The Art of Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein

Enzo knows how to race in the rain, motor racing that is, despite being a dog.  He has learnt it all from Denny, with whom he lives.  Denny is a man, an amateur racing driver, who puts the sport on TV all the time: movies like Grand Prix and Senna; Formula One and NASCAR races; and even driver-view videos of the great racetracks.  Enzo knows when trouble hits the track, like rain, the best drivers respond positively, embracing the conditions, keeping the car on the road until things improve.

Enzo has learnt much more from watching daytime TV documentaries while Denny is at work.  One of these aired the Mongolian belief that good dogs reincarnate as humans.  He decides to prepare himself for that by careful study of mankind, which enables him to narrate the novel from his canine point of view intelligently and articulately.

He adapts when Denny’s girlfriend Eve moves in and is protective when their daughter Zoe is born.  But happy families can be a short game.  When tragedy, conspiracy, injustice and rank bad luck hit Denny he must, with Enzo’s help, apply the art of racing in the rain to keep his life on the track.

Accept the premise and the book flows well enough.  The slings and arrows that rain down are predictable but nonetheless affecting; ditto the conclusion.  Affinity with dogs and/or motor racing no doubt adds to the enjoyment but is not a prerequisite.

For me it was reminiscent of the inevitably superior ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ but with simpler prose; after all this one is narrated by a dog not a philosophy lecturer.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

At least that I what she tells her social worker, her only visitor as she keeps herself to herself.  She lives alone, kept company by cheap bottles of vodka that help her through weekly conversations with her apparently institutionalised mother.  At work she keeps her head down and gets the job done.

Her life changes when she wins tickets to a music gig and is stricken by the lead singer of the support act.  It is love at first sight, for Eleanor at least; Johnnie Lomand is oblivious to her existence.

Eleanor realises that alterations are necessary to woo Johnnie – hair, clothes, social skills all need an upgrade – and stepping into the unknown to achieve them leads her into a whole new world of social interaction, including social media.  For help with her computing needs she seeks help from friendly but unprepossessing IT geek Raymond; her social pointers come from streetwise hairdresser Laura.

All the while hints emerge of the darkness in her past that has left her scarred (physically and emotionally).  And as the book progresses into the second half Eleanor’s life becomes a tug of war between the draw of her new life and the anchor of her past.

                                                                           

It is well written with plenty of humour in Eleanor’s discovery, not to mention dismay, of the modern world.  The portrayal of her older, darker, life that clings to her is equally well done.  Which will gain the upper hand?  By the end the reader fervently hopes that indeed Eleanor Oliphant will be completely fine.

Notes from an Exhibition – Patrick Gale

The eponymous exhibition is of paintings and ephemera of artist Rachel Kelly, recently deceased; and the notes that accompany each item form chapter headings that introduce aspects of her world.  The chapters slowly build a picture of her life and family, but the chronology is sliced and diced to tease and keep the reader engaged to the end, though the reveals confirm rather than confound expectations.

Rachel Kelly’s portfolio is broad with portraits, landscapes and abstract works on show; and Gale follows suit.  He sets many a scene with loving descriptions of the Cornwall landscapes.  He portrays an artist at work, a mother less than perfect, and a family as dysfunctional as most, bringing out emotional turmoil every bit as effectively as Kelly’s non-representative art.

It is well enough put together but as the family’s dramas are exposed those relating to the survivors – husband Anthony, sons Garfield and Hedley, and wayward daughter Morwenna – turn out to be low key and rather uninteresting.  It is left to those of the dead – Rachel and son Petroc who died young – to provide the mystery and spice in the tale.

The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway

Sarajevo, 1992, is a city under siege.  The men on the surrounding hills rain shells and mortars down.  Less indiscriminately, and so more cruelly, they also pick off soldiers and civilians alike with deadly sniper fire.  When a shell hits the market place killing twenty-two people queuing for bread, a cellist who witnessed the strike from his window takes the extraordinary decision to commemorate the lost lives by playing a haunting piece of music at the site for twenty-two consecutive days.

That much is true, and around the event the author relates slices of three fictional lives in the city.  Arrow is a young female sniper recruited from the university shooting team and given the brief to retaliate, shooting the snipers and other military on the hills.  Kenan takes his twice weekly trek across town to the brewery springs to collect life-sustaining water for his family.  For Dragan, who got his family out early in the conflict, it is the daily journey to work at the bakery (a job that exempts him from conscription) that takes him onto the streets.

Life under siege and under fire in what was a modern civilised city of half a million people is a real eye-opener.  The effect on the urban infrastructure and the lives of those still trapped is vividly portrayed.  As well as the physical dangers and fears there are psychological effects to contend with.  The likes of Arrow, Kenan and Dragan have to question why they continue to resist the enemy without in order to save a city that is rapidly losing its soul to the paramilitary chiefs and profiteering gangsters that thrive within. 

