Category: Reviews

This is the book you need beside you when you put down the daily newspaper with the continuing bad news out of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It is the almost unbelievable story of an American who set out “to promote peace one school at a time” — and succeeded. Peace is not something we have been encouraged to pursue for some time. Greg Mortenson, through an extraordinary set of circumstances, found himself in a position to do just that.

In l993 he set off from his home in California to climb the world’s second-highest mountain,K2, in Pakistan’s rugged Karakoram mountains. He failed and was rescued and cared for by the inhabitants of a poor village up in the hills. Struck by their poverty, he promised them, and himself, to return and build them a school.

Back in America he helped found the Central Asia Institute and then set off himself to fulfill his promise. Mortenson had grown up in Tanzania, where his parents were missionaries. He learned the language of the Pakistan people. Through dangerous adventures he was kidnapped, held by warlords, shot at by opium smugglers. He became known as “Dr. Greg” and his training as an emergency nurse did indeed help him. By 2009 , 8l schools had been put up, mostly in Pakistan but a few over the Afghan borders. Children, especially girls, who had been sitting on the ground reading their lessons, now had a place to study.

Needless to say this has had a huge effect on this area. Military commanders in the U.S. have put the book on their reading list. It has been published in 3l countries. Mortenson now has a second book published: “Stones into Schools”. He is indeed an amazing man – living proof of what can be accomplished when we talk to “the other side”, instead of shooting them.

Review by Anne McDougall

Anne Tyler writes about “ordinary people” in such a way that we can all relate to them. Or perhaps noone really feels ordinary, and neither do they.

“Noah’s Compass” is the story of a school teacher, Liam Pennywell, who had to retire early when his fifth grade class merged out of existence. At 6l, he pretends to be glad of his freedom. In actual fact he hits a nasty break-in in his new apartment. This in turn starts him on a life he didn’t expect.

Tyler is skilful and convincing in introducing the children from his two marriages, as well as his second (divorced) wife, sister and aged parents. Far from being left alone to read his beloved philosophy (the course he had wanted to teach) he is besieged with live-in family members, requests for drives, baby-sitting, etc.

The book uncovers stifled affection and old loyalties. As the blurb says, there may be a little of Liam in each of us. He is certainly a recognizable and likeable character.

This is Anne Tyler’s eighteenth novel. She won the Pulitzer Prize in l988. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is a fascinating novel on many levels, not least a glimpse into the beauties and mysteries of Egypt , l50 years ago.

It is set in that country and based on the true story of Lady Duff Gordon. She was a renowned hostess in Victorian London, and author of the book “Letters from Egypt” which is still in print. She suffered from tuberculosis, however, and this drove her to warmer and dryer climates.

That story has been told before, but Kate Pullinger takes a new approach and describes this exotic life through the eyes of the Lady’s chief maidservant, Sally Naldrett. We get the picture of total subservience on Sally’s part to the whims, as well as exciting adventures of the demanding Lady. Salons are re-established in their new headquarters at Luxor, and anyone of importance drops in to the Gordon household just as they did in London.

Sally’s own life widens in this new world. She falls in love,has a baby, and assumes all will be well for her as it never had been in England. Not so. Down come the cruel bans of class prejudice and mistress-servant tyranny. Pullinger is very sympathetic in her description of Sally’s courage and eventual victory in the face of these old prejudices.

The story gives a beautiful view of Egypt, with its vistas, and antique treasures, as well as a lovely description of travelling down the Nile. Sally learns to speak Arabic which opens up an entire new world to her and to us. Though set in l860, much is unchanged today.

Kate Pullinger was born in British Columbia, and moved to London,England in l982. She has written a number of novels, and short stories. This book won the Governor General’s Literary Award.

Review by Anne McDougall

It’s not often “The Guardian Weekly” runs a colour reproduction top to bottom, on its Books Page. But this is a Bengal tiger in a glowering, golden rage, and it is a tribute to Graeme Gibson’s new book, “The Bedside Book of Beasts”. Heading the page is the headline: Animal Rights, human wrongs.

Gibson is the Canadian writer, married to Margaret Atwood, who has already written “The Bedside Book of Birds”. In his new book he has a rich collection of essays and illustrations from all kinds of sources, Darwin to Audubon. The book is, however, no “cosy compilation, but instead, red in tooth and claw”. It is also a warning as to what may happen when our species loses its temporary hold and the world is abandoned once more to the wild.

The section titles hint at this: Echoes of a Working Eden; Death’s Golden Eye; Mighty and Terrible. There are wonderful illustrations, as well as thoughtful essays by Gibson himself. When man learned to kill by remote control, he upset the ecosystem. Freud writes: “A wild animal is cruel but to be merciless is the privilege of civilised humans”. Gibson begs us to reconnect with the animal inside us .

He is a past president of PEN Canada and winner of prizes in writing. He has been a council member of World Wildlife Fund Canada and is chairman of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. This is a wonderful book.

Review by Anne McDougall

Kate Grenville knows and loves her country, Australia. Her new novel, “The Lieutenant”, is set in New South Wales and the story brings that part of the world brilliantly to life. Even 200 years ago.

A young British lieutenant sails in l787 with the British fleet and its cargo of convicts to Botany Bay. This officer is an astronomer – and a shy one. He sets up his observatory on a distant promotory and spends hours watching the heavens, and learning the new country.

