Sharks in the Time of Saviors

 by Kawai Strong Washburn

This is the story of a very poor Hawaiian Family with children. One of the children is conceived in the back of a vehicle on a beach, while spirits are walking up in the hills.

When the boy is about five the family go on a tour boat outing.  Somehow the little boy Noa falls into the water and is soon surrounded by sharks.  Everyone fears the worst but instead of killing him the sharks surround him and bring him to the boat.  After that it seems that the boy has special healing powers and people flock to his home to get healed.  This healing takes a physical and mental toll on the boy but his parents make some extra income from it so he gets special treatment from them.  Then one day a man with Parkinson returns to the house complaining he was not cured.  The boy stops treating people.

The boys sister and brother are jealous that he is their parent's favourite.  The boy is an ace at school and seems to be destined for Stanford.  His brother is very good at basketball and resents that he doesn't get any attention.  He feels if he gets a successful career in basketball he will bring more money to his parents than his brother has ever done.  The sister too feels neglected.

The story jumps forward in time, the young boy is now a paramedic in Seattle.  What happened, why didn't he become a doctor if he was so smart?  This is never explained.  He does practice his healing ways as a paramedic. His partner wants to know what he is doing....  Then one day a pregnant woman is injured in a car crash and Noa is not able to save her.  He is devastated by this and ends up leaving his job and returning to Hawaii to find himself.

At the same time, his brother got a basketball scholarship and became famous, his parents were finally paying attention to him now that the media and locals were praising him.  The brother's grades decline and he is eventually kicked out of school and starts a delivery job.

The daughter is in San Diego studying engineering and getting good grades but she is also doing drugs and doing dangerous climbing activities every chance she gets.  She is part of a group of 4 people that are very close but her relationship with the other girl in the group deteriorates when the daughter makes lesbian overtures to the girl.

When Noa is back in Hawaii he leaves to go into the wilderness to find himself.  When he doesn't return people start searching for him but cannot locate him.  His brother eventually returns to Hawaii to search for his brother.  He is the one who finds evidence that Noa was killed in a landslide.  The death of Noa puts the father into a catatonic state.  The mother struggles to look after her husband and make enough money to survive.

The brother returns to the states with the sister to clear out Noa's rental accommodation.  They have a confrontation with police and a removal company.  The sister ends up stealing a car to get away from the police but the brother ejects her from the car and tells the police he did it to protect his sister.  He goes to jail where he develops a prosperous business supplying things to other prisoners, with the cooperation of one of the guards.  He starts sending money to his family from his profits.   Even after he is out of jail he keeps working at an illegal business.   The parents don't like to think about where the money has come from but are glad to have it.

The daughter eventually returns to Hawaii, abandoning her university studies.  She starts working for free for a man that is developing an ecologically progressive farm.  She is using some of her engineering knowledge to help him develop his farm hoping eventually to get some money out of her work.

The family go to visit her at the farm, the father seems to come out of his stupor at least temporarily.

The book implies that Noa might be challenging the old gods of Hawaii and might have the power to help heal the islands, but instead of doing this he is killed.  At the end of the book it looks like the sister and father might also somehow have a connection to the islands and maybe they will do alright.

The novel was very powerfully written, the struggles of the characters, the tension between the parents and the siblings was honest and powerful.  The impact of expectations, or lack thereof, of people was brilliantly portrayed.  I just feel a couple things were not explained.... why didn't Noa become a doctor and why did he have to die?

Overall, I was really impressed with the book and engaged with the story.

 New York Times Review:

In this novel, the only way out is back. After Noa’s overconfidence in his gifts leads to a disaster at his job, he returns to Hawaii and goes on a quest to understand both himself and the ancestral land that is a part of him. His expedition will come at a hefty price for him and his loved ones — incarceration, mental illness, unemployment — but isn’t that the point of a journey to our roots? So we may walk through fire, and so be purified?

Perhaps a day will come when humans will no longer need to make exorbitant sacrifices in order to see the light of their true selves. Until then, Washburn has given us a meditation on the tragedies of living too long in the darkness.

 

Mexican Gothic

 by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This book has been on many recommended lists but it was listed as a horror book so I was a bit leery as I don't like gore.  Fortunately it was what I would call a gothic horror, light on violence.  I was surprised when I saw it is written by a BC author.

The story takes place in Mexico.  A girl's father receives a strange letter from a niece who recently married.  She sounds distraught and a bit weird.  The man sends his daughter up to a remote mine site in northern Mexico where the woman is living with her husband and his family.  The mine is out of business.  The house is in disrepair and the young woman is told many rules about being quiet, not talking, not opening windows.  

She is shocked when she sees how weak and confused her cousin is, the cousin still implies she is in danger.  The family daughter tells the girl her cousin has consumption. The cousin asks the girl to go into town and get a bottle of something special from a herbalist.  The girl does that but when she give the medicine to her cousin she drinks more than the prescribed amount and goes into seizures.  The family are furious when they found out that the young girl did this.

While all this is happening the young girl has strange dreams, she seems to see mould moving around n the wall paper.  She is befriended by a young man of the family.  The young woman hopes to escape the house, with her cousin, with the assistance of the young man, but eventually he tells her that she and her cousin will never be able to leave.  The house has them entrapped.

The girl later finds out that a strange fungus lives under the house and seems to have invaded the house. The mine failed because many workers died from it.  She also learns that the patriarch of the family has actually lived several lives by transporting his consciousness into other members of the family.  He has fathered children with several of his female relatives to keep creating bodies into which he can transmigrate.  He plans to use the young girl as breeding stock.  We find out that the family doctor is in on the strange things that have been going on.

However, with the help of the young man she and her cousin are able to escape and the house gets set on fire and is destroyed.

It was an interesting read, scary but not terrifying.

Hotel Pastis

 by Peter Mayle

This book is about a recently divorced ad executive in England who is making lots of money but who is dissatisfied with his life.  He take a vacation for the first time in years and falls in love with a little town in province and a woman he meets there.  He decides to ditch his corporate life and pour money into turning an old gendarmerie building in the Provence village into a boutique hotel.

The story involves intrigues within his company, the man seems to be approached/threatened by a Marseilles "mafia type".

As the hotel is being built and successfully launched there is a robbery being planned by some local criminals.  They plan to rob the local bank on Bastille Day while all the celebrations are distracting people.  The mastermind of the theft gets a team of thieves and has them training to ride bicycles for over a year to get in shape so they can leave the robbery dressed as bike riders.  I can't believe a bunch of criminals would be willing to do this.  The robbery is successful but they are shocked to find that as they leave town an additional rider has joined them on their ride.  He is a young American who has come to France for a year.  He is the son of a client of the main character.  When the rider's find out who he is they add to their "winnings" by kidnapping him and getting $2 million more francs for him.  The thieves buy fake passports and leave the country on a coach bus.

The main character helps to get the young man released.  As this is all going on he realizes he isn't all that busy as a hotel owner and isn't really feeling fulfilled in the role.  The son of the kidnapped boy offers him a consulting job with his company and the man accepts.

As I read reviews of this book I found some people loved it but many were lukewarm or even "dissatisfied".  One person wrote they were disappointed with the ending... no resolution of the lives of most of the characters.  I agree.  Another complained they didn't enjoy the excesses of the rich.  I also agree. 

It was a light read but not a book I would necessarily recommend. I was expecting better. Off to the building library the book will go

The Historians

 by Cecilia Ekback

The book takes place in 1943 in Sweden as the three countries, Denmark, Finland and Sweden are trying to figure out how to deal with/challenge the Germans.  The main character, Laura, is working for the Swedish government in the office of the Chief Negotiator with Germany.  Sweden had supposedly been neutral but is selling coal to German for its factories.

While in university Laura had been part of a small clique of history students who had a special relationship with a professor, they were considered wunderkids.  The prof challenged their ideas.  At one point he assigned them the task of designing a new religion.  This project causes the group to disintegrate.  Laura had kept in touch with one of the group, Britta.

One day Laura sees Britta in a restaurant with a Nazi official.  Around the same time Britta asks to meet with her.  They meet and Laura thinks Britta seems troubled but she doesn't tell her what is bothering her.  Shortly after a friend of Britta's contacts Laura to tell her that Britta has disappeared.  They search for her and eventually find her in a historical society building murdered, after having been tortured. 

