Veering a bit off-topic here with Melanie McGrath's The Long Exile (2008, Vintage) but if you read White Heat and enjoyed it, then it is worth reading this true story of how the Inuit ended up on Ellesmere Island. McGrath is a journalist by trade, so knows a good story when she sees one. And the circumstances of how the Inuit ended up moved thousands of miles from their ancestral lands is just a particularly shocking example of white people using native people for their own ends, with little regard for the human impact of their (bad) decisions.
McGrath sets up the trajectory particularly effectively by starting with the making of the hugely influential film Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty, in Inukjuak, which is sort of southeast Hudson Bay. The film, and some of Flaherty's subsequent work in other parts of the world, is considered among the best filmmaking of the 20th c., although only Nanook was a commercial success. There are two reasons to start the story here. First, the film set up the idea of the "happy Eskimo" in the public's mind, people who can survive anywhere with a smile. This is of course false; the northlands and Arctic are as diverse in their landscape, flora, and fauna as any other landmass in the world. It is ignorant to assume that people native to one place can then survive off the land in a place 2,000 miles north, within the Arctic Circle and basically one of the most northernmost landmasses on earth. But this is what the Canadians - Canadians! those nice people to the north! - do.
The second reason to start the story with Flaherty and Nanook is that while filming, Flaherty had a relationship with an Inuit woman, who had a son after he left town, never to return. This son ends up in the second wave of Inuit to move to Ellesmere. How did the first wave get there? Well, in a nutshell Canadian authorities felt the need for human settlement in the arctic regions to maintain sovereignty there during the Cold War, and so they told the local constabulary to find some Inuit to move up there. Because you know, the frozen north is all the same, right? And those Inuit in Inukjuak aren't doing so well anyway, since the white people moved in, so it would be the humane thing to do to return them to their natural state of living off the land and stop their moral decline and dependency on white people. And sure, one Eskimo is the same as another right, so Inuit from the southern Hudson Bay can surely survive where it is completely dark four months a year, and there isn't much fresh water, or caribou to hunt or berries to pick or pretty much anything to live off of. Through cajoling and misrepresentation and a bit of bullying a few families from Josephie Flaherty's settlement move there, terribly undersupplied and completely unsupported. Amazingly, many survive, but when they ask to go home they are put off with excuses or flat-out denied.
It actually ends spectacularly well, with the establishment of an Inuit state in Canada, Nunavut, some reparations, and finally a governmental apology in 2010. But all of that only comes decades after starvation, madness, profound alcoholism, and a whole lot of general misery. And it only comes after Josephie Flaherty's daughter, an incredibly strong woman who overcomes extraordinary odds to get herself off of Ellesmere, spends years talking about the island's Inuit population and its problems to anyone who will listen. She and others finally make a big enough issue of it that official enquiries and hearings are held and the Canadian government is formally taken to task. The officials - top to bottom, comfy govt. types to the local constabulary who had to carry out the effort - who thought they were doing the right thing for Canada are shown to have been ignorant, racist, and in some cases criminal in their proceedings. The road to hell, you know.
And you thought Canadians were so nice.
McGrath's research is deep, broad, and generally excellent. While the proceedings of the hearings are obviously recent public record, she clearly went far into archives and oral history to put together this compelling portrait of Inuit life, survival, and as she puts it, betrayal. I did want to see footnotes, and a complete bibliography because I think there is more there and I'll bet one could do all sorts of research off of that. You can easily find materials about this online, if you want to read more. There is a thin Wikipedia article here, and you can start with the media coverage here.
I didn't need the late-in-the-book chapter on the rest of Robert Flaherty's life and work. It is interesting, but it is pretty clear that McGrath found the quote about how the protagonist in all of his post-Nanook films represented "son he never had" and wanted to use it but couldn't figure out how to do that without a whole chapter for preface. The starting of the story with Nanook makes a lot of sense, but it is a distraction from the narrative flow to go back to Flaherty late in the game. Yes, he started it, but he didn't finish it.
