A Silent Death

Finished March 20

A Silent Death by Peter May

This standalone thriller is set around a Scottish police officer, John Mackenzie. Mackenzie has always wanted to be a police officer because his father was one. Not that he really knew his father, who died when he was a child. Mackenzie is a man who is highly intelligent, always curious, and is unflinchingly direct. It is this last characteristic that has caused him the most trouble. It has caused him to be separated from his wife, with her having custody of their two young children, and has caused him to leave his job at the Met. 

As the book opens, he is just starting a new job at the National Crime Agency and is given the task of going to Spain to pick up a prisoner, Jack Cleland. Cleland has been a wanted man for some time, intelligent and wealthy before venturing into the world of international drug crime. His arrest in Spain was a bit of a fluke and opens the book. Cleland has declared vengeance against Christina Sanchez, one of the police officers who arrested him, and is a very dangerous man.

Christina has been fighting her superiors for some time, trying to get the respect and cases that her skills and abilities would normally get her, if she wasn't a woman. She took the assignment that netted Cleland as a favour to a fellow officer, and she soon finds that it was one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

Christina has a beloved aunt, Ana, that she and her sister visit regularly. Ana is deaf and blind, both disabilities affecting her as a young woman. Technology has opened her world to some extent, but she is still often trapped by her limited senses. 

As Cleland escapes custody and looks for ways to exact his revenge on Christina, her family, including Ana, come into his plan. Mackenzie's skills make him a good investigator to assist in the hunt for Cleland, but his personality also means that his choices don't always lead him to make good decisions. 

The setting is a big part of the story, The town of Marvina, on the Costa del Sol, is a small enough place to navigate, with lots to interest tourists. As Mackenzie walks through the town and drives to locations in the nearby hills, we get a real sense of the landscape and the economic reality of the people who live there. 

A fascinating read, with an interesting and complex character at the centre of action. There is lots going on here and the story held my interest until the end. 

Between, Georgia

Finished November 22

Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson

I've enjoyed other books by this author for their strong female characters, and this is another good one. The main character here, Nonny Flett, comes into the story literally at the beginning when she is born. Her birth mother is a young teenage who doesn't want the baby and is afraid of her own mother's wrath. She has run to a nearby woman who was a former nurse, Bernese Flett.

Bernese's two sisters, Stacia and Genny, lived next door. Genny was a nervous woman, given to compulsive behaviours. Stacia was a skilled ceramacist, who was born deaf and was losing her eyesight. When they heard the ruckus next door, they came running. Stacia assisted Bernese and claimed the child as her own. Bernese made sure the paperwork was done with a local lawyer, and Nonny grew up with Stacia as her mother. 

When, after a few years, her birth grandmother, Ona Crabtree discovered that she was born a Crabtree, a war of sorts started between the families. Nonny did some visits with Ona, but was raised by Stacia, and learned sign language, later making it her career. 

After Nonny's birth, the book jumps to her adult years as she is coming up to a court date for her divorce. She had loved her irresponsible, musician husband Jonno, but something had drawn apart that love, if not the physical attraction, and she is convinced that she will go through with the divorce.

But when a emergency happens back in her hometown of Between, she must rush to the side of those who need her, find her own truth, and choose her own path forward.

Nonny is an interesting woman, with attributes from both her birth family and her adopted one, and she has an inner strength when it comes to the people she truly cares for: her mother, her aunt, and her young cousin. This is a turning point in her life, when she must make her own choices and not have others make it for her. 

A very enjoyable read.

Two White Queens and The One-Eyed Jack

Finished May 12 

Two White Queens and The One-Eyed Jack by Heidi Von Palleske

This book is a winner. It takes you into the world of four young people, following their lives from the age of six to their early twenties. Gareth and Johnny are best friends, up for any adventure. When Gareth climbs a tree successfully, Johnny is urged to tackle it after him, climbing higher and higher, but he falls, and is hurt. The fall results in the loss of one of Johnny's eyes. Gareth struggles with the guilt he feels of urging Johnny on. The boys remain friends, but for a long while, there is distance between them that wasn't there before. Interestingly, the incident results in another revelation, the fact that Gareth's older brother Tristan is blind in one eye. As Gareth's family deals with this, and numerous doctor visits are kept, Gareth has a random encounter with two young girls in a waiting room.