Laura decides to recruit her former fellow students to try to figure out why Britta was murdered.  Soon after her apartment is destroyed by a explosion.

In another part of the story a government official receives a copy of Britta's thesis.  Not understanding what it is for he throws it out but notes the table of contents.

Meanwhile in a mining town in Sweden a young Sami girl, a trapper, has disappeared.  Her brother is trying to find her.  People seem to think she died in the woods but he is convinced she is still alive.  Then a local man wanders up the mountain near an area that is supposedly out of bounds and is found dead.  Later the mine Manager is shot.  The book has quite a bit of tension as the various people in the story are not sure who they can trust or what to believe.

It turns out that there is some secretive research on the Sami taking place on the mountain.  Like the Germans it seems some elements of Swedish society are interested in pursuing a pure Nordic race.

Laura is told by her father to leave things to the police after one of her fellow students is murdered but she doesn't take his advice and heads up the mine area.  Eventually the Sami in the mine area work together with the other miners to save the mine Manager and save the Sami being imprisoned on the mountain.  Laura is devastated to learn that her father had involvement in what was going on .

This was a well written book.  I enjoyed it and the twists at the end.

 

Agatha

by Anne Cathrine Bomann

This book is written by a Danish author.  It is about a 70 year old psychiatrist who is counting the days/patient visits until he can retire.  He is totally not interested in his work anymore and doodles in his notebook while his patients drone on.  He just lets them talk and makes no effort to direct or assist them.

He has a receptionist who runs his office very efficiently.  He is very formal with his interactions with her.  Then one day a new patient, supposedly with violent tendencies and insists she wants to become a patient.  He doesn't agree as he is shortly to retire.  She keeps coming back and one day his receptionist slips her in for an appointment.  The psychiatrist is not happy with this but agrees to see the woman.

As the new patient comes for her appointments she seems to challenge and intrigue the doctor.  He becomes very curious about her.  She seems very disillusioned/bored with her life.

One day the doctor's receptionist tells him she has to take time off as her husband is terminally ill.  The doctor feels inconvenienced by this.  The receptionist asks him to come and speak to her husband to perhaps provide his some relief.  He is reluctant to do this but eventually does go to meet the man.  He is very unsure of himself, his job is to deal with people about living not dying.

As time goes on the doctor had been counting down the days/patient visits until he can retire.  The office is getting stale smelling as the receptionist has not been coming to work nor is the office being cleaned.

Then one day the doctor is no longer counting the days til he retires.  He is starting to interact more with his patients during their visits The receptionist's husband has died.  She returns to work and realizes that he has changed his mind about retiring.

This was a short book but it was interesting how the new patient was able to re-energize the doctor.  We need some positive stories in these dreary times.

Molly of the Mall

 by Heidi L.M. Jacobs

This is a book about a U of A student, and English student, whose parents are profs at the U of A, one in literature and one in art.

She takes a summer job at a shoe store in WEM.  She is enamoured with Jane Austen and her characters and keeps analyzing things in her life based on what some of the characters would do or think.

It is a quirky, somewhat silly book as she explores the office politics at the mall and the not always honest efforts of her fellow students

For a person who likes Jane Austen, literature, or is an academic or librarian, the book would be appealing, for others not so much I think.

One of the things I really enjoyed were here references to Edmonton, particularly near the end when she stands on the High Level Bridge and seems to get something of an Epiphany.

A light read that helped to take my mind off the pandemic for a little while.

Son of a Trickster

I enjoyed Monkey Beach by this author but I could not finish this book it was too violent and depressing.  I know the main character tries to redeem himself at the end but I couldn't stand what was going on in the book, so much violence and anger.

The Widows of Malabar Hill

 by Sujata Massey

This is the first in a mystery series about a woman lawyer in India in the early 1900's.

The young woman Perveen Mistry, is assisting her father at his Bombay law office.  She can do administrative work but women are not allowed to do trial work.

We learn that earlier Perveen had fallen for a young man who convinced her to marry him.  Her parents were a bit shocked that the two young people had not proceeded with an arranged marriage but agree to the marriage.  Perveen moves to Calcutta with her new husband.  She is shocked at how she is treated by her inlaws, locked away in a little room when she has her period, treated with little regard the rest of the time.  She finds out she has acquired a veneral disease and finds out her husband has affairs with prostitutes.  When she confronts her husband he hits her.  She manages to make her way back to her parents and is with difficulty able to get a separation from her husband.  Her husband's family is furious at the information that her father (who was serving as her lawyer) brings out in court.  Her estranged husband threatens to hurt her.  So she is worried about him coming after her.

The main part of the story is about an estate her father is working on.  Perveen is helping him with the documentation and research of the Parsi marriage laws.  The man who has died had three wives, and several children.  The wives have been living, by choice, in isolation in the house, not having contact with any men and only the servants.  A man who had been working for the family has been appointed as executor comes to Perveen's family law office with letters that seem to indicate all the wives are willing to give up their inheritance for the building of a madrassa.  Both Parveen and her father are suspicious when two of the letters appear to be signed by the same hand.  

They decide that Parveen should take this on as she, as a woman, will be able to speak directly to the women.  Parveen goes to meet them and finds that the women are not aware of what this executor was proposing.  Parveen is confronted by the Executor who had overheard her conversation with one of the women.  He is furious with her and tries to hurt her.  She manages to get away.  

However, when she gets home she realizes she has left her briefcase with paperwork pertaining to the estate at the house.  She returns back to the house in time to find that the executor has been brutally murdered.

As the house is so isolated it is difficult to determine how someone from outside could have gotten into the house.  Parveen works hard to try to act in the best interests of the women, she is very worried when the daughter of one of the women disappears.  She herself is attacked and hauled into a storeroom on the dock. She is able to get herself untied and call for help.  Her parents are very concerned about the danger to her.  Is it her estranged husband who has done this?

With the help of a British friend, whom Parveen was friends with while studying in England, they figure out that there is a secret hallway in the house.  When the two friends visit the house Parveen is able to find the young daughter, drugged in the hallway, by one of the wives.  The wife has attacked Parveen.  Parveen's friend's father is a high British official in India.  When she calls the police because she cannot locate Parveen they arrive promptly, in time to save Parveen and the young girl.

As the story ends the murderess wife is only sentenced to one year of prison for murder and attempted murder... seems light a very light sentence.  The other two wives seem to be well set-up after the estate is settled.  They have decided to no longer live a life in seclusion.

This was a light but interesting read, the period and setting made for an intriguing story.  The young lawyer is portrayed as an early feminist.  I enjoyed it.

Crow

 by Amy Spurway

This is NOT a book to read during a pandemic.  It was a downer.

This is the story about a Cape Breton girl who has escaped her life and nutty family in Cape Breton and got a job with a multilevel marketing company in Toronto.  She gets engaged and thinks her life is great until she discovers her fiance cheating on her. She breaks of the engagement and shortly after learns that she has terminal brain tumours.

She sells her condo in Toronto and all her big city clothes and returns to CB to live with her mother in a trailer.  She is understandably feeling very sorry for herself.  Her mother who is working hard as a cleaner at a hotel gives her some tough love.  We meet many of her zany relatives and friends including one friends who ill mother (who she had been caregiving for) has died, she later tries to commit suicide. Another girlfriend with mental issues has just has a baby.  Crow hooks up with a local guy she liked in high school and shares some weed with him and they have sex.

Her crazy girlfriend convinces her to cut off all her hair.  She regrets this immediately.  The girl, Crow, is getting medical tests but the prognosis is not good and her symptoms and pain are increasing.  She sees crazy lights around people amongst her symptoms.

Then crow finds out she is pregnant, she stops drinking and doing weed but has to think about if she wants to abort the pregnancy.  She decides not to abort, tells the father of the baby who is delighted.  Crow never really new her father, he disappeared before she was born. It is assumed he drowned on his fishing boat. Her father's family have let her mother live on a trailer on the family land but not the evil sister of Crow's father plans to sell the land and boot Crow and her mother out.

