Alison Baird. The Dragon’s Egg (1994)

     Alison Baird. The Dragon’s Egg (1994) Baird has a nice idea, but her sense of narrative is weak. Mr Lien returns from China with a present for his daughter Ai: a rock he picked up on the shore of the Yangtze River. It is in fact a dragon’s egg, and when it hatches, Ai has a friend to help her overcome the sad feelings caused by a bully at school. The dragon, Ling Tau, is the eldest son of the King of Dragons. When he reaches maturity, he takes her to his palace under the waters of the Yangtze, where she is suitably rewarded; and the dragons will be her friends for the rest of her life. Dragons can shape-change, as well as command the weather, etc, so there is opportunity for a good deal of poetic justice. The grownups of course refuse to believe that Ai’s friend is real, but that just helps him hide his true nature. Baird’s dialogue is good, but she doesn’t use it often; she tells too much, and doesn’t show enough. Still, a nice story for the tweenagers. Bria (11) liked it. ** (2006)

John Greenwood. Murder, Mr. Mosley (1983)

     John Greenwood. Murder, Mr. Mosley (1983) Mosley is one of those seemingly bumbling ‘tecs who manage to accomplish a good deal more than their more up-to-date, always-active, and ambitious colleagues. He not only solves the murder of the Brenda Thwaites, village hoyden returned to her home after many years absence; he also gives his colleague the evidence and pointers needed to bring another villain to justice. The murder itself was motivated by that most pathetic of motives, the desire for respectability. But Brenda was mixed up with a bent lawyer, so Mosley gets the goods in him too. Sergeant Beamish, one of those young fellas who knows better than his elders, becomes a loyal disciple of Mosley’s roundabout methods. This looks like the beginning of a promising series, but I haven’t found anything else about Mosley or Greenwood. **½ (2006)

Gary Larson. The Pre-History of The Far Side (1989)

     Gary Larson. The Pre-History of The Far Side (1989) Larson tells and explains the development of his cartoons. He’s not quite as weird as his drawings and their subject matter suggest, but he comes close. Like all true artists, technique and style matter to him as much as content. I doubt that this book will interest others than Far Side aficionados and graduate students, but for them this will be a treasure and a pleasure. *** (2006)

Colin Watson. Bump in the Night (1960)

     Colin Watson. Bump in the Night (1960) A number of explosions eventually result in a death. Insp. Purbright is dispatched to sort out the clues, which he does with the reluctant help of the local man, Insp. Larch, whose marriage to a Councillor’s daughter has placed him a little too close to the action. Well plotted, nicely characterised, but uncertain about its focus: detective story or social comedy? This was Watson’s second book; I don’t know whether the series developed any further, but it would work well on TV. ** (2006)

Bharati Mukherjee. Darkness (1985)

    Bharati Mukherjee. Darkness (1985) Mukherjee has developed into a moderately successful but undervalued writer. This collection shows her early work, before she achieved renown and success. The stories are uniformly depressing and sad, occasionally brutal in their depiction of the difficulties of immigrants attempting to adapt and assimilate into their new culture, and their inevitable failures. These are bad enough for European immigrants, much worse for Indians, especially the upper caste Indians that make up the bulk of the Indian immigrants to America. The burden of class consciousness merely exacerbates the problem of becoming an ordinary American or Canadian. A couple of the stories deal with an Indian woman married to a white man; one wonders whether these reflect or refract Mukherjee’s experience as the wife of Clarke Blaise, a writer much overrated by himself.
     A good book, but a depressing one. **½ (2006)

Moshe Flato. The Power of Mathematics (1990)

     Moshe Flato. The Power of Mathematics (1990) This could be read as an extended gloss on Wigner’s well-known paper on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics as a model of the physical universe. How can such an abstract, human-invented system of symbolisms become such an accurate and powerful tool for explaining and predicting the behaviour of the material world?
     Flato limits himself to a few themes, especially misunderstandings of what mathematics is and what it can do. Like many mathematicians, he stresses that mere calculation is not a mathematician’s work. Unlike many earlier pure mathematicians (eg, Hardy), he finds the interplay of physics and other sciences with mathematics to be essential to both.
     The translation limps. One can tell that Flato’s original French was idiomatic and plain, but the translator was unfamiliar with English idioms. He’s also unfamiliar with mathematics, so that too often he translates the French terms literally, not into the corresponding English mathematical terminology. These faults make the book difficult to read, which may explain the fact that I found it on a remainder table a few years ago. I shall not keep it. ** (2006)

Ruth Rendell. Means of Evil and Other Stories (1979)

     Ruth Rendell. Means of Evil and Other Stories (1979) All of these have been made into episodes in the Wexford TV series. Rendell says they should be read “as if each was a little novel in the series”, i.e., the reader should flesh out the tales with his or her knowledge of the characters. This, the TV series did very well, so I read with the video images in mind. This helped, for the stories are sparse in character and detail, and heavy on exposition. All the same, they are good entertainment on a summer afternoon. *** (2006)