The Children Act by Ian McEwan

Posted on March 20, 2015 by bseat

The Children Act_Fiona Mayes is a British High Court Judge in London’s Family Division. There she hears cases dealing with families; mostly child custody but also some divorce.  She is committed to her work and “…belonged to the law as some women had once been brides of Christ,” crafting her judgements with meticulous care and authority.  She has been married to her husband Jack for thirty years. She thought her marriage was a warm and solid, until her husband told her recently that he wanted to see another woman. Instinctively she had told him that if he saw someone else he would have to leave their home, which he did.  She was, she thought, “[a]n abandoned fifty-nine year old woman, in the infancy of old age, just learning to crawl.”

Luckily, in spite of the emotional upheaval in her personal life, her work is engaging and demanding and she immerses herself in it.  In addition to her normal caseload an urgent case has landed on her docket.  Adam Henry, a young boy, seventeen, almost eighteen, is refusing blood transfusions as part of his treatment for leukemia on religious grounds-he and his family are Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Because of the severity of his condition, Fiona decides to visit Adam in the hospital  after hearing arguments in court, so that she can evaluate for herself the sincerity of his beliefs and see first hand whether there is undue pressure from either his family or leaders in the church influencing him to decline treatment. At the hospital she finds that Adam is an impressive young man, interested in art and poetry, filled with life even as he is dying, and completely committed to his faith.  And now Fiona must decide his fate according Section 1(A), The Children Act, 1989, which states that “When a court determines any question with respect to . . . the upbringing of a child . . . the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.”

Like he did in Saturday or Atonement, McEwan in spare, tranquil prose delineates the circumstances of his characters and follows them as they wrestle over the choices they face. Fiona has to face into the limits of her ability to save every child that comes into her courtroom even as she struggles to decide whether her own marriage is worth saving. With steely compassion, McEwan allows us to glimpse the raw emotions of grief, anger, denial and love that Fiona feels and through her helps us confront the moral and ethical dilemmas which are highlighted in her situation. Thoroughly engaging and thought provoking, this is a book that should not be missed!

Brenda’s Rating *****(5 Stars out of 5)    

Recommend this book to? Keith, Sharon and Marian

Book Study Worthy? Yes!

Read in ebook format

 

Posted in Fiction, Literary Fiction | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Posted on March 13, 2015 by bseat

LilaIn Lilla, Lila Dahl, a character we met in Robinson’s previous books Gilead and Home, tells the story of how she was found and raised by Doll, became a part of group of itinerant farm workers who wandered together, broke up and then found her way to the town of Gilead and into the heart and home of Reverend Ames. Lila’s life has been tough and hard, and she has missed out on many of the advantages of a normal life, like school and having a home, but she has the wisdom that she has gained from her experiences and a very different perspective which is both startling and profound.

Lila started out life under the tables in a backwoods bar. Unsure of who her parents were, she only knew that she needed to stay away from the boots that kicked her and the voices that abused her. Into this terrible existence came Doll, a young woman who saw this young child, sick, abused and abandoned and decided to do something about it. Doll took her away and nursed her back to health. Eventually, when Lila was healthy they joined a group of itinerant farm workers who offered their services to various farmers by planting crops, picking berries, tasseling corn, or whatever needed to be done. they would stay until the job was done and then move on to the next farm. It was a good, but hard life. But it was not a life that could last and when tragedy strikes, Lila has to find her own way, and ends up on the outskirts of Gilead in an abandoned shed. Eventually, she finds her way into town and meets Reverend Ames.

What strikes you in this book is Lila’s stream of consciousness and the intricate paths it takes as she tells us her story. Sometimes we circle around, and sometimes we go straight to the core of  her worries and concerns, but regardless we hear Lila’s voice throughout, tender, wise, questioning and brutally honest.

Awarded the 2014 National book award for Lila, and the Pulitzer for Gilead, Robinson has again given us a treasure trove of stories and reflections on what it means to love, to live, to have faith, and to experience grace.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 Stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Keith, Marian and Lauren

Book Study Worthy? Yes!