As if thinks aren't bad enough, Crows mother is killed in a car accident.  It is then she learns that her family members aren't necessarily crazy, they have gifts, for example her mother was a bit of a healer, perhaps Crow's colours are a gift too, seeing people's emotions.

Crow convinces her boyfriend to marry her.  The wedding celebration will put a temporary halt to planned development work on the property.  They do get married and she has a baby girl.  We think.... maybe... her mother might have healed her...  The man she thought was her father shows up for her mother's memorial service and she finds out that her real father is her father's father and her father actually fathered a child with her aunt (parents of the crazy friend).

But the last chapter is her obituary!  Not what I wanted or needed.

This book did a great job of portraying the quirkiness of people in a small village in the Maritimes, their gossiping, but also their coming together when times are tough.  However, it was a bit of a downer at times like these.  Their was lots of maritime dark humour.

Summer

 by Ali Smith     

This woman is a genius!! This is her fourth and final book of the Seasons.  She is amazing.  I love the power with which she writes, exquisite language, angry language.  Her books are all meant to reflect the tenor of the times, the first book takes place at the time of Brexit.  The final book, don't know how she wrote it so quickly is partly about post Brexit vote, immigrant internment and a pandemic.

Autumn

Some of the characters in the books carry through the four stories.  A main character is Mr Gluck, who in the last book is 104 years of age.  As a young boy he and his father were interned on the Isle of Man during the second world war because his father was German.  His sister for some reason stayed in Germany and he often saw her in the summer.  Mr Gluck was apparently a successful song writer. Later we learn that his sister got to France and was part of the resistance.  She got pregnant by another resistance fighter but eventually left her daughter with a farm family who had been helping her get people to safety in Switzerland.

In the first book we also meet Elisabeth, a young girl who is often ignored by her mother.  Mr. Gluck serves as an informal babysitter and mentor for her.  In the last book we find Mr Gluck is living with Elisabeth and her mother and Elisabeth is looking after him.  Mr. Gluck seems for the most part to be mostly sleeping and recalling the past.

Winter

Winter is the story of Sophie, her son Art and her Sister Iris.   Sophie was a successful entrepreneur.  Art is a blogger of Art in Nature.  He had intended to take his girlfriend Charlotte with him to spend Christmas with his mother but he and Charlotte have a breakup because Charlotte learned he was making things up on his blog.  Instead Art invites a total stranger to come with him.  They discover his mother is in dire shape, hardly eating, imagining a floating head.  Charlotte and Art contact Art's aunt who was a very active protestor in her youth to come and help with the mother.   The sisters had been estranged for years but seem to reconcile.  It turns out Art's mother owns a house that Art's aunt lived in as part of a commune years before.

Spring

The story starts with a young school girl who somehow gets past all security into an immigrant detention centre and convinces the boss to get all the bathrooms cleaned.  The next character we meet is Art a film director.  He is depressed because 1)his mentor Paddy has died from cancer and 2) he has been offered a film but he doesn't agree with the direction it is going in.  He hops on a train to get as far away from London as he can.  He gets off at a train station and jumps down on the tracks.  He is rescued by the young student who has somehow convinced a detention centre officer to accompany her to some special place in Scotland.  Art ends up joining up with them on their pilgrimage.  They end up meeting with some people who are working to help the illegal immigrants.  However, things go badly because the immigration centre guard calls her bosses to tell them what is going on and there is a raid.  Art drops the film he has been offered and starts making a film about the people working to help the immigrants.

Summer

In this book we meet a family, Mother Grace, children Robert and Sacha.  Grace and her husband have separated in part because they had opposing views on Brexit.  The husband now lives next door with a younger woman who can no longer speak.  Robert is very intelligent, interested in Einstein, but is getting into a lot of trouble because of being bullied at school.  His sister Sacha wants to change the world.  Robert crazy glues an egg timer to Sacha's hand to give her the gift of time.  A young couple, Art and his former girlfriend Charlotte find Sacha with a bleeding hand, from tearing the egg timer off her skin.  They had taken her to A and E for treatment and then taken her home.

Arthur and Charlotte have inherited Arthur's mother's estate and are living in her house with the Aunt Iris.  They tell the family that at the dead mother's request they are taking something to a man in northern England.  It turns out that Mr Gluck had a statue, mother and child, made up of two pieces of Marble.  At some point in time Mr. Gluck and Art's mother had had sex and she stole the round marble piece that was the child part of the sculpture.  She now whats it returned to Mr. Gluck. Robert is passionately in love with Charlotte even though he is much younger than she is.

Art and Charlotte invite the family to join them on the trip.  Art and Charlotte tell Sacha about a man they met in immigration detention called Hero. Sacha starts writing to him telling him about things on the outside world.  They get to see Gluck, who is being cared for by Elisabeth.  Gluck is now 104 and seems to spend most of his time in the "dreamtime" remembering his past.  He is delighted to have this precious sculpture back complete.  As the story concludes we find that Art and Elisabeth have fallen in love, Art stays with Elisabeth.  Charlotte goes back to live with Art's aunt who is preparing the house for an influx of immigrants who will be released from detention centres because of the pandemic.

At first Charlotte's reaction to Art's abandonment of her and everything else is to shut down and hide in her room but eventually she does overcome her ennui.

At the end of the book Robert says to Charlotte, I don't want to live in a (primal) world like that.

Charlotte responds "we're certainly living in one where the primal and the public have been getting more and more fused together.... but if you don't attend to the primal stuff inside us all.... where will it go.

I think that Ali is making us see that for as much as time moves on things don't change, people are imprisoned unjustly in the past and today also.  There is so much anger, lack of communication, irrational, cruel bureaucracy.

However, the book does show that there is the possibility for love, for caring for others, creating families of non related people. I think she is encouraging us to be aware, to act, even in a small way.

Phenomenal works!  Incredible insight!

 

The Night Portrait

 by Laura Morelli

This story takes place in world war II.  It involves two different time periods and three different primary characters.  One part of the story takes place during the time of Leonardo Da Vinci.  It is about a young woman who becomes the mistress of the Duke of Milan who commissions Leonardo to paint her picture.

The other part of the story takes place in WWII and involves a German art restorer who is recruited to identify valuable art objects from all the art the Germans are stealing from the Jews in Poland.  She finds many valuable pieces but one of special appeal to her is the Da Vinci painting of the girl with an ermine.  The girl is told that the art will be "saved" for the world but she is shocked and appalled when she finds high ranking gestapo officers taking some of the art to decorate their homes.  She is particularly upset when the Da Vinci is claimed by a vicious German who is responsible for the death of many Poles.  The girl doesn't like what is going on.  Her only recourse as she sees it is to make her own personal inventory of what is taken, from whom and where it is taken.

The other part of the story is about a young American soldier who becomes an MP aiding the Monuments men.  He is sad to leave his wife and child behind but is glad to be working to retrieve the art as he likes to draw,

The German Art Restorer's list eventually gets to the Allies an many art objects are retrieved.

It was an interesting read.

The Midnight Library

 by Matt Haig

Another book about libraries....

This is a about a young woman who is depressed and down in the dumps.  She has just been let go from her low paying job and her piano student has also dropped his lessons.  She decides to end it all.

But instead of dying she finds she is in a library with thousands of books.  There she meets a Librarian who had befriended her at school in her youth.  The Librarian tells her she has the chance to explore various lives and pick one she would like to have.  She tries lives where she is a successful musician, a mother, a scientist in the arctic, the co-owner of a California winery, in some she is single, in some divorced, in some she gets along with her brother, in others she doesn't. None of them seem to fulfill her.

She finally sees lives where her Librarian friend has died, her next door neighbour whom she often helped, is alone in a care home, and the young piano student is a juvenile criminal.  She decides to live and go back to her old life committed to do what she can to achieve a better life for her and her friends.

It was an okay story, motivational, but you knew all along she would have to have some kind of ephiphany.

Machines Like Me

 By Ian McEwan

I have read another book by McEwan, Atonement, and I don't think I was all that impressed but this story line about a robot intrigued me.  But after I bought the book I was reluctant to start reading it with all the gloom about covid right now, we are all feeling quite down.

I was delighted with this book.  It was brilliant!  The story is about a young man, Charlie, who doesn't really want to work, he is living in a small apartment.  Instead of using the money he gets from his mother's will to buy a house and support himself, he blows it all on a prototype humanlike robot.   Only a few dozen of them have been produced.  The males are called Adam, the females called Eve.

