Harm None by Will North

 

The setting for Harm None (which, for the longest time, I kept reading as "Harm Done") is the county of Cornwall in the extreme south west of England.  There, an archaeological excavation of an Iron Age site uncovered a skeleton, and it wasn't an Iron Age skeleton.  How did it get there, and how is the local wise woman involved?

Crime, mystery and a touch of magic have the potential to add up to a great book as far as I'm concerned.  In this case they have had only partial success.

I enjoyed the plot and it kept me guessing.  Unlike other reviewers, I didn't work out very far in advance what had happened to Becca. I enjoyed, too, the vivid descriptions of Cornwall.  I could see the Cornish landscape very clearly in my mind's eye.

Where I thought the story fell down was in the characters and dialogue. I understand that Will North has spent a lot of time in Cornwall but, to be honest, that doesn't shine through.  Everyone, from the 10 year old girl, to the detectives, to the old Etonian, spoke with one voice which sounded suspiciously like a London accent or Estuary English.  The little girl veers from "uh-uhs" and "sort ofs" to beautiful and evocative descriptions beyond any 10 year olds I know. 

All the same, I think the story wins though.  I had no difficulty finishing it at all, and at some speed.  It is a page turner.

Harm None is available as an e-book only, at least at the moment, and is the first in a planned series.

A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donelly

Somebody from my book group chose A Gathering Light for this month's read.  I didn't realise it was meant as a Young Adult book until someone pointed it out to me.  In fact the library labels YA books on the spine but while my copy did have the label, some copies did not.  Clearly it's a matter of debate as to where the book fits.

Set in 1906, it tells the story of Mattie, a 15-16 year old girl living in the Adirondacks in New York State.  She longs to go to university but at the best of times that's unheard of in the community where she lives, and since the death of her mother, he father needs her on the farm.

The plot has two threads, that of what happens to Mattie, and another that revolves around a drowning based on a true story of a murder.  There are also two time-lines set very close together which I found a little confusing at first until I realised that one was based in the time when Mattie took a job for the summer and the other was earlier the same year.

I found it quick and easy to read, the characters seemed very real, and the descriptions of the setting captured my imagination..

I’d seen a bear cub lift its face to the drenching spring rains. And the silver moon of winter, so high and blinding. I'd seen the crimson glory of a stand of sugar maples in autumn and the unspeakable stillness of a mountain lake at dawn. I’d seen them and loved them. But I’d also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods under the pines always. Even on the brightest of days.

Its title in the USA is A Northern Light, and is available from Amazon.com

As A Gathering Light it is available from Amazon.co.uk.

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

I had to read this book for my book group but it's one I might well have chosen for myself.  I'm not a knitter (though I wish I were) but it struck me it could be similar to Maeve Binchy's "Evening Class" and I did enjoy that.

In fact it bore very little resemblance.  It tells the story of single mother Georgia Walker who struggles to bring up her daughter by taking knitting commissions.  The knitting business develops into a shop selling wool which in turn becomes a meeting place for friends united by their interest in knitting. 

It's light and easy enough to read.  The characters aren't terribly well developed and the plot is in parts unlikely to say the least.  It's set very firmly in New York with a side trip to Scotland to visit the wise old granny.  I'm not at all sure Kate Jacobs has ever been to Scotland but I'll let that pass.  A holiday read, I think, or a way to pass the time on a long flight.

The Friday Night Knitting Club is available at Amazon.com
or in the UK at Amazon UK

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

 You know the feeling when you finish a book and feel lost?  That is how I felt after I finished this.  I wished it had been far longer.  I found myself slowing down while I was reading it so that I wouldn't come to the end, and this in spite of wanting to know, needing to know, what happened.

It's almost impossible to categorise the novel which was, unsurprisingly to me, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. It's in part an adventure, a mystery, a romance of sorts, a medical novel, and with a little science fiction thrown in for good measure.  It will remain with you in your thoughts for some time after you have finished reading it, I feel sure.

It starts off in the USA where Marina Singh works as a pharmacologist for a pharmaceutical company.  She is sent to Brazil  to find out what is happening in the development of a new drug where the research is being carried out deep in the Amazon jungle.  The new drug is expected to lengthen the period of women's fertility well beyond the menopause.  Some of the characters are better drawn than others but they all come across as real, with their own virtues and failings. 

 Highly recommended.

State of Wonder is available from Amazon.com with a different cover image.

And also available from Amazon UK

The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas

After their mother's death, Mair and her siblings are left to clear out the house that had been her parents home in Wales and where she'd been brought up.  I've been through this process myself and I know what it can be like.  You find all sorts of things that make you wonder and about the story behind them.  And this is what happened to mair.

She found a beautiful Kashmir pashmina shawl with a lock of dark brown hair and these led her to try to discover their story and that of her grandmother.

The story is told both from the perspective of Mair and of her grandmother who had left rural Wales to set off for a life as a missionary's wife in India and then in Kashmir.  Mair attempted to follow in her footsteps and so we see the region both as it was during the time of the British Raj before independence and more recently.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story even though it was a little overly romantic for my taste and the plot a bit contrived, but the descriptions of the area and the mental images they conjured up will stay with me a long time.

An article comparing The Kashmir Shawl and A Carpet Ride to Khiva.

The Kashmir Shawl is available on Amazon.com
and also on Amazon UK

The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa

I first heard about this book in its original French when Shan Sa won the 2001 Prix Goncourt des Lycéens for La Joueuse de Go or The Girl Who Played Go.  The Prix Goncourt des Lycéens is a literary prize voted for by secondary school students.

Shan Sa was born in China and didn't move to France until she had finished secondary school herself so winning a literary prize in her adopted language was no small achievement.

I read it for that reason and because I wanted to read a book set in China.  It wasn't until I'd finished the book that I realised that the format of the story was based on the game of Go, a very tactical that game I don't really know or quite understand.

It is set in China, Manchuria, at the time of Japanese occupation.  The chapters alternate telling the story of the girl and her opponent in Go, a Japanese soldier.  The chapters mirror the conflict in the game as well as the conflict between the girl and the soldier, and between China and Japan.  It wasn't the easiest read, but a fascinating glimpse into a part of Chinese history I hardly knew, nevertheless.

The Girl Who Played Go from Amazon.com

The Girl Who Played Go from Amazon.co.uk

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Not a light and rapid read, this one: my copy had over 700 pages and it's full of detailed descriptions.  The cover is dark and the story is dark, the story of a young girl who is searching for her father who in turn is searching for Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula.

Judging from the blurb on the back and the selected reviews, it seems to be aimed at people who enjoy books about vampires and I've seen more than once the suggestion that it is an update of Bram Stoker's Dracula.  It isn't.

I will confess that I found my attention wandering at times and in part this was due to finding it hard to tell who was the narrator.  There are three narrators: the daughter who remains nameless throughout, her father, Paul, and her father's mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi.  They all sounded much the same.  I have to say, the narrative wandered a bit and there were many times when I wondered how much of the history/geography was fact or fiction. 

However this was more than compensated by the wonderful, atmospheric, descriptions of Eastern Europe and Turkey.  In many ways this is padding to the plot and I can appreciate there is rather a lot of it but it may be what saved an overly long novel as far as I'm concerned.

The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbø

Jo Nesbø is widely promoted as the next Stieg Larsson which is very unfair, it turns out, because he's been writing from long before the famous trilogy of Stieg Larsson was published.  However there are some similarities - a gripping thriller, Scandinavia (Stieg Larsson was from Sweden while Jo Nesbo is Norwegian).

Things you should know:  the surname of the hero, Harry Hole, is pronounced Hooleh, the "oo" rhymes with "pool"; Jo Nesbø is a man his name sounds a little like Nesber (ø is very similar to ö in German); and that "The Devil's Star" is part of a series.  These things always hold me up when I don't know.

The central character, Harry Hole, is an alcoholic detective.  Where have I heard that before?  However I found him more engaging than many others.  He is at the point of being in grave danger of losing his job but, in the midst of the summer when everyone is on holiday, he is the only hope when a series of murders take place.  The plot is detailed and intricate, and carries you along at a great pace.  I could hardly put the book down.

All the action takes place in and around Oslo which is a first for me and has made me want to visit the city.

The Devil's Star from Amazon USA

The Devil's Star from Amazon UK

The Collaborator by Gerald Seymour

The Collaborator is the brutal but compelling story of the daughter of a Mafia-like family who becomes a collaborator with the police.  The story revolves around Immacolata, the daughter of a criminal family who realises that her family has been responsible for the death of a friend.  She has been living in London where she meets Eddie who ends up being an innocent victim in the efforts of the family to prevent Immacolata giving evidence against them.  Be warned though, it really is grim and brutal in places, realistic though that may be.

