The younger brother Salinger is named after the writer J.D. Salinger of Catcher in the Rye fame, and Carson is named after Carson McCullers – two great American writers who specialise in the theme of loneliness. Their father abandoned the two boys  and their mother when they were young and refused to have any further contact with them.  Perhaps the exigencies of the time are reminding them that their father must be very old now and is going to die without seeing how his sons turned out (and don’t we all want to show our parents what happened to us?).

Salinger’s character is imbued with a typically London cynicism which is his defence against disappointment and rejection.  Salinger lives with his girlfriend but the relationship seems to be floundering and perhaps this is time to go to the USA and see what happens when he returns. Carson on the other hand is a born-again Christian, and is relentlessly upbeat, responding to every negative remark with a unrealistically optimistic cliché.  Perhaps both men have adopted personas which in some way protect them from the sense of rejection they acquired as boys when their father left them.

Salinger is not surprised to find that Carson’s has done extremely well in America.  He has a perfect home, a perfect wife and a shiny new Lexus sitting in the driveway.  The car is Carson’s pride and joy and he wipes it clean both inside and out at the end of every day.  Salinger seems to delight in dropping small items of rubbish on the floor knowing that this will irritate his older brother.

As they travel across the American South, the banter between the two men has a cutting edge with childhood rivalries never far below the surface.  The contrast between Carson’s positivity and Salinger’s cynicism leads to endless bickering between them, not only on personal themes but also on the contrasting attitudes between Britons and Americans.  I enjoyed the spat which erupted when Carson erupts at yet another one of Salinger’s cutting remarks about bland, corporate America:

“All this bitching about globalization, standardization, homogenization. Think what England was like before it arrived. What was there before Starbucks? Second-rate greasy spoons where the tea was stewed and the coffee tasted like mud. What was there before McDonald’s? Wimpy Bars. What was there before Gap? Burton. And you’re telling me we’re screwing up the world?”

The Lexus came to a halt. The Holiday Inn sign flickered high at the end of the street. A static jigsaw of traffic held them in its grip.

“1951. That was the golden year. Coming of the malls. Victor Gruen, the first modern mall in Seattle. Model taken up all over the world. Clean, quiet, dry, temperature-controlled. What did we have in Willesden? The high street. What was in the high street? Bakers selling soggy rolls. Butchers selling sausages filled with cardboard and toenails. Fishmongers with three varieties of fish. The Cosy Nook café, the Copper Kettle, the Buttery”.

Tim Lott puts the two brothers through various adventures, not least the theft of the beautiful Lexus.  An unlikely cop helps them out and the brothers travel on by motorbike, enjoying the temporary thrill of living for a few days in a James Dean movie.

American road trip

Eventually the brothers arrive at their destination, the small town where their father was last reported to be living.  They do not know his address and have to hunt round various cheap cafés and diners in the hope of spotting him.  I won’t say what happens in the end but it is definitely a suitable ending, despite some reservations about the final resolution which although satisfying seemed a little trite to me.

I read this book while on holiday and it turned out to be a perfect match for my mood.  Light enough to be amusing, but also having enough grit to hold my interest and keep me returning to it as I hovered between promenade benches and open-air cafés.  While my wife read the newspaper I found myself eager to travel the next few miles with the two brothers as they drove along America’s giant freeways and quiet back-roads.  A 4-star read but still very good.

This was not a review copy.

The book is set in a deeply rural community which is about to go through a leap into the modern world when a new road is constructed, bringing with it new commercial opportunities and better jobs.  A a tension runs throughout the book between the old and the new, with most of the villagers being steeped in the folk-lore and legends of the surrounding forests.

Theodore Hidebrandt, the local constable runs his office from the home he shares with his son and daughter in law, his son Klaus acting as Deputy Constable.  Theodore is an interesting character; having been badly injured in the First World War he stuggles with disabilities but applies a fine mind and a sceptical nature to the minor crimes and offences of the villages he is responsible for.

