Shame and the Captives by Thomas Keneally

This fantastic novelization of the Japanese Prisoner of War breakout from Cowra prisoner of war camp in Australia is one of the best books I've read this year.  Keneally, through extensive and acknowledged research gets in the minds and thought processes of these inscrutable men and their culture of war, especially in regards to the shame of capture.  The narrative also includes Alice, who is living on her husband's farm with her father in law, while her husband is interred in a camp in Germany, and her relationship with Giancarlo, an Italian prisoner of war who is living and working on their farm.  She is missing her husband and indeed starting to forget him and enters into a sexual relationship with Giancarlo, little more than a slave himself.  Also we meet Albercare, camp commandant, a rather hapless but well meaning man, who is trying to stick to the Geneva Convention in regards to treatment of prisoners and his difficult relationship with his wife, to whom he has been unfaithful.  And there in Major Suttor, also trying not to fuck anything up with the Japanese since his son is a prisoner of war in Burma, where it is known that prisoners are being ill treated.  He is afraid any errors in judgement will directly affect his son's treatment.   (Although it wasn't till after the war that the world knew about the extent of the atrocities).   Keneally is a master story teller and I was riveted from page 1.  He has a well honed facility for both plot and character.  A beautiful and brilliant novel.

Road Ends by Mary Lawson

This lovely and simple novel languished on my shelf for almost a year before I picked it up and read it in one sitting.  The setting is northern Ontario during blizzard season and England in the late 1960's and is told from three points of view in alternating chapters, a device I am not overly fond of, but which worked beautifully here.  There is Edward, the patriarch, who is working through the legacy of a violent and harsh childhood while his wife completely absorbs herself in baby after baby, letting the household work fall into the hands of her only daughter Megan.  Megan is brilliantly brought to life by the author.  She exiles herself to London to find her independence, as if the only way to escape the endless drudgery of raising her brothers is to leave Ontario altogether.  And then there is her brother, kind and lost Tom, suffering after the suicide of his best friend.  Tom, although isolated by his grief is the one to notice things are awry in his family, but is at a loss to intervene in any effective way.  Gradually all three characters come to an understanding of their place in the world and how to give their lives some kind of purpose.  I highly recommend this novel.

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

Despite its length (about 570 pages) this entirely plot driven novel reads very fast.  Unlike many plot driven novels the pacing is perfect and the denouement is understated.  Yet I expected so much more.  Peter Leigh is an ex-addict, happily married pastor who takes a journey to a windswept, barren planet to serve as priest to the small population of fragile beings residing there.  There is no irony to the religious aspect of this novel which I found hard to bear.  His wife Beatrice remains on earth.  Through her computer missives to Peter we learn that the planet is going through climate disasters and economic breakdown leading to civil unrest and violence.  Peter becomes emotionally distant from his wife and earth's troubles as he engages more fully with the planet's (called Oasis) inhabitants.  I've read Faber's previous two novels:  Under The Skin and The Crimson Petal and the White which were both fantastic so I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book.  He has said he is finished writing novels which is too bad.  He is certainly a versatile writer and has a lot to say, however this novel didn't really excite me.  I think for me it was the earnestness of the characters that bothered me, I do love my satire.

Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald's new novel is out and I am getting so much joy from every word.  It begins Mary Rose, also known as Mr., just barely coping (and hilariously so) with her precocious toddler while her wife is working across the country.  The setting is Toronto, the annex, lovingly described, a great neighbourhood for those who know the city.  As Mary Rose is experiencing some pain in her arms the novel gently travels back in time to her birth and early childhood in Germany.  Ms. MacDonald writes childhood with great wit and humour, she writes of the post-natal depression her mother endures perfectly and with that amazing empathy all great writers seem to possess.  I think what astounds me about the writing is how one minute I am with Mary Rose in her bathroom where she is randomly studying her teeth in the mirror, next minute I am in mid fifties Winnipeg where her mother gives birth to a still born child, next I am in Germany where her army dad is oblivious to her mother's post-natal depression.  All this and I feel like I've not turned a page.  What pacing!  I cannot praise this beautiful, funny, tender novel enough.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

Toibin is a master at empathy for his characters.  His pacing is so deliberate, so thought out, that not a word is wasted.  The novel opens with Nora Webster dealing with the kindness of neighbours, showing up with words of sympathy for the recent death of her husband, a man who took centre place in her life.  She still must worry about money, her four children and how to find meaning for her life under the scrutiny and judgement of her neighbours.  This she does slowly and successfully, breaking free from the constraints of her time and place - mid sixties in a small town in Ireland.

