Tag Archives: 5/10

The Piano Tuner – Daniel Mason – 5/10

Historical Fiction March 5, 2013 1 Comment

“Edgar Drake, Piano Tuner, Erards-a-Speciality, put the letter down on his desk. An 1840 grand is beautiful, he thought, and he folded the letter gently and slid it into his coat pocket. And Burma is far.”

piano tuner

This bizarre but well-dreamt tale of a timid piano tuner who is summoned into the service of His Majesty in order to travel to Burma and tune a piano for an enigmatic and eccentric British officer in the Shan States of Burma carries the reader from 19th century London (remarkably changed and yet the same as today), through the Red Sea, past India and into Burma. Once there, he is captivated by the fragile peace, the Doctor’s true motives, and the beautiful woman who travels at his side…

For the first 250 pages, this was an excellent novel. Mason sets up the trip well – the disorganised piano tuner, his patient wife a little nervous about his departure, the odd visits to the War Office – and then the epic journey on sea and land, punctuated by letters from the Doctor whose piano he will tune. Drake is an odd, timid character, who slowly flowers under the hot Burmese sun. The mix of Carroll, Khin Myo and Drake makes for 100 pages of clever and sensitive dialogue once Drake reaches Mae Lwin. The adventures of getting the piano away on a raft and the various sojourns into the nearby wilderness are funny and richly descriptive respectively.

The end of the book put me right off it – much like The Great Gatsby, the ending felt rushed and tacked on a bit disjointedly. Not dissimilar to Dances with Wolves, once the conversion has happened, the attempts to go back go badly. In addition, we are treated to long passages explaining the historical context, the necessity of which I’m not disputing, but they were fairly dry.

Maybe best to stay away from this one unless you’re a big fan of the period? If you’ve read this and disagree with my half-and-half verdict, I’d be very interested to hear it in the comments below.

Additional information:

Copy from unknown source

Publisher: Picador, 348 pages (paperback)

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Lavender Lies – Susan Wittig Albert – 5/10

Comfort Reading, Thriller February 21, 2013 Leave a comment

“Damn it. This is my wedding. Why can’t the week be normal?”

lavender lies

After I discovered Thyme of Death, I went a little overboard and tried to get the whole China Bayles series – I ended up with one paperback and two audio downloads. This was the paperback… Eminently readable (this was one of 2 1/2 books I read on New Year’s Eve, content on the chaise longue outside my uncle’s caravan at Tuross), yet missing something in that fantastic idea collection of the first book.

So China Bayles has quit her toxic lawyering in Houston for Mean Nasty Companies and retired to a little place called Pecan Springs where she runs a herb shop and her shop-neighbour is a crazy new Age lady called Ruby, and they are about to open a joint tea room. Local real estate mogul found dead. Most residents think “Good riddance”, but it transpires rather quickly that Mr. Coleman was having a number of affairs and was blackmailing city council members for their support on a dodgy land investment deal. And then a few more bodies pile up…Oh and China is planning her wedding (at last) to McQuaid, acting chief of police, so the case needs to be wrapped up by Saturday otherwise China’s honeymoon is going to get derailed.

I love a single lady investigator, and I’ve raved about the first book in this series; something in this one left me underwhelmed. It might have been that there was too much side chatter and not enough actual case; Ruby seems to have got even more mad and tipped over into caricature territory, and Wittig Albert is a little heavy-handed with the emotional preaching (China fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally gets over her issues with her mother).

That all notwithstanding, there are any number of red herrings, I didn’t guess the bad guy, China’s life is quite amusing to read about, Ruby does provide a lot of amusement and China does a nifty amount of sleuthing in a rather clever manner.

It’s a decent detective story, it’s just not as good as the first one in the series was.

Additional information:
Copy from Bookmooch.
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime, 297 pages (paperback)
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The Last Good Man – A. J. Kazinski – 5/10

Thriller February 19, 2013 1 Comment

“The correct interpretation of numbers determines whether we live or die. it’s life or death  That’s something that every scientist understands. That was why Tycho Brahe got his nose sliced off in a duel.”

“Because of numbers?”

“Because he claimed that so-called complex numbers existed. And his adversary claimed that they didn’t.”

“Who was right?”

“Tycho Brahe. But he lost his nose.”

thelastgoodman

Venetian policeman Tommaso di Barbara has discovered a trend in killings around the world – every Friday at sunset, a good person is murdered. Humanitarian, lawyer, volunteer – they all die with a strange burn-like mark on their back. Niels Bentzon picks up the Interpol report – but can’t bear the thought of travel and doesn’t speak di Barbara’s language. Only once he teams up with Hannah Lund, astrophysicist extraordinaire mourning the premature death of her son, is he able to impose a pattern and find out when the next murders will be. The question is, can he stop them?

