Book Review - Hurting Distance by Sophie Hannah

Synopsis:  Three years ago, something terrible happened to Naomi Jenkins -- so terrible that she never told anybody. Now Naomi has another secret -- the man she has fallen passionately in love with, unhappily married Robert Haworth. When Robert vanishes without trace, Naomi knows he must have come to harm. But the police are less convinced, particularly when Robert's wife insists he is not missing. In desperation, Naomi has a crazy idea. If she can't persuade the police that Robert is in danger, perhaps she can convince them that he is a danger to others. Then they will have to look for him -- urgently. Naomi knows how describe in detail the actions of a psychopath. All she needs to do is dig up her own troubled past ...

First Line:  "This is not my story."

Random Quote:  "The more carefully I watch her, the longer I spend sitting here in this small grey room with her, the more ordinary she will seem.  It's like when you can't bear to look at a picture of some gruesome deformity because you're too squeamish.  When you eventually force yourself to stare it and familiarise yourself with all its details, it soon becomes something mundane, nothing to be scared of at all."

British highway exit - Image by Erwin Bolwidt (El Rabbit) via Flickr

Review:  Sophomore efforts often misfire - even sophomore years tend to be sort of mildly dreadful and a letdown after all the discoveries of being a freshman.  This book, however, is really good and redeems the author for me after the utter disaster of Little Face.

Hannah's device of alternating perspective from first-person to third-person by chapter is still here, but as in The Wrong Mother, it is much less distracting as a device than it is in Little Face.  The difference is that  the story utterly compelling and distinctive as are the characters.  This novel kept me reading and reading on the edge of my seat as I waited for her to play out all the strings.  I found the story and the characters believable and convincing and interesting psychologically.  The story is definitely disturbing, but it's well-written and doesn't cut corners or shy away from the complexity of human relationships.

This was a great read and redeemed Hannah for me.  I look forward to her fourth novel.

2009 Reading Round-Up

Image by National Media Museum via Flickr

I stole this from E.L. Fay over at This Book and I Could Friends - a good end of year set of questions.

How many books read in 2009?

I only started keeping track in April when I started this blog, but according to my Goodreads 2009 shelf, it's 146.  I read a lot.

How many works of fiction and non-fiction?

More fiction than non-fiction - 102 were fiction.

Male/Female author ratio?

Wow, I'm kind of impressed with myself on this one.  Library Thing says my ratio of male to female authors is 52% to 48%.  Apparently I don't gender discriminate in my reads.  Good for me!

Favorite book of 2009?

Can't think of just one, really.  Some notables (in no particular order):

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Low Life:  Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Reviews of the best books I read this year are linked on the right sidebar.

Least favorite?

Fallen by Lauren Kate and Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick.  In a word:  dreadful.

Any that you simply couldn’t finish and why?

I tend to persevere.  It's a bad habit, actually.  I'm an adult - I don't have to finish it if I don't want to!

Oldest book read?

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier - 1938.

Newest?

Lots.

How many from the library?

Lots.

There are more questions, of course, but these are the ones I wanted to answer (I'm practicing that adult thing by only answering what I want to answer).  All in all I have to say that this was a great year in reading for me.  It's been fun blogging about it all and it'll be fun to do it again next year.

Happy New Year to you all!  Let's hope the new decade brings us all joy.

Book Review - Little Face by Sophie Hannah

Synopsis:  It's every mother's nightmare ...

The first time Alice Fancourt goes out after their daughter is born, she leaves the two-week-old infant with her husband, David.  When she returns only two hours later, she swears the baby in the crib is not her child.  Despite her distress, David is adamant that she is wrong.

The police are called to the scene.  Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse is sympathetic, but he doubts Alice's story.  His superior, Sergeant Charlie Zailer, thinks that Alice must be suffering from some sort of delusion brought on by postpartum depressions.

With an increasingly hostile and menacing David swearing she must either be mad or lying, how can Alice make the police believe her before it's too late?

First Line:  "I am outside."

Random Quote:  "Finally a sliver of hope.  Maybe I can talk him round, persuade him to help me, no matter what sneery Sergeant Zailer says."

Review:  I really like Sophie Hannah's third book, The Wrong Mother, so I was looking forward to reading this one (her first) and was sorely disappointed.  This book was so disappointing that it made me wonder if I should rethink how much I liked The Wrong Mother.

Image via Wikipedia

Hannah alternates chapters between first-person narrative of the protagonist and third-person narrative of the cops.  In The Wrong Mother this works really well, but in this book it feels too much like a device (which, of course, it is in both books).  In thinking through this I believe the heart of the problem here is in the rather poorly cobbled together characterizations; they just don't seem substantial or even internally consistent and this makes their actions ultimately unbelievable and mildly bland and predictable in a Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip kind of way.  There is a terrible waste of a really interesting premise here and an even more terrible waste of some good writing that's buried in here along with all the clumsiness.

I'm reading Hannah's second book and will decide how I feel about her then, but at this point I'm feeling dubious and sort of jipped.

