4★ "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a puppy under the tree."
This is a wonderfully illustrated version of The Twelve Days of Chris4★ "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a puppy under the tree."
This is a wonderfully illustrated version of The Twelve Days of Christmas poem. The pages alternate between the appropriate verse, 'narrated' by an active squirrel or two, whose pictures you see on the verse page, with another page that is all illustration of the dogs described.
I'm sharing a few of the pages without much comment, because there's not much to say. Enjoy the pictures.
"Twelve huskies howling, Eleven labs a-leaping, Ten Great Danes digging, Nine corgis cuddling, Eight dalmatians dozing, Seven spaniels skating, Six poodles prancing, Five golden retrievers, Four dashing dachshunds, Three French bulldogs, Two barking beagles, And a puppy under the tree."
The idea is clever and the artwork is terrific. Kids will enjoy identifying and counting the dogs and puppies and describing what the squirrels are doing. It's cute.
Thanks to NetGalley and Cider Mill Press for a digital copy for review. It will be published in October in good time for the Christmas market. ...more
3★ "MARCH 2017: Flynn was studying in her bedroom at nine-forty-eight p.m. on Friday March 1st, when her parents were killed in a car crash."
Just a war3★ "MARCH 2017: Flynn was studying in her bedroom at nine-forty-eight p.m. on Friday March 1st, when her parents were killed in a car crash."
Just a warning, this starts off with a bang. Flynn, 16, and her younger sister Kaiya, 12, are suddenly orphaned, and before they know it, their mother's estranged sister and husband move in, their auntie eyeing the lovely furnishings and their uncle eyeing and touching the two young girls.
Flynn confides in thir school principal, who immediately confirms Flynn's lie to the aunt and uncle that the girls' parents had intended they become boarders, not just day students. These sisters are the first 'story'.
From March 2017, the book jumps back several years and begins a second story, about a boy.
"April 2011 Noah Santoro was rubbish at sport. That wasn’t him trying to be modest or anything. He really was sh*t. In primary school, things had been fine. They’d tried out sports like basketball and football in PE for a term, and almost everyone was equally rubbish and it had been fun. A break from sitting in a classroom, trying to make sense of stuff that the teacher seemed to think should be easy, but which to Noah was so difficult it was almost funny."
Now he's struggling in high school, but the rugby coach, Mike Anders, sees that Noah has some skills and names him for one of the teams. Noah wishes he could get a rugby ball and some boots, but he and his mum, who has no money, live with his abusive stepfather. No chance.
He notices new bruises on his mum and finally confides in the coach when Mike asks him what's bothering him.
" 'Noah, there are places that you and your mum can go while she gets back on her feet. If that’s what she wants. There are organisations that help women who are in your mum’s situation. If you like, I can talk to someone. I have a friend, another teacher, not at this school, who has connections. I could talk to her and see what’s available, and then maybe I could talk to your mum.' "
None of this felt like Dervla McTiernan. Like many readers, I've liked her Cormac Reilly series, but I have to admit I haven't cared for her other books as much. This was originally produced as an Audible Original audio, which I haven't heard. The text reads like a simplified YA story, and I began to skim. As I say, this just doesn't sound like McTiernan.
The last third or so becomes a thriller which includes attempted suicide, murder, and kidnapping. But it didn't rescue the story for me.
Thanks to the author for making it available to readers who subscribe on her website to her newsletter. I always enjoy hearing from her, and she's a delight to listen to in interviews. I suspect the audio version may be better....more
3★ "In the late autumn of that year, 1938, I had a bad fit of the spleen. I was living in Turin at the time, and my tart No. 1, while groping about in 3★ "In the late autumn of that year, 1938, I had a bad fit of the spleen. I was living in Turin at the time, and my tart No. 1, while groping about in my pockets for an odd fifty-lire note as I slept, had also found a letter from tart No. 2, which in spite of spelling mistakes left no doubts about the nature of our relationship."
I have to say this was an intriguing first sentence. I was pleased that at least tart No. 1 took off wearing Paolo's favourite black cashmere sweater.
He decides to spend his evenings in his local café after work, as a good place to kill time, tartless, as it were.
"For this period of retirement I could have found no place more suitable than the café in Via Po where I began spending every free moment alone and always went in the evening after my work on the paper. It was a kind of Hades peopled by bloodless shades of lieutenant-colonels, magistrates, and professors. These insubstantial apparitions would play draughts or dominoes, immersed in a light dimmed, during the day, by arcades and clouds, and at night by huge green shades on the chandeliers; no voices were ever raised lest too loud a sound disturb their tenuous woof. A most suitable Limbo."
He becomes fascinated with an old man sitting nearby who reads the papers and spits in disgust (and disgustingly) at what he reads. The staff tell Paolo the man is Senator Rosario La Ciura. Even Paolo knows this man's name and looks him up at work in the pre-prepared obituary notices for famous people.
As they talk, and Paolo's told him about his tartless state, the man informs him he has never touched a woman. But… then he goes on to recount his past lust/love affair with a mermaid.
The professor is certainly memorable, but this doesn't feel to me as if it adds anything to the usual myths and legends of mermaids and sirens and fishermen. ...more
4★ "I am a doodler. The diagnosis is clear. Crack open my heart; you’ll find a doodle in there. Whether pencil or pen, my doodles flow out like cool water4★ "I am a doodler. The diagnosis is clear. Crack open my heart; you’ll find a doodle in there. Whether pencil or pen, my doodles flow out like cool water running in a fire hydrant spout.
When I start to doodle, I doodle a lot. The best places to doodle are places to not: On the corners of desks, I impale my depictions of dragon fights with ghosts of disastrous infliction. On the soles of my shoes, I draft a landscape of blueberry tacos in pink permanent ink."
On and on it goes, from the spines of books to bathroom stalls to lockers, to posters on the wall until caught and stopped. No, not stopped – well not entirely.
"Some days they lock up all my utensils and tools, but that doesn’t stop me from doing my doodles. I close my eyes tight and the white canvas flies in. I doodle in my thoughts until I’m free once again."
There are drawings galore to illustrate the feelings. Although this short poem (and illustration) is called DAYDREAM, I think it applies to doodling in your thoughts as well. I'm not sure how well the text will display, so I will write out the words to the poems I've included.
[image]
"I’m dazing off to Daydream Land. I’m leaving class behind. Why use my focus for this class when there’s a party in my mind?"
Some of these are simple rhymes about school, some are long, philosophical thoughts, and some are just silly imaginings that are bound to get a laugh from youngsters, especially in a classroom situation. Some scan like conventional poems, but many don't.
[image]
"Mommy taught me not to sneeze and hold my farts by locking knees and bite my tongue to stop my burps and swallow coughs, which really hurts So now I know without a doubt how my belly button innie became an out."
Then there's the obligatory – ewww yuck stuff that kids love! There are severalpoems in this free-form style.
[image]
"the graceful robin pukes up lunch in her kid’s mouth geez . . . nature is weird"
This last one is fairly long, written with short phrases so it is viewed as a poem, and it's a bit of a teaching opportunity without being too heavy-handed.
[image]
"You have defeated me this time, flu. I might be sitting on the couch half awake, shaking from chills, too weak to stand, but I am plotting my revenge. Oh yes. I will be ready for you next winter! I will wash my hands thirty times a day! I will disinfect everything anyone touches! I will eat all my vitamins, even the gross ones! But before that I am going to sip on this cold orange juice, nibble on a graham cracker, lie here, and try not to throw up on myself again for the third time today. But next year you will not win! I promise you that!"
There is quite an assortment, and I can see that some of them are designed to be across two pages, but I can't view them that way in the apps available for reviewing.
