The storm

It is over three years since I last wrote anything here. Yesterday I got an urge to look in and started thinking of writing something, but had to give up due to the weather. There were altogether three power cuts. Although they were very short I gave up trying to do anything at all.

The storm was quite ferocious: the wind rattled the dampers in the stove and even in the firebox. Sometimes the wind made the tree whip the roof of the extension making me think that something had fallen on there.

There was no rain, but occasionally a few snow flakes fell down. There has not been snow this winter apart from these few flakes that settled in some nooks in my garden and on my neighbour's shed roof. On the mountain there was a thin dusting of snow.

The wind was stronger than I had ever seen here. On the coast it was hurricane strength according to the news.

This morning when I woke up it was really calm and still. The contrast with yesterday was almost eerie. The picture I took does not give even an inkling of the feeling I had this morning looking out to the quiet and stillness.

A view from the living room window this morning showing the snow in my garden, on the shed and the mountain.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiographical book Infidel was first published in 2007. I was drawn to the book because of its title and its subtitle my life. I had only ever heard or read the word infidel in connection with the Muslim religion referring to a person who does not believe in that religion. I had thought that all Muslims see non Muslims as infidels. And that term had very negative connotations to all Muslims.


At the time I did not know anything about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the writer of the book. The cover has a picture of a beautiful black woman. The back cover states that per (=s/he) had had a "traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia." The book is pers autobiography and per refers to perself as an infidel, a non-believer. That had an immediate resonance within me, having been brought up in a very strict evangelical Christian home which I left behind me in more ways than one. That journey from belief to non-belief was a long one for me and not at all as easy as moving from one country to another. I wondered how that journey was for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. So I bought the book although I usually do not read biographies or autobiographies. (One of the few I have read is The Loony Bin Trip by Kate Millett.)


In the Introduction Ayaan tells about the murder of the Dutch film maker who made a film called Submission, Part 1 with Ayaan. The film is "about Muslim women who shift from total submission to God to a dialogue with their deity." In this short film there "is the woman who is flogged for committing adultery; another who is given in marriage to a man she loathes; another who is beaten by her husband on a regular basis; another who is shunned by her father when he learns that his brother raped her. Each abuse is justified by the perpetrators in the name of God, citing the Quran verses now written on the bodies of the women. These women stand for hundreds of thousands of Muslim women around the world." Towards the end of the book Ayaan goes into more details about the film and the murder and what followed. The introduction is very short stating, after the brief mention of the film and the murder, the reasons for writing the book, the summary of Ayaan's life and then a dedication: "This book is dedicated to my family, and also to the millions and millions of Muslim women who have had to submit."

The early years in the lives of various family members are covered briefly in the first part of the book titled My Childhood. As Ayaan writes on the final page of the Epilogue that although it is only two generations from pers grandmother to per "the reality of that voyage is millenial. Even today you can take a truck across the border into Somalia and find you have gone back thousands of years in time." At the age of thirteen Ayaan's grandmother was married off to a much older man who already had a wife and a daughter just a little younger than Ayaan's grandmother. The story of Ayaan's mother's birth is instructive about the life of the grandmother. "My mother, Asha, was born sometime in the early 1940s, along with her identical twin sister, Halimo. My grandmother gave birth to them alone, under a tree. They were her third and fourth children; she was about eighteen, leading her goats and sheep to pasture when she felt the pains. She lay down and bore forth; then she cut the umbilical cords with her knife. A few hours later, she gathered together the goats and sheep and managed to bring the herd home safely before dark, carrying her newborn twins. Nobody was impressed by the exploit: she was only bringing home two more girls."

