Category: Reviews

Book review: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

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I met an old friend from high school once who had experienced a traumatic head injury – we rode horses at the same place. She had almost photographic recall of long term memories from high school, but almost no short memory. Every time we encountered each other it was as if we were meeting for the first time after many years, and we would often cover the same territory in discussion – remembering our highs school days. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa reminded me of that time. The story is a sweet domestic drama set in Japan.

A problem isn’t finished just because you’ve found the right answer.

A housekeeper who is single mother to a young boy is placed by an employment agency with a new client. He is an old man who lives in a two room apartment at the back of his sister-in-laws house. The professor is a brilliant mathematician who’s short term memory only lasts 80 minutes after a traumatic head injury in a car accident. Pinned all over his suit are reminder notes he has written to himself to try and remember things that matter. The disability has not interfered with his ability to solve complex mathematical problems. 

Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.

The professor asks the housekeeper for her phone number and shoe size and explains the significant of those numbers, then draws a picture of her and pins it to his jacket.

Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.

One day the housekeeper has to take her son to work with her and he and the professor become friends. He calls the boy Root, after the square root sign, because the top of his head is flat. They bond over baseball and maths homework.

He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an study of number theory – prime numbers, triangular numbers, amicable numbers – and a gentle exploration of relationships without memory.

Book review: All Fours by Miranda July

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All Fours by Miranda July is a novel about what happens when creativity, peri-menopause, lingering trauma from a premature birth, and an emotionally and sexually distant marriage collide in an existential crisis. 

All of the hormones that made me want to seem approachable so I could breed are gone and replaced by hormones that are fiercely protective of my autonomy and freedom

The 45 year old narrator (unnamed) is an artist who became mildly famous at a young age and works in several mediums. She lives in California with her husband Harris and their non-binary child Sam. After getting an unexpected windfall from a piece of work she completed, and dealing with a creative block, she decides to take a solo road trip across the country to New York. Her best friend Jordi encourages her to spent the windfall on beauty. The trip will give her time to think and reevaluate life and a stay in the Carlye will be luxurious. Much of the story is relayed via phone calls between our narrator and Jordi with whom she shares everything.

Each person does the amount of lying that is right for them. You have to know yourself and fulfill the amount of untruth that your constitution requires.

Twenty minutes from home she has an encounter with a young man, Davey, who cleans her windscreen and they meet again at the place she stops to eat. She books overnight in a motel in the town. Then she decides to stay there rather than drive to New York and spends twenty thousand dollars commissioning Davey’s wife Claire to redesign the motel room. Over the next three weeks she has an intense emotional liaison with Davey.

A lot of women destroy their lives in their forties and then one day they wake up with no periods and no partner and only themselves to blame

When she returns home she cannot shake her obsession with Davey, dissatisfaction with her marriage, and her changing hormones. 

The women I dated were often my age, that was fine. But the men always had to be older than me because if they were my same age then it became too obvious how much more powerful I was and this was a turnoff for both of us. Men needed a head start for it to be even.

I loved the strange idiosyncratic subversion of this novel and the naked examination of the narrators interiority and fantasies. Skilfully crafted and brimming with funny one liners All Fours is a novel about women questioning in mid-life. A must read for women of a certain age.

Book review: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne is a fable-like children’s story about the Holocaust told from the perspective of a nine year old boy. Bruno does not know he is growing up in the middle of what would become one of humanities great tragedies. 

The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you’ve found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.

Bruno comes home from school one day to find the maid packing up his belongings. His family are moving from Berlin to an isolated location in the country. His father is a soldier, and his boss the Fury (Fuhrer) has given Bruno’s dad a special assignment.

Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.

The new house, called Out With (Auschwitz), is smaller and less interesting than the one in Berlin and Bruno thinks that moving was a mistake. He misses his friends and grandparents. There is no one for Bruno to play with at the new house, but through his bedroom window he can see people in the distance in a large fenced off area with squat buildings where everyone wears striped pyjamas. The adults in Bruno’s life are a bit evasive when he asks them questions.

What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

Out exploring one day Bruno meets a skinny boy called Shmuel on the other side of the fence and the two become friends after discovering they share a birthday. They meet on the same spot every day for a year and Bruno brings food for Shmuel. Shmuel tells his new friend that the soldiers hate him and everyone else in the striped pyjamas because they are Jews. Bruno doesn’t believe this would apply to his own father – he is a nice man.

We’re not supposed to be friends, you and me. We’re meant to be enemies. Did you know that? 

When Bruno’s parents decide that he, his sister and their mother should move back to Berlin, Bruno no longer wants to go. Too much time has passed and he has adjusted to his new life and made a good friend – though his family do not know about Shmuel.

He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has received polarised reviews. It is criticised for its historical inaccuracies and simplistic depiction of the horror of the time. It has also been lauded as a beautifully written fable, well crafted to introduce children to a difficult topic. And both those viewpoints can be true simultaneously. How do we introduce difficult, violent, traumatic, but important topics to young people in appropriate ways except by leaving out details?

. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

My own youthful introduction to this period of history was a book called I Am David by Anne Holm which was also criticised for its simplicity, inaccuracies and improbabilities. Despite this it was a story that left an impression. It made me aware of this particular point in history and engendered a sense of compassion and empathy for those who were subject to the cruelties of war and concentration camps.  

Book review: Educated by Tara Westover

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Educated by Tara Westover is a memoir set in an isolated community with views of striking mountains. Geographically Idaho in the USA has large tracts of rugged, beautiful wilderness. The state also has a significant Mormon population. Educated is about growing up in a large family of seven children with fundamentalist Mormon survivalist parents. But it is not a story primarily about religion.

An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.

Tara did not set foot in a classroom till she was seventeen, receiving what little education she did from her mother and through self-learning. The family did not visit doctors or hospitals. Even life threatening injuries were treated by Tara’s mother, a kind of healer who used herbs and tinctures and the will of god to mend people. The children did not have birth certificates, education or medical records until they were teenagers.

But sometimes I think we choose our illnesses, because they benefit us in some way.

The children worked in their father’s scrap yard without protective equipment. He was a man who believed in grand conspiracies, hoarded food and guns, and avoided contact with bureaucracy.

I could tolerate any form of cruelty better than kindness. Praise was a poison to me; I choked on it.

Tara’s desire for an education motivated her to break away from family ties, eventually earning a Doctorate at Cambridge University. When a lecturer described the profile of bipolar in a psychology class, Tara recognised her father in it. The cost of leaving the small community was estrangement from her family, but the decision probably saved her. It also enabled her to learn to trust her own views of the world.

My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.

As the narrative unfolds, it becomes evident that the key themes of Educated are mental illness, loyalty, family violence and how those issues can pervert people’s views of the world – in this case in a framework of religion and conspiracy theories about the end of the world. Tara’s story is also about identity, the reliability of memory and how education can lift one up and offer freedom from a life that seemed predestined .

The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education

Educated if beautifully written but difficult to read. I was mesmerised and left with the sense that sometimes life really is stranger than fiction. It is a wonder that Tara survived to tell the tale.

Book review: The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş

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At only 186 pages, The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş is a short intimate narrative about daily life. Asya and her husband Manu have lived abroad in an unnamed foreign country for a few years. Asya is a documentary filmmaker and Manu works for a not-for-profit. 

Asya, my grandmother said, don’t complicate the point. We named you after a whole continent and you’re filming a park.

They worry that they are not living a normal life trajectory, they are playing at being adults rather than committing. They made two decisions to in response to that anxiety. Asya decides to make a film about a local park, and the two decide to look into buying a house.

In a moment of panic, we decided to look for a home.

The story follows Asya as she makes her film and interviews people in the park, and we go with the couple as they look at properties to buy. While these two activities comprise the spine of the plot we also gain insights into Asya and Manus’s lives – their friends dynamics, their parents, and their elderly neighbour with declining health who they visit for tea and to read poetry to.

All the months that I had been filming, I’d thought that there were so many ways of living, of inhabiting the park. I wanted to know as many configurations as possible, all the strange and unique ways. But lately, as I went over the scenes again and again, smoothing their edges, positioning them into a fluid conversation, I’d begun to understand that there was, also, only one way to live beneath the multitude of forms, one way forward through the fleeting hours of the day.

The story is told from Asya’s point of view and reveals her reflections on her days, and ponderings on what she wants her life to be. The ordinariness and subtlety of The Anthropologists, along with the beautiful prose are what make it a delight to read. The ordinary moments of life can also be the most significant.

Where do I feel most like myself? I don’t know how to answer that question. I guess I’m still looking.

The style and feel of The Anthropologists was reminiscent to me of other tender novels like Cold Enough for Snow and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. 

