Mortal Love, Peter Lovesey, and The World's Wife - reviews!

I have been remiss at writing on here.  I plead shopping for birthdays and Christmas.  And another trip to the emergency room last week.  All that aside,  I have so many books I want to write about that I've read this year!  I've debated on writing about each book separately, or choosing a character series, or grouping them.  I still can't decide, so meanwhile, here are 4 that I have wanted to write about for the past couple of weeks, all of which I highly recommend and really enjoyed.

Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand.  Remember when I wrote about this book in November, and I was disappointed in it about halfway through?  I am here to say that this is probably the number one reason I don't often blog about a book while reading it - I am often wrong in my assessment, and I am delighted, completely thrilled to say now, I was wrong.  Ok, the beginning of the book is slow, and feels muddled because we are getting viewpoints and stories set in different times.  It all works so very well at the end.  What the book is about, is art, and faerie, and myth, and how when we get a glimpse of the Otherworld, it can shatter us for our daily reality.  It's about how some people spend the rest of their lives trying to capture that moment, that beauty, over and over again.  It's also about how other people find a way to hang on to their sanity, to let the strangeness of the glimpse of the other realm wash over them, and change them so that daily life is enriched, vibrant, and tinged with melancholy because it's not what was glimpsed.  It's about art, and how art changes our perceptions.  And it's brilliant.  I don't want to say who the myth is who is brought to life, because that is part of the mystery and enchantment of this story.  The myth is so well written and brought to life so beautifully that it works.  The reason myths are so powerful is because somewhere deep within us, we know them, we relate to them - this is what gives the myths their power.  It's an archetype we instinctively, deeply in our minds, know without having words to fully explain how and what we know. Mortal Love is about this deeply held knowledge, and how it inspires longing for whoever glimpses the myth.  I highly recommend this book, especially for anyone who enjoys art and wants a glimpse of what it is like to have to write, to paint, to sing, to create.  Once again, here is Nymeth's excellent review which convinced me to try the book.  Thank you, Nymeth!

This leads me to The World's Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy.  This is a collection of poems that take the myths we all know, Greek and Roman and Norse, and give the woman's point of view - the hidden voice, the other, the silent one.  The wife.  The one we never hear about.  What was it like to be married to Aesop?  to Darwin?  to Midas?  to be Penelope, waiting for Odysseus to return - or maybe not. The poems are filled with the voices of real women.  Penelope isn't waiting for Odysseus, pining away - she is enjoying her solitude, and using her cunning in weaving to keep all the suitors away, so she can be alone.  How clever!  and then she hears Odysseus' footsteps and her precious private life is gone.  Mrs Midas is about what it was like after Midas made his wish to turn everything to gold.  Of course he can't touch her, he can't touch anything. She misses the touch of his skin so much.  One of my favourites is Little Red-Cap, which opens this book of poems.  I love how the wolf lures her by holding - what else?  a book of poems.  Poetry.  And how he has a wall of books, and how in the end she becomes free.  It's a true poem, about how knowledge is always the lure, and with enough wits and courage and hunger to know, you can survive the wolf and the woods.  Brilliant.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book of poetry.  It has given me a new way to look at the fairy tales and myths. It  reimagines the world through the eyes of the women who don't explore (or make) the world but who through loving men, and determining if they stay or go in the marriage, find that determination is just as exciting as anything their more famous husbands have done. 

The last book I want to talk about is really an ongoing mystery series by Peter Lovesey,  featuring Peter Diamond.  Last year I reviewed The Last Detective, here.  Now I want to talk about the next two in the series, Diamond Solitaire and The Summons. In Diamond Solitaire, Diamond is on his own.  He quit the force at the end of The Last Detective, and we see him struggle to find his place in the world.  He tries being a Santa Claus, one year!  And it's being a security guard that leads him to find a silent girl asleep in the department store he is guarding.  He is fired as the security guard since he didn't notice her before, and of course it is not as simple as the girl wandering away from her parents.  This little girl is from Japan, and very special. It is delightful to see how protective and caring Diamond is of this abandoned little girl, and when his suspicions are aroused by the people who claim her, he follows them all the way back to Japan.  A very solid second book in the series.  The Summons opens with Diamond depressed because he has not been able to find any permanent work  It's been two years now since he left the force.  Unexpectedly, a summons arrives: a criminal Diamond helped put away, has escaped, and is holding the daughter of the ACC hostage and has asked specifically for Diamond.  The criminal claims he is innocent of the charges.  This is the book about how Diamond discovers he made a mistake, and that he is a policeman through and through.  How he gets his job back, and what he learns while going back over the case and reinvestigating the original crime, makes for a solid mystery with excellent characters and very good dialogue. It's fast-paced and while I spotted who was involved early on,I didn't know for sure, nor why, and I was thrilled when I was right at the end!  which makes for a feeling of being clever (and a really good mystery writer makes the reader feel clever, I find).  I really like this series.  This has to be one of my favourite discoveries in the past year, and I thank Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise for reviewing the 10th book in the series - Skeleton Hill - last year and pointing me to this character. I also find it hard to resist a series that uses the real life author Jane Austen as a sort of ongoing backdrop to the series.  In The Summons, it is one of Jane's supposed houses that she lived in while in Bath, that plays a part in the book. 

If you have reviewed any of these, let me know and I will link to them.

