Of Human Suffering

Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel

I read this in English translation and my impression is that it is a good one.  The short story, a novella, is told in simple style and this poignant, moving and ultimately sad novel did indeed stir feelings that remained with me after the final sentences had been read.

Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, and with his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh and His Child is a remarkable novel with an extraordinary twist, a subtle portrait of friendship and a dialogue between two cultures.

 Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. The other refugees in the detention centre are unsure how to help the old man; his caseworkers are compassionate, but overworked. Monsieur Linh struggles beneath the weight of his sorrow, and becomes increasingly bewildered and isolated in this unfamiliar, fast-moving town. And then he encounters Monsieur Bark. They do not speak each other's language, but Monsieur Bark is sympathetic to the foreigner's need to care for the child. Recently widowed and equally alone, he is eager to talk, and Monsieur Linh knows how to listen. The two men share their solitude, and find friendship in an unlikely dialogue between two very different cultures.

In contrast to Monsieur Linh and His Child , my subsequent read is a 700-page novel which was short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker.  A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is a bleak, unrelentingly harrowing story of four young men who meet at college and focuses on one of the quartet in particular.  Malcolm, JB, Willem and Jude, randomly assigned as college roommates, become best friends. Bright, ambitious and talented, they all move to New York, pursuing different careers: handsome Willem works as a waiter while auditioning as an actor; JB creates trendily experimental art while dreaming of fame as a representational painter; Malcolm comes from a wealthy, demanding family and worries that his architecture career will not impress his father; Jude is a young lawyer, working for the public defender’s office. The reader predicts that some will succeed, some will fail; some will build happy relationships, some won’t; tragedies will strike and be overcome. 

The reader is quite mistaken, however: before long, all four friends are blessed with immoderate professional success, while two of them rapidly recede into the background, with Jude St Francis emerging as the novel’s protagonist.

His first 15 years consist of unrelieved, grotesque, extravagant abuse: and then an authorial switch is flipped. For the rest of his life (with the important exception of one disastrously abusive relationship), Jude encounters only selfless love and kindness: the patron saint of lost causes becomes a lost cause surrounded by saints. His friends are all very concerned with Jude, to the exclusion of being concerned about anyone else, including themselves.  In real life, people tend to get tired of other people’s repetition compulsions, largely because they are consumed by their own dramas. But this is a little life that tilts toward a large fairy tale, about cruelty and nobility, evil and goodness.  The novel deals with Jude's anguish, his self-hatred, his life-long habit of 'cutting' - the unfathomable tendency of people so wounded and traumatised by what others have inflicted upon them, that they blame themselves.  I lost count of the number of times Jude utters the words "I'm sorry."  You get the feeling as the novel progresses that there cannot be a redemption, a happy ending.  This haunting novel is one to which my thoughts will often in a world where instances of child abuse, many of long-years standing, continue to surface to the light of day.

In Steven Galloway's novel The Cellist of Sarajevo, the author mixes real and imagined characters.  It is set in Bosnia's capital during the civil war of the Nineties, opens with a cellist sitting by a window. He is playing Albinoni's Adagio while outside a queue of people wait to buy bread. Seconds later, a shell explodes in the marketplace and they are killed. The cellist stands at the window all night and all the next day. After 24 hours, he carries his cello down to the carnage-strewn street. He positions a stool in a crater and begins once again to play the Adagio. He goes on to do this every day for 22 days, one day for each victim.

Snipers in the hills overlook the shattered streets of Sarajevo.  But Arrow believes she's different from the snipers on the hills around the city. She shoots only soldiers.  But they kill unarmed civilians. Knowing that the next bullet could strike at any moment, the ordinary men and women below strive to go about their daily lives as best they can. Kenan faces the agonizing dilemma of crossing the city to get water for his family and neighbour.  He dare not take his household to help for fear they will be killed by the snipers. If he dies, what will happen to his family?

The last of Galloway's four characters, the baker Dragan, lives mostly in the past and, gripped by fear, does not know who among his friends he can trust. . He no longer knows which is the real Sarajevo: the one he sees today or the one in his memories, 'where people were happy, treated each other well, lived without conflict'.

