Indians on Vacation by Thomas King

Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
HarperCollins, August 2020

A funny novel about living with depression and despair.

Mimi Bull Shield, from the Blackfoot Nation in Alberta, and her husband Blackbird Mavrias, who is of Greek and Cherokee descent, travel to Europe in search of Mimi's uncle's medicine bundle. Why her Uncle Leroy ended up in Europe is a story in itself, plus there's a whole lot more going on in this hilarious novel. So much that, by the end, my heart was broken.

But let's back up to the beginning, to when Bird and Mimi have newly arrived in Prague. He is grumpy, she is full of optimism and excitement.

        I'm sweaty and sticky. My ears are still popping from the descent into Vaclav Havel. My sinuses ache. My stomach is upset. My mouth is a sewer. I roll over and bury my face in a pillow. Mimi snuggles down beside me with no regard for my distress.
        "My god," she whispers, "can it get any better?"

Years of living together have given this mismatched pair a warm understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses. Their relationship feels as real as the characters themselves. Their differences are a gold mine of humour.

        Mimi came home from her weekly jaunt to the thrift stores. She has a circuit that she works, much like a trapper on a trapline. 
        [...]
        For me, thrift stores are in the same category as the garbage bins behind fast-food joints. For Mimi, they're gold mines just waiting to be quarried.

It is clear from the opening chapter that something more than a reluctance to travel is bothering Bird. When they encounter an encampment of Syrian refugees, his despair comes to the forefront.

        "Are you depressed again?"
        "Just tired."
        "It's the refugees, isn't it?" says Mimi. "You don't like seeing children in distress."
        I can't imagine that anyone likes to see anyone in distress, but as soon as I think this, I remind myself that I'm wrong. For the most part, no one much cares what happens to other people, just so long as it doesn't happen to them. We have the capacity for compassion. We simply don't practise it to any degree.
        It's more an ideal that we hang on a wall where it's easy to see and almost impossible to reach.

The narrative flows back and forth in time. The present-day sections begin: "So we're in Prague," giving readers a rhythm that's easy to follow. There are no easy answers, however. As Mimi says: "The problem with human beings is that we can describe what we do. We just can't explain why."

Giller chances: HIGH - Thomas King is at the top of his storytelling game.

NOTE: I'm grateful to HarperCollins for providing a review copy.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog. 

Good Citizens Need Not Fear by Maria Reva

Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories by Maria Reva

Knopf Canada, March 2020

A collection of interconnected, darkly funny stories set in Ukraine, both before and after the fall of the USSR. The people are mostly residents in a poorly-built ten-storey apartment building. One of the ongoing characters is Zaya, an endearing orphan with a harelip growing up in a state-run institution. Simple drawings illustrate some of the stories. 

"The funniest, most politically astute book I've read in years... Bang-on brilliant." If you pick this up based on this blurb by Miriam Toews on the cover, you will have been steered in the right direction. Maria Reva balances humour and pathos like a boss and absurd Soviet bureaucracy makes perfect fodder. 

In 'Letter of Apology' a poet was overheard making a political joke and so a government underling goes to extraordinary lengths after being tasked with getting a written apology, even though his rank isn't high enough for him to know the content of the joke.

        Normally I had a letter of apology written and signed well under the thirty-day deadline. I took pride in my celerity. Even the most stubborn perpetrators succumbed when threatened with loss of employment or arrest. The latter, however, was a last resort. The goal these days was to re-educate without arrest because the Party was magnanimous and forgiving; furthermore, prisons could no longer accommodate every citizen who uttered a joke.

In 'Novostroika,' a resident is thwarted in his attempts to convince city hall to connect heat to their new building because their address is not in the records. Meanwhile, at his job in a canning factory, he is supposed to come up with a way to make green beans triangular so that they will fit more snugly together in a can.

Everyday life requires ingenuity. Wages are paid in lamps and perfume. There's a strong desire for elements of Western culture. Bootlegged music is copied onto x-ray film and sold on the black market. 

        Before the Union fell apart, the foreign films that made it into our country were dubbed by the same man. You could hear his dentures slap against his gums. No matter the character -- man, woman, toddler -- same droning voice. It flattened the characters' joy and sorrow, made us doubt their confessions. Did the heroine really love that man as much as she said? Vowing to die for him was going a bit far, wasn't it?

        Sometimes the dubbing lagged so far behind, you had to guess who said what, guess how the film ended.

