Fiction
'Cyberabad Days' by Ian McDonald
This book consists of 8 short stories set in the same context as his 'River of Gods' (2004), what was India but around the year 2047. That book, I felt: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/03/books-i-listened-toread-in-march.html jammed in far too many Cyberpunk ideas to work effectively. This book, by including just some of the ideas in each story is better. However, having read about the nutes, the battles over fragmented India's control of water and the genetically modified Brahmins already, these seemed spent. McDonald reworked the ideas and even simply showed incidents from the previous book from a different perspective. Interestingly, a number of the stories are from the view of children. There are interesting concepts such as a woman marrying an AI creation from a soap opera (another idea extensively used by McDonald) and the battles between water-controlling families which looks like 'Romeo and Juliet' only to go down an unexpected route.
The introduction of a character from Nepal, a temporary goddess, provides a fresh angle. However, by the end you really feel McDonald has gone at all of these things so intently, that they are now exhausted. This is not a bad book and McDonald has done well in giving new life to Cyberpunk tropes in an atypical setting for English-language readers. I would suggest that you ignore the publication dates and read this book first then, if you enjoy it, 'River of Gods' next. That way you will have some knowledge of the setting and had glimpses of particular incidents, before diving into a thorough story of them. If I had read this book alone I think I would have praised it more. I certainly think it contests the view too often expressed these days that 'short stories go nowhere' and McDonald shows himself capable with them as with epic science fiction. I am glad since this book, he has gone off in new directions, though perhaps as with his 'Luna' series he is in the territory of classic science fiction rather than the other sub-genres, though Cyberpunk always had its space corporations even if they were not a popular focus of the novels back at the sub-genre's height.
'Where Eagles Dare' by Alistair MacLean
I have seen the movie (1968) of this novel (1967) multiple times so when I saw this for 10p, I thought it would be interesting to see how it differed. The movie sticks quite closely to the novel, except there a long passages about a mad pilot flying the team to southern Germany in the book and the team have to do mountaineering not featured in the movie. In the movie, they have a lot more explosives. However, the story is much the same, a team of largely British operatives is flown to the German Alps in 1943 supposedly to free a US general held in a Gestapo headquarters located on a mountain top. In fact it is a mission to root out traitors at senior levels in British intelligence. Some of the names are changed and Clint Eastwood's character Lieutenant Schaffer does not have any romance in the movie in contrast to the novel. The killing of the three traitors is clustered together in the book rather than one separated off as in the movie. In disguise the British agents visit many more pubs in the town before ending up at the sole one they visit in the movie.
At times I felt Maclean had been anachronistic. However, I found that the Miss. Europe competition begun in 1929 and the commercial production of asbestos dated back to the 19th Century. The helicopter featured in the book is larger and more sophisticated than those used by the Germans during the Second World War and the term 'chopper' for a helicopter only appeared during the Korean War, 1950-53, at least 7 years after the book is set. Similarly at the time of the story there was no Heathrow Airport. It did not open until 1946 and was known as London Airport until some years later. I guess it shows how hard it was for an author to get details right in the years before the internet.
Overall, especially if you do not know the story, this is an interesting action novel. Unlike modern equivalents it is very tight and gets on with the job. If you do not know the twists, that is an advantage too. Eastwood felt there were too many, but I think that for a modern reader, this is what lifts it above many war action books.
Non-Fiction
'Ring of Steel': Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918' by Alexander Watson
This is a hefty book (788 pages in my edition) but is an excellent read; one of the best history books I have read in a while. Watson's scholarship is supreme and he brings to English-speakers a range of resources especially in Eastern European languages, that are not normally accessible. He also draw on books published throughout the 20th Century that have fallen into obscurity. Watson also makes good use of correspondence and diaries as illustrations of the human reality of the statistics and the strategies. It is his ability to connect the strategic and political to the everyday experience that makes the book so strong. The book details the different ways in which the two empires engaged their people and the mistakes they made. Challenges that the regions would face in terms of deprivation, massacres, nationality tensions and anti-Semitism are brought out. Watson is careful not to push a direct causal link especially from the Eastern Front to the activities of Nazi German forces in the Second World War, but does highlight parallels and the simple amount of murder going on in many of the same areas some twenty-five years earlier.
While the human aspect is a strength, Watson also proves excellent at analysing the economic challenges and shows how poorly prepared Germany and especially Austria-Hungary were for a sustained war. The astounding achievement is that their commanders, bumbling along at times, managed to keep the two countries fighting for so long. He also highlights Allied errors which did not exploit the weaknesses of the Central Powers, but the mobilisation of the public including schemes such as the 'nail' figures are fascinating. Overall, a thoroughly engaging book which at times is grim, but like all the best history books, leaves you feeling a greater comprehension of what happened and why it happened than before you read it.
