Book 250: Gibraltar (English) – A Vision of Battlements (Anthony BURGESS)
They reached Ragged Staff, and the boat was being moored by the steps. It seemed to Ennis that there was no great distance from the gunwale to the grey stone slabs of the quay above. He was the senior rank aboard, the men were impatient to be ashore, so, going first, he tried to heave himself up. Feet on the gunwale, hands on the quay, he prepared for the pull. But then the boat lurched, without warning, away and, to his blank surprise, down he went. The cold green oozy murk belched open to welcome him. He went straight down, the fathom of his height, then another, then another, with a splash and a glug, to the stillness of the men’s surprise, blank as his own, then the calls, the cries from above, the gurgling in green water, fathom by fathom down out of the light, the oozy coffin embracing him, his heavy boots, soaked clothing, down, down.
This was the first novel written by Anthony Burgess (of A Clockwork Orange fame) but not the first published. And it was out of print for ages. The copy I bought second-hand was the original 1965 edition (though Burgess wrote it in 1949). When you buy second-hand books you sometimes find surprises inside… in this case, a Pan Am boarding pass for Washington, D.C. to London with a colour postcard-like picture of Mexico. (I feel that the sad decline of boarding places is another sign of The End Of Civilisation As We Know It).
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory which basically consists just of the fortress rock at the northern entrance to the Mediterranean (one of the ancient Greeks’ Pillars of Hercules). It was named Jebel Tariq (The Mountain of Tariq) in Arabic after the Umayyad military commander who captured it in the 700s CE. This is where the name ‘Gibraltar’ comes from. Its history goes back a long way before that – most poignantly, it may have been the last refuge of the Neanderthals, long after Homo Sapiens had overrun Europe. The English captured it in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain ceded it in perpetuity in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. That doesn’t mean that Spain, is happy about having this British stone in its shoe, despite Spain having its own two colony cities in Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) that Morocco isn’t happy about either. But the Brits, especially the Royal Navy, would consider it too strategically important to give up, and it is very unlikely the inhabitants would vote to join Spain.
The story is set right at the end of the Second World War. Everyone is waiting to be demobbed and get home as soon as possible, and Burgess captures this no-man’s-land brilliantly. Since so much no longer has a point, there’s a big breakdown of discipline, deference, and rank. It’s often very funny.
The hapless Richard Ennis (who is no doubt a self-deprecatory send-up of Burgess himself) has ended up in Gibraltar (like the author did). Apparently he had been a misfit as a soldier. Like Burgess, he is a composer, but if this is his calling he is hardly staring success in the face there either. He tries to interest his comrades in Culture but they’re really only interested in eating, drinking, womanising and getting home from the war. His wife Laurel waiting at home for his return, which should happen at any time, but that doesn’t stop his eyes wandering. Sadly this early anti-hero keeps falling into the same traps. (The novel is sneakily structured along the lines of The Aenid!)
Maybe the funniest bit of all is where Ennis tries to stop a riot and his well-intentioned words get misinterpreted. There is a visit to a Spain we wouldn’t recognise today – here it is like something out of Hogarth.
It’s not the funniest, nor the most acerbic, send-up from WWII, and nor does it compare with Burgess’ later work, though it does already show his wit and literary references, but it grew on me and I did end up enjoying it. It might have an existential waiting-for-Godot feeling, but also a light-heartedness that is a very different world from that of A Clockwork Orange. What a shame it doesn’t get read any more.
Burgess, Anthony (1917 – 1993), A Vision of Battlements, NY, Ballantine, 1965, ISBN 345-03196-2-125
Book 249: Somaliland (English) – The Orchard of Lost Souls (Nadifa MOHAMED)
On either side of the trees are the stray dogs, thieves and promenading ghosts of Hargeisa. The swish of cars crossing the bridge and the susurrations of secret policemen come to her through the darkness. The barrel in which she sleeps is cold, too cold. The scraps of cut-off fabric that usually line the bottom are floating in kerosene-rippled water, the emeralds and sapphires of a peacock’s tail flashing on its moonlit surface. She shivered with goose-pimpled skin for as long as she could bear it and then sought out the drunks and their fire in a moment of reckless desperation; she wonders what they will do for her to her. She wants to know if hyenas can only be hyenas when confronted with a lamb the heat of the men’s fire blows over her, its crackling and its colours warming her. They have built a bombastic blaze, full of their alcohol; it lurches at the dark, quivering trees before stumbling and falling back into the barrel. she breathes in the smell of damp smoke, the taste of fresh ash.
The Republic of Somaliland is a northern part of Somalia, bordered by Djibouti, Ethiopia and the rest of Somalia which has declared itself independent in 1991. It covers the former territory of British Somaliland (the rest of Somalia was colonised by Italy), but united with the latter when it became independent in 1960. It was unhappy living under war-torn and impoverished Somalia, and as with so many other places, former colonial power seems to trump ethnicity and language when deciding borders… In any case Somaliland has been comparatively a haven of peace and democracy, even if it is still (as far as I know) recognised by any other country.
Nadifa Mohamed is from this area (she now lives in London), and the novel is set mainly in its capital Hargeisa, although a long time before Somaliland claimed independence, and it’s set under the long dictatorship of Siad Barre (1969-91). He started a war with Ethiopia to try to conquer its part of the Ogaden Desert (inhabited by Somalis), which ended up disastrously for Somalia.
The story follows three female victims (and occasionally perpetrators) of the chaos of the incipient 1987-8 civil war and famine. Deqo is a child who has escaped from a refugee camp. Feisty Kawsar is an older widow who becomes trapped in her house after being injured in a police beating. Filsan is a 30-year-old soldier who has been moved here from Mogadishu to fight the rebellion. (It might seem that it was advanced for the army to have female soldiers, but she still suffers greatly at the hands of male chauvinists). We start at an ego-fest ‘celebration’ for the dictator, in which Deqo is arrested and beaten for her poor dancing, Kawsar is jailed for standing up for her, being beaten up by Filsan (rebounding from a violent incident on herself) who later becomes disillusioned with the regime. At the beginning and in the end, the three lives come together (though I thought the writing of the ending was a little weak and too coincidental, like one of those 19th century novels).
Overall, it was a good read, and an enlightenment on this brutal and mostly forgotten time, despite a few unlikely plot twists.
Mohamed, Nadifa (1981 – ), The Orchard of Lost Souls, London [etc.], Simon & Schuster, 2013, ISBN 978-1-47111-530-1
Book 248: St Helena, Ascension & Tristan da Cunha (English) – Napoleon’s Last Island (Thomas KENEALLY)
The night before the arrival was warm and moonlit and unkind to those who sought sleep, given that the crowds of constellations seemed to pause above us, as if to herald the most exceptional day that was coming, its dread and wonder and melancholy. We were awakened the next morning by the usual ragged fusillade from the guns atop Ladder Hill. Sound sleepers could remain unconscious through this dawn thunder, but none of us had been sound sleepers that night. We rode down to the town the next morning, hastening on the way, me ahead at what my mother considered an unwise canter. The island and the town and the familiar hills seemed new, as if a certain pulse of the earth had created them afresh…
When we got there, the town appeared struck by a kind of dread. A squadron of newly arrived ships crowded the water. The question was, how could that massive advent be contained in Jamestown’s narrow span?
