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The Literary Corner
Literary thoughts and reviews mostly about Gothic and Crime fiction (with a bit of my photography thrown in)
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MORIARTY STRIKES AGAIN – A REVIEW OF ANTHONY HOROWITZ’S LATEST BOOK
Sherlock Holmes is dead and a villain worse than Moriarty needs stopping. Looks like Scotland Yard’s in trouble.
Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty have just plunged into the depths of the Reichenbach Falls and only one body has emerged. Scotland Yard sends Athelney Jones to investigate where he meets Frederick Chase, a private detective from America. The two men have come to see the body of what they believe to be Moriarty but soon realise there is another master criminal at large, a Clarence Devereux, who wants to take over Moriarty’s network of criminals. The two detectives must move fast to stop him.
This novel has good pace, particularly in the first half and the reader can follow a trail of clues left for them by the writer. However, many of the clues seem unrealistic and lack the subtlety of a Doyle Sherlock Holmes story.
Horowitz sets up a good balance of the Holmes-Watson relationship with Jones and Chase and the relationships mirror each other nicely. Chase is very much the amazed Watson prepared to bow to his friend’s superior knowledge but not all is quite as it seems here.
As you would expect the novel has a shock twist at the end and the title begins to make more sense. The twist probably won’t surprise all readers but it has been well constructed.
Clarence Devereux proves a good, if easily defeatable, villain and brings the thought out planning we admire so much in Moriarty into contact with the dark underworld of American crime. This does make some areas of the book a bit violent.
As a whole I would say that this novel is a simplistic crime story that lacks the depth of its precursor, The House of Silk. Moriarty is Horowitz’s second attempt at writing a detective story using Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters and it is by far the inferior. However, Sherlock Holmes fans should read it for completeness and as a stand alone work it did grip me while reading it.
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DOCTOR SLEEP – THE SHINING REVIVED
Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep is the sequel to his brilliant book The Shining. A number of years have passed in the real world and Danny Torrence, the boy with the shining, has all grown up.
The book starts with some old characters we know well. The woman from the bathtub makes another spine chilling appearance, this time free from The Overlook. Thankfully Danny finds a way to lock her away in his mind so we can all sleep a little easier knowing that.
Dan’s life hasn’t quite worked out well when we rejoin him. He’s a heavy drinker and does a lot of things he’s ashamed of but begins to sort his life out.
However, this isn’t just his story. There is a new girl on the block with shining powers, if anything possibly stronger than Dan’s own. She needs his help to fight off a group of people who want to take her ‘steam’ which seems to be there word for the shining. They want to harvest it from her and the book leads to a battle to stop this from happening.
The combination of Danny’s story which we know well and Abra’s new story make this a good stand alone novel in it’s own right. You do not have to have read or to have seen The Shining beforehand to make this novel easy to follow but it may enhance your reading experience if you have.
I enjoyed reading Doctor Sleep and found that it gripped me but I found the gang a bit easy to defeat at the end. It seems like the character’s will have a daunting and almost impossible task ahead of them to defeat Rose the Hat but the ending is a bit of a damp squib. Having said that the Danny Torrence storyline is nicely finished off and satisfying.
It was also a delight to read the character of Dan Torrence. He is every bit the little boy from The Overlook grown up and King brilliantly continues the characterization including all the warmth and heart of the young boy from The Shining.
Long but fast paced and well worth a read. Not in the slightest bit scary no matter what the reviewers may suggest on the back cover.
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BOOK GROUP CHOICE – THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
The latest choice for my office book group was The Silver Linings Playbook. One or two of us had seen the film with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence and we thought it might be a good topic for bringing up some discussions. We were right.
The gist of the book and the film is that Pat Peoples has been inside ‘the bad place’ to get over his mental health issues regarding his wife Nikki. He wants to become healthy and normal again so that he can go back to Nikki and tell her how much he’s changed so they can get back together. What he doesn’t realise is that he’s been away for four years.
Tiffany is sister in law of one of Pat’s friends and has had her own mental health issues after her husband died. She meets Pat at a dinner and immediately tries to throw herself at him before bursting into tears. She then begins following Pat every time he goes jogging which he finds intensely irritating. It turns out she wants him to train to dance with her at a competition for people with mental health issues. She offers to convey messages to Nikki if he’ll agree so of course, he does.