Galloway threads these individual stories together, narratives crisscrossing: three weeks in the lives of individuals struggling to survive as their beloved city is besieged. The characters of Arrow and the cellist are based upon real people, but in his examination of their feelings and motives, Galloway makes them his own. They are worn out with war, fearful of what will become of them and their loved ones. Only the cellist and his music brings hope - hope that mankind is still capable of humanity, that the old world is not completely lost, that the war has not destroyed everything. This short novel employs a sparse style with the simple prose of a short story.  Galloway's style is sparse, pared down; his prose has the deceptive simplicity of a short story.

Reading the book was an experience similar in some ways to that of reading Monsieur Linh and his Child.  People, emotionally wounded, trying to live their lives as if things were normal, when that is far from the case.  Such reads are made all the more powerful for the brevity with which the story is told.  They are gems of literature.

Last Days and Last Letters

Peking Story: The Last Days of Old China by David Kidd

I doubt I would have heard of this book were it not for the fact that David Bowie has it itemised on his list of 100 good reads.  And this list might not have come to my attention had not the death of David Bowie in January this year given rise to the publication of that book list.  There the book is listed as All The Emperor’s Horses .  What we know about the author is that he has taught Transcendental Meditation for twenty-eight years. He has been an environmental activist for nearly twenty-five years, and a vegetarian for thirty. He lives in Canton, Ohio.

From photographs in the book we can also see that Bowie carries a certain resemblance to Kidd.

Here is what Kirkus Reviews has to say about the novel, under the title of All the Emperor's Horses.  "Set in Peking during the first days of Mao's entry into official power, this is a personal, and delicate depiction of what to some is a disaster, to others a deliverance. The author, an American university professor, marries Aimee, the daughter of an ex-justice of the Chinese supreme court, just as the entire order from which springs her dignity and grace is receiving its death blow. Like the crumbling mansion so vital to Buddhist mythology, the palatial home of the Yus quickly succumbs as the various members of Aimee Yu's family go about finding a way of survival within the new order of things. The author, highly suspect as an American and as a member of the aristocratic Yu menage is, himself, subject to scrutiny and even arrest, although with comic rather than dire results. Throughout his ordeal he maintains a perspective on the situation which admits nostalgia, awe, and humour. David Kidd writes with restrained composure. The atmosphere he evokes is strong, exercising a poignant effect on the senses. He is discreet and despite the chain of lamentable events he reveals-- often with humour--one does not feel that a political judgment is being made. Here, rather, is a picture of a world in transition, a world which, under the scrutiny of the author, emerges rich, refreshing and real. "

Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris was my choice to fulfil a category on the BookRiot Read Harder Challenge.  (Read a work either by or about a transsexual.)  Jan Morris is a  is a Welsh transgender historian, author and travel writer. Last Letters from Hav is a narrative account of the author's six-month visit to the fictional country of Hav.

The novel is written in the form of travel literature. The work is structured in an episodic format with each chapter corresponding to a month spent in Hav. Hav itself is imagined to be a cosmopolitan small independent peninsula located somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. The novel proceeds with little in the way of connecting plot but contains several episodes describing the author's subjective experience in Hav. The author narrates a string of evocative episodes including visiting a languid casino, a courteous man claiming to be the true Caliph, watching a city-wide roof race, and a visit to the mysterious British agency. The novel concludes with the author's invited visit to a strange ritual conclave where she observes several cowled men whom she thinks she might recognize as her acquaintances from her time in Hav. The author then recounts the rise of strange and ill-defined tensions in the country. The author decides to leave the country amidst the growing unrest. On the last line of the novel the author writes that she could, from the train station, see warships approaching on the horizon.

The title appeared on the Man Booker Shortlist as a work of fiction, which it is.  However such is the vivid account of the imagined Hav - just look at the book cover image - that the book really does have the feel of a travelogue, a first-hand account of the author's visit to that country. 

Dark Things in the Night and the Arctic Cold

So I press on with my Read Harder Challenge.  One item on the list is:

'Read a book with a main character that has a mental illness'

The Bird of Night by Susan Hill fulfils this category very well.  It also ticks a box on my Booker Shortlist Personal Challenge.  It is a bleak read and not a long one.  Unfortunately the author commented in 2006 "It is a novel of mine that was shortlisted for Booker and won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction. It was a book I have never rated. I don't think it works, though there are a few good things in it. I don't believe in the characters or the story.  

Hill is known for her gothic style and penchant for a ghost story several of which she wrote in the 80s and early 90s.  Her 21st century novels are, in one way, lighter being thrillers written around her detective character, Simon Serrailler.  In terms of writing they are rather lightweight when compared to, for example, The Bird of Night.  But she has captured an audience with Simon Serrailler and this sells books and pays bill!

