text:
Emma's Biblio Treasures
Tag: Pushkin Press
Emma's Anticipated Treasures Support Debuts
Emma's Anticipated Treasures: 21 Books In 2021 – The Debuts
Post author By emmasbibliotreasures
Post date 6th Jan 2021
No Comments on Emma's Anticipated Treasures: 21 Books In 2021 – The Debuts
Welcome to my second post of my most anticipated books of 2021. Today I'm sharing the twenty-one debut novels being released this year that I'm most excited about. Once again, this was a very difficult list to narrow down as there were many more I'm looking forward to and have on my tbr.
The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr
Published: January 5th, 2021
Publisher: Riverrun
Format: Hardcover, Kindle, Audio
In this blinding debut, Robert Jones Jr. blends the lyricism of Toni Morrison with the vivid prose of Zora Neale Hurston to characterise the forceful, enduring bond of love, and what happens when brutality threatens the purest form of serenity.
The Halifax plantation is known as Empty by the slaves who work it under the pitiless gaze of its overseers and its owner, Massa Paul. Two young enslaved men, Samuel and Isaiah dwell among the animals they keep in the barn, helping out in the fields when their day is done. But the barn is their haven, a space of radiance and love – away from the blistering sun and the cruelty of the toubabs – where they can be alone together.
But, Amos – a fellow slave – has begun to direct suspicion towards the two men and their refusal to bend. Their flickering glances, unspoken words and wilful intention, revealing a truth that threatens to rock the stability of the plantation. And preaching the words of Massa Paul's gospel, he betrays them.
The culminating pages of The Prophets summon a choral voice of those who have suffered in silence, with blistering humanity, as the day of reckoning arrives at the Halifax plantation. Love, in all its permutations, is the discovery at the heart of Robert Jones Jr's breathtaking debut, The Prophets.
Pre-order here.
The Smallest Man by Frances Quinn
Publisher: Simon and Schuster UK
'I want you to remember something, Nat. You're small on the outside. But inside you're as big as everyone else. You show people that and you won't go far wrong in life.'
My name is Nat Davy. Perhaps you've heard of me? There was a time when people up and down the land knew my name, though they only ever knew half the story.
The year of 1625, it was, when a single shilling changed my life. That shilling got me taken off to London, where they hid me in a pie, of all things, so I could be given as a gift to the new queen of England.
They called me the queen's dwarf, but I was more than that. I was her friend, when she had no one else, and later on, when the people of England turned against their king, it was me who saved her life. When they turned the world upside down, I was there, right at the heart of it, and this is my story.
Inspired by a true story, and spanning two decades that changed England for ever, The Smallest Man is a heartwarming tale about being different, but not letting it hold you back. About being brave enough to take a chance, even if the odds aren't good. And about how, when everything else is falling apart, true friendship holds people together.
The Push by Ashley Audrain
Publisher: Michael Joseph
Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Domestic Fiction
'I will never forget her eyes in that moment – I couldn't look away from them. But I knew what happened as soon as I heard it.
'I think she pushed him,' I said to you quietly. 'I think she pushed him…'
The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn't right.
I had always known that the women in my family aren't meant to be mothers.
My husband Fox says I'm imagining it. He tells me I'm nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child.
But she's different with me. Something feels very wrong.
Is it her? Or is it me? Is she the monster? Or am I?
The Push is an unsettling, breathtaking and powerful read about obsession and our deepest fears that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.
Shiver by Allie Reynolds
Published: January 21st, 2021
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Psychological Thriller
They don't know what I did. And I intend to keep it that way.
How far would you go to win? Hyper-competitive people, mind games and a dangerous natural environment combine to make the must-read thriller of the year. Fans of Lucy Foley and Lisa Jewell will be gripped by spectacular debut novel Shiver.
When Milla is invited to a reunion in the French Alps resort that saw the peak of her snowboarding career, she drops everything to go. While she would rather forget the events of that winter, the invitation comes from Curtis, the one person she can't seem to let go.
The five friends haven't seen each other for ten years, since the disappearance of the beautiful and enigmatic Saskia. But when an icebreaker game turns menacing, they realise they don't know who has really gathered them there and how far they will go to find the truth.
In a deserted lodge high up a mountain, the secrets of the past are about to come to light. Pre-order here.
Girl A by Abigail Dean
Publisher: Harper Collins UK
THE BOOK THAT WILL DEFINE A DECADE
SOON TO BE A TV SHOW DIRECTED BY JOHAN RENCK (Chernobyl)
'Girl A,' she said. 'The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.'
Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped. When her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her six siblings – and with the childhood they shared.
Beautifully written and incredibly powerful, Girl A is a story of redemption, of horror, and of love.
The Long, Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper
Published: February 4th, 2021
Publisher: Manilla Press
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery Thriller
The sunniest places hold the darkest secrets . . .
Yesterday, I kissed my husband for the last time . . .
It's the summer of 1959, and the well-trimmed lawns of Sunnylakes, California, wilt under the sun. At some point during the long, long afternoon, Joyce Haney, wife, mother, vanishes from her home, leaving behind two terrified children and a bloodstain on the kitchen floor.
While the Haney's neighbours get busy organising search parties, it is Ruby Wright, the family's 'help', who may hold the key to this unsettling mystery. Ruby knows more about the secrets behind Sunnylakes' starched curtains than anyone, and it isn't long before the detective in charge of the case wants her help. But what might it cost her to get involved? In these long hot summer afternoons, simmering with lies, mistrust and prejudice, it could only take one spark for this whole 'perfect' world to set alight . . .
A beguiling, deeply atmospheric debut novel from the cracked heart of the American Dream, The Long, Long Afternoon is at once a page-turning mystery and an intoxicating vision of the ways in which women everywhere are diminished, silenced and ultimately under-estimated.
Madam by Phoebe Wynne
Published: February 18th, 2021
Publisher: Quercus Books
Genre: Gothic Fiction
'Rebecca meets The Secret History. Gloriously dark, gloriously gothic' SARA COLLINS, Costa First Novel Award-winning author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton
For 150 years, Caldonbrae Hall has loomed high above the Scottish cliffs as a beacon of excellence in the ancestral castle of Lord William Hope. A boarding school for girls, it promises that its pupils will emerge 'resilient and ready to serve society'.
Into its illustrious midst steps Rose Christie, a 26-year-old Classics teacher and new head of department. Rose is overwhelmed by the institution: its arcane traditions, unrivalled prestige, and terrifyingly cool, vindictive students. Her classroom becomes her haven, where the stories of fearless women from ancient Greek and Roman history ignite the curiosity of the girls she teaches and, unknowingly, the suspicions of the powers that be.
But as Rose uncovers the darkness that beats at the very heart of Caldonbrae, the lines between myth and reality grow ever more blurred. It will be up to Rose – and the fierce young women she has come to love – to find a way to escape the fate the school has in store for them, before it is too late.
Perfect for fans of Margaret Atwood and Madeline Miller, Madam is a darkly feminist tale with an electrifying cast of heroines you won't soon forget.
The Santorium by Sarah Pearse
Publisher: Bantam Press
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
EVERYONE'S IN DANGER. ANYONE COULD BE NEXT.
An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother's recent engagement, she has no choice but to accept.
Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it's beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous – as does her brother, Isaac.
And when they wake the following morning to discover his fiancée Laure has vanished without a trace, Elin's unease grows. With the storm cutting off access to and from the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.
But no-one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she's the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they're all in . . .
Call Me Mummy by Tina Baker
Publisher: Viper Books
Format: Hardcover, Kindle
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime Fiction
THIS MOTHER'S DAY YOU WILL CALL HER MUMMY
Glamorous, beautiful Mummy has everything a woman could want. Except for a daughter of her very own. So when she sees Kim – heavily pregnant, glued to her phone and ignoring her eldest child in a busy shop – she does what anyone would do. She takes her. But foul-mouthed little Tonya is not the daughter that Mummy was hoping for.
As Tonya fiercely resists Mummy's attempts to make her into the perfect child, Kim is demonised by the media as a 'scummy mummy', who deserves to have her other children taken too. Haunted by memories of her own childhood and refusing to play by the media's rules, Kim begins to spiral, turning on those who love her.
Though they are worlds apart, Mummy and Kim have more in common than they could possibly imagine. But it is five-year-old Tonya who is caught in the middle…
CALL ME MUMMY. IT'LL BE BETTER IF YOU DO.
The Eighth Girl by Maxine Mei-Fung Chung
Published: March 4th, 2021
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Psychological Fiction
Alexa Wu is a brilliant yet darkly self-aware young woman whose life is manipulated and controlled by a series of alternate personalities.
One woman, many personas. But which one is telling the truth?
Only three people know the truth.
HER THERAPIST
HER BEST FRIEND
HER STEPMOTHER
When her best friend is plunged into danger, Alexa is soon drawn into London's cruel underbelly to save her.
But will the truth lead to self-discovery, or to self-destruction?
Girl in the Walls by A. J. Gnuse
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Genre: Suspense, Gothic Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction
She doesn't exist. She can't exist.
'Those who live in the walls must adjust, must twist themselves around in their home,
stretching themselves until they're as thin as air. Not everyone can do what they can.
But soon enough, they can't help themselves. Signs of their presence remain in a house.
Eventually, every hidden thing is found.'
Elise knows every inch of the house. She knows which boards will creak. She knows where the gaps are in the walls. She knows which parts can take her in, hide her away. It's home, after all. The home her parents made for her. And home is where you stay, no matter what.
Eddie calls the same house his home. Eddie is almost a teenager now. He must no longer believe in the girl he sometimes sees from the corner of his eye. He needs her to disappear. But when his older brother senses her, too, they are faced with a question: how do they get rid of someone they aren't sure even exists?
And, if they cast her out, what other threats might they invite in?
The Plague Letters by V. L. Valentine
