simplysorro

Below is what I wrote at the start of the year; at its end our world seems as unsettled as ever.
As 2024 began there was no peace, nor even a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Ditto Ukraine. Elections on both sides of the Atlantic loomed. 2023 had been an unhappy year domestically and globally. Not much has changed. I revisited a great comic novel to kick start my 2024 reading. Huge enjoyment as ever this year and I’ve even read rather more non fiction. Thanks for the many recommendations. Here’s the list.

1. Stars and Bars. 1985. William Boyd. A reread from many years ago. This is a funny and sometimes laugh out loud comic novel. Henderson Dores is a fine art buyer brought over from England to boost the flagging fortunes of an American art sale-room in New York. He has reengaged with his ex wife Melissa but still hankers after the freedoms of bachelorhood. His very Englishness ( emotionally constipated, boarding school veneer of confidence masking a crippling shyness) sets up the comic narrative as he struggles with all things Yankee. He is forced to take Melissa’s fourteen year old daughter Bryant on a road trip to value the art collection of an eccentric millionaire Loomis Gage, who lives miles from anywhere, Luxora Beach, somewhere outside Atlanta. Gage’s weird family set up resembles a Confederate Cold Comfort Farm. It provides a rich seam of slapstick oddball giggles. There’s Cora, Loomis’s daughter who wears sunglasses to convince strangers that she is blind; Freeborn, his son who repeatedly threatens Henderson because he has other plans for the paintings; add the heavy metal geek, Duane, son of the housekeeper who woos the pubescent Bryant into wanting a hillbilly marriage – and here are the ingredients for a chaotic adventure. The reader does however want to follow Henderson’s story to the end and Boyd’s own arty life in America, back in the day, lends a brilliant authenticity to the sparkling humour which takes the mickey, equally out of Yanks and Brits alike. A joy. 8
2. This is What Happened. 2018. Mick Herron. I was intrigued to read this as I am a huge fan of the Slough House series – Jackson Lamb and all that. This is a stand alone psychological thriller. Maggie Barnes is a naive and lonely office girl who is ‘recruited’ by the dodgy Harvey to work for MI5 – or so she thinks. She is duped into interfering with office computers before being incarcerated in a basement to avoid the savage retribution of Britain’s enemies. Months, even years, elapse.It’s too dangerous, Harvey says, to emerge. The mind games he plays to keep his hostage acquiescent are pretty chilling. I missed the crude, dark fun of Slough House but this was still a page turner. 6
3. The Wolves of Winter. 2023. Dan Jones. The second in the Essex Dogs trilogy. Thanks to my neighbour Geoff for lending me this substantial tome! After Crecy, the Dogs are recruited by Northampton to march on Calais. King Edward wants to ensure that he has a channel port in his grasp. Once again the rag bag of mercenaries – now teamed up with some heavy drinking ‘Flemings’ – drag themselves from one scene of savage conflict to another, sorties punctuated by bouts of drunkenness and pillage. As before their perambulations are rather samey but the period detail impressive. From the smelting of arrowheads to armorial and linguistic detail, the research side of the Dogs’ story is captivating. But brothels and blood and relentless savagery is wearing. Of course the reader is supposed, by now, to identify with the battle weary Loveday, the crude vitriol of Scotsman, the calm of Millstone and the vulnerability of the brilliant archer Romford. But somehow, two books in, I don’t quite care enough about them. 6
4. The Satsuma Complex. 2022. Bob Mortimer. BM is irresistible on Would I Lie To You so Belinda couldn’t resist passing this on to me. The paperback was a huge hit in 2023 and almost trumped Richard Osman’s geriatric Murder Club series. But that has a momentum of its own….Here we have lonely legal secretary Gary whose only buddies are his ageing and irascible neighbour Grace and his pub buddies from The Grove where he ekes out time watching live sport. Then one buddy, Brendan, disappears on the same night that he meets the beguiling Doc Marten- booted Emily. And then the pace of the mystery quickens. Bob Mortimer’s wacky wit infuses much of the narrative which helps because the tale is a little mundane. Missing man, missing phone, planted memory stick ( dongle), corrupt coppers, estate thugs, drug dealers and so on. Gary’s wrinkly neighbour, Grace turns out to be a computer whizz- who would have guessed? Emily’s story is told alongside Gary’s. Unconvincing silly plot but that was probably the idea. Happy ending. Not quite sure why it sold so well but an easy and funny and fast read. That’ll be the reason, of course. 6
5. Thanks, Johnners. 2010. Jonathan Agnew. This is the affectionate tribute to the cricket broadcasting legend that was Brian Johnstone. A charity shop stocking pressie. Actually we learn at least as much of Aggers’s young life in cricket and subsequent career fronting TMS. Johnstone was a lovely funny old Etonian whose Englishness was of a bygone age. Sadly, actually. This was a delightful read but you have to be a cricket fan and be able to contextualise the old boys’ network stuff of yesteryear. An enchanting read for chaps like me – and very engagingly written. 7
   
6. South of the Border, West of the Sun. 1992, Vintage edition 2023. Haruki Murakami. So pleased to have discovered this brilliant writer. This is a first person narration of the life and loves of Hajime, set in the suburbs of Tokyo in the rebuilding of Japan after the 2WW and the devastation of atom bombs. An only child, Hajime’s significant friends are Shimamoto, the Izumi, girls who take him from childhood to sexual awareness, both of whom he ‘betrays’ as he moves on to a more selfish life focussed on himself. There are entrancing things about the tale. The brilliant translation by the author himself, is pared back, almost emotionless and yet the four decades of the life of the young Hajime involve huge dilemmas- sexual ( plenty of that) , moral ( fraud and infidelity) existential ( who are we, who am I?) – and the past very much shapes Hajime’s present and future. His wife, late in the tale, calls their situation a Japanese Casablanca. Apt. Plenty of autobiography in here too. Hajime sets up a jazz bar after University and becomes fitness obsessed. Obsessed too with finding the person he was and the girl, Shimamoto, he loved before life took control. The mixing of western culture with Japanese gives the story a relatability – Nat King Cole’s vinyl record becoming a symbol of past, of love, of the clash of cultures, and all that is enduring. Hajime’s moral greyness, means that readers are unsure whethe to like him. Certainly it’s hard to sympathise with the way he treats the women in his life. It’s all about him. Loved it. 8
7. A Passage North. 2021. Anuk Arudpragasam. This Booker shortlist is a journey, literally and metaphorically. Krishna, an Indian educated Sri Lankan Tamil, returns to Columbo, post civil war, to sink into a regular work life at an NGO and to live with his mother and grandmother. His ‘journey’ is to process the loss of his activist (politically and LGBT etc) girlfriend Anjun and to make the trip to the funeral of Rani, his grandmother’s Tamil carer, who had travelled from the north east of the country and whose dutiful friendship to the old lady had been vital. On returning to her peasant home to bury the the second of her sons to die during the troubles, she has met with a tragic death herself- breaking her neck in a fall. The physical journey that Krishna takes is dwarfed by the thought-digressions which fill the novel. We are transported to his youth, to his time in India, to forensic examination of his relationship with Anjun, to an historical review of the brutal dismemberment of the Tamil Tiger separatist movement – and the ‘journeys’ that all the women in his life have made. A sort of varied emotional pathetic fallacy which takes over the novel. Being impatient I felt a sigh rising in my chest occasionally and the exhaled lament of…please get on with it! But the prose is affecting and, sub-continentally intense. The minutiae of surroundings, the drift of clouds, the sound of a railway – all invested with a profundity which promises satisfaction by the end. Compound sentences that are paragraphs long, the reader either wades or floats through. Sumptuous and annoying in equal measure. Better informed now. 6