This is a great, extraordinary, story that is over-written at times, and one wonders about the editing given the glaring error on the back cover (the exile happens in the 1950s, not the 1930s!). I found the prose occasionally weirdly passive, and hard to get into. The exile itself doesn't happen until about two-thirds of the way into the book, which is all about setting context, but I wonder if a little less Flaherty would have streamlined that lead, because the exile is when the narrative really gets going.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Sunday, August 11, 2013
The Holy Thief
Anything would have been a let-down after JlC's A Delicate Truth. But I'm glad I didn't let my irritation with the workmanlike prose of William Ryan's The Holy Thief get the better of me. This book ended up being a reasonably compelling read, mostly for the detailed portrayal of life in Moscow, ca. 1936.
The story is not complex, although it requires a bit of focus to keep the names and relationships straight, esp. when switching back and forth between first names and patronymics, last names, and a whole lot of ranks - captain, colonel, general, etc. There are some ghastly murders, a couple discussed from the perp's point of view. Our Hero, Alexei Dimitriyevich Korolev, is an earnest comrade who likes being a cop (confusingly called the Militia) because he understands that justice must be served, but who also believes wholeheartedly in the glorious future of the Soviet state, and the sacrifices that must be made to get there. In other words, he's a good Bolshevik. Who gets caught up in a mystery involving the lucrative market for Russian Orthodox icons, and a variety of less-than-savory characters who will do anything to get their hands on the icons, or the money they represent. Not surprisingly, Korolev gets a little too close to the truth, which involves politically sensitive individuals, is pulled off the case, but still manages to solve it all in a dramatic denouement that almost costs him his life but of course does not because I think there are more in this series.
Our Hero is your pretty standard good-guy-in-a-not-so-good-world, but unlike, say, Dr. Siri, he remains quite devoted to the Collective, and has not quite developed the gentle cynicism of that venerable gentleman, nor the barely-toeing-the-line approach of Bernie Gunther. He's not, at the end of they day, that interesting. But what is interesting, fascinating in fact, is the evocation of his world. Moscow in 1936, just nineteen years after the Revolution, is not a garden spot. Life there is hard, uncomfortable, and dangerous - you could be denounced for just muttering the wrong oath in front of the wrong person, and Korolev, who still prays privately every morning, has to watch himself. There are a lot of bare bulbs in bare, cold, sparsely furnished rooms, and (very few) old cars, and threadbare clothing even for devoted servants of the State like Our Hero. The Metropol Hotel, where foreigners stay and bigwigs hang out, stands in stark contrast to the de-consecrated churches, barren police stations, shared apartments, empty shops, endless lines and grime-and-gray, in which much of the action takes place. One particularly well-done element is organized sport: several scenes take place around a soccer stadium and at a match, and at the hippodrome. Ryan has clearly spent a lot of time researching early Soviet-era sports, and the scenes set here provide a marvelous sense of detail and nuance. Yes, it sucks to live in Stalinist Moscow, but if your team is playing, well, that takes priority for just a few hours. The scene at the Moscow Hippodrome, while mostly a meeting between Korolev and another key character, effectively conveys the faded grandeur of that home to the sport of kings, combined with the desperation of small bettors with not much else to lose. Ryan's small but recent list of books at the end suggests a careful research methodology, and it really pays off for the reader
The Holy Thief is a nice addition to the Totalitarians, and the more I think about it, the more I look forward to the next in this series. (I've clearly gotten over my JlC-induced prose hangup.) I haven't read anything set this early in the Soviet era, in fact I've read nothing but Martin Cruz Smith's much much later works. It's worth visiting, from the comfort of the 21st c. anyway.
