Black Irish - Stephen Talty - Guest Book Review

Published by Headline Review

Guest book review by Lisa Sargison

Initially the book seemed to move quite slowly, taking its time to introduce the people and events.  There seemed to be an awful lot of words spent on scene setting and helping us to understand just what a detective named Absolom Kearney would want in Buffalo. The writing is good and is, on the whole, an easy read.  There are excellent descriptive passages setting the scene of Buffalo, a city that not many will know well.  However at times the descriptive passages are badly placed in that the story is racing along and Stephan Talty has you gripped to find out where we are heading and he stops to briefly describe a scene.  WHY??? It often adds little to the story, and where it does, it would be better placed at the end.  Our detective, Absolom, spends time reflecting on her past, her future and the events that have led her back to her childhood home in Buffalo.

As to story, I found this to be great.  It was tense, spoilt only by the interspersal of the descriptions already mentioned, and followed a well thought out plot.  There was enough talk about police work to enable you properly understand the right way (and more importantly!) the wrong way of doing things.  Our heroine is a tough girl, who has much to deal with - her own demons never far from the surface and often an unhealthy influence on her decision making - but that is what makes the story interesting and gives the character that likeability factor! There is a lot of Irish/American history and background tied up in the story, with an element of the IRA as well.

I would say that this will be something for readers of the grittier crime novels, as some of the descriptions are somewhat graphic.  I would also say that the best way to read this is in a couple of sittings - I found that my first read of it didn’t do it justice but my second read was far more satisfying and I found that I was able to keep focused on the story better. Since reading this, I have found that the author intends that this is the first in a series of books with the detective Absolom and so perhaps he can be forgiven for including such a large amount of scene setting.

Many thanks to Lisa for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library!

Fever - Mary Beth Keane - Guest review

Mary Mallon was an Irish immigrant to the United States in the latter years of the nineteenth century.  In many ways she was just like so many others who moved from Ireland in search of a better, more prosperous life.  The one difference between Mary and her fellow immigrants was that she was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, the first such healthy carrier to be identified by medical science and therefore a test case for the American authorities in how to treat such a risk to public health.  Working as a cook in a number of private households, Mary passed typhoid on to at least fifty individuals, of whom at least three died.  Once she had been identified by the health department as the common cause Mary was arrested and forcibly isolated at the hospital for communicable diseases on Brother North Island in New York's East River.  All in all she spent nearly three decades of her life there.

Such are the basic facts of the life of the real Mary Mallon, later known as Typhoid Mary, which form the backbone of Mary Beth Keane's novel, Fever.  For anyone even vaguely familiar with Mary Mallon's story the book's plot holds few surprises.  But for Keane the interest in Mary's story lies not in what happened, but in why it happened.  Why did Mary Mallon repeatedly flout the authorities ruling that she shouldn't work as cook, despite the fact that there was clear evidence that by doing so she was putting other people's lives at risk? Why did she risk losing her own liberty by refusing to cooperate with the public health officials, apparently ignoring compelling evidence that she was a typhoid carrier? Fever is Keane's attempt to answer these questions and is essentially a character study of a woman driven by a passion that ultimately doomed her to a sad and lonely existence. 

Mary Beth Keane's portrayal of Mary Mallon's character is presumably almost entirely fictional, but it is a well-rounded and wholly convincing portrait.  Mary is depicted as a strong-willed and independent woman, someone who wants to make her way in the world through working at what she loves best: cooking. Cooking is not only her way of showing affection for people, but more importantly she knows it's something she has a talent for  and showing off her skills makes her feel respected and valued.  When the authorities try to compel her to work as a laundress instead, so that she'll no longer pose a risk to people's health, Mary baulks at the sheer tedium of the job, but what irks her the most is that she sees it as unskilled labour, work that doesn't earn her the respect of others.  We completely understand, then, Mary's longing to return to the work she loves and that fulfills her. But her passion for cooking is her tragic flaw, since it is of course through her cooking that she passes on the typhoid bacilli, and in the end it is her inability to give up cooking that leads to her decades-long incarceration on Brother North Island.  Keane's real skill is in creating a picture of a woman who is not altogether likeable, but with whom we nevertheless sympathise despite her wilful denial of the facts.  We cannot condemn her for what she does, because Mary Mallon isn't wicked, just a flawed woman who, trapped by circumstance, makes bad decisions.  