The book describes the very different worlds of London and Naples very well.  I thought Naples particularly vivid but that may only be because that's new to me and not the fairly familiar world of London.  But more than that, it provides a great insight into Naples, its history and the local Mafia.  And it's one I won't forget in a hurry - unlike many thrillers.


The Collaborator is available from Amazon.com and from Amazon UK

Portobello by Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell writes under her own name and as Barbara Vine.  Her first novel featured Inspector Wexford.  Since then there have been upwards of 20 books in which he is the main character. These are police procedurals.  The Barbara Vine books are less about murder than about accidental death and the pressures of society.

Her other books, and this is one of them, tend to be loosely described as psychological crime novels, often with socially disadvantaged characters.  It has a quiet feel to it and is possibly not as dark and creepy as some of her books,  but the characters and their odd assortment of psychological idiosyncrasies and flaws are totally absorbing.  She has a particular gift in being able to make the commonplace seem menacing.  In one way you feel you know people like them, and yet at the same time they are extraordinary.

The whole is set, as might be gathered from the title, in and around Portobello Road.  Although they appear to have nothing to do with each other, the characters' lives weave in and out of each other's in unexpected and apparently random ways.  Above all, for me, it brings the area to life:

"The Portobello has a rich personality, vibrant, brilliant in colour, noisy with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. an indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger."

  Available from Amazon UK or from Amazon.com

Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon

Donna Leon is an author new to me.  I was looking for something light and easy to read and it was coincidental that the book was set in Italy, in Venice. It couldn't be more different from A Thousand Days in Venice, apart from the setting of course, but even that took on a different view.

I was dismayed at first to read so many negative reviews on Amazon (UK) but that turned out to be because it has been republished with a new title, the US title.  Previously it was called "The Death of Faith".  People were understandably annoyed that they had bought what they thought was a new book only to discover they had already read it.

I enjoyed the book.  It is one of a number of books in the series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. The characters of Brunetti himself, his colleagues, and of his family were appealing to me.  It is quite a relief to read about a policeman who isn't an alcoholic or has a failing marriage, or any other major problem in his life.

There are a couple of big issues brought into the plot, one of which, paedophile priests, may have been the reason for the re-issue now that it's even more consistently in the news.  The other issue concerns Opus Dei and the power of the Roman Catholic Church.  Both I feel to be rather too deep for this book and sit uncomfortably in an otherwise lighter book.  They aren't really examined or addressed to any extent and I felt that they didn't quite mesh together or with the rest of the plot.

You are constantly aware of the setting in Venice with a strong sense of the city and of Venetian society.

Quietly in Their Sleep is available from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

I chose this book purely and simply because I know a young girl who came from Sierra Leone to study in England while her parents stayed behind to survive the horrors of civil war as well as they could.

Saying that, I must point out that Sierra Leone isn't mentioned anywhere in the book but I think it's accepted that it is indeed set in Sierra Leone both during and after those dreadful times.  It tells the story of three men whose lives become three strands which touch and cross to form a complex web: Kai, a Sierra Leonean surgeon; Elias, the retired dean of the university who is dying at the hospital; and Adrian, a young British psychologist who is escaping his life in England.

At first I found it hard to keep track of the three different points of view all of which darted from present to past and back again.  It often took me a few moments to work out where I was, and when.  Before long, though, I was totally absorbed and found it a compelling read.  I kept wanting to pick up the book when I should have been doing other things.

It's not the most comfortable of reads, it does make you sit back and think, so if you're looking for a light page-turner this is not it.  However it does give you insight not only into ordinary life in western Africa, but also a clear picture of a country torn apart by war and an idea of what those terrible times must have been like.

More than that, it raises issues that are worth considering, whether or not you agree with them.  The first of these is whether all the western organisations which flood into developing countries do any good and whether in fact the individuals are there for their own benefit rather than the people they profess to help.  Do these NGOs understand the way of life in the countries where they are trying to help as they should or are they approaching with pre-conceived western values?  Second is the matter of post traumatic stress disorder, and whether it's always necessary to pathologize what is a natural reaction.  A vast percentage of the Sierra Leone was affected by the war but is it a psychosis or is it life?

There is a really interesting interview with Aminatta Forna on The Interview Online. It really is well worth listening to it.

The Memory of Love is available at Amazon.com and at Amazon.co.uk

Cambridge Blue by Alison Bruce

A Cambridge Blue is normally an award for sporting excellence given to a member of the University of Cambridge in England.  In this case, it means a book that is set in Cambridge and its cover is blue. Or green.  Unless I am missing something, I can see no reason for the title.

