Scandanavian crime is in a class of its own.  One of the highlights for me at this year's Edinburgh Book Festival was to be the Crime Fiction event featuring two Norwegian writers - Jo Nesbø and K O Dahl.  Or it would have if either of them had turned up.  Nesbo cancelled a few days before the event to be fair.  Dahl cancelled with about an hour to go.  Was it the weather?  Charlotte Square was swimming in about 3 inches of water at the time.  But I'd stuck it out ..... 

Not only that I'd read about 1200  pages of their fiction in preparation - 3 novels, to be precise - 2 by Nesbo, 1 by Dahl.



K O Dahl has been a published author in Norway since 1993.  The Fourth Man is the first of his novels to be translated into English.  In it we are introduced to Frank Frolich, who for a cop seems remarkably well-adjusted.  Then he saves Elizabeth Faremo from getting caught in some crossfire, falls hopelessly in love and risks his reputation and career to be with her.  For she is the sister of a crook suspected of murder.  As the investigation unfolds and the body count mounts, Frank Frolich finds it increasingly difficult to maintain his professional objectivity, especially when Elizabeth herself is threatened.  Art theft, a malevolent businessman and the suspicion that Frank meeting Elizabeth was a setup in the first instance make this an excellent and highly recommended read.  




Jo Nesbø has been published in English since 2005.  However, the English translations did not appear in chronological sequence. The Devil's Star (published 2005) is actually the sequel of The Redbreast (published 2006).  I'd advise you to read them in the correct chronological sequence, although some readers don't deem this detrimental to the reading experience.  Either way, it's hard to fault either of these fast-paced and furious thrillers.  Nesbøs detective Harry Hole has the usual problems yet he differs from other fictional detectives in that he's a full-blown alcoholic and struggling to keep his job. Serial killers aren't necessarily his worst nightmare either for he has enemies in the force.  If the booze doesn't kill him, these enemies might.  Both books pivot around events from the past bearing consequence in the present.  The Devil's Star focuses on contemporary emnities while in The Redbreast rivalries emerge from the Second World War.  This latter novel won the Nordic Riverton Prize and was recently voted best Norwegian thriller of all time by Norwegian readers and it is certainly a cracking and educational read.  There is much to be learnt about the reasons for Norwegian collaboration with the Nazis and how this still resonates in contemporary Norway.  In terms of plot, action, dialogue and entertainment I should really award 5 stars to both books.  Harry is a brilliant creation, too brilliant, though, for the raging alcoholic he is depicted to be?  Hence  for both.

Karen Connelly was an annoyance to fans watching this year’s webcast award ceremony.  For instead of fulfilling her allocated role by silently accepting her statuette for the Orange Broadband for Debut Writers, smiling to the cameras and exiting stage left, she stood her ground and delivered a political acceptance speech of some three minutes - thus blowing webcast timings to the winds and ensuring that those watching did not get to hear who had won the main gong.  I freely admit this was a turnoff despite the fact that minutes earlier Jackie Kay had described The Lizard Cage as “extraordinary, lyrical and compelling”.  In the months since fellows bloggers have waxed passionate about this novel.  That coupled with the fact that Connelly is Canadian (and Canadian Literature is an ongoing strand in my reading) has finally persuaded me to read.

The lizard cage is a prison where Teza, a musician, is spending 20 years in solitary confinement for writing political protest songs.  Prison conditions are barbaric; the guards are sadists. Connelly does not flinch from delivering graphic descriptions of starvation, torture, drownings, beatings, rape and the resulting physical consequences.  Think Midnight Express – only this time the prisoner is innocent.  The author’s outrage is evident yet she avoids polemic and didactism.  Teza uses the opportunity afforded by his imprisonment to practice the 8 precepts of Buddhism, transcending the brutality of his environment and, ironically becoming a better Buddhist than he would have become had he remained a free man.

