I started the month with Sally Nicholls’ debut novel WAYS TO LIVE FOREVER. This won the Glen Dimplex New Writer of the Year Award last year and it’s easy to see why. Aimed at younger readers, this is an often very funny novel about a young boy, Sam, who is dying of leukaemia. Written with honesty and compassion it builds to an extremely moving climax.
Next were two books by Stefan Zweig. The first, BURNING SECRET, is a chilling story of a young boy and his mother who, while vacationing, encounter a rather seedy Baron who plans a seduction while the boy does everything in his power to prevent it taking place. It’s quite startling and even threatening in its immediacy. While AMOK AND OTHER STORIES contains four stories based around the theme of suicide. Zweig is a writer whose passion for life seems countered by his horror of what man is capable of; he’s one of the least sentimental writers I can imagine.
Jed Mercurio’s third book AMERICAN ADULTERER is a fictional account of John F Kennedy’s presidency, told through the dual viewpoints of his libido and his health problems. The novel is written in a very cold, distant style and offers fresh perspective on a familiar period, although it’s not as imaginative as Curtis Sittenfeld’s magnificent recounting of Laura Bush, AMERICAN WIFE.
Nick Laird’s second novel GLOVER’S MISTAKE is an entertaining read, concerning itself with the love triangle between a rather sad thirtysomething man, his younger lodger and an older woman. The character of David Pinner is an interesting one although I can’t help but feel that the novel might have been better told in the first person rather than the third, to better represent Pinner’s disappointments. Still, it builds to quite satisfying dramatic moments and, if “lad-lit” is a new genre, then this is a worthy example of it.
Next up was LP Hartley’s SIMONETTA PERKINS, a story which owes much to A ROOM WITH A VIEW, a novel which is in fact referenced during the book. Set in Venice, it tells the story of a young woman who falls silently in love with a gondolier and in unsure how to explore these new, romantic feelings. It was Hartley’s first novel and while not in the same league as THE GO-BETWEEN remains a thoughtful and considered piece of work. I also read Hartley’s THE SHRIMP AND THE ANEMONE, the first part of the Eustace & Hilda trilogy. A wonderful reminiscence of childhood, the novel is a series of stories centred around young Eustace as he confronts his fears and anxieties about the world.
The stories in Wells Tower’s debut collection EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED are tough, tight, very American stories, highly influened I thought by the work of Richard Ford. It’s a very impressive book although there is a tendency for many of the male narrators to sound quite alike. A nice change of pace comes in LEOPARD, a 2nd person story with an 11 year old protagonist. Certainly an interesting new writer although it would be good to see him discover his own individual voice rather than simply sounding like an example of what an American writer is supposed to sound like.
Prolific Japanese author Yoko Ogawa’s second book to be published in English, THE HOUSEKEEPER & THE PROFESSOR came next. I found her earlier collection, THE DIVING POOL, to be both disturbing and unsettling and this novel is no different. The story of a mathematics professor with an 80 minute memory and his relationship with his housekeeper and her son is quite mesmerising at times, and cryptic, but it’s a worthwhile read.
Canadian writer Colin McAdam’s second novel FALL is a very interesting story about an elite high school where one of the students, Noel, a disturbed and lonely boy, forces his way into the lives of an attractive campus couple. Told from several different narrative viewpoints, this is storytelling at its most gripping and elusive, as we never fully understand the motivations of any of the characters until the story has reached its climax. A very strong novel.
Stephen Amidon’s new novel SECURITY is set in a Massachussets college town and revolves around a group of disparate characters who are involved in one way or another in the assault of a young woman at the home of a rich resident. Although this is an engaging and often interesting mystery, there are flaws which let it down. The character of the wealthy bad-guy, for example, is a bit cliched and the main story of the novel doesn’t really begin until about until halfway through. Some of the characters’s storylines are left unresolved too – a writing teacher whose career is going nowhere, for example, and his student lover – so it’s difficult to see exactly why they’re there.
Rose Tremain’s collection of short stories THE DARKNESS OF WALLIS SIMPSON is writing of the highest order. Each story is utterly different from the last and combines Tremain’s wonderful story-telling ability with characters that fly off the page. The title story is as unsettling as it is bleak. David Szalay’s debut novel LONDON & THE SOUTH-EAST is an utterly compelling tale of a rather broken-down salesman and the various scrapes, both professional and romantic, which define his ill-fitting life. It’s an intelligent and clever story, sometimes hilariously funny, reminiscent (I thought) of Tim Lott’s brilliant WHITE CITY BLUE. Definitely an author I’ll look forward to reading more of. While Monica Ali’s new novel IN THE KITCHEN is a well-considered novel of the various men and women who populate a London hotel’s kitchen, from the chef to the various people under his command. Ali takes the brave step of making Chef Gabriel less volcanic than many of his real-life counterparts and it’s all the better for that.
Finally, a debut novel by Italian writer Paolo Giordano, THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS, the story of two damaged children and how their lives diverge and reconnect at various points. An award-winning novel in Italy, it’s being published here in July, and deserves to reach a wide audience. Giordano, a physicist in his other career, brings a clinical eye to Mattio and Alice and this is a highly original novel. (And coinicdentally, like the Yoko Ogawa book, there’s a long section on prime numbers; are these becoming a common theme of contemporary fiction?!)
I gave an address last week to the Philosophical Society of Trinity College Dublin. Thankfully the organisers did not ask me to speak about philosophy so instead I talked a little about writing and gave a reading from the new novel THE HOUSE OF SPECIAL PURPOSE.
This coming Monday, the 27th, BBC Radio 4 begins a two-week transmission of my seventh novel 
I was a guest on Saturday morning, alongside fellow novelist Dermot Bolger, on RTE Radio 1’s 
There’s a special evening planned at the 