The Searcher by Tana French

Cal Hooper #1

391 pages

Publisher: Penguin/Viking

Publishing date: October 2020

 

Blurb

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a remote Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force, and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens.

But then a local kid comes looking for his help. Trey’s brother has gone missing, and no one, least of all the police, seems to care. Cal wants nothing to do with any kind of investigation, but somehow he can’t make himself walk away.

Soon Cal will discover that even in the most idyllic small tow, secrets lie hidden, people aren’t always what they seem, and trouble can come calling at his door.

 

Review

To say this book has a slow start would be an understatement. The first quarter of the story leisurely meanders along. The reader is in Cal’s head as he reflects on his new life and surroundings in Ireland and what, and more importantly who, he left behind in America. The writing was beautiful, and Cal is an interesting main character, but the slow pace didn’t urge me to keep on reading. On the other hand, it is fair to say the story's pace perfectly matched the pace of the life Cal thought he was settling into.

Everything starts to change and speed up as soon as Cal meets Trey, a thirteen-year-old kid who wants Cal to use his police skills to find out what happened to their older brother who disappeared a few months earlier. Once Cal starts asking questions the story and events pick up speed, but it isn’t until the last third of the book that the tale really explodes off the page and events follow each other at a much faster, at times rather uncomfortable but always fascinating, pace.

So much for the story since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. I have a few thoughts about what exactly did and didn’t happen in the end. For starters, if you read crime fiction because you love the straightforward endings in which evil gets punished and everybody gets what they deserve, this may not be the book for you. I think it’s safe to say there are no clear-cut good and bad people in this story with the possible exception of Lena, the widow Cal befriends and ends up relying on for assistance. While that may not be ideal for a fictional mystery, it does feel true to life. In fact, true to life could be used to describe a lot of what happened in this book. The way small local communities are inclined to distrust outsiders and, for better or worse, tend to take care of their own, for example, as well as the rural gossip, and the leisurely pace of life. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I believe Cal, the former cop, would behave as he does in this story; his actions should go against everything he was trained to believe in. On the other hand, any other decision on his part might have let to more harm rather than a ‘satisfying’ conclusion so the jury is still out in that respect.

In an interview with the All About Agatha podcast (https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Sl35ZwxlgtSNxOrnKWYXb), Tana French revealed that she took tropes from the Western genre and applied them to the west of Ireland, and as far as I’m concerned, she succeeded very well. This story has that ‘loner against the rest of the community’ (the old gunslinger who gets rocked out of retirement for one more mission, to paraphrase Tana French) vibe that we also find in traditional westerns as well as the ‘us against the rest of the world’ sentiments we often encounter in small, close-knit communities.

For a long time while reading this story, I didn’t think I would want to read the sequel. The last quarter of the story changed my mind; I now can’t wait to find out what will happen next to Cal, Trey, and Lena. Bring on March 2024 and The Hunter.

 

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

447 pages

Publisher: Viper

Book Club Read

Own

 

Blurb

 One Murder.

Fifteen Suspects.

Can You Uncover the Truth?

There is a mystery to solve in the small town of Lockwood. It starts with the arrival of two secretive newcomers, and ends with a tragic death. Roderick Tanner QC has assigned law students Charlotte and Femi to the case. Someone has already been sent to prison for murder, but he suspects they are innocent. And far darker secrets have yet to be revealed…

Through the amateur dramatics society’s disastrous staging of All My Sons and the shady charity appeal for a little girl’s medical treatment, the murderer hit in plain sight. Will Charlotte and Femi solve the case? Will you?

 

Review

 “Arthur Miller constructs a play the way a sculptor creates a three-dimensional image from an amorphous chunk of clay. He shows us a basic shape. Then bends and stretches its contours, turns it for us to view alternate angles, gradually reveals the finer details until, finally, we can see for ourselves what it really is.”

And the same can be said for this story. Nothing is as it appears at first and as the story progresses, deeper and hidden levels are constantly revealed. The big question being how it all ties into the mystery.

It is only thanks to the first two pages, where two young lawyers (?) are tasked to go over the paperwork of a case, that we know we will be dealing with a murder somebody has already be imprisoned for.

