Riding the Bus with My Sister, by Rachel Simon
The first thought that came into my head when I put Riding the Bus with My Sister down was, “I couldn’t be this honest in a million years.”
Because the thread running through Rachel Simon’s autobiographical account of her relationship with her sister Beth, who has a developmental disability, is honesty.
For Christmas, Rachel gifts her sister with an unconventional present; she agrees to ride the city buses with Beth, joining in the activity that’s become central to Beth’s life and meeting the drivers and riders in whose company Beth spends all her time. But becoming immersed in Beth’s life changes her perspective on the management of her sister’s disability, introducing her to the concept of self-determination, its pitfalls and its advantages. She gets to know the people behind the scenes of Beth’s life, the case workers, the bus drivers who love her and those who think her a menace or a burden. And in unraveling the bright, exuberant tapestry that makes up Beth’s days, she finds the answers to some of her own questions and begins to discover things she needs to learn from Beth instead of the other way around.
Silk Road, by Colin Falconer
Silk Road immediately drew in this reviewer due to the period and plot line it presented: the Crusading Templar knight, and the Dominican Friar that accompanies him, moving through the empire of the Mongols in search of a treaty against the Saracens. Having read fiction and factual works around both the crusades and the Mongolian empire I had already bought into the novel before I even turned the first page.
With his characterisations Falconer does not disappoint. The main protagonist, Josseran, is a wonderfully tortured soul. There is a dark back-story alluded to for much of the novel about why he took the crusade and joined the Templars, complementing his daily doubts about the strength of his faith and Christianity itself. As the story progresses there is an excellent change in the knight’s perspective, ensuring a character arc that makes us all the more sympathetic to Josseran’s plight in dealing with not only his past but also the present.
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Moondance of Stonewylde, by Kit Berry
This is the second novel in the Stonewylde series, which reflects the magical, mystical and sometimes sinister goings on at the fictional Dorset pagan community of Stonewylde. Possibly because it was originally self-published, the author Kit Berry, starts the novel exactly where she left off at the end of her first novel. This is refreshing as it does not, (like some books), use a lot of text explaining the meanings and idiosyncrasies of the fantasy world and characters. This does mean it’s a book you probably wouldn’t be able to pick up and read without having read the first installment – but that’s probably the point, isn’t it?
Magus of Stonewylde, ended with Yul being chosen to receive the green magic over Magus. This made the Machiavellian Magus realise of the extent of the threat that Yul posed to him and left him weakened making it much harder for him to run Stonewylde without the energy the magic gave him. Read more
The Blackhouse, by Peter May
The Blackhouse is the 17th novel from Scottish ex-pat Peter May. May, a screenwriter and prolific author of crime fiction, is embarking on a trilogy with this offering, introducing us to complex and traumatised Detective Fin Macleod.
The tale opens with Macleod being dispatched back to Lewis after two decades of absence, sent to investigate a particularly gruesome murder. A man has been hanged and eviscerated, his corpse found by a pair of canoodling teenagers on a Saturday night. The case, as such cases are wont to do, takes Macleod on a journey through his own past, causing him to examine both his own life and the lives of those he left behind him when he departed the isle as a youth.
While the context of Macleod’s visit places The Blackhouse within the crime genre, the bulk of the story centres on Fin’s relationships with both the island and its residents, in both the present and the past. As such, it functions as something of a coming of age tale, charting the events of Macleod’s troubled childhood, and the ongoing repercussions of those events in the present day. Far from being crime driven, the crime which initiates proceedings can often feel incidental. In terms of the story itself, this is by no means a negative; May has a story to tell, and refuses to be sidetracked by the conventions of the genre.
Colin Falconer talks about Silk Road
The Taklimakan is one of the world’s most feared deserts. The name, translated from the local Uighur, means ‘go in and you won’t come out.’ In the morning the rising sun turns the raked cliffs of the Flaming Mountains to violet; later in the day, under the furnace heat of the sun, they will burn oven-red.
On his epic journey Josseran Sarrazini would have watched these same mountains day after day. It is strange – not certifiable, I hope, but maybe – that someone who never existed should be so real to me. But I rode with him through every step long before I came here, saw it all through his eyes; from the Imperial post houses of Cathay to the caravanserais of Persia. It is perhaps not surprising that I see his ghost everywhere.
