the authors have achieved their aim. Here's what they say about the underworld,

 ...that loose collection of individuals who live outside the law and associate with fellow criminals both in and out of prison. Myths have been built up about this antisocial sub-class, mainly because there is a perceived glamour about being on the wrong side of the law. Some people think gangsters are masterminds with the brains and the nerve to beat the system, 'anti-heroes' and 'rebels' who snub conformity to 'live their own lives'.

The truth is most are too stupid, too lazy and too immoral to make a mark in the mainstream community. They don't decide to opt out of orthodox, law-abiding society so much as drift into crime because it seems easy and smart compared with working for a living. Others, of course, are born into ciminal families, condemned by breeding and circumstances to a lifetime cycle of crime and punishment.

Many criminals are 'stupid' by conventional standards -- in reading, writing and comprehension, for instance -- but some survive and prosper, at least until the law or even more predatory criminals catch up with them. Some develop a rat cunning, which trumps 'normal' intelligence in their bleak and brutal world. They can't read, yet can spy a police surveillance car a kilometre away. Others can barely count, yet can organise a bank robbery with split-second, military precision.

Rule and Silvester don't pull their punches -- they make it exceedingly clear throughout the 288 pages that make up this book that they do not have any sympathy whatsoever for the criminals. But by the same token they don't necessarily hold the Victoria Police in great esteem either, a much-maligned force that has been accused, at one time or another, of being reactionary, trigger-happy* and corrupt.

When two young police constables were ambushed and fatally shot one early morning in 1988 -- ten years before the 'war' began, mind you -- as payback for the police shooting of a well-known armed robber 13 hours earlier, Rule and Silvester claim that some police "were so desperate to 'get a result' they wanted to use illegal tactics to get evidence before a court". They add:

A huge investigation began within hours. Emotions ran high. Some police virtually declared war on the underworld. They wanted to mount raid after raid on known criminals and their relatives and associates. Many in the force saw this reaction as justified. Others saw it as blind rage, which would do nothing to gain evidence admitted in court.

This, essentially, is just the tip of the iceberg. The police's handling of certain investigations, their surveillance methods and their sting operations come in for some serious questioning -- and not just by the authors, there have been several public inquiries into specific incidents over the years which has resulted in changes to police working practices.

If you can forgive the slightly patronising Cops Vs Robbers tone of the book, what emerges is a fascinating account of Melbourne's dark underbelly and the ongoing rivalry that exists between a police force under siege and the street savvy crims who think they can do what they like, when they like.

I am reliably informed that the 13-part drama series Underbelly, which is based on these true-life crimes and comes out on DVD in the UK next February, is better value than the book. I will keep you posted once I have watched it!

* In the ten years after 1986, police killed 30 people in Victoria, whilst NSW police killed 10 in the same period. I remember it well, because it seemed like every time you turned on the TV news there'd be another report of a citizen gunned down. But this book explains the roots of that trigger-happy situation. Apparently, in 1985, two police pulled over a panel van on the Hume Highway just north of Melbourne. They knew it was being driven by a known criminal who was likely to be armed and dangerous -- in fact, they were tailing him at the time -- but what they didn't expect when they approached the car was the speed with which 'Mad Max' pulled out his pistol and fired off several shots. Rule and Silvester believe this random attack wormed its way into the collective psyche of the force, describing it as "the first milestone on a grim journey into hostile territory where almost every police officer felt threatened by unknown assailants who could be lurking in any car, any doorway, any hotel".

'Testimony' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - hardcover; Little, Brown; 320  pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Reading a new Anita Shreve novel is always a delicious experience, not least because she's an author with an uncanny ability to spin an entertaining story out of an often simple premise. But what I like most about this prolific American author is her refusal to stick to a formula. While her novels may share similar themes -- usually love, loss and family relationships in a New England setting -- she plays around with narrative structure so no two books are alike.

In her latest, Testimony, she tells the story of a sex scandal at a private school in Vermont from the viewpoint of some 24 different characters. It sounds crazy to have so many voices in the mix, but somehow, in Shreve's capable hands, the structure works without losing any narrative drive. But given the story is such a cracking one it would be almost impossible not to convey a sense of urgency and excitement in the telling of it.

The book opens with Mike Bordwin, the headmaster of Avery Academy, watching a video given to him by one of his administrative staff. The footage shows three male students from the school's basketball team having drunken sex with a much younger pupil. While Mike is shocked and repulsed, he is also desperate to contain the outfall so that it does not tarnish the school's sterling reputation. But we, the readers, are told at the outset that the explicit video produces ...

 ... something very like radiation sickness throughout the school, reducing the value of an Avery education, destroying at least two marriages [...], ruining the futures of three students, and, most horrifying of all, resulting in a death.

As Mike launches an in-house investigation and gets at least two of the culprits -- the upstanding Rob Leicht and the less likable "ringleader" James Robles -- to sign written confessions, the girl's outraged parents call the police. Meanwhile the third culprit, Silas Quinney, a promising scholarship student with a talent for basketball, goes missing.

