Reading Matters

'Heliopolis' by James Scudamore

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 288 pages; 2010.

Is there a word for the male equivalent of sassy? If so, it should definitely apply to James Scudamore's Heliopolis, an easy-to-read black comedy with a hard-hitting edge, that was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009.

Adopted by a very rich man

The story is set in São Paulo, Brazil, a violent city split into two very distinct classes: the rich, who live in high-rise apartments and commute by helicopter, and the poor, who live in favelas and shanty towns, and provide manual labour and unskilled services for the wealthy.

Into this sharply divided society we meet our narrator, 27-year-old Ludo, who has a rather cosseted, if somewhat vacuous, job at a PR/advertising agency in the heart of the city. But Ludo, who wants for nothing, is lucky to be in his current position.

As a child, he was plucked from a favela with his mother and given a new life by a rich man, Zé Fischer Carnicelli ("a supermarketeer with political aspirations"), and his English wife, Rebecca. Ludo was raised with Zé and Rebecca's only child, Melissa, while his mother became their cook at the farm — "palm hearts, bananas and a small Brahma beef herd" — a luxury retreat used by Zé on the weekends.

Look what can happen in a generation: my mother lived in a flimsy shack, and I have my own place and car, and I can speak and read and write better than most of the playboys you'll meet, because I paid attention in school. But this is no normal case study. What happened to me does not happen. And unless you're extremely good with a football, it definitely does not happen if you are male.

When the book opens we discover that Ludo is having an incestuous affair with his "adopted" sister Melissa, who is a lifestyle journalist ("she only seems to write about the kind of lifestyle that very few — herself among them — can afford"). Melissa lives in an extravagant penthouse suite with her husband, Ernesto, an anthropologist, who is absent for long periods doing research for his doctorate. When Ludo begins receiving anonymous and abusive voice messages on his phone at work, he suspects Ernesto is the culprit.

But then life takes on an even more dangerous twist when Ludo is given a dubious work assignment that takes him back to the favela from which he has turned his back.

Fast-paced narrative

The central core of the novel — and what makes it work as a page turner — is the very real danger that Ludo feels as the story progresses. He may have been rescued by Zé, who "hasn’t been down to street level in the city for over fifteen years", but he is still very much aware of what life is like in the favelas — desperate, difficult and violent.

Indeed, the book paints a far from flattering portrait of São Paulo, a city of 20 million people, where life is cheap and "nothing gets in the way of commerce".

The metropolis as a place of menace, where people are seemingly indifferent to danger and death, is evident from the start of the novel, when Ludo has a run in with a boy who is later shot by a security guard.

The women scream. The victim screams. The cars on the flyover continue to lurch and blare. Just one more frenzied city drama in a thousand, to be forgotten and absorbed into the oozing traffic, and perhaps mentioned in passing over lunch. [...] When the guard gets out his phone to call the police, I look at the pink car-park ticket in my hand and realise there's nothing more I can do but get to work. I'm late enough as it is.

On the whole, Heliopolis is a fast-paced, often comedic read that delves into thriller territory. It also explores several intriguing themes that provide the book with some intellectual weight — the importance of food within cultures and classes, for instance, and the glaring gap between the rich and the poor.

I found it entertaining and illuminating, and I loved Ludo's engaging, often smug, occasionally contrite voice. My thanks to KevinfromCanada for the recommendation.

'The Caller' by Karin Fossum

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 296 pages; 2012. Translated from the Norwegian by K.E. Semmel. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Norwegian author Karin Fossum is quickly turning into one of my favourite crime writers. The Caller is her tenth novel in the Inspector Sejer series — and the third one I have read. Even though the books feature the same detective they are not strictly police procedurals. Instead Fossum's perceptive — and empathetic — eye turns towards the perpetrator and the victims as she explores the cause and effect of often horrendous crimes.

A baby drenched in blood

The Caller begins in spectacular fashion when an odd crime is carried out. A young couple, Lily and Karsten Sundelin, are eating a meal indoors while their baby sleeps peacefully in her pram in the garden. When Lily goes to bring baby Magrete inside she feels a terrible foreboding. The baby is drenched in blood. The understandably distraught parents assume she is bleeding from the mouth and rush her to hospital. But once she is checked over, the nurses reveal the baby is unharmed — and that the blood is not hers.