Giller chances: MEDIUM HIGH - The writing style is smart and lively. The message has universal appeal: warning against what can happen if we allow our democratic rights to erode; reassurance in the changing nature of history (bad times don't last forever); and inspiration in the resilience of human beings.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.

Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt

Patrick deWitt's Undermajordomo Minor is a dark comedy that transforms European folktale elements into something entirely original. Imagine a mash-up of Wes Anderson's film The Grand Budapest Hotel with Pauline Reage's The Story of O and PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster.

Lucien (Lucy) Minor, a puny young man from a village of giants, accepts a position as assistant to the majordomo at a distant castle. When he gets to the castle of Baron Von Aux, you know it doesn't bode well for him when he is instructed to lock himself in his room at night.

I reviewed deWitt's The Sisters Brothers, a few years ago. As in that earlier novel, this one has dialogue that I found extremely amusing. In the following passage, the majordomo Mr Olderglough has asked Lucy what he thinks of a plan that has been proposed:

Lucy said, "I think it is somewhat far-fetched, sir."
"Are you not up for it?"
"I'm not, actually, no. And to be frank, sir, I don't believe you are, either."
"What sort of attitude is that? Let us rally, boy."
"Let us come up with another plan."
"Let us look within ourselves and search out the dormant warrior."
"Mine is dormant to the point of non-existence, sir. There is no part of me that wishes to lay nakedly abed and await that man's arrival."
"I tell you you will not be alone."
"And yet I shall surely feel alone, sir."
Mr Olderglough looked down the length of his nose. "May I admit to being disappointed in you, boy."
"You may write a lengthy treatise on the subject, sir, and I will read it with interest. But I highly doubt there will be anything written within those pages which will alter my dissatisfaction with the scheme."
"Well I'm sorry to have to tell you this, boy, but it must come to pass, and it will."
"I believe it will not, sir."

We will leave Lucy and Mr Olderglough at this point in their oh-so-polite disagreement. In their world, soldiers fight because they are soldiers, not because there is a war, and servants work because it's their job - even if they do not get paid. Befriended by a family of thieves, Lucy struggles to find meaning in his life.  

This gothic tale charmed me from the very start. There are no illustrations in Undermajordomo Minor, yet the books that I think most closely capture its essence are in graphic novel format: Tinder (Sally Gardner); Through the Woods (Emily Carroll), The Adventuress (Audrey Niffenegger), Baloney (Pascal Blanchet); and Beautiful Darkness (Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet). It would make a great movie.

I look forward to hearing Patrick deWitt at the Vancouver Writers Fest on October 23, 2015.

Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai

The short stories in Rebecca Makkai's Music for Wartime are wonderfully varied in style, setting and length. I didn't need to pace myself with one story per day, my usual habit, because each one remained distinct in my mind. The longer ones (around 20 pages) reminded me of Alice Munro's work, in the way it feels like a whole novel is contained within a short story. The shorter ones (2 or 3 pages) are the most stylistically diverse, and act like palate cleansers in between the longer pieces. At the same time, it is the shorter pieces, those which draw on Makkai's Hungarian family history, that tie the collection together into such a satisfying whole.

In an interview in Harper's, Makkai explains: "When I began putting together Music for Wartime, I decided I wanted these family legends sprinkled throughout the fiction. In the collection, they come at you separately, so that as you read you're not just getting my short stories, but also some of my own psychology, the reasons a young American writer would be drawn to write fiction about refugees and war zones."

"The Museum of the Dearly Departed" is a longer story with an elderly Hungarian couple in a supporting role. Laslo and Zsuzsi (a Holocaust survivor) were away in Cleveland when everyone else in their Chicago apartment building died during a gas leak. The story is about Melanie, whose fiance Michael was one of the people who died, nine weeks before their wedding. He was in bed with Vanessa, his ex-wife, in an apartment Melanie learned about when it was left to her in Michael's will.

"Melanie waited for some dramatic feeling to wash over her. But she hadn't registered much emotion that summer, unless numb was an emotion. Grief would be an embarrassing surrender, considering the new facts. Rage was inappropriate, given Michael's death. The two reactions had stalemated each other. She was an abandoned chessboard."

Zsuzsi consoles Melanie by telling her about Rigo Jansci, a Hungarian cake named for an adulterer. (I'm going to make one of these chocolate mousse cakes. Sounds delicious.)

Photo source and recipe at: East European Food

Other stories include one about an American literature professor who accidently kills an albatross in Australia ("Painted Ocean, Painted Ship"); a cello player who must contend with an elaborate memorial to a traffic fatality that has been constructed on her front lawn ("Cross"); and producers of a reality TV show who manipulate participants into a romantic entanglement ("The November Story"). Two of the stories feature gay central characters: "Peter Torrelli, Falling Apart" and "Good Saint Anthony Come Around."

In "Couple of Lovers on a Red Background," Johann Bach climbs out of a woman's piano and moves in with her. "He's fond of Mozart, unsurprisingly, but for some reason Tchaikovsky makes him giggle."

I highly recommend this collection.

Tinder by Sally Gardner

Tinder is more than a gothic retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's The Tinderbox. It's an exploration of the psychological trauma wrought by war, as seen through the eyes of an 18-year-old soldier. In the author's note, Sally Gardner reveals that her inspiration came from conversations with soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who found it difficult to adjust back into civilian life. She chose to set her story in the time of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), one of the most devastating conflicts in European history.

So, yes, there's a magic tinderbox that calls powerful wolf creatures to the soldier's aid, and there's a trapped princess to be saved... but much more is going on in Gardner's version. The tale is told in the voice of Otto Hundebiss, and begins when he evades death after a bloody battle in November, 1642.

   "I lay injured, a bullet in my side, a sword wound in my shoulder, watching night creep through the trees. Maybe I should have gone with Death when he offered me his bony finger."

12th-century half-beast half-man on
Saint-Pierre-es-Liens church in
Gluges, near the Dordogne river.

Instead, Otto is saved by a sort of shaman ("half-beast half-man") who tends his wounds.

   "Next time I woke it was daylight and I had a thirst on me of which a river would be proud."

He tells the shaman:

   "I was born in war, raised in war; in war I lost my family. I was fourteen when the soldiers came to our farm looking for food."

His entire village was burned to the ground and Otto was recruited to the Imperial army. Parallels are clearly drawn with the contemporary use of children as soldiers. Otto has frequent nightmares related to the horrors that he has witnessed. On the page, they are separated from the rest of the text by being printed in white against a black cloud.

The shaman has a prophecy for Otto:

   "When you fall in love, that is when you will come into your kingdom. Not a day before."

Otto falls in love with an elusive princess named Safire.
Illustration by David Roberts in Tinder.

And so Otto's adventure begins. It's a mesmerizing historical fantasy with suitably sad and sinister illustrations by David Roberts.

Roberts' illustration at right reminded
me of the massive doors of the 14th-
century Sainte-Marie church in Sarlat.
I took this photo while on a walking
trip in the Dordogne in 2009.

"Light spilled through their
splintered planks." 

Tinder is currently on the CILIP medal shortlists for both the Carnegie (for outstanding writing) and the Kate Greenaway (for outstanding illustration).

Illustrated readalikes: Through the Woods (Emily Carroll) matches most closely Tinder's spooky, haunting yet delicate beauty; A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness & Jim Kay) for menacing suspense and a folkloric creature, but in a contemporary setting; The Sleeper and the Spindle (Neil Gaiman & Chris Riddell) for the twisted fairytale retelling; Poisoned Apples (Christine Heppermann) for modern resonance using various fairytale tropes; Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses (Ron Koertge & Andrea Dezso) for rather more lighthearted, yet still bloody, retellings.

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck

One woman, five possible lives. The End of Days is Jenny Erpenbeck's haunting novel about a red-haired girl born of a Jewish mother and Christian father in the Austrian empire in the early twentieth century. She dies as an infant in the first book, which begins:

"The Lord gave, and the Lord took away, her grandmother had said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn't right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up."

What happens to her parents and their marriage makes up the rest of that part of the story. The child was not in the world for long, but she has had an impact on the lives around her.

What if the baby's life had been saved? Book II portrays another trajectory for her, this time into her teens. In each of the five parts, she lives longer. Her life plays out against the larger theatre of events through the twentieth century in Austria, Russia and Germany. In the final part, she is in her nineties at her death. The closing sentence (not a spoiler!) sums up the philosophical and melancholy tone of this remarkable work:

"Many mornings he will get up at this early hour that belongs only to him and go into the kitchen, and there he will weep bitterly as he has never before, and still, as his nose runs and he swallows his own tears, he will ask himself whether these strange sounds and spasms are really all that humankind has been given to mourn with."

