This site will share with you hundreds of book and film reviews written since 2009. Also a chance to discuss these reviews together with some of my creative writing to be added.
I have found this guide invaluable for planning a 10 day holiday in Sicily. It is clear, attractively presented with descriptions of the "highlights" to visit, but also an indication of intrigung places "off the beaten track", plenty of photographs to whet one's appetite, useful little maps including a separate "Touring Map", and strikes a good balance between being either too detailed or too sketchy. It also "sets the scene" with the background history and culture of Sicily, a reminder of its past diversity and prosperity, yet remains a manageable size to take along on holiday.
If there is anything missing – and this is a common lack in guidebooks – it is the absence of any detailed suggested 7,10 and 14 day itineraries, and an estimate of driving times between places, although you can of course calculate this from, say, Google maps.
A Chinese Malayan by birth, Judge Teoh Yun Ling retires to the house at Yugiri in the Cameron Highlands and the "Garden of Evening Mists" developed by the enigmatic Nakamura Aritomo, sometime gardener to the Emperor of Japan. Since she has suffered brutal treatment and lost her sister in a Japanese camp during World War 2, one is curious to learn how she managed to form a bond with Aritomo before his death. Shifting back and forth in time, the story is an account of her recollections, revealing some kind of truth layer by layer, as she follows a friend's advice and attempts to capture her memories before the aphasia with which she has been diagnosed destroys her mind, making her a stranger even to herself.
At first, I was put off by the cumbersome opening chapter, the dwelling on small details, the slow pace and the writer's preoccupation with metaphors which, although sometimes striking, too often seem clunky and distracting, even unintentionally comical – "the waterwheel dialled ceaselessly" and so on.
Then I became hooked by Tan Twan Eng's exquisite poetical descriptions of the garden, his enlightening explanations of the principles of Japanese garden design related to a Buddhist/Taoist philosophy of the meaning of life, linked in turn to woodcuts and the art of tattooing, and by his evocation of life in 1950s Malaya with the interaction of different cultural groups, including an introduction to a neglected aspect of colonial history in the rise of communist terrorism in Malaya in the 1950s. The main characters are well-developed, complex and flawed so that you want to know why they behave as they do, what secrets they may be hiding, how a known fate came to befall them.
I began to think that perhaps this should have won "The Man Booker", or that it may be "above prizes" but in the later chapters, where Yun Ling recalls her experiences in the prison camp or recounts Professor Tatsuji's period as a kamikaze pilot, the book loses some of its originality as the pace quickens and the prose becomes more commonplace – a pale imitation of say, "Empire of the Sun".
The final revelations prove a little contrived yet would have satisfied me if the final twist had not seemed a little too implausible – there is an over-reliance on coincidence in this book. Tan Twan Eng seems to have introduced a denouement only to leave it half-knotted, although I suppose this is a point for discussion in book groups.
After a rocky start, I found this novel absorbing, often a page turner, moving blend of unflinching and sentimental, thought-provoking and very informative as regards Malayan culture understood from the inside. It was useful but disruptive to look up various terms, often employed several times before they are explained in the text, if at all, so brief footnotes would have been helpful. I am also left wondering if some of the (to me) overwritten prose may be due to Tan Twan Eng's fluency in a language other than English, in which this style is highly regarded. His style may also reflect a continued focus in Malaysian study of English literature on the work of poets like Shelley (such as "The Cloud" quoted in the novel).
This begins like a novel with Walsingham, the English ambassador in Paris, risking his life by harbouring a Huguenot in a vain attempt to save him from the St Barthelomew's Day Massacre in 1572. This appalling event was critical in convincing Walsingham of the absolute necessity of preventing a Catholic invasion of England.
Although destined to play second fiddle to Lord Cecil, Walsingham filled a major role as Principal Secretary to Elizabeth, heavily involved in foreign policy, negotiating the thorny paths of her phony marriage plans, promoting early abortive attempts to extend English influence by founding colonies in North America, but most of all organising a network of secret agents to glean evidence of plots amongst Catholics at home and abroad.
