"The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" by M.G. Vassangi
Although I enjoyed his "The Book of Secrets" very much I found this one rather flat and too much a polemic rather than a story that came alive. A great first page but slowly went downhill after that. People in my Bookclub who had lived in Africa had a different idea and felt it captured the people, setting, times etc. very well. Rather hard to argue with that when you haven't lived in Africa! I always remember being amused by a friend who was doing a doctorate at Cambridge on Robert Graves and who also happened to be a friend of Graves. He felt he had a real ace in the hole because he could always counter his examining committe with "Gee, Robert didn't see it that way". Didn't get his doctorate in the end.
"The Game" by Laurie R. King
This is another of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. I do enjoy these mysteries very much even if many things are somewhat over the top. That's part of the fun but like many mystery series, you have to be a fan otherwise you probably can't get beyond it. Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim' is a character in this one and it takes place in India, of course. King loves the novel Kim and encourages the reader to read it. I've dug out a copy and have dipped into it...quite neat so far.
""The Finishing School" by Muriel Spark
Couldn't take more than about 10 pages of this latest claptrap. Spark has been in her dotage for a while now. I notice that BBC Radio 4 actually read this on air as "Book of the Week"...well, it is short (like most of the others).
"Wild Dogs" by Helen Humphreys
Her previous two novels, "Afterimage" and "The Lost Garden" were stunning in their beauty and poetic language. This seems like a particularly dismal tale so far (read to page 32) about six people who have lost their dogs in various ways. The dogs have joined a wild pack and this group comes together to call for them each evening. On page 32 we are treated to an especially ugly image of a laundromat that is used uniquely for drying pigs' ears into dog chews. Not sure what the point of this is other than it relates to dogs. Seems like a good place to end my reading.
