What is it About Islands?

I have always wanted to live in an island.  Maybe it's longing for the sea while living in the middle of the country, or wanting to be set apart from the rest of the world, but I have often thought with longing about a small house overlooking the sea, reached only by boat.  I've always thought Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard (I am a New England girl by temperament if not by birth), but after reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Anne Shaffer, I think that the Channel Islands might be a good choice as well.

The novel is told through letters and telegrams between Juliet Ashton and various residents of the island of Guernsey in the months after the end of World War II.  The Channel Islands were occupied by Germany during the war, and the residents were completely cut off from the rest of England.  For five years they had no news about what was happening in the rest of the world-no newspapers, no radios, no letters from family or from their children, who they sent to the mainland before the invasion.  One night, after dining on a forbidden pig with friends, a group of islanders was caught out after curfew.  On the spot, one brave young woman, Elizabeth, created a fictional literary society to explain why they were out together.  In order to put the truth to their lie, the small group of friends created an actual book club, and their meetings allowed many of the members to keep their sanity in the midst of war.  Years later, one of the members contacts Juliet Ashton, a journalist and author, to say how much he enjoyed a book that once belonged to her that he found in a used book shop.  Their correspondence leads Juliet to the island, and to a story both tragic and triumphant of love and friendship in a time of war.

I started out thinking that I was not going to love this book.  I am not that fond of epistolary novels, and the last one I read (check out my not-so glowing review of Between Friends) was so bad that I almost put this book back down once I'd picked it up.  But after resisting the pull of the story for 50 pages or so, I was drawn completely into the lives of the characters.  Juliet reminded me of a character from a period mystery I read recently (this time a glowing review of A Duty to the Dead)-a spunky, scrappy, snarky, but ultimately kind and loving young woman.  And I think that the reason that this worked where Between Friends did not is because each of the letter writers had such a distinctive voice.  Despite everything being told second hand, the novel felt very intimate and personal, and I felt like the character development was pretty good.  But what really made the novel work for me was the historical events it was based on.

I knew that the Channel Islands were occupied during WWII, and I already had some vague idea about their relation to France and England politically (which is to say, they "belong" to England but have their own government, a bit like Puerto Rico, I suppose).  But this novel filled in some details in my admittedly sketchy picture of that period in British history.  And like any good historical novel, it led me to do some more reading and research on the topic.  Rather than using lots of long exposition to provide background, the stories of the islanders comes out in dribs and drabs over the course of Juliet's relationship with them, and the novel feels light and easy to read, while at the same time having some substance-not an easy balance to maintain, but one that Burrows and Shaffer pull off rather well.

Zoli, by Colum McCann

Colum McCann finds the world to be a dark, seedy place where nothing good can last.  At least, that's what I think he feels after reading or trying to read two of his books.  Last year I read Let the Great World Spin, as a part of my effort to read more male authors, and more literary fiction.  Reading that review now, I can see that my feelings on McCann's writing are very similar now, having tried unsuccessfully to read his novel Zoli.

Here is what Amazon has to say about the plot of Zoli,

 A unique love story, a tale of loss, a parable of Europe, this haunting novel is an examination of intimacy and betrayal in a community rarely captured so vibrantly in contemporary literature. 

Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling Gypsy tradition, is a poet by accident as much as desire. As 1930s fascism spreads over Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather flee to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. Sharpened by the world of books, which is often frowned upon in the Romani tradition, Zoli becomes the poster girl for a brave new world. As she shapes the ancient songs to her times, she finds her gift embraced by the Gypsy people and savored by a young English expatriate, Stephen Swann. 

But Zoli soon finds that when she falls she cannot fall halfway–neither in love nor in politics. While Zoli’s fame and poetic skills deepen, the ruling Communists begin to use her for their own favor. Cast out from her family, Zoli abandons her past to journey to the West, in a novel that spans the 20th century and travels the breadth of Europe.

Sounds like a sweeping tale of love and transcendence, doesn't it?  Instead, reading it felt like being sunk into a dark, bleak  world where even the most beautiful, innocent things were tainted by something cold and dreary.  At first I was drawn into the world of the Roma in eastern Europe during the early 20th century.  I knew that they had been persecuted, but I didn't know a lot about their traditions or culture.  But eventually I began to feel weighted down with all of the misery of the place.  I suppose that was probably purposeful on McCann's part.  After all, the Roma were persecuted, and we are talking about the start of the Soviet Union and the cruel grip of communism here.  But nothing, and I mean nothing, that I read seemed to speak to the transcendence of the human spirit.  Even the love story was bleak, and felt strangely unemotional.  It is not that I am adverse to reading melancholy, haunting, tragic books.  I read and loved The Road, and found the triumph of the father's love despite the complete destruction of the world to be meaningful, even if the events of the novel themselves were bleak.   A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of my favorite books, and it is undoubtedly tragic and heart-wrenching.  But even within the horror of living as a widow or a battered wife in Taliban Afghanistan, there were moments of tenderness, or beauty, or light.  Not so with McCann's books.