Cooper provides a somewhat repetitive but fascinating analysis of how English Catholics who mostly just wanted to be free to worship "in the old way" were hardened into plotting against Elizabeth by the influence of priests who set up seminaries abroad and ventured into England, at great risk and personal cost, to spread the word. It was a vicious circle in which repressive laws, an inevitable result of foiled rebellions and plots, only made the English Catholics feel more persecuted and rebellious. Cooper debates whether Walsingham was guilty of "entrapment" by infiltrating Catholic families with agents who encouraged them to intrigue against the Queen.
Some events, such as the Throckmorton plot, are not easy to follow since they are presented in a rather fragmented way, and the whole structure of the book is a little disjointed, so that the abrupt switch from Walsingham's reliance on ciphers and code breakers to troubles in Ireland and attempts to found a colony at Roanoke feels like reading two fresh books in which he scarcely figures.
Yet, a sense of Walsingham the man comes through clearly: puritanical but not fanatical, loyal and industrious, stymied by the queen's periods of indecision. While giving her lavish presents, he was reduced to debt partly through being obliged to pay for some of his security work himself, not to mention the indignity of having an ungrateful queen throw a slipper in his face. His occasional bursts of written frustration to others seem almost modern in tone, and very human.
A few clear maps would have been useful, say of the ill-fated colony on Roanoke Island, the ports ravaged by Drake in the Spanish Empire, or even the route taken by the Armada. A timeline and list of main characters for easy reference would also assist the general reader. The illustrations are interesting, but need a full page each to do them justice.
Not having read the bestselling book on which this film is based, I came to the cinema with no great expectations, apart from thinking, as proved the case, that judging by the trailer this would be an excellent theme for 3D film and the use of CGI.
From the outside we are transported to the magical beauty of the Botanical Gardens of Pondicherry, where the oddly named hero Pi's father runs a zoo. Political pressures cause him to take a Japanese ship for French-speaking Canada, with his animals caged in the hold, but disaster strikes when the vessel sinks in a storm and Pi finds himself in a waking nightmare, confined to a lifeboat with a ferocious Bengal tiger inappropriately named "Richard Parker".
We know that Pi will survive the ensuing Odyssey, since he is narrating the tale years later to a young writer, but that does not detract from the tension of his struggle to exist, leavened by moments of humour and the astonishing beauty of vast starlit skies, oceans suffused with phosphorescence and a passing school of leaping dolphins. The striking scenes give you a real sense of Pi's loneliness, leading to a subtle identification with the tiger, and of his increasing sense of closeness to the natural world. This in turn helps you to appreciate how such experiences may give people a "sense of god", and Pi is, as we know, very susceptible to spiritual experiences anyway.
At some points the story turns to magical realism, which the computer graphics makes wonderfully vivid and somehow more plausible than might be the case in a novel. The mind plays tricks on people under stress, so we are left uncertain as to whether Pi may have imagined or even invented the story to replace a more mundane and sordid truth.
I recommend this film which can be enjoyed both as simple entertainment, or taken on a deeper level. But to do it justice, you must see it in 3D.
As a mature student of French, I read this in an attempt to understand the addiction to "les bandes dessinées" which seems to persist into adulthood even for French literature lovers. I hesitate to repeat what must be widely known – since I had grasped it without reading a single Asterix in the past – that the revered Goscinny has created a "village gaulois" populated by "irréductibles gaulois" who manage to make mincemeat of the entrenched Roman garrisons surrounding them, and fools of the occasional representative of Caesar who comes along with the intention of bringing the villagers to heel. The secret of the locals' success lies in the magic potion prepared by the venerable druid Panoramix, and the exceptional strength of the menhir delivery man, Obelisk, who never needs to take the potion since he tumbled into the brew at berth.
The ensuing tale of the wager for Asterix and Obelisk to tour France without being captured, collecting local specialities on the way as evidence, is pretty silly although amusing, partly in showing one again the French preoccupation with food – all the items collected are edible and listed with gusto at the end: "saucisse de tolosa", "huîtres et vin de burdigala" and so on.
