5� “Everything had to be good. Had to be fine just as it was, even if it wasn’t. Always. Because any changes might be worse. So terribly much worse.�
Ma5� “Everything had to be good. Had to be fine just as it was, even if it wasn’t. Always. Because any changes might be worse. So terribly much worse.�
Make no mistake � this is a scary story. Everybody in Peaksville understood the rules and said things were fine and good, even if someone had died. Not only did they have to talk like this, they had to think like this around Anthony.
He’s a strange little boy who hears people’s thoughts � not so much a mind-reader as an unintentional eavesdropper. When he hears about trouble, he feels he needs to fix it, but he’s a kid, so what does he really know.
He’s currently using mind control to make a rat eat itself (blech), but he has his reasons.
“Aunt Amy hated rats, and so he killed a lot of them, because he liked Aunt Amy most of all and sometimes did things that Aunt Amy wanted.�
The operative word there is “sometimes�. When Bill Soames arrives on his bike with the mail, he tries hard to mumble and think mumbled thoughts so he won’t attract Anthony’s attention. He’s anxious to leave, and as he goes out the gate, he makes the mistake of thinking just that.
“As Bill Soames pumped the pedals, he was wishing deep down that he could pump twice as fast, to get away from Anthony all the faster, and away from Aunt Amy, who sometimes just forgot how ‘c²¹°ù±ð´Ú³Ü±ôâ€� you had to be. . . . Pedaling with superhuman speed â€� or rather, appearing to, because in reality the bicycle was pedaling him â€� Bill Soames vanished down the road in a cloud of dust, his thin, terrified wail drifting back across the heat.â€�
Anthony had decided to ‘help� him.
As a fan of Twilight Zone and of short stories in general, this one felt appropriately ‘out there�. When the townsfolk gather for a birthday celebration, everyone is tense.
“The next arrivals were the Smiths and the Dunns, who lived right next to each other down the road, only a few yards from the nothingness.�
“The nothingness.� Where IS Peaksville?
I mention Twilight Zone because of the reference in the introduction to the story, which I have added to encourage you to read the story (and others) yourself.
“Jerome Bixby (1923 � 1998) was an American short story and script writer who wrote four Star Trek episodes and helped write the story that became the classic sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). He is most famous for the “It’s a Good Life� (1953), also made into a Twilight Zone episode and included in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). The Science Fiction Writers of America named “It’s a Good Life� one of the twenty finest science fiction stories ever written. References to the story have appeared in the Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo, Fox’s The Simpsons, and a Junot Diaz novel, among others.
You can read it here:
This is another from the Short Story Club, which offers a story every two weeks for discussion. Find out more here � it’s fun!
5� “But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such. I found more solace in the unnameable openness of the 5� “But some children never feel at home in the family they were born to, and I was one of such. I found more solace in the unnameable openness of the sea, on the little beach on the island that Endo-san would one day make his home.�
Philip Hutton is telling this story. An elderly Japanese woman has told Philip she knew his friend Endo-san when they were young and has only recently received a letter from him, written to her decades earlier, and she wants to know what happened to him during the war.
� ‘Tell me about your life. Tell me about the life you and Endo-san led. The joys you experienced and the sorrow that you encountered. I would like to know everything.�
The moment I had been waiting for. Fifty years I had waited to tell my tale, as long as the time Endo-san’s letter took to reach Michiko.�
Philip’s narrative about the past is interspersed with conversations and tours of Penang with Michiko.
As a boy, he often didn’t fit in anywhere. He was born in Penang to a prominent English businessman and his father’s young, much-loved, second wife, whose Chinese family had come to Malaya to escape the poverty and politics of China. The first wife had died, leaving Noel with three English children.
Philip’s mother also died when he was very young, so Philip was raised in an English family, all of whom loved him, but he knew he looked different. People obviously thought he seemed to be neither one thing nor the other. Even the ancient soothsayer’s prophecy could be interpreted two ways.
� ‘You were born with the gift of rain. Your life will be abundant with wealth and success. But life will test you greatly. Remember � the rain also brings the flood.��
As a young man, he found peace on ‘his� island.
“There was a small island owned by my family about a mile out, thick with trees. It was accessible only from the beach that faced out to the open sea. I spent a lot of my afternoons there imagining I was a castaway, alone in the world. . . . Early in 1939, when I was sixteen, my father leased out the little island and warned us not to set foot on it as it was now occupied. It frustrated me that my personal retreat had been taken from me.�
Philip was home alone (except for servants of course) while the family was in London for several months, when a man with an unusual accent came to the house and asked to rent a boat. He introduced himself as Hayato Endo, pointed to the island, and said he lived there, but his boat had broken. Philip wasn’t happy, of course.
“I got up from the wicker chair and asked him to accompany me to our boathouse. But he stood, unmoving, staring out to the sea and the overcast sky. ‘The sea can break one’s heart, ²Ô±ð³ó?â€�
This was the first time I heard someone describe what I felt. I stopped, uncertain what to say. Just a few simple words had encapsulated my feelings for the sea. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.�
This was the beginning of Philip’s hero-worship. Endo-san was older and took Philip under his wing offering to teach him martial arts and how to focus his mind.
“I felt no connection with China, or with England. I was a child born between two worlds, belonging to neither. From the very beginning I treated Endo-san not as a Japanese, not as a member of a hated race, but as a man, and that was why we forged an instant bond.
I began my lessons in ‘a¾±°ì¾±Âá³Ü³Ù²õ³Üâ€� the following morning, entering into a ritual of learning that would continue largely unbroken for nearly three years.â€�
While his family was still away, he met the son of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
� There were the usual speculative glances when I entered � ‘here comes the half-caste, � I thought wryly.� . . . I knew people called him Kon, which I now did. He looked at me with a curiosity I found disconcerting. He radiated a sense of confidence for someone so youthful. . . . We talked for a long time on the beach that night; although we did not know it then, it would be the start of a strong friendship. It was only when Uncle Lim was driving me home that I realised Kon had not asked me a single question, that he had seemed to know all about me and perhaps even about Endo-san.�
This is a story about men � Philip and the men he reveres. The closeness between him and Endo-san is never spelled out as love, but there are scenes and incidents that hint at something more than comradeship.
Kon is more of a best pal. Thus, this English-Chinese boy became very close to his Japanese â€ÈÙ±ð²Ô²õ±ð¾±â€� and to an up-and-coming leader of the Chinese community, representing the two countries already at war in China.
The British seemed oblivious to the danger the Japanese posed to Malaya, and when the invasion began, it was shocking and brutal, just as it was on the Thai-Burma Railway and in Changi prison, and everywhere else I’ve happened to read about WWII atrocities.
“When would I find a sense of my self, integrated, whole, without this constant pulling from all sides, each wanting my complete devotion and loyalty? �
Philip had to make terrible choices, trying to save his family and friends. Through it all, are the lessons he absorbed in his training. Endo-san had once told him that the sword is always the last option.
