Tag:

World Literature

Review

Runaway Horses

by Brian Kenney

And now for something completely different. Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini were well-known Italian authors who co-authored several mysteries, throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, under their surnames of Fruttero & Lucentini. Their best-known works are The Lover of No Fixed Abode, set in Venice, and The Sunday Woman, which was made into a film starring Marcello Mastroianni and Jacqueline Bisset. Runaway Horses takes place in Siena during the Palio of Siena, the biannual horse race that the Sienese have been celebrating since the 13th century. It features lawyer Enzo Maggione and his wife, Valeria, who are traveling from their home in Milan to Siena, visiting Valeria’s brother along the way. But the two never make it to the farm; instead, they encounter a violent storm and take refuge in a nearby, sprawling estate. Here they find a most idiosyncratic group, including Puddu, the best known of the Palio’s jockeys. Fruttero and Lucentini take the reader deep into the arcane practices of the Palio, which are full of plots and counterplots, while Enzo and Valeria discover their attraction not only to each other but to other residents on the estate as well. Readers with an interest in Siena may enjoy the exhibit Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350, which is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum and will travel to Britain’s National Gallery in spring 2025.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Nesting

by Henrietta Thornton

Even during her sly, vicious husband Ryan’s “good” moments, Ciara feels “part of her body (toe tips, ear lobes, the backs of her knees) is listening, tense, on high alert.” And in his bad moments, “The toppled chair. The smashed bulb. The broken handle. Her bones and blood.” She’s left before, but his rage at her absence was too dangerous to endure. But when she sees a new opportunity, she takes her two small daughters and flees. Here the reader will begin to understand the naivete of “why doesn’t she just leave?” (Why doesn’t anybody ever ask why he doesn’t “just” leave?). Dublin’s rental market is impossible, so Ciara and the children are homeless, forced to stay in a cramped hotel room provided by the city. Ciara, who is pregnant with her third child, has no job, at controlling Ryan’s insistence, of course. Her mother-in-law tells her that she’s going to hell for treating “poor Ryan-Patrick” this way. Child support is non-existent, and Ryan is determined to take full custody of the children even though he appears to hate them and has never lifted a finger to care for them. Watching Ciara claw her way out of this is a gripping view of endurance, terror, bravery and the small and large kindnesses that make her life bearable. The characters here are superbly drawn, the dialog spot on, and I can’t wait for more from this debut novelist.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Tokyo Suite

by Brian Kenney

A deep investigation into the lives of two women: a mistress and her maid. Maju is one of scores of the “white army,” maids and nannies in São Paulo; she cares for young Cora, whose parents pay the child little attention. Fernanda, Cora’s mother and a successful TV executive, is uniquely self-involved; even when Maju and Cora disappear one day, Fernanda can’t stop obsessing over an affair she’s having long enough to focus on her own daughter’s abduction. Dad, meanwhile, has pretty much checked out. But once Fernanda does realize her daughter is gone, her whole world begins to cave in. Maju and Cora, meanwhile, have boarded a bus for a multi-day trip that Maju barely plans—they have limited food and money—and that begins to unravel after the first day. Each woman is confronted by a harrowing series of events that forces them to confront maternal guilt, poverty, and society’s expectations.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Black River

by Brian Kenney

The village of Teetarpur, on the outskirts of Delhi, has been known for nothing for decades. Grittiness yes, but no crimes, no scandals. Until the unthinkable happens and an eight-year-old girl, Munia, is murdered, discovered hanging from the branch of a tree. Munia may have been shy, but she was much loved by her father, the widowed Chand, and the rest of her community. Part police procedural, part literary thriller, this beautifully written narrative brings rural India to life. The novel is told in the third person, with vivid characters richly developed and time that moves back and forth as we see Chand in his youth, living by the Yamuna, the black river of the book’s title. We follow local inspector Ombir Singh, under pressure from the rich and the political elite to resolve the killing, and Chand, calm on the exterior, but whose blood boils with revenge, not trusting the police. Roy is a journalist, and it’s tempting to attribute that to what makes this book so magnificently successful: the range of society, the moral complexity of many of the characters, and the terrifying brutality. Sure to be one of the best books of the year.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Whitewashed Tombs

by Henrietta Thornton

This piercingly written tale of modern life in Ghana is preceded by a warning in Quartey’s heartfelt prologue that his novel includes scenes of violence against gay characters and should be approached with “caution and mindfulness.” That’s fair to say, but it must also be noted that the violence is in keeping with the story and not gratuitous, except on the part of the criminals. The effects of white-supremacist missionary work in Africa also loom large in the story, which centers around the murderous homophobia stoked in Ghana by an American evangelical Christian, Chris Cortland. His bigoted ways have brought him to Africa where he finds a home among those who believe that “homosexuality isn’t indigenous to Ghana.” The tale features many well-drawn characters, all presented in an opening character list (don’t be put off by the full to bursting cast here!). They fall into three main groups: trans women who are being murdered, with famous Ghanaian pop singer Henrietta Blay the focus; Emma Djan and the other private investigators who who make this police-procedural-esque, employed because “the police might not give the case high priority”; and the smarmy, self-righteous circle of Americans and Ghanaians around Cortland, whose behavior means the book could also come with a domestic violence warning. The murder mystery is compelling here, but readers will also be absorbed by the politics and religious machinations and the emotional brutality the mixing of the two creates.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Night of Baba Yaga

