The Orchard
I have been quite baffled by the last few books I have read by Peter Heller. His earlier books had a plot, an arc, and a conclusion, if not the perfect resolution, and then I ran up against two or three that just seemed to…stop. They felt unfinished—they seemed confusing as to his intentions in writing them, and I was disappointed, because he is so gifted in his ability to capture the beauty of the natural world through his characters’ eyes that I will read nearly anything he writes, but…finally, in The Orchard, there is a cohesive story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending, even if they are slight and still take second place to his descriptive passages.
The book is a coming-of-age story told from the viewpoint of Frith, now in her 30s but looking back on her life from about age 12 onward. Her mother, Hayley, a renowed translator of the work of poets from the Tang Dynasty, walks away from her heroin-addicted husband and her career at a Denver university to set up house in a rustic cabin in the quiet hills of the Green Mountains of Vermont to raise her child. She and Frith move there when Frith is seven, and live a life that is both idyllic and hand-to-mouth, making a perilous living from selling the apples from their orchard and the syrup made from the maple trees they tap each year while thoroughly immersing themselves in the pleasure of vanishing into the pines.
The book is a combination of in-the-moment narrative with reminiscence, and is punctuated by some of the simple but transcendentally beautiful poems of Li Xue, translated by Hayley, as well as some poems that may have been Hayley’s own.
Hayley and Frith’s story starts out slowly, but builds to a deeply emotional climax. It’s all about the love of family, the joy of friendship, the experience of doing work that is fulfilling, and the quiet and perceptive appreciation of the natural world. This is not a book like some of Heller’s that are action-packed adventures with a bucolic setting; rather, it is a heartfelt exploration of humanity.
There were many slightly disappointed reviews of this book on Goodreads as being too simple, too slow-paced, not based in reality. It’s hard, sometimes, when you have come to expect a certain thing from an author, to receive something else; but Heller is almost always surprising, and I felt this one accomplished what was intended in a way that was both relatable and evocative.
Continued enjoyment
I read two books this week. One was the sequel to the cozy mystery I reviewed in my last post. The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Orchid Hunting, by Naomi Kuttner, would seem to follow one theme from the previous book—gardens. But orchids are less about gardening and more about collecting, especially because people mostly grow them either in pots (if they have a few) or in a greenhouse (if they have a bunch), and the word “hunting” in the title is no coincidence; orchid aficionados are all about seeking the rare, the storied, the unattainable bloom. A symposium on the subject is sure to draw a large group of rabid fans, and that is the set-up for this second story about Dante the retired assassin and his friends—Eleanor the (former?) con artist, and Charlie, the gardener who sees and talks to ghosts. Just your ordinary paranormal cozy mystery!
Dante has been working hard to acclimatize to “civilian” life with the assistance of regular AA (Assassins Anonymous) meetings on Zoom. He is learning to love the cat who insisted on moving in with him, and is easing up on his isolationist habits by actually contemplating a first date with the local veterinarian. But when the orchid symposium comes to town and Te Kohe’s resident expert on orchids dies under suspicious circumstances, Dante and his new friends team up to try to figure out which of the three other prominent figures at the gathering might be responsible, and why—and they only have the length of the convention to solve the mystery, so they’re on a tight timetable.
There are a couple of subplots; one involves Inspector Avery, who is actually back in town on vacation, choosing to spend his days off at the orchid symposium, and the other features a beautiful but weirdly attentive woman Dante is convinced has appeared at a suspicious moment and may be a threat to his retirement (and continued existence).
I enjoyed the inclusion of the paranormal elements, weaving together Charlie’s talent for perceiving the dearly departed with New Zealand’s flora and fauna and cultural/spiritual beliefs. The Pūriri or Ghost Moth was the perfect guide to help solve the mystery of the elusive Ghost Orchid all the collectors were pursuing, as well as an additional vehicle to expose the murderer. Another entertaining read from this series.
