Emily Maguire (1) (1976–)

Rapture by Emily Maguire is set in the year 821 when Agnes of Mainz is five years old, having been born to an English Priest and a pagan mother who died in childbirth. Living in Germany in a city called Mainz, Agnes is raised by her father and grows up with a love of nature, books and reading. Her father regularly hosts dinners where a variety of guests from far and wide seek out his company to discuss scholarly topics and engage in academic debates.

Listening and learning at their feet, by show more the time she reaches adolescence, Agnes is adamant she doesn't want to become a wife and mother.

"It is said a boy can avoid war by lopping off a finger or toe. What part of me, Agnes wonders, might I sever to be freed from the bloody service required of girls?" Page 34

Preferring not to become a nun either, Agnes is ambitious and wants to pursue a life where she can continue reading, studying and learning. It's not a spoiler - it's in the blurb - but Agnes disguises herself as a man and with the help of a Benedictine monk, she joins his monastery. The structure of Fulda monastery is a real culture shock and Agnes reflects on the daily structure of the Divine Office, beginning when bells rouse them at the darkest hour for Nocturnes.

"Afterwards only the barest couple of hours to rest before being roused to sing Lauds. Then every few hours the bells calling her back to the cold, stinking church for Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones. Every day at least one additional mass and sometimes two. Several days a week they sing Psalms for the deceased. Always, Vespers as the sun goes down and, finally, in the full darkness of night, Compline." Page 90

These terms - Prime, Vespers, Compline - are often mentioned in many of the historical fiction novels I read and I wish I could remember their order and time of day. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Agnes's time adjusting to the schedule, learning the different tasks performed by the monks and of course how she conceals her true identity in a monastery full of men.

Fortunately the deception is realistic and believable and the narrative isn't heavily steeped in religious fervour. The theme of desire dominates the book as Agnes stifles her physical desires in pursuit of stimulating her mind and achieving academic accomplishment. There are threats to Agnes continuing her life's purpose, but I admired how she steadfastly remained true to herself.

Maguire's writing is exquisite and I enjoyed the snippets of debate Agnes has with other learned men in the tradition of the discussions held around her father's dinner table:

"This man, whose name she has long forgotten, always assumes the barbarian monk will support his bellicosity, always acts newly shocked that she condemns swords and fire as a first resort. He is an old man but has clearly never seen war or its ugly aftermath. That a Christian with differing views is better off headless is an easy opinion if you have never had to see the insides of a severed neck." Page 182

Agnes is praised for her work as a scribe and scholar and for her knowledge of languages, not to mention her theological rigour and elegance of phrasing yet her subsequent career trajectory was a surprising one. I didn't love the way the author ended Agnes's time with the reader, but by then I'd already enjoyed a 5 star read and it wasn't enough to sway my rating.

With one of my favourite cover designs of the year, Rapture by Australian author Emily Maguire will appeal to historical fiction readers who have enjoyed books like Cuddy by Benjamin Myers or The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

* Copy courtesy of Allen & Unwin * show less

Well, this book goes down as one of the worst books that I have ever read. It was another of my Harper Collins First Look review books. Although the summary indicated that it was about a girl who is molested by her teacher when she's 14 it did NOT say that the book was almost completely porn.

It was horrifying. She's molested by this teacher and they start having an affair and the teacher is manipulative and sadistic. Her life spirals down into the gutter after. She sleeps with every man she show more meets. She's totally obsessed with the teacher, Mr. Carr. Her best friend does his best to help her but he ends up just sleeping with her as well as his own life gets dragged down the toilet with hers.

Then the teacher shows up again and she becomes his willing sex slave. The story ends when her friend kills himself and she stays with the psychotic teacher who sexually tortures her.

It was an awful book. If I hadn't been obligated to read it for the review I would have thrown the book away. It was unredeemable and the story only reinforced horrific themes. The teacher gets away with the entire thing and gets to keep her and keep abusing her. The 'good guy' kills himself and the main girl, Sarah, although she realizes that her life is a disaster, never does anything to try to help herself. She remains the helpless victim forever.

UGH. It was AWFUL. It made me uncomfortable to read and disgusted. show less

AN ISOLATED INCIDENT is one of those books I've been trying to read for a ridiculously long time now, so being able to finally get to it in the context of our f2f bookclub gathering was an added bonus.

This is such a fascinating book, one that worked particularly well for our group. Normally we find the discussion is at its most vibrant when the book isn't particularly liked, or when there is a mix of opinions, but in this case there wasn't a contradictory opinion in the room.

There's been an show more increase in "consequences' crime fiction recently. Books that consider, in particular, the fallout from violent crime in terms of victim's family, friends and community. AN ISOLATED INCIDENT is obviously such a book where the death of Bella Michael's affects her sister Chris, her ex-brother-in-law, work colleagues, friends, the small town from which Bella and Chris come, and finally the way that the media follows the story and the journalist that stays with it.

There is much to admire in the way that AN ISOLATED INCIDENT is structured. The exploration of outcomes is done without sensationalism and it reads as truthful, warts and all. Chris is not perfect, and she's harder on herself than anybody around her could be. Through her experience it becomes obvious how difficult the situation is for families and those around the victims. There's victim blaming, backgrounds and lifestyles being raked over, instant decisions about likely killers, finger pointing, whisper campaigns and character assassination. As the time between the death of Bella and the charging of a guilty party strings out, interest wans in some quarters, and seems to become more spurious, petty and pointless from others. Balancing between the grief of loss, and the weight of other's opinions, Chris is left attempting to make sense of her own life, her loss, grief, what to do now, her relationships with everybody and who she can trust.