Maybe I am being slightly unfair, since I didn't finish the book.  Maybe the page after I finally gave up started a trend showing something, anything positive in the human experience.  Sadly, I couldn't take the unending dreariness long enough to find out.

The Egyptian, Layton Green

Last year I reviewed Layton Green's first novel,  The Summoner.  In it, Green introduces us to Dominic Grey, a former member of the US diplomatic services security.  While stationed in Zimbabwe, Grey is drawn into the mysterious disappearance of a US diplomat, and its connection to a ju-ju priest who seems to be able to do the impossible.  This year I was lucky enough to be asked to review his next book, The Egyptian.

When I reviewed Green's first book, I said that while I thought there were some pacing and exposition issues, I was excited to see where Grey's story went as the series continues.  I was not disappointed.  Green has taken Grey out of the Diplomatic Security Service-which I think allows for more flexibility in storylines over time-and has him working with Professor Viktor Radek investigating cults and mysterious, seemingly magical events around the globe.  In The Egyptian, Radek and Grey are called in by a biomedical company to recover stolen research into a life extension product that could literally make humans almost immortal.  But all is not what it seems-when Grey and an investigative reporter begin to uncover the location of the stolen research, they witness the slaughter of a team of scientists, which leads them to believe that the biotech company is somehow behind the violence.  Drawn by their investigation to Egypt, they discover an ancient cult intent on controlling who is bestowed eternal life.

One of my favorite phrases for someone who seems to be feeling at the top of their game is "in the pocket".  Green has found his groove with this series, and The Egyptian felt much more "in the pocket" that The Summoner.  While there is less about Grey's back story in this book, there is enough to keep you interested in him as a character.  The story moves from America to Europe to a lost oasis in the Sahara, making for a lot of globe-trotting action.  The information about the immortality cult, and the science behind anti-aging, was presented in such a way that I felt like I learned a lot without being lectured at, and it was well-placed in the overall arc of the story.  I am so glad that this series is shaping up the way it is...smart thrillers for people who like their action with some cognitive stimulation!

Thanks for Layton for giving me an advanced preview copy.  You can get it in Kindle or Nook version from his website, www.laytongreen.com.

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

Any long time readers of this blog know my deep respect for Octavia Butler.  She takes the genre of science fiction and turns it into literature that not even the most pernicious lit snob can say is anything other than high quality.  Kindred, Butler's best known work, is perhaps the clearest example I've yet read of the way that she combines issues of race, gender, and class into her work.

Kindred is the story of Dana, a black woman living in California in the 1970s.  Through some process never fully explained, Dana is transported back to the early 1800s whenever Rufus, her white great-great-great-great (you get the idea) grandfather is on the verge of getting himself killed.  Unfortunately for Dana, this unknown ancestor is also the son of a slave-owner in Maryland.  This means that once she is back in time with him, she must adjust her life to the customs of the time, acting the part of a slave.  As Dana travels back and forth between the past and the present, she learns more about what it meant to be black and powerless in the United States than she ever wanted to.  What was abstract to her and her white husband in 1976 becomes terrifyingly concrete in the world of 1830s Maryland.

Kindred is a bit of a cross-over novel, as the science fiction aspect of it is not nearly as important as the story itself.   Perhaps that's why it is her most popular novel, because you don't have to be a science fiction fan to enjoy it.  But I suspect it has more to do with the examination of race and slavery than with a genre preference.  Through Dana's experiences, Butler shows the brutality and cruelty of slavery.  Dana, with her 20th century moral superiority, begins by "acting" as a slave, but after being whipped, beaten, forced into the fields, and nearly raped, she comes to realize how easily people can be made slaves.  Take away a person's humanity, and they will believe they are less than human.  Value a person only because of the work that they can do or the price that they will fetch, and they will start to define themselves that way, even contribute to their own captivity.