The novel can also be seen as the story of prison contraband, in this case paper and a cheap pen “made-in-Thailand ... its plastic casing carefully marked, at the bottom and the top, little cuts with a razor blade.  Identifiable” and the centre of a sting, conceived by the authorities to entrap political prisoners and ensure a lengthening of their prison terms by 5-10 years.  Teza is a prime target and defenceless in his solitary cell.  At this point the novel ignites.  As Teza realises the danger, the pounding in his heart echoes the pounding of the guards' boots as they march to his cell, echoing the pounding of my heart and the blood in my head as I become part of the scene ..... it's too intense, I have to stop to reading.

That pen (symbol for words and the capacity for freedom of speech) provides narrative continuity.  For wherever it lands, trouble and danger follows.  Ownership passes from Teza to Nyi Lay to Chit Naing.  Nyi Lay is a innocent 12-year old rat-catching orphan, scratching out a living within the prison complex; Chit Naing, a humane prison guard who befriends Teza.  Yet innocence and humanity are as dangerous as possession of the pen, and both child and guard are inexorably drawn into sympathetic complicity (at least in the eyes of the authorities).  Safety depends on disposal of the pen and fittingly, in view of its symbolic meaning, neither Nyi Lay nor Chit Naing, choose to dispose of it (despite this reader internally screaming at them to do so!).

No thriller has ever raised my blood pressure the way this novel did.  Yet this is undoubtedly a literary offering.  The colour palette is not as black and white as at first appears.  The villains, while evil, are products of their time and place.  In chapters written from their point-of-view, Connelly allows us, the readers, to inhabit their skins and confront the possibility that those choices, the choices of the masses after all, are ones we would make ourselves.  Connelly is an award-winning poet and it shows.  Yet she hasn't delivered a poem in prose and, therefore, lost her novel and theme to the language.  Her prose is controlled, by turns gritty and graphic, lyrical and rhythmic, as here: 
 

“Teza closes his eyes again.  Before he’s settled back into his mediation, he thinks how mysterious, how ordinary the breath is, this thin line of air cast between spirit and death, always here.  Until it’s gone.

He shakes the thought away and breathes

In

    Out

In

   Out

In”

A meditation to calm the most agitated of souls ... and this, at times, hyperventilating reader.

 


p.s.  Question: Why wasn't this included on the Booker longlist?  Answer:  Because Harvill Secker didn't submit it as one of their two choices.  I find this absolutely shocking!  Does anyone know which two novels they did submit?

Booker Prize Winner 1992

2007 marks the bi-centennial of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, a trade upon which the prosperity of Georgian Britain was founded.  Time then for a re-read of my personal Booker of Bookers Barry Unsworth’s “Sacred Hunger”.

The love of money, the making of profit is the sacred hunger of the title.  This quest justifies everything and sanctifies all purposes.  Living in their gaudy houses, playing with culture, romance and love, British merchants of the 18th century ruthlessly pillage Africa of its lifeblood. Detailed analysis of the triangular trade is woven into the first half of the novel which follows the history of The Liverpool Merchant slaver ship from conception and build to its disappearance in an Atlantic storm.  Its tortuous voyage, the lives it blighted and destroyed (both in Britain and Africa) form a fascinating and, at times, horrendous narrative.

The second half of the novel focuses on the British in America where “white man is speaking with forked tongue” to vanquish the indigeneous nation on the other side of the Atlantic.   It's heartbreaking to understand that shiny bright beads and baubles persuaded coastal Africans to hunt and enslave those from the interior.  Heartbreaking also to see shiny bright medals persuade Indian chiefs to hand over lands to the British King.

While the history of the ship, its crew and its cargo steers us through the first half of the novel, the emnity between the two main protagonists, cousins Erasmus Kemp (the ship owner’s son) and Matthew Paris (the ship’s doctor) provides the narrative drive in the second.  For Kemp wants Paris to pay for the damage done to his family when the ship did not return and pursues him across the Atlantic.  In the meantime Paris, along with the visionary Delblanc, forms a utopian society with the survivors of the ship.  Can this fledgling society, founded on the theft and brutalising of half its population,  coalesce and heal?  Or will the sacred hunger, common to mankind, reemerge even here?

Unsworth has done his homework but wears it lightly. There are many colourful characters and plenty of plot to disguise the research.  If there is any fault in this novel, and I admit this grudgingly, it is that the pace of the first two sections is very slow.  However, once The Liverpool Merchant reaches Africa, the pages turn very, very quickly indeed.

