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Title: Garnethill
ISBN: 0316016780
Author:
Denise Mina
Publicate Date: 2007-09-20
Publish: 2007-09-20
List Price: $13.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.05
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.19
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1: What Can You Say After 5 Stars
Considering that almost everyone who reads this book (and it's companions in the trilogy) heaps praise all over it (and that it's won many prizes) it's hard to write a review that's not all gushing. More than giving us a picture of down at the heals Glasgow in the late 1990's and the wretchedness of those who have to live on the edge of society, it also a true picture of how alcoholism destroys everything.
Mostly it begins by destroying the alcoholics, then their families, then their friends and neighbors, the community and any ambition that anyone might have had to begin with. How does the child of an alcoholic parent watch that parent turn away from them and hide from everyone in a bottle. "Quiet now, mom's not feeling well!" Could it be because she's drunk again or has a hangover? Who takes care of the child frightened by watching her father beat her mother to a pulp and then attacks her in the shower or in bed?
Maureen O'Donnell is the most unlikely (sometimes unlikeable) heroine ever to grace (cross) the pages of a mystery. She's been hospitalized for panic/anxiety attacks, and a memory of incest that the rest of her family says is in her head and never happened. Her mother is a raving drunk who only useful when she's passed out. Maureen comes home one night to find her married lover (whose mother is an MEP), tied to a chair with his throat cut ear-to-ear. Of course the first suspect is Maureen, who some people think she did it and then forgot she did.
Being harassed by the police (one who turns out to be a survivor himself)
and getting no support from her family, Maureen decides to find the killer herself. This leads her into a scandal and cover-up at the local mental hospital where rapes of non-verbal patients have been going on for years. Her lover had worked out what was going on, just before he was murdered. Can Maureen figure it out before the killer finds her? Well, yeah or there wouldn't be a book or the rest of the trilogy.
Zeb Kantrowitz
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2: Down and out in Scotland
Denise Mina's book Garnethill made me cringe at times while reading - her descriptions of events, places and people leapt out at me without warning like a sucker punch! I wanted to jump into the book and protect the characters from not only the Killer, but also the Mom, and even from each other at times.
Great read! Make sure to have a bottle on hand to properly get into it.
KUDOS to National Public Radio's interview with Ms Mina which led me straight to Amazon when I heard it.
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3: FLOWER OF THE COWCADDENS
This story won an award for a debut crime novel, and I can well see why. Without wishing to suggest that it is `perfect' (whatever that is), I would say it is outstandingly accomplished and exceptionally readable.
I bought it on the strength of its title and absolutely nothing else. Garnethill is an area of Glasgow that I knew very well when I was young, and nostalgia is strong in Glasgow's ??migr?? children. Apart from other factors, this city is full of unique and distinctive place-names, and I was looking longingly to hear them again. In fact the book has less of that than I expected, so I had to concentrate on the story. There is nothing distinctively concerned with Garnethill for one thing, but that makes a better title than, say, Springburn. One flank of Garnethill descends to Sauchiehall Street, the opposite flank to the Cowcaddens, but neither of these gets so much as a mention. If I had hoped to find some such statement as `A man was stabbed in the Gorbals' I did not find that either. The story is the thing, and quite a story it is too.
I liked basically everything about it. The dialogue and patois are distinctive enough to warm an exile's heart, but not so distinctive as to be unintelligible to anyone else. There are some very good lines here and there, most of them too indecorous for quotation in a review. It is all seedy stuff, what we used to call `kitchen sink' material back in the 50's. Being old enough to remember, say, Up The Junction, or A Kind of Loving, I started with a slight suspicion that we were meant to be shocked at such scenarios and goings-on, but happily that was just my own age showing and not the way the book is. In a sense it is pretty grim material, but for all the show of gritty unflinching realism the narrative has a sense of proportion, good taste and even a grimy dignity about it.
The characterisation is distinctly good in my opinion. I could recognise many or most of the types delineated, and there is a particular kind of brutality about Glasgow crime that came over to me very clearly, and that I hope will be recognisable to others lacking my own background, because the sense of it is captured with genuine perceptiveness and sensitivity. The real sleuthing is done by someone with rather an exceptional interest in finding the truth, miles ahead of the police in her thinking while not being any kind of genius, and a real down-to-earth personality rather than any specialist like Poirot or even Marlowe. The characters in this book are never boring or superfluous, but I'd say the best thing about the story is how well the narrative is paced. The identity of the killer emerges gradually and tantalisingly, known to the main participants before they mention it to the rest of us. What happens to the killer is then full of poetic justice and very satisfying, I thought, as well as highly original.
Not a page too long, it seemed to me as I waved farewell to them down Duke Street.
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4: Flat Flatulence
The ninth sentence, on the first page of the book, last line of the second paragraph is:
"Eight long months of emotional turmoil had passed as suddenly as a fart."
Um, had I noticed that line in the store I probably would have "passed" on this one (pun intended).
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5: Bringing Scotland to Life
I have never been to Scotland, but I feel like I know it. Mina is that good at creating her scene. Her characterization is equally outstanding. This novel introduces a sympathetic, yet seriously flawed, protagonist and has a compelling plot.
I generally hate anything having to do with "survivor" lit...survivor of abuse, incest, etc...don't like it...except here, it works.
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys detective lit, unless you like your heroes squeaky-clean. I also recommend this book to anyone who enjoys exceptionally well-realized characters and settings, especially if you like those who live "close to the edge."
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