Category: books

Day 735: Free Falling, As If in a Dream

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Cover for Free FallingWith the last book in the series Leif GW Persson calls the Fall of the Welfare State, he finally, as promised, gets to the actual assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. The novel begins in 2007, when Chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation Lars Martin Johansson (whom we have met in the two previous books) decides it is about time someone solved Palme’s murder.

Most Swedes believe the murderer was a madman named Christer Petersson. But Johansson doesn’t believe this, and he has brought together a team of Superintendent Anna Holt and Chief Inspectors Lisa Mattei and Jan Lewin to try to solve the crime before the statute of limitations expires.

This excellent police procedural, like the others in the series, is based on actual events and written by the man considered the foremost expert on crime in Sweden. To see if anything was missed, the detectives laboriously untangle the threads of various “tracks,” or theories of the crime, that were followed during the original investigation. Almost immediately they find evidence of a witness that may indicate the assassin took a different escape route than prevously believed. The witness’ testimony was discounted because she was a drug addict and prostitute. Although struggling with difficulties of an unofficial case and long-dead witnesses, the detectives make impressive strides.

In the meantime, Johansson explores the perilous channels of political intrigue, for Persson’s novel makes an almost perfect combination of political thriller and police procedural. In this novel, we encounter some of the people whose exploits were featured in the previous two, including the ridiculous buffoon Bäckström, who thinks every crime has to do with money or sex, and the dangerous Waltin, long dead but important to the case.

This is an excellent series. Its political ramifications are similiar to those of the works of Stieg Larsson. It is well written, sometimes funny, and also compelling.

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Day 734: The Sun Is God

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Cover for The Sun Is GodI have just become aware of the work of Adrian McKinty, said to be one of the best Irish crime novelists. The Sun Is God is set in New Guinea in 1906 and is based on an unsolved true crime.

Will Prior is a failing plantation owner in German New Guinea when his friend Lieutenant Kessler comes to request his assistance. Will is a former British military police officer who left the service after a massacre of rioting prisoners in South Africa. Kessler has come to ask him to help investigate a possible murder on a nearby island.

The island is occupied by a cult of mostly German nudists who call themselves Cocovores. They eat only coconuts and bananas and are sun worshippers. The pilot who brought Max Lutzow’s body back to Herbertshöhe, the regional capital, was told Lutzow died of malaria. But an autopsy reveals that he drowned.

Prior and Kessler are dismayed to find that they are expected to take a woman along with them on the investigation, Bessy Pullen-Burry, a travel writer. She is coming as a representative for Queen Emma.

The investigation seems to go nowhere almost immediately. Although the autopsy indicates otherwise, all the Cocovores tell the same story of malaria. The only discrepancy is whether Ann Schwab was with Lutzow right until he died. Yes, the investigators are surprised to find three women among the nudists, whom they had understood were all men.

Even though the investigation seems to stall, hampered by the islanders’ consumption of high-grade Bayer heroin, which they believe to be nonaddictive, Will grows worried about his party’s safety. They are not finding any evidence, but something is wrong, and they only have one opportunity a day to leave the island.

This novel is very well written and compelling, although it suffers from the feeling that no investigation is going on. So many men are on the island that I had difficulty keeping track of them and didn’t get much of a sense of their personalities. Still, the setting and situation are atmospheric and there’s a surprising shift of point of view at the end.

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Day 733: Little Women

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Cover for Little WomenOver the past months I have occasionally reread a childhood favorite to see what I think about it now. The Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables, for example, came through with honors. Not only were both beautifully written, but I found them as entertaining as an adult as I did as a child.

Little Women doesn’t fare quite as well. I found some of the same parts of it affecting as I did when I was young. Who wouldn’t sympathize with these girls, bravely coping without the things their friends have, doing without their father for over a year, getting along as cheerfully as they can? However, as a child reading the book, I didn’t notice that almost every chapter ends with a moral lesson.

The novel covers about 12 years in the lives of the March family, beginning during the American Civil War. For the first half of the novel, Mr. March is away as a chaplain for the Union army. The main character is Jo March, at the start of the novel a tomboyish, gawky 15-year-old who loves writing and putting on plays, reading, and writing stories.