For someone who was responsible for conquering one of the largest continental empires in European history, Napoleon’s life was surprisingly haunted by small islands – Corsica, Elba and St Helena, where he ended his days in exile. (You could perhaps add the not-so-small British Isles which he fatally failed to conquer).
Personally, I’ve always been mystified by the worship of Napoleon. It’s hard to think of anyone else who betrayed more people and ideals during his career: Corsican independence, his fellow consuls, the revolution, equality (declaring himself emperor), the slaves, Haiti, the pope (twice), his own armies after their defeats in Egypt, Syria, and Russia. I’m no military expert, but why is he considered such a genius when he lost all the battles that really mattered? Perhaps he should be praised instead for the less exciting civil reforms, such as the reformed law code.
This book is another place-holder, as I couldn’t find that any novels have been written by the ‘Saints’. So I chose this historical novel by one of Australia’s best writers, Tom Keneally (most famous for Schindler’s Ark, called Schindler’s List in the US and in the Spielberg film) based on an intriguing connection he discovered with Napoleon’s final exile there. In 2012 he visited an exhibition in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne on Napoleon. He was stunned to see that some of the exhibits had come from nearby on Port Phillip Bay and had been brought to Australia by the family of one Betsy Balcome – “intimate friend and annoyer” of Napoleon himself. And therein lies a tale, which Keneally was inspired to spin.
Betsy remembers her family’s arrival on St Helena when she was three (which seems unlikely). Her father works for the East India Company. The rather wild Betsy and her more staid and lovable sister Jane live an idyllic life there. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the major current of world history is dumped onto this exquisitely isolated island, when he is sent to the end of the earth to keep him away from mischief and escape. (Napoleon’s exile to St Helena is a bit reminiscent of how the British transported their unwanted convicts to the much bigger island of Australia.)
When the Emperor arrives on St Helena, he spends the first three months as a guest of the Balcome family, who become his friends, while the ramshackle permanent residence intended for him, Longwood House, is being repaired.
While Napoleon tries to maintain a pretend court there, Betsy refuses to be overawed by him; she keeps her cheeky character, and is continuously baiting him, which he loves – and because of her age, she gets away with it, and can ask him embarrassing questions that no one else could. (For example, he pretends the defeat at Acre didn’t happen, just like Ramses II in the same area thousands of years earlier). Napoleon corrects her homework, and plays blind mans buff and hide-and-seek with her. Privately she calls him alternately OGF (our great friend) and The Ogre. The dynamic between the two is fascinating.
Finally, after a change of governor, the Balcomes are exiled in turn, to Australia, because of their friendship with Bonaparte, who dies shortly afterwards. And the rest is history.
It’s a great example of turning a footnote in history into a fine work.
Keneally, Thomas (1935 -), Napoleon’s Last Island, North Sydney, Knopf, 2015, ISBN 978 0 85798 460 9
Book 247: Montserrat (English) – The Three Suitors of Fred Belair (E.A. MARKHAM)
Fred would adopt a child. Fred wasn’t needy; she had a full life. (Husband, child, garden, men of every class and colour – even schoolboys who didn’t know their dative from their ablative case in Latin now wanted to practise their French. They all told her, in whatever language they managed to speak, that she was the reason for creation, the miracle of miracles: that was no compensation for the loss of her cat, Riley, but it was something). Fred’s father had loved her, her mother had tried to understand her (she’d have nothing said against her mother). She had a son who – despite the brainwashing – had turned out OK, and was earning something of a living down in Martinique. In time he would manage to support his family, without her help; he was doing as well as could be expected. Fred and her daughter-in-law were on good terms, though she was relieved that they lived on different islands. And she adored her grandson, her Shoy, whom she went down to Martinique to see as often as was proper. That she and her cat, Riley, had prospered at a time before the hurricane and volcano, in the days when her garden bloomed and her plants were correctly labelled, made people whisper witchcraft; and Fred said if it was witchcraft, then witchcraft wasn’t so bad. She missed Riley.
This novel is a connected series of short stories (not as connected as I expected), set on the made-up Caribbean of St Cesare, which is actually Montserrat. Like Montserrat, it has a ‘before and after the volcano’ (the devastating eruptions of the Soufrière volcano were 1995-2000 in the case of Montserrat from which it hasn’t really recovered yet).
Fred Belair is actually a woman (short for Winifred), attractive and eligible, after her husband had walked out, but not overly eager to get ‘caught’ – she actually loves her garden more than men. That doesn’t stop them trying. Her neighbour Pewter Stapleton (perhaps an alter ego of the author) isn’t taken seriously by anyone, despite his being well-travelled and witty.
The most amusing of her suitors is the Rev. Alex Taylor, who studies her from afar as if she were wildlife or he was planning an army campaign. He is so committed (or should be!) that he tries to woo her by creating a new religion called Eucalyptus around her, involving a Greek myth-type task demanding that the suitor name all the species of eucalypt – in Latin, with an Australian accent no less…
The stories are set around the world, and Markham himself is obviously familiar with and lived in many places, like France, Ireland, England; other places like Australia and PNG get walk-on parts. There are presumably lots of references, and characters, from Markham’s previous books, which I haven’t read.
Maybe my favourite chapter/story was The Food Taster, in which he and his companion hitchhiking in France are picked up by a ‘Nazi’ who he suspects of having poisoned them (since the driver hadn’t eaten any of the proffered sandwiches). This leads to a delicious meditation on the imperial food tasters of ancient Rome, and who you would like to employ for the job if you were the emperor:
‘But then if you were an emperor would you want any old bit of riff-raff sitting next to you, sharing your plate? You’d want someone washed and oiled, just come from the baths, not too bad-looking, good teeth etc., so that the breath wouldn’t be offensive at dinner. And, surely, someone you could talk to, if the mood took you; so not a foreigner who couldn’t speak the language: the fellow would have to know his Latin. So the food taster is likely to be someone from your community, if not quite of your class, someone in touch with it enough to pick up references to things going on in the empire – if not actually at the court of Rome; and that person would, presumably, have a discreet line to the kitchens, to get them to hold off on the poison.’
I thought this one might be something along the lines of, or in some way a take-off from, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, but I was a little disappointed with it. Markham seems to excel in short-story writing and it’s perhaps best to consider them as individual stories. I wanted to enjoy this one – it is intelligent, literary, world-wise, sometimes makes you giggle, but somehow it didn’t grab me.
Markham, E.A. [Edward Archie] (1939 – 2008), The Three Suitors of Fred Belair, Birmingham UK, Tindal Street Press, 2009, ISBN 978 0 9556476 3 5
Book 246: Punjab (English) – Saintly Sinner = Pavitra Paapi (Nanak Singh)
The day went by, and night enveloped the world in its dark blanket. As time passed, the storms raging inside Kedar gathered strength. He could no longer see anything inside the room. His mind was spinning out of control, like a twig adrift in a whirlpool. Caught in the vortex of a swift and powerful current, he drifted for hours until he reached a place that is beyond the pale of intelligence or reason, where the overpowering torrents choke the human spirit before contemptuously tossing it aside as unconscious or half dead, where the boundaries between man and beast begin to merge, where the distinctions between friends and strangers, between truth and fiction begin to evaporate.
We haven’t been to Asia for quite a while; since I was reading in population order, and the countries and even territories are very populous, I got through them quite a while ago. Since Punjab is one of the most populous places that isn’t independent but that many would like to be (and simply because I love literature from the Subcontinent so much), this is an excuse to have a trip back to Asia.
Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan in the bloody split and independence in 1947. (Punjab suffered perhaps more bloodshed and dislocation from this than any other part of India, since the arbitrary boundaries drawn suddenly left millions of people on the ‘wrong side’ according to their religion. Read Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins for this amazing story). Now it forms a state in both countries, with a Muslim majority in Pakistan, and a Sikh majority and large Hindu minority in India. The Punjabi language, again one of the most spoken in the world, is also split in its written form: Arabic script in Pakistan, Gurmukhi script in India (a Sikh script related to Hindi, etc.) Since India is a majority Hindu nation, and there seems less room for other religions under BJP rule, many Sikhs would like to create their own homeland in Punjab (which they would call Khalistan).
In 1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered a military operation to oust militants from the Sikhs’ holiest site, the Golden Temple, in Amritsar. Two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in revenge. The Indian government has recently been accused by Canada and the US of having assassinated and of wanting to assassinate (respectively) Sikh separatists living in their countries. An organisation called Sikhs for Justice (banned in India) has been holding unofficial referendums for independence among the Sikh emigré communities, e.g. in the UK, Canada, Australia and this month in the USA.
Anyway enough background, on to my Punjabi book. It took quite a while to find a suitable one – there are lots in English, but they all seemed to be written by Punjabis living in the UK, Australia, etc.! Many thanks to my friend Raj for suggesting the poet, songwriter and ‘father of the Punjabi novel’, Nanak Singh. A popular Hindi film was made of Saintly Sinner.
The story takes place in the 1930s (that is, in the British Raj, before Partition). I guess you could say it’s a story about dharma, the need to try to do your duty (which may be impossible when your duties clash). The hero (Kedar) is always trying to do the right thing, but gets drawn deeper and deeper into a morass of lies and deception. Yet there is no ‘original sin’ he commits that would make us feel he deserves his sad fate. It’s just the way life turns out. In a way it’s as tragic as Romeo and Juliet.
It starts when Kedar gets a job with a watchmaker, inadvertently replacing Panna Lal who then disappears for the span of the story, leaving his abandoned family in a deep debt that they didn’t know about. Kedar is a good person and feels bad about what had happened, and he takes responsibility for this family. He comes to be loved and trusted by them, and the feeling is mutual – he especially comes to romantically love the eldest sister, Veena, though it’s hard for him to act on this since he has effectively become her brother. (She calls him Bharaji, which I think is ‘brother’ with an honorific -ji ending). Although he wishes it was himself, when Veena is promised to someone else in marriage he honourably accepts responsibility for raising her dowry for the greedy in-laws (since the family can’t afford it themselves), though he can’t afford it either. Veena herself is still too young to sort out her feelings, she has to suddenly see her relationship with Kedar in a totally different light but doesn’t have time to work out what to do, even if she was allowed to decide her own fate. She seems too dazed or powerless to care which of the prospects she would really want to be married to. All this leaves Kedar too in a despairing mood.
Kedar has been deceiving the family that Panna Lal hadn’t in fact lost his job but had been sent away for business, and was still writing them letters via himself, Kedar (who actually wrote them himself). For me it was a bit hard to believe that all this time the family didn’t ask for their father’s address, from either Kedar or the watchmaker.
The translation from Punjabi looks fluent and the tale is easy and pleasurable to read. The story is a little melodramatic and elements seem a little unbelievable, but it’s very touching and a great story. It’s heartbreaking following two good people trying to do the right thing but being constantly unfairly battered on the seas of fate. It’s a bit Sophoclean in that you feel that people trying their best shouldn’t be put in tragically impossible scenarios. But (sometimes) that’s life.
Nanak Singh (1897 – 1971), Saintly Sinner, translated by Navdeep Suri [his grandson], New Delhi, Amit Bhatia for A’N’B Publishers, 2003, ISBN 9788175390294
Book 245: Easter Island/Rapa Nui (English) – Easter Island (Jennifer VANDERBES)
Dozens more toppled moai littered the coast below. From a distance, some simply looked like rocks. Through her binoculars, though, the slope of the shoulders and the indentation of the eyes fixed to the ground became clear. The twenty-foot statues of volcanic tuff had all been carved with identical features – they looked like slender giants with huge rectangular heads. They were neither lifelike nor ornate, but the size of them and the sheer number was impressive. She could see why they had captured the imaginations of Roggeveen, González, Cook, and La Pérouse. This was more than art, this was industry. Carving hundreds of stone giants, then positioning them along the island’s coast – impossible to imagine.
This is another placeholder – since as far as I could find no Rapanui person has written a novel, and the minuscule population doesn’t leave me holding my breath. As for non-fiction though, I think it must have had more words written about it per square metre than any other place on earth (and I feel like I’ve read most of those books!) Even if I hadn’t been there, it would seem as if I would know the island like the back of my hand. The island has also suffered an endless series of misfortunes, of which the dreadful fire is only the most recent – the initial poverty of natural resources caused by its sheer distance from anywhere else, the further impoverishment caused by deforestation (whether deliberate or accidental), introduced diseases, the 1862 Peruvian slaving expedition which kidnapped half of the islanders including all who had any knowledge about the moai statues…
This one was sitting around for a long time waiting to be read, since I bought it in a discount book shop (Sydney used to have such things!) I automatically buy almost everything about the Pacific Islands. When its time came, it turned out to be a really good novel. It has so many themes, all well-handled – and not superficially. What I most loved about it was that there is a lot of real science in it but it’s not dumbed down, nor boring.