�‘We use swords in training,� I pointed out.
‘What am I teaching you?�
‘To fight,� I said.
‘No. That is the last thing I am teaching you. What I wish to show you is how not to fight. You must never, ever use what has been taught to you, unless your life is in danger. And even then, if you can avoid it, so much the better.�
He made me promise him that I would always remember that.�
This is a story, rich with history, that is brought to life through a boy growing up, caught between cultures and loved by both sides of his family, facing a world war.
Something that stood out to me was how many people spoke so many different languages. There are dialects within cultures, of course, and I lost track of who spoke what, although the author often pointed it out. Philip could use it to advantage because people often didn't expect him to understand them.
It is not all ‘plot�. The setting, the sights, the foods, the many cultural influences are all celebrated.
“Instead of going through miles of jungle, my father decided to drive around the island, heading to its westernmost tip before turning south.The road rose up on the shoulders of low hills and faithfully followed the curves of the coastline. Below us the thick green of the trees was stitched to the blue of the sea by a seam of white, endless surf. Light splattered like careless paint through the trees above us and the wind through our open windows smelled clean and unblemished, tasting of wet earth, damp leaves and always, always the sea.�
The Gift of Rain was longlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize. I’m currently reading some award-winners and nominees that sound interesting, and this certainly deserved a spot. ...more
4.5� “Baz darted in and pinned the head with his crook. Then he crouched and used his other hand to flick away lumps of concrete until the snake was fr4.5� “Baz darted in and pinned the head with his crook. Then he crouched and used his other hand to flick away lumps of concrete until the snake was free. He picked it up, keeping the whipping front section clear with his crook, and poured it into a hessian sack.
‘Piece of cake,� he said, grinning at the others. Who were more interested, it seemed, in a depression under the middle section of the slab.
‘What, we got a whole family of the buggers?�
He looked. What they had was a rotting cotton shirt over a rib cage, and a wrist bone encircled by a knock-off Rolex Oyster.�
The young couple who lived in the house never questioned why there was a slab of concrete in the backyard, but it made a handy place to park a chair and sit outside with the baby, until:
“On a mild October morning near Pearcedale, south-east of Melbourne, a snake slid over the edge of a veranda on a shortcut to somewhere.�
Somewhere was under that slab. Cue the snake-catcher, Baz, in the opening quotation. Next, cue the cops.
Detectives Alan Auhl and Claire Pascal have been assigned as partners in the new Cold Case Unit to investigate what is clearly an old crime scene. He’s been brought out of retirement to relieve the burden from the younger police, who refer to him as “Retread�, while Claire, considerably younger, has transferred from Homicide.
Initially they have a scratchy relationship, each haunted by past cases, but they are both committed to this new unit. They find a 2008 coin under the bones, so that gives them a time frame around which they can gather other evidence.
As well as countless phone calls, door-knocking, and tracking down past residents of the area, they also attend the pathologist’s examination of the remains to find cause of death, possible signs of poison and the like.
“Under the cold bright ceiling lights and in the chilled air of the autopsy room, they pulled on ill-fitting smocks and overshoes and waited. . . . The bodies were stored on steel trolleys in refrigerated units. Even the gleaming steel added to the chill in the air.�
They ask a lot of unanswerable questions and wish they could get a facial reconstruction, but where’s the budget for things like that?
�‘Come on, doc,� Auhl said. ‘Haven’t you got any tame PhD students in the building?�
The pathologist gave it some thought. ‘Actually, yes.�
‘They might get a kick out of joining the fight for justice,� [Senior Sergeant] Colfax said.
‘They might get a kick out of a few dollars, too,� Karalis said, and Auhl could see him considering the paperwork, the budget, whom to sweet talk. ‘I’ll see what I can do.��
Auhl has a couple of other interesting cold cases he still wants to follow, and the story moves between these three cases and his complicated home life.
He inherited his parents� huge old house with many rooms, now home to his daughter, his ex-wife (occasional lover when the spirit moves her), students, and assorted waifs and strays, like women and kids escaping abusive partners.
I began this book as a library audio, and I admit I got confused. As the story moved through the three cases and the many characters. I nearly gave up, until I thought, hang on - this is GARRY DISHER, a favourite author � he’d never let me down. So I bought a copy and am glad I did.
Auhl seems to be one of those guys who attracts extended family, and not just because he’s solvent and generous. He listens, he cares, and when necessary, he’ll get between you and the bad guy. He’s one of Disher’s good guys (unlike Wyatt � great character but a crook). Also, people care about him.
I ended up loving it. The narrator was fine, but for some reason I didn't engage with the story as well in the audio. I think that is more to do with me than with the narration. In a perfect world, I'd have both. ...more
5� “And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense.5� “And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense. I would write my obituary.�
That is an excerpt from John Kenney’s new novel I See You've Called in Dead: A Novel, which reads smoothly, easily, amusingly and sounds as if it might actually live up to what the publisher claims it to be: “The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.�
Kenney’s won several awards and is a contributor to 'The New Yorker', so you know you’re in the hands of an experienced writer.
Much-loved author Emma Donoghue, (with sixteen novels, including Room under her belt, or in the back of her brain, or wherever she keeps them) is releasing The Paris Express soon. It’s historical fiction, based on an 1895 train disaster, described by the publisher as “a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.�
It opens with a young woman hesitating as she’s about to board the train, and I imagine many readers will want to know what happens to her.
The next one that caught my eye is a debut novel, The Names, by Florence Knapp, who has previously written nonfiction. The excerpt was compelling and I hope I get to read the rest of it. Cora’s husband, Gordon, has instructed her to register the baby’s name, today. Cora and her young daughter walk to the registry office and the little girl suggests a name.
“Cora has never liked the name Gordon. The way it starts with a splintering sound that makes her think of cracked boiled sweets, and then ends with a thud like someone slamming down a sports bag. Gordon. But what disturbs her more is that she must now pour the goodness of her son into its mold, hoping he’ll be strong enough to find his own shape within it. Because Gordon is a name passed down through the men in her husband’s family, and it seems impossible it could be any other way.�
Does a person grow into the name or does the name define your trajectory? I completely forgot this was a debut, at least for fiction, and that is was only an excerpt. It’s imaginative and thoughtful and I’d like to read more, please.
Notes on Infinity is a debut by Austin Taylor, who is a recent Harvard graduate with joint degrees in chemistry and English, which she certainly put to good use here. The excerpt opens with Zoe in a dressing room, feeling manic, getting sick, and finally downing four pills before getting her makeup redone and going onstage.
She introduces herself and says she’s going to tell the audience a story.
Then the book cuts to Part 1, and I got caught up in the meeting of two bright students, kind of competing against each other in chemistry classes, which was a lot more interesting than I’ve made it sound - sort of a cat and mouse, unspoken rivalry between exceptionally smart young people.
