Alexandra Fuller: Quiet until the Thaw, 9780735223349, published June 27, 2017, hardback, Penguin Press, Penguin Random House US

Alexandra Fuller’s previous, mostly autobiographical work about her childhood and life in Africa and her new life in Wyoming   (Don’t lets go to the dogs tonight,  Leaving before the rain comes, Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness ) sit on my shelf of all time favorite books.  They are brilliant studies of her family, Africa and her new life in the US, colorful, honest and written with raw Emotion. Her style of writing always paints a clear picture, I always had visual images in my head when reading her books.

When I received the proof of her upcoming book “Quiet until the Thaw”, I was warned that this is an altogether different book. Having read various Native American authors, literature I have been drawn to for years, I was immediately curious about this new chapter of her writing.  Alexandra Fuller participated in a ride on horseback from Fort Robinson, Nebraska to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, a couple of hundred miles across country.  She ended up staying for months feeling at home for the first time since leaving Africa. 

“Quiet until the Thaw” is set in Lakota Oglala Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and tells the story of two cousins, You Choose Watson and Rick Overlooking Horse who were brought up  together but could not be more different in character. The one has chosen the traditional Native American path, the other has gone off the rails ending up in prison.  The book is set in three parts, describing Rick’s and You Choose Watson upbringing and the effect their life development has on many people in the reservation. When Rick is eventually given two orphan boys to bring up, Le-a Brings a Plenty, a colorful female character in the book, helps him without hesitation to raise the children her womb was never able to produce. You Choose Watson's return from prison and his actions change and disrupt their lives forever.

What makes this book fascinating is how it is set: very short chapters, 3 pages mostly, told exquisitely in story snapshots, thoughts, Indian mythology,  ll blended together. Fuller’s storytelling is heavily inspired by the Native American tradition of telling stories.   I loved this little gem of a book, was drawn to it immediately. She is such a fine writer, it deserves to be compared with other masterful writers like Louise Erdrich. It is certainly helpful if the reader is interested in Native American literature but it is not a requirement.   

Anton Disclafani: The After Party , 9780399573187, paperback May 2017, available in hardback 9781594633164, Riverhead Books /Penguin Random House US, (Nach der Party, C. Bertelsmann, April 2017, 19,99)

Anton Disclafani is a female author, in case you are wondering. Her first book “The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls”, a book I greatly enjoyed, established her as a keen observer and storyteller of what happens to women who fall outside the moral codex set by rich families in the US in the Thirties.

Her latest book “After the Party” is set in the roaring Fifties in Houston/ Texas where drinks and money flow as freely as the oil wells producing these riches. Disclafani does a great job in vividly portraying Houston’s social life and party scene of the very rich.

Joan Fortier is one of the golden girls born into an extremely rich, first class Texan family. Glamorous, blond and beautiful she is the center of the Houston party scene with her childhood friend Cece Buchanan always at her side. Whereas Cece graves stability, a happy marriage and family life, Joan is more reckless and has a much wilder appetite not always in synch with the rigid rules of a Houston society scene with its debutant balls and parties. When Joan goes suddenly missing for a year and eventually returns much changed, Cece desperately tries to find out what happened to the one person she has felt closest to. The story unfolding over 368 pages of love, betrayal, scandal and friendship captivated and entertained me until the very end. Atmospheric, cleverly plotted women’s fiction of high quality.  

Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Refugees, 9780802126399, hardback, Grove Press, no German edition yet

With his novel “The Sympathizers” Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

I have always been interested in Vietnam, one of the most beautiful countries I ever had the pleasure visiting.  My generation still recalls the Vietnam War vividly, the boat people and the wave of Vietnamese refugees coming to the US and Western countries.  “The Sympathizers” is still sitting on my reading list but I just downloaded and read his recently released collection of literary short stories, “The Refugees”.

These short stories written over a longer time period of time give an excellent portrait of Vietnamese refugee life in the US. But they apply to feelings all refugees share, especially those born in their parents adopted country struggling with the scars immigration left on their family history.  

