For those of you unfamiliar with blog hops, here how it works: One blogger asks a question that other bloggers answer on their own blog. They all link to the original blogger’s blog (following me?) so if you enjoy the topic, you can click on the “Blog Hop” button and then find other blogs discussing the same thing. Whew!

SO, this week Jennifer over at Crazy for Books has asked “What book-to-movie adaption have you most liked? Which have you disliked?”

Gone with the Wind comes to my mind as the best movie adaptation ever. How they condensed a thousand pages into only four hours and didn’t seem to leave out anything of import is still a marvel to me. I first saw GWTW when I was in grade 12, after having read the book once a year since ninth grade. The book was near and dear to my teenaged heart and the movie did not disappoint me. I do remember thinking that Olivia de Haviland was so much prettier than Vivien Leigh and should have played Scarlett, but now I think the roles were perfectly cast because, after all, Melanie really was the beautiful one.

Choosing a miss is somewhat harder. Oscar and Lucinda was a great adaptation except that the ending was completely different from the book. Was it better? Happier, yes, but…
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button wasn’t even close to the book, but I still thought it was a good movie. I thought Inkheart was a terrible movie, but then so was the book. And so on. I’m really drawing a blank on the miss.

If you’d like to see what some other book bloggers have thought about book-based movies, click on the bloghop link above.

Before you go, though, leave a comment here and tell me your picks for best & worst book-to-movie.

We moved to Nova Scotia eight years ago this week, at the beginning of a month of perfect summer days. I thought we had landed in paradise. But as the year(s) passed and the reality of country living became clearer, there were many times I realized that paradise has indeed been lost.

But this morning dawned a beautiful day 20C/68F, sunny and with a soft breeze from the southwest. After my shower, I went out on the side deck in my robe to hang my towel on the line – and paused to count the wonders of the day in the country:
• I was outside in my robe – and no one was around to see me
• I was hanging my towel on the clothesline
• The air smelled fresh and I knew my towel would come in with the same scent
• The only sounds were the birds singing for their mates

In the city, I would never have ventured outside without being fully dressed – there were too many people around. We didn’t have room for a clothesline and the clothes would have come in covered in fine black soot anyway. (Many urban areas have bans against clotheslines.) And in the city, the traffic and sirens were constant, and the neighbors’ music often reached us when we didn’t want to hear it.

Small blessings, perhaps, but they feed the soul and remind me again why we want to live in the country.

A year and bit ago, I discovered the delightful new Chet & Bernie mystery series that began with Dog on It, which I reviewed here (third book down).

Thereby Hangs a Tail is the second book in the series and just delightful as the first. At the risk of repeating myself, Chet is the canine half of the PI team and the story is told through his eyes.

This mystery revolves around a missing show dog named Princess and her owner, who we learn early on has been murdered. But Chet can’t convey that to Bernie and so Bernie must discover it for himself. Chet’s advanced doggie senses of hearing and smell bring interesting angles to the story. But Chet’s no superdog, as evidenced by his typically canine memory:

Bernie (gave) me a private look. I knew those looks. This one meant…something, I forget.

Although Bernie is an environmentally aware all-round nice guy, he’s not perfect either (except in Chet’s eyes). He’s flawed enough to be real, good enough to be extremely likeable.

This series is outstandingly readable, the mysteries are solid, and Chet’s observations can be laugh-out-loud funny. You will not be able to help yourself from feeling good when you’re reading Thereby Hangs a Tail. After all, as Chet says to Bernie’s observation that life is pretty good:

Pretty good? Life was great! How could anyone miss that? It was right out there every day.

I’ve already reserved the next in the series, To Fetch a Thief at my local library. May there be many more to come.

Recommended.

Links for my Canadian readers:

Okay, this week I cheated a bit and stepped outside the door to take this shot, but I’m so proud of my tulips.

I have huge gardens here but a couple of years ago I had surgery on my hand and spent the summer in a rehabilitation device that restricted all use. My gardens got away from me that year and I haven’t yet been able to get them back in control, so this show of non-weed color thrills me.

