It may be that if you are reading this you have visited Tasmania and in particular Sarah Island which lies in Macquarie Harbour, a place once known in the early 19th Century as hell on earth - the entrance to the Harbour actually being named as Hell's Gates. And perhaps you have stayed in the nearby town of Strahan and either seen the movie or the longest-running play in Australia which is called The Ship that Never Was. 

This book was inspired by that play but goes much further than comedy and Disney-esque entertainment as it delves deeply into the real and truly amazing story of the ten convicts who stole the brig Frederick and then sailed it out of Hell's Gates all the way across the Pacific and through the dangerous latitudes of the Southern Ocean to finally arrive in Valdivia in Chile.

The prominent figure in this adventure was Police Prisoner No. 324, James Porter aka James Connor aka Don Santiago. Porter wrote various versions of his memoirs and it is these on which author Adam Courtenay draws primarily, but he has rounded out the book with facts from solid historical research.

It is almost impossible for us to believe the conditions and treatment under which Porter and his mates fought so hard for their freedom. The one-eyed Porter carried scars all over his body, on his ankles and legs from the brutal chains and irons, on his back the evidence of more than 300 floggings. Originally transported for stealing furs and silk, he still managed to find time to joke, to say that his real profession was a "beer machine maker".

None of the men were properly qualified sailors or navigators, what they knew they had mostly been learned while slaving as convicts in coastal journeys and on Sarah Island where there was a thriving trade in boat-building. Frederick had barely been completed, her timbers were unseasoned Huon pine and the chances of her making it even as far as New Zealand were doubtful, yet she proved her worth, only to be scuttled by her crew as they approached South America.

In Valdivia, recently freed from the colonial oppression of Spain, the escapees were welcomed and lauded as heroes while Governor Arthur in Van Diemen's Land was furious and their presence in Chile almost caused a major diplomatic crisis between that country and Great Britain.

While the two countries wrangled for ten years, this motley bunch made lives for themselves in Chile, some married and had children and when things got too hot with Royal Navy warships drawing ever closer, some escaped to other lands never to be heard from again.  

Eventually only four convicts remained to be re-captured. After enduring horrendous re-imprisonment in England on the hulks, back they went to Van Diemen's Land to be tried and sentenced. The details of their trial provides some fascinating legal arguments as to what constituted mutiny and piracy and because the Frederick had never been registered, she truly was "the ship that never was". 

Courtenay's conclusions on the one-eyed Porter whom history has hitherto treated as a "scallywag and a scoundrel, a ne'er do well ... [his memoirs] the literary equivalent of the Artful Dodger narrating Oliver Twist ..." have provided us with a far more complex individual.

"Like many of us, he was incapable of forethought, context, planning or detail. But when it came to tenacity and courage, Porter was practically peerless. Some say Porter deftly marketed his doings for posterity, and they may be right - after all we're still discussing him more than two hundred years after his birth. ... his essential story remains a valuable addition to colonial history."

Meticulously researched and well-written, this is an all-round fantastic read that brings history to light in a most entertaining and informative way. Highly recommended
5 stars.


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​This is the latest in a series of novels featuring Superintendent Tom Harper of the Leeds constabulary and the plot contains a strong personal component as it revolves around his wife Annabelle's decision to run for election as a Poor Law Guardian, along with several other women. As this is the late 19th Century when the sufragette movement was gathering momentum and public opinions could become heated and divided, she knows she has to face many challenges.

When things turn nasty and an innocent man is killed in an explosion at a venue, followed by other attempts to cause harm to the women standing for election, Harper is on a race to find and catch the culprit before his wife and even his little daughter, Mary, are put in further danger. The only clues seems to be some scraps of paper found at the scenes containing phrases from old songs that are about dying women. 

Meanwhile, former associate of Harper's, Inspector Billy Reed, now lives in Whitby where he is on the trail of a smuggling racket that seems to be linked to a known criminal from Leeds.

This novel has all the hallmarks of previous titles in the series with its excellent historical background coloured with the sights, sounds and atmosphere of Leeds (a lot of murky air and soot!) in its industrial heyday. Harper is always a solid figure and his hiding of his hearing loss from his higher authority give him an extra human quality. Annabelle, who is also the owner of the pub above which the family live, is also an admirable female lead.

Although enjoyable for the most part, there is rather too much padding and repetitive dialogue along the lines of .... we've got to get this chap before he does something worse ... and something worse happens ... we've got to get this chap ... something else happens ... we've got to get this chap ... and so it goes. When the culprit is finally revealed, it all feels rather flat as the individual remains shadowy throughout and there is little opportunity for the reader to do their own sleuthing. The sub-plot featuring Whitby can be skipped completely as it serves no purpose other than, perhaps, a way of keeping Inspector Reed alive for some future joint activity with Harper.

​Three stars.

​(With thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.)


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As I read many books that are history-related, there are times when I’m in the mood for something more romantic and contemporary and this title fits that bill. It is also set in a region near to where I live, so that gave it added interest.
 
