Londoners and New Yorkers swigged beer and smooched on VE Day, but the horror of World War II would persist for months. My review for The Nation, published on November 7.

War’s end, beyond the jubilant newsreels, is certainly not all banners and bunting. Europe remained a boiling nightmare for months after Hitler’s Third Reich was vanquished, but the weary citizens of Britain and the Americas had had enough after six horrifying years of the tyranny of tanks and shrapnel. All they wanted to know was that World War II was over, at least in Europe.

And so today, their memories are of flags flying and GIs grinning and Marshall getting on with his rebuilding plan.

In “Endgame 1945″, David Stafford lays out the grim reality of what kept right on happening. Atrocities continued even as the veil was torn from the concentration camps. In peacetime, inflamed partisans imposed terrible vengeance on their wartime masters. Displaced persons were everywhere — it must have seemed like all of Europe was on the move.

And, in a foreshadowing of the terror that Stalin was about to generously share with all of Eastern Europe, Russian PoWs refused to go home, and whole communities scattered rather than see more of the brutality already meted out by the victorious Soviet army.

Then there were the German troops, legions of whom kept on fighting even after it was abundantly clear that their cause was hopeless. Such was the depth of their indoctrination that Allied troops routinely encountered German officers, even death-camp commanders, who expected honour and obsequity from their captors.

In some bizarrely ill-considered cases they received that honour. The Canadians, having liberated a huge Dutch population that had initially been bypassed in the rush to conquer the German homeland, and ended up as cadaverous in malnutrition as the inmates of Dachau, actually agreed to a dual command with the tens of thousands of German troops remaining in western Holland.

The Germans, deemed “surrendered army personnel” rather than PoWs, were even given rifles on several occasions so they could assemble firing squads to execute their own deserters. It was weeks before common sense and morality prevailed.

These are the sort of amazing revelations that Stafford places before the unnerved reader.

Staff at the Kaufbeuren mental institute in Bavaria continued giving physically and mentally handicapped inmates lethal injections long after the German surrender — or simply let them starve to death. Only at the end of July did an Allied medical team decide to ignore the typhus warning signs and enter. They found that many of the internees had died just hours earlier.

In a Tirolean village, the fate of several busloads of European VIPs freed from the death camps hung in the balance as German officers of the Wermacht battled with those of the SS for some mad semblance of territorial control.

In Germany’s Lubeck Bay, the SS piled thousands of prisoners into ships bearing no markings that would have saved them from the RAF Typhoon bombers that descended. All the ships were sunk, almost all the souls lost.

Those prisoners were bound for the Germans’ “northern redoubt” in Norway, a place to stage a last stand and perhaps turn defeat’s hand. The Allies had an abiding fear of an Alpine Redoubt in Bavaria. Both German “plans” turned out to be figments of the imagination, just as General Patton had predicted, but Eisenhower had seen the death camps and would put nothing past the enemy high command.

And yet British and American focus shifted rapidly away from shutting down the German resistance to shutting out Soviet territorial ambitions. The USSR was soon imposing its will in Vienna, and Winston Chuchill was understandably rattled, up to his knees in a bloody, tainted victory.

Stafford presents his story of millions by focusing on the progress of a half-dozen individuals through the tortured landscape, tracking each in turn in stages. It’s a clever way of infusing the saga with humanity, though in most cases the details of these people’s lives slow down a book that’s otherwise electric with micro- and macro-history.

Crime not only pays, it pays most honest people’s salaries. My review for The Nation, published in September.

“Anyone who has used a cellphone or computer notebook in the last decade has unwittingly depended on organised crime for his or her convenience,” Misha Glenny writes in “McMafia”. It’s one of many grounds for the blame he metes out to just about everyone — but mostly greedy bureaucrats — in the course of a 436-page survey of criminal gangsterism like you’ve never quite imagined it.

One of the world’s most tenacious (and thus successful) reporters, Glenny roams that world flipping over rocks to expose the handful of fungal roots that link just about every mob there is. The roots extend into your home, obviously if you smoke ganja or buy pirate DVDs, but less obviously if you’ve been the innocent victim of an online phishing scam.

The situation, it would seem, is hopeless, but then why fight crime? It’s got it’s own suite of offices at City Hall, and you can’t fight City Hall. More importantly — and this is where the politicians climb aboard — it keeps the global economy humming. At least it did until Wall Street screwed up its end of the operation, but eliminate organised crime and we’ll all really be weeping into our wallets.