They aren't brilliant, but that's sort of the point. Some are clever - a plumber who can't cover his 'crack' – with illustration!, and another about a young boy who considers pranking his sick brother by texting ridiculous messages from the brother's phone to the brother's friends.
They touch on fear, anxiety, generosity – as I say, teaching moments. I think it's a great idea and a way to get non-readers to enjoy playing with words. When I used to volunteer tutor little kids who couldn't/wouldn't try to read, I found everyone loved riddles. To have a riddle on one page and the answer on the other side was a fun way to start.
Whatever works, I'm all for it. Good on you, Mr Eicheldinger. I bet your class is fun!
Thanks to #NetGalley and Andrew McMeel Publishing for a copy of #HolesInMyUnderwear for review....more
5★ " A waiting list at the Empire Grill? If this continued he'd have to add that damn "e" to "Grill," just like Walt Comeau kept suggesting."
Hang on – 5★ " A waiting list at the Empire Grill? If this continued he'd have to add that damn "e" to "Grill," just like Walt Comeau kept suggesting."
Hang on – that's not going to happen. Mrs. Whiting is the boss, owns the Empire Grill, owns most of what's worth owning in Empire Falls, including the deserted old textile mill on the river, and pretty much runs the town and everyone in it… and she doesn't want to renovate the old restaurant. And Walt Comeau is full of hot air.
Empire Falls is yet another of the mill and mining towns that have gone the way of the steam engine -great in their day, but outgrown now and times have moved on.
It's no surprise to me that this won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. Loved it!
Miles Roby seems to be stuck in early middle age as a manager and short order cook instead of an academic – or almost anything else – because he gave up college to come back home to this dying Maine town to care for his dying mother. She demanded he go back to school, but no.
He and his younger brother, David, with an arm badly damaged in a drunken car crash, are working for Mrs. Whiting. David has stayed sober, and after years of discord, the brothers are getting along.
"Strange. He and David were closer now, since his brother's crippling accident, than ever. Before, both men had pushed their conversations until their words burst into flame, rekindling age-old resentments, reopening old wounds. There was nearly a decade's difference in their ages, and their life experiences were radically dissimilar. Miles had grown up before their mother became ill, David after."
Most of this is told from Miles's point of view, with lengthy sections about the past printed in italics. His mother, Grace, was a beautiful girl and is still a head-turner. She worked at the mill until it closed. Now she's taking Miles on a short vacation on Martha's Vineyard, but not at an upmarket place.
"At thirty, Grace was an attractive woman, and even in the company of a nine-year-old boy, she was regarded by many of the male guests with admiration open enough to be noted by their wives. One man stopped by their blanket and introduced himself, wondering why the two of them never appeared in the dining room in the evening…"
They do make a new friend who takes them under his wing, shows them around, treats them to some nice meals and makes their holiday something special. But Miles misses having his mother to himself. His father, Max Roby, is a disreputable house painter who comes and goes from Empire Falls when the spirit moves him, so Miles has looked up to his mother and the Church for guidance.
"Miles told her he didn't want to go out to dinner with Charlie. He wanted for it to be just the two of them. They'd been having fun, he told her, before Charlie Mayne showed up.
'Yeah?' Grace said, angry so instantly that it scared Miles, as if she'd been just waiting for him to say something like this. 'Well, I've been having fun since he showed up. What do you think about that?'
Miles didn't answer immediately. 'Dad wouldn't like it,' he said, looking right at her.
'Tough.'
'I'll tell.'
'Fine,' she said, surprising him again, increasing the sensation he'd been feeling all day that everything was adrift. She'd taken out the ointment and was applying cream to her skin. 'Then tell.'
'I will,' he said, knowing it was the wrong thing but saying it anyway.
'You'll have to wait till he gets out of jail, though,' she said, her eyes suddenly harder than he'd ever seen them. She hadn't so much spoken the words as let them out of their cages, and she watched him now as if purely curious as to the effect they'd have. If necessary, she had more of them to turn loose. 'You didn't know that, did you? That your father was in jail.' . . . 'You want to know why, Miles? Because last week he was arrested as a public nuisance, that's why. Not for the first time, either. He becomes a public nuisance every now and then when he tires of being a private one. And I'll tell you something else, too. You think Max Roby would care if you told him about Charlie Mayne? Think again. Your father cares only about your father. I wish that weren't so, but it is, and you're old enough to know it. The sooner you understand it, the better off you'll be.'"
For Miles, this puts a whole new perspective on his dad
"At first the news of his father's being arrested had mortified and humiliated him; but the more he thought about it, the more comforted he felt. Until this afternoon he'd always known that his father was a different sort of man from other boys' fathers, but he'd had no way of summing him up. Now he did. Max Roby was a public nuisance. Having this short phrase to describe him was better than suspecting that his father was so different and unnatural that nobody had yet invented a way to describe him."
Max is now "sempty" as he keeps saying and just as much a public nuisance as he was in his sixties and all the decades before. He is reminiscent of a couple of characters from Russo's 1993 novel "Nobody's Fool", which I also loved.
The week Miles spent with his mother on the Vineyard affects all of his life and his thinking. His mother becomes a daily churchgoer, signs him up as an altar boy (which he loves), and tries as hard as possible to get him out of Empire Falls, forever… to escape, as she was never able to.
Now he's cooking burgers, facing divorce from his soon-to-be ex-wife Janine (whom he loves, more or less), and putting up with daily visits from Walt Comeau, aka the Silver Fox, Janine's fiancé, a gym-club owner who likes to pester Miles with fitness tips.
He adores his teen daughter (who's on his 'side', not her mother's), and still secretly, but not so secretly loves working all these years later with his high school crush, Charlene, who hosts and waitresses at the Empire Grill. All the boys lusted after her (big boobs), but Miles genuinely loves her.
She's three years older than Miles, and she still treats him like a little brother. She's been married a couple of times and is reasonably content. When Miles and David do decide to extend their menu to special evenings and attract staff and students from a nearby university, she's pleased.
" … she was confident that despite their carefully trimmed beards, their pressed chinos and tweed jackets, college professors tipped in the same fashion as other men—according to cup size. She was doing very well by them, thanks all the same."
There's a younger generation thread, a crooked cop thread, and Mrs Whiting's shadow over everything. I get completely immersed in Russo's places and feel I'd recognise his people.
As well as reading, I also listened to the audio. Narrator Ron McLarty has just the right touch for this one. I alternate reading and listening, depending on my mood. This is one I'd enjoy in either format - it is terrific.
I'm delighted to say I loved it all over again. It's a favourite series. I remembered the theme and the characters but completely forgot who the villain was. I fell for all the same tricks.
5★ “Everything had to be good. Had to be fine just as it was, even if it wasn’t. Always. Because any changes might be worse. So terribly much worse.”
Ma5★ “Everything had to be good. Had to be fine just as it was, even if it wasn’t. Always. Because any changes might be worse. So terribly much worse.”
Make no mistake – this is a scary story. Everybody in Peaksville understood the rules and said things were fine and good, even if someone had died. Not only did they have to talk like this, they had to think like this around Anthony.
He’s a strange little boy who hears people’s thoughts – not so much a mind-reader as an unintentional eavesdropper. When he hears about trouble, he feels he needs to fix it, but he’s a kid, so what does he really know.
He’s currently using mind control to make a rat eat itself (blech), but he has his reasons.
“Aunt Amy hated rats, and so he killed a lot of them, because he liked Aunt Amy most of all and sometimes did things that Aunt Amy wanted.”
