My Sister the Serial Killer

My Sister, the Serial Killer probably isn't the kind of book I would normally pick up, but my interest was piqued after reading a recommendation on a book thread where someone was looking for novels from different countries (I think they were aiming to read a book from every country in the world). I'm very conscious that my reading pool of nationalities is tiny, so I made a note of Oyinkan Braithwaite's novel and found it at the Athenaeum.

My Sister, the Serial Killer is no mystery story -- the very title gives it away, and the first page begins with a murder, clearly not the first. The tension in the story comes from wondering if the narrator Korede will keep covering up for her homocidal sister, or betray her to the police; and from the imminent danger to Korede's crush, kind and hunky doctor Tade, who has the hots for Ayoola. 

My Sister, the Serial Killer is a very easy and engaging read; I flew through half of it while giving blood. The chapters are short and punchy, the action is swift. In some ways it reminded me of Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman, in that it does provide some plausible excuses for Ayoola's behaviour, and I really enjoyed the glimpse into Nigerian culture (albeit an upper class, 'nice' family). I wouldn't exactly call it a fun read, but it's effortless and very enjoyable, so far as a novel about a serial killer can be, and it does actually have some serious observations to make about intergenerational violence and co-dependent relationships.
 

Taboo

West Australian Noongar author Kim Scott has been on my radar for a while, but somehow I've shied away from his novels, fearing they might be too harrowing for me. But I was persuaded to pick up his 2017 book, Taboo, by my book group friend Cathy, and I'm so glad I did.

Tilly is a schoolgirl who's recently discovered the truth about her Aboriginal parentage; she finds herself caught up in a kind of cultural camp for Noongar people, returning to their Country after a long exile and horrific history which has rendered that place forbidden until now. The narrative about the adults exploring their heritage, tentatively recovering language, making traditional tools and painting, singing old songs, enveloping young Tilly in a family she's never known, is extremely moving. But there is deep darkness in the story too, not just in the form of past massacres, murder and rape, but in the present, between vulnerable Tilly and sinister Doug, who is also connected to the community.

Taboo contains both horror and humour, and a touch of magic realism that weaves First Nations spirituality through a gothic, haunted story. The book ends with the hint that eventually Tilly will make peace with both sides of her inheritance, despite all the pain that has come before.
 

My Brother the Orangutan

Disclaimer: Heather Gallagher is an old friend of mine. We met at ante-natal classes before our first babies were born, and quickly discovered that we had a lot in common -- not just living in adjacent suburbs, but Heather and I were both aspiring children's authors. It's hard to believe that was nearly twenty five years ago.

My Brother the Orangutan is a lively, fun body swap story in the best tradition of Paul Jennings. Esther and her brother Rex have newly arrived from the country to the city, where their dad has a new job working at the nearby zoo (every kid's dream, surely). But the family are also grappling with the recent death of Esther's beloved grandfather, and moving in with their eccentric grandmother, whose cooking tends to produce dishes like salmon and lychee souffle, or tuna and pineapple muffins. But the trouble really starts when Rex swaps bodies with Harta the orangutan and Esther finds herself sharing a bedroom with an ape in a boy's body, while her little brother is stuck in the zoo.

Resourceful Esther's hero is Sherlock Holmes and it doesn't take her long to start putting the vital clues together. But there's only so much an eleven year old can do to persuade adults that something truly bizarre is going on.

My Brother the Orangutan mixes a warm family story with a twisty magical mystery and plenty of laughs. It would make a fabulous read-aloud and I can see it appealing to reluctant readers, too. Lots of fun.
 

Clock Dance

Anne Tyler is one of those reliable authors where you always have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get, and you can relax in the knowledge that you're in safe hands while you get there. (I'd put Noel Streatfeild, Agatha Christie and Eva Ibbotson into the same category.) In one respect, Clock Dance departs from Tyler's usual MO -- instead of revolving around a nuclear family, or a couple of generations, this one consists of a few mostly unrelated individuals who end up forming a kind of chosen family.

Willa has two grown up sons, with whom she has little contact -- not because of conflict, they've just drifted apart. Widowed young, she's on her second husband, an honourable but pedantic and unbending man. Peter is most put out when Willa is unexpectedly called to the rescue of her son's former girlfriend and her young daughter, but he heroically accompanies her from Arizona to Baltimore so that Willa can step in. However, his willingness to be a hero is strictly limited and soon Willa finds herself torn between competing duties.