The book is amazing throughout, but there are two outstanding bits. One extrapolates on what exactly happened after Mr Gorbachev obeyed President Reagan’s command to “tear down that wall”. Much of the bankrupt Soviet Union opened laundries for foreign cash and found many interesting ways to help foreigners get it dirty in the first place.

The other great part is the revelation that organised crime doesn’t always involve triads, yakuza, Russians or that guy from Sicily with the scar on his cheek. On your way to meeting the scummiest of the Nigerian scammers, you run into pot farmers in western Canada who act like they’re in “Mission: Impossible” and some very shady (but funny!) characters in Tel Aviv and Mumbai.

And here, there and in Dubai, bless his soul, our very own VIP guest at Bang Khwan Prison, Mr Viktor Bout. Read an excellent New York Times article about him here

This is Part 17. Click here to go to the beginning of the saga.

A few years have gone by since I last sat down to put my memories to the printed page, and it’s time to update my story.

This is October 2009, and I am 69 years old, so please forgive me if I don’t lay out things in the proper order or don’t quite have all details, but I do want to let you all know what has happened since I last wrote.

First of all, I want to give my most exciting news. On November 26, 2008, Jack and I became grandparents to a sweet baby girl, Shannon Rachel Scott!

More about this a bit later. Now back to the updates.

The first few years after my last entry here weren’t very eventful.

Jack and I have been doing fairly well health-wise, with occasional aches and pains associated with our age, but nothing very serious. I put up quite a bit of my garden produce, both preserving it or freezing it, but since we don’t eat as much as we used to (although you wouldn’t know that by the weight we both have put on), I give a lot of it away to friends and relatives.

Stephen, meanwhile, was let go from his job of many years when the company downsized during the recession, but has since found another, doing mechanical repairs on service vehicles. It isn’t what he wanted, but it’s work and he’s happy.

Amanda has been coming up for visits with her friend, when they can, but with working and university, there’s little time for Great-Aunt Lydia. We did go to see her at her university when I needed an angiogram, so we spent a bit of time with her.

Ashley and I had a falling-out for a few years after her last visit here, and I didn’t hear from her until last year, when we patched things up and became even closer.

The boys here have made friends with both girls and they see each other whenever they visit and keep in constant touch over the Internet. This summer Ashley came up alone, wanting to spend time with us and the “boys” before heading out to British Columbia to attend the university of her choice.

We had a great week of visiting and the years apart have made a dramatic change in her. She’s not the little girl I knew, but an accomplished young lady who’s shed her childish ways and become a pleasant friend, as well as a niece. I enjoyed her visit very much.

Amanda had to leave her schooling during her second year due to health issues, so she worked through the summer and into the fall, but I did get to see her.

Last November I got a telephone call from Tim, my youngest nephew, that Brother, his Dad, was gravely sick and I should come down. I knew Brother had heart trouble and had a pacemaker, so I made arrangements to leave that night, getting to Toronto the following morning, where Tim met me.

I stayed at Brother’s apartment with Susan, his wife, and we went to the hospital soon afterwards. Brother was very weak but was happy to see me, and over the next few days I spent a lot of time with him.

Susan, true to her old ways, was more concerned about herself and what was going to happen to her than how Brother was feeling or doing. I hadn’t spent much time with her alone for years, and the two days I stayed with her left me on edge and wondering how a grown person could have so little interest in anything except NASCAR and herself.

She has one friend, a lady over 80 years old, and Susan’s main interest’s are shopping, walking around malls and talking about one particular NASCAR driver. She showed me boxes of scrapbooks she’s been keeping for years about this driver, has pictures of him on her walls, models of his racing cars and other memorabilia about him.

Elvis was also one of her favourite entertainers, right from when he he first started, and Elvis is very prominent in her apartment. Huge pictures of him hang in the living room and Elvis collectibles are everywhere.

Since Tim’s wife has a collection of “Gone With the Wind” plates, Susan had now added GWTW things to her home and large portraits of “Rhett” and “Scarlett” also hang on her walls. It’s like the home of a teenager who fills her room with her favourite movie or rock stars, not the home of a 68-year-old woman.

Her place is very neat and tidy, so tidy that when I left a glass on the end table, she immediately took it into the kitchen, washed and dried it, setting it back on its shelf. I was afraid to move in the place in case I accidently disturbed something.

