THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins (fic)

It seems Paula Hawkins hit the jackpot with this book which is an international best seller and is currently on the top of the list of best sellers in America.  Hawkins was raised in Harare, Zimbabwe and now living in England.  While she has written other novels, this is her first big success. "The Girl on the Train" is being compared to "Gone Girl" and has been optioned for an upcoming movie.

I had high hopes for this book as I enjoy a well-written suspense novel.  Hawkins is a decent writer and the plot is clever.  The story is told with three interwoven story lines, each told by the main female characters:  Rachel, Megan and Anna.  All three women have secrets and fibs are told and a threatening atmosphere runs through to the end.  The time frame slips back and forth also.  It seems to me that a number of popular books today use time frames which move back and forth and stories related by multiple characters.

Most of the story centers on Rachel; she is the girl on the train.  Rachel is a complicated mess.  She is an alcoholic and her drinking is out of control.  It is responsible for the loss of her husband, Tom, and her job.  She continues to ride the train to London each day and carries on the pretense that she is still working.  It is unclear what she actually does with her time in London.  Each day on the ride, the train passes the back gardens of the homes in her old neighborhood, including the house she lived in with Tom and which he still lives in with his wife and baby. Rachel fortifies her self with drink, most often cans of pre-mixed gin and tonic.  The trip home takes 4 cans.  Along the way she often sees a glamorous and seemingly loving young couple on their patio, and Rachel invents a life for them.  She calls them Jess and Jason.  They live several doors down from where she lived.

Megan is the real name of the woman Rachel calls Jess.  Megan is also a conflicted character which Rachel discovers as the plot thickens.  Megan is married to Scott, and their life is far from ideal.  Megan's disappearance is the catalyst of the story.

The third woman is Anna who is married to Rachel's ex-husband, Tom.  Anna's character is a foil to Rachel's.  She reacts to Rachel's stalking of her and Tom and their new baby.  In her drunken state, Rachel seems unable to stay away from Tom and Anna.

Rachel suffers from serious blackouts.  She is trying to unravel the mystery of what happened to her on the night Megan disappeared.  On that night, Rachel arrived home scratched and bloody, and she knows something happened in an underpass after she got off the train.  She knows there is a woman involved and a man, but does not know who they are.  She also has a shadowy remembrance of a man with red hair who helped her up when she fell on the station stairs.

To find these answers you will have to read the book.  I am not as enthusiastic about this book as other readers or critics have been.  It has a similar format to "Gone Girl" in which the suspense builds and the ending might or might not surprise.  I was not surprised.  Like "Gone Girl," I did not find the characters in this book likable or empathetic.   For my money Nicci French's books, "Blue Monday" and "Tuesday's Gone" are better thrillers.

TUESDAY'S GONE by Nicki French (fic)

This is the second of a series by the husband and wife writing team known as Nicki French.  The first book is "Blue Monday," both books crime thrillers involving Frieda Klein, a psychoanalyst who becomes enmeshed in the solving of a series of gruesome London murders.

It is dicey to write a review of a mystery novel keeping the plot minimal without giving away too much of the story.  This series of books should be read in order, and I would not recommend reading this book without reading the first.  A review of "Blue Monday" can be read elsewhere in the blog.  I rated it highly and have found I enjoyed "Tuesday's Gone" even more.  Both books are stylishly written with well-drawn characters.  The solving of the crimes is cleverly done and well-paced, keeping the reader's interest right up to the last page.  The mystery is always challenging and compelling.  The city of London  plays a large part in Nicki French mysteries, and the sense of place is strongly drawn.

Many of the same characters from the first book reappear in "Tuesday's Gone."  The novel opens with the discovery of a naked corpse of a man in the home of a deranged woman who has staged his decaying body in her living room as if he had dropped in for a spot of tea.  Because of the woman's mental state, the police bring Frieda into the case, having worked with her before.  It turns out the corpse has a name, but it is an assumed name, and by the end of the book his real identity remains unknown, as well as the whereabouts of his hefty bank account balance which had disappeared. It is a foreshadowing perhaps of the next book in the series.  It soon becomes obvious to Frieda that Poole was a con artist who bilked needy and lonely women out of their savings.  A bizarre mystery ensues and Frieda unravels it bit by bit until the intriguing end.