Translated from German by Susan Bernofsky and published by New Directions, the jacketless dark green cover design--featuring a gravestone surrounded by vegetation--is a good match for the sober and surprising contents. The more I think about this novel, the greater my admiration for it.

Readalikes: Great House (Nicole Krauss); Life After Life (Kate Atkinson); and Aquamarine (Carol Anshaw).

The City and the City by China Mieville

Gavin and a guest host, author Tom Pollock, talked about audiobooks in episode #79 of The Readers podcast (July 30 2013). Tom recommended China Mieville's The City and the City, narrated by John Lee [Books on Tape: 10.25 hours]. He reminded me of how much I also enjoyed this particular audiobook, although I never got around to blogging about it until now.

I listened to it back in December of 2011, so I don't remember many plot details. The intriguing premise is that two cities exist in the very same spot, in a sort of time/space overlap. It's the only place like it on Earth, and it is located somewhere vaguely Turkish or Balkan. A murder investigation is complicated by a question of jurisdiction. Did the death occur in one city and was the body then moved to the other place? (This problem of jurisdiction is a little bit like the crime committed in Erdrich's The Round House.) Anyway, it means that representatives of two different law enforcement agencies must cooperate, uneasily. Then, more complicated illegal activities come to light.

My listening experience was unique because I made a mistake when I downloaded the CDs to my computer, made a playlist, and then transferred it to my iPod. The tracks from CD 5 and CD 7 got interfiled, meaning that I listened to about 3 minutes from one part of the book and then 3 minutes from a later part and then back to the earlier part and so on, back and forth. Instead of waiting until I could fix the order, I was too caught up in the story and decided to continue with it as it was. It happened that events on CD 5 took place in one city, while events on CD 7 were in the other. That (and John Lee's narration) helped me to successfully follow both storylines. It also reinforced the setting Mieville created, with two cities simultaneously coexisting.

It's a fascinating book and I wholeheartedly agree with Tom Pollock's recommendation. (There's no need to replicate the weird order in which I listened to it, however.)

Books in Slovakia

Good Books bookstore

Game of Life is the title of
The Hunger Games in
Slovakia

Can you spot Snowdrops in this stack

Bojnice Castle

I was not surprised to find a Slovak translation of The Hunger Games prominently displayed in a bookstore in Bratislava. It was fun to see another book that I recognized - AD Miller Snowdrops - which is next up on my audio TBR list. I will be listening to that while on a train travelling between Zurich and Geneva tomorrow. Here are some images from Slovakia.

Bratislava Castle

Houses in Cicmany are painted in
beautiful designs

What I'll Be Reading While Travelling for a Month

I know that someone will be
missing me while I'm away...

This might be my last post for a month, since I'm flying to Europe today and won't be back until October. Depending on internet access, I may email a few posts enroute, but I'm not sure about that. This is what I've got lined up on my iPod Touch to read while I'm away:

eBOOKS (Borrowed from all three of the Edmonton Public Library's eBook databases: Overdrive, Freading and EBSCO eBooks.)

You might think an iPod screen is too small for reading books, and I used to think the same thing... until I tried it. The only way I could get We the Animals quickly was in eBook format and I flew through it. I've been a convert since, although I prefer paper whenever possible. There's no way that I would or could pack all of these in paper for a trip, however. My suitcase is small enough to carry on the plane.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif (Hanif will be at the Vancouver Writers Fest in October)

Princes, Frogs & Ugly Sisters: The Healing Power of the Grimm Brothers’ Tales by Dr. Allan Hunter (The enduring appeal of folktales fascinates me.)

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield (A gritty autobiographical novel by a Canadian lesbian.)

Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives by Ruth Morgan (The title was enough to hook me.)

Frommer’s Switzerland

Memorable Walks in Paris

Paris Eyewitness Guide

eAUDIO

Audiobooks are perfect for travel. On a bus or train, I'm prone to motion sickness when reading a printed book, plus, with audio, I get to see what's going on around me while listening. On a plane, I close my eyes and via headphones I'm immersed in the narrative and I forget to think about claustrophobia and time passes quickly. The following are all borrowed from the library; some are eAudio from Overdrive or One Click, others are from CDs transferred to my iPod.

The Assassin’s Song by MG Vassanji (I'm partway into this one and it's reminding me of Salman Rushdie's style. So far, it goes back and forth between mythological time and Gujarat around the time of India's struggle for independence. Vassanji will be at the Vancouver Writers Fest. 

