tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27970248603414110892024-02-19T06:55:55.370-08:00Shade Pointreading mysterious fiction in an abandoned lighthouseshadepointhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09403542503336527484noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-54888261588076384672015-11-26T03:14:00.000-08:002016-01-25T02:39:29.725-08:00REVIEW: An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlQpbmOUUPfcd_Bs7Z5z2lxJts8jRWKhqxvUJ8r6zQlM6ngBap6y-qdO8H3CDGqu1D8NMMo2ZLH4rzFXLtmI14SAwjf-Kc8TJwHW5gLemJqlFgxe1gwrml4i1Q4C4ulq1NemRbCxwKiTj/s1600/Henning_Mankell_2013-06-02_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijlQpbmOUUPfcd_Bs7Z5z2lxJts8jRWKhqxvUJ8r6zQlM6ngBap6y-qdO8H3CDGqu1D8NMMo2ZLH4rzFXLtmI14SAwjf-Kc8TJwHW5gLemJqlFgxe1gwrml4i1Q4C4ulq1NemRbCxwKiTj/s320/Henning_Mankell_2013-06-02_001.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>
<h4>
I believe that for a very long time, as long as
we speak and write about crime fiction, Henning Mankell will be
held as a gold standard, one of the great voices of the genre, one of the true innovators. </h4>
<br />
His impact
in terms of the growth of “Nordic Noir”, and the huge uptake in writers from
Scandinavia in this country, and the impact on writers in other countries, is
immense.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Of course, he didn’t just write crime fiction – and for me the surreal <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/review-depths-by-henning-mankell.html" target="_blank">Depths</a></i>
might well be his masterpiece outside of genre – but he will be forever
remembered for his crime thrillers. And especially for Wallander, a character
as important now in the history of crime fiction as Holmes, Poirot, Marple,
Morse …<br />
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Without Wallander,
there would not be quite the depth of international opportunity, I don't think, for any of
Nesbo, Nesser, Fossum, Adler-Olsen, Persson, Theorin, and even Larsson. There
might also not be a new voice to crime fiction more broadly, which not so long ago seemed to be stuck on course towards a ‘Silence of The Lambs’ abattoir. Crime Fiction has grown increasingly character driven, and Mankell-like,
ambiguous and human, unafraid of ordinary, realist in resolution, and this means the genuinely skilled practitioners, the storytellers of depth, stand out.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was certainly a valedictory feel to the brilliant final <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/review-troubled-man-by-henning-mankell.html?q=troubled+man" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Troubled Man</i>,</a> as Wallander himself
seemed to be trudging away into a snowy hinterland of his own, his faculties
and physicality diminishing, draining away into the forests and lakes. A friend of mine
read this book, and couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Of course that would
be the case, because he hadn’t read any of the previous books. If ever there was a series novel that shouldn't be first-read, it was <i>Troubled Man</i>. For those of us
who had read the lot though, the last book was immense, a just ending to a justly celebrated
series. It was a note perfect aria to a time ending, just as Wallander would
listen to his old Bjorling records, and collapse gently inside. We're not superhuman, we do our best, and the sun sets.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
This was the rawness and great beauty Mankell achieved with Wallander. Certainly
there were crime plots, and importantly to the writer himself, political statements
about immigration, cyber crime, and the like - but not to diminish these social concerns in any way,
it was the outright humanity of Wallander that appealed so strongly. He stood out, particularly in a CSI world of detectives who looked like
stockbrokers, and the aforementioned supermarket aisles of serial killers. Here he was, with diahorrea after eating too fast, or his fillings
falling out, or unable to make sense of his failures as a husband and a father - and
yet, haphazardly, still giving it a go and ultimately getting the job done while trying to do the right thing for society at the same time.<br />
<br />
This down at heel but strangely noble persona –
captured most perfectly by Krister Henriksson, I feel – was truly compelling. A
divorced detective, drinking too much and listening to music alone in his flat, was not exactly groundbreaking it might be said – but there was something utterly
true about Wallander. Most painful, was the sense that Wallander knew he was
allowing all he loved most in the world to fade away behind his work and his own fears and limitations - an irredeemable loss of time and people in the face of the inherent selfishness of this sacrifice. Yet on
he martyred – in despair, sometimes childlike in his sense of longing for things of the past to last, to happen again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>An Event in Autumn</i> was originally written for a free book
giveaway in Holland, and was later adapted as part of the excellent Branagh Wallander
series. In terms of Kurt’s own timeline, the events take place just before <i>The
Troubled Man</i>. As Mankell says in his own Afterword, “There are no more stories
about Kurt Wallander.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
With typical Kurt-ish luck, just as Wallander has finally found the wherewithal
to look over a property in his ongoing and much longed-for house in the country fantasy, he
finds himself stumbling over a skeletal hand in the garden on a viewing, pointing from the surface of the
earth like something from MR James.<br />
<br />
In a sense, this will mirror the plot of the story, but it also seems to
be saying something about Wallander himself, this late Wallander, as if fate itself is pointing to the sky, as our beloved detective perennially rolls his eyes upward in
frustration and despair, an internal agony that nothing is ever meant to be. “Perhaps what I want
most of all,” he thinks at one point, “is not to have to think about myself.
About the increasing feeling of repugnance I’m carrying around inside myself.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Autumn is approaching, literally and metaphorically, and
Wallander follows this new case in his usual dogged way with his determination undiminished by other frailties, and fans of the series
will be delighted to fall back into the usual ways: the dead ends, the
frustrations, the slight tips of luck, good and bad, the comedic telephone arguments and petty feuds. It is a very short
novella, so will be read quickly – although with great regret and sadness, now that Mankell
has passed away and this is truly the end.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Mankell
includes a short essay at the end: ‘How it started, how it finished and what
happened in between.’ In this piece on the creation of Kurt Wallander, Mankell
is fascinating. "Time is short - but more scarce than it has ever been," he writes, discussing the genesis of the detective, the author's own prevailing
social and political preoccupations at the time of the novels, and about how
various aspects of Kurt’s character came together.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“The passage of time is in many ways bewildering,” writes
Mankell. “I wrote at least half of the first Wallander book on an old Halda
typewriter. Nowadays I can hardly remember what tapping the keys of a
typewriter was like.” Here, he sounds very like his creation – that sense of
bafflement and despair at the passing of time that so defines Kurt Wallander.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Wallander is a fundamentally good man, driven to protect
others, unable to fully exist outside the context of work, who struggles often
to place his emotional life squarely alongside the job he does. In his
humanity and complete honesty as a character, he transcends genre, and will sustain. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Henning
Mankell and his wonderful writing will be a terrible miss.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-41641572917568971282014-03-03T00:51:00.001-08:002015-11-26T02:42:23.531-08:00REVIEW The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>What if all of it isn't merely allusion but literal history, an account of actors performing verifiable actions, both long ago and reaching into the present?</i><br />
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Andrew Pyper's <i>The Demonologist</i> is a swift travelling, deeply thoughtful and highly enjoyable novel. This comes as no surprise to ShadePoint; we loved <i>The Guardians</i> a lot, and reviewed it <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/review-guardians-by-andrew-pyper.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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On the face of it, <i>The Demonologist</i> might be seen as something of a departure for Pyper. While <i>The Guardians</i> was in many respects a small town ghost story - and a great one at that - here is a story of movement that crosses the globe to Venice, across the USA, Canada. It is not a story about one isolated intervention of otherness, but potentially a struggle between Good and Evil at such a high level the terms themselves need CAPS, and the battlefield is enormous.</div>
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There are a few reviews that compare <i>The Demonologist</i> to <i>The Da Vinci Code</i>, or at least novels of that type. This is in large part due to the central character, Professor David Ullman, who just happens to be one of world's leading authorities on demonic literature - and in particular, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost" target="_blank">'Paradise Lost'</a>. He has something in common with the-weary-academic-thrown-into-mad-adventures genre. Dealing badly with a crumbling marriage, surviving mostly because of his 11-year-old daughter Tess and his friendship/unfulfilled romance with Elaine O'Brien (from the Psychology Department), Ullman's world is about to be thrown into an entirely different path when a mysterious visitor, The Thin Woman, materialises by his office, and offers to pay him handsomely to visit Venice, to view "a phenomenon". Ullman takes Tess to Venice with him, witnesses something incredible, there is a terrible tragedy, and on his return across the Atlantic the story plunges him into the demonology road trip to end all demonology road trips.</div>
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While this storyline, with its initial echoes of that macabre masterpiece '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Now" target="_blank">Don't Look Now</a>', may seem as we say a bit of a switch from <i>The Guardians</i>, it isn't really. There's plenty of small town, for a start, in one of the most vividly realised and breathless fictional road trips and chases we've read for a long time - with the descriptions of motels and diners, towns that seem inches from deserted yet pulse away with some indefatigable refusal to give in, the pizza and beer and perpetuum mobile lifestyle that part of us all craves in some way (without the demons and the damned of course). But it is a sort of damnation of its own, isn't it - the motel and six pack and the closed threadbare curtains to lock in despair, a release that feels like it might be found, but really can't be found in the solitude and dark? Ullman is running and running, but with real devils at his back it seems - from one eerie set piece to another. There's a dual reading here though as Ullman falls deeper and deeper into despair - is it all real? Is all this real?</div>
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When Ullman is joined on his lost highway by O'Brien, now on a desperate voyage of her own, the novel switches up another gear towards a thrilling chase (and unbelievably brutal struggle, by the water's edge, which will have you wincing) and an ending that despite some uncertainty ShadePoint has seen in other places, we found deeply moving and apt. Without giving away any spoilers, it would also seem entirely possible that there could now be a series of books set in this universe.</div>
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While Venice is undoubtedly the early focus, and 'Paradise Lost' a key driver for the storyline, <i>The Demonologist</i> isn't really a Da Vinci Code book at all, it isn't rooted in libraries and dusty archives - and there's nothing wrong with that at all - it retains a greater supernatural genre emphasis, and most of the book takes place on North American highways and byways. There's more pilsner and pizza than Ponte di Rialto in places - and 'Paradise Lost' is less a code book in the end, than something more personal. One section of the book is not unlike one of the best set pieces of Stephen King's <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/review-doctor-sleep-by-stephen-king.html" target="_blank">Dr Sleep</a> and retains the same hollow-eyed travelling through the night quality of that storyline. There is less of the ancient manuscript and uncovering of clues in remote monasteries and cathedral basements that some of the marketing (see the book trailer below) might have you believe - and the book perhaps has more in common with the thematic approach to a similar quest of that utter masterpiece <i>The Dumas Club</i> by Arturo Peréz-Reverte than it does with Dan Brown.<br />
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But <i>The Demonologist</i> retains the same core that made <i>The Guardians</i> so enjoyable - characters that struggle to hold on to their humanity, whatever the cost, who lead fairly ordinary lives but find themselves in extraordinary situations, enduring great batterings of fear, love and loss and striving to get things to make sense and just to live - in the face of the wordly and the otherwordly, and whether things really are the way they are and whether this really is all there is. <i>The Demonologist</i> knows all this stuff is scary enough, even before the Demons turn up.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/A_aV67cX8uw?rel=0" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-63894392038042426042014-01-15T12:40:00.000-08:002015-11-26T02:42:32.881-08:00REVIEW The Missing File by D.A. Mishani <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Avraham didn't know why he thought the things he did.</i><br />
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ShadePoint reads a lot of crime fiction in the course of a year. Much of it isn't reviewed on the site, and not always because it isn't enjoyable in some way, but more likely because it just wasn't terribly original - from samey stock-image covers of deserted basements, to predictable characters, disappointing endings or absent thematic purpose. It's not to say these books aren't escapist diversions for a bit, and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but they just don't stand out. They just don't ring and ring and ring and we don't answer.<br />
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But occasionally there is a different kind of crime fiction, writing that elevates the genre, transcends its predictabilities, possesses an emotional integrity and wallop that is simply greater than all others. A number of Henning Mankell's Wallander books are in this league, as is Leif GW Persson, or Fred Vargas. Writers like these create characters that resonate deeply with the reader, settings that are completely immersive and plots that work, and do so from start to finish. And these writers often produce work that is perfect, or close to perfect (in many cases ably assisted by quite incredible translation) which is really, really very hard to achieve.</div>
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<i>The Missing File</i> by D.A. Mishani is just such a book, and if a better crime novel arrives here for review this year it will either be astonishing, or it will be this one's sequel, <i>A Possibility of Violence</i>, which is published in the UK later this year. It is no exaggeration to say that this staggeringly effective novel is one of the best books ever reviewed on our site, and there have been some magnificent titles, and it may well turn out to be one of the best books this reviewer has read, in any genre, for years. This is strong praise, hyperbole even, but right now, with the denouement only hours old, it seems completely justified: <i>The Missing File</i> is a slow building, taut, intense triumph.</div>
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Mankell is a good touchstone, because the hero of this novel, Inspector Avraham Avraham has many of the qualities, if not the backstory, of Wallander - something of his flawed believability, his doubts and fears, the moments where his work and its meaning and impact seem to swamp him. The way life seems as much a puzzle as the crime at hand, and just as important to the reader. Avraham is as well created as Wallander, and Kurt in the very best of the Mankell Wallander series. Mankell himself even describes Avraham as a "quite remarkable man on the stage where detectives dance." Not since Wallander, or Jussi Adler-Olsen's Carl Morck (about whom we said we would "<a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/mercy-by-jussi-adler-olsen.html" target="_blank">read about him starting a salmon farm</a>") has a crime fiction character had such an impact. The minute, the second, this book was finished, the desire to follow the rest of his story - and critically, just his basic life and hopes - was like craving a drug. </div>
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Avraham is leading on the case of a missing teenage boy in a Tel Aviv suburb. In a story reminiscent of Jan Costin Wagner's haunting <i>Silence</i>, events move in that snakes and ladders manner that Colin Dexter achieves so well, where differing viewpoints weave across each other and leads go nowhere, somewhere and nowhere, but relentlessly towards an end. The reader, like Avraham, begins to pontificate, to think, "I know how this is going to end" and then, also like Avraham, to start worrying, to fret "please don't let it end like this." For Avraham there is also guilt over perceived mistakes, anguish at slights from colleagues, competition from younger detectives. There is his father's illness, and his parents' concern for his wellbeing - missed calls to check his plane has landed. Avraham is a quiet wonder of a character - totally believable, immensely sympathetic and yet sustaining enough inscrutabilities to be compelling and exciting. He really is there with Wallander and Morck in the line-up of the very best. Stand by for the TV Series - this is incredible stuff.</div>
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The plotting is superb. Genuinely superb. ShadePoint almost immediately read the book again - startled by the way incidents and statements interlocked, pulled together, made sense. Seemingly mundane or unimportant things turn out in the end to be loaded with purpose. The novel is a master class in crime writing - not surprising really as Mishani is an editor of Israeli crime fiction and international crime literature, as well as a scholar of the crime genre. The ending is unforgettable and as clever and natural as the rest of the story. The sheer joy of a book that maintains its high quality right to the end is rare and <i>The Missing File</i> does not disappoint. It is heartbreaking in places, and completely unforgettable. Even now, writing this review, the pin tumblers are clicking away as elements of the novel switch in the memory and pieces are being put together. Like Persson, there is something beyond grasp in this story.</div>
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A recurring feature of the story is Avraham's own interest in crime fiction, which he reads in translation, or watches on TV. He likes to speculate on why there is very little crime fiction written in Hebrew. This is picked up again in a fascinating postscript interview with Mishani by Lidia Jean Kott. ShadePoint will speculate on this issue now. It may well be the case that if very little crime fiction is written in Hebrew the situation is likely to continue; any budding crime writer in Hebrew may read Mishani and throw their laptop out the nearest window. His Avraham is one of the finest creations out there, and this novel is crime writing in the order of genius.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-76929857908061096612014-01-02T06:38:00.002-08:002015-11-26T03:12:42.609-08:00BOOK OF THE YEAR 2013: House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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ShadePoint's Book of the Year 2013 is <i>House of Small Shadows</i> by Adam Nevill.<br />
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Choosing the Book of the Year here at the Point is a very informal, unsober process, and roughly speaking it amounts to spending a few days over the festive season mulling back over all the books featured on the site that year with a view to deciding principally which one <b>resonated</b> the most, which one left so many little dark corridors and cupboards in the memory that stumbling into them from time to time now seems guaranteed.<br />
<a name='more'></a> Some books are decidedly brilliant at time of reading, and they may be technically brilliant as well, but months later, with time passing something of them fades somehow.There is a recollection of a fine book, but just not a book that has got under the skin. So it is that Book of the Year at ShadePoint aims for the depths!</div>
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<i>House of Small Shadows</i> is so laden with powerful imagery, filled with memorable set pieces, that as time passes, it really increases in quality and impact - and that's saying something, as we gave it <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/review-house-of-small-shadows-by-adam.html" target="_blank">quite a good review</a> here as it was. There are moments in the book which simply do not have the grace to leave - dark, macabre incidences, characters and locations that hang around like fog. Looking back, the hallucinatory drive of the description intensifies at distance, and the reader is left with a kind of dreamshot sense of things - fragments of storyline that have embedded themselves deeper than was understood at the time. It would be too much of a spoiler to list these, but for ShadePoint, something of central character Catherine Howard's initial trip to the village would be at the top. Do you remember Roy Ward Baker's movie <i>The Monster Club</i> from 1980 - the third short film in the sequence, 'The Ghouls'? If you had the misfortune to have viewed this at the time, as a kid, Catherine's wander around Magbar Wood will evoke familiar creepiness and dread.</div>
