Get away from me with that twig

‘What’s that meant to be?’

‘Mistletoe.’

‘It’s twig you’ve snapped off some shrub.’

‘I bought it in a florist.’

‘Well, you can forget it; I’m not kissing you.’

‘What happened to Christmas cheer?  Good will to all men?’

‘It went the way of a Fairytale of New York.’

‘That’s a love song!  A duet.’

‘It’s a tale of lost love, dashed dreams, and being a drunk and a junkie.’

‘But I bet Kirsty Maccoll still gave Shane MacGowan a Christmas kiss.’

‘And he gave her a smash hit.’

‘Come-on, Caro.  A quick peck.’

‘Get away from me with that twig.’


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of Devastation Road by Jason Hewitt (Scribner, 2015)

A man wakes in a field. He is unsure who he is, where he is, or how he got there. Gradually he gathers himself and starts to explore. In a nearby river bodies are floating past. At a farmhouse a young man appears to be burying two people. He starts a journey, heading to where he thinks home might be.  He is joined by the young man, Janek, who reveals they are in Czechoslovakia. The war is on-going, but the Russians are not far away and the roads are full of refugees. Using a fragment of map, Owen, heads into Silesia with a sense he is searching for something, though he’s not sure what. Janek is hunting for his brother, Petr. Unable to retain memories for long Owen jots down notes to refresh his knowledge. Gradually he starts to remember fragments of his life in England, his brother, a woman, and joining the RAF. On their journey Owen and Janek meet Irena, a troubled young Polish woman who is trying to give away her unnamed baby. Together the three of them plus the baby head towards Leipzig en route to England, the past of each gradually catching up with them. And the more they progress into the heart of Germany the more devastating the journey becomes.

Set in the last days of the Second World War, Devastation Road charts Owen’s journey from a field in Czechoslovakia back to England. As told by Hewitt it’s both a physical and metaphorical journey – a slog across Germany and one of self-discovery. With amnesia and disorientated, Owen sets off on foot accompanied by a young man, Janek who is seeking his brother. Initially avoiding roads, they soon join the endless stream of refugees and are joined by Irena and her baby, who is seeking the man who raped her to pass on the child. Together they journey to an abandoned prisoner of war camp, then onto the rubble of Leipzig, ending up in concentration camp shortly after liberation. Along the journey Owen starts to remember fragments of his life and how he ended up on the continent. Janek and Irena have their own secrets that are also gradually revealed. The strength of the story is the hook of the journey and the evolving dynamic between Owen, Janek and Irena and the gradual piecing together of each of their lives. The tale seemed to sag and lose direction a little in the middle section, and I never quite connected with the lead characters, but Hewitt brings the story to a poignant denouement. The result is a thoughtful tale that deals with themes of memory, belonging, regret, and redemption.

Review of City of Thieves by David Benioff (Viking, 2008)

Lev Beniov is the son of a poet who has disappeared in Stalin’s purges. Aged seventeen he chose to stay in the sieged city of Leningrad when his mother and sister were evacuated and spends his nights as a fire warden on the roof of his apartment block.  When a dead German parachutist lands nearby he and his starving friends loot the body.  Lev, however, is caught by the NKVD and taken to the infamous Crosses prison.  He is soon joined in his cell by Kolya, who has been arrested for desertion.  The penalty for looting and desertion is death. However, the following morning they are taken to see a colonel who is determined that his daughter will have a cake at her wedding reception at the end of the week.  His wife needs a dozen eggs and Lev and Kolya’s task is to find and bring them back or be executed.  It seems like an impossible task in a city cut off from supplies and fresh food is a distant memory. Given no option, the two strangers embark on their quest, scouring the city and heading out behind enemy lines.