Vanderbes comes up with possible answers to such diverse problems as the mystery of why the moai (statues) were created, how they were transported, what happened to the rongorongo (tablets with the mysterious undeciphered script), why German Admiral Graf von Spee’s fleet came to meet its fate in the Falkland Islands during WW1, and what was the world’s first flowering plant? Some of these answers are speculative, others factual (as far as we know). In the mix there is also sibling and spousal rivalry, feminism and especially the difficult but slowly improving position of women in science, along with a bit of romance, linguistics, plant evolution and history. It sounds like too much for one story, but it didn’t feel that way.
There are two parallel stories that we follow. Elsa Pendleton in 1912 enters a marriage of convenience with much older (English) archaeologist Edward Beazley; she is torn between her loyalty to him and to her younger sister Alice (who has mental problems) which severely limits her life choices. They travel to Rapa Nui so that her anthropologist husband can study the moai for the Royal Geographic Society, but she herself becomes more interested in trying to decipher the rongorongo. Easter was even more isolated then; they hadn’t even realised that WWI has broken out when the German fleet arrives.
In the other strand, Greer Sandor (American) in 1960 marries botany professor Thomas Farraday, goes to Easter Island in 1973 after their marriage breakdown – her husband had plagiarised her own research work without acknowledging her contribution, and she herself got unfairly blamed for plagiarism. (Both of the women are in some way betrayed by their spouses.) She is a palynologist who came to take core samples to study ancient pollen and thus the plant history of the island.
She gets around the island by horse – more sensibly than me. I hired a bicycle, and managed to get right to the far end of the island when I had a puncture – there are sharp volcanic stones everywhere – and had to wheel it the whole way back to the only village, Hanga Roa, on the other side. But I loved the island, especially its peacefulness – coming from a slightly crazy Brazil which was about to win the 1994 World Cup. I stayed a week because at that time there was only a weekly LAN-Chile flight between Santiago and Tahiti (I think now there might be only 2 or 3 domestic flights to Santiago a week).
Elsa’s relationship with von Spee and the fictional story that Vanderbes adheres to the factual history of his voyage was the only part I thought was stretching things a bit. Otherwise both the stories and the scientific aspects seemed totally believable. Readable and thought-provoking.
Vanderbes, Jennifer (1974 – ), Easter Island, London, Abacus, 2004 (first published 2003), ISBN 0 349 11795 0
Book 244: Isle of Man (English) – Aunt Bessie Assumes (Diana XARISSA)
Bessie nodded slowly, her brain struggling to keep up with everything that was happening. “I suppose I didn’t really think about it,” she said after a moment. “I mean, I didn’t really think about it being murder. I just assumed he had a heart attack or something.”
Doona patted her hand gently. “Murder is hard to imagine.”
Bessie shook her head. “I might have made lunch for a murderer?”
“You made her lunch?” Doona choked back a laugh when she saw the look on Bessie’s face. “I mean, that was really nice of you, but why?”
“It was lunch time,” Bessie said weakly. “I wasn’t thinking.”
I have to admit I was (and still am) confused by the status of this island in the Irish Sea. Apparently it’s not part of the United Kingdom, nor of Great Britain, nor of England, Scotland or Wales but is a “self-governing British crown dependency”, yet it is under Charles III. It has one of the oldest legislatures in the world. (Unfortunately the Manx language is not looking nearly so healthy, but you will learn a few words from this novel). The UK looks after its foreign and defence affairs. Manxmen can get either a Manx or a UK passport. It was never part of the EU, and yet was included in Brexit negotiations, nor of the Commonwealth of Nations. Go figure… The flag looks like a Mercedes symbol made out of three bodyless legs.
This one is described on the cover as “An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery”. (By the way, inside the book it is spelt “cosy”). Now I have to admit in the past I’ve had a thing with the concept of “cozy mysteries”. For a long time I had a problem with writers making light of murder, which is always an awful thing, for the sake of their protagonist having a bit of fun and mental exercise. I even went through a phase of refusing to read Agatha Christie, though I subsequently repented and read (and loved) every one of her mysteries. Which isn’t to say that I would have written off all “cozy mysteries” – after all, I’ve always loved the wonderful Sherlock Holmes stories, and in many of them there’s no crime (or murder) at all. I got over it. Still, just a little disquiet lingers.
This is one of a long series of Aunt Bessie mysteries by the Manx author Diana Xarissa (entitled Aunt Bessie [+ action verb]). According to the blurb,
“Aunt Bessie assumes that she’ll have the beach all to herself on a cold, wet, and windy March morning just after sunrise, then she stumbles (almost literally) over a dead body. Elizabeth (Bessie) Cubbon, aged somewhere between free bus pass (60) and telegram from the Queen (100), has lived her entire adult life in a small cottage on Laxey beach. For most of those years, she’s been in the habit of taking a brisk morning walk along the beach. Dead men have never been part of the scenery before. Aunt Bessie assumes that the dead man died of natural causes, then the police find the knife in his chest.”
Despite offering (I suppose) traditional hospitality to the victim’s widow, she doesn’t like or trust her very much, and in fact the whole family proves to be very suspicious – no doubt one (or more) of them is the culprit.
Then a second murder takes place (while Bessie is there) at the Laxey Wheel, the strange Industrial Revolution device on the cover, “the largest working waterwheel in the world”. Bessie herself seems likely to be the next victim.
The style is gossipy and some might feel too much time is spent on extraneous everyday details (such as the long discussion about the merits of the new Indian restaurant), although I didn’t. Perhaps there was a bit too much happening right at the end.
There was a lot of “small island laissez-faire”, things not being done totally by the book; would that even be possible in a place where everyone knows everyone (and everyone’s business)? The interactions between the police and the civilians (in the shape of Aunt Bessie) seemed to be a bit too close – considering she discovered the body and could have been a suspect – and she does have an agent in place, in the shape of her friend Doona Moore, who works in the police station. One of the police spends the investigation staying at Bessie’s house. I have to admit I suspected one of the police investigators might have been the culprit. Likewise, the chemist does not always follow the law, and when Bessie ends up in hospital, she manages to get herself discharged from hospital suspiciously early when it threatens to hold up the plot, despite saying “Everything hurts!” both before and afterwards. She is feisty and clear about her priorities:
“You probably should stay until the inspectors get here,” Hugh [policeman] told her. “Sorry, I need to get out of the rain and have a cup of tea,” Bessie said stoutly. “The inspectors can find me there whenever they want to chat.”
I wasn’t expecting much given the “cozy mystery” title and the unknown (to me) author, but it proved to be a very enjoyable story.
Xarissa, Diana, Aunt Bessie Assumes: an Isle of Man cozy mystery, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014, ISBN 978-1499366020
Book 243: Mayotte (French) – Tropique de la violence = Tropic of Violence (Nathacha Appanah)
I hear a car stop on the gravel in front of the house, I hear the cry “It’s the cops!” and we run, climb up the metal fencing, jump into other gardens and we run on and on, the grass the asphalt the mud the earth the pebbles the cement under my feet, the barking the cries the horns the screeching of brakes the muezzin my own breathing in my ears, I am scratched knocked stunned beaten held pushed aside but I run and I distance myself from the house and I know that I’ll never come back.