It’s a blockbuster with a mothers-daughters scenario. Edwina is the somewhat aloof widowed family matriarch and her three daughters are organising a birthday for her. Harriett is a surgeon who has many of the efficient, but controlling, traits of the first-born, Xara lives on a farm and has the easy-going and compromising middle-child qualities in spite of having rambunctious twins plus a disabled child, while the youngest Georgie is a school-teacher who lives in Melbourne and is still grieving over the loss of a baby.
 
When Edwina shocks everyone by bringing an old boyfriend, Doug, to the party, the stage is set for massive disruption to their lives and there is a ripple effect with other issues coming to light. Accusations start flying about Harriett’s husband, James, who appears to have got himself into major financial trouble at the expense of many locals.
 
From here on, the plot gets pretty complicated with Harriett taking whammy after whammy when her own daughter Charlotte defies her and Georgie’s new love interest Ben is found to have an unfortunate link to her mother’s boyfriend. When Edwina reveals her own secret, there is yet another bombshell. All of this you can see coming and the chances of so much happening in one family at the same time are pretty implausible but the narrative is fresh and the dialogue is entertaining, and it does the job of getting you thoroughly immersed in what is a mega soap opera, wondering how all these characters can possibly resolve their conflicts with one another.
 
Harriett isn’t at all likeable, but then she isn’t meant to be, and Edwina’s character is rather chilly and vague in the way that any rich and properly-raised woman who twiddles her pearls is supposed to be. Xara’s role as the glue-maker means she is less intensely drawn and Georgie’s situation deserves sympathy but she can be indecisive.
 
The exposure of the murky financial doings of James is the most credible part of the plot, but there’s a strangely old-fashioned 1950s vibe to the family’s other worries about their dirty linen being exposed in public. It is questionable whether in this day and age of open and casual relationships and blended families that people in Victoria’s once exclusive and wealthy “Western District” are really still that obsessed with social status and keeping up appearances as they were in past decades. The conclusion is also rather too pat, and it is difficult to believe that the driven autocratic Harriett could ever become a push-over for anything.
 
Also as with many novels, it is way too long at nearly 500 pages. I really enjoyed it until about page 350, when boredom started to set in. With a tighter edit and not quite so many scandals, secrets and controversies all competing for attention, I’d have gone for a 4 star rating, but it is a worthy 3.5.

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Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders was a fantastic read and I anticipated I'd be in for a great ride with this title, and I wasn't disappointed.

It has a unique structure in which Horowitz himself is the first person narrator. Not only is he involved in investigation of a crime, he also shares aspects of his life as a scriptwriter and author, with references to his books, television series and real individuals. There are even cameos from film directors, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. All this could seem like self-aggrandisement in less capable hands, but it is woven so well within the story that there is no possibility of getting the reader off-side (leastwise not any reader who can appreciate the subtle tongue-in-cheek tone).

All of this begins when a sixty-something woman, Diana Cowper, visits a funeral parlour to organise her own funeral in advance and then is murdered only a few hours later. Enter the abrasive and somewhat mysterious Hawthorne, an ex-copper whom Horowitz has known previously when he helped out as a murder consultant on the TV series Injustice.

Hawthorne wants Horowitz to write a book about him (perhaps called "Hawthorne Investigates") and in order to learn about what he does, asks him to accompany him into the murder he is currently investigating, i.e. that of Diana Cowper. There are shades here of Sherlock and Watson, in which Horowitz feels like he's the bumbling amateur next to the crafty professional but endeavours to hold his own. When a second murder takes place, all the evidence seems to point to a hit-and-run case that happened ten years earlier in which Diana was the guilty party. Or is this a whole school of red herrings and the truth is quite different?

The narrative flows brilliantly, the plotting is fantastic and as a page-turner it can't be faulted. I did not anticipate the ending although as Horowitz himself points out at the end, all the murder clues were there in the words, hence the title.

Another five stars from one of the best writers in the business.

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​It is always difficult to fairly review any historical novel that wins awards, receives gushing reviews from the professional critics, as well as thousands of ordinary readers giving it 5 stars.
 
This is a long book I read in stages over several months, never quite sure what to make of it. I put it aside numerous times, usually after some passage that was so beautifully written it almost took my breath away, only to return later and read on with increasing annoyance at the improbability of the whole scenario.
 
While I was stewing over how best to express my frustrations, I discovered one other rather irate reviewer who felt the same as I did - he agreed that the writing was exquisite but was troubled by the impossible plot.

I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one to feel this way and I finally decided that for all its elegant prose, this book is troubling in that it does a disservice to history, to the millions of people who suffered and died under the Russian terrors of the early half of the 20th Century. We read a lot about the Count's wine and fine dining, we learn little of the wars, famine and oppression to which the Russian population was subjected during this momentous period in history.
 
The Russian Revolution happened in the first place because of the arrogant behaviour by members of its upper classes who included not only aristocrats, but all other cultured and educated individuals, be they merchants, artists or writers, and the vengeance of the revolutionaries did not discriminate when it came to their extermination.
 