Cue a police investigation, headed by Inspector Sejer and his colleague, Jacob Skarre. Had Lily or Karsten done something to upset someone? Was this an act of revenge? Had a former jealous partner wanted to scare them? Or was it a woman who had lost her child in a terrible way?

Later that evening Sejer finds a hand-delivered postcard on his doorstep bearing the message: “Hell begins now”. It has a glossy photograph of a wolverine on the front. “There will be more attacks,” he tells his colleague. “We’re dealing with a beast of prey.”

And he is right: this shocking incident turns out to be the first in an increasingly bizarre string of brazen and cruel “pranks” that terrorises a wide cast of unsuspecting victims. The book charts the ensuing cat and mouse game between the perpetrator and Sejer and Skarre, who try to track him down.

Portrait of a tormentor

It’s not a plot spoiler to reveal that the perpetrator is a young man, Johnny Beskow, who still lives at home with his alcoholic mother, whom he loathes. We meet him in chapter 4 and we discover how he chooses his victims, and why.

But Fossum does not paint things in black and white: Beskow may be carrying out criminal acts, he may wish his mother was dead, he may be filled with malice — but there are reasons for his warped worldview. And he’s not without the capacity to love: he dotes on his elderly grandfather, whom he visits regularly, and the caged guinea pig he keeps in his bedroom.

Essentially The Caller is not a whodunit, but a whydunit: what makes a young man carry out such spiteful crimes on random victims? And will he eventually get his comeuppance?

The human cost of crime

This neatly structured book interleaves Beskow’s storyline with that of the police investigation and that of the victims, both before and after the crime is carried out — it is fascinating to see how the Sundelin’s marriage begins to crumble as each partner copes with the crime in different ways; Karsten is angry and eaten up by a desire for revenge; Lilly’s fragile vulnerability turns her into a nervous wreck and she can no longer function normally. And it is equally fascinating to see how Beskow rationalises his actions — and how his conscience begins to bother him.

But it is the exquisitely planned plot which makes this novel an exceptional one: the impossible-to-guess double-twist ending left me gasping in shock.

Ripe with intelligence, suspense and psychological insight, The Caller is the cleverest and most involving crime book I’ve read this year.

'The Talented Mr Ripley' by Patricia Highsmith

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 256 pages; 2009.

I seem to be going through a minor, and completely unplanned, phase of reading suspense novels right now, so what better book to continue the theme than Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, a classic of the genre? This is where I also stick up my hand and confess that I've never seen the film, so I came to the book with no preconceptions whatsoever. I had no idea of the plot, nor the wickedness of the central character Mr Ripley either.

A suspense novel of the finest order

First published in 1955, the book is a suspense novel of the finest order — precisely plotted, written in concise but stylish prose, and filled with brilliant characters.

But unlike many suspense novels, where you fear for the good guys that have found themselves in a difficult situation, in this fast-paced story you actually cheer on the perpetrator. In this case it is Mr Ripley, a 23-year-old loner, who commits two atrocious murders.

From the outset, we learn that Tom, who lives in New York, isn't the most honest of characters. He hates his circle of friends, lies about his job and commits tax fraud under a false name. Raised by an aunt, whom he detests, he continues to accept the cheques she sends him, because he's desperate for the money.

But when he is offered the chance to go to Europe on an all expenses paid trip, Tom sees it as an opportunity to start his life afresh.

A trip to Italy

The trip, however, is not without its strings, for Tom has been "hired" by a wealthy industrialist, Herbert Greenleaf, to go to Italy in order to convince his wayward son, Dickie, to return home. It seems that Tom once met Dickie at a party, but for some reason Mr Greenleaf thinks they are close friends — Tom, knowing a good deal when he sees one, does nothing to disabuse him of the idea.

In the seaside Italian village of Mongibello, Tom befriends Dickie, an artist, and his American girlfriend, Marge, a writer. He is greeted with contempt at first, but soon worms his way into Dickie's affections and the pair become inseparable. (There are hints of unrequited homosexual love, on Tom's part, but they remain just that: hints.)

