Five in October

I read six books in October.

 

The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre

A mystery jointly investigated by a Scottish Miss Marple-type and a hardboiled Los Angeles cop? What a perfect mash-up! But then … this unsuspecting reader got caught up in pretty outlandish scenarios such as a volunteer-run library in rural Perthshire being stormed by gun-toting policemen … It’s a gripping read with some of Mr Brookmyre’s trademark humour. I enjoyed it and am still thinking about it but don’t ask me to explain the plot (wee hint: if you like video games you might be able to get your head round it).

 

I is for Innocent by Sue Grafton

Californian PI Kinsey Milhone is hired to re-investigate the case of a man accused of murdering his rich wife  – a crime for which a court has already acquitted him.

 

Same As Ever It Was by Claire Lombardo

I thought Claire Lombardo’s last (and first) book The Most Fun We Ever Had was amazing and I looked forward to reading this one. I still think her writing is brilliant and her characters seem so real – but I didn’t enjoy this one so much.

Now, I know that you don’t have to like a character for them to make good reading but here the intolerant and judgmental protagonist, Julia, is not the most congenial person to spend 492 pages with. Through flashbacks, however, we discover reasons for her wariness around other people and why, when she’s determined not to form friendships with her peer group, she’s happy when an older woman, Helen Russo, befriends her. But that friendship has consequences …

Lucky Julia, though, she’s married to Mark, ‘the nicest man on earth’ – and he really is devoted to her (no twist in the tale there).

They have two children, sweet, laid-back Ben who’s 24, and teenager Alma who’s a pain in the •••t. For example, when Julia croons in baby talk to her miniature daschund, Alma admonishes her mother, saying ‘Don’t police her emotions!’ And when Julia waves politely in thanks for a courtesy by a fellow driver, Alma rolls her eyes: ‘God, Mum, do you even know that man?’

But there you go – I wouldn’t have felt so annoyed by Alma if she hadn’t come over as a real person.

I’ll definitely read Claire Lombardo again.

 

 

The Mission House by Carys Davies

Reading this book means, sadly, that I am currently up-to-date with Carys Davies’ novels (following West and Clear). Unlike those two, which are set in the 19th century, this is contemporary (emails etc) – although, being set in a ‘mission house’ in India it does have a historic flavour to it.

Hilary Byrd, a middle-aged man, an English librarian, has always found life a little difficult. He takes himself to India and ends up at a mission house on a hill station in South India where he is taken in by the Padre and his adopted daughter Priscilla. But tensions are brewing down in the town which spell trouble for the mission house …

A wannabe country and western singer and a rescued horse provide some light relief. As ever, Carys Davies’ writing is spare yet colourful and compulsively readable.

 

Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang 

Non-fiction, read for book group. To quote from the blurb: 'This is a book about the coming of age of four women born in China in the 1980s and 1990s, in a society about to transform beyond recognition.'

The author, born in China, became a financial journalist and is now a Labour MP in England. Absolutely fascinating.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

These many posts I’ve compiled on books I’ve read have never included any science fiction until now … although The Ministry of Time has also been described as comedic, literary, romantic and (unsurprisingly) genre-defying. It is all of these things. Oh, and time travel.

What sold it to me, though, was the inclusion of a real-life Victorian polar explorer, Commander Graham Gore. Polar exploration is a subject I’m fascinated by and here was such a massively different take on the subject.

Gore is on the point of death, on a failed expedition in the Arctic in 1847, when he is snatched and taken to a time in our near future. He’s part of an experiment – the others (all fictional) include, for example, a soldier who would have died on the Somme if he hadn’t been ‘rescued’. Each of the rescued is housed with a civil servant to learn all about the new era they have found themselves in – not just the technology but changed attitudes and world orders; they have a lot of history to catch up on.

As our female narrator’s relationship with the dashing Commander changes and she gets involved in the lives of the others who have landed here from the past, she begins to wonder what exactly the government is hoping to gain from the experiment and if it’s as benign as she’d been led to believe.

I couldn’t put it down. Perhaps hard-core science-fiction readers are less enamoured with it, I don’t know, but if you’re soft-core then I heartily recommend it.