These are multi-facetted stories about everyday life such as that of the refugee who is given a new home in the apartment of a gay couple in San Francisco of the Seventies and the culture shock he suffers.  A Vietnamese women, whose husband is suffering from dementia, is extremely irritated when he starts calling her by another woman’s name, more tenderly than ever, clearly the lover he left behind.  Disturbing to me was the story of a man who has returned to former Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, where he has given the children of his new family with his former mistress and now second wife exactly the same names as the family he left behind in the US. And the bully of an ex-military man who is visiting his bi-racial daughter who is now living in Vietnam working for a charity organization, where they run into the same conflicts dividing them already in the US.  The sense of struggle of having two identities runs like a thread through all these keenly observed, beautifully crafted stories.  

Gary Disher: Bitter Wash Road, Soho Press, NY, 9781616955397, paperback,

German Edition: Gary Disher: Bitter Wash Road, Unionsverlag, gebunden, 21,95 € , 9783293005006

I came across author Gary Disher reading about nominations for the German „Krimipreis“ in the category „International“, liked the title,  read the blurb, saw that he had won the Ned Kelly Award for previous work, Australia’s award for mysteries/suspense,  and downloaded “Bitter Wash Road” on my e-reader.

Since reading and writing this review I have read other books but “Bitter Wash Road” is still with me, a sure sign for an unusual crime novel. At first I had to get used to Disher’s clipped, reduced sentences creating a very poignant way of telling his story but found the writing perfectly fitting the mood of the novel. Not a word too much just like the main character, demoted detective Paul Hirschhausen. He is a stubborn likeable character reposted as punishment to Tiverton, a bush town in South Australia about as pleasant as tumbleweed.

Hirsch, as he is known, reports to Sergeant Kropp who has surrounded himself with corrupt policemen, turning a blind eye on investigations his mates might be involved in. They are running the show abusing their position for sex and dirty deals, mocking Hirsch and making his professional and private life miserable. As if this were not enough, Hirsch also has the internal investigations bureau breathing down on him trying to get him on obscure grounds for previously spilling the beans on other corrupt cops. When a local girl is found dead dumped along the highway and Hirsch’s neighbor who is married to an abusive farmer goes missing as well, Hirsch has enough and quietly starts digging finding himself quickly surrounded by enemies.

The atmosphere of desolate life in Australian bush towns breathes through the pages of this unusual crime novel, a perfect portray with a great plot.

Donna Leon: Earthly Remains, Grove Atlantic US Edition, 9780802126474, hardback, April 2017, (UK Edition Heinemann, 9781785151354, hardback, April 2017), German edition not announced yet  

When I get my hands on a new Donna Leon, I know I have guaranteed reading joy ahead. Not only will I be immersed in the life of Commissario Brunetti and his family, but I will be in Venice in spirit, reading about mouthwatering food and great sites, Venetian grandezza, corruption & murder.  “Earthly Remains” is no exception, I loved every moment of reading, and I particularly enjoyed this novel set mostly on one of the Venetian islands.

The usually calm and diplomatic Commissario Brunetti loses his cool during an investigation involving the famous Ruggeri family on a hot July day ending in hospital. Diagnosed with exhaustion, sick of dealing with the nastiness of his job, he is given 3 weeks sick leave. Paola Brunetti decides the best place for him to recuperate is in her Aunt Constanza’s house out on Sant’Erasmo Island where Brunetti can enjoy a swim, rowing and reading in perfect solitude. The caretaker of the house, Davide Casati, picks him up and once Brunetti has settled in, the two men find themselves enjoying daily rowing excursions out on the laguna.  Brunetti learns that Casati has beehives placed on many of the smaller islands, something he has found purpose in after his wife’s death. Rowing, being out on the sea and enjoying Davide’s friendship soon restore Brunetti. When Casati goes missing during a bad storm, Brunetti joins the marine search party the islanders and police embark on. His new friend’s death leaves Brunetti badly shaken and he begins asking questions looking into what does not seem like a clear cut cause of death to him.

