Review: In the Galway Silence

In the Galway Silence by Ken Bruen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Irish can abide almost anything save silence.”

A few paragraphs into a new Jack Taylor novel and you hear the musicality and fall into the familiar rhythms of Ken Bruen’s prose. It is distinctive, like listening for the first time to your favourite band’s new album, you instantly the instrumentation and look forward to new tunes. Nobody in crime fiction writes like Ken Bruen. It is not just the words he uses, it is the way
he
puts
them
on
the
page.
Ex-Garda, Jack Taylor is a violent and poetic man. He beats his problems in the most literal way possible, with a hurley. Jack cares about people, yet he is self-destructive. He appears to have a death wish, yet he consumes, and enjoys, popular culture (I have gained so much from exploring books or albums recommended by Jack Taylor, although he may have taken one too many to the head - considering “Perfect” by Ed Sheehan to be, well, perfect).
Bruen’s plots are like a fever-dream. Jack narrates the madness that surrounds him, in this case a deranged killer and a returning out of the blue ex-wife, while commenting on craziness in the wider world - Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Brexit - which only serves to heighten the sense of unreality.
I love these books and, while jumping aboard here without reading any of the previous dozen books might not be the best recommendation, if you can find the rhythm, you will definitely enjoy the song.


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Review: The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We couldn't even hear you, in the night....
No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one else will come any nearer than that.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting from The Haunting of Hill House. Or rather, I thought I knew what I was expecting, but wasn’t sure. Which is slightly different. It’s a horror story, right? It’s about a haunted house - it says so in the title. The book has been on my to-read list for perhaps longer than any other, since I was a teenager and read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre when it was first issued in paperback. King loved Hill House. It is all over Danse Macabre. But it was out of print in UK until 2009. Still, that is almost ten years ago and, still, I didn’t read it.
So, it being Hallowe’en, and with the new adaptation on Netflix (which, it turns out is excellent, but is not an adaptation, rather a reimagining), I decided it was time to read this really scary ghost story. And it is really scary, but is it a ghost story? Is Hill House haunted?
The writing is excellent, the prose lyrical (The opening and closing paragraphs are rightly lauded as classics but there are many similar passages). The dialogue is perhaps a little old-fashioned but it was written 60 years ago and it fits the gothic storytelling. Yet, on finishing the novel I was slightly disappointed. There are certainly some moments which make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck (“God! Whose hand was I holding?”) but there are so many conversations in the book about being scared, about the nature of being scared, almost looking forward to being scared. The writing is excellent though and so I gave it four stars.
And, yet. In the days since I finished the book, images and scenes have stayed with me. I am ‘haunted’ by some of the imagery and find myself replaying some of the key scenes in my head.

“Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.” 

The characters surrender themselves willingly to the idea of being scared, in the same way as many of us do when reading horror fiction or watching a scary movie. And, whether there is something in Hill House which takes advantage of that, or whether it is something within the characters which tip them, particularly Eleanor, into madness, I am still unsure. And the genius of Shirley Jackson is that, two weeks later, I am still thinking about it.


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Review: Aja

Aja by Don Breithaupt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Bringing a post-Gershwin compositional gusto to post-Dylan subject matter (and filtering it through the lens of post-Nixon America)."

There is always something for the music-lover to glean from these little books, the 33 1/3 Series, each of which focuses on a 'classic' album. Some of them centre on what the music means to the writer and how it fits into his or her life; some appear only tangentially related to the album in question. Of those that I have read, this one goes deeper into the form of the music and its construction, perhaps a little too deep at times but it does suit Steely Dan and Aja.

Author, Don Breithaupt obviously loves the album and understands music theory and he puts Aja in context, not only with what was happening in the music industry at the time of its release in 1977, but also within Donald Fagen's and Walter Becker's output and their influences with inform the album. There is a large part of the book devoted to the recording of the album and I personally love that kind of stuff although, even for me, the in-depth examination of poetic techniques such as enjambment or the relationship between E9sus4 and Amaj9 chords gets a little too much. Breithaupt is also fond of purple prose such as that quoted at the start of the review but all of this is forgiven when it leads, as this book does, to a fresh listen to, and new appreciation of, the music.

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