'Deadlocked' by Charlaine Harris

I read 'Deadlocked' by Charlaine Harris, the penultimate book in the Sookie Stackhouse series, on which the crazy-and-great TV show 'True Blood' is based, on holiday last month, around the time when it was announced that the 13th and final installment, 'Dead Ever After', will be published next May.

I've read all of these books now, having devoured the first few after the first series of the show aired in the UK (I blogged about the book series for the first time last May) and caught up with the rest since. I've generally loved the sexy, witty satire on which these books are based, and I think Sookie, the protagonist and narrator, is a stand-out voice amongst all of the books I've read over the last few years. 

The premise of this particular one is that Sookie goes to Eric's, her vampire boyfriend, house,  and finds him feeding on a girl who is then found dead on his front lawn. However bad this looks to her, the circumstances are all a bit fishy, so she tries to get to the bottom of it whilst also dealing with her fae family and various other things. She still has the cluviel dor in her possession, which is a rare and desirable faery protection object, so inevitably this puts her in the firing line too, although the body count is much lower for this book than for others in the series.

"Mr Northman?" she said, her hand dropping to her side like a stone. "I'm Detective Cara Ambroselli."
"Detective Ambroselli, you seem to know who I am already. This is my dearest one, Sookie Stackhouse."
"Is there really a dead person on the lawn?" I asked. "Who is she?" I didn't have to make up the curiosity and anxiety in my voice. I really, really wanted to know.
"We were hoping you could help us with that," the detective said. "We're pretty sure the dead woman was leaving your house Mr. Northman."
"Why do you think so? You're sure it was this house?" Eric said.
"Vampire bites on her neck, party clothes, your front yard. Yeah, we're pretty sure," Ambroselli said drily. "If you could just step over here, keeping your feet on the stepping-stones..."

However....this book is not Charlaine Harris' best. It must be so tricky writing the 12th book of a 13th book series, with some many loose-ends to tie and characters to reconcile, whilst giving this book and individual plotline that hypes up the 13th book sufficiently to be a fitting climax to the series. It must be a bit of a nightmare for her. The trouble is, it's starting to show.

It's not so much that this book is bad: it's very easy to read and I raced through it, always wanting to read one more chapter, and I still like Sookie's voice and personality. The problem is that it feels like Harris has run out of steam, and this book feels kind of flat and lifeless compared to others in the series. We hear a lot of the day-to-day admin of Sookie's life, which obviously isn't as exciting as when she's battling deranged werewolves, and a lot of the main characters don't actually feature; if they do, they're usually in peripheral roles that don't make the most of them or adequately express their relationships with Sookie or each other. Eric is oft mentioned but rarely seen after the actual incident, Bill has become nothingy and the fae are featured but awkwardly, I felt, and in a way that forces them centre stage when I'm not sure that's the place for them. Also, there's a big fat occurrence at the climax of the book which clearly pinpoints the way things are going to end, and it all feels a bit forced. 

It's a filler book, basically, leading us to the end of the series. Not the best, but still a good holiday read.

Title: Deadlocked: A True Blood Novel

Author: Charlaine Harris

Publisher: Gollancz 

Date: May 2012

Format: Hardback, 327 pages, and I bought it.

  





The Great Gatsby: The Trailer

Is everyone else as excited about this film as I am?

I'm intrigued by the casting - Tobey Maguire seems just about right as Nick Carraway, but in my head Gatsby was taller, thinner and more angular than Leonardo Dicaprio, with a slightly more haunted air. 

Also, isn't it so funny how Daisy is always blonde in adaptations, when in the book her hair is dark? Maybe it's her personality rather than her follicles to which they are referring. I like Carey Mulligan a lot, so big hopes for her, and the girl with the short dark hair who I presume is Jordan Baker seems suitably clipped and implacable. I also love Baz Luhrmann - his 'Romeo & Juliet' is still SO exhilarating - so fingers crossed that this film is equal to the challenge.

