Nevermore: Dan Brown, Christopher Coake, DNA and Game of Thrones

Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, was the subject of discussion in more than one Nevermore meeting. Robert Langdon, the professor of symbology from The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, etc. awakens in a hospital in Florence with a touch of amnesia.  The next thing he knows, he’s on the run and following Brown’s trademark trail of codes, ciphers and clues. The first reviewer was definitely unimpressed, feeling that the book had too much padding-- much in the form of architectural description. Another reviewer found it very slow going at first, but then the plot did pick up.  He too noted the abundance of information on various Italian cities and architecture as well as on Dante. Finally, the book was sort of summed up as "excellent plot, terrible narration."

Another reviewer highly recommended a collection of short stories by Christopher Coake entitled We’re In Trouble.  As the title promises, each story opens with a character in some sort of serious trouble, love in the face of death.  Each character is challenged and the reader anxiously waits to see how the character will react.  Our reader said she was instantly drawn into each story and thinks Coake is definitely a writer to watch.  The book earned strong reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin is proving popular across various media.  The recent HBO series has attracted a wide and avid viewership, and putting the original novels back on the library’s reserve list in both printed and audio formats.  A Nevermore member put in a plug for the new graphic novel version of the books, and requested we get the others in the series as they come out.

Louise Erdrich’s novel Love Medicine was mentioned by another reader.  This was Erdrich’s first novel and revolves around two Chippewa families, spanning some fifty years. The novel moves back and forth in time, and is actually a series of interwoven short stories that form a whole.

Two non-fiction books were mentioned, both involving DNA.  Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer uses the latest genetic, archaeological, and linguistic findings to determine the composition of the British people.  Oppenheimer argues that the bulk of the genetic heritage predates the Anglo-Saxons and is a great deal more complex than was previously believed.  The subject is fascinating, but our reviewer found the book to be almost too technical.

A similar comment was made about The Violinist’s Thumb by Sam Kean.  The title refers to the Paganini’s extremely flexible fingers, the result of a genetic mutation which aided his musical ability but may also have shortened his life. Other parts of the book discuss an assortment of human and some non-human DNA (Neanderthals, for example) which makes for an interesting book, although the reviewer said there was a bit of a slog through the more technical aspects of DNA.

Nevermore: You Came Back, Low Pressure, and Sarah's Key

To paraphrase Faulkner, the past is never really past. It exists in the present too. The Nevermore fiction choices all seem to reflect that sentiment in one way or another.

One of our Nevermore reviewers was much taken with You Came Back by Christopher Coake. Mark Fife was devastated by death of his young son, Brendan.  His marriage to his college sweetheart fell apart, and they divorced.  Just as he is starting to put his life back together with a new girlfriend and a flourishing career, he gets a call from a woman who lives in the Fifes’ old house.  She claims that the house is haunted—by Brendan. Our reviewer found it to be a moving exploration of love, loss, and relationships, and said she couldn’t put it down.

Continuing the theme of how past and present can collide, Low Pressure by Sandra Brown was mentioned as a good light read.  A young woman writes a novel based on her sister’s murder eighteen years earlier, causing a tabloid reporter to take an interest in the case.  Unfortunately, someone else takes an interest too—someone who may know more about what really happened that stormy day.

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay begins with Julia,  an American journalist living in Paris with her husband and daughter. She’s asked to write an article about the Nazi round-up of  Jews in Paris, which happened 60 years previously.  As she begins her research, she finds out the apartment where they’re currently living had belonged to a Jewish family caught in the round up. The book goes back and forth in time, weaving together the story of Sarah Starzynski  in 1942 and Julia’s life in the present.  This book has come up several times in Nevermore, and has always been highly recommended.