Natasha Solomons - The Gallery Of Vanished Husbands

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good novel

Natasha Solomons is becoming established as a significant novelist, and rightly so, in my view. This is her third novel and, while I wasn't quite as keen on it as I was on The Novel In The Viola (her second) or The Song Collector (her fourth) it is still very good indeed.

The story is of Juliet Monague, a housewife in 1950s suburban England. Her husband has simply walked out and disappeared, leaving her in a very difficult limbo in the Jewish community in which she lives. It is the tale of her gradual breaking free of the stifling conventions and her emotional wounds to find a world in which she can be fulfilled. It sounds like a load of cliché-ed chicklit, but Solomons is a fine, thoughtful and intelligent writer who lifts it miles above that.

I love Natasha Solomons' writing. Her prose is readable, engaging and unfussy and she evokes period and place completely convincingly, but it is her characters an d hr treatment of them which really stand out. She is remarkably perceptive about people and sees her characters, flaws and all, with a very clear eye but also great compassion. I am always moved in some way by her books.

I can recommend this as a very good read indeed, which has important things to say about all sorts of human relationships. Warmly recommended.

William Sutcliffe - Concentr8

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, thought-provoking read

This is a good, engrossing book with some important things to say.

Set in near-future London, the story concerns a group of teenagers who, during riots very like those of 2011, randomly kidnap and hold hostage a member of the mayor's staff.  It emerges that policies have been in place for years to induce large numbers of "difficult" children, including these, to be placed on Ritalin.  This was superseded by the cheaper drug Concentr8 but which has now been withdrawn in one of the "difficult decisions" made as part of the austerity programme.  The result is rioting and unrest with the inevitable political manoeuvring, dissembling and blame-shifting.

Told in multiple first-person narratives, we get the story of how the kidnap develops from the point of view of the teenagers involved, the hostage, the mayor, a journalist and a police negotiator.  There isn't all that much fast action, but the story is full of tension and menace and I found much of it pretty gripping.  It is really a well-told polemic about the insidious medicalising of social problems, driven by political and commercial advantages rather than benefit to "patients".   It's an important topic which Sutcliffe addresses pretty well, but I did have some reservations, too.

The multiple-voice approach is reasonably successful, but there are too many different voices, some of which add little to the narrative and not all of which work very well.  The main voice is Troy, who I found very convincing and compelling as a young man with intelligence but a troubled background which has denied him much education or opportunity.  Other voices were less convincing: although I am all in favour of merciless parodies of Boris Johnson (who is so thinly disguised here as to be in plain sight), this is so crude that it rather loses its impact, I think, and I could have done entirely without most of the other teenagers and the police negotiatior.

Nonetheless, this is a good, involving read.  It is also a book with genuine insight and substance which I can recommend.

Giltrow - The Distance

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, exciting thriller

I thought this was a good, involving and at times very exciting thriller. It is certainly a very promising debut.

The plot summary sounds pretty dreadful to be honest - a shady "operative" asked to place a hit man inside an implausible-sounding prison facility to kill someone who isn't registered there, with all sorts of personal complications. I wouldn't have bothered but it was recommended to me by a friend whose judgement I trust and I'm glad it was. Some suspension of disbelief is required, but it is well written and structured, and the complex, multi-layered plot develops very nicely. I also found the characters thoroughly believable, which is by no means always the case with this sort of book.

The book is rather too long for its own good and a little tightening would have helped, but certainly not enough to spoil anything badly. Also, do be warned that there is a good deal of pretty graphic violence in it. It is certainly not gratuitous and is unflinchingly horrifying in places so it's anything but titillating, but if you're not keen on graphic violence this may not be for you.

I found this book a good, exciting read overall and I am looking forward to reading the next one in the series - always a good sign. Recommended.

le Carré - Smiley's People

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Still brilliant after all these years

I have just re-read this after about 35 years, and it is still very good indeed. There's not much in the way of violent action, although its aftermath does feature, but le Carré's brilliant storytelling keeps the tension high and kept me reading well after I should have gone to sleep.

I think what makes this so good is le Carré's mastery of character and dialogue. He knows the world of Intelligence intimately, of course, and he peoples it with plausible, beautifully drawn characters. There are also moments of description which encapsulate and idea or experience quite brilliantly, like "the unclearable litter of old age" or "a clarifying loneliness." These lift the book above just being a very good spy novel and make it a very fine novel in itself, I think.

This is the third in the Karla Trilogy, and it's best to read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy first, but this can be read on its own with great pleasure, too. I would recommend it very warmly – it is the work of a true master at the height of his powers.

Patrick Ness - Chaos Walking Trilogy

The Knife Of Never Letting Go
The Ask And The Answer
Monsters Of Men


Rating: 5/5

Review:
A brilliant trilogy



This is a remarkable and brilliant trilogy. It has an imaginative and interesting setting and premise, a gripping style and a story which kept me reading keenly right to the last page of each book as it came out and hungry for the next. They are billed as books for young adults and I think they would enjoy them greatly, but other not-very-young-at-all adults like me should read them, too. They are page-turningly exciting and form a really rich narrative which makes remarkably profound observations on very important themes without once making you feel as though you are being lectured.

The central, extremely ingenious, idea is that thoughts, including those of animals, are audible to everyone else. This is called their Noise and remains a fascinating idea throughout. The central character is twelve-year-old Todd Hewitt and a flavour of his narrative voice is given by this:
"Men's minds are messy places and Noise is like the active, breathing face of that mess. It's what's true and what's believed and what's imagined and what's fantasized and it says one thing and a completely opposite thing at the same time and even tho the truth is definitely in there, how can you tell what's true and what's not when yer getting *everything*? The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking."

Todd was brought up in a small, closely controlled community. Exactly where this community is and the nature of it emerges slowly in the narrative, and again this is very well-controlled and skilfully done. Early on in the story Todd discovers something which puts him in extreme danger and he has to run from the place in which he has spent every day of his life so far. The story to begin with is of an outsider searching, hunted and running in an unknown land. Later, as Todd takes on other roles, the story becomes morally complex and very involving in many ways.

The first book is narrated by Todd alone. For me, the second and third books are even better as other narrators also appear as their stories unfold - a very difficult trick to pull off convincingly, but Ness does it brilliantly. The voices are clearly identifiable, and the structure allows Ness to explore how misinformation and misunderstanding can be exploited by the ruthless and bring grief to the innocent. Ness also explores how a dictator can manipulate even the well-meaning, the nature of oppression and suppression and how the good can become dehumanised by inhuman situations and treatment. There is also a constant sense of the complexities of the ethics of resistance and terrorism, and how seemingly legitimate anti-terrorism measures can be exploited by those wishing to limit freedom. No easy answers are presented, very few people are portrayed as wholly good or wholly bad, and the entire book is imbued with a sense of the difficulty of knowing the right thing to do and how hard it can be to do the right thing even when you know what it is. And, though it all, an uplifting sense of the strength and power of friendship and love.