The other book harks back a few months to my discovery of the fantasy author T. Kingfisher and her weirdly wonderful stories. Kingfisher started out as a children’s book author called Ursula Vernon, but she began to feel confined by the inability to include certain elements in her storytelling (murder and mayhem) and decided to branch out into adult fantasy and horror fiction, as well as what she describes as her “occasional oddities.” The latter are the books with which I enthusiastically connected, including Nettle and Bone, A Sorceress Comes to Call, Hemlock & Silver, and a few others. I’m not much of a horror reader (too suggestible), so I will probably give some of her books a miss, but I am completely on board for her fantasy, so I put Nine Goblins on my waiting list at the library and finally snared it this past week.
The story had a bit of a slow start, because there was a lot of scene-setting background to get through before the action began, and it also turned out to be on the short side, a novella of only 160 pages. But once I got past the descriptive information-dump about goblins, orcs, elves, and other competitors for real estate with the ever-expanding human race, it turned into a typical whimsical Kingfisher tale with underlying Terry Pratchett vibes about more serious themes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I discovered in the acknowledgments that Nine Goblins was actually the first of her “occasional oddities,” self-published in 2013, and that its success (though modest) led to all the vastly better-known others. So I’m glad to have come across it as Kingfisher’s “origin story,” so to speak.
Next up: The Calamity Club, by Kathryn Stockett, and The Orchard, by Peter Heller. Stay tuned.
A cozy assassin
I am a long-time mystery reader, but not in general a particular fan of the “cozy”—I tend to like my mysteries on the darker side. But I just read a charming and unexpectedly funny one that made me laugh out loud while keeping me guessing.
The book is The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Gardening, by Naomi Kuttner. There is a sequel I already have queued up on my Kindle, and a third book comes out later this year, which I will most certainly pursue when
it lands.
Although I did enjoy the novelty (for me) of a story set in New Zealand, with its unique flora and fauna and different sensibilities to the more common British cozy, the real attraction of the book was its characters and their difficulty fitting in with the small-town vibe.
The title character is Dante, a former MI6 assassin who has lived a life so focused on one thing that he has no idea, in retirement, what appeals to him. He has chosen to settle in the town of Te Kohe but, despite its friendly and outgoing atmosphere, Dante is maintaining the lifestyle he learned when he was trying to fade into the background and make no impression. He is socially inept, wishes to avoid the inevitable outreach from what he perceives as intrusively nosy neighbors, and hides in his sparsely furnished house subsisting on protein shakes.
The first person to breach his privacy is Charlie Wilson, a 20-year-old gardener who is determined to continue the botanical services he provided to the former occupant (now deceased) of Dante’s house. Dante considers that he might enjoy learning something about gardening while allowing Charlie to do the heavy lifting, so he acquiesces to Charlie’s employment.
Next is an invasion by local landowner Ted Andrews, who has done his research and has decided that Dante can assist him by providing bodyguard services at an upcoming big event. Dante is less than thrilled to be called upon for this, but Ted makes a forceful case that convinces Dante the easiest route to his peaceful existence is to go along with it.
The most significant and also the most mysterious character is Eleanor Graham, who presents as a typical social manager of her small town, with a finger in every pie and extensive knowledge of all the town’s inhabitants and their foibles, but who drops hints about a past life that was vastly more exciting and certainly in some cases illegal. She fills the role of prime sleuth, although the others contribute and there is also a police presence.
The crime and ensuing mystery here are clever and not obvious; there are some unexpected twists as regards the character and abilities of the three incipient friends (and those of the villain), and the best part of the book is what I call “deadpan” humor. I was also charmed by Dante’s inadvertent acquisition of a cat whose attentions advance him towards a more human and humane outlook.
My sole complaint is that the gardening promised in the title turned out not to play much of a role in the story and, since that is what attracted me to the book in the first place, I felt this as a lack. But otherwise, a greatly entertaining lighthearted read!