The idea that one such gentleman would be allowed to reside - albeit in reduced yet genteel circumstances - in some grand hotel in the heart of the city is totally absurd. Even if this Count had hidden out in some remote Siberian village under a false identity, informers and spies were everywhere and the Cheka would still have dug him out and made him pay the price simply because of his rank and class.
 
The story with Nina is even more nonsensical. Just by associating with someone like the Count - or any “former people” - would have been a death sentence to her and her family, in addition to anyone even remotely connected to them; a neighbour, a shopkeeper who had served them. And as for a Bolshevik general taking English lessons from the Count … words fail me. The ending is also baffling, that the Count took thirty years to finally attempt an escape.

This book should only be read as a fairy story, or perhaps as some kind of fantastic allegory, and I hope to goodness is never put into some school curriculum as based on fact.
 
Yes, it deserves 5 stars for the quality of the prose but a black hole for its premise.
 



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Just when I had decided that I would not read another novel with that hackneyed “Girl” in the title, the synopsis of this one caught my eye so I had to make an exception. I have many happy memories of childhood holidays in the area of Simonstown and False Bay in the Cape Province of South Africa where this story is set. (As my parents were on holiday there nine months before my birth date, I have a sneaky feeling that I might even have been conceived somewhere near Simonstown!)
 
Louise Ahrendts is of Cape Malay origins, and lives with her parents in a cottage with a view of the sea. Her father works at the maritime base servicing the ships of the Royal Navy. Louise is expected to marry her childhood sweetheart, fisherman, Piet Philander. But she has other ideas and is determined to first have a career as a nurse in spite of Piet’s objections and her family’s doubts. She manages to gain a position in a hospital that usually only employs white nurses and when World War II breaks out she is seconded to work at the Royal Naval Hospital. It is there that she meets and falls in love with English Lieutenant David Horricks and everything about her life is turned upside down.
 
There are too few romantic novels set in South Africa. The power of its history can make it difficult. This paragraph touches on this when one of the characters is about to arrive by ship at Capetown and a fellow passenger asks her what brings her to South Africa, whether she is a writer:
 
“The young man pointed at the purple mountains growing in splendour as the ship approached Table Bay. ‘Well, there’s everything here. Beauty. Cruelty. Humanity. You won’t lack material’.”
 
And there is definitely beauty, cruelty and humanity throughout this gracefully-crafted novel. There is beauty in its setting of sea and mountains. The narrative abounds with humanity; you care about the characters and what happens to them. When Apartheid became official and people were classified according to their skin colour - “Cape Coloured, Malay, Griqua, Indian, Chinese, Other Asian and Other Coloured” - there is no denying the cruelty when they are forced to move away from their traditional homes and way of life.
 
The title aside, one might also quibble over the possibility of some scenarios but they pale into insignificance next to the telling of this love affair that does not follow a predictable path. It is poignant and absorbing, and ultimately very satisfying. I am truly delighted to discover this considerate and sympathetic author and look forward to reading more of Barbara Mutch’s stories set in South Africa.
 
 
Five stars (and you’ll need your tissues!)


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When Quaker mother, Mrs Sophia Smith of Huntington, Indiana, gave birth to her ninth child, a girl, in 1892, she decided that her daughter would need something to set her apart from the average Miss Smith, and so she gave her the first name of Elizebeth (ze instead of the usual za). Not that this Elizebeth could ever have been average. She was gifted with an extraordinarily brilliant mind and was destined to be one of the greatest code-breakers in history.
 
In 1916, after a chance encounter with the eccentric American tycoon George Fabyan in a library, she was “head-hunted” to work on his estate at Riverbank near Chicago where Fabyan had a private laboratory that conducted research into cryptography. He was particularly keen to prove that it was really Francis Bacon who wrote Shakespeare’s plays and that this could be established via secret ciphers in the text.
 
Although Elizebeth would eventually disprove the theory, it was while she was at Riverbank that she met her future husband, William Friedman, who had also been hired by Fabyan to work on genetics. Together they would create a lifelong partnership working in cryptology and cryptanalysis.
 
During the Prohibition years, Elizebeth cracked the codes used by the gangsters and bootleggers. Throughout the 1930s and into World War II, she deciphered secret messages from Japan, China and Germany and was one of the first people to figure out the workings of the Enigma machines, and she was also instrumental in the exposure of the Nazi spy network in South America.

It was Elizebeth’s husband William who gained most of the kudos in this field, but this book will show that she was every bit as important as her husband and, in some cases, even more talented and certainly better able to deal with the high stresses of the job, although her contributions were often dismissed and she had to sit by and see others take credit for her work, in particular by J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI.
 
There are some places where the invented dialogue and descriptions border a little on romantic fiction, but that doesn’t detract from this absorbing tale of how the famous intelligence networks came into being and often competed against one another, and how Elizebeth had to negotiate the outright sexism of the era.

