Brian Switek - The Secret Life Of Bones

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An enjoyable, entertaining read

I thoroughly enjoyed The Secret Life Of Bones. Brian Switek really knows his stuff and puts it over in an entertaining way with genuine science behind it all.

Switek takes us through the very beginning of bones in early creatures (and tiny, unprepossessing creatures they were, too) their evolution and the way they function in the body and a great deal more besides. I found it all fascinating and full of really interesting stuff including some very good little diversions into things like how the bones of Richard III were identified. Switek strikes an excellent balance, which popular science authors often fail to do, between proper science and a readable, entertaining book. He is a very good writer with genuine wit at times, which he never overdoes but which makes the whole thing an enjoyable read.

I thought this was an exemplary popular science book; readable, informative and entertaining. Very warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Prelude Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Cormac McCarthy - No Country For Old Men

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

No Country For Old Men is as good as everyone says it is. Thoughtful gripping and superbly written, it’s among the best I’ve read for some time.

It’s an account of a drug deal gone wrong on the US-Mexico border, a young man happening on the aftermath and stealing the money and his relentless, merciless pursuit by a psychopathic, conscienceless hit man. On the side of the law is the ageing Sheriff Bell who is a wonderful creation; moral, somewhat taciturn, not highly educated but very shrewd and intelligent, each chapter begins with some of his internal monologues and ruminations on things which are quite brilliant, I think. A gripping story with real moral content and a superb, understated comparison of these two contrasting characters made this a real saboteur of a book for me, disrupting plans and sleep as I had to read just a little more…

There has been so much written about this book by others that this review is probably redundant, but if you do happen across it I would urge you very strongly to read the book. It’s quite outstanding.

Susan Hill - The Benefit of Hindsight

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another excellent instalment

I’m pleased to say that this series is back up to its usual excellent standard after the rather disappointing The Comforts of Home. There is a very solid crime story, with Susan Hill’s trademark explorations of other themes and other stories involving her main characters.

Simon is back at work and we finally get a look at the process of mental and emotional recovery from severe trauma, which is faintly echoed in the story of the emotional struggles of one of Cat’s new patients. Both are very well done, with Hill’s usual combination of forensic observation and compassion, as is the development of the family story. The title refers to the judgements professionals have to make with insufficient information and their consequences, which Hill also deals with extremely well. I won’t reveal more to avoid spoilers, but I think she is back in her stride here, which for followers of this excellent series is probably all that need be said.

Susan Hill is a very fine writer and the Serrailler books are novels investigating human emotions, relationships and motivations with crimes running through the narrative rather than just Crime Novels. This is a fine example and is very warmly recommended.

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

John O'Connell - Bowie's Books

Rating: $/5

Review:
Interesting and readable

This is an interesting idea which is done well. John O’Connell has taken the list which Bowie made of the 100 books which had most influenced him (but not necessarily his favourite books, as O’Connell firmly points out) and has given a brief description of each book, something of its history and a suggestion of how it came to influence David Bowie.

In general, O’Connell does this very well. There is a lengthy introduction in which he describes Bowie’s almost addictive reading habit and relates this to the man and his extraordinary art. He generally (but not quite always, I think) manages to avoid pretentiousness and gives us a good idea of the influence of reading on Bowie himself. I liked this little passage: “This isn’t the story of David Bowie’s life… But it is a look at the tools he used to navigate his life, not to mention a shot in the arm for the unfashionable theory, one that I’ve always liked, that reading makes you a better person.” That gives an idea of the aims of the book and O’Connell’s style, both of which I liked.

The list is extremely eclectic, from Camus to Viz and The Beano and from art and philosophy to thrillers. O’Connell takes each book in the list and relates it to Bowie’s career and personal life. This is a tricky task, necessarily a little speculative in places, and he manages to do it credibly and engagingly. It’s one to dip into rather than read at a sitting, but a couple of sections at a time are rewarding and have suggested several things I may want to read myself.