Be warned, there is some real, unflinching horror here, too. It is anything but gratuitous - it is central to the story and to the ideas being considered - but I found it truly disturbing because, like the whole of the trilogy, it is so brilliantly written.

These books have more intellectual, ethical and moral content than most books written for adults, conveyed in a superbly-told, imaginative and thrilling story. I cannot think of much more to ask of a book than that, and I recommend all three in the strongest possible terms to adults of all ages.

Lea Carpenter - Eleven Days

Rating: 3/5

Review: 
Not really for me

From the descriptions and the endorsements I was expecting something quite special from this book, but I'm afraid I didn't really get on with it.

The story has been well summarized by others: set in the USA in 2012 with intercut episodes of what led to the present situation, it is the story of single mother Sara whose son Jason decides not to pursue the brilliant academic career open to him, but to train for Special Forces.  As we join Sara, Jason has been missing in action for nine days and the book tells of her responses and those of others to unfolding events, with lengthy passages about Jason's training and military career.

In many ways it is very good: it is well written and extremely knowledgeable.  It is concerned principally with the internal lives of the two main characters and Lea Carpenter has put a great deal of thought into them – but it never really engaged me, somehow.  I found it rather plodding and frankly a bit of a struggle for a lot of iys length.  The episodic nature of the narrative is partly responsible, but I think it's principally that for me Carpenter doesn't quite create real, recognisable characters.  Something about them seemed a little like CGI in films – close, but not quite real.

Whatever the reason, the book didn't gel with me.  This is just my personal response, of course, and I wouldn't want to put anyone off.  My copy of the book carries endorsements from both Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk, and Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds which in their very different ways are both brilliant, and two of the best books about war I have ever read.  They both think Eleven Days is terrific, plenty of other people plainly think it's excellent and you may do, too, but I can only give it a very lukewarm recommendation.

Murari - The Taliban Cricket Club

Rating 3/5

Review:
Fluffy and predictable but redeemed by some good atmosphere

I expected this to be a quirky novel about life under the Taliban, leavened with some women's subversion of repression and cricket. There was some of that, but the plot is basically a fluffy, predictable romance with burkas thrown in and a tiny bit of cricket in the background. The book merited three stars for me because I found the portrayal of life in Afghanistan under the Taliban, particularly for women, powerful and convincing in places. The author is male and I am pleased to see that female reviewers found the female narrative voice as convincing as I did.

Apart from these undoubted merits, however, I found the plot and characters thin, predictable and unconvincing. It is packed with cliché and, needless to say, Rukhsana our narrator is perfect, with impeccable loyalty, a feisty spirit, unimpeachable integrity, remarkable beauty which she isn't really aware of...tick them off as you go. I strongly suspect that this was written with more than half an eye on potential film rights.

I must also warn anyone reading this because of the title that the writing about cricket is simply dire. None of the beauty, power and grace of the game is evoked anywhere and the poetry of its language was entirely absent - indeed the author simply doesn't know the meaning of some of the basic cricketing terms he uses, and the cricket itself is ludicrously unconvincing.

If it weren't for the decent depiction of the repression I wouldn't have finished this book and I found myself skimming as the predictable plot was played out by rather cardboard characters, so I'm afraid only a lukewarm recommendation

The Bluffers' Guide To Cricket

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Witty and knowledgeable

I thoroughly enjoy these Bluffer's Guides. I had the good fortune to be sent a few for review by the publisher: they are pocket-sized and only around 100 pages long and I have found them all amusing, informative and very enjoyable. They are, in fact, a bluff in themselves because although they purport to be a guide for those who simply want to bluff their way, they use this as a cover for providing lots of very sound fact, written by people who really know and love their subject while being very witty about it and often scathing about the pretence which surrounds it.

This Guide to Cricket is an up-to-date (in 2013) view of the game, with some basics about what terms mean, the Laws (a successful bluffer must never refer to "the rules", of course), the history, some characters and the modern game in general. It offers some funny and penetrating insights into all sorts of things including, as a random sample, village cricket, the KP/Strauss "incident", Twenty20 and a very funny summary of the important characteristics of various national teams. As a life-long cricket follower, I found it very funny and in places genuinely informative about some of the dustier corners of the game (ideal for a bluffer, of course).

The book acknowledges that a true novice would need actually to attend a match or two and listen to a bit of TMS before they could bluff their way convincingly even after reading this book - but then the book is all a bluff anyway and, although a novice would learn a good deal, it is really aimed at cricket fans who want an amusing, informative read by a fellow lover of the game. They'll get it. I enjoyed it hugely and sometimes laughed out loud. Warmly recommended.

[You probably don't want to know this, but just to show how difficult real bluffing is, I spotted a mistake even this book. It claims on p.68 that AC MacLaren's 424 "is still the highest individual first-class score on an English cricket ground." In fact, as we all know, BC Lara scored 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston in 1994. Let this be a warning to aspiring bluffers. :o)]

Barney Broom - Haute Cuisine

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Very disappointing

I'm afraid I didn't get on with this book at all. It is a good idea for a satire, but to work it has to be well done and I'm afraid this isn't at all well done.

The basic notion is a good one: a chef secretly begins to serve human flesh in a restaurant and when word gets out it becomes the latest culinary sensation among the foodie set. It's an excellent basis for a really biting satire of the way fashion grips and controls some people, however harmful or repellent the fashion may be. To work, though, it needs finesse, an ability to create believable characters and situations to carry the central grotesqueness, and an ability to tell a well-paced and well-written story. I'm sorry to say that Barney Broom manages none of these things.

The characters, particularly the villains, are the crudest of stereotypes who wouldn't be out of place in a pantomime. The drunken, venal and sexually voracious aunt/guardian, for example, or the phoney chef de cuisine are so crudely painted as to be ludicrous. To make matters worse, things like the chef's behaviour are unsubtly described but even then this isn't left to speak for itself and we are constantly told that he is a buffoon, that he is a phoney, that he looks ridiculous and so on. Broom is a film-maker and really needs to remember the film-maker's adage "Show, don't tell," because this sort of thing is simply patronising and annoying. The narrative also lacks any subtlety or finesse - for example the whole point of satire is to portray something grotesque but to leave the grotesqueness to speak for itself, but we have to be told (after it has been made face-slappingly obvious) that "the world had plainly gone completely insane". It's like people who ruin a joke by insisting on explaining it to you afterward.