The operative word there is “sometimes”. When Bill Soames arrives on his bike with the mail, he tries hard to mumble and think mumbled thoughts so he won’t attract Anthony’s attention. He’s anxious to leave, and as he goes out the gate, he makes the mistake of thinking just that.
“As Bill Soames pumped the pedals, he was wishing deep down that he could pump twice as fast, to get away from Anthony all the faster, and away from Aunt Amy, who sometimes just forgot how ‘careful’ you had to be. . . . Pedaling with superhuman speed – or rather, appearing to, because in reality the bicycle was pedaling him – Bill Soames vanished down the road in a cloud of dust, his thin, terrified wail drifting back across the heat.”
Anthony had decided to ‘help’ him.
As a fan of Twilight Zone and of short stories in general, this one felt appropriately ‘out there’. When the townsfolk gather for a birthday celebration, everyone is tense.
“The next arrivals were the Smiths and the Dunns, who lived right next to each other down the road, only a few yards from the nothingness.”
“The nothingness.” Where IS Peaksville?
I mention Twilight Zone because of the reference in the introduction to the story, which I have added to encourage you to read the story (and others) yourself.
“Jerome Bixby (1923 — 1998) was an American short story and script writer who wrote four Star Trek episodes and helped write the story that became the classic sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). He is most famous for the “It’s a Good Life” (1953), also made into a Twilight Zone episode and included in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). The Science Fiction Writers of America named “It’s a Good Life” one of the twenty finest science fiction stories ever written. References to the story have appeared in the Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo, Fox’s The Simpsons, and a Junot Diaz novel, among others.
3.5~4★ “A whole life earlier, when the twins were aged nine – or perhaps ten; they could never get the seasons straight in their heads – they were crou3.5~4★ “A whole life earlier, when the twins were aged nine – or perhaps ten; they could never get the seasons straight in their heads – they were crouching on a beach, bleeding into the sand. . . . Tiny deep cuts on their shoeless feet from the bladed shells they’d crept over to reach this spot. Trickles of young life snaking from their wounds to stain the white grains crimson.”
The sister and brother Renshaw twins, Iris and Floyd, were raised as handy, small thieves by their English parents, not in Dickensian London, but in Tasmania. As a boy and girl who'd been skylarking and flirting, their parents were transported half a world away for a petty crime. That was then, but now, they're infamous.
“She harboured no doubts about their crimes. They were thieves. They were killers. They were what people said. But that wasn’t how Iris chose to remember them, because the truth of what they had done wasn’t the truth of all that they were. . . . when they were malnourished youths, living on the other side of the world in the old country… Sneaking into the nearby woods to lie on a green bank, dipping their hands into a clear stream, pulling out trout and holding them, fat and wriggling, up to each other’s eyes: an act both small and catastrophic. . . . To be caught by his [the viscount’s] gamekeeper, as her parents were on their way home one sunny afternoon, was to be arrested; to be charged and sentenced without ever appearing in front of a judge or jury; to be locked in the crowded, foetid hold of a creaking ship and dragged in chains to the far corner of the world.”
This young couple are the Renshaws, who then turned to actual crime to make a living, at the same time making a name for themselves as feared criminals. Their twins were given no choice.
Now adults themselves, the sister and brother can’t escape the Renshaw name and are fiercely loyal to each other. Who else would have them, anyway? Floyd has something seriously wrong with his back, and Iris keeps a special ointment she rubs on and unkinks it as best she can. They are quickly alert to each other's needs and anxious when they get separated.
They hear of a bounty offered on a wild puma, called Dusk, who lurks in the hills. It has recently killed a man in a particularly gruesome fashion, and hunters are gathering.
There are several interesting characters, but a couple of them felt more like caricatures. Still, I chose to go along with Arnott's imagination. It becomes quite an adventure story where I had to suspend disbelief more than once - there's his imagination at work, again.
The weather is mostly cold and wet and miserable, but Arnott’s descriptive skill alone is worth the read. Here is how morning light dispels the fears of the night.
“The fully risen sun built a morning of cold colour, of ripped clouds, sharp light washing onto wet wool and frosted fields. It afforded the twins a confidence that they hadn’t felt the previous day. With the sun unshielded, the mist absent, the land was robbed of menace. The river was no longer haunting but placid; the twisted trees appeared graceful and stoic in their contortions; the listless shepherds now seemed merely apathetic, rather than mysterious or threatening.”
I’m always happy to read the work of this talented Tasmanian....more
5★ “But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such. I found more solace in the unnameable openness of the 5★ “But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such. I found more solace in the unnameable openness of the sea, on the little beach on the island that Endo-san would one day make his home.”
Philip Hutton is telling this story. An elderly Japanese woman has told Philip she knew his friend Endo-san when they were young and has only recently received a letter from him, written to her decades earlier, and she wants to know what happened to him during the war.
“ ‘Tell me about your life. Tell me about the life you and Endo-san led. The joys you experienced and the sorrow that you encountered. I would like to know everything.’
The moment I had been waiting for. Fifty years I had waited to tell my tale, as long as the time Endo-san’s letter took to reach Michiko.”
Philip’s narrative about the past is interspersed with conversations and tours of Penang with Michiko.
As a boy, he often didn’t fit in anywhere. He was born in Penang to a prominent English businessman and his father’s young, much-loved, second wife, whose Chinese family had come to Malaya to escape the poverty and politics of China. The first wife had died, leaving Noel with three English children.
Philip’s mother also died when he was very young, so Philip was raised in an English family, all of whom loved him, but he knew he looked different. People obviously thought he seemed to be neither one thing nor the other. Even the ancient soothsayer’s prophecy could be interpreted two ways.
“ ‘You were born with the gift of rain. Your life will be abundant with wealth and success. But life will test you greatly. Remember – the rain also brings the flood.’”
As a young man, he found peace on ‘his’ island.
“There was a small island owned by my family about a mile out, thick with trees. It was accessible only from the beach that faced out to the open sea. I spent a lot of my afternoons there imagining I was a castaway, alone in the world. . . . Early in 1939, when I was sixteen, my father leased out the little island and warned us not to set foot on it as it was now occupied. It frustrated me that my personal retreat had been taken from me.”
Philip was home alone (except for servants of course) while the family was in London for several months, when a man with an unusual accent came to the house and asked to rent a boat. He introduced himself as Hayato Endo, pointed to the island, and said he lived there, but his boat had broken. Philip wasn’t happy, of course.
“I got up from the wicker chair and asked him to accompany me to our boathouse. But he stood, unmoving, staring out to the sea and the overcast sky. ‘The sea can break one’s heart, neh?’
This was the first time I heard someone describe what I felt. I stopped, uncertain what to say. Just a few simple words had encapsulated my feelings for the sea. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.”
This was the beginning of Philip’s hero-worship. Endo-san was older and took Philip under his wing offering to teach him martial arts and how to focus his mind.
“I felt no connection with China, or with England. I was a child born between two worlds, belonging to neither. From the very beginning I treated Endo-san not as a Japanese, not as a member of a hated race, but as a man, and that was why we forged an instant bond.
I began my lessons in ‘aikijutsu’ the following morning, entering into a ritual of learning that would continue largely unbroken for nearly three years.”
While his family was still away, he met the son of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
“ There were the usual speculative glances when I entered – ‘here comes the half-caste, ‘ I thought wryly.” . . . I knew people called him Kon, which I now did. He looked at me with a curiosity I found disconcerting. He radiated a sense of confidence for someone so youthful. . . . We talked for a long time on the beach that night; although we did not know it then, it would be the start of a strong friendship. It was only when Uncle Lim was driving me home that I realised Kon had not asked me a single question, that he had seemed to know all about me and perhaps even about Endo-san.”
