M.C. Beaton - Agatha Raisin: Beating About The Bush

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I’m afraid Agatha Raisin and I didn’t get on. This was my first Agatha Raisin and, in spite of all the praise this series has garnered, it will probably be my last.

The plot, for the record, concerns Agatha and her detective partner Toni investigating industrial espionage at a local factory, where all kinds of Odd Things seem to be going on and someone is Out To Get Them. It’s mildly amusing in places, but I found most of the humour clunky and overdone, the characters so caricatured and over-explained as to be tedious clichés rather than witty parodies and the whole thing a bit of a bore, really. After some judicious skimming I didn’t feel I had missed much and I was quite glad to get to the end.

So, it definitely wasn’t for me. Plenty of others, including people whose judgement I respect greatly, find Agatha Raisin very amusing, but personally I can’t recommend Beating About The Bush.

(My thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Kate Elizabeth Russell - My Dark Vanessa

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Intelligent, thoughtful and readable

I thought My Dark Vanessa was excellent. It is about a difficult subject so it’s not a light read, but it’s extremely well done and I found it compelling and thought-provoking.

The book is narrated in the first person by Vanessa, now in her 30s, who at 15 was groomed and had a sexual relationship with a 45-year-old teacher, Jacob Strane. We see her life now as a lost, isolated soul in an unrewarding job who relies on drink and drugs to get through the evening and night, and in flashback through the beginning of Strane’s grooming, her response to it and the consequences later.

It sounds grim – and the subject matter certainly is – but it drew me in and held me spellbound for much of the time. I was half expecting a bandwagon-jumping #MeToo potboiler beating me over the head with obvious points, but I was completely wrong. This is a book with real intelligence, insight and both emotional and psychological depth. We see how Vanessa, who is socially isolated, a little awkward and unconfident, is utterly overwhelmed and thrilled by the attention and compliments of Strane, how for a long time she denies that there was anything untoward in their relationship and feels a strong loyalty toward him, even though his behaviour made my flesh creep. The complexity of her emotions is superbly portrayed as she argues, for example that “it wasn’t rape rape,” as are the emotional consequences, which are intelligently and compassionately depicted, while never evading the reality. Kate Elizabeth Russell avoids neat, simple conclusions and messages and manages to show how issues may appear simple to outsiders, whereas they are extremely complex to Vanessa.

It’s all done with great skill and excellent judgement; for example, Russell manages to make the sex explicit – as it needs to be – while never the remotest bit titillating, but quite the reverse. The prose is very readable, the whole thing is well structured and there is a welcome dash of hope which never resorts to easy sentimentality.

My Dark Vanessa is an important book which is also an engrossing read. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to 4^th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Sandi Toksvig - Between The Stops

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific read

I loved Between The Stops. I was a little dubious about the initial premise, which sounded a bit contrived, but in fact it’s a delightful read, full of wit, well argued good sense and extremely interesting oddments about all sorts of things.

The set-up is that Sandi travels regularly on the Number 12 bus from her home in East Dulwich to where she works in central London. She is genuinely fascinated (to the point of geekdom) by the places through which she passes on the journey: snippets of local history, interesting shops and people, the roads and who they are named after and so on. She uses these also as jumping-off points for bits of autobiography, anecdote and opinion – which sounds a bit iffy as a device, but in fact is interesting, thoughtful and very funny in places.

What comes across is that Sandi is humane, intelligent, thoughtful, passionate about injustice and very funny. She achieves an excellent balance between these things and has the judgement to know when to make serious points in a witty way. She is generally kind to people, but isn’t above the occasional wittily waspish remark, like the time she sat between Ken Dodd and Julian Fellowes at a dinner: “Ken was genuinely fascinating and Julian was impressive in the self-belief that he was too.”

In short, this is a terrific read; it’s very enjoyable and with some real substance. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

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

Dorothy L. Sayers - Gaudy Night

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine novel

I thoroughly enjoyed Gaudy Night second time around (after about forty years). Although I’ve been back to the others many times, this was my first re-reading of Gaudy Night. It is principally about Harriet Vane and her return to her old Oxford college to investigate some rather sinister goings on.

I think what made me like the book more this time is that I accepted from the start that it is not primarily a detective story and that Wimsey doesn’t appear until two-thirds of the way through the book. There is a mystery which drives the narrative, but it’s really a novel about sexism and how it relates (or related in the 1930s) to marriage, women in academia and attitudes to women generally. It is also a book about Oxford and Sayers’s love for both the city and the academic rigour for which it stands.

