Monsieur Linh softly sings this lullaby to his granddaughter's ear as she is snuggled next to him on their thin mattress on the cold cement floor. Memories of a happier life back home keep the fragile old man awake and let him forget the cold and the unfriendly surroundings in the new country... This beautifully crafted, subtle yet intensely imagined story of refugee life and its bewilderment, memories of loves lost and the power of friendship found, is one of the most deeply touching stories I have read in a long time.

Monsieur Linh, arriving on a refugee boat from somewhere in Asia, having lost his beloved son and daughter-in-law during a recent war, is feeling lonely and confused, without the language of the new country, where everything is foreign to him. The contrast between the village left behind and the big city of the present could not be starker. "This place doesn't have any of the smells ..." he reminisces, recalling the beauty of his homeland. His only consolation is his baby girl, 'Sang diû', who he saved and who is now his sole reason for living. The conditions in the refugee dormitory, the hostility of the other refugees, painted with a few skilful and precise strokes, form the necessary background tableau for Monsieur Linh's loneliness and isolation. The old man, with 'Sang diû' in his arm, wanders all day in the nearby streets and the park, worried about crossing one of the wide highways full of cars. Then, one day, resting on a bench, he meets Monsieur Bark, a large quiet man with features that make Monsieur Linh look and feel even smaller.

Over time, even without a common language, the communication blossoms between the two men. Friendship can be expressed through quiet regards and understated gestures, such a touch on the shoulder. Their friendship grows, literally beyond words. In Claudel's perceptive and delicate language, the reader listens in on the two unspoken or spoken monologues that the two friends can only interpret from the changing sounds in the voice or expression in the face. We learn of their backgrounds, their happiness and deep sorrows that brought the two unlikely friends together. One day, however, Monsieur Linh is taken away from the refugee camp to a new residence in another part of the big city...

Philippe Claudel, award winning author of numerous novels such as (translated into English) Brodeck: A novel and By a Slow River: A Novel (Les Ames Grises), both outstanding and deeply affecting novels, has created with LA PETITE FILLE DE MONSIEUR LINH a masterwork in its subtle and tender portrayal of two human souls, their pain, and the healing power of love and friendship. His graceful lyrical language adds emotional depth and a fable-like reality to the story. Currently unavailable in English LA PETITE FILLE DE MONSIEUR LINH is, according to amazon.com scheduled for publication in the spring of 2011. [Friederike Knabe]

Julia Franck's novel, Blindness of the Heart (original title: DIE MITTAGSFRAU) starts dramatically with a Prologue in which a young mother leaves her seven-year old son at a remote railway station in eastern Germany and disappears... The time is 1945, the war has ended and the two have to flee west ahead of Soviet troops taking over the city. The author, captivated by her own father's childhood trauma, took the search for possible explanations for her grandmother's behaviour, as a starting point for her book. The resulting novel has turned into a fictional, wide-ranging psychological portrait of a complex and emotionally shattered young woman, who lived through two world wars and, for her not less dramatic, the time in between. Franck's novel is a thought-provoking and, at times, unsettling and disturbing story of one person's deep love and loss, loneliness and rejection, responsibility and neglect, and the desperate, sometimes incomprehensible, will to survive. In a way, the novel effectively provides the back story to the young mother and aims to clarify if not justify why a young mother abandons her beloved child after all they have been through together.

While primarily focusing on the portrayal of Helene, and her difficult relationships to her family and close surroundings, the author, nevertheless, reaches beyond the private and individual sphere into the depiction of sections of a society in chaos and upheaval. This applies especially to the Berlin's "Golden Twenties". Franck goes into some length in bringing to life the exuberant, careless and, with hindsight, totally naive behaviour of the bourgeois middle class. Any political events or references to changing economic conditions, that give the reader a sense of passing time, are only hinted at obliquely. In her description of individuals and scenarios, the author doesn't shy away from a certain amount of stereotyping. For her, Helene remains the silent observer as she feels increasingly alienated and retreats more and more into herself. Until she meets her great love, Carl, but even in this relationship one can detect certain clichés. While their happiness takes on the shape of a fairytale, the reader knows full well, given the events recounted upfront in the Prologue that some drama will destroy whatever hope Helene had for a happier life...

