The Descent of Man – Grayson Perry

Cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry sets out in print many of the ideas he presented in his “All Man” TV series.

He challenges the accepted norms of masculinity, questioning both their validity and usefulness of what he sees as out-dated values, and placing the blame for much of mankind’s woes – violence, crime and warfare – on them.

He also sees the damage ‘manning up’ can do individual men left unable to deal with emotional issues.

It is all very persuasive but there is no blueprint to fix the problem. Indeed he seems to accept there is a difficulty defining what the exact problem is, just that there is something wrong with the society’s current model. He really just issues a plea to allow men to be people rather than men, and find their own way unhindered by past generations’ baggage. Some hope!

It is a short thought-provoking work with, perhaps inevitably, the artist’s own pithy illustrations the most impactful feature.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe – Romain Puertolas

The preliminary stage of the journey made by the fakir (who is not so much a mystic as a con man) is straightforward enough, arriving at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport by a scheduled flight from India, thence by taxi to one of that city’s IKEA stores.

His mission there, to buy a new bed of nails, has a quirky if unlikely sound to it; his plan to pay for it with a photocopied (one side only) one hundred Euro note smacks of the ridiculous.  He uses the same note to temporarily pay his taxi fare, temporarily as he retrieves it from the driver’s wallet by means of an attached invisible piece of elastic.

Those readers amused by this premise and willing to suspend critical facilities may enjoy the remainder of the book, which continues in similar vein with improbable coincidences covering up a thinly worked plot otherwise full of holes.

The initial scene describing someone’s first experience of an IKEA store raises a smile but once trapped in his wardrobe and shipped of on his journey (more silly than extraordinary) the fakir’s facility for comic observation fades. Instead introspection grows as he bumps into both refugees and celebrities on his whistle stop tour of Western Europe.

On none of the potential levels - humour, satire or self-discovery – does the book really deliver. It is not laugh out loud, the satire doesn’t bite, and the morality tale fails to convince.

If, as claimed, it was a number one best seller in France then Guy De Maupassant, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo must be turning in their literary graves. Or maybe it just lost something, or quite a lot, in translation.

Killed at the Whim of a Hat – Colin Cotterill

Jimm Juree’s nascent career as ace crime reporter on the Chiang Mai Mail is ended by her mother’s sudden decision to sell the family home and move from the urban north to the rural south of Thailand. There each of the family find their own way to cope as new, mainly unenthusiastic, owners of the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant.

Her mother sits in the shop all day; brother Arny mainly works out on the beach; Ganddad Jah sits and watches out for passing cars; and Jimm guts fish and wonders if sister Sissi (who used to be brother Somkiet) got it right in refusing to leave Chiang Mai.

Then, in a part of the country where nothing ever happens, things begin to happen; criminal things much to Jimm’s delight. She’s soon back on the beat, investigating two skeletons found in a buried camper van, an unlikely murder in a Buddhist temple, the death of a dog and, closer to home, the truth about her absent father.

The first person narration works well and Cotterill’s writing as a thirty-something feisty Thai woman of independent outlook passes muster. The self-depreciating humour and a nice line in metaphor make the reading light and enjoyable. The barbs at officialdom, politics and corruption have a tone of resignation rather than indignation.

There is one good cop locally, and Granddad Jah stirs himself to help, so Jimm is not working alone. And as she makes progress in at least some of her enquiries she finds the country bumpkins don’t all fit in with her preconceptions. Maybe life down south would suit after all if she gave it a chance.

At nearly 400 pages the jaunty style of prose begins to wear thin towards the end and the technical denouement has much less charm than the excellent opening, but in the main an easy and passable read.

Game of Thrones – George RR Martin

This is just book one of A Song of Ice and Fire; the existence of another six tomes for me was a disincentive to ‘get into’ GoT that finally I have overcome.

First up, the maps at the front set the scene and demand a few minutes perusal, forming as they do the board upon which the game will be played. Next the Prologue sets the tone: dark, foreboding, violent. It’s clearly fantasy-land but we are in familiar territory: swords and shields; horses and wolves; mainly just men and women.

Dynastic rule, bonds of fealty and chivalric knights (but Sers not Sirs) are the order of the day. But the rule of Robert Baratheon, in place a dozen years since the violent ousting of ‘Mad’ King Aerys II of the House of Targaryen, is beginning to look under pressure.

His right-hand man, Jon Arryn, has died in his bed but under suspicious circumstances; the King’s in-laws of House Lannister are untrustworthy and probably plotting something; an infant survivor of the purge of the Targaryens is overseas planning revenge; and in the north, beyond the fortified ice-wall, ancient forces are stirring.

Responsibility for guarding the northern frontier lies with the House of Stark, and it is the members of that family that mainly drive the narrative forward, each chapter recounting events through the eyes of one or other of them: Lord Eddard; Lady Catelyn; children Robb, Sansa, Arya and Bran; and bastard son Jon Snow. Two other viewpoints provide balance: Tyrion, unfavoured dwarfish son of Lord Lannister; and Daenerys, the exiled Princess and true heir of the Targaryen dynasty.

It is undeniably engrossing stuff as the action ricochets between the protagonists, spread over not just the Seven Kingdoms but also beyond the ice wall in the north and across the sea in the grasslands of the nomadic Dothraki warriors. The prose is rich but punchy rather than purple. Although invented terms abound, they are cleverly suggestive of their meaning and used in context so do not jar and no glossary is needed.