When a local newspaper reporter gets wind of the unfortunate events, Avery Academy suddenly attracts the kinds of unsavoury headlines that destroy reputations and ruin lives.

But, as ever with a Shreve novel, everything is not quite what it might seem. A steady drip, drip of information, delivered by different characters -- including some of the parents, other teachers, the students involved and police -- allows the reader to build up a picture of what really happened that fateful night. There are certain revelations which occur late in the book that gave this reviewer at least pause for thought. (As an aside, I'd caution you against reading the product description on Amazon.co.uk because it gives away some of these crucial plot spoilers -- thankfully I read it after I'd finished the book.)

While Testimony doesn't attempt to draw any moral conclusion about the scandal, nor does it attribute blame to any one party, it does throw up some interesting questions about the sexual conduct of teenagers (or, as one character puts it, "I thought it odd that no one at school thought to mention to any student that it was actually illegal in the state of Vermont for a senior boy to have intercourse with a freshman girl") and underage drinking. But it does show very clearly how "a single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go" .

The social issues here, while important, aren't examined in any great detail, because the author is more interested in analysing how ordinary people react when thrust into extraordinary situations. For that reason alone, Anita Shreve fans will find much to like in this book and, if you're anything like me, you'll race through it in a day or two, desperate to find out what happens in the end.

'Petite Anglaise' by Catherine Sanderson

Non-fiction - hardcover; Penguin; 340 pages; 2008.

Petite Anglaise is one of those books that first started life as a blog -- the refreshingly well written and entertaining Petite Anglaise -- except this is not a collection of posts strung together to form a disjointed narrative. Instead it's a proper memoir that charts Catherine Sanderson's life in Paris as an expat Brit.

Despite its (not particularly attractive) chick-lit cover, the story deals with some fairly weighty subject matter, not the least Catherine's decision to leave her long-term partner (dubbed Mr Frog) and the father of her child (dubbed Tadpole), because she'd embarked on an affair with someone who left comments on her blog! Saucy, no?

But the book also charts a love affair with Paris, a city that Catherine became obsessed about when she was an 11-year-old school girl in Yorkshire.

France. Here was a destination to bend my running steps towards; a hook to hang my daydreams on; so alluring, so exotic, so tantalizingly close. No matter that school French lessons consisted of little more than endlessly rehearsed role plays and verb conjugations. No matter that my first extended stay on French soil would not take place for another six agonizing years. As I sat in a numbered booth in the school language lab, cumbersome headphones blocking out the English sounds of the world around me, I closed my eyes and pretended I was actually there. I yearned to taste the 200 grams of pâté I was instructed to buy in the grocer's shop; to visit the church or the town hall after quizzing a passer-by -- invariably an elderly man wearing a beret -- for directions. 'Ecoutez, puis répétz!' said the voice on the crackling tape at the start of every exercise. 'Listen, then dream' would have been more apt. I'd fallen hopelessly, irrationally, in love with the French language and, by extension, with France. And I'm at a loss to explain why, even now.

After a stint as an exchange student and later as an English assistante at a lycee in Normandy -- where she acquires her first French boyfriend -- it seems Catherine's path is set. A teaching job at the Sorbonne Nouvelle follows and before long Catherine is living in the City of Light, where she meets Mr Frog and settles down with him. But seven years later, with a one-year-old child, the dream is fading: Mr Frog works long hours and Catherine, a secretary for an English company, is bored at work and stressed at home.

She starts a blog -- "a harmless hobby...my virtual playground" -- to capture some "arch observations about life in Paris". But when her posts become more personal -- confessing that her partner does not want to marry her, for instance -- her online popularity grows substantially and she gains a worldwide audience.

Little did I know I had just unleashed a force which, within less than a year, would turn my life, and the lives of those dearest to me, inside out.

As much as I enjoyed this book -- I raced through it in the space of a cold, wet weekend, unable to tear my eyes away from it -- I have to admit that I'm in two minds about the author. I'm not sure if she's so shallow that she'll resort to almost anything for publicity (anonymous or not), or if she is someone to admire because she was focused and determined enough to chase a dream. But what I do know is  this: she is a superb writer. Her effortless prose style is by turns witty and heartbreakingly sad. She's painfully honest throughout, baring herself open in such a way that you feel voyeuristic reading her thoughts. The narrative trots along at a fair old pace and there's enough "hooks" to keep you reading on to see what might happen next.

Interestingly enough, after Catherine finished this book and before it was published, she was fired by the accountancy firm where she worked for blogging about life in the office. She went on to win her case, and has now embarked on a writing career. Her first novel is due for publication next year.

'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society' by Mary Ann Shaffer

Fiction - hardcover; Bloomsbury; 243 pages; 2008.

It's got a lovely cover, a great sounding name and everyone seems to be raving about it. So what's not to like? Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, quite a lot.

The book is composed entirely of letters between a successful newspaper columnist, Juliet Ashton, and a vast array of characters including her literary agent, her best friend and members of a literary society on the Channel Island of Guernsey.