Her older sister Meg is more ladylike and laments having to wear old things to parties. Beth is the third sister, who is too shy to go to school. Amy is the youngest and a little spoiled. Although there are certainly events in their lives, the story is about how Marmee, their mother, raises them all to be good, productive women.

One of the closest relationships in the novel is the friendship between the family and their neighbor Laurie, a rich young man being raised by his grandfather. This and other relationships are warm ones, and the Marches all seem like real people, as do their friends.

If Alcott could have let up a bit on the moralizing, I would have enjoyed the novel more. The other two novels I mentioned earlier also have moral messages, but they leave the reader to figure them out themselves. Still, I’m sure any young girl reading this novel would be as drawn by it as I was years ago.

My comments have made me wonder what I would think of Eight Cousins, which was actually my favorite book by Alcott when I was a child. I’m a little afraid to find out.

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Day 732: The Blazing World

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Cover for The Blazing WorldBest Book of the Week!
Every once in awhile I read a book that is so remarkable that I doubt my powers to convey it. Such a book is The Blazing World. This novel was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2014, but frankly, I think it is better than the novel that won. It is stunningly filled with ideas about such varying subjects as perception and misogyny in the art world, but it is ultimately the touching story of a flawed but compelling human being.

Harriet Burden is already dead when this novel begins. It is purportedly a book about her life, assembled through interviews, excerpts from her diaries, and art reviews and journal articles.

Our examination of Harriet’s life really starts with the death of her husband Felix. Harriet realizes that she has spent her entire life submerging her identity to please first her father and then Felix. She is a ferociously intelligent, well-read woman who has sat by and let Felix take credit for her ideas. Even more importantly, she is an artist. Although Felix was an art dealer, he never helped her find a market for her art. She has become convinced that no one pays attention to her work because she is an older woman.

Harriet, or Harry, as her friends call her, concocts a project she calls Maskings. She will convince a series of young male artists to present her work as his. Once the work gains the recognition it deserves, she will reveal it to be her own.

This novel is remarkable for the character Hustvedt creates in Harry—intelligent, articulate, caring, and extremely angry. Other characters are also complex and insightfully depicted—her grown children Maisie and Ethan, her lover Bruno, her second mask Phinny who becomes her friend, and even the Thermometer, a mentally ill man whom Harry gives a place to stay.

The novel is also remarkable for its ability to describe Harry’s art so that you can imagine it and understand its power. Some of Harry’s ideas are too abstruse for me—she is much smarter than I am and I couldn’t follow all of them even with Hustvedt’s footnotes. Still, this novel is an accomplished feat of storytelling, intellectual and dazzling.

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Day 731: Antidote to Venom

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Cover for Antidote to VenomIn this Golden Age mystery written in 1938, Freeman Wills Crofts had the goal of showing both the murder and the investigation. The result is a fascinating psychological mystery.

The first section of the book shows how George Surridge becomes involved in a murder. A mental degradation begins because of monetary difficulties caused by gambling and his attraction to a young woman who is not his wife. He is his elderly aunt’s heir, but when the thought occurs that it would help if she died faster, he pushes that idea out of his mind, thinking that he doesn’t wish her harm.

When his aunt, Miss Lucy Pentland, dies, he feels his troubles are over. His girlfriend loses her job as a companion around the same time, so he anticipates his legacy by buying her a cottage. By coincidence, his aunt’s affairs are being handled by David Capper, the nephew of an old gentleman doing research on snake venom at the Birmingham Zoo, where George is director. But when George visits Capper to find out about his inheritance, Capper admits to having stolen it and lost it all.

George is ready to go to the police, but Capper tells him then he won’t ever see his money if he does so. However, if George would help him with one little thing, the murder of his own uncle, he will get his money. All George has to do is steal a venomous snake from the zoo.

link to NetgalleySo, we see how George is slowly drawn into being an accomplice to murder. The rest of the novel shows how Chief Inspector French first recognizes that the crime is a murder and then solves it.

Although the murder involves a complicated device I couldn’t make hide nor hair of, for a Golden Age mystery it is fairly uncomplicated. I enjoyed this introduction to Croft’s work.

