Category Archives: reading

Deconstructing The Luminaries: a timeline

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As the title implies, this post is intended for those who have read Eleanor Catton’s novel The Luminaries as it contains significant spoilers.

If you haven’t read the novel, try this review:  https://115journals.com/2014/03/27/the-luminaries-eleanor-cattons-booker-prize-winning-novel/

Feb 1839 – the Sook warehouse in Kwangchow, China is raided, opium is found hidden in tea cartons and the elder Sook is executed; Sook Yongchen turns to Carver for help;

pre 1865 – After winning at the wheel in Lydia’s gambling establishment, Crosbie Wells accepts her hand in marriage instead of the payout money – which Lydia doesn’t have and never thought she would need since the wheel is crooked. Crosbie discovers a fortune in gold in the  highland gold field of Dunstan – £ 4000 (about $300,000 in today’s money)

1853 – Ah Sook arrives at Port Phillip, Australia, is robbed of all his money, tries to contact Carver, is beaten by Jeremy Shepard, takes refuge, is found by a buck-toothed woman -Margaret Shepard, given opium, begins to recover, goes to kill Carver, instead comes upon Jeremy Shepard, Margaret manages to save Sook by killing her husband; Sook is tried but found not guilty when Margaret testifies Jeremy killed himself; Carver is arrested for smuggling and sent to Cuckatoo Island for 10 years, hard labour;

July 1864 – Sook learns the released convict, Carver, has sailed to Victoria, Australia to look for gold

Jan. 18, 1865 – Carver meets Pritchard in Hokitika, NZ and offers to sell him opium, which he smuggles in, in tea cans;

April 27, 1865 – Anna Wetherell and Emery Staines meet briefly on their ship and arrive separately in Dunedin. Lydia Wells takes Anna under her wing. Lydia ascertains that the two, Anna and Staines- share the same birthday

Carver, posing as Frances Wells, starts a long con on Lauderback, threatening Lauderback that someone thinks he- Lauderback- was an associate of a man called Carver who committed a murder and this someone is out to take revenge on Lauderback. As a result, Carver/Francis Wells gets a position on the crew of Lauderback’s Godspeed. Carver and Lydia start shipping dresses to Melbourne, Australia in Lauderback’s name, ostensibly to be fashionably altered. Since Lauderback has been having an affair with Lydia Wells, this is a reasonable ruse.

May 11, 1865 – Crosbie discovers that the fortune he left in the safe at his wife Lydia’s is gone along with his papers and knows she has stolen them;
-May 12, 1865 – Lydia burns the morning paper so that Crosbie will not learn of the arrival of the steamer Active in port along with someone Crosbie has been waiting 12 years to see. This seems to be Lauderback who has previously always come when Crosbie was away. (Lauderback has come to figure out who is shipping in his name);
-a bottle of laudanum arrives and finds its way surreptitiously into Crosbie’s booze at Lydia’s hands;
-Carver, posing as Francis Wells, tells Lauderback he has cuckolded his ‘brother’ Crosbie Wells and forces him to sign over the Godspeed to him;
-Lydia prepares for a party for ‘gentleman with naval connections’ in her home/gambling house ;
-Staines spends the afternoon watching over a trunk labelled with Lauderback’s name, due to sail on the Godspeed, ostensibly for a man named Wells, but actually Carver;
-A Chinese man is looking for an ex-con who did time on Cuckatoo Island, i e, Carver:

-in the evening Crosbie Wells escapes Carver’s attack cutting Carver’s face in a c-shape from eye to mouth, while Anna’ sleeps’ nearby in Crosbie’s bed (the origin of her addiction?);
-Crosbie flees to the docks, discovers Carver’s efforts to ship a trunk to Hokitika in Lauderback’s name, diverts it and takes passage to Hokitika;
-the Godspeed leaves without the wounded Carver, still under Phillip’s command because Carver has not yet claimed ownership.
June 14, 1865 – the Godspeed returns to port in Dunedin and newly scarred Carver takes over as owner/captain and sails to Hokitika

June 18, 1865 – Staines meets Crosbie Wells in Hokitika, tells him about watching the trunk for Carver and the fact Carver is his partner, having stood him £ 8 for supplies; Staines cashes Crosbie’s nugget at the bank for him and is rewarded;
Carver begins his search for Crosbie Wells and for the missing trunk in Hokitika by placing an ad in the name of F. Crosbie Wells;
Anna and Staines are surprised and delighted to meet. (See cosmic twins theory in comments.)

July 28, 1865 – George Shepard (governor of the gaol, the late Jeremy’s brother and now Margaret’s husband) sees Sook Yongsheng; Anna, pregnant with Crosbie’s child and exiled by Lydia, arrives on the Godspeed and is taken under the wing of Clinch, who runs the Gridiron Hotel; she doesn’t know Crosbie is living an hour outside town; she is actually working for Mannering; a trunk full of silk dresses is salvaged from the wreck of the Titania and Anna buys them from the salvagers.
-Staines buys the Gridiron Hotel from Mannering
-Staines tells Anna Crosbie is in Hokitika

Anna begins plying her new trade as a prostitute and taking opium at Sook’s place in Chinatown in Kanniere

Sept 20, 1865 – Ah Quee having discovered the stash of gold in Anna’s dresses while she slept off her opium, removes the last it, except for that in the orange dress, which she never wears while working; (previously -Ah Quee smelts all this gold, stamps it with the name Aurora, Staines’ claim, which was initially salted by Mannering and is actually worthless; Ah Quee expects his boss to bank it and pay him his paltry share: Staines takes it instead and buries it on Maori land)

Oct 11, 1865 – Anna tells Crosbie’s story to Staines; Anna loses her unborn child having suffered a blow, ostensibly from Carver who did hit her, but the serious injury was caused by his horse rearing; she gives the impression Carver was the child’s father and accuses him of killing her child;  Crosbie, at Staines’ instruction, draws up a gift of deed assigning half the fortune in gold to Anna and signs it, but Staines does not, having fallen asleep;
Crosbie (p.673)- digs up the gold bars and stashes them in his home;

