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.