Audio Book - Fiction
'The Girl Who Played With Fire' by Stieg Larsson; read by Martin Wenner
This is the second in the Millennium Trilogy published after Larsson's death. It follows the next steps for Lisbeth Salander, the violent hacker and Mikael Blomqvist the philandering journalist from the first book that I listened to back in May: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/05/books-i-listened-toread-in-may.html This book is very messy. The first quarter of it is really a chunk of the previous book in which Salander continues the break in her contact with Blomqvist and goes to the Caribbean where she murders a man during a hurricane, something unconnected with the rest of the novel. She also has her breasts augmented. This highlights a worrying aspect of this novel. The augmentation runs utterly contrary to the character of Salander as we have come to know her. In this novel you really feel the male gaze. The repeated focus on Salander's bisexuality is another aspect of this and one can imagine Larsson as rather creepily poring over these elements, very much like some of the unreconstituted misogynist police officers he features. At times it is almost as if Salander is not developing properly as a character but being forced down certain paths to satiate the author and that jars.
There is an overly complex plot involving the abusive care system into which Salander was forced as a child, a biker gang and a Russian defector turned people trafficker. I like twists, but trying to bring all of these elements together, largely so that there can be more interaction between Blomqvist and Salander, feels really forced and it makes the book heavy going. The situation is not helped, especially in an audio book, with so many characters having similar names. In the end the mass of journalists, security officers, police, care workers, bikers, etc become impenetrable especially as we see through so many points of view and certain sub-plots fizzle out, perhaps only to be revived in the third book. As common with this trilogy there is a lot of violence but this is handled pretty well and you can see/feel the difficulties of an ordinary person facing a thug. Still, there is another aspect of the male gaze, carried over from the previous book, in that there are detailed naming of every piece of equipment whether a computer, a car, motorbike or gun, which does not help with the book flowing smoothly. Perhaps being Larsson's legacy it was under-edited. Overall, this is even less impressive than the first book.
Wenner does reasonably well, though, unlike most of the Swedish sounding voices, Salander ends up sounding like she came from South London. Wenner is good as the voices when the character is injured or disabled in bringing that aspect to what they say.
Showing posts with label Ian McDonald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ian McDonald. Show all posts
Saturday, 31 August 2019
Friday, 17 May 2019
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.
'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.
Sunday, 31 March 2019
Books I Listened To/Read In March
Fiction
'River of Gods' by Ian McDonald
Though published in 2004, this book is very much a Cyberpunk novel of the old style from the 1980s. Set in 2047 the action largely takes place in an India which has fragmented independent states, sometimes at war with each other. Artificial intelligence has advanced to a level at which it can exceed human thought and its application is policed. In the classic Cyberpunk approach, McDonald weaves together a range of apparently disparate characters whose various stories come together towards the climax. He handles this in a less clunky way than some of the 'heroes' of Cyberpunk, notably William Gibson. Though a westerner, he has done well, in my view anyway, in envisaging a future India, though some traits such as a love of cricket and soap operas, perhaps have been assumed to continue unchallenged.
The level of technology with drone attack devices and surgery that has led to the rise of 'nutes', literally surgically created neuter people, seems appropriate for the coming decades. It even features a sentient soap opera which I liked as a concept. There is some standard science fiction with a device close to Earth which is of ancient alien design and the development by a company which derives power from parallel universes, but they are merged in with the more down-to-Earth Cyberpunk technology without much of a jar. In addition there is a small scale war and climate change that has led to extended droughts. However, to some degree including all of these elements is pretty overwhelming for the reader.
The characters are diverse and believable, with their different motives, some pretty mundane such as escaping a cloying marriage, others exotic such as connecting to another universe. He has done reasonably well in looking at how a different world would shape attitudes, but crucially old world attitudes repeatedly shape the action and the fate of a number of the characters especially those that end tragically. Overall, this is an interesting book and if I had not read as much Cyberpunk as I have I think I would have been excited by it. The prime problem is the length (584 pages in my edition) and so you reach the closing stages of the book feeling worn out and wanting it to be over because you have had so many concepts, so many twists and turns, that by the end, you simply want the climax to be finished. The book is good, but ultimately drowns in all of the ideas, characters and activities that McDonald piles in.
