The Casual Vacancy (JK Rowling)

It’s JK Rowling, one of the finest young adult authors in the world, writing for adults. What can possibly go wrong?

Quite a bit, it turns out. The New York Times sums it up: "This novel for adults is filled with a variety of people like Harry [Potter]’s aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley: self-absorbed, small-minded, snobbish and judgmental folks, whose stories neither engage nor transport us."

Set in the fictional village of Pagford, The Casual Vacancy refers to a spot on the parish council, made vacant by the death of council member Barry Fairbrother. It chronicles (in detail) the political squabbles exacerbated by Fairbrother’s death and class tensions in Pagford – but it does so with such darkness that there’s no way it can be considered comedic. It’s not Jilly Cooper. Not even Christos Tsiolkas.

To illustrate, there’s suicide, rape, heroin addiction, beatings and racism; there is a sex scene in a cemetery; and there are alarming scenes of domestic abuse. Rich fight with poor, teenagers fight with their parents, wives fight with their husbands, and teachers fight with their pupils...

Granted, the writing is intelligent and the characters finely wrought, but there’s no-one to like. And the plot is, in a word, odd. I didn’t love it. In fact, I was relieved when it was over – not because JK Rowling doesn’t write well, but because this novel depressed the hell out of me.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

The Kingmaker’s Daughter (Philippa Gregory)

In my eyes, Philippa Gregory can do no wrong. She introduced me to historical fiction as a genre (before which I assumed it was all Georgette Hayer) and aroused my fascination with the British royal family. She broadened my literary horizons.

In The Kingmaker’s Daughter, Gregory takes the final step in her Cousins’ War quartet (the others are The Red Queen,The White Queen and The Lady of the Rivers) and introduces the daughters of Richard Neville, formidable Earl of Warwick.

The Earl is ‘the kingmaker’ because he orchestrates events so that only his favourites take the throne. It is little surprise, then, that he pulls the political strings for Anne and Isabel too – not of love for them, but of a thirst for power and control.

England being what it is in the fifteenth century, it’s not long before the Earl makes war on his former friends. And Anne, married off at age fourteen, must face early widowhood, a second marriage, intrigues and conspiracies, and the loss of her mother and sister (one to house arrest and the other to the enemy camp).

The New York Post has described this series as a tale of “royal witches, philanderers and kingslayers” and this novel as “the story of King Richard III's wife, Anne Neville, who went from the marital bed of one royal prince to that of another king-to-be during this long family feud.” I can’t improve much on that summary. This is another goodie.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Tell The Wolves I'm Home (Carol Rivka Brunt)

And... it's live. Have a look at the Women24 Books page for my review of one of my top 2012 reads: Carol Rivka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I'm Home.

I loved this novel, which tells the story of 14-year-old June and her beloved gay (yes, this really is central to the story) Uncle Finn.

If you appreciate beautiful writing, realistic characters and profound messages, add it to your pile. (Also available on Kindle and from kalahari.net)

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

Upcoming reviews: September

Just because I'm a nerd doesn't mean I can't be a kugel.

Hello readers (Mom, Dan - howzit).

Penguin Books has just delivered JK Rowling's latest adult novel, The Casual Vacancy. I can't wait to get stuck in.

On top of that, I'm also about to start reading:

• Funky Business - The Secrets of an Accidental Entrepreneur (Ronnie Apteker, Gus Silber)
• Sweet Tooth (Ian McEwan)
• Spark Your Dream (Candelaria & Herman Zapp)
• Tommy Toad (Joy Sachs)

Chat soon.

Tiffany

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za

The Top Prisoner of C-Max (Wessel Ebersohn)

I’ve said before that I’m not a wild fan of local crime fiction. But Wessel Ebersohn was the writer who converted me, so it’s highly appropriate that I’m reviewing his latest offering. (And, although The Top Prisoner of C-Max is the sequel to Ebersohn’s The October Killings, I’ve not read the latter and I still enjoyed this book thoroughly.)

To begin with, The Top Prisoner of C-Max brings back oddball Jewish psychologist, Yudel Gordon – who fascinated me in Those Who Love Night – and pairs him with talented lawyer Abigail Bukula. There’s also the improbably named Beloved Childe, an American prisons prodigy, and a cast of highly charged, overly politicised, brightly colourful and deeply scary characters in the post-1994 Dept of Correctional Services.

At Pretoria’s high-security prison, C-Max, convicts are now called ‘inmates’ and warders ‘members’, and Yudel is trying to find his professional feet in ‘the new country’. Enslin Kruger, a brutal criminal, is on his last legs and wants to exact revenge on Yudel before he dies, by establishing a prison contest to choose his successor: The first of two men to murder the beautiful Beloved takes the throne.

Twenty-five years before our story begins:

“Yudel did not see the man with the shovel move. He also did not see Masuku fall, but now he was down on his hands and knees. Exactly what had happened, how he had lost his balance, whether or not he had had been pushed or even where the man with the shovel had been standing, had not been clear to Yudel afterwards. All that he remembered with any sort of clarity was that within a moment of Masuku landing on his hands and knees, three picks had been driven into his skull, and power among the prisoners had passed into the hands of Enslin Kruger.”

Despite a contained start within the prison itself, the story is packed with chases, subtle in its violence and authentic in its dialogue. What’s also interesting is that this is the latest of six thrillers featuring Yudel Gordon, the first of which was penned in the 1980s. My, my – how times have changed for the character and his allies.

www.tiffanymarkman.co.za