Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games

Oh sweet temptation, I cave to thee ever so oft', and yet, how scarcely do I regret it. A tinge of embarrassment, possibly, and an element of judging the fool that wears my shoes does creep in, but that's alright. That's alright. This book has caught my attention numerous times since it hit the stands a couple of years ago, and each time, I picked it up, put it back on the shelf and moved on. About three weeks back though, desperate to try and find something that would complete my three-for-two purchase at Waterstones, this was picked up. Allow me a moment of sentimentality, for it's a dilemma I might never face again, with the three-for-two scheme coming to a close.

What do you say about a book where the writing is ordinary at best, the plot supposedly unoriginal (inspired by the Japanese novel, Battle Royale), and a book which is aimed at young adults about survival?

Kill or be killed. "Last man standing" wins. Innocent people die. Innocent children die. It's a far cry from the days of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, where justice was always served; from the days of Sweet Valley which was just high school fluff; from Roald Dahl where the villainous characters always got what was coming to them as they were purely outsmarted or outwitted by brilliant children.

Maybe you put that into perspective, with the Harry Potter books, where the innocent died at the hands of Lord Voldemort, and it was left to The Boy That Lived and his friends to avenge their family and friends, and protect the world of wizardry from the Dark Lord and Death Eaters.

In a futuristic society, North America has been replaced by the twelve districts of Panem. Every year, two teenagers (a boy and a girl) from each district are chosen to participate in a reality TV series (will we never escape those?): The Hunger Games. The objective of the Games is simple: the last teenager still standing wins, and the way to ensure victory and your own survival is to kill others your own age, who haven't committed any crimes, who've done nothing wrong.

In District 12, the poorest of the Districts, Katniss' younger sister is called upon to represent her district. Katniss immediately volunteers in her place, protective of her younger sister. The other representative from the district is Petra - the baker's son. The two go to the Capitol, show-off their skills, eat more than they've ever eaten and see more luxury than they've ever seen. They prepare for the Games, honing their existing skills, and trying to build new ones, as they meet the other tributes - the other representatives.

And then the Games begin.

People from the different districts group together, and hunt in packs, and like in any other dystopia, it's cringeworthy to see how naturally people do anything to survive, even though it's the monsters at the Capitol who have ensured this lunacy occurs year after year, as a punishment for a rebellion that occurred years ago. The book is gripping, as everyone wants to the girl who volunteered to take her younger sister's place to emerge victorious. It's not that the others should die (although a couple of them are truly obnoxious), but, the rules are simple.

Obviously, as the case is, with most fiction (young adult or otherwise), there's a parallel love story, as all the tributes battle for survival and the pride that comes with emerging victorious. It's these parallel - sometimes unnecessary - love stories that make these books slightly trying. Same thing with Harry Potter and the Harry-Ginny, Hermione-Ron thing - what was the point? What did it accomplish? Such a tame ending to the seventh book.

I digress.

There's a love story, here as well, but possibly, what Collins has done is, made this love story the base for the second and third books of the trilogy (which I have also finished and will pen down my thoughts on, in due course); the base for the Capitol's anger; and the base for the events that follow - but no spoilers here. Not yet anyway.

I'd recommend this book, in all its entertaining glory. It's not great reading, by any stretch of the imagination, but a book this entertaining and gripping deserves a read.

Marghanita Laski - Little Boy Lost

So, you start a book which is meant to result in emotional upheaval, and you keep your distance to begin with, but then the book sucks you in, and you feel your emotions getting the better off you, while the writing itself remains simple and straightforward, with almost no sentimentality. And as you keep turning the pages, you just want the happy ending; the fairy-tale happily ever after. And then the book ends, and you're just sitting there holding it, stunned into disbelief by the response evoked by a book less than two-hundred-and-fifty pages long.

It's Christmas Day, 1943, when Hilary, a poet and an intellectual, learns that his little boy, John, is lost. Lisa, his wife who was involved in the Resistence, was killed in Paris by the Gestapo, but before her death, she had asked a friend to look after her baby, who Hilary had seen but once. But on that fateful Christmas Day, a stranger (a Frenchman named Pierre) knocks on the door of Hillary's English home, informing him that his son has disappeared without a trace, and he would like to help Hillary find the boy.

Post-war, Hillary reluctantly heads to Paris upon Pierre's request, in order to commence the search for the lost boy - a search that has already been initiated by the resourceful Pierre. But Hilary is not prepared for the war-ravaged Paris that greets him.

