Books, books, books

These three books, read in this order have enlightened, intrigued and deepened my understanding of why I read and why I read books in a material format rather than online. I, sadly, have lots of friends who have stopped buying books as they don’t know what to do with them and no longer have space to keep them. And it is also, depressingly true, that it has become quite difficult to unload unwanted books anywhere – schools will not take them, Oxfam shops are full to the brim – so I am eternally grateful to the Annual Booksale at St John’s Wood Church, NW8 7NE which is about to take place – Saturday and Sunday 18th & 19th May – as they accept boxes of books gratefully, and apparently they are snapped up eagerly, so if you can go – get there early!

The Book Makers has been widely and positively reviewed. Each chapter concentrates upon one aspect and mainly one or two remarkable people involved in book making. Printing, typesetting, papermaking, binding and everything in between the pages. It is a most fascinating and lively delve into the materiality of the book. Adam Smyth has used the more shadowy people in the trade, so not William Caxton but William de Worde, not John Baskerville but his wife, Sarah Eaves. And I thought I knew a lot about Little Gidding, until I read this.

The Book Forger is another kettle of fish all together. A detective story of the most acute and interesting sort. Two young men go in search of fake documents, one only to start with, but horrifyingly more and more come to light. Joseph Hone has deliberately written this as a detective novel, and one of the two men, Henry Graham Pollard, has a keen interest in detective fiction – we meet several luminaries of the early detective novelists, Dorothy L Sayers for one. But this is not a novel. A great connoisseur, biliophile and member of the Roxburghe Club, highly respected and revered in such august establishments as The British Museum, the Browning Society, the Swinburne Society and other bookselling and buying establishments is, it turns out, not simply a massive forger, but also a thief.

On the other hand, Reading Lessons is about teaching English Literature to secondary school students. Carol Atherton has taught for three decades in Lincolnshire. Her book talks about aspects of the curriculum, all seen through some classic novels, poems and plays and the things that we can learn from reading and teaching at a time when the creative arts are under considerable stress. She looks beyond the text to what the books can teach us and our children about life and living – move aside all those Williams (Blake, Wordsworth and Shakespeare) and let the light in for Maya Angelou, Malorie Blackman, Barry Hines et al. I think every parent should read this, not just a few teachers.

End Game?

I fear that this maybe the final volume of the Marwood and Lovett series. Six novels covering the city of London from about 1666. The opening volume introduces the characters during the shock and awe of the Great Fire. By this time, in The Shadows of London, much has changed but the rebuilding of the damaged city continues. Cat Hakesby and her partner Brennan, are engaged to build a series of almshouses and a street of private houses for a wealthy client (engaged in the triangular trade it transpires) but a body is found and work has to stop. The novel is full of details: characters, costumes and Court intrigue in the intimate circle around Charles II; danger and threats from characters that we have met before. This is not the book to read if you haven’t followed the narrative, there is too much back story. This is a series that needs to be read from the beginning, Andrew Taylor tells a great story with just enough genuine history behind it to intrigue the most perceptive of readers, and plenty of excitement to engage the reader who cares more for the detection and adventure.

On unofficial business

This was passed on to me on its way to the charity shop and I will admit to being somewhat undetermined about its content. Partly because, I think, I knew people who really had been part of the SOE, whose work I respected and whose writings I have read, and indeed, re-read frequently.

Pam Jenoff makes no secret of the fact that this is fiction, that she has taken liberties with the stories of the undercover agents who were sent out to France in advance of the invasion of Europe towards the end of the Second World War. In The Lost Girls of Paris we are arrested in the first instance by a discovery of a suitcase and a bundle of photographs that end up in the hands of a stranger. Grace Healey, the one with the photos, is intrigued and does her level best to find the owner and return the photos and this leads to a long and involved quest.

Between the chapters covering her searches, we meet the young women in the photos who were recruited into the SOE and sent to France. As the title suggests, some of them never returned.

All this is true, not these stories, but ones very like this. My difficulty with this novel is that is contains a treachery so vile, so depraved and so violent that is becomes a travesty which besmirches the reputation of the SOE, and other branches of the War Department.

I have the privilege of knowing several people in the SOE, some of them on active service and some in the secret offices in Baker Street. This novel does them no favours. If you really want to know about the SOE and the various people involved you would be much better reading their books.

