Book Review: Phantom by Jo Nesbo

Title: Phantom
Author: Jo Nesbo
Publisher: Harvill Secker, Random House UK
ISBN: 978-1846555220
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 400
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Everyone who was a Swedish crime writer came to front after Stieg Larsson. Stieg’s entry in the popular crime fiction stream through the highly popular Millennium Trilogy paved way for all of them. One of the writers being Jo Nesbo, for which I am glad and thankful.

I have read all the Harry Hole (Nesbo’s protagonist and major detective) novels and been thoroughly entertained by all of them. When I got the opportunity to review Nesbo’s latest Harry Hole novel, “Phantom”, I was ecstatic. Phantom is a riveting read (like most of his earlier books), tightly plotted and fast-paced. The proverbial, never a dull moment is most appropriate to this book.

Harry Hole returns to his home city. Oslo has changed. The drug task force has been successful in erasing the heroin problem from the city. A new drug menace has risen and it’s been delivered by a completely faceless and ruthless gang. The Eastern Europeans are there to stay and aren’t taking no for an answer. Oslo has also had a facelift in its structure. The dirt exists, only needs to be dug deep.

Harry is back and is not wanted or needed anymore. His former girlfriend Rakael’s son Oleg is in trouble. Arrested for murder of his friend Gusto (barely a young boy) and involved with the new drug gang. Harry but of course has taken it on him to save Oleg and find out the real murderer. At the same time, the new gang and the old one do not want Harry alive. It is where the action starts.

The threads are well-connected throughout the book. The book is not cluttered by the over-complication that existed in the earlier books. More so Don Bartlett has provided a brilliant translation keeping in mind Harry’s jokes and the underbelly of Oslo and its description as Nesbo would have originally written.

Phantom’s strength is that it can be a standalone book and readers do not have to refer to the previous Harry Hole books to make sense of what is happening. It is however great to start reading about this detective and what he does right from the beginning to get more perspective. Nesbo’s writing as usual hits the sweet spot of crime and mystery. Phantom is somewhat bleak and realistic portrayal of the drug culture and its impact. The book has clever twists and does not get sentimental, which could have been the danger. It is a captivating read for sure. Top-Drawer.

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Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Title: The Night Circus
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Publisher: Harvill Secker, Random House UK
ISBN: 978-1846555244
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Pages: 400
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

I am not the one who would willingly read novels from the fantasy genre. Somehow fantasy and I don’t go together. However, when I received a copy of The Night Circus, I knew this book was unlike any other fantasy book. In fact, I would say it charmed the pants off me. The Night Circus is a breath-taking book and I cannot help but gush and rant about it. It is that brilliant.

The story follows Marco and Celia, two young children pitted against each other by their older and clearly vaguely amoral guardians. A game is set up, a game to which the rules are unclear and the winner can take decades to determine.

These two young people are raised unconventionally, studying magic under their tutors’ philosophies, all the while knowing there will be a competition between the two of them some day. Enter impresario Chandresh Lefèvre, who has imagined something wondrous. He explains:

“More than a circus, really, like no circus anyone has ever seen. Not a single large tent but a multitude of tents, each with a particular exhibition. No elephants or clowns. No, something more refined than that. Nothing commonplace. This will be different, this will be an utterly unique experience, a feast for the senses. Theatrics sans theater, an immersive entertainment. We will destroy the presumptions and preconceived notions of what a circus is and make it something else entirely, something new.”

Their arena? But of course the Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams). But the plot focuses on more than just the battle between these two (which involves snow gardens, wishing trees and mazes) it looks at the dynamics of all the relationships that exist as a result of this game; and the effect the game has on the wellbeing of the characters.

Some characters flourish within the confines of the circus whilst others go decidedly downhill, struggling with the concept that their lives do not fully belong to them, that they are being manipulated in ways they could never have imaged. Poppet and Widget were by far my favourite characters, children of the Night Circus, they are gifted and not entirely what you would expect from normal children. I loved the way Bailey was fitted into the plot; it was subtle and very elegant.

