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.

Five in September

I read five books in September.

 

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

I’m a big fan of Lissa Evans’ Second World War trilogy – Old Baggage, Crooked Heart, and V for Victory – so was keen to read her latest novel set just after the war.

Dimperley is an unattractive and crumbling stately home which houses returning soldier sons and evacuees who never left – and the matriarch who insists on standards being kept up no matter what. Witty and profound like the trilogy although, in my opinion, not quite as good. I’ve never (yet) read her Their Finest Hour but I loved the film made from it. Their Finest (why did they drop the Hour?) has a brilliant cast including Bill Nighy.

 

 

Killing Floor by Lee Child

When I saw this in a charity shop I thought, ooh a Jack Reacher I haven’t read and it’s the very first one! And so I continued to think, until I was more than three-quarters of the way in when something rang a bell loudly … No point in telling you the plot because clearly they’re all the same. … J

 

 

When skies are dark and murky, thank your stars you’re not a turkey wrote a school friend in my autograph book (remember those?). Well, thanking my stars I’m not a turkey doesn’t help for more than maybe a second. What does help is returning to childhood favourite reading. Jennings books still make me laugh, especially Our Friend Jennings in which his best friend Darbishire acquires a false moustache through a small ad in a magazine and is convinced that it makes him completely unrecognisable. To make the most of it, the boys collaborate on writing a play about … a man with a moustache.

Similarly, in Jennings’ Diary, when he writes teachers’ and fellow pupils’ names backwards, our hero is positive that no one sneaking a look at his diary will crack the code.

 

And from the delightfully ridiculous to the sublime ...

 

Clear by Carys Davies

I really love Carys Davies’ writing, so spare and sharp, so clear in fact. This, her third novel, follows her hugely successful collections of short stories (in particular do check out the title story in The Redemption of Galen Pike).

Clear is set in 1843, encompasses: a seismic moment in Scottish religious history, the Highland Clearances, an island with one remaining inhabitant, a lost language, a late marriage, an unexpected relationship … all coming together in a tale other writers would take three times as long to tell.

 

Seven in April

I read seven books in April.

West by Carys Davies

This has been on my radar for a little while. When I suggested it for a book group read it turned out that others had thought of it too. Despite it being short (160 pages), it engendered wide-ranging discussions and – because it was short – its immersive yet very spare writing was much admired.

Carys Davies was an award-winning short story writer before writing novels (do check out ‘The Redemption of Galen Pike’ which won the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize and is included in the collection of the same name).

 

Cy Bellman, American settler and widowed father of ten-year-old Bess leaves his small Pennsylvania farm and his daughter, in the unsympathetic care of his sister-in-law, to find out if the rumours are true: that the giant bones found in Kentucky are from a species still alive who roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River.

 

Just One Weekend by Catherine Aitken

Sandy leaves Scotland, and her husband, for a weekend in New York with her widowed best friend Isobel. There’s going to be a reunion concert there for The Brig, the group they were obsessed with for years.

Control-freak Sandy’s (very) detailed itinerary is thrown into disarray immediately when Isobel’s virtual American boyfriend appears, and Sandy gets saddled looking after the inebriated passenger who’s been irritating her in (she was upgraded) First Class.

There follows a wild weekend across New York with the stranger (who’s not such a stranger after all) when both their lives are changed forever.

I do love books set in New York and this was an exhilarating visit to the city that never sleeps.

 

There’s Something About Mira by Sonali Dev

This book is partly set in New York! Mira Salvi, from an Indian family now living in Chicago is finally engaged to be married (at the ripe old age of 28 … ) to a highly respected doctor, to the delight of her domineering parents. But a visit, minus fiancé, to New York takes her life in a completely different direction when she finds a strange ring and is determined to reunite it with its owner.

After New York, Mira has to go to India with her mother and future mother-in-law for a lavish spending spree on wedding clothes and jewellery. But as she suspects the ring’s owner is somewhere in that vast continent her mind is not on dresses.

I mostly enjoyed this. My reservation is one, not only for this book, but others that are told in first person present tense. It’s mostly to do with facial expressions – how can you see on your own face that ‘a smile plays on my lips’, ‘I look at him quizzically’ or whatever?

 

The People Next Door by Kate Braithwaite

A psychological thriller/domestic noir billed as having a ‘shocking final twist’ – which it certainly did.

The premise is ‘how well do you really know your neighbours’? In this case, the neighbours live in an affluent suburb of Pennsylvania. Jen has moved there with her partner and her daughter but she has a secret reason for being there.

Told from multiple viewpoints, in the past and the present, this is a tense and twisty read.

 

The Miseducation of Evie Epworth by Matson Taylor

Well, each to their own. I Did Not Finish this. It has pretensions to be a classic girls’ coming of age novel but I found all the characters to be cardboard cut-outs. It’s set in the 1960s and reminded me of 60s sitcoms which were funny at a time when we were more easily amused but are just tiresome now.

 

So after that I revisited Maeve Binchy, for the first time in years, and sank happily into her world.

First of all, with Quentins: 

 

and then with Tara Road: