Cornflower Books

Some new books - 3

  

     Some fascinating non-fiction to start us off today, Fordlandia by Greg Grandin, The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City. In 1927, Henry Ford bought 5,000 square miles of Brazilian Amazon land, his intention being to build not just a rubber plantation but to create a town full of "neat houses, straight roads and restrained Puritanism". At first he seemed to succeed in imposing his values and culture on his indigenous workers, but eventually the place turned into "a ribald tropical boomtown" and by 1945 it was abandoned in ruins.

    

     Next, a book for young adults and older readers alike, The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Due out here in a few weeks' time, this was the writer's debut novel and it sowed the seeds for his famous The Shadow of the Wind. This story of mystery and adventure features a strange legend, a troupe of ghostly statues, a haunted ship and a possessed cat [Dark Puss, is it you?].

   

     Now to The Cloths of Heaven by Sue Eckstein, soon to be dramatised on Radio 4 (Woman's Hour from Monday 15th. March). This promises "a deliciously intricate plot, compelling characters and razor-sharp dialogue", and is set in the diplomatic community of West Africa in the early 1990s.

On a side note, Margaret Powling pointed out to me yesterday that cover designers are now going for the legs and feet look - a move away from the ubiquitous 'headless woman'!  

Seeing and believing

    

    Reading Nigel Farndale's The Blasphemer is like being on a boat on a  choppy sea; you never quite know when the next wave will hit, how great the pitch and toss will be, and how soaked with salt spray you'll become as a result. Yes, there's an occasional passage where the narrative wind drops suddenly and you're momentarily becalmed, but as a whole it makes for an exhilarating ride, though not - it must be said - an even, balanced one.

    This is a very ambitious novel which I found extremely interesting. Its themes are conditional love, cowardice, familial/genetic traits, spiritual belief, and they are worked out through parallel stories, one set in the present day when a zoologist on his way to the Galápagos Islands survives a plane crash, the other during the First World War when his great-grandfather 'dies' at Passchendaele. Both strands are complex and bring in many fascinating ideas, some of which get their exposition and resolution of sorts as the book goes on, while others are left hanging. So we have a cameo appearance by Vaughan Williams and a missing fragment of Mahler, militant atheists and men of faith, string theory and Bach, angels and (shall I say demons?) a marvellously awful villain, Wetherby, the professor of music. As such I found it very gripping, but my intellecual curiosity was piqued and not always satisfied, and there was a juvenility about the main character - the zoologist Daniel Kennedy - which made him less convincing than he might have been (and his 'wife' is deeply unappealing - reader empathy is sorely tested there).

     If you don't mind a buffetting, there's a lot to think about here, but it's not just the Flanders Tommies who go over the top, the plot is ... exuberantly over-elaborate. Nonetheless, I found it an absolute page-turner.

Some new books

  

     I've got handfuls of new books to introduce, starting with The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge by Patricia Duncker, a crime novel which begins with the discovery of a group of bodies lying in the snow of the Jura. "Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of southern France to the gabled houses of Lübeck, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ... is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power."

 

   Next, not just a new book but a new publishing house, too. Peirene Press has been founded by German journalist and writer Meike Ziervogel to bring out contemporary European literature in English translation, books which are "thought-provoking, well designed, short". 

Peirene's list has been launched with Beside the Sea by Véronique Olmi, a French literary bestseller about "how a mother's love for her children can be more dangerous than the dark world she is seeking to keep at bay".

  "Mesmeric, mournful and intensely lyrical, Chef by Jaspreet Singh is ... about hope, love and memory, set against the devastatingly beautiful, war-scarred backdrop of occupied Kashmir."

This first novel was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, and has been longlisted for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Its mixture of "delicate cuisines and crude politics" sounds an intriguing one.

Here comes the galloping major

    

    At the heart of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson is a very tender, very affecting love story between two people of more mature years, and as such it's a warm and uplifting novel, and one with a great deal to enjoy.

    Set in the pretty English village of Edgecombe St. Mary, where Major Ernest Pettigrew has lived virtually his whole life, the book is about his gradually developing relationship with Mrs. Ali, keeper of the village shop. That in itself is skilfully and sensitively played out, but what is less succesful are the supporting sub-plots. One, involving Mrs. Ali's extended family, was confusing and scarcely credible - it exists to provide motive for various actions and then, crucially, dramatic moments at the book's climax, but it's contrived and it creaks. The other main strand concerns the Major's insufferably shallow son, his romantic life and his involvement in plans for village development, and again credulity is stretched and unfunny farce gets in the way of what the writer elsewhere does very well indeed.

