Affinity - The rest of the review

Me and my husband carpool to work. Since we have the luxury of being only a few miles apart when at work, and working the same hours, he drops me off in the mornings and comes to get me after work.

This agreement gives me about a half an hour reading time after work and before he calls to inform me he's there. I love that half hour, because once I'm home I need to do a million things and reading seems like a luxury.

Today, however, he had to work overtime and I spend almost 2 hours reading. I finished my book after 1 hour and hadn't counted on this misfortune to carry a spare one. Extremely annoying.
But the moral of this being, I finished the book.

And I was AMAZED!! 
Affinity  is a splendid novel. It resembles one of those very good movies, like Gone with the wind (of which the novel is wicked awesome also) which start out so slowly and with so much information but it all comes together beautifully in the end.

The ending is superb and even though I had clues there might be some misschief in the workings, I hadn't thought it out so clearly as it was.
I have already posted some ideas and questions about the novel before, while I was reading it.
Now that I'm done, I'm filled with so much emotion I can't stop thinking about the novel.

Someone on Goodreads named Sarah Waters the queen of gothic historian lesbian fiction, and while she is all that, her prose doesn't feel that way. You don't get the feeling you're reading lesbian fiction, although you must be blind to not see the distinct difference between her descriptions of women and men. Men have been ushered into the supporting role and this whole novel is being carried by very strong female characters.

First of all, Margaret and Selina. Yin and Yang. One couldn't be great without the other. The way the two women interact, get to know each other and ultimately depend on each other is phenomenal. You, as reader, live through it together with them. Slowly, by the entries in their diaries, you get to know both the woman better than is comfortable.

Other strong characters, are the wardens of the prison, especially Mrs Jelf. She's too kind to work in that place and is easily influenced by the women she is responsible for, which leads to terrifying results.

I'm torn between telling you more about the plot, and letting you reveal it on your own. I'll thread the fine line between a good review and plain spoilers carefully, hoping not to fall off. But to be sure, the rest of the review is for those who've read it already, or those who don't mind a spoiler or two.

BEWARE of SPOILERS

As my first half of this review said, Margaret has some secrets she hadn't yet revealed to us readers.
She has once given up on life, after her father died and her best friend married her brother, but was brought back. Selina picked up on this and drained it for all it was worth.
She tries to influence Margaret to believe in her, to help her and once Margaret says yes, she shows typical predator behaviour.

From experience I read the signs of the sudden lack of touching each other on Selina's persistence, as a sign she wasn't truthful. Once she had accomplished what she wanted, she drew back.
From then on, I knew she wasn't to be trusted and for a long time I actually tried to believe in the spiritual world of ghosts, just in case.
Margaret helps her escape, not by letting her out of prison but assuring a safe passage. A way out of England and to Italy. Little did she know that all along her maid and Selina worked behind her back to take her identity and escape.
When Mrs Jelf comes to her house, after the escape of Selina, she suddenly realises the awful truth. She is desperate and only sees one way out.

I don't know how I feel about Selina. She seems to be quite honest at first, maybe a little naive, but her actions tell otherwise. Or is it the influence of Vigers? Still so many questions.. that's why I love this book so.

For me this is a MAGNIFICENT read.

Reading now: Affinity - a bit of a review

Twenty-something Margaret Prior comes from one of London's finer families, but that doesn't protect her from suffering a very common malady: a broken heart. She attempts suicide by overdosing on laudanum and as part of her therapy following this attempt, she volunteers to visit inmates on the women's ward at nearby Millbank prison. Here she finds herself mingling with a wide array of women whose social backgrounds range from street beggars to London's upper crust. Their stories are as equally diverse and intriguing as they are suspect, from the petty thieves who stole food to assuage their hunger to cold-blooded murderers who killed for little more than revenge.

Although the plights of these sad women help take Margaret's mind off her broken heart, she can't completely put her lover out of her mind. Complicating that problem are two things. The first is that Margaret can talk to no one about her affair and is forced to keep her battered emotions bottled up inside to avoid a heinous scandal. The second is the stress of proximity, for her lover is another woman, one who is about to marry Margaret's brother. Desperate to get past her pain, Margaret throws herself into the prison environment and soon becomes curiously drawn to one young woman who, like most of the others, declares her innocence. But this woman, Selina Dawes, is intriguingly different.

For one thing, Selina claims to be a spiritualist and blames the crime for which she is being punished -- fraud and battery -- on a ghost. At first Margaret thinks this is just another story -- albeit a more inventive one than most -- designed to cover up true guilt. But before long, Margaret has reason to rethink things. First she delves into Selina's background and discovers several things that lend credence to Selina's claims. Then mysterious things start to happen that seem to support the existence of a spiritual world. Selina demonstrates her intimate knowledge of happenings in Margaret's life -- things she has no way of knowing. Plus, certain items appear -- a bloody collar and a braided hank of hair -- and disappear -- Margaret's favorite, treasured locket. Convinced that Selina is indeed innocent, and growing more captivated by this enigmatic woman with each passing day, Margaret thinks up a plan for escape from Millbank, one that will allow her and Selina to be together. But her plans go horribly awry and set both women on a devastating course of hope and betrayal that will leave one of them forever changed.


I'm about 100 pages in now, and already have a mind filled with questions.
What did Margaret Prior do to herself?
What kind of illness did she have?
How was the relationship with her father and the circumstances of his death?
What happened between her and Helen?

Selena is a recurring character in the novel, not sure if she is meant as a second protagonist or the antagonist. She could be the latter, because otherwise the occupation still needs to be filled.

I'm aware that most novels of Sarah Waters are slowpaced. I've read The Little Stranger and The Night Watch, and both novels have a certain laziness in building up a suspense. Waters mainly focusses on setting the mood right and then lets her characters do the things they were meant to do.
In this novel, the 19th century London is depicted stylishly. There's a passage about how the mist comes upon London in early October and it actually takes your breath away (as it must have been back then, albeit in a slightly different way).
Margaret remains a mystery still. I'm intrigued, what can I say.

On with the show!!

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Published: 1982

In 1001-books-you-must-read list

The Color Purple is a novel about two sisters Celie and Nettie, two young black women born in a racially conflicted America.
Celie is being married off to an older man who isn't interested in her since he is head over heels in love with someone else. She learns the tough lessons of life from very early on and grows a thick skin and an almost impassive nature to the world.
Nettie, the younger one, runs away from home and after staying a while with her sister and her husband she must leave there too. She comes upon a reverend and his wife and they embrace her into their life to look after their children. Treating her better than house personnel is treated in those days, she quickly becomes friends with them and joins them on a mission to Africa to help their brothers and sisters and relieve them of their wicked ways.

The novel consists of letters, most of them written by Celie. In the first half of the book she addresses them to God, since she thinks Nettie has died. Her thoughts are very dark, sober, but yet naive in a way. She has seen so little of the world, that she believes that what is happening to her, happens everywhere.
She's attracted to other women, but as reader of her letters we realise that sooner than she herself. But when she does come to the same conclusion there is no shame, no regret. She doesn't know another way and she lets herself be whomever she is.

Her initial behaviour towards god is a shy and fearing one. She fears the image she has of god, until her friend and lover tells her that she only fears the image white people have put in there. God is everywhere, and instead of fearing his disapproval, we should celebrate all he has made for us. As soon as Celie embraces that new train of thought, her life picks up. She leaves her husband and goes off to Memphis with her girlfriend, where she slowly starts a new, yet succesful life.

Nettie has been stationed in Africa, along with the reverend and his wife and their two children. They try to help a tribe, give them education and teach them better, less crueler ways of life.
The reverend and his wife couldn't have children of their own, and the two children they do have, have been adopted. These children are the two babies Celie has had, in her young years still living at home. Celie always thought that her babies had died, until she reads Nettie's letters.
Celie's husband had hidden Nettie's letters for years, leaving Celie to think her sister had died, but when she found out the truth, the person she wrote to, changes from god to Nettie.

Due to circumstances it takes 20 years until the two sisters meet again. Nettie married to the reverend, after his wife died. Celie living alone, at peace with her ex-husband and ex-girlfriend. Both aged, Nettie already starting to become grey, they fall into eachothers arms and there the story adrubtly ends.

My Opinion

 I wasn't swept away. It's a good story, but I expected more. I think that is because this is one of those novels everyone insists you should read.
I get the moral of the story.
Instead of fearing god, you should love and honour him by taking pleasure in the things he does for us.
Instead of having your life lived for you, you should take the reigns into your own hands and make the best of it, because it's all you have.
Instead of focussing on changing other ways of life into yours, open your eyes and admit the fact that there is more than one right way.

