Claire McGowan - The Lost

Rating: 3/5

Review:
A decent book marred by cliché

There are a lot of good things about Claire McGowan's second novel, but I think it has some serious flaws, too.

McGowan is a good writer of generally straightforward, easy-flowing prose. The story is based on a very decent idea based around the search for two missing teenagers in Northern Ireland and she creates an excellent sense of place. The Northern Irish setting is where she grew up and it shows in her fine evocation of the physical landscape and townscapes, the depiction of the attitudes of the society and her ear for the local speech.

The characters are quite well depicted, but it is here that I begin to have my problems with this book, because they tend to be stereotypes from Police Procedural Central Casting. I say police procedural, but of course the central character, forensic psychologist Paula Maguire, is a feisty individualist who consistently breaks all rules of procedure, has unprofessionally inappropriate relationships with people involved in the investigation...and so on. She isn't a police officer but constantly indulges in police work by interviewing suspects, turning up on raids, following leads on her own...and so on. She, naturally, has reasons why This Is Personal. And surely there must be a police unit somewhere in the world which isn't threatened by powerful local interests, which doesn't have a bigoted and hostile sergeant and a boss who forbids Our Heroine to follow up important leads...and so on.

Add to this the plot absurdities and clichés and I really did begin to get provoked. I won't give a list (it would be long), but I offer this quote in evidence: "She'd told Guy she'd be following up some leads. Dropped hints that she'd have to switch her phone off, interview policy, etc, so don't ring. She tried not to remind herself that this was what had gotten her into trouble in London, going off on her own. But it could be nothing - she'd tell him if she found something. It would be OK." I hate spoilers so I won't tell you whether it was OK or not and I'm certain you can't guess.

Plenty of other people do silly things for implausible reasons, too. Oh, and naturally Paula (not a police officer, remember) has a Climactic Confrontation With A Suspect In Which She Is At Mortal Risk While The Suspect Explains Everything. Twice. On Halloween for a convenient Colourful Backdrop.

I'm sorry to be so grumpy about it. It's just that Claire McGowan is a decent writer and there is a good book here which she devalues with all this stale, overblown stuff. Writers like Tana French and Susan Hill have shown that a thriller can be brilliant without it, and I think that writers with serious aspirations need to leave the clichés behind and just write something at least half-way believable. Could Do Better.

Tom Vowler - What Lies Within

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent book

I thought this was an excellent book. It is well written, intelligent, courageous in the subject matter it tackles and for me utterly gripping.

This is mis-categorised as a crime thriller. It is the story of a terrible crime and its effects on all concerned both immediately afterward and as their lives develop. It really isn't a thriller even though there is some well-executed and genuinely frightening threat later in the book, and it is extremely tense much of the time. Chiefly, it is a thoughtful and insightful study of character and of how it may develop.

This may make it sound worthy and dull, but it isn't. It's terrifically readable and very involving, and I found I was as hooked as by any really good thriller. The narrative is excellently structured and paced, the characters well drawn and very believable and the sense of place on Dartmoor exceptionally well done. Tom Vowler has the sense not to spell everything out, so that the crime itself isn't described at all, just its effects and the victim's actions, thoughts and feelings (or lack of them) told in plain, un-hysterical language which makes it all the more powerful and disturbing. The passages detailing a medical examination, for example, were completely calmly told yet left me almost trembling.

Vowler's prose is excellent: expressive but unobtrusive and wholly lacking in melodrama so that you are simply drawn into the story and carried along by it. He gets small details exactly right so that dialogue is completely natural, like the way that medical staff use the verb "to pop" - "pop this gown on," "pop your feet into the stirrups" - without clunkily drawing attention to it, which makes the whole thing completely real. This aspect is excellent throughout.

This is one of the best books I have read for some time. Warmly recommended to anyone who likes an thoughtful, intelligent and thoroughly gripping read.

Kate Clanchy - Meeting The English

Rating: 3/5

Review: Good in parts...

This book has some good things about it, but as a whole novel I found it unsatisfactory. Kate Clanchy is a fine poet and a very good writer of short stories but this, her first full-length novel, isn't of the same quality.

It is a character-driven story set in 1989, the tale of a very bright, but unworldly 17-year-old from a small run-down Scottish town who comes to Hampstead after taking his Higher Exams to care for an ageing, once-lionised playwright who has had a major stroke. There isn't a lot of plot per se, but there's plenty of interplay between the characters as changed circumstances and the outsider in their midst cause them all to interact, change and mature. Clanchy writes well in a gently ironic tone, she sets the period convincingly and she is extremely deft at conjuring characters and attitudes in a few telling phrases - an essential attribute for a poet and short-story-writer, of course.

I like a good novel of character. I was in something of a minority in thinking that Sadie Jones's The Unexpected Guests and Mark Haddon's The Red House were both excellent. Here, however, Clanchy gives us some pretty crude stereotypes, almost all thoroughly self-centred and self-regarding: the obnoxious, fading Literary Figure; his once-beautiful, grasping, property developer wife; the shallow, arrogant son at Oxford with theatrical pretensions; the intellectual who lives for a few months in a small working-class town and then smugly tells its people and the rest of the world what is wrong with them...and so on. It all felt very tired, and I really am not sure we need yet another novel satirizing the Hampstead literati.

The book did have its memorable flashes of insight, like the nice man who, "when he's being nice, he's always in there thinking how nice he's being," for example. For me, though, there's not enough to sustain a whole book and the ending where everyone learns their little Life Lesson felt false and saccharine. I'm afraid I can only give this a very qualified recommendation.

William Brodrick - The Day Of The Lie

Rating: 4/5

Review: An enjoyable, thoughtful book

I thought this was an enjoyable, thoughtful book with some genuinely fascinating moral content. In the Gilbertine monk Father Anselm, William Broderick has created far more than just another detective-with-a-twist. Anselm is thoughtful, compassionate man who, in his fallible way, seeks after not just the truth of wrongdoing and consequent justice but looks for understanding and moral enlightenment and tackles some very important human issues.

The story here centres around events Poland in the early 1950s and in 1982 under the communist repression and a present-day investigation into torture and execution, informers and resistance during those periods. It is a complex, nuanced story with a mass of hidden motives and secrets. At its heart is a perceptive examination of guilt and the choices people make in difficult, sometimes impossible, circumstances. As a study of motivations and compassion I thought it exceptionally good.