The prose, too, is stilted. It is full of things like "...to the untrained eye the kitchen became chaotic but it was very far from being such" which reads very awkwardly, and although it would be unfair to say that it is cliché-ridden, it is full of stale phrases like "little did anyone know that...", "there were problems from the word go", "it blew the whole thing sky high" and so on. I found it a struggle to get to the end of the book.

I won't go on. I am genuinely sorry to have to be so critical, especially of a first novel, because I much prefer to encourage where I can, but I really didn't think this was very good. Quite a few people have enjoyed this much more than I did and you might, too, but personally I can't recommend it.

Raymond Chandler - The Lady In The Lake

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A superb novel

I have just re-read this for probably the 6th or 7th time, but I hadn't read it for at least a decade. It is still quite brilliant, and the pleasure of reading such a superbly written, engrossing and humane novel is undimmed by either familiarity or time. The plot is gripping and the first person narration is an absolute masterclass in how to do it.

I think Chandler was a truly great writer of English. Marlowe has the tough one-liners and smart comebacks, of course, but he also has wonderful, meditative passages on the human condition which you hardly notice as being meditative because they are so well done. Marlowe is, under the hard-boiled exterior, a moral and humane man with a deep understanding of people which enables him to get to the heart of things and it is this which makes Chandler's books stand out as fine novels as well as first-class detective stories.

The other aspect of Chandler's sheer brilliance is his characterization. Everyone, even the most minor of characters, is drawn convincingly and with immense skill. They generally seem to paint their own portraits through what they say and do rather than a lot of the laborious psychological theorising which can get so tiresome in lesser detective novels. For example, Jim Patton, the Constable (effectively sherrif) of a small mountain county is a creation of genius, I think.

Few people will need an endorsement from me to persuade them to read a Chandler novel, but I would recommend this very warmly indeed. Plot, place and characters are all brilliantly done: it is, quite simply, superb.

Elizabeth Haynes - Behind Closed Doors

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent police thriller

I thought this was an excellent thriller/police procedural. It is well written and very gripping with some real substance to it.

This is the second in Elizabeth Haynes's DCI Louisa Smith series. I hadn't read the first but I found that didn't matter at all - this works fine as a stand-alone novel. The narrative is in two interlaced stories - Louisa's current investigations into organised-crime-related violence and the experience of Scarlett Rainsford who, ten years earlier at the age of 15, was abducted while on holiday and trafficked into the sex trade in Europe. The two stories are linked and develop very well.

The police procedural aspects are excellent: they felt completely authentic to me, as you might expect from Haynes, who has worked as a police intelligence analyst. The real strength of this book for me, though, was Scarlett's story. The horrifying reality of what "people trafficking" actually means is excellently evoked and I found the sections recounting Scarlett's story utterly gripping and convincing, with some real heart-pounding moments of tension, too. I found myself completely immersed in the whole thing and very keen to return and read some more at every opportunity.

Perhaps being hyper-critical, I was rather less keen on the parts to do Louisa's personal life, and I found the present-day investigation into organised crime rather hard to follow - especially as I was so bound up in Scarlett's story that coming back to trying to remember who was who in the various organisations seemed a bit of a distraction sometimes.

However, these are small things, they didn't really intrude and this was definitely a five-star read for me. It is engrossing, thrilling, very well written and has some very important things to say. Highly recommended.

(I received a free copy for review via Netgalley.)

Simon Lelic - Rupture

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very nearly five stars

I found this book an absolutely riveting read. It is very well-written and the storytelling is extremely skilfully structured. We are told virtually at the beginning the details of the crime being investigated and who did it. The book is the story of an investigation into why the atrocity was committed, various people's views of the crime and its perpetrator, and who may have been culpable for failing to prevent it. I don't want to give away plot developments, because the way the story emerges is truly gripping, but central to the novel is bullying - its origins, its consequences, how people collude in order to avoid being bullied themselves and so on. It is generally horrifyingly believable, and written in a flat style but with an underlying rage which made the book (and me) burn with pity and indignation.

The structure is original and fascinating. The narrative alternates between fairly conventional (although well written) descriptions of the activities of the investigating detective, Lucia May, and what witnesses say in interviews with her. These are presented as monologues, and although it is plain that questions have sometimes been asked or responses given we get only the witnesses' words. I found this a really engrossing aspect of the book and it brought the testimony to life quite remarkably.

I couldn't quite give this book five stars. I was utterly gripped and very moved by it, but I wasn't altogether convinced that all of the voices in the monologues sounded quite genuine. The use of hot weather to create an oppressive feel was perhaps a little overdone. Also, thinking about it afterward some of the characters (particularly the headmaster) verged on caricatures and somehow I found it hard to believe that none of the mature, professional adults who witnessed or were affected by gross abuses had so much as spoken to anyone in a position to do something about it like a trusted manager or union rep. The author may possibly be justified in both these things to illustrate a genuine and horrifying problem, but they didn't quite ring true for me.

Nevertheless, I would recommend this very highly as a thoughtful, genuinely involving nearly five-star book.

Jack Heath - Replica

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific YA thriller

I thought this was a terrific YA thriller. Its basic idea is excellent and the narrative moves at a terrific pace.

The book is set in Canberra, Australia in the near future and told in the first person. It is hard to give a flavour of the story without spoiling too much - the first ten pages or so are a great set-up and I would have hated to know even that much before starting the book. It's a thoughtful and intelligent story, but crammed with action. You may find yourself able to anticipate some of the plot "twists", but that didn't matter to me at all; the characters are very well painted and the story has a good structure and it's so well done that I just enjoyed the ride. [I have to add, though, that the author's understanding of the mechanism and effects of electromagnetism doesn't reflect well on his physics teachers. :o) ]

The book is aimed at young adults, but this definitely-not-young adult also enjoyed it immensely and I can recommend it as a gripping, exciting and also rather thought-provoking book.

Terry Pratchett - The Truth

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Funny, wise and humane - Pratchett at his best

A Terry Pratchett novel scarcely needs another review from me, but I have just re-read this for the third or fourth time and thought I'd add my voice to the chorus of praise for it.

For me, this is among Pratchett's best. He is brilliant here - funny (of course) but also wise, humane and very insightful into the workings of the press and how a free press influences and checks those in power. He does all this within an exciting, beautifully paced narrative with his usual array of very well painted characters both new and familiar. (I have been in love with Sergeant Angua for years and was pleased to see her make a brief but welcome appearance). He uses them to make delicate points about race relations, generosity and meanness of spirit, what "sorry" might really mean, the responsible use of power and so on. It is all presented in Pratchett's typical witty, readable style - like this exchange between The Patrician and Willam de Worde, who is producing a newspaper:
`So . . . we have what the people are interested in, and human interest stories, which is what humans are interested in, and the public interest, which no one is interested in.'
`Except the public, sir,' said William, trying to keep up.
`Which isn't the same as people and humans?'
`I think it's more complicated than that, sir.'
`Obviously. Do you mean that the public is a different thing from the people you just see walking about the place? The public thinks big, sensible, measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things?'
`I think so. I may have to work on that idea too, I admit.'

