THE FAT CHEF

by Fredrik Nath
314 pages, Fingerpress

Guest Review by Greta van der Rol

"The Fat Chef" is, at its heart, a love story, set amid the turbulence of war. It's a not uncommon theme but the author has chosen as his protagonist a most unlikely hero. Raoul Verney is the head chef at the Metro hotel in occupied Paris in WW2. And (as the name of the book suggests) he is fat to the point of being obese. He also has many of the insecurities of a man who has been overweight from boyhood. He was bullied, laughed at. But he could cook – very, very well. Cuisine is his anchor, the rock on which he secures his identity.

When the Germans occupy Paris, Raoul’s fairly comfortable life becomes rocky. Natalie, a demi-sous chef in his kitchen and the the secret object of his affection, is Jewish. She and others of the staff are targeted by the SS. Indeed, the Metro hotel itself is under the direct scrutiny of HauptSturmFuhrer Schiller. When his staff begin to disappear, Raoul decides to hide those under threat in the hotel, and in the vast cellars underneath. It's a dangerous game and when Schiller discovers Natalie in the kitchens, Raoul kills the German with a frying pan.

I confess it took me a few chapters to become engrossed in this novel. It's not filled with action-packed excitement. The introduction of a flashback halfway through chapter one to explain Raoul's bullied background didn't help the flow of the narrative. However, I persevered and I'm glad I did as Raoul goes through a gradual metamorphosis. He discovers that Natalie, the love of his life, loves him, too. She becomes the focus of all his actions from then on. He will risk anything for her, even murder.

What's lovely about this book is the way Nath maps the changing relationships between people, all driven by the twisted reality of trying to survive in an occupied city. Raoul is very close to becoming friends with German General Mueller, who appreciates food almost as much as Raoul does. Then there's chef Marek, who doesn't appreciate Raoul's approach to the Germans, seeing the head chef as a collaborator. Marcel is an out-and-out partisan, who just wants to kill Germans. Raoul's neighbour, Lebeuf, is a school teacher – but when he's sacked from his job he finds a new talent.

As does Raoul himself. He sustains fugitives in the hotel with skill, and protects his staff from the Germans, while his love affair with Natalie grows. Raoul often finds himself in a quandary, trying to decide what is right against what is possible. Those choices ramp up, starting as almost civil disobedience toward the Germans, then gradually becoming more and more dangerous for Raoul himself. When he kills Schiller, Raoul's life becomes much more precarious as he tries to hide his deadly secret. For him, his murder of Schiller is a shameful sin, even though he can argue that he had no choice. There are a number of unexpected twists in the narrative which took me by surprise.

Through all of this there is food. Nath describes the cuisine and how it is cooked. I'm not a chef, but I was convinced. Then there’s the wines, wonderful vintages piled high in the Metro's cellars. Every chapter starts with a foodee definition from the Larousse Gastronomique, underlining what it is that gives meaning to Raoul's existence, and giving the story a solid basis of authenticity. Taste, touch, smells and weather all have their place to make this a sensory journey, as well.

As mentioned earlier, I could have done without the flashbacks. One later in the novel, in particular, seemed to me out of place, throwing me out of the story to work out why this part was here. And I confess to wondering about some of Raoul's actions late in the story, on the lines of would he not have learned by now?

All in all, it's a great read. I studied Nazi Germany at university and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a novel that portrays life in Paris under the Nazis quite so vividly.

 

3-FOR-1 GUEST REVIEW

Reviews by Rebecca Lochlann, author of The Child of the Erinyes series.

I recently finished three great novels, all indie books. Dale Furse’s Curse of Wexkia is suitable for any age, but seems written especially for a younger set, maybe eleven and up. It’s imaginative, literally out-of-this-world in its scope, and somehow takes me back to my own childhood fantasies, where almost anything was possible. Loretta Proctor’s literary novel, The Long Shadow, is a heartrending, brutally realistic account of World War I in Greece, told through the eyes of two lovers and later, their son, who goes in search of his father and his identity. Black Tiger is completely different: a paranormal romance set in the jungles of India, bringing a flavor of Kipling though it’s written to modern tastes, and brings to life a unique love affair. I’ve watched this genre explode in popularity in recent years. Humans are something more: an animal, or a blending of human and animal, or with the soul of a beast. It intrigues me. I think we’re drawn to stories like this because most of us experience at one time or another inexplicable actions in animals that suggest they are more than they seem, more than history has portrayed them, more than they are given credit for, and in many cases, show they possess what is believed to be the best of humanity.

All three books highly recommended.