It's 1946 and the Guernsey islanders are trying to put their lives back into order after several years of German Occupation. London-based Juliet, who spent the war years writing a column for the Spectator under a non-de-plume, has been commissioned by The Times to write an article -- under her own name -- for its literary supplement about "the practical, moral and philosophical value of reading".

When, by chance, she receives a letter from one of the founding members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society she asks him whether members of the society would mind being interviewed for the article. A fierce onslaught of letters ensues, each member keen to tell their story, not only about their love of books and reading, but also about what life was like during the war, cut off from the rest of the world.

Obviously, Juliet's interest is piqued, and she abandons her suitor, a debonair American publisher who is keen to marry her, and visits the island to find out more. Here, living among the islanders -- a mish mash of terribly twee characters, it has to be said -- she hopes to find a new subject that she can write about for a new book.

When Juliet receives a letter from her publisher about her lack of writerly inspiration I laughed at the irony: this was a letter that should have been sent to Mary Ann Schaffer, the author of the book.

I've read your chapters several times, and you're right -- they won't do. Strings of anecdotes don't make a book. Juliet, your book needs a centre. I don't mean more interviews. I mean one person's voice to tell what was happening all around her. As written now, the facts, as interesting as they are, seem like randomly scattered shots.

I won't go so far as to describe The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society as dire, but I found it particularly tiresome and incredibly patronising. I don't appreciate having my intelligence insulted on every second page, as if I have never heard of the Second World War and the terrible deprivations and conditions that so many people were forced to endure. I know that children were airlifted to rural Britain, I know that people were sent to concentration camps, I know that German soldiers were brutes, I know that there were food shortages, I know that London was bombed. The author, having discovered all this in a book called Jersey Under the Jack-Boot in 1976, seems intent on ramming this down her reader's throats, as if all of us have been living in a dark cave for the past half-a-century and failed to realise the war happened at all.

Aside from the main character Juliet, who is perky and feisty and strong, I personally didn't care for any of the remaining cast of often poorly drawn, cliched characters, many of whom seemed overtly American as if they were picked up from the rural mid-west and dumped in the English Channel without anyone bothering to change their cultural makeup. (Tellingly, in the acknowledgments at the end of the book, the author's niece thanks the publishers for ridding the Americanisms from her aunt's manuscript otherwise "British characters would be wearing pants, driving wagons and eating candy". If the author can't get the basic language right, what hope is there of ensuring that the subtle nuances of setting, context and character are authentically British?)

There's no narrative drive, propelling the reader to keep turning the pages, unless, of course, you're an incurable romantic who wishes to know which man Juliet ends up falling in love with. But even so, that narrative thread is so over-worked and boringly predictable, it's rendered null and void, at least as far as I was concerned.

Overall, as much as I tried to like this novel, I could not. I particularly hated the "aren't-we-clever-mentioning-classic-authors-and-our-love-of-books" throughout trick, as if this was some kind of short-hand way of winning my literary approval. It wasn't.

This is a poorly written and poorly constructed book. In fact, at the risk of offending so many thousands of people across the world who loved it, I can best describe The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in two words: deeply mediocre.

'Thirteen Tonne Theory: Life Inside Hunters and Collectors' by Mark Seymour

Non-fiction - paperback; Viking; 391 pages; 2008.

If you are an Australian of a certain age and are a fan of pub rock, then chances are you have seen Hunters and Collectors perform live. And if you have seen them perform live then you no doubt know that this band is one of the most visceral live acts -- second only to Midnight Oil -- to ever come out of the Southern Hemisphere.

This book, written by lead singer Mark Seymour (who also happens to be the older brother of Crowded House's bass player Nick Seymour), provides an inside look at what it was like fronting this powerhouse of a band for 18 years.

Of course, if you haven't already guessed by now, I am a longtime Hunters and Collectors fan. But funnily enough, I always preferred seeing them live than listening to their records, which never seemed to convey the sheer velocity and passion of the music when performed in concert. In fact, this view of the band is not a unique one: they were critically acclaimed but never quite achieved the commercial success that comes so easily to other bands that do far less hard graft.

The book, which is currently only available in Australia (my sister gave me this copy when she visited me in London a couple of months ago), does help explain why the band was big in Australia but failed to crack the UK or American markets. Set up as an artistic collective, in which every member of the eight-piece band shared songwriting copyright and royalties, the decision-making process did not allow anyone to take the lead, nor did it allow the goal of commercial superstardom to become the over-riding aim. Seymour makes no bones about how frustrating this became, especially when, as lead singer, he was seen as the "face" of the band and its key lyricist.

At times the story reads a bit like a kid who has thrown the toys out of the pram. Seymour clearly thinks the band and, more importantly, himself deserved better. But he is also incredibly candid and so hard on himself that you kind of feel sorry for him.

I particularly liked his account of the band's early days in London, where they were on the cusp of international success, only to blow it all when one member who'd had too much to drink insulted the record company. This incident -- in a curry house in Shepherd's Bush -- would be laugh-out-loud funny if it weren't for the painful financial repercussions that followed. You get the sense that Hunters and Collectors never quite recovered from this monumental error.

