The Dinner by Herman Koch

This is a must read novel. Translated from the Dutch, the language nevertheless retains that sparse, non nonsense style that is so quintessentially Netherlandish, and is just gripping. And the story. Well, put We Have to Talk About Kevin and The Slap in a pot and get rid of the stereotypes and fairy dust, add some grit and a narrator whose true nature only dawns on you as you work your way through, and there you have one of the most compelling, dark and disturbing reads I’ve come across in months. In tone, not content, it’s a literary version of the Spacey version of House of Cards. Fabulous.

Emma by Alexander McCall Smith

This is a modern retelling of the Emma story. I do like Alexander McCall Smith’s somewhat dry Scottish voice. I suspect he is incarnate in Miss Taylor, Emma’s Scottish governess. However it is almost a colouring in by numbers retelling – the translation into the present doesn’t sparkle. I felt there was a lot more he could have done with it but it’s almost as if he’s just trotted it out. Having said all that though, it’s a pleasant enough read, though it does rely on a clear recollection of the original. Not worth buying; wait till someone lends it to you!

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

I cared desperately about the protagonist in this novel. I was with him every step of the way, like his mother, grieving at the things that happened to him, at the poor decisions he made, at the inevitability of the story. He is a child lost and struggling to find himself. But perhaps this is because I am a mother. This is another of Donna Tartt’s compelling stories. However it’s overly long I think, wordy, sometimes ponderous and some of the monologues, both internal and external, do become tedious. I admit to skipping slabs of it. And I’m not sure about the story line. It is very black and white – good mum, bad dad, good wizard-like antiques dealer, bad antiques shysters, crooks and criminals and evil but good best friend Boris. It took me quite a while to work my way through this novel and I’m really not sure about it. It’s certainly not as good as her two previous books.

The Kings Curse by Philippa Gregory

Historical fiction, but compelling. It’s the story of Margaret Pole, matriarch of the Plantagenets and friend to Katherine of Aragon and later her daughter Mary. I quite like well researched HF but do find it seduces you into thinking you know more about a period than you actually can. This is a nice holiday read.

Set on Edge by Bernice Rubens

This is the second Bernice Rubens novel I’ve read and although my friends highly recommend her, she’s not doing it for me. She writes as an observer, never really engaged with or absorbed by her characters. It’s like being a voyeur into their very odd, distinctly uncomfortable lives. As the raconteur, Rubens takes us through the day to day uncomfortable moments of their small existences as they resolve who they really are – in this case a middle aged lady called Gladys who has martyred herself to look after her siblings and aging mother, and is indeed, pretty much a replica of her mother. Turns out she is who she is. Some have suggested there is a black humour about her books. Black, definitely, but as for humour, well it’s not really apparent to me. I don’t believe in this writer’s characters and I don’t find their stories interesting, just small, gloomy and depressing.

N-W by Zadie Smith

I read White Teeth a very long time ago and loved it, then was disappointed in The Telegraph Man. However a bookshop person persuaded me to buy this book and I’m glad I did. This is no easy read. It’s a gritty book, a downer rather than an upper, but it has an almost anthropological ring to it, or perhaps a sociological ring might be a better word. It’s the story of four young people who have grown up and known one another on a council housing estate in northwest London. There are flashbacks to their childhood but essentially it’s about where they are now, in their thirties, and where if anywhere they are heading. It’s oddly constructed, first in chapters then in almost sound bites, and much of it written in the local street jargon. Smith makes the reader work hard to comprehend what’s going on; by that I mean she doesn’t spell things out and explain them, rather you have to be on your toes and really think about what a particular passage might be referring to. I came away from this novel feeling saddened but as if I had really experienced their lives in some small way. The blurb on the jacket described it as funny, sad and urgent – I think I’d change the order of those – but agree that it is an excellent portrait of modern city life for a particular slice of society. I found the book uncomfortable but compelling.

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

It took me about a month to read this utterly fascinating and absorbing book. Jared Diamond writes in a very accessible style about what people term ‘popular science’. He’s a geographer and arguably an ethnographer and this book compares traditional societies, with a heavy emphasis on New Guinea where he spends part of every year, and modern developed societies. He compares approaches to warfare, religion, child rearing, the treatment of the aged linguistics, approaches to danger, and health. It’s the sort of material that you want to remember and of course can’t, because of its detail. He presents masses of supporting evidence and you get the feeling that this is all thoroughly researched and thought out, the work of a lifetime of careful observation and follow up reading. This is a book I’ll keep on my shelf. Much of the information in it is actually a little bit life changing, especially approaches to child rearing, eating and, more broadly, in the way you view other human beings and their cultural background.

