I may have mentioned before - I belong to a book group. We read crime novels. During this period of LockJaw we read the books as best we may and comment by email. Not the same but hey all things change.
The latest offering by M L Stedman - The Light Between Oceans, is not the usual. While Rosie, our convenor (our Leader, our Great Helmsperson, the Sun in our Hearts) avoids the cruder shootemups she uses the Library stock and this sadly puts limits on what she can offer us and what we may want to read and discuss. It was a real breath of fresh air!
Setting the scene with the body of a dead man, and a live baby in a boat started the plot at a high level. The move back in time to 1918 and the aftermath of war was a deft sharpening of the plot, obviously the marriage of Tom to Isobel and the subsequent miscariage refined my interest. The plot certainly thickened with at least one more miscariage and stillbirth. I couldn’t at that point make up my mind that the characters were made deliberately wooden or just not fully drawn. The story developed well, I feel, to fill them out and the overall setting of the lighthouse appealed to me. I have been a sucker for an Australian thriller lately. Tom and Isabel have both experienced great trauma and that may be the skeleton on which the story hangs but it is also the framework for the horror which Hannah has to face with the loss of a child and husband Frank. In an interview the author claimed that the story just emerged and I can believe that. The slow pace of its development was one of the aspects I found attractive. She claims they evolved as “they were who they were, they did what they did, and those actions carried with them certain consequences.” A key phrase that defined the story was ...Love pulled out of shape… The author said that towards the end she realised that she was pulling punches where Tom was concerned, and she had to stop protecting him from his fate. I thought the treatment of the post 1918 world and the difficulty of communication physically and emotionally woven through the telling was a joy. Very, very different from previous suggestions but I found it very satisfying. I have already recommended it to Messers. All and Sundry.
I’ve been reading reviews as a defense against the idea that this covid stuff might go on for ages. Suggestions I picked up from NYRB include Leonardo Sciascia’s Day of the Owl, Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Fatale. Also Sand, by the German writer Wolfgang Hernndorf. I’ve really enjoyed Sciascia’s stories and intrigues in the past so I might look them up!
The NYRB review also rated Dorothy B. Hughes on a par with Patricia Highsmith and Raymond Chandler and suggested - In a Lonely Place and The Expendable Man. Both sound good.
(Lots of reading then, not much writing...Ed)
