The Magician's Tale by David Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'That, my dear, was the best part! Brother and sister! Like Tristan and Isolde. The depravity of it! The absolutely scrumptious degenerate depravity!'"

When I was a child I could never understand the saying "too much of a good thing." I considered it one of million stupid things that the grown-ups used to say. How could there be too much of a good thing? Well, David Hunt's (which is a pen name for a really good mystery/thriller writer William Beyer) The Magician's Tale (1997) is a great example of there being too much of a good thing in a novel. While the same author's Switch is one of the best procedurals I have ever read, perhaps not quite lean enough but at least relatively well focused, this novel tries too pack way too many goodies. Like a cake can be overfilled to nauseating effects with delicacies - raisins, almonds, figs, nuts, and others - this novel offers dismemberment, magic, sex trade, twins, pedophilia, serial killers, photographic art, bread making, generous helpings of depravity, and even autosomal recessive achromatopsia (check it out in a medical dictionary).

The narrator of the story is Kay, a single woman in her thirties, an award-winning photographer specializing in portraying the people and situations in San Francisco's "Gulch." This is an area of sex hustlers, chicken hawks (older men interested in much younger ones), and sex transaction brokers; in a neat phrase it is the center of "alternative sexualities." Kay is street smart, knows virtually everybody in the area, and cruises the San Francisco's Gulch and Tenderloin districts with her Contax camera.

One of her friends, Tim, a young and beautiful hustler, whom she used to photograph, has been killed and dismembered. Kay is needed to identify the body parts; she befriends a female detective, thus allowing the author to relate the investigation from Kay's point of view. Connections to a serial killer case from the past emerge and - to further increase the complexity - the reader learns that Kay's father, a policeman, had been involved in that case.

The Magician's Tale is still a very good book. First of all, I love the highly accomplished prose:

"[...] there's the fragrance of wild fennel and night-blooming shrubs mixed with the resin scent of the Monterey cypresses that compose the woods around Coit Tower. I'm so accustomed to viewing this place from a great distance through a lens that I'm surprised by the intimacy this sweet aroma conveys. Suddenly I feel heady. [...]"

The long passage depicting Kay's photographic session with Tim is a piece of serious literature subtly evocative of erotic undercurrents. Furthermore, the author succeeds in conveying the specific San Francisco's sense of place:

"I like the Castro, its parade of purpose and flamboyance, tank tops and tattoos, tight asses, pert tits, piercings, muscles, leather, flesh."

And of course there is the magician's tale, the story within the story. Those of us who, unlike me, read books for the stories they tell, will love it.

Highly recommended novel, but it would have been so much better had the author deleted half of it! Or, even better, why not make two novels out of it? There is enough of the "scrumptious degenerate depravity" for two books!

Three-and-three-quarter stars.


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Against the Grain-An Autobiography by Boris Yeltsin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"But what if I am the loser in tomorrow's election? What will that mean? That the party bureaucracy was after all the stronger, that injustice has triumphed? Nothing of the sort. Simply that I, too am human and that I have many failings."

Having lived for the first 31 years of my life behind the so-called "Iron Curtain", in the shadow of the Soviet ideology, I have a natural interest in Soviet affairs. So here's another one in my series of reads about 20th-century Soviet/Russian politicians. After biographies of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev (all reviewed on Goodreads) comes Boris Yeltsin: Against the Grain. An Autobiography (1990).

The autobiographical passages are interspersed between the account of Yeltsin's election campaign for the position of "people's deputy" in the Moscow region in 1989. He won the election, which was the first step of his full return to Soviet/Russian politics. Yeltsin had been a Soviet Communist Party member since 1961 and since 1985 he had been among the top Soviet leadership. He was a protégé of Mikhail Gorbachev who was seeking like-minded politicians to help him with the tasks of perestroika. Yet he was too independent to become a typical top functionary of the party. His ideas clashed with conservative members of the Politburo and even Gorbachev himself found him too radical. Yeltsin resigned from Politburo in 1987.

To me, one of the most important observations in the book is Yeltsin's assessment of Gorbachev, who had become the involuntary architect of the fall of the Soviet empire. On one hand he passionately praises Gorbachev and his contributions:

"What he has achieved will, of course, go down in the history of mankind. I do not like such high-sounding phrases, yet everything that Gorbachev has initiated deserves such praise."

Then he accurately diagnoses Gorbachev's main weakness:

"In particular, the state of the economy is catastrophic. There Gorbachev's chief weakness - his fear of taking the decisive but difficult steps that are needed - has been fully revealed."

Naturally, Yeltsin comes across as virtually a saint in the autobiography. He always tries the best course of action and works extremely hard for the benefit of the people and the country. Numerous times he tries to experience ordinary people's lives by commuting on public transportation and visiting grocery stores during acute food shortages. Yeltsin describes the extreme unfairness of the Soviet system, the elaborate system of privileges, which Stalin set up. All kinds of luxuries and Western goods are available for the party officials and nomenklatura; average people have access only to a limited range of very basic goods. The author's passion is palpable when we read his bitter observations.

The autobiography ends with an account of Yeltsin's short visit to the United States in 1989. He writes about the shock he experienced when he saw the availability of consumer goods in the US:

"When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons, and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people."

He also addresses the persistent rumors about him being frequently inebriated during the US trip and attributes his less than alert behavior to the insanely busy timetable of the visit, time zone changes, exhaustion, lack of sleep, and consequent use of sleeping pills. Naturally, no one will ever know the truth but Mr. Yeltsin's explanations sound quite convincing.

The autobiography ends in 1990. The readers who have little knowledge of Soviet/Russian affairs may want to know that Yeltsin resigns from the Soviet Communist party in 1990; in 1991 he is elected the president of the Russian Republic and later of the entire Russian Federation as the communist ideology seems to be dying. Yeltsin resigns in 1999 and dies in 2007.

Interesting if a bit chaotic read.

Three stars.

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When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I didn't want one now, but there are the ones you want and the ones you need, and this came under the latter heading. I poured a short shot into the water glass and shuddered when I swallowed it. It didn't stay down either, but it fixed things so the next one did."

An excellent book about serious drinking! Well, not in the class of, say, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, but then I don't think Lawrence Block aspires to the literary stratosphere. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes truly deserves the mystery/crime literature nominations and awards it received in 1987. Rarely can one encounter more realistic depiction of heavy drinkers' psychological make-up. Reading this novel I felt I knew Mr. Scudder well; he was a real person rather than just a literary character. I did not quite have this feeling when reading other Scudder novels.

Scudder as well as some of his pals are "maintenance drinkers," people who need certain level of alcohol in blood to function as if they were sober:

"'You gentlemen will rush to judgment of the man who drinks a bit,' Keegan said. He took a miniature bottle from a pocket, twisted the cap until the seal broke, tipped his head and drank the whiskey down.
'Maintenance,' he said. 'That's all'"

This may sound sacrilegious to fans of classical crime drama but Mr. Block's writing in Ginmill reminds me of the best of Raymond Chandler. In fact, I think it is better. The writing reflects the general feeling of nostalgia (the novel is framed as recollection of events that happened 10 years earlier), the evocation of times that have long passed. We have a few chandleresque passages:

"Her laughter sounded like someone pouring a sack of broken glass down a staircase. It followed me to the door and out."

The unforgettable scene of nighttime drinking in Billie's apartment and listening to Dave Van Ronk's song would not be out of place in any book of serious literary fiction. Wonderful!

"And so we've had another night
Of poetry and poses
And each man knows he'll be alone
When the sacred ginmill closes."

Unfortunately, Ginmill contains a criminal plot as well, and this layer of the novel is not impressive at all. Matt Scudder has to solve three cases that involve his drinking friends and acquaintances: a murder committed during burglary, a strange stick-up in a bar, and the case of theft of accounting books from another bar. The denouement is particularly weak: in Nero Wolfe's style Mr. Scudder collects all characters involved and announces the guilty parties.

