Reading

Review: Invasion

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I admire Frank Gardener, the author of this novel, for his bravery in recovering from severe injuries while he was reporting for the BBC in Saudi Arabia. But not only has he survived, but he has largely overcome his mobility impairment by becoming the BBC’s security reporter

and he is a best-selling novelist. Well Done, Frank!

Frank Gardener

Francis Rolleston Gardner OBE (born 31 July 1961) is a British journalist, author and retired British Army Reserve Officer.  He is currently the BBC’s Security Correspondent, and since the September 11 attacks on New York has specialised in covering stories related to the War on Terror. 

Gardner joined BBC World as a producer and reporter in 1995, and became the BBC’s first full-time Gulf correspondent in 1997, before being appointed BBC Middle East correspondent in 1999. On 6 June 2004, while reporting from Al-Suwaidi a district of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Gardner was seriously injured in an attack by al-Qaida gunmen, which left him partially paralysed in the legs. He returned to reporting for the BBC in mid-2005, using a wheelchair or a frame. He has written two non-fiction works as well as a series of novels featuring the fictional SBS officer-turned MI6 operative Luke Carlton.

This novel is set in England, China, Taiwan and vicinity in the present. The main characters are Dr Hannah Slade, a full time climate scientist at Imperial College, on a ‘collection assignment’ for MI6; Luke Carlton, case officer with MI6; and Jenny Li, intelligence officer with MI6. Hannah is apparently in China to attend a climate conference, but her real mission is to collect a small microchip from a senior agent with access high in China’s military. The microchip contains details about China’s plans to invade Taiwan. She meets the agent, receives the microchip and hides it behind her missing wisdom teeth. Almost at once she is captured and moved to Macau by criminals of a Chinese triad. When MI6 realises that Hannah has gone missing, they send Luke and Jenny to find her and the microchip. Luke and Jenny follow a lead to Macau, where they realise that a powerful triad is involved, and is in the process of moving Hannah to Taiwan. An attempt to recapture Hannah on the sea fails. Luke and Jenny go to Taiwan where they investigate a lavish temple,which turns out to be owned by the shadowy triad boss, Bo. Bo’s intention is to sell Hannah to the highest bidder: China, Taiwan, USA or the UK. Before Bo is able to act, the three Brits escape. Hannah hands the microchip to Luke for safe keeping. Jenny and Luke make good their escape, but they have to leave the injured Hannah behind. When they are back in the UK, Luke and Jenny learn that Hannah, who has fallen into the hands of China, is accusing MI6 of deserting her.

I had expected this novel to be about a fictitious invasion of Taiwan, but the only activities by the Chinese military are the firing of a hypersonic missile by a Chinese warship, the taking over of a tiny Taiwanese island, and preparations to take over Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. This was a bit disappointing, but if Gardener had written what he doubtless knows about an actual takeover, he would have doubtless been censured by the UK government, so the triad had to be inserted as the bad guys.

The book is well written, credible and suspenseful.

Are We Authentic?

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There is an article on The Conversation website by Sreedhevi Iyer dated 29 August 2024 titled ‘Why are authors expected to be authentic?’ which is both amusing and sad.

Sreedhevi Iyer

Sreedhevi Iyer has lived in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Australia, and can only answer ‘many places’ when asked where she is from. Her writing has been published in several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia, Sweden, and Italy.Jungle Without Water is her first book published in Australia. The Southeast Asian edition was shortlisted for the Penang Monthly Book Prize 2017. Her fiction work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in the United States. She has guest edited Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Drunken Boat, and was writer-in-residence at Lingnan University of Liberal Arts in Hong Kong. Sreedhevi is currently teaching creative writing at the University of Melbourne and RMIT.

Ms Iyer says: “The recent Oscar-winning movie American Fiction – an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure by screenwriter and director Cord Jefferson – is a scathing look at the racial stereotyping prevalent in the publishing industry.

In one scene, Theolonius “Monk” Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright) participates in a literary panel to promote his new book. The event is woefully under-attended. Monk then decides to join the crowds for celebrated black author Sintara Golden’s sold-out session. Golden is promoting her book We’s Lives In Da Ghetto. She gives a reading in an overtly black vernacular, to the audience’s delight and Monk’s disdain.

In another scene, Monk and his literary agent are on the phone with a publisher interested in purchasing Monk’s latest novel. Its title is My Pafology. Monk has written it as a joke, a satire of black stereotypes, but the publishers mistake it for serious literature. At his agent’s insistence, Monk speaks in “black” parlance to them, in keeping with his pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. He sounds “street”. He sounds “real”. The publishers love it.

Such scenes proliferate in American Fiction. As an academic, an intellectual and the author of several books, Monk faces the reality of having to fake-write the kind of book “they want”. The satire highlights the deeper issues around what the book industry considers “authentic”, and the burden it places on African-American authors.

Monk resists the requirement that he has to “write black” and even “talk black” to be a spokesperson, that he must represent his racial experience. But the more he resists this pressure – by moving his books to another shelf in a bookshop or refusing (initially) to accept the publisher’s bid – the more the audience becomes aware of the restrictions on his self-expression.

“Look at what they publish.” Monk says. “Look at what they expect us to write.”

Literary personas

Fictional writers, like Monk and Sintara Golden, satirise the reality faced by authors of colour, who are expected to perform a version of themselves in public and, paradoxically, end up adopting a persona – a supposedly “authentic” but in fact phoney persona – for the benefit of readers, literary gatekeepers and other industry players.

