The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker

Troy has not yet fallen. But one of its satellite cities, Lyrnessus, has with predictable consequences. The women are taken as booty, divvied up among the conquering heroes, who have slaughtered their fathers, brothers, and male children in front of their eyes. The high-born, young, and beautiful go to the chiefs, the rest are left to the mercies of the rank and file.

Briseis, an attractive nineteen-year-old princess, is ‘awarded’ to Achilles in recognition of his prowess in battle. Chryseis, the fifteen-tear-old daughter of a priest of Apollo, is taken by Agamemnon, the king of kings. Others – lets name them, Uza, Hecamede, Iphis, Tecmessa – end up with the likes of Odysseus, Nestor, Patroclus, and Ajax.

It is Briseis who carries the narrative forward. She is used, no more than that, by Achilles, who reserves any emotional attachment for his close friend, Patroclus. It is only the latter who makes Briseis’ new life tolerable by treating her as a person rather than as a possession.

Life in camp is vividly portrayed - battles, feasts, rivalries, funeral games. All great fun until the rats come, carrying plague. Turns out that kidnapping the daughter of a priest of Apollo was not a great idea. Agamemnon has to make amends, return Chryseis to her father. He demands Briseis as a replacement. Achilles rages, complies, sulks, and withdraws from the fight. Disaster! The siege falters. And it is all the fault of Briseis. As she says, it’s like blaming the bone for a dogfight.

The focus on the life of the women behind the battle lines is insightful. Their choices – endurance, acceptance, embracement – in respect of their captors / clients / partners, is subtly explored. Even so, there is plenty of battle noise, blood, gore, death, and burials to keep it in context. And there is a moving climax, despite leaving things open enough to lead into the sequel.

Pat Barker is a fine writer and here gives a memorable voice to at least one of the girls previously silent. Roll on book two!

Zoo Quest to Guyana – David Attenborough

A topical, given the great man’s recent centenary, choice from the reading group, but at the same time a historic curiosity first published in 1956. In that decade, the Zoo Quest books (and TV series) covered expeditions to both film and capture animals from the wilds of Africa, Asia, and South America. This particular jaunt was to Guyana (though then called British Guiana), and this version of the book is in an abridgement contained in a 2017 compilation under the title, Adventures of a Young Naturalist.

The introduction places the Zoo Quests in their historic context as well as giving background to how a young TV producer with an unused zoology degree got his start in natural history broadcasting. And we know where that led.

As for the expedition, what comes through is its off the cuff nature. Get a plane here, hitch a ride on a passing boat there, rock up at a native village and bunk down in a spare hut. Catch a caiman (small alligator) with bare hands and stuff it into a sack; knock up a cage from an old packing case for an anteater; haul a manatee out of the creek and sling it onto the back of a truck. All done by a crew of three – Attenborough, a cameraman, and a seconded zookeeper.

Their adventures are told succinctly, with boyish enthusiasm and an easy charm that has become his trademark over the years. But my historic curiosity satisfied, I passed on the other two quests in the volume, to Indonesia and Paraguay.

The Forty Rules of Love – Elif Shafak

In 2008, in Northampton, Massachusetts, Ella Rubenstein, forty-year-old wife of David, has returned to work after a long lay off raising her three children. It is a part-time job, a reader for a literary agency, and the novel she has been sent to review is titled Sweet Blasphemy, by A Z Zahara.

She begins to read. It is set in thirteenth century Asia Minor, and concerns a young dervish called Shams of Tabriz and his quest to find a soulmate with whom he can share his belief that love transcends all religion.

Love is currently a sore topic for Ella. Her husband, who she thinks she loves, is a serial philanderer; and her eldest, though still young, daughter is threatening to wed her new boyfriend on the scanty basis of being in love.

The book toggles between Ella’s twenty-first century self-questioning and Shams’ thirteenth century pilgrimage of hope. The latter gets more airtime and paints a vivid picture of the time,  location, and lives led by a representative cast – warrior, zealot, drunk, student, beggar, harlot – that Shams encounters on his wanderings. When he meets Rumi, a respected poet and teacher, a connection is made and a fast friendship formed. This does not please some of Rumi’s family and followers. But Shams meets distrust, envy, enmity, and hatred with love. He has forty rules with which to disarm his persecutors, but will that be enough to save his skin?

Meanwhile, in 2008, Ella is entranced by the novel and is driven to contact the author. She is seduced by the concept of love trumps all and seeks a meeting with Zahara. How will that end?

The two parallel tales, love echoing down the centuries, command attention to the end. For me the forty rules intrude a little and were a bit preachy, but nevertheless this is an interesting read, expanding my knowledge to include dervishes, Sufism, and the real historical characters of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.

Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years – Sue Townsend

It is 2007, Adrian Mole has turned forty and is living at The Old Pigsty in Mangold Parva, Leicestershire with his second wife, Daisy, and daughter, Gracie. His mother and father, Pauline and George, live next door. His son by his first marriage, Glenn, is fighting in Afghanistan.

Adrian’s low-paid employment is assisting in Mr Carlton-Hayes second-hand bookshop, but his quest for literary success continues. He is writing a play, “Plague!” for the local am-dram Mangold Players which requires a cast of sixty humans supported by several animals, mainly domestic.

Other familiar characters drop in: old schoolfriend Nigel (now blind and gay); sister, Rosie, who plans to go on Jeremy Kyle to test  her paternity; half-brother, Brett, on the scrounge since his latest speculation crashed and burned; and, of course, Adrian’s first love, Dr Pandora Braithwaite MP.

On top of reporting how these, and more, impinge on his daily life, Adrian develops prostate trouble, and shares with black humour the trials of his diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.

The observational humour is as funny as ever as Sue Townsend juggles the storylines with skill and practised mastery. The diary format makes for an easy page-turning read, the temptation to push on one more day is hard to resist.

After a gap of twenty years since reading The Cappuccino Years, the characters fell easily back into place. Though read as part of my Book-et List, I discover the series is still incomplete having missed The Weapons of Mass Destruction! So, that is one checked off the list, and a new one put on.

Sunday at the Pool in Kigali – Gil Courtemanch

Bernard Valcourt is a Canadian, Quebecois to be precise, who has landed up in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, ostensibly to set up a national TV station. One of the drivers for the project is the urgent need to inform the population how to protect themselves and others from the AIDS epidemic sweeping the country. But the Government do not want to broadcast bad news, publicise their failings, so the job has stalled.

So Valcourt spends his day writing articles for foreign journals, but worldwide interest is minimal, not only in AIDS but also the growing tension and violence between the Hutu and Tutsi people who share the country in a powder keg mix. The Tutsi have post-colonial position and wealth, but the Hutu outnumber them greatly. There is history between them, and history will out.

But on a Sunday in Kigali, sat around the pool at the once plush Mille-Collines hotel, the great and the good congregate in well-guarded luxury. Mainly white – UN officials, economic advisors, bankers, ex-pat Belgians, diplomats who have drawn the short straw – but also those natives who hold government posts or contracts.

However, even in this civilized company, tension bubbles as high-up Hutus abuse any Tutsi staff with impunity. Among the staff is Gentille, a Hutu by birth and identity card but a Tutsi by her crossbred attractive appearance. Valcourt, decades her senior, is smitten. Gentille reciprocates, but is it love or an exit strategy, wonders Valcourt.

What follows is a heady mix of romance and terrorism, tenderness and torture, where sex is a murder weapon and mutilation a political statement. Valcourt, protected by his skin and journalist pass sees it all unfold. The country is physically beautiful and beguiling, but hate, corruption, and history lead the people tear each other apart, and soon there are more rivers of blood than water.

Told with restraint and resigned fatalism, this is a story all too real that should be read, even if it needs a strong stomach.

The New World – Winston S Churchill

This is the second volume of Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, published in 1956. It covers the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so spans the Tudor and Stewart dynasties including the Civil War and the interregnum of Oliver Cromwell.

The ‘New World’ discoveries of the East Indies and the Americas, including the colonisation of the eastern seaboard of what becomes the USA, get due attention, but the real new world is closer to home with the makeover of European politics. The consequences of the emergence of the Protestant religion and its adoption by Henry VIII echoes down the decades providing the big divide in England, Britain, and Europe. For Churchill, this is politics not religion, and he describes the power struggles with insight and candour.

He explains how the various divides in society (and we are talking peers, landowners, gentry, clergy, and increasingly the merchant classes) develop from Protestant and Catholic, Royalist and Parliamentary, into the party politics (Whigs and Tories) that we still inherit, in one form or another, today.

The prose is a touch verbose to modern eyes, but that is his style, and his voice (if you know it) comes through every sentence. It is a comprehensive work as regards how the country was ruled and/or governed but rarely digs deep into the lot of the common people.

But taken on its own terms of reference, it is an informative and interesting read.

Deadline – Steph McGovern

Rose Steedman is live on air. It is her job, roving reporter for a top TV channel, today interviewing the Chancellor of the Exchequer at a secure location in the North of England. As ever, she is wired up to the studio but suddenly the voice in her ear is not that of the director. It is a stranger, who tells her, chillingly, he has her wife and son, and she must do exactly what he says to keep them from harm.

The narrative spins back a day to introduce the OB team – Jonesy on camera, Zoya producing, and Sandy the engineer – and show how they work together, how the broadcast should go. Then, as it works back to the present, it spins back again. This time to five years earlier. when, amongst other things: Rose had a stalker; Zoya had an issue with a radical cousin; and a hitherto unmentioned headteacher is trying to get a local school out of special measures.

It is events at the school that dominate the next hundred pages, so they must have a connection to the hi-jack, if only to provide a third possible motive (along with the stalker and the terrorist cousin). And it all comes out in a tense climax, though a lengthy epilogue is needed to clear thing up completely.

As to be expected from TV journalist Steph McGovern, the outside broadcast elements ooze authenticity and convey the excitement and tension involved in live reporting. The antics and dialogue of teenage boys is less comfortable, and the plot, while ingenious, relies rather heavily on coincidence and opportunism. The parcelling out of the narrative to ten different characters could be considered quickfire (good) or staccato (bad) but either way keeps the pages turning rapidly.

At the end of the day, it is just another indifferent celebrity novel-writing effort. Don’t give up the day job, Steph.