Yes, it was familiar again - until the bus creaked past the bombed factory, the makeshift bridge, the shattered rusting locomotives, and the English in the bus shamefacedly whispered to each other, "Do you think we did that?" and then wondered if there could still be friendship between the destroyer and destroyed.

Simply, eloquently put.

Hilary starts following the trail which could potentially lead him to the son he lost about two years ago - almost unwillingly - for, with time, he's made himself invulnerable to emotions, and is content to live in his memories. The search leads him to a convent in a small town in France, where a boy who might be his son lives. It's not definite, but the age and blood type match. The hope is that on seeing the boy, Hilary would recognise his son.

Hilary visits the boy (called Jean) in the convent, and starts spending a couple of hours each day with the boy, his affection for the slowly mounting, but the uncertainty as to whether the boy is actually his son not really diminishing. The first meeting is confusing, as at first glance, he thinks that's his son, but on second glance, he stares at the child in horror and repulsion, certain that the child isn't his...

...and thus begins the journey of trying to determine if he's found his little boy...

...But then, Hilary is detached, pragmatic and almost like an icicle at times, that one just wants to physically shake him into finding his human emotions - diametrically polar to some other moments where he buys the child expensive gloves, and gauges his reactions, without the child having to say much, if anything at all.

As the relationship evolves during the course of the week, the child transforms from a shy nervous boy to an excited happy one around Hilary. You can make out that he doesn't want to disappoint Hilary, and when Hilary comes across as impatient, the boy withdraws into himself. There are moments where, as a reader, you just hate Hilary, for how can someone be so heartless?

Hilary said nothing. He stood there watching the child, feeling only hate for the creature who had put him in this predicament, through whose interventions he had made a fool of himself. The little coward, he was saying, the little coward.

Jean whimpered, "I want my red gloves back."

You're finding out you can't buy happiness, thought Hilary coldly. Aloud, he said, "You can't have them back. Once you've given a present, it's a present forever."

Jean stopped whimpering, only stood there shaking and staring. You're finding out what desolation means, thought Hilary savagely [...].

But - but it's the absolute last line of the book that makes it so... touching and heart-rending. Just the last line. Honestly, words cannot describe the impact they make.

While the heart of the book is about the father looking for his lost son, Laski pays attention to the rampant corruption existing in Paris at the time, and the black market, which emphasised the difference between the haves and the have-nots, and the whole "survival of the fittest" philosophy. She also highlights the slight disconnect between the locals, as they attempt to determine on which side their counterparts stood during the Occupation.

"But at least the Occupation showed each man what he was capable of. Don't you think it was something to be able to find out?"

"No, why?" said Pierre. "Some found they were better than they thought, some worse. We are finding that out all the time in our everyday lives."

"But we're not conscious of it all the time," argued Hilary. For some reason, this point seemed of vital importance to him. "Surely occupation or battle or something like that brings the whole thing to an inescapable point - a sort of judgment by ordeal?"

If you haven't yet, please do read this book.

I've read two books by Laski so far, and have two more to go (which have been printed by Persephone) - her writing is amazing, and I can't wait to read the others.

Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey

Despite being the first novel that Austen started writing, Northanger Abbey was only published posthumously. It's the second book by the much-acclaimed author that I have finished, and while I thought Pride & Prejudice was significantly more enjoyable, this book was quite readable as well. I concede that readable isn't a very encouraging adjective for a book, and despite the fact that I've only read glowing reviews of this online, I've unfortunately not been swept away.

This book is meant to be a social satire on life in the nineteenth century, where money, marriage and dance partners were all people thought about. In that world, we meet Catherine Morland, a seventeen year old, naive and romantic and more than a little innocent; a most unsuspecting heroine, really, as Austen declares at the very outset:

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine.

She loves her gothic literature (who doesn't?) and is bestowed with the questionable gift of an overactive imagination. So, when her family friends take her with them to Bath for six weeks or so, to enjoy a holiday, go to some balls, and potentially, meet a dashing young man, she immediately befriends Isabella Thorpe, a fellow book lover.

[I]f a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; -- for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding -- joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. [...]

So imagine her happiness when she realises that her own brother is quite fond of Ms. Thorpe, that he comes down to Bath to visit her. Their friendship grows thus, as does the romance between her brother and Isabella. But when she's introduced to Isabella's brother, who she finds quite boring compared to the indelible Mr. Henry Tilney, she finds herself in a bit of an awkward position. The brother and sister duo keep trying to manipulate her and her position with the Tilneys (i.e. Mr. Tilney and his sister), but at that point, we see Catherine standing up for what she believes in, and not giving in to peer pressure - the first time her character actually shines through.