Although there are several chapters where the steps in deciphering codes are explained in such great detail that the eyes of the uninitiated reader will glaze over, one doesn’t need to have a mathematical or scientific leaning in order to still enjoy discovering this truly astonishing woman who is well overdue for the credit she deserves.

4.5 stars

(With many thanks to Dey Street Books via Edelweiss for the ARC.)


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Jess Mount is in her early twenties, lives in Leeds with her widowed father, her mother having died when she was just fifteen. She works in a movie complex with her best friend Sadie.

After a chance encounter with the highly attractive Lee Griffiths, Jess’s life is set on a path which may result in her being dead in a year’s time as, shortly after meeting Lee, she is horrified to discover Facebook posts from the future in which her family and friends commiserate over her death and detail the events leading up to it. Just as frightening, it appears she had a baby son called Harrison a few months before she died.
 
Spoiler Alert!  Some books are impossible to review fairly without revealing major plot points, and this is one of them, so don’t read further if you’d rather not know more.
 
The fact that no-one else apart from Jess can read these Facebook posts is a hint that perhaps all is not OK with her mental health, as otherwise this would have to be some kind of fantasy time-travel tale when it is clearly developing into an edgy contemporary narrative featuring female denial in the face of male control.
 
Because of this unusual narrative, the book is both fascinating and frustrating. For some readers there will be a major issue with its underlying tenet - i.e. a girl must have suffered earlier psychological damage to get involved with a violent man in the first place. Such readers might well argue in the real world this is not always the case and some of the smartest and most level-headed women have let their hearts rule their heads with disastrous consequences. Jess is given clear warnings, not just from the future, but from those around her in the present, especially Sadie, that she should steer clear of Lee yet she does not walk away because she wants a life for her unborn child. Getting your head around this bizarre logic is also difficult.
 
Even though I was impatient with Jess’s willing compliance to do nothing to avoid her own looming death, I was sufficiently intrigued to see how the situation would pan out and whether there was some final inventive twist to explain the Facebook posts, but there is none. If anything, one might detect faint allegorical echoes here of “A Christmas Carol” in which Scrooge only finally learns his lesson and gets his act together after his encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
 
The author’s end notes give some explanations to the book’s genesis and why she wrote it as she did and, it spite of my problems with it, it is certainly an inventive and memorable work that challenged me and has made me curious to read more by author Linda Green.
 
Four stars - or only two - depending on the levels of credibility you are prepared to accept in your fiction.
 
(With many thanks to Hachette Australia for sending me the reading copy.)

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Long before people went searching for their soulmates on the Internet, there were discreet businesses where, for a fee, you would be put in touch with your ideal match as potential wife or husband. London’s first such marriage bureau was founded by two friends, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, just months prior to the outbreak of World War II.
 
Written by Penrose Halson, a subsequent owner of the business, and based on Jenner’s personal archives, this tells the story of the Bureau’s early clients and also how it struggled initially for acceptance when society still had fixed ideas about how one went about finding a suitable partner, never mind the suspicions that two attractive young women in business might be up to something immoral.
 
Although marketed as non-fiction, it’s pretty obvious the truth has been greatly embroidered with fiction in the same voice throughout. It has all the “carry-on regardless” attitude that prevailed during war-time London and in places almost borders on a Brian Rix farce, with clients such as a dodgy Arabian “sheik”- or is he really Welsh? - and a man who wants a wife with only one leg. These, and many other peculiar and occasionally hilarious demands of the clients and notes by the interviewers, fill several pages of appendices at the end of the book.
 
A few working-class types did venture into the elite preserve of Bond Street in an effort to find partners, but on the whole there is a preponderance of certain types from the upper middle classes, retired brigadiers and daughters of peers, gay (in the old-fashioned sense) divorcees, trembling virgins, bumbling chaps from the colonies, twerps called Cedric and frumpy spinsters called Myrtle. Some of the owners and secretaries who worked at the bureau were quirky as well and apparently there really was a woman called Picot Schooling. The loneliness, desperation and tragedies at the heart of some of these personal lives are glossed over and the result is lightweight rather than insightful or philosophical.
 
If you love all those rather twee British TV series such as “Call the Midwife”, “Father Brown” or “Home Fires” then this book is definitely for you. Must admit I did enjoy its nostalgia and look forward to another wallow when the Bond Street Bureau comes to our screens - as it surely must!
 
Perhaps not quite four toodle pips, but a jolly spiffing three.

Note: This book has the more pragmatic title of The Marriage Bureau in the US, I guess with the assumption Americans are unaware of the prestige of a Bond Street address.


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Two boys yabbying find a screwed-down wheelie bin in a river. We don’t know what’s in it, but as this is a crime thriller we might guess.
 
Flashback to 1989 and two other boys, Ben and Fab, are best mates. They have the usual interests of boys hovering on puberty - TV, music, sports, girls and sex. They’re curious as to why 14 year old Daisy hung herself off the Hills hoist in a neighbour’s yard. When her parents move out, a single man, Ronnie, moves in. Ben starts doing a few chores for him for pocket money. Fab has a rough path having to deal with violence at the hands of his father at home and from other boys at school.
 
The creepy Ronnie has paedophile written all over him, with Ben looking like his preferred victim. Fab has an inner pressure-cooker steaming away because of the way he is being treated by others. One can see where this is going but it takes a long time to get there without any surprises or unexpected twists, except perhaps in the final court scene. In the beginning the dialogue is typical kids’ talk with relevant c. 1980s references, but the time-frame gets less clear as the novel progresses and jumps around. Although there are some descriptions of pornography, we are spared most of the graphic detail in the pivotal scenes and towards the end too much is left unsaid or just doesn’t quite gel somehow.
 
For me this would have worked much better if there was greater exploration of the psychological trauma suffered by the two boys with perhaps the introduction of a character who was prepared to help them at some point or who was brought in to support the legal case.
 
I have to admit I only decided to read this because I’d just been on a road trip through the same landscape of the Wimmera passing through towns like Stawell where the characters in this book live. One of the blurbs says this "perfectly captures life in small-town Australia" which is unlikely to please the residents of Stawell who probably much prefer their association with healthier pursuits like running [see Stawell Gift]. On the other hand, if the novel gains any notoriety it may be the town will become part of the macabre tourist route based on the growing “Aussie-noir” crime genre. 
 
Three stars.
 
 
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It was while sitting in a waiting room with a family member currently going through “some tests” that I read a publicity piece about this novel. I wasn’t sure if it was an unsettling form of serendipity but I ordered it from my local library anyway.
 
Beth Own is an ordinary woman who is just living a normal family life in Melbourne. She has a job in aged care, an accountant husband David and two children. One day she wakes up feeling vaguely unwell and David calls in a locum who sends her off for some tests.
 
The first part of the novel seems almost conventional with Beth being seen, tested and then referred to another specialist, then another and yet another. Then the pace picks up with squeezed-in appointments all over the place. Without transport of her own and a husband too busy to accompany her, she must travel on trains and buses and the destinations move from the strips of city medical centres at Box Hill further and further away to bleak industrial areas on the edges of farmland and soulless new suburbia near Epping. She has to stay overnight in one clinic and is given new clothes with yet another destination the following day, including to a massive pharmacy complex. Along her journey she encounters others clutching referrals for further tests, all set on similar but criss-crossing routes. In the process Beth becomes more compliant in her dislocation from her family and not getting any direct answers and just lets those in charge direct her.
 
It is soon apparent that this novel is a fantastical exploration of the road many of us now take towards our own ends, an allegory on the extensive medical interference, false optimism and denial that goes on and the hope that science will provide some test that might save us from the inevitable.
 
Bleak, bizarre, fantastical - but with occasional flashes of dark humour - this is not a novel I’d recommend to anyone currently going through serious “tests” for any reason, but it is memorable if only to warn us that unless we get a direct passage home via a bolt from the blue, this reflects the route the majority of us are likely to take.
 
(Follow this link for an interview with the author.)


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It is 1893 and Evelyn Ballantyre, who has had a restricted life growing up in the Scottish Borders, accompanies her wealthy father and a group of friends to Canada and on an expedition up the Nipigon River.
 
Evelyn is shocked when she discovers that their guide is James Douglas, who had been her friend when he worked for her father as a stable hand and who had vanished after the murder of a poacher. Evelyn always believed in his innocence and that her father has never told the truth about the event. Isolated in the wilds of Ontario and without the constraints of mannered society, the secret of what happened that night is finally revealed.
 
Initially, everything about this book captured me:- the lyrical title, atmospheric cover (Australian version) and plot summary. (It also helped that I grew up on tales of the Nipigon told by my father who had worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company in that area in the 1920s.) With so much going for it I anticipated a rewarding reading experience but most disappointed that this was not to be.

There are swathes of excellent writing here, including descriptions of Canada’s beautiful wild places and the burgeoning frontier towns like Port Arthur, but overall it is just too lethargic, let alone inspiring. Plus, whenever narrative lacks pace in a novel marketed as romantic adventure, including potentially boring subjects such as fishing and finance can just slow it down even more.

But the main issue is that I could not get sufficiently into the head of the vacuous Evelyn to even like her, let alone care about her, and the other characters, even the unjustly accused James, also seemed flat or elusive as well. To cap it off, there are also those annoying random flashbacks that are a particular bug-bear of mine and only work when the editing is tight. By mid-way, I started to skip read and the final mystery wasn’t all that surprising.

Much as I wanted to give it more I'm rather sad that, in all honesty, I can only give this three stars.

(With many thanks to Hachette Australia for the advance reading copy.)

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This slim volume by Eric Vuillard takes us on a very powerful journey in its scant 192 pages. Originally published in French and translated into English by Ann Jefferson, it packs an emotional punch that few lavish biographies or epic novels are able to do.
 
