Fiction reviews: The Light at the End of the Day and three more titles
PICK OF THE WEEK
The Light at the End of the Day
Eleanor Wasserberg
Fourth Estate, $29.99
Credit:
Over 80 years after the outbreak of the Second World War, the novels about it keep coming, a testament to the numberless tragedies it created. In this one, the time is 1937 and the place Krakow, where the four members of a Jewish family, the well-to-do Oderfeldts, never dream how soon their lives will be smashed. Alicia, the younger of the two daughters, is having her portrait painted by a cash-strapped but talented young painter who falls for her older sister Karolina. But then the rumours arrive, and, in their wake, the Nazis. The young lovers are parted, and the Oderfeldts’ panicked departure is only the beginning. The portrait of Alicia becomes a symbol and touchstone for some of the book’s wider themes – family, history, endurance – and the machinery by which the family story, many years later, achieves a kind of redemption.
The Codes of Love
Hannah Persaud
Muswellbrook Press, $29.99
Credit:
If you have ever met or heard of anyone who was happy in an open marriage, you might have more sympathy for the characters in this book than I did. Ryan and Emily have been married for 22 years and Emily laid down the ‘‘open marriage’’ rule as a condition of marrying Ryan at all. He accepted it because he feared he would lose her if he didn’t. Most readers will know that this is all a recipe for disaster. The marriage has been cracked for a long time, but it takes a third and fourth party, both much younger, to bring things to a crisis. All four characters are utterly humourless and quite awful. The only real surprise is that this book is so readable in spite of everything, saved to some extent by the writing itself, by the clever way the characters’ professions are woven into the story, and by the beautiful landscapes of Wales.
When Rain Turns to Snow
Jane Godwin
Lothian, $16.99
Credit:
This novel follows the pattern of much contemporary YA fiction in covering an assortment of topics that are often fraught for adolescents trying to find their place in the world. Here it’s broken families, adoption, IVF, homosexuality, fragile friendships, and assorted forms of bullying. The picture that Jane Godwin draws of teenage behaviour emerges as something all too recognisable. At the same time, the main characters Lissa and Reed, both of them generous and responsible as far as their youth will allow, find strength and support in each other as they deal with serious life problems that include some unrelentingly vicious cyber-bullying and a very sick baby. The management of a teenage narrative voice by an adult writer is harder than people think, but Godwin makes Lissa’s voice credible and consistent.
The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman
Julietta Henderson
Bantam, $32.99
Credit:
Norman Foreman is 11 and he has more than his share of troubles. The chronic skin disease is bad enough, but it pales into insignificance beside the fact that he has just lost his best friend. His mother Sadie is also not best placed for success in life. And yet, with the help of an elderly friend, they bravely set off from Cornwall to Edinburgh so that Norman, an aspiring stand-up comic, can try to score a gig at the Fringe. They are also trying to track down Norman’s father, if only they knew who he was. There are some nasty things lurking in the various back-stories, so this funny, charming and warm-hearted book never sinks into the lake of treacle that one might have feared. Part quest, part road trip, the story is told by Norman and Sadie in turns, and there are at least a dozen secondary characters who are equally well drawn.