The film and book follow the same lines pretty closely but a lot more emphasis is put on the dancing and football playing in the film. The film is a little more upbeat and shows less of Pat’s suffering to get to where he is when the dancing starts.
From a book group’s perspective this is a great book to choose. The tone of the novel is fun, the chapter’s short and it’s really easy to work your way through it. We all found ourselves wanting to read just that little bit more before we could put the book down. The mental health issues are dealt with tastefully and while there are funny scenes in the book the issues are never the butt of the joke.
The book delivers what Pat is looking for, a silver lining. It brings hope to people with difficult times and a smile to the face of it’s reader. Pat doesn’t get the happy ending he thinks he wants but he gets something better. It’s not a Hollywood love story, it’s a story about people and how they get through things. If anything it’s quite an inspiring read.
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How to tell you’re reading a gothic novel
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Out Friday June 20th
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"I know it doesn't count for much Lucy said, but at least it's a beautiful night.
Glen Duncan 'By Blood We Live', said to be the perfect eulogy
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Jo Nesbo to re-tell Macbeth
Dark, brooding, bloody... Jo Nesbo's writing and Shakespeare's Macbeth. Could be the perfect combination. This is the strange news that Hogarth Shakespeare, a major international publishing initiative across the Penguin Random House Group has commissioned the crime writer Jo Nesbo to re-tell the story of Macbeth as he sees fit. Jo says: ‘Macbeth is a story that is close to my heart because it tackles topics I’ve been dealing with since I started writing. A main character who has the moral code and the corrupted mind, the personal strength and the emotional weakness, the ambition and the doubts to go either way. A thriller about the struggle for power, set both in a gloomy, stormy crime noir-like setting and in a dark, paranoid human mind. No, it does not feel too far from home. And, yes, it is a great story. And, no, I will not attempt to do justice to William Shakespeare nor the story. I will simply take what I find of use and write my own story. And, yes, I will have the nerve to call it Macbeth.’ I am already looking forward to reading it.
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Film Studios, Glamour and Nazi Intrigue – A Review of Black Roses by Jane Thynne
The tale of a young British actress asked to spy on the wives of the top ranking Nazi officials, Black Roses by Jane Thynne is a truly inspired novel. Aspiring actress Clara Vine leaves London in 1933 to play a part in a German film called Black Roses. Nazi officials take over the running of the film studios and she finds herself at their parties and being introduced to their wives. Magda Goebbels is setting up a fashion bureau and asks Clara to model. Clara meets undercover British intelligence worker Leo Quinn who asks her to feed him information on the habits of her new friends. Thynne excellently mixes real facts that seem utterly unbelievable with her own fictional embellishments. Clara Vine is an excellent invention and a character of true substance and moral fibre who guides the reader through Berlin life with almost twenty first century attitudes. Black Roses is a joy to read with a real sense of thrill. Thynne keeps you forever on the edge, fearing for the safety of the characters as if you really could sense the fear of the German people at this time when storm troopers patrolled the streets. Thynne plays with the sense of paranoia of the average German citizen letting it seep into Clara’s life as she becomes a spy constantly worried that she is being watched or followed. Black Roses treads carefully through Nazi Germany showing both the monstrous side of Nazism and the basic humanity of some of the party’s members. There is an unusual vulnerability there and it makes a fair representation of that society as a whole. The relationship between Clara and Leo develops nicely as they begin to fall for each other slowly. Thynne avoids the cliché of a great war time romance by letting it develop at it’s own pace and both characters keeping their strength and independence. This book is exciting, heartfelt and always on the edge. It captures the romance and luxury of the city and carries the reader on Clara’s wave of enthusiasm for life and for the charms of Berlin. It oozes the glamour and excesses of high society and emphasises the ability to take whatever you want if you are prepared to pay the price. This is Jane Thynne’s fourth novel and the first in a planned trilogy featuring Clara Vine. The next book, The Winter Garden, is set to be published later this month.