Why does Helene stand out among the many young women of that time? From her early childhood she had learned that she was different: Walking around town with her father, everybody greeted them, commenting on the girl's pretty blond complexion; when accompanying her mother, the stunningly beautiful dark haired Selma, they were shunned. Selma was treated as a foreigner who one wanted to avoid at all cost. Reality was difficult and Helene didn't know how to formulate her burning questions about the two religions, her parents' deep affection for each other, or her mother's growing remoteness. Instead she retreated into silence, totally rejected by her mother and, eventually, abandoned by her father; she clings closely to Martha, her older sister. "[Selma's] heart is blind from all the pain" explains Martha. Are there parallels to Helene's "heart of stone?

Reading BLINDNESS OF THE HEART as a psychological portrait of one young woman, half-Jewish, intelligent and beautiful, whose circumstances may not have been unique, but were by no means common, I could relate to and empathize with Franck's central character most of the time. As an illustration of the total disintegration of sectors of German society in the twenties and thirties, in particular, I found the novel lacking in depth and specifics. For a German reader, many place names, such as Bautzen, Stettin, Pirna (where Selma is taken for treatment), etc. have strong historical connotations. Bautzen, where Helene grew up, is synonymous with brutal imprisonment, whether during the Nazi regime or later, until the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Stettin (Szczecin), where Helene lived until her flight to the West was, during the Third Reich, a centre for forced labour and prison transports into nearby concentration camps. Pirna is known for its "Sanatorium" where thousands of inmates were murdered during the early 1940s. However, Franck gives no indication as to the realities surrounding Helene, nor that her heroine was to any degree aware of such realities.

BLINDNESS OF THE HEART is Julia Franck's fourth novel and winner of the German Bookprize 2007. It is her first, though, to be translated into English and by the outstanding Anthea Bell. Frank's language is somewhat unusual, not only has it a touch of the old fashioned stories from the Eastern regions of Germany, it is at times, and in contrast with the event described, poetic in its choice of words and expressions. The complete absence of any punctuation in direct speech, is unusual, yet eventually, it makes the text flow and creates immediacy beyond speech. [Friederike Knabe]

"...where a bone cage could last a thousand years under the moon [...] The hills rose parched from the still lakes, the mountains beyond them faded to a mauve so pale they seemed stones under ice." There can be vibrant beauty in harsh, sparse, desert-like landscapes, so much better suited to animals than to human beings. Evoking its atmosphere through achingly beautiful flowing lyrical language, depicting its intricate details, award winning Canadian poet and author Patrick Lane captures the essence of the atypical landscape of the northern edge of the Great Plains in Canada. Contrasting environment with the bleak reality of life for the people who inhabit this wild and unforgiving land, Lane has created a powerful, thought-provoking and at times challenging and unsettling novel.

Set in 1958 in a small remote community in the southern Okanagan region, the story centres on the two Stark brothers, their family and a group of friends, enemies and neighbours. While the actual events take place in the space of a week, the narrative moves in flashbacks to previous generations and the early settler years. After roaming through the Prairies since his early teenage years in search of work, whether as a farm hand, in mills or as day labourer, Father Elmer Stark has settled his family here in a place of "even more desolate towns that turned into villages, villages into clusters of trailers and isolated shacks in the trees, nothing beyond that bush that ran clear to the tundra." The people, carrying the inherited burden of poverty and misery are still suffering from the late fallout of the Depression in that region. In their struggle to make ends meet they easily turn to violence, alcohol and drugs, petty and major crimes.

With a few strokes, Lane creates vivid characters in complex relationships. The Stark brothers, Tom and Eddy, are an excellent study in contrast. "For Eddy, the world was without borders. He learned that from both Father and Mother. [...] Eddy's crimes and misdemeanours, the things he did and didn't do, were just part of his life". Tom was very different. "He could get lost in stories of other places and other lives [...]For Eddy, stories about the past, anyone's past, were deadly and he wanted none of it." From a very young age, Tom quietly, often undetected, listened to the stories Father told Alice, the baby sister who died just short of six months old. It was his way of mourning at his daughter's grave. While Lane depicts the many action scenarios with cinematographic precision, he evokes the changing moods and behaviours of the various individuals with a combination of disgust, understanding and compassion. Compassion? Yes, empathy comes to the fore when Alice's spirit takes over part of the novel's narrative, creating a gentle, caring countervailing force in her depiction of the family's history and current struggle against misery. And not only here, a glimmer of positive change emerges over time, offering hope to those who can make it their own.

This is not an easy novel to read. The poetic beauty of Lane's language does not always fit or alleviate the sense of irritation and displeasure the reader feels with, especially, the precise description of arbitrary violence and careless disregard of others. However, drawing on his own wide-ranging experiences and a deep familiarity with the land and the region's stories, Lane captures a place and its inhabitants that is authentic as it was real in the specific region and period of time. It is a powerful and an significant book that allows important lessons to be drawn, especially when addressing issues of disenchanted and malleable youth. An amazing achievement for a debut novel by a poet of long standing. [Friederike Knabe]

The title song of Salif Keita's new and moving collection, 'La difference", celebrates diversity among people: not only does Keita identify in it with the fate of African albinos, his song celebrates diversity and takes a very public stand against the plight of albinos in Africa. *) It adds a pertinent message to the other important social and political themes that have been underlying Keita's songs and CDs for a long time: the need to address the devastation of the African environment, the importance of democracy, the respect for each other, etc. If we take care for each other, of the land and the environment, express our love openly, we can celebrate who we are and there is hope for our future.

The nine songs on this album comprise new material as well as re-working of earlier songs. For those, the change can be the addition of a richer instrumentation with traditional instruments, such as the n'goni or the balafon. In others we find a new balancing of Keita's unique and famed "golden voice" with the back-up chorus, adding rhythm and diversity. Most of the songs are soft, gentle and richly melodious.

Overall the CD collection continues the musical direction of his previous two, highly praised CDs, Moffou (Mali) and M' Bemba. Merging different styles - from Afropop to Western and Middle Eastern influences - with the Malian traditional music and instrumentation, Keita has re-affirmed his personal style of music. The result in this CD is as much a polished recording as a rich and diverse collection of tunes and arrangements. According to recent interviews, this is Keita's most personal recording. For me, each of the songs has its beauty and emotional strength, whether I had heard it previously, such as 'FOLON' or 'Seydou', or it is new to me. All will be listen to so often that they will feel like old friends. Keita's LA DIFFERENCE won the 2010 Best World Music award at the Victoires de la musique.

The only negative point I can make - nothing to do with the music or the quality of the recording - the accompanying leaflet does not include any lyrics or other background material. [Friederike Knabe]

*) Salif Keita has established a foundation to support programs for albinos. The proceeds of the CD will further assist the foundation.

"I don't really know where to start. It is rather difficult. So much time has passed, that the words can never be recaptured, nor can the faces, the smiles, the wounds." Still, he needs to try, to say what has been burdening his heart for twenty years. Philippe Claudel opens his hauntingly beautiful, dramatic novel with these confessions of his first person narrator. Later on, he explains that words are difficult for him. "During my lifetime, I hardly spoke. Now I write as if I had died since then. And, deep down, that is true. That's the real, true truth. For a long time now, I feel dead. I pretend that I still live a bit. I am on borrowed time. That's all."

The events that continue to disturb the nameless narrator of LES AMES GRISES take place in a small town in northern France during World War I, in a region so close to the frontline, that the sounds of war provide a constant rumbling background. In the early days in 1914, town life follows its usual course and the war, assumed to be short lived, does not seem to concern the townspeople too much. The passing soldiers add good business for some and brings much needed work for others. As the narration touches on events later in time, Claudel convincingly evokes the impact on the town of the steadily growing viciousness of war: the hospital fills with wounded and near-dead and starving, exhausted, brutalized soldiers roam the countryside.

However, it is the murder in 1917 of a beautiful ten-year-old girl, Belle de jour, that disrupts the still prevailing attitude of complacency among the important "gentlemen". The "Case", as it is introduced early on by the narrator, raises questions that dig much deeper into the society's fabric than a simple police procedural would be able to explore. In his recounting of the events surrounding Belle's death, the protagonist appears to hold his own - belated(?) - investigation by introducing, one by one, many of the ghosts, whose long shadows still haunt him into the present. What may have been his role at the time? Through a "parade" of richly drawn characters, who had been either directly, indirectly or possibly involved with the young girl's life or the Case, Claudel weaves a captivating, subtly structured web of evidence, rumours, suspicions, interrogations and deliberate disregard of clues. From the judge, the prosecutor, the father of the victim, to police officers and military, to other important persons in the town and even in the protagonist's own life, all the brilliantly brought to life as individuals with their strengths and weaknesses.