Read in ebook format

 

 

Posted in Fiction, Literary Fiction, Series, Spiritual | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Posted on March 6, 2015 by bseat

Road North_“Disturbingly fabulous” is what one reader said about this book and I have to agree.  There is the lyrical prose that Flanagan uses while describing the horrors of how the Japanese used POWs to build the Thai-Burma railway, the deep soulfulness that is embodied by the book’s flawed hero, Dorrigo Evans, and the curiosity that compels the author to go beyond a simple demonization of the Japanese guards, and explore their motivations, which all coalesces into this profound meditation on life and death.  Winner of the 2014 Man Booker prize, this is one of the most moving, fascinating, disturbing, heartbreaking, books that I have read in a long time.

The Thai-Burma railway was conceived after the Japanese invaded Burma and found that their supply ships were vulnerable to US attacks. The overland route would connect Bangkok, Thailand with Rangoon, Burma using various pre existing railroad lines together. There was a gap of 111 km gap on one part of the line and a 304 km gap on another, where the connecting new line would be laid through some of the most difficult, isolated and hazardous terrain imaginable. Work began on the railroad in September of 1942 and was completed ahead of schedule in October of 1943. The Japanese used a mixture of impressed workers from Burma, Malay and Java as well as foreign prisoners of war to do the work, and it is estimated that at least 90,00 impressed workers died although there are no records and of the 61,811 POWs, 12,621 died.

When we meet Dorrigo Evans he is a child from a working class family in Tasmania playing football in school. Soon he has graduated from medical school and as a surgeon is making his way into Melbourne society. Along the way he has developed a love of poetry, especially Ulysses, by Tennyson which he reads and re reads.  And then our perspective shifts, and Dorrigo is now 77 years old.  Thanks to a TV documentary about his role in the Burma death camps, he is a famous  war hero and and a celebrated surgeon. and he is struggling to write a foreword for a book about the POW experience and in writing it hoped  “…to somehow finally put things to rights with the honesty of humility, to restore his role to what it was, that of a doctor, no more and no less, and to restore to rightful memory the many who were forgotten by focusing on them rather than himself.”

Switching perspective back and forth through the span of Dorrigo’s life we see how how this flawed person, arrogant and resistant to authority, with an inability to cultivate relationships, was able to use all of his natural inclinations to help, inspire, nurture, and give hope to the men who were under his care in the POW camp. His detachment and arrogance gave him the necessary tools to make hard decisions, create trust in the men who looked to him for direction and even made some of the Japanese respect him. Yet after the war it is these very same personality traits that wreak havoc in his life leaving him lonely and alone. Although it is difficult to like Dorrigo, Flanagan is able to let you deep inside this character so that you understand him, and in that understanding there is a recognition of our common humanity.

Dedicated to prisoner 335, Flanagan’s father who was a POW on the Thai-Burma Railway, it is clear that Flanagan has a deep personal interest in this topic and yet he makes an effort to tell a story that is even handed, letting us know of the suffering of the Korean guards who were maltreated and beaten by the Japanese and even the Japanese themselves who were victims of the Emperor’s will.  As Flanagan says, “A good book…leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.” In this book, Flanagan has achieved the latter!

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to: Keith, Ken, Lauren, Marian and Sharon

Book Study Worthy: Yes!

Read in ebook format.

 

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Posted on February 27, 2015 by bseat

Girl on the Train_Rachel is living a lie. Every day she leaves her friend’s home where she has been staying “until she can get back on her feet,”and takes the train into London.  Ostensibly she is going to work, but she lost her job weeks ago and now when she gets to London she goes to the library or the park, and buys canned gin and tonics and drinks those until it is time to go home. Sometimes she drinks so much that she loses blocks of time that she cannot account for, a fact that scares her but not enough to stop the drinking.  Her friend knows she drinks; Rachel cannot hide the slurred speech or the smell, but her friend doesn’t know about the blackouts or that Rachel lost her job because of the drinking. Rachel keeps meaning to tell her, but her friend’s reaction-the disgust, the impatience, keeps Rachel from saying the words.  So every morning, Rachel gets up and gets dressed and takes the train to London and every day on the train she passes the house where this young couple live. She has named them Jess and James and they are all that she is not; young, happy, married and living together in a cute house. They are living the life that Rachel should have had but does not, and every day Rachel fantasizes about their life, projecting all her longings and lost dreams on them and in some strange way it soothes her pain.

Then one day from the window of the train she sees Jess kissing another man and soon after that she finds out that Jess has disappeared and the police are now looking for her.

Megan, the one Rachel calls Jess, is not living the dream life that Rachel imagines. Although she loves her husband, sometimes she wonders if this is enough. She has also lost her job, but doesn’t know what she wants to do. In the meantime she decides that maybe she could babysit for the couple down the street who have a new baby, giving herself some time to sort things out and talk it over with her therapist.

Anna is married to Tom, Rachel’s ex husband. They live in the home that Tom and Rachel lived in when they were married and Anna is now busy making it her own. Their new baby is a symbol of all that went wrong between Rachel and Tom.  When Rachel found out that she could not have children their marriage deteriorated and Rachel’s drinking escalated. Rachel still makes drunk calls to Tom which Anna resents enormously and sometimes shows up at the house which terrifies Anna. Although she loves the baby, she is surprised by how much energy and time it takes, so she is relieved to find that Megan, who lives just up the street, is willing to babysit so Anna can have a break.

Hawkins is a deft story teller. Although Rachel is an “unreliable narrator,” there is something likable about Rachel and you want to know her story and she makes you understand her pain. As Hawkins shifts from character to character we see what led up to Megan’s disappearance and the interconnections between our characters’ lives. As the story progresses and Rachel’s blackouts play a bigger and bigger role in what happened, the tension rises and each revelation brings you closer to knowing what happened to Megan.

Although compared to Gone Girl, I found this book much more satisfying. It is wonderfully written, with characters that are realistic and relatable,  Hawkins explores the depths of a woman’s despair, the consequences of trusting too much and you come away with the realization that you never really know what goes on in a marriage or behind closed doors.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Marian, Lauren and Keith

Book Study worthy: Yes

Read in ebook format

 

Posted in Detective novel, Fiction, Mystery, Psychological Mystery | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Martian by Andy Weir

Posted on February 20, 2015 by bseat

The Martian_This book was recommended to me by my daughter so I should have known it would be good, but I am notoriously leery of books that are recommended to me!  So it was very gratifying to find that the story grabbed me from the very beginning, pulling me along, until I got to the point where I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to find out how it would end! Very satisfying indeed!

The Martian isn’t an alien, rather the Martian is Mark Watney, an engineer and botanist who is part of a 6 member crew of US astronauts in the Ares Program, sent to explore Mars.  But on day 6 in the midst of a violent storm, Mark Watney suffers a freak accident where he and his EVA suit are impaled and is blown away from the ship. Battling the storm, the remaining crew cannot look for Mark and with only moments to spare take off from the planet and begin the long return trip home to earth.  But Mark is not dead and after regaining consciousness and getting to safety, he must assess his situation and concludes, “I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion. Fucked”

I don’t know if you remember the TV show MacGyver and I am probably dating myself by even mentioning it, but like MacGyver, Mark Watney must turn all his learning, and abilities into sustaining his life until someone can come back to pick him up in four or so years!  Mark’s resilience and ability to think outside the box are put to the test and even duct tape makes an appearance; “Yes of course duct tape works in a near vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshipped”  But despite the light heartedness, Mark is fully aware that he must have food and water, a stable and warm environment, a way to communicate and he can’t give up if he wants to live, even though his odds of making it are slim to none.

Back on earth, there is a memorial service for Mark and NASA waits for the remaining Ares Program crew to return in order to debrief them on what went wrong. Then a person whose job it is to track the satellites as they travel across Mars, notices that at the HAB site where the Mars crew lived doing their experiments and explorations there is unexplained movement of the Rover vehicles and slowly NASA becomes aware that Mark is not dead and must now deal with how to help him survive until they figure out how to get him back.

This was such an engaging, interesting, well written, well paced, exciting, book! Although mostly light hearted in tone, there was a soulfulness to this book that made you think about humanity and the insatiable curiosity that drives us to explore and go beyond our limits and the type of people it takes to make that kind of exploration a reality.

Brenda’s Rating ***** (5 Stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to: Keith, Ken, Sharon and Lauren.

Book Study Worthy: Yes!

Read in ebook format.

 

 

Posted in Fiction, Science Fiction, Thriller | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Posted on February 13, 2015 by bseat

The Luminaries_What a stunning surprise to open a recently written book whose style is reminiscent of of a great 19th century novel by Dickens or Wilkie Collins!  With an intricate plot of grave misunderstandings, murder, a missing person, a great love, great treasure and cold blooded treachery all set in New Zealand during the gold rush of 1866, this is one of the most fascinating books I have read.

Our story opens as Walter Moody, a young lawyer from England, disembarks from The Godspeed in Hokitika, New Zealand after a disastrous and extremely upsetting voyage. Wanting nothing more than to get dry and out of the cold rain that never seems to stop, Moody seeks shelter at the Crown Hotel and once settled into his room makes his way to the drawing room to warm himself by the fire and have a stiff drink. But the drawing room is already occupied by 12 men who have gathered there out of a mutual concern over recent events in the town. The men are resentful by the sudden appearance of an outsider into their private meeting, but eventually, after learning that Moody was trained in the law, they begin to confide in him about the recent death of an old gold miner outside of town, the mysterious disappearance of another younger miner, and the sad attempted suicide of a well liked whore. Although seemingly unconnected, the men are suspicious that there are deeper connections between these events but are finding it difficult to parse through the details and are hopeful that maybe an outsider may be able to see the connections that they cannot see.

Moody initially finds their interest in telling him their problems onerous, since he still has not been able to process his own strange and horrific voyage, but begins to be intrigued by the stories that they are telling him and finds as “[i]t often happens that when a soul under duress is required to attend to a separate difficulty, one that does not concern him in the least, then this second problem works upon the first as a kind of salve.”  And soon Moody is in the middle of a vast web of murder, intrigue, and treachery and must find a way to unearth the truth before more damage is done.

Catton is both fearless and artful in her writing.  Although the style is from Dickens or Collins, there is also a hint of laughter behind the words and style, as though she is poking fun at the juxtaposition of the formal and stiff way people interact with their overwrought sensibilities. For example when Mr. Balfour, as representative of the 12 men begins telling the story of recent events to Moody, Catton prefaces the narrative with the following note to the reader: “t]he interruptions were too tiresome, and Balfour’s approach too digressive to deserve a full and faithful record in the men’s own words. We will here excise their imperfections and impose a regimental order upon the impatient chronicle of [his] roving mind; we shall apply our own mortar to the cracks and chinks of earthly recollection and resurrect as new edifice that, in solitary memory, exists only as a ruin.”

Her characters are rich and fully developed-even the dead gold miner is given careful attention. Her observations are both refreshing and knife-sharp in their insight. For example she describes the Governor of Prisons who has taken the whore, Anne Wetherell, into custody, like this: “He had always been irreproachable in his conduct and as a consequence, his capacity for empathy was small….when he looked at her he saw only a catalogue of indiscretions, a volatile intelligence and a severe want of promise.”

It is completely understandable why this book won the Man Booker Prize for 2013.  Even though it is quite long (p. 849,) it is a delight to read, quickly catches your interest and immerses you into the mind set of an earlier time. Although their culture and rules of conduct are much more rigid, these characters are so very familiar in their very humanness, and that is what sustains your interest, because you truly care for them.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to: Marian, Lauren, Keith and Sharon

Book Study Worthy; YES!

Read in ebook format.

 

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Mystery | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Posted on February 6, 2015 by bseat

All the light we cannot see_In a small town in Germany a young boy and his sister, find a radio. The boy, Werner, is remarkably adept at figuring out how to repair it and soon he and his sister and the other orphans who live with them in Frau Elena’s Children’s Home are able to listen to wonderful musical broadcasts and news from all over Europe including Berlin telling them about the progress of the war. But as the war continues and losses for the Germans begin to mount, the Nazis confiscate or destroy any radios they find, so Werner and his sister hide the radio in the attic and listen to it only at night, long after everyone else has gone to sleep. Night after night Werner and Jutta listen to their favorite broadcast by a Frenchman with a voice like velvet who talks about optical illusions, electromagnetism and even coal and who encourages his listeners to “Open your eyes and see what you can before they close forever” and they are transported from their small village and the war that surrounds them.