She writes beautifully and penetratingly about all these things, creating very well observed and well painted portraits of her subjects, who are principally the Dons in a women’s college. The mystery forms a backdrop at best and isn’t hugely interesting in comparison with the novel’s setting and with the relationship between Harriet and Peter. Her understanding of people is acute and she gets vital human details exactly right, like the poignancy and mixture of feelings when returning to university for a reunion, for example

I found the whole thing engrossing, witty, exceptionally intelligent and a pleasure pretty well from start to finish. I think it was a little long, with some episodes which could have been left out, and Wimsey remains implausibly accomplished in absolutely everything, but these are minor niggles. This is a fine novel which I can recommend very warmly.

Marcus Berkmann - Rain Men

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

Rain Men is brilliant. It is genuinely hilariously funny and also captures the spirit of amateur cricket perfectly.

Now well over 20 years old, this remains one of my favourite books about cricket. It is the true tale of Berkmann’s amateur cricket team who are untalented but enthusiastic, with many reflections on aspects of cricket and the people involved in it and devoted to it. I think you do need to be of a certain age to fully appreciate many of the references – the brilliant description of Jim Laker’s commentary or the question “What is the point of Jack Bannister?” for example – but anyone who has played or loved the game at any level will identify with this book and find it extremely entertaining. This passage from the beginning of Chapter One gives a flavour:

“Non-believers cannot understand how anyone could allow themselves to fall under the spell of a game, and such an intrinsically silly one at that. Their sneers and contempt, not to mention their endless satirical use of the phrase ‘bowling a maiden over’, can undermine the most robust of personalities. What they don’t understand is that we know it’s stupid, but England are 84 for 4, for Christ’s sake. Which, needless to say, answers all their questions in full.”

The whole thing is a joy. I laughed out loud very regularly and literally cried with laughter a few times. It’s also knowledgeable, insightful and rather touching in places. If you have any interest in cricket, I can recommend Rain Men very warmly indeed.

(Oh, and if I ever meet Marcus Berkmann, I shall have just three words to say to him: Little Harry Pilling.)

Mark Hebden - Death Set To Music

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and enjoyable

I enjoyed Death Set To Music. Written in 1979, this is the first of the Inspector Pel series (and the first that I have read); it is a decent police procedural with some amusing aspects which is very well written.

Pel is an Inspector in the French Police, based in Burgundy. He is a grumpy, rather misanthropic hypochondriac, but a very good detective. Here he and his team investigate the gruesome murder of a fairly wealthy woman and the story unfolds slowly (rather too slowly at times) as Pel’s well-drawn officers diligently pursue leads. It can drag a bit, but it isn’t too long, it was well written and had enough humour to keep me interested. The denouement was a little contrived but it didn’t spoil the book and I found the whole thing an enjoyable read.

I can’t say that this is a classic, but it’s certainly good enough for me to read more of Inspector Pel and I can recommend it.

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

Jane Rogers - Body Tourists

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good but flawed

Body Tourists had a lot of very good things about it, but for me it didn’t quite live up to its initial promise.

The book begins excellently. It is 2045 and a lone scientist with a super-wealthy backer has found a way of downloading the minds of dead, cryogenically frozen people into the bodies of young, healthy (and well paid) volunteers for 14 days. Jane Rogers uses this to explore the consequences and ethics of such a procedure, as well as to make some strong political points about the direction our society seems to be taking. This includes the increasing use of robots and the consequent loss of jobs, income and self-respect and people’s use of Virtual Reality effectively as a drug to deal with the effects of this as the unemployed are shipped out to bleak “Northern Estates” and left there with almost no facilities. The wealthy, meanwhile have a fabulous time – which begins to include the wealthy dead taking over the bodies of the poor so that they can return to life.

It’s an intriguing concept and Rogers does pretty well with the ideas and examines both how things can go terribly wrong but also how it may be an opportunity to resolve injustice and bring resolution. We get several points of view, some in the first person, some in the third. For me, there were rather too many to keep the narrative sufficiently tight, some were more effective than others. There is also a long story which for much of its length isn’t directly relevant to the Tourism concept; it’s well done and I can see why Rogers wanted to give such a fully drawn background, but it doesn’t sit well with the book as a whole. The issues weren’t always considered in the depth I’d expected and I also found much of the ending rather rushed and over-neatly resolved – but there is also a brief but brilliant and quietly chilling final section in the voice of the rich backer.