Parts of this were really well written – as a police procedural, with all of the distractions from the climate conference and the terrorist threat, it succeeded. I kept reading, engrossed, all the way to the end with no trouble.

Niels and Hannah are both interesting characters – neither is perfect and each is dealing with their own romantic issues – but as a partnership they work very well. In particular, their weaknesses are key – Hannah’s inability to deal with normal interpersonal situations, Niels’ travel phobia; both are worked slyly into the story but are completely obvious as obstacles when we happen on to them.

Kazinski writes Venice and Copenhagen well – the floods, the abandoned madhouse/hospital, the cold, the ridiculous media interactions with the police at the conference, the conflicts between cyclists and cars in Copenhagen and most of all, the pervasive, penetrating, personal cold that a north European winter brings (I’m writing this with the heating on, socks and slippers, and a blanket over my knees).

However, this gets big negative marks for resorting to a fate-imposed, generational mysticism. I bought it until Niels tried to run away and whatever he did, events conspired to send him back to Copenhagen; similarly the suggested passing of the burden to a new soul at the climax dragged this novel down into Dan Brown land. Except worse because at least there, none of it is magical and spiritual and fate, it’s all just bad guys.

Copy kindly provided by Simon & Schuster when I went to their author-blogger meetup.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 519 pages (paperback)
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The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine – Alina Bronsky – 5/10

Current Affairs January 10, 2013 Comments: 2

“As my daughter Sulfia was explaining that she was pregnant but that she didn’t know by whom, I paid extra attention to my posture. I sat with my back perfectly straight and folded my hands elegantly in my lap.”

tartar

Rosa’s mentally hindered daughter Sulfia announces a pregnancy. Despite Rosa’s best folkloric efforts, Aminat is born, and from that moment Rosa employs every fibre of her cunning, strength, effort and money into wrestling her away from Sulfia, claiming Sulfia is an unfit mother. When a travelling German writer becomes fixated on Aminat, Rosa sees her escape to the West.

Wow. Just wow. Rosa is a seriously devious, evil character. Can understand why she makes it onto a few villain lists (to quote Literate Housewife: “Rosa Achmetowna makes Scarlett O’Hara look like a Girl Scout and perhaps even Mother of the Year. Her story should be compulsory reading for every teenage daughter who thinks her mother is the worst mother in the world. Very few mothers will retain monster status in comparison”). But I had to keep reading as the horror of the situation spiralled further, while Rosa believed she still has it all totally under control. She does remind me of a much less pleasant Emily Gilmore.

We never really establish what’s wrong with Sulfia, which I found frustrating; not being able to escape Rosa’s psychotic brain does leave quite a few puzzles unanswered. Similarly, Aminat is an interesting character and I would have liked to have spent more time with her. A dual approach would have been interesting here – alternating chapters written by Rosa and Aminat? The men are pretty dire – which is a trend I’m finding in my reading at the moment. Although in this case, the women are dire too so it’s not poor writing of male characters… What I couldn’t understand was the fact that every man tolerated Rosa’s bizarre behaviour!

Plot wise? There’s no great rush – it’s the tension and movements in the power struggle between the three generations of women that propel us towards the end. Thus the plot feels haphazardly timed; for a long time nothing really happens, then suddenly there’s a rush for Israel. Then nothing happens again for a long time, then Germany. I suspect that I didn’t get on with this because the humour didn’t do anything for me; the blurb suggests that it is “told with sly humour and an anthropologist’s eye for detail… women whose destinites are tangled up in a family dynamic that is at turns hilarious and tragic.”

All in all – odd. Definitely a book I’ll remember for a while, and unlike anything else I read this year. However, not a pleasant experience – the humour fell short for me.

Additional information:

The Darling Strumpet – Gillian Bagwell – 5/10

Historical Fiction August 7, 2012 1 Comment

“His Majesty saw women on the stage in Frankfurt and thought it a charming innovation”


The Darling Strumpet is the story of a girl who was nothing special but rose to national and historic fame. She’s known as one of the first actresses, one of the first women to be given the privilege to play female roles on the boards, but also for winning the love of a number of rich men, including the King of England (Charles II).

