The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

With the blurb including the phrase “a Dickensian dazzler” the expectation was for a nineteenth century setting in smoky London town, so it was a surprise to be pitched instead into twenty-first century New York.

The narrator is Theo Decker, thirteen as the story opens, and on his way with his mother (currently his only parent) to a school disciplinary meeting. They are early, it starts to rain, and they pop into the art gallery to shelter, taking the opportunity to have another peek at their favourite work – the Goldfinch, barely more than a miniature, painted by a Dutch master, and priceless. On the back of such a coincidental chain of circumstance, disaster strikes, leaving Theo bereft of his dear mother but in secret possession of the painting.

To whom will his care be entrusted? Initially it is the family of his geeky friend Andy Barbour, in their swish Park Avenue apartment, where he gets a taste of the high life and refined society. But it is temporary and when his absentee father turns up to claim him he is whisked off to Las Vegas where the paternal business of gambling is based. There, left to his own devices, he is befriended by the other loner on the school bus, Boris Pavlikovski, similarly neglected by his Russian/Ukrainian mining engineer father. The two boys largely fend for themselves; largely with alcohol and drugs.

His third “loco parentis” is Hobie, surviving partner of Hobart and Blackwell, dealers in and restorers of antique furniture, befriended due to Blackwell having perished in the same disaster that claimed Mrs Decker. Hobie’s workshop provides a retreat when the Barbours get too overwhelming and an escape when his Las Vegas life finally runs off the rails.

While Theo’s care is fragmented and chaotic, his care of the painting is meticulous and of course unknown; his ownership (and the circumstances of it) having an importance to him that far outweighs its monetary value.

Having survived a traumatic childhood and adolescence, stability beckons – as a respected partner in Hobie’s business and engaged to a Barbour girl – but someone is on his case, digging up his past and making waves.

Dealing with it makes the upheavals of his youth seem child’s play; he is soon embroiled with the big boys (including, for good or bad, his old friend Boris) who deal not in dodgy furniture but drugs, guns and, tellingly, stolen art.

So not that Dickensian, except Theo could easily be a modern day David Copperfield or Pip of Great Expectations, also orphans left to grow up in an unfamiliar world buffeted by adults who are kind, cruel and indifferent (some of them all three). These characters that surrounded Theo (more than mentioned above), and in some way define him, are well drawn and pleasingly complex.

It is as long as a Dickens novel at 850 pages, but the prose is easy on the eye, making each of them a pleasure to read.

Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 into a family well-connected to the Thembu royal house of the Xhosa nation that had for centuries inhabited the Transkei region of South Africa. His early childhood mirrored that of countless previous generations, centred on subsistence farming in the rural hinterland, and was largely unaffected by the white dominated government.

But at seven years old, as befitted his station in life, he was kitted out in a cut-off pair of his father’s trousers and sent off to school to commence a British style education, on the first day of which he was allocated a British name – Nelson.

Though not a brilliant student he was studious and hard-working, and so progressed through the black education system via boarding school to university. It was there that early brushes with the relatively benign white establishment started to build a consciousness of an ingrained assumed superiority among the whites.

While questioning that oppression he also found himself at odds with the traditional tribal authority that among other things threatened him with an arranged marriage. In limbo between out-dated tribalism and stifling white supremacy, he ran away to the city – Johannesburg – to make his own way in the world as best he could.

With a good (for a black) education he found work as a lawyer’s clerk, eventually gaining sufficient qualifications to take on his own cases, often fighting for the rights of those suffering from the discriminatory race laws. More significantly he found like-minded political thinkers in the African National Congress, through whose ranks he rose.

What followed - demonstrations, arrests, banning orders, internal exile, trials, prison and long-delayed release – is familiar; but it is no less interesting as it reveals its gradual imposition on a man trying to balance his love for and need to support his growing family with his deep felt duty to his people.