The story is not complex, although it requires a bit of focus to keep the names and relationships straight, esp. when switching back and forth between first names and patronymics, last names, and a whole lot of ranks - captain, colonel, general, etc. There are some ghastly murders, a couple discussed from the perp's point of view. Our Hero, Alexei Dimitriyevich Korolev, is an earnest comrade who likes being a cop (confusingly called the Militia) because he understands that justice must be served, but who also believes wholeheartedly in the glorious future of the Soviet state, and the sacrifices that must be made to get there. In other words, he's a good Bolshevik. Who gets caught up in a mystery involving the lucrative market for Russian Orthodox icons, and a variety of less-than-savory characters who will do anything to get their hands on the icons, or the money they represent. Not surprisingly, Korolev gets a little too close to the truth, which involves politically sensitive individuals, is pulled off the case, but still manages to solve it all in a dramatic denouement that almost costs him his life but of course does not because I think there are more in this series.
Our Hero is your pretty standard good-guy-in-a-not-so-good-world, but unlike, say, Dr. Siri, he remains quite devoted to the Collective, and has not quite developed the gentle cynicism of that venerable gentleman, nor the barely-toeing-the-line approach of Bernie Gunther. He's not, at the end of they day, that interesting. But what is interesting, fascinating in fact, is the evocation of his world. Moscow in 1936, just nineteen years after the Revolution, is not a garden spot. Life there is hard, uncomfortable, and dangerous - you could be denounced for just muttering the wrong oath in front of the wrong person, and Korolev, who still prays privately every morning, has to watch himself. There are a lot of bare bulbs in bare, cold, sparsely furnished rooms, and (very few) old cars, and threadbare clothing even for devoted servants of the State like Our Hero. The Metropol Hotel, where foreigners stay and bigwigs hang out, stands in stark contrast to the de-consecrated churches, barren police stations, shared apartments, empty shops, endless lines and grime-and-gray, in which much of the action takes place. One particularly well-done element is organized sport: several scenes take place around a soccer stadium and at a match, and at the hippodrome. Ryan has clearly spent a lot of time researching early Soviet-era sports, and the scenes set here provide a marvelous sense of detail and nuance. Yes, it sucks to live in Stalinist Moscow, but if your team is playing, well, that takes priority for just a few hours. The scene at the Moscow Hippodrome, while mostly a meeting between Korolev and another key character, effectively conveys the faded grandeur of that home to the sport of kings, combined with the desperation of small bettors with not much else to lose. Ryan's small but recent list of books at the end suggests a careful research methodology, and it really pays off for the reader
The Holy Thief is a nice addition to the Totalitarians, and the more I think about it, the more I look forward to the next in this series. (I've clearly gotten over my JlC-induced prose hangup.) I haven't read anything set this early in the Soviet era, in fact I've read nothing but Martin Cruz Smith's much much later works. It's worth visiting, from the comfort of the 21st c. anyway.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
A Delicate Truth
It is hard to write a review of a very, very good book that you really really liked because it is easy to just end up with, I liked this and I loved that. And really, who, outside of you, actually cares what you liked unless you get deeply into the why? For a couple of weeks now after finishing John le Carré's latest novel, A Delicate Truth (Viking, 2013), I find myself desperately wishing that I could write like that. That British-ly elegant structure, that economy of words, that CHOICE of words, that somehow manages to convey a setting, a scene, and sensibility in far less but far more interesting verbiage than pretty much anyone else out there writing crime or espionage or whatever-the-heck-you-call-this fiction - this is my goal, and one that I fear is unattainable. Consider this chapter opener:
"On a sunny Sunday early in that same spring, a thirty-one-year-old British foreign servant earmarked for great things sat alone at the pavement table of a humble Italian cafe in London's Soho, steeling himself to perform an act of espionage to outrageous that, if detected, it would cost him his career and his freedom: namely, recovering a tape recording, illicitly made by himself, from the Private Office of a Minister of the Crown whom it was his duty to serve and advise to the best of his considerable ability." (47)
You don't realize, when reading it, that it is all one sentence; I didn't until I typed it just now! And run-on sentences are usually one of my irritants. But in this one that I didn't even notice, we get both the subject's view of himself (committing an outrageous act, the responsibility of his job), and how he's viewed by Society (earmarked for great things). There is a certain keep-calm-and-carry-on tone when the old Foreign Office types speak. You realize that for a British foreign servant, these two views are ingrained - he represents the Crown (caps usage brilliant, required by protocol I'm sure but really Makes the Point) and that's who he is when he's at home, so to speak. This sensibility, of doing the Right Thing because we are British and that's how we roll, is a central theme of the story. Which is, in standard JlC mode, pretty complex, jumping around in time and place and subject so that you have to Pay Attention, lest you get hopelessly lost.
