Clowns at Midnight by Terry Dowling. Very Australian. Very intriguing. Here’s a bit of blurb from the publisher’s website:
Clowns at Midnight is a powerful and spellbinding tale of fear and wonder, of unexpected transformations and genuine redemption. David’s discoveries in this almost overlooked corner of rural Australia lead him full-square into both the universal mystery at the forgotten heart of Western civilisation and the deepest, darkest secrets of the human condition.
one of those books you think about even when you’re NOT reading it.
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I’m not one for complicated reviews but of Connie Willis’s Blackout, I have this to offer: Now and then a novel comes along that is so damn engaging and exciting, it reduces reality to a niggling irritation serving no purpose other than to obstruct quality reading time. I clearly recall feeling the same way when reading Passage nine years ago. The terrible feelings of disappointment upon reaching the end of the book. Not because it sucked, but because I would no longer be spending my time with those characters, each of whom had become as real as the people populating my own life. Even more so, some of them.
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Just finished reading The Limits of Enchantment by Graham Joyce, a book I grabbed off the shelf last Monday as I headed out the door to spend a couple of hours on public transport. I needed a book guaranteed to be engaging and Joyce is one of those rare creatures — an author who never disappoints. Not ever. Not once. No matter how uninterested I may be in his subject matter, he always manages to charm and win me over. This one even made me tear up in a couple of places.
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If you’re into books as artifacts, you really can’t go past this one. Small and pink, it’s like a treasure washed up by the ocean, tangled amidst shells, seaweed and driftwood, carried onto land by a moonlit tide. The size of the book was what encouraged me to select it for last week’s train travel reading. I go to the gym before work so am always lugging a bag of clothing with me, meaning I tend to choose physically smaller books if I can help it. I’d read two of the stories before — I published one of them in Agog! Terrific Tales. All but one of Marianne’s Glitter Rose stories are set on the fantastical Carmine Island, a place infected by mysterious spores which alter people in sinister ways.
My one criticism of the book is that I’d have liked it to be a novel. I wanted to spend more time with these people.
Glitter Rose is published by Twelfth Planet Press. You can buy it here.
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As I may have mentioned in earlier posts, I really dug Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. If you haven’t yet read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, here’s a tip: the first 50 pages or so are boring as batshit. After that, it’s all sex, violence and wacky Swedish intrigue, complete with Ikea sequences and the most uneventful prison scenes in literary history.
I thought I’d follow up with a David Baldacci thriller The Whole Truth, seeing as two people recommended him to me. This book is truly and totally gobsmackingly awful. It reads like a parody of a watered down version of a novelisation of a movie. I simply can’t believe a word of it, from the ‘super-rich arms dealer’ Nicholas Creel’s ability to manipulate world politics via a few viral you tube clips and thus start a war, to the action hero Shaw himself, tough as nails, eats bullets for breakfast, etc etc… yawn. I won’t even bother mentioning the cardboard cutout female characters cos they’re so often a given in these things. But compare and contrast with Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher novels. They too are written to a formula but it’s one that works for me. Why? I think a big part of it comes from how much hardcore research is evident in the books. Reacher himself might be a bit of a stereotype, but the entire supporting cast is always utterly credible. Details, details, details… Baldacci’s bad guys don’t seem to know much more about the machinations of international politics and policing than I can fabricate myself from newspaper headlines and a lifelong devotion to Bond movies and le Carre novels. The back blurb of The Whole Truth ends with a Daily Mirror quote: "David Baldacci is the consummate secret service insider." Oh no he fucking isn’t. He tells rather than shows for entire (albeit mercifully short) chapters. Farewell, stupid book, you’re going back to the bottom shelf of my gym’s book swap where you belong…
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