Where on earth is Mayotte? When the Comoros Islands (between Madagascar and Africa) became independent in 1975, the island of Mayotte decided to stick with France (although it is still claimed by the former). So it is the 101st département of France. Did you know that there’s a part of France where they speak (a dialect of) Swahili? So there’s a little bit of the EU in the Mozambique Channel. It’s a beacon for illegal immigration from the independent Comoros and Madagascar, and increasingly from the African continent – perhaps it will become another Lampedusa since the small population is being rapidly overwhelmed by the influx. I don’t know if this is commonly known in France, but we hear nothing about this at all. Mayotte itself seems to be much poorer than, for example, Réunion, with the vast majority living in poverty. Half the population are under 20 (fr.wikipedia.org). No doubt we’ll hear a lot more from Mayotte in the future.
Marie is a French nurse who marries her colleague Chamsiddin, who is from Mayotte, and they move there, after which their marriage falls apart. She adopts Moïse, son of an illegal immigrant who abandoned him. (Like the Biblical Moses, I guess Moïse is a ‘boat person’). He has different coloured eyes (perhaps a symbol of his two totally different lives?), which leads the locals to believe that he’s a djinn and bad luck. Certainly his life is only unlucky and mis-lead. When Marie dies (he is 15) he goes and hangs out with a slum gang led by alpha male Bruce. (It is a great portrait of a thuggish slum gang leader). The gang life in the slum (Gaza) is all law of the jungle and no more than an animal existence. Bruce tries to kidnap Moïse, but Moïse kills Bruce in the woods. Thereafter the chapters continue with a voice for each character, including the dead ones. Other characters include Olivier who is a flic (cop), Mahmad ‘La Teigne’ who is a clandestine, and Moussa who is a muzungu (‘white person’) and friend of Moise, but who doesn’t want a ‘white’ life.
It’s interesting to see the local language; muzungu is obviously the same as mzungu in standard Swahili, and I was amused to see that Swahili karibu (‘welcome’) comes out as caribou!
The story is depressing and impactful, and a great portrayal of a situation most of us know nothing about. I loved the way the narration speeds up and transitions to stream of consciousness during the thrilling episodes.
The story has been recently made into a film.
Appanah, Natacha (1973 – ), Tropique de la violence, Folio (Gallimard), 2018, ISBN 9782072764578
Book 242: Turks & Caicos Islands (English) – Deadly Deceit (Jean HARROD)
On the main road into town, it was a normal Grand Turk rush hour. No-one was driving fast, or in a panic. These hurricanes were part of everyday life in this Territory. Most storms veered off course anyway, before they got near the islands. But the few direct hits they’d had loomed large in island folklore.
The salty water slopped up over the sides of the salina, and the rusty weather vanes creaked in the wind. There were no green herons or other birds to be seen now. They knew what was coming, and had already left.
Recently I was excited to get my first reader from the Turks & Caicos Islands, so it was time to finally do a reading! (I’m so honoured to have all you readers from most of the places in the world).
The Turks and & Caicos Islands is a Caribbean group off the southern end of the Bahamas archipelago; it used to be part of the Bahamas but opted to remain an overseas territory of the UK when the former became independent in 1973. Relevantly, they have a history of deliberately luring ships onto rocks.
Author Jean Harrod was a British diplomat and lived all over the world, including Australia and China (the scenes of the first and third in her Diplomatic Crime series), and the Turks & Caicos Islands, which is the setting of this second one. They say you should write about what you know, and Harrod obviously does.
The heroine of the stories is diplomat Jessica Turner. She is suddenly called from London to cover for the absent Head of the Governor’s Office. Almost everyone else who could assist her is either away/has been in an accident/suicides/gets killed/can’t get there because of a looming hurricane. Like almost everyone else she knows nothing about the islands, but gets up to speed pretty quickly!
Fortunately, her Queensland policeman friend from the first in this Diplomatic Crime series bumps into her when they are in transit in Miami airport, and decides it might be profitable (from two points of view) to make a side trip to TCI. He is now working on preventing illegal immigration and is studying how the Americans do it, why not how the Brits do it too? (Tiny TCI has a problem with Haitian ‘boat people’ who really intend to make it to the US).
So starts the series of accidents/murders among the ruling class. Clement Pearson hangs himself in his garage. The Governor is seriously injured in a car ‘accident’ with a truck (we subsequently learn that he was going to ‘confess’ something). Mrs Pearson is then murdered at a dinner party in the same garage in the same gruesome manner as her husband.
There is a lot of (non-indigenous) voodoo being practised, not least in the two garage murders, which seems to immediately link to the Haitians, but what is the real connection?
On the whole, it was a very enjoyable read. The characters were well-described and believable. I liked that there were good summaries of the dramatis personae, sometimes it’s easy to forget who is who in a thriller, or any novel.
If I’m being picky, I might question how Jess in the middle of managing hurricane planning still had time and mental space to run around investigating and having adventures. Why would expert diver Tom go diving apparently without an alternate air source? After the hurricane why doesn’t Jess stop to check if people are OK in the flimsy Haitian settlement? I felt the changes of character were very abrupt. The suspicious aspect of the Governor’s car crash is left a bit up in the air. When listing those in a car, the driver is left out. Jess uses a torch on her late-night snoop even though the moon is almost full. Most of all, it’s surprising that on such a small island there is no general knowledge (or at least rumours) of what has been going on. (Wouldn’t someone notice that the kindergarten full of Haitian children was slightly suspicious?)
But I’m nitpicking. Even though I could predict some elements of the plot, including the main scenario, that didn’t detract in the slightest from my enjoyment. It’s a real page-turner, a great discovery and highly recommended! Just as well TCI exists, and needed to be read, otherwise I never would have stumbled across this one.
Harrod, Jean, Deadly Deceit (Diplomatic Crime Series 2), Layerthorpe, York Authors Coffee Shop, 2016, ISBN 978-0-9929971-4-4
Book 241: Svalbard (English) – Dark Matter: a ghost story (Michelle PAVER)
Hugo, the keen glaciologist, asked Mr Eriksson to head into the fjord to get nearer the glacier, and we craned our necks at fissured walls of ice and caverns of mysterious blue. From deep within came weird creaks and groans, as if a giant were hammering to get out. Then came a noise like a rifle shot, and a huge segment of ice crashed into the sea, sending up spouts of water, and a wave that rocked the ship. Shattered ice turned the sea a milky pale-green. The hammering went on. Now I know why people believe that Spitsbergen was haunted.