The circus, it is said, “arrives without warning.” Not so this novel. There have been all kinds of pre-pub buzz and hype for this title. There’s a reason; this book is so special that almost all who read it take note. Ms. Morgenstern’s tale transcended the page and brought true enchantment to my oh-so-ordinary life. As it happens, one of the characters could be speaking for the author herself:

“I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will.”.

It’s amazing that this is Morgenstern’s first novel, the writing is haunting and fanciful; befitting of such an enigmatic circus. She handles the descriptions of the various circus tents and acts beautifully, it is never monotonous hearing about the circus, in fact, I wish she’d publish a whole separate book outlining each and every detail. She ties all the elements together with a grace that seems effortless.

Some have compared The Night Circus with Audrey Niffenegger and yes, I can see slight similarities given that both authors are visual artists. Others mention Alice Hoffman and yes, I can see some elements in common but Erin Morgenstern has created a unique world with the Cirque de Rêves and for those who are on the right wavelength she has provided a pathway to a singularly enchanting universe, one in which my inner child revelled. Highly recommended for all “reveurs”/dreamers.

Here is the gorgeous book trailer:

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Book Review: The Milkman in the Night by Andrey Kurkov

Title: The Milkman in the Night
Author: Andrey Kurkov
Publisher: Harvill Secker, Random House UK
Genre: Literary Fiction
ISBN: 978-1846553981
Pages: 480 pages
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Semyon and Veronika, Egor and Irina, Dima and Valya: three pleasant, affectionate couples in the madhouse which is post-communist Kiev in the Ukraine.

Semyon is the highest status of the three. He’s chief bodyguard to Parliamentary Deputy Gennady Ilyich by day; at night he seems to turn into someone else as he sleepwalks around the freezing empty city streets to meet up with a mysterious blond.

Egor is a security guard who encounters country girl Irina, a single mother who works in Kiev as a wet nurse. She wishes she knew the name of the child who’s drinking her milk, but maybe that’s not quite where the milk is going.

Dima is also in the law-enforcement business, but in a humbler capacity at the airport where he’s a handler for the luggage-sniffing dog Shamil. The story starts on the baggage carousel as Dima’s dog finds something unusual about a black plastic suitcase. The baggage handlers sense an opportunity, and Dima is easily persuaded to look the other way as they make off with their treasure: a caseful of drug ampoules. But what actually is the drug? The baggage handlers don’t know or care, selling them on the street for $20 a throw as `imported cancer cures’.

The fates of the three couples unfold and intertwine in a thoroughly naturalistic way. That is to say the characters are real people who you get to care about. What makes Kurkov’s novel unusual is the ludicrous surrealism with which he surrounds them. Dima’s cat samples some of the drug and is transformed into a ferocious fighter for justice, roaming Kiev’s streets in the dead-time of the night seeking out bad people and lethally attacking them; Egor gets irritated by security guards who are messing Irina around and proceeds to shoot up their car causing a serious accident (there are no consequences); it turns out that everyone the three protagonists know is connected to a shady organisation called “the Embassy of the Moon” which then proceeds to take political power: obviously there is no hint here that the rulers of the Ukraine might be lunatics!

The first few short chapters throw the reader straight into the story and require a little patience. Once it gets going however, the novel is increasingly addictive provided you appreciate the author’s playful and surrealist style. Kurkov’s Ukraine is deeply conservative in the rural countryside, where traditions lie deep and are still observed. In the capital Kiev, the picture is more complex: the old authoritarian state is still there, everything is done through patronage and connections. Corruption is ubiquitous: everyone is a petty criminal, calculating what they can steal or fix, what rules they can bend and get away with. Attitudes to women are, let us say, traditional.

The many threads to this novel increasingly diverge in the last few pages. It’s then drawn together in an epilogue of a page and a half. Kurkov writes with a charming simplicity, which can occasionally become slightly too basic. As in his previous books, a focus on the senses, particularly smells, can be seen in Kurkov’s writing. He is unafraid of making comments about Ukrainan politics (I wonder what he thinks about the recent arrest of Yulia Tymoshenko?). Finally, I love the way that the plot-lines fall woozily together at the end to make for a pleasingly ambiguous but hopeful ending.

