Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I received Olive Kitteridge as a Christmas present after watching the Sky Atlantic mini-series last year. I’ve always been an advocate for the book that comes before any screen adaptation and I always will be. I think even Olive Kitteridge would criticise my roundabout way of initially encountering her story. 

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is a telling of the lives of characters that inhabit a coastal town in Maine. Each of the thirteen chapters exists as separate short stories, and can be considered all together as one form, or individually within their own contained shell. 

If the plot was to centre on a main character, it would be the title name. 

Olive Kitteridge is retired Maths teacher who lives with her quiet-mannered husband Henry and her angst-ridden son.

You may met Olive first-hand through Elizabeth Strout painfully beautifully verse or you have seen the Sky Atlantic television adaptation. Either way you must agree Mrs Kitteridge is one of fiction’s complex entities. 

Hardened, bitter, set in her ways and snappy, Olive is the ignored relative and feared schoolteacher. “I don’t know how he can stand her” comments Bob Houlton in the Winter Concert chapter, after Henry Kitteridge and his wife arrive at Church.

Despite that I couldn’t help warming to Mrs Kitteridge and her firm way of thinking. At times she shows a tender loving side which is out of sight from the prattles of town gossip and I felt protective over her and angry about any criticisms she endures.

What Elizabeth Strout has created is an interesting set of townspeople, each with their own sorrows and idiosyncrasies. Alongside any chapter where Olive Kitteridge appears my favourites also include The Piano Player which tells the life of an alcoholic lounge singer, and Ship in a Bottle, the story of a jilted teenage bride.

Appetite by Philip Kazan

If a book can make a recipe for tripe sound appetising then that is a testament to the author’s skill as a writer. 

To my knowledge I’ve never eaten tripe. However I’ve found a compelling argument that it tastes wonderful, especially, according to Philip Kazan, if you scrub it “diligently”, cook it with “a handful of fresh sage leaves” and finally add secret intangible Florentine ingredient…

I decided to try Appetite upon the strength of many reviews declaring it is like Patrick Süskind’s Perfume.

I loved Patrick Sukind’s sensory and descriptive delve into the world of scent, and as I love food it seemed Appetite and me would be the perfect match. 

Unfortunately the comparison to Perfume lost all meaning as the book went on.

In Appetite Philip Kazan has created a novel with little gems to add to your cookbook, but the plot gets tangled up in a drawn-out love story, and on occasion loses its taste.

Nino Latini, a young butcher’s son, has a talent in the kitchen and his ambition/idiocy in the pursuit of love takes him far and wide across the Italian landscape.

Appetite would be the perfect companion if you are visiting Florence or Rome. It has all the elements of a historical-fiction novel; real-life characters, plenty of Piazza’s, Churches and rioting in the cobbled streets. However if you are looking out for a follow up to Perfume, dismiss all of earlier comparisons to it as well… a load of tripe.

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

It’s the 90s. In Richmond Virginia people switch on their VCRs, turn over their cassettes, insert floppy discs into their PCs and listen to the dulcet tone of a modern dial up. All the while a serial killer, a ‘Mr Nobody’, is breaking into the homes of women late at night.

Now that the fourth victim has been discovered Dr Kay Scarpetta, the town's chief medical examiner, is running out of time…

I was lent Patricia Cornwell’s first book after completing The Axeman’s Jazz.

Post-Mortem, was published in 1990, and was a groundbreaker in its focus on forensic evidence within the crime-fiction genre. 

Nowadays whenever you are channel-hopping you cannot escape the slab-gore reruns of CSI: Crime Investigation, CSI: Miami or CSI: NY. 

The morgue table has become an obligatory feature in any crime thriller, and it is usually during that scene when I turn the telly on mute, leave the room to make a cup of tea or cover my eyes and repeatedly shout “Ewww!” until it ends.

Post-Mortem, evidently given its title, exposes the subject intently and talks about things that I don’t feel like typing about at the moment because I’m about to eat my dinner.

What’s more PG friendly is Cornwell’s mention of DNA samples, microscopic analysis of fabric fibres and dust which have moulded into the modern-day crime fiction vocabulary.

Plus the strong female lead, Dr Kay Scarpetta, who clashes with her male counterparts in her fight against violence to women, and probably goes out drinking with Agent Clarice Starling after work. 

Despite that the technology is a bit dated, and since I’m used to reading about the hacking exploits of Lisbeth Salander, I still enjoyed Post-Mortem.

It was a breezy read that I completed in a week and was the perfect companion to the January sniffles. 

No one can ignore the significance this book has had to the crime-fiction genre, and if you are wondering when the film based on Dr Kay Scarpetta is going to emerge it seems so is Patricia Cornwell… read here.

The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin

I have never been to New Orleans, but after completing Ray Celestin’s debut novel The Axeman’s Jazz I’m hooked, and now the unique carnival city sits on my list of places to visit.

