Books I Listened To/Read in May

Non-Fiction
'Don't Mention the War: The British and the Germans since 1890' by John Ramsden
I have noticed that historians who become 'grandees' with a career of academic books under their belts, are often exempted from being edited.  This can make their later books (Ramsden retired in 2008, three years after this book was published and died in 2009) rather bloated and often meandering.  This book is an example of that problem.  It is interesting and despite the title, actually goes back much further than 1890, looking at relations between the British and Germans in the early modern period and the full length of the 19th century.  The problem is that Ramsden keeps wandering off the thread.  He confesses at the start to being a fan of opera, so music and indeed the broader arts, whether high-brow or highly populist, are probably over-represented when talking about relations.  The book really gets going when it reaches 1914 and Ramsden is best on the animosity between Britain and (West) Germany in the post-1945 period.  However, he spends a lot of time considering specific war films and goes on at length about Noel Coward and Bert Trautmann.  Their role is important but the space Ramsden gives them is out of scale with their importance to the story and means he neglects broader issues and wider examples.  East Germany is largely forgotten.

This book has interesting points, but it very much feels to be not a thorough history book, but more a transcript of what you would have heard if you had sat down with Ramsden over tea and talked about Britain and Germany over a number of afternoons.  That may have been the intention, that it would be a book that straddled the popular and academic spheres.  However, if that was the case, it is too bulky for the popular audience and too meandering for the academic.  Aside from this character, Ramsden, a historian of the Conservative Party, misses no opportunity to make petty, almost childish jibes against not on the Labour Party, but even the liberal media, being very dismissive of  'The Guardian'.  Again, with proper editing these barbs, which are entirely unnecessary for the story being told, would have been eliminated. Left in they add to the sense that this was a late draft of the book rather than a version which could be deemed a finished book.  However, perhaps that is no surprise in the 21st century when editing is left to authors and people they may employ rather than being done by the publishers themselves.

Fiction
'Witch Hunt by Jack Harvey [Ian Rankin]
This book is from 1993, early in Rankin's career but not at the start.  As is typical for successful authors it seems his agent or publishers encouraged him to try other series aside from his long-running Rebus books.  This is a sort of a spy novel.  It attempts to be a John le Carré novel and a little like the Villanelle e-novels/novel that Luke Jennings produced 2014-18 with much greater success.  A major problem is that Rankin is uncertain who he wants to focus upon and whether the tone will be the downbeat, almost desultory one of Le Carré's work or something a bit more action filled and glamorous.  As a result it feels very much like a book of bits.  He lacks the ability to make the downbeat elements as intriguing or tricky as Le Carré so they just come across as tedious.  He even has a retired operative, Dominic Elder, a specialist on the assassin being hunted, brought in just as George Smiley is to deal with Karla.

There is far too much about different levels of the British security system that adds nothing of interest and slackens off any tension Rankin has built up with the killings.  The relationship between Michael Barclay from Special Branch and his French equivalent in the DST (now the DGSI) Dominique Herault is so predictable as to be painful to read; only Herault's mother adds an interesting element.  The novel is about the hunt for a female assassin, codenamed 'Witch' who has returned to the UK at the time of an international summit and the rather ineffectual attempts to prevent her.  There are some interesting twists, but overall, because of his uncertainty the book really lacks life.  You feel he could have taken all the same elements and written a much better book.  It does show that someone who specialises in police procedural can struggle when attempting a spy novel.

'Brasyl' by Ian McDonald
This book is marginally better than 'River of Gods' (2004) which I read in March: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/03/books-i-listened-toread-in-march.html  While McDonald continues to completely overload the reader with too many characters, haring around, he at least restricts himself to three settings this time, different parts of Brazil in 1733, 2006 and 2032.  A lot of McDonald's, and indeed Cyberpunk's, themes come out again in this book.  Especially the 2032 features all the trappings of the cyberpunk tropes and indeed the mono-molecular blades so favoured in classic Cyberpunk, appear in all three time periods.  As with 'River of Gods' McDonald is interested in the quantum and the use of alternate universes, in this novel to provide computing power rather than energy.  The book ends up being pretty much like 'The Matrix' movies (1999-2003), in revealing that the universe is almost dead and we are in fact living in a computer simulation of previous versions of the universe.  The antagonists, The Order, are reminiscent of Mr. Smith from 'The Matrix' movies.  However, the overarching context strays into Michael Moorcock's principles from 'The Dancers at the End of Time' books (1972-81) too.  This multi-layered context shows the central problem of the book.  Added to this, at least two of the characters have doppelgangers from other realities.  The 1733 strand is laden with heavy parallels to 'Apocalypse Now (1979) itself drawing on 'Heart of Darkness'  (1899) by Joseph Conrad and 'The Mission' (1986) especially with its very robust, sword-fighting priests; the floating cathedral reminded me much of  'Oscar and Lucinda' (novel 1988; movie 1997) as well.

