The Interpretation of Murder – Jed Rubenfeld – Book Review

In the previous post I reviewed one of my favourite writers, Georges Simenon, and the astounding book that is called Memoirs of Maigret in which he walks through the days of his famous detective, and supposedly the latter corrects the errors that have populated Simenon’s novels about the real cases solved by Maigret. In fact, I pointed out that one of the the most entertaining features of Simenon’s writing style is the gems hidden between the lines, in the way a detective inquiry develops, particularly through the eyes and mind of the famous policier, who needs to understand the reasons and the meanings behind some gestures, who needs to understand the criminal’s mind before to be able to catch him. He has to think like him, to see like him, then he can follow his steps and get him.

It is not by chance, then, that the next novel I would like to present here talks about psychology and murder, and involves the paramount expert of psychology, the far famed Sigmund Freud himself. The novel’s title intrigues straight away, for it paraphrases the title of Freud’s most famous book: “the Interpretation of Dreams”, a book that marked a cornerstone of the psychoanalysis theory. In fact, the author is far from being a psychologist; Jed Rubenfeld is a lawyer, and for some reason he took a deep interest in Freud up to the point of writing a full novel with the doctor as a main character.

The novel develops onto a background setting that picks up from real historical events. The main events take place around New York in 1909, at the time when Sigmund Freund, Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi -that is, the founder of psychoanalysis and his school – arrived in the USA. The journey happened for real, Freud was invited to hold some lectures in the United States and to receive an honorary prize; however, a journey that was supposed to be of pleasure and a great triumph for the Austrian turned out to be a dramatic event in the mind of Freud, who spoke of America in unusual defiant terms afterwards. Rubenfeld explanation is ingenious, connecting the uneasiness to a series of events that happen while Stratham Younger, the protagonist and hero of the book, American disciple of Freud, tries to solve the inexplicable events related to some murders.

Freud and Younger need to work hard on a girl, Miss Acton, who is unable to speak after being found tied to a chandelier the night after a murder occurs. She has to be cured using psychoanalisys to regain speech and be able to actually testify on what has happened and how. In the process, Freud and Younger enter in a deep debate on the usefulness of the Austrian doctor’s practices and the importance of the hidden sexual meanings to Freud theory and to the real understanding of what’s behind the surface, what impedes to be or to become something.

In the book, moreover, there is a hint and description of the famous fallout between Jung and Freud; in reality, it happened later in the years, but it helps definitely to make up for the relative mystery of Freud’s disgust with America. However, the book is extremely well written, and the plot keeps the reader up with suspense until the last chapter. The reader gets a detailed insight of psychoanalysis practices and theories, and most of the speeches are directly taken from the real writings and letters of Freud and his affiliates.

I believe that Jed Rubenfeld is one of the finest authors our days; The Interpretation of Murder and its following The Death Instinct are among the finest thrillers written in the past years. Moreover, the historical reconstruction is of the most accurate kind, making Rubenfeld a great inventor of fiction and a wonderful psychoanalysis passionate, who is able to transmit a great deal of his abilities to the reader. In the end, that is the great quality of a great writer: being able to invent a world and a story that challenges the reader mentally, stimulating his fantasy and the passions that move his heart and his soul. Even more, that can dig into the reader’s mind and prevent prevision, surprising him with fine twists and interesting riddles; a writer must be able to surprise and empathize with his reader. Rubenfeld does it wonderfully, which makes him a recommended read, definitely.

Have you read him? what do you think?

Memoirs of…Georges Simenon – Book Reviews – Maigret Revisited

Few days ago I was walking home from the station, strolling through the same old journey that I had done so many times before, knowing that it would be the last time before leaving London. On the train, for one of those coincidences that add spices to life, I had just finished reading a very interesting book: Memoirs of Maigret, a book from Georges Simenon that sent interesting thoughts and ideas to my mind, on the most famous French detective of all times, his author and life chances in general.

