The Fishermen

A Family Tragedy

Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen is a dazzling literary addition to the list of books that have been written by African authors. In recent years, writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Teju Cole have left their mark on the scene, after forerunners like Ben Okri and Chinua Achebe.

Obioma is Nigerian, like Achebe, and writes of the traumatic times in the 1990s under the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. The narrator is nine-year-old Benjamin, one the large brood of a bank official and his wife, who runs a food stall in the local market. Their father wants his children to get a good education and become successful professionals.

When the patriarch is transferred to another town, the boys run riot and play at being fisherman in the town’s sewer-like polluted river the Omi-Ala, while their mother is out at work. Walking home one day, the encounter a mad, soothsayer, Abulu, who prophesies that the oldest Ikenna will be killed by one of his own brothers.

The prophecy wrecks the happy household, as Ikenna seems to self-destruct. The mother has a nervous breakdown, the father is shattered. Around them the country falls apart too.

The novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Award last year, is moving and disturbing. In an interview Obioma said that thebook was “a critique of the British occupation of Nigeria,” suggesting that he madman who destroyed a happy family/country is like the colonialists, who took advantage of a society divided by tribes. But even without this interpretation, the book is a deeply felt chronicle of a family—a striking debut by a young writer.

The Fishermen

By Chigozie Obioma

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Pages: 297

The Black Widow

The World Is Not Enough

Daniel Silva has created one of the finest espionage thrillers in recent times featuring Gabriel Allon, an Israeli spy-assassin, who is also an extraordinary art restorer. So, the books are often as much about art history as about the Israeli intelligence services battling international terrorism.

Silva is so eerily prescient that what he writes about leaps right out of the news headlines. Over eighteen books his hero tracks and destroys terrorists from Iran, to Palestine, to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and other hotbeds of unrest and radicalisation, particularly groups that endanger Israel. In his latest, bestselling novel, The Black Widow, an ISIS run terror outfit carries out bombings in Paris and Amsterdam, which really happened a few weeks later. Silva writes in his foreword, that he began writing The Black Widow before the Paris attacks of 2015, and he considered putting aside his typescript, but made the decision to let it be published. He notes in a sad tone, “I only wish that the murderous, millenarian terrorism of the Islamic State lived solely on the pages of this story.”

His novels provide a concise history of the troubles in the Middle East, and don’t soft peddle Islamic terrorism. He names the terrorist groups Allon sets out to fight in each book, with a team of dedicated officers. Allon is on friendly terms with heads of other intelligence organizations in the world, and they often help one another in their mission to battle extremists.

Allon was a talented art student with a promising career, when he was picked by the head of the Israeli secret service to avenge the murder of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972 by Palestinian militant group Black September. He was one of the elite team that hunted and killed the murderers.  His art career ruined, he joins the Israeli security agency known simply as the Office. Allon suffers tragedy himself, when a bomb kills his young son and maims his wife; he subsequently falls in love with and marries fellow intelligence agent Chiara, and in The Black Widow tries to keep work away and look after his new born twins. He is also waiting to take over as Chief of the Office, when the ISIS bombing that kill his friend Hannah Weinberg, one among many, bring him back into the field,.

The man responsible for the bombings is the mysterious Saladin, and the only way of reaching him is by planting an undercover agent into his network. The woman chosen and trained for the highly dangerous mission is a Jewish doctor, Natalie Mizrahi, who is given a new Palestinian identity and past so that she can infiltrate the ISIS hideout.

She takes on the assignment reluctantly, but once she is in, Natalie, or Leila Hadawi as she is renamed, acts with exemplary courage, losing her nerve just once before she is to be thrown into the lion’s lair. For the reader every page is full of tension and a heart-in-the-mouth feeling for Natalie and her suffering.  It can be very difficult to become another person, to the extent that even her dreams belong to Leila. One slip could mean death not just for her, but thousands of innocents to be targeted in attacks being planned by terrorists.

The Black Widow is a terrific book, close enough to reality to be scary, but also tempered with the softness of emotions—love, friendship, loyalty and devotion to a cause. In a sense Gabriel Allon and Saladin are not that different—only one seeks to protect and the other to destroy.

