Book reviews on Bournville, Molly and the Captain, Secret Lives, Bleeding Heart Yard, The Aosawa Family
Jonathan Coe and Anthony Quinn clock in with two magnificent novels—Coe’s storyline takes on the last 75 years of UK history, while Quinn muses on art, time, and love. The other three novels today fall under the crime fiction genre, but with unexpected central female figures. One is a septuagenarian living in Washington D.C., with the D.C. address being the clue, the second is a London police officer with a shocking, dark secret and her superior, a Sikh detective, and the third is a blind young Japanese girl.
Bournville by Jonathan Coe
Ever since What A Carve Up!, Jonathan Coe has been consistently one of my favorite authors, and this stretches back to the mid-1990s. There’s always been something singular about how his social commentary and chronicling of recent history is leavened by humor, compassion, and making the personal and intimate stand-in for the societal and general. His microcosm of a milieu becomes macro in a revelatory and enlightening manner. His latest, set in the town of Bournville and temporally taking place from 1945 to 2020, is no exception. It centers on Mary and her family, and when we first meet Mary, she’s a young girl experiencing the end of World War II hostilities.
What Coe does is take central events in the history of Great Britain over the aforementioned period, and use them as weathervanes for what’s going on with Mary and her extended family. Elizabeth ascending to the throne, Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales (with a sidebar story about how he isn’t Welsh to begin with), his wedding to Diana, and her funeral—these all stand in chapter headings for us getting to know Mary and her brood intimately. The special magic that Coe weaves is in how his cast of characters resonates with us, that we all know people such as them in our lives. From the ugly face of racism within the family, how a family member decides he’s gay, and losing a loved one during the Covid-19 health crisis, you’ll be touched and even tear over how Coe makes every day and mundane so special.
Molly and the Captain by Anthony Quinn
Time, love, and art, in the form of a multi-strand narrative lie at the center of this richly engrossing novel. We first open in 1785, where our narrator is Laura Merrymount, one of two daughters of the renowned 18th-century portrait painter William Merrymount. Her sister, Molly Merrymount, is an important part of this story, as she’s a pretty but rather fragile creature. And then some 100 years later, we follow the exploits of a struggling, physically challenged landscape painter Paul and his sister. The story revolves around a painting at an auction that may or may not be an undiscovered Merrymount. Then in 1983, we’re thrust into the life of abstract painter/grandmother Nell Cantrip and her daughters. Nell discovers she may be the great-great-great granddaughter of William Merrymount.
Quinn wonderfully evokes each era. The first is done in letters and diary entries of Laura. The second era is done via straightforward narrative, but with the previous era hovering ever so gently. The 1983 story is a rich one that brings everything to a head in unexpected ways as Nell and her daughter Billie resonate with us, the readers, and make us wish there was more story to follow. This in fact is part of the particular magic that Quinn conjures up. We care about the characters from each time frame and eagerly look forward to reading what happens next. That Quinn also makes poignant points about changing attitudes and values about love, family and friendship, and art, which are the bonus points we get from this terrific journey through time.
Secret Lives by Mark de Castrique
Jesse attends college while staying at a Washington D.C. boarding house run by Ethel Crestwater, his cousin twice removed. Ethel is 75 years of age and while still spry for her age, seems to play the role of meek and mild boarding house operator to perfection. So when a boarder, Jonathan Finch, is seemingly murdered, right before dawn, with Jesse as the one reacting first to the gunshot (he was Skypeing with his girlfriend, who’s studying in London), it doesn’t take long before Ethel suddenly takes control of the situation, galvanizing into action, and showing off a gift for playing off the FBI, Secret Service, and local police force against each other. Seems Ethel is a retired FBI operative, and everyone owes her some favor or holds her in grudging respect.
Finch’s death is linked to a case of cryptocurrency fraud and a $20-million deposit account that has never been recovered. Ethel is a wonderful creation, and it isn’t giving anything away that she runs away with this suspense novel, delighting us with every scene she’s involved in, from knowing how to expertly pick locks to being a licensed small craft pilot. Her history reveals a father who was in law enforcement, passed away early when Ethel was still in her teenage years, and a mother who died giving birth to Ethel. Lucky us readers as de Castrique gives us a compelling lead character, a topical, sure-footed crime and plot, and a lot of Washington D.C. local color and detail. Enjoyable crime mystery, and you’ll hope Ethel will be back with new adventures in crime-solving.
Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths
This is the third novel I’ve read by Elly Griffiths, and it fortifies my opinion that she’s one of the better contemporary crime fiction writers. The procedural part is strong, and it’s bolstered by the richness and complexity of the characters she creates. An overriding theme of this latest is how even if you try and escape your past, it’ll spring back when you least expect it to. Central to the case is the 21st-year reunion of the graduating class of a posh London comprehensive. Two members of Parliament, a popular actress, the frontman of a revered pop band, and a police officer can be counted from this class, and it’s all about what happens when one of the members of Parliament is found dead in the toilets, from what turns out to be a staged “suicide.”
To complicate matters, one of the class died by misfortune a few days before they graduated, and it seems the member of Parliament’s current death is connected in some way to keeping the truth of that long-forgotten :accidental" death from seeing the light of day. Detective inspector Harbinder Kaur, a diminutive Sikh closet lesbian, who we first met in the Sussex case found in Griffiths’ The Stranger Diaries is back, but now connected to the London Metropolitan force. She leads the investigating team, and we’re brought up to speed via her narrative. The police officer who’s a member of the aforementioned graduating class also narrates, and it would seem her involvement in the accidental death two decades ago is much deeper than we could imagine. So there’s the rich irony of her being on the force. It's a real page-turner.
The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda
Written like a true-crime serial, this brilliant novel takes inspiration from a Rashomon-like reveal of the truth, peeling layer after layer via the testimonies of several personages who in some way or another, have some relation to the ghastly crime committed back in the 1970s. The Aosawa family has a local doctor at the head, something of a local community leader. When the family holds a double birthday celebration with the townsfolk invited, a case of mass murder via cyanide poisoning takes place, leaving more than 13 people dead, and Hisako Aosawa, a blind young teenager, is the sole surviving family member. A suspect who delivered saké and drinks to the party subsequently commits suicide, and it’s thought that resolves the case.
But a decade later, a girl connected to the family writes a true crime novel and it seems to point to people having drawn a hasty conclusion about who was the real mastermind behind the mass killing. There’s a brilliant manner in which Onda meticulously teases us, withdraws then slowly reveals the truth—or what could be the truth. Until the very end, there’s a cloud-like quality to what is passing as exposition in this novel. Numerous characters flit in and out, weighing in with their viewpoints and versions of what happened, or may have happened. Throughout, there’s the mystery surrounding Hisako, what really transpired, and what she could have set in motion that fateful day. It’s as much about the transitory nature of truth and facts, as it is about uncovering what really happened.