Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

A bit spoilery.

After Amy Dunne disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband Nick is the first suspect. Though he maintains his innocence, desperate in his search to find out what has happened to his wife and to clear his name, the evidence appears damning. Chapters alternating between Amy's diary and Nick's contemporary narration reveal that the Dunne's marriage had been unhappy for a long time. In fact, it seems that Amy and Nick didn't even know each other any more. Their accounts of events in the past, and of each other's thoughts, moods and reactions, show a couple shockingly out of tune with each other.

These conflicting accounts keep the pages turning, switching the reader's allegiance between Nick and Amy, at least at first, while causing us to question if either party can actually be trusted. Nick, in particular, in the first half of the novel, showed the signs of being an unreliable narrator by withholding information, not only from the police, but also from the reader. His cell phone rings, and he turns it off, not telling who is calling, or mentioning it again - until the next time. He is questioned about an overheard argument - an argument he has not described. He claims to be a writer, and yet describes his father-in-law is "literally losing his head."

And then, halfway through, there is a momentous twist, and everything we think we have figured out about Amy, Nick and their marriage turns on its head. I was completely taken by surprise! The second half of the novel. The case plays out like a deadly game between ruthless, manipulative players taking turns. Both Amy and Nick reveal themselves to be highly unpleasant characters in a toxic relationship, and it's difficult to root for either one. The pages keep turning of their own accord as the story heads for a climax, and from a reader's point of view, you want something huge to happen, but you know it can't end well for both. Can there be a winner, or only losers?

Gone Girl starts off as a fairly straight-forward crime thriller, but turns out very different indeed: clever, but very twisted, dark and unsettling. You might want to read something cute and wholesome after this one.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Süskind

Just these last few weeks, it has seemed as though the whole world wanted me to read Patrick Süskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. After joining in with a customer about the merits of real books over e-readers, his parting words to me were to recommend this book. My friend had been talking about the movie adaptation, and then Ellie mentioned it as a really challenging book in reply to my comment on one of her posts. Lastly, it emerged that my latest acting "discovery" Ben Whishaw had starred in the movie adaptation. And I couldn't see the film without having read the book. Only Shakespeare is exempt from that.

Perfume starts slowly. Really slowly. We are treated to pages and pages of descriptions of smells, every scent in Paris that you might be able to think of. Scent is, of course, a hugely evocative sense, and this forms the basis of the novel, however, I'm not quite sold on how convincingly it can be described with pen and ink. But though slow, these descriptive pages are compelling. It is easy to describe the appearance of things, but there are all the other senses, and Süskind has chosen to focus on one not widely used in literature.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, Perfume's protagonist villain, is a very unusual sort of character, even from birth. Those who ought to look after the infant Grenouille are repelled by him in ways they cannot describe, other than that he smells of nothing. Yet his own nose is remarkable, able to identify the subtlest scents, and this one sense occupies his entire mind. He is utterly alien, lacking in human qualities, a psychopathic nose. There is nothing relatable about Grenouille, and yet he is pitiable. Süskind seems to use scent as a metaphor for the soul, and Perfume leads one to ponder on the nature-versus-nurture debate, presenting the uncomfortable idea of a person innately evil. Grenouille moves from place to place, and bad things happen to those he leaves behind. No explicit connection is made, but Grenouille leaves a trail of misfortune behind him, leading back even to his mother, which adds to the sense of menace.

Perfume does not end where you might think it should, and I found the expected denouement to be anticlimactic. When compared with the pages of description earlier in the book, the "finale" is prosaically described, lacking all tension. There is a sense of inevitability of events, with Süskind making no attempts to keep the reader guessing. I came to realise (thanks to my friend's comments) that this is actually incredibly clever, because, after all, this is how Grenouille sees the world. The smells are everything - human actions, life and death, mean nothing to him.

But just when I thought the ending was all wrapped up, the plot takes a horrifying turn by showing not just the evil in Grenouille's character, but the depravity he inspires in his fellow man by the seeming of purity. Perfume is a slow-burning novel, which took its time to grab my attention, but one that lingers, turning out very dark and unsettling indeed.

Mini-reviews 2: Grace Williams Says It Loud & Feet of Clay

Another post with a few thoughts on two more books I've been reading at the same time. Like the last two, these couldn't be more different!

Grace Williams Says It Loud, Emma Henderson

I bought Grace Williams at Waterstone's bookshop on a special offer for customers who use the Orange mobile phone network. It is an account of a life inside the Briar Mental Institute, from the point of Grace, a mentally and physically disabled girl. We follow Grace through her life from before her arrival at the institute aged eleven in 1957, through to the 1980s when she is living with carers in a smaller house. Although Grace has difficulties communicating with others, leading to dismissive attitudes from outsiders and even staff, she is observant and thoughtful, and the novel focuses particularly upon her friendship and romance with Daniel. Narrated in a sometimes stream-of-consciousness style by a girl limited by her lack of speech, Grace Williams can be a little claustrophobic and jarring in the contrast between how we see Grace - from within her own head - and how others see her, as a hopeless simpleton. Grace Williams Says It Loud is a challenging and sometimes disturbing but compassionate novel from a new author.

Feet of Clay, Terry Pratchett

My favourite Discworld books are by far the "Watch" sub-series. We first meet Ankh Morpork's City Watch in Guards! Guards! which takes place at a turning point in the Watch's history. At the beginning of the novel there are only three people foolish enough to police Ankh Morpork: drunken Captain Samuel Vimes, solid and thick - in every definition of the word - Sergeant Fred Colon and Corporal "Nobby" Nobbs - who was "disqualified from the human race for shoving" and needs a certificate to prove that he is (probably) human. The three remaining watchman have a settled lifestyle of plodding the streets, ringing a bell and saying "All's Well!" and looking away when, in fact, all isn't well. Enter new recruit Carrot Ironfoundersson, two metres tall, who when he was sixteen had to be informed by his father, a dwarf, that he was in fact adopted. Carrot knows the rulebooks inside out and, to Vimes' dismay, thinks that the watchmen should actually be fighting crime. Carrot's arrival is the catalyst for a complete overhaul of the City Watch into a force to be reckoned with. The second book in the sub-series, Men At Arms, introduces new recruits of nearly every species (but no vampires) into the force, and by Feet of Clay it has become a vital cog in Patrician and Tyrant Lord Vetinari's well-oiled machine that is Ankh Morpork.

In brief, Feet of Clay is - to use Friends terminology - the one with the golems, the one in which Lord Vetinari is poisoned and the one that introduces Cheery Littlebottom, the first dwarf to "come out" as female. (Of course there are female dwarves, a necessary evil for the continuation of the species, but it wasn't something dwarves really talked about, except for a few delicate conversations when courting.) Feet of Clay raises questions of personhood and slavery: are golems - clay-baked workers - machines or people? If machines, they have no moral responsibilities and cannot be arrested for committing crimes, any more than a sword can be arrested. If people - then their owners/employers have some serious thinking to do! The book is full of scathing comments on social hierarchies and comparisons of human "breeding" with farming. Full of Pratchett's trademark biting satire and groan-worthy "punes, or plays on words," there is also a brilliant whodunnit, howdunnit mystery with some wicked red herrings. In my opinion, Feet of Clay is one of Pratchett's finest stories.

Beloved, Toni Morrison

I chose to read Beloved as part of Sarah's Back to the Classics challenge, as it was a regular title to appear on lists of books banned from school libraries. Looking it up on Goodreads, opinions were polarized: reviewers either loved or hated Beloved and could not understand any other point of view. I decided to give the book a 50-page or 3-chapter trial, and decide at that point whether or not it was for me.

Beloved tells the story of Sethe, a former slave who chose to kill her small daughter rather than allow her to be taken back into slavery. After many years of mysterious activity in Sethe's home, a young woman appears at her door who calls herself Beloved - the name on the child's gravestone - and who knows things that only Sethe's children ever knew. Is this girl Sethe's daughter miraculously returned to her, or does Beloved have a more sinister purpose?

When reading Beloved I had no difficulty in understanding why it is a regular banned book. With themes of infanticide, cruelty, rape and torture, Beloved is a dark, disturbing novel, not suitable for young or sensitive readers. However, I found myself wondering if people call for its censorship out of discomfort, not wanting to look closely at a shameful era of history; one which, like Beloved, will not stay dead.

I have to say, I didn't really enjoy Beloved. Beside the obvious, that it covers subjects highly unpleasant to think about, I found the writing style very patchy. Though Morrison's writing can be beautiful and poetic, I found it somewhat dense and at times impenetrable. I tuned in and out of the writing and sometimes found myself reading a few pages without really taking in what was going on. She switches between characters, past and present and first and third person narration with little warning, and if I'd put the book down it took me a little while to be able to tune back in to what was going on at a particular point. At one point, the book took on a stream of consciousness style which, although full of fascinating language and imagery, I confess I couldn't get its meaning. I think my personal preference of storytelling is more traditional.

And yet, when I reached the end, I found myself unable to let Beloved go, feeling that it needs at least a second reading to get everything out of it. Perhaps more. I didn't always enjoy reading it - and yet, I felt the need to do so again. Love it or hate it, or if, like me, you don't quite know what to make of it, ultimately Beloved is an important work of literature which deserves its place as a classic.