The report, being put together by the narrator, is seemingly written in separate memory blocks (chapters), thus justifying the non-linear structure of his account. The reader's attention is constantly required to pick up clues and connections that will eventually reveal much more than the reader would expect at any one time. The conclusion is dramatic and comes with more than one unexpected punch. It also epitomizes the meaning of the title "âmes grises - grey souls" in a way that will keep the reader's mind ponder its deeper truth: "Nothing is either totally black or totally white, it is the grey that wins. For human beings and their souls, it's the same... You are a grey soul, really grey like all of us". Having read the novel in its original French, all translations are mine. Claudel's exquisite language, that is full of nuance, rich in local colour and often complex structures, will provide a major challenge for any translator. It succeeds beautifully to capture those bleak and worrying times. [Friederike Knabe]

Eighteen-year old Christian, high school student in a small seaside town along the Baltic Sea coast, is a silent participant in the memorial gathering for highly popular English teacher, Stella Peterson. While others praise her youthful and lively personality, express their respect or admiration for the colleague and teacher, Christian is absorbed by his own memories of Stella. In a confident, if somewhat nostalgic, tone and a very tender gentle feel for his young narrator, octogenarian Siegfried Lenz has written a touching, dreamy and somewhat idealistic love story that, tragically, ended before it had really begun.

Using the memorial assembly at the school as the frame for his novella, Lenz has Christian tell his story. His mind moves between the present and the recent past. In the now, he addresses Stella directly, expressing his intimate thoughts and feelings, his dreams of a future that he was too reticent and shy to express before. Alternating the direct voice with his account of the previous summer's events that brought Stella into his inner circle and intimately close to him. Stressing the duality of timelines, Lenz applies voice changes between the direct "you", and indirect "she" for Stella, sometimes quite abruptly. Evoking the atmosphere of the beautiful seascape around the small maritime town and describing its summer activities the reader gains insights into Christian's life, complementing his evolving love for his teacher. Christian helps his father, a "stone fisher", in the strengthening of the breakwater barriers, he takes tourists around Bird Island, and joins with friends in the annual summer festival. Stella is enjoying all the events and more, allowing the secret romance to evolve. With the depiction of the surroundings and summer activities Lenz creates a second, important narrative frame that, at least to me, adds depth and plausibility to a story that is more about a young man growing up into a new world of emotions than the depiction of an "affair". Consequently, beyond Christian's perception of her, Stella remains an enigma, her actions open to questions. She lived in Christian's imagination more than in life. The "warm bearing wave" of love, her note, written on a postcard to Christian, is the only message left to him that will have to carry him beyond the grief.

Siegfried Lenz is a highly regarded German author of long standing with a large body of fiction and non-fiction work. This short prose work, written in 2008, was his first to break a long silence following a devastating personal tragedy. Having read the book in its original German, I cannot comment on the English translation. His language is straight forward and easy and subtle when describing the very few private encounters of "the lovers". It seems to me, however, that the English title 'STELLA' is somewhat misleading; Stella is not at all in the centre of the story. The German title "Schweigeminute" - minute of silence - captures the core of the novella more better. [Friederike Knabe]

"I felt as though I were in a different physical world, on another planet. The people [...] wore a mark of foreignness, otherness, on their faces..." Chinaza, a young Nigerian bride describes her new surroundings in New York. She, like other protagonists in this quietly affecting collection of stories, seeks to adjust to daily life in the United States, a country they could only envision from snippets of information prior to their arrival. With each of the twelve stories, award winning Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie opens a small window into the minds of those who grapple with the challenges of bridging traditional cultures and modern realities, whether within Africa or, as in the majority of stories, across continents.

Her central characters may be young brides, part-time wives, mothers, students or job seekers, whose lives are captured in a crucial or decisive period of time. Through Adichie's perceptive portraits, we gain insights into a wide range of "private experience[s]". We meet Nkem, who, having settled with her husband in the US, has now reason to worry about his continuing life back home in Nigeria. Kamara, a recent immigrant, needs to get by on a babysitting job after her uncle and long-term resident, made unwelcome inappropriate advances. Graduate student Ukamaka, abandoned by her boyfriend, finds an unusual friendship in the most unexpected way... Taken together, these sensitively crafted stories, some more like beautiful, impressionistic vignettes, yet always ending with a surprising twist, create a colourful mosaic of women's efforts to take control of their lives, confronting - with varying level of success - the obstacles they face, be they from their own extended family, the prejudices of their surroundings or from their own lack of understanding.