City of Thieves is a well crafted coming-of-age story set during the Siege of Leningrad.  It’s told from the perspective of the author recounting how his grandparents met before emigrating to America.  The tale has a number of strengths, including an engaging voice and prose, well-paced narrative, a well-developed sense of place, time and context, and a great hook and engaging story line.  What makes the book shine, however, is the characterisation and the emerging relationship between two friends.  Lev is a shy, intelligent but somewhat naïve seventeen year old working as a fire warden.  Kolya is only a couple of years older but is gregarious and much more worldly-wise.  The pair are thrown together when Lev is caught looting the body of a dead German parachutist and Kolya is arrested for desertion, having slipped back into the city for some female company. Facing summary execution, they are given the option of a reprieve if they can locate a dozen eggs for the wedding cake of a NKVD colonel’s daughter.  While Lev is uncertain how to proceed, Kolya seems to relish the challenge, confident he can use his charm, wit and wiles to track down the eggs.  As their quest unfolds Kolya takes Lev under his wing and an uneasy friendship starts to develop, deepening as they encounter a number of challenges.  Having quickly exhausted options in the city, they move through Soviet lines into the countryside beyond, tangling with partisans and Germans.  One partisan in particular catches Lev’s eye, Vika, a deadly sniper.  She seemingly has little interest in him or Kolya, though gradually she becomes the third member of the quest.  Benioff nicely blends the action of the adventure with the dynamics of the emerging friendship and observations about Soviet society and the war.  And while the tale could have been dark and depressing, Benioff nicely balances pathos with dark humour and moments of warmth.  Where the story does slip a little is with respect to the emotional register, particularly towards the end, with an absence of grief or anger or a tugging on heart strings.  Nonetheless, City of Thieves is an engaging and entertaining tale of hardship, friendship and adventure.

Lazy Sunday Service

On Friday I finally managed to return the completed copy edits and index for the Understanding Spatial Media book.  Hopefully that is now done and dusted and the book should see the light of day sometime in the new year.  On the same day I got the positive reviews back on the proposal for an edited book on Digital Geographies and the contract for that should be signed in the new year.  The next big deadline on the horizon is the Data and the City book, which is very near to being ready to submit. Wheels turning ...


My posts this week:
Review of The Darkest Summer by Bill Sloan
Review of Exposure by Helen Dunmore

A tiny hand

A tiny hand

Tom turned the corner and stopped abruptly.

Half the row of terrace houses had collapsed.

‘Cable Street got it as well, poor buggers,’ a passing woman said.

He stumbled forward, ignoring the melee of filthy firemen.

An arm shot across his chest.  ‘Where d’ya think you’re going?’

‘Number 29.’ He pointed.

‘There’s an exploded bomb.’

Tom pushed the arm away and scrambled up onto the rubble.

Almost immediately he spotted the tiny hand reaching skyward.

Lucy.  Just turned one.

He dug frantically into the debris and halted.

The arm was plastic.

He didn’t know whether he was relieved or not.

A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words

Review of The Darkest Summer by Bill Sloan (Simon and Schuster, 2009)

On June 25 1950 communist North Korean troops invaded South Korea advancing quickly.  Seoul fell shortly after and the well-armed invaders made steady progress down the Korean peninsula.  The US and United Nations pledged political and military support to South Korea, with US troops mobilised from Japan for war, with others shipping from the US and Mediterranean.  Given the huge downsizing of the US military post Second World War and their relatively easy postings US troops were ill-prepared for combat and they fared poorly in their initial encounters with the North Koreans.  As the supply lines were extended and more US and UN troops arrived, the battlefront stabilised around Pusan at the foot of the peninsula.  The job of pushing back the North Koreans largely fell to the US marines, a branch of the military threatened at the time with being phased out.  The Darkest Summer tells the story of the US marines battles in Korea in 1950, mainly focusing on battles on the Pusan perimeter and the daring amphibious assault at Inchon near to Seoul.  While the book discusses each encounter and provides eye-witness testimony, it largely skims over the wider political landscape and military strategy and also the battles undertaken by UN or South Korean troops.  Indeed, it is a very US-centric account of the first phase of the Korean War.  As such, while it was interesting and one got a sense of the battles from a soldier’s point of view it is somewhat myopic and narrowly framed.

Review of Exposure by Helen Dunmore (Hutchinson, 2016)

Lily Callington fled with her mother to Britain from Germany in the late 1930s, leaving her father behind.  November, 1960, and she’s living in Muswell Hill, is married to Simon and has three kids.  Late one evening Simon’s boss from the Admiralty, Giles, phones from hospital and asks him to visit immediately.  It seems that Giles has taken home a top secret document and needs Simon to return it covertly.  Once in possession of the file, Simon hesitates.  Shortly after Simon is arrested and accused of spying for the Soviets.  While a small camera is found in his office at work, the crucial file is still missing.  Suddenly Lily’s world is falling apart.  Her husband is in remand, her job is under threat, her neighbours and colleagues shun her, and the kids are being bullied.  Simon seems resigned to his fate with the evidence stacked against him and Lily seems destined to repeat the flight to safety she experienced twenty years previously.  She’s a fighter though and she’s determined to try and keep her family together.