Reductiveness in the name of “authenticity” is not specific to the American market. Global literary discourse also requires authors of colour to produce ostensibly “authentic” narratives. They are then required to embody this “authenticity” when presenting themselves in public.

But are such narratives predetermined by race, ethnicity and language? Who qualifies as an “authentic” author? The demand for “authenticity” – within literary culture, in particular, and postmodern culture in general – has become a problematic, paradoxical idea. Authors are now expected to depict an authentic experience – and yet the form of such authenticity is pre-determined on their behalf.

There would seem to be several underlying reasons for this. One is that contemporary literary culture tends to equate the author with the worlds they create in their books, expecting them to align. Laura Mandell, an assistant professor of English, argues that

whenever we talk about “great literature” using an author’s name, we confuse people and texts, subtly reinforcing the unconscious idea that authors are literature rather than that they wrote it. The ideology of authorship fosters such a confusion, and it simultaneously imposes expectations on people as to how to behave.

Another reason is the way book publication automatically renders the author a public figure. Even if this is expressly resisted, as in the case of Elena Ferrante, whose real identity remains uncertain, it only further underscores its ubiquity.

Authors of colour often employ personas as means of navigating these expectations. At a literary event in Hong Kong some years ago, I interviewed Junot Diaz on his views around his identity.

Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, and a professor of Creative Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His writing voice employs a mixed register of Spanglish, nerd jargon and taboo slang – perhaps an amalgamation of Monk and Golden. Here is his response, verbatim:

I’ve always told people that you know whatever your formula is about being Dominican, about being African diasporic, or being poor or being from New Jersey or being an immigrant, whatever your formula is, please, safely put me outside of it. Whatever your test is, I have failed. Really, I have failed. I am so much happier to fail everybody else’s formulas, to not belong, that’s my joy, although I am deeply embedded in my community, even though I feel strongly related to my community.

My poor girlfriend feels like she’s living some crazy Dominican nightmare, 24/7. Everybody’s fucking Dominican in my world, so, she’s like what the fuck am I doing with this guy? Even with all these things, I will still argue that whatever people’s reductive formula about what authentic is, of a Dominican person in New Jersey, I don’t want any part of it.

Diaz’s uneven, mixed register of street vernacular and academic lingo is a strategic performance. His persona acknowledges both his racial and class background, and his transcendence of that background through his literary accomplishments.

He is, however, also indicating that he is “keeping it real”, that he is still a part of his community, while not accepting the “reductive formula” around his identity.

Like Monk in American Fiction, Diaz resists being pushed into a finite category around race or ethnic identity. At the same time, he is performing that identity in his manner of speech, the same way Monk is asked to speak as “Stagg R. Leigh” over the phone. Even when he is denigrating the idea of his pigeonholing, he is enacting it.

Another example is from an interview with Madeleine Thien, Booker-nominated author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Thien’s prose, unlike Diaz’s, is spare and lyrical, focusing on small moments. Also unlike Diaz, Thien in real life embraces her pigeonholing, almost weaponising it.

When I interviewed her about reviewing culture in Canada, she also enacted a persona, but in a different way. “I used to feel frustrated and sad by the misreadings of works by writers of colour,” she said:

[Reviewers] make such sweeping generalisations about a place, and what they think the literary culture is, when they actually have possibly not read a single book about Vietnam, or whatever it is, you know, about Lebanon, about China, even, I mean, most people have not read a single novel set in China and yet when they sit down to write that review, there’s no conception that they are out of their depth. Because if you know you’re out of your depth, you can’t really write a really sensitive and interesting critique that comes from that place, you know?

The paradoxical nature of contemporary literary discourse around “authenticity” requires Thien to perform her activism, her outrage, her wielding of identity politics, her sense of responsibility to the rest of her ilk. It’s the prescribed social self of the “real” author.

But instead of claiming her “authenticity” is not up for discussion the way Diaz does, Thien discusses her responsibility to the larger culture. She wields her identity and power of representation (perhaps in some ways like Sintara Golden), performing the outrage expected of her in the diversity conversation.

True to oneself?

The idea of being true to oneself now extends into identity politics. It pigeonholes writers to produce a certain type of narrative. It’s not write what you know; it is write what only you know. Deviation renders the work (or worse, the writer) inauthentic – one of the last taboos of postmodern culture.

In one of the later scenes in American Fiction, Monk and Golden have a quiet lunch together in a miserable room. They have been brought together as jury members for a literary prize. Curious about Golden’s contempt for his hoax-novel Fuck, Monk gently suggests Golden’s writing is guilty of the same pandering.

The questions are also from the audience. How did she catch that the writing panders? What did she see in it that was disingenuous? And is she perhaps aware of the disingenuousness in her own work? Is she pandering on purpose?

The film refuses us the satisfaction of an answer. Golden merely throws Monk’s query back at him. She implies that his perspective comes from a position of academic privilege, making him unaware of the realities of black life. It is an irony in the context of the film, but it also confirms how Golden views her own role in the industry, and how she views being “authentic”. Monk and Golden, like Diaz and Thien, both make choices around authenticity. Their opposite responses are both true.

Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest

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I have now read the third book in this amazing trilogy. You can find reviews of the first two books in the Millennium Trilogy two and four weeks ago. Of the three, I think that the first volume, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is the best. It has a self-contained plot and is probably the clearest example of Stieg Larsson’s amazing talent for writing thrillers, which include: creating distinctive, memorable characters, building and keeping tension high, designing a plot which captures the reader’s interest, and keeping the reader guessing with surprises at critical junctures in the plot.