No need to go on, I suspect. In short, this is high-quality Pratchett, and it doesn't get much better that that. Very warmly recommended.

Adrian McKinty - Gun Street Girl

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Probably his best so far

This is another very good novel from Adrian McKinty. Set in Northern Ireland in 1985, it is the fourth in his series featuring Sean Duffy, a CID inspector in the RUC. It is helpful to have read the first three but certainly not essential and this stands perfectly well on its own.

The plot of Gun Street Girl revolves around an apparently simple murder/suicide which begins to look much less simple, and Duffy is again drawn into complex political waters. To say more would be more of a spoiler than I would have wanted before I read the book, and anyway the chief pleasures of these books for me aren't the plots. What McKinty does really well are the characters he portrays, the engaging narrative voice of the flawed but fundamentally decent Duffy and the superb sense of time and place he generates. He is also ingenious at weaving his stories around real events of Northern Ireland during The Troubles and (to this non-expert, at least) gives a very good sense of what things were like then. All of these are again excellently done and kept me gripped throughout - and the plot, too, is rather more credible than in some of the previous books, where I have found them a little overblown.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and I think the Duffy series is shaping up to be a very significant addition to the detective canon. This is thoughtful, readable and gripping, and probably the best of the series so far. Warmly recommended.

This is another very good novel from Adrian McKinty. Set in Northern Ireland in 1985, it is the fourth in his series featuring Sean Duffy, a CID inspector in the RUC. It is helpful to have read the first three but certainly not essential and this stands perfectly well on its own.

The plot of Gun Street Girl revolves around an apparently simple murder/suicide which begins to look much less simple, and Duffy is again drawn into complex political waters. To say more would be more of a spoiler than I would have wanted before I read the book, and anyway the chief pleasures of these books for me aren't the plots. What McKinty does really well are the characters he portrays, the engaging narrative voice of the flawed but fundamentally decent Duffy and the superb sense of time and place he generates. He is also ingenious at weaving his stories around real events of Northern Ireland during The Troubles and (to this non-expert, at least) gives a very good sense of what things were like then. All of these are again excellently done and kept me gripped throughout - and the plot, too, is rather more credible than in some of the previous books, where I have found them a little overblown.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and I think the Duffy series is shaping up to be a very significant addition to the detective canon. This is thoughtful, readable and gripping, and probably the best of the series so far. Warmly recommended.

Raymond Chandler - The Little Sister

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not one of Chandler's best

I think Raymond Chandler was a truly great writer of English and at his best a truly great novelist. Sadly, this isn't one of his great novels.

At his best Marlowe is tough, certainly, but he is also a thoughtful, moral and humane man. His meditative reflections on things are insightful and witty and although they're sometimes very world-weary, there is a sense of decency and sometimes compassion to them. He takes no nonsense from anyone and is quite often provocatively rude, but he has genuine sympathy for people like General Sternwood in The Big Sleep and Anne Riordan in Farewell My Lovely, for example, and his befriending of Terry Lennox and its consequences in The Long Goodbye are genuinely touching. However, in The Little Sister there is a pretty unremitting tide of jaded cynicism, unredeemed by much in the way of humanity.

Chandler is plainly disgusted by much of what he saw and experienced as a Hollywood screenwriter and is attacking it here - which is fair enough - but the unrelenting nastiness and sarcasm much of the time in The Little Sister isn't really worthy of such a great writer. Dialogue, too, is too often reduced to interchangeable tough guys trading wisecracks, rather than the individual, realistic voices sprinkled with brilliant lines which he produced at his best. There are none of the superbly drawn more minor characters he creates in other novels, like Jim Patton, Eddie Prue or Lieutenant Nulty, to name just three which spring immediately to mind. The similes are still there, of course, but seldom of the quality of "he was as thin as an honest alibi" or "I felt like an amputated leg." Marlowe's interactions with women are for the most part downright unpleasant as, one after another, they throw themselves at him...and so on.

I first read The Little Sister over forty years ago. In that time I have re-read Chandler's five truly great novels at least half-a-dozen times each but haven't gone back to The Little Sister until now, and I have been reminded of why. It's not actively bad, but it's no better than a lot of average hard-boiled detective fiction of the period. For a Chandler devotee it's a disappointment; I'm glad to have reminded myself of it, but I probably won't be bothering again. Other devotees will want to read it, of course, but if you're new to Chandler, my advice is to skip The Little Sister and to start with one of these instead - they are genuine classics and immensely enjoyable:
The Big Sleep
Farewell, My Lovely
The High Window
The Lady In The Lake
The Long Goodbye

Robert Lautner - The Road To Reckoning

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Gripping, touching and rewarding

I enjoyed this book very much. It is extremely well written and a gripping story.

The story is narrated by an older Thomas Walker, telling the story of a journey he made the age of twelve in 1837. Eventually left alone on the trail, it is the story of his perilous journey home and of the things and people he encounters. To say more would act as more of a spoiler than I would have wanted before reading the book, but the tale, though simple-seeming, is a truly gripping one with a cast of beautifully drawn characters, a building atmosphere of menace with some very exciting episodes, and a vivid picture of life at the time.

Much of this is due to the narrative voice of Thomas, which is exceptionally well done. I am no expert, but the language and period detail seemed utterly convincing to me and I was drawn in completely, both into the historical background and into Thomas's internal world. The book has quietly incisive things to say about goodness and wickedness (both sometimes found in unexpected places), courage and cowardice, the nature of guilt, bluster and genuineness, how society works (including the role of guns) and other things, much of which has real relevance today. The narrative is full of small observations like this on the ladies of a recently-founded town: "We did not have a carriage so we were low to them. They had forgotten that their town was built by lumber and sweat."

It is the language of the narrative which really distinguished this book for me. To give you slightly more of a flavour, Thomas writes this when confronted by a bullying robber on the trail: "He waited for me. And like all violent, laughing children (for that is still what his kind are even in their grown-up mind) they have nothing better to do than wait for you. In their reasoning there is nothing more diverting or entertaining than your misery. As children and as men they do not kiss good-bye to their families to go out for pleasant company or a drink and meal or for diversion. They go out to spread their misery. Good societies ostracize these felons eventually. But I was now aware that I was in the very lands that these men make their streets and homes when the good has had enough of them."