8. Samuel Pepys. An Unequalled Life. 2022. Claire Tomalin. She is the doyenne of biographers, able to engage when the contemporary socio- historical detail of the time threatens a reader’s consciousness. Pepys was a remarkable man living in a fascinating period for the country. Civil War, the start of constitutional monarchy, plague, fire, the rise of the metropolis…the mid 17th century was a firmament of ideas, exploration, enlightenment and the rise of meritocracy. He was a the example of this last. Of very modest beginnings- his father was a tailor, he won a scholarship to St Paul’s and then on to Cambridge. CT carefully charts his business and political career which seems unaffected by wives, affairs and other nefarious dealings. His talent for administration and networking seemed very considerable and, of course his diaries, never intended to be published, are a captivating insight into a transformative time in our history. Taken in steady chunks over time this is a very absorbing read. 8
9. Another Life. 2021. Jodie Chapman. Almost put off by the tiny text but encouraged by Lesley the local librarian.Billed by one critic as ‘Atonement meets David Nichols’, another as ‘Sliding doors love’, I confess that I was tempted by the this sort of blurb after the weight of Pepys. It’s a coming of age tale with complications. Teenage Nick meets the entrancing Anna and they both have baggage. Chain-smoking Nick lost his mother in a tragic accident and Anna leads a double life: embroiled in her Jehovah’s Witness community whilst being a free spirited rebel. The plot unfolds in One Day fashion, narrated by Nick. The reader is shunted backwards and forwards, sometimes irritatingly, as the essential story of the star- crossed lovers unfolds. Plenty of contemporary themes: the struggle of established values in a brave new world; how the past shapes the future ; first love and enduring love; they fuck you up your parents etc. It’s a long read and could do with better editing but the story engages. The reader can find himself or herself in it. As a debut novel, impressive. 6
   
10. Gone Tomorrow. 2010. Lee Child. Another stocking filler from the charity shop. Another brutal Reacher tale. Jack is riding a New York subway in the early hours when a woman blasts her own head off. What has prompted this savage suicide? Reacher’s need to nail the detail leads him, inevitably, down a dangerous road involving a number of moving parts: police, FBI and CIA of course; a rising star, much decorated senator whose undercover operations in Afghanistan need to remain secret; Taliban, Mujihadeen and Al Quaeda power brokers; the desperate need to find an incriminating picture of Osama Bin Laden; the savage torture of those who stand in the way of resolution. All this and more. At nearly 600 pages long, the denouement is rather protracted but the usual Child ingredients are here: Reacher’s uncompromising personal values – anyone who disagrees gets slaughtered; brilliant research on all things – military, weaponry in particular, historical, geographical and geopolitical; some sex as Reacher cannot live with only his toothbrush to play with. At the end of this gruelling adventure we get the first chapter of the next one to whet our appetites. The last thing a reader wants when a Reacher novel hits the floor is another one straight away. I liked the added, but unnecessary note that the novels can be read in any order. They’re all the same. Good stuff. 6
11. Nothing Else. 2022. Louise Beech. Another library pick up. Heather is a divorced mid forties piano teacher. In care, then adopted after her parents (loving mother, abusive father) died in a car crash, she was separated from her sister, Harriet. Now mid life crisis has prompted her to call for her care records and take a job playing on a cruise ship. Long Lost Family meets a mawkish Richard and Judy. The novel starts with melodrama as Heather runs out of a house where a small child resembles her long lost sister. It continues in similar vein. The cruise is Heather’s journey into her past and the discovery of her future. The plot’s contrivance and clunkiness is toe-curling. The music score is a neat thread; otherwise forgettable. 3
12. Young Mungo. 2022. Douglas Stuart. Somewhat in the vein of his Booker winning Shuggie Bain, Stuart tells the tale of Mungo, a 15 year old gay boy, dreadfully neglected by his alcoholic mother, fending for himself on the mean streets of Glasgow. His older siblings have their own survival to manage. The sectarian divide in this post Thatcher era is, seemingly as vicious as in Belfast. You’re either Rangers Proddy or Celtic Fenian. Mungo’s adult role models are bitter, unemployed and drunk, mostly. The limit of ambition for girls brought up on ‘the scheme’ is to get banged up by 16 and live off benefits. Not so Jodie, Mungo’s sister, who wants so much more. We follow Mungo as he fights off the urgings of his delinquent elder brother to be a hoodlum. His homosexuality gets exposed and in a moment of madness his mother sends him on a fishing trip with two convicted paedophiles. It doesn’t end well. A grim story which retain some dark humour and moments of tenderness. There’s a hopeful spark or two at the end – and the flow of Stuart’s prose, the authentic drive of dialogue remain captivating. I guess DS now needs to move on from the mean streets of Glasgow and the concentration on his own back story to see if he can tackle things beyond himself. Still a compelling read. 7
13. Anxious People. 2020. Frederik Backman. Another from the Ove and Beartown stable. Still odd and funny and true. Jim and Jack are father and son police detectives. Jim never wanted his boy to shadow him into the force but Jack has had the do-gooder compulsion ever since he failed to talk a jumper out of suicide when he was 12. The two are called to investigate a strange attempted robbery-cum-hostage incident at an apartment where prospective buyers have been hijacked by a woman who has tried ( and failed) to rob an adjacent bank. She has, weirdly, moved on to trap an estate agent and the hapless group. When the hostages are released, the criminal disappears into thin air leaving only a trail of her own blood. The OCD humour from the odd father and son police couple carries the narrative alongside the search for a strange criminal. We’ve come to expect odd stories and odd people from Backman. This is no different. The hostage scenario is similar to the suicide group in Nick Hornby’s, A Long Way Down, that is, the reader gets to know the life journeys which have led these principals to be in the same apartment. A little overlong but Backman shines intriguing lights on the motivations of human beings. 7
14. The Other You. J. S.Munroe. 2022. A crime and relationship thriller which promised more than it delivered. An intriguingly modern set up: Kate is a super-recogniser used by Swindon police to spot faces of criminals on CCTV. She escapes a murder attempt by drug barons who want her silenced. While hospitalised she falls for Rob, a tech entrepreneur who is revolutionalising surveillance systems. There is a very dark side to him, obsessed, as he is with doppelgängers- everyone has an exact double somewhere in the world. His doppelgänger, he says, is out to kill him. Part fantasy, part modern tale of AI, part repairing of damaged relationships story- it is a complicated plot, made worse by being overlong – 500 pages. I didn’t warm to victim Kate or her ex boyfriend Jake; or Silas the cop with broken marriage and a druggie son or anyone else. However, if you like thrillers with a super- tech theme this could be for you. Not me. 5
15. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. 2023. Gabrielle Zevin. Riding high in the bestseller charts and rightly so. It’s an engrossing coming-of-age and elongated love story of Sam and Sadie. These two American children with Korean/ Oriental backgrounds meet playing video games in a hospital children’s ward. A car crash has left Sam needing multiple operations to save his crushed foot. None of these work but his months in hospital are lightened by game playing with ten year old Sadie, indeed she is the only human that traumatised Sam will interact with. When Sam finds that Sadie is earning Bat Mitzfah credits for her synagogue, he cuts her off. But their paths in life will forever cross. They become high fliers at MIT and Harvard. They meet up and conceive a ground breaking game which makes them household names in the emerging brilliance of gaming in the 1990s. Tomorrow and Tomorrow…is the story of their lives. You might think that greybeard readers would struggle with a world of gaming which passed them by, but you’d be wrong. The book is about people, race, patriarchy, America, gaming- yes, culture, education, disability, youth, life’s journey …and love. Captivating and only 50 pages too long at 500. 8+
