The UFO Diaries, Martin Plowman

I should have reviewed this book weeks ago, but it’s been a difficult one to process. My interest in the book was directed towards the “UFO” part of the title, while the author wrote a book more focused on the “Diaries” side.

Martin Plowman set out to study those who study UFOs. This was the focus of a postgraduate degree. As part of course work he travelled to the Americas (North, South and Central) to meet with people with some kind of attachment to the UFO phenomenon. After some disappointment with Roswell and its claimed crashed flying saucer, he set his sights on Latin America and most of his book tells about his experiences there.

I did learn a few new things about the people with UFO claims. I hadn’t known that (in)famous contactee George Adamski was a theosophist and I was kept interested by his Roswell interview with Walter Haut . But those UFO related insights were rare. Most of the book was a kind of travelogue which sometimes touched on UFO-related regions such as those publicised decades ago in Erich Von Daniken's popular but mostly discredited Chariots of the Gods?.

Even though his travel experiences are interesting enough in themselves, it wasn’t really the kind of book I was looking forward to reading,

I feel part of the problem for me is that Plowman had no real interest in what lies behind UFO reports and he makes that clear all along. UFOs therefore become incidental to his personal quest – the goal of which was never really made clear. Maybe there was no aim in mind beyond completing his course, or maybe he didn’t figure out what his own motives were, why at times he seemed driven to continue the goalless journey he had started.
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I was kindly provided with a review copy by the publisher, Allen & Unwin.

All Clear by Connie Willis

All Clear at last!

In writing this “review” I need to exercise great restraint. It would be easy to turn it into a bombardment of superlatives as I try to say how much I enjoyed Connie Willis’s All Clear. But I can’t help indulging myself with at least one word that keeps jumping into my mind. Maybe using that single word will give enough satisfaction to allow me to move on. It’s not a word that I recall using often but at the moment it seems the most appropriate to use.

All Clear is a MAGNIFICENT book.

It is complex without being complicated, weaving separate threads of time and multiple characters into a tight and cohesive story that I didn’t want to leave. It had twists, turns, surprises and puzzles as well as creating some vivid images of wartime London.

Willis’s characters are the core of the book. Time travelling historians, delinquent children, a venerable actor, shop girls, ambulance drivers, intelligence officers and clergymen give a human face to the horrors of a war where civilians were regularly the victims.

The central characters are historians from mid 21st century Oxford, part of a project utilising time travel to study the past. They were introduced in Blackout, the first volume of the story. Britain is at war and each of them is studying a different aspect of wartime England.

At the end of Blackout, they are trapped in London during the Blitz. They were afraid they had somehow interfered with events and changed the direction history had taken – maybe even altering the outcome of the war. This fear seemed to be confirmed when the casualties at the bombing of a department store exceeded the number recorded in historical accounts.

All Clear brings the story to its conclusion. Written as one long novel, the publishers decided to release the story in two volumes, thinking the modern reader could not cope with book of over 1100 pages.
In my review of Blackout I said it ended with a whimper. So hopefully the few months wait between volumes hasn’t discouraged any readers from completing the journey: but unfortunately that may be the case.

Those who don’t return will miss out on the experience that Willis intended to share, with the whole story presented as a united whole. The biggest obstacle to reading All Clear was trying to pick up a story that had been put aside months ago. It took a while to become reacquainted with the interwoven plots spread across different wartime periods. But it was worth the effort. After a chapter or two I was caught up again in the character’s lives. One day I hope to get the chance to read the whole story as it was intended by the author – from beginning to end without a disruptive break in the middle.

Why did I like the book so much? It has an all round richness and depth. There’s nothing shallow or simplistic about it. It gives the mind a workout without becoming convoluted and confusing, dealing with one of science fiction’s most iconic conundrums – the potential effects of changing the past and how it would affect the future. The characters are given time to develop and grow, drawing the reader in to experience their emotional journey through very difficult and unknown territory. It deals with the heroic as well as the horrific with occasional humour to balance the growing tension. Willis is able to do all of this without resorting to anything cheap, gratuitous or potentially offensive.

