Menchuu Ki Ki itibaren Ori, South Galela, North Halmahera Regency, North Maluku, Endonezya
loved this one.
She is joining our writer's group, so I am biased. Review to follow shortly. A fast exciting read about young drug smugglers from Coventry in the 80s. But far from parochial: action takes place across Europe, Spain, Albania, Italy, and in India. Told from three points of view - Pads, a middle class lad attracted to wheeler-dealering and drugs and money; Jez, a working calss local from a racist family who - don't think this gives away too much - cracks under the strain, and Mehmet an Albanian on the run (a revenge killing) across Europe. All men, and Packer expertly captures how this maleness affects them, the way they look at things (not just women, but she catches this too, the constant casual appraisal), the way honour and embarrassment trigger them, and feelings get shut off. For a first novel it is remarkable - it has pace and a beauty in the unravelling of plot (I'm not normally a plot-boy but appreciated this), and engaging, if hard nosed characters, Jez being the exception: I'd never been abroad. I'd been on a school trip to Wales once. That felt foreign... It was like a film where the scenery goes on and on. Maybe sometimes you feel the voice is a bit too writerly (although I enjoy those bits too), the same Jez: The white in his eyes is right creamy like old paper. Maybe. Mehmet too sometimes seems a little too Albanian, living by 'besa', 'fis' and 'gjak' (honour, family, blood), but by the end he has changed and his story is compelling: There are many things I remember from the day I went to murder Jules Greci. Yes I'm biased but this is truly gripping stuff.
This book was based on a wonderful, fascinating premise and I thought the characters were well-rounded and real. One thought that has disturbed me, however, is that the author made a point to say that in art--at least in painting--that a compostition shouldn't be overly ordered. The author even showed the protagonist, who was a servant girl to Vermeer, the famous Dutch painter, rearranging props in her master's studio... Vermeer agreed with the new arrangement--but I felt the author didn't follow her own rule artistically. She neatly tied up every odd and end in her own plot, and by story's end there never was a hint of chaos in her own words--and I was indeed looking for a little bit of chaos, somewhere, anywhere...