Reading Matters

'Brooklyn' by Colm Tóibín

Fiction - hardcover; Viking; 256 pages; 2009.

Reviews of Booker long-listed novels on this site are a bit like London buses. You don't get any for ages, then two come along in quick succession.

Following on from yesterday's review of Ed O'Loughlin's Not Untrue & Not Unkind, is Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, another from this year's longlist.

As long time readers of this blog will know, I have a soft spot for Irish fiction, so it was no great surprise that this would be my type of book. But what I did find surprising was just how much I liked it. I devoured it in just two sittings this past weekend.

The book opens in poor, provincial 1950s Ireland -- Enniscorthy, County Wexford to be precise. Eilis Lacey, a part-time shop girl, leaves behind her mother and devoted older sister, Rose, to immigrate to Brooklyn, USA, in search of a better life. She lives in an all-girl boarding house, presided over by the matron-like Mrs Kehoe, and spends her days working in a local department store and her evenings studying for a book-keeping qualification at Brooklyn College. Along the way she makes several friends, meets a boy and finds herself living a relatively contented life, despite the fact that she still misses her family back home.

I'm not sure I can really say anything else without giving away crucial plot spoilers, so I shall keep schutm, suffice to say this is a quietly devastating read, one in which it is completely possible to lose all track of time as you get lost in the world presented here.

Brooklyn is a gentle read, but its gentleness should not be mistaken for shallowness, because this is a story that's profoundly moving and tickles the grey matter in ways you might not quite expect. It might be set in the 1950s but it touches on universal themes that resonate today, and I've yet to read anything that so perfectly captures the profound sense of dislocation you feel when you swap one country for another and then return to your homeland for the first time.

In short, Brooklyn is a superb paean to homesickness and the émigré experience. I think I identified with it so strongly because it shows, in an understated but powerful manner, how all emigrants have to make that god-awful decision about whether to stay or go, a decision that paralysed me for years. When Eilis is confronted with this very kind of choice she is tormented because there is no one right answer: whatever she chooses will have both negative and positive repercussions for herself and her loved ones.

And while I've tried to avoid reading reviews of this book, fearful that it will put me off reading it, I'm conscious Brooklyn has drawn criticism from some quarters over Eilis's passive nature, yet I did not see her that way at all. Sure, her move to Brooklyn is organised by others, namely Father Flood and Rose, but she recognises this as an opportunity for which she should be grateful, even if she finds the prospect of leaving all she knows behind a daunting one. She's proactive enough to get herself educated while in Brooklyn, because she recognises this as another opportunity to better herself in ways which would not be possible "back home". The truly lovely thing about Eilis is that she is a good person, and she thereby attracts good people and many acts of kindness come her way, but her good manners and her unwillingness to rock the boat should not be mistaken for passivity.

Whether Brooklyn makes tomorrow's Booker cut, I cannot say, but it deserves a wide readership regardless: it's a powerful story about culture shock and the life-changing decisions we all must make as we grow up and forge our own paths. I rather suspect it's going to be one of those books that will stay with me a long time...

'Monster Love' by Carol Topolski

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 272 pages; 2008.

It's been quite awhile since I've read a book as dark and oppressive as Monster Love, which was long-listed for last year's Orange Prize. In fact, I found myself in a bit of a funk all week, for no good reason, and the only thing I could put it down to was reading this highly disturbing book. It's almost as if the story within had resonated off the page and enveloped me in a cloud of gloom.

I think the most chilling aspect of Monster Love, which tells the story of a married couple accused of killing their four-year-old daughter, is that it could have been lifted from today's newspaper headlines. It reminded me very much of the the Baby P case (still ongoing), which readers in the UK will know well, and for that reason it seemed a little too authentic for comfort.

This realism is helped, in part, by the way in which the story is recounted through a series of testimonies -- monologues, letters and official reports -- made by people -- neighbours, social workers, family members, jurors and prison officer -- who have been affected by the crime in some way.

The parents, Brendan and Sherilyn Gutteridge, recount their side of the story too, and I am not revealing any crucial plot spoilers by saying that they are perhaps the least realistic of the narrators because they appear so damn weird. Their "perfect love" comprises a strange telepathic connection and, in the latter third of the novel, a series of simultaneous sexual fantasies which stray into sheer kookiness. Still, the author, Carol Topolski, is a practising psychoanalytical psychotherapist, who's probably treated clients much odder than these two.

There's no doubt that Monster Love is a fascinating, if wholly unpleasant story, but it's not nearly as thought-provoking as it could have been. This is partly because the narrative is so fragmented that you don't get a proper overview of the case. You know from the outset that the accused are guilty, so you know what happens in the end, too. And the huge cast of characters all sing from the same hymn sheet so there's no room for ambiguity or doubt of the couple's guilt. It also doesn't help that so many of the testimonies are recounted in the same voice -- there seems little to distinguish one character from another.

Structurally, this is a poor novel, but in terms of subject matter you will be hard pressed to find anything so startling and dark.

'PopCo' by Scarlett Thomas

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 450 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I read dozens of novels every year but I can quite honestly say I've never read anything quite so weird nor as wonderful as Scarlett Thomas's PopCo.

Thomas, who was named by The Independent in 2001 as one of the 20 Best Young Writers, has an idiosyncratic style that is fiercely intelligent but imminently readable. This is a book that brims with ideas, is stuffed full of one-liners, and even includes a crossword puzzle and a list of prime numbers at the rear. It's hugely ambitious, wanders off on what seems like a million tangents and editorializes on everything from the state of Western medicine to the "cruelty" of the dairy industry, but somehow it all comes together to form a coherent and immensely entertaining narrative.