And ghosts and ruins are mostly what remain now. Like Xanadu, made famous by Coleridge’s unfinished poem; this fantastical city was not an opium-inspired rapture, it was once a real city, Khubilai Khan’s summer capital, Shang-tu. Now it’s just a few stones behind a grassy mound.
The Silk Road itself was not just a single road, like the M-26; it was a complex spider web of routes that linked Europe with Asia, twisting through China and over India, Persia, Egypt, Somalia, and Arabia until it reached Southern Europe.
It created a ‘global marketplace’ for the first time in human history; it was also a super highway for the transmission of cultures, ideas and religious belief, Man’s first tentative steps towards going online.
Eight hundred years ago, to travel the Silk Road was to undertake one of the most extraordinary journeys imaginable. It was like you or I being sent, without any training, to Mars. For a westerner of the time, restricted in thought and beliefs by superstition and the Inquisition, it must have been quite literally a life-changing journey. Even those that made it back would have been changed irrevocably, exposed to philosophies and knowledge beyond anything they could have conceived.
The world was a really big place back then. Now we have jets instead of camels, and Imperial post riders have been replaced by mobile phones and Twitter.
One night we stay in a guest house in Turpan, officially the hottest place on earth. The owner does not offer me the use of his wife and daughters for the night, as was the custom eight centuries ago. Even if he had, I don’t think my wife would have appreciated it much. There is only so much you can do and call it research.
Later we take the bus to Xi’an, which is an unnerving experience, even today. China’s roads have the highest death toll anywhere in the world, the bus drivers here all play chicken with each other at night with their headlights on high beam. Our dodgem bus drive to hell pauses at dawn for a rest stop at an oasis town. I use the word ‘oasis’ loosely. It’s a truck stop with a barbecue pit selling parboiled goat.
But it was much rougher back in the thirteenth century. Instead of oncoming trucks the dangers were bandits and civil wars and black hurricanes; and Josseran had the same choice between eating semi-raw gristle or starving, same as I do, only not nearly as often.
A dust devil hisses along the side of the road; I see him smile through the swirling grit. “What’s wrong with you, brother?” he shouts. “I did this for eight months, and still had to return. There’s a Hilton waiting for you in Xi’an. What have you to complain about?”
Silk Road by Colin Falconer is out 1st October published by Corvus
The Shiralee, by D’Arcy Niland
Do you know what a shiralee is? I didn’t until I read this book. It is a somewhat old-fashioned slang word used in the rural Australian outback, to describe the encumbering load that a traveller was carrying. The title will soon become clear if you give this book a try, which, by the way, I highly recommend that you do.
First published in Australia in 1955, The Shiralee tells the story of Macauley, a gruff, rugged, and hardy man in his mid thirties. Rather nomadic by nature, his journey on foot through New South Wales is a constant search for work to keep him going until his next stop. If he was alone, Macauley would have considered this a relatively easy and even desirable life, but he has the complication of a newly acquired four-year-old daughter in tow. Macauley feels little but resentment towards his child who initially seems to be nothing more than a burden. However, as the story progresses, a touching relationship between the two unravels itself, and when Macauley realises on more than occasion that his daughter might be taken from him, his true feelings start to become apparent. Read more
Alphaville, by Michael Codella and Bruce Bennett
Alphaville is the true account of one NYPD officer’s career in Alphabet City, the heroin capital of the USA. Having retired in 2003 as a Detective Sergeant, Codella recounts the most action-packed of his years on the force, just after joining up in the mid 1980s, during the height of the crack explosion.
The single recurring story is of Codella’s quest to bring a local drug kingpin to justice, although the book is principally a string of anecdotes, tales from the front line of the war on drugs. Many of these tales are tragic, horrifying and violent, and few more so than the curtain raiser. Setting the tone perfectly, Codella recalls the story of a baseball bat attack by one young man on two others. The suspect bludgeons one victim so badly that his eyeball is detached entirely from the socket. On investigation, Codella and partner Gio find the victims are two of the suspect’s closest friends. Read more
Cowboys & Aliens, by Joan D. Vinge
Well dang me pardner if I’m not hornswoggled by this boonie talk. I’ve spent my whole, internet-free holiday worrying about what constitutes a toad-strangler and how a storm can be one. What is it about the crashing, deafening, thunderous storm with its tornado-like winds, blinding lightning and torrential freezing rain that makes it capable of strangling toads? Turns out (Wiktionary to the rescue) that a toad-strangler is a heavy downpour. I’m none the wiser about what that has to do with dead toads, but what a waste of a good worry.
