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Hello and welcome to Hear This. I'm Frances Keyland and you're listening to the Vision Australia Library radio show here on Vision Australia Radio. I've got an interesting array of books this week I think so anyway, so I do hope you enjoy the show. Well, today as I'm recording this, which is Friday, it is the winter solstice for us here in Australia, the longest, darkest day of the year. So what better time to feature books that are about the darkness in the soul, the darkness in the heart, the darkness in the mind, and also just the darkness of a journey.
The first book today is This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson. Robert Fitzroy is given the captaincy of HMS Beagle, surveying the wilds of Tierra del Fuego. He is aged 23 and suffers from hereditary manic depression. He takes on a passenger, a young trainee cleric and amateur geologist named Charles Darwin, to follow his two ambitions, one being that black and white men are equal and that he can prove the truth of the Book of Genesis. This is the story of a deep friendship between two men and the twin obsessions that tore it apart, leading one to triumph and the other to disaster. Let's hear a sample of This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson. It's narrated by Mervyn Smith.
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Chapter 18. Patagonia's Patagonia, 6th August 1833. The tiny settlement of Patagones, defended by nothing but a wooden palisade huddled against the crumbling bank of the Rio Negro. Only the fortified stone church stood out and beyond the defences atop the bank, as if daring the godless Indians to do their worst. Just a few years back. There had been no white settlement this far south, but the fort at Argentina had held. And now more and more settlers were pouring across the Rio Colorado, fired by greed and bravado, ready to risk all they possessed to join the great land grab. But Patagonia felt alone and exposed every whisper, every waving grass stalk in the plains to the north, west or south occasioned a twitch of fear from its inhabitants. The east, where the blue Atlantic formed an implacable bulwark, was the only direction upon which they could safely turn their backs. The Horse Indians never attacked across water. They did not care for water, so the arrival of the pass on this August morning was an unremarked event.
The little village lay hushed in its inconspicuous hollow as James Harris, Charles Darwin and his new servant Syms Covington, rode the tide in through the estuary. In truth, Darwin was glad to be off the Beagle. Since Heller's death, a vexation of the spirit had seemed to settle upon a company. Fitzroy's agony had been almost unbearable to watch. Unable to deal with his own helplessness in the matter, he had surrendered to the foulest of tempers instead. The officers had a code for it. How hot is the coffee? This morning? They would ask each other. The crew had learned to be more unstinting in their efforts than before, more exact in their work to avoid their master's terrible displeasure.
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And that was This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson. Harry is [spells author's name]. And that book goes for 27 hours, so it's quite a long one. It comes under the category in our library of biographies and memoirs. History, also literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers. So quite a combination there. The author, Harry Thompson, who is sadly no longer with us, was an English radio and television producer, a comedy writer as well, and a novelist and biographer. He worked on such shows as Not the 9:00 News and The Mary Whitehouse Experience, but this was his only novel based on history and real characters in history, This Thing of Darkness.
Well, this book was long listed for the Booker Prize in 2005, and Thompson described Fitzroy, rather than Darwin, as the book's hero. He said, at its heart, it is the true story of someone who epitomized a certain sort of person that this country produced in the 19th century. There was a fantasy of chivalric empire run by Britons who were gentlemen and played the game. Of course, the reality was that our empire was no better than any other. We were busy conniving in the extermination of tribes, robbing natives of their land, and we sent droves of brilliant young men brought up with the chivalric fantasy to enforce what was, in many cases, a visibly corrupt system. But Fitzroy's morality was iron. He said no, and it destroyed him.
We don't have any other books by Harry Thompson in the collection, but This Thing of Darkness is certainly there. And for some reason just reminds me a little bit o... the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, which we do have in the collection, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the classic story of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer who undergoes a physical and psychological journey in his search for the enigmatic Mr. Kurtz that is available in, um, Daisy. And that's quite a short one, that goes for four hours and 23 minutes.
And now to the next book, which is 30 Days of Darkness. This is by Jenny Lund Madsen. Hannah is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in 30 days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts and her editor sends her to a quiet, tight knit village in Iceland filled with colorful local characters for inspiration. But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman's young son is pulled from the water, and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk, including Hannah. Let's hear a sample of 30 Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen. It's narrated by Diana Croft.
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A hand intertwines with another atop the shared armrest. They lean back simultaneously. He turns to look at her a millisecond before she turns to him. He is scared of flying but tries to hide it. She isn't, but pretends she is. They make love with their eyes falling for each other all over again as they soar into the sky. Her. I camped out on a mountain. Him I went skiing. Her. I took your breath away. Him. I danced in Brussels. The plane ascends his slightly sweaty hand. Ah! What now? How the hell do you plot out the early stages of two people falling in love? How were you meant to portray those emotions without sounding like a knockoff version of Goethe? Or worse, a way too good Barbara Cartland? Regardless. Too trite.
Holding her finger firmly on the delete button. She erases the entire paragraph and washes away the feeling of inadequacy with an entire large glass of red wine. Then another. It takes more than just the one glass to expunge the feeling of mediocrity. Hannah Krouse Bendix has never received a bad review. Not once has anyone had a single negative thing to say in any of the reviews of her four novels. A literary superstar twice nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize didn't win, but that doesn't matter anyway. She doesn't believe that the hallmark of good literature is how many awards it's won.
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That was 30 Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen. Jenny is [spells author's name]. Netbook goes for 13 hours last year. This time last year, June 2023, The Guardian Australia included it in its best recent Crime and Thrillers review review roundup. They call it a caustically funny debut. Begins with a public altercation between a best selling mystery writer, John Jensen, and Hannah Kraus Bendix, who writes books in which an old man takes a sip of coffee, then stops to think for about 40 pages before taking another sip. When Hannah rashly accepts his challenge to write a crime novel in a month, her editor sends her to this family friendly - seemingly - village in rural Iceland for the peace and quiet.
They end the review saying Hannah is a prickly, judgmental alcoholic with poor impulse control, but this is an original and thoroughly enjoyable treat. So that was from the Guardian Australia. The reviewer was Laura Wilson from Friday the 20th of June 2023.
The next book is Winter Work by Dan Fesperman, an exhilarating spy thriller inspired by a true story about the precious secrets up for grabs just after the fall of the Berlin Wall on a chilly early morning walk in Berlin. Emil Grimm finds the body of his neighbor, a fellow Stasi officer named Luther, with a gunshot wound to the temple and a pistol in his right hand. Despite appearances, Emil suspects murder and now his East Germany disintegrates. Being a Stasi colonel is more of a liability than an asset, more troubling still is that Emil and Lothar were involved in a final clandestine mission, one that has clearly turned deadly. Now Emil must finish the job alone, on uncertain ground, where old alliances seem to be shifting by the day.
Meanwhile, CIA agent Claire Saylor sent to Berlin to assist an agency mop up action against the collapsing East German adversaries, has just received an upgrade to her assignment. She'll be the designated contact for a high ranking Stasi foreign intelligence officer, although details are suspiciously sketchy. When her first rendezvous goes dangerously awry, she realizes the mission is far more delicate than she was led to believe. With the rules of the game changing fast, and as their missions intersect, Emil and Claire find themselves on an unlikely common ground, fighting for their lives against a powerful enemy hiding in the shadows. Let's hear our sample of winter work by Dan Fesperman, and it's narrated by the author Dan Fesperman.
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Tell me how you came to be at the scene of the shooting this morning, Dawn asked. I went out for my morning walk up the hill first, then down toward the lake. That's when I saw the crime scene tape. Krauss and his people were already there. And what time did you leave your house? Around 730. It was barely light. Is that your daily routine? You can check all of this with Corolla. By the way, after we're done. I plan to. Aimwell nodded. I go for a walk first thing every morning. I try to vary the routes, but this morning I set out on my favourite one, which is about three miles long. It stays away from the lake for a mile or two, going off in that direction. He gestured toward the side window. Then it comes downhill to the upper end of the lake.
I knew it must be Lothar. The moment I saw the cap, the orange one that was lying beside him. He's the only person up here with a cap that bright. You can always tell it's him from clear across the water. Or could. Had you pass by that spot earlier? I hadn't. I'd been up higher in the trees. And what time was it, do you think, when you reached the body? Emil checked his watch and thought about it for a second. Close to 830, probably. Dawn took down every word in neat but slow shorthand. Oh, by the way, we'll need to get a photo of the bottom of your shoes to try and make sense of who went where in all of this mud, of course. An interesting idea if they could pull it off. He wondered what they would learn about Luther's movements that morning, or Krauss's for that matter.
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And that was a Winter Work by Dan Fesperman. First name Dan is simply [spells name]. The book goes for nearly 12 hours, and it comes under literature and fiction and mystery and thrillers as the category doesn't mention spy fiction, but sounds very spy fiction to me. We have other books by the author Dan Fesperman. In the collection there is The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, set in war torn Sarajevo. There's also a series that he's written featuring Vlado Petric, a detective, and the first one in that series is lie in the dark. Investigator Petric makes his living from the dead lately, business has been slow, what with the siege around Sarajevo condoned killing has displaced the crime of passion. His services with the civil police as a homicide investigator have been less in demand.
And there's many others of his books. So if you enjoy winter work, or if you want to explore what other books he's written, certainly you can... ring the library or search the catalog. Dan Fesperman is an American writer. He's a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun and the author of several thrillers. The plots were inspired by the author's own international assignments in Germany, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Middle East. Gosh. And I'm going to look at the review here for, from Kirkus Reviews. Kirkus. We're a very popular in reviewing books, and they call this an engrossing, deep in the weeds thriller. In 2022, they also added it to their list of ten novels to kick start your summer reading for their part of the world in America.
And if you like spy fiction, there is a really good spy podcast series, spy novel podcast series, called Spy Library [spells it]. Sorry, I can't pronounce this spy library.com and they've reviewed Winter Work and they say Fesperman not only riffs off this operation, which was dubbed one of the CIA's greatest triumphs, but he also peppers the book with expertly researched elements of East German life to give it that air of authenticity. It is worth noting that Dan Fesperman worked in Berlin during the early 90s as a foreign correspondent, and he draws on that experience to expertly create this Berlin. And they finish off their review by saying, if you enjoy engaging, realistic, cerebral, Cold War spy reads, than Winter Work is for you and should sit proudly in your collection. And that was from 2022, in August. And that review was by Shane Whaley and that is from Spy Library. A website there.
Now on to a popular author, Kristin Hannah, with her book Winter Garden. Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family business. The other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, these two estranged sisters will find themselves together again, standing alongside their disapproving mother Anya, who even now offers no comfort to her daughters. On his death bed, their father extracts a promise Anya will tell her daughters a story. It is one she began many years ago and never finished. This time she will tell it all the way to the end.
The tale their mother tells is unlike anything they've heard before - a captivating, mysterious love story that spans more than 60 years and moves from frozen, war-torn Leningrad to modern day Alaska. Nina's obsession to uncover the truth will send them all on an unexpected journey into their mother's past, where they will discover a secret so shocking it shakes the foundation of their family and changes who they believe they are. Let's hear a sample of Winter Garden by Kristin Kristin Hannah. It's narrated by Susan Erickson.
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Was this what 40 looked like? Really. In the past year, Meredith had gone from miss to ma'am. Just like that with no transition. Even worse, her skin had begun to lose its elasticity. There were tiny pleats in places that used to be smooth. Her neck was fuller. There was no doubt about it. She hadn't gone gray yet. That was the one saving grace. Her chestnut colored hair, cut in a no nonsense, shoulder length bob, was still full and shiny. But her eyes gave her away. She looked tired, and not only at six in the morning, she turned away from the mirror and stripped out of her old t shirt and into a pair of black sweats, anklet socks and a long sleeved black shirt.
Pulling her hair into a stumpy ponytail, she left the bathroom and walked into her darkened bedroom, where the soft strains of her husband's snoring made her almost want to crawl back into bed. In the old days, she would have done just that. Would have snuggled up against him. Leaving the room, she clicked the door, shut behind her and headed down the hallway toward the stairs. In the pale glow of a pair of long outdated nightlights. She passed the closed doors of her children's bedrooms. Not that they were children anymore. Gillian was 19, now a sophomore at UCLA who dreamed of being a doctor. And Maddy Meredith's baby was 18 and a freshman at Vanderbilt.
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And that his Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah. Kristin is [spells author's name]. And that book goes for 14 hours and 40 minutes. Other books by Kristin Hannah in the collection are The Nightingale, set in France in 1939... Home Again, which is a contemporary fiction novel. I'm reading here from the Huffington Post review. About this book. It's been reviewed by Jackie Kay Cooper. And this is from 2010. Winter Garden is Kristin Hannah's best written and most deeply affecting novel yet. It reaches deep into the reader's soul for compassion and understanding. It is a book that must be read for the detail and intensity of its story. Though it's not an easy book to read, it is one that is well worth the effort.
All right, so it does sound like a bit of a challenging read. The reviewer goes on to say, This is a beautifully written novel, a meaningful novel, a satisfying novel if you have the diligence and patience to stick with it from beginning to end. And I hope you do. And once you have read it, you will be compelled to recommend it to your friends. It starts out as cold, beautiful and remote, but thaws about halfway through to envelop you in a in a world of discovery.
Now to the next book, which is... In a Dark, Dark Wood. This is by Ruth Ware. Someone's getting married. Someone's getting murdered in a dark, dark wood. Norah hasn't seen Claire for ten years. Not since Norah walked out of school one day and never went back. There was a dark, dark house until out of the blue, an invitation declares Hindu arrives. Is this a chance for Norah to finally put her past behind her? And in the dark, dark house there was a dark, dark room. But something goes wrong. Very wrong. And in the dark, dark room, some things can't stay secret for ever. Let's hear a sample of In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. It's narrated by Imogen Church.
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Nina and I looked at each other. My heart was thudding like a stray echo of the door knocker, but I tried to keep my face calm. Ten years. Had she changed? Had I changed? I swallowed. There was the sound of Flo's feet echoing on the high atrium of the hallway. Then metal shrieking on metal as she opened the heavy door, followed by the murmur of voices as whoever it was came into the house. I listened carefully. It didn't sound like Claire. In fact, beneath Flo's laugh, I could hear something that sounded distinctly male. Nina rolled over and raised herself up on one elbow. Well well, well. Sounds like the fully Y chromosome. Tom has arrived. Nina. What were you looking at me like that for? Should we go downstairs and meet the cock in the henhouse? Nina, don't. Don't what?
She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. Don't embarrass us. Him? If we're hens, naturally, that makes him a cock. I'm using the term in its purely zoological sense. Nina. But she was gone, loping down the glass stairs in her stockinged feet, and I heard her voice floating up the stairwell. Hello? Don't think we've met. Don't think we've met. Well, it definitely wasn't clear then. I took a deep breath and followed her down into the hallway.
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And that was a sample of In a Dark Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. Ruth is [spells name]? And that book goes for ten hours. So this book is told through the eyes of Nora... Amazon.com.au, who have reviewed it, and they've given it four out of five stars, saying This was a very solid, classic thriller that ticked all the right boxes: remote location, questionable cast of characters, secretive past and suspicious behaviours. It was published around 2016 and this is her debut novel. We also have by Ruth Ware, The Lying Game. Again, centring around a group of friends with the premise, How much can you trust your friends?
The text message is just three words, need you Isa. The Woman in Cabin Ten is another one. There's also The Death of Mrs. Westaway, The Turn of the key, Zero Days, The It Girl, One by One. So lots of mysteries - if you do like Ruth Ware, just a bit of a read here from Wikipedia... Ruth Ware is actually Ruth Warburton, born in 1977. British psychological thriller author in her crime books. Ware's writing style is often compared to that of Agatha Christie, and Ware has said that some aspects of her writing are directly inspired by Christie, whereas protagonists are usually ordinary women who find themselves in dangerous situations involving a crime.
The first two of Ware's novels feature a murder mystery, with a group of people trapped or otherwise restricted from immediately escaping a dangerous environment. Echoing Christie's novels such as murder on the Orient Express, Ware and Christie both choose settings and situations that foster the sense of dread that propels their characters to paranoia, and often they react violently as a result. As of 2015, In a Dark, Dark Wood is being planned to be made into a film. Also, The Woman in Cabin Ten is going to be made into a film or a series. A Netflix Netflix adaptation, with Keira Knightley in the role. And that was... reported in May 2024.
There's a couple of others in the works as well. The Independent named In a Dark, Dark Wood as this year's hottest crime novel, and The Guardian praised In A Dark Dark Wood's excellent characterisation and called the book's ending mesmerising. The Kirkus Review writer said, Cancel your plans for the weekend when you sit down with this book because you won't want to move until it's over. So some high praise for In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware.
Thank you so much for joining us today on Hear This, I'm Frances Keyland. If you have a book recommendation, if there's a dark book that deals with some dark things that you would like to recommend, please send an email through or ring the library on 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656 ... the email for the library is library@visionaustralia.org - that's library at Vision Australia dot org. Send through the books that you've enjoyed. They're always very very welcome. And also any suggestions about what you would like the show to feature more of. Do you want to hear more about a particular type of book that I don't mention much, or a genre or a theme? Themes are always welcome, like today's theme of darkness. Have a think and let us know. In the meantime, have a lovely week and we'll be back next week with more Hear This.