For the Win by Cory Doctorow (Doctorow is intellectually stimulating. I've enjoyed his previous books and I love his Boing Boing site and I'm excited that I'll hear him in Vancouver in October at a session where he'll be in conversation with William Gibson.)

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz (Gavin of The Readers podcast praised this new Sherlock Holmes tale. Also, I know that Horowitz can write a pageturner, based on his Alex Rider teen series.)

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (Not sure about this one. The publisher's blurb compares it to Anne Rice and the Twilight series and I've read one of each of those and that was enough for me. Also, Danielle Trussoni, author of Angelology, has a blurb on the back of the audiobook. Oh dear. I'll see how far I get.)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (A review in Booklist sums up why I'm interested -- Writing in a combustible mix of slang and lyricism, Díaz loops back and forth in time and place, generating sly and lascivious humor in counterpoint to tyranny and sorrow.  Plus, Diaz is another who will be at the Vancouver Writer's Fest.)

Collected Stories by Lydia Davis (Someone -- maybe Michael of Books on the Nightstand? -- recommended Davis. I love short stories.)

The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse (Humour is always welcome and I've been meaning to read Wodehouse for a long time. Jonathan Cecil's narration has been recommended as the best choice.)

Snowdrops by AD Miller (Character-based novel set in contemporary Russia)

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (I think Nancy Pearl championed this one?)

Drift by Rachel Maddow (I've only heard Maddow a few times on television when I've been travelling in the States, but her quick intelligence impressed me enough to pick up this book, even though "The Unmooring of American Military Power" isn't normally a topic I'd choose.)

Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (A true story of adventure and survival following an American plane crash in Dutch New Guinea in 1945.)

Slovak for You (The audio portion of my textbook. I've also got Mango Languages app with Slovak loaded on my iPod. I've gone all the way through the lessons, but I like reviewing.)

These next audiobooks are all downloaded free through the 'SYNC YA literature into your earphones' summer program:

The Last Apprentice by Joseph Delaney (I'm curious about this fantasy series that has been very popular with elementary school boys. It's about a boy learning how to get rid of boggarts, witches and ghosts.)

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake (Ghost hunting again, this time in Thunder Bay, Ontario - it was Liz's review at A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy that caught my eye)

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud (I fell in love with the djinn Bartimaeus from my first reading in 2004, when I was working at a B&B in the south of France. Most recently, I reviewed Stroud's Ring of Solomon.) 

Guys Read: Funny Business by various authors (Jon Scieszka, Adam Rex, Jeff Kinney, Christopher Paul Curtis, Jack Gantos and more; what a great line-up!)

Irises by Francisco Stork (I'm looking forward to another by the same author who wrote the fantastic Marcello in the Real World)

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain (Can't go wrong with Mark Twain)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (I've known the opening passage for years, so it's about time that I encounter the rest of the words...)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (I first read this in high school and loved it so much that I went on to read everything else by Steinbeck.)

Tales from the Arabian Nights by Andrew Lang (I've been enthralled by these since childhood)

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (I don't know, this one is mostly as a back-up, but maybe I'll get drawn in. I'm afraid it might be like Jane Eyre, which I hated.)

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (I have high hopes for this one, which I've been meaning to read for decades. I might save it for the plane ride home, as a treat.)

PODCASTS - I've got a few of each:

Books on the Nightstand

The Readers

CBC’s Writers and Company (with Eleanor Wachtel)

The Guardian Books Podcast

CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera

CBC Ideas

And I do have actual PAPER books, of course!

What Becomes by AL Kennedy (Complex, layered short stories written by a master of language. I'm very excited about hearing her at the Vancouver Writers Fest.)

Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees by Richard Mabey (A gift to me last year, but I didn't get far into this trove of information about beech trees, even though I immediately loved Mabey's style, because I set it aside to finish library books that had to be returned. The Sunday Times: "Bursting out is a leaf-storm of philosophical musings, journeys of mind and body, reflections and anecdotes that imprint the tree on human culture." I'm really looking forward to getting back to it.)

Slovencina pre vas (Slovak for You) textbook + a Slovak/English dictionary

See you in October!

Bratislava by Lucy Mallows

Travel writer Lucy Mallows shows some personality in Bratislava: A City Guide, published by Bradt. Most travel guides are so bland that it's refreshing to come across odd statements like "Slovak mineral water is delicious and contains many life-enhancing properties" -- even when I don't believe her. I'm a fan of water, truly, but "delicious" is going a bit far.