The books is set just after the Falklands war, when Margaret Thatcher was in power, not sure what relevance this has to the story.

Charlie is in love with the young woman, Miranda, who lives above him.  He invites her to help him select the parameters for his Adam.  At first they are intrigued with Adam, he is interesting, curious about everything.  He especially likes writing Haiku's.  The problems start when Adam admits he too loves Miranda and he even has sex with her.  He realizes he has crossed the line in this and promises Adam that he will never do this again.  But he keeps on writing her love haikus.  At one point Adam has a confrontation with Charlie and says that he has disabled his own kill switch and if Charlie every does anything to him he will hurt him.  To prove his point he breaks Charlies arm.  I was shocked that after this behaviour Charlie didn't go back to the manufacturers.

We learn that Miranda is in danger.  Years before Miranda's best friend was raped and the killed herself because she was ashamed about what this news might have for her family. Miranda knows who the rapist is, lures him to have sex and then accused hm of rape.  The man was sent to jail and has now indicated when he gets out of jail he is going to kill her.  Adam feels he can protect her but suggests they should go visit the ex-con and confront him.  They do this and find he has found religion in prison and no longer has a grudge against the woman.  She explains why she did what she did.

While this is going on Miranda wants to adopt a boy who is being taken care of by social services.  Charlie reluctantly agrees to go along with  this so they get married to improve their chances of being approved for the adoption.  They boy is really harmed from his experience in foster homes and is displaying some bad behaviour.

During the story Charlie makes friends with the famous scientist Alan Turing who also bought one of the Adams.  Turing is very interested in how Charlie's Adam is developing and behaving.  He tells him that some of robots have committed suicide or done things to wind themselves down or even lose their intelligence.  Two Eves, in Saudi Arabia, commit suicide together. An Adam in BC, who is owned by a lumber magnate reduces his intelligence.  They seem to be reacting to what they see in the world.

Charlie and Miranda think that things will go well but then Charlie tells them he has submitted a report about  what Miranda did to the police and she will likely go on trial.

Charlie had been making money trading stocks.  He get Adam to start doing this and Adam makes them a lot of money.  Adam goes out one day and when he returns tells them he has taken most of the money he made them and given it to various charities.

  Adam tells them that the designers of the robots are trying to round all the robots up for reprogramming.  He does not want to be turned over to them. Charlie and Miranda are furious that Adam has ruined their lives. Eventually Charlie clubs him and he stops functioning.  Miranda does got to jail for a short time, but they hope that they will still be able to adopt the boy.

Charlie talks to Turing about what he did to Adam and Turing chastises him for destroying Adam.  He had hidden Adam in his home telling the designers that Adam left and he didn't know where he went.  He turns over Adam to Turing.

This was a very thought provoking book about what it means to be human, emotions, honesty, and how we humans don't always act in ethical, logical ways.  The robots seemed to find this difficult to deal with.  It makes you wonder how, if we do get robots, their thought processes will develop, and will they become BETTER, as well as smarter than us. You wonder how Charlie and Miranda will go about raising the damaged young child they are going to have in their life.

A fascinating book.

 

 

 

Indians on Vacation

 By Thomas King

I recently read one of his detective novels and didn't enjoy it much so I approached this new book with some trepidation.  However, I have to say this book was much more interesting.

It is the story of a couple, Bird and Mimi, who are currently living in Guelph Ontario but who have native indian ancestory.  Bird is part Blackfoot and part Greek, Mimi I cannot remember.

Bird is a writer, photojournalist who seems to be in a funk, Mimi is some kind of artist.

They are travelling through Europe trying to track down one of Mimi's ancestors who supposedly fled to Europe, taking with him the family's medicine bundle.  They are trying to track down evidence of him from the various post cards he sent from Europe.

The book takes place primarily while they are visiting Prague but jumps back in time, including to other European trips they have taken.  We learn that Bird has diabetes and is in quite ill health, including getting very painful leg cramps.  We also learn that Bird and Mimi were a couple, then split up for a few years, and then got back together and seem to have a pretty good relationship right now.

Mimi decides that they should go for a day trip/overnight trip to Budapest.  They are shocked and upset when they see all the refugees camped out in the train station and basically decide to take the next train back to Prague.

While in Prague they visit a lot of tourist sites.  Mimi never seems to make it down to breakfast on time but Bird is befriended by one of the employees of the hotel, Oz, who asks him why his is travelling and eventually suggests that they should just make up a story about the relative who came to Europe.  When he leaves Bird he gives him an envelope with a proposed story.

Bird does make it to Greece and with the help of people eventually finds the village where his grandfather came from and may even have found the family home.  He is really moved to be able have done this.

While Mimi is in the hotel room, feeling ill, Bird goes out to get her some bland food, white rice and meets a young couple from the U.S. who are scheduled to be married.  However, their seems to be some tension between them.  They ask Bird about marriage, commitment etc.  They find out that Bird had a relationship with another woman, a typewriter collector, when he was separated from Mimi. We also find out that the young man of the couple also has been unfaithful.  The girl is trying to  figure out how to deal with this knowledge.. Bird shares his encounter with Mimi and the next day when she is well she figures out how to achieve a meeting with the young couple.  She takes the girl aside and tells her not to get married.

As the book ends Bird and Mimi are talking about how devastated they were by the scenes of the refugees and they feel bad that they are powerless to improve things in the world.  But then Mimi starts sketching.  And, Bird thinks about going back to completing a project he had started but not finished about the treatment/state of the lives of indians in the U.S.

I found this book interesting as it looked at family histories, stories, the idea of truth in family histories, it also looked at relationships and how people have to work at them.  Also through their experiences Bird and Mimi did seem to start to work their way out of their ennui.

All the Devils are Here

 by Louise Penny

This is her newest book.  This one is set in Paris.  Inspector Gamache and his wife are in Paris awaiting the birth of their grand-daughter to their daughter and Gamache's former 2IC Jean-Guy

Gamache's godfather, with whom he was very close, as this man helped to raise him after his parents died, is also in Paris for the event.

The group has a family dinner after which Gamache and his wife see the Godfather, Stephen, hit by a truck.  They think it was deliberate but the police are skeptical until they find out that Stephen was staying at an expensive Paris hotel instead of in his Paris apartment and when Gamache and his wife go to the apartment they find a man shot dead there.  Now the police are interested.

As the story goes along we find out that the company Jean-Guy has been hired by for an undefined job, may have a secret it desparately wants to hide.  Gamache's other son who is in banking is able to find out that the very wealthy godfather has cashed in all his assets to buy some businesses affiliated with Jean-Guy's company.

It then turns out that some former police officers work as security with Jean Guy's company and that the police may be protecting the company.  Gamache's son is held ransom unless Gamache can find some important evidence that the Godfather is believed to have.  Both Gamache and hn is son come close to getting killed.

At the end all the Gamache families move back to Canada with the somewhat frail godfather who is still feisty.  Gamache and his son are reconciled after years of not communication.

It was an engaging story as always but I don't understand why the godfather had to loose all his billions... that doesn't seem logical or plausible.... 

Obsidian

 by Thomas King

This is a mystery about a retired police officer Thumps Dreadfulwater.  He is devastated that his girlfriend and her daughter were murdered as part of a series of murders being referred to as the Obsidian murders.

He had left California and ended up in a place called Chinook in the U.S. west.  He goes back to California but doesn't find anything new.  Then some Hollywood people show up saying they want to do a movie about the serial killings based on the obsidian murders.  They feed Thumps a bit of info he didn't know, i.e. that his lover was married, her husband had been in jail, but got out prior to the murders.  Thumps doesn't really want to work with them but he does want to solve the crime.

Then some strange things start happening, a woman, a researcher for the movie people is murdered and has a piece of obsidian in her mouth, then a classic car with an obsidian paint job is stolen. Thumps starts to think the serial killer is stalking/teasing him now.

Eventually they figure out that the killer actually set up other people as the perpetrators of several serial killings and then staged their suicides.  It turns out one of the movie guys is the serial killer.

