"Disappearance of Adele" by Graeme Macrae Burnet

An audio book, set in St Louis, Alsace.

Manfred (36) frequents a restaurant run by Pasteur and Marie where Adele (19) works. One night he sees her meeting a boy with a scooter. She disappears. Gorsky, a policeman, questions him. Manfred doesn't mention seeing Adele, not wanting to seem to be a voyeur.

Manfred goes to Strasburg sometimes, to a bar where he could pick up call-girls. He meets Alice in the building where they live. After their first date she invites him to have a night-cap. He doesn't take advantage.

Gorsky likes studying people, especially when they lie. He's married to Celine, with a daughter. Celine would like to move to a big city.

When a boy (reading Zola and the Existentialists), Manfred had met a girl, Juliette, in a yellow dress. They were immediately in love. He was brought up by grandparents. Her father was a lawyer. They met daily in a wood. On their last day, he tried touching her. He wasn't sure what to do. During sex he'd somehow straggled her. Gorsky had investigated. A vagrant had been sentenced, based on little evidence. The prosecution had done Gorsky's career no harm. We learn that Gorsky's father had a pawn shop. Sometimes he was a fence. He expected Gorsky to take over the shop. We learn how Gorsky met Celine.

Gorsky invites Manfred to correct his evidence. Gorsky tells Manfred that he gave Adele the creeps. After, Manfred tries to act normal. He thinks he's being watched. He thinks Alice might be spying on him.

Gorsky interviews the boy on the bike. He admitted to having cannibis. He said Adele was experienced. Gorsky realises that Manfred when a boy lived close to the woods. He tells Manfred he wants to interview him. Manfred flees to Strasburg, kills himself. Adele returns.

In a final chapter the translator writes that the novel was published in 1982. It didn't sell well until Chabrol made a film of it in 1988. The novel made the author unpopular in his home town of St Louis. He thought the film adaption made the hero look too much like him. At 38 he killed himself.

Other reviews

• motherbookerblog (As a reader, you have to work just as hard as Gorski to work out if Manfred is guilty or not.)
• Arnold Taylor (The way in which the author explores the minds of these two characters, particularly Bauman, is fascinating. He is never afraid to take the time to do this and never for one moment do we feel a need for more 'action'. However, when the action does come it is a complete surprise and we are left to contemplate the sadness of a life that never really got going, that was spent aimlessly and – except for one brief period – almost completely alone. This is a crime novel but it is so much more than that, and whilst it owes a lot to Simenon, it is in no way diminished by that comparison.)

"The phoenix ballroom" by Ruth Hogan

Venetia (74) attends the funeral of her husband Hawk (84) in the church where they were married. Liberty (48, single after a long affair with her married boss) has found out that her mother didn't leave her the house. She's left something in trust that she'll get if she behaves appropriately, according to stipulations that were left with the solicitor. Liberty becomes Venitia's helper.

Venitia's son Heron has gone with his wife to France, leaving their 10 y.o. son Kite in a nearby boarding school. He feels different from the other boys. Venetia shows him that she's different too - she's bald. He runs away, then becomes a dayboy. Heron's marriage is in trouble.

The ballroom where Venetia and Hawk met has become a meeting place for a spiritualist church. Liberty's mother used to go to it. It's threatened with closure. They all go to help at the drop-in.

2 male guests at the wake haven't been identified. There are hints that Hawk might have had a gay history. Venetia buys the old ballroom. Kite finds old posters and programmes in the ballroom's attic, plus a sign that someone's been up there. Venetia hints of some old unpleasantness there involving a man.

Crow watches from a distance. His wife left him, he drank and he's homeless in Bedford. He's Polish. He visits the ballroom attic sometimes, leaving origami pieces for Kite. There's a fire while he's there. He breaks a leg.

Hawk had saved Venetia from an attempted rape that had caused her to lose her hair. Her lack of confidence caused her to stop seeing her dance partner and marry Hawk.

One of the mystery men turns out to have been Hawk's love of his life. When the ballroom re-opens, Venetia's old widowered dance partner turns up. Heron's wife has left him. He and Liberty seem happy together, so the solicitor gives her the keys to a beach house. Crow becomes the building's caretaker.

I don't like "she thought to herself" or "he smiled to himself" but such phrases seem commonplace nowadays.

Other reviews

• dearauthor (Some tragedy occurs ... but no one lets these things keep them down or depressed. ... There’s no sense that anything will end badly for these people. No tension and no spice. For readers looking for a book that is the equivalent of a dozen sugary donuts, washed down with sweet ice tea while gently swinging in a hammock on a not too humid or hot day, this should fit the bill. )

"Ash Mountain" by Helen Fitzgerald

An audio book

Fran has returned to the Australian town where she was brought up to look after her father, who's had a stroke. She sees in the distance a fire that's approaching the city. She has a son Dante who she had when she was 15. He's now 29. He spent years in Italy. She also has a daughter Veronica (Vonny) who visits in the weekends.