Stieg Larsson 1954 – 2004

The plot carries over from the second book in the series. Lisbeth Salander (the heroine) is in the hospital with serious injuries caused by her half-brother, Ronald Niedermann, who has a rare congenital condition which makes him insensitive to pain, and who is on the run with the cash of an outlaw motorcycle club which hired him to kill Lisbeth. Two rooms away in the hospital is Zalachenko, Lisbeth’s father, a former Soviet operative who tortured Lisbeth’s mother, and who was injured by Lisbeth with an axe. Zalachenko is shot to death in his hospital bed by Evert Gullberg, the head of a renegade section of Sapo, the Swedish equivalent of MI6, and who is terminally ill. Zalachenko is killed for fear that he will reveal the existence of the section which protected Zala, and instutionalised Lisbeth with the help of the corrupt psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Teleborian. Gullberg tries to kill Lisbeth, also, but is frustrated by her lawyer Annika Giannini, Mikael Blomkvist’s sister. Gullberg commits suicide. Section operatives murder Gunnar Björk, Zalachenko’s former Säpo handler and Blomkvist’s source of information for an upcoming exposé; the operatives falsify the death as a suicide. Other operatives break into Blomkvist’s apartment and mug Giannini, making off with copies of the classified Säpo file that contains Zalachenko’s identity.

Torsten Edklinth, a Sapo official is informed of the renegade section of Sapo, and begins a clandestine investigation with Monica Figuerola. Blomkvist, secretly arranges to have Lisbeth’s hand-held computer returned to her in the hospital and arranges a mobile phone hot spot to keep her in touch with the outside world. Blomkvist plants misinformation about plans to defend Lisbeth at her trial for the attack on Zala. The section swallows the bait, plants cocaine in Blomkvist’s flat and tries to have him killed.

On the third day of the trial, Blomkvist’s expose is published, causing a media frenzy, and leading to the arrest of section people. Giannini destroys Dr. Peter Teleborian’s credibility, and proves that the section conspired to cancel Lisbeth’s rights. The prosecutor realises that the law is on Lisbeth’s side, withdraws all the charges and the court cancels Lisbeth’s declaration of incompetence.

When she is freed, Lisbeth discovers that she and her twin sister are to share Zala’s estate which includes an abandoned factory. She goes to investigate the property and finds Niedermann hiding there from the police. During a struggle with him, she nails his feet to the floor with a nail gun. She informs the motorcycle gang where Niedermann is and then she informs the police of the resulting chaos. Mikael Blomkvist visits her at her apartment and they reconcile as friends.

This novel is 715 pages long, and, as such, the plot is far more complex than the above summary suggests. It is also richly populated with minor bit-part characters, whom I sometimes had difficulty keeping track of, even though each one had an essential role to play in keeping the story advancing, credibly.

All in all, this is a great story!

For Whom Do You Write?

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Jericho Writer’s Harry Bingham makes a good point in his Friday email. He says, “I mean, readers, yes, obviously. But who? Your mum? That old English teacher you loved? Crime fans in general? People who love Patricia Cornwell in particular?

There are two reasons to ask these questions. The first is marketing. If you’re writing people who want a fresh take on the Patricia Cornwell vibe, that would suggest a certain approach to book covers, titles, marketing slogans and so on. You might even refer directly to Cornwell, or her most famous character, Kay Scarpetta, in your marketing yadda.

The second reason has to do with the choices you make as you write the book itself.

As you write, and as you edit, you are faced with 1,000,000 choices: again and again and again. Are you happy with this sentence? What about this one? Does the attacker strike your heroine? Strike her with what? Does he hurt her? Does she hurt him back? Does she escape? How does she escape? Is her breath ‘hoarse and rasping’ afterwards? Or does it come in ‘juddering heaves of relief’? What phrase do you prefer? And what does she do next?

Now, obviously, you’re going to make all those choices on the basis of what seems right to you – you have no other option. But at the back of your mind, there’s always a sense that you’re writing for one set of readers rather than another.

For example, if I were writing forensically-led crime fiction, I’d have to assume that my readers knew Patricia’s Cornwell work and would be wanting me to break new ground. I couldn’t just reprise Cornwell’s tropes and expect success myself.

Indie authors – intelligently analytical as they are – often take this further, and try to conceive of an ‘Ideal Reader’ – a dog-loving, mother-of-two Kansas 40 year old housewife. Someone with plenty of friends and love of hiking, who watches true crime shows on Netflix, reads mostly crime, but will cry at soppy love stories too.

The idea is that if you know your ‘Ideal Reader’, you can craft your book and your marketing material to appeal perfectly to that one person.

And? OK. Very smart writers I know do just that and they say it works for them. In part, it works because book marketing works best when it’s micro-targeted. A good campaign is one that gets excellent conversions happening amongst a very tightly defined group of readers. A bad campaign is one that starts so-so conversions within a much broader group. So: a hyper-detailed picture of your Ideal Reader keeps your marketing focused.

But I have a somewhat different take.

I think you have to turn yourself into your own Ideal Reader.

Partly, that means bringing your own tastes to bear. As I say, when it comes to editing, you don’t really have a choice.

But you also have to ensure that you become your own readership. What books do you expect your readers to have read? What authors do they love?

