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.

Irish Journal by Heinrich Boll (travel memoir)

Translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz

At a pub before evening mass, Heinrich Boll observes a shrewish woman harassing and threatening a hungry child that she thinks is using too much vinegar on his chips. By chance Boll notes that "the savior was approaching"...a banged-up brute who pretends to kiss her hand, offers her a ten-shilling note, then interjects, "May I request you, Madam, to regard these ten shillings as sufficient payment for the six drops of vinegar?"

The woman takes the money, embarrassed, and the man left her with one last reminder, "May I moreover remind you that it is time for the evening service? Please convey my respectful regards to the priest."

Oh snap.  Such a moment captured is one of the unforgettable scenes in Boll's Irish Journal, a collection of essays he wrote about his visit to the Emerald Isle in the 1950s that comes across much like a love letter to the Irish people.  In the event above, he doesn't just leave it at his own observation, he brings it to the reader's consciousness, by making us wonder about the benefactor:

"The man who lives poetry instead of writing it pays ten thousand percent interest. Where was he, the dark, blood-stained drunk, who had had enough string for his jacket but not for his shoes?"

Just outside, in the same scene as above, he depicts the buildings:
"King John's Castle reared grimly out of the darkness, a tourist attraction hemmed in by tenements from the twenties, and the tenements of the twentieth century looked more dilapidated than King John's Castle of the thirteenth; the dim light from the weak bulbs could not compete with the massive shadow of the castle, everything was submerged in sour darkness."

The image he creates mixes characters caught between faith and tradition and modern change, yet still capable of vast generosity in the face of poverty.  Anger mixes with empathy, and somehow the way he connects the fight over "vinegar" to the "sour" light makes it contain so much depth.  And of course, the bum's reminder to the woman about mass, a dig at her less-than-charitable spirit, shows how Boll could see the irony in the situation.

Many of the images that Boll writes about are not far off from our pop culture image of Ireland, a place romanticized by many as a place of quaint cottages and endless green.  (Those of us unfortunate enough to have seen the film, PS I Love You have further embellished that image with scenes of Gerard Butler and Jeffrey Dean Morgan meandering the countryside, spilling charm everywhere.  Neither of whom are Irish.) Having come off a semester of Irish Studies, I realize that the reality is far different, yet the timing of Boll's trip and his ability to write about the people of Ireland without delving into the politics make this a lovely read. 


In "Skeleton of a Human Habitation", Boll writes of the abandoned village he discovers on a walk with his family.  "Everything not made of stone gnawed away by rain, sun, and wind--and time, which patiently trickles over everything; twenty-four great drops of time a day, the acid that eats everything away as imperceptibly as resignation."  He describes the village much as a human body, with spine and heart and limbs--he puts the church as the head.  He observes that the town has been left alone and not plundered, and how the doorways and walls, while decrepit, still remain.  Only his own children, outsiders (the Bolls are German), attempt to raze what they can.  It seems that he's making a distinction between the identity of a nation towards its own things, and notes that "this, then, is what a human habitation looks like when it has been left in peace after death."  How many places permit this return to the soil?  Is it perhaps that the soil feels alive, a dignified presence deserving of respect?

Boll draws attention to generous train conductors that help out when they can't change money, and good-hearted people determined to help without question when they are short on funds.  He even describes something quite new to me:  the private drinking booth.  Inside it's leather curtain, "the drinker locks himself in like a horse; to be alone with whisky and pain, with belief and unbelief; he lowers himself deep below the surface of time, into the caisson of passivity, as long as his money lasts; till he is compelled to float up again to the surface of time, to take part somehow in the weary paddling: meaningless, helpless movements, since every vessel is destined to drift toward the dark waters of the Styx." 
 
Incidental details make Boll's journeys rich, and he describes them in a voice that is simple and clear.  I say that because I've been recently reading other German authors, namely Bernhard, Kafka, and Trakl, and at times I feel frustrated by my lack of understanding.  At the time I was reading this, Irish Journal, I also read Boll's The Bread of Our Early Years, just to see how different his memoir voice was from his narrative voice.  Both are deep reads, full of subtle clues, yet with surprisingly uncluttered prose.  Fortunately, Boll wrote a great many titles, and I'm eager to delve into more. 

As a side note, I found it interesting that the translator was the same for both books.  This led me to discover that Leila Vennewitz was pretty much the only English translator for Bolls, and received numerous awards for her translations.  In an interview in 2006, she stated that "she had always wanted to be a translator, she never made a major blunder in her work, she never had much trouble with editors and she preferred to take her time on each project. Vennewitz preferred to view the translator as "the boss," not unlike an orchestra conductor. She never had an agent and she pioneered the ability of translators to gain copyright for their own translations. She maintained she had always followed the early advice of a fellow translator: "Be bold." (BCBW 2007 archive, "Translation")

It should be said that while the essays were written in the 1950s, he did add an Epilogue dated 1967.  In this, he does acknowledge more of the political problems that were developing and the change present all over Europe, but seems focused on not taking a political position.  He has a bit to say about how the birth control pill will change Ireland, and it struck me as a bit unexpected, maybe naive.  Because of his love of all things Irish, especially the children, I wonder if he was heartbroken when some of the little children he so admired died in hunger strikes years later.  How pained he must have been.