    As I'm sounding negative I must stress that I enjoyed the book thoroughly despite its weaker parts. What makes it work are the characters of the Major and Mrs. Ali, both now alone after very happy marriages, finding a common interest in literature and a sustaining friendship when the modern world is beleaguering and all too swiftly changing. The Major is a stickler for upholding standards and maintaining correct behaviour; he abhors the pushy, the crass, the impolite, but his stiff exterior hides a heart which he discovers will open to the right gentle touch. Mrs. Ali has quiet dignity and a good deal of spirit, but hers is a life of duty, so when the chivalrous Major saves her from what was to have been a miserable fate, there is a blossoming which surprises them both.

    Ignore the bumpier patches and enjoy the smoothly written, highly engaging story at the book's centre - it's quite lovely.

Good lines: the happy few

     "There's nothing useless about reading the classics," said the Major, weighing the books in his hand. "I salute your continued efforts. Too few people today appreciate and pursue the delights of civilized culture for their own sake."

     "Yes, it can be a lonely pursuit," she said.

     "Then we - the happy few - must stick together," said the Major.

From Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.

Three new books

    It's a privilege to be able to 'introduce' new books here, to point you towards titles which have only just come out or are about to be released, and we have three such freshly-minted ones today (click on the cover pictures to enlarge them).

     Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is described by Elizabeth Strout as "funny, comforting and intelligent - a modern day story of love which takes everyone ... by surprise - as real love stories tend to do."

A retired major and the widow of the village shopkeeper are brought together by a shared love of Kipling; this sounds delightful.

 

    A favourite writer of mine, Sue Gee, says of Judith Allnatt's The Poet's Wife: "meticulously researched, and beautifully realized, Judith Allnatt has steeped herself so deeply in the period and milieu. I admire her very much."

John Clare, poet, genius, "madman"; his wife Patty - what does she do when the man she loves is lost to her through the strange workings of his mind.

 

    And now to seventeenth century Scotland and the Massacre of Glencoe. Corrag, by the acclaimed Susan Fletcher, features a young woman who is condemned for her involvement in the terrible events of 13th. February, 1692. Accused of witchcraft and murder, she awaits her death in prison where she meets Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist and Jacobite who is keen to implicate the protestant King William in the massacre. Slowly a true friendship develops.

I want to read all three of these right now!

Money makes the world go round

   

    Don't you love a good name? How about Bilbo Mountwilliam and Hector Chetwode-Talbot? They both loom large in Paul Torday's new novel The Hopeless Life Of Charlie Summers, though the eponymous Charlie's name is rather more workaday than his ultimate fate might suggest.

     Hector, known as Eck, is a former soldier who has left the army with no particular career plan in mind, ending up working for his schoolmate Bilbo as an 'introducer' or client relations type in Bilbo's highly successful investment company. While golfing in France with his old friend Henry Newark, Eck encounters the rather shabby Charlie Summers, an unlikely entrepreneur selling Japanese dog food. A casual invitation to "look up" Henry at home in Gloucestershire leads Charlie to become curiously involved in Eck's life, a life which begins to go alarmingly off course when Eck's army experiences in Afghanistan are suddenly dangerously relevant to his current job, and the gathering financial storm threatens the solvency of Bilbo's firm and that of his many clients - the land-rich, cash-poor Henry among them.

     While Charlie is selling "downmarket dreams", Eck is "peddling the same at the upper end of the market", and becoming increasingly disillusioned with the job and suspicious of Bilbo's dealings. He looks for a way out, one which he hopes will feature his second-cousin Harriet of whom he says, touchingly, "Harriet had made my heart her own every time she glanced at me".

     Will Eck get his girl? Will Henry's now heavily mortgaged family estate remain intact? Will Charlie amount to more than "a trail of debts and damaged hopes"? Paul Torday tells all in a novel which is elegant, funny and highly readable. I enjoyed it very much indeed and found it reminiscent (though 'quieter' and more comfortably at ease) of the tone of Julian Fellowes' Past Imperfect, another book I strongly recommend.

In-tray

   I referred to the in-tray yesterday, and when you consider the headache-inducing contents of some people's, mine is an absolute joy! Here are the latest additions to it. 