This is a story about men – Philip and the men he reveres. The closeness between him and Endo-san is never spelled out as love, but there are scenes and incidents that hint at something more than comradeship.
Kon is more of a best pal. Thus, this English-Chinese boy became very close to his Japanese ‘sensei’ and to an up-and-coming leader of the Chinese community, representing the two countries already at war in China.
The British seemed oblivious to the danger the Japanese posed to Malaya, and when the invasion began, it was shocking and brutal, just as it was on the Thai-Burma Railway and in Changi prison, and everywhere else I’ve happened to read about WWII atrocities.
“When would I find a sense of my self, integrated, whole, without this constant pulling from all sides, each wanting my complete devotion and loyalty? “
Philip had to make terrible choices, trying to save his family and friends. Through it all, are the lessons he absorbed in his training. Endo-san had once told him that the sword is always the last option.
“‘We use swords in training,’ I pointed out.
‘What am I teaching you?’
‘To fight,’ I said.
‘No. That is the last thing I am teaching you. What I wish to show you is how not to fight. You must never, ever use what has been taught to you, unless your life is in danger. And even then, if you can avoid it, so much the better.’
He made me promise him that I would always remember that.”
This is a story, rich with history, that is brought to life through a boy growing up, caught between cultures and loved by both sides of his family, facing a world war.
Something that stood out to me was how many people spoke so many different languages. There are dialects within cultures, of course, and I lost track of who spoke what, although the author often pointed it out. Philip could use it to advantage because people often didn't expect him to understand them.
It is not all ‘plot’. The setting, the sights, the foods, the many cultural influences are all celebrated.
“Instead of going through miles of jungle, my father decided to drive around the island, heading to its westernmost tip before turning south.The road rose up on the shoulders of low hills and faithfully followed the curves of the coastline. Below us the thick green of the trees was stitched to the blue of the sea by a seam of white, endless surf. Light splattered like careless paint through the trees above us and the wind through our open windows smelled clean and unblemished, tasting of wet earth, damp leaves and always, always the sea.”
The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize. I’m currently reading some award-winners and nominees that sound interesting, and this certainly deserved a spot. ...more
3.5★ “Some detectives, perhaps, solve crimes like fireworks: one lit fuse exploding everything at once. I solve crimes like a ten-car rear-ender on a b3.5★ “Some detectives, perhaps, solve crimes like fireworks: one lit fuse exploding everything at once. I solve crimes like a ten-car rear-ender on a bumper-to-bumper freeway: one car slams into another, and another and another, all the way up the line.”
Yep – that’s Ernest Cunningham for you - amateur sleuth and author/storyteller who speaks directly to the reader. His first book, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, introduced us to his rules for writing mysteries (what is or is not allowed – no 'deus ex machina' or surprise villain we never met), and his second, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect, follows the same pattern.
This one adds some rules for a holiday story, and while he makes a point of sticking to the rules, he is adept at skirting them a little here and there just to trick us. But on to the story.
Since the first book, his now ex-wife Erin, has suffered from PTSD from murders and bodies and has moved on with a new partner, Lyle Pearse. She has called Ern in desperation because she’s just been arrested for the extremely bloody murder of Lyle, whose body was found on the kitchen floor, and blood has been trailed up or down the staircase.
Oh, yes. And she woke up covered in blood, even in her hair! Ern tells his fiancée, Juliet, he has to go to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains (hills west of Sydney) to see a band. This is only a few days before Christmas, but he must go. He tries to make up a story.
“‘Ernest,’ she said, and it was all over. I am cellophane around Juliette; she sees right through me. I have no idea how people have affairs.”
She knows his ex-wife lives up there, but he gets away (for now) with his ridiculous explanation. The bit about the band is true, but it’s not only a band – there’s a big magic act, which is what Lyle was involved with.
There are a fair number of characters to keep track of, including twins. Normally, he says, the rules don’t allow twins, but since he introduces them early and promises they won’t switch places, it’s okay. It takes a few people to keep a magic show like Rylan Blaze’s working smoothly. There are props and equipment, so most of these people are working offstage.
He starts interviewing and collecting information, but the heat (Christmas is hot in Australia), his nervousness for Erin, and his lousy accommodation are getting to him. He often foreshadows what is coming – sort of.
“I wish I could lean into my own narrative here and tell myself that I do indeed solve the crime, a feat that will be accompanied by both being shot in the chest and witnessing another death. I’d tell myself that I will, eventually, be writing it all out with shortbread in one hand and a pen in the other. But motel-me, dawn-hours-of-22-December-me, doesn’t yet know the solution to two impossible murders.”
He's tried finding information on Lyle’s computer, but no luck.
“The screen shuddered in denial. One of the rules of murder mysteries is that the detective cannot succeed by virtue of luck or coincidence. My amateur hacking doesn’t cut the mustard.”
There is another murder, a particularly gruesome one, and obviously Erin couldn’t have done that, locked up as she is. Her relief at hearing she’s off the hook for that is short-lived when Ern explains she’s still the obvious culprit for the first murder. She is seriously distressed.
“It would be a cliché to say she looked thinner, as a more accurate description would be that there was less of her. It wasn’t so much a physical loss. It was the glassiness in her eyes. She took up less space in the room.”
I enjoyed this in both print and audio, but I like having the text to refer to so I can remember characters and select quotations. I found this one pretty far-fetched, and I had to suspend a fair bit of disbelief about some of the explanations, but for a quirky holiday read, it’s entertaining.
Each of these mysteries is a standalone, but I liked meeting Ernest and his family in the first one and then taking The Ghan in the second.
4.5★ “Baz darted in and pinned the head with his crook. Then he crouched and used his other hand to flick away lumps of concrete until the snake was fr4.5★ “Baz darted in and pinned the head with his crook. Then he crouched and used his other hand to flick away lumps of concrete until the snake was free. He picked it up, keeping the whipping front section clear with his crook, and poured it into a hessian sack.
‘Piece of cake,’ he said, grinning at the others. Who were more interested, it seemed, in a depression under the middle section of the slab.
‘What, we got a whole family of the buggers?’
He looked. What they had was a rotting cotton shirt over a rib cage, and a wrist bone encircled by a knock-off Rolex Oyster.”
The young couple who lived in the house never questioned why there was a slab of concrete in the backyard, but it made a handy place to park a chair and sit outside with the baby, until:
“On a mild October morning near Pearcedale, south-east of Melbourne, a snake slid over the edge of a veranda on a shortcut to somewhere.”
Somewhere was under that slab. Cue the snake-catcher, Baz, in the opening quotation. Next, cue the cops.
Detectives Alan Auhl and Claire Pascal have been assigned as partners in the new Cold Case Unit to investigate what is clearly an old crime scene. He’s been brought out of retirement to relieve the burden from the younger police, who refer to him as “Retread”, while Claire, considerably younger, has transferred from Homicide.
Initially they have a scratchy relationship, each haunted by past cases, but they are both committed to this new unit. They find a 2008 coin under the bones, so that gives them a time frame around which they can gather other evidence.
As well as countless phone calls, door-knocking, and tracking down past residents of the area, they also attend the pathologist’s examination of the remains to find cause of death, possible signs of poison and the like.
“Under the cold bright ceiling lights and in the chilled air of the autopsy room, they pulled on ill-fitting smocks and overshoes and waited. . . . The bodies were stored on steel trolleys in refrigerated units. Even the gleaming steel added to the chill in the air.”
They ask a lot of unanswerable questions and wish they could get a facial reconstruction, but where’s the budget for things like that?
“‘Come on, doc,’ Auhl said. ‘Haven’t you got any tame PhD students in the building?’