I will not reveal more as it would spoil your reading fun.  As always I felt really sad when I was finished reading.  Donna Leon – thank you for giving me the pleasure of reading your new book!!! 

Graeme Simsion: The Best of Adam Sharp, 9780718179502, paperback, Penguin Random House UK, available now

When I was still active in the publishing world, “The Rosie Project” by debut author Graeme Simsion became a huge success for Penguin and went on to become a bestseller by S. Fischer in Germany.   I noticed he had written a new novel and when the world looked particularly bleak, grey skies, winter, a dire political world, I downloaded “The Best of Adam Sharpe” hoping for an easy, entertaining read.

I do not read a lot of so called women’s fiction, so I may be a little too critical. The first part of the book I enjoyed but the second part is a little too schmaltzy for my taste. 

The book is told from the perspective of Adam Sharp, a greying, just 50tish IT consultant from Norwich, with a love for music and an accomplished pianist himself. His uneventfully content life with long time partner Claire is suddenly interrupted when an email from the past pops up unexpectedly. Angelina Brown, the love of his life, the woman all his musical choices are connected to, was a very sexy actress starring in an Australian soap when they met. Adam was on an working world trip in his twenties when their path crossed in Melbourne and they fell madly in love despite Angelina being married. What follows is a string of flirty emails and the feelings she still arouses in him make him realize how emotionally stale his current relationship to Claire has become. When Angelina proposes a week’s visit when she and her husband vacation in France, Adam is torn but he knows he has to make a decision.  Does he have a second chance to correct what now feels like a mistake? 

Adams current life, his relationship with Claire and his memories of the three month with Angelina in Australia make up the first part of the book. The second part is set in France where he is spending a very eventful week with her and her husband Charlie which is where Graeme Simsion lost me.

I am sure many readers will find this book highly appealing but for my taste it was a little too simply constructed. The sex parts felt a little like let’s add a dose of “Fifty shades of grey” magic.  Songs and music play a central role in the novel; I thought the reference to the songs in the book made available by the author on Spotify at the end of the book was a clever idea by Simsion. Other than that, make up your own mind whether this is for you or not, reading the book is care free entertainment for sure.  

Hisham Matar:  The Return, Viking (Penguin Random House) UK, paperback: March 2017, 9780241966280, available as hardback 9780670923335, 14,99 GBP

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY
WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES' TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2016”

“The Return” is a truly remarkable book, one of the most talked about non-fiction titles of last year, coming with highest recommendations from most critics.  

As a fan of his previous novels “In the Country of Men” and “Anatomy of a Disappearance”, I was eager to read “The Return”.  In my opinion both his previous novels should become required reading in schools, dealing with dictatorship, tyranny, totalitarian regimes and their effect and consequence  on people’s  lives.  With Erdogan in Turkey and Trump in the US trying to turn democracy into an autocracy, his memoir is a tremendous account of what could happen to any of us if democracy fails.

“The Return” is also a haunting book, I could not read it in one go it affected me so deeply.  Colm Toibin said this book will become a classic, I could not agree more.  Hisham Matar is a brilliant writer, his novels all draw from his real life experience,  the traumatic effect his father’s disappearance left on him and his family. Jaballa Matar, a Libyan diplomat living in Cairo in exile with his family, was abducted by Gaddafi’s secret police disappearing in one of the nightmare prisons, Abu Salim, the worst. The atrocities prisoners experienced there are incomprehensible.  Jaballa Matar was one of the most well-known resistence fighters, as were other family members, cousins, uncles – most of them ending in prison for up to 20 years. How they and others survived is astonishing. Hisham Matar spent his entire adult life trying to find out what happened to his father, holding on to hope to find him alive.  After the uprisings in Egypt, Tunis and finally the toppling of Gaddafi’s regime, many relatives were released from prison. But Jaballa Matar remained lost. This book is about Hisham’s return to Libya, the account of his continued, stubborn search for his father with family members, brother and mother remembering the man they lost and loved, their fate entwined with recent Libyan history.