All in all, Thirteen Tonne Theory (the name comes from the weight of equipment the band took on the road when they toured up and down the country) is an intriguing read. Written by a singer that crafted so many Australian anthems -- Talking to a Stranger, Say Goodbye, Throw Your Arms Around Me and The Holy Grail -- it's a wonderful, if slightly worthy, warts-and-all account that fans will find fascinating.

'A Time to Tell' by Maria Savva

  Fiction - paperback; Pen Press Publishers; 308 pages; 2006. Review copy courtesy of the author.

I haven't read a rollicking good family-saga-cum-romance for a very long time, so I was pleased to pick up Maria Savva's second novel, A Time to Tell, for a leisurely Saturday afternoon read this past weekend. It turned out to be perfect fare for someone currently suffering from a chest infection, and I ploughed through it in one sitting.

The novel charts the course of Cara Hughes' life over a 50-year period from the early 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century. From her first doomed love affair and a failed suicide attempt, to marriage and motherhood, the book actually opens at the end of Cara's life as a 60-something widowed invalid living with the only relation that will have her -- a granddaughter caught up in an abusive marriage.

Unusually, the story does not follow a reverse chronological order as you would expect from such a starting point, but jumps backwards and forwards in time, a style that reflects Cara's memories as and when they occur to her. Through this disjointed third-person narrative we slowly learn more about Cara's long life: her joys and sorrows, her trials and tribulations, and the very many secrets she has kept hidden from her family, including the fact that the father of her first-born was not the man she married but the one for which, some 50 years later, she still harbours strong affection.

We also get introduced to a vast array of characters -- three children, one of whom has been missing for 16 years, various grandchildren, an estranged sister, and an assortment of in-laws -- so many , in fact, that it is almost impossible to keep track of who's who. Before long, the reader begins to build a picture of a large, complicated and dysfunctional family that is falling apart at the seams.

But Cara only begins to reassess her own familial values and relationships and to regret some of her past actions when she is shunted off to live with an older sister she hasn't spoken to in more than two decades. Here, in the home in which she grew up, Cara is forced to confront some of her most painful memories...

The best part about this rather ambitious novel is Savva's careful drip feed of information, so that you're never quite sure what sordid revelation or family secret is going to be unveiled next. The structure of the novel is like an onion, with layer upon layer being peeled away. It's a delicious read, with a powerful, surprising and very neat conclusion.

But as much as I enjoyed this book -- I was reminded on more than one occasion of the master story-telling abilities of Maeve Binchy -- I also had some problems with it, not the least of which is the author's slight tendency towards melodrama. Some of the characters also behave inconsistently and several scenes need fleshing out, as they felt too rushed and not quite authentic enough. The dialogue, at times, does not always ring true.

But on the whole the narrative is very strong and the simple prose style moves things along at an energetic pace. A Time to Tell is an entertaining, multi-layered story that looks at the ties that bind people together and the unspoken words that drive them apart.

'Eden' by Tim Smit

Non-fiction - paperback; Corgi; 286 pages; 2002.

The Eden Project is a series of man-made biomes built in a disused clay pit in Cornwall, England. One of the British Government's much-lauded Millennium Projects, it opened to critical acclaim in 2001 and has been on my list of places to visit for many years.

Designed to educate the public about plants and our dependence on them, it features the world's biggest conservatories, the first of which emulates a tropical environment, the second a warm temperate Mediterranean environment. Both biomes are made out of "bubbles" -- sturdy plastic, air-filled hexagons -- which interlock to form a series of gigantic greenhouses that are home to thousands of plants from across the world.

I visited the complex last month and was so in awe of its scale and beauty that I purchased this book, by the project's founder, in the souvenir shop because I was keen to learn more about the project's inception and difficult birth.

Reading Tim Smit's account it's hard not to feel inspired by the positivity that pours off every page. This was a project so ambitious in size, scale and concept that few people thought it would get off the  ground. Indeed, at every turn, there was opposition from every front, whether it be finding a suitable site, getting the money to build it, convincing local communities that it was going to be good for the area or finding architects that could design something workable.

If nothing else Smit's book -- and the Eden Project itself -- reveals that a diverse group of people working together with a common vision can pretty much achieve anything if they put their minds to it. Smit also argues that finding reasons to do things rather than finding reasons why they can't be done was the secret behind the project's success.

This is a wholly readable account of a complex project coming to fruition, although the endless cast of characters that Smit name checks -- and then praises -- does get a little confusing after awhile. (You almost wish he'd start dishing the dirt on those who didn't co-operate or played hardball, if only to make the story an even more intriguing one.)

I found it a thoroughly absorbing read and one that enhanced my understanding of the project in ways that weren't apparent when I was actually wondering around the biomes on foot. In short Eden is an uplifting human success story, one that drips with inspiration without being too preachy or too earnest.

You can find out more about the Eden Project at the official website or by taking a peek at my photographs of the site.

'Aiding and Abetting' by Muriel Spark

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 212 pages; 2000. 

