Category: Reading Challenges

Book Review: Macbeth by Jo Nesbø

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MacbethAbout the Book

He’s the best cop they’ve got.

When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath it’s up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess.

He’s also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past.

He’s rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They’re all within reach.

But a man like him won’t get to the top.

Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He’s convinced he won’t get what is rightfully his.

Unless he kills for it.

Format: Paperback (624 pp.)    Publisher: Vintage
Published: 20th September 2018 [5th April 2018] Genre: Fiction, Thriller

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Macbeth on Goodreads

My Review

Jo Nesbø is the latest author to participate in the Hogarth Shakespeare project.  Launched in October 2015, the project’s stated aim is ‘to see Shakespeare’s plays reimagined by some of today’s bestselling and most celebrated writers. The books are true to the spirit of the original plays, while giving authors an exciting opportunity to do something new.’

This is the first book by Jo Nesbø I’ve read, although I’m aware of his books and his many fans across the world.  Therefore, I came to the book with high expectations both because of his reputation and the Shakespeare play he had chosen to tackle, Macbeth. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed.  At over 600 pages, I found the book rather a slog and not as gripping as I had expected.  For me, the author didn’t really succeed in ‘doing something new’ to the extent I was hoping for.

The book certainly fleshes out the back stories of many of the characters in Shakespeare’s play but I didn’t find this added much for me.  A lot of time was devoted to the detailed planning of police operations, carried out with ruthlessness and little regard for the rule of law.  So if you like plenty of blood and guts, you’ll be happy. Things picked up a little when Lady (the character who represents Lady Macbeth) arrived on the scene but not enough to reignite my interest in the book as a whole.

The book is set in a rundown Scottish town in the 1970s but has a distinctly dystopian feel.  It’s a place where unemployment and deprivation has led to a high level of addiction to drugs, gambling and alcohol.  In practice, the drug barons are in charge and corruption in local institutions, including the Police, is rife.  To my mind this was where the book worked best; conjuring up an atmosphere of decay and hopelessness, a society divided into ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ and torn apart by violence and gang warfare.

I think if the writing had been tauter, some of the detail had been excised and the author could have done more than just retell the story but set in another time and place, it would have made Macbeth a more compelling read.  Although there were elements I enjoyed, like some other reviewers, I don’t believe this is the most successful contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Vintage, and NetGalley.

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In three words: Atmospheric, dark, weighty

Try something similar…New Boy by Tracy Chevalier (read my review here)

Jo NesboAbout the Author

Jo Nesbø is a bestselling Norwegian author and musician. He was born in Oslo and grew up in Molde. Nesbø graduated from the Norwegian School of Economics with a degree in economics. Nesbø is primarily famous for his crime novels about Detective Harry Hole, but he is also the main vocals and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre. In 2007 Nesbø also released his first children’s book, Doktor Proktors Prompepulver.

(Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Jo

Website  ǀ  Goodreads

Book Review: The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

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The Winter SoldierAbout the Book

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.

But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon’s scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (336 pp.)    Publisher: Pan Macmillan/Mantle
Published: 20th September 2018 (ebook)   Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance

Pre-order/Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Winter Soldier on Goodreads

My Review

The reader witnesses in brutal detail Lucius’ struggle to do his best for the soldiers in his care, many of whom have suffered terrible injuries that challenge his medical knowledge and surgical skills.  His task is made more difficult by the basic conditions in the makeshift field hospital to which he has been posted, the lack of food and medical supplies and the long, cold winters.

Along with a few orderlies, Lucius, and the hospital’s only nurse, Sister Margarete, care for the patients as best they can, battling not only the injuries themselves but the scourge of infection and disease.  Before long, the mutual dependence between Lucius and Margarete grows into a forbidden intimacy.

Although Lucius tries to fulfil the principle of ‘do no harm’, this conflicts with his military oath to ‘patch and send’; to return soldiers as quickly as possible back to the front to fight.  This dilemma becomes personified in the case of one patient.  What follows will have far-reaching consequences for Lucius and others.

I don’t really ‘do’ romance in novels, especially if it’s at all soppy or sentimental, but I’ll freely admit I was slightly tearful at the end of The Winter Soldier.    It made me think of Dr. Zhivago, albeit David Lean’s marvellous film version rather than the original novel by Boris Pasternak.

The Winter Soldier is a beautifully written novel that depicts the bonds formed through shared experiences in the worst of situations.  It’s a story of people thrown together by war, of separation and reunion, of love and loss.  I thought it was fantastic.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Pan Macmillan/Mantle and NetGalley.

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In three words: Epic, intense, emotional

Try something similar…The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford (read my review here)

Daniel MasonAbout the Author

Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner (2002), A Far Country (2007), and The Winter Soldier (2018). His writing has been translated into 28 languages, adapted for opera and stage and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Northern California Book Award. His short stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, Zoetrope: All Story and Lapham’s Quarterly, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize, and a National Magazine Award.  In 2014, he was a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A Clinical Assistant Professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, his research interests include the subjective experience of mental illness and the influence of literature, history, and culture on the practice of medicine.

Connect with Daniel

Website  ǀ Goodreads