Category Archives: Mystery

August 10, 2014 · 5:06 pm

Six Books; Seven Days: The Vacation Edition

                                     If you asked my mum I spent the entire cottage week reading and avoiding conversations about weddings, houses and jobs. To be fair I *did* avoid those conversations, but I didn’t spend the *entire* week reading. I also played a lot of hearts, chess, ticket to ride and euchre; made dinner; paddled a canoe and cuddled my nephews (though the photographic evidence suggests I did a fair bit of this cuddling while also reading). 

I should probably blog each book individually, but instead I’ll give you the highlights reel. Thanks to those who made suggestions in advance of cottage week, most of the reads here are terrific and well worth seeking out. So, in the order that I read them (and so with descending memory of what they’re about):

The Cat’s Table – Michael Ondaatje

Basic Plot: Young boy sent on his own on a three week sea voyage; meets other kids; woven passages of how the boat trip does (and does not) influence his later life. Highlights: Ondaatje does so much well here – sweet slices of poetry, characterization, atmosphere and mood. It’s a novel that takes a “small” story (a slice of one man’s life; a trip) and makes it resonate with large themes and a wide audience. Gripes/Grievances: The climax didn’t feel sufficient, not an anti-climax, but a sort of “oh, that’s it?” and a wish that it was more. Overall: Beautifully written; not my favourite plot.

Salvage the Bones  – Jesmyn Ward

Basic Plot: Never a good sign that I had to flip through the book to remember what it was about. But then it all comes back: poor family in the lead up to Hurricane Katrina; the kids in the family are (on the surface) trying to raise pit-bull puppies (to sell; to fight) and trying to conceal a pregnancy; the father in the family tries to prepare the house/kids for the coming storm. Highlights: The scenes during the storm itself are gripping, tense and well written. Gripes/grievances: The plot reads a bit “out of time and place” in that its hard to imagine (though maybe this is the point?) this family existing. But they do and their suffering reads as real and poignant. Overall: I could have done with less time obsessing over the puppies. 

Tenth of December – George Saunders

Loathe as I am to admit it: this collection moved me. Like my experience of all short story collections, I struggle to recall exact plots of the stories (though the story of the experimental drug testing and the other about the human garden gnomes linger), the overall impression of the collection is fresh: fresh narrative voices, images, plots and characters. The whole thing reads like a genius writer from the future has arrived in our present to share how writing will be: imaginative, funny, poignant and challenging. I know I’m late to the bandwagon (and that I’m hardly credible when it comes to recommending short story collections): but go get this one. It’s really, really great.

The Good Lord Bird – James McBride 

Basic Plot: Henry Shackledford (Henrietta aka “Onion”) narrates his history disguised as a girl in the company of abolitionist John Brown as he (Brown) campaigns for the end of slavery. Highlights: I suppose it was getting a sense of this aspect of American history – the raid on Harpers Ferry contributing to the beginning of the Civil War. Gripes: I just didn’t like Henrietta/Henry. At all. I found the character to be annoying, so my patience with the plot stretched. On the plot it was ploddingly paced, overburdened with description and scenes that didn’t add to character. Hard to pinpoint larger thematic questions: just seemed to be a straight-up retelling of history. Overall: It’s rare that I don’t like something N. recommends, but this one fell a bit flat. Sorry, N.

Defending Jacob  – William Landy

It’s probably a rule that you can’t go to the cottage without reading at least one pulp mystery novel. And so I did. I intended to read the first in the series by Mo Hayder (on the suggestion of A.), but couldn’t get a copy from the library (I’m now halfway through a copy – stay tuned!), so settled for this one brought to the cottage by mum. Basic Plot: District Attorney’s son is the prime suspect in the murder of another teenager. DA has to defend his son. Highlights: Pages turned quickly. Gripes: The ending  – promised by the front cover to “chill and thrill” was… disappointing. Not that I saw it coming (surprise!) but that it wasn’t a satisfying outcome to the moral questions the plot tried to ask (a much, much better answer to these questions can be found in the brilliant *We Need to Talk About Kevin*). Overall: I’m enjoying the Mo Hayder so much more. But if you’re stuck on a plane, or holding a sleeping nephew, it does make the time go by quickly.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman

I love the way Neil Gaiman writes about the importance of reading and libraries. I love the idea of loving Neil Gaiman. And I did like The Ocean at the End of the Lane well enough because I love reading about other people who forget all of the things that they ought to remember. But I just don’t *swoon* the way others seem to over this book. Anyway, Basic Plot: boy returns to childhood home and remembers magical/fantastical experience when  otherwordly things wreak havoc, saved by neighbour girl, has remembered/forgotten the experience before. Highlights: I have a terrible memory; it’s comforting to be reminded that our memories alone can be tricked with, played with and held in other places by other people. Gripes: Slow getting going. I worried about the kitten. 

 

So there it is. The cottage week is done for 2014. I’m now returned to conversations on weddings, houses and jobs. Routines of work, play and reading in the bath with wine. I’m still very open to book suggestions – though be warned that the next six weeks rival that time I moved across the country, started a new job, ran a marathon and co-chaired a conference all at once. So send me gentle reading suggestions. Or free books. Or hugs. 

 

 

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June 16, 2014 · 2:35 pm

A Land More Kind Than Home: Acknowleding Faith

Im an atheist. Telling you this will reduce your trust in me, but it should also help you understand my reaction to Wiley Cash’s (excellent) first novel A Land More Kind Than Home. I loved the book. Found it moving, brilliantly paced and narrated, complex in its themes and written with an even, understated beauty. I loved the book, too, because the book directly engages with the consequences of belief and ideas of fate and free choice.

As an atheist I really ought to consider the actions and predispositions that come attached to belief in God more than I do. Atheism is a belief structure (if only a negative belief structure) that warrants a thoughtful engagement with justice, choice and morality just as living within a religious framework does. But I don’t think about these questions within the context of faith (or its absence) very often, and when I do, it’s usually because I’ve been prompted by a book (yet further evidence of the importance of reading). And so I loved A Land More Kind Than Home for both its complex presentation of these questions and for prompting me to reframe the questions within the context of my own life: what do I hold as dogmatic? when/how do I follow/resist authority? Under what circumstances will I take a principled stand?

Enough circling: what’s the book actually about? Set in the American South, the novel follows the Hall family before and after the oldest son, Christopher/Stump is killed during a revival meeting at the local (Baptist?) Church. More complex than following just the family, the interwoven narrative voices of the town sheriff and a local spinster (crone?!) bring forward the ways in which faith and fate impact those within and outside the Church itself. In some ways a mystery, the novel slowly unfolds what properly took place in the Church and who might be held to account for the crimes (a mild complaint, but this “mystery” element wasn’t necessary from my point of view and added little complexity so much as frustration with just wanting to know what had happened). It then does (really remarkable) work in expanding the scope of time and place around this central plot line by weaving in histories of the families and town in ways that add depth to both the characters, but more importantly to the central conflict/crime. As the novel unfolds and these lives and their histories are explored, the death of Christopher/Stump comes to resonate with whole new sets of questions (how are crimes of fathers inherited? is it possible to change our nature?) in a way that lets the reader circle back to the instigating plot moment with new intensity and feeling.

Finally it is a novel about what we do and do not say or speak. Christopher/Stump is a mute – attention metaphor hunters! – and his brother, Jess, attaches responsibility for Stump’s death because of what he – Jess – didn’t say when he could have. There are other moments where silence/speaking surfaces as significant, but for me it crystallized questions around bystanders and bystanders of faith: what do we allow under the auspices of religion that would not be borne under other circumstances? what do we say and not say under the banner of faith or freedom of expression? Certainly questions in 2014 Canada, with different levels of government trying to legislate what kinds of religious accommodations will be “tolerated” within the framework of multicultural Canada and different community groups and individuals muddling through what can and cannot be “said” with reference to belief structures and practices. And certainly questions worth asking and exploring for ourselves – through reading this book! – to know, regardless of – or rather precisely because of – the belief systems we hold to be most true.

So yes, definitely a book worth reading. A book worth talking about with others, but certainly a book worth talking to yourself about.

(Aside: Also! This book has some of the best “acknowledgements” of any I’ve recently read. I’m a sucker for book acknowledgements – I love a taste and tease of the “real life” behind the author. Wiley Cash writes sincere and sweet – but not saccharine! – acknowledgements and I just loved the apparent genuineness of his appreciation).

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January 20, 2014 · 3:18 pm

Conspiracy of Paper: Cheque that

The trouble with me is that I’m an arrogant reader. Particularly when I’m reading a mystery. I think that because I’m paying attention I’ll sort out the mystery and so this post might otherwise be titled “chagrin.” Chagrin because I thought I’d solved the mystery in David Liss’s brilliantly enjoyable *A Conspiracy of Paper* : a mystery set in London in the 1710s as the stock market is developing and the first (ever!) stock market crash takes place. Around page 300 (of a rough 450) I’d decided that I had it all worked out and so I resolved to make it through to the end to have my conclusion validated by the book. ONLY TO BE WRONG. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, realizing I’d misread the signs. Though our protagonist Benjamin Weaver – a former boxer, turned private detective/thug – isn’t entirely sure by the end of the book that the murderer/conspirator/mastermind really is who he thinks he is. So! Maybe I’m right after all?

And this is the delight of the well wrought mystery. The unravelling of threads reveals not a single person behind the curtain, but rather a set of societal conditions that allowed such crimes to take place that anyone (perhaps) could have been the perpetrator given the right opportunity. That is to say, one person pulled the trigger, but a hundred could have. Moreover Liss’s novel is brilliant for showing how easy it might be for anyone of the characters to have slipped into pulling the trigger, that we are all but a hairs breath – or an opportunity – away from being thieves and killers. That with proper motivation and opportunity we’d all easily fill the role. That the line between virtue and crime is as easily crossed as it is misapprehended.

So the book gives you a host of suspicious characters – lovers, family, friends and supposed enemies – and has each of them vacillate between trustworthy and unreliability. Our protagonist himself, towards the end of the novel, falls under the reader’s suspicion in a masterful play of the unreliable narrator. The story is, after all a first person memoir recounted at many years distance, and this reader couldn’t help but wonder if the usual shades of self-aggrandizing truth that ought to be suspected in a first person narrative weren’t being underdrawn in suspicious ways.

The one way I wasn’t arrogant in this reading is that I am entirely ignorant of all things stock market, and moreover intimidated by economics, investments, stocks, etc.  In another brilliant move Liss anticipates this (potential) discomfort with the stock market among his readers and so positions his protagonist as similarly ignorant and so a suitable surrogate to ask the obvious and naive questions. Through Weaver we explore the history of the stock market without the burden of overly technical or alienating facts or details, instead we get repeated explanations of the significance of such and such an event or practice through his Uncle or best friend. This gentle introduction to the history makes it both enjoyable and accessible, to the extent that I think I have a decent grasp of not only the emergence of the stock market, but a confidence enough to translate the historical circumstances to the present to ask questions about the abstraction of currency: talk to me about Bitcoin! I have thoughts now. Maybe.

Oh and I should say, too, that the narrative is written – as you’d expect – in the (supposed) diction and phrasing of eighteenth century London. So I learned some new words and had to catch myself as I started inserting ‘countenance’ into everyday conversation: always a joy.

All this to say an entirely enjoyable read – captivating mystery, thoughtful pacing and introduction of historical details and compelling (enough) characters.

 

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November 7, 2013 · 2:36 pm

The Demonologist: Plot comes first

I’m generally wary of self-described “literary” texts. It feels like a bit of a pre-emptive strike or (to mix analogies) like arrogance masking insecurity to claim “this is a literary thriller.” All the same, this is getting close to a literary thriller (note I said *close*).

There’s certainly the pacing and plot of a thriller: Kidnappings, women in fashionable suits, private jets and fancy hotel rooms, hitmen and demons Not surprising the acknowledgements of the book point out that this book is being turned into a movie. And this is one of my complaints with the plot: it reads like it wants – desperately – to be turned into a movie. Forget spending time examining the thoughts and beliefs of any one character – or how they might change! – we! have! plot! to! consider! It is a gripping plot, though. I made it through the book in two days and wanted, very much, to be reading it. 

I do have other complaints though – are these outweighed by the compelling plot? hard to say. I was okay with the demons and the parallels with the Da Vinci Code (mostly because this was much better written). I was less okay with the various explanations for why our narrator was beset with demons. The novel suggests that demons are all around us, and those suffering from depression may be more likely or more able to “see” these demons. Okay. I’ll accept. But then the novel trots out – almost on a chapterly basis – different hypotheses for why the demons have decided to wreak havoc with David’s life. Not that I’m not interested in the theories, but that each one was presented as “the” reason, so I’d try to absorb that reason and make it fit with the bizzare plot elements only to have “the” reason change a chapter later. It made character motivation and action hard to believe and it made subsequent “reasons” for the demons feel like they were created to suit the particular plot point.

That is to say, the plot was so overpowering that everything else – including reasons for plot points – had to be subsumed to the whim of plot. 

So there’s no real character development – David doesn’t come to understand his father, brother, lover, wife, daughter or self any differently than he did before, now he just accepts demons exist because they showed up and ate his face (not really) – no sense of setting (they drive across the continent and it reads like a movie script describing them in a car rather than the setting having any meaningful relationship to the story). No real thematic or moral question, except perhaps “what would you do for a demon?”

So yeah. “Literary”  if you take literary in the sense that the writing wasn’t terrible – there were some okay descriptions and useful figurative language. And for all those complaints, still undeniably readable. LIke gobble it up readable. I might even read Pyper’s other – more famous – “Lost Girls” if only to see if the idea of “literary thriller” exists or if my bias against the genre outweighs any strength in the writing,

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