October Reading

One of the benefits of a busy month of travelling is the opportunity it affords for a lot of reading, and with trips to Russia, England and Singapore during October, I seem to have got through a lot of books.

Of these, the best ones included JM Coetzee’s SUMMERTIME. I’m a great admirer of Coetzee’s fiction, the manner in which he can blend pure fiction and fictionalised autobiography, also the methodical manner in which he deconstructs a writer’s psyche. This latest work is a powerful piece of self-analysation, told after ‘his death’ by a number of people who knew him.

Completely different was Nick Hornby’s latest novel JULIET, NAKED, a very funny and clever story about a couple and their relationship to an obscure and reclusive American songwriter. It’s a terrific read, full of unexpected twists; I loved it. Lorrie Moore’s  A GATE AT THE STAIRS is receiving a lot of praise, and rightly so. Told in a cold and almost clinical manner, it’s the story of a young student who falls in with a middle-aged couple when she is hired to babysit their adopted daughter. It’s an intriguing and fascinating tale.

Alistair Morgan’s debut novel SLEEPER’S WAKE is a powerful work of fiction, the story of a man who is attempting to recover from the death of his wife and daughter in an automobile accident. It’s a strong piece of work although there are perhaps too many unresolved strands left in the air at the end. William Boyd’s ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS is an intricately plotted thriller that asks serious questions about identity and examines how easy it is to abandon it in the 21^st century.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that my favourite contemporary novelist is John Irving. It was reading THE CIDER HOUSE RULES when I was 17 that convinced me that I wanted to be a writer. So it was with great delight that I read his twelfth novel LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER, which ranks alongside his best work. The story of a writer and his father, a cook, set over 50 years it’s funny and moving, filled with stylistic flourishes that have set Irving set aside from his peers over the last quarter century. The credibility of the unexpected is one of the key features of Irving’s novels; the appearance of Lady Sky is a moment in fiction that I will not forget in a hurry. A masterful, masterful novel.

I hadn’t read Maurice Sendak’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE in many years and returned to it – and enjoyed it – before reading Dave Eggers’ THE WILD THINGS, a novel based on the picture book and screenplay of the movie. The novel is hugely entertaining and appropriately bizarre; life on the island with the beasts is alternately scary and funny. But the opening 60 pages or so, leading up to Max’s escape, is one of the best accounts of childhood loneliness, frustration and isolation that I’ve ever read.

I also read Pat Conroy’s SOUTH OF BROAD, Alan Glynn’s excellent Dublin thriller WINTERLAND (which I reviewed for The Irish Times), James Lever’s ME CHEETA, Penelope Lively’s FAMILY ALBUM, Audrey Niffenegger’s curious and interersting novel HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY, Taichi Yamada’s I HAVEN’T DREAMED OF FLYING FOR A WHILE and re-read Art Spiegelman’s powerful Holocaust graphic novel MAUS.

September Reading

Two stand-out novels this month. I’ve always loved Richard Russo’s novels but his last book, BRIDGE OF SPIES, wasn’t my favourite. His new one, however, THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC is a real return to form. A late middle-aged man, Jack Griffin, attends two weddings and while doing so reflects on his relationships with his parents and his wife. It’s very funny at times but also provocative and interesting. Loved it. The other stand-out was Sebastian Faulks’ A WEEK IN DECEMBER, a great story based around the lives of a group of characters whose lives cross each other over the course of a week. Of the others, David Szalay confirmed his status as one of the most interesting young writers out there with his second novel THE INNOCENT. And yes, I read the Dan Brown. Well why not? I read one other book this month, an advance copy of a novel being published next year, which was so spectacularly awful – I mean seriously one of the worst books I’ve ever read in my life – that I decided not to put it in the picture. I’m nice really.

