“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breath“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breathtakingly credible, terrifying, provocative, heart-stopping, and predictably open-ended version of a concatenation of incidents, confrontations, political decisions, scenarios, sabre-rattling, threats and retaliations, and globally dispersed events that lead to the beginning of the use of nuclear weapons in what would certainly escalate to WW III. At the close of the novel, the reader is left with no doubt as to what is coming and will almost certainly ask themselves whether there would actually be any historians or history books who would remain to analyze the events that brought about the horror!
On a side note – for me it was an open question whether Follett was making mock and lampooning politics in the US or portraying the danger that current right-wing neo-fascist and obstructionist knee-jerk Republicans pose to a fragile world peace. It doesn’t take much knowledge of the US political stage to know who a female president with a philandering husband and a demagogue blowhard male opposition candidate for the opposing party actually represent.
But I digress.
The bottom line is that NEVER has definitely been added to my Top 10 of 2023 list and, even more notably, to my short list of lifetime favourite novels. Obviously, recommended wholeheartedly without reservation for your reading enjoyment.
For a popular science nerd and a reader of sci-fi with a lit“Good night, Rocky.” “Good night, Grace.” “Good night, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are!”
For a popular science nerd and a reader of sci-fi with a little more than a passing knowledge of university level physics and math, PROJECT HAIL MARY is a gift that keeps on giving, manna from heaven, or a smashed piñata that will allow you to sit cross-legged below it as it rains down a blizzard of gifts from above. I’ll acknowledge that my reaction may be more ebullient than others but, having closed the last page with a sigh of satisfaction and a small sniff that it was over, I’m thrilled to have just been privileged to read one of my personal Top 10 Favourites for 2023 and, arguably, one of my Lifetime best!!
Jumping off from the reality of the existential threat of global warming, Weir takes the opposite tack and posits the coming of the mother of all killer ice ages. Science has detected Astrophage – a primordial life form capable of literally feeding on the heat of the sun and causing its output to decline precipitously to a point at which life would be unsustainable on earth. The solution – if one exists at all – requires an interstellar multi-year voyage to Tau Ceti, a nearby sun in the galaxy. Nearby, hah! Yeah, right! Even having solved the problem of rocket propulsion and fuel capable of accelerating a ship to near light speeds, the voyage would take over four “ship” years and nearly thirteen “earth” years after accounting for relativistic time dilation.
The back cover marketing blurb characterizes PROJECT HAIL MARY as a tale of discovery, speculation, and surivival to rival THE MARTIAN. Well, that’s for sure. A list of the topics that Weir’s blockbuster follow-up to THE MARTIAN touches on would be nearly as lengthy as the novel itself – relativistic time dilation, of course; stellar evolution and star classes; suspended animation; exobiology; extraterrestrial first contact and communication; linguistics; artificial gravity; the psychology of space travel; EVAs; panspermia and evolution; orbital mechanics; and much, much, MUCH more!
Because I thought ARTEMIS was such a ridiculous letdown after THE MARTIAN, I waited a long, long two years before I had the courage to crack open PROJECT HAIL MARY. I needn’t have worried! It was worth the wait and a good deal more besides. Definitely recommended.
“Her father did not know – she held to it from that time – how much she loved him”
There really can be no other suitable word. DOMBEY AND SON is, “Her father did not know – she held to it from that time – how much she loved him”
There really can be no other suitable word. DOMBEY AND SON is, in many respects, a stereotypical Dickensian tale. It’s dense, it’s long, it’s hilarious, it’s heartwarming, it’s heartbreaking, it’s shocking, it’s complex, it’s multi-thematic, it’s plot-driven, it’s character driven, it’s forward thinking and generally left-wing – in short, it’s Dickensian. And, despite the fact that if general readers, or even confirmed Dickens fans, are asked to name a Dickens title, few will think to mention DOMBEY AND SON, I think it’s one of his best.
Consumed with the desire and the need to see his family name, his wealth, and his business success continued through his only son, Dombey ignores, and indeed comes to bitterly hate, his dedicated, loving daughter who blames herself for her father’s failure to love her. The themes that Dickens tosses into the DOMBEY AND SON kettle are legion – parental, filial, and romantic love; friendship and loyalty; patriarchy and misogyny; evil, theft, and embezzlement; feminism; family; wealth versus poverty; marriage, divorce, and the societal expectations and laws that govern them; and much more.
I can only ask, as a confirmed Dickens fan, what was I thinking of waiting so long to pull this one off my shelf. Definitely recommended.
“Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren’t that different.”
Olek Volchek, the local kingpin of the “Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren’t that different.”
Olek Volchek, the local kingpin of the Russian Mafia, is in the dock for murder. And the FBI has a slam-dunk witness whose rock solid incontrovertible testimony constitutes the sure win for the prosecution, under tighter lock and key and more safely guarded than the main vaults in Fort Knox. And that has placed Eddie Flynn, Volchek’s defense lawyer, into a rather prickly pickle. Volchek’s last resort was to kidnap Flynn’s young daughter and to weaponize the lawyer himself – to force him to wear a small tactical bomb into court and to plant it underneath the witness chair. Boom … no witness, no conviction!
And there you have it! A simple but wickedly ingenious evil premise and THE DEFENCE wins my recommendation as one of the fastest, most gripping, high speed legal thrillers that I’ve ever had the pleasure to read!
The story is told in a convincing first person narrative style in absolutely linear real-time with nary a single deviation over the period of the three day duration of the trial and what an exciting story it is! Flynn’s character development is brilliant as Cavanagh manages to make him tread that razor thin edge between deceptive and cleverly unscrupulous versus flat out illegal. Think of ANY of the time-worn chestnuts and tired tropes that are commonly plastered on the back cover marketing fluff for lesser contenders for entry into the crowded thriller genre – “pedal to the metal on page one”, “never lets you go”, “you’ll be reading into the wee hours”, “an exhilarating roller-coaster ride”, “will take your breath away” … they ALL apply without the least exaggeration!
And BONUS – this is the debut novel for Eddie Flynn’s character in a series that now holds such extraordinary promise. Definitely recommended and I’m on the hunt for a copy of #2 THE PLEA.
An awesome dramatic tale of the clash of three cultures – white colonial government, Roman Catholic arrogance, and stone age Coppermine Inuit!
In 1913,An awesome dramatic tale of the clash of three cultures – white colonial government, Roman Catholic arrogance, and stone age Coppermine Inuit!
In 1913, two Roman Catholic priests, driven by the unseemly presumption of the supremacy of their religious beliefs and its demand that all on the planet must subscribe to that religion to reach salvation, depart from the northern outpost community of Fort Norman with the goal of establishing the first church on the Coronation Gulf at the mouth of the Coppermine River.
“There were rumors they were violent savages, witches and cannibals, but to the Bishop they were the children of God yet to be claimed.”
When two years pass by without word from the priests, Royal North West Mounted Police officer Jack Creed and a young Inuit interpreter, Angituk McAndrew, are sent north to investigate and determine their fate. COPPERMINE is the extraordinary story of the discovery of the priests’ mutilated remains, the investigation of their deaths, the apprehension and arrest of their murderers, and the perilous return to Edmonton where the two Inuit will face trial for murder. The likely outcome of their conviction under white justice – a system that they had never before encountered and of which they had absolutely no understanding – is execution.
There are many words which can be used to describe COPPERMINE and every last one of them must be ranked as a superlative in its use – gripping, compelling, heartwarming, heartbreaking, informative, disgusting, brilliant, turbulent, romantic, swashbuckling, dramatic, and many, many more. It is certainly one of the very best books that I’ve read this year and ranks very highly on my list of lifetime favourites. What a find!!
But it is so much more than “merely” exciting!
It is a sociological and anthropological study of the endemic xenophobia and racism that informed the Canadian government’s mistreatment of our aboriginal people through the entire 20th century. Sadly, the struggle to improve that relationship persists into the 21st century.
