Rating: 
Summary: BORING...........
Review: I'm sorry but this book went nowhere. It was dull, the characters were hard to decipher and the story line was confusing. I liked Aud but the author's writing style just could not keep my interest. She created a fascinating character in Aud but for some reason she let her get lost in whatever mystery she was trying to create. This was one dull, boring book.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully plotted, written, realized--mesmerizing to read
Review: I've been a fan of Nicola Griffith's since her first novel, "Ammonite". Her novels, each distinct in genre and voice, share traits that have turned me into an admirer: a clarity and precision of language, a unique angle of view on the world, and characters that stick with me long, long after I've finished the novel.Griffith herself has spoken eloquently about the genesis of her heroine, Aud Torvingen, pointing to both James Bond and Travis McGee as influences. Well, OK, but Aud is far more interesting than these characters. She has a vivid, complicated interior life, one we realize only gradually, and a complicated past that we learn of in bits and pieces. The suspense in the novel comes as much from wanting to find out more about Aud as a person, as it does from trying to figure out who is behind the illegal actions of the novel. Something else I love about Griffith's work is that, in all of her novels, women are strong, independent, serious and full people, and no one in the world around them blinks an eye at this: their competency and their sexuality are givens. No other characters are non-plussed, alarmed, condescending--Griffith's women exist in a world that accepts them as full human beings. This is one of the great appeals of her work--and something that reviewers have often missed. In this sense, the grim worlds of "The Blue Place" or "Slow River" are utopias for women, despite their difficulties. Aud is one of those characters who is frightening, chilling, yet fascinating--someone about whom we want to know much more, yet someone who would probably give most of us pause if we met her in the street. But between the covers of a book, she's terrific.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but extremely predictable
Review: If you're a fan of Griffith's sci-fi, chances are you'll think this is a dud. If you're a fan of great lesbian fiction with tight plot lines and just plain good story telling, then this book is what you're looking for!!! I found Griffith's attention to detail phenomenal. This girl does her homework. I loved every minute of this book.. It kept me on the edge of my seat one minute, and then lulled into the comfortable feeling of being home again, and then just jerks you right out with a jolt of excitement. I won't give anything away of the plot, but Aud (sounds like proud) is a spectacular character and Griffith doesn't leave any gaps. By the end of this book you really know and understand her, you care about her and know what makes her tick. Such a wonderful set-up to an equally impressive sequel, Stay. Do yourself a favor and buy them both today.
Rating: 
Summary: Griffith has it and gives you all the details too
Review: If you're a fan of Griffith's sci-fi, chances are you'll think this is a dud. If you're a fan of great lesbian fiction with tight plot lines and just plain good story telling, then this book is what you're looking for!!! I found Griffith's attention to detail phenomenal. This girl does her homework. I loved every minute of this book.. It kept me on the edge of my seat one minute, and then lulled into the comfortable feeling of being home again, and then just jerks you right out with a jolt of excitement. I won't give anything away of the plot, but Aud (sounds like proud) is a spectacular character and Griffith doesn't leave any gaps. By the end of this book you really know and understand her, you care about her and know what makes her tick. Such a wonderful set-up to an equally impressive sequel, Stay. Do yourself a favor and buy them both today.
Rating:
Summary: AUD RULES!
Review: It's the first book i've ever read that features lesbians as main character and i must admit it was my curiosity that made me picked up this book. I will only say that i will remember this book for the rest of my life and i enjoyed it thoroughly. I've never met a more interesting character than Aud Torvingen and i think she rules! . The way the author focused on Aud's emotion, psyche and awareness of herself made the character complex and compelling. A complete character study and a book worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read in a long time.
Review: Nicola Griffith won me over on page 3 when she described Atlanta in winter as "a pale black and white photograph of a city." I read these two paragraphs during a literacy tutoring session; my student was more thrilled with those two paragraphs than anything else we've read. Beautifully written, great story, wonderful characters. I really hope Nicola Griffith gives us more Aud!
Rating:
Summary: Darkness in life's morning
Review: Nicola Griffith's novels are focusing more and more astutely on the struggle to separate from family, the transition described as eloquently by Gail Sheehy as by the new-age spokesentity Michael. Slow River deals immediately and instantaneously with these themes, presenting its POV character with a crisis that forces her to do this work years before she might normally be inclined to. The Blue Place shows us a more likely (if no more realistic) example of the transition. Aud Torvingen had a horribly alienated childhood, and has evolved into a grownup devoid of emotional awareness, revolving around her parents by means of a thorough-going denial of her vulernability. This material could be taken over the top, but Griffith handles it like the master she is. The book can be read simultaneously as high post-camp and a movingly realistic portrayal of the coping mechanisms of avoidance and obsession taken to extremes. Once the series plays itself out, I think we're going to look back on this book as a remarkably introduction to a character who is going to go down into her own private Hades, and then emerge smaller and wiser. I look forward to the insights that Griffith will offer. In the meantime, the book is enjoyable as character study, as travelogue, and as thriller. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Every book is killer!
