Note: This novel will be released on September 14, 2010. It may be pre-ordered from Amazon now.
“Today, in 1865, in the twenty-eighth year of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s reign, human understanding of nature and society was surely nearing completion. Economic science showed the inexorable law by which wealth was generated by the poor and flowed to the rich. Social science revealed the inevitability that a sizeable segment of the poor would sink towards crime and depravity. Statistical science showed the precise extent to which this would happen.”
Lovers of Victorian Gothic mysteries will have loads of fun with this one, quite different in tone from the norm, and lovers of literary fiction will admire the author’s ability to describe and bring the period to life while also conveying important sociological and religious issues. Written by Ala
stair Sim, great-nephew of the famed actor of the same name, while he was still a student at the University of Glasgow, the novel takes the Victorian police procedural in new directions. Inspector Archibald Allerdyce, an emotionally damaged man who no longer believes in God, and Sergeant Hector McGillivray, even more damaged from his army experiences during the colonial rebellion in India and the Crimean War, have been ordered by the highest levels of government to solve the disappearance of William Bothwell-Scott, the Duke of Dornoch, wealthiest man in Scotland.
The Duke has amassed a ten thousand-acre estate by having his thugs clear the land of long-time poor residents, also demolishing a small village near the coast which interfered with his view. Just as cavalierly, the Duke has drastically cut the wages of the workers in his five mines. When he is discovered shot dead and pitched into a well, formerly a mine, on his estate, the number of potential suspects is so long that the government decides, for political reasons, to announce his death as accidental. His brother Frederick becomes the eighth Duke or Dornoch, not an improvement, as Frederick, a drunk and a bully, has no conscience at all. “I’m sorry for William,” he says at William’s funeral, “but it’s an upturn in my own fortunes.”
Allerdyce’s investigatio
n of William’s death takes him into the lower depths of the city, described in terms that “out-Dickens” Dickens—houses of prostitution; bars where the Duke, known to them as Willie Burns, can indulge his desires for young men; gambling dens and dog pits where ratters vie to kill fifty brown rats in five minutes—places so dangerous that Allerdyce needs two men to watch his back. Despite the information that Allerdyce and McGillivray discover, the police powers-that-be, tied to the government, insist that the murderer must be the head of the Scottish mines or the foreman who cleared the Duke’s lands. True justice is unimportant—just the appearance of justice, the quicker the better. Eventually, in true gothic tradition, several other murders occur, innocent people are jailed and quickly subjected to summary trials, an illegitimate child threatens the succession to the estate, coincidences resolve a number of plot issues, and complicated love stories unfold.
As one might expect from the title, the socio-religious changes in Victorian society can be seen in the conflicts faced by some of the main characters here, especially Aller
dyce. Darwin’s Origin of the Species, published in 1859, has challenged the traditional church beliefs in Separate Creation and the Chain of Being, with man at the top of the chain and rich men at the very top. Spiritualism, a new movement, is becoming popular. Trade unions are beginning to form, and communism, also new, is gaining followers among the poor. Colonial wars, and the country’s involvement in the Crimea, in which the poor have been used as cannon fodder by their aristocratic officers, have further exacerbated class divisions. Allerdyce, despite his agnosticism and awareness of the social inequities, still sees the world in black and white, however: The law is the law, and no compromises are possible, even if the results make no sense on a grander scale. “Sometimes,” he says grandly, “your duty to the law doesn’t seem to do justice to the people you encounter,” but he does his duty anyway.
In the second half of the book, deliberate religious symbols and parallels appear, causing the mystery to veer off in unexpected directions. Patrick Slater is seen as a Christ figure, living in the wilderness and doing good deeds, Allerdyce is declared to be a Judas by someone he wants to help, Easter images describe someone who “rises to a better life,” and a character on trial is asked if he believes in the Bible as God’s perfect word for man, his answer determining his fate.
The author’s brilliant imagery makes the setting and atmosphere come alive, while the complexities of the plot reveal the author’s comprehensive vision of society. The characters, with the exception of Allerdyce, tend to be stereotypes, in the fashion of typical Victorian Gothic novels. Where this novel differs from most other novels of its genre is in its mood—the customary happy ending, with all details resolved, is omitted. Instead, the reader is left to ponder the social and religious issues that the author has raised. Though his primary purpose is not completely clear and the themes, introduced and developed late, are sometimes fuzzy, the author’s vibrant depiction of a fragmented, class-based society with its equally class-based system of justice is absorbing and memorable.