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Speaking of spoilers, a recurring feature of some reviews of the book centres on the main character and a sense of disappointment that she seems too passive, somehow too easily caught up in what goes on. Unfortunately for Adam Nevill, it is actually too hard to counter this without a fairly major spoiler - an interpretation of this character's actions that is dependent on the reader's understanding of the ending. Basically, ShadePoint had no trouble at all with this character. The world of <i>House of Small Shadows</i> is viewed as if through a filter, or perhaps a miasma, for both characters in it, and readers of it. Once this clicks, or more accurately, shifts or slides, it's a different book.</div>
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Honourable mentions this year have to go to Peter May's excellent <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/review-entry-island-by-peter-may.html" target="_blank">Entry Island</a></i>,<i> </i>Neil Spring's tour de force<i> <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/review-ghost-hunters-by-neil-spring.html" target="_blank">The Ghost Hunters</a> </i>and<i> </i>Johan Theorin's<i> The Asylum, </i>which was actually <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/review-asylum-by-johan-theorin.html" target="_blank">a whisker away from greatness</a><i>.</i></div>
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But, speaking of whiskers, it is Adam Nevill's trip into the dark heart of folk memory, with its haunted houses, grotesque taxidermy landscapes and ghoulish village of 70's nightmare that wins out.</div>
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From ShadePoint, very best wishes to our readers for a happy and peaceful 2014.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-78374499548050466372013-12-27T06:56:00.001-08:002015-11-26T02:42:55.258-08:00REVIEW Entry Island by Peter May<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73pYDFhW-I2K3GLlXTCK-PMo-8ff7yi_0258mK7A2iwukLF4wtRNbfEnkyOs_Ra6sKdzyNtuuFbnyl0bUYO8IkHLPpF9Hemm2SyFXGEoaGCktoT-V3FLjw8QKfux6AzbbgN9G-ROOJMNl/s1600/Entry_Island_JK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73pYDFhW-I2K3GLlXTCK-PMo-8ff7yi_0258mK7A2iwukLF4wtRNbfEnkyOs_Ra6sKdzyNtuuFbnyl0bUYO8IkHLPpF9Hemm2SyFXGEoaGCktoT-V3FLjw8QKfux6AzbbgN9G-ROOJMNl/s320/Entry_Island_JK.jpg" style="text-align: center;" title="" width="207" /></a><br />
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Peter May's Lewis Trilogy has been tremendously successful, with sales for the series topping the million copies mark. ShadePoint <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-blackhouse-by-peter-may.html" target="_blank">reviewed the first in the sequence</a>, <i>The Black House</i>, back in May 2012 and was greatly impressed by the emotional weight of that story - the way that police procedural formed one layer of the story, and the tortured life and history of the investigator another, even deeper one. This led to ShadePoint musing on the tonal similarity between the book, set in the Outer Hebrides, and those set in Scandinavia by some of our favourite writers. May's writing seemed to have that appeal a writer like Mankell has, where the human experiences forming the story are not neglected, but are often the element that sustains, long after the book is finished. This is always something that can set crime novelists apart from each other and a skill that Scandinavian crime fiction seems at times to have hardwired in.<br />
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In May's brilliant new book, <i>Entry Island, </i>Detective Sime Mackenzie flies out from Montreal's St Hubert airfield as part of an investigative team to Entry Island in the Magdalen Islands of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Two kilometres wide and three long, the island is home to only 130 people. Well, 129: Mackenzie and his team are off to investigate the murder of the island's wealthiest inhabitants. As Sime voyages out to the small island, uncertain about the task ahead, haunted by the life he leaves behind, ShadePoint couldn't help thinking of Stellan Skarsgård's unforgettable trip to the Arctic Circle in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia_(1997_film)" target="_blank">Insomnia</a>, and the fact that May gives Sime chronic insomnia as a defining response to life events, was also deeply reminiscent of that film's appeal. The weightless, distorted sense of drifting out to the unknown, uncertain in one's companions (one of whom as it turns out, Sime knows very well) and the hallucinatory, exhausted quality of this journey, the symbolic sense of passing over into a different consciousness, is very well and succinctly handled by May, and makes a thrilling opening to the story. As if to intensify this sensibility, Sime and the team must then take a ferry, Styx-like, to reach their final destination:<br />
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Fans of The Lewis Trilogy need not despair that May has left behind the Outer Hebrides, such a compelling setting for that superb series. We learn quickly that Sime has Gaelic roots, and when he meets the murder suspect for the first time, Kirsty Cowell, he is at once thrillingly struck with a sense of having met her before - this, without giving too much away, will lead to a fascinating dual narrative: the solution of the crime, and the telling of Sime's family history, and a defining passage of time told through the diaries of an ancestor. Therefore, Lewis features heavily in <i>Entry Island</i>, a dark echo of clearances and exile, the dreadful events leading the Gàidhealtachd out to these remote places of Canada. As the parallel narrative builds, the stories begin to be carded steadily together until they seek in many ways the same solution.<i><br /></i><br />
May's depiction of the tiny island itself, from the villagers who turn out at the pier to meet the ferry, to the wild and desolate cliff-tops where a world of otherness seems to prevail, is superbly handled. Regular readers of this blog will know what a big deal it is to ShadePoint when I say this, but May's blending of the island setting, with the mystical elements of Sime's falling into the past, is reminiscent very much of the work of <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/book-of-year-2010-darkest-room-by-johan.html" target="_blank">Johan Theorin</a>, in particular <i>Echoes of the Dead</i>. So much so, that if this was not so defiantly and admirably a standalone work, one can easily imagine May being able to create a new series of novels in these haunting islands, not necessarily featuring Sime, but existing in the same universe. Not as chillingly "other" as some of Theorin's work (the eerie <i>The Darkest Room</i> was our <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/book-of-year-2010-darkest-room-by-johan.html" target="_blank">Book of the Year in 2010</a>) <i>Entry Island </i>is more clearly based in the real world - but the interplay of past and present and the inexplicable echoes and coincidences of destiny, is still very like Theorin's style. Like Theorin, what may seem casually to be coincidences in <i>Entry Island</i>, may well be nothing of the kind. There is a strong sense with both these exciting writers that this depth of storytelling comes in part from a deep fascination and identification with ancestry and heritage, and by extension the narrative of folk tale and superstition. In May's case, the accounts of the Clearances and subsequent exile of the people of Sime's Lewis origins are terribly moving, and reveal a very great deal about this experience that was certainly unknown here at the Point. <br />
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Emphasis on this mysteriousness and historical storytelling is not at all to suggest May neglects the thrust of the procedural investigation. Not a bit. This side of the narrative zips past with false trails, mysterious intruders and attacks, forensic and interrogative incident - not to mention the geography of the story shifting continuously as investigators island-hop in search of suspects and clues. There is a constant sense of threat throughout, and within the fragile dynamic that is the investigative team there is a great deal of tension - which in one scene, without hopefully giving any spoilers away, erupts with considerable force and bloodshed. It is an exciting detection tale deftly told, and works extremely well as counterpoint to the arguably much deeper and more complex story of Sime's own life, and by extension, his connection to times, emotions, loves long before his own birth. Where the two narratives cross over, what may seem unlikely or surprising to some readers, may in fact spring from a totally different understanding.<br />
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Overall, <i>Entry Island </i>is highly recommended. Fans of the Lewis Trilogy will be enthralled, and new fans will surely be found - Sime's journey and Gaelic heritage acting as a kind of bridge to a completely standalone world from the Trilogy, but one that will be by no means unfamiliar. Sime shares certain characteristics with Fin Macleod, and both are equally compelling characters. <i>Entry Island</i> succeeds in one of the most difficult writing challenges for any writer - maintaining parallel past and present stories without diminishing one at the expense of the other - and has a filmic, vivid quality to it that will endure.</div>
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<b>An Interview with Peter May</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqjPNj5Zs2nn4vDxyoNUzdJmYxP9kLy1bZYgL_Z0rtr0ly0Zd6kyPvSWCdjcls3a_1pHPFk6bxdTKnbNnKpX5DvhfaNYsKkAW7H1fBv515CeWhfJ4jAvzHxYcv-BnLZaSj2-yS5GxvSbyp/s1600/PeterMay2013+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqjPNj5Zs2nn4vDxyoNUzdJmYxP9kLy1bZYgL_Z0rtr0ly0Zd6kyPvSWCdjcls3a_1pHPFk6bxdTKnbNnKpX5DvhfaNYsKkAW7H1fBv515CeWhfJ4jAvzHxYcv-BnLZaSj2-yS5GxvSbyp/s320/PeterMay2013+(2).jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Shade Point was lucky enough to have the chance to interview Peter May about </i>Entry Island<i>, and his work in general.</i></div>
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<b>SP:</b> <b>From the Lewis Trilogy to <i>Entry Island</i>, you seem drawn to islands - can you say a bit about why you find them a compelling setting for your novels?</b></div>
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<b>PM:</b> People separated from others by water seem to develop a character and culture quite different from their mainland compatriots. Islands are generally more exposed to and affected by the weather, and that tends to shape everything from architecture to agriculture, relationships to religion. But for the crime writer islands present a wonderfully closed setting, a breeding ground for feuds and jealousies where the smallest disagreements can become all out war. The human condition is contained and placed under the microscope, providing the perfect setting for murder.</div>
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<b>SP:</b> <b>In the Lewis Trilogy and <i>Entry Island</i>, we find a sense of kinship with Scandinavian crime fiction, in the tone, and in the emotional heart of the stories - do you feel there are things about the Hebrides and the islands of the Gulf of St Lawrence that have a Scandinavian aspect? The connected history is clearly there in the Hebrides, but something of the character and emotional sensibility too perhaps?</b></div>
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<b>PM:</b> I think that cold, dark northern settings breed a bleak and brooding fiction that the Scandinavians have capitalised on in recent years. But culturally I think that the Hebrides that I know so well, and the islands in Quebec that I researched for <i>Entry Island</i>, possess their own very unique character that owes very little to the influence of the Scandinavians. Of course, the Western Isles of Scotland were under Norse occupation for 200 years, so there is clearly a linguistic and cultural influence there. But the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it seems to me, have been shaped much more powerfully by the influence of France and the French language.</div>
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<b>SP: Although <i>Entry Island</i> is a standalone - do you feel you might ever be tempted to return to this setting in a future book? What drew you in particular to this part of the world?</b></div>
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<b>PM:</b> Unlike <i>The Blackhouse</i> there is no chance that <i>Entry Island</i> will develop into a series or even a trilogy. I was aware while working on its development that it would only ever provide a one-off story. Knowing how publishers (and readers) like series, it was with some trepidation that I told my editor that <i>Entry Island</i> would be a standalone. Fortunately, after he had read my synopsis, he gave it his 100 percent support, which was very gratifying.</div>
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To be honest, I would never have considered setting a story in Canada, since it was not a country with which I was particularly familiar. But the nature of the subject of <i>Entry Island</i> - the Highland Clearances - led inexorably towards Canada, and more specifically Quebec, as a setting for the book. It is where tens of thousands of displaced Scots ended up, if they survived the brutal Atlantic crossings. So it was a challenge for me to make myself sufficiently familiar with the country in order to be able to write about it. But having already tackled China, I was undaunted, and found the Canadian people and police nothing but friendly and helpful. The truth is, often I enjoy the research more than the writing!</div>
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<b>SP: <i>Entry Island</i> and the Lewis Trilogy have a strong driving connection to past events, both long ago and relatively recent, and these events shape the stories. Do you feel drawn to this aspect of past and present intermingling in this way?</b></div>
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<b>PM:</b> The way the past shapes both the present and our future was very much a theme of the Lewis Trilogy, and one that I carried on into <i>Entry Island</i>. It is something that fascinates me, both in my own life, and in observing the lives of others, how small decisions made often in the spur of the moment can have far reaching consequences years later. It also gives me the chance to explore that all consuming human emotion of regret. We all have regrets, and very often they colour, and sometimes consume our lives. So I have developed a style of storytelling that embraces both past and present as a way of examining these phenomena. In the trilogy that was relatively easy, since the gap between past and present was only two or three decades. In <i>Entry Island</i> the gap was 150 years. So that presented a major challenge all by itself.</div>
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<b>SP: You have had a very successful career in TV drama - do you feel aspects of your work in that field and its techniques have transferred into your novels?</b></div>
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<b>PM:</b> There is no doubt that I have brought elements of the skills required both as a journalist and as a script writer into my novel writing. Journalism taught me to write fast and economically, and how to research any subject quickly and in depth. Script writing honed my abilities as a dialogue writer, and the techniques employed in advancing plot and character purely through the spoken word. All these things have, I think, been positively beneficial as I have endeavoured to carve out a career as a writer of crime fiction.</div>
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<b>SP: Can we ask, what's next up for Peter May?</b></div>
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<b>PM:</b> I would love to say retirement. But no one will let me stop writing! So I have already started work on the next book. It is something completely different - not an island in sight - and is based on events that happened to me when I was a teenager. More than that, at this stage, I cannot say.</div>
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Many thanks to Peter May, and Cecilia and Sophie at Midas PR. <i>Entry Island</i> by Peter May is just published by Quercus at £16.99. He will be doing a tour of the UK from 9th January. Please see Peter May's <a href="https://en-gb.facebook.com/petermayauthor" target="_blank">Facebook</a> page or follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/authorpetermay" target="_blank">Twitter</a> for information on all events.</div>
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=entry+island+&aq=&sll=52.8382,-2.327815&sspn=8.100648,18.720703&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=%C3%8Ele+d'Entr%C3%A9e&t=m&ll=47.276783,-61.69733&spn=0.034939,0.051498&z=13&iwloc=A&output=embed" width="300"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=entry+island+&aq=&sll=52.8382,-2.327815&sspn=8.100648,18.720703&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=%C3%8Ele+d%27Entr%C3%A9e&t=m&ll=47.276783,-61.69733&spn=0.034939,0.051498&z=13&iwloc=A" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-66546678030383321802013-11-24T07:59:00.004-08:002015-11-26T02:43:05.237-08:00REVIEW The Ghost Hunters by Neil Spring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/book/The-Ghost-Hunters-by-Neil-Spring-ISBN_9781780879758#.UpIOPMRSiAg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilWcA6WFiHk1siV4PFp1X202WAAtfRMkpT7k0SfBuQRMc4vWHr6jSAyh4jLiprl5uUabcix6vaablcXw-Cm_anPRb0LhMV4LJlohyeopZum0W0GLLVRYOomiMu70xB71umTvq4GO_ydoYr/s320/The+Ghost+Hunters+jacket+pic.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
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<i>As I read, I was hardly aware of the hours passing, the faded pages seeming to turn themselves; and by the time I was done, the fire beside me had long since died down, its embers glowing like eyes somewhere in the distant past, watching me.</i></div>
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ShadePoint last crept around the history of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borley_Rectory" target="_blank">Borley Rectory</a> in Roger Clarke's quite superb <i>A Natural History of Ghosts</i>, which <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/review-natural-history-of-ghosts-by.html" target="_blank">we reviewed last year</a>. For fans of the paranormal, the story of Borley is hard to beat. Now, <a href="http://www.neilspring.com/" target="_blank">Neil Spring</a>'s delightful <i>The Ghost Hunters</i> opens the door once again to "the most haunted house in England" and more than fills the place with eerie chills and great storytelling. From start to finish, <i>The Ghost Hunters</i> seemed a book custom-designed to be enjoyed here on the Point.<br />
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Fortunately, I don't know crates of detail about the real story of Borley Rectory, so was able to dive straight in, unencumbered by fact-anxiety. And so, it's 1926, and Sarah Grey has landed a job as an assistant to the legendary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Price" target="_blank">Harry Price</a>. Gradually Sarah is drawn deeper and deeper into Price's strange world of paranormal debunkery and all-round weirdness, and their working relationship reaches a fever pitch when they travel to investigate the mysterious world of the Borley Rectory. It is a case that will shape them both as people, frame the rest of their lives, and finally define their understanding of each other.<br />
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Spring captures this relationship perfectly, and his attention to their bond, to the extent that Borley almost plays second fiddle to its dynamic, even when Price and Grey are under its tenebrous roof, is one the key elements in this book's success. In our last review <a href="http://www.shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/review-house-of-small-shadows-by-adam.html" target="_blank">we were praising Adam Nevill</a> for his perfect construction of a setting rationale, and here Spring achieves that other intensely important factor - supporting a genuine relationship of central characters. This is so important in mysterious fiction, because the nature of relationships between main characters is often key to sustaining our belief that people will go down into a cellar, sleep in a haunted house, die together in a cold clearing, and so on.</div>
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Along the way there are superb set pieces in <i>The Ghost Hunters</i> - from ectoplasm-spewing mediums to high profile seances, and on to the supreme chills of Borley Rectory - and Sarah, in particular, is always an exceptionally well drawn and engaging character in the midst of it all. And this is saying something when she is sidekick to the much, much larger than life Harry Price - who Spring also captures very well indeed. Price comes across as part Sherlock Holmes, part Aleister Crowley and the tension in his psyche shivers at the centre of the story. Together, this wounded and determined Grey and Price are superbly drawn.</div>
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It is something of a joy then for fans of paranormal fiction to follow them as the dilemma of Borley sharpens to a fine point - in a lifetime seemingly devoted to uncovering hoaxes and pretence, has Harry Price at last stumbled upon the real deal? Sarah Grey is a compelling conduit for the creepy happenings of Borley and reels the reader in as the pull of the investigation threatens to overtake everything. She is reminiscent in ways of the splendid Florence Cathcart in <i>The Awakening</i> (which we <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/film-review-awakening-slight-spoilers.html" target="_blank">reviewed last year</a> as well) and indeed <i>The Ghost Hunters</i> shares many thematic features with that terrific film.</div>