Of course, it's difficult to say much more without ruining the plot, but let's just say that Tom's hunger for money gets the better of him and he decides to bump off Dickie. Later, when one of Dickie's friends suspects that Tom is hiding something, he, too, is done away with.

Two murders down and with the police on his trail, the book's suspense element goes into overdrive as Tom tries to keep two steps ahead in order not to be caught. The story moves from Mongibello to Rome, Sicily to Venice, and all the while he covers his tracks so superbly you begin to wonder if he will ever make a false move. Surely Marge can see through his lies? Doesn't Mr Greenleaf suspect him of evil doing? Can't the police tell he is making things up? And won't the private investigator, brought in at the last minute, find him out?

Cheering on a killer

Funnily enough, even though Tom is a killer and a wicked, manipulative little man, you can't help but cheer him on. Yes, he's probably a psychopath — he certainly doesn't show empathy for any of his so-called friends or victims — but it's hard to dismiss him as evil. He is so lacking in self-confidence and self-esteem, and so desperate to be liked and accepted by his peers, that you end up empathising with his conniving ways and become enamoured of his quick wit and ability to think on his feet. Essentially, you appreciate his talent as a conman and killer.

And that, I think, is the real success of this novel, because Highsmith really gets inside the heads of her characters and so expertly depicts the complicated tangle of human relationships — people's loyalties, their weaknesses, the things that make them tick — that the characters and their predicaments seem entirely plausible. You can appreciate why Tom is jealous of Marge, can see that Marge is foolish to pin all her hopes on a man who doesn't truly love her, and that Dickie is self-centred and spoilt. And you understand completely their motivations, which probably explains why you can never truly condemn Tom for his actions. He wants money, freedom and success — don't we all? — he's just gone about achieving it the wrong way.

I read The Talented Mr Ripley in two longish sittings, because I just had to know whether Tom would get away with his crimes. If you want to know if he gets his just desserts, beg, borrow or buy a copy...

'Fly Away Peter' by David Malouf

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 142 pages; 1999.

David Malouf is a critically acclaimed and prize-winning novelist and poet from Australia. Fly Away Peter, his third novel, netted him The Age Book of the Year in 1982 and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1983.

A Great War novel

It is a truly beautiful and devastating story set before and during the Great War. I read it in two sittings and felt stunned by the sheer power and emotion that Malouf wrings from just 144 pages of eloquently written prose.

When Fly Away Peter opens it is 1914. Jim Saddler, a 20-year-old man from southern Queensland, devotes his time to watching birds in the estuary and swampland near the home he shares with the father he does not like very much.

One day he meets the owner of the land, Ashley Crowther, a rich farmer not much older than himself, who employees Jim to record the coming and going of the birds — both native and migratory species — as part of his plan to create a sanctuary.

A little later Jim befriends an older English woman called Imogen Harcourt, whom he sees in the "sanctuary" taking bird photographs which she sends to a London magazine. These photographs also accompany the long list of birds that Jim transcribes into a special book using his "best copybook hand, including all the swirls and hooks and tails on the capital letters that you left off when you were simply jotting things down".

Trio of characters

This trio of characters come from vastly different backgrounds — Miss Harcourt is an English immigrant who lives alone, Australian-born Ashley was educated in England's finest schools, Jim has never left Queensland — and yet they are united by their mutual love of birds and the natural world. 

When he talked to Miss Harcourt, as when he talked to Ashley Crowther, they spoke only of 'the birds'.

But their idyllic existence comes to an end when war erupts in Europe and both men decide to sign up — Jim goes to Salisbury, England, to be trained; Ashley is an officer in a different division. It is here, on the battlefields of the Western Front, that Malouf's extraordinary novel really comes into its own.

The mud and the trenches

His gut-wrenching descriptions of the mud and the trenches and the fear of going over the top are eloquent and moving, as is his depiction of the friendships, and occasional personal hostilities, formed on the front line.

There is one particularly god-awful scene in which Jim loses his best friend in the platoon, a larrikin called Clancy, that is more horrifying and bone-chilling than anything I've ever read about the Great War.