'Pattern Recognition' by William Gibson
It was ironic that the next book I read was by William Gibson who had been one of the leading lights of the Cyberpunk era. However, I have been unaware that he has continued writing, indeed I was not even aware he was still alive. He seems, if 'Pattern Recognition' is characteristic of his post-Cyberpunk writing to have moved on to contemporary novels. This one is set in 2002, only a year before the book was published. Much activity happens in London, especially around Camden an area I visited a lot at that time. The first thing I noticed is how much Gibson has improved as a writer since I read his books in the 1980s. As noted in the review above, I always found the working out of his stories very clunky and you could see where they were heading from very early in the book. Added to that his writing has become far more lucid and there were passages in this book that I really admired for their skill. I cannot remember seeing an author develop so far as Gibson seems to have done and I guess it suggests there is hope for all authors, or maybe he just employed a better editor than before. Perhaps writing contemporary fiction, publishers do not simply bow down before his apparently stunning concepts as they might have once done.
The book focuses on American Cayce Pollard who has an allergy to brand logos and so is used by companies to test out whether their new logo will have impact. She is also alert to global trends and highlights 'the next big thing'. Rather erratically she becomes involved with artists and film makers, but as it progresses the book narrows down to her pursuing the maker of snippets of a film which have been released sporadically over the internet with no contextualisation. A community has grown up trying to read meaning into the snippets. The quest means her interacting with cool people from London to Tokyo to Moscow as ultimately she is successful in locating the source and keeping the information out of the hands of wealthy obsessives and corporations. At times the book is satirical about corporate culture and especially marketing and branding and takes a wry look at life in the capitals of the UK, Japan and Russia. The improvement in Gibson's writing really helps these elements be effective. His characters are interesting, not all of them are likeable and some verge on caricatures, but he creates a rich complex environment both real and virtual which does not go too far the way McDonald does to drown you in all that he has conjured up. While I will not rush out and buy all of Gibson's 21st Century output, if I come across others from this phase of his writing, I would not pick them up.
'Death at La Fenice' by Donna Leon
I have been given a lot of the books in Leon's Comissario Brunetti series, this book, published in 1992 was the first. I think this is because I enjoyed Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series also set in contemporary Italy. I have been annoyed by comments made by Leon in an interview to 'The Guardian' newspaper in which she said while no male author can successfully write female characters, female authors, because they live in a male-dominated world, are well capable of writing male characters. I found that a very arrogant attitude but given that she is an American I suppose such sweeping claims are to be expected.
This book is certainly a feminist crime novel. Though her police detective is a man, much of the story features women who have suffered at the hands of men. All the men beside Brunetti are at best bitchy or short-sighted in their arrogance and at worst repeated paedophile offenders. The story is around a famous German conductor who is found poisoned mid-way through a performance at La Fenice opera house in Venice. The story is pretty straight forward, like many detective stories set around theatres or concert halls. Leon is less concerned about the mystery and in fact the reader may be able to work out the solution from very early on. Her concern is showing how nasty the dead man was in his treatment of women, children, gay men and lesbians. These factors are more important to the story than the conductor's collaboration with the Nazi regime.
Perhaps it is Leon's upbringing, but in many ways I felt this novel was far older than 1992, especially in terms of its attitude to how women and lesbians are perceived. The view that the entire population is interested in opera and familiar with its participants also jarred. Hanging over much of the book is a very old fashioned social attitude. I think Leon, who lived in Italy for man years is chiding the country for not being up-to-date. In passing she notes it corruption, something which often featured in Dibdin's books. However, she does not successfully disengage from the dated social attitudes in her own portrayals which makes her seem complicit in them even while she might be aiming to counter them. Then again, she might not, but given what I have heard from her, I do not believed she sees these things this way herself or maybe she has a range of attitudes that it is difficult to entangle. Thus, overall, the women are largely victims of circumstances and maliciousness and the men are at least incompetent if not nasty in a range of ways. The only exception is her hero.
I do not really understand why the book received so much acclaim, perhaps because of its feminist agenda, maybe because of its detailed portrayal of Venice. It is a standard murder mystery that exposes the author's views on subjects very clearly to some degree removing much of the intrigue and at times compelling characters to be pretty exaggerated. I have a string of these books to get through and hope that Leon's writing improved especially in terms of subtlety.
Non-Fiction
'Rethinking British Decline' ed. by Richard English and Michael Kenny
There is so much going on in this book that it is difficult to review. It was published in 2000, but it is fascinating reading it now because of so many of the antecedents of the current Brexit crisis can be seen in it, even going back to 1962 and the leader of the Labour Party of the time, Hugh Gaitskell, warning about the dangers of European federalism. The first part of the book is a series of interviews with many of the great economic historians of the last two-fifths of the 20th Century, Sidney Pollard, Samuel Brittan, David Marquand and other commentators from that late period such as Corelli Barnett and Will Hutton. Much of their time is spent dismissing the views of the others and in some cases, notably Jonathan Clark, arguing that Britain actually did not decline in the 20th Century, in part due to the more widely held view that its economy has always been more about finance and insurance than manufacturing and emphasis on standards of living and opportunities; Britain still being in the G7.
The second part of the book is a more standard collection of chapters looking at the same aspects often mentioned in the first half of the book, such as problems with British culture and institutions, plus relationship with the European Community and the former Empire. There are no firm conclusions, except perhaps that declinism as a political tool has been greater than actual evidence of decline itself. Interestingly, it is all handled at a very high level of society and politics and aside from comments on the rise of unemployment under the Thatcher governments, there is no reference to rising poverty, debt, homelessness, ill-health and declining education and opportunities across the UK. I do not think an update today would have such a neutral sense, but then it was produced in the days of 'things can only get better' early in the Blair governments. I think this is a good summary of the different angles on British decline and especially on declinism as a ideology usable across the political spectrum. In some ways it also marks a changing of the guard, and despite the persistence of some of those interviewed into old age, it seems unlikely that economic historians will ever have such an impact on politics as they did in the 1960s-90s and that in itself is interesting to see as that breed of academic/commentator was coming to their sunset in terms of influence.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Sepulchre' by Kate Mosse; read by Lorelei King
I felt I had read Mosse's best seller 'Labyrinth' (2006) longer ago than it had been published. I have seen some of her later books, including this one published in 2007, regularly in charity shops, but had been put off by the length of them, so it was ideal to have as an audio book. As with 'Labyrinth' in 'Sepulchre', Mosse uses the approach of parallel stories between two women's lives, one in the present and one in the past, in this case 1891 rather than the 13th Century. Meredith Martin travels to France to research the life of Claude Debussy for a book she is writing and as a side mission to find out a little about her birth family, which it proves, originated in southern France. Martin ends up going to Rennes-les-Baines and staying at a hotel in the Domaine de la Cade. In 1891, with her brother mixed up with a jealous wealthy man's revenge and fleeing creditors, the teenager Léonie Vernier travels to the same house owned by her widowed aunt. A further connection is a sepulchre in the grounds of the house, apparently connected to the Cathars persecuted in the region in the 13th Century and the source of both music and art work, notably tarot card designs, that both Vernier and Martin come into contact.
At first I thought that the book was going to be at a very populist level. King's opening narration, very breathless in the US audio book style, added to this sense. However, I was glad that I persisted. Both King and the book settled down and while you might feel the connections are rather contrived, as the story progressed you had the sense that the motives and behaviour in both times were legitimate. While the genuinely nasty antagonist closes in on the Vernier siblings, Martin becomes involved in investigating the death of her new lover's father. This was the section which jarred most. Martin, in her late twenties, seems willing to hop into bed with a stranger and to become his partner very quickly, involving herself in a dangerous situation with aplomb. I do not know if that is the self-confidence of American women, but given that the author is asking us to accept tarot readings and phantoms and does so pretty well, this aspect really jarred and I felt she had been ordered to include it for some sex rather than to genuinely advance the story. Interestingly, this was a book that I enjoyed as it progressed. However, I do think she did not need to go into the latter years of Léonie Vernier's life and it would have been crisper to end it all in 1891. Thus, at times I had mixed feelings about the book, but was ultimately satisfied by it. I largely believed the characters and what they go up to. The Gothic elements were handled well without becoming overblown or too deeply trope coining. The research and attention to detail was excellent.
While I often have difficulty with US narrators over-exaggerating their readings and really worried that King was going to persist with this, as I have found with other such readers, if you give them a few chapters at the start, they settle down and given a more level tone. She does the range of voices both male and female, in both time periods well. While I feel a reader of a different nationality would have made the story sound more sinister, King's performance was not as much out of step as I initially feared.
'Fever of the Bone' by Val McDermid; read by Michael Mahoney
I listened to the first of McDermid's stories featuring psychologist Tony Hill and police detective Carol Jordan, 'The Mermaids Singing' (1995) last year. This book published in 2009, is the sixth in the series which this year reached 11 books. Hill and Jordan now live in the same building though not together. In large part this is blamed on Hill's impotence which has continued through the novels.Furthermore Jordan, heading a specialist murder investigation team, is encouraged not to call on Hill's services when teenagers begin to go missing and then turn up dead with their genitals removed and instead use a cheaper police psychologist. Hill goes from the fictional Bradfield to work for the police of Worcester which develops the sub-plot of the death of his father who disappeared before he was born and his own poor relationship with his nasty mother. Hill is brought into a case which soon connects to the killings in Bradfield and aided by the arrogant incompetence of the police psychologist is brought into the broader case. While the book is about a serial killer, the motive differs from those which usually turn up and the twist to keep the killer's identity secret is well handled. Overall, the book is competent and engaging with very believable characters. I have another of McDermid's novels on my stack to listen to. Mahoney handles the story telling well and does convincing women, not simply Jordan but also a range of bereaved mothers and female friends of the victims, to the extent that you forget he is there, a sign of a good reader.