The story revolves around Alice Butler, a 29-year-old "creative" at PopCo, a global toy company ("the third largest in the world"), during an "away" trip in the English countryside. With all the employees pitted against each other to come up with a new product for the teenage girl market, Alice buzzes with excitement and creativity. But then she begins receiving secret coded messages, which indicate that there might be more going on in PopCo than meets the eye.

Alongside this main narrative thread is a back story about Alice's childhood in which she was raised by her grandparents, two mathematical geniuses, whom she very much adored. This gives us a glimpse of the girl who grew up to be a fiercely independent woman with a penchant for numbers and puzzles. From this we learn not only about her troubled schooldays in which she was too geeky to fit in, but about the highly secretive work involving code-breaking and treasure-hunting, to which her grandfather devoted his life.

Throw in a healthy bit of romance (and sex), a whole lot of stuff about marketing and mathematics, and you'll get some brief idea of what PopCo is about.

While I can't say that I found the ending particularly satisfying (it seemed slightly too far-fetched for my liking), I did very much enjoy reading this book and learning about code-breaking and all kinds of mathematical rules, which surprised me given I am not a numbers person at all. But what I loved most about this book was its cynicism, particularly in relation to marketing and the dubious practices some advertisers carry out.

This is what Alice begins to realise part-way through the book:

It is all dishonest. We are twenty-first century con artists. Marketing, after all, is what you do to sell people things they don't need. If people needed, say, a T-shirt with a logo on it, no one would have to market the idea to them. Marketing, advertising... What started off being, 'Hey, we make this! Do you want it?' turned into 'If you buy this, you might get laid more,' and then mutated into, 'If you don't buy this, you'll be uncool, no one will like you, everyone will laugh at you and you may as well kill yourself now. I'm telling you this because I am your friend and you have to trust me.' Marketing is what gives value to things that do not have any actual intrinsic value. We put eyes on a bit of plastic, but it is marketing that actually brings the piece of plastic to life. It is marketing that means we can sell a 10p bit of cloth for £12.99.

There's no doubt that PopCo has a conscience and treads a subversive line, but it is also quirky, unusual and damn good fun and is perfect if you're looking for something a little different to cleanse the reading palette. Highly recommended.

'In a Summer Season' by Elizabeth Taylor

Fiction – paperback; Virago Modern Classics; 224 pages; 2006.

Before I discovered the wonderful world of book blogs I had never heard of the English writer Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975). I simply associated the name with the Hollywood actress. 

I made a mental note to read something from her extensive bibliography, but it wasn't until very recently that I acquired my first Taylor novel. I'm not sure why I picked In a Summer Season, her eighth novel (first published in 1961), to begin with, but I spied a cheap copy on Amazon Marketplace and the deal was done. (Apparently the book is regarded as her raunchiest, although I did not know that at the time!)

The story revolves around a wealthy widow, Kate Heron, who marries Dermot, a man ten years her junior. The couple live in a large house in the picturesque Thames Valley, within sight of Windsor Castle, with Kate's elderly aunt, the housekeeper Mrs Meacock and Kate's two children, Tom, 22, and Louisa, 16.

But despite this cosy little world, it is clear that all is not well, that Dermot views the arrangement as claustrophobic and that Kate is all too aware of this:

At this time of evening Kate felt that he was restless. He had too many years of pubs and clubs and pleasing himself. Not be free to walk out of the house when he wanted to must seem a monstrous tyranny. She, herself, sometimes in the course of this second marriage, found it a tyranny, too; found other people's presence irksome.

While nothing much seems to happen -- there's no real plot to speak of -- the narrative inches forward by a series of largely domestic scenes that are filled with delicate nuances and innuendo. You soon learn that everyone is working at cross-purposes, that everyone is wearing a mask to protect others from their real feelings. These tensions build and build until a rather tragic, and unexpected, climax is reached.

But while the story might lack a certain -- how shall we say it? -- page-turning quality, it is a wonderful psychological portrait of a middle-aged woman coming to terms with a new identity, because within In a Summer Season we find the protagonist desperate to be true to herself rather than conform to society's unwritten moral code. Her friends cut her off because they regard Dermot as a parasite only interested in her money and even her Aunt Ethel thinks the marriage will last "five years at most". Her teenage daughter sums it up even better:

I think my mother gets jealous [of my brother's girlfriends], and that's why she married Dermot; perhaps she thought that she would be getting someone quite young; who would be a bit like her son, but who would have to take her everywhere with him.

But Kate feels she can overlook the gossip and rumours about her because she's found a man with whom she can enjoy a passionate sexual life. Her lust is such that she can even overlook Dermot's flaws: his lack of career, his drinking, his lack of "cultural awareness".

But what Kate refuses to acknowledge is that erotica is no substitute for companionship and a peaceful domestic life. It is only when her old friend Charles -- refined, cultured and now widowed -- returns to the village that she can begin to see what she might have lost...

In a Summer Season is a fascinating portrait of domestic life from another, more innocent era and how the choices we make impact on our own lives and the lives of others.

'The Road Home' by Rose Tremain

  Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 365 pages; 2008.

Rose Tremain is one of those British authors who has been on the periphery of my reading existence for about 10 years. She's been hard at work crafting novels -- 11 at last count -- and the odd short story collection, but I have only ever read Music and Silence, which won best novel in the 1999 Whitbread Awards. In fact, I adored that book so much, it may partially explain why I've shied away from reading anything else by Tremain: I've been scared that nothing else could live up to the beauty of my first experience reading her work.

I have had her 1992 novel Sacred Country in my reading queue for a year or so, but then she won this year's Orange Prize with The Road Home and I wondered whether it was time to give her another shot. A half-price promotion at Waterstone's was the final push I needed, and so, that was how I found myself last weekend opening this book and falling in love with it.