Exposure is a spy drama that focuses mostly on the fallout affecting a wife and children when a family-man is framed as a traitor.  The tale concentrates on a triangle between Lily Callington, her husband Simon, and his boss, Giles.  In an effort to save his own skin after taking a top secret file home and ending up in hospital after a fall, Giles turns to Simon, a long-time friend and colleague.  When Simon fails to take the file back he unwittingly positions himself as a fall-guy.  Dunmore uses the refrains of indecision, waiting too long, and a hope that a situation will turn out alright to chart the fallout, setting the tale in the context of Lily’s flight from Germany twenty years earlier in which her family delaying leaving Germany, with only herself and her mother reaching Britain.  The tale has a number of strengths.  The storyline is nicely plotted and paced, with the unfolding drama of the ordeal interspersed with flashbacks to key moments in Lily, Simon and Giles’ lives and the gradual revealing of secrets that may have additional repercussions.  The characterisation and character development is excellent, with each of the leads being fully dimensional, along with the children, and their interactions ring true.  In addition, Dunmore keeps the mood and tension low-key but persistent, keeping the sense of an everyday family caught out of step front and centre.  The result is an engaging, thoughtful, understated literary spy tale.

Lazy Sunday Service

It's been a slow reading week.  Home and work has been hectic.  I'm presently making my way through The Darkest Summer by Bill Sloan about the Korean war.  The latter part of the book focuses on the invasion of Incheon, which is one of the places I stayed on my recent trip there.   

My posts this week
Review of Black Roses by Jayne Thynne
Ear ache

Ear ache

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘As if I’ve a choice!  Why don’t you give it a break, put on the kettle, and make yourself a piping hot cup of shut the fuck up.’

‘How dare … I’m … it’s you that’s being unreasonable here, I’m …’

‘Me?  I’m not the one shouting and raving.’

‘Because of you!’

‘I’m going to the pub.’

‘As if that’ll solve anything!’

‘It’ll solve my ear ache.’

‘You’ll have a bigger problem if you leave now.’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine?  You’ll be looking for a new home!’

‘For once we agree!  I’ll pack when I get back.’


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of Black Roses by Jayne Thynne (Simon and Schuster, 2013)

1933.  Clara Vine is a young British actress and daughter of a German mother and a former Conservative MP with fascist leanings.  Fed-up with life in Britain and with an offer for the possibility of work at the famous Ufa studios she heads to Berlin.  Partly through circumstance, partly through her heritage, Clara falls into a circle of senior Nazi wives, including Magda Goebbels who recruits her to model new German fashion and becomes her confidante.  She is also being pursued by Goebbels right-hand man, Klaus Muller.  Clara is no chip off the block, however, and loathes what the Nazis stand for and are up to.  After an encounter with Leo Quinn, a spy whose cover is working in the British Embassy passport office, Clara agrees to continue her association with the Nazi wives and to pass on anything she learns.  It’s a dangerous game and it becomes more so when Magda Goebbels enlists her in deadly game.

Black Roses is set in Berlin 1933 shortly after the Nazis have come to power and are undertaking the first wave of sweeping changes.  The main protagonist is Clara Vine, a young British actress who hopes to establish a career at the Ufa studios.  Shortly after arriving in the city, she falls into the company of senior Nazi wives and enrolled into a new fashion state agency that aims to dress German women in appropriate clothes.  Principled and determined, with little time for the Nazi ethos and behaviour, she’s found herself in a difficult situation.  That is made more unpalatable when a British embassy employee, Leo Quinn, asks her to continue to meet the wives and collect and report any interesting information.  As she works undercover, unfolding events centred on the secrets of Magda Goebbels are drawing her ever further into a dangerous situation, and at the same time she’s falling for Leo while also dating a senior Nazi.  Giving a sense of authenticity, Thynne populates the book with many real characters, events and fashions (and there’s certainly a strong focus on the fashion), as well historical context and the geography/atmosphere of the city.  Clara, the set-up and the real historical context are intriguing and the story should have fully captured my attention and imagination. However, I never quite got fully engaged with the tale until the last section.  I’m not sure why – partly voice, style, focus, pace, I think.  It was just one of those stories that was okay, without being a compelling, immersive read for much of it.  I’ll probably still try next book in the series as there’s a lot of promise in the main character and premise and I often find the second book clicks more strongly than the first.