August Reading

August began with Robert Dinsdale’s novel A HARROWING, a Cain and Abel-type story with the First World War as a backdrop. It’s a strong debut, well written and engaging. The story trails off a little towards the end but he’s certainly a writer worth watching. I wasn’t as sold on Clancy Martin’s debut HOW TO SELL, an American comic novel about a young man who gets up to no good in his brother’s jewellery business. It has shades of Douglas Coupland but I found the writing quite self-conscious at time, desperate to be hip, and I’m afraid it wasn’t one for me.

Lynn Barber’s memoir, AN EDUCATION, is often very funny – Barber examines herself with as cool and detached an eye as she does everyone else – but ends on a moving note after the death of her husband. The title chapter has, of course, been made into a film, with an adaptation by the great Nick Hornby, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

I’d never read any of Caryl Phillips’ books until his month but his excellent new novel, IN THE FALLING SNOW, has made me want to go out and buy everything he wrote. An intense and thoughtful novel about a middle-aged man dealing with the mixed demands of an ex-wife, teenage son and ageing father, this is a novel filled with truth about relationships and some very powerful writing. I’m a little surprised it didn’t make the Booker longlist, it’s that good.

A couple of page-turners for the flight to Australia – Claire Letemendia’s THE BEST OF MEN, a historical novel set during the time of Charles I and Luis Miguel Rocha’s THE LAST POPE, a DaVinci Code style thriller, didn’t make much of an impression – but Anne Tyler’s NOAH’S COMPASS is a wonderful novel by one of my favourite writers. Set over the course of a year, it examines the effect that retirement and injury has on a late middle-aged man. Although it lacks some of the dramatic urgency of the best of Tyler’s work, it’s still a polished and thoughtful novel from a great storyteller.

Having heard so much hype – not least from my niece – I read Stephenie Meyer’s TWILIGHT – just the first one – and didn’t like it at all. The emphasis on physical beauty throughout the story, an obsession with what Edward What’s His Name looks like, is almost pathological in its relentlessness, and the narrator is so unbearably shallow and self-involved that it’s painful to read. Every 100 pages of so, Meyer sends Bella to a bookshop, presumably to show that she’s smart, but it’s ridiculously cliched. I don’t get it at all. The movie’s crap too.

I’m a big fan of Philippa Gregory’s historical novels and her latest, THE WHITE QUEEN, which begins a new series set around the Wars of the Roses, is her best since THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL. It’s hard not to feel that having been released from Tudor times, Gregory has a new lease of life. The narrator, Elizabeth Woodville, wife to Edward IV is a fascinating character and the pacing and energy of the novel are fantastic. I can’t wait for the next installment.

On to Australia and a bunch of excellent Aussie novels, starting with Murray Bail’s THE PAGES, the story of two women who travel to a small farm to read the work of a recently dead philosopher. Very much a novel of ideas, it bounces between two time periods in a clever way and I found the small cast of characters fascinating in their contradictions, their belief in a life of the mind and, at times, their extraordinary selfishness.

Another novel which uses dual narratives is Richard Flanagan’s excellent WANTING, which moves between Charles Dickens in London and a settlement in Tasmania. This is one of the novels of the year, compelling and hypnotic; the scenes of Dickens on stage are so unsettling as to be almost spooky. A very rich and thought-provoking book.

Every so often, well once every few years, a novel comes along that is so brilliant it reminds me why I love reading and writing. These reading experiences are few and far between but the reason I read so much is I’m always looking for the next one. Christos Tsiolkas’ novel THE SLAP, which will be published in the UK during 2010, is just such a novel. A simple but brilliant premise – at a suburban barbecue where a group of friends and acquaintances are gathered, a man slaps a child who isn’t his own – opens up into a complex and fascinating multi-charactered story of contemporary Melbourne and, by extension, Australia. It challenges prejudices, reveals hypocricies, examines ambitions, thwarted and otherwise, and has a central cast of 8 fascinating characters who together slowly reveal the story. Quite simply one of the best novels I’ve read in my life.

