The Seance by John Harwood

I've been waiting for the Seance a long time. I'd requested it from the library in time to read over Halloween! According to the library catalogue, it was on the shelves, but no-one could seem to be able to find it! But it did eventually turn up, or the library gave up looking and bought a new copy? It is a brand new book, so could be either!


It is really a story within a story, as it starts in one place and then veers off in a different direction altogether. We start (and finish) the story with Constance Langton, a priviledged child in Victorian England and a brief overview of her life in her childhood home. However, although she was financially privileged, emotionally both her parents were distant. Her mother is in permanent mourning for her younger sister, who died in infancy, and her father has very little emotional attachment to her at all. Constance is brought up in the care of her nurse, and is then sent to school. When her father eventually leaves, a chance encounter leads Constance into the world of seances, and what she sees as an opportunity to make her mother happy again. Constance convinces her mother to attend a number of seances with her, and in consultation with the 'medium', Constance pretends that Alma is speaking through her and for a time, her mother seems to improve. But when the 'contact' with Alma leads to disastrous consequences, Constance is left to face life with her increasingly distant father.

Constance is saved from this fate in the nick of time by the appearance of a distant uncle, who offers her the chance to live with him, which she gladly accepts. She then discovers she is the sole inheritor of a run down estate, Wraxford Hall, with a dubious history, and at first the only advice the solicitor will give her is to sell it, sight unseen and to never ever live there. And just to add to the intrigue, he is shocked by her appearance as she seems to bear a striking resemblance to someone he once knew. He does eventually reconsider though, ands sends Constance a packet of journals explaining the history of the decrepit house and what happened there.

This is where we veer off into a totally different story, and move into a story of the spooky and disturbing events that happened at Wraxford Hall, which include eccentric old men, mysterious accidents, mesmerism, villainous men and suspicious deaths. The story itself is full of intrigue, mystery and murder. Nell Wraxford, a woman who possibly has real clairvoyant powers flees her stifling, distant family to her friends in the countryside, falls in love with a man her family would consider unsuitable, is blissfully happy for a short while until tragedy strikes, and all the supernatural connections with the Hall are threaded into the story. The story within the story ends with murder, in a most bizarre fashion, and the disappearance of numerous central characters.

The book itself doesn't end here though. We return to Constance, determined to prove that that Nell was innocent, possibly that she's still alive and even that she may be her daughter. The idea of fake Seances returns to the plot here, as Constance takes a trip to the hall and eventually unwinds all the twisted threads and discovers the truth, with the usual twists that accompany Victorian fiction.

I really enjoyed this book. All the twists, turns, red herrings and vague suggestions kept me guessing right until the end. The plot hinges on various aspects that are mentioned throughout the story, and everything that Constance works out is laid out throughout the story, when you go back and look for it. The portrayal of women in Victorian society was covered very well, especially the idea of them being possessions of their husbands, and at their beck and call. Both the central female characters in the story suffer for being women in Victorian England. It was typical of this type of fiction that the plot was turned on it's head at least twice, and just as we think we've figured it all out, something else comes along and changes it all. Brilliant!

The Bad Girl by Mario Vargo Llosa

The Bad Girl wasn't what I was expecting. I don't know what I was expecting it to be like, but it wasn't this. I want to say it's a love story, but there's not a lot of love in it, just sexual obsession, selfishness and cruelty. Then I thought I would say it was story of a couple's progression through life from early teens to late middle age, but that's not really right either, because I don't think they could ever be classed as a couple, and we only get to see certain parts of their life, when they do actually come together, although the book spans half a century.

So starting at the beginning, I'll try and say what this book actually is. Ricardo is Peruvian, and as a teenager he falls totally in love with Lily, a Chilean girl living in Peru, and although she seems to feel the same, she will never commit to him, and following an embarrassing incident, disappears totally from his life. Following this, Ricardo works hard to achieve his only real ambition in life, which is to live in Paris. He lives frugally, and works sporadically as a translator, and later an interpreter, but the only real friendship he develops is with Paul, a man who runs a restaurant, but whose main interest is the political rebellion taking place in Peru. This is the turning point, for this is when he meets a woman calling herself Comrade Arlette, immediately realises she is his teenage sweetheart, falls in love all over again and throws his heart and soul into getting her out of the revolutionary movement she has got herself involved in. She promises to return to Paris as soon as she is able, and he waits. But when she does return, she is married to a relatively well off Frenchman, and he is devastated.

This pattern repeats itself throughout the book, with each long chapter focusing on a different period in Ricardo's life, with Lily, who Ricardo terms 'the bad girl' showing up, each time with a different name and a different identity. She lets him keep falling in love with her, help her escape whatever crisis she has got herself into, and then leaves to find a different life. The bad girl is characterised as a shallow, materialistic woman, who is really only out to make a nice, easy life for herself, and will trample over anyone to get what she wants. Although, it is difficult to say she is the same person each time Ricardo meets her. She re-invents herself so much that she is almost a different person each time. As readers, we don't feel we know her as we see her life through Ricardo's eyes, and he only ever knows her as her current alias, never as what she really is. The end does clear some of this up, and the explanation of who she is and why she behaves the way she does helps understand her, and softens the fairly harsh image of her portrayed throughout the book.

I liked this book. As well as the relationship between 'Lily' and Ricardo, the descriptions of the places they find themselves in, particularly the cultural and political situations are interesting and informative. The only thing I'm struggling with is coming to a decision about what I think about Ricardo. On one hand I want to say he's a fool for keep taking her back, and letting her manipulate him, but on the other hand, his loyalty is admirable and it is interesting to see how he does harden against her, and how gradually the story moves from him chasing her, to her searching him out. Again the end does shed some light on his character, but I still remain ambiguous about his credibility.

Is it me....or my books?

I've felt recently that I'm becoming slightly over critical with the books I read. I enjoy them all, it's very rare I actually pick up a book I don't like at all. At first I thought it was just me, either trying to find something to criticise, or just picking the wrong books to read in the first place. The only way to find out was to go back and read my reviews, and try and figure it out. Which is when I think I came upon a surprising conclusion............

I think I read too much fiction published in the last few years!

My reading habits have always tended towards recent fiction, and I've always been happy with it. However, over the last few months the best books I've read have been the older ones, such as The Heart of the Matter, The Woman in Black and The Bookshop. Now there is always the possibility that this could be co-incidence, and I'm perfectly prepared to believe that. But I am going to make a concerted effort to change the ratio of new books to slightly older ones.
The only thing left now is to define (mainly to myself) what I'm classing as recent! I was going to pick a definitive date, but that seems a bit harsh. But the date I'd got in mind was 1976 (year I was born), so I'll go with that as a rough guide. So in brief, hopefully more, but by no means all, of the books I read (for now at least) will have been published before I was born, there or thereabouts.

After the Fire, A Still, Small Voice by Evie Wyld

After The Fire, A Still, Small Voice is a quiet, subdued novel but it's not the worse for it! Told in alternate narratives, it deals with various themes, the main one being the relationships formed, destroyed and ignored,mainly parental, but also between husbands and wives (or boyfriend and girlfriend). A big theme is also the horrors of war, specifically the Korean, then the Vietnam war, and the effect fighting can have on a person and their families.

Leon is a child when we are first introduced to him, the child of immigrant parents in Australia. His family owns a bakery, which his father is passionate about, and passes this passion on to Leon. All is good until his father goes off to fight in the Korean war, leaving Leon and his mother at home to run the business alone. Leon starts to take this on all alone, as his mother becomes more and more withdrawn with her worry for her husband.

Running alongside this is the story of Frank, a man fleeing from a relationship which has caused him to be violent, to his parents run down shack in the Australian countryside. He is a broken man, and obviously has issues with his parents as well as himself, as the first thing he does when he arrives is rid the place of anything that may remind him of them. He starts finds himself in a very close knit community, but also one that is wary of strangers, understandably since he arrives just at the time when a young girl has disappeared, leaving no trace.

It doesn't take long to work out exactly how the three men in this story are related. Leon's father soon passes out of the story, as he returns from the war mentally exhausted, a state from which he never really recovers and moves off to a rundown shack in the countryside, and Leon's mother soon follows. This leaves Leon alone to run the bakery, until the day comes when he is called up to join the Vietnam war. In his father's story, we are left to imagine the horrors he witnessed/experienced, but with Leon we are thrown right into the action and follow the horrors in person, from when he joins, to when he leaves.

