Reading matters

'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell

Fiction - paperback; Sceptre; 544 pages; 2005

Out of all the recommendations I have received from fellow book bloggers over the past few years, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas gets mentioned more than any other book. It has been lauded by so many people I was almost too scared to read it, which is why it languished in my ever-growing to-be-read pile for more than three years.

At one point I considered discussing it as part of Reading Matters Online Book Group and put it up for vote in February 2006. It lost out to Orhan Pamuk's Snow and it went back onto my pile of unread books once again.

When I finally worked up the courage to read it some 18 months later, I have to be brutally honest and say I could not work out what all the fuss was about.

'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...

'The Chemistry of Death' by Simon Beckett

Fiction - paperback; Bantam; 438 pages; 2007. REVIEW COPY.

It's been a long time since I've read a straightforward crime thriller that delivers the right ingredients to keep me turning the pages: strong characterisation, a sympathetic narrator, a claustrophobic setting, a smattering of gruesomeness and fear, lots of dark secrets, a good plot and plenty of twists, turns and red herrings to keep me guessing all the way to the end. Simon Beckett's Chemistry of Death certainly ticks all the right boxes.

Set in rural Norfolk, it tells the story of a young widowed GP, Dr David Hunter, who has a secret past: he was once a forensic anthropologist but gave it all away following the death of his wife and young daughter in a car accident. Now living a new life in a small village, Dr Hunter is dragged back to the past when two local children stumble upon the decomposing body of a woman in the woods. The police seek his help to determine the time of death and before he knows it, he is completely embroiled in their investigation. It looks like there is no way out when a second body -- and then a third -- is discovered a short time later...

'Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry' by B. S. Johnson

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 187  pages; 2001.

What goes around, comes around. This is the premise behind this short, quirky and experimental novel, by the late B.S. Johnson, which was first published in 1973. Sadly, the author killed himself not long after publication.

Christie Malry, a simple man from a humble background, decides that if he can't have money he will work close to it. He therefore takes a lowly job at a bank where he learns the principles of double-entry book-keeping. It is only when he moves to a new position as an invoice clerk in a sweet factory that he decides to apply the system of credit and debit to his own life. This system allows him to "even up" all the hard (and not so hard) knocks that society throws at him, so that if he feels aggrieved by something -- for instance, his boss yelling at him -- he must balance the books by doing something to accrue credit -- for instance, playing a prank on his colleagues.

As the novel progresses Christie's credits become more and more outlandish -- and criminal. Bomb hoaxes, death threats and then poisoning of the water supply become the order of the day. Eventually, Christie's account is settled in full in a very karma-like if tragic way.

'The Colombian Mule' by Massimo Carlotto

Fiction - paperback; Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ) - New Ed edition; 184  pages; 2004.

"Somehow the Colombian knew he was fucked the moment he met the cop's gaze."

So begins Massimo Carlotto's hardboiled Italian noir novel The Colombian Mule, which opens with Arias Cuevas being detained at Venice airport with a belly full of cocaine. When Cuevas describes his drug-smuggling contact -- "about fifty, medium-height, a bit fat, with light brown hair" -- the Italian police arrest the wrong man. Is it a case of mistaken identity, or are the police bending the law for their own means?

'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...

'Candle Life' by Venero Armanno

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 351  pages; 2006. REVIEW COPY.

This book begins where it ends: with a man lying on "dusty French cobblestones" in a Parisian street coming out of what he feels to be a coma of sorts.

The man is an Australian writer. He is living in an arts commune, where he spends his days mourning his Japanese-Australian girlfriend, Yukiko, who died suddenly before their planned trip to France.

One day he gets harassed by a strange-looking black man with a misshapen head. His name is Sonny, he's American, a beggar and he claims to have known many of the 20th century's greatest writers before his unspecified fall from grace.

Our unnamed narrator is not quite sure what to make of Sonny -- is he being duped, or is his story a legitimate one? -- but the chance meeting acts as a kind of catalyst for all kinds of accidental occurrences, including sexual congress with a mute Russian woman, the death of his dead lover's gay friend and a love affair with a French student. Throw in a rich, possibly corrupt, Russian art dealer and a second beggar with a dodgy past and you get an entire cast of weird characters that only serves to heighten the strangeness of the city's dark underbelly in which the narrator finds himself.

'Christine Falls' by Benjamin Black

Fiction - hardcover; Picador; 384  pages; 2006.

It's no secret that the author of this book, Benjamin Black, is actually Booker prize-winning novelist John Banville in disguise. Which partly explains why I rushed out and bought this in hardcover. I'm a longtime Banville fan and was intrigued as to how he would handle the crime genre given he's largely made his name on the back of (high brow) literary fiction.

Christine Falls is certainly an intriguing and arresting read. I might have been holed up in my sick bed at the time, but I think my reaction would have been the same regardless: I just could not bear to put this book down and finished it in one sitting.

Essentially the story, which is set in 1950s Dublin, is about a pathologist, the love-worn Quirke, who discovers a colleague, Griffin, altering a file to cover up the cause of death of a young woman called Christine Falls. Seeking to discover the real cause of the woman's death, Quirke finds himself in the midst of a conspiracy, which involves not only Griffin but the upper echelons of Dublin society and the Catholic Church. Its tentacles stretch across the Atlantic to New England, and goes back several generations. The closer Quirke gets to unravelling this conspiracy, the more dangerous his investigation becomes and before long he's being warned off in no uncertain terms.

'Carry Me Down' by M.J. Hyland

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 256  pages; 2006.

Carry Me Down is about a year in the troubled life of a boy trying to comprehend a confusing and painful adult world.

John Egan is unusually tall for an 11-year-old and his voice has already broken. He is obsessed by the Guinness Book of Records and has a 'gift' for detecting lies.

An only child, he lives with his mother, father and grandmother in a small village in rural Ireland in the early 1970s. But when he moves with his parents to a council estate in Dublin, the notorious seven towers of Ballymun (U2 fans will appreciate this reference), his relatively happy homelife takes a serious downward slide.

When John's obsession with truth telling goes a step too far, it has drastic -- and quite unexpected -- consequences for his parent's relationship and his own sanity.

'The City of Falling Angels' by John Berendt

Non-fiction - hardcover; Penguin Group (USA); 382 pages; 2005.

"The air still smelled of charcoal when I arrived in Venice three days after the fire." So begins John Berendt's unique travelogue of the world's most romantic city.

Taking the fire that destroyed the Fenice theatre in 1996 - one of the most important theatres in Italy if not the world - Berendt takes his readers on an extraordinary voyage into the (quite literally) stinking heart of the city that has intrigued and delighted mankind for centuries.

Having read Berendt's much-acclaimed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil when it was first released a decade ago, I had expected The City of Falling Angels to be a tour de force that would not only capture the essence of the city and its inhabitants but weave a spellbinding account of the Fenice fire and its aftermath. What I got was a disappointing and, quite frankly, aimless narrative that leaves the reader wondering if they've missed something along the way.