tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31261424636402041322024-03-19T03:20:37.163+00:00Northumbrian BooksGeraniumCathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03010199887691558717noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126142463640204132.post-22405619365296158532012-08-15T20:39:00.000+01:002012-08-16T16:13:03.989+01:00Angels and Men by Catherine Fox<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPluyg0W1Vi1pOlcNUFXdLCs4zKzo1bi-pn8q186lUFeSR33oP3CVy3bWi_jtZZpJtTiOSCGH0xWXKgeCkH09jQCThFSYePpLWZK2SOi66rYu8HdEosI17ZRTrfFOw20yoLwbSVukRcQ/s1600/angels+and+men.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPluyg0W1Vi1pOlcNUFXdLCs4zKzo1bi-pn8q186lUFeSR33oP3CVy3bWi_jtZZpJtTiOSCGH0xWXKgeCkH09jQCThFSYePpLWZK2SOi66rYu8HdEosI17ZRTrfFOw20yoLwbSVukRcQ/s320/angels+and+men.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The
City is a galleon sailing on the river. Listen to the wind thrumming in
the trees and singing round the chimney pots. High on the crow's nest
of the cathedral hear the ping-ping-ping of rope against flagpole. This
is where the angels pass by. These are the angel paths, the windy
walkways. They are clothed with polished air and their faces are the
faces of statues, bright as sunlight off water. No one sees them.</i></blockquote>
I'm
going to file this under Northumbrian Books - okay, I know it's not,
it's Durham, but I said I was going to apply the category loosely. And,
to be fair, I found it during my hunt for books set in Northumberland,
so it occupies that place in my mind. And I am <i>so</i> glad I found it, because it is terrific!<br />
<br />
Mara
is a postgraduate at Durham University, researching women in cults for
her Master's -- a topic she's chosen because she had a disturbing
experience with a sect which sucked in both her and her twin sister. It
quickly becomes evident that she was emotionally frail anyway, but is
now deeply scarred, and she's arrived at university determined to stay
aloof from her fellow students and to concentrate on her work. Her
detachment is read as contempt by those around her, particularly by her
neighbour in her hall of residence, whom she has immediately named "the
polecat". Two of the undergrads, however, May and Maddy, both, like
Mara, clergy daughters, refuse to be put off by by her manners, and set
out to befriend her. In their wake are clean-cut Rupert and local boy
Johnny, both ordinands, both wildly attractive, and the disturbingly
insidious Joanna, whose religion is of the charismatic kind. Mara finds
herself, albeit against her will, caught up in college life and
struggling to maintain the defences she's built to protect herself from
further damage.<br />
<br />
Does this sound oppressive? Well, it
might be, except that Mara is cursed -- for someone who wants to stay
angry all the time -- with a sense of humour. She can be disarmed by
wit. The story as it unfolds is by turns funny and painful, but always
compelling, and even when she's accused of histrionics, Mara's pain is
plausible and convincing. Despite her prickliness, though, it's clear to
the reader that she is capable of the active process of healing,
however reluctantly she embarks on it. The other students both help and
hinder, of course.<br />
<br />
The intensity of college life is
wonderfully depicted against the background of cathedral and castle --
Fox's portrait of the city reminds me a little of Elizabeth Goudge's
portrayal of Ely and Wells, perhaps in the way that they both linger on
rock and stone, the cathedrals rooted in the earth but soaring upwards.
The river runs a constant course through the novel too, while behind the
massive city sprawl the industrial wastelands of Johnny's birthplace.<br />
<br />
I <i>ache </i>for a sequel to <i>Angels and Men</i>. Fox has written two other books which I'll be reading just as soon as I get my paws on them (warning: the third, <i>Love for the Lost</i>, is hard to find if you get hooked, and expensive). Meantime, I shall be busily imagining futures for all the characters...<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Cross-posted at <a href="http://geraniumcatsbookshelf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/broken-harmony-by-roz-southey.html">Geranium Cat's Bookshelf</a>. </span>GeraniumCathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03010199887691558717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126142463640204132.post-28188958773280159452012-07-15T18:08:00.002+01:002012-07-17T11:45:38.922+01:00Broken Harmony, Roz Southey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtjlWZc26HJMhwt8K5an3-HvkN7z0Hd9yM9oLEeabSuyArjTlNgHhU3_46lLAjnXQbYODrazoDTI4uX7-8BU7wsi2_SWdh04_RwWuKyOpgZkioPwKCEqoHcwZnEZz9__6AjA-uW6JvHkg/s1600/broken+harmony.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtjlWZc26HJMhwt8K5an3-HvkN7z0Hd9yM9oLEeabSuyArjTlNgHhU3_46lLAjnXQbYODrazoDTI4uX7-8BU7wsi2_SWdh04_RwWuKyOpgZkioPwKCEqoHcwZnEZz9__6AjA-uW6JvHkg/s400/broken+harmony.jpg" width="259" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I am talking to a dead man, trying to
persuade him to give up the name of his murderer. Trying to persuade him
that justice is more than a private matter. And getting nowhere."</i> </blockquote>
This is a bit of an oddity, but none the worse for that. <i>Broken Harmony</i>
is a mystery set in the 1730s in Newcastle, and it's written by a
musicologist, so you can be assured that the occupation of the main
characters is going to be convincing. Charles Patterson is a harpsichord
player (though he's proficient on other instruments too) who aspires to
lead the city's small chamber orchestra, a position he thinks should be
his by right: in those days it was quite usual for an ensemble to be
led from the harpsichord, something, indeed, which we often see today.