The next 2/3s of the book deals with an amateur dramatics group and the real-life drama taking place off stage. Through emails and messages, we get to know the Fairway Players and how they relate to each other. We learn about a young child with cancer and the fundraising efforts to get her an experimental treatment from America. But most of all, we slowly but steadily discover that nobody is exactly how or who they present themselves as. Secrets, past connections, animosity, obsession, fraud, lies, they all float to the surface. Until ultimately, on the premiere of their performance of All My Sons things come to a head. Truths are spoken and accusations made, and they lead to death.

I have to be honest, the cast list in this story is so long that it took me a while before I knew who was who and how they related to each other, and to what was happening. While it was a little frustrating initially, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because keeping track of it all forced me to read slowly and pay attention to all the details. And that, in turn, allowed me to notice the various discrepancies and misdirections I might have missed if I’d read at my normal pace.

The murder is almost an afterthought. In most mysteries, we start with a body after which the investigator tries to figure out the motives and events that led up to and might explain the crime. In The Appeal, we are given all those possible motives and the events that led up to the crime before the murder is committed. You would think that having all that information would make the identity of whodunit obvious. Not for me. I still wasn’t sure who out of an enormous cast of suspects had done the deed.

The murder victim wasn’t who I thought it would be either, although it does make a lot of sense it would be them. The actual murderer was also rather low on my list of suspects, although now that I know, it does make sense that it would be who it is.

The final page and a half were delightfully creepy.

I rarely re-read books, not even mysteries, on purpose, although the occasional title does slip in due to my far-from-perfect memory. However, I can’t help feeling that The Appeal and Hallett’s other titles would greatly benefit from a re-read. While I tried to keep a running list of characters and things that stood out about them and their actions while reading this story, I’m still sure I must have missed a long list of clues. For obvious reasons, I can’t share those notes or the thoughts I had when I wrote them down. The fun (for me) in this mystery is the slow lifting of the veil.

After having read all three of Janice Hallett’s currently available titles I have to conclude that she is something of a genius when it comes to slow reveals and misdirection while still giving the reader all the information they need to keep up with the investigators. Except that the fictional sleuths have so far proven a lot cleverer than I am. Then again, being shocked and surprised by the end of the book is one of the big joys I find in reading mysteries.

I am now caught up with Hallett’s mysteries and eagerly awaiting the release of The Christmas Appeal on October 26^th. The blurb indicates that the story will return us to the Fairway Players and Femi and Charlotte, which should be interesting, to put it mildly. 

Bring. It. On.

Queen Bee by Ciara Geraghty

416 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins

Publishing Date: Feb 2023

Own

Book Club Selection

 

Blurb

Agatha Doyle is in denial. Her glorious empty nest has filled up with two adult sons and a widowed father busy renovating her childhood home for his new girlfriend. Worst of all, she can’t seem to write a word of her overdue novel. Or confide in her husband, Luke, that she’s plunged off a cliff into menopause.

When she’s talked over at a panel event, Agatha has had enough – stepping forward she stands up for herself and unintentionally goes viral, becoming the poster girl for midlife women everywhere.

But underneath the new life, what is happening in her old one – and in particular, her marriage?

 

Review

Well, this was quite a read and I’ve got some thoughts. 😊

I really liked the idea that formed this story. Goodness knows that it’s all too ‘easy’ these days to achieve online fame and/or notoriety, so Agatha going viral after a rant for middle-aged women and against the patriarchy is more than realistic. What’s more, the underlying idea that menopause is something that is either denied or ignored isn’t too far from the everyday truth either. It’s a bit like other issues that exclusively affect women. Menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause are ‘inconveniences’ that the world (read: mostly men) has decided we should just put with while shutting up about them. Men-flu on the other hand… Don’t get me started.

Did you see what happened there? I was only trying to review a book and within one paragraph I find myself ‘pulling an Agatha’, be it less publicly.

But, back to my thoughts on the book. So, the instant fame premise works very well. The same can be said for Agatha’s anger and exasperation about…well, basically the world at large. Except that, I’m not sure anybody, no matter how hormonal, is angry and snarky all the time. And with Agatha, it does appear to be a continuous anger rather than an ebb and flow of mood swings; coming and going just as the hot flushes and night sweats do. Of course, we only know about Agatha’s moods because she writes about them, and like most people who keep a journal, she writes about the emotional high and low lights and not about the mundane ‘meh’ moments in between. Which is fair enough, and there are one or two moments when we get glimpses of a more mellow Agatha, but I would like to have seen a few more of those. And I would have liked it if she hadn’t grumbled about every nice thought she had or any good deed she did. Not only because that would have made Agatha more sympathetic but also because it would create a (bigger) contrast with all her anger and frustration.