Notes: The author’s photo and announcement as recently appointed director of Universities Scotland are here: www.timeshighereducation.co.uk
Skibo Castle in Dornoch may have been a model for the estate of the Duke of Dornoch. Skibo was restored as the home of Andrew Carnegie in 1898 and remained in his family until 1982. The Duke of Dornoch’s castle was described as having 10,000 acres in 1865; Skibo has 7,500 acres now. Photo by Heather Swinton: http://travel.webshots.com
Sgt. Hector McGillivray’s younger brother was a member of the 93rd Highlanders and died in the Crimea, an event for which McGillivray still blames Brig. Frederick Bothwell-Scott. The officers of that regiment (dressed as in the attached drawing) were part of the “Thin Red Line” and The Charge of the Light Brigade: www.britishbattles.com .
there enjoy reading and talking about the same kinds of books we do, and the helpful staff has read most of the books and can make recommendations. The main characters in this novel by Laurence Cosse have created just such a bookstore in Paris. Ivan (Van) Georg, who manages a shop called The Good Novel, and Francesca Aldo-Valbelli, the heiress who is supporting it financially, have committed themselves to a shop which is not “an ordinary bookstore…[and] our customers [are not] ordinary customers.”
ing the shop to pay for them. Nasty comments appear on their internet forum, and a seemingly organized attack is mounted in the press, with accusations of elitism taking up whole pages, At one point the shop is described as a “totalitarian undertaking,” an attempt by a small group of elite to control the reading done by the public. Fascist accusations result. Demands are made that the shop’s financial backer be unmasked, and Van and Francesca are both followed.
vide more insight into publishing than the novel itself does. On the internet, you will find a web address, 
Notes: The book I nominated for inclusion at The Good Novel is 
people within a few minutes of their arrival. Some had come here many times and knew that they could reserve cots and places to sleep for the night. Others just took their chances, hoping that the emergency would not last long and that they would be able to return to their homes soon afterward.
who might have become scapegoats, when there were many issues which had contributed to these deaths, he had written his report with a concern for human feelings and for what human beings need in order to deal with such disasters during fraught times such as war. “Perhaps,” he suggests, “we should only sometimes be held accountable for the unintended consequences of our actions.”
at they do, and always leaving the door open for other interpretations of their actions. As the characters become more fully understood, they elicit sympathy from the reader, and by the time all the details are known, the reader feels the same sorts of conflicts that Sir Laurence Dunne felt when he wrote his report. James Low, the chief shelter warden, is unable to forgive himself because his conscientious efforts failed. An eight-year-old who lost her four-year-old sister has seen something that forever affects her life and her relationship with her mother, and she neither forgives nor forgets. Rev. McNeely, of St. John’s Church, across the street, is hard pressed to see the big moral picture which Sir Laurence Dunne feels is so important as he writes his inquiry, the paster recognizing instead the individual issues which he feels have clear black and white answers.
eeds of the community, regardless of the strict definitions of right and wrong. She writes clearly and succinctly and avoids flights of sentimentality, always showing the big picture, the big moral issues, and the big questions of responsibility. Each reader will decide for himself/herself whether to agree with Sir Laurence’s feelings: “People think,” he states, “that they want the whole truth, but they’re far happier with only as much as they can forgive.” A fine novel which deals with major ethical and moral issues within a context which every reader will appreciate and understand, The Report offers a different way of looking at historical events—rationally, but with a kindness toward the participants which protects their integrity and their future lives. “Speculative journalism” and the rush to blame are not yet a way of life at this time.
simply had the misfortune to belong to the wrong rural tribe, these armies massacred a quarter of a million people and displaced a million others.