Closing in on page 800 it is clear not all issues will be resolved. But despite the fact that six more books loom ahead GRR Martin does not prevaricate, springing deaths and dismemberment on the reader before ending this volume not, thankfully, on a cliff edge but satisfyingly paused for the next instalment.

The jury is out on whether to resume reading or resort to the box set.

Feast of the Innocents – Evelio Rosero

Read as leg 6 (Pasto, Columbia) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

The Feast Day of the Holy Innocents, 28 December 1966, is the start of a tumultuous and fateful week for Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso Lopez (Dr Proceso familiarly).  In Pasto, southern Columbia, the day is celebrated by practical joking and begins a week of festivities leading up to carnival parade on ‘White Day’ on 6 January.

The Doctor, who in his spare time has been researching and writing a damning reappraisal of Simon Bolivar, the much revered ‘Liberator’ of his country, decides that actions will speak louder than his dry dusty words.  He commissions a float for the parade on which the Liberator’s misdeeds will be writ, and illustrated, large and uncompromising.

There being no such thing as a secret in Pasto, word gets out and while the authorities apply pressure to dissuade him a shady group of self-styled ‘guardians of the revolution’ plan more direct action.  To complicate matters the Doctor’s domestic life is in crisis due to a love-hate relationship with his wife and his wayward teenage daughters disowning him.  But the would-be urban guerrillas are in similar disarray, some going off half cock and one who would rather be writing poetry.

With the week increasingly fuelled by the local ‘aguardiente’ liquor, reality is diffused by a drunken haze, but its trajectory is ominous for Dr Proceso.

The progress of the book mirrors the unfolding week in tone, beginning light-hearted and humorous, inserting episodically a potted alternative history of Simon Bolivar’s impact on southern Columbia, then spiralling into chaotic comings and goings that climax dramatically on the day of the carnival parade.

Although set in 1966 the book was published in 2012 so the subject must still resonate in Columbia.  The political history lesson is delivered seamlessly within the story, and while the style is fluent and reminiscent of his more illustrious countryman Gabriel Garcia Marquez it doesn’t quite hit those heady heights.

In The Darkness – Karin Fossum

When Eva Magnus, out with her young daughter, finds a body of a man in the river she pretends to phone the police from a call box then calmly walks away from the scene. In time another woman reports the find and Inspector Sejer is called in to investigate.  The dead man, a car mechanic, has been missing for a while, and clearly died a violent death so now the missing persons case becomes a murder hunt.

That makes two for Sejer to solve. The victim disappeared shortly after a local prostitute was killed; a coincidence or a connection? As Sejer works through the evidence will he discover the reasons for Eva’s reluctance to get involved?  No spoilers here, so suffice it to say the outcome is played out in the gritty town and dramatic countryside of the book’s Norwegian setting.

I felt the two main narratives – Sejer’s methodical police procedural and Eva’s increasingly frantic activities – though naturally contrasting could have combined better than they did; but both were enjoyable on their own terms.

This is the first in the translated Inspector Sejer series and given the stiff competition in the detective fiction genre it may be a while before I sample the second.

A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman

Ove often discusses the daily trials and tribulations of life with his wife, even though she has been dead for six months. And now he has been ‘let go’ from his job so only one of his three purposes in life remains – keeping order in the residential development in which he has lived all his adult life.

That is a full time job in itself with folk parking in the wrong place, letting dogs urinate uncontrollably, and leaning bikes against the signpost saying ‘no bicycles to be left here’. When new neighbours announce their arrival by reversing their trailer into his garden wall, Ove decides enough is enough and the sooner he joins his dead wife the better.

He’s a methodical man, a practical man, so proper preparations need to be made; but sequential interruptions by strangers, cats, children and particularly his new neighbour Parvaneh continually distract him and draw him into an unfamiliar world of social interaction.

Backman’s portrayal of the archetypical grumpy old man is spot on (all too recognisable to this critic) providing much humour, occasional pathos, and an entertaining take on the fundamental question in life for the Scandinavian male – whether to drive a Saab or a Volvo?

                               

More seriously, as Ove’s past is uncovered it reveals him as more than a stereotype. As a result the reader gains a greater emotional stake in his future, which makes this more than just a blackly humorous comic novel.

Pig’s Foot – Carlos Acosta

Read as leg 5 (Cuba) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Pata de Puerco is the village in the Cuban hinterland that, the narrator tells us, is his ancestral home. His name is Oscar Mandinga, each element derived from the mismatched pair of friends, Jose Mandinga and Oscar Kontico, who were early Negro settlers there. Mandingos were tall and muscular whereas Konticos were pygmies, small but ferocious warriors; both were involved in the violent struggle to throw off slavery on the island.

From these two firm friends, and the two sisters they courted, sprang generations whose interactions form the human chain of the story that interweaves with Cuba’s troubled recent history. Early generations remain mired in the poverty and ignorance of the rural landscape before the arrival of education enables some of Oscar’s contemporaries to make the transition to Havana with all its opportunities and threats.

The narrator is relying on oral history handed down from grandparents, and much of the prose is reflective of this. However the narrative is punctuated periodically with outbursts that reveal it is being told while he is currently under some sort of interrogation. The nature and reason remains a mystery right to the end.

Familiarity with Cuban history and politics is assumed, and referred to in passing rather than related; but it is its impact on the characters that matters. Their personal histories change as the book progresses, with revelations of hidden relationships and parenthood to match any TV soap opera.

