The Winter Ghosts

There's no doubt that Kate Mosse can spin a good yarn. Labyrinth and Sepulchre were two of my favourite recent reads, so I was delighted to spot The Winter Ghosts in my local library. (Even though it's August!) I didn't read the jacket blurb, trusting to past experience that I would enjoy the book, so I was slightly disappointed to realise from page one that it's set in exactly the same area as the previous novels.

The set-up is different. Freddie Watson has been sent to the South of France in 1933, to recuperate after a serious illness. He's still obsessed with the death of his elder brother George on the eve of the Battle of the Somme. It soon becomes clear that Freddie is sick in mind as well as body.

In a foolhardy attempt to make his way through the Pyrenees in an unreliable car he almost veers off the road and has to find help in an isolated village with a strange atmosphere. The locals make him welcome, and even invite him to a local festival, where he meets a beautiful woman called Fabrissa. As the evening passes and the wine flows he finds himself talking about his fears and loss for the first time. She tells him a tale of how her family had suffered at the hands of soldiers and the pair talk all night.

The morning after, quite predictably I'm afraid, Freddie's back at the boarding house and nobody has any memory of his being at the fete. No-one has heard of Fabrissa or any of the other people he met at the party. His coat still hangs on the hall stand and his boots are not even wet, in spite of the winter snow.

By that time it's clear to the reader that Fabrissa is one of the Winter Ghosts of the title and yes, fancy that, she probably wasn't talking about the same war that triggered Freddie's mental health problems.  I won't spoil the tale for anyone who plans to read it, but if you've read Kate Mosse's other works you'll have worked out for yourself who Fabrissa is.

Confession time - I knew nothing of the relevant period of history before I read Labyrinth, and I learned a lot from it and Sepulchre, but The Winter Ghosts is really a book too far. Time for a new research topic Ms Mosse. You write excellent and engaging prose. Your books truly are gripping, page turners, but it would have been possible to tell the same tale in reference to a different era. Man's inhumanity to man is not limited to 14th century France.

The original version of The Winter Ghosts was published as The Cave in 2009, as part of the Quick Reads initiative, aimed at young adults. Its length and simplicity show through in the later book. If you're already familiar with Mosse's work you know what to expect. If you haven't read Labyrinth and Sepulchre this might be a good place to start, then move on to the meatier works to find out more about the topic.

The October List

Writing a novel backwards can't be easy, and reading one that's been written backwards wasn't a stroll in the park either. Well done Jeffery Deaver for attempting to do it. It all turned out well in the end (or should that be 'at the beginning'?) but please don't do it again.

To explain, The October List starts (at chapter 36) with a kidnapper arriving at an apartment and pointing a gun at the mother of the kidnappee, and a guy who's there to keep her company. In the next chapter (35) two other guys set off to negotiate with the kidnapper for the child's safe return. In the chapter after that (34) four people arrive at the apartment to await the kidnapper's instructions. Then after that... Well, you get the idea.

It wasn't easy to follow.  And when I got to the end (chapter 1) I had to go back to 36 to check out exactly what had happened all the way back then.

Part way through I was convinced I knew what was going to happen (had happened but I hadn't read yet) and to a point I was right. I didn't guess it all. I should have known with Deaver that he still had a few twists in the plot. It was a good story. But I'd been so preoccupied trying to make sense of the backwards timeline that I didn't really enjoy it. Which is a shame.

If you're a Jeffery Deaver fan by all means give it a go. You'll stick with him because you know he'll spin a good yarn eventually. But if you aren't familiar with his work, don't start here. It will put you off reading any of his other excellent books.

Review: The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

Confession up front: Dan Brown isn't my favourite author. I've read The Da Vinci Code, preferred Angels and Demons, so I thought The Lost Symbol would be an easy read with a bit of entertaining hokum. That's what it offered, peppered as usual with Brown's passion for symbols and determination to link conspiracy theories and ancient folklore with a modern day challenge.

This time he's centred on Washington DC and the myriad myths connecting the foundation of the United States with the Masonic Movement. I'm not American, so maybe my lack of enthusiasm for the topic can be explained that way. Yes, it was interesting to Google pictures of the Capitol building, the Washington Monument and even a dollar bill, to see the so-called 'clues' that Brown laid out for our consumption, but somehow it just didn't grab me. I was slightly startled when the 'hand of the mysteries' symbol that starts the trail turned up on an 18th century statue at Newstead Abbey during a completely unconnected visit, but a book so definitively about the US shouldn't have delivered its biggest shock in the Nottinghamshire garden of Lord Byron.

