Customer Reviews

A Stranger in the Family (Wheeler Hardcover)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Please, no more books about screwed up families. No more trawling through memories and family gossip. It's getting a little boring. Please write some more police procedurals, bring back Charlie Peace and Perry Trethowen, much more interesting people than those soulless types you've been writing about lately. Remember "Bodies?" Remember "Death in a Cold Climate?" You are my favorite writer. You have gone too far in this direction, let's get back to some more compelling characters, more interesting stories, people we can like or dislike. I get the feeling the people in all your most recent books are just humorless, passionless sorts digging around through the past because it's mildly intriguing, but they have nothing that speaks to me like your earlier characters.

I have never read any of Robert Barnard's books before I picked this up at the library. I don't know if I will be able to keep going in it. I have read almost half the book and I am perplexed by an odd flatness to the characters and tone. I couldn't warm up to Kit at all - he is so detached and has no warmth whatsoever. There is also little description or detail in the novel.

The writing seems careless and does not come alive for me. Perhaps it was not carefully edited? For instance, there seems to be some missing conversation at the end of chapter two. After the party at which Kit meets his relatives we get the following:

"In the taxi on the way home Isla said. 'There, now you know most of the family...The grandchildren are lovely, aren't they?'
Kit agreed, uncertain how far the implications of the analysis were meant to be understood by him. Whatever was the case, he *did* understand them, and wondered at his birth mother feeling the need to make such base insinuations. The undercurrents in this family clearly ran strong."

What? Did I miss a couple of paragraphs in which Isla analyzes people and makes insinuations? When I carefully checked, there was in fact no explanation whatsoever for this strange comment.

There were other oddly expressed passages. For example, when Kit is describing Jurgen in chapter three, he talks about the guilt Jurgen felt

"...as the world learned more and more about what happened in the death camps. He and I did lots of things together, but he was never a happy person, except in his private life. There was a sort of shadow floating around and over him. He was always on the defensive."

This is not well expressed. It's odd to say that someone was never happy - except that they *were* happy in their private life.* It's a strange thought, or perhaps not strange, but not smoothly crafted.

I rarely get halfway through a book and then abandon it. But I just can't keep going with this one. From the reviews below, it seems that his earlier novels were more interesting (and I hope, better crafted.) Perhaps I will look at some of his best-reviewed works and try another.

Not his usual wonderful read. Barnard was always a reliable mystery writer with lots of surprises and unusual endings. Not this time. Very predictable and trite.

Robert Barnard, the British author, writes small books. Small in physical size and generally, small in scope and plot. Barnard's books are generally filed as "mysteries" but they are mysteries in the true sense of the word. Not a lot of death and physical mayhem; Barnard's books are psychological mysteries. Cerebral, of the mind, in the family, in small spaces...

"A Stranger in the Family", Barnard's latest, has no murders, other than those murdered by the Nazis and their allies. The plot, which ranges in time from the 1930's to modern days, ties the Kindertransport of 1939 to a more modern child abduction. Two boys, both three years old, are taken from their families. One, Jurgen Greenspan, is sent out of Germany on the last Kindertransport with his slightly older sister, Hilde and raised in England by adopted parents. The other, Peter Novello, is snatched from his parents while vacationing in Sicily and is adopted by the now-grown Jurgen and his wife in Glasgow. Only on his adopted mother's deathbed, does she tell Peter, referred to as Kit by his adoptive parents, the name of his birth mother. After her death, Kit tracks down his birth family in Leeds and is accepted by his mother, estranged father, and siblings with varying degrees of warmth.

Kit sets out to discover how he was taken from Sicily and ended up in Glasgow. His journey of discovery takes him to London, Vienna, and Sicily, touching on people's memories of the times and events. Few people in the book are all good or all bad (except Peter's birth father, who's an unreconstructed "baddie"); Barnard draws all his characters with a nuanced touch sadly missing in many works of fiction.

There's very little physical action in the book; the action is nearly all of the mind. Barnard's books are pure gems and thankfully he's a fairly prolific writer.

Many adopted children become obsessed with finding their biological parents. That is not Kit Phillipson's problem. His adoptive mother, as she was dying, told him that his birth mother's name was in her address book, and that she lived in Leeds, as well as that he was three years old when he was abducted while the family vacationed in Sicily and ended up "adopted" by the Phillipsons. After the death of his much-beloved adoptive mother, he traveled from Glasgow to visit the Novello family, meeting his biological mother and siblings. He finds out that he was three years old when he was abducted while the family vacationed in Sicily and ended up "adopted" by the Phillipsons.

