Category: fiction

Reading List 2023

March

Tokyo Zodiac Murders by SHIMADA Soji, translated from the Japanese by Ross and Shika Mackenzie; (c1981) Pushkin Vertigo ed 2015
complex puzzle story

Killshot by Elmore Leonard, William Morrow 1989
tremendously entertaining, great dialogue leavens the tension

52 Pick-up by Elmore Leonard, Secker and Warburg 1974
first of his crime novels; a blazing fast read because I couldn’t put it down

The Boat of Longing by O.E. Rolvaag, translated from the Norwegian by Nora O. Solum; (c1933) Minnesota Historical Press 1985
a moving story of immigration, its hopes and costs; lovely, lyrical language in the descriptions of the sea and life in Norwegian fishing village (book group)

Picture in the Sand by Peter Blauner, Minotaur Books 2023
pure storytelling pleasure; a young Egyptian man caught up in the political turmoil of post-British Egypt in the 1950’s while working on the deMille production of The Ten Commandments

Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk, translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap; Knopf 2022
a tremendous novel, expansive in themes and engrossing in character and story; bubonic plague strikes a small island in the waning days of the Ottoman empire

Crashed by Timothy Hallinan, Soho Press 2012
a Hollywood comic crime novel with sharp writing and great characters; if you like this kind of thing, which I do, it’s a delight – I rationed the pages to savor the dialogue

In The Morning I’ll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty, Seventh Street Books 2014
1980’s Belfast, police detective solves a classic locked room mystery to catch an IRA bomber

Counting Sheep, A Celebration of the Pastoral Heritage of Britain by Philip Walling; Profile Books 2014
a remarkably interesting and enjoyable guide to all things sheep in the UK, historically and today; really a delightful book, especially for anyone who has enjoyed the sight of “woolies” dotting the hills and countryside of Britain

February

Idol, Burning by USAMI Rin, translated from the Japanese by YONEDA Asa; (c2020) Harpervia 2022
sympathetic portrayal of a teenage girl and her obsession with a J-pop idol; winner of Akutagawa Prize

Billie Starr’s Book of Sorries by Deborah E. Kennedy, Flatiron Books 2022
2nd grader Billie collects the “Sorry” excuses and explanations she hears from adults

Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta, George Braziller 1975
strongly autobiographical novel of a woman determined to be educated and independent; propulsive narrative takes Adah from childhood in Nigeria to the London slums as a young mother

A Death in Tokyo by HIGASHINO Keigo, translated by Giles Murray; (c2011) Minotaur Books 2022
a classic procedural with Detective Kaga; psychological insight, deeply moral

Evil Things by Katja Ivar, Bitter Lemon Press 2019
solid mystery story set in early 1950’s Finland, introduces an interestingly complex female detective who solves a tricky case in Lapland

Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo, Tom Doherty Books 2022
modest novella about the value and importance of stories, personally and culturally; set in an appealing China-ish fantasy world

Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Bloomsbury 2017
deceptively powerful novel; a story of lives disrupted in the post-colonial turmoil of 1970’s Zanzibar told in such measured subtle prose that I was immersed before I noticed my feet were wet

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker, (c1991) Scribner 2021
a very witty, very odd novel, a bit unsettling but wonderfully entertaining for the language and dark comedy (book group)

January

Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer, (c1944) Poisoned Pen Press 2021
a delightful entertainment, like the classic elements of a Golden Age mystery exuberantly exploding from a Christmas Cracker

The Heretic by Liam McIlvanney, Europa 2022
intricate procedural in darkest Glasgow

Gaia, Queen of Ants by Hamid Ismailov, translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega; Syracuse Univ. Press ed. 2020
the stories of intriguing empathetic characters, all shaped by the political turmoil of their homelands, are intertwined with myths and folktales of Central Asia; lots of food for discussion in Book Group

Double Wide by Leo W. Banks, Brash Books 2017
I’m calling this very entertaining western mystery/thriller ‘noir light’ – lots of tough and snappy dialogue, characters on the fringe of Southwest society, but the exbaseball player protagonist is just too likeable for Noir (that’s a good thing)

The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan, translated from the Ukrainian by R. Costigan-Humes and I. Stackhouse Wheeler (c2017) Yale University Press 2021
an intense, gripping story of war at the Ukrainian-Russian border as a trip across town to reach the orphanage becomes a three day nightmarish journey; brilliantly conveys the confusion of identity and loyalty in the community, the confusion and uncertainty of the military action, and the misery and suffering of everyone