The progress both sisters make is remarkable. Celie becomes stronger, most of all because of the love she feels for the woman of her dreams. But when that woman leaves her, she easily recognises that the strength was all along in herself.
Nettie becomes wiser. She learns that people in need don't always want help. She feels that god isn't the divine being as thought in church, but god is everywhere. In every raindrop, in every ray of light, and she relishes in the fact that she is alive and well in gods creation.

Those transformations both sisters made, have been accompagnied by loose sexual morals, blunt use of language and a streak of violence that makes you realise you are not reading a novel per se. This has happened to someone somewhere.

Of course, with being overwhelmed by violence every day, the sheer shock this novel must have been on its release date, is lost on me. I don't quiver when I read about the violence and my cheeks don't redden when I come to a sex scene.
Much of the novel depends on that, it's a good story, but not as shockeffective as it used to be.

For me, this novel is a DECENT read.

The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien

I tried to reread LotR and I failed.
I don't seem to like them as much as I liked it the first time. At least not the Fellowship. The other two could be different, but I'm not inclined to see if it's so or not fairly soon.

This novel is a DECENT read. The reason why, is that I did like it the first time. I just can't focus upon the book with having seen the movie too many times. The movie spoiled the book for me, but luckily the movie isn't half that bad.
Tolkien has been named the father of the fantasy genre, but others have taken it and made it better.
I'm sticking to the movies and I'm not meaning that as blasphemy. :)

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Summary

Illuminating Peter Mayle's South of France with a touch of Laura Esquivel's magic realism, Chocolat is a timeless novel of a straitlaced village's awakening to joy and sensuality. In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a chocolate festival. Chocolat's every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere. It's a must for anyone who craves an escapist read, and is a bewitching gift for any holiday.

My opinion

I've highlighted the last part of the summary, because I couldn't phrase it better myself. 

Chocolat is a fine work of proze. I loved to read, I savoured it immensely and closed the book hungry for sweets. 

The atmosphere in the novel feels very southern of France, the rustic villages, the seasons soothing and scorching the earth, the union between man and nature, and Vianne adds a little pleasurable erotic atmosphere to an already awakening tide. 

Travelling in with the winds of Mardi Gras, she soon opens the doors to her chocolate store, on the very first day of Lenten. 

This strikes with the local parish and a silent yet hungry war has started. Vianna, blessed with a gift for seeing people, seems to realize that she and père Reynaud are two sides of one marble and one can't see the sun without the other being in the dirt. 

Even though his stubborn fight against her 'pagan ways' the town slowly falls into her arms and embraces the gift of life for what it is, instead of feeling guilty we even thought of being born at all. 

Like Vianne said, she doesn't believe in sin. And in truth, why should we? There's bad and there's good, and as long as we know which side to walk on, we'll all be okay. 

Enough of the moral lesson, more on the food. 

Chocolat is a novel you could classify under food porn. I don't mean that in a bad way, but having a passion for the edible arts, I truly loved the descriptions of how she makes her chocolate. Every syllable has a particular taste, scented with vanilla and cinnamon, the words gave me a freefeeling, flying as a bird sensation. Almost all the joys of chocolat, and none of the calories! :) 

All in all, this novel scores a 8 out of 10, which would be Magnificent.

Black Seconds by Karin Fossum

Summary (Good reads)

Ida Joner gets on her brand-new bike and sets off toward town. A good-natured, happy girl, she is looking forward to her tenth birthday. Thirty-five minutes after Ida should have come home, her mother starts to worry. She phones store owners, Ida’s friends, anyone who could have seen her. But no one has.
Suspicion immediately falls on Emil Mork, a local character who lives alone and hasn’t spoken since childhood. His mother insists on cleaning his house weekly—although she’s sometimes afraid of what she might find there. A mother’s worst nightmare in either case: to lose a child or to think a child capable of murder. As Ida’s relatives reach the breaking point and the media frenzy surrounding the case begins, Inspector Konrad Sejer is his usual calm and reassuring self. But he’s puzzled. And disturbed. This is the strangest case he’s seen in years. 

My opinion

Black Seconds is the 6th novel in the Inspector Sejer-series. I read only one before, The Indian Bride, which was a gift of my husband. I stumbled upon this title in my ferocious and ravenous search in the library.

