Susan Hill - Old Haunts

Rating: 3/5

Review:
OK but nothing more

I think the Serrailler series has been brilliant so far, but I can’t really see the point of this very short story.

Old Haunts opens in the present day, when a rather clunky few pages stir Simon’s memories of a summer in the early 1990s when he was a young PC and was chosen for some undercover work. It’s decently written and has a couple of quite tense, unexpected moments; with a bit of revision it might have made a chapter in a novel set at that time of Simon’s career but as a short story it really doesn’t add up to much.

Old Haunts is OK and will pass an unobjectionable 20 minutes for Serrailler fans like me, but I really don't know why Susan Hill has bothered with it.

(My thanks to Vintage Digital for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Pat Barker - The Silence Of The Girls

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Outstandingly good

I thought The Silence Of The Girls was quite outstanding. I wasn’t sure whether I would like it, but it turned out to be readable, insightful, humane and by the end was utterly spellbinding.

(If spoiler warnings are needed for a famous 2500-year-old story, be aware that I make reference below to some events in the book.)

This is the story of the end of the Trojan War from the perspective of Briseis, a Trojan noblewoman captured in battle and given to Achilles as a prize of honour. Largely narrated by Briseis herself, this is a brilliant portrait of what it is to be captured and to become someone’s property; to be referred to as “it”, to be silent and perform domestic duties, to be paraded in front of the men as a prize and to be forced to have sex with the man who killed her brothers and destroyed her home. There is also an excellent picture of the reality of the fighting and of the Greek camp on the plains of Troy, and it is all done in a wonderfully human, readable voice so it never becomes turgid or worthy. As a tiny example, of Achilles’s legendary invulnerability, “Invulnerable to wounds? His whole body was a mass of scars. Believe me, I do know.”

Much of the book is, of course, the story of Achilles and it’s a wonderfully insightful study of a proud, emotionally illiterate warrior’s reaction to insult and then to grief. The almost adolescent sulking and its effect are evoked with real understanding, the death of Patroclus is superbly done and very moving, and the portrait of Achilles’s grief and rage quite enthralling. We get a chilling picture of what his subsequent “heroism” on the battlefield really means, and the visit of Priam to plead for Hector’s body was both deeply touching and utterly gripping with Briseis’s voice and perspective binding it all together.

I was hooked from quite early in the book and for the closing third I was completely enthralled.

I think that Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy is among the finest literary achievements of the last half century, so I don’t speak lightly when I say that The Silence Of The Girls is one of her very best. I very much hope that it will be a contender for major literary prizes and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via Netgalley.)

Patrick O'Brian - Blue At The Mizzen

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The last of this brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

This is the last book that Patrick O’Brian completed before his death, the twentieth of this great series. It finds Jack and Steven aboard the Surprise during peacetime, again involved in a semi-clandestine mission in Chile to suport independence from Spain. There’s plenty of seaborne action and also both subtle intelligence work and touching personal developments for Steven. The book ends with ne of O’Brian’s genuinely moving moments, done in his characteristic understated way which make them all the more powerful.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff, and it is a source of genuine sadness to me that they had to come to an end.

Patrick O'Brian - The Hundred Days

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
The nineteenth in a brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

Following the Peace and paying off of much of the Royal Navy, Napoleon has escaped from Elba and war is again upon Jack and Steven. They and the Surprise find themselves ordered to the Mediterranean again to harass and thwart Bonaparte’s plans to build more ships and reinforce his troops in Europe. There is plenty of action, plenty of political intrigue (perhaps in a tad too much detail at times) and, of course, Steven’s pursuit of natural philosophy wherever he finds himself. It’s another fine, absorbing instalment. It begins, too, with a masterstroke of storytelling as we learn of the death of a significant character which has taken place offstage, as it were, since the end of The Yellow Admiral. It is rather like a Greek Chorus and is remarkably effective and affecting.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.

Susan Hill - The Comforts Of Home

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but not Hill's best

The Comforts of home is good, but I don’t think it’s quite up to the exceptional standard of many of its predecessors in this excellent series.

We follow Simon’s recovery, both physical and psychological, after the shocking events in The Soul of Discretion as he eventually travels to Taransay to convalesce. His father is in France and Cat’s life progresses at home in Lafferton, where there is some serious crime and a cold case to investigate. Even on Taransay, Simon becomes involved in a local mystery and then a crime...and therein lie some of my reservations about the book. There is so much happening in so any different places that it loses focus, I think, and Susan Hill’s thoughtful, often profound psychological analyses are less evident.