In this particular book, there is a clue that Dean Reeve the elusive killer from the first book, will continue to plague Frieda Klein and remain her chief antagonist.  If you were frightened by Dean Reeve in the first book, you will continue to be spooked  by knowing he is walking the streets of London lying in wait for Frieda. You will also know that Frieda Klein obsesses over her cases and finds relief by walking though various London neighborhoods after dark.

As before, I highly recommend Nicki French mysteries to all who like a well-written crime thriller.  This book is much better than the wildly popular "Gone Girl."

THE STORY OF A NEW NAME by Elena Ferrante (fic)

"The Story of a New Name" is the second book in Ferrante's Neapolitan trilogy.  You can find a review of the first book, "My Brilliant Friend" in an earlier posting. I can only repeat all I said about Elena Ferrante's first brilliant book.  All the accolades can again apply to this novel.

The story picks up where the first book ends.  The setting is now in the 1960s and covers the years when Elena and Lila, the two main characters, are now aged 16 until 22.  The book again opens in Naples, and Elena Greco is preparing to go to university in Pisa, while Lila Cerullo is stuck in a disastrous marriage.  Before Elena parts for Pisa, where she has been accepted at the prestigious Scuola Normale, the girls spend a summer together on the Island of Ischia.  Most of the story centers on what happens to both girls in this disastrous summer.  Nino Sarratore, Elena's crush in the first novel, plays a large role in the lives of both girls during their holiday.

As Elena's fortunes rise and Lila's fall, the girls remain connected by Elena's failure to break loose from the dominance that Lila has always had over her.  Language and dialect play a large part in the novels of this series.  As Elena becomes more educated, she begins to use the classic Italian of the north, while Lila remains in Naples, where the characters speak in a local Neapolitan dialect filled with the coarseness and brutality of the life they are living.  Though Elena is unable to break from Lila, she also has used her as a spur to better herself and move away from the class she was born into.  The contrast between her and those she grew up with is sharper than ever on her infrequent visits to home.  In Pisa Elena meets and becomes engaged to an intellectual classmate, the son of a famous socialist professor.  She writes a novel that is a huge success, yet when she returns to Naples, she finds no one there has read it or seemingly cares about it.  She has no part in her old world.

What both the reader and Elena knows is that she, Elena, has a strong interior life that we have privy to, but she has little exterior life that she can call her own.  Almost all she has accomplished, she had done under the influence of Lila, including her writing.  The opinions Elena holds are taken from cues of those around her, whether in Naples or in the intellectual community in Pisa.  She comes to recognize that she does not think for herself.  She is as much a prisoner as Lila is in her failed marriage to an abusive husband.

Again Ferrante writes brilliantly.  I felt like I was reading an autobiographical novel.  The characters are all alive.  There is not a fake amongst them.  They are as real as real can be.  I put the book aside when I was reading of the summer on Ischia.  It seemed those languid days went on and on, and I was waiting for something dreadful to happen.  I think I knew what was going to happen, but it was taking a while to get there.  About half way through the book, things came to a head, and I found I could not put the book down.  I began to read non-stop and finished the second half of the book in a few days.

I highly recommend this book to all readers, but it should not be read before reading the first book in the series.

THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH by Richard Flanagan (fic)

Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania as is Dorrigo Evans, the hero of his new book.  Flanagan's father survived the notorious Death Railway as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II.  The building of this railway through Thailand and into Burma, to facilitate a Japanese invasion of India, forms the setting of this novel.  The title comes from a 17th century classic of Japanese literature about a long journey on foot, told in a mixture of prose and haiku.

Dorrigo Evans is a medical officer in the Austrailian army when he is captured by the Japanese and made to tend to his fellow captives who have been pressed into slave labor cutting through the jungles of Thailand and building the railroad.  It was called the Death Railway because it killed nearly 100,00 allied troops, 9000 of them Aussies.  This harrowing subject is penned with care by Flanagan.  The book is beautifully constructed with occasional poetic quotes which stand in contrast to the stark and frightening conditions the prisoners endured.  Flanagan weaves several stories through the bildungsroman of Dorrigo's life, from his childhood in Tasmania, to his love affair with the fascinating and beautiful Amy.  The centerpiece of the book is the Prisoner of War Camp where Dorrigo attempts to maintain as much civility as he can, for the men he is responsible for saving.  When the war is over those men who make it through are forever scarred, and this includes Evans who becomes a hero in his country, but not much of a father or husband.

