Category: Reading Challenges

#BookReview Where Roses Never Die by Gunnar Staalesen, trans. by Don Bartlett @OrendaBooks

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Where Roses Never DieAbout the Book

September 1977. Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found.

Almost 25 years later, as the expiry date for the statute of limitations draws near, Mette’s mother approaches PI Varg Veum, in a last, desperate attempt to find out what happened to her daughter. As Veum starts to dig, he uncovers an intricate web of secrets, lies and shocking events that have been methodically concealed. When another brutal incident takes place, a pattern begins to emerge…

Format: Paperback (272 pages)  Publisher: Orenda Books
Publication date: 1st June 2016 Genre: Crime, Thriller

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My Review

Where Roses Never Die is the eighteenth in the author’s crime series featuring private investigator, Varg Veum. It precedes the only other book in the series I’ve read, Wolves in the Dark. (Not all the books in the series have been translated into English.) But don’t worry if you haven’t read all, or even any, of the previous books in the series because Where Roses Never Die works perfectly well as a standalone.

The book finds Varg in a state that will be familiar to those who’ve read earlier books in the series. He’s recovering from a tragic event in his personal life and the three years since then have disappeared in a haze of booze. He feels he’s ‘wandering restlessly through life’s back streets’. His bank account is all but empty, the new cases have dried up and it’s a struggle to keep off the bottle. Recalling when he was at his worst, he observes, ‘I was the emperor of the empties, and I had hundreds of vassals, empty, silent and glassy-eyed’.

He needs something to rescue him from his ‘daily demons’ and what has become ‘the longest and darkest marathon’ of his life. The unsolved case of Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl who disappeared without trace nearly 25 years ago, may be just that. It might even give him the willpower, and an excuse, to remain sober.

Varg sets about investigating the case with his customary dogged determination, even going so far as to pick the brains of an old adversary, the now retired Inspector Dankert Muus who handled the case originally. He interviews the residents and former residents of Solstølen Co-Op, a community of five houses. Some of them are extremely reluctant to talk to him. What is it they have to hide? Varg discovers a complex web of connections but one which for a long time seems just to confuse the situation not make it clearer.  It’s a seemingly random, unconnected event that brings about a breakthrough but not before Varg has found himself in a series of sticky situations and uncovered some pretty dark stuff.

Is Mette still alive? If so, who was responsible for her disappearance and how has she remained undiscovered all these years? You’ll have to read the book to discover the answers to those questions and I’ll be very surprised if you find them before Varg.

Varg Veum
Life-sized statue of Varg Veum in the centre of Bergen

Varg Veum is a wonderful character. He’s quick-witted and not easily dissuaded from a course of action. Yes, he’s flawed, a little world-weary and often consumed by dark thoughts but he always remains likeable because of his strong sense of justice, wry sense of humour and the fact he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I was pleased that the end of the book holds out the possibility of a little light coming into Varg’s life once again.

Where Roses Never Die is a skilfully-crafted, compelling crime mystery with plenty of twists and turns.

In three words: Gripping, intriguing, unsettling

Try something similar: End of Summer by Anders de la Motte

Gunnar Staalesen

About the Author

One of the fathers of Nordic Noir, Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1947. He made his debut at the age of twenty-two with Seasons of Innocence and in 1977 he published the first book in the Varg Veum series. He is the author of over twenty titles, which have been published in twenty-four countries and sold over four million copies. Twelve film adaptations of his Varg Veum crime novels have appeared since 2007, starring the popular Norwegian actor Trond Espen Seim. Staalesen has won three Golden Pistols (including the Prize of Honour). Where Roses Never Die won the 2017 Petrona Award for Nordic Crime Fiction, and Big Sister was shortlisted for the award in 2019. He lives with his wife in Bergen. (Photo/bio: Publisher website)

About the Translator

Don Bartlett lives with his family in a village in Norfolk. He completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000 and has since worked with a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian authors, including Jo Nesbø and Karl Ove Knausgaard.

#BookReview The Echo Chamber by John Boyne

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The Echo ChamberAbout the Book

What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once a gateway to other worlds – and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary.

The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. They are various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen.

Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the jungle of the modern living, where carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant. Along the way, they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the prescribed path.

Format: Paperback (528 pages)    Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 12th May 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

John Boyne is one of the authors on my list for my Backlist Burrow reading challenge so it was serendipitous that The Echo Chamber was the book chosen for discussion at my book club this month. As is often the case, the book divided opinion with some club members finding it lacking in nuance or simply unable to put up with the unlikeable characters. However, quite a few of us – including myself – found it hilarious and very enjoyable.

I don’t believe The Echo Chamber is intended to be an in-depth exploration of the impact of social media. To me, it’s a satire in which the author pokes fun at various aspects of the modern age such as the rise of social media influencers, the scourge of online trolling and our growing dependence on electronic devices. It can also be seen as his response to the abuse he himself suffered on social media which saw him leave Twitter.  The book’s epigraph includes this quote by John Ronson from his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. ‘The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche’.

To my mind, the members of the Cleverley family are clearly designed to be caricatures representing the worst of modern day society.  George, the head of the family, is a popular TV personality – or in his own words ‘a national treasure’. Although he believes himself to be liberal-minded he gets into a series of scrapes through his use of distinctly non-PC language on Twitter and in a broadcast interview.

George’s wife, Beverley is a celebrated – or so she would like to think – author of romantic fiction who employs a ghost to do the hard work of actually writing her books. She gets some of the funniest lines in the book. For example, she proudly recalls one of  her readers commenting on a recent book, ‘She said it reminded her of Wolf Hall. Just without all the boring historical bits’.

George and Beverley’s daughter, Elizabeth represents the nasty side of social media. She is addicted to her phone, suffers panic attacks when separated from it and is intent on increasing her followers on Twitter by any means possible.  At one point, whilst taking a break from trolling celebrities, she even engages in an argument with herself on Twitter.  What may be the greatest moment of her life comes when she gains that elusive blue tick on her Twitter account but disappointment soon follows.

My favourite character was the Cleverley’s eldest son, Nelson, who finds it easier to interact with other people when dressed in a uniform. His experiment with speed dating is one of the funniest scenes in the book. Other memorable characters are Pylyp, a Ukranian dancer, and his pet tortoise named after a Ukranian folk hero.

Each member of the family eventually finds themselves in hot water in a variety of bizarre ways and all of them are brought down to earth with a bump.

The Echo Chamber is certainly very different from the only other book I’ve read by John Boyne, All The Broken Places, although a glance at his backlist demonstrates the great variety in his writing. It’s rare a book makes me laugh out loud but The Echo Chamber did. In fact, I like to imagine John Boyne chuckling away to himself whilst writing certain scenes.  At over 500 pages, I did feel it ran out of steam a bit towards the end but it’s wickedly funny – with the emphasis on  ‘wicked’.

In three words: Funny, entertaining, satirical

John BoyneAbout the Author

John Boyne is the author of thirteen novels for adults, six for younger readers and a collection of short stories. His 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide and has been adapted for cinema, theatre, ballet and opera. His many international bestsellers include The Heart’s Invisible Furies and A Ladder to the Sky. He has won three Irish Book Awards, along with a host of other international literary prizes. His novels are published in over fifty languages. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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