Clock Dance is a really sweet read. Willa is quite a passive character, but I recognised a fellow Phlegmatic type -- averse to conflict, resisting through inaction, a calming presence. It's lovely to see her gradually being appreciated by this bunch of neighbourhood strangers, even as her supposed nearest and dearest dismiss and overlook her. At the end I almost stood up and cheered.
 

This Way Up

This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters) by Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman (otherwise known as the Map Men) was a Christmas request from my younger daughter which I've since borrowed, and a very entertaining and educational read it was, too. The Map Men have a popular YouTube channel and have produced loads of short, entertaining and educational videos all about maps, which are quite addictive if you fancy getting lost down a cartographic rabbit hole.

This Way Up focuses on some truly bizarre map issues, like the weird history of regional television stations in the UK and why the areas they serviced bore almost no relationship to actual, you know, geography. (This chapter led to me and younger daughter watching nearly an hour of YouTube footage of ITV logos through the years.) There's a chapter about maps that omit New Zealand altogether (there's also a Reddit group that catalogues these -- I'm telling you, this book has sent me down many internet black holes). There's the story of how some completely non-existent mountains came to feature on maps of Africa for decades until someone worked out that they weren't actually real. And there's a chapter about Polynesian navigation by 'reading' the feel of waves, believe it or not -- incredible stuff.

The Map Men go to some lengths, probably not strictly necessary, to mix up their formats; one chapter is in the form of a (fictional) podcast script, one is a long poem. But honestly the subject matter is so fascinating that these flourishes and the liberal sprinkling of bad jokes really isn't needed. This Way Up is a total hoot, and I learned a lot.

The Middle of Nowhere

I like Geraldine McCaughrean's books. I loved The White Darkness, and she's written 170 books and won numerous awards, so she's clearly doing a lot right. The Middle of Nowhere is a pacy, often frightening, high stakes drama set in the Australian Outback in the late nineteenth century. Comity's father is a telegraph operator on a remote repeater station; her mother has just died from snakebite. Comity is comforted by her friend Fred, an Aboriginal boy. But when the new assistant, Quartz Hogg arrives, he has brutal schemes up his sleeve...

As an historical adventure story, I enjoyed The Middle of Nowhere. But I did have a few problems, starting with the cover of my edition, which unlike the one shown here, features a silhouette of an Aboriginal figure in a stereotypical pose, standing on one leg and braced by a spear. I appreciated Fred's use of language throughout the book, but his ostracism from his mob didn't quite ring true -- I just couldn't believe it when Comity told her father, 'Fred has no people.' (This shunning was sort of explained in the text, but I didn't buy it.) There were other small weird moments, like when Comity's father gives her dollar coins, or when Horse suddenly changes gender for part of a chapter. I'm sure McCaughrean took pains to achieve historical and cultural accuracy, but small slips kept pulling me out of the story. Would I have noticed or cared if the novel had been set in, say, Venezuela? Absolutely not, and I'm sure I've brushed past the same kinds of errors in Eva Ibbotson's books that would have driven me crazy if I were actually Venezuelan.

On the other hand, McCaughrean doesn't flinch from showing the racism and cruelty of settler society (though Comity's family are almost too progressive to be true). So a mixed review from me. 

These Precious Days

Thank you to Susan Green for alerting me to the existence of this second volume of Ann Patchett's essays, These Precious Days. The longest and most moving of these pieces is the title work, which tells the story of how Tom Hanks' personal assistant, Sooki, ended up living with Ann and her husband during her cancer treatment -- a supposedly temporary stay that became long term when Covid restrictions descended. What began as a favour to a near stranger became a deep and cherished friendship.

The other piece that made me cry was about the death of Patchett's father after a long and debilitating struggle with pain and increasing disability:

I felt sad about my father all the time. When I closed my eyes at night I saw him lashed to a raft in a storm-tossed sea: dark rain, dark waves, my father crashing down again and again as he waited to drown. 

When her father, after years of this, eventually dies, she doesn't feel 'terrible.' What she feels is joy.

This essay struck particularly close for me, though my father is still aboard his own storm-battered raft. I don't know yet how I'll feel when he goes under, but Patchett has given me a glimpse of a few possibilities.

Lyrebird

Lyrebird opens with an irresistible hook: a biologist deep in the forest hears a lyrebird mimicking the sounds of a brutal murder, and a woman's voice crying for help. But twenty years go past before this killing can be properly investigated and a whole sordid scheme is eventually uncovered, involving trafficked women, sexual abuse and multiple murders.

