The Return – Roberto Bolano

Read as leg 7 (Chile) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Although the author is Chilean by birth and upbringing, these short stories reflect his wider world view and experience, spanning the Americas, Europe and Russia.

Many take as their subject a portion of an individual’s life, retold second hand in a style almost verbatim.  As for the ‘heroes’ – they are anything but; criminals, gangsters, pimps, whores, porn stars and, worse of all, poets, all feature heavily.

The best for me was the title story in which a recently deceased narrator observes with understandable distaste the unpleasant fate of his corpse at the hands (thankfully only the hands) of a necrophiliac.

This collection is not for those who like a good tale with a punchy ending; most of the stories simply share a slice of the unusual before fading away without resolution, and so maybe reflect life rather than art.

The Gates – John Connolly

The hardback cover is striking and attractive – a blue, black, and amber rendition of the night sky, the suburban streets, silhouettes of figures (human and otherwise) and, in front of an indeterminate redness, a set of black wrought iron gates dangerously ajar.

For these are the gates of Hell and unseemly things are on the way out, summoned by a combination of Mrs Abernathy’s séance in the basement of 666 Crawley Avenue and an unexpected event at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

A small boy and his dog witness the former and soon become the main obstacles to the achievement of Hell on Earth.  Using courage, ingenuity, school friends with useful skills (cricket and a knowledge of black hole physics) and a helpful demon with a grudge, the battle is waged.

The premise and prose style indicate a target readership of young adult, but what age?  The hero is about eleven but the humour is dark and the footnotes introduce serious science.

The perils of choosing a book by the cover became evident - loved its artwork but felt a few decades old for the text.

Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair is Thackeray’s name for the milieu in which the polite society of the early nineteenth century mill around, show off, seek amusement, manoeuvre and score points.

Becky Sharp should not really be part of it, convention decrees that her lack of pedigree and means condemn her to serve the great and the good rather than join in their games.  But she is young, attractive, accomplished, witty and quite without scruples when it comes to social climbing.

Amelia Sedley, equally young, equally attractive if not so vivacious, has better pedigree and more means, at least initially.  But while Becky schemes for her own benefit, Amelia puts others first.  As Becky sees and exploits weakness, Amelia is blind to faults and is indiscriminately loyal.

The story of the two women, and the men they attract for good or ill, meanders over 600 pages.  For the modern reader too many of these pages are choked with Thackeray’s asides gently satirising his time.  In the rest the tale develops at a steady pace, widening to embrace the ups and downs of two moneyed families, the Osbornes and the Crawleys, whose scions (George and Rawden) have a major impact on the heroines.

Country estates, London town, the Battle of Waterloo, and the spas of Europe all feature over the twenty year or so span of the book before a climax of sorts enables the reader to exit the fair with good grace and a sense of both achievement and relief.

The Man Who Disappeared – Clare Morrall

That is Felix Kendall, accountant, who disappears before the police can arrest him for his money-laundering part in a wider criminal network.  All well and good for him to escape, but what about the family he leaves behind?

Wife Kate and the two children face a future at first uncertain and then all too real as their creature comforts - big house, private schools, the leisure to study for an art history degree - are peeled away.  Kate must take over the role as breadwinner and family rock and the kids have to adapt; and what is worse in their world, becoming part of a single parent family or having a dad labelled as a criminal?

It is an interesting premise, and Morrall unfolds the narrative from all angles with an understanding and empathy that reflects the daily slog each must make against a misfortune whether or not of their making.  Kate, suffering guilt by association, searches her past for missed clues; similarly the holed-up Felix examines his history for where it all went wrong. The children have minor dramas, but to no obvious purpose.

In truth not much happens for much of the book; what dramatic tension there is revolves around whether Felix will resurface or not, and if he does how will the family react?  There is a flurry of action just before the end, and a resolution of sorts for those still reading.

