She (2006)

By H Rider Haggard
I have a vague memory of seeing the film of this book, probably from when I was about 12, something about a woman stepping into a pillar of blue light and shrivelling up into a very old woman. How could I not want to read the book?? So, finally I got around to it.

Written by the same author who wrote King Solomon’s Mines and other tales of derring-do, She sees our heroes, Holly (a bloke, not very attractive, by his own admission, about 40-odd, the narrator of our story) and his adopted son Leo (very attractive, twenty-five, not quite as brainy and wise as Holly) travelling to deepest darkest Africa in search of a legendary race of people (the Amahagger) and their legendary Queen, Ayesha, who is said to have lived for thousands of years on the wild plains of Kôr. (This is the titular “She”, always italicised and short for “She-who-must-be-obeyed”; yes, this is where Rumpole got it from).

Our heroes know about all of this because of the writings on a ancient potsherd and various other bits and pieces left to Leo by his birth father, all contained in a locked chest with strict instructions not to open it before Leo’s 25th birthday. (And in true Victorian fashion, they even stop to have a cup of tea before opening it – obviously those Victorians would have passed the delayed gratification marshmallow test with flying colours, but I fear those Victorian adventurers could have waited so long for the second marshmallow that the original marshmallow would have rotted away, if such a thing is possible. I mean, imagine if the delayed gratification tester went out of the room and got hit by a bus? They might have waited for ever! Certainly the Victorian adventurer would never survive in a modern movie version of such events).

Anyway, Leo is apparently descended from Kallikrates, an ancient Greek priest loved by She but (mysteriously) also murdered by her. I think we can all see where this is going, can’t we? So Holly and Leo struggle through wild seas, fever-filled swamps and fight off dastardly natives (who speak Arabic, interestingly enough, which when translated into English for our benefit, contains lots of “thees” and “thous” and "didst thy knowests" and so on, which I must say was a little tiresome) who would kill them by putting a large red-hot cooking pot on their head, before eating them for tea, in order to find She and (supposedly) avenge Kallikrates death. Amazingly, it turns out that Leo is the exact image of Kallikrates!! Who would have thunk it??

This book is interesting in that Ayesha is not presented as evil – both men fall in love with her, although Holly concedes it might be because she is so amazingly beautiful and nothing to do with her brain, which is in pretty good shape, it must be said. (Ayesha holds her own in lots of philosophical discussions about right and wrong, good and evil, life vs. death and so on). In fact, Ayesha reminded me a lot of Akasha, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Dead – a two-thousand-year-old babe with a brain, neither truly good or bad, but wrapped up in her own desires. I wonder if Rice may have been influenced by Haggard? Anyway, call me Alisha from now on, obviously this style of name has got something going for it.

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Eyre Affair (2003)

By Jasper Fforde
I thought this book was tops. It follows the adventures of our heroine, Thursday Next, who works for a special government agency that tracks down crimes against literature (eg forgeries, exceptionally bad productions of Shakespeare etc). Things get a bit weird when the villain, Acheron Hades (a truly villainous villain), steals the original copy of Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit and threatens to take out the hero and thus change the manuscript for ever – with the help of Thursday’s uncle’s new invention, the Prose Portal. (In the testing stages his wife gets trapped in one of Wordsworth’s poems – and it turns out Wordsworth’s a bit of a flirt). When this evil plan doesn’t work out quite as he intended, Hades decides to pick on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre instead.

Next’s world is one in which literature is much more popular with the masses than in ours – so much so that there is a copy of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works in every hotel room, along with the Bible and several other religious texts, and the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a frequent and serious topic of discussion. I liked the character of Thursday Next extremely (she’s a smart chick! Maybe not at genius level, but pretty good), and Acheron Hades was an excellent villain. I think I’ve found a new favourite author and will be looking for a hardback copy for my bookshelves.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Death and Restoration (2003)

By Iain Pears
This is the second of these series of books that I have read, about the fictional adventures of the Art Theft department in Italy, and although it’s nice to read some crime novels about art for a change instead of all those ones about serial killers and autopsies and things, these are pretty light-weight books and not much to get excited about. Good for reading on the plane or the bus, or when you don’t want to tax yourself overly. I don’t think I need to tell you anything about the plot – a painting gets nicked and they get it back. (Oh damn, I just ruined the ending).

Also it bugs me that the heroine, Flavia, who works for this particular branch of the Police Department, never seems to solve a crime without the help of her bookish failed-art-dealer boyfriend, Jonathan. (He failed at the art dealer thing because he was too ethical and nice). Jonathan seems to be the author’s alter ego in this book in that he has the superior academic knowledge, lateral thinking skills, sensitivity and all that while Flavia tends to run around a lot being the tough cop chick. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of the tough chick and am very glad she’s been written about more in recent years, but now I would like to see more of the “genius chick”. Where are the books with incredibly clever sheilas in them, who solve mysteries with their smarts?? And don’t say, what about “Murder, she wrote” – that doesn’t count. I can only think of Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and Elizabeth from “Pride and Prejudice” (and that’s not really a crime novel anyway). Any others you can think of? Are there even any female evil geniuses out there?

Rating: 4 out of 10