If you like that, you will like the book, I think. Personally, I loved it. I found it gripping, touching and very rewarding, and I recommend it very warmly.

Kate Gross - Late Fragments

Rating 4/5

Review:
Well written, touching and perceptive

This is a good book. It is well written, thoughtful and well worth reading by anyone involved in any way with terminal disease. Kate Gross manages to talk honestly about aspects of her life, her cancer ("The Nuisance") and her impending death largely without sentimentality and sometimes with great perceptiveness.

I find it almost impossible to review this book in any great depth for two reasons. One is that it seems almost unbearably inhuman to criticise anything at all about such a sincere and un-self-pitying account. The other is that I have had far, far too much experience of this sort of thing, including my beloved sister dying of cancer in very similar circumstances. Objective analysis is therefore very difficult and, to be honest, far too painful, but as a brief personal perspective:

A lot of the book is readable, thoughtful and touching. I didn't find all of it brilliant - having terminal cancer does not automatically grant someone superhuman wisdom - but Kate Gross was already a thoughtful, intelligent woman before her cancer and she offers some very good reflections and insights. One section that I thought was especially good was the brief passage about what Kate wanted from people supporting her. She acknowledges that people often don't know what to do and lays out very frank and sensible rules and advice. Examples include: offer help, then "offer again in six months time because the chances are that that is the point at which everyone else will have stopped offering help", or "Remember this is not about *you*. The point is not to burnish your halo, but to help." Oh, yes.

She also says things I don't agree with, like "There's really nothing you can say that will make things worse, after all." Kate plainly didn't hear some of the presumably well-intentioned but crass, stupid and deeply upsetting things which were said to my sister, but there is a good deal of very good stuff here about a variety of things in life and in death and there's bound to be a difference of view occasionally.

My overall verdict is that this is well worth reading. It's nothing like some of the self-indulgent misery memoirs which have been published: it's well written, thoughtful and offers some important insights. Recommended.

Edmund Crispin - The Moving Toyshop

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very enjoyable nonsense

This is a very amusing book in which the crime/detective story is really just a vehicle for amusing writing and humorous capers. There is a crime, certainly, and the book's protagonists solve it in the end, but it is chiefly an entertainment with that arch, self-conscious Oxford wit at its centre and the plot merely something to hang it on.

And that's just fine with me. Edmund Crispin writes with genuine wit and often with humour, too. He creates just-believable characters and puts them in a wholly implausible story involving dead heiresses, bizarre wills, car chases, eccentric professors...you name it. It is terrific fun, especially if you largely ignore the plot. Crispin does go to some lengths to set up a mystery which depends upon who was in exactly which room when, but to be honest it didn't matter that much to me. The style and characters are what make this book, and I enjoyed both hugely. One does need to make considerable allowances for attitudes of the time - especially toward women, who are generally insulted or patronised - but the book is a period piece and is very enjoyable on that basis.

The Author's Note before the Contents Page gives a good flavour of Crispin's style:
"None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits."

If you like that, you will like the book, and I can recommend it as a very enjoyable piece of nonsense.

Molly McGrann - The Ladies of the House

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I didn't get on with this book. It is a good idea for a story but for me it wasn't sufficiently well written or structured to work as a novel.

It is revealed early on that the chief protagonists of the book are former prostitutes now grown old, and the book is concerned with their histories, their characters and what took them along the path they ended up on. It is also about attitudes to them both in the past and the present, and how humanity or lack of it may affect people's lives. It's an original and interesting idea and I was looking forward to reading this book, but I'm afraid I was very disappointed.

The problem for me is in the quality of the writing. Molly McGrann has a slightly stilted style in places which often feels rather self-conscious. Her descriptions of characters and their inner worlds felt forced to me, without delicacy or finesse and with little real insight. This, and the rather frequent use of stale phrases like "next thing she knew," for example, meant that they began to feel like rather crude stereotypes rather than well drawn characters. As a result, I began to lose interest in their stories.

The prose is too often awkward, especially from a "literary critic, poet, novelist and former editor at the Paris Revue." Take this sentence, following a (rather predictable) rant about people who strip all the character out of old houses: "So too would this house soon have that fate." I found that a badly structured, stilted and ugly volley of monosyllables which threw me straight out of the narrative, and the same thing happened in quite a few other places. It often seemed rather amateurish to me - including the ending which was intended to be moving but which I just found absurd in its ridiculous implausibility.

I'm sorry to be so critical, but I really didn't think this was very good. Others have obviously enjoyed it so do read their reviews before you let me put you off, but I really can't recommend this.

C.S. Forester - The Peacemaker

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still very well worth reading

This isn't a Forester classic, but it's still very well worth reading, I think. The Peacemaker was written in 1934 and tells of Edward Pethwick, a diffident schoolmaster whose personal timidity and unfulfilled personal life coupled with a brilliance at physics leads to potentially Earth-shaking consequences. As a plot, it doesn't add up to all that much, really, and the ending in particular has a rather damp-squib feel about it, but I still found it involving and enjoyable. It is principally a novel of character, as many of Foresters books are, and it is this and his superb skill as a storyteller which make the book worthwhile.

The Peacemaker is a period-piece in many ways; certainly the meticulous build-up (which I found fascinating) would nowadays be crammed into a few pages - probably with references to childhood abuse to explain everything - and the "action" in the second half, rather than being fast and furious with car chases and Conspiracies Which Go Right To the Top is more concerned with Pethwick's character and his responses to events, and an often unflattering portrait of the press and public in the face of a threat to established attitudes. Forester was a genius at painting the minutiae of character which shape events (it is part of what makes the Hornblower series *so* good, I think) and he does it very well here, too. He also shows how relatively small, sometimes apparently insignificant actions can have the profoundest effect on the course of major events. It's a theme in a lot of Forester's work (like the excellent Brown On Resolution, or Hornblower mounting a horse and rallying the troops outside Riga in The Commodore, for example) and it is convincingly done here, too

I have loved Forester's books for decades but have only just got round to this. I'm glad I have and I would recommend this to anyone who likes a well-written and intelligent story.

Adam Sternbergh - Shovel Ready

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but tails off a little

This is a good, readable novel. It promises to be excellent in the first half, but works less well later on.

Set in a near-ish future, the story itself is, at heart, a pretty well-worn idea of a cynical hit-man who is hired to kill a young woman, finds he has some scruples and feelings and ends up protecting her and tackling a Sinister Conspiracy Of The Powerful. However, the book is lifted well above the ordinary by the excellent narrative voice which is sharp, pacy and very engaging.