The prose is intelligent and very readable and the story well-structured and compelling. I found most of the book excellent, but there were eventually just too many hidden twists to keep me completely involved and believing, and I found the eventual verbal showdown between the "villain" and Anselm rather staged and implausible. This meant that the last 100 pages or so didn't keep me quite as engrossed as the beginning of the book.

Despite this reservation, I found this a very good book and recommend it warmly to anyone who likes a thoughtful, well written novel.

Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A decent, if flawed, action/conspiracy thriller

This is a decent action-thriller in many ways. It is well written and based on an interesting premise which the author uses reasonably well but I do have some quite strong reservations.

Brilliance is set in a parallel version of the present day in which a group of people born with exceptional abilities ("Brilliants") are making "normals" feel threatened and have also created some remarkable advances in technology, among other things. It's a good, if not terribly original, idea which Marcus Sakey uses pretty well. It develops into a long, convoluted conspiracy thriller with plenty of action as the protagonist, Nick Cooper, pursues his quest as a Government agent in hunting down Brilliant terrorists. Needless to say, there are major plot twists, plenty of Not Knowing Whom To Trust and so on. For about half the book's 500 pages I found this an easy and exciting read, but it did begin to pall. The book is far too long and although I finished it, I did so in the spirit of wanting to know what happens now I've got this far, rather than being gripped by the plot which, by the last quarter of the book had got to the point where I met each supposedly gut-wrenching twist with "yep, I was waiting for that one."

Call me Mr Cynical, but I strongly suspect Marcus Sakey wrote this hoping for a big film deal. It has all the action set pieces expected of a Die Hard film, an oh-so-admirable central character who is amicably (and quite inexplicably) divorced so that he can be both a strong Family Man but also available for romantic attachments elsewhere, and the book's fundamental message is pretty much Motherhood, Apple Pie and God Bless America - all just perfect for a blockbuster actor who wants to be liked.

I perhaps shouldn't be quite so grumpy about this book. Marcus Sakey can certainly write and I enjoyed enough of it to (just) round 3.5 stars up to four. It's a decent beach read, but I doubt whether I'll be bothering with the next in the series.

Greening (Ed.) - Accompanied Voices

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific anthology

This is a really terrific anthology.  I'm pre-disposed to liking it because classical music is such an important part of my life, but that also means that a bad anthology would make me very grumpy.  Fortunately, I think this is excellent.

The idea is self-explanatory: John Greening has collected poems about composers and their music, with both composers and poets spanning the period from the 16^th century to the present day.  It's a beautifully judged selection, I think, with a wide variety of poems which aren't always the ones you might expect.  This makes it a lovely book to dip into; as with any anthology, I don't like all the poems, but I'm glad to have read them all, some old favourites are here and it has introduced me to some I didn't know and will be going back to again and again, I think.

Just to give a slight flavour of the variety here, among the fine selection of poems on Bach, I was struck by the delightful contrast on finishing Norman MacCaig's powerful Bach for the Cello:

"Passion will scorch deep in these sharp canals: under the level moon desire runs fast, the flesh aches on its string, without consummation,

Without loss."

and then immediately reading the matter-of-fact opening of Rowan Williams' Homage to J.S. Bach:

"It is good just to think about Johann Sebastian Bach grinding away like the mills of God,

producing masterpieces and legitimate children –

Twenty-one in all – and earning his bread."

In short, this is a lovely, varied selection with a very interesting and thoughtful introduction by Greening and I can recommend this wholeheartedly.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Anna North - The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent

I thought this was an excellent book – readable, gripping, extremely well written and very perceptive.  I was persuaded by the good reviews, but I wasn't keen from the description – the life of a fictitious, oddly-behaved filmmaker told through the personal stories of a variety of different people who knew her has the potential to be pretentious nonsense if done badly, but this is done brilliantly and works excellently. 

The story itself is pretty simple and contained within the title: a slightly odd, geeky girl goes from making strange but compelling home-made shorts to becoming a cult director before dying young.  Two aspects of this make it special, I think.  The first is the character study of Sophie herself: a character who sees people remarkably clearly, listens intently and elicits the truth of their stories in a way few others can.  However, has little idea of how to actually relate to anyone and who has no compunction about putting what she has learned into her films with no regard for the pain and damage it may cause.  It's a beautifully painted, subtle character study which I found quite riveting.

The second aspect is the narrative voices, which are quite exceptionally well done.  I found them all completely convincing in their different ways.  Anna North has the ability to capture things in a neat, brilliant sentence.  As examples, a teenage boy says of a girl, "She had a sad edge to her voice which made me like her hair even more," which is a great evocation of what goes on in an adolescent's head.  Or later, another character says, "And when people ask me why I married her that September, even though I'd only known her for three months and knew it wouldn't last, I tell them that life is a heavy burden and imagine if someone just carried it for you for a while, just picked it up and carried it."  I made a note of lots of these gems as I was reading, of which these are just a couple.  It's like a brilliant artist who can capture a subject perfectly with just a few strokes of a pencil or brush and I found the whole thing a pleasure to read.  (And the brief writings of the maturing film critic as they develop, interpolated throughout the book, are also terrifically well done.)

If you want a strong plot, or even thoroughly likeable characters then you probably won't find this to your liking.  These are engaging, human and flawed people, struggling with life's difficulties like the rest of us – and they're beautifully portrayed.  Personally, though, I thought this was utterly gripping and exceptionally good. I can recommend it very warmly.

Pierre Lemaitre - Alex

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, involving crime novel

This turned out to be a very good thriller/crime novel. I had some reservations, particularly in the early part of the book, but in the end I found it enthralling, exciting and very well done.

The story begins with a brutal and very cruel kidnapping, but there are genuinely surprising, intriguing and just about plausible plot developments which take the book in unexpected directions. The narrative alternates between the activities of the criminal and those of the police which I found extremely effective, giving drive and mystery to the story. The characters of the small police team were very well drawn and I hope to meet them again in future books. The dénouement is excellent, avoiding the now tedious cliché of a Tense One-To-One Stand Off With A Cornered Killer, but with things emerging cleverly in police interviews which for me were some of the most gripping scenes in the book. Whether or not you accept the explanation for the killer's actions, it was depicted and drawn out with a great deal more ingenuity and subtlety than the sort of facile psychobabble which we quite often get in crime novels.

