Book Review - A Pleasure and A Calling by Phil Hogan

This is an avuncular story which goes along quietly until you realize that the narrator, Mr Heming, a real estate agent, has kept keys to every house he has ever had dealings with and he indulges himself with visiting the houses and sampling the lives of their occupants. For example, he goes to one house every day for breakfast after the family has left. They are in such a muddle that they wouldn't notice extra toast has been used. Gradually, we learn more of his history, and then learn what he is capable of when he is threatened. He is in danger of losing his carefully acquired poise and good humour, not to mention several clients and employees! Macabre and darkly funny, a very unusual and different mystery which would not be for everyone. 
Wendy

Book Review—The Surfacing by Cormac James

The HMS Impetus wades into the arctic in search of John Franklin’s lost expedition of 1845. While en route it is discovered that Kitty Rink, a female stow away, is pregnant with Morgan, the second in command’s, child. After a troubled start the ship gets stuck for 18 months and from there unfolds tension and desperation.

The restricted geography of the barren environment and the ship’s hull leaves as the only recourse for movement the temporal. Structured around dates, James replicates the strain of the voyage and moves inwards for psychological drama. It is not an easy novel to read, but not because of dense, obscure references or impenetrable language. Instead the hardboiled journal format leaves the reader fatigued from the fractured repetition. This repetition is not soothing or comforting. It is jarring, unsettling, creaking, and the narrative progresses slowly like the ship jerking in the hard Arctic Sea.

Strenuous and demanding, The Surfacing is as mentally and corporeally unrelenting as the events it depicts.

Andreas

Book Review - Redemption by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Described as the "It boy of Nordic noir "on the cover blurb, Adler-Olsen does not disappoint in this murder mystery from Denmark. The serial killer here has the most ingenious way of targeting families, extracting money from them and also satisfying his need to control and to kill. All is going well until he makes a fatal error at the same time as the case is given attention by an eccentric cast of detectives in the cold case team. Another terrific Scandinavian mystery.
Wendy

Book Review - Longbourn: Pride and Prejudice – the servants' story by Jo Baker

Pride and Prejudice, one of the English speaking world's favourite novels by the acclaimed Jane Austen, concerns the Bennett family of five daughters, who will be homeless on their father's death because the family property, Longbourn, is entailed and can only be inherited by a male heir, Mr Bennet's cousin, Mr Collins. This story focuses on the servants of Longbourn:  Mr and Mrs Hill, Sarah, Polly and James. Just as the Bennet daughters are dependent on a good outcome to keep a home, so are the servants. Mr Collins proposes to and is rejected by Elizabeth Bennet and immediately secures the hand of their neighbour, Charlotte Lucas.

"…it was though a sack of bricks had been lifted from Mrs Hill's back. The future was no longer such a terrifying place. Charlotte Lucas was a steady young woman, who knew the value of a good servant, and who had far too much sense to replace staff simply for the sake of appearance or fashion. Nothing was certain, of course – for nothing is certain in this life, except that we must leave it – but Charlotte had been in and out of Mrs Hill's kitchen since she was a little girl, asking for recipes, a loan of sugar or a jelly mould, and was known to be particularly partial to Mrs Hill's lemon tarts, and indeed had on several occasions been heard to say that nobody could make a lemon tart like Mrs Hill. Back in the kitchen, Mrs Hill set about whipping up a batch of lemon tarts to send back with Sir William. These little attentions were more than worth the effort."

It is not necessary to know Pride and Prejudice to get a lot out of this story. Elizabeth is fond of walking and getting her petticoats muddy, on such excursions, she has encounters with Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. In Longbourn, the focus is on Sarah and Polly getting the mud out on wash-day, with cold reddened hands and chillblains. The servants' tasks are carefully detailed, revealing the unimaginable drudgery of keeping a large household running with no running water, no sewerage, no mechanical aids and a lot of sheer hard work. Sarah takes centre stage and her story is told well, but Polly, James and the Hills all reveal their backgrounds, hopes and dreams in this sensitively imagined and satisfying read. A welcome complement to the beloved novel.

 

Wendy

Book Review—Mapping our World: Terra Incognita to Australia

Who thought a book about cartography could be so captivating? Based on an exhibition by the National Library of Australia, this fascinating book reveals the history of man’s conception of the world.

Showing how cultures perceived their world, the volume starts with the earliest extant map from the Babylonians and progresses through to early maps of Australia. Beautifully reproduced are the maps from these many ages, from the geometrically divided world of the ancients, to the medieval mappaemundi that combined the physical and temporal history of the world, through the mercantile maps of the age of exploration, leading to the early sketches of the Australian continent.

The interest goes further than the physical with the story of how people perceived themselves in their world, their conceptions of time and space, other lands and people. It reveals the peculiarities of these ideas (like the belief that the southern continents were not inhabited by decedents of Noah and therefore not human) as well as expelling our myths of the past (the ancients knew the earth was spherical and not flat). As the maps grow more familiar and detailed, so declines the strangeness of these conceptions of the cultures that produced them. What remains is the intrigue of these notions and the people who conceived them.

Mapping our World proves that cartography is more than just geography. It is culture, belief, humanity.

Andreas