Disclaimer by Renee Knight

This intricately plotted novel presents various points of view. By manipulating the reader's sympathies, the author demonstrates how quickly and automatically we judge and blame others, then reveals how misguided those judgments can be. Why are the narrative perspectives so different and who is reliable? Is it human or forgivable to take out one's own grief on an unwitting child? Do the bereaved spouses unconsciously whitewash the character of their son?

The book raises troubling thematic questions as well. In an effort to protect our families from emotional trauma, is is appropriate to keep secrets from loved ones? What does it mean to trust someone? What past errors are forgiveable, and how can we choose who to believe? Are we responsible for our own suffering? A gripping read, this story offers no easy answers to these vexing questions.

Finished at last!

Behind the missing pieces, I sense the malign hand of Jarvis. There's also one piece that fits neither gap! But now that the puzzle is done, we can take the Christmas tree down.

 

Jigsaw fashion on the French Riviera

 

The pieces are varied in size and oddly shaped - perhaps in the French style? The image is coming together, a seafront scene with boats at Nice, on the Riviera. At 1250 pieces, this takes time!

The Reading Edge: Books Read in 2019

In 2019, I read 124 books, beating my 2018 total of 109. In 2017, I read 126.

January
James Clear                       Atomic Habits

Lilia Momple                    Neighbours, the Story of a Murder

Anna Burns                       Milkman (CD)

Jordan B. Peterson            Twelve Rules for Life (CD)

PM Forni                            Choosing Civility (skimmed and made notes)

Mark Cote                          That Lucky Old Son

Alexander McCall Smith    The House of Unexpected Sisters

Kagise Lesogo Molope        This Book Betrays my Brother (re-read in order to teach at SFU)

                                                                                                                                         
February
Alexander McCall Smith    The Colors of All the Cattle

Derek B. Miller                  The Girl in Green

Diana Athill                       Alive, Alive Oh! and other Important Matters

Tana French                      The Likeness (CD)

Diana Athill                       Midsummer Night at the Workhouse and other Stories

Iain Reid                            Foe

March
Tana French                      The Trespasser (CD)

Diana Athill                       Somewhere towards the end

Lisa See                             Dragon Bones

Donna Leon                       Through a Glass Darkly (relistened for SFU course)

Sue Grafton                       X (relistened, for SFU course)

Jack Knox                         On the Rocks with Jack Knox

Charles Cumming             The Moroccan Girl

Alan Bradley                      The Golden Tresses of the Dead (CD)

Ian Rankin                        Watchman (quit partway through)

Diana Athill                       Instead of a Book

Diana Athill                       Stet

Tana French                      The Secret Place                

Gloria Steinem                  My Life on the Road (Audio)

Ross Macdonald                The Ivory Grin (a Lew Archer novel) (Audio)

Henning Mankell               Chronicler of the Winds (skimmed last of this tragic allegory)

Sarah Waters                     The Night Watch (Audio)                                                               

April
Michael Kluckner              Julia (graphic novel about Julia Henshaw)

Lisa See                             The Island of Sea Women (CD)

Sally Rooney                      Normal People (audio)

Sheila Kohler                     Once we were Sisters

Alexander McCall Smith    The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse

Abir Mukherjee                  A Necessary Evil

Jhumpa Lahiri                   The Namesake (audio)

Val McDermid                   Forensics

Jhumpa Lahiri                   Unaccustomed Earth (audio)

Abir Mukherjee                  A Rising Man                                                                          

May
Ann Patchett                     State of Wonder (CD)

Anne-Marie Drosso            Hookah Nights

Anne-Marie Drosso            Cairo Stories

Jhumpa Lahiri                   The Lowland

Nathaniel Brandon            The Six Pillars of Self-esteem

Alain de Botton                  The Course of Love

Ovidia Yu                           The Frangipani Tree Mystery

Victoria Zackheim ed.        Faith: essays from believers, agnostics and atheists

Peter Robinson                  Careless Love

Daniel Kahneman              Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow (audio)

Abir Mukherjee                  Smoke and Ashes (audio)                                                               

June
Diana Athill                       Instead of a Letter

Elif Shafak                         Black Milk

Maureen Medved               Black Star

Gail Honeyman                  Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine (skipped over last bit)

Alain de Botton                  A Week at the Airport

Alain de Botton                  Status Anxiety

CS Lewis                            The Silver Chair CD

Graeme Simsion                The Rosie Result

Val McDermid                   Insidious Intent

Val McDermid                   Trick of the Dark

Josephine Tey                    The Daughter of Time

Rupert Sheldrake              Science and Spiritual Practices

Peter May                          The Blackhouse

Fred Vargas                       Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand

Colin Cotterill                    Six and a Half Deadly Sins (CD)                                                       

July
Ariana Dagnino                 The Afrikaner

Jennifer Robson                The Gown (CD)

Edna O’Brien                     The Little Red Chairs (Audio)

