Cover of The Property of Rain

Sam Savage is born during hard times in a poor rural Suffolk village in England. His father is home from war and is suffering the consequences of witnessing death in the trenches. His wife and children are suffering too, his fists beat them and his lust ensures the arrival of Sam into the world.

Sam survives the school bullying, starvation and a brutal father. His mother follows all laws laid out in the bible and Sam learns to read it during an illness. When fear or doubt clouds his vision, he remembers inspirational words and they give him hope. His love of reading intensifies and he is encouraged by his teacher.  Sam has character and stamina, the will to live and survive against the odds. Eventually he escapes the clutches of his father.

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On a parallel line of life, Lakshmi  lives in Kanpur, India. She is the daughter of a sweeper and is in the lowest caste, The Untouchables. To add to her misery, she is unwanted by her parents. The young couple meet, they are fifteen years old and a monsoon rages all around. Tragic events take place, harrowing events.

The author gives us vivid insights and descriptions of what both characters endured in their own villages. There are no frills around the edges, traditions are compared and there is a price to pay. Injustice, cruelty and a simple tale is told through the extremely sad times of this young man’s and woman’s life.

This was the last novel written by Angela Lambert before her death in 2007.

Detective Wade Jackson investigates a bombing at a birth control centre in Oregon. He becomes involved in a separate investigation when the body a fourteen year old girl is found. I appears that she is a client of the centre he had been investigating prior to looking into her death.

Her body is found in a garbage bin and a nurse from the clinic, Kera Kollmorgan, confides that she wonders if the bombing and murder are connected. She cannot give too much information to Jackson as she is bound by confidentiality in her job. Are they connected? Not convinced the powers that be ensure they are investigated as individual cases.

Still unconvinced, Kera looks into the murder of the girl and puts herself at risk. When another girl connected to the clinic is murdered, Jackson becomes concerned for his own teenage daughter. A local church holds a teenage bible studies group. Do they study the bible? What goes on within the group?The storyline keeps bringing in connections to link the two. the clinic and the bible study group. There are many twists and turns during the search for the bomber and murderer. The novel has a few surprises for the reader throughout the book.

In some novels with twists and variety one can get confused, you lose track of who is who and what is what. The Sex Club is written at a good pace, no rushing from scene to scene. The characters are well described and you are aware of who is who. The main characters have their own personal problems and they are portrayed well by the author, L J Sellers.

Prospero was once a powerful duke but conspiracy led to him being cast loose in a boat with his young daughter, Miranda. The two finally land on a small island which had once been governed by the witch Sycorax, who had a son named Caliban, who is a brutish, unpleasant creature bent on mischief. Prospero frees the magical spirit Ariel from the prison in which Sycorax had imprisoned him since her death some time previously. All of this takes place before the play’s action takes place and that action begins with a shipwreck, after which a number of men struggle for survival on the island. These include a certain Ferdinand, whom Miranda subsequently encounters and the two immediately fall in love – Ferdinand is the first man Miranda has ever seen apart from her father and Caliban and it is doubtful whether this love at first sight is really a suitable basis for a marriage. Nevertheless, Prospero is quite secure in his manipulation of the events – it is revealed that he caused the shipwreck through the agency of Ariel and he wishes to use this event to inform Miranda about her real past and her legacy.

The survivors of the shipwreck broadly divide themselves into two factions (in addition to Ferdinand, who labours for Prosper alone for love of Miranda). Drunkenness and the prompting of Caliban persuade one set to murder the other and, also, Prospero himself. The various plots and complications that arise from this are orchestrated by Prospero and Ariel, with the latter occasionally appearing to be independent in action. Ultimately, peace is brought to the island and the magician is restored to his Dukedom. Prospero concludes by freeing Ariel, after the latter ensures that the return voyage for all travelers will be plain and calm sailing.

Various interpretations have been put forward concerning the nature of Prospero, his daughter and servants in particular. It is often considered that the magician refers to Shakespeare himself, since this play is conventionally considered to be his last and, therefore, it represents the author’s giving up his talent (i.e. freeing Ariel) and returning to his earthly life. However, many other interpretations are also possible.

Author :           Stephen Baxter

Publisher:        Gollancz

                        Orion Publishing Group

                        Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

                        London, UK WC2H 9EA

ISBN:              978-0-575-08056

Flood, like many of Stephen Baxter’s starts to his trilogies is a little bit tough to get into but ends with a promise of going into the universe which most his reader’s love, thereby making the next in the series, Ark, a must read. In the middle you have a premise that the Earth’s mantle will spring leaks that flood the planet with tons of water. There’s enough science behind the one meter rise provided by global warming and the example of watery planets in the universe that readers fall into the tale. In essence, Mr. Baxter is raising the question of how planets evolve while touching on similar questions about the human species.

The story starts out compellingly told by hostage Lily and stays with her most the time, although there are forays into the minds of her fellow hostages and their journeys. The young mother of the Saudi princess, Helen, dies quickly but the others make a journey along with Lily into what happens around the planet as the waters rise. The reader cares most about Lily, although her relationship with Piers seems unexplainable and detached.  She often acts to help many of the other characters in the story even though most are defeated by society except for the gifts of the magnanimous Lathan Lammockson, head of Axyscorp and the prime architect of the future survival of Lily and her friends.

Flood also tells the step by step breakdown of society when the population has to contend with increasingly short supplies of resources. The reader has to wonder “is this our future” even though some of the lecturing about global warming gets tedious.

The story Flood slowly travels inland from where the waters breakdown and destroy cities up to the mountain tops where the last elite get to make their homes. The sad tale of those that don’t fit into the “must be saved” scenarios is rather sad. The good news is Mr. Baxter believes that governments will continue to do their jobs in some places. In the end, the reader begins to get a sense that humans are changing to meet the altered planet, showing the one way leg up that humans have over other species, ie. our ability to adapt.

At the center of this huge and thematically layered tome is something called, “The Entertainment,” a literally lethal film that captures the undivided attention of anyone who views it – so much so that victims inevitably die of starvation, or wind up in a catatonic state unmotivated by anything other than this particularly moving picture. The U.S government seeks the master copy, as does a group of separatist Quebec terrorists so that they may either control its dissemination or use it to nefarious ends. A wild and woolly plot with plenty of meat and social commentary, this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to this book.

There is the Incandenza family, centered around the young Hal, a tennis prodigy with a marijuana problem. His father, affectionately called “Himself,” turns out to be the very film-maker who created “The Entertainment,” but rather than simply keep the family characters revolving around this very clever plot, Wallace developed and followed the Incandenza family members throughout the book, following their inner lives and tensions in exquisite detail.

Also intertwined is a group of recovering drug addicts, in particular the large if affable ex-burglar Don Gately, who in some ways is the hero of this book. (I won’t tell you why – you have to read it.) Through the various AA and NA attendees that are followed throughout the book, Wallace artfully uses narrative to explore the reason cliches, rather than being dismissed as trite, should be looked at a little more closely.

One of my personal favorites, I have read this daunting volume four times, and have found in it, each time, something new to marvel at and ponder. This 1996 novel has been called the book of its generation, defining the modern age that few novels throughout history have been able to do. To say that David Foster Wallace is missed after his suicide by hanging on September 13th, 2008 is a huge understatement, at least for me.

In spring of 2010, Little Brown will be releasing the unfinished work, “The Pale King.” So if you are one of the many who bought Infinite Jest but never got around to reading it, do yourself a favor and begin the journey. It might take one to three months to finish it, but reads like this are a fine, rare thing for serious bookworms. Like dark chocolate, Infinite Jest begs you to indulge.

      The whole story took place in a railway. The author acted as the main character in the story. One night when he was standing at the top of a steep slope, he met a signalman working in the railway. He was so curious about his job and they chatted together in the signal-box which is the working place of the signalman. However, when they were chatting in the room, the signalman told the main character (the author) about the happenings when he was working in the railway. The signalman said that a terrible accident happened when he was working few years ago. He witnessed one person died in the accident. Although he wanted to tell that person to escape from the railway, that person died at last. The signalman felt so unassisted. And a year ago, he saw that person in the railway again. He thought that it was a ghost…… After he told this happening to the main character, he died after a day in an accident. It was so horrible!

       After reading this story, I am a bit startled. The story was very woebegone. A signalman died in an accident suddenly. I feel quite sad about him. Still, I think the author of this story has written a good story. I appreciate his writing skill so much. It was so suspenseful. The writer doesn’t write too many at the beginning but only tells us that the signalman is worrying about something. Till nearly the end of the story, the writer tells us that he is worrying about the ghost he meets. I can’t stop reading until the end of the story as I have already lost myself in it.

       Besides the writing skills, I think the author has also chosen a suitable topic for this ghost story. Since there are no cars in the 19th century in London, people traveled to other places on railway trains. And railways were very dangerous at that time. Therefore, this story is relevant to the society at that time. (the story was written in 1866).

        By and large, I enjoy this book so much in all ways. It is very exciting and its title is also noticeable. I think this book should be recommended to the others. It can even be a kind of entertainment as well!

In a true display of twenty-first century marketing, I picked up a copy of ‘Dazed & Aroused’ after speaking to author Gavin James Bower on Twitter. The internet has had an amazing impact on the arts world, and in this case, I’m more than happy to have made a technology-inspired literary discovery.

The story behind how ‘Dazed & Aroused’ came to be is perhaps just as interesting as the novel itself. After graduating from university, Bower interned with fashion and lifestyle publication ‘Dazed & Confused’ and was roped into modelling for a shoot. Following this, he found himself signed to a top London modelling agency and jetsetting around the world to model in catwalk shows for all the major designers. An impressive turn of events for a recent History graduate!

The resulting debut novel ‘Dazed & Aroused’ follows egoistical model Alex through everyday life as a model in Central London and through a season of fashion shows in Paris and Milan. Alex’s lifestyle – inspired by the author’s own modelling experiences, of course – is filled with casual sex, drugs, alcohol and a degree of self-obsession, only going to support Kate Moss’s recent proclamation that a catwalk model’s diet consists of “coffee, vodka, cigarettes and champagne”.

There’s something very Oscar Wilde-esque about Bower’s narrative and approach. Though lacking basic punctuation in a number of places throughout ‘Dazed & Aroused’, this stylistic choice only goes to reveal Bower’ sophisticated take on and relationship with writing and subject matter, and forces the reader into following the sequence of events in a fast-paced and almost chaotic way – exactly the way ‘Dazed & Aroused’ ought to be taken, if you ask me.

This is a real gem of a first novel, and Bower writes with a truly unique brand of accessible eloquence. I have no doubt that Gavin James Bower is set to be the next big thing of the literary world. ‘Dazed & Aroused’ can be found here at Amazon.co.uk or in a number of independent bookstores throughout the UK.

Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” focuses upon a representative scene of the diverse cultural aspects of a New Orleans society, ironically named the “Elysian Fields”. Williams’ portrayal of the architecture gives a distinct noble quality with the “quaintly ornamented gables” and “galleries” although altogether the scene is actually presented with a “raffish charm”. The opening dialogue commences with harmonious multicultural fluency as the different groups of society interact in normal life. However when a stranger, a Mississippian makes her entrance, there is distinct unfavourable reaction. This reaction reflects the distinguishable social differences of the Northern and Southern ethos.

Firstly Blanches’ appearance delineates her foreign nature. She enters the “Elysian Fields” with a look of “shocked disbelief”. Instantly the facial expression displays her disgust at the living standards. The reaction appears very instinctive and reveals that she is not familiar with such a lower class standard. Williams’ description of Blanche is a concise depiction of her class:

“She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and ear-rings of pearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she was arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in a garden district.”

 This aristocratic quality displays the wealth and manner which Blanche adopts. Her expensive ear-rings and necklace used by Williams signifies the wealth of her background with the subtle undertones of the Southern, historic slave-based rise to power. The class division becomes more prominent when Blanche forgets her petulance and courtesy in an outburst of honesty:

“I thought you would never come back to this horrible place! What am I saying! I didn’t mean to say that.”

This sudden release, originates from her building internal tension, described as “feverish vivacity”. Her immature reaction represents her psychological instability also echoed by the prior description of her attire with the alliterative exaggeration on “daintily dressed”. This description gives her character the tone of fragility and innocence with the constant reference to “white” also used in Blanche’s name.

This psychological volatility is a recurrent thematic touchstone through many of Williams’ female characters in his plays. For example “Rose” in “The Last Menagerie” is a sickly and disturbed sister of “Tom”. This is all due to his maternal and sisterly relationships. In “A Streetcar Named Desire” Blanche displays her mental frailty in her erratic emotional behaviour for example her rapid interchange of despondency and elation. An example of the latter quality is apparent in Blanche’s dramatic response to Stella’s arrival:

“Stella, oh, Stella, Stella! Stella for star!”

This excitement is juvenile and precedes a sudden stream of commanding imperatives, ordering Stella to do things. The abundance of confidence and courage seemingly comes just from the arrival of Stella. However just moments before her arrival, Blanche was assuming a much more reserved position:

“Blanche sits in a chair very stiffly with her shoulders slightly hunched and her legs pressed close together and her hands tightly clutching her purse as if she were quite cold.”

Blanche’s real fragility is underlined in her foetal-resembling position. Williams uses spirantal phonetics in the sibilance of “stiffly”, “shoulders” and “slightly” to produce the gentle but unnerving tone that reflects Blanche’s psychological state. Similarly the mentioned coldness is a perfect parallelism of her emotional state.

Williams drops Blanche into a completely unfamiliar scene. She has a rather intellectual impression first encountered with her understanding of the phrase “Elysian Fields”, a classical term for an ethereal world in the afterlife. It is then understandable that she has a disgusted look when her expectations are not met. There is a constant conflict between this intellect and the animalistic instinct seen in many of the characters in the play. For example Blanche contrasts Stanley. Similarly Blanche’s inability to relax into this animalistic state leaves her completely tense. Stanley is undeniably suited to this situation, living in close quarters in a dirty household. As in the opening narrator’s passage, this proximity is portrayed as harmonious:

“In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner, or just a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played by the infatuated fluency of brown fingers.”

