Ghettoside by Jill Leovy

I don't normally read "true crime", equating it with people who slow down while driving to stare at an accident scene, but Leovy attempts more a study, almost of an anthropological nature, to explore black on black homicide rates in Los Angeles, by working alongside detectives in south L.A.  I have worked in policing as a dispatcher for over 25 years so have always struggled with my own prejudices as to why violent crime persists.  Leovy's thesis is fairly simple, by this I mean clearly portrayed, that the perception by black people in the neighbourhoods of south L.A. is that police and politicians do not care, because they are black, and thus they must police themselves. The homicide rates are staggering, almost impossible to comprehend.  Leovy backs her thesis with some history of the south and the need for extralegal imperatives in marginalised societies. She then turns her thesis on its head by following some of the dedicated detectives in their attempt and ultimate success in solving the murder of Bryant Tenelle, age 17.  Leovy explores the abject fear of witnesses to come forward due to the very real threat of reprisal.  She portrays the community's sense of exhaustion with police, that it is just another black man killed.  But a detective, John Skaggs, feels very deeply about the problem, stating with sadness and exasperation "all these innocent men!".   Tenelle had no gang ties and is the son of a police detective himself.   I wondered if the book would have had the same impact were Leovy to choose another victim to write about. Black lives matter but the emphasis on solving the homicide of a son of a police officer lends the book a certain slant that the son of a drug dealer or prostitute may be less interesting or of less impact to the reader.

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally

After reading Shame and the Captives, which I loved so much, I pulled Daughters of Mars from my bookshelves.  This is an incredibly researched novel of the first world war about two sisters, Naomi and Sally.  Both are nurses in Australia and join the war effort in that capacity.  Told in the third person, the point of view shifts from sister to sister.  They start out together on a hospital ship, launched from Egypt and end together on the western front.  Never before have I read a novel that illustrates the absolute arbitrariness of who lives, who dies in the great and awful war machine. The novel is immense with plot without sacrificing character development.  Naomi is the elder and stronger sister, Sally is the more conflicted; they both harbour a secret and may have been complicit in their mother's death by administering an overdose of stolen morphine to hasten her death from painful and terminal cancer.   In one incredible chapter the hospital ship's red cross identification is painted over black to be used to transport more men and horses to the field.  The ship is torpedoed and sunk.  Naomi and Sally are part of a group on a life boat waiting for rescue, with soldiers hanging on to the sides of the boat, until the cold and fatigue cause some to just let go and drift off to drown.  My heart was in my throat reading this chapter.

Naomi and Sally are separated after rescue.   Naomi's strength and sense of justice cause her to rebel against a cruel hospital colonel and she is sent back to Australia.  She reapplies and is successful, eventually becoming a nurse at a privately funded hospital near the western front.  Sally also goes to the western front at a clearing station very close to the fighting.  Keneally is impeccable in his description of treatment of the injured and dying men.  How little one could do for these poor men in 1917.  Amputate.  Morphine.  And the quicker back to the fighting the better.  Shell shock and the irony of so called shirking.

To further illustrate the arbitrariness of who lives, who dies, both sisters contract the influenza that swept the world in 1918.  In a heart stopping final chapter to this woeful war two endings are given.  Do both sisters die?  Or does Naomi live and Sally die?  Does Sally live and Naomi die?   It might have been a literary gimmick, but I chose to see it as a beautiful and thoughtful way to illustrate how effectively and devastatingly any life changes when just one life is lost in war.

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.