t, Hannah believes so totally in her own definition of what is right that she is almost inhuman, unable to relate to other people, unable to understand or accept any compromise or middle ground on any issue, and unable to work on an equal partnership with anyone else. Once in Liberia, she meets and marries a government minister in the cabinet of President Samuel Tolbert and has three sons, but she remains not only a detached observer of what is happening in Liberia but a detached participant in the lives of her Liberian family, showing very little feeling or affection for anyone, even her children. Only the chimpanzees for whom she has set up a sanctuary gain her full attention.
g sons, Dillon, William, and Paul had earned the nicknames of Fly, Worse-than-Death, and Demonology by the time she left, her own life hanging by a thread in the midst of the civil war violence. Through flashbacks, Hannah’s early life with her husband, Woodrow Sundiata, shows the violent transition from the corrupt government of William Tolbert to that of Samuel Doe in 1980, culminating with Hannah’s expulsion from Liberia in 1983. While in hiding once again in the US, she meets with Charles Taylor, who had been a friend of her husband, and who later disappears in Africa for many years. In 1989, “ignorant of maternal instinct,” she is able to return to Liberia and her family.
utal history of Liberia, from the seemingly lofty goals of its founding to the beginning of the twenty-first century. No one who reads this (or does a Google image search) will fail to understand the inhumanity and the atrocities for which the International Court of Justice in The Hague has put former President Charles Taylor on trial, nor will they be able to ignore the horrors also committed by Prince Johnson (and recorded on video), who is currently serving as a duly elected senator in Liberia. The high-minded goals of the country are in tatters, the economy is a disaster, the poor are still hungry, tens of millions of dollars in US aid have lined the pockets of the country’s politicians, and as the novel ends, Hannah Musgrove is living in New York State as a wealthy heiress with a successful commercial farm. Nothing good seems to have resulted from any of this for the people of Liberia.
theoretical and dense the novel sometimes became with its science. Fascinating personal stories are interwoven with the scientific plot, giving the novel immediacy, even for a devout non-scientist.
ach of these stations will report by telegraph to a central facility. Forecasting at this time is inexact, however, with accuracy declining for every day after the first day of observations. Forecasts beyond two or three days are often wildly inaccurate, and a five-day forecast seems impossible. Though the air pressure, the winds, and the temperatures can all be measured, these measurements can be compromised, sometimes fatally, by the unexpected effects of turbulence and by measurements which may not take into account all the variables. Discovering some valid way to add turbulence into the calculations would help explain the seemingly random changes which occur in the weather, a crucial element in the D-Day plans.
his life’s work used for warfare, but Henry Meadows hopes to convince him to share the application of his “Ryman number” in the pursuit of a weather equation to aid in meteorological forecasting.
interpretation of God’s will, the issues of science which have not yet been resolved (a solution for the problems of the Rh factor in pregnancy, for example), and the desire to find one formula which will explain the as yet unexplainable future, all relate to the idea of turbulence and seemingly random outcomes but do not necessarily provide insights or answers. Filled with vibrant descriptions, an assortment of characters whose views of the world differ greatly from that of the twenty-first century, a setting that reflects a critical moment in time, and philosophical/scientific themes and insights of great originality, Turbulence is a novel which manages to raise questions and explore them in ways I have not seen before in literary fiction, and I loved it.
three other young Vietnamese women who have also emigrated to France—now totally assimilated after twenty years of living there. Two sisters, known as Elder Cousin, or Potbelly, who is pregnant, and her younger sister, Long Legs, a “cutie” who is living with someone she hopes is a ticket to wealth, have decided to invite their estranged father, King Lear, to come from Saigon to Paris for a three-week visit. Potbelly will pay for the trip, since she is married to a wealthy French “Hardware Man” in the “nutsandbolts business” who, significantly, will be away during the visit; Long Legs has no money, spending her small salary on clothes, makeup, and trinkets. The third member of the Three Fates, Southpaw, referred to at one point as Albatrocious, is their cousin, a young woman who has lost a hand.
on, King Lear has observed the changes in the country for the past twenty years, accompanied not by any family members but by The Wheezer, a priest who was tortured, his vocal cords and tendons cut by the communists, and who no longer celebrates the Mass, referring to God now as the Butcher on High and the Great Deaf-Mute in the Sky. He hangs around King Lear hoping for a meal of his favorite fried eel.