There is banter between Mr. Tilney and our young innocent heroine, which is amusing, entertaining, and completely valid. For instance, I did actually chuckle while reading the below.

“Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement – people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.”

The Tilneys take to Catherine as well (after all, she is our heroine), and invite her to visit them at Northanger Abbey which is where the last third or so of the book takes place. Northanger Abbey is the kind of place "you read about", rich in Gothic ornaments. Getting carried away in the breathtaking Abbey, and blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Catherine jumps to a conclusion about events that have taken place in the days gone by at the Abbey, and when she's made aware of her naivety and stupidity, it's Henry's character's turn to shine through.

It's really bizarre how quickly people are jumping to conclusions in the book, and the number of judgment calls that go wrong. It's the shallowness and superficiality of the characters that are quite disturbing, and in a world where everyone has an end-game, Catherine's innocence and Henry's class (for lack of better words) stand out. The pompousness of some people, and the selfishness of others just leaves me feeling quite uncomfortable - it's like... seriously, life's too short! The sad thing is, even today, people are that shallow and selfish, and you just have to weed them out in order to find the people who are actually good.

The writing style, itself, is not a patch on Pride and Prejudice, but that's quite understandable, considering that this was the first book that Austen started. The dialog isn't as fluent or as romantic, and it didn't leave me all wistful - mostly a result of Catherine not being that strong a character, compared to Elizabeth Bennett. There's also large chunks where Austen seems to be addressing the reader, directly - possibly in a slight tongue-in-cheek voice. While a clever device, specially in a satire (which this was), it just didn't work for me, which was unfortunate. I guess once I read her other works, I should come back to this, and then evaluate it against those.

The next Austen on my list is Persuasion. A lot of Austen fans suggest that it's their favourite book by her, but considering how widely different I found this to Pride and Prejudice, I'm not quite sure as to what to expect with Persuasion. I guess that's part of the Austen charm. Which is your favourite Austen?

J.D. Salinger - Catcher In The Rye

As some of you might already know, The Catcher In The Rye is one of my favourite books of all times. I've read it, and re-read it, and then read it again. At the age of fourteen, the first time I read it, I fell in love with Holden Caulfield. A decade later, I still love Holden Caulfield, and all his quirks, but I sympathise with him, and my heart goes out to him. At one point, I was reading this book every year - sometimes, even more often. When I started working, my ancient edition found a permanent spot on my desk, and it was just there for me to flip through, on days when things didn't make sense. Eventually, the book found its way back to my bookshelf, and I picked it out the other day, to find some solidarity, and to fall in love with the book and the author all over again.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

That's the kind of author Mr. Salinger is to me - I wish he was a terrific friend of mine, for, despite the hypocrisy and despite the narcissism, I can just relate to his protagonist... and, despite popular opinion, that fans of the book are likely to be homicidal maniacs (John Lennon's assassin and Reagan's sniper were both obsessed with the book), well... I've never really felt the need to load up a shot gun, and go around shooting people who annoy me.

The thing about Holden Caulfield is, he's just trying to find his place in the world, where he's surrounded by phonies and pretentious folks. He's been expelled from school, for failing everything but English, and he doesn't really regret his expulsion. Instead, he leaves his school before his last date, and heads to New York, to spend a couple of days on his own, before he goes home to face the music, i.e. his parents. He rambles about life at the school, and then, the book continues with his adventures in New York, as he meets old friends and girlfriends, and reflects and introspects on his life.

He's surrounded by people who talk for the sake of talking, and who have the whole holier-than-thou attitude, which infuriates the living daylights out of him. God knows, I can relate.

He started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down on his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God - talk to Him and all - whenever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving in his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.

While reading the book this time 'round, Caulfield came across as someone struggling to deal with the real world, and he seemed to be quite bipolar - with his emotions wildly swinging from ecstasy to despondence in seconds.

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.

There's an element of hypocrisy, as he rambles on and digresses excessively, but there's so much innocence and idealism and impulsiveness, that he still comes across as someone you'd want to know in real life. He seems to have no regard social protocol, and finds it tiresome, to the extent that he's compelled to make things up, as and when he feels like... some of which is quite politically incorrect.

Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

I'm always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.

But what really gets me - like, really gets me - about this book is his relationship with his sister, Phoebe; and of course, his sentiments about Allie, his dead brother. When he's asked by his roommate to write a descriptive essay for him on any subject, he chooses to write about Allie's baseball mitt, which has poems scribbled all over.

So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. […] God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair.

How can something like that not choke you up? Or make you melt? Or not make you love the protagonist unconditionally? It's so simple, yet so profound. So plain, yet so beautiful. And then - how can you blame Caulfield for treating the world with such utter disdain, when the world has really not been good to him, and taken his younger brother away from him? I think it's easy to say, "get over it" or feel like slapping him to knock him into his senses, but when one feels like the world is unjust, they need time to grieve and come to terms with things at their own pace. Everyone handles things differently. Everyone's way of rationalising things vary.

And when eventually, the title of the book is explained, it's just... perfect.

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like — "

"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."

"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."

She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.

"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

There's something metaphoric about the above quote; it's not literal. It's an element of having the urge to save people before they go down the slippery slope - much like Holden's done, but there's been no one to catch him, or save him. And the vulnerability and utopian fantasy that comes to light here is just gut-wrenching really.

I can read this book over and over again, and it's one of those books I always turn to when things aren't looking up, or I'm ruing the state of affairs around me. And it always makes me feel better. And it always restores my faith in people, ironically enough. I don't think I can read this book too many times, for with each read, it just gets better and better.

Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat

Oh, for such a small novella (tautology?), The Driver's Seat covers so much, with a dark plot, completely mental characters and just bizarreness all around! Lise, a thirty-something year old woman, is stuck in a dull office job for a decade or so, and she's about to embark on her first vacation. At the very outset, we discover that Lise is completely and utterly nuts. Like flips out in a shop, while looking for a dress to travel in, when the salesperson tells her it's made from stain-resistant material... so much so that she walks out of the store, as she is affronted by the insinuation that she does not eat properly. When she finally finds an outfit to wear ("a lemon-yellow top with a skirt patterned in bright V's of orange, mauve and blue.' and a coat over the top 'narrow stripes, red and white with a white collar") during her travels, the reader is left truly bewildered, by the sheer garishness of it, which she justifies easily.

The colours go together perfectly. People here in the North are ignorant of colours. Conservative; old-fashioned. If only you knew! These colours are a natural blend for me. Absolutely natural.

Okay, so possibly, Lise is on the verge of a breakdown of sorts, but she does seem to have an agenda. She insists she's meeting her boyfriend at the destination, but one wonders if she knows the man in question, for she does incessantly use the phrase, he's not my type while interacting with any of the strange men she encounters from the start of her break till... well... her death. Again, early on, Spark lets us know about the fate of her character. Not the who, not the why, just the what.

She will be found tomorrow morning dead from multiple stab-wounds, her wrists bound with a silk scarf and her ankles bound with a man’s necktie, in the grounds of an empty villa, in a park of the foreign city to which she is travelling on the flight now boarding at Gate 14.

Lise's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic as the novella progresses. She lies glibly, steals a car, and just seems to have lost all regard for any semblance of normality. Everything as per her convenience. Everything on her terms. Bizarre, uncomfortable, gripping.

This is the third book by Muriel Spark that I have read, and it couldn't be more different than the other two. It's significantly darker, to begin with, and suspenseful. The characters are just - wow - I really hope I never have to interact with people like them! Honestly! And despite it being a mere hundred-odd pages, Spark covers a lot of ground, and the ending just fits perfectly. Almost as though everything makes perfect sense.

Sarah Winman - When God Was A Rabbit

What an amazing name for a book! That was the first thought that came to me when I saw this book at Waterstones. The gist sounded promising enough, and you've got to give a book with such a title a chance. And so I did. The initial chapters are indeed promising. However, as you keep turning the pages, it just keeps going downhill. And then you force yourself to finish it, and are left wondering.... why?!

Or well, that was my experience. The book spans about forty years, from 1968 when Elly (the narrator) was born in Essex to 9/11 and beyond. We meet Elly's brother, Joe; her parents; her lesbian aunt; Jenny Penny, her best friend and finally, Charlie - Joe's lover. And so the drama starts.

By the age of ten, Elly's been sexually abused (or it was so indicated, but never outright said), she's seen her brother in a gay relationship, her father's sister talks openly of her sexuality, her father nearing a mental breakdown, moved to Cornwall far away from her best friend, and... well, she's still perfectly fine with everything and carries on as though everything's hunky dory.

So many of the themes needed to be explored in greater detail, but... nothing. It was shallow and the characters one-dimensional. Even the brother-sister relationship, which started so encouragingly just... faded into nothing. The rabbit that her brother gifted her on one of her birthdays, and they decided to call god (much to her teacher's chagrin and horror) was a redeeming part of the book, specially when Elly believed he was anthropomorphic. However, even that storyline just drifted into nothing.

