French philosopher Blaise Pascal’s famous aphorism (turned oft-quoted cliché) “the heart has its reasons” is reason enough for Ana and Connor to begin an illicit affair in Sarah Crossan’s first novel for adults.
“Here is the Beehive” isn’t about the ignition of a romance. Crossan spares us the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ tête-à-tête, and the tedious and torturous deliberation about the morality of their entanglement. For three years, in stolen moments — hotel rooms, bars and coffee shops, snatched weekends away, and quickly-deleted texts — they have formed a clandestine relationship. And in these moments, it is perfect, their other lives — spouses, kids, jobs — washed away. This isn’t a sexually-charged fling; genuine emotion pulses through their liaisons. There is love. But it exists in a void, unshared.
The book opens at the end of their relationship. “Here is the Beehive” is about its abrupt termination, when Connor dies suddenly, and the emotional fallout Ana suffers. It’s about the grief inherent when you lose a loved one, and how it can unspool the life you know, made worse for Ana by the fact nobody can know the their ever existed. With Connor gone, it’s like it never happened. So Anna, untethered, self-destructively makes contact with Connor’s widow.
Told in verse, Crossan’s trademark style, Ana’s sincere hopes and foolish naïveté regarding Connor is heartbreaking, her anguish over his death equally so. “Here is the Beehive” is a subversive exploration of the complicated matters of the human heart. Discomforting at times, but absolutely riveting and beautifully told.
ISBN: 9781526619495
ISBN-10: 1526619490
Format: Hardcover
Number Of Pages: 288
Available: 1st September 2020
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
There’s very little mystery and even less suspense in “Maigret and the Ghost,” my first dalliance with Georges Simenon and his famous protagonist. And yet I was absolutely charmed by the French detective’s 62nd case, and Simenon’s depiction of the plodding reality of police work: endless phone calls, witness statements and interviews — with plenty of time for beer and sandwiches, and visits to bistros, naturally.
“Sheerwater” is a nerve-shredder.
The work of novelist Daniel Silva is inextricably linked to current events, his thrillers either ripped from the headlines, or frighteningly prescient. As his hero Gabriel Allon has ascended to the head of Israeli intelligence, the scope of Silva’s novels has expanded. His recent fiction has explored Islamist extremism, the diminishment of the United States as an intelligence powerhouse, and the rise of Russian influence. His twentieth novel in this long-running series is smaller in scope, but with ramifications just as significant: a murder mystery in which the victim is Pope Paul VII.
David Mitchell’s “Utopia Avenue” is a rags-to-riches rock ‘n’ roll story that begins in London, 1967, and ends in tragedy in San Francisco a little more than a year later. It examines the lives of the quartet that make up Utopia Avenue — troubled guitarist Jasper de Zoet, bassist Dean Moss, keyboardist and singer Elf Holloway, and drummer Peter ‘Griff’ Griffin — as it charts the development of their three albums, and their burgeoning success and fame.
“The Hunted” is an absolutely merciless thriller set in the Australian outback. It’s violent and scary and relentless, and so filmic in its unfolding, it’s easy to see why Hollywood is already scrapping it for parts. It is a novel of pure action; a shotgun blast of mayhem; bullets, blood and explosions organised around the barest bones of plot and character — because such elements would only impede its relentless velocity.
Genre critics sometimes indulge themselves by scoffing at loopholes or implausibilities in thrillers that could not possibly exist without them. These people want their fiction grounded in a world of physical and psychological plausibility. They want characters to ask the obvious questions, or react rationally; but characters in thrillers do not, because then the problems would be solved (or avoided entirely) and the book would be over.
It’s been maybe 15 years since I last read one of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels, of which “The Museum of Desire” is the 34th. They were a staple of my adolescence, alongside James Patterson’s Alex Cross series. There was no discernible reason why I stopped. Some characters live with you forever — Harry Bosch, Jack Reacher, Joe Pickett, Matthew Scudder, etc — and others you leave behind.
Jane Harper’s “The Survivors” is a splendidly entertaining and addictive whodunit set in the small coastal town of Evelyns Bay in Tasmania. It is a crystallisation of Harper’s three preceding novels — “The Dry,” (2016) “Force of Nature” (2017) and “The Lost Man” (2019) — and plunders similar themes of childhood friendship, family loyalty, and festering secrets, which threaten to break the thin-ice on which its characters live when the body of a young woman washes ashore.