Book Review - Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes

Synopsis:  Damian Baxter is very, very rich - and he's dying. He lives alone in a big house in Surrey, looked after by a chauffeur, butler, cook and housemaid. He has but one concern: who should inherit his fortune...Past Imperfect is the story of a quest. Damian Barker wishes to know if he has a living heir. By the time he married in his late thirties he was sterile (the result of adult mumps), but what about before that unfortunate illness? He was not a virgin. Had he sired a child? A letter from a girlfriend from these times suggests he did. But the letter is anonymous. Damian contacts someone he knew from their days at university. He gives him a list of girls he slept with and sets him a task: find his heir.

First Line:  "London is a haunted city for me now and I am the ghost that haunts it."

Random Quote:  "Her forehead was so smooth she might have been dead, since no expression or mannerism seemed to make it move above the eyebrows, and the eyes themselves had become very fixed in their orbit.  Of course, more or less all this stuff, carrying with it, as it must, horrible images of the pinning and stretching and sawing and sewing of bloody skin and bruised bone, has come about in my lifetime, and I can't be alone in finding it an odd fashion to have developed alongside the supposed liberation of women.  Cutting their faces about, presumably to please men, does not strike one as a convincing mark of equality.  In fact, it feels uncomfortably insecure, a Western manifestation of female circumcision or facial disfigurement or some other dark and ancient method of asserting male ownership."

Review:  I expected this book to be a fun, insubstantial bit of fluff.  Boy, was I surprised.

Leith Hill Tower, Surrey - Image via Wikipedia

Mr. Fellowes wrote the screenplay for Gosford Park and is the author of another novel that I haven't read, but now will.  He's working in P.G. Wodehouse/Evelyn Waugh territory - an English novel of manners - a mix of novel and ethnography of the upper crust with plenty of humor thrown in.

The premise is a lovely one.  The narrator's decidedly former friend, Damien, is dying.  The quest:  to find Damien's hitherto unknown and unidentified illegitimate child.  The prize:  a life-changing inheritance for the to be designated heir.

It would have been easy to write something bitchy and erudite about this journey into the end of the sixties - the Season of 1968 - and the various where are they now stories this journey naturally elicits and that would have been a fine book.  Instead, Fellowes has painstakingly and rather beautifully described a world in transition and captured the tension and ambiguity of the time.  These are not rebellious flower children heading for Carnaby Street to smoke dope with the Beatles.  These are debutantes and their escorts, still in thrall to their parents, and with relatively few options.  The novel is rich in period detail and observation, sumptuous in language, and strangely kind in its judgments of its characters.

I liked almost everyone in this novel and even the characters that I didn't like were worth reading.  I appreciate that Fellowes manages to avoid most stereotypes and to make even the worst sort of gorgon a human being.  This was a lovely read and a nice way to end the year.

Two More Challenges

Almost to the end of the year and I want to sign up for two more challenges just because they sound like so much fun!

First, the typically British Reading Challenge.  I just about always have British authors on my TBR pile, so this one's a no-brainer for me.  I just finished two books by British authors this week, actually, but won't count them in since it's not 2010 yet.  I suspect that the new A.S. Byatt will end up being my first entry.  Thanks to the blogger over at Book Chick City for this one!  I'm going for the Cream Crackered level to read 8 books with British authors.

Next up is the Take Another Chance Challenge which has a mix of ways to pick books for it.  Thanks to Jenners at Find Your Next Book Here for sponsoring this one.  It looks like lots of fun!  I'll be going for the Moderate Gamble level to complete 6 of the 12 challenge levels.

It looks like 2010 is going to be great year!

Book Review - Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Synopsis:  New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn’t.

In the next few tense seconds Reacher will make a choice–and trigger an electrifying chain of events in this gritty, gripping masterwork of suspense by #1 New York Times bestseller Lee Child.

Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.

Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark’s plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan . . . from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell–and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed.

In a novel that slams through one hairpin surprise after another, Lee Child unleashes a thriller that spans three decades and gnaws at the heart of America . . . and for Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, it’s a mystery with only one answer–the kind that comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye.

First Line:  "Suicide bombers are easy to spot."

Random Quote:  "Lila Hoth had been just seven years old when the Soviet Union had fallen apart, so she spoke with a kind of historical detachment.  She had the same kind of distance from former realities that I had from the Jim Crow years in America."

Review:  I love Jack Reacher.  He's a combination superhero and B-movie action hero.  I've been trying to cast him in the movie in my head, but haven't quite managed to get him down.  I'd like to think of him as a big guy, like John Wayne, but more urban tough, like Charles Bronson.

This whole series is built to be incredibly entertaining and a non-stop joyride.  You do not read these for probable outcomes or events or for great literary significance.  You read these because you want good escapism in the form of a really good thriller and these will deliver.

I always manage to learn some odd bit of trivia I didn't know before from these books.  This time is was a bit about the British in Afghanistan that I never put together until now.

