Audio Reviews: The Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson

Author: Kate Atkinson
Publisher/Format: BBC Audio America, 10 discs-11 hours, 312 page equivalent
Year of publication: 2008
Narrator: Susan Jameson
Subject: Three different crimes separated by years
Setting: Cambridge,England
Series: Jackson Brodie Mysteries
Genre: mystery- detective fiction
Source: public library


Author: Kate Atkinson
Publisher/Format: BBC Audio America, 12 discs-14 hours, 448 page equivalent
Year of publication: 2006
Narrator: Steven Crossley
Subject: seemingly random unrelated incidents of murder
Setting: Edinburgh Scotland
Series: Jackson Brodie Mysteries
Genre: mystery- detective fiction
Source: public library


This series has a lot to like about it.  I had just gotten the 4th in the series Started Early Took My Dog for our library, and was intrigued by the jacket blurb.  I really dislike starting a series in the middle, so I hunted down the 1st two to see if they might be worthy of including in our collection.  Since I needed some audios to get me through a couple of cooking/sewing projects this summer, these two really met the challenge.  They are intricately plotted, but somewhat hard to follow in the beginning.  In both volumes, Atkinson weaves together a series of seemingly unrelated characters and murders that leave the reader asking "where is this going?" until about half-way through each book.  The head scratching is well worth the wait however because not only do the stories mesh together, along the way we meet a cast of wonderfully eccentric and engaging characters who hold our interest and pull us toward their personal conclusions.

In Case Histories, Jackson becomes involved in a cold case of a missing toddler, another of a dead teenager, and an ax murder.  I don't want to spoil the delicious way Atkinson pulls Brodie through all of these with their reluctant witnesses, missing evidence, etc. so I won't reveal too much more about the story line or characters.  I especially like her borderline risquè sense of humor, her tartly funny remarks emerging from the most unusual characters, and Jackson's seemingly lackluster enthusiasm for some of the rigors of the cases.

In One Good Turn, we see Jackson continuing a relation that was only a glint in the first book, as he follows (somewhat begrudgingly?) his now lady friend to Edinburgh so she can participate in an acting festival.  He whiles away the time that she is in rehearsals by blundering onto a dead body, and then spends the rest of the book walking a tightrope between wanting to be totalling uninvolved in solving the crime, (he's on vacation after all!) and in wanting to take over the investigation completely.  His prickly personality and on-again/off-again motivation makes for a true page turner and some uproarious chuckles.  Again, the reader has to pay attention to be sure not to miss any of the many many clues Atkinson strews throughout, but that concentration is well worth the effort in the end.

Normally, I really enjoy audios, but I'm daring to say these are better read in print at first, unless you have exceptional powers of remembering who is who.  The audios done by BBC America were spot on, and easy to listen to, but I think being able to flip back and forth would be a definite advantage to the first time reader of either of these.  Susan  Jameson and Steven Crossly did a first rate job of bringing these doty characters to life so if you like audio, do give them a try, but maybe with a dog-earred paperback next to you for easy referral.   I don't necessarily see that they have to be read in order either, so my advice is to find any of the four in the series, grab a chair and settle back for a great and fun detective story.

PS...I think I'm going to be adding at least one more of these to our collection at the library.

Amateur female sleuths

Thanks to my sister Cheli (she of Cheli's Shelves) --aka Queen of the Cozies, I seem to be picking up quite a few 'cozies' featuring amateur detectives who happen to be female. While I can't handle a steady diet of cozies, I think of them as treats to 'cleanse the pallet' between doses of hefty, heavy, depressing, or horrifying reads. The cozy mystery always has a lovable, almost huggable hero or heroine, a plot that's relatively easy on the brain cells, settings that inspire (in fact I've often thought as I finish one of these that I'd love to visit the scene), and believable, almost happily-ever-after endings.

Here are a few that have tickled my fancy in the past few months:

Sr. Mary Helen in...........

A Novena for Murder

by Sister Carol Anne O'Marie

 A sweet and sassy cozy written by a nun featuring a 70 year old nun as the amateur sleuth.  Sent  against her wishes to her alma mater to "retire,' Sr. Mary Helen finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation, helping a former student who is now a San Francisco police detective find out the who and why.

I went to a school exactly like Mt. St Francis (mine was Mt St Agnes) and our dear Auntie whom you've heard me speak of so fondly lived right where this is set, so I could really relate to this.  Besides, some of the main suspects (and the victim) were Portuguese, so this was a no-brainer for me to pick up and read.  It's not Nobel Prize lit, but it's fun. A nice afternoon's read--perfect for the fog and rain of the San Francisco setting.
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 Dead Cat Bounce

by Sarah Graves

"Home Repair is Homicide" Series

This was originally slotted to be a group read by our Read Around Maine group, but that group seems to have dissolved. I decided to read it when I needed something less cerebral than some of the other books on my list. It was actually a delightful little mystery, set in small town Maine, capturing the flavor of the town, the culture of those living by the sea and making their living from the sea. Jacobia Triptee lives in a falling down Victorian house which she is remodeling, has an ex-husband who is the proverbial jerk, and a teenage son trying to adjust to living in a small town after having lived in a big city.

When the dead body shows up in the pantry, and her friend confesses to the murder, Jake sets out to prove her friend innocent. There are several suspects, and the plot is convoluted enough to make it really interesting. This was the first in the "Home Repair is Homicide Series" and I'll definitely look for more.
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Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon
by Nancy Atherton

I've read several Aunt Dimity stories before, and enjoy them alot. I've just started this one and suspect that it will be neither more or less pleasant than those before it.  Lori Shepherd, the mother of twins, moves to a tiny village in the Cottswolds, and there makes the acquaintance of "aunt Dimity" --actually a haunted journal who ''writes" to Lori explaining and/or giving clues to the mystery du jour.  The stories are almost non-sensical, but the sense of whimsey and the pleasant English countryside setting redeems them.

Review: The Saint and The Fasting Girl

Anna Richenda sent me this richly worded story of a group of women living in England during the time of the early Reformation.  She asked if I would be interested in reviewing it, and I agreed to read.  I had recently finished Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth so I was familiar with the period and thought it sounded really fascinating.  I apologize to Anna for not getting to it sooner. 

I realized also as I went to post this review, that this book fits really well into this week's Banned Book theme.  I'm sure that somewhere, sometime, this book is going to be challenged and some group will ask to have it removed from circulation.  In my view, that means more people will want to read it to find out why some people don't like it and want it banned. More on this as I go on.

This book has great descriptive text.  Through her writing, we are transported to a time and setting of awful stenches, steaming piles of mud and manure, bone-numbing cold, gruesome starvation, teeth-chattering rains, blood and sweat and urine soaked straw mattresses, fleas, spiders and other bugs, and every other physical hardship that can be dreamt of.  

As the story progresses, there are action scenes worthy of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart – lots of blood, gore, pounding hooves, waving swords and pikes and bishop’s staffs; children, horses, pigs, oxen and pregnant women being beaten, whipped, dragged away, burned and hanged;  and lots of trauma (as in chopping off) of various body parts.

The chapters are well defined and divided into easy-to-read-in-one session pieces, but with chapter titles that seem, with a few exceptions, to have nothing to do with the text that follows.

I have done other reading (albeit fiction) set in this period, and have spent time literally traipsing through the area of England she talks about, so I from my limited perspective, I’d say that her historical settings are accurate portrayals of the times and places.

All that said, I need to preface the rest of this review with the caveat that I don’t like fantasy, or paranormal activity in my reading, so I really had a hard time with a lot of this.  These points are exactly why it IS an important book and why it will be challenged and why some people will want it banned/burned/removed.  While I regret to say that I couldn’t figure out the point of this book, that doesn't mean that others won't.  It's not my bag, but it should be looked at and available to others who will read and enjoy it. Here are some of my issues:

• First of all, the main character Georgia? Jane? has (had?) many lives (incarnations?) with different names, and has (had?) been killed many times but keeps coming back to be the bearer of the relic of St. Iselda. This rebirth issue made it difficult for me to get an accurate picture in my mind of what this woman looked like…something I find necessary if I’m to read a story about a main character.
•  The next character "Lo" is said to be the "Chooser" but I never figured out what she was to choose.

• I never figured out what St Iselda is supposed to do (other than restore these women to power? – power over what? Men?)or when she's supposed to do it or why these women are following (worshipping?) her.  Shades of Christ coming to save the world, but then again not.
• The ‘followers’ of the saint (they keep emphasizing “we’re not nuns”) go through quite a bit of persecution on the part of both the Roman and Protestant Catholics, who see any woman as a threat, nuns as whores, and treat women as chattel but why this is any different than treatment of any other group of religious at the time is not really clear.
• I know that during medieval times there was quite an emphasis on appealing to saints for protection, and relics were big big big, but never once in this book did I hear a prayer being sent heavenward to any deity…only female saints.(Right there....that'll get it on the Banned Book list! )
  
• Every chapter builds to a new battle with some MAN or other, and often involved some struggle to find the relic (which kept getting stolen but without the men realizing what they had?).For the first 150 pages or so, this constant distress and see-sawing held my interest; after that, I began to find myself saying ‘Oh no, not again….when is this ever going to end?’ It went on for a full 300+ pages. And maybe that’s the point? Was her point that for women, this never ended?

For me, all the aforementioned descriptive text provided way TOO MUCH descriptive INFORMATION with too little real plot or denouement. Ok …it smelled bad…it was cold…nobody took a bath…ok…I get it, but I didn’t like having to get it over and over again. And I didn't like wondering where it was going.

If her point was to demonstrate that woman were treated poorly in Merry Olde England, she’s done that in spades. In fact, seven no trump. If the point was to portray the customs and lifestyle of this particular cult of woman, she did that too…sorta…but I found I had to stop in the middle of the book, go to the web page listed in the acknowledgments and read about Anchorites and their practices for any of this to make sense. And this pointer was buried at the end of the book in acknowledgments---not in the front, where the reader could have used it.

Then there’s this whole issue of being reborn. I saw resonances with the tribal memories we saw in “Clan of the Cave Bear” but this was quite different…this was a reincarnation theme that had the main character coming back ….and back…and back…and bringing memories with her and dragging, and I mean drrrrrr….aaaa…..ggg…….ing this Saint into everything.  Often, these revived memories appeared to have been drug induced or the result of sleep deprivation, so I found myself not accepting their validity.

As I said, I never could figure out who the Saint was (other than the owner of the blood in the relic) or what she had done to merit such devotion, or what on earth power she had that was going to turn the whole world into one dominated by women where men weren’t needed. 

And I never did figure out which of these ladies was ‘the fasting girl’ – I think there was more than one, but….?

As I said, I don’t normally read in the paranormal genre, nor do I read or enjoy fantasy.  This book, though billed as historical fiction, reads much more like fantasy. There were times when  I half expected Wonder Woman to rise from the bubbling stream of muck! Or a unicorn to come bounding out of the woods to rescue the princess or girl or nun or whatever she was!  I probably wasn’t the right person to review this.  I think this book would have been helped immensely by putting some background material at the beginning. If I hadn’t gone and delved into her reference on the Internet, I’d never have finished it.

So....If you’ve never heard of Anchorites (and that term was NEVER mentioned in the book itself—I had to discover it on the internet), if you’ve no experience of religious women living in community (I was educated by nuns from 1^st grade through college and I still have trouble understanding it), and if you’ve never read anything else about this period, this is probably not the book to start with. 

On the other hand.... If you’re well versed in Reformation England history and its religious battles, and enjoy adding to your knowledge of the period, if you like some fantasy mixed in your fiction, you may find this to be a welcome addition to your library.  It would in fact, make a great Reading Group discussion book for those who like this genre.

From the Past: My Favorite Reads

Gwendolyn B over at A Sea of Books introduced me today to a new feature she got from Alyce of At home with Books. I liked it so much I've decided this is one periodic feature I can handle. I spend a good part of my day in an office/library at home surround by over 1000 books. Often I look up and see one I've read and think "Wow, that was such a great read, I wish I had time to read it again." However, there are also hundreds waiting to be read for the first time. So here, I'll just mention periodically "good reads" from the past. I hope you find them inspiring. This weeks' favorite is R.L. Delderfield's God is an Englishman. I remember reading the entire series (this was the first) several times, enjoying them so much that one year for Christmas I told my husband to scour the used book venues so I could have copies of them all in my personal library. It's now been at least 5 years since I read any of them, but as I remember, the story is set in the Victorian England, as the Industrial Revolution is going strong, the railroads are beginning to change the face of rural England and Adam Swain, the main character sets out to form a dynasty (with the help of his wife Henrietta) in the shipping business by recognizing the advantages of horse drawn wagons in areas where the railroads just aren't available. This sounds dull and boring, but it's not. There are incredible descriptions of all parts of England, well-developed and memorable characters, and several sub-plots running along. I remember being able to sink into this book: there is romance, history, sociological discussion, war stories (from the Crimea, and later in the series, WWI), mystery, villains, and real life disasters. I must find time to stroll through this one again before the year is out.