Ayaan's early childhood was spent in newly independent Somalia, formed after the British and Italian colonizers left in 1960. Because of Ayaan's father's political activities the father was in and out of Ayaan's life and the family moved from one country to another. They moved to Saudi Arabia when Ayaan was only eight. After about a year there the family was deported and the father took them to Ethiopia. About a year was enough there too; Ayaan's father moved the family to Kenya where many of the exiled Somali families lived. Ayaan writes:"That is how, by the time I turned ten, I had lived through three different political systems, all of them failures. The police state in Mogadishu rationed people into hunger and bombed them into obedience. Islamic law in Saudi Arabia treated half its citizens like animals, with no rights or recourse, disposing of women without regard. And the old Somali rule of the clan, which saved you when you needed refuge, so easily broke down into suspicion, conspiracy, and revenge. In the years to come, clan warfare would sharpen and splinter and finally tear the whole of Somalia to pieces in one of the most destructive civil wars in Africa."

Ayaan had not only gone through those different political systems per also had to learn different languages. On moving to Kenya Ayaan could speak Somali, Arabic and Amharic. Now per had to learn Swahili and English. Another difference between these countries had been the calendars and the way time was told. "In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o'clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili.) The months, the days - everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary School did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times. Grandma never learnt to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system."

Religion was a part of Ayaan's life from the beginning. Per learnt it from observing people around per and from attending Quran schools in Somalia and Saudi Arabia. In Kenya pers mother hired a preacher to teach Quran to the girls on Saturdays. Ayaan saw how Islam was practised in different countries they lived in. Per also saw the differences in pers parents beliefs, the father's beliefs being more humane whereas the mother's beliefs were more literal and for example accepting the brutalities in Saudi Arabia as “God's will.” As Ayaan writes: “My father's Islam was also clearly an interpretation of what the Prophet said. As such, it was not legitimate. You may not interpret the will of Allah and the words of the Quran: it says so, right there in the book. There is a read-only lock. It is forbidden to pick and choose: you may only obey. The Prophet said, 'I have left you with clear guidance; no one deviates from it after me, except that he shall be destroyed.'” Although Ayaan questioned what per was taught it was not until per had fled to Holland that per felt able to really study and think and finally declare perself an infidel. That part of Ayaan's journey is told in the second part of the book My Freedom.

Ayaan did not escape because per wanted to get away from Islam. What sparked pers flight to pers freedom was the forced marriage. Ayaan had told pers father who arranged the marriage that per did not want it. Pers wishes were not taken into account and the marriage took place without Ayaan's attendance as neither pers presence nor pers signature was required for an Islamic ceremony. What Ayaan was allowed was the postponement of the consummation of the marriage until a further ceremony in Canada where per was to live with pers new husband. Ayaan travelled to Germany to wait for the visa to Canada as the process was very slow in Kenya.

In Germany Ayaan's frantic ponderings about how to undo pers marriage brought per to a realization “I didn't even have to go to Canada. I could disappear here. ….. I knew that another kind of life was possible. I had read about it, and now I could see it, smell it in the air around me: the kind of life I had always wanted, with a real education, a real job, a real marriage. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to become a person, an individual, with a life of my own.” And in July 1992 Ayaan acted taking a train to Holland where per applied for a refugee status and got it.

In Holland Ayaan worked hard in various jobs and in pers studies until per finally earned a place in a university to study political science as per “wanted to understand why life in Holland was so different from life in Africa. Why there was so much peace, security, and wealth in Europe. What the causes of war were, and how you built peace. …. Why should infidels have peace, and Muslims be killing each other, when we were the ones who worshipped the true God? If I studied political science, I thought, I would understand that.” While studying at the university Ayaan worked as an official interpreter. In both pers studies and in pers work per had to learn to compartmentalize, as per said what conflicted with Islam per had “to stuff it all behind the little shutter in my brain.” After 9/11 attack that shutter broke open and refused to close again but it was not until May 2002 that Ayaan fully realized that per was not a believer any longer. Per realized "I had left God behind years ago. I was an atheist. .... And I felt relief. .... There was no pain, but a real clarity."

