Black Diamond

There were not many times that Bruno Courreges disliked his job. But today was certainly one of them. The weather was not to blame, a crisp day in late November with thin, high clouds trailing feebly across a sky that was determined to be blue. And even this early in the morning the sun was warm on his face and lending a rick gold to the few remaining leaves on the line of old oaks that fringed the town's rugby field. It gave warmth to the aged stone of the mairie across the river and to the red tile roofs of houses that climbed the hillside. The season was still mild enough, he noticed, for the women to have thrown open their windows and the blue wooden shutters. Splashes of white and blue, stripes and floral patterns adorned the townscape where they had heaped out bedding to air on the balconies, as their mothers and grandmothers had done before them. It might be the last day of the year that would be possible. A touch of frost had silvered the grass outside his cottage when Bruno walked his dog just after dawn that morning, and he had heard the first of the Christmas Muzak in the supermarket over the weekend.
Black Diamond
Martin Walker


Doesn't the opening paragraph just make you want to find that village, move there, and throw open your own patina'd blue wooden shutters?

I like Bruno enough to have decided to read the backlist--this is the third in the series, and there's a fourth. Fast read, entertaining. Fun. And, I know so, so much more about truffle hunting, the market, etc. than I'll ever use.

I'm soon off to find some of those black diamonds to sniff out and taste.

A FAREWELL TO FRANCE

(This is a big, thick book. Actually, the copy I bought used on Amazon is a Doubleday Book Club edition. It took me a lot of time to read. Unusual for me, but I was somewhat indisposed (Shingles) during the time I was reading it. I loved returning to it every single night at bedtime. I love this book.)

For all our youth the Astell family had lived in and out of Douzy, the small chateau named after the village, hidden by vineyards lining the gentle, sloping hills of Champagne. My American father and mother, his father's father, my French grandma, my brother and his twin sister, our friends, our lovers--all had made up a patchwork of happiness that none believe would ever end.

* * *

That was before. But then the serenity of Douzy was exchanged for lives that tore us apart, of death and torture for some, despite neutrality, and eventually, after America entered the war, for me a life spent in ditches and barns, hunting the enemy or being hunted--to protect or to kill.

A Farewell to France
Noel Barber

I will begin to read everything written by Noel Barber. Everything. He's written loads of fiction and non-fiction. This book is his second novel, and it makes me want to read his first, Tanamera (which is also a film) and then to proceed through his entire roster.

Noel Barber was for many years the chief foreign correspondent for the London Daily Mail. He was the first Briton to reach the South Pole since Scott, was stabbed five times covering wars in Momrocco, reported on the fall of France to the Nazis, was shot during the Hungarian uprising, and walked across the Himalayas to report the Dalai Lama's escape to India.
from the back cover flap

A FAREWELL TO FRANCE

Loving this book. Loving it. It's a long one, which is great since I've been under the weather and in need of distraction. I've not finished it yet, but already I know I want to read everything Noel Barber has written. And, that's a lot--fiction and non-fiction..

Whoops! The above links are Amazon U.K. Here's a U.S. link.

Be back soon with more details and my review.


Fiction
Tanamera: A Novel of Singapore (1981)
A Farewell to France (1983)
A Woman of Cairo (1984)
The Other Side of Paradise (1986)
The Weeping and the Laughter (1988)
The Daughters of the Prince (1990)

Non-fiction

Cities (1951) (with Rupert Croft-Cooke)
Fires of Spring (1952)
Strangers in the Sun (1955)
A Handful of Ashes: A Personal Testament of the Battle of Budapest (1957)
The White Desert (1958)
Distant Places (1959)
The Flight of the Dalai Lama (1960)
Life with Titina (1961)
Adventures At Both Poles (1963)
Conversations with Painters (1964)
The Black Hole of Calcutta (1965)
Let's Visit the USA (1967)
Sinister Twilight: The Fall And Rise Again of Singapore (1968)
From the Land of Lost Content (1969)
The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948-60 (1971)
The Sultans (1973)
Lords of the Golden Horn: From Suleiman the Magnificent to Kamal Ataturk (1973)
Seven Days of Freedom: Hungarian Uprising, 1956 (1974)
The Week France Fell: June 10-16, 1940 (1976)
The Natives Were Friendly So We Stayed the Night (1977)
The Singapore Story (1978)
Fall of Shanghai: Communist Takeover in 1949 (1979)
Sakkara (1985

About Noel Barber

Noel Barber has enchanted millions of readers with his bestselling novels. These powerfully exotic novels have each become timeless classics in which he drew upon his own experience as one of the leading foreign correspondents from the '40s to '60s working on the Daily Mail. He was the first Briton to reach the South Pole since Scott, was stabbed five times covering the wars in Morocco, and was shot during the Hungarian uprising. He died in 1988.

NADA

Can I just say that I haven't read much of anything memorable for months and months. Really. Oh, there have been a few quotes that caught my attention, but mostly in mediocre books. I'm always reading. Stay tuned.

THE HOUSE ON PRAGUE STREET

Love this cover version:

This is the one I bought on Amazon (used books):

Well written and compelling. We've spent a good bit of time in Central Europe as our daughter-in-law is from Bratislava, Slovak Republic. The Armistice did not mean the end of occupation in Czechoslvakia--just a changing of the guard. The deprivations and inhumanities continued until the Velvet Revolution. So, the ending of this book is not a happy one. Lovely story from an unusual perspective.

THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS

Manhattan, New York. May 8, 1940.

Claire Harris Stone breathed in the faint scent of roses from the courtyard garden below as her yielding body swayed to the strains of "In the Mood" drifting out the open French doors. The sounds of the orchestra inside her Manhattan brownstone blended with the late-night rumble of traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Buoyed by the Veuve Clicquot champagne, she felt as though she drifted above her partner as their gliding shoes whispered against the balcony floor. He held her tight, his hands warming her body through her thin silk dress. Her arms were draped around his shoulders.

He was tall. That was nice. And he knew how to dance; even better.

"You're dreaming, Claire," von Richter said.

"Of you." Claire opened her eyes.

The Last Time I Saw Paris
Lynn Sheene


I love, love, love this book. I procrastinated on finishing the last few pages of the book because I didn't want it to end. Ms. Sheene has written a superlative first novel. I eagerly await her second, Under Paris Skies.

I've been recommending this book right and left, have purchased a copy after obtaining it first from the library, and have ordered one for a friend. A very, very good read.

THE LAST GOOD DAY

It was early on one of those powder-blue late-September mornings when middle-aged commuters stand on platforms, watching airplanes pass before the sun and hoping the apex of some great arc in their lives hasn't already been reached.


On the far side of the Hudson from the train station, the Rockland County palisades glinted as if they'd been freshly chopped by God's own cleaver. From the rustling trees along the shoreline came the same sound of money in the wind that the old Dutch trades must have heard when they first rounded this little bend in the river.


The water was brownish and turbulent, as if a low flame were on underneath it. Out by the narrowing of the channel, a forty-five-foot cabin cruiser skimmed across the surface, leaving a broad foamy cape. The ripples spread, pushing the cattails and the submerged bluish-gray mass closer to the crooked-in elbow of land beside Riverside Station.


"Hey, what is that thing?" said Barry Shulman, standing at the platform railing.
The Last Good Day
Peter Blauner

I ran onto Peter Blauner as one of the writers in Nelson DeMille's Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead. I made a list of most of the authors and this one by Peter Blauner is the first I've read from that list.

Excellent book. I was captivate from the first. More suspense than mystery, but that's only good. I'll read more from Blauner's backlist.