For some reasons, one of my favourite writers has yet  to enter the glories of a post on this blog, but it is with some scent of melancholy that I am writing down these words. In fact, reading Memoires of Maigret, finished just minutes before getting off the train, marked the beginning of the last week I spent in one of my favourite cities, London. In some ways it appeared to my mind, still soaked with the words that Simenon put into the mouth of the famous Parisian detective, as though they meant something beyond the page, beyond the meaning of a simple ideal clarification over the events of a lifetime of a policeman. It reminded me of the many roads the life lays before you, ready to take the one more suitable to your tastes, always in doubt whether to embark on the best or the worst, according to the feeling of the moment.

Maigret, in his reasonings supposedly put on paper at a later stage of his life, does not expect himself as a good judge of the years gone by. A quote from Tiziano Terzani explains it better: “do you think history is a right judge? they asked me, No, I dare reply”, and that is the way it goes on the ex-detective, analyzing the past events with the eye of the afterwards. I think I feel the same now that another turn changes my days: you cannot judge your gestures but with an afterward insight, and it is always with a safe mind that you would need to consider your past.   

However, as Maigret goes on explaining, history and experience are two features that express your own self or test your ability to get out in the world and become someone. You need to learn the rules, though. You need to experience the many varied faces that takes a criminal, the alternative expressions of a unique criminal, the incredible amendments you have to make to your prejudices to get out of your own little egg. You have to learn, but also to be prone understand the modification, with no ways out of it. In life, things can work out well or badly, but they are defined by your judgement, by that peculiar way that makes every human a single personality, a single and unique  entity. However, Maigret explains, sorts of life pave the way as well.
In his career, more than once opponents faced the same dilemma as the policeman: they find themselves in such a position that they completely understand the psychology of the adversary, but anyhow they must carry on with their duty, there is no way out.

The one becomes so similar to the other that distances and differences fade. Isn’t it true for many other things in life? once you reach a position, a job that you feel like it is yours. You carry it on, ethically and firmly as the position requires, because you feel you belong to it, you feel like it is what you need to do. It is the opposite though, when you are actually going through some career path that leads you in the wrong direction, when you are obliged or constricted into some dress that is not yours that things get out of hand, thart you become frustrated and you can’t cope with things.

Well, Maigret knows none of the previous, he is born a policeman and he will be all his life. Moreover, the idea that Simenon wanted to give of him – I forgot to mention, his memoirs are written to correct the errors that Simenon himself had done writing fiction about the famous detective – is often exaggerated, too much of this and too few of that. It leaves no doubts around it, in the way SImenon drafts these memoirs he wants to confirm and make clear the main themes that the figure of the most famous detective of Paris put together: the good man, loyal to the family and to his wife, who is committed to his job, and therefore he knows it so well that he knows the many faces of the human perverrsion, he does not approve it or despise it, he knows he needs to understand it through his skin to be able to catch the criminal.

Life is like that to some extent: if you cannot understand your own self, get through with what you are doing or with whom you are with – a relationship, a job, a commitment – how can you fulfil it?

Then, another of the reasons why Commissaire Maigret’s books are a great read and Simenon falls among one of the best writers of the Twentieth Century: to understand, to wear someone else’s shoes, is to understand the reasons behind crime and passion, behind life accidents. How can there be a better understanding of the things of our own? What do you think?

Imperium – Robert Harris – Book Reviews

I have to admit, doing some research for the previous posts I wrote,I got caught by a sort of unrest, and I started to look for books and references to ancient Rome, its costumes and its traditions.

No wonder, I ended up with many things piled up onto my virtual bookshelf, from Cicero’s orationes, to the quo vadis? I managed to retrieve the free ebook, to Robert Harris book on Cicero himself, called Imperium.

It is with great pleasure that I found again those good feelings about imagining yourself walking around the biggest capital of the ancient world, Rome, rich of monuments, statues and marbles that would make any city if the time blush at its magnificence.

In fact, when I started to read Imperium, memories of Pompeii came back, and I had a feeling the challenge the author was putting himself into, that is, to write the story of the most famous lawyer of the imperial Rome, right at the moment when the Republic was put under pressure by fights, would be too great to undergo.