Ayaan's work as an interpreter was an education in itself to per. Per was called to interpret in the refugee centres, prisons, police stations, clinics, courts, unemployment offices, schools and shelters for battered women. Many if not all the people that per saw in any of these places were from Muslim backgrounds. This and what per knew from pers own experience informed pers political work as an MP in the Dutch parliament where per was elected in January 2003. Ayaan did all that per could in the parliament to improve the lives of Muslim women and children and to inform the society around per about their situation. After a couple of years per realized that there was nothing else per could do there and decided to accept a position in an American think tank thinking that it would give per a wider audience and per could do more good there.


I want to give the final words to Ayaan:

When I took the train to Amsterdam thirteen years ago, I took a chance at a life in freedom, a life in which I would be free from bondage to someone I had not chosen, and in which my mind, too, could be free.

I first encountered the full strength of Islam as a young child in Saudi Arabia. It was very different from the diluted religion of my grandmother, which was mixed with magical practices and pre-Islamic beliefs. Saudi Arabia is the source of Islam and its quintessence. It is the place where the Muslim religion is practiced in its purest form, and it is the origin of much of the fundamentalist vision that has, in my lifetime, spread beyond its borders. In Saudi Arabia, every breath, every step we took, was infused with concepts of purity or sinning, and with fear. Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago.

The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia, and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts or honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes the transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam.

It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. It was difficult for my grandmother, and for all my relatives from the miyé. It was difficult for me, too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason – from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values.

The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.

A brilliant and gripping thriller - I think not!

"A brilliant and utterly gripping thriller, The Executor is the long-awaited new masterpiece by the author of the Richard and July bestseller The Brutal Art." Thus (and I do not mean "the commoner kind of frankincense" with "thus", but an even commoner thing done by publishers) is an unsuspecting reader enticed to obtain and read this novel by Jesse Kellerman. The front cover uses the same ploy declaring that "Kellerman is a master of menace". Having found its way to my hands how could I resist reading this book. And was I gripped? Did I feel menaced? No and no - a hundred NOs. The book was tedious beyond belief. It felt like the author used a hundred words to say what two or three words would have said so much better.

Jesse Kellerman is the son of Faye and Jonathan Kellerman. Both are thriller writers. I have read some books by both and enjoyed them. (Although the last one of Jonathan Kellerman I read was a disappointment. I wrote about it last September.) The fact that Jesse Kellerman is their son was another enticement to read this novel.

The main character in The Executor is a Harvard philosophy student named Joseph Geist who found it difficult to finish pers (= her/his) dissertation. Per (=s/he) had been writing it for some years and had become "if not persona non grata, then a white elephant" in pers Hall at Harvard. A bit like Jesse Kellerman going on and on and on ad nauseam.

This tortuously rambling story written mostly in past tense slips from one time to another with stories about Joseph's parents and childhood mingling with more recent happenings. This mostly past tense writing is interrupted by one whole chapter written in present tense and in second person singular. After that the writing returns to the first person / past tense for two and a half chapters when it switches again to the present tense / second person midway through a very, very, very long paragraph. The last chapter is written in first person and present tense. Who would not be confused!

It was a real struggle reading this novel; it took me longer than other novels, some with many more pages than this, to finish. There were times I was so frustrated with the style, the story, the number of words, the lack of real interesting engaging characters, I just could not go on. About half way through the novel as I sat thinking of the torture I was putting myself through an idea popped into my head. What if the writer is trying to bring Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment to the present day. That alone made me want to read to the end to see how these two novels would compare. As I could not remember much about the style of writing of Crime and Punishment I had to go and find my copy of it. Not finding it I started Googling and now I have a copy on my computer. (The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.) Just a few pages of it gave me the flavour of the style, the story and its setting, an interest in the character, and I had to stop myself from reading it all there and then: I had to finish The Executor first.

Crime and Punishment is not written as a first person account. There is a narrator who intersperses musings by the main character in inverted commas. This makes the read more interesting and easier to follow. The musings of the main character have a similar feeling to them as those of Joseph Geist in The Executor, only not so boring. When the whole book is written in the voice of one character and when that character is not a sympathetic one or well developed by the writer, the whole book falls flat. The novel is not redeemed by other characters appearing in it as none of them is really memorable or interesting in any way.