Truth is often stranger than fiction, and no more so than in the case of Lord Lucan, an English aristocrat, who has been missing since the night of November 7, 1974. On this night the nanny looking after Lucan's three children was brutally murdered and his wife suffered severe head wounds in the attack. Lucan, who had a gambling problem and had racked up considerable debts, was suspected of the crime. Wanted on charges of murder and attempted murder, he was never brought to court, and despite being declared officially dead in 1999, numerous "sightings" of him still occur around the world.

The late Muriel Spark, one of Britain's most acclaimed and prolific writers, takes this real life story, one that has fascinated generations of Brits, and turns it on its head. She has Lucan still alive, on the run from the law but supported by a closeted network of aristocratic friends. When he presents himself for treatment at the consulting rooms of a Paris-based psychiatrist, Dr Hildegard Wolf is immediately intrigued -- and not just because of Lucan's mysterious past. It turns out she is already treating another man, who also claims to be Lord Lucan. And so she must try to unravel which Lucan -- if any -- is the real seventh Earl, and then she must determine what threat each poses to her new life, far from the one in which she was a fake stigmatic defrauding people of money for her own gain.

What follows is a fun, high-tension, hilarious romp that spans Paris, London and the Highlands of Scotland as Lucan and Dr Wolf both go on the run. Without wishing to give too much of the remaining plot away, I can safely say the ending is a satisfyingly wicked one.

Aiding and Abetting is, quite simply, a delight from start to finish. Its pared down, elegant prose and fast-moving storyline makes it a deliciously quick read. But because it strays into areas of morality and crime there's enough substance to give real food for thought. It might appear to be a rather simple novel but don't let that trick you into thinking it doesn't deal with rather complex issues...

If you like this book, you might also like The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose, which has Lord Lucan reinvent himself as a Scottish expat living in Tasmania.

You can find out more about the real life Lord Lucan story on the Channel 4 website.

'Dracula' by Bram Stoker

Fiction - paperback; Wordsworth Classics; 352 pages; 2003.

The horror genre isn't my normal genre of choice. I spent my teenage years working my way through Stephen King's (then existing) back catalogue, dabbled with some Dean R Koontz and a little James Herbert, before giving Anne Rice a shot. I read Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned and that's about the sum total of my exposure to horror/vampire fiction.

But Dracula was always one of those books I intended to read at some point, if only because I wanted to understand how one nineteenth century novel could have such an influence on the popularity of vampires in modern day literature and films. I put it off for years and years, but during a visit to Whitby, on the north east coast of England earlier this year, I finally decided it was time to read the book. I had been to Whitby before, but this time around its connection with Dracula seemed to resonate more, perhaps because I'd seen a BBC TV production and recognised the Abbey and the Yorkshire coastline on the screen. (In truth, during my first visit in 1998, I was more interested in the "Australian connection" -- Whitby is where Captain James Cook embarked on his famous Pacific voyages.)

Whitby is, of course, the fishing village where Bram Stoker sets some parts of the novel -- where one of the main characters, Lucy, meets Dracula for the first time, in fact. But it's also the place where Stoker began taking notes for the book while on holiday in 1890. It is a beautiful village nestled by the River Esk -- and Stoker's description, told through the eyes of Mina Murray, remains unchanged more than a century later:

This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour. A great viaduct runs across, with high piers, though which the view seems, somehow, further away than it really is. The valley is beautifully green and is so steep that when you are on the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you are near enough to see down. The houses of the old town -- the side away from us -- are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes [...] It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows.

The story is told as a series of diary entries and letters from a divergent cast of characters -- and there's a few "news clippings" thrown in for good measure. The result is a well-rounded and fast-moving narrative that feels incredibly modern, almost as if the book had been penned in recent times and not in 1897.

The storyline is a familiar one, but for those who don't know it it begins with Johnathan Harker, a young English solicitor, travelling to Transylvania to meet a client -- Count Dracula --  about a property sale he wishes to undertake in England. Despite Dracula acting as a gracious host, Harker soon discovers he is being kept prisoner in Dracula's remote castle and makes plans for escape.

Some time after a Russian ship runs aground on the Whitby coast, but all on deck -- save for a dog, which leaps onshore never to be seen again -- are presumed dead. The ship's log reveals some uncanny experiences on board during the journey, and the hull is found to be carrying a strange cargo of earth from Transylvania.

Harker's fiance, Mina, and her friend, Lucy, are in Whitby at the time. Lucy is a sleep walker and during one of her nocturnal strolls meets a strange man -- Dracula -- on the cliffs overlooking the town. Shortly after she mysteriously begins to waste away.

Dr John Seward, who has proposed marriage to Lucy, is very concerned by her deteriorating health. He calls in  in his old teacher, Professor Van Helsing from Amsterdam who begins administering blood transfusions -- all to no avail.

Eventually -- and I don't think this is much of a plot spoiler -- Lucy becomes a vampire, and the finger of blame is being pointed in Count Dracula's direction.

The action then moves to London, where the Count has been seen out and about. It turns out -- by a strange twist of fate -- that his house, on Picadilly, is right next door to Dr Seward's. A band of vampire hunters is then brought together, including Harker, Mina, Seward and Van Helsing among others, to put Dracula's rampage across London and England to an end...