But enough about that. That long paragraph makes Agatha’s anger sound like a huge issue, which it wasn’t. It’s just something I noticed along the way.

This story is firmly and very well set in the world we live in right now. Grown-up children returning to live at home and not having any real prospects of setting up a life for themselves independently; it’s sadly all to recognisable. I’m guessing that anybody who’s been in a relationship for a long(er) period of time is aware of how easily things can slip into a rut. And goodness knows that Agatha isn’t the only one struggling to juggle work, home, love, friendships, children, parents, and whatever else the world decides to throw our way.

I may have given you the impression that Queen Bee is a heavy, somewhat dark story. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Queen Bee is a smoothly written, light-hearted, and effortless read. At times Agatha’s thoughts are laugh-out-loud funny and I found myself chuckling more than once. There isn’t a boring moment in this story as the plot pushes you along until it reaches its climax.

As for that climax…Let’s just say it used two plot devices I’m not fond of and leave it at that.

Overall, I really liked Queen Bee. Just like in her earlier books, Ciara Geraghty created a fascinating main character that pulled me into her story and didn’t let go until I’d reached the final page. The side characters were well-presented and interesting. The way this rather light-hearted read managed to raise real and complicated issues is impressive. And I think it’s wonderful such a strong and feisty voice was given to menopause. I can only hope it will resonate.

In other words: Queen Bee is a good story well told.

 

*****

 

Side note:

I’m curious. Do (Irish) women (in general) really never discuss menopause? If the answer to that question is yes, I guess I should be grateful for my mother who, at some point during the late 1970’s announced to my brother and me that she was menopausal and that she was probably going to be short-tempered from that moment forward. Truth be told, I don’t remember her as being particularly short-tempered but that doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the heads-up or the ease with which she announced that phase in her life.

Also: how does the Queen bee dying relate to our titular Queen Bee fleeing to LA? Or does it?

 

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

325 pages

Publisher: Penguin

Publishing Date: August 2018

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

When the Greek Queen Helen is kidnapped by Trojans, the Greeks sail in pursuit, besieging the city of Troy. Trapped in the Greek soldiers’ camp is another captured queen, Briseis. Condemned to be bed-slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her family, she becomes a pawn in a menacing game between bored and frustrated warriors. In the centuries after this most famous war, history will write her off, a footnote in a bloody story scripted by vengeful men – but Briseis has a very different tale to tell…

 

Review

They say, and this book’s blurb confirms, that history is written by the victors. But it is only a tiny part of the truth I think. Because, in general, it is the men who were victorious who get to tell the tale, and the tales tend to be about those men, too. The women, if they do get mentioned are mostly an afterthought, an aside, irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. The blurb promises us a different perspective – Briseis’s – but is that what we get?

Not according to Briseis herself. Near the end of the book, she says:

Looking back, it seemed to me that I’d been trying to escape not just from the camp, but from Achilles’ story; and I failed. Because, make no mistake, this was his story – his anger, his grief, his story.

In many ways this is still The Song of Achilles (pun intended). Everything that happens to Briseis from the moment the book starts until the very last paragraph is the result of Achilles’ actions, choices, and decisions. What’s more, when we get to the second part of the book, we suddenly get a new, third-person perspective, next to Briseis’ first-person narrative. Achilles who, until that moment, had only been shown through Briseis’ eyes, now gets a voice of his own.

So even in a book called The Silence of the Girls, eventually the one girl who has been given a voice is occasionally silenced. And I’m not sure that it was entirely necessary. Surely the stories of the ancient Greeks and the Trojan War are well enough known that the readers could be trusted to see Achilles only through Briseis’ eyes? Would his despair after Patroclus died have been any less obvious or heart-wrenching if Briseis had described it? Did we need his thoughts and guilt trips to recognise the humanity in this demi-god? I have no way of proving this, but I can’t escape the feeling that our process of feeling (at least) some sympathy for him would have been as powerful (if not more so) if we had seen it through Briseis’ eyes; if we had been part of her very reluctant journey to the point where she sees that Achilles wasn’t all bad – that in many ways he was as much a victim of circumstances and the times he lived and died in as she was.