Neel Mukherjee's A Life Apart is described by Ali Smith as "incisive and poetic, sensual and intelligent, a novel with great breadth, heart and courage." It tells the story of Ritwik, his escape from a miserable childhood in Calcutta, his new life in England, and was published first in India to great acclaim.

 

   I began reading Amanda Craig's Hearts and Minds just before Christmas and had to put it down for something pressing, but not before I'd got involved with this compelling story of contemporary London. Newly out in paperback, the book has got great reviews, with terms such as "utterly gripping", "dynamic", "thought-provoking and deeply moving" cropping up again and again.

  

    Now, "a stellar debut. A delicious and painful tale of marriage, suffering, tolerance and sacrifice"! That's The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran, a novel based on a controversial nineteenth century court case. Henry Oades and family settle in New Zealand from England, but when his wife and children are kidnapped and then believed to be dead, Henry leaves for San Francisco, a new life and a new wife. What happens when the first Mrs. Oades turns up on the doorstep some time later? We shall see!

Guns, bombs and dog food

   

   I feel sometimes that in terms of the books which pass across the Cornflower Desk of Power, all life is here, for they are many and various. Take the current bunch:

    I'm well on with Matthew Plampin's The Gun-Maker's Gift which is about Colonel Samuel Colt and his London gun-making factory in the 1850s. Did you know that Colt revolvers were made in Britain? I didn't, but here's a short clip from the author to tell you more.

   Next is Sandra Howard's A Matter of Loyalty. British readers will know this novelist as the wife of politician Michael Howard, and as such she is well-placed to set her book in Westminster with her central character a female Home Secretary dealing with a terrorist threat. It's been described as "genuinely gripping", "intriguing and captivating", so I shall look forward to it.

  Then we have Paul Torday, whose The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce I thoroughly enjoyed a while ago. His new book is called The Hopeless Life Of Charlie Summers and is "a sharp, funny novel about money, greed, redemption ... and dog food". I can't wait!

   That's what I'll be reading over the next few days; how about you?

Life and times

    

    We often talk about books being moving, but how many of them actually cause in the reader a strong emotional shift? We speak of books which make us think, but do they put such a fine focus on a subject that we come away feeling not only well-informed but having had our conscience exercised, or the working order of our moral compass checked?

     Hazel McHaffie's novel Right to Die does all this and more. It's extremely well-researched and very readable indeed, and as the issues it covers are highly topical and the questions it asks are hard ones, it's an important book, too.

     Its main character, Adam O'Neill, is a young man, a highly-respected journalist, who discovers that he has Motor Neurone Disease, a pernicious, degenerative condition from which he will die. The book takes the form of Adam's diary, but interspersed with his entries are the thoughts of his wife, Naomi, on reading his words much later. While Adam's physical decline is chronicled - and this is sensitively handled and skilfully incorporated into the narrative - his intellect remains sharp and his intentions clear, and it is his wish to meet a dignified end at a time of his own choosing that is at the book's core. 

     Around Adam are practitioners of various medical disciplines from a larger-than-life West Indian physiotherapist to a GP of the kindest, most compassionate sort, and others who range from tactless and self-centred to supportive and respectful of Adam's wider needs; and then there's Naomi, who must make hard decisions of her own. But central is Adam himself, and this very personal account of facing a shortened life, of coping with diminished capacity, is very powerful. I was struck by how often the prefix 'in-' occurred: indignity, inevitable, insignificant, invalidity, invisible, incurable, intolerable, insensitivity - all these negative words describe and define Adam, his situation, the attitude of others towards him; there are few positives when deterioration is inexorable. But this is not a bleak book by any means because its essential humanity and empathy lift it above 'the mere facts of the case'. That spirit, coupled with a well-balanced handling of the medical, ethical and legal aspects of the subject and their careful presentation through character and plot, makes for a book that is absorbing reading and solid food for thought.

Happy days

    

     I'm jumping the gun a bit with this book as it won't be out here for a while and I hadn't intended to read it now, but I picked up Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord after a particularly stressful and exhausting day when no other book would do, and it was just the thing for some light relief but with enough depth to it to make for a soothing and very engaging read.

    I found it delightful, and was taken by its central character (who reminded me a bit of Louis Theroux) from the very first page. Hector is a psychiatrist and he's very good at his job. He talks to his patients, listens to them and is genuinely interested in them and in what causes them to seek treatment, but he's aware that many of them are not so much ill as just deeply dissatisfied with their lives, and he finds this puzzling and wearing.