And then there's the book's big plot twist. There's a fact that's obviously supposed to shock the reader when it's finally revealed. It certainly shocks the characters when it turns up in the narrative on page 588. Sadly, I'd worked it out at about page 260, and all it did was emphasise how clumsily Brown wrote the text to avoid mentioning it earlier.

If you like Dan Brown novels you've probably already read this. If you live in Washington DC it'll be fun to visit the buildings that feature in the story and look for the various symbols. Otherwise I can't think of a real reason to read it. At 670 pages it's about twice as long as it should be.

Something from 2011 I think

Being fat is not a crime. It's an eating disorder. Yet anyone who's seen as even slightly wider than a moss-covered stick is considered out of control, stupid and a fair target for insults and abuse.

It's still acceptable to say the word 'fat' as an insult, even when people aren't. I've seen plenty of examples recently. I'm increasingly convinced that those who choose to use it are lazy and lacking in imagination because all the other words they might have hurled in the past have been branded politically incorrect.

Call someone by the N word or insult their religion or sexual preferences and the world will condemn you. Call someone fat and everyone laughs. Why?

Let's look at the recent publicity over Amy Winehouse. Poor Amy. She couldn't help herself. The stress of fame and fortune got to her and she started taking drugs and drink so she could cope.
Good job she wasn't a comfort eater then, wasn't it? Otherwise the millions who have been rushing round to offer their sympathies since her death would be calling her a fat bitch.

More than half of the UK's under 30s have considered surgery to 'correct' their bodies.  Most of them think they're fat - even at size 12 (US size 8). Why?

Because it is still acceptable to use the word fat as an insult. It's about the worst thing you can say to someone these days without risking admonition.

If someone in the UK is identified as having one of the 'skinny' eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia the might of the health service turns out to help. Full on psych support, daily guidance, the works. But until recently a fat person was told to eat less, take more exercise and go away. Being fat only increases your risk of other diseases and so you're costing the country money you fat waster.

Stuffing your fingers down your throat, taking overdoses of laxatives, smoking, drinking, popping pills, pushing white powder up your nose, etc. etc. are seen somehow as 'proper' signs of addiction that deserve help. Being addicted to eating is a sign of weakness.

Make no mistake here. Fat people do not enjoy being fat. Most of them don't even enjoy eating. They are addicted to the short-term comfort food offers. And unlike most addictions they have to learn to control it. They can't just go cold turkey.

Telling a fat person to cut down on their food is like suggesting to an alcoholic that they restrict themselves to three measures of whisky a day. It ain't gonna happen!

Everyone (except a lucky few) is addicted to something. Sex, exercise, gambling, smoking, biting fingernails, Facebook, blogging, whatever.

Next time you think about using 'fat' as an insult just consider what your own addiction is - and use that word instead.

Shoppers!

Time slip

Ben Elton is perhaps best known as a comedian, but there are not many laughs in his novel Time and Time Again. It does raise a few wry smiles, but it's far more thoughtful than mirthful. It starts with an interesting premise: suppose you could go back in time to change one thing - what would it be?  I have no idea whether Ben Elton's version of Newtonian physics that explains the time shift is even vaguely possible, but it's a challenging idea. Before you start working your way through all of history to pick your moment, let me warn you - for purposes of the storyline, you're limited to arriving in 1914. Does that give you a clue?

The tale centres on Hugh Stanton, a former soldier who has no personal ties since the loss of his wife and children in a motor accident. A bunch of  Cambridge university professors persuade him to travel back to the months before World War One and charge him with a mission. He has to prevent the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo - the event generally accepted as the cause of the war - and so save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost in the conflict. But it soon becomes obvious that the academics' theory fails to take account of history's power.

Stanton arrives in the early twentieth century with good intentions, but quickly paves a path to hell as it becomes obvious that he must take several innocent lives in order to carry out his instructions. In fact the bodies fall fast at Stanton's hands and the butterfly effect of his killing begins to change history much earlier than the Cambridge Dons had planned.

Stanton spends much of the book trying to put right the wrongs he has caused, with much soul searching over the moral questions raised by his meddling. It makes for fascinating reading as an adventure story unfolds, but makes the reader agonise along with Stanton over the justification for his actions. I'd recommend it.