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Day 730: The Sea Captain’s Wife

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Cover for The Sea Captain's WifeSince she was a little girl, Azuba has wanted to marry a sea captain and leave her home on the Bay of Fundy to live with him at sea. Although such arrangements are not usual, they are also not unheard of. She envisions a life of romance and adventure, traveling to the distant realms of the earth.

This is the life she plans with her suitor Nathaniel Bradstock, but once they are married, he changes his mind. Azuba is bored and discontented at home for years alone and feels he will be a stranger to their daughter Carrie. After a traumatic miscarriage, she decides to insist he take them with him on his next voyage.

In her loneliness, Azuba has befriended the young Reverend Walton. Just before Nathaniel is due to return, carelessness and misjudgment result in a scandal for the two of them. When Nathaniel learns about it, he decides she cannot be trusted home alone and makes immediate plans to leave instead of staying ashore awhile as planned, taking along Azuba and Carrie.

Azuba has got her way, but she is not happy. Aside from the misunderstanding with her husband, she has not realized the dangers and inconveniences of the voyage. To make matters worse, Nathaniel sees her and Carrie as more burdens among the many he must juggle as captain. The terrifying voyage around the Horn is the first in a series of mishaps that endanger them all.

I found this a fascinating book in its knowledge of sea lore and the ports of the time. The main characters are complex, the novel focused on Azuba and Nathaniel’s struggle to design the conditions of their marriage. I have one plot quibble when Mr. Walton reappears in Belgium, where he is studying to be a photographer. After booking Azuba and Carrie on a relatively safe journey home by steamship, Nathaniel suddenly decides to keep them with him. There is no explanation of this decision, and we don’t even see the scene where it is made. It seems awkward, as if Powning made the decision just to further the plot.

Finally, Nathaniel and Azuba don’t actually work out their conflict. Instead, the decision that resolves it is forced on Nathaniel. Still, I found this novel of absorbing interest. But one more quibble. Sometimes stopping to explain what Azuba or other female characters are wearing actually interferes with the story-telling.

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Day 729: The Great Texas Wind Rush

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Cover for The Great Texas Wind RushThe Great Texas Wind Rush is a history of the wind energy business written by Kate Galbraith and Asher Price, a couple of reporters. It begins with the building of wind turbines to pump water and then covers a few pioneers who tried to use turbines to produce electricity, with mixed results.

Finally, it follows the various attempts to do this as a business and the legislation that made it possible to make wind farming a serious business. These efforts finally culminated in the 2000’s with the establishment of many successful wind farms across Texas.

I have nothing against wind power. In fact, I am for green energy. But the book at times seems to be biased both for Texas and for wind power. I live in Texas, so I am used to the ridiculous pro-Texas bias that creeps into everything, but I felt that the cons of wind power were glossed over. The problems of migratory birds are mentioned, for example, several times, but there are no facts or figures even estimating the number of birds killed. This is disturbing, especially in discussions about wind farms off the coast, where there are many bird sanctuaries, including for the whooping crane, which already almost went extinct. And the admiring tone the book occasionally takes is not good journalism.

Books about business do not fall within my interests, and the only reason I read this one was because it was chosen for my book club. At first I found it more interesting than I expected, but eventually it seemed to become just one story after another about one company after another. I kept falling asleep. Unless you are really interested in wind power or business history, the book, although clearly written for a general audience, has limited appeal.

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Day 728: The Wake

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Cover for The WakeBest Book of the Week!
The Wake was one of the most unusual reading experiences I have ever had. The closest I can come to it is the revelation of reading Benjy’s sections of The Sound and the Fury. What Paul Kingsnorth has done is write a novel about the aftermath of the Norman Conquest entirely in a “shadow language” that approximates and gives the flavor of Old English while being understandable to the modern reader.

Buccmaster is a socman of Holland in the Lincolnshire fens. A socman, Kingsnorth’s glossary explains, owns his land and owes allegiance only to the king under Danelaw. At the beginning of the novel, Buccmaster is a well-off man who has a large house and about 90 acres of land, servants, and a seat on the Wapentec, the local court of justice. Buccmaster is a proud and angry man, and we find, not always a reliable narrator.

