Reading matters

'A Time to Tell' by Maria Savva

  Fiction - paperback; Pen Press Publishers; 308 pages; 2006. Review copy.

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

The novel charts the course of Cara Hughes' life over a 50-year period from the early 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century. From her first doomed love affair and a failed suicide attempt, to marriage and motherhood, the book actually opens at the end of Cara's life as a 60-something widowed invalid living with the only relation that will have her -- a granddaughter caught up in an abusive marriage. Unusually, the story does not follow a reverse chronological order as you would expect from such a starting point, but jumps backwards and forwards in time, a style that reflects Cara's memories as and when they occur to her.

Through this disjointed third-person narrative we slowly learn more about Cara's long life: her joys and sorrows, her trials and tribulations, and the very many secrets she has kept hidden from her family, including the fact that the father of her first-born was not the man she married but the one for which, some 50 years later, she still harbours strong affection.

'The Tenderness of Wolves' by Stef Penney

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 466 pages; 2007.

When Laurent Jammet, a French settler, is found brutally murdered in his shack in the frontier township of Dove River a whole chain of events is set in motion.

It is 1867 and life on the edge of the Canadian wilderness is tough. It's even tougher when you decide to hunt the killer by trekking through the Arctic snow, which is what Mrs Ross, an immigrant from the Scottish Highlands, decides to do when her teenage son, Francis, is accused of the crime.

But this is more than one woman's tale. There are stories within stories in this cleverly crafted novel, which scored Stef Penney the Costa Book of the Year in 2006. We meet a whole cast of divergent characters, each of whom has their own reasons for finding the murderer.

There is Parker, a half-breed Cherokee, who is arrested for the crime but later escapes and helps Mrs Ross on her trek; John Scott, a wealthy landowner who runs a dry goods store, and is privy to local gossip; Andrew Knox, the elderly magistrate, and his two daughters, the beautiful Susannah and the plain but intelligent Maria; Donald Moody, the young somewhat green Company employee who is charged with investigating the crime, along with his colleagues Mackinley, the factor of Fort Edgar, who has a penchant for taking the law into his own hands, and Jacob, a half-breed who serves as Donald's bodyguard; and Thomas Sturrock, an old journalist, who once befriended the dead man and seems intent on finding a special bone carving that he feels should be willed to him.

To complicate matters further, there are two sub-plots running throughout this book. The first involves the mysterious disappearance of two teenage girls 15 years earlier. Amy and Eve Seton, daughters of the local doctor, went on a picnic with their friend Cathy but were never seen again. The second involves Line, a Norwegian immigrant, who lives in a religious settlement north of Dove River but wishes to escape with her children and her lover.

All these characters and storylines combine to create a rather powerful if somewhat disjointed narrative. This is further complicated by Mrs Ross telling her side of the story in first-person while everyone else takes it in turn, chapter by chapter, to have theirs narrated in the third-person. I'm not sure this narrative approach entirely works, especially when it comes to the climax which is told from so many points of view it loses its immediate impact.

The greatest failing, in my opinion, is the lack of resolution in several narrative threads, which weakens the novel and leaves the reader slightly frustrated when they finally get to the last page.

But Penney's writing style, on a whole, is confident and perfectly captures frontier life. Her descriptions of the snowy wilderness and the resultant isolation and loneliness are pitch-perfect. Perhaps that's why this book has been so lauded, as you'd be hard pressed to read another debut novel that so expertly conveys an unfamiliar world in such an immediately familiar way. But personally, I just felt The Tenderness of Wolves lacked the narrative hook to keep me reading -- and judging by all the glowing accounts online I may, just possibly, be the only person to feel this way.

'Tarry Flynn' by Patrick Kavanagh

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 192 pages; 2000.

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) is best known as an Irish poet, but he also dabbled in fiction. Tarry Flynn, first published in 1948, is perhaps his most popular and most famous novel. It is set in rural Ireland in the 1930s and tells the story of a young farmer's day-to-day desires: women, nature and poetry, not necessarily in that order.

On the face of it, this book does not have much of a plot. It's essentially a series of vignettes, held together by the passing seasons, but it is written in such beautiful, evocative prose, it's difficult to find fault with the narrative. There's a quiet, understated grace to every sentence that makes it a powerful and affecting read. I never thought I would say this, but I loved this book so much I'm afraid the late John McGahern, my favourite Irish writer and possibly my favourite writer per se,  has a rival for my affections.

There are lots of similarities in style and content -- I rather suspect that McGahern (1934-2006) drew inspiration from Kavanagh's work -- but it is their shared ability to find beauty in the simplest of things, in the mundane tasks of people's lives, that I love so much.

'The Three Evangelists' by Fred Vargas

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 304 pages; 2007. (Translated from the French by Sian Reynolds.)