by Brian Kenney

The novel opens with the abduction of a young woman, Shindo—a butch, menswear-wearing, expert fighter—who is taken away by the yakuza, a crime syndicate. After turning several henchmen into minced meat (it’s very Kill Bill), and nearly raped and brutalized herself, she’s given permission to live, providing that she agrees to work as the bodyguard and driver of Shoko, the only child of the gang’s leader. Shoko, who’s around Shindo’s age, is a revelation: doll-like, dressed in strange, old clothes (it’s the early 1980s), a student at a women’s junior college that is more like a finishing school, with courses in French pastries. And while Shindo misses her old life delivering for a florist, she and Shokow slowly begin to hit it off as Shindo ferries her back and forth from school. Shoko’s life, it turns out, is no picnic, including her upcoming marriage to a complete and utter sadist. How the two women manage to escape from this uber-violent world, confront the patriarchy, and create an alternate existence is as thrilling as it is fast paced. This novella was nominated for a 2021 Mystery Writers of Japan Award

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Neferura

by Brian Kenney

With a doctorate in Egyptology, it would have been easy for Malayna Evans to have fallen down the bottomless hole of historical detail. But instead, this is a beautifully balanced novel, rich in the experiences of life in the backstabbing court of Pharaoh Hatshepsut while also focused on the engaging and ultimately tragic life of her daughter, Neferura, princess and high priestess of Kemet. Neferura lives to support the people, but she is often distracted by court machinations, especially those of her misogynistic half-brother, Thutmose, who wants to end her mother’s rule, become Pharaoh, marry Neferura, and produce an heir. Neferura’s interior thinking is powerfully engaging, and setting the novel largely among women, whose struggles to lead are always under scrutiny, is incredibly refreshing. But Neferura’s own story feels nearly revolutionary: to survive, she befriends the wisewoman, a much-tattooed priestess of sorts, who is in touch with a network of women who devote themselves to supporting Neferura, even to the point of risking their own lives. Add to this several standout characters, such as Neferura’s life-long tutor who helps guide her actions, and you have a cadre ready to protest their princess. Powerful and poignant, this is a treat for fans of historical mysteries.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The City of the Living

by Brian Kenney

A deep, dark descent into one of Italy’s most disturbing true crimes, drawing on actual documents, news reports, and interviews to tell the story. Billed by the publisher as a “spellbinding literary thriller”—it’s certainly spellbinding, but no one’s definition of a thriller—this is a slow, methodical, layered journey into the murder of 23-year-old Luca Varani. The method? Torture. The perpetrators? Manuel Foffo, who confesses to his father, while driving to a family funeral, that he killed someone—three, four, five days ago?—he’s too drugged out to know. And Marco Prato, also from a “good family,” a nightclub promoter, gay and considering transitioning. Manuel and Marco barely know each other, although after several drug-and-alcohol fueled days holed up in Manuel’s apartment they develop an intimacy that’s somewhat sexual but more a twisted sort of friendship. “So-called psychic contagion, like a racing engine, brought the two young men close to the point of fusion.” What do they share, besides a love of drugs and alcohol? For starters, an inability to mature, jealousy of the rich, and complete irresponsibility. Lagioia intertwines the descent of Manuel and Marco with the descent of Rome itself—drug filled, rat-infested, garbage strewn, home to wild animals, yet ultimately, he claims, freeing. This story begs for comparison with the Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murder of Bobby Franks in 1924 Chicago. Brilliantly translated.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Jenny Lund Madson. Thirty Days of Darkness

by Brian Kenney

How often do you hear the phrase “comic Nordic Noir”? I’m guessing not often. Yet that’s exactly what Madson delivers in this delightful/terrifying novel that parodies the publishing industry while also taking on a real, live murder case. Hannah is one of Denmark’s most successful literary authors, even if no one actually reads her. Forced by her editor to attend a book convention—snobbish Hannah abhors these sorts of things—she manages to get into an argument with crime writer Jørn Jensen, Denmark’s James Patterson. In the end, she agrees to Jensen’s challenge to write a crime novel in one month. Why not? All she’s doing is facing a nasty case of writer’s block while day drinking. To keep her focused, her editor bundles her off to the rural, coastal Icelandic town of Húsafjörður, where Hannah lives with an older woman, Ella. Hannah’s take on life in Húsafjörður is wonderfully droll—indeed, the town and its cast of characters would make the perfect setting for a cozy. But things take a more violent turn when Ella’s nephew Thor drowns, likely murdered. Faced with a completely incompetent police officer, Hannah can’t help but take on the investigation herself. And best of all, the sleuthing will let her gather all the information she needs to write her mystery. If, of course, she survives. For fans of Anthony Horowitz.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Lover of No Fixed Abode.

by Henrietta Thornton

This strange, beautiful tale wedges readers into the crowded boats and alleys of Venice while whisking them along on a three-day romance with a Roman princess and the down-at-heel tour guide she falls for. The two seem to float above the city’s watery fray even before meeting. After meeting, they withdraw completely into their own emotional realm, “literally liquefied” by their fascination and passion for each other. Time is immaterial, they agree, as they find themselves “precariously suspended between being and non-being,” contemplate “intimate perplexities on who is who, where the I ends and the you begins,” and eat “a variety of little inventions.” The love story, which as the translator’s note explains, features more robustly in the book than the crime tale related to the princess’s work as an art dealer, soon provokes questions in the reader. Where is the tour guide from? Why must he leave Venice despite his grief over losing the love he has just stumbled upon? The answer to the mystery is startling and brings up many questions about the nature of life and how the past, and past injustices, can resonate today. Try this after Danielle Trussoni’s The Puzzle Master; you’ll come back to Earth eventually

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
  • 1
  • 2