The story is essentially about an immigrant from an unspecified Eastern European country (I imagine it is Poland and wondered why Tremain had refused to just come out and say this), who arrives in London determined to make enough money to support his elderly mother and young daughter back home.

Lev is in his early 40s and still grieving over the death of his wife, 36-year-old Marina, from leukemia, so there's a sense of melancholia about him. But he is also prepared to work hard and knows to get anywhere in life he must put aside his personal troubles and just get on with it.

Naively believing that it is possible to survive in London for £20 a week, he initially struggles to get settled, sleeping rough and making a measly fiver here and there by delivering leaflets for a kebab shop. But his luck turns when he scores a job washing dishes at a restaurant run by a famous chef (the fictional GK Ashe who has a  touch of the Gordon Ramsay's about him).

With a little help from Lydia, a fellow compatriot whom he befriended on the long bus journey to London, he finds himself a room to rent in a house owned by the genial Christy Slane, a recently separated Irish plumber. Together Lev and Christy strike up a wonderful friendship, based partly on shared grief and the fact they both have young daughters of around the same age.

When Lev finds himself falling in love with Sophie, a colleague, it seems as if his new English life is finally complete, but it's really just the beginning of a complex, often bumpy, occasionally funny and constantly challenging journey...

Initially, I was gripped by this very human story. Lev is a remarkably likable and sympathetic character. I loved reading the descriptions of London through an immigrant's eyes, having been one of those myself a decade ago. But while Tremain makes his struggles quite tough, they don't always ring true. That Lev would find himself such a compassionate, helpful and friendly landlord, for a start, seemed unlikely. That he would land such a great job with so little English also seemed problematic. And his lack of friendship with other immigrants from his country -- aside from the slightly highly-strung Lydia -- seemed unrealistic. If you have ever been an immigrant you will know that you seek out others from your country, often without realising it, and congregate together, if only because the sound of a familiar accent (or language) is a comfort.

I had other problems with this book the further I got into it. There are inconsistencies in Lev's character (that he could be so violent towards a female in one particular disturbing scene and then be unable to fight off two 12-year-old muggers in another, for example) and there's a tendency to resort to immigrant stereotypes (the drunk Irishman, the fat curry-cooking Indian, the aloof and mysterious Chinaman). While it is clear that for much of the story Lev is living on the poverty-line, or surviving just beneath it, he still owns a mobile phone and thinks nothing of phoning his friend Rudi, back home: phone debt never seems to enter the equation.

But the thing that annoyed me most was the story's slide, somewhere after the half-way point, into a kind of rose-coloured upbeat fairy tale that had me guessing the ending 100 pages before it arrived. It was like Maeve Binchy suddenly took over the narrative and injected a bit of heart-warming sentimentality. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it effectively ruined what had been an extraordinarily realistic tale up to that point. Suddenly it changed tack and became a vastly different book to the one it had promised to be.

Perhaps I am being overly critical. Perhaps Tremain wanted to show that it is entirely possible to achieve your dreams if you get all the horrible stuff -- like struggling to survive on a minimum wage -- out of the way first. But the promise of the first 180 or so pages did not play out and by the time I reached the final page I was more disappointed than satisfied.

Still, despite these flaws, I enjoyed The Road Home and found myself underlining sentences that struck me with their beauty, such as: "Planes kept passing overhead, embroidering the sky with garlands of vapour." And this: "On the policeman's hip, his radio made sudden, violent sounds, like the coughing of a dying man."

'First Love' by Ivan Turgenev

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 102 pages; 2007. Translated from the Russian by Isaiah Berlin.

First Love is Russian writer Ivan Turgenev’s most famous novella. First published in 1860, it has been beautifully repackaged and republished as part of Penguin’s Great Love series.

At just over 100 pages, this is a book that can quickly be read in one sitting (I achieved it via two 20-minute train journeys), although its brevity should not be mistaken for shallowness. First Love is exactly what the title suggests: a man looks back on his first love. “I was sixteen at the time,” he writes. “It happened in the summer of 1833.”

His name is Vladimir Petrovich. He is 40 now, but he recalls the time he stayed in a holiday house – “a wooden building with pillars and two small, low lodges” -- in the country with his parents. He would spend his days studying, horse riding and strolling through the Neskootchny Park, but when he notices a “tall, slender girl in a striped pink dress with a white kerchief on her head” in the garden next door he is immediately smitten.

[...] there was in the girl’s movements (I saw her in profile) something so enchanting, imperious and caressing, so mocking and charming, that I nearly cried out with wonder and delight. […] My rifle slipped to the grass; I forgot everything: my eyes devoured the graceful figure, the lovely neck, the beautiful arms, the slightly dishevelled fair hair under the white kerchief –- and the half-closed perceptive eyes, the lashes, the soft cheek beneath them…

Eventually he gets to meet the young woman, Princess Zasyekin, who is five years his senior, and falls into her circle of friends –- a quintet of suitors comprising a count, doctor, poet, captain and soldier. The suitors belittle him, but he is too in love with the princess to care.

For whole days I did nothing but think intensely about her. I pined away, but her presence brought me no relief. I was jealous and felt conscious of my worthlessness. I was stupidly sulky, and stupidly abject; yet an irrestible force drew me towards her, and it was always with an involuntary shiver of happiness that I went through the door of her room.

Despite the princess's almost penniless existence -- her father had gambled all their property away and then scandalously married the daughter of a minor official -- Vladimir continues to fawn at her feet, knowing full well she is in love with someone else.