Loosely, this particularly story involves an illicit operation that may or may not have gone bad, some shady American defense contractors from a company hilariously named "Ethical Outcomes," and a couple of Foreign Office (we call it Service, the Brits call it an Office) Don Quixotes who will tilt at the windmills that claim to protect the Crown in our modern era.
All of this said, this is not as complex a plot as one might find in, say, The Honorable Schoolboy, which was the hardest of the Karla trilogy for me to follow. Generally speaking, JlC's more recent novels are more straightforward than his Cold War classics: black and white hats are stark in their contrast, and a bit obvious. If you follow his work, you'll know that JlC's more recent books have really been about the failings of our great and glorious free and democratic governments, and the institutions that protect them. Big government and its covert strategies, esp. when farmed out to third parties to protect the reputation of said govt. are bad, as is naked capitalism more generally. Le Carré's very public condemnation of the US and friends' involvement in Iraq is well-documented, and stories like The Constant Gardner, The Mission Song, A Most Wanted Man and A Delicate Truth are unambiguous challenges to the US-led new world order. It's funny because of course the old JlC books were set in a world of clear good and bad - West v. East, with all of its Cold War weight - and the characters really wrestled with means vs. ends. And, in more recent works, there is still an individual or two who rails not entirely helplessly against the trend. But I don't know that we have the subtle build-up to the moral dilemma of Smiley or Magnus Pym for example. For Our Heroes (and heroes they are) Kit Probyn and Toby Bell, the moral path is clear, if fraught. Castlekeep is a perfect fantasy of the evil defense subcontractor's headquarters, as is Jay Crispin, and yes, we should despise them. It is clear that in JlC's worldview, most of us have lost even the ability to think about some sense of personal decency, dare I say honor? (How I hate that word, charged as it is with all kinds of meanings and misuses for all kinds of people). Maybe I just know what to expect from a JlC story these days: rage against the machine.
A couple of minor quibbles. It's pretty clear that JlC has it in for the Yanks - they are the source of Ethical Outcomes after all, but he might employ a little more subtlety (see Castlekeep, above). Miss Maisie, the money behind EO, i pretty derivative of Julia Roberts' character in "Charlie Wilson's War." And small note to editors: fact check, please! There is no such Harvard degree as a Masters in Business Studies.
Reading back, this sounds vaguely critical, and it is not. It is more an attempt to wrap my mind around a great - great- writer's oeuvre. Reading this, I found myself thinking about other JlC books constantly. The idea of a little person as a mentor (Oakley) reminded me of George Smiley, and who can read the name Toby and not think of Toby Esterhaze and his lamplighters? But, I'm drawn back to the writing, as always. In chapter 3, which overall exudes that hale-fellow-well-met Britishness that JlC always captures so well, there is an absolutely brilliantly executed recognition scene that stopped me in tracks, and made me read it again. The reader is unwittingly recognizing one character as he is reluctantly - so very reluctantly - recognizing another. To say more would spoil the story, but suffice it to say that you should drop pretty much whatever else you are reading right now and enjoy this. And then wish, as I do every time I sit down to type, that you had a piece of that.