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The blend of fact and fiction is extremely well handled, right down to the appearance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In fact, without giving too much away, Conan Doyle has one startling starring moment in one of the high points of the story. Spring clearly knows a very great deal about the history of Borley, but he marshals this with subtlety, and where maps, drawings, references or photographs appear, the reader does not step outside the narrative, and indeed these features serve instead the interior world of the story itself, and this is really quite an achievement. The story is always out front, so that where some may find inconsistencies or alterations with the factual Borley story, nothing should jar at all with most readers and they will be carried along. In fact, this is very impressively done. It will be little wonder if sales of non-fiction on Borley leap up as readers turn the last page of <i>The Ghost Hunters</i> and are then eager to know more.</div>
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All in, <i>The Ghost Hunters</i> is highly recommended. Harry Price and Sarah Grey are finely created, their relationship is integral to the story, and the structure of the narrative is always compelling and exciting - while Borley Rectory beats at the very centre of it all like a very bad dark heart.</div>
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From <a href="http://www.neilspring.com/">www.neilspring.com</a>:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2FIHrmAiTcY?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-81934896106855290402013-10-26T02:06:00.000-07:002015-11-27T00:22:29.826-08:00REVIEW House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill<a href="http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/adamnevill/houseofsmallshadows" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicrPHhcyt79iGQvhDoXoD-rhSlOrdq9nTSO3v4J_UbvgOjesyv98FYNfoieUD0cNgPL6CA1XPjGKD_H8dKmD1SYeYtrPPiglsOORXlVYc5IsAWlKKUmgB5rBTAXaSsWvq3GrxkurxWv2iw/s400/House-of-small-shadow+(King+Quote).jpg" width="261" /></a><br />
<i>By the time she reached the landing about the stairwell, a door below clicked open, and then closed. Briefly, a dim but comforting glow appeared downstairs. Catherine paused to listen. A second door opened more slowly, deeper inside the vast building.</i><br />
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We reviewed <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/review-last-days-by-adam-nevill.html" target="_blank">Last Days</a></i> by Adam Nevill <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/review-last-days-by-adam-nevill.html" target="_blank">last year </a>and liked it a very great deal. Nothing about <i>House of Small Shadows</i> shifts Shadepoint from the continuing view that he is becoming one of Britain’s most important horror writers. In fact, this may well be his best book. "Britain’s answer to Stephen King" a quote from <i>The Guardian</i> even proclaims on the cover, which is sort of both true and not true at the same time.<br />
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In <i>House of Small Shadows</i> Nevill successfully nails one of the most vital targets in the supernatural genre: the setting set-up. In Shadepoint’s view, supernatural novels work at the apex of their power when the setting, and most importantly the snare of the setting, work to perfection. Long term readers will be sick of our persistent <i><a href="http://www.susanhill.org.uk/woman-black" target="_blank">The Woman in Black</a></i> obsession, but Hill’s short novel is a perfect example of how this is done – in a flawlessly and continually believable set-up, solicitor Arthur Kipps finds himself trapped in the isolated Eel Marsh House. At night. Separated by water. He’s there to wind up the late Alice Drablow’s papers. Professional ambition and the codes of his era combine to stick him there. It makes perfect sense. The reader is completely immersed in the unfolding trauma. Another example is poor old Jack Torrance and family in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(novel)" target="_blank">The Overlook</a>. The reader simply believes in their mountainside quarantine, the snow falling, the dark rising. Another: Jonathan Harker in the opening sequence of <i>Dracula</i>. In fact, perhaps the greatest snare of all time. In films it’s the same – take Laurie Strode. Why does she not flee the house? Get the hell out. Just run! Because she’s the babysitter, and the kids are there, and it’s their house. The house is her responsibility and her battlefield. It’s her job. </div>
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Nevill’s central character, auctioneer Catherine Howard, finds herself in her own Kippsian lure as she is invited to Hereford’s The Red House, to value the contents of the place – home of the late M.H. Mason, acclaimed yet deranged Victorian master taxidermist and puppeteer. Occupied at present by only Mason’s ancient niece Edith and her shadowy housekeeper Maude, who warns her to never come back before Catherine has even reached her car after a first visit. Sound good? Indeed it does, and there is more than a touch of poor old Kipps in this excellent piece of set-up. Professional curiosity, the enormous scoop of it all, a personal desire to drive away demons of previous disappointment. This is a job she's going to get done.</div>
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I have read one review where Catherine’s seeming inability to leave the house is seen as a small negative – of course, in order to value all the contents, she has to stay there overnight as the plot unfolds. Technically, there would indeed be ways around this, different responses. I get this, but I actually disagree with this view of Catherine's plight, but can’t really explain why because to do so would be a bit of a spoiler really. Just to say, don’t let this put you off. I think it makes complete sense.</div>
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The Red House, or should I say Hereford’s Red House, is a marvellous creation. I mention Hereford, because Nevill has Susan Hill’s delicious skill in letting names work together for the horror good. Echoing Hill’s playfulness with people (Mrs Drablow) and places (Eel Marsh House, Nine Lives Causeway, Crythin Gifford, etc), Nevill has quite a bit of fun: a nearby house is called Magbar Wood, Cathryn grows up in Ellyll Fields near Green Willow and so on. It’s a superb way to create an underlying tension and menace. The Red House, with its reminders of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barn_Murder" target="_blank">the murder in the red barn</a>, is superbly named.</div>
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The house itself, “a place made of burgundy walls and shadow” welcomes poor Catherine “like a gullet, that seemed to reach into for ever.” It more than lives up to its ambitiously ghoulish name. The reader is taken with Catherine on a weird stop start tour of the house by old Edith (a dread cross between Miss Havisham and the witch in Hansel and Gretel) and without giving too much away, this takes in more than a few weird and creepy sights of the taxidermy/doll persuasion. Anyone with either a fear of rodents and/or stuffed rodents and the practicalities of this process would do well to avoid. Later, once Catherine is installed as house guest in this great sepulchre, and descends into the dark heart of M.H. Mason's working quarters, his films, his records, his instruments, it is hellish. </div>
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And this is just in the stygian claustrophobia that is daylight in The Red House. In one masterwork of a set piece, lit only by the weakening glow of her mobile, Catherine is launched into the House at night, into the cacophony of scampering noises, the sudden glimpsed faces, the things beside her in the dark, but not seen. Nevill proves himself in this one scene to be a superb horror practitioner. Despite the great quantity of horror that is written, it really isn’t often terribly scary. Grue, gore and torture can be described, but fear must be invoked and it’s really not easy to do. Here, Nevill gives it his all, and it is a fully achieved bit of creepiness. This skill is extended to Catherine's ill advised trip to nearby Magbar Wood. I won't spoil the effect but it is a supremely eerie success.</div>
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I think there is no answer to Stephen King, in Britain or anywhere. He is in a class and a world of his own. He's a bit like Sinatra - it's his world and we're just living in it, etc. King's recent books have even moved him to some extent out of genre. It’s not even clear what the question would be nowadays if we needed a British answer. But, Adam Nevill is a continually compelling writer, in a genre that always needs a brave new voice in what might be called ‘mainstream’ – breaking through with a technician’s skill and a gift for setting, storytelling and characterisation that says strongly and with a fan's own intent, this may be the horror genre but it has emotional purpose and intelligence. In this sense, Adam Nevill is our answer at the moment.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-59591176774020418112013-09-21T00:15:00.000-07:002015-11-26T02:43:47.145-08:00REVIEW Doctor Sleep by Stephen King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Oh, my dear one, is it you? How can it be you? Are you dead? Am I? ... Are we ghosts?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>Stephen King's new novel <i>Doctor Sleep</i> is a sequel to<i> The Shining </i>(1977)<i>. </i>Simple to say, but enormous in meaning to King's multitudes of fans. Like Evelyn Waugh announcing a follow-on to <i>Brideshead Revisited, </i>or Fitzgerald deciding to see what happens next to old Nick. Easy to sneer at such a statement of course, but in Horror genre terms <i>The Shining</i> is right up there with the very greats. For many, it is King's best book. The writer himself was tormented by the idea of following it: "Did I approach the book with trepidation? You better believe it?"<br />
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King was clearly worried about making the book as scary as the first one, because lots of people who have read it were either properly spooked or at the very least found it eerie and somehow unforgettable. In some senses the popular memory is also influenced to a very great deal by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(film)" target="_blank">Kubrick's film version</a> which was a seriously jumpy affair, even if <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/09/18/doctor-sleep-the-shining-stephen-king/2828845/" target="_blank">King himself is less enamoured of it</a> and feels it has a "cold heart". All in, <i>The Shining</i> just has a scary reputation. But one suspects King was concerned about more than just making sure the follow-up was scary: <i>The Shining</i> is a book that is adored. By lots of us.</div>
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Predominantly, Shade Point remembers the wonderful setting of that book - The Overlook Hotel. Like another favourite around here, Susan Hill's <i><a href="http://www.susanhill.org.uk/woman-black" target="_blank">The Woman in Black</a></i>, <i>The Shining</i> is a towering lesson in the importance of setting in creating an atmosphere to genuinely unsettle a reader. The Overlook is as good as a character in <i>The Shining</i>, and while some us may be visually influenced by Kubrick in this, it can be hard still to check into some, well, older hotels without mischievously comparing them to The Overlook. The hotel is wonderfully described, but it's not just the physical rendering that's important. Like Hill, it is the premise of the setting that really does the job - plunging characters into an entirely plausible isolated landscape, then bringing the walls closer and closer in. The story, about small boy Danny Torrance, who moves with his parents to this hotel high in the Colorado mountains as sole winter caretakers, is thus made a classic. Plain and simple. Following it would indeed be hard, and for the fans this kind of thing is all mixed emotions. Sequels, they're tough sometimes.</div>
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In some ways, though, and we're not saying this just to be contrary, <i>Doctor Sleep</i>, in hooking up with the grown Danny Torrance, may be a sequel, but it is also perhaps in some ways the last of a trilogy, so far at least. Stephen King has been writing some of the best books of his career recently and <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/for-moment-everything-was-clear-and.html">11.22.63</a></i> (2011) and <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/review-under-dome-by-stephen-king.html">Under The Dome</a></i> (2009) have something in common with <i>Doctor Sleep</i>. <i>11.22.63</i> King originally tried to write in 1972, and <i>Under the Dome </i>in 1976. <i>The Shining</i> came out in 1977. All these ideas must have been tumbling around at the same time. Like his last two, <i>Doctor Sleep </i>is a going back, back to<i> </i>answer a question that has long been on King's mind: what happened to Danny Torrance? He refers in his afterword to a question about it at a live event 15 years ago, with the implication that it had been in his thoughts much before that. There is then a sense of a 'collective finishing' about these three novels, that these were books that 'had' to be written, ideas that had to be put to bed with love and care. <i>11.22.63</i>, <i>Under the Dome</i> and <i>Doctor Sleep</i> seem to be family.</div>
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There is more than just the long gestation of the three stories in common. There is something too about the way King extends his writing about small towns and communities, and the relationships of loved ones and family units - whether this be so enormous it has its own cast list (the entirely jaw-dropping creation of Chester's Mill in <i>Under the Dome) </i>or smaller, like Danny Torrance's weary and scared supporters in <i>Doctor Sleep</i>, or the weird familial operation of their foe, the Winnebago convoy The True Knot. In all three books there is something special going on in the way that King explores small town America, communities; something he has alway done of course, but in these novels seems somehow pin-sharp, high definition. </div>
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He looks at the everyday relationships, the families and the bonds of friendship. In an entirely unshowy way, all three books have a deeply emotional undercurrent, strong currents of love between characters that is truly affecting. Of course, King fans have known this all along - like setting, he does our ordinary emotions with tremendous ease. Probably, one suspects, because he just writes it as he feels it. In all three of this 'unfinished business trilogy' there have been moments where Shade Point simply started crying. There is a genuineness about some of these simply described human interactions in the books that actually in effect has the startling otherness of good poetry - the sting in the tail at the end of the poem that tells us something profound when we are not expecting it. It is perhaps no surprise that one of the <i>Doctor Sleep</i> characters is a famous poet. King frequently catches us off guard with the great weight behind seemingly ordinary exchanges of affection.<br />
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This is not to denigrate the run of books before <i>Under the Dome </i>at all - after a wobbly time of it, Shade Point started to reconnect with King at <i>Bag of Bones </i>and pretty much enjoyed them all from there on. But, it is almost as if, after finishing the super <i>Duma Key</i>, King paused on the stairs, went way back down to the basement for these old manuscripts, got back up to the floor where <i>Duma</i> and <i>Cell</i> and all were happening, and decided to just keep going up. Now, I liked <i>Duma Key </i>a lot, and it was pretty spooky in places - more so than<i> Doctor Sleep </i>arguably<i> -</i> but honestly, nothing would prepare me for <i>Under the Dome. </i>That book<i> (</i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/review-under-dome-by-stephen-king.html" style="font-style: italic;">and I reviewed it here</a>) is possibly the best thing he has ever written. It was an utter triumph. And there seemed to be no going back downstairs again after that. Now that he was up there, he wrote <i>11.22.63</i> and even though it is perhaps not quite the equal of the earlier two, <i>Doctor Sleep. </i></div>
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That's not to say<i> Doctor Sleep</i> isn't great, because of course it is. It's as subjective and difficult to separate any of this 'unfinished business trilogy' as it is to, say, compare <i>The Shining</i> with <i>Salem's Lot</i>, or <i>Pet Sematary</i> with <i>Christine</i>. I enjoyed it a very great deal.</div>
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Danny Torrance has grown up, and his life has hit the skids. While trying not to give too much away about the plot of either sequel or original, he has inherited the gift of all-out alcoholism from his father - the haunted and unstable Jack Torrance, caretaker to The Overlook. The book follows Dan into adulthood, marked gently by the passing of Presidents, as he finally finds a kind of shelter from the trauma, only to become involved in a battle to save a young girl who shares his own gift - the shining - from a marauding group of characters as bizarre and eerie as the riders of Cormac McCarthy's <i>Blood Meridian: </i>The True Knot.<br />
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Initially, it may seem to some readers that just perhaps the same story could have been told without the need to make this a <i>Shining</i> sequel. That without The Overlook, it somehow wasn't quite the same thing. That Danny Torrance needn't be Dan Torrance. That you could just about tell the same story without the weight of the connection. I'd be lying if I said this didn't occur to me as well as quite a different story unfolded to what I had imagined, or hoped for. But, hang in there, it all becomes entirely right. This magic trick is another feature of the 'unfinished business trilogy' - we are given initially awkward concepts that soon become as natural as air. Small American town inexplicably covered by giant dome? Check, all well, let's get on with the story. Time loop in the basement of a diner? Good, all good, fine with that. Sequel to <i>The Shining</i> with no hotel-style setting, new shining back story that stretches back centuries? You know what - that's okay too.</div>
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Hollywood of course would have done this differently. A movie remake might well have used The Overlook as the premise for the sequel, rebuilt it and sent in another family. But King doesn't, and maybe that's why he thought the Kubrick "cold". For him, it is always about the family.<br />
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And at the centre of this particular family sits maybe one of the biggest themes of the book. The life-long battle against alcohol for those who get addicted. Even in the original novel, there was something of Danny's gift that worked as a metaphor of interior protection as well as panic, and something of the hotel that mirrored his father's descent into alcoholic despair and dementia. That King has returned to this seems deeply significant. By his own admission, of course, he struggled greatly with alcohol - and has now been sober for a very long time. Maybe this new novel is some kind of reaffirmation. His book <i>On Writing</i> movingly recounts his alcoholism in quite an inspirational way (as well as being a great guide for budding writers - if you're not going to listen to King ... ). </div>
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For a while one saw references to how King wasn't as good a writer when he stopped drinking. Shade Point has always thought this a nonsense, and it is interesting, conversely, to wonder if any of the 'unfinished business trilogy", particularly <i>Under the Dome </i>and <i>11.22.63</i>, were books that were too demanding, or indeed like <i>Dome</i>, too huge, to get done under the influence. And now, they are like the work of an older wiser man, sober since the late eighties, bringing out these broken things from the basement, and fixing them, polishing them up, and making them shine - like the model train that Danny Torrance finds at the beginning of <i>Doctor Sleep</i>, his route to sobriety and hope.</div>
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To return full circle? Is it scary? I think the answer to that is yes, and no.<br />
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'Yes', it is scary, but in a different way to the original <i>Shining</i> - the menace seeps in, as has been the case with most of King's recent works. There is one particular scene, late at night, by moonlight, digging, unearthing, that is quite terrifying. Individual moments will serve the inevitable film version well, too, with many, many moments of superb eeriness. Torrance's enemies this time, the True Knot, are a creepy bunch and have some superb set pieces to themselves. It is also scary because it is squarely about death and loss, about the fragility of love, about terrible guilt and redemption, about the despair of drinking a screwdriver at 8.15am because you need to. About whether there really is a higher power. </div>
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And then 'no' - probably for lots of people <i>Doctor Sleep</i> will not be a time machine back to first reading <i>The Shining</i> under the covers with a torch. Like those in <i>Bag of Bones</i>, when the villains of the piece are defined, they somehow seem too heavy on the other end of the see-saw. And <i>Doctor Sleep</i> won't be a doorway to the past, like the diner in <i>11.22.63</i>. It won't be the horror creepy-fest that story really was, back then. But you know, for those of us who read <i>The Shining</i> first as a kid, it couldn't be, and I hope Stephen King will be happy with people like Shade Point saying things like: it may not be as scary as that first trip to The Overlook, but it's scary in different ways, and boy, it does have some really eerie moments. And other things like, <i>Doctor Sleep</i> is not so scary because it is about warmth, and salvation; it's about survival, the survival of love and family, it offers hope that we sustain, and inspiration to the addicted. Stuff like that.<br />
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I still adore <i>The Shining</i>, and this new book may not be like it, but it makes sense with it, belongs with it, and is just fine.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Kkmqd15tqeI" width="420"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-27066160189004051322013-09-08T04:39:00.001-07:002015-11-26T02:43:57.503-08:00Morseology 2: Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><br />For life was sweet, and we each of us had our own little hopes, and few of us exhibited overmuch anxiety to quit this vale of misery and tears. Valerie had a right to live. Like himself. Like Lewis.</i><br />
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In our first Morseology episode, <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/morseology-no-1-last-bus-to-woodstock.html" target="_blank"><i>Last Bus To Woodstock</i></a>, there was a faint sense of wonder between the lines at how such an iconic crime series had grown from so humble a source. With a slightly difficult ending, in particular, it was hard to escape the feeling that enjoyable though it was, the novel hardly made a standalone case for the phenomenon that Morse has become - successful and much-loved TV series, follow-up and superb <i>Lewis</i> and now the brilliant <i>Endeavour</i>. Morseology was to be all about digging into the actual novels themselves, and seeing what it was all about, where it all comes from. <i>Last Bus To Woodstock</i> turned into an awkward initiation. The fact that nearly a year has gone by before a look at book two speaks for itself.<br />
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So, what fun it is to say that Dexter's second outing for Morse, <i>Last Seen Wearing</i>, takes the set-ups and characterisation of the first novel, tightens them, and boots the ball through the sticks from the halfway line. It is immediately clear, within chapters, that it is a significant raising of the game. Taut, brutal in places, deeply characterised, it feels harsh and modern, ahead of its time.<br />
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First published, incredibly it seems now, about 8 months before Paul Cook thumped out that drum beat to Steve Jones's guitar to kick start <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_in_the_U.K." target="_blank">'Anarchy in the UK'</a>, it is somehow hard to place Morse this far back - and yet here he is, and where things seemed somehow dated and difficult in the first book, now there is a very real edge. Here is a detective series stamping out of the post war era as hard in many ways as the Sex Pistols did pop music. Icily, often, the novel crackles with the tensions and fears of that era, and Morse is suddenly a man on a tightrope - one foot in the past, the other, reluctant, in this harsh new world. <i>Endeavour </i>now looks a completely inspired idea in this context, bursting with dramatic possibility for its timeline.</div>
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And it is indeed a harsh world this book at hand. Like that surprise ShadePoint hit from last year <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/review-fatal-frost-by-james-henry.html" target="_blank">Fatal Frost</a> </i>this hard second outing for Morse extends the feeling, particularly for those who remember the times, that somehow the 70s and 80s now appear more attached to the post war era than any more substantial kinship to the now. To startling effect, <i>Last Seen Wearing</i> is fiercely of its age, but crucially, just omnisciently out in front. While there are nostalgic moments - the typewriters, the Belisha crossings, the football coupon - there are sharper and more difficult voices from the past. Morse is nearly always drinking, in a bad way, stopping off for pints before interviews, haunting pubs at opening time, driving at what now would be well over the legal limit. This is only quietly questioned, indirectly by Lewis at one point, but generally, Morse is a force of alcohol, mostly unconsciously driven towards it and therefore limited by it. This is not to say that this still doesn't afflict many of us in all walks of life, but it's hard to imagine the clean lines of NCIS accommodating a character like this for very long. And other attitudes are brutal and awful. "Look you miserable wog," growls Morse at one point, to a strip club doorman. "You want a fight?" It leaps out of the page. Speaking of NCIS, at one point Morse removes a murder weapon from the body of a victim himself, spilling pink blood around him. Even in his own 1980s TV series, someone would have had a word.</div>
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Hard to imagine all this being tolerated by any of the new crop of forensic investigators, like Bones maybe. Although this 1976 Morse and new 21st Century Bones - a collision course would be highly likely from the get-go. More like Regan from <i>The Sweeney</i> than the gentler Morse of John Thaw, in this book the character's sexual attitudes will be difficult. In Morse's moral struggle between buying <i>The News Of The World</i> or <i>The Sunday Times</i>, between his own personal Victorian pornography or his temptation to to steal some hardcore Danish material during a search, there is detachment in the way Dexter depicts him, his desires, and his collapsing horrified dignity. This conflicted, contradictory character considers himself deeply flawed - Dexter lays him out there, naked. Morse is filled with disgust and self-loathing and it is painful to watch.</div>
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While the investigation continues - into the case of a girl missing for over two years - the reader gets to know Morse, to understand his failings, and ultimately his tragedy. He is without question, a genuinely, formally, tragic figure. From the less sure footing of <i>Last Bus To Woodstock</i>, in this first return, Morse steps out as an incredibly well realised character, a difficult and to some extent dangerous one, but compelling, darkly tragic and wanting.</div>
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The solving of the crime, as it goes, continues in the style of the first book, a spiralling and dizzying collection of dead ends, mistakes, and good fortune. Much tauter, though, than the debut, this is breathlessly done. At one moment it seems all will be resolved and then hope is dashed to the rocks, with Morse flung to drink and despair, and a real desire to quit the case at one point. Lewis, ill in bed for a significant portion, while beginning to love and admire this forlorn figure of Morse, is frequently in disdain of the leaps of fancy and tortured logic of his thinking. He is like a man almost unable to watch as Morse stumbles hopelessly from one collapsing line of enquiry to the next. Always within touching distance, but frequently looking from the wrong angle. Lewis emerges as a far rounder character here, and the sense of balance and complement begins to take shape. Like all the great crime fiction, the reader is subtly aware of this dynamic, this intensity of characterisation, rising higher above the actual narrative of the detection - until the procedural solution, being desperately important of course, is just not the only thing. Or indeed the only thing that needs solving.</div>
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Detective novels by their very nature crave resolution, but the ones that become great, that transcend this, are the ones where another story takes hold this way, where the journey of the investigators themselves, or other people caught up - to the extent that the reader will almost forgive a non-resolution - is just as critical. It becomes essential that these human stories stay true. Like Wallander, for example, we are latterly reading as much for the detective himself, as we are about the crimes he is investigating. The final Wallander, <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/review-troubled-man-by-henning-mankell.html" target="_blank">The Troubled Man</a>, </i>actually only makes sense in this way, to this kind of invested reader. Dexter may well have stumbled onto Morse as much as his anti-heroic detective does clues, but nonetheless, in this book, the synapses of great characterisation fizz alive. Married to a fairly devastating management of setting in time, the ingredients are all there. The books came first, after all.</div>
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So, Dexter would seem to be an important writer, here in the mid 1970s, assisting to signal a shift from the Agatha Christie-like connecting of dots, to a kind of anarchy, where fatalism, nihilism even, risk winning the day - and this is as on-the-border and frightening, if not more so, than the human motivations to crime that frame the detection. Colin Dexter was in his mid-forties when he wrote this novel, so he was no Johnny Rotten in age terms, but Morse's emotional life and world is as much "another country" that this novel seems to speak in its own way of the same collapsing and breaking of society and people as the inchoate roar of Punk. Here in Morse is a man for whom the world is spinning too fast, perhaps, who is beginning to unravel in the face of an existence increasingly at odds with his hopes, but he must try to hang on, by whatever means. His is the boot through the TV at the Grundy interview, and it is equally an understanding of the cartoon characters of desire in the studio. It is no wonder from this second book alone, that an icon was born. Morse's fate suddenly becomes lit up, like a fire, and we are lost to him:</div>
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<i>Morse slept fitfully that night. Broken images littered his mind, like the broken glass strewn about the rubbish tip. He tossed and turned, but the merry-ground was out of control. and at 3.00 a.m. he got up to make himself a cup of tea. Back in bed, with the light left on, he tried to concentrate his closed, swift-darting eyes on to a point about three inches in front of his nose, and gradually the spinning mechanism began to slow down, slower and slower, and then it stopped. </i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-82049297142700552102013-09-05T06:46:00.002-07:002015-11-26T02:44:05.234-08:00REVIEW How The Light Gets In by Louise Penny<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijq1AiDUOMeWC5nHghEFGIGkIbnqZvtSf5ukmCPXlIM4nn3fO2yPZzp4eaZcQOvfDGjJwQql-TceCq1YLqOf59fs2hx-0Y_rFErh9pDvSwspFxlr223KmUUxUCBap9rFGu6VvuwvWovKhH/s1600/How-the-light-gets-in-JACKET.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijq1AiDUOMeWC5nHghEFGIGkIbnqZvtSf5ukmCPXlIM4nn3fO2yPZzp4eaZcQOvfDGjJwQql-TceCq1YLqOf59fs2hx-0Y_rFErh9pDvSwspFxlr223KmUUxUCBap9rFGu6VvuwvWovKhH/s320/How-the-light-gets-in-JACKET.gif" width="208" /></a></div>
<i>Being thieves in the night depended on the night</i><br />
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Although <a href="http://www.louisepenny.com/" target="_blank">Louise Penny</a> has published nine crime volumes featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Quebec, ShadePoint has somehow missed out on the whole saga. At long last, and very much better late than never, this poor situation is brought to a halt with the latest in the series, <i>How The Light Gets In</i>.<br />
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Anyone who has read ShadePoint over the years will know that it does have a thing for international fiction, in particular Scandinavian fiction, for harassed existentialist detectives trudging through snow and muttering less than they really mean in quixotic struggles that may end, but never finish. Thus, the advance marketing for <i>How The Light Gets In</i> did capture our imagination. An isolated village, trees, snow, world weary detective, more snow? All the ingredients seemed entirely in place. </div>
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As it turned out, though, ShadePoint wasn’t going to get what it expected. The Gamache novels, if this one is anything to go by, are quite different to, say, the world of Wallander or Morck. Not unenjoyable at all, far from it, but just not what was anticipated. They have common elements, but they are not the same experience.</div>
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This view was shaping up to be a struggle to explain, when as if by magic, a very apt comparison arrived only yesterday in the form of <i><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/dci-barnaby-enters-the-land-of-sarah-lund-midsomer-murders-travels-to-copenhagen-for-special-joint-episode-with-danish-broadcaster-of-the-killing-8795924.html" target="_blank">The Killings at Copenhagen</a></i> – a collaboration between the makers of Danish TV triumph <i>The Killing</i>, and the <i>Midsomer Murders</i> team. Yes, a Midsomer local is found murdered in Copenhagen. Yes, Midsomer of <i>Midsomer Murders</i>. That <i>Midsomer Murders</i>. Barnaby and <i>Borgen</i> ...</div>
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The fact is, though, ShadePoint has always sneakily quite liked <i>Midsomer Murders</i>, particularly when John Nettles was in it. Nettles is a bit of a legend out here on the peninsula. <i>Midsomer</i> often gets criticized for being small town twee, with its fetes and slaughtered jam makers, potters, poets, sculptors, lollipop ladies (delete as appropriate). Truth is, though, like any small town in Agatha Christie, the kill count can end up high, brutal and gleeful. Don’t ever go to Midsomer it would seem – not even on holiday, not even passing through – it’s a battlefield. How this very British mild mannered mayhem will play with the icy chill of <i>The Killing</i> – well, I can hardly wait. From an initial incredulousness this bizarre mash up is as eagerly awaited as the second series of <a href="http://skyliving.sky.com/hannibal" target="_blank">Hannibal</a>. What on earth will it be like?</div>
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To some extent I think <i>How The Light Gets In</i> may supply us a clue. On the one hand a dark novel of long buried secret, corruption and murder, it is also a small town snapshot, like St Mary Mead, or any small town in Stephen King. There is a bookshop, a lady with a pet duck, the guys who run the B&B, the bistro. Penny’s small village of Three Pines – cut off from the rest of the world’s technological advance (they still have phones on the walls) is at once a comforting space, with maybe just a hint of something darker. Not quite Twin Peaks, of course, but very much Midsomer. While Three Pines has its own isolated beauty and safety, the dangerous world outside will always be headed up the road towards it, guns drawn. If real life Quebec has half of the undercurrents suggested here, you’d be as well giving it as wide a berth as any body farm in Causton, Badger’s Drift or Newton Magna.</div>
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I can see how some of Three Pines depiction might be seen as quaint, or even how the marshaling of such a large group of much loved characters (this is the ninth book after all) might occasionally seem too cosy (often Penny has to balance five or six characters simultaneously in exposition dialogue set pieces – which is difficult to pull off) but the overall effect is completely successful. It is actually splendid escapist fun – a balance of an idealized world of neighbourly support and eccentricity that isn’t antisocial with bigger corporate level crimes and dark murder in the city. Agatha Christie is an apt comparison, and with the Quebec setting, it isn’t unhelpful to imagine a cross between something Scandinavian and something English rural. There is even a young computer hacker with just some of the fire of Lisbeth Salander. Gamache wakes not to the thwack of cricket bat and ball, but the slap of ice hockey stick and puck on a frozen pond. After months of ploughing through thick and worthy but ultimately unenjoyable books that haven’t <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/p/contact.html" target="_blank">made this blog</a>, it was a total relief to sit back and read an unashamed entertainment, with a very good heart. And a sense of closure, and hope, even. </div>
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One thing, though: if, like me, you’re starting afresh with the wily and worldly Inspector Gamache, I’d say don’t start here. The plotlines of previous novels and their relationships and histories lie like the snow on the pine branches in <i>How The Light Gets In</i> and a far more rewarding experience would await those starting at book one – and ShadePoint would be quite envious of that new journey in the snow.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-46962911944162154352013-03-13T08:04:00.001-07:002015-11-26T02:44:29.099-08:00REVIEW The Asylum by Johan Theorin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjluHZIiVLwBHXFZclHa45s6Sg_I983gb_QmNz8DVBJx9Y89TbNfC82wDPwA99sl-0l572KoHnxvU6b4ZCzHSsrc1Ctupun0aqj7q-QMC3j_6GphDdcMC4_DPqKIR3pH-d5AzdPcRfjpFnV/s1600/the-asylum_jacketpicUK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjluHZIiVLwBHXFZclHa45s6Sg_I983gb_QmNz8DVBJx9Y89TbNfC82wDPwA99sl-0l572KoHnxvU6b4ZCzHSsrc1Ctupun0aqj7q-QMC3j_6GphDdcMC4_DPqKIR3pH-d5AzdPcRfjpFnV/s320/the-asylum_jacketpicUK.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
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If a darker, more chilling and gripping novel than <i>The Asylum</i> crosses the door of ShadePoint this year, it will be a huge surprise. Already a favourite writer here, Johan Theorin has returned to the form that made <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/book-of-year-2010-darkest-room-by-johan.html" target="_blank">The Darkest Room</a></i> a ShadePoint Book of the Year.<a name='more'></a> </h4>
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<i>The Asylum</i> has a slight trace of the denouement difficulties that perhaps took the edge off Theorin's last, <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/review-quarry-by-johan-theorin.html" target="_blank">The Quarry</a></i>, but is overall a vastly superior book - and <i>The Quarry</i> was actually very good! In many places <i>The Asylum</i> was simply 'unputdownable' to be honest - and very often, it is utterly macabre and screeching with tension one minute and pulsing with dread the next. While largely seen as a crime writer, it seems at ShadePoint that Theorin has always written with strong echoes of horror and the modern gothic and <i>The Asylum</i> is no exception. In many, many ways this book is more the stuff of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(novel)" target="_blank">Jack Torrance and The Overlook</a> than it is the world of Wallander and Ystad police station.</div>
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In the novel Jan has started work at the Dell Nursery, an experimental establishment linked to Saint Patricia's Regional Psychiatric Hospital. The children in the nursery are able to visit a parent in the facility next door, and in some cases are resident. 'St Psycho's' is a great brooding stone edifice from the 19th century, looming over the tiny temporary preschool building like a gothic beast behind its high fences and security systems. In the novel's central device, the two buildings are linked by an underground tunnel. It is this almost impossible-seeming connection that provides some of the novel's most haunting and nerve-whittling moments. As I have said before about Susan Hill and <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/film-review-woman-in-black.html" target="_blank"><i>The Woman in Black </i></a>it is the case that a unique, unforgettable setting is often one of the key reasons for a novel's success - and so it is with<i> The Asylum </i>and this chilling underground pathway. In its initial appearances it has an effect not unlike Clarice Starling's memorable walk through those corridors in Baltimore.</div>
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Almost from the start, the reader is made aware that there is darkness and remoteness within Jan himself, that he harbours desires to get inside the hospital, and that his own past is as crowded with shadows and secrets as the hospital courtyard when night descends. As the novel progresses, we discover he is not alone in this. The narrative moves through three time zones, and dark inter-connected patterns and horror stories emerge and many of the characters become drawn deeply in. The reader is compelled to read on through this unfolding despair and menace, tempted into the darkness in much the same way that marks Patricia Highsmith's characterisation: as we follow Ripley here, there and everywhere, and the uneasiness rises, still we maintain a connection to this dangerous and difficult 'hero'.</div>
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From very early on, Theorin achieves a sense of dread that never leaves. Even considering issues ShadePoint had with the ending - more of which later - the tension is never diminished.There is never an instant where stopping reading seems remotely possible and the novel had that very rare quality of total compulsion and immersion that marks out the great thrillers. It is testament to the drive of the story that any implausibilities are largely ignored as the pages drive on. </div>
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Shortly after starting work, Jan sees an old woman 'behind the fence' - she is dressed in black, sweeping dead leaves. He looks away, and looks back:</div>
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<i>"But the woman behind the fence has disappeared. Only the pile of leaves remains."</i></div>
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This atmosphere keeps up, particularly as Jan's backstory emerges and Theorin plunges the reader into the basement of the hospital, trapping us in a series of darker and darker holes, forests, and tunnels. And there is one downright shocking scene towards the end which anyone with claustrophobia will have a really hard time reading. A baby monitor system is also employed in one of the most unusual ways since Andrew Pyper's <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/review-guardians-by-andrew-pyper.html" target="_blank">The Guardians</a> </i>and there is an old rickety lift put to unbearably eerie use. The reader is led this way through the half light from one setpiece eerieness to another, relentlessly. Are there rats down there, Jan wonders at one point? Quite...</div>
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A book like this could easily be unpalatable in terms of the way it presents mental ill health, and the care for people who endure it, but it isn't. This is in part because of the way the narration works, but also in the use of the backstories, and a real sense that Theorin is taking this context very seriously indeed, that he is prepared to work well beyond stereotype, to try to find some truth at the heart of what is going on. Sure, there are a fair few <i>Shutter Island </i>style moments - not least the 'grey sacks' in the basement, the strange twilight figures roaming around in seemingly abandoned parts of the hospital - but on the whole, I believe Theorin's intentions are good, and that despite the thriller centre, the novel has some very empathetic and sensitive things to say.</div>
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I have to be honest, and say that unfortunately, the ending didn't quite hold up to the rest of the novel. This could easily be because the rest of the novel is so astonishingly tense and achieved that any ending would suffer, and maybe perhaps because it was just not the ending I wanted. Either of these are possible - and I suspect the latter. My issues with how the story was wrapped up, however, were in no way significant enough to override what a superb book this is for almost all of its pages - for me. Lots of people will probably love the ending. Without wanting to put too much out there as a spoiler, I just thought that too many ends came together in the last sections, without really needing to, and that there was a slight drop in the immersion factor as these strands snapped together in the closing pages.<br />
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This is of course a shame: with a handful of chapters to go, <i>The Asylum</i> was shaping up to be an absolute, undeniable five-star legend in the making. Having said that, the further I move away from reading the book in time, the less and less this denouement worry seems to matter, and it may be that I'm wrong about that ending. What sustains of <i>The Asylum</i> is the endless tension of the story, the brilliance of setting, and the skills of a thriller writer of great talent - not to mention his translator - pushing as close as can be to the very top of the game. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-18495442145807576562013-02-18T12:10:00.001-08:002015-11-26T02:45:56.209-08:00REVIEW The Forbidden by F.R. Tallis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5ksWhtvmLIubQTeM1-NUO5OgrLPB4eK9O36EKlbOeCnv-rwFRG-n5YV5e9tUWEU8R4kUFGSv2hUuMIPQ7yOB2saijLzedQ1Tblk83AsztSGFiODB3hJbYHt3VKw9lluUSCj25suAX8ci/s1600/the-forbidden-jacket+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5ksWhtvmLIubQTeM1-NUO5OgrLPB4eK9O36EKlbOeCnv-rwFRG-n5YV5e9tUWEU8R4kUFGSv2hUuMIPQ7yOB2saijLzedQ1Tblk83AsztSGFiODB3hJbYHt3VKw9lluUSCj25suAX8ci/s320/the-forbidden-jacket+pic.jpg" width="209" /></a><i>The world turns and we move from light into darkness, from darkness into light. With light comes warmth, with darkness, cold. Everything that lives and breathes depends on the light for its continued existence. All growth is stunted by darkness …</i>
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The 1870s. When young doctor Paul Clement returns to Paris from the French Colony of San Sebastien, he unwittingly takes with him a curse that defines the plot of <i>The Forbidden</i>, a superb novel of the undead and demonic possession by F.R. Tallis. Experimenting in Paris with new resuscitation techniques in order to sight the mysteries of life and death, Clement allows himself to die and be returned – but forgetting his island curse, does not reanimate quite as planned.<br />
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In a gothic tour de force, <i>The Forbidden</i> reminded this reader of <i>The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i>, <i>Dracula</i>, <i>The Island of Dr Moreau</i> and of a dark and brilliant novel that I had somehow forgotten, <i>The Lightning Cage</i> by Alan Wall. Occasionally too, those two eerie masterpieces of Peter Ackroyd, <i>Hawsksmoor</i> and <i>The House of Doctor Dee</i> and one of the most underrated books, ever, the marvellous <i>Pilgrim</i>, by Timothy Findley.
There are also quite strong echoes of <i>Interview with the Vampire</i>.</div>
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Rather than a negative, it’s always a good sign here at Shade Point when all these fleeting similarities bubble up, because it means a book has captured that macabre junction between the historical, the otherworldly, the thrilling and the unsettling that really is so much the meat and drink of all the favourites of this site. <i>The Forbidden</i> is a fast paced whirlwind through Zombie curses, undead transformations, arcane knowledge, demonic possession and was so enjoyable it was read in a couple of days. Not for the faint hearted, the book is often extremely gruesome, and memorably creepy in places, and it has an undercurrent of dread and menace conveyed brilliantly by the exceptional period narration. The book is really well written.
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Great fun can be had with many of the events of the novel – the hurried trap rides in darkness, the exorcisms, the Brundle-esque physical transformations, the esoteric lore, the fabulously realised demons. These are little escapist wonders for genre fans. But the novel has deeper darker layers: the psychological study of good and evil, some eye watering sadism and a trip to Hell that is as unforgettably grim as any Heironymus Bosch imagining.
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Overall, this is the first real genre masterwork we’ve read this year, and it is incredibly exciting to learn that Tallis, a crime writer ‘by day’, has a ghost novel appearing later this year. We may have a very special series about to take shape. <i>The Forbidden</i> at least will be the excellent, page turning, cheerfully malevolent opener.
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F.R. Tallis has some really interesting background to the novel on his site <a href="http://www.franktallis.com/forbidden.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-10160870344054982782013-01-04T07:49:00.002-08:002014-11-02T04:17:50.495-08:00REVIEW Dominion by C.J. Sansom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmvwBuoH5IpBQ-WannBpLvSYgX6V7_oPeZpMCqFCnkKlkn-URxTkX_vMmQcOFF33AjuUT61qzYNMroL2T1ZWKd2uk546Ah1Jzq7vxvkaaYHzMP1Z3sftHcerRGqOi_tXPhhlkZOqWG043b/s1600/dominion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmvwBuoH5IpBQ-WannBpLvSYgX6V7_oPeZpMCqFCnkKlkn-URxTkX_vMmQcOFF33AjuUT61qzYNMroL2T1ZWKd2uk546Ah1Jzq7vxvkaaYHzMP1Z3sftHcerRGqOi_tXPhhlkZOqWG043b/s320/dominion.jpg" height="320" width="209" /></a><b>*MILD SPOILERS*</b> </div>
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C.J. Sansom is one of my favourite writers, and I'll read anything he puts out. <br />
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To digress from the main point of this review, I often think of Sansom whenever the subject of digital publishing and e-readers comes up. Years ago I was on a ship, in a storm, and I was reading Sansom's Shardlake novel, <i>Dissolution.</i> I have such a clear memory of this experience, such a vivid 'book-memory', that every time I think about Kindles and so on, I think about this episode and can't help wondering if we will lose this strong connection to the memory of particular physical books and the part they played at times in our lives. I remember completely the crashing and rolling of the ship, and just as clearly, the rapt turning of the pages as my first introduction to Shardlake and his world unfolded. I sort of remember that book now much as a friend, keeping me company while a Force 10 bashed us about the sea. Ever since, Sansom has been a special writer for me. And every time I ponder the move to reading a black plastic container rather than a paper book, I think of Shardlake and his embossed cover. Apt, I think, for a writer with such dedication to interpreting the past.</div>
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I guess I'm also telling this story rather than getting on with the review because I want to be absolutely clear that even though I'm slightly disappointed by <i>Dominion</i>, as I was by Sansom's last <i><a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/review-heartstone-by-cj-sansom.html" target="_blank">Heartstone</a></i>, I really am a big fan. I think he may just have temporarily entered into that 'massive novel' era that Stephen King had for a while, where the size of the books and the readability seem to be heading in slightly different directions. I felt the same about <i>Heartstone</i> <i>-</i> <i>Dominion</i> could easily have been 200 or more pages shorter. Like <i>Heartstone</i>, I was at least a hundred or so into the story before it started to grip and for a while was genuinely worried I had found a C.J. Sansom novel I couldn't finish. I needn't have worried of course, stuck with it and by the end felt hugely rewarded, but briefly, bleakly, it didn't look good. More of this later.</div>
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Sansom praises one of my favourite books, <i>Fatherland</i> by Robert Harris, in his bibliography. <i>Dominion</i> occupies similar imaginative ground. Britain has conceded defeat to Nazi Germany, and to all purposes is now a puppet state, while war continues to rage between Russia and the Nazis - even to 1952, when the novel is set. Into this scenario, and Sansom spends a great deal of time outlining the social, political and demographic details of it, the reader joins a desperate chase as a group of resistance activists seek to rescue a scientist from a pyschiatric hospital in England and deliver him by submarine to America, so that secrets he has gleaned from his visiting brother from the States are not lost to the Nazis. </div>
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Now, Sansom has clearly done an enormous amount of research and an enormous amount of thinking about this alternate British history. The book is crammed with great detail about how Britain might have turned out as a place to live day to day, and framed against some fairly huge strategic thinking about how the country would be placed in world events. This is undeniably a superb feat of the imagination, and to a certain extent the description is fascinating and for some readers it will be a pure joy. It is a very 'historical' novel, even if it is an alternative history. His reading list suggests exhaustive attention to detail and this is borne out by the background work in the story.</div>
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While it takes a fair time to get going, <i>Dominion </i>does become thrilling - the last third in particular being essentially a chase, a lethal hide and seek. The reader grows to care for the central group of characters, and indeed, the secondary characters caught up in the drama - most movingly in the fate of one of the secretaries in the civil service office of the main protagonist. Hunted down by British Special Branch and a grim SS officer by the name of Gunther Hoth, the group struggle to secure their human MacGuffin, the scientist Frank Muncaster. The world this story moves through, shabby, impoverished, dangerous, is incredibly well described and there is always a sense of great threat in the setting.</div>
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This threat in terms of plot, though, is diminished by the length of the book. Bluntly, the reader could be allowed greater room to move about for themselves in the imagined world - it is in the end, too relentlessly described. For the first third in particular, it seems impossible for there to be any dialogue between the characters that does not in some way flesh out the various dimensions of setting. Often, this extends to the backstories of characters, where not only their own journeys, but what these journeys represent in the historical infrastructure, is related in detail. Often it feels as if the characters serve the setting, rather than the other way around. The issue here may in the end be whether the reader comes to this novel expecting a thriller - I did - or historical novel with thriller elements. The latter is the most accurate. The loser in all the detail is pace.</div>
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In the thriller, like <i>Fatherland</i>, if it is well done, the writer can throw away much of this detail, and just suspend the readers' disbelief as the story rattles along. It may sound cheap, but we really don't mind - we're prepared to go with the story come hell or high water. Whether this particular politician did this, or this particular treaty led to this and then that, and how plausible this is, is to an extent unimportant - albeit a critical balance that is hard to achieve. In <i>Dominion</i>, while undeniably brilliant in its scope, the creation of the backstory takes over far too often in the first half. This leads to some fairly jolting exposition during discussions between groups of characters as it is further set out. </div>
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At the same time, I also think of other writers, Graham Greene for example, who could set thrilling novels in intensely complicated political situations, eg <i>The Quiet American</i>, without either swamping the reader in detail or reducing in any way the difficulties of the times, or lessening our concern to understand them accurately once the book is finished. In his historical note, Sansom continues to describe his political reasoning for the novel in detail, his fears for the future, and sets this out in clear terms, as well as working through several strands of the speculative thinking for the setting (supporters of the Scottish National Party may well want to stay clear altogether!).</div>
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The thriller expectation is also diminished by, to my mind, two implausibilities. Firstly, the reader must sustain over nearly 600 pages the core idea that somehow in a matter of minutes enough of the secret that makes Muncaster the centre of the chase could have been conveyed to make it all necessary, while at the same time having predicted what the secret was likely to be for themselves. Secondly, in a world where brutality and unbelievable deviousness are the norm, we need to believe that the Nazis - as implacable and deadly as Hoth and his cohorts are - would be unable to simply walk into the institution where Muncaster is kept and take him immediately. There is an explanation for this, which seems almost bureacratic, and it doesn't really work - not when people are murdered in the streets and tortured throughout. As a thriller reader, I can accept readily a sketchier outline of hugely important historical background, but have greater trouble with these problems. </div>
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But having said all this, I did really enjoy it overall, and by the end, felt incredibly pleased to have read the book, and certain that once my struggles with the detail of the setting are forgotten, what will be remembered is a bold, ambitious and deeply thoughtful novel with a strongly empathetic historical sensibility, written by one of our foremost historical novelists and thriller writers. </div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gw2c8o6NR9k?rel=0" width="460"></iframe><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-9788379840623413682013-01-04T06:39:00.000-08:002013-01-04T07:02:12.203-08:00BOOK OF THE YEAR 2012: The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigewyqk-kXp4WgQEXKb0i00hSqAVNXFQwQ_JS71Jaa7-6XG98r6HnuUGiiCDO-WIZJ-T2Fq8JdC3qB4zrlWDTcW2duv5uHyqvcptyqEg-Mqe-rmcUi-a9PWkQ1onFBwSWKNF1m4oCAYYje/s1600/Light.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigewyqk-kXp4WgQEXKb0i00hSqAVNXFQwQ_JS71Jaa7-6XG98r6HnuUGiiCDO-WIZJ-T2Fq8JdC3qB4zrlWDTcW2duv5uHyqvcptyqEg-Mqe-rmcUi-a9PWkQ1onFBwSWKNF1m4oCAYYje/s1600/Light.gif" /></a>Although there are very honourable mentions for <a href="http://www.shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/review-when-nights-were-cold-by-susanna.html" target="_blank"><em>When Nights Were Cold</em> by Susanna Jones</a>, <a href="http://www.shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/for-moment-everything-was-clear-and.html" target="_blank"><em>11.22.63</em> by Stephen King</a>, and a very close runner-up decision for <a href="http://www.shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-another-time-another-life-by.html" target="_blank">Leif G.W. Persson's <em>Another Time, Another Life</em></a>, Shade Point's Book of the Year 2012 goes to <a href="http://www.shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/review-light-between-oceans-by-ml.html" target="_blank"><em>The Light Between Oceans</em> by M.L. Stedman.</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/review-light-between-oceans-by-ml.html" target="_blank">Reviewed on the site</a> just under a year ago now, this heartbreaking novel has sustained in the memory more than any other reviewed last year. Surprising, unbound by genre, deeply moving, it was wonderful. With 71 five-star reviews on Amazon in less than a year, it has clearly been welcomed by many in the same way.</div>
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Biased perhaps, but the lighthouse setting was beautifully rendered and deeply haunting. The characters and their dilemmas were completely immersive, the writing was extraordinary and the emotional pull of the story was astonishing. I still think on it often, when fragments of the story flit to mind for one unexpected reason or another, much as I do with some of the best works of fiction I have ever read.</div>
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Our full review from January 2012 is <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/review-light-between-oceans-by-ml.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="260" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rarrchwFb7E" width="460"></iframe><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-15923138573812864142012-11-18T04:16:00.000-08:002012-11-18T04:17:47.486-08:00REVIEW A Natural History of Ghosts by Roger Clarke<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUOBdbQbHKcTsxPAT003mwyCYkOq6w4sz7zWRDCUUakmNQMIBYuNPGM0beyPZyDMx5WpxLxJ4tR_u2DVIIt_ouCgdxtrg4nLTbdXSzVbivHMHSSnfqZem37jee4ysAlD_akNUvwMlvD25P/s1600/Natural-History-of-Ghosts,-.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUOBdbQbHKcTsxPAT003mwyCYkOq6w4sz7zWRDCUUakmNQMIBYuNPGM0beyPZyDMx5WpxLxJ4tR_u2DVIIt_ouCgdxtrg4nLTbdXSzVbivHMHSSnfqZem37jee4ysAlD_akNUvwMlvD25P/s400/Natural-History-of-Ghosts,-.jpg" width="258" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUOBdbQbHKcTsxPAT003mwyCYkOq6w4sz7zWRDCUUakmNQMIBYuNPGM0beyPZyDMx5WpxLxJ4tR_u2DVIIt_ouCgdxtrg4nLTbdXSzVbivHMHSSnfqZem37jee4ysAlD_akNUvwMlvD25P/s1600/Natural-History-of-Ghosts,-.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><em>They had seen the ghost of Mrs Maria Manning in the window, glimpsed her from the street. She was looking down on them with her dead murderess eyes.</em></div>
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If there is anyone struggling to hunt down ideal Christmas presents for a special someone in their life with a thing for the supernatural, consider this dilemma completely solved. </div>
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Firstly, there is <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghost-Stories-Christmas-Definitive-Collection/dp/B008JZY7YS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352714946&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Ghost Stories for Christmas - The Definitive Collection on DVD</a>, about which eerie joyfulness no more need be said here, and now there is Roger Clarke's outstanding <em>A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting For Proof</em>. Put together, these two presents will be unassailable - a direct hit of the eeriest kind. In so many respects, they are perfect companions. Throw in a copy of <em>The Woman in Black</em> by Susan Hill or a collected MR James, and all will be well on the day.</div>
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Those of us who have spent years fascinated by the fiction of the supernatural - devouring books and films on an endless loop - will be in love with Clarke's book from the very first page, if not indeed first sight of the marvellous cover. Glimpses in its darkened doorways are returned to time and time again while reading the book - <em>is</em> there a figure there? <em>Is</em> there something there in the photo? The waxy quality of the dustjacket picks up smudges, and these in turn become new small shadows in the photographs. Blow up the image of the cover, and yes, maybe there is someone there - in that left hand door? A face? A skull?</div>
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Clarke is immediately engaging, starting with a very personal reminiscence of his introduction to the world of ghosts. In 1981 he became the youngest ever member of the Society of Psychical Research. His early ghost stories were published when he was only fifteen. Throughout, the book has the quality of stories well told, and this skill is evident from the very opening sentence:</div>
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<em>"There was a dead woman at the end of the passageway. I never her saw her, but I knew she was there."</em></div>
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What follows, in Clarke's own words, is "a book about what we see when we see a ghost, and the stories we tell about them" and these stories run from the very earliest accounts of hauntings, to the frantic green screens of people screaming in corridors on haunted TV programmes - closing just as we begin to form a view of a ghostly future, sitting as we are on the cusp of the spirits of virtual reality.</div>
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Several key grandstand hauntings and personalities, some familiar some less so, form the spine of the narrative and act as exemplars as trends in ghost sightings move forward and change (The Cock Lane Ghost, for example, The Borley Rectory, The Ghost of Mrs Veal) but the book is by no means a simple chronology of hauntings. While important events are dealt with in detail, the reader is treated to a wonderful array of incidental tales and observations in the passing, often through Clark's occasionally very witty end Notes.</div>