'The Secret Adversary' by Agatha Christie; read by Samantha Bond
Most people tend to think of Agatha Christie having written murder mysteries set in English country houses. However, this, like 'The Seven Dials Mystery' (1929) which I read last month, is one of her adventure stories, of the Bulldog Drummond ilk, though with women taking a leading role. This is the first of five books featuring Thomas 'Tommy' Beresford and Prudence 'Tuppence' Cowley who subsequently marry. Though published in 1922, it is actually set just ten months after the end of the First World War, so around September 1919, though is not dramatized as such when seen on television. Seeking work, Tommy and Tuppence set themselves up as private detectives and are drawn into a conspiracy by Bolshevik agents to trigger a general strike, influencing trade union leaders by revealing a secret deal that was to be brokered with the Americans in 1915 but which was thought lost when the RMS 'Lusitania'. At the time it is set the Russian Civil War was still raging and the Russo-Polish War was about to break out. There was a concern about Russian revolutionaries trying to spread unrest across exhausted Europe, so it has a political currency akin to featuring ISIS agents planning unrest in Britain today.
As with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' the tone of the book is almost like an Enid Blyton story with lots of haring around Britain and being confined and escaping. At the heart of the mystery is identifying the prime Russian agent, Mr. Brown and recovering the proposed treaty, which is interesting to speculate on what it might contain. Fortunately the antagonists are not idiots and pull off tricks on the heroes and there are two well handled deceptions by other characters. Again, common with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' it is impossible to trust many of the characters and rather than the bulk being suspects, the majority are trusted until the real malefactor is revealed. This adventure story probably lacks the stately unravelling of a Christie mystery; instead it has frantic action and demonstrative dialogue and is very much of its time. I enjoyed it as a romp but little more. Samantha Bond is now one of my favourite readers and handles a whole spectrum of European accented English as well as catching the energy of the two leads appropriately.
'Poirot's Early Cases' by Agatha Christie; read by David Suchet and Hugh Fraser
This book was published in 1974 but was made up of 18 short stories that had appeared in magazines between 1923-35. You can see Poirot's progress through the stories. At the start he and Captain Hastings are sharing rooms and stories are told from Hastings's perspective, very much like John Watson recounting Sherlock Holmes's cases. By the end of the collection, Poirot is widely renowned, Hastings has moved out and Miss. Lemon has been appointed as his secretary, though she is less enthusiastic than portrayed in television dramatizations. Having seen dramatizations of all of the stories, it is interesting to note how they are fleshed out, I will not say 'padded out' because I do not feel there is anything extraneous in the television versions, but coming back to the original stories, you see their epigrammatic nature and demonstrate that Christie was adept at short story writing, something which requires different skills to writing novels, especially in terms of crime fiction.
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot and Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings, appeared right throughout the TV series 'Poirot' (broadcast 1989-2013) so it is fun to hear them when putting on the voices they acted with, when presenting these stories. They read alone on different stories. Suchet is far more adept at not only doing his Poirot voice, but a wide range of characters that feature in the short stories. Fraser, puts on the voices far less but I know some listeners appreciated the story being narrated rather than the norm of performing it. Both bring a richness to the stories and conjure up the time in which they are set. The crispness of these stories, interesting characters, the clever ploys used by the criminals and the detective, plus some interesting twists even in a short story, make these very enjoyable without having to become involved in lengthy detail. They do very well at showing up a particular side of Christie's writing. The two actors associated so much with the stories in the public consciousness being the reader just rounds off the success of this audio book.
'River of Gods' by Ian McDonald
Though published in 2004, this book is very much a Cyberpunk novel of the old style from the 1980s. Set in 2047 the action largely takes place in an India which has fragmented independent states, sometimes at war with each other. Artificial intelligence has advanced to a level at which it can exceed human thought and its application is policed. In the classic Cyberpunk approach, McDonald weaves together a range of apparently disparate characters whose various stories come together towards the climax. He handles this in a less clunky way than some of the 'heroes' of Cyberpunk, notably William Gibson. Though a westerner, he has done well, in my view anyway, in envisaging a future India, though some traits such as a love of cricket and soap operas, perhaps have been assumed to continue unchallenged.
The level of technology with drone attack devices and surgery that has led to the rise of 'nutes', literally surgically created neuter people, seems appropriate for the coming decades. It even features a sentient soap opera which I liked as a concept. There is some standard science fiction with a device close to Earth which is of ancient alien design and the development by a company which derives power from parallel universes, but they are merged in with the more down-to-Earth Cyberpunk technology without much of a jar. In addition there is a small scale war and climate change that has led to extended droughts. However, to some degree including all of these elements is pretty overwhelming for the reader.