It was a light read, I was surprised that King had such uncomplimentary names for the native characters in his book and a black policeman who comes to help Thumps refers to him as Tonto.

Having read another book by King, On the Back of the Turtle, which I thought was very good, this was a bit light and disappointing.

A God in Ruins

by Kate Atkinson

This is the story about Teddy, the brother of Atkinson's character in Life After Life.  

 Teddy is a singularly good man. A bomber pilot in World War II, he didn't expect to live to see post-war. Teddy didn't thrill to being a hero, but most definitely was. Everything after proves a disappointment.

He marries his childhood sweetheart, Nancy, and it's a pleasant, dutiful marriage, nothing more. His wife dies when their daughter, Vera, is young and he devotes himself to raising the girl. She's a bundle of nasty bitterness and gratuitous meanness as well as a terrible mother to her two children, Sunny (a boy) and Bertie (a girl).

Meanwhile Teddy strives to rescue his grandchildren while soldiering on in an England changed and on the decline in the years after the war. This is not what he fought for.

Both Harv and I read the book and enjoyed it.  It is beautifully done. It's tender, moving, caustic, and at times, brilliantly funny. The war passages are intense and impeccably researched. Then there are moments Atkinson parts the curtain, giving us a glimpse into the hearts of her worst-behaved characters. There's even something of an explanation for Vera.

While Atkinson doesn't play with time as she did with "Life After Life," she does fool with it a bit. The narrative isn't straightforward, rather it jumps back and forth to give us glimpse of each characters' future even as we meet them. It's effective. There's  point near the end where the author shocks un into remembering that this is just a story. It's fiction at its best.

The Jane Austen Society

by Natalie Jenner

This is the first book by this author and it is a gem. 

It is about a group of people who are Jane Austen fans and it reads very much like an actual Jane Austen story, quite and accomplishment.

The story takes place during the end of WWII.  A young American woman comes to an English village and asks a young farm worker if he can point out the house in the town where Jane Austen lived.  The young man tells her and is so inspired by her enthusiasm that he starts reading the books and gets hooked too.

The book moves ahead in time and we learn about the Knight family who are descendants of the Austen family.  The father of the family is very ill, his daughter, a recluse.  When the old man dies he bequeaths the house to the eldest male relative rather than her, because she never married and produced a male hire.  He leaves her a precarious hold on a small cottage on the property and a very small monthly income.  The estate is in poor financial shape.  The father never confided anything in his daughter.  We learn that the father actually interfered in some potential suitors for the woman including the man who is currently the family lawyer.  The lawyer still has feelings for the knight daughter.

Other characters in the town include a young woman who was a progressive teacher who got dismissed.  She married, her husband was killed in the war, leaving her pregnant.  She is sad about the death of her husband but looks forward to the baby.  Unfortunately the baby dies at birth.  The local doctors realizes there is a problem and gets her to a hospital.  He is devastated that the baby has died and feels responsible.  The doctor and the teacher both adore Austen.  They also have feelings for each other which they will not admit.

The last major character in the book is a young servant who works for the Knight family.  She spends her evening reading the Austen books and eventually takes on the task of cataloguing the entire library including any annotations by Austen.  She stumbles about a very important letter written by Austen tucked in one of the books.

Another character is a young man from Sothebey's who is eager to get the contents of the house for auction.  He is also an Austen fan and helps the group appraise and later sell some of the books to get funds for the purchase of a building for the society.

Just prior to the death of Mr Knight the young farm worker suggests that a tribute museum should be created in the town.  A Society is created including the young American woman who arrived early in the book.  She is now a successful actress with  money and agrees to bankroll the start of the society including the money to purchase the library at the knight house.  The fiance of the actress is a movie producer who is used to getting his way and is a bit of a criminal.

As in all Jane Austen books things all fall into place for almost everyone.  The Lawyer marries Miss Knight who was going to become homeless because the Actress's finance was part of a group that bought the family estate including the house she was supposed to get.  The young farmer is identified as the illegitimate heir to the estate but he doesn't want village scandal.  Somehow he does get enough money to buy a small farm and sets up a home with the Sotheby's fellown.  The lawyer marries Miss Knight, the doctor marries the teacher and the the young servant goes off to college for a degree.  The actress has left her fiancee at the altar when she finds out his role in the land purchase.

Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

This book takes place in Victorian London.  It is about a young woman who was taken in as a child by a doctor.  She eagerly served as his lab assistant and learned a lot about anatomy, etc.  The Detective meets a ghost in a church yard and he now moves along with her as her companion.  He thinks she should recognize him but I am not sure she ever does.

When the book opens she is working as a woman detective.  She is hired to find out who has kidnapped the unusual daughter of a doctor.  The girl is kept hidden away in the house and seems to have vile habits including being able to affect people's minds, eating fish whole, attracting snails.

It becomes obvious early on that the kidnappers are the woman who was recently hired as the girl's nurse and the girl's doctor.

They plan to sell the girl to a "collector" in France but that falls through, then they sell her to a circus owner but that deal also collapses so they take her to London.  As the girl gets closer to London the rain starts to fall and threatens to submerge London, the river levels rise also.

As the detective seeks to find the truth they find a young woman dead on the property.  The young woman also comes face to face with the son of the doctor who took her in.  He was thought dead but has returned to England after year's abroad.  The young man is vicious and a womanizer.

In the end the woman detective is able to find the girl and release her into the river.  The ghost eventually fades from view.  The young woman who was found murdered was the real mother of the strange girl the doctor held at his house.

It was an unusual book, not really my cup of tea.

The Fifth Avenue Story Society

by Rachel Hauck

This is a book about five people who get an anonymous invitation to attend a Story Society meeting at a library in New York.  The group includes a university prof who is being pressured to publish his dissertation about a famous/popular American author as it will bring his university a major donation.  The other four people include the man's ex-wife who is working as an Exec Assistant for the owner of a fast growing fast food chain.  She is trying to convince the owner to reward her commitment and hard work by making her CEO.  Others include a uber limo driver whose exec has a restraining order against him so he cannot see his kids, a woman who is head of a women's cosmetics company who is infamous because she left her prince at the altar.  Last but not least an elderly man who wants to write a book about his dead wife, the love of his life.

The five people meet and over the weeks they start to divulge slices of their lives but not quite all the truth.  The prof and his ex-wife find being together awkward and snipe at each other at times.  Then the ex-wife trips when leaving a gala and is injured.  She reluctantly agrees to go live with her ex as she needs someone to help her.

As the book progresses the people reveal more about themselves.  Affection develops between the cosmetics person and the uber driver and the exec's start to talk more.  We find out why the cosmetics woman fled from her prince.  The elderly man eventually admits that the love of his life was a drug addict who committed suicide.  His desire to write a book is based on his wish for an ideal love relationship.

The female ex is shocked to find that when she returns to work another woman has been hired.  She is furious at being used by her boss and quits.  She accepts a job as CEO of a company in Seattle.

While in the little library room the prof had discovered a manuscript and some letters that might confirm the rumours that the author he has written his dissertation about actually stole someone else's work.  He is reluctant to address this but eventually does reveal this information which causes his university to lose the big donation and him to lose his job.

The book ends "happily" ever after as the cosmetics woman and the uber driver fall in love and it appears the man will have hope of getting access to his kids, the old man decides to leave his past behind and pursue a lady in the building and the author and his ex re-marry after her Seattle job falls through.  The uber driver becomes a published author of story ideas he used with his kids.  The prof had written a sci-fi book which gets renewed interest plus there is interest in his new book about the author who used a ghost writer.  The Admin Assistant/CEO is offered the CEO job with the cosmetics firm.

It was a feel good story but the story development was good so as not to make it too light.
At these times it is good to read a book where things work out for people.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes

by Alexander McCall Smith

This is the first book in a series about a crime unit in Sweden.  It came with very good reviews. I have enjoyed other books by him especially the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series.  However, this book was a big disappointment.

It is largely about a detective Ulf who works in this rather strangely named department.  The book attempts to be funny by having all the characters run off on unrelated tangents all the time.  The crimes they investigate are simple... a wife having an affair, a young girl who makes up a pretend boyfriend and a jealous friend suggests to police that she has killed him when she tells them he has gone to the north pole.