The Black Widow

By Gabriel Allon

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 544

End of Watch

The Suicide Prince Strikes

End of Watch is Stephen King’s fifty-fifth novel (hat tip) and the third of the Bill Hodges trilogy.

In the first book, Mr Mercedes, a mentally-disturbed man, Brady Hartsfield, drives a stolen Mercedes into a crowd of job seekers, who had queued up at the City Centre on a cold morning. He is clever enough not to be caught, which bothers the cop, Bill Hodges, who retired with an unsolved case on his head.

Now, living on his own, with nothing to do and no friends, Hodges starts feeling depressed. He is forced out of his self-pitying idleness by the Brady—a computer wiz—who taunts and goads Hodges into trying to catch him. He deviously pushes the hapless owner of the Mercedes to commit suicide by messing with her computer, and also plants thoughts of suicide into Hodges’s mind.

Then, Brady tries to commit mass murder at a stadium full of kids who have come to watch a popular boy band perform. He intends to do that by blowing himself up with a home-rigged bomb, but Hodges and his companions, Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney foil his plans. Holly whacks Brady on the head with a heavy object, leading to his being hospitalized in a vegetative state.

In the second book, Finders Keepers, Hodges has recovered from a heart attack suffered during the stadium attack and set up a detective agency with Holly, who is a “bundle of nervous tics and strange associations” but fiercely devoted to the older man, and very fond of young Jerome. A case connected to the first book turns up; Hodges who goes to visit Brady regularly is convinced he is faking mental damage to avoid trial for his crimes. The nurses at the hospital are scared of Brady, because he makes strange things happen through telekinesis.

In End Of Watch, the full extent of Brady’s diabolical powers are unleashed. An unscrupulous doctor, Felix Babineau, experiments on Brady with some drugs which give the criminal supernatural abilities that the doctor is unable to control, and which lead his downfall. Brady’s damaged brain gets fully functional, though he continues to pretend being catatonic. But with the help a defunct electronic gadget called Zappit, which he has contrived to place with survivors of the foiled concert attack, and his former co-worker, Freddi, he triggers off a spate of suicides.

Alarm Bells ring in the Hodges camp when Bill’s old partner, Pete Huntley, tells him about a fresh case of murder-suicide linked to the Mercedes massacre, and then Jerome’s cheerful kid sister Barbara tries to kill herself. Hodges, pushing seventy and low on energy, discovers he has pancreatic cancer, and his precarious health adds a layer of urgency and tension to the proceedings.  

If Hodges and Holly catch on to Brady’s modus operandi very soon, the “architect of suicide” never underestimates his nemesis and always skips one step ahead of them. The two have to trace and stop Brady themselves, because nobody will believe what he has been up to and how. And by the time, they can convince the cops, Brady will have succeeded in his evil plot.

The friendship between the young and moviestar handsome African American Jerome, the middle-aged eccentric Holly and the old cop is suffused with a rare warmth, and makes the reader wish the series would go on for a few books more.

Stephen King’s mastery over the thriller makes the story totally plausible and hence, very scary.  The book can be a standalone read, but it is better to read all three books for full impact—the first being arguably the best.

End Of Watch

By Stephen King

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Pages: 368

Stars Of Fortune

Fantastic Six

 

Best-selling author Nora Roberts kicks off her new Guardians trilogy with Stars of Fortune. It’s the mix of fantasy, magic, the supernatural, romance and action that is working well with young readers these days, and also in cinema.  It is very likely these this set of books will end up as films too.

 

The prologue talks of three good goddesses and the stars they protect, and one evil one—Nerezza— who wants those stars to increase her beauty and power.

 

On earth six special people have been picked to find those ancient fallen stars and prevent Nerezza from getting her hands on them.  Sasha Riggs, a reclusive artist, has vivid dreams about six strangers and a picturesque  island, which she captures on her canvas. She figures the place she has been seeing in her dreams is the Greek island of Corfu and decides to go to there on an impulse. In her hotel, she immediately meets archaeologist Riley Gwin and magician Bran Killian, who are two of those she painted without ever having met them.

When the three decide to rent a lovely beach side cottage, they soon find the remaining three -- Sawyer, Annika and Doyle, all of whom have special powers and secrets.  Sasha always suspected she was different and suffered for it with enforced loneliness, but now she realizes she is a seer, that her dreams and visions are directions to the hidden stars.

 

The six know they are the chosen ones, and when they commence their search in caves around Corfu, they are attacked by strange creatures unleashed by Nerezza. Their fighting together creates a strong bond between them and the others slowly reveal their secrets. Once they are a unit, they train and get battle ready for the big fight that is bound to come—the skirmishes that shake them up, were mere threats.

 

Romance is Roberts’ forte and the sparks between Sasha and Bran sizzle with passion. The more interesting character than Sasha, is the kick-ass Riley, who is fearless and has leadership skills that bind the other five disparate people into a fighting team.

 

Young readers, and maybe the author’s adult fans, will like the book for its pace and consistently layered suspense.  Stars of Fortune should serve as an appetizer for the other two books in the trilogy—Bay Of Sighs and Island Of Glass.

Stars of Fortune

By Nora Roberts

Publisher:  Piatkus/Hachette

Pages: 340

 

Death In Sunset Grove

Four Funerals And A Wedding

India is just about beginning to realise problem of elder care— people are living longer, in urban areas homes are getting smaller; with everyone out at work, there is nobody at home to look after old people in the family, unless they are rich enough to afford help. Our culture still looks down upon homes for senior citizens, though in the West, it is an accepted form of ‘vanaprastham.’

It is believed that in wealthy nations, elders are well looked after in old age homes, so it is shocking to read Finnish journalist-turned-author Minna Lindgren’s Death In Sunset Grove (in an English translation), which busts that myth. It is the first of a trilogy, which for the English market has been labelled The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency Series.  This might actually do the book a disservice, because it immediately brings to mind Alexander McCall Smith’s popular The Ladies No 1 Detective Agency which is very different; also comparing it to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple books is not quite accurate. The ladies here are not really detectives, they just want to correct a few wrongs, by finding out what is really going on in the place where they have come to spend the last years of their lives.

Lindgren reportedly wrote the book after doing a magazine article about retirement homes in Finland (for which she won an award). Thebook is set in such an establishment, called Sunset Grove. The three protagonists of the book--Siiri, Irma, and Anna-Liisa, are in the nineties; they have lost their husbands, some children and friends, simply by outliving them. Lindgren does not look at old age with rose-tinted glasses—behind the camaraderie and humour, is fear of loneliness, illness, and loss of dignity. There is also the carefree attitude that comes with such advanced age—what it the worst that can happen?  Death?

The Lavender Ladies—so called because in the opening scene of the novel, they are all dressed in varying shades of purple-- are all aflutter about the sudden death of the young cook at the Grove. As they cope with the mostly clueless director of the home and the vicious head nurse, they realise there is much else to worry about.  Anyone who asks too many questions is seen as a trouble-maker, quickly sedated and bundled off to a closed section for dementia patients, where mistreatment and over-medication drives them to a vegetative state, and speeds up the end.

The lives of the women, with their dietary and fashion quirks, their days spent reading, gossiping, playing cards or wandering about, are punctuated with funerals of inmates, which, for them are special occasions. Siiri is the kind who takes long tram rides and observes Helsinki’s architectural marvels.  When her best friend Irma is locked up in the out-of-bounds dementia ward, Siiri, with some unexpected help from Anna-Liisa rescues her. In their adventures they are aided by a cab driver Mika, who opens their eyes to the criminal goings on in the home, and is not averse to resorting to crime himself, if it would help his lady friends in Sunset Grove.

The women observe that the quality of the staff deteriorates over time, with untrained young immigrants, who can’t speak the language, being dumped with duties of looking after old people, because nobody wants to do it.

Their own children are too busy to care, but it seems particularly heartless when the daughter of one of them says she can’t make the time to visit, because she has to look after her horses. When it looks like Irma would return from the hospital, her family, whom she calls “her darlings” turn up to divide up her belongings.

The book is funny and full of hope, laughter and courage, but also depressing—if old age means indifference of the family and the casual cruelty of strangers. Still, the wonderful characters in Lindgren’s book, find ways to be happy, and reasons to go on living.

Death In Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

Translated Lola Rogers
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Pages: 384