The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

I’m not a huge fan of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels. This one is more of the same, a young couple eking out survival in their car who are lured into a model city where the organizers have people working month about in society and in prison to kick start the economy again. In typical Atwood fashion – remember The Handmaid’s Tale – all is not what it seems. Sadly this one is pretty ridiculous and not at all shocking because of that. Go back to something you do well, Margaret.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love was a self-indulgent bit of fluff. In this book, she’s more disciplined and makes a good attempt at building a terrific character, Alma, a botanist who rivals Charles Darwin in developing a theory of evolution. However I do wish the editor had been a bit harsher with the blue pencil – far too long, far too wordy and lots of extraneous waffle.

The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks

This is the surprising, shocking, incredible story of King David. Historical fiction at its best, really. Not having had a religious education, and not being Jewish more to the point I think, I knew nothing about David except for the Goliath story and an awareness of passing references to the City of David. I was also aware that the Old Testament stories are bloody and violent. So I wasn’t quite prepared for the scope and action of this story, which strikes me as rather like a biblical version of Game of Thrones with its murder and incest, homosexuality, rape, wars and mysticism. As always Geraldine Brooks has done her homework, even if the sources are limited secondaries. She tells the story of David’s life with welcome embroideries, from the time he is a shunned child sent to mind the goats through his rise on the battlefield to power to his failings and ultimate punishment. The word of ‘the Name’ runs right through the story, lending some terrific mysticism to the story. This isn’t March, though. It’s a great rollicking yarn, without the subtlety of March or the insight into its tortured protagonist. All the same, it’s a gripping read and not to be missed.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

I’m now officially hooked on Elena Ferrante. This is the second of the four novels charting the lives of Lina (My Brilliant Friend) and Lenu, the girls from Naples whose lives take such different paths yet whose friendships remains intact. In this novel Lenu continues on to university in Pisa, struggling to accommodate the two very different cultures she finds herself living in. The emotion in these books, the suffering, the sense of loss and loss of hope, the glimmers of a possible future for Lenu, are gut wrenching but marvelous. Onto the next in the series.

The Dust That Falls From Dreams by Louis de Bernieres

Sadly, nothing ever lives up to the delight that was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. This is an interesting book though because it was inspired by the story of de Berniere’s grandfather, who disappeared from the family. It turned out that he left an unhappy marriage because his wife was still emotionally committed to her fiancé who had died in WWI. So this is a story about a family and their relationships during WWI. There are four daughters and three families, all connected as children through a kids ‘club’ called The Pals. It traces their progress through the war and the psychological difficulties they had to navigate as a result. Primarily it is the story of Rosie, Ash and Daniel but it isintricately connected with the families as well. But it is too long and much too wordy, especially with the pages and pages of detailed description about flying biplanes in the war and what it felt like etc etc etc. There are sub plots that don’t go anywhere, like the psychic medium who I think was in there to just to add a bit of colour. And the whole thing just flops about a bit.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Wow, what a fabulous novel. Elena Ferrante is someone who has kept her identity secret, though it is known that she grew up in Naples. This book is about childhood and adolescence in Naples and it must be informed by her own experience. And it is riveting. It tells the parallel stories of Elena, the narrator, and her best friend Lina, and their cohort of boys and girls and local families. They are poor girls in a poor neighbourhood with parents who are shoemakers and porters. Both have brilliant minds, but only one of them goes on to get an education. Perhaps because I visited Naples a couple of years ago, I found the insight into life, values and behaviours, rituals, relationships and norms utterly, utterly mesmerizing. Not only is the story compelling but Ferrante’s writing style is also addictive. I struggled a little at first, because she writes in Italian and this is a translation that has retained a lot of the convolution of Italian prose, but like reading George Eliot or Dickens, your brain soon settles into the rhythm of the language and its structure. It’s vivid, often violent, and original. I’ve come away desperate to read the next installment. I think this book is a masterpiece.

A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

This is my second Patrick Gale book and I do like his writing. The other book, A Perfectly Good Man, hasn’t stayed with me unfortunately but I did note how much I liked his subtlety of style. This one is a foray into historical fiction using his own family history as source material. It is set in Edwardian times, when Oscar Wilde was being metaphorically strung up for his sexuality, and deals with Gale’s great grandfather Harry Cane who unaccountably left his a family to go to Canada to homestead on prairie land. Gale weaves a homosexual story around this, which is not implausible when you consider Harry never married in Canada. Although this is a major part of the story, there is also the Great North American Adventure story happening, with people battling it out to tame the land and eke out a living. Harry meets up with another gay man, Paul, and his sister Petra and they build their lives together. But nothing is straightforward and evil people, gossip, World War I and the Spanish flu all play their part in unraveling their happiness. This is a sensitively written book and a pretty good read really.