Loretta has two other books available: Middle Watch and The Crimson Bed. Dying Phoenix, her fourth, is forthcoming.

Greta also has several other books in the sci-fi fantasy genre: The Iron Admiral, Morgan’s Choice, and Supertech, to name a few.

Dale is finishing work on Secret of Wexkia.

Curse of Wexkia, by Dale Furse

A delightful middle grade, young adult, and adult story:

This book was an amazing fantasy ride, full of unique characters and vivid scenes. Nell is facing college and has secretly applied to one. But there's a reason her father doesn't support this idea, and it isn't any reason you've ever heard of before. For seventeen years, Nell has lived a rather lonely--but fairly normal--life. Then one day an alligator speaks to her, and from that moment on, BIG changes come barreling, sweeping her away from any hint of normalcy, and taking her good friend Sam with her. This story surprised and delighted me at every turn. I don't want to give any spoilers, but The Curse of Wexkia has a lot going on. It's a little bit sci-fi, a little bit fantasy, a little bit teenage angst, a little bit rebellion, and a little bit sweet budding romance. While the story ends very satisfyingly, there is definitely room for a sequel.

The Long Shadow, by Loretta Proctor

The memories linger…

The Long Shadow is destined to become a literary classic.

 

Characters who grab you and won't let go. Scenes ripped from history. Drama, and the violence of war. Interludes of beauty and joy in the midst of chaos and terror.

 

The two male characters are so lifelike and compelling, I fell in love with both of them. Andrew and Costas, very different, yet in many ways identical, both bringing to life a magical fantasy of female daydreams.

 

The Long Shadow not only contains fascinating, unforgettable, mesmerizing characters, it has history: lots of it. It brought forth the horrors of World War I Greece, and also managed to capture those precious moments of fulfillment that occur even in the grimmest circumstances. The end, which I never could have predicted, was perfect and satisfying. It reminded me of Hemingway's work in many ways. This author is becoming one of my all time favorites.

Black Tiger, by Greta van der Rol

He haunts the jungle, and her dreams...

Black Tiger is one of those special paranormal romances that transcends the ordinary. Set in India, around the vividly well-characterized protagonists, Ash and Sally, the reader is swiftly drawn into the heat, majesty, and charisma of this ancient, evocative land and its beliefs, sometimes magical, other times violent and cruel.

 

Ash is a mesmerizing romantic hero. He's standoffish, but not necessarily because he wants to be: he has certain special obligations he dares not share with anyone.

 

He's drawn immediately to Sally Carter, a doctor he's recruited to care for the villagers he's in charge of. He resists the attraction: for as long as he's lived, he's known he can only get together with a certain kind of woman.

 

The Legend of the Black Tiger pulls them both irrevocably into its mystery, its grace, its terror, and Sally discovers more about herself than she ever could have imagined.

 

The proceeds from this book go toward tiger preservation.

THE BLACK CAT

A Richard Jury Mystery
by Martha Grimes
336 pages, Viking Adult

Guest Review by Robin Duff Boone

Maybe other people read a mystery series as though each book in it were a separate, stand-alone novel. This is usually not easy to do, and in any case the die-hard fan is reading the newest in a series because they like the series. Either the detective is an appealing character, or the good writing makes the book fun to read. Maybe the main draw is the setting. In the case of Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury series, I vote for all three of these novelistic amenities.

I love the main character. Richard Jury has a fetching smile, and he has the de rigueur moody, romantic soul one wishes for in an intelligent, tall, and handsome detective. More to the point, he has red hair, which is always a plus for me, don’t ask me why (because I don’t know). These days, Grimes rarely mentions the color of Jury’s hair, though we always know Melrose Plant’s eyes are green (appositely, given his name). Maybe the flaming tresses of Jury’s upstairs neighbor, Carole-Ann, upstage the sober, settling auburn of Jury’s; who knows?

Not only do I love the main character, but Grimes also carries off successfully, at least for an American reader, the atmosphere of English places. Most of her Jury novels are set in various places in the British Isles – primarily of course London, though Jury and the others of his milieu are also likely to be spotted elsewhere. Two of the Jury novels – Rainbow’s end and The Horse you Came in On – are set in the USA, but the characters always retain their Britishness.

The biggest draw for a Grimes fan, though, has got to be her writing. Each of the Jury novels has its own atmosphere, and they tilt towards the literary. The early novels, thirty years ago, were more general, probably a bit formulaic, though always with a touch more depth or subtlety than what one might expect from genre fiction.

The reader’s sense that a mystery series is formulaic is reinforced when a series has a gimmick –title, series locales, character quirk, or the like. Sue Grafton is going to run out of alphabet pretty soon, but in the meantime, Kinsey Millhone’s adventures have spanned the letters A through U. Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small series covered the days of the week, and then went on to One Day and so on. Nevada Barr sets her Anna Pigeon series in the US national parks. Adam Dalgleish’s outlook is affected by his non-policing experiences as a poet. Brother Cadfael is a monk, solving mysteries in the world of the Wars of the Roses, and Dave Robicheaux hangs out in present-day Louisiana. James Melville’s Superintendent Otani books are a twofer – set in Japan, each novel in the series also has a title that riffs on a word in Japanese (The Wages of Zen comes to mind).

Grimes’s Richard Jury novels have their schtick too: Each has been named for a pub that figures in the plot of that novel – though sometimes the pub name, at least to an American ear, does not sound like a name you’d give a place. When her series began, many long years ago, that was how I thought of the novels: they were a detective series, set in England, and each book in the series was named for a pub. They do in fact fall into a category – the “cozies” genre.

The books are a bit of cozy, too, I’ll admit, particularly as the cast of eccentric characters has accumulated. Originally we had the hypochondriac Sergeant Wiggins, Jury’s partner in apprehending crime, and Melrose Plant, the aristocrat who has forsaken his titles, and his truly annoying (I consider her the most annoying character in literature) Aunt Agatha, who wishes her nephew Melrose had kept his titles. And, of course, there is Carole-Ann, who feels she owns Jury, whatever his opinion of the situation may be. Over the years, others have come along and become part of the landscape – most particularly Marshall Trueblood, and Diane DeMornay, and the other habitués of the pub in Long Pid. This little crowd, in some of the novels, have tended towards cartoonishness, but lately they are not quite so annoying to me; perhaps Grimes began to notice the comic element they provide is not worth making them annoying to her readers.

I especially like the newest additions – a preternaturally intelligent dog named Mungo, and the nefarious and almost certainly criminal man whose hospitality Mungo enjoys, whose name is Harry Johnson. These two debuted in the two most recent books prior to this latest, The Old Wine Shades and Dust. Mungo brings a sardonic silliness to the goings-on this time around, which is often more than offset by the ambiguities of Johnson, who tends to be snarky and sometimes too clever by half.

Since The Old Silent, Grimes’s Jury novels have accumulated depth and atmosphere beyond what one would expect even from an extraordinarily good series. The Horse You Came in On, taking place in Baltimore and drenched as it is in Poe, is particularly atmospheric – might one say Povian? Dust, the novel just before this one, is much imbued with Henry James, and Jamesian references intertwine themselves with the detection efforts.

If I sound a bit retrospective, it’s not surprising. Grimes’s newest, The Black Cat, had that effect on me. Mysteriously, I felt a sense of retrospection in this, her twenty-second Jury novel. The narrative throughout is sprinkled with allusions and references to the places and events of almost every one of the previous novels in the series. So, while I was reading it, I found myself thinking of past events in the world of Richard Jury. He has acquired complexity – the sort of complexity one would expect of someone whose back story is well known, as is the case with characters in series fiction, but it’s more than that. His life seems real, because his memories are a whole spectrum – sorrow, grief, laughter, trepidation, confusion, happiness, anger.

The plot of The Black Cat twists like a several-stranded braid. Three murders come to Jury’s attention that are otherwise unrelated – except that each of the women was leading a double life, and each was wearing expensive clothes and designer shoes at the time of her death. The way Jury and Wiggins and other detectives piece together the larger picture is one of the subplots. The other main subplot is dominated by Harry Johnson. Jury suspects Johnson of being the killer of at least one, if not all three, of the victims. Johnson, however, not only does not and will not help, but he also enjoys the attention he’s getting and, even more, he relishes winding Jury up.

Melrose, as usually happens, ends up in comically improbable scrapes that somehow made perfect sense in the planning stages beforehand. And additional whimsy is provided by another series staple, and an endearing one in Grimes’s hands, of an astute child observer. The opinions and information that children provide tend to be ignored, but Grimes handles this trope deftly, with a light but truthful comic touch. Of course the black cat who likes to sun itself in the back yard of The Black Cat pub is not the same cat now as it was last week; shouldn’t that be obvious? It is to Maisie. We see the adults’ viewpoint is reasonable as well: Why on Earth, or how, at the very least, could a cat be a different cat now than before? It simply does not stand to reason.

Not to give anything away, but Mungo contributes as best he can to helping solve the mysteries here, although he would be the first to agree that cats verge on total uselessness as far as helping out anyone whatsoever.

This time around, Mungo is my favorite character. He has to deal with three different cats, and if you have ever lived with cats, you will agree that Mungo’s opinions and observations about cats are spot-on. I think the cats-and-dog parts of this latest in the series are the best reason for reading it.

And, as Abraham Lincoln said, when put under duress to review a book he didn’t want to be unkind about, those who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

I do hope the retrospection does not mean Jury and company are closing up shop. There is always another pub to visit, after all.

THE GIRL ON THE SWING

by Ali Cooper
302 pages, Standing Stone Press

Review by Judith Kinghorn

With an intriguing premise and a coveted gold star, The Girl on the Swing was the very first book I dipped into on the Harper Collins Authonomy website. From those first few chapters I knew that this was a book I’d like to read in its entirety, a book I’d be more than happy to buy. Almost exactly one year later - I did.

With the teasing opening line, ‘It takes a while for my eyes to adjust, then gradually I see it’, the reader is drawn into this first-person narrative with some intoxicating prose: ‘It is a garden of high summer. Where hollyhocks turn their faces to the sun. Where oriental poppies, full and red, grow taller than I have ever seen. Where roses twist and turn over timber archways. Where delphiniums reach from their hiding places to erupt in a surprise of iridescent blue.’ But this book offers much more than simply beautiful prose.

The Girl on the Swing is a complex and absorbing read: a novel about birth and death; about saving lives and past lives. And it is also the story of Julia. Grieving for her lost child and suspended from her job, Julia knows she has lived before and is pulled back to another time and place; a place we are taken to, and see through her eyes. When she first set eyes on the garden at Kimberley Place – the event which triggered memories of a past life, she was ‘overwhelmed with love’ for her then unborn child. The two events became linked together in her mind and over two decades later, as she tries to come to terms with the loss of her only child, her son, she goes back to this place: the place of another life.

The themes of life and death, birth and rebirth are woven further into the story as Julia discovers she has been suspended from her job – delivering ‘new lives’, because of an action brought against her by the husband of a woman whose life she was unable to save during a difficult birth. As she moves through empty days, grieving for her dead son and pondering on the legal case ahead, her heart surgeon husband, Richard, is invariably unavailable. Working at the hospital she has been suspended from - he has other lives to save. In a bid to try and heal her grief, and in order not to dwell on the ‘death that should have been a birth’, she decides to take on voluntary work at the local prison, bringing her face to face with someone from her past life.

Julia’s loneliness and yearning to go back to another time are palpable, and are mirrored in evocative descriptions of the landscape and elements: ‘A grey mist hangs over the day, blurring the transition from night into morning. I know from experience that this cheerless haze will probably last all day, clinging onto buildings and trees, until, in the late afternoon, it is gulped down the dark throat of a premature night.’ The powerful metaphors and allusions to birth throughout the book continually remind us of Julia’s role in life, and the themes of birth and death are reinforced by the passing of seasons and lifetimes, and a connection to the earth: Mother Earth. The pull of her past life is like ‘a separate being, gathering its own energy. It will grow and punch and kick until it is free.’

As Julia drifts back and forth in time, the author’s knowledge, love of, and connection with, flowers, plants and nature are much in evidence and used with stunning effect in descriptive prose linking the internal and external landscapes. And, because this is a book written in the first person, because of the language, the choice of words and the internal dialogue, there’s an intimacy to the narrative. The reader is always inside Julia’s head, looking at the world through her eyes, questioning this life: ‘I think about the theory of parallel universes, the possibility that millions of worlds inhabit the same time and space, that in other dimensions we are living a palimpsest of subtly different lives, a new one branching off every time we make a decision.’

For me, there were some minor inconsistencies in the characterisation. Julia lives in a box, but thinks beyond the box; and yet, for me, at least, her reactions to the dramatic, life–changing events taking place around her, particularly towards the end of the book, seemed muted and perfunctory. I reasoned that this may have been because she is a scientist: cold and clinical, analytical. For much of the book Richard seemed too much of a one dimensional character: cold, heartless and unfeeling; ‘as mechanical as one of his false hearts’. I wanted to like him, but couldn’t, even during the very clever twist at the end of the book. That said, The Girl on The Swing is a compelling read: a well-structured, thought provoking work of fiction; a novel which challenges our conceptions on many levels, and which lingers on, long after we have turned the last page.

