A group of people in Paris in 2014/15, all literary, all quite objectionable, meander round
each other, aloof from events around them.
Max Jackson is a Kiwi, although I doubt he would ever describe himself as such – the thought of his pairing with a New Zealand wife is the source of some amusement to him and his French wife, Louise. Louise has banished Max to the lower floor of their house, while she and the children stay aloft – not surprising really, given his tendency to mansplain to women, and ponder that a woman’s breasts “… must be the broadly rounded kind, not pointy”. She keeps in touch though – prowling around his floor when he’s not there, sniffing his sheets. What is surprising is that Sylvie, a new colleague of Max’s at the Sorbonne Nouvelle where he lectures, would be attracted to him – he is particularly condescending towards her, but then Sylvie rather prefers him when “he recovers some of his authority”, just as what she likes most about her German lover, Bertholdt, is his “SS manner”.
Then there is Helen White, a young English student at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, who read an early poem of Max’s (who has long since stopped writing poetry) and liked it immensely – and who arrives at his office to say she is bipolar and she is going to get him to start writing poetry again: “Where was the youthful Max’s soul hiding? She would make it her project to find it, to bring it out”. And Max, whilst enamoured of colleague Sylvie, seems to think it is quite acceptable to engage in a relationship with a vulnerable student, “He entertained himself by thinking of her as a muse.” At the end of one of his lectures he does a bit of a rave about Nabokov, so maybe he thinks he is being faithful to the ‘literast’ tradition.
All the characters in this novel are bright and erudite, and quip away to each other. Both Max and Louise are working on books, his is a small volume of literary criticism, hers a volume on Flaubert, the latter volume being destined for greatness: Louise is trying to spark a renaissance of word crafting and sculpting in literature, and a move away from the New Wave of authors who favour obscurity, thus leaving the reader room for creativity. And this crafting of material is probably what this novel is about – how people’s lives can become overly constructed and lack spontaneity and engagement. Helen is a devotee of Gurdjieff, who believed that ordinary lives were a ‘sleep’ and that one had to work at ‘wakefulness’, creating a soul along the way. Sylvie meets another man towards the end of the novel, Lenny, and sees him as a project: “She was going to have to train him, teach him how to dress stylishly but less formally, and to stop perfuming himself.” All the characters are using each other in some way for their own ends. At one point, the ‘necessary angel’ of the title is used to describe both Helen and Sylvie in relation to Max, but also to describe the drugs that Helen relies on: “‘I like to be brilliant,’ she said, ‘but it’s better to be sane’.”
For the characters in The necessary angel, their world has become so removed behind words that French and world politics are just a backdrop. Max scans the Guardian Weekly and the New Zealand Herald, “reads the world telling its own story, getting on with the ‘now’ of everything …”, reads of the growing gap between rich and poor, the heightening unrest around the globe, but: ”Nothing-to-be-Done, alas!” The book is set in turbulent political times, there are scandals in French politics, right ascendancy, the Ebola crisis, ISIS public beheadings and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Max is separated from his world not only by his choice of work and social circle, he feels himself apart from his French associates, an unbridgeable language gap arising from his having learned French from written not heard words. At the beginning of the novel there is an odd unnecessary note about most of the conversations being in French – when it is made very clear throughout the novel whether the characters are speaking French or English. But maybe this note is to emphasise this additional barrier to engagement for Max?
Max and Sylvie are working together organising a small conference on World War One writers, as part of the centennial commemorations. But even with this there is a feeling of fatigue, even before commemorations begin: “Let’s not be tired in advance”, advises Sylvie. By the end of the novel, Max is calling the Great War Wobbly Wobbly One. Sylvie puts this ennui and apathy down to our knowledge of the ‘Death of Everything’, the forecast end of the universe that was not a concept for previous artists and philosophers. “In this society at this time almost everything was waste – works of art, music, reading and talking about novels and poems, and, perhaps especially, opera. Everything we do, she thought, was at the expense of the future and the poor.” We do fleetingly glimpse ‘the poor’ in this novel – in the form of an “old harridan”, to whom Max thrusts 20 Euros to keep her off his property.
Much of the writing in The necessary angel is lovely. But some is quite flat: Louise. “Maybe the cat was just a cat – the one that in English ‘sat on the mat’” or odd: “He said it as if preparing her for the worse that was not to come.” And sometimes I don’t think Stead has quite captured the female voice:
“Her period had come and it was better that she did not have to tell him she was pregnant, which might have upset him. Pregnancy would have been an interesting experience – she had quite liked the idea; but they said it hurt a lot giving birth; and after that you would be stuck with a baby, like a big, noisy doll, getting bigger all the time, and before long walking and talking and probably telling you off – and perhaps even falling into the canal. No, she would be more careful from now on. Fucks for sure, but with care and a condom.”
