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Mothing with my head

The Behaviour of Moths
Poppy Adams

One of the thing guidebooks for writing like to emphasise is the compact with the reader. The writer has to play a fair game, no matter how tricksy, convoluted or abstruse they might be to get their story told. At the end of The Behaviour of Moths I had the distinct feeling that Poppy Adams had not kept her contract with me. I can’t accuse her of not laying the groundwork for her denouement because she does, quite carefully. We know from the beginning that her narrator, Ginny, is quirky and obsessive, but it is a fun quirkiness and an endearing obsessiveness (this obsessiveness is later channelled into her work as a lepidopterist, following her father into the field hence the “behaviour of moths”).

The novel starts with Ginny in old age waiting for the return to their family mansion of the sister she hasn’t seen for 47 years. The reason for the estrangement is spooled out in flashbacks over the space of several days. Adams has a facility with words and a wonderful ability to evoke scenes and people through the mordant prism of Ginny’s eyes. For the most part I was enthralled with this book (who would have thought descriptions of moth collecting, dissecting, preserving etc could be so engaging?) I loved the portrayal of the sisters’ relationship, the mother and the father and the house and countryside. So why did I feel betrayed by the ending?

Of course there has to be dark secrets and mysteries and, of course, the seeds for unravelling these have to be sewn throughout the narrative, and Adams does do this quite deftly. She does, for example, have a family doctor who takes an inordinate interest in Ginny, annoying her with his questions and attentions. She does have a terrible accident befall Ginny’s sister and Ginny overhearing her mother complaining that she (Ginny) shows little emotion over it.

Ginny, as the narrator, is able to explain most things away to the reader but we remain wary, as we should. It is the sign of a great (rewarding) writer that they hold these things in balance in a plot. The reader has to be drawn forward in the mystery, be taken down plausible roads and then be left there disoriented as something unexpected happens, only to be reassured and picked up again. Sarah Waters did this masterfully in The Little Stranger. That book, too, left me with the sense I’d been led up the garden path but when I looked back over the story I couldn’t pinpoint where I’d been misled so deftly was the thing knitted together. In the case of The Behaviour of Moths there was a place near the end where Adams used an unfair device to keep information from the reader. I won’t spoil the ending but it didn’t sit comfortably with me. Okay, an ending doesn’t have to be comfortable but it has to feel right. That said, as a debut novel, The Behaviour of Moths is accomplished, enjoyable and beautifully written.

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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

A Flavia de Luce Mystery
Orion Books  2009

Recipe by Alan Bradley

The Sweetness:
  • Venerable old English country pile, seat of the de Luce family
  • Set post-war 1950s and pre- so many things
  • First person heroine (Flavia): hyper intelligent, monstrously well-educated and one of three Mitford-like sisters
  • Flavia has her own well-stocked chemistry lab! Yay!
  • Absent parents, that mandatory element of the 1950s children’s adventure story. Yay!  Dad is closeted with his musty old stamp collection and mother is a feminist aviatrix and adventuress who is presumed dead – perfect!
  • Ladles full of literary, musical and art references
  • Liberal sprinkling 1950s brand names and events
  • A murder to solve
  • Baddies
  • Country-style coppers who, nonetheless, outpace Flavia (refer to Agatha Christie here about the perils of underrating country coppers)
  • Flavia’s father has a secret in his past which is sending a long shadow into the present
  • Humdinger red herring
Pie crust
  • Standard cosy murder mystery structure
  • Play fair with reader
 Method:
  • Mix sweet ingredients very, very carefully and place in piecrust.

Review

Mature, Scottish (Zimbabwean-born), white, male Alexander McCall Smith created a believable and charming black, Botswanan, traditionally-sized female detective in The Full Cupboard of Life. Can mature, white, Canadian male Alan Bradley do the same with his overflowing cupboard of ingredients for his white, English, 11 year-old Flavia De Luce series, and this book in particular?

Let’s see what the reviews on my book cover said:

  • “Cross between Dodie Smith… and the Addams family”;
  • “A dark Nancy Drew set in a gothic Midsomer”.

Yikes! Just goes to show that if crème caramel is nice and liquorice allsorts are nice, a caramel allsort pie is not necessarily going to work. By the way, I could not see anything remotely like Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle or 101 Dalmatians here. Nor the Addams family, thank goodness.

