Another City, Not My Own by Dominic Dunne

I will start this review by disclosing that, in my opinion, Dominic Dunne could do no wrong.  Every month, when I open my new Vanity Fair, I still regret that there is no longer a Dominic Dunne column to savour.

Dunne's recurring character (alter-ego?), Gus Bailey is sitting in a Los Angeles courtroom covering the trial of O.J.Simpson by day.  By night he is being wined and dined by L.A.'s power players eager to hear every detail of the trial. Although this book is fictionalized, real names and occurrences are used.  Based on the views in Dunne's columns I would have to say that this book is only veiled with the most transparent covering of 'fiction'.

 During the trial I was astounded that people actually could make themselves believe that this horrible murderer was innocent.   I could hardly believe that Johnnie Cochrane was able to pull off such a side-show looking at the case through the lens of race rather than as a terrible murder of two innocent people.  Like almost everyone in North America, the Simpson murder trial was part of my daily life.  When it became clear that Simpson would most likely be acquitted I felt disgust that I thought was generally shared by all.  WRONG.  I had been at my job for a number of years working well with my colleagues and enjoying their company in my home as well as enjoying pleasant evenings in theirs.  When the verdict came in, one of my friends shook her fist in my face and yelled 'That will teach you!".   ...okay...

Anyway - the book offers a fascinating glimpse into the courtroom of 'The Trial of the Decade'.  Dunne paints comprehensive portraits of all the major players - as only someone who has spent every minute in the courtroom can do.  Because the book is fiction, he was able to paint emotion and feelings on to the characters who became so familiar to us all.  If you haven't had enough of 'OJ', read this book.  If you have convinced yourself of his innocence, give it a miss.

THE TAILOR KING: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ANABAPTIST KINGDOM OF MUNSTER... by Anthony Arthur

Many of us would think that David Koresh, Jim Jones or Charles Manson are modern phenomenons. Think again.  Jan van Leiden considered himself a man chosen by G-d to usher in a glorious new age of peace and godliness across Europe. Jan was an Anabaptist - one of the sects that sprouted like weeds once the Catholic Church was splintered by the Reformation. His people believed that one could only come to the Kingdom of Heaven by willingly being baptized as an adult. They also believed in some fairly-forward thinking ideas such as pacifism, freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state - ideas that could get you killed in the early 1530s. 

Jan, from the Dutch city of Leiden, came to Münster in 1533. He had heard that the city was friendly to Anabaptists and that he'd be able to make something of himself amongst a group of fellow believers. He heard correctly.

Within months of his arrival, Jan, along with a few of his Anabaptist followers, had seized control of the city, kicking out the city's council and stacking it with fellow believers. They achieved this mostly by running around the streets in a state of half-dressed religious zeal, singing about the End of Days and the glories that awaited G-d's chosen ones. Amazingly, this worked - you have to remember that this was an age of intense religious strife and hysteria. Anyone promising a little peace and prosperity far from the blood and muck of this world was considered worth hearing out.

Unfortunately, power began to go to their heads. The 'rules' began to get a little crazy. Capital punishment without a trial started to be the order of the day. The medieval version of the ATF stepped in, surrounded the city and prepared to starve the people into submission. Eventually, some were brave enough to escape Munster and help the local Bishop storm the city and regain control.

Jan and two of his most loyal cronies were arrested and eventually executed in a most painful, slow and torturous manner. Their bodies were put on display in three cages hung from the church steeple as a 'warning' to anyone else who might try to rock the boat. If you visit the city of Munster today, you will still see the cages hanging there.

This is a fascinating book and I would highly recommend it to any history buff. 

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN

What a terrific book! I'm not normally into YA fantasy fiction, but I found the cover picture and the pictures inside so intriguing that I bought the book immediately. I guess I must have been living under a rock. I had never even heard of the series (yes, it is a series) and it is about to be released as a motion picture (by Tim Burton - the absolute right choice for this book!).

Jacob's grandfather was sent into hiding to escape the Nazi's in 1940 - the only one of his family members to survive. After moving to America and starting his own family, he told Jacob fantastic stories of his youth - stories of mansions, children with peculiar abilities, headmistresses who could become birds, monsters and time loops. As Jacob became older, he filed these stories under 'fairy tales'. But are they? When Jacob's grandfather meets a gruesome death, he leaves instructions for Jacob to find his childhood home and friends.

This book is excellent. Ransom Riggs is a collector of vintage, creepy pictures and used many of them to help tell his story. There is just the right mix of suspense, adventure, family drama. Although the book is advertised as a YA, it easily translates into Adult literature. It held my interest right until the final page and me me eager to begin the next book in the series. 

HARRY POTTER and the CURSED CHILD, parts one and two

I looked forward to reading this book and I was not disappointed.  The story picks up 19 years after the last one.  Harry and Ginny are married with a family.  Their middle child is ready to go to his first year at Hogwarts where he develops a firm and loyal friendship with the son of Draco Malfoy.  Albus and Scorpius feel they must 'right a wrong'.  To accomplish this they are able to steal a prototype of a Time Turner and go back to when the wrong occurred.  Unfortunately things are only made worse and it takes the combined powers of our old favourites and the new characters to restore harmony to the wizarding world.  I'm reluctant to give more away - read it!