Published: April 1st, 2021
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery
WHO WOULD MURDER THE DYING…
London, 1665. Hidden within a growing pile of corpses, one victim of the pestilence stands out: a young woman with a shorn head and pieces of twine delicately tied around each ankle.
Symon Patrick, rector of St. Paul's Covent Garden, cannot say exactly why this corpse amongst the many in his churchyard should give him pause. Longing to do good, he joins a group of medical men who have gathered to find a cure for the plague, each man more peculiar and splenetic than the next. But there is another, unknown to The Society for the Prevention and Cure of Plague, who is performing his own terrible experiments upon unwilling plague-ridden subjects.
It is Penelope – Symon's unwanted yet unremovable addition to his household – who may yet shed light on the matter. Far more than what she appears, she is already on the hunt. But the dark presence that enters the houses of the sick will not stop, and has no mercy…
This hugely atmospheric and entertaining historical thriller will transport readers to the palaces and alleyways of seventeenth-century London. Perfect for fans of Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Andrew Taylor and C.J. Sansom.
Tall Bones by Anna Bailey
Publisher: Transworld Publishing
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction, Crime Fiction, Adventure Fiction, Political Fiction
When seventeen-year-old Emma leaves her best friend Abi at a party in the woods, she believes, like most girls her age, that their lives are just beginning. Many things will happen that night, but Emma will never see her friend again.
Abi's disappearance cracks open the façade of the small town of Whistling Ridge, its intimate history of long-held grudges and resentment. Even within Abi's family, there are questions to be asked – of Noah, the older brother whom Abi betrayed, of Jude, the shining younger sibling who hides his battle scars, of Dolly, her mother and Samuel, her father – both in thrall to the fire and brimstone preacher who holds the entire town in his grasp. Then there is Rat, the outsider, whose presence in the town both unsettles and excites those around him.
Anything could happen in Whistling Ridge, this tinder box of small-town rage, and all it will take is just one spark – the truth of what really happened that night out at the Tall Bones….
Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner
Published: April 15th, 2021
Publisher: Raven Books
Daniel is the perfect husband.
Rory is the perfect brother.
Serena is the perfect sister-in-law.
And Rachel? Rachel is the perfect nightmare.
When Helen, finally pregnant after years of tragedy, attends her first antenatal class, she is expecting her loving architect husband to arrive soon after, along with her confident, charming brother Rory and his pregnant wife, the effortlessly beautiful Serena. What she is not expecting is Rachel.
Extroverted, brash, unsettling single mother-to-be Rachel, who just wants to be Helen's friend. Who just wants to get know Helen and her friends and her family. Who just wants to know everything about them. Every little secret…
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.
Motherless and irrepressibly curious, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.
Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day, she sees a slip containing the word 'bondmaid' flutter to the floor unclaimed.
Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women's experiences often go unrecorded. She begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.
Cunning Women by Elizabeth Lee
Published: April 22nd, 2021
Publisher: Windmill Books
Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance
A bewitching debut from a magnetic new voice in historical fiction. CUNNING WOMEN is sure to be loved by fans of The Essex Serpent and The Mercies.
They only want a kindness, but beware, for if you have no coin, they will curse you black and blue.
1620s, Lancashire. Away from the village lies a small hamlet, abandoned since the Plague, where only one family dwell amongst its ruins. Young Sarah Haworth, her mother, brother and little sister Annie are a family of outcasts by day and the recipients of visitors by night. They are cunning folk, the villagers will always need them, quick with a healing balm or more, should your needs require. They can keep secrets too, because no one would believe them anyway.
When Sarah spies a young man taming a wild horse, she risks being caught to watch him calm the animal. And when Daniel sees Sarah he does not just see a strange, dirty thing, he sees her for who she really is, a strong creature about to come into her own. But can something as fragile as love blossom between these two in such a place as this?
And when a new magistrate arrives to rid out those behind the strange ends that keep befalling the villagers, he has his eye on one family alone. And a torch in his hand.
Cunning Women is the powerful reckoning of a young woman with her wildness, a heartbreaking tale of young love and a shattering story of the intolerance that reigned during the long shadow of the Pendle Witch Trials when those who did not conform found persecution at every door.
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
Publisher: Wildfire
Genre: Historical Fiction, Fairy Tale
A mesmerising retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Perfect for fans of CIRCE, A SONG OF ACHILLES, and THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS.
As Princesses of Crete and daughters of the fearsome King Minos, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra grow up hearing the hoofbeats and bellows of the Minotaur echo from the Labyrinth beneath the palace. The Minotaur – Minos's greatest shame and Ariadne's brother – demands blood every year.
When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives in Crete as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne falls in love with him. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that in a world ruled by mercurial gods – drawing their attention can cost you everything.
In a world where women are nothing more than the pawns of powerful men, will Ariadne's decision to betray Crete for Theseus ensure her happy ending? Or will she find herself sacrificed for her lover's ambition?
Ariadne gives a voice to the forgotten women of one of the most famous Greek myths, and speaks to their strength in the face of angry, petulant Gods. Beautifully written and completely immersive, this is an exceptional debut novel.
Threadneedle by Cari Thomas
Publisher: HarperVoyagerUK
Genre: Fairy Tale, Fantasy Fiction, Horror Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction, Urban Fiction, Contemporary Fantasy, Romance Fantasy
Within the boroughs of London, nestled among its streets, hides another city, filled with magic.
'Magic and love. Love and magic. They destroy everything in the end …'
Anna's Aunt has always warned her of the dangers of magic. Its twists. Its knots. Its deadly consequences.
Now Anna counts down the days to the ceremony that will bind her magic forever.
Until she meets Effie and Attis.
They open her eyes to a London she never knew existed. A shop that sells memories. A secret library where the librarian feeds off words. A club where revellers lose themselves in a haze of spells.
But as she is swept deeper into this world, Anna begins to wonder if her Aunt was right all along.
Is her magic a gift … or a curse?
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Published: June 1st, 2021
Genre: Suspense, Literary Fiction
Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of book publishing.
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and the micro-aggressions, she's thrilled when Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They've only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events cause Nella to become Public Enemy Number One and Hazel, the Office Darling.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella's desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It's hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realises that there is a lot more at stake than her career.
A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
Everything Happens For A Reason by Katie Allen
Published: June 10th, 2021
Publisher: Orenda Books
Format: Paperback, Kindle
When Rachel's baby is stillborn, she becomes obsessed with the idea that saving a stranger s life months earlier is to blame. An unforgettable, heart-wrenching, warm and funny debut.
Mum-to-be Rachel did everything right, but it all went wrong. Her son, Luke, was stillborn and she finds herself on maternity leave without a baby, trying to make sense of her loss.
When a misguided well-wisher tells her that 'everything happens for a reason', she becomes obsessed with finding that reason, driven by grief and convinced that she is somehow to blame. She remembers that on the day she discovered her pregnancy, she'd stopped a man from jumping in front of a train, and she s now certain that saving his life cost her the life of her son.
Desperate to find him, she enlists an unlikely ally in Lola, an Underground worker, and Lola's seven-year-old daughter, Josephine, and eventually tracks him down, with completely unexpected results…
Both a heart-wrenchingly poignant portrait of grief and a gloriously uplifting and disarmingly funny story of a young woman's determination, Everything Happens for a Reason is a bittersweet, life- affirming read and, quite simply, unforgettable.
Midnight in Everwood by M. A . Kuzniar
Published: October 28th, 2021
Publisher: HQ
Genre: Fairy Tale, Magical Realism, Fantasy Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction, Historical Fantasy
In the darkness of night, magic awaits…
The Nutcracker for adults, perfect for fans of Robert Dinsdale's The Toymakers, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and Stephanie Garber's Caraval
'It was a rainy day that the magic came, and once magic has entered your life, you stay in its glittering clutch forever'
Nottingham, 1906
Marietta Stelle longs to be a ballerina but as Christmas draws nearer, her dancing days are numbered. At the wishes of her family, she will be obligated to marry and take up her place in society in the New Year. But when a mysterious new neighbour, Dr Drosselmeier, purchases a neighbouring townhouse, it heralds the arrival of magic and wonder in her life. Although Drosselmeier's magic is darker than Marietta could have imagined…
When he constructs an elaborate set for her final ballet performance, she discovers it carries a magic all of its own. As the clock chimes midnight, Marietta finds herself walking through a land of snow-topped fir trees leading to a frozen sugar palace silent with secrets.
In the darkness of night, magic awaits and you will never forget what you find here…
Tags 21 Books In 2021, 4th Estate Books, A. J. Gnuse, Abigail Dean, Allie Reynolds, Anna Bailey, Ariadne, Ashley Audrain, Bantam Press, Bloomsbury Publishing, Call Me Mummy, Cari Thomas, Chatto & Windus, Cunning Women, Elizabeth Lee, Emma's Anticipated Treasures, Everything Happens For A Reason, Frances Quinn, Girl A, Girl in the Walls, Greenwich Park, Harper Collins UK, HarperVoyager, Headline, Hodder & Stoughton, HQ, Inga Vesper, Jennifer Saint, Katherine Faulkner, Katie Allen, M. A.. Kuzniar, Madam, Manilla Press, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung, Michael Joseph, Midnight in Everwood, Orenda Books, Phoebe Wynn, Pip Williams, Pushkin Press, Quercus, Raven Books, Riverrun, Robert Jones Jr, Sarah Pearse, Shiver, Simon & Schuster UK, Support Debuts, Tall Bones, The Dictionary of Lost Words, The Eighth Girl, The Long Long Afternoon, The Other Black Girl, The Plague Letters, The Prophets, The Push, The Sanatorium, The Smallest Man, Threadneedle, Tina Baker, Transworld Publishing, V. L. Valentine, Viper Books, Wildfire, Windmill Books, Zakiya Dalila Harris