Yet, so many events were covered: the death of Princess Diana, the assassination of Lennon, the assassination of JFK, 9/11, cancer, a friend in prison, a Getty-like kidnapping. So much, and yet so little. So much promise, and yet such little delivery.

I was honestly disappointed after finishing this book. At only 330 odd pages, it's not really a chunkster or anything, but after about p280, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. Didn't care about the characters, didn't want to care about them either. I forced myself to finish the book, and well... I did.

Have you read this book? Am I judging it way too harshly?

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall

When Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize in 2009, I was slightly disappointed. It was one of those books on both, the longlist and the shortlist, that I didn't want to read. I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but there was zero motivation to read the book. A couple of weeks back though, I pulled it out from my Chunksters shelf, and decided to give it a go, prepared to abandon it midway. But, from the minute I started it till the time I turned the last page, I was totally mesmerised, and was kicking myself (not literally) for not pulling it down sooner.

Wolf Hall, at 650 pages, has Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, as the central character. While it's set before and during the English Reformation, the focus is not King Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn; instead, it's the man who was the King's right-hand man.

But - how does a boy, a blacksmith's son, who doesn't even know his own birthday - get to be the King's favourite, and play such an instrumental role in the events that shaped British history? That's the angle Mantel has approached this book from. Fictionalising some of Cromwell's life, while following the actual historical events of the 1500s, she casts Cromwell as a sympathetic loyal family man and not the devil that everyone thinks he is. What is actually incredible is though, while portraying him as the hero (and not the anti-hero), Mantel does share what everyone around Cromwell thinks of him, and some of the things said are far from flattering. The high opinion the reader has of Cromwell though - it never changes. It doesn't even waver. Haunted by personal tragedies, his father's wrath, experiences abroad after running away from home post being victimised by his father's drunken beating once again, Cromwell's rich character shines through.

The Reformation is essentially about King Henry VIII wanting to divorce Katharine the princess of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. To do this, the Church of England is forced to break away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, as the Pope would never void a legitimate marriage. King Henry VIII insists that Katharine was not a virgin when he married her, thereby meaning the marriage was never actually legit.

"Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of Constantine, son of St Helena, who was a Briton. Arthur, High King of Britain, was Constantine's grandson. He married up to three women, all called Guinevere, and his tomb is at Glastonbury, but you must understand that he is not really dead, only waiting his time to come again.

His blessed descendant, Prince Arthur of England, was born in the year 1486, eldest son of Henry, the first Tudor king. This Arthur married Katharine the princess of Aragon, died at fifteen and was buried in Worcester Cathedral. If he were alive now, he would be King of England. His younger brother Henry would likely be Archbishop of Canterbury, and would not (at least, we devoutly hope not) be in pursuit of a woman of whom the cardinal hears nothing good: a woman to whom, several years before the dukes walk in to despoil him, he will need to turn his attention; whose history, before ruin seizes him, he will need to comprehend.

Beneath every history, another history."

Real-world events of historical significance, the wars and economic concerns and a rich cast of characters all come together in Wolf Hall. The significance of the title is not lost on the readers as well. As Mantel says in an interview:

Wolf Hall, the Seymour House in Wiltshire, is where we're going at the end of this book. But of course, I chose it primarily for its metaphorical resonance: who could resist it? The whole of Henry's court is Wolf Hall.

Cromwell makes everything his business, his loyalty, first to the disgraced Cardinal and then to the King unequivocal. His occasional thoughts about Anne, who he doesn't really seem to like, are hilarious though.

A little later he hears that Anne has taken wardship of her sister's son, Henry Carey. He wonders if she intends to poison him. Or eat him.

Anne really doesn't come across as a likeable character or Queen though. Instead, the Princess of Aragon seems to have a lot more character, and subsequently, a lot more respect from Cromwell. His interactions with both are delicate, as he tries to make peace and do what is right by the King - not questioning him - which might, in fact, be his biggest failing. It's almost a case of the Henry saying "Jump" and Cromwell replying with "How high?"

Even when Thomas More is in the Tower, awaiting his punishment for not condoning the divorce or the split from Rome, he tries to prompt him to ask for forgiveness, saying Henry's a compassionate monarch. And it's parts like this that makes Cromwell come across as a nicer person than history might indicate. Obviously, certain chunks are fictional, but to take a hated character from history and to turn him into - well, Cromwell in Wolf Hall does take serious talent.

