Author: Fred Vargas trans. Sian Reynolds
ISBN: 9780099488965 DDC: 843.914
See also: LibraryThing ; Strangley Connected ; Thorasbook ; Dave’s Fiction Blog ; Lizzy’s Literary Life

Leaning his shoulder against the dark basement wall, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg stood contemplating the enormous central heating boiler which had suddenly stopped working, two days before.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that I’m a huge fan of Fred Vargas’ work. And this book is no exception. The star, once more, is Commissaire Adamsberg. The plot revolves around a series of murders, the first in 1943, the latest takes place in the present of the book. Adamsberg has a special interest in this case, and the judge he believes to have committed these crimes. In each case the murder victim is killed by three stab wounds. And in each case an assailant has been found, always suffering from amnesia but also having a murder weapon in his possession. In each case the police decide that this individual is responsible and, there you go, case closed. Adamsberg is not so sure.

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Author: Irene Nemirovsky trans. Sandra Smith
ISBN: 0099488787
DDC: 843.912
See also: LibraryThing ; wikipedia ; Caribousmom ; Paris Parfait ; Erin’s Library ; Historical/Present

Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. But dawn was near and the war far away.

Two novellas and some appendices make up this book. The two fiction pieces were intended to be part of a series of books about France during World War II, but the author, Irene Nemirovsky died in a concentration camp in August 1942, and that is what makes up the non-fiction element of this book. Of course the real like story of Nemirovsky, and how this book came to be published makes up a large element of the media coverage surrounding the novel, but the fiction element alone deserves attention. The background, and fact that it was written as these events were taking place, adds to the work as a whole.

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Author: Fred Vargas trans. Sian Reynolds
ISBN: 978099469551
DDC: 843.914
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‘Pierre, something’s wrong with the garden,’ said Sophia.
She opened the window and examined the patch of ground. She knew it by heart, every blade of grass. What she saw sent a shiver down her spine.

The first Vargas book I read was Seeking Whom He May Devour, which I loved, and the reason I picked it up was because I liked the cover, well, this one doesn’t have quite such a gripping cover, but it really did grow on me. It is quite simple, just a tree picked out by a shaft of light in a garden, everything else is half hidden in the darkness. It really suits the story.

As I’ve mentioned before characters are what make, or break, a book for me. And this book has great, if slightly odd, stars. Eccentric is probably the polite term.

Sophia, the first character we meet used to be an opera singer. Not among the top-notch singers, but a lot better than halfway decent. She lives in Paris with her husband, Pierre, when one morning she wakes to find a tree planted in her back garden. She is intrigued, puzzled and a little scared by this. Who would have done such a thing? And why. Pierre isn’t too bothered by this sudden arrival of a plant, thinking perhaps it is a present from an old fan.

Pierre despised the fans who had come before him and the ones who had come after him, in other words, all of them.

Sophia doesn’t think this likely and can’t stop thinking about the tree and what possible reason someone could have for planting it in the middle of the night in her garden. When she sees a young man viewing the tumbledown disgrace of a house next door she asks him if he can identify it. It is a beech tree. What possible meaning could a beech tree have?

This young man, Marc, is a down on his luck historian. And because he has little money and few job prospects as a Medieval historian he agrees to rent the house next to Sophia’s. It is cheap, because of the state it is in, but even so, Marc cannot afford the rent by himself. And so, against his better judgment he asks in two fellow historians, but these other historians are not really to Marc’s taste. Neither is interested in the Middle Ages. One, Mathias, Marc liked a lot but the problem is that he is a specialist on prehistoric man.

As far as Marc was concerned, once you’d said that, you’d said it all.

The other, Lucien, works on the Great War, a contemporary historian.

Despite this gulf in interests the three get on quite well, and together with Vandoosler, an ex-cop and Marc’s godfather they move into the ‘disgrace’ and so meet Sophia. She calls around, still worried about the tree, and although they have never met, almost at once they begin to understand her fear; perhaps there is a body hidden under the beech tree.

I won’t bother describing anymore of the plot details, because I don’t want to give away too much of the mystery, but also, because while it is an enjoyable and entertaining story it was the characters that kept me reading. The characters and the writing. Vargas has a great, easy to read, style that is full of humour. It keeps you turning pages, not necessarily to find out what will happen, but to find out more about her quirky (in a good) way characters.

Obviously in a translated work I can’t be too sure of the original but translator Sian Reynolds has a great turn of phrase, and there are plenty of wonderful passages to enjoy.

His thoughts were in a whirl, clashing or diverging. Like the plates that move along on top of the hot heaving magma underneath, the molten mantle of the earth. It’s a scary thought, those plates sliding in all directions over the earth, unable to stay put. Tectonic plates, they’re called. Well, he was having tectonic thoughts. The thoughts were sliding about inside his head and sometimes, inevitably, the clashed. With the usual sodding consequences.

As for the reason for the title, well Vandoosler takes to calling his house mates after the three evangelists; St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke.