Mallow pays attention to small, but important, details, like where to find the best public toilets. She gives advice about how to get small denominations of money to make it easier to pay bus fare, even going so far as to mention "The girl at the exchange booth on Rybárska brána is very helpful." (The guidebook was published in 2009. I wonder if that woman still works there.)

Me in traditional dress, Slovakia 2002

Twenty-five pages at the beginning give just the right amount of the history, politics and economics for context. Unusual facts are what I like best, like this list of names that the city has had over a succession of occupants and occupiers:
805 - Wratislaburgum
907 - Braslavespurch
1038 - Breslava Civitas
1042 - Brezeburg
1050 - Brezalauspurch
1052 - Preslawaspurch
1108 - Bresburg, Bresburch
1146 - Bosonium
1300s-1400s - Poson, Posonium
1465 - Istropolis
1500s - Posonium Pressburg
1848 - Pozsony, Pressburg, Presporok, Bratislava
1918 - "Following many centuries of Austro-Hungarian domination, Czechs and Slovaks were so thankful to American President Woodrow Wilson for supporting the establishment of their independent common state, Czechoslovakia, that they renamed Bratislava 'Wilsonovo Mesto'; the new name didn't last for very long."
1919 - Bratislava

Former American president George W. Bush was not held in the same regard as Wilson. "'The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister who came to Texas,' Bush told a Slovak journalist, shortly after meeting the prime minister of Slovenia."

I'll be in Slovakia in two weeks.  I'm looking forward to seeing my cousins and talking like a pirate with every hello and goodbye: Ahoj!

The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

If you're in the mood for something along the lines of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, then Robin Wasserman's The Book of Blood and Shadow is for you. An eccentric professor and a group of five modern day American college students run afoul of an ancient religious cult when they decipher an ancient manuscript. Nora, the narrator, isn't sure if she can trust any of her companions -- while they are still alive. "I should probably start with the blood." is the first line in the book. It's a thrill-a-minute, especially when they travel to Prague where all the really scary stuff happens.

The dialogue is sassier than you'll find in Dan Brown's work. For example, when Nora translates the following sentence from Latin -- The sperm of Sol is to be cast into the matrix of Mercury, by bodily copulation or conjunction, and joining of them together -- her friend responds: "This is how you build a telephone to God? Looks more like porn for chemistry nerds."

The arcane book that is at the center of the adventure does actually exist; it's called the Voynich manuscript. (More about that document can be found here). The Book of Blood and Shadow contains an entertaining mix of humour, suspense and alchemical secrets.

Readalikes, in addition to Dan Brown: Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Laini Taylor); Angelology (Danielle Trussoni); and The Eight (Katherine Neville).

Then by Morris Gleitzman

Two children are running up a steep hill after jumping from a train on its way to a death camp in 1944 in Poland. Felix is 10 and Zelda is six. They must get to the safety of the forest above them before the next train comes along with machine gun-bearing German soldiers watching from the train roof. A third child has already died escaping as a result of the jump.

Felix narrates this harrowing and heartbreaking story of survival. Each chapter in this page-turner begins with the word "then." The word can also be used to describe consequences, like farmers being hanged in the town square along with the Jewish people they've tried to hide. "Then" can also refer to a past period of time, as opposed to now. The time of the shoah, the holocaust.

An obvious book to compare to this one is John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Bruno, Boyne's young narrator, is totally clueless compared to Felix. Felix has first-hand knowledge of atrocities. He and Zelda hear gunfire and afterwards come upon a pit full of the bloody corpses of children who have just been massacred.

The power of stories helps Felix and Zelda to persevere. When Felix prays, it is to Richmal Crompton, because she is his favourite author. As it happens, I have a copy of collected William stories by Crompton on my to-read shelf, so that has moved to the top of the pile.

A nine-year-old reader could easily handle the text in Then, but I would suggest the accompaniment of an adult's guidance because of the content. Teens and adults will find much to appreciate in this thoughtful novel. Readalike: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (in addition to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas).

New, Aug 27, 2009: I've just listened to an excellent Australia Radio National podcast conversation with both John Boyne and Morris Gleitzman. This is the description:

How young is too young to read about the Holocaust?

Is there a danger of oversimplifying complex events or downplaying the true horror of Nazism by writing about history in this way?

That's what authors John Boyne and Morris Gleitzman are discussing live from the Melbourne Writers' Festival.