Her writing is as good as ever, with lovely, unobtrusive prose, extremely well-painted characters and an excellent sense of place on Taransay. However, I didn’t find Cat’s most recent medical dilemmas anything like as interesting as they have been, and other things weren’t quite on Hill’s normally stellar level. One thing that has marked this series as quite exceptional has been her examination of attitudes to death in different circumstances. That is almost wholly absent here (as it was from the previous book), but I was hoping for a similarly incisive portrait of recovery from physical and psychological trauma. It’s not really there; Simon is a closed and introverted character and we actually see very little of what he is going through. As a result, The Comforts Of Home felt rather more like a decent crime novel and a little less like the superb, profound books which have preceded it.

A not-quite-so-good book by Susan Hill is still far better than much of what’s out there and I can still recommend this, but it wasn’t quite the exceptional treat that I was expecting.

(My thanks to Random House for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The eighteenth in a brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

In The Yellow Admiral, there is both trouble and satisfaction for Jack and Steven on land, but a grave worry for Jack as enmities in the Service and in politics threaten to end his career as a shorebound “yellow” admiral or even to be passed over altogether. A period on the blockade of Brest doesn’t help his spirits and he begins to consider options outside the Royal Navy as peace approaches. In spite of the slightly unpromising-sounding subject matter, this is another wholly absorbing and enjoyable instalment in the Aubrey Maturin saga.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.

Patrick O'Brian - The Commodore

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The seventeenth in a brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

In The Commodore, Jack and Steven’s personal affairs on land are, as so often, in some upheaval, but Jack is appointed Commodore of a squadron to suppress the slave trade off the East African coast and then to intercept and thwart a French squadron sent to raise rebellion in Ireland. It is another gripping and fascinating book, full of detail and with a compelling story.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.

Sophie Hannah - The Mystery of Three-Quarters

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Enjoyable - in the end

In the end I enjoyed The Mystery Of Three-Quarters, but it was hard going for a while.

Sophie Hannah has done a good job of creating a Christie-style mystery, with an intriguing puzzle, odd clues, red herrings and a lengthy climactic meeting of all possible suspects in which Poirot reveals the true culprit. The first half was a bit of a struggle, as the characters and the strange mystery of the accusatory letters in Poirot’s name are introduced. It all seemed a bit laboured and disjointed, but things moved along much better in the second half and I ended up in that old state of ought-to-be doing-something-else-but-must-finish the-book, which is always a good sign.

Part of the problem is that I found very little in the way of period setting. This mattered less as the story began to rattle along, but it was a disappointment for me. It’s not that Sophie Hannah gets it badly wrong – she’s far too good a writer for that – but somehow I never felt that we were in the 1930s. The language was generally pretty well done, but there were occasional things like an ancient family servant saying, “I’ve set up the two machines for Mr Porrott, like you asked, Mrs Lavington.” Surely he would have said something more like “I have set up the two machines as you requested...” There wasn’t too much of this but it did grate occasionally.

This ended up as a four-star read for me; it’s fun but be prepared for a somewhat stodgy first half.

(My thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC via Netgalley.)

Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The sixteenth in a brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

The Wine-Dark Sea follows Jack, Steven and The Surprise to the second part of their long, long mission in Peru and Chile where Steven’s intelligence work becomes very involved and he also has a very lengthy journey through the Andes. There is also a lot of seagoing action, of course, and yet another superb character study – possibly O’Brian’s finest – of Nathaniel Martin. It is complex and subtle, perhaps very slightly reminiscent in some ways of William Golding’s Rites Of Passage, and one of the satisfying joys of O’Brian’s writing.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.

Patrick O'Brian - Clarissa Oakes/The Truelove

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The fifteenth in a brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

Clarissa Oakes/The Truelove sees the Surprise in the South Seas and finds the eponymous Clarissa aboard as a stowaway from the penal colonies. There are the fine naval and intelligence development s we have come to expect, but the chief underlying theme of the book is the effect of a young woman on the closed, celibate male community of a man of war, which O’Brian does superbly, along with a fine, nuanced portrait of Clarissa herself. This is for me one of his finest psychological studies – but the narrative and action are as gripping as ever.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.

