They Were Found Wanting – Miklos Banffy

This is Banffy’s continuing tale of Transylvanian folk – not the vampires, nor the little furry toy animals, but the aristocratic class of Hungary circa 1900. It picks up a year or so after volume one (They Were Counted, reviewed October 2015) and again concentrates on the lives and loves of the Counts Balint Abady and Laszlo Gyeroffy. More the former than the latter.

Balint is now a member of the Hungarian Parliament. Unaffiliated to any party, he looks on with cool detachment at the machinations of Austro-Hungarian politics. These get a good airing and may have had relevance and satirical impact in its own time and place, but in the here and now are obscure and just have to be ploughed through.

When not politically engaged, Balint remains obsessed with Adrienne Miloth, now married to the half-crazed Pal Uzdy. She reciprocates Balint’s passion, and together they plot, meet, make love, and plan to one day marry. Balint’s mother, the Countess Roza, disapproves, and tension builds between mother and son.

Meanwhile, Laszlo Gyeroffy continues his decline, selling off what remains of the family fortune to finance his drinking and gambling. His friend Balint, his wider family, and the wealthy lady farmer, Sara Bogdan Lazar, all try to save him from himself.

The plot inches forward giving plenty of time to appreciate the lovingly described Transylvanian landscape, and the stately homes set therein. There is a fin de siècle feel to the lifestyle of the aristocracy as the foreshadow of the First World War begins to impinge.

However, nothing much happens of any note. Perchance it all kicks off in volume three, although I won’t be picking that up any time soon.

You Are Here – David Nicholls

Cleo Fraser knows what people need, particularly those friends whose lives fall short of her own standards of happiness. Like Michael, her colleague at a north country school who teaches geography and who, since splitting up from his wife, has retreated into a solitary life. And like Marnie, a friend from her youth, several years divorced, who as a home-working self-employed proofreader in London, also spends too much time alone.

Cleo decides to take them out of their humdrum existence for a few days hiking on the Coast to Coast path. She also invites fellow northerner Tessa, who she thinks may click with Michael, and Londoner Conrad, who she hopes may take an interest in Marnie.

They gather in St Bees, already a couple down as Cleo’s husband has baled, and Tessa is a no-show. They set off regardless. Cleo, energetic and mothering; Michael, grizzled and experienced walker who intends to carry on solo when the others depart; Marnie; a novice newly kitted out and resigned to her two-day ordeal; and Conrad, ill-prepared for the walk but ready to hit on Marnie.

How far will Conrad last? Will Michael go on to the bitter end? Will Marnie find any conversational common ground between Conrad’s metropolitan chatlines and Michael’s field trip nuggets?

Few authors do fluent internal monologues and socially awkward interactions as well as David Nicholls. The walk gives an unusual but authentic context within which the walkers get to know each other and their back stories. There are comic moments, tragi-comedic misunderstandings, and an endearing plot line that does not quite end as expected.

Great fun but more besides – depth of character, empathy, and scenery!

The New Machiavelli – H G Wells

Read as part of my ‘book-et list’ in homage to HG whose science fiction and romances lit up my adolescent reading half a century ago. This book falls in the latter category and is set in 1900s London.

The story is simple enough, narrated in the first person by Richard Remington. His childhood, schooling, and university leads to a growing interest in becoming a mover and shaker in society. Moving in political circles, he meets and marries Margaret Seddon, gets into parliament, and seems set for a glittering career. One of his staunchest supporters is young Isabel Rivers.

However, Remington’s mission to improve the lot of mankind, or at least Imperial Britain, goes beyond the narrow party-line parameters. Frustrated and disillusioned, he finds comfort in Isabel’s like mind, then in her comely body. It is Edwardian London and a scandal such as this would mean the end of his political career. So, a choice must be made. Respectability, Margaret, and high office; or passion, Isabel, and obscurity.

It is a wordy 400 pages, though the words are well put together. To be honest, it is a little dull. The affair is hardly racy, and the politics of 1906 are remote. The social attitudes that Remington rails against, which I suspect was the purpose of the book, are largely long gone.

So, thanks HG for the good stuff of my youth; but I missed nothing here.

Everyone in My family has Killed Someone – Benjamin Stevenson

Ernie Cunningham is the narrator, an expert in crime fiction, as a critic that is. And, as author of a ‘how to write crime fiction’ guide, he knows the rules, knows Robert Knox’s 1929 ten commandments. So, when he puts pen to paper to relate this personal murder mystery, he promises to abide by them in the solving, while also revealing just how everyone in his family has killed someone.

He points out early that they are not a family of psychopaths. Killed does not necessarily mean murdered, though neither does it preclude it. The plot reveals are central to the narrative, and as I don’t do spoilers this review is restricted to setting the scene and introducing the characters.

The scene first, Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat, the highest drive-in accommodation in Australia. It is the antipodean winter, and a snowstorm is on the way. Arriving from all quarters for a reunion is the Cunningham family along with attached or semi-detached partners.