And finally, I read Tsiolkas’ earlier novel DEAD EUROPE on the flight home. A dark and brooding story of a young photographer in Europe it’s hypnotic in its intensity and the passion of the language. What a writer.

June Reading

A couple of stand-out novels this months, including Sarah Waters’ THE LITTLE STRANGER. One of my favourite writers, Waters writes historical novels with a real feel for time and place. This ghost story is very well constructed, scary in all the right parts, sad and moving at times, and leaving the reader with questions about the characters to ponder. A really wonderful book. The other book I really enjoyed was William Trevor’s LOVE AND SUMMER, one of our great novelists writing about a rural Irish village and the unsettling effects of the arrival of a young photographer. I read a bunch of other novels over the last few weeks but I’ll stick with a photo this month.

May Reading

The first book I read this month was Rebecca Gowers’ THE TWISTED HEART, a combination literary mystery and off-beat romance. Unfortunately the two halves didn’t quite gel for me at all and I found the whole thing a bit forced, although the Dickens sections are interesting. Anne Michaels’ second novel, THE WINTER VAULT, on the other hand is a beautifully realised account of the marriage between an engineer and his wife, much of which is set in Egypt in the 1960s. It’s easy to see from Michaels’ prose that she has published a lot of poetry for the language is very beautiful and moving.

Helen Oyeyemi’s third novel WHITE IS FOR WITCHING is a ghost-story of sorts but the novel is overrun by different narrative voices which make the story far more complicated than it really is, leaving the reader feeling more irritated than scared.

Deirdre Madden’s latest novel, MOLLY FOX’S BIRTHDAY, is a tremendous piece of work. The story of three friends, a playwright, an actress and an art historian, Madden sets her story over one day but uses the smallest moments to create stories of memory that tell us who these people are. It’s a very fine novel with a strong, consistent narrative voice and characters whose motivations we only slowly begin to understand as the story progresses.

Another Irish novel, ALL NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED by Claire Kilroy is a beautifully written story of a group of writing students in 1980s Dublin. The narrator is the only man in the group and Kilroy captures his voice very well. There’s a dark side to the novel too, a recognition of the heroin problems in the city in those days, and it provides a fine counterbalance to the artistic longings of the aspiring writers.

Hilary Mantel’s new book WOLF HALL is a gripping account of the rise of Thomas Cromwell to power in the Tudor court of Henry VIII. I’m a huge fan of anything relating to this period of history and found Mantel’s take completely original – which is not easy considering the wealth of literature relating to Henry – and poetic in its storytelling.

There is nothing quite so wonderful in literature as the novella form and Eugene McCabe’s brilliant THE LOVE OF SISTERS is a great example of how powerful they can be. In just over 100 pages McCabe tells the story of two sisters, particularly that of the younger sister Carmel, in a series of dramatic and moving tales. This is storytelling at its most accomplished, a novella that stays with the reader and fills one with admiration for its writer.

Ian MacKenzie’s debut CITY OF STRANGERS starts with an interesting premise: two brothers, estranged, forced to re-enter each others’ lives as their father, a former Nazi sympathiser and the cause of their fall-out, lies dying. This in itself would be enough for a novel but MacKenzie adds a further twist, a moment of violence reminiscent of Bonfire of the Vanities, which leads the brothers into unexpected directions. The first half of the book is terrific, tautly written, interesting characters, but sadly it’s let down by the second half where it rather bizarrely descends into melodrama and the standard tropes of a conventional thriller.

AS Byatt’s new novel THE CHILDREN’S BOOK is a powerful novel. A large cast of characters whose relationships we gradually come to understand as the story develops it takes a very careful reading but it’s worth the effort. Less obtuse but equally long is Iain Pears’ STONE’S FALL, which reads like a 19^th century novel, a terrific story of journalists, spies, bankers, warmongers. A really compulsive read.

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors and his first collection of stories, NOCTURNES, contains five stories, each of which has some connection with music. There’s a great freshness to the narrative voices, often a very casual sense of phrasing which makes the stories feel alive. My favourite was probably ‘Malvern Hills’ but like all Ishiguro’s writing, it’s just a delight to read every one.

