This is my review of Pavel and I by Dan Vyleta.

This recreates 1946 Berlin in the aftermath of war, with buildings and lives smashed, and law and order barely held in place by the Allied forces united in name alone. People have been brutalised by suffering yet still retain a powerful will to survive and the capacity to undertake at times unexpected acts of humanity.

Pavel is presented from the outset as an enigma, a sick American, fluent in German and Russian, hiding away with a large store of books he refuses to sell to obtain much-needed medicine and food, and giving shelter to Anders, a ragged and superficially unappealing street urchin.

This well-written, fast-moving drama in which the author still finds time to develop a large cast of characters as distinct individuals, begins with Pavel receiving an unwelcome visit from his friend Boyd, once soldier, now pimp and racketeer, who dumps on him the body of a well-dressed midget concealed in a suitcase. It soon becomes clear that the midget possessed something of strategic interest to each of the Allies jockeying for power in Berlin.

There ensues a complex Grahame Greene-cum-Chandler tale in which nothing is ever quite what it first seems, and actions tend to have unintended consequences. The tone is often brutal and cynical, but leavened with wry humour: this is illustrated by the recurring references to the pet monkey which the sinister Colonel Fosko (reminded me of Count Fosco in the Woman in White) foists on Sonia, the elegant tart with a heart. It is also evident in the descriptions of the street urchins organised by Paulchen, and the casual deciding of their fate.

An unusual aspect is the third person narration which, with growing frequency, lapses into the first person – a one-eyed Brit called Peterson – sometimes merely confiding with the reader in sly asides, at others even getting fully involved in the plot. The shifting viewpoint could be irritating, and reduce one's engagement with the characters, but I quite like this device.

There are, as Peterson himself admits, a few holes in the plot, but overall the complex chain of events links together quite well. There are moments of real tension, when a character seems to be going to his death, and you know the author is ruthless enough to eliminate any member of the cast, and to let bad win out over good.

I thought the ending a little too inconclusive and disappointing – perhaps as is often the case a bit too condensed. I also found it unclear why Pavel exerted such a charismatic power over most of the people he met, and would have liked to know a little more about "what made him tick" and exactly what he had been up to.

If this is a first novel, it suggests an impressive talent, and I shall look out for further novels by Dan Vyleta.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch.

In what is mainly a seafaring yarn, the East End urchin Jaffy Brown pats an escaped tiger on the nose, lives to tell the tale, is taken up by the menagerie owner Jamrach, eventually sets out on a whaling trip with a detour to catch a dragon for one of Jamrach's clients, and suffers appalling privations in the company of his longstanding friend Tim. I was interested to learn that Jamrach was an animal dealer in real life, although in fact he was fined for letting a tiger carry off a young bystander. It was a bit of a let down when the menagerie faded out of the story quite early on.

For much of this book I felt I was reading an adventure story for teenage boys, admittedly with rather more sex, booze, child abuse and graphic descriptions of cannibalism than some parents would like. At times I felt bored, perhaps because the plot is rather slight to sustain a work of some 350 pages, and I found many of the characters quite sketchily drawn and unengaging. In particular, I was unconvinced by the relationship between Jaffy and Tim's twin sister Ishbel, and felt that the opportunity was missed to develop the complex triangular relationship between these three, which could have given the story a stronger emotional core.

What impressed me most and may justify nomination for a prize, are the vivid, poetical descriptions which pour out of the writer's imagination: the sounds and smells of the Victorian Thames, the lively market in Watney Street, the colourful ports visited on the voyage, the dissection of a harpooned whale after an exhilarating chase, the strange appearance of waterspouts over the ocean, in all their deadly beauty. I was distracted by the fact that Jaffy expresses himself with all the articulate lyricism of a mature female writer, and wonder whether the book would have been better written in the third person (we are told that Jaffy educates himself later in life and I suppose he could be modelled on Joseph Conrad). Also, use of the third person would make the final outcome more uncertain.

At times, the frequent references to people and animals vomiting and "voiding from both ends" become tedious. Some of the descriptions keel over into rambling excess. The style veers times between stream of consciousness and "telling rather than showing".

From Chapter 9, my boredom was replaced by a sense of unbearable oppression over some unremittingly harrowing, repetitive scenes. This may of course be intentional. Sometimes, the detail of shocking events seems almost included for effect, and the reader becomes desensitised to it as a method of coping. Again, this could be deliberate on the author's part. I don't think the moral dilemma in the climax of the book (which I can't reveal), and the key characters' reaction to it are explored enough. Also, in the final details of Jaffy's homecoming, which you know will be achieved since he is the narrator, some potentially moving scenes fall rather flat.