As a reader I found it almost unbearable to follow Vladimir as he tries to figure out who the princess has given her heart to, because, for me at least, it was painfully obvious. But, in many ways, this is what makes this book tick so beautifully: as much as you want to protect the youthful, inexperienced narrator from having his heart broken, you want to see how he will react when the penny finally drops and so you keep turning the pages.

While First Love seems strangely naive in this day and age, it has a quiet, restrained beauty that makes it a delightful read. But be warned: this story is not just about falling in love for the first time, it's also about betrayal and cruelty of the finest order.

[Please note: This review was brought to you via my neighbour's unsecure wireless internet connection, because this household is still without broadband access. Grrr.]

'Bad Debts' by Peter Temple

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 336 pages; 2007. 

When I started reading Peter Temple's much acclaimed The Broken Shore last summer I became so enamoured with his writing style that before I'd even reached the half-way mark I rushed out and bought Bad Debts. I could sense it was going to be the start of a beautiful romance. Unfortunately, life got in the way -- along with a few dozen other books that beckoned me -- and it took me eight months to eventually get around to reading Bad Debts. The wait, I think, was worth it.

This book is not dissimilar to The Broken Shore in that it features a damaged protagonist with a slightly dodgy past and a penchant for spirited women. But that's probably where the similarities end.

The main difference is the writing style. Bad Debts, which was written almost ten years before The Broken Shore, certainly feels less polished, the language is tougher, the dialogue more choppy. And in the best tradition of hardboiled noir, the main character, washed-up lawyer Jack Irish, treads a very fine line between enforcing the law and breaking it. You're never quite sure whether you should admire him or despise him.

But Irish is not all he seems. His wife was murdered by a disgruntled client and he has buried his pain in years of serious alcohol addiction. He's also a habitual gambler and hangs out with a motley crew of horse racing men who make a living out of spotting rank outsiders and setting them up to win. He's tough (as his work as a sometime debt collector and private investigator might suggest), very male (he loves Australian rules football, women and beer, not necessarily in that order) but he has a softer side too (in his spare time he learns cabinet making and he's a bit of an amateur foodie).

The book opens with Irish discovering a series of increasingly urgent voice messages on his answering machine. These have been left by a former client, Danny McKillop, urging him to meet in a pub car park because "I'm in deep shit". Unfortunately, the messages are a few days old, so Irish has missed the meeting. He can't place McKillop but when he later discovers that he's been shot dead at the very time and place of the requested meeting, he doesn't waste any time refreshing his memory. It turns out Irish defended McKillop when he was charged with the hit-and-run death of a young woman 10 years ago. He was found guilty, sentenced to prison and had only just been released.

The more Irish digs around, the more he begins to suspect that maybe McKillop has been set up. Joining forces with female journalist Linda Hillier -- she later becomes his love interest -- he manages to discover that the hit-and-run victim was a vocal campaigner against a proposed luxury residential development on an urban brownfield site. Was she silenced to allow the development to go ahead? Or is he joining dots that shouldn't be joined?

What follows is an action-packed, fast-paced investigation that throws up a good mix of red herrings, Government cover ups and dodgy dealings. And despite a few too-odd-to-be-true incidents (involving guns, police chases and a few ethically questionable journalistic practises), I struggled to guess the ending, the sign of a well-plotted and carefully crafted storyline.

Of course as a former Melburnian it would be remiss of me to not point out the distinctly Melburnian feel of this book. I loved the references to particular suburbs and streets, football teams and racecourses, and quietly chuckled at all the Australian colloquialisms that might actually stump Northern Hemisphere readers.

Without a doubt Bad Debts is a highly charged, highly entertaining read, and a wonderful introduction to the Jack Irish trilogy. One down, only two more to go!

'Hearts and Minds' by Rosy Thornton

Fiction - hardcover; Headline Review; 352 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of the author.

The last time I read a campus novel was probably Donna Tartt's The Secret History way back in 1993. I'd forgotten about the closed world of the university campus, in which students seem perpetually at loggerheads with the academic staff. Once-upon-a-time that was my world too, but I escaped it by the seat of my pants, swapping the cash-strapped lifestyle of a post-graduate student for the cash-strapped lifestyle of the rookie reporter. A dozen years later and I'm an editor instead of an academic, but it could quite easily have been the other way around.

Reading Rosy Thornton's latest book, Hearts and Minds, which is set in the all-female St Radegund's College, Cambridge, was an unexpected reminder of my distant past.  And in a funny, crazy, karmic-type of way, it seemed fitting to find that one of the main characters -- James Rycarte -- is a BBC executive who swaps journalism for academia.

I wasn't sure what to make of this novel when I began reading it a fortnight ago. It seemed to take forever to set up the plot, which revolves around Rycarte, the college's first ever male Head of House, quarrelling with the fellowship about a large cash donation that could be used for much-needed building repairs as well as setting up scholarships for up to 10 students in perpetuity. His one champion, the career-minded senior tutor, Martha Pearce, has her own battles to fight -- a rent strike by students, coupled with domestic problems involving a clinically depressed teenage daughter and a layabout husband -- to devote all her energies to Rycarte's aims.

But once I got into the rhythm of the writing and came to know the diverse and quirky range of characters, I fell in love with the story, the setting and the little subplots. I decided, about 100 pages in, that this was a book to savour and so I treated myself to a few chapters a night rather than race through it and miss out on the subtleties of Thornton's lovely rich writing style.

Despite the somewhat "girlie" cover, this is not chick-lit, nor, as the title may suggest, is it a cheesy romantic novel. In fact, I'd argue that this is mature fiction for mature readers, male and female alike. At its most basic level Hearts and Minds explores the complicated balancing acts that people perform every day -- Rycarte, looking after the college's best interests without compromising its integrity; Pearce, juggling her academic career with a troubled home life -- but adds a delicious layer of extra interest by setting it in a cloistered world where tradition does not mix with modernity.

This is a great, rainy day novel brimming with intelligent, often witty, prose, the perfect kind of story to luxuriate in while the rest of the world goes about its busy ways. I very much enjoyed it.

'Venetian Stories' by Jane Turner Rylands

Fiction - paperback; Anchor Books; 304 pages; 2004.

I am not a great fan of the short story, but I made an exception for this collection, because of its setting. It's no secret that I have a soft spot for Venice, so, when I found Jane Turner Rylands' Venetian Stories in a local charity shop I snapped it up, took it home and then spent the next six months reading it very, very slowly.

All the stories -- there are 12 in total and each is about 20 pages long -- are set in the watery city. They are told from the perspective of the residents, whether new or old, Italian or foreign, rich or poor. Some are even interlinked, but this is done in such a subtle manner that it's not immediately obvious and, to be honest, I wouldn't have even picked this up if it wasn't for the blurb telling me this was the case.

In fact, subtle is the key word here, as the entire collection seems to lack any great impact. There's no "wow" factor in these stories, but they are pleasing and effortless to read, if slightly fey in places. They supposedly provide an insight into real Venetian lives, but I have my doubts because many of the people portrayed here are downright snobs, corrupt or stupid.

There's also a decidedly American feel to everything, which is no great surprise given the author is an expat American. But what concerned me most was the condescending prose style adopted by Turner Rylands; there's no greater turn off than being talked down to, as if I could not possibly be as well travelled or as well connected  as the author.

In my humble opinion, Venetian Stories is not a great collection and has done nothing to make me reassess my usual distaste for the short story, but if you love Venice and consider yourself an armchair traveller (rather than a real traveller) you just might enjoy it.

'Under Enemy Colors' by S. Thomas Russell

Fiction - hardcover; Putnam Publishing Group; 368 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of publisher.

Although I'm not an expert on the naval genre, many of my favourite novels -- Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger, Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea and Matthew Kneale's English Passengers -- have been seafaring adventures, so I had rather high expectations for S. Thomas Russell's Under Enemy Colors. I'm pleased to say I was not disappointed.

Set on board a newly-built British frigate, the Themis, during the French Revolution, it tells the story of two very different men working for the King's Navy.

The ship's captain, Josiah Hart, is a notorious coward and an incompetent, bumbling, tyrannical leader, but the Admiralty has turned a blind eye to his failings because he is very well connected through Mrs Hart's family.

Charles Saunders Hayden, a seafaring man of impeccable ability, is his (reluctant) first lieutenant who has been secretly engaged to inform on Hart's exploits. Hayden, who feels the role is beneath him, has only accepted the job because his parentage -- his father is British, his mother French -- has often been used to (wrongly) call his loyalty into question, and to refuse it would only jeopardise his career in the Navy.

During the ship's adventure-filled voyage into French waters, Hayden finds himself increasingly stuck between duty and honour, between a tyrannical leader, who thinks nothing of belittling him in public, and a disaffected crew with leanings towards violence and possible mutiny...

I have to say that I loved this book from the outset. Thomas Russell has an immediate and an easy-to-read voice  that rings with period authenticity. He's a master at suspense and is so good at capturing that sense of injustice that sets the reader's teeth on edge this book should have come with a health warning.

His vast cast of characters are imbued with a realism that is hard to fault. This is impressive given that Captain Hart could have so easily been turned into an over-the-top caricature.  My only quibble is that Hayden's personal struggle to come to terms with his identity as half-French half-English was laboured a little too strongly -- such a dilemma wears thin after it's been mentioned more than a dozen times.

As for the narrative, there's certainly plenty of action and adventure, most of which is thoroughly entertaining. But I felt the book would have benefited from the judicious omission of a seafaring battle or two. Personally, I wanted to cut to the chase, and not revel in the guts and gunshots, of which there is much. And the ending, which is satisfying, also raises more questions than it answers, but that's no bad thing...

All up, Under Enemy Colors is the perfect mix of character- and action-driven entertainment, with a heady dose of history and humanity thrown in for good measure.  It will appeal to those who love historical fiction or seafaring adventures or just want to get lost in a good old-fashioned action story.

'The Broken Shore' by Peter Temple

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 400 pages; 2007.

Crime novels set in modern day Australia are few and far between. In fact, I've never read one before. But then I heard lots of good things, mainly from British critics, about Peter Temple's The Broken Shore and knew it was a book I had to track down.

I picked up a cheap copy from Waterstone's earlier in the year and read it over the course of a dismal weekend in June. The book was absolutely enthralling in a way I could not put my finger on. And because I couldn't quite work out what it was about the book that I loved so much I couldn't muster the creative energy to write a review. I then gave the book to my father, who was about to embark on a long haul trip back to Australia, and kept telling myself I'd write about it ... soon.

Well, two months later I'm finally composing this review-of-sorts. Since my reading of The Broken Shore, it has been awarded  the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (formerly the CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction) for 2007. Temple, who was born in South Africa, is the first Australian to win the award.

But while it might have scored a top-class prize for crime writing, I'm not entirely convinced that this book is a conventional crime novel. The first half is very heavy on scene setting and character development and there's little in the way of detective work. But this is not a bad thing, because you get a real sense of what makes Joe Cashin -- and the rural community in which he lives -- tick. I enjoyed the slow sense of build-up, the careful exploration of Cashin's current life interspersed with the occasional flashback of his troubled past. You get a real feel for the man: his decency, his pain, his professionalism and his solitary nature.

Temple also interweaves some interesting political and racial problems into the storyline without resorting to cliche, although the picture he paints of rural Australia (and its police force) isn't exactly the one that the tourist brochures will want you to see.

The urgency of the plot picks up in the second half -- and goes off in unexpected directions. I'm not sure it entirely works, as there were elements that I found slightly unbelievable, almost as if Temple was trying too hard, as if he wanted to shock the reader and bang them over the head with the sheer outrageousness of it all. 

But as a whole The Broken Shore is a refreshing take on crime fiction, both in setting and style. Temple nails the melancholy nature of small town Australian life -- it's petty grievances, its politics, its sense of community -- sprinkles a healthy dose of humour throughout and offers some brilliant dialogue that is so spot-on you can almost hear those flat, Australian accents reverberating off the page. In fact, this novel is such a realistic portrayal of my homeland I'm not ashamed to admit that it made me feel just a wee bit homesick in places...

'Digging to America' by Anne Tyler

 

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 336 pages; 2007.

What is it to be an American? And to what lengths will people go to fit in even when they come from far flung places? Is it possible to remain a foreigner even after you have lived in a new country for more than 30 years?

These questions -- and more -- are explored in Anne Tyler's brilliant Digging to America, her 17th novel, which has been critically acclaimed on  both sides of the Atlantic and was recently shortlisted for this year's Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

In typical Tyler fashion Digging to America revolves around a range of relatively ordinary characters in Baltimore dealing with extraordinary circumstances.

Two couples, both of whom are unable to have children, decide to adopt Korean babies. When they meet by chance at the airport on the day of their daughters' arrival neither couple could be more different. Bitsy and Brad Donaldson are all-American -- loud, brash and unselfconscious about turning Jin-Ho's arrival into some kind of over-the-top celebration -- while Ziba and Sami Yazdan, two American-Iranians, are quiet, shy and restrained as they wait for Sooki -- later dubbed Susan because it "was a comfortable sound for Iranians to pronounce" -- to be "delivered" into their arms.

From this day onwards the two couples and their extended families are inextricably linked. Each year they celebrate "Arrival Day" -- August 15, 1997 -- by taking it in turns to host a party. It is through these parties that each family's individual differences -- their attitudes, cultural backgrounds and hopes for the future -- begin to shine through. The tension is, at times, palpable. But so too is the fun and the love.

While there is no real storyline to speak of -- the plot simply revolves around the various "Arrival Day" celebrations and the events that happen in between -- Tyler is able to explore two different views of America -- the insider's and the outsider's -- with tenderness and insight.

She charts the inner workings of the human heart like no other author, and the developing relationship between Sami's Iranian-born mother, the independent-minded widow Maryam, and Bitsy's widowed father, Dave, is the strength of this wise, moving and often funny book. I adored every precious word, but then I'd expect nothing less from this exceptionally talented author.

'The Blackwater Lightship' by Colm Toibin

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 272 pages; 2000.

This quiet, understated novel, the fourth by Irish writer Colm Tóibín, was short-listed for the 1999 Booker Prize and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. And with good reason. It is a beautiful heartfelt book about three generations of women, estranged for years, who must join forces to look after one of their own who has a serious life-threatening illness.

Helen, the central character, is a 30-something school teacher married with two young boys, who has managed to carve out a comfortable existence in Dublin. But despite her career success and ordered life, she hides a guilty secret: as a college student she had a falling out with her mother, Lily, and has not talked to her since. In fact Lily was not invited to Helen's wedding and she has never met her grandsons.

Helen's relationship with her grandmother, Dora, is not quite as strained, but Dora and Lily are particularly tetchy with one another and rarely talk.

But these personal histories, filled with pain, hurt and anger, must be cast aside when Helen's younger brother, Declan, announces he has AIDS. For the first time in decades the three women are thrown together by circumstances beyond their control.

When a very ill Declan says he wants to stay in his grandmother's falling-down house by the Wexford coast, the three women, all strong-willed and contrary, find their tense relationships tested even further.

Things are not made any easier by the presence of Declan's gay friends whom he regards as "family" but whom his mother, in particular, does not like.

But for Helen it is the house, which holds unpleasant childhood reminders of her father's untimely death, that causes her to confront her troubled past.

The Blackwater Lightship is not a straightforward novel. There's no happy conclusion. By turns it is shocking and moving. Its stark, spare prose lulls the reader into a false sense of comfort, a bit like the calm before the storm, because the nub of this novel is far from pleasant. Exploring the notions of family ties and how history binds us together no matter how hard we might try to escape it, it also looks at morals, manners and the pain we can dish out with one hand and hold close with the other.

This is a quick, emotional read and one that lingers in the mind for a considerable time. It is hugely reminiscent of John McGahern's Amongst Women and Jennifer Johnston's The Gingerbread Women, two other Irish novels about troubled people coming to term with familial relationships, both written in a succinct, bleak style.

'A Long Shadow' by Charles Todd

Fiction - paperback; Harper; 354  pages; 2006.

A Long Shadow is one of nine mystery novels featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge written by an American-based mother-and-son writing team.

Rutledge, who works for Scotland Yard, survived the trenches of the Great War but the horrors of the battlefield still plague him and he is haunted by the ghost of a soldier friend who did not return.

In this evocative novel set in London and rural England in 1919, Rutledge is being stalked by someone who keeps leaving brass cartridge casings for him to find, an eerie reminder of his former life on the battlefield.

At the same time, he is sent to a small Northamptonshire village to investigate an attack on a local constable, shot in the back with a bow-and-arrow in Frith Wood which is said to be haunted by Saxon ghosts.