    Hector decides to take a break, a busman's holiday, travelling around the world to try to find out what makes us happy - or not - and searching for the elusive key to that state which can be as hard to recognise as it is to define. Along the way, Hector meets people and encounters certain situations, both mundane and extreme, experiences which his perceptive, logical mind distills down to form 'lessons' about happiness, ones he can apply to his own life as well as offering his patients.

   I could use words such as 'quirky' and 'idiosyncratic' to describe this book, and its distinctive, simplistic style is perhaps deceptive, but it is a fable and commentary on modern life, full of a kind of wise but innocent charm and amusing authorial asides. Many a self-help book or even an academic study would tell you no more about 'cultivating your serenity' or 'subjective well-being' than this novel, but its psychiatrist author has cleverly got to the nub of things here and has chosen to present these findings in a beautifully naive manner.

   What does Hector eventually discover? You'll have to read it yourself to find out!

Recent acquisitions

    Monty Mouse has been inspecting some new arrivals on the Cornflower desk of power (which is where he lives) and I see he's put his paw on The Monday Night Cooking School as he lives in hope there will be a tasty morsel or two in that one. Erica Bauermeister's novel is already out in the States under another title and with a very attractive cover, but her British publishers have gone for a different look - which do you prefer?

    Erica's novel is sandwiched (yes, I know) between David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, much talked about here and there, and my copy a prize from Simon S., and The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, she was a long-suffering woman by anyone's standards.

    Almost in its rightful spot there in the pile is Kelly Corrigan's The Middle Place, a memoir about growing up when you are already an adult, and a book "both unbelievably moving and hilarious."

   Beneath it are Secret Son by Laila Lalami and Nigel Farndale's The Blasphemer. Both books sound very strong indeed, the former a modern fable set in contemporary Casablanca, a rags to riches story with a difference, while the latter poses the impossible question, would you save yourself or the one you love?

   Lastly for now, and a slim little volume up by Monty's shoulder, Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord is another 'modern fable', this one written by a psychiatrist. Is there such as thing as the secret of true happiness? We shall see what Hector discovers. (Monty thinks it's an ample supply of cheese and an absence of cats.) 

Sands of time

    It is said that there is no armour against Fate, and that is proved countless times over in Roma Tearne's novel Brixton Beach. The fragility of life, the hair's breadth which separates the safe path from the one that leads to danger, that is the unforgiving framework on which hangs this story of civil war, ethnic divisions and the search for a better life.

   The opening scenes describing a doctor looking for someone among the casualties of the London bombings in July 2005 are powerful, but then we move back from that urgent beginning to a very different time and place - Ceylon in the early 1970s. Here we meet Alice Fonseka, the child of a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father, her family fractured by racial divisions but her closeness to her grandfather, Bee, making up for much of what she lacks at home.

   The story follows Alice as she leaves Ceylon bound for England and an escape from the violence and discrimination, but this is not a happy tale, and almost every character will suffer - some terribly - before we are done with it. As such, I found it 'too much', and that's a pity because as well as being a writer, Roma Tearne is an artist, and her painter's eye puts on the page colours, textures, the sea in all its moods, as she would put pigment on canvas. There's a quality of light and lightness to some of those scenes and to the writing of them which is lacking elsewhere in what can be a mood of oppressive, unrelieved gloom and dull resignation. The reader wants some spark of brightness, some hope, some redemptive twist of fate, but no ....

   That said, it's a strong, well-written book, and its factual background should not be made light of in a fictional setting, but I felt there was too much mute acceptance by characters whose creator is quick to cut them off from what sustains them and who puts too intense a focus on their suffering.

No. 44

   

     My thanks to Frances for letting me know that Alexander McCall Smith is to be the guest on Radio 4's Bookclub this afternoon (4pm, repeated on Thurs. 7th.), when he'll be talking to James Naughtie and an audience of readers about his Edinburgh novel 44, Scotland Street.

   He is never less than wonderfully entertaining in person as on the page, so do listen if you can.

In the bleak midwinter

    

    I said the other day that Nicci Gerrard's The Winter House had held me from the start, and that remained true throughout. It's a very 'collected' book, emotionally well-pitched and controlled, technically accomplished in its switching from past to present and voice to voice, and though its mood could have been unremittingly sombre or uncomfortably maudlin, it avoids these traps and is instead moving and absorbing.