In trying to find an equivalent story embedded in English culture I came up first with Winnie the Pooh, then thought perhaps Dad's Army would be nearer the mark. You may need to be able to associate Asterix with the nostalgia of childhood, and also be a native of France to understand the puns fully. I have at least learned the French for "port" and "starboard" and that, "Je tire ou je pointe?" refers to the game of pétanque.
In our insatiable thirst for detective thrillers, foreign language productions have the benefit of introducing us to a different way of life in a setting which might well suggest the location of our next holiday.
In this case, the drama is set in the fictional Vigata, a quaint old stone-built town spreading over a hilly Sicilian coastline bathed in perpetual sunshine. Detective Montalbano occupies an elegant flat overlooking the Mediterranean where he can relax swimming at the end of each stressful episode.
We are introduced to a slow-paced (apart from the crimes, that is) way of life revolving round food – a man will put the enjoyment of a good meal before rushing to greet his lover – and the extended family, where relatives and workers gather on a sunny terrace to consume plentiful meals together.
Smartly turned out and astute, Montalbano somehow commands the respect of his staff despite the kind of volcanic outbursts which would have him sent on an anger management course in Britain. Like most detectives, he is on shaky terms with more senior officials, perhaps in part owing to his tendency to break the rules, but survives in his post, probably because he always seems to solve the crime in hand, usually through his ability to make deductions from very slim evidence.
The denouement is often unpredictable, partly because the very complicated plot tends to have a few twists which are hard to follow – and to be honest at times implausible. It's quite fast-moving, so with the sub-titles as an added constraint you have to concentrate.
Overall, it's worth watching as the characters are well-developed, the dialogue is amusing, the cases have intriguing aspects, and all does not end happily in every respect – there is a gritty undercurrent, say in the suffering of Tunisian immigrants in "The Snack Thief" or the continual hints at bribery and corruption amongst higher ranking officials, making the "honest" Montalbano a rarity.
This harsh revelation of the "violence, injustice and torture" imposed on Haiti by the thuggish "Tontons Macoute" supporters of the sinister "Papa Doc" during the 1960s forms the background to a novel that is a mixture of tense thriller, sad love affair, and reflection on the meaning of life provided through the portrayal of a variety of characters. Sadly, this impoverished island escaped from Papa Doc's control only to suffer the ravages of AIDS in the 1970s.
Returning to the rundown hotel in Haiti which he cannot sell, Brown has to deal with the body of a dead government minister in his swimming pool. This must be concealed from his only two guests, an idealistic but naive American couple, the Smiths, who are resolved to transform Haiti with an ill-timed project to promote vegetarianism. Can Brown maintain his clandestine "semi-detached" affair with Martha, whom he resents having to share with her spoilt and all-too observant young son, while Brown is unsettled by the suspicion that Martha's ambassador husband knows about the relationship but appears to accept it. What has brought Captain Jones to Haiti – a congenital liar beneath his blustering charm?
Although Greene himself did not regard "The Comedians" as one of his best works, and he admitted his experience of Haiti was superficial, this book hooked me from the first few pages with his gift for storytelling, constructing a plot in which every incident and character counts, creating a strong sense of place and devising scenes which are by turns poignant, philosophical, menacing, exciting or hilarious – hence the idea that we are all to some extent playing the part of comedians.
The narrator Brown may be cold, cynical and self-centred, but his role as an outsider gives him the detachment to observe and analyse the people and situations he encounters. He may be forgiven a little bitterness since he has never known his father's identity, and his flamboyant mother abandoned him as a small boy in a Catholic boarding school where the monks could be relied upon not to throw him out when she failed to pay the fees.
For the first time, I have understood some of the Catholic angst which pervades so many of Greene's novels. Near the end, Brown refers to "the never quiet conscience injected into me without my knowledge, when I was too young to know, by the fathers of the Visitation." Brown seems to be the vehicle for Greene's introspection. "The rootless…. we are the faithless. We admire the dedicated….the Mr. Smiths for their courage and integrity……we find ourselves the only ones truly committed to the whole world of evil and good, to the wise and the foolish, to the indifferent and the mistaken. We have chosen nothing except to go on living."