It is Oscar’s necessity to unravel this tangled web in order to follow his grandfather’s maxim that no man knows who he is until he knows his past, his history, and the history of his country.

The author was a renowned ballet dancer, a principal with some top international companies, but here shows another string to his creative bow with a story that paints a vivid picture of a country he seems both to love and despair of.

The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

A more apposite title for this take on the great American novel could be “Life with the Lamberts” as we get a forensic examination of parents Alfred and Enid and their three grown up children – Chip, Gary and Denise.

As the book opens Alfred and Enid are in New York to embark on a cruise of the Canadian Atlantic coast, but are stopping en route to have lunch with Chip, who becomes first to take centre stage. He’s a failed academic (a career undermined by a penchant for young female students) who now writes unpaid for the obscure Warren Street Journal (his parents think it is the Wall Street Journal and he has failed to correct them) while working on the umpteenth rewrite of the screenplay that will launch his literary career. His parents’ visit is at an inconvenient time coinciding with a deadline for his script, his latest girlfriend walking out on him, and a new opportunity suddenly appearing.

Each family member has a turn in the spotlight to share their back story and perspective on the current state of relations.

Alfred, retired railroad engineer and executive, man of principle and too stubborn for his own (and his family’s) good, is now deteriorating physically with Parkinson’s and mentally with dementia. Enid is in good shape but is struggling to cope with Alfred; concerned about the children’s lives and obsessively intent on bringing them back home to St Jude “for one last Christmas”.

Gary is, to all appearances, ‘the successful one’; a banker in Philadelphia with an attractive wife, Caroline, who is too attractive for his comfort. She uses their three boys to play him like a fish on a line.

Daughter Denise is to me the most appealing. The youngest, she is wilful, resourceful and strong; getting what she wants (or what she thinks she wants) then, finding it unsatisfactory, throwing it away. She is a renowned chef, also in Philadelphia, and the one who exhibits most responsibility for Alfred and Enid.

It’s a big rambling book, the structure seemingly loose and wandering, with a style of prose that takes some getting used to. But it grew on me and eventually the diverse stories and the resonating family history coalesce in a satisfying manner as Enid’s “one last Christmas” takes shape and threatens to impact disproportionately on all their lives.

Maybe “The Corrections” is a suitable title after all.

The Girl who Played with Fire – Stieg Larsson

The second volume of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy opens with Lisbeth Salander spending her ill-gotten gains from volume one on a jet-setting, but low profile, lifestyle. Her absence from Sweden has bothered few, but two people with a keen interest in her whereabouts (for different reasons) are investigative journalist Mikail Blomkvist and lawyer Nils Bjurman. Salander had saved Blomkvist’s life, and just about ruined (with good reason) Bjurman’s.

Blomkvist is getting on with the day job, working with colleagues on an expose of human trafficking of sex workers that will compromise a lot of well-connected Swedes. Bjurman’s career is on the slide thanks to Salander’s ministrations and he’s channelling his time and efforts into finding and neutralising his nemesis.

Returning unnoticed to Stockholm, Salander uses her high level hacking skills to check out what both Blomkvist and Bjurman are up to. Both give her cause for concern. A name crops up that chills her to the bone and prompts he to intervene at just the wrong time. Three dead bodies later she is no longer unnoticed but identified and on the run, sought by Blomkvist, wanted by the police and hunted by the traffickers.

The action is thick, fast, fastidiously detailed (Salander’s tastes from pizza to underwear is lovingly revealed) and increasingly violent. Often tense, rarely dull, with an exciting climax, the book also reveals more (but still not all, one feels) of Salander’s back story.

All in all it is pretty good for the middle book of a trilogy; and nothing here to put the reader off reaching for that final volume.

I am the Messenger – Markus Zusak

Ed Kennedy, nineteen years old, is making his own way in the world; he just hasn’t got very far yet.

He’s got a job of sorts – as an under-age taxi driver - and a home in the shape of a shack he shares with the Doorman – a dog that’s old, smelly, and with a liking for coffee. When he’s not working, which is quite often, he hangs out with three friends – Marv, Ritchie and Audrey – and mainly plays cards.

Then his life of quiet monotony starts to get weird. First he helps foil a bungled bank robbery, getting his name in the local paper. Then an envelope arrives through his letter box, containing a playing card (the ace of diamonds) on which is written three addresses each with a time of day.

They mean nothing to him, but as a cab driver he knows where they are and, intrigued, he stakes them out around the specified times. It is clear (chillingly clear in one case) that at each a resident needs some help; and it is clear that someone has chosen him to do the helping.

Ed does what he can, and feels quiet satisfaction of a job well done, until another ace (clubs) arrives inscribed with a cryptic clue. This leads to three more folk needing help, and with two more suits available the labours of Hercules begin to look like a doddle.

From the simple concept Zusak crafts an engaging book. As well as dealing with the cards’ demands he has his own life to sort out; his love for Audrey is unrequited and his relationship with his mother dysfunctional. Only the Doorman understands him, and he only talks with his big brown eyes.

Like the author’s “Book Thief”, though aimed at (or suitable for) young adults, this is a book for all ages. The prose is simple but subtle, the issues straightforward but challenging, and the resolution of the aces’ demands while always likely are often less than obvious.

Uncertain to the end is the identity of the dealer.