For an adult seafaring yarn which brings characters too close to nature for comfort, I would recommend Barry Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger".

P.S Having met Carol Birch at a book event, I would give her 5 stars for being so approachable and unassuming, and her readings aloud from "Jamrach" are very vivid and moving.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Warden (Penguin Classics) by Anthony Trollope.

The first story in the “Chronicles of Barchester” is a slim novel with such an apparently slight plot that it may seem all too easy to slip into the category of “classics I never got round to reading”, but that would be a mistake.

The Rev Septimus Harding enjoys a pleasant life in his role as warden at Hiram’s Hospital, with the welfare of twelve aged men in his care. His peace is shattered when John Bold, a local reformer bent on “stopping injustice” begins to question the financial arrangements that give the warden too high a salary and the old men too small a pension. Is Bold’s action foolhardy or noble, since he is jeopardising his prospects of marrying Harding’s daughter Eleanor?

In a climate of attacks on the religious establishment, the issue escalates. The machinations of Harding’s outraged control freak son-in-law, Dr Grantly are of little avail outside the cosy world of Barchester, and the matter even gets reported in “The Jupiter”, the highly influential organ of the national press. A decent and kindly man, Harding is mortified to find himself personally vilified. A further problem is his growing sense that he is not really entitled to his salary. Normally keen to avoid arguments and supine in the face of Grantly’s domination, is this to be the one occasion when Harding takes a stand and, if so, what form will it take?

In all this, the characters are so real, both in their conversations and the shifting inner thoughts that Trollope describes so acutely that, if one could meet them now, direct communication would be possible – as might not be the case for some of Dickens’ caricatures or Jane Austen’s mannered heroines (both writers whom I appreciate and respect in other ways).

The book is full of sly humour, as Trollope shows Abel Handy, the old men’s self-appointed spokesman, using all the manipulative arts of a modern union leader to induce his colleagues to “make their marks” (since they can’t write) on a petition. Likewise, we see how Mrs Grantly plays the accepted game of the dutiful wife in public, but controls her husband behind the scenes as he does others in public. Then there is the description of Harding, playing the “air violoncello” in moments of deep concentration or stress, to the bemusement of people who do not know him well. We can also identify with Trollope’s tongue-in-cheek musing on the power of the Jupiter, a kind of Victorian forerunner of Murdoch’s power to make and break people, at least until recently.

The only parts to which I cannot relate are when Trollope gives way to the fashion of his times to launch into a flowery essay on, say, the behaviour of people at social gatherings. When the language becomes arch and peppered with classic allusions I do not know, I lose patience. These passages are mercifully quite few, except towards the end when the plot moves to London.

What I like most is the way that, in his focus on the small, quiet lives of very ordinary people, Trollope has the gift of summoning a sense of grief and loss as moving as in any great tragedy, but also of maintaining a sense of proportion and showing people’s capacity to adjust and survive, as is part of the human condition.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock.

Set on Guernsey, this debut novel interweaves the lives of two characters: bright but unpopular and emotionally disturbed teenager Cathy, revealed through the black comedy of her diary , and her deceased Uncle Charlie, whose suffering under the German occupation is recorded in interviews with his brother Emile, also Cathy's father. Before his recent death, Emile was a local historian, obsessed with exposing the truth, but he may have been unable to cope with facts that proved unexpected, or impossible to prove beyond doubt.

In the first few pages Cathy confesses to the murder of her former best friend, but we know she is an unreliable witness. Other reviewers have been repelled by her coldness, but I see it as a kind of defence against a lack of parental affection and bewilderment over the loss of a father whom she clearly admires, but who died before she could "get to know him".

I found the genre hard to place – psychological drama, perhaps? Some scenes are very amusing. At times, it reads like a teenage cartoon strip, yet there is always an underlying sense of the grim legacy of the Nazi occupation. Guernsey is presented in a negative light – somewhat leavened by humour – as claustrophobically small, overrun by tax-dodging foreigners, with a local population concealing their guilty secrets over collaboration with the Germans. The web of lies makes it hard to know the truth, and triggers a chain of misunderstandings and long-term wrongs.

The story held my attention, despite the distracting footnotes, intended to show Cathy's precocious attempts to write like an academic historian, but many of the comments could easily have been included in the main body of the two parallel story lines.

Although I expected to be disappointed by the denouement, it is potentially better than I had feared. I like the ideas of an ambiguous ending, but some of the final revelations seem unnecessarily rushed and I was left too unclear as to exactly what role Cathy's mother has played. I also dislike the note of moral blackmail on which the book ends – it is neat, but overly cynical. I want the book to be more than just a clever construction.

