All the Birds Singing, by Evie Wyld

I read Wyld's first book After the Fire,A Small Still Voice a few years ago and loved the suspense she creates.  Eager to read this, I was not disappointed.

The main character is a woman with a complicated past, but we are not presented with all the details right away.  Wyld doles out details and time periods slowly as the novel progresses.  We start with a woman working a lonely sheep ranch, and go through five distinct periods of her life that made her the isolated woman that she is now.  She's tough, she's vocal, and she has scars both emotionally and physically.

The push and pull of the book that creates the suspense is the way Jake (the protagonist, female) is drawn out.  Aside from her past and her avoidance of social interaction which instinctively tells us there may be a good reason for that, there is also a current problem on her ranch that also is tense.  There's devastation everywhere, and she's riding a wave of emotional locations from childhood memories to current fears.

Wyld populates the book with well-drawn characters, few of whom you'd actually like to meet.  A ghastly lot.  Then there's the surprise of finding a rain-soaked stranger standing in the path of her extremely isolated ranch.  He seems nice.  But given her interaction with the human race in the past, can she trust him?  Can he trust HER?

The suspense leaves you breathless (I know that's a cliche but in this case very much appropriate).  I kept reading faster to get more details about the "why" of what was going on, as well as the "who" that is making mysterious things happen. Dialogue is crisp and realistic, the location gorgeous but frightening.

This is a meditative reading experience, much in the style of Tim Winton's The Riders or Dirt Music.

The Canal by Lee Rourke

Flat-screen monitors, an old park bench, the "Park Crew", suicide bombers, swans, an Airbus A320, an Audi TT 225, an unknown woman at a funeral, boredom...

All of these things factor together to make The Canal by Lee Rourke a fascinating glimpse into boredom.  How can boredom be interesting?  Don't we avoid it?  The unnamed narrator has left his job, spending his days ruminating on life on an old bench near a canal in downtown London.  It's not the most scenic location:  dirty water, a roving gang, commuters, and the occasional coot or swan may pass nearby, but no one seems to sit.  Until him.

As he sits, he imagines the lives of the people who, quite literally, cross his path and he reflects on his own experiences.  Having the freedom to just sit is something he's not used to:  "it's the power of everyday boredom that compels people to do things-even if that something is nothing."  He notices that all the efforts to avoid boredom, usually in order to be more productive or to entertain, never really accomplish anything.  It is 'found' time, an appreciation for not filling every moment, that makes time more meaningful for him.  And this he does, spending more and more time at the canal.    It is only after the pace of his life has slowed that the really exciting and life-changing events begin to happen.  But this is no new-age inspirational story.  What he discovers are terrible crimes and intentional cruelties, all tied together by acts done out of boredom.

"I've often thought that we seek reality in places and not in ourselves....We need things, extra things that help us to make sense of it all;  we need the space where things can happen, where these spaces become a thing-it is only at that point, when space becomes a thing to us, that we truly feel real."  The narrator considers the nature of time as an object, one to be treasured.  The different characters he meets are similarly lost, filling up time without understanding that their actions are actually just throwing it away.  "It baffles me why people are so obsessed with trying to fill this time with holidays, cars, designer clothes, technology, energetic sports, et cetera.  Why would they want time to pass by quickly?...Those who bemoan the speedy passing of time at the end of their life are surely those same people who tried to fill it up with things to quicken its passing anyway, aren't they?"

The novel is brief:  we know little about the narrator's appearance, home, or prior job.  He doesn't even have a cell phone.  We know small details about his family but the impression is that he doesn't see them.  He's a complicated figure:  he is fascinated by flight, admiring the planes descending into Heathrow, and yet he's nearly motionless himself.  Throughout the remainder of the story, the concepts of time and flight intersect, and the denouement finds both fractured.  The effect is complex and mysterious and one of those rare books that may yield more insight by being read again.

Special thanks to Megan Halpern of Melville House for the Review Copy.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka

Despite the title, there's much more to this novel than tractors.  It's really more of a fable about a family coming to a realization that the past, namely their history as immigrants from the Ukraine, never really goes away.  It begins with the death of the mother, a thrifty and conscientious woman with two bickering daughters.  Their previously eccentric father, an inventor of sorts, becomes increasingly unbalanced and ends up marrying a blonde bombshell from Ukraine, fifty years his junior. 

The storyline goes as you would expect it, and there are no real surprises.  The underlying theme of identity is emphasized with tragic and comic stories from their childhood.  At points it becomes a slapstick comedy of the strangest proportions with the lovesick old man and his embarrassed daughters.  Things seem to resolve a little easier than would be predicted, but with a fable they usually do.

This is a fast paced and witty read.  I didn't find myself particularly drawn to any of the characters, and much was left simmering at the surface without real depth.  To really enjoy this, I'd suggest having a map of Europe at hand, because much is made of locations and journeys.