However, from the first lines I got caught into it, and finished in the space of few days. Well, now I am really looking forward to reading the next episode of the series Robert Harris wrote on Rome. Imperium is well written, with material nicely set out and organised smartly. Given that the history of Cicero’s life had already been written many and many times, the way the author approaches the matter is unique and appealing, creating great expectations on the chapters to come.

As in the case of Pompeii, the research the author did prior to writing is stunning. Historical events are assembled and concatenated puzzlingly well, making up for a plausible historical  account as well as for a good piece of literature. The book tells the story of Cicero, his fight in tribunals to raise as the most shining star among Roman lawyers, and his mixing up with the political intrigues that would eventually cause the end of the Republic. Battles in Senate between Cicero, Verre, Crass and Pompeus swindle quickly through the pages, supposedly accounted for by Tiro, Cicero’s Greek slave, the one who invented stenography and who was one of Cicero’s closest associates fire many years.

The great political career of the equites representative- the cavalry rising middle class so despised by Roman aristocracy – is walked through fondly, and with the cure and attention an historian would do. Sometimes it is a little bit too far fetched, but in the end to collate such a huge amount of information into a single novel may really result in a difficult operation to do.

In the end, a very good book, entertaining and appealing to the point, and a particularly well conceived historical account of Cicero’s events.

Getting to the last page, the book’s sense of completeness is acute and intense, giving the reader the impression of yet another great work of art from Robert Harris.

Ides Of March – Valerio Massimo Manfredi

The first time I heard of Valerio Massimo Manfredi I was fairly young, and it was those years when Cristian Jacque was selling great amounts of books writing embarrassing series on Egyptian Pharaohs, unfortunately lame and weak in content. Even though, compared to some Fifty Shades of Anything was probably high quality literature. The days were those where books had high quality fantasy drawings on the covers, and I have to admit that at that time I were more – as I am now, anyways – into thrillers. Therefore, once I got taken aback by a poorly conceived Jacque book, I put all those old age historical thrillers into the same cauldron, avoiding them all at once.

However, they say that years bring wisdom, to me it has brought a capacity of keeping on reading more than one book at time and of many different kinds, thus I have a slight tendency of trying to vary my reads. Following the same logic of Bart Simpson’s Hamster, a couple of years ago I were wandering about a station and I thought I could make use of a good book, and choosing almost random had already brought me luck in more than one occasion, so I persevered. A couple of days before I had watched by chance, while over at my parents, an episode of a tv series on tragic episodes in old history made by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, and a bloody red book caught my eye, bearing his name on it and the title of the Ides of March. I was intrigued by the title, so I went on and bought it, hoping it will bring me the same feelings of some other books I was reading.

Valerio Massimo Manfredi is an Italian archaeologist, who took onto writing historical fiction and working on TV historical shows, after several years spent in academia. He wrote a trilogy on Alexander the Great, and several other books. As mentioned, he became very famous at the time when historical novels were as famous as historical drama in TV nowadays.

The Ides of March refer to a very famous period of time in the Roman empire, when Julius Caesar is killed and Ottavianus Augustus wins the battle for succession, thereby starting the so-called “Imperial” Roman era. The day of the Ides of March, the 15th of the month, Caesar was stabbed 77 times to death in the Senate, following a coup that lead Brutus, who was Caesar adopted son, to be the first one to stab the former general to death.

Manfredi’s book is extremely accurate, reconstructing in detail how the events unfolded and how Caesar inexplicably went to on until he faced his destiny despite the high number of advises. As fictional characters that sustain the novel, the writer introduces a series of figures that run against time to warn Caesar and prevent the forecasted end. The description and recreation of the sceneries and locations are extremely accurate, as it could not be otherwise, given the historical accuracy of Valerio Massimo Manfredi.’s researches. However, the book lacks something, a certain pace or rhythm or definition of the characters that make the book a bit incomplete. It sounds as though the books cannot take off itself the scent of being not deep enough, being the plot already given by the historic events.