There is another problem with the book, which despite all the action scenes whether involving capoeira or mono-molecular blades or rapiers, is a very heavy-going read.  I complimented McDonald on how well he brought to life a future India in 'River of Gods' and here he seeks to do it with Brazil.  The trouble is, that he digs so deeply into the culture of the music, religions, martial arts, soap operas, slums and so on, that some sections are almost not written in English but in Portuguese and dialect.  When you have a 6-page glossary of terms, you have to know that the average reader of the book in the language it is supposed to be written in, is going to struggle.  I have encountered authors before who are more concerned by showing off than telling a good story and it is becoming clear that McDonald was one of these.  Read this book for the bright lights (some of which have been reconditioned from 30 years ago) but do not expect it to make any sense or to be coherent for much of the time, it is pushing around far too much bulk and trying to make it go fast for that to work, especially if you do not speak Brazilian Portuguese slang.

Audio Books - Fiction
'Troll Fell' by Katherine Langrish; read by Alex Jennings
As I often buy mixed boxes of audio books, I sometimes have no idea about the nature of the books I am purchasing.  Though this one is read by (the male) Alex Jennings who I tend to hear reading heavy-weight classics, this is actually a children's book.  It is quite enjoyable all the same.  It is set in a fictional Nordic setting though one which seems to have some connection to the real world as the father of one of the characters sails beyond Iceland and Greenland to land in North America.  However, it is also a fantasy as Nordic creatures including a house 'elf', a were-eel (!) and lots of trolls feature.  The story follow orphaned Peer Ulfsson who is 12, when he is sent to live with his cruel uncles at a watermill near Troll Fell. Dealing with their cruelty and then the deals they make with the trolls who live under Troll Fell, to sell Peer and his new friend Hilde provides the basis of the adventure.  Peer gets aid from some other fantastical creatures.

Like the best children's fiction the book does not baulk from unpleasant elements in the harshness of life, notably the loss of parents and the need to protect siblings. At one stage Peer believes he is going to remain a slave for life or indeed hideously transformed.  Thus, I found this novel easier to engage with than perhaps I would have done with other children's books.  I liked the Norse feel to it as well.  Jennings is a capable reader of audio books, but felt he was out of place with this one, making me feel that it should be a 19th century novel or a dry contemporary commentary.  Still he is not bad with the various realistic and fantastical voices, it is just this is not really his kind of book to narrate.  The book is the first of a trilogy but this story wraps up quite neatly and I am not going to seek out any others intentionally but would not chuck them out if they turn up in a box of audio books I buy.

'Outbreak' by Chris Ryan; read by Rupert Degas
This was another from a box that I mistook.  Given that Ryan is ex-SAS, I had expected something along the lines of an Andy McNab novel.  It is an action adventure, set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but focused on a 13-year old boy (despite his youth he can drive cars and even a lorry) where Ben Tracey's father, a mining expert is investigating a source of an important mineral, only to stumble across a reservoir of a disease that is worse than ebola.  The story is an adventure set around a small village as Ben tries to survive against the opposition of the mining company and warn the world about the risk of the disease.  It fits different tropes.  It is almost a colonial adventure from the 19th century though, fitting with much children's fiction of today, Ben partners up with a local girl Halima, whose knowledge helps them survive facing not just the baddies but the various ferocious creatures of the region.  It is a frantic adventure, though it feels reasonably realistic.

I was a little apprehensive that it would be a neo-colonial story especially when Halima's beliefs are introduced, and Ryan walks a fine line.  Individual readers will have to judge whether he manages to remain appropriate in his approach.  Similarly I was rather concerned at Degas putting on accents of Congolese people.  He seems to have gone to a great deal of effort and at times, I had assumed that the company had brought in someone else to do those voices.  In reality most of the dialogue would be in French, but Degas, just about pulls off sounding authentic without being a caricature.  Again some readers might be offended by the fact he even tries.  Whereas I might listen to some McNab books, I am unlikely given the areas Ryan strays into, to come back to anything by him in the future, even if aimed at full adults rather than young adults.