The publisher describes it as two people going into a biotech startup and discovering a cure for aging, That got my attention, too. I immediately thought of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, although this may be completely different, of course.
These Publisher's LunchBuzz Books are free to download from the Publishers Marketplace.
There are excerpts from 49 books, but there are a lot more titles and release dates for books by acclaimed authors. There are no excerpts, but many authors are famous, so you may find a favourite with a new book to look forward to.
Get a copy and have a look.
Thanks to #NetGalley for my copy for review, but you can download these books for free....more
4� “And yet, there is some sort of unsuccessful oddity about him, which sets him off from your successful bourgeois. I cannot put my finger on it yet, 4� “And yet, there is some sort of unsuccessful oddity about him, which sets him off from your successful bourgeois. I cannot put my finger on it yet, but it interests me.�
The narrator is writing to his sister from St. Philippe-des-Bains where his physician has sent him to recuperate and take the waters. He is not happy. There is little to recommend it except for the blue of the Mediterranean.
“St. Philip is but one of a dozen small white towns on this agreeable coast. It has its good inn and its bad inn, its dusty, little square with its dusty, fleabitten beggar, its posting-station and its promenade of scrubby lindens and palms.�
As a result, he says she will doubtless be subjected to a lot of long letters from him. He knows she will advise him to remember his plan to study human nature and tell him there must be someone, even there, who could interest him.
He is sure there isn’t,. But one day, as he’s sitting by the square, reading poetry, (not realising he’s started reciting it), a fellow doing his morning promenade around the square stops by, asking if the lines are from the great poet, Ossian. Our narrator say yes, and the man bows.
" ‘Monsieur will excuse the interruption,� he said, ‘but I myself have long admired the poetry of Ossian�—and with that he continued my quotation to the end of the passage, in very fair English, too, though with a strong accent. I complimented him, of course, effusively—after all, it is not every day that one runs across a fellow-admirer of Ossian on the promenade of a small French watering place—and after that, he sat down in the chair beside me and we fell into talk. He seems, astonishingly for a Frenchman, to have an excellent acquaintance with our English poets—perhaps he has been a tutor in some English family. I did not press him with questions on this first encounter, though I noted that he spoke French with a slight accent also, which seems odd.�
It certainly is odd, as is the man, but he’s very entertaining, in his unusual sort of way. He bemoans the fact that he was born at the wrong time and could have been great � if only. Our narrator eventually meets the fellow’s large, extended, unusual family, and is even more intrigued, if a bit frightened, I think. He attends a dinner and is warmly welcomed by everyonge.
“Only the old lady remained aloof, saying little and sipping her camomile tea as if it were the blood of her enemies. . . . It was like being in a nest of Italian smugglers, or a den of quarrelsome foxes, for they all talked, or rather barked at once, even the brother-in-law, and only Madame Mère could bring silence among them.�
I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It’s a story that once our narrator has put it all together, we want to go back and read things in context.
It’s another selection from the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Short Story Club Group. Join us here.: /group/show/... You can read this story here: ...more
3� “Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here. But 3� “Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here. But Eustace was something besides: he was indescribably repellent. . . . His aunts thought him delicate; what he really needed was discipline.�
This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, because the Englishman narrating this tale is dreadful himself. He tells of a visit to Italy with his family and what happened at a picnic, saying:
“I do flatter myself that I can tell a story without exaggerating, and I have therefore decided to give an unbiassed account of the extraordinary events of eight years ago. Ravello is a delightful place with a delightful little hotel in which we met some charming people. . . . To this little circle, I, my wife, and my two daughters made, I venture to think, a not unwelcome addition.�
I can't imagine his being a welcome addition anywhere I would want to be. The focus of his tale is a fourteen-year-old boy who doesn’t want to do anything � I mean anything. Lounging around, shuffling down the road, permanently bored and boring. (sound familiar?)
These delightful people gather themselves to go for a walk, taking a picnic and avoiding Italians as much as possible. They are far too lower class and sometimes don't even understand English.
The Short Story Club group discusses a number of interpretations of the sudden strange panic that takes hold during the party’s afternoon out and the incredible effect of it on the boy. It is okay, but I don’t feel inspired enough to dig into any deeper meanings, but others have enjoyed it.
If you’d like to read this wild tale yourself, you will find it and other stories free to read or copy here:
4� “The summer sky is a veil thrown over the moon and stars. The streets are quiet, the good people of Avalon long since tucked in for the night. Their4� “The summer sky is a veil thrown over the moon and stars. The streets are quiet, the good people of Avalon long since tucked in for the night. Their own parents are asleep in their queen-size bed under the plaid afghan knitted by one of their father’s patients. His mom is a deep sleeper, but his dad has been trained by a lifetime as a doctor to bolt awake at the slightest provocation. He is always ready.�
Tonight, his kids have the car, those dreaded teenage hormones kick in, and it’s a good thing the good doctor was ready.
Two families, living across the street from each other, cross paths sometimes but aren’t social friends. Dr Wilf, his wife and two kids have lived in the neighbourhood a long time before the young Shenkman couple move in.
Shenkman is a competitive perfectionist who pushes himself to exhaustion on a rowing machine in his ‘man cave�, apparently using an app to pit himself against another ‘rower� whom he knows as they race down a virtual river.
“It’s taken him a while to realize that this—the deep twilight blue of the lake, the ripples he imagines are cast by his blades—this is what he’s been looking for. Here, in this gym above his garage, paid for with plastic, here is where he forgets about the rest of his life.�
The timelines and character stories jump around � a lot. I’m usually pretty good with that, but for some reason, I realised I was sometimes forgetting what age the different families were. Their children were not contemporaries.
My interest was in young Waldo Shenkman, born to the new couple across the street from the doctor after the doctor’s kids have grown up. Waldo is adored by his mother, completely misunderstood and therefore disappointing to his father, and a budding, inquisitive science nerd, probably ‘on the spectrum�.
As a young boy, he loved his Star Walk app to trace the night skies. He’s a child who sees the Big Picture, the many connections between us all, between past and present. It makes sense to him, but to his dad, he’s just weird.
Dr Wilf happens to look outside one night at 10:45pm, and sees young Waldo at his window, gazing out at the sky while holding something glowing in his hands. He can see Waldo’s parents in two different rooms. Why is a ten-year-old up so late? They are not like his family was.
“These folks leave first thing in the morning, the father in a brand-new Lexus hybrid, the mother in a Prius—cars that don’t make a sound—and as dusk falls they return, gliding silently into the garage, the automatic doors closing behind them. The boy doesn’t play on the street the way Sarah and Theo used to. None of the neighborhood kids are ever out in their yards. They’re carted around by their parents or nannies, lugging violins or cellos in their cases, dragging backpacks that weigh more than they do. They wear soccer uniforms or spanking white getups, their tiny waists wrapped in colorful karate or jujitsu belts.
