While on holiday I read a lot. For the first time in years a stream of unread novels flew through my intent hands and were enjoyed appropriately. Three and a half novels in fact and now, for your education and my pleasure, it's time to write a little about them. One of the great horrors of growing up is a lack of leisure time for reading!
First off, we have 'The Detective And The Woman' by Amy Thomas, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Sadly, this didn't live up to the high standard of 'The Seven-per-cent Solution', and ultimately impressed I was not. There's a distinct whiff of competently written fan fiction about this one, for what would happen if Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes had had a case together during the detective's hiatus. They get married at the end. Sequels have followed. It all seems to be a bit off character really, but at least it's short.
Secondly, 'The Girl, The Gold Watch And Everything' by John D Macdonald. This is a caper story, a crime novel, a science fiction novelty and a rites of passage tale all wrapped together. It's also just the tad disturbing as the protagonist largely parallels me up until a certain point, and that's not the point where he discovers his inherited gold watch can pause time. Overall, an interesting one trick novel, written expertly and soaked in a West Coast of the United States atmosphere. Upsetting but again quite short. Some people will probably love it.
Thirdly, 'Three Hearts and Three Lions' by Poul Anderson. Anderson is one of the great legendary fantasy and science fiction writers and this one of his well known works. My only other experience so far with his work is the much more well known 'Broken Sword', which was a bit too bleak to be enjoyable. This is definitely a far more agreeable (short again) novel. An engineer is transported from occupied Denmark where he's working for the resistance against the Nazis to a seemingly parallel world locked in its own war between order and chaos. Therein he falls in love, regains his memories of a former life there and finally finds the means to save the day. Defying convention it ends abruptly, glosses over the actual defeating of chaos, and culminates in the hero not getting to live happily ever after. Recommended, fun and serious, but an underwhelming ending. Will it get read again? Maybe, but it's no certainty.
Finally, and I'll come back to this in the future, even a few days after returning I'm still stuck in 'The Prestige' (not short) by Christopher Priest. The reading of this novel has been overshadowed by two things: one, a certain lack of taste for his eerie writing picked up while trying out 'The Glamour' on my now-defunct Kindle, and two the clear fact that the movie adaptation tells this story remarkably better. I will get back to this once the novel is finished and a full post can be written comparing novel and film.
It's not a holiday if there's no reading and apart from all the above 'Yes Man' came to the rescue at several points, when trams and trains and buses were threatening to destroy the delicacies of the soul. Again, more on 'Yes Man' and it's predecessor 'Join Me' soon. Oh, Danny Wallace you have made a difference to so many people!
O.
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