BOOK REVIEW: The Anti-Social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole by John Mortimer

The iconic characters of fiction tend to wear their years lightly, remaining the same even as the world around them moves with the times. I’ve just been paying a visit to one such old friend in the pork-pie-munching, Chateau-Thames-Embankment-swilling shape of Horace Rumpole. The old warhorse of the bar has been forced to confront some of the modern realities of life in The Anti-Social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole, but he continues to treat life with the same sort of stoic grumpiness that  distinguished his earlier episodes. And of course, the same irritants are there to play their usual part – the mad judges on a power trip, the syncophantic members of his chambers, and the well-worn relationship with his wife, Hilda.

As a barrister, John Mortimer had a detailed knowledge of the workings of the Criminal Bar and the book will not cause any of the lawyers among us to flinch. In fact, criminal barristers may even recognise themselves and their colleagues in the sharply-drawn cast that surrounds Rumpole ( I am fairly sure Horace Rumpole is unique). Mortimer also has a fine turn of phrase, accompanied by a sly wit. My favourite: “I was seated alone in my favourite corner of Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, sharing a bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment with myself.”

The Rumpole series is never going to keep you on the edge of your seat, or make you re-evaluate our existence. It features no blood or sex and little that is sensational. Still, if you are looking for well-written, well-plotted crime fiction, featuring one of the great characters of recent years, you could do far worse.

AWW BOOK REVIEW: Sharp Shooter by Marianne Delacourt

 Cover lines which refer to bestsellers are a risky strategy, creating expectations which the novel itself may find hard to meet. Marianne Delacourt's Sharp Shooter raised my eyebrows with the cover line 'Introducing Tara Sharp, a new, kick -arse crime fighter for fans of JANET EVANOVICH.' (yes, capitals in the original). It's a bold move to refer to the woman who basically invented the kooky-crime-romance genre, although I presume the marketing department is to blame rather than the author. Unfortunately, while Sharp Shooter is a competent light-crime novel, it suffers in the comparison.

One area where Evanovich is particularly strong is keeping up the pace. In contrast, Delacourt introduces all her characters at a leisurely speed and with little urgency before the story actually begins. It’s not until page 39 and Chapter 7 when fledgling 'paralanguage agent' Sharp is hired by a dodgy lawyer with mafia connections that things start to get interesting. The first six chapters consist of background and introduction and if I hadn't been reading with a view to writing a review, I would have been tempted to put the book aside. In particular, I didn’t find Sharp engaging as a character in these early chapters. There was a great deal of what I thought was rather laboured slapstick (for example, I found the episode where she spills her drink on a potential client painfully unfunny.) Still, sense of humour is a personal thing and other readers may not have the same reaction.

Once the story gets going the book improves markedly and I liked the fact that it is set in Perth, obviously a city that Delacourt knows well. I think she also succeeded in maintaining a genuine Australian tone throughout, avoiding the risk of transplanting an essentially American story. The love interest is plausible and Tara Sharp also becomes more likable as the story progresses. Some of the more annoying minor characters fade out of view (the wise teacher speaking in broken english is one I particularly wanted to strangle).

One other aspect of the book that seemed rather underdone was the supernatural element. Sharp's ability to read auras is certainly an original plot device, but seems to me to be rather useless. As far as the story goes, an experienced reader of body language would end up with exactly the same information, and we hardly need descriptions of their auras to work out who are the bad guys. Instead, the aura reading becomes something of a sideshow, an alternative method of describing a character (eg. “Grassy green aura” instead of “tall with blue eyes”). It also makes the comparison with Janet Evanovich even more puzzling – while her new series does include a supernatural element, her hit Stephanie Plum series does not.  

Still, even taking the above into account, I did think it was competent and relatively entertaining, with a number of good points. It’s possible than fans of Janet Evanovich will like this book, if they are looking for something in a similar genre. I do think it could have done with some further thinking and editing, but then I’ve thought that about the last few Janet Evanovich books as well. I think it’s unfortunate that that cover line created such high expectations, because read on its own merits this is a competent and enjoyable Australian contribution to the light-crime-paranormal genre.

BOOK REVIEW: Fear Not by Anne Holt

Some books don’t just have a theme, they have a Theme. In such books, subtlety is not usually a strong point. Neither is character, as all become slaves to the author’s desire to explore (god forbid) a Burning Issue Of Our Times.