Which is not to say that there are not many novels by other authors whose characters are part of the SOE clandestine operation, just I would suggest, not The Lost Girls of Paris.

Oh my darling Clementine

Probably not the best title, but Rory Clements does write captivating books and invites readers to blog about his novels. It is now Lent, so I am eschewing fiction, but with Munich Wolf I have adopted the Mastermind approach – as Clive Myrie says (and other presenters before him) “I have started, so I will finish”. I had just a couple more chapters to end the book.

And what a book. Rory Clements has, I hope, begun a new series. I think his great advantage is that his previous series do not go on too long before he starts something fresh. His focus in now on Munich at the very beginning of the Nazi party, in the early 1930s. Hitler has failed at one putsch, but that has not stopped the momentum of the rise to power, but at the start of Munich Wolf he is not yet in power, in fact there is an internal struggle between various factions – for example the Brownshirts are out.

The shocking murder of a young woman begins an investigation by Sebastian Wolf, selected from on high especially for this sensitive task. But how do you solve a murder when the corruption “from on high” will stop at nothing to prevent you from finding the truth?

Sebastian is offered an assistant, who appears to be an absolute worm of a man. How is that going to play out?

Just an add on: it is well worth looking up the background history of some of the actual characters in the narrative, those who existed in reality: Putzi Hanfstaengl & Rudolf von Sebbotendorf would be a good place to start, then there is Anton Drexler and all those Hs & Gs – Hitler, Himmler, Herman Göring, Joseph Goebbels

This is just the start of what might turn out to be marvellously nuanced partnership, I do hope so.

Indi-Scandi noir

So, Kamil Rahman rises again, from humble waiter to chef and now a member of the Metropolitian police. His years as a crime detective in Kolkata do not, however, impress his London colleagues who resent his meteoric rise from Police training straight to an elite crime section. Ajay Chowdhury makes no bones about the fact that his detective is brown and a rookie, and this placement obscures the fact that he is an excellent detective. In spite of the difficulties: name calling, a lack of co-operation, general disaffection and a complicated homelife, Kamil soldiers on…

The Detective is out now in paperback and another novel is pending this year, is MI6 beckoning?

Another Scandi series draws the reader in to the trials and tribulations of Detective Carl Morck. A suitcase left forgotten in an attic leaves Carl with some explaining to do, and leads the reader right back to the beginning of the gripping Q Department series eight novels ago. Jussi Adler Olsen certainly knows how to keep the pressure on. The Shadow Murders keep the reader and Carl and his team guessing.

If you like detective series and police procedure dramas you will undoubtedly enjoy catching up with these.

Libya Lost

If you have followed my blog, you will already know that I am a huge admirer of Hisham Matar, a Libyan author in exile. His new novel, My Friends, has a distinct before and after event. Two Libyans, Khaled and Mustapha, attend a university in Edinburgh, but decide on a whim to go to London. They arrive at a weekend when there is a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in St James’ Square.

What happened then is seared into the memory of anyone who was sentient on 17th April 1984 when a young police woman was fatally shot outside the embassy while on duty. Yvonne Fletcher’s killing is well known and remembered, memorialised in fact. What is less well advertised was that several of the protesters were injured, some very seriously, and then Margaret Thatcher’s government allowed all the members of the embassy to leave the country, including the person who stuck a gun out of the window and sprayed a London Square with lethal bullets. This is the before and after event.

Over the years that follow, Khaled and Mustapha are linked by this event, which for their own protection and that of their families, they have to keep secret. So profoundly suspicious and with tentacles that spread far and wide, Colonel Gaddafi’s secret service have eyes and ears on the ground. Each Libyan knows that when abroad, trust no one, especially not your own countrymen as some of them are reporting back anything that you say or do. Later on in the novel the two men meet and become friends with a writer, also adrift in exile. None of them can safely travel to Libya, which involves a complicated deception, as their families yearn for their return.

Hisham Matar knows full well, from his personal experience the dangers of association. Kidnapping and executing anyone perceived to criticise Gaddafi’s regime was routine, and the family would also be in jeopardy, or alternatively used to keep the criticism in check.

My Friends is a poignant and moving narrative of friendship, courage, fear, partisanship and the horrors of tyranny; and family life. Brilliantly evoking the period and the aftermath, the so called Arab Spring.

And on with the motley

I have now read all of the Ruth Galloway novels. They are addictive, interesting, often profoundly moving, always intricate and clever. I strongly recommend them. Elly Griffiths nails the Norfolk coast, its sky, sea, land space and fills it with its ancient bones, stones and henges and a series of modern murders. They are brilliant. And while you wait for them to arrive, listen to Bookclub on BBCSounds where she discusses Wilkie Collins The Moonstone with a group of readers. Get with it!

And back to America

It is no secret that I admire Paulette Jiles. I first came across her writing by accident. The Color of Lightning was recommended by my favourite independent bookshop – Primrose Hill Books before I started this blog, and I have followed Jiles ever since. Chenneville is her latest novel.

Set in her familiar territory of the American Civil War, we open as John Chenneville regains consciousness in a field hospital after an explosion has severely damaged his skull. However, against all the odds he suffers little more than a slight tendency to wobble, and the occasional headache. Once back on his feet, our eponymous hero travels back to his home state of Illinois and his faithful retainer, Firmin. The family estate is in ruins, but the house is habitable and he is able to employ a few able men to start getting things back together. His Uncle Basile has abjured everyone to secrecy on one important matter, and eventually when he feels that John will be steady enough to hear the news he arrives to tell him.

This leads John on a quest for vengeance, as he follows a trail of destroyed or wounded horses, and deaths; along the way he will meet the kindness of strangers or its opposite the suspicion and hostility towards travellers; he will pass through a landscape ravaged by war into the Southern States where the absence of slaves is marked out by the unharvested fields of tobacco, cotton and indigo, burnt our plantation houses and derelict farms. But will he catch up with his quarry?

The Last and the First

The last title of 2023 and the first title of 2024. Wondrous new discovery, Indian noir (almost). These were a Christmas present and what a find! Ajay Chowdhury give a masterclass in intercontinental intrigue and thrills.

Kamil Rahman is in England after he fails to follow instructions in uncovering an important crime in Kolkata. He was not supposed to find the right answer and as a result was fired from the police and in some danger – so he is on a visitor’s visa in London, working for his father’s great friend in a Brick Lane curry house – Tandoori Knights. The Waiter covers both the Kolkata crime and his London life.

The restaurant is invited to cater for an important 60th birthday party, and Kamil is roped in as an extra waiter, there but invisible. The birthday boy dies! And the Indian crime detective is first on the scene…

By the beginning of The Cook all that is behind him. The restaurant owners have gone back to India to look after a relative for six months, Kamil and their daughter Anjoli are managing the restaurant, when a friend gets into trouble, and so the detective swings into action again, endangering everyone he cares about and the restaurant itself, in a tangled web of deception and murder.

These two books are a thrilling introduction into this world, so different from the ordinary. It is full of the smells and sounds of cooking for one thing, Ajay Chowdhury is a cook and experiments with recipes for his family, so he knows whereof he writes. The next in the series is already in print (and on my TBR pile) and is called The Detective. Has Kamil joined the Met? I cannot wait to find out.

The Irish Connection

Thomas Keneally has a brilliant knack of making a small item in the history of a nation into a narrative that grips and enthralls the reader when even a modicum of historical knowledge is lacking.

Just so with Fanatic Heart. John Mitchel, a Protestant Irish rebel is surrounded by the dying, the destitute and the dead. It is 1847 and the Potato Famine and its accompanying horrors are in full swing, and yet the grain harvest which might save lives is all exported to England.

Being contumacious, John speaks up and for his pains is imprisoned, tried and sentenced to transportation. First to Bermuda and finally to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) from where he escapes.

This is, in brief, the story that is told in Fanatic Heart. But there is so much more to it: love, loyalty, aspiration, hard work, joy and adventure. A cast of unlikely, but real, characters and a perspective on history that paints a truthful and unflattering picture of the British Government.

You should read Britannias by Alice Albinia to find out why John Mitchel first ended up in Bermuda, where he was kept on a prison hulk amply described by Charles Dickens in Great Expectations, only in a humid and unpleasantly hot climate.