Reykjavík by Ragnar Jónasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir

I did not discover the work of Icelandic writer Ragnar Jónasson until the spring of 2019, and since then have read all his mystery novels, including this fall, the most recent, Reykjavík.

A number of books published this fall were written during the pandemic when everyone lived a life of isolation. For Ragnar Jónasson it was the opportunity to have some fun with a new novel. Having had lunch with a friend in early 2020 and discussing “our mutual interest in crime fiction” the pair embarked on a story about the disappearance of a young girl on the island of Videy, most of which is set in the 1980s when both friends were pre-teens. Ragnar Jónasson has a well won reputation as one of Iceland’s best and most well-known writers of mystery novels. His partner in this project “holds a master’s degree in Icelandic literature and is now the Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir”.

We begin in the summer of 1956 on the island of Videy, not far offshore from Reykjavík. A husband and wife are the summer residents of the otherwise uninhabited island. Though the Danish Colonial mansion still stands, along with a church, the village on the tiny island has been abandoned since the Second World War.

Lara Marteinsdóttir is a 15-year-old girl, employed as summer help by the couple. She has been on the island since May, and now in early August she has disappeared. Her employers claim that Lara, much to their annoyance, gave notice and left the island, taking all her belongings. Her parents, who she spoke with each week, had no idea that Lara had left her job, and only became concerned when she did not make her weekly phone call.

There is a search, no body is found, nor any trace of Lara or her suitcase. The following days and weeks and months in 1956 reveal nothing more. The investigation is at a dead end. Kristján Kristjánsson, the policeman in charge, is convinced that Lara will be found alive. The case never leaves his mind.

The decades pass until we reach 1986 and, as has sometimes happened in the previous three decades, a reporter decide to write yet another article on this case that has long fascinated all Icelanders. Valur Róbertsson in fact thinks with enough research into the past investigations and fresh interviews with all involved he may be able to discover the truth of the disappearance of Lara.You will find out if he is correct!

The novel is dedicated to Agatha Christie, a master of the red herring and far too many suspects, and just as good a read! She would have enjoyed reading this novel – and so will you.

Rage the Night by Donna Morrissey

One of the many authors whose books I am looking forward to re-reading in retirement is Donna Morrissey, having read each of her many novels as they were published over the past 25 years. Her most recent, Rage the Night, arrived in the store a few weeks before I headed to Newfoundland this fall. I resisted reading it until I arrived at the small fishing harbour we call home for a couple of months each year.

Rage the Night takes place in towns, and harbours I know, and in St. John’s, all in the early 1900s. The jacket information tells us that the novel involves the Newfoundland, a ship famous for its tragic history in carrying so many men to their deaths on the ice. The ice was near Elliston, a harbour not far from our home where we take all visiting friends to see the John C Crosbie Sealers Interpretation Centre and the waterfront memorial – having advised them to read Cassie Brown’s Death on the Ice before coming to Newfoundland. This tragedy on the ice is a grief still held by all who live here, as is the slaughter of so many of the Newfoundland Regiment in World War I – an event that took place at much the same time, and left no one in Newfoundland unaffected.

Donna Morrissey came to Parry Sound to present readings from some of her earlier novels, and I met her again in Newfoundland last summer at the Woody Point Writer’s Festival when she talked about her recently published memoir Pluck. She talked about life – the joys and griefs, had the audience both laughing and crying – there is no one who can tell a story as she can. She later told me that, as was her mother, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer – which she has shared in a blog on her website. And, that she is well now.

Rage the Night takes a young man, raised on the Northern Peninsula as an orphan, on a quest to discover his parentage. Travelling form St. Anthony to Deer Lake by dog sled, by train to the Avalon Peninsula and beyond, into a story that you will not want to put aside as his history is slowly revealed.

As Donna Morrisey writes on her website -

It matters not our differences, we all feed from the one basket of life with its fruit of kindness, grief, fear, and all other emotions evoked by this tremendous and terrible journey through life. Of the fruit in the basket, it is joy I covet most for it is fed by Love. And love is everything.

Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

“Some eighty years ago, our mother’s parents founded the School here to train up wives and mothers worthy of the sacred charge of forming the next generation. How glorious a time this is for the education of girls!”

This quote is from early in Emma Donoghue’s novel Learned by Heart.  Set in the 1800’s this is the story of two schoolgirls, over the years 1805 to 1815. Eliza Raine and Anne Lister meet in 1805 as boarders at a girl’s school, King’s Manor, near York, England 

Eliza is “a young lady of colour” whose mother was East Indian, her father a British military man. Their daughters Eliza and Jane, shipped off to England to be educated. Anne Lister is one of a large family, a daughter who is largely self-taught, confiedent, and very, very intelligent, with an aptitude that enables her to learn easily and is already knowledgeable beyond her years. The girls are in Middle School, 14 years old, more or less. We meet their classmates and learn of their histories, giving the reader a picture of life for these girls in this time and place. We also learn what is going on in the world as the girls hear it – Bonaparte defeated at Cape Trafalgar, and later his victories in Europe. We learn about what was considered modern medicine in the early 1800s.