Other, much rarer books, fall into a different category. You close the covers and muse on the contents. After a while, a connection between characters suggests itself, then another. You realise there is a pattern of sorts, a common thread. Yet the book seems so perfect, so the characters so convincing, you can’t quite comprehend that the author might have started with a theme in mind. Surely, it must be some sort of coincidence.

I am happy to report that Anne Holt’s Fear Not fell into the second category. The most obvious theme is that of gay relationships. A series of murders appear unconnected, until it becomes obvious that the victims were gay or advocates of gay marriage. So far, so simple. It’s the deeper theme that raises this far above the standard crime novel. That theme is long-term relationships, or the ways in which people adapt to that period when romance seems a distant memory and in its place, the  everyday chore of adapting your needs to another being. Gay relationships or straight, Holt explores the various facets of love and the ways in which relationships survive or fail in periods of stress.

I have to admit, I was initially unconvinced by the multiple-viewpoints of the story. Compared to the striking 1222 (which I previously raved about here) it seemed diffuse, harder to understand the story and to find a way in. Yet by the end, I would compare this book favourably with the other. While 1222 was a superb thriller/mystery , Holt’s ambitions here seem to be wider, and the book is richer as a result. Like certain of the Donna Leon novels, she uses the crime as a vehicle for exploring an aspect of society, while never losing the narrative drive.

Anne Holt is rapidly progressing up the list of my favourite writers. Beautifully written and acutely observed, her novels are distinctly Scandinavian but also universal. Mystery or thriller fans of all stripes – or just anyone who appreciates a good story – will find much to enjoy in Fear Not.

BOOK REVIEW: Last Chance to Eat by Gina Mallet

It was the pomegranate on the cover that drew me in. I’d recently tried these slightly sour, jewelled fruits for the first time, and the title Last chance to eat – the fate of taste in a fast food world suggested that there would be more of these treasures within the covers. I wasn’t disappointed. Before reaching the end I’d encountered devilled kidneys, clotted cream and Thames Mud (chocolate mousse) – thankfully, not all in the same dish.

It’s difficult to describe what genre Last Chance to Eat falls into. It’s about as far removed from the glossy cookbook food-porn as the dishes it describes are from trendy molecular gastronomy. While it does contain recipes, they are provided more as an illustration of the author’s nostalgia than anything else. Gina Mallet was blessed with a childhood rich in food experiences and an interestingly eccentric family, and the book weaves tales of both around a broader narrative of the role of food in our society. The book is certainly entertaining and easy to read, written in an almost journalistic style with plenty of headings and subheadings.

Yet despite the fact that I enjoyed the book, I felt somewhat ambivalent upon turning the final page. For me, one key element was missing , and that was any discussion of potential solutions to the problems that Mallet describes. The entire book centers around the problem  that food has become industrialised, that we have lost our eye for quality produce, that we have taxed the earth until it no longer produces the bounty that it once did. Clearly, this is a problem and Mallet is correct to call it out. However, I don’t know what she thinks we should do about it. It seems odd that having spent so much time thinking about and researching this book, her few comments on the way forward seem to be throwaway lines, not properly thought through.

In the end, I think I’d categorise this book in “Nostalgia.” It’s not that Mallet doesn’t have scientific backing for her claims. In fact, she’s done an admirable job of summarising all the evidence and translating it into a readable form. Still, it feels to me like only half a book. I admit that it’s a big problem and I truly don’t expect someone to come up with all the answers – but Mallet’s failure to try means that the book only looks backwards, never forwards. Unfortunately, the constant refrain of “things were better then,” leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Welcome to 2012 and Australian Women Writers 2012 Challenge

Sorry for the lapse in blogging recently – next time my life turns into utter chaos, I’ll try to schedule some blog posts in advance. Then again, it’s probably one of those things you can’t plan and should stop trying. At any rate, I have been reading over the break and I have plenty of new books I can’t wait to blog about.

First up, I want to announce that I’m joining the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. Partly because, like most of us, I have a vaguely guilty feeling that I don’t read enough Australian fiction. Also because, I’m a sheep at heart and I love being part of a great big (and growing) group! I’m going for the Franklin-fantastic (read 10 and review 4 books) but I’ll probably try and review all 10, because I’m also going to try to stick to my roughly one blog a week, and that’s a lot of reading to do!

