Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris

It's a new school year at St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, bringing with it the annual batch of new teachers, one of whom is a relentless psychopath intent on destroying this bastion of upperclass education. Roy Straitley - eccentric, intelligent, beloved Classics instructor - has been a fixture at St Oswald's for almost thirty years. Devoted to the school and to his boys, Straitley eventually is the only obstacle preventing the ultimate ruin of the school, staff and students. The story unfolds through three voices:

• Straitley
• the malicious, vengeful and cunning new arrival
• Snyde, the child that the once was our villain

Gentlemen & Players underscores the class differences inherent in the British social system - differences that the young Snyde felt acutely and that produced the monster plotting the utter annihilation of St Oswald's and those who love it. Snyde's story is particularly riveting, and the mystery as to the identity of the grown-up evil-doer is maintained until the very end. Straitley's voice is truly a treat to read - he's a witty, stubborn old luddite with a soft heart. Harris' writing really brings him to life. I could hear his accent and inflections as I read the words on the page. Gentlemen is beautifully composed. Characterization is excellent, the plot is compelling and if you're not really, really attentive to detail, the end is quite surprising.

The Devil's Labyrinth by John Saul

Let's see - a creepy Catholic school; a dark, winding labyrinth under said school; a secret, seriously creepy, chapel; rites of exorcism; possessed, de-possessed and re-possessed teens, both male and female; a troubled 15-year old boy; some yicky scenes with garbage, rats, and a decomposing body; a fanatical priest; an heirloom artifact; the Pope; a terrorist plot. Really over-the-top. A messy stew. My first book by John Saul - will not repeat the experience. I found it really easy to figure out who the bad guy or guys were while wading through blood and gore which made it all not just yucky, but boring - yuckily boring. Oh for Pete's sake, blow up them all up and get it over with! Horrific, but, for me, not horror at its best.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

When Europeans discovered the New World, they triggered "fuku americanus" (or just "fuku"), a demon curse and doom brought down upon North America and particularly potent in the Dominican Republic. Diaz' book is a truly North American tale, weaving together both Spanish and English, in the story of one Dominican family pursued by implacable fuku.
Obese, nerdy, and ultimately winsome, Oscar wants passionate, true love, but he can't even get a girl to kiss him. In a culture priding itself on the romantic prowess of its menfolk, Oscar is a failure. He's a computer-game geek with no sex appeal. But, this is not just Oscar's life story, it is also that of his sister, his mother and his grandfather, and of the Dominican Republic under the bloody shadow of Trujillo. Oscar, a first-generation citizen of the USA, lives in New Jersey, but his fuku, his roots, are deeply in the DR.
Until I went to Puerto Plata as a tourist, I couldn't even find the DR on a map, had no idea that Santo Domingo is the oldest city of the New World, and outside of a couple of baseball players, did not even know that the USA was home to a large Dominican community. In language liberally flavored with urban swagger and Spanish slang, on pages peppered with explanatory footnotes, Diaz gives us the fusion and separation of two Americas.
Reading this book was an experience - it was totally different from anything I had ever read before. I'm going to be a really poor reviewer here because I think Walter Mosley expressed it so eloquently in his statement on the book's back jacket cover - I'm just going to quote him: ". . . a masterpiece about our New World, its myths, curses and bewitching women . . . it is a rousing hymn about the struggle to defy bone-cracking history with ordinary, and extraordinary, love." So well-put and I couldn't agree more.

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Literary equivalent of watching a movie filmed with a hand-held camera. Choppy scenes - immediate feel of being there as the trauma of the past bleeds into the present. Keith Neudecker stumbles out of the dust and carnage of the World Trade Center and back into his estranged wife's life. Sooty, bloody, clutching a stranger's briefcase, he arrives on Lianne's doorstep. DeLillo shows the impact of 9-11 on North American society through Keith, his family and acquaintances. In the last chapter, after exploring how the trauma has affected the national psyche (Lianne develops a hatred-tinged paranoia focusing on her Muslim neighbor, her mother ends a long-standing relationship because of her lover's political views, Keith has an affair and becomes a professional gambler), DeLillo shows us what happened to Keith when the plane hit his tower. Along the way, he has also intertwined the story of Hamad, one of the hijackers, relating 9-11 from his viewpoint. DeLillo manages to make it all work to create a picture of things changed forever in a moment. It's a strangely detached tale, told through isolated conversations and snippets of events. I felt as though the book was remote and somewhat cold and the characters like paper dolls. A shadow play. Not really my favorite style, but I can appreciate DeLillo's mastery and do see why he had garnered accolades. But, I just couldn't get involved with the characters and was glad when I reached the last chapter.