Note: The translator, Amanda Love Darragh, has done a great job in conveying Kurkov’s whimsical style.

Book Review: Cain by Jose Saramago

Title: Cain
Author: Jose Saramago
Publisher: Harvill Secker, Random House UK
Genre: Literary Fiction, Mythological
ISBN: 978-1846554469
Pages: 160
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4.5/5

If Jose Saramago has ever blown your mind with past novels such as Blindness or The Double, get ready for another masterpiece. If you’ve never read Saramago, Cain is a great place to begin. This concise piece of cerebral beauty demonstrates many of the author’s greatest strengths. Translator Margaret Jull Costa also deserves strong praise. Translating Saramago’s stylized syntax and occasional wordplays must require an incredible amount of contemplation and creativity. Costa did the author’s work brilliant justice.

Have you ever read a Bible story and wondered what on Earth (or, perhaps, what in heaven’s name?) were the characters thinking? In this tale, which begins in the Garden of Eden and follow Cain’s (of Cain and Abel) life, Saramago speculates, with courage. Saramago’s Eve, Cain, and others ask critical questions; even angels such as Azrael proffer pointed comments. God appears in various forms throughout the story and answers many Whys, which many characters interpret as evidence of a flawed and cruel belief system.

God criticized Cain for Abel’s murder and Cain, in turn, charged God with complicity; he shouldn’t have shown undeserved favoritism to his brother. The two agree on a compromise of Cain’s sentence based on the shared responsibility for Abel’s death. Cain escapes capital punishment, but gets a disfiguring mark on his forehead and is banished to wander, like an illegal alien without a country. Contrary to what seems to be recorded in the Bible, there were other people present on earth at that time, many living in organized cities. Adam and Eve and their descendants were a special divine project, an experiment that didn’t work.

Cain drifts from place to place, like a protagonist in a sci-fi movie. He finds himself in one episode after another, moved by some force, not God, who doesn’t keep tract of him. The new place might be the present or the future. He is plucked back and forth, as in a roller coaster ride. He finds himself in a town called Nod where its queen takes a fancy to him and they engage in sexual escapades until the queen’s husband becomes tired of the affair and embarrassed, and tries to have Cain killed.

After this adventure, Cain finds himself following Abraham on a mission to sacrifice his son Isaac, and intervenes by seizing Abraham’s hand. An angel sent by God to stop Abraham arrives late due to a problem, he says, with one of his wings. Cain is then hurled back in time to watch the Tower of Babel incident, then shunted forwards in time to when God and two angels visit Abraham and Sarah and foretell Isaac’s birth, followed by a slight shift to Lot’s house and the destruction of Sodom, then to the Israelites’ worship of the golden calf, Joshua at Jericho where contrary to reports, the sun didn’t stand still, Job and his afflictions where God is complicit with Satan, and Noah and the flood.

The book is jammed with Cain’s disgust at the countless murders committed by God, as at Sodom, the Tower of Babel, the golden calf, the flood, among others. Why, he wonders, was God disturbed at his single murder when he commits so many? He decides to take revenge against God.

Perhaps the book’s one notable flaw is the occasional feeling of a forced plotline. Saramago worked hard to place Cain himself either on the sidelines or in the midst of several Old Testament stories with which he is not normally associated. The transitions into these stories feel like a stretch. Once Cain has joined the action, however, the story tends to flow.