Lazy Sunday Service

I'm presently working through the proofs for Understanding Spatial Media, which should be out early next year. Next job is the index. A tedious job, but one I think best done by the author/editor if its to be useful.  Looking forward to seeing as a finished tome.

My posts this week
Review of Pavel and I by Dan Vyleta
November reviews
Dust and moonshine

Dust and moonshine

‘Stop.  Just stop!’  Carrie threw up her arms.

‘What?’ Penny snapped. ‘You wanted an explanation, I’m explaining.’

‘And it’s all dust and moonshine.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘That everything you say is either without substance or a fantasy.  You’re a liar.’

‘You’re calling me a liar?’

‘You are a liar!  You can’t help yourself.  You probably don’t even know what the truth is.’

‘How dare you!’

‘Go home, Penny.’

‘You go home!’

‘I am home.  You’ve not managed to steal it from me yet.’

‘So now I’m a thief?  God, Carrie, you’re such a cow.  It was one dance.’



A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

November reviews

A mixed month of reading in terms of themes, styles, etc.  My read of the month was Gil North's The Methods of Sergeant Cluff, which was re-issued by the British Library.  Cluff is certainly his own man, with his own methods, and it makes for an engaging police procedural.


Pavel and I by Dan Vyleta ****
1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski ****
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch ***5
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes ***.5
The Methods of Sergeant Cluff by Gil North ****.5
Cobra by Deon Meyer ****
The Piccadilly Murder by Anthony Berkeley ***.5
The Nuremberg Enigma by Yves Bonavero **.5

Review of Pavel and I by Dan Vyleta (Bloomsbury, 2008)

Berlin at the tail end of 1946.  Pavel Richter, a decommissioned GI, is holed up in freezing apartment in the British sector of the city, struggling with a kidney infection.  His friend Boyd visits and asks him to look after a suitcase that contains the body of a dead dwarf.  It seems that the dwarf has been selling secrets to the Soviets and is about to pass on a valuable piece of information.  As well as being sought by a Soviet general, a scheming colonel in the British Armed Forces is hunting for him.  Pavel is no condition to do anything other than lie in bed and try to stay alive.  Aiding him in this task is Anders, a twelve year old street orphan, who enrols the help of his upstairs neighbour, Sonia.  By coincidence Sonia is the colonel’s mistress and he regularly visits her apartment.  As the hunt for the dwarf unfolds and Boyd is found dead, rather than hand the dwarf over to the colonel, Pavel and Sonia instead hide the body as they try to work out what game they are caught up in.  All the while both the British and Soviets are closing in.

Set in the freezing ruins of post-war Berlin, Pavel and I has the feel and atmosphere of the film version of The Third Man.  At the heart of the tale is Pavel, a former GI, Sonia who has survived post-war as a prostitute, Anders, an orphan who splits his time between Pavel and his street-gang who hustle and thieve to get by, and a rogue, over-weight British colonel.  Hovering on the fringes is a Russian general.  What brings them together is the dead body of a dwarf stuffed in a suitcase and the secret he holds.  It’s an interesting hook and Vyleta uses it to spin an elliptical tale of spies, street gangs, prostitution, violent state services, survival, friendship and budding love.  It’s very much a character-drive story, yet each character is not quite what they seem.  That is very much the case with Pavel.  Indeed, near the end of the tale, the narrator of the story, a British ex-soldier, remarks that there is a hole at the centre of the story he's telling – and that hole is the enigmatic Pavel.  The narrator’s knowledge of him is based on events that happen over a few short weeks during which Pavel barely reveals anything about his past and acts in a calm and collected way.  While that could have been quite frustrating, it actually draws the reader in.  The result is an intriguing, atmospheric and ambivalent tale.

Lazy Sunday Service

On Friday I made a start on Mark Douglas-Home's The Malice of Waves to come to an abrupt halt at the bottom of page two.  The next 33 pages were missing and they weren't elsewhere in the book.  So on Saturday I headed to the bookshop to seek a replacement.  While I was there I also picked up copies of Helen Dunmore's Exposure and Graham Norton's Holding, both of which I'm looking forward to reading. 


My posts this week
Review of Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
Review of 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski
Is she worth it?