But the great strength of Fly Away Peter is the way in which Malouf not only describes how war is a machine, spitting out more and more young men who will die horrible deaths far from home, but also the way in which he contrasts the fighting in the trenches while the residents of Armentières are getting on with their day-to-day lives:

Often, as Jim later discovered, you entered the war through an ordinary gap in a hedge. One minute you were in a ploughed field, with snowy troughs between ridges that marked old furrows and peasants off at the edge of it digging turnips or winter greens, and the next you were through the hedge and on duckboards, and although you could look back and still see farmers at work, or sullenly watching as the soldiers passed over their land went slowly below ground, there was all the difference in the world between your state and theirs. They were in a field and very nearly at home. You were in the trench system that lead to the war.

Explores Australian myths

It's easy to see why the novel is a set text in many Australian schools. It explores the myth of the Australian soldier and the ANZAC spirit, and contrasts the horror of war with the beauty — and peace — of the natural world. It shows how an appreciation and respect for nature is a great leveller, crossing the boundaries of race, class and experience. And the text is rich with symbols, not least the migratory birds which represent Jim's "flight" to the other side of the world.

But it is the poignancy of the ending, in which Miss Harcourt stands on the beach and reflects that life continues to move on — "Everything changed. The past would not hold and could not be held" — that elevates this novel from excellent to exceptional.

I haven't felt so devastated by a First World War novel since I read Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way. And going by how much I loved and adored those novels, I don't make this statement lightly...

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout January 2012. The idea is to simply read as many novels as I can by writers from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'Loaded' by Christos Tsiolkas

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 151 pages; 1995.

Loaded is the first novel by Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas, he of The Slap fame. To say the book is loud, brash and in-your-face would be an understatement. It brims with raw energy, power and verve. It's audacious — and confronting.

It's also pornographic and those who don't really want to know the detail of casual, often anonymous, gay sex should probably stay clear. But the sex is central to the novel's focus, for Ari, the narrator, is 19, unemployed and trying to find his way in the world. He is bored — and self-destructive. He's looking for any kind of experience to lift him out of his ordinary, dull, suburban existence. And if that means getting it off with strangers in nightclubs and public toilets, then so be it.

Ari is also a drug user — and occasional pusher.

Stark subject matter

Yet despite the stark subject matter and the clear-eyed prose, there's something sad and tender about this story.

Spanning just 24 hours, we get a glimpse of Ari's frustrating home life — his father, a Greek immigrant, calls him an "animal" and is prone to angry outbursts; his mother, an Australian, shouts and nags — and see how he prowls the city — its streets, its suburbs, its nightclubs  — because he needs "something else going on".

What's clear from the outset is that Ari, aimless, directionless and confused by his sexuality, has a bleak world view shaped by the things he sees around him — his parent's unhappiness ("I love my parents but I don't think they have much guts. Always complaining about how hard life is and not having much money. And they do shit to change any of it"), the casual racism among his peers and the ways in which the immigrant community is just as obsessed by money and class as the "skips" (white Australians).

He thinks he looks like John Cusack

He is intelligent, good-looking ("I saw John Cusack interviewed on late-night television and he looked like me") and obsessed by movies and music. In fact, he spends most of the novel mooching around listening to mix tapes on his Walkman (the music references are particularly good if you are of a certain, a-hem, vintage).

But what resonates most is Ari's sense of alienation — from his parents (in particular, his father's Greek background), his older brother (who is studying at university and is not afraid to stand up against his domineering parents), his friends (who have gainful employment) and himself (never quite sure if he is gay or straight).

This alienation is reflected in the city he sees around him — the narrative is very much tied to Melbourne's suburban enclaves and is split into four parts named East, West, South and North — which he loves and loathes in equal measure. I particularly enjoyed his references to suburbs and places I know from my time living in Melbourne (which is about the same time that events in the book take place) and thought his descriptions of the Eastern suburbs (which are more affluent than the West) — with their "continuous loop of brick-veneer houses forming a visual mantra" — pretty much spot-on.

In the East, in the new world of suburbia there is no dialogue, no conversation, no places to go out: for there is no need, there is television.

An angry young man

The strength of the novel lies in Ari's voice, which is angry, full of self-loathing and deeply cynical. He's not necessarily a likable character, but he is empathetically drawn.