I wasn't too impressed. The praise on the back of my edition clearly exaggerated. It's a good book, don't get me wrong, but it hasn't given me that extra little spunk, like in the early novels of Nicci French.

The story was bland, devoid of surprises and from very early on it was clear who had done it. And yes, I did mean the so-called twist at the end.

Spoiler alert

From the moment his mother noticed her son had covered up his car, even though he told her he crashed it into something. 

 
I didn't feel compassionate with the mother, she seemed to be a mere side-character anyway, from very early on. I didn't feel nothing, it was a book and I read it, let's leave it at that.

On my score table, it gets a 5 out of 10, which means mediocre.

Solar

By Ian McEwan

To read the summary the inner book flap and Goodreads provide, click on the following link: Goodreads' take on Solar

My own personal opinion is rather bad. I give it a 1 out of 10, meh... bad with other words. 

I have a rule I apply very rarely, which is that I give a novel about 50 pages and then decide if it's worth reading further at all.
With most novels I don't even make that choice, I just keep on reading and get to the end, mostly too soon.

With Solar, I had to struggle to make the quota of 50 pages, and actually abandoned the whole thing while still in its forties.

It's bad, it's truly bad. I've read Atonement and that is a marvellous little piece of literature. I had watched the movie first, which made me wonder about the book and I'm still very much relieved I decided to give it a go, because I rarely read adapted books if I've seen the movie already.
(I used to be different, but it's not so much fun if you know all the key elements - the other way around isn't swell either, so at this time it's either the book or the movie, not both)

I'm born in a dutch speaking country, Belgium to be precise, and have not been fed on English. The education system and my want for good novels, preferably in the language they're written in, have made my English quite good, if you don't mind me saying so. I might write the occasional spelling mistake, or add a syllable to many to some words, but over all I'm content with my knowledge of the beautiful language.

But I do find it annoying if I have to look the meaning of some words too much, especially when you can substitute them with easier ones. I'm not saying 'food' should become 'grub', or 'eloquent' should become 'coherently spoken'.
But reading the first page you come across words as unprepossessing, anhedonic, monothematic, flagrantly, punitively, cuckold. I don't mind the use of those words, but if they come forth in the first page of any novel, what will the rest be like? I don't mind reading difficult language, just don't make it a scientific text I need to suffer through.

Which bring me to my next point of annoyance. I had an inkling from the title that it might have an environmentral theme. The chapters I read were set in 2000, and with solar energy not yet having its boost we see today, the scientific explanation (utterly boring and in my opinion not needed in a work of fiction) he provides us with is too much. I don't need to know why a certain character does something. He's depicted to be a Nobel prize winner and I trust he has good reasons to do what he does, he doesn't need to explain everything.

Of course this novel can become better if you read further. There is mention of a turning point where the gloomy nobel prize winner stirs his life around, but I just haven't got the will to read more.
So many books to read, so little time, so I go on to the next, hopefully better one.

Take care and read my younglings.
xxx

Last Night in Twisted River

by John Irving

Summary

 In a story spanning 5 decades, Last Night in Twisted River, depicts the recent half-century in the US as 'a living replica of Coos Country, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.' From the novel's taut opening sentence to it's elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional  authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as The World according to Garp. 
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto, pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.

This is what the back of the book says..

And this is what I say..(SPOILERS!!!!)

The story revolves around 2 persons.. Danny and Dominic Baciagalupo (which means Kiss of the Wolf in Italian, by the way).

The story opens with a tragic loss, a young boy drowned while doing a river drive of logs to the neighbouring saw and paper mills in New Hampshire. He disappeared between the logs and never came up again. Twisted river, the river he drowned in, the river many men drowned in, is the home of rough, out of the country men who earn their living in a most dangerous way.

Dominic Baciagalupo, the local chef at the cookhouse, (although he calls himself a cook, not a chef) provides them with local and Italian cuisine. He lost his wife a couple of years back and is going through life with his only son, 12year old Danny, and his best friend, Ketchum (no first name basis, though). Ketchum is a river driver, and he felt protective of the young boy perished in the river, and blames himself for letting him do the work, while he was still green behind the ears.

Both grown men are still at mourning for Rosie, Dominic's wife and Ketchum's lover (this fact is revealed later on). Danny was too young to remember her, but keeps pictures of her pressed flat between her books. Because of the weird atmosphere of this rural out of the way town and the two most important men in his life, Danny grows up becoming anxious and easily afraid.