After the war has ended, the reader also follows the fate of Marjor Nakamura the protagonist of the prison camp.  Flanagan does an admirable job of expressing the confusion of Nakamua who has to work out the dichotomy of blind obedience to the Emperor and his desire to be thought of as a good man.  He spends his life trying to work out this puzzle.

The theme of the novel is life's journey and meaning for all the men, Austrailian and Japanese.  It seems to elude these men damaged by war.  For Dorrigo Evans it is connected with his attachment to Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" who finds life's meaning always just beyond his grasp.  Also Evans looks for meaning in the dark Haiku poems of  Shisui who at his death had nothing to say that wasn't contained in his final brush painting of a perfect circle.

Flanagan has written a story based on truth that will stay with the reader long after the final page is read.  It is well-deserving of the Booker Prize which it won in 2014.  Though it deals with man's dehumanizing brutality to man, it also shows us the consequences of the aftermath of war and the hope of rehabilitation.  I highly recommend this book to all readers.

DEATH OF THE ADVERSARY by Hans Keilson (fic)

Hans Keilson was born in 1909 and died at age 101 in Amsterdam where he lived and worked.  He is considered by many to be one of the world's greatest writers.  By the nature of its subject matter, his books are dark and not easily absorbed.  Keilson's parents died in Auschwitz, and he managed to escape to Holland in 1936 where he joined the underground. After he emigrated, he continued his study of medicine and pioneered the use of psychoanalysis in treating war trauma in children.

 A few years back I read his "Comedy in Minor Key" which equally affected me.  Keilson grew up with the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and this book is semi-autobiographical.  He deals with the dangers and finality of National Socialism in a very different manner than most books which cover this subject.
"Death of the Adversary" was not published in America until 1962 and was recently reissued. In this book, he delves deeply into the mind and motives of a man he calls his "enemy" and "B" but he never mentions him by name.  Eventually the reader realizes he is referring to Hitler. He also never mentions the words Nazi and Jewish. He fights the battle with his enemy in the secret recesses of his mind. He illustrates a mutual deadly attraction the main character has with his enemy by incorporating into the story a Russian fable of the strange attraction between deer and the wolves which hunt them.  As for his own experience he says, "I could not give him up;  I needed him. His existence meant my destruction in the near future, that much was certain.  But his sudden death, or some other event that would have robbed me of his threatening presence, would equally have destroyed me.  Between us two, ties and obligations had come into being, perceptible only to those whose share in the things of this world lies in suffering. A strange and questionable share, perhaps; but who can break the community that secretly establishes itself between the persecutors and their victims?"

Self-deception is the theme of the book, and the contradictory thoughts brought on by denial. Why do people stay in dangerous situations when they know the inevitability of the ending that awaits them? At another point in the novel, the main character states, "Self-deception is the pleasantest form of lying.  It is a panacea for all personal ills and injuries, it can heal even metaphysical wounds."

"Death of the Adversary" is an exceptional work by a great writer.  Because of its dark subject-matter and its delving into the deepest recesses of the main character's mind, it is a book that will not interest a number of readers.  If you are fascinated by the workings of the psyche, it most likely will be of value to you.

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE by Anthony Doerr (fic)

Doerr is a mesmerizing story teller and he had my attention after the first chapter.  The book was impossible to put down after that.  His sentences are economical and his chapters short.  With this book, it is a blessing because it is so engrossing, that should you need to attend to other things, the end of a chapter is just a few pages away.

I loved this story which was chosen as one of the 10 best books of 2014 by The New York Times.  The story which begins in 1934 is told mostly in the present tense until we near the end which takes place in 1974. It is essentially the tale of two young children, one German, one French who grow up during the war years.  The chapters alternate between the two until their lives intersect during the German bombing of St. Malo.

We first meet the six year old blind girl, Marie-Laure Le Blanc who lives in Paris with her father, Daniel, who is a locksmith and works in Paris's Natural History Museum. Daniel is an accomplished wood worker and has built a miniature replica of the their neighborhood which helps Marie-Laure find her away around.  Marie-Laure and her father manage to escape Paris when the Germans occupy the city and begin their pillage of valuable paintings and museum collections. The reader soon suspects that a famous diamond called the Sea of Flame has been entrusted to Daniel by the museum director who knows the Germans will be searching for it.

