As my book group is approaching its 5th year and its 50th book, a review of past reads shows that the overwhelming majority have had unhappy, nay downright miserable endings. One group member has been pleading for a happy book. So it was that Stuck-In-A-Book’s mention of unremitting cheeriness led to the swift inclusion of this 2005 Richard and Judy Book Club choice onto our list.

Now I try not to indulge in inveterate literary snobbery and so I do enjoy a smattering of chicklit here and there. The cover in itself was no turnoff. However, the addition of candy floss pink edged pages was one saccharine-tablet too many and I began to read with a firm determination not to enjoy this book.
Neither did I for about 120 pages. The candy floss allusion proving more than apt. Very sweet, dissolving to substancelessness after the initial taste. But just as suddenly I found myself charmed. It is quite an enjoyable read taken on its own terms. A cheerful (Stuck-In-A-Book was right!) book about newly-formed friendships, the girlishness of the late teens, the innocence of the 50’s, pop idolatry in the days before Elvis, mismatched couples. As a romantic comedy, it would make quite a good film. The more serious social history element, the declining wealth of the upper middle classes as war and death duties take their toll on both people and property, is wrapped in an absurd humour, effectively removing much of the pain if not the sharpened point.
The group finally categorised the read as a happy fairy-tale for grownups and the book averaged a respectable
rating.
I hope the group enjoyed the respite from mislit because we have The Lizard Cage coming up ….. and I can’t wait!
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The murder of 4 nuns and a visiting Swedish tourist in South Africa unleash a series of highly inventive but particularly brutal killings in Sweden. The killer has ice running through the veins. Mankell paces the revelations about the diverse modus operandi in such a way that the reader’s blood freezes over also. There are seemingly no connections between the victims. It is the nature of the case that a number of deaths must occur before a theory turns into a trail and Wallander and his team are on the way to cracking the case. That is the particular strength of this novel. The whodunnit, howdunnit, whydunnit elements are all incorporated but the emphasis is firmly on the how solved it. Without the long hours, false trails, sacrifice, exhaustion and stubborn dedication of the team, the killer could not be found.
Heinrich von Kleist’s 1810 novella, Michael Kohlhaas, is one of the most important in German literature, building a bridge between the classic and modern traditions. Quite by chance it shares an uncanny thematic link with Boell’s
influence on modern literature, most notably E L Doctorow’s modern classic Ragtime, with its direct homage to Kleist in the form of Coalhouse Walker.
When her younger sister, Daphne, commits suicide, Iris Tennant successfully applies, under a pseudonym, for the job of personal assistant to Lord Melfort, the Under-Secretary of War. This takes her to his estate in the Scottish Highlands and to the place of her sister’s death, where she encounters a intricate net of sibling rivalry, sexual jealousy and political treachery.
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is his answer to the treatment he received, treatment which did no service to his health. The novella is, in effect, a personal diatribe; a rant, if you will. Except it is anything but. The front cover blurb, courtesy of the Sunday Times, proclaims it “a marvel of compression and irony”. Just so. Boell’s anger controlled but his pen dripping with venom as he subjects his heroine Katharina Blum to the worst excesses of the gutter press.
It’s a sequel Fforde should not have written, despite the pressure from the Thursday Next fandom. It feels, dare I say this considering the overall premise of Fforde’s ultimate fantasy series, contrived. Set 14 years after its predecessor, Something Rotten, this book has too many narrative strands, each requiring major amounts of exposition to sustain the internal rationale. It’s mad and amusing in the usual Ffordian sense, but it descends rapidly into a wearying mania. And it’s clumsy with Fforde committing two cardinal sins:
As I said, this is exasperating from the man who wrote what is possibly my favourite chapter of all time - an episode guaranteed to lift me from the doldrums. Required reading particularly if you’ve ever wondered what would happen if the cast of Wuthering Heights began to attend anger management classes. Chapter 12 of The Well of Lost Plots is the work of genius.










