The Careful Use of Compliments

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, in so many ways. Why has Alexander McCall Smith so totally sold out that every new novel of his now seems like a chore in generating more revenue for himself? All the characters in the Isabel Dalhousie series are annoying. Isabel's niece is a bitch, Isabel hardly cuts a maternal figure, Jamie is a cardboard saint, and even the housekeeper whatsherface has become an irritating "old wife". The mystery wears ever thinner, and worse, so does the philosophising. While I know that Isabel is supposed to be made more human by her faults and lust for power, I find her unpleasantly so.

No more for me for quite a while.

A Certain Justice

Addy lent me this one by PD James, and I liked it better than The Skull beneath the Skin. Sure, there's drama aplenty here too (the positioning of the corpse described as a scene out of the Grand Guignol, with a red-headed wig and all), but there's also a lot about the legal system in the UK, and how it attempts to dispense justice in sometimes-ambiguous cases. There's also quite a bit of character development in this novel - both of the victim and the culprit (of sorts).

The Three Evangelists

I actually read this before Moral Disorder and all the feel-good Hilary McKays. It's my third Fred Vargas book, and I'm not tired of her yet - I've Addy to thank for my renewed interest in crime fiction here, because Fred Vargas, so persistently non-English, is so different from the (limited) crime fiction I subsisted on in my teenage years. She's self-deprecating, funny, and obviously likes the very act of writing.

In The Three Evangelists, three down-and-out historians (1st World War, medieval and pre-historian) buy a house together with one of their "uncles", a disreputable ex-cop. This house is next to that of a one-time Greek singer, in whose garden a tree mysteriously appears one day. She seeks their help in digging up the tree, but nothing is found. Then, she disappears.

A fast-paced, absorbing novel with some parts that actually made me laugh out loud, even if the overall atmosphere created by Vargas is a fairly eerie one.

Moral Disorder: And Other Stories

This could've been good - and I do like Atwood - but the collection of short stories, centred as it is around the life of one woman from childhood/adolescence to adulthood, is too reminiscent of Alice Munro, and therefore can't quite compare.

Hilary McKay

I finished the Casson family series - Indigo's Star, Permanent Rose, Caddy Ever After and Forever Rose - mostly over the first four days of the Lunar New Year. The life of the Casson family is utterly absorbing and charming, though vaguely disturbing in many ways. My favourite characters are Indigo (third in seniority among the children) and his best friend Tom from America - who just seems so cool I would definitely have had a crush on him at school.

I wish they didn't grow up so quickly!

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

The series is really deteriorating, and it's most obvious in this latest of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive. First of all, nowhere in the novel is the meaning of the title illuminated. Mma Makutsi is completely out of character, choosing arbitrarily to quit the agency in a fit of petulance. The solving of the not-so-interesting "mystery" is undertaken by Mma Ramotswe's husband, and is not done very well.

Disappointing.

Saffy's Angel

I was interested in Hilary McKay's Saffy's Angel because Suyin and Minz had both rated it highly on goodreads.com (see, that website does work! I love sharing good reads!).

Again, I managed to inveigle my younger sister into getting Saffy's Angel for me from some remote library. The book didn't disappoint - it was a delight to read from the very beginning, when you encounter the scatterbrained Eve, artist-mother to four precocious children. Later, wheelchair-bound Sarah becomes Saffy's best friend by bowling into her on the street, and her cunning ways get both of them a trip to Tuscany, Italy, where they embark on a mission to locate "Saffy's angel," which was left to Saffy by her grandfather in his will. Oh, and Caddy (Cadmium), the eldest child learns how to drive from the most adorable ponytailed instructor ever. Lots of exciting incidents follow.

Consequences

I loved Penelope Lively when I was 17 or 18, but I haven't read her in years - ever since I revisited Moon Tiger for my undergraduate thesis. I picked up Consequences, which looked like one of her more recent novels, in the library.

The novel deals with the lives of three generations of women from the years of WWII onwards. It felt loosely structured overall, and the link between the three women (grandmother-daughter-grand-daughter) felt rather bland to me. Perhaps the theme was too feminine - in this novel, Lively seems primarily concerned with how woman discover/find true love, which is ultimately a cheesy sort of thread.