The dual narrative works really well in this story as by juxtaposing the men's lives it is easy to see how the events that happened to Leon have impacted on his relationship with his son, Frank. It is apparent early on that Frank does not have a strong relationship with his father, although the real reasons why are not revealed until the end. I think though by seeing how Leon's fathers unknown experiences affected him, and therefore Leon, it is easy to imagine how the horrors described in Leon's time in Vietnam could have impacted on Frank.

The main thing that struck me was that nobody ever talked about these things. Leon's father just withdrew into himself, and it is to be assumed that Leon did exactly the same thing, although in a different way. Things are left unsaid and unspoken. Just as Leon never talked to his father, Frank never spoke to his and both never really did. Frank's loner attitude to life is really well described, and seems to be accentuated by the rough, wild landscape that he finds himself in. In fact all the landscape in this book is describes impeccably, and really jumps out off the page. From urban Sydney, war torn Vietnam and the wilds of the Australian countryside, complete with slightly threatening wildlife and something un-named watching from the shadows.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J Jacobs

The Year of Living Biblically was better than I thought it would be. But having said that, I think this will only be a short review because I don't really know how much I can actually write about it. The title is pretty self explanatory, the author decides to try and follow every biblical rule he can find to the letter for a year. Not always an easy task in twenty-first century America.


A.J Jacobs is a secular Jew who claims he would like to try and find out more about his spiritual side, and that of his ancestors by doing as above, and living as close to biblical ritual as possible, along the way trying to find out why these laws exist, if they were ever meant to be taken literally, and if they are even relevant today. As well as the more well known commandments such as the female impurity laws, stoning of adulterers (how he achieved this was funny), and the restrictive food laws, he focuses on such things as not wearing mixed fibres, blowing a horn at the start of every month and building a hut and living in it for a period of time (he does this in his living room. At the start he says there are over 700 commandments in the Old Testament alone, so obviously this is only a very small sample. And he grows a beard, takes copious amounts of photographs of said beard and talked about it a lot! That annoyed me slightly. I couldn't see how that was the biggest thing he was dealing with!

The female impurity laws meant he wasn't really allowed to touch women at all, since it was difficult to know whether they were unclean or not, which as you can imagine led to some offended remarks. Also, these particularly irritated his wife, who went round and sat on every chair in the house when she was menstruating, presumably to make her point.

It was written in a day by day diary form, with the majority of the entries focusing on a different aspect, rule or bizarre ritual, but with some elements being returned to on various occasions (not just the beard). But for me, by far the most interesting aspects were his trips to various evangelist church's or groups to see how they take the biblical commandments. This led to a tour of a creationist museum, a conversation with an Amish man, a couple of Evangelical churches and a trip to Israel to meet his Uncle and spend time with a shepherd!

I did think when I was reading this book that I might learn something about the more obscure biblical rules, and whilst I was reading it I probably did, but it's all gone now! It was entertaining and funny in places, but I think it covered so much in a relatively short book that entertainment was all it could be. Not a bad thing though. I enjoyed it whilst I was reading it, but I don't think I'll remember very much about it all in a few months!

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

The Heart of the Matter is the first Graham Greene novel I've read since I was seventeen, and that would be about half way through my A-level course, so I reckon that makes it about seventeen years! The reason being that after reading The Power and The Glory I despised it, and it's taken me that long to pick up another one. I did enjoy this one though, although I can't say I loved it.

I can't really describe the plot because there isn't much of one. It is more a series of mundane and normal events in the life of Scobie, a brutally honest policeman in West Africa during the war years, and how he copes with the trials, temptations and corruption that faces him there. Unlike most of the police, he is immune to bribery, which paradoxically, makes a lot of the people, both native and British distrust him. He is also trapped in a loveless marriage, but he will not leave as he feels a sense of duty towards his wife, Louise, as well as a sense that as he promised to make her happy, he should do his best to fulfill that vow, whether he loves her or not. Scobie and Louise perform a sort of charade of a marriage, both in public and in private, He is also filled with a sense of regret that it is him that has made her unhappy, and it torments him.

"Fifteen years form a face, gentleness ebbs with experience, and he was always aware of his own responsibility. He had led the way: the experience that had come to her was the experience selected by himself. He had formed her face."

