Devils' Corner

By Lisa Scottoline
I’m afraid I found this book quite dull. Really dull, in fact. So dull it gets my annual award for Crime Novel Least Likely to Inspire Me to Stay Up Past My Bedtime as well as my other annual award for Least Plausible and Least Interesting Love Story.

So why was this book so dull? It wasn’t badly written. It had a relatively good plot – at least, it wasn’t one of those ones about some shifty white-collar crime involving convoluted financial arrangements, which I always find particularly challenging to follow…no, I think it was because the characters weren’t terribly engaging. They got a bit better by the end of the book, but I didn’t really get a sense of our heroine ever being particularly interesting. Her love interest was silly, as I believe I have already inferred. Also, she had a very annoying way of interviewing suspects and witnesses and so on, which seemed to be essentially to bombard them with a long series of questions and not let them have any time to respond. No subtle Inspector Goran-type methods here!

Anyway, what happens? Our heroine, Vicki Allegretti, goes to meet a confidential informant about some gun-running but interrupts the murder of said confidential informant, and the theft of some very good quality cocaine. Also, her partner gets killed. So naturally she has to investigate, against the express wishes of her boss, of course. (I think Lisa Scottoline needs to read a bit of Jasper Fforde, to make her more aware of crime novel cliches). Ho-hum.

Rating: 4 out of 10

A Gentle Plea for Chaos (2006)

By Mirabel Osler
This is a book about gardening, but the author seems to have applied the idea of chaos to her writing also. The book is divided into five chapters, one each about trees, water, stones/wall, roses and bulbs, but it seemed to me that the chapters didn’t necessarily stick exclusively to their theme, making the whole book a bit of a jumble. The more enjoyable parts of this book talk about Osler’s own garden (acres of land somewhere in England) and how it came into being, interdispersed with musings on gardeners and gardening in general.

I became bored by Osler’s repeated “pleas for chaos” in gardens. (She really really doesn’t like neat gardens, gardens with dirt spaces between neat rows of plants and anything else that smacks of an even vaguely anal retentive personality). I mean, each to their own, I reckon – and Osler seemed to look down her nose at anyone who didn’t happen to share her gardening philosophy. (There were some quite snide remarks about clubs of little old ladies that visit open gardens, the "plant collectors"). Live and let live, you snotty cow!!

I haven’t had much gardening experience myself, but I won’t let that stop me putting in my two bits about Osler’s own gardening style – because she hates dirt showing between plants, she plants very densely, and then wonders why things don’t work. She despises those who sit down with pencil and paper to plan their gardens before they plant (presumably this is not organic enough or something) and then again wonders why things don't work. I mean, derrr.

Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for this book. Maybe I don’t know enough about plants to fully enjoy a book about gardening that has no pictures.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Making the Cat Laugh (2006)

By Lynn Truss
Lynn Truss rose to fame with her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, about grammar, and it seems pretty certain this book has been published to cash in on her current popularity. This book is a collection of columns Truss wrote for The Listener, The Times and Woman’s Journal, from the perspective of a single woman with cats, and about topics that concern a single woman with cats who is very fond of grammar (and male tennis players).

I kind of read this book out of spite for all the people that have recommended I read “Marley and Me”, a book about a man and his dog, currently high on the bestseller list, which I resisted because I am a cat person. However, this book had disappointingly little to do with cats, despite its title. Truss’ cats turn up every so often to observe and emphasise some pathetic aspect of her life (cats are very good at that) but otherwise we don’t hear much about them.

Truss is an entertaining writer and I often laughed while reading this book, but there is something curiously unsatisfying about the book as a whole - and something irritating about her style of writing. Mum suggested it might be because she is always ironic, or satirical, or whatever, and never serious about anything, which may be the case. I guess this book has highlighted for me the differences in writing for a newspaper column and writing a novel – they are written for different purposes and read for different reasons. I guess I expect something more intriguing from a novel; it is a long-term investment with long-term rewards. Still, it was good for reading on the train. And maybe Truss would be interested in joining my "Family Last" party - except of course she can't vote in Australia.

Rating: 5 out of 10

The Prisoner of Zenda (2003)

By Anthony Hope
Okay this one’s not being counted in my Readathon tally either – again, I only got up to about page 50 before giving up. This is one of those “oh-my-god-you-look-just-like-the-King-who-has-just-mysteriously-disappeared-can-you-fill-in-for-him-and-get-it-on-with-his-chick?” books, written in “Boys Own Adventure” style. The Swashbuckling Hero is Rudolph Rassendyll, on holiday from England in the green forests of Zenda. The Bad Guy is “That damned hound, Black Michael”, the King’s brother. People say “Courage, lad!” to each other, look “paler than was his wont” and seem to bite their moustaches a lot when they’re nervous (??). There’s lots of drinking and smiting. It even features the odd buxom wench and rosy damsel!