Pulitzer Prize Winner 1936

I have a general rule -  film tie-in covers are to be avoided.  Yet I have no argument with the classic image from a classic film on the cover of this classic novel - it is an icon after all!




I first read this in my teens and my great memories have been fed in the intervening decades with periodic viewings of the film.  That would appear to be a common experience for several in my reading group requested a reread.  

Arguably the first blockbuster (it has sold more than 38 million copies) Gone with the Wind at 1010 pages is long .... very long ... too long?  

It is essentially the tale of a tormented love triangle: Scarlett's unrequited love for Ashley, Rhett's unrequited love for Scarlett and ultimately Scarlett's unrequited love for Rhett.   As a teenage I enjoyed the Rhett/Scarlett cat and mouse games but, in middle age, I tired of Scarlett's emotional scotoma around page 600.  The green-eyed independent Southern belle, a spirited heroine to be admired when I was 17, is  a selfish, heartless, unintelligent little madam.  Like Rhett, at the end I couldn't give a damn about her predicament although I find myself debating whether the monster was created by the circumstances or by Rhett himself.

To reduce Gone with The Wind to romantic saga is to render it a great disservice.  Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and defeat of the South, military tactics and the corruption of scallawags, carpetbaggers and the administration during the Reconstruction of Georgia is laid out in all its fascinating and inglorious detail.  So too are the effects on the population - the men who died, the women who survived and the slaves or "darkies" who were freed.

This brings us to the controversial elements of the novel.  There is no doubt that Mitchell's portrayal is a patriotic pro-Confederate stance.  The Southerners are also pro-slavery ... which is only to be expected.  Anything else woud destroy the historical context of the novel.  But does Gone With the Wind cross the line and become racist?  There is evidence for this: the dimwittedness of the "darkies", who form a threatening anonymous mass after the war.  And does Mitchell go so far as to endorse the formation of the KKK?  On the other hand, when the negroes are named, they are honourable people who form a backbone of society. Think Mammy.  Think Uncle Peter.

However there are those who are not so ambivalent as myself.  AliceRandall says her book, The Wind Done Gone,  is a form of political protest, an “antidote to the poison” of racism in Gone With the Wind. “I wrote this book so that Gone With the Wind would no longer sit on the shelf unanswered, so that young black girls who were damaged by that book, as I was, would have somewhere to turn,” she says. “To create a literary parody is to derive the most absurd thing possible from the original text, and that is what I have created in Cynara—an intelligent black woman.”  

For those who wish to follow the further adventures of Scarlett and Rhett  there are 848 pages of the authorised sequel Scarlett  by Alexandra Ripley.  Personally, I'll be leaving Scarlett in her mansion in Peachtree Street, Atlanta, the street, where unfortunately her creator met her demise.  Margaret Mitchell was struck by a speeding automobile on Peachtree Street in 1949.  She died 5 days later. 

With just one week to the announcement of the 2007 winners, it's time to reflect on the one that got away in 2006.



Shortlisted for both the Duncan Lawrie Dagger and The Edgars in 2006, it won neither.  However, I awarded it

Lizzy's book cover of the year and Lizzy's crime novel of the year awards.

It is quite simply the best crime novel I've ever read.

I've recommended it to all and sundry for the past twelve months and everyone without exception has awarded it 5-stars.

However, it comes with a health-warning - it will break your heart ........

To be honest, the strength of this novel doesn't actually lie in the traditional murder mystery but in the depth of the social commentary. Abused wives and children still exist, but the behaviour of the abuser is no longer tolerated and social mechanisms are in place to protect the vulnerable. 60 years ago this was not the case and the portrait Indridason paints of a wife-batterer and his  family is powerful and harrowing, yet never voyeuristic. He is more concerned with the psychological destruction of the soul rather than the physical breaking of bones.

The other strength of this novel is his downtrodden detective, Erlendur, whose family life is as traumatic as that of the people he investigates. Is Erlendur, who is portraited realistically, warts and all, partly to blame? This mystery is offered alongside the traditional murder and it's one for which there is no open and shut case.