Blue chalk circles begin to appear in the Paris suburbs, each ringing some everyday object. But Commissaire Adamsberg knows it is only a matter of time before a circle contains a murder victim. Unlike his sidekick Danglard, the pragmatic, cynical, stereotypical heavy-drinking inspector deserted by his wife, Adamsberg is not your usual senior police detective. Burdened by his acute intuition, "if only I could be wrong about someone once in a while", he wanders round with his shirt half hanging out, idles around in coffee shops too depressed to go into work, and is only tolerated by colleagues at his new post in Paris because of his astonishing success record in solving cases.
Some of the characters are entertaining, such as the beautiful Mathilde, a famous marine biologist, only really happy deep-sea diving, who spends her time when on dry ground following and observing strangers. I liked her glass table with a built-in aquarium. However, the main characters are all highly eccentric and somewhat unrealistic. I enjoyed some of the quirky dialogue and was prepared to go with the flow of the off-the-wall plot until it reverted abruptly to the kind of trite, contrived thriller overfull of coincidences with a hero who keeps presenting his bemused colleagues with the next piece in the jigsaw, obtained through his latest light-bulb moment.
Some of the English translation is a little oddly worded perhaps partly because the distinctive whimsical quality is hard to capture in English.
Blue chalk circles begin to appear in the Paris suburbs, each ringing some everyday object. But Commissaire Adamsberg knows it is only a matter of time before a circle contains a murder victim. Unlike his sidekick Danglard, the pragmatic, cynical, stereotypical heavy-drinking inspector deserted by his wife, Adamsberg is not your usual senior police detective. Burdened by his acute intuition, "if only I could be wrong about someone once in a while" , he wanders round with his shirt half hanging out, idles around in coffee shops too depressed to go into work, and is only tolerated by colleagues at his new post in Paris because of his astonishing success record in solving cases.
Some of the characters are entertaining, such as the beautiful Mathilde, a famous marine biologist, only really happy deep-sea diving, who spends her time when on dry ground following and observing strangers. I liked her glass table with a built-in aquarium. However, the main characters are all highly eccentric and somewhat unrealistic. I enjoyed some of the quirky dialogue and was prepared to go with the flow of the off-the-wall plot until it reverted abruptly to the kind of trite, contrived thriller overfull of coincidences with a hero who keeps presenting his bemused colleagues with the next piece in the jigsaw, obtained through his latest light-bulb moment.
I recommend this in French for the practice, and the English version to help with some more obscure language points. Some of the English translation is a little oddly worded partly because the distinctive whimsical quality is hard to capture in English.
I agree that unless you are a Danish speaker you need to concentrate hard to read the subtitles, observe people's body language and notice what is happening in the often short scenes which switch rapidly between the various plot threads, frequently leaving gaps for you to fill in. I wish I had thought of making a note of the various characters starting with Episode 1, which you may need to watch twice to grasp the political background of this thriller.
Although you do not need to have seen the previous two series, it is an obvious advantage to have done so. Series 3 may be the best in terms of coherent plot and character development. There are some similarities with Series 1 e.g. the sensitive in-depth coverage of a couple's desperation when their child is kidnapped; a cunning criminal who has a specific and unusual motive rather than being a simple "serial killer"; complex political shenanigans with a charismatic but flawed leader trying to win an election but dependent on trade-offs with small parties ("The Killing" does little to further the case for coalitions) and requiring the support of a major industry, in this case "Zeeland" – realistic when you consider the size of Denmark.
Still driven and preoccupied with the latest case to the point of obsession, Sarah Lund retains the tendency to walk round in the dark with a torch, usually without backup, which has become an almost comical trademark of the series. She is as unconcerned about her personal appearance as ever, although wears a wider range of jumpers – I particularly liked the white one with a striking chevron pattern. She admits to having been a "bad mother", but her attempts to be reconciled with her son are invariably interrupted by a phone call on the latest crisis at work.
Since this is described as the last Series, I anticipated a dark ending, thinking that it would be too tame for Sarah to take a cushy desk job, as planned, and to settle down with a former lover in her "shed". The ending is unpredictable, leaves a good deal for you to mull over and draw your own conclusions, according to your preference. I think it is wise to call this the last in the series while many people may still want more, but perhaps the producers will change their minds.
Antenna Reviews 