AWARD WINNERS OF 1965 PART TWO

 

This post covers the award winning novels from genres such as science fiction and mystery as well as the prestigious French literary prize, The Priz Goncourt.

The Hugo Award:

The Wanderer, Fritz Leiber, Tom Doherty Associates, 1964, 311 pp

The Wanderer earned Fritz Leiber his second Hugo Award. He won the first time in 1958 with The Big Time. I liked this one a good deal better.

An eclipse of the moon turns out to include the arrival of a rogue planet, four times the diameter of the moon and giving off a bloody and golden light. Humans name it The Wanderer. Once the planet consumes the moon, tidal surges and massive earthquakes make Earth a terror.

In addition to the apocalyptic horror of it all, I thought Leiber did a great job of showing the effects on various people around our planet as tides roll into cities and submerge the streets, as ships at sea try to navigate, as a group of flying saucer buffs come up against the space program, and as an astronaut on the moon is captured by the alien planet.

It took me a while to get used to all the characters and the shifts between their stories, but overall I enjoyed the book as a wild tale. I am discovering that it pays off to read older sci fi. I always think about how it influenced the sci fi of today. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, Octavia Butler's work, The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin. I bet they all read this one when they were growing up.

The Edgar Award:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre, Coward-McCann Inc, 1963, 256 pp

This was the #1 bestseller in 1964. The Edgar Award is for mysteries and sometimes thrillers. The movie starring Richard Burton came out in 1965 and has since been included in The Criterion Collection, as seen at the top of this page. My review of the book is here. It is sobering to post this today, just one day after the great John le Carre passed away.

The Nebula Award:

Dune, Frank Herbert, Ace Books, 1965, 473 pp

This award was given for the first time in 1965. I read the book for a reading group in 2018. My review is here. I have not read any of the sequels but I might see the movie version coming out in 2021. The book went on to tie for the Hugo Award in 1966.

The Prix Goncourt:

The Bond, Jaques Borel, Doubleday & Company, 1968, 479 pp (originally published by Editions Gallimard, 1965, translated from the French by Norman Denny)

The Prix Goncourt is known as the premier French literary award, probably comparable to the Pulitzer Prize in the US. It has been awarding French novelists since 1867! I decided to add it to My Big Fat Reading Project whenever I can find an English translation of the winner for the year, which one usually can these days but not so much in earlier years. I found a library copy.

The Bond is an autobiographical novel about a man's rather tortured but undeniably close relationship with his mother. Borel includes a vast amount of detail; in fact one reference I found on Britannica.com described the writing style as Proustian or Joycean. For a while I felt I might not made it through such dense and introspective prose but finally I just gave myself over to it. 

The son in the story was perhaps overly attached to his mother. You find out why as you read. Borel had kept a diary since the age of 14 and drew from it to write the book. 

He portrays France from the post WWI years through WWII and the German occupation, his life in Paris as a child and adult through to the death of his mother. Thus he gives a 20th century personal history of French life during years when France was quite different than it is now. I found this fascinating.

I got plenty of insight into what it takes to write about one's own life. Since I am attempting to do that, it was useful. Having read most of Simone de Beauvior's memoirs, which cover the same time period, I could compare the two. Borel studied at the Sorbonne, as did she. In fact Beauvoir won this prize herself for The Mandarins in 1954, a book which I have read.

THE LIGHT OF DAY

The Light of Day, Eric Ambler, Alfred A Knopf, 1962, 219 pp

 

 

Eric Ambler published his first book, The Dark Frontier, in 1936. That date falls outside of My Big Fat Reading Project (begins in 1940) and somehow I had never heard of him until I was already reading my list for 1959, when I read Passage of Arms. I have got some books to fill in but for now I am just reading the books he published since 1959. This one was published in 1962 but since it won the Edgar Award in 1964, I saved it until now.

 

The award may have been given in 1964 because the movie Topkapi, based on The Light of Day, was released in that year. Peter Ustinov won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in his role as Arthur Simpson, the main character in the book.

Arthur Simpson is English/Egyptian, living a life of crime in Greece. He has been scamming his way through life as a pimp, pornographer, and petty thief. At the beginning of the book he has fallen into deep trouble involving British spies plus criminals on a much higher scale than he, and to save his skin he agrees to become an agent for the British secret service. 

It is a great adventure tale in which a basically cowardly man finds himself part of a major jewel heist. To maintain his cover he must perform dangerous feats in Istanbul's ancient Topkapi palace, all the while knowing that the British are completely following the wrong people. 

I think I saw the movie once and found it ridiculous, but now that I have read the book and know what was really going on, I am going to watch it again. (Netflix has it on DVD.) Ambler was a forerunner of John le Carre, a contemporary of Graham Greene, but puts a spin on the spy genre that is all his own.

Ian Fleming of the James Bond books also fits into this genre. Reading all these different authors of Cold War spy fiction written in the early years of that era has given me a look into British intelligence during those times. One of these days I will figure out how the CIA fit into the picture then. 

Does anyone know of novels about American spies during the Cold War that were written and published in the 1960s? Suggestions welcome.

(The Light of Day is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GIDEON'S FIRE

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Gideon's Fire, J J Marric (pen name of John Creasy), Harper, 1960, 208 pp

Another of the five books read from my 1962 list in August was this Scotland Yard mystery, winner of the 1962 Edgar Award. J J Marric was a pen name used by John Creasy, who was so prolific that he wrote under 18 different pseudonyms and published over 600 mysteries! Gideon's Fire is the eighth of 22 books in his Gideon Series.

George Gideon is the Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard. He has a wife and four children, all of whom he loves dearly and who also feature in the book, but it is his job that he devotes himself to and that defines him. Conscientious, honest, a good leader, but perhaps a bit overly hands-on with the cases.

He arrives at work an unusual 30 minutes late to learn that a terrible fire the previous night had killed an entire family, leaving many other tenants burned and in shock after their whole tenement building was consumed. Adding in the rape/murder of a 14-year-old girl and two other time sensitive investigations, the man has his hands full.

As the story progresses, the fire turns out to be one of many, probably set by a psychotic arsonist. One of the murder cases begins to look like the work of a serial killer. In fact, the plot blows up like a raging fire. By the third chapter the reader is living all the stress right along with Gideon.

Though it is a rather standard police procedural, Gideon's Fire has a couple unusual features. The criminals in each case are included as characters with their own actions and thoughts covered by the same third person narrator. Thus the reader gets the story from both sides, adding even more tension.

In the end the Yard's Criminal Investigation Department prevails but there are deaths and disasters along the way. Gideon feels bad about those, as any good law enforcement professional would. In fact, the author makes you feel bad too as he takes you into Gideon's mind.

Another different feature though is that this man is not cynical, he is not being beaten down by his job or any of his superiors or even by the prevalence of crime in the vast city of London. He knows what the odds are, he knows he is competent, and he stays on top of the game. Refreshing I thought.

(Gideon's Fire is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LET ME DIE IN HIS FOOTSTEPS

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Let Me Die in His Footsteps, Lori Roy, Dutton, 2015, 322 pp

Summary from Goodreads:
On a dark Kentucky night in 1952 exactly halfway between her fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, Annie Holleran crosses into forbidden territory. Everyone knows Hollerans don’t go near Baines, not since Joseph Carl was buried two decades before, but, armed with a silver-handled flashlight, Annie runs through her family’s lavender fields toward the well on the Baines’ place. At the stroke of midnight, she gazes into the water in search of her future. Not finding what she had hoped for, she turns from the well and when the body she sees there in the moonlight is discovered come morning, Annie will have much to explain and a past to account for. 

My Review: 

This book won the Edgar Award for 2016. Since the prize for mystery novels was created in 1954, I have read eight of the early Edgar winners as part of My Big Fat Reading Project. Four of the first eight winners were written by females and their books were great reads. (See list below.)

I have not read any recent winners and only one in the last decade was written by a woman. The prize has always been given to a mix of well known authors and ones you don't hear much about otherwise. On a whim, I decided to read this year's winner.

It was a whim that paid off. Set in 1950s Kentucky, the story combines coming-of-age, southern themes, family feuds, and love stories with a mystery. Annie has been raised by her aunt since infancy. Along the way she and the reader learn that her birth mother was a wild woman who disappeared right after Annie was born. She has no idea who her father was but it is widely known that a man was hanged in connection with the loss of her real mother's young brother. In fact, it was the last public hanging in the United States.

Annie has that Southern mixed blessing, sometimes called "the sight" but here it is called "the know how." Are the things she "knows" are going to happen really true or just teenage wishful thinking? A great way to put red herrings into the tale.

Because of the 1950s time period (I loved reading about Southern life, tobacco farming, etc in those times) and the back story set in the 1930s, it is almost historical fiction. Annie is a fascinating character. She is actually an orphan, she is smart and brave, and you just want her to be happy. The only thing I never figured out was the meaning of the title. I would be happy to hear thoughts on that from anyone who has read the book.

Lori Roy won an Edgar for Best First Novel a few years ago. She has two earlier novels I'd like to check out. Recommended for Southern fiction fans. 

Edgar Winners written by women in the first decade of the prize:

Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay

Beast in View by Margaret Millar

A Dram of Poison by Charlotte Armstrong

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin

(Let Me Die in His Footsteps is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)