Perhaps the portrayal of the malevolent Nic could have been more nuanced, although she is of course seen from Cathy's distorted viewpoint. Also, you may feel that sometimes the author steps in and inserts a little too much mature self-knowledge into Cathy's adolescent diatribes.

Overall, the novel is like a Chinese meal, giving short-term gratification but leaving you a little unsatisfied and wanting something more substantial.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed.

This novel exposes the plight of muslims living in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir, doomed to suffer whether or not they are militant. It has the ingredients for a powerful and moving tale, narrated by the anonymous son of a village headman in the wild, beautiful mountains close to the disputed border. One by one, members of his close-knit group of teenage friends disappear, leaving him haunted with questions. Why did they not include him in their plans to leave? Have they really crossed the border to join Pakistani training camps? How many have been killed in attempts to infiltrate back as terrorists? When, sickened by military reprisals, all the villagers have decamped apart from his stubborn father and long-suffering mother, the narrator is forced to become a "collaborator", searching the mutilated corpses of infiltrators to collect ID cards and weapons. Is his main motivation just to earn money for his family, or does he seek to find the bodies of his friends?

Although I wanted to be gripped and impressed, I found this book very hard to read. The plot is too slight to sustain a full-length novel, without very skilful writing. In the lengthy first part, the author rambles through the chapters like a traveller without a compass. Despite the vivid descriptions of the striking landscape and the villagers' simple lives, when it comes to the relations between characters, the style becomes stilted and wooden. I found it hard to distinguish individual characters or to care about them. The narrator's endless speculation over his friends' fates becomes repetitious and tedious.

The narrator's "voice" is inconsistent: sometimes, he is a confused teenager, at other times he sounds more like the author, describing the village as "settling down to stasis". The writer's penchant for flowery writing works quite well for passages on spiritual matters, the burning of corpses to save them from desecration, and so on. However, when describing incidents, the style often becomes quite clumsy, with prose inadequate to the task and a frequent jarring misuse of words – I had to resist the urge to seize a red pen and correct it.

To give just one example of how the clotted prose undermines the dramatic effect:

"…Ramazan Choudhury's elder son – the same man who had worked on the mosque and whose two children I had seen at Noor's shop buying éclairs and whose full name, Ishaq Jan Choudhary, I only got to know now when we were paired together in the hunt for X's body – and I were scouring the area around the dirt track that goes away from the village and tails off into the footpath to the valley, when we saw X's ..body lying near a narrow stream running down from the mountain."

What were the editors fulsomely cited at the end, not to mention the author himself who is a BBC editor, thinking of?

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Half Blood Blues: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011 by Esi Edugyan.

Since I don’t care for jazz and have little in common with hard-drinking Black American male musicians, why was I so quickly hooked on “Half Blood Blues”? At first, it was the dry, wisecracking wit, and the rhythm of the Black American speech patterns which didn’t grate as I would have expected – “he stood..leaning like a brisk wind done come up” or “Man, Sid, ain’t you ever going to clean up? You live in plain disrepair” and so on.

Then, I was struck by the spate of vivid, original similes. “He got oddly thin lips, and with the drink still glistening on them they looked like oysters”.

I realised too that there is scope for a compelling drama in a situation where a group of jazz musicians, some black, realise that the world of swing in 1930s Berlin has suddenly turned dark as the Nazis brand it “degenerate art” and begin to beat up black artists.

The author knows how to create tension. From the opening sentence, “Chip told us not to go out”, the first chapter builds up a sense of impending calamity, as the narrator Sid reluctantly accompanies Hiero, a youthful prodigy on the trumpet, in his unwise quest for a drink of milk in occupied Paris, where his high visibility as a Black German combined with a lack of the right papers place him at risk of deportation to a death camp.

Esi Edugyan takes risks in introducing the real-life Louis Armstrong to the plot, but carries it off convincingly. She also succeeds in helping me to understand the appeal of jazz music. She finds apt words to describe in detail how Hiero’s playing sounds to Sid.

“Hiero thrown out note after shimmering note, like sunshine sliding over the surface of a lake, and Armstrong was the water, all depth and thought, not one wasted note. Hiero, he just reaching out, seeking the shore; Armstrong stood there calling across to him. Their horns sounded so naked, so blunt, you felt almost guilty listening to it, like you eavesdropping.”

This is not just a tale of a jazz group under pressure, surviving violent fist fights with the brutal “boots” (Nazi soldiers) but also a subtle psychological study of the interplay between the members of a group, providing a keen insight into personal and professional jealousy. Almost until the end, we are unsure whether Sid betrayed Hiero long ago, exactly how, and if he is a reliable narrator.