Written with simplicity of style, clarity of moral purpose, and self-effacing modesty, the book reads less that its 600 pages and places on record the life of an extraordinary man whose remarkable ability to embrace his oppressor and gaoler enabled the rainbow nation to survive a transition from apartheid to inclusive democracy that few would have believed possible.

White Nights – Ann Cleeve

In this, the second of Ann Cleeve’s “Shetland” series, the year has turned and it is midsummer in the northern isles, which means long days and “white nights” during which darkness never really falls. Even for locals like police detective Jimmy Perez it is unsettling; for visitors off the newly docked cruise liner it is a tourist attraction to be experienced.

An alternative attraction is the Herring House gallery at the remote Biddista hamlet where an exhibition by the owner Bella Sinclair and fellow artist Fran Hunter (now an item with Perez) is on offer. However the gala opening is disrupted when a stranger throws a wobbler, claiming memory loss and leaving in apparent confusion. He is later found hanging from the roof of the boathouse on the beach.

Suicide by a crazed mainlander? Perez has his doubts, and the post mortem confirms murder – but who is he, why did he come to Shetland, was his distress real or an act and, most importantly, whodunit?

Again Perez is joined in the investigation by Roy Taylor from the mainland and once more they work in uneasy alliance to solve the riddle, Taylor digging into the stranger’s ID and background while Perez seeks to find his local connection to the tight knit highland community.

There is an initial lethargy to the proceedings, reflecting the white nights’ mood of the island, but this gets ramped up as the investigation unearths events long buried but not forgotten.

The plot is tight and twisting with a pleasing but fathomable complexity typical of the author; Perez’s romance moves on but does not intrude; and the topographical detail remains authentic, but subtly different under those long days and short white nights of the “summer dim”.

The Journal of Dora Damage – Belinda Starling

Dora Damage was a bookbinder’s daughter before she became a bookbinder’s wife so she’s steeped in the trade and can tell that her husband’s business is on the decline. He’s not well, struggling with arthritic hands and painful joints, so she needs to help; but in nineteenth century London the guild rules are strict and use of un-apprenticed, non-union, and heaven forbid female, workers risks exclusion from the market.

However behind closed doors who is to say who has produced the goods, and her clandestinely backed notebooks, with their feminine finish, prove popular with the ladies and earn a crust or two. But when one publisher discovers her secret, instead of exposing her, he uses it to persuade her to exercise her skills on books of a disreputable nature for a group of wealthy men with unconventional tastes.

Thus she is drawn into the fringes of an unfamiliar society of free-thinkers and liberals, rubbing shoulders with men of influence and ladies of leisure. As a favour (not to be refused) to one of the ladies she takes on a freed Negro slave to help in the workshop, which increasingly becomes a model of equality and diversity with the boss man disabled, the apprentice gay, and a newly appointed servant girl pitching in when needed.

Dora’s troubles (she also has a young daughter who fits) and travails are related first hand in her journal with candour and they chronicle her developing confidence and capability in a man’s world. Her emancipation, and that of the other equally down-trodden characters, is the real story and a quite uplifting one it is too. The period detail is atmospheric and the bookbinding techniques and materials exude a convincing authenticity.

The volume I read was hardback, nicely bound of course with appropriately patterned endpapers, tooled spine, period dust jacket and ribbon bookmark. Its format and content provide a fitting and lasting legacy of the young author who died shortly after she finished writing this, her first, and sadly only, book.

Someone to Save You – Paul Pilkington

Dr Sam Becker is driving along a country road when a girl dashes into his path, flags him down and pleads for help – her family’s car has crashed down an embankment and is straddling a railway line, with a train on the way. His rescue efforts are only partly successful but he still emerges as a wounded hero.

However some things do not add up: why was the driver handcuffed to the steering wheel; why was the baby in the boot; why did only the girl get out; and why has she now disappeared?

Sam has other pressing issues on his mind just now. He is in fierce competition with a colleague for a consultant’s job at the hospital, and the man who murdered his kid sister fifteen years ago has just been released from prison and is still claiming innocence.

