Sebastian Barry - Days Without End

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Truly excellent

Days Without End really is as good as everyone says it is.  I was a little sceptical but eventually tried it because so many people had said it was great – and it is.  Truly excellent.

This is the story of Thomas McNulty who left Ireland like so many others around 1850 because of "the hunger" to seek a new life in the New World.  Narrated by Thomas himself looking back in later years, it's a tale of hardship and survival and of life in the US Army before, during and after the Civil War.  It has important things to say about many things, including friendship, the companionship and sometimes divided loyalties of soldiers, the meaning of family and also a powerful, enduring love between two men.  It's brilliantly done; I found it utterly gripping and often profoundly moving.

What makes this so special for me is Thomas's voice, which is a wonderful mixture of the slightly rough, naïve and uneducated and also the evocatively poetic.  I'm no expert on the language of that time and place, but it rang absolutely true to me and I genuinely felt as though Thomas was sitting with me and telling his story.  He evokes the real feel of the Old West brilliantly, with all its hardships and some pleasures, and the terror, exultation and horror of battle is as well drawn as I've ever read.  Some is hard to read because of its content, but never because of the telling.  The appalling massacres of Native Americans and the terrible battles of the Civil War kept me absolutely riveted and often feeling wrung-out afterward from the intensity of them.  It's never overblown and often rather understated in a way, but utterly gripping and immensely powerful; I felt as though I was there at Thomas's shoulder, feeling all his complexity of emotion.

I marked lots of sentences and passages which I liked and which give a flavour of the book's style.  As a couple of brief examples: "Dark fields and troubled crops, the big sky growing melancholy with evening." Or of a Catholic army padre who is liked by men of all denominations, "A good heart carries across fences.  Fr Giovanni.  Small man wouldn't be much good for fighting but he good for tightening those screws that start to come loose on the engine of a man when he's facing God knows what."

Quite simply, this is a wonderfully involving read, superbly written; it is one of the best things I have read for some time and I cannot understand why it didn't at least make the Booker Shortlist.  Too enjoyably readable, perhaps?  Very warmly recommended.

Mark Barry - There's Something About 1970

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
An excellent guide

This is another excellent compilation of reviews from Mark Barry.  His Overlooked Albums has steered me to some real gems which I didn't know, and There's Something About 1970 is doing the same.  I was 16 in 1970 so I knew quite a lot of these albums and quite a few of them are enduring classics anyway - Layla and Déjà vu are just a couple of irrefutable examples – but I missed quite a bit

Mark is extremely knowledgeable, having worked in Vintage and Rare records for many years.  He has an obviously genuine love for the music he writes about and extremely wide taste.  The book includes albums from a huge range of genres: folk, hard rock, reggae, free jazz, soul, honest-to-God pop, and so on.  This means that there are many albums I love, some I'm not that fussed about and a few that I can't stand – which is just as it should be.  The definition of 1970 is a little flexible, but if it has to stretch to releases in November 1969 or March 1971 in order to include Joe Cocker's second album and Bryter Later by Nick Drake, for example, that's just fine by me.

There's plenty of stuff here that I didn't know and am glad to explore and Mark is an excellent guide throughout, with thorough, readable reviews and really good advice on which editions or re-releases to buy for best sound and best value.  It's a cracking book, which I can recommend very warmly.

Roddy Doyle - Smile

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good novel from Roddy Doyle

I thought Smile was very good, and truly excellent in places.  It has ingredients that would normally put me off and if it hadn't had Roddy Doyle's name on it I suspect that I would never have tried it, but I'm very glad that I did.   

In Ireland, Victor, a middle-aged man ends up moving to his old home town after the break-up of his marriage, and we get the story of his growing up and early adulthood told in retrospect, complete with brutal treatment and sexual exploitation at the hands of the Brothers at school…it just sounds tediously familiar.  The thing is, though, that Roddy Doyle can really write.  I don't mean that he's verbose or "literary," but that his prose is incredibly readable, his characters are very real and completely convincing and his dialogue is brilliant.  The book was a genuine pleasure to read.  Chiefly, he catches superbly the sense of an adolescent boy growing up – that mixture of arrogance and insecurity, the precariousness of one's position among one's peers, the disbelief that a desirable woman could possibly be interested in you…and so on.  Even though my education and upbringing were very different from Victor's, these internal experiences of a young man rang completely true to me and I found that aspect of the book truly excellent.  There is also a fine, quite light-touch evocation of the religious conservatism of may in Ireland in the 80s which I found very neatly done.

The last quarter or so didn't work quite so well for me as Victor's present-day life becomes more prominent and the shady, slightly menacing figure of a man who claims to know Victor from schooldays intrudes.  The climax is rather weird and I'm still not sure I fully understand it – but it still packed a powerful emotional punch for me, from which I'm still reeling slightly.

I have rounded 4.5-stars up to 5 because so much of the book is exceptionally good, it's so well written and the ending is extraordinary.  Despite minor reservations, I can recommend this warmly.

(I received an ARC from NetGalley.)

