The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a well-written first novel in a planned series of three, where young William Avery from England appears in India, under The Company, i.e. The East India Company. The year is 1837, and at the start Avery gets orders to follow an older, morose and eccentric man, Blake, in order to find a poet laureate, Mountstuart.
This is an adventure along the lines of Indiana Jones, Agatha Christie, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. The language is spot-on and the action is thrilling; the tempo holds throughout the book, and I really wanted to find out what was happening next.
All in all: an adventure, almost veering more towards the young adult way than towards older persons, but it's a well-researched book, recommendable to all who like the above.
Smålands mörker by Henrik Bromander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Henrik Bromander's books are often on the border of fiction and non-fiction; they're about human life at the core, where Bromander rarely seems to care about the big, bombastic stuff that often make the core of the twists and turns of other persons' novels. This is conversations, between the self and between people. Inner thoughts, controversies, boredom, war, politics, poetry, Morrissey and hate.
I love Bromander's use of space in his stories. Even if there's violence in a lot of his tales, there's still reflection in nothing, in very well-used pauses where human existance lies, whether it be through his expression of depression, of protest, side-tracked stories of other people's lives - as with Genet's life as displayed in this book - he does this very well, and it makes the tempo of the book work excellently.
The main character in this book, Erik, creates a fanzine that's published in the book. That's also excellent, as are the views into his psyche where politics, love, sexuality, crime and art are concerned.
All in all: should be read by all.
In a Lonely Place by Gregory Crewdson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The introduction for this collection of photographic series mentions David Lynch. Indeed, the pictures of persons next to houses in suburban USA envelop me in two ways: one, I'm captured by some visceral fear, and two, I think the pictures are completely normal.
The pictures grab me much like Lynch manages to make the everyday seem scary, as he did in "Twin Peaks" and "Blue Velvet".
I didn't like the other photo series in this book much, but the mentioned one's very good indeed. The pictures take on a quality as though they are super-realistic paintings, not photographs.