The Pure Gold Baby

Margaret Drabble
The Pure Gold Baby

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

London, early 1960s. Young anthropologist Jess has an affair with a married professor. The affair leads to pregnancy, childbirth of a pretty girl Anna, but the birth of the child in turn leads to a parting with the professor.

Jess keeps the child, explains the situation to the parents, and they generally understand their daughter. Jess in London is surrounded by intellectuals, scholars, poets, TV presenters, young professionals like herself. In her neighborhood Jess is getting acquainted to other young mothers, they walk together with children, take them into the kindergarten. The story is narrated by one of Jess’ friends, Eleanor, a lawyer, now retired. She recalls their youth and tries himself as a writer. Eleanor lived her whole life side by side with Jess. The narrator will notice the difference between 60s and 70s and 2000s.

About The Pure Gold Baby it can be said that this book is heartfelt, but not concentrated. Lying in the heart of the novel the story of a mother and daughter is very touching and humane. Fragile Jess is hardly a strong woman. Nevertheless, she took a strong decision to take care of a sweet but mentally retarded daughter, the pure gold baby from the title. Jess brought up Anna alone without relying on help from someone. All the men in her life were just lovers, romantic interests, flashes of passion, but not the breadwinners, fathers, defenders. Jess alone guarded Anna, making the daughter entirely dependent on her. But Jess herself, unwittingly, has become dependent on her daughter. Jess almost deprived herself of a life - career and possible lasting relationship with a man - for the sake of her daughter. But we can assume that Jess was just afraid to start over, afraid to alienate Anna, let into her life more fresh air.

On the background of relations between Jess and Anna, we read about the changes in England. Real estate prises have risen, manners softened, diet and nutrition appeared. The whole structure of psychiatric institutions changed. State and private investors began to create special schools for people with developmental problems. In place of a madhouse with notoriety came a fashionable clinic, where they began to treat nervous breakdowns and drug addictions. Money of higher classes, suffering from mental health problems, flowed into the clinic.

Drabble on behalf of the narrator then makes digressions from a central plot to insert a reference on Livingstone, television, science, art and so on. These are clever arguments, although they still remain digressions – adding almost nothing to the story.

In addition to the main group of characters the narrator Eleanor focuses on the fate of Jess’ friends, especially to those with whom she was familiar from the hospital. These disgressions are overrepetitious, and none of the supporting characters are really interesting to read about him or her a dozen pages. In fact the entire second half of the novel is more about old acquaintances of Jess, than about her. Anna’s and in some respects Jess’ lives remains static, respectively Eleanor tries to fill this static with the stories. The novel loses his focus, although the end is rather good.

Drabble writes lyrical prose (but without the usually amorphousness), I wish it were more focused. If we return to the title: this is not gold, rather silver.

The Deaths

Mark Lawson
The Deaths

Picador, 2013

Four families live in the fictional Middlebury in homes in the suburbs, which were built for the aristocracy. They call themselves The Eight, mainly communicate only among themselves and goes to London only to the airport and commute on train to work.

Men of the family all work, and among their wives work only two. Max is a tycoon, always doing business. Johnny is a prosperous lawyer, Tom is a security expert, and Simon is a PR manager of a bank. His wife Tasha runs a catering company, and Tom's wife Emily is a doctor, a specialist in chronic diseases. Max's second wife (he is 56, she is much younger) Jenno sometimes teaches courses and gives advice to families on reducing costs, and Johnny's wife Libby mostly is busy shopping and discussing of au pairs.

The novel, in fact, opens with the deaths from the title. Courier of coffee in containers delivers coffee to one of the houses where he sees a family shot to death, wife and children, as well as dogs. Victims of mass killings are from one of the above families, but Lawson before the end will keep in secret, who were killed and who killed them.

And if the main plot line will explain in a meticulous manner the life of The Eight, the secondary storyline will focus on the police investigation. There is very little to investigate, and the detectives just wander around the murder scene, discussing the murdered family.

Four families are seen in their daily lives, and with each chapter husbands and their wives become more disgusting and repulsive. The main storyline begins with the description of men on the train London. They all are late for work when the train suddenly stops and an announcement explains that someome threw himself under the trainand the train can’t go any further, and the four men are even not surprised with this: suicides like that happen on English railroads every week. The men are only annoyed, but they do not feel any sympathy to a suicide victim: they think they will never fall that low.