Theodore and Klaus are called out one day to a nearby village to investigate the case of a missing baby belonging to the village doctor’s sister.  Two couples live in one house, together with a disabled older child who’s difficulties cause all manner of problems for the family.  Only one member of the family, the doctor’s wife Ute is prepared to speak candidly about the missing child.  Theodore, interviews her alone and despite  his professional approach, he finds himself deeply intrigued by this attractive woman and she occupies a place in his thoughts long after the interview is over.

Within a day or two, the baby is found dead and a suspiciously hasty burial is conducted by the grieving family.  Theodore returns to the house and despite the apparent sadness at the loss of the child he is strangely unmoved by his conversations with the family and their attempt to suggest that a local Jewish young man, Elias Frankel should be the prime suspect.

Throw into the mix a story-hungry local journalist who latches on to the suggestion that Elias may be responsible and combines this with rumour of a “wolf-man” being seen in the neighbourhood and before long Elias has fled and a witch hunt has been started.

Jenny Mayhew

What makes this book work is its combination of a number of complex themes which Jenny Mayhew manages to control so well throughout the book.  We find an emerging anti-Semitic feeling throughout the community, which when seasoned with ancient forest beliefs in were-wolves makes for a potent and poisonous brew.  There is a German League of local no-hopers who use the situation to whip up local feeling and then launch out into vigiilante action which goes seriously wrong.  We have the mystery of the missing baby which becomes all the more suspicious when we find that the baby’s uncle, the local doctor, has a belief in eugenics and wishes to help cleanse the race of sub-standard children. And we also have the very strong character of Theordore Hildebrandt, a classic flawed but very effective detective who has to find a way investigating the highly regarded doctor and his family despite his lowly position as a constable.

In some ways I was reminded of some of the better Scandi-crime novels while I read A Wolf in Hindelheim, but this book is definitely in the category of “literary ficiton” rather than “police procedural” (although it is that too).  In setting this book in a 1926 Germany Jenny Mayhew chose a difficult time to write about and she has managed to pick out most of the themes of that period and focus them into one small community.  We can see where the early trends she mentions are going to go – anti-Semitism, eugenics, emerging Fascist bands and for me, these elements raised this novel well above the vast numbers of run of the mill crime novels.

My only sorrow is that with his infirmities and his age, Theodore Hildebrandt is not going to appear in another book.  Had Jenny Mayhew made him a few years younger and less infirm, there was the potential to make A Wolf in Hildebrandt the first novel in a long-running series with many more plot opportunities  as the road is built and the community takes off in new directions into the 1930s.  I would like to read some more!

I would be exaggerating if I said that this book is perfect.  My only quibble is that the ending tends to peter out and I wonder if it wouldn’t have been possible to cut out sixty pages or so and make the ending a little crisper.  The author maintains her quality of writing to the end but I think a little more editing would have helped.  Other readers will of course disagree and in any case it’s only a small criticism problem.

As for the setting, I was reminded of Michael Hanek’s 2009  film The White Ribbon which also captures the atmosphere of a between-the-wars German village with its rigid morals, class-ridden social structures and stultifying atmosphere.  I watched this film earlier this year and reading a Wolf in Hindelheim was like stepping into the film but in the richer, more engaging way that only a book can give.  I’ve embedded the trailer for The White Ribbon below:

This novel deals with a difficult subject; an epidemic of suicides among the Innuit community in Greenland.  Apparently Innuit suicide is an ongoing problem and a quick search on the Internet brought up some in-depth studies by Canadian academics about the possible reasons for it such as

- Lack of coping skills when relationships break-up
- Lack of access to mental health treatment;
- Loss of control over land and living conditions;
- Socio-economic factors such as poor housing and employment opportunities.

Further research shows that suicide is a problem with all native communities and also of course with northern countries generally where long, dark winters seem to draw out  melancholic feelings in those disposed to them.

In Anatomy of a Night, Anna Kim has produced a remarkable novel based on one Innuit community in Amaraq in Greenland in which the plague of suicides affects every family in the township.  I say “township” for this community of dispersed dwellings seems not to have a centre as such,

In Amarâq shops flourish in secret, they’re not made visible by signs: the paper store is behind the hospital, the manicurist is next door, the cleaning lady lives close to the heliport, the kindergarten teacher close to the church, the translator next to the police, the hairstylist by the orphanage. The confectioner bakes in a pink house next to the art studio SKUNK, the shoemaker only works when her husband is out hunting, the seamstress only when her husband is at home, she accompanies him on the hunt, the shaman is always active when the pastor is away, the travel office is in Emilia’s book store and only sells tickets for the cargo ship Johanna Kristina . . .