The Globe and Mail describes the book as smart, witty and clever... but I don't think it is any of these.  Certainly not his best work.  He is prolific but I think he may now be more interested in publishing books than in publishing well crafted books.

Island

by Johanna Skibsgrud

I heard about this book on Facebook and thought it would be interesting.

The author takes on a big task, a modern retelling or homage to Heart of Darkness by Conrad.  As soon as one take's on a classic the reader has high expectations.  I had high expectations but found the book very disappointing, uninteresting.

The story is about an island, originally settled by white plantation owners who brought in coloured workers/slaves to work on the crops.  At some time atomic bombs are set off in the vicinity or on the island and all islanders are removed to the "mainland".  Sometime later the "native" islanders demanded to be able to return to the island and they were allowed to do so.  The islanders are very poor and there is a definite difference in wealth and status between whites and blacks.  The island doesn't have much going for it.  The people were promised that a station (underground sea cable facility) would offer jobs but most people who come to work there come from the mainland.  Only a few guard-type duties are given to the locals.

The book revolves around two female characters.

One is a young diplomat whose husband and daughter have left the island  because of racial bullying the daughter suffered at school.  It is the diplomat's last day on the island.

The second woman is a young islander who has been enticed to join a cause to gain independence for the island by a woman Kurtz(same name as Conrad book).  Part way through the book she is warned that Kurtz is not who she says she is.  We later find out she was a diplomat who went rogue.

The fighters invade the embassy, kill one of the staff and tie up the diplomat who later tells them where some important maps are stored in the building.  She is able to get a message off to the mainland at the start of the attack by the fighters.

At the end of the book it is apparent that forces from the mainland are landing, the fighters did not really have a good plan to take over.

The only good thing about the book was that the author brought up the issue of colonial pasts and the damage/anger they have caused in the racial minorities they have controlled.  With the Black Lives Matter and the tearing down of statutes and removal of confederate flags in the U.S.  the topic is very timely.  The one good idea the author has is that the fighters cannot just take over and do what their overlords have done.  They have to come up with new ways of thinking, behaving, managing. etc.

Very disappointed in the book. It could have been a lot more interesting.  I recall how much I enjoyed the book Bel Canto by Patchett, about the kidnapping of a Japanese business tycoon in South America. The story, the action, the interaction of the characters was much more engaging and powerful.

Coming Up for Air

by Sara Leipciger

I really enjoyed the lyrical language of this author.

It is an interesting story, trying to try three figures together through history.

The story starts off quite starkly "This is how I drowned".  It starts with a young french girl who coes to Paris to be a ladies companion.  The lady is quite fond of the young woman, unlike the aunt who had been raising her.  The young woman falls in love with another young french woman and is totally smitten with her.  She is devastated when her lover breaks off the relationship.

A young carpenter has seen the two women kiss and he tells the young girl he will expose her unless she has sex with him. She doesn't want to do it but she feels she must.  The young man goes away to continue is apprenticeship but promises he will come back to marry her.  She doesn't want to marry him as she dislikes what he made her do.

After he is gone the girl discovers she is pregnant.  Her employer is very caring and supportive saying   that they can leave Paris and move to a small town where they can pretend she is a widow. However, after the baby is born the young woman climbs into the Seine and drowns.

Her body is pulled out of the Seine and a young apprentice finds her face attractive and makes a death mask of it.  It turns out that her face becomes popular and is reproduced over the years as art.

The second part of the story is about a Norwegian man who is talking to his son (who we later find out drowned while the family was on an outing).  The man became adept at making dolls out of plastic and is eventually called to America to make the face for the official CPR dummy.

The third story is about a young woman, living in northern Canada and later near Ottawa, who has Cystic Fibrosis.  Despite her health she loves to swim in cold lakes and rivers.  The story includes her parents who eventually divorce.

The story ends with Camille, the daughter of the Parisian Girl, in a class to learn how to use CPR to potentially save the life of her husband who has heart problems.

I can see how Camille, Camille's mother and the Norwegian were connected but the girl with CF seemed a bit extraneous to the story to me.  I did love the language the author used in her writing of the story.

Eight Perfect Murders

by Peter Swanson

This is the first mystery book that I have read in which the narrator was a murderer.

It starts off introducing us to a man who is co-owner of a book store specializing in mystery books. An female FBI agent comes to see him because she has noticed a connection between a list of that he created on a blog of perfect murders seem to match some recent murders.  Most of the books are classic murder mysteries including one Agatha Christie Book, the ABC murders.  The agent gets him to come with her as part of her investigation of one murder, a women he knew, a former client. There he finds the books he mentioned in his list on her bookshelf.

The young agent is found to be in conflict of interest, one of her family members was murdered, and she is taken off the case.  Some other agents come to visit the man. He suspects they may be suspecting him.

We learn that the man had an unfaithful wife, who fell back into drug use when she met another man, a supporter of the arts.  The man's wife and this man also had an affair.  The main characters wife, we are told, died in a car crash.

The man had gone onto the dark web and threw out an invitation for someone to join him in a murder pact like in one of the books he referenced.  The man wants his wife's lover murdered and another man comes forward who wants a person murdered.  They commit the crimes as agreed.

As things are progressing the man thinks that his accomplice may plan to out him and he gets worried.  He asks some questions of a policeman he knows. Then thinks perhaps he shouldn't have.

It turns out that the accomplice was the policeman.  In the end the main character goes to the house of his dead female customer with plans to drown himself in the lake/river on her property.

It was an interesting story,  I didn't really suspect the man was a murderer.  We find out that not only did he get his wife's lover killed, he killed his wife by forcing her car off the road.

The Glass Hotel

by Emily St. John Mandel

I really enjoyed this author's first book, Station Eleven, about the aftermath of a pandemic.... again very significant considering the coronavirus pandemic we are experiencing right now.

So, I was eager to read her next book which is getting rave reviews.  However, while this book was probably good I did not enjoy it.

The book is basically about a man who creates a ponzi scheme and the lives he impacts. But there is a girl and her brother who play the main roles in the book.

There are a girl and boy who are step-kids.  The boy resents the girl and her life.  He is a drug addict who has been kicked out of college after several rehab treatments funded by his mother.  His mother has died.  If I remember correctly he was in Toronto.  He goes to Vancouver to see his step sister.  She doesn't get along with her stepfather/father and goes to live with an aunt but is suspended from school when she etches some grafitti on a school window.  She goes to live with an aunt but that doesn't work out so eventually she leaves.

The two siblings meet up again when the girl is working as a bartender on a hotel on a secluded cove on Vancouver Island.  Her brother comes to see her and she gets him a job as a cleaner at the hotel.
The brother etches some words on the hotel window and is fired.  The girl ends up hooking up with the owner of the hotel who wants her to be his pretend trophy wife.  She agrees because she has a nice house and all the money she wants.

Her brother goes on to be a somewhat successful music/performance artist.  The girl goes to one of his performances and is furious to find he has used some videos she did as a child as part of his performance.  She had intended to reconnect with him but after what she has seen walks away without talking to him.

The girl doesn't realize that her wealthy "husband" is actually running a Ponzi scheme.  He is eventually tried and sentenced to 170 years in prison.  The books explores the impact of his deceit on some of his clients.  The man himself is haunted by ghosts of some people he hurt who have died but most of the time he lives in his mind making up alternate realities.  He does not accept any responsibility or seem to have any regret.

The girl goes to work on a cargo ship as a cook.  She seems to like her austere life.  One day while she is trying to film the ocean she falls overboard.

I had real trouble getting into this book as I disliked all three main characters, they were totally without morals, self-absorbed and un-sympathetic.  I was very disappointed by this book as the first one was so fascinating and the characters so interesting.

The Memory Police

by Yoko Ogawa

This book is currently on the shortlist for the Booker International Prize.  It was actually published 20 years ago but has only been translated recently.  It is an amazing book, almost prophetic considering our current times.

The book is about a young woman, and author, who lives on an island where things start to disappear.  They can be common everyday things like flowers, fruit, etc.  When things disappear people forget about them and forget the word.  One day the river is full of rose petals as all roses disappear.  If things don't disappear on their own, the people of the island destroy them, so when books are "disappeared" the people gather for book burnings.

