The Other Family by Joanna Trollope

This must be the month for chick lit. I read a favourable review about this book in the SMH, saying that these types of books – can’t remember whether the reviewer called them second tier or mid-range or some other similar description – deserved greater respect and that this one was a goodie. Well, maybe. But really, there’s so much else worth reading and so little time and this is like a bookish version of Sex in the City or Friends. Trash really. It's about a bloke who dies and how his second family copes when he leaves something in his will to his first family, whom they’ve never met. The mothers of both these families are caricatures and really, really irritating. In fact all the bloody characters are caricatures and really, really irritating. Perhaps for a distracting train journey or when you’re sick with the flu and don’t want to concentrate…. 1 star

Roddy Parr by Peter Rose

This book was recommended by someone on the panel of the First Tuesday Book Club – Richard Flanagan perhaps? It’s about a young literary PhD grad who through a family friend ends up being absorbed into the world of one of the great literary families of Australia, as secretary, later friend, and biographer. The jacket is covered in accolades from people I respect, like Helen Garner, but somehow this book irritated me. To begin with, you get the sense that these fictional characters are real characters in the Oz literary world in disguise, which is perhaps why the folks at the book club were so keen on it – they may have recognised themselves or someone they knew. The whole thing is peppered with references to Sydney and Melbourne personalities and places, like Tony Bilson and Bill Henson and Patrick White and The Flower Drum, and somehow that annoyed the hell out of me too because they ended up being involved in the plot with White saying this, and Bilson saying that, again as if the writer is trying to pass this thing off as a piece of non fiction.
The story line - the unpacking of family secrets and development of relationships - is interesting enough but the characters don’t ring true. They keep saying awkward things that nobody says, like one woman talking about entertaining people to dinner and saying ‘I just give them a chop’. Now, who says that? It’s like something out of PG Wodehouse. And there’s lots more of this irritating lack of authenticity in the characters and the way they speak.
And finally the writing – OTT. This guy has ‘discovered’ literary language so his prose is full of dreadful metaphors and unwieldy language that just goes clunk at the bottom of the bucket. Nothing seems to live, not the characters and not the action. The main character Roddy is an onlooker, who reports, diarises, but barely lives the action. Contrived and awkward I think. 2 ½ stars.

House Rules by Jodie Picoult

Jodie Picoult is my guilty secret. She writes what I would term girly thrillers, with a lot less blood, violence and graphic sex and a lot more relationships and soul searching angst! This one is about a young man with Aspergers who is implicated in a murder but his condition prevents him from communicating what exactly happened. It takes a lot of pages to unravel I can tell you! I spent the best part of a day on the couch racing through it and as a thriller it was fairly absorbing. 3 ½ stars

The Shortest History of Europe by John Hirst

The problem with books like this is that the moment you finish them, you’ve forgotten all the detail. This is a wonderful summary of history, which for me filled in a multitude of gaps and connected all the pieces together. There were so many ‘aha’ moments in this book for a person who hasn’t formally studied history, and possibly for someone who has as well. The book is a series of lectures by a history lecturer at La Trobe university in Melbourne, designed for first year students whom he thinks have studied too much Australian history and have no understanding of their place in ‘civilisation’. It’s a broad brush approach but it really provides the context that allows the rest of the detail to fall into place. It’s full of fascinating details and is one book I will be reading again and probably again. 5 stars.