The book is actually the script for the play that opened in London's West End this summer.  This format seems to be the main reason for the large amount of criticism it has received.  As a script, it lacks the beautiful descriptive writing of the books.  There are no paragraphs setting the scene.  We are not taken into the thoughts of the characters.  There are no gorgeous visuals that the movies offered (I'll truly never forget Harry's first glimpse of Hogwarts).  There is only the spoken word.  However, after seven other books, surely we can use our imaginations!

I thought the story was terrific and would definitely recommend it to any Harry Potter fan.

HELLGOING

The 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner was a bit of a mystery to me as I was reading it.  In fact, at first I wasn't even sure why Lynn Coady chose the name 'Hellgoing' for her collection of short stories.  As I read on, however, I realized that each story had characters who were going through their own personal hell - the horrors of high school, the self-loathing of anorexia, alcoholism and obesity, the shame of teenage pregnancy, a honeymoon that is disappointing – perhaps a situation that would seem trivial to anyone except the character going through it - perhaps a situation that lasts only a day or two and is then forgotten.  Often the characters are nothing short of unsympathetic.  Frequently their stories are unresolved.

Still, in the end I found the book compelling and find myself still thinking about it.  Definitely worth re-reading.

MIDWIVES: A NOVEL by CHRIS BOHJALIAN

The “Swiss Cheese Model” of system failure states that every step in a process has the potential for failure, to varying degrees. The ideal system is analogous to a stack of slices of Swiss cheese. Consider the holes to be opportunities for a process to fail, and each of the slices as “defensive layers” in the process. An error may allow a problem to pass through a hole in one layer, but in the next layer the holes are in different places, and the problem should be caught. Each layer is a defence against potential error impacting the outcome. For a catastrophic error to occur, the holes need to align in each step of the process allowing all defences to be defeated and resulting in an error. Each slice of cheese is an opportunity to stop an error. The more defences you put up, the fewer the holes and the smaller the holes, the more likely you are to catch/stop errors that may occur.

In 'Midwives', the layers were lined up with all the 'holes' in a row and Sybil Danforth, a lay midwife in rural Vermont in the early '80's finds herself on trial for manslaughter.

This book refers to Sybil's personal diaries at the beginning of each chapter, but the story is told by her 14 year old daughter, Connie who provides her perspective on the trial, her mother's midwifery practice and the complex family relationships that are tested during a time of high stress. I first read this book almost twenty years ago and I remembering liking it. When I came across it again recently, I decided to give it another read and had forgotten how much I had liked it. This one will stay on my bookshelf.

Before my retirement, I was lucky enough to work for many years as a labour and delivery nurse - really - the best job ever!  I could really relate to this book.  Sometimes, despite your best efforts things don't go perfectly and in this day and age, it has to be somebody's fault.  My heart went out to Sybil.

THE PRINCES OF IRELAND: THE DUBLIN SAGA

I have read most of Edward Rutherfurd's novels and, on the whole, quite like his work. Unfortunately, one has to be the least favourite and this one wins the prize. I hate to use this word when describing books but it was 'tedious'. The Princes of Ireland follows the author's tried and true formula of taking a location and following it's growth and change throughout many centuries - in this case the city of Dublin, Ireland from the time of the Druids to the 1500's. Generally the story is told through the eyes and actions of a number of families throughout the generations.

Princes of Ireland felt like one endless description of minor, sometimes petty, battles from beginning to end. The people were never fleshed out enough for me to really care about them and, as a result this book never really captured my attention. I did stick it out to the end though - all 1280 pages of it because I have enjoyed so many other books by this author.

If you have never read anything by Edward Rutherfurd, I wouldn't want to spoil that experience for you - try his excellent 'Sarum' or 'London' instead.

    

THE MARRIAGE OF OPPOSITES

Alice Hoffman is a tremendously popular writer of historical fiction.  I first read her book The Dovekeepers and enjoyed it - so I opened this one expecting more of the same.  The Marriage of Opposites is the story of Rachel Pomie Petit Pissaro - a young Jewish woman from the island of St. Thomas.  As a young teenaged girl, in order to save the family business, she is bartered away into marriage with a much older widower who has three children of his own.  She comes to respect her husband and love his children.  When he passes away suddenly, Rachel falls in love with his nephew who comes from Paris to take over the running of the business.  Although their love is considered scandalous (she being his aunt by marriage) they marry and have several children - one of whom is Camille Pissaro, considered to be the Father of Impressionism and one of France's greatest artists.  I wish I had known this in the beginning of the book.  I just didn't put 2 and 2 together.

Rachel Pissaro's story is an interesting one.  It is told from a number of different perspectives - her own, her husband's, her dearest friend's and her son's.  Unfortunately, the two books I read just before this one were extraordinarily well written and, as a result, this one suffers a bit for me in comparison.  Hoffman's sentences are very wordy (she loves the comma) and sometimes I had to reread a paragraph to be sure who I was reading about.

While I enjoyed this book well enough, it probably won't find a permanent place on my bookshelf.