On the other hand, maybe Archilles’ point of view goes to prove a point – the point being that girl voices were silenced, as the title of the book tells us.

Mind you, especially in the earlier part of the book, there were times when Briseis' words made me sit up and brought tears to my eyes.

A slave isn’t a person who’s being treated as a thing. A slave is a thing, as much in her own estimation as in anybody elses.

Later on, Briseis adds:

…and a slave will do anything, anything at all, to stop being a thing and become a person again.

A statement made more interesting by the fact that when push comes to shove, Briseis decides against doing the one thing that might have made that transition back possible, be it only for a short while.

Suffice it to say that I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book. While I wouldn’t call this an easy read, it was certainly very smooth. The reservations I mentioned above don’t make this any less of a powerful story, beautifully written. It gives the reader a perspective we’re not normally given, and it certainly provoked numerous thoughts and feelings while I was reading and now that I’ve finished the story. If I have to grade this book (and I will be asked to do as much in the book club meeting), I give this book four stars.

And finally, as an aside: I guess the clue is in the name: history. Will we ever get to the time when herstory will receive equal billing?

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

 

410 pages

Publisher: Harper Collins

Bookclub

 

Blurb

 

Welcome to No.12 rue des Amants

A beautiful old apartment block, far from the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower and the bustling banks of the Seine.

Where nothing goes unseen, and everyone has a story to unlock.

The watchful concierge
The scorned lover
The prying journalist
The naïve student
The unwanted guest

There was a murder here last night.
A mystery lies behind the door of apartment three.

Who holds the key?

 

Review

WOW!!!

There are well-plotted mysteries and then there is The Paris Apartment. To say I am impressed would be a gross understatement.

There is very little I can tell you about the story. Jess leaves her shitty job in England in a hurry and travels to Paris to stay with her brother Ben. From the moment she arrives at the address he’s given her, things seem off. For starters, how could her brother possibly be able to afford a place in such a luxurious building? That question is quickly pushed to the back of Jess’s mind when her brother doesn’t appear to be there to let her in. He doesn’t answer his phone either and isn’t reading her text messages. With nowhere else to go and very little money to her name, Jess has no choice but to find her way into the building and Ben’s apartment.

There is no sign of Ben in the apartment either, but worryingly, Jess does find his wallet. Jess stays because she has nowhere else to go and because she wants to find out what has happened to her brother.

Her search centres on the other people living in the building and the more Jess learns, the more she discovers that nothing is as it seems.

And that’s when a breathtakingly intense mystery slowly unfolds. There are layers upon layers of secrets to be revealed, unexpected connections to be made, and shocking discoveries a plenty. Lucy Foley achieved something remarkable here. This story works on every level and is masterfully plotted. In my arrogance, I thought at one point that I had it figured out. I was wrong. Very wrong. What happened in this story was more intricate and intelligent than what I had come up with.

This book is a page-turner and a half. It layers twist upon twist and then adds a few extra twists just when you think surely all has been revealed. The story pulls you in and the more you read, the deeper it sinks its claws into you. This was, without a doubt, the best book I have read so far this year. It’s going to take something very special to push it off that top spot.

Three Sisters by Heather Morris

414 pages

Publisher: Bonnier Books

Publishing date: October 2021

Own Copy

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

A promise to stay together.

An unbreakable bond.

A fierce will to survive.

From international bestselling author Heather Morris comes the breathtaking conclusion to The Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy.

When they are girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father - that they will stay together, no matter what.

Years later, at just 15 years old, Livia is ordered to Auschwitz by the Nazis. Cibi, only 19 herself, remembers their promise and follows Livia, determined to protect her sister, or die with her.

In their hometown in Slovakia, 17-year-old Magda hides, desperate to evade the barbaric Nazi forces. But it is not long before she is captured and condemned to Auschwitz.

In the horror of the death camp, these three beautiful sisters are reunited. Though traumatised by their experiences, they are together.

