Sociopath by Patric Gagne

 

This is the memoir of a sociopath, Patric Gagne, who is also a clinical psychologist and advocate for people suffering from sociopathic, psychopathic, and anti-social personality disorders.

Patric knew from an early age that she didn’t feel things the way other children did. She didn’t feel guilt or empathy, but often she used to feel pressure building up inside her brain which she could only release by doing something ‘bad’. Badness consisted of stealing into houses when nobody was home and taking little trinkets, or such as sneaking out of a house as a little girl where she had been at a slumber party and walking home by herself  in the dark when everyone in the house was asleep.  She tried hard, with limited success, not to cause physical harm when the pressure was building up. As she grew older her bad episodes changed and she got away with a lot of  more ‘risky business’, to borrow a phrase.

Patric’s self-awareness gave her the ability to observe her own behaviour and regret the unhappiness it caused her mother, while at the same time being unable to experience guilt or empathy. I love reading psychological studies and this one was exceptionally interesting because of its being in the form of a memoir. Patric is clever and funny and is obviously loved  by people close to her. She is awfully honest, for a self-confessed liar. Her aim is to help other sociopaths understand the condition and know how to deal with it through therapy and treatment.

This is a memoir like no other I have ever read. It is brave and fearless and absolutely memorable for that. 

Published by Pan Macmillan

One of Us is Missing by B M Carroll

 

It is always a treat to open a new book by B M Carroll and this one is no exception: domestic noire, if that’s a genre, at its best! On paper Rachel and Rory and their teenage children, Bridie and Emmet, living in a Sydney beachside suburb, have got it all. In reality, however, they’ve each got their demons: first world problems maybe but no less painful for those living with them.

Rachel’s plans for a big family night out at a stadium concert aren’t going strictly according to plan but she is hoping the shared experience will lift the children’s spirits and rekindle the warmth she and Rory have lost.

A shocking turn of events finds one of the family is missing after the concert. B M Carroll has woven a dramatic, suspenseful tale which crept up on me and had me reaching compulsively for the book in every spare minute. I picked up on one clue relatively early but I didn’t come close to working out how it was going to end. That, for me, is the test of a good thriller.

The story is greatly enriched by the reasons for the private angst each character is suffering. They are all different, all relatable,  although one of them is not exactly an average, every day problem!

Altogether an excellent thriller from one of Australia’s finest.

Published by Affirm Press.

A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci

 

1968, Freeman County, Virginia. Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King have all been assassinated but the Civil Rights movement has barely raised a ripple in Freeman County, Virginia, where Jack Lee, 33 years old, is making a modest living as a criminal lawyer. Although Jack grew up in a working class neighbourhood he has always accepted unquestioningly his privileged position in relation to the Black citizens of the county. He believes in the Civil Rights movement but has never thought of actively supporting it.

All of that changes when a Black woman Jack has known since he was a child asks him to help her grandson who has been accused of the murder of a wealthy white couple. Jack knows that he is no match for the blatant white prejudice against the Blacks of Freeman County and the ferocious campaigning of Governor George Wallace to nullify the gains made by the Civil Rights movement but he can’t in conscience refuse to help these desperate people.

So begins a magnificent American novel and I don’t want to give away any of the story, I want everybody to read it! This book is different to any other David Baldacci book I have read. He has based Jack’s character on his own beginnings in Richmond, Virginia. He says in his author’s note: “Where I grew up, the Black-white divide was so ingrained that despite the efforts of the Civil Rights movement and the Warren Court, life was not so very different from many decades before”. The story doesn’t flinch at describing the horrendous behaviour of people who are the products of that ingrained Black-white divide. It is a history lesson of a sort but filled with knowable, human characters. It is tense, dramatic and compulsive. 

A modern masterpiece.

Published by Pan Macmillan 

Suddenly Single at Sixty by Jo Peck

 

Thank you Jo Peck and Net Galley for my ARC of this book, to be published on 30 April.

Jo Peck, at the age of sixty, was completely blindsided by her husband’s announcement that he was seeing someone else and wanted to end their marriage. As this wonderfully frank and free-flowing memoir progressed, however, I couldn’t help but think he had done her an enormous favour. I’ve seen a few friends over the years tied to men who establish the ground rules for a relationship by making sure their ‘moods’ set the tone of each day; that their default setting in response to all suggestions is ‘no’, and who have made gaslighting into an art. It is obvious from Jo’s writing that her friends could see him much more clearly than she did. That she wasn’t broken by him and is able to focus on memories of their good times bears witness to her resilience and strength of character.

Jo had a highly successful career in advertising with her business partner, Eliza, and she had several good friends. She also has a wonderful, self-deprecating sense of humour and, reading between the lines, it is obvious that she is very attractive. Outside of her marriage she was confident and appealing in her relationships with others.

Jo’s honest remembrances of her attempts at online dating are often funny and sometimes heart-wrenching. She is searingly honest and self-aware and at her raunchiest she could almost rival Erica Jong, although not really, but when you get to her massage sessions you will see what I mean: Jo is not afraid to reveal some of her most intimate  secrets.

This memoir is intelligent and funny and a celebration of optimism and hope. Jo at sixty was knocked down by a nasty blow, but she picked herself up, dusted herself off and started all over again. And how! If I had a seal of approval I would stamp it on this book.

Published by Text Publishing

The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene

 

Thank you Net Galley and Katherine Greene for my ebook.

Katherine Greene is the pen name of two writers: A Meredith Walters and Catherine C Riley.

The Lake of Lost Girls is a suspense-filled story about the disappearances of four female college students in 1999. The plot line is driven by alternating past and present narratives of the main characters, and the scripts of a podcast by two annoyingly flippant women seeking out and interviewing possible witnesses to the disappearances twenty-four years ago.

Lindsey is 30 years old and was 6 when her sister, Jess, vanished.  Lindsey’s life for the last twenty-four years has been lived under the cloud of Jess’s disappearance, and she has always been desperate to know what happened to her sister. Something happens to bring the disappearances to the attention of the local police once more and at the same time a man seeks Lindsey out at the hotel where she works and tells her he is researching the case.

 Lindsey tells her story in the present while her sister, Jess, is speaking from twenty-four years ago. People are not necessarily what they seem to be, which is always an important ingredient in a good mystery story.

This book kept me enthralled from start to finish. There were a lot of twists and turns and I couldn’t begin to guess how the mystery was going to be resolved, right up to the end.

Congratulations, ‘Katherine Greene’, on a terrific collaboration!

Published by Crooked Lane Books

Interpretations of Love by Jane Campbell

 

Thank you Net Galley and Jane Campbell for my ebook.

Agnes lost her adored parents to a car crash when she was four years old. She will never stop missing her mother’s love. Malcolm, Agnes’s young uncle wants only to love and care for his little niece but he has a secret and he is never sure when to reveal it.

Joe, an older man, also lost his mother at an early age and he, too, will always miss the love he shared with her. Joe is a psychiatrist whom Agnes had consulted during the troubled years of her marriage and he still feels a deep, unexplained, connection to his former patient.

This beautiful story of different interpretations of love is told in alternating chapters by the three main characters. It shows how their lives have been shaped from their earliest experiences, the decisions they have made and the relationships they have formed;  their successes and failures. There is sweetness and sadness in all of their lives. They eventually achieve degrees of happiness in their own ways which made me happy as I had come to love them all.

I highly recommend Interpretations of Love to readers of literary fiction. I think I could go on reading Robin Campbell’s elegant prose for ever!

Published by Grove Press, New York