Lawson, like a real surgeon, dissects the top layer of British society: he stabs and cuts, sews and cuts up, exposing the insides – people’s vices. He is amazing surgeon, but he just gives too much anesthesia. He forgot to check if the reader feels anything.

The problem with this novel lies not in the fact that the characters are all unsympathetic, as we have seen even more vile, but that Lawson is not particularly empathetic to his own creations. And if the author doesn’t care, what to expect from the reader?

If we discard the murders, which is not only bait for the story, but also a way to show that there is a punishment for sins, the plot of the novel is compressed into a parade of little connected scenes of everyday life of the wealthy. Lawson spins his characters, exposing all their imperfections. Work, leisure, sex, church, holiday, day-to-day life - Lawson just can not stop. He throws out the details, going from one family to another. He tells hurriedly, as if afraid to stop. It is not surprising that the novel has grown to such a volume.

No doubt, the author is witty, has a keen eye, can make you laugh. He seemed to doubt his own abilities: making their characters vile, Lawson can not stop, as if considering that we did not see enough how disgusting all the characters were.

If you do not belong to their circle and their social status, you are nobody. But why, then, even to the 400th page you hardly recall who is who in this book, and who married to whom? Where is the humanity to his own creations? He is interested to look at them under a microscope, but the characters from the book after closer look remain types.

Those readers who expect from The Deaths complicated police investigation will be disappointed. Murder plot line is only auxiliary, giving no surprises.

Lawson is sure talented, but in this book even those characters that remained alive turned out lifeless.

Marriage Material

Sathnam Sanghera
Marriage Material

William Heinemann, 2013

The novel tells the story of three generations of a family, which emigrated from India in the mid-60s. The story from today is told by 35-year-old Arjan Banga, whose grandfather moved his Punjabi family from India to a small British town of Wolverhampton. Head of the family, Mr. Bains himself first moved to England, and when he was settled, he moved his wife and two daughters Kamaljit and Surinder.

To a job in a factory Bains prefer to keep his own shop, which is inherited and passed to Arjan.

At present our narrator became moderately successful graphic designer, settled in London, found a partner, a white girl Freya, and already engaged to her. The wedding is scheduled for December, as Arjan’s father died suddenly from, as police puts it, natural causes.

After his father's funeral store Arjan runs the store along with his mother Kamaljit. Death of the shop’s owner happens exactly at the time of the London riots, spreading later across the country. The shop is temporarily closed and Arjan realizes that his mother is old and alonr, she can’t manage and protect the shop. But this shop is all that his mother has, and she never agrees to sell it. Arjan, too, doesn’t want to, becuae the shop is a kind of a family heirloom.

After Freya offers to put Kamaljit in an apartment complex for the elderly, Arjan has a quarrel with the bride and goes to Wolverhampton. At work, he is given a six-month leave, and Arjan's back where he once ran away from.

Together with Kamaljit he runs the shop, they took turns behind the counter, manage the stock, although the shop brings a small profit. Arjan is daily faced with racism on the part of buyers, even once grabbing a mop - to fight back a violent buyer.

Despite its title, Marriage Material is far from the average romance novel. And to be quite accurate, it is not romance novel at all but high-quality contemporary prose – marriages included.
There are several marriages in the novel, but the main one would not happen. Arjat will break an engagement, cancel the wedding and the epilogue will leave us guessing. But it will be possible to compare the marriages that occurred and that didn’t.

The present story becomes clearer and clearer on the background of the past, stories of two sisters. Sanger asks: have a lot of things changed there? Marriage to a white girl is not considered a crime within the family anymore, castes is a thing of the past, Asians already can drink, smoke and, as well as to engage in sexual relations before marriage.

Arjan on the example of his fate shows that Asian community no longer holds one who wants to escape. And even if the parents object to your choice, no one will stop you. But the increase in freedom does not remove all the problems. Racism still remains, caste is transformed into shackles of family business, brains are still valued less than diligence and obedience.

Both storylines are spiced with humor, of course, Asian one. Arjan in his narrative presents himself as an object of ridicule, also sneering Asians and parodying the gangster image of his rival. In the plotline of the past humor is there thanks to Surinder’s naivety, smart girl who had been a victim of a sleaze talker.

Sanghera writes clever prose interspersed with sentimentality, but without the melodrama. His observation of the Asian way of life is shrill and accurate. Sanghera is able to mask the details: the death of Arjan’s father at the beginning of the novel is quickly forgotten, but then cleverly played up.

Smooth style helps no less smooth plot, quite intense, although quite predictable. In the afterword, the author writes that the storyline about two sisters is a remix of the early XX century novel. This does not affect the perception of the novel, and sometimes remix is better than the original.

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10
Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

Robinson, 2013

Two years ago, I wrote about one of the previous anthologies titled «Best British Crime». Then that anthology had an enormous size and a dozen of excellent short stories (out of forty). In two years, serious conceptual changes have not taken place: the editor Jakubowski again selected the best and not so from the British crime, diluting the big names with lesser known and quite unknown. The quantity of truly best has not increased yet. This anthology has to offer a dozen stories of exceptional quality, five stories that are not bad, but they don’t deserve a higher praise.

Jakubowski, an experienced editor, as no one understands one of the main rules of this kind of collections: you have to start and finish a book with the strongest stories. Miss it with the opening story, and the reader will put the book down for a long time (if not forever). Miss it with closing stories (after a number of very bad ones) , and the book will leave a bad aftertaste. What's good is that the rule here is met. Anthology opens with Lee Child’s «The Bone-Headed League», noirish delightful story, only pretending to be a lightweight joke. Not surprisingly, Child is called the master. It turns out that he is the master of short form as well.

The next portion is worse. After a cheerful start the anthology falls into a swamp of mediocre short stories, some of which deserve to be collected in the collection «Worst British Crime». But closer to the equator the collection becomes more smooth, mediocre stories are replaced by good and sometimes even great, like «Stardust» Phil Lovesey or «The Message» Margaret Murphy, or the bitter story of Peter Turnbull «The Man Who Took Off His Hat to The Driver of the Train».

On the territory of noir in the book several writers walk into, among them Nina Allan, Cath Staincliffe, Christine Poulson and Stella Duffy (please note, it's all ladies). Allan’s story «Wilkolak» is probably the best in this book. It is a grim story of a teenager who wants to be a photographer and begins to follow the man which very much looks like a serial killer murdering children. Allan does not add anything new to the plots about a maniac who kills children, but switches to a psychological game between the boy and the suspect, a photographer himself in the past. For teenager the killer is kind of werewolf, hence the Polish word of the story in the title. With a serial killer plays the heroine of another story, «Laptop» by Cath Staincliffe. The heroine of the story is a professional thief who specializes in laptops, until one day she steals the laptop belonging to a serial killer. If Staincliffe better wrote the diary part of the story, her short story would be even more shocking.

Among men, strong stories here from such masters as Joel Lane, Adrian McKinty, John Harvey and a new name for me Bernie Crosthwaite with yet another story about a serial killer.

Closing the collection are two fantastic stories, but with the criminal element. This is another feature of the anthology. Among my favorite stories - seven one way or another can be attributed to the fantastic genre - stories from Child, Johnston, Lane, Allan, Lovesey, and the final stories by Alison Littlewood and Neil Gaiman. Gaiman here is represented with the story about the death of Mycroft Holmes, and Littlewood with a shocking prison story.

The collection certainly should be cut by half, and then it would show the British crime from the best side. Moreover, that the fair sex seems to write even more darker fiction than men.

Apostle Rising

Richard Godwin

Apostle Rising

Black Jackal Books, 2011

Detective Chief Inspector Frank Castle once could not find a serial killer, the man responsible for so-called Woodland killings. Everything pointed to Karl Black, but the investigation has failed to prove his involvement in the brutal killings. Black remained at large, and Castle was trampled. He’d been humiliated, lost his wife, was treated for depression. Now, many years later, a copycat kills people in a similar manner. Castle thinks that the killings are committed by a person who well studied original killings. The inspector and his partner Jacki Stone suspect that Black once again implicated in the killings, but detectives still have no leads. Black is now the head of the secret and powerful sect, and murders are clearly ritual. The situation is complicated by the fact that killings are commited by, perhaps, two maniacs. One kills prostitutes, the other - politicians. Castle will do everything to find a cruel copycat. Or two.

The fact that Black comes up in the second series of murders already indicates his involvement in the killings. Black’s sectarianism and violence homicides give s reader first puzzle: whether will there be a rational explanation of the crime or there will be the intervention of supernatural forces? Nevertheless, the chapters, in which we see the actions of Black, are the most tortuous and they’re almost not moving the events. One chapter is similar to another so that as you listen to an interesting story told by a stutter: interesting, but too ductile.

The investigation is moving, albeit slowly. The killer always is one step ahead. Castle, which once again is humiliated by the press for his impotence, uses help of not only Stone, but also psychologists, establishing motives and psychological portrait of of the killer. After a few sagging middle the book pleases unexpected plot twists.