"On a sunny Sunday early in that same spring, a thirty-one-year-old British foreign servant earmarked for great things sat alone at the pavement table of a humble Italian cafe in London's Soho, steeling himself to perform an act of espionage to outrageous that, if detected, it would cost him his career and his freedom: namely, recovering a tape recording, illicitly made by himself, from the Private Office of a Minister of the Crown whom it was his duty to serve and advise to the best of his considerable ability." (47)
You don't realize, when reading it, that it is all one sentence; I didn't until I typed it just now! And run-on sentences are usually one of my irritants. But in this one that I didn't even notice, we get both the subject's view of himself (committing an outrageous act, the responsibility of his job), and how he's viewed by Society (earmarked for great things). There is a certain keep-calm-and-carry-on tone when the old Foreign Office types speak. You realize that for a British foreign servant, these two views are ingrained - he represents the Crown (caps usage brilliant, required by protocol I'm sure but really Makes the Point) and that's who he is when he's at home, so to speak. This sensibility, of doing the Right Thing because we are British and that's how we roll, is a central theme of the story. Which is, in standard JlC mode, pretty complex, jumping around in time and place and subject so that you have to Pay Attention, lest you get hopelessly lost.
Loosely, this particularly story involves an illicit operation that may or may not have gone bad, some shady American defense contractors from a company hilariously named "Ethical Outcomes," and a couple of Foreign Office (we call it Service, the Brits call it an Office) Don Quixotes who will tilt at the windmills that claim to protect the Crown in our modern era.
All of this said, this is not as complex a plot as one might find in, say, The Honorable Schoolboy, which was the hardest of the Karla trilogy for me to follow. Generally speaking, JlC's more recent novels are more straightforward than his Cold War classics: black and white hats are stark in their contrast, and a bit obvious. If you follow his work, you'll know that JlC's more recent books have really been about the failings of our great and glorious free and democratic governments, and the institutions that protect them. Big government and its covert strategies, esp. when farmed out to third parties to protect the reputation of said govt. are bad, as is naked capitalism more generally. Le Carré's very public condemnation of the US and friends' involvement in Iraq is well-documented, and stories like The Constant Gardner, The Mission Song, A Most Wanted Man and A Delicate Truth are unambiguous challenges to the US-led new world order. It's funny because of course the old JlC books were set in a world of clear good and bad - West v. East, with all of its Cold War weight - and the characters really wrestled with means vs. ends. And, in more recent works, there is still an individual or two who rails not entirely helplessly against the trend. But I don't know that we have the subtle build-up to the moral dilemma of Smiley or Magnus Pym for example. For Our Heroes (and heroes they are) Kit Probyn and Toby Bell, the moral path is clear, if fraught. Castlekeep is a perfect fantasy of the evil defense subcontractor's headquarters, as is Jay Crispin, and yes, we should despise them. It is clear that in JlC's worldview, most of us have lost even the ability to think about some sense of personal decency, dare I say honor? (How I hate that word, charged as it is with all kinds of meanings and misuses for all kinds of people). Maybe I just know what to expect from a JlC story these days: rage against the machine.
A couple of minor quibbles. It's pretty clear that JlC has it in for the Yanks - they are the source of Ethical Outcomes after all, but he might employ a little more subtlety (see Castlekeep, above). Miss Maisie, the money behind EO, i pretty derivative of Julia Roberts' character in "Charlie Wilson's War." And small note to editors: fact check, please! There is no such Harvard degree as a Masters in Business Studies.
Reading back, this sounds vaguely critical, and it is not. It is more an attempt to wrap my mind around a great - great- writer's oeuvre. Reading this, I found myself thinking about other JlC books constantly. The idea of a little person as a mentor (Oakley) reminded me of George Smiley, and who can read the name Toby and not think of Toby Esterhaze and his lamplighters? But, I'm drawn back to the writing, as always. In chapter 3, which overall exudes that hale-fellow-well-met Britishness that JlC always captures so well, there is an absolutely brilliantly executed recognition scene that stopped me in tracks, and made me read it again. The reader is unwittingly recognizing one character as he is reluctantly - so very reluctantly - recognizing another. To say more would spoil the story, but suffice it to say that you should drop pretty much whatever else you are reading right now and enjoy this. And then wish, as I do every time I sit down to type, that you had a piece of that.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Detective Inspector Huss
Can it be - a reasonably cheerful Swedish detective? And not just one, but several, all working together? Yes, at least in the charming southern Swedish city of Göteborg (pronounced, per Lonely Planet, "yer-te-bor"). This is not far from Malmö, around where that depressive Kurt Wallander hangs out, but miles away psychically.