Has anyone seen any of the previous adaptations?








The Millions and Kevin Barry

At the end of last month, The Millions published an article entitled The Mad Music of Kevin Barry, which is a loving soliloquy to the wonder that is Kevin Barry's prose.

I thought I'd post it here as 'City of Bohane' is one of the best books I've read in recent times, and certainly one of the most unique, and was recently nominated for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year, although unfortunately it didn't win. 

Also, at last look, I was one of only two commentees on The Millions piece.

You can read my original review of 'City of Bohane' here.







In My Mailbox: Holiday Edition

Hello all, and apologies for my prolonged absence, aside from my little pop-up appearances on 12 Books 12 Months, which I'd like to thank Ali for again. Things have been a littllleee stressful, shall we say, and unfortunately all interest of sitting at my computer after hours just fell away into the ether, and all I wanted to do with my downtime was watch Mad Men and read books completely unaccountably in the darling little cafe that opened up a month or two ago just down the road from my flat. It was a little scary, after angling all my efforts towards the words on my computer screen an' all, but I think I'm over the worst of it now, which is no bad thing because, at the last count, I have eight books hanging around for review (!) and perhaps need to get them done before I forget the main plot points and the protagonist's name.

Anyway, I thought I'd make a start with an In My Mailbox post, hosted as ever by The Story Siren, detailing the books I devoured on a blissful stress-bursting holiday to Croatia, from whence I returned yesterday. Reviews of all to follow the inevitably epic Union Jack-waving, bunting-laced, Coronation chicken-flavoured Jubilee weekend which starts tomorrow in the UK. Yay for the Queen! And now to the books:

 I picked up 'Eugenie Grandet' by Honore de Balzac at my local library quite impulsively whilst looking for Croatian travel guides in the week before I was off on my hols. This is a book that I've been meaning to read for about a year now, after hearing Rose Tremain endorse it as 'the book she'd most like to pass onto the next generation' at the Vintage Classics Day at Foyle's on Charing Cross Rd back in May last year. Apparently, she's also done the TV adaptation for this book, which is currently in development with Lime Pictures.

I changed tack a bit for the next book I read:'Deadlocked: A True Blood Novel' by Charlaine Harris.  This is the twelfth of thirteen planned Sookie Stackhouse novels (that the thirteenth one is the final one was confirmed the other day) and since becoming a bit obsessed with True Blood the HBO TV show, I've bought them all as soon as they've been released. I suppose it's my happy concession to the vampire craze :)


 


Then came 'The Sisters Brothers' by Patrick Dewitt, a stunningly-covered book that was sent to me as part of the last round of books from the More4 TV Book Club. What a book. Really looking forward to reviewing this one.  

 

 

I then arrived to the party about 3 years after the main players left it by finally reading 'One Day' by David Nicholls, although unfortunately after my husband had been somewhat destroyed by it, so the spoiler for everyone else was not a spoiler for me. Ho hum. FYI, I did not find it hard to relate to Emma.

Then, shock horror, I was out of books! (At least, until Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy became free.) This, 'Frenchman's Creek' by Daphne du Maurier, was hanging around the hotel lobby, waiting to be borrowed, and from amongst the stiff competition posed by German translations of the Scandinavian crime classics and Jackie Collins' 'The Stud', I picked up this as 'Rebecca' is such a fave (it was actually a fairly close run thing).

Thanks to this book, I realise now that what everyone needs in their life is a French philosopher-pirate.




And to the last! I'm still reading John le Carre's 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' as I write this, and I think I know what's going on. I think. (Cough.)


Look for reviews of all of these, plus a few more, in the next few weeks.  





'The Politics of Book Purchasing' Guestpost on 12 Books, 12 Months

A short series of posts by me over on 12 Books 12 Months concludes today with my guestpost 'The Politics of Book Buying', in which I describe the complex overthinking that goes into each of my book purchasing escapades.