But it is Eliza and Anne who are the centre of the story. Anne who calls herself “Lister” and honours Eliza by calling her “Raine”, as young men would do.

This is a novel about class, race, friendship, love. About girls and women, intelligence, education. As they are taught social skills, appropriate behaviour, dancing lessons, music, drawing – these girls are being trained for marriage.

Emma Donoghue is a writer who with each novel presents us with something completely different than the one before – always surprising and inventive. Learned by Heart is again such a story.

It is also a novel based on real people and their experience. Emma Donoghue writes “I’ve been obsessed with the puzzling and tragic fate of Anne Lister’s first lover, Eliza Raine, since writing my first play, back in 1990, which was a very loose adaptation of Helena Whitbread’s first book of selections, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840. This long-brewing novel, Learned by Heart, brings Eliza and Lister together, at 14, at the Manor School in York.”

Fall 2023

 The leaves are turning colour, the nights are cooler, and we have packed our car for our fall migration to Newfoundland. We’ll spend four weeks away, visiting friends, before taking the overnight ferry to Argentia. Then home in our home away from home overlooking Trinity Bay.

 I think of the fall as such a time of change. The children back in school – for us it is now grandchildren back in school. The cottage closed until next year. Living in town and going out with friends, having others to us for dinners. Change of wardrobe and footwear. Settling in.

 In the publishing industry and in bookstores it may be a quieter time than summer in this tourist town, but it is still busy with new arrivals and the beginning of the fall literary festivals and award nominations. For so many years we hosted author events at this time of year, until interrupted by Covid. This fall we are presenting Waubgeshig Rice at the Charles W Stockey Centre in November and will be part of an earlier event that is being organizing at Wasauksing in October.

 The books we are reading changes in the fall as well. I spent the summer of 2023 with Detective Alan Banks, in Yorkshire, thanks to the, late, very talented Peter Robinson. I re-read about half of the series this summer – with occasional forays into literary novels – but always back to Alan Banks. Somehow reading mystery novels in the summer is such a part of cottage life.

 The time has come to put Alan Banks aside for now. I have a pile of books to read in Newfoundland. By writers from Newfoundland, Rage the Night by Donna Morrissey, and The Adversary by Michael Crummey. Along the way I will read Emma Donoghue’s Learned By Heart.

Packed in boxes are Sue Hubbard’s Girl in White, just re-issued, having loved her Flatlands and Rainsongs. Also, Zadie Smith’s new book, The Fraud. A copy of Jane Urquhart’s Away to re-read. I might just have to sneak in a Peter Robinson or two…..

 As the season transitions, Sara practices being the new owner of Parry Sound Books while I practice retirement – with most of my days spent berry picking and reading – while Sara does the work that keeps Parry Sound Books doing what we have always done - providing a great selection of books and great service. Perfect!

 Thanks to all - Enjoy this beautiful fall. Charlotte

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

A new novel by Ann Napolitano is always a cause for celebration. Now, we have Hello Beautiful. I had a couple of long sunny days in July at the cottage to spend with this book and loved it as much as her others.

Each chapter follows one of the main characters, the first from 1960 to 1978 when we meet William as a young child and then as a college freshman. William meets Julia Padavano, his first girlfriend and a woman who will be part of his life as long as we know it. Julia is the eldest of four Padavano sisters, followed by Sylvie and the twins Cecilia and Emeline. They live with their parents Rose and Charlie in a Chicago suburb.

For William meeting Julia and her sisters is life changing. William is the only surviving child of parents who, in their grief over the death of his sibling, were unable to give William the love he deserved, and needed. I thought of Jill Frayne’s book Why I’m Here and Jill saying that every child needs someone in their life who they know loves them. This William did not have. He does however become part of the loving and messy Padavano family.

What follows is the story of William and the Padavano sisters. William is tall, very tall, and discovers that playing basketball provides him with another sort of family – the boys on the College basketball team. Among them two lifelong best friends, and dozens of others who care for him.

Hello Beautiful is a difficult book to review because the story is revealed chapter by chapter as each of the sisters and William move through the decades, there are graduations and marriages, there are deaths and separations. There are children born. There are misunderstandings and long held resentments and broken hearts. There is drama and reflection. There is forgiveness. I more than once found myself teary.

All in all, Hello Beautiful is a wonderful family saga, a book to fall into during some time off, at the cottage, on a plane or anyplace you can sneak away for some good reading time!