This social situation is exaggerated with the parallelism of just a few doors down the street as well as the fluency of the fricative alliteration (“infatuated”, “fluency” and “fingers”). These techniques give the tone of admiration and content, giving the scene a beauty with reference to race intermingling (“brown fingers”). This is an example of the people of New Orleans having fun and focusing on their main instincts in life, just as Stanley, who comes home with the “meat” and then leaves to go bowling. All through the first scene the people respond to their instincts where Blanche is left incongruous to her setting.

Similarly Blanche appears uncertain because she is not familiar to the race mélange. She is a representative of the South that is more socially inept at cohabitating with non-Caucasian and especially non-American ethnic groups. This is mirrored by her insecurity and uncertainty around individuals and phrases foreign to her and her characteristic phrases. For example when she is searching for her sister and queries Eunice:

“I’m looking for my sister, Stella Dubois. I mean – Mrs Stanley Kowalski”

This mistake can be interpreted as a subconscious objection, a portrayal of her objection to the Polish links in her relation’s name. This similar uncomfortable quality is deduced from her conversation with Eunice. When Eunice uses the clichéd phrase (“por nada”) Blanche impolitely displays minimal interest as if affronted by the use of a foreign language. It is understood that she is not comfortable in this scene and she eventually exclaims her off-topic racist nature towards Stanley after her intense speech on the family situation:

“Where were you. In bed with your – Polak!”

This accusation with intensity on the personal pronouns (“you” and “your”) delineates her fury, but with this fury she accidentally exclaims “Polak”, a racist term. This racism distinguishes her character, a Southerner from the content multicultural Northerners in New Orleans.

Altogether Blanche is summarised as a racist, aristocratic woman with a psychological instability, provoked by her beliefs and her upbringing. This upbringing originates from the South and then leads to Blanche’s problems with other classes and ethnic groups contrasting her from the other characters in “A Streetcar Named Desire”.  

Shifting sands, isolation, a quixotix attempt to defy mortal limits:  even before the hero of Kobo Abe’s The woman in the Dunes has missed the bus out of the desert, the reader knows he is lost to an existential quest.  Abe, trained as a medical doctor, writes as a clinician, dispassionately and with exactitude.  In the dunes his hero, Niki Jumpei, falls captive to the enigmatic woman from whom he seeks shelter for a night.  Having descended into the sand pit where the woman lives, Jumpei discovers that there’s no way out, he’s trapped in a sinister village where each citizen becomes Sisyphus.  Everyday Jumpei must join the inhabitants in their necessary work:  shoveling away the sand that threatens to bury them and their homes.

The Woman in the Dunes transcends the form of allegory-often lifeless and didactic-to engage its readers to the point of discomfort.  It’s a claustrophobic novel, subjection us to Jumpei’s mounting panic as he begins to suspect that he will never leave the sand pit, that meaningless striving is his, and our, inescapable fate.

Cooper was continually forced to move on because he seldom agreed for long with the churches that he attached himself and his ever-increasing family to. Eventually, he became a “denomination” unto himself, the rules growing as fast as the number of his children. And finally, he stopped moving and began the Springbank Christian Community near Christchurch. The community became known colloquially as the “Cooperites .

The community had (and still has) its positive side: strong work ethics and a traditional attitude towards marriage, for example. But, as so often happens with communities that have a charismatic and controlling leader, sexual abuse of young people (under the pretence of “openness about sex’) soon became a feature. Furthermore, those who didn’t agree with the rules were subjected to virtual interrogations, and either conformed or were cast out and treated as “dead.” Soon the outside world began to regard the Cooperites as a cult – with some justification.

Neville Cooper dominates the background of this story, but its main focus is his son, Phil, and his young family. Phil was strong-minded like his father, extremely entrepreneurial, and a constant challenge to the wrongness of certain aspects of the community. Most of the book is taken up with his attempts to escape his father’s dominance. Once he’d left the community for good he set about trying to rescue the family he’d had to leave behind, to give them freedom. Kidnappings and abductions were regular features of their life, and the surprising thing is that they all survived the experiences.

The saddest part of the book is the way in which Sandy, Phil’s wife, is never able to release herself entirely from the “teaching” of her father-in-law. She constantly heads back to the community, almost in spite of herself. The best thing about the story, apart from the fact that the family survived not only as people, but as Christians, is that time and again Christians both in the “world” and “out” of it (the Hutterites in North America, for example) offered genuine help and salvation to this scarred group of people.

Beale, who has mostly written novels for young adults until now, admirably uses a no-frills writing style to bring cohesion to a confusing series of lives.

Sins of the Fathers is published by Longacre Press, Dunedin, New Zealand.