The book focuses on one spring night when the suicide epidemic reaches a peak.  During the night we follow the lives (and deaths) of eleven Innuit inhabitants of Amaraq, learing a little of their background, their joys and sorrows, the place they occupy in the community.  The people have broken lives and Anna Kim occasionally gives the impression that they are  like ghosts, almost transparent, a transient people who are not fully present in the world.  I was struck by this description of Inger and her home which illustrates this tendency of the people to be adrift in the world;

The kitchen is small: a stove; a refrigerator; a table, painted white; and two chairs. Thin wooden shelves are mounted on the walls; ladles, a cooking spoon, and spatulas dangle above the stove; under the table there are three jugs for drinking water and three for other purposes. Inger is hardly visible against the furnishings— Mikkel would say she’s well camouflaged— both she and her clothing are faded, as if someone had tried to erase her and a stubborn residue remained, one which moved around in its own house like a guest, always stumbling over the furniture, completely out of place; she would probably fade away completely one day.

Greenland town Nuuk – click on image to see large

It is in grim surroundings like these that we read of the lives of this group of Innuit, their sad lives, often displaced from their birth families, spending periods of exile in Denmark only to return and never quite fit in again, their alcoholism and their yearning for family.

The Danish tourist information officer tells a visitor, “the Greenlanders can’t control their unhappiness” and explains that the government are trying to restrict access to alcohol, believing that strong drink is the root cause of the suicides.  Anna Kim however seems to have been dissatisfied with such simple explanations and while I know nothing about how she wrote her book, it shows evidence of a considerable amount of research and personal exploration of the territories she describes so well.

Particularly striking was the story of two boys Ole and Magnus who plan a joint suicide.  Anna Kim spares us no detail, “We’ll wrap the hand towel around the line so that it doesn’t slip out, and then we attach the line to the bedpost”.  The two seem to have a distinct lack of despair, and plan their last act with a cool calmness which is as shocking as any more violent death.

Anna Kim

Relationships seem to be difficult for the Inuit people.  Families are troubled and couples seem no longer to understand how to behave with each other.  Family relationships are made more complicated when relatives and friends go to Denmark for study or work, and then return with the old values permanently altered.  One character muses on these conflicts and thinks, “What is hidden beneath this yearning that we call love? Is it strengthened by the conversations which are less like dialogue and more like confessions? And these mutual confessions give rise to a convergence that is based on an illusion, the illusion that one truly understands what the other is talking about”.

As I write this review and revisit the book I am struck by how well-written it is.  It is tempting to compose this article as a set of quotations, to let Anna Kim for herself, for no one could doubt the beauty of the writing.  Her translator Bradley Schmidt must take some of the credit for the quality of the prose of course, but a translator can only work from what is before him and I can only assume that the original German is as eloquent as the English translation.

The image of Anna Kim comes from the publisher’s website.

The year is 2010, but things are not quite how they are in today’s world. Japan has gone into serious economic decline and nation can no longer afford social care, resulting in vast shanty towns constructed in city-parks.  The banks have implemented stringent controls on how much money can be withdrawn from cash machines and sales tax has soared.  The public sector is the only employer offering real jobs, but security guards have to protect government workers from demonstrating crowds of less fortunate citizens. Criminal gangs are rife and the black-market flourishes.

The rest of the world has responded to the economic crisis by retreating into isolationism. America has a vast financial deficit and can no longer afford to act as the world’s policeman. Instead it is pushing for security agreements with East Asian countries, even a non-aggression pact with North Korea. Europe is concerned only with its own boundaries and China and Russia no longer want to get involved with other nation’s problems. Japan is effectively abandoned to its fate.

