Tainted tosh

When a lone septuagenarian (I LOVE that word!) is murdered in his apartment in Reykjavík, detective inspector Erlendur Sveinsson is called in to investigate. As he digs into the murdered man's background, so he unravels a sordid tale of rape, a fatal genetic disease, incest and suicide - with a drug-addicted daughter as a side. Just the ingredients for a rip-roaring police procedural right? WRONG.

For the first time in years I feel confused and unsure about a book and I don’t like it one bit. I think I liked Erlendur; he’s my kind of detective; quiet and morose with a whiff of wit. He smokes too much, I can relate to that. His floundering efforts to save his daughter ranged from heart-string-pulling sentimentality to the downright pathetic. But, like the character of Sigurdur Oli, the plot was sparse and underdeveloped, all the vaguely exciting elements of the story were underplayed, like the whole genetic pool thing, fascinating but barely mentioned.

For my first foray into the criminal underworld of Iceland, this was a serious disappointment. Too much lackin’ and too little learnin’ to be had. So this ‘prize-winning international bestseller’ can go jump.

5/10

Tainted love...

Dear god, I've just gone and given myself a soft cell, marc almond moment, first thing on a monday morning, but it suits my purpose so I'm sticking with it. Because TAINTED BLOOD was, for me, a tainted love kind of experience (by which i do not mean, under any circumstances, that it wore a tight t-shirt or made me want - du du - run away) but it just wasn't perfect enough to be the prizewinner it apparently is.
Whilst it was a quite interesting peek into a seriously inbred, closed-in culture, it just didn't do quite enough. Jen kept saying she wanted to learn more about Iceland, and although that struck me as odd at the time, looking back, now I kind of agree. Because (with its cliche cop and its predictable story, sans twist) it didn't bring anything new to the genre apart from being set in Iceland. But then I didn't actually come away knowing much more about the country than that only 15 people went missing from Iceland in the 1970s, and that everyone calls each other by their first names and a one-generation patronymic (I would be Isobel Robertsdottir... how cool is that?)
However the prize for most exciting thing I'll always remember about last week's book club for is that Jaime actually brought along A MOUSE'S BRAIN in a pot. Amazing!!! And that I got hammered and don't remember how i got home (think it involved a bus but still can't be sure). Can't wait for the next book!
Isobel Robertsdottir

I'm scared already...

Our new selection by the lovely Kate. It took a while but we got there in the end.

Charming at best. Pointless at worst.

Meg Rosoff's 'How I Live Now' is being marketed as a crossover novel. However, the crossover genre - which seems to be the bastard offspring of the Potter phenomenon and Mark Haddon - is a harder nut to crack than Rosoff seems capable of. For while this novel clearly has elements that would make it appealing to kids, there's little enough in it for adults. The fantasy level is depressingly poor (compared to writers such as Pullman, and even J K Rowling)... and the skewed-reality element - worse still (especially in comparison with someone like Haddon).
Basically Daisy, a fifteen year old American anorexic is booted off by father and wicked stepmother to live in an idyllic English country setting, with her strange and wonderful cousins (with assorted pets), when an unlikely war (World War 2 with terrorists and mystery) breaks out leaving them cut off, separated and evacuated. However, Daisy, rather like a misplaced and underfed Shakespearean heroine, rises to the challenge. And before the novel is out has saved at least one cousin, trekked along some footpaths, and started eating again, not to mention dallying in incest and blackberry picking, rather in equal quantities.
But basically I was bored. There simply wasn't enough in it for an adult imagination. And the daftness of the whole thing actually suggested we were heading towards some sort of Daisy-awakes-in-a-New-York hospital 'and it was all just a dream'. But even when this didn't happen, I didn't feel pleasantly surprise, because the end then became even more far-fetched.
Issues undealt with, charm undercut with silliness, Daisy being more or less the most insufferable girl in children's fiction to date, and my feeling that it takes more than a little freestyle writing to make a book like this clever, combined to make this an utter disappointment for me. Would be interested in seeing what a 13 year old thought of it though...