The Bomber - Liza Marklund

This novel is set in Stockholm and the plot centres around newly promoted chief crime reporter Annika Bengtzon, working at the Evening Post newspaper, who hits upon a massive story. In the fictional events of the novel, Sweden is due to be hosting the next Olympic Games, and there has been a large explosion at the main Victoria Stadium. Annika is straight into finding the facts underneath all the talk about the explosion, wanting the best story and the best picture, first. She has recently been made head of the crime team at the newspaper, and is worrying about being a boss, and dealing with the team around her, some ace reporters working with her, and some other male journalists who refuse to accept her as their chief. Additionally, now that such a big story has broken, she is working a lot of extra hours and seeing little of her husband Thomas and children Kalle and Ellen. Using her sources and her skill and eye for a story and a good picture, Annika finds out who the victim of the bomb blast was, and begins to piece together the truth.  Then a second blast occurs, and the investigation is on as to the link with the first. When a further, third event happens, it becomes a personal attack which leaves everyone at the Evening Post deep in shock.

I found this an exciting, pacy read with a gripping storyline, and intriguing personality clashes between the journalists and editors at the newspaper. I liked the exploration of these conflicts. I also enjoyed the tension towards the end of the novel and the dramatic closing chapters. It's interesting reading about the views of the print journalists, and their opinions of the radio and tv reporting on the same incidents. Also how the newspaper tries to be first with the exclusive stories and increase their circulation figures, but without resorting to the sordid or excessively personal details about the people involved. The author also intelligently deals with the demands of modern working life and children and overcoming prejudices in the workplace for women. It did put me in mind a little of Stieg Larsson's novels with Annika being an intelligent journalist and some of the issues regarding women. I will definitely be reading more of Liza Marklund's novels featuring Annika Bengtzon. Great, compelling read.

This is the fourth and final reading choice of mine as part of the Transworld Book Group Reading Challenge 2011. I have read four different and very interesting titles as part of this challenge and have been very glad to have taken part.

The Secrets Between Us - Louise Douglas

Sarah has suffered a devastating double blow in her personal life, and has temporarily escaped from her painful loss to Sicily with her sister May and her sister’s husband Neil. There she meets handsome Alexander and his young son Jamie one day by the hotel pool, then on two more occasions, and suddenly Sarah is falling deep into something that will change her life. She leaves everything she knows behind, her life in Manchester, her friends and family, and moves to live in Somerset with Alexander and Jamie as a nanny and housekeeper. A new start, where no one knows her. But this is no straightforward new life leading to romance; this is not what she thought it would be like. Instead, Sarah finds herself right at the centre of a family torn apart by anxiety at the mysterious absence of beautiful, talented Genevieve, Jamie’s mother and Alexander’s wife.

Rich in description of the setting and surroundings, and with a mysterious air throughout, this is such a compulsive novel, with very short chapters of the kind that make you think ‘oh just one more before I put it down!’ Though the original premise was surprising to me, that Sarah would just up and leave her supportive family having met this man so briefly, when she was in an unsettled emotional state, I did get drawn into the storyline and intrigued as to the outcome. I did marvel at how much Sarah trusted Alexander despite him seemingly sharing so little of his past with her. This adds to the intrigue of the storyline. The pace really picked up in the second half of the book as the investigation intensified and the author built towards an exciting ending.

At the end of the book, the author mentions in her notes that she was influenced by some themes from the classic gothic novels she loves, such as ‘Rebecca’, and certainly I noticed echoes of ‘Wuthering Heights’ with the eerie tapping at the window of the trees during a storm at Avalon, the house Sarah inhabits with Alexander and Jamie, and the mysterious supernatural hints at a presence within the house calling to Sarah. She also captures the sense of isolation Sarah feels, at being in a small village where there is a tight community and she is the unwelcome outsider who people are suspicious of. The old houses, abandoned barns, the old disused quarry, all add to the atmospheric portrayal of this place.

I read and reviewed this novel as part of the Transworld Book Group Reading Challenge. Thank you to them for providing the novel and for the opportunity to be part of this. The book was provided free and my review is my own honest opinion.

4/5

The Obscure Logic of the Heart - Priya Basil

Anil and Lina meet at University in London. He feels an immediate and strong attraction to her, and enlists his friends to help him meet her. His family lives in Kenya and is Sikh, and her family lives in Birmingham and are Muslim. He has enjoyed a life of having it all, wanting for nothing. His wealthy parents’ home in Kenya is referred to as a palace. Lina’s family home is much more modest. As their relationship develops, Anil introduces Lina to his world, to the art he admires, and she learns from him. He is unhappy whenever he is not with her and tries to drive the relationship forward. Lina feels she has to keep the relationship hidden from her parents, and becomes embroiled in lying to them in order to continue to see Anil. We follow Anil and Lina as life moves on for them after University, with Anil embarking on his career as an architect in Kenya, and Lina persuing her work with the UN in Sudan. At the heart of this epic novel is their relationship. What will happen, how strong is their love; can it overcome obstacles that appear insurmountable? Interspersed amongst the main narrative are some emotional letters from the 1960’s detailing the end of a relationship; we do not know who has written them, or to whom they are addressed, until much nearer the end of the novel.

I found this an enjoyable, intelligent and moving read. I found some of the other characters, such as Anil’s mother Minnie, were well drawn and easy to imagine in my mind’s eye. I would recommend this for anyone interested in reading about a somewhat unusual romance where differences in religion and ideals, pressures from parents and their beliefs, all conspire to create a weighty internal conflict. Dealing with religion, illegal arms dealing, aid work in refugee camps, this is a lengthy novel, and an epic in the amount of ground it covers. The author successfully integrates many aspects into the storyline, with the tumultuous love between Lina and Anil the one constant running throughout, but the novel is much more than just a love story. A talented writer, I will look out for her other work.

I read and reviewed this novel as part of the Transworld Book Group Reading Challenge. Thank you for the opportunity. 

The Sandalwood Tree - Elle Newmark

I have read and reviewed this novel as part of the Transworld Book Group Reading Challenge.

This is a beautifully written, enjoyable to read, dual timeframe novel. In 1947, Evie  travelled from Chicago to India with her historian husband Martin and young five year old son Billy. Martin is on a Fulbright scholarship to study the last days of the British rule in the region. Their marriage is on rocky ground since Martin returned from serving in WWII a changed, quieter man, and Evie hopes things may improve for them once they are in India, and that he may open up and share the dreadful wartime experiences that he evidently keeps locked within. Hidden in their cottage, Evie discovers the remains of some letters between two English women, dating from just under a hundred years previously, who themselves were occupants of this cottage in Masoorla.

So begins the other half of the story, featuring Felicity Chadwick and Adela Winfield, set in the 1840s and 1850s. We learn, through remnants of letters, and journal entries made by Adela and found by Evie, what happened when these two Victorian women met as young girls in England, formed an incredibly close bond, and found themselves both together again in India, looking to live their lives unconventionally, with joy and adventure. Evie becomes entranced by the mystery of these two women from the past, who, like her, traveled to India and experienced the unfamiliar culture. She looks into their story, as she finds further clues and the tale unfolds, as a distraction from her troubled relationship with her husband. The stories that Evie uncovers from the past enlighten her as to what really counts in the present.

I really enjoyed this lovely read, with a well-developed and cleverly intertwined storyline. It has such a strong sense of place and is rich with period detail evoking the vibrant, varied colours, spicy foods, diverse smells, intense heat, terrible poverty and suffering, inequality, and the many ways of life in India as these incomers experienced it then. Whilst reading I myself felt as if I was immersed in the place and I was engrossed in the tale throughout. I was very interested to learn aspects of India’s, and the regions’ past through the eyes of these characters, in particular Evie, whose first-person accounts bring us close to her everyday experiences. The author captures the country at a time of unrest and change, with Partition on the horizon, and many millions of people with an unsettled, uncertain future. I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next in both parts of the story. It is a vibrant novel, which contains mystery, tells of love and passion that is against the accepted norm of the times, of despair and hope in a relationship that has faltered and needs repair, and introduces the reader to a wonderful and vivid landscape. I could imagine fans of Kate Morton’s novels, amongst many other readers, very much enjoying this book.

At the end of the novel, there is an insightful interview with the author, who details her research and trips to India, and it is evident that she put a lot of effort into authenticating her story. I was sad to learn that the author has recently passed away, a talent lost, but this marvelous novel will endure. The words she wrote and attributed to Adela in the novel are so true for her too, that ‘death steals everything but our stories.’

Transworld Book Group Reading Challenge

‘I’m part of the Transworld Book Group!’


Thank you to a fellow forum user on Read It Swap It for telling us about this.


A new reading challenge I am hoping to be involved in. More soon!


Click the link below to find out more.


http://www.between-the-lines.co.uk/?m=201107


I have now received my first book for the challenge - The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark.