Material Witness

50 Books #9 - Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but had I not, I might never have come across John Connolly and Charlie Parker. 

On one of my frequent visits to the excellent Murder One bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, I came acros Every Dead Thing, the first of a series that has now been successfully running for more than two decades. The cover was hard to ignore with its striking anatomical image, that might be called "distress in death". With it came the strapline, "The most terrifying thriller since Silence Of The Lambs". 

That was more than enough for me, and I left Murder One, which sadly closed its doors in 2009, with one more book than I had gone in for, as I always seemed to. 

In 1999, I was a couple of years into my obsession with crime fiction and reading everything that James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and countless others were publishing. Connolly offered something different. While the supernatural elements to the Charlie Parker books has become increasingly influential as the series has developed, there was something other-worldly and different about the PI and his stories from the start.

Parker, his life detached from its moorings by the murder of his wife and daughter, inhabits a dark, dangerous and violent world, one where the ghosts of the past haunt the living. That darkness is evident not just in his investigations but in both his adversaries and his allies, and the exploration of the dubious and complex moral trajectories of all are a key feature of the novels. 

Complex and detailed characterisation is an important attraction of the series as Connolly takes the time and trouble to develop the stories even of peripheral characters. This contributes to novels that are longer than average - Every Dead Thing comes in 480 pages - but there's never a sense of needless digression.  Connolly writes rich and multi-dimensional stories that explore the boundaries between the living and the dead, the thin line that often separates good and evil and the fragility of our lives. The books also have a profound sense of place, particularly in Parker's home state of Maine, where the great forests of the north hide mystery and danger.  

Since 1999 he has published 19 more Parker novels (and other work besides) and the series has never lost any of that edge I first encountereed 23 years ago. In 2018, I listened to the entire series again in a matter of a few months, hoping that this would help reveal some of the secrets and threads of the stories that my memory inevitably lost over two decades of annually dipping into Parker's world. I wasn't disappointed. Each book has its own story and structure but taken as a whole, this is an epic and compelling journey with layers and layers to uncover. And as the supernatural has infused the books more and more, they've opened an entirely new dimension and become even more compelling. 

My first edition of Every Dead Thing is one of my prized books, and I was grateful that Connolly signed it for me on a visit to Madrid a few years back. He's also been generous with his time, giving me this interview in 2014, in which he explored his influences, his doubts and the fact that he regards the Parker stories as "hopeful", rather than "dark or bleak". Parker and other are on a journey of redemption. 

“As a Catholic the word redemption comes with a certain spiritual and supernatural baggage has resonance,” he said.  “It seemed appropriate I could explore the implications of redemption through novels and that’s why the supernatural  elements become more pronounced. It’s about the possibility and the cost of redemption as redemption costs sacrifice and sacrifice is painful.”

Parker has certainly endured his share of pain. Over the past 23 years I don't think there's a writer I've read more, of and certainly reviewed more, and a selection of those are linked below. It's been a spritual and emotional journey and long may it continue. 

A Game of Ghosts 2017

A Time of Torment 2016

A Song of Shadows 2015 

The Wolf in Winter 2014

The Whisperers 2010

The Lovers 2009

The Reapers 2008

 

 

REVIEW: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

After the collapse of Republican resistance to Franco's nationalist forces in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fled the country and the violent repression that was to follow. Many eventually found their way from Europe to Latin America, a natural place of refuge for Spanish speakers seeking a new life. 

Some of those found their way to Chile,  the "long petal of sea and white and snow" as beautifully described by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the inspiration for the title of Isabel Allende's magnificant novel of love, suffering, survival and political upheaval. 

Neruda plays a small but pivotal role in the novel, which depicts his involvement in the organization of the refugee ship SS Winnipeg, which took Spanish refugees from Bordeaux to Chile in September 1939. A Long Petal of the Sea tells the story of two Catalans among those 2,200 refugees: war widow Roser and her army doctor brother, Victor Dalmau. Allende charts first their war story and then their attempts to rebuild their lives in Santiago and through to the 1973 coup that deposed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende (the author's uncle) and unleashed a wave of repression, killings and disappearances similar to that of Franco's Spain. 

This is vintage Allende, and for me her most captivating novel since The House of the Spirits, published in another lifetime in 1982. As in that book, Allende captures the sweeping drama of family life with verve, empathy and sometimes painful honesty as she details the inner lives of her characters, their hopes and fears, with intensity and emotion. And as she does so, she also intertwines the personal with the public illustrating the impact - both good and bad - that political change has on our lives, often leaving us at the mercy of events we have no control over. 

The summer of 2022 feels like a good time to read a novel that shows history repeating itself in the space of just a handful of decades. It emphasizes how fragile our democracies and our taken-for-granted freedoms really are. Victor Dalmau, a man who dedicates his life to serving others, twice pays a devastating price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time - and on the wrong side. 