Some of the minor scenes drag a little and I found a few points implausible e.g. would it really take so many weeks to make a single record, without actually completing it, would/could the seductive singer Delilah make a headscarf out of a stiff, dusty theatre curtain? Despite this, overall “Half Blood Blues” is an original, well-plotted and beautifully written work. I shall certainly look out for Edugyan’s future novels.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

 

This is my review of The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht.

It is easy to see why this book won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. It has an unusual theme and approach, weaving together a grandfather's tall stories based on Balkan-style folktales and the experience of Natalia, a young doctor trying to cope with the aftermath of the grim war which caused the recent fracture of the former Yugoslavia, and with the death of her much-loved grandfather. Still only in her mid-twenties, the author is a gifted storyteller with an impressive command of English learned as a second language. I am not sure whether she sometimes misuses words by mistake, or is just trying to be original and poetical, but you cannot deny Tea Obreht's striking and unusual use of language.

Although I am no lover of magic realism, I was most impressed by the storytelling, in particular the tale of the "deathless man" who cannot be killed, even if shot through the head or drowned – a sceptical scientist, Natalia's grandfather is tantalised by the mounting evidence for this which flies in the face of reason. Obreht clearly loves animals, of which there are some wonderful descriptions – the tiger leaving footprints in the snow, round as dinner plates, or the elephant recaptured after its escape from the war-damaged zoo.

At first I was irritated by the lack of clarity as to exactly which country we are in – Montenegro, Croatia. Bosnia ? – which border we are close to, and so on. Then I realised that this is not the point. Obreht simply wants to create a sense of the superstition and prejudice, the deep-seated and irrational hatred between Christians and Moslems, the brutality and unthinking futility of war, and the residue of damage for the survivors. Then there is of course the simple expression of grief over the death of a close relative, regardless of whether there is peace or war.

I found the descriptions of Natalia's work the least satisfying, too many minor scenes of little interest, and in need of editing. Some of the later tales told to Natalia by her grandfather become rather tedious and rambling, getting bogged down in excessive back story about the early lives of Luka the sadistic butcher, Darisa the bear hunter and the village apothecary.

From the outset, Obreht skilfully manages to arouse the reader's interest by covering events through a series of separate scenes which move back and forth in time. Natalia's attempt to find out more about her grandfather's death and to obtain his belongings has a touch of the detective novel. Towards the end, the plot loses structure and pace. Again perhaps deliberately, it becomes even more fragmented and further parts company with reality, proving a little too fey and nebulous for my taste, although there is a persistent rather odd attempt to provide rational explanations for implausible events.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Prestige by Christopher Priest.

The term "prestige" refers to the product of a magic trick – the rabbit pulled out of a hat.

"The Prestige" is the tale of a feud between two rival magicians in the late Victorian age, the working class Borden who makes good use of his skills as a cabinetmaker to conceal people during tricks, and the aristocratic Angier, forced by the poverty of being a younger son to make a living out of a hobby. Told largely through extracts from their journals, starting with Borden's viewpoint, this makes for a clunkily plotted read. Many incidents are reported, which detracts from the drama, and the tone is often stilted, although this may be an attempt to adopt a suitably Victorian style. At any rate, the characters come across as rather wooden.

Borden's prize act is "The Transported Man", for which the obsessive desire to work out an explanation drives Angier to distraction. The only possible solution seems to be that Borden has a double, but there is no evidence for this. In his desire to outdo Borden, Angier is driven to devise a transportation trick of his own, making use of the new power of electricity to move himself instantly from one place to another, although the process gives rise to a certain persistent problem… I was interested to learn that the electrical engineer Tesla really existed and had a laboratory at Colorado Springs, with a contraption called a "magnifying transmitter" which emitted arcs of electricity 7 metres in length. However, I share the disappointment of readers who prefer a story of magic where the suspense lies in working out how it is done, rather than one which relies on science fiction to create effects. This raises a real problem in reviewing the book fairly, since scifi is by its nature generally implausible. You just have to like it (which I don't) or judge it for its originality. On this count, the book scores quite highly, but it would have worked better with more skilful development of the plot.

I agree with those who think that the modern storyline of the magicians' descendants, wrapped round the basic plot, proves to be a further twist too far. This may be why it has been dropped totally in the film version of the book, which I happened to see a few years ago before reading "The Prestige" for a book group. I also think the film version works better because the visual recreation of the various tricks and acts of sabotage is obviously more entertaining than a series of descriptions. Interestingly, I enjoyed the film right up to the end when the multiple cloning of men and black cats by electrical transmission seems too ludicrous. This particular twist is not in the book.