I did baulk slightly at the end of each section where there is a “Read while listening to...” with suggestions of Bowie tracks. I wouldn’t dream of listening to Bowie while reading anything – it would be an insult to both Bowie and the book. Perhaps “After reading, listen to...” would have been better. This is followed by an Amazon-style “If you liked this, then try...” suggestion which I have to say I found rather patronising.

Minor quibbles aside, this is an interesting, readable book which I can recommend.

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

Kate Weinberg - The Truants

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An impressive debut

Overall, I enjoyed The Truants, but it did drag a bit in the middle especially.

The book is narrated by Jess, looking back six years or so to 2012 when she was an eighteen-year-old first-year student at an unnamed university bearing a strong resemblance to the University Of East Anglia. Studying English, she falls under the spell of Lorna, a charismatic female lecturer, and also of a wealthy, drug-dependent fellow student and her maverick older boyfriend. It’s a story of love, desire, betrayal, lies and growing up.

Kate Weinberg writes very well. The book is literary without ever becoming pretentious and she creates very believable characters with a fine sense of growing foreboding. Jess’s voice is excellently done and it’s very readable, with a death and important revelations making the second half of the book very gripping.

Perhaps it’s me – as a gent in his mid-60s I’m perhaps not the ideal audience for a lengthy exploration of the emotional life of a slightly withdrawn post-adolescent woman – but I almost gave up around half way. It was all well written and well done, but it began to feel a bit familiar and drawn out. I really needed something to actually happen; fortunately, I persisted and things did happen soon enough for me to enjoy the second half very much.

So, a slightly qualified recommendation but this is an impressive debut and I’ll certainly be looking out for Kate Weinberg’s next book.

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

Terry Hayes - I Am Pilgrim

Rating: 4/5

Review
Enjoyable but flawed

I enjoyed I Am Pilgrim, but I did think it had its flaws.

There’s a lot that’s familiar here; the best agent of his generation, retired but dragged back into the secret world to save the entire world from terrorist catastrophe isn’t the most original of set-ups. However Terry Hayes pulls it off very well, by and large. He structures the story cleeverly so that it’s a compelling read, there is a lot of meticulous research which makes it at least semi-plausible and his portraits of the motivations of his characters are well done. I found it gripping and page-turning almost throughout. Almost.

The book is too long and would benefit from considerable trimming, I think. Some of the extensive back-story began to get in the way sometimes, some of the action sequences were over drawn out and frankly silly and the rather ridiculous climax and extended sentimental coda let the book down a little.

Nonetheless, it’s an engrossing book for much of its (considerable) length and would make an excellent beach read. Recommended.

Cormac McCarthy - The Road

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Absolutely brilliant

The Road scarcely needs another review from me, but I will say that all the rave reviews are justified. I thought it was an absolutely brilliant book.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, two unnamed characters – a man and his boy – walk south through an unnamed country to try to escape the worst of the coming winter. All is burnt and wholly desolate and they survive on the few unlooted scraps they can find. The world is entirely lawless and the portrait of the two preserving their mutual love and trying to remain humane and compassionate to the few people left is very haunting. It’s a bleak read, but a magnificent one; the prose manages to be almost flat in tone and poetic at the same time and a wholly believable world is created largely by suggestion as almost nothing is explained but hideous truths show through.

I couldn’t stop reading The Road. It is powerful, haunting, moving and utterly compelling. It’s a masterclass in writing and a terrific read – very warmly recommended indeed.

Isabel Rogers - Bold As Brass

Rating: 4/5

Review :
Enjoyable stuff

I am pleased to say that I liked Bold As Brass a lot more than its predecessor, Life, Death and Cellos. It’s still pretty fluffy nonsense, but it’s much better done and an enjoyable read.

This time, the Stockwell Park Orchestra embarks on a “community outreach scheme” which means getting students (invariably referred to as “kids” - hmm) from two local schools to participate in the orchestra. One is a rough state school struggling to emerge from Special Measures, the other a posh minor public school, steeped in wealth, history and entitlement. Rivalries, skulduggery and a minor mystery ensue, with friendly DCI Noel Osmar on hand to help to sort things out.