The characters are diverse and believable, with their different motives, some pretty mundane such as escaping a cloying marriage, others exotic such as connecting to another universe. He has done reasonably well in looking at how a different world would shape attitudes, but crucially old world attitudes repeatedly shape the action and the fate of a number of the characters especially those that end tragically. Overall, this is an interesting book and if I had not read as much Cyberpunk as I have I think I would have been excited by it. The prime problem is the length (584 pages in my edition) and so you reach the closing stages of the book feeling worn out and wanting it to be over because you have had so many concepts, so many twists and turns, that by the end, you simply want the climax to be finished. The book is good, but ultimately drowns in all of the ideas, characters and activities that McDonald piles in.
'Pattern Recognition' by William Gibson
It was ironic that the next book I read was by William Gibson who had been one of the leading lights of the Cyberpunk era. However, I have been unaware that he has continued writing, indeed I was not even aware he was still alive. He seems, if 'Pattern Recognition' is characteristic of his post-Cyberpunk writing to have moved on to contemporary novels. This one is set in 2002, only a year before the book was published. Much activity happens in London, especially around Camden an area I visited a lot at that time. The first thing I noticed is how much Gibson has improved as a writer since I read his books in the 1980s. As noted in the review above, I always found the working out of his stories very clunky and you could see where they were heading from very early in the book. Added to that his writing has become far more lucid and there were passages in this book that I really admired for their skill. I cannot remember seeing an author develop so far as Gibson seems to have done and I guess it suggests there is hope for all authors, or maybe he just employed a better editor than before. Perhaps writing contemporary fiction, publishers do not simply bow down before his apparently stunning concepts as they might have once done.
The book focuses on American Cayce Pollard who has an allergy to brand logos and so is used by companies to test out whether their new logo will have impact. She is also alert to global trends and highlights 'the next big thing'. Rather erratically she becomes involved with artists and film makers, but as it progresses the book narrows down to her pursuing the maker of snippets of a film which have been released sporadically over the internet with no contextualisation. A community has grown up trying to read meaning into the snippets. The quest means her interacting with cool people from London to Tokyo to Moscow as ultimately she is successful in locating the source and keeping the information out of the hands of wealthy obsessives and corporations. At times the book is satirical about corporate culture and especially marketing and branding and takes a wry look at life in the capitals of the UK, Japan and Russia. The improvement in Gibson's writing really helps these elements be effective. His characters are interesting, not all of them are likeable and some verge on caricatures, but he creates a rich complex environment both real and virtual which does not go too far the way McDonald does to drown you in all that he has conjured up. While I will not rush out and buy all of Gibson's 21st Century output, if I come across others from this phase of his writing, I would not pick them up.
'Death at La Fenice' by Donna Leon
I have been given a lot of the books in Leon's Comissario Brunetti series, this book, published in 1992 was the first. I think this is because I enjoyed Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series also set in contemporary Italy. I have been annoyed by comments made by Leon in an interview to 'The Guardian' newspaper in which she said while no male author can successfully write female characters, female authors, because they live in a male-dominated world, are well capable of writing male characters. I found that a very arrogant attitude but given that she is an American I suppose such sweeping claims are to be expected.
This book is certainly a feminist crime novel. Though her police detective is a man, much of the story features women who have suffered at the hands of men. All the men beside Brunetti are at best bitchy or short-sighted in their arrogance and at worst repeated paedophile offenders. The story is around a famous German conductor who is found poisoned mid-way through a performance at La Fenice opera house in Venice. The story is pretty straight forward, like many detective stories set around theatres or concert halls. Leon is less concerned about the mystery and in fact the reader may be able to work out the solution from very early on. Her concern is showing how nasty the dead man was in his treatment of women, children, gay men and lesbians. These factors are more important to the story than the conductor's collaboration with the Nazi regime.
Perhaps it is Leon's upbringing, but in many ways I felt this novel was far older than 1992, especially in terms of its attitude to how women and lesbians are perceived. The view that the entire population is interested in opera and familiar with its participants also jarred. Hanging over much of the book is a very old fashioned social attitude. I think Leon, who lived in Italy for man years is chiding the country for not being up-to-date. In passing she notes it corruption, something which often featured in Dibdin's books. However, she does not successfully disengage from the dated social attitudes in her own portrayals which makes her seem complicit in them even while she might be aiming to counter them. Then again, she might not, but given what I have heard from her, I do not believed she sees these things this way herself or maybe she has a range of attitudes that it is difficult to entangle. Thus, overall, the women are largely victims of circumstances and maliciousness and the men are at least incompetent if not nasty in a range of ways. The only exception is her hero.
