Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca

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Book Review, Daphne du Maurier, Gothic Novel, Gothic Romance, Psychological Thriller, Rebecca

“The salt wind from the sea”

I must have read Rebecca at least twice, over the years, the first time in my teens, and have seen the film also at least once, but reading it again after many years is a bit of a revelation.

I’m amazed that the very obvious homage to Jane Eyre did not strike me when I read it previously, because this time, that came into clear focus – no doubt helped by the rather excellent forward by Sally Beauman, in the Virago Modern Classics version I recently found in a charity shop, and snapped up, thinking a re-read would be a very good thing.

Now I always knew that du Maurier was a good writer, as well as a popular one, but, again, my re-read this time absolutely underlined how good she was. Freed from any ‘what happens next’ I soaked up structure, atmosphere, and could not help but compare this book to the sometimes relentless ‘psychological thrillers’ subgenre which burgeons on the bestsellers. Rebecca is a literary fiction book, surely, and it’s easy to see how Hitchcock was enamoured by her wonderfully structured, tellingly visual, darkly sub-textural visions

From that wonderfully brilliant, evocative opening line and paragraph, to the masterly ending where she trusts her readers, so that there is no need to spell out, as though to a child, exactly what has happened, but expects that the reader will connect the little clues, the phrases, and complete the picture themselves, she kept me close and spellbound on a disturbing, unsettling, dreamlike journey, almost skating over all sorts of myths lying beneath. Not only were there the clear nods to Jane Eyre, the scary archetypes of female madness, the charismatic, domineering older man – but I thought also of Bluebeard.

Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine

I won’t spell plot, in case, despite this book’s perennial popularity, a lucky person who has never met it happens on this review, but something which struck me forcibly on this reading is the rightness of never naming our narrator, despite the fact that Max de Winter informs her that she has a lovely name. The second ‘Mrs de Winter’ is remarkably unformed. Here is where the young, innocent, exploited ‘companion’ to a spoilt, rich, emotionally unintelligent woman, differs from the innocent and also sometimes exploited Jane Eyre. Jane may be gauche at times, but she has such a clear sense of herself, such discernment. Mrs de Winter has no boundaries, she has incredibly fine empathy and ‘feels the feelings’ of others, but she lacks a healthy and resilient sense of self-worth. She is almost like a mirror-image, or extreme opposite of Rebecca. In this book, we have not one, but I think two (and of course three, if you count the fearsome Mrs Danvers) women with some kind of psychological flaw. Rebecca, the charismatic, is deeply narcissistic, and has boundaries of steel and rock. She is invulnerable to the needs of others. The second ‘Mrs de Winter’ deeply imagines and inhabits what others are feeling; so much so that she loses herself. The other archetype which is played out, is that of Svengali/Trilby – almost anyone can be the second Mrs de Winter’s Svengali – Rebecca’s pervading presence, Mrs Danvers, Maxim, Mrs Van Hopper, and she is manipulated with ease.

Judith Anderson, Joan Fontaine

And of course Trilby was a work of fiction written by du Maurier’s grandfather, George.

Although I can’t read this as part of my ‘Reading the Twentieth’ challenge, as I am still firmly stuck in 1900, I am finding that my reading or re-reading of books from the first half of the twentieth is being influenced by ‘Reading the Twentieth’ Given that the book was published in 1938, it is surprising that there is absolutely no reference to the events brewing in the wider world, although of course the implacable, sociopathic Rebecca, might be a domestic version of tyranny and dictatorship. Du Maurier is I think creating a dark and mythic world here. It is assuredly realistic, not magical realism, yet the at times highly charged language, the implied, destructive eroticism, take the book into a kind of free-floating world of myth, metaphor and sub-consciousness. The only glancing intrusion of politics happens when Max’s sister, Beatrice, imagines that the central crime which the book leads towards might have been carried out by:

a Communist perhaps. There are heaps of them about. Just the sort of thing a Communist would do

I was intrigued to discover, that when the book came out it was pretty well dismissed by the ‘literaries’ – who only saw its populist appeal, and little more. The Times dismissively said “the material is of the humblest…nothing in this is beyond the novelette.” . The novelist V.S. Pritchett predicted the book “would be here today, gone tomorrow”. Inevitably, one can’t help but wonder how the book would have been viewed if the author had been male. Post-feminism, it has been re-assessed by readers and writers precisely with a feminist perspective, in its examination of the power differential between powerful, worldly men, and young inexperienced women.

Menabilly House, Fowey, du Maurier’s Manderley

Du Maurier interestingly wrote this not in her beloved Cornwall, but in Alexandria, Egypt, where her husband, ‘Boy’ Browning, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, was posted with his battalion. She longed for home, and that longing is most powerfully expressed in this book. There was also, by all accounts, a close to home exploration for du Maurier herself, of the powerful drive of female jealousy ‘Boy’ Browning had been engaged before, to a brilliantly dark haired beauty.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited

I will, in fairly short due course, before the wonderful atmosphere of the book begins to let me go, be watching the film on DVD. It will be interesting to compare. I believe (though I can’t quite remember) that Hitchcock went for a less dark ending.

Certainly, du Maurier, in the ‘present’ of the book – most of it involved the second Mrs de Winter looking back at the events of her new married life – gives us a sense of a terrible sterility. The polite forms are observed, and they are used to paper over the chasms of what must remain unsaid.

This is, of course, a properly fabulous book. Perfectly inhabiting genre, and much, much more

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Isabel Allende – Ripper

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'Magic Realism', Book Review, Crime Fiction, Isabel Allende, Psychological Thriller, Ripper

Utterly implausible, a denouement with more holes than a colander, yet, most curiously, enjoyable.

Chilean author Isabel Allende, known as a `Magic Realist’ author, has written her first thriller/crime novel in Ripper. Although it involves the all-too-predictable `there is a serial killer on the loose’ territory – albeit one who is a million miles from the even more predictable savage-dismemberment-of-beautiful-women territory which appears to be the stock in trade of the genre – it is remarkably unlike most crime writing. Perhaps that (and of course, the author’s credentials) is what acted as its lure.

Magic Realism, and particularly South American Magic Realism, is often labyrinthine and circumlocutory in structure. A shaggy dog story which rambles happily all over the place, entering into tangles, picking up burrs and thistles in its coat, enjoyably snuffling hither and thither, gathering all sorts of snippets and detritus. The earthy, fascinated by small detail tangle of this-and-that IS the point. The journey, and everything on it, including the dead-end detours, are what matters, far more than an express London to Edinburgh straight up along the high speed tracks predictable journey.

So Allende brings that to this story, and peoples her world with the weird and wonderful, the odd-ball, the eccentric – which is actually all of us, if we bother to get behind the façade – and the undoubtedly messy hotch-potch of some 500 pages, kept me reading, sometimes with irritation, raised eyebrows, pursed lips, muttering `ridiculous!’ Yet curiously enthralled and fascinated. Allende’s voice is persuasive, warm, charismatic. Lovable not despite, but because of the rich and fussy detail.

`Ripper’ in this San Francisco set novel is nothing to do with the nasty Jack, the equally nasty Yorkshire, or any of those all too overt other real misogynists. Or the thousands of invented sociopaths which people many books in the genre. `Ripper’ is the name given to a small global band of rather oddball geeks who solve murders `as an on-line game’, and severally adopt various avatars and skills to do so. So there is a `Sherlock Holmes’ for example – in reality a baseball cap wearing cool dude living in Reno. The tempestuous gypsy Esmeralda is the avatar of a New Zealand based boy confined to a wheelchair. There is a `psychic’ – in reality, an hospitalised anorectic, visionary through her extreme starvation. The games master, and leader of the group, is San Francisco based Amanda. Amanda is 17, but she is also, often, going on 10, in her emotional innocence and child-like enthusiasms, and simultaneously, going on 900 in her Methuselah like intelligence and wisdom. Wrapped around her little finger is her grandfather Blake, an author. Blake is also one of the Ripper players – his avatar is that of Amanda’s henchman and gofer, Kabel. She bosses him around hideously. Amanda’s father is Bob Martìn, (ha ha, for English readers, a doggy joke) a Police Chief. Martìn is `in real’ trying to solve the murders which are hitting the city. And, by nefarious means, gaining access to inside information, `Ripper’ is attempting to solve the cases too. (no prizes for guessing, true to golden age crime traditions, who does best, the ams or the pros)

San Francisco Womens Building Wiki Commons

So far so good – until things all get close to home. Amanda’s mother, Indiana (Indiana and Bob separated long ago but remain friends) is a New Age good-hearted, far too innocent, far too credulous and space-cadetish healer. She is an aromatherapist and Reiki practitioner and Allende leaves no crystal unturned and no `vial’ of oil unopened to richly egg a stereotype. Indiana is also gloriously beautiful (so clearly, she will be a victim) and very sensual.

Stir well, in San Francisco’s Armistead Maupin Tales Of The City cauldron, and Allende drops in astrologers, the campy camp, a collection of noble animals (delights for dog and cat lovers) a noble and injured Navy SEAL with a prosthetic leg, any number of ancient women with superb kitchen skills and earthy wisdom – and of course, somewhere there will be our murderer. Actually, she signals this quite early with big waves – I fingered the perp, accurately, from the off – though there were some very surprising twists and potential herrings and attempts to throw us, at a late stage, off the scent.

I have to say that one of the major twists and revelations I did not see coming. And perhaps that was because, with even a little objective thought, it was of such utter implausibility as not to have crossed anyone’s mind. What amazed/amused me, though, was despite the gaping holes in any credibility, which caused my eyebrows to hit the ceiling, and my mouth to downturn in critical disapproval, my page turning frenzy was increasing, and was enjoyable despite the eventual utterly silliness.

The book is full of intentional (and I think, unintentional) humour – some of the
characters almost wallow in their ability to wear a cliché well, and Allende has fun with us as she paints them in glaring primary colours and then twists a bit – and I even wonder whether the utter silliness of the solution isn’t part of her joke and genre spoof

So, surprisingly, recommended – but only to those prepared to leave scientific and linear rationality at the door, and surrender to a kind of hectic carnival where anything might happen. And does Northern European Noir this isn’t!

Rarely have I enjoyed anything with so many flaws so much!

Originally written in Spanish, the book is translated by Ollie Brock and Frank Wynne

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Tana French – Faithful Place

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Book Review, Crime Fiction, Dublin, Faithful Place, Ireland, Irish Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Tana French

Tragedies of epic, archetypical themes.

So, with Faithful Place, the third book in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, I finally reach the end of a fairly concentrated immersion in matters murky, Dublin, French style. I started out of order, reading her two latest books, Broken Harbour and The Secret Place, following strong recommendations by a couple of savvy bloggers, Fleur In Her World and Cleopatra Loves Books, got immediately hooked, and then embarked on 1-3

I think the fact that I read my first Tana French, Broken Harbour, 6 weeks ago, and finished this one last week, probably says much more about French’s compulsive, interesting, quality writing than this particular review can. I did read other books as well in that period, mainly because, however brilliant a writer is, (in fact, particularly if they are brilliant!) I don’t think a solo immersion is useful – it can get a bit like only eating one kind of food. However delicious, the palate gets jaded, and other sustenance, other nutrients are required, both for variety and to sustain appreciation for that favourite.

Even so, as I started each new French, I was wondering ‘have I overdone it, will I be too immured into her style, her tricks, her vision, so that I get a ‘oh, here we go again’. Well, bravo, Tana French, because I didn’t.

Now that’s not to say I didn’t guess, fairly early on, the who-dunnit of Faithful Place – French has a clearly short list of potential perps, and drops some clues early on, so we know early on who both the herrings, and the do-er of dastardly-deeds might be. But the person who did it is never the major focus of French’s writing. She is a writer of time, of place, of society, and, above all, the close and frequently (in her novels at least) dysfunctional nature of family. Out of particular families, in the time and place of their culture, the happenings arise.

Reading all 5 books in a short time scale, what I got, increasingly, was a kind of Greek Tragedy, the chorus is given by the ‘Dublin Murder Squad’ – except, that in each book, a spotlight shifts, bringing different members of that chorus, different detectives and their side-kicks and team partners, out from the background, into centre stage, which they then share with the particular crime being investigated. And sometimes, as with this book, the detective and the particular crime have uncomfortably close associations.

Each of her books make one detective centre stage, but a central character in one will crop up as a not-quite-peripheral, or even as a major minor player in another.

But this book has a particularly challenging protagonist/instigator-and-victim of fate. We met Frank Mackey as a powerful, charismatic, dynamic figure in The Likeness. Mackey heads up Undercover Operations. We don’t know too much about his past, but he is hugely influential in The Likeness. And he will appear again as a slippery, influential player in The Secret Place, attractive and manipulative by turns. In those two novels, the reader sees pretty well only Mackey’s mask.

In this book, he is slap bang in the centre, and the source of his complex and damaged personality, and how that damage is used both positively and in a retrograde way, comes clear. He is like some kind of scorpion figure. Scorpions (well, female scorpions) are fiercely protective of their families – and the family, in this context, may spread far wider than blood family. But, as all know, their sting is deadly, and a wide berth should be kept!

Mackey is certainly not an attractive figure here. The book is told in his voice, and that voice is generally brutal, unforgiving, self serving. What redeems him is his love for his precocious daughter, Holly. And his love for his ex-wife, Olivia, though it is largely Mackey’s driven, controlling, self-protective angry personality which made Olivia end the marriage.

Mackey came from a very dysfunctional family indeed. Father an alcoholic, unskilled, though with a huge potential which was never realised, due to neighbourhood enmities going back a generation; mother a manipulating fearful and aggressive mammy martyr. And the 5 children, Carmel, Shay, Frank, Kevin, Jackie, the battleground on which the parental war was played out.

One of my da’s tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life. He would have been a lot better off thick as a plank

Frank Mackey, back in his teenage years, had a secret first love, Rosie Daly. Theirs was a Romeo and Juliet affair as the Daly and Mackey fathers were sworn enemies. Frank and Rosie were deep in the planning of elopement and escape to England, but the night they had set for this to happen, Rosie didn’t show, and left a note for Frank, saying that she was going to England and was sorry to hurt him. This devastating blow to his idealistic dreams not only damaged, for life, his ability to trust, be intimate and open with anyone, but also meant that he also ran away from his own home, that night. He had after all, planned to do this with Rosie, now he did it alone. Twenty two years later he is  still estranged from his family who never forgave him for leaving. The enmity between the Mackeys and the Dalys has also grown, as the Daly family had been convinced, given that both Frank and Rosie vanished on the same night, that they had gone together, and that somehow Frank must have abandoned Rosie in England, and returned to build a better life for himself as a member of the Garda. The community don’t have much liking for the Garda.

But now, twenty two years later, events happen which fling open all the doors revealing community cupboards full to bursting with skeletons.

It took me a little longer to surrender to this book than most of the others – and in the main it is because of the challenges of an unlikeable central character. French manages this brilliantly, but Frank’s heat, and rage are uncomfortable to be with. But for sure you are made to fully understand and engage with why Frank’s aggression, despair and anger are as they are – and he is also a man who struggles and positively tries to engage with his shadows.

And it also has to be said that Mackey’s dark wit keeps the reader going. His is an unkind humour, but he is amusing

A handful of ten-year-olds with underprivileged hair and no eyebrows were slouched on a wall, scoping out the cars and thinking wire hangers. All I needed was to come back and find that suitcase gone. I leaned my arse on the boot, labelled my Fingerprint Fifi envelopes, had a smoke and stared our country’s future out of it until the situation was clear all round and they (expletive deleted meaning ‘went away’) …to vandalise someone who wouldn’t come looking for them

Gaby Gerster—Laif/Redux

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Tana French – The Likeness

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Book Review, Crime Fiction, Ireland, Irish writer, Police Procedural, Psychological Thriller, Tana French, The Likeness

“Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat. I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that” Lyrics, ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream

I’ve been working my way pretty compulsively through Tana French, Irish literary crime fiction writer’s books, since coming to her fourth book Broken Harbour, on the strength of two book reviewers blogs. Stand forth Fleur In Her World and Cleopatra Loves Books

Having just finished The Likeness, her second book, I’m reeling, punch drunk, from the emotional journey of this, which for sure must take part of its inspiration from Donna Tartt’s first explosive novel, The Secret History, but is nonetheless in no way derivative, and is all imbued with French’s own intelligence, style, and intricate character and plotting.

Cassie Maddox, the central detective of her gripping first novel, In The Woods, is still feeling the after-shocks of the crime she investigated. No longer in the Murder Squad, she has relocated to the quieter shores of the Domestic Violence Unit, and has begun a relationship with one of the detectives from the murder squad.

The Likeness does read as a stand-alone, for anyone who has not read In The Woods, and anything which the reader needs to know as background does get dripped into the story of this, as Cassie herself continues to come to terms with the events of In The Woods.