And, literar-ily too. In the end, I enjoyed Helene Tursten's Detective Inspector Huss, but more because I liked the cops and the setting, NOT because this was a particularly well-written book. There was the same stiltedness that I assume comes from translation as one finds in a Henning Mankel novel, but compounded with a really dreadful reliance on cliche and excess verbiage. The writing was distracting to the point that I had to put the book down for several weeks after getting a few pages in. Try this paragraph:
"Irene spent a few hours bringing Jimmy up to speed. She had not complaints about his interest. He hung on every word she said. It couldn't be denied that she envied him his enthusiasm faced with this intricate mystery. His puppylike eagerness was sure due to his youth, but his questions were intelligent. Her instinct had been correct. These days, the more complicated things got, the more tired she felt. But she remembered how it had been the first few years. The excitement, the aroused hunting instincts, and the feeling of triumph when the case was solved. Of course, she still had these feelings, but noticeably attenuated. Far too many cases had not left being the sweetness of victory, but rather a bitter aftertaste. You become either jaded or cynical in this profession, she thought in her darker moments. But she didn't want to become either jaded or cynical! You had to go on, keep moving forward. You couldn't stop and dig yourself a hole. The job she had chosen was not without its dangers, but she had never wanted to do anything else and had always enjoyed her work. The past few years she had begin to notice an insidious feeling that hadn't existed before. Only recently had she been able to identify it. Terror. Terror of people's indifference to the human value of others and terror of the ever-increasing violence." (205)
See what I mean? The slightly stilted construction, larger-than-necessary words, change in subject (she to you), obvious emotions (hunting, cynicism, indifference) - John le Carre would have said all that in about four sentences. Actually, he wouldn't have written it at all. But I digress. I'm just starting A Delicate Truth, and am in the thrall of that perfect use of language. Since Detective Inspector Huss is a work in translation, and I don't speak Swedish, it is impossible to know if it the author or the translator, Steven T. Murray, who is the source. I'm a little surprised to see this difficult writing coming from the usually reliable Soho Press, didn't anyone copy edit this book? Given its surprising length - 371 pp. - I'm guessing maybe not.
That said, I did end up finishing this story, and would not turn away the next in the series. It is a pleasure to read a story filled with interesting female characters. Some are strong and together and generally wholesome like Our Hero Irene Huss. And some are hysterical or slutty. But Tursten is to be praised for offering an alternative to the male-dominated world of police procedurals.
In this story, a rich and famous man is murdered a few weeks before Christmas. Everyone in his deeply dysfunctional family is a suspect, and when another person is killed in an assassination attempt that is clearly directed toward the first dead guy, you know things are going to get complicated. The story quickly spins outward to include adultery, gangsters, drug trafficking, skinheads, motorcycle gangs, and that evergreen staple of mysteries, missing keys. I felt like it covered a lot, but you know, it did all kind of make sense in the end.
And, while I found the writing hard to follow, I loved the setting of Göteborg , even if I couldn't pronounce half the names and had no idea where I was most of the time. (Again, a map would help! Why don't more books utilize them? Mankel does, and it is so helpful.) The subplot with the twin daughters turned out to be more interesting than I'd expected. I think the whole thing did, actually, although the final scene (pre-epilogue) kind of wraps things up a little too neatly when the individual pretty much confesses to everything under careful questioning so all of our questions are quickly answered.
Should you read this book? That depends on your tolerance level for awkward writing. If you aren't distracted by it, then yes, you'll enjoy Huss. If you are, step away from the victim.
And, literar-ily too. In the end, I enjoyed Helene Tursten's Detective Inspector Huss, but more because I liked the cops and the setting, NOT because this was a particularly well-written book. There was the same stiltedness that I assume comes from translation as one finds in a Henning Mankel novel, but compounded with a really dreadful reliance on cliche and excess verbiage. The writing was distracting to the point that I had to put the book down for several weeks after getting a few pages in. Try this paragraph:
"Irene spent a few hours bringing Jimmy up to speed. She had not complaints about his interest. He hung on every word she said. It couldn't be denied that she envied him his enthusiasm faced with this intricate mystery. His puppylike eagerness was sure due to his youth, but his questions were intelligent. Her instinct had been correct. These days, the more complicated things got, the more tired she felt. But she remembered how it had been the first few years. The excitement, the aroused hunting instincts, and the feeling of triumph when the case was solved. Of course, she still had these feelings, but noticeably attenuated. Far too many cases had not left being the sweetness of victory, but rather a bitter aftertaste. You become either jaded or cynical in this profession, she thought in her darker moments. But she didn't want to become either jaded or cynical! You had to go on, keep moving forward. You couldn't stop and dig yourself a hole. The job she had chosen was not without its dangers, but she had never wanted to do anything else and had always enjoyed her work. The past few years she had begin to notice an insidious feeling that hadn't existed before. Only recently had she been able to identify it. Terror. Terror of people's indifference to the human value of others and terror of the ever-increasing violence." (205)
See what I mean? The slightly stilted construction, larger-than-necessary words, change in subject (she to you), obvious emotions (hunting, cynicism, indifference) - John le Carre would have said all that in about four sentences. Actually, he wouldn't have written it at all. But I digress. I'm just starting A Delicate Truth, and am in the thrall of that perfect use of language. Since Detective Inspector Huss is a work in translation, and I don't speak Swedish, it is impossible to know if it the author or the translator, Steven T. Murray, who is the source. I'm a little surprised to see this difficult writing coming from the usually reliable Soho Press, didn't anyone copy edit this book? Given its surprising length - 371 pp. - I'm guessing maybe not.
That said, I did end up finishing this story, and would not turn away the next in the series. It is a pleasure to read a story filled with interesting female characters. Some are strong and together and generally wholesome like Our Hero Irene Huss. And some are hysterical or slutty. But Tursten is to be praised for offering an alternative to the male-dominated world of police procedurals.
In this story, a rich and famous man is murdered a few weeks before Christmas. Everyone in his deeply dysfunctional family is a suspect, and when another person is killed in an assassination attempt that is clearly directed toward the first dead guy, you know things are going to get complicated. The story quickly spins outward to include adultery, gangsters, drug trafficking, skinheads, motorcycle gangs, and that evergreen staple of mysteries, missing keys. I felt like it covered a lot, but you know, it did all kind of make sense in the end.
And, while I found the writing hard to follow, I loved the setting of Göteborg , even if I couldn't pronounce half the names and had no idea where I was most of the time. (Again, a map would help! Why don't more books utilize them? Mankel does, and it is so helpful.) The subplot with the twin daughters turned out to be more interesting than I'd expected. I think the whole thing did, actually, although the final scene (pre-epilogue) kind of wraps things up a little too neatly when the individual pretty much confesses to everything under careful questioning so all of our questions are quickly answered.
Should you read this book? That depends on your tolerance level for awkward writing. If you aren't distracted by it, then yes, you'll enjoy Huss. If you are, step away from the victim.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
The Dance of the Seagull
This is harder than I've been prepared to admit.
It only struck me with The Dance of the Seagull (2013, Penguin), just how much driving Salvo Montalbano and his crew do in these novels. They are all over the place, thinking nothing of an hour or two there and back. It's kind of like the American West, where people will drive 100 miles for dinner because they can do it going 100 mph. I wish that Andrea Camilleri would include a map in his novels, so that I could sort out where, exactly, all of this is taking place on Sicily. There are tours you can take of Montalbano's Sicily, but since I don't have plans to travel there (soon, anyway), I'll have to just do with imagining.