In my time I've read a fair share of crime novels, but this is the first in which the sleuths are a trio of 30-something historians -- the three evangelists of the title -- guided by a retired policeman who all live together in a ramshackle house in Paris known as "the disgrace". It's an unusual premise for a detective story, but given that Fred Vargas, a pseudonym of Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau, is actually a French historian and archaeologist it probably shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

In this superbly plotted book, which netted Vargas the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger in 2006, medievalist Marc Vandoosler, Great War historian Lucien Devernois and prehistory specialist Matthias Delamarre join forces to solve the mysterious disappearance of their neighbour, opera singer Sophia Siméonidis.

The book begins with Madame Siméonidis asking the trio to investigate the sudden appearance of a beech tree in her garden. She has no idea who planted it, nor why, and her husband seems quite indifferent to its unexplained arrival.

When the three evangelists dig it up, they find no clues to suggest it has been planted with any sinister intent. But when Madame Siméonidis disappears and her body is found in a burned out car a few days later they launch a full-scale investigation, aided by Marc's godfather Vandoosler, a former policeman who still has connections within the force.

What ensues is a well-thought out analysis in which everyone from Madame Siméonidis's husband to her occasionally surly niece falls under suspicion... 

'Things the Grandchildren Should Know' by Mark Oliver Everett

Non-fiction - hardcover; Little Brown; 256 pages; 2008.

To survive the tragic deaths of your entire family is one thing, to become a critically acclaimed musician is another, and yet  44-year-old Mark Oliver Everett has done both. Now, with the release of this memoir, he can also added talented author to the list.

Everett, better known as 'E' from the Eels, an alternative rock band which is essentially Everett and an ever-changing cast of musicians, seems to be the current flavour of the month here in the UK. He recently starred in a BBC 4 documentary called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives about his father, the late quantum physicist Hugh Everett III, who was the originator of the many-worlds theory. Then his book was published and just last week he played a special gig at St James's Church in Piccadilly to promote it.

'Theft: A Love Story' by Peter Carey

Fiction - hardcover; Faber and Faber; 274 pages; 2006.

The wonderful and intriguing world of art forgery is explored in Theft: A Love Story, the Booker shortlisted novel by Australian author Peter Carey.

In my experience, reading anything by Peter Carey can be a bit of a hit or miss affair. There are certain books by him that I love (Jack Maggs, Oscar and Lucinda) and certain books I've struggled with and eventually abandoned (The Illywhacker, The True Story of the Kelly Gang). Fortunately, I found Theft: A Love Story to be immediately accessible and highly entertaining. I loved it's balance of humour and melancholy, and the twist at the end was a joy.

'Two Moons' by Jennifer Johnston

Fiction - paperback; Headline Review; 232  pages; 1999.

Two Moons is another startling novel by Jennifer Johnston, who  writes in a crisp, clear style reminiscent of so many of her Irish counterparts.

A kind of cross between Colm Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship and Salley Vickers' Instances of the Number 3, this book is part comedy and part family drama, but has an element of spiritual "fantasy" that gives it an unusual twist -- although some readers may find it too "inventive" for their liking.

Essentially it is a story about three generations of women, two of whom live together -- Mimi, the elderly grandmother, and her daughter, the stage actress Grace -- in a house overlooking Dublin Bay.

'That They May Face the Rising Sun' by John McGahern

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 304  pages; 2003.

This book, published in the USA under the title By the Lake, was the late John McGahern's last novel.

It is a beautiful, slow-moving book that mirrors the gentle rhythm of rural life and brims with a subdued love of nature.

In its depiction of the changing seasons and the farming calendar -- the birth of lambs, the cutting of hay -- it tells an almost universal story about humankind and its relationship to the land and the climate. But this is more than a book about what it is like to live in the Irish countryside. It also tells an important, often overlooked tale, of how humans interact with each other when they live in small communities.

'A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance' by Marlena de Blasi

Nonfiction - paperback; Ballentine Books; 272 pages; 2002

I have just discovered that the medication I am currently taking for a chest infection is the same medication given to people with Anthrax, so this might partly explain the snarky review which is to follow. Then again it might not.

A Thousand Days in Venice is one of those lovely-looking personal travel memoirs that promises everything and delivers not very much at all.

There's no doubt that it is well written: the prose is clear, lucid and free from too much 'waffle' and de Blasi definitely knows how to write about food in a wonderfully evocative way.

But the story -- how can I say this without sounding too mean? -- is woefully sappy and overly sentimental, which is fine if you like those things, but terrible if you don't.

'Three Dollars' by Elliot Perlman

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 368  pages; 1999.

Eddie Harnovey, a 38-year-old chemical engineer, is married to a brilliant academic with whom he has a young daughter. He has a lovely house in the suburbs, a strong moral conscience and a kind, friendly nature. He is intelligent and well educated. Why, then, is his world falling around his feet? Why is he on the brink of bankruptcy with just $3 to his name?

This is the premise behind Elliot Perlman's award-winning debut novel Three Dollars.

Essentially it charts the rise -- and spectacular fall -- of a young man, who could have had everything but looks set to lose it all, including his home and his marriage.