Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, Laurence Durrell
I really enjoyed this. He’s a beautiful writer and I loved his Alexandria Quartet. I knew nothing about yprus and the period covered here which was what he describes as the troubled years of 1953-6. This was when disputes between Greece and Turkey over the island was acute causing much disputation among people some of whom wanted to be with Turkey, others to remain with Greece. I can’t work out the role of the British at that time. Laurence wanted to settle there as a private person and to be welcomed as a local which he managed until things got hectic and he took a job as press attaché for the British Governor – as I said I’m unsure what the Brits were doing there – hard to get the full story easily (on Wikipedia). Durrell is very critical of the British Government and missed opportunities to get a peaceful resolution of the dispute – which is still ongoing and it’s no surprise that dopey Downer couldn’t resolve it when appointed to do so not so long ago. The people and their way of life is beautifully captured. There are some great characters who come alive through their varied interactions with Durrell. He buys a house and a lot of the book is taken up with he manages all the associated pitfalls involved. described nicely The book which is really a love letter to Cyprus and it’s people. He describes how he overcomes resentment against his foreignness and the friends he made. A few expats lived there where he enjoyed lavish dinners and cultured conversation. Others passed through like Paddy Fermor and Durrell’s mother and brother. There are lovely descriptions of historic sites and amazing landscapes. Reading this made me look up more about Cyprus and more about Durrell.
The Bloomsday Dead, Adrian McGinty
I picked this thriller up ages ago from our little library over the road – because of the title! Although I’d read McGinty was a good writer, which he is. This is the third book by McGinty about Irish born criminals operating in America, called the Dead series – Dead I Well May be, The Dead Yard (wonderful titles). It would probably resonate more if you’ve read the first two but you get the background pretty easily. It rattles along from the first page. Our hero is dragged reluctantly – by force – to track down a young woman who’s been kidnapped. It emerges he’s got a past with her mother who is now running ‘the Boston mob’ so both ruthless and beautiful. This is a thriller after all. There’s only a very tangential relationship to Bloomsday. What I liked most about it was the depiction of contemporary criminal gangs in Belfast as emerging out of the now ended Troubles. Former IRA and Provos now in charge of different areas of the city running drug and extortion rackets. These bits had a very authentic feel to them. All in all a nice diversionary read although I’m not rushing to get its two predecessors. If they turn up in my little library I’ll read them.
Australian Gospel: A Family Saga, Lech Blain
I loved this book and have been urging it on everyone. Blain is a terrific writer and the story he tells here is amazing. It’s about his parents who over the years fostered lots of kids, three in particular, who are the focus of the story, born to, and taken from, completely delusional parents. Who never let up from trying to take them back, including if needs be by kidnapping. It’s mostly in Queensland and Belle-Peterson, Mike Ahern and Anna Bligh make appearances over the course of the book. Although New Zealand and Notre Dame in France get a look in. The birth parents were mad – a wealthy Sydney North Shore fellow who, perhaps due to drugs although it’s not clear, gives it all up to preach about Jesus and gives up work to do so, the mother an unhappy British born woman. They travel Australia causing havoc living off good natured people who let them stay – often Ministers or members of congregations – who then have to call the police to get rid of them. That’s when the under-nourished children get removed by child services. The father is then thrown in gaol and the mother into a mental facility. Always temporarily. And when they get out they threaten the foster parents and the children. Blain’s parents had to move house to feel safe. Very weird people. Amazing how they get to do the same thing over and over again. A mystery how they got the money to travel. Blain has had to trawl through masses of information and talk to a huge number of people to get this story. That he’s been able to put it so clearly into this book that reads like a thriller is amazing. He did it for his mother who’d kept a lot of material and had wanted to write it up. The book is a tribute to his parents, both of whom had incredibly impoverished backgrounds and who clearly gave so much to so many kids. Child protection services come out of it all pretty well – courts and experts not so much. Really really recommended, a great Australian story.