The Road Home by Rose Tremain

I am nuts about Rose Tremain's fiction from A Sacred Country to Merivel.   The Road Home has been on my book shelf since its publication date in 2007 and yet I hadn't opened it.  Savidgereads is having a Tremain read-a-thon in honour of his grandmother and I thought I would finally read it.   What a disappointment for me.  The protagonist is Lev, who has come to England from an ex-communist country, looking for work to send money to his mother who is caring for his 5 year old daughter after the death of his wife a year or so prior.  He also leaves his good friend Rudi, who supplied the only comic relief the book has to offer.  I do not need to like my characters but I need humour if they are despicable or without introspection. Lev has honour but no shame.  In his quest for work he goes from making 5 pounds a day delivering flyers to 17 pounds per hour as a chef. Despite help and support and even love along the way he continually bites the hand that feeds him.  Lev admits to a temper but that is all.  I lost any empathy for him when he assaults his girlfriend at an obnoxiously hip play, which she is enjoying but he finds morally offensive.  His anger I understood but the violent assault (he chokes her) disturbed me.  Later in the book she tries to forgive him after she rightfully breaks up with him and he then chokes her and rapes her.  In relating this occurrence to Rudi he states "I guess it wasn't really far from rape".   Well.   And that is all that is said about that.  The only person that stands by Lev is Lydia, whose friendship he rejects over and over only to phone her to ask for ten thousand pounds to open his own restaurant.  What a jerk!

Anyway, I could have stood all this if there were satire or redemption but there is none.  His reading of Hamlet throughout the novel  (a gift from Lydia) as a device for Lev eventually gaining insight was flimsy and poorly executed, and indeed no insight was gained by this selfish, violent man.

The Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland

Just as all songs seem to be about love, I find that fiction seems to be often about loneliness or that very human need to connect.  Amy Rowland's first novel The Transcriptionist does this elegantly.  Her prose is soft and gentle and I melted into this intelligent novel.  Lena works alone in a small office transcribing by dictaphone stories for a large New York paper.  She lives alone in a ywca by Gramercy Park.  What brings Lena out of her solitude is a brief connection with a blind woman on a bus whose suicide (by entering a lion's den at the zoo) she transcribes.   Amy leaves her solitude to go on search of this stranger's life in order to give it meaning.   The book has several plot points which, despite the short length of the novel, unfold slowly and gently.  Amy Rowland has a deliberate way of writing, each word necessary, which I loved.

This is the Water by Yannick Murphy

This is the forth novel I've read by the crazily versatile Yannick Murphy and was a bit hesitant as it is written in the second person present tense for a lot of it, but Murphy is so original I was drawn in despite myself.  This "you" is Annie, an insecure mother of 2 adolescents on a swim team that is being beset by a serial killer.  So far, so run of the mill mystery, you think - but not so.  Murphy has a gift for character as well as plot, unlike so many procedural mysteries, and this is what kept me invested.  It's like Murphy is turning the standard mystery on its head.  The killer and his psychopathic motives are revealed early.  So what we care about are the vulnerable, flawed parents dealing with consequences from their own fucked up behaviour, often satirically, which I always love.

The Undertaking by Audrey Magee

I have never believed in allowing cultural context to validate acts of oppression or war, however Audrey Magee's novel The Undertaking illustrates to me how insidiously evil creeps up and becomes accepted by ordinary people.  This short, exquisite novel tells of a young couple in Germany during World War 2, he on the front, she at home with her parents.  They come together for wholly selfish but human reasons and fall in a sort of love.   The siege of Stalingrad, where Germany began losing the war at great cost to conscripts, challenges the main character's world view.  In Berlin, favoured families, loyal to the Nazi killing machine, move into homes owned by Jews, never asking or caring what became of their owners.  And yet, the reader feels for these characters with their simple wishes for life, which says a lot for Magee's ability to convey empathy.   The book is written mostly in dialogue that is precise and real in all its banality.  This novel is the reason that I read fiction.

Herman Koch

Summer House with Swimming Pool is Herman Koch's second book to be translated into English (from Dutch) after his wildly successful novel The Dinner.  Again we have the unreliable narrator, a physician who has committed an act placing him before the medical board where he is at risk of losing his licence to practice.  This we know from the start.  The action takes place against the idyllic summer house, also (tellingly) not without its own flaws.  Various assorted oily and vituperous people gather here, living the good life until it starts to crumble under the weight of their own despicable behaviour.  Not without humour, thankfully, but humour notwithstanding I still needed a (figurative!) shower after finishing this quick read.

Eyrie by Tim Winton

I am just getting the hang of this so bear with me.  My first post will be about Tim Winton's newest novel Eyrie.  With humour and staggering dialogue, Eyrie is about disgraced environmentalist Tom Keely.  As a result of his high ethical standards he has lost his job, home and his wife and is living in a colourless concrete building in Fremantle, Australia, where he has succumbed to addiction and loneliness.  This solitary man starts to connect with a desperate woman and her young grandson who live on the same floor.  Sounds grim but Winton is wickedly funny writer and Keely's struggle for redemption is rife with humour.  Read this book for the dialogue alone if for nothing else.