Caves of Steel – Isaac Asimov

The caves of steel are the enclosed mega-cities of Earth a millennia or so in the future, where men and women live heavily communal lives with the limited space and food supplies rationed out.

In contrast, just outside New York city limits, is the spaciously laid out Spacetown, a closely guarded transit port for inter-planetary travel and trade with the outer worlds – planets colonised centuries ago, now independent of and slightly contemptuous of Earth. The Spacers are disease-free, technologically advanced, and enjoy a lifestyle that most Earthmen resent.

Another bone of contention between Earth and the Spacers is the use of robots. The sparsely populated outer worlds rely on them for labour and even more advanced operations; on Earth their increasing use is putting people out of work - and out of work means losing status and associated lifestyle privileges such as a wash basin in the apartment and a seat on the expressway.

So when New York police detective Elijah Baley is teamed up with Spacer R Daneel Olivar to investigate a murder in Spacetown, it is a bit of a challenge; because R stands for Robot, and is the only obvious giveaway in his humanoid appearance and behaviour.

The investigation proceeds haphazardly, hampered by political and social barriers. The scientific advances in evidence are interesting but it is the social developments and the unchanging human condition that forms the mainstay of the book. Solving the crime soon becomes part of the bigger issue of fixing Earth – Spacer relations and seeing a way forward for the teeming masses of the home planet.

Asimov writes a good book, deftly combining plot, dialogue, and context. When I first read this aged sixteen it was the futuristic setting that fascinated; now some 45 years later the sociological aspects hold as much interest. And while the whodunit element is secondary it does work at that level too.

Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

This graphic (in the literal, illustrated sense) book relates the experiences of the author as she grew up from a ten year old girl to a young woman of twenty-four in Iran during the troubled years from 1980 to 1994. This edition combines Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood’ and ‘Persepolis 2 – The Story of a Return’.

The only child of middle class liberal parents, Marjane is first affected by the Islamic revolution through the gradual imposition of religious dogma at her previously secular French-run school – gender segregation, cultural indoctrination, and the compulsory wearing of the dreaded veil. Inconvenient as these changes might be to her she soon learns of the more serious effects on her country as friends and relatives who oppose the regime disappear or suffer arrest, interrogation and beatings.

To escape the poisonous, stifling and eventually war-hit environment (and to continue an unfettered education) she is packed off to Vienna, where the opportunities of Western liberalism are almost too much for an unsupported young girl to deal with. The freedoms are all very well, but with no family to anchor her, they are also dangerous. In the end she feels the need to return home.

Back in Tehran the repression continues, but as a resourceful young woman she and her friends find ways and means to subvert the regime and achieve small victories over the Guardians of the Revolution, but not without peril.

Seeing the momentous events from a child’s and then a young woman’s perspective, using stark black and white drawings to support the simple but surgical comments, is very effective. The politics and history provide the context but it is the development of Satrapi as an individual that drives the story. She is candid about her mistakes and while critical of the regime she remains patriotic to her country.

I expected an easy read (this being my first ‘graphic novel’) but found instead a thought-provoking and compelling book with wise words and evocative images.

Widow’s Walk – Robert B Parker

The book is one of Parker’s “Spenser” novels (the first I’ve read) featuring the Boston-based (Boston Mass. not Boston Lincs.) private investigator.

Here he is called in by attractive defence attorney Rita Fiore, and after some flirting (she is available and interested, he is appreciative but otherwise committed) the case is set out. The client is Mary Smith, who is accused of murdering her husband, found shot dead in his room while only the two of them were in the house. The now rich widow seems to be the archetypical dumb blonde – or is she cleverly playing dumb – unable to explain what happened or the whereabouts of the missing gun.

Spenser sets out to crack this variation on the ‘locked room’ puzzle and soon unearths enough murky secrets and dodgy dealing to implicate a rage of ill-wishers, if only he could place them in the room. As he digs up the dirt, people get hurt, some killed, leading to a tense denouement and a clever reveal.

Parker’s style is bright and snappy, dialogue driven and narrated throughout by the wise-cracking Spenser, straight from the Sam Spade / Philip Marlowe tradition. He networks effectively with the cops and the lawyers but takes no crap from anyone else; for back-up he has the mononymous Hawk – big, black and, when necessary, brutal. With these ingredients the story unfolds at pace, but not unrelentingly as time out is occasionally taken for some homely and reflective moments with sassy girlfriend Susan and aging pooch Pearl.

The complexities of the case and the multiple characters are handled without muddle, the twists and turns are plausible, and the outcome is satisfying enough to put Spenser firmly on my ‘good cop’ list.

Moby Dick – Herman Melville

You think you know the story – Captain Ahab and the great white whale – but unless you have completed the full 650 page voyage you probably don’t.

While the hunt for Moby Dick drives the story, on its harpoon spike is hung a treatise on all things to do with whales and whaling: history, mythology and literature; boats, tools and techniques for chasing, catching and killing; the anatomy and economics of dismemberment; and the make-up of the men who do it all - as individuals and as a crew.