“Their world is now our world, and they better damn well adapt to it just like the Indians have and like all the Aboriginals have in all the territories of the Empire. We made them … The civilizing process is what the Empire does. It is the price Natives have to pay for peace, prosperity, and security … ‘Tolerance and respect’ gets you nowhere. They must be shown the new order. They must be taught who’s boss!”
COPPERMINE is also an exposition on the mythological and cultural underpinnings of the Inuit’s “religious” beliefs and a condemnation of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches’ efforts to supplant, suppress and eliminate those beliefs entirely – only recently accepted by the Canadian government as attempted cultural genocide:
“But heaven? No. the afterlife for us is not a good place. We do not like to think about it. We think about surviving each day. Our beliefs are about life now, while your religion seems to be about death and what comes after. I’ve never understood that.”
“When we kill animals, we must do so with respect … you must avoid needless pain. We believe the spirit of the animal we kill goes into the next animal we hunt. We will meet him again, so we must treat him with respect and maybe he will give himself to us again … And when a boy makes his first kill, his mother will weep over the animal and apologize to it for what her son has done.”
“Despite himself, there were cracks forming in Creed’s skepticism about the Copper beliefs. Here on the land they made as much sense as the tenets of any religion he knew. More than most.”
(Amen to that from an atheist reader whose opinion of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions could hardly be any lower!)
Author Keith Ross Leckie’s closing comment in an afterword interview is worth repeating:
“Our task as creators is to make these stories relevant to this generation and the issues it faces. In COPPERMINE, I deal with issues such as the futility of war, new approaches to the environment, religious fundamentalism, and even gender shifting. These are contemporary, universal topics that make COPPERMINE relevant to a modern audience.”
If you have any hope that current global government efforts to improve national relationships with local aboriginal populations will succeed, then you need to read COPPERMINE. Recommended well beyond 5-stars. Reading it was an unexpected honour and privilege.
“Did you know there are two hundred and sixteen single stitches in a Major League baseball?”
The line is obvious but it must be said. Stephen Roth “Did you know there are two hundred and sixteen single stitches in a Major League baseball?”
The line is obvious but it must be said. Stephen Roth hit this one right out of the ball park! THE PERFECT SEASON is a brilliantly crafted, positively delicious literary cocktail that will defy genre classification.
As you sip, slurp, slug, or splash your way through Roth’s savory creation, (trust me on this!) you’re going to wonder what Roth was smoking when he sought to juxtapose such a wild concatenation of bizarre ingredients – a high-functioning autistic savant with a baseball IQ that’s in the stratosphere; a budding black female soccer star fleeing murderous persecution by the French majority against an uprising of English nationals in Cameroons; the science of sliders and curve balls and the finely tuned mechanics of the art of hitting and fielding in professional baseball; racism; bullying; young love; friendship; parenting; genetics, cancer, death, and dying; the struggle of a budding young scientist to decide between atheism and the belief in a god that appears heartless, capricious, and cruel; peaceful protests, boycotting, and human rights; adoption and privacy legislation; the smell of freshly cut grass (the word is “novertdortis” … bet you didn’t know that!); and obesity. There’s more but I think you get the idea!
Then having wondered why Roth would juxtapose this wild list of topics and themes, you’ll almost certainly go on to wonder how in the world he crafted a sensible path through a story that connected this list. All I can tell you is that the answer has to come down to the simple notion of creativity and artistic genius. THE PERFECT SEASON was far more than a mere pleasure to read. It was a rare privilege.
On literacy: “I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full”.
If Kya had grown up in the mountains of AppalacOn literacy: “I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full”.
If Kya had grown up in the mountains of Appalachia, townies might have looked down their noses and scoffed at her as a “redneck”, “hillbilly”, or perhaps “white trash” and “trailer trash”. But since she lived deep in the Atlantic coastal tidal marshes of North Carolina, the vogue term of disparagement was “marsh girl” or “marsh trash”. Demonstrating sensitivity and an innate intelligence that was clearly off the charts to an empty audience, Kya raised herself living alone and completely isolated for years in a shack with only her ever-growing collection of biological artifacts to love:
“Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feathers; or by the most fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other’s strengths; the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world. She grew with them – the trunk of the vine – alone, but holding all the wonders together. But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness … months passed into a year. Then another.”