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Review of Longbourn by Jo Baker
A telling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from the servants Hall, Jo Baker’s Longbourn is an intriguing new take on a well known classic. Longbourn is the home of the Bennett family and the setting of this novel. Mr and Mrs Hill, the housekeeper and butler, have helped to raise Sarah the maid who they took from the workhouse as a child. Another young servant comes to work at Longbourne and after a fraught beginning the two fall in love but it is only a matter of time before James’s dark past means he is forced to leave again. Longbourn can be easily divided into two sections, first where the lives of those above stairs rule the plot and the second, longer section which becomes a story in it’s own right. Baker deals well with keeping the upstairs characters as readers of Pride and Prejudice would expect them to be. There are also new and interesting character developments occurring such as Wickham who appears to wish to ruin James and the other maid Polly simply for the pleasure of it. However, other characters such as Mr Bennett and Mr Hill change beyond all recognition for what seems to be only to produce a twist or a shock in the reader. Jo’s prose style feels natural and she easily takes you with her to the house and grounds. She quickly establishes a warm friendliness between characters, particularly Sarah, Mrs Hill and Polly which pulls the reader in as well. These women have formed their own family downstairs and are protectively fond of each other. The relationship between Sarah and James is touching and beautifully mirrors the fraught relations between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy upstairs. Baker frequently illustrates that the temptations are just the same upstairs as down and that they are all as equally likely to succumb to them. Longbourn is full of twists and turns, some of them fairly obvious and some more inventive but it does not disappoint. It is just as good a read whether you already know the characters or not. It compliments Austen’s work and it is also a well written novel in it’s own right. On a personal note I am thrilled to see Jo getting such recognition and praise for her writing as she has been for Longbourne because she was one of my creative writing tutors at Lancaster University and a thoroughly nice and talented lady.
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Pre-publication Review of Vengeance by Megan Miranda
A young adult thriller with gothic overtones, Vengeance by Megan Miranda is an intriguing mix of the supernatural and human killer instinct. Schoolboy Decker pulls his girlfriend, Delaney, out from a frozen lake and makes a deal. ‘Anyone but her. Everyone but her.’ She survives after eleven minutes under the ice but soon other people begin to die as if the lake is claiming them in her place. This book drips gothic with it’s supernatural feel and cursed lake. No-one is quite what they seem and everyone is harbouring a dark secret. Delaney even develops the power to sense when someone is dying which leads to huge rifts between characters and threatens to split her from Decker for good. The book provides a clever and at times entertaining narrative. It is an intriguing who or what dunnit and has depth as a novel when Miranda explores how this close group of friends deal with losing each other. Vengeance has a strong set of secondary characters in the form of Decker and Delaney’s school friends. Living in a small town they have known each other since childhood and are fiercely protective of each other. Miranda does well to give them all their own distinct personalities and not to let them blend into the category of generic friends. The descriptions of the deep hole of loss that the death of Carson, Decker’s best friend who dies before this novel begins, has left on the group is both touching and a constant reminder throughout that death is all too close for this group of young people. The small town setting is so essential for the atmosphere of the book. It creates a real them and us between the outsiders who enter the town and the residents. It gives the novel it’s creepy edge as people can be shown as something ‘other’. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book from start to finish but it did seem to lose it’s way a little in the middle when the plot of the cursed lake is sidelined for a look at whether Decker and Delaney’s relationship can survive the events of the novel. This goes on for ever so slightly too long but is worth ploughing through. This novel is officially for young adults but can be enjoyed by anyone. It is also a sequel to Miranda’s earlier novel, Fracture, but you do not have to have read that to appreciate Vengeance. This book is an enjoyable and often funny read that offers up just the right amount of darkness and hope for the future. It is well written and suggests a successful writing career to come. Vengeance is available in the UK from 13th February and is also available in the US.
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One year, three months and 141 job applications later and someone has finally offered me a job in publishing
It’s been a long wait and taken some hard work but I can finally say that I work in publishing. It's fair to say that there have been a lot of ups and downs in my search for a publishing job and I have been admittedly lucky in the mean time and had a wonderful ten months working in a library (a job which I will now be keeping on a Saturday by way of saying thank you to the wonderful library ladies who would employ me when it felt like no-one else would.) But publishing has seemed to me for the past few years, as it does for many literature graduates, like a dream job. So being offered a job as a Digital Editorial Assitant was of course a big moment. Did I feel a sense of joy and relief at no longer having to search for jobs? No, quite frankly my initial reaction was terror. Thankfully I had a few weeks over Christmas to get used to the idea before I started. Now I have finished my first month in publishing and it is definately for me. I have done all kinds of strange things already. I have built interactive workbooks, tested apps for the Brazilian market and even witnessed the introduction of office slippers to be worn daily for the comfort of all staff. It is really hard to get into publishing, I know. I was lucky. So really what I want to say is that if you are trying to break your way into the industry as well, my advice is to keep going. It may seem sometimes like however much you do you’ll never get there but if you keep trying, it really will happen. Don’t give up because what you just might end up with really is worth it.