Adam Sternbergh also paints a convincing picture of a dystopian, New York following some devastating attacks on the city and creates a very good (if not entirely original) idea of a virtual reality into which people retreat more and more. This doesn't dominate the story, but provides both interesting context and important plot elements. I found the character of the hit-man narrator convincing and surprisingly engaging, and other characters are well drawn, if a little familiar form similar books, and all this kept me very engrossed for at least the first half of the book. However, I thought the plot wasn't well structured enough to really hold me once the initial impact of style and setting wore off. It became a bit disjointed and less convincing and the rather obvious set-up for the next in the series rang a little false.

Nevertheless, I can recommend this as an exciting and enjoyable novel and I will certainly read the next one. It's not a brilliant book but it's a good one and well worth reading.

Jessica Cornwell - The Serpent Papers

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Could have been much better

I tried this book because of good reviews and because it seemed to promise genuine intellectual content, given the historical and alchemical background. It has very good things about it, but ultimately it wasn't well enough done and I found the whole thing a bit of a slog.

The story is a good idea: a researcher into arcane alchemical and mystical books and documents becomes drawn into an old investigation of serial killings in Barcelona, and also into the hunt for an ancient manuscript, both of which place her in danger and which, inevitably, are related. Jessica Cornwell plainly knows a lot about alchemy, its language, symbolism and its history and puts this across well. She also captures very well the passion and deep connection with books of her central character, who narrates much of the story, and generates a good sense of place in Barcelona. It could have been a great read, but I'm afraid the execution wasn't really good enough.

The story has a lot of threads and we jump between times and narrative voices. This can be very effective but here it all became very jumbled for me so that I spent so much attention on remembering where we were, when this bit was set and who the people were that I struggled to keep up with the plot. Even this would have been manageable, but the style also let it down rather. The protagonist has a narrative voice which is permanently at fever pitch, and it gets very wearing. Even routine work is presented as though it were high emotion. Just as a small example, a police officer is trying to determine how a criminal got access to the scene of the crime. We get this:

"He makes a call to his officers. They check the entry point. Sure enough, the lock of the metal chain that stretches across the turnout has been cut.

The bolt hacked through.

When Fabregat holds the cut metal in his hands, he runs his eyes over the surrounding apartments."

That level of emphasis on the simple, unimportant fact that a bolt has been hacked through by giving it a paragraph to itself simply dims the effect in other places when emphasis is really needed, and having everything - vital or trivial - presented at that pitch made this very hard going for me.

Similarly, there are some awkwardnesses and solecisms in the prose. "Sweat malingered," for example, or "I must bear this lodestone." (She just means "load," nothing to do with magnetized rock.) Correspondence dated 1851 contains enough small anachronistic usages (like "he's a career explorer," or "you're half way there" meaning "you have partially solved it") for it just not to ring quite true, and so on.

Perhaps I am being too picky, but style and context are very important in creating a story, and this one could have done with some firm editorial input. Others have enjoyed this book, and there is a good deal to enjoy so do read other reviews before letting me put you off, but for me this was only so-so. A shame - it could have been much better.

Spike Milligan - Adolf Hitler; My Part In His Downfall

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Still hugely enjoyable

It is over 40 years since I first read this book, and I am glad to say that it stands up very well.

This is a record of Spike's training and preparation in southern England before embarking to war. It is often extremely funny and quite often extremely touching. It is also a vivid record of life at that time both in and out of the army, which is an aspect I had rather neglected previously.

It's well written and laced with vulgarity, wit and Milligan's zany humour which makes it a real pleasure to read, and quite often embarrassing in public because I kept bursting out laughing. Some of the attitudes of the time are uncomfortable now (especially those toward women), but are recounted without gloss, and they, like the vulgarity, are just an honest account of how it was then.

This remains a hugely enjoyable and worthwhile read. Recommended.

David Nobbs - Obstacles to Young Love

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A wonderful book

This is a really excellent book. It is exceptionally well written, witty, humane, perceptive and extremely touching. The plot is simply a chronicle of how the lives of two people and those associated with them develop as they grow older. There is marriage, birth, death, divorce, friendship and some tragedy, but no car chases, grisly murders or anything of the kind, and yet I found it utterly gripping. It kept me engrossed in the lives of people whom I really cared about in a way that few other books have done and genuinely made me think about what is important in relationships and in life.

The story opens in 1978 with Naomi and Timothy discovering sex together aged 18, and follows episodes in their lives for the next thirty years, sometimes apart and sometimes together. David Nobbs has a wonderful talent for seeing honestly and describing brilliantly the way people behave, think and feel. With Timothy in the first section of the book, for example, he catches with perfect delicacy the teenage sense that everyone else somehow knows how to behave, what to say, what to wear and so on, and that you don't but must try look as though you do. He paints a full cast of real, genuinely believable characters, and gently lays before us their foibles and mannerisms, the little lies they tell themselves to survive, the things they try to ignore because they are painful but know to be true, and so on. I felt that I had already met several of them in my life. David Nobbs is terrifically perceptive about them. He doesn't spare us their humiliations or their failings but treats them with tenderness and compassion. He reminds you, too, of people like the bloke who is always hanging around but is never really included, and that he, too, has feelings and a life, even if no-one ever takes an interest in him.

Important themes in the book are faith and organised religion, how they impact on lives and whether it is possible to have a meaningful, fulfilled life without them. It's exceptionally well done here: Nobbs's own position is very clear by the end of the book, but it's never preachy. He is very even-handed and he shows some of the fine and the ignoble aspects of both faith and atheism with equal insight, which makes this an enjoyable and thought-provoking aspect of the book, whether or not you agree with his final stance.

Nobbs's prose is a delight. He writes in the present tense here which I seldom like, but it works very well, giving the narrative a real flow through the years. It is straightforward, poised and excellently crafted, so that I seldom actually noticed the writing, and when I did it was just to notice how much I was enjoying it.

I don't often rave unreservedly about a book, but I think this is simply fantastic. Beautifully written, extremely readable, hugely entertaining and very thought-provoking, it's one of the best novels I've read for years and I recommend it very warmly indeed.

Richard Beard - Lazarus Is Dead

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but...

This book is partly an imaginative re-telling and embellishment of the story of Lazarus raised from the dead by Jesus, and partly a meticulously researched, highly speculative historical analysis of what that story means both in the context of Jesus's life and death and a philosophical discourse on its wider meaning for all of us. The book has lots of things about it that I like very much. It is extremely erudite, drawing on a huge range of cultural and historical sources for its ideas and analysis, the ideas are original and sometimes thought-provoking and the prose is excellent - readable, witty and beautifully crafted.