Seeing an opportunity to get revenge on its old enemy Japan, the North Korean government launch an audacious plot to invade Fukuoka, one of Japan’s lesser cities, with a force of 150,000 troops, establishing a colony at least, possibly a complete take-over.  When the invasion comes, it seems remarkably old-tech, but the commitment and professionalism of the North Koreans make it immediately effective.  A fleet of ancient bi-planes flies into Japanese airspace and lands on an abandoned air-field.  hundreds of highly trained North Korean commandos stream off the plane and immediately fan out around Fukuoka treating any opposition with cruelty and ruthlessness.  Murakami captures the complete helplessness and un-preparedness of the Japanese population in the face of these automaton-like invaders.

Ryu Murakami

Initially the invaders seem content to establish a base on the edge of the city and invite the city’s mayor and other officials to a bizarre reception, inviting the officials to join a “Master Plan for Harmonious Government”.  At this point, Fukuoka’s Chief of Police is dragged in, evidently having been terribly injured at the hands of the North Korean troops, a clear warning to anyone who is unsure about what will happen to those who refuse to accept the Master Plan.

The novel focuses on several locations, each with its own cast of characters. In Tokyo we have groups of government ministers and crisis managers. In North Korea we meet senior party officials then travel with advance team commandos and expeditionary forces as they launch their invasion. In the area of Japan targeted by the North Koreans in and around the city of Fukuoka we engage with local government and media, a medical centre, various criminals and a renegade gang of Japanese youths who plan an elaborate counter-attack in response to the horrific events which happen on their territory.

Needless to say the book is at times brutal detailing barbaric prison conditions and interrogation sessions. But the brutality always appears in the context of the complex plot and it would be unrealistic of Murakami to gloss over the outcome of a military invasion when it is countered by a rebel rag-tag army.

Fukuoka

This is a compelling and shocking read. During the 20th century we saw what happened when nations fell apart after world wars and revolutions, but there is something particularly disturbing about seeing what happens when the structures of the modern world fall apart because of firstly economic collapse and secondly a cruel invading force. Murkami writes at both the macro level (governments, military leaders) and also at the micro level (citizens, health-care workers, criminal opportunists). He makes his vast cast of characters come alive on the page and as a reader I found myself swept along as the terrible plans of the North Koreans unfolded on the page.

It is a long time since I read anything like this and while at first glance it appears to be a sort of fantasy war novel, I suspect that Murakami had a very serious purpose in writing it, perhaps a sort of prophetic warning of what can happen when a nation allows economic decline to eat away at the structure and values of society.

At the start of the book, Murakami explains how Japan has got into such a poor state by putting his characters through some slightly contrived conversations for the benefit of his readers.  However he soon gains pace and once the scene is set the novel  moves into a fast-moving drama involving a well-assembled and convincing cast of characters. This is a very clever novel by a very able writer who has been able to control all the elements of the story, keeping them moving forward at a fast pace equal to the cataclysmic events described.

However, the highly qualified Alister McGrath (Professor of Theology and Ministry Kings College London and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University) explains in the preface to his book, the huge significance of the publication of the collected letters of C S Lewis during 2000-2006 which has added 3,500 pages of source material to our knowledge of Lewis and provides a “continuous narrative backbone for an account of Lewis’s life” which was not available to earlier biographers.

I am now very pleased that I have read McGrath’s book for three reasons.  Firstly, it reminded me of how important Lewis has become as a writer and thinker. Secondly, it definitely draws out some elements of Lewis’s life which I hadn’t fully understood before.  Thirdly, it is a very readable biography, not over-long, nor too scholarly and full of interest throughout.

Earlier biographers were reluctant to cover some of the darker sides to Lewis’s character.  McGrath’s new biography does not flinch from some of the more controversial sides to Lewis, such as his relationship (probably an “affair”) with a Mrs Moore which started when Mrs Moore’s son Paddy, a close friend of Lewis was killed in the First World War.  Lewis had managed to serve in the same regiment as his best friend but was soon hospitalised with trench fever and later wounded by shrapnel, returning to Britain, while Paddy was lost in action.  An intimate relationship soon developed between Lewis and Paddy’s mother and there is now a consensus among scholars that Lewis and Paddy’s mother continued as lovers for many years.