Moving swiftly on therefore I come to three detective novels written by Icelandic authors.  Two, by Arnaldur Indridason, are part of a crime fiction series written around the character Inspector Erlendur.

Strange Shores and Hypothermia are full of Icelandic atmosphere.  Having recently renewed my acquaintance with Iceland in general and Reykjavik in particular and rekindled my enjoyment of everything the country has to offer,
and given my fondness for a good thriller, these are books to enjoy for their page-turning qualities added to which there is an ongoing story surrounding
Erlendur and his early life, during which he experiences the death of his younger brother, in circumstances the nature of which he has not been able to establish. 

Another Icelandic writer, Ragnar Jonasson has also captured my attention.  His output is not quite so prolific but he is the author of the Dark Iceland series in which there are only two titles published so far but three further novels planned according to his website.  I've read Night Blind and I now need to retrace steps and read the first title, Snow Blind.   As with Indridason we are in the realms of Icelandic noir, atmospheric with good characterisation and plotting.  The tension sucks you into a claustrophobic story whose main protagonist is a novice police detective Ari Thor.  The peace of a close-knit Icelandic community is shattered by the murder of a policeman - shot at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark Arctic waters closing in, it falls to Ari Thor to piece together a puzzle that involves tangled local politics, a compromised new mayor and a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik where someone is being held against their will...

Ordo Equitum Solis

In four early books J G Ballard succeeded in making a kind of steely poetry out of the nastiest incidentals of late twentieth century life. So reads the Guardian review for 'Empire of the Sun'.   This novel however merits consideration as a work which distinct from that early, essentially science fiction, genre.

"Based on events which Ballard himself witnessed and suffered while interned as a boy in Shanghai during the Second World War, this is an extraordinary addition to our modern literature of war.

  Indeed, it could be said that if there is still room for a masterpiece about the Second World War, then this is it - and like other masterpieces it gains its initial effect in standing at a slightly oblique and unexpected angle to its subject matter.   By concentrating on the expatriate colony of Shanghai, and by showing us the events following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy, Ballard achieves the creation of an amazing microcosm. Above all, the book is a triumph of truthfulness of tone. The boy, Jim, separated from his parents, camping out first in his own empty house and then in the deserted house of his parents' friends, eventually interned for four years in the camp at Lunghua, becomes an admirable clear-eyed guide to a most peculiar inferno.  This, Ballard convinces us, is how it was. No heroes, no heroics, just war as the normal condition, and the only battle that to survive."

The tone of the narrative of Empire of the Sun sounds authoritative and, lacking the need for imagination in the events which take place between the pages of the book, it is completely convincing. I 'read' this novel as an Audible experience.  The narrator, Steven Pacey, made an excellent job of characterisation, finding voices and accents for the cast and in particular for Jim, the young and naive ingenu who is caught up in the adult folly of war. 

Another novel by Ballard, High Rise, was another Audible read.  A new high-rise block seems to give its well-established tenants all the conveniences and commodities that modern life has to offer: swimming pools, its own school, a supermarket and high-speed lifts.  But at the same time, the building seems to be designed to isolate the occupants from the outside world, allowing for the possibility to create their own closed environment.  Life in the
high-rise begins to degenerate quickly, as minor power failures and petty annoyances among neighbours escalate into an orgy of violence. Soon skirmishes are being fought throughout the building, as floors try to claim lifts and hold them for their own. Groups gather to defend their rights to the swimming pools. And party-goers attack "enemy floors" to raid and vandalize them.  It does not take long for the occupants of the entire building to abandon all social restraints, and give in to their most primal urges. The tenants completely shut out the outside world, content with their life in the high-rise; people abandon their jobs and families and stay indoors permanently, losing all sense of time. Even as hunger starts to set in, many still seem to be enjoying themselves, as the building allows them a chance to break free from the social restrictions of modern society and embrace their own dark urges and desires. As the commodities of the high-rise break down and bodies begin to pile up no one considers leaving or alerting the authorities.

In time the tenants abandon all social and moral etiquette. As their environment gives way to a hunter/gatherer culture, they gather together in small clans, claim food sources from where they can (which includes eating the many dogs in the building, and eventually even the other tenants). Every stranger is met with extreme violence.