The story of Dracula was a familiar one to me, but genuinely thrilling in places. Some of Stoker's descriptions were also incredibly vivid and chilling, such as this scene in which Harker, trapped in Dracula's remote castle, sees the Count's head coming out of a window:

I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards and with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.

The book also poses some interesting questions about science and faith, religion and folklore, topics that were been debated at the time in which it was written. Interestingly, the role of women in society is another theme, with Lucy representing the "traditional" weak-willed woman who succumbs to Dracula's charms, and Mina, who is strong enough to fight him off and plays a pivotal role in his eventual destruction, representing the "new" female.

On the whole, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Dracula. The prose style was easy-to-read and apart from some clunky elements -- Stoker's inconsistent depiction of Van Helsing's Dutch vernacular, for instance, was woeful  -- felt incredibly contemporary. And there was plenty of suspense to keep me turning the pages long into the night. A truly great read -- and one I'd recommend, even if your tastes don't normally venture into classic literature or the horror genre.

***
This book was chosen for discussion in Reading Matters Online Book Group (Session 13) in December 2007.

Click here for reading group questions and discussion.

'The Litvinenko File: The True Story of a Death Foretold' by Martin Sixsmith

Non-fiction - hardcover; MacMillan; 320 pages; 2007.

Anyone who was living in London in November 2006 will know that the hot topic of conversation -- in the pubs, at work, on the news and in the papers -- was the poisoning of Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko.

Mr Litvinenko, a former member of the KGB and its successor the FSB, was granted political asylum (with his wife and child) in the UK in 2000. An outspoken critic of the Russian Government, he fell ill on November 1, 2006 and died three weeks later. Doctors could not say what caused his death, but it later emerged he had been poisoned by radioactive material known as polonium-210.

This book by the BBC's former Moscow correspondent, Martin Sixsmith, explores Litvinenko's murder and looks at who might gain the most from his death. During the course of his research Sixsmith discovered that Litvinenko had made many enemies. "What I found out about Litvinenko's past," he writes, "both astounded me and threw up so many potential reasons for his murder that I ended my research more surprised he survived as long as he did than that he eventually fell victim to the assassins who sought him out in London."

He structures the book into six parts, beginning with Litvinenko's funeral (he was buried in Highgate Cemetery) and how the poisoning might have occurred (was it at the Millennium Hotel or the Itsu sushi bar?), before exploring Litvinenko's former life in Russia and his subsequent falling out with the man who was to become president, Vladimir Putin. It then comes full circle, and looks at the Scotland Yard investigation, tracing the polonium trail and unearthing the many suspects who might be to blame for his death.

What emerges is a fascinating portrait of a flawed man living in a dark world of shady characters. While many in his situation might have chosen to lay low, Litvinenko did the opposite, seeing it as his duty to speak out against those he saw as corrupt or dangerous. Ultimately, this was his undoing.

But Litvinenko's death was no ordinary death. Sixsmith describes it as the "world's first act of international nuclear terrorism". It caused a major public health scare with a trail of radioactive contamination spreading across London (and two British Airways planes) and sparked a major diplomatic crisis between the UK and Russia. (Relations are still strained, especially now that Scotland Yard will never be able to charge the chief suspect Andrei Lugovoi who became a deputy in Russia's new parliament earlier this week, earning him immunity from prosecution.)

As much as I was fascinated by the poisoning of a Russian exile in such a dramatic and public way, I had half expected The Litvinenko File to be a relatively dull book, weighed down by too many facts and complicated Russian history I'd struggle to understand. But Sixsmith knows how to write a narrative in an exciting way, ending each chapter with a cliff hanger so that you feel you really must keep reading to find out what happens next.

And his theory about who is responsible for the death -- and why they carried it out -- is a totally believable one. But if you want to find out whodunnit, then stop reading this review and get your hands on a copy of the book instead...

'Don't I Know You?' by Karen Shepard

Fiction - paperback; Harper Perennial; 230 pages; 2006.

This fascinating murder mystery, which is set in New York in the 1970s, opens with a 12-year-old boy, Stephen, coming home to his Upper Westside apartment to find his mother dead on the floor. Gina has been raped and stabbed multiple times. The TV is still on and all the windows are open.

Outside, it was getting darker. Inside too. He was crying.
Her black hair was still in its ponytail. It was spread out like she was jumping. She was making a face that he didn't like to look at. He thought about touching her, but didn't.
Down the hall, a quiet thud and two creaks.
His feet and hands tingled. Get out, he thought. He stood; his knees cracked, and he headed toward the front door. The sound of something heavy being lifted and put down again. He was still crying. He started down the hall. He couldn't believe he was doing it.
There was blood. Streaky patches of it. And then it stopped. His foot hit something that rolled. Glass beads. He recognised them from the necklace she liked to wear.
Her bedroom door was open a little. Shadows moved behind it.
He ran the last few feet. His head felt like he'd been holding his breath too long. 'Hey,' he called. 'Hey'.
One leg was disappearing out the window onto the fire escape. Jeans. A white sock. Adidas sneaker. White with green stripes.