Although I would say that the story works better as a film, you could argue that the book version of "The Prestige" has two advantages. It includes analyses of what motivates magicians and of the nature of magic, and insights on the relationships between the main characters which are lacking in the film. These combine to make it more thought-provoking, yet this quality sits uneasily with an ending which could be said to "go off the rails".

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Solace by Belinda McKeon.

The following is an attempt to analyse why a book which has been well reviewed so far disappointed me.

This slow-paced novel commences with descriptions of places – the Irish countryside – and small incidents – buying a ball of twine. The reader is left to work out who the main protagonists are, what the characters are like and what is going on, and that is fine. We meet Tom the farmer, his son Mark who has returned to assist him, with an infant daughter Aoife in tow. Where is the child's mother? Is Mark's excessive anger over his father taking the child with him to buy twine without telling him a cover for some deeper-seated resentment? There are all the ingredients for the unwinding of some moving Irish tale and my expectations are suitably kindled, but nothing much happens over and above what is given away on the flyleaf.

As the book progresses, I find it hard to engage with any of the characters. I think this is because the differences in their personalities are not very clearly drawn and sustained. The most dramatic incidents seem strangely muted. The description of someone discovering she is pregnant, another of someone dying in an accident – the events and people's reactions, none of this moves me as it should. Likewise the old grievance between the fathers of Mark and Joanne does not strike me with sufficient force, given the flyleaf's reference to "spectacular…wrongs" and "betrayal". I think part of the problem is that, once the book gets under way, there is too much "telling" rather than "showing". Also, events seem too disjointed.

Pehaps the plot is too slight to sustain a book of this length in the absence of a strong narrative drive. I feel that I am reading the words of someone with an ambition to write, who loves putting words down on paper or the keyboard but does not as yet have much to say.

Yes, the simplicity is to be admired, but needs to provide new insights or find ways of expressing truths that we cannot produce for ourselves.

For examples of "less is more" I cite the work of the late Brian Moore and also William Trevor.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

This is my review of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey.

My view of this book see-sawed violently as I read it. Starting with the over-used ploy of the description of a shocking event, in this case the beating of a young boy by corrupt policemen, the novel launches into a study of Englishman George Harwood and his French wife Sabine, who have lived on Trinidad for fifty years. It dissects their rum-fuelled love-hate relationship with each other and the island.

For many pages I read without feeling absorbed, noticing the stilted, banal scenes, characters who did not quite ring true. I was interested to realise that George's interviews for the " Trinidad Guardian" are with real people still living at the time of writing, and wondered if one of them , the famous calypso singer "The Mighty Sparrow" takes exception to being described as the suspected father of a poor, illegitimate Trinidadian boy.

Gradually, I found myself impressed by some of the vivid descriptions, say of the colourful island vegetation, which I found to be very apt when I googled their images. For instance, we see George's favourite month of May described in language which implies his casual promiscuity.

Sabine's habit of talking to the surrounding green hills which she sees as a voluptuous reclining woman seducing George and her appreciation of Trinidad's beauty, contrast with her hatred of the country's corruption and its failure to progress once free from white domination, and the way it makes her feel an outsider.

She hates George too at times for choosing to ignore all this, so that he can exploit the situation, indulge in the free way of life, the scope to grow rich through land purchase, enjoy "the sounds and smells….smiles and shapes", the "bewitching" local women and booze, in a way that would never have been possible in England.

The first part of the book proves to be a novella set in 2006, building up to a dramatic conclusion which I felt for a time should be the end of the whole book. Since the next section moves back in time, to the Harwood's innocent arrival on Trinidad in 1956, I had to force myself to continue because of the numerous hints already provided as to what had happened in the past.

I remain unsure as to whether a structure that moves back in time is a good idea. The reader may gain a sense of "one-upmanship" through knowing more than the characters, but on balance this does not compensate for the loss of suspense.

However, once the narration becomes first person, Sabine's viewpoint from part 2 onwards, it seems to come more alive, grow more moving, and the quality of the writing also improves.

I remain unconvinced by the idea of Sabine loving the unsuccessful leader Eric Williams, the first black leader of an independent Trinidad who promises the people progress, but fails to deliver. I also think the story is not just about the exploitation of Trinidadians first by whites, then by their own leaders. It is also about issues of feminism – the way some women are attracted by powerful men, and allow themselves to be dominated by men, as well as the sense of regret many women have over failing to achieve much in their lives.

The book "goes on too long" and the attempt to create a resounding finale in 1970, after moving back from 2006 to 1956, then forward again, makes for a final chapter with some of the overblown or ludicrous paragraphs which mar an otherwise striking novel.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars