Poet-author Serge Pey grew up among the Republican partisans and anarchists who participated in the Spanish Civil War and were brutally defeated by Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s army in 1939. His family, like those of many other defeated fighters, escaped to France in the aftermath of the war, but were confined to internment camps within France as soon as they were captured. Author Pey, born in 1950, has obviously grown up knowing his family’s stories during the Spanish Civil War and in the internment camps in France, and his own values and beliefs in freedom have been molded by the culture within them. Here in this collection of often interconnected stories, he provides glimpses of a unique and powerful culture, the product of the lives lived by his family and their friends during and immediately after the Spanish Civil War. Filled with dramatic events, symbols, and hidden messages, this book is more than literary fiction. It is true literature, a collection of writings which inspire thoughtful reflection on life itself and share the ideas of its characters and author, a work which many readers will enjoy reading again and again and again.
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Author Aravind Adiga, whose Indian family immigrated to Australia during his childhood, is well familiar with Australia’s social and economic conditions, and with its attitudes toward “brown”people, both legal and illegal. His sensitivity and empathy in his presentation of Danny as a kind, thoughtful, and honest main character make Danny’s problems as an illegal resident from Sri Lanka and his lack of options particularly vivid for the reader. When he arrives at work one morning, he finds a police van parked across the street and learns that there has been a murder across from where he is working – in a house which he himself has cleaned many times over the past two years. He knows the female owner, Radha, a married woman who is having an affair, and he is also a worker of the person who may have killed her. With the author’s stunning ability to present Danny’s hopes, his memories of beauty from the past, and his fully imagined dreams for the future, which he presents impressionistically, Danny comes fully to life – a real person with a real life and personality – and not simply a character who is illustrating social conditions, themes, and ethical problems. Danny must decide whether to help the police with much-needed information and risk deportation, or keep quiet and let events take their course. Outstanding!
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Telling the story of his father’s life, author Johannes Anyuru, the son of a Ugandan father and Swedish mother, focuses on the fraught political climates of several East African countries in the 1970s, when his father was in his early twenties, trying to find some sort of direction and sense of purpose. As a young teen in Uganda in the early 1960s, his father, known here as P, took advantage of a program in Greece which taught him and other young men in Uganda how to fly military aircraft, a program which changed his life. He loves the freedom of the air and sees himself flying professionally. P is an ethnic Langi, belonging to the group to which President Obote of Uganda also belongs, but as the novel opens, Obote has just been deposed in a coup led by Idi Amin. Assumed to be a supporter of Obote, P has no interest in being drafted into the air corps aiding Amin in his bloody rise to power. Secretly escaping his program in Greece by going to Rome, he then flies to Lusaka in Zambia, hoping to start a job he found as a crop-duster. The back and forth narratives of P and his son continue as they try to figure out who they are and where they come from, and require the reader to fill in blanks by making their own connections. For P, the biggest issue is escaping to someplace safe. For his son, it is filling in the blanks in his own life by learning more about who is father is, or has been. P remains full of mysteries, largely because one never knows whether he is telling the whole truth about the things we do know about him.
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Three strikingly similar murders have taken place in Glasgow during 1969, and police have made no progress apprehending the killer, nicknamed The Quaker. Detective Inspector Duncan McCormack has been sent from the Flying Squad in Glasgow to the Murder Room at the Marine Police Station in Partick, assigned to review the evidence, the investigation, and the abilities of the local police. McCormack has been treated with cold disdain, if not outright hostility, however, by the entire local crew. As Goldie, one of the more outspoken local detectives, puts it, “You cannae be the brass’s mark and do good police work. Know why? Because good police work doesnae get done on its own. You need your neighbors to help you. And who’s gonna help you after this?” While McCormack is working on these murders, a major jewel robbery takes place, and the two plot lines, which alternate, will keep readers totally occupied. The enormous suspense McInvanney creates eventually leads to one of the grandest finales ever, as surprise after genuine surprise is revealed, corrected, changed and eventually resolved.
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In the sixth of the Swedish Millenium series of mysteries begun by Swedish author Stieg Larsson and continued by David Lagercrantz, all the familiar characters and secret organizations reappear. Fourteen years have passed since THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was published, and even Lisbeth Salander, a sociopathic but brilliant computer hacker, and Mikael Blomqvist, an admired journalist who cares for her, have changed with time. Lisbeth is on her own most of the time now, and she has no financial worries so she can come and go and pursue her twin sister, who has threatened her life. Her sister will never forgive her for her attacks on her father and brother who were determined to kill her – but failed. Sister Camillia is now associated with the highest eschelons of Russian intelligence, as was her father, and is out to finish her off. While this is going on, Blomqvist is asked to help with the investigation of the mysterious death of a beggar, who is eventually discovered to have been a Sherpa guide for a group of Swedish officials who wanted to climb Mount Everest. Much of the book is concerned with Mt. Everest. Deaths occurred there, and the guide knows more than participants are comfortable with. Less tightly organized and less focused on Salander and Blomqvist than in the past, this one has a multitude of characters and action scenes which don’t always connect tightly but show Salander and Blomqvist as they settle into their lives more fully.
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