Please ignore the lawn in the background. The constant rain has made it lush but has prevented us from cutting it as often as it needs.

P.S. If you don’t have tulips but want some, why not send yourself some?

“Behind the glamorous exterior of horse racing lies the gritty reality of the backside”: a competitive world of owners, trainers, vets, jockeys, and other hangers-on. In this particular backside, someone is killing horses and demanding protection money.

That’s the premise of Bullet Work, although the title does not refer to the method of killing but to some sort of exercise with the horses. Oddly enough, the author explains just about everything else involved in the backside, but passes by the one mention of “bullet work” in the story without explanation.

Exercise riders had been given instructions for each mount, whether that was a canter just to stretch the legs, a two-minute mile clip, or a bullet work.

Nonetheless, I learned a great deal about racetracks and horse racing from Bullet Work. O’Brien manages to clarify most terms peculiar to that environment without being condescending to the reader.

If only that clarity had carried over to the plot. This book is not really a mystery because clues are not given to the reader; instead the story is just told. The climax occurs too early, and the follow-up death seemed gratuitous—at least not necessary to the advancement or completion of the plot.

In addition, the writing is choppy. It seems as if O’Brien had written each setting, action, or explanation in a number of different ways, and then simply strung them all together without integrating the thoughts. Moreover, the structure of most sentences is a basic subject-verb configuration that becomes overly repetitive and jerky. Although the writing is grammatically correct and mostly free of spelling & punctuation errors, it seems to suffer from a lack of good editing.

I thank Cadence Marketing Group for this copy of Bullet Work. Steve O’Brien is clearly familiar with the backside of horse racing. If that’s something you’d like to learn more about while being mildly entertained, pick up your own copy of Bullet Work.

Link for my Canadian readers:
Bullet Work

The garden in the middle of our front lawn is filled with wild rose bushes, which look sort of ratty this time of year. But the ground below is carpeted with daffodils–it’s a bumper crop of blooms this year.

I picked some for the dining room table. There seems to be five different varieties: a golden yellow King Alfred type, a paler yellow similarly shaped variety, cream petals with an orange center, white petals with a yellow center, and a double yellow bloom (most of these are past their prime so there’s not many in the bouquet).

Which is your favorite?

Don’t have daffodils in your garden? Send yourself some spring flowers. Here are some beautiful tulips.

Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters has been getting lots of buzz since its release in January of this year, so I was surprised at how quickly my hold request at the library produced this copy for me.

Brown’s debut novel is the story of the Andreas sisters, Rose, Bean and Cordy—named for the Shakespearean characters Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia–who have returned home to small town Barnwell, Ohio, ostensibly to help care for their mother who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Each of the three, however, have come to lick wounds from injuries that, although we the reader know immediately, each is unwillingly to divulge to her family. They take on their old roles within the family, while trying to reconcile these with the women they have become.

Brown writes convincingly about the complexities of sibling relationships. She captures the dichotomy between old lives and new. She successfully traces the growth of each sister.

And she does it all in the third person plural voice that seems to call for constant attention on the part of the reader. It’s as if all three sisters are speaking in unison and yet, when the actions of one are described, she is portrayed in the third person also. The effect is that the speakers are ever moving—one minute it’s all three telling the story, the next it appears to be Rose and Cordy or Bean and Cordy. This seemed to keep the story’s voice lively. For example:

So this was it, then. She’d been replaced. Bean and Cordy were going to the ones to put everything right…Apparently we could have done it without her all along.
So she was useless, then. We only wanted her if we were feeling too lazy to do what we were apparently perfectly capable of.
If only we’d been there to talk to her, soothe those fears, to tell her that no, we could not have done it without her all those years, it was only now, only after all we had been through, only because we had seen her managing things that we could step in and take up the reins, do our part.

I also enjoyed Bean’s struggle to return to small town living after being in NYC for several years.

The whole drive home she had pictured her stay in Barnwell, imagining an ascetic, nun-like existence that would serve as spiritual penance for what she had done. She would wear drab colors and eat dry bread and her skin would take on the cinematic pallor of a glamorous invalid as she modestly turned down creature comforts. But the reality of that hair shirt was beginning to chafe already. It was Saturday night, for crying out loud. At this hour in the city, she would only just be getting ready to go out, and here she was seriously considering going to bed.

Although all of the sisters have life-changing circumstances to deal with, the tone of the book is upbeat, perhaps a bit too much so to be taken as serious literature. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed The Weird Sisters and was sorry to see the book end.

Four stars out of five.

Link for my Canadian readers:

The Weird Sisters

In 1969 San Francisco, young single mother Lisa Fay finds herself swept into a drug deal and looking at 15 years in jail before parole. Her young son, Wrecker—named for his destructive tendencies—is sent to live with Lisa Fay’s sister, Meg, and her husband Len in Humboldt County, California, although Lisa Fay is not aware of his fate.

Also unbeknownst to Lisa Fay (and system administrators), Meg is brain-damaged following a dental infection and unable to care for Wrecker. Len turns for help to his next-door neighbors at Bow Farm. There, in what amounts to be a commune, live Melody, Ruth, Willow and Johnny Appleseed. This motley crew agree to help out and find themselves falling for Wrecker. Eventually, Melody convinces Len to adopt Wrecker but to leave the actual raising of him to her.

The book covers the time from Wrecker’s arrival at Bow Farm, just before his third birthday, until the time he is twenty. But it’s more than the story (as compelling as it is) of an angry boy becoming a strong and gentle young man.

It’s a story about families, how they form and grow, and how they change. The diverse & flawed characters of Bow Farm, and Len and Meg, become Wrecker’s family, and Melody, his mother. Mother love—both Melody’s and Lisa Fay’s—drives the book.

Sometimes she looked at him and was horrified…(W)hat if she made a mistake? No. What if the mistakes she made (of course she made mistakes, how was she to know how to raise a child like this, any child) mounted up and somehow tipped the scale toward bad? What if she made—a monster? It would be her fault. Everyone would know she had been a BAD MOTHER.

I was hooked on Wrecker from the first paragraph and could seldom put it down. Lisa Fay’s longing for her son and her fear of losing him wove throughout the story, keeping a tension that was balanced by the love and hope on Bow Farm.

Without wasting any words, Wood brings alive the setting:

There was a man on the moon. All across America children sat cross-legged on shag rugs and watched F Troop and Gilligan’s Island, Gigantor, Bewitched.

She is skilled at capturing emotions in a few perfectly chosen words.

She knew how grief could shove you off your moorings. She was afraid that he would drift so far he would lose his way back.

Wrecker is never cliché in its setting or its emotions. As much as it is a story of being foster or adoptive parents, it is not one-sided. I felt as empathetic toward Lisa Fay as I did toward Melody. There are beautiful insights and rich emotion, caught in spare and lovely prose.

I very much enjoyed Wrecker and rate it a solid four stars out of five.

Link for my Canadian readers:
Wrecker: a Novel

In the springtime, the back portion of our 2.5 acres, usually swampy, becomes a small creek. I sighted this pair of mallard ducks out there today.

Since there’s a male and female, I’m hoping there’s a nest.

One of the perks of country living.

I gobbled up several mysteries in April, getting through thirteen books in total. I have no idea how I had time to read them all but…

1. The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz
This is the first in a mystery series featuring 28-year old Isabelle (Izzy) Spellman whose family runs a private investigation firm. Fast paced and funny.

2. The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld
A mystery set around the real-life September 1920 bomb on Wall Street that killed 38 people and injured 143. Witnessing the blast are war veteran Stratham Younger, his friend James Littlemore of the New York Police Department, and Younger’s friend, a French radiochemist named Colette Rousseau. A fine mystery, second in the Stratham Younger series, but stands alone.

3. Mark of the Lion by Suzanne Arruda
First in the mystery series featuring Jade del Cameron and set in 1920 British East Africa (Kenya). My review is here.

4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
This classic WWI tale is told from the point of view of an eighteen-year-old German soldier. His experiences, common to men on both sides of the conflict, make clear the horror of war. I read the illustrated edition which includes many period photos.

5. February by Lisa Moore
On February 15, 1982 the oil rig The Ocean Ranger sank in Canadian waters off Newfoundland. with all hands lost. February is the fictional account of one woman whose husband died in the disaster.

6. The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family by Peter Firstbrook
Firstbrook traces the history of the Luo tribe in Kenya, of which Barack Obama Sr was a member. The book details the life and character of President Obama’s father and grandfather. Interesting history.

7. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: Or On the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie R. King
First in the mystery series featuring Mary Russell, a young English woman who meets her neighbor – a retired Sherlock Holmes, and apprentices with him to become a super-sleuth. If you like Sherlock Holmes stories, you’ll love this.

8. Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie
Featuring Miss Marple and considered to be one of the best books written by this author. Great mystery and wonderful period piece.

9. The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
An earlier Miss Marple story, slightly convoluted but still worthwhile.

10. They Do It With Mirrors (also published as Murder with Mirrors) by Agatha Christie
Another Miss Marple, with a slightly different flavor. You’ll solve it if you choose the correct paradigm – but therein lies the challenge.

11. In the Queens’ Parlor, and Other Leaves from the Editors’ Notebook by Ellery Queen
Behind the scenes observations on authors, publishing, plotting, naming and other mysteries of mysteries by Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay who wrote scores of mystery novels as the fictional Ellery Queen. First published in 1942 and updated several times, the last in 1957. Out of print, but I was lucky enough to get a copy on inter-library loan from Halifax. Loved it. (It’s available used on Amazon.)

12. The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette by R. T. Raichev
First in the Country House Crime series set in England. I knew from the second chapter what happened to Sonya on the day of the 1981 royal wedding of Charles and Diana. Kept reading, hoping for surprises, but there were none.

13. Evans Above by Rhys Bowen
First in the mystery series featuring Constable Evan Evans of Llanfair, Wales. A very good mystery with all the necessary clues and lots of red herrings. If you like M.C. Beaton’s Hamish MacBeth, you’ll enjoy this series. I’ll be reading more of Evan Evans.

Links for my Canadian readers

Evans Above: A Mystery

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

It’s springtime in the country, and lambing season is here. I took these photos yesterday afternoon on a brief driving tour of the area.

The babies are growing quickly but are still gangly.

Watching the domestic animals like these is just one of the small joys of country living!

A dying soldier in the Great War in Europe extracts a promise from his friend, Jade, to track down his illegitimate half-brother, conceived when the now deceased family patriarch was exploring the Dark Continent.

Set in 1919 British East Africa (now Kenya), amid colonial rule and racial unrest, Suzanne Arruda’s debut Mark of the Lion introduces Jade del Cameron. A young woman raised on a New Mexico ranch and who served as an ambulance driver near the front lines in France in WWI, she is a perfect heroine. Just too perfect.

Not only is she beautiful with her green eyes (what are the chances?), black curls and olive complexion (her mother was Spanish), she has a “mellow contralto voice” (nothing too shrill for our Jade). She’s practical enough to wear trousers on safari while the other women wear skirts, she’s intelligent enough to finger a drug-smuggler and to uncover a murder. And she’s always in perfect control and understanding of her emotions so that men cannot sweep her off her feet without her consent.

Jade’s remarkably (& implausibly) free of the prejudices of the day, and of the condescension of the ruling people of whose society she is part. What’s more, she’s an ace-mechanic, a crack shot, and learns Swahili faster than just about anybody. She can out-climb, out-drive and out-think anybody around, but especially men.

There were many times I felt like gagging on yet another demonstration of her multiple, never-ending, and—oh yes, did I mention—perfect skills.