In Paris a young girl, Marie, has gone blind. Her mother died when she was born and her father, a master locksmith for the National Museum of Natural History takes her to work with him every day. There he makes he work on a Braille work book for an hour each day and then takes her with him on his rounds as he makes repairs and maintains the locks, and cabinets that hold the thousands of specimens and collections in the museum. Sometimes her father leaves her with Dr. Geffard, a mollusk expert who lets her open the cabinet drawers in his laboratory and hold the the seashells they contain.  At night after they return home and have supper, her father works on the scale model he is building for her of their neighborhood, complete with the boulangerie where they get their bread, and the little park with the four benches and ten trees.

How these two lives become intertwined is the basis of the story, but Doerr’s gift is in the magic of his writing, and the penetrating insights he gives us about these characters and their motivations. As Werner goes into the Nazi training school for boys and Marie and her father flee from Paris for Saint Malo to live with family we are confronted with the wreckage that war makes on lives and the resilience it takes to overcome it’s toll. But even though the story is compelling it is Doerr’s exquisite language and insights which are the dropped like jewelled breadcrumbs through out this book that seduced me.  For example this is what he says about Marie’s blindness:

To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air.

Or this insight about the value of time:

To men like that, time was surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really…it’s a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it. Fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop.

 This will be probably one of the best book you will ever read. Savor it and enjoy!

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 Stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to: Everyone!

Book Study Worthy? YES

Read in ebook format.

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

A Map of Betrayal: A Novel by Ha Jin

Posted on January 30, 2015 by bseat

A Map of Betrayal_One of my favorite TV shows is The Americans on FX.  The story is about deep cover Soviet agents who infiltrated and operated in the US during the end of the Cold War. What is fascinating to me is how the show portrays the everyday struggle that a spy must go through to keep focused on their purpose and to keep true to their values and principles without anyone knowing what they are thinking, feeling or doing-not even their own children!

In the Map of Betrayal, Jin explores this inner dissonance in a spy’s life even more deeply. Gary Shang was the most important Chinese spy ever caught. As a CIA mole he was responsible for the deaths of numerous US agents and had leaked numerous valuable documents to the Chinese during his more than 30 years as a spy. Lillian, his daughter knew this about her father but it wasn’t until she began reading his journals which were given to her by his mistress after her mother’s death, that she begins to truly understand his loneliness and the guilt he carries for leaving his wife and children in China.  When she realizes that she has siblings and relatives in China that she never knew exsisted, Lillian decides to try and visit them on her next trip to China where she is often lectures and teaches.

Switching between Gary’s journal entries which expose his increasingly conflicted loyalties and Lillian’s journey to China to find her father’s family, the complicated life that Gary led and the manipulations by his own government to preserve their valued asset are revealed. But even as Lillian makes contact with members of her family and learns from them the personal cost of China’s volatile history, she begins to suspect that the map of betrayal her father began is still unfolding and is still influencing her family even now.

Gary is an enigmatic character who has lived with his conflicted loyalties and dissonance for so long that he seems unable to see his own actions for what they are.  Based on the life of the real Chinese spy Larry Wu-Tai Chin, Jin gives voice to a spy’s inner life while giving a context for how it could happen, and although I might not be sympathetic to his choices, I at least came away with a better understanding of why he chose to do it.

As Lillian finds her relatives and hears their stories, which resonate with such sincerity, giving her deeper insights into the personal impact of the Great Leap Forward and the famines that followed. Jin is less successful with Lillian’s voice and character as she often sounds stilted or does things that would seemingly belie any kind cross cultural sensibility that a person of her background and education would have. But in spite of that,  I was still drawn to Lillian and her quest to understand her own history. This was an intriguing book and kept me interested until the very end.

Brenda’s Rating: ***1/2  (3 1/2 Stars out of 5)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Marian and Ken

Book Study Worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format.

 

 

Posted in Fiction, Mystery, Spy/Covert Operatives | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Posted on January 23, 2015 by bseat

The Gargoyle_Our narrator is a repulsive man. A self obsessed pornagrapher and drug user, he is driving on a lonely stretch of wilderness road with an open bottle of bourbon in his lap. As he reaches for it the bottle it slips through his fingers and falls on to the floor of the passenger side. Instinctively reaching for it, he takes his eyes off the road for only a second; veers too far and the car crashes through the guard rail, plummeting to the bottom of the ravine and exploding into flames.  He wakes up in the ER and learns that he is horrifically burned and the only thing that saved him was the fact that after the explosion the car slid just a bit further ending up in a creek, where the water put out the worst of the flames before rescue workers arrived to get him out of the car. With burns covering most of his face and body he is transformed and is now repulsive on the outside as well as the inside.

