The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith

Right up my alley, this one! It’s a nicely researched piece of historical fiction, or sort of, with modern overlays a bit like that secrets of the book or whatever novel from Geraldine Brooks where the timeframe jumps around from present to past. It moves between Australia and Holland and America. And it’s about an art historian on the track of an obscure Dutch woman painter. I like the research into Dutch painting, and Dutch painters being a particular interest of mine, the detail appealed. And there’s a sort of love story intertwined in it all. Probably it’s a book for the girls but still, a nice thing to read on a wintry day, light enough but intelligent.

The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver

Another dystopian novel …. but I must say Shriver does it in a more accessible way than Margaret Atwood. She has at least some characters for whom you feel sympathy. This book is very timely and, like all her books, incredibly well researched. I’d like to know what somebody who actually understands economics would make of it. It follows the collapse of American society when their financial system collapses because of debt that can no longer be repaid. In particular it focuses on the Mandible family, really pretty awful people with a couple of interesting exceptions, who have vast inherited wealth and are suddenly on their uppers because of draconian decisions made by the government of the day. The ‘hero’ of the book is Willing, a prodigy really who through his clear sighted common sense is able to rescue his family from the worst of the fallout. While I like this book, I often find modern dystopian books a bit thin and a bit silly. And perhaps also a bit scary??