‘Hey, kid!� Ben calls again. ‘What are you doing?� �
He and Waldo meet outside, and Waldo shows the doctor his Star Walk app that tracks the night sky and how everything is connected to everything else and to them and to Avalon and to � on and on, he goes, reciting the names of constellations in alphabetical order� until Ben, (Dr Wilf) says it’s time to go to bed for both of them.
� ‘One more thing,� Waldo says. ‘Let me just show you one more thing, please?�
Ben’s not sure he can handle one more thing, but what choice does he have? Waldo presses the bottom-right corner of the screen, and now they are flying over the curvature of the earth, skating above the surface of oceans and continents until the entire planet recedes and two neon green lines bisect to show their exact location on the globe. A small neon figure stands in the center of a circle perched on the easternmost edge of the United States, the state of New York, the town of Avalon, the street � their street. Division Street.
‘Here we are,� Waldo says, pointing to the neon figure. ‘That’s us.�
Ben touches the screen. � From this distance, everything is connected. �
The sky of 1936 to the sky of 2010. From this distance, it seems possible that it’s all happening at once: this life, that life—an immeasurable number of lives all playing themselves out in parallel motion. He is at once a newborn at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, a kid playing stickball…�
I couldn’t help being reminded of Samantha Harvey’s 2024 Booker Prize-winning Orbital, with the space station circling the world sixteen times a day, so that everything did seem to be happening all at once. The astronauts saw the big world picture at the same time as they were worrying about their individual families at the pinpoint on Earth that was their home.
This is mostly a story about the people and their relationships and secrets with the added depth of Waldo’s perception. Shapiro shows all of her characters developing, but of course it was Waldo whose story arc I really loved.
I enjoyed it, although the jumping timelines confused me more than I’d like to admit. Within each time heading, there might be six chapters, each devoted to one character. It went from 1985 to 2010 to 1999 to 1985 to 2010 to 2020 to 2010 to 1985 to 2014 to 2020 to 1970.
But, in spite of occasional confusion, I came to agree with Ben, Dr Wilf, who thought back on his night with Waldo. I was reminded of the cultures that see the stars as our ancestors, where we go when we die.
“It was comforting, somehow, sitting beside the small boy who was able to navigate their precise location in the vastness. The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path; one hundred thousand million luminous presences beckoning from worlds away. ‘See us. We are here. We have always been here. We will always be here.� �...more
5� � ‘Anybody ever tell you you look more like your old man every day?�
‘No one needs to. There’s a mirror in my bathroom.�
‘Must be discouraging.�
‘A lit5� � ‘Anybody ever tell you you look more like your old man every day?�
‘No one needs to. There’s a mirror in my bathroom.�
‘Must be discouraging.�
‘A little,� Peter admitted.�
His old man was Sully, hero (?) of Russo’s previous ‘Fool� books featuring Donald Sullivan, known only as Sully by everyone. He was a rumpled, unkempt, guy who did everything, fixed things, was kind to drunks and old ladies, and was increasingly hindered by his ‘bum knee�. I think you would enjoy this on its own, but for me, I loved revisiting the people.
Russo fills in the background details well, but it’s impossible to capture the long and ongoing back and forth, the to and from of everyone’s conversations and interactions over the years. We are now a generation or two removed from Sully, Peter being his university professor son. (Who would ever have thought he’d produce a son like Peter?!)
Peter has come back to North Bath to fix up the house he inherited from his father, who had inherited it from an old teacher (one of the old ladies Sully helped). The idea is to renovate and sell.
North Bath is on the skids, about to be amalgamated (swallowed up) by the more upmarket, nearby Schuyler Springs.
“Naturally, not everyone had been in favor of this quantum shift. Some maintained there was really only one genuine redundancy that annexation would eliminate, and that was North Bath itself. By allowing itself to be subsumed by Schuyler Springs, its age-old rival, the town was basically committing suicide, voting for nonexistence over existence, and who in their right mind did that? This melodramatic argument was met with considerable derision. Was it even possible for an intubated patient on a ventilator to commit suicide?�
Chief of Police Douglas Raymer has been talking about retiring, so the timing for him is perfect. Charice Bond, whose boss he’s been for some years, is now the Chief of the new amalgamated department. She is also his lover, and her unusual brother, Jerome, was Raymer’s late wife Rebecca’s lover with whom she was going to run away before she tripped, fell, and died.
Oh, there are lots of entwined threads in this community’s stories, and I totally enjoyed both the reading of the text and listening to some as audio. Mark Bramhall’s narration made it clear who was speaking to whom, and I’m sure he enjoyed doing Jerome, who is certainly unique.
I almost forgot � early in the book, a decomposing body is found hanging from an abandoned building, too far gone to identify. And there are crooked cops.
Oh yes ... Raymer is white, Charice and Jerome are black, so there’s that dynamic, too.
I was delighted to visit what’s left of North Bath, and I hope to see more of Schuyler Springs, if Russo sees fit to continue. After all, there should be even more cross-pollination of stories now.
“Schuyler Springs, a lucky town if there ever was one, had money to burn. The city was flush. It was full of fancy restaurants and coffee shops and museums and art galleries.� ...more
4� � ‘Are you sure you’re talking to the right guy?�
‘Yes, sir, we’re sure.�
‘So what is this about?�
The voice said a black car would arrive at his door4� � ‘Are you sure you’re talking to the right guy?�
‘Yes, sir, we’re sure.�
‘So what is this about?�
The voice said a black car would arrive at his door in thirty minutes, and he was to get in the back.�
Cloak and dagger stuff, not the sort of thing your everyday mathematics professor is used to dealing with, but Nathan Tyler has decided when his country calls, (because that is who has called), he should answer.
He’s off to a mathematics conference, in Moscow. Others have attended conferences in Moscow, but they tell him it was safe back then, and these are different times. Even his airline texts him.
� ‘The State Department has determined that due to escalating international tensions, travel to your destination may not be safe and is not advised.� Then, as if concerned, or pretending to be, the airline had added: ‘Passengers wishing to change, delay or cancel their plans may do so at no additional cost.� �
He’s determined, and off he goes � alone � no travel companions, no security, no group to hide in. Just a lonely maths prof off to compare notes with others who love the field as much as he does.
It’s a great short story without a sign of Reacher or anyone similar, and I enjoyed it enough that I hope he writes some more.
