Reading matters

'How the Light Gets In' by M.J. Hyland

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 320 pages; 2004.

A couple of years ago I read MJ Hyland's Booker Prize shortlisted novel, Carry Me Down, which I greatly admired. Her ability to get inside the head of a disturbed 11-year-old boy was nothing short of extraordinary.

Her debut novel, How the Light Gets In -- written two years before Carry Me Down -- covers similar terrority, but this time the protagonist is a 16-year-old troubled girl. But that's where the similarities end.

This time the narrator is not from Ireland, but Australia, and the setting is the suburbs of Chicago.

Louise Connor is an exchange student from an underpriviledged background who has high hopes of reinventing herself as a new person, free from her emotionally distant family -- her unemployed parents, two bullying older sisters and their no-hoper boyfriends -- where evenings are spent 

all in the boxy lounge-room, all smoking; so much smoke you can hardly see, the burning ends of their cigarettes glowing, moving from lap to mouth, somebody waving at the smoke to see the TV screen.

When she moves in with her clean-living morally upstanding host-family, Margaret and Henry Harding, and their two children, 14-year-old Bridget and 15-year-old James, she believes it won't take long to "unlearn the tricks of my own family". But despite the love and affection shown to her -- Margaret is especially touchy-feely and goes out of her way to make Louise feel at home -- it doesn't take long before Louise starts to crack under the pressure.

'Garden Spells' by Sarah Addison Allen

Fiction - paperback; Hodder; 327 pages; 2007. REVIEW COPY.

I know you shouldn't judge books by their covers, but when this one came thudding through the door, courtesy of the publisher, I practically salivated over this soon-to-be published paperback, not so much because I was dying to read the story, but because the artwork was so delicious. The image shown here (see left) doesn't do the real hold-it-in-your-hands cover justice, because it doesn't quite convey the gorgeous embossing that glitters like fairy dust on the dress and curlicues. So you'll just have to take my word for it. It's a magical cover, and if they give prizes to book cover designers, this designer should not only get the top accolade, they should get a lifetime achievement award. Seriously.

But does the cover match the contents, I hear you say. Well, the story is certainly magical -- think English author Joanne Harris transported to North Carolina -- but Garden Spells isn't going to win any top literary awards. This is comfort reading: enjoyable, fluffy and fun. In fact, I read this book in two longish sittings while the rain pounded against the window one miserably wet Saturday and it was perfect fodder for an entertaining weekend read.

'The Ghost' by Robert Harris

Fiction - paperback; Hutchinson; 310 pages; 2007.

My very short relationship with British author Robert Harris has been a bit of a hit and miss affair: I absolutely loved the compulsively readable Fatherland (1993) but struggled to finish the dull and plodding Enigma (1996), and so I've not been inclined to read his other novels -- Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium -- for fear of wasting my time. But his latest book, The Ghost, has received so much press attention and been lavished with equal amounts of praise that I admit to being intrigued enough to give the man a second shot.

The Ghost was published last September among a flurry of reports that it was based on Harris's one-time friend, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie. This is a claim that Harris denies.

But reading this book it's difficult not to think of the the two main characters --  Adam Lang and his controlling wife Ruth -- as thinly veiled versions of Tony and Cherie. The difference is that in this novel the couple are immersed in an extremely wicked plot that even the conspiracy theorists would have a hard time dreaming up!

'The Clearing' by Tim Gautreaux

Fiction - paperback; Sceptre; 374 pages; 2003.

The fetid, snake-ridden swamps of Louisiana come alive in this dark, depressing and violent tale set in a lawless logging camp during the 1920s.

Two brothers rule the roost here. Randolph Aldridge is the mill manager, while his elder brother, Bryon, is the town's policeman. But their brotherly bond is not as straightforward as it seems.

Byron had initially been groomed by his father, a Pennsylvania lumber baron, to take over the family business. But then he enlisted in the First World War, from which he returned a broken man. Unable to stand the pressure of his father's expectations, Byron fled the family home in Pittsburgh, never to be heard of again...

Randolph stepped into the breach and learned the family business. But when his father discovers that Byron has been employed as a lawman in a cypress mill down south, he buys the mill and its tract of lumber. He then sends Randolph to manage it and to convince Byron to return back home, far from an easy task.

What Randolph, a city man born and bred, finds when he moves to the Nimbus Mill leaves him numbed and shocked. Not only is his brother mentally unstable and prone to be a little trigger-happy, the timber town is incredibly violent. Racism, gambling and drinking is rife.

When Randolph decides to close the local saloon on a Sunday to curb the workers' rampant alcoholism little does he know that he may as well begin digging his own grave: the saloon's owner, a Sicilian with organised crime connections, doesn't want to play ball. In refusing the Sicilian's bribes, Randolph finds himself caught up in a culture of escalating violence. It is only when his wife unexpectedly decides to join him from their home in Pittsburgh does Randolph realise the danger that he and his loved ones may be subject to...