Well, four-and-three-quarter stars for a great novel about alcoholism, two-and-a-half for the mystery/crime storyline makes almost (I am in a good mood)

Three-and-three-quarter stars.

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Jung: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Stevens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'My life is the story of the self-realization of the unconscious.'"
(The first sentence of C.G. Jung's autobiography, quoted by A. Stevens)

About a month ago I allowed myself to make fun of the inanities produced by a certain Dr. Freud, who projected his own sexual complexes and hang-ups onto the entire mankind and, even worse, womankind. So I searched for a text about psychology that I could read without bewilderment at the vagaries of a supposedly scientific mind. Jung (1994) by Anthony Stevens has been a perfect antidote for the Freud-induced malaise. Similarly to Storr's Freud, it is a concise (about 130 pages) account of Carl Gustav Jung's life and his contributions to psychological sciences.

We read about Jung's solitary childhood and youth, his medical studies, and his decision to become a psychiatrist. Several years of close friendship with Freud, 19 years Jung's senior, end when Jung rejects Freud's assumptions of predominantly sexual origins of human motivation and the entirely personal nature of human unconscious mind. The concept of "collective unconscious" is Jung's most important contribution to psychology:

"Jung held it to be the business of the psychologist to investigate the collective unconscious and the functional units of which it is composed - the archetypes [...] Archetypes are 'identical psychic structures common to all' [...] which together constitute 'the archaic heritage of humanity.'"

These archetypes might be thought of as patterns of behavior common for all people. They exhibit a "fundamental duality": they are both psychic structures and neurological structures. The author emphasizes that many other disciplines have produced similar concepts: for example, Levi-Strauss's infrastructures in anthropology or Chomsky's deep structures in linguistics. Jacques Monod, the famous molecular biologist, stated a very similar conclusion:

"Everything comes from experience, yet not from actual experience, reiterated by each individual with each generation, but instead from experience accumulated by the entire ancestry of the species in the course of its evolution."

I find the chapter on archetypes by far the most interesting. It is also very well written - to the extent that such an ignoramus in the field as this reviewer seems to have understood it. I am very curious now how the concept of archetypes relates to the most recent knowledge in the field of genetics.

In the chapter The stages of life we read about the Self (the "psychic nucleus" of a person) and other components that play a role in psychic and social development of all of us: the ego, persona, shadow, anima, and animus. The next chapter, Psychological types presents Jung's psychological typology. He distinguishes four main functions: sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition, and two attitudes: extraverted and introverted. This produces eight psychological types and the book presents them in detail. To me, it all borders on pop-psychology, particularly the examples of professions typically chosen by people of specific type. The author also seems to reserve full support for the typology.

The next chapter Dreams will certainly interest many readers; it is wasted on me as I have not been able to remember any dream in 20 years or so. Continuing on a personal note, I found the following statement (in one of the previous chapters) optimistic and uplifting:

"For Jung, ageing was not a process of inexorable decline but a time for the progressive refinement of what is essential."

Yay! I have just realized how refined I must be! In the chapter on Jung's methods of therapy the author clearly states that "the school of analysis that is carried in Jung's name is his chief legacy to our culture." We read how Jung's analytical method of therapy was based on an interaction of two equals, two real persons, the therapist and the patient. The author praises the "open-minded humanity of [Jung's] approach," and emphasizes that he remained "undogmatic to the end."

Jung is a concise yet good introduction to the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung. I am now interested in reading more about Jung's psychology.

Three-and-three-quarter stars.


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Indictment for Murder: A Mystery by Peter Rawlinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Into the valley of death they had gone, he had thought at the time. In the first rays of sunlight they could see, ahead and below, the heads of the corn in the plain swaying in the faint breeze, yellow-gold, spotted with crimson - the poppies, [...] "

Peter Rawlinson, the author of Indictment for Murder (1994), has probably the most impressive non-literary resume of all mystery writers. Among other top jobs, he served as the Solicitor General and Attorney General for England and Wales, his full title was Baron Rawlinson of Ewell, and he was a barrister for exactly 60 years. One can safely assume that when he writes about legal affairs he knows his stuff very well.

Indictment begins strongly when an elderly prisoner is led to a courtroom, the indictment of the crime of murder is read, and the prisoner pleads not guilty. The trial begins. The neat twist is that the accused, Jonathan Playfair, is a judge who used to preside over trials in the same courtroom. Judge Playfair is seventy-seven years old, which - considering the date the novel was published - makes the accused almost the same age as the author. The victim is David Trelawney whom Judge Playfair had known for almost 70 years.

The current-time story that follows the progress of the trial is interspersed with judge Playfair's memories of the past, reaching back to his childhood. He first met David at the age of 8. Later, they were interested in the same woman, Nicola. They fought the Germans in the same military unit in Northern Africa. Playfair muses

"Everything had always been Nicola and David. Even now, it was still David."

I do not believe it is possible to synopsize the plot any more without providing spoilers. Let's just mention that while judge Playfair maintains his innocence we learn that he had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit the murder.

The absorbing plot is plausible: the denouement is gradually unveiled through a cascade of twists. As expected, we learn that the roots of the current events are grounded in painful secrets of the past.

A very readable and highly recommended mystery!

Three-and-a-half stars.


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This House of Grief by Helen Garner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The only thing they wanted to know was, 'Well? Did he do it?' The least interesting question anyone could possibly ask."

I selected the above passage for the epigraph to make it clear that any readers potentially interested in knowing 'for sure' whether the accused was indeed guilty will not find a definitive answer in this book. Why? Because

"Only one person knows what happened in the car that night, and he's not talking."

Also, there is a significant distinction between "(s)he has been found guilty" and "(s)he is guilty." Since the former phrase has the jury error factored in, it only provides a (supposedly) high probability of actual guilt, which in many real-life cases can never be established "for sure."

Helen Garner's This House of Grief. The Story of A Murder Trial (2014) is a non-fiction book. The famous Australian writer (I loved her The Children's Bach ) spent many months as a careful observer of two murder trials of Robert Farquharson and talked to many people involved in the case. She provides a riveting account of the case, lucid, painstakingly unbiased, and very well written.

A brief summary of the setup: a year before the murder (or accident) Mr. Farquharson's wife terminated the marriage, told him to move out of the house, and found a new man in her life. On Father's Day 2005, Mr. F, exercising his visitation rights, was driving with his three young sons in the car. The car veered off the road, drove into a farm dam, and plunged into water. All three boys drowned but Mr. F saved himself. Forensic evidence seemed to indicate that the driver purposefully drove off the road and Mr. F was charged with triple murder. He claimed that a coughing fit caused a complete blackout.

One of the author's main targets is the "reality-TV-like" aspect of the case. With the high visibility of the trial and extensive media coverage ("media circus") most people had their view:

"The general feeling was that a man like Farquharson could not tolerate the loss of control he experienced when his wife ended the marriage. Again and again people came up with this explanation. [...] Either that, or he was evil."

People inferred the guilt or innocence based on the court behavior of the defendant. Naturally, and most frighteningly, this included the jurors. In a particularly damning passage Ms. Garner quotes a spectator:

"He looked really healthy in the photo I saw. He didn't look like a man whose three children were dead."

"But what is a man supposed to look like when all his children are dead?" asks Ms. Garner. So many people derive entertainment from the high-profile court cases. I find it repulsive, as I think the author does.

To me, the narrative axis of the account is framed by the evolution of Ms. Gambino's (the defendant's ex-wife and the mother of the victims) point of view. First, during her testimony, she defends her ex-husband and states that she believes an accident happened. Few years later, she changes her mind and turns against him.

Very highly recommended book! This House is much more than a captivating and thrilling read: it is a deeply thought-provoking study of human motivation and behavior.

So was it murder? Maybe. Likely. Probably. Will we ever know for sure? No. It is in fact possible that Mr. F himself does not know.

Four-and-a-quarter stars.

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