I often like this kind of book (I’m eagerly waiting for the word “cad” to come back in style) but this was very tedious – too tedious to laugh at even. Don’t bother – I’m pretty sure a film was made of this one and for once I feel that the movie must be superior.

Rating: 0 out of 10

Complicity (2003)

By Iain Banks
I’m not counting this one in my tally of books for the Readathon because frankly I thought it was crap and only got up to about page 50. It starts off alternating between the activities of an unnamed murderer and the activities of a semi-junkie journalist, set somewhere in Scotland. The unnamed murderer (assuming it was all the same guy, I didn’t get far enough to find out) is very busy and had killed two people, several dogs and sexually assaulted another (person) by the time I gave up. The journalist seemed to drive around the countryside a lot getting uptight about the quality of beer in Scotland, smoking, drinking whiskey and sniffing one of those white powders, I forget which, to keep him awake and hanging around in telephone boxes waiting for some secret source to call him about something. By page 50 there was still no apparent connection between the two although obviously there must have been, unless the author was trying to be all post-modern or something.

In the end it was all getting a bit sordid for me – and to top it all off I thought it was pretty badly written, relying way too much on shock value. I won’t be picking up any more Iain Banks books unless they come with a very good recommendation!!

Rating: 0 out of 10

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (2003)

By Jean-Claude Carriere
Written as a sort of journal, this book details the holiday of the accident-prone Monsieur Hulot, as seen through the eyes of a terminally bored and jaded man on his annual holiday to some dreary beach in France. While some of the scenes are entertaining, this book ultimately failed for me because nothing really happened – no characters had a crisis or came to a greater understanding of anything about the world or the people in it. Also, I found it difficult to be sympathetic towards the character of the narrator, who obviously found his wife stupid, inane and boring and consequently his own life stupid, inane and boring but was too pathetic to do anything about it but be glad that poor old Monsieur Hulot was there to make an ass of himself and liven things up a bit.

When I saw this book at ye olde second-hand book sale I had a vague idea that it had been turned into a movie of some repute and therefore may be of literary merit. I have to say I was disappointed. When will I ever learn!!!

Rating: 3 out of 10

R is for Ricochet (2005)

By Sue Grafton
What I shame this book wasn’t “C is for Corpse” (an earlier Sue Grafton novel) so I could make a clever joke about what the novel really should have been called. I can think of several derogatory words that begin with C, but none that start with an R. The best I can think of off the top of my head is “R is for Ratshit”, which is kind of cheating.

Yes, I was less than impressed with this latest effort by Sue Grafton in her alphabetically-themed adventures of her heroine Kinsey Millhone, a private investigator. Why? Because it really is INCREDIBLY DULL. And Kinsey is also INCREDIBLY DULL. This is meant to be a thriller detective novel – what do I care whether Kinsey goes jogging, unless something interesting happens along the way? What do I care about the romantic problems suffered by her 80-year old neighbour? What do I care about the precise details of her outfit? Well, I’ll tell you – NOTHING. This book really made me suspicious that the whole female-private-eye genre is nothing more than Mills and Boon in disguise – the word frisson even lurked in one sentence, ready to shock the unwary reader believing she was reading a hard-nosed feminist text. Okay okay, maybe that’s going a bit far, Kinsey is certainly much more liberated than the average Mills and Boon heroine, BUT THE AVERAGE MILLS AND BOON NOVEL IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THIS. Maybe I was just crabby when I read this novel…perhaps if I’d been a fan of the whole series right from “A is for Aardvarkshit” (not the real title) I would be more enthusiastic about the adventures (or not) of Kinsey Millhone. Gee, I can’t wait for “Z is for Zebrashit” to come out…

The only interesting thing about this novel is that it is set in the 1980s, Grafton deciding not to age her characters in real time. And that’s only interesting for its novelty value – how many other novels do you know deliberately set in the 1980s? Pity Grafton didn’t chuck in a bit more Duran Duran and Milli Vanilli – that could have spiced things up a bit.

Rating: 3 out of 10
Only in recognition of the effort it takes to actually write a novel. For die-hard Kinsey fans only.

Gulliver's Travels (2004)

By Jonathan Swift
This is an odd kind of book. The author describes his (accidental) voyages to Lilliput, where everyone is about 6 inches high, and to Brobdingnag, where everyone is about 60 feet high. There is no plot, as such – the author merely gets stranded on said islands, is captured by the locals, learns to communicate with them, and eventually finds his way back to England again.

It is quite interesting to see the details Gulliver thought to include, such as the various punishments passed on criminals, court intrigues, exactly how many Lilliputian sheep were needed to make up a meal for a standard-issue human, the philosophical musings of the respective kings of the realm and so on. Ingenious and very easy to read, but it just didn’t really grab me. I was vaguely expecting talking horse-people, so maybe that was why I was disappointed. I wondered if perhaps it might be more fun to read aloud with children?

Rating: 5 out of 10