Loaded isn't the type of novel you read for "pleasure", but it's worth reading because it offers an eye-opening peek inside a rarely seen world. It's like getting on a rollercoaster for the first time: it's deeply frightening but once the ride ends you're glad you found the courage to experience it.

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I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout January 2012. The idea is to simply read as many novels as I can by writers from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

 

'The Silent Twins' by Marjorie Wallace

Non-fiction - paperback; Vintage; 304 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I first remember reading about identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons when I was a teenager. They were featured in an article in Reader's Digest magazine (my parents were subscribers), which explained that the girls did not communicate with the outside world because they had developed their own private language.

A complicated history

The Silent Twins, first published in 1986, updated in 1998 and reissued in 2008, explores June and Jennifer's complicated history. It is written by an investigative journalist, Marjorie Wallace, who founded the mental health charity SANE on the back of her experiences writing articles on schizophrenia for The Times.

In fact, after years of incarceration — the sisters were sentenced to Broadmoor after going on a five-week crime spree when they were teenagers — both June and Jennifer were diagnosed as schizophrenic. Wallace, who befriended the girls as part of her research for this book, argues otherwise.

The label seems to fit awkwardly the profound and complex problems of their twinship. [...] I have met many people with schizophrenia and have read many of their letters and writings. In the million or more words written by the twins I read in preparing this book, I have not yet found any sign of the fragmentation of thought so typical of this illness. Nor do the twins appear to suffer the more florid symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hearing voices. In any of my conversations with them I did not feel the fundamental disintegration of personality; or those moments of vacancy which can make communication so difficult. The twins are certainly not normal. They do suffer from feelings of paranoia — the people are watching them or reading their minds, one of the symptoms of schizophrenia. But how much was that paranoia an extension of their own experience of reading each other's mind and their jealous vigilance over each other?

Alas, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you a bit about the twins when they were youngsters and what made them so unusual.

Identical twin girls

They were born in 1963 to a West Indian couple, where they were brought up on an RAF base in Wales (their father was a technician in the RAF). But from the age of three the girls rejected communication with everyone around them — they would only talk to each other, and even then it was in a soft but high-pitched voice in a private language no one else could understand.

Because of this, they lacked social skills and failed at school (they weren't sent to a special school until they were 14, by which time it was too late). The older they got, the more private — and reclusive — they became. By the time they were 16, they'd dropped out of school, were living on benefits and rarely left the bedroom they shared with a younger sister. Most of their time was spent writing purple-prosed novels, which they would send off to be published by a vanity press.

But when editorial success eluded them they decided to seek their fame and fortune in other less legal ways: they went on a five-week crime spree involving petty thieving, breaking-and-entering, and arson. They were caught and sentenced for an unlimited period to Broadmoor, the only facility prepared to accept them.

Wallace charts the girls' lives from birth until their release from Broadmoor in 1993.

Diaries reveal their secret lives

Throughout their teenage years and beyond, the girls kept incredibly detailed diaries to which Wallace had access. These show that they were intelligent and that they cared deeply for their parents and siblings, even though they were unable to show emotion and unwilling to communicate with them.

And it reveals how they made a childhood pact to only communicate with one another, often through the subtle use of body language or eye contact. The pact became so all-consuming they were never able to break out of it.

What emerges is a powerful study of two siblings caught in a peculiar bond in which they loved and hated each other in equal measure — when they were separated, which the psychiatrists would do as part of their "treatment", they pined for each other to the point of illness, but thrust back together they would fight violently, tear their hair and scratch each other's faces.

Truth is stranger than fiction

The book is written in an easy-to-read narrative style and there were times when I had to remind myself it was not fiction. Truth can, at times, be stranger than fiction, and no more so than the case of The Silent Twins. It's a compelling and tragic tale.

You can find out more about June and Jennifer Gibbons via this Wikipedia entry — but be warned, it does contain plot spoilers.

'The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance' by Edmund De Waal

Non-fiction - paperback; Vintage; 368 pages; 2011.