Apart from Mary, the other key character in the book isn't Alfred, her long-term lover (important though he is in revealing the gentler side of Mary's nature); rather, it's New York City which, in its many facets, is the backdrop to almost all the key scenes in the book, from the tenements where the impoverished immigrants try to scrape a living, to the sweatshops and building sites where they work; from the first skyscrapers of the shiny new city rising from the streets, to the bleak isolation of the quarantine hospital on the inhospitable Brother North Island.  The atmosphere of this rapidly-growing melting-pot of a city at the dawn of a new era pervades the entire book and some of the details - such as the description of the men building the first skyscrapers - are just marvellous.  

All in all, then, Fever is a beautifully detailed portrait of both character and setting, and Mary Beth Keane fleshes out the bones of Mary Mallon's story in such a way that we not only understand but can even empathise with this woman driven by a terrible stroke of fate to make the wrong choices.  From the basic facts of the case it would be all to easy to demonise Mary as either woefully ignorant or selfishly deceitful, but Keane's picture of Mary is far more nuanced.  As a result I found the book to be a fascinating read that made me reassess in a new light what I already knew about Mary Mallon.  Of course we'll never know now exactly what the real Mary's motives were for repeatedly defying the authorities' instructions to her, but I thought Keane's interpretation was compellingly convincing, and quite probably not too far from the truth.  

Published by Simon & Schuster

Reviewed by Penny Tattersall - guest reviewer

Huge thanks to Penny for kindly reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library

Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell

'The very bricks, mortar and plaster of this house are saturated with the lives of her three children. She cannot believe they have gone. And that they are back.'

I should declare that I am a big fan of this author - I loved The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and The Hand that First Held Mine in particular. I chose the former as my first choice for my World Book Night book to distribute in 2012. I was therefore very excited indeed to hear about a new novel coming from Maggie O'Farrell. I've now read Instructions for a Heatwave, and I wasn't at all disappointed. She is such a consistently good writer; I find her novels so incredibly satisfying and rewarding to read. 

Set over four days in July during the very famous red hot summer of 1976, the novel introduces us to Robert Riordan and his wife Gretta. After Robert leaves the house one morning to pop and by a newspaper and doesn't return, his three adult children, Michael, Monica and Aoife, are reluctantly brought back together to help with the search for him and support their mother. They cannot imagine the two of them apart; Michael thinks to himself that 'his father minus his mother is an unsolvable equation.'

Each of them is pulled away from the separate lives they have forged for themselves. We learn that Michael's marriage is in a delicate state, that Aiofe has somehow escaped her family and made a life for herself in the USA coping somehow with the secret that seriously afflicts her ability to live her everyday life, and that Monica has an unhappy existence in a home that doesn't feel like her own with children from her partner's previous relationship who don't offer her much affection.

The author has woven a compelling tale that moves seamlessly between the past and the present throughout and has created characters that are beautiful and likeable each in their own flawed, damaged way. I was drawn into the story immediately and felt I wanted to get to the heart of what was really going on in the minds of each of the three adult siblings.

I felt that I engaged with all of the characters; each one of them is so well drawn and believable, and troubled in their own ways. Aiofe carries with her the memories of her difficulties in childhood, and is trying out experiences in life to try and find her place.  Monica is coping, yet her past actions haunt her and her present isn't bringing her much happiness. Michael is a very well drawn male character who is struggling with his wife's new studies and friends; he feels neglected and can't understand why him sharing his knowledge with her isn't enough.

Gretta is also an intriguing character whose dominating presence is felt throughout the novel; a strong mother who has brought her children up with certain firm ideas that she holds so dear to, yet there is more to this woman, her past is also fascinating; her history is a key thread that gradually unwinds throughout the book. Some of the passages revealing Gretta's thoughts about her home and the children growing up there are so evocative and moving, her memories are so vivid and clear.

I felt as I was reading that I was looking in on real people seen at their most vulnerable. The situations are heightened by the intensity of the heat that summer. The characters and the events kept me gripped, and the author brings the whole together at the end for a very satisfying conclusion.

Maggie O'Farrell demonstrates such a keen insight into human relationships in her writing; she captures the bonds of family and love that are so strong. She illustrates so convincingly the secrets and anxieties that people carry with them from their past into their present and which can tear people apart and damage the closeness they once shared. She also depicts the need we have for others, the fragility of love and of the lives we have constructed for ourselves, and how the past is always in danger of coming and breaking back through into the present.

Altogether this is once again marvellous, insightful storytelling by Maggie O'Farrell. Instructions for a Heatwave is beautifully written throughout and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reading it.   

I think this will please both existing fans of this author and encourage new readers of her works too.

Another lovely to book to look forward to in 2013! 

Reviewed by Lindsay Healy

Published by Tinder Press - a new imprint from Headline - on 28 February 2013

Thanks very much to the publisher for kindly sending me a proof copy to read and give an honest review.