Blog Tours book reviews
When Life Gives You Mangoes by Kereen Gretten
Post date 14th Oct 2020
1 Comment on When Life Gives You Mangoes by Kereen Gretten
Published: October 1st, 2020
Genre: General Fiction, Children's Fiction
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this charming debut. Thank you to Pushkin Press for the invitation to take part and the gifted eBook ARC.
A summer she can't remember
A friendship she won't forget
Nothing much happens in Sycamore, the small village where Clara lives – at least, that's how it seems. She loves eating ripe mangoes fallen from trees, running outside in the rainy season and escaping to her secret hideout with her best friend Gaynah. There's only one problem: she can't remember anything about the previous summer.
When a quirky girl called Rudy arrives from England, everything starts to change. Gaynah stops acting like a best friend, while Rudy and Clara roam across the island and uncover an old family secret. As the summer reaches its peak and the island storms begin, Clara's memory starts to return and she must finally face the truth of what happened last year.
"Something happened that made me forget everything that happened last summer."
Nothing exciting ever happens in the small town of Sycamore. And since the incident with the witch-doctor, no-one new ever comes to visit. A summer the same as every other is stretching out in front of Clara. Until new girl Rudy arrives from London and changes everything. Now things are looking like they might be exciting after all. It would be perfect, if only Clara could remember what happened last summer that made her too scared to go into the water…
I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book as it's been a while since I read children's fiction.
I read it quickly, immersed in the tropical setting and scary yet innocent world of young Clara. Her every emotion was palpable and there were many times my heart broke for this child. I wanted to help her, even if I had no idea what was causing her pain. The author captures the fun, freedom and innocence of childhood on a small island while also looking at the fear, frustration and pain that children also experience. She examines topics such as friendship, family, mental health, trauma and forgiveness through an age-appropriate lens that I think will make young readers feel seen.
Charming, heartfelt, thoughtful and mysterious, this is a beautifully crafted debut and a wonderful story for the young reader in your life.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
Kereen Getten grew up in Jamaica where she would climb fruit trees in the family garden and eat as much mango, guinep and pear as she could without being caught. She now lives in Birmingham with her family and writes stories about her childhood experiences. When Life Gives You Mangos is her debut novel.
Twitter |Instagram
BUY THE BOOK:
Amazon |Waterstones |Hive |Google Books |Kobo
Tags Blog Tour, Book Review, Children's fiction, debut novel, Four star reads, general fiction, Kereen Getten, October 2020, October Books, Pushkin Press, Support Debuts, When Life Gives You Mangoes
The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao
Post date 27th Aug 2020
No Comments on The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao
Published: August 6th, 2020
Format: Paperback, Kindle, Audio
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Domestic Fiction
Trigger Warning: Mental Health Problems
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this exquisite debut. Thank you to Poppy at Pushkin Press for the invitation to take part and the gifted copy of the book.
Gwendolyn and Estella are as close as sisters can be. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor after Estella poisons their entire family.
As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this brutal act.
Journeying from the luxurious world of the rich and powerful in Indonesia to the spectacular shows of Paris Fashion Week, from the sunny coasts of California to the melting pot of Melbourne's university scene, The Majesties is a haunting and deeply suspenseful novel about the dark secrets that can build a family empire – and also bring it crashing down.
"When your sister murders three hundred people, you can't help but wonder why – especially if you were one of the intended victims – though I do forgive her if you can believe it."
I have a penchant for anything with butterflies, so I was immediately drawn to the stunning cover of this book. When I read the synopsis it became a book I had to read and I was thrilled to receive an early copy from the publisher. Then, in May I read the first line above to share for #firstlinefriday and I was hooked. I knew I had to shelve my current reading plans and read this immediately.
"How ironic. We had embarked on this mission to save the family from darkness, only to discover that we ourselves were darkness through and through."
The Majesties opens with Gwendolyn looking back on the day that her sister Estella murdered three hundred people and left her, the sole survivor, lying in a coma. It then follows as Gwendolyn looks back at their family's history and events leading up to the murders, as she tries to figure out what drove her beloved sister to commit such a crime and how she missed the warning signs.
At its heart, this is a story about family. The murders happen at a family event, the novel is narrated by the sister or the killer, and their family dynamics are a big part of the storyline. The author examines the impact of the unspoken secrets and shame lying behind their respectable family's polite facade. How it can trickle through the generations causing greater damage than anyone ever imagined. She also explores the topic of mental health: asking how we can miss the signs of someone close to us struggling or push our concerns aside while wrapped up in our own lives, and how those around us are affected by our mental health struggles.
"It was like watching someone drown without struggling, sinking serenely to the bottom of the deep blue sea."
Tiffany Tsao is an exquisite writer. Her beautiful prose and vivid imagery brought the world she created to life and transported me to a place and culture I knew little about. The time and effort she has put in to get every line just right jumps from the page and I savoured every delicious word. I found the parts about the bagatelles – the Majesties – fascinating and once again her research and knowledge was evident. It is hard to believe this is a debut novel and I will definitely read what she writes next.
There is so much more to this layered and cleverly written novel than meets the eye. It addresses some deep, difficult and sinister topics and will surprise you just when you think you have it all figured out. I am still reeling from that ending!
The Majesties is a mesmerising debut from a wonderful new talent that you don't want to miss.
Tiffany Tsao is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel The Majesties (originally published in Australia as Under Your Wings) and the Oddfits fantasy series.
Her translations from Indonesian to English include Norman Erikson Pasaribu's poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus, Dee Lestari's novel Paper Boats, and Laksmi Pamuntjak's The Birdwoman's Palate. Her translations of Norman's poetry have won the English PEN Presents and English PEN Translates awards.
Born in the United States and of Chinese-Indonesian descent, her family returned to Southeast Asia when she was 3 years old. She spent her formative years in Singapore (8 years) and Indonesia (6 years) before moving to the US for university. She has a B.A. in English literature from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in English literature from UC-Berkeley. She now lives in Sydney, Australia with her spouse and two children.
Website |Twitter
Amazon | Waterstones | Hive | Apple Books
Tags August 2020, August Books, Blog Tour, Book Review, Domestic Fiction, Four star reads, Mental Health, psychological thrillers, Pushkin Press, suspense, The Majesties, thriller, Tiffany Tsao
Blog Tours Monthly Wrap Up
Monthly Wrap Up – May 2020
Post date 31st May 2020
2 Comments on Monthly Wrap Up – May 2020
Another month is done and I'm writing another wrap up. These seem to come around quicker each month. Does anyone else think the same?
May has been my best reading month in quite some time. I finished sixteen books and took part in fourteen blog tours. The quality of books has again been high with all books being four stars or above.
Here's what I read in May:
He Started It by Samantha Downing ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Who We Were by B. M. Carroll ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Happy Couple by Samantha Hayes ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Secrets of Sunshine by Phaedra Patrick ⭐⭐⭐⭐
One Mistake by Rona Halsall ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dear Child by Romy Hausmann ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
What Lies Between Us by John Marrs ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ash Mountain by Helen Fitzgerald ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Her Last Mistake (Detective Gina Harte Book 6) by Carla Kovach ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Bride by Wendy Clarke ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Glass House by Eve Chase ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
His & Hers by Alice Feeney ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson⭐⭐⭐⭐
Water's Edge (Detective Megan Carpenter Book 2) by Gregg Olsen ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao ⭐⭐⭐⭐
You can read the reviews for all the books by clicking on the title except for The Ice Cream Girls and The Majesties. My reviews for those books will be posted in the coming week.
This month there were two books that stood out as favourites for me. They are very different books and I found it impossible to choose one over the over. Therefore, I have two books of the month: What Lies Between Us and Tsarina. What Lies Between Us is an outstanding thriller that was so twisted I can't stop thinking about it. John Marrs really outdid himself with this book and I'm hoping it is turned into a series or film soon. Tsarina is the epic story of Catherine, Tsarina of All the Russias. Catherine's story is one so crazy that you couldn't make it up. The novel is beautifully written and I was utterly immersed in Catherine's world while reading. I already had a fascination with the fall of the Tsars but this novel brought about a greater interest in the Tsars reign and Catherine and Peter's stories in particular. I highly recommend both books.
Are any of these in your tbr? What is your favourite book you've read this month?
Next month I have a slightly more relaxed schedule of blog tours which I'm looking forward to as maybe I'll get to do more free reading soon. I'm very excited about my buddy read of The Phone Box at the Edge of the World with Beth as it's our first buddy read and the book is one of my most anticipated books of the year.
Thank you to all the tagged publishers for my gifted copies of these books.
Hope you are all staying safe and well,
Emma x
Tags Alice Feeney, Ash Mountain, B. M. Carroll, Bloomsbury UK, Book of the Month, Bookouture, Carla Kovach, Dear Child, Dorothy Koomson, Ellen Alpsten, Emma's Anticipated Treasures, Eve Chase, Gregg Olsen, He Started It, Headline, Helen Fitzgerald, Her Last Mistake, His & Hers, HQ, John Marrs, May 2020, May books, Michael Joseph, Monthly Wrap Up, One Mistake, Orenda, Phaedra Patrick, Pushkin Press, Quercus books, Romy Hausmann, Rona Halsall, Samantha Downing, Samantha Hayes, The Bride, The Glass House, The Happy Couple, The Ice Cream Girls, The Majesties, The Secrets of Sunshine, The Tandem Collective, Thomas & Mercer, Tiffany Tsao, Tsarina, Viper, Water's Edge, Wendy Clarke, What Lies Between Us, Who We Were
Emma's Biblio Treasures
© 2021	Emma's Biblio Treasures