Jan 12, 1866 – Lauderback’s shipping container, containing his books, letters and the deed of ‘sale’ of the sailing ship Godspeed to Carver arrives on the Virtue but is misdirected and does not arrive at Balfour’s office;

Tauwhare betrays Crosbie Wells to Carver, telling him where Crosbie lives

Jan 14, 1866 – Wearing her orange dress, Anna goes to Staines’ home for the night; while he is sleeping, she goes back to her room at the Gridiron Hotel to take opium, intending to return to Staines;
-while she is gone Staines wakes up, goes out, falls and hits his head;
-extremely high, Anna falls, hits her head and ends up collapsed on Christchurch Rd: -Carver uncorks a phial of opium (again see cosmic twin theory in comments); Crosbie drinks half a phial of opium on top of a good deal of alcohol;
-after finding the stash of gold bars in Crosbie’s cabin, Carver puts a piece of paper in Crosbie’s stove; next he needs to alert the widow, Lydia to claim it;
-Lauderback arrives from his trek over the alps to find his half-brother, Crosbie dead; -Lauderback finds Anna lying on the road; unconscious Anna is put in jail;
-Staines, also suffering concussion, falls on Gibson Quay and is nailed into a shipping crate;
-eventually Tauwhare reports having seen Lauderback and his 2 men arrive at Crosbie’s cabin on this day, after another man has also visited;

Jan 15/16, 1866 – Annie gets bail, leaves jail and she and Gascoigne remove the gold from the orange dress and hide it under his bed; Crosbie is buried by Devlin; Nillsen discovers the fortune in gold bars  after being hired to clear the dead man’s cabin and gets paid £400;
-Balfour tells Lauderback his container has not yet arrived instead of telling him it is lost; -Lauderback discovers that he ‘sold’ Godspeed to Francis Carver, not Crosbie Wells; previously he had thought that Carver (Francis Wells) was Crosbie’s half brother, extorting Godspeed as retribution for Lauderback’s cuckolding Crosbie; Lauderback knows now that he has been conned by Lydia, Wells’ widow, and Carver.

Jan 17 – Lydia arrives and makes a claim on the fortune at the bank; Frost tells Mannering the fortune was stolen; Mannering and Frost visit Ah Quee to force the truth from him; Balfour visits Lowenthal on the Sabbath;
Clinch buys Crosbie’s property and gives Frost £30 finder’s fee; Lydia arrives in Hokitika and lays claim to the fortune;

Jan 17, 1866 – Pritchard confronts Anna about the opium she took on Jan 14th. her gun goes off and Staines, now an opium addict, hiding behind the drapes is shot (or locked in a crate on board ship, he suffers a bullet wound thus preventing injury to Anna -cosmic twin theory); Gascoigne agrees to bring Anna to meet Lydia, but becomes angry when Anna asks him for help to pay her rent from the gold found in her orange dress and in G’s keeping, so does not; Lydia goes and gets Anna and takes her under her wing again; Staines gets away unseen but gravely wounded;

Jan 27, 1866 – Walter Moody sees a bloody apparition start up at him from a container, saying Magdalena; Moody arrives in Hokitika, but the ship he was on has to remain anchored beyond the reef because of bad weather; Moody meets the 12 worthies in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel and listens to their stories, which are bits and pieces, scrambled and misunderstood of the above events:
-the Godspeed is wrecked;

Feb 18, 1866 – Gascoinge advises Carver how to claim insurance for the wrecked Godspeed;  Lydia holds a seance to summon Staines’s ghost and instead “speaks” in Cantonese Sook’s words vowing revenge on Carver for causing his father’s execution; Ah Sook learns Carver is in Hokitika and forms a plan to kill him; Shepard writes a letter to the newspaper admitting he has used private money to build the new jail and lies that it was a gift from Nillsen; Lauderbank’s trunk is delivered to Moody by mistake and Moody learns Crosbie was Lauderback’s half-brother;

Mar 20, 1866 – Devlin talks to Anna while Lydia is out and shows her the unsigned deed of gift, assigning Anna half the fortune; Anna forges Staines signature despite the fact she is illiterate; Ah Sook buys a gun and has it loaded; Shepard puts out a warrant for Ah Sook’s arrest; Ah Quee is mistaken for Ah Sook and attacked in town: Mannering rescues him; Sook seeks refuge with Margaret Shepard who eventually betrays him; Shepard shoots Sook: Staines turns up and is treated for his wounds and is imprisoned beside Anna who is also back there;

April 27, 1866 – Anna’s trial for attempted suicide, public intoxication and grievous assault on Staines begins -Walter Moody for the defense; during Lauderback’s testimony, Carver is arrested for fraud against Lauderback when Crosbie’s signature on the Godspeed’s bill of sale is proven to be forged; Carver is murdered by Tauwhare while being transported to jail; Staines’ testimony that he was hiding in Anna’s room, high on her opium when he was accidentally shot, clears Anna of the most serious charge; Anna is acquitted of all charges;

Staines, charged with falsification of a report, embezzlement of ore and dereliction of duty, pleads guilty to all charges, is found guilty and sentenced to nine months hard labour.

The luminaries look forward to a loving life together in nine months.

If you find errors or can add detail, please leave a comment. I intend to keep revising as needed.

 

The Luminaries: Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize winning novel

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luminariesThe good thing about Eleanor Catton’s Booker winning novel, The Luminaries is that when I got to the end, I started all over again. The bad thing about it is that when I got to the end, I had to start all over again. Good because it is interesting and multi-layered enough to read again. Bad because I still didn’t get it.