One night, with the regular coming and going disturbed, he mistakes his father's secret lover for a bear and kills her with an 8-inch skillet. He recognizes her, just before she tumbles lifeless on the floor. The reason for the mistaken identity lies in the fact that his father and Ketchum told him a tale of Dominic chasing away a bear by hitting it upside the head with the same skillet, that hung ceremoniously in the cook's bedroom. In truth, the bear in question was actually Ketchum, who walked into the cookhouse on the night Rosie, Dominic's wife, confessed her affaire.

But with his lover dead on the floor, a woman also tied to the local constable, who is as much vengeful as he is cunning and cruel and his son the culprit, the cook is forced to take steps to ensure they both can escape in time. He hides the body in a most peculiar place, the constable's kitchen, because of the constable's reputation with booze and violence towards women. He hopes the constable will think he killed his girlfriend, even with not remembering it. This gives the cook and his son enough time to escape and hide somewhere entirely else.

They decide to go to Boston, where both the cook's mother and wife were from, both banned because of getting pregnant outside of a marriage.
They have an alterior reason. The boy who lost his life in Twisted River, which doesn't have enough turns to be called twisted according to the cook, also came from Boston.
They end up in North End, an Italian neighbourhood in Boston, starting a new life.

This is where the second decade begins. The story skips several years and trails forth from 1954 to 1967.
Danny is all grown up now, graduated from Exeter, having his first book published while still writing and working as a teacher.
His dad lives in North End, together with the mother of the boy perished in Twisted River. Carmella, both an astonishing strong and strangely beautiful woman, enchanted him. They live together in a small apartment and both work at a local restaurant, Vicino di Napoli, where he finds out his father, who never married his mother after he knocked her up, worked as a busboy.
Meanwhile he's looking out for his son, trying to give him as much of a normal life as possible and trying to keep them both out of the clutches of a man who has found out the cook had an affair with his girlfriend. The constable still doesn't know he didn't kill her, but is enraged they had an affair.

Danny, having decided he wanted to be a writer on an early age, is encouraged by a teacher in the public school he attends to apply for Exeter. The teacher gives him a splendid recommendation and with exaggerating the conditions at home, he gets selected to go there with a full scholarship.

At the time this second parts comes on stage, Danny already has a kid himself. With the Vietnam war raging on, he met a girl who befathers guys who don't want to enlist themselves in the army. Katie, a so-called free spirit, coming from a wealthy home, marries Danny and gives him a boy, who he calls Joe. They stay married until Katie decides it's time to go. The 2year old might remember her, she states, if she stays longer.

Then the dreaded phonecall from their friend in New Hampshire comes. Ketchum calls, he admits to Danny he never learned to read, that he and Danny's mom were fucking while they should be attempting to read and that his girlfriend at-the-time 'Sixpack Pam' (because she firstly downs a whole sixpack before starting on other booze) reads his letters aloud. Of course, in those letters, there is a mention of the terrible accident that happened in 1954. Now Pam went to live with the constable and while Ketchum is sure she wouldn't do it maliciously, he knows that when the constable hits Pam hard enough she will spring that information on him just to point out he isn't as all-overpowering as he seems.
The cook, his son and his son's son will have to leave town and their lives again. They decide to go to Vermont, the son willingly since he got a position to teach there, the cook needing some incentive in the form of Ketchum arriving and sending him on his way.

The third part sets itself in Windham County, Vermont in 1983.
Danny having published a succesful novel, The Kennedy Fathers, and able to give up teaching and live of his earnings as a writer. His boy going through the rough pubescent years and his father starting up 2 restaurants. The first Benevento, being a small pizza place in an equally small town and after they move for a couple of years to Ohio, when they come back to Vermont, a second place called Avellino which he loves more than any restaurant he ever worked at.

Both men aren't married, or publicly seeing someone. Both have short flings, and both are concerned about each others dating habits. Both men are also worried about the flimsical way Joe, the youngest, goes about his way amongst women. They both dread he might impregnate a girl and end up having to marry her and quit school.
Beside those problems and anxieties, Joe turns out to be a pretty good wrestler and a lover of life. He decides to go to Colorado University, mostly because of the skiing opportunities.
This third decade, revolves around the coming of age of Joe, as well as Danny learning how to be a good father. There's the example of a dog, who has bitten him quite a few times on his daily runs and he and a friend decide to kill the dog, by having another dog attack it. Afterwards he does ponder if this is the way he wants his son to act, he doubts that he might have pushed it too far.