The Dance of the Seagull is a bit of a departure from Camilleri's usual sordid-not-so-under-belly-of-Sicily, in that the initial victim is none other than Salvo's sensible lieutenant Fazio. Of course, the attack on Fazio happens because he is on the verge of discovering some nasty acts by some very bad guys, and the plot moves along quickly to involve the usual assortment of drug smugglers, transvestites, honey traps, mafiosi, bumbling jurists, grumpy pathologists, and so on. This is not to say that any story featuring Salvo and his crowd is ever REMOTELY formulaic. Rather it is that the neatly sketched characters and refreshingly non-per-le-touriste-Sicilia situations are regular elements to be happily anticipated, and slowly savored in every one of the Salvo stories. Camilleri doesn't waste a lot of time, his scenes and dialogue move fast, and there is not so much in the way of long, deep introspective internal dialogue from anyone. Well, we do get Salvo's good and bad halves (Montalbano 1 and 2) arguing with each other occasionally, but they don't drag it out. And nobody else thinks much, they just do.
A couple of differences from earlier stories. Livia makes just a brief appearance, and an uncharacteristically gracious exit. More critical is that there is a whole lot less eating going on! Yes, of course Salvo visits Enzo's trattoria, and Adeli leaves some caponata or pasta 'ncasciata or something but mealtime just didn't seem quite the distraction that it has been in earlier stories. And while there is a dalliance with a beautiful woman, it somehow seemed more clear than some of those in the past. Who can figure out what Ingrid's role ever was, anyway? Finally, the terrific translator notes at the back have been shrinking in the recent books, now comprising just a couple of pages of notes.
Perhaps I am the one distracted, as I am finding it hard to focus my thoughts. So let's wind it up by saying that in any case, this latest entry is among the best in the delightful Salvo Montalbano series.
It only struck me with The Dance of the Seagull (2013, Penguin), just how much driving Salvo Montalbano and his crew do in these novels. They are all over the place, thinking nothing of an hour or two there and back. It's kind of like the American West, where people will drive 100 miles for dinner because they can do it going 100 mph. I wish that Andrea Camilleri would include a map in his novels, so that I could sort out where, exactly, all of this is taking place on Sicily. There are tours you can take of Montalbano's Sicily, but since I don't have plans to travel there (soon, anyway), I'll have to just do with imagining.
The Dance of the Seagull is a bit of a departure from Camilleri's usual sordid-not-so-under-belly-of-Sicily, in that the initial victim is none other than Salvo's sensible lieutenant Fazio. Of course, the attack on Fazio happens because he is on the verge of discovering some nasty acts by some very bad guys, and the plot moves along quickly to involve the usual assortment of drug smugglers, transvestites, honey traps, mafiosi, bumbling jurists, grumpy pathologists, and so on. This is not to say that any story featuring Salvo and his crowd is ever REMOTELY formulaic. Rather it is that the neatly sketched characters and refreshingly non-per-le-touriste-Sicilia situations are regular elements to be happily anticipated, and slowly savored in every one of the Salvo stories. Camilleri doesn't waste a lot of time, his scenes and dialogue move fast, and there is not so much in the way of long, deep introspective internal dialogue from anyone. Well, we do get Salvo's good and bad halves (Montalbano 1 and 2) arguing with each other occasionally, but they don't drag it out. And nobody else thinks much, they just do.
A couple of differences from earlier stories. Livia makes just a brief appearance, and an uncharacteristically gracious exit. More critical is that there is a whole lot less eating going on! Yes, of course Salvo visits Enzo's trattoria, and Adeli leaves some caponata or pasta 'ncasciata or something but mealtime just didn't seem quite the distraction that it has been in earlier stories. And while there is a dalliance with a beautiful woman, it somehow seemed more clear than some of those in the past. Who can figure out what Ingrid's role ever was, anyway? Finally, the terrific translator notes at the back have been shrinking in the recent books, now comprising just a couple of pages of notes.
Perhaps I am the one distracted, as I am finding it hard to focus my thoughts. So let's wind it up by saying that in any case, this latest entry is among the best in the delightful Salvo Montalbano series.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)