From this all, of course, Ireland is still number one on my wish-list destination, and Boll's personal biography is the next thing I'm going to hunt for.

Special thanks to Nathan at Melville House for the Review Copy.

A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black

Good old Quirke.  The coroner/sleuth/ladies man is back to solve another puzzle.  I've read the other Dr. Quirke books by Benjamin Black, and there's just something so appealing about the Dublin city life and Dr. Quirke in it:  his mournful boozing, the earnest but misguided attempts at parenting his adult daughter, and the stream of women that never ends, despite no apparent effort on his part to attract them.  In fact, I picture him much as the detective George Gently played by Martin Shaw on the British television series Gently. 

In any case, this story involves the suspected suicide of the high-profile society member and horseman Richard Jewell.  Quirke ends up at the country estate almost immediately and assists in interviewing the widow, a striking French woman who is calm and collected despite the horror she just discovered.  As in many television shows, the medical examiner here seems more of a detective than a doctor...he pretty much leads the investigation for all purposes.  Yes, it's a bit of a stretch but Quirke is just that kind of character, one that Black (a pseudonym of author John Banville) writes well. 

Because it takes place in Ireland, there are gorgeous descriptions of country estates, drawing rooms, and endless cups of tea. As in all Black novels, many descriptions of the facets of light and dark, the penumbras of shadow play.  I noticed a new motif in this particular novel-trees are often described extensively and with a sense of purpose to the story.  It's a nice touch that makes the story feel more of a journey than a procedural.



Brit actor Martin Shaw, how I imagine Quirke

 So with all that going for it, it should be better than it is.  Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the series and the character of Quirke is up there with Wallander for me in terms of crime fiction.  But this one disappointed me in two ways.  First, it introduces a story line about Sinclair, Quirke's assistant, and his possible relationship with Phoebe, Quirke's troubled but plucky daughter.  It's compelling, but it doesn't seem to develop-it drops off completely.  Then, there are the other characters that make up the suspects, and I felt like they were all sort of caricatures-from beginning to end, they never changed in their behavior.  Instead of developing some complexity or depth, they simply remained the same as when the story introduces them. This made predicting and solving the crime fairly easy for the reader.  Usually in a detective story, the underlying rule is 'nothing is as it seems';  yet in this one, yep, it pretty much is exactly how it seems.

And, no spoilers here, but in terms of imagination, the plot of this book has been on every other episode of Law & Order SVU.  Mental illness, homeless children, anti-Semitic hate crimes, and business corruption fill in the blanks, but the basic premise is pretty bland and predictable.  It's still an enjoyable read, as there's something strangely peaceful about the old-school sleuthing that Quirke does. 

Special thanks to Jason Leibman of Henry Holt for the Advance Review Copy. 

This title releases today, 7/5/11.

Elegy for April, Benjamin Black, Dublin Noir

Crime fiction has no shortage of brooding crime-solvers, and it’s usually their vices and complications that make them so memorable. In Benjamin Black’s new novel, Elegy for April, the “facilitator” is Dr. Quirke, a pathologist who doesn’t investigate crimes as much as he observes the key players and encourages them to talk and communicate until the mystery is revealed. His perception and the way he moves people is the key to the solution, rather than typical detective techniques. Dr. Quirke is one of the most memorable characters I’ve run across lately, and this novel is an engaging read that constantly offers surprises and complications.


The biggest surprise to me is that it is not politically correct: Quirke is a raging alcoholic and the book begins with him leaving his treatment center, and he manages a few hours of sobriety. His drinking is stupendous, with blackouts and all, and yet the author doesn’t try and preach anything from it nor romanticize it. It’s a refreshing change that makes Quirke’s character that much more sympathetic. Other complications in his life, such as his relationship with his daughter and several women, also demonstrate conflict without resolution. He clearly doesn’t have all the answers, yet he’s able to help solve the disappearance of April with subtle questions.

Several things really struck me about this book, clearly an example of Dublin Noir. Sure, there’s rain in most of those style books, but Elegy for April features rain, sleet, mist, hoarfrost, fog, and drizzle. Black uses these weather features to illustrate twists to the plot and factors in the mystery, without ever getting cutesy or formulaic. Additionally, many scenes feature characters looking in or looking out of windows, and the symbolism of introspection and separation from the outside world is clear. This aspect of the main characters is especially telling, yet done subtly.

Lastly, the other symbolism in the story is the archetypical meanings of black and white, light and dark. Characters step into shadow, out of bright rooms, into shadowed corridors, under bright streetlights, and into gloomy booths. The contrasts between the light and dark are intertwined with the story and it creates an air of tension and suspense. Quirke himself uses the analogy of an ocean to observe:

“All around lay the surface of the ocean, seeming all that there is to see and know, in calm or tempest, while, underneath, lay a wholly other world of things, hidden, with other kinds of creatures, flashing darkly in the deeps.”

If this were ever made into a movie, I'd hope they’d film it in black and white to keep the feel and mood of it united. It’s set apart from other mysteries because much is left unresolved, as happens in real life. My only critique of it was that it ended rather abruptly after a tense buildup through the greater part of the book. I think I simply didn’t want to let go of the mood and characters. Altogether though, I enjoyed this and intend to seek out Black’s earlier books that feature Dr. Quirke.

Special thanks to Jason Liebman of Henry Holt and Company for the Advanced Review Copy.