A fast-paced thriller in which the action and blood never stop, this strong debut by Spanish author Juan Gomez-Jurado will keep many readers going until well into the night. Set in Vatican City during the conclave to elect a new pope following the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, the action begins with the grisly deaths of two cardinals planning to participate in the conclave, their bodies tortured and mutilated almost beyond recognition by a serial killer on the loose. That serial killer is Victor Karosky, a priest. As Rome begins to fill up with all the cardinals returning for the conclave, clergy of all denominations, pilgrims who wish to view the Pope’s body, heads of state arriving for the funeral, tourists, and news organizations with their equipment, the various security forces are frantic to find the killer and prevent additional killings.
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Although Nolan’s prose has often been compared to that of other, more famous Irish writers-James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example–his style is more accessible, making his story more readable, more emotionally powerful, and more personally involving than anything I’ve read by these other great writers. Minnie O’Brien lives, loves, ages, aches, and ultimately haunts. She’s an extraordinary character presented in an extraordinary way by an equally extraordinary author. Nolan brings her to life by following the first rule of fiction: “Don’t tell about something; recreate it.” He does this, in part, by using vivid, emotionally charged words in new ways, sometimes using adjectives and nouns as verbs, conveying not only the emotional sense but also an action: In describing Minnie’s actions at the death of her husband, we find that her cries were “cartwheeling around the room,” before “she sacked her voice of screams” and dried her eyes, going downstairs to “perform the miraculous loaves and fishes reenactment,” for the neighborhood wake. (On my list of All-Time Favorites)
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Frankie Crowe is one of those men who takes shortcuts. A “little” criminal, in the sense that he has a small mind and grand ideas of his own self-importance, he is among the most dangerous of criminals, a young man for whom no one else counts. Life in Dublin—at least the kind of life Frankie wants—is expensive, and his current scheme is to kidnap one of Ireland’s wealthiest men and hold him for ransom. Justin Kennedy, the man selected, has been involved in the purchase of a small private bank, and Frankie figures that he will have an easier time obtaining a large sum of money than some of the other men on the “Rich List.” Collecting a group of petty criminals around him, Frankie and his three associates conspire to make the snatch. Debunking the myth of a jolly Ireland in which life revolves around storytelling, singing, and companionable drinking at the pub, Kerrigan shows the growing pains of economic “progress” and how that has changed the fabric of the country for its young people, a number of whom have put their entrepreneurial skills to use in unsavory ways. (On my Favorites list for 2008)
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Booker Prize-winning author John Banville presents a sensitive and remarkably complete character study of Max Morden, an art critic/writer from Ireland whose wife has just died from a lingering illness. Seeking solace, Max has checked into the Cedars, a now dilapidated guest-house in the seaside village of Ballyless, where he and his family had spent summers when he was a child. Images of foreboding suggest that some tragedy occurred while he was there, though the reader discovers only gradually what it might have been. Now renting a room at the Cedars for an indefinite stay, Max broods about the nature of life, love, and death, relives earlier times, and tries to reconcile his memories, some of which are incomplete and imperfect, with the reality of his present, sad life. An ordinary man in his late fifties or early sixties engaging in interior battles with personal demons may not appeal to readers who prefer snappy dialogue and action plots. But other readers, especially those who may have faced the deaths of family or friends and recognized the limitations of memory, may recognize in Max a kindred spirit. (On my All-Time Favorites list)
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Posted in Coming-of-age, India, Literary on Jan 14th, 2011
Writing with wit and perception, Kiran Desai creates an elegant and thoughtful study of families, the losses each member must confront alone, and the lies each tells to make memories of the past more palatable. Sai Mistry is a young girl whose education at an Indian convent school comes to an end in the mid-1980s, when she is orphaned and sent to live with her grandfather, a judge who does not want her and who offers no solace. Living in a large, decaying house, her grandfather considers himself more British than Indian, far superior to hard-working but poverty-stricken people like his cook, Nandu, whose hopes for a better life for his son Biju are the driving force in his life. As Desai explores the aspirations of Sai and Biju, the hopes and expectations of their families, and their disconnections with their roots, she also creates vivid pictures of the friends and relatives who surround them, evoking vibrant images of a broad cross-section of society and revealing the social and political history of India. (On my Favorites list for 2006)
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