Light summer reading

At the end of a warm summer day it's a pleasure to sit in my comfortable elm wood chair by the picture window overlooking the city, harbour and ocean,while the sun sinks behind the horizon.













A Haydn Piano Trio plays softly in the background and a good book lies in my lap. No need to turn the light on until it gets dark. The sun disappears behind the horizon at 9.30pm now - alas! the days are getting shorter again. But it doesn't get really dark till around ten or half past.



Because my attention is divided between the sun, the music and my book, I prefer to read something light. As someone pointed out on a podcast about writing and writers, it seems that modern authors walk away from narrative. The only authors who still concentrate on telling a good story are writers of crime, mystery and 'genre' novels. And of course children's books. Speaking here was Tim Wynne-Jones who has written several books, including books for children, for example Rex Zero and the End of the World.

Wynne-Jones said he likes Ian Rankin because he writes about Edinburgh, and about 'drinking Scotch in a cold place'. I have heard some really nice interviews recently with Ian Rankin and there are quite a few on the internet, because of the publication of what may be his last 'Rebus novel'. See for example here, or here and here is a nice overview of Rankin's writing and his Rebus novels. He sounds like a nice man, thoughtful, interested in politics, which inspire many of his novels. I scoured secondhand bookshops and the library, but the author is so popular that his works are seldom on their shelves. I was happy to find one, The Hanging Garden, which interested me because I heard Rankin talk about it. It's inspired by the events during the war, in 1944, in a French village called Oradour-sur-Glâne, where the Germans massacred every single inhabitant (only five people survived, of whom two died of their wounds soon after).

This was one of those 'reprisal' actions. Rankin visited Oradour, which has been left in the state it was found after the war as a monument. Here is a beautiful U-Tube slide show of pictures of Oradour-sur-Glâne, before and after the massacre and the monument as it is today. Very interesting to compare with the monument in Berlin made by an architect to commemorate the holocaust, which I discussed in a previous blog entry (dated 5 January 2008). The Berlin one is important because you may be more or less forced to look at it when you roam through the city, while you have to make a conscious decision to visit Oradour, unless you're taken in a school class. Both types of monument are important, I believe.

So, I read The Hanging Garden, my first Rebus novel, and I did not really like it. Too jumbled, too many sub-plots, too many big themes to cram into one small crime novel. Also, I don't like Rebus. I don't like men who drink too much, although Rebus is loudly on the wagon in this book. Yet, Rankin touches on some really important issues. The question whether it is possible to extricate oneself from a mob when you find yourself in the middle of it. Whether you can stand up for your ideals, for justice, for what is right, when everyone around you is willing to walk right over you and clobber you if you get in the way. He compares WWII incidents with Northern Ireland, where Rebus supposedly served. Important questions. A pity they are crammed into a confusing tangle of stories in this book that deal with other vitally important issues, such as drug smuggling and the abuse of eastern European women as sex slaves. If any of my blog readers is an admirer of Ian Rankin, please comment and/or recommend one of his books you think I should read.

Instead, I turned to a trusty old friend, Inspector Maigret, the invention of Georges Simenon.

They're old books, but have a depth that I feel many modern crime novels lack. (Look here for a good website on Maigret) . And another podcast pointed me to Michael Dibdin, who wrote a series of books with an inspector called Aurelio Zen, set in Italy. I have started with his first, called the Ratking, and so far I really enjoy it. Amazon reader reviewers give it 5 stars. I like the character, the writing is excellent (Dibdin has written other novels outside the Aurelio Zen series) and Zen seems a pleasant character. Of course this is only the first. Sadly, Dibdin died in 2007. He was respected as an author. The Guardian wrote an obituary. Dibdin seems to have been a nice man, according to an online interview. But he has either been ill for some time, or he smoked and drank too much. Interesting to compare the pictures appearing on most of his books and online entries, with a later one I discovered.


This only goes to show the truth of an epigram Margaret Atwood has tacked on her office notice bulletin board: "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté" (Quoted in Negotiating with the Dead (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002), p. 35). Atwood regrets she did not realise in time how wise the American writer Thomas Pynchon was, who has never done interviews, nor allowed his photo to appear on book jackets. Pynchon's 'reclusiveness' has become legendary.

Back to my light summer reading. The book that's currently on the top of my pile is the third in what promised to become a series of at least four 'who-done-its' by Louise Penny. Her books may appeal more to female than to male readers. Penny's website more or less
confirms this.

What I like about her books (the first two of which I gobbled up during a long international flight), is that the murder story is not the only mystery. This series is set in one particular, imaginary Canadian village. Some of the people who live in the village re-appear in each book. Although some of the characters border on caricature at times, they are not impossible, while others are simply wonderful, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache among them. One of the reasons I seldom read 'who-done-its' is that so often the narrative is not engaging enough to keep me interested, or not well enough written to keep me on the page. Too often I get bored and skip straight to the end to find out who did it and be done with it. That is not how I feel about Louise Penny's series. There are enough other themes weaving along to make me want to know what happens on the next page, not just what happens in the end. And she writes really sumptuously about art (at least two of the people in the books are painters), poetry (there's one poet - two in the third book) and about food!! They eat well in Penny's books, because the imaginary village boasts a great café where everyone regularly congegrates in front of a warm fire.

The sun has come out, so I am going to enjoy it. Till next time. If you know of any great light holiday reading, I'd like to hear from you.