The book’s 832 pages took me 13 days to finish. (Usually a book takes me three days.) I gave up television and cold weather kept me inside, so reading it was pretty much all I did.

Should you read it? It depends.

Reviewers are widely divided. Bill Roorbach in the New Yourk Times (Oct.16/13) waxed lyrical in its praise. nytimes.com Another reviewer refused to review it because he couldn’t get past the first few pages and then, after it won the Booker, did read it and decided life was too short for such books. He notes that Catton has suggested her book does not appeal to men over 45. In his blog, Claude Nougat examined the pros and cons in “Should You Read The Luminaries?” and decided to wait for the price to fall. http://claudenougat.blogspot.ca There are 72 pages of reviews on Amazon, ranging from 1 star to 5. The bad reviews remind me that Rome plowed Carthage with salt so that the city could never recover.

Almost every review mentioned its slow start and the fact it was written in Victorian English, formal and stilted. I nearly wore out the page at the front where the characters are listed. Until I had more or less memorized who was who, the twelve men at the meeting in a back room of a shabby hotel, I couldn’t keep them straight. Even after I had been provided with detailed physical and psychological descriptions, I couldn’t tell them apart easily once they got talking. One reviewer said “Don’t tell. Show.” Something I harped on as a writing teacher, but Catton feels the novel form is ripe for reinvention.

True, I wasn’t immediately hooked, but two readers I respect had thought of giving it to me, so I persisted and soon I was drawn in to it.

First there was the exotic setting – Hokitika on the west coast of southern New Zealand during the gold rush of 1865-66, beginning on January 27th. Yes, that would be summer down under, but it is a dark and stormy night, as almost all reviews point out, so stormy in fact that ships are in more danger than usual at that perennially dangerous port.

Second, there are the three mysteries, which newly arrived Scotsman  Moody stumbles upon when he gate-crashes the private meeting of 12 worthies of the town who have gathered to try to resolve: why did a drunk, Crosbie Wells die with a fortune in gold bars hidden in his shack, why did Anna Wetherell – alias the Whore- try to kill herself with opium and what has happened to the wealthy, likeable and beautiful young man, Emery Staines, who has disappeared without a trace. Oh and what of the gift of deed to Anna of half the fortune, found unburned in the ash tray of Crosbie’s stove.

Other puzzles soon emerge: how has the villian Francis Carver harmed Ah Sook, Crosbie Wells, and Anna, how many illegitimate half brothers does the politician Alistair Lauderback have, who is Mrs Wells actually married to, where is Lauderback’s missing shipping crate, who shipped the trunk with five silk dresses, why is the warden, Shepherd intent on killing Ah Sook and vice versa. Etc. etc.

The ownership of the fortune in gold is particularly tricky. You may need a flow chart. Let’s just say a heap of irony is involved.

And third, why is there a zodiac chart indicating the sign of each of the 12 worthies as well as the position of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and Mercury? And who are the luminaries?

One reader I know is studying the astrology first. I’m leaving that until later, but I am grateful she e-mailed me an astrological chart. (Balfour is Sagitarrius, Gascoinge, Capricorn and so on until you get to Pritchard who is Scorpio.)

Other reviewers have verified my conclusion that some mysteries are never entirely cleared up, although I was left with a pretty good guess at the truth.

The book gets better and better as it goes. Part One, “A Sphere Within a Sphere”, set on Jan 27th is 360 pages long and includes a retelling from 12 points of view of the events of Jan 14th; Part 2, “Augeries”, Mar 20, 1866, 159; Part 4, “Paenga-Wha-wha”, April 27, 1865/April 27,1866 , 95 pages long; Part 5, “Weight and Luchre”, May 12, 1865, 40 pages long; part 6, “The Widow and the Weeds”, June 18, 1865, 21 pages;  Part 7, “Domicile”, July 28, 1865, 11 pages; part 8, “Mutable Earth”, Sept. 20, 1865, 4 pages; part 9, “matters of Succession”, Oct 11, 1865 2 1/2; part 11, “Orion Sets When Scorpio Rises”, Dec 3, 1865, 2 pages, part 12,”The Old Moon in the New Moon’s Arms”, Jan 14, 1866, 1 1/2 pages and we finally learn who the luminaries are. In short, the novel moves from slow-paced, DIckensian to brevity, to the episodic and lyrical. It was the speed and loveliness of the end that made me like the luminaries so much that I wanted to stay with them for a second read.

What I propose to do another time is to post a chronological time line. You may not want to read that until you finish the book and maybe, way down the road, I will have a guest talk about the astrology. https://115journals.com/2014/04/05/deconstructing-the-luminaries-a-timeline/

eleanor cattonThe auhor, Eleanor Catton

 

To e-read or not to e-read: again

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It was the First World War that made me realize the limitations of present day e-readers. I had loaded Margaret MacMillan’s The War That Ended Peace onto my Kindle before I went to Brussels for Christmas. Just the place to read about the causes of that war, I thought. Of course, the season and my brother’s open house policy prevented such serious reading. I was lucky to sneak in two John Grishams. The Michael Connelly, the Lee Child and the Margaret MacMillan had to wait until my return. I got through the first two of those fast enough and once I had read the new Ian Rankin and Louise Penny, I started some serious reading about the early twentieth century.

Immediately I knew I was in trouble.I had to read much more slowly. There was a large cast of characters, which I couldn’t keep track of. Who exactly was the “doomed Fredrich Wilhelm”? I knew MacMillan had told me already, butI couldn’t just look in the index without losing my place – at least not on my aging Kindle. I couldn’t flip back until the name jumped out at me. Finally, I went on-line and found out he was the father of Kaiser Wilhelm II who died less than a year after ascending the throne. Bad luck since he was liberal and pro-British unlike his Prussian-loving son. Fredrich was just the first of many puzzles. Plus the pictures were weird. Their descriptions turned up on the next page and I had to keep flipping back and forth, counting group photos, for example, to see which was Edward IV and which Tzar Nicholas. Turned out being cousins, they were all but identical. And the maps made me crazy.

