Keeper of Lost Causes

The Book

The book from which the Scandinavian film is adapted is Mercy by the Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. It is the first in a series of books about a police department (Department Q) set up to investigate cold cases. The department is an initiative set up as a political ploy and to gain funding for the force, but the actual department is one man - Carl Morck - given the job as nobody wants to work with him after his last investigation left one of his partners dead and the other unable to move due to spinal injury. He is given a helper - Assad, a Syrian immigrant who has an unclear past - who prods Carl into actually doing some work rather than moping in his office.
Across its 500 pages, it manages to keep the story fresh and interesting by including various side stories while not losing sight of the main plot - the disappearance five years ago of Merete Lyngaard. The reader is aware that she is still alive and being kept in harrowing conditions, so it is a race against time to find her.

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

 And so we finally come to the conclusion of all things Middle-Earth. The final film in the Hobbit trilogy covers the last seven chapters of the book. After wreaking revenge on the Lake people, Smaug is finally despatched by Bard with his last black arrow, aiming at the dragon's breastplate weak spot.
As the dust settles, however, as with all vacuum's created by a dictator or powerful ruler, various parties sniff the possibility of wealth and position left by the death of Smaug. Thorin's greed and stubborn pride lead him to reject any sharing of the dragon gold and he is beseiged as armies of men, elves, dwarves and goblins gather and align themselves into factions to fight for the title of King under the Mountain.
The final battle sees the return of characters featured earlier in the book, including the Eagles and Beorn, and is not without its main character casualties, which I was not expecting.

Mockingjay part 1

The Book

 And so we come to the end of another trilogy - but not quite, as the film company has decided to drag the end out over two films. Because there is so much in the source novel to get across in just one film or because they will get twice as much box office takings?
As we are only looking at a Part 1, I have only read half way through the book and am guessing where the film will end - with Katniss being shot following the rebel attack on the Nut defences in District 2, I suspect, as its a good cliff hanger but we all know she survives.
What becomes clear through the first half of the novel, is that Katniss is still being used for other people's purposes - she's enlisted as a propaganda emblem (much like Captain America during WWII) to strengthen morale and purpose with the rebelling Districts and to be a niggling itch with the Capitol and President Snow. It feels that President Coin of District 13 and Plutarch have their own agendas in their quest to usurp and gain power, however.

Horns

The Book

Horns is written by Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. He looks very much like his father but I think it was very brave, some may say foolhardy, to try and follow in his footsteps and always be measured to him in terms of imagination and creative writing.

Ig wakes up one morning to find he has started to grow horns. They give him the power of suggestion over others (if it is something the victim secretly wants to do), the ability to touch a person and be shown bad things from their past and also causes the involuntary sharing of deep secrets. Ideal powers to investigate the death of his girlfriend, Merrin, who was raped and murdered. Ig needs to clear his name, as everyone thinks he is the culprit, and get revenge on the true killer.
The truth is gradually revealed as he visits family and friends - finding out what they really think and what they are hiding.


Through flashbacks and the re-telling of the fateful night from three perspectives, the scene is set for a final confrontation with the guilty murderer.

Serena

 The Book


Ruthless corporate business and environmental exploitation are nothing new, as Ron Rash explores in his Shakespearean tale of a lumber company during the 1920s depression. Pemberton and his wife Serena hatch plots and dispatch enemies as they lay waste to the forests of North Carolina.

The book starts as it means to go on with the body count clocking off with the outraged father of a young worker girl, Rachel, who has been made pregnant by Pemberton. He confronts the newly-wed Pembertons at the train station and is promptly disemboweled by the husband, urged on by the unfazed and callous Serena. 


The Macbeth couple murder anyone who gets in the way of their business empire, whilst trying to harvest every living tree on their land before it can be turned into a National Park. 

Serena gains a faithful servant and henchman in Galloway, who she saves from bleeding out when a green lumberjack swings at a trunk and lops off the pointing hand of the foreman instead. He has the useful means of tracking victims through his cloudy-eyed mother, who has the second sight. 

The Maze Runner

 I really wanted to enjoy the Maze Runner, as a book that will launch a new series of films (The sequel - Scorch Trials - already scheduled for a 2015 release) now that the Hunger Games trilogy is coming to an end. By the end of the book I felt like an indifferent lab rat ready to give up, however.

