William Codpiece Thwackery - 50 Shades of Mr Darcy

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Good ideas stretched very thin

This book didn't appeal to me nearly as much as it has to others.

The basic premise is a good one, and there is some real humour derived from subverting Jane Austen's picture of 19th Century propriety with Mrs Bennett distraught because her daughters haven't yet been ravished, for example. The idea of Mr Collins as Phil Collins is also very funny to begin with, but the rather laboured jokes about his lyrics and song titles did wear pretty thin - and that's what I thought about the whole book, really. It's an inspired comic idea which would be great for a sketch or possibly even a 30-minute programme, but for me it couldn't support an entire book and I found myself skimming a lot while admittedly enjoying the occasional chuckle.

At least part of the problem is that I have not read 50 Shades Of Grey. This may be better if you have read 50 Shades, but for me it was a good comic premise and some funny ideas which made me laugh in places, but which was stretched far too thinly to maintain my interest.

Hanna Jameson - Something You Are

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A very good noir novel

I thought this was a very good noir crime novel. The protagonist and first-person narrator is Nic, a freelance underworld enforcer and killer in London who is employed by a crime boss to find his missing daughter. I found it fresh, gripping and well written, and I became very involved with the story.

The story is bleak, very violent in places and very well told. The prose is readable and the characters generally well drawn and believable. I particularly liked the neat sketching in of how Nic came into his "occupation" without a lot of cumbersome back-story to weigh down the plot. Things move at a good pace and I found the London underworld which Jameson depicts to be repellently plausible. I did think that the culmination of the story was a little weaker, but certainly not enough to spoil anything. Do be warned that there is liberal use of what TV warnings call "very strong language" and some truly sickening violence in places, but I thought both were completely justified and absolutely true to the characters Jameson depicts.

If you want likeable characters to identify with or object to swearing and violence then this book won't be for you. Otherwise, I can recommend it as an exciting, involving and in places quite thoughtful crime novel.

Gordon Ferris - Pilgrim Soul

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A very good crime novel

This is a very good crime novel, the third in the Douglas Brodie series. I enjoyed Bitter Water, but I think this is better; Gordon Ferris seems to be hitting his stride and I think this series may well develop into something quite special. Here, ex-policeman Brodie is still working as a reporter and gets drawn into a sinister murder investigation involving the Jewish community in post-war Glasgow. Events lead to Nazis, the Holocaust and the camps and trials in Germany. It is a well-told and involving story with genuine emotional impact in places.

I always approach books which have a Holocaust theme with a degree of scepticism. It has direct and immediate personal relevance for me and I have seen it too often used to lend a spurious gravitas to undistinguished work. I needn't have worried here because Ferris avoids this well. The Holocaust and its aftermath is a perfectly legitimate subject for a novel set in 1946 and he stays well this side of the line between exposition and exploitation. As a result, I found the book emotionally powerful in places as well as being a good story. It is well told in literate, readable prose and the period and atmosphere of a freezing winter are well done. The odd very non-1946 phrase like "in the loop" does creep in, but rarely enough not to spoil the book in any way.

I found this an engrossing and exciting read with some genuinely important content, too. Recommended.

Kate Worsley - She Rises

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good after a slow start

This is an enjoyable book which is excellent in places, although I do have some reservations. Set in the mid-18th century, it takes the form of two intercut narratives. One is a third person account of Luke, a young boy press-ganged into the Royal Navy and his subsequent adventures, and the other a first person account by Louise, a Suffolk dairymaid who goes into service as a lady's maid with a rich Harwich family. The stories are well told, especially in the latter half of the book, and eventually form a very engrossing narrative of adventure and a powerful love story. I don't want to give away any more and strongly recommend that you try to avoid spoilers for this book: the way in which the two stories are linked emerges slowly and is one of the most interesting parts of reading it.

Kate Worsley has created interesting characters and can write very well. I found her account of the life of a pressed man in the Navy excellent (and a fine complement to the officer-focused tales of Forester or O'Brian.) She generates a good atmosphere and some parts, like the passage where Luke goes aloft to take in sail for the first time for example, are simply excellent.

I have two reservations about this book. The first is with Louise's narrative voice, which, at the beginning of the novel in particular, ends up being in neither Worsley's own enjoyably literary style nor that of a rural girl in 1740. There are phrases thrown in like, "She was that bit older than me, see," while most of the narrative is more of the style of Louise seeing the sea for the first time: "It was the lack of boundary that unnerved me. I had never seen water so wide, distance so unbounded." The two styles clashed very badly and prevented me from hearing the voice of a credible character. The second reservation is that the beginning of the book in particular needs some tightening up and could have done with being a good deal shorter. The opening is terrific, but Louise's story in particular took an age to become at all involving, and I found it a bit of a slog getting to page 150 or so. After that it really took off, though, and I enjoyed it very much.