Rosie Alison’s debut novel THE VERY THOUGHT OF YOU grips from start to finish. Beginning with the story of a young girl evacuated to a country house at the start of the war, it opens up to include doomed romances, thwarted love affairs, innocence corrupted, and a cast of characters that are as passionate as they are believable. Alison writes with a real understanding of the period and true compassion for her characters and the plot develops in unexpected and often shocking ways. Without question one of the best debuts I’ve read in recent years and an important addition to the growing body of literature which concerns itself with the effect of the Second World War on the people back home.

And finally, THE SELECTED WORKS OF TS SPIVET, another debut, this time by an American writer Reif Larsen. It’s narrated by a highly precocious 12 year old mapmaker who’s travelling to Washington DC to collect an award. There are so many, so very many, debut novels narrated by smart-beyond-their-years children and teenagers and very few of them work, mainly because the narrators don’t actually sound like precocious children at all but like adults pretending to be them. There’s a lot of gimmicks in the book too as can be seen by its extraordinary production values – which are, it has to be said, great fun – but unfortunately I wasn’t sold on the novel itself.

April Reading

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 2^nd 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?!)

March Reading

This month, I was lucky enough to get advance copies of two novels by eminent Irish writers, both of which will be published in the coming months.

Colm Toibin’s new novel BROOKLYN, which will be published in May, tells the story of a young woman, Eilis Lacey, who moves from Enniscorthy to Brooklyn in the 1950s. It’s a moving and powerful novel, led by a protagonist whose journey is one of personal growth and emotional difficulties. I read the last 50 pages with my heart in my mouth, wondering how the story would be resolved. A simply beautiful novel which will no doubt be one of the finest published this year. As, I think, will Colum McCann’s LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, which arrives in September. An extraordinary piece of writing, set in New York in the 1970s, this is a hugely ambitious work by a writer who never veers into sentimentality and allows complex stories and ideas to develop over the course of the novel. Both books deserve to reach a wide audience and I have little doubt that they will.

I didn’t get on quite so well with Tim Krabbe’s THE CAVE. I read THE VANISHING last month and loved it but this novel, centred around a particularly malevolent drug-dealing character, was less engaging.

Siobhan Dowd’s final novel, SOLACE OF THE ROAD, is told with her usual powerful level of storytelling and engaging voice. The story of a young girl, Holly, who flees her foster family in order to travel to Ireland to find her mother, it’s a great read, although I think BOG CHILD, which I read last month, remains Dowd’s masterpiece.

I’ve never read Stefan Zweig before and his novel CHESS has been sitting on my shelf for about 3 years and I’m pleased I finally got around to it. A highly charged, dramatic story about a chessgame on board a ship, with flashbacks to Nazi Germany, this is a psyschologically interesting story by a writer I plan on reading more of.

I followed this with Edmund White’s biography of RIMBAUD, which is an entertaining and lively read, less academic than one might expect and with the pace of a novel (not surprisingly, considering the author.) I didn’t know much about Rimbaud before and I’m not sure I care much for him now but it’s worth reading.

Then Anita Brookner’s new novel STRANGERS, the story of a retired bank manager and how two demanding, awkward women affect his humdrum and solitary life. This is a moving story with unexpected moments of great humour and pathos. It has to be said that none of the female characters come off very well in the book but Sturgis, the protagonist, is deeply sympathetic. Having never read Brookner’s work before I also went back to one of her earlier novels, the Booker prize-winning HOTEL DU LAC, which is a thoughtful account of a novelist who retires to a Swiss hotel for a short break after an embarrassing incident at home. It’s astonishing how much Brookner can get into these relatively short novels. And HOTEL DU LAC contains one of the most extraordinary sentences I’ve ever read in fiction, towards the end of the novel: ‘Edith,’ said Mr Neville. ‘Please don’t cry. I cannot bear to see a woman cry; it makes me want to hit her.’