A Long Petal of the Sea is hugely enjoyable and very sobering at the same time. While it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit and the power of love, it also highlights our capacity for inflicting chaos and pain on ourselves and others. A truly magnificent novel by an important and beautiful writer. 

 

 

The return to Westeros: episode one of House of the Dragon

It has to be nerve-wracking, doesn't it? That moment when your follow up to the most successful fantasy show of all time goes live. In your hands, the future of a powerful, much-celebrated franchise, and on your shoulder there's Amazon, which has gone full Hobbit in pursuit of the sword and sandals mantle. It's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power show starts in two weeks. 

So there's quite a bit at stake for HBO and the makers of House of the Dragon, set 200 years before the events that took place in Game of Thrones.  The final episodes of GoT weren't loved by everyone, which perhaps made the first episode's landing even more important. 

So, how did they do? Well, I thought they absolutely smashed it. 

All the things that made GoT a massive success are on display. Just to remind you where you are the scene opens with dragons soaring through the sky before depositing a Targaryen princess at King's Landing. There is politics, palace intrigue, plenty of violence, more than a hint of Targaryen lunacy, a huge amount of sex and loads and loads of great acting.

And in particular there is Paddy Considine as King Viserys and Matt Smith as his dangerous bad boy brother and heir, Daemon. Smith, with his flowing silver locks and the playful menace in his eyes, is every inch the Targaryen trouble maker, while Considine carries the weight of the Iron Throne and his family's status heavily. One scene between them is electric, and Smith in particular dominates the screen every time he appears. 

They are well supported. There is surely more to come from Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys, another potential pretender to the throne and Steve Toussaint as her courtier husband Lord Corlys.  Anf Milly Allcock is great as Visery's daughter Rhaenyra. 

The first episode is well paced, making the introductions and seeding the storylines as required, but with plenty of action to off-set. So far, it's a smaller world than GoT and a narrower storyline, and that might work well even if there is, of course, plenty of room to expand. And of course the sets and design are sumputous and everything looks great. 

So, so far so good, and I'm looking forward to episode two.  

REVIEW: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Every so often I read a book that is so initimidatingly good that I am heistant to review because of the fear that my words could not do it justice. 

Bonnie Garmus's debut novel is one such a book. It is so well conceived, so beautifully written, so charming, clever, funny and moving that the hesitancy was overcome by an urgent need to tell everyone to read it. Read it!

Lessons in Chemistry tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant 1950s (and 60s) chemist adrift in a male-dominated world that cannot and will not put any value on her ground-breaking work when it cannot be attributed to a man. Hers is a world of insitutionalized misogny, of normalized sexual assault and of gender injustice of every kind. And yet, Elizabeth Zott is nobody's victim. She confronts the world on her own terms, refusing to cave to the unfairness of her situation and her intense frustration, but instead fighting for win every inch in her battle to be allowed to follow her professional path. 

Defeated in her early attempts to be a research scientist, Elizabeth Zott finds herself instead on television hosting a cooker show called Supper at Six in which she describes her cooking in chemical terms and speaks directly to her audience of women as intellectual equals rather than patronising them as "just housewives" as the rest of the television industry does. Away from the lab, and the television studio, Elizabeth Zott has other crosses to bear, including single parenthood at a time when such lifestyles were frowned upon and ownershp of the world's cleverest dog. One intriguiging sub plot in the book is her daughter Mad's own search for her place in the world. 

If all this sounds like a rather dour business, don't worry. Garmus deals with serious, complex and important issues in the vooks and, like Elizabeth Zott, doesn't shy away from them, but she does so with such wit and lightness of touch that the story sings throughout. 

Elizabeth Zott is quirky, fierce and driven, uncompromising in her relationships with all in her orbit. Her presence is powerful and throughout a narrative that has pace and bite, Garmus builds a world around her populated by (largely) weak and vain men and resourceful, spirited women. It delivers an important message not just about the iniquity of sexual (and other discrimination) but also its sheer wastefulness. 

It is a superb novel that flies by in the blink of an eye, such is the desire to read Elizabeth Zott's story, but it will linger long in the memory. 

 

 

REVIEW: Lying Beside You by Michael Robotham

What I have always loved most about Michael Robotham's writing is the voice that he gives his characters and the honesty with which he explores them: their virtues, flaws, fears, hopes, motivation. He delves into the inner lives that we all have and in doing so raises a mirror to the reader. 

Through nine novels featuring clinical pyschologist Joe O'Loughlin we learn his deepest secrets and his fondest desires. We share his pain and suffer his grief. And there is a profound sense of loss when a much-loved character disappears, as O'Loughlin did in 2018 when he most recently featured in The Other Wife. 