But all is not what it seems and before long Rutledge is embroiled in another mystery involving the disappearance of a teenage girl, who is believed to be buried in the woods, several years before.

Are these incidences -- the casings, the constable's attempted murder, the girl's disappearance -- all linked and, if so, by what?

A Long Shadow is one of those good old-fashioned murder mysteries that keeps you guessing pretty much all the way through it. Things only begin to fall into place when you're about 50 pages from the end.

The plotting is very good, although some scenes felt slightly laboured and I wasn't sure of the point of one or two characters, particularly a Mrs Channing, an acquaintance of Rutledge's who comes all the way from London to spend a few days in the village. If she has any romantic intentions these are not explained, which only makes me wonder whether she might play a more prominent role in a future novel of this same series?

But the real strength of this novel is the historical setting. The aftermath of the Great War infuses this story with a gentle kind of horror, and Rutledge, who has his own ghosts to contend with, is an effective channel for the psychological pain and suffering of a generation. He is a beautifully drawn character, a man with a strong moral compass who is wracked by guilt but never able to articulate it in any meaningful way. The only thing that grated was his constant conversations with the ghost of his dead soldier friend; I thought this device was overdone and a case of less is more might have curbed this slight reader irritation.

On the whole A Long Shadow was an enjoyable read and if the other books in this historical series are just as good I'll definitely be reading more of them.

'The Amateur Marriage' by Anne Tyler

Fiction - paperback; Vintage (exclusive edition for Red magazine); 306 pages; 2005.

What is it that makes a marriage work? How much give and how much take is acceptable? Should each partner have a diametrically opposed personality to balance things out? Or is it better to be compatible in temperament and attitude?

What happens to the children if things go wrong? And to what extent does the state of our parent's marriage reflect our own personalities and attitudes?

These questions -- and so many more -- form the backbone of this astonishingly perceptive and near-perfect novel by Anne Tyler.

The Amateur Marriage spans three generations of one family living in suburban Baltimore. It charts the course of one couple's life together, beginning with their whirlwind war-time romance, marriage, children and then, unsurprisingly, their divorce some 30 years later. This is not a match made in heaven.

Michael Anton, the son of Polish immigrants, is plodding, cautious,  thorough and little on the dull side, while Pauline is good-looking, gregarious, spontaneous and slightly scatty. Michael is content to run his mother's grocery store over which they live, but Pauline wants so much more, including a new house in the suburbs to bring up their young family.

Their life is filled with spats, hurtful off-the-cuff remarks and very little kindness. It is obvious that they are both seeking something that their opposite number cannot provide but fail to find a way out of their predicament: this is an era in which counselling is not an option.

It is not until their eldest child, 17-year-old Lindy, runs away from home that the cracks in their marriage begin to take their toll: Pauline thinks the rifts can be patched but Michael's dogged stubbornness will not yield. When they later inherit a grandchild they did not know existed they muddle through until Michael, unable to take his wife's unpredictable moods any longer, walks out...

But there is much more to this story than this perceptive and oh-so true dissection of a marriage. It's also a story about family relationships,  the ties between siblings and how we cling to the past to make sense of the future.

Quite akin to Tyler's highly acclaimed (and my personal favourite) Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, it reveals how the little things -- everyday routines, conversations and decisions -- make up the bigger picture of our lives. It's a very knowing novel, incisive and tuned-in to what makes ordinary people tick, and for that reason Tyler's cast of characters and their individual behaviours seem completely believable: the Anton's could, indeed, be your next-door neighbours.

If you are looking for a thoughtful, intelligent, page-turning read that centres on family life, provides a good dose of tragedy tempered by comedy (the humour is particularly endearing), then The Amateur Marriage should fit the bill perfectly.

'Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living' by Carrie Tiffany

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 256 pages; 2005.

This luminous, sparsely written but wonderfully evocative novel is set in rural Australia during the 1930s.

Jean, the 23-year-old narrator, is a seamstress instructor on board the government-sponsored 'Better Farming Train' that trundles through agricultural districts espousing wisdom on everything from chicken-sexing to baking cakes.

Her colleagues comprise a wonderful mix of eccentric characters which include the matronly infant welfare teacher Sister Crock, the cooking lecturer Mary Maloney, the Japanese chicken-sexer Mr Ohno and the Yorkshire-born 'agrostologist - a specialist in soil and crop', Robert Pettergree.

When Jean enters an erotically charged romance with Robert it looks like she is going to live happily ever after. They leave the train, get married and set up home in the Mallee, a wheat-growing region of western Victoria. Together they set out to prove that Robert's Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, an article he penned for an agricultural journal, really do convert low-yielding paddocks into rich, productive ones.

But when the local farmers don't appreciate this new scientific way of thinking, it looks like their efforts may be doomed. Throw in a never-ending drought, the Depression and a looming war, is it any wonder Jean's new-found happiness soon begins to wear thin? But ultimately it is her marriage that self-combusts because Robert is too emotionally distant to recognise his own - and science's - limitations...

I read Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living in two short sittings. It's an easy read, helped in part by the narrator's delightfully simple voice, which is naive, sometimes pained and at other times full of the wonder of life.

Tiffany's assured writing perfectly captures the Australian landscape and the era within which the story is set. (I wooped with joy when she name-checked several places in South Gippsland that I know oh-so well.)

And despite the bareness of the prose, her eye for detail manages to convey so much in just a few short words. There's a lot going on here, so much so I'm tempted to read this book again to see what I missed first time round.

The book is full of quietly understated moments but it's the tear-inducing emotional punches that deliver the poignancy without sentimentality that makes the story so memorable.

My only quibble is that the narrative seems a little directionless and needs more structure to move the reader along, but that's a small price to pay for a gorgeous little book that captures the Australian melancholy so effectively. A worthy contender for this year's Orange Prize.