Ironically, the most interesting character in the book is not Castle or Black, both of them are full of cliches, but the partner of Castle, Jacki Stone. Her role in the investigation is not exactly clear, but what makes her interesting is her relationship with her boyfriend, Don. Stone is definitely not as dependent on the investigation as Castle, but spends nearly all her time at work. The storyline with Stone and Don are not carried through, and ending suggests that perhaps we’ll see a sequel.

«Apostle Rising» is an entertaining book, but unnecessarily prolonged. The novel would be definitely better if it’d shorter by a half.

The Sound of Gravity

Joe Simpson
The Sound of Gravity

Jonathan Cape, 2011

The second novel from a professional alpinist. The book opens with a shocking scene: a man named Patrick, the main character, wakes up because his wife catches him in an attempt to save herself from falling off a cliff. Patrick and his wife made the ascent in the Alps, stopping for the night. But at night Patrick’s wife gets out of her sleeping bag and her lifeline failes. The woman begins to fall and manages to grab Patrick's hand. He tries to pull her, but he was not secured by lifeline. Because of that the woman decides to fall to save at least the life of her husband. They barely have time only to tell each other "goodbye." Later, from the conversation of two men from the mountain village, it becomes clear that Patrick was found. He was very weak, barely moving. He was taken to the hospital.

The second part of the novel begins 25 years after the accident. Patrick lives and works in a small hut right in the mountains. He helps the other climbers, who can rest or spend the night at the hut. One of them is Karl, a German. In the mountains, he falls and breaks to death. The team of rescuers from the village comes for the body. However, the storm is approaching, and the body is needed to rescue fast. The next day the body is taken away and brought to Patrick’s hut. In here rescuers decide to leave the body near the hut, fasten it to the frame and throwing snow on it. Big storm is coming. This time, Patrick will have to save the life of another woman named Cassie.

The imbalance between the first and second parts of this book is the main flaw of the book. The first part begins suddenly and very promising. But after a thrilling beginning the novel bogges down and starts marking time. The book is very reliable, since the author himself is an experienced climber. But the description of multi-day struggle for life during a storm begins to tire a reader quickly. Too viscous text; you need to climb in it as in a rock to not to lose interest. The struggle for life, of course, is a thing in itself not very interesting: it’s no entertainment, if you know that you can die, - but the book would have won if Simpson had cut the first part in half.

The second part is read perfectly as a standalone work. Very lyrical, piercing style; simple but strong story; again a high level of realism. The author masterfully describes the dynamics of the relationship between Patrick and Cassie. Simpson changes the angle of view, and we see how Patrick begins to thaw a little after difficult for him 25 years, full of silent mourning for his wife. Cassie gives him new hope. The more symbolic that the new love in Patrick’s life also appears in the strongest storm in the same place, but 25 years later. To avoid repetition and thoroughly disclose the nature of Cassie, the author shows the events of Patrick’s past through the lens of the woman. How she saw that situation, how she assessed the actions of Patrick, how this case had changed her life.

«The Sound of Gravity» is generally meditative reading, but the second part is a much more dynamic. The first one could not disclose the nature of man, because Patrick remained alone with the rocks. In the second part the character interacts with others, and we begin to understand the depth of his drama.

It is a book well worth reading, with the first flawed part.

Cold In Hand

John Harvey

Cold In Hand

William Heinemann, 2008

Charlie Resnick, an aging cop and hero of numerous novels of John Harvey, lives with a young woman Lynn Kellogg, also a detective, and is preparing to retire. On Valentine's Day the youth gangs dispute, and Kellogg is trying to prevent it. As a result, one girl is killed, another wounded, and Kellogg, which used the body of a murdered girl as a shield, receives minor injuries. Resnick persuade the authorities to allow him to investigate this incident with a partner. The father of the killed girl makes explicit threats to Resnick and Kellogg, believing she’s guilty in his daughter's death. When Kellogg recovers from an injury, she returnes to the stalled case, involving the illegal gunrunning and human trafficking from Eastern Europe. Witnesses in this case, two women who worked as prostitutes, fear for their lives, and Kellogg begins to suspect the connection between a police officer from the department of serious crimes and the Eastern European mafia. Resnick is busy with his investigation and does not yet know what a nightmare his life will soon become to.