Happily, Robotham returned with two equally compelling characters the following year in Evie Cormac and Cyrus Haven in their debut Good Girl Bad Girl. They're back this year in Lying Beside You, their third outing, and all the mastery of character and the authenticity of voice that so characterised the O'Loughlin novels is on full display.

Cyrus is a forensic psychologist who works with the Nottinghamshire police helping them solve crimes, while also running a private practice. Scarred by the murder of his family by his ilder brother when a young teen, Cyrus carries demons of his own, but these help him understand and empathise with others have suffered. Cyrus, as the series developes, proves to be a collector of damaged souls, and Evie, with her own terrible back story (no spoliers here, read Good Girl Bad Girl), eventually becomes his ward. 

Evie, volatile and unpredictable, is a good foil to Cyrus, who is steady and reliable and the chemistry between the two of them drives the books.

In Lying Beside You, both become embroiled in the investigation of the murder of Rowan Kirk and the disappearance of his daughter, Maya. 

Robotham carefully and skilfully unpeels the layers of a complex plot as the police investigate the crimes, with Cyrus poking them in the right direction. And while the mystery of the fate of the Kirks is satisfying enough in itself, it is the inner lives of Cyrus, and, in particular, Evie that give the story its soul and make it very difficult to put down. 

Robotham doesn't attract the attention of some of his peers for his work, but he has put together a bibilography that's up there with anyone else writing thrillers right now, and I can't recommend these books highly enough. 

I also learned at the start of the book that Joe O'Loughlin is going on television later this year with Aidan Turner in the title role. Turner is not who I'd have imagined in the role, but that won't stop me tuning in. Something to look forward to. 

And in researching this piece, I'm surprised to discover I've not reviewed a Robotham book since 2009 - when we were all young - despite the fact that I've read everything he's written since. So here's The Night Ferry, also excellent. 

 

 

 

 

REVIEW: Intimacy / Intimidad on Netflix

Exactly how the Netflix algorithm delivered the Spanish drama Intimacy to me just as I had a few hours to spare, I don't know. I'm just grateful it did.

It's extraordinarily good television, as compelling as anything I've seen this year, as well as topical, brave and honest as it confronts difficult but critical issues facing women in contemporary society. 

The story focuses on the devastation wrought in the lives of two women by the violations of their privacy through the distribution of photos and videos of them engaged in sexual activity. 

 

The first is Malen, the deputy mayor of Bilbao, whose shaming is public as footage of her having sex on a beach with a man who is not her husband is broadcast on the mainstream and social media. The second is Ane, a factory worker, who suffers when footage of her is sent around ny men at her work place. 

Malen, strong, driven and, partially at least, supported, fights for her political life and the chance to achieve her ambition to become mayor. Ane, who holds her secretly privately until it is too much, takes her own life. 

Intimacy then tells the story of Malen's struggle for survival in a Machiavellian, male-dominated political enviornment and the search for justice for Ane driven by her sister Begoña. If the power and intensity of the performances of both Itziar Ituño as Malen and Patricia López Arnaiz as Bego could be captured as energy, climate change could be halted in an instant. Bego, a quiet school teacher thrust into an unimaginable situation, spends perhaps half her time on the screen in tears. And as much as there is sadness for her lost sister in those tears, there is also vast wells of anger and frustration as well as incredible strength. At times it was hard to watch her, but harder still to stop. And in Malen, we see an indomitable will and the heart of a lionness combined with razor sharp political instincts as she fights first for herself and then for her family as her perfidious allies and unscrupulous enemies seek to use her public shaming to unseat. 

I am sure these two will both be in the frame come awards season, but the nominees from this series alone could provide another three. Despite announcing her own death in the opening scene, Ane's story is told through a series of flashbacks in a harrowing performance from Verónica Echegui whose life unravels as she deals alone with her own sense of shame and guilt. Then there is Yune Nogueiras as Malen's daughter Leire who struggles to cope with the fallout of her mother's public humiliation. And then Emma Suárez as Alicia, the cop charged with investigating both cases, who is also dealing with her own demons. These are five phenomenal performances. 

Intimacy is part political drama, part police drama and part domestic drama. Ultimately it is a story about guilt and blame. Malen, Bego, Ane and Leire are victims, and yet the system, the media, the public and even their friends and family are quick to blame and shame them. And such is the shape of the world we live in each blames themself for some element of their situation. And in the background, the men who are responsible deflect, dissemble, conspire and commit crime without the slightest compunction. Theirs is the world and they act accordingly. 

Intimacy follows Unbelievable as a Netflix drama that takes on complex issues with intelligence and subtlety and lays bare the fault lines in our society. With incomparable acting, sharp writing and imaginative cinematography it delivers a powerful and emotional package. See the trailer here.