Throughout the novel, Scobie is constantly in conflict, either with Louise, his contemporaries, and most importantly, himself. He seems constantly in a battle with himself over what is right,or what he should do. This comes into force early in the book, when he has a debate with himself over what to do with some perfectly innocent, although contraband letters found on a ship he is searching. The captain, whose letters they are, tries to bribe him not to report them, but as previously stated, he is probably the only police officer on whom this wouldn't work. He enters a moral dilemma over whether he should follow his heart or his head (I won't spoil it by revealing which he does choose).

But this just prefigures the major dilemma he faces, which is at the heart of this novel (the heart of the matter)? I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that whilst Louise is away, he falls in love, and then when she returns he feels a moral duty and obligation towards both women. This also conflicts with his catholic beliefs, because although these are not strong, they are present, and they cause him conflict, but more because he cannot reconcile his own feelings of duty and respect to both women with the duty and respect that his catholic beliefs say he should be feeling towards God.

In fact this internal struggle with the tenets of his faith and his own personal standards towards his fellow human beings is the essential struggle of this book. His decision at the end, and the calculated way he goes about it, shows where his feelings actually lie when it really comes down to it. I actually found the last section of the book the toughest to read, because it becomes very weighed down with theological ideas, mainly in monologue form. And I was unsure what I felt about Scobie in the end. Although I certainly felt some sympathy for him, I also felt that the situation he ended up in was of his own making, and perhaps he could have had a bit more backbone about him!

I did enjoy this book, and it was beautifully written, very wordy and descriptive, but I never felt a description was too long or unnecessary. And I have just realised I haven't really talked about the setting at all and that's really odd because although Greene describes the West African setting in great detail, I felt this book was all about character and ideas so although the setting is relevant to the story, the story could have been told in any setting.

The Outcast by Sadie Jones

I've had The Outcast sat on the shelves for quite a long time, and for some reason, something had stopped me picking it up. I'm not sure if I could say I enjoyed this book, as it was pretty depressing all the way through, but I was certainly gripped and I loved the story.

We start the story when the main character, Lewis, is returning from a spell in prison, to a family that do not seem to want him home. After this first chapter, we backtrack to his childhood, and the majority of the book is concerned with Lewis's life until he was sent to prison and the events that got him there. When we first meet Lewis he is a small child, living alone with his mother, and awaiting the imminent return of his father from the war. It at first seems as though they are part of an idyllic, fairly comfortable family, but it soon transpires that Lewis's relationship with his father is not all it could be, and although his mother obviously idolises him, she drinks a lot. When Lewis's mother dies in an accident witnessed only by Lewis, his life is understandably turned upside down. From this point on, Lewis withdraws into his shell, and eventually ends up as something of an outcast in his community. I got the feeling that he was torn between his needs and desires to be part of the community, but his hatred and desperation at being excluded, even by his own family.

Lewis is seen as odd, by virtually everyone in the community, including both his distant father and his bewildered stepmother, who his father married remarkably quickly after his first wife's death. In fact the only person who doesn't view him as odd and deranged is Kit, the youngest child of The Carmichael family, who are good friends of Lewis's family. But this information is kept to herself for most of the novel, and she has problems of her own with her father.

In fact, the novel is populated by unpleasant adult characters, imposing their will on the children, with disastrous results. Lewis's father is distant and harsh on Lewis, with a total failure to understand how his mother's death has affected him. Kit's father punishes her violently for the slightest misdemeanor whilst her mother turns a blind eye to this, her only reaction being to leave the room. Mr Carmichael is also instrumental in Lewis's final departure and separation from his family, and horrifically, uses him as a scapegoat for his own actions.

Lewis himself is portrayed as a confused child and adolescent throughout the whole novel. He is by no means an angel, and does some dubious things, but in modern society a lot of what he does, both to others and himself would be spotted quicker and picked upon as a reaction to his mother's death. We are definitely left with the impression that a bit more understanding and perhaps some medical or even psychological care would have nipped his issues in the bud quickly. He really does seem to be left to find his own way in the world. with horrible results. The climax sees Lewis realising he has to do something to help someone else, even if it alienates him.

In the end, Lewis does seem to come to some kind of resolution, and although it's not a happy ending, it does seem positive and as if the climax at the conclusion of the book has helped Lewis realise his potential, or at least make a start on this.