The aboriginal people, who have turned down all overtures from the British Governor, gradually get to know and trust this junior officer. What develops is based on a true story and Grenville writes it with great imagination and compassion. One reviewer notes: “for once appreciation, sympathy and admiration for the aboriginal culture get the better of impotent guilt. ”

Kate Grenville lives in Sydney, Australia, with her family. She has written seven novels, as well as four books on the craft of writing. Many of them have won prizes. “The Lieutenant” is bound to join them.

Review by Anne McDougall

If anyone is well-equipped to tell the story of detective fiction it must be P.D.James, herself a leading figure in this popular genre.

Her new book “Talking about Detective Fiction” is a delight in many ways. James takes the historical perspective to show how writers like Dickens enriched his own story-telling with elements of mystery in a book like “Bleak House”. In the U.S., writer Wilkie Collins does the same thing in “The Woman in White”.

In England in the l930’s women writers like Dorothy Sayers wrote about an age of anxiety, before the welfare state was introduced and with growing threat from fascist dictators abroad. While the British writers tried to bring order out of disaster and wrote about tranquil village life, in the U.S. writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were showing the social upheavals of the same period when prohibition, gangsters, boom and depression were in full swing. “The Maltese Falcon” came out of this, as well as Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlowe.

Much of the pleasure in reading James’ book comes from finding your own favorite detectives, and remembering books you loved. She has a special place for the “breaker of all the rules”, Agatha Christie.

James herself must have broken most of the rules with twenty books to her credit – many of them made into films, or broadcast on television. In 2000 she celebrated her 80th birthday and now lives in London, as Baroness James of Holland Park , where she was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008.

Review by Anne McDougall

There’s just nothing like a good story, and Jane Gardam knows how to tell one. It’s a treat when a new book comes out by her.

“The Man in the Wooden Hat” is the tale of Betty Feathers, wife of Sir Edward Feathers whom we met in “Old Filth”. Even without knowing Sir Edward, his wife stands out as a thoroughly colourful character on her own. Together they constitute a very British marriage: entirely original and unexpected in fifty years of being together.

Gardam paints vivid shots of the old Empire,when British barristers could call the tune on British Law in any corner of India, Hong Kong, etc. In this story, old Filth was a Raj orphan, sent to England for lonely school studies which finally culminated in his highly successful law career. He needed a wife and finally found one: Elizabeth Macintosh, herself orphaned after terrible years in an Internment Camp.

Much of the story takes place in Hong Kong and the East comes exotically to life. Then England, where once again Gardam takes you into a tiny village in Dorset, damp, lovable, full of odd characters. The book has deeply sad moments, as well as high comedy.

Jane Gardam has written some sixteen novels, many of them winning prizes. She is the only writer to have won the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year twice. She lives with her husband in England.

Review by Anne McDougall

John Irving’s new novel begins with the death of a young Canadian on the big log-driving river, the Androscoggin, in New Hampshire. It takes its violent story for 50 years, moving from New Hampshire to Boston, to south Vermont, to Toronto. Irving sees this period as a massive change in America’s way of life.

Logging is not the only industry that is dying. The country is seen as moving into a post-imperial status, and away from its cherished “manifest destiny”.

The Manchester Guardian notes that in this book, Irving brings up a lot of the stories in his earlier books. The Guardian calls this “a playful novel, toying with the stock elements of the rugged American literary tradition associated with the frontier spirit.”

All readers of John Irving will recognize the powerful story-line that races through generations and locales. Irving believes it’s an accidental world and we should beware anticipations of who we are.

This is Irving’s twelfth novel. He has won the National Book Award for “The World according to Garp”, as well as the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Cider House Rules “- a film with seven Academy Award nominations.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is an appropriate book for right now.

The novel “A Week in December” tells the stories of seven people living in London, U.K.. Among them are a hedge-fund manager, poised to bring off the biggest trade of his career, a student who has been brain-washed by Islamist theory, a schoolboy hooked on drugs, and a Circle Line train driver,who joins them all together in a daily loop.

Faulks is a daring story-teller and writes with great skill about the self-deception and greed of these people. He brings in their loves and hopes as well, however, so that we are drawn in to the way the electronic age fragments modern life and end up thoroughly involved in what is going to happen to them. The conclusions are convincingly upbeat.

Faulks lives in London and knows it intimately. He is well-known for earlier novels, such as “The Girl at the Lion d’Or,” “Birdsong” and “Charlotte Gray”. This book is a fine yarn for the Christmas season, or any other season.

Review by Anne McDougall

Canada must be the only country in the world where a published author could send a list of books to the head of state, suggesting what he might read, and then have the list published.

Yann Martel is the Canadian author of the popular “Book of Pi”. He was invited to Ottawa to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council, along with a large group of other artists, dancers, musicians, etc. While sitting in the House of Commons, he looked down at the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and it occurred to him to share his love of reading with him.

As a result, on April l6, 2007, he wrote Mr. Harper a note and posted off a copy of “The Death of Ivan Ilych”, by Leo Tolstoy. He received a polite acknowledgement from Mr.Harper’s office. Martel has been posting him a book every second week from then until quite recently. He has received only one other acknowledgement…other-wise silence.

He sent 55 books in all and you can imagine the incredible range of authors he includes – all the way from Shakespeare, to Northrup Frye—from Paul McCartney to Michael Ignatieff. The covering notes describe the book and why Martell likes it. They are informative and neither patronizing nor impertinent. Martell is disappointed in Mr. Harper’s silence. At least he was not rebuffed.
And for the rest of us, the list is well worth reading.

Review by Anne McDougall