Be forewarned, the Kenya-set story involves witchcraft among some of the tribal people. Although the suggestion of that made me extremely uncomfortable while I was reading, I forged ahead thinking that perhaps the plot resolution would reveal another explanation of events. Alas, it did not. If you are offended by demonism, give this book a pass, as it is a key element upon which the plot turns.

At the story’s end, Miss del Cameron decides to stay on in Kenya, so future stories in this series may include witchcraft as well. Given that, and Jade’s oh-so-irritating perfection, I won’t be reading any more of Arruda’s novels, even though I did enjoy the historical setting of this series debut.

Link for my Canadian readers:

Mark Of The Lion: a Jade del Cameron Mystery

URGENT:

Controversial Drilling Method Threatens Nova Scotia

So reads the front cover of a leaflet being distributed in our community by concerned citizens. Concerned about what?

Fracking – or hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas from deep underground. Energy companies drill deep wells, then pump in water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressure. The water shatters the rock bed below ground and the sand keeps the cracks open, thus allowing natural gas to escape and be captured.

Fracking has been in use by the energy sector in the U.S.A. since 1947, and an estimated 90% of the natural gas wells there use hydraulic fracturing. So why the uproar?

Opponents of the process assert that very little research has been done on the long-term impact of fracking on human and wildlife health and on the environment. What are the problems?

1) The chemicals used in the fracking process (many of them carcinogens) and the natural gas itself can contaminate ground water – and in communities where most people rely on their own well for drinking water, that’s a tremendous concern.

The producers of the film Gasland show many examples of ruined wells, including one where the water actually burns when lit. America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) maintains that these wells were contaminated by other sources, and prior to fracking activities in the area.

2) Fracking requires millions of gallon of water – local water – and thus could lower our ground water levels. Some home water wells may run dry and need to be re-drilled.

3) Much of the water used in the process returns to the surface, now contaminated with such hazardous chemicals as kerosene, benzene, toluene, and formaldehyde, and must be disposed of. The rest of the water and chemicals remains underground.

4) As in all mining operations, large areas of land (4 to 6 acres for each well pad) would be levelled, and roads for heavy equipment built. In a rural environment that depends on its natural beauty to draw visitors, as Nova Scotia does, tourism could decline dramatically.

5) Occasionally, a well will explode, spewing millions of gallons of hydraulic fracturing fluid and combustible gas into the air and onto surrounding landscape.

According to the New York Times, the NYC Department of Environment Protection refused to allow fracking within the NYC watershed, citing “an unacceptable threat to the unfiltered water supply of nine million people”.

And therein lies the rub: in the country, we’re not nine million people. We are only a few, and in the eyes of big business and government (and of people who do not live here), a few whose quality of life can be sacrificed.

This is one of the hazards of country living: unless you own ALL the land, potentially dangerous commercial enterprises can become your close neighbours. Sure, in the city, land might be cleared for a new mall or big box store but, as unattractive as they are, they don’t pose the hazard of a natural gas well, fracking the earth beneath you.

In Nova Scotia, there will be a demonstration held in front of Province House in Halifax between 1 and 2 p.m. today, to mark Earth Day and to officially register the groundswell of protest against fracking in Nova Scotia.

During her amazing half-century-plus writing career, author Agatha Christie jotted notes and ideas for her work in various notebooks and journals. Seventy-seven of these notebooks were discovered by her heirs after her death. Although they are certainly not a complete collection of the scribblers she used, they shed much light on how Christie created her masterpieces.

The notebooks contain character lists, suggested settings, and plot ideas and development, but until now they have been largely ignored, mainly because Christie’s handwriting is nearly illegible. As John Curran worked with the material in preparing Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, he became familiar with her scribbles and unlocked fascinating insights into the woman and author Christie.

The Secret Notebooks opens with several chapters of summary, giving an overview of Christie’s work, her characters, and her influences, among other things. These chapters I read completely.