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This is the book, for example, where I became familiar with ghost sighting flashmobs of old London town, the ghosts of submarine U65 and the sinister yet compelling Daniel Dunglas Home, the "Algernon Swinburn of the spirit world". Something about the tale of the ghost of Mrs Manning was deeply spooky, and I found Clarke's dissection of the shocks, sadnesses and sexiness of the seance tables from the late Victorian era brilliantly done - a cast of entirely outrageous characters that would fill a book of their own drift moaning and joint cracking across the pages.</div>
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There is something of Mark Gatiss's recent explorations of horror cinema about this book. By that I mean principally the very real sense of enduring fascination that comes across, that deep love of subject that I find hugely engaging. Whether they know each other, I don't know, but you can imagine the two having a great deal to discuss over a glass of wine or two. For those of us who grew up as kids sneakily watching Hammer movies after bedtime, or poring over ghosts of Britain compendiums (titles now forgotten), there is some sense of a shared experience with both Clarke and Gatiss - perhaps agreeing with Clarke in his suggestion that the supernatural has a particular hold over a society for a period, for particular reasons, and that this hold then diminishes, or changes - only to return with the next new development.</div>
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The book is deeply enjoyable, hugely informative and at times distinctly unsettling. It does not set out to prove whether ghosts exist or not, and makes no attempt to overtly direct the reader one way or another. Just as Clarke seems to be implying one thing, he implies another. Science, religion, politics, popular culture - all are explored. Charlatans are unmasked in photo scams and yet some photos hold secrets. Just as a particular strand of clairvoyancy is debunked, some simple strain of it remains naggingly unexplained. Is there anybody out there, indeed. What Clarke does splendidly well in this book, I feel, sometimes wistfully so, is tell us just how genuinely fascinated by the subject we remain, sometimes why we want to believe or disbelieve, and how much we love the things that go bump in the night. At a distance, of course ...</div>
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If I have a regret about the book it is only this: that I did not actually read it at Christmas, at night, by a crackling fire with a warm brandy. With only the slow candlelit journey up to bed at night, when the shadows lengthen behind me as I go, the staircase creaking beneath my feet, as before I reach the landing, a dark figure flits across my line of sight.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-29642526520298723902012-10-08T22:23:00.001-07:002012-10-09T08:15:16.401-07:00Morseology 1: Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter<br />
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And so begins an occasional series, as Shade Point plots to read the entire Colin Dexter 'Inspector Morse' canon in, well, as long as it takes. Inspired by an extended period of time watching endless episodes of the John Thaw television period, I decided it was time to get thoroughly to grips with the novels which inspired this enduring TV favourite of mine.</div>
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The first surprise - I had read only one Morse before, and that some time ago - was that the first in the series, <em>Last Bus to Woodstock</em>, dated from 1975. I was six years old. For some reason I had assumed the novels began in the 80s, or even the 90s, so pervasive is the television adaptation in my thinking. It was quite an opener, to begin this Morseology review saga by going quite so far back in time - well before the internet, the mobile phone and so on. Here was a Morse operating in the world of my childhood, with payphones and people writing letters, more akin to the 60s it seems now, than the eras to follow.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyPwSy_rFEKD44Yqi-Ik3FI6hx7h6AeATduucoZ7lcEjiVvgoCyWBlvW77couicbydu820qoU2th8jQU399AZsc7WfVZGl8RBS2rrfzpenj0_MGRSfLfDelAwAqVDalxIIaewR5vMAD4fg/s1600/LastBus1stEd.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyPwSy_rFEKD44Yqi-Ik3FI6hx7h6AeATduucoZ7lcEjiVvgoCyWBlvW77couicbydu820qoU2th8jQU399AZsc7WfVZGl8RBS2rrfzpenj0_MGRSfLfDelAwAqVDalxIIaewR5vMAD4fg/s320/LastBus1stEd.JPG" width="197" /></a><em>Last Bus to Woodstock </em>introduces Inspector Morse, and his sidekick Sergeant Lewis. Although it's quite hard, it isn't entirely impossible to push aside John Thaw and Kevin Whately from the imagination, as the characters in the novel are different, subtly sometimes, but nonetheless. Lewis, for example, is older than Morse. Morse, while irascible, doesn't have quite the academic haughtiness that he developed as the TV programme progressed - it is hinted at, perhaps, but not fully formed. In his forties, he is a different proposition, fairly hard centred and already quite disillusioned with the world as it is progressing, but he still has one foot in his younger days. No pun intended there, because in one great set piece, a gouty Morse has to buy a size up in his favourite M&S shoes to hide a sore foot when he's out on a date. Somehow, you imagine Thaw's Morse having his shoes discreetly made by some sidestreet cobbler or such rather than Marks & Sparks, but this touching bumbliness in Morse is very well done. <br />
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In the novel, we're straight into grim and violent murder. A girl is found dead in a pub car park. Immediately one notices the lack of 21st Century CSI at work in the response - the whole investigation seems somehow bundled together. Lewis does his best at the scene, while Morse sits in a back office slugging Scotch. No different to the TV Morse, the novel incarnation likes a good dram too. Like that other Thaw vehicle, <em>The Sweeney</em>, its a wonder anyone is ever sober enough to get a shift in, let alone solve the crime. At one point, after the aforementioned date, Morse seems to simply get in the car after a bit of a skinful of champagne and the rest. There is a spark between the two detectives right at the beginning, though, that sets up the partnership to come - and while Morse accepts a whisky but Lewis is "on duty", there is something of the mutual respect there that makes the partnership so likeable.<br />
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Morse doesn't drive the famous red Jaguar here, but a Lancia. Apparently he does in the end take up the Jag later in the books, as a nod from Dexter to the TV series, and I'll need to watch for that happening. I did, in a vaguely train spotterish way, a good train spotterish way, wonder what kind of Lancia it was, and whether the same principles of classic ownership applied. Comically, when the car breaks down, Morse manages to call out an engineer, have a battery fitted and replaced, and all for under a tenner. And then complain about the price. The vintage of the novel comes across very swiftly in this segment.</div>
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In the end, its an enjoyable story, but not without its flaws - particularly, it has to be said, some of the reasoning at the end of the novel which gives rise to Morse's solution to the mystery. Some of it will have the reader baffled as to why it never came up before, or if it did, how they missed it. There is a real temptation to read the earlier sections again to see if this was indeed material introduced in the final lengths. I think it probably is. Nonetheless, there is a typically Morse stumbling on to a conclusion that is certainly part of the appeal of the television series - he gets things wrong, he backs a hunch or even a prejudice, and has to backtrack and start again. Right here, at the very beginning of the novels, there is clearly this humanity and liability to Morse that makes him such an enduring piece of characterisation.</div>
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Hard to imagine this novel being the starting point for the phenomena to come (<em>Morse</em>, <em>Lewis</em> and now, <em>Endeavour</em>) with its slightly ragged ending, and feet firmly in an older decade, but that's exactly what it is. I believe it is the strength of the characterisation, even at this early stage, the interplay between Morse and Lewis, and Morse's almost beaten, hunted sort of persona, that is the key. It's difficult to know whether Dexter anticipated this first book being part of a longer sequence, but there is something in the way that information about our characters is sketched in for further elaboration, that suggests he maybe hoped so. This early Morse is quite an important piece of characerisation, I feel, because rather than inhabiting the era of Christie, for example, Morse is really ahead of his time for 1975, anticipating the Rebuses, and even Wallanders to come. There he sits in the middle of this book, a troubled man, waiting for more trouble to come.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-291403920826734572012-09-21T21:51:00.000-07:002012-09-21T22:06:47.889-07:00BOOK REVIEW The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"The Well Dungeon at Lancaster Castle measures twenty feet by twelve feet. It is sunk thirty feet below ground. It has no window and no natural light, save for a grille, slotted into the floor at ground level, but ground level is thirty feet above. Might as well be the moon away. And the moon looks in at night, high and pale, a cold light, but on a full moon a light at least."</i></div>
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After the gentle but deeply moving ghost story that was <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/review-greatcoat-by-helen-dunmore.html" target="_blank"><i>The Greatcoat</i></a>, Random House and Hammer well and truly plunge the reader into darkness with Jeanette Winterson's <i>The Daylight Gate</i>. Set in 1612, the novella is a new telling of the trial of the Pendle Witches, and like <i>The Greatcoat</i> is a beautifully produced small format hardback.</div>
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ShadePoint knows absolutely nothing about the Pendle Witch Trials, and this is probably an advantage. Reading some of the responses online, it probably made it much easier for me to accept Winterson's take on the story of one of those on trial, Alice Nutter, and the incorporation of historical figures like Dr John Dee, and, yes, Shakespeare. In her introduction, Winterson makes it perfectly clear she is up to to some invention. With no background worries in place, I was able to roll along easily with the story, which I read in a single sitting. It is a novella, of course, but it is also beautifully written, the prose precise and effortless to read.</div>
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The subject matter, on the other hand, is often very hard to read about. If Hammer's brief to Winterson was for the 17th Century to ooze from the pages of the book in a riot of torture, abuse and general hideousness, then it is brief fulfilled. Often, the detail is eye-wateringly horrible, and all the more so for the spareness and directness of the description. In one scene, a man has his leg skinned, and this is dealt with much in the way that we might observe a cobbler of the period, mending a shoe.</div>
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I was reminded all the way through of two other stories, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Morality-Play-Barry-Unsworth/dp/0140175741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348287653&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Morality Play</a> by Barry Unsworth, and the short story <a href="http://polygon.birlinn.co.uk/book/details/Calendar-of-Love--A-9781904598732/" target="_blank">'Witch'</a> by George Mackay Brown. Something of the viscous recreation of an era recalled Unsworth, and the sparse brilliance of the description, Mackay Brown. These are two quite unforgettable tales, so all suggestions are that Winterson's dark little masterpiece is likely to leave a lasting impact.</div>
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Alongside the tongues bitten off, the flayings, burnings, dungeons and the general all round cruelty, <i>The Daylight Gate</i> is a matter of fact, almost day-to-day consideration of the supernatural and its place in the world at this time. On the one hand, I think Winterson does this to set the scene - essentially saying, people in those days believed in all this stuff, and so there it is, and plain - but on the other I think she cleverly puts us in that place, in order to lift our own astonishment at the 'real' magical elements of the story. For every villager and evil eye, every scheming political varmint or religious intolerant, there are simple moments of otherness, a bizarre magick world that intrudes, then retreats. Spiders talk, severed heads talk, dead walk. In the middle of all the gruesome everyday horror and basic superstition, Winterson sends in markers from a completely different understanding. When the alchemist Dee steps into the narrative, its a clear sign all will not be as we expect. And so it is: elixirs work, mirrors are magical, ghosts walk abroad. It is a fantastic and wonderful story.</div>
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It is also, without giving too much of the plot away, a love story. The horror is intensified by its contrast with a very moving back story for Alice Nutter, by the hopes of love that are up against the ignorance and hatred that springs the trials. Alice's story is elevated from the grim chambers of the castle and the mundane understanding of the accusers and even some of the more sympathetic characters. It is like a fragile song that carries above all the action, very much like her falcon that carries her messages:</div>
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<i>"She heard wings. She held out her arm. It was her bird. He scarred her arm where she had no glove but she did not care because she loved him and she knew that love leaves a wound that leaves a scar."</i></div>
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In the end, for me it is this haunting love story that will sustain. A good while after finishing the book, the memory still recoils at all the Witchfinder General gore and grue, but it is Alice's story and to some extent, her sacrifice, that is uppermost in the mind.</div>
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The old adage about waiting ages for a bus and two arriving at once holds true at Shade Point. Within short order <i>The Awakening </i>follows <i>The Woman in Black</i>. Both of these films sit very comfortably in Shade Point land - creepy, ghostly stories set in what seems in many ways a long vanished era. Except, for those of us born well back in the last century, it isn't. The Victorian time is the time of my Grandparents' childhood, the Edwardian era, comfortably that of their early adulthood. My grandfather had to suffer through the mud and madness of the Somme.</div>
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The First World War looms large over the story in this film. Rebecca Hall stars as Florence Cathcart, an author in the early 1920s who makes it her business to debunk fake spiritualists and ghost sightings. The film opens with a very well handled example of her doing exactly that.</div>
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With an entire lost generation never having returned from the trenches of the Great War, spiritualism and the desire to connect with these lost souls was understandably at a very high point. It becomes clear that Florence Cathcart is coming at the same loss and anger from a slightly different angle.</div>
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She is visited by a school teacher (Dominic West). He asks her to come to the boarding school where he works to explore the death of one of the boys, and how this is linked to a series of ghostly sightings of another boy over numbers of years. What then follows is Florence's journey into the darkness as she uncovers much more than she had bargained for.</div>
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The film is to some extent a frustration, because like <i>The Woman in Black</i> it has an exceptionally well-created atmosphere, and looks fabulous, but doesn't just quite succeed in being a fully rounded piece. Slightly more so than <i>The Woman in Black</i>, if I'm honest. This is a pity, because there is a very great deal to like about it. I also suspect, which is slightly contradictory, that this will be all the more the pity because when the detail of <i>The Woman in Black</i> is faded, it will be this wistful and haunting film that will leave the more lasting impression. But as I say, there's lots that's good.</div>
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As mentioned, the setting for starters. Completely shot in Scotland as I understand it, London is nevertheless superbly done, and the grand boarding house has a grim, gothic beauty from the outside, and all the dark recesses and staircases a fan of the genre could possibly want. The colour palette, to my mind is very reminiscent of some of the very best Asian horrors of the 90s and creates a wonderfully, washed sepia sense of a time that has gone.</div>
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Another great strength is Rebecca Hall. As anyone watching the current <i>Parade's End</i> adaptation can attest, she's a brilliant actress. She excels as Florence Cathcart. She carries with her great strength and sadness and fragility. Without straying into spoilers, I have read criticism of a sudden change in the Cathcart personality, but I think this is completely consistent with events. She's stunning in this role really, and in many ways the highlight. When she arrives at the boarding house and sets up her steampunk array of ghost-finding tripwires and cameras, it's joyful.</div>
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There is also some superb film-making of the eerie here. I think hats-off always to those who can achieve even the merest sequences of genuine hair-raising dread these days. In truth, it happens rarely, or it is so marginalised by crash bang jump scares that the subtlety is lost. Not so, here. There is a patient moving forward through the uneasiness, that with only one or two jumping, CGI-ey mis-steps, is very well achieved. There is also, and apart from Rebecca Hall's performance, this is why I'm reviewing it, one bravura, bel canto, coloratura flat-out brilliant piece of horror that is up there with the very best. I'll try to dodge too big a spoiler for this, except to say it involves Rebecca Hall and a dolls' house. The film is genuinely worth viewing for this sequence alone. In a film that references so many seeming influences, from <i>The Changeling</i> to <i>The Devil's Backbone</i>, it is superb that it has its own skilful moments, and this stand out classic moment is the very best of them.</div>
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The 'but', I think, is in the last section of the film, and the unravelling of the story. As seasoned hunters of the great ghost movies will know, this is so, so often the case. A film feels like a masterpiece in the making only to start to diminish as the denouement either lets down, or baffles, or feels like a cheat in some way. To some degree, you could level all three of these at <i>The Awakening, </i>although I must stress that it's not an irredeemable situation - there's still more than enough in the film to make up for what its a fairly helter skelter bluster of exposition in the last section, with you guessed it, a lobby talk ambiguity at the end, that is actually ambiguity for the sake of it. I blame M. Night Shyamalan for this type of over kill on endings. Sometimes, you know, the very great stories just end, they finish on a point of wonder in terms of our human and philosophical responses to what has happened, not the dreaded 'hang on a minute' moment that boots most films that try this into touch. Sadly, with <i>The Awakening, </i>while the ending, in my view anyway, is not a mortal wound, it is certainly a significant one. A great pity as I say, because lots of it is just fantastic.</div>
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It is like poetry in a way, where there may be a search for the killer last line, the great metaphorical turn of attention, that leaves the reader in some version of a state of grace. A moment of haiku-like deep reflection from a simple elevation of words. This doesn't work, and just seems contrived, if the rest of the poem has not been moving collaboratively and instinctively towards this understanding in the first place. I have always believed there can be poetry in the supernatural spooky genres - <i>The Awakening</i> feels like a movie very nearly there, but one which went for the wrong last line.</div>
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<br allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" iframe="iframe" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3yneMKpmA8w?rel=0" width="560" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-78279839500400625282012-07-19T01:52:00.001-07:002012-07-19T03:13:07.415-07:00FILM REVIEW The Woman in Black<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There not being a cinema in the vicinity of the lighthouse, Shade Point had to wait for the DVD release of <em>The Woman in Black</em>. This meant a very long period of avoiding reviews with spoilers, and generally staying clear of all mention of the film where possible. Obviously, this was hard. With the involvement of Daniel Radcliffe, and the studio involvement of the resurgent Hammer, it was always going to be a film in the spotlight.</div>
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But, time passes.</div>
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A film adaptation of Susan Hill's <em>The Woman in Black</em> is a big deal here at Shade Point, for the simple reason that I consider it one of the Twentieth Century's best tales of the supernatural. I have read it several times now since the early 80's, and while some of the terror diminishes with familiarity, none of the atmosphere is unwound, and none of the superb storytelling grows any less wonderful. I think it is easily one of the best books I have ever read. </div>
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Now, I also think it is one of the scariest, if not <em>the</em> scariest book I have ever read. Having recommended it to one or two friends who find themselves slightly less terrorised, I know that it depends a great deal on what scares you. But I have to say that the first time I read it, the book just about whittled my nerves to splinters.</div>
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Susan Hill muses on the popularity of the story herself on one of the DVD extras. For my part, I think one of the great strengths of the novella is the setting. Like Jack Torrance and The Overlook, the action is cut off from the rest of the world, all escape routes - temporarily at least in <em>The Woman in Black</em> - are blocked. In the book, this quality is enhanced very much in Conan Doyle fashion by the choice of names for these sepulchral places - Crythin Gifford, Eel Marsh House, Nine Lives Causeway. When I was a child, I was spooked royally in a similar way by the great Grimpen Mire, Baskerville Hall, Merripit House. The evocation of the mist and water, the decay of the house, the settling, settling darkness - all these Hill achieved with unforgettable success. A deep dark menace lives throughout <em>The Woman in Black</em>.</div>
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Hill's novella was of course written in the last decades of last century, but it was a powerful evocation of great ghost stories from the era of Conan Doyle, of Dickens and his <em>Signalman</em>, of the legendary MR James. Not long after publication, or at least it seems now, <em>The Woman in Black</em> was adapted for Christmas viewing - very much in the style of the great BBC Christmas ghost stories - by Central TV. I remember being well and truly chilled by that one. Unfortunately, apart from clips on YouTube or hideously expensive Region One used DVDs - this adaptation is now hard to get a chance to see. Apparently, it is tied up in some rights issue. This is a crying shame - it was great, and also, it would make an exciting extra disc in any Special Edition of this new adaptation.</div>
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Which, at last, leads me to the new adaptation. Conan Doyle was not such a digression, however, because more than anything, assessing this film reminds me of the complicated back process that goes on every time I watch a film version of <em>The Hound of the Baskervilles</em> - another major favourite book. I have seen countless versions of that one - some great (Jeremy Brett, for example) some okay (the recent BBC one with Richard Roxburgh) and some bonkers (Hammer). The process that takes over is a continual cross reference between what happens on the screen, and what happens in the book. In the past, this was often a tortured process. It used to be a case of "That isn't in the book!" and "Why can't they just follow an already outstanding storytline?!".</div>
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I'd be lying of course, if I said that is no longer completely so. But I was determined to watch this version of <em>The Woman in Black</em> without as much of this carry on - to some extent I now accept that while I know and love certain books, I'm not a film maker. I'd also already read enough fissures in reviews and magazine articles about the new <em>Woman in Black</em> to know that some liberties were being taken, some new angles exploited.</div>
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Two lines of review were in my mind the whole time: does it recreate that incredible atmosphere of the novel, and two, is it scary?</div>
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For the first, yes it does - very well in fact. Crythin Gifford is actually almost exactly as I imagine it from the novel. The Nine Lives Causeway is wonderfully done. Eel Marsh House, for some reason, is bigger in the film than I would have imagined it from the story, but it is certainly an eerie, tortured place. The interiors of Eel Marsh, created at Pinewood but not so that you'd notice, are also superbly creepy, forming into long corridors of darkness and suspense. Without giving too much away for anyone who might not yet have seen the film or read the book, the main room in the house in terms of plot development, is incredibly well realised. A horrible, creeping dread-filled place. I was reminded of some of the great Japanese and Korean horror films of recent years in the way that the angles of the house are represented, the way that movement is all around us, behind us, drifting suddenly past us, or there, way ahead, moving our way ...</div>
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Is it scary? Absolutely. Sometimes this is achieved by shock tactics which aren't a major part of the make up of the book's sources of terror, but are part of the language of horror cinema. Other scares are just created by the great work of make up and costume - there are just some genuinely chilling characters who flit back and forth in the film. Sound effects and soundtrack are superb as well. These things are the meat and drink of the scary movie, really, and <em>The Woman in Black</em> doesn't disappoint. If it is a bit hell for leather at times in comparison to the steady drip of scares in the novel, well, this is just cinema. I think the film-makers obviously respected the source material a great deal, that's really clear, but they also probably wanted to have a hit film, and scare the living daylights out of folk. The film did well, and they succeeded.</div>
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I can't get with the criticism of Daniel Radcliffe that I've read either - namely that he is somehow too young to play Arthur. Maybe this is more a personal reaction than a proper reading of the work, but I was in my very early twenties when I first read the novel, and frankly I 'read' Arthur to be a young man, and that's how he has always seemed. In the long passages where only sound effects reign, I thought Radcliffe's gaunt, white faced anguish was perfect for the story. To an extent, it is not Radcliffe's fault that Kipps has a different back story.</div>
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Yes, there are one or two additions and embellishments. Some work, some don't. But none, overall, spoil what is a darkly successful adaptation of the book. I'm not sure how Hill views it, but I'm hoping that with her presence on the DVD extras, she likes it. She's involved in the intended sequel as well, which is surely a good sign. I'm not bothered at all by the sequel - I know some fans are - because I think moving the story to a completely new century is a clever way to do it and Hill is apparently involved in the screenplay.</div>
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The 'Woman in Black' herself was well done, although in one of the few criticisms I'd make of the movie, I think she was underused. At the risk of getting back into book versus film stuff again, there is a scene early in the book where Arthur encounters her at the funeral of Eel Marsh's owner, Alice Drablow. This was such an important set for the suspense and the introduction of the back story, that I feel the new film missed the chance to re-create that bit of creepiness. The make up and costume for the 'Woman' were also well done, so it wasn't that she wasn't scary herself. I know there is the element of what is not seen making things even scarier, but she was often slightly too obscure, in almost a kind of 'Grudge' style, whereas in the novel, there are moments of supreme ghoulishness when Arthur gets an early, good look at her. We're in fear of her ever on. Her own story is told in flashes here too, and some would be forgiven for not quite getting it on first viewing - whereas the book achieves this powerfully.</div>
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So, all in all, this was well worth the wait. The adaptation in no way dismantled and despatched one of my favourite ever books, and nor did it let the audience down in frights. Maybe it had to invent a few to keep the cinema audience on the edge of their seats, but that's the movies. Above all, it succeeded in creating that malevolent atmosphere that was such a huge part of the book's success. I hope this film series does go from strength to strength - for the reason that this original work, this story, this character, and this setting deserve to pass into the mystery and terror iconography of the literature of this country - the Hound of the Baskervilles, Dracula, Frankenstein. I believe it to be that good a source story.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-87059947726113083172012-06-30T01:28:00.000-07:002012-06-30T01:47:25.970-07:00REVIEW Last Days by Adam Nevill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em>"This is not some ghost story for the masses, my boy. Some haunted house you can film and then speculate about on cable television. Some paranormal fantasy you can go and film with your friends. For the festivals and fans. The freaks."</em></div>
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ShadePoint has been swamped by crime fiction of late, so it was good to take a trip into the other with <em>Last Days</em> by Adam Nevill. I last covered Nevill in the excellent<em> End of the Line</em> anthology I <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/review-end-of-line.html" target="_blank">reviewed a while back,</a> and I think I'm not alone in considering him one of the finest horror talents around at the moment.</div>
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In <em>Last Days</em>, indie film maker Kyle Freeman is dragged from the modern horror of plunging credit debt by a mysterious film producer prepared to offer him £100k to shoot a pre-plotted documentary on the life of Sister Katherine and her Temple of the Last Days - an infamous apocalypse cult that ended its days in a mysterious bloodbath in the Arizona desert. Or so it seemed ...</div>
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Joined by his trusty cameraman comrade, Dan, and remotely by the king film editor Fingermouse, Freeman takes the job, against his better instincts, and as the shoot begins, in the face of some seriously eerie developments. The project will take him to France and America and places inbetween as he steadily uncovers the horrific legacy of Sister Katherine and falls headlong out of the world as a result:</div>
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<em>"The people sat down to dine, and those others over there - that girl with the nose ring who laughed into her phone, the man who read the book in the window of the pub, the bus full of listless faces, they were in a parallel dimension. One he'd slipped foolishly slipped out of and now could not get back inside, even though he yearned and scrabbled to do so."</em></div>
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What begins almost as an extreme version of Most Haunted in the London townhouse that was the cult's first base, takes an Escher staircase to ever more twisted and devilish otherness as Kyle and Dan are pitched from one set piece of hideousness to the next. Gradually more and more is uncovered, layer after layer, century after century - and as the story progresses the discoveries bend in on themselves and worlds shifting against and across each other are very skilfully depicted.</div>
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Nevill excels at the creepy set-piece. There are several high points like this - the first event in the townhouse in London, the abandoned French farmhouse, the desert mine, the breathless finale. These are paced apart with narrative segments that drive the mystery forward as Kyle uncovers the grim truth of the deaths in the desert and their aftermath, and the real agenda of his mysterious produce-benefactor, Max - a wasted, haunted creature in apartments filled with articial light, like a version of Dr Eldon Tyrell, apart from the world, from everything.</div>
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Nevill himself acknowledges the stylistic debt the novel pays to films like <em>Rec. </em>as he superbly plays the ghoulish possibilities of these indie film-makers with their night vision cameras, the darkness of ruins and deserts, the half-seen flitting horror that shoots across the line of sight:</div>
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<em>"Hunched over on the floor of his flat, he stared at the laptop screen and didn't blink in case he missed what he really did not want to see. the picture on the screen remained unchanged for a few seconds: the camera stationary and shooting from ground level, the image in the viewfinder static. Until a thin figure raced across the open doorway."</em></div>
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In scenes like these I was reminded of that dramatic close to Andrew Pyper's <em>The Guardians</em>, which I <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/review-guardians-by-andrew-pyper.html" target="_blank">reviewed a while back too</a>, in that Kyle and Dan's camera work goes to that next point I dreaded in that basement in the Thurman House, and then beyond. It is these supremely eerie devices that get us the most - the half-seen, the unseen but heard, or the scene that cannot assemble in our brains fast enough. Like that dreadful bit in the basement in Kurosawa's <em>Kairo</em>. Nevill knows this language acutely and is always searching for these moments of the chilling extraordinary.</div>
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The book is also about human horror, of course - and in this case looks closely at the kind of terror and torture of a cult like Sister Katherine's Temple of the Last Days, a steadily disintegrating and decaying collective, with very real life equivalents, that takes people to the worst possible places. In <em>Last Days</em> there is the work of other worlds at hand, but Nevill has studied the real life territory as his reading list for the novel testifies. In his depictions of the survivors, doomed as they shun and hide, he finds a real sensitivity and understanding in his reaching out, via Kyle, for their stories.</div>
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While it's not nerve shreddingly scary, it is deeply eerie in places, and carries a burgeoning sense of menace throughout that will be deeply disturbing if you're ever fool enough to read it on your own, by torchlight, late at night when the silence brings out the noise of the dark. It's a great book.</div>
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<em>"Night shoot,"</em> says Dan the cameraman early on. <em>"Slow the shutter speed right down. And I can get all</em> Blair Witch <em>on your ass."</em></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-29927268943046813422012-06-18T22:46:00.001-07:002012-06-18T22:56:45.124-07:00REVIEW Fatal Frost by James Henry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em>The Kung Po had filled him up and was the only thing he'd eaten since breakfast. He felt strangely content alone in his car. His elusive, possibly ill wife and his wounded, upset girlfriend were far away in another world. He released the ring pull on another can of Harp.</em></div>
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Wired from too long awake in the novels of the Nordic midnight sun, ShadePoint unexpectedly finds itself in the fictional English town of Denton, somewhere off the M4, in 1982 - smoking John Player Special, scooping up Harp and wearing the same clothes to work for three days. The Falklands War is on, Culture Club are in the charts, and 3 million people are unemployed. </div>
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Inspector Jack Frost is not the elderly and wayward curmudgeon of the <em>Touch of Frost</em> television series, but a man in his early forties with some of those traits developing - essentially a man in balance. Against the backdrop of a series of burglaries in the town, he is called to investigate the death of young girl, apparently thrown from a train. Soon this will lead to a deeper mystery, and a second body. As if this wasn't enough, he has to deal with a private life going nowhere, racism in the force, and more or less, the challenge just to keep ahead, and keep going.</div>
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<em>Fatal Frost</em> is the second in a series of novels based on the well-known character created by RD Wingfield, but written by the pseudonymous James Henry - in reality James Gurbutt and Henry Sutton. I say well-known character, but not by me - apart from watching one or two of the David Jason episodes, ShadePoint isn't acquainted at all with the character or the original Wingfield novels. It sometimes seems the case that you can only have room in your life for so many detectives, and Frost was one that up until now, had seemed surplus to requirements. There was something about those handful of episodes on TV that put me off, perhaps. Jack Frost just didn't seem to click before. </div>
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And so, a plate of humble pie. I found <em>Fatal Frost</em> to be one of the most enjoyable reads of the year so far, and a real challenge to a bit of Nordic Fanboy complacency that had maybe been creeping into the Light of late. I expected something one dimensional, I think, something fairly dull if I'm honest. There is a sense of such an ascendancy of Scandinavian crime fiction in my reading of late, or at least crime fiction in that style, that perhaps I need to re-check the GPS a bit on this evidence. "I'll just start with this and see how it goes," I said to myself. "I can always ditch it."</div>
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Well, good job I did. From start to finish, with only minor niggles, I thought this book was a cracker. So much so that I even sent one as a present. Although initially I had a kind of overlay of David Jason in my mind - sort of like the Jason of early <em>Only Fools and Horses</em> - this soon fell away as the novel asserted its own identity. I realised quite quickly the depth in this character, and made regular mental notes to read one of the original Wingfields as soon as I could. Frost began to emerge out of the pages very much his own man. </div>
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This characterisation is the first strength of the novel. Frost emerges as a very compelling study - deeply private, and yet a leader and a man able to marshall his team and gain their respect. He is shambolic, often half-pissed to be frank, and hopelessly messy and unkempt. He smokes like a chimney and only notices to eat long after it might have been a good idea. Like Wallander, we are often treated to more detail than we might want about what's going on in this idiosyncratic policeman's digestive system. He has hopes and dreams and ideas that will flit to the surface, but will all too quickly fade again - replaced, always, by a single-minded will to be at work, to get the job done. In one scene, no sooner has he freed a prisoner from the cells has he gone to sleep in the bed they have vacated. There is powerful sense of that duality of sacrifice and duty and yet personal escape from the world about Frost - common to all the great fictional detectives - that is exceptionally well handled here.</div>
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With this vital ingredient in place, such a strongly achieved central character, the next strength is the depiction of setting - not just the run down estates and shopping streets of Denton, which are well done - but setting in terms of time. Now, it might help that I can remember the 1980s, but even still, it has to be said that the novels recreates this strange decade with great skill. The supposed riches and consumerism of the late 80s and 1990s are hinted at - with the rise of VHS players, the golf club set, etc - but overall this is an England that is more post-war than Facebook. All the cast, like the team from <em>The Sweeney</em>, are permanently drinking. Lots. They all smoke, and the novel gleefully makes sure we all know who smokes which brand - an illusion that was still there at that time, a kind of marketing con that the brand of fags a person smoked somehow said something about them other than "you're killing yourself" - a 'Bensons Man' for example, Silk Cut, Rothmans, et al. </div>
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The novel captures a significance, I feel, in the decade as an end of something, the true end of an age - the twilight of so many old values and ways, the pre-internet times. The book seems to take us up the last flight of stairs before the fit and healthy make it to a new century. Some, the novel seem to say, can't progress that far - things really just were different in those days. It is very easy from this extremely clever novel to trace this man out of time quality that is then carried forward as such a large part of the David Jason characterisation. <br />
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To my shame, I had expected <em>Fatal Frost</em> to be some kind of cash-cow cash-in, but could not have been more wrong. It is an intelligent, hugely enjoyable crime procedural, with a deeply fascinating lead character and a such a vivid evocation of an era that the result is completely immersive. Like <em>Endeavour</em>, it is surely a matter of time before someone decides that this series would play well on TV, and Inspector Frost will keep on going into the new century - sweaty under the armpits, smoking forty a day, half-cut, but utterly endearing.<br />
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Right, it's opening time - who's for a pint?</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-26048704157541505362012-06-16T02:07:00.002-07:002012-06-16T02:32:04.768-07:00REVIEW Disgrace by Jussi Adler-Olsen<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<em>Mercy</em> by Jussi Adler-Olsen was very nearly ShadePoint's Book of the Year for 2011. Introducing Detective Carl Morck of Danish cold case division, Department Q, the novel was a breathtaking read, and a superb welcome for Morck and his brilliantly realised sidekick Assad.