So after yet another doctor appointment, I rewarded myself by stopping at one of our few remaining bookstores, a giant outfit called Chapters/Indigo, I forked over almost $40 for a hard copy, hard-covered and complete with dust cover. (The e-copy had cost about $15.) As I waited to pay for it, I chatted with the woman behind me and we agreed -you can’t read a serious book on an e-reader.

I try to indicate in my book reviews whether I read the book on my Kindle. I see that I have done that for a Lee Child novel, a Jo Nesbo, and a Ruth Rendall. Even so, I remember realizing that I had loaned the other Jo Nesbo books to a friend when I wrote the post on  The Police. I was thrown back on the internet for forgotten details. When I wrote about Kate Atkinson’s books, I actually went out and bought a hard copy of Behind the Scenes at the Museum when the on-line search didn’t work. Besides I couldn’t do without that book on my shelf.

What about the argument that a real reader wants to have a real book in hand for its sheer tactility. Well sure, but is that practical at a certain point? I am no longer a book collector. Once I had several thousand books, which required their own room and left barely enough space for a table and chair. It was twenty years ago, but I was able to hop on that earlier real estate meltdown and lose my house. The solution was to move in with my sister Georgia and while I would have a den of my own, I would have to downsize my library. I made several trips to a second hand book dealer. I didn’t get paid. In fact I would have paid him to find new homes for my beloveds. After that, I weeded as I went. Each book had to pass a stringent test in order to stick around: was I likely to use it as a reference or to want to reread it. Otherwise, it was off to a charity book sale. True, every so often, I discover I have exiled a book that I desperately need RIGHT NOW.

The Kindle is good for urgent book needs. You want a book and as often as not, you can download it in a few minutes. John Le Carré books were the exception last time I looked. Another great advantage of the e-reader is that it saves on luggage. Years ago when we travelled in Europe for the summer, our cases were so heavy with books that we spent a lot of time in laundromats. This year, I kept under the one bag, 23 kilo rule by taking my Kindle.

And e-readers are getting better. Georgia’s iPad is easier to read than my old e-reader, brighter, whiter, more like paper. Previously, she needed a little attachable lamp to read her old e-reader in the dark.

No doubt, it will soon be possible to search a downloaded e-book the way you can now search a document for a name. Perhaps it is already and I just don’t know it. What would be most helpful is a meaningful way of keeping track of page numbers. Knowing that I am at 85% or locations 1975-82 of Christopher Hitchen’s Thomas Jefferson, doesn’t work for me.

Pending these improvements, I will buy hard copies of difficult books.

Just One Evil Act: Elizabeth George’s latest

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I searched in vain for newspaper reviews of Elizabeth George’s most recent novel, Just One Evil Act. There are plenty of reviews by readers on Goodreads, but the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail not so much. And readers were less than kind.

Their main beef was the novel’s length – 719 pages, but they also go on at length about beloved characters, Lynley and Barbara Havers, acting uncharacteristically. Many of them recommended better editing, particularly with regard to the “excessive” detail of the Italian setting where the major crimes occur. In short, they felt the same irritation I did as I read it.

I began with gratitude. There was another Lynley mystery to occupy my imagination during a particularly cold and wintry season and I got it from my sister for Christmas. So thank you, Elizabeth George and Georgia, the latter of whom confessed that she had actually ready my copy, but she is such a tidy reader I couldn’t tell.

Now, it’s true that, of late, both Georgia and I have complained that George’s books are getting too long. It seems as if she actually enjoys -how to say this politely?- fooling with the reader’s brain. As she is reported to have said, she doesn’t take the reader’s feelings into account. She is capable  of killing off a beloved character even while said character is pregnant. She can then go on to devote her next book to a sympathetic examination of the murderer and then drag us through the husband’s resulting breakdown. Clearly, we do not own the characters. She does and as their creator, she is capable of dispassionate distance.

What are we to make of the fact that Inspector Thomas Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton, opens the novel, as part of a shouting crowd of 200 in Brompton Hall, he and his man Denton, cheering on Kickarse Electra, one of Bristol’s Boedicia Broads, a roller derby team? Totally out of character, a chorus of reviewing readers say. Not so fast, say I. People fall in love unpredictably. Frankly, I can’t even remember Daidre Trahair, large animal vet and, evidently, the owner of a seaside cottage that Lynley broke into in the previous novel. Lynley can, and is willing to pass Denton off as a pal so as not to intimidate Daidre. Daidre who is tall, athletic and given to plain-speaking as well as roller-skating violence, is the antithesis of the well-bred, beautifully turned-out, shopaholic, Helen, Lynley’s late wife.

Which brings to mind Barbara Havers, Lynley’s partner in crime solving. Never well turned-out, given to wearing t-shirts with printed slogans such as “No Toads Need to Pucker Up’ and red, high-topped training shoes with white socks, Barbara lives in Chalk Farm. a district in London, in a converted carriage house behind an Edwardian Villa done into flats. In the first floor flat lives Taymullah Azar, a microbiologist, whom Barbara has loved from a distance for many years and many George novels. That love has been sublimated into his daughter, Haddiyah, now 9 years-old, who has been kidnapped by her mother, Angelina. Initially, Barbara is determined to find the child and return her to Azar, even though Azar was not married to Angelina, was not named as her father on her birth certificate and has no legal claim to her. To do this, Barbara enlists the help of a shady private detective, Dwayne Doughty and his side-kick, Em Cass.

At a certain point, Azar tells Barbara that Doughty has hit a dead end and that seems to be that. Suddenly, Angelina arrives back at the flat, a passionate Italian lover in tow, demanding that Azar return their daughter – who has been kidnapped in the Italian town of Lucca. Time for key characters to fly there, including Lynley, who falls victim to Barbara’s machinations and is assigned as a liaison officer. These machinations involve a tabloid reporter, Bryan Smythe, to whom Barbara feeds the story.

Is it believable that Barbara, who is a good detective but obviously a bit of a loose canon, would go so completely off the rails? The implication by several other characters is that she does it out of her love for Azar. I find it easier to believe initially that it was more out of concern for the child, but as things progress, it is harder to rationalize that. Whatever the motivation, the thing that bothered me was her profound stupidity. Reporters can’t be managed. Blatant disregard of police protocol is bound to come back to bite badly. Still, it is clear that she has weighed the loss of her career against the happiness of Haddiyah and her father and decided to risk all.

The initial kidnapping mystery is resolved in the first half of the book. More or less. This is thanks to a lovely new character, Chief Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco, of the Lucca police department. Salvatore is separated from his wife and daughters and back living in a tower with his mother, where he escapes to the roof at sunset. His superior, Piero Fanucci, il Pubblico Ministero is stupid and corrupt and removes Salvatore, from the kidnapping case as soon as possible. But Salvatore is one of those detectives that doesn’t let a little thing like an official order stop him.

A second mystery develops in the latter half of the book while the details of the kidnapping are being wrapped up. By then, Lynley has returned to London, but Barbara jets off without authorization, the sleazy reporter in tow. While Lynley was fluent in Italian, having spent time there in his youth, Barbara is not and her interactions with Salvatore are puzzling to both of them. Irritating or amusing depending on your point of view. I was more amused and, for the most part, I enjoyed the local colour, detailed descriptions of the walled city of Lucca and the farm where Haddiyah and her mother live. I did get sick of the constant comments about Barbara’s lack of professionalism. Okay, I get it and now she’s doing something even worse. I can see that. You don’t have to tell me. Yet, she is instrumental in solving the second mystery, handicapped by language and attitude though she is.

The end of the book is a real surprise and has lead some to question its feasibility, but it’s just weird enough to appeal to me.

I hope that Barbara and I have seen the last of Taymullah Azar, frankly. I’m not sure how much more of Daidre I want to see either, although I reserve judgement there. I do know that, like most reader/reviewers I want to see Barbara and Lynley working as a team again and I would like more than the glimpse of Simon St James and his wife Deborah.

Doesn’t matter. Elizabeth George is not about to write to order. Given her ability to create well-rounded characters like Salvatore and genuinely mysterious plots, I will probably forget how she annoys me and buy the next book hot off the press.

How the Light Gets In: Louise Penny’s latest

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At the beginning of her new novel, Louise Penny thanks Leonard Cohen for generously allowing her to use a line from his song “Anthem”. Cohen tells us in that song that “There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.” I have read all nine of Penny’s novels, so, presumably, I must have enjoyed them. And those lines by Cohen struck me from the first time I heard them as a neat summation of how good comes out of bad. Why, then, do I dislike their use as the title of her ninth and latest Armand Gomache mystery, How the Light Gets In?

Reviews, including one in the New York Times ranged from very positive to rhapsodic. Fans told of staying up half the night, of being totally emotionally engaged, of how they had waited breathlessly since the dire conclusion of book 8, The Beautiful Mystery for the resolution of this book. My goodness, I thought, and here I’ve been sleeping soundly oblivious to Gomache’s terrible suffering. I was so cold-hearted that I plodded through the book in my usual three days, closing it up at my regular bedtime.

How the Light Gets In, unlike The Beautiful Mystery, is set once again in the village of Three Pines, a place that cannot be found on any map, hidden and sheltered by wooded mountains where cell phone towers and internet connections cannot penetrate. And, despite its high body count over the years, an idyllic place with its village green, its outdoor rink, its used bookstore, its gourmet bistro with two fireplaces and its eccentric but helpful villagers. When he isn’t solving the latest murder there, Gomache retreats to it for solace, something he greatly needs now that his department in Quebec’s Sureté has been dismantled, his reputation is in decline and his good friend Jean-Guy Beauvoir is a drug addict.

Three Pines is south-east of Montreal in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.  I am familiar with this area. More or less. I recently made a sentimental journey back there to my birthplace. (See https://115journals.com/2013/09/11/septuagenarians-on-the-road-3/) While I was there, I stayed at Auberge Ayres Cliff (https://115journals.com/2013/09/14/septuagenarians-on-the-road-5/ ),an excellent hotel, every bit as cozy as the one in Three Pines, although much more on the beaten path.

When it comes to the willing suspension of disbelief, I’m a hard case. I spent my first five years freezing and starving in the hills of the Eastern Townships, albeit in a place that couldn’t be found except by those who had been there. True we were on a hill farm which produced a bumper crop of stones every year. Over the hill and down the valley, there was rich land with fat herds of dairy cows. Presumably, the hilltop soil had been scraped off our high land and deposited there. One of those farmers held the mortgage on our place. In the end, it seemed better to move to town.

But okay, I’ll go along with this Brigadoon-like village. I’d even like to sit by one of those two fire places drinking hot chocolate and eating hot buttered croissants. (No wait I’m gluten intolerant.)

Something I won’t dispute is fear of the Champlain Bridge. Too long, too high, too confusing with those changeable lane markings and too prone to traffic jams. In the opening chapter, a woman driving across that bridge comes undone. Some time later, her body is discovered dashed against the rocks beneath. It used to be the bridge that took you from Montreal across the wide St. Lawrence to Auto Route 20 and so into Les Cantons Est. Imagine my delight when I discovered this past summer that a new bridge allowed me to cross the river without going near Montreal.

Another thing I won’t dispute is the corrupt reputation of Quebec’s construction industry and its bureaucrats or some of them at least. Whether it is believable that they could be quite so dastardly or that the dastardliness could reach quite so high is a stretch. (Whoops – I seem to have lifted “dastardly” from Marilyn Stasio’s New York Times review.)

Nevertheless, the mystery of why a 77 year-old visitor to Three Pines is murdered on her return home to Montreal is intriguing. What does her murder have to do with her siblings? And, of course, there is the ongoing question of whether Gomache is going down to defeat as some terrible act of terrorism befalls La Belle Province.

Why do I resent Penny’s appropriation of Leonard Cohen’s line? I think it’s because Cohen’s idea belongs to the real world, which, let’s face it, is fraught with suffering and hard-earned insight. Penny’s world, on the other hand, is a fantasy, an imagined place of cozy friendship and monstrous villainy. It is the dissonance that bothers me.

Cheering for the Underdog: Gladwell’s David and Goliath

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Did you consider calling your son, Goliath? Would you tell him to go to the best university possible? If he were murdered, could you forgive his killer?

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book is David and Goliath: underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants.

David is one of my favourite names. It means “beloved of God” and denotes a hero and a poet. In 1 Samuel 17, we read of David’s exploit as a young shepherd sent to take food to his brothers in the front lines of Saul’s army as they face off against the army of the Philistines across the Eloh valley. Things are at a standoff. Neither army will venture down from the safety of the hills. While David is there, the giant Goliath, armed to the teeth with spear, sword, and javelin and wearing full body armour and helmet, issues a call to single combat. When no other Israellite answers it. David steps up. He declines Saul’s armour and runs toward Goliath with his sling whipping. The rest is history.

Gladwell examines the situation, citing scholarly literature, ballistics specialists, medical experts and geological facts. Goliath, who appears invulnerable, actually has serious limitations and David, who appears so vulnerable, actually has significant advantages. In fact, it would have been more surprising if David had lost.

Power is not always triumphant. Giants can be felled.

Gladwell goes on to consider how a disadvantage, like having dyslexia or losing a parent at a young age can have a positive effect. Twelve of the first 44 presidents of the United States, from Washington to Obama, lost their fathers at an early age. (p. 142) Emiel ‘Jay’ Freireich who pioneered a cure for childhood leukemia lost his father and had a truly awful childhood. The strategies we develop to cope with our disadvantages have a way of lifting us out of the ordinary. If….

My own life illustrates the “if” – if at least one person in the situation, the brutal childhood, for example, supports and believes in you. My Aunt Mae did that for me and my sister and we were able to pass it on to our siblings.

Then he tackles advantages like getting into a great university. Trouble is even if you are very bright, you may find yourself feeling stupid compared to your classmates because they are even brighter. Discouraged, you may drop out, whereas, if you had been satisfied with your second choice, you would have stayed the course.

One chapter considers the trickster in folk mythology and how enslaved people saw Bre’er Rabbit as a model for dealing with oppression. It’s all about not getting thrown into the briar patch. Oh, please Mr. Bull Connor, not the briar patch. A careful examination of an iconic photo – a police dog attacking a boy – astonishes.

Throughout the book, Gladwell uses the u-shaped graph to show that good effects can result up to a certain point, but past it, things go down hill. He relates this to class size, California’s Three Strikes Law, and even wealth itself.

The Nazis bombed London night after night expecting to demoralize the people into defeat. Churchill and his researchers had predicted this would happen. Mental hospitals were standing ready. Didn’t happen. Rather the opposite. Londoners remained calm and carried on. The looneybins stood empty. Has to do with the difference between a near miss, which is very traumatic, and a remote miss. People who survive a remote miss, and they were in the majority, actually conclude “that wasn’t so bad”: they have defeated fear.

Two of the most affecting stories are those of great forgiveness and great courage. A mother forgives her daughter’s murderer and a group of Huguenots in a remote area of France not only defy authorities during the German occupation but send a letter to the Vichy government saying, “We feel obliged to tell you that there are among us a certain number of Jews.” And they prevailed.

What a hopeful and encouraging short read.

Jack Reacher Reaches Virginia: Never Go Back

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Last year I posed the burning question -Will Jack Reacher ever get to Virginia? https://115journals.com/2012/11/04/jack-reacher-will-lee-child-let-him-get-to-virginia/ I can now answer that question. Yes.

It’s true that three of Lee Child’s Reacher novels – 61 Hours, Worth Dying For and A Wanted Man, describing his circuitous journey through South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, actually took only a matter of days Reacher time, but  it took several years in publishing time and, despite the thrills, seemed endless. In Never Go Back, he actually arrives there.

The novel begins: “Eventually they put Reacher in a car and drove him to a motel a mile away where the night clerk gave him a room, which had all the features Reacher expected, because he had seen such rooms a thousand times before.” The shower would be strangled, the towels thin, the television small and old. In short, he lives in such rooms. As faithful readers know he is in constant motion, travelling by bus and hitched rides across the United States. Earlier I called him a wandering Taoist, unattached to any notion of home. https://115journals.com/2012/06/08/jack-reacher-wandering-taoist/

Shortly after, he is dumped at the cheap motel, a plain dark sedan pulls up and two heavies attempt to persuade him to leave town. “They couldn’t find you before. They won’t find you now. The army doesn’t use skip tracers. And no skip tracer could find you anyway. Not the way you seem to live.” Now here’s a quandary. The guys in the first car have ordered him to stay. But of course, Reacher isn’t about to follow orders any more. He does follow his own rules one of which is “Get your retaliation in first” and soon there are dents to prove it. Such is his welcome to Virginia.

Why was he so intent on getting there? He was following the siren call of a woman’s voice. Not just any woman’s voice, but the competent, risk-taking woman’s voice that has helped him in his travels from South Dakota. His goal is the HQ of 110th MP Special Unit in Rock Creek, a place he knows well since he was its first commanding officer before he quit on principle in 1997, just short of being laterally transferred to the end of the earth. He announces that he is there to see the current CO, Susan Turner and sets the wheels in motion the mayhem that follows.

