The Night Guest, by Fiona McFarlane - definitely yes. Go read it now.

9780865477735
Faber and Faber, 2013
241 pp

hardcover

"If one person walks on the beach in the next ten minutes, there's a tiger in my house at night; if there are two, the tiger won't hurt me; if there are three, the tiger will finish me off."


I don't know the last time I've ever been this unsettled by a novel.  I started it, was intrigued, picked it up again the next day and read until just after 3 a.m. when I finished it. Then I couldn't sleep for another hour and a half, mulling over what I'd just read and trying to calm the anxiety this most excellent book had caused me.  The Night Guest is author Fiona McFarlane's first novel and if this is her first outing, I will probably buy every book this woman writes.

Harry and Ruth Field bought a lovely beachside home up the coast from Sydney after Harry's retirement. Sadly, it isn't too long afterwards that Harry dies, leaving Ruth alone. She's 75, with two sons, one in Hong Kong who is always busy and one in New Zealand. Ruth gets through her day through "symmetry," for example, always beginning her journey up a flight of stairs on her left foot, ending it on her right, or believing that if dinner was ready by the six o'clock news, her sons would be there for Christmas.  As the novel begins, Ruth awakens at four in the morning after hearing noises in the house. She'd heard these noises before, at a German zoo: "loud and wet, with a low, guttural breathing hum punctuated by little cautionary yelps, as if it might roar at any moment ... like a tiger eating some large bloody thing..." A phone call to her son Jeffrey in New Zealand puts her mind at rest and reminds her that the tiger was likely nothing more than a dream, but she realizes that "something important" was happening.  The next day, looking out at the sea, Ruth tells herself that "If one person walks on the beach in the next ten minutes, there's a tiger in my house at night; if there are two, the tiger won't hurt me; if there are three, the tiger will finish me off."

It is then that Frida arrives, sent by the government to be Ruth's carer. A quick conversation with Ruth's son Jeffrey establishes how Frida came to be there:

"A state programme. Her name was on file, and a spot opened up...An hour a day to start with. It's more of an assessment, just to see what's needed, and we'll take things from there."

Jeffrey is delighted at the "good use of taxpayers' money," but Ruth is "not sure about this," thinking she's "not doing badly." But then again, Ruth is somewhat assured because Frida is "Fijian," since Ruth spent part of her childhood in Fiji with her missionary medical parents. And, Ruth tells herself, she's only 75, and her mother had been over 80 "before things really began to unravel." 

 Things seem to be going well for Ruth with the addition of Frida into her home. Frida extends her hours, and Ruth seems happy when Frida takes on the shopping, bill paying, cleaning, meal preparation and banking. Soon enough the two settle into a comfortable routine. Ruth tells Frida about her life in Fiji, Frida tells her about her brother and her family, and Ruth comes to depend on Frida's help.  Up against Frida's boisterous personality, Ruth's own fragile state starts to become obvious, and the reader senses that for Ruth it is somewhat of a blessing to be in Frida's boisterous company. But a  visit from a friend from Ruth's past starts a long series of waking nightmares that quickly jolt the reader into realizing that all is indeed not well, and events occur  that bring Ruth's dreams of being stalked by a predator into a waking reality.

 The Night Guest is not an easy book to read on an emotional level.  While I won't give away much, first, a lot of what happens is viewed through the lens of Ruth's mind. It's obvious early on that there's something not quite right with her -- she forgets to wash her hair for weeks, she's let her lovely garden become overgrown to the point where the sand is overtaking it, and chores that used to be done dutifully are also neglected.  As things begin to take a turn for the worse,  it is difficult to pinpoint whether or not Ruth's version of things are anywhere close to lucid and coherent, especially since there is an alternate point of view that gives the reader an impression that maybe Ruth's deteriorating and disoriented mind is imagining things, just as she imagined the tiger in her lounge room.  This constant tug between  versions of reality (and one of the best uses of reader manipulation I've experienced in a long time) is one of the best features of this novel -- the reader is always trying to decide what's really going on here, and in my case, the tension and sheer aura of menace produced by this story continued to grow up until the very end.  Second, this book is incredibly sad and depressing -- there is not one iota of happiness in this book when all is said and done. However, unless the reader's heart is made of stone, the story ultimately should inspire  a deep, beyond--gut-level empathy, and make you want to call one of your aging relatives more often. And even though I'm far far away from Ruth's age,   I also came away feeling like "Oh my god, I hope I NEVER find myself in this position."

The only niggling thing is that explanations at the end come tumbling in a rather rushed manner, but by that time they don't really matter.  As with so many books, in this one, it's more about the journey.  The fact that this writer was able, with only words, to produce so much unease inside of me speaks to how well written I found this book to be. There are relatively few books I've read that move me like this one, that keep me up at night, and that still resonate days after reading them.  I seriously cannot recommend this one highly enough. I loved this book.

starting the new reading year off with a bang: Oyster, by Janette Turner Hospital [Australia]

0393319369
W.W. Norton, 1999
400 pp

paper


This book isn't "new" in the sense that it is recently published, but it's one of those that is a new read for me. It actually continues my little self-imposed "fictional cult" challenge from December, but I just finished it yesterday.  This author is a new one for me as well, although I have a couple more books by this writer in my home library, and after reading this book, I've made a point to pull them out and put them on the near-future stack.  It's positively eerie and I loved it.   Now on to the discussion.

"People see with the madman's eyes. For true madness has this gift, and this potency, that it makes its own complete world. It has its own space. Others can enter it."

A man known only as Oyster literally stumbles into the small opal-mining town of Outer Maroo, Queensland a few days before Christmas at 2:23 one afternoon.  Clad all in white, his clothing stained with blood, he comes into this little off-the-map outback town and things are never the same again.   Neither are the inhabitants of this hidden drought-ridden world of its own, where many of the people are happy to be away from the prying eyes of the government.   It is a town cloaked in its secrets, which are not made privy to the reader at the outset. What is made very clear is that something terrible has occurred  in this place; as the novel unfolds, just what's happened is revealed little by little.  Before Oyster's arrival, the inhabitants of Outer Maroo -- -- the cattle graziers, the opal miners and the members of the Living Word fundamentalist congregation all got along just fine.  But once the people allowed themselves to be "seduced" by this man,  described by one person as being like "one of those bacterial forces that blindly and ruthlessly seek out the culture that will nourish them,"  life completely changes, and for the worst.   This new, uneasy coexistence is also threatened by the "foreigners" who come into Outer Maroo, at first the swarms of Oyster's followers looking for something meaningful in their lives, and then the ones looking for loved ones who had come there and had never been heard from again. Slowly the "foreigners" begin to outnumber the townspeople, a situation which has potential to threaten  those who hold the biggest secrets and the most to lose  -- and as young Mercy Given notes, when "Jake Digby occasionally arrives with passengers, ... no passengers ever leave with him again."  A teacher brought in for the 13 schoolchildren is only one of their number; the arrival of two more who'd come to search for their children at the beginning of the story will be the last. 

In this eerie, sometimes verging on the edge of surreal novel, much of what the reader knows is transmitted via Mercy, whose father once led the Living Word congregation.  He had built his congregation on the notion that God speaks quietly to each man, and that "No one, no other living soul, can hear what God says to you."  With the coming of Oyster, though, Pastor Given's words and his position are  usurped by a man who sees the potential of Oyster's usefulness, Dukke Prophet, a man with plenty of secrets of his own and a paranoia that becomes infectious; the Book of Revelation is his testament, hellfire and brimstone are his weapons, and the church is his personal zone of power. 

Oyster is an excellent novel, one that not only looks at the lives of a group of people living in the outback, but also examines the madness connected with power, secrecy, religious mania and money. Definitely recommended, this is one of the most thought-provoking works of fiction I've ever read. If you're expecting something ordinary in terms of novel structure, you won't find that here -- the story is not told linearly, but in bits and pieces of looking backward.  They do jump out in 3-D, however, and to me, that's much more important than finding someone likeable.  The characters aren't warm and fuzzy people, so you may not find people here with whom you can identify.  Looking over reader responses to this novel, they range from truly excellent to phrases like "sleep inducing" or "boring to the point of frustration;"  obviously it's not everyone's cup of tea. However,  I found Oyster to be an excellent novel and I can't wait to get to her other books on my shelves.  Amazing. Simply amazing.

*Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent -- a definite yes!

9780316243919
Little, Brown and Company, 2013
314 pp

pre-release edition from Little, Brown/Hachette, thank you!

Funny thing about this incredible novel -- I preordered it eons ago, and was eagerly awaiting its arrival, and then out of the total blue, the mailman who hates me for getting so many books every day drops this one on my front porch  just last week.  Then, I wander over to Book Passage to see what the Signed First Editions Book Club entry is for this month, and it's (ta-da!) Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent.

The dustjacket description of this lovely novel of historical fiction doesn't quite do it justice. Burial Rites is based on true events that happened in Iceland in 1828, when  Natan Ketilsson and Petur Jónsson were both murdered at Ketilsson's farm in North Iceland.  Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Friðrik Sigurðsson were charged with the crimes and sentenced to be executed by Ketilsson's brother.  There was a third person involved, Sigríður Guðmundsdóttir, who was also arrested, sentenced to death but then had her sentence commuted to life in prison. Agnes was first held at Stóra-Borg, and then the authorities moved her to Kornsá, where she stayed with a family until she was taken to be executed in January of 1830.   According to the author's note, some of the historical accounts of Agnes Magnúsdóttir view her as "an inhumane witch, stirring up murder," but in Burial Rites, Kent sets out to provide Agnes with a more "ambiguous portrayal."  While the blurb inside the cover gives you a taste of the story to come, it doesn't begin to cover just how good a writer Hannah Kent really is.  She has filled this book with so much more than the story of a murder.  Through her excellent use of language,  she brings out  how nature, the seasons, and the Icelandic landscape not only defined the way that people lived and survived in this time and in this place,  but also how people were often left helpless, stranded and in the dark when nature was less than cooperative.  Above all, her writing brings out the psychological damage caused by isolation, loneliness and abandonment in an unforgiving environment.  If I had to describe this book in one word it would be this one:  haunting.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir, abandoned at an early age,  spent most of her life moving farm to farm, working as a servant. As the novel opens, she has been sentenced to die along with two others for her part in  killing two men at a farm along the sea in Northern Iceland. She'd been kept in irons and chains at the first place after her trial, but then the District Commissioner decided she should be moved to the farm of Kornsá to spend her last days, and the family will be compensated for taking her in.   The family at Kornsá is shaken by the news; Margrét, the farmer's wife, protests that she does not want to share her home with "the Devil's children."  As Agnes comes to her final home, it upsets the family dynamic, but Margrét puts her foot down, telling Agnes that she will be put to work, and if there is any "violence, lazing, cheek, idleness" or theft, Agnes is gone. A young assistant reverend, Thorvardur Jónsson  nicknamed Tóti, also receives official word --  he will be Agnes' spiritual advisor during her final days of life, and is urged to get Agnes to repent and confess before she dies.Tóti, who is inexperienced and counseled by his father not to take Agnes on, becomes the vehicle through which Agnes first starts to unspool her tale, and the rest of the book takes the reader through Agnes' story  from her childhood through the fateful day at the farm of Illugastadir, and on to Agnes' last day of life.  Each chapter begins with some form of real official document, or a poem, or in one case, an Icelandic saga, all of which have relevance to what's happening in that particular section.