I should have loved this book but something got in the way. I did think it was well worth reading, just not the enjoyable gem it should have been. It may be a reflection on me rather than the book but somehow I found myself slightly unengaged, and occasionally wondering how much more there was to go. I cannot quite put my finger on why, but I think I felt that Richard Beard was making very sure we noticed how very clever and original he is and this kept intruding on my simple enjoyment of the book. The tricksy, layered section numbering is a small example: I can see why he's done it, but it just felt over-elaborate and self-conscious. I have to say, too, that in spite of all the philosophical fireworks I wasn't sure that in the end it really added up to quite as much as it promised.

Please don't let me put you off. Plenty of people don't share my reservations which are the result of a very personal response to the book, and I still thought it was pretty good - just perhaps a little bit too pleased with itself.

Naomi J. Williams - Landfalls

Rating: 5/5

Review:

Fascinating, gripping and revealing

I enjoyed this book very much.  It is an account of the real-life expedition of discovery by the two ships Astrolabe and Boussole, commanded by Lapérouse, which set out from France in 1785.  It is written in a series of episodes, each from a different person's perspective.  It is largely narrated in the third person but with some first-person narratives, some letters and so on.  We get the thoughts and experiences of a wide range of people who took part in the expedition and others who were affected by it in different ways.

This is not so much a novel of the sea as a novel of character and of the Enlightenment.  There are some echoes of writers like Patrick O`Brian but we get almost no shipboard narrative, and certainly no details of the operation of a sailing ship.  The accounts are of the preparations, relationships on board, events ashore and so on, and we get a very good feel of what a voyage of discovery really meant and how hazardous it really was.

I thought it was all very well done. The different voices were convincing and gave a fascinating perspective on the effects of the voyage and on the attitudes of the time, both among the French protagonists and among those they encountered, including natives of the places they visited and Spanish conquerors in Chile and California.  Naomi Williams has plainly done deep and thorough research and seems to be thoroughly steeped in the period.  It is an impressive achievement to bring a genuine historical event to life so convincingly and the personal stories are very recognisable and convincing, from the burdens and sometimes guilt of command to the simple human grief for a lost comrade, for example, or the way in which a respect for scientific endeavour overrode animosity between governments. 

I found the whole thing very gripping and a fascinating, revealing portrait of what aspects of the Enlightenment meant at an individual, human level.  It's a really good read and a book which will live in the memory. Very warmly recommended.

Spike Milligan - "Rommel?" "Gunner who?"

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A cracking read

This second volume of Spike Milligan's war memoirs is even better than the first, I think. It is just as funny and just as readable, but has far more real emotional and human content, and gives a wonderful insight into the life of a regular British soldier in the North Africa campaign.

The book tells the story from Spike's regiment embarking in England in 1942 to the fall of Tunis in April 1943. It is very well written; it is extremely funny, very evocative in description and very moving in places. You really do get a sense of life there, from the beauty of the landscape, the drudgery and boredom alleviated by humour (often vulgar) and the terror and dreadful consequences of battle. It's a book which keeps you entertained and laughing but from which you learn a lot, which will move you and which leaves you with much to think about.

I warmly recommend this - it's a cracking read.

Michael Simpkins - Fatty Batter

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

Consider the following questions:
1. In all the years since you first picked up a cricket bat, do you still remember with a thrill the occasion when you actually got to the pitch of a friendly half-volley, and just for once the ball didn't dribble a few humiliating yards toward mid-on or loop gently into the hands of backward point, but rocketed through extra-cover for four?
2. In all the years since you first picked up a cricket ball, do you still remember with a thrill the occasion when you pitched one just outside off and it turned in just enough to go through the gate of the hopeless incompetent at the far end to bowl him middle-and-off?
3. Does the single, unadorned phrase "eight for forty-three" unfailingly send you into a long and blissful reverie involving two rather mad, staring eyes under a shock of curly hair and Ray Bright's middle stump lying flat on the Headingley turf?

If the answer to all of these is "yes," then you are me and probably ought to seek psychiatric help. However, if the questions have any meaning to you, whatever the answers, then you will enjoy this book hugely, as I did. It is the story of one semi-competent cricketer's love for the game from the first stirrings of interest through to an adult obsession which many, many people will recognise. It is beautifully written, hilariously funny - I literally cried with laughter several times - and very, very touching in places.

Highly, highly recommended to anyone who has ever played cricket at any level whatsoever. A fantastically enjoyable book.

Lawrence Booth - Cricket, Lovely Cricket?

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Interesting and entertaining

This is a very good book in which Lawrence Booth gives thoughtful and very funny reflections on cricket past and present. He writes very well, with an easy, flowing and amusing style which has an excellent balance of real knowledge and insight with irony and self-deprecation. There's nothing shocking in the way of revelation here, but Booth does give some very engaging and thought-provoking perspectives on things like sledging, the various national psyches and the politics of the game.

It's not as consistently hilarious as, say, Fatty Batter or Rain Men - that's not the point of this book - but it does have several laugh-out-loud moments and a grin on most pages. He also has the grace to credit others for jokes and insights - like Vic Marks's description of a tedious, cliché-filled press conference by Inzamam-ul-Haq as "Much Urdu about nothing."

This is very readable, very knowledgeable, very interesting and very amusing. What more can you ask of a book about cricket? Very warmly recommended.

David Lloyd - The Ashes According To Bumble

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good in parts...

I found this a mixed bag of a book. The 200 or so pages which are actually about David Lloyd's personal involvement in The Ashes as player, coach and commentator are pretty good, but there's some very thin stuff and some out-and-out padding, too. If you like Bumble's sense of humour you may well love this book. I'm not so keen on it myself so I didn't find it as hilarious as some people, but he's a knowledgeable and thoughtful bloke under the oh-so-jokey persona and there was enough here to make me glad I'd read it.

The meat of the book is Bumble's personal thoughts and experiences of The Ashes (including, of course, the Thommo at Perth incident which causes every male cricket lover to wince and cross his legs at its very mention), and his thoughts and insights into the players, staff and tactics are well worth reading. It's not the best-written of books, with, an especially idiosyncratic, use of commas. This, coupled with the lightweight rush through some Ashes history to start with, and two frankly dire chapters toward the end which consist of unfunny "comedy" stuff about his wife, his local football club and random press cuttings about sexual practices made me think that this had been padded and rushed out in time to cash in on the 2013 series rather than properly, thoughtfully written and edited. And the cover...dear Lord!

I've given this four stars (just) because I did enjoy the real Ashes stuff and found it interesting and quite often insightful. It's not a great book by any means, but there's enough here to provide a couple of diverting hours between Test Matches.