I had two reservations. One was a minor one about the translation which was a little clunky in places and often couldn't quite make up it's mind whether it was in UK or US English. The juxtaposition of distinctively UK usages with those unmistakeably from the US was a little disconcerting - especially at the start - but certainly not enough to spoil the book. My other problem is the level of cruelty and violence. There is a thin line between realistic depiction for the sake of the plot and gratuitous torture-porn. At times I thought this book strayed over the line, and despite finding the book as a whole very good this made me uneasy. Certainly you should be warned that this isn't for the faint of heart.

That said, I thought this a good, exciting and gripping book and can recommend it as a very involving read.

Graeme Simsion - The Rosie Project

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Engaging and genuinely funny

I enjoyed this book enormously. It is, in structure, a pretty standard chalk-and-cheese romantic comedy but differs from a good many romantic comedies in that it is genuinely very funny and also rather touching in places.

The narrator, the geeky Don, is somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum and much of the humour of the book derives from his extremely literal take on things and his inability to read social situations. This has the potential to be cringe-makingly embarrassing but isn't - the narrative voice is so well done and Don such an engaging character that it's simply charming and often very funny. To give just one example, "I immediately recognised Julie...from Gene's description: 'blonde with big tits." In fact her breasts were probably no more than one and a half standard deviations from the mean size for her body weight and hardly an identifying feature..."

Other characters are well-drawn - so much so that you don't really notice that they're from RomCom Central Casting: the louche, lascivious best friend (Gene in the above extract), the rebellious, slightly kooky romantic interest, the disapproving boss...they're all there. But so what? They are so well done and the story so well told that I didn't even spot the Regulation Cast until after I'd finished.

There have been some very good Asperger's or Asperger's-like narrators in books - The Curious Incident..., obviously, but also The Universe vs Alex Woods and even Kiss Me First, which I didn't enjoy much as a book but has an excellent narrative voice. The bar is set pretty high, therefore, but this matches up extremely well. It's not packed with meaning and deep human insight (it's not supposed to be), but there's far more substance to it than just a fluffy, disposable RomCom.

In short, this is readable, engaging and funny. I made a spectacle of myself in public more than once by laughing out loud at the book, and I warmly recommend it.

Galileo (trans. Drake) - Dialoguse Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Rating: 5/5
 
Review:
A brilliant  translation of a wonderful work

It's not the most alluring of titles, I admit, and even though most people have heard of Galileo and many know enough of his achievements to admire him, I suspect few people would consider reading a book by him. However, I urge you very strongly to buy this book and at least give it a try. It's a wonderful work, full of fascinating and brilliant insights and Stillman Drake's superlative translation makes it extremely readable. It gives a fascinating insight into what Galileo *really* did to annoy the Inquisition and shows his often brilliantly witty and occasionally dangerously sarcastic style. Even to dip into, this book is a monumental pleasure.

Try this, the first few lines of the Introduction - To The Discerning Reader:
"Several years ago there was published in Rome a salutary edict which, in order to obviate the dangerous tendencies of our present age, imposed a seasonable silence upon the Pythagorean opinion that the Earth moves. There were those who impudently asserted that this decree had its origin not in judicious inquiry, but in passion none too well informed. Complaints were to be heard that advisers who were totally unskilled in astronomical observations ought not to clip the wings of reflective intellects by means of rash prohibitions. Upon hearing such carping insolence, my zeal could not be contained..."

I first read that while studying History of Science forty years ago, laughed out loud, and read the rest of the book with immense pleasure. It is written in the form of dialogues presided over by Sagredo ("wise man") and conducted between Salviati (really Galileo himself) and the person representing the Church's orthodoxy, whom Galileo christened Simplicio. Tactful, he wasn't, but he was a brilliant physicist and a brilliant author, filling the book with witty and amazingly ingenious arguments resulting in poor Simplicio being confounded at every turn.

I cannot say strongly enough what a pleasure this book is. It really isn't just a tome which will sit on your shelf looking impressive, or which you ought to plough through because it will Do You Good. It's wonderfully enjoyable and hugely rewarding, and I recommend it very highly indeed.

Jim Crace - Harvest

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent book

I thought this was an excellent, engrossing and readable book. It has a depth and resonance which I found truly haunting and it has stayed with me very strongly since I finished it.

It is the story of a single week after harvest in a small English village. The exact period and place are unspecified, but the village is very isolated and has a subsistence agricultural economy which is threatened by enclosure for wool production. I think it is Crace's intention to leave us guessing a little in order to show that this could have happened at almost any time between about 1500 and 1800. The narration is by Walter Thirsk, a well-established resident but non-native of the village. We see through his experienced but slightly detached eyes what rural life was really like then: hard, precarious, sometimes brutal and sometimes very rewarding. There is a great deal of thoughtful insight about things like grief, the nature of loyalty and both the compassionate and responsible use of power and its uncaring, selfish abuse - which has some potent modern resonances. A lot happens as apparently small actions and their consequences grow to momentous events. I won't spoil the story by describing any of it, but it is brilliantly evoked in wonderful, atmospheric prose as events unfold showing how fragile even such a long-established community could be.

Walter is a decent, fallible protagonist and the story he tells is gripping, elegiac and haunting, told with a brilliantly balanced mixture of evocative detail and thoughtful, sometimes almost mystical prose. It is superbly done and I really do think this is an exceptionally good book. Very warmly recommended.

Lottie Moggach - Kiss Me First

Rating: 3/5

Review:
A good idea but flawed in execution

This book has a very interesting premise and some good, engrossing episodes but as a whole I found it rather unsatisfactory.

The plot revolves around the narrator (Leila) being asked to take on the identity of another person (Tess) and to pretend to be her and to keep up her internet "life" while the real Tess disappears. I won't give away more plot details than that because things develop slowly and further revelation would have acted as a spoiler for much of the book for me. The characters of Leila and Tess are interesting and Leila has a very well realised and convincing narrative voice. She is a solitary, asocial, slightly autistic young woman while Tess is an older, devil-may-care "free spirit". I found both characters convincing; Leila's social ineptiude and naiveté were well done as was Tess's unpredictability, and the depiction of the relationship between them was a strength of the book.

There is lots of interaction between the two of them as Leila tries to get to grips with the minutiae which she will need of Tess's life, and then the story of how things go once Leila has taken over. This was one of my problems with the book; it's an interesting idea but - oh dear! - there's a lot of it. I ended up skimming pages and pages of stuff regarding questions about who Victor was, where Tess worked at certain times and so on and so on, none of which had any real relevance to the plot or central idea. I know that Lottie Moggach is trying to convey the immense intricacy and detail needed, but it's not really a spectator sport. Things picked up a bit after page 150, but there were still considerable longeurs and I thought the book could have done with being at least 100 pages shorter. Moggach has the courage not to tie everything up too neatly at the end, but I still found it all just a little more convenient than convincing.

There is a really good book to be written about identity in the internet age but, although it's a creditable attempt in many ways, this isn't it. I was hoping for some elements of the Curious Case Of The Dog In The Night-Time and The Talented Mr Ripley, but got neither, really. I don't like to be too critical of a debut novel, but I can only give this a very qualified recommendation.

James Smythe - The Machine

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

I thought this was a brilliant book. It is intelligent, thoughtful and completely gripping.

I cannot really describe the plot without giving away too much, so I won't. The publishers' synopsis is right - this is a Frankenstein for the twenty-first century (it is set in the near future). It is a fantastic piece of storytelling: the rather deadpan prose is excellent, the narrative extremely well paced, the characters utterly convincing and the plot developments fascinating and unpredictable. James Smythe generates a brilliant air of menace both in the plot and setting, which builds slowly and gripped me completely. The book, as well as being a page-turning story, is a thoughtful look at the nature of memory, at what makes us the people we are and at what might happen if the fundamentals of our characters and memories are altered.

It is hard to give more of flavour of this book because I am wary of spoilers, but I warmly recommend it to anyone who likes a dark, unsettling but very intelligent and thought-provoking read which will keep you up late to finish it. It is one of the best things I have read for some time.

Adrian McKinty - I Hear The Sirens In The Street

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An enjoyable, atmospheric thriller

I enjoyed this thriller a lot. It has its flaws but overall I thought it very good. It has a good narrative voice, is very well written and for the most part the plot and action are very well structured.

The story is a police procedural, set in Northern Ireland in 1982 during The Troubles. Inspector Sean Duffy is a very engaging narrator - wry, intelligent, amusing and believably human. Needless to say, he is a bit of a maverick, but well this side of cliché, and I thought he and all the other characters were well drawn and plausible.

The setting is a real strength of the book. McKinty paints a convincing picture of life during The Troubles (although I'm no expert, having only spent a few weeks in Northern Ireland around that time.) He has the sense and courage to portray the life of a police officer in full, and the parts not directly related to the case are just as well done, like the little vignette where Duffy has to deal with a couple of fighting drunks in a car park. The atmosphere and the period really make this book.

The plot works well for most of the book, moving slowly and in a rather opaque way. I thought it was much less good toward the end, with the obligatory Clash With Authority and, of course, the Single-Handed Showdown With The Killer. It was a disappointment for me that the book ended in such a well-worn way - its originality and freshness were something I had really enjoyed up to then.

I can still recommend this book as a very enjoyable and engrossing read, though, and I look forward to the next one.

Nicci French - Waiting for Wednesday

Rating: 4/5

Review:
The best of the series so far

I enjoyed this book and I think it is the best of the series so far. It can be read as a stand-alone book but I would strongly recommend reading the others first, even if they aren't quite so good.

Here, Freida Klein is recovering from her last involvement with the police and reluctantly gets drawn into another investigation. She becomes personally entangled again and pursues another of her feelings down another solitary, dangerous road. It's a well-told tale in good, readable prose and I found it pretty gripping a lot of the time. Frieda herself is a complex, not always likeable character which is a strength of the book, and the plot (well, plots, really) are nicely paced and developed, and there are some very well done and insightful character portraits - the sister of the murder victim, especially.

I still have my reservations, I'm afraid. Among them are Frieda's rather frequent implausibly silly behaviour in putting herself at risk, the fact that she now has not one but two arch-enemies, one of them an almost pantomimically dreadful rival psychologist. It felt just a bit overblown at times and could have done with a little tightening up.

Overall, though, it's an involving read and a good (in places very good) crime novel and I can recommend it.

Carol O'Connell - It Happens In The Dark

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
Terrifically enjoyable

This is a terrifically enjoyable book. It features Kathy Mallory, a ruthless, enigmatic New York cop who apparently has no human emotions other than rage, and has the almost superhuman skills to get her way - and she is the "queen of Get Even." This makes the Mallory books exciting and darkly comic, and this is no exception.

The plot, looked at in the cold light of day, is a load of old hokum. It's almost Agatha Christie-esque in construction with a dash of Edmund Crispin's wit. A (very unlikely) death takes place during a theatre performance and the list of suspects is limited to the cast and crew. Events and more deaths follow, including murky and horrific past occurrences. There's even a climactic Poirot-like explanation to the murderer of how and why they did it. However, Carol O'Connell writes so well and gives it all such wit and flair that I happily suspended disbelief and just enjoyed the ride. Mallory is a wonderful creation and the whole thing is hugely enjoyable.

Don't expect a gritty police procedural (although there is a fair amount of police procedure, often being subverted) nor a grim serial-killer tale. It's a macabre but amusing book and warmly recommended as a gripping and diverting read.

D.W. Wilson - Ballistics

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Gripping, thoughtful and insightful

I thought this was an excellent book. It's not perfect, but it has real depth, a powerful narrative drive, distinctive and evocative prose and has a lot of very insightful things to say, particularly about men and boys. Set in small-town and rural Western Canada, the story concerns Alan, a young man who was brought up there by his grandfather who has a heart attack and sends Alan on a quest to find his father. Told in two narrative voices, we hear the present-day story from Alan intercut with the story of how Alan's parents came to meet and the fallings out and feuds which led to the estrangements which drive the plot, narrated by Archer, whose place in it all becomes clear as the book progresses.

D.W. Wilson writes very evocative, quite poetic prose and generates an excellent sense of place, especially as a colossal forest fire begins to take control of events. There is fairly constant tension between characters which sometimes spills over into violence and keeps the book exciting. What makes this book special for me, though, is the characterisation and especially Wilson's deep understanding of the minds of tough, seemingly self-sufficient men and the way they relate to (and fail to relate to) one another and to women. There are scenes of great tenderness and of crackling tension, and I was gripped pretty well all the way through.

I have seen the words macho and even super-macho used to describe this book, but this is no Hemingway-like celebration of macho manhood. It is a tragic, regretful, almost compassionate portrait of how such men can damage their own and others' lives and how festering enmity can eventually lead to isolation, loneliness and destruction. I found it remarkably insightful and honest, and often very, very sad.

The book isn't perfect. It gets a bit rambling at times and could do with a little cutting in places, I thought, and it's not always easy to tell whose voice we're hearing which can be a distraction when the narration switches, but I still thought it worthy of five stars. Something this well-written and this insightful doesn't come along often, and I would recommend this very warmly to anyone looking for a thoughtful and haunting novel.