The Executor is not really a thriller as promised. There are murders committed by Joseph Geist. I suppose the first person ramblings are meant to express the state of mind of the protagonist, if it is possible to think of Joseph Geist in that light. And what of the second person episodes: they come at the times when some big change has happened or is happening: the moments after the first murder, the second murder and the hiding of the bodies; the break down, the hospital and the confession. In these pages Joseph Geist is looking at perself and telling what per is doing as per is doing it. "You could claim self-defense but look. Look at the carpet...." Although Joseph Geist is writing pers story while in prison as it appears in the final chapter, these passages, these moments and days of pers life are stilled in pers mind as happening in the present. This device certainly sets these parts of the story apart from the rest. However, while I was actually reading these passages I felt confused. The whole thing felt so contrived.

I think enough said. I must say I have enjoyed writing this. Made me look at the book a bit more and more critically than just saying: What a bore! However much I have enjoyed writing this, I will not start reading books that I know I will not enjoy just for the sake of writing reviews of them.

Weird seizures

I have about two hours to kill - and that feels such a good word for it. Lets see if writing makes me feel better. It usually does.

I am pleased that I changed the name of this blog to Books etc. It will be mostly about books, but also about my life, my thoughts and my feelings and my opinions. Lets not forget them. As Shakespeare put it "I can not put off my opinion so easily."

"This far and no further", said an Irish poet/terrorist in Colombo about drinking. I say it about what I wrote yesterday. I think I shall delete what came after the first two little paragraphs. Who would want to read about my sweating - not even me, even if it made me feel quite good writing about it. So lets go to fresh pastures: "So graze as you find pasture." (Shakespeare) My mood continues to be a bit weird, but I am in good company. "Myself too had weird seizures." (Tennyson) My online dictionary is brilliant, coming up with these quotes when I check that I have a correct spelling for words. And I do not even have to go on the web page as this Linux operating system enabled me to put a little box on the bar at the top of the screen. There I type a word and it gives me meaning. The only trouble with it is that if I get a spelling wrong it comes up with nothing. So I have to try a different spelling until I get the word right. Enough of this! ...


Now for something else ... a book I have read. I read this novel quite a while ago, but have not written about it yet as I wanted to find out more about one thing in it and did not get round to doing it until yesterday. The book is devil bones by Kathy Reichs. I have read quite a few novels by per and liked them. This one was different for one reason. Still a good read, but that one thing has put me off Kathy Reichs and pers novels.

The main character in the novels of Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist, like the writer perself, by the name of Dr Temperance Brennan who is an alcoholic mostly in control of pers alcoholism. Like the writer Dr Brennan divides pers working life between two countries, Canada and USA. In Charlotte per is employed by the university and by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In Canada per consults for the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de medecine legale in Montreal. In pers working life Dr Brennan, like the writer, sees the worst of what we humans are capable of. Dr Brennan, like the writer, wants to unmask these monstrosities and to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In this book the bones found were those of a child, aged between 14 and 17. Dr Brennan feels sad for the loss of a young life and horrified at the thought of what may have brought the bones to the table in front of per. From these grisly discoveries Dr Brennan hurries up to meet pers daughter for dinner at a restaurant. There per orders veal and the daughter comments that per always eats that.

I find it strange that a person cannot see the similarities in the violence. Veal comes from a young calf, sometimes only a couple of days old, often a male calf - surplus to requirement in the dairy industry. These calves are often separated from their mothers after birth, living their short lives often in grates alone where they are artificially fed with all kinds of things that they would not normally eat. This is torture for the calf and the mother. Cows have been known to cry after their young are taken from them.

The juxtaposition of the order of veal with the following enquiry from the daughter, "So. Voodoo, vampires, or vegan devil worshippers?" to me indicates that the writer is aware of the suffering in veal production and does not care. In fact it feels to me that the writer is taunting vegans for their care for animal suffering.