You need to have read that book and know those authors. If you’ve read Patricia Cornwell as keenly as your readers have, you won’t just repeat that stuff. In the end, your desire for novelty will be the same as theirs.

These things go deep.

I know, for example, that more of my readers are American than British. So I have a particular love of giving my American readers a taste of Wales that’s very Welsh. So, for example, a few miles from where my Mum lives, there’s a village called Newchurch. Easy to say, easy to spell, right? But I’d pretty much never use that placename in one of my Fiona books. Near Newchurch, lie the settlements of Rhosgoch, Glascwm, Llanbadarn-y-garreg, and (where my kids go riding) Bryngwyn. I’d use any of those placenames instead, joyous in the knowledge that Kate from Kansas and Ali from Arkansas will struggle to pronounce any of them.

Or again: I wrote a book that had to do with the archaeology of the British Dark Ages. I know my readers to be literate and intelligent. Plenty of writers might have avoided a ton of ancient history detail, but I knew my guys would like it. (I know I like it. I’ve become them.) So the book is spattered with chunks of Latin, and late Celtic poems, and mournful Romano-British monks, and factoids about Anglo-Saxon vs British burials. (The main difference being that the Anglo-Saxon invaders were pagan, the ancient Britons were Christian, so their burial rites looked different. I am English, but I’m still on the side of the ancient Britons. Twll dîn pob Sais.)

One last example:

How fast or slow do you take a scene? Do you hurtle through? Offer a reaction shot or two, but still move at pace? Or do you allow yourself a paragraph or two of considered reflection?

My writing creates my readers, but my readers also create my writing. I know that my readers relish the Fiona character – they want more of her, not less. So, while I’m hyper-sensitive to anything that feels boring or self-indulgent, I’m happy to allow proper space for reflection. On the whole, my scenes go slow but deep, not fast and shallow. That’s respecting my readers, not ignoring them.

Over time, any difference between you and your readership gets snuffed out. You learn from them what they do and don’t respond to. You learn what books and authors they like. You follow down those trails.

You don’t have to like everything that every one of your readers like. I’ll get book recommendations from readers (either via email, for example, or from names cited in an Amazon review) where I read the book and don’t like it. But that’s fine too. What matters is knowing (roughly) the universe that your readers inhabit, and using that knowledge to shape your tastes and your choices. The process becomes a rolling, laughing, respectful conversation with a multitude.

And if you follow that path, things become easy. Your Ideal Reader? It’s you.

Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire

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So, I’ve finished the second book in the Millennium Series, and, at the moment, I’m two thirds of the way through the final book. As you already know, the series is by Stieg Larsson:

Stieg Larsson (born as Karl Stig-Erland Larsson) was a Swedish journalist and writer who passed away in 2004.

As a journalist and editor of the magazine Expo, Larsson was active in documenting and exposing Swedish extreme right and racist organisations. When he died at the age of 50, Larsson left three unpublished thrillers and unfinished manuscripts for more. The first three books (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest) have since been printed as the Millennium series. These books are all bestsellers in Sweden and in several other countries, including the United States and Canada.

Larsson witnessed a rape when he was 15, and was helpless to stop it. This event haunted him for the rest of his life. The girl being raped was named Lisbeth, which he later used as the name of the heroine on his Millenium trilogy. Sexual violence against women is also a recurring theme in his work.

Stieg Larsson

This book begins with Lisbeth Salander in a long trip to tropical resorts. She returns to Stockholm and buys a luxury apartment with money she siphoned off the accounts of a financial criminal. Nils Bjurman, who had previously raped Lisbeth Salander, focuses his attention on capturing her and destroying the film she made of his crime. He hires a motorcycle gang to capture her, but the attempt is foiled by Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of Millennium magazine.

Millennium is approached by Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson, who have put together a report concerning sex trafficking in Sweden and the abuse of underage girls by high-ranking figures. Everyone is intrigued by recurring mentions of “Zala”, a mysterious figure heavily involved in the sex-trafficking industry. Salander, hacking Blomkvist’s computer, is taken aback by the mention of Zala, and visits Svensson and Johansson to ask questions. Later that same night, Blomkvist finds the couple shot dead in their apartment. With Salander’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, and her formal record establishing a history of violent instability, she is implicated in the double murder. Bjurman is also found dead, shot by the same weapon; Salander is the prime suspect.

Blomkvist confronts Gunnar Björck, a policeman on sick leave and one of the high-ranking abusers identified by Svensson and Johansson, who agrees to disclose information about Zala if Blomkvist leaves him out of Millennium‘s exposé. Visiting Bjurman’s summer cabin, Salander finds a classified Sapo (Swedish Secret Police) file and begins to make the connection between Bjurman and Zala, whose real name is Alexander Zalachenko. With information from Björck and Palmgren, Lisbeth’s earlier guardian, Blomkvist pieces together the history of Zalachenko: he is a former Soviet defector whose very existence is kept classified by Säpo. Initially an intelligence source, Zalachenko began to traffic in sex slaves on the side. He became the partner of a 17-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins, Lisbeth and Camilla. Zalachenko was an absent father who repeatedly abused his partner; Lisbeth, angered at her mother’s abuse, threw a petrol bomb into Zala’s car while he was in it, causing him near fatal burns. The authorities imprisoned Salander and declared her insane, since acknowledging Zalachenko’s crimes would require them to divulge his existence. Niedermann had killed Svensson and Johansson on Zalachenko’s orders; Bjurman, who was involved with Zalachenko, played a role in the murders and was killed to ensure his silence.