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
I really loved this author’s The God In Ruins which preceded it and lots of people told me this was better. I didn’t think it was but I enjoyed it a lot. An English family – children during WWI, adults during WWII. It starts with the birth of Ursula who becomes the main focus therafter. I liked all the characters especially the mother in the early part but also the father and the siblings except the oldest boy who becomes a very conservative English civil servant. Little Teddy, born unexpectedly when father arrives home from war, and the youngest is the God who finds life after his experiences in the war a disappointment – never again the dashing war hero. The sense of a life destroyed by the war – albeit by slow degrees and not dramatically moved me very much. This one not so much. The central idea in this book is a What If / Sliding Doors approach to the story. You get different versions of incidents throughout Ursula’s life. Each episode concluding with and then darkness descended. What if the doctor hadn’t arrived in time for her birth? What if the maid had gone to London on VE Day and got the Spanish flue and brought it back to the house? What if she had got close enough to shoot Hitler on her pre-war time in Germany? What if Ursula had not followed the dog when the bomb fell near her home during the blitz? It’s all well done and the writing is terrific – especially the descriptions of London during the blitz. But I found the different versions of the life a bit wearying.
When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro
Having loved The Remains of the Day I couldn’t resist picking this up from our little library across the road. I thought it preceded his Booker Prize winner but it came after. Another first person narration. A man looking back at his life as a child in Shanghai after being taken hastily to England after his mother and father go missing in the turbulent years after WWI. A time when in Shanghai English businesses flourished, warlords controlled different parts of China and the opium trade was in full swing, in part due to English collaboration with locals – despite some well-intentioned individuals campaigning against it. One of whom was the narrator’s mother. The child and his Japanese friend in the foreign compound spend their time playing at being detectives. There’s a famous local Chinese one making headlines in the newspapers all the time. In England, living with his grandmother, well-heeled, financially and educated at all the best schools, Eton then Oxford etc he feels he’s been integrated into English ways but various encounters with his peers as an adult suggest he’s not a reliable narrator of the past. While he thinks he’s effectively picked up English idioms and practices his peers found him strange and isolated. He becomes a famous private detective along the lines of Sherlock Holmes and having been successful goes back to Shanghai to find out what happened to his mother. It’s now the late 1930s and war is raging in the city between the Japanese and Chinese. It all rattles along and there is a resolution to the mysterious disappearance of his parents – a little lurid in part. There are also two other orphans, both women, hence the title. Inserted I suspect to show the different outcomes when children lose their parents – one outgoing and desperately seeking inclusion in high society, another carefully managing her emotions while adapting to circumstances. Sort of interesting but didn’t add much to the story. It was quite well done – descriptions of life in pre-WWII Shanghai, the conflict between the Chinese and Japanese (during which our narrator finds his childhood friend – stretching credibility somewhat) the role of England in mid-century China and English societal norms at the time. But it’s not as good as Remains of the Day.
Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, Nicholas Shakespeare
This would have been better divided into two books. It’s over 700 pages. The sub-title refers to the author’s intention which is to show Fleming as more than just the creator of James Bond. But throughout his recounting of incidents in the real life he follows up with extracts from the various books keen to show us how much was based on the author’s real experiences. And not just a pithy reference but whole paragraphs recounting this or that character doing the same thing. Having no interest in the books and barely remembering the one or two films I’ve seen long ago I found these very distracting from the life. The could have been put in a completely different book analysing the impact of the life on the stories. The bits about the life were very interesting. The lives of the upper echelons of English society are excruciating. You wonder how they managed to ever acquire an empire. Appalling schooling what with sadistic teachers and bullying elders – in his first book home from primary school Fleming described himself as being a slave to an older boy. He was pretty hopeless in his youth and according to the author under the oppressive weight of a famous older brother, a war hero father and financially canny grandfather who came from nothing to be the richest man in England. Sent down from Eton – no clarity about why, something to do with a woman (not good enough in a biography), didn’t get into Oxford or the diplomatic service. His mother is depicted as responsible for some of his problems but I thought she was doing all she could for him. Sure she kyboshed his relationship with the love of his life – but he chose the allowance over love! The author’s other thesis – alongside second son syndrome – is that he came into his own during the war years when he was an assistant to the commanding officer in the navy and became involved in secret stuff. While it’s claimed more information now confirms Fleming did more than just shuffle messages to and fro, and was quite influential in lots of ways – including the establishment of the CIA – it seems to me it’s not conclusive. All up it seems he was a very unhappy man, finally marrying an avaricious woman with who he’d had a longstanding affair (as you do in the upper echelons of English society). What’s most interesting is how late fame came to him, how little time he experienced it – all arriving after the first film and not really associated with his books – and he is said to have hated it. The money was welcome though. Even though he’s wealthy all along it seems he always wanted more. His wife is blamed for that. Poor upper class women, denied an education, required to marry well and then given nothing to do except have affairs and do up the stately mansions. Awful really. I liked reading about the life, about Bond not so much.
Butter, Asako Yuzuki
I gave this to Eleanor for Christmas – it’s on lots of best of 2024 book lists and was recommended by a friend. I’ve decided I’ve got to give modern fiction more of a go having been largely disappointed with it lately. I quite liked this to start with though I found it a bit didactic about the pressures on young women in Japan to be thin and to adjust to the needs of men. All good points but a bit heavy handed and repetitive after a bit. A woman is accused of murdering the wealthy men with whom she has lived a lavish lifestyle, mostly evidenced by extravagant fine dining – I related to that! It’s left open if she was prostituting herself but she denies it, saying she only gave lonely men companionship. There’s no actual hard evidence linking her to the deaths. Her major crime is to be unrepentant about her lifestyle – those expensive dinners in particular. She agrees to speak to the woman journalist who’s narrating the story and seeking an exclusive, only on condition she not talk about the crime but rather about food. And of course butter. I actually bought some very expensive butter to try one of the recipes she recommends. The narrator – until then uninterested in such things and somewhat traumatised by her past relationship with her father – does as she’s told and tries out all of the recipes under the conditions demanded by the prisoner – she’s in gaol awaiting a second trial for the murder. These exchanges are interwoven with the journalist’s personal life – unsatisfactory boyfriend, competitive work colleagues, relationship with mother, family history. And with her investigations into the circumstances of the prisoner – which are not exactly as conveyed. We see her personal life expanding under the influence. Along with that of her married best friend. So it’s a sharp critique of the role of women in Japan. I liked it but didn’t find it compelling and wouldn’t include it on a best books list.
Scents and Sensibility, Maggie Alderson
I thought I wanted something light after the stolidity of Butter so brought this home from my little library across the way. I like Maggie Alderson, following her on Twitter and Instagram. She used to have a column in the Age about lifestyle that were acute and witty. She’s also worked in fashion about which she is insightful on social media. She sometimes talks about her books so I thought I’d try it. But this was not for me – so light it floated away. I ended up skim reading really so maybe I’m not doing it justice. A fashion journalist hooks up with an American millionaire without knowing who he is and we get descriptions of how the filthy rich live, jetting around from country to country at a moment’s notice, not working, buying what ever attracts etc etc. She has a completely unbelievable father – ever so wise but already through five marriages giving our narrator lots of step siblings. A couple of other possible ove interests are thrown into the mix – including an Australian journalist called Ned – incredibly gorgeous body and a straight talker! The other major strand is what it’s like working for a newspaper which sounded authentic enough although there was a completely misogynist take on the evil female competitor in the office which was upsetting. The unreality of it all need not be a problem in a light and fluffy romcom what is what I was expecting but only if well done. I was surprised the writing was so pedestrian. To be returned to the little library post haste!
A World Gone Mad: The Diaries of Astrid Lindgren
I’ve never read Pippi Longstocking or seen any films or anything but I read a review about this in the Guardian ages ago and finally got around to it. Indicative of how out of control my unread future reading pile is I discovered I have two copies – one on my kindle and a lovely hardback version acquired I think from the Readings bargain table. It’s a very brief and easy read – half a day – but interesting. She was in her thirties, married with three children and working as a secretary at the start of the war, and in the end in an office censoring letters. She records what is happening from 1 September 1939 to New Years Eve 1945, not every day but nearly. In the actual diaries she also stuck in cut out bits and pieces from the newspapers. She’s a keen observer and writes really well. Along with information about what’s happening globally there’s an emphasis on what Sweden is doing – allowing German soldiers to transit through from Norway – and what Sweden should be doing – not that! In particular there’s a lot about what is happening in the other Nordic countries – Finland, Norway and Denmark. I didn’t know much about that aspect of the war so found it interesting. The fear of communist Russia is palpable throughout, especially near war’s end. All this is mixed in with family doings – her husband’s job, children’s birthdays and school reports and a lot of excursions into nature, skiing and bicycling trips. In the latter stages of the book she refers to a great shadow over her life and I assumed from the bits and pieces she includes that her husband left her for a period. He’s back at wars end. She also includes a little bit about her writing, short stories plays, books. Finally at the very end of the diary she records sending Pippi Longstocking to a publisher. Her subsequent fame is about to take off. An easy and enjoyable read.
The Track of Sand, Andrea Camilleri
Another from the little library across the street to which it shall now be returned. They’re fun especially because of the Montabana television series which, after reading this, we streamed an episode on Apple TV. A change from Poirot and Miss Marple. Extraordinarily beautiful locations and the detective reminds me of my brother.
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