The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry

The New Year (sometime in the nineteenth century) starts for Cora Seaborne with the funeral of her husband. Her grief is outweighed by relief and a sense of release from his oppression. Sill young, responsible only for a son in tow, she now has freedom and the means to follow her own interests.

But this Victorian heroine defies the stereotype. She is robustly independent with an enquiring mind and an interest in the natural world and, plain rather than pretty, she dresses for practicality and comfort. Not that Cora is unattractive; she already has an admirer in London surgeon Dr Luke Garret, and also a close relationship with her companion (and boy’s nanny) Martha.

When Cora, out walking the Essex coast, meets the Reverend William Ransome, Rector of Aldwinter parish, their differences of philosophy, hers scientific, his spiritual, clash but there is soon a respect, and then more, between them.

The attraction of Essex for Cora is not only the sea air and Will Ransome; there are rumours of unnatural happenings and possible sightings in the salt marshes of a creature that some think is supernatural. Cora dismisses that theory and dreams of discovering a new species; Will is also keen to rationalise the mystery which is starting to undermine his parishioners’ faith in him and his religion.

The story moves through the months of the year, centred on London, Colchester and Aldwinter, each atmospherically depicted and populated with minor characters of relevance and interest. The search for the eponymous reptile becomes less important than each character’s search for their own truth. And what will that mean for Cora and Will (and Will’s wife Stella and their children)?

The prose is well written and has an unusual (in a good way) style; description of place is evocative; the complexities of emotions and relationships are not overplayed but subtly put out there to be inferred.

So while not your standard Victorian melodrama it is a well written, insightful story featuring flawed but very human characters.

The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood

Tony, Charis and Roz have more in common than their regular ladies-who-lunch date. More even that they were at college together, a long while since, where their paths rarely crossed. The glue that binds them is Zenia, who was also at college and who did cross all three of their paths, separately, and not in a pleasant way.

However having some time since attended Zenia’s funeral, she is far from their minds as they lunch at the Toxique in downtown Ottawa; until she walks into the restaurant, studiously ignoring them as she passes. The girls scatter in confusion.

Back at their respective safe havens of home, each of them looks back on Zenia’s impact on their lives. These are not thumbnail sketches to serve the plotline but in each case a full rounded life story is unfolded. Any one of them would make a novel in its own right; such is Atwood’s consummate skill in story-telling, use of prose, characterisation and nuance.

Back to the present, the girls reconvene to compare notes and discuss who has found out what about their un-deceased ‘friend’ and her Lazarus trick; more importantly they need to decide what to do about it.

No more need be said here, no spoilers given. It is a rich and satisfying read; its length (550 pages) is immaterial as it is one of those books where the urge to get on and enjoy it is tempered by never wanting it to end.

The Dead Women of Juarez – Sam Hawken

Read as leg 4 (Juarez, Mexico) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Ciudad Juarez on Mexico’s northern border is where ex-boxer Kelly Courter now calls home. He fled his real home in the US as a last desperate act in a downward spiral from potential contender to drugged-up punch bag with a felony charge hanging over his head.

Here across the border he ekes out a living in the ring as ‘white meat’ for up and coming local fighters, and out of the ring as gofer and accomplice to Estaban, a small time drug pusher. The good news is he’s off the drugs and has a good ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with Estaban’s sister Paloma. He’d like to cement that further and has upped his training and cut down the drinking. But Paloma has other priorities; she is deeply involved with a support group for women whose daughters, sisters or mothers are ‘missing’ – among the scandalous hundreds in the city who have been taken, raped and murdered over recent years.

More professionally involved with the ‘feminocidios’ is Rafael Sevilla of the State Police; he’s also involved with policing the drug-dealing ‘narcotraficantes’, so Kelly’s on his radar - more as an informer than a target.

So far, so atmospheric, with plenty of local colour, poverty, exploitation, petty crime and sex for sale in the heat and dust of the city. Then the book explodes in a frenzy of violence. The feminocidios strike near to home; the city police investigation is lazy, ham-fisted, brutal and possibly corrupt. Sevilla’s response is to work alone to find the truth and seek some small justice for the dead women of Juarez.

This is a thriller not for the faint-hearted. The few sex scenes are explicit if not erotic; the violence is more pervading and is described in disturbing detail. This is one Mexican city not on my holiday list. However the read moves quickly with short chapters, morphing midway from Kelly’s narrative to Sevilla’s, and building to an action-packed climax.

How well it serves in bringing the (true) dead women scandal to the world’s attention is uncertain, but the attempt is to be applauded.

The Program – David Walsh

David Walsh is the Sunday Times journalist who refused to accept that Lance Armstrong raced clean and made it his business to prove it. Walsh had been covering the Tour de France since 1982 and when he first met Armstrong in 1993 he was immediately impressed by the 21 year-old Texan’s force of personality and ambition to win.

The next four years were significant for both Walsh and Armstrong. Armstrong battled with and overcame cancer while Walsh was sickened by the revelations of widespread doping in his favoured sport of cycling. So, in 1999 when Armstrong returned to what was meant to be a cleaned-up Tour, and produced barely credible performances, Walsh smelt a rat.

Armstrong won that Tour, and then the next six, and while most journalists lapped up the story – cancer survivor overcomes odds for sporting success – Walsh became an increasingly lone voice in questioning its validity. He didn’t just question, he investigated and turned up evidence and witnesses; he also uncovered intimidation and cover-up.

In 2005, Walsh and like-minded French journalist Pierre Ballester published the detailed allegations in a book.  ‘LA Confidential’ could only be published in France due to Armstrong living up to his name with strong arm legal moves that threatened to sue any English language publisher. Armstrong rode out the storm and retired with his record (and prize money) intact. It would take another seven years and the testimony of team-mate Floyd Landis for Walsh’s position to be vindicated.

The book is detailed and meticulously referenced and cycling insiders may be comfortable with the constant asides and shifts in timeframe, but I sometimes found them difficult to follow. To me the book is more about Walsh than Armstrong and the author’s search for the truth and his battles to get it published.

As a result I now know quite a lot about how Armstrong suppressed suspicions and bullied the cycling world, but not as much as I would like about how he managed to avoid getting caught by doping control.

Forces of Nature – Brian Cox (with Andrew Cohen)

In this book based on his recent TV series Professor Brian Cox (aided by the programme producer) sets out to answer some simple questions about our everyday experiences – the shape of a snowflake, the motion of the earth, the origin of life, and the colours of the rainbow.

Inevitably the answers are not so simple, involving atomic and molecular structure, relativity and space-time, the biochemistry of LUCA (our last universal common ancestor) and the nature of light and the electromagnetic spectrum. But in Cox’s capable hands the explanations are revealed to rest on simple foundations – universal laws of physics and chemistry.

I did not see the TV series and only acquired the book (a Christmas present) having browsed it in a shop and been pleasantly surprised at the apparent depth of science in the text. First impressions were confirmed by the reading; there is nothing dumbed down here, there are equations aplenty and all the concepts are painstakingly but elegantly explained. I almost, briefly, understood general relativity – but that point (event) in space time has now disappeared into my personal past.

The large format hardback edition is lavishly illustrated with colour stills from the programme, and only some feature Dr Cox looking butch and moody in scuba suit, pilot fatigues or mountaineering gear. Most of the others are stunning nature shots although not all seem relevant to the text. Similarly some of the diagrams and figures, despite looking nice, lack proper explanation.

But these are niggles, forgivable product design features, that do not detract from the quality of the writing that manages to be rigorous, informative and entertaining. The four sections – symmetry, motion, elements, and colour – hang together remarkably well with a tangible progression that leaves the careful reader feeling better informed and in awe at how scientists have decoded nature without detracting from its wonder.

Fleshmarket Close – Ian Rankin

In this, the fifteenth outing of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh based detective, Rebus and protégé Siobhan Clarke have been farmed out to the suburbs having lost their office space at their old St Leonards police station. Rebus feels sidelined, but at least it gives him freedom to operate as he does best – independently and unconventionally.

When a murder crops up in one of the outlying housing projects he is quickly on the scene. The estate has a high proportion of immigrants and asylum seekers, and the victim is one of them.

Meanwhile Clarke is contacted by the parents of a girl whose rape (and subsequent suicide) she had investigated some years ago; now the other daughter has gone missing.

Added to the murder and missing persons are two bodies found buried in a cellar in Fleshmarket Close, just off the Royal Mile. Both Rebus and Clarke attend but there is something fishy about the find as the bodies turn out to be just bones picked clean.

The three cases develop with the expected complexity, interweaving and connecting (or not) and with the expected complications for Rebus’s and Clarke’s personal lives (will a clinch in the previous book translate to more) and professional prospects (Clarke is on the way up, Rebus is treading water).

In these later Rebus books Rankin always injects some topicality and while this dates from 2004 the context of immigration still has resonance today. The issues are handled well enough – exposing prejudice and inhumanity – with Rebus characteristically cutting in his assessment of all those around him, be they do-gooder or bigot. While unable to do much to right all the wrongs he sees, he does what he can, while solving the crimes, to help those in need that cross his path.

Rankin rarely disappoints and this outing is well up to standard, benefitting from being a bit shorter (at 400 pages) and tighter than its immediate predecessors.

Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk – Ben Fountain

Read as leg 3 (Texas, USA) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Billy Lynn and the rest of Bravo Platoon are nearing the end of their ‘victory tour’, their last engagement at Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, for the Thanksgiving Day game against the Bears.

The ‘engagement’ that got them here was a short, sharp and bloody firefight in Iraq, captured on newsreel footage which, being largely successful from the US viewpoint, has become an internet sensation at home and a totem for the war effort. Their reward is a short furlough back in the US – provided they perform in the media circus and accept their due as heroes of the nation.

Billy Lynn doesn’t feel like a hero, he didn’t exactly volunteer to serve, and the adulation is starting to wear thin.

There is a lot going on at Texas Stadium, a lot for Billy to process. Bravo now have an agent who is trying to cut them a film deal, promising big bucks but so far delivering nothing; their role in the half time show is vague and while it should include meeting the fabulously attractive cheerleaders, Beyoncé led Destiny’s Child will be on stage too; and the Cowboys owner has invited the platoon into his suite for hospitality among the rich and powerful, which takes them all far from their comfort zone.

Billy has two other preoccupations. He had twenty-four hours at home, down the road at Stovall, that reintroduced him to his family’s troubles and during which his sister Kathryn tried to persuade him to dodge his return to war; and now he’s besotted with one of the cheerleaders who to his surprise seems to reciprocate. More immediately he needs a drink and some pills for his headache.

Through the blur in his head the contradictions between his current treatment as a ‘hero’ and his previous as a ‘grunt’, a nobody, lead to half-formed questions about who he is actually fighting for; whose will the victory be? But though war is hell, and victory maybe hollow, could he walk away from his platoon, his comrades, his true loyalty?