The narrative is pure quicksilver, hypnotic and shiny, slipping this way and that around the incontrovertible bluff of the greatest showman of all time, Buffalo Bill Cody, who created the mass spectacle to which thousands flocked in order to witness for themselves recent historical events in the Wild West. Woven throughout are fictional impressions of Cody’s private life, his spurious beginnings and carpetbagger associates, his womanising, even his town, Cody in Wyoming, and how he became consumed by his own legend and ultimately unable to distinguish truth from the showman’s lies.
 
There is equal force in the retelling of Sitting Bull’s relationship with Cody and how this stately Native American was reduced to being part of the freak sideshow for fifty bucks a week. Then there are the the cast of other  “injuns” who are jeered at, insulted and made to recreate their own massacre every night, only to rise and fight and die again the next day, and the next. Most of them are now forgotten and lost to history, like stunt rider Feather Man who had a fall in Marseilles and died in agony, “all alone on the other side of the world, unable to speak either French or English” with no-one to claim his body and whose remains were eventually discarded in a communal grave. The disturbing tale of Zintkala Nuni (Lost Girl), the infant survivor of Wounded Knee, is especially poignant in how she fell victim to good intentions, transient curiosity and ultimate degradation at the hands of white men.
 
Real history and imagination mix so well here, that it is difficult to slot this book into a specific genre but its impact is in its poetic prose and its brevity. Even the busiest reader can find the time for this rewarding work on how the tragedy of show business is a spectacle that ".... steals from us, and lies to us, and intoxicates us, and gives us the world in every shape and form. And sometimes, the stage seems to exist more than the world, it is more present that our own lives, more moving and more persuasive than reality, more terrifying than our nightmares.”

Five stars.

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(With many thanks to Edelweiss for the advance reading copy.)

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(For more examples of the fine writing in this book, an edited extract can be found here on The Independent book review site.)

It’s 1940 and most of the men in the village of Chilbury have gone to war and so the local choir will be disbanded, but not if music teacher Prim Trent has anything to do with it and she persuades the vicar to let a group of ladies carry on.
 
The choir is almost secondary to the various subterfuges and romances of the local residents, some of whom are up to no good while others hide their lights under bushels. Told in the form of letters, diaries or journals it has a mix of humour and seriousness. As with so many novels written from many viewpoints or in an epistolary style there are always some passages that work better than others, plus the inevitable credibility problems with swathes of description and fictional dialogue in letters that would never normally appear in such writing.
 
The dodgy midwife Edwina’s absurd baby-plotting antics in particular feel like part of a comedic “Agatha Raisin” cosy-crime plot while the journal entries of the lonely widowed Mrs Tilling, whose only son has gone to war, offer a much deeper and reflective style. The two sisters, Kitty and Venetia, are inconsistent. Kitty has adult perceptions that the average thirteen-year-old girl in 1940 was unlikely to have and the flighty Venetia’s transformation from irresponsibility and flirtatiousness to a more serious mien in a matter of days is implausible. Other characters are clichéd fare so often found in twee novels set in English counties such as a mysterious Cary Grant look-a-alike, the upper-class Mrs B who finds fault with everything yet becomes a stalwart, the rigid and sadistic Brigadier, the sneaky maid Elsie, plus a range of young “hooray Henry” chaps off to war (including one called Henry). The major tragedy that hits the village is another contrivance to ensure that certain characters are eliminated in order that all ends well for others.
 
The earlier cover with its genuine 1940s flavour is what drew me to this book initially whereas the second version is trendy and perhaps more fitting for a book about World War II written from a modern viewpoint.
 
If you don’t worry about flaws and just want an enjoyable read, then this will fit the bill. 3.5 stars.

Just when I’d decided I couldn’t face another World War I story for quite some time, this title and lovely impressionistic cover caught my eye and also the fact it is a translation. I thought perhaps here is a point of view that differs from so many WW1 novels written by English authors who tend to have similar voices because of their educations or backgrounds.
 
Written by Flemish poet and novelist Stefan Hertmans, with translation by David McKay, this is based on some notebooks written by Hertmans’ grandfather, Urbain Martien, shortly before he died in 1981. (This New York Times review gives the best summary.)
 
While it has passages of poetic beauty and tenderness deflecting off others packed with fiendish and grotesque horror, I do wonder how faithful this is to the notebooks themselves; how much is romanticised and intellectualised, how much is enhanced with splattered guts for those readers who prefer over-the-top-with-the-flag-boys fiction to introspection, art and philosophy? (If you aren’t already a vegetarian the descriptions of Urbain visiting a gelatine factory are enough to turn you into one.)
 
Urbain found his release from war, grief and disappointment in love through painting copies of masterpieces and portraiture, so somehow the excessive details of his war service don’t quite fit. It is a well-known truth that the majority of those who survived the trenches of World War I were silent or reserved about their actions and, even if they did share what they had been through, they would resort to macabre humour or allusion rather than describing squelching brains of comrades left on one’s boots. Perhaps rather than polishing and expanding the raw words of Urbain, there may have been greater honesty if the memoir had been lightly edited and left as written.
 