Alexander Starritt - The Beast

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Unsubtle and unfunny

Journalists, it has to be said, don't always make good novelists.  Some certainly do (Terry Stisatny is a recent fine example) but I'm afraid I don’t think the same can be said of Aleaxander Starritt and I really didn't get on with The Beast.  It is intended as a satire of an unscrupulous, bigoted and bombastic tabloid newspaper whose staff indulge in all kinds of horrendous practices to twist, distort and outright lie in order to create stories which will outrage their supposedly bigoted readership, boost circulation and shift the mood of the country.  Starritt has lived and worked in that world, so it's possibly an accurate (or at least semi-accurate) picture of what goes on, but as satire, or even a readable story, I found it sadly lacking. 

The present-day story is set in the fictional newspaper from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, but there the comparison ends.  Where Waugh is witty and scalpel sharp, I found Starritt plodding, unfunny and very, very predictable.  This isn't a new area for satire (especially following the News International phone-hacking scandal) and The Beast felt tired and unoriginal, with stock characters, rather a clunky feel and a story which is sordid and depressing without the necessary leaven of wit and clear-sighted originality which is essential in good satire.  We get plenty of intricate detail of office politics which dilutes the central story further.  Starritt even makes it obvious from the geography of The Beast's offices that it's really the Daily Mail; now the Mail may well deserve this sort of bashing, but here it just removes more of the subtlety required in such a book – and there wasn't much to start with.

I got thoroughly fed up with The Beast.  I found it an increasing struggle to read, increasingly unpleasant and wholly unrelieved by the humour and satire I had hoped for.  I'm sorry to be so critical, but that's the truth and I really can't recommend it.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Kamila Shamsie - Home Fire

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Absolutely excellent

I thought this was absolutely excellent.  I had to be persuaded to read it because the idea of an updated Antigone about terrorism, radicalisation and its consequences didn't appeal at all.  In fact, I found it gripping, convincing and very moving as well as saying important things about modern Britain – and the world.

The story is told successively from several points of view, which worked very well for me.  We have members of the Muslim Pasha family in North London plus a Muslim Home Secretary, determined to show the world that he is tough on radical Islam, and his son who becomes involved with the Pasha family.  I won't give any spoilers, but what emerges is beautifully evoked responses from all the characters involved, whose internal lives are convincing and vividly real.  The complexities, deceits and decencies of what happens are exceptionally well done, and I found the whole thing completely involving and ultimately extremely moving.

Kamila Shamsie writes beautifully.  Her prose is extremely readable and simply carried me along.  She creates some beautiful, evocative sentences; for example:  "The sky was a rich blue, the water surged like blood leaving a heart, a lean young man from a world very distant from hers was waiting for her to walk back to him."  Or: "Months after their mother died, Parvaiz, a boy suddenly arrived into adolescence in a house where bills and grief filled all crevices…"  It's wonderful writing.

I was surprised by how very much I liked this book.  It's one of the best I've read for some time, and warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Nathan Englander - Dinner At The Centre Of The Earth

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good - eventually

I very nearly gave up half way through this book, but I'm glad I didn’t.  The first half is slow, mannered and rather uninteresting but it does become quite a gripping and thought-provoking read.

This is really a book about the Israel-Palestine conflict and how it really affects some individuals involved.  It's a complex structure in which three seemingly unrelated narratives, separated in place and time, intercut with each other.  For almost half the book I found this unengaging and frankly quite irritating; it seemed to be a lot of style for its own sake while telling us so little that it didn't make much sense.  It's not helped by some lengthy recounting of the semi-hallucinatory recollections of an unconscious and dying man (a barely disguised Ariel Sharon) which is a device which almost never works for me. 

However, when things finally begin to happen and the connections between the characters become a little clearer the stories really did engage me.  There are some genuinely exciting espionage moments and also penetrating studies of people on both sides of the conflict, as well as those who are ideologically and emotionally caught between the two, raising some complex moral issues which are very well handled.  There is also a touching and convincing love story and a remarkable account of the relationship between a long-term prisoner and his guard, including an extraordinarily moving dénouement, both of which I thought were exceptionally well done.

So, despite its flaws, I thought this was a good, worthwhile book in the end.  It's worth persevering even if you find the first half rather tough going – it's worth it in the end, and I can recommend this.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Michael Innes - Hamlet, Revenge!

Rating: 4/5

Review: 
Still a very good novel

I have read Hamlet, Revenge! A number of times over the years and I still get a lot of pleasure from it.  It was first published in 1937, which shows very plainly in the language, the assumptions about the reader's literary knowledge and the attitudes.  It's a period piece, in other words, and a very good one.

The plot hinges on a murder committed during a production of Hamlet in a large country house.  The redoubtable Inspector Appleby investigates as possibilities of pre-war espionage and the inevitable personal motives emerge.  It is, like all Innes's plots, dense and intricate, and depends upon minutiae of sightlines in a 16^th-Century theatre, a pretty detailed knowledge of Hamlet and so on.  I rather like this, and Innes's enjoyable prose and dry wit add to the pleasure – including one wonderfully amusing and memorable, if wholly absurd, escape from pursuit in a formal garden.