Len Deighton - The Ipcress File

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Still very good

The Ipcress File has aged remarkably well. It was first published in 1962 but I’d not read it before (although I thought I had!) and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing, the excellent sense of place, especially in London, and the laconic but quite realistic tone.

The Ipcress File a spy novel which is often bracketed with Ian Fleming and John le Carré and which seems to me to be something of a bridge between them, both chronologically and in style and content. Much more down-to-earth and realistic than Fleming (who had been producing Bond novels for almost a decade by then) but not as grimly downbeat as The Spy Who came In From The Cold which followed it three years later, it’s a very good read. The plot just about holds water, although I did get a little lost at times. It also depends too much on lengthy explanations at the end, but I didn’t mind too much because the prose is great and the unnamed narrator’s laconic style is just right; it’s believable and witty without being crammed with implausibly smart wisecracks and comebacks and I found it a pleasure to read.

“Classic” modern novels don’t always live up to their billing when read half a century later, but I think The Ipcress File stands up well. I enjoyed it and can recommend it warmly.

Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg Of Consolation

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The fourteenth in a brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

The sublimely titled Nutmeg Of Consolation finds Jack and his wrecked and battered crew still in the Far East, but restored to a ship and heading for their rendezvous with the Surprise and thence to the penal colonies of New South Wales to refit. There is plenty of seagoing action this time, plus a superb picture of the true horror of the penal colonies and plenty of life ashore for Steven as a naturalist. It’s another superbly constructed, engrossing instalment with a couple more of O’Brian’s quiet but deeply touching moments, too.

Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.

Tommy Orange - There There

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Admirable intent but not a great novel

This is not going to be a popular view, but I didn’t think There There was a very successful novel. The history it conveys and the points it makes about the treatment of Native Americans are extremely important and it is essential that Native American voices should be heard, but for me it didn’t make a compelling, readable or involving novel. I found the fragmented structure too disruptive and the multitude of stories, told in a very similar voice throughout, meant that I never quite engaged with each one before a cut to a different one.

The very fine song White Man’s World by Jason Isbell contains the couplet,

“I’m a white man living on a white man’s street

I’ve got the bones of the red man under my feet...”

and those two lines had as much impact on me as the whole of There There, I think. We really do need to hear the stories of those bones and of the living descendants of the bones’ owners, and I applaud Tommy Orange’s noble purpose in trying to tell some of them. However, this felt to me more like a rather fragmented history lesson than a novel. There are some very fine novels now about African American history and slavery (Colson Whitehead’s recent and excellent Underground Railroad, for example) and Native American history needs them too. There There isn’t bad by any means, but however great the need and however admirable its aim, for me it doesn’t come into that category.

(My thanks to Vintage for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Patrick O'Brian - The Thirteen-Gun Salute

Rating: 5/5

Review:
The thirteenth in a brilliant series

This is now my third time reading through this brilliant series and I am reminded again how beautifully written and how wonderfully, addictively enjoyable they are.

The Thirteen Gun Salute sees a major restoration of Jack’s fortunes and a mission to the Far East with an Envoy hoping to conclude an important treaty with a Sultan and thereby thwart the French ambitions to do the same. The book is therefore less concerned with seagoing matters and naval actions than most of its predecessors, but is no less involving for that. Stephen’s work both as a naturalist and as an intelligence agent dominate much of the book and it’s fascinating stuff, along with another of O’Brian’s subtle psychological portraits, this time of Fox, the Envoy.

This, by the way, is the first O’Brian that I ever read; it was about 20 years ago and I picked it at random from the library shelves...and I have been hooked ever since. Patrick O'Brian is steeped in the period of the early 19th Century and his knowledge of the language, manners, politics, social mores and naval matters of the time is deep and wide. Combined with a magnificent gift for both prose and storytelling, it makes something very special indeed. The books are so perfectly paced, with some calmer, quieter but still engrossing passages and some quite thrilling action sequences. O'Brian's handling of language is masterly, with the dialogue being especially brilliant, but also things like the way his sentences become shorter and more staccato in the action passages, making them heart-poundingly exciting. There are also laugh-out-loud moments and an overall sense of sheer involvement and pleasure in reading.

I cannot recommend these books too highly. They are that rare thing; fine literature which are also books which I can't wait to read more of. Wonderful stuff.