Chapter 2 is 10 days before the fire. Successive chapters get closer. We also get flashbacks to 30 years before, and to what happens at the time of the fire - ostriches burn; passengers burn in their cars.

Fran's Italian mother died in a road accident. Vincent is Fran's ex-partner. He's just started living with someone else.

Fran's one-night stand when 15 was with an older schoolboy (called "The Border" during family chats) who's going to be married soon at a ceremony organised by a neighbour (now nicknamed The Captain) who's a man Fran liked (he was kind to her at school though not attractive then). His brother killed himself soon after befriending Fran at school. His wife has died. His daughter Rose is quickly sexually attracted to Vonny. The two of them find in a nunnery a box of Fran's which now has suggestive photos of young Fran, and they tell the Captain about it, who tells Fran. Fran asks the nunnery about it. They return a box to her, without the photos. She later spies Father Frank moving boxes.

Before the fire, Rose punches a boy who'd been racist and anti-lesbian on church grounds. The church bans Fran and family. Fran confesses to Priest Frank that she fantacises about attacking perverted priests.

As the wall of fire advances, some decide to retreat to bunkers. Fran chooses who to save. She saves the nun who taught her. Father Frank dies.

During the fire Fran thinks she can see red boots on the water tower. Rose or Vonny? She discovers that Vonny wasn't wearing the boots.

Emotional surprises seem too easily received.

other reviews

• Goodreads
• Reading Matters

"Upgrade" by Blake Crouch

An audio book.

It's the future. Denver. The narrator Logan is in the GPA (Gene Protection Agency) trying to stop gene-related offences - pink gorillas, new dangerous designer bacteria. He and partner Nadine take Soren in for questioning. He gives them an address. They raid it. It's booby trapped. He's infected with a virus that improves his body and mind.

His mother's gene-editing project had gone wrong, causing a famine that killed 200 million people. He was in prison for years. He has a wife and teenage daughter. His sister lives far away. The rest of his family (including his twin) are dead.

He's kidnapped and put in isolation by his boss. He's told that his mother is alive. She threatened the GPA that if they didn't stop suppressing gene research she'd release a gene drive (something that not only edits the host's genes but those of the host's offspring too). Logan suggests that with an IQ of 200+ and a super-human body he might be best equipped to hunt her down.

His sister Kara gets him out. She's been upgraded. They decode their changed DNA and work out that part of it is a map reference. They find their dead mother there, and a laptop. On the laptop is a video of her recalling happy days, then her explaining that she's killing herself because she has dementia. She has a plan to improve mankind before it's destroyed.

He suspects Kara is going to kill him so that she can carry out their mother's plan. He escapes, wounded.

He's trying to work out who he is. He can recall everything. He can multitask. He has sensory overload. A year later he's established a new identity. Playing poker, he exploits his improved maths and body-language-reading skills to make some money. When there a mystery deadly virus outbreak in an isolated town, he goes there and takes DNA samples. About 10% of people die, the rest are upgraded like he was. He tracks down his sister, who's expecting him. She's responsible for the experiment and want to try it worldwide. She has a team working on it, so killing her will do no good.

He returns to his old place, sees his wife with another man on a date. He has trouble keeping the old Logan under control. Using the DNA samples he works out how to upgrade himself to match Kara - in an accelerated, risky way. He contacts old colleagues to access their computing resources. He works out which scientists and potential spreaders are helping Kara. He realises that Nadine had worked for Kara. She tries to kill him. His old boss helps him assemble a raid party on the lab Kara's using.

He kills his sister and escapes. The lab blows up.

3 years later he makes himself known to his daughter, wife and her new husband. He tells them that he's written a compassion upgrade, and has spread it the way his sister had planned to distribute her upgrade. Then he disappears. He's changed too much and he's a wanted man.

I enjoyed much of this, though the description of the final raid seemed too long to me.

"Days at the Morisaki Bookshop" by Satoshi Yagisawa

An audio book

After losing her boyfriend and her job, the 25 y.o. protagonist works and lives in her uncle's secondhand bookshop in a Tokyo street of other bookshops. She becomes a booklover and gets to know the clients. She becomes matchmaker for 2 of them.

When she confides in her uncle, things don't seem so bad. Her ex boyfriend's fiancee dumps him. The protagonist learns that her aunt left years ago.

She moves out. 1.5 years later her aunt returns. The protagonist befriends Wada in a cafe. He's there hoping that his girlfriend returns. He suggests that she reads a novel that has a similar plot.

Her uncle asks her to uncover her aunt's secrets. The aunt suggests an overnight stay with the protagonist in nearby mountains. They stay in a hotel that she ran away to work in after she couldn't cope with a miscarriage. She's in remission, which is why she returned. When they return to Tokyo the aunt soon disappears again. This time the uncle correctly guesses that she'll be in the chapel where she mourned her last child. Wada's girlfriend returns.