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Darragh McKeon's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air - due for publication 6th March
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Pre-Publication Review of Darragh McKeon's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
Darragh McKeon’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a moving tale of the aftermath ofChernobyl.
The novel follows a doctor sent to clear up the disaster zone, a young piano prodigy and his aunt and a boy whose family is evacuated from a nearby farm. All are dealing in their own ways with the sheer scale of the disaster and the oppression of the government where even mentioning that there is a problem could have you arrested.
The story starts a little slowly as it jumps around from character to character but soon it becomes obvious that they are all connected and the novel really takes off. McKeon’s book excellently shows how unprepared the government was for such a disaster. There was no plan for if things went wrong and even once it has the majority of people seem to have no concept of how much danger they are in. The doctor, Grigory, provides an insight into the situation for characters and readers alike with his expert eye as he does his best to lead the clear up operation.
Grigory is a steadying force in the book, a surgeon who remains calm at times of great stress. He pours himself into helping the victims of the disaster and pays the price for doing so. His romance with his ex-wife Maria breaks up the story and brings hope of a brighter future as well as a tinged sadness of a love that has been lost.
Maria, the aunt of the piano prodigy, epitomizes the waste present in the novel. A bright young woman who wishes to teach at the university but who has been forced to work in a factory. But it is only through her and her sister’s sacrifices that Yevgeni can be the shining light who will escape to something better. His music is his way out but only through sacrifice will he make it.
Families are ruthlessly destroyed in this book. Very few fathers make it to the end of the book and sisters shut each other out. Families are held in compounds alarmingly similar to concentration camps and treated with appalling indignities. Artyom loses his father in the most horrible and graphic way to radiation poisoning but is shielded from the very worst of it by his mother.
This is not a happy book but nor is it miserable. McKeon seems to know the moments when his readers need pulling away from the distress and he provides gestures of basic human kindness that blow you away.
This novel is a comment on society as much as it is about a particular disaster. It leads to wider questions about how our own culture might deal with such an event. Would we really be any different when it actually came down to it? Whatever we may feel McKeon provides an authoritative air throughout, his research clearly showing.
This book can move a reader to tears and horrify them but it also leaves a feeling of the basic goodness of people even though that seems to have been lost in some places in the story. The imagery is vivid and there are some images from this novel that I know I will never forget.
This book is brilliantly written, moving and provides a small glimmering suggestion that even in times of disaster there is still hope and the chance of something better.
I have been extremely lucky to get to read this before the publication date. I actually had it in October last year but the official publication date is 6th March.
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Darragh McKeon talking about his upcoming book for Waterstones at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival
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Book Recommendation of the Month
Russian Roulette may be the prequel to Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series but it is really not an Alex Rider book. He features for all of about five pages at the end. The story is about Yassen Gregorovich, a trained assassin who has been sent to kill the 14 year old Rider.
For anyone who has read the series, it is set just after Stormbreaker has occured and several references are made to the story from that book but that is really not important to this novel, only a nice addition to established fans.
Things go from bad to worse for Yassen who has an extremely colourful life escaping his village which has been destroyed, killing his parents and everyone he knows. His life is destroyed and he is on the run with no-one to trust. He escapes and a whole adventure unravels at a ruthless pace.
At times is does feel like nothing else could possibly go wrong for the main character but somehow it always does, even occaisionally in a comical way.
Officially this is a book for young adults and teenagers but there is non of the dumbing down that is often associated with books for that age range. It could easily be placed on the adult shelf and I certainly wouldn’t give it to a young teenager.
I really enjoyed this book and hope that a Yassen Gregorovich series will follow because there is certainly scope for one.
It is an action packed, fast read with a character that brings depth to the page. It is well worth reading.
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