No One is Talking About This

 by Patricia Lockwood

This book is one of the books on the Booker Prize Longlist this year.  It is about a woman who is addicted to Internet Social Media.  She is seen to be a guru and is invited to speak around the world.  The book portrays all the nonsense with mis-information in social media, the striving to get attention by controversial or even ridiculous posts. The woman ignores her husband.  At one point she agrees to have her phone locked in a mini-safe so she can't go online but she doesn't even last a day and begs her husband to unlock the safe.

About this point I was ready to give up on the book.... it is too much like real life right now and we don't need more crap on the Internet.

She is on a speaking tour when she gets a message from her mother that something is wrong with her pregnant sister's foetus.  She rushes home.  It turns out the baby has Elephant man disease.  There is discussion about aborting the fetus but is is a late stage pregnancy and the laws of the country would have dire consequences for the parents and doctors if this was done.  While doctor's understand why the parents may wish to do this they are eager to find out what happens with the baby if it survives.

The baby survives and the internet addict forgets about the internet.  She and all the family are in love with and engrossed in this beautiful, blind, deaf, deformed child.  They are excited to see her beautiful blue unseeing eyes grow bigger when they cuddle her or play music to her.  At one point it is proposed to sew her eyes shut... don't know why.  But when it comes time to do it the doctor says he can't won't do it... wouldn't do it if it was his child.  The main character has been taking numerous pictures and videos of the baby throughout its short life on her phone.

The child's days are numbered, they all know this but they spend as much time as they can with her until she eventually stops breathing.  

As the book ends the author has been speaking at a conference.  While she is speaking, she has really been thinking about her niece.... She is invited for a drink.  Then it says someone "lifts" her phone from her pocket.... and she feels lighter.... Not sure what this ending is supposed to mean.

This was a difficult book but the author really did a great job of switching from the internet addiction and the need for attention in the cyber-universe to the preciousness of an individual life.

She did a brilliant job.  I am glad I stuck with the book.

Thursday Murder Club

 by Richard Osman

This book is about a group of seniors in a Seniors Home who as a hobby practice trying to solve previously unsolved crimes.   One of the group is a former police officer who kept copies of some case files.  Other members of the group include a psychiatrist.

The group is merrily pursuing their various activities at the home but are intrigued when an actual murder occurs, the developer who built their seniors complex, and has expansion plans, is murdered, as is theman who was his second in command.  

The group had made contact with a police officer previously.  She had come to give them a presentation as a public service.  The group wants to be involved in solving the crime.  As they are not police officers they do not have to do everything by the book.  They manage to get their friend the police officer assigned to the team working the murder cases.

In several ways the group seems to be ahead of the police, but they also try to find out what the police know that they don't know.  They manage to find one of the people the police feel may be responsible before the police do.  Eventually they share their info with the police and the cases are solved.

The characters in this book are all characters, many of the people in the home have "back stories" which add to the colour of the story.

It was an entertaining read.  I am looking forward to the next book in the series which is being released next month.

Island Queen

 by Vanessa Riley

This is a fictional account of a real woman, Dorothy Kirwan Thomas.  Dolly as she liked to be called began her life as a slave, she was raped by her half-brother (son of her slave owner father).  The story tells of her life and loves, the many children she bore by several men including a prince of England.  He documents how she worked to become an entrepreneur, hiring out housekeepers, to raise money to free herself and her family members from slavery.  She succeeded at that and became a very wealthy and powerful woman in the caribbean.  Men seem to have been smitten by her.  She was lucky, she had many white men who were willing to work with her or for her to help her achieve her goals.  She faced a lot of hurdles trying to be a black business-woman.

She faced many hardships, her first lover kept the daughter she had by him, convincing her it was better to take the girl back to England to the family of him and his wife.  She never forgave him for this.  The book describes the history of slavery, the battles between England and France over some of the islands and a rebellion by the slaves on one island.  Her daughter and the daughter's husband were involved int his and Dolly had to get her to another island and change her name to save her from being tried or killed (her husband died in the fighting). Dolly eventually married one man, Mr. Thomas and they had several children together.  She loved him but couldn't really admit it and she always did what she wanted even if he advised against it.

The book then goes on to document her life building stores, and hotels, a plantation which got destroyed in the slave uprising.  She admitted that the girls she hired out as housekeepers often ended up having sex with her employers and eventually she had someone buy slaves for her to help her build her hotels and work on her plantation.  She justified this by saying she treated them better than the white "mastas" would have.  She was a very determined and complicated person.

The book was well researched and interesting.  I do feel that the book could have been shorter, a few of the details of the family lives and adventures could have been skipped.

Anne's Cradle: the Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka

 by Eri Muraoka

This book is about the Japanese translator of the Anne of Green Gables and other L.M. Montgomery books (16 of 21).

It is a fascinating story about an amazing woman.

Hanoka was one of the children of a poor tea merchant.  All the other children were sent into service of some kind but Hanoka's father, who had become a Christian, decided to send her to a girl's school run by Christian missionaries.  She was sent there at 10 years of age and lived in a dorm at the school.   Most of the students were of wealthy parents but somehow she got in on a scholarship.  Most of the missionaries were Canadian.