It is strange how we humans can live with such contradictions. We love animals yet we kill them to eat them. I believe, I have to believe, that most of us want world peace like Miss Congeniality and yet we invest in violence. I think all violence is related. As long as we accept some forms of violence others forms will also persist. In many of the novels I have read murderers start by tormenting animals and end up killing human animals.

The World March for Peace and Nonviolence is attempting to create global awareness of the urgent need to condemn all forms of violence and to bring about real peace. With my whole being I wish it success.

Speedy Pensioner

Not Speedy Gonzales but Speedy Pensioner - that's me! The wood finally arrived yesterday in high winds and drizzle. Two cubic meters of wood was dumped on the pavement outside our house - not quite outside the door as our neighbour's van was there. The whole lot was inside the house in about an hour - truly! And now all my muscles hurt and still lot to do as I have piles of wood around the house that need to be stacked in their proper places. But that is another story for another day...

Today's story is about the book which I read in the cold house while waiting for the wood to arrive - Speedy Pensioner in this too as I read the whole book in one day. You Can't Hide is the first book by Karen Rose that I have read. One more of those serial killer books that seem to abound nowadays. I am trying to think of a book with just one murder in it, but cannot remember one single one.


The main character is a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, Dr Tess Ciccotelli, working with suicidal patients. Per also works for the police giving assesments of the criminals being tried in court. Per testifies as to their competence to stand trial. Sometimes that brings per to the conflict with the police. One such case where, according to the police Dr Ciccotelli helped a child and a police killer get free, had happened just before the beginning of the story and had caused the most of the police force to hate Dr Ciccotelli. The police believed that the killer had pretended to be mentally ill, whereas Dr Ciccotelli had pronounced the killer not responsible for pers actions, being continually tormented by demons attacking per.

Another main character is a police officer who is given the task of working the case where Dr Ciccotelli's patients are manipulated to commit suicide. It becomes clear that the killings are just tools to get at Dr Ciccotelli. From the actions it is very clear that the killer is a psychopath. Per has no empathy or any kind of feeling for any of the people per kills. Per manipulates people to get what per wants and killed even before these latest killings, without any remorse, first in an attempt to get what per wanted and later to make money.

Mental illness is an important thread in the book - has to be with a psychiatrist as one of the main characters. When killer is unmasked, but not yet caught, the fact that pers mother suffered from schizophrenia is made much of. It is almost given as an explanation for the actions of the killer. Dr Ciccotelli feels bad that per had not been able to help this person to get better or get any treatment for pers mental illness - schizophrenia. This is where an otherwise good novel falls apart. How could a person - even a fictional character - go through medical and psychiatric education and training and not know the difference between pcychopathy and schizophrenia. There is enough stigma and misunderstanding particularly of schizophrenia in the world for this to be a really bad flaw in the book. It adds to the confusion about these things and is totally inexcusable. 

The writer should have researched the illness better. The way the killer is portrayed is clearly someone who is a psychopath. This is how Wikipedia defines psychopathy: "Psychopathy is a personality disorder whose hallmark is a lack of empathy. Robert Hare, renowned researcher in the field describes psychopaths as 'intraspecies predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse'. ...
Psychopaths are glib and superficially charming, and many psychopaths are excellent mimics of normal human emotion; some psychopaths can blend in, undetected, in a variety of surroundings, including corporate environments. There is neither a cure nor any effective treatment for psychopathy; there are no medications or other techniques which can instill empathy, and psychopaths who undergo traditional talk therapy only become more adept at manipulating others. The consensus among researchers is that psychopathy stems from a specific neurological disorder which is biological in origin and present from birth."


Psychopathy is not an illness like schizophrenia is. Schizophrenia can be treated and many suffering from it can and do lead normal lives never doing any harm to themselves or others. Its characterisation is different from that of psychopathy. Wikipedia states schizophrenia "is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. Distortions in perception may affect all five senses, including sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, but most commonly manifest as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction. ... The mainstay of treatment is antipsychotic medication; this type of drug primarily works by suppressing dopamine activity. Dosages of antipsychotics are generally lower than in the early decades of their use. Psychotherapy, and vocational and social rehabilitation are also important. In more serious cases—where there is risk to self and others—involuntary hospitalization may be necessary, although hospital stays are less frequent and for shorter periods than they were in previous times."