These two girls are twin sister, Blanca and Clara, albinos who live with their grandfather in a very dysfunctional family. Their mother, Faye, is living in a mental institution and they go to see her from time to time. The also spend time at the home of their uncle and his family. They are bullied at school, and subjected to strict rules at home, but they find refuge in the home of their downstairs neighbour, Esther Perlman, a refugee from World War II, who was the only one in her family to escape the Nazis. Esther teaches them art and manners, and they begin to plan a way out of their situation, by taking advantage of their uniqueness instead of feeling lesser because of it. These are strong-willed girls and their intense connection with each other is their strength.

Johnny's mother Hilda, is another European immigrant, in her case running from a life that she didn't want to face. But she remembers a figure from her childhood and thinks about how he may be able to help her son. As she reconnects with Siegfried, she also finds that her relationship with her husband, already unravelling, grows even more frayed. 

As Johnny grows up, he grows tired of being the "junior" of his father and reclaims his name as Jack, and finds himself using photography as a type of replacement for his partial loss of vision. It is not until they are teenagers that the young people encounter each other again. But this time, they spend more time with each other and are influenced by each other's experiences. 

This book takes us into the past, dealing with loss and shame and the impulse to forget. But it also looks into the future, with the hope these young people have of starting anew, reinventing themselves and finding new purpose. The book's final scene is a fabulous metaphor for new beginnings. 

Memoir

Finished March 1
Invisible by Hugues de Montalembert
This memoir is short but gripping. The author returned home to his New York City apartment on a summer night in 1978 to find two men robbing him. They turned on him and one threw paint thinner in his face. Within a few hours, he was completely blind. As a painter and a filmmaker, vision was part of his being in a deep way.
Sharing his reactions and experiences, freeflowing at times, Hugues takes back control of his life, and regains his independence in a way others thought foolhardy. He talks about how being blind changed how others reacted to him and interacted with him. He talks about how he began a new life and about how his strong sense of vision allowed him to imagine his surroundings to such a strong degree that he sometimes confused them with real memories of seeing things.
He writes with great insight and absolutely no self-pity as he shares his new sense of himself and his life.
This book kept me reading, except when I had to break for work or driving my car for the whole day, and yet I found myself reading more slowly to savour it.

Musings on Saturday and more books read

I took a book out of the library called The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books. 125 leading American and British authors were asked to provide "a list, ranked, in order, of what you consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time--novels, story collections, plays, or poems." A few also picked some non-fiction works. The books were given points based on their ranking and an overall ranked list was created. The choices of each author are also given, book summaries are included and other short commentaries. I was fascinated and decided I must have my own copy, so have ordered one.

I was also at the OLA conference this week and got the Dewey Divas Spring list and was pleased to see that I'd already identified some of their chosen books as ones I wanted to read. I also got some more to add to an already long list of reads!

Finished February 2nd
Cockeyed by Ryan Knighton
This memoir by a Langley, B.C. man who began going blind in his teens due to a degenerative condition called retinitis pigmentosa. He talks about his experience from before he knew what was happening to him to the present day. It is a fascinating look at the inner thoughts of someone going blind as well as seeing how his interactions with the world change.
This is on the short list for the Evergreen Book Award.

Finished January 29th
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
I listened to this unabridged book on e-audio (my first foray into this format) and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is one of those classics that I always meant to read, but had never got around to actually reading. I can see why it is a classic. It is a book about relationships, with ourselves and with others, and still applicable today. I also enjoyed the format and will definitely use more of these.