The Gordian Knot by Bernhard Schlink

A big fan of The Reader and the brilliant Flights of Love, I hadn’t realized Schlink wrote thrillers. This is so different from the usual American/English thriller genre though. It’s sparse, unadorned prose, all narrative really, with difficult and fairly unlikeable main characters. The protagonist, Georg, is finely drawn but utterly colourless. I also had problems with the story, which focuses very much on what Georg is imagining is happening and is somehow quite messy and angst ridden. He’s engaged as a translator to copy documents for a readily identifiable crook, and then the whole thing goes pear shaped as his Mata Hari, Francoise, disappears and he tries to track her down in America. The resolution, when it comes, is pretty silly. I found this book flat - it just doesn’t work, which is a shame when it comes from such a fine writer.

My Dirty, Shiny Life by Lily Bragge

This is what Andrew O’Hagan describes as a misery memoir. The only reason I read it was that the writing is really good. But the story, oh for heaven’s sake. It’s Lily’s life, her dreadful violent upbringing, unplanned pregnancies, drug use and heroin addiction, suicide attempts and then, yes you guessed it, she finds Jesus. Years ago when my dad was dying in Hawaii a support person gave me her book to read and comment on. It was essentially the same tale – dissolute youth, promiscuity, drug addiction, and finally salvation. I don’t know what to think about that, merely remark on the similarity of these stories. Perhaps people who have nothing to live for can find a purpose through religion?

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

What a whopping great book this one is. It’s a 600 page tale of a polygamist and his four wives and 328 kids, told from the point of view of him, his youngest wife Trish and the black sheep of the family, his thirteen year old son Rusty. It tries to analyse the types of stresses and strains that would afflict families constructed like this and I found it a pretty interesting read. There were some very funny moments in it and the characters were finely drawn and believable. It’s a great holiday read, as the narrative is compelling. I particularly liked the descriptions of the setting in the deserts of Utah and Nevada, which were beautifully described.

Room by Emma Donoghue

Room was long listed for the Booker Prize so it was always going to be interesting. It’s the story of a young woman who has been kidnapped and incarcerated in a room and the child that she has during the seven years of her imprisonment. The writer admits that the idea was triggered by the Austrian case of a few years ago where a father kept his daughter locked in a room and fathered seven children with her, three of whom were also imprisoned. But she says this is where it ended and I can see that: it’s the story of the relationship between the child, Jack, and his mother and of how they cope when they are finally launched into the world. It isn’t voyeuristic in the least and the voice is that of the child. I really liked the way the characters developed, the real irritation the mother has from time to time, the child’s insightful analysis of things juxtaposed with his five year old innocence. It’s a compelling book and I did find myself skimming through the first bit to get the action.

The Wailing Wind by Tony Hillerman

This writer was recommended by E Annie Proulx at a talk Theo and I went to recently. She said he writes from the Navajo point of view, and indeed you do learn a bit about American Indian rites and beliefs as you wade through the story. Apart from that though there’s not much to this book: it’s a detective story set in Arizona (quite close to where we shall be travelling later this year), and tells the story of a murder over gold rights. It’s artlessly written, a yarn rather than a piece of literature, and I found the detailed descriptions of people pouring coffee and packing sack lunches needlessly dull. 2 stars for the Indian content.

The Boat by Nam Le

This is the most wonderful collection of short stories by a young Australian writer, Nam Le. Rather than writing solely about the Vietnamese ‘ethnic story’ experience, as he describes it, Nam Le spans the experiences of the underclasses in many parts of the world. The stories range from the lives of young ‘soldiers’ in Colombia to the experience of a young child witnessing the bombing of Hiroshima to a teenager coming of age in a coastal Victorian town. They are such authentic stories that you feel Nam Le has actually lived these lives and been in these places and times, though of course it is patently impossible. The most moving for me was the story entitled The Boat, which describes in devastating – and there’s a sense of it being almost real time - detail the flight of a sixteen year old Vietnamese girl on a dilapidated junk. It’s the most moving and horrifying account of the experiences of refugees who escape on boats that I’ve ever read and I feel certain it is founded in truth. Every paranoid red neck who screams about so-called illegal immigrants coming here on boats should be forced to read this story.

At Home by Bill Bryson

This book came with me to the south coast for a fortnight and it took me the whole two weeks to read. That wasn’t because it was hard going: on the contrary it is written with Bill Bryson’s trademark wit and ease of language. The reason it took so long was that is was absolutely fascinating. This is a book about social history. It uses Bryson’s rectory home in England as that starting point of an investigation into the Victorian period. This inevitably takes him on a journey right around the world as he explores the influence of global trade and political machinations on his sleepy village in England. I kept reading a chapter and the putting it down to think about and then to regale my fellow holiday makers with half a dozen utterly fascinating facts that I’d just discovered. I don’t often even think about re-reading books but I wanted to begin this one again as soon as I had finished it. It is definitely a book to buy and keep and dip back into whenever you have the opportunity. 5 stars