The narration places the reader firmly in Billy’s consciousness, making the language authentic and providing a lot of buy-in to his situation and mindset.

Billed as “the Catch 22 of the Iraq war”, this takes a swipe less at the military than the civilian context of the war. There is humour but the out-loud laughs are fewer and the cynicism is more bitter – Billy is only nineteen so his eyes are just opening to the self-serving and exploitation that abounds.

Billy Lynn is a book of its time and one that deserves to be read and enjoyed on its own merits.

Periodic Tales – Hugh Aldersey-Williams

In this book the author shares his fascination with the elements that go to make up the periodic table. He follows no scientific order in introducing them, preferring to group them in sections labelled Power, Fire, Craft, Beauty and Earth.

In Power we have the traditional riches of gold, silver and platinum along with the energy providing likes of carbon and plutonium. Fire includes the most reactive of elements such as sulphur, potassium, phosphorus and radium; while Craft covers the malleable metals – long discovered tin, iron and copper along with more recent additions of zinc, tungsten and aluminium. Beauty looks at the colour giving elements, both the physical tints of cadmium, chromium and cobalt and the bright light producing argon and neon. The Earth, or ‘rare earths’ elements are more recently won from the ground, the likes of scandium, strontium and yttrium, unsung but increasingly useful in modern industrial processes. These are just examples - there are of course over a hundred to go at, and he covers them all.

Although the chemical properties are covered, of more interest to the lay reader are the cultural references that have attached themselves – how they arose and are perpetuated independent of updated scientific reality.

Another interesting strand of the book is the human stories behind the discoveries made; the search to fill the gaps predicted by the periodic tabulation and the research into the chemistry and physics behind its organisation.

The trends and fashions in naming new elements is also of interest – Greek & Roman mythology (cerium, promethium), places (germanium, francium, scandium, californium), recently discovered planets (uranium, plutonium), and scientists (einsteinium, rutherfordium, mendelevium).  Geology also gets a look in (mining engineers often at the forefront of discovery) with Samarium.

Aldersey-Williams gets the balance right between science, history, biography, economics and trivia, making for a book packed with interesting information, obscure detail and memorable anecdotes.

The Favourite Game – Leonard Cohen

Read as leg 2 (Montreal Canada) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Is this highly stylised novel just a curiosity or one only for the musician’s fans? In it we follow the early life of Laurence (Larry) Breavman, through whom Leonard Cohen paints pictures of his own time as a child and young adult in Montreal.

Despite, or because of, his middle class Jewish origins Breavman indulges himself in what the city has to offer. In short chapters, some snappy some lyrical, his boyhood, adolescence and student experiences involve girls, poetry, music and the search for novelty and meaning, often expressed through dialogue with friend and soul mate Krantz.

Relations with women feature throughout. Boyhood fascination with the tragic Bertha and first love Lisa (whose favourite game it was to be flung on to snow, to land crazily and leave bizarre impressions in the drifts) gives way to more long lasting involvement with muses Tamara “whose thighs made him a fetishist of thighs” and then Shell.

He meets and falls at first sight for Shell during an interlude in New York, her back story revealed in some detail as they spend lazy days and nights holed up in an apartment.

In love but never content, Breavman returns to Montreal to take up the offer of a summer camp job with Krantz and we get a more mature view of the City. Here the temptations of the women, still Tamara but also the red headed Patricia, persist and conflict with his enduring need for Shell.

As to be expected from Cohen, the prose is captivating as he finds characteristically unconventional but apt ways to bring to vivid life landscapes, situations and people.

More than a curiosity and more accessible than his poetry, the book is a rewarding read whether or not you are a Leonard Cohen fan.

Red Bones – Ann Cleeves

This is the third of Cleeves’ Shetland series of detective fiction featuring Jimmy Perry, native of the islands despite his Spanish sounding name, which is a relic of the shipwrecked Armada.

This time the action takes place on the island of Whalsay, home of Perez’s sidekick sergeant Sandy Wilson, where a couple of archaeology students are conducting a dig at his grandmother’s croft. Human bones are found; they seem old but their discovery is rapidly followed by a death – accident or murder?

Perez investigates and has to unravel current relationships and hidden secrets within the Wilson family history. Another death occurs; again there is uncertainty as to whether it is suicide or murder, but two bodies and some old bones on a small island look more like enemy action than coincidence.

Perez’s personal life takes a back seat in this book (girlfriend Fran is shipped off to London) but Sandy’s fills the void to maintain the usual balance between human interest and police procedure.

Cleeves is a fine writer of the genre and the story rattles along nicely with its usual sprinkling of Shetland landscape and weather to give an authentic feel to the location.

I have enjoyed all three books read so far, and the series continues, but whether I will return to Shetland for further instalments is unsure. So many books, so little time!

Skippy Dies – Paul Murray

Read as leg 1 (Dublin, Ireland) of my "Bookpacking" reading journey.

Dublin’s exclusive Seabrook College for Boys is the setting for this close examination of events in one tumultuous autumn term. The action takes place in the parallel worlds of the masters and the pupils who meet physically in class but have little notion of what is really happening in each other’s lives.

The adult thread of the story centres on Howard “the coward” Fallon, like many of teachers a Seabrook old boy, back in the fold after a failed career in finance. His issues, apart from trying to promote in his class an interest in history, include: a long held feeling of guilt arising from a tragic event from his days as a pupil; the siren attraction of newly arrived temporary teacher Miss Aurelie McIntyre; and the unwelcome attention of acting (and would-be permanent) headteacher Greg Costigan, whose mission it is to modernise the school and wrest control away from the historic grip of the Holy Paracletan fathers.

Howard’s problems pale into insignificance against those of his second year class; their issues span the chaotic spectrum of early adolescence. Skippy (aka Daniel Juster) is the quiet boarder who unwittingly binds together a diverse set of friends including: roommate Ruprecht van Doren, bookish would-be intellectual who is obsessed with the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence in a multi-dimensional universe; Dennis Hoey, the cynic; Mario Bianchi, the self-appointed expert on sex; and straight man Geoff Sproke, whose bit part role in life is defined by him playing the triangle in the Van Doren quartet.

Though quiet and inoffensive, Skippy has his problems too – at home and in the swimming team – and is most comfortable in the alternate reality provided by the ‘Hopeland’ computer game. However that takes a back seat when, through Ruprecht’s telescope, he espies and immediately falls for an unknown girl he sees playing Frisbee in the adjacent St Brigid’s School for Girls.

Lorelei Wakeham (her of the Frisbee) has her own demons. In common with most of her schoolmates she is concerned (in her case needlessly) over body image, and has been drawn into the misuse of prescription drugs as ‘slimming pills’. These are procured and peddled by two older boys at Seabrook, entrepreneur Barry and hard man Carl. Carl also has designs on Lorelei, and has the leverage to obtain sexual favours that Skippy could only dream of.

Things come to a head for both Howard and Skippy at the Halloween Ball when St Brigid’s come to play. Howard and Aurelie are to chaperone the event; Lorelei will be there; the punch will be spiked; and several die will be irrevocably cast. Skippy may die, but not quietly, and his influence continues to affect the lives of the others.

It is a sprawling six hundred page roller coaster of a book. Paul Murray takes a scatter gun to numerous themes and nails most of them. The narration switches from character to character with good effect, providing not only humour and tragedy but also no little insight into the human condition. A recommended read.

Shylock is My Name – Howard Jacobson

The setting for this modern day retelling of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is the money belt south of Manchester around Alderley Edge. Here live, in conspicuous affluence, the main protagonists: Strulovitch, a well-heeled Jew; Plurabelle, a wealthy heiress with a celebrity lifestyle; and D’Anton, friend and factotum to Plurabelle and implacable enemy to Strulovitch, based purely on a disagreement over the latter’s planned development of a local gallery to exhibit Jewish art.

Plurabelle and D’Anton are casually anti-Semitic; Strulovitch while not religiously devout is culturally mired in his faith, content to field prejudice and return it with interest. Not anti-Semitic (despite his Nazi salute style goal celebration) is Plurabelle’s and D’Anton’s friend Gratan, a big footballing fish in the small pool that is Stockport County. In fact he has a hankering for Jewish-looking girls, currently centred on Beatrice, Strulovitch’s sixteen (but going on twenty-five) year old daughter.

The scene set, enter Shylock.

Strulovitch meets him in the cemetery and, unfazed by the presence of a fictional character from a four hundred year old play, invites him back to the house for a meal and to stay a few days. For Strulovitch it is an opportunity to quiz his guest on his ‘recent’ experience and to seek advice on his own predicament. For Shylock it is a chance to reflect on and explain a point of view the bard omitted from his play.

The plot in Cheshire’s ‘Golden Triangle’ develops along Venetian lines. Barnaby (Plurabelle’s lover) wants something Strulovitch has; D’Anton seeks to get it and makes a risky bargain that includes Gratan, Beatrice and an unwise forfeit. Will it end familiarly or will there be a twist this time?

There are some wordy bits around the Jewish condition but Jacobson uses words very well, and there are plenty of mannered comedic episodes too. A familiarity with Shakespeare’s play will help to appreciate the sense of unfolding fate (I refreshed my schoolboy memory with a quick browse of Lamb’s Tales) but the story can stand alone to give a modern and more balanced, though not anodyne, picture of Jewishness in contemporary western society.

The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets – Simon Singh

From its opening episode in 1990 “The Simpsons” animated series has implanted mathematical nuggets into episodes, sometimes as part of the story but more often slyly into a background graphic or throwaway line. Mainly unnoticed by the viewer these are the private jokes of the some of the scriptwriters (who include a preponderance of maths graduates), shared with some fans who use freeze frames to capture the figures and decipher the message. In this book Simon Singh combines his love of maths and The Simpsons to bring those mathematical titbits out of the background and in entertaining fashion explain their history and significance.

Thus we are treated to mini-treatises on universal constants such as pi and e; theorems such as those of Pythagoras and Fermat (his last one that provided enough material for an earlier book from Singh); and the maths behind ideas such as six degrees of separation. He also covers some social issues such as the under-representation of women in maths (taking his cue from the “Girls Just Want to Have Sums” episode).

To give an example of how it works, one episode briefly displays three answers to a multiple choice question to fans at a baseball game, inviting them to guess the attendance. The options are 8191, 8128, 8208 and in the context of the show are meaningless. But to mathematicians they are highly distinctive: 8191 is not only a prime number but a ‘Mersenne’ prime formed by raising 2 to the power of a prime number (13 in this case) and deducting 1; 8128 is a ‘perfect number’ (the fourth) as its divisors (other than itself) also add up to the number (easier to check the second one, 28 = 1+2+4+7+14); 8208 is even more arcane as a ‘narcissistic number’ equal to the sum of its digits each raised to the power of the number of digits (again easier to see it in the smaller 153 = 1 cubed + 5 cubed + 3 cubed).