I learned why Christie was so successful and remains so popular. She was immensely productive and eminently readable. Curran also points out the secret of the plots that entrance Christie’s readers:

The secret of her ingenuity with plot lies in the fact that this dexterity is not daunting. Her solutions turn on everyday information–some names can be male or female, a mirror reflects but it also reverses, a sprawled body is not necessarily a dead body, a forest is the best hiding place for a tree. She knows she can depend on our erroneous interpretation of an eternal triangle, an overheard argument or an illicit liaison. She counts on our perceived prejudice that retired Army men are harmless buffoons, that quiet, mousy wives are objects of pity, that all policemen are honest and all children innocent. She does not mystify us with the mechanical or technical…

In almost every Christie title the mise-en-scene features a closed circle of suspects–a strictly limited number of potential murderers from which to choose. A country house, a ship, a train, a plane, an island–all of these provided her with a setting that limits the number of potential killers and ensures that a complete unknown is not unmasked in the last chapter.

He also touches on what I have always considered a touchstone of a good mystery book – the fairness.

Throughout her career Christie specialised in giving her readers the clues necessary to the solution of the crime. She was quite happy to provide the clue, firm in the knowledge that, in the words of her great contemporary R. Austin Freeman, ‘the reader would mislead himself’.

The bulk of the book, however, discusses the notes on individual books and contains many spoilers. I found interesting the comparison of plots and plot devices, and settings in various books.

Last fall, I read several of Christie’s novels, checking Fantastic Fiction to find the titles of her earliest works, and thinking to start at the beginning of my collection. I thus completed The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), The Man in the Brown Suit (1924), The Secret of Chimneys (1925), Partners in Crime (1929), and Sad Cypress (1940). Reading the plans behind these, and Curran’s intelligent analysis of Christie’s background work, was fascinating.

I borrowed Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks from the library, but I want to buy a copy for own bookshelf. I plan to put it beside my collection of Christie’s works and to consult it upon finishing one, when the characters and plot intricacies are fresh in mind. As Curran points out: it is possible to read a different Christie title every month for almost seven years; and at that stage it is possible to start all over again safe in the knowledge that you will have forgotten the earliest.

And so Christie’s work continues to transcend every barrier of geography, culture, race, religion, age and sex; she is read as avidly in Bermuda as in Balham, she is read by grandparents and grandchildren, she is read on e-book and in graphic format in this twenty-first century as eagerly as in the green Penguins and The Strand magazine of the last. Why? Because no other crime writer did it so well, so often or for so long; no one else has ever matched her combination of readability, plotting, fairness and productivity.

And no one ever will.

Amen to that.

Links for my Canadian readers:

Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making

The Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

Secret Of Chimneys: a Hercule Poirot Mystery

Sad Cypress: a Hercule Poirot Mystery

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

I was out doing some volunteer work yesterday afternoon and came across this curious bovine in the barn at the edge of a dooryard. Not something I saw very often in the city…

Can’t get enough cows? Check out CowParade – Moo-ti-cultrural! Shop Today!

Rohinton Mistry’s third novel, A Fine Balance (1995), won the second annual Giller Prize in 1995, and in 1996, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. It also snagged the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, and Denmark’s ALOA Prize, and was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker prize. It was selected for Oprah’s Book Club in November 2001. All for good reason.

Set in 1975 India during “The Emergency” when the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, “ruled by decree”, A Fine Balance tells the stories of four people who, because of circumstances, end up living together in a small flat.

Dina Dalal, a fortyish widow who grew up in a wealthy family and who jealously guards her independence from her merchant brother, is the official tenant of the flat.

Maneck Kohlah grew up in a small mountain village near the Pakistan border. His father owned the local general store and sold his secret formula Kohlah’s Cola. When the highway comes through the village, his father’s business suffers because of the importation of mass-produced soft drinks.
At seventeen, wanting a career independent of his father, Maneck decides to attend college in the city and obtain a certificate as an air-conditioning technician. Maneck’s mother was a school-mate of Dina’s, and so arranges for Maneck to board with her at her flat.