There is reference in the novel to the power of the written word, not just the ability to trouble the “Christian–atheist mind”, but an accidental and dangerous power – a line is drawn between Houellebecq’s Submission and the Charlie Hebdo attack, and Houellebecq is described as having ‘taken refuge somewhere in rural France” after the attacks. But, despite the characters’ vast knowledge in The necessary angel, there is a vacuum of commitment on all fronts, e.g. when Sylvie is asked about her religion: “‘Oh yes, I’m Catholic’, she said. And then, ‘Regrettably’.” There is a piece of art central to the story, interestingly having familial not official proof of provenance, and the fate of this work, purposely kept private and not for public display, is how the novel ends. It is a clever ending and oddly satisfying, but is of the ‘obscure, leaving the reader room for creativity’ type. As a reader, I was not sure what ideas this novel left me with: That the Parisian literary world has become totally removed from the ‘real’ world? That the postmodernist West is ill equipped to face current threats? That reading might encourage empathy but literary criticism does the opposite? Perhaps all of these. Read The necessary angel and see what you think.
Edge of truth is another adrenaline roller coaster ride from Brynn Kelly, the author who brought us the fantastic mash-up of thriller/romance that was Deception Island. Edge of truth is a story of international conspiracy and war-mongering, played out in the Horn of Africa. Tess Newell is a well -known tele-journalist, unfortunately more known for a high-profile romance break-up than for her journalism. But Tess has uncovered a huge story of corruption and conspiracy, and is desperate to get the story out before the world is plunged into a major conflict – but she has been captured by the conspirators.
Murder on Broadway is a rollicking wild West Coast goldfields tale of murder and mayhem. When the obnoxious Reefton Police Sergeant Mackworth Snyder leaves Reefton in the hands of his new Constable Gordon Trembath, in the days leading up to the 1877/78 festive season, the reader just knows the hapless cop is going to have to deal with serious goings on. Fortunately, Trembath has the “town idiot”, Abe, to watch his back, along with Abe’s friend, the town drunk, Little Jimmy. The refrain “he said it would be quiet over Christmas” is used to good effect, as the plans for thievery, swindlery, sly-groggery and all sorts of other nefarious business are being made in Reefton and abroad. The main target for most of this activity is the annual Reefton Boxing Day Race Meeting, and tensions rise as the reader becomes aware of various scams being set up.
“Of all my frustrations with the Christian Church, besides its demonising of women, there are two that most confound me: the preoccupation with unquestioning obedience and the notion of original sin.” So says one of Heloise’s early teachers – a Jew who was forced to convert and who along with her daughter had faced the worst that the patriarchal society of 12th Century France could inflict. And Heloise’s exploration of the life and character of Heloise is unflinching in its descriptions of the endless abuse and disempowerment of women.
This is an absolutely riveting debut novel. Told from alternating points of view of two young artists, one a musician and the other a painter, whose gifts are thwarted by drugs, violence and a corrupted world view. Zlata is a singer/songwriter who comes from a loving and supportive family, Hamish is the artist – and tagger – who is from a dismal background and who is knee-deep in self-loathing. The two spy each other across a crowded room and in another world their love may have managed redemption. But in Auckland with a widening gap between the haves and have nots, where drugs are pushing the natural us/them tendencies to grotesque levels, and where artistic success is seen as a cop out – there is not all that much room for redemption.
uphemia Sage has been receiving strange letters over the years – from her deceased aunt, the woman who raised her when her mother ran off. The letters have been spookily aware of Euphemia’s circumstances at the time she reads them, and they speak of strange powers that she will possess once she hits menopause. Euphemia is looking forward to seeing if the letters are true, but unsure how she will use such powers – her life being relatively uneventful. She runs a consultancy business with her golf-crazy husband, and has two daughters, one a police detective and the other a cyber-whiz who works in the family business. She finds enjoyment in her family, her work, running, and in Petal her pug. But that all changes when the hot flushes start.
help of alcohol, when she gets the opportunity to write a feature story that might land her the job of head reporter for the national magazine she works for, First Look. Sergeant Kahu Parata is a local cop at the small Coromandel town of Castle Bay, where Miller will hopefully write her masterpiece. Kahu knows all the locals and turns a blind eye to some of their misdemeanours, and he is annoyed when a team from Auckland are sent to work the case that Miller intends to cover – the discovery of the body of a missing tourist, Bethany Haliwell.
In Know me now, partial amnesiac Dan Forrester is back, back in another adventure for our enjoyment, and also back with his wife, Jenny, and their daughter Aimee. The family is eagerly awaiting the imminent birth of Dan and Jenny’s second son. Dan is also dealing with the sudden death of his father, Bill, who was visiting Germany when he had a massive heart attack. In the midst of making arrangements for the repatriation of his father’s body, Dan hears that his 13-year-old godson, Connor, has also died. Connor’s death is being dealt with as a suicide, but the local doctor in the Scottish village where he died is not so sure. Two deaths so close together – and as the delightful DC Lucy Davies says: “In my job, we don’t believe in coincidences”.
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