Game theory also gets an airing, explaining the strategies for winning rock-paper-scissors, as well as the superior (less prone to ties) version of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. Fun is had with infinity (apparently there is more than one) and multi dimensions; and classic example of the pitfalls of statistics are recounted.

It is light hearted but not dumbed down, and the periodic inclusion of joke maths test papers provide such gems as: Why did 5 eat 6 (because 789); what is the volume of a pizza of radius z and thickness a (pi.z.z.a); and what are the 10 kinds of people in the world (those who understand binary numbers and those who don’t).

For anyone with an interest in maths it is a very good read, explaining the sometimes complex concepts clearly and concisely. A liking for the Simpsons (and Futurama which is also covered) is less essential but aficionados probably won’t be that surprised by the care and attention lavished on the details, inconsequential to the plotlines, included in the programmes.

Phineas Redux – Anthony Trollope

This, the fourth, of Trollope’s ‘political’ novels features the return (or more literally translated, the bringing back or revival) of Phineas Finn whose parliamentary and romantic entanglements were the mainstay of the second volume. At the conclusion of that novel Phineas had exited parliament on a matter of conscience, cut his ties with the society women he courted, taken a local government post back in Ireland, and married local girl and first love Mary Flood Jones.

Now with his wife dead and the job tedious, he is tempted back into politics, where he contests the Tankerville seat in an acrimonious election; the longer term goal to gain a remunerative post in the government of the day. Amid much politicking he is also back amid his society women - quite a fan club he has, though two are married (one happily, one disastrously) and the other is a regular companion of the all-powerful, but aging, Duke of Omnium.

As is his wont, Phineas gets into scrapes; publically sniped at by his old enemy the editor of The People’s Banner, more literally shot at by a disgruntled husband, and put into in a perilous situation when a political rival is bludgeoned in the street. All the while he struggles to come to terms with his current romantic feelings and how much they are just echoes of past loves, misdirected expressions of gratitude, and coloured by his need for independent means.

Trollope moves the reader through the political, emotional and moral issues that arise with an assured hand and graceful prose to a resolution of sorts; though as ever with this author, not necessarily the outcome all readers would choose.

The Dream Lover – William Boyd

Two dozen short stories mainly involving relations between men and women, mostly from the male viewpoint and often concerning their perspective of the relationship rather than the reality. So they are more to do with the dream than the love; and less about the love than the desire (with a sprinkling of hate, revenge, ennui and betrayal).

The settings, periods and characters cover an impressive range. To give a taste of those that stuck in my mind: a US serviceman seeks revenge on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific; a schoolboy’s first date, the plans shared in the dorm, has a lot of to live up to; a diplomat’s last night in the tropics provides a long awaited opportunity for sex with a colleague’s wife, but there is an impediment; a man’s obsession for a girl has an unusual genesis and a tragic end; and student affairs at an international school in Nice create tensions and torments.

Stylistically Boyd experiments in some stories, which adds to the variety, but for me he is best when he tells it straight – good characters, intriguing situations, a dilemma to resolve.

Resolution doesn’t always come, not all endings are neat, but most stories say something interesting about men and women and how they relate. And it is not a bad thing sometimes to be left wondering…

Personally I prefer his full length novels but this collection provides a more-than-readable, bedtime-story length assortment of tales; some will resonate, some may jar, but none will put you off the next.

Review of 2016

The move to fortnightly reviews reduced the number of books read in the year to twenty-six, though these included (as planned) some hefty tomes from favourite authors. As a result the overall standard was high and restricting my books of the year to eight was tricky. However from the titles reviewed the following are picked out as the books of my reading year and so are particularly recommended (full review in bracketed month).

Books for serious readers:

The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt (Jun) – A traumatic childhood event leaves Theo Decker bereft of family but in possession of a secret treasure; both consequences shape his future in this fine depiction of a developing young man surrounded by richly drawn characters.

Life After Life – Kate Atkinson (Jul) – Time-looping depiction of a 20^th century life, lived over again in an attempt to get things right – the author at her mischievous best.

White Teeth – Zadie Smith (Dec) – Multicultural, multi-generational tale of the intertwined lives of a group of working class London folk; full of comedy, irony and pathos.

The Bone Clocks – David Mitchell (Dec) – Six differently narrated episodes provide a snapshot every decade or so between 1984 and 2043 (with perceptive views of the past and perceptive visions of the future); each a good story, the combination linked by recurring characters and an age old mystic battle between good and evil.

General fiction:

The Journal of Dora Damage – Belinda Starling (Apr) – Unusual in its conception and physical presentation, which both factor into a story that sees representatives of some oppressed minorities rise and take control of their lives via an unconventional bookbinding business, against the odds, in 19^th century London.

Joyland – Stephen King (Jul) – Fine, quick paced and nostalgic yarn of a young man’s 60’s summer working on a run-down amusement park; a fun job that turns darkly serious.

The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins (Nov) – Cleverly crafted and unusually constructed modern murder mystery that works to perfection.

Nonfiction:

Manhood for Amateurs – Michael Chabon (Mar) – Short essays from a wise man and a gifted writer who here turns his attention to the male zeitgeist based on his experiences as a son, lover, husband and father.