But I needn’t have worried. The second day I was there, as we were getting ready to go to the hospital, Susan asked if I wanted to take all my stuff and after the hospital visit, she would drive me to Tim’s. So, although I had told her I would stay with her, I was shuffled off to Tim and Monica’s place that afternoon and stayed there the rest of the time, which was all right with me as I felt very at home there and got to really know my youngest great-niece, Silvia, who was six at the time.

Monica

Brother started to do better and there was talk of sending him home, so I came back to my home, only to receive another phone call in December that things went downhill after Brother went home and he was back in the hospital, not doing well at all. In fact he was in intensive care and not expected to live.

Again I rushed down and spent many hours by his bedside with Susan crying and the rest of us trying to get her to calm down because it wasn’t doing Brother any good to see her in that state. What really got the rest of us very upset and angry was that she kept telling Brother not to leave her — she didn’t know what she was going to do without him, and if he died, she was going to kill herself.

Even Tim, her own son, was disturbed at what he was hearing from his mother, while Monica and I were just plain disgusted. Talk about someone being selfish and self-centred! Anyway, Brother seemed to withdraw into his own thoughts and didn’t seem to really care what was going on around him.

Tim did a lot of the nursing of Brother as the staff were busy, and Monica told me that seeing me in the room seemed to ease Brother’s mind a bit. Shortly before Christmas I had to go home, where another shock soon hit both Jack and I.

It was a few days after getting back that we saw Jack’s niece, Rose, arrive at our place with her brother and sister. She wasn’t even all the way through the inside door when she told us she had some bad news. Rose had cancer and had only about a month to live!

We were floored! Rose was very active, walked twice a day, went to the gym daily and ate only healthy food and now she was dying. Her two sisters and her brother were here with her and they stayed with her until the end.

Rose on the right, Betty on the left, Shirley in the middle

Christmas was very bleak for all of us. I had given away my big tree to the family across the road and was just going to have a small one. Monica was glad to get my many boxes of ornaments, some old glass ones from when we were kids, plus many collectible ones I got over the years. I only kept a few to use on my little tree, and because of Brother and Rose being so sick, I wasn’t in a very holiday mood, but I did manage to decorate the living room and make an effort at festivities.

Another of Jack’s nephews, Pat, called around this time and told us that he too was diagnosed with cancer, but he was taking some herbal medicine and felt good. In fact, he was back working in his garage, so although we were concerned, we didn’t worry too much about Pat yet.

On January 11 we got a call from Tim that Brother passed away. I wanted to go down, but Tim said there was no need, and since Rose was now in the hospital and in a coma, I didn’t go. I did call Susan and offered to stay with her, but she kept telling me it was all right, she had Tim and didn’t need anyone else.

That got me worried that she might try transferring her need from Brother to Tim and that could jeopardize Tim’s marriage, so I called Tim. He was well aware of what his mother was doing and had the sense to see through it all. Monica also had been worried and told me that Tim came home one night saying if Susan wasn’t his mother, he would have told her to shut up and leave him alone — so she knew he was all right.

Two days later, on January 13, Rose passed away. This was all very stressful for me, and I had a hard time getting over both deaths so close together. I was really down emotionally when one night our son Irvin called. I hadn’t heard from him since we had that falling-out years ago and I didn’t know what to expect, but he talked politely before announcing that he and Charlotte had a baby.

I got excited and asked tons of questions of him. I found out Shannon was born in November, how much she weighed and many details about her difficult birth. Irvin promised to e-mail pictures and I asked what they needed for the baby. Because I quit knitting years ago, I sold or gave away my yarn and needles, so as soon as I was able I went shopping for everything I needed and started knitting.

True to his word, Irvin sent the pictures of the baby and e-mails and phone calls were flying between our homes.

This wonderful news helped to get me out of the doldrums.

A few years ago I met a woman from Oakville, Ontario, who belonged to the same chat site as me, and we had visited each other’s places over the years. One day she called and I very excitedly told her I was a grandmother. She also very excitedly told me she was a grandmother.

We compared notes, and our Shannon and her Jakob were only three weeks apart, Jakob being the older one. So I now had two babies to knit for. The weather outside was cold with lots of snow and knitting was just the therapy I needed.

Brother’s burial was to be held on February 28, his and Susan’s 50th anniversary. I went down again and stayed with Tim. While Brother was in the hospital, I tried to get his other children to visit him, but they were still bitter about the past and wouldn’t come. Something must have gotten through to Tom after a talk with his boss, because Tom and Amanda came to the memorial service.

Tom’s wife, Roni, had to take Ashley for an interview about the BC university so she couldn’t attend, but seeing Tom there warmed my heart.

To help Susan out and to save money, we had Brother buried in our parents’ plot, so although Susan had kept him away from Mom during her last few days, he was now with her forever.

Before the ceremony, the funeral director introduced the priest, a man from Poland with a very heavy accent. I told him about our Kosciuszko connection and he got very excited, telling us about how famous Thaddeus was. In fact, although it was very cold and we were all freezing, the priest gave a short history lesson about Thaddeus Kosciuszko by the graveside.

I do know that Tim, Tom and Amanda were very proud to hear such a glowing historical commentary, and the others must have also been very impressed. I know I was.

We all gathered at Tim’s for refreshments after the service and I took pictures. It had been years since Tim and Tom had their picture taken together with their mother, so this was very special.

Tom, Amanda, Susan, Kim (Susan’s niece) and Tim, and in front, Silvia and her friend Lexie

Lydia, Silvia and Amanda

Silvia and I really got to know each other over the winter and we did a lot of things together. Ever since I started making bread, any children that have been around at the time got to make a “Teddy Bear” out of dough that they decorated any way that they wanted, and Silvia was no exception. She was so proud of her finished product.

Here’s Silvia with her Teddy Bear before she decorated it.

With Brother buried, Tim had the job of moving Susan to a cheaper place, getting her a car she could afford and doing all the renovating for her. Because I wasn’t there and only heard the details from Tim and Monica, I guess the transition went well, although once in her new place, Susan was very lonely and not very happy. I was told she cries a lot and, other than that one friend, has no one but Tim and his family. Even though Tom came to the graveside service, he hasn’t been back to visit his mother.

Brothers Tim and Tom

In March, Irvin called to say that he and Charlotte were coming down so we could see the baby and spend time together. I had a lot to do to prepare for such an important visit and the days flew by.

What a joy it was to finally meet our first granddaughter, hold her, play with her and just love her. Charlotte and Irvin are such good parents — their world revolves around their daughter, and Shannon is a contented, happy baby.

Grandma and Shannon

Grandpa and Shannon

The visit ended too soon, but there might be another one coming up. If they can manage it, they will come down for Christmas, and I am praying things can work out. Charlotte goes back to work in December and Irvin has gone back to school to study for a Native Child Welfare job. We wish him luck.

Around here, we had Rose’s memorial service well into spring, at the park where she walked twice daily with her dogs. Rose was well liked and a lot of people attended.

We all came back to her house where her family greeted friends and exchanged stories about Rose. For me, it was so hard to believe she was gone, as she had just finished renovating the house the year before and hadn’t even seen the effect of all the flowers she planted in the fall. She and I used to take our dogs for a walk down the road below our place quite often, and we visited or had dinner at each other’s place, and now that has all ended.

We now were told that Jack’s nephew Pat was in the hospital with pneumonia and not doing well. Jack and I stopped in to see him whenever we were in the area, but the prognosis wasn’t good. His cancer was spreading and it was difficult to see Pat wasting away to nothing as the weeks went on. Finally, in July, it was all over.

Pat was one of the friendliest people I knew, and he had so many friends that the hospital had to ask visitors not to come during certain hours so he could rest. At his memorial service it was standing-room only, with many people not able to get in. Such a difference between his and Brother’s services, where only a handful attended.

Three deaths in such a short time was very emotional on our family but, as they say, life goes on and with things to do daily, time heals the hurts, and new events take place of old ones.

When Ashley called me to ask if she could visit before going off to university, I learned that Brother’s four children — Tony, Debbie, Tom and Tim — all got together at the beginning of July, along with their children, and had a barbecue at Tom’s place. The whole family was there but one. Debbie’s son Brian didn’t go, but her daughter’s fiancé, Scott, was there with Laura.

This was the first time in years that the four of them had gotten together, and when I heard that, I was so choked up I started crying. I had been working for years to try and get those siblings together and now it had finally happened. The adults have been keeping in touch with each other and the kids, who have never met some of their cousins, all got along great. Silvia once told me that she had no cousins, and she was so happy to find so many of them.

