Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's illustrious writing career began late; this novel came out in 1980 when she was 64. From the rooftop broadcasts over a burning city to the deeply eccentric broadcasting heroes and underutilized female staff, Fitzgerald portrays what she witnessed, for she was there. Seeking "aural perfection," the radio men "never talk about the BBC’s independence – the first word the BBC normally uses to defend itself against outside pressure – they simply practise it." (Mark Damazer Intro 2013).

Her description of the BBC is striking, considering what now passes for news. "Broadcasting House was...dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective."*

No doubt this early and salubrious beginning at the BBC set the tone for what came later, and accounts for the continuing excellence of its reputation.

The romantic plot is amusing, and centres around a new employee called Annie. A frank and self-sufficient girl who has "drawn since birth on the inexhaustible fund of tranquil pessimism peculiar to the English Midlands," she used to work at Anstruthers in Birmingham at the hosiery counter, where "they hadn’t asked the customers whether they wanted plain knit or micro-mesh, but ‘Do you want the kind that ladders, or the kind that goes into holes?’" Annie falls for an unsuitable middle-aged flirt during a staff dinner at a French restaurant, and true to her habitual frankness, declares her feelings to him, with unexpected results.

The comings and goings of the occupants of BH are fascinating -- the fanatical sound engineers, motherly secretaries, and "high up in the building, refugee scholars in headphones, quietly clad, disguising their losses, transcribed page after page of Nazi broadcasts in a scholar’s shorthand."

One of many tragicomic incidents involves a French general whose live interview never takes place when fate intervenes -- just as well, perhaps, since he insists that there is absolutely no hope of the Allies winning the war. "'We (France) are ruined, and we blame it on you,'" he tells the interviewer, referring to Churchill as "'that courageous drunkard you have made your Prime Minister.'"

Meanwhile, the super-conscientious mobile unit, while preparing a program on de Gaulle's new headquarters for the Free French in Westminster, have decided the background sounds of "footsteps coming and going on the bare boards, a nice bit of echo there, your wine coming out of the tap" are insufficient, and they must return the following day to "get some more atmosphere." Discussing the "threadbare" Archives, the programme directors complain that they've "no Stukas," and must therefore borrow from Pathe when the need for dive bomber sounds arises.

This writer's vignettes of life in Broadcast House during the blitz are priceless. "Recordings...apt to be mislaid [were] all 78s, aluminium discs coated on one side with acetate whose pungent rankness was the true smell of the BBC’s war." Jeff scarcely needs to show his face. The best-known in the entire BBC, it resembles a comedian’s, "but one who had to be taken seriously." We feel we are beside him when he stands "for a moment among the long shadows on the pavement, between the piles of sandbags which had begun to rot and grow grass, now that spring had come."

Meanwhile, early each evening "men in brown overalls [go] round BH, fixing the framed blackouts in every window, circulating in the opposite direction to the Permanents coming downstairs, while the news readers [move] laterally to check with Pronunciation, pursued by editors bringing later messages on pink cards." The  canteen provides sandwiches made with National Cheese, manufacturers having agreed to amalgamate their brand names in support of the war effort.

Often it's impossible for employees to get home at night. But when metal bunks are dragged into BH and stacked outside the concert hall, senior broadcaster John Haliburton (nicknamed the Halibut) trips over them. He has been chosen to read "in case of enemy landing," since he has a voice "of such hoarse distinction that if the Germans took over BH and attempted to impersonate him the listeners could never be deceived for a moment."

The reader scarcely knows whether to laugh or cry when the Departmental Director is told that, with the news being so bad, he is now "entitled to the use of an armoured car every evening on standby until further notice" but is expected to be public spirited enough to share it as necessary.

Up to now, a cab has been held for him at the ready in a side street. "‘Jack," he says, "you want my taxi for somebody else. Who is it?’" When told its's a "very distinguished American newscaster" arriving from France," he calmly says to give this man his armoured car; he will keep the taxi. But, he is informed, in the wording of a gentle order, that the American wants a taxi, complete with a Cockney driver. And so we laugh.

All quotations from *Fitzgerald, Penelope. Human Voices. HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Chasing Painted Horses by Drew Hayden Taylor

We meet city police officer Ralph Thomas on a winter day in Toronto. "A first Nations man authorized to toss white people in jail," he's chosen to live and work "among the concrete mountains." Though he misses his northern home, with its clean silence and access to wild meat like moose and elk, there are compensations. Here he can see movies at noon, shop any time, eat food from anywhere in the world, and meet "more women he's not related to."

On this particular day, Ralph sees some graffiti that stirs up memories of his childhood. He's deeply unsettled by the conviction that the remarkable painting of the horse has been done by Danielle, a kid he knew briefly in elementary school on the Otter Lake reserve. He and his family tried to help this neglected little girl, but when social services came calling, her family upped stakes and left town.

Under the sharp questioning of Harry, a homeless man Ralph treats to a meal in Tim Horton's, he realizes that the incident with Danielle started him on the trajectory to become a policeman, in the hope of making a positive difference.

As Ralph remembers his childhood, we meet his mother, Liz, an artistic soul who possesses "the energy that could fuel a thousand bingo games." One of her many bright ideas is to create The Everything Wall, where kids can try their hand at painting pictures. Danielle is thin, solitary, undernourished and dressed in clothing too small and inadequate to the weather, but she astonishes everyone by painting a horse that seems to leap right off the wall.

When Ralph, his sister and his friend learn that Danielle's mother told her she was bad and that's why Santa didn't bring her presents this year, the kids are confused, because they know "no parent should tell a child something like that. Santa was supposed to be like Jesus, he had to like everybody, even though he knew who was naughty or nice." They feel very sad about the neglect and unkindness suffered by their artistic schoolmate. Ralph was only eleven when he and his sister asked their parents to help Danielle. They told the social services woman, who "looked into it" but could do little. In the end, their efforts backfired, forcing young Ralph to confront a deep philosophical question. What can we do in the face of another's suffering?

In Ralph's work as a policeman, he's learned that "Wisdom and knowledge come with many faces." Deciding that "it didn't hurt to investigate all possibilities, he decides to trust Harry, "the crazy homeless man" who can read people's characters in their eyes.

In his Acknowledgements, the author says that this tale, which he touched on earlier in a short story and a play "nagged him" to be more fully explored. There is something mysterious, something ancient, about Danielle -- hinted at by a reference to the cave paintings of Lascaux that inspire her in a book given as a prize in the art competition. Taylor thanks his publisher for "giving my little girl and her Horse a larger pasture to explore."

Though the work has moments of the hallmark humour of its author, this time Drew Hayden Taylor chose a more sombre tone for his tale.

The Twelve by Stuart Neville

Stuart Neville's first novel, The Twelve, aka The Ghosts of Belfast, came out in 2009 and won an LA Times Book Award. Also named as a top novel of that year by the LA Times and the New York Times, it's been followed by eight other novels and Neville's work has been widely translated.

Set in Belfast after the peace, but haunted by the recent sectarian Troubles, this book deals with universal themes: appearance versus reality and the costs of privileging the one over the other; loyalty versus betrayal, seen through chilling close-ups of people who assess the world in terms of insiders versus outsiders, and the moral bankruptcy of a creed of loyalty that absolutely forbids dissent. Neville's characters reveal in agonizing detail the the lengths people will go to in pursuit of money, power and belonging. Above all, this is a story about conscience.

Now that they "have their feet under the table at Stormont," former gangsters and killers have begun "shifting away from the rackets, the extortion, the thieving." Paul McGinty, once the enforcer who propagandized ignorant young foot soldiers to bomb and kill for his own ends, is now a (crookedly) elected politician. He dresses in fine clothes and has a lawyer in his pocket to distribute sinecures meant to keep former comrades in line.

Gerry Fegan has 'the sight.' After his father "dies of the drink," the little boy sees and holds the hand of his ghostly dad. Echoing the Irish political dictum to "say nothing," his frightened mother urges him to keep the sighting to himself to avoid being laughed at or bullied. As a young teen with few prospects, Gerry is recruited and used by McGinty. Caught after a bombing that kills three innocent bystanders, he is convicted and sentenced to twelve years in the Maze for terrorism.

As a middle-aged ex-prisoner, Gerry is deeply disillusioned. The "cause he once killed for [is] long gone, swallowed up by the avarice of men like McGinty." Haunted by the ghosts of his victims, Fegan is no longer able to "turn aside and say nothing." The twelve men, women and children he killed "in the name of politics," before he realized how he was being used and manipulated, have taken up residence. Relentlessly, these manifestations of conscience disturb Fegan's life by insisting he atone for their deaths. Unsurprisingly, he pursues the course they urge on him, hoping to gain some peace.

Though Gerry Fegan is under no illusion that he can ever enjoy a normal life, the mistreated Marie and her daughter offer him a glimmer of hope for redemption. Fiercely protective of her young daughter, the pale Marie inhabits the novel as a reminder of the price a violent society exacts from a woman who stands against the suffocating pressures of social conformity imposed upon her.

The Glaswegian ex-Black Watch soldier, David Campbell, is observed by secret service recruiters  to be "good in a scrap" and able to wriggle out of disciplinary charges. Accordingly, he's inducted into the undercover Fourteen Intelligence Company. Annexed to the SAS, Fourteen doesn't officially exist, though it's known to do "the dirty work, the stuff no one owns up to, the kind of things ordinary people go to prison for." Once Campbell leaves the Commando Training Centre, where he's been "brutalised for the good of the country," he's ready to infiltrate the Northern Irish paramilitaries as a double agent. Though his motivation is less well-developed than that of other characters, we glimpse him stroking the Red Hackle that symbolizes his former regiment and draw our own conclusions.

The history portrayed is all too real, and the story is tragic. Yet some moments of luminous beauty and hope contrast with the general darkness. The author shines a play of light over ironic and symbolic elements. While serving in the Maze, Gerry Fegan befriends Ronnie, a fellow prisoner. Dying of asbestos lung disease he got from working in the shipyards, the old man teaches him woodwork. Before his imprisonment, Fegan's tool was a deadly Walther pistol, but when Ronnie dies, he leaves Fegan a valuable Martin guitar and the skill to finish restoring it. Fegan then adds a third tool to his belt. The cell phone he buys symbolizes the hopeful possibility of protecting Marie and her child. And twelve, the tally of Fegan's ghosts, is of course the number of the disciples.

Though the genre is said to be hard-boiled, this lyrical and unusual novel by a writer with a sure and subtle touch conveys universal themes through deeply satisfying layers of meaning.

The Templars' Last Secret by Martin Walker

This book was my first experience with the work of the amazing Martin Walker, a journalist of vast experience who has worked all over the world. His list of writing and editing credits alone made my eyes pop, and he's also a revered historian and broadcaster.

Bruno, on the other hand, is an ordinary French cop. Though his early life situation did not offer him much in the way of opportunities, this kind and intelligent man has done much with the talent he's been given. A relaxed guy who enjoys life, Bruno befriends his neighbours and puts heart and soul into his work, which provides rich rewards in return. Readers are transported to the rural peace of the Perigord. There we get to experience the people, the wine, the food, and the world-famous UNESCO heritage site of Lascaux with its amazing 17,000-year-old cave paintings.

The Chief of Police is surprised by the arrival of a Parisian bureaucrat sent to job-shadow him for research purposes. Initially, Bruno is resistant to having Amelie constantly at his side; he fears her presence will disrupt his well-oiled routine of getting information from his contacts. But he soon sees how her social media skills can be used for police work. Yet, much as he's impressed by what Amelie can discover on the internet, he still shares a smug glance with Horst the archaeologist when she finds herself stymied by a loss of connectivity at the cave.

Bruno is engagingly optimistic and philosophical. Shocked by the destruction of Aleppo and Homs, he finds it hard to believe anyone could "seek deliberately to eradicate the monuments and the history of their own people." Even so, he feels optimistically certain that the past can "never be wiped away with the arrogant sweep of a violent hand."

Like many fictional cops, Bruno has access to non-logical forms of thought and knowing. He views these "subterranean mental  stirrings" as "hunches, and sometimes as an idea coming from a part of his brain that was not entirely his--a part formed by curiosity, experience and intuition--that kept churning, calculating, and making hypotheses that would suddenly erupt as a breakthrough."

For a mystery, the pace of this book is fairly slow. The body appears early on, but the detective work takes time. As he works on his investigations, we accompany Bruno as he prepares for the wedding to two archaeologist friends, cooks a delicious meal, rides his horse, walks his dog, talks to all kinds of local characters, drinks several delicious coffees, and teaches tennis to at-risk kids.  

Supporting a contemporary plot based on middle-east tensions, we're treated to an impressive array of curious historical facts. Unfamiliar with all but the most basic French history, I was intrigued to learn that the last master of the Templars cursed Phillip IV and the pope before he was burned at the stake by the Pont Neuf in Paris in 1314. Nor did I know the Vikings had sacked Bordeaux and Bergerac. I was equally surprised to learn that the Templars, while involved with the Crusades, "negotiated an alliance with the Mongols."

And who who knew the British intelligence people, those inveterate nicknamers, referred to their diplomats who specialized in the Arab world as camels? Or that the French Winnie the Pooh is Winnie l'ourson? I learned of technological developments too, thanks to scenes where the archaeologists use ground-penetrating radar.

A secondary plot involves a therapist who claims, for reasons of her own, to be "retrieving" memories from children raised in a Catholic orphanage. In reality, she's just bullying them into agreeing with her faux psychological finds. This finds a satisfactory resolution when the therapist is caught cheating on her taxes. The pace of this delightful armchair cosy picks up near the end, where a couple of romances resolve as well.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Fortunately, Walker has created a series featuring Bruno, Chief of Police.