Jane Caro clearly relishes making her lead detective a sixty year old woman, hauled out of retirement to take charge of this cold case. It's nice to see an older woman with some life baggage in a leadership role -- a bit like Jane Tennison in Prime suspect, only more likeable. The threat of climate change hangs over this novel, too, this time in the form of bushfire, which makes for an action-packed climax. Lyrebird is less twisty and convoluted than Chris Hammer's thrillers, but the largely female perspective makes it a satisfying and relatable crime mystery.
 

The Fire of Joy

In my ongoing battle to acquire a taste for poetry, I bought this collection as an experiment. Clive James, at the very end of his life, found solace in remembering the many poems he'd memorised by heart; The Fire of Joy collects about eighty of them, with commentary and anecdote by James. For the last couple of months, I've been reading one poem per night, just before going to sleep (I whispered them aloud to myself if possible, as per his instructions), which has been a lovely ritual, and I certainly developed a new appreciation of many of these poems, most of which were new to me, though some were old acquaintances.

I had an idea that I might also memorise these poems and thus be able to access the same joy and comfort that James obviously felt on his deathbed, but I fear it might be beyond me. I have tried to learn Louis MacNiece's The Sunlight on the Garden by heart, which is my favourite, and which I'd partly copied onto my collage study desk in Year 12; but so many of these poems are so long, and I don't like them all equally, so I don't think that the project is going to take off after all. It would be a wonderful thing to have a fund of poetry to repeat to oneself in moments of stress or crisis, which is what Clive James says he did during health emergencies. Traditionally poetry and I don't get along very well. The Fire of Joy has been at least one step towards reconciliation.
 

Music Camp

I absolutely love Penny Tangey's books for middle graders; they are the perfect blend of wry humour and important questions. In Music Camp, we see events through the eyes of flautist Juliet, bookish loner, and bolshie recorder-player Miley as they negotiate making new friends, loving Miss Lin (who teaches them both) and the politics of Grade 6 music camp. Juliet's father has died; Miley and her mum have lost everything in recent floods. Neither of them wants to talk about it. Climate change gently but persistently hangs over the story, but never in an overwhelming or hopeless way.

Tangey is so good at sketching characters through young eyes. We can see for ourselves that Renee has issues with OCD and that Clara might have ADHD, without it being spelled out for us. Minor characters are beautifully outlined -- Ollie, who is a total player on the music camp scene but is apparently a bit of a dork at school; Liam the eager gossip; Mr Broadbent, who is reluctant to accept the sponsorship of the big fossil fuel company; Miss Lin, who is more focused on the benefits their money can bring the kids she teaches. There is a lot of Tangey's trademark droll humour in Music Camp.

I can't get enough of Tangey's writing and I'm so excited that she has an adult mystery out now, set in East Melbourne, What Rhymes with Murder? I can't wait.
 

Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul

I have a feeling I might have read this biography of Dorothy L. Sayers before -- I think I borrowed it from the Stockbridge Library in Edinburgh in 1991, I'm sure I remember reading it in Jo and Alyson's flat in East Claremont St. Anyway, I had forgotten almost everything except the rather astonishing fact that she had a son in 1924, out of wedlock, telling no one. Fortunately she was able to foster the baby with her discreet cousin Ivy, who did this for a living, and was able to keep in contact with her son and support him for his entire childhood, until she 'adopted' him at the age of about eleven. He suspected that she was his biological mother but was not able to confirm this until after her death. (Also, apparently adoption as we know it was not legal in the UK until 1926! How extraordinary.)

Barbara Reynolds focuses a lot on Sayers' religious work and spiritual philosophy, which is of less interest to me than her detective fiction, so I skimmed over the last section of this book fairly quickly. I am intrigued to find her radio plays, The Man Born to Be King, which at the time were a revelation in their realistic presentation of Jesus' life. Something I'd forgotten was that Sayers pronounced her name 'Sairs' and strongly disliked the pronounciation SAY-ers, which is of course how I've said it my whole life. Whoops. Sorry, Dorothy. 

I don't think Dorothy Sayers and I would have agreed on much, but she had a brave, rich and resourceful life and I celebrate her.

The Blessing

I found this omnibus edition of three of Nancy Mitford's novels in a secondhand book shop. I already own a very well-thumbed copy of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate so I just bought this for The Blessing, which oddly I have never owned and I don't think I've read it since high school (a long time, anyway!)

The Blessing, while not reaching the comedic heights and poignant depths of the other two novels, stood up very well, though I expect I would have got more out of it if I knew more about French high society in the 1950s. Womanising Charles-Edouard is of course yet another portrait of Gaston Palewski, this time elevated to a dukedom and terrifically handsome. Despite being married to beautiful, languid, easy-going Englishwoman Grace, he can't keep his eyes or hands off other women; the central cultural conflict of the novel lies between the worldly, sophisticated French attitude to these affairs, and the uptight priggish English intolerance of such behaviour.