I liked this book on the whole and will read more of this writer's novels. I hope that in other books the research will be better. 

Escape


I am a rarerity among pensioners - I am more comfortable with the computer and the internet than with the older form of communication - the telephone. In fact I have come to the conclusion that I am slightly phone phobic. I am ok taking calls, but making one is always difficult. Like now, anyone else would have sorted the trouble with the wood delivery by now. Me - I sit here by my computer typing in the cold house hoping that the company has finally read one of my many emails and will send the wood I ordered and paid for (all done on the internet) before I freeze. This is the fifth day without the heat. The wood was supposed to be delivered on Wednesday. Yesterday I escaped into a book - after making my moves in scrabble. I read a book from cover to cover and I will write about that book in due course. Now I will escape to The Western Shore....

The Western Shore is a world born in the imagination of Ursula Le Guin and revealed in the Annals of the Western Shore comprising of three books: Gifts, Voices and Powers. The Western Shore, as its name implies, is a western part of the world by the sea. It has a mountainous region in the north called The Uplands inhabited by people with dangerous gifts living on farmsteads or domains scattered around the mountains. On the far south there is Ansul famous for its university and library and peaceful people engaged in commerce. In between there are the warlike City States fighting each other and sometimes people further away taking slaves. On the east there is Asudar, on the edge of a desert. Alds live there and from there send their armies to Ansul determined to destroy demons they believe inhabit the place.

All the various peoples of the Western Shore originally came over the desert from the east and first settled in Ansul speaking the old language which then evolved into what is spoken in all the various nations of the Western Shore. In the library in Ansul there are books written in that old language.

One of the themes running through all the books is the importance of stories, both oral and written. All the books are written in the voice of one of the main characters. Orrec is the narrator of the first book and an heir to one of the domains in The Uplands. Pers story is about learning about pers gift and accepting it and learning to use it. The gifts were passed on from father to son, from mother to daughter. Orrec's father's gift was undoing, a terrible, fearful gift. But not to have that gift as pers father's son was shameful and also dangerous for the whole domain, because without it there was no protection agains other domains. It was the fear of gifts that kept a sort of peace between domains.

Orrec's mother, Melle Aulitta, also had a gift, but not a kind of gift that was considered of any worth within the domains. Orrec's mother was not from the Uplands, but pers father brought per from a raid to the Lowlands. Per was not taken by force; per chose to come. Melle was an educated person who told stories to Orrec and pers friend Cry and taught Orrec to read. Pers gift to Orrect was a book per made, the only one in the Uplands, with the stories per could remember from pers youth. Orrec inherited this gift of telling stories and making up stories and poems. Orrec's gift was making, not undoing, and that was no good in the Uplands. So at the end Orrec chose to leave, had to leave, the Uplands. Cry came with per as pers wife.

The narrator of the second book, Voices, is Memer in Ansul. Memer lives in the Oracle House, which was built on the place where the people first settled on coming from beyond the desert. It has a secret library with very special books. And in the courtyard there is an Oracle Fountain, which has been dry for many years. Memer is a true daughter of this important house in Ansul, but per is also a daughter of rape. Pers mother was raped by Ald soldiers when they first came to conquer Ansul with a purpose of destroying what they called demons and the Mouth of Evil which they believed to be in Memer's house.

Alds fear written word. They worship one god to whom written word is blasphemy. When they finally took over Ansul they destroyed any book they could find and killed any people found with books. They ransacked Memer's house, but did not find the secret library where Memer's mother was hiding with baby Memer. After the initial destruction in Ansul the soldiers settled to rule and kept the people of Ansul in subjugation. Memer grew up in Ansul, not a free citizen like all the peole of Ansul were previously, but as a member of a subjugated people under the rule of Alds. Memer's mother game from hiding and put the house in as good an order as per possibly could in the circumstances. Other people of the house came back and the Waylord, the head of the household, a relative of Memer, was finally released from Ald prison and came back to live in the house also.