Lewis’s father was very concerned about this relationship, particularly the fact that Lewis was using much of his allowance in supporting Mrs Moore, a matter over which he deceived his father, admitting to a friend that he (Lewis) was a habitual liar.  By 1942, Mrs Moore suffered failing health, even dementia, and Lewis continued to care for her throughout her declining years, showing perhaps the depth of his relationship with her and her family.

In 1926 Lewis met J R R Tolkien and eventually formed a relationship which was to be perhaps “the most important of his personal and professional life”.  Tolkien on his part, was delighted to have Lewis as a sounding-board, someone who would critique his work and help him bring it to completion.  This relationship became a stepping stone to Lewis’s conversion to  Christianity during 1930/32.  Until then Lewis had been an atheist, but his love of literature drove him to realise that there was perhaps something more to life than was immediately visible.  McGrath quotes Lewis from his book Surprised by Joy, in which Lewis wrote, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.  There are traps everywhere”.  Lewis agreed with Graham Greene that “to lose sight of the religious sense was also to lose any sense of the importance of the human act”, views shared by other writers of the time such as T S Eliot and Evelyn Waugh.

Magdalen College, Oxford

Lewis found Christianity to be an escape from narcissism even to the point where he ceased keeping a diary.  His conversion gave him freedom from “the fussy attentiveness . . . to the progress of my own opinions and the states of my own mind”. McGrath places the key date in Lewis’s conversion to Christianity as 19th September 1931 when he stayed up most of the night talking to his two friends J R R Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, after which he wrote to a friend, “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ – in Christianity – my long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it”.

Lewis soon became the most well-known Oxford lecturer of the time and delivered whole series of lectures without notes.  He also launched on a career as a writer publishing books of popular theology and also of course, his most well-known work, the Narnia Chronicles.  His fame soared when he gave a series of wartime radio talks and his voice became one of the most recognised in Britain. His 1942 book The Screwtape Letters appeared firstly in a church magazine but went on to become a world-wide best-seller, its publication in America bringing him international fame.  His great, and immensely readable Mere Christianity continues to inspire countless people to this day and is a classic of Christian apologetics.

In his biography, Alister McGrath discusses all these works in the context of the times, but also brings out their lasting value.  No work of theology exists without a context and a time and this book helped me understand quite where these books fit in the history of the last century.  McGrath’s chapter on Narnia is particularly helpful, pointing out the mediaeval symbolism of the work, the deeply embedded social attitudes of the time of its authorship and its theological basis.

It was fascinating to read of Lewis’s relationship with the American Joy Davidman.  Davidman was a writer and poet who converted to Christianity from a strident atheism and then began to explore her new faith with the aid of Lewis’s books. She travelled to England with the express intention of “seducing Lewis” and after an initial correspondence was invited to lunch with him. This led to further meetings with Lewis being drawn to her because of her sense of humour and her intellectual gifts. They soon entered into a controversial civil marriage in April 1956, not really understood by Lewis’s friends.  Within a very short time Joy developed a malignant tumour in her breast and began a rapid decline leading to her death in 1960.

With Joy’s death Lewis lost a wife, “a personal Muse, a source of literary encouragement and inspiration”.  The impact on his life was huge, as is shown in his “most distressing and disturbing book, A Grief Observed”, which “engages emotions with a passion and intensity unlike anything else in Lewis’s body of work”.  Some have suggested that this book shows that Lewis lost his faith through the intense sense of bereavement left by Joy’s death but Lewis himself denied this, saying that A Grief Observed “ends with faith” but “raises all the blackest doubts en route”.  Lewis’s health soon failed after Joy’s death and in 1963 he himself  died through kidney failure.

In his final chapter, Alister McGrath writes of the “Lewis Phenomenon” which reminds us of quite how far Lewis’s influence has gone and how for how long it has lasted, with no signs of it abating.  Obviously the Narnia books will go on for as long as stories are told, but Lewis’s theological works are all still in print and still sell very well indeed.

McGrath perhaps controversially reports that even the atheist Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy “implicitly recognises  (the Narnia books) as representing the definitive statements of the position he wishes to reject.  The more Pullman criticises Lewis, the more he affirms Lewis’s cultural significance.  In the end Pullman’s appeal is parasitic, depending precisely upon the cultural impact of Narnia that he wishes to subvert”. While many will disagree with this statement McGrath’s evident mastery of his subject at least qualifies him to make it.