Separately, Salander and Blomkvist find Niederman’s address. Salander is captured there, and shot by Zalachenko, who is hiding out with Niederman. Niederman buries her alive, but she escapes, and attacks Zalachenko with an ax, seriously injuring him. Blomkvist arrives on the scene and calls the emergency services. He captures Niederman and ties him to a lamp post. The book ends at this point.

This second volume is nearly as good as the first: very difficult to put down. I have just two comments. The beginning of the book deals with Lisbeth’s time at resort hotels in the tropics and her purchase of a luxury apartment. Neither of these activities – while interesting – contributes to the plot. In fact the plot continues into the third volume, so that the second volume is not a complete story in itself

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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I have another confession to make: I didn’t bother to read this book (also) when it was first published, because I was put off by the title and the hype. But when I was preparing my summer reading list, I decided to add it. In fact, I actually ended up buying the first three books in the original Millennium Trilogy, because they weren’t listed individually on Amazon.co.uk. But before I got there I bought a series of three Millennium books on Amazon.it. When they arrived, I saw that they were books 4-6 by a different author, who was ‘carrying on’ Stieg Larsson’s (the original author’s) ‘footsteps’. I read the first 100 pages of book no. 4, thought ‘this is rubbish’, and put books 4-6 in the bin. (For those of you who don’t know, Stieg Larsson, the original author took the complete manuscripts of book 1-3 to the publisher, and died of a heart attack before he could see them in print.) My view, having read 100 pages of book 4, is that the publisher made a hasty decision to satisfy a demand for more Millennium without qualifying the author and with inadequate editing.

Stieg Larsson

Wikipedia says: “Karl Stig-Erland “Stieg” Larsson, Swedish: 15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish writer, journalist, and activist. He is best known for writing the Millennium trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2005, after he died of a sudden heart attack. The trilogy was adapted as three motion pictures in Sweden, and one in the U.S. (for the first book only). The publisher commissioned David Lagercrantz to expand the trilogy into a longer series, which has six novels as of September 2019. For much of his life, Larsson lived and worked in Stockholm. His journalistic work covered socialist politics and he acted as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.

There are two principal and quite unique characters in this novel: Lisbeth Salander, tiny, mid-twenties, brilliant computer geek, anti-social, severely abused as a child, and Mikael Blomkvist, mid forties, bright, moralistic, attractive publisher of the journal Millennium, in Stockholm. Both are dedicated and very competent investigators in their respective fields: Lisbeth: personal and corporate security; Mikael: business. At the outset, Mikael has been convicted of libeling the billionaire industrialist Wennerström; he serves a three-month prison term. He is offered a one-year freelance job to write the history of the Vanger industrial family, but he knows that his real assignment is to discover who murdered the grand-niece of the patriarch, Henrik Vanger forty years ago. Impressed with her work investigating him for Henrik Vanger, Mikael hires Lisbeth to use her computer skills in investigating the Vanger family. They discover that Michael Vanger, the current CEO of Vanger Industries, and the brother of Harriet Vanger, the girl who disappeared, can be linked to several violent murders of women, but not to his sister disappearance. Lisbeth saves Mikael from death at the hands of Michael, whom he has confronted. Michael escapes, but pursued by Lisbeth and he commits suicide by driving head-on into a truck. Knowing that Michael did not kill Harriet, Lisbeth and Mikael trace Harriet to a sheep farm in Australia where she is the owner/manager. Lisbeth unearths some terrible dirt which destroys the Wennerström empire, and, incidentally, she siphons off several billion krona into her own account.

This book is very hard to put down. In fact, I kept it close at hand so that I could read a page or two when I had a chance. Larsson drew his characters clearly and persuasively, so that they stand out in your mind. He also went to the trouble of setting each scene so that the reader feels s/he is there. But above all, he was a master at creating and maintaining tension about what will happen next to these characters about whom the reader really cares. He also skillfully leads the reader into anticipating X, when a surprising Z actually occurs. Great creativity!

Review: The Hunger Games

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This is another case of my overcoming reservations to read a novel which has made it into the hundred best of the twenty-first century. The wild popularity made me suspicious of its literary merit.

Its author is Suzanne Collins. Wikipedia says, “Collins was born on August 10, 1962, in Hartford, Connecticut, to Jane Brady Collins and Lieutenant Colonel Michael John Collins, a U. S. Air Force officer who served in the Korean and the Vietnam War. Collins graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham in 1980 as a Theater Arts major. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana University Bloomington in 1985 with a double major in theater and telecommunications. In 1989, Collins earned her Master of Fine Arts in dramatic writing from the New York University Tisch School of Fine Arts. Collins began her career in 1991 as a writer for children’s television shows. She worked on several shows for Nickelodeon. She was also the head writer for the PBS spin-off Clifford’s Puppy Days. She received a Writers Guild of America nomination in animation for co-writing the critically acclaimed 2001 Christmas special, Santa, Baby!. After meeting children’s author James Proimos, Collins felt inspired to write children’s books herself. In September 2008, Scholastic Press released The Hunger Games, the first book of a series by Collins. The Hunger Games was partly inspired by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.  The trilogy’s second book, Catching Fire, was released in September 2009, and its third book, Mockingjay, was released on August 24, 2010. Within 14 months, 1.5 million copies of the first two Hunger Games books were printed in North America alone. The Hunger Games was on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than 60 weeks in a row. Lions Gate Entertainment acquired worldwide distribution rights to a film adaptation of The Hunger Games. Collins adapted the novel for film herself.” Collins lives in Connecticut with her two children.