'The Republic of Trees' by Sam Taylor

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 240 pages; 2006.

Four adolescents -- expat Brits who live in France -- run away from their family homes to spend the summer in the forest free from adult control. Here they set up a new society called The Republic of Trees based on the principles in philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract.

At first things are carefree, even joyous. Louis, the intellectual leader devotes his time to drawing a map of the region; Alex, the hunter ensures there's a ready supply of food; Isobel does the cooking; and Michael, the youngest of the quartet, climbs trees and swims in Elbow Pool.

The first half of the book is quite a charming account of Michael's sexual awakening and, told through his eyes, the reader gets to experience his first flush of love (and lust) with the intriguing Isobel.

Later, when a fifth interloper, another ex-pat, this time a Canadian, Joy, enters their world things suddenly go a bit awry. Before long, the pleasant 'camping trip' takes on a worrying and menacing undertone. Sexual jealousy, sibling rivalry and power struggles all come to the fore.

When food supplies start running out the group begins some petty thievery from nearby farm houses and villages, which is indicative of their running-on-empty mindset and their slide into darkness.

Despite the republic becoming more formalised, with proper rules and laws put in place, things begin to spiral out of control.

The tale takes on a nightmarish, and downright nasty, element that does not end until the book's gruesome climax.

I have to admit that I did not like The Republic of Trees very much. That's not to say it isn't well written, because it is. The plot's quite good too. I just did not feel any empathy for any of the characters and had no idea of their ages -- early teens, mid-teens, late teens? -- because none are specified. It's such a minor but oh-so important element.

There were several things that did not ring true either: how could four teenagers run away and not be found and what teenagers are into politics and philosophy to the point of creating their own revolution these days?

Ultimately, while this book has many similarities to William Golding's Lord of the Flies and Toby Litt's Deadkidsongs, two books I've read and enjoyed, The Republic of Trees just didn't do it for me. 

'Due Preparations for the Plague' by Janette Turner Hospital

Fiction - paperback; Harper Perennial; 416 pages; 2004.

The central focus of this novel is the hijack of an Air France plane. The terrorists responsible keep ten hostages as a negotiating card. Each of these ten hostages has a story to tell their loved ones before they die. But more than a dozen years pass before these stories reach the outside world. In that time the children of the hostages, and other survivors of the event, are still grappling with the horrifying consequences of what happened to Flight 64.

While the hijacking  is set in 1987, the similarities to the real life terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA are eerily apparent. In fact, Turner Hospital acknowledges that those events had a bearing on the novel, although she'd pretty much finished the manuscript when 9/11 occurred. For the reader, this makes the book all the more realistic and terrifying. I found myself becoming more and more anxious (and paranoid) as the story unfolded.

Due Preparations for the Plague (the title comes from Daniel Defoe's writings on the Bubonic Plague and how to survive it) is a riveting, electrifying and haunting read. Turner Hospital weaves a wicked web of deceit and deception. But in doing so she never loses sight of what it is that makes this novel such a tour de force: the impact of man's deadly ways on the lives and loves of everyone involved. Through one exceptionally horrific event she is able to chart the full spectrum of human emotions - fear, rage, suffering, heartbreak, jealousy and love - with aplomb and gravitas.

This consummately written novel could not be better placed to draw on the current age of paranoia we live in. I expect it will usher in a whole host of similarly plotted books although I doubt any will be as haunting and as beautifully written as this one. My only quibble is the ending, which was disappointing because it seemed so silly and predictable. But all in all this is an exceptional thriller.

'Felicia's Journey' by William Trevor

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 213 pages; 1994.

This is a wonderful, heartbreaking tale of a teenage girl's search for the father of her unborn child. That search takes her from her childhood home in Dublin, Ireland, to the bleak, post-industrial heartland of the British Midlands. Her journey is fraught with difficulty and disaster until she meets the seemingly kindly Mr Hilditch who takes her under his wing. At just 17 years of age, Felicia's stranger-danger radar seems far from tuned and she naively accepts his assistance.

This perfectly written novel (not a sentence, not a word, is out of place) is an enriching read. Felicia's character - her naivety, her grit, her determination - is in stark contrast to Mr Hilditch's smarmy, insidiously creepy, traits.

"Watching" Felicia blindly going on her wild goose chase is difficult enough without having the menacing Mr Hilditch - a catering man in love with food - follow her every move.

Without wishing to spoil the ending for anyone, I can say it is heartbreakingly sad, and some tissues might come in handy.

'The Fourth Queen' by Debbie Taylor

Fiction  - paperback; Penguin; 496 pages; 2004.

This is a sanguine, sexy tale set in a harem in Morocco.

It's based on the true story of Helen Gloag, who, fleeing the poverty of Scotland, finds herself on a ship bound for America. When the ship is captured by pirates, the young, inexperienced and prudish teenager is kidnapped and sold into slavery.

In the harem run by the cruel and charismatic Emperor Sidi Mohammed, Helen's world is turned completely upside down. From a naive waif with little sexual experience she becomes the emperor's fourth wife (hence the book's title) and lives a life that must have been totally unimaginable for a western woman in the 18th century.

Taylor's writing is accomplished and confident, if overly descriptive at times. She manages to convey the "richness" of Helen's surrounds using lush and evocative language.

But the plot, which is a kind of murder-mystery revolving around the poisoning of several of the queens, is lacklustre and doesn't justify devoting 496 pages to it.

All in all, it was a pleasant enough read but nothing too earth shattering.

If you have read M. R. Lovric's Carnivale and enjoyed it, you will probably like The Fourth Queen, too.