Star of the Sea

By Joseph O’Connor
Really I picked up this book because it was on sale (only $3.95!) and because the cover blurb mentioned something about a monster stalking the decks of a ship, at night. So naturally I thought it would be about vampires. Really, there should be some kind of government inquiry into book jacket blurb writers because needless to say this book has nothing to do with vampires. OK, possibly I am obsessed with vampires, but what would you think the word “monster” is meant to represent, particularly when associated with “night”? (Apart from werewolves, maybe).

Lack of vampires not withstanding, this book was actually very absorbing. When I am trying to recommend a film to someone, I might say “I wouldn’t mind paying full price for that” or “Cheap Tuesday flick, man” or “Wait for it on video, bud” or just a bald “Don’t bother”. I think Star of the Sea classifies easily as a Cheap Tuesday book, possibly even a “Wouldn’t mind paying full price”, so feel free to ask for a lend of my copy.

The Star of the Sea is actually about the Irish potato famine. There are many characters involved, one of whom is a poor Irish peasant who has been appointed the task of murdering an Irish aristocrat on the trip over the Atlantic to America. Though the present-day plot is set on board, there are many flashbacks, in order to highlight who the characters are and how they got that way. It is very successful in showing the reality of the famine and how shocking it must have been; also the realities of travelling by ship back then and how yucky that must have been; also also some of the realities of immigration, and how enormous a decision this must be.

There is even a bit of post-modernism in there (I think it’s post-modernism, anyway, you post-modernists will have to tell me) where the aspiring author character despairs of writing a novel about the famine because it is impossible to write about something so terrible. And yet – we are reading a novel about the famine!! How post-modern.

The book is written as if it is a “piecing together of the facts”, well after the events occurred, and so is written from many different viewpoints and includes parts written as the Captain’s Log, unpublished memoirs or fiction by some of the characters (drawing heavily on actual factuals, of course) and so on. Also, in between each chapter the author has included an extract from letters written by Irish immigrants to the US. Chapters are subheaded things like “In which are sketched certain recollections of The Star of The Sea; the condition of her passengers and the evil which stalked among them”. (Seriously, stalking evil-doers? That can only mean vampires!). I found this all a bit of overkill and distracting from the story; I think it would have worked much better had the author left out all the frilly clever bits. All the chopping and changing made the story seem a bit overworked and diminished its credibility, rather than adding to it. I think the author did A Lot Of Research for this book and By Gad He Was Going To Use It All.

Still – it did make me stay up past my bedtime.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Clean Break

By Val McDermid
I really really want to like McDermid’s books, because I heard her speak at an Adelaide Writers’ Festival once and she was fabulous. How many authors will admit that the reason they made their main character a journalist was because that was the author’s own area of expertise and they didn’t want to have to do any research?? But I’m afraid McDermid’s books just don’t do it for me.

I think Clean Break is the third novel of McDermid’s I’ve read, this one featuring her private eye heroine Kate Brannigan. Brannigan is trying to track down a stolen Monet (there’s a gang of art thieves on the loose! Very topical…) while simultaneously investigating a bit of industrial sabotage. She’s independent, tough and feisty, needless to say, and grappling with some relationship problems with her partner, Richard (a music reviewer). Sound familiar??

McDermid’s books are OK, but they don’t make me want to stay up way past my bedtime to find out what happens. Somehow the jaunty dialogue seems forced. Also, even though I suspect McDermid wrote these before the tough action chick was a bit of cliché, unfortunately the tough action heroine is becoming a bit of a cliché. Also also, and I mention this as advice to any budding crime writers out there, why do crime writers persist in describing their character’s outfits?? Maybe it’s because I’m not a fashion person, but they always sound terribly ugly, unless the crime is set in the nineteenth century or something, in which case I don’t mind reading about greatcoats and bonnets and things. I don’t care if our heroine is wearing tan jodhpur-style leggings, a cream linen collarless shirt and a chocolate brown jacket with a mandarin collar, so just leave it out, OK?

I know McDermid has a staunch fan base, particularly for her series featuring Kate Brannigan and another featuring journalist Lindsey Gordon (not to mention the books that the Wire in the Blood series was based on, featuring crime psychologist Tony Hill), so don’t necessarily be put off by my review. Give it a whirl – airplane reading, maybe.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Silas Marner

By George Eliot
It’s been a while since I read Middlemarch; I remember enjoying it immensely (a good book to read while travelling on trains through the UK, incidentally) but had forgotten why. Reading Silas Marner reminded me – George Eliot takes you right into a community, building up the many characters and their foibles, illuminating the customs and beliefs of their society, and when she depicts foolishness, weakness or error, she does it kindly.

Silas Marner, a weaver, was brought up in “Lantern Yard”, an unspecified religious community, but is banished after a “friend” sets him up for stealing the church’s moolah and steals his chick. Marner makes his way to Raveloe, where he is not the most popular of residents, as the pain of his betrayal and banishment has made him a bitter and withdrawn person. He hoards his gold, earned through long hours on the loom, which is the only precious thing to him. So when it’s stolen, he kinda goes to pieces. Through chance, however, a young orphaned child turns up on his doorstep, bringing about his personal salvation. (He names the child Hephzibah, after his mother and sister; when it is noted that this is a bit of heavy duty name for a child he says, don’t worry, she will be called Eppie for short. I don’t know why I feel the need to note this – it’s just such a terrible name!! NB Apologies to all people called Eppie out there).

I have obviously been watching too many television soaps, because I expected many more twists and turns and disappointments and much more anguish before the finally happy end of the novel. Apparently this was Eliot’s favourite of her own work; I found it enjoyable and I love Eliot’s gentle style; but overall the story was a little bit “so what”. To channel the Queen for a moment, one isn’t always in the mood for a bit of nineteenth century novel. But if you are, this is a nice one.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Harnessing Peacocks (2003)

By Mary Wesley
I think Mary Wesley is most famous for her book The Camomile Lawn, which I haven’t read. I have read a few of her others though, and she is an author that is worth trying out, if you haven’t already. This book is not one of her best – my favourite to date has been The Vacillations of Poppy Carew – but still quite enjoyable. She tends to write about the same sort of characters a lot, and in this book I didn’t find her set of characters as likeable or convincing.

One thing I have liked about Mary Wesley’s books is that her heroines tend to be unconventional, but maybe this one went a bit too far. In this book, the heroine (Hebe) runs away from home as a teenager as she is pregnant and her family wants her to have an abortion. Many years later, she supports her son by travelling around the countryside and cooking for various elderly ladies and having flings with their sons, as a paid mistress. All men in the book seem to develop an uncontrollable passion for Hebe but her “business” relationships are all very nice and well-mannered and end very tidily when they need to. OK, it’s unconventional, and maybe I’m just a prude, but I mean, come on!! How likely is this?? Still I suppose they ARE British.

In general Wesley’s blokes aren’t as well written or as three-dimensional, and the ones in this book just seem to be arrogant and bad-tempered (except perhaps for Hebe’s son) and you don’t get to know them well enough to care about them particularly.

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Poisonwood Bible (2005)

By Barbara Kingsolver
This is one of the best books I have read for some time; I found it quite unputdownable. I nearly chucked at sickie on the Monday after I started reading it so I could stay home and finish it. (Bosses, take note: I did not chuck a sickie).

This book tells the story of a family from southern USA who move to a small village in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1959 to convert the Congolese to Christianity. The family consists of Dad (Nathan Price), Mum (Orleanna Price) and four girls (Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May). On arrival, the family proceeds to slowly unravel. The father is a evangelical Baptist preacher, truly astonishing for his incapacity for empathy or to recognise the strain his choices placed on his wife and children. Ooh, I really didn’t like him – neither did anyone else in the book, much.