The pathologist gave it some thought. ‘Actually, yes.’
‘They might get a kick out of joining the fight for justice,’ [Senior Sergeant] Colfax said.
‘They might get a kick out of a few dollars, too,’ Karalis said, and Auhl could see him considering the paperwork, the budget, whom to sweet talk. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”
Auhl has a couple of other interesting cold cases he still wants to follow, and the story moves between these three cases and his complicated home life.
He inherited his parents’ huge old house with many rooms, now home to his daughter, his ex-wife (occasional lover when the spirit moves her), students, and assorted waifs and strays, like women and kids escaping abusive partners.
I began this book as a library audio, and I admit I got confused. As the story moved through the three cases and the many characters. I nearly gave up, until I thought, hang on - this is GARRY DISHER, a favourite author – he’d never let me down. So I bought a copy and am glad I did.
Auhl seems to be one of those guys who attracts extended family, and not just because he’s solvent and generous. He listens, he cares, and when necessary, he’ll get between you and the bad guy. He’s one of Disher’s good guys (unlike Wyatt – great character but a crook). Also, people care about him.
I ended up loving it. The narrator was fine, but for some reason I didn't engage with the story as well in the audio. I think that is more to do with me than with the narration. In a perfect world, I'd have both. ...more
3.5★ "She was an incredible child, capable of grasping meaning and nuance, yet often as green as a tender sprout."
Yes, that she was, Miss Penelope Pie 3.5★ "She was an incredible child, capable of grasping meaning and nuance, yet often as green as a tender sprout."
Yes, that she was, Miss Penelope Pie Palmer, aka Pea, aged exactly eight-and-a-half on Pi Day. March 14.
[Pi Day, for the uninitiated, celebrates the calendar date of 3.14, the short version of the magical, mystical, never-ending number, pi, that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter: C= πd. That's one I've always remembered, and it has been handy over the years, being roughly one-third, or close enough... but I digress.]
I digress as Penelope often does herself, wandering off into her vast imagination. But first, Theo. Theo Gruene is a 70-year-old widower, who since retiring from teaching, has buried himself in his favourite botanical pursuits, preserving specimens for posterity.
He is absorbed in this one morning when an insistent tapping at his door proves to be not the wind blowing something around, but the knocking of a small girl in a lime green raincoat.
"'The truth is, I missed my school bus by two measly minutes, and I can’t get back inside our house. I forgot my key, and it’s storming, and I don’t want to be struck by lightning.'
Theo had to listen carefully to keep up with her rapid-fire words.
'Would it be okay if I come inside and stay with you for a while?'
'Me? Well, no, I don’t—'
'My mom gets off work just before noon today, and I’ll go home then.' She swiped at her glasses with wet fingertips, further smearing the lenses. 'I won’t bother you. I promise.'
Too late for that, he thought."
Waaay too late, Theo. This is a warm-hearted story of a precocious little girl worming her way into the affections of an elderly neighbour in spite of his reservations. She is exceptionally bright, learns quickly, and he finds he loves teaching her. Lucky, that.
She and her mother, Ivy, live in a small flat over the garage of the house behind his backyard. In his backyard is a stray dog who seems to have adopted him. Penelope asks if she can come and play with the dog sometimes.
Ivy works at the nearby VA hospital while Penelope is at school. She invites Theo to dinner, to thank him, and the next day she arrives at his house to ask if he could look after Penelope while her school is closed because of coronavirus. Not only that, could he possibly teach her as well?
So much for his quiet, retired lifestyle. Before you know it, he has turned her loose in his library upstairs to choose whatever she wants to read. Of course her choices are not that of your run-of-the-mill schoolchild.
"When she finally returned, she was carrying three books. 'You sure have a bunch of old books up there.'
'Well, I’m an old man. Let’s see what you found.'
She dropped the books with a thud on the kitchen table and arranged them side by side.
"Penelope studied the covers of the three novels before launching into her reasoning. Crime and Punishment sounds dark and intriguing to me, and since it’s huge, I imagine it must be filled with words I don’t know yet. I like the idea of expanding my vocabulary. Plus, I’ve never read any Russian literature, and that seems like an important thing to do.'
Next, she lay a palm against A Confederacy of Dunces. 'I like the title and even though I don’t fully understand the meaning of it, the cover makes the story look funny. And last, I’ve never read the "Mockingbird" book, but I’ve seen the movie, the one with Gregory Peck. It was very compelling, and since my mother says books are always better than movies, why wouldn’t I want to read it?"
We don't hear much about the first two books, but Penelope takes a fancy to Boo Radley and the holes where he hides gifts for Scout and Jem. She finds holes in the trees when they take the dog for walks, and it becomes a theme through the book.
When Ivy gets sick and sent to the 'regular' hospital, Theo wonders why nobody has checked on Penelope.
" 'My mother never told her boss about me. People don’t like to hire single mothers.'
'Now, why would you think something like that?'
Penelope glared at him. 'Because it’s the truth. No offense, Mr. Theo, but what would a seventy-year-old straight white man know about discrimination in the workplace? Especially discrimination against young women?'
'Excuse me, but I—'
'Remember what Scout’s father said? "You don’t know what someone else is going through until you walk in his shoes." 'I think that applies here.'
'Okay…well…'"
As you can see, the author does get a bit teachy-preachy here and there (okay, didactic and moralising, which is probably what Penelope would say), which I found a bit annoying. She has also created an outrageously well-informed little girl. But Penelope is not sophisticated. She can also be charmingly naïve, which sometimes catches 'Mr. Theo' off-guard, and which makes her somewhat more believable.
I still don't believe an eight-and-a-half-year-old would refer to 'Russian literature' but I decided to suspend disbelief, go with the flow, and enjoy the story and the twist at the end.
I think fans of Catherine Ryan Hyde will like this one, too. I know how many readers love her work.
Thanks to #NetGalley and One Mississippi for a review copy of #TheThirdActOfTheoGruene....more
4★ “The man talked too much. . . . The man laughed, dropping the small nugget into a black plastic film canister and pocketing it. ‘Plenty out there, if4★ “The man talked too much. . . . The man laughed, dropping the small nugget into a black plastic film canister and pocketing it. ‘Plenty out there, if you have the patience to go look.’ . . . …the two men still sitting silently in the corner. Their eyes were firmly fixed on the man with gold in his pocket. He was on his phone now…”
Outback Western Australia’s goldfields still attract prospectors and tourists. This fellow is so excited with his find, that he has attracted exactly the wrong kind of attention. When he doesn’t show up at his daughter’s as expected, she contacts police and then Gabe Ahern.
Why Gabe? He was an old dogger (dingo-trapper) whom she’d met when he was tracking people smugglers who’d set up a slave trade in the outback. Courtney is a RAN (Remote Area Nurse) and had helped him save the refugees. She’s aware that Gabe probably knows the Cue area better than the police because he grew up there.
Gabe collects his refugee friend, Amin Tahir (one of the people Courtney helped), and they drive north from Perth to Cue. At the police station, where the SES (rescue service) and other volunteers have gathered, they meet Gabe’s old friend, Antonio Vargis, a Macedonian immigrant (from 30 years ago) who still speaks with such a thick “Mediterranean accent” that the Cue locals refer to it as “Antonese”.
I enjoy Trant’s characters and his descriptions. I can ‘see’ these people. Here are two.
“Antonio Vargis was a short, white-haired man with a deeply tanned and jovial face, though most of it was hidden behind a thick moustache and close-cropped beard. It was no surprise the grocery store owner was called upon to play Santa at the community Christmas tree each year – and each year the kids went home with an expanded vocabulary to complement their new toys.” . . . ‘Long way between here and Jake’s,’ drawled the jackaroo-looking man. He was sprawled in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him. Gabe got the impression he was one of those fellas so laid-back you had to line them up with a post to make sure they were moving.”