We learn something about her professional back-story, too – unfortunately, this is a major spoiler which I think the publishers chose to reveal, and it represents my major criticism of this book (not French’s fault) Cassie worked for a time a few years ago in Undercover Ops, infiltrating a drug ring. Her invented identity was that of a woman called Alexandra (Lexie) Madison. And then a body is found, in a derelict cottage, clearly a very recent murder victim. The wallet on the body shows the victim is called Lexie Madison. Running the identity through the police computer brings in the big gun of Undercover ops, Frank Mackey, who ran Cassie as Lexie. The shock is that this Lexie Madison is a double for the very much alive Cassie Maddox.

The dead Lexie was part of an elite group of 5 post-graduate students, close friends, living in a beautiful, decaying mansion, Whitethorn House, on the outskirts of Glenskehy, a small backwater in the Wicklow Mountains. Inevitably police interest centres initially on the others in the group, but their stories all stack up, and the group are united in their grief that one of theirs is dead. And there are other suspects, which link in to Ireland’s deep history going back through generations, and the tensions arising out of class and nationality – the working class and the peasantry of old Ireland, and the wealthy Anglo Irish landowners.

Irish history is firmly woven into all French’s novels.

So, an audacious plan is set in place (and I’m afraid it is the spoiler of the blurb itself) Cassie could go undercover again as Lexie. The pathology report shows that the woman in the derelict cottage died from a single stab wound which did not happen in the cottage itself, the woman had run from somewhere to the cottage, and bled to death there. Had she been discovered earlier, she might have survived.

The group (including the dead Lexie) were very much the golden, charismatic, bound together elite (and odd, skeletons in their backgrounds) of The Secret History. French adds something else into this however – there is very much a sense of the yearning, soulmate romance of deep friendship, above and beyond sexuality, the kind of friendship that arises in youth, and at the time seems as if it could last a lifetime. And in this book, it is centred as much on place as time. Even whilst within that place there is a kind of looking back to it, a ‘Lost Domaine/Grand Meaulnes’ quality. Cassie herself and Cassie taking on this second ‘Lexie Madison’ identity and the 4 others, is someone who longs for the powerful sense of belonging, of friendships as a more powerful bond than bloodkin, and a more powerful bond than the one-to-one of sexual partnership.

In the sitting room the piano is open, wood glowing chestnut and almost too bright to look at in the bars of sun, the breeze stirring the yellowed sheet music like a finger. The table is laid ready for us, five settings – the bone-china plates and the long-stemmed wineglasses, fresh-cut honeysuckle trailing from a crystal bowl – but the silverware has gone dim with tarnish and the heavy damask napkins are frilled with dust……Somewhere in the house, faint as a fingernail-flick at the edge of my hearing, there are sounds: a scuffle, whispers. It almost stops my heart. The others aren’t gone, I got it all wrong, somehow. They’re only hiding; they’re still here, for ever and ever

And that quote is as powerful a paean to memory, and the sense of our pasts almost within reach, as any I’ve read

This is indeed a long book (she shares that too, with Tartt!) – at nearly 700 pages, but the unravelling of the story, the careful and believable psychology of all the major characters, the tangles and twists of all the relationships, and, for Cassie herself, the weirdness of being herself-and-not-herself, the whole question of identity, arising when anyone is leading any kind of double life, is superlative. And there is also the fascination of the police procedural itself, and how individual police can marry their work functions, with who each of them is, individually.

Most of all – it is the wonderful, seductive quality of French’s writing, and a first person narrator who grabs the reader and makes them as desperate to want the golden lads and lasses to be real, and unsullied as Cassie would like, because of her own yearning for lifelong soulmates, whilst at the same time, making us as needy of her fierce professional desire to solve that crime as she is. She (and we) know that there are two drives going on here, which may not be compatible

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Tana French – In The Woods

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Crime Fiction, In The Woods, Irish writer, Police Procedural, Psychological Thriller, Tana French

Pointers to what she will become……..

I encountered Irish writer Tana French only recently, when her fourth book, Broken Harbour, got a rave review from a blogger who is firmly wedded to good writing, rather than genre fiction. Go see FleurInHerWorld As this is my position too, I was swayed, and blown away by French’s version of crime fiction, police procedural and psychological thriller, all carefully showing she is a literary fiction writer, who chooses to write in this kind of subject matter area.

Another blogger then pushed me over to her fifth, currently latest book, The Secret Place, which grabbed me even more. And you should visit that persuasive other blogger, CleopatraLovesBooks

And so it is that I’ve gone back to explore French’s progression as a writer, via her first book, and will, for sure, progress to books 2 + 3

For those unfamiliar with her work, Book 1, In The Woods, is of course the perfect place to start.

French’s territory is murder, and the police investigations undertaken by Dublin’s Murder Squad. She has chosen not to follow one particular detective and partner through all the subsequent investigations; rather, she focuses on the squad itself and a different pair of detectives will come to the foreground in each book, and others in the pool may stay as a background note across several investigations, be bit players, or come to take stage centre.

This is a fascinating and excellent approach, as it does mean that the reader can start reading her books in any order, without thinking they have missed vital back history, often a problem when one particular main character is followed in a series.

There are a couple of central cores to the three books I have read so far – the story of each individual main detective, including their back history which will slowly be revealed and will explain who they are, and why. There will also be the crucial relationship between the two detectives themselves, and their relationship within the murder squad as a whole. By this, French wonderfully covers the interior workings of a central character, how they are in a significant one-to-one relationship with a working colleague, and how they, and indeed the two of them, are within a wider community of others. And then, of course, in parallel is the investigation, the crime, where the victim and their story will be teased out, the thread to connect them with the perpetrator worked clear from all the potential many threads which will need to be explored and investigated

French’s own background is as an actor, and, to me, there is a correlation here between 3 kinds of theatrical focus a performer may have – there is first of all the interior, which may be expressed as soliloquy, a performer alone upon a stage. Then there is the immediate focus of `small other’ where there is a relationship between two individuals on a stage, and, however tangled, the lines of that relationship may be clearly seen. Finally, there is the relationship of the group of characters themselves, cross currents, tangles and all – and then this may be taken out even wider, in plays where the fourth wall is broken down, and the characters acknowledge the wider world which incorporates the audience as another collective. French does not just set her crime investigation as an isolated event, as so far, wider concerns which may be present in society are examined

In this particular story the victim is a young girl, and a particularly horrible crime. As all investigations must, initial focus is on the family itself, and that family is quite strange.

What is also going on, as part of the whole Celtic Tiger economic phenomenon, and the collapse which happened, is a story around community expansion, business interests, corruption and politics.

And, central stage in this novel, two detectives, a man and a woman, who from the off have been firm and platonic friends. Cassie Maddox has, like another female detective in the squad in French’s fifth book, challenges because she is a woman in an environment which is aggressively old fashioned and macho, still. Rob Ryan her work partner, has the history of a terrible and unresolved crime which happened back in his childhood, to two of his friends. He has, in theory at least, found ways to deal with something which devastated him, his family and the families of his two dead friends. However, because the crime was never resolved, and became a cold case, with neither the bodies discovered, nor a perpetrator found, there has been no closure, for anyone from that community. And it also means that any murder involving a child is one which could completely shatter all Ryan’s coping strategies.

These three children own the summer…This is their territory, and they rule it wild and lordly as young animals; they scramble through its trees and hide-and-seek in its hollows all the endless day long, and all night in their dreams.

They are running into legend, into sleepover stories and nightmares parents never hear. Down the faint lost paths you would never find alone, skidding round the tumbled stone walls, they stream calls and shoelaces behind them like comet-trails. And who is it waiting on the riverbank with his hands in the willow branches, whose laughter tumbles swaying from a branch high above, whose is the face in the undergrowth in the corner of your eye, built of light and leaf-shadow, there and gone in a blink?

I suspect, had I read this book without having read French’s latest two, I would have five starred it. Because I know where she now is as a writer, my bar for her is set very high. In this one, I think she is a little closer to the more formulaic writing in genre, than she now is, a little more obvious in her choices. It is however a wonderful first novel, and, as ever, her understanding of psychology, relationship, narrative drive are excellent.

She is a writer who seems to focus more on how the ordinary man or woman crosses the line into violence and there is less focus on graphic gore and deranged psychopathology than often litters the genre. And that external restraint, and more meticulous examination of the process of crossing the line which is certainly a hallmark of book 4 and 5, is what I think of as a kind of sophistication in her as a writer, not completely in place in book 1.

However, still recommended, still highly recommended

In The Woods Amazon UK
In The Woods Amazon USA

Tana French – The Secret Place

Tags

Crime Fiction, Ireland, Irish writer, Psychological Thriller, Tana French, The Secret Place

WTF, OMG, like, WOW!

I’m rarely reduced to both incoherence AND speechlessness by a book. Incoherence, yes, but generally accompanied by loquaciousness,; incoherence because of loquaciousness, perhaps.

This compelling, satisfying, dark, twisty, evocative thriller by French, set in an elite girls’ boarding school outside Dublin, did though, leave me thinking for once that perhaps the operatic over the top incoherence of stylised ‘youth-speak’ was the only possible response, after all. Not because Tana French is in any way incoherent or over the top, though she certainly deals with huge issues which are the stuff of opera and classical drama – the individual and the domestic opening out into much wider, mythic, universal themes. The gobsmacked reaction is really one of awestruck admiration, is all.

Continuing with her ‘Irish Chorus’ of leading characters from the Dublin Murder Squad (she highlights and focuses on a different detective each time) this time her investigating duo are both, in different ways, outsiders. Antoinette Conway is outside because she is a woman, and, moreover, a fierce one who lashes back at evidence of misogyny, patronisation and exploitation. This has made her unpopular with her male colleagues. Stephen Moran wants to be liked, sure, and has charm, but is not prepared to be one of the laddish lads. There is a sense that perhaps he is a little better than the rest, and knows himself to be so. This means he too is a slightly dubious, slightly marked card, by virtue of this aloofness behind the affable. The dynamic between the two, and the building of a professional working relationship, is fascinating – both gender and class are subtexts.

A year earlier, a dead body had been discovered in the grounds of St. Kilda’s girls’ school. It belonged to a popular and lusted after catch of a boy from the neighbouring elite boys’ boarding school. Conway, with another professional partner had attempted to solve the murder, and failed to do so, and the failure left a stain on her. So when some compelling evidence comes Moran’s way, re-opening the investigation offers a way-out, the prospects of advancement, but also the danger of ultimate professional failure, for both. Stakes are high

The fervid, hothouse, intense setting of adolescent girlhood (plus the allure of the neighbouring testosterone) is magnificently done. The reader, like the detectives, is drawn into a world which is both terrifying and sparkling with energy, dreams, passions and possibilities.

Any comparisons to Donna Tartt’s first novel, The Secret History, which French clearly nods at in her own title, are neither audacious nor undeserved. Once again, we have an elite (albeit a crucial few years younger) and issues of class and privilege, cliquery which is both full of possibility and full of poison.

Cypress, featuring heavily in this novel, mythically is connected to death, transformation, times of transition and symbolises everlasting, enduring bonds, that might exist between people

What I particularly liked about French’s superb mastery of relationships, characterisation and dialogue amongst the charged teens is that she does not fall into relentless cliché – though there are the ubiquitous rhythms and language of the group, portrayed with accuracy – she does not cut each individual girl and boy from an identikit cloth – the reader can hear individual rhythms.

There is a substrate to French’s writing which seems to have a particular sensitivity to ‘atmosphere and preternatural energetics’ I suspect she is someone who feels the indefinable, that which, for want of a better term, gets tarred dismissively as ‘supernatural’. So this is certainly a strong element running through this book. But, for those who absolutely dismiss such things, there is certainly much evidence throughout history of the effects of a kind of group hysteria, group hyper-arousal to ‘mysterious comings and goings’ and activities involving poltergeists which cluster around adolescence. So, take a group of highly charged young girls within a cloistered setting, and the explosion of a dark, brilliant energy out of which mysterious things happen does not, in any way, feel like a novelist copping out by invoking the supernatural. It just adds to the shiver and the tension.

Structurally, a beautifully told tale : alternate chapters, the detectives, taking place over a little more than a day, the central groups of two rival groups of girls, moving slowly forward over eight months and two weeks towards the day the boy was murdered.

And as for the writing itself, gorgeous, authentic, and every now and again arising into something even finer, some kind of summing up :

Conway..spun the MG onto the main road and hit the pedal. Someone smacked his horn, she smacked hers back and gave him the finger, and the city fireworked alive all around us: flashing with neon signs and flaring with red and gold lights, buzzing with motorbikes and pumping with stereos, streaming warm wind through the open windows. The road unrolled in front of us, it sent its deep pulse up into the hearts of our bones, it flowed on long and strong enough to last us for ever.

So………..I have recovered loquaciousness, though I’m not so sure about coherence….read it, just read it!! A brilliant, highly recommended outing.

And I am indebted to Cleopatralovesbooks for her superb review of The Secret Place which sent me hot-footing to the library for a copy. It IS one which I know I’ll want to read again, so I know a Kindle purchase is on the cards!

The Secret Place Amazon UK
The Secret Place Amazon USA

Barbara Vine – The Blood Doctor

Tags

Barbara Vine, Book Review, Psychological Thriller, The Blood Doctor

A complex and satisfying weave of 3 major topics in suspense form

Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine can always be relied on to produce a complex, absorbing and intelligent page turner.

In this book, published in 2002, which I have been happily re-reading, the major topics are genetically inherited diseases (a topic which also featured in The House Of Stairs) the ticking of the biological clock, and the challenges children (or the lack of them) can impose on a relationship, and, perhaps more surprisingly the Reformation of the House of Lords 1999 Act, which removed the voting rights of the majority of hereditary peers.

Martin, 4th Lord Nanther is a biographer. He is researching a biography of his great-grandfather, who was elevated to the peerage by Queen Victoria. Henry Nanther was one of Victoria’s Physicians-In-Extraordinary. He was a specialist in haemophilia and as is known, one of Victoria’s sons, Prince Leopold, was a haemophiliac.

As Martin investigates his family tree it becomes obvious that Henry was a man with a succession of secrets, and with no doubt bloody skeletons in the cupboard.

Meanwhile, Jude, Martin’s dearly loved second wife, increasingly hears the insistent rhythm of the biological clock, and, despite a history of miscarriage, is increasingly desperate to conceive. Martin already has an adult child from his first marriage, and is secretly unwilling to be a father again, though unable to express this to Jude.

And, running parallel to the story of the past (his exploration into the life of his ancestor) and of the future (the question of offspring) are the present debates of the abolition of the voting rights of hereditary peers. Martin has a traditional affection for his status, even though at times he finds the weight of history and custom stultifying. The further he enters into his great-grandfather’s past, the past of `the blood doctor’ and the mysterious history of haemophilia, how it arose in families and was transmitted, the more he finds himself thinking about bloodlines and inheritance in terms of the history of the House of Lords

House of Lords Chamber, Flicr Commons

If I have made this sound dry, it’s not my intention – it is a slow paced, thorough, detailed and very absorbing page turner.

If, as some reviewers have noted, some of the story of the big reveal of the First Lord Nanther’s secret life is pretty obvious to a half awake reader, that is not really the `point’ of the book. Sure there are mysteries where the feverish page turning is the reader wanting to know what happens next, but there is another kind of page turner, where the reader, understanding the forms of fiction, may absolutely be ahead of the game and know the outcome – but the point of the journey of discovery is not the reader’s – it is the journey of discovery the central character or characters need to make. And this book is really that second kind.

The reader has the benefit of hindsight and is in fact the almost omniscient one, but, as in life, what so often might be perfectly obvious to an outside observer on another person’s life is not what the person deep within their own story is aware of.

Rendall-as-Vine is thorough and absorbing in her research – she does it deeply, and imparts it lightly.

As ever, she is meticulous and fascinating in her creation of different times, and places, thoroughly believeable characters, and their motivations. As the reader sees where things are heading, they may well think `surely no one would………..’ but, in fact Martin Nanther is the one who makes sense of the why, in the closing pages of the book

I’m grateful to fellow blogger crimeworm, who reminded me of this one, in a comment on my earlier review of The House of Stairs

The Blood Doctor Amazon UK
The Blood Doctor Amazon USA

Patrick Hamilton – Hangover Square

Tags

1930s, Book Review, Hangover Square, London setting, Patrick Hamilton, Psychological Thriller

A subtle, tragi-comic tale of a good man undone by adoration, ‘in darkest Earl’s Court’

Patrick Hamilton is a not-quite-forgotten, admired author, who specialised in getting inside the heads of those who were disaffected, on-the-margins, or even, dangerously psychopathic – he was a stage and film writer, as well as author, and responsible for the highly charged, tightly wound, thrillers of sinister psychopathology, Gaslight, and Rope

Hangover Square was one of his most iconic novels. Set primarily in London on the very edge of, and then just at the start of, the Second World War, this follows the fortunes (pretty well unstoppably downwards) of George Harvey Bone, a not quite impoverished, weak willed man with a severe drinking problem, some undiagnosed dissociative mental health problems, and a dangerous 2 year infatuation with a hard, vicious untalented actress.

Bone is an unlikely subject to capture a reader’s compassionate interest, yet he does, because despite the fact that he is someone of a definite wasted life, a bit of a bumbling, naïve and pathetic character, he is nevertheless like a lost and vulnerable puppy, possessed of great sweetness of temperament, despite his irritating flaccidity of purpose

Netta, the object of his adoration, is a beautiful and completely amoral woman, without any charm, wit, intelligence, talent or likeability. Her one asset is her extraordinary beauty, which is clearly barely even skin-deep. Whereas Bone is a marshmallow, ineffectual, likeable drunk, Netta, and her closest crony, louche, spiteful Peter, are hard, aggressive, deeply unpleasant drunks.

The trajectory of the story is George Bone’s worsening mental health problems, and the hopeless infatuation with Netta, who is completely uninterested in George, in any way, except as someone to sponge money from, and exploit.

This should be an unbearably depressing book, but instead, there is a kind of gentle humour in George, a puppyish enthusiasm and a potential for excitement and joy which carries the reader along, despite the awareness of the grim background of war on the horizon, the predictable and nasty leanings towards Fascist sympathies espoused by Netta and Peter, and George’s inability to free himself from the nest of vipers he can, in some ways, clearly see.

Netta. Nets. Netta. A perfectly commonplace name. In fact, if it did not happen to belong to her, and if he did not happen to adore her, a dull, if not rather stupid and revolting name. Entirely unromantic – spinsterish, mean – like Ethel, or Minnie. But because it was hers look what had gone and happened to it! He could not utter it, whisper it, think of it without intoxication, without dizziness, without anguish. It was incredibly, inconceivably lovely – as incredibly and inconceivably lovely as herself. It was unthinkable that she could have been called anything else. It was loaded, overloaded with voluptuous yet subtle intimations of her personality. Netta. The tangled net of her hair – the dark net – the brunette. The net in which he was caught – netted. Nettles. The wicked poison-nettles from which had been brewed the potion which was in his blood. Stinging nettles. She stung and wounded him with words from her red mouth. Nets. Fishing-nets. Mermaid’s nets. Bewitchment. Syrens – the unearthly beauty of the sea. Nets. Nest. To nestle. To nestle against her. Rest. Breast. In her net. Netta. You could go on like that for ever – all the way back to London.

Perhaps Hamilton’s ability to make us feel George from the inside, and care about him, too, comes in part from what must have been a certain self-identification in the writer, as Hamilton himself had a disastrous relationship with alcohol, child of an alcoholic father, he died in 1962 of liver cirrhosis. He was a writer who definitely identified with the underdog, the marginalised, and the powerless in society.

Hangover Square was made into a much altered film, setting it in London at the turn of the twentieth century (hence, completely losing the political background which is an integral part of the book’s darkness) and making George Bone into a composer/musician. Effectually, a much more romantic melodrama, more Hollywood, more clichéd. Hamilton wisely did not buy into the hackneyed cliché of the tortured artist in his book. George Bone a much more everyday, genteel, impoverished, distinctly ordinary person. Weak, but essentially decent.

J.B. Priestley in his introduction to the the Penguin Classics edition of Hangover Square, describes Hamilton as one of the best ‘minor novelists’ writing in the interwar and beyond years. And lest that seems like damning with faint praise, it is I think fair, admiring praise.

However………I should caution anyone who gets this edition, with the Priestley introduction to AVOID reading that introduction if you have never read Hangover Square, as foolishly, in the closing paragraph of his otherwise pertinent and interesting introduction, he reveals one of the major spoilers. (I was re-reading, so not a problem)

Hangover Square Amazon UK
Hangover Square Amazon USA

Ellen Ullman – By Blood

Tags

Book Review, By Blood, Ellen Ullman, Psychological Thriller, San Francisco

Rear Window meets Sophie’s Choice and Wally Lamb

Ellen Ullman has written a page turning, thought provoking, disturbing book that is fascinating even though it doesn’t completely succeed

2 of the central 3 characters are unnamed. What is particularly interesting is that all 3, for different reasons, are unreliable narrators. Unreliable narrators appeal I think precisely because they leave the reader a little wary, a little unsure whether they can trust what they are discovering and being told. The unreliable narrator prevents reading complacency, and requires the reader to do a bit of assessment. It’s a little edgy, spending time with such a narrator.

The book is set in San Francisco in 1974. The narrator who reveals the stories he hears and makes conclusions on, is an educated man, a University professor. However, for some reason he is not actually working at the moment. He is under disciplinary investigation, the subject of a student harassment complaint . He appears to have a mental health history, making reference, repeatedly, to `the crows’ – some symbol of ever lurking depression. He has spent a lot of time in therapy. Unsuccessfully, with a series of therapists.

He rents a room in an office building to complete some research and course work. The building itself seems to have some not quite neutral atmosphere – or this may of course be our narrator just being unreliable. He discovers his next door office neighbour (whom he never meets) is a German psychotherapist. She appears to have a complex history of her own, as he overhears, through the thin walls, in her phone conversations with her supervisor.

She uses a white noise machine to ensure no one hears the conversations of her patients (even though she thinks the adjoining office is empty) However, one patient objects strongly to the noise of the machine, so it is switched off for her sessions.

It is these that our professor hears, and quickly becomes obsessed with this patient, going so far as, listening, to begin to think of her as his patient `my dear patient’ as he repeatedly refers to her in his head. In fact, he begins to influence the course of her treatment, by circuitous means. Again, he never sees her, but has fantasised and become obsessed by her, and by the therapist, because the patient’s unfolding story resonates for him.

There is a whole subtext around trying to escape from personal history, around whether there is any freedom in individual identity, the nurture /nature debate. Issues of transference and counter-transference.

There is also another story which weaves in and out, a real story, concerning another `unreliable witness’ – Patty Hearst. Hearst, wealthy daughter of the publishing family, was kidnapped by a left-wing guerrilla group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, in 1974. Within a few short weeks Hearst had been `turned’ and became a fully fledged guerrilla with the group, and took part in bank robberies. Later captured, espousing group ideology, she was sentenced to a long prison term, though released after a couple of years, reputedly a classic victim of The Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages form attachments to their captors. The Hearst story reinforces the search for `who am I’ which the book’s journey is all about, and issues of control, and how one person controls another

The `about’ of this book is excellently absorbing, however, I struggled at times with Ullman’s writing, which can be clunky. Lots of shorthand phrases get repeated, ad nauseam – the crows, the endless reiteration of `my dear patient’ which became overlaboured and wearing. Her professor narrator certainly is pedantic, but some of his (or, possibly the author’s own) choices of language just seemed unrealistic and unnatural – particularly as these are `in his head’ rather than spoken or written.

A couple of examples

But I was stronger than they were; the patient was my shield; the demons did not ensorcell me

And, describing heavy rainfall:

It might have been the rain, which fell with deluvian determination

This type of writing just seems clumsy.

And the shocking ending, which I didn’t see coming, felt absolutely contrived. The author playing with the reader. I wondered whether she had copped out on her narrative

However, I am still thinking about the complex themes the author engaged with, and how well the unreliable trio of narrators worked, adding depth to a story which might have been arranged more simply, without the presence of our eavesdropping principal. That extra layer, the therapy filtered through the eavesdropper, was most engaging, and the psychology which she explores, cultural and personal and the narrative drive, did hold me. Perhaps next time an editor will work magic on poor writing constructs.

Nonetheless, a thank you to Cleopatra Loves Books where I first found this book flagged up.

By Blood Amazon UK
By Blood Amazon USA

PS Despite the title, I’m relieved that no vampires were evoked, invoked or in any way given page room in the writing of this book!

Marcus Sedgwick – A Love Like Blood

Tags

A Love Like Blood, Book Review, Marcus Sedgwick, Psychological Thriller, Vampires

Grown-Up Vampire

The excellent YA author Marcus Sedgwick, whose novels often take old myths and legends, and examine them in a more contemporary setting, with modern sensibilities, has taken the same approach in this, his first adult novel. Which is about vampires.

Sort of.

I must admit the vampire/werewolf/zombie fashion is one I more or less avoid, so overworked and overpopulated does the genre appear to be, and a novel about people, with no need for acquaintance with stakes, silver bullets and the like, is my preference.

However, this is a novel by Sedgwick, so I expected a more interesting variant on the well-worn theme.

And so it proved.

Do not expect the supernatural. Although there may be a couple more coincidental meetings than one might hope for, in order to create story, feet are firmly on the ground, bats no-where in evidence, and the un-dead never a consideration.

However, what we do have (not a spoiler as it is the publicity for the book) is a young doctor, Charles Jackson, a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, in Paris during the dying days of the second world war,  seeing the shocking, brief, sight of a man apparently drinking the blood of a woman he appears to be murdering, or have murdered.

This horrific sight possibly changes the course of  Jackson’s life, and stunts it, on many levels, as his panicked reaction haunts him, about the choice and choices he made as a result. Possibly changes, because as the book unfurls Jackson learns things about his own nature which are uncomfortable and horrifying.

He embarks on a twenty-five year journey to come to terms with what he saw, and to find the man.

This is a gripping page-turner, which, being Sedgwick, goes deeply into the mythology of why we have an obsession with the genre anyway, and what it is that speaks so powerfully, alluringly and fascinatingly about the connections between sex, death and life-giving blood.

Jackson becomes a doctor who specialises in haematology. A close friend has specialised in working with the psychologically damaged. So…..rather than the Hammer-Horror vampire, there is psychopathology to repel and attract Jackson. There is also quite a lot of academic exploration into myths around blood – including the powerful rituals of Christianity – another of Jackson’s academic friends is involved in that more mythological field, and in literary and artistic interests in the subject matters

Joos van Ghent, 1474: The Institution of The Eucharist

I particularly like the fact there is little obsessive gory detail in these sometimes blood-splattered pages. Sedgwick is a fine enough writer to trust the reader’s imagination – he gives us some gore but let’s OUR imaginations paint the picture as red as we like or don’t like!

Charles Jackson is an ordinary, likeable enough man, and, perhaps, had he not seen what he saw, would have had an ordinary, likeable enough life. But………was he tainted and spoiled, or was the spoil within him? This is in the end a journey of more than one kind of obsession, and more than one kind of desire. There are lots of oppositional pulls within this story, including that satisfying one of just-who-is-hunting-whom. Not to mention why, no, REALLY why?

And the book kept me awake – it wasn’t that I was afraid to turn out the light, it was that I couldn’t bear to turn it off, before reading just one more chapter.

I had a slight disappointment, with the very final page, and might have preferred a slightly different ending, removing a couple of penultimate lines. A red pen moment itched!!

A terrific take on this genre, saying new things

If you liked ‘The Historian’ – you should like this. If you sort-of liked ‘The Historian’ but thought it was way too long, you really should like this (310 pages) Sedgwick manages a good balance between page turning plot and theoretical and academic investigations.

I received this as an ARC from the Amazon Vine Programme. It will hit the widely available shelves and ereaders on March 27th

A Love Like Blood Amazon UK
A Love Like Blood Amazon UK