Elma Turner Library book chat - March
Susan Choi Flashlight
Shortlisted for the Booker. The story centres around Father Serk, Mother Anne and daughter Louisa. It’s about what families lose and gain by choice & circumstance. The novel is about the unravelling of what happened the night Louisa aged 10 and her father go for a walk while on holiday. She wakes up in hospital unable to recall what happened. Her father Serk has disappeared, and conclusions are made that Louisa slipped and fell into the sea and her father drowned trying to save her. Characters are unpleasant and the ending depends too much on coincidence.
Antonia Fraser Must you go ?: my life with Harold Pinter
A memoir about life being married to Harold Pinter the playwright. They met in their 40s at a premier of a Pinter play. They were both married to others. It was a scandal at the time. They were both very active in left wing causes and remained married to each other until Pinter’s death. The book is mostly taken from Antonia’s diary and is heavily edited. Many names dropped in and didn’t always know who they were.
Naomi Arnold Northbound
Local journalist from Nelson at age 42 decides to walk the Te Araroa track from South to North. She found it very demanding. She has all the safety gear and husband following her GPS tracker from home. She found it lonely as didn’t meet many people going in her direction. She continued to work so would call into libraries to file copy and if she did take a break ( when she needed to rest damaged knee) she would return to spot she left determined to ‘walk every inch’. She does the trail over 2 years. She refuses to take dehydrated food but fills up on Mars bars and sugar. Would oved to have known the weight of her pack as seemed to have a lot of gear. A good read.
Anne Cleeves The killing stones
The first in the Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves series ( he is now married to Willow). Set on Orkney where they live. Jimmy investigates a murder. Loved the setting – a real whodunnit.
Lucy Mangan Bookish: how books shape our lives
Mangan talks about her language teenage reads plus set texts at school and University. She later works in a bookshop and reviews for the Guardian. She and her husband’s ideas of a holiday is going to second-hand book shops. They set up home in Norfolk and installed a library consisting of 10,000 books.
Lauren Roche Julia Eichardt : a life of grit and grace : from Tipperary to Central Otago
Faction. Based on the real life of an Irish emigree who moved to Melbourne but leaves after her father dies. Julia she moves to Queenstown at the height of the gold rush, meets Albert Richardt and marries him and they set up the now well-known Eichardt’s hotel.
Val McDermid Past lying
It’s April 2020 & Edinburgh is in lockdown. This is the 7th in the Karen Pirie series ( Detective chief Inspector of the Historic Cases Unit). As usual Karen is dour. Lots of Covid references – masks, daily walks, regulations. Missing people from a Writer’s school. Good pace and suspense until halfway through then the story becomes bogged down in files and forensic evidence and the action slows. Written while McDermid was Visiting Professor of Scottish Studies and Crime Fiction at Otago University in Dunedin from 2019 - 2021.
Tom HoltThe good, the bad and the smug
A comic fantasy. Slapstick comedy with Humans ( good) goblins ( bad) and elves ( smug). Nods to Lord of the Rings, Terry Pratchett.
Rabih AlameddineThe true true story of Raja the Gullible ( and his mother)
Sixty-three-year-old Raja is a high school philosophy teacher who lives quietly in an apartment in Beirut. Zalfa his mother views her son’s desire to be private as a challenge. Set In Covid times, we learn of Raja’s traumatic time when he was kidnapped which has been formative in his life. Lovely characters. Wonderful.
Frode Grytten The ferryman and his wife
Translated from Norwegian. Nils Vik wakes up on November 18th and knows it will be the day he dies. His wife has already died. He gets up and dressed and goes to work as the ferryman, His deceased dog accompanies him then passing woods in the fjords, past friends long dead, emerge. Passengers come aboard whom he hasn’t seen alive for years and he converses with them. Absolutely the loveliest book. It’s short at 150 pages. Very Clare Keegan in style and with the iwriting about the intimate quality of people’s lives. Sad and beautiful about a simple life.
Monisha Rajesh Moonlight express : around the world by night train
The author describes the romance of a night train well, the headlamps, the sunsets, the cabin setups, the dining car. She’s good at details and inviting us into her journeys. She experiences the Paris to Vienna, Finland’s Santa Claus express, Orlando to New York and Turkish train night journeys
Nina Haratischwili The lack of light: a novel of Georgia
Translated from Georgian. Set in the tumultuous 80s and 90s against a backdrop of fighting, gang warfare, heroin addiction in Tbilisi when the Soviet Union is crumbling. It centres around four friends who grow up together and forge a strong friendship until betrayal and death leave three of them. They meet up again at a photographic exhibition of their deceased friend’s works. An immersive page-turner. Dark and tragic but worth persevering with .
Tatiana de Rosnay Sarah’s key
Based on a true story. Set in WW2 Paris when Jews were rounded up by the Vichy government and imprisoned in a velodrome, shuttled about, and eventually sent to Auschwitz. None survived. In this book two girls escape . One survives and is cared for by an elderly couple who pretend she is their granddaughter. A US journalist who is married to a French architect is asked to do an article on this event in WW2 .
Harald Jahner Aftermath: life in the fallout of the Third Reich 1945-1955
This is extraordinary and to understand Germany today this is worth reading. It deals with how people in Germany dealt with the 10 years following their country’s defeat in WW2. Chapters deal with how the ruins were cleared and buildings reconstructed ( amazing systems put in place), the fear and violence often towards women, the black markets and trading and silence about the murdered millions. It’s particularly gruelling reading about the displaced people, great migrations – wandering prisoners, freed forced labourers, the homecoming of the shattered men, broken marriages, the looting and how Germany emerged to have a strong economy after the reform of the currency.
Anthony Horowitz Marble Hall Murders
The third in the series featuring Atticus Pund the detective and Susan Ryeland the freelance editor. I enjoyed the first two in the series and this one would have got a 4 but felt the first half of the book didn’t have enough pace. Horowitz is an excellent writer ( he’s written a continuation novel featuring Sherlock Holmes with the blessing of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate, Foyle’s War, episodes for Poirot, Midsomer Murders and others) and if you like a complex storyline in the Golden Age style of Agatha Christie then it’s worth giving this series a go. I just wish it wasn’t more than 600 pages long.