"Thomas" is awakened from a metal lift with no memories of his life before and introduced to a new life - an established community of boys that have gradually been brought, via the lift, to a Glade surrounded by an ever shifting maze which contains mutant killer creatures. Instead of a Lord of the Flies type scenario, however, the boys maintain a civilised group with rules and a leadership by elected board in order to stay alive, find a solution to the maze and escape.
It is interesting that the author restricts the group to just boys rather than a mixed society. (Yes "Teresa" is introduced, but only as a means to end the trial). I suppose that if there were girls as well, the group might just have decided not to bother to find a way out and just establish families in the Glade. As the boys have no memories of what they have left behind, they don't know that what they are trying to escape to is better than what they currently have.

Gone Girl

The Book

Nick comes home on his 5th wedding anniversary to find a crime scene in their house with all the clues pointing to the murder of his wife, Amy; except there is no body. As the police investigation gets under way, the prime suspect becomes Nick, with all the evidence stacked against him. As Nick is telling the first half of the story, the reader wonders whether he is being entirely honest, as it is revealed that he was having an affair. 
In essence it is a one trick pony - a big twist that comes not at the end but right in the middle with a change of narrator. This is what drives the narrative on to the end, as a few people I have passed this book on to found it a bit dull until I tell them to just keep going until the middle.
It is difficult to say much more without revealing the twist, but I did find the ending very unsatisfactory. You do not sympathise with or like any of the characters, however, so perhaps the self imposed purgatory that the book finishes on is a fitting finale. It just seems very implausible after all that has gone before.

Before I go to Sleep

SJ Watson's thriller relies on a very clever premise - if you suffer from amnesia and your memory starts afresh every day, how do you know what is the truth and that people are who they say they are.
Christine wakes up and has to piece her life together through photographs and written reminders on a Groundhog type daily basis. This could get repetitive and dull, but the excitement is that every time she uncovers a little bit of new evidence or hint of a lie, will she be able to note it down in time and then re-discover it before she goes to sleep.
Written in the first person, you are put into Christine's blank mind, but, frustratingly, you know what has gone before. Gradually you build up a picture of mistrust with her husband, Ben, as she discovers things that have been kept from her and with Dr Nash, a neural psychologist, but is it just Christine's natural paranoia following her accident? Her journal is a means for her to record her suspicions and remind herself of things that have recently come to light.

Hector and the search for Happiness

I don't think I've ever read a book where one minute I am quite enjoying it and the next loathing it, but Hector and the search for Happiness caused such extremes during its short read.
Hector is an American psychiatrist, who becomes disillusioned at his practice, where he mainly sees prosperous, middle-class citizens who complain and are never happy. He decides to seek out the true meaning of happiness by going on a trip around the world to see how different cultures view contentment.


 Its written by Francois Lelord, also a psychiatrist, who's aim is to put forward the means to true happiness in a format other than a psychology textbook. He does this through the various tales and adventures that Hector has and Hector gradually compiles a list eg. Lesson 1: Making comparisons can spoil your happiness.



Sometimes the fables can seem a bit trite or forced situations to illustrate the author's point, but what makes this even more frustrating and indeed patronising is the tone that the author takes in telling the fables. It is written in a simplistic way as if you were explaining things to a child eg. "When he was a child, people from another country had occupied Hector's country and had decided to put to death all the people with surnames they didn't like. In order to do this they put them on trains and took them very far away, to places where nobody could see them doing this terrible thing."

The Double

 The Book

First published in 1846, The Double is a short story by Dostoevsky that follows the mental breakdown of civil servant Golyadkin in St Petersberg.

It takes perseverance to read to the end of this tale - the main character is so meek and passive, he is difficult to like. The text is full of dialogue and whether talking to others or talking to himself, Golyadkin is so subservient that it crawls along, interspersed with "sir" and hesitant attempts to put forward his protestations. It becomes very frustrating. No wonder, you feel, that his inner conscience decides to split and create a more confident and out going version of himself. At first it is not clear whether Golyadkin junior is real, or part of our "hero's" paranoia. He interacts with shopkeepers, fellow office workers and his servant.