Admission. I saw the film first (Craig and Ford, unmissable) and then read the book. My thoughts about the book are therefore influenced strongly by the imagery and action in the film. It’s not easy to separate the two. That won’t stop me trying.
The Invisibles Ones, by Stef Penney
The Invisible Ones is Stef Penney’s follow up to her Costa Award (nee Whitbread Award) winning debut, The Tenderness of Wolves. While The Tenderness of Wolves took us to the 1860s and the Canadian wilderness, The Invisible Ones takes us back to the Britain of the 1980s, and to the gypsy community. The family at the heart of the tale are the Jankos, a clan with a history of tragedy that would rival the Kennedys. An unknown disease has taken the lives of several members, and traffic accidents account for still more. They are outcasts squared; pushed to the margins of a community that itself inhabits the fringes of society. Their troubles are exacerbated then, when the protagonist, PI Ray Lovell, is tasked with finding Rose Janko, missing for seven years since leaving her husband and child behind. As Lovell asks questions, it slowly becomes apparent that the Janko family is as familiar with secrecy as it is with tragedy.
The Invisible Ones is strong from the offset, opening with Ray regaining consciousness in hospital, his memory in tatters and his ability to communicate severely damaged. The effect is reminiscent of the beginning of Stephen King’s Misery, creating a mood of menace and paranoia that endures throughout the book. Having said this, Penney counterbalances this in the finest Chandleresque style, using Ray as first person narrator, puncturing the bleakness with self-deprecating wit. Read more
Alan Glynn
Alan Glynn is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where he studied English Literature, and has worked in magazine publishing in New York and as an EFL teacher in Italy. His second novel, Winterland, was published to huge acclaim in 2009, while his first novel The Dark Fields was released as the film Limitless – starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro – in Spring 2011. New novel Bloodland is out now.
The Lady of the Rivers, by Philippa Gregory
Philippa Gregory’s Cousins’ War series continues with The Lady of the Rivers, the sweeping story of Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Jacquetta, rumoured to be descended from Melusina the mythical spirit of fresh waters in sacred springs and rivers, is a little known figure whose life story seemingly involves almost as much folklore as history and, given the extraordinary impact that her life was to have on the evolution of the English nation, a detailed account of her role in the Cousins’ War is long overdue.
Gregory has clearly set out to establish as full a picture of the remarkable life and character of Jacquetta as possible and so she begins The Lady of the Rivers during the period of Jacquetta’s childhood where she became acquainted with the imprisoned Joan of Arc, a young woman whose allegedly mystical powers seemed to mirror Jacquetta’s own unique gifts. As a daughter of the Count of Luxembourg and a relative of many European royals, Jacquetta unsurprisingly went on to encounter many other famous and infamous characters well known to the history books. While still a teenager Jacquetta was married off in a savvy political move to the Duke of Bedford, English Regent of France and an uncle to Henry VI, only to be widowed at the age of nineteen.
The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain
It’s a pretty well-known fact Ernest Hemingway was intimately familiar with alcohol. Travel just about anywhere in the world and you’ll find a bar with a sign reading “Hemingway Sat Here.” Some other commonly known facts about the American author include his fame for writing some memorable novels, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, reputation as a ladies’ man, involvement in an expatriate art movement in Paris during the 1920s and, later in life, committing suicide.
These facts do not tell the true story of the man. Paula McLain gives us a much better glimpse in The Paris Wife: A Novel by focusing on Hemingway’s relationship with his first wife, Hadley Richardson.
Magus of Stonewylde, by Kit Berry
Initially self published by the author Kit Berry in 2005 through her self-created Moongazy Publishing, it left her little time to write; Orion Publishing now having the worldwide rights to the Stonewylde series have (via Gollancz) republished all the books. This is great news, as the pagan based novels are continuing to be discovered by adults and children alike, as its popularity as a cross-over read broadens. Having not read these books before myself, I can say I have also been won over.