They make another promise: that they will live. Their fight for survival takes them from the hell of Auschwitz, to a death march across war-torn Europe and eventually home to Slovakia, now under iron Communist rule. Determined to begin again, they embark on a voyage of renewal, to the new Jewish homeland, Israel.

Rich in vivid detail, and beautifully told, Three Sisters will break your heart, but leave you amazed and uplifted by the courage and fierce love of three sisters, whose promise to each other kept them alive. Two of the sisters are in Israel today, surrounded by family and friends. They have chosen Heather Morris to reimagine their story in her astonishing new novel, Three Sisters.

 

Review

It’s not very often that I read a story that is as horrific as it is uplifting and inspiring, but that’s what happened here. I’m sure I do not have to go into detailed descriptions of the nightmare Cibi, Livia, and later Magda were forced to live through while in German concentration camps. Suffice it to say that it is nothing short of a miracle that anybody would survive such ordeals with their humanity intact, yet all three of them did. And that’s only one of several miracles. The odds against Magda and her two sisters finding each other and being reunited once the middle sister is also captured by the Nazi machine are staggering but it happened. That all three of them managed to survive both the camps and the death march is nothing short of mind-blowing, as is the fact that all three found their way to the emerging state of Israel and a new life.

It was somewhat surprising that while the horrors I read only pushed me from word to word, it was the happier moments, like when Cibi gave birth to her son, that brought tears to my eyes. Or maybe it is not that surprising since my reactions mostly mirrored those of the three sisters. They pushed their emotions away during the nightmares they endured, only to let them flow once they’d found (relative) safety.

I haven’t read either of the prequels to this book and I don’t think I ever will. Born in the early 1960 in the Netherlands, I was raised on WW II stories. In fact, the vast majority of books published at the time in the Netherlands was in one way or another related to the war and/or its aftermath. Stories about the five years during which the Netherlands was occupied were required reading in school. History lessons were dominated by those recent events at the cost of everything that happened in previous centuries. I imagine there isn’t a horrific event or heroic action I haven’t read about over the years, and I’m not convinced exposing myself to more of it will benefit me in any way, no matter how uplifting the ending of such a story might be.

Three Sisters is a very well-written book and portrays the lives of these three girls/women in graphic and often horrific detail. I have no doubt both The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey are equally good and worthy books. I just don’t think that reading them will bring me anything other than more confirmation of man’s ability to inflict terrifying horrors on his fellow man.

Which is why, when I remember this book, I will focus on the promise the three young girls made to their father. They said they would always stick together, and they did. Keeping their promise goes a long way to explaining how they managed to survive their ordeal although it’s hard to deny that an enormous amount of ‘luck’—a bad word to use given the circumstances, but non the less true—played a big role too.

I guess that’s the message I take away from this book. If the whole world turns against you, trust and hang on to those who only have your best interest at heart, even if it means ignoring everybody else.

Nora by Nuala O’Connor

426 pages

Publisher: New Island Books

Library book

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

Dublin, 1904. Nora Joseph Barnacle is a twenty-year-old from Galway working as a maid at Finn’s Hotel. She enjoys the liveliness of her adopted city and on June 16—Bloomsday—her life is changed when she meets Dubliner James Joyce, a fateful encounter that turns into a lifelong love. Despite his hesitation to marry, Nora follows Joyce in pursuit of a life beyond Ireland, and they surround themselves with a buoyant group of friends that grows to include Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and Sylvia Beach.

But as their life unfolds, Nora finds herself in conflict between their intense desire for each other and the constant anxiety of living in poverty throughout Europe. She desperately wants literary success for Jim, believing in his singular gift and knowing that he thrives on being the toast of the town, and it eventually provides her with a security long lacking in her life and his work. So even when Jim writes, drinks, and gambles his way to literary acclaim, Nora provides unflinching support and inspiration, but at a cost to her own happiness and that of their children.

 With gorgeous and emotionally resonant prose, Nora is a heartfelt portrayal of love, ambition, and the quiet power of an ordinary woman who was, in fact, extraordinary.

 

Review

This is going to be one of my ‘I’m not entirely sure what to say’ reviews.

Don’t get me wrong. Nora’s story captivated me. I loved her voice and the way she picked her words and formulated her sentences.

“Sometimes I crave a little alone time to just let my thoughts scatter.”