Crime novels in the genre of "police procedurals" can rarely boast of originality and freshness. Their structure itself is so well established that you do not need to invent anything, everything has already been invented, you need only one cliche replace by another. Most often, the inspector in years drinks heavily and walks on the women, while investigating for weeks one and the same thing as if the criminals in this period generally disappear from the face of the earth and do not commit crimes that are actually also need to investigate. And it’s good, if the author has come up with an original twist in the ending or can write well in his/her native language, then so a book can deserve some attention. So «Cold In Hand» by John Harvey is an outstanding police procedural for several reasons. For once, there are two detectives, but they do not work together. Resnick does not drink heavily or sleep with anyone, but listens to jazz and takes care of his partner. Here are a few crimes, and the inspectors have to cope with several things simultaneously.

Harvey also gives an idea of how the police work in Britain: how departments interplay between themselves, how internal investigations are conducted, how the security of important witnesses is provided. Yes, all of these are the technical details, the theory, but the author knows practice too. Knows how win over a reader, knows how to surprise with an unexpected clue in the end, knows how to deploy a novel half-way and return it in a different direction.

«Cold In Hand» definitely shows that it’s early to give up on police procedurals.

The End of the Line

The End of the Line
Edited by Jonathan Oliver

Solaris, 2010

What could be better than to pick up an anthology of British horror and read it a little every night? And if the authors of this anthology are horror dream team? The presence of star names, however, does not guarantee one hundred percent satisfaction from reading the book. Some authors confirmed that they are masters regardless of what they write. Another part moves only on the surface, not down there in the subway, in the dark tunnels of fear, in the trains full of despair and powerlessness.

All the stories in this anthology in one way or another connected with the subway. Topic is extremely interesting: subway, despite the level of technological development, the perfection of the security of the metro passengers, continues to keep dark secrets. It's worthy noting that there are no poorly written stories in the anthology (remember: all the authors are professionals, all famous writers), but some of them do not have enough depth. Fear is always hiding inside, not outside, and those writers who are not digging in, not sink into the ground, provided good stories, which, however, can hardly be called outstanding.

The first strong story in the collection - «The Lure» by Nicholas Royle. This is also most complicated story in a book, full of silences, omissions, secrets - secrets that we hide inside ourselves. The action of the story takes place in Paris, and Royle writes ease with the French. His story smells of French perfume, but it's not the smell that you want to inhale. «The Roses That Bloom Underground» by Al Ewing is much more straightforward, but appealing with ease and ill-concealed black humor. Candidate for mayor of London offers three weeks for completely renovation of the subway, if the people elect him. There is absolutely no dirt in the renovated subway, doors close silently, seats are not broken, subway inspires people a sense of happiness: you bet - it even smells like roses. But for the convenience you always have to pay.

Ironically, in the second half of the book there are much more outstanding short stories than in the first one. The best of them «In the Colosseum» Stephen Volk. Volk, like no one else succeeded in the short story to show how people go crazy and what this person feels. To get a good order, Marcus agrees to take part in the party, which his future boss organizes. Marcus and others from the party go down to the underground and locked themselves in the room, where the monitors are installed by security cameras. And what is displayed on these monitors, it is not something that every one of us would like to see. «In the Colosseum» is a story- mirror in which the author invites us to look and see what lies within us and those who are close to us. Michael Marshall Smith’s «Missed Connection» reveals the characteristic feature of the human: we are looking to the last of a logical explanation, even if everything does not fit in the usual course of things. Hero of the story comes out in a subway station, hoping to quickly get to the store to buy a family Christmas gifts. But not a soul around him, escalators don't work, so that the protagonist seems that the station is just shut down for repairs. «Siding 13» by James Lovegrove is rather a nice joke, but still creepy. «Crazy Train» by Natasha Rhodes exploits bored theme «death and rock 'n' roll», but it does so not without grace. The narrator of the story is committed suicide bassist of rock group, which have been woken up near the bar by a woman, suggesting the dead go to a concert. Musician is stunned, but agrees to travel on a crazy train. He does not know who this girl is and what this trip will lead to. Joel Lane in «All Dead Years» tells the story of two women - therapist Val and her patient Helen. Helen suffers from mental disorder: as soon as she descends into the subway, she becomes ill, she gasps, and she sees corpse remains in the walls. Desire to help the patient leads Val to strange consequences. Lane's prose is imbued with compassion and suffering. In this story, he showed how people can stay alone with the emptiness.

«The End of the Line» is very high-quality anthology of short stories in which a third of the outstanding, and the rest just good.