that conceit is relatively undeveloped, the characters not really paralleling King Lear as Shakespeare has created him. But other symbols, of Bluebeard, dragons, witches who remove hands, soldiers, and even of a shrimp which is about to be fried take their place. The fairly straightforward narrative of the early part of the novel becomes much more “internalized” by the author, and the voices of the speaker(s) become more dream-like and nightmarish as a torrent of words and images is disgorged for the reader to interpret.
ult to judge—or to give stars to, if one were to do that—since it is obviously revealing connections which the author has to the past, close to the heart but not necessarily things that the reader will identify with or understand. Sometimes the novel feels like an aria being sung to an audience in an operatic language which the reader does not understand, but just as often it feels like a poem being read to a sympathetic audience of people who can identify with the feelings, if not the events. The artificiality of the construction and the sometimes arch, even academic, attitudes—including a large amount of mockery of people—may add to the “humor” of the narrative, but it is a cynical, sometimes snide humor which trivializes the way others deal with the lives that fate has handed them, and it gets in the way of more thoughtful communication. The descriptions and the musicality of the language are superb, but I sometimes felt as if I were being involved in a literary free-for-all when what I wanted was to understand the feelings of the characters who were facing very real and difficult problems.
ven, as occurs in one scene here, if the member of the family is only seven years old. Each week a list of new fatwas is released—prohibitions regarding even the smallest aspects of behavior (including one against the reading of fiction)—and the “religious police” are empowered to arrest and detain anyone, even foreigners, who violates these rules. Women may not drive cars in Saudi Arabia, and they are discouraged from working outside the house, which creates some strange situations when women need to shop for personal items–underwear, for example. Sometimes their husbands must purchase it for them; at other times, a shop will hire a woman specifically to wait on other women. Women who do work outside the home often work for the media or for the police, but these women are nearly always married (because single women cannot interact with men), and whoever hires them must provide separate offices for them.
women officers to help him by interviewing female witnesses and victims, without their male escorts present. He depends on Faiza, and later Katya, within his department, to bridge the gap with women who need help, women like Miriam Walker, an American whose husband Eric, working in private security in Jeddah, has vanished. The US consulate has been unable to find him.
is writes this compelling and insightful novel from experience. Having lived in Saudi Arabia with her then-husband, a Saudi-Palestinian-Bedouin, she has packed her novel with information about the Saudis’ unique culture, one which has become more strict over the past ten years. We learn, for example, that organized sports for young girls are now banned, though they had been popular. At the age of eleven or twelve, the girls now disappear from view, becoming part of the women’s culture and wearing full burqas from then on. Even small details are revelatory—one woman is excused from “immodesty” in her conversation because, having reached the advanced age of thirty-seven, she has “passed into the sanctuary of perceived sexlessness.” One cleric even approves “summer holiday marriages,” marriages of convenience contracted for short periods of time—because he does not regard women as people.
As the daily lives of the women here become increasingly claustrophobic and frustrating, the limitations and, more importantly, the seeming impossibility of any change—ever—become increasingly obvious and increasingly difficult for the western reader to understand. The death of Leila reveals the hidden underside of Jeddah society, while the disappearance of Eric Walker reveals the attitudes toward foreigners (infidels under religious law) and the inabilities of the US government to solve his disappearance within the Saudi system.
cationing in Jutland as a child; the loss of the brother who came just after him in birth order; working at a bookshop; and taking a neighbor’s dog to be put to sleep.
nse descriptions of nature give weight and importance to Arvid’s experiences and what they reveal of him. On Jutland with his mother, “There were hares and hedgehogs..and pheasants with chicks that were full grown now, in November, and rodents in abundance, and hawks in the sky above, and buzzards that came sweeping out of nowhere, and falcons hanging cruciform in the air before hurtling down, and there were owls in the oak tress, all quiet at night, where they perched on a branch in the dark and stared their prey to death, and in the black night a marten darted between the trees and up across our roof, and we could hear it, and there was plenty to eat for everyone.” The selection of these bleak details, so complete, so haunting, and so full of compelling movement, not only reveals Arvid’s dark state of mind but also the (very) small comfort that there was plenty to eat for everyone.