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No surprise then that this second in the series was eagerly awaited and read in a flash when it arrived. It is actually very nearly as good as its predecessor. In the ever so slightly fated way that cases appear on Morck's desk, on this occasion he is investigating the 20 year old murder of a brother and sister. Like <em>Mercy</em>, the story will lead him into a race against time, and various worlds of horror and suspense.</div>
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A huge part of the success of these books is the characterisation. Morck and Assad are fabulous characters - there is a wit and knowing about their creation, and yet also a great tenderness. Like Wallander, for example, Morck is one of those superbly realised and deeply human detectives that so mark Scandinavian crime fiction. Assad is a wonderful character - a man of mystery with seemingly endless hidden talents that appear to hint at some past of secret service and espionage. Like the increasing numbers in <em>The Magnificent Seven</em>, in <em>Disgrace</em>, Department Q is augmented by the equally super character of Rose, who becomes quite quickly more than an admin assistant. Nothing is ever as it seems in Department Q and it is a loveable feature of the series that one expects more and more will be revealed about the characters as the books progress. The result may well be a deeper and deeper attachment to them as people, and a sense of following their narrative as much as that of the books to come. This, I think, is a very strong indicator of how well these stories are conceived. </div>
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Similar to <em>Mercy</em>, there is such skilled setting of pace here - the progression of the investigation is handled at a constant clip, which never seeming rushed, captures a constant changing of perspective and unravelling of information that really is quite perfect. Adler-Olsen is a fabulous writer. When this skill at creating, releasing and then increasing tension is so well handled, the combined talent of involving the readers so completely in the characters makes for overall strength. As Morck and Assad plunge ever more into the widening complexities of the case, and face huge peril together, it is as exciting and distinctive as that excellent first in the series.</div>
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Except, brilliant thought it is, I think its perhaps not quite as good. Still vastly superior to most other things around, but just not as completely achieved as <em>Mercy. </em>It's churlish, really, because it feels almost too picky to criticise a great read for not being as good as an even greater read. I had this issue with Johan Theorin last year - and he's one of my favourite writers. So what's wrong? Well, I think Petrona explained this perfectly in her recent <a href="http://petronatwo.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/book-review-disgrace-by-jussi-adler-olsen/" target="_blank">review of the book</a> - there is an absence of Adler-Olsen's verve with characterisation when it comes to the bad guys here; to the extent that it does become hard to continue to engage with them as real people, as is easy to do with Morck. They are also just fairly obviously the bad guys. When it comes to the final showdown in a billionaire's complex, there is even a hint of a James Bond installation finale that undermines the good work gone before. It'd make for a great film though. But critically, as Petrona observes, the great mystery that fuelled <em>Mercy</em> like a rocket is slightly missing as a result.</div>
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Having said all that, though, this really is a fine book, and Adler-Olsen is more than just one to watch - he may well become top dog when these stories come to film, which is to be very soon. Perfect thriller reading, intelligent characterisation and a constant sense of the human context of the story, he's a master of this form. ShadePoint is a Department Q fan already - roll on the next one.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-60084204676142100452012-05-26T23:53:00.001-07:002012-05-27T00:58:03.141-07:00REVIEW Another Time, Another Life by Leif G.W. Persson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Their most important common quality was that they were both - in an environment almost exclusively made up of police officers - unanimously described as "real policemen." They were heroes in a large number of so-called police station stories of at best varying degrees of veracity, and in contrast to their colleagues in the world of fiction - who associate with female intellectuals, listen to opera and modern jazz, and prefer nouvelle French cuisine - Johansson and Jarnebring liked regular ladies, preferably female colleagues, dance band music and Swedish home cooking.</i></div>
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Leif G.W. Persson is back. His last book, <i>Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End</i> was a <a href="http://shadepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/review-between-summers-longing-and.html" target="_blank">masterpiece</a>, and ShadePoint's book of the year in 2011. Here, it seemed, was a writer of enormous talent: complex plotting, wry satire, page turning drama, and in the end, a real emotional kick. There is Scandinavian Crime Fiction, and then there is Leif G.W. Persson. He really is a rogue, out there operating in the cold on his own, a brilliant cut above the rest. To describe him as a Scandinavian crime writer would be like calling John Le Carre just an English thriller writer. Like Le Carre, Persson is a writer of considerable depth. Reading this second, equally outstanding and perhaps more accessible book, it just seems incredible that Persson's work is not more celebrated outside Sweden.</div>
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<i>Another Time, Another Life</i> is the second in a trilogy of books that have at their core the seismic shift in Swedish culture that came from the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Like the first in the series, what appears the "story of a crime", a single instance of murder, in this case a civil servant killed in his flat, is actually an event that sits in a much greater tale of a country changing, discovering itself anew - even fighting with itself. Persson's detectives are often wickedly satirised - in a common device in the novel, the author will swiftly reveal what is really going on in their heads, immediately after they have spoken something else, something sanitised and controlled. There is homophobia, racism, paranoid ambition and a kind of defeated will to corruption that is bringing the country to its knees.</div>
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Battling through this are the nearest we come to traditional Scandinavian Crime Novel heroes, Lars Martin Johansson and Bo Jarnebring. They are caught in a timeline that starts with the 1975 German Embassy seige in Stockholm, investigates the murder of a Swedish civil servant in 1989 and then slowly coagulates into one at the turn of the millennium. As in the first book in the trilogy, nothing at all is what it seems, there are spooks everywhere. What is on the one hand a police procedural, is on the other an espionage thriller. What Persson does to such devastating effect - and in this he shares the skill with Stephen King - is marshall a great army of characters and multiple chains of events into one cohesive whole. One great big "Ah, right!" moment that is the hallmark, I think, of great thriller writers.</div>
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Towards the end of the novel, as if to very consciously signal an era slowly dying to a close, Persson hands the stage to "regular ladies" in the department, Lisa Mattei, Anna Holt and Linda Martinez. Pointedly more trustworthy to join the investigation than all the men, they drive the investigation to its conclusion with verve, bravery and integrity. Of course, Johansson still lords over it paternally, and Martinez is as liable to get hammered in a bar as some of the shambolic characters earlier in the book, but Persson is I think suggesting some break with the past, a sense of handing over to a different type of professional who gets things done, and gets them done within the lines. Lisa Mattei, for example is a hugely compelling character, and even seems to muse on the consciously symbolic nature of her character herself:</div>
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<i>"Sure," said Mattei, nodding thoughtfully. "This is a problem I have when I do this type of job. I have to downplay the literary element of my work. I don't know how to explain it, but to me its often been the case that a really good novel has more to say about what we're really like as human beings than the gloomy accounts of people and their lives that we compile here."</i></div>
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When Martinez is described as a witch at one point for her uncommon skill at creating fingerprint situations, one wonders almost if these three brilliant detectives are meant to be Shakespearean symbols, three seers to Johansson or Sweden's own Macbeth. They are perhaps the prophets of a new way, a new age. The final section of the novel, the section primarily concerned with these three detectives, is wondrous and exciting.</div>
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As the book ends, we have a greater sense of the course fixed in the first in the trilogy - which was admittedly hard to keep ahead of at times - and feel part of an event in publishing as the world is developed and sustained so effortlessly. This is piercing, intelligent writing, demonstrating tremendous skill in plotting and characterisation. With the right break - a film trilogy perhaps, a TV adaptation, who knows - these books could become absolutely huge. They deserve to - they have more to say about what we're really like, as Mattei would put it, than virtually every other book Shade Point has reviewed since the site started. They tower above most other Scandinavian crime novels, and yet the comparison is a construct of marketing - Persson's novels inhabit a time, a life, a Sweden entirely of their own.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-20890569562376233642012-05-01T00:33:00.001-07:002012-05-01T00:36:47.556-07:00REVIEW The Blackhouse by Peter May<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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ShadePoint travels a bit late to Peter May's 'Lewis Trilogy'. The second in the series is already out, and the final chapter is due early next year. We've just made the last ferry to the isle, then, arriving as darkness falls.</div>
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And goodness me, this is a dark book. It is a procedural crime novel, yes, but really the investigation to the fore is the psychological impact of return - returning to a formative place, having left intending never to go back. Here we follow Detective Inspector Fin MacLeod as he returns to his birthplace on the Isle of Lewis from Edinburgh, in the wake of personal tragedy; that he is to be overwhelmed by the impact of this return is clear from the very beginning.</div>
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MacLeod, we alter between first and third person narrative to tell his story, comments at one point on the endlessness of the sky, but generally this is a story that looks inward, not up. The title of the novel seems to capture this - a sense of something old, primitive, enclosed. As an advert for Outer Hebrides tourism, <i>The Blackhouse </i>can only be said to be partly successful, because the novel creates such a sense of the repressed, the seething, the fearful, that at times it becomes hard to breathe in these wondrous, wide-open Hebridean landscapes. </div>
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What seems at first to be an investigation connected only to his professional life, becomes a descent into MacLeod's own past - as the jacket suggests, "soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted." It becomes claustrophobic, with every discovery opening new wounds for the characters - at one point the sheer grief at the passing of time, of hopes, of childhood dreams lays MacLeod so low that he collapses in tears, and it is an incredibly moving scene. This is near the end of the novel, at a point where his journey seems to be taking him deeper and deeper into his own psyche, and the reader can only hang in there with him.</div>
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Many reviews have commented on the strange disconnect between the circumstances of MacLeod's Edinburgh life, and his behaviour on the island. This is a fair point, and it may to some extent be explained by the growing questions over his mental state suggested by the dual narrative, but it is an issue that stays with the reader throughout. This is a shame, because overall, this is a very successful novel, and it may well be that the arc of MacLeod's story will be more fully honed in the subsequent books.</div>
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There is no such issue with the depiction of the island, however, and it is less of a setting, than a character in itself: a brooding magnet for MacLeod, a cage for those he has left behind, a Picture of Dorian Gray that at any moment may reveal decay and pain. Towards the end, the setting narrows, literally, to a fine, black point, and amidst the ancient tradition of harvesting sea-birds on a remote sliver of rock, the narrative reaches its terrible finale. This is the extreme in the extremes. At the edge of an abyss, Fin MacLeod faces the entirety of his life as he does the dark, the wind and the brutal sea. By this stage, ShadePoint had long ago forgotten that MacLeod was a detective, that this was a crime novel. Maelstrom: that will do to describe it.</div>
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So, <i>The Blackhouse</i> takes its place in the growing list of Scottish Island Noir - the Shetland Quartet of Ann Cleeves, <i>Pig Island</i> by Mo Hayder, <i>Sacrifice</i> by S.J. Bolton, <i>Written in Bone</i> by Simon Beckett, and so on. There is something of the Scandinavian appeal to these stories, unsurprisingly as the Scottish Islands retain strongly embedded cultural similarities with the lands of their old Viking heritage. May's book is similar to the new wave of Scandinavian fiction too, in that the lives of the people, their individual emotional landscapes are often as important to the narrative as the procedure, and in fact may even be the story at hand, with the investigation simply the mechanism. Certainly Fin MacLeod's breakdown is similar to the collapsing of many a Scandinavian detective - a moment of terrible humanity to connect us to the people of the story and to ourselves.</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2797024860341411089.post-8236243814056330422012-03-24T05:38:00.001-07:002012-03-25T11:50:07.281-07:00REVIEW When Nights Were Cold by Susanna Jones<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Hours have passed and I am shivering. I could sit down here until I freeze, let frost be my skin and let icicles hang from my chin, let glaciers creep through London and crush my house. It is how I have lived these fifteen years.</i><br />
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Since her superb debut novel <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Earthquake-Bird-Susanna-Jones/dp/0330485024/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332590071&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Earthquake Bird</a></i>, Susanna Jones has been crafting a place as one of this country's most impressive writers. She excels in dark, psychological mystery. Not procedural mystery, with detectives and so on, but the kind of sharp dissection of our devices and desires that reminds me of Du Maurier or Highsmith.</div>
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This new novel is her finest, and that's from someone who liked the previous three very much. Something about its chilly madness has stuck with me and I find myself returning often to her alternating worlds of Victorian drawing room and towering mountainside that seem to collapse together - both equally as forbidding and terrorising.</div>
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Just before the First World War, Grace Farringdon manages to secure a place at Candlin Women's College - very much against the wishes of her austere parents. There her childhood dreams of ice and exploration will become a reality as she forms an Antartic Exploration Society that will lead Grace and three fellow members into darkness on the alps. Imbued with this sense of adventure by a wounded and tragic seafarer of a father, the novel explores the dreams and fears that steep in the bloodlines of families, and where these single minded obsessions can take us when we let them take over our reason.</div>
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In fact, so haunted and chilling did I find this story, that I can well imagine readers lulled by the Romantic cover, the story of derring-do (and there is a wry bit of that here) only to be shocked on finding that here on the snowy peaks there is despair and pain, and locked in the dank rooms of her Victorian home is a madness flooding through all things. In one extremely memorable scene, Grace's forlorn sister Catherine sits on the floor, making endless piles of misshapen ghoulish rag dolls.The whole household at this point seems lost in eccentricity and delusion:<br />
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<i>"... there were thirty or forty of them, all misshapen, strangely deformed with heads sewn onto their sides, stuffing falling out, limbs hanging off their bodies. I started at the sight of them. Catherine was snipping intently at a length of blue silk, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth." </i></div>
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The central mystery at the heart of the novel is a tragedy that takes place on the Exploration Society's first major exhibition - climbing in the alps. It is an event that is described with such a suddeness and breathtaking simplicity that it succeeds completely in framing the rest of the book. It is an unforgettably well crafted moment. From an already unbalanced progress so far, this moment drives Grace into increasingly tighter, more claustrophobic mental spaces. A narrator that had seemed reliable, becomes increasingly unhinged. The reader will be compelled to read the last fifty pages or so in one sitting - driven on by the tension and menace. There are moments towards the end that have almost a surreal, hallucinatory quality, as Grace seems neither in London nor the Alps, but as said before, in some vicious hinterland between the two.</div>
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In the end it is a world of ghosts. The reader will move with Grace through one imagining to another, drifting in an out of what seems to be reality, what seems to be the truth of the tragedy in the mountains. But in a way, this is a chaotic world, and nothing is ever as it seems to be. The fiercest of sudden emotions, their reactions and consequences are laid bare in this darkly beautiful book. On a different level, it is about the death of an age - pomp and circumstance and stiff upper lip, dashed and broken on the slopes.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com