Ballard here offers a vision of how modern life in an urban landscape and the advances of technology could warp the human psyche in hitherto unexplored ways.  It is an allegory based on the tower block phenomenon, an architectural money-saving expedient in maximising potential accommodation over a given area.  But with this new approach to providing living space came various social problems which discredited this innovation.  Ballard's satire illustrates these issues in an extreme way.

As a postscript to the above reviews there are two further things to say about Empire of the Sun.  Firstly, in order to comply with a requirement of the Read Harder Book Challenge 2016 that I have embarked on, I sat down to watch the film of the book.   Steven Spielberg directed the 1987 American production with Christian Bale playing the role of Ballard as a boy and John Malkovich playing Basie.  Ballard chose Bale (who was 12 at the time he was cast) because he felt he bore some resemblance to himself as a boy. The casting was based on the recommendation of the wife of Steven Spielberg; more than 4,000 child actors were auditioned.

By and large I felt the film was fairly faithful to the book although visually it was heavily sanitised in comparison to the narrative of the novel.  To complete my understanding of the novel I also read Ballard's Miracles of Life which is a short autobiography describing his childhood and early teenage years in Shanghai in the 1930s and the early 1940s, when the city is ravaged by war.  Ballard is plucked from a happy and comfortable childhood to experience the horrors and deprivation of internment camp with his parents. 

After being liberated by the Americans in 1945, James travels to England with his mother and sister, but he finds the atmosphere of post-war Britain difficult to penetrate.  After his schooling he embarks on medical studies but throws this over to enlist in the RAF.  This also turns out to be a wrong move and subsequently Ballard marries, becomes a father only to be widowed unexpectedly.  Faced with bringing up his three children single-handed he embarks on his literary career and makes forays into the art world of the 60s and 70s.  The book ends with Ballard's return to Shanghai in 1991, and with a very short and moving epilogue, dated September 2007, wherein he announces that he is sick with a terminal illness

Challenging Reading

In recent months I have been working through novels that I have picked up here and there, titles by authors whose work I have consistently enjoyed.  My reading thread has periodically been punctuated by novels that have previously been nominated for the Booker Shortlist, or have been winners.  Titles such as St Urbain's Horseman by Mordecai Richler, Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes and Time's Arrow by Martin Amis.  None of these was a particularly 'easy' read.  They are not what I would call accessible novels and I found the challenging.  But there you are, I am a collector and these are four titles ticked off the list.

Meanwhile I continue with another list, my BookRiot challenge.  Slade House by David Mitchell
fulfils the 'horror' category although it is more weird and mystical as a fantasy than frightening.  It began as the series of tweets by Mitchell in July 2015 which evolved into a story and which was set in the same universe as The Bone Clocks.  But the 2,000-word story quickly acquired a life of its own and was published on 27th October 2015 just in time for Halloween.  You need to concentrate when Mitchell is doing his thing, slipping between time frames but his writing is always inventive and articulate.

And then I decide to tackle The Year of the Flood by Margaret Attwood.  I love this woman's writing, and her voice even more.  My sister in law Jenny forwards me a link; it takes me to a slot on YouTube where you can listen to Attwood read one of her poems, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGOaB7Ifg5U   Listening to ' The Moment' has a remarkably calming effect on me.  Her deeply modulated voice and the words and their meaning speak directly to me, have the ability to change a personal perspective.  The message is clear and I heed the message as I continue to sort through a surfeit of papers, documents, publications that I no longer need.   Meanwhile I plough on with The Year of the Flood......  

With a reading of MaddAddam this third novel by Margaret Atwood brings together two of her previous works, Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.  I read Oryx and Crake at least ten years ago and have no clear memory of the book.  Tackling The Year of the Flood through the medium of an audio book requires a lot of concentration.  I find it is not always easy to hold onto the strands of narrative and I miss the ability to leaf back through pages to help re-orient myself in the narrative when I 'lose the plot'.   Some reviews of MaddAddam run as follows:

“The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire … Her vision is as affirming as it is cautionary, and the conclusion of this remarkable trilogy leaves us not with a sense of despair at mankind’s failings but with a sense of awe at humanity’s barely explored potential to evolve.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An epic dystopian journey through a wasteland of high science and low deeds that ends in hope.” – The Independent

I am left with the feeling that I have not done the trilogy justice.  It seems clear to me that I should tackle a second reading challenge in that I should at some point reread the three novels, in hard copy, and try to make sense of the narrative and the new world disorder that is portrayed.