That’s just one example. I have a much longer list of Nora-sayings written down in my reading-notebook.

Nora was also an easy read in so far that I got swept up in the tale, found it hard to put the book down, and couldn’t wait to get back to it when I had to pause my reading. At the same time, Nora is anything but an easy read when it comes to the content of her story and in my mind, I retitled it…

The things we do for love…

Because you would need to love somebody deeply in order to put up with everything Jim Joyce put Nora through. From James refusing to marry her for the longest time, through the various locations where they lived in sometimes abject poverty dependent on others just to keep a roof over their growing family’s heads and food on the table, to a life led making sacrifices for James’s art, it takes someone special and an extraordinary level of love and trust to stay the distance.

I wonder if I would have had a better understanding of Nora and James if I’d known more about them and if it would have made a difference if I had read, for example, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.

 I’m not sure how to write this review without summarising the journey the Joyce family made, and honestly, if you're curious about that, you're far better off reading this beautiful book.

Ultimately, Nora was a gorgeously written book about an anything-but-easy life. I was happily surprised to discover it was universally loved and admired by the members of my reading group, even if one or two felt the need to remark on the more erotic scenes in the story. I’m very happy I read this story. And it just goes to show that it is indeed true that behind every great man there’s a great woman because it is hard to imagine James Joyce reaching the heights he achieved without Nora facilitating his life and art.

 

 

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

 

276 pages

Kindle edition

First published November 6, 1939

Book Club read February 2023

 

Blurb

First, there were ten - a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal - and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.

 

Review

 

Ten little soldier boys went out to dine;

One choked his little self and then there were Nine.

Nine little soldier boys sat up very late;

One overslept himself and then there were Eight.

Eight little soldier boys travelling in Devon;

One said he’d stay there and then there were Seven.

Seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks;

One chopped himself in halves ad then there were Six.

Six little soldier boys playing with a hive;

A bumble bee stung one and then there were Five.

Five little soldier boys going in for law;

One got in Chancery and then there were Four.

Four little soldier boys going out to sea;

A red herring swallowed one and then there were Three

Three little soldier boys walking in the Zoo;

A big bear hugged one and then there were Two.

Two little soldier boys sitting in the sun;

One got frizzled up and then there was One.

One little soldier boy left all alone;

He went and hanged himself and then there were None.

From the Author’s Note:

I had written this book because it was so difficult to do that the idea fascinated me.

As for me, I was fascinated from the opening few paragraphs describing several people making their way to a place called Soldier Island. Their destination may be the same, but they don’t know each other, aren’t aware others are making the same journey, or that they’ve all been invited under a different pretence.

As the blurb suggests, the guests are in for one or two unpleasant surprises. And chief among those is the fact that one by one they will be killed as punishment for deaths they have caused in the past but gotten away with.

I do not want to spoil this book for anybody who may not be familiar with the story or for those who, like me, read it so long ago that they've forgotten every single detail. Suffice to say that I was mesmerized by this tale and not just because it appeared to be an impossible crime. Once it becomes clear that the eight guests and two servants are the only people on the island, we know that the only possible explanation is that one of them has to be the deranged murderer. But if all of them die, how can that possibly be the case?

It's not just the mystery of who and how that kept me captivated. The slow but steady slide from disbelief via fear and anger to utter paranoia was fascinating. It was also very cleverly executed because Christie has a very light touch. In fact, if I had to pick one facet of this story that stood out over all others it would be her ability to show her reader darkness without ever spelling it out or layering it on with heavy strokes.

I have to hand it to Agatha Christie. Yes, the idea for this story is fascinating and it reads like an impossible-to-resolve mystery (even) more than her other stories. Yet, once all was revealed at the end of the story—and therefore much too late to save anybody’s life—it did makes sense and both motivation and means of execution convinced me. I’m not sure why that should surprise me; they don’t call Christie the Queen of Crime for nothing. 😊 In fact, if it hadn’t been for the wonderful and in-depth All About Agatha podcast, I would have been oblivious about the one plotting ‘mistake’ in this story.

 

I am delighted I picked this book for my book club and can’t wait for the discussion. Reading And Then There Were None also has made me even more determined to revisit more Agatha Christie mysteries. I rarely re-read any books but I’m looking forward to making an exception for her mysteries.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

193 Pages 

Publisher: Penguin

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Her unexpected visit forces Lucy to confront the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of her life: her impoverished childhood in Amgash, Illinois, her escape to New York and her desire to become a writer, her faltering marriage, her love for her two daughters.

Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable. In My Name Is Lucy Barton, one of America's finest writers shows how a simple hospital visit illuminates the most tender relationship of all-the one between mother and daughter.

 

Review

My Name is Lucy Barton was a fascinating read. For the longest time, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was reading. At first, the story felt fragmented and confused; it went back and forth in time and since it was told in short paragraphs and chapters, it initially also felt incomplete.

This improved as I got further into the story, though. Or maybe, my perception of it changed once I recognised that the story was told the way our thought processes work; rarely linear and often jumping from time to time and topic to topic.

As the blurb states, this is a tale of a woman who has more or less completely cut herself off from her impoverished and often cruel childhood. But while it is possible to take oneself away from a situation, it is much harder to separate ourselves from the person who experienced that situation. While Lucy is in hospital, she has plenty of time to contemplate her life, who she is, and how she relates to her life and the people she has encountered. Her mother’s visit, which is completely out of character for the mother Lucy remembers, adds new angles to Lucy’s memories as she discovers that it is impossible to leave yourself in the past.

Where I disagree with the blurb, or rather, where I feel the blurb is incomplete is where it implies that the whole story is about the mother-daughter relationship. To me this was the story about Lucy discovering who she is, both because of and despite her fractious relationship with her past and family. It is only through reassessing what has gone before that she can move ahead and arrive at the point where she can say “My name is Lucy Barton” and fully (or as fully as any of us ever can) understand what that means.

My final thought about this book is that I had to remind myself more than once that I was reading a novel, a work of fiction, and not a memoir. I haven’t decided yet whether that is a pro or a con. 😊

Panenka by Rónán Hession

166 pages

Publisher: Bluemoose

 

Blurb

His name was Joseph, but for years they had called him Panenka, a name that was his sadness and his story. Panenka has spent 25 years living with the disastrous mistakes of his past, which have made him an exile in his home town and cost him his dearest relationships. Now aged 50, Panenka begins to rebuild an improvised family life with his estranged daughter and her seven year old son.

But at night, Panenka suffers crippling headaches that he calls his Iron Mask. Faced with losing everything, he meets Esther, a woman who has come to live in the town to escape her own disappointments. Together, they find resonance in each other’s experiences and learn new ways to let love into their broken lives.

Review

I read Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession just under a year ago and adored the book. As I wrote at the time, ‘it is a quiet read…sweet, uplifting, and all the more thought-provoking for it’. So, I went into Panenka with high expectations and I’m very happy to report that I wasn’t disappointed.

Like its predecessor, Panenka is anything but an action-filled page turner. And yet, the story gripped me from the very start, and I would have found it next to impossible to put the book down for long. Thankfully, there was no need for me to be away from the story for any length of time after I started reading.

This is very much a character-driving story. A story about life, the moments that define us, and the always present opportunity to choose differently and, maybe, do better. For the most part (and with the possible exception of Panenka himself), the issues the characters in this book face aren’t huge, or earth-shattering. That makes them all the more recognisable. And the same is true for the way they deal with their situations. And that’s what made this book so special for me. It doesn’t create drama for the sake of it, because life, with its ups and downs, is dramatic enough without overstating the facts.

What most impressed me about Panenka and its predecessor is the apparent discrepancy between what appears to be a simple and subdued story and the glorious, thoughtful, and thought-provoking language in which is told. So many sentences and paragraphs stopped me in my tracks. I’d re-read them while pondering the message or admiring the choice of word, the imagery, the depth. I’m sharing a few examples below, but I was spoiled for choice in this book and could easily have come up with a much, much longer list.

“It struck him how unreliable age was as a measure of anything. All it did was count the distance from the start when what truly mattered was the time remaining.” (p.63)

“Well look at us. I could have asked for the full tour – you could have shown me around all your own facts and circumstances, given me the tourist board version of yourself. A whole story that I would later have to revise or unlearn based on who you turned out to be. Bit if I start with what you’re actually like, pick you up where I found you, then at least I’m starting with my information. I can sketch you my won way, and then colour you in over time.” (p.99)

“At times this place has been like quicksand. At other times like the centre of the world.” (p.112)

“Sometimes, as I get older, I wonder whether all that’s left are the unfixable things.” (p.115)

“Loneliness is a torch. It can show you things about yourself.” (p.123)

“But isn’t that what allowing yourself to be loved is all about – letting something greater than fear into your life?” (p.160)

 

Long review short. Panenka is a treasure of a book. The quiet story it tells is filled with humanity. It touched me deeply without ever turning sentimental. Between Leonard and Hungry Paul and Panenka, Rónán Hession has earned his place on my list of ‘must-read authors’.

Girl A by Abigail Dean

326 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins

Book Club Read

 

Blurb

Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared.

 

Review

 

Yet another book where I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

This is what it says on the back of the paperback:

‘Girl A’, she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.’

I am Lex Gracie: but they call me Girl A.

I grew up with my family on the moors.

I escaped when I was fifteen years old.

NOW SOMETHING IS PULLING ME BACK…

 

And that is followed by ‘The biggest mystery thriller since Gone Girl’ – Elle.

The description and the blurb sounded intriguing and pulled me in as soon as I read them. But… Whatever this story is, it is not a mystery or a thriller. It’s a fascinating story, that’s for sure, but in a ‘car-crash-I-should-look-away-but-I-can not' sorta way. Sure, there are one or two shocking and unexpected revelations (which for obvious reasons I won’t go into) in this book, but most of what the reader gets is revealed in the blurb and in the first chapter.

This is the story of a family in crisis. Of a father becoming so obsessively religious that he puts his children in mortal danger, and a mother who isn’t strong enough (or too devoted to her husband?) to interfere on behalf of her children. It gives a fascinating view of how the circumstances affect every child a little differently. While they all suffer, they don’t suffer or deal with their suffering in identical ways.

Alexandra (Lex) – Girl A; the one who got away and saved her siblings.

Ethan – Boy A; as the oldest child he had privileges or was being groomed by his father to follow in his footsteps. He creeped my out, especially since he is referred to as a sociopath by one of his siblings. What creeped me out even more was that none of the siblings felt the need to warn his wife-to-be about the risks she faced if she married him.

Delilah – Girl B; described as a bit of a pretty airhead, she may have been smarter than the others in that she managed to charm those around her, including her father to some extent.

Gabriel – Boy B; ruined by his adoptive parents’ dreams of fame based on his nightmarish past as much as his horrific real family and everything that happened there.

Noah – Boy D; the only one young enough to have no memories of the horrors inflicted on the others and for that reason kept away from his siblings in an effort by his adoptive parents to give him a ‘normal’ life.

Evie – Girl C; the sibling closed to Lex.

Daniel – The only child without a chapter who would have been ‘Boy C’.

Of course, since the book is told only from Girl A’s perspective, we don’t necessarily get an accurate description of how her siblings experience and deal with their early years. All we know is what Girl A has observed and the conclusions she has drawn from that.

Although Lex’s escape and some of the horrors leading up to that moment are revealed very early on, there were huge stretches of the story where things didn’t seem that bad. The horror of their situation creeps up on the reader, just as it would have crept up on the children. As a result, the read became increasingly uncomfortable for me. I knew things had to get horrific in order to live up to both the book blurb and Lex finding the courage to escape the chains that bound her, but there was a long stretch where it was possible for me to believe that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

As I said, this book didn’t read as a mystery or thriller for me. It felt more like a character study; a description of how even when trapped in the same nightmare, all participants come out of it with different memories, different defense mechanisms, and different (lasting) consequences.

Finally, there is something I didn’t know before I started this book and now that I do know, I’m not sure how I feel about it. As it turns out, this story is based on a real-life domestic tragedy known as the Turpin family saga. Click the link if you would like to know more about that.

Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about this book. While it was a captivating read, it wasn’t at all what I expected. There were a few questions I would have liked a (clearer) answer to and, most frustratingly, I have no idea how the book ended. I mean, I read all of it, but I couldn’t tell you if that ending was hopeful or heart-breaking. The fact that I don’t really care what the answer to that conundrum is, explains my 3 ½ stars rating.