Book review: Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

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Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors is a pre-covid New York urban fiction novel populated with flawed, and sometimes unlikeable characters – simply because they are ordinary humans. The characters are at times lacking insight, bad at arguing, codependent and avoidant.

When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.

Twenty four year old Cleo is a painter with ambition but not motivation, and her student visa is about to expire. Enter Frank – they meet after a New Year’s Eve party. Frank is a fortyish advertising agency owner. The chemistry is instant and the two marry after a very short courtship – Cleo swears it’s not just the visa, there are others she could have married for that.

Love looks through spectacles that make copper look like gold, poverty like riches, and tears like pearls.

The relationship soon begins to unravel into addiction, loneliness and betrayal, both haunted by past baggage that prevents them from functioning well together. As their relationship turns sour, they start to turn on one another.

I’m so lonely I could make a map of my loneliness….Sometimes I’m so lonely I’m not even on that map.

They are surrounded by friends, who due to their own struggles, are unable to support them. Frank’s half-sister, aspiring actress Zoe, relies on him for handouts to support her, and his best friend Anders is in love with Cleo. Cleo’s best friend Quintin struggles with his sexuality.

He wished he loved her a little more or hated her a little less, something to tip the scale. Instead, he lived in the fraught balance between the two, each increasing the intensity of the other….

Due to their inability to connect effectively with one another, Frank turns to Eleanor and Cleo turns to Anders.

Everybody’s got a hungry heart. The trick is to learn when you’re eating to fill the heart instead of the stomach. Feeding the stomach, she said, is easy. That’s just diet. It’s learning how to feed the heart that’s hard.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a meander about the ordinary struggles of life with the self and others, and about falling in and out of love. The novel is primarily character driven with lots of big intense feelings. If you like action, it might not be for you as the plot is loose.

Book review: Liar Liar by James Patterson and Candice Fox

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Ok, so I may have had a little binge…Liar Liar by James Patterson and Candice Fox is book 3 in the Harriet Blue series.

Detective Harriet Blue is clear about two things. Regan Banks deserves to die. And she’ll be the one to pull the trigger.

In Liar Liar Harry is on a mission to hunt down serial killer Regan Banks who killed her brother. But she is not searching for him with procedural justice in mind. She’s gone rogue and wants to kill him. Because some people deserve to die. But it is not a one way chase because Regan is hunting Harry as well, and the police are looking for both of them. 

Police bungle Regan Banks arrest, deadly serial kiler still at large. Two found dead; scene suggests Regan Banks alive and well. Where is Harriet Blue? Speculation rife detective is in league with killer.

Regan knows a lot about Harry and the people she cares about, going all the way back to her childhood. He’s using what he knows without remorse to try and draw her to him.

The public had never liked Harry. Had never believed that a Sex Crimes detective didn’t know her brother was a serial killer. 

The authors take us deeper into Harry’s psyche as she walks on the wild side driven by grit, determination, loyalty, and a thirst for vengeance. It is hard not to like Harry, as crazy as she is.

I didn’t sleep much. But when I did, my mind turned in circles, repeating their names like a mantra, connecting them end to end. When I was really tired, my lips moved. I sometimes woke to the sound of my own whispering.

Liar Liar is all action, violence and plot twists. It’s dark and gritty and suspenseful.

Book review: Fifty Fifty by James Patterson and Candice Fox

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Fifty Fifty by James Patterson and Candice Fox is book two in the Harriet Blue series. I have not read book one, but it didn’t matter, so don’t let that issue put you off. I read the novel as I am a huge Candice Fox fan and her finger prints are all over this one.

I’d been talking about the ‘key’ to my brother’s case since his arrest. The thing that freed him. A piece of false testimony. A surprise witness. Something, anything. I’d been looking into Same’s case, and I hadn’t found the key that proved he wasn’t the killer. But I had high hopes.

Detective Harriet Blue has a short fuse and anger issues stemming from an upbringing in foster care. When her brother Sam is arrested and charged with being a serial killer, Harriet is the only person who believes he is innocent and she is determined to catch the real killer. 

The only sound was the dull thump of his body on the pavement, the whisper of his styling robes, a big bird bought down out of the sky by a rifle blast.

There is one person who holds the key to Sam’s innocence, but she is locked up in a cellar being starved by the real serial killer.

You’re a hothead. And I love that about you. It’s half of what makes you a good cop. Your fearlessness. Your fire. But you need to get away from here before you do some real damage.