Of Hares and Unicorns: folklore and myth

The hare (Lepus europaeus) appears in English folklore in the saying "as mad as a March hare". 

Here we are on the second day of March having just enjoyed the gift of an extra day in this 'leap' year.   The legend of the White Hare tells of a witch who takes the form of a white hare and goes out

looking for prey at night, or of the spirit of a broken-hearted maiden who cannot rest and who haunts her unfaithful lover.  The mythical Unicorn is white too.  It is a legendary animal of European

folklore, often depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long horn and cloven hooves and sometimes a goat's beard - but not lady unicorns surely?  In the Middle Ages and Renaissance it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured by a virgin. In encyclopedias you will read that its horn was said to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In Medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as unicorn horn.

Why all this hares and unicorns?  As it happens I have just read two delightful books; the one recommended by a new bookish friend who came to lunch at The Old Workshop with other village friends who are keen readers.  The other is my choice to fulfil a category on my reading challenge.

'Hare' by Jim Crumley is one in the series Encounters in the Wild, where the author writes of memorable experiences as a quiet bystander at the margin of a place where he can observe the animal's activity and behaviour.   Hares, golden-brown in colour with a pale belly and white tail, spend most of their day nestling in a patch of grass, known as a form, and is most active at night.  When they are disturbed, they can shift..... up to 45 mph.  Jim Crumley's Encounter series is written as short monographs on individual species; companion books include Fox, Barn Owl and Swan.  They are pretty and bijou, very much books to have and to hold. 

'I Believe in Unicorns' by Michael Morpurgo is my choice to fulfil the 'Middle Grade' category on my list of challenges.  I disliked this term intensely when I first encountered it, as it implies something mediocre and not quite worthy of the attention of a discriminating reader.  In fact it is part of educational terminology and describes a category of reading suitable for 8-12 year olds before they are ready to tackle Young Adult fiction.

Tomas hates school, hates books and hates stories. Forced to visit the library, he stops to listen to magical tales that the Unicorn Lady spins. These tales draw him in and soon his life will be changed for ever.  The story is set against the backdrop of war-torn Europe, and explores the power of stories to transform lives    Many reviews of this book are united in finding the story enchanting. "It has adult themes of loss and redemption wrapped up in a delightful and safe story for children. Adults will get as much from this book as children - it brought tears to my eyes." writes one reviewer.  Another says " It will make you cry a little or at least get a lump in your throat but a truly brilliant read and one I think everyone should read."  I am absolutely with these reviewers on that one.  It did bring tears to my eyes, happy ones.  I doubt anyone who treasures the joy they find in reading can help but feel emotional as the story draws to a close.

Whilst on the subject of animals......... I complete my reading of The Soul of an Octopus, lent to me by Francis Shaxson at one of our Bookish Lunches.  The Author Sy Montgomery offers a unique window into octopus behaviour and intelligence through eloquent and vivid descriptions — both science-based and emotional — of her extended encounters with octopuses while going behind the scenes at Boston's New England Aquarium and diving in Polynesian waters. 

The aptly-named giant Pacific octopus Octavia comes alive in the book (as do other octopuses) with a unique personality that responds to Montgomery in poignant ways.  Wild-caught in British Columbia and transported to the aquarium by Federal Express, Octavia is the octopus Montgomery comes to know best. On one occasion, Octavia and Montgomery hold on to each other for one hour and fifteen minutes, in an instance of tactile pleasure felt in an apparently mutual way by octopus and woman. 'I stroked her head,' Montgomery reports, 'her arms, her webbing, absorbed in her presence. She seemed equally attentive to me.'

Montgomery watches Octavia with added excitement when she lays eggs — thousands of them, like 'tiny seed pearls on black string.' 'Mottled with dark patches, Octavia is radiantly beautiful', writes Montgomery, 'the very picture of a healthy octopus and a diligent mother. She fluffs the clusters of eggs nearest the window with one arm, like a mom sitting on a park bench might jiggle a baby buggy.' The eggs, though, will never hatch; they are inert, infertile, sending no signs of life back to their caretaker. Never having had the opportunity to mate with a male, Octavia will not experience the evanescence of octopus motherhood shortly before death in the way that wild female octopuses do."

So three very different animals, two from the real world and the third from the surreal world of fantastical beasts.  But the octopus has been the subject of many mythological stories over the years, one of the best known being that of The Kraken, legendary sea monsters of giant proportions said to dwell off the coasts of Norway and Greenalnd and usually portrayed in art as a giant octopus attacking ships.

