The Leopard---Jo Nesbo

I love Jo Nesbo's work. I first heard about him on NPR about a year or so ago, and I went out and bought The Redbreast based on the review that I had heard. I have always loved gritty novels, and this stuff sounded like it was right up my alley. Well, it was. It is. Nesbo's Harry Hole is the best kind of "hero" in my book (well, that phrase sounded better in my head, but there you go): he's an alcoholic, bleakly hopeless man, but a brilliant detective. He's always on the verge of something, and that's all I'm going to say about that because I want you to read these novels.

This review is about Nesbo's eighth Harry Hole installment, but only 6 of them have been translated into English as of yet. Nesbo is Norwegian, and is immensely popular in his home country. With good reason. I don't know how he does it, but Nesbo manages to craft his novels into a mystery/philosophy/textbook conglomeration that stuns me every time. Doesn't sound too appealing does it? But it is. It works. Harry's so damaged and so real that every aspect, every move, every decision in his life is a philosophical treatise even if Nesbo never devolves into actually spouting any philosopher (thank God). Nesbo also researches exhaustively, and here is where the textbook element comes in: I learn something about something that I never knew I wanted to know each time. I can't explain it any better than that, although I will try.

In The Leopard, Harry Hole begins in Hong Kong, returns to Norway, travels to the Congo, back to Norway, again to the Congo, and back to Hong Kong all over again. Seem like a bit much? Well, it could be in less capable hands. Yes, there is a mystery: a series of terrible murders in Oslo, and Harry's expertise is needed even if he is the disgrace of the Crime Squad for his drinking and his attitude. Two young women have been found dead, with curious wounds in their mouths, and no idea of motive or connection to one another. More murders follow, and it is up to Harry to find the connection, battle the politics of an evolving government, fight his own demons, and track down the killer.

To be honest, there is a lot going on in this novel and at times it does become a bit much. Some of Harry's adventures in Hong Kong and the Congo seem extremely fantastical in nature, but I give Nesbo kudos for creativity. However unlikely, those situations do feel like something Harry would find himself in somehow, but there is one element revolving around heroin that is extremely tiresome. There is also a sort of romance that I found unpleasant, but highly realistic. Which is probably why I found it unpleasant in the first place: romance can be messy and ugly, and Harry's usually are.

I love Harry Hole and I can't wait until Nesbo produces a new novel in this series. Phantom is already out in the UK, and I might just break down and order a copy from amazon.co.uk to satisfy my obsession, and the first two novels are due to be released sometime this year. FINALLY!

I highly recommend these novels, but be warned that happy endings are as rare for Harry as they are for the rest of us.

A Exercise in "Putting It Out There"

Ok. So. I'm posting three of my original poems because I've been asked to do so. This is not something I do often, so please bear with me. Thanks for reading and comments (if this blog will let you do it...i'm having the worst time with my blogs). Here we go:

Just beneath the lump in my throat

Lie all sorts of good intentions,

But I swallow them down with chai latte,

Feeling mostly guilty and slightly free.

The price of all of this is nausea—

A wave of purple illness that surges

Upward, reminding me of past decencies,

Things I don’t care to remember when, while,

This flush of rebellion infuses my cheeks

With a satisfied pinkness.

I curse beautifully—those raw, peeled back

Words foaming over my tongue,

Bubbling comfortably in the atmosphere of conversation.

Laughter isn’t forced from my throat,

But bursts forth in fountains of absolute mirth,

Letting you in on all my hidden vices

That now simmer slightly on the surface of my skin.

AD--3/13/04

Ache.
My body, my soul, whatever part of 
Me that can be touched
Aches.

I knew Lonely as a child
But now we are lovers and
Icy cold tendrils of possession
Wrap around me
And the deep, dark nighttimes
Are all I know of intimacy
Given freely with a price 
By Loneliness.

Poetry is supposed to be delicate
And filled with subtleties
That provoke the reader’s imagination
And all the accompanying emotions.
It is never supposed to spell out 
Exactly what the poet (I mock)
Means to say
And yet here I am (mocking) spelling
It all out so that my reader knows precisely
What moans in me, through me, without me.

Ache.
My body, my soul, my mind.
Whatever part of me that can be touched
Aches. 
Freely.
Fiercely.

I am no one and everyone.
I am Me and I am You. 
I wish I knew who You were.
I wish I knew the same of Me.
I only know Lonely.

No one can save me now.

AD—2010

fragment

You can find me

In the dark—

In spoonfuls,

With withered hands

And nightblack eyes

And this—

My too-full heart.

AD—4/30/12

The veiling of the moon
Last night
Caused my mind 
To wander as I watched her
Shrink behind the callous Earth's
Shadow.
She belongs to me, you know--
My sometime sister Diana.
And as she dons her shadow cloak
It is then that we 
Are one.
It is then that we
Mirror the other
For as she is overshadowed
By the earth's reflection,
So am I eclipsed by the
Ingratitude of man--
The ignorance of his
Ultimately
Inferior
Opinion of how my life should be--
And how my heart
Should feel.
It is only when we wear our shadows
That Serene and I are one--
For I am the moon
And the moon is in me.

11/29/1993

Hiatus, enforced.

So, it has been quite a long time since I posted anything. This is not because I haven't been reading. This is because I was busy graduating, stressing out, traveling, stressing out and then finding a job.

Books, I think I have already mentioned here somewhere, are glorious means of escape for me. When I am seriously stressed out, I read and read and read and read. Losing myself in someone else's troubles (mystery, memoir, general fiction), the extraordinary (science fiction, science, memoir again, history), the "you can't make this stuff up" (history...j'adore) helps iron out my soulful wrinkles. Lately, history has been my go-to wrinkle relaxer.

I read this really great book a couple of months ago called Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. It is the story of Theodore Roosevelt's childhood up to the point where he becomes, well, TR; the guy we remember as a fearless and vibrant personality with charisma to spare. McCullough only takes us up to the point when Thee (isn't that a wonderful nickname?) begins to make a name for himself in local and state politics. The thing about this book isn't the wonderful prose (oh, it's there) or the riveting examination of 19th century politics (as down and dirty as ever), but the ridiculously enchanting and wistful look into a society that no longer exists. Sure, that society is super privileged and terribly exclusive, but under McCullough's deft pen it emerges as a magical way of life that we ought to mourn for being so far gone. Edith Wharton, one of my very favourite authors, wrote very honestly about how oppressive and judgmental turn of the century high society was, and it would be a huge mistake not to recognise that the world in which Theodore Roosevelt was reared was completely and cunningly manufactured for prime enjoyment. McCullough wisely reminds us of this even as he paints a long-gone world that anyone would want to experience. It's like reading a book in sepia.