Crisis of confidence

Crisis of confidence. I am not sure how to rescue my self worth. Time was when I would sail through life knowing I could do anything if I put my mind to it, but nowadays I am never sure. Job adverts call but I block my own chances with doubt and never even apply. Ideas flood at work but I fear the negative response of my employers and carry on, plodding, without achieving anything remarkable. I have hit mediocrity on my way down and will probably soon be beyond repair. The skills I have, the ones I have practised and polished for decades, are no longer valued. Who cares that I can craft a sentence well or even spell? They have machines that do it now, although they cannot tell the difference between wood, would, wooed and wowed. They even think that color is correct, and ax, center, sympathize and split infinitives, but no-one cares. My knowledge is dismissed as irrelevant today. I am a dinosaur, a dodo, and my skill set is redundant because my mindset (apparently) is wrong.
****************

May 2011

Stones

Tumbled stones glitter in small baskets on the market stall; quartz, citrine, fluorspar, opalite. Alongside each small cairn is a sign that promises good health and fortune. The rainbow of colours is linked to something called chakras. There is no explanation and I am forced to assume that those who believe in the power of stones will understand the strange word. Small, pink cards offer good luck and balance from agate; relief from loneliness through dolomite; power over depression from smoky quartz. Hard to choose: do I need jade’s promise of longevity, energy from obsidian, or peridot’s ability to attract wealth? In the end I pick a small, pointed, purple one, because I think it is pretty.

****************
July 2011

Scapegoat

Can you hear me?
I’m here.
I know you hear. No?
I need the truth
You knead the truth
So I am nowhere
Know where.
Not here but where?
I wear myself out
Trying to be heard
By the herd.
I wear your guilt.
You take the gilt
And the gingerbread.
Ill bred. Your head
Held high. Your soul -
Sole-less,
So less than clean.
A fact of which
You’re conscious.
Your conscience.
Out in force
Shouting:
Can you hear me?
I’m still here.


******************
January 2012

Shadowman

You know how sometimes you catch sight of something out of the corner of your eye and it scares you because it looks like a person in the shadows? You glimpse it, you turn to take another look, and then it morphs into your coat hanging on the door back, or a table lamp and a pile of books or something. Well it’s constant in my life, happens every day, but I never get used to it because once, many years back, it really was somebody, and I know one day he’ll be coming back.  

I had just got home from work, not that I worked too hard in those days. To be honest I was a bit of a waster and was the first to bleat if conditions weren’t exactly how I wanted them. I was drinking hard, ate too much of the wrong stuff, smoked worse than a kipper and was probably heading for an early grave. So I walked in the house and threw my coat and a load of other stuff onto an armchair as I passed it, went straight to the cabinet and poured myself a large whisky. Just as I looked back into the room, there he was; large as life and way more ugly, sitting in the chair where I’d just deposited my gear.

I did a double-take and checked again but he was still there. He looked like he’d been dragged out of a grave, all grey and dusty. His suit seemed like it had once been well cut, maybe Italian styling, but old fashioned. I could see the skull through the skin on his face and he just stared at me. He had no eyes in his sockets but I knew he was staring.

“Listen,” he said, lifting a bony hand and pointing at me, “I’m here to give you some advice.  Unless you want to end up like me you have to lay off the booze, cut out the smokes and watch your cholesterol. You’ve heard about all that karma stuff? Well it’s real, and you already have a debt to pay. We have a job for you to do and you’d best be fit for it when we come to call.”

“What job? What do you mean? Who are you? Who’s we?” I tried to ask, but it was no good. I was talking to my coat.  

Do I need to tell you how terrified I was? Some beast from beyond had paid me a visit with a personal message from…who? Heaven or hell or some place I never heard of.  Next morning I joined a gym and I’ve been living the clean life ever since to keep myself in trim. I daren’t do anything else because I know he will be back some day. I’ve seen his eyeless face every single day to remind me: in dark corners by coat stands; in the way the curtains hang in my living room; in my rear view mirror. So far he’s always been a shadow man but one day will be for real. When he does come I want to be ready for him. Though whether I’ll use my new fitness to help him or fight him off I’m not so sure. 

****************

Originally written for three word Wednesday. The three words are highlighted in bold.. 

Earwig

Prison life really suited Jimmy the Wig because of his habit. Jimmy’s nickname didn’t come from any lack of hair; he had such a thick thatch of black locks that many people thought it was a rug, but no. He got his name from being a natural earwig. He couldn’t stop himself eavesdropping conversations. He was compelled to do it, just like that disease, that obsessive compulsive thing, you know.  So being in prison was just right for him, surrounded by people with nothing better to do than discuss old exploits and plan new jobs for when they got out, and Jimmy became what they call institutionalised. He was happiest behind bars.