Memer wrote pers story at the age of 17. It is a story of Memer learning about life and pers place in the society. It is a story of how Memer met Orrec, the famous poet and storyteller, and Cry. It is a story of how Ansul became free again. It is a story of how Memer came to learn about and to accept pers special gift.

The last book in the Annals is the book about Gavir. While Orrec learnt about pers gift and purpose in life at pers home domain, and Memer did the same at pers home, Gavir started pers journey in one of the City States, a place where per was brought as a young child to be a slave. Gavir also had a gift or a power as it was called by pers people, but had to hide it, because city people were afraid of them. This gift was to see the future or as Gavir put it "to remember" something that had not happened yet.

Gavir was an indoor slave in an important house where slave children attended school with the children of their owners. The teacher was a slave and Gavir having shown aptitude was being trained to take over once the old teacher was retired. Gavir's older sister was an indoor slave in the same house and once per was old enough was given to the oldest son as a gift-girl. Per was happy about it as per loved this son who loved per back. However, being a slave the sister was badly used and killed by another son, who was not punished. So in a daze Gavir walks away and starts pers journey, to find freedom, to find perself, to find the place where per could feel at home.

The journey takes Gavir through various places and communities, from a crazy hermit, through two different communities of escaped slaves, to pers own Marsh people and finally to Urdile, where Gavir was drawn because Orrec, the poet and writer, was there. There Gavir finds the person from one of pers early "memories" who happens to be Orrec and who offers to vouch for Gavir so that Gavir can become a citizen Urdile and be free. So Gavir finally finds pers real home.

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

This is a first book by this writer. I came accross it when looking for something to read on a train journey back home having finished the book (the previous review) I took with me when I left home a couple of days before. I went to the bookshop at the train station. The cover was interesting, the name unknown, the title intriguing - I needed to have a closer look.

The deciding factors for buying this novel were the setting of the story in Norfolk and the writer being English. If you look at the list of my favourite authors, you see that only one of them is English. Although just now thinking about it I realized that I need to add one more: Manda Scott - more about pers books later, I think.

I read the book without knowing much at all about the setting in Norfolk. I had spent a holiday once on the Norfolk seaside and been pointed out some dangers there. I had also heard of other dangers. So my mind was predisposed to accept some dangerous situations within that landscape, where the main character's home, with its only two neighbours, is on the road which is "frequently flooded in spring and autumn and often impassable by midwinter", on the edge of the Saltmarsh with "these inhospitable marshlands, these desolate mudflats, this lonely, unrelenting view". The meaning of the landscape and the title of the book are explained early on by the main character Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist, as crossing places "between the land and the sea, or between life and death".

The Saltmarsh and the henge at the crossing place are imaginary. However, there was a real seahenge found in Norfolk and the story has similarities with those real events like protests by druids and locals and the controversy about what to do with the find. The story has a beginning in that imaginary find, with all the main characters being present there. And that is when the first child disappeared. 

The book has a prologue. I find prologues most of the time just plain unneccessary. And so I think it is here. The real beginning in chapter one is really good: "Waking is like rising from the dead. The slow climb out of sleep, shapes appearing out of blackness, the alarm clock ringing like the last trump." The biblical reference did not come to mind immediately: "We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump." It is, however, really fitting as Ruth's parents are revealed to be Born Again Christians "(capitals obligatory)". Having been brought up by born again christians (small letters obligatory for me) and having been one myself in my distant past I find the way this is written about amusing. (Perhaps, I was born again third time as an atheist. I do not remember any one birth, although I do remember how I became an atheist.)

I like the book, I like the story, I like Ruth Galloway. However, there are some things in the book that I find not quite ringing true. I find some aspects of the murderer difficult; the motive for the notes I find a little far fetched; and Ruth's flight into the marshes I find annoying. I do not quite know what to make of them. They are all so central to the story. I would not know how to make the story work without these things.

All in all I think this is a very good first book.