Don’t Pay the Theremin – Until It Gets You to the Other Side

US CONDUCTORSus conductors
Sean Michaels
Bloomsbury, July 2015, RRP $29.95

There are a number of different ways to write a novel based on historical characters. You can go for a modernisation of the characters and follow the general story but change bits of the plot – Susan Kay’s Elizabethan Legacy, which is a total romp and hugely enjoyable despite it’s lack of accuracy.

You can interweave an imaginary character into a historical narrative; Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon introduces Lawrence Waterhouse into the development of the code breaker during WWII to such an extent that I have no longer any idea what really went on because my memory of the history is so tarnished by reading it. Loved that book: I have a cat named after Enoch Root, one of the minor characters. Continue reading

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      THE QUIET AMERICAN Graham Greene (William Heinemann, 1955; Vintage, 2004) ISBN: 9780099478393 So, ah, have you ever started reading a book you thought was about something completely different than it turned out to be?  Because I was under some kind of misapprehension about The Quiet American before I started it.  All … Continue reading