Review: Nicola has written four novels, and edited three anthologies. Each of these has won a major award, which is all the more remarkable given her movement from sf writer to sf editor to myster writer. Her quality will out. This here novel is exemplary among mysteries in the way Xena is exemplary among TV shows. If you've never been there, go! and then tell me what you think! Nicola is one of those people who makes you think whatever the encounter.
Rating:
Summary: A great read with interesting characters and description
Review: Once you suspend your disbelief with respect to a 29 year old woman from Denmark being a retired Atlanta police lieutenant, this "novel of suspense" is a great read. The descriptions of people and particular places are captivating in their detail and assault on the senses. The main character is likeable but challenging. The plotline direct but with a few curves. The use of language is what really captures the reader as in a Pat Conroy novel. This could be a great series but stands alone as a novel of feeling and intellect. Unfortunately my library does not carry other novels by Nicolla Griffith or I would be reading them as you read this. Totally recommended. Ms Griffith even mangfes to finish the book with dignity and deftness, a challenge which so few writers meet. If you are interested in self defense, Norway, relationships or just a great read, this novel is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: On writing "The Blue Place"
Review: Publishers, readers, booksellers, reviewers, even writers, tend to divide books into categories--literary fiction, western, mystery, science fiction, romance--so when I was asked "What kind of book are you writing this time?" I was nonplussed, because The Blue Place is a novel about Aud, a woman so utterly herself that I don't know how to classify her, don't know how to put her in a genre box. Aud Torvingen doesn't fit the box labelled Female Private Eye. She isn't a fortysomething who lives alone, dislikes running but goes jogging anyway, eats from cartons over the sink, and wears dirty sweats a lot but has had for years one basic black dress that gets hauled out for all non-aggressive encounters. Nor does she never have any money but always end up doing the job for free, refuse to clean or tidy her apartment, never seem to have fun, or always fall in love with some man who tries to take away her independence. She is not always struggling with self-estee! m and feelings of powerlessness; in fact she never does. I set out to make Aud self-contained, self-assured, and self-possessed. Although she is coolly autonomous, she is not alone; we meet many friends and more than one lover. She has money, style and skill. She is competent and fascinating, compassionate but ruthless, beautiful but terrifying. If I saw her turn into my street, I would run a mile...but always wish I'd had the courage to stay and find out what she's like. Nor is she like any of the characters in the noir fiction of Hammet or Thompson or, more recently, Burke: she isn't an alcoholic, or a deadbeat, or a psychopath. Her dysfunction is much more subtle. At a crucial point in the novel she gets to choose whether or not to change, to become something more--and the possibility of that choice, the glimmer of hope, takes the novel out of the nihilist noir category. I don't think she has much in common with the recent Realist Mode police detectives, either.! She doesn't live on either the East or West coast, she is! n't hampered by official rules and regulations, and she really doesn't much care about the law. She cares about herself and the people she likes. Having said that, just under the skin there is a streak of perfectionism, of a stereotypically Scandinavian protestant work ethic and urge for order, a yard wide. Aud doesn't really fit in with polite Atlanta society--or any other kind, for that matter, although she often appears to. Her apartness could be read as cynicism, but I don't think that's really it; it's more an aloofness that springs both from competence, and from a certain unwillingness to engage. It will probably surprise no one to find out that the reasons behind that unwillingness are only gradually revealed, and form the core of the frozen enigma that is her character. If I absolutely had to try pin Aud down, then I'd say the closest comparison might lie somewhere between James Bond and Travis McGee. Both characters have had immense appeal for me over the yea! rs and several aspects of their personalities helped spark the birth of Aud. Fleming's cold, competent creature--not the arch, double-entendre spouting shell of the Broccoli films--is at home in any situation, and he always wins. He's smart, in every sense of the word, and although he operates alone, efficient support is never far away, and he is well-prepared and well-equipped. "Imagine," I thought, "if I wrapped a woman around those traits, then added a sprinkling from Travis McGee." McGee is very appealing. He loves women. He is wise, seeing the both the bitterness and beauty of his world. He is a man ahead of the curve: just a bit faster, just a bit smarter, just a bit more attuned to the fact that women are human beings, too (unlike the rest of his gender of that generation). He is free as a bird, and yet closely anchored to a time and place, to friends and acquaintances. He is a chameleon, yet very much himself. He has a home. And so the b! ones of Aud were laid down, and then her own, very distinct! muscles