The story is told from the perspective of the four girls and occasionally through Orleanna’s eyes. Alternately fascinating and dreadful, the book shows how the Congo slowly begins to shape the girls’ thoughts (adaptability – or the lack of it – is an amazing thing), and how their experiences there make a return to “normal” life impossible. Nathan Price’s original plan was to stay there for a year; some of the characters never return to the US.

Quick soapbox: This book also triggered a chip I have on my shoulder about Europeans – I reckon they get let off really lightly when it comes to colonial crimes against humanity. There is no question that the English committed many crimes in their bid to conquer the world, or whatever they were doing, but so did the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish and (in this case) the Belgians – we never seem to hear about their histories so much. But then, maybe that’s because we live in a country colonised by the English.

Rating: 10 out of 10
This is a book that stays with you for some time.

Wilt (2005)

By Tom Sharpe

This is the story of Henry Wilt, who’s a chap not really content with his middle-class existence. Neither is his wife, Eva, who wishes he had a more prestigious job and a bit more ambition and so on. Wilt fantasises about murdering his wife, especially after she meets an odious American couple, Sally and Gaskell Pringsheim, who are into Sexual Freedom and Women’s Lib and all sorts of revolutionary new things. Wilt even goes so far as to “practice” Eva’s murder, while she is away with the Pringsheims, after which he decides not to murder Eva.

Unfortunately for Wilt, his practice body (a blow-up plastic doll) is discovered and everyone believes he has murdered Eva after all. People become increasingly hysterical from then on, especially at some staff meetings at Wilt’s workplace, which are really very good scenes.

This book is written very cleverly, and is quite amusing, only it bothers me that the “bad guy” of the story is Sally Pringsheim, who really is a super bitch, but also the representative of “Women’s Lib” in the story. So, in satirising Sally, the author also makes Women’s Lib seem shallow and callous and selfish. Eva is “saved” in the end and she and Wilt return to their normal, comfortable existence, but partly because at some level Eva rejected Women’s Lib and what it represented.

In other words, I get the feeling Tom Sharpe is not a fan of Women’s Lib. But then, he is entitled not to be a fan…literature would be very dull if we all had the same opinions…all the same, I will be reading more of Sharpe to decide whether or not I think he is a misogynist, as well as to enjoy his depictions of bureaucratic ridiculousness.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Read when you feel in the mood for an episode of “Yes, Minister” or are feeling very anti-Women’s Lib.

The Dressmaker (2004)

By Rosalie Ham
It must always be so annoying to writers when they read reviews of their work that say things like “yeah it was fantastic but I really didn’t like the ending much’. Writers must thank their lucky stars that they aren’t poor unfortunate film-makers whose ultimate vision is compromised when the test audience decides they’d prefer it if the two main characters got married and lived happily every after instead of dying alone in some garret somewhere after contracting a terminal disease and a broken heart.

So I do apologise to the author for saying this, but…I really did enjoy the book except for the ending. The story is about Tilly, who returns to her childhood town (in country Victoria) to look after her sick mother. Tilly and her mother were the town outcasts when she was young, and she finds that they still are. (Why? Not telling; read the book to find out). Everybody is horrible to her, despite her whipping up fantastic dresses for them all (she became a dressmaker in Paris during her years of exile), except for Teddy McSwiney, who thinks she is beautiful and carefully begins to work on winning her heart. The only other person who is nice to her is Sergeant Farrat, a decent bloke with excellent manners who enjoys sewing his own frocks.

The book is described on the front cover as “an Australian gothic novel of love, hate & haute couture”. It’s a good read, most people get their just desserts, but I felt the end was a bit of a cop-out. I also felt sorry for the poor old Sergeant – in a book where people sort of got what they deserved, I thought he was short-changed. I don't think it’s destined to be a classic or anything, but it was enjoyable and often quite clever – good character sketches, especially. A good holiday read.

(NB: If there really is a town called Dungatar in the wheatlands of Victoria, they must really have it in for Rosalie Ham now).

Rating: 6.5 out of 10