It is this idea that is perhaps the most striking in Butler's work, especially given the 1979 release date.  That close to the heyday of the civil rights movement, it must have been a risk for Butler to create the characters of Rufus, who while not likeable does at least become understandable as the slave owner's son, and eventual slave owner himself.  Even though Dana hates what he does, she can't quite bring herself to hate him, though he certainly gives her ample reasons to do so.  But Dana's relationship with Rufus, and the various attitudes of other slaves on the plantation, demonstrate that slavery and people's attitudes towards it were not as clear-cut as history books would make them out to be.  To be sure, the institution of slavery is abhorrent, but those living within it sometimes had to do things that should not necessarily be judged by 20th (or 21st) century standards.  Butler clearly shows how insidious the effects of living under such a brutal system can be, from the need to run away again and again, even after the most horrific beatings, to the need to try and secure your place by serving up another slave's transgressions to your masters, even though you know what the consequences for them will be.  In the end, Dana is able to retain enough of her 20th century self to free herself from the bondage imposed on her by the involuntary time travel, but not without scars, both physical and emotional, that will leave a permanent impression on her, and on the reader.

City of Shadows, by Ariana Franklin

There is something about royalty that is fascinating to many of us.  If you need any evidence of this, just take a look at the enormous amount of media coverage that the recent royal wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton received.  I know that I am not the only woman who spent a good part of her girlhood wishing that she had been born a princess.

The 20th century was a bad time for royalty.  Many, many monarchies either disappeared completely or were weakened to the point of figurehead status, including the kingdom of which Prince William will one day be the king.  But perhaps no one had it as bad as the Romanovs of Russia.  The repressive political system in Russia led to tyranny, ethnic cleansing, and the exacerbation of poverty.  In response, the Bolsheviks didn't just depose the royal family-they executed them, all of them, including the children.  This is probably not a new story to most of you-the tragedy of Prince Alexei and his four sisters, the grand-duchesses.  The most famous of those little girls, of course, was Anastasia.  Years after the massacre at Ekaterinburg, a woman turned up claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia.  She convinced many many, usually wealthy, people that she was in fact the daughter of Czar Nikolas.  It is this woman, Anna Anderson, that provides the underlying structure of Ariana Franklin's City of Shadows.

(From Amazon) "British author Franklin (the pseudonym of a veteran historical fiction writer) makes the most of an original premise in this engrossing thriller that opens in 1922 Berlin. The German government is in crisis, inflation is staggering, anti-Semitism is rife, citizens are starving and Hitler has begun his rise to power. Horribly scarred Esther Solonomova works as a secretary for fake Russian nobleman Prince Nick, the owner of several Berlin nightclubs (think Cabaret) catering to the rich, the foreign and the deviant. Nick finds an inmate in a local asylum who claims to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, sole survivor of the slaughter of Russia's royal family. Prince Nick renames the inmate Anna Anderson, installs her in an apartment with Esther and sets in motion plans to get his hands on the money and jewels that Anna will claim as the heir to the Russian throne. But a mysterious Nazi is trying to murder Anna, and those near her begin to die."

I read and enjoyed Ariana Franklin's historical mystery series about Adelia, a Salerno-trained doctor solving crimes during the reign of Henry II of England, so I had high hopes for this novel, and it delivered.  Rich characters were a big part of its appeal-Esther is a woman with a painful past, the detective who investigates the murders, Seigfried Schmidt, is decent and driven by the horrors he witnessed during the war.  But what really made the book for me was the evocative way that Franklin wrote about Germany between the big wars.  Reading about the rise of Hitler was a little bit like seeing a horrific accident happen and being unable to stop it.  You really get the sense of how an entire country was taken in by this charismatic leader who played on their fears and promised to get the country out from under the yoke of the "Jewish bankers" who were ruining the lives of good, hard-working Germans.  The "is she or isn't she?" subplot worked well as a framework for this story, and Franklin did something that not too many mystery writers are able to do anymore-she completely surprised me with the ending.  All in all I'd say that if you are looking for a mystery with a little more substance than is usual in today's world of books, then you would enjoy this one.

The Summoner, by Layton Green

After the Da Vinci Code, there was quite a market created for historical thrillers.  Layton Green takes this now rather cliche formula and turns it on it's head, giving us a dark, gritty story of blood sacrifice and ancient evil in his book The Summoner.