I also had my friend from Oakville visit for a few days, with her family. Seeing Jakob, just three weeks older than Shannon, made me wish Irvin didn’t live so far away from us. We’re both too old to undertake such a long drive through sparsely settled country, so we’ll have to rely on them to come and see us.

During the summer, a friend who was visiting told me that Sister had given up her house and is now living at the local hospital. I asked what happened since I heard nothing about it from her or her friend, and was told Sister wouldn’t do as the doctor ordered so they had her admitted and kept off her feet and on the proper medication.

Since no one contacted me I didn’t feel I should go to see her, and just waited to hear from her. I’m still waiting, but in September, both my neighbours wound up in the hospital and called me for favours, so when I went in to see them, I decided to also visit Sister.

She acted like I should have known, even after I asked her why she didn’t call me. Her response was she didn’t want to worry me! It seems that her legs got really swollen and she had to keep them up, which was next to impossible while living alone, so her friend and the Home Care people had her admitted to the hospital.

Sister is on oxygen and medication and she seems to enjoy the company in there, the constant comings and goings and having everything done for her. Her weight has ballooned, but a lot of it is because of her medication, and she keeps busy reading and working on her crafts.

I brought her some hand-held electronic games and magazines, but she has everything she needs, and quite a few organizations send people in to see her. I don’t go in often, but have gotten a few other things for her and will go in once in a while. I agree that the hospital is the best place for her right now, and if they move her to a nursing home, she’ll be happy there as well, with all the activities the residents have there.

A huge event was held in our area this year that has brought much needed cash into the region. The annual International Plowing Match and Rural Expo took place just a few miles from our farm. Usually it’s held in Southern Ontario, but this year we were lucky. Over 80,000 people attended and there were hundreds of campers set up for the visitors.

Several farms served as grounds for the weeks it took to set up and dismantle everything, and Jack and I really enjoyed seeing the exhibits and displays. The highlight for me was seeing the Renfrew Square Dancing Tractors! Those eight people sure put their tractors through the paces as a man called out the square dance.

Finally, summer was over and we had to attend Laura and Scott’s wedding on October 3. Tony and Wendy hosted the wedding at their rural place. Wendy married Tony shortly before my mother died and she is a wonderful wife to Tony and a great Mom to Michael and Ryan.

Wendy and Tony

Michael on the left and Ryan

Jack and I are very proud of Tony and how he and Wendy raised their sons. Both boys spent some time with us during the wedding, making us feel very special. I give credit to the parents for the wonderful job they did being part of the boys’ life, unlike my brother and his wife in their children’s lives. Michael is now in university and Ryan is finishing high school.

We drove down and stayed with Tim, Monica and Silvia, who sported a cast on her whole leg. She broke it during her first and last skating lesson of the year, but she is so good about the whole thing and manages to scoot around on the floor quite nicely.

Children were not invited to the wedding, so Tim and Monica decided not to go. Susan also wasn’t invited.

Brian, who I haven’t seen for a few years, is now a grown man and ushered at his sister’s wedding. Brian is still living at home and very into the electronic media.

Here’s a picture of Brian, Debbie’s son and Laura’s brother.

We had a great time but didn’t stay long as we were both very tired and had a long drive ahead of us the next day.

Scott, Laura and Debbie and her husband, Neil

Tim and Monica, with little Silvia, will be coming to our house the day after Christmas, since Santa has to visit Silvia in her own home. I’m all excited and decided to get a real tree this year, something we haven’t had for a number of years. Since Monica got nearly all of my decorations, I’ll enjoy getting some new ones but I don’t want many.

So for now, I am signing off, and hope to have more updates as my family grows and new members are added. Thanks for reading.

Read the earlier episodes here:

Part 1 @ Part 2 @ Part 3 @ Part 4 @ Part 5 @ Part 6 @ Part 7 @ Part 8 @ Part 9 @ Part 10 @ Part 11 @ Part 12 @ Part 13 @ Part 14 @ Part 15 @ Part 16

The scariest part is that all of my close personal friends who died in September happen to be in this one photograph that was taken at a party in Manhattan around about 1977. Is that spooky, or what? I’m going to have to start checking my other group photos to see who else is doomed!

We were at someone’s arty loft and Patrick Swayze was showing me how to “throw a pot” on the ceramics wheel. The word “pot” caught the attention of Niels Bohr, who’d shown up for the party in sepia tone, of all things.

He was in town from Copenhagen, where everybody smokes pot. He determined that we had the wrong kind of pot, but sat down anyway and started nattering on about quantum spinning wheels or something, and a crowd gathered round.

Mary Travers from Peter, Paul and Mary was there. She provided the music. And so was Keith Floyd, the celebrity chef, who cooked us some very boozy venison.

Keith Waterhouse, the guy who wrote “Billy Liar”, offered to buy the house a round of drinks if we could help him come up with an idea for another play, but most people were more interested in helping Larry Gelbart write the next episode of “M*A*S*H”.

Jim Carroll was staring at the potting wheel going round and round and suggested having Hawkeye and Trapper John accidentally discover that Colonel Potter is a secret drug addict.

Henry Gibson, who was still very much in “Laugh-In” mode at the time, said that was way too dark, even for “M*A*S*H”, and wanted to do something with a flower theme instead. So he and Jim Carroll got into a poetry pissing contest. I forget who won, but I went home with a nice vase I’d made and put flowers in it.

And then afterward, every time I looked at it on the mantel I kept thinking of the song “If I Had a Hammer”. Spooky, or what?

Mystified? Morose? Misfitting? Let Pattaya’s best-known alien physician give you another dose of his cure for the farang flu, My review for The Nation, published on September 12.

Suspicion does arise when Iain Corness virtually admits to augmenting his visits to public squat toilets with his own handkerchief (which is cheating), but the Scottish medical doctor who transplanted himself to Thailand from Australia does maintain his esteem, if not his dignity, in this second collection of light-hearted musings on strangers’ strange experiences in a strange land.

The first topped the English-language best-seller list in Thailand (he tells me anything over 5,000 copies sold represents a best-seller), so the symptoms indicated another trip to the doctor’s office and an extra dose of experience, observation and philosophy. These are the components of his patented remedy for any farang afflicted with a misunderstanding of Thai ways, which is potentially fatal.

As with the original book, this one deals mostly in familiar topics, but the amusement is in the fresh telling, and the healthfulness of the dose is in the author’s acceptance — and, usually, admiration — for the way things work here.

Actual physician’s advice is dispensed about Alzheimer’s disease and the need for the terminally ill to prepare Living Wills, and in the form of his own “75 Per Cent Diet”.

Ranging more widely, Corness extracts the following from his medicine cabinet of curiosities: boob and penis enlargers, karaoke and gik bars, gasohol, motorcycles as sports machines and modes of transport for entire households, Chang and Eng, school and security-guard uniforms, the disproportionate ramifications of fender benders (recounted with humour amid the horror), Buddhist and animist rituals, and the ability that God gave Thais but not foreigners to seal and unseal plastic bags with a rubber band.

There is also the fundamental reality that many Thais celebrate their birthdays on a date plucked out of the air, months or years after the actual date of birth, by a relative who has more important things to do than remember long-ago events for the purpose of government paperwork.

Are Thai ways always better than those of the West? The doctor is only human, so he deigns to complain about the state of the toilet paper here, the road conditions and car salesmanship, and allows that farang countries are better at noise abatement, albeit only by suckling at the nanny state’s teat.

Education he finds to be on a par, at least for those who can afford a halfway decent school.

Sometimes Corness gets carried away praising his adopted country. A gushing essay about the Tiffany’s shows claims that kathoey are “totally accepted in Thai society”, when in fact they remain legally oppressed. He showers fawning praise on the performers (and elsewhere in book does a drag turn himself), but is surprised that there are no catfights backstage.

A chapter on the cash crunch ends up imploring readers to invite overseas friends and relatives to Thailand. Tourism will again soon flourish, he claims, thanks to “Thai friendliness”. Optimism prevails on that score, despite the political mayhem, which also gets some passing scrutiny.

Being based in Pattaya, the doctor wades into the scrum of red and yellow knights seeking the grail of democracy, but the episode turns out to be just a news recap, really, and hardly worth the bravery medal he jokes that he deserves.

There is a near-complete disdain of hyphens (an affliction so easily treated) and the choice of words tends to be rushed, weakening the heart of clarity, but these are piddling worries in a book that’s plenty of fun and, once again, a sure and dependable guide for newcomers.

One particularly humorous episode finds Dr Iain setting a Brisbane neighbourhood ablaze while trying to lure people into his Thai-food restaurant (there’s a couple of good Thai recipes at the back of the book), but he’s completely at home on Siamese soil, and makes no such blunders in judgement.

Read my review of the first “Farang” here.