I'm enjoying
Blackout (scroll down) by Connie Willis very much, despite its tendency toward repetitive meanderings. It's a heavy-weight at 490+ pages and could have been edited, but Ballantine published it, and this publisher is not known for spending more than a minuscule amount on editing. But I don't mind.
Blackout has a lot going for it, and ESCAPE is the key ingredient in the recipe. (I'm also uncomfortable with Willis's versions of Cockney speech--is this dialogue-manipulation necessary?) But the story intrigues me, so I'm willing to overlook that, though I do wonder what my friends in the British Isles might think of it.
Now--Iceland, a country I dearly wish I had visited when I had the chance. I have picked up Arnaldur Indridason's
Jar City, a police procedural set in Reykjavik. As Norse mystery writers go, some say Indridason can't hold a candle to Henning Mankell, but so what? It's set in Iceland, not Sweden, and the first few chapters drew me right in because for those in the know, Icelandic writers and Icelandic literature are nothing like the Swedish.
I asked Jack if he had read anything by Connie Willis and the first thing he said to me is "She can't do British, but Americans probably don't realise that." So full marks to you! He has a few of her books and I'll get around to them sometime.
ReplyDeleteIceland is a place we have wanted to visit for a long time but I think it's very expensive. Haven't read anything Icelandic yet.