They may come up with different answers but each, like many others, draws strength from the music of the cellist of Sarajevo.

A tense, gripping and surprisingly positive paean to the fortitude of the human spirit under dire circumstances.

The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad was the name given to the network of supported routes north which runaway slaves of the southern states took in their bid for freedom.  Safe houses, food drops, false-bottomed wagons all featured, but to these Colson Whitehead adds a physical manifestation of underground trains and rails with drivers, conductors and station-masters.  That is the only bit of magic realism in this gritty telling of the slaves’ lot; generally the realism is brutal and shaming.

Young slave girl Cora’s flight is the peg on which is hung a sequence of fact-based events.  She flees from a life on the plantation in Georgia already filled with cruelty, injustice, beatings and rape; spends months in an attic in South Carolina; and finds respite of sorts in North Carolina, only to discover acceptance comes with sinister conditions.  Only in Indiana does she find any semblance of normality, and even there threat lurks.

Along the ‘railroad’ she encounters other runaways, abolitionist sympathisers, racists and slave-catchers.  Across the spectrum people get damaged, people die.

It is not an easy read but Cora’s plight keeps the reader engaged.  And it is not one-dimensional fare.  Cora is seeking not only freedom but her mother, who ‘ran’ before her, leaving her baby daughter on the plantation.  The slave-catchers’ motives have unexpected complexities and there are nuances within the abolitionists to expose.

A thought provoking book that puts the reader uncomfortably inside Cora’s skin, a skin that many at that time and place refused to look beyond.

The Last Runaway – Tracy Chevalier

As the two Bright sisters head off to America in 1850 it is Grace who does so in expectation of an exciting future, while for Honor it is more to do with leaving the past behind.  Grace is betrothed to a man already settled in Ohio whereas Honor’s engagement back in Bridport has just been broken off.

They are Quakers, and after an arduous Atlantic crossing they head overland through Pennsylvania to the recently established township of Faithwell where many of their faith have put down roots.  En route Honor encounters two people who do not share her faith but are destined to play a significant part in her future – larger than life milliner Belle Mills and arrogant but handsome Mr Donovan.

In Faithwell there is little enough to do but make quilts, something Honor is very adept at, but that changes when circumstances pitch Honor up at the Haymaker dairy farm, which transpires to be on the route of the fabled ‘underground railroad’.  The railroad isn’t real but a network of anti-slavery activists and sympathisers that provide safe houses and work to assist runaway slaves escape north to freedom.

In the community there are helpers (like Belle), hunters (like Donovan), and those in between who sympathise with the runners but who are fearful of the consequences of getting involved.  Honor must make her choices.

Told from Honor’s viewpoint, supplemented by first person letters home, there are well penned descriptions of Honor’s new world – the landscapes, the changing seasons, and the new society she finds herself in.  Even the quilts are different here.

Slaves pass through, some safely, some not; but it is not so much about them as about how Honor wrestles with conflicting loyalties (family, faith, law, friendship, humanity and her own feelings as a woman).  It is also quite a lot about quilts, which may or may not be a metaphor that passed this reviewer by.

As befits a tale of Quaker folk it is a gentle read (the sex and violence are quickly and efficiently dealt with) but be prepared for lots of thee’s and thou’s in the dialogue that while adding verisimilitude to the text eventually grate on the modern eye.

The Burgess Boys – Elizabeth Strout

The Burgess boys – Jim and younger brother Bob - left their home town of Shirley Falls in Maine for New York years ago.  Jim has made it big as a celebrated defence lawyer, married well and with the children now off to college life is fine in their swanky brownstone apartment.  Less so for Bob; confidence dented by a childhood tragedy he’s divorced, living in what his brother terms ‘a student dorm’ but making a decent living reviewing legal appeal cases.

Left back in Shirley Falls is their sister, Bob’s twin, Susan.  She phones with the news that her son Zach, withdrawn since his father left home, has committed a misdemeanour with religious overtones and political implications in the town struggling to come to terms with an influx of Somali refugees.

The Burgess boys are mobilised and while Jim uses his contacts to get Zach a top lawyer Bob heads home to provide emotional support.

The case drags on and even Jim has to slum it for a few days back in Maine; and as the siblings get back together old tensions and recriminations surface.  By the end lives - Jim’s, Bob’s, Susan’s, even Zach’s – have changed.

Strout’s portrayal of family relations is very good, capturing the mix of irritation, loyalty, resentment, love and envy with subtle but effective writing.  The pulse doesn’t race but the heart goes out to characters all too human, and by the finish there is deep concern that each will be left with their lives set on a favourable course.