Four stories are set within Africa, adding depth to our appreciation of Nigerian cultural traditions and conflicts. In 'Jumping Monkey Hill', for example, a group of aspiring authors from different corners of Africa meet at a Safari club for a writers' retreat. While at one level the most satirical story, it raises serious questions on prejudice and multicultural open-mindedness among different African peoples. The last story,'The Headstrong Historian', stands alone among the stories, in terms of structure and subject treatment. Couched in a multi-generational Nigerian family portrait and centred on Mwangba, a strong central female character, it explores the historical and continuing clashes between strong cultural traditions, social progress, and old and new religions. Written in the best African story telling tradition of, eg. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it confirms Adichie's place among the impressive group of internationally recognized Nigerian authors. At the same time, as the other stories in this collection illustrate, the author is finding her own voice and style to story telling. Two of her stories, for example, are written in the second person, creating an unusually intimate connection between reader and author, with us pondering who the "you" really is.

Most of the stories have been published individually at different times. Nevertheless, bringing them together in one volume will be much appreciated by readers familiar with the author or wanting to explore her writing. Both her novels, Purple Hibiscus: A Novel and Half of a Yellow Sun have won international praise, with HALF OF A YELLOW SUN winning the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. When reading THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK, other comparably excellent story collection on cross-cultural and immigrant experiences come to mind, especially Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies or M.G. Vassanji's When She Was Queen. [Friederike Knabe]

"...The cultivated landscape of this farm has decayed so completely now, it is difficult to believe that the fields and orchards ever existed outside my own memories, my own imagination... ". With these opening lines Liz Crane, forty-year old entomologist and the central voice in Jane Urquhart's new, engrossing and most personal novel invites us into her world and into her mind. Having recently returned to the old Butler homestead and studying monarch butterfly behaviour at the nearby Sanctuary Research Centre, Liz feels she needs to reconnect with all that is familiar from the past. She let's her mind wander back to the fun-filled summers of her childhood, spent amongst her cousins and the rest of the extended family. Important questions have remained since then about the whereabouts of some and she hopes that by going through the remnants of memorabilia kept in the farmhouse she will shed some light on these.

Much of the story takes place in the nineteen eighties at the Butler family farm on the northern, Canadian, shore of Lake Erie, a landscape that is depicted with detailed and loving attention and that is somewhat familiar to readers of Urquhart's previous novels. She and many of her characters feel grounded there. Liz, the city girl is the enthusiastic "summer cousin" immersed in play and exploration, especially with her cousin Mandy. Mandy and her father Stanley, the head of the Butler clan, are often on Liz's mind now in her ruminations about the past. Mandy, the poetry lover turned military officer, was killed on duty in Afghanistan not long ago, and Stan, the life-loving, "innovative" farmer disappeared without a trace one day, twenty years earlier. Memories also take her back to Teo, the Mexican boy, whom she met over several summers at the farm where his mother and other Mexicans were working. They had become close friends, until... "There is no one, no one left. I live in a landscape where absence confronts me daily," she reflects, and later on: "Hardly ever has memory been good for people ..."

Multi-generational intriguing family sagas, reaching back in time to Irish immigration to North America, are one of Urquhart's familiar themes. In SANCTUARY LINE the primary family storyteller is uncle Stan, who captures Liz's attention with his absorbing tales of the family's forbearers, the "Great-greats". His recounting of the past is not linear and, similarly, Liz's mind is wandering in and out of memory snippets, the history of the Butlers is revealed in small, apparently disconnected, summer installments. Central to the family traditions, beginning in Ireland, is "bifurcation": between farmers and lighthouse keepers, and in North America between those settlers on the southern shore of Lake Erie and those on the northern side. Family dramas and politics have come into play resulting, finally, in peaceful coexistence and more between the two branches. Still now, Liz keeps wondering how much of Stan's rich lore was based on fact and how much a construction of his creative mind, deliberately invented for the benefit of the children. Mystery and questions remain as far as the family saga is concerned.

Having read most of Urquhart's previous novels and enjoyed her insightful realization of engaging characters and her often lyrical and vivid evocation of the beautiful and diverse landscapes in Southern Ontario, SANCTUARY LINE feels quite familiar in that respect. Yet, for this novel, the author has taken a completely new, and for me, more intimate approach to story telling. Creating an authentic first person voice, one that allows the reader to feel like an intimate companion to Liz, who, in turn, appears to invite us to "look out the window" with her into her young girl's persona and life. With the hindsight and distance of a mature person, yet filled with deep emotion and unresolved questions, she brings the past to life for her and our benefit. While we might feel addressed directly in that first line and on and off throughout the novel, the question sneaks up on us as to whether we really are the intended audience.

By allowing Liz's memories to wander effortlessly - and seemingly randomly - between present and past, yet also subtly linking the two by dropping clues and small hints to future situations, Urquhart, in fact, spins a beautifully crafted delicate, yet sturdy, and increasingly tightly structured story web. It captures scattered shards of Liz's memory, splinters from Stan's imaginative and sometimes wild family stories, and builds on strong connecting threads of love and friendship, happiness and loss. It is up to the reader to carefully assemble the numerous and recurring references to individuals and relationships that will be revisited again and again, revealing a bit more each time until they are eventually explained.

Monarchs appear regularly every summer on the Butler farm and the symbolism of their migratory behaviour is evident to Liz, who monitors their behaviour. She understands their genetically imprinted sense of orientation and interconnectedness through several generations to return to their summer breeding grounds. In her ruminations she returns, from time to time, to admire their strengths as a swarm and to recognize their fragility if migration patterns are changing or one butterfly is straying from the predetermined path. The parallels to her understanding of her family and human behaviour in general are evident. Sometimes, though, the connections to the story web seem arbitrarily tenuous and appear to get lost in the midst of everything else. [Friederike Knabe]

Mary Anning, the heroine of Joan Thomas' novel, CURIOSITY, was indeed a mystery and has, for a long time, been a mere footnote in the history of paleontology. Her recognition as "the greatest fossilist the world ever knew"*) came long after her death in 1847. Basing herself on whatever facts are known about Mary, her family and English society mores and rules in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Thomas has created a multi-layered, convincing and engaging portrait not only of her heroine but also of the social realities of her time.

Mary's obstacles to be acknowledged for her contributions and increasing competence and knowledge were two-fold: she was still a young girl, barely educated and self-taught, when she made the first sizeable prehistoric fossil find, the first specimen of an *Ichthyosaurus*, and she was "lowborn", living in the poorest part of Lyme Regis, on England's southern shore and a centre for "fossilizing" during her lifetime. To support her family, Mary had been selling ammonites and other small petrified treasures as "curiosities" to visitors and "gentlemen geologists". Among the latter was Henry De la Beche, who took a liking to her beyond the curios. Close in age, they met initially when there were still teenagers and over the years he followed her explorations up and down the cliffs of Lyme Regis with great enthusiasm and growing respect for her detailed knowledge of the taxonomy of her fossils. **)

Lyme Regis is defined by the cliffs, with the poor people living close to the seashore. Storms, high tides with resulting flooding of low-lying areas of town are frequent and the cliffs prone to landslides. Daily, Mary is driven by both hunger and intellectual "curiosity" to discover new creatures and/or work methodically on digging them out of their rocky grave. The dangers of the tides and the changing landscape in response to the weather are constant reminders how fragile the land is and how precarious the digging for fossils could be.

Henry's story is told in often alternating chapters, allowing the author to add another facet of the social context: Henry grew up in Jamaica as son of a slave-owning plantation owner. In part, this explains his nonconformist behaviour but also his financial and other constraints at a time when the moves towards the abolition of slavery may have further reduced his income from the plantation. Eventually and based on his work, indirectly helped by Mary, Henry is accepted into the prestigious Geological Society and debates with other then well-known early paleontologists across Europe.

Thomas suggests that Henry and Mary may have been romantically linked as well working together. She imagines touching, yet guarded, encounters during walks along the cliffs and through the undergrowth above them. The descriptions illustrate the social stigma any such contact would have carried, given the strict class rules of the day. The author pursues the depiction of their social differences into the language they use in dialog and also into Mary's inner reflections.

These early fossil finds challenged the scientific thinking on the origin of life (decades prior to Darwin's ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES) and led to intellectual controversies by leading scientists and religious leaders of the day. With great skill Thomas explores these often emotional debates in some depth by bringing several geologists into the core of her novel. A few had met and bought from Mary, others did not believe that her work could be genuine. While none of them ever acknowledged Mary's contributions, her fossils were used, nonetheless, in evidence for any of the theories centred on the newly coined concept of "evolution". Above all, it challenged the scientists how the fossil evidence could be brought into harmony with the Bible and Christian beliefs in Genesis, the Flood and Noah's Ark. Fascinating debates indeed.

One of the challenges for a novel that fictionalizes the life of historical figures and their real-life circumstances is to maintain the momentum of the narrative and balance between an interesting wider context and an engaging personal dramatic story. Thomas writes perceptively about Mary and with great sensitivity, presenting her as a strong-willed young woman who, despite knowing her 'personal lower station' increasingly fought against her social limitations. Overall, the author has succeeded, in my view, to combine the various threads of the narrative well. At times, however, the detailed portrayal of Mary's daily struggle and her family's efforts on the one hand, and life among the "highborn" on the other, may seem a bit slow and drawn out to some readers. Similarly, for others less interested in the scientific explorations and debates, the intricate descriptions of the early fossil finds and the details about the gentlemen geologists's lives and debates may seem to be lacking in dramatic drive. The book ends in 1824 somewhat abruptly and I for one found this a bit disappointing. A more informative and rounded ending may have added to the sense of a completed novel. (4.5 stars) [Friederike Knabe]

*) The British Journal of the History of Science in 1999, the bicentenary of her birth, describes Mary Anning in this way.
**) She was eventually credited with, among others, the first nearly complete example of the Plesiosaurus, discovered in 1824.

The Chateau d'Argol, an imposing and mysterious mansion, set in the midst of an unexplored wild and remote area of coastal Brittany, plays a central role in this fascinating psychological drama. The eerie atmosphere emanating from the chateau and the surrounding lands awaken deep and conflicting emotions in Albert, the young new owner. Exploring the gothic-like chateau, the enchanted deep forests and isolated beaches he appears to be intensely affected by the ever changing play of light and dark, heat and cold, sunlight and storms. His moods in response swing from joyful to anxious in synchronization with the natural environment. The visit by Herminien, his longstanding friend, promises a welcome distraction from his solitary pursuits. However, he is accompanied by a beautiful young woman, Heide...

Julien Gracq creates a minimal plot with Albert as the central character within the trio. The small group's evolving interpersonal relationships are constantly shifting between attraction and rejection, intimacy, jealousy and conflict, love and hate. Mostly they are alluded to in subtle and oblique ways, leaving the reader to speculate. Much of what is going on is seen through Albert's eyes. However, his moods can swing suddenly between worry and outright panic or joyful calm and happiness, and in the process changing his view of and feeling for the other two. His frame of mind is also deeply influenced by memories of his past friendship with Herminien, suggesting a very deep and complicated relationship...

Reading it in the original French*), the novel's captivatingly expressive language struck me immediately. The author's evocative descriptions of the chateau and the haunting landscapes are conveyed in a style that is filled with images, symbolism and metaphors. The flow and rhythm of the writing is more like that of a prose-poem; one feels like reading aloud. Frequently, very long sentences, covering sometimes more than a page, are densely packed with descriptive and associative phrases, word repeats and sound associations. Gracq clearly uses them to create in the reader the sense of growing intensity of emotion, a crescendo that may reach some climactic breaking point or dissolve unexpectedly without. The reader is kept in suspense, captured by what might happen. The meshing of language expressiveness and fluidity with the at times oppressing intensity of landscape and the complex psychological portraits of the three individuals, has been for me highly absorbing.

Au Chateau d'Argol, written in 1938, was the author's first novel. Julien Gracq is the nom de plume Louis Poirier gave himself to separate his writing identity completely from his - politically very active - personal life. He was one of the most remarkable French writers of the twentieth century, much admired by many, yet little known and vastly underrated in the English-speaking world. While this novel was claimed by André Breton, the principle founder of Surrealism, to be the first novel truly reflecting this new literary movement, the author himself distanced himself from any labeling of his work. [Friederike Knabe]

*) Au Chateau d'Argol was translated by Louise Varèse in 1951.