The Captain, The Avaeste and the King ~ J M Bardsley

I wasn't going to read another indie novel this year, but how could I resist the offer from one of my book club members to read this novel by a local author, especially when she said it was in the same vein as The Chronicles of Narnia.

Ashton, the 8th son of the King of Aeloran, Mathis St Almeric, is searching the islands of the Aethermarinus for the Silvertip Sedge - a plant whose unique properties can save the life of his dying father.  Ashton's ship the Aeveste can travel beyond the ether but it is on a different plane that he kidnaps a crew that will prove their worth and loyalty during their many adventures.

The Avaeste's First Mate Morris - a swamp monster - is one of Ashton's most loyal friends, along with the ship's Engineer (a goblin called Dew) and Santee (a tiny magical sprite).  These four friends learn much about each other and the crew, during their dangerous voyage, and learn that nothing is always what it seems.

All heroes have a nemesis lurking is the background and this comes in the guise of the evil Calegra Camba Descada.  Descada and his crew will stop at nothing to get hold of the rare Silvertip Sedge destroying everything and anyone in their path.....

I thought that this was a very imaginative story and I loved the imagery of a sailing ship traveling through the heavens. It didn't take me long to like the characters and the narrative style, and I thought that there were some great chapter headings such as the opening 'The surprising use of blackcurrant juice' and 'The taming of the crew'.  There's nothing overtly nasty in the telling of the story, even with regards to the bad guys, which gives a very pleasant feeling to the whole novel.

At over 350 pages it is fairly long for the target audience, but the story develops really well and I think that it will be enjoyed by young and old alike.

Maxine

On first reading Sabbath's Theatre I was shocked at how licentious and explicit it was. Mickey Sabbath is definitely someone you would not want in your life, but the writing is excellent and despite the subject matter I really enjoyed it. 

Mickey Sabbath is a sad old lecher who defines himself by the women he sleeps with and when his long time lover dies he is lost.  Sabbath tries to make sense of death and dying and the fact that he has left nothing of value to show for his sixty odd years on earth. 

There are several significant events with affect Mickey's life, the main one being the death of his older and much loved brother during the war, and the disappearance of his first wife.  When his brother dies it is like his immediate family dies along with him, and life as he knows it will never be the same again.  

As a young man Mickey was a successful, if not indecent, puppeteer and it is his deviant sexual exploits that dominate the theme of the novel but, for me, the most poignant and beautiful written scene in the book is when Sabbath visits an elderly uncle.  Sabbath seems caring and considerate of the man's well being, but he considers killing the man when he recognises some family items in the house, which include a box of his dead brother's belongings.  Sabbath must have this box at all costs.

I think the older you are the more you will appreciate this novel, and whilst I read a few other Roth novels for this month's author theme, Sabbath's Theatre is the one I think about the most.

Maxine

American Pastoral ~ Philip Roth

This intriguing novel, in which the life of Jewish American Seymour Levov and his affluent middle-class family is painstakingly traced against the background of the American Dream and its unraveling during the social upheaval of the Vietnam War, takes the form of a story posthumously told to (and by) Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s alter-ego, during a class reunion dominated by aging men plagued by the dread and the reality of prostate cancer. Levov’s unloving brother tells Zuckerman that ‘golden boy’ Seymour’s seemingly ideal life as sporting and military hero disintegrated into grief and horror and that, after re-marrying and having two sons, died of prostate cancer.

Seymour Levov, universally known as ‘Swede’ because of his blond and powerful body, was the son of a renowned glove manufacturer who duly passed the thriving and profitable business on to Swede; the Newark factory was a hallmark of quality American craftsmanship and ethical practice, and Swede and his family lived the Dream with a country estate, powerful social life etc.  His wife, former state beauty queen Dawn, was a devout Catholic who strove constantly to prove she was not just a pretty face, successfully breeding and showing cattle and being the perfect wife. Their only child, Merry, apparently lived the ideal childhood and wanted for nothing  - except that she had a bad stutter, which defied all parental efforts at curing. A therapist infuriated the parents by claiming that Merry’s stutter was the result of being stifled by her family environment.  Stifled, perhaps; but in her increasingly rebellious adolescence Merry became intensely involved in the anti-Vietnam war campaign. Her horrified parents eventually forbade her visits to New York City where they felt she was being badly influenced – so 16-year-old Merry stayed home in the rural idyll, and set off a bomb that wrecked the local Post Office and killed a well-known and loved local citizen. Afterwards she disappeared without trace and never could the police or her parents track her down.

These events and the resulting disintegration of the Levov family are powerfully told by Roth, in some of the most amazing prose I have read. It is a personalised account of the political and social civil war that rocked America in the 60’s as LBJ’s administration tried to bomb Vietnam and its neighbours into submission –families broken up as their children protested against the violence, and refused the authoritarianism of their parents, businesses destroyed by racial riots, and a bewildered older generation who could not cope –as Swede’s father despairs “I remember when kids went home and did homework, not out rioting and killing”.

Incredibly, the whole disintegration and alienation is reflected in a dinner party at the Levov’s home, where about 100 pages of the story takes place and old beliefs and friendships are shattered. It is searing stuff, if a bit wordy at times, and the ending is a despairing wonder at how such a good man could have suffered such traumas.

The format gets wearying at times (get to the point, please! I found myself thinking at times), and Roth as always paints a confronting and graphic view of sexual events, but altogether it is a powerful and memorable book. Not surprisingly, it won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and featured in “Time” magazines ‘All-time greatest novels’. It is not for the faint-hearted.

Helen

Nemesis ~ Philip Roth

In the "stifling heat of equatorial Newark," a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability, and even death.  

At the centre of Nemesis is a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful 23 year-old playground director, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor’s dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground - and on the everyday realities he faces – the story leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Roth does an utterly convincing job of evoking the terror that polio creates over the frightened and bewildered Newark community. (The vaccine was licensed in 1962.) The powerlessness of parents, the desperate lack of information, the speed and severity of the disease are all conveyed with affecting veracity as – seemingly at random – polio sentences child after child to crippling or to death.

"How," thinks Cantor at the funeral of one of the boys from the playground, "could there be forgiveness – let alone hallelujahs – in the face of such lunatic cruelty?" Moving between the smouldering, malodorous streets of besieged Newark and Indian Hill, a pristine children’s summer camp high in the Poconos - whose "mountain air was purified of all contaminants", Roth depicts a decent, energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Nemesis is not really about Cantor's war with polio but his war with himself: the war between a man's idea of duty and decency and the shirking of this for the facilitation of his more immediate happiness.

When Cantor abandons his post at the polio-riddled playground for the mountain summer camp where his fiancee Marcia is working, his conscience is savagely infected by the idea that he has not done the honourable thing. In the end, things get so bad physically and spiritually for Cantor that "the only way to save a remnant of his honour was in denying himself everything he had ever wanted for himself." This is the true emotional core of the novel. And this is the subject, above all others, that most galvanises Roth's genius: a man divided against himself.

Nemesis is Roth's 32nd book.

(From the web)

Di 

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Life Begins ~ Amanda Brookfield

Charlotte is approaching her 40th birthday, and not finding life particularly easy. Her divorce from Martin has just been finalised, but she finds it difficult to see him with his new partner. And their 13-year-old son Sam is having a tough time at school, no doubt related to the breakup of his parents' marriage.

Charlotte would really like to make a new start so she puts her house on the market, and finds the house of her dreams... she also meets the estate agent Tim who seems to think that Charlotte may be the woman of his dreams. Her rather lost demeanor also attracts the attentions of her best friend's husband. Then her mother - whom she has always found difficult - has an accident...

While the plot revolves around Charlotte and her gradual acceptance of her circumstances, especially all the misconceptions she expected which were often not really there.  There are a lot of subplots in this book, and such a big cast of people that I often found myself forgetting who was whom. Nice easy read though I read it over a week,  the twists and turns got a bit long winded but on the whole enough suspense and mistakes made it interesting.

Still, I gradually warmed to the book and found it quite difficult to put down as I neared the end. Some of it was predictable, but there were a few surprises along the way; each chapter begins with a brief, first person account from Charlotte's past, in italics to distinguish it from the main text. I quite liked this device and felt it helped me to get to know her better. Once she had come to grips with the truth these little adjuncts to the story disappeared.  The one person I never liked was the estate agent.

Robyn S.