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.