I liked Nell. She’s safely characterised (for such a potentially contentious story); strong and witty and intelligent, she rises above the poverty of her oyster wenching days and the abuse from her mother, she befriends others easily and we only see a negative side when she is jealous of Charles’ other mistresses. Looking back, I feel like she wasn’t given much depth as a character, but I’m not sure that’s fair – I think my problem is that too much time was spent trading on her looks and not enough on her wit and brains.

Nell’s sister Rose and early suitor Hart are similarly safe, pleasant but uncontroversial characters. Bagwell shows much more vim in writing Rochester, Dorset, Monmouth and other scheming men – they each have their fatal flaws and their difficulties for Nell. In a sense they are presented less as players in her life and more obstacles to be overcome, hindrances in her rise to prominence.

What Bagwell did very well was the historical events of the time – the great fire of London, the plague, the return of King Charles II from exile. You always have to wonder how accurate these things are, but they were slotted into the story well and Nell’s grief at losing so much of her home town was not something I had expected, but was a nice touch. Similarly her financial insecurity, being wholly dependent on Charles’ goodwill, was an eye-opener for me.

On the whole, I found this a little bawdy for my liking – too much romping about in bed with noblemen and kings, and not enough time on stage.

Additional information:
Copy provided by the publisher in return for an honest review.
Publisher: Avon, 414 pages (paperback)
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After the Lockout – Darren McCann – 5/10 (DNF)

Fluff, Historical Fiction, Review copies January 14, 2012 Leave a comment

“Being right is cold comfort when the whole world is wrong”

In November 1917, Victor Lennon receives the summons he’s been avoiding for ten years. While he’s been fighting for a communist republic in the Dublin Lockout and Easter Rising, his father has been drinking the family wealth. The dogmatic local bishop Benedict sends for the young man, bringing hardened and cynical politics into a thus-far tranquil village and ends up with much more of a revolutionary than he can handle. Victor helps his father back onto his feet, fixes up the farm, and falls back in love with his childhood sweetheart. If only Ida Harte would step out of the story…

McCann renders 1917 country Ireland well, with simple supporting characters and an undeniably strong sense of community in the village folk of Madden. The key characters, Benedict and Victor, are forcefully and diametrically opposed in their opinions, but have critical flaws of character which render both quite unsympathetic.

The narrative drags at first; almost the first third of the book was devoted to exposition and character description before Victor returns to Madden. I understand the need to give Victor a certain history and show the reader just how committed he is to the revolution, but it became dull rather quickly.

I did not finish this book; the combination of a very slow start and unsympathetic characters – Victor seems to bring all his trouble upon himself, philandering and politicising – made it a dull read for me. Those with a stronger interest in the era or more patience with stubborn, opinionated, womanising protagonists would enjoy it more.

Additional info:
This  copy was sent for review by We Love This Book, where a shorter version of this review will appear.
Publisher: HarperCollins, 239 pages
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The Radleys – Matt Haig – 5/10

Current Affairs November 30, 2011 1 Comment

“If blood is the answer, you are asking the wrong question.”

The Radleys are just another family in Bishopthorpe: Clara, the vegetarian teenager who doesn’t understand why animals flee from her; Rowan, besotted with the girl a few streets over, whose dad really doesn’t like the Radleys; and Ma and Pa Radley – stuck in standard stereotypical middle-class marital strife. Only problem: they’re vampiric abstainers, trying to live a human life and avoiding blood consumption.

I really wanted to enjoy The Radleys, Matt Haig’s gentle satire of the vampire craze that has swept the literary world. Maybe my lack of prior offences with vampire books was the reason for my lukewarm reaction; often a parody is only funny if you are familiar with the object of the humour (is this why I didn’t like Northanger Abbey?).

Also – there was a whole lot of blood. This might be standard for vampire novels, and I’m no stranger to gory crime scenes from my steady thriller diet, but somehow this was far too graphic.

Haig has a really clever idea here and I’m sure that those more familiar with the vampiric genre would derive great enjoyment from the subtle and unsubtle snarks that Haig drops all over the place, but it just wasn’t for me.

Additional info:
This was borrowed from the library.
Publisher: Canongate, 341 pages (paperback)
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The Charm School – Nelson Demille – 5/10 (DNF)

Fluff, Thriller November 11, 2011 Comments: 3

“Hello. Anything exciting happening?” “Yes, but it’s happening in Rome.”

Rich frat boy Gregory Fisher is driving his Trans Am across Europe. Because he can. When he gets to Russia he is mildly amused by the Big Brother control – until he meets an American war pilot, MIA since Vietnam, in the woods. He races on to Moscow to pass the message on to the attaché there, but something sinister seems to have happened to him since he made that phone call…

This thriller had plenty of potential. Gormless rich boy screwing things up? Check. Russians doing bad things? Check. American embassy two steps behind all the time? Check.

