librarytart

Baldacci, David ~ The Camel Club

When I selected this book I thought
A good action drama freshens the mind and makes time pass quickly and pleasurably; with a poor action drama, at least you can guess the ending and know it’ll be over soon.

50-word description
Four down-on-their-luck conspiracy theorists witness the murder of a US secret service employee. Another secret service agent supports a group of terrorists plotting a stunning attack in America. A down-on-his-luck secret service agent meets a lawyer moonlighting in a bar and they become involved with each other and help the conspiracy theorists stop the planned attacks. Somehow the city of Damascus and its occupants are at risk of being blown to smithereens

150-word review
My general rule for action novels is that I’ll tolerate three suspensions of disbelief, comprising perhaps an unlikely love story, a good agent turned bad, a good agent struggling against overwhelming odds to stifle the bad agent and the circle of villains, a startling coincidence every 75 pages or so, up to three elite snipers missing the good agent in close-range shots, a bad hospital employee who happens to be on shift at the right time trying to kill an important political figure, a maximum of five seemingly random characters who appear to deliver small but timely clues, and a master of disguise (women are never mistresses of disguise and this upsets me).

Oh, hang on, I just described The Camel Club. Except poor old Damascus nearly copped a nuclear warhead just for existing. I did not expect that.

Baldacci has written far superior books. Then again, three follow-up to The Camel Club have been published, so perhaps I’m just an idiot.

david baldacci ~ the camel club

Found in
Library B

Read
Jan 10

Links
David Baldacci web site
Frankston Library catalogue link

Rating
Overblown

This is book 29 of the project.

Bulgakov, Mikhail ~ The Master and Margarita

When I selected this book I thought
There’s a big soft spot in my heart for Russian literature but a little empty spot as I haven’t read any of Bulgakov’s works.

50-word description
In an attack on Stalinism that was banned for more than 30 years, the devil disguised as a foreigner comes to Moscow with his merry and sadistic band of followers and with them havoc and terror reign.

150-word review
I still can’t decide if the book was trying too hard to be clever or if I’m just not clever enough to understand the book.

I devoured and wanted to be dazzled by Bulgakov’s slyness and dramatic tale telling but I didn’t finish because the storylines crashed like dodgem cars driven by children under the influence of red cordial. I looked for greater understanding – and wanted to understand the book’s many layers and scathing attack on Communism – but I was trying to convince myself to enjoy the book out of obligation.

One day I’ll hunt down a different translation with an introduction and footnotes and I’ll be back. Until then, The Master and Margarita is being shoved back into a shoe drawer, which is the only available space I have now for new books.

Found in
Home library B

Read
Oct 09

Links
Book’s Wiki page
Frankston Library doesn’t have a copy, but you search the totally excellent Library Link Victoria catalogue link

Rating
I don’t know

This is book 28 of the project.

Boyne, John ~ The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

When I selected this book I thought
I fortunately read the book before the film’s marketing campaign (I don’t watch a lot of television and, yes, probably have been living on another planet) and my copy has the plain cover that doesn’t give away the theme.

50-word description
The story is told as an allegory about nine-year-old Bruno, who moves with his family far from the comforts of home. He meets a boy who lives on the other side of a high fence and forms a friendship despite differences that don’t often make sense to Bruno.

150-word review
Creating a fictional Holocaust tale with respect, imagination and a fresh perspective is a challenge reserved for the bold verging on foolhardy.

The author succeeds but with any great idea comes the risk of serious flaws. The last book by Boyne I read, The Thief of Time, was similarly ambitious (a man who can’t die and outlives generations of family) but fell over in its execution and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas follows suite.

Bruno’s character strays too far from innocent child to blinkered fool; with his father ranked highly in Hitler’s regime Bruno would have been a member of the Hitler Youth instead of professing ignorance about Jews. Bruno’s continued mispronunciation of vital German words (in English) grates and he would have been punished severely in a commandant’s household. The likelihood of meeting a boy on the other side of the fence with the freedom to meet daily for a year goes beyond suspension of disbelief.

But the author writes an absorbing story that emphasises the lesson of the allegory with a breathtaking finale. A colleague asked if I had seen the film, and I replied, “No, I don’t want to risk ruining my memories of the book,” because the flaws are outweighed by the originality of Boyne’s undertaking.

john boyne ~ the boy in the striped pyjamas

Found in
Home library B

Read
Jul 09

Links
Author’s web site
Frankston Library catalogue link

Rating
Flawed brilliance

This is book 27 of the project.

Bird, Carmel ~ The White Garden

When I selected this book I thought
I cheated a little because I’ve read this book but wanted to read again to understand more fully the layers of literary and historical references in Bird’s story.

50-word description
Set in 1950s Australia, psychiatrist Ambrose Goddard experiments on female patients to further his landmark studies into the human mind. Patients’ delusions are encouraged, radical therapies experimented with and sexual abuse is rampant. The discovery of a dead woman in the clinic’s grounds helps unveil the true lunatic.

150-word review
Bird masterfully chronicles Goddard’s growing megalomania as his patients’ mental states crumble in the name of providing case studies for his book.

The White Garden is disarming with drugged patients describing abuse in dazed monologues, point of view shifts to the doctor’s and backgrounds of historical figures on whom some patients’ delusions are based. Cross-referencing was required occasionally (by me anyway) to hold the past and present together and understand how cleverly the author has constructed and tied up the story.

The book is an obscure but important piece of Australian literature and a reminder that quality doesn’t always equate with popularity.

carmel bird ~ the white garden

Found in
Home library

Read
Jul 09

Links
Author’s web site
Frankston Library catalogue link – n/a

Rating
Outstanding

This is book 26 of the project.

Baer, Martha ~ As Francesca

When I selected this book I thought
Wow, everything’s different in ‘B’. It’s darker and more mysterious and then I realised that’s because the ‘B’ shelves are further from the sunny northern window than ‘A’ *d’oh*. The book’s blurb sounded like an interesting foray into the muddling of professional and online lives.

50-word description
Elaine Botsch is a go-getter in a soulless corporation and in the night hours becomes Francesca, the online sexual plaything of a dominatrix named Inez. After ‘Francesca’ mistakenly logs in under her real name, Inez hints she knows the real-life Elaine, sending her into an emotional and professional tailspin.

150-word review
The premise of ‘real’ and online worlds colliding was daring at the time (the book’s release in 1997 was still in the early days of widespread popularity of internet chat rooms) but the novel’s execution fell flat.

Plot climaxes slipped by quietly, hidden in long and rarely insightful prose about identity. The overall theme of the book suffered from confusion between wanting to be a cautionary tale of who we share our secrets with, a mystery novel or a precursor to the darker chick lit genre.

I couldn’t identify with or be drawn into the corporate and virtual worlds created by the author because neither was tempting. Most of the characters were thinly rendered and didn’t evolve past initial glimmers of interest.

I kept reading out of curiosity to learn which character was behind Inez’s user name. However, by the end it didn’t really matter because most of the suspects had been discounted too early in the text.

martha baer ~ as francesca

Found in
Fiction B

Read
Jul 09

Links
Random House book blurb
Frankston Library catalogue link

Rating
Underwhelming

This is book 25 of the project.