Mark Lawson - The Deaths

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good social reportage but a less good novel

I was hoping for great things from this book. I think Mark Lawson is an excellent journalist and broadcaster and a brilliant cultural critic, and he has also written some of the best radio plays I have ever heard. Some of that comes through in this book, but as a whole novel I do have reservations about it.

Mark Lawson creates believable characters and has an exceptionally good ear for the way people use language. The book examines the minutiae of the lives of four rich families in Buckinghamshire, with some detail of the lives of others and a small amount of police investigation, which is actually very well done but is a very minor part of the book, and this is certainly not a crime novel. It is, as others have said, a piece of social observation of our time. It's often very well done with plenty of sharp insight and nice little one-liners like "...[he] blames Top Gear for the fact that so many British men now regard conversation as violently belittling banter." We get a decent portrait of the lives and attitudes of the wealthy, with their competitive one-upmanship and so on, but Lawson also throws in the points of view of a lot of other people and vignettes about disgraced but still greedy bank CEOs, MPs expenses, various kinds of on-line behaviour and a huge number of other modern social phenomena. He also takes incidental swipes at a lot of his own modern irritations like textspeak, the book group member who doesn't like a book because she wouldn't want any of the characters for a friend, the shallowness of a lot of theatre audiences...and so on and so on.

There is so much social detail that the book sometimes feels as though it's drowning in it all. The problem for it as a novel is that this almost completely swamps any real interaction or development in any of the characters. We see them mainly in a sequence of set pieces: on a pre-Christmas shopping trip to Marrakesh, on the train, at a Christmas party, at the Christmas morning service, shooting on a Sunday, walking the dogs... and so on and so on. (And I confess that I got to the stage where I was saying, "Oh, not blooming Waitrose again," although "blooming" isn't the exact word I used.) It's social reportage rather than a novel, and, although the reportage is very good, I found 500 pages of it is far too much to wade through.

The last hundred pages or so did pick up and were rather touching in places, and there's enough other good stuff here for me to (just) round up 3.5 stars to 4, but it's a long slog in places and, however much I admire Mark Lawson's other work, I can only give this a very qualified recommendation.

J. Robert Lennon - familiar

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Flawed but still very good

For a good deal of its length I thought this was a terrific novel, very well written and full of ideas and thoughtful insights. It petered out rather badly, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

J. Robert Lennon uses the notion of a woman quite suddenly translated into a parallel, slightly different version of her life to examine all sorts of things, so it's hard to say what the book is "about," but I thought it had very interesting and sometimes quite original things to say about relationships, being a parent, what genuine fulfilment is and isn't, and the impossibility of recreating the things we have lost in our lives. As an illustration, he has a fine understanding of the nature of bereavement and how differently it affects people - for example: "...[she had] no breakdowns, no fits of grief. She just bore the extra weight." It's a typical piece of pithy insight.

I found Lennon's style excellent. He writes in the present tense in a tight, unforced way with very few adjectives or similes and makes the prose really grip as the story evolves. I was utterly engrossed until the last 30 pages or so, when he suddenly seems to lose his assured handling of the story and get rather lost. I like that there are no easy resolutions or neat Life Lessons Learned anywhere in the book, but I found the culmination of the story very unsatisfactory, as though Lennon had followed his trail of ideas to a place which he can't see a way out of, and just fudges a mess to end the book. It's a shame, because it's very good up to then.

Plainly, many other reviewers here thoroughly disliked this book, but in spite of my reservations I would recommend it as a very well-written, rewarding and intelligent read.

Frank Tallis - The Sleep Room

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Unengaging

I'm afraid I didn't get on at all well with this book. It's well written and has its atmospheric moments, but it failed to grip or chill me and I found it rather tedious.

The main problem is that I found it almost comically packed with clichés. It's a chiller set in 1955, and at the outset we have a slightly dodgy-seeming psychologist, a small, claustrophobic hospital in an isolated location surrounded by thick mist and desolate marshland, hostile locals, disturbed patients, a sinister experimental treatment, unexplained goings-on, and so on and so on. It all felt straight out of a Hammer Horror B-movie to me and even the climactic and "shocking" ending seemed a familiar device.

I'm sorry to be so grumpy about it, but it really didn't work for me at all. Frank Tallis can write decent prose, but I often found myself rolling my eyes at what he was writing about. Others have enjoyed this more than I did, but personally I can't recommend it.

Matthew Quick - Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Readable, engrossing and touching

I thought this was a very good book. It is readable, engrossing and touching and also has some important things to say. Narrated by Leonard Peacock, a High School student in Philadelphia, it is the tale of one day of his life - his eighteenth birthday. On that day he decides that he will first shoot a schoolmate and then himself. (This is revealed on Page 2, so isn't that much of a spoiler.) We get Leonard's observations on life, what has brought him to this state and portraits of various people he knows, both the very good, the not so good and the "übermorons".

Leonard is (pretty obviously) an unhappy and rather disturbed character, but his narrative makes perfect sense in its own terms, and I found it genuinely touching and very believable. Much of the time he is just experiencing the sort of anxieties and disillusion which many of us have felt at some time, but considerably more intensely, which for me made the sympathy for him the more heartfelt as the events which have led up to all this are gradually revealed. His observations on the truly good people in his life are tender and sometimes moving, and he has some very shrewd things to say about the roles played by others, even those who are fairly incidental to the story. For example, of his school Guidance Counsellor, who expresses concern which Leonard meets with an emphatic speech about how he is fine, he says:
"Deep down she absolutely knows I'm bull[...]ing her, I'm sure of it. But she has a million problems to solve, hundreds of students who need her help, endless [expletive] parents to deal with, mountains of paperwork, meetings in that awful room with the round table and the window air-conditioning unit they run even in winter because the meeting room is directly over the tropically hot boiler room, and so she knows the easiest thing to do is believe me.
"She's fulfilled her obligation, assuaged her conscience by finding me in the hallway and giving me the chance to freak out, and I've played my role too, by remaining calm, pretending to be okay, and therefore giving her permission to cross me off her things-to-do list. Now she can move on, and I can too."

I think that's a very perceptive passage, just reeled off in passing, and there are a lot of others just as good. It gives a good idea of the style, too, which I found extremely involving and very readable.

The only question is whether you want to read another book about an angst-ridden and suicidal teenager. Personally, I think this one is well worth it; I became very engrossed and stayed up too late in order to finish it, and it has stayed with me strongly ever since. I think it's a really good book, and I recommend it very warmly.

