Monthly Archives: October 2011

I picked Winter Ghosts on an impulse. The title conjured up scary images in my mind and I do love a scary story. What I got, however, was something slightly different.

This is the story of a man, Freddie Watson, who is trying to come to terms with the death of his brother, declared missing in 1916, one day before the Battle of Somme. Freddie knows his brother was the favorite child in the family. As grief tears the family apart, it is clear that Freddie has to deal with the death of his brother by himself. Years later, after some time spent in sanatoriums following a nervous breakdown, Freddie started traveling around France in the hope that the cooler climate of the mountains will restore his frail nerves.

On one such day he gets caught up in a winter storm and comes close to losing his life. Dazed and bloodied, he makes his way to a nearby village where he is given help and a place to spend the night. That night the village celebrates “la fête de saint Étienne” and Freddie is invited to the party. The celebration, however, is stranger than he thought. The food, the people, the clothes, the atmosphere, everything makes Freddie feel as if he had stumbled back in time. At the party he meets a striking young woman, Fabrissa, and her story manages to shake Freddie from his lethargy. Determined to find out more about her, he asks the villagers but his inquiries are met with strange looks and not much more. Undeterred, Freddie continues to search for Fabrissa. What he finds is a way to face his grief and move on. He begins to understand that life is worth living, that loved ones die but are never forgotten, and in the end holding on to happy memories is all we have.

I liked the book for the easy pace, the stories within stories, and the bits of history it provided (I didn’t know much about the Cathars and their religion and this book made me want to find out more). The story however, became predictable after a point. Reading this book felt like taking a walk through a forest on a quiet afternoon: you can see the path winding up between the trees and you know the exercise will do you good, just like you know that the scariest thing you’re likely to encounter will be a squirrel or a rabbit. Despite the “ghost” element it wasn’t scary – there was a point where it seemed things could get more chilling but it passed quickly and the story went back to its even pace. An enjoyable quick read.

*Read in October 2011

A bit of an update:
I’ve been a bit lazy in the writing department these days. There are a few books sitting on my desk, waiting to be reviewed, and a few others that I can’t wait to start reading. Right now I’m enjoying a long awaited holiday and also keeping my fingers crossed that the rains will stop so I can go on a trip I’ve been dreaming about since last year. Until then, I’ll try to get back to writing and this is the first (overdue) review. Happy reading!

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Pulse

The book contains 14 stories (I wonder if the author was superstitious) about life, choices, love and marriage. I was attracted to this book by the title – it seemed like an interesting name for a book.
While at the bookstore I started reading the first story, East Wind, about Vernon, a late thirties divorcee, who falls in love with Andrea, an East European waitress. There was something funny and likable about Vernon, and I decided to take the book home and continue reading.

What I really liked about this book was the way the author managed to infuse the stories with humor but also with sadness at the same time, a notable accomplishment which is tricky to achieve within the same story. There’s also a bit of cynical witticism in the “At Phil and Joanna’s” stories (there were four), in which a group of friends gather for dinner and some verbal banter. The dialogue is entertaining and well written, the topics ranging from politics and grammar to sex and religion to name just a few.

Another story I particularly liked was The Limner. I must confess I had never heard the word before (and that is yet another reason why I liked this book – finding new words) and had to look it up in the dictionary. The limner, Mr. Wadsworth, is a traveling portrait artist. He can’t speak or hear, due to a childhood illness, but that doesn’t mean he’s dumb, as some of his customers seem to think. Attention to detail is observed not only when painting, but also when dealing with others and he manages to form an accurate opinion of the people he meets. This is one of my favorite passages from the story:

“The limner had shown the collector of customs some miniatures of children, hoping to change his mind, but Tuttle merely shook his head. Wadsworth was disappointed, partly for reasons of money, but more because his delight in painting children had increased as that in painting their progenitors had declined. Children were more mobile than adults, more deliquescent of shape, it was true. But they also looked him in the eye, and when you were deaf you heard with your eyes. Children held his gaze, and he thereby perceived their nature. Adults often looked away, whether from modesty or a desire for concealment; while some, like the collector, stared back challengingly, with a false honesty, as if to say, Of course my eyes are concealing things, but you lack the discernment to realise it. Such clients judged Wadsworth’s affinity with children proof that he was as deficient in understanding as the children were. Whereas Wadsworth found in their affinity with him proof that they saw as clearly as he did.”

In Carcassonne, the author explores the concept of marriage, how couples meet and what keeps them together over the years. Is it passion, like the type Garibaldi and his wife Anita felt the first time they laid eyes on each other, or is it something more subdued, like the man who had met his wife at an office party and when asked what did he feel when he saw her, said “I thought she was very nice”. Do couples without children have more chances of staying together, unencumbered by responsibilities and worn out by worries, and what about gay couples? Questions, musings, experiences shared. No miraculous recipe for a long, happy marriage, only doubt and various perspectives – it’s all a roll of the dice.

There were a couple of stories I didn’t care much about. While I had no complaints about the writing style, which by the way, seems to flow nicely enough, those stories in themselves fell short of interesting. But then it’s almost inevitable for this to happen in a book of short stories.
An entertaining read, quite different from the books I usually pick. I have to admit I was more excited about this book when I finished it but for some reason I postponed writing a review and in time my enthusiasm decreased considerably, which is a shame, really…

*Read in August 2011

This book is the last in the trilogy which started with Man and Boy and continued with Man and Wife. When I read Man and Wife, I had no idea that it was part of a bigger story so I can safely say that I sort of started in the middle. The books however, can be read independently.

In this new chapter of Harry Silver’s life, Parsons delves deeper into the problems and challenges of a mixed family. Now married for the second time, to Cyd, who has a daughter, Peggy, from a previous marriage, himself the father of a teenage boy named Pat, from his first marriage, Harry finds himself yet again caught in the turmoil of everyday life. A new daughter, Joni, born into the mixed family, completes the picture.
Conflicts arise from every aspect of his life: the loss of his job, his son becoming a teenager, the return of his first wife, Gina, who decides she wants to play an active role in Pat’s life after years of being away, the arrival on his doorstep of one of his father’s comrades from the war, all this is enough to bring complications, misunderstanding and resentment but also new lessons in love, compassion and trust. There is a palpable undercurrent of anger which can be felt throughout the book, a feeling which seems hard to control for Harry.

The reason why I liked all of Tony Parsons’ books I’ve read so far is because he succeeds in telling this universal story of love and heartbreak, mistakes and forgiveness and the power to start all over again in such a compelling way. The characters feel real, the situations even more so, and even though sometimes I wanted to shake Harry and Cyd for almost giving up, in the end I could not help but like them.
There are also a few words from the author at the back of the book – about how his personal experiences have played an important role in the writing of the trilogy, about life, mistakes and the power to turn it all into a story that does not belong to one man only but to all of us.

*Read in September 2011