From this frightening opening, the reader is taken on a rollercoaster ride through Stephen's new life without his mother. Until his estranged father flies in from California, he is taken into the care of his mother's boyfriend, who later becomes a suspect in the case. But Stephen think he is too nice to have carried out the crime.

Eventually, the police investigation stalls, perhaps because Gina's past has been littered with too many boyfriends (she keeps a rogue's gallery on her wall) for the police to track down and interview. Her diary has also gone missing, and so any secrets she may have kept have gone to the grave with her.

Fast-forward 18 months and we are introduced to Lily Chin, a teacher, who is engaged to be married. But Nikolai, her wealthy Russian fiance, is not all that he seems. Lily discovers his darker side thanks to a woman called Tina, who claims to have been a previous girlfriend. Tina reveals the location of an apartment that Nikolai keeps for his secret liaisons, and it is here, in this apartment, that Lily finds Gina's diary. Did Nikolai murder her?

The story then jumps forward once again, this time by a decade. Here the narrative is taken up by an elderly woman who is dying of cancer. Louise Carpanetti lived with her 'slow' son, Mark, above Gina's apartment when she was murdered. In fact, Louise took a phone call from Gina on that fateful day but for some unfathomable reason hung up on her. Now she is plagued by fears that it was Mark who killed her. How should she handle this, given that someone else has already been arrested for the crime? Should she confront her emotionally dependent son, who, at the age of 55, still lives at home with her, or leave things be?

This is one of those subtle but disturbing books that contains stories within stories, each of them interlinked in ways that are not immediately obvious. Indeed, I had to read the book twice to fully comprehend them, and even then I still have not worked out who the murderer is -- although I have my suspicions.

Shephard writes the story from various perspectives, each of which is written in a distinctive, original voice, so that the reader has to do some mental gymnastics to sort it all out into some form of cohesive order. But I liked being able to build up a slow mental picture of the victim instead of being force-fed it had the author employed a more straightforward narrative style.

My only quibble is that Don't I Know You? has too many questions and not enough answers, causing me to reach the end feeling frustrated rather than satisfied. For that reason I think it would make an excellent reading group book, if only because it's likely to divide opinion and there's plenty of issues to discuss, particularly on the theme do we ever really know the people closest to us?

'Detour' by James Siegel

Fiction - paperback; Time Warner Books; 406  pages; 2005.   

First things first. If you read this book you need to check your brain at the door. Detour is not highbrow literature. Instead it's a fast-paced plot-driven romp that reads like a movie screenplay. It's well written in the sense that it's effortless to read. But if you're expecting something that will rock your world or make you see things in a different light or have you reassessing your life, then give this one a wide berth. It's enjoyable and entertaining. No more, no less.

Like Siegel's previous effort, Derailed (which was turned into a movie starring Jennifer Aniston), Detour is about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. In this case, a young New York couple, Joanna and Paul, travel to Colombia to adopt a baby as part of a fast-track scheme set up by their lawyer. Of course Colombia is a dangerous country -- a point which Siegel labours again and again throughout this long novel -- and there's a menace around every corner. Not surprisingly, the couple and their new adorable baby girl, Joelle, are kidnapped by left-wing militia -- and then things really heat up.

Paul enters into a deal to secure their release: he must travel to New York as a drug mule with 30 condoms of cocaine inside him. He has 18 hours to deliver them to an address in Queens and once the drugs are safely handed over, Joanna and Joelle will be free to return to the USA. If he doesn't hand them over, he will never see his wife and daughter again...

Of course -- you guessed it -- things don't go according to plan, but to say any more would spoil the plot...

Detour is certainly an adrenalin-fuelled read. Siegel is shameless in wringing every last drop of fear out of the reader, manipulating events so that you're never quite sure what is going to happen next. He's very good at pulling at the heartstrings too -- a pet hate of mine, I must add -- and of building up the tension only to offer up an over-the-top-almost-ridiculous succession of climaxes that don't really ring true.

However, if you can tolerate the narrative "tricks" and don't mind loopholes in the story (for instance, when was the last time you read a book in which a character couldn't ring the police because his landline had been disconnected even though he'd been using a mobile phone regularly up until that point?), then you'll enjoy this thriller. I found it slightly annoying and about 100 pages too long, but other than that it was a cracking story that didn't tax the grey matter too much, perfect for when you want a lazy I-don't-need-to-use-my-brain read.

'The Blank Wall' by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Fiction - paperback; Persephone; 231 pages; 2003.

This book should come with a warning: make sure you have an entire afternoon free to read this, because you won't be able to put it down. Honestly.

The Blank Wall, no. 42 in Persephone's book list and first published by Simon & Schuster in 1947, is a nail biting thriller set in the United States during the Second World War. I read it in a matter of hours and felt myself holding my breath much of the way through it, as I was never certain what was going to happen next. It is, as the Observer called it, a "classic of suspense fiction".