'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' by Stieg Larsson; read by Martin Wenner
This book published in 2005 (though not in English until 2008) revived the English-speaking interest in Scandinavian crime novels (as opposed to television series) that had perked up in 1995 with 'Sidetracked' by Henning Mankell having lain largely dormant since the last Sjöwall and Wahlöö book had been published in 1975.  I have seen the Swedish movie, but not the English one.  Coming to the book showed me that really this was a classic detective story with a contemporary, edgy element bolted on top.  Without the appearance of Lisbeth Salander a young female hacker under the care of the state, this book could have appeared in 1976, though some of this made have been due to the toning down of the book for English-language audiences in translation.  The Swedish title of the book is nowadays well known to be 'Men Who Hate Women'.  Larsson was dead when the book was published so had lost control over it.

Still, the bulk of the book is about a journalist Mikael Blomkvist, following a libel conviction, retreating to a remote Swedish island to investigate the disappearance of a girl of a wealthy industrial family in 1966.  Much of his work to uncover what occurred, handling all the unpleasant family members could have come from a book by Maria Lang [Dagmar Lange] who published crime novels between 1949-90.  The fact that Blomkvist reads novels by Elizabeth George and disparages one by Val McDermid for being too gory in 'The Mermaids Singing' (1995) which I listened to last year: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/09/books-i-listened-toread-in-september.html indicates really where Larsson's writing lies.

Salander has her own revenge to wreak which she does with the latest technology of the time and helps Blomkvist in the latter stages of his investigation, though old photographs are the real source of the clues.  Blomkvist has a girlfriend his own age, sleeps with one of the old women of the family and has a sexual relationship with Salander too.  These developments are highly unconvincing and I do wonder if it is to be expected in Swedish novels.  Aside from 'Sidetracked' which I read 17 years ago, I have not read Swedish novels and to be honest this one hardly won me over.  It is not a bad book, but really it is a very old-fashioned murder mystery with more contemporary elements put on top to give it some 'edge' but they are not well integrated into the book and so it seems like two separate novels and the connection between them really forced and unconvincing.

Wenver sounds convincing as the various characters, though far better with the men than the women and his Salander is a real stereotypical Londoner accented young woman, which jars with the rest of the voices.  I have the other two books in the series to listen to, but I am not expecting much from them.

'The Spy Who Loved Me' by Ian Fleming; read by Rosamund Pike
The James Bond movies have done Fleming a great misservice.  While he never would have been notable in the feminist movement, the more you read of the James Bond novels, the more you see a nuanced approach to women and a recognition of the inequalities of the time.  This book is unique among the series as Bond appears only towards the end and it is narrated from the view of a French Canadian woman, Vivienne Michelle.  Much of the book covers her personal experiences being mistreated by men in Britain.  Her shame at having sex in a public place might be absent these days, but this book could come out with modifications in the MeToo era, showing up how men manipulate women for sex and insisting on their own rules.  Michelle is compelled by her second lover to have an abortion when these were illegal in the UK, but given the changes in US law at present such a path is liable to become common once more for American women, bringing the references back into currency.

There is action in this book as Michelle, travelling down the eastern side of the USA on a scooter, is set-up to be the one to blame for an insurance-fraud fire at a motel where she is temporarily working in New York state.  The two gangsters sent to carry out the fire are eager to rape her but want to keep her alive so she can be seen as the cause of the fire when burnt to death.  Though the language is dated, the way the men abuse her and insist she behaves in certain ways could be written today.  Bond turns up as a deus ex machina, recounting at length an action against SPECTRE that he had carried out in Canada.  He does get things wrong even when dealing with just two gangsters and Michelle has to keep active even when he is charge.  Perhaps all of her being joyful at finding a decent man and being lectured by a policeman about not falling in love with men like Bond would be absent from a novel today.  However, ultimately Michelle rides off on her journey to Florida, very independently, simply with a view that some few men can treat her well especially sexually.  In many ways, this book should stand outside the Bond series and is better judged as something distinct which it comes out pretty well for being.

Despite the distinctiveness of this novel among his work Fleming features many of his usual tropes.  At length he condemns the USA as tawdry with few redeeming characteristics and highlights particularly the Italian-American gangster culture.  He shows men manipulating women to their own ends as a signal of their genuine evil.  There is lots of attention to detail in terms of products, vehicles and clothing both in the UK and especially in the USA.   I guess I would not have come to this book if it was in the Bond series, but am reasonably glad I did because it is engaging even for its age (published 1962) which it shows very clearly in its references to President John Kennedy (1917-November 1963).

Pike does the narration excellently.  Much of it is in the first person as a woman, but she does not sound like a British actress, but a Canadian.  Her voicing of Bond is handled pretty well, though the gravity she gives it makes her sound like Honeysuckle Weeks acting in the 'Foyle's War' series.