Uncle and nephew, Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji, members of the Chamaar caste, considered untouchables, have come to the city to start a new life after a family tragedy of barbaric cruelty. Trained as tailors, they are hired by Dina to sew piecework from patterns provided by an export company. Initially, they only work at Dina’s flat and do not live there. After a series of misfortunes, they end up sleeping in Dina’s veranda, bathing in her washroom, and eating meals with Dina and Maneck.

The co-existence of these strangers from disparate backgrounds begins tenuously but with a little choice.

…in a city where millions were living in slums and on the pavements. And not just beggars–even people with jobs who had the money to pay the rent. Only, there was nothing to rent.

The backstories of these characters create a depth of understanding in the reader and as their story unfolds, we feel emotionally invested in their future.

Even though the characters are skilfully and deeply drawn, A Fine Balance is not simply a character study. There is a blockbuster of a plot filled with the small triumphs and large tragedies of human existence. Although it would seem that India’s political affairs would be the “big picture” of this novel, the effects of those affairs on the population are so dramatic that the fabric of people’s lives becomes the greater theme.

Mistry has made India live. The heat, the dust, the hunger and the thirst, the crowding, poverty, disease, and corruption become real to the reader. Even so, we are appalled when Dina’s brother, a member of the urban merchant or commercial class, says:

My friend was saying last week…that at least two hundred million people are surplus to requirements, they should be eliminated…you know–got rid of. Counting them as unemployment statistics year after year gets us nowhere, just makes the numbers look bad. What kind of lives do they have anyway? They sit in the gutter and look like corpses. Death would be a mercy.

Ultimately, A Fine Balance is about man’s inhumanity to man and the indomitableness of the human spirit. There’s plenty of heartache here. The tragedy, sorrow, and loss could overwhelm some readers: this is not a book for those looking for a happy ending. As Maneck, ever the student of air-conditioning observes:

If there was a large enough refrigerator, he would be able to preserve the happy times…, keep them from ever spoiling…but it was an unrefrigerated world. And everything ended badly.

A Fine Balance is a sweeping and powerful novel that has been compared to works of Tolstoy or Dickens. It is a rich study of a difficult time in India’s history, featuring complex and flawed characters.

It will certainly remain on the list of the best books I’ve read this year – perhaps even in my lifetime. I cannot recommend it enough. Five out of five stars.

Link for my Canadian readers:
A Fine Balance

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Is spring really here? There’s only a few low clouds in a beautiful blue sky and although the temperature is only just above freezing, the sun is warming the earth.

To the right, you can see the tamarack trees at the end of our drive. They are the only coniferous tree in Canada to lose their needles in the winter. I love them for it, although I’m glad that other species stay evergreen so we have some color during the winter months. No buds yet – but soon, soon!

The home page of our regional library proudly displays the headline:

Excitement in Tatamagouche!

The first steps have begun toward building the new Tatamagouche branch.

I’ve been by the site and the earth where the building will go has been dug up, although nothing more seems to have been done in the last couple of weeks. It’s very exciting for our village, although it has not been without controversy.

The location of the new structure was the biggest issue under debate. Many favoured a location on the main street next to the Raven Gallery, where a burned out variety store has been razed.

The chosen building site is considered by many to be out of the way, being half a mile down the road and out of the village centre proper. I believe that parking availability was the strongest deciding factor.

It is exciting to see this project finally off the ground and I’m curious to watch as the building goes up.

But I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that many will miss the old site, as tiny and impractical as it is. The size has never bothered me, since I reserve books on-line, and can read books from all over the province through the inter-library loan system.

Still, it must be quite difficult, if not impossible, to have a kids’ story-time session in the current premises, or for more than one student at a time to research or study (do students still use libraries?)

Always trade-offs. That’s progress – and life.

Richard B. Wright’s 2001 novel, Clara Callan was a masterpiece that won Canada’s two most prestigious literary awards – the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize. I have tried to not to measure the author’s subsequent works by that book, but I admit that my expectations were high when I started his latest offering, Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard.

Unfortunately, this book fell far short of my expectations and I finished it mainly because it was this month’s choice for our local book club, The Loquacious Compendium.