So when more strange things start to happen to him, Sam can’t decide who is behind them – his work rival, the ex-con with a sense of injustice, or someone displeased with his intervention on the railway line. Whoever it is has got some imagination, and a twisted sense of purpose.

Fortunately, with time off work to recuperate mentally from the train crash and with his wife away on business, he has time to pursue his tormentor; or is he just being led by the nose to a sticky end?

The events, characters and inter-relationships are convoluted and to me somewhat contrived, more to perplex the reader than to serve a coherent plot. This makes the reading quite fun in a mind-blowing way but on reaching the conclusion there remained unanswered questions in my mind.

It is a pacey read that uses chapter-ending cliff-hangers to keep you interested and turning those pages.

The Axeman’s Jazz – Ray Celestin

It is 1919, the Great War is over, and the servicemen are returning. New Orleans is a melting pot of colours, creeds and ethnicities – Negroes, Creoles, Sicilians and Irish all have their place, their culture and segregated communities. The one area they mix in freely is the Old Town where jazz music is emerging, drink is flowing and illicit sex is for sale.

The shadow over them all is a serial killer on the loose whose modus operandi is brutal, bludgeoning his victims with an axe, always left at the scene, always accompanied by a different tarot card inserted into the gaping wound. So far the dead have all been Italian shopkeepers so the involvement of the local mafia, the Family, is suspected, whether as target, perpetrator or both.

Three people are on the Axeman’s trail: Detective Lieutenant Michael Talbot is given the unenviable task of leading the police investigation; Luca D’Andrea, ex-detective, ex-con (just released after serving five years for his corrupt mafia connections) is commissioned by the head of the Family to find out who is targeting his organisation; and Ida Davis, aspiring Pinkerton detective (though currently their office girl on the spot), wants to solve the case to prove she is worthy of promotion to an operational role.

Each has a different way into the web of clues and deception. Talbot can use official police files and intelligence; Luca has access to the Sicilian underworld; and Ida, helped by talented young cornet player Lewis Armstrong (who maybe became Louis Armstrong), can engage with the black community inaccessible to the others. Of course they each have their personal issues to resolve as well. Much more than justice depends on the outcome of the chase.

More people get hacked to death before the three pursuers (largely working in ignorance of each other) start to close in. The climax is heightened when the rain begins to fall and a hurricane blows in. Who, if anyone, will catch the Axeman; how will the aftermath of the chase change their lives?

It is a good atmospheric read to find out. The three pronged investigation is an interesting and (for me) novel approach in the genre; however keeping track of which of them knows what and when is a challenge. The immersion in the location is total and the research seems meticulous (the events are based on fact – a serial killer did terrorise New Orleans in 1918-19) so this would be a great book to read while visiting the Big Easy. And it is a pretty good one even if stuck at home.

Manhood for Amateurs – Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is best known for his offbeat novels – such as ‘The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay’, and ‘The Yiddish Policemen’s Union’ – but here he is in self-reflective mode as he sets out his thoughts on the male condition.

The sub-title says it all – the pleasures and regrets of a husband, father and son. And in a sequence of forty or so short essays he covers a lot of ground, extrapolating from his own experiences to reach conclusions, or inconclusive bewilderment, as appropriate.

Although he’s Jewish (albeit secular) and American, his experiences resonate with this British, slightly older, atheist – maybe because I too am a son, husband and father. Even where the common language divides our nations (a murse turning out to be a man’s purse, i.e. a manbag) the observations are spot-on.

To give a flavour he writes of childhood passions (Lego & comic books) and adult dilemmas (what to do with your children’s all too prolific but largely bad artwork); first loves and lasting loves; and the pains and pleasures of growing up and growing old.

The style is understated and the humour wry and self-depreciating, earning this volume a deserved and not inappropriate permanent place on the bookshelf next to the similarly gifted and perceptive Alan Bennett and Bill Bryson.