As the psychosis grows and everyone around him becomes his enemy, the feeling of disorientation for the reader is more pronounced and the ending came as something of a relief.

A Long Way Down

The Book

Nick Hornby's tale is told through four different voices - Martin, a TV presenter, who cheated on his wife with an underage girl and went to prison; Jess, a politician's daughter who's pampered since her sister vanished; JJ, an American wannabe rock star stuck delivering pizza and Maureen, a single mother left caring for her severely brain damaged son. They are brought together one New Year's Eve as they all decide they want to end it all by jumping from Topper's House, a renowned suicide spot. Instead of jumping, they support each other and vow to help each other through.
None of the characters are immediately likeable, as they all have their own clashing points of view and experiences, but through their interaction and over time, the reader gets to better understand them. Maureen is the one you feel most sympathy for, and get a real sense of the problems for a carer with a child that you can never grow up with - choosing his posters, toys, clothes etc at different ages that you hope he would like but never knowing.

Despite hints to tell you that there would be no Friends-type "happy ending", the finish was a bit surprising and an anti-climax, but I think realistic - everyone has the potential to be in a depression at various times in their life and it is not something you can easily switch off. You just make the best of each day and look forward to the next, finding things to keep you going.

The Fault in our Stars

John Green's novel about two teenagers falling in love whilst living with cancer is so much more than a book for "YA" young adults. Although the premise sounds like a straight forward story of ill-fated young love with the potential for schmaltz and tears, what makes it so special and a fantastic read is the philosophical and almost fourth wall breaking approach by the author. The dialogue is witty and sharp, with the two young lovers sparring and delving into deep discussions over mortality.

Having read a novel, "An Imperial Affection", which ends mid sentence, Hazel and Augustus are so frustrated to know what happened to the characters after the story ends, that they travel to Amsterdam to try and find answers from the author. The author has become a drunk nihilist following his own daughter's death by cancer and refuses to give them any clues - they are just characters in a novel and when the story ends, they cease to exist.

Does this apply to real life to? Once all those people that remember us have passed away, are we no better than a fictional character?

The Two Faces of January

Having read quite a few Patricia Highsmith novels, I should have guessed the set up for the Two Faces of January, as they are all very similar. There is invariably a couple and an interloper, who becomes drawn to either one of the two and stalks them, becoming tangled in their lives and gradually building to a climax of tragedy.
One of the trio usually dies at the hands of another in the group and the remaining two play a cat and mouse game between themselves and the authorities.
Having read this scenario before, it was still a surprise to me when the pivotal death occurred, but after this it fell into familiar territory and dragged on a bit towards the end.
The highlight for this novel, and I guess for the film makers, is that the plot is set in some great European backdrops - Athens, Crete and Paris. 

In Secret (Therese Raquin)

It's been a while since I read any Zola, so I picked up Therese Raquin under the impression that it was going to be a story of passionate forbidden love. Bored and stifled Therese marries the weak and dull Camille but is then introduced to his rakish friend Laurent. Immediately they connect and embark on a secret relationship. So far so expected, but then Zola takes us into the realms of Gothic horror and dark sensationalism which is almost overwhelming in its heightened language and pitch of despair.
Unable to live without each other, desperate and worried that they will no longer be able to conceal their feelings from the watching eyes of Mme Raquin and her weekly Thursday soiree guests, they decide to murder Camille. There are passages of extreme ghoulish melodrama - Camille biting a chunk out of Laurent's neck as he is lifted and thrown overboard into the Seine to drown, descriptions of morgue bodies (people were allowed to come and view the dead out of curiosity!) as Laurent seeks confirmation that Camille has died, the horrific treatment of a cat that torments the guilty murderers by its judging stare.
It was the first of Zola's novels to gain him any notoriety and caused a scandal at the time of its publication. I loved the nihilism, and the dark ending was perfect.

     

The Sea

The book is not something to read if you are looking for a pacy novel. It reminded me a bit of Ishiguru's Remains of the Day in its leisurely pace and lack of plot. Banville loves words and its often a delight to discover new descriptions of familiar scenes - "Beyond was the railway line paved with jagged loose blue shale and giving off its mephitic whiff of ash and gas."