(Oh, and nothing to do with the overall quality of the book, but he's picked an "All-Time Ashes XI" which doesn't include Bradman. That's right. No Bradman. I mean, come on, Bumble - there's a difference between being a cross-grained individualist and being plain wrong, mate.)

Tom Callaghan - A Killing Winter

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good crime novel

I thought this was a good police thriller. It is well written and its setting in Kyrgyzstan is very well done.

It is the setting which sets this book apart from the ordinary. Tom Callaghan creates an excellent sense of place in the bleak winter in Central Asia, and his depiction of the corrupt, almost lawless society which his central character is trying to police is excellent. He also gives a very good view of the politics of the region but does it without lecturing, weaving it into the plot so you hardly notice you're being informed about relations between neighbouring countries and ethnic groups.

Callaghan's prose is very good. He creates a very good atmosphere and believable characters, and he drives the plot along very well. The plot itself has plenty of very familiar features: hideously butchered women, a decent cop (with, naturally, a Personal Tragedy in his past) trying to conduct a truthful investigation in the face of official corruption and obstruction, drug gangs, political involvement... You get the idea. It is saved by the quality of the writing and the setting, although I hope that Tom Callaghan will ease up a little on the graphic violence against women in future novels; I thought it bordered on the gratuitously sensational at times.

Small reservations notwithstanding, this is a good, well written police thriller which kept my attention throughout and left me with a very haunting sense of the setting. I will certainly read the next in the series, and I can recommend this.

Peter Grogan - The Knowledge: Red Wine

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent little guide

I think this is an excellent little guide to red wine. I suspect there are a lot of people like me out there who enjoy wine and are interested in it but don't study it particularly seriously. I have picked up a bit of knowledge from labels, books, TV and programmes and the like, I know quite a few grape varieties and a reasonable number of regions in quite a diverse range of countries and so on but I'm not really any sort of expert. If you're one of us, I think you'll like this book.

Peter Grogan is knowledgeable and keen to share his knowledge in a straightforward, comprehensible way. He has little time for the self-absorbtion and pretension which abounds in parts of the wine world, but recognises real quality when he sees it and does his best to describe wines clearly while avoiding the more absurd flights of fancy which some critics go in for. The style, in short, is readable and comprehensible and I've enjoyed browsing as well as using this as a basic reference.

The book is decently set out (although, oddly, there's no Contents page, just an index at the back) with good sections on the winemaking process, major grape varieties and major (and more minor) winemaking regions of the world. It is up-to-date, which is very important at the moment because the winemaking world is changing so rapidly and written with the average drinker in mind. Grogan does mention the top, super-expensive wines, but is more concerned with guiding people with more realistic drinking ambitions toward decent wine and away from poor stuff. He does it very well, I think, and I can see me looking into this pretty regularly as I'm making decisions or I hear of unfamiliar wines.

I think this is well worth a look if you're an ordinary wine drinker with a bit of an interest. I like it a lot and can recommend it.

Anna Smaill - The Chimes

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Original and gripping

I think this is a very good book. Anna Smaill creates an exceptionally convincing and original world with very believable characters and a decent plot.

The Chimes is set in a post-apocalyptic London. It is hard to give a sense of the plot and setting without giving away more that I would have liked to know before reading it because they emerge gently from an extremely skilful and gripping narrative. Memories are now transient and almost vanish each night, reading and writing are banned and long-forgotten skills. Such memories as people have and things like directions for navigation and a type of sign language are largely preserved in music, which permeates the whole plot and background of the book. Language has adapted to the new world; it is largely normal English, but with changes in vocabulary such as presto and lento for fast and slow, tacet for silent and so in. Smaill pays her readers the compliment of just using the terms without explanation, so it helps to have some knowledge of musical terminology and even a bit of basic music theory, but it's not essential.

I think the creation of this world is beautifully done. In less skilful hands this could be pretty dreadful, but the first-person narration is pitch-perfect and is a fantastically realistic and atmospheric evocation of the book's world and of the state of mind of the narrator. The language is perfectly convincing, with little touches like old circuit-boards now called secret-boards, and outlawed ideas termed blasphony making it perfectly believable to me. There are echoes of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker and other fine books, but they are faint echoes because Anna Smaill has created something wholly her own here.

The plot is perfectly decent but much less original, and unlike several other reviewers I found the second part of the book rather less interesting as the plot begins to unfold because it's an idea which is the basis of many, many books and films, with the "ordinary" character struggling to free the world from oppression by a mighty, dominating state machinery. It is Smaill's creation of her imagined, music-based world, rather than this plot, which gives this book its quality and distinctiveness, but it is all well done and did keep me reading avidly.

I have rounded what is really a 4.5-star rating up to 5, possibly because music is a big part of my life so this book spoke to me in a way I enjoyed very much. I can also recommend it to the non-musical, though, as a very well-written, evocative and engrossing book.

Markus Gabriel - Why The World Does Not Exist

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and quite stimulating

This is a pretty demanding book.  It's written with wit and in a rather engaging style, but it's still a tough intellectual work-out.  On the whole I think it's worth the effort, but it's not an unmitigated intellectual treat by any means.

I am not a philosopher, although I have studied Philosophy of Science and it's an interest which I have kept up.  Markus Gabriel makes a decent stab at moving on from the sort of postmodern nonsense we've been subjected to of "our internal view of the world cannot be the world itself, so therefore (!) anyone's internal view is equally valid."  He does it with wit and verve and makes a decent case for his "New Realism."

It's not really for an amateur like me in a place like this to attempt to assess how valid Gabriel's ideas may be. However, with his admittedly slightly playful assertion that the title that the world as an entirety is not to be found within the world and therefore (!) cannot exist, he seems to me to be on some very thin philosophical ice.  Philosophers do like to play fast and loose with logical operators like "therefore" and "because" and Gabriel isn't immune from this.  For what it's worth, this just reads to me as a simple category error, like, "Here we have a pair of gloves.  However, the *pair* is not contained within the gloves, so therefore (!) the pair cannot exist."  The physical gloves and the concept of a pair are not of the same category, so this is plainly logical nonsense, and Gabriel seems to me to be making the same error about the world. I had a similar sense in a number of places, but it's reasonably cogent and sound enough to be stimulating rather than just infuriating.  (This is a considerable relief to someone who has actually read the whole of Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, for example.)

There is sometimes the slightly arrogant feel which seems to occur in a lot of philosophical writing where authors adopt an "if you don't agree then you're too stupid to understand" tone.  It's not as bad here as in some I've read, though, and at least the writing is largely comprehensible. 

I'd say this is well worth a go if you're interested in this sort of thing.  It is decently written, has some stimulating stuff in it and did make me think, which is, I suppose, what I'm looking for in a book like this.  I can recommend it on that basis.