Edmund De Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes won the 2010 Costa Biography Award. And yet this book is not a biography as such. It's a mix of memoir and history, with a little bit of art and some travel thrown in for good measure.

The hare of the title is carved out of ivory and is one of 264 netsuke that Edmund De Waal inherited from his Uncle Iggie. Netsuke are miniature sculptures from Japan, highly collectible and presumably worth a lot of money. De Waal, who is a potter by trade, is obviously enamoured of them and is keen to learn how these intriguing items came to pass. He also wants to know how they entered his family: where did his Uncle Iggie get them from?

While the book appears to centre on this special collection of netsuke — their origin, the ways in which they have been passed through three generations of De Waal's family — their appearance in the text is fleeting. This is more a story about De Waal's complicated, but intriguing, family tree — he is the direct descendant of the Ephrussi family, a Jewish banking and oil dynasty that originated in Odessa, Ukraine, rose to power in Paris and Vienna, but then crumbled when the Nazis seized their assets, including the family's famous bank, during the Second World War.

De Waal chooses to structure his book by starting near the top of his family tree, rather than working backwards as one might expect (or perhaps I've just watched way too many episodes of Who Do You Think You Are?) This is a gamble, because what happens if this person is the most interesting relative of the lot? Everyone else will pale by comparison and the narrative tension will be lost.

Arguably, Charles Ephrussi, whom De Waal introduces us to in Part One, is the most interesting relative he has in his tree. Paris-based Charles (1849-1905) is an art historian, critic and collector, who is immersed in the Impressionist era. He buys work from the likes of Manet, Pisarro and Degas and is depicted in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party. If that's not enough, he is also the inspiration for Charles Swann in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. He even starts his own periodical and becomes editor several years later.

It is Charles who buys the netsuke from Japan at a time when Japanese art was coming into fashion. And it is Charles who passes them onto a Vienna-based cousin, as a wedding present, setting them on a journey that is to stretch for more than 100 years.

I have to admit that there were times when I found this book slightly tedious — and dull. De Waal has a tendency to be self-indulgent, to explore the things that interest him rather than thinking about his reader, but his prose style is elegant and effortless.

Every now and then, however, there are little bursts of excitement — and shock — that lift the text out of the doldrums and give the narrative some extra impetus. I was particularly rivetted by the section in which the Nazis seized the Ephrussi family's palace, depriving them of their property and belongings. For a family so wealthy and privileged it must have seemed an astonishingly rude — and frightening — shock from which they never fully recovered.

But, overall, I had reservations about this book, perhaps because I'm not much of a "thing" person — material objects and accumulation of wealth don't interest me in the slightest. The Hare with the Amber Eyes resonated more with me as a history of anti-semitism in the 20th century rather than a "biography" of netsuke. It's an interesting book, but it's also a strange one, too.

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This book was chosen by Anirban for our Riverside Readers book group.

'Bad Intentions' by Karin Fossum

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 192 pages; 2011. Translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Judging by the number of Scandinavian crime thrillers that are 400 pages or more in length, I was pleasantly surprised to find Karin Fossum's latest novel, Bad Intentions, had fewer than 200. This is the perfect size to fit in my bike bag, which meant I've spent much of this past week toting it into work for my lunch-time reading fix.

The novel — or should that be novella? — doesn't follow the usual rules of the crime fiction genre. In many ways it's not so much a whodunnit, but a whydunnit. There's a twist though — isn't there always? — which makes it the kind of book that gets you thinking.

The moral message of Bad Intentions is nicely summed up by one of the characters, who mid-way through the story opines: "We need a sense of decency. Without it we cannot live a good life." 

That sense of decency seems to have bypassed Axel Frimann, a 25-year-old advertising executive, who is by turns charming, domineering, ambitious and manipulative.

Together with his childhood friend Philip Reilly — a passive, directionless, drug-taking hospital porter — they invite a third friend, Jon Moreno, on a weekend trip to an isolated cabin by a lake. The trip is designed to cheer Jon up. Jon, lonely and withdrawn, has recently had a nervous breakdown and is currently residing in a hospital's psychiatric ward.

But when Axel suggests a moonlit row across the lake in the middle of the night, Jon is reluctant to go. And probably with good reason — only two of the three men will return to shore.

I'm loathe to name which of the friends falls over board and drowns in the lake, but it's not a plot spoiler to reveal that the two survivors decide to cover it up. The book then focuses on why they made this fateful decision. After all, if it was an accident — or a suicide — what have they got to hide?

This is where Inspector Sejer and his partner Jacob Skarre step in to find out. And while Bad Intentions isn't strictly a police procedural — it largely focuses on the two survivors and the ways in which they deal with their guilty consciences — it does form an important element of the story.

It is only by Sejer and Skarre's investigative work, mainly the interviews with family and friends, that enable the reader to sketch in details and hit upon clues to provide a bigger picture of what really happened on the lake and the events leading up to it.

The twist comes when a second body is found in another lake nearby. How is this linked to the first body? Or is it merely a red herring?

Sadly, I figured it all out before I had even reached the half-way point, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment — in fact, I was waiting for Fossum to prove me wrong, but all she did was confirm my theory.

That said, this is a terrific crime novel that explores culpability, peer group pressure, betrayal and paranoia. Fossum's prose style, translated by Charlotte Barslund, is crisp and clear, with not a word wasted — as it needs to be when the story is delivered in such a slim package. But this only goes to prove that bigger doesn't necessarily mean better.

Bad Intentions is the ninth volume of the Inspector Sejer series (a tenth remains to be translated into English), but there's no need to worry if you haven't read the others: this can easily be enjoyed as a stand-alone book.

'BUtterfield 8' by John O'Hara

Fiction - paperback; Vintage Classics; 240 pages; 2008.

John O'Hara's BUtterfield 8 is an evocative portrait of New York in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929. Into this altered world, where the newly rich have lost fortunes and others are knuckling down to protect their assets, comes good-time girl Gloria Wandrous.

The book opens in sensational style with Gloria waking up alone in a stranger's apartment. Her evening dress, ripped down the middle, has been cast aside. Wanting to escape, but with nothing to wear, she steals an expensive mink coat from the wardrobe. The theft of the coat becomes a catalyst for a series of events that lead, eventually, to tragedy.

Young and carefree, Gloria flouts all the rules in which women are expected to marry a nice man, settle down and start a family. Instead, she befriends men in illegal bars and usually ends up sleeping with them, with no plan to ever see them again. But then she meets Weston Liggett, a man 20 years her senior, and her life takes a different, more dramatic turn...

BUtterfield 8, which is set in 1930, was written in 1935, giving it a truly authentic period feel. There are constant references to famous people of the time -- politicians, musicians, criminals -- and contemporary events. The city is dotted with hundreds of speakeasies, and Gloria frequents many of them, because she likes a bit of a tipple ("She became one of the world's heaviest drinkers between 1927 and 1930, when the world saw some pretty heavy drinking").

While Gloria is quite a feisty character, worldly-wise beyond her years, it's hard not to see her increasingly outrageous behaviour -- "where she awed the bartenders by the amount she drank", went on 48-hour benders and slept with a succession of married men -- as a cry for help. At times I was very much reminded of Jean Rhys' work in which females are regarded as nothing more than the playthings of men.

But where Rhys' characters are often stuck in desperate circumstances with no route out, O'Hara provides Gloria with a strong support network -- a lovely platonic friendship with Ed, a small circle of female friends, a non-judgemental mother and an Uncle happy to provide her with a roof over her head and a generous allowance. And yet Gloria, for whatever reason, is set to carve her own way in life, with catastrophic consequences. She is sympathetically and realistically drawn, and one of the best females, written by a man, that I've ever come across. Her terrible treatment of a black maid (towards the end of the novel), only serves to highlight her lowly position in the pecking order.

Despite its occasionally disjointed narrative and its huge cast of characters, BUtterfield 8 is a wonderful read. It not only brings 1930s New York to life, it chronicles the ways in which the conservative facade of society was simply a front for order and morality, while so much more was going on behind the scenes...

----

This book was chosen by Claire for our Riverside Readers book group.

'Deloume Road' by Matthew Hooton

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 320 pages; 2011. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Deloume Road promptly went on my wishlist when I read KevinfromCanada's review last year. In mid-October it was named the joint winner of the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize (the other winner was Lee Rourke's wonderfully thought-provoking The Canal), but I had to wait more than six months for the paperback release. The wait was worth it.