When Robert G reads Robert G

About a couple of years ago I signed up to audible.co.uk, a provider of audio books with many narrators of high calibre.  None more so than the English actor who reads a trio of Crime novels written by J K Rowling under her pen name, Robert Galbraith.  I happened upon the second in the series, The Silkworm because it fulfilled the requirements of one of the 24 categories listed on the BookRiot Read Harder Challenge, 2016.

What a find!  Not only is the novel an engaging audio page-turner of a thriller, it is read by the talented character actor Robert Glenister.  His interpretation gives the central character Cameron Strike, an SIB investigator who is an amputee with a craggy character and a west country accent, credibility, humanity and an appeal with which this reader certainly connected

I have now had all three novels read to me by Glenister.  One after the other with no restraint, no 'cooling-off' period in between each book in which to digest the plot of the one and anticipate the pleasure of the next story-telling session, but headlong to the exclusion of all other listening media.  Fortunate that I had embarked on some time-consuming jobs which included a re-shelving of my fiction library.  And a bit of tidying up.  With my iPhone tucked in my pocket I can enjoy a supreme reading experience to accompany a manual task.

'Galbraith' has found many fans for her crime novels and a stream of adjectives describe her thrillers: gripping, compelling, addictive (yes certainly that!), cleverly plotted, atmospheric, entertaining..... a bit tame that last one. 
So here's the first in the series, The Cuckoo's Calling, and let's hope she at the very least keeps to her promise to write seven in the series..  A troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony and it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case.  Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker and more dangerous things become.  The action takes place in London and Galbraith captures the atmosphere of both smart West End and backstreet settings. 

The second novel, The Silkworm, shifts to territory which is very familiar to JKR. A novelist, Owen Quine,  has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published it would ruin lives - so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him.  As the investigation proceeds it is clear that there is more to the novelist's disappearance than a straightforward leave of absence.  When Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer.  In this second novel JKR develops the professional relationship between Cormoran Strike and his secretary Robin Ellacott.

In the third novel some clever plotting with unexpected twists and red herrings results in a dark tale of a serial killer driven by a grudge against Cormoran, to discredit and taunt the detective and bring about the ruination of the private investigation business Strike is trying to establish. 

Woven into the principle narrative is the story of Strike and Robin Ellacott who are at crossroads in their professional and personal lives.  I found it difficult to switch this audiobook off... a combination of the gripping and fast-paced plot and the fluent and compelling narration by Robert Glenister provides an enthralling listening experience.  The range of accents he uses for a cast of shady characters and gruff policemen is skilful indeed.  I really enjoy the voice he has chosen for the wide boy Shanker.  All in all I cannot wait for these novels to be brought to the screen.  Nor can I wait to find out which man wins out on Robin's wedding day............. but I'm hoping.

Nequeo sopitis ac relictis curarum librorum acervum iuxta lectulum meum

This is how I feel but maybe the reality is not as uncompromising as that sounds although the pleasure to be derived from titles, visibly in waiting, is one to hug to oneself.  A couple of weeks ago my friend sent me a link to a Book Riot page, the Read Harder Challenge 2016.     It is simple enough: a list of 24 categories is given and the object is to read one book to fulfil the requirements of each of those categories.  At the time I receive this challenge I am already underway.  My current read is Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver: a 500+ page novel whose principle theme is climate change as manifested through the unexpected appearance of Monarch butterflies who attempt to overwinter on the wooded slopes above the rundown Appalachian farm where the Turnbow family lives.  Attempting to escape her empty marriage and the drudgery of life Dellarobia Turnbow heads for an assignation that accidentally transforms her life. En route to a tryst with a lover, she stumbles on the hillside covered with swathes of these orange butterflies that appear like fire on the landscape.

"The flames now appeared to lift from individual treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a campfire when it is poked. The sparks spiralled upward in swirls like funnel clouds. Twisters of brightness against grey sky."

As the story unfolds the mission of the scientists, led by Ovid Byron, who are studying this phenomenon, comes into conflict with the views and aims of the local community for whom the continuance of their every day and its routines is their only concern.

When I turn the final page I am one book down and 23 to go.  In the meantime I have reviewed the 'serving suggestions' that accompany the table to work to and find I already have one of the recommended titles, but otherwise decide to go it alone.  After much reflection and searching on the internet I come up with a first list of books which I would like to read on any terms:

Bedside companions all.