All this aside, I acknowledge that this is a magnificent piece of writing (evidence of a superb translation too), and it works best when the author’s own voice comes through as he wanders through the modern landscape trying to place it within the context of his grandfather’s past, such as in this passage where he is trying to visualise an ethereal nude girl who rose out of a lake and captured Urbain’s soul:

“ … but it can’t be done: the ring road, the buildings, the industrial sites, the fences, the streets, the railway, everything runs straight through it, as if an old songline had been ruptured by the brute force and mindlessness with which modern technology has flattened memories everywhere.”
 
And in the closing pages …
 
“… paradox was the constant in his life, as he was tossed back and forth between the soldier he had to be and the artist he’d wished to become. War and turpentine. The tranquillity of his final years made it possible for him to slowly overcome his traumas.”
 
No matter how good your research and imagination are, if you weren’t there you can’t ever really know what it was like and first-hand accounts remain the best (as in All Quiet on the Western Front, Testament of Youth, A Farewell to Arms, etc.). There are echoes here of that reality but like some of the old masters that Urbain copied they are hidden under the varnish.

Four stars.

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Anthony Horowitz wrote one of my favourite TV series of all time, Foyle’s War, and he has also been responsible for quite a number of scripts for Midsomer Murders and Hercule Poirot, plus he’s written versions of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, books for children and young adults such as the Alex Rider spy series as well as stage plays and goodness knows what else. He has a fiendishly clever mind for plotting, so I knew even before I started Magpie Murders I would be in for a roller-coaster of a ride and this novel-within-a-novel didn’t disappoint me.
 
Without giving away too much of either plot, editor Susan Ryeland of Cloverleaf Books has the manuscript of the last title in a detective series written by the late Alan Conway, but its final two chapters - the ones who tell you whodunit - are missing. Why? And is there in any connection between Alan’s presumed death by suicide and what is contained in those missing chapters?
 
The Alan Conway manuscript carries all the traditional aspects of a 1950s Miss Marple or Poirot plot; a cute English village with its cricket and crumpets for tea and classic characters such as the over-bearing lord of the manor, an unfaithful wife and her dashing lover, the resident nosey-parker, a creepy gardener, dodgy antique dealer, wide-eyed ingénue in love, etc. Enter the foreign-born detective who will solve the case, Atticus Pund. It is absolute pastiche, absolutely fabulous.
 
Susan’s modern story contains lots of observations on the publishing world and even throws in real-life individuals such as Agatha Christie’s grandson into cameo roles. She discovers things about Alan Conway and his Atticus Pund series that even she as its editor hadn’t spotted: anagrams, word plays and cryptic codes. When she finally realises that Alan was murdered her own life will be in jeopardy when she discovers the truth.
 
This is a delicious book to be gobbled up in one manic extended session because if you leave it aside for any time you risk losing the momentum and forgetting who’s who or recalling some of the hidden clues that so cleverly juggle one story with the other. I must admit to not guessing the culprits in either of the two stories and that made it a terrific reading experience. Unlike Midsomer Murders on TV which has been known to get so slow and convoluted it can send me to sleep, this sparkling and clever tale kept me wide awake for many enjoyable hours.

Loved it. Five stars.
 
(With many thanks to Edelweiss for the opportunity to read a review copy.)

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Much of this tale takes place in the fictional Essex town of Aldwinter where many of the local yokels are terrified of a creature said to inhabit the Blackwater and is blamed for all manner of inexplicable disappearances or disasters both large and small.
 
Enter Cora Seaborne, a widow from London. Her interests in the creature are secondary to her enthusiasm for her new-found freedom from an oppressive marriage. Although not traditionally attractive many are captivated by her in spite of her big boots, messy hair and fascination with fossils and such. We are never really quite sure what she suffered at the hands of her late husband Michael or the exact nature of her relationship with her friend Martha, who is a progressive socialist of sorts. Cora’s only child, Francis, is obviously autistic or suffers from Asperger’s before either of those conditions had a name but sadly there doesn’t seem to be any real affection between mother and son.
 
There is also the simpering sick sweetness of the vicar’s wife Stella who becomes addicted to all things blue while her husband Will tussles with rescuing sheep and explaining religion and is also intent on axing a carving of the serpent from the pews that is probably an allegory on his growing desire for Cora. His rival, arrogant and “imp-ish” London doctor Luke is "cut" in more ways than one; by Cora and also a thug who puts an end to his surgical celebrity. Others include the Ambrose couple, all hale-and-hearty do-goody-ness, a legless beggar who quotes poetry, a girl with webbed fingers and another angelic child who smokes cigarettes, plus the creepily Gothic man Cracknell who skins moles, harbours earwigs up his sleeves and lives with two goats, Gog and Magog, in a moss-ridden house called World’s End.
 
Perhaps it’s a reaction to the brusque nature of much contemporary fiction or our modern sound-bite way of life, but there is a trend for some authors of recent historical novels to go to the opposite extreme and indulge in the long-winded intellectual styles of 19th Century literature with florid detailing of everything from fogs to furbelows. But like any intricate work of art, the individual characters within in it can get swamped by too powerful a background. For some reason it also feels oddly mid-Victorian and therefore old-fashioned within its own context which is post-1890.
 
The beautifully-designed cover displays abundance and sinuousness and the narrative certainly reflects those qualities. Like the mythical serpent of the title it meanders with symbolism and superstition only to slither off into the stinky Essex marshes leaving one wondering what the heck it was really all about …
 
Summary:-  a novel weighed down by its own brilliance. Three stars.

(With many thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC)

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Having recently read the excellent Behold the Dreamers, an immigrant novel with interesting characters facing the dead-end of their American dream, I had hoped for similar insight in this title from a Chinese-American perspective.
 
A brief summary of the plot:- the make-up empire of super wealthy businessman Charles Wang goes bust in the financial crisis, so he gathers together second trophy wife, Barbra, takes his kids Grace and Andrew out of school and college and together with elderly family retainer Ama drives an old car from California to the East where elder daughter Saina lives in the sticks after a crashing failure in her art career. Charles’ ultimate dream is to go back to his mythical ancestral lands in China.
 
Sounds as if it should be fun - and some passages do raise a chuckle - but the posturing is excessive with its acronyms and cool jargon, name- and brand-dropping, and the passages on the reasons for the financial crisis read like they were copied from incoherent second-rate economics theses found in Google searches. The demise of the first Mrs Wang was black humour turned into more of a disturbing grey.
 
Plus the Chinese dialogue that is left untranslated displays the arrogance of an author who is dismissive of her less-advantaged readers. I once went to a talk in Australia given by a famous Canadian author who repeatedly lapsed into French without explanation and which was clearly aimed at the educated high-brow contingent of her audience at the expense of us English-only ignoramuses who were left puzzled while the fawning elite gushed and clapped at her French in-jokes and reminiscences. Perhaps some idiot PR person had told her that all Australians interested in her books were members of Alliance Francaise, but the damage was done and I’ve never been inclined to read anything she's written since. So I’m afraid I feel the same about Jade Chang.
 
After persevering to the half-way mark, I was finally done in after the chapter on Saina’s career which is especially excruciating with its hip art chatter which might be clever if you are in the know about the New York art scene. At this point, I couldn’t care less if any of these unappealing poor rich people crashed and burned or found their Shangri La or not and I scanned my way to the end.  Two flickering stars for the occasional chuckles.

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Back in 1960 when I was on a summer holiday with my parents in the Cape Province of South Africa, I spotted a groovy, nattily-dressed young guy getting on a bus and my teen heart was all a flutter.
 
Only problem was as soon as I saw him take seat in the “Coloureds Only” section, I was shocked - not because he was “coloured” (he just looked tanned to me) - but because being a “white” girl I wasn’t allowed to be attracted to such a boy. Heaven forbid I should mention it out loud to anyone because you didn’t know who was listening and if I openly expressed an attraction to someone of mixed race, in my naivety I actually thought I might get sent to jail. Hard to believe these days, but that was how one was conditioned to think when visiting South Africa. Also, some years later in the early 1970s when I took a ship from Durban to Australia I made friends with a lovely couple from Nyasaland (now Malawi). He was white, she was black and they had three children. While transiting South Africa from Nyasaland by train, the husband had been forced to travel in "white" carriages and his wife and children were forced into the "black" carriages. In Durban, they had to stay in separate hotels and could have nothing to do with one another until they boarded the ship. 
 
Trevor Noah’s coming-of-age book brought back these memories for me. Although he was born in the 1980s when apartheid was wavering but still held its grip on the country, much of what he encountered growing up hadn’t changed. For a Xhosa woman to have relations with a white Swiss man was officially a crime. How Trevor’s independently-minded and slightly eccentric mother bravely negotiated her life with her son makes for moving and astonishing reading. That Trevor came out of it with the sense of humour and prodigious gift for satire that have now made him a successful and much loved entertainer is an even greater tribute to her.
 
Trevor’s unique situation, being neither Black nor White, and not even quite Coloured under the legal definition of those days, makes for sober but occasionally hilarious reading. His desperate tales of trying to get a girlfriend, or about the casting out of the demon and buying a toffee apple had me laughing out loud, but those about his mother’s troubled second relationship and what eventually happened to her nearly had me in tears.
 
In any memoir such as this, there is always going to be comedic exaggeration or poetic licence and there are quite a few gaping holes in his youthful career path apart from being a DJ and pirating and hustling CD’s, but possibly these will be filled in another future book.
 
Now that some places in the world are looking like reviving these despicable old prejudices and racial divides, we need to be reminded of what it was like to live under such systems and I can’t recommend this book highly enough for that reason.

​Four-and-a half stars.

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