I’m going to focus on genre primarily, probably mostly crime. I already have a few books on my list – the latest by the divine Kerry Greenwood, Death and the Spanish Lady by Carolyn Moorwood, which I saw reviewed and looks interesting.  Otherwise, I’ll be seeing how I go. Some of it is going to depend on which books I can download as an ePub, so if the message hasn’t got through by now PUBLISHERS PLEASE MAKE YOUR BOOKS AVAILABLE IN EPUB!!

Apart from that, I have a new obsession with Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series, I’ll probably write a long love letter to Barbara Hambly and I may even tackle some of those free classics sitting on my ereader. It’s going to be a good year! Hope you can join me.

BOOK REVIEW: The Romantic by Kate Holden

The Romantic by Kate Holden surely qualifies as one of the least romantic books I have ever read. There are certainly large amounts of sex, but it is accompanied by the kind of raw emotional revelation that makes you want to avert your eyes. It’s been said “Writing is easy; all you do is open a vein and bleed onto the page” (who said it does not appear to be quite clear) and Kate Holden is clearly a writer who takes this dictum to heart.

The Romantic is the long awaited follow-up to Holden’s memoir of her descent into drug addiction and prostitution, In My Skin. Now clean, this new book chronicles her attempts to rediscover some sense of normality in her relationships by spending time in Italy. In the process, she seems to fall into bed with a vast number of men. She describes sex several times as a “debased currency” – although she no longer trades it for money, she is still trying to earn affection, security and love.

It would be easy for The Romantic to become self-indulgent and some readers may believe that it does. My own view is that it is saved by Holden’s unflinching honesty, which was also a feature of In My Skin. At times you feel that you want to reach into the book and shake her, as she allows herself to be manipulated by yet another unreliable man, but you never lose sympathy with her. It’s the sense that she is trying to move on but keeps falling back into bad habits that becomes frustrating after a while.

The book is elegantly written, in the third person. It’s an interesting choice that initially surprised me, expecting as I was a memoir. But the book is very much an internal examination of the writer’s mind and perhaps was only possible through such a distancing mechanism. Or perhaps Holden felt self-conscious describing sex in such detail using the first person. Either way, it’s easy at times to forget you are reading a memoir, albeit a lightly fictionalised one.

I found the book somewhat depressing, although it ended on an upbeat note. If any readers have delusions left about the so-called “glamour” of prostitution, this book will destroy them utterly. Seeing how it affected Holden and the way that she interacts with people, particularly men, made me very sad. As she gropes her way back towards some sense of ‘normality’ it is also disheartening to see the way men reacted when she told them about her past. After years of saying yes over and over again she found it almost impossible to say no, and it seems that there were plenty of people willing to take advantage of that.

Ultimately, In My Skin  is a book about the redemption of Holden’s body, while The Romantic is about the rebuilding of her shattered psyche. For all that, it’s a different book and readers who enjoyed the first will not necessarily enjoy the second. A relatively high tolerance for introspection and self-analysis is required, as well as a tolerance for high levels of sexual content. For all that, those with an interest in human relationships will relate to Holden’s honesty in laying her emotional life open on the page. I look forward with interest to whatever she writes next.

BOOK REVIEW: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey

When I picked up The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating I vaguely remembered reading a review at some point. I expected one of those books that purport to be about one thing, while really being about something else, on a deep metaphorical level. Surely the book couldn’t just be about snails – could it?

I was wrong – this book is purely and simply about snails. It is about one snail in particular, who lived in a pot of violets and then in a glass terrarium by Elizabeth Tova Bailey’s bed. She was suffering through a strange and serious illness, but developed an interest in snail biology, literature and history, and her research forms the core of the book. If you have ever wondered about the reproductive habits of the snail, this is the book for you.

Tova Bailey’s illness plays a peripheral role. It is perhaps too peripheral, for those hoping for a Hollywood redemption-through-snail-watching ending. I found myself hoping for Tova Bailey’s recovery, but this is a book that avoids the easy answers. In an elegant and restrained postscript, Tova Bailey gives some more background to her situation, but as I said this book really is all about the snail. That’s not to say there is no self-reflection, but it is done sparingly. A book such as this could easily become self-indulgent and it is to Tova Bailey’s great credit that she steers the opposite course. It is left to the reader to ponder, after closing the book, the questions it raises.

In some ways, the book itself resembles the snail that it features. The attraction of the story is not immediately obvious, and some may dismiss it out of hand. But slowing down and spending some time to try to understand the book, at its snails pace, has unexpected rewards. It won’t be for everyone but this quiet meditation will appeal to many who appreciate thoughtful and elegant writing.