Great plotting, superb action, big fun.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) random teaser sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS (make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don't want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & the author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!

My Teaser:

"I wonder if the police know the exact hour - minute, even - that Laura was killed, whether they ever narrowed it down.  When they interviewed me and David immediately after her murder, all they could tell us was that she'd been stabbled at some point between nine in the evening and the early hours of the following morning."

- Little Face by Sophie Hannah

Mailbox Monday

The above picture is of a London postal carrier from the early 1900's.  I got a couple of books in the mail this week:

The Psychiatrist Who Cured the Scientologist by Aaron David Gottfried (from the author).  Step inside the misunderstood world of mental illness and the underground secrets of Scientology in this first-hand account of a walk on the extreme side of both.  This true story of a teenager trying to seek truth, finds himself going completely backward in a downward spiral of curiosity, rebellion and fanaticism.

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (from the publisher).  Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.  When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before.

Science Fiction Experience 2010

Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings is hosting the Science Fiction Experience 2010 from January 1 through February 28.

It's pretty low pressure in that there are no rules, no number of books to read, just read what you want that's science fiction and post a review if you feel like it.

I am participating in this.  I have a couple of steampunk books that have been on the back burner that I want to dive into so this is as good a time as any.  I love science fiction and fantasy and read it regularly so this is a natural for me.

Thanks, Carl!

Book Giveaway - Winners Chosen!

Winners for the giveaway of Exit Music by Ian Rankin have been chosen as follows:

• wwrk
• Nancy S
• Sue
• Swtlilchick
• George Ferris

Each winner will receive an email with further details.  Congratulations & happy holidays!

Happy Holidays

Book Review - Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues by Loren Rhoads

Synopsis:  A highly-original anthology featuring true stories of the unsavory, unwise, unorthodox and unusual, first published in the magazine Morbid Curiosity.

First Line:  "I grew up on a farm."

Random Quote:  "No way they'd have something like this back in the States.  I thought back to Manzanar, the American concentration camp I'd visited in the California desert.  In some ways, that was very similar to this place, a vista of old wire and empty foundations.  Only we dismantled our camps, let the desert reclaim them.  Except for a roadside plaque, nothing remains to tell the tale, to cop to our own guilt."

The remains of Manzanar - Image by mlhradio via Flickr

Review:  This was terribly disappointing.  The annoyances were numerous including, but not limited to:

• The format of the book - It's printed in newspaper type with two columns per page as if it were still a zine.  It makes reading it difficult.
• The introduction - This is printed as in a regular book and starts out okay, but quickly devolves into self-congratulatory drivel.  Yes, yes, you are the coolest, gothest ever.  We all bow to your amazingness.
• The writing - Almost universally mediocre.  These were the 40 best items?
• The illustrations - If you had a goth friend in high school who doodled cartoons in their notebook, you'll recognize these.

Out of 298 pages and 40 or so essays only one of them was worth reading - Souvenir of Hell by Brian Thomas - about visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau.  Thank you, Mr. Thomas, for writing about this experience in an intelligent and honest way.

This book got two stars because of Mr. Thomas' essay - a long-winded way of saying you might as well skip this.

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• Auschwitz sign stolen 'by neo-Nazis' (telegraph.co.uk)

Book Review - Birds, Beasts and Relatives by Gerald Durrell

Synopsis:  Part coming-of-age autobiography and part nature guide, Gerald Durrell’'s dazzling sequel to My Family and Other Animals is based on his boyhood on Corfu, from 1933 to 1939. Originally published in 1969 but long out of print, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives is filled with charming observations, amusing anecdotes, boyhood memories, and childlike wonder.

First Line:  "It had been a hard winter, and even when spring was supposed to have taken over, the crocuses - who seemed to have a touching and unshaken faith in the seasons - were having to push their grimly through a thin crust of snow."

Random Quote:  "The only other time I saw snails indulging in this curious love play was when I succeeded in obtaining a pair of the giant Roman or Apple Snails which lived on the stony outcrops of the Mountain of the Ten Saints, and the only reason I was able to get up there and capture these snails was because, on my birthday, Mother had purchased for me my heart's desire - a sturdy, baby donkey."

  Corfu - Image via Wikipedia

Review:  This is the second in a trilogy of books about his childhood on Corfu that Gerald Durrell wrote in part to subsidize his collecting habit (and when I say collecting I mean collecting of animals).  Durrell, the brother of Lawrence Durrell, was an author, naturalist, and conservationist.  He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo.

I was first introduced to him by my Seattle grandparents, Wayne and Lorene, who I remember sitting up in their big king-sized bed with me, all of us reading Gerald Durrell books and laughing and stopping to read bits aloud to each other.  That's a really great memory.

These books gave me my long-time not-so-secret desire to run away to live on Corfu.  Maybe some day I'll get to do that.

Durrell writes wonderfully about animals and about his hilarious family and their friends.  These books will make you laugh out loud and will teach all kinds of things you didn't know about all kinds of animals.  I turned my son on to these books when he was 10 and recommend them often.