Scar Tissue

Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff

As part of my reading habits I have been working through the Booker/Man Booker shortlists since the beginning of their time.  I always have several novels waiting in the wings and my reading of these is interspersed with more current titles, and novels which are less demanding and of the more popular thriller variety  As it happens this novel was the first I spotted in my basket of 'wallflowers'. 

The subject matter turns out to be so relevant to my place at the moment.  With my own mother in her last days of the cruel disease which is Alzheimers, this and the way the fictional family in Ignatieff's novel deals with it forms the very relevant core of the novel. 

At the heart of Michael Ignatieff's riveting novel about a woman's descent into Alzheimer's are the tangled threads of a Midwestern family, frayed by time and tragedy yet still connected - as much by pride, embarrassed love, and sibling rivalry as by the painful ties of family loyalty. More than a tale of isolated tragedy, Scar Tissue explores the bonds of memory, their configuartion in self-identity, and their relationship to love, loyalty, and death. 

It is a son's account of his mother's voyage into a world of neurological disease and anyone, and there are so many of us, who has lived their parent through that journey will find much that resonates in this memoir.  I find it a particular point of interest that none of the main characters is given a name...   Wikipedia gives a plot summary as follows:

The book details one woman’s struggle with Alzheimer's (or dementia, it’s not clear) and how her family respond to it. In particular, it is one of her son’s voice the reader hears since he is narrating it. Another son isn’t involved so much as he is living in Boston practicing as a neuroscientist. So it is the narrator who bears most of the burden. And all the while, he is trying to work on his marriage and his career as a philosophy professor. His own family life is hardly acknowledged and tears in his marriage begin to show, towards his wife; there for moral support but can't come to terms with him not being a consistent, central figure at the moment.

While her illness begins with her repeating stories ad nauseam, things get much worse as she starts to be incapable of recognizing her own family. Thus the prime caretaker – the son – ends up separating from his wife and living in derelict conditions. Nonetheless, he remains positive about the nature of life and death, even once he has lost both his parents, concluding that he “know[s] that there is a life beyond this death, a time beyond this time. I know that at the very last moment…I will be face to face at last with a pure and heartless reality beyond anything a living soul can possibly imagine

How the Light Gets In

How The Light Gets In by Louise Penny

When I have been browsing in charity book shops I have occasionally seen books written by Louise Penny.  I have allowed my eyes to slide past these books and their titles.  I have to be utterly honest and say that the format of the paperbacks has not sold itself to me in terms of being a novel worth my reading time.  How judgemental, how misguided.

My reading neighbours in St Vaast handed me this book, it being a second copy for which they did not have any use.  Never being one to look a gift horse in the mouth I decided to give it a go.  At least I reasoned as I looked at the dust jacket, it looks as if it is a detective novel.

When I google I am amazed to see that 12 other Inspector Gamache novels have slipped me by.  True to form I will now go and start with the first in the series, Still Life.

There is something about Penny's plotting that goes beyond the run of the mill necessity to provide an arena in which the detective/criminal scenario can be played out.  A suite of credible characters and a plot based on the lore around a famous set of Canadian quintuplets, born before the days of test tube fertility treatment are brought together to give a narrative of substance.  I really enjoyed this read:

A DETECTIVE
As a fierce, unrelenting winter grips Quebec, shadows are closing in on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department and hostile forces are lining up against him.
A DISAPPEARANCE
When Gamache receives a message about a mysterious case in Three Pines, he is compelled to investigate -- a woman who was once one of the most famous people in the world has vanished.
A DEADLY CONCLUSION
As he begins to shed light on the investigation, he is drawn into a web of murder, lies and unimaginable corruption at the heart of the city. Facing his most challenging, and personal, case to date, can Gamache save the reputation of the Sûreté, those he holds dear and himself?