reserved and often tamps down his feelings, the reader comes to know him, understanding his mixed feelings about his mother while also recognizing his need for her, accepting his distance from his father while regretting their lack of connection, accepting his decisions even when they seem to be wrong for him, and seeing the effects of change upon him at every stage of his life. Often ineffective in his actions, clumsy in expressing his inner feelings, especially in matters of love, and unable to give himself fully to others, Arvid lacks the stature of a “hero.” It is in this very characteristic, however–his imperfect humanity–that he comes to life, becoming a character so real that even the author has said, “I recognize myself in him…[and] I could have behaved like Arvid, given a different set of circumstances…Sometimes I call him not my alterego but my stunt man.”** This is an extraordinary novel of a character facing life changes by one of Europe’s most esteemed authors.
Zambra is a unique writer, one who belies the stereotype of a writer as someone who becomes impassioned by an idea, then hies off to his quiet garret to write furiously, developing, refining, and then ultimately promoting it. Zambra, like his alterego Julian, also an author, ties himself to the most mundane aspects of everyday life, which he then describes succinctly and, at times, lovingly. There are no spectacular scenes, no dramatic displays of emotion, and no real plot here, just the story of Julian, a university professor who teaches all week, entertains his stepdaughter with a continuous story of the private lives of trees every night, and on Sundays works on his novel, a long project which was once three hundred pages but which he, calling himself a “self-policeman,” has whittled down to a mere forty-seven pages. His novel is about a young man tending a bonsai tree, similar to the one given to him by his friends, and which he has neglected to the point that it may die.
and has not come home. Julian is not worried about her at first, but before long, he begins to wonder whether she will, in fact, return to him. He passes the time that night writing about her, their life together, and their past lives, and he says he will stop writing when she returns home, or when he is convinced that she will not return.
nds, author Zambra continues. Using the point of view of Daniela, he shows her as an older woman as she considers reading Julian’s novel, which she thinks may be, like all fiction, just “novelists’ absurd farces.” As Zambra touches on the process of writing fiction, what it means, and whether it is important, however, he moves into the future, giving a conclusion to Julian’s thoughts and demonstrating the power of fiction to create whole worlds.
he removal van…My thighs wobbled, dimpled with fat and puckered with stretch marks, and I saw myself kick again….[and] at the sound of his voice [in my head] I kicked it again…My little episode went on some time; could have gone on longer but I stubbed my toe and had to stop, gasping, eyes watering, laughing in spite of the pain.” Then she takes the tags off a completely new wardrobe and gets dressed: “I didn’t want to smell like this house, or even like the fabric conditioner Will and I used. Had used…I wanted to leave all reminders of my old life behind me.”
husband and daughter, that this is indeed the truth, and that something has happened to both of them. Suspicions become suspense as the novel unfolds.
he reader knows this, the cumulative picture of Annie’s mind as the plot develops further becomes positively terrifying—and pathetic. Her childhood, as it unfolds, does elicit sympathy for her, but at the same time, Annie is dropping hints about what will unfold in the future, increasing the ironies, since the reader does not want to be tricked into believing in someone as devious (and deviant) as Annie. When the author finally begins to reveal details of Annie’s past which one must accept as true, the reader still cannot help wondering how the author will ever reconcile the information gleaned from several scenes which seem to conflict with one another. The conclusion is sly and clever, with the full impact coming very gradually.
world. Marco has a different life from that of boys in other parts of Italy. Like his father, he may be destined to leave his home in Hora, one day, to spend long periods of time in the mines and fields of France earning enough money to support a family in Italy. Marco and his family are Arberesh, descendants of Albanians who emigrated to southern Italy from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, citizens who keep their ethnic ties, their language, and their culture alive within their small communities, which remain poor “while the world outside [gets] better. While the rest of Italy progresse[s].” As his father explains to the son who desperately misses him for the large part year that he is in France, “If I come back [home to stay], who’ll send us money so that Elisa can go to University? What are we going to eat if I come home: nails?” For Marco, however, “My father was a chronic source of pain under my skin.”