Narrated by an old hand (the iconic “call me” Ishmael) the level of detail is obsessive and fascinating. After 100 pages the Pequod hasn’t yet left the port of Nantucket; it is 600 pages before the eponymous fish (sorry, mammal) is sighted. In the meantime, as other whales are chased, caught and slaughtered, we get to know the crew like old shipmates, best summed up in Melville’s own unsurpassable words:

On Ahab – “intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge” (Moby Dick of course having previously snapped his leg off); on his officers’ qualities – “mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and pervading mediocrity in Flask; on the crew – “chiefly made up of mongrel renegades and castaways and cannibals.”

The above gives a flavour of the language: almost biblical, at least Homeric, in its epic moments; Shakespearian in its soliloquies; and always darkly compelling.

Many themes can be read into the tale, and may theories have been expounded on it, but I just read it, and enjoyed it, at face value - an engrossing seafaring epic, a tale of obsession and revenge, and a manual on hunting the biggest game of all.

Three Beds in Manhattan – Georges Simenon

Francois Combe, an actor of repute in his native France, is in New York licking his wounds after his actress wife dumped him for her younger leading man. Bitter, haunted and unable to sleep, he cruises the bars of Manhattan in the early hours.

In one he meets Kay, not young, not pretty, but alluring in a damaged kind of way. They talk; they drink; they walk; they connect; and eventually stumble into the down at heel Ivy Hotel for a night of mutual comfort.

Come the dawn (late afternoon actually) Francois can’t let go, and Kay is content to start all over again with another night on the town. After all she has nowhere to go having been kicked out of her borrowed room.

Kay’s past is chequered and as details emerge of her previous liaisons – marital (she’s divorced), pick-ups (like him), and platonic (as if) – they torture Francois with a mixture of unreasonable jealousy and a desperate need to possess.

A fragile trust develops as she moves into his apartment; and he accompanies her to her old flat to regain some personal effects. However events conspire to part them. It should be temporary but, as both can see reasons to cut and run, who can tell?

Simenon of course wrote the Maigret stories, and a host of other top-notch crime thrillers, and although the setting and premise is different, the style and craft is familiar. The prose is admirably concise, New York is as atmospheric as Paris, and the lead characters are complex and credible (for 1950s New York).

The result is interesting and very readable, but I prefer his whodunits (or as is often the case with Simenon, the whydunits).

The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

The novel has at its centre a bit of a sex scandal at the Abbey Grange high school, though it is glimpsed only through the murky reportage of some of its pupils in their weekly saxophone lessons, then through a drama put on by students at a local, but prestigious, stage school.

The saxophone teacher, up in her attic studio, encourages her girls to open up to her and reveal the secrets they withhold from their mothers, so what they say of the ‘abused’ girl is music to her ears. The pretext is for them to use their emotions and experiences to inject soul and feeling into their playing; the suspicion is that it is her only window on the sensual world.

Meanwhile in parallel, young would-be actor Stanley auditions and gets a place at the drama institute, only to be exposed to equally unorthodox teaching. He too is prompted to reveal and use private and personal experiences to enhance his art. When his class have to devise an end of year production, the school affair is picked as the central theme.

Eventually the two strands come together with potentially disastrous consequences, but though the plot drives the book forward it is the teacher–pupil interaction that grips.

The teachers, significantly known only by their titles (the saxophone teacher, the head of acting, the head of movement, etc.) are, or try to be, manipulative; but is this for their own gratification or for the benefit of the learners? The pupils mainly recognise the attempt but face the same dilemma – is it for their improvement or are they just being used for a vicarious reliving of a long gone youth.

The concept of performance is central to the way the story is told. Time shifts uncertainly; real life events morph into staged performances as, for example, the saxophone teacher projects scenes from her own past onto the intimate conversations with her pupils. This sounds more complex than it reads, because it is done seamlessly well.

This unusual novel (Catton’s first - her second won the 2013 Man Booker prize) is compelling and thought-provoking. The easily flowing prose and the slow reveals keep the pages turning to the end, and the mind turning even after that.

Saints and Sinners – Edna O’Brien

In these eleven stories Edna O’Brien presents not so much distinct saints and sinners but rather the more complex combination of good and bad in most folk. The tales, though varied, can be considered for review purposes roughly in three groups.

First, inevitably, there are those that deal with love between women and men in its several guises: doomed from the start in Black Flowers; lost and regretted in Manhattan Medley; unrequited in Send My Roots Rain; and betrayed in Cassandra. Narrated by women, the language is lyrical and the mood melancholic.

Lighter are a couple of wry observational pieces. In Sinners a landlady takes a dim view of the morals of her latest paying guests, and in Green Georgette a young girl accompanies her mother to tea at the house of a lady of high social standing.

Men do take centre stage in two biographical sketches of working men. Shovel Kings gives an insight to the trials of an Irish labourer in London; Inner Cowboy follows a naive would-be wide boy in Ireland. In both their faults and foibles are balanced by their good nature. But in Plunder the men come out less well as a young girl gives a harrowing account of the invasion by soldiers of her country, her home and her body. In these stories the prose is more gritty and the mood both lighter and darker.

As to be expected from a writer of her reputation, the stories are well written, put together with skill of such a light touch as to be unobtrusive. They are about relationships, emotions and mood, and can be admired as such.

My own taste is for a little more to actually happen: some dilemma or other to torture the protagonists, or some ironic twist to leave me thinking.