A chance purchase in the Auckland Airport became a very satisfying mystery. An apparent murder-suicide is presented in the context of a small town in Australia 500 km north of Melbourne, with the added complexity of a cold case from the past. The context of how heat and continuing drought and mystery affects the psychology of a place and people both individually and collectively is presented very well – a very good read.
Category: Location / Setting
The Lonely Hearts Hotel – Heather O’Neill
O’Neill is a wonderfully descriptive writer of places and people, with sensational metaphors. This new novel is about two orphans who endure terrible hardships while growing up in Montreal from 1915–25: poverty and abuse and then the depression. Much of the story is about vice (such a good word) in Montreal with an extension to New York in the 30s. The two principal characters, Pierrot and Rose, are both flawed and endearing, while dealing with fate and opportunity. This may be my favourite of all O’Neill’s novels.
The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton
An epic story set in a remote gold mining frontier town in New Zealand’s South Island in 1866. There is a mystery with murder and disappearances; everyone is hiding misdeeds and withholding information. The structure of this Man Booker prize winning novel is fascinating. The first half of the book essentially describes a meeting of 13 men and each fairly long chapter provides a different point of view unique to each character. The second half has shorter chapters as more back story is revealed, mostly about some really delicious villains. This is fabulous story telling, even better as a second read compared to when I first read this book.
The Lola Quartet – Emily St. John Mandel
The steamy heat of Florida is the setting in which people make bad decisions and lives spiral downwards: the consequences of lies and deception produce weariness and desperation. This is very good story telling by the author of Station Eleven.
Swing Time – Zadie Smith
An un-named narrator tells a story that alternates between two times: childhood in NW London in the 1980s, and adulthood in the 2000s. All the important relationships in the narrator’s life are with women: her mother, her friend Tracey, and her employer Aimee, a Madonna-like rock star. A sub-plot in Africa is especially rewarding. Smith’s prose is insightful, she is an acute observer of the narrator’s world. This is sensational writing, the best of Smith’s books so far.
The Transcriptionist – Amy Rowland
This book is a gem, a short but meaningful book about loss and finding one’s place in the world. First, it is a very New York book. But it is mostly an existential book. Lena is a transcriptionist at a prestigious newspaper; her job is to transcribe dictation, a job that is disappearing in 2001. Thus, Lena is looking for meaning in her life, a quest that is precipitated by chance encounter with someone on the subway. A very good read.
Umbrella Man – Peggy Blair
Blair is a Canadian who writes mystery novels about Inspector Ramirez in Cuba. The plot is complicated: murder and spies and double/triple agents. But as in most mystery stories, the context is more important than plot. In this case, the context is Havana: decaying elegance, a hopelessly under-resourced police department, and the general deprivations of life in Cuba. This is a very fun read, and topical since Cuba has received more attention after the death of Fidel.
Harmless Like You – Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
There is much to love about literary festivals, but one distinct pleasure is the chance encounter with a new author. Buchanan is such a bonus from the Calgary Wordfest. This is a remarkable first novel with two parallel time lines: NY from 1968-83 and contemporary 2016. Profound sadness pervades Yuki’s story in NY as an abandoned 16 year-old and her subsequent struggle to do art. She then abandons her son when he is 2 years old to live in Berlin as a struggling performance artist. The contemporary story line is about her adult son Jay who has remarkable insecurities. Mother and son are finally reunited and the confrontation/reconciliation is both beautiful and painful. This is an excellent read, exploring the thin line between attachment and abandonment, love and pain, sacrifice and selfishness, with an impressive maturity. This is an author to follow in the future.
The Widow – Fiona Barton
This contemporary novel is a very well-written story about a child abduction in Britain. The story unfolds Gillian Flynn-like with an alternating time frame and chapters from different points of view: The Detective, The Reporter … The Widow is a stand-by-your-man wife so her psychology unfolds ever so slowly. Several characters in this book are overcome by obsession. This is a very good companion book to Zoe Whittall’s The Best Kind Of People in that the main focus is on the aftermath of a traumatic event.
What David Read 