Alternating voices, dreams and portents, superstitions, haunting imagery, and seasonal routines also help to shape this story.  It is filled with descriptions of the rhythms of farm life, from communal harvesting and slaughter to living in cramped quarters in a turf-walled croft.  But standing above everything that the author writes about is the way she writes it.  It's a book that didn't let go of  me until the very end, and even then I wasn't finished thinking about what I'd just read. You may be tempted to zip through it for the murder story, but don't.  Definitely recommended.  Considering that Burial Rites is the author's first novel, it is highly intelligent, sophisticated, and a novel that readers across the spectrum will enjoy.

 fiction from Australia

*Two from the land down under: The Daughters of Mars, by Thomas Keneally & The Asylum, by John Harwood

 The daughters of Mars, by Thomas Keneally

9781476734613
Atria Books, August 2013 US release date
544 pp

My thanks to both Bookbrowse.com's first impressions program and the publishers for my advance reading copy.


Longlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award, The Daughters of Mars didn't make it to the shortlist, but it's pretty good all the same, in that sweeping, summer-read sort of way.  It is a well-researched novel of historical fiction that plots the course of the Durance sisters, two Australian women who volunteer to serve as military nurses during World War I.  As a point of interest, according to an interview I read, the author used actual journals written by WWI nurses as part of his research, later reflecting  that "these women are too good not to write about." The story centers around the war and the effect it had not just on the soldiers, but on the Durance sisters and the other men and women with whom they work who have their own private battles to fight as well.

 Two sisters, Sally and Naomi Durance, both nurses, hail from the Macleay Valley. Naomi had left home while Sally stayed on the family farm, working only three miles away.  Their mother suffered from cervical cancer, and after months of suffering bad enough that she just wanted to die, Naomi came home to help out. During that visit, their mother dies; what may or may not have happened on that day leaves both with a burden of guilt hanging over them and bad feelings between the sisters.  It isn't long until Naomi writes home with the news that she's enlisting as a military nurse; Sally soon follows and in her own self-punishing way, hopes to engage herself in something bigger, and in another sense, to be rescued. Off first to Egypt, they're soon on board the hospital ship Archimedes taking them into the waters off the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, where hundreds of  casualties were ferried and put on its decks and small wards to be tended by the physicians, nurses and orderlies.  Later they are sent to France, where their patients now include victims of the new German weapon, gas.  From Gallipoli to the continent, the nurses find that by leaving their small Australian town, they've moved into the center of history -- yet also into lives that are much more complex than they could have ever previously realized. They must also suffer their own indignities and horrors on top of tending to the suffering of the physically and psychologically-damaged soldiers.  As they do so, the war provides a testing ground for individual mettle, resilience and spirit, and -- to paraphrase the author -- a venue for teaching these women about their weaknesses and at the same time educating them in the nature of the kind of women they are.

Australian nurses on board a hospital ship, 1915. From Gallipoli and the Anzacs, Australian Government Dept. of Veterans Affairs

For the most part, I liked Daughters of Mars.  While it's a wonderful tribute to some largely-unsung heroes, if you're looking for a happy story, this is definitely not it, and  it's not a tale for the easily queasy.  Injuries are described with no sugar coating, as are a number of the treatments the wounded had to undergo.  There  is also a large focus on death and life in this novel: there are soldiers who are aware they're going to die, there is much about mercy killing, and a rather disturbing scene where men are shot for attempting to commit suicide. It's a perfect book for a casual reader although I must say for me it was a bit too long -- and sometimes overly detailed.   I pretty much skimmed the love stories in this novel -- while I know that people fall in love in life, these episodes just went on too long for my taste.  As a warning, there are no quotation marks for conversations, and many reviewers have complained about the surprising ending (definitely a departure from the norm)  which I won't give away.   But overall, definitely recommended.   I will also be reading much more of Keneally's work over the rest of the year. 

  *****

  The Asylum, by John Harwood

 9780544003477

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

272 pp

hardcover

I have to be rather honest here. This is the third book I've read by John Harwood -- I loved his The Ghost Writer, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize in 2005, and I also enjoyed The Seance, his second book.  Compared to those two, this one is not as good, and for me, not so mysterious as I feel a gothic-style novel should be.  Having said that, let me just say that it's getting multi-star ratings so it's one you need to try on your own.  This is probably one of the ultimate beach reads this year.

I took The Asylum off my shelves to read just days after my book group had read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey -- you know, the one where young Catherine Morland has become so swept up in reading Gothic novels that it causes her a few problems down the road.  As is my usual habit, I first read the dust-cover blurb:

"Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in Tregannon House, a private asylum in a remote corner of England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton the day before, then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in London... Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary."