Suzanne Collins

It is somewhat remarkable that this dystopian YA novel made in onto a list of the hundred best novels of the twenty-first century. But a plot involving the forced recruitment of twenty-four children (‘tributes’ to the dictatorship) to fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the population is horrific and at the same time compulsively compelling. It is particularly compelling when the principle characters are so attractive and real, faults and all. Collins writing is excellent, conveying each character, his/her emotions and the settings clearly and believably. Needless to say the book is very difficult to put down.

Two aspects of the book didn’t work for me. The reader is asked to accept that the combatants are filmed live, close up, for the national television. But how would this be possible, without cumbersome interference, when the characters are moving rapidly through a wild setting? No technology would be remotely capable. But one just accepts this. The other issue I had was the final scene in the arena, when the final three combatants are attacked by wolf-like creatures which stand erect as humans, have rapier-like claws and are presented as the avenging reincarnations of dead combatants. These strange creatures were presented as examples of the technological innovation of the state. This was too much for me, and the wolves killed no one. Why were they necessary?

This book is a remarkable literary milestone. It is a must read.

Believable Co-incidents in Fiction

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This post is from an article by Steven James on the Writers Digest website dated September 7, 2018. The focus of his article is making co-incidents believable.

“We’ve all read stories in which the cavalry arrives just in time to save the day, or the hero just happens to find the time machine/ray gun/escape hatch/shark repellent right when he needs it in order to survive the climax. Although coincidences may happen in real life, they can kill believability if they appear at the wrong time or aren’t handled the right way in a story.

Coincidence is necessary to get a story started, but is often deadly at the end. However, too many authors use it backward: They work hard to get readers to buy into the plausibility of the beginning, but then bring in chance or convenience at the climax—when readers’ coincidence tolerance is at its lowest.

For handling coincidence deftly, follow these seven strategies to unlock its power.

7 Clever Strategies for Harnessing Coincidences in Fiction

Strategy 1: Capitalize on the coincidence that initiates your story

We don’t typically think of it this way, but really all stories start with a coincidence.

Stories begin when the author dips into the stream of cause and effect and pulls out a moment that initiates all that will follow. Readers accept this without consciously identifying the event as coincidental:

  • The young couple serendipitously meets in a tiny Parisian cafe.
  • The suicide bomber ends up killing the president’s niece in the airline attack.
  • The woman’s fiancé is diagnosed with terminal cancer the day he proposes marriage.

Readers don’t say, “Yeah right. The detective who ends up being the protagonist just happens to be assigned to the case that this book is about. I don’t buy it.”

Of course not. Readers know that a story must start somewhere and, whether they realize it or not, an event that doesn’t require much in the way of explanation typically gets things rolling.

Use the story’s opening sequence to justify incidents that would otherwise seem too convenient. This is where coincidences will fly under your readers’ radar.

For example, a cryptic phone call can set up a number of storylines:

“So, is the meeting still on for 7?”

“No. We’ve had to move it back an hour so Fayed can make it.”

“And we’re still on target for tomorrow at the raceway for—”

“It’s all set. Everything is set. Now, no more questions.”

If this type of conversation occurs early on in the book, readers won’t much care why it was Fayed couldn’t come at the originally scheduled time, and you don’t have to explain. However, if the conversation were to happen later in the story, readers may very well be wondering why Fayed was going to be late—and they’ll be expecting a good reason.

If your story requires the inclusion of an unlikely event, move it closer to the start—or even use it as the inciting incident—to capitalize on your readers’ willingness to suspend disbelief.

Strategy 2: Avoid justifying what readers readily accept

In contrast to what we’ve just established—that the earlier a coincidence occurs in the story, the less it needs to be justified in the minds of readers—many authors spend excessive time trying to explain why the opening should make sense.

Often, they’ll include an exciting hook, then drop into backstory to explain what instances led up to the hook occurring. This not only hurts the flow of the narrative, but also decreases escalation and hampers your readers’ engagement with the story.

Can lightning strike the person standing beside your protagonist during the first scene of the story? Yes, of course. Is that a coincidence? Absolutely. Will readers accept it? Sure, because that’s how the story begins.

Can lightning strike the bad guy at the climax right when it looks like he’s about to kill the hero? Well, technically anything can happen, but if it does, it’s likely to solicit eye rolls and book throwing—unless the main character somehow causes that to happen through a conscious choice and in a way that readers will readily believe but not anticipate.

Does your hero need to know karate late in the story? Show him sparring early. You don’t need to explain why or when he started sparring; you don’t need to give a history of all the karate tournaments he’s been in since high school. All of that information is unnecessary. He’s a black belt. Got it. Now move on.

Strategy 3: Leverage genre conventions

Coincidences are more acceptable in some genres than in others. For instance, fate tends to play a bigger role in romance, fantasy, and horror: The lovers are destined to be together (regardless of when in the story that destiny is revealed), the prophecy about the young wizard must come true, and readers might anticipate that the demon will somehow survive at the end to wreak havoc again.

In those cases, or when the thematic nature of a story revolves around fate, destiny, prophecy, or divine intervention, coincidences play a bigger role in the story’s progression.

However, most people believe that free will plays a more significant role in our destiny than fate does, so even in genres that are friendly to coincidences, consider searching for a way to have a freely made choice rather than simply destiny or an act of God resolve things at the climax.