The comforts of formula
Many writers of series (especially the ones with recurring themes, such as mysteries) fall into a pattern with their books—what one would call a formula. Depending on how well they perform within the confines of that formula, it can be either immensely satisfying to discover a story with all new characters and situations that is nonetheless comfortingly familiar, or it can quickly become tediously repetitive and cause you to seek out fresher fare. The books of Dick Francis, in my opinion, mostly fall into the former, positive category, and I have been re-reading some of my favorites lately when there seemed to be a dearth of new books to enjoy. (I’m sure they were out there, I just wasn’t finding them, and the frustration at my lack of success sent me back to some old familiars.)
The genius, if you want to call it that, of Francis’s books is that they all revolve around horse-racing, but within that broad context he explores many different aspects and occupations contained within or sometimes just adjacent to that world. So while many of his protagonists are jockeys or former jockeys, there are also books in which the main character is a horse trainer, an owner, a groom who escorts horses when they must fly overseas to far-flung racing meets, a sports photographer, a wine merchant, a banker, a jeweler…and he manages nonetheless to set all the stories in the world of horse-racing.
You do need to know that, based on the time period in which most were written (he began in 1962) and adding that to the upbringing, work ethic, and societal circumstances of the author, there are some features that may grate on a contemporary reader—chauvinistic or stereotypical assumptions about men’s and women’s roles being the most prominent. But if you can put those into the timeframe and mindset in which they were written, you can still gain much enjoyment from his tales about the world of horses. Also, because his female characters do have definite personalities and quirks, the macho nature of his stories is much less problematical than those contained within, for instance, the Mitch Rapp books of Vince Flynn (wherein all women wear pencil skirts and “high” ponytails!).
Whatever his profession, the protagonist is usually a competent (and more than usually clever) man connected somehow to the world of British horse-racing who becomes involved in some kind of quandary: a crime, a conspiracy, an act of violence. He is often reluctant to become involved, but is propelled by his ethics and innate sense of fairness to put things right. The villains are typically people who are outwardly respectable or even admired, but in truth are ruthlessly involved in some type of corruption—fraud, kidnapping, sabotage, murder. Despite not being a professional detective, the protagonist rather methodically uncovers the truth about these people and their misdeeds using a combination of intelligence, expertise, and resilience. He never makes it through entirely unscathed, usually coming up against the villains and their flunkies at least once or twice, when he is either physically or psychologically punished for his “nosiness,” surviving beatings, torture, financial ruin, or some form of betrayal. He ultimately manages to expose the criminals while surviving whatever retribution they have to offer.
Francis almost always manages to add in at least one romance for his amateur sleuths, and there is a fair amount of humor of the dryer Brit variety involved as well. He is also good with his descriptions of specialized professions or hobbies, bypassing the temptation to information-dump by placing the reader right in the moment in which the action occurs.
I have written about Francis and his books before, but felt the need to mention them once more because periodically re-exploring them gives me pleasure and perhaps, should you choose to read a few, might give some to you as well. The majority of the books are stand-alone one-offs as regards the personnel, but he does have a series of four about a former jockey named Sid Halley, and a duo involving trainer/rider Kit Fielding. So look out for those and read them in order if you come across those first.
Feel free to add a comment about series or authors whose books you find lend themselves to reading more than once or twice!
The art is “Before the Race,” by Edgar Degas, charcoal and pastels on paper.
Re-read break
I have three books on the holds list at Los Angeles Public Library for which I am #1 in line, so while I was waiting i decided to do some rereading, because every time I have books on hold and start something else new, all of them become available at once and then I can’t finish them all! Apparently whoever has them now is taking their own sweet time, however, because I have now been rereading for two weeks! I’m not going to review the books I have completed in that time period; some I have already reviewed, and others are serial genre series that are easy and enjoyable and need no promotion; if you know them, you probably like them too. These are pretty fast reads, but thoroughly enjoyable. Here’s what I read:
Two Georgette Heyer Regency novels
Two Sid Halley books (out of four) and one Kit Fielding book (out of two) by Dick Francis
One Charlaine Harris book I had missed (it was written in 1984)
The Harris book was something I had wanted to read because it was her second book ever and emerged from a personal experience of Ms. Harris’s, but it would probably be triggering for many people, and was also extremely dated. The others are by authors I have always enjoyed binging.
I’ll probably keep going with this until one of those three books becomes available, and then I’ll be back to reviewing.
Burn(ed)
Once again I have to ask: Peter Heller, where are you going with this?
I picked up his book Burn from the library early in the week and once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. I’m having some trouble right now with excessive edema in my legs, so sitting up for periods longer than the half hour I usually dedicate to eating a meal can be problematic in terms of extra swell and knee pain. I kept turning the pages on this one for another half hour or more in every instance, because I so wanted to know what came next. But I never found out…despite finishing the book.
Jess and Storey have been friends since childhood, growing up as close-by neighbors in rural Vermont. They still meet up every year (Jess having moved to Colorado) for a few weeks of hiking, camping, and hunting in various wilderness areas of the upper northern states; this year, they chose moose hunting in the middle of Maine. Jess is particularly glad of this year’s trip; his wife left him and he needs the distraction and the away time with his friend.
There has been a lot of rash talk on the news from secessionist groups in Maine and a few surrounding states about leaving the union, but the guys figure this is something that will work itself out in the courts. That’s until they emerge from their vacation off the grid to replenish their provisions and buy a tank of gas, only to discover that the town they chose to visit has been decimated. Unlike when a wildfire passes through, leaving some houses partially or wholly standing amongst the devastation, the force behind this act was concentrated and deliberate; although a few outhouses and sheds remain, every single house in the town is burnt down to its foundations. The implied savagery is bewildering and disturbing.
The strangest part of it is there are few bodies—they have discovered just four out of a population of more than 2700—and no live people left in the town, but for some reason all the boats docked by the nearby lake are pristine and untouched. There is no cell phone reception, no radio reception, nothing to tell them what happened here, but it’s plain that the talk of secession has escalated into a real and frightening battle. They have no idea who is “winning”—secessionists or U.S. military (or could Canada be involved?)—or how far the devastation stretches, so they decide to figure out a route to get back home (Storey has a wife and two daughters in Vermont), scavenging food from the lockers in the boats, camping under cover in the woods, and dodging human contact after they discover that the new world order is to shoot first and ask no questions. Then something happens that interferes with this plan and changes their whole trajectory.
Up to this point, I was breathless with the need to keep reading. But then the book goes off into a lot of flashbacks into Jess’s teen years and, while interesting, it didn’t further the story at all. It also seemed strangely inappropriate that he would be sitting around reminiscing about this in the midst of the disconnect the two friends are experiencing from the present-day world.
I should also add that the book, as is usual with Heller’s writing, is a poetic and passionate ode to both nature and human emotion, which I always appreciate. I was enthralled by both the possibilities and the story-telling; I kept waiting for progress, for some kind of reveal, but we just kept circling around the same information—we don’t know what’s happening or who we can trust, we don’t know what to do about it, we need to go home. After the event that changes their focus, the story was still compelling until I turned a page after a particularly dramatic scene to discover that it was the last page. What?!
I honestly don’t know what Heller is doing. I do understand some of the statements he was attempting to make—the pondering over human nature and friendship, the disbelief and dismay at the violent divisions over things that seem small but accumulate into a reason for war, but…I want to know how it ends! This is the second of his books that has simply stopped in what I would consider mid-story with no resolution. It is a beautifully written story, but…what happens? Will there be a sequel? Or is that it? As someone similarly frustrated said on Goodreads, Gripping? yes. Satisfying? no.
I don’t know whether to say to read it anyway for what it does offer, or to be outraged by what has been omitted. It was too good to call it a waste of time, but…I’d love to know other reactions to its abrupt full stop.
Grainger, cont’d
I have to date read two more of Peter Grainger’s mystery novels featuring DC Smith. Although the second in the series felt a little lackluster to me, being exceedingly low-key and petering out into a “solve” that everyone knew was coming, the third one picked things up again and my attention was retained for the rest of the series. I am currently in queue for the next two from the library.
New-to-me mystery
I’m always looking for a mystery writer previously unknown to me who will keep me interested the way dozens of others have in the past. I have devoured all the books of Penny, Morton, Johnson, Hill, Harrod-Eagles, the Harrises (Charlaine, C. S., and Joanne), Hamilton, Griffiths, George, Galbraith, French, Frear, Francis (pere, not fils), Crombie, Crais, Connelly, Bolton, and Atkinson, and that’s only a partial list, some of whom take up two to four pages of book listings in my Goodreads account. In addition to all of these, I have read three to six books by countless other authors, either because that’s all they have written to date, or because I liked the first few but didn’t continue for various reasons. These books include all categories of mystery, from cozy to procedural.
This week I started a new series, and the first book gives me the hope that its promise will lead to another series favorite.
The book is An Accidental Death, by Peter Grainger, and I came across it by chance on Kindle Unlimited. The synopsis made the protagonist, DC Smith, sound likeable, and the book turns out to be something of a hybrid between straight mystery and police procedural, with a controversial lead detective and the rookie newly under his direction poking at a death deemed accidental to see if there is something more to discover. I read it in four sittings, and now have the next three on hold at the public library, which will hopefully cough them up sooner rather than later.
There were parts of it that both intrigued and frustrated me; it seems like the book begins in the middle of a previous story, but it is plainly listed as the first of the series, and no other stand-alone books or other series precede it, so I must assume that the mystery and intrigue of how DC Smith became involved in a police investigation that went “tits up,” as the Brits say, and then came back from leave to continue working despite some fairly heavy pressure on him to retire will be revealed eventually. A few details surface in this book, including the naming of an adversary on the force named Wilson, who was apparently culpable for the mess made of the previous case and is now under a cloud, which he blames on Smith.
The plot involves a young man on a river bank, getting boisterous and drunk with his friends, who jumps into the water in pursuit of a man in a canoe to prank him, and ends up dead. It’s assumed, from where he was found and in what condition, that the death was accidental and attributable to the combination of inebriation and poor judgment, but something sticks out to DC Smith’s superior officer, Reeve, and she asks him to take a look. When he does, his examination reveals a bigger picture that no one in the police was, perhaps, meant to know about, and he gets into fairly deep water himself before it’s resolved.
The storytelling reminds me in some ways of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’ Bill Slider series, in that the protagonist is a focused and determined detective who resists both bureaucracy and promotion in his determination to keep solving crimes. Both detectives (Bill and DC—his initials as well as his rank) are thoughtful, smart, and also witty. I enjoyed the first book and am anticipating reading the next and having it turn out just as engaging.
New-to-me fantasy
Sorry for the long silence—I have been reading steadily, albeit slowly, but haven’t been able to sit up at the computer to post due to an illness that put me in hospital for five days and has taken a couple more weeks to resolve. I’m well on the way to mending now, but am still needing to spend a lot of the day with my feet up and my head down.
Right after I read the Heller book, I picked up a fantasy from Kindle Unlimited by an author called T. Kingfisher. I’d never heard of this author, but the premise for the book sounded intriguing and I was in the mood for (free) fantasy, so I decided to give her a try. I am a little wary of books that pop up for free, because that can mean that they didn’t sell well for various reasons, and someone is trying an alternate promotion opportunity, so they may not be good. But this time I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, because A. I don’t have the energy for a lengthy review, and B. these books are best experienced for yourself with little to no preview. But I am now a confirmed fan.
The first book I picked up was called Nettle and Bone, and it opened on such a grisly scene that I almost put it down. I’m so happy I didn’t, because it rapidly resolved into a wonderful story about a third sister (in the classic fairy tale tradition of three siblings—but they’re usually men) who becomes a reluctant heroine once she realizes what’s at stake in the marriages of her two older sisters to an abusive prince in a neighboring more powerful kingdom threatening their own. It’s populated by fairy godmothers, former knights (this one rescued by the heroine, Marra), and demon-possessed chickens, and it’s magical.
As publishers and authors so cleverly do with Kindle marketing, the first chapter of another of Kingfisher’s books was included after this book ended, and completely sucked me in. That one was A Sorceress Comes to Call and it was, if anything, better than the first. After that, I was hooked, and have now read Minor Mage, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, Hemlock & Silver, and The Seventh Bride, which I just finished this morning. I found them all delightful, intriguing, and filled with unexpected twists; her characters are truly individual, her writing is engaging, and she has a wonderful tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
Some of the books are loosely—and I can’t emphasize that word enough—based on original fairy tales, but the directions in which she takes them are truly unique. Several of the books could as easily be considered for young adults, since their protagonists are in the 15-18 age range, but in no way would I characterize these as specifically YA Lit; they are merely terrific fantasies whose main characters are youthful.
I’m not going to go into more detail about the individual books here; but if you like fantasy with a fresh, slightly humorous voice but with serious issues as their subjects, I encourage you to explore the worlds of T. Kingfisher! (which is the pen name of Ursula Vernon, who also writes both children’s books and comics).
A Heller of a book, until…
Peter Heller has written a couple of books that are favorites. The top one is (predictably) The Painter, and I loved The Dog Stars. I can also say that I tremendously enjoyed The River, The Guide, and Celine. So choosing to read his latest was predictable for me. It started strong, and parts of it remained strong, but…
Yeah, there’s that dot-dot-dot. Heller’s writing about nature in The Last Ranger was as beautiful and lyrical as ever. He creates a sense of awe and wonder that is contagious—even if it is his protagonist who is expressing these feelings, they gradually seep into your own consciousness as if you are experiencing that environment and the engendered response firsthand. I could never find fault with that aspect of his writing.
I also liked the characters he created for this book, and enjoyed absorbing knowledge from them about how the various people in and around Yellowstone spend their days. The protagonist, Ren, is a park ranger for whom the reward of living a solitary, blissed-out life in the midst of nature must be balanced by preventing parents from taking photos of their adorable three-year-old cozying up to a baby moose while its mama is ready to kill everyone within charging distance. He breaks up traffic jams caused by too many tourists trying to photograph something-or-other by the side of the road, he prevents the wildlife from being shot by “individualists” with no respect for the boundaries of the park or the laws of the land, and everything in between those extremes. His life is sort of predictable and sometimes irritating, but ever-changing and therefore not boring.
Ren’s best friend is Hilly, a biologist who finds herself up against both man and nature when advocating to protect the wolves of Yellowstone. There are a host of other characters, both local and transient, whose descriptions and actions are meaningful and/or entertaining even when the scene or description is fleeting. That is the power of Heller’s writing.
This time, however, the big lack is in the plotting and especially the resolution of the “mystery.” As the story develops, the focus centers on the brazen actions of a local poacher and then transitions towards the end to the discovery of a large semi-secret group of wealthy men who are at odds with the goals of a national park and are inciting rebellion amongst suggestible locals. But there are so many segues from these threads into a sort of “day in the life of” narrative about both Ren and Hilly, so many outtakes about fistfights between tourists, and ignorant sightseers putting themselves and others in jeopardy, and an unexpected and exceedingly awkward romance that the story line gets lost. And just when you think it’s going to resolve itself in the last 100 pages, you get some directional hints, you get a few minor questions answered, but everything else is simply left hanging.
I’d say there’s a sequel coming, but Heller hardly ever writes sequels, let alone initiates a series, and has not indicated one here. Given that, I feel like as readers we are owed the resolution to at least three plot threads, and no amount of euphonious language has made up for that in The Last Ranger. Disappointing.
The Book Adept 