16. Killing Moon. 2023. Jo Nesbo. His latest. I need a fix of Harry Hole every couple of years. Harry needs money after getting involved in the Californian underworld. He returns to Oslo as a hired investigator for Marcus Roed, a high profile guy who is being implicated by the press for two grisly murders of young women. Harry, who has already suffered a dishonourable discharge from the force, finds himself attempting to beat his former colleagues in finding the culprit. Lots of Harry- baggage is thrown in: his desperate alcoholism; his ongoing bereavement of Rakel, the love of his life, murdered; the awkward relationship with chief detective Katrine, whose child is Harry’s but no one must know. Usual stuff- damaged cop but because we know the back story, we follow his trials. Enjoyable but too long. I’ll return in a couple of years by which stage Harry’s liver might be pickled in a jar. 6
17. Scenes from Clerical Life. George Eliot.My buddy Fran encouraged me to revisit this lesser known set of stories by GE. His instinct was right! Amos Barton, the best known of the tales is a gentle and funny delight of a story which captures the gossip and micro power games of a parish community. Petty jealousies, the destructive of rumour and the preeminence of status all propel the story of the worthy Reverend Barton along. More capriciously like Jane Austen that her weightier novels with a touch of the social spite of Dickens. You have to like delving into the early 19th century world and language but if it’s your thing, then this will make you smile. 7
18. Victory City. 2023. Salam Rushdie. He completed this just before the horrific attack from which has left him much diminished, physically. This might be classed as a fantasy historical novel. The tale is of the rise and fall of the Vijayanagara Empire which ran from the 14th to the 16th century, in Southerrn India. It was the great power of the sub continent and Rushdie’s fantasy opens with it’s making, by the enchanting Pampa Kampana, a young girl who watches her mother walking into the flames of her husband’s funeral pyre and then is left to grow up in a cave while suffering the sexual abuse of a her rescuing guru. From this, as the fantasy goes, she flew over south India and created an empire by whispering in the ears of the peasants below. She created a story for them, a story of their ancestors and the greatness of their tribe. And so the tale progresses. Pampa becomes queen. Marriage and children and conquests, victories and betrayals. She doesn’t age physically; she observes the destructive natures of men and women as she tries to equalise the societies in which she lives. As with all Rushdie, analogy to the modern day is inescapable. The whole of human life is here: love and murder, gay rights, women’s rights, populist nationalism, evil tyrannies, family jealousies, generosity and meanness. At the turn of a page there is a Putin or Trump, a Mandela or Gandhi. The lot of women – and their power – is at the fore. All wrapped up in a fantasy and told with a simplicity of language that is beguiling. I’m not a great fan of fantasy but it was hard not to be impressed. 8
19. No Time to Die. 2023. Chris Grayling. This is my mate Chris’s last in the Dr. Neil MacKenzie (teacher-turned-private investigator) series. He’s tired of having to invent more improbable plot lines, he says. Here we are again with the three musketeers running the agency in Tunbridge Wells and getting embroiled in a protection racket that is much more sinister than it first seemed when an ex pupil, Katz, alerts Slick aka MacKenzie, to the thugs who demand money with menaces from Kay’s dad who runs the local corner shop and takeaway. The tale is simple enough but takes an improbable turn when Neil takes a break to Spain and gets caught in the crossfire of a drugs war – he can’t stop himself when a gorgeous woman who comes into the local bar needs his help. It’s a rather tired finale – Chris might admit that himself – bur it remains a poolside romp and the humour is pleasingly cheap and un PC. Sixth form stuff that makes me titter. Rapid, easy reading. 5/6
20. The Exchange. 2023. John Grisham. His latest. Mitch McDeere is a partner at one of the biggest global law firms. He is an untypical top man, from poor beginnings to Harvard and then onwards and upwards. He represents a Turkish construction client suing Gaddafi and the Libyan government for hundreds of millions for not paying out on the contract to build a useless bridge in the Libyan desert. On a fact finding trip out of Tripoli Giovanna, a colleague and daughter of Mitch’s great friend, is kidnapped by a guerilla group. Her security group and colleagues are savagely murdered. Starngely, Mitch’s wife, Abby, back in New York , is contacted by the kidnappers and told of the extraordinary ransom demands. Mitch’s kids are not safe. No one is. And so the story unfolds with the usual clarity of prose and neat plotting that we expect from JG. And a neat global perspective. Good stuff. 7
21. The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction. 2023. Robert Goddard. Not sure if I had read any of his crime/ thriller offerings, so I dived into this. It’s unusual, being set in Tokyo and its heroine is the forty something inscrutable Umiko Wado. She runs the Kodaka detective agency single handedly, her boss having died some years earlier. Hired to find the estranged son of a local businessman she gets involved in a power and wealth struggle to cover up truths which began in the aftermath of the 2nd World War. She travels to California in search of people and truth. The plot is labyrinthine, the Japanese names a minefield of confusion for an Anglo Saxon reader. Thankfully Goddard gives us a three page glossary of names and functions – a glossary I kept flipping back to as the plot jerked forwards and backwards in time. It’s easy to like Wado and her testy mother but the narrative dragged a little though its interconnections were clever. I might read another; might not. 6
22. Past Lying. 2023. Val McDermid. I’m usually a fan but this latest in the DCI Karen Pirie series started to drag about halfway through. Set in the early days of lockdown Edinburgh. Karen is flat sharing with her junior, Daisy. Karen is in rather dodgy relationship with Hamish whose flat the women are bubbled in. Hamish is conveniently elsewhere. A cold case comes up. A student Lara Hardie has been missing for a year. A sharp eyed archivist at the Edinburgh library has spotted the plot similarities between the draft novel of a dead disgraced novelist and Lara’s final movements. Karen fires her team up but the constraints of lockdown and the personal lives of her constables, Daisy and Jason, make things tricky. VM tries to wedge in some politicising- care homes, the flaunting of lockdown rules, misogynistic males, Scottish issue – which distracts somewhat. Her prose is, as ever, clear and easy. The idea of a novel within a novel is a neat Shakespearean steal. 5
23. Back in the Day. Melvyn Bragg. The early years of the national treasure. I much enjoyed this as I am in mid research of my own upbringing and ancestry. MB makes the mundane rituals of this early life pretty engaging. A young, clever lad brought up in very modest circumstances in Wilton, a hardy mining area. His acute memory covering schooldays, happy time in the local pub run by his parents, local character, aunties and uncles, friends and foes – and all with the social backdrop of the times. Enchanting but perhaps a selective appeal. 6
24. Cloud Cuckoo Land. 2023. Anthony Doerr. After the great success of All the Light We Cannot See, I was intrigued by this novel billed as fantasy ( I’m not really a fan) which is rooted in ancient history. Well, yes. We start with the writings and life musings of Diogenes and we are invited to consider the need of humans to push beyond the physical boundaries of our lives: we always want more. Power, wealth, muscle flexing, beating up the neighbours, climbing mountains before the next man…etc The narrative moves through time from the fragments of Greek writings still left to us to the tussling for power during the height of the Ottoman Empire; then on to the American involvement in Korea and Vietnam; and on again to the mind scramble of an autistic boy who takes a bomb and gun to a high school library in 2020. And on to a young girl in a post apocalypse world of a space ship hermetically sealed, interminably circling the earth looking for a safe haven to restart another doomed civilisation.
    So far, so depressing. The main characters are damaged in one way or another: Konstance the 12 year old trapped in a dystopian future; Seymour who can only manage life with ear defenders on to shut out the awful noise of the world; Omeir with his cleft palate which makes him a mediaeval gargoyle; Anna in 15th century Constantinople which is being bombarded by the Saracens… and so on. Doerr’s message, from Diogenes on, is that language and the understanding of others, our own limitations and the preservation of the planet is the key to humanity’s survival. So a common and modern message which we, of course, continue to ignore.
    It’s a long read but I found myself following each story with increasing ardour. Doerr links characters through time and space and in the stories handed down from our Greek forbears. To be at one with our world and to look upon others with benevolence is enough. Excellent. 8
25. The Secret Hours.2023. Mick Herron. Although billed as a standalone novel, we are firmly back in the tetchy spooks world of Regent’s Park and political chicanery. The last decade of UK politics ensures that Herron’s characters are thinly veiled satires. Johnson, Cummings et al. The whole novel is a dark piss take. Griselda and Malcolm have been charged by the SPAD at Number 10 to unearth some dirt on the First Desk (aka head of MI6) and the mismanagement of the security services. The PM wants more power. Poor Gris and Mal are caught in the middle. They organise a governmental inquiry into the workings of the security services. The internal power wrestle is way above their pay grade or competence. Meanwhile, Max, a spook who had gone to ground following some dark business in Berlin, has been found in his Devon hideyhole by unknown special forces. He has escaped to the hornet’s nest of London. And so the intrigue develops. We go back to 1990s Berlin and the post Wall fallout- the Stasi’s brutal revenge on counter spooks and the weirdos who inhabit the British spook house in near the Brandenburg gate. One of whom Brinkley Miles is a dead ringer for our beloved Jackson Lamb ( of Slough House and Gary Oldman fame) – all whisky stains, farting and cruel but brilliant put downs . It’s fun, a real romp with sideswipes at the car crash of our politics this last decade or more. Also darkness and brutality. The writing is so clever – fans of the Slough House series will enjoy every page. 9
26. Olive, Again. Elizabeth Strout. Another little gem. Now in the twilight of her years the awkward, straight talking Olive, has removed from being the grumpy retired Maths teacher of Shirley Falls, to the sometime anonymity of Crosby, even further away from the big smoke of New York, to where her son Christopher has escaped. She has remarried- Jack. She isn’t really sure whether this is a good idea but Jack, like her, is both lonely and astute. A Harvard man without the pretension. And so we learn of Olive’s later life. She spends much time in the head space of her past but, as with the other Shirley Falls novels, we are introduced to an array of characters and stories, loosely connected to Olive but, in the richness of their personal and poignant stories, we see all human life in small town America. A series of short stories making the reader nod and smile with recognition. We leave Olive in her nursing home, still awkwardly navigating her last few days. Surely she will speak from the grave in Strout’s next offering. I hope so. 8
27. Wish You Were Here. 2021. Jodi Picoult. Her latest. Not a huge fan but time to catch up. After the slick and sleazy world of Herron, I found Jodi’s contrived social/moral storyline all rather worthy. Used to the razor edge of spook-prose the predictable faux sentimentality of the drama that JP lays before us feels dull. It’s March 2020. Finn is a New York surgeon; love partner Diana an art historian working for Southeby’s. Her boss is a Devil Wear’s Pravda type, her main client a thinly veiled Yoko Ono ( with a murdered rockstar husband to boot). She and Finn organise a life tick holiday to the Galapagos. COVID strikes; Finn stays behind sending detailed ICU experience emails to Diana who is locked down in a now unfriendly island with a curfew and a self harming teenager and her father and grandmother. Initially hostile to the American, the locals warm up, and, as is Picoult’s wont, she lets the reader ponder on the damage of COVID, the problem of self harm and teenage angst, the environmental mess we have created in the world..and so on. She goes from working with the high rollers and a game plan for life – married to an eminent surgeon- then, of course, an epiphany in the Galapagos is required. It all seems strangely facile after the sharp intensity of my previous read, despite the earnestly researched twist of Diana’s trip to the Galapagos being a COVID dream. I’m probably doing JP a disservice but this effort has more in common with Shirley Valentine than a novel trying to make us sit up and consider the issues of that traumatic time. 6
28. Standing in the Shadows. 2023. Peter Robinson. The last DCI Banks caper. The esteemed crime author died last year. I was on safer ground here. Banks investigates a historic murder after a corpse has been unearthed during an archeological dig. We go back in time to the febrile era of the early That her years. Miners’ strikes, IRA bombings, undercover infiltrating special branch police getting dangerously involved on the dark side. Nick Hartley is an English student in Leeds in love with Alice. Her head is turned by a suave Londoner who seems to have money but no job. Alice is murdered. The local police cover their strange lack of interest with the easy excuse of pinning her murder on the Ripper. The action jumps back and forth from the present. Banks is till mourning the loss of his great mate Ray Abbott but his team of Winsome, Gerry et al are back in harness as they follow the clues back in time. Easy and satisfying. 7
29. Entry Island. 2014. Peter May. A typical May yarn, this time set on a small island in St. Lawrence bay off the coast of Canada. Sime is a cop investigating the murder of a rich chap named Cowell. Hmm. His wife is no 1 suspect. She is a reclusive beauty whose ancestral jewellery bears the same motif as Sime’s signet ring. And so we are transported to the Hebrides of the early 19th century and the Scottish Clearances- an inhuman scheme dreamt up by lairds and landowners to transport large numbers of crofters and other menials across the Atlantic, forcibly, so that the land could make more money without the impediment of lowlife. A romance between Sime’s many x great grandfather and the laird’s daughter brings the history of two families together. In the present, Sime ( the usual damaged cop trying to sort his life out), contending with a divorce, insomnia, estrangement from his family, etc recognises the wife of the victim from an image from his childhood. The ricocheting of stories from northern Scotland 200 years previously and Canadian island in the 21st century is pretty well done despite being hopelessly contrived and romantic. But that’s what you need in a poolside book. The murder investigation seems incidental to the long lost family saga which sits conveniently beside it. A diverting holiday read. 6
30. The Trinity Six. 2014. Charles Cumming. Another sumptuous excursion into the speculative spy world of the Cold War era. Here Cumming deliciously melds fact and fiction from the Oxbridge days of Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt et al and fast forwards us through the political and spook world of the second half of the twentieth century before settling on the storyline which gives electricity to the tale. Sam Gaddis, a lecturer at UCL in Russian studies, has a dear friend executed by the KGB because she has come into possession of the diaries of a double agent who has long since changed identity and has been ‘lost’ somewhere near Winchester in an MI6 protection scheme. By and by we learn that the Russian president, a thinly veiled Putin, once asked to defect when he was running a KGB operation out of Dresden. This news is dynamite, of course, and in the awakening consciousness of the SIS, MI6, the Stasi and KGB, there are trails to be snuffed out, bodies to be buried. We follow Dr Gaddis as he becomes amateur spook, placing himself- and others around him- in untold danger. It’s a compelling spy drama including Orson Welles-ish scenes at the Prater in Vienna. Not as satirical and laugh out loud as Mick Herron but every bit as slick and assured as Le Carre. Brilliant. 9
31. The Brethren. 2014. John Grisham. With elections on both sides of the Atlantic this year, this was a topical read. A group of disgraced lawyers are cooling their heels in a remote prison while masterminding a blackmail business. They extort money from closet gay men who have too much to lose. One such is the red hot presidential favourite. The arch fixer at the CIA tracks their every move. He has a vested interest in the race for the White House and will stop at nothing to ensure his man wins it. A mix of the usual legal shenanigans with the spice of covert CIA operations and the political thriller. A neat combustion. As ever Grisham is worth a read. 7
32. Brand New Friend. 2008. Mike Gayle. I have read a couple of MG’s offerings.They are light, slight pre millennial romcoms with strongly laddish overtones. Here we have Rob a thirty something graphic designer who moves from London to Manchester to cohabit with lovely partner, medic Ashley. Trouble is he can’t find any mates to have a beer with and he’s too old ( really?) to replicate the footie-and- beer-and-birds banter of his southern crew. Ashley is a saint, always trying to jolly him along. Then he finds Jo, a girl who behaves like his mates. But can he tell Ashley about her? It’s facile, groan out loud stuff with just the occasional titter to see you to the end. Rob needs a lobotomy and Ashley a medal. To be read only when alcohol is involved. 4
33. Dreamland. 2023. Nicholas Sparks. I was a Sparks virgin before this and, on balance, wish I had remained intact. Written in a deliberate filmic fashion ( think The Notebook and Message in a Bottle ) it’s a Jodi Picoult meets Mills and Boon tale of boy (Colby) a farmer but frustrated musician, who meets Morgan a gorgeous dancer and YouTuber but also a frustrated musician. Colby is on holiday performing beach gigs in Florida. His back story involves a bipolar sister whose son and husband died in a car crash, an ailing aunt, a farm business he has to return to. Morgan’s medic parents want her to teach music rather than aspire to Taylor Swiftism. Both lovers are on a ‘journey’. There’s actual and attempted suicides, a stroke, plus all the romantic tosh that goes with a Baywatch type beach romance. It’s tosh, of course. 3
34. The Seventh Son. 2023. Sebastian Faulks. I love SF’s books. He brings a mounting body of research – much of it on the workings of the mind and the evolution of the genetics that have brought the human race to its current pitch of development. His latest novel is a speculation on those experimental boundaries which could be pushed by the super rich ( Elon Musk types) in the near future. Set a decade hence Talissa, an American anthropologist, is persuaded to carry Mary and Alaric’s child via IVF. Alaric’s sperm is exchanged for a genetic cocktail which is over 50% Neanderthal. The multi billionaire……who bankrolls the clinic and his close-knit and secretive team are playing a morally dangerous game. We follow Seth the awkward young progeny of the laboratory as his life unfolds. We follow Talissa too and the sad story of her one time boyfriend…who has spiralled into madness. The narrative drive is tremendous – what will happen to Seth if and when the world finds out that Neanderthal man has returned? What is it that sets humans apart from the animal kingdom – reason, yes…but also insanity. Brilliant 9.
35. A Month in the Country. 1980. J.L. Carr. Such a charming and gently funny read. Booker nominate over forty years ago. Belinda advised me to pick this up – it’s in Penguin Modern Classics – and I’m delighted that I did. Tom Birkin an art historian and restorer has been commissioned to uncover a mural in a small Yorkshire parish church. He travels from London, not long having returned with the blight of shell shock from the trenches of the Somme. A further blow has been his wife’s infidelity – she has left him but seems destined, always, to return and be accepted back. So here is the setting. A rural Arcadia where the stationmaster, Mr Ellerbeck is proud of the steam which slices through the dales but once the engine has passed the clip clop of horses’ hooves are the predominant sound. Tom finds himself engaging with characters whom we get to know. The severe Reverend Keach who resents the interloper; Moon the diviner who, lately back from the war himself, has been tasked with finding the grave on a local Colonel’s ancestor, buried without the cemetery for some reason. And there is Kate Keach, the vicar’s wife, a woman to love. The restoration captivates Tom as he captivates the locals. The observational humour is affecting – of people, of the times, of language and the pull of religion ( Wesleyan chapel at one end of the village and C of E at the other) and the gentle recovery which Tom makes as his work and his love heals his mental scars. The prose is clear and so engaging; the sense of time and place completely absorbing. It made me think of Eliot’s Scenes from a Clerical Life or something by Hardy. But this has a humour, sometimes sad, that is its very essence. Written in …..it has the feeling and sentiment of the contemporary. A treat. 8
36. Wellness. 2023. Nathan Hill. NH’s second novel after the great success of The Nix. Jack and Elizabeth meet at art college in Chicago and revel in bohemian love, freed from the sad nooses of their upbringing. Jack has escaped from being the runt of a Kansas farming family, with tragedy in their story. Elizabeth comes from a long family line of ruthless business magnates – to flee her bullying father is her greatest desire. Their story flips back and forth -from their youthful and unpleasantly formative back stories to marriage and life with odd son Toby twenty years hence. Jack becomes an art lecturer, Elizabeth trials placebos at the Wellness clinic. Their work reflects the deep traumas of the growing up years. Nathan Hill seems to wedge in so much about human life – he’s Cormac Macarthy one moment in the prairies and Woody Allen in town. Social media, the power of the tweet; genetics; what is love; truth and lies; the semiotics and prejudices of societies through the ages…well it’s all there. And sometimes I found myself wanting him just to get on with the bloody story. It’s a big hardback of 600pages. Brilliant American Graffiti but 400 pages would be better. It’s a love story after all. 8
37. Earth. 2024. John Boyne. The latest from one of my favourites. Here we are in very topical territory. Robbie and Evan, two famous footballers are on trial for rape. Robbie is the boy born with an English silver spoon; Evan the lad from poor Irish farming stock. Both have been damaged by their fathers. Evan is shy, gay – a brilliant footballer who wanted to be an artist. Robbie has bucked the family trend (university, the law, eminence) to play. And he likes odd sex. Boyne’s capturing of a young generation while the past infects their present and future is both typical and affecting. The short novel is heavy on dialogue: the court, the boys ( for that is what they are), the parents. It’s intense and tragic. The girl at the heart of the case is a pawn in a number of games. 7/8
38. Identity Crisis. Ben Elton. The Blackadder maestro is in sparkling form in this satire on the stage of the world in the 20th century. Influencers, #metoo, lying politicians, TERFs, gender fluidity, Eton toffs, social toxicity..it’s all here. Even Samuel Pepys has his three hundred year old misogyny pursued by the beleaguered Met Police. Some of the protagonists are thinly veiled- Johnson, Farage, JK Rowling, Germaine Greer et al – as this cancel culture rollercoaster careers along. It’s all rather obvious but very funny. We dislike all the characters equally and BE clearly wants us to have fun as he points out the idiocy of modern times. Only in fiction, it seems, can we take the piss out of ourselves. 7