Looking from Ernie’s point of view, he expects hostility from his brother, Michael (just out of prison after a stretch for murder), his mother, Audrey, and sister-in-law, Lucy. Ernie gave evidence in Michael’s trial, and Audrey and Lucy bear a grudge. He is also expecting grief from his almost-ex-wife, Erin, and his Aunt Katherine and her husband Andy. Only his stepsister, Sofia, daughter of Marcelo (Audrey’s second husband), will be glad to see him.

So why meet up? It’s mandatory, a family edict to welcome Michael’s release. And for Ernie it is a matter of closure and returning the 267,000 dollars in cash his brother left in his care.

A body is found, things happen, deaths occur, back stories emerge revealing the trail of more deaths that have led to this, whatever this really is! All related by Ernie in deadpan humour  and playful tension, taking the reader by the hand through a convoluted but perfectly reasoned plot.

An unusual murder mystery faithful to Knox’s rules.

Missing You – Harlen Coban

Centre stage in this thriller is Kat Donovan, New York detective, fortyish, single, and likes a drink. She is third generation NYPD, and it did not end well for the previous two. Grampa shot himself and dad was rubbed out by the mob. This latter still rankles. Though the perp is serving life, Kat never understood the motive nor the exact circumstances.

Three things happen. One, the perp is dying, and Kat extracts an inadmissible retraction of his confession, setting her off on an unofficial re-investigation of the shooting. Two, her friend Stacy reckons Kat needs to get laid so signs her up for a dating website, on which she stumbles over her long lost, long dumped, boyfriend, Jeff, and discovers her long-buried feelings remain an itch to be scratched. Her on-line approach is rebuffed but she’s a detective, right, so she’ll find him ‘IRL’. Three, a young lad called Brandon turns up at the station to report his mum as missing, gone off with a new boyfriend but now uncharacteristically unresponsive to his calls.

Quite a workload for Kat, but as we follow her high energy investigations it is no surprise to discover links between the threads. Particularly as her PoV narration is interrupted with disturbing scenes from a remote location where carefully selected rich folk (like Brandon’s mum) are held and tortured until they provide access to their financial assets.

The plot lines are skilfully drawn with a good scattering of reveals and surprises. The characters though are secondary, and only towards the end, as Kat makes some personal discoveries, are we drawn to her. But then we return to the action and an exciting climax.

It all makes for a fair enough, page turning, thriller.

Norwegian Wood – Lars Mytting

Unlike the Murakami novel of the same name, this book really is about Norwegian Wood – chopping, stacking, and drying wood the Scandinavian way. It may sound niche, but in that part of the world it can be a matter of life or death, or at least comfortable warmth or freezing cold.

Mytting starts with the cold, the raison d’etre for stockpiling sufficient quantity and quality of firewood ahead of the winter. He assesses the forest and the wood-burning potential of the various trees, then critiques the essential tools of the trade, before moving onto the all-important construction of the woodpile that ensures the proper seasoning of the fuel. (As an aside the woodpile also gives scope for artistic impression and provides insights into the character of the builder.) Finally, he covers the choice of stove and the heat-giving qualities of the fire itself.

The culture of woodsmanship is deeply rooted in rural Scandinavia, and Mytting expounds on it with understanding, affection, and no little science. Interspersed vignettes of characters involved in the processes adds a human touch to the essays.

It makes for an almost sensuous read, particularly this hardback edition from the MacLehose Press (Quercus) that is richly illustrated with beautifully detailed and artistically staged colour photographs. A curiosity to be dipped into or read slowly over winter evenings as the fire crackles in the stove.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne

In 1945, Catherine Goggin, sixteen years old and newly discovered pregnant, is denounced as a whore by the Goleen parish priest in front of the congregation and sent packing from the church. Her response is to get on the bus to Dublin and start a new life, A life in which a baby cannot figure, so the child is given to a nun to place in a new home.

Skip to 1952 and we discover that home is with Charles and Maud Avery, an unconventional couple, who are bringing up Cyril, now seven, with kindly disinterest while constantly reminding him that he is ‘not a real Avery’. The pattern is set to revisit Cyril’s life every seven years when we share significant events, often humorous, sometimes tragic.

This short review, avoiding spoilers, can only hint at the scrapes, the inner turmoil, the compromises, and the betrayals involved. Suffice it to say that Cyril, being young, gay and living in Ireland in the 1960s and 70s, has problems. While the church and state sponsored discrimination reduces in later decades, his outsider status never goes away.

It is a small-scale epic, which builds up an eclectic cast of characters that weave in and out of the narrative over the decades. It is told in the first person by Cyril in a style that is engaging, authentic, and compassionately human.

Though long at 700 pages, it reads much shorter due to its episodic structure and fluent, frequently funny, prose. Highly recommended.