Stonewylde is a vast, mysterious place set in Dorset, with boundary walls that keep it separate from the modern world. In essence it is a religious community where the ebb of the natural world is worshipped and magic co-exists. In the most part it appears self-sufficient, with its own spring water supply, stone quarry, woodlands and farms but over the years modern life, business and modern equipment have infiltrated the estate also.
In the first book, you are introduced to Sylvie a fifteen year old girl, who is inexplicably dying in hospital, virtually wasting way, as if allergic to all things around her. Her single mother, Miranda is at her wits’ end, when a doctor at the hospital in noting the distinct silver hair colourings of Sylvie arranges for her to meet Magus the seemingly warm and charismatic leader of the community to offer both mother and daughter the opportunity to live in Stonewylde (as Hall people), which it was felt would give Sylvie the best, if only chance of recovery. Virtuously penniless with the offer of a home, food and a teaching job for Miranda, the offer is too good to refuse. Read more
Sister, by Rosamund Lupton
Beatrice has always lived the safest life, the one far away from exhilarating ledges and heart-pounding tightropes, so when her sister turns up missing she is uncomfortably reminded of Tess’s ability to throw caution to the wind and live a life with no safety nets and no restraint. Of course Beatrice, her mother, and her safe-as-houses fiancé think Tess has just gone off on one but somehow, it doesn’t seem right… Not with her baby due in three more weeks.
Then it turns out that the baby died in childbirth, and every puzzle piece turns jagged and sharp. Will Beatrice unravel the mystery, and will she be able to figure out what happened to Tess?
Beatrice’s perception of herself will be challenged by the ordeal to come, and she will find herself and her life irrevocably changed. But will she be able to keep herself safe? And are the ties she forms to people from Tess’s past enough to keep her sane when the world turns topsy-turvy?
Ravenor (The Omnibus), by Dan Abnett
Ravenor doesn’t seem as popular as its prequel Eisenhorn, and on first glance it’s not too hard to see why. The titular lead character is a subtler protagonist, and the plot moves more slowly and intricately. To this reviewer Ravenor certainly doesn’t feel like a Warhammer 40K story either, with barely any references to the weird and wonderful cast of superhuman space marines or aliens of the distant future. While the rest of Abnett’s fiction could belong to no other mythos, Ravenor could almost exist as its own entity. None of this is intended to dismiss the novel though, just to present it as a different beast.
The differences revolve around the protagonists themselves: Eisenhorn was a towering, dominant man, striding across star systems, gathering his deadly followers and mighty weapons and refusing to back down in the face of terrible danger; a galactic juggernaut on a wild quest of heroism and mayhem. Ravenor may be his protégée, but he is also a near destroyed husk, kept on permanent life support inside a sealed chamber and has none of the physical presence of his mentor. He is, however, a brilliant and powerful psyker, and his most memorable battles are played out as duels in the incorporeal world. As a character he is circumspect and cautious, although no less brave or determined than his former master. As a result, his story is told often through the eyes of his team (sometimes as he “wares” or possesses them) and locked inside the machinations of an unravelling mystery and man-hunt. He’s a brave choice to lead the novel as well, and it is to Abnett’s credit he was willing to take such a gamble writing a sequel to the much-loved Eisenhorn and not revert to a stock copy, and here also Abnett keeps the planet-hopping and mass destruction down to a (relative) minimum and spends longer with his heroes and villains, taking the time to develop each.
Egypt: A Short History, by Robert L. Tignor
If ever there was a time to know a little bit more about the history of Egypt it is now.
Written before the Arab Spring, Robert Tignor tells of a country that has known of despotic rule and revolutionary overthrow time and time again in a way that sets the scene for recent events. When it is not being ruled by others – Ottomans, French, English – it is the minority wealthy, educated merchant class exploiting the poor peasant class from the pharoahs to Mubarak.
In the Name of the King, by A.L. Berridge
After his initial, formative adventures in Honour and the Sword (during which I convinced myself that the noble André de Roland was going to meet a premature end, on account of the fact that the book consists of lots of people talking about him in the past tense), the Chevalier de Roland is back to buckle more swashes, and this time he’s doing it firmly in the territory of André Dumas’ Three Musketeers: Paris. Having kicked the Spanish out of the beloved Saillie, André and his half-brother Jacques must travel to the French capital to be reunited with their Aunt, the formidable Comtesse, and Uncle, the Comte, raddled with syphilis but remembered as a formidable warrior in his youth.
With their talent for getting enmeshed in the business of others, the two are inadvertently drawn in to a conspiracy against the French throne before they have even reached Paris – and they have barely arrived when Andre’s honour brings him in to dispute with a powerful faction of the nobility. What is more, it becomes clear that the father and brother of André’s intended, Anne, are also bound up in the plot. Before long, Andre is implicated in a crime he did not commit, publicly humiliated and on the run, his beloved honour in tatters.
Theories of Flight, by Simon Morden
A welcome return to the Metrozone and the adventures of Samuil Petrovitch. In the previous volume of the Metrozone Trilogy, Equations of Life, he took on and defeated the sentient intelligence of the New Machine Jihad, devised a set of equations that completely redefined physics, and got the girl. Now he’s back, and the book opens with a test of those same equations, the success of which catapults Petrovich to instant worldwide fame. The trouble is, the Metrozone is under attack from without: the Outies, those people sealed outside the M25 when the Metrozone was created, are invading from the north, gradually encroaching in to the nominally safe areas of a city only just being rebuilt after the depredations of the New Machine Jihad – oh, and someone’s trying to kill Petrovitch (again).
As the Outies push further in to North London, Petrovitch takes off on a desperate attempt to reach his police officer wife. It’s a journey fraught with peril, and in the course of attempting to reach her, he has to enlist the aid of the New Machine Jihad, which he secreted away from the world at the end of the previous book rather than destroy a genuine Artificial Intelligence. His new interface with the Jihad gives him an unprecedented amount of power, and like it or not, he realises that to rescue his wife he is going to have to use that power and assume control of the war effort against the Outies if they’re going to be defeated. This he does to great effect, using various deceptions and evasions to channel command to himself.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Gollancz 50th Anniversary Edition ), by Philip K Dick.
Gollancz – the UK home of science fiction and fantasy since 1961 has recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. This long-established publishing line was originally an independent publisher founded by Victor Gollancz in 1928. He was succeeded by his daughter and it operated for many years from an office in Covent Garden. Its early strengths were in political and non-fiction writing, however from 1961 it became involved in science fiction and fantasy and began publishing works by the likes of Arthur C Clarke, Terry Pratchett and William Gibson. 50 years later, Gollancz are proud to announce the top 10 science fiction and fantasy titles voted for by their readers. Beautifully repackaged in cool retro editions that follow the classic Gollancz yellow jacket style, the editions also feature brand new introductions from outstanding top genre authors.
In the science fiction top 10, is Philip K Dick’s near-future apocalyptic masterpiece Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. This special anniversary edition features an introduction by Paul McAuley. McAuley (www.unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com) is the author of Fairyland, Eternal Light and The Quiet War. The introduction asks readers to forget Ridley Scott’s film adaptation Blade Runner and concentrate on the more intimate story of how Rick Deckard, android bounty hunter and ‘ordinary working stiff suffering an existential crisis confronts the true nature of his profession and questions the truth of his own existence’.
In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
By now the turbulent, violent events of the thirties and forties must count as one of the most broadly recorded and studied periods in history. We’ve all watched the war films, remembered the history lessons, visited the museums. Mention that period and everyone can throw out a dozen, at least, of the defining events; Pearl Harbor, D-Day, The Battle of Britain. Or mention the people who lived through it all, and you’ll get back Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, all of them with enough books to their names already, they seem more like mythical, archetypal characters than actual flesh and blood mortals. With a public so familiar with the period, authors have to become increasingly resourceful to dig into the corners of filing cabinets, just to come up with anything fresh to say.
So, with his new book, In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson admits to making ‘no effort at another grand history of the age,’ instead plumbing the back of said filing cabinet for the more personal, and little known, experiences of an American family in Berlin, 1933. Read more
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
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Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
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