Soon word comes that King Harald is calling up the army against the invasion of Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway. Buccmaster owes King Harald six weeks’ service a year, but he refuses to go. His sons do, however. Of course, while Harald and his army are repelling Hardrada, William the Bastard (William the Conqueror) attacks.

Buccmaster soon finds his world destroyed. His sons never return from Hastings. The Normans arrive claiming all of the hamlet’s land. Buccmaster’s home is burned to the ground and his wife murdered one day while he is out eeling.

Buccmaster was raised by his grandfather to believe in the old ways, not the newer ones of the White Christ. He decides to take his great sword, which his grandfather told him was given to him by Welland the Smith, and raise a troop of Green Men, essentially guerilla fighters, to ambush the Normans.

This novel is as much about the conflict between the old Germanic-Norse ways of the English and Christianity as it is about the little-known war of resistance against the Normans after the conquest. Buccmaster makes a complex and troubled main character.

Kingsnorth has said that he chose his approach for the novel because he doesn’t like historical novels written in modern language. I am torn about that, because I would rather see modern language than clunky fake archaic language. But Kingsnorth has done a fantastic job of steeping himself in the time, and his goal of conveying the alienness of the 11th century English through language is certainly achieved.

The Wake is an enormously powerful novel. It is probably not for everyone. You have to be willing to invest yourself in it enough to tolerate some early slow going. There is a glossary, but it doesn’t include all the words. You can figure most of them out by sound or context. Still, I strongly believe it is worth the effort, and after awhile, I think I was reading almost as quickly as usual.

It may be hard to find this book. I had to order it from England. But if you are interested, you’ll find it very much worth the effort. I read it because it was long-listed for the Booker Prize. Frankly, I think it was better than the winner.

I’ll end with this quote, which begins the book:

I have persecuted the natives of England beyond all reason.
Whether gentle or simple I have cruelly oppressed them.
Many I unjustly disinherited, innumerable multitudes perished through me by famine or the sword.

Having gained the throne of that kingdom by so many crimes,
I dare not leave it to anyone but God.

Deathbed confession of Guillaume le Bâtard, 1087

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Day 727: I Know This Much Is True

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Cover for I Know This Much Is TrueI have only read one other book by Wally Lamb, the more recent The Hour I First Believed, and when I began reading I Know This Much Is True, it was like deja vu all over again. In a very long novel, crass, belligerent, macho protagonist with anger issues ignores his own problems in attempting to cope with a family member with serious mental health difficulties.

In this case, Dominick Tempesta has a twin brother Thomas who is a paranoid schizophreniac. Thomas has seemed to do very well lately, so Dominick is shattered when Thomas goes to the public library one day and chops off his own hand in an effort to halt Operation Desert Storm. When Thomas is sent to Hatch, the high-security facility for the most dangerous patients, instead of Settle, where he usually goes, Dominick is convinced there is some mistake. His misgivings are confirmed when Dominick himself is severely beaten by one of Hatch’s security guards while he’s trying to get someone to call Thomas’ doctor. He begins trying to get Thomas out of there.

In his efforts, he meets with Thomas’ social worker Ms. Scheffer and with Dr. Patel, one of the therapists who is supposed to evaluate Thomas. Dr. Patel asks Dominick to discuss his and Thomas’ past with her so that she can gain more insight about Thomas. But eventually she begins treating Dominick.

So, the present-day chapters of the novel, set in the early 90s, are interspersed with chapters describing incidents from Dominick’s childhood and adolescence. These incidents include upbringing by a mild-mannered mother and abusive stepfather Ray, Dominick’s constant curiosity about the identity of his real father, Dominick’s jealousy at their mother’s favoritism for Thomas.

In the end, you get to understand and feel for Dominick, if not actively like him. His insight about himself is helped along by finding a manuscript written by his grandfather, another similarity with his other novel. This novel explores issues such as bullying and abuse, mental illness, the way Americans raise boys, the closeness of twins, the way our own history flows from the history of our parents.

As with the other book, I liked it well enough but perhaps not well enough to subject myself to another 1000 pages of Wally Lamb.

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