The year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

Story of the attempt by Ireland in 1798 to follow in the footsteps of the successful revolutions of the USA and French. The Catholic and Protestant middle classes united to throw out the English aristocracy and create a republic of legally free citizens.

We follow through the eyes of different sections of society- protestant landowners, catholic gentry, English land agents, Irish farmers, landless peasants etc the trigger for the revolt and its tragic course as the revolt is aided by the French.

The weakness of the middle classes, and its reliance on the Irish peasants who want a Celtic Ireland free of all landlords tragically undermine the rebellion with serious consequences. Ireland looses its political independence for an 100 years and its Irish culture. And the failure of the French leaves the way open to the rise of Bonaparte as a key political General looses the ability to counter his rise to power.

Its not a dry historical account or an historical romance. The book uses live action with a range of letters, journals, histories etc to build up the complexity of motives, views of both sides so you the reader are involved as a judge of history to weigh up the whole picture rather then the myths of all sides.

I would recommend it but the different narrative formats require a concentration and can drag in places but if you pursue to the end it comes together in a grand sad ferocious sweep of a maybe moment in history

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

I did this post over a year ago when in China which was never posted to my blog because of the Firewall blocks there. Doing Sunday Salon. I came across a Mr Linky link and then discovered the year long oversight.

When thinking about reading this book, prepare yourself by abandoning notions on what a novel exploring the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, the war should be about. It cover all this through the bitter-sweet nature of family life, bravery and the kindness of strangers, small town and street life ... and Death.

We meet Death when he first sees Liesel Meminger as he comes to collect her Brother's soul. He is too early so gets distracted and intrigued by her life. And so he follows her story until she is 14 as he comes to collects the souls of these around her.

Lisa's parents are communists so long gone into the labour camps so she is is fostered by a working class couple- he a decorator and she a laundress. Her foster mother is one bad mouth, rotten cook and all time battle-axe with guts. Her foster father is barely literature but kind, honest and hard-working. Its him that sits up with Liesel every night when she has her nightmares. He helps her to learn to read from the book she had stolen from the graveyard as her brother was buried-its her only link to the past.

We meet Liesel friends and the gangs she gets involved in to steal food and her time in the Hitler youth movement. One boy falls in love with her and chases her for a kiss- it happens but...

During the story we learn that her foster father life had been saved by a Jew in the war 20 years before and now his son saved by his best German friend comes to stay, The family honour a promise even though discovery would mean their death.

Death helps Liesel learn more from the books she has stolen( each theft a fresh adventure and a new danger) until he has to leave when it gets too dangerous for him to stay- she meets him twice more. He keeps in touch with her because he is busy in war torn Munich which destroys and builds her world as she matures.

The writing is clear, simple and imaginative from how each death has its own colour to having a narrative that is from the point of view of Death yet also from the changing awareness of a growing child. This makes the horror and danger of the period more human and so more real. Its not sentimental and having read much about the social and political realities of the time is very accurate.

Would I recommend it? Yes its a quick read with imagery and lines lingering long after the book is closed

The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov

When a book opens with a single cinematic sweep, moving from Sir Richard Burton death through the reluctant giving of last rites, to a sharp focus on a burning photograph of the 22-year-old Richard Burton that pulls you into his 1840's Bombay, you know you are in for a treat. This book is The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov just published in the UK translated by William Hobson but originally published in Germany in 2006. The book is not a Biography, History or a novel but a biographical fiction meaning as the author says that the live and works of Sir Richard Burton inspired him because all

…individual lives are mysterious, particularly those of people one had never met. This Novel is intended as personal approach to a mystery rather than as an attempt at definitive revelation.

This approach shapes the unusual structure of the novel. It is divided into three sections: first is Burton's service in India in 1842-49, second is his travels in disguise to Mecca and Medina as a pilgrim on the hajj (1851-53)and concludes with his journey from Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika in 1858 as he attempted to discover with a fellow explorer the source of the Nile. So we don't know his life before or after this period or even during this period when away from waving the Flag.

In each section, Burton’s reveals his thoughts through a third-person monologue whilst other narrators offer context or even contrasting views. Burton acts as the antagonist to these characters where as his is the culture or landscape of India, Arabia and Africa. In the Indian section, these others are Lahiya, a professional letter-writer, to whom Burton's one-time servant Naukaram goes to have his story written up, in the hope of gaining further employment. It’s soon clear to Lahiya that Naukaram is not telling the whole truth and as we see neither is Burton. In the Arabian section, a script like exchange between various Islamic officials, suggests that he spied on military positions. Perhaps he did, or perhaps they fear the loss of rich pickings as the long slow decline of the Ottoman Empire gave opportunities for the politically unscrupulous. The African section narrator is another historical character Sidi Mubarak Bombay, we meet him as a old man telling stories to his friends and relatives. He was a slave working in India before gaining his freedom and returning to Madagascar and becoming a key figure in most of the big exploratory expeditions of the time into East Africa. Through him, we explore the conflicting motives and styles for the Speke and Burton expedition to find the source of the Nile.

The language is poetic with scene after scene evoked with powerful physical detail and a constant parade of realistic characters from a long faded 19^th Century that engage us in both Burton’s life as well as the other narrators. Together each section reveal a complex ambiguous man who loved language, disguises, adventure, learned to love sex, and wanted to understand cultures for the wider benefit of the Empire without perhaps realising the irony that Empires once they see the worth of other cultures the right to rule begins to crumble.

I strongly recommend the book for a highly enjoyable read and an introduction to a man well worth reading and in many ways a man ahead of his time.

Jasmine's Tortoise by Corinne Souza

Jasmine’s Tortoise is the first novel of Corinne who has written non fiction books about her family’s involvement in spying and her experiences as a lobbyist during the Major-Blair years. It is clear that much of Corinne Souza life is woven into the novel’s mix of fictional and historical events that unfolds from1965 to 2002. Souza’s father is clearly used as a source for Jasmine’s father and she like Jasmine owes her British passport to the spy trade.

The book covers 40 turbulent years from the ellipse of the Puppet Hashemite monarchy by secular Arab nationalism to its eventual challenge by Islamic militancy and Kurdish nationalism. These local changes are shaped if not controlled by the ebb and flow of the big three imperial powers: Britain, America, and Russia, who gradually became the big two and then finally in the 90’s just the big one. These complex social and political changes are explored through the fates of three families: the Palameries- Roman Catholic Indian traders, the Solomon’s, the last of Bagdad’s old Jewish families and the El-Tareks- a well heeled Muslim family with a presence in the old and emerging social-political elites.

The story starts in Bagdad when the British niceties of Masonic lodges, Horse Racing, dances and formal parties, are in the final throes of death with a family party. Tragedy is triggered when Jasmine is given a tortoise by her grandfather. Peter Ligne, the local MI6 bureau spymaster claims it from him. This hurts her grandfather’s feelings so his friend Nico Stollen, the KGB spymaster, is pulled into a rivalry to protect Jasmine. Thus starts a struggle for her “soul” that will see betrayal and death rip the families apart mirroring the wider betrayal of Iraq. Forty years later the younger generation and older family survivors fight for Jasmine’s redemption as Nico Stollen and Peter Ligne pull the strings to the final moments.

The book is structured with a prologue setting out all the main characters and their relationship in 2002 before diving back to Bagdad in 1965. It then jumps in linear stages to 2002 and we follow the twists and turns of the characters as they die, marry, betray and manipulate with bitter and unintended consequences. Expect lots of twists and unexpected turns as the plot sets a good pace as you keep a track on who is who. If in doubt dip back to the prologue as the characters and their relationships are set out as if a route map.

Clearly an ambitious and multi-layer story so does it work? Only partly has to be the honest answer. The flaw is that the writing does not match the ambition of the story. The characters are often two-dimensional, and clichés with barely distinguishable voices but they do serve as effective pegs to move the plot on at a quick pace. And who complains when Fleming and Agatha Christies characters serve the same purpose?

We also have a POV that switches character within the same page as well as an irritating habit of the writer as untended narrator explaining words and actions. This would have been fine in a historical account but not in a novel as it all adds to effect of the reader being distant and observing rather then participating in the story. Again fine as long as the reader is interested in plot rather then character driven stories.

So is the plot credible? The opening prologue is over complex and slows the introduction to the story; this could have perhaps been better handled perhaps as a press interview of Jasmine so become a narrative that intrigues us. Nor do we have the back story of why key central characters are so loyal to each other. The importance given to British Intelligence, Masons and Employer associations stretches credibility. But Lodges were in the British Middle East until closed down in the mid 60’s, and until the 90’s employees with a radical past were black-listed and British intelligence did play dirty tricks with the Labour Party. And as for the corruption of the Government sponsored arms trade just read the latest news headlines! So the story is an exaggeration and simplification of the truth which will irate some readers but not all.

In the end, the potential fatal flaw of the novel is who is the intended readership? In wanting to explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, it suffers in comparison with Graham Greene who managed to combine serious literary acclaim with wide popularity. Yet it lacks the technically detailed espionage and military science storylines of say a Tom Clancy or the focus on one heroic man, or a small group of crusading individuals, in a struggle against powerful adversaries of say a Robert Ludlum. Despite these reservations and limitations it is still a good holiday read but given a good cast, and screenplay it would really work as a mini commercial TV series.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

You are a decent sort of person, respect the neighbours, keep on the right side of the law. But if you could die in the next few days as you flee your home, possessions and community what then? Could you keep decent, fair minded and above board? These are questions that Irene Nemirovsky explores.

In the first section, Storm in June she explores the impact of the fall of Paris in June 1940 falls and like a pebble falling into a pool we follow how this affects the life of various families and individuals. The Pericand's are an upper middle class family who flee and in the course of the flight the two sons, Hubert and Phillipe discover to fateful costs the depth of their political or religious pretensions. In Gabriel Corte the emptiness and selfishness of many intellectuals is explored and exposed. Or with other characters how the ordinary working class people were mistreated and trampled over.

This is not a history book but a moving story where we dip in and out of peoples lives as they deal with extraordinary events. In the second section, Dolce she explores how French and German lives interweave with each other in a small village two years after the invasion. Some of these characters and events have been touched on in the first section of the book but both sides have virtues and flaws. The writing and tone is superb and runs in the French naturalism tradition(think Zola).

Given the humanity of the writing and the story, its deepens the tragedy that she had escaped the death camps of the Russian Revolution only to die in Auschwitz. These fragments of a planned 5 part novel survived as her young children grabbed the diary as a memento of their mother whilst fleeing and hiding amongst relatives and friends. Their father also being snatched and dying in Auschwitz, a few months after their mother. The daughters found it too painful to read and so didn't discover until the 90's that the small bearable print was in fact the two sections of this novel.

Weep for what may have been and enjoy what we have. Highly recommended even for the fellows.