I've actually already read Margaret Atwood's 'Surfacing' (read my review here) and Murakami's 'South Of The Border, West Of The Sun' (review here), whilst the other two books mentioned are nearing the top of my TBR pile. 

Rest assured, I've also bought many more books since then. 

Thanks again to Ali at 12 Books, 12 Months for allowing me air time on her wonderful blog!

  





The Book Blogger File - about Me!

[via]

Hello all,

Quite excitingly, Ali over at 12 Books 12 Months has interviewed yours truly, about writing, books and my WIP. 

 

Amongst many things, she asks about my reading habits, my life outside blogging, and also the slightly awkward question of why 'Dickens from the Start' has, shall we say, floundered :)

You can read the interview here.








Review: 'Surfacing' by Margaret Atwood

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'Surfacing' is the first Atwood book I've read since 'The Handmaid's Tale' fully freaked me out at uni, and after a friend of mine perceptively commented the other day about the contraceptive-insurance-hoohaa moving the US towards a reality not dissimilar to the'The Handmaid's Tale', I thought the time was ripe to read some more. 

This is one of Atwood's first, published in 1972, after the publication of 'The Edible Woman' and six volumes of poetry, and concerns a young woman returning to the remotest wilds of northern Quebec with her friends and lover to try and find out what happened to her father, who has been missing for quite a time. Things descend after they arrive, both in terms of their personal relationships and also the protagonist's state of mind, as she arrives as a relatively well-adjusted city dweller, haunted by a failed relationship and various things to do with a baby, to something slightly less civilised, shall we say? 

The way this book is written is quite arresting: Atwood uses a first person, agrammatical, stream-of-consciousness style to tell the story in a fragmented, subjective way, which leaps from topic to topic, and from present day to the protagonist's childhood and back again, without interruption or pause. This means that several incidents are recounted in her memory, each time with a different slant on what happened, which means by the end of the story you have a totally different idea of her past from the one originally presented. It's totally immersive, especially as I think it's one of the few books I've read written entirely in the present tense: 

'In the middle of the night silence wakes me, the rain has stopped. Blank dark, I can see nothing, I try to move my hands but I can't. The fear arrives in waves, like footfalls, it has no center; it encloses me like armour, it's my skin that is afraid, rigid. They want to get in, they want me to open the windows, the door, they can't do it by themselves. I'm the only one, they are depending on me but I don't know any longer who they are; however they come back they won't be the same, they will have changed. I willed it, I called to them, that they should arrive is logical; but logic is a wall, I built it, on the other side is terror.

Above on the roof is the finger-tapping of water dripping from the trees. I hear breathing, withheld, observant, not in the house but all around it.' 

This style, for the main part of the book, sits on the right side of histrionic, but there were a few pivotal moments in the plot when, for clarity's sake, I wished that she'd just say what had happened and be done with it. But I guess that's not the point of the book: our perception is prismed by hers, and the story of the book is the story that's evolving inside her head. This is offset by a great evocation of the nature environment, which spoke of a deep familiarity and affection for the water-soaked, threatening landscape in which the story is set. 

This book was deeply satisfying for other reasons as well: it had endlessly interesting things to say about femininity, sex, motherhood and relationships, and also about civilisation vs. our nature state, as well as the differences and similarities between humans and animals. It's intelligent, well-considered and non-judgemental, as well as liberated and serious, and I found it entirely instructive spending time at the feet of Madame Atwood. In fact, this is the kind of fully formed, female-penned read that makes me disappointed by comparison when Katie Ward just moons over paintings or entire swathes of people think of female writing as just tales of the pursuit and the temporary acquisition of men. 

I really enjoyed this book, and have added a good portion of her back list to my Classics Club list above. 

Title: Surfacing 

Author: Margaret Atwood 

Publisher: Virago Press 

Date: originally published in 1972; reprint from 2009 

Format: Paperback, 251 pages,and I bought it.