Thanks to #NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for a copy of #ElevenNumbers for review....more
3� “Crouching like a sunbird ready to fly, Nabila Yasmeen peered through the window of the village school. The children had taken their places, in rows3� “Crouching like a sunbird ready to fly, Nabila Yasmeen peered through the window of the village school. The children had taken their places, in rows four deep, eager for their learning to begin. . . . He was the school’s only teacher and he taught the children everything they needed to know.�
I think this is for readers who are unfamiliar with the ancient and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. I saw a review by someone who said they had no idea what the situation has been, so I guess this novel has served that purpose. In her author’s note, she writes,
“It is necessarily brief, to counter the narrative that the question of Palestine is complicated...�
It is brief, but nothing is simple.
Palestine, December 1947. Nabila is a bright five-and-a-half-year-old girl who is desperate to join the other children at school, and the young teacher kindly pretends to ignore her, with an occasional almost-smile, until he has to shoo her away.
Today, while she’s still watching, he seem serious and nervous and hasn’t shooed her away yet, so she listens.
“He was good-humoured and easy in his manner, but today Nabila noticed something different in him. He seemed distracted, unsure. There was a lightness missing.
He cleared his throat, adjusted the collar around his neck and began to relay the news that had come to him via the radio. But Nabila found it hard to follow what he was saying. He told his class that, on Monday, the United Nations (whatever that was) had passed something called Resolution 181. He talked of partition and special committees. Of welfare and friendly relations among nations. Of mandates and immigration and freedom of worship. But it soon became apparent that the children in the classroom, most of whom were much older than Nabila, had no idea what he was talking about either.
So, he began again and in the simplest of terms he distilled the information for them. He told them that their country would be divided and a new country formed within it. Nabila was still confused. How could a new country be put inside a country that was already there? Where would the new country go? Where did it come from? What would happen to the people who were already there? Would they be squashed into the ground like ants under a boot? Would Nabila’s village be in the new country? Why was this happening? Nabila didn’t understand at all.�
This is Nabila’s and the reader’s introduction to the partition of Palestine into two states: Arab and Jewish.
The book goes on to follow the displacement of Palestinians from then until now. Then it shifts timelines to December 2023 in Australia, where Nabila is now an old lady.
I believe the author is presenting this moving story to show Palestine’s plight since WW2, when the UN moved to split one country into two. For readers who have not followed the continuing conflict in the Middle East, the UN resolution may be as much of a surprise as it is to Nabila. Jewish people supported it, but Arabs didn’t, and it has been ever thus.
People today, certainly those of Nabila’s generation, know about the Holocaust and perhaps about the promise to establish a safe, free Jewish State.
I humbly suggest the United Nations was between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes, and agreed to select part of the ancestral Jewish homeland for the new country.
Contrary to the author’s statement that this is simple, I think it’s a conflict that goes back more than two thousand years and is still complicated.
There’s a saying I like: “It’s a reason, but it’s no excuse.� For me, it applies to most forms of revenge and the brutality that’s been used over the years. The behaviour on both sides has been to provoke the other until someone makes a move and then stomp on them.
Any conversation about this becomes, “Yes, but…� vs “Yes, but…�, noting past atrocities, past take-overs, past political upheaval, going back probably to pre-Biblical times. And then it becomes bomb vs bomb.
But one genocide doesn’t justify another.
The book does not mention the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and there is no mention of hostages. The only indirect reference is in December 2023 when Nabila is attending protest marches where she lives in Australia. Readers are obviously expected to know what the protests are.
The author includes many pages of links to articles and research, and I have no doubt at all that she knows what she has written about.
Not long ago, I read Apeirogon, the award-winning biographical novel by the incomparable Colum McCann, where two fathers � Israeli and Palestinian, each of whom had lost young daughters to the ongoing hostilities � hoped to work together to create some kind of peaceful co-existence.
It wasn’t simple then, and it isn’t simple now. I sure wish it were.
Read this and see what you think - and then get curious.
For some reasonably basic background, I suggest you check the articles by Britannica (now based in the US) and the BBC.
P.S. I read this because it is one of the five books sent to all Australian parliamentarians for summer reading about the Israel-Gaza war. (Remember the Aussie summer is Dec-Jan-Feb.)
2.5� She was indeed a wicked princess. She possessed beauty enough—nobody could be more elegant or prettier than she was; but what of that? for she was2.5� She was indeed a wicked princess. She possessed beauty enough—nobody could be more elegant or prettier than she was; but what of that? for she was a wicked witch; and in consequence of her conduct many noble young princes had lost their lives."
I realise she's supposed to be a witch, but the actions in this 'fairy tale' seem more 'grimm' than I associate with Andersen.
There is some humour and there is an answer-three-riddles storyline, but the unexpected violence is rather graphic, I think.
3� � ‘I tell you, Withers,�" he went on moodily, slinking across the meadow with his hands covered up in his pockets, ‘she sees everything. And what s3� � ‘I tell you, Withers,�" he went on moodily, slinking across the meadow with his hands covered up in his pockets, ‘she sees everything. And what she doesn't see she knows without.��
Arthur Seaton is a sallow, quiet, unpopular schoolboy for whom Withers feels a bit sorry. Seaton is bullied or ignored, depending on the mood of the boys, but Withers makes occasional contact with him.
When Seaton invites him to visit at his Aunt’s magnificent country house, Withers would rather not accept, but in the end he decides to go. When they get there, Seaton is visibly uncomfortable.
It’s while they are walking through the garden and the estate that Seaton makes the comment about his aunt knowing and seeing all, like some kind of fortune-teller.
�‘But how?� I said, not because I was much interested, but because the afternoon was so hot and tiresome and purposeless, and it seemed more of a bore to remain silent.
Seaton turned gloomily and spoke in a very low voice. ‘Don't appear to be talking of her, if you wouldn't mind. It's—because she's in league with the devil.� �
Curiously, the aunt seems to like Withers/Smithers, whatever his name is.
� ‘So this is your friend Mr. Smithers, I suppose?� she said, bobbing to me.
‘Withers, aunt,� said Seaton.
‘It's much the same,� she said, with eyes fixed on me. ‘Come in, Mr. Withers, and bring him along with you.� She continued to gaze at me—at least, I think she did so. I know that the fixity of her scrutiny and her ironical "Mr." made me feel peculiarly uncomfortable. None the less she was extremely kind and attentive to me, though, no doubt, her kindness and attention showed up more vividly against her complete neglect of Seaton. Only one remark that I have any recollection of she made.to him: ‘When I look on my nephew, Mr. Smithers, I realise that dust we are, and dust shall become. You are hot, dirty, and incorrigible, Arthur.��
The aunt is certainly a piece of work, as the saying goes, with a big head and an enormous amount of hair. I pictured her as a character out of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or something similar. But I didn’t find her frightening.
There is more to the story than this, as the boys grow older and meet again. It didn’t seem particularly scary or even intriguing to me, but I don’t know how it would have been received when it was written a century ago.
This is another from the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Short Story Club Group here: /group/show/...