However, after 100 pages, the plot didn’t seem to be going anywhere (I had endured a lengthy restaurant scene where the American hero from the embassy dallies over Afghani food with another embassy employee before heading out to the aid of the MIA pilot), and there were just too many editorial errors! A date which should clearly have been 1969 was given as 1989 (the year of publication of this book, I believe), and on two occasions, sentences with very similar structures (“This, he thought, was a xxx thing”) occurred in the same paragraph; the structure is unwieldy once but twice it is careless.

I didn’t fancy wasting another 587 pages on something that hadn’t been properly proof-read, so on the DNF pile it went. Others may will be rewarded for being more patient than me.

Additional info:
This was a personal copy.
Publisher: Sphere Publishing, 687 pages (paperback)
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Almost Blue – Carlo Lucarelli – 5/10 (DNF)

Thriller September 30, 2011 Comments: 5

“This voice is different, less liquid, hazier, smoky, like thick fog.”

From the blurb: A serial killer is terrorising the people of Bologna and rookie Detective Inspector Grazia Negro is determined to solve the case. She only has one witness who can identify the killer – and he is blind. Simone spends his days listening to Chet Baker and scanning the radio waves of the city, eavesdropping on other people’s lives. He imagines what people are like – based on the ‘colour’ of their voices – and his acute hearing sets alarm bells ringing when he tunes in to the killer. Together Simone and Negro are the only people able to stop him.

I seem to be having a bout of the DNFs at the moment. Maybe I am just getting more ruthless with my reading. If I’m not loving it, out it goes.

This one’s a funny one, and I can see why it was CWA Gold Dagger shortlisted. Grazia is a great lead investigator (although why why why the author chose to make her pre-menstrual is beyond me, did he want to ramp up the blood quotient even further?) – prickly, independent, tired of being treated as cute and useless because she’s a woman in a man’s world…

I liked the idea of a blind witness too, and an unhelpful one at that – Simone (and this frustrated me too – why not switch to Simon? Simone is a woman’s name in English – I know that Simone is the Italian men’s name but in translation it’s confusing) is difficult with his mother, and with Grazia when she visits, and generally seems to be a bit away with the fairies.

What made me put this book down was the incredibly short chapters, switching back and forth from Grazia to the killer to Simone. I thought the killer’s voice could have been left out for a much smoother novel. Anyway it was too jumpy and I got fed up.

Reviews by other bloggers: Gaskella, A Work in Progress, Petrona

Additional info:
This was a personal copy from a big-box purchase.
Publisher: Vintage, 169 pages (paperback)
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A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka – 5/10

Fluff, Orange Prize for Fiction, Prizes August 6, 2011 Comments: 7

“You she-cat-dog-vixen-flesh-eating witch”

Nadezhka discovers that her 84-year-old father, recently bereaved, has become enamoured of a younger local Ukrainian woman and decided to marry her to save her from deportation. Nadezhka and her sister Vera attempt to set their father right, and when they are unable to do so, must watch the ensuing domestic mismatch. They rail against their stepmother with ever more inventive plots.

For a book that has won comedy prizes (Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), this was bleakly un-humorous. I suspect that the comedy award was given on the strength of farcical descriptions – the image of Valentina tottering around the garden in her plastic high heels and heaving her enormous bosom about is quite funny, but the human tragedy of Nikolai’s situation, bereaved of a valued if not beloved wife, overwhelms the comedy.

The story of how the family came to England is actually a beautiful one and I wish it had been the centre piece of a very different novel. Similarly, the sisters’ petty heirloom battles and the attempts of the youngest generation to piece it together made for some interesting family drama.

Character development is cast aside in the pursuit of laughter – both sisters come across as embittered middle-aged women, Nikolai as a doddering old fool, a eminent (post-eminent?) engineer with incongruous fluctuations in his ability to make reasonable decisions, and Valentina as a witch with unclear motives. Perhaps my understanding of the Ukrainian emigrant psyche is insufficient to impose a pattern on Valentina’s behaviour – to me it appears cruel, haphazard and simply bizarre.

However, it can only be a condemnation of the relentless black comedy that I was willing the old man to die rather than endure any further nonsense from his daughters and partner.

Reviews by other bloggers: Jane of Reading, Writing, Working, Playing

Additional info:

 

This was one of two personal copies I had. I think I bought them both in Notting Hill.

 

Publisher: Penguin, paperback, 336 pages.

 

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