text:
Two recent Japanese crime novels show a double view: American genres seen through the distinctive lens of Japanese culture.
The first, Seicho Matsumoto''s A Quiet Place is in an old-fashioned psychological noir mode like some of Patricia Highsmith's non-Ripley novels. A husband discovers, on his wife's death, that she has been frequenting a hotel that is nowhere near her usual territory. Investigating, he becomes obsessed with the idea that she has been having an affair, and then obsessed with the supposed partner, a man whom he begins to follow. The violent consequences and the psychological weight of the violence are inevitable, and the inevitability is a big part of the narrative. That's pretty standard territory for noir fiction in the U.S. in the '50s and 60s, but the dated quality of the plot is compensated, for a Western reader, by the glimpses into the distinctive qualities of Japanese culture, such as the dizzying series of obligations and debts surrounding a funeral, funeral gifts, etc.
The other, Tetsuya Honda's Soul Cage, is a police procedural in the mode of Ed McBain, though the lead character is a woman, an ambitious cop who struggles with the hostility and/or affection of the other cops in the elite murder squad. The tone is light rather than heavy, with the cops' banter and jealousies takeing up a large part of the narrative, but the crime itself is distinctive and interesting, traced back through a series of flashbacks with a distinct flavor of Japanese culture (particularly in the construction business and the gang world). Again, one of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the day-to-day portrait of Japanese life--for instance, when the cops need to rush off to a crime scene, they almost always go via public transportation...
A glimpse into other cultures is not the only reason to read international noir, but noir is an excellent genre for getting glimpses like these. The intensity of emotions in books like A Quiet Place offer more than superficial character portrayal, and the street life of books like Soul Cage give a better view of the larger culture than a domestic drama can.
And now where are we?
Where in the world...
Motion, in three recent novels
I've recently read three crime novels that have a lot of movement, back and forth across Paris, Galway, and the Italian peninsula. In two of them, the motion is a bit dizzying, and in the third it's punctuated by conversations that are perhaps more dizzying than the physical movement.
Cara Black's Aimee Leduc is frequently portrayed in movement, across the particular arrondissement of Paris in which her current novel is set. But
in Murder in Saint-Germain, the crisscrossing of that neighborhood and across several plotlines seems to be motion for its own sake, rather than activity that keeps the plot moving. Still, for fans of detective Leduc, the book has its charms, as well as some forward motion in the overarching plot of Aimee's personal and family life.
The movement in Ken Bruen's The Emerald Lie seems more gratuitous. Bruen's plots sometimes meander, for sure, but this novel seems more to lurch. The murders and murderers are quickly dealt with and then the perpetually down-and-out private detective and former Garda Jack Taylor veers off toward another one--without influencing the action very much himself. What The Emerald Lie has to offer is Bruen's distinctive voice, his constant references to other crime writers, several distinctive characters we meet along the way, and what pleasure the reader may take from seeing how the author can manage to take Taylor even further on the road to dissolution.
The Second Day of the Renaissance is a belated sequel to Timothy Williams's excellent series of novels set in northern Italy, featuring irritable Commissario Piero Trotti. In the new novel, he's retired, but a series of events brings some of the cases in the earlier novels into the story. Trotti travels from his foggy home town to Florence (where he meets a young girl at the train station, an encounter that has repercussions later), Siena (where he has a long and often oblique conversation with a Carabiniere officer who tells him that there's someone trying to kill Trotti), to Rome (where his god-daughter and a former colleague are getting married) to Bologna (fleeing from a killer but inadvertently leading the violence toward his own daughter). There's a lot of dialogue in the story, much of it indirect (Trotti is not an easy person to engage in a conversation), along with considerable discussion of Italy's troubled past (particularly the "years of lead," when the international rebellions of 1968 threatened to spiral into terrorism, in the north, and the mafia was resurgent in the south. No one would say that Trotti is good company, through all this, but the reader will nonetheless care about him and his fate as well as that of all those who are near him. And the reader will also learn much about the Italy beyond the monuments and tourist attractions.
Denise Mina's new The Long Drop
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/macho-centric-denise-mina-takes-on-classic-noir/
Posted by Glenn Harper at 12:43 PM No comments: Links to this post
Jassy Mackenzie, Bad Seeds
My review is at Los Angeles Review of Books
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/despair-and-hope-jassy-mackenzies-south-african-noir
Anita Nair, Chain of Custody
I'd like to hear from someone who's read Anita Nair's first Inspector Gowda book, A Cut-Like Wound, which I haven't read. I recently finished the second in the series, Chain of Custody, which picks up the story after his assistant is recovering from injuries he received in A Cut-Like Wound, and a good deal of the story revolves around his recovery and other threads from the earlier novel. Not that it's difficult to keep up, when starting with Chain of Custody: Nair is careful to include new readers in the story.
Set in Bangalore, Chain of Custody deals with the trafficking of children, in particular a young girl who is the daughter of Gowda's housekeeper. The story shuttles between the Inspector's daily life (the investigation, his wife who has reappeared in his life, his mistress) and the point of view of a young man who works for the traffickers. Gowda's life only skates above the dark underside of the story, while the trafficker provides the heartless underbelly.
The result is dark but frequently amusing, providing a glimpse of Bangalore and India today along the way. Is A Cut-Like Wound a similar blend?
Donna Leon: Earthly Remains
Donna Leon's new Guido Brunetti book follows the typical/atypical pattern of the series, developing slowly toward an ambiguous ending, with familiar and unfamiliar elements along the way. In Earthly Remains, as in some of the earlier books, we are immersed in an aspect of Venice not commonly available to the tourist: in this case woeing (Venetial style) among the outer islands of the laguna.
Brunetti falls into a trap he has created for himself and as a result finds himself taking an unexpected vacation, staying by himself in a villa some distance away from the city, a house belonging to one of his wife Paola's relatives. The caretaker finds out that the detective is interested in spending some time out on the lagoon rowing, and begins a series of excursions that tax Brunetti's muscles but not his ptience (and not the reader's, although there is more about rowing in this particular style than we would have thought we wanted to know). This is a side of Venice way beyond the calle and campi, instead among burds and reeds and especially bees (another major topic of the book, both in the process of the detective's vacation and in the working of the plot.
Of course, there are twists involving a death in the present and a violent incident in the past, as well as currption of a new sort for a series that has often explored corruption. In addition to the faxing natural glories of the region, we also see the industrial mainland, as well as the bureaucracy and the family life for which the series is renowned.
All of the Brunetti books have a dark, pessimistic core, but some are more bleak and some more hopeful. Earthly Remains earns its gloomy atmosphere with a complex portrayal of human nature along with its detailed exploration of nature itself at the edges of Venice's glorious and its dark corners. Leon's strength as a writer is to inveigle the reader with language that seems casual and unforced into following down the book's twisty and twisted path.
Karo Hämäläinen: Cruel is the Night
There is a locked-room mystery quality to Finnish author Karo Hämäläinen's first novel to be translated into English, Cruel is the Night, along with an homage to Agatha Christie, toward the end. But the best part of the novel is a black comedy told from the varied points of view of the 3 participants, two couples, Robert and Elise and Mikko and Veera, at a dinner party in the London high rise occupied by Robert and Elise.
The first two monologues, by boyhood friends Robert and Mikko, and pompous and self-absorbed, qualities that are immediately punctured by Veera's monologue, from outside their self-centered maleness. The Rashomon quality continues with an additional thread about the survivor of the reunion that has brought the couples together (we aren't supposed to know, presumably, who this survivor is, but the language hardly leaves any doubt). So we don't know who the survivor is, or how the presumed deaths of the other 3 occurred, but the mystery isn't really maintained as a driving force of the book, which remains a fairly static series of interrelated blackouts that reveal the interrelationships, obvious and not, of these 4.What draws the reader on is more the comic but emotionally loaded interplay, revealed not only through the dialogue at the party but also through flashbacks to their past, some of which deal with the death of Robert's girlfriend, in their youth (Mikko and Veera became a couple almost by default, as friends of Robert and the doomed girl).
So this is a novel about murder, but not a mystery really. Instead it's a very dark comedy, sometimes witty and sometimes wildly farcical. Forget the slim thread connecting the book to the mystery genre and enjoy the ride.
Repost: Heda Margolius Kovály's Innocence
- Reposted from the late lamented site The Life Sentence, now offline
- Down Prague's Mean Streets: Heda Margolius Kovály, whose well-known memoir of the Holocaust, Under a Cruel Star, was first published in 1973, also published one crime novel in Czech, Innocence: or, Murder on Steep Street, in 1985. According to her son, who wrote the introduction to the new English translation, Kovály modeled her book on Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe stories, which were among the many books she had translated into Czech from English and German. But the Chandler connection is a bit misleading: Innocence is an intriguing reimagining of the crime genre in the context of Prague in the 1950s. Kovály does take from Chandler a focus on the real conditions of the lives of her contemporaries, but Kovály's Prague in 1952, under Soviet totalitarianism, is a very different place than Chandler's 1940s Los Angeles, under corrupt, bankrupt capitalism.
