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Journalism of Courage
One of the most anticipated books this year has been Estonian writer Sofi Oksanens third novel Purge Penguin,
Rs 299. Aliide Truu is an old woman who lives alone in the Estonian countryside and time has stopped still in her cottage since her countrys liberation from the Soviet rule. Everybody rushes to Tallinn,nobody comes to visit,which is why she is suspicious when she finds a raggedy young woman in the garden in front of her cottage. Zara is on the run from her Russian captors who sold her into the slave trade,but has secretly been seeking Aliide for some time now. The translation by Lola Rogers is smooth and Oksanen has a gripping story to tell: from Aliides pre-Soviet Estonian girlhood in the 1930s to Stalinist deportations,from Siberian camps in the 1940s to,finally,Zaras desperate existence as Natasha,a porn film actress. Not a quick read but compelling enough.
P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym for a mother-daughter writing team,Patricia and Traci Lambrecht. They are the bestselling authors of Want to Play? and Snow Blind. While they managed to stir up some interest with their previous books,with their latest offering, Play To Kill Penguin,Rs 499,they have run out of ideas and lost their fans. When a serial killer starts to post murder videos online,computer analyst Grace MacBride and her motley crew of nerds and geeks are recruited by the FBI to hunt down the killer. Apart from the fact that this sort of plot makes for better viewing than reading,Play to Kill has a weak narrative,one-dimensional characters and an unbelievable ending. But if you have a really long flight/train ride and want to leave your brain behind,this should work well.