The book, which also won Bath Spa University's inaugural Greene & Heaton Prize for the Best Novel (in draft form), is set on Vancouver Island, Canada, in a rural location somewhat reminscent of my Australian childhood. Indeed, the road of the title could almost be substituted for the dusty gravel road, lined with native bushland, farm properties and houses, where I grew up.

Deloume Road is covered with loose gravel and the sunken patch at the bottom of that first steep hill is impossible to drive over without scratching a car's exhaust pipe. The children of Deloume ride bikes down this hill, dust and gravel flying up behind. At the bottom they pull back on handlebars and jump off the divot, then hit back-pedal brakes and skid sideways. [...] Blades of grass grow waist-high along both sides of Deloume and tangles of blackberry bushes and crabapple trees border the dairy farm in patches, filling in the space between the road and fence, cutting the cows off from view in places. Children stop here in August, laying their bikes in the grass on the roadside and wandering deep into the mess of thorns and branches, eating blackberries as they go, until it appears from the road that they are impossibly far in and must have sprung up from the fertile ground.

The childhood references are important, because this novel captures that sense of carefree abandonment one takes for granted when growing up in a small community. And the community of Deloume Road is small -- although the cast of characters in the book is not. (There were so many, a list of characters at the front might have been useful.)

Hooton structures the book in an unconventional way. The story has multiple narrative threads and these are told in short chapters, many of them only two or three pages long.

One of these threads is set in the past, 1899 to be precise, and tells the story of Deloume's founding father, Gerard Deloume. 

Another thread, told in the second person, is set in the present in which an unnamed narrator returns to the area and recalls, in hazy, elusive detail, a tragic incident from earlier times.

But the bulk of the threads are told in the third person and are set around the time of the local tragedy I've just mentioned. (There's no definite date mentioned in the book, but I suspect that it's set in the late 1980s because one of the characters, "The Butcher", is a Ukrainian immigrant who refers to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.) All of them are about various residents on the road -- young, old, newly arrived and everything in between. This builds a picture of a small, close-knit community, not without its tensions and rivalries, that is surprisingly multi-cultural for a place so small.

Confused yet?

Well, don't worry. The story is not as difficult to read as it might sound, mainly because the characters are so well drawn that it's easy to slip into their lives and feel involved. Even though you only spend the briefest of time with each character before the focus shifts to someone else, it somehow hangs together. (It's helpful to think of each chapter as a scene in a much larger drama, a kind of Robert Altman-like view of the people of Deloume.)

There's some terrific characters in the book, and Hooton knows how to get inside the heads of "outsiders", those people who have moved to the community and are struggling to fit in. Two that stood out for me include the aforementioned Ukrainian immigrant, who is running a pig farm and successful butchery in order to raise the money to bring his wife and child into Canada; and Irene, a heavily pregnant widow from South Korea, who has no support network but does not want to return to her homeland despite her mother's pleas.

And then there are the children. There are four key ones and, as you might have gathered from the cover image, it is their story which comprises the dominant thread in Deloume Road. There is Matthew and his "retarded" (Hooton's description, not mine) younger brother, Andy, and their best friend, Josh. All three come from secure homes and are loved and cared for. They go to art classes conducted by a local artist, they ride their bikes up and down the road, they swim in the local waterhole.

And then there's Miles Ford, a lonely boy who is mistreated by his farmer father and is effectively homeless -- and friendless. He lurks around Deloume, keeping himself to himself, but develops a touching friendship with The Butcher, who misses his own boy back in the Ukraine.

Of course, a novel of this complexity must somehow draw all these divergent storylines together, and Hooton does this superbly by having them collide in a tragedy that occurs at the very end of the novel. I won't give anything away, but it's a profoundly shocking conclusion, one that makes Deloume Road a truly haunting and powerful read.

Although it's probably far too ambitious as a first novel, it's easy to see why the book has garnered so much praise from readers who voted for it in the Guardian's poll. And I haven't even mentioned the elegant prose or the beautiful imagery yet...