Exile

I can see why this book might not be for everyone. There’s a fair amount of Glasgow vernacular, more whisky is consumed than on a raucous Hogmanay—by one woman—and the atmosphere is unremittingly dark, grimy and threatening. There is no place to hide, no light relief, and no real hope for any of the characters.

But I loved it.

In Exile we rejoin Maureen and Leslie who, fresh from dealing with a nasty, murdering rapist in their own way, become involved in the search for Ann, a woman who had taken refuge in the Glasgow Place of Safety, a shelter for battered women. Ann has disappeared and everyone assumes her husband Jimmy is behind it. But when Ann turns up dead in the Thames, Maureen heads to London to look for answers.

This is show more exquisite writing, with well-drawn, brilliantly observed characters. It’s exactly the sort of book I love. Exile is the second book in Mina’s Garnethill trilogy. While the Alex Morrow books always left me eager to start the next instalment the moment I finished one, I feel the need to take Garnethill slowly. These novels are bruising. They require decompression at the end and time to appreciate what Mina has done.

I think that some people struggle with the fact that Maureen keeps on making really bad decisions which put herself at risk, missing the point that she is a completely broken person. She drinks to blank it out and when she drinks she chooses to do exactly the wrong thing. A lot of the time she doesn’t really care. It’s all so bleak that she simply wants to feel alive, to have the thrill and sensation of following the catastrophic path.

The details are breathtaking. Every scene is redolent with texture: the sights, the smells and the sounds of deprivation. Mina doesn’t need long descriptions. She can sketch a picture in three or four words and convey it perfectly. There are no unimportant characters. Everyone has a role that matters, and there’s clear movement along a longer narrative arc.

You can already sense that more trouble lies ahead for Maureen, as the shadows of her father and her mad, alcoholic mother loom behind the grimy net curtains that separate the reader from the next book: Resolution. show less

Exile is the second installment of Denise Mina’s Garnethill trilogy, which begins with Garnethill and ends with Resolution (which I have not yet read). If you do not read Garnethill prior to this book, you will be a bit lost, both in terms of characters, and in terms of the main character’s (Maureen O’Donnell) background. And this is critical. These are excellent books, and I most highly recommend them.

As the action begins, Maureen, who works at a battered women’s shelter, is drawn into the disappearance of Ann Harris, a resident of the place, who told everyone that her husband Jimmy constantly beat and abused her. Quickly she learns that the London police have discovered a disfigured body wearing a piece of Ann's jewelry, and show more that they are out to find her killer. Maureen meets up with Jimmy and realizes that he’s just a quiet man trying to take care of four small children and wasn’t involved in Ann’s disappearance. However, if she doesn’t figure out what happened to Ann, more than likely it will be Jimmy that’s off to prison. Her desire to help Jimmy sets her on a very dangerous path where she will meet up with some very rough characters who aren’t so happy that a foreigner has come asking questions.

But aside from the crime element, Maureen as a person is worth the reading time alone. She’s got a lot on her shoulders and struggles inwardly with her past as well as her extremely dysfunctional family. Now she’s got new worries that pick up where the first book (Garnethill) left off. I really enjoy her character and I’m really sad there are only three books about her. I also enjoy Denise Mina’s writing…it is excellent, and not just in the sense that she’s a good writer of crime fiction. She can write, and after I finish this trilogy I will be reading anything I can of hers.

Highly recommended, but as noted above, please do start with the first in the series. On to the third book, and very soon. If you like UK crime fiction and strong women characters, you will really like this book. This is no ordinary “mystery” series by any stretch of the imagination. show less

This is the second book in the Garnethill trilogy, which was Denise Mina’s earliest work. When I read Garnethill, I said that “Glasgow comes to life, and Maureen O’Donnell makes a complex, human protagonist. The issues at the heart of this story are serious, and there is some grim violence, but the whole is told with warmth and a bit of humour.” Garnethill had more on-stage gore, whereas Exile focuses on the psychological aftermath of Garnethill, and the grim violence happens off-screen more than on-screen. And as I did in Garnethill, I found myself getting a bit confused in a couple of places, mainly toward the end when Maureen figured out the solution and was naming a bunch of people that it took me a little while to remember. show more What I liked best in this story was Maureen’s relationship with her brother, Liam. show less

The second book of a trilogy, Exile continues the story of Maureen O’Donnell, abuse survivor, ex-mental patient, reluctant volunteer shelter-worker and genuine heroine for the age. Having survived the dramatic events depicted in [b:Garnethill|94177|Garnethill|Denise Mina|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171278302s/94177.jpg|2275377] Maureen is spending her days trying not to cry and volunteering in the office at the Place of Safety women’s shelter. When Ann Harris, one of the women who had stayed at the shelter after supposedly being beaten by her husband Jimmy, goes missing no one but Maureen’s best mate Leslie seems bothered. When Leslie involves Maureen in the search for Ann, Maureen soon learns that all is not what it seems show more in Ann’s life.