Turns out that Reacher is still a wanted man: he is wanted for the murder of a gunrunner in Los Angeles 15 years ago and for skipping out on a pregnant lover in Korea, who is now living in a car with her daughter and wants support. Fortunately, the litigant has the wisdom to be living in a car in L.A.

As for Susan Turner, she has vanished from sight and when Reacher tracks her down in a detention facility almost as secret as Gauntanamo, she has left word she doesn’t want to see him. That only encourages him of course.

Turns out her charges are even more serious.

Reacher doesn’t get a glimpse of Susan Turner until a quarter of the way through the book. “She was an inch or two above medium height. She was small-boned and slender, with dark hair pulled back, and tanned skin and deep brown eyes.” He concludes she was well worth the trip. Furthermore she can take care of herself.

It is not brawn but ingenuity that enables them to go on the lam with no papers of their own and a “borrowed” $30. They head for Los Angeles in an attempt to sort out Reacher’s problems before they tackle Turner’s. As they sort his out, they speculate about why they are being targeted and who has the power to pull such strings.

One of the delights of the story is the “daughter”, a 15 year-old who seems as if she should be Reacher’s child. She already has powers of observation well beyond the FBI agents, the Army MPs and the heavies who follow in Reacher’s wake.

The good news is that Reacher’s face doesn’t take on any more damage, but it’s not news at all that he ends up waiting for a bus.

(I read this book on my KIndle.)

Is this the End of Harry Hole#2: Police by Jo Nesbo

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Spoilers for earlier Nesbo books and dark hints for Police.

Some months ago, I finished Jo Nesbo’s novel The Phantom in a panic and querried whether that was the end of Harry Hole (pronounced hooleh).  (See Is This the End of Harry Hole https://115journals.com/2013/03/27/jo-nesbos-the-phantom-is-this-the-end-of-harry-hole/  The appearance of a new book Police seemed to argue against it, but I got well into the new book -32% into it, my Kindle said- and Harry was still missing. It’s true there was a closely guarded coma patient in an otherwise empty locked ward in Oslo. That could be Harry, I thought. Last we knew, Harry’s “step-son” Oleg Fauke had gunned him down with a Russian Odessa – a copy of the better-known Stechkin – in a drug squat.

The first few pages of Police is told from that gun’s point of view, tracing its journey from Siberia to Norway in the hands of Rudolf Asayev and finally to Rakel Fauke’s house where it is now “sleeping” in a corner cupboard, smelling of old wood, powder residue and gun oil. Nesbo helpfully reminds us that two of its five bullets killed Gusto Hanssen who had pocketed Asayev’s money and dope, and that its next three bullets hit Harry Hole. Hitchcock said that if a gun is carried onto the stage in act one, it will sooner or later be an important plot device. There are 12 bullets left in the magazine.

As to the sleeping man in a hospital bed in a locked ward, a number of people hope never to see him again, including Mikael Bellman, the bent police chief, Harry’s nemesis.

After the glimpse of the hidden Odessa, Nesbo gives us a lovely picture of September in Norway and brings Erland Vennesla, a jogger and recently retired detective onto the scene. Poor Erland soon becomes the first victim in a series of carefully executed murders of police, mostly at the site of an unsolved murder that the victim investigated. As the bodies of police begin to pile up, Harry’s old boss Gunnar Hagen, head of Crime Squad, assembles a secret inside team consisting of Harry’s helpers: Katrine Bratt, the Bergen detective who spent time in a mental hospital, Beate Lonne, the head of Krimteknisk, who literally cannot forget a face, Stale Aune, Harry’s psychotherapist, and Rasta Hat, Bjorn Holm. Meeting in the Boiler Room as of old – so far beneath police headquarters that it’s almost in the prison next door- they bemoan the fact that Harry is totally unavailable. He was Norway’s only expert on serial murderers.

Long-standing bad guys are still on the scene, including Bellman, his lover Isabel Skoyen, a prominent city councilor, and Truls Bernsten, his erstwhile sidekick, temporarily suspended from the police department but still able to act the part of ‘burner’, destroyer of evidence. Bellman, of course, forbids Gunnar Hagen to split the investigation of the police murders between the regular police department and the four in the Boiler Room.

But who is the lecturer at the police college, the expert who has enthralled an attractive student, Silje Gravseng? And why are mysterious visitors waiting for him in his office? So his red-bearded colleague, Arnold, informs him? Surely this well-spoken, well-groomed person cannot be …..

As usual in Nesbo’s books, the murders are bizarre even grotesque, and in this case, duplications of old unsolved murders. And as usual Harry and his group leap to wrong conclusions. More than once. Harry is passionate about justice and committed to finding the bad guy, but bright? Not so much.

The trouble with Jo Nesbo as a writer is that he is capable of cold bloodedly killing off even the most beloved characters. He had Ellen Gjelten, Harry’s partner beaten to death just when she was about to tell Harry who the ‘Prince’ was. As a result, Oleg got kidnapped by the villain and narrowly escaped death, not for the last time. Then in the next book, Halvorsen, Harry’s new partner and father of Beate’s son, got gunned down. Moreover, Nesbo has said that Cockroaches due to be released soon is the last Harry Hole novel. (It is actually the second book after The Bat and before The Redbreast, translated only now.)

As the novel reaches its climax, Rakel and Oleg are menaced once again and surely this time, Harry cannot save them. Or himself.

Thus, this reader arrived near the end of the book at a solemn church service where the Boiler Room crew and the surviving cast members have assembled. Bellman is impatient for the organ to announce the ceremony. How inappropriate!

I may never forgive Nesbo for his tricky ways.