After this I read LP Hartley’s THE GO-BETWEEN. One of those classic novels that I’ve heard so many people praise but which I’d never read myself, I was utterly charmed and moved by the story of young Leo Colston, who acts as a messenger between a young farmer and his paramour. It’s a beautifully written novel, at times funny and at times heartbreakingly sad. I can’t believe it’s taken me so many years to read this book.

Quite a change in tone next with Amos Oz’s novel RHYMING LIFE AND DEATH. This story of a famous writer who gives a reading and is alone with his thoughts on stage, followed by a walk through the city, it’s a contemplative story about the nature of fiction itself which didn’t move me particularly but is thought-provoking for its detailed analysis of storytelling and where characters come from.

And then THE WAY I FOUND HER, a novel by Rose Tremain, whose THE ROAD HOME was one of my favourite books of last year. This is an earlier novel, published in 1997, about a 13 year-old boy spending a summer in Paris with his mother who gets involved in a missing person mystery. The novel is at times funny, suspense-filled and dramatic but ultimately it’s a very moving left-of-field love story and a tremendously sad one too. Rose Tremain is really one of the finest English novelists at work today.

February Reading

A real United Nations of reading this month, with four novels by British writers, two by Italian, Chinese, French and Dutch writers and also books by Japanese, Australian and Irish novelists.

I was completely hooked by Niccolo Ammaniti’s novel THE CROSSROADS, an Italian translation which tells the story of a young boy who gets caught up in a criminal scheme devised by his father and his father’s friends. More plot twists than you could shake a stick at, it’s a difficult book to put down and is written with real energy and storytelling power. The only disappointment was the sudden nature of the ending; some of the storylines are left unresolved. No, forget that. Nearly all of them are. Maybe that’s the way Ammaniti wanted it. Anyway, it’s a terrific read.

Yoko Ogawa’s THE DIVING POOL, a collection of three novellas, is a dark and creepy little book by one of Japan’s most prolific writers. Each is written in a clean, clinical tone which makes them quite menacing, particularly the random acts of violence perpetrated by the narrator in my favourite of the three, the title story.

Florian Zeller is a writer whose second novel, Lovers or Something Like It, impressed me when I read it a couple of years ago. His fourth and most recent book is JULIAN PARME, is much lighter in tone but good fun. It owes a huge debt to The Catcher In The Rye, there’s no question, but Julian is such a wonderful character, so melodramatic, so convinced of his own future greatness, that it’s impossible not to fall in love with the book. Question of taste, as Julian might say. I also read Zeller’s Florian Zeller’s debut novel, ARTIFICIAL SNOW. Much less exuberant than Julian Parme, much closer in style to Lovers or Something Like It, it’s the story of a young man who becomes obsessive about a lost relationship. Introspective and unsettling, the novels of this talented writer need to be brought to a wider international audience.

In Amsterdam, I picked up a novel by a Dutch writer Harry Mulisch, THE ASSAULT. The story of a young boy whose family are slaughtered in Amsterdam towards the end of the Second World War, the novel traces a series of events in his life over the following thirty years. A very thoughtful and introspective novel, by an author who I was unfamiliar with, but who is apparently one of Holland’s great post-war writers.

I struggled with Chris Killen’s debut novel THE BIRD ROOM, yet another British debut by a young writer that focusses entirely on bad sex, unhappy relationships and boring jobs. There are moments of interest, when the writer veers away from his story and allows language and character to take over in the occasional short scene, but not enough of them. I wish sometimes that debut British novelists would use their imagination more and not stick to the tried and tested themes of debuts. (Two who broke the mould last year were Ross Raisin and Joseph Smith.) Still, it is a debut and there might be more interesting work by Killen on the horizon.

Tim Krabbe’s THE VANISHING, on the other hand, another Dutch novel I picked up in Amsterdam, is a masterful piece of suspense writing. A young couple stop at a garage, she goes missing, he spends eight years obsessing about what happened to her. And when we find out… A terrific, short novel.

I read Carlo Collodi’s PINOCCHIO this month, a book I hadn’t read since I was a child, although I’m not sure I ever even read the full novel. A tragi-comedy, the Pinocchio of the story is very different from the animated version; he’s a ne’er do well, a rogue who makes mistakes at every juncture and only finally realises how to be a better puppet and then becomes a boy. It’s often hilarious but strangely unsettling too.

Kate Grenville’s new novel THE LIEUTENANT is a powerful story of a young, highly intelligent officer sent with the British forces to a colony in New South Wales where he is to work as an astronomer. His experiences among the newly enslaved natives – and with one in particular – opens his mind to questions of freedom and choice, servitude and empire. It’s a fascinating novel, all the more so in that it is based on a real person and has a strongly dramatic and then emotionally satisfying resolution.

Next I read Yiyun Li’s novel THE VAGRANTS. A big admirer of her debut colletion of short stories, I was really looking forward to the novel and wasn’t disappointed by it. It’s a fascinating look at the lives of a group of disparate characters at the end of the 1970s in China and their response to the execution of a counter-revolutionary. All the stories come together to form connections at different times and this novel is both a political statement and a deeply moving memory of terrifying times.

Something of a SECRET HISTORY set among 15 year-olds, THE SUICIDE CLUB by Rhys Thomas is a rivetting and often moving read centred around a group of disaffected teenagers who, under the guidance of a manipulative leader, decide to embark on a suicide pact. The narrator’s voice compels the narrative – he’s a hugely likeable character – and while it’s yet another debut British novel about a precocious teenager, this is the best of its type that I’ve read in a long while. I’ll be very interested to see what Thomas writes next.

Another debut, MR TOPPIT by Charles Elton, is a curious book. Telling the story of the family of a phenomenally successful children’s author, the novel has shades of one of my favourite writers, Jonathan Coe, in the humorous writing on the family and their many catastrophes. The story of how the books became successful also works well but the novel comes a-cropper in the last third, when the action moves to Los Angeles, which is a shame as before that it was rather good. Terrific book design though.

Siobhan Dowd’s novel BOG CHILD, set in Northern Ireland in 1981 when the Troubles were at their height, is one of the most moving and politically astute novels I’ve read in some times. The young protagonist, Fergus, is an extremely sympathetic character and the reader follows his difficult journey as he deals with the decision of his older brother to go on hunger strike. This is a powerful novel by a great writer.

Next up was Xialou Guo’s novel UFO IN HER EYES, a short, strange book about a girl who spots a UFO in the sky in China and the forces who interview her and those who know her to understand exactly what has happened. Not entirely for me, I’m afraid.

And finally, Nevil Shute’s 1942 novel PIED PIPER, which will be reissued by Vintage Classics in October this year. I’m writing the introduction for the book so will be writing more about it then.

 

January Reading

A busy month of reading, the year began with two novels which, by coincidence, were set either entirely or partly in Wisconsin. The first was AMERICAN WIFE by Curtis Sittenfeld, a hugely entertaining novel based on the life of Laura Bush. Divided into 4 parts that examine different periods of her life – or rather, the life of Alice Blackwell, her fictional alter-ego – it’s a terrific read that offers an intriguing glimpse into the life of the outgoing first couple. Certainly George W Bush/Charlie Blackwell is portrayed as a vulgar, not particularly bright layabout who stumbles across drink, “religion” and the White House in that order, but he’s also rarely less than kind-hearted in the story, a phrase I never would have attributed to the former president himself. But the novel also leaves one questioning Alice/Laura’s complicity in her husband’s amoral and criminal administration. The suggestion is that he’s a fool, but that she should have known better and was in the unique position to steer him away from his malevolent impulses. The good news is that Ms Sittenfeld has written a great book; the better news is that as of a week or two ago the Bushes and their cronies are gone forever.