After losing her cool on the steps of the courthouse and assaulting a prosecution lawyer, Harriet is sent to Last Chance Valley in the outback where a diary has been found by the roadside containing plans of a massacre in the town of 75 people. It becomes apparent the plot may be legitimate when the former Chief of Police is blown up out in the scrublands. Harry has the local (not very experienced) cop to work with along with Elliot, an over enthusiastic counter-terrorism task force member who thinks he should be in charge.

I flipped through the diary. The only thing I could think that united the spree killers in the diary was their rage. Their desire to be punishers.

Back in Sydney, Harry’s partner Detective Edwards Wittacker is keeping an eye on her brother’s trial and notices some of the evidence doesn’t make sense.

Most of my life I’d wavered over a very thin line between light and dark shades of my being. There were things in me that were frightening. How quick I was to anger. How much I liked hurting people sometimes…Most of the time, my light half won out, and the shadows and smoke were sent recoiling to where they belonged, not completely driven out, but controlled…But sometimes the halves collided. 

Fifty Fifty has two plots for the price of one. While at times a bit overly dramatic, it’s a pacey novel that keeps the reader hooked. Harry’s wild antics steal the show. She’s ferocious, smart, quick to fight, has nerves of steel and a heart of gold. If you like a quick, gritty bold crime read, Fifty Fifty could be for you.

Book review: The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary

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Who doesn’t love a road trip?

The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary is set in Scotland. Sisters Addie and Deb are on a road trip in their Mini to attend a friends wedding in the north. Accompanying them is some random guy from Facebook called Rodney who needed a lift. 

But that’s the thing about almost: you can be ninety-nine per cent there, you can be an inch away from doing it, but if you stop yourself from stepping over that line, nobody will ever know how close you were.

Part way into their trip another car slams into the rear end of the Mini. The offending driver is Addie’s ex, Dylan who she’s been avoiding since their break up two years prior. Dylan is accompanied by his best friend Marcus, a spoilt, rich man-child with addiction issues.

Everyone’s got the potential to do the wrong thing—if we were measured that way, we’d all come up short. It’s about what you do.

Dylans car is wrecked, so Addie offers he and Marcus a lift. The Mini is soon straining with sweat, resentment, unfinished business, bottled up frustration and seething anger. And just a little bit of sexual tension.

The story line covers two time frames, the current one in the car and the time when Addie and Dylan first met, while she was working as caretaker of his families villa.

Love as a bargain. Like, giving up your heart is scary, but doable if the other person does it at the exact same moment, like two soldiers lowering their weapons.

The big question is will Dylan and Addie reunite?

The Road Trip is a rollercoaster with many laugh out loud moments, plenty of tension and awkwardness, misunderstandings and misdirections.  An easy light read.

Book review: The Quiet and the Loud by Helena Fox

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Contemporary young adult fiction The Quiet and the Loud by Helena Fox begins with a childhood memory of our protagonist, George. Her father wakes her in the middle of the night on a camping trip to go on an adventure. Then he abandons her in a dingy in the middle of a lake. Fast forward and George lives with her grandfather, her mother and Mel, her mum’s girlfriend in Sydney near the harbour.

Ugh. Words. If only I could paint what I mean or turn it into water – then I could move over the surface of the story as it spoke. I need to talk. I want to talk.

George is eighteen and working in Mel’s art store during a gap year. She carries a lot of responsibility for other people’s emotional lives and holds a lot in. George supports her very emotive and demanding best friend Tess who is about to have a baby as a single teen, deals with a constant stream of messages from her alcoholic father, falls in love with a girl called Calliope she meets when out paddling her kayak. On the water is where George finds peace.

I get off the bus and run. I run through the fuzz of car exhaust. Past traffic lights, and lights turning on in houses…run through heat thick wind, along the up down cracked pavement, Weaving past walkers carrying their groceries. I run and breathe. I breathe out the baby crying, and Tess’ darkroom dyes and me not calling Calliope, and Laz not coming by, and Tess crying, and my dad dying. I breathe out the feeling if my body. I move so quickly, feet hitting the pavement, I stop being human, I become the path to the water, the choppy waves, all the hooded boats. I become parks and trees, leaves and fences, bikes, and bins, and houses being knocked down or built, I become breath, and bone…over, and under and away. My mind opens, splays itself as I run.. this is all there is.

The Quiet and the Loud is a gradual unveiling of the characters as wildfires rage around Sydney. The story contains weighty themes include teen pregnancy, trauma, substance abuse, anxiety, and friendships but is buoyed by Fox’s lyrical and evocative writing.