This isn't a light read and does require more intellectual engagement than many Golden Age detective novels, but it's still very rewarding and is regarded by many as a classic of the genre.  Recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Hamilton Crane - Miss Seeton Quilts The Village

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another very good Miss Seeton

This latest Miss Seeton story is, as always, a real pleasure.  We have reached the 1970s, but Miss Seeton herself remains unchanged, thank heavens.

The plot, as if it matters, is an enjoyable load of old hokum concerning Cold War espionage, mysterious findings during the renovations of an old cottage, rumours of Nazi gold and a revolution in a (fictional) South American country.  Miss Seeton is recruited, as always, to make her inspired sketches which reveal important facets of the investigations.

This is all good stuff, but as always for me, the pleasure in these books is the characters, their development and interaction and the wonderful picture of the Village rumour mill (especially those splendid creations, the Nuts) and the tides of rivalries and alliances, through which Miss Seeton glides, innocently and benignly unaware – this time fuelled by a supposedly collaborative embroidery effort to mark an anniversary in the village.  It's probably enough to say that this is a good Miss Seeton book: to her admirers (like me) that's all that need be said.  If you're new to Miss Seeton it might be best to start earlier in the series; this stands alone as a story, but it's helpful to know a little about the characters' history and background to get the most out of the wit and story development.  (The first three books are now available as an omnibus. )

In short, Miss Seeton Quilts The Village, is a pleasure to read and a very enjoyable light diversion.  Warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Salman Rushdie - The Golden House

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Impressive, insightful and readable

I thought this was a very fine novel.  Narrated by René, an aspiring filmmaker, this is an account of the arrival in New York in secretive circumstances of a super-rich family from India and the subsequent, often cataclysmic events surrounding them, in which René plays a part.  The slow emergence of a dark history of corruption and evil is paralleled by Rushdie's perception of the rise of ignorance, untruth, bigotry and hatred, and of "The Joker" (i.e. Trump, although he is never named).  I found it a slow but gripping story which  Rushdie also uses as a vehicle for portrayal and discussion of the times from 2008 to 2016 – the Obama presidency – including penetrating analyses of many of the issues of our time.

The writing is brilliant.  It is discursive, sometimes addresses the reader directly, even sometimes adopts the form of a screenplay and has a wonderful voice of its own.  It is full of cultural allusion of all kinds, especially to film, so that even a neat, passing phrase like "in the age of the search engine, all knowledge is just a motion away," made me suspect that the echo of Paul Simon was deliberate.  References to literature abound  - including, I was rather shocked to note, a misquotation of Kipling :o).  - and a friend who is a classical scholar assures me that it is also crammed with references to Greek and Roman literature and myth, only a small portion of which I noticed, I suspect.  No doubt there is more which I failed to spot entirely.

This could be dreadful: apparently self-referential writing full of cultural references almost shouts of an arrogant, conceited author showing off for all he's worth, something I can't stand in writers like Tom McCarthy, for example.  But it isn’t like that at all; it's readable, engaging and enjoyably insightful and intelligent.  Most of the time it really works and I loved it.

It's not flawless.  I found the denouement a little slick, for example, (in spite of the "if this were a movie" disclaimers) and the postmodern blurring between supposedly objective narrative and things René has "made up" for his screenplay did get a bit much occasionally, especially in a book which excoriates the Trump-inspired replacement of truth with untruth.  It could be argued that this is simply mirroring and illustrating what Rushdie is criticizing, but it felt to me a little too much like trying to have his cake and eating it.

Nonetheless, I thought The Golden House was excellent.  I confess that I've not read a Rushdie novel since giving up on Midnight's Children 35 years ago, so I was slightly dreading this, but I was very impressed by its intelligence, its insight, its superb writing and – slightly surprisingly - its readability.  In short, I think this is an important, insightful book which is also a very good read.  Warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Jimmy Webb - The Cake And The Rain

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not a great memoir

I respect Jimmy Webb's work enormously and hoped to like this book more than I did.  It's a fairly decent memoir in places but overall it lacks much coherence, I think.

The Cake And The Rain covers Webb's life from childhood in an agaraian environment with a pastor father who insisted on moving the family around very frequently, through his period of colossal wealth and fame to the point in 1973 where he took a drug overdose, almost died and lost the ability to create music for a time.  To his credit Webb is honest and forthright not only about his ability, but also about his mistakes, his young man's hubris and so on, and the book gives a decent picture of the time.

The story is, I'm afraid, told in a fractured timescale, with childhood and adolescent episodes intercut with Webb at the height of his fame in the late 60s and early 70s.  Frankly, it's an annoying structure which does nothing to help the book.  There are some great stories and some very tedious ones, too.  Meeting Elvis and Joni Mitchell? I certainly want to hear about that.  Long tales and descriptions of over-flashy cars?  Not so much.  I also think that Webb is a very fine songwriter, but often pretty over-the-top in his prose.  Writing of the start of 1970, for example, he says "Now, the seventies waited for the swift hand of fate to write what wonders or horrors?"  A little of that goes a very long way with me, and it's often a great deal too rich for my taste.

So…worth a read if you're interested in the times and their music, but it's somewhat heavy going and I can only give this a qualified recommendation.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)