The power struggles, the jealousy, the humour and the emotional baggage that everyone's carrying - it all comes across, so stark, so clear, that every character is ambiguous. There's no black and white. There's no sinner, there's no saint. It's a lot like the real world today - everyone has their place, and everyone has their endgame. To manage that with such a myriad of characters (we actually do meet practically anyone and everyone who was involved in the Reformation, or had a part in Henry's Court or knew Cromwell) is incredibly commendable, and I found it quite difficult to judge the characters or find out if I liked them or not. Cromwell and his family though - loved them to bits. And the Cardinal.

My only gripe with this book was the way Mantel referred to Cromwell - always in the third person pronoun: He. Occasionally, paragraphs and pages had to be re-read, but that's a small gripe compared to just how fantastic I thought the rest of this book was. There is meant to be a sequel in the pipelines, and I can't wait to read that. Off we go to Wolf Hall, and see what transpires next...

Dexter - The Fifth Book's Out!

Hello, Some of you may have noticed my mild (!) obsession with Jeff Lindsay's Dexter. Sophie from OrionBooks sent me an email a couple of weeks back, informing me of the fifth Dexter book that's being released this month: Dexter Is Delicious. Dexter - a dad? Slowly becoming more and more human? My curiosity's piqued.

With the book being released tomorrow, on Sophie's request, below's an extract of the first couple of pages. Hop over to Shots to win some Dexter memorabilia tomorrow (Thursday, 18th August), and join in the fun!

I really do wish I'd read the book before writing this post, for I would have liked to give some insight into the book itself, but you can be rest assured that in due course, that will happen. I've been stupidly busy with work, and reading Wolf Hall which is a chunkster of immense proportions!

That said, the only comment I have on this book is, I'm having a hard time imagining Dexter as a father, and considering the fourth book was slightly... soapy... what's this book going to be like? Return to the engrossing nail biting world of Dexter, or further down the soapiness... I am hoping for the former, for what that's worth... apologies for not reading the book first though!

Without much further ado...

This part of the hospital seems like foreign country to me. There is no sense of the battlefield here, no surgical teams in gore-stained scrubs trading witty remarks about missing body parts, no steely-eyed ad- ministrators with their clipboards, no herds of old drunks in wheelchairs, and above all, no flocks of wide-eyed sheep huddled together in fear at what might come out of the double steel doors. There is no stench of blood, antiseptic, and terror; the smells here are kinder, homier. Even the colors are different: softer, more pastel, without the drab, battleship utilitarianism of the walls in other parts of the building. There are, in fact, none of the sights and sounds and dreadful smells I have come to associate with hospitals, none at all. There is only the crowd of moon-eyed men standing at the big window, and to my infinite surprise, I am one of them.

We stand together, happily pressed up to the glass and cheerfully making space for any newcomer. White, black, brown; Latin, African-American, Asian- American, Creole – it doesn’t matter. We are all broth- ers. No one sneers or frowns; no one seems to care about getting an accidental nudge in the ribs now and again, and no one, wonder of all, seems to harbor any violent thoughts about any of the others. Not even me. Instead, we all cluster at the glass, looking at the miraculous commonplace in the next room.

Are these human beings? Can this really be the Miami I have always lived in? Or has some strange physics experiment in an underground supercollider sent us all to live in Bizarro World, where everyone is kind and tolerant and happy all the time?

Where is the joyfully homicidal crowd of yesteryear? Where are the well-armed, juiced-up, half-crazed, ready-to-kill friends of my youth? Has all this changed, vanished, washed away forever in the light from yon- der window?

What fantastic vision beyond the glass has taken a hallway filled with normal, wicked, face-breaking, neck-snapping humans and turned them into a clot of bland and drooling happy-wappys?

Unbelieving, I look again, and there it is. There it still is. Four neat rows of pink and brown, tiny wig- gling creatures, so small and prunish and useless – and yet it is they who have turned this crowd of healthy, kill-crazy humans into a half-melted splotch of dribbling helplessness. And beyond this mighty feat of magic, even more absurd and dramatic and unbelievable, one of those tiny pink lumps has taken our Dark Dabbler, Dexter the Decidedly Dreadful, and made him, too, into a thing of quiet and contemplative chin spittle. And there it lies, waving its toes at the strip lights, utterly unaware of the miracle it has performed – unaware, indeed, even of the very toes it wiggles, for it is the absolute Avatar of Unaware – and yet, look what it has done in all its unthink- ing, unknowing wigglehood. Look at it there, the small, wet, sour-smelling marvel that has changed everything.