The parallel story is that of Werner Pfennig a young German orphan who lives near the Essen coal mines which claimed the life of his father.  He and his sister Jutta are being brought up in an orphanage run by a kindly french woman.  Werner shows an early ability to repair radios and as a young engineering prodigy is awarded a scholarship to a famous military school called Schulpforta. Conditions at the school are brutal as these young boys are being trained to obey without question and ultimately become the elite of Hitler's army. Here Werner makes two lifelong friendships, but here he also questions the morality of what he is being trained to do.

Eventually Marie-Laure and her father safely make their way to St. Malo where her great uncle, Etienne lives with his fearless housekeeper, Madame Manec, a wonderfully drawn character who runs the household and is involved with the French Resistance.  Daniel quickly goes to work making a scale model of St. Malo for Marie-Laure, and one day when he is taking measurements of the neighborhood, he is captured by the Germans who suspect he is a spy. Not long after this, Marie-Laure and Etienne join the resistance and begin making clandestine radio transmissions to British and Americans.

As the story develops, it is inevitable that the lives of Werner and Marie-Laure will diverge, and the diamond plays a large part in moving this along.  Doerr may not be the most masterful writer one has read, but his ability to spin a tale is indeed masterful.  While reading, I was aware that the writer's style and word choices were American rather than those a French or German character might use, but the story was so very good, that I hardly noticed until later when I reflected on the book.  I highly recommend this book to all readers who love a good well-written yarn that is impossible to set down.  Happy reading.

FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL by Sheri Fink (non-fic)

I feel sure most of us have etched in our minds those horrific scenes on t.v. during and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005.  The intensity of what we were viewing was unrelenting for days and the consequences and aftermath has gone on for years.  Sheri Fink, a physician herself, has done extensive research into the disaster at Memorial Hospital and the subsequent charge of murder that was brought against Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses who were on duty at the hospital for the 5 days during and after the hurricane.  This book is the result of Fink's research and was chosen in 1913 as one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times.

For 5 days the staff and patients at Memorial Hospital waited for evacuation while the city, state of Louisiana and federal authorities conducted what now looks like an unprepared and incompetent scenario of bickering and poor organized efforts of rescuing the oppressed population of New Orleans.  Memorial, meanwhile operating with a skeleton crew and without electricity, was left to fend for itself, as its parent company, Tenet, was dithering without a plan or a helicopter contract.  As the hurricane raged and then departed, the temperature in the hospital rose to an unbearable level coupled with heavy moisture which intensified as the days went on and worked on the emotional level of patients, staff and the families and in some cases pets who were sheltering at the hospital.  Along with the rising contaminated water, the staff had to contend with roving bands of looters and addicts looking for drugs and food.

Doctors and especially nurses acted with heroism under the stress of sleep deprivation and the deteriorating condition of their patients.  This is their story and Fink tells it in admirable detail.  The central issue in the wake of the disaster is one of ethics and religious conviction.  Overworked doctors and nurses under the direction of Dr. Pou were put in a position to make life and death decisions for a group of patients in palliative care with Do Not Resuscitate orders on their charts.  When Dr. Pou made the decision to inject a number of these patients with morphine and a sedative, was she acting with mercy and euthanizing the dying or was it a question of murder?  This is what the DA's office in New Orleans investigated.  Forty-five corpses were found in the chapel of the hospital and many of these were not given the choice as they faced death.

Fink does a thorough examination of all sides of the moral issues involved as the city began to build its case again Dr. Pou.  She writes plainly and without exaggeration as she wades through the conflicting stories and evidence in the case.  Who can judge what choices people make under duress in a dreadful natural disaster such as Katrina.  As Fink states toward the end of the book:

"Sometimes individual medical choices are less a question of science than they are of values.  In a disaster, triage is about deciding what the goals of dividing resources should be for the larger population.......The larger community may emerge with ideas different from those held by small groups of medical professionals."

As a result of Katrina, hospitals all over the country have had to reexamine their response to catastrophic disasters.  Five Days at Memorial has played its part in this reexamination.  I highly recommend Sheri Fink's book to all readers.  It will provoke thoughtful discussion and moral examination of our values.