All through the story, Grace is urged to adopt a kind of radical acceptance of Charles-Edouard's roving eye, even when she catches him in flagrante. It occurs to me that Charles-Edouard could equally have exercised some radical self-control, but hey. The real villain of the piece is the couple's young son Sigi, who shamelessly manipulates them both to keep them apart and enjoy the fruits of their undivided attention. I have no idea what the contemporary attitude to extra-martial affairs is in France these days, but I suspect it might be a little less forgiving that it was in 1951. 

A Matter of Death and Life

A Matter of Death and Life is a beautiful, sad book. When Marilyn Yalom, married to author and psychotherapist Irvin Yalom and an accomplished academic and writer in her own right, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she suggested that she and Irv should write a book about their experience together. In the first two thirds of the book, they write alternating chapters, charting Marilyn's treatment, her acceptance that the end is near and her wish to take control of the process, along with Irv's panicked denials and terror at the thought of losing her. The last few chapters are written by Irv alone, grieving, observing himself, missing her so much he can't bear to look at her photograph. At 88, he is sure that it won't be long before he dies, too -- but, incredibly, as I write this, he is now 94 and remarried!

There are many interesting, heart wrenching observations: Irvin is shocked that he's besieged with obsessive thoughts of sex after Marilyn's death; he knows perfectly well intellectually that she is dead, but he can't help taking photos and storing up anecdotes to tell her (apparently this reflects different functions of the memory in the brain); he acknowledges for the first time that he has never really known loss before, and that his therapy clients who accused him of being smug and insulated in his own happiness were quite correct.

Marilyn quotes a beautiful poem that I hadn't come across before, by Jane Kenyon, who herself died tragically young.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

 

Silver

Fittingly, I read most of Chris Hammer's second novel, Silver, in a seaside town, though one located on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne rather than the north coast of New South Wales like the fictional town of Port Silver. Silver takes place in the months after Scrublands; journalist Martin Scarsden has finished his true crime book (don't we all wish we could bang out a whole book in a month or so?) and is joining new partner Mandy and her baby son Liam in his old hometown where she's inherited a house. Overlook the coincidence -- there are more to come.

Silver is a well-constructed mystery with the now familiar Hammer ingredients of shenanigans around real estate, buried secrets and unsuspected connections. I really enjoyed the sections where Martin is schlepping around with Liam; we don't often see investigations carried out with a toddler in tow, and the detective having to worry about nappies and baby food (conveniently, Liam falls asleep in the car a lot). Martin's own traumatic family past is fleshed out for the first time, and we meet his uncle Vern and his Aboriginal wife. The pace is less frenetic than in Scrublands, but there's plenty of action -- a corpse in the first few pages, several historic violent deaths, a fist fight on the beach, and a mass poisoning before the novel's end. Martin often acts like a dick, despite his bonding with Liam (luckily there is private childcare available whenever it's not possible for either Mandy or Martin to look after him), and Mandy gets realistically fed up with him.

Silver forms the basis of the second season of Scrublands, available on streaming, and now I've polished off the book I can't wait to get stuck into the TV version. If it's anything like Scrublands season one, it will simplify the plot considerably and delete a few storylines to compress it into four episodes instead of 560 pages. 

Cuckoo's Flight

Cuckoo's Flight is the third and final volume in Wendy Orr's Bronze Age trilogy, and Leira from Swallow's Dance makes a reappearance as Clio's grandmother. This time the town is in danger from raiders, and it seems that one of the young girls will be chosen as a sacrifice to appease the Goddess. Clio's family are potters, but Clio's true love is her father's horses. After an accident that damaged her leg, Clio will never ride again; but her father has an idea for a chariot that might be almost as good...

Orr wrote Cuckoo's Flight during Covid lockdowns, and she says she realised while she was writing it that Clio was going to be disabled, as she herself is now. Female family relationships and friendships are strongly emphasised in this book, like the other Bronze Age stories, and it's so refreshing to read a novel set in a matriarchal society (even if the Lady and the Goddess are sometimes unreasonable in their demands). Life is harsh in these times, with orphaned Mika being beaten by her brother, ill-treated slaves in the purple dye works, and brutal battles; but there is kindness and rejoicing, too.

Cuckoo's Flight was the last book I rescued from the Allen & Unwin clearout, and I'm happy to have all three volumes of the trilogy safe on my own shelves -- it would be worth it for the covers alone, created by the brilliant Josh Durham who was also responsible for the cover design of Crow Country.