This is altogether a very fine book and a welcome addition to the many books written by and about C S Lewis.

The Castelluccio of Nostalgia is small enough to be a backwater, but large enough to have enough cafe’s, restaurants and other locations in which various social set-pieces can take place. The town is steeped in history, and the author regularly diverts into descriptions of people and events in the town’s past which together build up to make a fascinating background to the unfolding events which make up the novel.

Gideon Westfall is an elderly artist who has exiled himself from the London art-scene in protest at their rejection of the “representational art” which goes to make up the majority of paintings in galleries around the world. Critics describe Gideon’s paintings as “nostalgic”, and despite their popularity with wealthy purchasers around the world, they do not appear in any of the great London galleries. Customers commission his portraits because he knows how to create a likeness with just a touch of flattery which will lessen the effects of age, while still being recognisable. The work he produces without commissions sells equally well, with elegant and tasteful nudes predominating.

Gideon has an assistant, Robert Bancourt, a painter himself but one who realises that he will never make the grade as a professional artist. Robert deals with emails, contracts, websites. He makes frames for Gideon’s paintings and arranges exhibitions and other publicity in exchange for a reasonable salary and a near-perfect life in Tuscany.

One day, a woman arrives to see Gideon. At first Robert tries to turn her away, but she persists in demanding an appointment and on seeing Gideon announces that she is his long-lost niece, Claire Yardley. Claire’s father has recently died and she has found a number of family photographs of Gideon and his brother which she thinks may be of interest to Gideon.  Claire knows that the two brothers fell out long before she was born, and in coming to Castelluccio she hopes to find out the background to this family rift.

Tuscan village

Gideon is clearly reluctant to look at the photographs and while he is welcoming to his niece he is extremely evasive about the reasons for his falling out with his brother; “we were never close”.  Claire is rebuffed when she tries to probe more deeply but Gideon seems pleased to find that she is staying on in Castelluccio for a few days and he arranges to meet her later in a local restaurant.

Over the next few days, Gideon and Robert show Claire around the small town and the local places of interest and Claire explores on her own using Gideon’s old car.  Towards the end of the week she does in fact receive the revelation she desires about the two brothers but it is somehow deeply unsatisfying to her (although readers may think otherwise).

On the face of it, this may seem to be quite a thin premise on which to hang a novel but in some ways, Claire’s quest for the truth about her family is not the point of the book at all, for this is as much the story of Castelluccio and it’s people as it is the story of Gideon Westfall and his brother.  We also have a minor mystery story going on in that one of Gideon’s young female models, Ilaria, has gone missing and her family are deeply concerned and wonder if Gideon knows anything about what happened to her.

Jonathan Buckley also spends a large part of the book going back into the history of Castelluccio and its people with countless little stories often going back centuries in time to early inhabitants of the town and the anecdotes surrounding them.  This gives a timeless quality to the novel and slows down the whole reading process – it is tempting to pass over these but as I read them I found myself drifting into an almost timeless state of mind where the centuries seemed to roll by in an endless stream.

Another theme amply covered by the book is the debate in the art-world about the value of representational painting.  Gideon is a neo-classicisist who cares deeply about his work.  He seeks to uncover the soul of his subjects and devotes many hours of work to each portrait, caring deeply about light and form, while not forgetting the importance of knowing about pigments, canvases and the technicalities of painting.  He suffered much at the hand of London art critics who seemed to be in thrall to “installations” and abstract works, deriding his own paintings as “anachronistic shit” despite their obvious quality as fine art.

Despite its extremely slow pace this is what might be called an “enchanting” novel.  It is difficult to think of any other book which conveys such an elegant word-picture of a town and the people that live in it.  Although it focuses on the artist and his associates, it travels far and wide and back in time, to build up an impression of this small town which is hard to forget.  By the time I finished the book I felt I had been staying in Castelluccio myself, so vivid is the picture which builds up in the mind.

Nostalgia is published by Sort Of Books and is currently available on Kindle at a bargain price despite it’s newness.