Oooh! oooh! I'm thinking, I can't wait to get into this one! I love Gothic novels and I like Gothic-style novels, and I'm a sucker for historical novels where people end up in an asylum, so this seemed right up my alley.  For a while it was. 

Related in three parts, the novel starts with Georgina/Lucy's arrival and her stay at Tregannon House. She can't help but wonder why she picked the name Lucy Ashton, and starts wondering if whether or not there was some "strain of madness" in her family. Telling herself  "not to think about it," she thinks instead about her childhood with her mother and great-aunt, another interesting story, set on a cottage about fifty yards from a cliff on the Isle of Wight.  An escape only leads to more questions, as she sees Georgina Ferrars in her uncle's home and then returned to Tregannon House.  As she's considering a second attempt, she stumbles upon her old writing case, leading to Part Two, which helps in some ways to clear up the mystery of what's going on, by going back in time to when her own mother was a young girl. 

While Part One held my interest completely; Part Two also intrigued for a while until the story started to become so obvious that I figured out most of what had happened and what was going to happen, so by Part Three, I just wanted to finish the book.  Certainly no mystery there -- and the transparency of it all sidelined my enjoyment. There were also so many implausible things happening here that it stopped being fun.  What I did like very much was the atmosphere the author created from the contemporary present in Tregannon House to a cottage on the Isle of Wight and even further back in time, to the realm of Victorian high society.  He sets up his story so that you don't know who you can trust in this book, which is a plus -- I love dubious characters and trying to sort them all out vis-a-vis their relationship with the main characters in this novel.   But overall, I wasn't that fond of this novel, and felt let down, which is a shame, since I liked his other two books so much. 

The Asylum is  getting really good reviews from several readers so maybe they see something in it that I didn't.  It just didn't do it for me.

fiction from Australia

sneak peek: coming to a bookstore near you -- Questions of Travel, by Michelle DeKretser (May 14, US publication date)

9780316219228
Little, Brown and Company, 2013  (US release scheduled for May 14)
480 pp


"To work and suffer is to be at home. All else is scenery."

My many thanks to NetGalley and to the publishers for my kindle copy of this book.

This book will be publishing soon in the US and it's one you may not want to miss.  While I really don't like posting my thoughts on a novel this far away from its publication date, it's already been published elsewhere with many reader reviews, so why not.  Questions of Travel is  a story that moves over decades to examine the two very distinct and conflicted people at the heart of this novel as they make a series of sometimes heartbreaking transitions over their lifetimes. 

With the death of her beloved aunt, and the emotional distance between herself and the other members of her immediate family, Laura begins to feel acutely that something is lacking in her life. While she's lost her closest family tie, her aunt does leave her some money, allowing her to make a move to London.  She also begins to travel, thinking that in some way moving about the globe might take her out of her lonely existence and into something more exciting, or perhaps lead her to find the love or acceptance she's missed out on in her life.  Her desire to travel is  sparked largely by a suitcase left behind by her aunt, filled with souvenirs from her own wanderings.   Laura has no real desire to settle down or put down roots, and while in the UK, takes only the kinds of jobs that allow her great flexibility in her life.  She has a few friends, keeps her possessions down to a manageable level, and enjoys her life there until a friend dies, leading her back to Australia.  There, her background leads her into a job with a company that publishes travel guides where she discovers that the business is less about sharing the spontaneous joys of travel than keeping up with the shallow day-to-day office politics which tie up most of the work day.  The second character,  Ravi, on the other hand, has always been surrounded by a loving family. As a young boy in Sri Lanka, his favorite subject in school was geography; as a man, he married a lovely  woman with whom he had a little boy.  His wife saw firsthand the outrages committed against women during Sri Lanka's terrible civil war, and did not hesitate to speak out so that others would become aware; her work, however, leads to her tragic death. Ravi then discovers that on top of his loss, his own life is in danger and that his physical safety depends on getting out of the country.  He ultimately makes his way to Australia on a tourist visa, but he is really a refugee who must try to piece together some kind of life in this new place, continually torn  between his own survival and the love for the country and people he's left behind.  Both have a number of adjustments to make as they travel through life, but they each come to realize that their respective pasts are always along as their constant companions. 

By exploring the lives of these two people, the author also examines what it is that prompts people to venture out into the world away from home; she also looks at travel as a medium for connecting to people of other cultures and the "invisible things" a tourist might see but which go unnoticed by the locals.  Flight, transition, and overcoming the individual "refugee" experience are  very pronounced themes in this story, as is the question of the relativity of history to the places travelers  pass through as tourists. Ravi, for example, has lived through some of the worst moments in his country's modern existence, while tourists coming to Sri Lanka for the authentic native experience either find their tours  too bleak or else contrived.  The author also makes her readers understand that travel and the technology that takes us where we want to go can have the opposite, isolating  effect -- as both Laura and Ravi discover in their own very different ways.  There are also a number of very mockingly funny and ironic moments in this novel to enjoy.  Obviously, there's so much more to this book; my little scratch on its surface here is only a start.