These chapters also return to a time where Joe was about ten and living in Ohio. He almost died, being hit by a blue mustang, while riding his bike in a back alley, his dad points out where he almost died the first time. He walks towards the place he lived with his wife Katie, together with his son, and tells him the story of how he once escaped his crib and walked out of the house onto the street in the dead of night, almost getting hit. Joe was 2 years old at the time and his father told the 10year Joe that he himself would have died, if Joe got killed that night.
Joe asks why. Danny answers that no father can live longer than his son.

The next turning of events is when two old broads from Twisted River end up eating in Avellino, the restaurant of Dominic, who now goes by the name of Tony Angel. They recognise his cooking and he and his family are forced to run again. This time, Ketchum recommends them to go across the border to Toronto.

The fourth decade plays its part in Toronto, in 2000.
Danny being embittered and mourning his son's death this part of the novel mainly focusses on the accident his son had.
Ketchum also visits more, especially during the holidays and he urges the cook not to work in an Italian restaurant, because the constable will be expecting that.
What he doesn't get, is the weird circumstance in which the constable will find the cook and his son. He follows Ketchum, because of a weird remark an employee gave at a garage both men attend, and gets led to the doorstep of the man he has been searching for, for multiple decades. Already in his 80's he is still ready to deal out a vengeful blow and surprises the cook in his sleep, shooting him dead while in bed.
Danny answers by shooting the constable.
Afterwards, he and Ketchum dump the ashes in Twisted River. Carmella, from Boston, tags along because Ketchum promised her to let her one day see the place her young son drowned.

Danny encounters Pam and she apologises for having told the constable and warns him for Ketchum's left hand. She urges him to make Ketchum tell him the story.
Ketchum does so, after a while and while Danny is back in Toronto and talking to a doctor he is befriended with, he asks his friend if someone could die from a severed hand.
The doctor tells him this is possible with the aid of aspirin.

1 year later, Pam arrives in Toronto during the holidays, bearing bad news and a dog. The dog stays in Toronto to stay with Danny and he hears what happened to Ketchum.

Danny being the sole one left, he spends most of his time alone. He regrets the things he has done and years for someone to spend his life with. The wife he almost could have had, if his son hadn't died or the woman he met while he was still in his twenties, skydiving naked from an airplane.
On one of his solitary trips, while writing the book we have read by now, the latter woman comes into his life, like an angel falling from the sky.

My Opinion?

The  first chapters tended to be longwinded. Nothing has happened, but the boy disappearing under the logs. Then the accident happens and you escape along with the two desperate characters.

This novel seems to be about fear. The cook constantly fears to be found, he fears his son will be with the wrong woman, he fears his son's fears. He fears to be with someone, as if he doesn't love Rosie anymore. The reason why the women he has relationships with are the opposite of his beloved Rosie.

Danny on his turn, also is afraid of so much. The only one seemingly carefree is Joe.

On another level, this novel is drenched in love. How else will someone leave everything, more than once, for someone else. In the beginning of the novel the cook sacrifices his life for his son, but later on the tables are turned, since the constable is looking rather for the cook because of the affair than for the son, because of the murder.

Being so heartfelt, full of sorrow, full of missed chances, both men are in a lost place. They never had a normal life, the cook choosing so, to honour his lost wife, the son never having had a normal life to settle down. Once, in Toronto, in came close, but then Joe's sudden demise caused everything to end.

I felt this was a slowpaced novel, one that grabs you by the throat and not letting go until you've read the last syllable.
I even wanted to read the novels Danny wrote. Having read a lot of novels, where the lead character is a writer, this hasn't happened before. I truly was fascinated by The Kennedy Fathers, and imagined what it would be about knowing a little of the story line. Also, his other novels, seemed to set a spark in me.

All in all.. I'm giving this book a 8 out of 10. The reason it lost 2 points, is that I wasn't a fan of the first chapters. Too much detailed info. It slowed everything down too much and it didn't add up to the story, neither the son nor the cook was a logger.
In the end of the novel it's assumed that the novel isn't about Danny, nor Dominic, but about Ketchum.. but with him not being part of the large part of the story I don't believe it. This novel is Danny's story.

So..Magnificent