What I ave bin reeding

"I'm Not Scared" - Niccolo Ammaniti

Michele is a 10-year-old boy living in a rural district in southern Italy, who spends his days exploring the countryside with his friends. One day, poking about an old abandoned house, he discovers a terrible secret, the body of a boy about his own age. The story unfolds through Michele's eyes, as he keeps the discovery a secret from his friends and family. He is just at that age when he has glimmers of understanding about adult life, but still lives within the strange logic of childhood and that's what makes the story so interesting. The beauty of the language and descriptions of idyllic rural life as the children race their bicycles down country lanes, explore and roll down hillsides through boundless fields of golden wheat conflicts sharply with the mystery at the heart of the book, which unfolds leisurely but not without a number of twists and turns, that Michele struggles to understand.

It's refreshing to have a child in a book who thinks like a child and acts like a child, rather than a miniature adult as most novels and media present us with. He's not a Spy Kid or a Harry Potter but a 10 year old trying to make sense of the world. That and the intelligent, twisting plot made this novel a joy to read.

"The Flood" - David Maine

A curious retelling of the story of Noah and the flood from Genesis, the author plays up on the callousness, brutality, confusion and the wrath of an unquestionable and incomprehensible Old Testament God. In some ways the story is modernised - the characters of the children of Noah, or Noe as he is here (from the original Latin translation of the Bible), are fleshed out and given character traits that seem a little too modern in parts. Likewise Noe is not a pleasant character, with all the certainty and self-righteousness of one who believes God speaks only to him and his callous treatment of his family and those who perish in the flood is at odds with the idea that God spared him and his family because they were true to the faith and good people. However, in other ways there's been not attempt to modernise the story - Noe is 600 years old, and the world has only existed for a millennium.

Maine tells the story in eight voices - Noe, Noe's wife, three sons and three daughters-in-law - telling the story in their own voices, which works nicely to create a difference in narrative. It does make for a refreshing retelling while keeping close to the original biblical story, but it's an uncomfortable read as well - the innocent are swept aside along with the sinners; Noe puts an unfair curse on his grandson, sends his descendents in different directions across the Earth, and dies alone - it's rather like reading Snow White in the original text after seeing the Disney version. When the wicked witch is forced to put on red hot iron slippers and dance until her feet are burned away and she drops down dead, it's cruel and unfamiliar.


"Flashman and the Redskins" - George MacDonald Fraser

Essentially two stories, tied together with the common thread of the American West, and probably the best of the Flashman novels as arch cad, Harry Flashman - womanizer, cheat, thief, coward, Knight of the Bath, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and Victoria Cross - winds his way across America with the '49ers, commanding a wagon train of invalids and whores as he joins the trail to California to escape slave traders out for his head in New Orleans. As with all the Flashman novels, it takes most of its cues from actual events and historical detail and acts as a veritable "Who's Who" of the time as Flash travels the Oregon and Santa Fe trails, running into such larger-than-life personalities as Kit Carson, Gallatin, feared Apache chief Mangas Colorado and Geronimo. The second half of the book has Harry return West twenty years later, to run into the likes of Custer, Spotted Tail, Crazy Horse, Anson Mills and Wild Bill Hickock as he stumbles from crisis to crisis and from Little Big Horn to Deadwood.

As is always the case with the Flashman novels, the historical detail is fascinating and Flashman is written truly as a man of his time - modern sensibilities are forgotten and often the tone of the characters is uncomfortable, but Flash makes an interestingly balanced narrator - he's not a bleeding heart to whom the Native Americans are an innocent, oppressed people, nor is he entirely heartless to their situation and people. He recognises, like Spike in Buffy that "That's what conquering nations do. It's what Caesar did, and he's not going around saying, 'I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.' The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story." Like his fellow countryman, Flash might be a cynic, but the mixed tale of the American West is a story that needs a little cynicism and not a Dances With Wolves interpretation of all whites being evil and Indians being innocent. The shades of grey, coupled with lashings of humour and make for a rollicking good read.

"Naked Prey" - John Sandford

Apparently the fourteenth novel in John Sandford's PREY series. I've never read any of the others, however, and came at it fresh having picked it up in a "Try It For 99p!" promotion at my local book store. There is enough background information provided that I was able to thoroughly enjoy the story on a standalone basis and now want to read some of the earlier novels, which was the point of the promotion no doubt.

There's a real "Fargo" feel to the book, set as it is in a tiny town in northern Minnesota. Letty West, a twelve year old muskrat trapper, discovers two nude bodies that have been hanged from a tree near her trap line. The case is complicated by the fact that one victim is a white woman, the other a black male and everyone is politically sensitive to the term lynching being used to describe the killings. Cop Lucas Davenport and his partner Del Capslock soon discover that there appears to be much more to the case than an interracial double homicide.

Much like the Columbo mysteries - the story here is not to work out who committed the crime or their motive, as both the reader and Lucas know those answers before the book is half complete. Rather, the story revolves around the attempt of Lucas and Del to make sense out of the remaining pieces of the puzzle as the murder itself leads into a tapestry of deception in a small town. Some of the characters are sparsely fleshed out - perhaps because I haven't read any of the other books Lucas and Del seemed a little light on personality, but the supporting cast of small town characters trying to cover up a secret that the whole town seems to be in on are a lot more interesting. It's not exactly Twin Peaks, but has the otherworldly weirdness of small town life. The real hero and central character is in many ways Letty West, who is wonderfully developed as she deals with the traumas she experiences throughout the book (and before). Not a traditional murder mystery, but a riveting read regardless.

"Crocodile on the Sandbank" - Elizabeth Peters

A more straightforward mystery story here, although not without twists of its own. Again, I've never read any of the 'Amelia Peabody' mysteries before, who appears to be a sort of Victorian Egyptologist Miss Marple, but picked this up in the same promotion. Armed with a parasol, a first-aid kit, and a formidable confidence in the superiority of the British Empire she braves irascible archaeologists, curses and a wandering mummy to bring the case to its conclusion. It's not particularly smart or clever - the plot twists are predictable and the identity of the villain easy to decipher well before the closing chapters - but it's rather fun. There's a Miss Marple meets Scooby Doo meets Nancy Drew vibe to the whole novel. It's not taxing or original, but still enjoyable. It's charming, quaint, old fashioned fun. I must admit, I prefer something with more teeth. And I'm not talking about the crocodile.