Manuel Matas MD             The Borders of Normal 

Rachel McMillan               The White Feather Murders (didn't finish)

Mike Simmons                   Episodes from Iceworld 

Terry Fong                         Princeton: a Love Story

Edna O’Brien                     The Love Object (CD) [heard first 8 CDs only]

Iona Whishaw                    Death in a Darkening Mist

Edward Gibbon                 The Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire I (Audio)

Gianrico Carofilio              The Past is a Foreign Country

Gianrico Carofilio              Involuntary Witness

Ian Hamilton                     The Disciple of Las Vegas

Derek B. Miller                  Norwegian by Night

Josephine Tey                    Sands of Time

Kate Atkinson                    Big Sky
Ann Shortell                      Celtic Knot                                                                                

August
Qiu Xiaolong                     Shanghai Redemption

Jess Kidd                           Himself

Peter Carey                        True History of The Kelly Gang                                            

September
Peter Carey                        Illywhacker (finished at home in October)

Chris Cleave                      Incendiary

Jane Harper                      The Dry

Jane Harper                      Force of Nature (CD)

Dervla McTiernan              The Ruin

Adrian McKinty                 The Chain

Adrian McKinty                 The Cold, Cold Ground

Ovidia Yu                           The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

Iona Whishaw                    A Killer in King’s Cove                                                               

October
Elly Griffiths                      The Dark Angel

Iona Whishaw                    It Begins in Betrayal

Iona Whishaw                    An Old Cold Grave

Iona Whishaw                    It Begins in Betrayal

Iona Whishaw                    A Deceptive Devotion

Shelley Wood                     Quintland Sisters (Audio file)

Peter May                           The Chessmen (CD)

Adrian McKinty                 Police at the Station and They don’t Look Friendly (CD)

Richard van Camp             Moccasin Square Garden

Maude Barlow                   Whose Water is it Anyway?                                                

JoJo Moyes                       Still Me (CD)

Adrian McKinty                 Police at the Station and they Don’t Look Friendly (CD)

Adrian McKinty                 I Hear Sirens in the Street (2 of Troubles Trilogy)       

Adrian McKinty                 In the Morning I’ll be Gone 

Adrian McKinty                 Gun Street Girl                                                                       

November
Adrian McKinty                 Rain Dogs (CD)

Jakob Arjouni                    Brother Kemal

Jane Harper                      The Lost Man                    

Kate Atkinson                    Transcription

Adrian McKinty                 Hidden River

Nicola Upson                     An Expert in Murder (first one featuring Josephine Tey)

Jacqueline Carmichael      Tweets from the Trenches

Dervla McTiernan              The Scholar (CD)                                                                   

Ben Macintyre                   Operation Mincemeat (CD)

Jennifer Egan                    Manhattan Beach                                                                  

December
Derek B. Miller                  American by Day

Renee Knight                     Disclaimer                        

Mark Manson                    Everything is Fucked: a Book about Hope
Kevin Barry                       Night Boat to Tangier
Naomi Wood                     Mrs. Hemingway (didn't finish)                                                

How the mind plays tricks - missing jigsaw pieces again

Christmas is jigsaw time. The mind with its beliefs and expectations is powerful, and I appear to be carrying some subconscious mental baggage about completing jigsaws. It's not a conscious view, but since a few recent experiences with missing pieces, I seem to have internalized the belief that there will always be a missing piece. For the puzzle on the left, we found that piece under the coffee table. The other one has not turned up yet, and it leaves a glaring gap in the wall of the Chateau Frontenac. This is an affront to one of Canada's most venerable and impressive hotels.

Mark Manson imagines how to restore old-fashioned virtues

Humans need hope. Manson appeals to readers to develop "a sustainable, benevolent hope" that unites rather than dividing us, that is "robust and powerful, yet still grounded in reason and reality." Only this can carry us through life "with a sense of gratitude and satisfaction."

In this remarkable work, Manson shows how current social values and expectations weaken us. He speaks of values that are now unfashionable: emotional maturity, character, and virtue. He also encourages us to face up to where we are and how we've got here.

Individual choices, choosing challenging commitments and taking responsibility for them -- these are the actions of mature adults, and the only path to "spiritual happiness." They also make us "anti-fragile," able to stand up to life.

Daily decisions have long-term consequences, and choice is a serious business. This important activity should not be confused with selecting among the overabundance and variety of consumer goods available today. In reality, these are distractions. The plethora of meaningless purchasing options steals our attention from the truly important things.

Human conflict is always with us, both within and without. The author notes that in the paradox of progress, "an irrational sense of hopelessness is spreading across the rich, developed world...The better things get, the more anxious and desperate we all seem to feel." Yet we all have the power of choice. How we cope with this as individuals will have great influence on the future pf spcoetu. 

I was surprised by the concluding section of the book, which lays out Manson's thoughts on how to pass through human crisis into a "post-hope" world. There is much to recognize here, and whether a reader resonates with the final section or not, this is definitely a worthy read.

American by Day and the paradox of individualism

This novel portrays Sigrid, a female Norwegian police officer who featured in Norwegian by Night. Learning her brother is missing in America, she goes looking and meets Irv, an American sheriff who studied divinity rather than criminology. Wary at first, the two cops develop enough mutual trust to tackle the problem they share, though it has different implications for each of them. Sigrid fears for the safety of her brother Marcus, who has run like a guilty fugitive from the scene where his lover dropped to her death from a high building. In Irv's world, the professor's death raises the American spectre of race relations.

At a tense confrontation in from of a biker bar by a Target parking lot, Sigrid recalls how Norwegian gangs "adopted American tropes about freedom, individuality, and rebellion and demanded complete conformity to them."

According to academic race relations expert Lydia Jones, the paradox of American cultural individualism is "both the problem and the solution." She explains that "'What we're up against now is a conservative movement anchored in a way of seeing Americanness that says that any attention to group problems, or trying to actively support diversity through representation is actually divisive and discriminatory itself...They see the entire world through this individualism prism," which "negates discussions of race and racism...One can't escape the observation that America historically enslaves groups, but only frees individuals.'"

Marcus, also a teacher, makes similar observations about the students who are plugged in to their phones, thinking "the more they strive to express their uniqueness in those machines, the more conformist they become."

Miller's language is smart and funny, which makes it easy to absorb unpalatable truths. We laugh when Irv explains that "nobody has ever overestimated the intellect of a man in cowboy boots," which is why he wears them. We like him better for  having left his job using his "knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew to help name pharmaceutical products," when he realized that "most of the products aren't meant to cure you but make you dependent on the treatment." That felt wrong.

Sigrid's perspective on American policing is fact-based and clear. Citing a recent article, she tells Irv, "While we don't know how many citizens are killed by the police, we do know how many cops have been killed by criminals...the overall number of murdered officers has been dropping in a nice flattening curve since the 1970s." The perceived "war on the police" is illusory; there's been nothing close to that since Prohibition in the 1920s.

This book features variable and shifting perspectives, shown mostly using Sigrid's point of view. "Why," she wonders idly as she flips through the TV channels in a motel room, "is overacting preferred in situation comedies but not in dramas?" In a more serious moment, she decides that "The heart is one of the few places where facts and truth may be separable." Shopping in Target provides a salutary reminder of privilege: the low prices make her feel "a momentary pang of guilt for the abducted and enslaved children who surely weaved the clothing with their tiny little fingers." She finds it "unsettling how quickly that feeling fades as she "holds up a pair of ...jeans being sold...for twelve dollars, the price of coffee and a muffin in Oslo." And as Sigrid tells Irv, there are no glass barriers between the front and rear seats of Norwegian cruisers; it's unheard-of for Norwegian criminals to shoot police.

She also feels that American horror movies reflect the culture: the invariably end "with someone being self-reliant and overcoming her own fear or else failing to do that and dying." Unable to think of a single movie "where the horror was overcome through strategy, cooperation, teamwork, or planning," she reflects to Irv that "the terrible machine you've created," explains "why Americans buy guns rather than build institutions," which does not make anyone safer.

The differing perspectives of the sexes comes up for some gentle ribbing too. The SWAT team scenes feature hilariously clownish portrayals of trigger-happy macho males, whose hasty and ill-considered actions incite in Sigrid a flash of anger against men, for "their stupidity, their lies, their egotism, their irrelevant words, their aggressive personalities and their hairy backs...the ease by which they open jars and their inexplicable incapacity to return even the smallest object" to its rightful location. However, knowing that she cares deeply about her brother and respects her male colleague, the reader can smile at her snit as she slogs through the forest ruining her good Italian shoes.

Strangely, just after reading this novel, I learned another piece of the American cultural puzzle from a recently published essay. For American citizens, no matter where they live, work and earn, that there is no escape from filing taxes in the US, and failure to comply can carry heavy financial penalties. Paradoxically, I was gobsmacked to learn that it costs $2350 to relinquish one's US citizenship - a costly sanction against no longer wanting to be American.

In a recent essay, Mark Manson takes the concept of paradox beyond culture into the realm of human biology. We need to maintain homeostasis, a salubrious balance between opposites. This concept, he says, also has applications in psychology, for instance, as we are obliged to seek company, then retreat into ourselves, or cycle between seeking novelty and maintaining a reassuring routine.

Humans are contradictory and paradoxical, and our behaviour is often unaccountable. Reading fiction is a good way to face the irrationality of our views and actions. The work of Derek B. Miller is enlightening and thought-provoking as well as entertaining. While he admits that as a novelist, he takes "some liberties with reality," he deserves kudos for showing us realities we all face, thus expanding our perspective on the human condition.