She was an eager student and especially liked to devour the English language books in the library.  She shrived in the school and while she longed to be a translator she started out by being a school teacher. At quite an advanced age for a young woman, she met and married her husband whose family ran a publishing company.  This was of course right up her alley.  However, an earthquake destroyed the printing business and the other brother who had been co-managing with it also died.  Hanako and her husband struggled to start up another publishing company.  In addition to earning money for her own family Hanoka also tried to support her family as well so money was tight.

She was committed to publishing books for children. She translated a lot of english language books such as Twain, Dickens and Buck.  She also became active in the Japanese suffragette movement.

When world war started the teachers at the school had to leave the country.  One of the teachers gave Hanako a well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables before she left.  Hanako and her husband's printing business was destroyed, by a bomb this time.  While the war raged on Hanako would take the copy of Anne of Green Gables and her translation notes with her every time she went to a shelter.  She knew that if she was caught with this book by the "enemy" she would face imprisonment or even death but she kept on.

After the war she tried to get the book published and finally in 1952 she was successful.  It was an instant success, exceeding the expectations of Hanako and the publisher.  She went on to translate more of Montgomery's books.  She never made it to PEI.  Eventually she was part of the group to convince the Americans who were "governing" Japan after the war that women should have the right to vote and they did get the right.

Hanako's house had a huge library, later in life she opened her private library to the neighbourhood children and eventually donated the collection to some institution.

An fascinating women who had an amazing life.  Like Anne she persevered through many difficulties, death of her son, loss of businesses, the war, etc.

In the Footsteps of the Group of Seven

 by Jim and Sue Waddington     

This book is a history of the Group of Seven with photos of the locations they painted with the paintings of the locations.

It was very interesting to see how they "interpreted" what they saw when they painted.

I hope to keep that in mind when I paint.

My Brilliant Friend

 by Elena Ferrante

This is the story of a young girl growing up in post war Italy near Naples.  As the book opens she gets a call from the son of her best friend who tells her his mother has disappeared.  All her clothing etc. are gone.  The woman isn't surprised by this development and tells him not to contact her again as she has no idea where his mother has gone.

The book is the first of a series of books which I assume will ultimately explain where the woman's friend, Lina, has gone.

The book follows the life of the girls as they become best friends.  Lina is a very intelligent but also very spunky, even aggressive girl who doesn't take guff from anyone.  The main character is enthralled with her best friend.  She relies on her friendship, thinks about her all the time, even when Lina is cruel to her.  There is a lot of conflict and violence within families and between young men trying to assert their manhood,  One man drove a widow crazy when he wooed her, when his wife forces them to leave the neighbourhood, the woan really loses it.

The book does and excellent job of portraying life, tragedies, scandals and gossip in the small town.  It shows the girls as they get interested in boys and vice versa.  Lina always seems to have to the need to show she is smartest, even when she is forced to leave school to work in her family shoe repair shop.

When she learns that the main character is taking Latin  , Lin a borrows books from the local library learns latin on her own.

Lina and her brother plan to develop a company making shoes, but don't tell their father.  Everyone, adults and especially young men seem enthralled with Lina.  One wealthy young man asks to marry her.  She says no but her parents welcome his attention.  They also accept his investment in their shoe company.  Lina finally accepts a proposal from a boy whose family own a grocery store.

While all this is happening the main character continues to go to school, but she starts to wonder what it will get her.  She is also hurt that her friend keeps getting all the attention, she feels ugly by comparison.

The book ends up being a little like a soap opera but it did a great job of portraying life in Italy, the coming of age of the girls, the family dynamics, the gap between the wealthy and the poor, the neighbourhood conflicts.

The book ends with Lina's wedding.  She is shocked to see her first suitor come to her reception wearing the first pair of shoes she and her brother made.  Did her husband sell them to this man?  We imagine Lina won't react well to this.

The story is now on Netflix.  I think I may continue to watch the series on Netflix rather than read three more books.

 

The Eighth Detective

 by Alex Pavesi

This is one of the most original mystery books I have ever read.  I really enjoyed it.

The story starts with a woman who is supposedly an Editor for a small mystery book publisher who wants to meet the author of a mystery book called the White Murders that was published 20 years before.  She says her company wants to publish the book.

The author is reclusive, living on a Greek Island.  He was a math prof who wrote a book about the mathematical elements of mystery stories. He asks the woman to read each of the stories aloud to him.  She does so.  One chapter will be the story, the next chapter will be their discussion of elements of the story.  I have to say each of the stories is quite unique.  It starts off with one victim and one murderer, a victim and several murderers, a story where the detective is actually the murderer... etc

The woman wants to know if the author named the book after a famous murder of a woman named White, which occurred around the time that the book was self-published.  The author denies any connection.

The lady points out some inconsistencies in the stories.  The author replies that he put these in to tease his readers.  As the stories go along the woman seems to be getting suspicious.  In the end we find out the woman is not really an Editor, she has come to see the author because she believes he was her father.  She became suspicious of the man she was speaking to and starts revising parts of the stories or the endings.  When he doesn't confront her about this she challenges him that he is not really the author.  The man then admits that he was the author's lover.  The author had been wearing the man's jacket when he was killed when the edge of a cliff collapsed under him.  The village assumed the author's lover had died which was fine with the lover as he took on the persona and continued to live of the pension of the author/mathematician.

It then comes out that the mathematician did not write the stories.  The murder victim, Miss White, had come to the prof asking his feedback on her stories.  He murdered her and claimed the stories were his own.

This was an intriguing book, both the mystery stories themselves and the way the story developed.  I look forward to reading other books by this author.