Strategy 4: Point out coincidences in the middle

Every coincidence except the opening one requires a leap of faith. So, the further you move into a story, the more coincidences will undermine believability.

Certain forces press in upon a story to help shape it—believability, tension, escalation, characterization, and so on. Sometimes authors overlook the importance of causality, or the fact that each subsequent event in a story is causally linked. In other words, every event is caused by the one that precedes it.

At times, the flow of a story might require a break-in causality, a jump in logic, or the necessity for something inexplicable to happen. If that’s the case in your story, readers will often sense a gap in believability—unless you point it out to them.

You can do this by having a character note that what’s happening seems unbelievable:

“It just doesn’t seem like Judy to lose her patience like that.”

“I can’t believe he would say that.”

“I could tell something was up. She just wasn’t acting like herself.”

Readers will think, “Aha! Yes! I thought something weird was going on, too!” And, rather than be turned off by what seems too unbelievable or too convenient, they’ll be drawn deeper into the story. They’ll trust that there’s more going on than meets the eye and that, in the broader context of where the story is heading, this event will retrospectively make sense.

Strategy 5: Anticipate readers’ reactions

Be your own worst critic of seemingly arbitrary events in your story. Think through the reactions that readers will have to the events as they occur:

Oh, that’s convenient.

I don’t buy it.

Yeah, right.

This doesn’t make sense.

Why doesn’t he just …?

We often talk about silencing our inner critics when we write, but this is one time when you should listen to that voice. When it pipes up, find a way in your story to answer it.

Strategy 6: Look for what’s missing

Avoiding coincidence isn’t just about spotting what does occur that’s not the logical result of the preceding events, it’s also about recognizing what doesn’t occur that should, given the current circumstances.

For example, the woman is being chased by the knife-wielding killer. She runs out of the house and tries to fire up the car—it won’t start. (Oh, that’s convenient.)

So, she gets out of the car and runs to the cellar instead of toward the highway. (I don’t buy it.)

Where she rallies her strength and punches the killer in the face, knocking him out. (Yeah, right.)

In those three cases, the coincidence comes from the actions she takes. But such contrivances are equally ineffective when they come from what should happen but too conveniently does not:

She carefully and quietly steps over his unconscious body to get to the staircase again. (This doesn’t make sense. Why doesn’t she tie him up, finish him off, use that knife of his against him?)

Any time your readers would have one of those reactions, you’ve identified a coincidence that needs to be addressed in the service of the story’s believability.

Strategy 7: Foreshadow to remove coincidence from the climax

Of all the scenes in your story, the climax should contain the least amount of coincidence. Foreshadowing is a powerful tool that can serve to remove coincidence, and thus the climax should be foreshadowed more than any other scene.

I’ve already pointed out that in far too many stories, things are reversed. Why do so many authors use coincidence to resolve the climax? Well, because they’re trying to come up with an ending that readers won’t guess. As the author brainstorms ways to surprise them, he also runs out of believable ways for the protagonist to solve his own problem, or to make the defining choice of the story in a way that will satisfy readers. It’s much easier to just put the protagonist in a terrible fix, stick her in
a situation that looks impossible to escape from, and then have someone else show up in the nick of time to save her.

But that’s lazy writing, and it’s not giving readers what they want.

Conclusions depend on choices, not on chance, coincidence, or rescue. By definition the hero should do the rescuing rather than needing to be rescued. He makes a choice that depends not on coincidence but instead on causality, and that choice determines the ending of the story.

Think back to Strategy 2: If your character needs that Swiss Army Knife at the climax, foreshadow earlier that she has it with her. If he needs to be a rock climber, show him on the crag with his buddies in a previous scene. If she needs to be able to solve complex mathematic equations in her head, foreshadow that she’s a human calculator.

The location, the character, the asset (or liability) that comes into play at the climax—anything that ends up being significant to the outcome of the struggle—should have been introduced long ago, or it’ll seem too convenient that it arrives when the protagonist needs it most.

At its best, foreshadowing should make so much sense in that earlier scene that readers don’t notice that the scene is foreshadowing anything at all. Only later, when that special skill, ability, or asset shows up again, will readers think, Oh yeah! That’s right. He knows how to fly a helicopter. Excellent. I forgot about that.

Readers should never think that the story’s conclusion “came out of nowhere,” but rather that it logically followed all that preceded it, even if the story ends with a twist.”

Review: Hostage to the Devil

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I mentioned having bought this book when I bought Glimpses of the Devil. The two books are quite different, not only in the authors’ styles, but also, Glimpses is a scientific report by an amateur exorcist. Hostage is a researched report on the experiences of six, third party exorcists. Glimpses is a psychiatrist’s report; Hostage is the report of a high-ranking priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Still, the two books come to the same conclusions about the reality of demonic possession and the methods of exorcism.

Wikipedia says that the author, “Malachi Brendan Martin (23 July 1921 – 27 July 1999), also known under the pseudonym of Michael Serafian, was an Irish-born American Traditionalist Catholic priest, biblical archaeologist, exorcist, palaeographer, professor and writer on the Catholic Church.

“Ordained as a Jesuit, Martin became Professor of Palaeography at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. From 1958, he served as secretary to Cardinal Augustin Bea during preparations for the Second Vatican Council. Disillusioned by the council, Martin asked to be released from certain aspects of his Jesuit vows in 1964 and moved to New York City.