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Author: Haruki Murakami, trans from the Japanese: Philip Gabriel
ISBN: 0099494094
DDC: 895.635
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“So you’re all set for money, then?” the boy named Crow asks in his characteristic sluggish voice. The kind of voice you have when you’ve just woken up and your mouth still fells heavy and dull. But he’s just pretending. He’s totally awake. As always.

There are two main narrators to this book, one a 15 year old runaway who has taken on the name Kafka, and the other an old man, Nakata, who never recovered from some strange childhood accident, but can talk with cats. I have to say that while both storylines were gripping and intriguing, I never knew what was going on. Or had an idea what would happen next. By the end of the novel I was as in the dark as at the beginning.

I still enjoyed it though.

It isn’t a fast paced book, the characters weren’t particularly gripping, but there is more than enough to keep you entertained and wanting to read on, even if you are scratching your head and wondering about fish falling from the sky, or if Kafka fulfilled his father’s dark prophecy. There is death, and sex, myths, and cats, libraries, and truckers. Of course there is also a lot of unanswered questions at the end, and many, many loose ends. But in a way that doesn’t matter, the open-ended nature of this book isn’t something that bothered me in the slightest.

I’m sure I missed half of what was going on here, what with references to Oedipus and Japanese legends, aliens and creating a magic flute from the souls of murdered cats… But what the hell, it was a wierd and enjoyable book, one that I may have to read again to try and understand a little more.

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Author: Isabelle Allende
ISBN: 0060535032
DDC: 863.64
Trans from the Spanish: Margaret Sayers Peden

Alexander Cold awakened at dawn, startled by a nightmare. He had been dreaming that an enormous black bird had crashed against the window with a clatter of shattered glass, flown into the house, and carried off his mother.

The main reason I picked this one up was that I’d heard quite a few good things about Allende’s version of Zorro and so I figured that I’d give her a go. This is a one of her YA books though, so maybe not a perfect choice to gain an impression of her adult writing.

The story revolves around 15 year old Alexander Cold, who is shipped off to live with his grandmother after his mother becomes ill with cancer. And his grandmother isn’t you usual white-haired little old lady. Instead she is an explorer, and drags Alex off to the Amazon jungle. She is in search of the humanoid, yeti-like Beast that has been reported in the area, either to show this new creature to the world, or announce that it doesn’t exist.

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ISBN: 0098461560
Author: Fred Vargas Trans from the French: David Bellos
DDC: 843.914

On Tuesday, four sheep were killed at Ventebrune in the French Alps. On Thursday, nine were lost at Pierrefort. “It’s the wolves,” a local said. “They’re coming down to eat us all up.”
The other man drained his glass, then raised his hand. “A wolf, Pierrot, my lad. It’s a wolf. A beast such as you have never clapped eyes on before. Coming down, as you say, to eat us all up.”

Yes again a cover influenced purchase, so I am glad to report that a good cover can lead to a good read too. I really enjoyed this book. The language, characters and descriptions are fantastic, so I suppose a lot of praise must also go to the translater as well.

The book opens with the character of Lawrence Donald Johnstone, a Canadian in France to film wolves. He’s been away from his true love, grizzly bears, for far too long, and is rooting in in Mercantour. Not only for the skinny European wolves, although he has come to love them, but also because there’s a woman, Camille, in his life.

But when dead sheep, always ewes are found the locals begin to look at the “foreign Italian wolves” with suspicion and hate. They organise local hunts. Coming to believe that it is all the work of one, huge, extraordinary animal.

Camille has her own ideas, especially after a friend Suzanne is found killed just like a sheep. She begins to suspect that a local is responsible. She doesn’t buy into Suzanne’s theory of a werewolf, but she sets out along with Watchee the shepard and Soliman, Suzanne’s adopted son to track down the killer. Things, however, do not turn out to be quite as straight forward as she’d hoped, and she is forced to ask an old friend for help. This old flame is Commissaire Adamsberg. And he is quite a character.

That is how Adamsberg used his brain, like an ocean that you trust entirely to feed you well, but wich you’ve long ago given up trying to tame.

I loved Adamsberg. He is so very different from the logical reasoning detective in the Sherlock Holmes mode. Instead he is an interesting, fascinating character, with his own, highly personal way of getting things done.

‘Dunno’ was among the frequent of Adamsber’g utterances. He fell back on it neither from laziness nor from lack of wits, but bcause he really did not know the answer and was ready to admit it. The commissaire’s passive ignorance bemused and maddened his deputy, who could not conceive of the possibility of taking any apropriate steps in full ignorance of the facts. Wavering was Adamsberg’s most natural element, however, and his most productive by far.

Or maybe it just that I see parts of myself with my wavering in him.

The whole book is full of wonderful turns of phrases, and great characters. The actual plot itself is not so important, and you’ll probably have worked out the ending before the characters. But that isn’t really a negative point, in my opinion, I was content to just read and enjoy this book.

Splitting a guy in two goes beyond the legal limits of violence between neighbours

I enjoyed it so much, that had I not been the final stop on the train I may actually have missed it, I was so engrossed in the book.

Camille shrugged. “Sometimes things just click for all sorts of lousy reasons, but loads of good reasons just cant unclick them ever again.”

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