I do not really understand why the book received so much acclaim, perhaps because of its feminist agenda, maybe because of its detailed portrayal of Venice. It is a standard murder mystery that exposes the author's views on subjects very clearly to some degree removing much of the intrigue and at times compelling characters to be pretty exaggerated. I have a string of these books to get through and hope that Leon's writing improved especially in terms of subtlety.
Non-Fiction
'Rethinking British Decline' ed. by Richard English and Michael Kenny
There is so much going on in this book that it is difficult to review. It was published in 2000, but it is fascinating reading it now because of so many of the antecedents of the current Brexit crisis can be seen in it, even going back to 1962 and the leader of the Labour Party of the time, Hugh Gaitskell, warning about the dangers of European federalism. The first part of the book is a series of interviews with many of the great economic historians of the last two-fifths of the 20th Century, Sidney Pollard, Samuel Brittan, David Marquand and other commentators from that late period such as Corelli Barnett and Will Hutton. Much of their time is spent dismissing the views of the others and in some cases, notably Jonathan Clark, arguing that Britain actually did not decline in the 20th Century, in part due to the more widely held view that its economy has always been more about finance and insurance than manufacturing and emphasis on standards of living and opportunities; Britain still being in the G7.
The second part of the book is a more standard collection of chapters looking at the same aspects often mentioned in the first half of the book, such as problems with British culture and institutions, plus relationship with the European Community and the former Empire. There are no firm conclusions, except perhaps that declinism as a political tool has been greater than actual evidence of decline itself. Interestingly, it is all handled at a very high level of society and politics and aside from comments on the rise of unemployment under the Thatcher governments, there is no reference to rising poverty, debt, homelessness, ill-health and declining education and opportunities across the UK. I do not think an update today would have such a neutral sense, but then it was produced in the days of 'things can only get better' early in the Blair governments. I think this is a good summary of the different angles on British decline and especially on declinism as a ideology usable across the political spectrum. In some ways it also marks a changing of the guard, and despite the persistence of some of those interviewed into old age, it seems unlikely that economic historians will ever have such an impact on politics as they did in the 1960s-90s and that in itself is interesting to see as that breed of academic/commentator was coming to their sunset in terms of influence.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Sepulchre' by Kate Mosse; read by Lorelei King
I felt I had read Mosse's best seller 'Labyrinth' (2006) longer ago than it had been published. I have seen some of her later books, including this one published in 2007, regularly in charity shops, but had been put off by the length of them, so it was ideal to have as an audio book. As with 'Labyrinth' in 'Sepulchre', Mosse uses the approach of parallel stories between two women's lives, one in the present and one in the past, in this case 1891 rather than the 13th Century. Meredith Martin travels to France to research the life of Claude Debussy for a book she is writing and as a side mission to find out a little about her birth family, which it proves, originated in southern France. Martin ends up going to Rennes-les-Baines and staying at a hotel in the Domaine de la Cade. In 1891, with her brother mixed up with a jealous wealthy man's revenge and fleeing creditors, the teenager Léonie Vernier travels to the same house owned by her widowed aunt. A further connection is a sepulchre in the grounds of the house, apparently connected to the Cathars persecuted in the region in the 13th Century and the source of both music and art work, notably tarot card designs, that both Vernier and Martin come into contact.
At first I thought that the book was going to be at a very populist level. King's opening narration, very breathless in the US audio book style, added to this sense. However, I was glad that I persisted. Both King and the book settled down and while you might feel the connections are rather contrived, as the story progressed you had the sense that the motives and behaviour in both times were legitimate. While the genuinely nasty antagonist closes in on the Vernier siblings, Martin becomes involved in investigating the death of her new lover's father. This was the section which jarred most. Martin, in her late twenties, seems willing to hop into bed with a stranger and to become his partner very quickly, involving herself in a dangerous situation with aplomb. I do not know if that is the self-confidence of American women, but given that the author is asking us to accept tarot readings and phantoms and does so pretty well, this aspect really jarred and I felt she had been ordered to include it for some sex rather than to genuinely advance the story. Interestingly, this was a book that I enjoyed as it progressed. However, I do think she did not need to go into the latter years of Léonie Vernier's life and it would have been crisper to end it all in 1891. Thus, at times I had mixed feelings about the book, but was ultimately satisfied by it. I largely believed the characters and what they go up to. The Gothic elements were handled well without becoming overblown or too deeply trope coining. The research and attention to detail was excellent.
While I often have difficulty with US narrators over-exaggerating their readings and really worried that King was going to persist with this, as I have found with other such readers, if you give them a few chapters at the start, they settle down and given a more level tone. She does the range of voices both male and female, in both time periods well. While I feel a reader of a different nationality would have made the story sound more sinister, King's performance was not as much out of step as I initially feared.
