Mortal Mischief (or A Death in Vienna as the US edition is called) by Frank Tallis was my "dusty" book for the 9 books for 2009 challenge. I thought I might have bought it sometime in 2006 and that was confirmed, when I found a receipt between pages 312 and 313 (the receipt revealed that I had also bought Christine de Pizan's classic The City of Ladies which I haven't read yet, either!). Anyway, the receipt was dated March 28th 2006. Mortal Mischief/A Death in Vienna is the first book in The Liebermann Papers series.
Dr. Max Liebermann is a music loving psychiatrist, a dicipline of Dr. Sigmund Freud, in Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Empire. The year is 1902. When a young female medium is mysteriously murdered, detective inspector Rheinhardt asks his good friend Liebermann for help.
Mortal Mischief was a delightful read! Yes, delightful, despite of it being a murder mystery. Even though interesting, the actual mystery part of the story was almost secondary to me. What I enjoyed most was the description of Max Liebermann's professional struggles, his clever use of deduction when solving both psycholocigal problems of his patients and the details of the murder mystery, and the snippets about his personal life, some of which will no doubt be developed further in the dollowing parts of the series. That being said, also the mystery was a very clever one, so simple, but clever.
I am very glad I finally read this mystery. Tallis is able to bring turn of the century Vienna alive in this book. As I've been lucky enough to visit Vienna twice I was able to see in my mind some of the places mentioned. This little paragraph, where the Karlzplats station pavilions are mentioned, made me chuckle:
"Eventually she found herself standing by one of the new station entrances on Karlsplatz. Her husband had said that they were a disgrace and that the architect should be shot. Beatrice had agreed, but looking at them now she could not understand why some people found them so offensive. The green wrought-iron framework of the two pavilions reminded her of a conservatory."[p. 408]
The architect was Otto Wagner. The pavilions had been built in 1898 and they are two of the most beautiful examples of Wagner's work. Today one of the two pavilions, the west pavilion, houses a permanent exhibition of Otto Wagner's life and work. Learn more about the pavilions and Wagner here. The paragraph I quoted made me smile, because I simply love Jugend/Art Noveau architecture and while in Vienna Karlsplatz pavilions were one stop on my Jugendstil architecture pilgrimage! :) I don't think anyone today could think the pavilions as a disgrace!
Sorry, I digressed from the book to Viennese architecture... :) All in all, Mortal Mischief was an easy and enjoyable read, and I will most definitely read the other parts of the series, too. My only critisism is that there were perhaps too many café scenes it the book. Cafés are very special in Vienna, but still. And all those tarts and cakes mentioned! They would make even a stronger person give in to temptation, not to mention someone like me with more than one sweet tooth! ;)
The other volumes of the Liebermann Papers series (this far) are:
I don't read much fantasy. I do enjoy reading science fiction, though, my favorite science fiction authors being Elizabeth Moon and Ursula Le Guin, both of whom have actually also written fantasy books (which I have not read). Sometimes, however, a fantasy book catches my attention and in those cases more often than not it is a book that somehow tells a story using alternative history, which I love! There is also wonderful alternative history science fiction out there, two of my favorite authors on this genre being Sophie McDougall (Romanitas and Rome Burning and the third upcoming part of the trilogy tell about the Roman Empire that never fell) and Jon Courtenay Grimwood (the Arabesk series where the Ottoman Empire never fell and also his earlier science fiction books where the Napoleonic Empire survived into the future).
It was because of the alternative history aspect that I some years ago bought Susanna Clarke's bestseller Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, or rather the Finnish translation of it which is called Jonathan Strange & Herra Norrell, herra being mister in Finnish. I also loved the fact that there were two different looking versions of this novel published, one with white covers and a white dust jacket with black text and the other with black covers and a black dust jacket with white text. White magic and black magic! I though it was a brilliant idea.
So, I bought the book, but I never read it. These past four years it has been sitting on one of my book shelves, occupying a very prominent place there, a place, where it has caught my eye more or less every day. Thus, when I was choosing what to read for the 9 books for 2009 challenge, I thought it was high time to give the two magical gentlemen a try!
