The Fatal Englishman- Sebastian Faulks

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Christopher Wood, a beautiful young Englishman, decided to be the greatest painter the world had seen. He went to Paris in 1921. By day he studied, by night he attended the parties of the beau monde. He knew Picasso, worked for Diaghilev and was a friend of Cocteau. In the last months of his 29-year life, he fought a ravening opium addiction to succeed in claiming a place in history of English painting.

Richard Hilary, confident, handsome and unprincipled, flew Spitfires in the Battle of Britain before being shot down and horribly burned. He underwent several operations by the legendary plastic surgeon, A H McIndoe. His account of his experiences, “The Last Enemy”, made him famous, but not happy. He begged to be allowed to return to flying, and died mysteriously in a night training operation, aged 23.

Jeremy Wolfenden was born in 1936, the son of Jack, later Lord Wolfenden. Charming, generous and witty, he was the cleverest Englishman of his generation, but left All Souls to become a hack reporter. At the height of the Cold War, he was sent to Moscow where his louche private life made him the plaything of the intelligence services. A terrifying sequence of events ended in Washington where he died at the age of 31.

Review

I’m going to split this review into 4 sections, one general section and one for each story or ‘life’. It just makes it a bit easier to organise my thoughts.

General

Again this is a book which Waterstones put in the wrong section of their store, which kind of disappointed. Maybe they did it purposefully because Sebastian Faulks is better known for his fiction (his most famous novel being Birdsong) but this book is in fact a sort of biography (I say sort of because there are really 3 biographies). This meant I bought it expecting Faulks’ normal style, and this is where I found the book a bit of a let down. I usually really enjoy Faulks’ books, and Birdsong is amongst my favourites, so I had pretty high hopes for this one. While I found the stories themselves quite interesting I found the style was not up to Faulks’ usual standards. At times is read like a list which had just been joined together with a few conjunctions and a bit of punctuation. I think this was partly because, being a biography, there was little on how the ‘characters’ (I say for want of a better word) felt, understandable but I found it jarred with the story-like style of the writing.
After a while my problems with the writing style did become less important as I got more interested in the stories.
The only thing which wasn’t reduced by my interest in the stories was that there was a sense that Faulks’ wanted to use all th information he had read while researching for the book, this meant that in parts there did just seem to be lists of information which wasn’t really needed and actually extended each section beyond the point where you would have expected it to finish.

Christopher Wood

Of all the accounts this was the one which interested me the least. While Wood’s life was more interesting than the majority of the population I didn’t really become interested until the section was almost finished, in fact I almost gave up within the first 50 pages, all that really kept me going was wanting to know how he died (although I did get interested before that point)! Really the only thing it did was made me intrigued to see some of his art work. I have posted one of his more famous pieces above.

Richard Hilary

Factually this was my favourite section. I’ve always been pretty interested in history (at one point I was planning on taking a history degree) and particularly the period around the two world wars. However I’ve never really known that much about the RAFs role in the second world war (in fact I think my only knowledge comes from a story I read as a teenager which was more focused on the work on the ground than in the air) so I found it really interesting to find out about what it was like to be a pilot and getting into the RAF. I also found the information about early plastic surgery really interesting. This was also the section I found easiest to read, because one of the sources was Hilary’s own book (which was more or less an autobiography) Faulks was able to include more information about how Hilary felt than he had been able to for the other two sections.

Jeremy Wolfenden

Character wise this was my favourite section. Wolfenden seemed to spend most of his life trying to be controversial, and various events made things all the more crazy. It seemed there was always stuff going on in his life. This section also partially took place in Moscow during the Cold War so I found it historically interesting too although it had less historical content (in terms of world history rather than personal history) than the section on Richard Hilary.

3/5

The Cure for Death by Lightning- Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Synopsis (from Amazon)

The remote Turtle Valley in British Columbia is home to fifteen-year-old Beth Weeks and a community of eccentric but familiar characters. There, amidst a stunning landscape of purple swallows and green skies, strange and unsettling events occur: children go missing, a girl is mauled by a crazy bear and Beth too is being pursued…The Cure for Death by Lightning is a rich and thrilling novel, as filled with strange deeds and dark fears as with beauty and magic.

Review

For some reason I remembered this book being described to me as a fantasy book. I suppose it does have some fantasy elements, but despite some odd events the story actually feels quite realistic. It did take me a while to get into this story, in fact I was probably about half way through before I really started enjoying it. However by the end I was really enjoying it. I had really got attached to the characters, especially Beth and Billy. Sometimes I thought Beth was being stupid about things but that just made her realistic, and made you want things to turn out right for her even more. Even the characters who I didn’t feel attached to I did feel deeply about (if those are the right words). I hated to father, the mother I thought was a bit of an idiot. I quite liked Dan. Initially I disliked the style of writing, I found it a little old fashioned but by the time I got into the story that didn’t really matter, and it seemed to fit with the setting of the book. I want to read another by her now.

3.5/5

 

Living Dead in Dallas- Charlaine Harris

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is having a streak of bad luck. First her co-worker is killed, and no one seems to care. Then she comes face-to-face with a beastly creature which gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Enter the vampires, who graciously suck the poison from her veins (like they didn’t enjoy it). The point is: they saved her life. So when one of the bloodsuckers asks for a favour, she obliges – and soon Sookie’s in Dallas, using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She’s supposed to interview certain humans involved, but she makes one condition: the vampires must promise to behave, and let the humans go unharmed. But that’s easier said than done, and all it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly . . . The Sookie Stackhouse books are delightful Southern Gothic supernatural mysteries, starring Sookie, the telepathic cocktail waitress, and a cast of increasingly colourful characters, including vampires, werewolves and things that really do go bump in the night.

Review.

I don’t really have much extra to say about this book than I had to say about the previous book in the series (my previous review). Again I didn’t find I really got into the mystery, although as there was less background information I did find this book better for that.  One thing I did find annoying about this book is that I was most interested with the death of Sookie’s workmate, which was set up to be the main plotline but which ended up being rushed to be closed up at the end. It seemed like Harris had put it it to get a plot started quickly but then let it fall to the wayside only to ralise towards the end that the reader might want to know what had happened. This has made me put the score down a little.

3/4

Dead Until Dark- Charlaine Harris

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much – not because she’s not pretty – she’s a very cute bubbly blonde – or not interested in a social life. She really is . . . but Sookie’s got a bit of a disability. She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he’s tall, he’s dark and he’s handsome – and Sookie can’t ‘hear’ a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting all her life for. But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s fussy about his food, he doesn’t like suntans and he’s never around during the day . . . Yep, Bill’s a vampire. Worse than that, he hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, with a reputation for trouble – of the murderous kind. And then one of Sookie’s colleagues at the bar is killed, and it’s beginning to look like Sookie might be the next victim . . .

Review

First off this book was much more…adult than I expected it to be. A bit of a Twilight for adults I suppose, and not that much better either. It was enjoyable enough but not really worth the hype I don’t think. I found the more investigative bits kinda of thin on the ground, brief and they didn’t really get you thinking. I enjoyed it enough to want to read the next one (but wouldn’t have paid for it), and it was an easy read, which is good when you’re ill.

3/5

Blue Diary- Alice Hoffman

Synopsis

Ethan is a man most people would trust with their lives. Member of the volunteer fire department, coach of the school baseball team. He seems to have everything, a wife who he still loves the same as the day he met her and a lovely son. But Ethan has a secret. A secret which will rock the whole community.

Review.

I never really had been attracted to this book when seeing it around, but my sister recommended it as she knew I like Jodi Picoult’s books. I suppose I can see the similarities. Picoult’s books do tend to be about how events effect different people. I did feel as attached to the characters in this book though- there was only one I really felt for. The others I sympathised with but I didn’t feel that attached to.  I did find it a bit more predictable than Picoult’s books too, there always seems to be a twist in the tail with Picoult, and there was none here.

One thing I would have liked to have changed is to find out the outcome for Ethan. While the majority of the story wasn’t directly about him it felt unfinished not to know what happened with him.

I enjoyed it well enough however, and if you want something easy then I’d recommend it, but if you’re looking for something to really get involved in don’t bother.

3/5

What was Lost- Catherine O’Flynn

Synopsis (from Amazon)

The 1980s. Kate Meaney is a serious-minded and curious young girl – who spends her time with her toy monkey acting out the role of a junior detective. She notes goings-on at the Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, particularly the newsagents, where she is friends with the owner’s son Adrian. When she disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion. 2004: 30-something Lisa strikes up a friendship with a security guard in protest at her own futile relationship. Following CCTV glimpses of Kate, they become entranced by the lost girl and the history of Green Oaks…

Review

I live in Birmingham and apparently Green Oaks is based on Merry Hill, where Catherine O’Flynn used to work. She’s got the atmosphere just right, a kind of forced brightness which when you really think about it is actually quite oppressive. Like lets make a big box but we’ll make it nice by making shiny glass and marble and having green patches, but really there will be no proper natural light, just very bright artificial lights, and it will be ‘lovely’ and ‘warm’. I never liked Merry Hill, but O’Flynn seems to capture both what people see in Merry Hill and why other people hate it, it’s kind of balanced. I did really enjoy this book. It wasn’t exactly what I expected, it was more about different people’s lives than about child going missing- but those lives were somehow connected to the girl. In a way it was about how the event effected the future, and about the girl it happened to. I suppose the missing girl is more the glue that holds the story together, not a story on its own but connecting everything that needs to be connected. In another way I found it predictable. I did guess ‘who did it’ (highlight to view spoiler) although I imagined it happening differently- I expected it to be a purposeful act rather than what was really an accident. And I didn’t make the connection between the man in the past and who he was in the present.

4/5

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle- Haruki Murakami

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Toru Okada’s cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada’s vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.

Review.

How do I describe this book. It is different (I suppose is the best words). Full of strange events which are never fully explained and seem random while still giving the sense that they may be linked. In fact I think a quote from the book actually explains it better than I ever could

“(She) did not offer any explanations, and I did not ask for them.”

I guess you could say this is a disadvantage, or that it makes the story seem unfinished. While I would like to know what happens next I also think Murakami did a good thing leaving it up to the reader’s imagination. Plus in a way explaining everything would take away from what I loved about this book, the strangeness, the mystery. It gives the reader some choice too, they can choose to rationalise everything with their own expansion of the story, they can leave the ending as it is in the book, or they can give their own slant on the story which doesn’t diminish the strangeness. Personally I want to think about how things fit together, but I don’t want to rationalise anything- instead I want to extend the story to have the conclusion which I feel it would eventually come to and which I find most satisfying. I’m not giving full marks for this book because it took a while to really get going but I still rate it as one of the better books I’m read this year.

4.75/5

Songs of the Humpback Whale- Jodi Picoult

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Jane had always lived in somebody’s shadow. Escaping a childhood of abuse by marrying oceanographer Oliver Jones, she finds herself taking second place to his increasingly successful career. However, when her daughter Rebecca is similarly treated, Jane’s dramatic stand takes them all by surprise. Jane and Rebecca set out to drive across America to the sanctuary of the New England apple orchard where Jane’s brother Joley works. Oliver, used to tracking male humpback whales across vast oceans, now has the task of tracking his wife across a continent. To do so he must learn to see the world – and even himself – through her eyes…

Review

Ok so did I miss something…both the above synopsis and and the one on the back of the book suggested Rebecca was abused but as far as I can see that isn’t what happened, or the reason why Jane chose to leave…did I miss something crutial? (Highlight for spoiler)There was a brief section where I thought the Grandad may have thought about doing something, but that was in the past (he was dead in the present section) and not what caused them to leave at all. I guess that’s not something that’s really important though, makes no difference to the actual story even though it gives a false impression. Although this is Picoult’s latest book in the UK it was her first book in the US. You can already see her style though, with multiple voices. I don’t think her flow was quite up to her current standard, I did find that the changes in time took a while to adjust to and at first I found them a little confusing.

What I did like about this, in comparison to the other Picoult books I’ve read (which I think is all that are released in the UK) was that it was easier to relate to. There was still a moral dilemma as in the rest of Picoult’s books but it was the sort of dilemma you can image facing yourself, while not exactly common it’s less…dramatic, I suppose, and that makes it seem more likely to happen to you. I guess some people may see this as a disadvantage but for me I found I could more easily understand how the characters were feeling because it was easier to imagine myself in that situation.

I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite Picoult book, and it took me a little longer to get into, but I did really enjoy it- more even than some of her more recent ones.

4/5

A Fraction of the Whole- Steve Toltz

Synopsis (from Amazon edited for spoilers)

Martin Dean spent his entire life analyzing absolutely everything; from the benefits of suicide to the virtues of strip clubs ; and passing on his self-taught knowledge to his son, Jasper.  Jasper reflects on the man who raised him in intellectual captivity, and the irony is this: theirs was a great adventure. As he recollects the extraordinary events of his life, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries; about his infamous criminal uncle, his mysteriously absent mother, and Martin’s constant battle to leave his mark on the world. From the Australian bush to the cafes of Paris; from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition, this is an unforgettable, rollicking and deeply moving family story.

Review.

What to say about this book? I don’t think it’s really like anything I have read before. Sometimes you can almost believe it could be real, despite how absurd it is, a sort of strange enough to be true type thing. I guess that shows it’s well written, that Toltz managed to give Jasper, and his father a realistic voice. Most of the story was told through Jasper’s voice but at times through the voice of his father. While their voices were somewhat distinctive there were similarities which you would expect from people who had lived together for a long time. Initially I found the moments when Martin (the father) was speaking most interesting but after a while I came to like Jasper just as much (If like is the right word). Generally I’d say I enjoyed the book but I did find it tough going. At times it seemed to drift aimlessly and at these points I wasn’t really compelled to pick the book up, at other times it gripped me and I couldn’t pt it down. Maybe this shows an inconsistency in writing style but it did make it seem more realistic in a way as Jasper wasn’t a writer at all and Martin’s writing were only in the form of what I can only really call journals. Physically the book was tough going, a hardback, and a n unusually large one at that, over 700 pages and larger height wise than the average hardback (more like the size of a book in large print). It meant I could only read it at home, a little annoying as it meant I needed something else to read when I was out of the house just so I didn’t have to lug this book around. I also found the ending didn’t really fell so much like an ending as just a stop, there could be more to the story and no real conclusion was drawn.

Would I recommend it? Well if you are willing to persevere with the slower sections yes, but if you want something which will always grip you then this is probably not it.

3.5/5

For One More Day- Mitch Alborn

Synopsis (from Amazon)

‘Every family is a ghost story …’ As a child, Charley Benetto was told by his father, ‘You can be a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy, but you can’t be both.’ So he chooses his father, only to see him disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence. Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been destroyed by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits rock bottom after discovering he won’t be invited to his only daughter’s wedding. And he decides to take his own life. Charley makes a midnight ride to his small hometown: his final journey. But as he staggers into his old house, he makes an astonishing discovery. His mother – who died eight years earlier – is there, and welcomes Charley home as if nothing had ever happened. What follows is the one seemingly ordinary day so many of us yearn for: a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the family secrets and to seek forgiveness.

Review

Having read and enjoyed 5 People You Meet in Heaven by the same author I had high hopes for this book- enough that I was worried it would never meet up to my expectations. I was not disappointed. This book was beautiful, I think that is the only word for it. Short but sweet, and in a way I think it would have lost some of it’s charm if it was longer- it would have been overly complicated. The narative, despite it’s strange topic was somehow believable and written in a way that you could actually hear Charley talking.  Despite the tough topic of someone you loving dying this story managed to be, maybe not happy, but hopeful. It left me thoughtful and contented.

5/5