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

This is a very weird book. I had seen the film years ago and of course could not get Jack Nicholson out of my mind, and I recalled he was clearly cast as the devil himself but I really didn’t pick this up strongly from the book. There were hints at it but I didn’t come away with a strong sense of it. Yes he was devilish in his behaviour, but again he could be almost any man if you want to look at this as a feminist novel. What I did come away with was a strong sense of witchcraft itself. Updike sees it totally tied up with being female, a sensual sexual powerful thing that comes with age and freedom and menstruation, almost a mantle of female power. And then when you get a couple of witches together you end up with a cone of power, a spirally energy that transports them in a way. I’ve had friends that he would have cast as witches, indeed any woman who comes into her own with maturity and strength could end up casting spells. His writing in this book is absolutely Updike, leaping off into convoluted asides and observations that take great concentration. The reader must be engaged in this book, pay attention, because if not stuff slips through and you find yourself asking, what?? So, the story… about three women living in Rhode Island, in the small inward looking town of Eastwick. Their powers have become strong with divorce and they are promiscuous, dangerous women, “bad” mothers, all trying to find their place in the world. Their work and their thinking is stuck in Eastwick. Along comes Darryl , an exotic and mysterious man from New York, who leads them into a life of personal challenges, wild orgies, everything life in small town America is not. I really don’t know what Updike is getting at with this book. Is he commenting on small town America? Is he paying tribute to the mysterious power of women? I understand the story but there’s a lot more to this book and I think it will take some thinking about.

The Silent Wife by ASA Harrison

Ha ha ha ha ha! This is an utterly evil book about a woman whose husband cheats on her. It is black and wicked and compelling and at times chortle out aloud funny. Awful people, awful situations and a great conclusion. Five minutes on the beach should do it for this one. Or when you’re wiped out in bed for a day.

The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

What a guilty pleasure to sit down and read through the entire series of seven books, one after the other. I do think Rowling has a very dark side to her but I’m thinking that’s part of the attraction. Speaking critically though, there’s not much to say about these books except that they are about story, not about wonderful writing, that they are repetitive in plot structure AND that one Hermione does not resolve the gender equality problem. Indeed Hermione is a stereotyped bossy boots know it all. The sexism, the stereotyping of family, and the patriarchal values all bother me. So while the stories were fun, I did find myself skipping large tracts of them, and I don’t think these books add anything to kidlit other than cheap thrills.

The Box Garden by Carol Shields

What a fine writer Carol Shields is. And this is a delicate book, sparingly written but with such poetry of language that you often stop and reread phrases. Usually I find that books that are beautifully written don’t have a similar strength in the plot but this one has a finely wrought plot, where the threads of the story work in with one another to a lovely resolution. Charleen is a painfully divorced mother, who doesn’t seem to be able to resolve any of the major relationships in her life – with her ex husband, with her mother, with her new boyfriend and with her career. She is marking time, waiting for something to go bang in her life. The catalyst is a trip she takes to attend her mother’s wedding on the other side of Canada. Outlined like this, it sounds a bit bald but the story is told with such delicacy that understanding comes upon you slowly, like gradual realizations as you get to know the characters. There is sympathy and warmth and humanity in this book. The characters are utterly believable and the whole thing an absolutely compelling read.

Sunday Best by Bernice Rubens

My friend Kathy recommended this writer and what a wonderful writer she is. Kathy said her humour was wonderful but in this book it’s not the humour that is the key to enjoyment. It’s the story of George Verrey-Smith, schoolmaster and cross dresser, who needs to resolve his personal issues. The death of a neighbour initiates a whole string of events that see him facing up to his sexuality and to his past. The writing is outstanding. George tells his own story with black humour, wit and a nastiness of character that can leave you gasping. I really liked the resolution which rang absolutely true – no fairytale quaint endings here but something as satisfying and utterly believable, important when the situation the writer is exploring is so unusual. This makes it all sound very serious, and while the themes are indeed serious, the storytelling is done with a light hand. It is utterly readable.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