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme – Lars Mytting

The narrator, Edvard Hirifjell, lives with his grandfather Sverre on an isolated farm in rural Norway.  There are reasons beyond geographic for their isolation.

Edvard’s parents died while holidaying in France when he was just three, the circumstances unusual if not mysterious, particularly as he was with them, survived, and was found days later many miles away.  His grandfather, tarred by his eastern front service in the Nazi-supporting Norwegian Legion, is largely shunned by the local community so it no surprise Edvard is a bit of a loner.

When Sverre dies (no spoiler - it happens early in the book) Edvard gains access to photos and documents that rekindle his curiosity over his family tragedy.  Now totally alone he starts asking other people questions that his grandfather had previously fended off.  What was his mother (‘a French drifter’ according to his grandmother) doing in rural Norway in 1965 before she had met his father?  Why did  Sverre’s brother Einar, a skilled cabinet maker, leave Norway for good in 1939; if he was, as reported, executed by the Germans in 1944, then who has made and sent the distinctive coffin for Sverre’s burial?

That item has come from Shetland and Edvard resolves to travel there and pick up the trail of his family history, leaving the farm in the hands of old flame Hanne.  She fails to appreciate his new obsession but agrees to mind the shop in his absence.

In Shetland revelations abound.  Einar’s trail is picked up; a young Scottish heiress is encountered who has an agenda of her own that may coincide or conflict with his; more documents are unearthed; false identities and hidden truths emerge; and all point to a certain sixteen trees that grew in the Somme in 1914.

The book is multi-layered and intricately plotted with atmospheric descriptions of wild and starkly beautiful locations.  Edvard’s journey is both physical and emotional, almost bringing to mind that of Pip in Dickens’ Great Expectations (there are even echoes of Satis House and Estella).

The outcome is uncertain to the last but what is not in doubt is the lasting good impression of an epic tale that drags in history, mystery and even a little carpentry.

A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson returns to the Todd family featured in ‘Life After Life’, but this time it is Ursula’s brother Teddy who takes centre stage.  Mercifully, however, we get just one version of his life, albeit in time jumbled slices.

The centrepiece of Teddy’s life, and the book, is his time in the RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War.  That experience forged his personality in the contradictions of combat - a good, kind, brave man who risked his life to kill unnumbered, unknown, and largely blameless foreigners with his deadly ordinance.  A time he looks back on with both pride and guilt.

Around that is spun his relationships with his wife, daughter and grandchildren.  No spoilers here, it is the unfolding of the stories with teasers and revelations that provide most of the appeal.  But suffice to say there is love, loss, misunderstandings, tragedy, estrangement, re-connection, closeness and peace at last.

It is no surprise that it is well-written, meticulously researched and a pleasure to read.  Atkinson excels in family relationships, ensuring they are seen from multiple angles, and in her hands the Todd family are well worth getting to know.

Look Who’s Back – Timur Vermes

It is not difficult to guess, the cover on the paperback features the distinctive black hairline, and the title in black type is placed to double up as a toothbrush ‘tache.

Yes Adolf Hitler finds himself back from the dead, unchanged seventy years on from his Germany’s Armageddon.  He may not have changed but Germany, and the world, has.  Initially he finds it all very confusing but you don’t get to become Reich Chancellor without being able to assimilate facts quickly and adapt rapidly to changes in circumstances.

Two broad strands develop.  In one Hitler, as with any time traveller from the past, gets to comment on the absurdities of the modern world with his outsider’s eye.  In the other he pursues his (unchanged) political objectives, finding modern Germany a fertile ground for his national socialist rhetoric.

But these days the road to social change is not through politics (or violence) but through social media.  He quickly becomes a controversial TV personality and gains traction through the ‘internetworking computer thing’.

A knowledge of the rise and fall of the Third Reich helps with the satire (otherwise an appendix provides a succinct biography of the historical figures) and familiarity with modern German politics would probably makes the comments thereon funnier than to an outsider.

For the non-German it is still an amusing read though probably a longer one than the joke requires.