… until she encountered Tate Walker, a young man, whose yearning for her companionship, her mind, and her beauty, blossomed into a love that would not and could not be requited in the wilderness of Kya’s beloved marsh. Kya’s world slowly began to open to new possibilities as he patiently taught her to read and write. Despite his promises to return to her and stay in touch, Tate’s departure to attend university left open the possibility for Kya’s marginal encounters with civilization to take her down a different and tortuous Byzantine path. Having encountered Chase Andrews, a second young man who offered the possibility of entry into a larger world of possible friends, family and love, Kya’s world collapses when Andrew’s broken body is found at the foot of a decrepit fire tower in the marsh and she is charged with his murder.
No doubt there are those that would dismiss WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING as romantic chick-lit and, to be sure, it definitely has some of that flavour that might incline readers to momentarily assign such a label. But to do so would unfairly weaken an extraordinary novel that is so much more – a murder mystery, a legal thriller, a coming-of-age narrative, a celebration of nature, science and outdoors writing, and an awesome, gut-wrenching, cautionary tale on the human frailties of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, rejection, exclusion, snobbery, and our propensity to make unwarranted judgments and draw conclusions on the basis of appearances and incomplete knowledge and information.
The author herself characterized her novel in the following way:
“WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING is a mystery, a love story, and a courtroom drama, but it is primarily about self-reliance, survival, and how isolation affects human behavior. Since our specises is a social mammal, we have strong genetic tendencies to belong to a group of tightly bonded family and friends. But what happens if a young girl … finds herself alone without a group? Of course, she feels lonely, threatened, insecure, and incompetent. [She] also behaves strangely, hiding behind trees when she sees others on the beach and avoiding the village. She ventures deeper into the wilds of the marsh, away from people, and in so doing begins to learn life’s lessons directly from the natural world.”
WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING is a heart-warming, compelling, gut-wrenching, awesome novel that will definitely be on my TOP TEN list for 2022. Beyond that, a jaw-dropping ending inclines me to add it to that much more atmospheric list of my personal lifetime favourites. Regardless of what genre might press your buttons, I can definitely recommend WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING as an awesome read. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Another shocking page from the Roman Catholic Church’s history of genocide!
One could argue that 17th century European colonialism and expansionism wasAnother shocking page from the Roman Catholic Church’s history of genocide!
One could argue that 17th century European colonialism and expansionism was also to blame for conduct of the fur traders, the French military, and the settlers towards the aboriginal people in the territory along the St Lawrence River (and it certainly was). But make no mistake. When it came to homophobia, misogyny, sexual assault, rape, pedophilia and cultural, linguistic and actual physical genocide, it was the Church that held the whipping hand of authority and dictated the behaviour of the settlers towards the aboriginal people. It is an open question as to whether the French government and its people would have formulated such disturbing policies in the New World if the Roman Catholic Church had not demanded them. The Roman Catholic Church has a great deal to answer for!
DAUGHTERS OF THE DEER is the story of Marie Miteouamegoukoue, a young aboriginal woman, widowed as a result of the Algonquin’s perennial internecine war with the Iroquois, her subsequent forced marriage to a prosperous French farmer and landowner on a seigneury close to Trois Rivières, and the life of their mixed race “two spirit” lesbian daughter in the face of the community’s entrenched homophobia.
DAUGHTERS OF THE DEER is a touching, evocative story that is at once heartwarming and heartrending. It is a compelling story of heroism, bravery, and personal growth and a sad reminder that, notwithstanding what should have been 300 years of cultural growth for Canada and her people, one can still point to instances of this kind of hatred today. Joanna Goodman’s A HOME FOR UNWANTED CHILDREN comes quickly to mind. And any informed North American reader will be all too familiar with the deeply disturbing story of aboriginal residential schools.
