Tuesday 18 July 2017

Blues With Ice by Tin Larrick


Blues With Ice by Tin Larrick
First published by Obscure Cranny Press today, the 18th July 2017.

Where to buy this book:
Buy the ebook from Amazon.comAmazon.co.uk

How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the author

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meet 20-year-old roofer and aspiring blues guitarist Alex Gray, who, on the cusp of the millennium, is heading west to California to seek his fortune. Armed with big fear, bigger dreams, a handful of dollars and his beloved guitar Camille, he arrives in Los Angeles to a self-imposed ultimatum: Make it here and now, or grow up and Get Serious.
It's a well-worn track, however, and Alex follows the vapour trails of former dole-buddy and expat-done-good Marvin Price. Already gregarious and exuberant, Marvin has been well and truly Californified by his year in the sun, and persuades Alex that fame and fortune are practically guaranteed the moment you clear customs.
As if to prove the point, a fortuitous encounter with homeless Santa Monica busker Rosco Dunhill III leads to a showcase at Rosco's downtown residence, and the American Dream seems to be playing out in front of Alex. But the sudden appearance - and transformation of - Alex's onetime love, Marie Clement, is a broadside he doesn't see coming, and the flames of Possibility evaporate almost as soon as they have appeared. Not one to admit defeat, Marie injects her new zest for life into Alex’s dejected dumbfoundedness, and pretty soon the three of them are in search of the elusive busker, chasing the spirit of Gonzo and the soul of the Beats around California.

I've been eagerly awaiting this new Tin Larrick novel since reading an early draft version several months ago. Blues With Ice is very different to his previous crime and thriller books. Inspired by 1950s American Beat classics such as Jack Kerouac's On The Road ( to which numerous nods are given) it recounts the highs and lows of a six week trip to California in the late 1990s. I also journeyed alone to California, albeit for just two weeks, at around the same time so this was a wonderfully nostalgic read for me. I didn't have a guitar, nor was I in search of stardom, but I did meet some amazing people in Los Angeles and rode the Amtrak from LA to Santa Clara and Santa Clara to beautiful San Francisco.

Larrick's naive hero, Alex Gray, is very English in his manners and outlook and this clash of cultures provides much of the thoughtfulness in Blues With Ice. His last ditch attempt to kickstart his music career is frequently derailed by alcohol and drug-fuelled days and nights, leading himself astray as often as he is led. I enjoyed following his journey and seeing how quickly he matured emotionally during what was a brief period of time. Larrick evokes the American cities in an interesting way although we do mostly see them through the bottom of whisky glasses and beer bottles.

The Beat writers seem to be undergoing a resurgence of influence at the moment and the style of Blues With Ice reminded me of Harry Whitewolf's travel writing especially Route Number 11. If you liked that book, I would certainly recommend Blues With Ice to you and vice versa.


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Books by Tin Larrick / Coming Of Age fiction / Books from England

Saturday 15 July 2017

Revenants - The Odyssey Home by Scott Kauffman


Revenants - The Odyssey Home by Scott Kauffman
First published by Moonshine Cove Publishing in America in December 2015.

Where to buy this book:

How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the author

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A grief-stricken candy-striper serving in a VA hospital following her brother’s death in Viet Nam struggles to return home an anonymous veteran of the Great War against the skullduggery of a congressman who not only controls the hospital as part of his small-town fiefdom but knows the name of her veteran. A name if revealed would end his political ambitions and his fifty-year marriage. In its retelling of Odysseus’ journey, Revenants casts a flickering candle upon the charon toll exacted not only from the families of those who fail to return home but of those who do.

Every so often one of my indie author reads turns out to be an absolute gem and I am delighted that this was the case with Revenants. The novel is a modern day retelling of Homer's Odyssey, but I admit it has been so long since I read that classic that I didn't identify Kauffman's story with Homer's, nor did I think it needed that distinction as Revenants stands strongly on its own merits. I did have to look up some of the American slang - a candy-striper for example is a young female volunteer at VA hospitals so named for their red and white striped uniforms. And VA is the acronym for Veterans' Affairs, an American government department charged with the care of former military personnel.

In Revenants, Kauffman explores the aftermath of war both on the fighting soldiers and on their friends and families back home. Unusually for American novels I think, his veterans are physically and mentally damaged by their experiences, many horrifically so, and he sensitively presents their plight. The book is set partly in a 1970s hospital and partly in First World War trenches. Perhaps attitudes have changed now, but it was saddening to read of men being feted heroes as they go off to fight and shunned for the injuries incurred in that fighting on their return. Kauffman has his characters comment on the political use of medal pinning at election times while those same men are kept out of sight for the rest of the year.