This was followed by THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE by David Wroblewski. A long novel about a dog-rearing family in 1970s Wisconsin, it’s a book that thinks very highly of itself but is deeply flawed. Wroblewski uses the plot of Hamlet to tell the story but to far less effect than, for example, Jane Smiley used King Lear in A Thousand Acres. (The scene that reflects the ‘play within a play’, for example, is excruciating.) At times he seems to be chanelling Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, but without that book’s lyrical beauty. There are certainly interesting parts to the book – all the sections that deal with Edgar’s relationship with his dogs are fascinating – but there’s something very calculated about the rest of it, as if the author has decided that this is how to write a big American novel and readers will simply believe that it is one.

Dogs – a pair of them – are central to Ian McEwan’s BLACK DOGS, which I first read in 1993 but returned to this month. Experimental in its use of time periods and elegant in language, it’s a mesmerising novel which climaxes in a terrifying manner. Questions of discord between love, faith and politics are central to the story. It contains one of the finest closing sentences I’ve ever read. I followed this with MISS GARNET’S ANGEL by Salley Vickers, a moving and thoughtful novel about an ageing spinster who, having suffered the loss of her companion, decides to spend six months in Venice. It put me in mind of some of those great EM Forster novels and was a fine read.

It would be hard to find a more extreme contrast to this novel than what I read next, PIERCING by Japanese author Ryu Murakami. A horror/thriller set over one dark night in Tokyo, the novel tells the story of a young man who decides to commit a horrific act of violence, although it does not go quite according to his plan. It’s not for the squeamish but I must admit I quite enjoyed the shifting perspectives and the cool language that Murakami employs. So much, in fact, that I read two other Ryu Murakami novels later in the month: firstly, IN THE MISO SOUP, another descent into a chaotic Tokyo evening, this time between a young Japanese tour operator and an American tourist. Shocking, compulsive and vibrant, the horrors of the novel are offset by the depiction of the city as a devastatingly lonely place, despite the energy that surrounds the characters on the streets and in the bars they visit. And then his most recent work, AUDITION, a much more mature and reflective novel than the earlier two, although it descends into grotesque violence towards the end too. Still, an interesting author who manages to combine a bleak view of humanity with startling, vibrant images and a fast-paced narrative style that makes the books terrific to read.

Next was OUT STEALING HORSES by Norwegian writer Per Petterson, a languid story of a long gone summer, recollected by an elderly man. Although this is a short book, it takes careful reading to appreciate the beauty of the prose and to fully understand the stories happening behind the text. A very rewarding read.

I first came across Arthur Bradford’s fiction in an issue of McSweeney’s and, liking his story very much, I ordered his book of short stories, DOGWALKER. It’s a strange, surreal collection, mostly centred around the relationships between humans and dogs, and although they are at times funny, and certainly inventive, it’s hard to shake the feeling that they’re really quite meaningless and ultimately rather superficial. Unlike the extraordinary stories in Jay McInerney’s THE LAST BACHELOR, a collection filled with troubled relationships, cheating wives and husbands, and the kind of credible storytelling that defines his novels. Best of all is ‘The March’, which signals the return of two characters from ‘Brightness Falls’ and ‘The Good Life’ (suggesting that there is another novel in them yet) and ‘Summary Judgement’, a biting satire about a calculating woman.

I reviewed Gil Adamson’s debut novel THE OUTLANDER on RTE’s The View. It’s a beautifully written story set in 1903, concerning a young woman who has murdered her husband and is fleeing her brothers-in-law’s retribution. Along the way she meets a cast of eclectic characters. Adamson writes with a keen ear for nature and the awkwardness that can exist between men and women. Although it ends on a slight deus-ex-machine contrivance, it’s an excellent debut and should be widely read. As should Alain Claude Sulzer’s A PERFECT WAITER, a tragic love story that is as moving as it is insightful. A middle-aged waiter, Erneste, receives a letter from a former lover, a lover whose brief affair with him blighted his life, and a chain of recollections and unexpected discoveries are set in flow. I love books like this that can be read in one sitting and the reader can become completely lost in the world and the emotions of the story. Sulzer has written several novels but this is the first to be translated into English; I hope that more follow.