I’ve read and re-read this book many times since first coming across it as a child. But it’s been a long time since the last read possibly thirty years, so it was time to have another look at an old friend. The story of this madcap family moving to Corfu and their exploits over the five years they were there still made me laugh. What an eccentric lot they were. The animals Gerry acquires and the people they befriend retain their original charm even all these years later. But the Corfu they lived on no longer exists and that made me a little sad. You read Gerry’s descriptions and know that the places he is describing are covered by acres of concrete holiday developments and resorts. The people are no longer open and welcoming and friendly but used to mass tourism and have developed a keen commercial eye. I was interested in my response to the way the book was written after all this time. I realized that it really was just a collection of episodes strung together on a timeline. The characters are amusing stereotypes. And the writing is florid. The young Gerald Durrell had a passionate love affair with adjectives. Still, this is a wonderful book as much because of the authenticity of its feeling and experience as anything. It is laugh aloud material and was a great way to begin my holiday reading.

Mapp & Lucia by EF Benson

Inspired by an upcoming trip to Rye, the setting for Tilling, I launched into Mapp & Lucia with gusto. And it is wonderful. In this book Lucia and Miss Mapp come head to head. Pepino has died and Lucia decides to leave Riseholme and move to Tilling, trailed by the devoted Georgie. There begins the battle for social supremacy in the village, all told with the waspish wit and clever writing that marks EF Benson’s work. I find myself chuckling a lot, sometimes even bursting into loud laughter, when reading these Lucia books. The smallness of village life, the pettiness of the characters, their anxieties and fears and their snobbery all tell, but they are above all endearing. You smile indulgently and forgive them every time. And of course, their behaviour is instantly recognizable in people you know today. Apparently Benson did not regard the Lucia and Mapp series as important works, but wrote many more serious biographies and the like, as well as some ghost stories that have a good reputation. But it is this series that is the most widely read and has given him his place in literary history.

Lucia’s Progress by EF Benson

In this fifth book of the Mapp and Lucia series, Lucia and Mapp continue to battle it out for queen of the village. It is perhaps the weakest of the books I’ve read so far in terms of plot, but of course the language and humour is still Benson’s strong suit. Finding herself turning fifty and wanting to put her stamp on the world by doing useful things, Lucia takes on a series of projects: running for council, speculating on the stock exchange and undertaking archaeological excavations in her garden. Of course Miss Mapp, who has developed as a less generous spirited soul than Lucia and rather less likeable, tries to compete and failing that, to spoil all of Lucia’s projects. As always it’s laugh aloud stuff, when you’re not cringing from embarrassment at the situations these two competitive women put themselves in! How Benson must have enjoyed himself writing them!

Cairo by Chris Womersley

Didn’t like this one all that much. It’s the story of a young man’s misspent youth amongst the bohemian arty set in Melbourne thirty or so years ago. They are planning an art heist and he gets involved. The voice of this novel really irritated me, like a young person writing down every single thought they had without discriminating between something worth recording and the most uninteresting and worthless trivia. Because he’s writing it and it’s about him, everything he thinks and sees and does has value …….well no, Chris, sorry.

A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale

This book represents the unpacking of a character, Father Barnaby Johnson. It begins as he witnesses the suicide of one of his parishioners, and helps him through the process with a prayer. Father Barnaby is a good man, but flawed, and struggling like all human beings. He is married to Dorothy aka Dot, and he has two children, Jim aka Phuc and Carrie. This family has to deal with all the things that other families deal with, but there is a sort of delicacy and compassion in the way Gale writes about the issues. Patrick Gale is great on story and inventive in his retelling: the book is a collection of chapters written from the point of view of different characters and at different ages. Gradually, ever so gradually, the story unfolds as it does in real life, with revelations making sense of things you had discovered earlier and changing their meanings.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