Within reading the first few chapters of historical crime thriller I found myself googling pictures of the French Quarter, lapping up words such as Banquette*, searching for recipes for Gumbo and discovering recently colour-restored pictures of Louis Armstrong.

It seems odd that a novel based on an unsolved serial killer case would make you want to visit the place it is set. 

I first heard of the Axeman of New Orleans after watching American Horror Story, a series which embodies the modern day obsession with all things gruesome, and like Ray Celestin’s creation demonstrates why New Orleans is a wonderland setting for any writer.

French Quarter http://www.trekexchange.com/tours/99

The case is as follows…

From May 1918 and October 1919 eight people were brutally murdered in New Orleans by a killer who was never caught. 

On March 13 1919 a letter was published in the local newspapers from the Axeman with the ominous threat that on following Tuesday any home which did not have a jazz band playing on 12.15 “will get the axe.”

The case shares parallels to Victorian London’s Jack The Ripper, an unsolved set of grisly murders in a city loaded with underworld tensions, ripe for the picking for any grabbing sensationalist reporter, conspiracy theorist or future crime writer.

Ray Celestin seems to be a member of the historical crime club and pays tribute to one of its founding fathers Sherlock Holmes in the form of the character Ida Davis; a budding young female detective who enlists the help of her friend Lewis Armstrong to find answers. 

Alongside the pair Celesin also supplies a disgraced cop, Luca d’ Andrea and his former protégé Lieutenant Michael Talbot who are carrying out separate investigations of the murders. 

Ray Celestin tails the three leads and tours New Orleans in the early twenties - perusing the haunts of the Mafia, exploring the Voodoo dens of the Bayou and jumping aboard a cruising Tramp Steamer -  all the while enjoying the linguistic delights of the local tongue, sampling words such as tignons, fichus and colporteur.

The Axeman’s Jazz is a lovely fanciful bite of ghastly escapism to cuddle up to.

As of yet I haven’t booked by plane ticket to Louisiana so for now my New Orleans reading wishlist will have to do.. 

* Banquette – a sidewalk, the term is typically used in Costal Louisiana and is French in origin.

New Orleans Reading List:

Anything by Anne Rice but The Feast of All Saints tops the list.

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen - According to reviews this book makes to want to visit New Orleans instantly, plus anything with food for me is a winner.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy - a posthumous winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

There is something special about reading a book by an author you have enjoyed before. When I heard that Donna Tartt the author of The Little Friend had brought out a new novel I didn’t rush out to buy it, and with it numbering at 863 pages I thought I would wait until I had some time in the holidays to savour it.

Donna Tartt’s first novel, The Secret History, created quite a following after its release.

Embedded in Greek tragedy, the dark murder mystery tells the story of a college cult and poses the question: What would happen if the characters in the Dead Poet Society embarked on Bacchic-style orgy?

Her second book The Little Friend sits high on my favourite books list and is a gorgeous coming of age Southern Gothic jammed packed with beautiful descriptive prose. 

With a ten year gap between them (which I don’t mind if the break produces great fiction) The Goldfinch appears to be penned with the same ink.

It is dark and gothic. It retains the same danger of its predecessors with its exploration of a murky drug-fuelled lifestyle. 

It is boldly poetic. Donna Tartt has a gift which all writers aspire to achieve; The Goldfinch has sentences I read and re-read. Her words glide into passages which possess a startlingly smoothness and clarity relating to real life experiences such as grief and trauma.

It is full of the descriptions that I love and seek out in any book. There is a hoarding of objects, possessions and antique furniture which do not sit around like useless clutter but enrich the book with an enjoyable eloquence.

It is full of life and colour. In Theo Decker, Donna Tartt provides a compelling character study which I felt looking at me directly in the eye as if to say “Here I am. I am more like you than you think.” 

Without giving away any spoilers, The Goldfinch is about the protagonist Theo Decker’s lifelong obsession with the painting of a chained bird.

On the inside back of the book there is a copy of Carel Fabritius’ famous creation and I often found myself engaging in a read-along with Theo; while he gazed at the painting so would I, asking myself “What does this mean? What is this trying to say?”

How can I, an English female, relate to a story about the rich upper classes of New York, collecting beautiful antiques while carrying out their secret and self-destructive behaviour?

However in a final magnificent brushstroke by Donna Tartt, Theo provides a monologue that is that clinches the accolades and Pulitzer Prize which have been presented to this book and its author. 

I would strongly suggest after finishing the last page to revisit Theo’s and his mother’s trip to the Met and her discussion of the paintings on page 26 as it brings into light the book as a whole.

The Goldfinch is about the universal appreciation of beautiful things. 

Like a famous painting which thousands flock to see each year searching for interpretation, I see this book being studied in English workshops as a piece of fiction that moves with a steady beating heart.