It turns out the jackaroo-looking man is the young pilot who’s been doing searches for other missing people and is now available to help hunt for Terry Drage, Courtney’s dad. All they have to go on is that Terry told his daughter he’d prospect some more around Cue and then let her know when he was leaving for the Jakob’s River community (“Jake’s”), where she works, in time for her birthday.
Since then, no word. Gabe, Amin, and Antonio make a great team. They split up in different ways, depending on where they’re needed, and talk to the locals. It seems there are other prospectors who’ve gone missing and never found, and a few who’ve been found dead, supposedly accidentally (falling down a mine shaft) or heart attack. All were known to have found and sold gold.
This is not the Outback familiar to readers. It is wet, muddy, unbelievably slippery, and it makes driving next to impossible on any dirt roads. So Gabe has hidden his ute in a safe spot and walked through the bush to spy on a campsite of people he suspects.
“Gabe glanced down at his boots, heavy with mud. Sh*t. There was no way to cover his tracks. He could see the flash of a torch rounding the van. His only option was to keep moving, doing his best not to slip. He struggled through the undergrowth, wincing at every rustling branch and each twinge of his hip. Branches snagged at his jacket like long bony fingers, scraping against the leather. They tore at his beanie and raked against his face, and the clumps of lush wanderrie grass threatened to trip him up every step of the way. He pushed onwards, the long green strands soaking his jeans with moisture.
‘Got footprints! Someone’s been here!”
There are plenty of heart-in-the-mouth moments, and with Trant, we can’t be sure our favourite people will survive. Those who haven’t survived from Gabe’s previous exploits are remembered fondly in occasional intervening chapters titled “Before”. Not only do they explain some of the background, they also remind fans of what haunts and/or drives him.
I can’t not mention Ric Herbert’s narration. I think the author covers it perfectly in his acknowledgments, where he gives thanks to, among others,
“Ric Herbert, the voice of Gabe, and who I now hear in my head when writing these stories: thank you for bringing him to life, and for swearing so beautifully. “
I hear Ric’s voice too, not only for Gabe, but for the many other distinctive voices and accents of Trant’s people – Antonio (thick, gruff Macedonian), Amir (Afghan - Pashtun Afghan, please!), snivelling cowards, tough barmaids, Heidi (his girlfriend), and the various cops and miners. He is not just a narrator, he is a voice actor, and by golly he’s good! You can listen to a preview in libraries or on Amazon, etc.
I sometimes listen while I’m reading or alternate between book and audio. I will add that you don’t need to have read the first two books to enjoy this one. Trant fills in any necessary blanks., but of course I recommend the first two.
4★ “Like so many people, he had come to the conclusion that the odd man in front of him was a bumbling, disorganised eccentric. Big mistake.”
Indeed it 4★ “Like so many people, he had come to the conclusion that the odd man in front of him was a bumbling, disorganised eccentric. Big mistake.”
Indeed it was. This is no rumpled Columbo they’re dealing with. DS Cross doesn’t bumble but does organise. He is certainly eccentric, being outside the centre of general behaviour, but it’s a mistake to assume that this means he is somehow less-than.
Over the years, Cross has learned what it is about himself that people find hard to understand, and when it suits him (or when he thinks of it) to modify his behaviour to make someone feel more comfortable, he makes the effort. That effort is the trouble. Where others use the social niceties to help us rub along together, Cross often needs prompting.
His reluctant partner is DS Ottey. She keeps asking not to be partnered with him, because he’s so difficult, but each time, she’s told that she is the one who ‘manages’ him best. She has to admit, he is certainly successful.
They are investigating the recent murder of a man whose wife was also murdered, several years ago and for which someone was found guilty and jailed. Cross insists that they check the old case, and he’s assigned some jobs to the new recruit, Mackenzie.
Mackenzie is brand new, keen, earnest and anxious to do a good job, if only someone would tell her what her job is. Finally, she is delighted that Cross has given her an assignment to research dates and times, sift through data, and narrow the results down to a list.
When Mackenzie brings the list in early in the morning, DS Ottey notices she looks exhausted, which is when Mackenzie says she had been up all night working on it. She begins to explain what she’s done, how she did it, and how many possibilities there still are to be checked. The list is several pages long.
“She held the list out to Cross, but he didn't take it, leaving her hanging there like she'd just had a fist bump unreciprocated. He looked straight through her. She thought she'd done something wrong, but he was simply processing what she had said.”
Cross instructs her to narrow the list again for all the names that contain certain initials, but then decides it’s quicker to do it himself, whizzes through, highlights the names in an instant, leaving Mackenzie gobsmacked.
“She just stood there, not moving. Ottey stepped in with the words this young staff officer was expecting – needing, in fact. ‘That's great. Thanks Alice, you can go,’ she said.
Mackenzie stood there for a moment, as if unsure who she should obey, then left. ‘Okay.’
Ottey looked back at Cross, who was oblivious to this.
‘ “Well done”, “good work”...’ said Ottey.
‘I don't understand.’
He looked at her, but she wasn't giving him any more help on this one. He knew he'd done something wrong, just not what it was. But she wasn't upset, which meant someone else was. He then looked at Mackenzie, who had gone back to her desk. She'd been up all night, she said, doing this list. He thought for a minute, played the conversation back in his mind. He'd been business-like, not rude; he was fairly sure about that. Then he got it. He hadn't said ‘thank you’. She needed reassurance and gratitude. Noted.
Mind you, they shouldn't need all this molly-coddling.”
Noted. That’s important. He does make a mental note of these things and sometimes manages appropriate responses, which he finds particularly useful when interviewing people. Rather than showing off how clever he actually is, he leads people to believe he’s not only odd but perhaps a little slow, so they go out of their way to explain things – which is when lies trip us up of course.
I liked the back story about his dad (a creative hoarder who repurposes stuff), and his hobbies (church organs) and personal life (cyclist) as well. I started off feeling as if this was going to be a lesson in autism/aspergers/whatever, but the author managed to work it into the story pretty comfortably, and before long I was truly hooked.
Cross is reminiscent of Dr Gregory House from the TV series “House”, but he isn’t grumpy or angry. He’s just a perfectionist whose skills in noticing clues – things out of place – make him an excellent detective.
I ended up enjoying it and also enjoying the audio, part of which I listened to as well as reading the text. There are four more in the series and a new one to come I believe. ...more
4★ “Cora watches as the letters form, each one emerging like some magical and extraordinary thing from the nib of the registrar’s pen as it moves acros4★ “Cora watches as the letters form, each one emerging like some magical and extraordinary thing from the nib of the registrar’s pen as it moves across the page.”
England 1987. Cora has pushed the pram with her infant son to the registry to register his birth. With her is 9-year-old Maia, who is happily skipping along discussing names. Husband/father Gordon is a much-loved local doctor in whom everyone confides, and he wants his son to carry his and his father’s name.
“Cora has never liked the name Gordon. The way it starts with a splintering sound that makes her think of cracked boiled sweets, and then ends with a thud like someone slamming down a sports bag. GORdon. But what disturbs her more is that she must now pour the goodness of her son into its mould, hoping he’ll be strong enough to find his own shape within it.”
The ’Gordon’ mould is not one that Cora or Maia would wish for their new baby. At home, the kindly local doctor is a frighteningly temperamental bully who snaps without warning, scaring Maia, whom he scolds and lectures, and physically abusing Cora when Maia is at school or has gone to bed.
On the way to the registry, Cora asks Maia what name she likes, and Maia surprises her mum with ‘Bear’.
“ ‘Bear?’ Cora asks, smiling.
‘Yes. It sounds all soft and cuddly and kind,’ Maia says, opening and closing her fingers as though she’s scrunching sweetness in her hands. ‘But also, brave and strong.’ Cora looks at the baby and imagines him being all those things. She wants that for him.”
If it were up to Cora, she’d choose ‘Julian’ – sky father – “it implies transcending a long line of troubled earth fathers”, something she’d like for her son.
She can’t escape the registration because Gordon’s parents are coming for dinner and he wants to show off the birth certificate to them, especially to his domineering father, a famous surgeon who sneers at Gordon’s General Practice credentials.
The book cover I have shows a man on a path - or possibly positioned in the middle of an hourglass – casting three shadows, one for each name, or ‘mould’, as Cora called it.
This is the prologue, the set-up, so to speak. Next, there is a handsome drawing of a bear face with 1987 underneath. Those letters (in the opening quotation) that Cora was watching magically form in the registrar’s office obviously spelled out BEAR.
[image]
“A great surge of – what is this thing? – joy, yes, that’s it, joy – courses through Cora’s being. A whole-body dizzying happiness.”
Joy… until Cora realises that she had better farm Maia out with a friend for the night, anticipating her husband’s likely violent reaction.
Then the reader is presented with a drawing of needle-nose pliers, a small screwdriver, and a chain with a hand-crafted pendant, and we move into an alternate 1987 scenario.
[image]
“Afterwards, Cora is unsure what made her say it, only that she did and it felt right. Now, as this baby lies in his pram – Julian, ‘sky father’, ethereal, transcendent – Cora has a feeling of being more rooted than she has for years. As though, feet planted, she holds the two kite strings of her children’s lives safe in her palm.”
Before they tell her father, Maia suggests making his favourite lasagne. At nine, she already knows to dance carefully around his temper. Cora had discussed wanting to name the baby Julian, so she hopes for the best.
After that is the third drawing, a bottle labelled GIN London 1821 with a tumbler on its side, spilling what is unquestionably Gordon’s Gin.
[image]
“Coming back from the registrar’s office, it’s as though a cloud has descended. Cora looks down at the baby and feels she has broken something. Less than an hour ago, walking in the opposite direction, his small form seemed filled with hope and possibility. But now, that’s tainted. Where earlier she’d seen only the peach blush of his cheeks and the delicacy of blue-veined lids, now she sees a chin dribbled red and lips pinched in popeish judgement.” [with apologies to the new Pope Leo XIV, who seems more like a Julian]
Although the book is not divided into Parts One, Two, and so-on, the author moves the timespan seven years to 1994, beginning each of the three sections (they are longer than chapters) with the same three drawings.
The seven-year intervals continue to 2022, and the family dynamics go through various developments with three very different stories, but the echoes of the parents’ pasts resonate throughout.
Incidentally, the father stops being referred to by name as time moves on, so we know which Gordon a story is referring to.
The problems Gordon (father) and Cora faced as children and young adults continue to affect them as a couple and as parents. Each story shows the different paths both Maia and her little brother set out on, but they can’t shake the influence of their parents (and grandparents), especially Maia, who was 16 in 1994 when the second timespan begins. The past is the same past.
The seven-year intervals remind me of the wonderful BBC documentary series which began with ‘Seven-Up’ and follows 14 kids from seven years old in 1964 until ’63 Up’ in 2019. It’s absolutely wonderful, and I think you can find it on Netflix and some of it on YouTube.
I found it confusing at first, not knowing quite where I was or what was happening. I don’t know if the physical book has different page breaks for these sections or not, but I’m certainly glad the illustrations came through in the digital version. Perhaps I’m just a bit slow on the uptake.
Each story arc is a small book in itself, but because there are many of the same characters in each (same grandparents, some friends), I think I fell into the trap of carrying the closeness of a relationship from one story arc to another, which isn’t the case, of course. It isn’t just the boy who is in the alternate universe – they all are.
Overall, I enjoyed how Knapp handled the different characters, even when they were the same person, and I thank #NetGalley and Hachette for a copy of #TheNames for review....more
5★ “And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense.5★ “And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense. I would write my obituary.”
That is an excerpt from John Kenney’s new novel I See You've Called in Dead: A Novel, which reads smoothly, easily, amusingly and sounds as if it might actually live up to what the publisher claims it to be: “The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.”
Kenney’s won several awards and is a contributor to 'The New Yorker', so you know you’re in the hands of an experienced writer.
Much-loved author Emma Donoghue, (with sixteen novels, including Room under her belt, or in the back of her brain, or wherever she keeps them) is releasing The Paris Express soon. It’s historical fiction, based on an 1895 train disaster, described by the publisher as “a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.”
It opens with a young woman hesitating as she’s about to board the train, and I imagine many readers will want to know what happens to her.
The next one that caught my eye is a debut novel, The Names, by Florence Knapp, who has previously written nonfiction. The excerpt was compelling and I hope I get to read the rest of it. Cora’s husband, Gordon, has instructed her to register the baby’s name, today. Cora and her young daughter walk to the registry office and the little girl suggests a name.
“Cora has never liked the name Gordon. The way it starts with a splintering sound that makes her think of cracked boiled sweets, and then ends with a thud like someone slamming down a sports bag. Gordon. But what disturbs her more is that she must now pour the goodness of her son into its mold, hoping he’ll be strong enough to find his own shape within it. Because Gordon is a name passed down through the men in her husband’s family, and it seems impossible it could be any other way.”
Does a person grow into the name or does the name define your trajectory? I completely forgot this was a debut, at least for fiction, and that is was only an excerpt. It’s imaginative and thoughtful and I’d like to read more, please.
Notes on Infinity is a debut by Austin Taylor, who is a recent Harvard graduate with joint degrees in chemistry and English, which she certainly put to good use here. The excerpt opens with Zoe in a dressing room, feeling manic, getting sick, and finally downing four pills before getting her makeup redone and going onstage.
She introduces herself and says she’s going to tell the audience a story.
Then the book cuts to Part 1, and I got caught up in the meeting of two bright students, kind of competing against each other in chemistry classes, which was a lot more interesting than I’ve made it sound - sort of a cat and mouse, unspoken rivalry between exceptionally smart young people.
The publisher describes it as two people going into a biotech startup and discovering a cure for aging, That got my attention, too. I immediately thought of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, although this may be completely different, of course.
There are excerpts from 49 books, but there are a lot more titles and release dates for books by acclaimed authors. There are no excerpts, but many authors are famous, so you may find a favourite with a new book to look forward to.
Get a copy and have a look.
Thanks to #NetGalley for my copy for review, but you can download these books for free....more
4★ “And yet, there is some sort of unsuccessful oddity about him, which sets him off from your successful bourgeois. I cannot put my finger on it yet, 4★ “And yet, there is some sort of unsuccessful oddity about him, which sets him off from your successful bourgeois. I cannot put my finger on it yet, but it interests me.”
The narrator is writing to his sister from St. Philippe-des-Bains where his physician has sent him to recuperate and take the waters. He is not happy. There is little to recommend it except for the blue of the Mediterranean.
“St. Philip is but one of a dozen small white towns on this agreeable coast. It has its good inn and its bad inn, its dusty, little square with its dusty, fleabitten beggar, its posting-station and its promenade of scrubby lindens and palms.”
As a result, he says she will doubtless be subjected to a lot of long letters from him. He knows she will advise him to remember his plan to study human nature and tell him there must be someone, even there, who could interest him.
