The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 08 Jul 2011 12:55 AM PDT The Silent Girl Author: Tess Gerritsen Publisher: Bantam Press, 336 pages A CRIME has been committed in Boston's Chinatown. In the alley lies a woman's severed hand, and on the rooftop lies her head. Two strands of silver hair cling to the body that lies not far away. These are the only clues to the murder that detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles believe is linked to an attack in a restaurant 17 years earlier. Five people died in that attack and only one woman connected to the massacre is still alive. But she doesn't want to talk. Now she's the target of someone, or something, evil, and Jane and Maura must outwit an unseen enemy, one with ties to an ancient Chinese legend and in possession of a swift, avenging blade. Star Island Author: Carl Hiaasen Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 412 pages SINCE she became a pop star at the age of 14, Cherry Pye has developed an insatiable appetite for drugs, booze and sex. She has an "undercover stunt double", Ann DeLusia, who portrays Cherry whenever she's too wasted to be seen in public. But now Ann has been kidnapped from a South Beach hotel by stalker/paparazzo Bang Abbott who is obsessed with Cherry. How does Cherry's team rescue Ann without exposing the secret they have been keeping for the last seven years? And can Cherry pull herself together to lip sync at her next concert? State Of Wonder Author: Ann Patchett Publisher: Harper, 353 pages PHARMACEUTICAL researcher Marina Singh is sent deep into the Amazonian jungle to find Anneck Swenson, a renowned gynaecologist whose research into a fertility drug Marina's company had funded. In the jungle lives a tribe whose women can conceive even when they are old, and Anneck was paid to find the key to this mysterious ability. But finding Anneck, much less the well-guarded secret to the women's fertility, is no easy task – one of Marina's colleagues has already died in the process. To make matters worse, Marina dreads meeting Anneck because the two women have a connection that Marina does not want to acknowledge. An Object Of Beauty Author: Steve Martin Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 309 pages COMEDIAN/ACTOR Steve Martin's droll voice comes across clearly in the narrator of this modern satire on manners set at the end of the millennium. Journalist Daniel Franks tells the story of his friend, Lacey Yeager, an ambitious young art dealer who doesn't let anything stand in the way of her dream of opening her own gallery. Leavened with Martin's real knowledge of the American art scene, the book also offers colour reproductions of famous paintings. Summer And The City Author: Candace Bushnell Publisher: Harper Collins, 409 pages IN this sequel to The Carrie Diaries, Carrie learns to navigate the Big Apple, trying to shed her small-town girl image to become the person she has always wanted to be. It's summertime and all the crazy characters in the neighbourhood have come out to play. She is in love with the vintage clothing stores and the wild parties people throw in this big city. She has enrolled in a writing class and is finally taking her first steps towards fulfilling her dream of being a writer. But she runs into some problems with reconciling her past with her future and realises that making it in New York is much more complicated than she imagined. Letters From Home Author: Kristina McMorris Publisher: Avon, 357 pages THE year is 1944 and America has just gone to war. And the lives of three young women will never be the same again. Liz is engaged, Julia is waiting for her fiance to come home and Betty falls for Morgan just before he is sent off to the front lines. Liz, too, meets the magnetic Morgan and when Betty asks her to write to him for her, she finds herself corresponding regularly with Morgan and enjoying herself thoroughly – the problem is, Morgan thinks he's writing to Betty and Liz is still engaged and about to get married to someone else.... Satori Author: Don Winslow Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 418 pages IN 1979, the mysterious and deadly assassin Nicholai Hel was introduced in the bestseller Shibumi by the book's equally mysterious author simply known as Trevanian. He was an American academician who incorporated philosophy and Eastern mysticism in what was also an excellent thriller. Shibumi opens with a Nicolai who is retired, in his late-50s and about to embark on a last mission. In his prequel, Don Winslow begins with a 26-year-old Nicolai who has spent the last three years in solitary confinement, developing his uncanny "proximity sense" that allows him to sense potential danger. Nicolai is let out of prison on the condition that he accepts an assassination mission – but, of course, in the world of thrillers, nothing is ever as simple as murder. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2011 07:26 PM PDT Malayan Spymaster: MALAYAN Spymaster: Memoirs Of A Rubber Planter, Bandit Fighter And Spy is the abridged version of the memoirs of the late Boris Hembry (1910-1990) who, according to the back cover blurb, "... spent a month in the jungle behind enemy lines ... recruited into the Secret Intelligence Service ... returned to Sumatra and Malaya several times by submarine ... liaised with Force 136 ..." Who would not want to know more? Born in South Africa, Boris Messina Hembry was barely 20 when he arrived on these shores in 1930. He bounced around several rubber estates in Malaya and Sumatra, and also joined the local volunteer corps. He brought his wife over from Britain and started a family. When the Japanese invaded during World War II, Hembry joined one of the volunteer corps' many stay-behind parties – his first and failed foray into espionage – before eventually escaping to India. He soon demonstrated a knack for getting into trouble when he signed up for intelligence work in Burma, forsaking the relative safety and calm of a training battalion. He would later join spying operations in Japanese-occupied Malaya, a job that had him travelling by submarine and taking a short course at Britain's famous Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley Park, where the Nazis' Enigma code was cracked. Hours after the murder of estate manager Arthur Walker (that eventually triggered the declaration of the Malayan Emergency and the fight against communist insurgents), Hembry organised his "own bloody army" of volunteers to repel the Reds – the beginnings of the anti-Communist home guard. His contribution to the fight against the insurgents included input that would later be incorporated into the Briggs Plan that resettled rural folk into New Villages to cut off support for the communists. Social highlights included interactions with Sir Henry Gurney, Sir Gerald Templer and Anthony Eden, who would become British prime minister. Hembry left Malaya in 1955 with his wife, partly due to poor health. With a title like Malayan Spymaster one expects a cool book. The writing, however, is quite matter-of-fact, devoid of the usual fluff and literary devices. His life as a planter, soldier and estate manager is more detailed than chapters that concern his time as an intelligence officer. Even if this isn't quite the knuckle-whitening, real-life spy thriller the title suggests, Hembry's simple storytelling, charming in its own unadorned way, is compensated by a wealth of information and experiences gleaned the hard way. The reader is immersed in life in the clubs and estates of the British colonial era, as well as the dangers of the jungles and swamps during war-time. 'Tis heady stuff, this record of the days in pre-war and post-war Malaya by this Mat Salleh, one of many who spent much of their life's efforts on their adopted country and who may never be acknowledged in the history books. Hembry never intended to publish his memoirs. His kin, however, felt that it deserved a much wider readership. "We dedicate it to those expatriates of many generations whose devotion to that beautiful country and its peoples helped to lay the foundations of present-day peaceful and prosperous Malaysia," says Hembry's son, John, in the preface. I'm certain readers of Malayan Spymaster will be grateful for the Hembrys' generosity. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2011 07:19 PM PDT It takes skill to make the reader want to know more about a main character who is thoroughly flawed. The False Friend AUTHOR Myla Goldberg's debut novel, 2000's Bee Season, was a tale of a dysfunctional family seeking a spiritual path while coping with a distant parent and spouse, mental illness, lies, and ... spelling bees – it was an explosive combination of elements. Goldberg's follow-up, the multi-layered Wicket's Remedy in 2005 – a tale about the great influenza outbreak in the Depression-era of the United States – was as far removed from her debut as one can get, and while it had its moments, it did not, I feel, live up to its hype. The False Friend, Goldberg's third novel, hovers between her first two efforts. It is, as the author puts it, a novel about "time, memory and deception". Essentially, The False Friend explores how a lie, when repeated continually over time, becomes the truth. The novel opens in the present, with the protagonist Celia mentally drifting back 21 years to her girlhood. When they were 11, Celia and her best friend, Djuna, were leaders of a mercurial clique of girls. While many of the girls in school wanted to be part of that special group, Celia and Djuna toyed with their emotions and hopes by stringing them along for days and sometimes weeks before deciding if they were worthy of being part of their gang or not. Leanne is especially desperate to be included but Djuna and Celia make it impossible for her. Instead of telling her no, the two girls take great pride in shaming and humiliating Leanne, who, despite her embarrassing and painful ordeal, keeps returning to the pair. While she may not have set out to be intentionally mean, Celia's behaviour see-sawed between being kind to her fellow school mates and being outright cruel because she could get away with it. The catalyst to the novel comes very early on in the novel when, following a heated argument between Celia and Djuna, the two girls enter the woods surrounding a small upstate New York town and only one comes out. The story that Celia concocted was that Djuna was abducted by a stranger while they were in the woods. Despite the local police coming out in full force looking for Djuna, no one is able to trace the stranger or his car. As the years roll by, the story of Djuna's abduction remains clear in many people's minds – including Celia and Djuna's parents and family members. However, 21 years later, Celia's conscience prods her into remembering that the event in the woods, and it may not be what so many have been led to believe. In her 30s and in a fragile relationship with her boyfriend Huck, Celia returns to her hometown hoping to correct the lie she uttered in her own defence when she was 11. Unfortunately for her, correcting a past mistake is much harder than she had anticipated. And it is Celia's desire to make up for her lie that acts as the spine of the novel. As the novel spans 21 years, Goldberg uses vignettes and chapters to demonstrate the passage of time. This concept largely works as Celia tends to drift back to her childhood more often than not, and Goldberg does not necessarily inform her readers when a flashback is occurring. Once back in her hometown, Celia tries to contact the other girls who were part of the gang to see if they have any recollection of the day Djuna disappeared. One member was so traumatised by Djuna's disappearance that a recurring theme of girls being chased by faceless men pops up in her sculptures. Suddenly, everything that Celia thought she once knew about her parents, her life and that fateful afternoon with Djuna stops making sense, and Goldberg does not offer any explanations, apart from reminding her readers that one event that has been hatched so clearly in one's mind for years can turn into various shades of grey over the years. In short, Celia's memory of that fateful afternoon may well differ from what actually happened. Much like Bee Season, The False Friend has a simple premise and is very slow moving. However, Goldberg inserts hints of psychodrama and neurosis (mainly Celia's) throughout the novel and gives the story a three-dimensional feeling with beautifully and emotionally descriptive language to keep the pages turning. This is an achievement considering Goldberg's protagonist is not the nicest of characters and Goldberg did make Celia rather irritating with her inability to be frank and open with Huck. But with this flaw in the main character, Goldberg manages to turn an invented individual into a more realistic one. Readers may despise her, but without Celia, there is no story. While Bee Season may still be her tour de force, The False Friend is much more concise and delivers the illusion of the passing of time much better than Wicket's Remedy. Though it may not be mainstream, The False Friend is a worthy read. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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