The story is a police procedural or would be except that the young and too-good-to-be-true (brilliant, good-looking, caring) detective paid scant attention to police procedures.  I know this is fiction but there is a limit beyond which the story loses credibility.  He is so "nice" that I disliked him almost as much as the "nasty" detective.

I found the plot interesting enough but the ending seemed rushed and contrived.  I always dislike lengthy explanations to find out "whodunit"

Alison Bruce very clearly has an excellent knowledge of Cambridge and you do get an overall idea of the place but some atmosphere is missing.  Someone, somewhere, described it as being like Cambridge-by-numbers.  It might be a book you would read after you've visited, to bring back memories.

Buy Cambridge Blue at Amazon.co.uk or at Amazon.com

The Joys of My Life by Alys Clare

From the back of the book I read: "Adroitly weaving medieval history into a rousing and mystical tale", and I was interested.  Elsewhere on the cover it mentioned Chartres, the Ile d'Oléron and Richard the Lionheart and that finished the process of capturing my imagination.

This was yet another cover with a black background - there seem so many at the moment.  A robed figure, maybe a monk, a labyrinth, maybe the one at Chartres.

It became obvious after a while that the book was one of a series with a number of references to things that had happened to the characters in the past.  It wasn't a major problem because the book stands relatively well on its own but I'm not sure how you'd feel going back to read earlier books.  In fact it is the twelfth and final book in the Hawkenlye Mystery series and it finishes with a fair amount of tidying up of loose ends.

The story started at the siege of Châlus Castle, not far from Limoges, where Richard the Lionheart was fatally wounded.  From there we are taken to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine who wants a chapel built in honour of her son, Richard, we are introduced to the main characters, and the mystery unfolds.  In all honesty there wasn't much of a mystery so you could hardly describe the book as full of suspense.  The magical or mystical elements were over-played for my taste.

Nor did the characters really come to life for me.  They all seemed too good to be true - or evil.  Even the hero, Josse d'Aquin, didn't feel like a real person, and I the love of his life, Joanna, left me with no impression of her character at all.  I found Helewise the abbess more interesting because through her we saw how the Christian church was changing at that time and how the crusades against Catharism were starting.

It was fun, though, to trace the journeys made by the characters through France, and to visualise the cathedral being built at Chartres. It was a light, easy, and undemanding read.

The Joys of My Life is available at Amazon.co.uk or at Amazon.com

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I always read the Amazon reviews for a book before I buy a book.  There were a plenty for Cutting for Stone, it isn't a new book - published 2009 - and they are very heavily weighted towards 5 stars.  But for some reason I held back.

I wish I hadn't.

It's a big book in every way.  At 500+ pages of quite densely packed text it isn't a quick read and I'll admit that at the start I felt it was too detailed.  In fact it probably could have been edited down quite a bit, but in the end for me that wasn't essential.

The story is told through the eyes of one of a pair of identical twins, sons of an Indian nun and a British surgeon.  We then follow their lives in Ethiopia, through personal and political turmoil until Marion, the narrator, is betrayed by the girl he loves and has to flee the country.  He ends up as a surgeon in the USA where his life runs no more smoothly.

It is an immensely dramatic and compelling novel, and combines intense realism with an almost magical quality.  In fact some people think the realism of the surgical descriptions are almost too vivid, but I'd say no worse than some thrillers I've read.  I'd prefer the medical details over  violence and day.  Along with the family saga, you do get a feel for the country of Ethiopia, its life, politics and history.


Frankly, I couldn't put the book down and, if it weren't for the large pile of books waiting their turn, I'd happily read it again.

Cutting for Stone is available at Amazon.co.uk or at Amazon.com

Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka

A few weeks ago I was travelling by train through Kent, the Garden of England.  I saw the strawberry fields and through a gap in a hedge I was completely taken aback to see row after row after row of caravans.  A whole field on the side of a hill had been given over to them.

I hadn't realised when I picked up this book how much this would come back, almost to haunt me.  Although the book is described as hilarious, I think there's far more tragedy than comedy in it.  Whether intended or not, it's a social commentary on migrant workers, on battery farming methods, on human trafficking.  It follows the story of a mixed group of workers in Kent, then on to London and finally, briefly, Sheffield.

I was close to giving up early on in the book, partly because I didn't much care for the characters and the story didn't grab me, but I'm glad now that I persisted.  I'll never look at strawberries or chicken portions in the same way again.