Following the death of his wife from cancer, Max Morden goes to stay in a boarding house by the sea, where he had his first childhood romance. The story flows in and out from his childhood, recent past and present, with no separation of chapter or scene. The reason for this becomes clear, as the narrator is often drunk and maudlin, reflecting on happier times but also the tragedies in his life. He has been drawn to the scene of happier times but also earlier tragedy, and to the reader its clear that the visit to pick over his past is not a good choice for his state of mind.

Divergent

Divergent is set in a future where society is divided into factions based on character traits or virtues - a Belbin test taken to the extreme. The groups are Erudite (interested in accumulating knowledge); Candor (those that tell it as it is); Amity (peace loving): Abnegation (selfless) and Dauntless (adrenaline junkies). In a Belbin test, the answer is that elements of all the different traits are ideal but being a "Divergent" in the novel is to be an outsider and dangerous. 

The book is a page turner and a quick read but quite why society is divided up into these groups is never fully realised and its clear that this system is not one that could ever be sustainable - they all dislike and mistrust each other and there seems to be no production or manufacturing. 

When Beatrice chooses Dauntless over her family's Abnegation, the story takes us into an in depth initiation into the Dauntless faction. This takes up most of the book and does feel similar to the Hunger Games in pitting fellow teens against each other to see who succeeds the trials.
 

Carrie

This is not the first time I have read Carrie, having had a Stephen King phase in my late teens, and apart from the cultural references, his first novel from 1974 hasn't really dated. Comparing it with some of the author's later bloated books of doorstop proportions, Carrie is a first-rate paranormal thriller which takes little time to get to the set up (its on page one that she is telekenetic) and telling us that something terrible is going to happen.

It's that foretelling, dotted throughout the story, given to us through published reports, the media and interviews with survivors that helps to increase the tension and makes it inevitable that we expect Carrie's harsh upbringing by a crazy religious zealot of a mother and teasing by school A-listers to have harsh consequences.

Following Carrie's humiliation in front of everyone on Prom Night, however, the scale of destruction visited on the town of Chamberlain is devastating.

The Book Thief

The Book

Markus Zusak had a genius idea when he decided to use Death as the narrator for his novel. Through him, you are able to have a bigger picture of the atrocities and deaths taking place across Germany but maintain the focus on Liesel, the book thief, and her story. He is able to provide warnings and fore-knowledge of the future in order to maintain interest and pace, because Death is the only character who we know for certain will still be around at the close of the book.

As a librarian, its hard to resist a title and story that features books! The novel is a homage to the book and the power of stories, as it is what keeps characters like Max, the Jew hidden in Liesel's basement, and all the Germans sheltering together from bombs, sane and distracted from the terrible situation. Stories are able to transport you to another place, where your interest focuses on others and away from your own troubles.

John Dies at the End

The Book

The book is a 400+ page mix of sci-fi hokum, schlock horror and Farrelly brothers type humor. Certainly easy to read but frustrating in that much of it seemed so random and disjointed. For example - John and David are in a deserted Mall. They are attacked by a large mutant deer which explodes and inside the creature was a box with a key. The key to a room. They pick it up and its never mentioned again. You'll find various exploding animals and people throughout the story.
There was an over-arching storyline (all-seeing evil god-like being that exists in other dimensions trying to invade ours) that got to a sort of conclusion, but by the end it seemed that even the main characters didn't care about what would happen next, let alone the reader.
There were some neat ideas and premises within the hotchpotch - X-Box and Playstation games training children to be cold-hearted killers, waiting for an alien trigger - but maybe these could have been used in their own right rather than added to the brewing pot of slights of hand, misdirection and twists that left me unphased and bored.

12 Years a Slave

The Book

This is not a work of fiction but a true narrative of a free man who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841.
As such it provides a unique insight into life and conditions on Southern USA plantations. The memoirs are factual and give information on how cotton and sugar were grown, how Solomon's fellow slaves lived and how he was treated.
It had little emotional description and avoids pity and anger at his captors following his ordeal, perhaps to avoid litigation. Solomon, himself, brought legal action against his abductors, but they were never brought to court and Solomon never received any compensation for his twelve years in slavery.