39. The End of Nightwork. 2023. Aiden Cottrell-Boyce. A remarkable first novel. Pol and his wife Caroline have back stories which play strongly in their married life as they raise their rather odd son Jess. Pol has a heterochronous hormonal disorder (think Benjamin Button). At 13 he suddenly ages by a decade overnight. He then waits, for years, for the next episode. The strains on family of this and the bumpy journey of their lives affect the present profoundly. Written episodically in Greek chorus style paragraphing ( think Of Mice and Men) Pol addresses his son, Jess throughout as if explaining the complexity of life. I started slowly but speeded up. Unusual. Intriguing. 7
40. Cold People. 2023. Tom Rob Smith. Encouraged to buy this after enjoying Child 44 and Agent 6, as usual I enjoyed the easily clarity of TRS’s narrative and the general speculation of the novel – that when an alien force takes over the world and forces its remaining inhabitants to live in Antarctica, they will find a way to make genetic modifications which will both ensure survival but destroy what it is to be human. It’s an apocalyptic tale. Liza and Atto are lovers who meet in romantic Italy as an alien force invades the world. The reader never learns of how or why, only that the few human souls who can make it to the Antarctic before a deadly deadline , will be allowed to survive. The two lovers make it leaving all their loved ones to perish: they have no option. How their lives unfold and how genetic mutations nurture an ice-adapted super- species who will threaten the extinction of all humans, is the story of the novel. I rarely enjoy trips into science fiction and I thought this overlong and, at times, a bit silly. However with existential threats on our minds, the values of human decency and love lie at the heart of an intriguing novel. Perhaps TRS thinks a bit too filmically for my taste. 6
41. Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes. 2024. David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts. DK, a historian I much admire (ie very readable) has put together, with HR a gloriously fond an funny memoir focusing on the fourth Ashes test of 1961 and, using the gentlemen v players analogy of the time, holding a mirror to sport and society – then and now. One might think that the, almost, ball by ball story of a seies played over 60 years agos might be a tad niche but there is a faded eloquence about it all aided by the lovely inclusions of newspaper reports, Swanton, Arlott and all the others in the commentary box; the anecdotes of players, the soft and humorous sledging as the gentlemanly drama unfolded. Another era, a changing of the guard. A rivalry that has defined our cricket for more than a century. I was very taken with it. 7
42. The Stolen Coast. 2023. Dwyer Murphy. Two rogue lawyers, one a migrant and drug smuggler working with his father, the other an old flame from law school who is part of a diamond-heist group. Coastal Massachusetts. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Mr Dwyer hadn’t wanted to be all literary about it. Pathetic fallacies and introspection and curious mind games. I lost patience. 3
43. Yellowface. 2023.Rebecca Kuang. I much enjoyed Babel and, although this transatlantic hit is piled high in bookshops, it didn’t quite match up. RK does write very persuasively about life in the 2020s: online trolling, diversity issues, fake news, student life, the past, ethnicity, the illusion of love and friendship, honour, integrity….etc etc. Here we have Juniper who steals the novel of a dead friend who is part Korean. The story concerns Chinese migrant workers who help the war effort in WW1. The book becomes a minor sensation; Yellowface is an account of the fallout as online trolls accuse Juniper of plagiarism. It’s a fast read and American society is reflected back at us on each page. Trouble is, it’s hard to like Juniper whose decision making is awful – she, like Macbeth is ‘too steeped in blood’ and simply can’t get back to the safety of truth and anonymity. Enjoyable stuff but not Babel. 7
44. All the Broken Places. 2022. John Boyne. Twenty years on from his career defining The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Boyne has produced a brilliant sequel. Written in lockdown this is an exploration of how the past informs and infects the future. Gretel, the 12 year old surviving daughter of a concentration camp commandant, has spent her life dealing with guilt. By running away – to Paris, Sydney and, finally to London, she has built a new life under a series of aliases. But the past always catches up. Now, at 91 she finds herself dealing with her final challenge. A brutal man moves in to the luxury flat below her … and discovers her secret. Boyne handles the juxtaposition of past ‘adventures’ – loves, children, escapes – with ease. I was gripped by the whole thing. 9
45. Quite a Good Time to be Born. 2015. David Lodge. Another in my mini reading series of autobiographical books about my own formative years as seen through this delightful memoir. DL, some 15 years my senior, writes fondly yet tellingly of a small boy growing up during the war and his life thereafter. An only child, he was brought up to be staunchly Catholic by a somewhat impoverished musician father and an Irish- Belgian mother, in the suburbs of London. The social and cultural changes of the 50s and 60s gives him plenty to get his teeth into but this is the story of quite an ordinary child written with the easy style of a fine writer. Much enjoyed, if rather niche. 7
46. A Running Grave. 2024. Robert Galbraith (aka JKR). I have only read a couple of the Cormoran Strike private detective novels and this latest is a hell of a read At nearly 1200 pages it’s a marathon which has all the sinewy and supernatural complexities of an adult Harry Potter. Strike is tasked with investigating the mysterious UHC – a purportedly religious cult where followers are brainwashed, girls are forced to have sex with elders, money is extorted and those who defy or threaten find themselves conveniently silenced. Robin, Cormoran’s business partner volunteers to go undercover and brave the attempts to indoctrinate and abuse. It’s a tough read at times but Galbraith takes us into the surreal world of cultism with assured research and plotting which is her hallmark. Of course the other subplots of Strike novels are there : different cases which bubble in the background; the unrequited longing which Robin and Cormoran have for each other; their other tangled relationships; both their pasts; the office dynamics with the irascible Pat at her typewriter, all ears; the thoughtful links to modern day concerns. No doubt it’s too long. JKR’s editors need to get a grip. That apart it has a depth and narrative drive that sees the reader through. 7
47. Nero. 2024. Conn Iggulden. Another loan from my mate Geoff who is much into historical stuff. CI is a master at filling in the gaps when historical fact falters. So it is with this imagining of the power struggles of Ancient Rome. As the cruel baton of ultimate control is wrenched rather than passed from Tiberius to Caligula, then Claudius with the scheming puppeteer Agrippina the great female survivor, ever with her eye on the ultimate goal: the crowning of her son Nero. Much of the narrative is truth but Iggulden infuses the dialogue and contemporary detail with a sure and witty touch. A fine read. Informative and pretty racy. 7