Everything about AN ISOLATED INCIDENT is beautifully done. It's involving and extremely moving, and very cleverly populated by characters who aren't perfect, but aren't particularly bad into the bargain. There's absolutely nothing in anything that any of them have done to deserve the fallout that goes with Bella's murder, and much that makes you stop and think of how much ordinary people have to consider when placed in extraordinary circumstances.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-isolated-incident-emily-maguire-0 show less

If I tell you AN ISOLATED INCIDENT is about the death of a beautiful young, female aged care worker in a small country town you’ll think you know at least a little about where the book will go. But you don’t. the book subverts just about every stereotype and trope of the genre. Brilliantly.

What I found most noticeable about AN ISOLATED INCIDENT is what isn’t there.

Firstly the killer is not present at all in this book. I’m not talking about whether the identity of the killer is or show more isn’t revealed but the book is not about that person. That bloke (because let’s be frank when a young woman is brutally murdered the odds are astronomically high that her killer will be male) doesn’t get italicised passages from his point of view or consideration of his motivations. Or Excuses. The why of the crime is present only in the subtext: men kill women, all too bloody frequently, because they can.

Another traditional element missing from the book is the police perspective. Of course there are police officers and various plot points in which one or more of them is central but we do not spend any time seeing things from their point of view and we do not know if any of them are haunted by the death and the subsequent investigation. This is not their story either.

In a way the book isn’t even about Bella Michaels – the young woman who has been murdered.

Instead the book is about the aftermath of her death, primarily about the people who are affected by it. The most important of these people is Bella’s older sister Chris who experiences an almost unsurvivable grief. Not ‘just’ the grief that comes with a loved one dying horrifically and much, much too early. But the dual complications that come with the knowledge that someone caused that death and is still going about their lives and that because Bella’s death is so public other people – most of whom didn’t even know Bella – feel some kind of ownership of her. And her death. Chris’ descent into a form of madness as she grasps the enormity of her new reality is one of the most compelling characterisations I have ever read. As a divorced barmaid and amateur prostitute Chris is an atypical heroine but I defy even the most uncharitable of readers not to feel entirely sympathetic towards her.

One of the people who never knew Bella but who is affected by her death is May Norman. Suffering an ignoble relationship breakup she heads to the fictional town of Strathdee – ostensibly half-way between Sydney and Melbourne – to put some distance between herself and her lover as well as to take on her first big crime reporting assignment. It’s what she’s always wanted. Isn’t it? Initially May is a typically dogged yet somewhat insensitive journalist but finds herself increasingly invested in ensuring that the truth of Bella’s life and the impact of her death on those who loved her is meaningfully presented to the world.

Maguire lets Chris narrate most of this story, honestly and directly (she is even allowed to break the literary equivalent of the fourth wall occasionally) which helps the reader to develop a real understanding of all that Chris is going through. Though there is humour too as evidenced by Chris’ physical description of her sister

Bella was, if I’m being honest, Strathdee-pretty. I was always telling her she could be a model if she wanted, and I still think that was true, but it’d modelling in the Kmart catalogue not Vogue or anything. I’m not putting her down. Like I said, she was the most beautiful thing anyone around here had ever seen in the flesh, but she was five foot nothing in high heels and had a size 10 arse on a size 6 body.

But it is through Chris’ response to the public appropriation of Bella’s death that we start to really see how the situation is impacting on Chris. When there is a ‘march for Bella’ in Sydney – some six hours drive away from where she lived and died – Chris is angry

…Look, for the record I believe they were sad and scared. But that march was about them, for them. That’s fine. Whatever gets you through this life. But they shouldn’t have pretended it was for Bella. How could it have been? They had no memories of her to celebrate, no way of just what it was the world lost when she died. And the coverage that thing got, well, it made people – all the goddam compassionate, sad people out there – feel like something had been done, some kind of justice. It made a lot of those nice ladies and men marching through Sydney feel better about what had happened and that was the opposite of what was needed. We needed rage and heartbreak, we needed the whole country to be unable to sleep, to eat, to move on with their lives until the men who did this were found. Instead we got warm feelings about community and sweet quotes about paying tribute. They got peace and we – Bella and me – got jack-fucking-shit.

There is more. Much more about the way in which these kinds of deaths are reported by the media and picked over by the rest of us.

Another subversion of the genre is in the book’s approach to violence. We know Bella’s death was violent but whatever brutalities she endured are not recounted. Chris knows what they are – they infuse her thoughts – but she doesn’t pass them on. And even when she looks at leaked photographs of Bella’s body posted online we don’t learn the details from May either. Chris knows it’s what people want – details and the gorier the better – but Maguire is determined we won’t have them.

I’ve only scratched the surface of AN ISOLATED INCIDENT both in this review and in my own thinking. I suppose that is as it should be given the book subverts just about every aspect of the crime genre while forcing readers to consider their own responses to real world incidents of the type it depicts. Being confronted in this way should not be easily forgotten. So if you like your reading thought-provoking and don’t mind keeping company with fictional people long after you’ve closed the back cover of their stories then I highly recommend AN ISOLATED INCIDENT. show less