GLIMPSES OF A FLOATING WORLD

by Larry Harrison
214 pages, lulu.com

Review by Marion Stein

Larry Harrison's dark and dazzling first novel, Glimpses of a Floating World, takes its title from the phrase used to describe the red-light district of 18th century Edo, now known as Tokyo. The Japanese term alludes to the Buddhist concept for "the transient nature and suffering that defines our earthly existence". Edo's floating world was a haven of pleasure and illusion, filled with kabuki actors, geishas and courtesans. Harrison's work is set in London's Soho, 1963, its denizens -- anarchists, mods, rockers, beats, and others. Our protagonist, seventeen year-old Ronnie "Fizz' Jarvis loves feeling that he is part of "the scene."

The novel opens with two heroin addicts on their way to a fix. The griminess of the dialogue is pitch perfect in its rhythm and authenticity. Ronnie, one of the fortunate few with a prescription for heroin and cocaine, is eighteen minutes away from his chemist's and would gladly die sooner to make up the time.

Our "hero", the son of an abusive, alcoholic, upwardly mobile Scotland Yard officer, survives by staying in squats and selling small amounts of his excess stock on the black market.

Harrison skillfully makes it easy for the reader to identify with Ronnie despite the character's being vain, selfish and occasionally cowardly. He is, after all, an adolescent trying to understand the world and his place in it. Ronnie, fiercely intelligent, tells himself that he is not constricted by his addiction, but enhanced by it. He is a self-proclaimed rationalist and anarchist, identifying with the beats. Since age twelve, he has "collected extreme experiences in a conscious attempt to destroy childishness."

Ronnie reminds us of other young, unreliable characters on the precipice of manhood in an imperfect world. The reader is immediately aware that no matter what else happens, Ronnie will either grow and change, or he will not. We root for Ronnie's potential, hoping he will live to tell the tale.

Harrison's Soho is not a land of flower children and love beads. There's still a sense of post-war deprivation. Ruth Ellis has recently been executed. Political scandals involving naughty politicians and call girls are in the news, while on the streets police corruption is endemic and gangsters have celebrity status. Heroin addiction, however, is relatively rare. While addicts like Ronnie scam the system, which allows him to walk away drugs in hand for easy resale, the black market in illegal drugs is small.

Early in our story, Ronnie is caught shooting up in a restroom. While his heroin and cocaine are legal, he has a small amount of opium that isn't. In jail, he is interviewed by an elderly (at least to his adolescent eyes) prison doctor. When she tells him that he'll be dead soon if he keeps going, he replies, "We're all going to die... You're going to die a lot sooner than I am."

She believes she's been threatened, classifies him as a psychopath, and Ronnie is sent to a mental hospital that reminded this reader of a cross between a Dickensian workhouse and a Ken Kesey nightmare. Ronnie overhears the nurses discussing how easy psychosurgery will make their jobs and soon escapes.

Several chapters are told from different points of view. We see both the war and early post-war years through the eyes of Ronnie's parents. Freddy's drinking, jealousy and violence eventually drive Flo to leave and return to her hometown of Swindon, a place Ronnie will always deny being from. Freddy has managed to rise to become a senior officer, but his son has been out of his life for years.

While the atmosphere and depth of characterization is strong, so is the pacing and plot development. Ronnie's initial arrest, psychiatric diagnosis, escapes and recaptures all lead to a situation where he is forced to turn informant even though he knows nothing about any large scale narcotics dealers and does not believe that any exist. The shifting points of view allow the reader to know more than the characters, and the last quarter of the novel is a compulsively addictive page-turner in which Ronnie's fate is anything but certain.

Harrison, who has written nonfiction books on alcohol and drug issues, seamlessly weaves in the growing panic over narcotics. While the world was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon and scandal reigned, Britain -- influenced by the US -- was changing its policies, moving from treating addiction as a public health issue to criminalizing addicts. Ronnie is as much a victim of these changes as he is of his abusive father and his own self-destructiveness.

Glimpses of a Floating World is described on its back cover as "a lyrical and triumphant elegy to a seedy, vice-ridden London of the 1960's." It is that, but also a tale of familial tragedy, a history lesson, a novel that offers much more than simple glimpses.

Glimpses may not be easy to find in your local bookstore though you can order it online as a paperback or download FOR FREE as an ebook through the link provided. It's from Year Zero, a writers' collective dedicated to creating a new relationship between readers and writers without the filter of the publishing industry. Agreed, there are many skeptics who still won't touch books not given the imprimatur of even a small publishing house. This novel puts lie to the myth that important literature can only be found on store shelves. In addition to reading like a lost classic, it's polished, proofed and edited. If you're a serious reader, skeptical about anything that sounds like self-publishing, I urge you to rise to the challenge and sample it online for free. Believe me, it'll be a more rewarding experience than a trip to Borders to browse through the latest Jane Austen with zombies tome.