In lush and often lyrical language, author Gail Jones creates a consummately literary novel which takes place on Circular Quay, surrounding the Opera House, during one hot summer day in Sydney. Four major characters are dealing with personal losses and memories of the past which make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to participate fully in the present. Deaths haunt them all, and as they gravitate individually towards the Opera House, they relive events from their lives. Time is relative as the novel moves forward and then swirls backward during each character’s reminiscences. Only Ellie and James know each other. The other characters lead independent lives, and any connection among them will be just a glancing blow, a random event – one of the minor acts of fate. A mysterious fifth character, who materializes without warning in the conclusion, serves as a catalyst to bring the novel to its thematic conclusion. Literary and artistic references pepper the narrative, adding depth to the themes of love, loss, and death. Sometimes the prose is weighed down by the elaborate imagery, but the novel still offers much of interest to those who enjoy highly literary novels, and the thematic focus and the setting are unusual and intriguing.
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Posted in 9-2012 Reviews, Australia, Book Club Suggestions, Coming-of-age, Historical, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Social and Political Issues on Feb 26th, 2012
If there is such a genre as “Australian Gothic,” this novel would be one of its best-written examples. The sights, sounds, and smells of the bush, filled with storms, heat, dust, and exotic birds and animals, vibrate with life—and death—both physical and spiritual. Set in remote and sparsely populated Western Australia in the early 1940s, this 2008 novel recreates the life of Perdita Keene, a ten-year-old child not wanted by her British expatriate parents, who had hoped she would die at birth. Perdita, whose childhood is formed by the aborigine women who nursed her in infancy, develops a strong friendship with Mary, an aborigine girl five years older, and Billy, the deaf-mute son of the Trevors, white people who run a local cattle station. All three children are outcasts for various reasons, and their bonds with each other are total and life-affirming. The murder of Perdita’s father, described in the opening pages, is at the core of the novel, and the circumstances surrounding the case are not clear. All three children witness the crime, but Perdita, the narrator for most of the novel, is so traumatized that she cannot remember details. Lyrical, sensual, and full of passion, Sorry is a novel that is dramatically intense, full of emotion.
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It has been two years since I have added a new book to my list of All-Time Favorites, but that has just changed with the release of this novel which deserves a special place on my Favorites list. Set in the mining country of South Wales, Vanessa Gebbie’s incandescent new novel captures the cadences and speech patterns that lovers of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood have celebrated for years, and as I read the book (as slowly as possible), it felt as if Richard Burton, whose recording of Under Milk Wood is still in demand, were whispering in my ear. A collection of stories narrated by Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, a beggar who lives on the front porch of a disused chapel in a Welsh mining town, the novel eventually becomes the history of the town itself, and readers will come to know all the characters and their families going back for three generations. The emotional power of this novel is overwhelming without becoming sentimental or syrupy. Filled with wonderful descriptions and emotionally moving insights into people of all types, The Coward’s Tale recreates an entire town, and as the characters develop and overlap throughout the book, the wonder of this author’s achievement expands.
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This novel was WINNER of the 2005 Naoki Prize for Best Novel in Japan, and also WINNER of both the Edogawa Rampo Prize and the Mystery Writers of Japan Prize for Best Mystery. Mathematical genius Tetsuya Ishigami and his equally brilliant friend Manabu Yukawa, from the physics department at Imperial University in Tokyo, are at the heart of Keigo Higashino’s complex and satisfying murder mystery from Japan. From the outset the reader knows who has killed a loathsome and terrifying bully; the big question is whether or not the person will ever be caught. As Prof. Yukawa says, “The investigators have been fooled by the criminal’s camouflage. Everything they think is a clue isn’t…[it] is merely a breadcrumb set in their path to lure them astray. When an amateur attempts to conceal something, the more complex he makes his camouflage, the deeper the grave he digs for himself. But not so a genius. The genius does something far simpler, yet something no normal person would even dream of, the last thing a normal person would think of doing. And from this simplicity, immense complexity is created.” With two characters who resemble Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty in their battle of wits, the novel also contains the kind of abrupt dialogue and thin characters of Conan Doyle. Outstanding and very clever.
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Many readers will find How It All Began the best novel Lively has written so far, primarily because the characters and their issues sound so familiar. With characters who comment insightfully and often ironically about their lives while dealing with their latest crises, the novel also features graceful prose and sparkling dialogue to give this novel a thematic heft which is rare in current fiction. The novel opens with the mugging of Charlotte Rainsford, age seventy-eight. Her subsequent recovery from a broken hip at the home of her daughter and son-in-law begins the cycle of change from which ripples radiate for the rest of the novel. Charlotte’s daughter Rose works part-time as a personal assistant to Lord Peters, an elderly former history professor who spends his time doing obscure historical research. Rose’s need to stay home with Charlotte at the beginning of her recuperation leads to the arrival of Lord Henry Peters’s niece, Marion Clark, who comes to Lord Peters’s estate to fill in. Marion, a successful interior designer, is having an affair with the married Jeremy Dalton, who feels no qualms about betraying his wife. When Jeremy’s wife Stella discovers a revealing text message from Marion on Jeremy’s cellphone, “The Dalton’s marriage broke up, [all] because Charlotte Rainsford was mugged.” Rippling out, the novel studies how one random event can permanently affect the lives of dozens of people.
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