It is easy to be delighted by the precocious Flavia whose chemical and elemental asides are fascinating and often pertinent…(which describes what happens when the yellow prussiate of potash is heated with potassium to produce potassium cyanide). She is humorous and as omnivorously intelligent and educated as you wish we all could be. However, I think this sort of 11 year-old would be more appropriate in a child fantasy/mystery ( like Lemony Snicket stories for example). It becomes a bit of a stretch here in stock standard cosy land, with a first person narrator. The 1950s references are, I am sure, accurate, but seemed more like a banner strung across the stage than of the play itself. The mystery is delightfully tangled and necessitates so much bicycling by Flavia on her trusty steed Gladys (a Raleigh for those thousands of us who remember) that I felt for her 11 year-old legs.

With so much to like and a real desire on my part to unravel the mystery, why did I find this an unsatisfying read?  Has Bradley just thrown too much delight and sweetness at a fairly slight theme? Flavia has her own website and lots of fans who have no trouble at all with a 1950s 11 year-old stuffed to the gills with feminism, chemistry, D’oyley Carte operettas, literature, art etc. I can see where her mischievous and humane sides are given a run in her relationship with her sisters but it’s all a bit strained and cursory.

The Ladies Detective Agency series has characters with real humanity and a moral viewpoint that informs them and forms part of the South African setting that McCall Smith obviously loves and understands, warts and beauty alike.  Bradley needs to develop that kind of core for his heroine in her very English setting so her humour and intelligence can be grounded in the setting that gives rise to her mystery. It lacks heart and in the end is less a pie, perhaps, than a glorious jumble of trifle, needing more control to blend these delicious ingredients into a coherent dish.

Review by Tania

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Review – Survivor

Chuck Palahniuk, WW Norton, 1999.

Review excerpts at the start of this book refer to Palahniuk in the same breath as Camus, Vonnegut, DeLillo and Pynchon, if that is any help to what you think will be inside.  Survivor is structured, Tristram Shandy-like as a chapter countdown of a life during the seconds to a plane crash, except that Tristram Shandy is being born, and our survivor is the remnant of a suicide cult recording his last moments into the plane’s flight recorder as it crashes.

I wouldn’t say Palahniuk is another Fielding but he has an affinity for the lonely, salty lives at the edge of mainstream society. In Survivor the protagonist narrator is gradually revealed to us through his unique take on the world, influenced by the role the cult gave him in the “outside” world. Two of the United States’ cultural creations, the insular, non-taxpaying religious cult and the mass market collude and collide here. Both feed off vulnerability, brainwashing, hope and someone else’s money in your pocket, and lots of it.

The protagonist, whose name is gradually revealed, comes from a labouring cult and the book is peppered with the handy home hints the cult followers are trained in so they can be desirable cheap labourers in the outside world and send the money back to the cult. Potential employers of the cult followers want to know how to eat lobster, how to behave as if civilised and to avoid cleaning up their own messes. Palahniuk’s whingy-whiner hero could be any one of us with our culturally-induced problems (need more plastic surgery, need Viagra, need love, need bigger/more everything) but he has the answer for our existential angst – kill yourself. It is programmed into cult members. It was Camus, I think, who thought suicide was the one serious philosophical problem: a lack of courage in the face of the ultimate meaninglessness of everything, as only we, ourselves, can seek our own meaningfulness. And what an interesting quest that is.

Survivor is skilfully structured and reveals a compellingly bizarre world, leavened with black humour. About three quarters of the way through I thought the railing against modern society and sexual grossness grew soggy. I’m all for railing and inveighing, but Palahniuk moves at a gulping speed and it feels a little undigested. However, Palahniuk is a good enough writer to fashion sustained quality from the raw material of excess and greed, and a clever enough one to depict a convincingly a Kafkaesque world of ever-closing nightmare.

An astute social commentator, expect no mercy from Palahniuk. This is a read for those who relish their social commentary funny and sharp in a picaresque setting relentlessly careening to the edge.

Reviewed by Tania

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The Last Brother

I’d like share the lovely cover for Nathacha Appanah’s novel The last Brother. Appanah is from Mauritius but now lives and writes in France. The Last Brother is a tale of the friendship of two boys: Raj, a native of Mauritius, and David a young Jewish boy incarcerated on the island after a group of refugees fleeing Europe in 1945 are interned there. Appanah beautifully evokes the lushness of the island but also the harshness of life for both of the boys. The story is framed by the older Raj who looks back with guilt on what occurred on the island. There is poignancy in the portrait of Raj as a boy, not quite aware of what is going on, and who is the victim of a violent father. But I never bought his love for David whom he befriends when he spends time in the prison hospital (Raj’s father works as a prison guard). David is never a fully realised character – his main attribute being his blonde fly-away hair and uncoordinated body. Appanah suggests that David is a substitute brother to Raj after Raj’s other brothers are killed in a flash flood (hence David is really the “last brother”) but I thought the relationship was forced. Nevertheless this is a short, fable-like book, and gives a rich sense of another life. I bought the book on the strength of the wonderfully evocative dust jacket which I’ve framed. Does that count as vandalism against a book? It still has the underneath plain green hard cover …

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Review – A Fair Maiden

16 year old Katya Spivak and 68 year old Marcus Kidder undertake an alchemical journey in Joyce Carol Oates’  A Fair Maiden. Katya is from an impoverished, fractured gambling clan in Pine Barrens and Marcus is from an old extremely wealthy well-connected local family. Both are visiting Bayhead Harbour for the summer, like the hundreds of stinging jellyfish washed onto the Jersey shore in squalls. Katya is nannying with a new-money family that Marcus refers to as the Mayflies and Marcus is visiting his family’s old summer place from his home in New York, and perhaps his wealthy cultured trust-fund family has descended from the Mayflower.

These two meet when Marcus recognises his soul mate in Katya and woos her with a blend of personal charm, renaissance-style talents, autocratic but well-bred manner, and the borrowed allure of family wealth and position. Katya is drawn into the liaison secure that she possesses a strong bargaining chip in her sexuality and youth.

This is the card she plays initially, but Marcus’ desire for her goes beyond elderly loneliness or sexuality, and she flounders when she finds herself longing for connection and  to express her own creativity. Marcus offers her money for modelling, and wanting to do better for herself than whatever Pine Barrens offers, she agrees. Katya is flattered, wary, greedy for the money Marcus pays her and which her feckless gambling mother begs for.

JCO portrays an interesting character in Marcus with his abandoned potential: the young tenor voice, musical composition, his children books, his detailed illustrations and portraits, his beautiful and strange glass fossil flowers, his film star relationships and his apparent yearning for something beyond this and quite sure his money can buy it. His creativity has not been enough, he longs for the mystery at the heart of the rose.

Katya’s world where life’s actions are throws of the dice is already also one of intoxication and intemperance. Marcus carefully tempers her wine when she sneaks out to visit him at night and model, building her up to the ultimate planned intoxication but Katya’s cousin Roy, fresh from prison and setting up his own drug dealing business to take him beyond Pine Barrens, comes once more into Katya’s world when Marcus impatiently pushes her forward too quickly one night wanting to sketch her nude.

Roy (another word for king) and that’s how Marcus refers to himself as she flees him that night: “Katya! The offer – the King – will be waiting for you”. There is explicit textual offer here to look at this story as fairy tale, perhaps Beauty and The Beast, however the references to intemperance (in money and substance) and the attempts by both Katya and Marcus to wrest some meaning or value from life’s materials had me thinking of Alistair Crowley and the alchemical journey for the philosopher’s stone.

JCO has woven a complex and textually tight story with lots of potential markers to explore which gives it depth and makes for a very satisfying read. Although the two main characters are portrayed as fairly complex and, in Marcus ’case, with a very busy life, the story revolves not on character or plot but on the issue of our search for value and meaning, and when we cannot find it, the human drive to attempt to create it out of our actions.

Before Katya’s final act for Marcus, done for love rather than money, she feels attachment for her young charges. When Katya first went to Bayhead nannying, her mother warned her against becoming attached to stranger’s children, and indeed Katya’s mother seems totally unattached to her own children. Katya finds love for the young children she has looked after and, far more dangerously for her, the charming and somewhat pathetic Marcus Kidder. Perhaps as a result of this access to love, Katya sees herself running, leaping across the stinging jellyfish tentacles on the Jersey shore before she goes to the dying Marcus.

Review by Tania.

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Review – Of Bees and Mist

This is a truly strange book – compulsively readable and annoying in equal measure. The cover is a bit of a giveaway consisting as it does of the title in big art deco letters on a grey background with a few white curlicues ie we’ve got no idea how to classify this. Just above the author’s name is a small picturebook-like silhouette of a tower on a cloud with a windswept woman’s figure. The publisher is tentatively suggesting this might be a kid’s fantasy.

This could be a fantasy book except it is set in a picturebook ‘real world’, in a city that might be northern European, central European or Asian; it has elements of each. It could be in medieval times, the nineteenth century or contemporary times. The clothes don’t help. In one place the heroine, Meridia, wears a knee length dress, yet her father wears a top hat and cloak. Everyone walks – there are no horses, or cars, or trains. In the gardens there are roses and marigolds but also bougainvillea, the food is cakes and sandwiches but also ginger and garlic and noodles. If we accept this hybrid world it is only one step further to accept that there are yellow and blue mists that enfold Meridia’s father when he leaves the house, that the house is perpetually freezing no matter the heat outside, and that Meridia’s mother-in-law dominates her family with vicious attacking bees that aren’t visible to others.

In Meridia’s world there are fortune tellers, invisible friends and people who fade into their spirit beings but there’s also school, romance and marriage, housekeeping and starting up a business. This mishmash of elements would be fatally off putting if it wasn’t for the strong narrative drive and the barrage of mysteries to be resolved. Meridia’s mother-in-law is a truly horrendous character, such a narcissistic sociopath that she doesn’t really need the (supernatural) bees the author bestows on her to perpetuate her horrors. Be warned, her comeuppance is a long-time coming.

The novel has been called magic realism, but it doesn’t quite fit that description, also an adult fairytale. That tag doesn’t really fit either but is closer to the mark. There are sexual references and crudity of language that mark this out as ‘adult’ whereas the story itself could be young adult, or teen. Perhaps as the phenomenon of Harry Potter showed, adults do want to read young fantasy books, and Of Bees and Mist has tapped into this. Interestingly, however, they’ve marketed the novel as general fiction, not fantasy.

I found it unsettling: I thought Meridia a little too self-satisfied, her husband a dolt, the feud between Meridia’s parents unbelievable and the fate of many characters unfair but, bloody hell, I couldn’t stop reading until I’d bolted through to the end.

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Review – The Anatomy of Wings Karen Foxlee

UQP 288 pp

This novel is set in an unnamed mining town which we can take is based on Mount Isa where the author grew up. It’s the 1970s, Jenny Day is ten year’s old and something terrible has happened to her older sister, Beth. Jenny thinks the how and why of Beth’s death lies in a box of her belongings their mother has hidden away. Of course it’s not that simple and we follow Jenny’s childish attempts to make sense of things as she goes back over the last year of Beth’s life. Jenny is on the cusp between childhood and a more grown up view of the world and the author beautifully evokes Jenny’s love for her family and her sister, and her perplexity at what happens. She is torn between the fanciful romanticism of her grandmother and the prosaic reality of her mother, between her own safe world and the world of the ‘bad’ girls in town that Beth’s involved with. Some of what happens is confronting but the lyricism of Foxlee’s style and the wonderful character of Jenny make this an enjoyable book to read. The author beautifully recreates the poignancy of leaving the simplicity of childhood behind. She also has a marvellous eye for the details of small town life, as well as for the harsh beauty of the outback.

The Anatomy of Wings won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (South East Asia and South Pacific Region) and the 2008 Dobbie Literary Award for first published woman writer.

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Review – The Owl Killers

The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland, Michael Joseph 2009

The Owl Killers is a medieval thriller set in the early thirteen hundreds in a small village in South East England. Into this closed world where Christianity and paganism are in uneasy co-existence, come a group of Beguines from Bruges. They set up a community of women on land they have inherited near the village. Not surprisingly when disease and famine beset the village, the Beguine women are easily demonised as causing the misfortune. Despite fearing the women the villagers still surreptitiously bring their sick to the Beguinage, under the cover of night, to be healed. To complicate matters a fraternity of masked “Owl Masters” terrorise and extort from the villagers, and there is evidence that a pagan monster called the Owlman is preying on victims in the area.

The story is told through the points of view of five characters: Servant Martha the leader of the Beguines, a morally compromised priest, Father Ulfrid, Agatha the disgraced daughter of the local landowner who joins the Beguines, Beatrice, another of the Beguines, and a small village girl, Pisspuddle. The device of five different voices allows Maitland to build up the story from both the villagers’ side and from point of view of the Beguines, withholding vital pieces of information along the way to keep the reader guessing.

The novel has fantasy elements — the flesh-ripping Owlman, a “witch” with second sight, a wild forest girl who can control the weather — but these are explainable by the superstitious beliefs of the time. Maitland is also adept at portraying medieval life in all its smelly, gory detail.  From this mixture she weaves a fast-paced, tense, intriguing story. It might get bogged down in places with too many strands in play but for the most part I couldn’t put the book down. The Owl Killers will appeal to historical fiction fans who like their stories dark and to fantasy buffs who don’t mind a dose of reality.