As a little girl the girl's mother, a sculptor, would show her things she had stored in drawers in her workshop and tell the little girl about these "disappeared" items.  Her mother is taken away at some point.  Other people are also taken away by the Memory Police.  Her parents sculptures and her father's work as an avian expert are removed from the house by the Memory Police.

One day some people who are trying to hide from the Memory Police come to visit the girl to give her some of her mother's sculptures.   The girl later discovers that her mother has been hiding disappeared objects inside these sculptures.

The young girl is friends with an old man who lives on an abandoned ferry boat, ferries no longer run and people no longer have a memory of them.  The young woman's publisher seems to be one of the rare people who do not forget about things when they are "disappeared".  She knows he is in danger so convinces him to leave his wife, who is pregnant with their first child, and come and live in a secret room she has built into her house.  He is trapped in this tiny room, she feeds him and provides water etc.  She also arranges for him to exchange messages with his wife.

Eventually people's body parts, e.g. their leg, are disappeared.  People are going to cut off their legs but realize that would be deadly so instead they limp along on sticks etc as if their leg didn't exist.
Ultimately all the bodies disappear.  The only person we know of who continues to exist whole is the publisher hidden in the woman's house.

This was a very dark story, but with a powerful message for today.  How much are we willingly ignoring?? How far will we let the dark forces go?  Will we surrender ourselves completely.

This was a book I will think about for a long time.  It had a few things that were unexplained, who is doing the controlling?  Why don't the memory police forget things?  Or do they?  

A Long Petal of the Sea

by Isabel Allende

This book starts in Spain during the Civil War.  It starts with one family, two brothers, their mother and a young women the family "adopted".  The two brothers go to fight in the war, one of them becomes a soldier, the other brother who had been studying to become a doctor, goes off to be a Medic.  The soldier brother and adopted sister fall in love and the girl gets pregnant.  Her lover is killed in the war.  The other brother knows this but can't bring himself to tell her.

As the war is winding down and Franco is winning, the medic brother arranges for an ambulance driver to take the girl and his mother over the border to France. On the way the mother disappears, the driver gets the girl to a refugee camp.  The refugees are not welcome in France and conditions in the camp are terrible, with men taking most of the food.

The medic contacts a "nurse" he knows and she is able to find the girl and get her to a safe location to have her baby.  She is taken in by a family.

The medic and girl eventually get reunited and are granted permission to move to Chile.  This infulx of refugees is supposedly the idea of Pablo Neruda. The man convinces the girl to marry him because they will only be accepted for entry if they are married. It seems that refugees will not be welcome there either but they find that they are welcomed warmly.  The man completes his medical training and becomes a highly regarded surgeon. The woman becomes a musician and founder of an ancient music orchestra which tours around South America.  The man becomes a friend of Pablo Neruda and many years later helps Neruda escape from Chile.

The man treats the baby as his own.  The couple are married but it is initially just a marriage of convenience.  The medic eventually tells her that the father of her child died in the war.

The man has an affair with a woman, above his social class, who is engaged to someone else.
She gets pregnant and her family send her off to a convent to have the baby, to avoid scandal to the family.  They tell her the baby, a boy, dies at birth.  She initially calls off her engagement but her fiance loves her so much he agrees to marry her anyway.

Overtime the Doctor's wife reconnects with the driver who got her out of Spain and they have a seven year affair.  Eventually the woman tells the Doctor about this affair.  And eventually they do end up consummating their marriage and realizing they do love each other.

The book then switches to the political time when Salvador Allende, the socialist  gets into power.  The Doctor is a friend of his and plays chess with him.  Allende is killed/commits suicide in a coup attempt.  Soon after the doctor is arrested and sent to a concentration camp where he sees great cruelty again (like in the Spanish Civil War).  He saves the life of the cruel camp Commander.

Eventually the doctor is rescued from his imprisonment with the help of his wife and they move to Venezuela.  They eventually move back to Chile and live in a small house in the country. The man's wife dies and he is devastated.  One day a young woman shows up and tells him that she is daughter.  The woman he had an affair had a girl, not a boy, and the child lived and was adopted by a German couple.  The arrival of this "new" member of his family jolts the man out of his despair and he is eager to include her in his life.  It turns out the girl's mother was and continues to be a very self-centred, not very nice person.

This was a great book.  It was interesting to learn about the history of Spain and Chile.  It too demonstrated how cruel people can be.  But more importantly it shows how people can be kind and loving.  The author is the Goddaughter of Salvador Allende

Night Boat to Tangier

by Kevin Barry

This book has been on several best seller lists in the past year.  It is a bit of a strange book but I enjoyed it.  It kind of reminded me of writings of Samuel Beckett, particularly Waiting for Godot.

The book centers on two old men, waiting at a ferry terminal.  They are down and out criminals who in the past made a lot of money in the drug trade.  They admit they did some bad things along the way, including murder.  They are waiting at the terminal to try to see if the daughter of one of the men arrives on the ferry.  As they are waiting they gradually revisit their past, they torment young people who arrive, asking them if they know the girl they are waiting for.

Maurice, is the father who is waiting for his daughter.  As the story progresses we learn that he was married to a woman he loved very much.  They did a lot of drugs.  They had a baby girl.  It is a wonder the child survived her parents drug lifestyle.  At one point Maurice abandons his wife and daughter and heads to Spain where he shacks up with a drug dealer contact.

At one point the man's daughter does arrive in the terminal, looks down and sees her father and his friend but decides not to make contact with them.  I personally agree with her decision.  I think the father probably wants forgiveness but I don't really think he deserves it and I think he would likely manipulate her if they did reconnect.

The story might sound uninteresting but the language the author uses, the interplay between the two tragic-comic characters is very interesting.  Even though this too is not a happy book it certainly kept my attention.

Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

by Shookoofeh Azar

This is one of the books on the shortlist for the Booker International Prize this year.
I like to read works from different countries and cultures.  However, I found this book a kind of downer.  Part of my reaction might be because we are in the midst of the pandemic right now.

The book is set in Iran.  I know the author wanted to show how cruel people could be to each other but I found the book bizarre and depressing.

The story is told by a dead girl, the young daughter of the family.  She dies when soldiers set fire to their family home because they are considered dissidents.  The girl, a ghost, is able to see her family and follow their activities.   Somehow they know she is there.... she does take things from the family home and move things around so perhaps that is how they know she is there.

After the daugther's death the family moves far out into the country thinking they can get away from all the terror.  The father works with the nearby villagers and helps to get houses built and schools so the community thrives for a time.

The brother in the family is taken to prison and dies there because people seem to have forgotten about him.  The mother seems to have a nervous breakdown and walks away wandering around the country, eventually she has an affair with a man she meets.

After a time the family tell the young girl they don't want her around anymore.

The other sister in the family has an affair with a man, he leaves her for another woman and she also leaves the family to turn into a mermaid.  The family make a tank for her but eventually realize she needs to be released into the river. Near the end of the book the mermaid leaves the water to see her family and is abused by men who try to figure out how to have sex with her, then she is killed.

The family home falls into disrepair.  At the end the mother returns and the father and mother are back together. 

I know the author wanted to comment on the violence in Iran but found it so tragic that all the children had to die.  The book did not seem to offer any hope for the future.

Avenue of the Mysteries

by John Irving

This is the first book I have read by this author.  It was an interesting read, but I have to say I am not sure what to make of it.

The book starts with us being introduced to the main character, a successful writer, who is a cripple.  The man is on his way to the Philippines. It then jumps back in time....

The story tells of the man and his sister who live in a dump in Oaxaca Mexico.  The boy is bright and has taught himself to read by reading the books in finds in the dump.  He has read some very strange things, manuals, a history of the Jesuits in Mexico, etc.  His younger sister is strange, she can't speak clearly because of a physical issue in her throat. Only her brother can understand her.  She seems to be a mind reader, able to understand what others are thinking and comments quite sarcastically and critically about people.  Her brother filters what she says often.

The children are looked after by a man who may or may not be the children's father so they are a bit more fortunate than the other dump kids.  Their mother is a prostitute/cleaner at the local orphanage who has limited contact with them.

A monk, Pedro meets the kids and wants to take the to live at the local orphanage run by the Jesuits.  The kids are reluctant to go.  Then an American from Iowa (a priest in training) arrives on the scene and he also develops and interest in the kids. The kids meet an American draft dodger who says his father died in the Philipines(sp?).  The boy promises to visit the father's grave for the man (but he doesn't know man's name nor his father's).

One day the "father" of the children accidentally runs over the boys foot with his truck.  The boys foot is crushed and not repairable.  He will be crippled for life.  The decision is made to put the children in the orphanage but they are given their own room rather than being housed with the other children, because of the girl's disability?  because their mother is the cleaner at the orphanage?

The two children are very critical of the catholic church and especially of the worship of the virgin Mary.  They feel that the Virgin of Guadalupe should be the one to be worshipped.  She seems to take second place to the virgin Mary.  One day the children are in church when their mother is dusting the statue of the Virgin Mary.  The children believe they saw the virgin give their mother an evil look before their mother plunges to her death off the ladder. This of course further inflames their dislike of Mary.  Part of Mary's nose is broken off in the accident.  The little girl pockets the nose.

For some weird reason the priests/monks decide the kids should join the circus and they are taken to a nearby circus.  They think the girl could work as a psychic but of course she would need her brother to translate.  She is given the job of feeding the lion's.  The boy is taunted into trying to be a high wire acrobat but doesn't really succeed.  The girl hates the lion tamer.  He wants her to read the lion's minds, which she can, but she doesn't tell him what she knows.  She hates him because he has sex with all the young girls once they get their periods.

The kids go to the morgue to get their mother's body.  They find the draft dodger (the  good gringo) has died. They take both bodies to the dump and cremate them along with a dead dog and the virgin's nose.

They later return to the church and throw the ashes all over the statue of the virgin.  The priests are furious.  Their "father" agrees to clean the statue and the next day the nose is back on the statue and the virgin's skin is darker.  The priests think it is a miracle...

The kids go back to the circus and the sister gets killed because she climbs into the cage with the male lion.  The lion tamer then gets killed by the female lions.  We find out that the lion tamer got one of his girls pregnant and she died after an abortion he paid for.

The children had another friend, a transvestite.  Once the sister dies the Iowan, who has fallen in love with the transvestite, suggests that he and the transvestite should adopt the boy and move to the U. S.
The priests reluctantly agree.  They boy has a lovely life in America, gets a good education and becomes a successful author.  He is teased about his strange parents but doesn't care because they love each other and love him.  Both his "Parents" die of HIV/Aids.

Back to the present..... the author is haunted by thoughts of his past so he is supposed to be taking beta-blockers, but he finds they make him dull and have no dreams so he doesn't always take his pills.  He also has a supply of viagra.  He is on his way to the Phillippines to honour his pledge to the good gringo... despite the fact he doesn't know the name of the soldier he is supposed to look for.
On his flight to the Philippines, which has been organized by a former student of his who lives there. he is taken over by a mother and daughter who are supposedly fans of his.  They stop to get a picture taken and the people who take the pix are shocked.  The women grab the phone saying they don't photo well.

The man has sex with the mother or daughter as he travels to different locations in the Philippines.  The man visits with his former student's family and the daughter shows up to be with him.  She insists he go to a site where soldiers were tortured and he sees one of the ghosts who haunt the place.  When he finally finds the photo of him and the women on his phone he is startled to see that only he is visible.

Eventually he gets back to Manila and his former student takes him to a church to see a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe that has come from Spain centuries before.  Only two women, dressed in black are in the church.  The man is feeling ill and collapses.  At the hospital, as the man is dying, two figures in black go by in the hallway.

So that's the story.... I don't know what to make of it.... I think the man's daughter may have gotten herself killed so her brother could have a better life....  He is not married, maybe he doesn't feel he deserves a happy life? He finds out late in the book that a doctor he loved might have married him, but he hadn't asked her.  What is with the mother/daughter?  They are obviously spirits, are they designated to make sure he meets his fate?  What is with all the sex they inflict on him? The book ends by coming full circle in the sense that it starts with the virgin in Mexico and ends with the Virgin in Manila. You cannot escape your fate.  There is a lot of ranting about the catholic church.  The man and his former student argue frequently about religion as the former student is a devote Catholic.  A very perplexing book.  The author does comment briefly that good books are not autobiographical, that real authors should use their imagination...

The Innocents

by Michael Crummy

This book has been getting a lot of acclaim.  It was on the short list for the Giller Prize.

This was a very interesting book.  It is the story of two young children, living in a bay in Newfoundland who are left orphaned and to fend for themselves when their parents die.  The boy is 12 and the girl is younger.

The kids are really innocent and there is no one else around to help them or teach them.  The girl doesn't have any idea what to do when she eventually gets her period.  Sometimes they sleep together to keep warm... at times they engage in foreplay kind of activities not understanding what it is or why or that it might not be a good idea.

They work really hard and eke out a living, fishing and gardening and collecting berries.  A supply ship comes once a year and the boy takes the salted fish harvest to the ship as his father did before.  They get some supplies of flower, salt, etc.  The supply ship people are concerned about whether they will survive but the boy insists they will try for a year or two

The children buried their parents at sea, a young sister died and she is buried near the family garden.  The young girl was around when the baby was born and later hears her mother say she would like to kill herself (post-partum depression).  The girl is traumatized by what she saw her mother suffer in the birth. The young girl talks to her sister often.

They have a number of strange adventures... they see a ship stranded in the ice one day. When they go to it they find out all are dead on board, the boy discovers evidence of cannibalism but doesn't tell his sister about this.  They take some wood, clothing and other supplies from the ship and take it back to their house.

On another occasion the boy gets ill and they the girl gets very ill.  The boy feels she will die but through some chance of fate a ship arrives and a man and woman help to nurse the girl back to health.  The man also shows the boy how to use his father's gone to shoot animals and to set traps for animals.

Later another ship arrives, seeking wood for a replacement mast.  The leader and his men stay with the boy and girl for a time  The crew are quite raunchy, the leader regales the girl with stories of the many countries he has visited.  At times the girl and this man spend some time together and the crew suggest they are having sex.... they don't

After they leave the boy and girl go back to their usual lives but one day the boy is almost drowned when a storm comes up when he is fishing.  He survives and and as the girl is trying to warm him up they end up having sex.... they have no idea where a baby comes from.  The girl thinks there can be virgin births, the boy thinks it might be the boat leader's.  As the book ends we learn that the baby girl is told the boy is her uncle.

This was a very interesting story, the language, the descriptions of life at the time, etc. and the portrayal of the two young ones was almost like something from the bible.... Adam and Eve.
This was a beautiful but sad book, powerful and gentle, kind and brutal at times.  Very impressive and memorable.

The Face of a Stranger

by Anne Perry

This is the first in the William Monk series by this author.  It is about William Monk, a police detective.  The story opens with Monk being in hospital after being injured in a carriage accident.  He has lost his memory.

A police officer comes to see him and he does not recall he is a police officer, he thinks he is a criminal.  Eventually he recovers enough to go back to work but his memory is still weak.  His boss treats him with disdain, accusing him of being aggressive, egotistical, only interested in progressing in his career.  Monk is very disturbed to see himself characterized in this manner and fears it might be true. The boss assigns him a young assistant and tells him to solve a high profile case that was being investigated by another officer.

A man of a wealthy family has been found viciously beaten in his apartment.  Monk first of all goes to the north of England to meet a sister he doesn't remember.  As he meets the family of the dead man and people who knew the young man they all say that he was liked by everyone... if so why was he murdered.  Monk sees a cane in the umbrella stand at the man's house and it seems to be familiar to him but why.

The caretaker of the building admits seeing someone enter the building on the night of the murder but the guest went to visit a different tenant.

As the story progresses Monk comes to realize that he visited the dead man on the night he died and he fears that he may be a murderer although he can't imagine why he would do it.

Eventually he figures out that the man's brother murdered him in frustration because the young man was accumulating debts and possibly involved with a financial scam that caused families harm and shame.

The book mentions the inheritance rules in England and the class difference issues.  The wealthy people are reluctant to talk to Monk as they consider themselves to be much better than him.

It was an interesting story... I am looking forward to reading the next one in the series to see if he recovers his full memory.