Once again, the real strength of the book is Isabel Rogers’s writing about music and musicians which she does with real insight, fondness and wit. The plot itself is...well, it’s Enid Blyton for grown-ups, really, with some almost pantomimic stereotypes and the dastardly rotters eventually being thoroughly routed by the jolly nice people. It’s a lot of fun, though, and Rogers has tightened things up greatly, so that the whole thing is well focussed and skips along nicely. Although it’s pretty plain what is going to happen, I wanted to keep reading and enjoyed it a lot; I have the sense that she might be hitting her stride with this series.

So, overall, a light, fun read with some genuinely interesting stuff about music and performance, and which is well written and enjoyable. Recommended.

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

Sarah Hilary - Never Be Broken

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not a great addition to the series

I wasn’t all that keen on Never Be Broken. Sarah Hilary is a good writer, but the reservations I have about this series as a whole are rather greater for this episode.

Hilary is dealing with important issues of knife crime and the use of children as drugs couriers, but as a book this never really engaged me. Marnie Rome takes something of a back seat and the book is largely about Noah Jake – for me far too much about him personally at the expense of the plot and the issues at stake. I have had a sense of this imbalance in quite a few of the previous books, but here it really did spoil things for me, I’m afraid.

I’m plainly in a minority about this, but Never Be Broken didn’t really do it for me and I won’t be rushing to read the next in the series.

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

Tom Chatfield - This Is Gomorrah

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good but a weak ending

I enjoyed a lot of This Is Gomorrah very much. For a good deal of its length I found it well written, witty, rather insightful in places and genuinely exciting. Sadly, for the last quarter or so it declined into a rather silly, generic-feeling cyber-thriller.

The set up is good. Azi is a cyber-geek in London who spends time on the dark web where he has cleverly set up a false identity to infiltrate and sabotage far-right groups. This brings him into contact with Gomorrah, a very sinister organisation on the dark web who deal in all sorts of highly unsavoury things and whose dark purpose becomes gradually clearer throughout the book. Azi suddenly finds himself caught up in a real-world web of espionage and terrorism in which everyone seems untrustworthy and he is on the run with powerful people trying to kill him.

It all sounds pretty familiar, almost stale stuff, but Tom Chatfield makes it feel very fresh. He writes very well, there is genuine wit here, laced with some sharp observations, plausible detail and decently drawn characters, all of which makes for a good story. For a while I thought this might be a five-star book, but the denouement (which I obviously can’t say anything about) let the book down badly for me. It was just plain silly and rather clumsily done, I thought, and I was disappointed by it. I have given it four stars on the basis of the first part of the book, but only just in the end.

This is plainly being set this up as a series. I like Azi as a character and Chatfield writes well so I may well try the next one, but I can only give This Is Gomorrah a rather qualified recommendation.

(My thanks to Hodder and Stoughton for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Howard Jacobson - Live A Little

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Excellent - in the end

I enjoyed Live A Little very much in the end. It is witty, insightful and rather touching, but I found the first two-thirds or so a bit of a slog.

This is a story of two people in their eighties and nineties respectively who have very different pasts and views of themselves. Shimi Carmelli is cursed with remembering almost everything – especially his shames and embarrassments which are many. (“A butterfly doesn’t beat its wings in China without Shimi feeling it is his fault or at leasts reflects badly on him.”) Beryl Duisenbery, on the other hand, is losing her memory, while trying to write a memoir of her imperiously lived life (“Who the hell cares, anyway, she thinks. It’s true if I say it is. It’s true if I recall it that way.”)

We spend the first two-thirds of the book getting to know Beryl and Shimi, allowing Jacobson time to develop his characters while throwing witty barbs at politics of both shades, artists, elderly widows and plenty of other targets. It’s well done and fantastically well written, of course, and they are interesting characters but I did find that it meandered a bit. The book really takes off when Beryl and Shimi finally meet and their relationship brings about some surprising and sometimes genuinely touching revelations, confessions and redemptions of a kind. Here, I think Jacobson has important things to say about loneliness, the impact of shame on a life and about relationships in general.

I laughed several times and was moved, too and in spite of my reservations about the length of the first section, I can recommend Live A Little as a rewarding read.

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