These flaws didn't ruin it by any means, but did detract from what could have been a very good book indeed. This is still very well worth reading - eventually it is a very good historical novel, but I found it took quite some effort to get through the first third of it.

Griselda Heppel - Ante's Inferno

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A very good read

I enjoyed this book very much. It is aimed at roughly 10-13 year-olds, but I think older teenagers and adults would also enjoy it.

As its title suggests, this is a sort of re-telling of Dante's story of his journey through Hell, set in the present day. There are some neat allusions to the original which those who have read it will enjoy, some characters and torments retold as they were in the original, and some very effective updatings. The narrative is exciting and gripping, and I became very engrossed in it. Ante, the main protagonist, is an engaging character with many of an insecure twelve-year-old's anxieties very well portrayed; I found her character and her struggles with her fears very convincing and involving.

I won't give away too much plot, but the three children making their way through Hell all have their difficulties and misadventures and, as in a good morality tale, all learn from their experience. This may sound a bit turgid and worthy, but it's not - it's a cracking read and a thoroughly enjoyable book with genuine moral and intellectual content. I'm not sure it was so truly outstanding as to merit five stars, but it's very good and warmly recommended.

Elizabeth Strout - My name Is Lucy Barton

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Outstandingly good

I thought this was quite outstandingly good.  It is the first of Elizabeth Strout's books  have read, but it certainly won't be the last.

It find it hard to convey exactly what makes the book so good.  It is narrated in the first person by Lucy Barton who is now a successful writer.  For much of the time she is recalling a period in the 80s when she was slowly recuperating from an illness in hospital and a visit from her almost estranged mother causes her to remember her childhood, some of the people she knew then, her growing up and how this has affected the way she feels and acts.  She had a rural Midwest childhood of poverty and abuse; much of the cruelty and deprivation is implied or sketched from a child's perspective rather than fully described which gives it great power, I think – a little like a great artist capturing the essence of a subject in just a few brush strokes. 

And that's largely it, which doesn't sound like much, but I found it gripping and very involving.  Lucy's voice is beautifully done.  It is simple in a way, but has the tics and traits of phrasing and repetition which make it seem as though she's absolutely real and speaking to you personally.  What she has to say is often rather simple-seeming, but also genuinely profound, and her story, her relationships (especially with her mother) and her sometimes almost random-seeming recollections and musings are just a joy to read. The book is peppered with little gems of wisdom and insight, like "It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people.  It happens everywhere and all the time.  Whatever we call it, I think it's the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down."  Or the insight and kindness in, "…what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don't know they have embarrassed themselves."  Or the simple wisdom in "I learned that work gets done if you simply get on and do it."

Elizabeth Strout has created a truly beautiful miniature here.  She has the ability to paint vivid portraits of people, places and situations in just a few lines, so although the  book is short, it conveys more in its 200 pages or so than many books twice its length and more.  I loved this, and if you like an excellently written novel of character I think you will, too.  Very warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Sarah Pinborough - 13 Minutes

Rating: 3/5

Review:
A bit disappointing

This book has good things about it – an interesting premise and an excellent beginning, for example, but it has some pretty serious failings, too.

The plot is part crime/psychological thriller and part exploration of the world of relationships between teenage girls.  It has plenty of twists as we get closer to the truth of why Natasha ended up in the freezing river and whose heart stopped for thirteen minutes as a result.  To say more would give away more than I would have wanted to know before starting, but this is quite structured so that the real solution doesn't emerge until close to the end of the book.  Along the way we get a lot of examination of the relationships between Natasha and her friends, especially her ex-best friend Becca, from whose point of view a good deal of the narrative is told.

[You may like to be warned that there are some pretty frank descriptions of sex and drugs (although sadly, very little rock & roll) and frequent use if the f-word.  I thought it was all absolutely justified in creating realistic setting and character, but I know some people don't like to read about such things.]

Much of this is pretty good.  Sarah Pinborough writes well as a narrator and it's an interesting story, but I did have some serious reservations.  Principally the book is too long at 400 pages and needs some serious editing.  It really does go on in places, so that I ended up being reasonably interested in what happened in the end but not at all keen on the prospect of having to read another couple of hundred pages to get there.  The narrative is told in several forms including journals, texts, official and news reports and - suddenly and clumsily in the closing pages - a first person internal monologue.  Some is good, but it's a bit clunky at times, with a rather implausible and apparently irrelevant romance which turns out just to be a means for the author to get a police officer into a convenient place at the right time, for example.  Also, there is some active misleading of the reader about the authorship of some of the texts which I think goes beyond what is acceptable in a mystery.  Added to this are some pretty serious implausibilities and an ending which I found plain silly, so I did struggle a bit.

I'm afraid I didn't quite find the plot, the characterisation and motive or the analysis of relationships quite convincing enough. I have recently read Holly Bourne's brilliant Am I Normal Yet? which I found far better at depicting relationships in a similar situation.  For me, 13 Minutes didn't really live up to its promise and I can only give it a rather lukewarm recommendation.