Tag: contemporary fiction

#BookReview Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

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Death and the PenguinAbout the Book

Viktor is an aspiring writer with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although he would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the subjects of his obituaries continue to cling to life. But when he opens the newspaper to see his work in print for the first time, his pride swiftly turns to terror. He and Misha have been drawn into a trap from which there appears to be no escape

Format: Hardback (240 pages )     Publisher: Vintage
Publication date: 28th April 2022 Genre: Contemporay Fiction, Literature in Translation

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My Review

Death and the Penguin was the May selection for the book club run by Waterstones in Reading. Although the book is available in paperback, most of us chose to purchase Waterstones’ special edition containing a new introduction by the author and with £10 from each copy sold being donated to Oxfam’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

First published in 1996, Death and the Penguin has been described as ‘a chilling black comedy’ and there are definitely moments of surreal humour; Misha the penguin’s funeral attendances spring to mind.  And anyway how often do you come across someone who has a penguin for a pet, especially when that person lives in an apartment? However it does show that, although solitary by nature and with a history of keeping other people at arm’s length, Viktor can show affection. Touchingly when Misha falls ill, Viktor seeks out a penguinologist (who knew there was such a thing) to advise him on what to do and, as a result, enters into an agreement that will have quite incendiary results.

Through a series of chance events and quite without knowing how it happened, Viktor acquires what he regards as the requisites of a ‘normal’ life: wife, child, pet penguin. Set largely in the city which we now know to call Kyiv, there are occasional glimpses of Ukranian lifestyle such as when Viktor travels to a friend’s dacha for New Year celebrations.

Though he doesn’t comprehend it for a long time, Viktor has become entangled in what turns out to be a web of corruption run by some very shady individuals. When he finally puts two and two together, he realises he knows too much. ‘This isn’t a film, it’s for real.’  But has that realisation come too late?

Although all the book club members enjoyed the whimsical nature of the book, we were left with the feeling that we’d missed something and that perhaps you had to be Ukrainian to really appreciate the satirical element of the book.

In three words: Quirky, playful, charming

Try something similar: Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar

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Andrey KurkovAbout the Author

Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kyiv Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin which was first published in 1996.

Kurkov has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the world’s media, notably in the UK, France, Germany and the United States.

#BookReview The Birdcage by Eve Chase

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The BirdcageAbout the Book

Kat, Flossie and Lauren are half-sisters who share a famous artist father – and a terrible secret.

Each has found their way of burying it. Over the years they’ve grown apart, and into wildly different lives. But an invitation to Rock Point, the Cornish cliff house where they once sat for their father’s most celebrated painting, Girls with Birdcage, reunites them.

Rock Point is a beautiful, windswept place, thick with secrets, electrically charged with the one subject the family daren’t discuss. And there is someone in the shadows watching the house, their every move. Someone who remembers the girls in the painting. What they did.

The sisters must unlock the truth to set themselves free – and find each other again.

Format: Hardback (400 pages)     Publisher: Michael Joseph
Publication date: 28th April 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Mystery

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My Review

I’ve been a fan of Eve Chase’s books since I read Black Rabbit Hall in 2016 and I very much enjoyed the books that followed it – The Wildling Sisters (originally published as The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde) and The Glass House.

Kat, Flora and Lauren have different mothers but share the same father: famous artist, Charles Finch. Summoned to Rock Point by their father, an unexpected announcement  – and the arrival of an individual from the past – threatens to widen the rift that already exists between the sisters as well as bring back  unwelcome memories of the dramatic event that occurred two decades earlier. It’s an event that hasn’t been spoken about since but which has lurked beneath the surface as unfinished business between the sisters. ‘It’s the secret they forged here twenty years ago that’s pushed them apart as it’s run through each day of their lives since. In each other they see too much of the worst of themselves.’

In Charles, the author gives us a portrait of a mercurial, rather self-obsessed artist who pours his energy into making art rather than sustaining relationships. ‘He has an ability to detach from his subjects; to see human beings as arrangement of form and flesh in space, volume and light; a technical challenge to be solved.’ His three marriages are not the only evidence of his inability to be faithful but his dedication to art has come at a cost.

In a striking metaphor, the sisters are ‘mismatching dolls, from different sets’. Kat is a high-flying successful entrepreneur (on the surface at least) and Flora is a wife and mother trying hard to live up to the expectations of her husband, Scott. Close to each other in age, Kat and Flora had a close bond when younger. Lauren, on the other hand, has always felt like the outsider right from the first moment she was introduced to her two half-sisters. ‘In the archipelago of the sisters, she’s still an island on her own.’ One other notable character is Bertha the parrot whose often ill-timed mimicry of snippets of overheard conversations proves key to what unfolds. ‘We all knew Bertha didn’t invent things, just repeated them.’

As with all Eve Chase’s books there’s a real sense of place – in this case the wild, expansive coastline of Cornwall. Rock Point’s remote location surrounded by moorland dotted with abandoned cottages and standing stones, contributes to the sense of unease.  As Lauren observes, ‘Everything was bigger. Skies. Rooms. Feelings. There was more to go wrong’.

The present day story (2019) alternates between the points of view of the three sisters. Interwoven with this is Lauren’s first person narrative of events in 1999. The author skilfully ramps up the tension through fleeting references and tantalising snippets of detail about events on an August day in 1999.  It soon becomes apparent that no-one has the full picture of what took place on the fateful day. It’s only when all the pieces are put together that the sisters – and the reader – find out what actually happened. Like me, you may have an inkling about the direction of some of the story but I’m pretty sure you’ll discover a few surprises.

The Birdcage’s combination of long-buried secrets and exploration of complex family relationships adds up to an intriguing, well-crafted and satisfying mystery.

In three words: Tense, atmospheric, suspenseful

Try something similar: The Beloved Girls by Harriet Evans

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EveChaseAbout the Author

Eve Chase writes rich, page-turning mysteries set in beautiful places, thick with secrets. The Glass House was a Sunday Times bestseller, Richard and Judy Book Club pick and word-of-mouth lockdown hit. Longlisted for the HWA Gold Crown award 2018, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde went on to become an Amazon bestseller. In 2019, Black Rabbit Hall won the Saint-Maur en Poche prize in Paris for Best Foreign Fiction and also went on to be an Amazon bestseller. Before writing novels, Eve worked as a journalist in magazines and newspapers. Married with three children, she lives in Oxford, alongside a very hairy golden retriever called Harry. (Photo: Goodreads/Bio: Publisher author page)

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