Maurice Leitch - Seeking Mr Hare

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Well written but unengaging

I was expecting to enjoy this book very much. Maurice Leitch is a very good writer and it sounded like my kind of thing - a well written historical novel based on good research. Sadly, although it was well written and researched, it failed to engross me and I found it rather dull in quite large parts.

Leitch creates two very believable narrators in William Hare, the murderer and partner of William Burke, and Percival Speed the detective on his trail. Hare is violent and conscienceless but constrained by caution (and sometimes by lust) and is very well painted. Speed is less interesting as a character but still an interesting voice and commentator on the times. For the first hundred pages or so this was enough to keep me going, but I have to say that I just got a bit bored as the narrative carried on, and on, and on with things happening but little in the way of real development or tension. In truth, I ended up skimming sections (which is something I rarely do) and found that I had seldom missed much when I began to read in detail again.

Others have plainly enjoyed this book far more than I did, and for the reasons I expected to, so don't let me put you off - it may just be me. However, I found it all a bit of a slog and can only give it a lukewarm recommendation.

Edna O'Brien - The Little Red Chairs

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A fine novel, but not a flawless one

Edna O'Brien remains a very fine writer.  This book has many excellent things about it, but as a whole novel I do have my reservations about it.

Beginning in a small, isolated Irish town, a charismatic mystic and healer arrives and mesmerises the people there with his spirituality and depth.  We find out quite soon, though, that he is a wanted war criminal who has committed the most appalling atrocities in the Balkans.  To say that he is a thinly disguised Radovan Karadzic would be to exaggerate the extent of the disguise, but by making him a fictional character in a community that she understands intimately, O'Brien can explore his character and the consequences of his actions through fictional events and she paints a brilliant, disturbing portrait of an egocentric, self-deluding psychopath.

She does this very well much of the time.  Her wonderful ability to conjure place and convincing characters remains undiminished, and her perceptiveness about the people she writes about is remarkable.  In the second half the narrative moves with the main character to refugee communities in London and to The Hague, becoming a book about the consequences of violence and prejudice and about the people who have been crushed, displaced and made helpless by them.  Any violence is largely implied but occasionally graphic.  Be warned that there is one truly horrifying scene which will haunt me for a long time, and O'Brien is excellent at portraying the appalling reality and consequences of the crimes she deals with.  There is also a vivid reminder that victims may be treated in this way not just in war zones and lawless places, but in settled societies like ours.

We get a lot (and I mean a lot) of different people telling their stories of oppression, survival and displacement.  Each one is very important and movingly told, and each teller very well painted by O'Brien.  I did find, though, that as a whole novel it didn't quite hang together at times as the narrative led to yet another round of storytelling by a group of new characters.  I don't mean to diminish the importance of these stories one jot, but as a novel it felt rather clunky and contrived at times – including the early scene in which we discover the "healer's" past as it is recounted to him in a dream by a dead colleague.

I don't want to be too critical because I did find much of the book very engrossing and memorable.  Also, knowing all these stories meant that I was moved almost to tears in the last page or two by the haunted and unhappy protagonist asking The Mothers Of Srebrenica "What brings peace?  What brings certainty?"…

"They listened attentively and then one spoke - A bone she said.  To find the smallest piece of bone of one of her children…"  They also gave immense impact to the final sentence of the book:  "You would not believe how many words there are for home and what savage music there can be wrung from them."

This book is wise, important, impassioned and readable and has great emotional impact. I can recommend it warmly in spite of my reservations. 

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Jonathan Coe - Number 11

Rating 4/5

Review:
A very good novel - in the end

Jonathan Coe is a very fine writer with a penetrating eye for social attitudes and trends in Britain.  I enjoyed much of Number 11, although I did think it had flaws.

This is Coe's take on the years since 2000.  Its underlying themes are the shallow belief that everything can be reduced to monetary value, the idea that the selfish amassing and flaunting of personal wealth is the sole purpose life, and the shedding of any sense of responsibility toward others.  The conceit of the title is that this is Coe's eleventh novel.  It is presented in a series of episodes featuring a number of characters who appear and disappear, which very loosely related by the Number 11: in one it's a house number, in others a bus route, the number of storage unit, a table number at a function and so on.  Critically, number 11 Downing Street gets the briefest of mentions very late in the novel, but the effect of financial policy pervades this book, and it's a nice subtle touch to point to it in this way.

Coe writes excellent, readable prose which doesn't draw attention to itself but tells the story very well.  His wit is evident in many places and I both laughed and smiled wrily quite often.  Many of the expected targets are there: social media, the selfie generation, the cruelty and falsity of reality shows, pretentious art prizes, aggressive viciousness on the internet, ignorant and bile-fuelled "commentators", the effects of "austerity" on the poor and needy while bankers and the super-rich are unaffected, and so on.  All are worthy targets for satire but, however deserving, for quite a while it felt like a slightly stale checklist with a sense that a lot of characters were just put there as a vehicle for Coe's next social observation. This made it a little difficult to get into the book as a novel, and it wasn't helped by the characters sometimes talking or thinking in carefully crafted analytical essays rather in the voice of than the ordinary person that they were.

However, later in the book the story and the social exposé became very gripping and  things picked up wonderfully for me around half way through with the chapter on The Winshaw Prize.  This is written as an out-and-out comedy, complete with slightly silly names, and from there on in the whole thing worked excellently – including the final chapter which actually became rather exciting and frightening in places - and I thoroughly enjoyed the second half of the book.  The characters had also become far more recognisably human, rather than something to hang a political point on, and I became involved with them at last.

The message of the book is probably summed up in an exchange between Rachel, an idealistic post-grad, and Freddie who advises the super-rich on how to avoid tax:

"The poorest half of the world has the same amount of money as the richest *eighty-five* people.  …  Doesn't it make you think?"

"It makes me think the poorest half of the world should get its act together."

Jonathan Coe has illustrated the effects of that attitude on our society here with a good deal of flair and wit, and in spite of my reservations about the early chapers I can recommend this novel.

Holly Bourne - Am I Normal Yet?

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!

What an utterly brilliant book!  I took a bit of a chance on it because I am not in the target audience being male and in my early 60s…and I thought it was absolutely terrific.  It is completely engaging, very funny in places and has some very important things to say.

The book is narrated in the first person by 16-year-old Evie, who has OCD and anxiety which have meant that she has spent some time in psychiatric institutions in the past.  As the book opens she is recovering and starting Sixth-Form College.  This is the story of her struggles (and joys) with friends, boys, her family and her illness.  It is brilliantly done; Evie's voice is completely engaging and convincing, characters and her perceptions of them are excellently drawn and Evie's thoughts about her mental state seem utterly real to me.  Obviously, I'm not the ideal person to judge the accuracy of this portrait of what goes on inside a teenage girl's head, but as a male ex-teenager (all right, a *very* ex-teenager) I found it absolutely convincing. 

I also thought that Evie's OCD and anxiety and her thoughts and attitudes to it were superbly done.  There have been some superb books written from the point of view of someone with a mental illness; Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident…, Nathan Filer's The Shock Of the Fall and Gavin Extence's The Mirror World of Melody Black spring to mind.  I think this is the equal of any of them, which is really saying something.  It is lighter in style and an easier read, and I laughed out loud very regularly - but that's a good thing, and this still has all the insight, compassion and depth of those great books.  (And the short section headed "What Really Pisses Me Off About People And Mental Health Problems" are the most insightful, the funniest, the angriest and the truest three pages I have read for a very long time indeed.)

Just as important as this is the theme of feminism, the effects of sexism in all its forms and how damaging it is to women, *and* to men.  Holly Bourne articulates this brilliantly and it is a real joy for me to read ideas in which I have believed profoundly for many years, expressed with such clarity, wit and humanity.  I wish that every 15- and 16-year-old, male and female, would read this.  I wish *I'd* read it when I was that age, too – but at least I've been able to read it now.

I'm sorry to gush, but I really thought this was something very special.  It is gripping, engaging and genuinely profound, and although it is aimed at Young Adults I think adults of any age would enjoy it and get a huge amount out of it.  I certainly did, and I would urge anyone to read it.  It's terrific.

Patrick Ness - More Than This

Rating: 5/5

Review:

I thought this was an excellent book - exciting, engrossing, extremely readable and full of interesting ideas and thoughtful reflections.

It is hard to give a flavour of the plot without giving too much away, but the opening of the book is "Here is the boy, drowning." And he does drown, quite irrevocably, and it's brilliantly and chillingly described. And he then wakes up somewhere unknown...but not quite unknown. One of the very well-handled themes of the plot is not knowing what is real and what is made up in one's head (including a powerful modern restatement of Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum"). There are echoes of The Matrix, Total Recall and the like, but Ness also subverts the genre very successfully and this book has a good deal more moral and human substance than most works in this vein. It explores themes of sexuality, families, guilt and friendship without once becoming turgid or preachy and Ness keeps up the pace, the shocks, the mystery and the thrills throughout. He's a terrific storyteller and I was completely hooked.

After his, to me, disappointing The Crane Wife, Patrick Ness has returned to a genre in which he seems much more at home and this is far more reminiscent of the quite brilliant Chaos Walking trilogy. It may not have quite the depth and power of Chaos Walking, but it is very, very good and very warmly recommended.

(If you haven't yet read Chaos Walking I recommend it very strongly, too - it really is something quite exceptional.)

Paula Lichtarowicz - The First Book Of Calamity Leek

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Engaging, gripping and thoughtful

I thought this was a very good book - thoughtful, readable and with some important things to say.

Narrated in the first person by the young Calamity Leek, we learn of the world inhabited by her and her "sisters" and the strange myths and ideologies which they believe and by which they live. To say more would be too much of a spoiler, but there are echoes of Emma Donoghue's Room and Anne Holm's I Am David. Paula Lichtarowicz uses this device to throw a sideways and often revealing light on some of our attitudes in society, especially those of men toward women, and of women toward men and toward each other. It sounds terribly worthy and turgid, but is nothing of the kind because the storytelling is so good.

What makes this special is Calamity's voice, which is charming, believable and very engaging. Lichtarowicz has the insight and courage to make Calamity the compliant believer in the strange and increasingly disturbing myths which they are peddled, rather than the usual feisty heroine who refuses oppression, which gives the narrative real power rather than just making it a run-of-the-mill adventure story. The story itself is excellently paced and structured, so that the truth of what is happening emerges slowly and compellingly. I found myself completely gripped for long periods.

I have to say that, in the cold light of day, the set-up and the psychology and back-stories of Mother and Aunty are thoroughly implausible, and if this were written as a thriller to which this was the solution it would be laughable. However, that's not the point of the book and it is redeemed by the terrific storytelling and the delightful, believable - and sometimes naively horrifying - narrative voice.

This wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I enjoyed it very much and it has some real substance. Recommended as an engrossing, enjoyable and thoughtful read.

Malcolm MacKay - The Sudden Arrival Of Violence

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A brilliant conclusion to The Glasgow Trilogy

This is the concluding volume in Malcolm MacKay's excellent Glasgow Trilogy and it maintains the brilliance of the preceding two. It is comprehensible if you haven't read the previous two, but I would strongly recommend beginning with The Necessary Death Of Lewis Winter and How A Gunman Says Goodbye because the story and characters progress through all three to the climax here.

The story is of the Glasgow underworld and how different "organisations" manoeuvre for power between each other and within themselves. As before, we get the points of view of a number of characters which is a difficult trick to pull off but MacKay does it brilliantly, showing the way in which these things play out and the rapid changes in perspectives and loyalties as things change. He is so good at this that, slightly disturbingly, I found myself concerned for a cold-blooded gunman and wanting him to be safe. It's an excellent, exciting and thoughtful story, full of tension and insight and which avoids most of the clichés of the genre.

I find MacKay's style riveting. He writes mainly in short, staccato sentences. Not many adjectives. No similes or metaphors. It moves the action along. Builds the tension, too. You get the idea, and it's fantastically effective, I think. Despite the title, there isn't all that much graphic violence. What violence there is, is described in the same tone as the rest of the book which, to me, makes it exceptionally vivid and disturbing.

I was completely hooked on this as I have been on the previous two books. If you like a good crime novel (this is a lot more than a basic thriller) you'll probably love this and I recommend it very warmly indeed.

Tom Wright - What Dies In Summer

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Readable, engrossing and insightful

I enjoyed this book very much. It is exceptionally well written for a first novel and it held me engrossed throughout.

The story is set in Dallas, Texas in an unspecified time, but before computers and mobile phones. (Judging by some of the musical references, it seems to be around 1970.) It is narrated by Biscuit, an adolescent boy living with his grandmother and this is really a coming-of-age story with crimes more-or-less in the background for much of the book. For me, even the denouement and discovery of the criminal, although well done, was less gripping than Biscuit's own internal story which is beautifully told. As a portrait of a boy's moral and sexual awakening I thought this was quite exceptionally insightful, sympathetic and involving. Tom Wright catches brilliantly the jumbled thought processes and feelings of adolescence and I found Biscuit a very believable and engaging character. The portrait which emerges of Biscuit's feelings of desire and awkwardness for his girlfriend, for example, is almost painfully recognisable and is one of the best evocations of that first infatuation that I know.

Wright also generates a very good sense of the place and morals of the time there, especially as Biscuit muses about the nature of religious belief, including little gems like, "What it came down to was that I had a hard time seeing prayer as a practical tool in the face of real danger." There is a subtle, growing sense of menace, too. It's all beautifully done and I was completely swept up in it.

If I have a criticism it is that there is just a little too much drama in Biscuit's life to be wholly plausible, even if each part is completely plausible in itself. This is a small niggle, though. I found this an excellent read which carried me along, engaged me with a well-drawn cast of characters and left me with lots to think about afterward. A little against my expectations, this is a five-star book for me and I recommend it very warmly.

Alexander Maksik - A Marker To Measure Drift

Rating: 5/5

Review: Gripping, haunting and moving

I thought this was an excellent book. It's a slow, intimate portrait of Jacqueline, a survivor of the dreadful last days of the Charles Taylor regime in Liberia who has fled and ended up, destitute, on the Greek island of Santorini. There is very little action for much of the book's length; the narrative is concerned almost entirely with Jacqueline's inner state, her response to her new circumstances and the scattered, hinted-at memories of her contented, privileged past and the terrible events which brought her here.

Maksik writes exceptionally well. He has a deceptively gentle, almost lyrical style which captures the place and Jacqueline's internal state very well indeed. He also has a remarkable depth of understanding and an ability to convey Jacqueline's combination of vulnerability and resilience which made this an absolutely riveting read for me. The narrative hints for much of its length at fragments of the full horror of what Jacqueline has experienced and witnessed so there is a building sense of tension which gives the story some real drive. I found the imaginary mental conversations she has with her mother completely convincing. Her responses, too, to events on the island and people she meets are exceptionally well depicted, and I found her a fascinating and beautifully drawn character.

It's not all grimness and horror by any means. Maksik doesn't insult the events or the people he is writing about with facile notions of "closure" or the like, but there is a redemptive and hopeful note in Jacqueline's inner strength and in some of the simple human kindness which she encounters. When the full revelation of the horror comes, it is with a kind of catharsis and the hint of a beginning of healing, and I found it exemplary in expressing dreadful but necessary things in an honest and human way.

I found this book gripping, haunting, moving and deeply thought-provoking and I recommend it very warmly.

Willeford - Miami Blues

Rating: 4/5

Review:  
An enjoyable crime novel

This is a good, very readable thriller from 1984. Set in the Miami of the time, it features detective Hoke Moseley in pursuit of a very plausibly-drawn killer and I found it engaging and enjoyable.

Charles Willeford is a new author to me, and I am glad to have found him. He writes very well in the "hard-boiled" tradition of US crime fiction. He has a flat, unsensational style which makes the story grip and, slightly counter-intuitively, makes the action and violence all the more shocking when it happens. Hoke Moseley is a good central character and the "blithe psychopath" Freddy Frenger is very well drawn and disturbingly plausible. Miami and its seedier side are extremely well-evoked and I found myself thoroughly drawn into the book. It has to be said that the plot depends upon an extremely unlikely death and a coincidence which really ought to have made the author blush, but these both happen early on and everything hangs together well thereafter so they didn't really interfere with my enjoyment.

Good though it is, I am not sure this really deserves the title of a Penguin Classic. Willeford isn't in the same league as real classic authors of the genre like Chandler, Cain or Hammett, but it's a good read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good crime novel.

Marcus Sedgwick - A Love Like Blood

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Thoughtful and involving

I thought this was a very engrossing and thoughtful book. Although it uses elements of the vampire myth, this is a long way from the current glut of teen vampires. It is intelligent and subtle, it doesn't stray into the supernatural and is more of an exploration of the nature of guilt, desire, evil and the abuse of power than a horror story.

There are elements of horror, but they are very well done. The story is narrated in the first person by Charles Jackson, a brilliant haematologist, who becomes obsessed with and then in deadly conflict with a man whom he glimpses apparently drinking the blood of a young woman in Paris at the end of the Second World War. It is generally a considered rather than an action-packed tale, although there was more than enough action and suspense to keep me reading avidly. It's Hitchcock rather than Hammer Horror and it is excellently done.

Marcus Sedgwick is a very fine writer. I tried this because I have enjoyed his work on the past very much (his recent She Is Not Invisible is terrific, for example) and he didn't disappoint here. He catches the voice of a post-war academic extremely well and creates a terrific sense of place throughout; I found his oppressive portrait of Avignon quite brilliant, for example, and he conjures equally convincing and involving backgrounds in the many different settings for the action.

Even if you're utterly allergic to vampires I would suggest giving this book a try. It's involving, plausible, exceptionally well written and has some important things to say about human nature. Warmly recommended.

Alastair Bruce - Wall Of Days

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent

I thought this an excellent book. It is exceptionally well written, with an absorbing story and real moral and intellectual content. Set apparently in the far future in a world in which civilisations have been drowned and history almost completely lost, the story is of a man banished from the small society he ruled and effectively created and who now lives alone on a small, slowly vanishing island. It is very hard to say more without spoiling the story too much, but something occurs so that he eventually decides he must return, whatever the consequences for him.

The real point of the book is an exploration of how we deal with terrible events of the past - whether they can really be forgotten and even airbrushed from history, whether people need to face the truth of what they and others have done and whether they are capable of doing so. There is, too, a moving but unsentimental and wholly believable portrait of a man who felt it his duty to his people to commit dreadful acts for their sake, and how that sacrifice of his humanity has affected him. I thought both these aspects of the book were quite remarkable and exceptionally well done, especially in a first novel by a relatively young author. It is significant, I think, that he is South African and so from a nation where such things are a powerful and recent, but all countries have such things in their past and there is much that is relevant to all of us in this book.

The prose is excellent. Narrated in the first person by an ex-soldier it is clear and unsentimental with an unaffected elegance and spareness which I found completely gripping. The whole book is absorbing and very rewarding and I recommend it very warmly as a thoughtful, intelligent and haunting read.