It is incredibly easy for the reader to become deeply caught up in Ravi's story, but imho, in Laura's life, not so much.  What Ravi has to undergo not only in his own country but upon his arrival in Australia makes him a much deeper, more compelling character than Laura, who seems to me to be much more shallow of a person.  While reading the chapters about Laura, I was always anticipating the move to Ravi's story, not just because of his story, but because it seemed to me that the writing flowed better in these parts. And frankly, to be really honest, I just couldn't care about "poor" Laura.   That's not to say I only liked half the novel, because that's just not the case.  It's just  when reading about a character you just can't bring yourself to find any sympathy for, treading through the thick detail surrounding that person's life is just difficult.   From the perspective of a casual reader, there's much to appreciate in this book; you don't have to have a background in the situation in Sri Lanka (although it's very helpful) to understand where Ravi is coming from, and the overall story is easy to understand without having to pull your hair out at the roots trying to discern what the author's trying to say.  I tend to not want to go through novels with a fine-tooth comb  which for me takes out all of the enjoyment of reading, so if you're looking for a bottom-line good story, you'll like this one.  I have to agree with some other readers who complained about the huge amount of detail that could have been edited out, but beyond that, the story leaves you with much to consider, which is never a bad thing in any book.

*The Street Sweeper, by Elliot Perlman

9781594488474
Riverhead, 2012
626 pp
hardcover

 "The enemy ... is racism.  But see, racism isn't a person.  It's a virus that infects people.  It can infect whole towns and cities, even whole countries.  Sometimes you can see it in people's faces when they're sick with it.  It can paralyze even good people.  It can paralyze government.  We have to fight that wherever we find it.  That's what good people do."
  --- (36)

After having heard from a number of people that they consider The Street Sweeper to be one of their all-time favorite novels (and because I am trying to put a dent into a number of unread novels from Australia I have laying around here)  I started this book  yesterday;  with only a few breaks for eating, taking my puppies out, and answering the phone, the day became a marathon reading session that ended at 1 am this morning.  It was an epic reading day for an epic novel.  Even though there are several problems with this novel, overall I couldn't help but find myself extremely moved by it.

Actually, epic is really the only way to describe this book.  It zigzags through 20th-century history here in America and in Europe, beginning with modern-day (2007) history professor Adam Zignelik.  As the story begins, Zignelik's days at Columbia University are numbered; although an earlier work had provided him with some notoriety and opportunities to be a "talking head" on TV documentaries and had helped to pave the way for his appointment at Columbia, Adam now is on his way out.  There will be no granting of tenure -- he has not published any original research for five years.  His personal life is on a downward spiral, and he's plagued with nightmares.  His friend Charles McCray is the department head; McCray's father William and Adam's dad Jake worked together in the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, after Thurgood Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court.  William, feeling like he might be able to help Adam, throws out an idea for a project near and dear to William's heart.  It seems that one of his friends, an African-American World War II vet, was with the soldiers who liberated Dachau. Yet the claim that there were any African-American soldiers involved in liberating the camps  was vehemently disputed after the airing of  an earlier PBS documentary on the subject.  As William notes:  

"My friend is a black veteran who, among other things, served his country at the risk of his own life, liberating victims of one of the worst regimes that has ever existed, and ever since then people have been saying he wasn't there...This is what happened when the invisible man went to war!" 

While this is going on, and while Adam begins to research, Lamont Williams has just been released from prison and is at Sloan-Kettering to start a new but probationary job.  For six years he has waited for the chance to find his daughter and to be a father to her; this job provides him the means to start to put his life back in order.  While attending to his chores one day he meets an elderly Jewish cancer patient, Henryk Mandelbrot who asks that Lamont wheel him up to his room. It's against the rules, but after some convincing, Lamont carries out the man's request. From his ninth-floor window Mandelbrot stares at some chimneys in the distance and begins a story with a line that will keep Lamont returning day after day:

"There were exactly six death camps but you could die more than once in any of them.’

While these two main characters are working at getting their lives back on track,  The Street Sweeper examines, among many other things, why it is important to understand that history is not just a study of past events, but that there were real people involved who should also be remembered.  As Adam notes about the importance of history,

 "... it's a way of honoring those who came before us. We can tell their stories. Wouldn't you want someone to tell your story? Ultimately it's the best proof there is that we mattered." 

And later, while at a funeral, Lamont thinks along those very same lines, as he was

“desperate for people to remember other people. If they didn’t, what did anything mean, what had anything been for?”  

The author draws our attention to the " connections between things, people, places, ideas," and  also spends time drawing parallels between African-American struggles against extreme forms of racism and those of  European Jews.  As just one example, did you know that African-American workers in Chicago slaughterhouses had black stars on their time cards making it easier for them to be identified when the layoffs came around? 


Although this is one of the most powerful books I've picked up in a while, The Street Sweeper is not without its faults. To mention a few, first it does take some time to figure out exactly where the author is going; it really wasn't until Lamont meets the elderly cancer patient that things started to pick up for me.  Also, in trying to make the point about connections the author has relied on a contrived, systematic series of coincidences that you can't help but notice.   There's also a lot that could have been weeded out of this novel such as the ongoing, in-Adam's-head discussions with his girlfriend Diana throughout the story, a number of storyline starts that aren't always finished, and some strange-sounding prose here and there (migrainous?).    But while these sorts of things and others  tend to set my teeth on edge, they can be somewhat forgiven because of  the author's overall focus on people not just as players or victims caught up in historical events, but people as human beings with lives to be remembered and stories to be told.

I feel this need to pace my reading about the Holocaust because of the emotional toll,  and while you can't help but be moved by the powerful scenes that occur in the camps in this novel, there's a great deal more to this book that will keep you reading.  As one of the characters notes, memory  "can capture you, corner you or liberate you," and this idea is perhaps one of the strongest ideas that runs through this book when all is said and done -- that and the force behind oral history that keeps the past alive. The people may be gone, but the stories live on and need listeners, no matter if they're sad or inspiring.   Aside from my issues mentioned above, I couldn't help but be very moved by this novel -- I was so utterly engrossed in it that all outside stimuli  disappeared to the point where it was just me and the book for hours on end.  I most definitely and highly recommend it.

