FIRST THOUGHTS
AS usual with Jane Smiley, there’s a lot more going on here than might be expected from the central theme of an American marriage spanning the break from the 19th century to the 20th. Smiley likes to take the long view, and this is, if you like, a coming-of-age novel in which Margaret, married to a brilliant but increasingly obsessive man, grows up as a wife and as a woman.
Andrew is an astronomer but the oddities of his behaviour eventually declare themselves as full-blown mania.
Blessed with a mother who believed that romance was always the first act of a tragedy, Margaret begins to find her way as a private person through public events, gradually discovering the power to simply resist. In a way this discovery and the long wait for its appearance is the tension in the story, for Margaret has been true to what she understands as the obligation of marriage.
She has become her husband’s amenuensis until at long last she tells him that he had better learn to type. Yet Smiley draws her with conviction; the narrative is compelling in its depiction of a woman who realises, too late, how daring she might have been and should have been. Smiley has written an absorbing novel of meaning and memory.
Kathryn Bonella
Quercus €12.99, eBook (price unavailable)
IN 2005, 27 year-old Schapelle Corby was sentenced to 20 years in an Indonesian prison for smuggling 4.2kg of marijuana into Bali.
Despite her unwavering pleas of innocence, the beautician from Australia’s Gold Coast, is serving out her time in the notorious Kerobokan prison, where she will remain until 2024.
Kathryn Bonella, an Australian journalist living in London, moved to Bali in 2005 to research and write Corby’s autobiography, which became a bestseller. While she was there, she came into contact with a host of other tragic inmates who spend miserable lives in the rat-infested “Hotel K”.
In her follow up book, Bonella tells these stories and that of the prison where hanging, murders, corruption, paid-for sex and widespread drug abuse are everyday.
A fascinating insight into the prison, Hotel K includes shocking testimonies and black humour.
Colin Cotterill
Quercus, £16.99, Kindle unavailable
St Mary Mead, Badger’s Drift, rural Botswana ... as every reader of crime novels knows, even the sleepiest of backwaters can hide a hotbed of criminal activity.
So, when crime reporter Jimm Juree’s posting to a small fishing village on the coast of Thailand turns from snoresville to goresville, no one except the protagonist is remotely surprised.
Two skeletons are found on a rusty bus buried in the ground, then someone else dies, the plot thickens and all is not what it seems.
CWA Dagger-winner Colin Cotterill’s pacey plot and exotic setting, laced with gentle humour, are an enjoyable cocktail, served up with a side of sass by Juree, who — like a cross between Sam Spade and Precious Ramotswe — manages to be cynical, wise, spunky and knowing all at once. (PA)
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