began to accrete. Aud knows the world, its seamy underbelly and its luxuries; she understands people and uses that understanding to hide behind a variety of masks to manipulate them. At the same time, though, she rarely sees them as anything less than human; she likes some of us; sometimes she cares. When she knows what she wants--which is all the time--she has no compunction about hurting people to get it, and she can be hurt, too, but she always, always wins in the end, and she is always and completely in charge of herself, her life, the situation. A wish fulfillment figure, then, but one as real as I could make her. TITLE:Blue Place AUTHOR:Nicola Griffith SOURCE:The author, Nicola Griffith DISPLAY-EMAIL:yes USER-LOCATION: TIME:901316111 RATING: PRIORITY:3100 SUMMARY:On writing "The Blue Place" REVIEW: Publishers, readers, booksellers, reviewers, even writers, tend to divide books into categories--literary fiction, western, mystery, science fiction, romance--so when I was asked "What kind of book are you writing this time?" I was nonplussed, because The Blue Place is a novel about Aud, a woman so utterly herself that I don't know how to classify her, don't know how to put her in a genre box. Aud Torvingen doesn't fit the box labelled Female Private Eye. She isn't a fortysomething who lives alone, dislikes running but goes jogging anyway, eats from cartons over the sink, and wears dirty sweats a lot but has had for years one basic black dress that gets hauled out for all non-aggressive encounters. Nor does she never have any money but always end up doing the job for free, refuse to clean or tidy her apartment, never seem to have fun, or always fall in love with some man who tries to take away her independence. She is not always struggling with self-esteem and feelings of powerlessness; in fact she never does. I set out to make Aud self-contained, self-assured, and self-possessed. Although she is coolly autonomous, she is not alone; we meet many friends and more than one lover. She has money, style and skill. She is competent and fascinating, compassionate but ruthless, beautiful but terrifying. If I saw her turn into my street, I would run a mile...but always wish I'd had the courage to stay and find out what she's like. Nor is she like any of the characters in the noir fiction of Hammet or Thompson or, more recently, Burke: she isn't an alcoholic, or a deadbeat, or a psychopath. Her dysfunction is much more subtle. At a crucial point in the novel she gets to choose whether or not to change, to become something more--and the possibility of that choice, the glimmer of hope, takes the novel out of the nihilist noir category. I don't think she has much in common with the recent Realist Mode police detectives, either. She doesn't live on either the East or West coast, she isn't hampered by official rules and regulations, and she really doesn't much care about the law. She cares about herself and the people she likes. Having said that, just under the skin there is a streak of perfectionism, of a stereotypically Scandinavian protestant work ethic and urge for order, a yard wide. Aud doesn't really fit in with polite Atlanta society--or any other kind, for that matter, although she often appears to. Her apartness could be read as cynicism, but I don't think that's really it; it's more an aloofness that springs both from competence, and from a certain unwillingness to engage. It will probably surprise no one to find out that the reasons behind that unwillingness are only gradually revealed, and form the core of the frozen enigma that is her character. If I absolutely had to try pin Aud down, then I'd say the closest comparison might lie somewhere between James Bond and Travis McGee. Both characters have had immense appeal for me over the years and several aspects of their personalities helped spark the birth of Aud. Fleming's cold, competent creature--not the arch, double-entendre spouting shell of the Broccoli films--is at home in any situation, and he always wins. He's smart, in every sense of the word, and although he operates alone, efficient support is never far away, and he is well-prepared and well-equipped. "Imagine," I thought, "if I wrapped a woman around those traits, then added a sprinkling from Travis McGee." McGee is very appealing. He loves women. He is wise, seeing the both the bitterness and beauty of his world. He is a man ahead of the curve: just a bit faster, just a bit smarter, just a bit more attuned to the fact that women are human beings, too (unlike the rest of his gender of that generation). He is free as a bird, and yet closely anchored to a time and place, to friends and acquaintances. He is a chameleon, yet very much himself. He has a home. And so the bones of Aud were laid down, and then her own, very distinct muscles began to accrete. Aud knows the world, its seamy underbelly and its luxuries; she understands people and uses that understanding to hide behind a variety of masks to manipulate them. At the same time, though, she rarely sees them as anything less than human; she likes some of us; sometimes she cares. When she knows what she wants--which is all the time--she has no compunction about hurting people to get it, and she can be hurt, too, but she always, always wins in the end, and she is always and completely in charge of herself, her life, the situation. A wish fulfillment figure, then, but one as real as I could make her.
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