"The Better Mousetrap" by Tom Holt

I realised that even though I am a huge TH fan, I never quite got round to reviewing any of his books at BWSG. Thinking about it, I realised it may be because I have always found his books hard to pin down.

Don't get me wrong, TH's books are rather readable, even if this reader does occasionally get lost in the story. Today, as I was chatting with the sis (who's also a TH fan), I finally figured out that the best way to enjoy his book is to roll with the plotline, far-fetched as it sounds, and try not to figure out the logical workings of the plot from start to finish. It is likely to give you a blinding headache.

I'm not exactly sure which genre he fits in, though fantasy would be my personal best bet, since his books always take you on flights of satiric fantasy that always make me feel slightly silly for chuckling out loudly while reading it in public transport.

"The Better Mousetrap" is a story about Emily Spitzer, a pest-control slayer and Frank Carpenter, the guy with a portable door who travels in the fabric of time to un-do "events" which, if happened, could lead to vast amounts of insurance being paid out. Emily is no ordinary pest-control slayer as well. She slays dragons, huge spiders.. you get the idea.

"The Better Mousetrap" is in reference to this death bounty that has been taken out on Emily. Someone wants her dead, conclusively. By a stroke of luck, she crosses paths with Frank and a few other characters who combine forces to eventually send the evil profiteer to her just desserts.

Typing it out, it all sounds rather bland. But I think part of the fun is in the reading for his books. He has a gift for taking digs at many aspects of our lives in a fashion that loses its punch in the telling. Or maybe it's just me.

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Wiki link

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is definitely worth recommending as it is an epic tale of two young men in America during the war, how they fought for their ideals through their comic book creation, and it touches on many other issues such as mid-20th century American culture, the allure of magic and Houdini, and how the real world eats up idealists.

But it took me a long time to get through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. While certainly a hefty tome, Chabon's poignant and accessible writing should have allowed me to finish it in half the time. But I couldn't - it got too sad. I reached some points where I felt like the story was rather like a Korean drama - heart-wrenching and depressing. Some parts made me feel like shutting the book quickly, cos if I did that, then maybe the tragedy would not unfold for the two main characters.

I guess it is the hallmark of a good book, for its reader to feel for the characters to this extent.
But did he have to make them until so cham?!?

8 out of 10 tear drop daggers.

(On a related side note, here's Chabon's interesting essay on The Recipe for Life )

"Company of Liars" by Karen Maitland

I got to agree with Gary on this, "Company of Liars" (henceforth shortened to "COL") is a good read. It packs enough of a story and mystery about this band of travellers who are fleeing the plague to get you to keep going and reading on, right up to the last page. Everyone has a secret to tell in this story, and arguably the one takeaway of the story is the truth does not always set you free.

The storyline rather reminds me of Canterbury Tales, the literary tome by Geoffrey Chaucer, which is about a tale of pilgrims travelling in old England and how they each take turns to recount a story. Beyond this, the resemblance ends. Where Chaucer tells his tale in old English (*winces remembering how painful it was to read the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale for 'A' levels*), this story is narrated by Camelot, whose secret is perhaps the hardest to guess at.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but if you want an interesting read to take a couple of hours off, do consider this book. It has mystery, tragedy and drama rolled into one.

Thanks, G for the book!

Rating: 4 out of 5

"Kingdom Come" by J.G. Ballard

It took me an unusually long time to complete this book. But I stuck to my guns and finished it... eventually.

The plotline is mind-numbingly simple: newly-sacked advertising executive Pearson travels to suburban England from cosmopolitan London after he learns of his father's death from a random shooting in a suburban mall. In his quest to find his father's killer, he hopes to find the father he never knew as well as find some meaning in his own life. He becomes embroiled in a vast conspiracy which eventually embroils him in all the kitsch, glitter and façade of the consumerism sham.

My thoughts about the book, simply put: I don't like the book because it is disturbing and way out in the weird curve. Before doing this review, I did some research and learnt that Ballard is well-known for creating dark and pessimistic landscapes of the world. His vision of the world usually invokes the wasteland and post-modern decay at its most bleak form. No wonder.

Kingdom Come's extremity made it very depressing to follow, which accounted for why I stopped the book several times before finishing it. Notwithstanding, I have to concede that Ballard's prose and vision of a world dedicated to serving a consumerist god is rather compelling to follow.

The book left me with a mildly disturbing aftertaste in my mouth, much in the way (Philip)Roth's books work for me.

Rating: 2 out of 5 geek points

Random trivial: Ballard passed away in Apr 09 this year. Read more about him here.

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

I usually avoid mystery/thriller fiction. It's probably because I grew up reading a lot of it, Christopher Pike, then Stephen King, and well...good ol Dan Brown.

