Swimming in the Dark by Paddy Richardson

Serena is a bright 15 year old living in Alexandra under the shadow of her rat-bag family’s reputation. When something horrific happens to her she is convinced no one will believe her story and goes into hiding. Her rescuers, trusted teacher Ilse and Ilse’s mother Gerda, have their own brutal family secrets from life in their native East Germany.

Richardson brings alive her characters in a believable way. Serena yearns to get away from her small town life and dysfunctional family and gain an education. Ilse and Gerda strive for quiet uncomplicated lives as immigrants while remembering the good and sometimes horrifically bad experiences of life in their former home.

Life under the scrutiny of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police agency, is described in grim detail. This most hated and feared institution infiltrated every aspect of daily life, eventually for Gerda in the most brutal way imaginable. Her experiences are revisited as she becomes determined to protect Serena as her abuser closes in.

This book is difficult to categorise; it is part gripping psychological drama, part literary drama detailing the recent history of the former East Germany before the fall of Communism. Themes of family, helplessness, power and courage come together in a powerful and suspenseful novel.

I have not read Paddy Richardson before but will definitely search out her previous four novels (all held by Hastings District Libraries). She lives in Dunedin where she writes and teaches courses in creative writing.

Posted by Katrina H

Catalogue link: Swimming in the Dark

Self's Murder by Bernhard Schlink

You may remember Bernhard Schlink as the German author of The Reader - that wonderful novel about a teenage boy in post war Germany who has an affair with a woman whom he rediscovers as a law student when she is being tried for war crimes. It was made into a seriously good film starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet.

Before all that, Schlink wrote some fairly decent detective fiction featuring his Mannheim private eye Gerhard Self. The last of the series, Self’s Murder, has his protagonist contemplating retirement when he takes on a final case for a banker named Welker. Recently Welker's wife disappeared in the mountains while the couple were on a walking holiday, either the victim of a tragic accident or of foul play.

But oddly enough this isn’t case at hand. Welker wants Self to discover the identity of a silent partner in the bank’s history, before the rise of the Nazi Party. Self has a few awkward run-ins with Welker’s chauffeur and general factotum, Gregor Samarin, and then discovers he is being followed by ex-Stasi officer, Karl-Heinz Ulrich, who insists he is Self’s son.

There’s extortion, murder and several mad-cap episodes as the story builds towards an interesting twist. Schlink’s characters are all degrees of quirky giving the novel a lightness of touch, while Self is an urbane, philosophical sort of chap and as such makes a wonderful narrator. For a distinctly different kind of mystery, the Self books are well worth a look.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Self's Murder

The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

I am yet to watch the Oscar winning film The Grand Budapest Hotel, a story influenced by the life and writings of Austrian war-time writer Stefan Zweig; when I do though I shall eagerly look for references to The Post Office Girl.

This is a novel in two distinct and abruptly different parts. In part one the reader is introduced to civil servant Christine, who works without complaint at the post office in a small Austrian town. Her life shuffles between the banal and just plain tiring, after which she returns home to tend to her ailing mother. Post-war austerity has robbed Christine of the joys of being a young woman.

“The war stole her decade of youth. She has no courage, no strength left even for happiness”.

Out of nowhere an invitation is extended to Christine by her wealthy aunt to join her and her husband at a Swiss resort. Christine is quickly drawn into a world of glamour and luxury and naively believes she belongs there. Zweig’s description of Christine’s experience is dizzying and lavish, but when she is suddenly sent packing by her aunt the reality of her situation becomes too much for Christine to bear.

Part two sees Christine return to her former life with a bitterness and despair that knows no bounds. She is introduced to Ferdinand, a disabled war-veteran, and in him Christine finds a similarly disillusioned soul. This section of the book is a grim look at how poverty is all consuming. It seems much more political than part one and it hammers home (perhaps somewhat repetitively at times) the point that the world is a different and unforgiving place for those on the fringes of society.

“The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don’t, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it...”

The book ends abruptly after Christine and Ferdinand formulate a plan to take back control of their lives. While we are given no clues as to how their story ends it ultimately feels like a tragedy.

Posted by CP

Catalogue link: The Post Office Girl

Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

Lissa Evans' new novel has an unprepossessing title and slightly oddball cover art. But don't let that put you off as within these pages is pure gold.

Crooked Heart is set during the London blitz, from which ten-year-old Noel, with his sticky-out ears and enormous vocabulary, is evacuated. He winds up with Vee, who is a bit of chancer, always looking out for a new way to make some slightly dodgy money.

She hasn’t been very successful and with the rent due, starts to get desperate, until Noel decides he can help. The two make a brilliant team and the novel traces their varying fortunes and budding relationship. Meanwhile, the blitz is raging and Noel, on discovering a terrible crime, is determined to see justice done, a decision that will put him in danger.

This is a wonderful story about how unusual times can forge the strangest of relationships and Evans creates some wonderfully original characters. There’s Vee's son, Donald, who has also found his own get-rich-quick scheme which can be possible only in wartime, as well as Vee’s mother who spends many hours writing to Churchill, giving him the benefit of her advice.

The novel is enriched by quirky humour and the writing is stunning, full of evocative imagery which is a delight to read. Crooked Heart has made the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction long-list (formerly the Orange Prize). Look out for the short-list early next week, with the winner announced on 3 June.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Crooked Heart

Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

Landscape with Solitary Figure by Shonagh Koea

Shonagh Koea is one of my favourite New Zealand authors. After a hiatus in her novel writing, I was delighted when she produced Landscape with Solitary Figure last year. Rather than mine any new ground, she has written a further novel featuring a solitary woman in middle age who, like many of her previous characters, is haunted by events in her past.

Ellis Leigh lives quietly in her seaside cottage, gardening and selling off the odd antique, when a letter arrives from a man who years ago played a terrible trick on her. This story is revealed slowly through the book and takes you back ten years to Ellis’s life in a different town, the build-up to Martin Dodd’s terrible act of bullying, and Ellis’s escape.

It is a novel on a small scale, full of rich and quirky detail – food, gardens, clothes and, of course, antiques, and the impression you have of Ellis's life is the kind of shabby gentility of reduced circumstances. Her sensitivity and shyness is seen as snobbishness which attracts a meanness among those from her circle of acquaintances.

This gives Koea a canvas on which to create some wonderful scenes, laced with her trademark dark humour. What I particularly like about her books is the atmosphere she creates, the subtle nuances and the prose where every sentence is written with care. It all adds up to a unique reading experience and books that can happily be enjoyed again and again.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Landscape with solitary figure