Yes, with its use of time travel the book is built upon a science fiction foundation, which will probably be a stumbling block for some potential readers. That is unfortunate because they will miss out on a very rewarding journey that has very little to do with scientific speculation. This book is about people, relationships and how the worst of experiences can bring out the best of human character.

I loved it.



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Thanks to Allen & Unwin,the publishers of this book in Australia for sending me a review copy.

See here for their All Clear webpage:
http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781741758429

NOTE: Allen & Unwin were not responsible for the decision to divide this story into two parts.

The Alternative Kitchen Garden and A-Z

Earlier I said I would provide a link to my review of Emma Cooper's The Alternative Kitchen Garden an A-Z.
I have now written the review and have posted it here.

http://onefile2.blogspot.com/2010/10/alternative-kitchen-garden-a-z.html


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Reviewing My Reason for Reviewing

The review I wrote of Mary Poppins left me wondering whether I’d forgotten my reason for starting this blog.

I’m not sure I wrote anything of interest or value in that review. I could at least have written about my reason for reading that particular book at that particular time: which was for convenience. The book had been sitting unread on my bookshelf for ages and I wanted something reasonably quick and easy to read after taking over a month to get through the second of two books about the space race of the 1960s.

So why did I think I had to attempt a review? Do I really need to review every book I read or should I reserve that task for those books that I WANT to write about? Those books that move me in some way and give me an experience that I feel is worth documenting…

A Taste For Death

Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise novels were my favourite teenage reading and I last revisited them in my early 20s. It would therefore be around 30 years since I read this book.

For several years I have been looking for Modesty Blaise novels in every second-hand bookshop I've come across. My own copies disappeared long ago. A shop in my home town has had a hardcover first edition of one of the series for a couple of years - but $70.00 is much more than I am willing to pay.

This was the very first affordable Modesty Blaise book I've seen for years* and, allowing myself to be overcome by nostalgic urges, I bought it.

In reading this book I quickly recognised why O’Donnell’s stories had so much appeal especially to a teenage boy. It is the same kind of appeal that can be found in the Indiana Jones films, the appeal of the rollercoaster ride that lifts you to a peak of suspense and then lets you accelerate to a brief resolution before building up to the next peak. O’Donnell continually drops his heroes into impossibly desperate situations and then lets them work their own way out.

This kind of story could easily leave readers shaking their heads at the improbability of the plot but with skill a writer can suspend the reader’s sense of unbelief to hide the improbability from the readers mind. I can see two aspects of this skill in the Blaise books. Firstly O’Donnell creates very likeable heroes with backgrounds that equip them for the dangers they will face. Secondly he adds humour showing his tongue is very much at home in his cheek. And then there is no pretence that his villains are anything other than villainous – no attempt to justify their behaviour through questionable psychology. They are the baddies because they are evil, not because they are misunderstood or misguided.

Modesty Blaise is a former organized crime boss who made her fortune through illegal but not entirely immoral means, her crimes allegedly having no really innocent victims. Living in retirement, she retains an extraordinarily close bond with a former associate, Willie Garvin. It is a retirement that is regularly interrupted by their ability to attract – or be attracted to – trouble. In A Taste For Death, a holidaying Willie Garvin witnesses the murder of a young woman, after which he is able to rescue the victim’s companion from the murderers. In doing so he disrupts the plans of an old adversary and further confrontation becomes inevitable.

The books exotic settings, from the Caribbean to the deserts of North Africa are matched by the exotic and inventive challenges faced by Blaise and Garvin. In this book they are rejoined by Stephen Collier, a survivor from former adventures. Collier’s self-deprecating humour not only provides some of the books lighter moments, it becomes an important part of the plot with Collier being adopted as “court jester” by the book’s major villain Delicata, extending his life and also giving him access to vital intelligence.
Another recurring character is also introduced in this book. The girl rescued by Garvin at the beginning of the book, Dinah Pilgrim. She is the focal point of the villains’ plans, possessing a talent essential for their success. Garvin’s intervention ensures that he and Blaise will complicate those plans and be drawn into a deadly confrontation with a collection of adversaries from their past.

Some would call stories like this “comic book” and that criticism would not be entirely unjustified. Modesty Blaise started out as a comic strip character in the 1960s. The strip’s success led to a film adaptation with the original screenplay being written by O’Donnell. Unfortunately, the film business being as it can be, there were several rewrites and the result was far from satisfactory. At the time O’Donnell vowed never to allow his characters to be portrayed on film again unless he had personal control, a sentimnet he made known to me in a reply to a fan letter I wrote in the early 1980s.

After the disastrous film, O’Donnell salvaged the reputation of his characters by converting his screenplay into a novel, the first of a series which continued for 20 years. The Modesty Blaise books ended with a collection of short stories The Cobra Trap, published in 1996, 10 years after the last of the novels. However the comic strip continued until 2001.

Despite O’Donnell’s intentions regarding film adaptations of his characters, he relented to a degree and two other films were made. The first in 1982 was a telemovie, the pilot of a proposed TV series that never eventuated and the most recent being a prequel to the published Modesty Blaise stories. The latter made little impact and went straight to DVD. Maybe the most significant aspect of the DVD release was the bonus features, which include a lengthy interview with Peter O’Donnell who talks about his career and his relationship with the Modesty Blaise stories.

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* Some of the series are available as new books but to me the old Pan paperback editions are an important part of the nostalgic experience.

Last & First

The Time Traveller’s Wife is the kind of book responsible for the dilemma I experience with reading. As previously anticipated I received a copy for Christmas and spent most of the Christmas holidays reading it.

Firstly the positive…
It inspires the desire to read, with its interesting and original story of Henry, a man who is uncontrollably snatched from one time period to another. These shifts in time occasionally bring him into contact with important people from other periods in his life, enabling him to visit his childhood self and other people of personal importance. He is able to spend time with his wife throughout her childhood, preparing her for their eventual meeting and the novel alternates between his and her points of view.

Time travel stories have always appealed to me. There have been TV series like Dr Who and Time Tunnel; films like The Terminator and Back to the Future series, adaptations of HG Well’s The Time Machine (and of course the original book); Connie Willis’s award winning novel The Doomsday Book and so many other examples of time travel being explored.
Unlike all of those, Niffenegger’s book is not likely to be described as “Science Fiction” even though a scientific reason for Henry’s condition is lightly touched (some kind of genetic anomaly). This book’s major focus is on the effects of the time traveller’s condition upon his relationship with his wife Clare; effects that (to me) did not always ring true and left me wondering whether real people would react in the same way as this books characters when faced with the particular realities of their relationship and experiences. For example, would a woman be so accepting of her husband having an extramarital, sexual encounter with a younger woman – even if that woman was herself, many years before, during one of his time travelling episodes?

And next the negative…

This book is also an example of what annoys me about modern writing that makes me think twice about starting a book.
Like so many modern writers, Niffenegger follows the compulsion to soil her craft with the use of explicit sexual encounters and graphic language. What is it about today’s writers that make them think it’s necessary to include at least one obligatory oral sex scene in their novels? It’s a practice so common that it has become a cliché.

Many years ago an English work mate was telling me about his favourite author, a writer of pulp thrillers who, as part of his popular formula, always included “one fook per book”. It seems to me that otherwise talented “literary” writers today see it necessary to fall into the same formulaic trap, spicing up their stories with gratuitously explicit sexual encounters and obscene language. Is it REALLY necessary for a writer to use the crudest terms in the English language to describe genitalia?

Prior to reading this book I had been seriously considering Niffenegger’s next novel, but after reading this one – despite its many good points, I’m not likely to follow it up with any more of her writing.


The Time Traveller’s Wife was the last book I completed in 2009. The first to be finished in 2010 was Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing, a book that I purchased through a series of mistakes and misunderstandings.
I saw it praised on a book blog and immediately assumed it was the same book I had recently left on the shelves of a charity shop’s book section. I was disappointed at missing out on such a highly recommended book that I could have bought for a few dollars, but my disappointment was eased when I found that I could buy an autographed copy direct from the author. Several days after placing my order it arrived and I realised that it had NOT been the book I had previously seen for a bargain price, which will now remain unidentified as the shop is a four hour drive from home.

Hill’s Howards End is a collection of writings that every book-lover should enjoy. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of Hill’s relationship with books, literature and the varied personalities involved with their creation. It is a personal insight into Hill herself, as well as to the many writers she has been privileged to meet. Along with anecdotes about people like Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Edith Sitwell, Hill writes about the memories stirred up by the different types of books (diaries, pop-up books, literary classics and more) that she rediscovers on her own bookshelves. In particular we are given a glimpse into her love of both Virginia Woolf and Thomas Hardy.
After my conflicting feelings about The Time Traveller’s Wife I was quite pleased to read Hill saying that love is “the most difficult thing to write about successfully. It is the litmus test of greatness in a novelist if a love story moves and convinces and never once makes the reader grimace, smirk or feel embarrassed. Modern novelists are bad at writing about love because they feel that it has to mean writing explicitly about sex.”
I certainly see that comment being applicable to parts of The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Susan Hill concludes her book with a list of her “Final Forty” which could be described as those books she would find as most essential if she had to cull her extensive library. Reading such a list makes it clear how subjective book choice is. Out of the forty I have only six of them in my own library – one of which is Wuthering Heights, a book that would clearly be absent from my own “Final Forty” (Read about my struggle with this book elsewhere on my blog).

Last Post for 2009.

After today I’ll be away from my computer until after the New Year holiday.

My attempt to become more disciplined in my reading has been reasonably successful, but Wuthering Heights remains on my “currently reading” list because I haven’t picked it up for a few weeks. Eventually I’ll finish it off but I think it will be more of a chore than a pleasure.

I also added Zadie Smith’s White Teeth to my current reading list, even though it’s a book I started many months ago and put aside. I have read a few more chapters but it hasn’t really maintained my interest.

Since I started this blog I’ve tried to write short “reviews” of books as I complete them, but maybe “review” isn’t an accurate description. I’ve merely tried to record some personal impressions of each book including (when possible) my reasons for reading it and how the book came to my attention: (i.e. why THIS book and not one of the countless others that I could have purchased and read?).

There seems to be so little time to read and far too many books that I would like to read. Prioritising my time is never easy with so many other things demanding attention. With a week or so off from work over Christmas I might be able to find a little more reading time and hopefully another book or two will be ready to be transferred from my reading list to the completed list before the end of year.

One title that will soon be added to those I’m currently reading will be The Time Traveller’s Wife – a Christmas present (but shhh I’m not supposed to know that yet!)

Talking to Animals, Creating Myth & Returning to Reality

As a child I loved Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle books and read all of those held by my local library. When I recently found the first book in a nearby second hand bookshop I couldn’t resist it.

Reading it again more than 40 years later I can understand the appeal the books had, but I wondered whether such a book could remain in print today considering some of its very politically incorrect portrayals of black Africans. However, a quick look at the website of a major seller has shown me that The Story of Doctor Dolittle is still being sold.
Now I wonder whether it has been modified in anyway to remove references to “Darkies” “Niggers” and “Coons”. I also wonder about an incident in the book where a black African prince dislikes his colour and turns to John Dolittle to change his face white.

Otherwise, the story is a simple adventure of animals (both domestic and exotic) and encounters with pirates.


Another favourite revisited was Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. I found a hardcover copy in the same second hand shop mentioned above a few weeks ago and looked forward to rediscovering why I enjoyed it so much when I first read it. Not long after I bought the book I found out that the author had very recently died .

This book is the first of a series. None of the subsequent books is a true sequel, they merely explored different aspects of the world introduced in the first. However only a month or two before Holdstock’s death Avilion was released and that book apparently returns to the characters of the first novel to continue their story.

The main “character” throughout the series of books is Ryhope Forest, one of the last remaining wild woodlands in Britain in which man’s deepest mythological memories are brought to life. The Mythago’s of the title are the people and places originating in the wood that have been formed out of the racial memories of the humans venturing near or into the forest.
As someone who has always had a love of British legend and mythology this book offered a mature exploration of a doorway between our “real” world and the world of myth. Instead of children finding a way to Narnia through a wardrobe (as in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe), Mythago Wood presents darker more brutal reality behind the stories that became legend and its world is entered along hidden trackways into and through the forest. Take the wrong path and you merely find yourself back at your starting point. Take a correct path and you enter deeper into the forest and its mysteries.
If the book has a weakness it is its lack of sustained emotional engagement. The characters are stoic ex-servicemen who don’t let their guard down.
The exception to this comes through the early relationship between Stephen Huxley and a female Mythago, Guiwenneth. Only during their deepening relationship is there a genuine sense of emotion involvement between reader and characters. It is this relationship that provides the motivation for Stephen to enter the forest and seek the paths to its heart.


A Patchwork Planet was something new that I hadn’t previously read. I had seen that its author Anne Tyler is a favourite of both Nick Hornby and Roddy Doyle, two of my own favourite writers.
I don’t know how this particular book fits within her overall work, whether it is one of her best or one of her lesser novels, but I enjoyed it enough to something else she has written.
Unlike the fantasy and adventure of the two books mentioned above, A Patchwork Planet deals with very realistic characters facing very real situations and at times gives a very moving account of relationship issues that most (if not all) of us face at some times in our lives. The emotional complexities of maintaining relationships in a broken family where a child has little contact with one parent. The effects of old age, in which physical and mental decline can strike suddenly to significantly change a person’s relationship with those around them. The way emotional blackmail can be utilised to create and maintain dependency of one person upon another.
It is a simple book exploring complex matters of relationship without any sense of exploiting or manipulating the reader emotionally.

Who Killed Dave?

I received Linda Cockburn’s book Who Killed Dave as a review copy under the condition that I would read it and write a review for my blog within 8 weeks. The book arrived in the mail on a Friday and by the next evening I’d finished reading it. I didn’t even get the chance to enter it on my blog as “currently reading”; it went straight to my completed books list.

In an earlier book, Living the Good Life, Cockburn recorded her family’s attempt at genuine self sufficiency, trying to live for six months without spending money.
Coburn regularly contributes to the ABC’s Organic Gardening magazine in which she writes about the environmentally friendly property her family are developing in Tasmania. This is also the main topic of her blog. http://lintrezza.blogspot.com/

It is clear she and her family are people who act on their convictions, not taking shortcuts for the sake of convenience.

The method of publishing of Who Killed Dave is an example of living out those convictions. The author writes a little about the publishing process here: http://lintrezza.blogspot.com/2009/05/who-killed-dave.html

I make a point of highlighting this because I have to address this book in a way that would maintain the integrity of MY convictions.

Firstly, as a recipient of the book I am obliged to keep to the terms of the book being given, and that is to write a review for this blog.
Secondly I want to be fair to the book, its author and any potential readers.
But taking into account those two factors I can not compromise myself or my Christian beliefs.

There is no denying that Who Killed Dave is entertaining and very readable. As I’ve said previously on this blog it’s often the case that I don’t even finish the books I start, so it’s very rare that I start and finish a book in less than a day.

The Dave of the title is a very unpopular resident in the aptly named Kaos Court, and when he is found dead there is no shortage of suspects. Everyone in the street had a motive and community interest into the investigation of his death turns the crime scene into a media circus with almost constant TV coverage being broadcast.
Robyn Miller finds herself at the centre of everything. Accident prone and voted as the prime suspect by the viewing public, her relationships are in turmoil, finding herself involved with men with surnames inappropriate for long term commitment

“Our love life, well, it’s an oxymoron really. Besides, with my first name Robyn and his last name, Banks, we were doomed from the start”.

Her luck doesn’t improve when she starts to lust after Detective Mark Hood one of the policemen investigating Dave’s death.

And lust is a major factor through much of the book with all kinds of sexual experiences being thrown into the mix (real, imagined, fantasised and “psychic”) from a ménage a trois, and phone sex to an incubus-like experience.

Coarse language is also a big factor. The main character herself confessing she has: “never sworn so much in my life. For some reason I equate swearing with assertiveness. Perhaps I could start my own workshops and have circles of people sitting in yoga positions loudly mouthing as many satisfying expletives as possible”.

Those two aspects of the book, being used so frequently, would normally have stopped me from finishing it. But having agreed to reading and reviewing the book I didn’t have that option. Clearly those who have no problem with the language and that type of sexual content won’t have the same concerns.

A third issue I have with Who Killed Dave is the positive view it presents of psychic experience, while giving a more negative view of the Christian characters in the book. The Christian as raving loony has become an accepted and much overused cliché in the world of popular fiction, however in this case the Christian has not been singled out – EVERYONE in the street has their particular problems with normality.

The positive portrayal of psychic experience includes a scene in which a psychic sexually engages Robyn during a phone conversation. Although the man is not physically present, Robyn’s experience is described graphically enough to leave no doubt that she encounters physical, sexual contact. Later it is revealed that someone observed the event and saw her and a partner performing oral sex.
When she finds out who her “sexual” partner had been Robyn expresses her disgust, indicating to me a lack of informed consent. However, towards the end of the book an event that in other circumstances would be considered sexual assault is given a positive spin.

While humour is a central part of the book, I found the most effective sections were those in which Robyn found herself empathising with characters that previously had been the focus of hostility. Revelations of Dave’s life make her realise why he had been so obnoxious to everyone and she feels a little remorse for the way she had felt about him before his death. These brief scenes late in the book give a little breathing space after Robyn’s constant stream of unfortunate experiences.
Other breaks from the humour that definitely don’t give breathing space are a couple of scenes of effective horror. The first occurs when members of the neighbourhood discover the crime scene. The sight, not surprisingly, results in Robyn relieving her stomach of its contents.

Ultimately the reader wants to find out who did kill Dave. My suspicions continually changed – from the obvious to the highly unlikely, trying to outguess the author. While the resolution didn’t disappoint (all of my guesses had been wrong) I had difficulties wrapping my head around the practical aspects of his killing. When all was revealed it seemed very impractical, if not impossible that it could have been carried out in the way depicted.

Overall I was entertained by the book, but for reasons mentioned earlier, if a sequel were written it wouldn’t be something I’d add to my reading pile.

Three Faces of Politics: Peak Oil, Local Food and the Fall of the Iron Curtain

Last weekend I finished three books that I’ve been reading for a while. Two of them turned out to be very long reading projects, being read over several months. The third took only a matter of weeks.

Choosing Eden tells the story of a middle aged couple whose concern about “peak oil” led them to a radical life-style change. Realising that the world’s oil reserves were less than secure and that the days of “cheap” oil are well and truly over, the couple bought a farm near Coffs Harbour, intending to prepare for the time when oil can no longer be relied upon. Considering that our western lifestyles are totally reliant upon oil, not only for fuel but as an ingredient for medicines, fertilisers, man made materials, toiletry products and countless other essentials, the oil crisis that can not be avoided will have a devastating impact.

The couple in question featured a while ago on an Australian TV series “The Real Seachange” in which their move from city to country was observed.

My copy of the book came as a freebie with the purchase of an issue of Gardening Australia magazine; a free offer that seems to have been restricted to purchases of the magazine from Woolworths. As a subscriber to GA I missed out on the book and had to purchase another copy of an issue I already owned so I could get my hands on the “free” book.

I have a particular interest in this kind of book because I started a similar journey myself three years ago when I moved from Sydney to a country town 4 hours to the west. My ambitions are on a much smaller scale, choosing to wrestle with an average sized garden instead of a farm of many acres.

In the end I was disappointed with the book. I felt there was too much emphasis on “peak oil” and not enough on the actual experience of two city folk becoming farmers. It got to the stage where the term “peak oil” was becoming extremely irritating. However it was THEIR story told as THEY felt it needed to be told and I cannot expect a book to be written to satisfy what I would like to read about. Instead of having that attitude I should have read a different book that DID look more at practical solutions rather than continually point out problems.

Fortunately I found the book taking the approach I prefered: Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle.

Kingsolver’s book was one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a very long time. It is a witty and informative look at a year in her family’s life during which they chose to rely on food grown in their local area instead of following the extravagant but common practice of eating unseasonal produce shipped from around the world to our supermarkets.

The book follows the family’s year as “locavores” and includes many recipes utilising seasonal food. While Barbara Kingsolver takes care of most of the book’s content, her daughter provides the recipes and her husband interjects occasionally to address some of the technical and political issues affecting food production and marketing. As a new inductee to the world of gardening and backyard food production, I could identify with a lot of the experiences shared in the book. In particular I can understand why a community that is still secure enough to leave doors of cars and houses unlocked for most of the year needs to change that practice during zucchini season (read the book to find the answer).

The third is the only fictional book. Snowleg by Nicholas Shakespeare has its setting in East and West Germany, both before and after the fall of the iron curtain. It follows a young man’s life after he finds out that the man he grew up knowing as his dad was not in fact his father. Instead he was the son of an East German man with whom his mother had a brief affair prior to meeting her husband. From that point onwards, Peter tries to identify more with his German roots.
After finishing school he starts medical studies at a German University. When the opportunity arises for him to visit East Germany, he hopes to make tentative investigations into the fate of his father. In the process Peter himself becomes involved with an East German who he only knows by his anglicising of her family nickname: “Snowleg”.

The rest of the book is about Peter trying to deal with the memory and consequences of his brief relationship with “Snowleg” until the reunification of the two Germanys makes it possible for him to (eventually) try to find her again.

Overall I found the book disappointing. The potential for an intriguing story was definitely there, but to me it didn’t fulfil that potential. The author did a good job of setting up his story, and he knew where he wanted it to lead – but he didn’t seem to know what to do with the middle bit. To me it seemed like a lot of padding with some low credible sex scenes thrown in to try to maintain the reader’s attention. Maybe I live in different circles, but Peter seemed to find far too many women who were willing to get intimate with him as soon as they met him. Was it a case of an author vicariously satisfying his own fantasies?

Another problem I had was the books predictability. I saw some of what was ahead long before it was purposely revealed by the author. And Steven, despite being a medical student (and later a doctor) which I would assume demands an above average intelligence, didn’t seem able to take the simplest logical action when required. For example, immediately after his return to the west he tried to re-establish contact with Snowleg by writing to her. But he addressed the letters to a place that offered very little hope of reaching her; a University to which she had hoped to be admitted but she had told him, due to political issues, had been denied entry. Why didn’t he address them to the place where he first saw her, a place he knew she regularly frequented?

The final disappointment was the book’s conclusion. After slowly building up a little tension, the potential is hurriedly snuffed out within a couple of concluding sentences, failing to give the payoff required from such a build up.

Clearly I felt the book could have been much better, but I DID get to the end, and at the moment that is a very important factor.

The Other Half Lives: Sophie Hannah

Sophie Hannah’s The Other Half Lives was so intriguing that not only did I read it at every opportunity I had, but I wanted to share the story with my wife who rarely spends time reading books. After each section I would put the book aside and bring her up to date with the story.

I first heard about the book from a very complimentary review in a Sunday newspaper. Very rarely am I tempted to buy a novel on the strength of a stranger’s recommendation, but this was one of the rare exceptions and without that review I probably would not have given the book any consideration, and if I’d known it would turn out to be a “crime novel” I would have been less likely to have taken an interest in it.

Considering my dislike of “crime fiction”, how did a book like this overcome my prejudice? Firstly its beginning didn’t fit with my idea of that genre and it was quite a way into the book before police investigators started to take a primary role.

It begins with Ruth Bussey being confronted with her new partner’s dark secret: that he, Aiden Seed, had killed a woman. Ruth’s initial shock resulting from this confession is compounded when she hears the name of the victim, Mary Trelease – a woman that Ruth knows is very much alive.

Ruth’s new relationship suffers from the turmoil created by the confession, and her attempts to discover the truth, and to convince Aiden that he did not kill Mary. Through this process we learn about Ruth’s own traumatic past which will re-emerge and affect her current situation.

The police become involved when Ruth tries to get them to investigate the murder she knows could not have taken place, hoping that where she had failed, the police may be able to convince Aiden of the truth.

This book has been described as a “psychological thriller” rather than crime fiction, and perhaps that label is more appropriate. Many of the characters have been damaged in some way by previous experiences, and those experiences are the catalyst that draws them all together within the unfolding conflict.

Towards the end of the book I lost a bit of momentum when I had to put it aside for a while. When I finally picked it up again I found it hard to get back into it. This was possibly because I was unable to devote a serious slab of reading time to one of the most crucial parts of the book; I could only read small portions at a time and I had trouble picking up the flow of the resolution.

I’m quite sure that Hannah managed to resolve all of the questions and quandaries she created, but my disjointed reading pattern at an important part of the story made it hard for me to appreciate the closure she brought to it.
If only I could go back and read it for the first time again, without the unfortunate break that disrupted my concentration at such a crucial time!

[I recently listened to an interview with Hannah, which can be found by clicking on the book title in the “Books Read” section the side bar. She reveals that a TV series based on her books is being planned.]

Black Swan Green: David Mitchell

I found a hardcover edition of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green in Wagga Wagga K-Mart selling for $7.00. I had never heard of the author or the book, but the blurb and the bargain price gave enough incentive for me to buy it.

It was after I’d finished the book that I found out that Mitchell had been twice shortlisted for the Mann Booker prize, and that this particular book had made the long list. That discovery made me wonder whether I should have liked the book more than I did.

The book wasn’t a disappointment. I DID enjoy reading it and it WAS the first book for a long time to keep my interest from beginning to end. Unlike many other books it didn’t get put aside for a lengthy period prior to finishing. But I’m not sure it was worthy of consideration for what is supposed to be one of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes.

Apart from the bargain price, what attracted me to THIS book instead of one of the others in the bargain bin? Mainly because it was about a young teenage boy growing up in the English Midlands and until I turned thirteen, I had also been a Midlands boy. Mitchell’s story about 13 year old Jason Taylor to a degree continued where my experience of English village life ended with my family’s move to Australia. Despite the 10 year gap between Jason’s time and my own there remained enough familiarity to recognise a lot of his story and environment.

The book looks at 13 months of Jason’s life at the beginning of puberty. We are not given a continuous narrative, but each chapter is like a short story of Jason's month by month experiences. Not all of these experiences are given full and immediate closure, but their outcome is revealed in hints throughout subsequent chapters. This approach is something I find appealing and has a slight similarity to Tim Winton’s technique in The Turning, where Winton used distinctly separate short stories to bring together an overall narrative linked by common characters. Mitchell’s book however maintains a more significant focus on the one person’s experience.

Jason faces all of the usual teenage anxieties of relating with family and being accepted by peers. The book shows how fluid and changeable concerns about those relationships can be and how successful manoeuvring through those changes is often dependant upon the image someone is able to create and maintain. Jason, having a persistent stammer has an obvious disadvantage regarding his perceived place among his peers.

Reviews of Mitchell’s books mention his uses of unconventional writing styles. Black Swan Green seems like it must be more conventional than his previous works, but it still has the interesting handling of narrative continuity mentioned above. While I wasn’t completely won over by this book I’m grateful for the introduction it gave me to David Mitchell and I look forward to trying his other novels.

For more information see: blackswangreen