However, Patterson has an arch rival, first violin Henri Le Sac, and it
is he who leads - and, as Patterson grudgingly admits, is a virtuoso
player, dextrous and showy, to the frequent delight of audiences.
Patterson himself, meanwhile, is proficient and an excellent leader, but
unexciting. The two men vie for pupils, as well, as teaching provides
an important supplementary income, and it only exacerbates their
antagonism that each has a friend who is a dancing master. Indeed, if
anything, Demsey and Nichols hate each other even more than the two
musicians.<br />
<br />
The oddity is that there is a supernatural element to the story. We
quickly learn that hauntings are a part of everyday existence - spirits,
it seems, usually take a hundred years before they leave the place
where death occurred. Patterson's landlady, Mrs Foxton, is still running
her establishment with a firm word despite her incorporeality, while on
stormy nights the ghosts make the streets an eerily frightening place:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Key was a river of smoke, eddying and drifting in a wind that
dragged at my clothes and hair. As the smoke swirled, it covered
everything in a pall of dark grey, then tugged itself apart again,
offering glimpses of cobbles, bundles of charcoal, ballast stones
abandoned in huge hillocks. The scream of seagulls echoed as if from a
great distance; faintly I heard shouting - confused and alarmed,
frightened even - as if some calamity had occurred. A man stumbled out
of the smoke, coughing and retching - a collier by his clothes and the
ingrained black lines on his hands and face. He pushed past me, swearing
through his coughing, and stumbled on.<br />
<br />
At last I understood. No seagulls made those unearthly noises but the
spirits of drowned sailors, calling from the water for assistance,
pleading to be lifted from the river, crying out for rescue. Sailors who
had fallen from the keels, or cast down by wreck, or thrown over by
drink or malice or the impenetrable workings of fate. Each of them
tormented, crying for help.</blockquote>
The grimy, ghost-ridden streets, and Patterson's glimpses of a house in
Caroline Square which only seems to be there at certain moments, tease
and chill the reader: there's a sense that you don't quite know where
firm ground is. Patterson is so matter of fact, except when he sees the
strange house, but you do begin to wonder who of the characters can be
trusted. Is there something odd about the the two women who patronise
the musicians? One of them is certainly playing games, apparently with
little care for the safety of her pawns.<br />
<br />
I imagine that some readers will feel uncomfortable with the notion that
ghosts, if they can be found, can reveal the identity of their
murderers, but there are constraints on the ways this can happen. And
after all, we're dealing with a period when most methods of
investigation that we take for granted now are not available. No DNA, no
mobile phone tracing, not even any fingerprints. So a little leeway can
surely be granted. And anyway, there's something about the 18th-century
world which is amenable to the paranormal, perhaps because it's the one
which gave birth to the gothic. I found that I quickly accepted the
spirits almost as part of the period detail - which, not surprisingly,
is excellent, since the author's own research area is 18th-century
music-making. She evokes Newcastle of the time, a provincial city
surrounded by by coalmines, to great effect, persuading me that it's
every bit as fascinating as London or Edinburgh. And I intend to read
the next in the series, <i>Chords and Discords</i>, while listening to the music of Newcastle's very own 18th-century composer, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Avison" target="_blank">Charles Avison</a>. The perfect accompaniment!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Cross-posted at <a href="http://geraniumcatsbookshelf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/broken-harmony-by-roz-southey.html">Geranium Cat's Bookshelf</a>. </span><br />
<br />GeraniumCathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03010199887691558717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126142463640204132.post-77787876189764194992012-07-12T18:05:00.000+01:002012-07-12T18:25:48.669+01:00About...Living in north Northumberland, one of the less well-known parts of the
UK, seems to have encouraged another of my obsessions: seeking out books
and novels about the county. Fortunately, it hasn't been as compulsive
as it might be, perhaps because some form of latent self-preservation