48. Radical: A Life of My Own. 2023.Xaolu Guo. The writer, artist, filmmaker, lecturer has already, at 50, led an extraordinary life. From her upbringing by illiterate grandparents in remote, rural China, to academic success in the UK and USA she defies both convention and categorising. The autobiography/memoir of her early years, Once Upon a Time in the East, was a visceral and exciting account of the years before leaving Chinese academia to explore and expand herself in the West. Here we have another, intimate memoir. Each chapter is framed by the etymological examination of a word – along with its Chinese symbol. The book is as much about language – it’s adequacies and inadequacies – as it is about her. This is the adult Guo, mother, wife in London but also a mistress of sorts in New York. It’s an art house film in print, each chapter giving us another thought about life and the difficulty in finding identity. It’s hard to categorise. I found myself intrigued and baffled at its intimacy, like watching a video installation at the Tate Modern and wondering what the fuck it was all about. But I read on. It’s immersive. 6
49. Absolutely and Forever. 2023. Rose Tremain. I love Rose Tremain. This is such a charming novel set in the 1950s and 1960s and thus liberated from the clutter of cyber lunacy and general falsehood. Of course social change is famously in the air. Marianne falls in love with Simon as a young teen. She loses her virginity quite happily to him and is convinced that they will share a gilded life together. The two young lovers are huge disappointments to their staid, insensitive parents:Simon because he flunks his Oxford entrance exam and Marianne because she isn’t her dead brother and doesn’t concentrate at school. Simon makes a young French girl pregnant in Paris; Marianne marries Hugo an aspiring auctioneer. But Simon is the love of her life. The tale is told with such a light but sure touch. The detail of those decades- Woodbines and sherry, groping in the back of a Morris Minor, the casual sadism of a teacher, parents’ incomprehension of the youth of the country, their cold indifference. Tremain is so sure footed with this soul searching stuff and the childlike bravery which her heroine, Marianne, navigates her life’s tragedies. 9
50. The Last Voice You Hear. 2004, reprinted 2015. Mick Herron. This is the second in the series of Zoe Boehm, private investigator novels. When MH found fame with his Slow Horses/ Slough House series, his publishers leapt on to his past ( and pretty much failed) catalogue to see if they could squeeze some more profit. It’s a dark, noir-ish tale of the unhappy Zoe. Her soulmate Joe was murdered in the first book. Here she is engaged by the employer of a forty something woman, to find her mysterious lover, who disappeared after the hapless lady fell ( or was she pushed?) on to a tube line. As this investigation crawls along, Zoe becomes intrigued by the apparent suicide of a young tearaway whom she had encountered when he was still in primary school but nicking handbags in Kensington. As these two trails merge the reader is wrapped in a stream of consciousness style narrative. Trouble is bent cops are also stalking Zoe. It’s complicated. Almost every thought, observation, motive, feeling that Zoe- and her stalking nemeses – have, is laid before us so that the action, mostly gripping but unpleasant, takes on a secondary role to the inner life of protagonists. I loved it. Others might not. 7
51. The Paris Hours.2020. Alex George.Given to me by my mate Nick Fowler, this is an engaging, if formulaic historical tale, set in Paris, 1927. Four characters with varied back stories are brought together, eventually by the four strand plot. The four: a displaced Armenian refugee; a lovesick painter who owes money to savage men; a journalist searching for a lost daughter; Marcel Proust’s maid-cum-PA. George weaves famous names into the narrative. At times it’s rather clunky but the individual tales are, mostly, plausible. Engaging enough. 6
52. My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologies. Frederik Backman. This is the prequel to Britt-Marie was here. It’s the usual comic/ autistic sidelong look at a community with diverse individuals struggling at the edges of society. The main character, Elsa, is an insightful, neuro-diverse eight year old whose existence is championed by her equally odd grandmother – a woman who has led a dramatic life of service to others but an absentee mum to Elsa’s mother. It’s a strange tale of fantasy – Elsa and grandma deal in Game of Thrones type fantasy tales to make sense of a brutal world. The realities of living in a block of flats with a group of people who are all damaged in some way are the backdrop to the plot. The reader gets to know the cast, indeed they will feature in future tales – Beartown for example. For the most part we follow Elsa in her journey to find the truth about her grandmother, indeed the truth about life. It’s rather too long for my liking. The humour and pathos deriving from tales of odd people seems rather exploitative as well as intriguing. I’m not a huge fan of fantasy and there’s a little too much here. Provoking, often darkly comic but unsatisfying. 5
53. The Bee Sting. 2023. Paul Murray. I was drawn to this Booker shortlist novel having read the brilliant Skippy Dies. Here we have an Irish tale with the brooding, below surface emotional weight characteristic of so many modern Irish writers ( think Barry, Rooney, Boyne etc etc). This is a family saga. Each section explores the lives of Imelda, former lover Frank, husband Dickie, daughter Cass and son PJ. We travel from their young provincial lives of error, success, expectation, love and loss to the adults they are or are becoming. Murray plays around with form. Like Shakespeare he moves from formal punctuated text to free flow stream of consciousness- style, unbothered by the constraints of stops and commas. The central story concerns those who are trapped in their local lives when their youth promised so much more. And there are those who escape – to Dublin and Trinity College or Portugal for sun and golf. Every character seems to have tragedy knocking at his/her door. We follow them all and observe how they struggle to cope with the cards that are dealt for them – or the choices made in youth which dog them forever. Set in a small town outside Dublin, the various characters coalesce into a dysfunctional mass of discontent and thwarted ambition. It’s hard to warm to many of them- save the innocent PJ who has yet to feel the weight of expectation weighing upon him. It’s an involving saga. At 650 pages, a long one too..but Murray has a gift of insight, of emotional depth and a sharp humour which encourages the reader to keep turning pages. 7
54. Gabriel’s Moon. 2024. William Boyd. His latest. Sumptuous. Gabriel Dax is one of Boyd’s long line of troubled heroes. Plagued by insomnia after the childhood house fire in the 1930s which kills his mother, he makes his way in journalism and travel writing as a young man in the 1950s. Boyd writes so evocatively of these times before the tech, political, social and health revolutions of the later part of the century made the world too much with us, late and soon. Dax is a Gitanes- smoking, whisky slurping man of his time. Women are a glorious mystery and his relationship with his brother, Sefton is cool and detached. Sefton works at the Foreign Office and occasionally pays Gabriel to deliver innocuous packages to his contacts abroad. Gabriel thinks nothing of these well-paid errands; certainly not that he might be being groomed for greater things. His life really life changes when he meets Faith Green, top woman in MI6. He imagines that bumping into her on a plane back from the Congo was a delightful coincidence. Not so. He becomes mired in love and espionage. The simple life of regular sex with waitress Debbie and indulgent research trips to exotic locations is metamorphosed into one of reluctant service and compliance to the shady imperatives of the intelligence services. Boyd’s prose is wonderfully spare, clear. His characters have the world weary allure reminiscent of Graham Greene and Carre but also the more modern wit of a Herron or Cumming. Captivating. 9