I have to admit that ghost stories are not what I normally read. Perhaps the closest I’ve gotten in Tirelessreader so far was my zombie story from Haiti. But I always intended this to get me reading outside my ‘comfort zone’…
Svalbard (also known as Spitzbergen) is part of the Kingdom of Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. It has the most northerly permanent population on Earth.
This is the story of a small 1937 scientific expedition to Svalbard. The main protagonist, 28-year-old Jack Miller, is poor and from a lower social class than his companions. This gives him somewhat of an inferiority complex. He hero-worships the expedition leader, Gus, and craves his approbation. In fact, class is a major theme of the book.
“I suppose what Gus was trying to say is that here in the Arctic, class doesn’t matter. I think he’s wrong about that, class always matters. But maybe up here it doesn’t matter so much.”
The young scientists are to base themselves at an isolated uninhabited site called Gruhuken but which had the remains of defunct whaling and mining activities. We come to learn that these had also left another unpleasant legacy. (Perhaps the name of the place should have given them some warning, since ‘gru’ means ‘horror’ in Norwegian – no doubt related to the ‘grue’ in ‘gruesome’).
While they stay there, the midnight sun turns into endless night. When he is left alone by his companions (Gus had become ill and needed to be evacuated), Jack’s mental state clearly deteriorates and the horror increases. Whether the one is linked to the other is up to us to judge – since nothing concrete happens to him to cause this, maybe it was just a case of cabin fever? Jack’s terror centres on a ‘bear post’ outside the leftover hut.
Dark matter seems to have become deeply entwined with Svalbard! Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (whose ‘dust’ is dark matter) also visits the islands. As Jack says,
In one of my periodicals, there’s a paper by someone who’s worked out that what we know of the universe is only a tiny percentage of what actually exists. He says what’s left can’t be seen or detected, but it’s there; he calls it ‘dark matter’. [This might be a reference to the Swiss Fritz Zwicky in 1933]. Of course, no one believes him; but I find the idea unsettling. Or rather, not the idea itself, that’s merely an odd notion about outer space. What I don’t like is the feeling I sometimes get that other things might exist around us, of which we know nothing.
Jack obviously believes in the supernatural…
Once or twice, I felt that there were anachronisms – for example I don’t think people in the 1930s knew the correct scientific explanation for the aurora borealis (northern lights), that’s only been confirmed fairly recently.
Each chapter ends with a lovely illustration – these weren’t attributed, so perhaps are from the author’s photos?
If I found the plot sometimes predictable, along with what I suspect might be common in horror writing (suggesting rather than saying that something is happening – for example, the Norwegian ship captain warns them off going to Gruhuken, but won’t say why), and as I said horror is not my preferred genre, this was still a good read, and it has received very good reviews.
Michelle Paver was born in Malawi (then Nyasaland) and now lives in Britain. She lived in Norway and visited Svalbard.
Paver, Michelle (1960 – ), Dark Matter, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion, 2011 (originally published 2010), ISBN 978-1-4091-2118-3
Book 240: Cook Islands (English) – Vaka: Saga of a Polynesian Canoe (Tom DAVIS = Pa Tuterangi Ariki)
A black night, relieved only by spectacular sparkles of phosphorescence, found them in no better condition. There was no let up in the storm. Each man found ways of mentally overcoming moment by moment the endless waiting for the storm to abate. Some sat covered from head to feet, and never changed position. Others found enough room to stretch out and try to sleep, but most were denied this luxury by the movement of the vessels, the constant deluging, the shriek of the wind and the thrash of the seas. No one could tell whether it was raining. The wetness was all around and it mattered little that it was rain or salt water.
The Cook Islands is a self-governing territory of New Zealand/Aotearoa. The local Polynesians are Maoris, the source of the Maoris of New Zealand, as we see in this story. Even though this is a novel, with an interesting story line, it has an incredible amount of factual information about traditional Polynesian voyaging, and life in general. It even has a comprehensive index. It ranges all the way across the vast Polynesian world, even to Fiji (although it doesn’t reach the Cook Islands until fairly late in the book), and across a long time span down through history. The author, Tom Davis/Pa Tuterangi Ariki, obviously knows what he’s talking about. The Polynesian voyages of exploration and settlement (they found every habitable speck in the vast ocean) are tragically, I would say criminally, neglected in Western history books. They were effectively the space exploration of their day. The points of the ‘Polynesian triangle’ (Easter Island/Rapa Nui, Hawai’i and New Zealand) are enormous distances apart, and their wider Austronesian relatives made it all the way to Madagascar (more than halfway around the globe through Indonesia from Easter Island). Despite this great distance in space and time, the relatedness of the languages is still quite obvious. And not only linguistically, but also culturally, the common givens are ubiquitous. The Polynesians made the Vikings and the Phoenicians look like landlubbers. The islands were often at risk of becoming overpopulated (Malthus would have been popular), and various solutions were tried, including infanticide, war, and abortion. But perhaps the most popular solution was emigration to another island, including discovering it if necessary! It’s obvious that to the Polynesians, the sea was their home and they were totally comfortable with it; it was their highway and they were happy to set out, almost casually, on enormously long voyages. They were aware that the world is round, and were expert in using signs such as currents, winds, birds, and the stars to navigate. Davis (rightly) puts paid to the debunked theory, advanced most prominently by Thor Heyerdahl, that the islands were settled from South America. The Polynesians had no problem sailing against the prevailing winds. Any sailor worth his salt knows to keep plenty of wind and tide in hand. Only landlubbers think that sailing down wind is the way to go to sea – but you may never get back. Sailing against the wind and the current allows the choice, if things are not to one’s liking, to run back home with ease. Calling these voyaging vessels ‘canoes’ is a bit of a put-down. The double-hulled vaka were really ships, fast, flexible and technically advanced for their time. This particular vaka goes through a series of owners, 12 generations, and 9 names (finally Takitumu), over 300 years. Over that time all its components were replaced (which brings to mind the Ship of Theseus, or the proverbial axe which has had both blade and handle replaced – is it the same item?) – except for the keel, although it was finally riddled with teredo worm and patched for as long as possible. It was originally built on ‘Upolu (Samoa), Its first big voyage is a malaga (visiting party) around Samoa, then with its series of owners it spends at least 15 years in Fiji, then Tahiti, then the Cook Islands. When no longer seaworthy, it ends its life beached in New Zealand. At the beginning of its life, Te Arutanga Nuku covets the canoe, and sends his wife Te Pori to get it somehow from his father Atonga, which she does by making love with him (he renames the boat after her). It’s interesting to compare Polynesian colonialism with European. In the story there is a feeling of superiority among the Polynesians over the (Melanesian) Fijians, since the latter were cannibals, had less effective governmental structures, and were more prone to warfare. (As usual, it’s hard to know how much of this can be put