Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This the second of Chimamanda's books I've read. The previous one 'The Purple Hibiscus' is reviewed below. I think I should have left a longer break between the two because I was slightly coloured in my views by the previous novel. I have to begin by saying that Chimamanda is a good writer - unusual for many contemporary writers. They are often formulaic in their style, and fail to realise that a few words can conjure a scene or a feeling, when several paragraphs packed with detail can obscure the description and confuse the reader. Ms Adichie can with a phrase get you into the situation and provoke thought and emotion. This book is about the Biafran War - and centres on twin sisters, so unlike each other as to be strangers. Rather like 'Gone With the Wind' and the American Civil War this novel tells the story of female resiliance in the face of adversity, horror and often near dispair. Both sisters (rather like Scarlett O'Hara) discover that they overcome almost any difficulty by using all the skills in their possession. The two, very independent women, find themselves sucked into the tribal conflict, and are surprised by the hatred the Igbo people provoke amongst the Yaruba and Hausa people of the rest of Nigeria. It is also the story of Ugwu, a houseboy who goes to work for the partner of one of the sisters at an extremely young age. It traces his emergence into manhood, and his love of literature as a way of distancing himself from the horrors around him.
A moving, slightly disturbing book, well worth reading. Rating? 9/10

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

I'm re-reading this book after 30 years. I'd forgotten how excellent it really is. In the meanwhile I've seen the Hitchcock film many times, but the book is even better.

Du Maurier manages to inject such a sense of menace and impending doom from the very start, and this builds to a tremendous level. Her dialogue manages in a very few words to conjure up the banality of most social situations - and yet that banality so often masks hidden agendas, the unspoken emotions that we all encounter in our daily interchanges.

This is not your standard romance - Ms Du Maurier doesn't do anything standard. A young paid companion to a middle aged American in the south of France meets Maxim De Winter, wealthy recently widowed owner of a West Country estate. They quickly marry, but even from the start their relationship is overshadowed by the beautiful Rebecca - Maxim's first, drowned, wife.

Returning to Manderlay - the ancient seat of the De Winters, the new Mrs De Winter quickly realises that things aren't quite as they should be, and there is the sinister housekeeper Mrs Danvers - obsessed with Rebecca, waiting, waiting, waiting.

The truth about Rebecca's death emerges, and everyone is the loser. This isn't a romance, a murder mystery, a horror, it is a well written all embracing good tale of people and how they behave in the face of the unusual and unexpected.

Brilliant, well written, recommended. Rating: 9/10

Death in a Strange Country - Donna Leon

The second book I've read from this series featuring Venetian Police Commisioner Brunetti.

I think I have a slight problem with these books - perhaps because I don't really know anything about Italy, its politics or society. I also have a problem (never having visited Venice) with geography - this often appears important in Donna Leon's books. The first book I read had a map of Venice in the front - but this didn't really help-I still work out where things were in relation to one another.

I gather Ms Leon is making some sort of judgement on the chaos and corruption of Italian life - but I find the bureaucracy not only frustrating (probably intended) but equally incomprehensible. Brunetti seems to be in rebellion against everyone - his superiors, his aristocratic in-laws, the rest of Italy, Americans, tourists, the world. This isn't your standard detective novel, and like in real life the bad don't always get punished, and there are lots of areas of grey. This time Brunetti has to investigate two crimes - the death of an American Serviceman and the 'theft' of some valuable works of art. The two (of course) end up interlinked - through business corruption and environmental pollution. Trouble is Ms Leon's obsession with irrelevant detail (food and drink - why does this feature so largely in so many crime novels) means that the interesting political and investigation aspects too often take a back seat. I'll probably read more - but I'll need a break. Rating? 6/10

Darkness & Light - John Harvey

This is the second book I've read by John Harvey - this one wasn't one of his Inspector Resnick books. This one 'stars' a retired detective named Frank Elder. Unfortunately this wasn't the first in the series - so some of the references to his past were slightly confusing. However, Mr Harvey obviously writes a very competent above average cop novel. I'm not sure if he's in the same league as your superior 'Whodunnit' novelists, but he seems good on characters, and plots are fine. He's not so good on suspense though and the murderer isn't a great revelation. Rating? A solid 7

Time and Place - Alan Sheridan

There are several words to describe this book - none of them terribly flattering: pretentious, chaotic, self-indulgent, rambling, incoherent, dull, boring, overwritten and substantially flawed. This is (supposedly) based on the genuine journals are reminiscences of a relative of the playwright and politician Richard Brindsley Sheridan. Set at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century it recounts (in an extremely confusing way, with chapters going backwards and forwards in time) the travels and sexual adventures of a young rich man with little to occupy his time. He 'walks' on the stage, he goes to school, he visits realtions, (his father is in the diplomatic service), he goes to University, he meets minor celebrities of the arts, and along the way we are presented with vast amounts of facts, about people, places, books, plays, history geography and social, sexual habits and behaviours of the time. I often felt bludgeoned by the sheer volume of facts. It is almost as though the author is trying to constantly trying to demonstrate his knowledge and the thoroughness of his research. So, we go to Berlin, and in rapid succession we go to several plays (and are 'treated' to the minutiae of producing a play) visit several hotels, bars, explore the streets, examine the politics of the period, huge numbers of names are trotted out (far too many to take in or care about). Meanwhile in London, a welter of concerts, operas, concert halls, public conveniences, turkish baths, books, Dan Lenos life history, lists of actors (and their histories) are spewed forth.
And after 480 pages do I really know anything about the central character? NO - do I care? Double NOOOO!!!!!
Rating: 3/10.