Definitely recommended as a story that will move you to tears, that will hold your interest from first page to last, and that will leave you with a painful lump in your throat for quite some time after you turn that last page. DAUGHTERS OF THE DEER has a lock on ending up on my list of Top Ten Reads for 2022. And, a bonus for this reader, Danielle Daniel is an aboriginal Canadian author. Two thumbs up and an assurance that I'm looking for more of your work, Ms Daniel!
I read this many, many years ago and, truth be told, I have no recollection of any details. All I recall is that I thought it was simultaneously inforI read this many, many years ago and, truth be told, I have no recollection of any details. All I recall is that I thought it was simultaneously informative, breathtaking, and heartbreaking - an extraordinary portrait of endemic racism in the USA in the 20th century. I recently read Richard Wright's NATIVE SON for the first time, so I reckon it's time to pull this one off the shelf for a re-read....more
Many years ago (I dare say the better part of half a century), I read THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN and enjoyed it to the extent of adding it to a short Many years ago (I dare say the better part of half a century), I read THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN and enjoyed it to the extent of adding it to a short list of my lifetime favourites. Given that it posits a Ukrainian Pope named Kiril Lakota who suffered much under the Communist system and who envisions a worldwide, peace-making role for the papacy, it would seem that the time is right for a reread. The current lack of peace in the world and its constant flirtation with the staggering possibilities of WW III seem to make the novel's theme more current even than when it was written. I wonder how it stands up to my conversion to an outlook of unrepentant die-hard atheism.
My parents were from Stratford and many, many summers ago, during a visit to my grandparents, my father toMy first taste of live Shakespeare at age 6!
My parents were from Stratford and many, many summers ago, during a visit to my grandparents, my father took me, at the tender age of 6, to the Festival Theater to see THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. I had absolutely no idea what they were saying or what the plot was all about, but I remember enjoying the vaudevillian style body language, the physical comedy, the classical costumes and the colour, the odd piece of music and the sound effects immensely. What a wonderful gift from my father ... a lifelong love of Shakespeare and the desire to return to the theater goodness only knows how many times over the next 65 years!
“… the power of one – one idea, one heart, one mind, one plan, one determination.”
The fictionalized biography of Peekay, a young man born into a p“… the power of one – one idea, one heart, one mind, one plan, one determination.”
The fictionalized biography of Peekay, a young man born into a profoundly racist WW II South Africa, is so compelling, so graphic, so gut-wrenching, so moving and so gripping, it is all but impossible to believe that it is Bryce Courtenay’s debut novel. Like Jeffrey Archer’s KANE AND ABEL, Herman Wouk’s THE WINDS OF WAR or Khaled Hosseini’s THE KITE RUNNER, Peekay’s personal story is credible, moving, and unfailingly interesting. At the same time, like Lawrence Hill’s THE BOOK OF NEGROES or Richard Wright’s BLACK BOY, the endemic, deeply rooted racism is stomach-churning, disturbing and shocking – whites hate blacks, Pentecostal Christians hate Jews, South Africans hate Brits, Nazis hate everyone who isn’t Nazi. 1930s and 1940s apartheid South Africa is a dangerous, violent, distressed and, frankly, very ugly country that exemplifies hatred but Peekay, despite the blockades lined up in front of him, is determined to rise above it all. With the help of black men and women, his eyes are firmly fixed on the welterweight boxing championship of the world.
And the writing was beyond brilliant. Peekay’s friend and mentor, Doc von Vollensteen, was imprisoned for the temerity of having been born German at a time when Hitler was ravaging Europe. The prison concert scene, for example, in which Doc debuted his piano composition “Concerto for the Great Southland”, sung by the black inmates in a polyglot male chorus of mixed tribal languages, was one of the most moving segments of writing that I’ve ever clapped eyes on.
THE POWER OF ONE and its sequel TANDIA comprise a rather daunting 1400 page epic but I was simply astonished at how quickly the opening novel sped by. Despite its length, I was sorry to see it end but I’m looking forward to cracking the metaphorical binding on the sequel.
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