- The style of Kovály's book shares more with Czech literature of the 1970s: The philosophical meta-fictional prologue could have been spoken by one of Milan Kundera's characters. But Innocence suggests most particularly a novel by Zdena Salivarová, Summer in Prague. Salivarová's famous husband, Josef Škvorecký, also wrote detective stories, but his honest policeman is quite different from Chandler's characters or, for that matter, Kovaly's. Both Innocence and Summer in Prague have a lightness of touch in dealing with difficult material and both focus on young women whose lives are stifled by the overbearing state. Innocence does include elements of crime fiction absent in Summer in Prague: two murder investigations frame the novel, whereas the only death in Salivarová's book is accidental (the result of social conditions rather than murder per se); but the real engine behind the misfortunes that befall the central characters in both is the unfeeling apparatus of the all-powerful state.
- Kovály's novel does begin with the kind of murder one finds in Chandler and American noir generally, but it's a red herring: the child-murderer who would have been a serial killer in a conventional crime story serves as a counterpoint to the real serial killer, whom we discover only later. The murder at the beginning announces the book as crime fiction and introduces the characters around whom the action will take place: a police detective, Captain Nedoma, and an usher in the Horizon movie theater, Helena Nováková. The crimes with which the book is really concerned occur later, toward the middle of the book.
- The focus of the narrative is split among several of the women working at the movie theater, plus a few policemen: in addition to Nedoma, Lieutenant Vendyš (who ultimately replaces Nedoma as the book's primary investigator) and a satanic figure, Vojta Hrůza, from the secret police (according to the notes, his last name means "dread" in Czech). The central character, though, is Helena Nováková, who had been working in a publishing house, until her husband (a planning official) was falsely arrested by a paranoid government, branding her, by association, as an enemy of the state. She feels fortunate to have been offered a menial job as an usher in the movie theater, but is mainly preoccupied with her jailed husband's dilemma. The most important of the other women working at the Horizon are Marie Vránová, a young woman seemingly only interested in having a good time, and Mrs. Kouřimská, an older woman who is carrying the burden of more than one secret life.
- Helena's interior monologue, devoted to her despair and the solace she seeks in her hope for her husband's release, is the only first-person voice we hear. In the depth of her despair, "The solitude separating Helena from other people was starting to distance her from inanimate things as well, stealing into her brain, where every thought floated unanchored into the void." Her loneliness leads her into a tentative relationship with a stranger who primarily foreshadows the relationship that her despair will lead her into with Hrůza, who presents himself as a friend who may be able to help her husband. There are several other seductions: Marie has an affair with the married Nedoma and Mrs. Kouřimská, in addition to her private sexual proclivities, also has a relationship with Hrůza, providing the opportunity for his original introduction to Helena.
- It is the two policeman-seducers who precipitate, in very different ways, the deaths at the center of the story, one of which, the "murder on Steep Street" of the book's subtitle, Vendyš will investigate throughout the second half of the novel. The Lieutenant, though, is an ordinary cop who seems incapable of penetrating to the dark heart of the crime, as the narrator notes in an image that recapitulates the novel's central setting in a theater: "Steep Street was like an empty auditorium after a performance, with Vendyš the late-coming spectator who could only guess what had taken place."
- The investigation leads not so much to the truth behind a murder (though a resolution of a sort is achieved) as to a revelation by a confessed killer about the underlying subject that provides book's main title, innocence, especially in the context of life in a police state:
- "No one can do a thing to stop people like Hrůza…They're like earthquakes, or the plague. But they could never inflict so much misery if it weren't for…the little helpers who try to convince you it doesn't matter, there's nothing wrong with a little snitching…They make evil seem like a natural, trivial thing…they blur the line between guilt and innocence, till eventually you accept it and murder just seems like an accident with nobody to blame."
- In the trivializing of evil lies the link between Kovály's Holocaust memoir and Innocence, as well as the dark undertone that makes her crime novel so distinctive and powerful.
- The book ends with a coda, a conversation between a shadowy fat man who had crept into the Horizon earlier, and an even fatter man, who together seem to be the actual spies whose actions had caused government's paranoid suspicion, which in turn ruined Nováková and her husband. The two fat men untangle, from their particular point of view, the skein of guilt that runs through the book's deaths and betrayals, and one of them refers to the possible justice in some afterlife: "I just hope it isn't like here. Because if we got what we deserved for everything we did in our lives, they'd have to just cancel heaven, straight up." That pessimism echoes the novel's epigraph, from Hemingway: "All things truly wicked start from an innocence."
3 by Pierre Lemaitre (from The Life Sentence site)
Continuing my reposts of my reviews from the late lamented website The Life Sentence (now offline), here's an overview of Pierre Lemaitre's first 3 twisty thrillers.
- In his Commandant Verhoeven Trilogy, Pierre Lemaitre has set out to investigate the history and the possibilities of crime fiction, and noir in particular. In Irène (2014), the narrator offers an analysis of the career of James Ellroy that could serve as a description of noir writing in general: as his "style evolved, it became more savage, more visceral as Ellroy began to trade in inhumanity at its most elemental. The seediest districts of the city became a metaphor for a desperate, disillusioned humanity. Love took on the acrid taste of urban tragedy." Yet Lemaitre refreshes these tropes of noir by turning them inside out. Irène takes crime fiction not only as the genre of the story but also the subject and the structural principle of the novel. In Alex (2014), the author twists and re-twists an abducted woman's relationship to both the perpetrator and the police until the story reaches a final clarity. In Camille, all the principal characters are lying, to each other, to themselves, and even to the reader: Lemaitre is making clear the importance of prevarication (as well as unreliable narrators) in crime writing.
- But in no way are these books a dry exercise in crime fiction writing or a farcical metafictional jest. Each of the novels, and all three as a group, are among the very best French crime novels to be translated into English so far (and there is some very strong competition). The first installment in the series, Irène, begins with the case of a battered woman but moves on very quickly to the principal plot, the case of a horrific murder and dismemberment of two women in an apartment on the periphery of Paris. As the gruesome details of the murders accumulate and Commandant Camille Verhoeven of the brigade criminelle pursues the few leads in the case, a reader with a heavy heart may come to the same conclusion as the Commandant, who early on in the story "feels immensely weary, because this whole thing is predictable, banal." The violence against women, the murder of prostitutes, the pursuit of suspects among the pimps, property developers, and petit bourgeoisie seems all too typical of the genre, a run-of-the-mill serial killer story distinguished mostly by the Parisian setting and the quirky team of detectives. Verhoeven himself is a tiny man, whose growth was stunted by his artist mother's tobacco habit, but the quirkiness of the detective and his colleagues is itself typical of the genre (think of Fred Vargas's Adamsberg, another eccentric French detective of small stature). However, Lemaitre's book is more than the simple depiction of the "universe of carnage, peopled by impulsive psychopaths, shady deals, and old scores settled," as the detective himself announces. Lemaitre is less concerned with displaying all the sadistic, misogynist carnage and more interested in pursuing the essential nature of crime fiction and of the relationship of the storyteller to the reader, but a subtext of the whole trilogy is the dependence of crime fiction on violence against women.
- After the double murder becomes linked to an earlier murder by the "rather American exoticism" of the crimes as well as a fingerprint match in both cases, another connection between the crimes comes gradually into focus: both crime scenes seem patterned on literary precedents, well-known novels by James Ellroy and Bret Easton Ellis. Thus the press dubs the killer "the Novelist." From that point on, the brigade criminelle relies on information provided by sources such as one character's "authoritative introduction to crime fiction," and another's survey of the novels published in Gallimard's famous Série Noire.
- After other crimes, present and past, prove to be based on Scottish, French, and Swedish crime classics, the narrative itself turns inside out: the team of detectives discovers that the killer has been keeping a journal of his murders, and Lemaitre refers to a detail of his own life that the killer gets wrong, a detail that makes us suddenly question who has been telling the story we've been reading up to that point. Lemaitre upends the book in a logical and devastating way, while ultimately remaining true to the pact between the author and the reader, not in the same way but in the same spirit perhaps as Agatha Christie's notorious ending of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, when the narrator turned out to be spectacularly unreliable. The writer in both cases reminds us of the narrativity of the text — that we're only seeing what the narrator wants us to see — while maintaining the credibility and the emotional truth of the story.
- In Alex, which takes place four years after the events of Irène, Commandant Verhoeven is a wreck, devastated by the loss of his wife and unwilling to take on anything with living victims, accepting only, "Cases where the deaths are behind you, not in front. No kidnappings. Camille wants his dead well and truly dead, corpses with no comeback." But the brutal kidnapping of a young woman (Alex), which opens the book, occurs when Verhoeven's replacement as head of the brigade criminelle is out of town, and the diminutive Commandant is tricked by his boss and friend, Divisionnaire Le Guen, into taking the case temporarily, with the inevitable result that it becomes his case. For the first third of the novel, the narrative alternates between the frenzied pace of police procedure, in the effort to save the kidnapped woman, and the portrayal of the brutal conditions of her captivity. As in the beginning of the previous novel, we are on standard plot territory here, a woman severely confined and tortured by a thuggish man who repeatedly says, "I'm going to watch you die, you filthy whore." But as her torment and the investigation proceed, both Alex, the victim, and Camille, the investigator, realize that there is a link between the kidnapper and his captive. Their pursuit of this link provokes disastrous action by the police, but also a prefiguring of the sudden shift in the middle portion of the book that turns the story on its head: a shift that overturns both the woman-as-victim narrative and the entire genre of the serial killer (all the while remaining full of terror and torture).
- In the third section of Alex, Verhoeven is following her not in the present but in her past, seeking the roots of her actions and personality, in large part through a long series of interviews with her brother (perhaps a reference to the extended interrogation in Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Roseanna, also referred to in Irène). The awful truth that Camille discovers will explain all of the book's twists, and lead to yet another twist in the story.
- Camille, which has the most straightforward plot of the three novels, takes the Commandant back to the beginning of the trilogy: "His first wife was murdered, a tragedy from which he took years to recover. When you have faced such an ordeal, you assume that nothing more can happen to you. This is the trap." Again, the ordeal happens not directly to him, but to the new woman in his life, Anne Forestier, who walks in on a jewelry store robbery and is beaten nearly to death. No one in the police knows about his new relationship, allowing Camille to step in as lead investigator, a lapse in personal and professional judgment that will leave his life in tatters.
- The story of Camille is a three-day race against time, as the jewelry store robber seems determined to return to kill the witness and Camille pushes toward preventing him from doing so. The narrative focus is divided among an increasingly irrational Commandant, the surviving but terribly hurt Anne, and the man who attacked her (who gives us his story in his own voice). All three narratives explore the extreme violence that Anne suffers and its echoes in the story of Irène, and the lies that all of them are telling each other (as well as the truths they are all withholding from the reader) create overlapping dramatic ironies as well as contributing to the tension driving the story forward.
But even when we see the story from the points of view of Anne and her attacker, the overlapping of Camille's past and present draws us back to Camille as the center of everything. There is a brutal honesty in the Commandant's focus on himself: he feels responsible for Anne, but what he feels is not really sympathy but regret for what he has himself lost: "The woman who lies swollen and bandaged before him now has nothing of the magic, all that remains is the outer shell, and ugly, terribly prosaic body." Even her own betrayal is ultimately less important to him than his loss of the "magic" of their affair. For all the violence against women in the trilogy (as in much crime fiction), it is Camille's self-absorption that leads the narrative down into disaster and a final resolution. Having wrecked his career by lying to everyone in order to maintain control of the pursuit of the attacker, and having used the attacker's own strategy to finally turn the tables on him, Camille reaches an abject state of loss that makes it possible for him to confront his own history, in particular the parts played by his mother and his wife. In Camille's story there is a horrible assertion of male ego. This man of boy-like stature, having hidden his damaged lover in his mother's studio in the forest (also the site of his wife's murder) achieves a catharsis at the cost of several women's misery. But that is a truth that the Commandant does not face. Lemaitre's trilogy takes apart the structure of noir fiction and puts it back together in a new way but remains, like Camille (in his professional capacity), dependent on the genre's reliance on violence against women. Lemaitre has continued to write about Commandant Verhoeven, extending the trilogy into a series. As new novels appear in English, it will be fascinating to see how far Lemaitre can extend his reimagining of the roman policier, as well as how he will develop his central character after the apotheosis at the end of the trilogy.
Helene Tursten review
My review of Helene Tursten's new Who Watcheth is now on-line at Los Angeles Review of Books:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pancakes-and-pea-soup/
From The Life Sentence: On Donna Leon
Another re-post of an article of mine from Lisa Levy's late lamented site The Life Sentence:
Obsession and Betrayal in Venice (Donna Leon 101)
BY GLENN HARPER
In a 2003 interview at italian-mysteries.com, Donna Leon said that she doesn't allow her very popular Commissario Guido Brunetti series, set in Venice, to be published in Italian translation because, "I don't want to be famous where I live … the people in my neighborhood know that I am the American who lives opposite Nando and above Angelo. It would just change the tenor of my life." The 24th book in the series, Falling in Love, deals directly with the consequences of the kind of fame Leon wants to avoid in her adopted country, in particular the phenomenon of the obsessed fan. Leon uses one of the ongoing themes in her series, the opera, as the setting for her examination of fandom, and as the central character she has chosen one of her few non-police recurring characters, the singer Flavia Petrelli, who appeared in the first Brunetti novel, Death at La Fenice (1992), as well as one of the best books in the series, Acqua Alta (1996, book five).
Leon's reflection on fame and her return to Flavia provide a good opportunity to look back at the Brunetti series itself. It is one of the most popular crime series worldwide, with a particularly fervent fan base in Germany (where there is a German-language TV series based on the books) as well as the United States, Leon's home country. Leon's vivid evocation of the city of Venice is, of course, part of the appeal of the series. She doesn't dwell on the tourists or tourist attractions (which are a constant background to the series and the city itself), dealing instead mostly with the city's real life: its shopkeepers, aristocrats — among them Brunetti's in-laws, Conte Orazio and Contessa Donatella Falier — as well as immigrant workers, bureaucrats, criminals, and police. Also in evidence is the shadowy and sinister face of this unique city, as seen in Brunetti's pursuit of a fleeing figure in the new novel:
He saw a figure, really half a figure, standing at the point where a calle opened on to the riva. He saw a coat, perhaps a raincoat, perhaps a scarf. Brunetti's step faltered and he came down heavily on his left foot … When he looked again, the figure was no longer there, the only trace of it the sound of diminishing footsteps.
The passage suggests the maze-like pathways as well as the unique quality of noise in this city built on water: sound travels quickly and echoes off water and walls, making faraway noises seem immediate and even threatening.
The running cast of characters also has a lot of appeal, among them a feckless boss, Vice-Questore Patta, a nemesis who remains mostly (ominously) offstage; Lieutenant Scarpa; Brunetti's assistant, Vianello; Patta's omnicompetent (and somewhat subversive) secretary, Signorina Elettra; and, of course, Brunetti's wife, Paola, a professor of English literature, and their children, Chiara and Raffi (who age very slowly through the series, remaining in the spectrum of childhood to late adolescence).
While the Brunetti books, with their abundance of local color and gastronomic treats, appeal to the fans of the traditional mystery, Leon has something darker and deeper in mind. Brunetti's investigations frequently do not result in clear answers or resolutions. Falling, for example, concludes with an unexpected abduction, leaving Brunetti and Vianello rushing to catch up. The book ends with a sudden resolution that the two policemen can only witness helplessly. The scene also includes a passage typical of Leon's use of language and imagery: in her moment of greatest threat, the victim muses that the "things that made her herself, had ceased to function. She looked down and saw her shoelace and though of how beautiful it was, how perfect, what a wonderful way to tie a shoe, and how efficient shoes were, to keep your feet safe. Safe." Leon pauses the rapid pace of the final events for a moment that captures the abductee's adrenalin-heightened mental state and emphasizes the emotional reality of the threat, not just the physical aspects.
Frequently both justice and Brunetti's intentions are derailed by corruption and the powerful political, aristocratic, and bureaucratic forces of the seemingly all-powerful but nearly invisible organized crime networks. The ongoing theme of the series is a confrontation between ordinary humanity and powerful forces that are at best indifferent and sometimes malevolent. In negotiating this territory, Brunetti and his closest associates (in particular Vianello and Elettra) often work within the cracks of both the legal system and the social order, while the interests of Patta, Scarpa, and sometimes even Paola's parents, the aristocratic Falier family, do not always cohere with Brunetti's. (Falier is indeed the name of a historic family in Venice, though the palazzo that bears their name in the novels does not exist).
In one passage, Brunetti's thoughts to himself give a sense of the whole series, as well as the particularities of Falling in Love:
[He] had rarely had to deal with the mad. The behavior of the bad made sense: they wanted money or power or revenge or someone else's wife, and they wanted them for reasons that another person could understand. Further, there was usually a connection between them and their victims: rivals, partners, enemies, relatives, husband and wife. Find a person. Find a person who stood to gain—and not only in the financial sense from the death or injury of the victim and put some pressure on that connection or start to wind in the connecting line, and very often the returning tug would lead to the person responsible. There had always been a line: the secret was to find it. Here, however, the reason might have been nothing more than a casual conversation, a bit of praise, a bit of encouragement.
The lack of any reasonable motive makes the detective's usual methods, focused as they are on personal and social links among those affected by a crime, ineffective.
Falling in Love begins with a performance of Tosca that highlights a series of events in Flavia Petrelli's recent life that to anyone else would not seem to invite any kind of danger. After performances on her current tour — at the opening of the novel, she's reached Venice's La Fenice Theater — the stage and her dressing room are filled with a cascade of yellow roses that go beyond the usual adoration of her fans. She asks Brunetti, when he greets her after attending a performance, to look into the threat that she perceives in the overabundance of flowers. Not entirely convinced at first, the detective gradually enters the world of opera fans who demand access to the star and even a reciprocation from the singer of the obsessive love they feel toward the object of their obsession. Along the way, we get a backstage tour of the world of opera, with all its artifice, jealousy, and artistic achievement. Since the opera is Tosca, we also get some ironic parallels to the Brunetti novels themselves: the story deals with murder, suicide, and a corrupt policeman named Scarpia. (Leon's wry reference to her own maleficent Lieutenant Scarpa is reinforced by a sly joke about shoes — the Italian word for "shoe" being "scarpa.")
Though some readers may be startled or unsatisfied by her frequently ambiguous endings, Leon has accomplished the not inconsiderable task of joining the atmosphere and social realism of noir with the charm and appeal of the traditional mystery. Her portrait of Venice (and Italy in general) is clear eyed about the attractions as well as the sometimes very dark realities of Venetian and Italian life: in Falling in Love she refers to the "crowds, the corruption, the cruise ships, the general cheapening of everything." Her plots, which often have a natural quality, as if the author didn't plan them so much as let them happen, also defy sub-genre classification. There are sometimes puzzle-like qualities, but always based on the actions of people caught in the contradictions of the city and its diverse cultural elements. More frequently, Brunetti, doggedly and with considerable frustration, fights his way through a fog of shadowy motives and erratic actions until there is a clearing of sorts that gives the reader (if not the detective) some kind of resolution, as well as an investigation of the facts of contemporary life in (and beyond) Venice. In the new novel, Leon also, with some astringency and perhaps a bit of vengefulness, demonstrates the sometimes unpleasant burden of fame, through her depiction of an extreme example of the fans and devotees from whom the author seeks some solace in her Italian anonymity.
- See more at: http://thelifesentence.net/book/obsession-and-betrayal-in-venice-donna-leon-101/#sthash.Q4FohLZP.dpuf
Two recent Japanese crime novels show a double vie...
3 by Pierre Lemaitre (from The Life Sentence site)...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Communication » Media » Editorial
The term "editorial" in the mass media refers to a format designed to express the outlet's or a particular author's commentary or political position most openly and legitimately. In editorials the different media outlets establish a particular ideological profile that distinguishes them from their competitors and binds to them certain segments of the audience. Editorials must be seen in contrast to news reporting, which insists on being factual, objective, and impartial, thereby reflecting the world by describing it. The purpose of editorials is related to the more persuasive and evaluative functions of media performance. The newspaper, radio, or television program here seeks to express its distinctive view on issues of public concern, aiming to advise, evaluate, commend, rebuke, and imagine the world as it wishes it to be.
The significance of editorials is twofold. First, editorials serve as a figurehead that defines the political identity and values of the outlet, thereby signaling whether it would support either liberal or conservative positions. Through editorials, the media publicly express opinions and make use of their right to present themselves as autonomous actors in public and political debate (Page 1996). Second, editorials, and particularly the editorials of a nation's agenda-setting media, are paid close attention by politicians, activist and interest groups, opinion makers, and other media. By speaking up openly in editorials, the outlet may exert influence on decision-makers and their decisions. There is also empirical evidence that news commentators do have a significant impact on public opinion and its changes over time (Page et al. 1987).
Editorials are often given a distinct space, which is labeled as editorial page or story, to distinguish it from the news coverage. Many publications have an editorial board or a group of opinion editors or commentators who decide on the tone and direction that the publications' editorials will take. In Anglo-American journalism, editorials must not be written by the regular reporters or editors of news departments. Instead, they are authored by a separate group of individuals, who are not constrained by the rule of impartiality that governs news writing. In some European countries, however, staff policies regarding the separation of roles between newsmakers and opinion writers do not exist.
In contrast to news reporting, which is constrained by the professional rules, the logistics, and the time pressures of newsmaking, editorials are free from these external pressures. They can be taken as the result of some considered reasoning and opinion formation within the editorial staff (Eilders et al. 2004). Editorials are published without bylines, which means that they represent the newspapers' or media outlets' "official" position on issues. Editorials usually tackle current events of public concern or political controversies and intend to take a stance on them.
In order to broaden the spectrum of opinions offered in the newspaper, many outlets carry a so-called op-ed page, which is usually opposite the editorial page. These commentaries carry bylines and feature regular opinion columnists who present their own points of view. Most newspapers feature freelance writers, guest opinion writers, and nationally syndicated columnists to supplement the content of their editorial pages.
In communication research, editorials are primarily discussed as a special form of opinion journalism, which is distinct from news reporting. At the same time, the boundaries between news and opinion and the effect of media commentary on politics and public opinion have always been debated. In addition to ethical questions regarding the use of media power and the right of journalists to impose their opinion on the audience, questions of the instrumentalization of media commentary for political purposes emerge. It is safe to say, however, that the format of editorials is only meaningful in countries that guarantee the right of free speech and free media. Thus, editorials by their very nature are sensible expressions of media opinion only under the conditions of democracy and media pluralism.
Looking at editorials with respect to their political functions, it is important to differentiate between the tradition of Anglo-American journalism as compared to that of northern and continental European countries. This distinction is important as regards the partisanship of the press and the norm of objectivity in journalism. In the United States, the decline of the party press in the early twentieth century is seen as a consequence of the advent of a neutral commercial press that draws on a broad social consensus shared by the major parties in an otherwise pluralistic society (Schudson 2003). Journalism in this context turned to the norm of objective and factual reporting intended to bring about news that would serve the information needs of a most inclusive audience. Opinion was strictly limited to the editorials. In the European tradition, the press has always been granted to be partisan and divided across political party lines. Even if the party press has come to decline in most western European countries, the news media are politicized, which means that they not only represent the political cleavages in society but also feature the ideological spectrum of the political parties (Eilders 2002). Editorials clearly represent this traditional party–press parallelism.
The principal distinction between news reporting and expression of opinion has set the research agenda on editorials. Even though the norms of journalism prescribe strict separation between news coverage and editorials, it is an empirical question, after all, to what extent this principle is put in practice. This question is particularly pertinent in media systems in which news and editorials are written by the same editors. For instance, media research in Germany has demonstrated that news selection, news writing, and editorial opinion are synchronized to a greater or lesser degree (Schönbach 1977).
Finally, an essential question is when media opinion expressed in editorials turns into illegitimate political power over public opinion that constrains democratic principles. This question is all the more pressing since there is fairly solid evidence that news commentary does in fact have an impact upon how citizens and policymakers think and what candidates and policy preferences they support (Kahn & Kenney 2002). It remains open to further research to clarify the conditions under which these influences operate and to what end.
Eilders, C. (2002). Conflict and consonance in media opinion: Political positions of five German quality newspapers. European Journal of Communication, 17(1), 25 – 64.
Eilders, C., Neidhardt, F., & Pfetsch, B. (2004). Die Stimme der Medien: Pressekommentare und politische Öffentlichkeit in der Bundesrepublik [The voice of the media: Press editorials and the political public sphere in Germany]. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Kahn, K. F., & Kenney, P. J. (2002). The slant of the news: How editorial endorsements influence campaign coverage and citizen's view of candidates. American Political Science Review, 96, 381–394.
Page, B. (1996). The mass media as political actors. Political Science and Politics, 29(1), 20 –24.
Page, B., Shapiro, I., Dempsey, R., & Glenn, R. (1987). What moves public opinion? American Political Science Review, 81(1), 23 – 43.
Schudson, M. (2003). The sociology of news. New York: W.W. Norton.
Schönbach, K. (1977). Trennung von Nachricht und Meinung [Separation between news and opinion]. Freiburg: Alber.


text:
Q: Image and div sections are cut off when browser size is decreased On the website I'm building, after I decrease the size of the browser, the header images and div sections are just cut off:
I've tried tracing the code using Firebug, but I really can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?
CSS:
.slide {
    padding-top: 125px;
    background-attachment: fixed;
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    min-height: 960px;
    position: relative;
    box-shadow:inset 0px 10px 10px -10px rgba(0,0,0,0.3);
}
div#home, div#contact  {
    min-height: 480px;
 }
div#inner-container {
    text-align: left;
    width: 960px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    padding: 0;
    white-space: normal;
    position: relative;
    height: 100%;
 }
 div#greenPortion {
    background-color: #3CA67B;
    min-width: 100%;
    height: 200px;
    bottom: 0;
    position: absolute;
 }
 div#title {
    background-image:url(../images/banner.png);
    margin: 0 auto;
    padding: 0;
    min-width: 100%;
    height: 200px;
 }

HTML:

Website: http://andrewgu12.kodingen.com/
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

A: Apply min-width: 960px to your body in css:
CSS
body {
    ...
    min-width: 960px;
    ...
}

A: Set a width in percentage to make the elements adjust to the window size
div#inner-container {
    width: 100%;
}

div#header {
    width: 100%;
}

Also you should look into using media queries to adjust the look of your site at different screen resolutions

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: Include relative files in PowerShell I would like to include script files with such pseudo syntax:
Include '.\scripA.ps1'

But the only thing I have found is some thing like this:
$thisScript = Split-Path -Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition -Parent
. ($thisScript + '.\scriptA.ps1')

that is ugly.
Is there some nice way to include scripts with relative paths?

A: Unfortunately no, there is no good way.  PowerShell doesn't really support this idea very well at all in V1.  Really the approach you are taking is the best approach

A: As of V2 (native starting with Win7/2008R2; see $psversiontable.psversion) you can easily include a file like so:
. "RelativeOrAbsolutePathToFile\include.ps1"

$result = FunctionInIncludeFile()

Reference:
How to reuse windows powershell functions in scripts

A: You can dot-source (include) the file:
. .\scriptA.ps1
To get the full path of the script:
Resolve-Path .\scriptA.ps1

A: Dot-sourcing is the simplest option albeit not particularly pretty, as already stated. However, this format makes it just a tad bit cleaner:
$ScriptDirectory = Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path
. (Join-Path $ScriptDirectory ScriptA.ps1)

Also, a note about relative paths that is useful to make explicit: the original post might seem to imply wanting a path relative to the current working directory; in reality the intention is to be relative to the current script's source directory (as alex2k8's own code sample indicates). Thus, this allows the current script to access other scripts from the same repository.

A: You can use $PSScriptRoot and the "Split-Path" directive to make it work cleanly for relative paths.

. (($PSScriptRoot | Split-Path | Split-Path)+'somedir\ps\script.ps1')

A: You can utilize the $PSScriptRoot parameter like this:
. "$PSScriptRoot\script.ps1"

A: This would probably work from any directory, but it'll be a sloooooowwwww find if your starting directory is not a direct antecedent directory of the file you're trying to include.  IOW, if your starting point for this search is the root of c:\ or some other drive letter, this will probably be horrifically slow.
. $(Resolve-Path -literal $(gci -Recurse include.ps1))
This will work particularly well if you're developing scripts on your PC but need to deploy them to a server that's going to run the script as a scheduled task.


text:
Op-Ed: Canadian political leader Jack Layton, 1950-2011
By KJ Mullins Aug 22, 2011 in World
"Your support and well wishes are so appreciated. Thank you. I will fight this – and beat it," wrote NDP leader Jack Layton on Facebook. Sadly the cancer he so bravely fought claimed Jack Layton Monday in the middle of the night. He was just 61.
Canadian NDP Leader Jack Layton dies after battle with cancer
We were able to accomplish a lot, despite the fact some people said the numbers were not quite where they would need to be in order to accomplish things.
~ Jack Layton
Jack Layton was born in Hudson, Quebec to Progressive Conservative MP Robert Layton and his wife Doris. Jack knew from an early age that politics was to be his life. He was the student council president of his high school class.
After marrying his high school sweetheart Sally Halford in 1969 his education continued at York University in Toronto where he obtained a PhD in political science. Layton became a professor at Ryerson University as he started to become as an activist and author.
In 1982 Jack Layton started his climb in Canadian politics winning a seat in Toronto's City Council. He became known for speaking for the underdog. He let his voice be heard becoming an early advocate for those fighting AIDS.
In 1983 he and Sally Halford divorced. They had two children, Mike and Sarah.
In 1988 he married the love of his life, Olivia Chow, then a Toronto District School Board trustee, on Toronto Island. They had planned to have an action packed honeymoon whitewater rafting. That plan had to be pushed back when just days before the wedding Jack was injured while cycling.
Olivia and Jack served their city of Toronto since.
In 1990 the Toronto Star wrote an article saying that the couple were living in subsidized co-op housing at Hazelburn Co-op.
Last summer I had asked Chow about the controversy. She smiled and said that they had a two-bedroom unit at the time and needed a larger home when her mother came to live with her Jack and Jack's son Michael. They had always paid market value on their co-op residence. She said that Jack and her had loved their time at Hazelburn but their move into their current home wasn't because of a silly newspaper story, just that their family had grown.
That home reflects the family, it's off the grid and completely green.
That move in 1990 wasn't the only one for the Layton household, with Jack running for mayor of the city in 1991. He was the first official NDP candidate to attempt a run for the position. While he lost the bid that year Olivia won a seat on City Council. Layton took the time away from politics to found the Green Catalyst Group Inc., an environmental consulting business.
In 1993 Jack ran for the Canadian House of Commons in the Rosedale riding. He finished fourth. The next year he returned to Toronto's City Council.
On January 25, 2003 Jack was elected leader of the NDP.
Jack Layton never steered away from controversy, when he saw wrong he spoke out. In 2004 he spoke for the rights of homeless people and funding for affordable housing. Throughout the early 2000's the NDP party rose with Layton's leadership.
In 2011 Layton ran against current Prime Minister Stephen Harper. During the election a story came out in the Sun News Network and the Toronto Sun that Jack had been found naked in a police raid of a massage parlour. At the time I asked Olivia Chow about the incident. She laughed when she told me that she knew he had been there saying that Jack's life of being sporty led to the need of massages. Olivia had complete trust of the man she had married and loved. Her love of Jack was visible to all that know her.
On May 2, 2011 Layton led his party as the NDP won 103 seats, more than doubling the party's previous highs. For the first time in history the NDP party became the Official Opposition in the Commons.
Jack Layton had been diagnosed with prostate cancer on February 5, 2010. He had fought the cancer and it looked like he was winning the battle.
He and I both had surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto (I had broken my ankle) on February 17, 2011. I didn't know that Jack was scheduled for surgery at the time, but later I found out that my emergency surgery had bumped his hip operation.
On July 25, 2011 Jack Layton announced that he was taking a temporary leave from his post to battle a new cancer.
On Canada Day Olivia Chow was at Trinity Bellwoods Park speaking up for the city's immigrant population at a BBQ she and Rosario Marchese hosted. While we were chatting it was obvious something was wrong, her sad eyes gave it away. Days later she and Jack were at the Pride Parade in Toronto. It was clear that Jack was not well, his weight loss was visible. They rode instead of walking the route.
On Monday at 4:45 a.m. surrounded by his family Jack Layton died peacefully at home.
Today Canada mourns a great man who fought for those who thought they were treated unfairly. Facebook has a RIP Jack Layton page where mourners are writing about Jack's passing.
In history books Jack Layton will be remembered as a great man who led his party well. He helped bring changes to Canada for the underdogs. He fought cancer with everything that he had with courage. He loved and was loved back by a nation.
This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com
More about Jack Layton, Canada politics, Obit, NDP leader, Cancer
Jack Layton Canada politics Obit NDP leader Cancer