persuaded me that I was never going to be able to read the works of
Catherine Cookson, "heartwarming" shipyard sagas or books about
football. So it's my usual idiosyncratic mix, and there will be some
leeway over actual borders - for a start, there will have to be, as
Northumbria once extended rather further than it does today, but there
will also be books which I decide in an entirely arbitrary fashion, get
in because they have some relevance to Northumberland - for instance,
something which is essentially about the Scottish borders may find its
way in.<br />
<br />
There may also be occasional reviews of local films, exhibitions and anything else I find interesting. It's a work in progress...GeraniumCathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03010199887691558717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126142463640204132.post-5522203226775311892012-02-10T14:07:00.000+00:002012-07-17T14:08:41.544+01:00A Lesson in Dying, Ann Cleeves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Zhu2K0TP5wCu9IlPVl0vtNO_0ji-504xtcgdf-LFRZgqBszzzAzZWCLhR0HHeJIeqiwofat5XLp6_tBoztMMFVuvCHeo22BNWsRTMruasu8D_zOXCtBqmiBulpJypTF_EzQzigESAaU/s1600/Cleeves+lesson+in+dying.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Zhu2K0TP5wCu9IlPVl0vtNO_0ji-504xtcgdf-LFRZgqBszzzAzZWCLhR0HHeJIeqiwofat5XLp6_tBoztMMFVuvCHeo22BNWsRTMruasu8D_zOXCtBqmiBulpJypTF_EzQzigESAaU/s1600/Cleeves+lesson+in+dying.jpg" /></a>I've been trying of late to track
down novels set in Northumberland, and this was one of them. <i>A Lesson in Dying</i>
is set in the south of the county, but you don't get a huge sense of
place, really - it's recognisably the Northumbrian coast with its
ex-mining villages, and there's mention of Morpeth and Blyth to locate
it, but there's no sustained description of the area. Partly this is
owing to the comparative shortness, which curtails description or
leisured portrayal of characters - the word which came into my head was
"workmanlike" - it set out its plot and then got on with it briskly.
We've become used, of late, to long rambling detective novels with
multiple red herrings and complex sub-plots, but here we have just
200-odd pages and not much exploration of the inner workings of people's
minds.</div>
<br />
I could certainly <i>imagine </i>it set not many miles away, and hear
the local accents, but I think that depended more on my own knowledge of
the area than its evocation by the author. I missed the kind of
development and examination of motive and personality that we get in
longer books, including of the lead detective, Inspector Ramsay - he is
clearly intended to engage our interest and sympathies, but I never
really felt that I got a handle on him, nor was my interest really
piqued. You know how with a new protagonist you can be really itching to
get the next in the series to see what they'll do next, and to learn
more about them? For example, no one could have loved Andy Dalziel in
the first of the Reginald Hill books, but you were certainly eager to be
appalled by him all over again in the next! I've read one of the books
featuring Cleeves' later creation, Vera Stanhope, and she's certainly a
much more rounded character, although admittedly I read it after I'd
seen the excellent TV series. I've yet to read any of the Shetland
series, but I've heard good things said about them. Perhaps it didn't
help that Ramsay is a loner - the chat between a detective and his or
her sidekick is always illuminating, and we're missing that here.<br />
<br />
A brief run down on the plot: Harold Medburn is headmaster of the small
local school, but no-one likes him, he's a man who abuses his position
of authority in the community. But a small town isn't a likely place for
murder and, when Medburn's found dead, Ramsay is happy to fix on the
obvious suspect, the dead man's wife. It takes the school caretaker,
Jack Robson and his daughter to keep the investigation going, and
Ramsay, faced with a lack of support from his own team, finds himself
making an almost cynical use of their efforts to prove Kitty Medburn's
innocence, even while believing that their faith may be misplaced.<br />
<br />All in all, it's a perfectly competent and readable novel - maybe not one
to get excited about, but I'd be perfectly happy to read more about Ramsay.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Originally posted at <a href="http://geraniumcatsbookshelf.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/lesson-in-dying-by-ann-cleeves.html">Geranium Cat's Bookshelf</a>.</span>GeraniumCathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03010199887691558717noreply@blogger.com0