Soon he is  transferred to  the burn unit where he goes through excruciating treatments and surgeries in order to give him back some of his mobility and function. The unceasing pain and agony that he goes through is balanced with endless hours of  vague twilight sleep that opiates often give which are filled with strange dreams. His one goal is to get well enough to be able to kill himself.  It is the one thing that keeps him alive -the will to die.

And then one day Marianne Engle appears in his room. She seems to know things about him that would be impossible for a stranger like her to know.  She is a patient in the Psych ward at the same hospital, but how she ended up in his room no one can say. But he is intrigued and soon Marianne begins visiting him regularly and tells him stories-stories about another time and place where she insists they were lovers.

Davidson has created an extraordinary story about the timelessness of love and its redemptive power which can transform lives if we let it. Although we never learn the narrator’s name, we see his transformation unfold and much like the debridement he undergoes physically he also sheds his emotional scar tissue even as he resists the pull of love to heal and make him whole. Marianne is a force of nature and she always  keeps the reader guessing- is she for real or does she really belong in a psych ward!  Davidson’s writing is both deft and honest. He does not sugar coat the cost and hard work that redemption and transformation require, and yet there is almost a playfulness with which he balances these hardships by using Marianne’s Shevardnadze like stories to keep the plot of the story moving forward and slowly revealing the layers of mystery surrounding her. This was a very satisfying and enjoyable read!

Brenda’s Rating **** (4 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Marian, Lauren, Sharon and Keith

Book Study Worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format.

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Romance | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Accident by Chris Pavone

Posted on January 16, 2015 by bseat

The Accident_New York literary agent, Isabel Reed has just stayed up all night reading a manuscript that appeared anonymously in her office.  It was so explosive and good that she couldn’t put it down, and she is no convinced that this book will be blockbuster and make her career, if only she can get it published. And that is the real catch, since it is a tell all book about a powerful media mogul and an incident long buried in his past that if revealed could end his dominance in the media and destroy his reputation.  Although the author’s name is never revealed, Isabel is fairly certain she knows who it is: the only problem is that he supposedly committed suicide after being diagnosed with a fatal disease!

As dawn approaches Isabel carefully considers who she needs to include in the process of getting this manuscript published and settles on Jeffrey Fielder, a great editor and long time friend (and maybe more,) who she feels will treat this book with the care and attention it deserves. What she doesn’t realize however is that her assistant Alexis has also seen the book and has realized its potential and has also passed it on until it eventually reaches Camilla Glyndon-Browning a subsidiary rights agent who sees its potential to get her out of her moribund career and decides to shop the book in Hollywood. When Camilla turns up dead, before she was even able to talk to any producers about the book, Isabel realizes how seriously the “damage control” for this book is being taken and knows that she and Jeffrey will need to use all their wits in order to stay alive.

Hiding overseas, and with the story weighing on his conscience, the anonymous author can only watch helplessly as his carefully laid plans to get this story published explode in treachery, mayhem and murder.

Told as an event that unfolds over one day, the story moves from one character to the next with flashbacks to help us understand their motivations and actions.  Although this is helpful on some level, it does take some getting used to and it took me a few chapters to sink into the rhythm of the story.  With so many characters needed to move the story forward, they were not each as fully developed as I would have liked, but Pavone does a great job giving us a snapshot into their lives and making them memorable.  (For those who read The Expat you will also be happy to see a cameo appearance of Kate Moore! )

It seems that the publishing industry is getting more dangerous all the time since this the second book I have read recently in which a threatened publication causes murder and mayhem. But although The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowlings has a similar theme Pavone’s book is more tautly paced and the characters and their motivations more believable, interesting and memorable.

Brenda’s Rating: ****(4 out of 5 Stars) 

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Keith, an  Marian.

Book Study Worthy? Not really

Read in ebook format

Posted in Fiction, Thriller | Tagged , , | Leave a comment