Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Despite – or perhaps because of – this book’s notoriety I never got around to reading it when it came out. I’m glad of that now because it’s only with a little life experience that I think you can really appreciate the humour and the characters in this novel. Portnoy is so wonderfully angst ridden and sex obsessed, so Woody Allen in many of his film incarnations; Sophie Portnoy, his mother, is the gold standard Jewish mother, with a bloody good dash of all the controlling, anxiety ridden mothers you’ve ever met elsewhere as well. There were times when I could even see something of myself in her! Theo had trouble sticking with the book, largely because it’s a stream of consciousness monologue and short on obvious narrative, but there is in fact a strong story there as Portnoy pieces together the story of his life as part of his confession – did I just say that? – his conversation with his psychiatrist. And it’s funny, so full of irony and black humour, hysteria, wit and even moments of sheer slapstick. I loved the characters, Alex Portnoy and especially Sophie of course, and The Mouse, but also Portnoy’s long suffering dad with his constipation and resigned approach to his daily grind. It’s a great piece of writing. 4 1/2 stars.

Falling Angels by Tracey Chevalier

This is a soap opera set in the early 1900s and narrated by several different characters. It’s salacious in its way, with hidden moments of illicit sex around which the plot revolves. It’s the story of two middle class families living ‘proper’ lives, their children and the Highgate cemetery. It was entertaining enough but another book to be left behind at the end of the holidays. 2 stars.

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

As I might have said before, Margaret Atwood is among my favourite writers, except for her sci fi gloomy stuff. This collection of short stories is a gem. The same characters flit in and out of the stories so you gradually build up a picture of them and a relationship with them. And I got the sense that she was telling the same story from different points of view, a very clever use of the short story genre I think. These are elegant and subtle stories and show Atwood at her restrained best. 4 stars.

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann

This is a collection of several short stories and a novella, all inspired and in response to the writer’s father’s suicide when Vann was just a youngster. I thought it was autobiographical for a while, and I still think there is a lot of that in it, but the novella had me quite confused because it presents a different take on events. It is particularly powerful and often uncomfortable reading of the squirmy sort but certainly a book that ought not to be missed. Vann is a beautiful writer and his stories are so so sad, not in a sentimental way at all but to the depths of his soul. 4 stars

Faithful Unto Death by Caroline Graham

Well, I was on holidays, wasn’t I? So I sat by the pool in Chiang Mai and read this silly, pompous thriller about a faked kidnap and murder. The best thing about it was that after I’d finished it I could leave it behind, making more room in my suitcase for shopping. 0 stars.

Collected Short Stories by F Scott Fitzgerald

I really don’t like F Scott Fitzgerald – I’ve tried and tried but his gloomy view of the world and the people in it just gets me down. I got through three of his stories before I decided to give in and return the book to the library.

The Cut Glass Bowl: an upwardly mobile young couple receive a cut glass bowl as a wedding gift; it almost becomes a malevolent character in their lives, being somehow connected with a series of tragic events that alter the course of their lives

May Day: an unpleasant story of Yale graduates and their drunk partying and returning soldiers and their drunk rioting – a real event I think – and the shallow people caught up in between.

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz: a fantasy tale where John Unger is invited to a fantastically rich classmate’s home to discover the sinister and immoral origins of the wealth and the evil his narcissistic hosts will enact to preserve it. It’s an anticapitalist tale indeed.

Solar by Ian McEwan

It’s interesting that a writer can choose such an unpleasant protagonist and yet have his reader so compellingly drawn into the narrative of this character’s life.

Solar is about a physicist, Michael Beard, a brilliant, womanising, cheating liar who nevertheless has a certain smarmy and superficial charm about him that initially draws people in.

The story charts the course of more than a twenty years, as he navigates his relationships with wives and lovers while developing new solar power technologies.

Like most of McEwan’s books, Solar is uncomfortable, squirmy reading. He is an acute observer of the everyday details of life and he uses them to build an excruciating picture of this awful man and his behaviour.

I think McEwan is a genius. He focuses on moments in people’s lives that are at the least uncomfortable and often very threatening – obsession, home invasion, suicide, lies and betrayals – and puts them under a sort of literary microscope using characters we all recognise from our own lives. I loved Solar.