Lily Anne.

Three small and very ordinary syllables. Sounds with no real meaning – and yet strung together and attached to the tiny lump of flesh that squirms there on its pedestal, it has performed the mightiest of mag- ical feats. It has turned Dexter Dead for Decades into something with a heart that beats and pumps true life, something that almost feels, that so very nearly resembles a human being.

Alice Munro - Too Much Happiness

Too Much Happiness is a collection of short stories by internationally-acclaimed writer, Alice Munro. Not being a big fan of short stories, I always start a collection tentatively, not really expecting to enjoy it, but hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Munro's Runaway, for example, was fantastic. Too Much Happiness is a bit of an ironic name for this collection. While reading the first few stories, it felt like the stories kicked off right about the time the "happiness" ended in the protagonist's lives... when everything seemed to be hunky-dory, and then the world came crashing down. The stories, in their simplicity and their profundity, explored how the protagonists reacted, and gave a tremendous insight into the workings of a human mind.

Like I've said before, it's this simplicity that makes Munro's work absolutely breathtaking. There's no cliffhangers. There's no incredible twists. It's about the brittleness of human relationships - nothing out of ordinary, nothing spectacular, but just... something that's so universal that it touches the reader, and makes the reader root for the protagonists; empathise with them and sympathise with them. Reading Munro isn't an escape from reality. It's facing reality head-on.

She had always been such a reader – that was one reason, Rich had said, that she was the right woman for him; she could sit and let him alone[...]. She hadn’t been just a once-through reader, either. The Brothers Karamazov, The Mill on the Floss, The Wings of the Dove, The Magic Mountain, over and over. She would pick one up, planning to read that one special passage, and find herself unable to stop until the whole thing was redigested. She read modern fiction, too. Always fiction. She hated to hear the word “escape” used about fiction. She once might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape.

All that said though, I did find this collection a tad inferior to Runaway. A couple of the stories just didn't resonate with me, and I was left thinking, this is a tad pointless; or, I really don't get this... It seemed to unrealistic in the oh-so-realistic web of fiction that Munro spins. Fiction and Free Radicals are two of the stories. Even Dimensions, the first story, had me confused. It was tragic, but... I just couldn't relate to the main character.

On the other hand, stories like Face and Child's Play were mind-blowing though, and if nothing else, I can't recommend those two stories enough. It's stories like these that keep me going back to the world of short stories, and as soon as I had finished this anthology, I picked up yet another one of her books, simply because they are meant to be read, treasured and then re-read, just for the odd glimpses they give us into life, reality and everything else.

Jussi Adler-Olsen - Mercy

It's been a fantastic weekend, with Sunday seeing me curled up in bed for the better half of the day, with this fantastic thriller, and a big bag of M&Ms. For me, it's kind-of hard to imagine that Scandinavia has a dark underbelly. What with the strong economy, the idyllic fjords and the breathtaking mountains, it's almost like a slice of heaven. Even the events in Oslo on July 22 seem so surreal... so un-Scandinavian, so wrong...

Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy put Scandinavian crime-fiction on the literary map, and since then, there seems to be a sudden emerge of crime fiction from the Nordic countries. Jussi Adler-Olsen's Denmark-based thriller is the latest, and while it hasn't won any accolades yet, it has spent over a year on the Danish charts, and the English translation seems to have gotten rave reviews. So, I just had to read it.

And I loved it. Finishing the five-hundred page thriller in a day - that should say it all, really. In fact, I would say it was superior to Larsson's Millennium trilogy; if for nothing else, the book actually seems to be edited! And there is no product placement. Always a bonus.

Department Q is a newly opened department within Homicide for cold cases, and it's headed by the lazy quirky detective, Carl Mørck. Mørck's recovering from a hellish previous case, where one of his colleagues was killed and the other is still hospitalised, paralysed neck-down. Mørck is a difficult character to deal with - good at what he does, but non-conformist, brusque and slightly eccentric. So, when he's relegated to this new department, with the help of his new assistant, Syrian immigrant, Assad, after much procrastination, Mørck starts tackling the cases sent down to his basement office. The fact of the matter remains that his colleagues want him out of their hair, and in no one really cares as to what happens down in Department Q. Oh, the politics at the workplace.