"Lies" by T.M. Logan

An audio book

Joe, driving with his little son William (4), sees his wife Mel's car. He stops and with his son follows her into a hotel. He sees her argue with Ben, an ex-classmate who's a tech/computing millionnaire. He talks to Ben in the underground car-park. Ben thinks Joe must surely know by now. Know what? They tussle. Ben falls, unconscious. John rushes home with his son. His wife (she does HR) at first denies she was there, then says it's a confidential business matter. He's lost his phone. Pictures taken with it of the car-park appear online, with captions about him being a loser.

Mel tells Joe that she'd talked Ben out of hiring thugs to hurt a man who'd tried to sabotage Ben's work. Beth (Ben's wife) turns up at Joe and Mel's to say that Ben got back late on the night of the hotel meeting. Drunk, and swearing about Joe, Ben disappeared with a gun.

Beth confronts Mel among friends, showing her stuff that's on one of Ben's mobile. There are compromising txts and photos of Mel nude in the house. At home she admits to Joe that she started an affair 4 months ago but had ended it. She'd told Ben that she had to end it because Joe had threatened her. She criticises Joe's lack of ambition (he's a teacher) and says she'd been bored. A faked Facebook post shows Joe in handcuffs. He's suspended from work. The police think Ben might be dead. They're suspicious about Joe, so Joe want to give police proof that Ben's alive, planning a meeting with him, etc. He finds Mel's hidden phone. An escort agency number is on it, and Ben's, and a legal firm specialising in divorce. A tech wizard, Ben seems in control of Joe's PC.

Joe's house had been broken into. A rifle cartridge had been left behind. Ben's been posting him threatening messages. The police think Joe's been sending them to himself. Joe realises that Ben's been in control of his phones. He realises that Beth and her daughter are in trouble and rushes to their house. He's fallen into a trap. Beth and Mel are lovers. They've killed Ben and plan to kill him. But Beth's teenage daughter has been suspicous and is recording the scene.

Months later Beth and Mel are in prison. Joe lies to William that his mummy will be back soon.

Reading the reviews, I see several opinions about the ending. I didn't expect it. It reveals that the plotting is more complex than it first seemed. The characterisation is sometimes secondary to the plot (e.g. Joe seems very tolerant of Beth's repeated lies, and surely Joe over the years must have seen clues) but I think the sacrifice is worth it.

I'm not keen on -

• "... an icicle of realisation sliding into my stomach"
• "Larsen sighed audibly"

"Spillway" by Ian Pople (Carcanet, 2022)

A "New and Selected" with poems from Antagonish Review, Manchester Review, The North, PN Review, Poetry, Stand, etc. There are about 60 pages of new material - about a third of the book.

It's not my type of poetry. These are parts of a thoughtful piece which goes on for many pages - way beyond my attention span.

• "In the photograph,// she neither looks/ nor does not/ at the camera./ She went away/ and there was nothing" (p.51)
• "Without the doll's house/ which her father made,/ which was her house/ and beyond it, is/ the darkness, unreturned" (p.59)
• "Samuel Palmer knew/ how each leaf lies/ clear of the next/ in wind-held sun/ where hover flies float,// the stark implications/ of trees at hand, their/ canopy's calm belief/ in time - this week/ and the week after next" (p.62)

Quite often he follows up a simile I like with one that's baffling. Here are more things I don't get -

• The 10-lined "Owl" begins with "Stubby Venus on stubby-fingered wind,/ that flapped above a childhood park,/ a rail to somersault on over gravel." Eh? "In memoriam Dupree Bolton" also mentions owls - "sluggish/ as if not confident, an aphorist// of predation. Its flat wide face/ divided about the beak" which makes more sense.
• One of "Three Bagatelles" is "She grabbed my hand as we headed/ off on the path above the sea, by the/ commemoration bench for one whose/ favourite place it was to sit and watch"
• "Our book" begins with "Your shadow moving on in front/ as if upon a lead, the lights quietly// going down, with the drip of reason/ onto ritual"
• "Breathing is often outside the face,/ just out of reach of the mouth;// like gaze which is, itself, memory,/ like a shadow which falls across/ a darkened doorway" (p.140)
• "Continuation is both waiting/ and surprise, as if he stood to see// both beermats and moorland heather/ in the wall mirror of the pub" (p.140)
• "And when the map chest// was tidy and relocked, and when/ the church was spilled as if its flesh// were sand, the rain came over the hill, like water blown over the heel// of my hand, the hand that was no good/ there, and no good anywhere else." (p.144)
• "like/ the words you walked among,// one foot stopping, then the/ other foot stopping, like// the rain that later runs down/ windows of an accelerating train" (p.181)
• "Certainly a wheel may need centering,// so brake lights shine at the cross roads." (p.186)

I like "The same condemnation".

Other reviews

• Jonathan Timbers (Pople is a Christian existential poet ... In his philosophy, God is transcendant rather than imminent. There is no way to Him other than through acceptance. This creates a dilemma for a Christian poet like Pople whose subjects are meticulously observed. Throughout Pople’s work there is a tension between the seen and the unseen.)