Dominic Grey is a member of the Diplomatic Security Service.  He is a man with a past-abused by his father as a boy, he ran away from home at 16 and has spent his adult life traveling the world, learning jiu-jitsu and taking a number of dangerous jobs.  He is called in to investigate after a US diplomat disappears during a religious ceremony in the bush.  Along with his minder, Nya Mushumbu, they investigate, only to find that there appear to be magical forces at work.  Viktor Radek, a religious phenomenologist and expert on cults is brought in to help them understand the forces that they are dealing with.  Thwarted at every turn by the political and bureaucratic nightmare that is modern-day Zimbabwe, Grey and Nya soon find themselves working outside of the law-and facing an enemy who seems to have supernatural powers.

When I was approached to review this book, I was very intrigued by the premise.  It seemed to take the historical thriller genre in another direction, focusing on ancient religions and some of their more sensational practices and placing them in the 21st century.  The resulting conflict between modern man's rational thought and ancient "supernatural" occurrences becomes a central feature of the mystery.  The mystery was not just what happened to the diplomat, but whether what appeared to happen could in fact be real.

As I read I could literally see this playing out as a movie in my mind, something that is not always true of the books I read.  I think that this would make an excellent movie.  It is fast-paced, has some truly gruesome scenes of ju-ju blood rituals, and characters that radiate evil rather strongly.  While I enjoyed the story quite a bit, it did have some of the same problems I see with Dan Brown's writing.  Prof. Radek spends paragraphs on exposition, which can start to feel like a history lesson.  But Layton does a better job of placing them in the action.  Radek is not hurriedly explaining the history of ju-ju as they are literally running for their lives, but during moments in between the action.  He also makes them a bit shorter, which helps the flow of the book.  Speaking of the flow, while it was well-paced, I felt that there were areas that could have used more development.  Unless you had pretty good background knowledge about Zimbabwe some of the cultural references would be troubling, and a little bit more information about the Diplomatic Security Service, how it works, etc...might have been useful.  I think all in all this is a good start to what is going to be a series of historical thrillers about Dominic Grey.  I look forward to seeing how the characters develop over time, and how Green's writing grows as he continues the series.

(Thanks to Mr. Green for providing me a review copy of the book!)

The Serpent's Tale

Any regular readers of my blog know that I am a fan of mysteries.  While I choose more literary fiction when my brain can handle it, when I am super busy and stressed with work, home, and life in general a good mystery is like comfort food.  The authors I tend to read write characters and stories that are predictable in the best sense of the word.  Slipping into an Alex Delaware novel or a Myron Bolitar story is like putting on a comfy old pair of jeans.  But sometimes a mystery writer will surprise me, and I have to say that my last read was a pleasant surprise indeed.

I guess the universe must have sensed I was ready for something different, because instead of the usual formula mystery I picked up The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin.  I was intrigued by the premise, and I was right to be.  Ms. Franklin blends modern mystery sensibilities with historical fiction in a new and ingenious way.  Her heroine, Adelia Aguilar, is a doctor of the dead, trained by the illustrious medical school in Salerno-during the 12th century.  It is a time of superstition and blind devotion to Catholicism for most people, but not for the forward thinking Adelia and her Saracen helper, Mansur.  When Henry II's mistress, the Fair Rosamund, is poisoned, she uses her medical knowledge and fierce intelligence to discover who the murderer is-and to avert a civil war between Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Having been interested in Eleanor of Aquitaine for her early feminism since my teens, I've read a fair amount on her life.  It seems that Ms. Franklin is spot on with her historical accuracy.  She deftly describes the contradictions of the time-blind faith in the superiority of Catholicism, coupled with bishops and priests having relations outside their vows of chastity; the plight of the poor against the noblesse oblige of the rich.  It is almost as though Adelia herself is a visitor from our own time to this strange land of our cultural ancestors.  So trapped is she by the assumptions and attitudes people have about both women and science that she must sacrifice the man she loves just to be allowed to continue her calling to medicine-a calling she can only fulfill by pretending to be the assistant of her Muslim friend.  In that time of the Crusades, those ruling England would rather put their trust in an infidel who happened to be male than in a Christian female.  Yet within this rigid social construct she is able to use her scientific mind in ways that mirror many modern forensic techniques-at least the ones that don't require 21st century technology.  There is a lot going on in this novel, but despite the questions and challenges it raises for the reader it is not a difficult read.  As this is actually the second novel in a series, I am going to go back and read the first, Mistress of the Art of Death, as there was some backstory I was obviously missing.  If you haven't read Ariana Franklin before, I suggest you do the same.  But either way, The Serpent's Tale is worth the time.