Am I ashamed to be caught reading the genre? In some way, I am. Mystery/thrillers (I'm not sure what's the exact term) seem to me to be a little too mass market, too accessible, too formulaic and hence, too popular. Then again, cheem books like Ulysses seem rather daunting.

Oh well, leaving that to be resolved another day, the last novel I finished was Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. There isn't a wiki on the novel so here's the Amazon page. The cover caught my eye some time ago, but I've been hesitant to pick it up cos I thought it might be a funky iteration of the Da Vinci code or something (the book is classified under 'Historical Fiction').

I'm glad I eventually bought it though cos I was hooked after the first few pages. Set in England during the spread of the plague in 1348, a ragtag bunch of misfits band together to escape the plague. Maitland tells the story very well, she manages to transport me to the raw and grim setting of 14th century England, and follow her characters in their search for food, shelter, and escape. This is one mystery/thriller I will proudly read in public. 8 stars.

"The Kite-runner" by Khaled Hosseini

As I recall, Don pointed this book out to me more than a year ago. But strangely enough the desire to pick it up never became compelling enough for me to act on it. Then by chance I happened upon it last month while browsing the shelves of the library and decided to add it onto the pile I was juggling in my hands.

[Sidetrack: I'm a glutton when it comes to borrowing books from the library. My "eyes" are always bigger than (a) my actual borrowing limit (which is why I have "swiped" my parents library cards ever since I was old enough to go to the library on my own; and (b) my actual bandwidth to finish them within the 3-week deadline set by NLB. The good people of NLB have since revised the policy to allow for free 1-time renewal AND a maximum of 6 books each, which has needless to say sent me into transports of delight.]

"The Kite-runner" (henceforth shortened to "TKR") didn't make the final discard pile as well, so I ended up borrowing it. And even then, the compulsion to read it was never quite there. Today being a self-imposed stay at home day as I was rather down, I ended up picking it up and completing it at one sitting.

For me, the best part of TKR was when Amir's self-redemption and self-discovery started to happen two-thirds into the story, and how he grew to accept the truth about his father and attempted to do the right thing by his nephew. The war backdrop of Afghanistan interested me less somehow, that was how absorbing the tale of the 2 half-brothers' fates were for me.

At one point when the fates of the 2 half-brothers diverged, I was always conscious of the need to want to turn the page faster while reading the section on Amir's life in America, to find out how Hassan had similarly fared. It was doubly poignant and I think rather well-done of the writer to choose to reveal Hassan's story by having another character speak about what happened to him, indirectly rendering his fate all the more tragic and echoing his choice to always be humble and live in the shadows.

(You can read Don's review here, which I did on completing the book today as I was curious enough to read his review of it again now that I had read the book.)

Rating: 4 out of 5

"The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred" (HSMRMHB) by Carl-Johan Valgren

A rather uncanny coincidence, that by chance the 2 book reviews I'm about to review today has to do with children, social status, and how both books actually use the picaresque storyline to different effect. It's also rather freaky, on another front, given that of the 6 books I borrowed, I had to read the 2 that bore the most similarity together, when the remaining books could not be more different.

But enough of that.

The first, HSMRMHB, is a picaresque fable recounted in the 3rd person of the love story of the ugly Hercules and the beautiful Henriette. Both were born in a brothel on a stormy night in 1813, and from that day on, their fates were entwined.

Hercules was born deaf and mute, and was so ugly that for the first few years of his life, the procuress of the brothel kept him locked away from the external world, for fear of horrifying the world who could not take the sight of a freak, and of harming a child that whilst ugly, nevertheless had a pure heart that beat only for Henriette.

Beyond his disabilities, Hercules had a gift for reading people's minds and conversing with them in their thoughts. This was to be both his undoing and his salvation in his later life, when he used it to aid him in the search for Henriette, and eventually in his quest for revenge for the murders of Henriette and one churchman who had sought to protect him from charges of demonology.

Another interesting point: do go and take a second look at the book cover in the beginning of this post. You will realise the cover is written in the freak show poster style of that time, and deliberately laid out/ rendered in the style of posters advertising for freak shows -- don't ask me how I know that, but I think I came across something similar before. It was the reason why I picked up this book in the first place, though eventually I was to realise that this cover was an indirect reference to the time Hercules spent as the main attraction in a traveling freak show.

The original book is actually written in Swedish, and while I do not know if any subtle nuancing is lost in the translation, I do think this version remans quite a good read. Though at times, I tend to find the prose a bit awkward, I think overall it still works and whatever that comes across funny, can be chalked up perhaps to the language style of that time.

Hercules' devotion to Henriette is the thread that binds the whole story together, but unlike the usual love story, I thought it had rather dark overtones in its way it placed Hercules as the central figure of the story, and had him struggling against church doctrine, social norms and being the 'outsider' in a normal world. It lingers after you finished the book, but beyond that I guess nothing earth-shattering.

Readibility: 3 out of 5