down to racism). Sometimes the justification for colonialism sounds familiar: Ka’ukura…pointed out that it was not all of benefit just to the migrants. A large proportion of the communities already on these islands could see the benefit of more people. Some of the larger islands, he told them, were lying idle for want of people to develop them, and because the settling of these islands had been done without benefit of planning or organization, the people were often in strife with one another for lack of leadership and social structure to guide them. Like a Russian classic, there were too many names for me to remember (the Polynesians love genealogy) but that didn’t detract much from the enjoyment. Especially towards the end, the story veers into mythological territory (perhaps it is directly derived from there?), for example the fire-proof cloak. But on the whole, Davis keeps closely to known facts, and even avoids coming down on one side or the other of disputed issues (such as whether the rats the Polynesians brought with them were merely stowaways or brought deliberately… they were a food source). The story spends a lot of time in Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, and New Zealand. Perhaps (for present purposes) I could have wished for more time in the Cooks, whose origins are left a little vague, but perhaps I was thrown off by how the islands had different names from their current ones. I would say that this is a book that all Polynesians should read to understand and take pride in their heritage (perhaps not as a school text though… there’s a lot of sex, and some cannibalism, especially in Fiji!) Davis was the Cook Islands Prime Minister from 1978-83 and then from 1983-87. He founded the Democratic Party and wrote the music to the national anthem. He also founded the Cook Islands Voyaging Society and built and sailed in two replica Polynesian voyaging canoes. Davis, Tom, Pa Tuterangi Ariki (1917 – 2007), Vaka: saga of a Polynesian Canoe, Institute of Polynesian Studies; Polynesian Press; Samoa House; University of the South Pacific, 2nd edn. 1999 (1st edn. 1992), ISBN 982-02-0153-5
Book 239: Falkland Islands (English) – Little Black Lies (Sharon BOLTON)
The islands are transformed by the setting of the sun. As the colours fade to monochrome, as the fine contours of the landscape melt into shadow, so the sounds and scents and textures of the land wake up. People who live in the populated parts of the world talk about the quiet, the stillness, of night. Here, when the sparse population goes to its rest, the opposite happens. Here, night-time means an endless cacophony of noise. The nesting birds that Bee and I ride past chuckle and gossip, in a constant, squabbling carpet of sound. Overhead, avian teenagers carouse in high-pitched revelry, drunk on flight and freedom. Hawks sing, penguins on the nearby shore bray at the howling of the wind, while the clifftop albatross colony might be discussing politics, so varied and intelligent seem their conversations. Beneath it all is the endless grumble and roar of the ocean.
This one is a bit of a placeholder. Sharon Bolton isn’t from the Falkland Islands and I couldn’t find mention anywhere that she had even visited. (Though the descriptions ‘feel’ seem so realistic that that’s hard to believe). But since I was unable to find a single novel written by a Kelper – or by a long-term visitor – this one will have to do until one appears. And, frankly, this thriller is so good that I couldn’t pass it over.
The Falklands would appear in reality to be one of those island countries where everybody knows everybody (although there is a visiting cruise ship in this story to throw in a wild card); crime doesn’t happen and in fact nothing normally happens (apart from the little matter of the Argentine invasion and its legacies, such as PTSD and minefields). (“Margaret Thatcher, who’s practically become the patron saint of the islands after her handling of the invasion, talks about society being redundant, of the individual being king. If she truly knew and understood this place, she’d never spout such a load of old bollocks”). Indeed there’s no privacy even for the police – I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them!
When suddenly one child after another goes missing, even suspects have to get involved in the search. Three of the chief suspects are the prickly, troubled Catrin (who had already lost her own children), Rachel (the best friend from her childhood) and ex-soldier Callum, Catrin’s former lover – all of them flawed, are stalking each other, and all of them get to tell a third of the story from their point of view in turn. Whose version can you trust, if any of them? All of them have suffered losses, are damaged and suspicious, have darkness in their souls, and have secrets to be revealed. You can’t help wondering, if something like this happened to you, whether fate might tear you asunder from even your best friend as well.
The main characters are brilliantly drawn and believable (or should I say plausible), the setting is very atmospheric (a major character in itself), and the plot is not unbelievable but is fast and intricate and keeps you guessing right till the end.
For me the most devastating part was the pilot whale stranding, failed rescue and subsequent killing carried out by Catrin – even if in a good humanitarian cause, it showed that she was capable of killing!
The references to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to represent the unbearable burden that must be borne by Rachel for past actions that are sewn into the text were brilliant.
The ending is very clever and unexpected, although perhaps the author should have provided more information so that it would be possible to spot the miscreant ourselves (I was brought up on the Agatha Christie fair play rules!) Sour grapes since I didn’t guess the correct culprit, right? It also seemed a bit strange that Catrin and Callum hadn’t discussed the long-ago fate of their children Ned and Kit until the point in the story when they do. The pacing of the story was masterful. I totally recommend this one for thriller lovers, or anyone who’d like a quick trip to the Falklands.
Bolton, Sharon (1960 – ), Little Black Lies, London, Corgi, 2015, ISBN 978-0-552-16639-3
Book 238: Anguilla (English) – Yellow Dad (Patricia J. ADAMS)
Anguilla is an eel-shaped self-governing British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. Here we’re in the 1960s. The story is narrated by the fairly sensible young Jeff, but is mostly about his cousin Sue and her lover Wilbert, who gets her pregnant but keeps putting off marrying her (using the pretext that the house isn’t ready yet). He seems to abandon her to go off to work in St Kitts. We’re also concerned with who is Jeff’s real father (he was taunted about this when younger). And that is pretty much the plot, apart from the resolution.
Apparently a yellow dad is dodder, a kind of parasitic plant. It must be widespread in the Caribbean, since a character from Barbados at the other end is also familiar with it. (Presumably it’s the yellow plant on the cover). It has lots of colourful names around its range, according to Wikipedia: “strangle tare, scaldweed, beggarweed, lady’s laces, fireweed, wizard’s net, devil’s guts, devil’s hair, devil’s ringlet, goldthread, hailweed, hairweed, hellbine, love vine, pull-down, strangleweed, angel hair, and witch’s hair.”, but doesn’t seem to be popular anywhere! “Yellow dad” is what Jeff’s dad’s brother-in-law, then other people, start calling Wilbert, implying that he’s a parasite. (He doesn’t seem that bad, though; before leaving Anguilla, he is always visiting Sue and the girl, obviously loving both, and helping round the house).
The story is written in Creole (in the dialogue more ‘extreme’ than in the exposition), but it wasn’t too hard to follow, mostly – it just slowed me down a bit. There are lots of great sayings and proverbs, such as “Pappy always say when frog open he mout’, croak does jump out” (meaning, “Sometimes yur gotti say what is on yur mind”). Frankly, I’m fascinated by creoles and pidgins, from a linguistic perspective.
I wouldn’t say the book is at all ‘gripping’, unlike what the blurb claims (I’m sure Dante would have allocated an appropriate corner of the Inferno for hyperbolic blurb writers!), but it was still an enjoyable feel-good read, despite or because of the Creole, and despite the simple plot – and often funny. I learned a lot about life in Anguilla (and its language).
Adams,Patricia J. (1952 – ), Yellow Dad, independently published 2019, ISBN 9781793185297Book 237: Pitcairn (English) – Remembering Love (Nadine CHRISTIAN)
She’d closed the door on Jack’s heartbroken face early that morning, heart shattering into a trillion pieces. Sliding down against the door, she sat on the cold, hard floor and let her own tears and pain loose, crumpling in a boneless mess on the floor. She’d lain there until she was sure a puddle had formed from her tears, and there were no more left to fall. Dragging herself down the hall, she collapsed into her bed and stared into the dark, eyes dry, mind void. She thought she’d never sleep. She hoped when she did, she’d never wake. Her life felt so broken. Holly had no idea where to turn next. _______________________________________________________________
I have to admit romance isn’t one of the genres I usually read, so I wasn’t holding out much hope for this one, especially since Pitcairn is one of the world’s smallest political entities (population: 47) and Nadine Christian was the only Pitcairner (with that famous surname!) I could find who has written a novel. (Incidentally, also the only one who had given birth there for a very long time). But this book wasn’t bad at all. The story of the Mutiny on the Bounty and the settlement of Pitcairn Island must be one of the best-known (and most enthralling, dare I say romantic?) in human history – Fletcher Christian’s mutiny against his supposedly evil Captain Bligh, Bligh’s incredible non-stop voyage to Timor from mid-Pacific, the mutineers’ voyage in the Bounty to find an island to hide on and their incredible discovery of Pitcairn which had been misplaced on the map, its settlement by the mutineers (all but one of whom ended up being killed) and their Tahitian wives. Even though I’ve never been, and am sadly never likely to go, to Pitcairn I felt I was already familiar with some of the places in this story. Nadine herself knows Pitcairn too well, so more description of the island might be nice for those who haven’t been there (which is almost everyone). Still, I learned a lot about what it’s like to live on this super-isolated rock with its intriguing place names. (I always wondered who Ted was – none of the Bounty mutineers had that name – but thanks to this book found out that Tedside comes from ‘The Other Side’.) Pitcairn’s language is a fascinating mix of 18th century English (much of it nautical) and Tahitian. As someone who loves islands (and dreamed of owning one!), I think there must be a happy medium between having an island to oneself (and one’s girlfriend/partner/wife) and having a reasonable population number so that you have some privacy and autonomy. Tiny islands like this seem to be gossip factories, in fact the chief gossiper in this story is a real ogre! Obviously the population must also be very inbred? Like the heroine Holly, I rolled my eyes at myself for choosing a romance, but frankly there was little if any choice from this tiny island. (Holly seems to be always rolling her eyes at something – she should see a doctor about it). Speaking of her eyes, like Elton John, I was confused by their colour, which is earlier on described as green, later as blue. It’s self-published and has some of the usual self-published foibles (bad punctuation) but it wasn’t too bad in this respect. Some examples: “The tree’s thinned out” “the old biddy’s getting their knickers in a twist” “Holly laid her head on Jacks shoulder” “Tattoo’s radiated from under his singlet” “he light’s my fire” “Saturday’s were his day” “It’s hard to know who’s they are” “”a diary that not only had opened her eyes to her mother’s secrets, but obviously held some of his fathers” (presumably a very big diary!) At least at the beginning, there is a thicket of too many adjectives, which would be anathema to Stephen King! But overall it was much better written than I expected. Like the author, Holly is a writer and has lived in New Zealand. She was actually born on Pitcairn but had left it as a young girl. As the story unfolds, she learns the tragic story of her parents and why she ended up in NZ. The tale is about memory, and forgetting. As soon as she arrives she gets back together with her childhood friend, Jack, this time in a romance. Jack’s father has Alzheimer’s and is regularly helped by another of the locals, who is openly hostile to Holly, because of her supposed past. The story keeps clipping along, and on the whole it wasn’t a chore to read as I expected.
Christian, Nadine (1971 – ), Remembering Love, Santa Rosa, CA, Eternal Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-61572-855-8
Book 236: Aruba (English) – Nights in Aruba (Andrew HOLLERAN)
By now I was convinced that thinking was a form of laziness, an excuse for inaction. Often I awoke in the middle of the night in New York as if someone had tapped me on the shoulder – the fabric of sleep came undone – and I found myself in bed frowning into the darkness. I came to possess a certain dark place in the middle of the night which I alone knew of: stern, cold, implacable, far from daylight and friendship. I became dependent on a good night’s sleep, which I courted as I had once pursued other things. I could not agree to do anything before noon. And the night before I traveled out of New York, I could not stop thinking for a moment – I could not sleep at all.
Aruba is one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles (its independence bid was put on hold due to economic difficulties).
I’m afraid this one didn’t do it for me, either for its theme or for providing any insight on Aruba, where the hero, Paul, grew up (he admits, ‘For the most part, I hardly knew Aruba at all’.) Despite the title, it’s mostly set in the US, not Aruba. Incidentally, this edition is also a good contender for the most boring cover prize (unlike the beautifully designed cover of Zuleikha).
We follow Paul’s lethargic and not very meaningful life in New York with his gay companions, on the one hand, and with his family on the other, which he has to compartmentalise (he cannot discuss his homosexuality with them) – both sides pretty boring for me. The life he and his friends follow seems superficial:
‘It’s pointless to hate homosexuality for not providing the things a family does. The joys of this life are joys the family can’t provide – of course it can’t give you kids, Christmas, relatives, and all that, but it can give you something else.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘That man’, said Vittorio, looking at a handsome cowboy entering the bar.
Some of it seems slightly ridiculous:
The nurse told how her husband had pestered her for years to allow him to hire a prostitute for a ménage à trois. Finally in the eighth year of their marriage she gave in. As a result of the incident, the nurse discovered she was a lesbian.
I couldn’t sympathise with the characters, who seem to be interested in one night stands rather than any sort of committed loving relationships. The love they show seems to be just for appearances, at least that was the impression I got. (When Paul breaks up with Sal, he says he no longer believes in romantic love between two men – but did he ever?)
Paul can’t help lying to his mother – not about his homosexuality, but about how dangerous New York City supposedly is.
On the other hand, there are some nice quotes… ‘his mother… went in and out of lucidity like a country radio station’.
There doesn’t seem to be much of a plot or character development, but a lot of the prose is well-written. But on the whole, I found it meandering, depressing and a drag to read, and not really a contribution to my quest to learn about Aruba. I can see that some people love it, that’s just me…
Holleran, Andrew (1943 – ), Nights in Aruba, NY, Perennial, 2001 (first published 1983), ISBN 978-0-06-093734-8
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