I took the book with me, when I went to Slovenia for a week's holiday. (I always take two books with me, when I travel. This time the other one was Granford by Elizabeth Gaskell, a lovely book!) I got a good start reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell in the airplane, and somewhat to my surprise I was soon captivated with the story. Before the week was over I had finished the book, all 793 pages of it!
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a story about how practical magic returs to the early 19th century Britain after many centuries, when magic has only been studied as something theoretical. It is an ambitious work of fiction successfully executed, and I am very happy I finally read it!
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was my book read for the strange-category in the 9 books for 2009 challenge, because of its genre and, well, of course also because of its name! :)
I spent last week in Slovenia. There are some photos about Ljubljana central market place on my food blog Cinnamonda, if you want to take a look. I'll post some pictures here, too, as soon as I have time to sort my pictures a bit. I tend to take a lot, I mean A LOT of photos, every time I'm abroad. :).
After returning home I felt that I'd rather spend my last summer holiday week mostly off-line. The weather has been so nice, and I wanted to cramp in this week as much tennis as I could :) in addition to that our dance practise started again after a three-week summer break. So, I have been very busy with my two favorite sports these past few days back home. I have, however, also made good progress with my reading during these past two weeks, and I think now is high time to continue reviewing my reading challenge books. Since my last post I have read both my "Alive or not"- and "Strange" -books for the 9 for 2009 challenge. In addition to that I have read Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (such a lovely, funny book) and Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin (definitely a great summer read!). I'll post reviews of both later. Let's start now with the book I chose as my "Alive or not" -book for the 9 for 2009 challenge:
Basic facts:
Author: Kim Wilkins
Book: The Autumn Castle
First published: in Australia in 2003, in the UK in 2004
I read: The 2004 Gollanz trade paperback edition
First line: Once upon a time a Miraculous Child was born.
The idea behind the Alive or not -category of the 9 books for 2009 challenge is to read a book already in your possession that has been written by an author, who has won or been nominated for any literary price. Australian author Kim Wilkins has both been nominated and won the Aurealis Award, the Australian scifi, fantasy and horror book award, multiple times. She won both the fantasy and horror categoríes in 1997 with her first novel The Infernal, and the horror category in 2000 with The Resurrectionists and in 2001 with Angel of Ruin. The Autumn Castle was among the finalists for the horror book award in 2003.
Actually, I was ashtonished to find out that the Autumn Castle had won in horror category! For me it is purely a fantasy book. It is a fairytale for adults, but of course, like most traditional fairytales, the Autumn Castle does have some horror elements. It is, however, in no way a horrific or scary book.
The Autumn Castle is a story about Christine Starlight, a rich young woman living with her boyfriend in an artist colony in Berlin, Germany. Christine is the daughter of two seventies pop stars, who died in a car accident that left Christine herself with constant pain in her back. Christine does not want to use the monay her parents left her just yet and works instead in the English Bookshop for living. She has lived in Berlin as a child and was best friends with a gir,l who was abducted and Christine assumes the girl was murdered. When the backpain one day makes Christine faint, she is miraculously transported into another world, a land of faeries. Soon it is revealed that Christine's childhood friend is not dead, but lives in the lands of faery as Queen Mayfridh. Mayfridh becomes fascinated by the world of humans, while Christine longs to return to faeryland again and again as there she does not feel pain. The tale of Christine and Mayfridh is complicated by a love triangle and a murderous billionaire sculptor, who calls himself the Faery Hunter and wants to build himself a wife by using faery bones as raw material.
The Autumn Castle is a really fantastical story. Ms. Wilkins has created an interesting world with many great characters, my favorites were Hexebart the witch in the well (!!) and Queen Mayfridh's shapeshifting (crow, fox, wolf, bear) counsellor Eisengrimm.