2.5´Ê3â˜� “I know perfectly of course that I brought it upon myself; but that doesn’t make it any better.â€�
Written in 1896 with the title “The Way It Cameâ€�2.5´Ê3â˜� “I know perfectly of course that I brought it upon myself; but that doesn’t make it any better.â€�
Written in 1896 with the title “The Way It Came�, this tale of the supernatural is one that has probably been told and retold over the years in a more straightforward and less circuitous fashion. James is a wordy fellow whose style has never appealed to me, but the story itself is entertaining.
Our narrator describes a girl who had an extraordinary experience.
�.. She was charming, clever, pretty, unhappy; but it was none the less the thing to which she had originally owed her reputation.
Being at the age of eighteen somewhere abroad with an aunt she had had a vision of one of her parents at the moment of death. The parent was in England, hundreds of miles away and so far as she knew neither dying nor dead.�
This vision is the story she dined out on, so to speak. She becomes known as someone who saw a ghost.
Our narrator then tells us about her own young man who had seen his mother’s ghost. He is likewise known for this unusual experience and our narrator suggests the two should meet. Years go by with every opportunity missed, for a variety of reasons. She and her young man marry and it becomes a kind of running joke that he and her friend are destined not to meet.
When it ceases to be a joke, and he has become more and more curious about this girl, our narrator says she has only herself to blame.
I will leave the outcome for you to enjoy (or not). It is readily available online. You will have to wade through the convoluted verbiage and tortured sentence structure for which I believe James is known.
Rod Serling would have made a better show of it on the old Twilight Zone, I’m sure. Or perhaps he did?!
This is another from the Short Story Club Group, whose conversations I am happy to recommend. Leonard always gives us access to the story online or as a PDF if we don’t have the anthology of stories ourselves.
4� “Stooped and listing, they gave the impression of a thousand men, women and haggard children huddling in the snow.
Was this a graveyard? I wondered. 4� “Stooped and listing, they gave the impression of a thousand men, women and haggard children huddling in the snow.
Was this a graveyard? I wondered. Are these gravestones?�
This is part of Kyungha’s dream, which is based on a dream the author had that inspired this book. The entire opening segment is almost exactly how the author recounted her dream in an NPR interview.
In the story, Kyungha says she dreamed this not long after her book about a massacre was published. She is suffering in sweltering summer heat with broken air conditioning, and when she finally sleeps, she’s dreaming snowy scenes that she thinks might be from her future. She sees the tide encroaching on the ‘gravestones� and sites of bones that will be washed away.
Awake, she is so hot that she considers ending her life.
â€�The previous summer, as my private life began to crumble like a sugar cube dropped in water, back when the real partings that were to follow were only a premonition, I’d written a story titled ‘F²¹°ù±ð·É±ð±ô±ôâ€�, a story about a woman of snow who melts away under sleet. But that can’t be my actual, final farewell.â€�
She falls asleep on the floor only to dream so strongly of snow and the ‘graves� that she knows she can’t give up � she has to do something about them.
Summer ends, and Kyungha is surprised by a text message from her close friend, Inseon, saying only her name: ‘K²â³Ü²Ô²µ³ó²¹â€�. When she texts back, asking if everything is all right, she receives only: ‘Can you come right away?â€�
Inseon is a filmmaker with a focus on women and war, and the two young women have been planning to do a project together one day, making logs into standing “torsos� representing those who were massacred during WWII.
Inseon is now in a Seoul hospital, requiring urgent, continued care, and she presses Kyungha to please please please go to the little village on the island of Jeju where Inseon lives to save her last adored bird and stay in the house until Inseon is released.
The book opens with unbearable heat and moves to an almost unbelievable cold, all with an eerie, moody, haunting quality. There are dreamlike sequences that seem real to Kyungha.
In her NPR interview, Han Kang explains why there was such focus on snow.
“Snow; It falls between the sky and the earth and connecting the both. And it falls between the living and the dead, between light and darkness, between silence and memories. And I thought of the connection, the circular flow of water and air. We are all connected over this earth so I had this image of the snow. I wanted the snow to fall from beginning to end and I wanted even my characters to enter into that dream of snow.�
There is a lot of history � of which I admit I am ignorant. There are stories of horrifying massacres, people hiding in caves in the hills, the sorts of awful stories I’m more familiar with from Europe during WWII.
Her writing is absolutely compelling. I haven’t read any of her other work, but I have some idea of why the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to her.
The facts, the history, the descriptions, the dreamlike quality and moodiness are beautifully drawn, well worth five stars. But � and for me it is a big ‘but� - sadly, I was never invested in the characters and their story.
Thanks to #NetGalley and Penguin UK for a copy of #WeDoNotPart for review.
The NPR interview the author:
p.s. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friend Barb has posted a terrific review with illustrations which really help describe the mood and feeling of the story. /review/show......more
4� � ‘Miss Breen.� Rideout looks exasperated. ‘Really, must I say this until I’m blue in the face: leave this investigation to me!�
‘So,� says Nora. ‘It4� � ‘Miss Breen.� Rideout looks exasperated. ‘Really, must I say this until I’m blue in the face: leave this investigation to me!�
‘So,� says Nora. ‘It is an investigation.� �
Detective Inspector Rideout is exasperated indeed. He first meets Nora Breen when she comes to the station to report her friend missing. Because the officer at the desk keeps ignoring her presence an continues writing something, she takes finds a unique way to get his attention � and eventually get Rideout’s as well.
Her feet were sandy after walking on the beach, and she had taken her shoes off during her lengthy wait. The desk officer, who doesn’t seem to have noticed her, orders her to put her shoes back on. She refuses.
“Detective Inspector Rideout surveys Nora Breen across a tacky, cup-ringed table. The weapon of assault, a pair of ugly auld shoes, lies between them.
Rideout looks amused, Breen looks unrepentant.
The inspector leans forward, chin on his hand. Nora both likes and dislikes the way he’s looking at her. As if she’s the entertainment, or a puzzle he could solve. Either way she’ll be sure to disappoint.
‘I misunderstood what your officer was requesting of me.�
‘You threw a shoe and hit him in the eye. Did you think that’s what he was asking for?�
Nora can hardly answer that. ‘Actually, I threw both shoes but only one hit its target.�
Rideout raises his eyebrow.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. The promotional material lays the groundwork that Nora Breen is a nun who has left her convent to find her friend, a former nun who had to leave the convent for health reasons and wrote to Nora every week without fail to share her life ‘outside�. When the letters stopped, Nora left to investigate.
She books herself in at Gulls Nest, Gore-on-Sea, which is indeed where it is located just above a beach. It’s a strange boarding house with unusual residents, dreadful food, and a landlady who’s always resting with a headache while her young daughter runs around in costumes, causing mischief, hiding and not speaking.
“Outside, the sky is brightening, which is of no concern to the room, daylight being dissuaded by heavy velvet drapes and the sombre yews that crowd about the window. The drapes move. Nora notices. The movement increases to a gentle sway. The curtain twists apart to reveal a child cocooned in its folds.