*Document Z, by Andrew Croome

9781741757439
Allen and Unwin, 2010
350 pp
softcover

There is a reason why I never skip the author's notes section in a book, and reading through them today just after having finished the story,  I came to discover that this novel is a fictional re-imagining of a real event that took place in Australia during the Cold War years of the 1950s.  I'd previously never heard of what ultimately became known as "the Petrov Affair," the defection of  two Soviets working at the Soviet embassy in Canberra that ultimately revealed clandestine Soviet activity in different areas of Australia's government.  Vladimir (Volodya) Petrov and his wife Evdokia held diplomatic posts at the embassy, but in reality they were also spies working for the MVD, the USSR's Ministry of Internal Affairs.  Further exploration led to an incredible photo which mirrors the action occurring as the novel opens, that of Evdokia being escorted through a crowd at Sydney's then Mascot Airport by a couple of big, brawny minders whose job is to get her on a flight that will eventually take her back to Moscow after her husband defected.  

from vrroom.naa.gov.au

The reason why Evdokia looks so panicked is not just that she's headed back to Moscow  to face an uncertain future where who knows what will happen to her or her family, but in those pre- 9/11 days,  the tarmac is actually surrounded by a mob of angry people who are trying to block her access to the airplane, trying to keep her off of it and free in Sydney, a scene also realistically depicted in the novel.

from watoday.com.au

 The question Andrew Croome asks is how did it come down to this?  The answer is laid out in this most excellent, intelligent and engaging novel as he reconstructs not only the events leading up to this particular day in 1954, but also as he imagines the inner turmoil of the Petrovs during their time at the Soviet embassy in Canberra, especially after the death of Stalin and the arrest of Beria become a major game changer. Added to the Petrovs, Croome brings in other players in the game, both Soviet and Australian, and also explores life for the Petrovs after their defections to some extent as well. 

The story begins three years earlier introducing the Petrovs, moving through their daily work routines and their home life in Canberra.  Coming to Australia from a post in Sweden,  Evdokia is secretly a captain in MVD intelligence decrypting coded messsages but openly works for the ambassador, while ironically, the job of  Vladimir  (also a spy) is to prevent defections.  But within the embassy it's all about power, political intrigue, and paranoia; the Petrovs often find themselves on the receiving end of trouble, with trumped-up charges that find their way back to Moscow in the ambassador's reports; no small worry for Evdokia who still has family back in the Soviet Union. They are also sure they are being watched constantly outside of the embassy, but they're not sure who is and is not an agent spying on them.  Then the ambassador receives word of Stalin's death and Beria's arrest -- and when Evdokia and Vladimir are told that they are being replaced and will be returning home shortly thereafter, Vladimir, who has been secretly courted as ripe for defection, decides the time is right to make his move but tells Evdokia nothing. 

Not only is the story behind the Petrov defections  intriguing and compelling on its own, the author's re-imagining of their personal lives is also credible. There is not a great deal of emotion shared by this couple; often they come across as rather flat together but all the same their inner lives are in turmoil. Evdokia cannot stop thinking of her dead daughter; Vladimir drinks, visits prostitutes and is faced with the life-changing experience of giving away his country's secrets.  Add in the author's excellent depiction of the political atmosphere of the time, as well as the workings of the fledgling Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), and  Document Z  jumps miles above the usual spy fare. In fact, after I finished the book and went on to read what I could about "The Petrov Affair," I was taken aback at the  realistic tone of the author's rendition of this story.  I couldn't put it down while reading it and most definitely recommend it. 

fiction from Australia

*The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman

9781451681734
Scribner, 2012
343 pp
hardcover ed.

Considering I chose for this month books you might want to take to the beach if you happen to be in Australia right now, enjoying a nice summer, I picked the perfect title in The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman.  For me, this book is the epitome of beach read for several reasons which I'll get to momentarily.  

Tom Sherbourne left Australia in 1915, setting out to serve his country in World War I.  The last he saw of Australia as he left was the five-second flash of light beaming out from the lighthouse at "his homeland's furthest reach," Janus Island.  That light became a memory that stayed with him during the war "through the years of hell that followed, like a farewell kiss."  Back in Australia at war's end, Tom first takes a six-month posting at Byron Bay, where he learned the "basics of life on the Lights." 

Byron Bay Lighthouse, Cape Byron, NSW, Australia

 (from Wikipedia)

In June, 1920, he gets wind of a vacancy at the lighthouse on Janus Island, a remote location that suits him perfectly, as does the island's isolation.  The supply boat comes on a very limited schedule; the chance to return to the mainland is even more limited.  At first Tom is there to relieve the current lighthouse keeper, but the situation eventually becomes permanent, and he eventually brings a young woman Isabel (Izzy) there as his wife.  Tom is a very principled, moral, by-the-book man, until one day when a small boat washes up on the beach that Izzy begs him not to report.  Because of multiple tragedies that Izzy has endured on Janus Island,  Tom acquiesces to her request, although his failure to report the boat incident constantly eats away at him inside.  But it will also have unforeseen consequences for both himself and Izzy, not to mention other innocent people when they return to the mainland.  It will also become a decision that will haunt both of them the rest of their life.  I won't say any more, not wanting to spoil it for anyone else who may want to read this book.