'Lost Souls' by Michael Collins

Fiction - paperback; Phoenix; 292 pages; 2003.

Dark, depressing and claustrophobic. These are the words that best describe this unconventional crime novel set in the heartland of industrial America, where "the smell of sulphur made the air taste bitter, a haze of pollution hanging in the wintry light, the chimneystacks breathing fire".

Into this "crouched, grand, sad and burned out landscape" dotted with factories, shopping malls, dilapidated motels and highways, Lawrence, a divorced policeman, discovers the body of a three-year-old girl lying face down in a pile of autumn leaves by the side of a road. It appears as if the toddler, who is dressed as an angel, has been the victim of a hit-and-run accident during the town's busy Halloween night festivities.

But why was she by herself? And why did the driver fail to stop and give assistance?

During the ensuing investigation, the town's star quarterback, a 17-year-old schoolboy called Kyle, emerges as the chief suspect.  But in a soulless town desperate for heroes a cover-up takes place to ensure the teenager's promising football career remains untarnished.

Lawrence, his sense of right and wrong dulled by his own personal and financial problems, becomes an unwitting pawn in the mayor's plan to "fudge" the investigation. When he later finds his own life threatened by an unknown assailant, Lawrence begins to question his role in the power games being played out by those around him. His actions, fuelled by fear, loneliness and paranoia, only serve to turn him into a suspect in the very case he is supposed to be investigating...

'Rant' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - hardcover; Jonathan Cape; 336 pages; 2007. REVIEW COPY.

Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favourite authors. He has a distinctive, often experimental, style that mixes black humour with scathing satire. The result is often a very funny, completely surreal, rollicking good read. But his new novel -- subtitled The Oral History of Buster Casey -- fails to deliver the usual offbeat and inspired narrative I have come to expect.

Rant is essentially a story about a now-dead wayward weirdo -- Buster L "Rant" Casey -- who is responsible for an urban plague of rabies and other "pranks" across America. It is set in a technologically advanced dystopian future in which people are separated into two distinct groups -- daytimers and nighttimers.  The nighttimers, who come out when it is dark, spend a large proportion of their time Party Crashing. This is a sport in which participants deliberately cause car accidents in a rather destructive and surreal version of a demolition derby.

'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.

'Comfort Woman' by Nora Okja Keller

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 240  pages; 1998.

During the Second World War the Japanese military introduced a programme to provide sexual services for its troops. Young, often ethnic, women were kept prisoner in special camps where they were employed as "comfort women", a euphemism for being systematically raped and beaten.

American-Korean writer Nora Okja Keller explores this abhorrent practise in her astonishing debut novel Comfort Woman, which, upon its release in 1997, attracted critical acclaim from far and wide.

Through twin narratives, which jump backward and forward in time, we learn the secrets and private struggles of two women: Akiko, a Korean refugee living in Hawaii, who has the unnerving ability to channel spirits; and Beccah, Akiko's daughter by an American missionary, who loves her mother deeply but is unable to fully accept her cultural and ethnic heritage.

What Beccah does not know is that her mother was once a comfort woman. This deeply hidden secret manifests itself in Akiko's often insane -- and embarrassing -- behaviour that plagues Beccah for much of her childhood. When most teenage girls are having fun, Beccah is haunted by her mother's absurd kowtowing to the spirits of the dead.

It is only when the secret is revealed that Beccah comes to some kind of understanding of her mother's strange ways...

'Body Surfing' by Anita Shreve

Fiction - hardcover; Little, Brown; 304  pages; 2007. REVIEW COPY.

When this advanced readers' copy of Anita Shreve's soon-to-be-published Body Surfing thudded through my mail box (courtesy of a blog friend and not the publisher) I was -- to be perfectly frank -- just a little excited. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I am a Shreve fan. Not only does this American author produce quality fiction, she's not afraid to experiment and go off in different directions without losing the very essence of what makes her a great writer: she knows how to spin an entertaining, often emotional, yarn without sacrificing plot or character.

Body Surfing is a welcome return to form after the disappointment of her previous novel, A Wedding in December, in which the pacing was thrown off kilter by two narratives that did not particularly compliment one another.

But in this latest addition to Shreve's ever-expanding body of work (this is her 13th novel) the author has ditched her preference for dual narratives and stuck to one simple, and very solid, storyline.

'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy

Fiction - hardcover; Picador; 256  pages; 2006.

The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Two travellers, a man and his young son -- both unnamed -- follow the road south in search of a warmer climate.

Their journey is a treacherous one. They trudge through snow, pushing a shopping cart loaded with their worldly goods, and are constantly on the look out for the predatory "bad guys" out to steal their belongings. They have a gun for protection, but the bullets have long run out.

In this rather chilly, desolate and oppressive landscape, the man and his son devote most of their time to walking and looking for food. They spend their evenings huddled under a plastic tarp, frightened that the cold will kill them.