Lucia is a 38-year-old housewife and mother. Her husband, a Navy man, is away at war in Europe, and she is left to run the household, comprising her elderly father, 17-year-old Bee and a 15 year-old David, with help from her faithful maid, Sibyl.

The family has recently moved to a new house by a lake and are still settling in to the neighbourhood, when Lucia discovers that Bee is going out with a "quite sinister-looking character" more than twice her age. This throws Lucia into a kind of spin: she makes a special trip to New York to warn off the boyfriend and then, one morning, finds him dead in the motorboat moored behind the family's boathouse. She immediately suspects her father has murdered him and then embarks on a not very well thought out plan to cover up the crime...

This is a thoroughly entertaining read about one woman's struggle to manage events that are seemingly beyond her control. Lucia is a charming all-too human character, whose honourable (if naive) intentions to protect her family adds a distinctly domestic edge to the drama. Her interior monologues, which form much of the narrative, provide an insightful glimpse of her sometimes tortured mindset: she wants to safeguard her family's way of life but is all too aware that it could all go wrong if she makes one little slip-up.

Sanxay Holding imbues the text with much social commentary -- including the role of women, class, race and educational background -- but this never feels heavy. Indeed, it's the opposite: effortless and seamless.

As strange as it might sound to describe a thriller as delightful, it is the first word that springs to mind when I think of The Blank Wall. A wholly gratifying and pleasurable read.

'The Post-Birthday World' by Lionel Shriver

 

Fiction - paperback; Harper Collins; 600 pages; 2007.

In Lionel Shriver's astonishingly profound novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, the American-born London-based author explored the notion of nature versus nurture. It divided readers across the world and became the quintessential book group book, if only because its content stimulated so much discussion. If a student went on a killing spree, was the mother to blame? Or had he simply been born evil?

In her long-awaited follow-up, The Post-Birthday World, Shriver treads less controversial ground but doesn't shy away from exploring a theme that is likely to generate a similar amount of discussion: is life pre-ordained or do we need to take responsibility for our actions? Is sex or companionship more important in a relationship? And is there such a thing as a perfect partner?

In this accomplished and incredibly well plotted novel we meet Irina McGovern, a children's book illustrator, who is an expat American living in South London. Every July 6 Irina and her long-term partner, Lawrence, meet an acquaintance, Ramsey Acton, who is a rich and famous snooker player, to celebrate his birthday. It is a once-a-year rendezvous that Irina usually tries to wriggle out of. The one year that Lawrence can't make it due to a business trip, Irina is left to entertain Ramsey on her own. It is on this particular evening that Irina's comfortable, if occasionally dull life, cleaves in two.

And this is where Shriver has fun exploring the what ifs. What if Irina kisses Ramsey on this night? And what if she decides to resist temptation?

The Post-Birthday World charts Irina's life using a parallel universe structure, one in which she chooses to run off with the wild and impetuous Ramsey and the other in which she stays with her dependable, intellectual partner Lawrence. These two worlds are so diametrically opposed -- the seedy on-the-road life of the professional snooker player and the closeted, safe and cerebral existence of an academic -- that Irina's decision in anything but a light one. Does she settle for Lawrence's seeming unwillingness to experiment in bed (he won't even kiss her) or does she seek the sexual thrills that Ramsey offers? Does she maintain the cosy homelife she shares with Lawrence -- who won't marry her --  or does she embark on a steamy affair that may ultimately end in wedlock?

Irina's two lives are told in alternate chapters. I initially found this confusing, but once I understood the structure of the book I found that it lent each story an extra depth. This is because much of the dialogue in each "universe" is repeated, although the words don't necessarily fall out of the same mouths. I can only imagine how much hard work went into plotting and planning this extraordinary novel.

As ever Shriver's prose is forthright and incisive. The characterisation is superb. Irina is especially compelling, if only because she seems very human -- and self-absorbed -- and is never quite sure whether she should follow her head or follow her heart.

I loved the setting. The London described in these pages is one I know well (I work in South London), so I had fun spotting the familiar landmarks. And Shriver's descriptions of snooker, a sport that is peculiarly English, are spot-on. It was a brave decision for an American to write about it, but she handles it with aplomb, even if some of the passages explaining the sport's history seemed a little laboured.

Unfortunately, Ramsey's dialect, a kind of contrived Cockney-speak, doesn't always ring true -- he uses words that don't fit, such as gobshite (which is Irish) and pet (which is from the North) -- that suggest Shriver, an American, hasn't come to terms with native English, or is playing a much cleverer game in which Ramsey is not all that he appears to be. Either way, I found his idiosyncratic speech grated throughout much of the book.

Ultimately, I thoroughly enjoyed The Post-Birthday World, ripping through its 600 weighty pages in a little under two weeks. It's a fascinating account of one woman's personal growth as she learns that both men in her life are good people with character flaws and that no matter who you choose there will always be ups and downs. The ultimate moral of this book is that life is what you make of it. No more, no less.

PS> If you want to know more about snooker, can I suggest you read The Hurricane: The Turbulent Life and Times of Alex Higgins by Bill Burrows. It provides a fascinating glimpse into one of the sport's most controversial characters.