I will be looking forward to reading something more from the author before to give a more thorough opinion of his work, but I was not so much impressed by this one. It has to be said, though, that if you feel like walking through the streets of Rome at the time of the Empire, it is a very enjoyable, precise and very much rich in descriptions piece of work. If you are looking for a thrilling experience into the last days of the man who made the Empire, well, maybe you may want to look elsewhere. In the end, Manfredi as a writer comes out as a great setting creator, a great organiser of scenic material.

Indeed, the book lacks the good complexity and intriguing plot that would have made it an outstanding read. If you would like to keep it on my shelf? Probably, but on the receding part of it! tell me what you think of it!

Pompeii – Robert Harris

My childhood has been populated by myths about the Roman Empire. Emperors, gladiators, pamphilii and cuturnii were a world surrounded by fascinating figures. Maybe it was because of Asterix and Obelix , the comic figures invented by Goscinny and Uderzo, depicting amazing Gallic fighters against the power of Rome, maybe because I lived closed to the ruins of Aquileia, the second Imperial capital, or simply because visiting Rome itself made the eyes of a small kid sparkling at the sight of the Colosseum and the old palaces. Hence, since the first time I put my hands on Quo Vadis? by Henryk SienkiwiczHenryk Sienkiwicz I loved the atmospheres, dreaming of a world with no electrical energy able to create and organise so many incredible achievements. Over the years, and studying more in depth the Roman world from a more accurate point of view, my enthusiasm was tackled down in part, but the dreams of a kid are difficult to forget.

It is for that very reason that when I put down Pompeii on my night table, my eyes were sparkling with the same lights of the boy who put his hands on an old column or admires a gladium. I already knew the stunning ability to recreate environments and feelings of Robert Harris, but I confess that I ended up being definitely appalled by that book.

The plot is fairly simple, although it suits perfectly the aim of the book, that is to describe the Roman society and the events prior the extraordinary eruption of the Vesuvius in 94 B.C., and particularly around the big commercial centres of Naples and Pompeii. A young aquarius, the water magistrate who looked after the aquaeductus maintenance, the majestic water main line that for miles and miles covered the overall Italian peninsula to bring water to the cities, is sent to replace a missing colleague. Marcus Attillius, that is his name, discovers, that the water sources are starting to weaken for some reason, and that strange events are changing the morphology of the Vesuvius. He starts on to a battle against time, on which he discovers a plot to steal water from the Empire by a certain Ampliatus, he falls in love with the daughter of this and in the process if fighting against the big patrician families of the area, he meets Plinius, who wrote about the eruption, and eventually fulfills the means of a millenary legend that states that a couple emerged from the aquaeductus right after the end of the disaster.

The novel, as I mentioned, is stunning not only because of the intrigue of the plot – which, it has to be said, suits perfectly the many metonymies placed here and there, but it is the historical reconstruction that amazes the reader. Robert Harris researches are thorough and align one by one unforgettable pictures of a world that anyone who is passionate about the Roman world would love to see. The style is entertaining, aligning fast paced scenes to extremely detailed pictures that vividly catch the imagination of the reader.

It has to be said, the comparison with the Nobel Prize winning Quo Vadis? is a bit overstretched, but Robert Harris is definitely worth is fame. I am in the process of getting the first two books of the trilogy on Cicero that he wrote, and I will keep you posted on when the last book will come out.

Meanwhile, I just decided that tonight I am going to watch some Asterix and Obelix, to refresh some good memory of old days!

To Blog or Not to Blog, that is the Question!

Several months have passed since the last time I added some content to the blog, and by sheer chance they match almost exactly the moment in which I moved to London and lived here ever since. Now that I am in the process of moving again, as a magical source poisoned with some inactivity, I manage to come back from the grave and post some new content, as I should have done more often.

In the past 8/9 months I read a lot, and when I say a lot I really mean it. I did not, for some reason, find either the time or the will to keep myself up to date with book reviewing, or at least I managed to do it in my mind but not on the screen. A great fault, it has to be said, particularly towards the ones who liked reading my posts and sharing my books, but more than other towards myself, for, as you all know, the will to write comes with the practice of writing, with the willing to put on paper ideas and thoughts, to make things right for the pleasure of the mind and of your own soul, to make you feel good.

I’ve got some time coming, where I will be adding slowly as many reviews as I can. And I will start from where I stopped, from that Roman fiction that caught my imagination since I was a kid. There will be some surprises I guess, being the books I read of many kinds and origin, but I am sure that the more we go along this path the better.

I am looking forward to see if you remember me!

D&P

Roman fiction

Wow, now I have it, it’s just ended up in my hands a book I really want to share with you, that is Robert Harris’ Pompeii. I don’t know if any of you has ever read anything from him, but I do think he is one of the best writers around at the moment. However, in this book the impressive research work that has been done is stunning, and I still believe that some of the parts of the book reminded me immediately of the late Sienkiewicz  and Quo Vadis?, and the same rhythm of an old song.

I will come back to it later in the week, because unfortunately it is a weird evening where loads of things need to be done, so I have long hours ahead of me. Meanwhile, I’d like you to have a good thought about another book you should read if you like Roman times and settings, which is The Ides of March by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. Not the same style, not the same kind, but I did like it as well.

Anything else to mention? well, once I come back with mr Harris, then I will tell you a bit more about literature and the Roman eternity

Have you visited a library lately? – #3

It is true, sometimes you loose track of what you are doing and think about something else, so in the past weeks, between copywriting, thinking, reading and travelling I haven’t been able to go back to posts that actually refer to each other and complete them in a way or another.

However, I was talking about the way you buy a book. There is a peculiar element that every marketing expert would tell you it is compulsory and that you have to think about when you start off a marketing campaign or you set up a business, which is not only the image of the product, but the setting in which the product is set itself.

In this case, there is no doubt that when you enter a bookshop to buy a book, you expect the place to be like some sort of image you make it in your head. In brief, it is the setting that helps your choice, as well as the book itself, its cover, the colours, the shape, etc.etc.

Funny thing is that is depends on the place or on the location, you could find yourself comfortable buying books even in the least expected places, like airports, news-stands, shopping malls, rather than bookshops themselves. I mean, if you are like me, readoholics, you tend to choose attentively the books you buy and you dedicate a certain time, generally a long one, to the activity itself, being it in a public library or in the limiest rotten-mould smelling under-stair shop that sells books.

So, I made myself a mental note to notice and have a look to the next places I go to buy or sneak at books, and maybe write a bit about it, for I believe that sometimes it can enlighten some own inner choices you would not know about before you start.

Anyway, since I am running out of time to write a quick post that is already becoming too long. if it ever happens you are in London, and have to wait for half an hour, an hour, two hours, for that friend or wonderful woman that is letting you boil over her arrival, don’t worry, there is a place you can go to. And, fantastically enough, it is very close to Oxford street and Tottenham Court Road, in case you are a tourist, or in case it is around the place you are going to meet that person. Have a look at the upper part of Charing Cross Road, you will find tons of bookshops of every kind and form: from the classic chains like WHM and Waterstones, to the little dusty cabins that are the ones I prefer, that sell second-hand little pieces of history stashed in cases.
Well, I could loose myself for hours while I am around there. Among the chains, I have to see that in terms of choice given, organisation and setting, Foyles is a prime. Let me know what you think!

A Perfect Spy – John Le Carrè

Exhausting length, astonishing troubled plot, strangely wordy but rich of inner analysis that always makes for a great book, A Perfect Spy is a wonderful John Le Carrè’s masterpiece. It has to be said, it takes patience and a quite a long while to get to the last page of it, but it is worth the effort, when you get to the end you have owned John Le Carrè’s ability to wow you till the last page, always quietly and with good style.

The storyline is simple to tell in few words. A long-standing British Spy disappears, right in the middle of a crisis over evidence of leaks of sensible information to Soviet Block agents. A chase follows, intertwined with flashbacks and long introspective analysis of a life spent in the Service by one of the best and most appreciated agents, culminates with pathos that builds up in the last two chapters of the book.