     It is a book about love as an unbalanced equation; there are several examples of this but chief among them is the complicated relationship of Marnie, Ralph and Oliver, teenage friends who meet again many years after the passions and betrayals of their early life when the dying Ralph summons them to his remote cottage in the Scottish highlands. As Marnie and Oliver keep vigil through the short, dark midwinter days and long sleepless nights, so the story of their shared past is told, and despite the circumstances of their re-acquaintance, perhaps there will be a future for them after all.

     Ralph is vulnerable, quixotic, elusive, but he inspires affection, and in Marnie that shows as a desire to save him from himself. She is independent and alone, and though capable and kind she could so easily be overlooked, but her straightforward plausibility and clear good nature carry the book. She is not a showy heroine but she is a strong one, and the complex but fitting play of her character against the others makes for a compelling piece.  

Wintery reading

  

    A secluded cottage in the Scottish highlands, three friends "bound by ties of love and betrayal", a short time in which to right wrongs and say what needs to be said. That's the gist of my pre-Christmas reading, The Winter House by Nicci Gerrard.

    I haven't read any Nicci Gerrard before, nor her collaborative works (written with her husband) which appear under the name Nicci French, but something about this book appeals, and only one chapter in I'm already held by it.

Have you read ...

 ...  The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery? With over 2.5 million copies sold worldwide there's a fair chance you have, and if so, what did you think? Amazon reviews are very mixed with strong feelings both pro and con.

A cultured concièrge, an unhappy child, a Parisian apartment building, come together in a "profound but accessible book", one of "great charm and grace".

 

    Just in but not quite out here yet is Ru Freeman's A Disobedient Girl , "an epic, heartbreaking novel about the linked destinies of two women, set against the backdrop of beautiful, politically turbulent Sri Lanka".

Margaret Forster loved it, but what about you - as I see it was published in the US a few months ago, have any of our American visitors read it?

Cornflower Blues 2009 - part 3 (the rest of the fiction)

    

    Here's where it gets really difficult - choosing just a few titles from the eighty-eight novels I've read to date this year. I'm going to eliminate re-reads to narrow the field slightly, and then because as I begin to write this I'm still swithering(!), I'll just list the books and give a link to their original posts.

Here are the top twenty:

 

and in no particular order, the top ten:

Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel; out in paperback soon (post)

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (post)

Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (post)

Earth and Heaven by Sue Gee (post)

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (post)

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd (post)

Ask Alice by D. J. Taylor (post)

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (post)

The Outlander by Gil Adamson; due in paperback soon (post)

A Proper Education for Girls by Elaine di Rollo (post)

Pulling the plug

    It is extremely rare for me to give up on a book, but alas, I have just done so with To Heaven by Water (which I am mischievously re-naming To Hell in a Handcart). I gave it 150 pages - that's half way - and I may well be in a minority of one, but it's just not for me. There is a potentially interesting story struggling to get past the self-obsessed, sex-obsessed, puerile characters (and maybe they are meant to appear as they do), but with apologies to fans of Justin Cartwright who must be appreciating something I'm clearly missing, I couldn't bear another page.

   It irks me that I have not read right through because I don't like to leave loose ends, and the book might turn out to be brilliant in the second half, but with the TBR pile reaching Everest-like proportions, I just have to move on.

New arrivals

   Two new arrivals today, a biography and a novel on a topical subject.

   The first is The Madness of Queen Maria by Jenifer Roberts, the story of the remarkable life of Maria I of Portugal (1734-1816). This is something I know nothing about but as it is "... an intimate glimpse into the world of absolute monarchy, of court life in the old Europe, before the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon brought the Braganza dynasty to the brink of ruin", I shall be interested to read it.

 

    Next, Right to Die by Hazel McHaffie. After her journalist husband's death  from Motor Neurone Disease, Naomi reads the diary he kept of his illness; she has her own secret, and the diary will reveal whether Adam knew of it, but it also shows how he resolved "to mastermind his own exit at a time of his choice". "A startlingly clear-sighted and courageous story, this novel explores the collision between uncompromising laws, complex loyalties and human compassion."

I've read great praise for this fictional treatment of the question of assisted dying, and Hazel McHaffie's background in healthcare and as an academic in the field of medical ethics make her well qualified to write about such a difficult but important subject (you can find her website here).