Revenants is emotional historical fiction and also an ingenious mystery story. As readers we uncover the story of the hidden patient alongside Betsey and her brother. Betsey's story is intriguing too as she tries to assuage her guilt by helping the hidden patient, but cannot forgive herself enough to avoid her own life slipping into delinquency and drug addiction. This unglamorous reality of war is often suppressed when hysterical and jingoistic rhetoric fires up yet another generation to take up arms against each other, but hopefully honest novels such as Revenants will prove memorable and encourage greater debate before new bombs fly.


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Books by Scott Kauffman / Historical fiction / Books from America

Thursday 13 July 2017

Nemesis by Jo Nesbo


Nemesis by Jo Nesbo
First published in Norwegian in Norway as Sorgenfri by Aschehoug And Co in 2002. English language translation by Don Bartlett published by Harvill Secker in 2008.

I registered my copy of this book at Bookcrossing

One of my WorldReads from Norway

Where to buy this book:


How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the publisher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How do you catch a killer when you're the number one suspect? A man is caught on CCTV, shooting dead a cashier at a bank. Detective Harry Hole begins his investigation, but after dinner with an old flame wakes up with no memory of the past 12 hours. Then the girl is found dead in mysterious circumstances and he begins to receive threatening emails: is someone trying to frame him for her death? As Harry fights to clear his name, the bank robberies continue with unparalleled savagery.

I am sure I have never read any Jo Nesbo books before, but this Scandinavian crime novel felt very familiar throughout. It has an alcoholic lead detective emotionally tortured by actions in his past, an inexperienced but brilliant sidekick, a bizarre serial crime for them to solve, a trip to the other side of the world for no great reason and, of course, our detective has a close personal attachment to the crime. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Nesbo is certainly a competent crime writer and I liked his evocation of Oslo life, especially in respect to the city's frequently miserable climate, but for me this novel felt too formulaic. I thought most of the characters didn't have the believability of, say, the Martin Beck creations, and the plot line seemed to become more outlandish by the minute! As an escapist read, Nemesis did keep me occupied for a couple of afternoons, but my high expectations were ultimately disappointed.


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Books by Jo Nesbo / Crime fiction / Books from Norway

Monday 10 July 2017

Behind The Counter by Constantina Rebi


Behind The Counter by Constantina Rebi

First published in Greek in Greece by Quest Publications in 2015. English language translation published by Quest Publications in June 2016.

One of my WorldReads from Greece

Where to buy this book:
Buy from independent booksellers via Abebooks
Buy the ebook from Amazon.comAmazon.co.uk
Buy the ebook via Payhip

How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the publisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The novel “Behind the Counter” is an effort to describe our times. The uncertainty and the fear of the present and the future. People who live in a surrounding of moral and financial crisis, trying to survive. Two women, who are friends and colleagues, describe their lives in dialogues. Between the dialogues there are descriptions of their colleagues, their behaviour and the effort to adjust in the cruel environment of a strict hierarchy. There are ironic metaphors in the text, as an effort to explain the cruelty, injustice and death.

Behind The Counter is a novella of about a hundred pages which illustrates the rapidly declining living standards of ordinary people in austerity-struck Greece. We see Athens through the eyes of a bank clerk, her friends and colleagues, and are gradually more aware of their fragile circumstances as the book progresses. I liked Rebi's device of only naming each character with an initial. This allowed me to have some remembrance of each person, but also meant I wasn't limited to imagining them as definite characters. Each of these worried people could be any one of us reading the book and the financial similarities between the Greek and UK economies at the moment meant I felt Behind The Counter resounds with what I see here as accurately as with Rebi's Athens.

I think stark contrasts made Behind The Counter particularly striking for me. Short chapters are each relatively mundane co-worker conversations, but as the bank staff discuss meeting targets, the machinations of the Rising Star, or what they saw on TV, outside their windows children are jumping onto moving rubbish lorries in the hope of salvaging a discarded pair of flip-flops while equally desperate adults rip cables from railway lines. The combination creates a graphic portrayal of a teetering society and the sense of it just being a matter of time before everyone is dragged down makes for compelling reading.


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Books by Constantina Rebi / Contemporary fiction / Books from Greece

Monday 3 July 2017

Vagrant Nation by Risa Goluboff


Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s by Risa Goluboff
Published by Oxford University Press in April 2016.



How I got this book:
Received a review copy from its publishers via NetGalley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In 1950s America, it was remarkably easy for police to arrest almost anyone for almost any reason. The criminal justice system-and especially the age-old law of vagrancy-served not only to maintain safety and order but also to enforce conventional standards of morality and propriety. A person could be arrested for sporting a beard, making a speech, or working too little. Yet by the end of the 1960s, vagrancy laws were discredited and American society was fundamentally transformed. What happened?
In Vagrant Nation, Risa Goluboff answers that question by showing how constitutional challenges to vagrancy laws shaped the multiple movements that made "the 1960s." Vagrancy laws were so broad and flexible that they made it possible for the police to arrest anyone out of place: Beats and hippies; Communists and Vietnam War protestors; racial minorities and civil rights activists; gays, single women, and prostitutes. As hundreds of these "vagrants" and their lawyers challenged vagrancy laws in court, the laws became a flashpoint for debates about radically different visions of order and freedom.
Goluboff's compelling account of those challenges rewrites the history of the civil rights, peace, gay rights, welfare rights, sexual, and cultural revolutions. As Goluboff links the human stories of those arrested to the great controversies of the time, she makes coherent an era that often seems chaotic. She also powerfully demonstrates how ordinary people, with the help of lawyers and judges, can change the meaning of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court's 1972 decision declaring vagrancy laws unconstitutional continues to shape conflicts between police power and constitutional rights, including clashes over stop-and-frisk, homelessness, sexual freedom, and public protests. Since the downfall of vagrancy law, battles over what, if anything, should replace it, like battles over the legacy of the sixties transformations themselves, are far from over.

With its subtitle of 'Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s' and the fact of it having been written by a law professor, I did wonder if I might struggle to understand Vagrant Nation. Happily, it is remarkably accessible for non-lawyers or law students and, other than an occasional legalese phrase or two, I not only comfortably kept up with the text, but also learned a lot about this period of American history. Goluboff stresses the human stories behind the headlines and clearly explains often complex legal arguments. Personally I was amazed at the sheer variety of people who fell foul of the wide-ranging vagrancy laws in America, especially as practically none of the cases mentioned by Goluboff recognisably fitted the classic image of a vagrant! Instead, vagrancy law victims were generally simply undesirables - men and women who didn't fit their locality's narrow idea of 'normal' and 'acceptable'. They didn't DO anything wrong, but they LOOKED wrong and therefore could legally and repeatedly be arrested at the whim of any zealous / bored / malicious police officer even though they might have money and a job and a legitimate reason to be wherever they were. I was reminded of Sylvie in Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping - an outbreak of neighbourly fingerpointing could result in an arrest record.

I was fascinated and frequently shocked throughout Vagrant Nation and I am sure Dave started getting fed up of me interrupting him to read out excerpts! Goluboff briefly discusses vagrancy law's Elizabethan roots (English colonialism at fault again), and takes us into courts across America, from local towns to the Supreme Court, to meet lawyers and victims over a period of some twenty-odd years from 1949 until 1972. She examines the influences of diverse challenges to vagrancy law from civil rights, women's rights and gay rights groups, and does a fantastic job of making what must have been a sprawling mess of arrest records and lawsuits into a strong coherent narrative, tracing threads across states and years. I am glad to have read Vagrant Nation and would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in twentieth century history and social sciences.


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Books by Risa Goluboff / Sociology / Books from America

Saturday 1 July 2017

Enough Is Enough by Lindsay Miles + Free book


Enough Is Enough: 18 Ideas for Embracing a Life with Less Waste and Less Stuff by Lindsay Miles
Self-published in Australia in 2016.

Where to buy this book:
Download a copy free from the author's website in return for signing up to the newsletter

How I got this book:
Received a copy for signing up to the Treading My Own Path newsletter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I stumbled across Lindsay Miles' inspirational blog, Treading My Own Path, through a shared Facebook link to her post Can You Live Plastic-Free Without Bulk Stores? This in turn led me to discover Plastic-Free July, a global challenge which encourages people to attempt to get through the whole month without adding to the plastic burden already suffocating our planet.

Enough Is Enough addresses how readers can change our mindsets towards the way that we live and how we can refuse to blindly follow society's consumer culture ethic. It is not a simplistic instruction manual issuing orders, but rather offers areas upon which we can each think about our own lives and situations. Page headings such as Make Conscious Choices, Don't Be Tempted Just Because It's Free, and Never Doubt That You Can Make A Difference are expanded upon with practical suggestions and advice and I certainly recognised myself in several of the scenarios! At just twenty-three pages, Enough Is Enough is a quick read, but one with (hopefully) long-lasting ramifications and that I can see myself keeping (digitally, of course) to refer back to whenever an extra burst of enthusiasm is needed for my own zero-waste lifestyle efforts.


Search Lit Flits for more:
Books by Lindsay Miles / Lifestyle books / Books from England