I hope you are ready for Christmas, and enjoying the season.  We are planning a games party for the children on Saturday, as a way to give them something to do and share in the excitement leading up to the holidays.  As it's my daughter's 9th birthday on Christmas Eve, the tension excitement around here is so high in the final weeks to her birthday that this is when we build our gingerbread houses and try to keep them busy.  We don't have any snow yet, so there is no playing outside and making snowmen. I am enjoying the lack of snow, utterly content to not see any this winter, while my knee continues to heal. No snow means no slippery patches.......no hats, and no boots either!  I could get used to this!

Happy reading moments for you, my Gentle Reader, in the build-up to the big day.

Guardian of the Dead - Karen Healey - the most amazing myth journey

Well, I have Chris from Stuff As Dreams are Made Of to thank for his comment he left on my previous post.  He'd been looking to read Guardian of the Dead, so I pulled it from my towering " it's not so big if you put it into smaller piles" stack of library books today.  It's seven hours later, and in between making meals and doing  the housework, I read this book today.  Trust me, you won't want to put it down.  It's unbelievably fantastic and good.  I love this book.  I think it's safe to say it's one of my books of the year.

The book is about Ellie Spencer, a 17 year old girl attending boarding school on the South Island of New Zealand while her parents go around the world on a cruise.  It's not what you think, because her mother has just survived her treatment for breast cancer, and they are doing this in celebration.  Ellie has to finish school, and she chose Mansfield because it is on South Island, far from her home on the North Island; she couldn't go live with her sister in Sydney because her sister is gay and her parents don't want her lifestyle to rub off on Ellie.  Very normal, nothing unusual in that.  She thinks she is a normal 17 year old girl, and that is part of the delight of this novel:  all her reactions are, from her dislike of her body to her crush on the loner Mark, to her best friend Kevin who is hiding a secret, to the descriptions of the world around her, are satisfyingly real and prosaic.  And then she bumps into Mark by accident, and everything changes.  It's not what you think, though it is that too:  Mark is not what he seems to be, and in touching her, he awakens a latent talent in her for seeing the magic things around her.  She discovers she can use magical items, too. 

If the book just contained that story, it would be a good solid fantasy novel.  It contains much more though, and this is where it hums and sings like the best novels do.  Healey has woven New Zealand's myths into this story, so we meet some gods and goddesses, and other spirits, the guardians of places, hence the name of the book.  What is even more wonderful than having Maori myths brought to life, is that New Zealand, like any continent settled first by the First People (Aboriginals, we white people name them), and then by white settlers, so there is a mixing of peoples, languages and myths now.  Guardian of the Dead is about the ancient New Zealand myths stirring, but it's seen through the eyes of a non-aboriginal girl who loves the Classics.  So we get a fabulous mix of Classical mythology with Maori mythology.  It's magic.  Every magical form we meet, every old creature, the Guardian of the Dead herself - are believable and true and awesome. 

This is a story about discovery:  Ellie discovers who she is and what she can do.  She discovers love, she discovers friends and friendship.  She is betrayed, over and over, and stumbles along with only her determination and faithfulness to guide her.  I liked Ellie, and I wanted to be Ellie.  I liked her that much.  She discovers magic.  She discovers that the world isn't about her.  She discovers how to control people, and how it makes her feel.  She discovers myths are real. Her friends are interesting, and she is practical, down to earth, partly because her mother did have cancer, and Ellie spent a lot of her time helping her mother when she could.  She makes the story work because she is just a 17 year old girl who mostly wants to be loved.

The journey in to myth is fraught with peril, and it is dangerous to meet myths themselves;  humans are never the same afterward.  So it is for Ellie, and Mark, as they learn the surviving putapaiarehe are trying to regain the immortality they once had long ago, and join in the attempt to stop them, for it means the destruction of the North Island all together if the ancient creatures succeed. 

This is one of my favourite moments in the book, when Ellie is in danger from Mark's mother, Reka, who is a Maori fairy, or patupaiarehe, but really she is a species that is not human:

I wasn't moving. My feet were rooted as Reka's song rose.  Numbed, I heard my fate in her voice - not death, but the long, wooden life of tree and bush, sleeping away winters and rising in the spring to thrust mindless to the sun.  I might live a century or more until the rot claimed me, and never remember that I had once been a girl, with limbs instead of branches, who had fought, and run, and kissed.
   Anger faded into placid acceptance as her voice sang out the final phrase and hung, questioning, on the last word. 
    I began to sigh my consent.

One of the myths I like is the story of Daphne and Apollo, which this little scene reminded me of very much.  How did Daphne feel, when she turned from Apollo's advances, and her father rescues her by turning her into a tree?  Much like how Ellie feels as Reska enchants her, I imagine.  However Ellie is not fleeing from a boy, and she chooses to stay alive as a girl, before she is saved.  This book is about empowerment too, for women, with several very strong female characters like Ellie, to Iris her new friend who is running the school play, to Ellie's teacher Miss Lagribaldi, to the Guardian of the Dead, to Mark's mother who is a dark enchantress.  They are all powerful in their way, and for me, I found fascinating and energizing. It's not myths for women, it's women who happen to be powerful encountering and working with or within myths, becoming guardians of secrets.  It's a fascinating glimpse into myths that are real because we believe.  It really is an extraordinary novel.

  The Guardian of the Dead is a marvelous journey to a mythic world.  I can't recommend this book highly enough.  5/5.