Nora introduces herself as a retired nurse, there for a holiday. She nursed many soldiers during the war (WW2), and it makes sense that she has earned a break now. She has been instructed not to encourage the gulls, but being a newly independent woman, she tames one who comes to her windowsill to eat from her hand. She names him Father Conway for his steely expression.
She tries to be carefully inquisitive without letting anyone know that the missing woman whose room she is now renting was her best friend, Frieda Brogan. Residents include a troubled young couple whom she watches have an argument on the beach, and when the husband’s hat blows off, he just storms away. A young man following some distance behind the pair stamps violently on the hat. Nora is intrigued.
Occasionally, her mind harks back to the circumstances that led her to join the convent and how she learned to live a quiet, cloistered life without causing too much friction. But as we see her today, it’s hard to imagine her being at all submissive.
“Controlling her temper was her greatest trial in the convent. But this wasn’t the worst of her shortcomings. Her inquisitive nature was judged to be disrespectful. Her cleverness the sin of pride. These were traits that found her scrubbing a far greater share of bathtubs than any other postulant. Now, out in the world, she can exercise these unfavourable traits. This thought fills Nora with a strange mix of relief and alarm.�
She grows increasingly angry about her past and how much she has missed, and seems to want to make up a bit for lost time. She tries some whiskey at the pub and she accepts cigarettes from Rideout and others and learns to smoke companionably as they chat. It’s a bad habit but a good strategy for making comfortable conversation. She is adaptable and enjoying it.
“She notices that her prayers have a stiff formality now. Like the first inroads after a bad argument with someone. She doesn’t expect an answer.�
When someone dies at Gulls Nest, she tries to convince Rideout it’s a crime, not an accident. She pesters Rideout with ideas and clues and suggestions and asks that he call her by her surname, Breen, as the police do in detective novels.
When someone else dies, she really starts snooping. I enjoyed the variety of characters and the atmosphere of the big old house and the beach. I have to admit that I found nothing welcoming about the place. It was appropriately old and spooky.
It’s not what I expected from Jess Kidd, who often uses magical realism, but I enjoyed her venture into the cosy mystery genre. I think the ending leaves no doubt that there will be another one coming. Rideout and Breen? Breen and Rideout?
Thanks to #NetGalley and Faber and Faber for a copy of #MurderAtGullsNest for review
5� “Most kids of thirteen or fourteen decide anyone over thirty’s an old fogey, and they’re apt to be out the door about two minutes after the fogies c5� “Most kids of thirteen or fourteen decide anyone over thirty’s an old fogey, and they’re apt to be out the door about two minutes after the fogies come through it. Not Selena, though. She’d get em coffee or help with the dishes or whatever, then sit down in the chair by the Franklin stove and listen to the grownups talk. Whether it was me with one or two of my friends or Joe with three or four of his, she’d listen. She would have stayed even when he and his friends played poker, if I’d let her. I wouldn’t, though, because they talked so foul. That child nibbled conversation the way a mouse’ll nibble a cheese-rind, and what she couldn’t eat, she stored away.�
This entire book is a monologue supposedly being recorded as elderly Dolores Claiborne’s statement to the police after her wealthy, equally-elderly employer has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs. This does not auger well for Dolores, because her husband died in suspicious circumstances, and although she was cleared, the residents of Little Tall Island, off the coast of Maine, all assume she got away with murder.
I am more than happy to suspend disbelief that this is an afternoon interview, because I found it so entertaining. I’m well aware that the audio is just over nine hours long, but Frances Sternhagen is such a gifted actor that she made it compelling listening.
Her language and accent are what I would expect of a Maine islander, which made it even more believable. I did often read along, and King’s writing depicts the rhythm and sound of Dolores’s voice so that a reader would have no doubt how people should sound.
If Dolores quotes Vera, her employer, for example, King uses quotation marks, but mostly she just describes her conversations and interactions with others. It’s all from her point of view. The opening quotation is about her daughter, Selena, the eldest of her three kids. There are two younger brothers, Joe Junior and Little Pete, so-called.
I am not a fan of horror stories or grisly thrillers, so I haven’t read King’s most famous books, but I’ve enjoyed some of his other stories, and this is one. His descriptions are unique. About a bank manager, she says “He was rubbin his hands together faster n faster. They made a sandpapery kind of sound, and if he’d had a dry stick between em, I b’lieve he coulda set fire to the gum-wrappers in his ashtray.�
Recounting an early memory of her own parents, Dolores explains to the police and to us how she was raised. Her father had come home from haying at a neighbour’s, and for whatever reason, his dinner wasn’t ready.
“He went into the kitchen and there wasn’t nothing on the table but a glass pitcher with flowers in it. He turns to Mum and says, ‘Where’s my supper, dummy?� She opened her mouth, but before she could say anythin, he put his hand over her face and pushed her down in the corner. I was standin in the kitchen entry and seen it all. . . . . . . Mum was getting his supper. Her face was still kinda swole from cryin, but she was hummin a tune, and that night they bounced the bedsprings just like they did most nights. Nothing else was ever said or made of it. That sort of thing was called home correction in those days, it was part of a man’s job, and if I thought of it afterward at all, I only thought that my Mum must have needed some or Dad never would have done what he did.�
Her interview with the medical examiner is understandably nerve-wracking.
�He had snowy white hair even though he couldn’t have been more’n forty-five, and blue eyes so bright n sharp they looked like drillbits. When he looked at you, you felt like he was starin right into your head and puttin the thoughts he saw there into alphabetical order.�
While the story itself doesn’t need to be so long, this is the one time that this old lady has the floor to herself, and she is going to make the most of it. She and Vera Donovan were more than employer and employee, much as they fought and bickered.
Every detail from her past that has led her to becoming a housekeeper, companion, and carer for wealthy Vera Donovan is going to be aired. Vera advised her from time. to time.
"She said that sometimes a woman had to be a high-ridin bitch. ‘S´Ç³¾±ð³Ù¾±³¾±ð²õ,â€� she told me, ‘being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.â€�
Ayuh, I thought. When there’s nothin else left, there’s that. There’s always that."
Perhaps if I’d had only the text to read, I might have become impatient, but I don’t think so. Listening to Sternhagen, however, left me completely satisfied. She IS Dolores. You can listen to the first few minutes in this preview. I hope the links work.
4� “Stella and I were two of a kind. We were so much alike, we had all the same faults. I loved trouble, and so did she. Both of us walked on the wild 4� “Stella and I were two of a kind. We were so much alike, we had all the same faults. I loved trouble, and so did she. Both of us walked on the wild side and flirted with disaster. Both of us loved to pick fights with bad guys and then land them behind bars or bury them six feet under. We were so much alike, we were like oil and water.�
OIL AND WATER There are two stories in Volume One, and this is the first. They are narrated by the excellent, gruff-voiced Stacy Keach and feature a full cast production with music, sound effects, and a great immersive experience. Stella is a former lover, one he has been missing, and she has come to find him to tell him something. He is to meet her at the hotel.