The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis

It is almost impossible to give a plot synopsis of The Thin Place. A lot happens, but it's mysterious and mystical, and not easily grasped or categorized. This is a really original book - the tone is lyrical and mesmerizing. People and animals have voices and exert equal impact in Davis' universe - three young girls, beloved dogs, an old woman, a couple, a tenacious beaver - all have stories here. There are deaths and near deaths as she paints the mundane with a magic brush. The Thin Place, found at no identifiable location, existing at the periphery of our limited vision, is where past and present mingle, while life and death are an infinite mesh of time and place. Davis gives us metaphysical snapshots of humans and animals sliding in and around time and space.

The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder

I have used the word "charming" in my last two reviews. Perhaps it was weak writing on my part to rely on the same word in back to back reviews, but I felt totally justified given the fact that my last two selections are, well, completely charming. I can assure you that I won't be using that word to describe The Devil of Nanking. Gripping, riveting, fascinating - yes - a compelling, grab-you-by-the-throat-page-turner - oh, yes. Charming, delightful, soothing, lovely? Not even remotely. Devil is a magnificent thriller, but it's not for those who favor light reading.
The plot involves interlaced mysteries all with roots in one of the most horrific events of the 20th century - the 1937 "Rape of Nanking" by the invading Japanese army. Grey, a really, really disturbed young woman (believe me, she's really unbalanced), is obsessed with finding proof of something she read in an orange book that disappeared. She tracks down Shi Chongming, a university professor and survivor of the Nanking atrocities, because she thinks he possesses an old film that will prove the truth of what she read in her childhood and show that she was not insane, that whatever it was really happened. Shi Chongming, while not admitting that he has the film, sends Grey on a mission to discover what substance a vicious gangster, Fuyuki, consumes to stay alive. Hayder juggles mysteries, linking them as the plot unfolds one creepy, ghastly, step at a time.

• What did Grey read?
• Why was she committed to an asylum?
• What happened to Shi Chongming and his wife during the 1937 horror?
• What does the film show?
• What is the medicine given to Fuyuki by his Nurse? (And who is the Nurse?)
  
• Who is the Devil of Nanking?

The story alternates between Grey's trance-like account of her search and Shi Chongming's 1937 diary. Hayder takes you to the edge in each chapter, switching back and forth between voices, making it impossible to put down the book. Submerging the reader in a surreal atmosphere of evil, malevolence permeates the setting. While the ending came as no surprise, the powerful ride to the ultimate revelation of truth was great storytelling.

Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith

Charming. The perfect book to put your harried life into perspective. A bit of shelter from the frenzy of the modern treadmill. If you're feeling frazzled, a cup of tea and some time spent with Mma Precious Ramotswe will sooth your senses.

Mma Ramotswe, founder of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, solves mysteries - not murders, kidnappings or armed robberies, but little mysteries of everyday life. Her cases here focus on food stolen from a school, a doctor who apparently doesn't know how to take blood pressure, and the sudden uneasy atmosphere at a game preserve.
The joy in reading this series lies not just in finding out "whodunit," but in savouring the setting and visiting with Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi (star graduate of the Botswana Secretarial School), and Mr J L B Matekoni (Precious' husband and master mechanic). As usual, there are many personal problems to contemplate at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Mma Makutsi is engaged to Mr Radiphuti, but could her feminist views jeopardize their relationship? Can Mr Polopetsi and his rich uncle be reconciled? And, then there's Aunty Emang, the Dear Abby of The Daily News , whose answers seem overly curt. It's a trip to a simpler, quieter place where there's time to watch the small things, cogitate a bit and converse leisurely with others. A sweet balm for tense souls. It's also very nice to know that such places exist, as McCall Smith creates this world in loving, believable detail. Pick any book from the series - highly recommended.