He is sure there isn’t,. But one day, as he’s sitting by the square, reading poetry, (not realising he’s started reciting it), a fellow doing his morning promenade around the square stops by, asking if the lines are from the great poet, Ossian. Our narrator say yes, and the man bows.
" ‘Monsieur will excuse the interruption,’ he said, ‘but I myself have long admired the poetry of Ossian’—and with that he continued my quotation to the end of the passage, in very fair English, too, though with a strong accent. I complimented him, of course, effusively—after all, it is not every day that one runs across a fellow-admirer of Ossian on the promenade of a small French watering place—and after that, he sat down in the chair beside me and we fell into talk. He seems, astonishingly for a Frenchman, to have an excellent acquaintance with our English poets—perhaps he has been a tutor in some English family. I did not press him with questions on this first encounter, though I noted that he spoke French with a slight accent also, which seems odd.”
It certainly is odd, as is the man, but he’s very entertaining, in his unusual sort of way. He bemoans the fact that he was born at the wrong time and could have been great … if only. Our narrator eventually meets the fellow’s large, extended, unusual family, and is even more intrigued, if a bit frightened, I think. He attends a dinner and is warmly welcomed by everyonge.
“Only the old lady remained aloof, saying little and sipping her camomile tea as if it were the blood of her enemies. . . . It was like being in a nest of Italian smugglers, or a den of quarrelsome foxes, for they all talked, or rather barked at once, even the brother-in-law, and only Madame Mère could bring silence among them.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It’s a story that once our narrator has put it all together, we want to go back and read things in context.
3★ “Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here. But 3★ “Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here. But Eustace was something besides: he was indescribably repellent. . . . His aunts thought him delicate; what he really needed was discipline.”
This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, because the Englishman narrating this tale is dreadful himself. He tells of a visit to Italy with his family and what happened at a picnic, saying:
“I do flatter myself that I can tell a story without exaggerating, and I have therefore decided to give an unbiassed account of the extraordinary events of eight years ago. Ravello is a delightful place with a delightful little hotel in which we met some charming people. . . . To this little circle, I, my wife, and my two daughters made, I venture to think, a not unwelcome addition.”
I can't imagine his being a welcome addition anywhere I would want to be. The focus of his tale is a fourteen-year-old boy who doesn’t want to do anything – I mean anything. Lounging around, shuffling down the road, permanently bored and boring. (sound familiar?)
These delightful people gather themselves to go for a walk, taking a picnic and avoiding Italians as much as possible. They are far too lower class and sometimes don't even understand English.
The Short Story Club group discusses a number of interpretations of the sudden strange panic that takes hold during the party’s afternoon out and the incredible effect of it on the boy. It is okay, but I don’t feel inspired enough to dig into any deeper meanings, but others have enjoyed it.
4★ “The summer sky is a veil thrown over the moon and stars. The streets are quiet, the good people of Avalon long since tucked in for the night. Their4★ “The summer sky is a veil thrown over the moon and stars. The streets are quiet, the good people of Avalon long since tucked in for the night. Their own parents are asleep in their queen-size bed under the plaid afghan knitted by one of their father’s patients. His mom is a deep sleeper, but his dad has been trained by a lifetime as a doctor to bolt awake at the slightest provocation. He is always ready.”
Tonight, his kids have the car, those dreaded teenage hormones kick in, and it’s a good thing the good doctor was ready.
Two families, living across the street from each other, cross paths sometimes but aren’t social friends. Dr Wilf, his wife and two kids have lived in the neighbourhood a long time before the young Shenkman couple move in.
Shenkman is a competitive perfectionist who pushes himself to exhaustion on a rowing machine in his ‘man cave’, apparently using an app to pit himself against another ‘rower’ whom he knows as they race down a virtual river.
“It’s taken him a while to realize that this—the deep twilight blue of the lake, the ripples he imagines are cast by his blades—this is what he’s been looking for. Here, in this gym above his garage, paid for with plastic, here is where he forgets about the rest of his life.”
The timelines and character stories jump around – a lot. I’m usually pretty good with that, but for some reason, I realised I was sometimes forgetting what age the different families were. Their children were not contemporaries.
My interest was in young Waldo Shenkman, born to the new couple across the street from the doctor after the doctor’s kids have grown up. Waldo is adored by his mother, completely misunderstood and therefore disappointing to his father, and a budding, inquisitive science nerd, probably ‘on the spectrum’.
As a young boy, he loved his Star Walk app to trace the night skies. He’s a child who sees the Big Picture, the many connections between us all, between past and present. It makes sense to him, but to his dad, he’s just weird.
Dr Wilf happens to look outside one night at 10:45pm, and sees young Waldo at his window, gazing out at the sky while holding something glowing in his hands. He can see Waldo’s parents in two different rooms. Why is a ten-year-old up so late? They are not like his family was.
“These folks leave first thing in the morning, the father in a brand-new Lexus hybrid, the mother in a Prius—cars that don’t make a sound—and as dusk falls they return, gliding silently into the garage, the automatic doors closing behind them. The boy doesn’t play on the street the way Sarah and Theo used to. None of the neighborhood kids are ever out in their yards. They’re carted around by their parents or nannies, lugging violins or cellos in their cases, dragging backpacks that weigh more than they do. They wear soccer uniforms or spanking white getups, their tiny waists wrapped in colorful karate or jujitsu belts.
‘Hey, kid!’ Ben calls again. ‘What are you doing?’ ”
He and Waldo meet outside, and Waldo shows the doctor his Star Walk app that tracks the night sky and how everything is connected to everything else and to them and to Avalon and to … on and on, he goes, reciting the names of constellations in alphabetical order… until Ben, (Dr Wilf) says it’s time to go to bed for both of them.
“ ‘One more thing,’ Waldo says. ‘Let me just show you one more thing, please?’
Ben’s not sure he can handle one more thing, but what choice does he have? Waldo presses the bottom-right corner of the screen, and now they are flying over the curvature of the earth, skating above the surface of oceans and continents until the entire planet recedes and two neon green lines bisect to show their exact location on the globe. A small neon figure stands in the center of a circle perched on the easternmost edge of the United States, the state of New York, the town of Avalon, the street … their street. Division Street.
‘Here we are,’ Waldo says, pointing to the neon figure. ‘That’s us.’
Ben touches the screen. … From this distance, everything is connected. …
The sky of 1936 to the sky of 2010. From this distance, it seems possible that it’s all happening at once: this life, that life—an immeasurable number of lives all playing themselves out in parallel motion. He is at once a newborn at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, a kid playing stickball…”
I couldn’t help being reminded of Samantha Harvey’s 2024 Booker Prize-winning Orbital, with the space station circling the world sixteen times a day, so that everything did seem to be happening all at once. The astronauts saw the big world picture at the same time as they were worrying about their individual families at the pinpoint on Earth that was their home.
This is mostly a story about the people and their relationships and secrets with the added depth of Waldo’s perception. Shapiro shows all of her characters developing, but of course it was Waldo whose story arc I really loved.
I enjoyed it, although the jumping timelines confused me more than I’d like to admit. Within each time heading, there might be six chapters, each devoted to one character. It went from 1985 to 2010 to 1999 to 1985 to 2010 to 2020 to 2010 to 1985 to 2014 to 2020 to 1970.
But, in spite of occasional confusion, I came to agree with Ben, Dr Wilf, who thought back on his night with Waldo. I was reminded of the cultures that see the stars as our ancestors, where we go when we die.
“It was comforting, somehow, sitting beside the small boy who was able to navigate their precise location in the vastness. The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path; one hundred thousand million luminous presences beckoning from worlds away. ‘See us. We are here. We have always been here. We will always be here.’ ”...more
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