Before I Let You Go by Kelly Rimmer

 

A father dies;  a mother, Deborah, feels unable to cope without him and withdraws into herself leaving her two young daughters, Lexie and Annie, feeling neglected and unloved. Then Deborah meets a new man, Robert, and is happy to surrender to him all care and responsibility for raising the children and running their lives.

Consequences flow from Deborah’s virtual abandonment of her daughters in this utterly engrossing story. Lexie and Annie are two very different personalities. Robert’s control and Deborah’s submission mean they each have to work out how to survive in the strict, cult-like community to which they have been brought. One is able to make compromises in order to reach her goals but the other struggles to accept the unfairness of their new way of life.

Kelly Rimmer’s take on the outcomes of excessive control and the apparent withdrawal of affection is sympathetic and insightful in the tradition of Charity Norman, Margaret Forster and Lionel Shriver. This is a story of sadness and  happiness and, ultimately, hard won hope.

This is a thought-provoking book while at the same time being an absolute page-turner!

Published by Hachette Australia

A Deadly Covenant by Michael Stanley

 

In this prequel to the Kubu series it is 1999 and Kubu is a rookie detective, learning first hand how to go about solving a crime which, although committed in Botswana, would be well above Mma Ramotswe’s pay grade.

As in the Michael Stanley team’s previous books, this is a good, solid mystery. The landscape and atmosphere of a small town in Botswana are easily called to mind and Kubu is also a rookie in the romantic stakes, shyly and hesitatingly attempting to court Joy.

The skeleton of what proves to be a Bushman is unearthed during excavations for a pipe line which will bring water to this part of the Kalahari. One obviously old skeleton is an interesting archeological find but as more and more skeletons are found, signs of a massacre appear.

Kubu and his superior, Superintendent Mabaku, aided by the pathologist Dr Ian MacGregor, have many suspects to interview and eliminate before they can get to the heart of the matter. A mysterious Bushman appears, and murders are now being committed in the present.

This is another clever, interesting collaboration from Michael Stanley. It has mystery, suspense and a little bit of romance, all the ingredients needed for a good detective story and  Kubu, “the hippopotamus”, is a most endearing, enduring character

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

 

Alicia Western, twenty years old, mathematical genius and previously diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, re-admits herself to the Stella Maris psychiatric facility. She is carrying $40,000 in a plastic bag, the remains of her inheritance from her grandmother.

Although there are only two characters in this story, Alicia and her psychiatrist, I found the book as dense, complicated and at times hard to get through as The Passenger. Again, there are pages of discussions on mathematics and mathematicians which were beyond my understanding or, really, my desire to understand.

The Thalidomide Kid and some of the others who invade Alicia’s mind are alluded to and it helps to have read The Passenger for an understanding of who and what they are. 

This is a sad story of a beautiful little girl whose overpowering intellect kept her apart from other children. She saw no sense in the normal rules of human conduct and wanted just to love her brother, Bobby. I can only presume that she was correct in everything she discussed with her psychiatrist  about mathematics. She showed a sense of humour sometimes, though, as when she quoted a line which she attributed to Joyce: “We were jung and easily freudened”. Isn’t that lovely? I wouldn’t mind quoting it myself, if ever I find myself in a position to do so.

My previous reading experiences of Cormac McCarthy were All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men.  Although they both also required concentration and a quiet reading space, Stella Maris and The Passenger are in a different category. I can’t help wondering if, as he approaches the end of his literary career, the writer has decided it’s time to unburden his mind of all the knowledge, mathematical and psychological, he has accumulated in his lifetime and get it out onto paper.

Published by Picador Pan Macmillan

Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

Regan is bi-polar; she takes her pills and attends counselling sessions with a court appointed psychotherapist as part of her sentence for having been found guilty of counterfeiting. She is from a wealthy family and volunteers as a tour guide at the Art Institute of  Chicago. Regan does not feel loved by her mother and believes her parents favour her older sister.

Aldo is a doctoral student whose main preoccupation is with solving the problems of time travel. His mother left him in the care of his father, Masso, when he was a baby.

Regan and Aldo meet in the armory of the Art Institute. Regan suggests that they should meet for six conversations and see what they can learn about  each other.

This is a gently erotic love story but much more than that. Olivie Blake says of herself that she is “a person with a mood disorder” and, obviously it would seem, she has written authentically about Regan’s struggles with medication and therapy. Aldo is very different to Regan and although he has a sweet, loving relationship with his father he is unable to communicate generally with others. He teaches quantum physics while working on his doctorate and he dislikes his students as much as they dislike him. It is hard as a reader, however, to dislike him as he is portrayed so sympathetically.

The  book is set out in an unusually lovely way. The story is told in parts and occasionally different narrators will give overviews of the meanings of what has happened at a particular point.

I LOVED this book and I have given it 5 stars.

Published by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan