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Loading... The Snow Kimonoby Mark Henshaw
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  stillatim | Oct 23, 2020 |   What a fascinating pair to read back to back. Payment Deferred is a very modern psychological thriller which hooks the reader in from the start: an astonishing work to come up with in the 1920s by a young man at the start of his career. The Snow Kimono might also be defined as a psychological thriller, as long and meandering as Forester's is to the point. And, again in contrast, Henshaw's novel is the first he'd written for 25 years, having a normal career after realising that there would be no money in writing for him. I suspect that Henshaw is too clever for me. I spent too much time wondering what I was doing. Whereas CS Forester knows exactly what you are doing. Following the journey this simple question takes you on: will the murderer get away with his deed? And despite - or perhaps because of - the implications of the title, the reader is sort of barracking (in the Australian usage of the word) for the petty man who acts on this big idea. https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/payment-deferred-by-cs-fo... (  ) bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 | What a fascinating pair to read back to back. Payment Deferred is a very modern psychological thriller which hooks the reader in from the start: an astonishing work to come up with in the 1920s by a young man at the start of his career. The Snow Kimono might also be defined as a psychological thriller, as long and meandering as Forester's is to the point. And, again in contrast, Henshaw's novel is the first he'd written for 25 years, having a normal career after realising that there would be no money in writing for him. I suspect that Henshaw is too clever for me. I spent too much time wondering what I was doing. Whereas CS Forester knows exactly what you are doing. Following the journey this simple question takes you on: will the murderer get away with his deed? And despite - or perhaps because of - the implications of the title, the reader is sort of barracking (in the Australian usage of the word) for the petty man who acts on this big idea. https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/payment-deferred-by-cs-fo... ( ) bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 | What a fascinating pair to read back to back. Payment Deferred is a very modern psychological thriller which hooks the reader in from the start: an astonishing work to come up with in the 1920s by a young man at the start of his career. The Snow Kimono might also be defined as a psychological thriller, as long and meandering as Forester's is to the point. And, again in contrast, Henshaw's novel is the first he'd written for 25 years, having a normal career after realising that there would be no money in writing for him. I suspect that Henshaw is too clever for me. I spent too much time wondering what I was doing. Whereas CS Forester knows exactly what you are doing. Following the journey this simple question takes you on: will the murderer get away with his deed? And despite - or perhaps because of - the implications of the title, the reader is sort of barracking (in the Australian usage of the word) for the petty man who acts on this big idea. https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/payment-deferred-by-cs-fo... ( ) bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 | Winner, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, 2015 Winner, ACT Book of the Year Award, 2015 Longlisted, Voss Literary Award, 2015 Shortlisted, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, 2015 Shortlisted, Queensland Literary Awards, University of Queensland Fiction Book Award, 2015 So when I saw it at the library I took it home… Memory, he had once believed, was our real refuge. It was who we were. What we returned to. A somehow sacred place. Our cells might die, be replaced, but not their secret synaptic codes. That was the paradox. Memories were our sanctuary. What bound us to each other. But he knew now that was an illusion. Memories could change, be destroyed, be rewritten. Now, in the library, he would remember. He would force himself to recall all the pain, to give up those things he wished he could have left buried. He would overcome his own resistance. (p.257) It was when I came across meditations like these that I began to enjoy the book. To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/06/03/the-snow-kimono-by-mark-henshaw/ (  ) anzlitlovers | Jul 16, 2016 | no reviews | add a review
There are times in your life when something happens after which you're never the same. It may be something direct or indirect, or something someone says to you. But whatever it is, there is no going back. And inevitably, when it happens, it happens suddenly, without warning. Paris: 1989. Recently retired Inspector of Police Auguste Jovert receives a letter from a woman who claims to be his daughter. Two days later, a stranger comes knocking on his door. Set in Paris and Japan, The Snow Kimono tells the stories of Inspector Jovert, former Professor of Law Tadashi Omura, and his one-time friend the writer Katsuo Ikeda. All three men have lied to themselves, and to each other. And these lies are about to catch up with them. A quarter of a century after the award-winning bestseller Out of the Line of Fire, Mark Henshaw returns with an intricate psychological thriller that is also an unforgettable meditation on love and loss, on memory and its deceptions, and the ties that bind us to others. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.74)
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Wikipedia in English
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Then, nothing.
And here we have his second novel (not counting two crime novels), a mere twenty-seven years later.
And he's learned a lot from those two crime novels. The metafiction here is buried, but all the more fun for that: we have Inspector Jovert (whom I like to imagine as a particularly grizzled Russell Crowe). We have a novel of love and Japanese university life, involving trips to and from the provinces, and a character called Natsumi (cf: Natsume Soseki, and his Sanshiro). We have echoes of everything you've ever read about the French and the war in Algeria.
He's also learned that readers enjoy suspense, but the suspense here is astonishingly strange, and requires a lot of trust in the author. What we can't wait to find out, in short, is why we're hearing the stories we hear at all. What looks like it will be a policier or noir suddenly turns into one of those "then so and so sat down and told me this story" tales, but with no indication whatsoever why we, or Inspector Jovert, is listening to what he's hearing. Rest assured, dear reader, it is made clear (pace some other reviewers), though it's not at all easy to piece everything together.
The form is by far the best thing about this wonderful book, but there are also some harrowing moments, particularly if, like me, you have a brand new child.
Anyway, despite the rather cheesy opening sentence, you should all go and read this book. (