The Marshal at the Villa Torrini by Magdalen Naab, (c1993) Soho Press 2009
one of an excellent series of mysteries set in Florence; beautifully written with a very appealing and singular detective character

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman, Viking 2022
the Thursday Murder Club solves a cold case in this third book of the improbably entertaining, witty, and warmhearted series

The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller, Europa 2022
subtle, exquisite prose; a story of finding a way out of the trauma and guilt from a tragic mistake, the possibilities of healing and reconciliation

2020 in books

I try always to carry a book with me for those times when I anticipate or fear I might have to wait – the doctor’s office, obviously, but to smooth all those little gap times between the activities in a day too.

“Waiting” is what this past year has been about and books have helped a lot. I read more, though not as much as I thought I would. Streaming K-Dramas helped a lot too, and going for walks. And of course, food must be prepared and the house cleaned even when largely housebound, so, all in all, more books were read but not an especially large total.

I read 77 books in 2020, 25 non-fiction and 52 fiction. 28 titles were works translated into English. The desire for escapist entertainment must account for the number of mysteries in the list, but the quality was generally quite high across all genres. It was a bit hard to pick only ten for the years’ “best” list. See the Post ‘Reading List 2020’ for more information on each book.

10+3 Favorites for 2020

Non-Fiction

A House in the Mountains by Caroline Moorhead
Black Count by Tom Reiss
Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson
The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas (transl. Spanish)

Fiction

The Return by Hisham Matar
Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb (transl. Hungarian)
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin (transl. German)
Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa (transl. Arabic)
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler (transl. German)
Measuring The World by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. German)

I reread The Lord of the Rings trilogy and must put it in the “always a favorite” category.

Special recognition in the ‘just plain fun’ category for The Glorious Hussar by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Best new-to-me mystery discovery is Death On Demand by Paul Thomas. The earlier titles in the short series aren’t readily available here. I liked this so much I sent to a bookseller in New Zealand for copies of the other four novels featuring Maori Detective Ihaka. The internet is good for some things!


wounds of melancholy

( in medieval Estonia, a student hopes to make a fresh start at a new University)

Laurentius sighed in exasperation, closed his eyes, and started making a serious effort to get to sleep. The carriage shook monotonously, the wheels engaging the furrows in the weathered road surface with a regular measured rhythm, like the swinging of a clock’s pendulum. He imagined that the carriage was a large golem made by Rabbi Eliyah, with people stuffed into its stomach like strips of paper, each one with the name of the Lord written on it. But how does that strip of paper feel inside the mchine’s stomach? Does it have its own place there, or is it just passing through, whiling the time away in boredom? What is it like inside a human? Where does the soul come from, and where does it go? What about inside his parakeet?

Laurentius shook his head and looked around uneasily. He didn’t want to get bogged down in those kinds of thoughts – he had to make sure he stayed rational. But he couldn’t help himself. Fragments of thoughts, individual sentences and memories permeated the edge of his consciousness like blood soaking into a bandage. This was the wound of his consciousness, which he dressed and treated, but to no avail. Laurentius had tried to immerse himself in learning, literature, theatre, other people’s company, anything to soothe this wound and help it heal. But it festered; the same thoughts kept recurring and the bad blood kept rising to the surface.

from The Willow King by Meelis Friedenthal

you’re old when…

“…maybe I’m getting old.”

“Don’t be cute. You’re not even fifty.”

“What’s that got to do with it? At my age, not long ago, people were already old, or almost. My father died at fifty-seven; my other didn’t live much longer. Now everybody wants to be young; I understand, but it’s a bit stupid. It seems to me the fun in all this is being young when you’re young and being old when you’re old; in other words: you’re young when you don’t have memories and you’re old when behind every memory you find a bad memory. I’ve been finding them for a while now.”

from the novel Outlaws by Javier Cercas

secrets will out

(After midnight an old classmate drops in on Inspector De Vincenzi at the police station.)

De Vincenzi looked at him. Why in the world was he here at this hour? And why had he come?

They had been classmates and friends. They were certainly friendly, but not, perhaps, close. Come to think of it, where could one find closeness these days, with men all hurling themselves towards their own destinies, with their own passions, their own needs and all the vices of the human body?

Each one of us has a secret, and the man with one he can admit to is fortunate.

from The Murdered Banker by Augusto De Angelis

tension rising in Death Going Down

Gaby heard the click of the receiver being replaced on the stand, then she moved away silently. Once she was in her bedroom and had got into bed, she took a packet of cigarettes from the drawer in her bedside table. Long hours unfurled ahead of her like an image multiplied in a house of mirrors. She smoked with relish, tricking her wakeful anxiety with the calm appearance of her gestures, her gaze lost in the whitish smoke that slowly dissipated in the darkness of the room.

from Death Going Down by Maria Angelica Bosco
translation by Lucy Greaves

…time has solidified

It’s only natural for a man, full of regrets and knowing he’ll die within hours, to be weak and make impossible requests. And then it’s equally natural for the person tending to that man to put on a cheerful front…so as not to let the dying man feel that he has been abandoned. Our final moments in this life aren’t generally an appropriate time for clear-eyed reflection; indeed, they always find us at our most sentimental. There’s no room left in them for rational thought, because time itself has solidified and expanded inside them like water becoming ice.

Khaled Khalifa from Death is Hard Work

a campaign worker’s lot is not a happy one

Yamasaki always wagered that he would be disillusioned; it was as if he kept up a constant bet with his youthful hopes. Yamasaki ranked as a genuine veteran in election campaigns, and he was absolutely indomitable, but a kind of masochistic fervor lodged within him. Corruption in an election or the victory of moneyed power did not in the lease surprise him; they seemed as natural as stones and horse dung along a road…(he was an) epicure of disillusion

After The Banquet by MISHIMA Yukio

Looking back, from A Month In The Country

…at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart–knowing a precious moment gone and we not there.

We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever–the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.

All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.

But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow.

A Month In The Country by J.L. Carr

For All The Gold In The World, a Mediterranean Noir

For the umpteenth time I came to the conclusion that families are complicated and that everything becomes clear only when it’s too late. And then all you’re left with is time to waste on your regrets.

I am very happy to meet Marco Buratti aka”the Alligator”, a self-styled “free man with an outlaw heart”, in the series of novels by Italian author Massimo Carlotto. Writers in many countries have adopted/adapted the style and themes of noir crime fiction to tell stories of their own contemporary urban world. It’s been exciting recently to find several small presses (Pushkin Press, Bitter Lemon, Europa’s World Noir series) offering some really fine Noirs in English translation.

The elements of the genre – a world-weary flawed detective, laconic style, interior monologue – easily fall into cliche or even parody. These novels are utterly dependent on the author’s skill with language. Tone is everything. In the hands of a real craftsman, the Noir combines the pleasures of a complex story with the satisfactions of philosophical reflection.

Here is the Alligator reflecting after the not altogether happy resolution of For All The Gold In The World:
I kept on keeping on while waiting for another case where we’d need to step in to help straighten things out. The solution was almost never as simple as determining truth. We needed to protect our clients’ interests and, as much as possible, put things right, while respecting the rules of free men with outlaw hearts.

The opening quotation about regret is classic noir, taken from the scene below.

I sighed. It had been a little more than twenty-four hours and I was already standing up my new girlfriend.
She was at work and I couldn’t call her. I wrote her a text in which the word “sorry” appeared three separate times.
I turned around and, since I was definitely running early, I left the highway and drove to a multiplex. I had no idea which movie to watch, basing my decision more or less on showtimes. I chose a movie by an Italian director. A famous multiple award-winning director. I’d always been deeply grateful to the auteur school of filmmaking, which had put me in touch with aspects of life I knew nothing about. I often left the theater shaken, sometimes filled with wonder. The movies fed me with stories of the civilian world, as we referred to it, and helped me to understand ordinary people. But I felt no envy. Their world was still one I didn’t like. Unlike Max the Memory, I’d never cherished the dream of changing it. I preferred to live on its outskirts.
That afternoon I was sucked into a story of old age and death, told with great delicacy. I sat there as the end titles scrolled past and was the last to leave. I leaned on my car and smoked a couple of cigarettes, immersed in memories of my early life, the life that ended the day I wound up in prison. For the umpteenth time I came to the conclusion that families are complicated and that everything becomes clear only when it’s too late. and then all you’re left with is time to waste on your regrets.
“You can’t change the past,” I muttered under my breath, pulling open the car door and rushing to slip the CD into the player…The memories slipped from my mind. [the music] had managed to persuade the past to grant me a truce.