Diana Athill’s SOMEWHERE TOWARDS THE END was the deserved winner of a Costa award. A reflection on old age and the various people she has known who have approached that time of life in different ways, it’s the work of a gifted writer who clearly loves writing. It’s wickedly funny at times and utterly honest.

I also read a debut novel by an Irish writer, Peter Murphy, JOHN THE REVELATOR. An atmospheric tale of a young boy growing up in a small village whose life is altered by his friendship with a very free-spirited boy who he meets. It’s an interesting debut, filled with humour and energy, and a certain sense of mystery. Best of all is the old crone, Mrs Nagle, who takes up residence in John’s house whenever she sees an opportunity. Their face-offs are very funny and original.

And finally, the last book in a busy month of reading was THE 19^TH WIFE by David Ebershoff. An ambitious novel, split between the life of one of Brigham Young’s polygamous wives in the 18^th century and a young man trying to free his Latter Day Saint mother from a murder charge in today’s world, it’s fast paced and energetic, and details the lives of women all married to one man carefully. I felt the sections set in the past worked a little better than the ones set today but was impressed by Ebershoff’s use of an unexpected narrator to the contemporary scenes.

 

December Reading

 

Having read and enjoyed The Birthday Present by Ruth Rendell’s alter ego Barbara Vine while in Madrid a couple of months ago, I took Rendell’s new novel PORTOBELLO on the plane with me to Mexico. It’s a darker story than the previous book but I found it less engaging. A group of characters, all connected through a sum of money lost on the Portobello Road, I felt it lacked the intrigue and complexity of the earlier political story.

Politics was at the fore, however, of Ann Patchett’s RUN, a novel set over the course of a day following a traffic accident. It’s an interesting story – a former mayor, his two sons, and a young girl whose life intersects with theirs – but perhaps not strong enough to sustain a full novel. Some of the characters felt a little redundant (Uncle Sullivan, for example, and his nephew also called Sullivan) or underdeveloped but the young girl, Kenya, was lively and the best thing in the story.

Next up was Zoe Heller’s debut novel, EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, published originally in 1999. I’m a huge fan of Heller’s second and third novels and went back to her first to see could it possibly be as good as they are and while it’s not up to their level, it’s still a terrific novel. Narrated by one of the most loathsome men I’ve ever read about, it’s probably helpful that the book is short, as there’s only so much misanthropy one can stand. But it certainly shows the great talent that Heller would bring to her next two books.

I had never read JL Carr’s A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY but am glad I picked it off my shelf this month. A tremendously moving story about two former soldiers shortly after the First World War, there’s so much heart and emotion to the writing that one can’t help but be affected by it. After this, I read Christopher Buckley’s SUPREME COURTSHIP, a comedy set around the US Supreme Court, which was disappointing. Flat dialogue, unfunny jokes, and clichéd characters add up to a very amateur piece of writing.

There’s been a lot of talk about Tom Rob Smith’s CHILD 44, an upmarket thriller set in Stalinist Russia and I found it an absorbing read. Exciting and well-paced, this story of a serial killer being chased by an officer of the State Government deserves all the praise it’s been given. Reminiscent in a way of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal books, there’s a sequel on the way next year and I look forward to reading it.

And I ended the year with two short books, Roddy Doyle’s HER MOTHER’S FACE, a moving and beautifully illustrated story of a child who has lost her mother and Philip Ardagh’s THE SCANDALOUS LIFE OF THE LAWLESS SISTERS,  a very witty work which uses some old illustrations from Punch to create a history of a tribe of criminal women. The prose which accompanies the drawings is clever and often hilarious. A terrific book to end the year on.