Stedman's evocation of a time and place is very realistic, and she is also skillful at developing  the moral/emotional dilemma so central to this novel and then bushwhacking the reader with a twist that adds even more intensity to Tom and Izzy's predicament.  It is pretty much impossible for anyone reading this book to not come to some sort of a judgment about what is right and what is wrong, and this novel will probably also make for some pretty intense book group discussions (my own group will be reading it later this year and I can already hear the thoughts of some of the people in my head right now).    Her depiction of people in a town who can't forgive or forget, in some large part the cause of all of the problems that follow, is also very well composed. The first part of the novel up until the return to the mainland really engaged my attention -- I was caught up in the descriptions of the lighthouse, Janus Island and the isolation of being cut off from other people as well as Tom's angst over his conflicting ideas of duty, all of which kept me reading and interested.   At the same time, The Light Between Oceans has the feel of what I'd consider a beach read, verging on the edge of chick lit.  Once the dilemma and the added jolt present themselves, the rest of the book became rather predictable and the outcome just sort of  fell flat.  When I figured out what was going on, I really didn't feel like I needed to read any longer because I knew just what was going to happen. I did finish it, though, and well, I was right. I figured it all out.  I also want to figure out my own emotional reaction to the books I read; this one is a guided tour with plenty of gut-twisting choices being made along the way,  pretty much guaranteeing a certain response.

To be extremely fair, readers everywhere are LOVING this book; as for me,  I'm not overly fond of pre-constructed emotional sentimentality and chick-lit material in the novels I read. So you might want to read the 5-star reviews from Amazon to see the glowing praise being heaped on this book to get more of a feel for why people loved it.  Once again, I'm swimming upstream from public opinion, but well, that's how it goes sometimes.

fiction from Australia

-

*The Heat of the Sun, by David Rain

9780805097670
Henry Holt, 2012
288 pp
hardcover
from the publisher -- thank you!

Australian author David Rain adds a rather lengthy postscript to the story of Puccini's Madame Butterfly with this novel, in which his subject is the little boy taken away from Nagasaki by Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and his wife Kate after the boy's mother's suicide. The Heat of the Sun is an ambitious book, one which covers the lives of both the narrator, Woodley Sharpless,  and the boy in question, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton II (aka Trouble -- "dolore," so named by his real mother Cho Cho san in the opera).  Starting with their boarding school days in Vermont, Rain moves his characters through  the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, World War II and the dropping of the bomb, then brings the story to a close in  the later years of their lives. The novel  examines how events from the past can create lasting and echoing repercussions for everyone involved, both personally and peripherally, here lasting throughout most of a century.  It is also a story about identity, love, honor, friendship and the ties that bind people together.

As the novel opens Sharpless reflects on the idea of scandals, saying that most of the time they tend to fade into oblivion in our "age of amnesia," but there is one that will probably never die -- The Pinkerton Affair.   Several books and even a movie keep this cause célèbre  looming large in the public psyche -- after all, Pinkerton Sr.  could have been the President of the United States.  Woodley feels that he has to write his own story, one that will not appear until after his death -- "the saddest story I know" --  beginning with his introduction to Trouble, ending decades later with the end of his dealings with the Pinkerton family. He touts himself as a well-placed bystander on hand to watch the saga unfold; you must judge for yourself whether or not he's a reliable narrator.  

Without getting too much into the plot here, Trouble is at the very heart of this novel, and as a boy, Sharpless recognized that  "Trouble was dangerous. He had in him an excitability that had to go to extremes," which made Sharpless "want to go with him."  Woodley  is one of those kids who just kind of lay low, very dependent on his "ashplant" after a childhood accident left him with a bad leg. Some time later, in the heyday of the Roaring 20s, Trouble and Woodley cross paths again in New York, where Sharpless is invited to tea and is introduced to Trouble's parents.  At that meeting, some kind of tacit, unspoken agreement is reached that Sharpless will be responsible for keeping an eye on their son.  Trouble lives a risky life, never happy in one place,  seemingly inhibition free.  But inwardly he's hiding something --  he reveals to Sharpless that he's always sensed something wrong and that sometimes things like "a smell, a texture, a rustle of fabric" offer memories of  another life he believes he was "stolen from" at an early age.  The truth comes out during a rather grotesque "Blood Red Ball," a highly-anticipated,  masked society affair given by globetrotting Japanese Prince Yamadori; but even knowing the truth, Woodley is unable to fully comprehend Trouble's inner anguish, a condition that will last as long as their friendship.   As it happens, the Ball becomes a turning point that will ultimately become an epic life changer for everyone falling within the orbit of the Pinkerton family -- and beyond.

The Heat of the Sun thematically tackles some pretty heavy topics, including American imperialist ambitions,  politics, power and influence, the human toll of war and others.  Rain's writing throughout the first two acts is pretty much seamless with the best occurring during the two boys' prep-school days -- if you read carefully, there's a lot there that sort of acts as a foretelling of what is yet to come for these two.   As the novel moves into the second half of the book, there is also a great section where Yamidori  discusses the "end of the golden world," the last days of the Samurai era and life as the Japanese once understood it as American ships made their way into Edo Bay, leading Japan eventually  to "become America."  I will say that my enthusiasm for this scene was tempered by an unnecessary act of violence in a Japanese bath, a symbolic act that imho really didn't need to be there. Rain adds some  excellent little touches as well -- a copy of Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème (a precursor of sorts to Puccini's opera) laying on the bookcase by a bed, someone softly whistling a tune from a Puccini opera, etc.  There is also a lot of symbolism here that  for the most part I felt worked well --   Sharpless and his "ashplant," (the walking stick/crutch he relies on heavily),  Telemachus (the son estranged from his father), and Imogen/Fidele's funeral song from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, from which the novel gets its name (see the video below), but throwing in Oedipal blindness was a little over the top and could have been left out entirely.  There is also a tendency for unevenness in the novel's overall tone: the beginning is so well written and highly realistic, but in between  there is a tendency to verge here and there into the melodrama zone, and sometimes even into the silly (an entire outdoor amphitheater of servicemen involved in a brawl?) which together diminish the novel's overall effect.

I liked this book, didn't  love it, but I do I think David Rain is an author to watch in the future. The premise is new and fresh, the scope is ambitious and I love how the book is structured.   If you would like the opinion of  someone who absolutely loved this novel, Liam at The Book Boy  has written an absolutely glowing review. Recommended.

Parrot and Olivier In America, by Peter Carey

9780307592620

Knopf

2010

380 pp.

Parrot and Olivier in America is composed of two narratives that interweave throughout the novel: that of  Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Barfleur de Garmont, he of French aristo parentage, and that of  John Larrit (known as Parrot or sometimes Perroquet), son of an English  journeyman printer and a mother long dead.  Olivier's family were nobles who did not flee France during the revolution, but went to live in hiding in Normandy, so that when the monarchy eventually returned, their political position was tenuous. It became even more so when the last of the Bourbons (supported wholeheartedly by Olivier's mother) was later overthrown during the July Revolution of 1830. When Garmont was in his 20s and started attending lectures given by Francois Guizot, an activity deemed too politically dangerous for the young and naive man, his mother decided to ship him off to America for his safety:

You are a Garmont...the liberals see you and have no doubt you are a spy. The monarchists see you and know you for a traitor. You are in danger (77).

Ultimately his parents secured for him a commission to write on the state of American prisons, and create a report on his findings for France. Olivier, who as a child was a hypochondriac extraordinaire, never far from his Qianlong bowl of leeches, tends to be whiny and priggish, considers himself as a victim of the French Revolution, and has little to no understanding of others who are outside of his class and station.  Yet at the same time, there is a bit of a pathetic side to Olivier: he really has very little control over his own life -- everything is always decided for him by others.

Parrot, who as a young boy had escaped when his father and others were arrested in Dartmoor and ultimately executed for forging bank notes, had run across a Monsieur de Tilbot, who offered him help (eventually sending him off to Australia, promising that one day he would return -- the full account of which comes later in the story). As it so happens, Tilbot is also an acquaintance of the Garmont family, and turns out to be the initial connection between both characters. Parrot is older than Olivier, is an artist more firmly rooted in the working class, and in general understands the world better than his aristocratic counterpart. Parrot, a long time now in Monsieur's service, is called upon to spy upon Olivier while he attends Guizot's lectures. When Olivier's friend Blacqueville is killed defending their collective honors,  it is Parrot who is called on to escort him to America and to protect him while also serving as his secretary. And thus Parrot and Olivier come to America (but not until page 141!) -- and the rest of the book continues from there, where this odd couple of sorts come to realize the positives and negatives of living in a democracy and eventually come to terms with each other.

 I have to confess to never having read de Tocqueville (although I am familiar with many of his ideas on democracy), so at the end, when the author notes

The author's debt to Tocqueville himself will be obvious to scholars who will detect, squirreled away among the thatch of sentences, necklaces of words that were clearly made by the great man himself,

I find myself definitely not in the category of one of these "scholars," and perhaps I missed a thing or two along the way.  [The London Review of Books for August has an interesting take on this aspect of the novel if you're interested.]  But really, I don't think it makes that much of a difference while you're reading this book (unless, I suppose, you ARE a de Tocqueville scholar and you find things with which you may disagree or dislike about Carey's treatment).

I had a few minor issues with this novel. First, the book tends to lag at times -- for example, in the scenes where Olivier travels from place to place with Godefroy -- to the point where I found myself skimming to get to the next part, and there were other situations as well where the action was a bit dull.  Olivier's character, although drawn well, was rather aloof and often unreachable.  And then there's the little twist at the end. Just when I thought I had control over how I felt  about both main characters, Carey knocked the wind out of my sails for a while and made me have to do a rethink. But overall, I genuinely liked this book. When Parrot's first account began, I remember thinking how much I liked the feel of the narrative, as if someone were actively engaged in storytelling. Carey's judicious  use of imagery (especially of the birds) ran throughout , as did his constant allusions to the love of art. I also enjoyed his scenes that seemed to be taken right out of Dickens, especially in the case of Watkins and the forgers at the beginning.

 And I have to say also that I enjoyed the little barbs Carey throws out about the current situation in the US, especially when one of his characters notes that

America does not need either leadership or deep laid plans or great efforts, but liberty and still more liberty. The reason for this is that no one yet has any plans for abusing liberty. But wait, monsieur. It may take a century, but le fou viendra.

Take that as you will. My money's on W (pronounced "dubya").

Despite my minor issues with this novel, Parrot and Olivier is a clever philosophical debate about the pros and cons of democracy woven into a nice piece of historical fiction that will make you think about things long after you've put it aside.