I read this novel in 2 sittings. It's fabulous. Indridason is a phemonenon.  At one week in the summer of 2003, his crime novels occupied the top five spots in the Icelandic bestseller list.  This novel deservingly won the CWA Gold Dagger in the year before they founded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (for works originally published in English) and the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger (for those translated into English). Three of his novels have now been published in English.  The fourth is due in August 2007.  I, for one, can't wait!

The 1985 Booker Prize Winner was a controversial choice.  21 years later it remains so, igniting fiery passions on internet book boards simply by mentioning the title.  Is this due to the emotive nature of the content or because the writing is not up-to-scratch?



First things first - I  love the ethnicity of the 1986 paperback edition cover as well as the fact that all the images are reminders of storylines, symbols and motifs used throughout the novel - a fabulous summary of the content of this incredibly complex novel.

The composite triangle containing the tricephalous image emphasises the book's trinity of main characters:  Joe, the father; Simon, the son; Kerewin, the unholy yet reconciling force.   Each of these characters has major flaws.  Joe is a brute.  True, he loves his son but anyone who almost batters his son to death (whatever the provocation), is a bully and a brute.  Simon is a foundling child adopted by Joe.  He is mute and incredibly disturbed, displaying aberrant behaviour, which cannot wholely be attributed to the physical abuse he suffers.  Kerewin is also damaged goods.  We are never told why but at the beginning of the book she is living in isolation, separated from her family in a purpose-built tower - a home she refers to as prison.  Into her retreat stumbles an injured Simon, heralding a new, though not untroubled phase,  in the lives of all three characters.

While the characters may not be likeable, Hulme's psychological portrayal of all three is amazingly astute.  Simon, while an absolute nightmare, displays the symptoms of battered spouse syndrome.  Behave badly, be abused and trigger the comfort of a loving reconciliation.  Kerewin is a master class in characterisation.  Brittle, prickly, amazonian yet with a soft centre - she is drawn slowly but surely, against her will,  into the maelstrom of Joe and Simon's relationship.  I found the interaction of these three absolutely fascinating.  

Hulme's narrative is interspersed with short streams of consciousness, which enable the reader to really get inside the skin of the three characters.  (Thus it is impossible to condemn Joe even though our moral judgement may scream at us to do so.)  The text is also rich in symbol and metaphor. Not that I understand them all for I'm pretty sure that, like the language used, some of these metaphors have Maori origins.  Spirals figure throughout.  (Perhaps New Zealanders reading this could elucidate on their meaning.)   

The main metaphor, though, has to be that of the three central characters.  Joe is Maori, Simon is European while Kerewin, the reconciling force, is of mixed extraction (though only 8% Maori).  Joe is happily married with Maori wife and child.  He loses both to flu after adopting Simon.  The implication is obvious.  Simon, the European, brings trouble and destruction to the indigenous population, who reacts with rage and brutality.  Kerewin, the troubled mixed breed, effects reconciliation between the two.  There's a message here.  Is it that the past is done?  It's unchangeable.  Move on.  We must live better, even if we can't live perfectly.

I loved all of this depth yet the novel is not perfect.  A couple of issues come immediately to mind.  1) The brutality is extreme.  Too raw.   Offputting.  2)  Kerewin and Joe, while psychologically injured at the beginning of the novel, are damaged further by events.  Before they can reconcile, they must heal.  Yet, given all the stomach-churning realism, this healing is effected by Maori mystics.  It's almost but not quite deus ex machina.  Quite simply I don't buy it.

There are other things that don't add up either.  What's the matter with Joe's family?  Why, given the extent of his abuse of Simon, don't they report him?  How can Kerewin get so close to Joe and Simon without realising that the child is covered head to toe in scars?  How can Joe afford to spend so much time in the pub?  Why do the adults spend so much time in the pub?  Why does Hulme depict such a negative portrayal of New Zealand life?  Why does Keri name her heroine Kerewin? Why? Why? Why?

I'll be thinking of it for a while yet.  So, despite its flaws, this novel is powerful, amazing and ultimately unforgettable.    Read it!