High Anxiety: Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control

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SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERAOn January 24, 1961, a B-52 developed a fuel leak while being refueled mid-air. Unable to jettison the fuel inside its left wing, it went into an uncontrolled spin and began to break up over North Carolina. Four of its crew parachuted to safety. One died in the attempt and two died in the crash. The two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs it was carrying fell from the plane. In the process, various locking pins and arming wires were yanked out of one of them and the bomb responded as if it had been deliberately armed. The bomb hit the ground crushing crystals inside the nose, the firing signal. “But the weapon did not detonate.”  (246 Command and Control). A simple switch in the ‘safe’ position had saved the eastern seaboard from devastation. The other bomb, unarmed, hit the earth, part of it burying itself more than 70 ft deep, never to be found.

A news item in the National Post on September 23, 2013 telling that long-secret story indicated that Eric Schlosser had revealed it in his new book, Command and Control: nuclear weapons, the Damascus accident and the illusion of safety.

I snapped to attention. I remembered that day very vividly. I was in a state of high anxiety myself. I was about to give birth to my first child and true to the wisdom of the day, I was all alone in a cold room high above a wintry street, listening to the shrieks of the woman down the hall who definitely wanted “Momma Mia”.

I saw the day in an entirely new perspective. Instead of latching-on problems in mid-January 1961, I could have been dealing with radiation sickness in a semi-destroyed civilization.

I didn’t want to know that. And yet, knowing it, I rushed out to buy the book. The book seller said, if I liked Fast Food Nation, I would love this. I hadn’t read Schlosser’s best seller, figuring I didn’t need to be convinced that many people eat badly. I’m a born-again feeder myself, converted by bad health. And goodness, what a thick book – over 600 pages.

The framework story around which Schlosser builds his book is an accident in a Titan II, ballistic missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980, which began when a mechanic dropped a socket. Ordinarily, a dropped tool just ended up in the W-shaped support at the bottom and had to be retrieved. This one ruptured a fuel tank. Warning lights came on all over the command panel. The silo crew evacuated. Now it was impossible to say exactly what was happening inside the silo, except that it was dire. Schlosser feeds us this story bit by bit, concluding it at the end of the book. In between the Damascus chapters, he recounts the story of atomic weapons, the struggle to make them, to determine who would control them and how to use them. Throughout it all, the public was lulled as much as possible in spite of unbelievably inept handling, accidents and near misses, like the time the rising moon over Norway was mistaken for a fleet of Soviet bombers.

Schlosser’s research is topnotch. He seems to have interviewed everyone involved in the Damascus incident, for example and the many characters involved come to life because of the detail. If you do get confused, there’s a handy glossary at the front, not only of the major players, but also of acronyms and abbreviations.

Some of you will understand the physics Schlosser outlines better than I do. It’s true that at school, some of my best friends were physicists and I lived across the road from the university’s reactor, but, no matter how many times I am told the difference between fusion and fission, I don’t get it. I’m pretty much stuck at really big bang and lots of destruction and unimaginably big bang and destruction. The latter would be the Mark 39, H-bomb.

So my baby daughter came home un-radiated, never did learn to latch on, but took to a bottle readily enough. She learned to walk and loved her baby brother deliriously. They were both short enough to walk upright into the crawl space of our new house. That was a good thing because we were likely going to have to live there for weeks, drinking out of the hot water tank and consuming stockpiled cans of food, after the Soviet missiles took off from Cuba.

But that didn’t happen either.

Still Schlosser doesn’t want us to be lulled into a false sense of security. And I’m willing to inform myself when a book reads this well. I’ll finish it and then slip back into willful ignorance.

Your Immense Heart – re-posted

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This morning it seemed like a good idea to re-post this.

A jar floating in the river
Has river in it. The city lives in the room. Think of the world
as the jar and your immense
heart as the river.
Rumi – Coleman Bark’s translation in The Soul of Rumi p. 295

Apparently, Rumi is currently the best selling poet in America. He is the 13th century Sufi, born in Afghanistan, who fled Genghis Khan and went to live in Persia. Coleman Barks, his translator, has brought him to our attention. There are other translators certainly, but I am familiar with this one and came across the lines I have quoted high above the blue Pacific on my way to Maui. I kept running them through my mind so that, by the time, I saw the double rainbow over the ocean on the Hana road, I had committed them to memory. It seemed a wonderful thing that, instead of being carried along by the current of the world, my heart was the great river that bore the world along.

Well, easy enough to know the immensity of the heart when it is full of joy as it was then. Not so easy in times of fear and loathing. And disappointment and frustration, and loss and failure and recession and depression and so on until we end up with Grinch-sized hearts, hearts that need the jaws of life to pry them open. Little tiny hearts such as Connor  (“Why I Will Never Sleep Again”, posted May 30) must have had in the end.

Open-heartedness like a river accepts everything and sweeps it up in its embrace. It does not hold back to assess a situation, deciding perhaps that here, compassion is called for or there, that empathy is in order, that this is just and right and valuable whereas that is not. It doesn’t involve effort or reason. It isn’t deserved. It is more like grace.

Big-hearted people, the Falstaffs that we meet, give us a glimpse into open-heartedness although we may dismiss them as tiresome good-time fellows. But the open heart is not necessarily ‘Hail-fellow-well-met’.

The open heart sees things in a positive light. What seems negative is just misunderstood, for always life is carrying us on in the right direction, the direction our soul is seeking in spite of where we think we ought to be or go.

But how to come to such an inclusive, accepting, positive frame of mind can be a difficult question. We each have to find our own way. Someone might begin with gratitude. Someone might arrive by being in love. Some by family love. Some by love of a pet, some of nature. To be truly open-hearted will always mean expanding beyond those beginnings and, for example, including everyone in that beloved family, loving your mother-in-law as much as your cat, for example, your political opponent as much as your child.

It is not a way of being that comes naturally to us yet, but I believe that technology is coming to our assistance. The internet can serve as one immense heart as well as mind. We share our thoughts instantly and spontaneously now and we have the opportunity to be more empathetic.

In another poem, Rumi says we are cups floating in the ocean and we should strive to wet our lips.