'Fever of the Bone' by Val McDermid; read by Michael Mahoney
I listened to the first of McDermid's stories featuring psychologist Tony Hill and police detective Carol Jordan, 'The Mermaids Singing' (1995) last year. This book published in 2009, is the sixth in the series which this year reached 11 books. Hill and Jordan now live in the same building though not together. In large part this is blamed on Hill's impotence which has continued through the novels.Furthermore Jordan, heading a specialist murder investigation team, is encouraged not to call on Hill's services when teenagers begin to go missing and then turn up dead with their genitals removed and instead use a cheaper police psychologist. Hill goes from the fictional Bradfield to work for the police of Worcester which develops the sub-plot of the death of his father who disappeared before he was born and his own poor relationship with his nasty mother. Hill is brought into a case which soon connects to the killings in Bradfield and aided by the arrogant incompetence of the police psychologist is brought into the broader case. While the book is about a serial killer, the motive differs from those which usually turn up and the twist to keep the killer's identity secret is well handled. Overall, the book is competent and engaging with very believable characters. I have another of McDermid's novels on my stack to listen to. Mahoney handles the story telling well and does convincing women, not simply Jordan but also a range of bereaved mothers and female friends of the victims, to the extent that you forget he is there, a sign of a good reader.
'The Secret Adversary' by Agatha Christie; read by Samantha Bond
Most people tend to think of Agatha Christie having written murder mysteries set in English country houses. However, this, like 'The Seven Dials Mystery' (1929) which I read last month, is one of her adventure stories, of the Bulldog Drummond ilk, though with women taking a leading role. This is the first of five books featuring Thomas 'Tommy' Beresford and Prudence 'Tuppence' Cowley who subsequently marry. Though published in 1922, it is actually set just ten months after the end of the First World War, so around September 1919, though is not dramatized as such when seen on television. Seeking work, Tommy and Tuppence set themselves up as private detectives and are drawn into a conspiracy by Bolshevik agents to trigger a general strike, influencing trade union leaders by revealing a secret deal that was to be brokered with the Americans in 1915 but which was thought lost when the RMS 'Lusitania'. At the time it is set the Russian Civil War was still raging and the Russo-Polish War was about to break out. There was a concern about Russian revolutionaries trying to spread unrest across exhausted Europe, so it has a political currency akin to featuring ISIS agents planning unrest in Britain today.
As with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' the tone of the book is almost like an Enid Blyton story with lots of haring around Britain and being confined and escaping. At the heart of the mystery is identifying the prime Russian agent, Mr. Brown and recovering the proposed treaty, which is interesting to speculate on what it might contain. Fortunately the antagonists are not idiots and pull off tricks on the heroes and there are two well handled deceptions by other characters. Again, common with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' it is impossible to trust many of the characters and rather than the bulk being suspects, the majority are trusted until the real malefactor is revealed. This adventure story probably lacks the stately unravelling of a Christie mystery; instead it has frantic action and demonstrative dialogue and is very much of its time. I enjoyed it as a romp but little more. Samantha Bond is now one of my favourite readers and handles a whole spectrum of European accented English as well as catching the energy of the two leads appropriately.
'Poirot's Early Cases' by Agatha Christie; read by David Suchet and Hugh Fraser
This book was published in 1974 but was made up of 18 short stories that had appeared in magazines between 1923-35. You can see Poirot's progress through the stories. At the start he and Captain Hastings are sharing rooms and stories are told from Hastings's perspective, very much like John Watson recounting Sherlock Holmes's cases. By the end of the collection, Poirot is widely renowned, Hastings has moved out and Miss. Lemon has been appointed as his secretary, though she is less enthusiastic than portrayed in television dramatizations. Having seen dramatizations of all of the stories, it is interesting to note how they are fleshed out, I will not say 'padded out' because I do not feel there is anything extraneous in the television versions, but coming back to the original stories, you see their epigrammatic nature and demonstrate that Christie was adept at short story writing, something which requires different skills to writing novels, especially in terms of crime fiction.
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot and Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings, appeared right throughout the TV series 'Poirot' (broadcast 1989-2013) so it is fun to hear them when putting on the voices they acted with, when presenting these stories. They read alone on different stories. Suchet is far more adept at not only doing his Poirot voice, but a wide range of characters that feature in the short stories. Fraser, puts on the voices far less but I know some listeners appreciated the story being narrated rather than the norm of performing it. Both bring a richness to the stories and conjure up the time in which they are set. The crispness of these stories, interesting characters, the clever ploys used by the criminals and the detective, plus some interesting twists even in a short story, make these very enjoyable without having to become involved in lengthy detail. They do very well at showing up a particular side of Christie's writing. The two actors associated so much with the stories in the public consciousness being the reader just rounds off the success of this audio book.
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