55. Long Island. 2024. Colm Toibin. The follow up to Brooklyn. Toibin writes so sparely, yet so beautifully that we float along in this lyrical sequel while the life of Eilis, now twenty years older and dealing with the infidelity of husband Tony. This requires a far different response than the odd inertia which led her to abandon her Irish home and first love Jim for a new life in Brooklyn. If that sentence seems a contradiction, we are confronted with a stronger woman here. She is able to stand against the claustrophobic closeness of Tony’s family ( his mother wants her to accept To y’s illegitimate child as her own) and she strikes out for her homeland to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday. Her two children go with her: she wants them to see her life, her upbringing, her core and give them a greater independence. This physical and emotional journey into the past is brilliantly told; small character vignettes abound but centrally old flame Jim and best friend of yore Nancy feature very strongly. Wonderful. 9
56. A Spy Among Friends. Ben Macintyre. BM is brilliant at turning history into novelistic drama. This is, really, a spy- biography of Kim Philby. Of course it covers the rise and fall of the Cambridge 5 or 6 whichever way you want to tot them up. BM takes us through the relationships built over time between honest patriots, equivocating ones and those who were downright traitors. The merry go round is fascinatingly told with breathtaking research. John Le Carre’s afterword, which includes his own involvement as an MI6 man, contains heavy praise indeed and a grudging tip of the hat to Philby whose daring and treason was wrapped in charm and conviction. A fantastic study of the politics and manoeuvring of the world in the 40s, 50s and 60s. 8
57. In Memoriam. 2023. Alice Winn. A page turning first novel from this clever and well-researched writer. This is the story of Gaunt and Elwood, two boys plucked from childhood at their posh boarding school (Preshute, which is Eton by any other name) to face the horrors of the trenches in the First World War. Their fledgling gay schoolboy romance becomes something much more serious – with all the attendant dangers of the age. So serious too is the carnage all around them as their fellows, many in their teens, fall gruesomely at Ypres and the Somme. Chapters are punctuated by the Death Roll of Honour published in the school magazine as one by one the youngsters are listed as dead or missing.It’s intriguing that a woman has written so tellingly about this world of boys and men. Sometimes it grates a little ( not all boys were gay in boarding schools) and AW bends coincidence or luck to her advantage to force the plot along. Mostly it’s compelling as we follow the central characters through their sad and devastating youth. Boys become men overnight. It’s another Birdsong. Moving and page turning. Thanks to my Sis Jane for lending me the book! 7
58. The Last Devil to Die. 2023. Richard Osman. We are back with the Murder Club and there is some comfort in the geriatric company of Elizabeth(ex MI6), Joyce (ex Nurse and a main narrator), Ibrahim (psychiatrist), Ron (geezer), the ailing Stephen (Elizabeth’s husband, not long for the world), the Polish muscle of Bogdan and the tame but lovable police duo of Donna and Chris. Bob the computer whizz and Mervyn fixated with online dating are likely additions to the group as the current group fall begin to die off. The plot is incidental to the comfort of being with the gang again and seeing how their different skills meld to combat the drugs and murder which seem to be going on in the Kent/Sussex borders. Kuldesh, an antiques dealer and friend of Stephen’s has been murdered because he seems to have stolen £100,000 of heroin. As the search for his murderer develops we enjoy the banter and the naughty social comment allowed to emanate from the mouths of greybeards. Sensitive issues too – euthanasia, police corruption, identity fraud, online scamming. It’s fun and easy and relevant. 6
59. Kennedy 35. 2023.Charles Cumming. The latest in the Lachlan Kite series of spy novels…and another cracker. Lachlan, now in his 50s has chased Ingrid and their new baby to her home in Sweden hoping for reconciliation after the near death experience of the last novel. They both know that when the call comes from MI6/Box 88, he will respond. And so when his American boss Strawson calls, he responds – a response which will take him back nearly 30 years to Senegal and the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of Tsutsis…which rumbles forward to the 2020s. It’s a brilliant read. 9
60. Why We Die. 2009. Mick Herron. MH’s pre Slough House/Slow Horses catalogue has all been reprinted and this is the third of the Zoe Bohm private investigator series. Here she is employed by a dodgy jeweller to discover the whereabouts of stolen cash and jewels. Zoe, with plenty of personal baggage ( don’t they all?) follows the trail to a gang of hoodlums, one of whom is a dad ringer for Martin Amis’s Lionel Asbo, a female assassin, bent coppers, pathetic coppers and a very nice man who has got himself caught up in the mess of it all. The dark and laugh out loud black wit, so recognisable from Jackson Lamb, is being fine tuned in these early caper novels. The plot freaks with implausibility but we like Zoe, as readers, and she makes it through the bleak comedy.7
61. Us Against You. Frederik Backman. This is the next in the Beartown series. Having been disappointed with the last Backman, I found myself on a train with only my kindle for company. I found that I had bought the whole Beartown series for a few pennies…and so resolved to settle down to this sequel. Beartown is still reeling in the aftermath of Kevin’s rape of Maya. Both families have left town and the hockey club disbanded. A weighty gloom has descended. It stays that way and although there are nuggets of truth about the human condition, Beartown has become a grim and dysfunctional basket case of a town. Readable but odd, very odd. 6
62. Our Evenings. 2024. Alan Hollinghurst. The last two reads of my year seemed a cut above the rest. This beautifully observed life of Dave, a single-parented half Burmese boy who wins a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school and is taken out of a working class, struggle to pay rent life into a rarefied world of privilege and and manipulation. AH observes so many of his main characters through a sidelong lens: sexuality, social status, emotional deprivation. His celebrated novels have examined the inner world of gay men living in a world either of subterfuge or plain sight. The weight of the past, of boarding school power games and the determinants of future choices is prevalent here as we follow Dave’s life and career contrasted with that of the pernicious Giles. The former becomes an actor; the latter an amoral politician. Sumptuous and moving. 9
63. Intermezzo. 2024. Sally Rooney. I thought that I might tire of the introspection of SR’s novels but this is a glorious leap forward. Peter and Ivan are brothers with baggage and a fractured relationship. Peter, a successful Dublin barrister, bankrolls and beds Naomi, a student ten years his junior. His daily cocktails of booze and drugs seems to stabilise him after the sad accident to ex fiancée Sylvia. They remain the best of friends but sex is now impossible and she lives constantly with both the pain of her condition and what they both have lost. Ivan is a chess geek. A decade junior to elder brother he only finds meaning in chess until he happens upon Margaret, a mid thirties woman who manages a community centre where Ivan is giving a chess masterclass. The brothers, who should have bonded more over the recent death of their father, find that personal secrets and brotherly jealousies get in the way of meaningful relations. SR’s technique of thought and speech flowing along paragraphs as one narrative force, could annoy ( no speech punctuation, in fact not much punctuation at all) but I soon found myself accustomed to the faux-Joycean style. The story actually rattles along with the focus switching from one brother to the other; Margaret to Sylvia to……..It’s tense, revealing and somehow more mature than her first novels. I loved it. 9

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