I’ve put off plucking this book from my TBR pile for ages. Though there was a little apprehension that it might not live up to its predecessor (one of my top ten reads of 2009) my main reason is that I wanted to save it for a time when I needed a guaranteed great read. Happily my ‘second book’ apprehension was completely unfounded and Exile delivered on its promise of being an absorbing, gut-wrenchingly sad and darkly funny book.

It’s hard to know which of the dozens of brilliant things about this book to highlight in a short review but I have to comment on the writing which is superb. It is richly descriptive without an ounce of floweriness or unnecessary length and seems to leap off the page in its desire to be read, savoured and rolled around one’s tongue. There are gems scattered all throughout the novel but perhaps they’re illustrated best in Mina’s descriptions of her characters. Leslie is introduced with “…[her] hair was short and dirty and stuck up like a windswept hampster’s…She walked into every room as if she was there to get her money” while one of the policemen is described as “…an officious prick with a Freddie Mercury moustache and the social skills of a horny lap-dog”. That’s my kind of imagery.

The characters are another standout feature of the novel. For me Exile is about an underclass of abandoned, abused and abjectly poor women who are heroes in exactly the way those our society labels as such never really are. Maureen is the kind of person you want to wrap in a hug due to the traumas she’s been through, then you would re-think the folly of hugging a cactus. She launches into everything at an often reckless full-throttle and is dogged, loyal and though plagued by self-doubts I’d want her on my side in any fight. Then there’s Leslie’s mother, having raised two generations of kids virtually on her own and nearly dropping with age and fatigue she is ready at a moment’s notice to go to the aid of Ann Harris’ 4 children to save them from going into care. Even Maureen’s own clinging, alcoholic of a mother sobers up when it looks like her grandchild will need her intervention. These are people I won’t forget in a hurry.

Finally there’s the story itself. Against the backdrop of Mina’s brutal, sad and violent Glasgow an utterly compelling tale unfolds. It’s only crime fiction in the loosest possible sense, being more a story of intertwined lives of desperation, courage and surviving bastardry in all its forms. And for me the thing that saved it from being worthy misery lit, which a book tackling such subjects as this one does could easily become, is the vein of dark but totally credible humour evident from beginning to end. As if Mina is saying this is how real people do it. show less

This is the second book in the Garnet Hill series. The story didn’t didn’t grab me as much as the first one -however, this rating shoots up to 4 stars because of the fantastic narration (Katy Anderson). Listening to her accents for the many characters felt like a visit to the theatre.

Second in a trilogy by Mina and I can't wait to get to the third one! Not much to add to what has been said about this book, except that this is an excellent example of what post-traumatic stress looks and feels like. I think that is important knowledge for those interested in understanding survivors of any kind of trauma e.g. refugees, returning military, those bombed and those bombing, those abused and those abusing.

Ann Harris has gone missing from the shelter run by Leslie and while someone disappearing is not unusual Leslie seems to think the manner of her going is a bit suspicious and so enlists the help of her friend Maureen O’Donnell to investigate. When Maureen visits Ann’s husband Jimmy she gets the impression that he wasn’t the one who beat her up. Struggling to bring up the four kids that Ann left behind he is such a pitiful creature that Maureen is convinced that he’s innocent. When Ann’s body subsequently turns up dumped in the river in London and Jimmy remains the prime suspect, Maureen jumps at the chance to investigate further. Especially as it means leaving Glasgow behind for a while what with the return to the area of her show more father and the police still trying to pin something on her for what happened in the previous book then it will be good to leave it all behind even if she doesn’t know what she’s getting herself mixed up in.

This is a darkly compelling tale which also gets quite bleak at times. With the protagonist not that particularly concerned with her own welfare she is content to put herself in harm’s way even if that results in her own demise so this book is not going to be for everyone. Personally, I don’t mind spending time visiting the darker edges of fiction as long as the plot is consistent and the characters are well written and their actions match the situations they find themselves in. There is no problem with either of those here with another excellently written story. While the mystery element of the plot is fully contained within this book there are elements that carry throughout the series so while you can read this as a stand-alone I would suggest that you read Garnethill, the first in the series, prior to picking this one up. show less