While in Leeds, he meets visits his supposed biological father, Peter Novello, who is in an assisted living home and in the early stages of senility. He is informed, however, that he is not Novello's son, giving rise to all sorts of questions and leading Kit to investigate his adoptive father's past.

As the past unfolds, many secrets are revealed about the nature of Kit's abduction, and his real grandfather, who has a murky past in wartime Europe and post-war Italy. While this is termed a novel of suspense, it is much more: an insightful analysis of the foibles of human nature and family inter-actions, much less self-discovery on Kit's part, leading to accepting values and morals by which to live. Well-written and intriguing, the book is highly recommended.

Barnard has given us a real page-turner here, well written (of course) and well plotted. Treat yourself! And wish for Mr. Barnard a long, healthy, productive life -- for his sake and ours.

In Glasgow, Scotland, Kit Philipson was raised by professional parents; his mom taught school while his dad, who escaped the Nazis as an infant, was a journalist. He loved both of them and knew they loved him.

However, twentyish Kit is stunned when his dying mom informs him he was adopted; his birth name is Novello. Her comments trigger long lost not quite lucid memories of a nursery and a woman baking as well as strangers taking him away from his apparent biological family. Needing to know the truth, he searches newspaper clippings for Peter Novello. He learns that in 1989 in Sicily, three years old Peter Novello was abducted. Kit deepens his quest to meet his family, but is confused by what he learns as his siblings had no idea he existed or why his biological parents who never left Leeds suddenly went to Sicily on vacation.

This great tale will be on most short lists for suspense thriller of the year as everyman Peter digs deep into his past trying to connect the dots between Leeds, Sicily and Glasgow. The journey is filled with twists as nothing is quite like it seems. Readers will want to join Kit on his quest to discover why from Peter's biological bloodline.

Harriet Klausner

I'm afraid Robert Barnard has lost a few steps. Reviews for this book were fairly positive, but it certainly wasn't "a novel of suspense." The "mystery" was so easy to figure out that there wasn't much point in finishing the book--at least it was very short. The writing is competent but not gripping or descriptive--we barely get a sense of the locations in the story. It wasn't a "psychological thriller," as no thrills were involved; the characters were so flat that it was hard to sustain an interest. Even the protagonist, Kit, seems unsurprised by any of the novel's events. His search for his "real" family leads to no interesting or even firm conclusions. The best I can say for this novel is that it is a narrative--it starts at the beginning, goes on until it reaches the end, and then stops.

Robert Barnard's unique sense of suspense always pleases me. His approach is almost Hitchcockian, just a quiet story of people and their ups and downs, but with a surprise waiting.

Robert Barnard has written more than 40 mysteries in his distinguished career, and has never once failed to turn out a beautifully written novel that tells an engaging story. Much like Jane Austen's works, Barnard's stories can be likened to ivory miniatures: precise, lovely, detailed. And like Austen, Barnard has a sly wit and a quiet irony that makes his tales all the more engaging.

A Stranger in the Family is not a murder mystery; you will find no dead bodies in these pages, except for those who have died a natural death. But there is still plenty of suspense, as Kit Philipson tries to discover the truth behind his abduction at the age of three. It's a tangled story that takes Kit from his home in Glasgow following the deaths of his adoptive parents to the home of his birth mother in Leeds and ultimately to Sicily to unravel all the threads. In the process, Kit must examine his heritage as the adopted son of a Jewish refugee from World War II, deal with his natural siblings who fear that he will take away "their" share of his birth mother's estate upon her eventual death, and ultimately speak with a Mafioso who made huge profits from the suffering of others.

Barnard can communicate such a great deal with such an economy of words that one marvels. A train journey is made vivid in a single sentence: "Four people in his compartment were talking into their mobiles - conversations of the most indescribable banality, which made one wonder what God's purpose in creating language had been." A character is described out in a phrase:
"[T]he old man sat up in the bed, royally genial and welcoming, wearing a dressing gown and a woolen hat that made him look like a Dickens illustration." Barnard's talent is such that he can tell us just enough to let our imaginations finish the job perfectly well.

There's a reason Barnard was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for excellence in mystery writing. Pick up A Stranger in the Family and find out for yourself just what a wonderful writer he is.