expedition to the South Pole in The Birthday Boys; later (but emphatically pre-DiCaprio) came the sinking of the Titanic, in Every Man for Himself. Now, in her third historical novel (and her 16th overall), she takes on the Crimean War, and the result is a slim, gripping volume with all of the doomed intensity of the Light Brigade's charge--but, thankfully, without the Tennysonian bombast. "Some pictures," a character confides, "would only cause alarm to ordinary folk." There's a warning concealed here, and one that easily disturbed readers would do well to heed: Master Georgie is intense, disturbing, revelatory--and not always pretty to look at. Bainbridge's narrative circles around the enigmatic figure of George Hardy, a surgeon, amateur photographer, alcoholic and repressed homosexual who counters the dissipation of his prosperous Liverpool life by heading for the Crimean Peninsula in 1854. His journey and subsequent tour of duty are told in three very different voices: Myrtle, an orphan whose lifelong loyalty to her "Master Georgie" becomes an overriding obsession; Pompey Jones, street urchin, fire-eater, photographer and George's sometime lover; and Dr. Potter, George's scholarly brother-in-law, whose retreat from the war's carnage and into books takes on a tinge of madness. United by a sudden death in a Liverpool brothel in 1846, these characters plumb the curious workings of love, war, class and fate. In between, Bainbridge frames an unforgettable series of tableaux morts: a dying soldier, one lens of his glasses "fractured into a spider's web"; a decapitated leg, toes "poking through the shreds of a cavalry boot"; two dead men "on their knees, facing one another, propped up by the pat-a-cake thrust of their hands." Glimpsed as if sideways and then passed over in language that is as understated as it is lovely, these are images that sear into the brain. Master Georgie is full of such moments, horrors painted with an exquisite brush. --Mary Park
Advantages: characters, language Disadvantages: plot
...At university this term I am doing a course on the Booker Prize Winners, and this week we were studying the 1996 winner 'Last Orders', by Graham Swift.
Graham Swift was born in 1949, and has written seven novels in total, one of the most noteable being 'Waterland'. 'Last Orders' was Swift's sixth novel, and was the one that finally gave him the appreciation many felt he deserved after 'Waterland'. Swift won the Booker Prize in 1996 beating stiff competition from Margaret Atwood, BerylBainbridge, Seamus Deane, Rohinton Mistry and Shena Mackay.
The novel revolves around four men, who were once close to Jack Dodds. In the opening we learn that Jack has died, and then the men proceed on a journey to Margate in order to scatter Jack's ashes. What at first seems like a simple plot, through a series of flashbacks we learn more about...
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Advantages: Great suspense Disadvantages: There was one thing I wasn't sure was possible...
...A famous author, Beryl Madison, is brutally killed in her home only hours after she has returned from hiding out from a stalker. Kay Scarpetta delves through the clues in her past to investigate another famous author, Beryl's reclusive former lover, and his sister. Beryl is in the midst of writing a "tell-all" book even after she has signed a contract not to reveal anything about her former lover's life. Kay is left to investigate the missing manuscript, and to deal with her old college boyfriend who appears out of nowhere....
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Advantages: Continuing with a much loved character Disadvantages: None
...‘Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her makes threatening obscene phone calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West, but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in….’ Thus starts another murder mystery for Dr Kay Scarpetta.
For those who haven’t read any of Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta mysteries before, Dr Kay Scarpetta is the chief medical examiner for Virginia, USA. She is charged with discovering what happened in some of the most gruesome crimes committed.
These books are written in the first person, that of Kay Scarpetta, so no information is off limits, including the autopsy and crime scenes. For those of you who enjoy crime detection novels, this one is definitely a must....
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13.10.2005
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