I don't often read fantasy. This book caught my attention in the Academic Bookstore here in Helsinki a couple of years ago, because it was a book written in English but set in Berlin (and the lands of faery, of course :)) and the story sounded just so... well, fantastical! And that it was. The Autumn Castle was a fun story to read.
Find more about Kim Wilkins:Ok, here's one fantastical :) picture I took in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It is a dragon decorating the Dragon Bridge (Zmaijski most in Slovene). Dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana.
As a child I read an illustrated version of Oscar Wilde's Happy Prince in Finnish, and it made such an impression on me that I still remember vividly the picture of the crying prince with the sparrow. Later I have seen both An Ideal Husband and An Importance of Being Ernest on film, but I had not read more Wilde until now. Which is kind of incredible come to think of it! Well, better now than never, and I can assure you I am going to read more Wilde in the not too distant future.
The book I am going to talk about now is Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan which I read for the 9 Books for 2009 challenge hosted by Isabel. 9 for 9 is a challenge to help participants to make their to-be-read piles a bit lower. All the books read for the challenge should already be in the possession of the reader, and we are to read books from nine different categories. See the right column of my blog for a list of the categories.
For me Lady Windemere's Fan falls into free-category. The book was given to me as Christmas present in 1993 by a friend and has been waiting for the perfect moment to read it ever since! It is a gem of a book (I can almost here Lady Windemere exclaim 'What a dear little book!") printed in March 1913, and it has that lovely old book smell to it! :) As a nice curiosity there is also the list of actors and actresses that acted in the premiere of the play printed in the beginning of the book.
As you can see the play premiered in St. James theatre in London in February 22nd, 1892. Mr. George Alexander, manager of the theatre from 1890 to 1918, produced the play and also acted the part of Lord Windemere. Lady Windemere was played by the young Miss Lily Hanbury, who in 1908 died tragically of medical complications after the birth of a still-born child. She was at the time of her death only in her thirties. The third main character, Mrs. Erlynne, was played by Miss Marion Terry, who performed in some 125 plays during her career that spanned five decades.
Lady Windemere's Fan is a play about morals, especially about morals of marriage. Lady Windermere, a good and innocent woman, falsely suspects her husband of two years of having an affair with the notorious Mrs. Erlynne, and is outraged when Lord Windemere demands Mrs. Erlynne to be invited to her party. Later Lady Windermere puts herself in a compromising position and is rescued by Mrs. Erlynne.
I found the play charming. Wilde's writing was all I thought it would be, witty and precise, and he portrays the life of the upper echelon of Victorian society very cleverly. At the same time the play is a quick and easy read. Highly recommended!
Here are some amusing snippets from the play:
"Lord Darlington: It's a curious thing, duchess, about the game of marriage -a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion- the wives hold all the honours, and invariably lose the odd trick.
Duchess of Berwick: The odd trick? Is that the husband, Lord Darlington?
Lord Darlington: It would be rather a good name for the modern husband."[p. 16]
"Lady Windermere: Are all men bad?
Duchess of Berwick: Oh, all of them, my dear, all of them, without any exception. And they never grow any better. Men become old, but they never become good." [p. 23]
"Lady Plymdale: ...You are to lunch there on Friday!
Dumby: Why?
Lady Plymdale: Because I want you to take my husband with you. He has been so attentive lately, that he has become a perfect nuisance. Now, this woman is just the thing for him. He'll dance attendance upon her as long as she lasts him, and won't bother me. I assure you, women of that kind are most useful. They form the basis of other people's marriages." [p. 62]
Mortal Mischief (or A Death in Vienna as the US edition is called) by Frank Tallis was my "dusty" book for the 9 books for 2009 challenge. I thought I might have bought it sometime in 2006 and that was confirmed, when I found a receipt between pages 312 and 313 (the receipt revealed that I had also bought Christine de Pizan's classic The City of Ladies which I haven't read yet, either!). Anyway, the receipt was dated March 28th 2006. Mortal Mischief/A Death in Vienna is the first book in The Liebermann Papers series.