The quips fly fast, with puns and dark humour, in spite of the tragic turn of events. Mike’s a tough guy and likes to let you know it, but he has a soft side and loves the ladies.
DANGEROUS DAYS The second story involves possible international terrorism, which is a little out of Mike’s usual territory. But bad guys are bad guys, and he’s not going to let the government get in the way of his hunt. A G-man insists Hammer go with him to the boss.
Mike gets frisked for weapons when he arrives at the Agency, and refuses to part with Betsy, his gun. He has thrown the frisker to the ground when the main agent enters.
�‘But he has a gun, Ma’am!�
‘The only thing that bothers me about him having a gun is that he gave it a name. Hi, I’m Agent Lindsay Dekker, with two Ks.�
‘I’m Mike Hammer, with two Ms.�
‘Actually, three.�
‘Hey, you’re right.�
‘That’s why I’m the boss. Come with me.��
These are entertaining stories, told in the classic manner that old-timers like me will remember from childhood radio plays. The production quality is excellent. Each story is about an hour, which is perfect to accompany an activity or just to enjoy between heavier literary endeavours.
It’s an Audible audiobook that’s free for members to listen to, or available to buy.
I recommend listening to the 5-minute preview to hear what it's like.
3.5´Ê4â˜� “He is waiting for me to look at him and, when I do, he smiles to show me he is fine, the briefest nod of his head.
Say it, Beth. Say it now.
I lo3.5´Ê4â˜� “He is waiting for me to look at him and, when I do, he smiles to show me he is fine, the briefest nod of his head.
Say it, Beth. Say it now.
I look at his face again, beautiful to me then and now and always, one final glance between us before everything changes.�
The publisher’s blurb sums up the premise � love triangle, a murder, a trial. The timelines jump around with each section clearly labelled, but the jumps seemed to interrupt the storyline for me. I’m usually fine with them, but it did feel like a tease much of the time.
Married rural couple Beth and Frank live alone on their farm in Hemston, North Dorset. Early in the book, Frank comes home with news.
� ‘Gabriel Wolfe is back living in Meadowlands,� Frank says, the name exploding at me over breakfast. ‘Divorced now. Just him and his boy rattling around in that huge place.�
‼«³ó.â€�
It seems to be the only word I have.
‘That’s what I thought,� Frank says. He gets up from his side of the table and walks round to mine, takes my face in his hands, kisses me. ‘We won’t let that pillock cause us any grief. We’ll have nothing to do with him.��
Frank and Beth and Gabriel all grew up at the same time in Hemston, but Gabriel’s family was wealthy and he was sent away to school.
In 1955, Beth literally bumped into Gabriel when she was out walking, daydreaming of wild romance after reading Austen and Brontë and not paying attention to where she was. She’d crossed onto Meadowlands, the Wolfe family property.
Gabriel is handsome, charming, smart and smitten with her. She feels likewise. Frank is a bit rougher but wonderful, steadfast and adoring, when she gives him a chance. Gabriel goes up to Oxford, Frank and Beth settle into a contented rural life with a child.
This is a saga that moves back and forth through the years, with romance, passionate love, unspeakable tragedy, much tugging of heartstrings, and some suspension of disbelief eventually required by me at the end.
Very early in the piece (page 21) is this:
The Trial Old Bailey, London 1969
Nothing could prepare me for the agony of watching the man I love, sitting high up in the dock, flanked by two prison officers, as he awaits his verdict.
A man accused of an unthinkable crime.�
Perhaps the title refers to the country Beth loves being broken by tragedies. The country of her heart certainly feels broken.
I enjoyed the writing, and I know a lot of readers will love this. I admit I kept reading, eager enough to find out what happened, but frustrated with either the pace or the way it was put together � I’m not sure which.
I am sure it will be very popular.
Thanks to #NetGalley and John Murray Press for a review copy of #BrokenCountry...more
5� � ‘These are my special things. I love them very much.� Precious looked down. There on her friend’s upturned palm was a necklace and a photograph. S5� � ‘These are my special things. I love them very much.� Precious looked down. There on her friend’s upturned palm was a necklace and a photograph. She peered at them more closely. She thought the necklace very beautiful. It was made up of beads, strung loosely on a band of twisted black string and sections of porcupine quill.�
This necklace becomes an important clue in Precious Ramotswe’s early detective career. She is nine years old now and has been invited by a new classmate to visit her home. Nancy wants to show Precious her special things.
“These charms were miniature carvings of zebras, made out of bone perhaps, or stone that had been stained black and white to match the zebra stripes. It was the most beautiful necklace Precious had ever seen.�
Nancy then explains that the photograph is of her mother, and these are the only two things that were sent with her as a baby when she came to live with her new family. She doesn’t even know her mother’s name, and Precious realises how sad Nancy feels.
Well, this won’t do. Precious has an idea! She decides to show people the photograph, and when her father recognises the hills in the background where her mother is standing, Precious is on the case!
A nurse who is going to that village offers the girls a ride, as far as the road will take them, and then they are to follow her through the bush to get to the village. They are to stay close to her and not get lost. All goes well � it’s quite a long hike � and then Nancy steps on a thorn or something, and the girls stop to pull it out.
Oh dear. The nurse didn’t realise they’d stopped. They must catch up! Precious asks if Nancy is able to walk a bit faster.
“Nancy replied that she was, so Precious set off at a rather faster pace than before. This, I’m afraid to say, was a mistake, because the faster you walk in the bush, the more likely you are to lose your way. That is exactly what happened.�
They are in the bush in Botswana, not a suburban playground, and they don’t want to be there overnight!
“It was perfectly possible that there were lions not far away, or leopards perhaps. Leopards like to hunt in the hours of darkness, and if they were to meet a leopard� it was best not to think about what would happen then.�
Needless to say, Precious and her new friend survive their long adventure, and Precious proves once more what a good detective she is learning to be� or perhaps I should say already is.
Another lovely story in this series for children. I enjoyed the wonderful Adjoa Andoh’s narration and then found a copy of the book in the Internet Archive, so I copied a couple of illustrations for this book. I think kids will enjoy learning about another part of the world, too.
5� “Patrick—the little boy who dreamed of pitching baseballs—became the world’s greatest quarterback. He proves that sometimes the most incredible vict5� “Patrick—the little boy who dreamed of pitching baseballs—became the world’s greatest quarterback. He proves that sometimes the most incredible victories come from the most unexpected dreams.�
Fans of American professional football know Patrick Mahomes as the star quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. [Taylor Swift fans know the Kansas City Chiefs as the team of her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, but I digress. ...more
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