On the top of the pile is the case of Merete, a young beautiful politician who vanishes on a ship some five years earlier, without a trace. No one knows of her whereabouts, and there are no suspects. In a parallel narrative, we meet Merete, only to discover that she is still alive, and being held captive. She doesn't know who the kidnappers are... but they keep asking her just the one question: to figure out why she's being held. Merete's narrative goes back in time, to a few weeks before the kidnapping, and it's up to the reader to start figuring out the whodunnit.

Interleaving chapters explore Merete's life - her reflections while being in a dark chamber of sorts, and the struggle to retain her sanity - and the investigation launched by the two members of Department Q. Merete's a strong female protagonist, not a "wimpy heroine" which is refreshing. She's not submissive, she's not subservient, at any point, and she rationalises her way through the hell she is going through.

A multi-layered narrative, fast-paced chapters, a tinge of humour, interesting characters and a fantastic plot make this book absolutely unputdownable. As the mystery unravels, it is not incredibly challenging to put the pieces together, but there are enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing and biting her nails while reading the book.

So, if you're a fan of crime-thrillers, I recommend this extremely highly. I'm already looking forward to the next book in this series. Where will Department Q go next?

Philippe Claudel - Brodeck's Report

If there was ever a book that just made you feel slightly uneasy, a tad queasy, very uncomfortable, but still had you hooked, this would be it. You have Brodeck, who survived being treated like a dog - literally - in a prisoner-of-war camp, in France, during an unnamed war, albeit implicitly it suggests that the war is World War II. He returns to his village, a changed man, and as he goes through the motions of ordinary life, he is still haunted by the past. The growing xenophobia and animosity in the village doesn't really help either.

We had to go down on all fours, like the dogs, and eat our food without using anything but our mouths, like the dogs.

Most of my fellow prisoners refused to do it. They are dead. As for me, I ate like the dogs, on all fours and using only my mouth. And I am alive.

Sometimes when the guards were drunk or had nothing else to do, they amused themselves by putting a collar and leash on me. I had to crawl around like that on all fours. [...] I had to strut and turn round in circles and bark and hang my tongue out and lick their boots.

The book has two parallel narratives (jumping from one to the other): one of Brodeck's present, and one of his past. In the present-day, Brodeck has been requested by his fellow villagers to write a report on the Ereigniës (i.e. "the thing that happened") with Anderer, the Other. Anderer was a stranger that arrived in the village, in colourful robes, on a donkey and a horse, with artistic skills. His name remains an unknown, and the initial friendliness of the villagers soon descends to animosity, so much so that he is murdered. The unmentioned refrain is, it had to be done. At the outset of his report, Brodeck states that he had nothing to do with it, and left to him, he'd never speak of it again.

As he recounts the events that transpired since the day the Other arrived in the village, he takes various unpleasant trips down memory lane, remembering the horrors of his past, and the choices he made to survive. Survival of the fittest mutates to survival of the ones willing to do anything to survive, no matter how degrading or self-abasing it is; and the thing - the only thing - that encourages this complete submission from Brodeck is his adoptive mother, and his lover, and to return to them, safe and sound.

"Those were two years of total darkness. I look upon that time as a void in my life - very black and very deep - and therefore I call it the Kazerskwir, the crater. Often, at night, I still venture out on to its rim."

The writing, the metaphors, the imagery is both, beautiful and poignant. And of course, heartbreaking. The mind boggles, that people can be so cruel, and on reading about some of the events, my stomach churned, and I had to remind myself that this was fiction. To quote Wordsworth, have I not reason to lament what man has made of man?

If you have an interest in WWII literature, I really can't recommend this book enough. I don't know if Claudel has written anything else or not, but I would be curious to read some of his other works, to see how they hold in comparison. Any ideas?

This was read for Paris in July, hosted by Karen at BookBath and Tamara at ThymeForTea. It's not a cheery happy summer book, but it was a fantastic read, and most of the times, that's all that matters.

In For A Long Week...

I suspect that the upcoming week is going to see me putting in sixteen to eighteen hours of work a day, as we have a big deadline looming, and are terribly behind schedule. While I am toying with the idea of taking a sleeping bag to work, and just curling up underneath my desk, where, when the lights are out, the mice play, I really think I should refrain from doing so. With a forty-five minute commute each way, though, I do want some recommendations on books to read. I don't want to read anything heavy, or super-chunky. Just... easy-to-read light books, which I can race through and enjoy.

As of now, I'm contemplating:

• Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness
• Colleen McCullough's Tim

Do you have any other recommendations? Anything from this list that jumps out? Some Du Maurier? Some Murakami?

Help, please. Thanks, and hope your week's looking slightly better than mine. Just slightly. :)