From the dust jacket:

In failing health, Aerlene Ward, an elderly housekeeper in an Oxfordshire manor, feels compelled to confess the great secret that has shaped her life: she is the illegitimate daughter of William Shakespeare, England’s most famous playwright. But will anyone believe her? Even Charlotte, the young mistress of the house who is writing Aerlene’s words down, is doubtful.

Wright tells a plausible story about Aerlene’s mother meeting and mating with Shakespeare. I’d be very surprised if the real Shakespeare didn’t have more “bastards”, so that revelation in itself is certainly not enough to carry this story. In fact, my complaint about this book is that there is no story. What happens is summed up on the dust jacket.

That said, there were some in our book club who agreed with this blurb:

With a brilliant eye and ear for this rich period of history, Richard B. Wright vividly evokes the seasonal rhythms of rural life in Oliver Cromwell’s England and the teeming streets of Shakespeare’s London as he interweaves the two women.

Certainly, Wright captures the female point of view beautifully and uses it often in his writing. This book is no exception. It’s easy to forget as one reads about Aerlene & her mother Elizabeth that the book has a male author. The female voice is amazingly authentic.

But the blurb also promises that “secrets are revealed, mysteries are uncovered, and futures are forever changed.” Sorry, I didn’t see that. What you’ve found out here is what happens. It’s a glimpse at seventeenth century England, especially London. There’s a brief introduction to Shakespeare, although he plays a minor role and is used mainly as a plot device (and title).

Since the book is well-written, it was suggested at our book club discussion that it might be a good Young Adult choice. However, Elizabeth’s morals leave much to be desired and her actions might not be appropriate reading for that age group.

Overall, I was very disappointed by Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard, but you might be an historical fiction fan who will find it:

An engaging blend of invention and historical detail, a novel full of imagination and delicate emotion.

Many in The Loquacious Compendium did.

Links for my Canadian readers:

Clara Callan

Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

A road trip to Ontario gave me some riding time for reading. Here’s what I got through in March; four of the ten are by Canadian authors.

1. Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
Set in 1929 in London’s theatre district, the first in the Inspector Alan Grant series. Grant is presented with an unidentified body found in the ticket line for a musical comedy. He must first discover who the victim is before he can find who killed him and why. My review is here.

2. Alligator: A Novel by Lisa Moore
You can read my review of this novel set in modern-day St. John’s Newfoundland here. I just picked up Moore’s February from the library and I’m looking forward to cracking it open next week.

3. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
Set in modern-day Mumbai India, this story of family patriarch Nariman Vakeel, an elderly widower of the Parsi minority, who lives with his two middle-aged stepchildren gives us a good look at that city. Although quite interesting, it’s not up to A Fine Balance.

4. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
1899 classic set in and around New Orleans, this chronicles the cultural and sensual revolution that takes place inside one society woman.

5. Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard by Richard B. Wright
The latest from the author of award-winning Clara Callan, this book is set in 17th century Oxfordshire & London, England. You can see what I thought of it.

6. An English Murder by Louise Doughty
Also called Honeydew, this story is set in modern-day rural England and involves the murder of a middle-aged couple by their teenage daughter. Said to be a soft spoof of English murder mysteries, it didn’t satisfy as either that or a real mystery.

7. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Compared by critics to Tolstoy, this book is one of the richest I have read. You can find my review here.

8. Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson – foreward by Allan Wright Green
A beautiful win from the publisher. See my review here.

9. Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making by John Curran
Non-fiction analysis of the notebooks that Christie used in plotting many of her books. Fascinating – and one I want for my own bookshelf. Here’s my thoughts.

10. The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards
First in the Lakes District series featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett and historian Daniel Kind, this modern-day crime mystery is oddly named but enjoyable. I’ll likely read more in the series.

Links for my Canadian readers:
The Man in the Queue
Alligator
Family Matters
The Awakening
Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard
An English Murder
A Fine Balance
Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks
The Coffin Trail

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.
Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.