the novel opens with Marco and his father sharing the Christmas bonfire when Marco is thirteen and concludes with the same memories, but in between these “bookends,” the chronology and the point of view change with the seasons and the holidays, and good times alternate with hard times as the family dynamics and mysteries unfold. In flashbacks, the father’s life in France before Marco was born becomes clear and makes him human, also explaining his older sister Elisa’s role within the family, while Marco’s difficult life without him also makes him understandable as he grows from the age of nine to thirteen. “I was a child who could not stand losing,” he says, explaining how he would take away the almost-sacred football, given to him by his father, and leave the other boys and the game if he were not winning.
hile also trying to figure out what is going on with “the man with the light blue eyes,” a man who is much older than she, with “salt-and-pepper hair.” When Marco becomes deathly ill and misses two and a half months of school, his father is away, and the man with the light blue eyes begins to play a major role in his life.
sponsibilities associated with it become clearer for Marco.
rm in Ipswich. Her physician father had died, and Kitty, wanting to keep the farm from being sold for development, which her Boston-based brothers favored, decided to give up her job working at the Harvard Library to try to make the orchard profitable enough to save the land.
hours a day for two years during the apple and peach seasons, and gained new appreciation for the values she saw every day among her workers, the wholesaler who bought her drops and cider apples, and the purchasing agent of Harvard, who helped her make commercial connections to sell her crop.
Without preamble, the life story of Lisbeth Salander continues where it left off, as she tries to navigate a world which damaged her to the point that she has difficulty relating to all humans. This film features the same cast in the lead roles as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—the stunning Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander (computer hacker extraordinaire), Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomquist (publisher of Millenium magazine), Lena Endre as Erika Berger (former publisher of Millenium), and Peter Andersson as Nils Bjurman (Lisbeth’s slimy legal guardian). Where this film differs significantly, is in its direction by Daniel Alfredson (who replaces Danish director Neils Arden Oplev) and in its cinematography–Peter Mokrosinski replaces Jens Fischer and Eric Kress.
In a separate plot line, which eventually overlaps with the Millenium plot, Lisbeth finds out that her former legal guardian, Nils Bjurman, is about to hire a plastic surgeon to remove the tattoo she gave him (which announces to the world that he is a rapist and a pervert), and she goes to his apartment at night, threatens him with his own gun, and swears that she will release a damaging video of him if he dares to touch that tattoo. Three violent murders later, with her fingerprints on the gun used in the murders, Lisbeth is shocked to discover her photo in all the newspapers—she is wanted for these murders. She contacts Blomqvist for help.
The change in director and cinematographers has resulted in a film which lacks the icy sparkle and brittle atmosphere of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The scenes in this film are as dark as they were in that film, but the sharp visual contrasts and dramatic changes of lighting, which added to the suspense and mood, are missing here. It becomes more of an action film than an intense character-based study filled with menace, mood, and almost palpable suspense, and it is less involving and less coherent than the previous film. That said, some viewers may actually find the film better than the novel of The Girl Who Played with Fire because the pacing is better. Though parts of it are completely unrealistic, as they were in the novel, the visuals and the sudden shocks keep the reader intrigued for the film’s two hours and nine minutes, whereas many people became annoyed after reading more than six hundred pages of the novel only to find that they had been manipulated by the author to accept some unrealistic “solutions” to some of Lisbeth’s problems.
any more of Pym’s novels saw the light of day, and it was not until 1977 that she emerged from her creative “wilderness” and succeeded in having a novel accepted for publication—Quartet in Autumn, which was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
dark hair looking like a helmet, and her “marmoset eyes” peer through thick glasses. Living in the decaying house which once belonged to her dead mother, she does not maintain even a semblance of neatness, and still has not bothered to remove from a bed a hairball that was coughed up by her long-dead cat.
eks after they retire, the four of them have their first social occasion, with mixed results.
She indicates that the reason that they never married was for their mutual safety. Larsson, a journalist who was a dedicated crusader against the active neo-Nazi party and other far right organizations in Sweden, was aware that he might be killed for his efforts, as other crusaders had been. If he and Gabrielsson were married, they would have had to post their addresses with their names on the door to their apartment. If they were not married, this requirement could be bypassed and their safety increased. They avoided being photographed together and interviewed together, and Gabrielsson kept an unusually low profile, again for their mutual safety.