A Perfect Spy is the story of the life of Magnus Pym, of his hard relationship with life and with the unbelievable con man who is his father Rick. Of a good wife Mary, provided by the Service, and of a mentor and companion, Pym’s controller and forger Jack Brotherhood. It is the story of a double Czech agent who once was a German, Axel, that becomes the beloved and real true figure in the bunch of lies of a man who has never known anything else but forged realities throughout his all life. It is the story of a father who wants to be real for the other little bit of reality life has owned him with: Tom Pym, his son, so that in the end Magnus Pym decides to tell his truth, his whole life of lies aligned one by one, brick by brick, one fact after the other, writing it all in a memoir addressed to Tom.

I am not going to tell you how the book ends, but it is a journey through the world of a man who’s never known right or wrong on the basis of ethics, the standard ethics of Western societies, and had to understand his place in terms of the wicked relationship with his father, the sick relationship with women and the perverse relationship with love. Pym understands love on the basis of truth with only one person, who’s interests are too biased to eventually save Pym from his own destiny.

This book is John Le Carrè at his maximum height, crossing styles and options until he reaches the zenith of spy-story and introspection, action and feelings, the need to become and self-consciousness. The Perfect Spy is a long journey, more than 600 pages, that begins and ends in a room, catharsis of a secret agent’s lost life. If you want to embark yourself in this journey, do not forget that every journey has its moments and its pleasures, and literary travelling is never easy, not in the slightest in this case. However, dawn awaits the traveller, once he reaches the shore, and it is the experience that feels like it is worth more than the journey in itself.

The Perfect Spy will leave you speechless, and of the many thoughts you can have at the end, no one would suffice to describe what you get or do not  by reading it. Here’s literature in the making, be careful how you handle it!

Memories of my Melancholy Whores – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Cover of the american edition

An old man, a bit of a journalist, a bit of a character out of place and time, in a city which is not a city in its own terms, refreshes in his mind all the days he has passed with women, paying every single one of them. He is too old and too tired, but ancient rituals and a house where you imagine the dust floating through the sunbeams coming in from half open windows are hard to die. However, on the brim of his nineties, he decides he wants a virgin. He calls his long-term mistress, probably as old as him, “I knew you would have asked, sooner or later” seems to be the answer.

As hard as it seems, the old pal falls for it. He falls in love with a country teenager, that never speaks and sleeps giving him shoulders and never doing other anything else than breaths and memories to this old man. He falls in love like an old gentleman would do, with flowers and smells, thoughts and whispers, sighs and  long stares. And he keeps a room for her at his favourite brothel, in a quarter of the city that used to be full of charm, and now lives like that only in our man’s eyes. However, weird as it seems, the weekly column he keeps on the newspaper becomes so popular he can never imagine. Love changes lives, love changes the way you see and think, whatever age you have. One can find love, where anyone would expect only sex

I have to say I was surprised. I like mr Garcia Marquez, but not in the way a writer takes you by the hand and never leaves, but in the way you would expect tales should be told. He is a wonderful artist, with a fervid fantasy and that writing style so typical of South American writers. To me it is like wine: a good wine is always good, even though it might not be your favourite. And with Garcia Marquez it is the same. Sometimes a bit tannic on the tongue, but what is left is good memories, what something good has to be.

I have to say, I read this book in an afternoon, and it was a long time it had not happened, so I do think you should give it a try. It is a short book that can surprise you. it can surprise you imagining yourself in the roasting streets of South American city, where the sun flickers your visual and sweat pours stickily. It makes you think of slow movements and ancient habits, of long hooked hands with fine neat nails and wrinkled cheeks. It makes you think of a man with weird unresolved complexes with women, whose respect for them is always quantified in value, money, substance. Of a man who’s never believed in feelings other than overestimated customs that can rarely be of real truth. Of a man who, on the verge of becoming an ancient living legend and an much-maligned myth, finds unexpected feelings and love for an insignificant and vulgar teenager, who barely speaks and vaguely resembles attractive, with whom he does not, for the first time in his life, lay down as with a woman, but as with a daughter or a fetish, to relinquish and adore.

A story of men and feelings, of weirdness and mania, of old-fashion and habit, of youth and age, of love and passion. A story of love, in the end, for we all need some kind of love to highlight and beam our days.

Give it a go, you won’t regret it!