This is an interestingly constructed book. Years ago my father made me read EM Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, which outlined half a dozen plot styles and proposed that all novels fall into one of the categories. There is nothing new, according to Forster. The most intriguing plot style for me was the one used in Thornton wilder’s Bridge Over San Luis Rey, which described a single incident (the bridge collapsing) and the impact that event had on the lives of people on the bridge. Let the Great World Spin uses the same technique: a tightrope walker strings a line between the two World Trade Centre buildings (it really happened) and walks across. Various people see it and the event is woven into their lives. Eventually they all seem to intersect one way or another. It’s quite a fascinating take on the plot style, though it takes all novel to get there. Enjoyable, nicely written, interesting characters.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Like the last book I read, We Are Water, this book has another ‘bad’ mother as its central character. But it is much more than that. It tells the story of a young Indian woman who marries a Maoist in India, only to lose him to the revolution. She is left pregnant and vulnerable when his brother steps in to marry her. They go to America to work and raise the child. The rest of the book is about the broken relationships in this small family and about the influence that the dead first brother has over their lives. Jhumpa Lahiri is a very sensitive writer, who uses the language beautifully. The story line is fairly sparse – these people simply live their lives – but that story is well told and her descriptions of Rhode Island in particular are exquisite.

We Are Water by Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb’s books seem to focus on people with emotional problems. This one is about an artist, Annie Oh, and her ex husband Orion, and her kids, most of whom are pretty disturbed. The story centres around Annie’s impending marriage to her new partner, this time a woman called Viveca. It’s told through the eyes of several people, including some who aren’t even members of the family. It’s a book about secrets and how holding on to them can corrupt and pervert your life. And of course Annie’s secrets have done just that, with some quite devastating consequences for the people around her. It all unravels as the wedding plans move forward. This is a huge book but pretty readable – sometimes a bit too wordy for me and I did find myself skipping over pages where all that dialogue and description and soul searching became a bit unnecessary. Still, I liked this book and it made a good read.

The Circle by Dave Eggers

This is a self indulgent sort of book, miles too long, held together by a shallow but compelling story. It’s about Mae, a young graduate, who joins The Circle and rises to become their star employee. It details the way this organization, which merges Facebook and Google and Microsoft and all the other information gathering/social networking/programming/internet payment sites and groups that exist, stitches up a global monopoly of information. It’s Eggers’ pitch at 1984 really and you can see he’s had a wonderful time creating all sorts of information gathering and tracking possibilities, such as embedding chips in children to keep them safe, and using the power of the network to track down criminals on the run in under fifteen minutes. The funny thing is that all the programs seem appealing on the surface: politically correct and beneficial to society BUT underneath it all they remove people’s privacy so that in the end there are no private moments in their lives at all. The writing is typical Eggers, running off at the mouth, way way too long, but it flows. The development of the totalitarian state where information is everything, something which used to belong to the realms of scifi, now appears frighteningly close.

Harvest by Jim Crace

I’m not really convinced by this book, which was a Booker prize nominee I think. It’s very poetic but there is a lot of book to deal with not much story. It’s set in the times when the Enclosure Acts were occurring, and deals with a village that has been farming its owner’s land forever. A new owner arrives with plans for reorganizing and resettlement. At the same time, three strangers arrive to settle on the edge of the village and a series of crimes against the owner’s property occur. These three changes in the status quo combine to destroy the village. There is one person left who tells the tale. Mmmm, not sure really.

One Summer America 1927 by Bill Bryson

I read half this book. It is written in an easy entertaining style, as is always the case with the talented Mr Bryson, but halfway through I thought, I’m really, REALLY not interested in the subject matter. So what happened in 1927? Well, Charles Lindbergh made his famous non stop flight across the Atlantic. And the genius baseball player Babe Ruth came to prominence. Anybody who is remotely interested in either of those events will love this book. I’m not and I didn’t.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

I’m really glad they’ve made a movie about this book. It’s a kids’ classic scifi and I loved it. I’m a great scifi fan and I’ve always liked kids’ books. This is the story of a genius child in the future who is selected to fight on behalf of the world against the buggers, an alien enemy wh have already invaded the world once and who are expected to come again with even more devastating powers soon. It’s interesting because Card manages to write from Ender’s perspective, with the adults being almost a separate race from the children. They have their own ideas, their own motivations and all the power. Despite his genius, Ender really doesn’t figure them out …. until the end.

The Light Between Oceans by LM Stedman

Wooden characters, a ridiculous story verging on soap opera …. My friend Kathy told me not to bother finishing this book and she was right. A lighthouse keeper and his wife? That’s ridiculous to begin with, or at least in this incarnation. Aboat comes in with a dead man and a baby? I should have sht the book there and then.