Saramago walks a remarkably fine line in remaining respectful both to believers and nonbelievers. Had he lived past publication, it would be fascinating to hear him respond to the criticism this book will doubtless garner. He could handle it. Cain deserves a place among the best fiction in the speculative Biblical genre, including the author’s own The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

Book Review: I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive by Steve Earle

Title: I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive
Author: Steve Earle
Publisher: Harvill Secker, Random House UK
Genre: Literary Fiction
ISBN: 978-1846555084
PP: 256 pages
Price: £12.99
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Doc Ebersole is a disgraced physician, who lost his license and is rumored to have given Hank Williams his fatal does of morphine. He spends his days performing abortions, patching up knife and gunshot wounds while trying to earn enough to keep his own heroin habit afloat during the early 1960′s in a down and out area of racist San Antonio. He takes care of a young Mexican girl, Graciela, who almost dies from blood loss and she stays with him long after her recovery. Doc is haunted by the ghost of Hank, who goads him into his continuing drug use, but now finds that Graciela can see him and helps cure Doc from his addiction. There are more miracles at the hand of Graciela where people are uplifted and their maladies cured quickly. The local priest gets wind of the miracles and begins to investigate which leads to the an interesting conclusion.

I am just amazed that this first novel from Steve Earle is so tightly paced and cleverly written. It reminded me a great deal of the wackiness that appears in Christopher Moore’s books through the ghostly voice of Hank Williams. There are also the magical properties like in Sarah Addison Allen’s stories where under-the-radar miracles occur quietly in the form of Graciela. The story mixes Catholicism with Mexican folklore during the early Sixties where social change is so prevalent and ties it all to the shooting of JFK. This work helps you understand why Steve Earle is such a successful songwriter since this book is so lyrically alive and paints a wonderful picture with an economy of words. This is the perfect book for any one looking to expand their paranormal horizons with a bit of magic and ghosts.

Earle has written a masterful reflection on loneliness, addiction, despair and redemption. With the hand of a seasoned writer he weaves in abortion, liberation theology, Mexican theological mysticism and an indictment on the moral bankruptcies of the priesthood.

This is not an easy tale. It is grit and dirt and despair. But oh, is it beautifully written and chock full of characters worth remembering. Read it.

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Book Review: In the Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

Title: In the Sea there are Crocodiles
Author: Fabio Geda
Publisher: Harvill Secker, Random House UK
Genre: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-1846554766
PP: 224 pages
Price: £10.99
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

The first thing I thought of when I completed this book was how easy most kids have it in our part of the world. That’s not a bad thing, but perhaps it would be good for our pampered children to see how the real world is, and how an alternate reality is the case for most of the children worldwide.

The novel starts out explaining that it’s fictionalized, as the experiences told were based on true recollections that had to be verified. For the most part, though, it’s true as to what he remembers of his childhood. That makes sense, because it starts with a ten-year-old boy, and how clearly can their recollections be from their youthful perspective?

Akbari’s mother takes him across the border and out of his village and leave him there. She leaves him to a life of the unknown, hoping it is better than what is in store for him with the Taliban in power. We often hear the word and shrink of its visage, get angry with its connotation, or conjure of an image of a turbaned warrior with dusty skin and a Soviet automatic weapon. In reality- the Taliban play a very small role in this book- they are offered up as a reason for escape, but nothing more.

Akbari makes his way across the middle east and into Europe, eventually settling in Italy. Over the course of his journey he relates a sea crossing, getting deported multiple times, run ins with the police, and finding friends, kindness, and hope along the way. The story is stark- details are not really fleshed out with the insistence that they don’t matter- he is trying to tell a story, trying to capture the essence of his journey and has no time for the subtle nuances we come to expect in situations like this. Not deeply philosophical, this might be a turn-off for some.

Along the way there are false friends, painful losses, and some agonizing choices. It’s hard to imagine this is just a kid. What he has to go through is too much for an adult, much less a child.

In the narrative, there are pauses when the storyteller and the Italian author who writes it converse. These sort of bring you to present day. It’s an interesting presentation. They sort of help you digest what you just read. There’s very much a sense of “once upon a time” to this.

Some facts that astonished me was that the Taliban is made up of members that are of many ethnic groups, not just Afghanistans. I knew they were bad but their oppression is senseless. Also, I was amazed at his resilience. The way he kept going despite being abandoned.

A really good read, and I think it would be valuable for some spoiled kids to read and get a clue how well they have it. I know I’m making one of my kids read it, just for the reality check. There is violence but nothing outrageous.

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