His only troubles came from the other side of his compulsion: he felt driven to pass on whatever he overheard. If he thought he was imparting a particularly exciting piece of news he would gesticulate a lot, so it left no-one in any doubt what he was doing.  At first it ruffled a few feathers when he chose to reveal something to the hotter heads in clink, but an understanding Governor solved that by putting him in a cell with Clothears Jones: deaf in one ear and didn’t listen with the other. Wig could say anything he liked and Clothears would nod and hum and har occasionally to make Wig think he was paying attention. That went on for years and life looked settled.

Wig had a number of jobs around the prison. They’d tried him on library duty but it made him edgy because no-one was allowed to talk in there, so they swapped him to cleaning the chapel. He loved that because he often overheard juicy confessions about dirty thoughts. So one day when he was polishing the brasswork and Phil Skillett came in to talk to the Padre he thought he was in for a treat. He was; just not the kind of treat he was expecting.  Phil’s nickname was ‘Fillet’ and it wasn’t just a play on his name; he was renowned for his knife skills and I don’t mean he was a good cook! Anyhow, him and the Reverend disappeared behind the curtain and Wig could hear the prayer bit as he dusted his way closer to the booth. He was comfortably in place when he heard Fillet admit he was the one who had shanked one of the screws two weeks ago.

Well that was too much for Wig. He dropped his cloth and dashed out to find someone to listen. Give the boy his due, he went looking for Clothears, but as bad luck would have it the cell was empty. Wig turned back just in time to come face to face with a chatty screw and he couldn’t stop himself from telling. He was still talking and waving his arms around when Fillet came back from chapel and saw him. Of course he realised straight away what was going on and Wig’s days were numbered.

They found Jimmy dead in his cell two days later and everyone assumed that Fillet had got to him somehow, even though he had been questioned almost non-stop since the secret was revealed. At the inquest, though, the sawbones reckoned there wasn’t a mark on him and there was no hint of poison. The coroner had no option but to call it natural causes, though I know he was wrong. I know what it should have said on the death certificate. To protect him from Fillet’s attentions the screws had Wig put in solitary confinement. I reckon he died of boredom.

(596 words)

Originally written for Three Word Wednesday, but I can't remember what the three required words were now. 

Taxidermy

Just finished reading The Taxidermist's Daughter, by Kate Mosse and it's had quite an effect on me. I've read other Mosse titles (Labyrinth & Sepulchre spring to mind) so I knew she doesn't fight shy of a bit of unpleasantness, but this still had a few shock points to deliver. I won't spoil the story for you (I don't put spoilers in reviews) so it's hard to give you a detailed summary of what it's about. It's set in 1912, though for some reason the pictures in my mind were set much earlier than that. I don't think the actual date is important really. The story would have worked over a couple of centuries, I think.

Connie Gifford lives with her father in an isolated house on the edge of a marsh in the Sussex village of Fishbourne.  He's a taxidermist, though he prefers the title "stuffer of birds". He's also a drunk. Connie can't remember her childhood, owing to an accident that her father refuses to discuss. It left her with amnesia and occasional petit mal seizures. It's clear from the start that something is odd in the village. A weird ritual goes awry when strangers turn up to watch it, and hundreds of songbirds fly out of the church when someone opens the door. Lots of the birds die, setting the tone for the remainder of the book.

A few days later a woman's body is found near Connie's house, apparently drowned, but actually having been strangled by a length of taxidermy wire. Connie is concerned for her father's state of mind, because since the ritual he has been drinking more heavily than usual. Could he be responsible for the murder? And just who can Connie trust from the village and elsewhere?

I'd like to say that I didn't work it all out before the reveal, but that's not true. About a couple of hundred pages before the end I knew 'whodunnit' and I was pretty certain why. Let's face it, writing that kind of background makes it fairly obvious that the climax of the story must be connected to Connie's accident, though the actual details were grislier than I dreamed in my mind's eye. As a writer of sorts I am perturbed when I create truly cruel or gory scenes. Let's just say I'd be really worried if I'd described what Ms Mosse delivers in this book.

Having said that, I would recommend it as a creepy mystery book. There's a bit of history included, and an awful lot of technical detail about what's involved in the craft of taxidermy. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to carve a chicken again without qualms.