“Martin’s 17 novels and non-fiction books were frequently critical of the Catholic hierarchy, who he believed had failed to act on what he called “the Third Profacy” revealed by the Virgin Mary at Fatima. His works included The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1958) and Hostage to the Devil (1976), which dealt with Satanism, demonic possession, and exorcism. The Final Conclave (1978) was a warning against Soviet espionage in the Vatican.”

Father Malachi Martin

There are five exorcisms described in detail in Hostage. The first possessed is Marianne, a young single woman in New York City. The exorcist is Father Peter, and the demon is The Smiler. The exorcism involves violence and the demon recalling in grotty detail Peter’s sexual adventure with a girl friend before he was ordained. The exorcism was successful, but Peter died a year later, a psychologically damaged man.

Then there is Father Jonathan, a priest who is a possessed nature worshiper, and Father David, who as a natural scientist is nearly possessed by the same demonic spirit, Mister Natch, as Father Jonathan. The exorcism is stopped for a period of months while Father David recommits his own faith. Jonathan’s mother exerts her faith to save her son.

Next is Father Gerald, the exorcist, the Girl-Fixer, the demon, and Richard/Rita a transsexual who is possessed. Father Gerald is physically attacked and injured by Girl-Fixer during the exorcism. This exorcism was also adjourned for a period of weeks while Father Gerald recovers. The demon leaves Richard with threat to deal with Gerald after his death.

This is followed by Jamsie who is semi-possessed by Uncle Ponto, a lower level evil spirit who wants to make his abode in Jamsie and try to control him. This is termed ‘familiarization’ or possession by a familiar spirit. Father Mark expels Uncle Ponto, but he then discovers that there is a senior demon, Multus, wants to take possession of Jamie. Father Mark uses Jamsie’s will to complete the exorcism.

In the last case, Carl, a prominent parapsychologist, who can read minds, travel back in time, and who has learned he was a Roman in a prior life is possessed by the Tortoise, an evil spirit who was able to create Carl’s illusions for him. Father Hartney is the exorcist. During the exorcism, Carl is reluctant to let go of the privileges which the Tortoise has given him, but he finally decides he wants freedom of mind, body and spirit.

There is a sixth exorcism mentioned in the book, briefly. It is the only one for which Father Martin had no recording to rely on, and no witnesses, other than the priest to question. This sixth exorcism took place in China, and involved a Thomas Wu, who was possessed and who died in a fire before Father Michael Strong could complete the exorcism. Father Michael’s health was severely affected by the exorcism.

These brief summaries sound quite improbable, but the book is over 450 pages long, and if it has a fault it is that there is too much detail about what the various participants were feeling or thinking at critical moments. The five cases are laid out in excruciating detail. One can deny their accuracy, but this becomes a matter of personal choice and denial. For my part, they make sense, as they align with my Christian faith.

The book caused a sensation when it was first published in 1976.

Why I Love Dirty Children’s Books

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There is an article with this title by Daniel Donahoo on the Wired website. It’s dated 14 February 2013, but it is quite timely.

Daniel Donahoo is the Director of Project Synthesis, an ideas consultancy whose work is driven by play, technology and narrative.

Daniel is the author of children, family, media and technology “Idolising Children” and co-author of “Adproofing Your Kids”. He has supported a number of services across Australia with the planning and implementation of technology in play-based environments,  he has advised on national projects on incorporating play-based approaches into digital learning resources and reviews and writes about technology for Wired, Huffington Post and New Media Consortium.

He says: “BOOKS ARE ARTIFACTS. We hold them close, we sort them on shelves, we lend them out and wonder when they will return. In these digital times the value of the book as a treasured item is only increasing. Books have a scent, a feel and a connection that some place well above the stories they may read on their Kindle.

However, I’m teaching my kids that books are far more important than to be given the status of artifact. My favorite books are dirty children’s books.

While illustrated children’s book have long history of being even more special artifacts than most others, a children’s book in beautiful condition, with clean crisp pages in near-mint condition is a sad and troubling thing. Children’s books should belong to and be treasured by children, and if that is the case they should look like they have been handled and read and looked at by children.

Our house is currently littered with books. They can be found behind the cushions on the sofa, on the floor in the kitchen, under the washing machine and occasionally on bookshelves. Most of these belong to my 20-month-old son, and he loves to flick through the pages of any book and identify everything with wheels as a “brum.”

We read to him. His older brothers read to him. And he “reads” himself. Consequently, all of his books are dirty children’s books. They are frayed at the edges, some pages are ripped, others have splashes of breakfast cereal or smudges from butter and toast. These books have gorgeous pictures and wonderful stories, but what good would they be if we kept them all well ordered and alphabetized on a shelf, only to bring them out on the occasion of bedtime for a story before sleep?

Books are something we should treasure and care for. We should fold over the edges to keep our place, we should let them live in the bottom of our bags or in the dirt while we are on camping trips. Our books should reflect the lives we lead — messy and uncertain, but well lived and loved.

We should teach our children to love books in this way, and deal with the little bit of damage that comes with it. Books are not made of glass. You can dry pages with a hairdryer, and stick ripped pages back together. You can construct a new spine from cardboard and even write a new ending on some new paper and slot that in at the end if those pages have been lost.

I love dirty children’s books. Covered in dust and grime and the things you find on children’s fingers. I love the stories and the pictures the fact that every fingerprint is a page turned, a new word learned, a narrative pursued.

Keeping reading with your children. Always.”