So how did April go?

With a little help from two review copies, a competition prize, and a reread, I  still haven't bought a book in 2012. I have enjoyed concentrating on Mount TBR, and finding time for "big" reads...

It is not impossible that A Death in the Family, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, will turn out to be my book 2012.   During a rather Scandinavian April, I also completed Death Sentence, by Mikkel Birkegaard, tackled Leif GW Persson's Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End, and reread Henning Mankell's  second Wallander outing, The Dogs of Riga, which I still feel is the weakest in the series. 

Actually, I am not quite sure I did 'complete' Death Sentence - after a enjoying most of the novel, I found the final few ages of torture so unpleasant I could only skim through them. There was some narrative justification for the scene, but it was not for. Likewise, I am not convinced there was any great need for Persson to include a sadistic paedophile at the top of Sweden's secret police service.

Maybe this is a bit of an odd position in that Death Sentence and Winter's Longing are works of fiction - no-one was hurt in the making of the novels - which cannot be said for Knausgaard whose brutal account features real people in ways that have impacted on their lives.  

 

Comments

[Maxine]

I agree that there is a difference in reading about factual "horrors" and fictional ones. We can learn the lessons of history, geography and society. But violence, torture and so on as fictional entertainment - this is questionable. I read Mikkael Bierkergard's first translated book, but did not like it as it was about magic and so on, a kids' book, really, I had read in other reviews that his second translated novel is gruesome, so I'll give it a miss. I will tackle Leif GWP's second at some point, though, despite my irritation with the length, relentless misogynism, plot convolutions, too many identical (horrid) policemen/spies and over-simple murder mystery in the first!