Jane Rogers is a very good writer, so there is much to like about this book. Flaws notwithstanding, I can recommend this as an exciting and thought-provoking read.

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

Elizabeth Strout - Olive, Again

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Involving and insightful

I thought Olive, Again was very good indeed. For me, it is that rare thing: a sequel that is better than its predecessor.

Olive, Again has a similar structure to Olive Kitteridge (which I strongly recommend that you read first). It is a sequence of linked short stories about the various people of the small town of Crosby, Maine, in all of which Olive features to a greater or lesser extent. Elizabeth Strout again shows her remarkable insight into character and human motivations and writes beautifully about all of them. The real strength of this book, though, is that it has a more linear structure and – crucially for me – it is far more concerned with the development of Olive’s own life, with most of the other characters as a part of it. There are exceptions which work very well, but the increased focus here made it more compelling for me.

Olive is still that beautifully painted human mixture of social awkwardness and directness bordering on rudeness with compassion, a refusal to pretend that things are not as they are, and the rare, precious ability genuinely to listen to someone with empathy. I found it wholly engrossing for much of its length and some stories, most notably February Light and Friend, quite outstandingly involving and insightful.

This is Elizabeth Strout at her best, which is probably all that really need be said. Very warmly recommended.

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

Caroline Criado Perez - Invisible Women

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Readable and fascinating

I agree with all the favorable reviews for Invisible Women; it is excellent. It is readable, fascinating and extremely well-researched.

Caroline Criado Perez has produced a real eye-opener of a book. She uses data to illustrate how women and their needs are simply omitted from planning in a huge range of areas. She says clearly that this is not deliberate, it is simply because the default assumption is that when we talk about “people” we are talking about men unless otherwise specified – or, as she puts it, “men go without saying.” She gives a wide range of fascinating examples from snow-clearing (believe it or not) to the allocation of space for toilets in public buildings and so on and so on. All of this is backed up with solid data and persuasive argument.

The great thing is that the book is so fascinating (and at times shocking) and so readable. I learned a huge amount and also thoroughly enjoyed reading it. This should be read by everyone; warmly recommended.

Brian Clegg - Scientifica Historica

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A beautiful introduction

I like Scientifica Historica very much. I studied History and Philosophy of science as an undergraduate many years ago and have maintained an interest in it, so this is an area I’m familiar with in an amateur sort of way – and am pleased (and slightly smug) at the number of books discussed by Brian Clegg that I have actually read.

The first thing to say is that the book is beautiful. The illustrations are lavish and inspiring much of the time – especially for me, seeing original scripts from millennia ago and handwritten notes by some deeply revered scientists but also pages and covers from great books. This makes it more of an introduction and a coffee table book than an in-depth work on the historiography of science, but that’s just fine because it fits that role very well. All the great works of pre- and 20th-Century science you’d expect are here, from Aristotle and Hippocrates through the great Arab works of the 9^th to the 12^th centuries, then Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Harvey, Malthus, Dalton, Faraday, Darwin, Einstein… plus a lot more, all of which is a delight to see. Each is discussed readably and with enough depth to inform the casual reader and to encourage those interested to seek out more.

Things become quite interesting with 20th-Century selections as science broadens out and I think it’s here that people may find some editorial choices controversial, especially in the final section on popular science books. Clegg doesn’t give us any Freud or Jung, for example, but does include Oliver Sacks and two (two!) of Desmond Morris’s books. To me Sacks is unarguable, as are many others he chooses, but two Desmond Morris books but nothing whatsoever by Peter Medawar or Stephen Jay Gould? My judgement would have been different – but then, that’s always going to be the case in such a selection.

So, as an enticing introduction to some of the great (and in my view some not so great!) books of science, this works very well and I can recommend it.

James Sallis - Drive

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A minor masterpiece

James Sallis is an outstanding writer in this genre and Drive is a minor masterpiece, in my view.

Like all Sallis’s novels, this is brief (under 200 pages), spare and superbly written. The protagonist, known only as Driver, is a superb driver who works in movies and also as a getaway driver for select criminals. When a job goes bad he is forced into retaliatory measures as the victims of the heist come after him.

Sallis never wastes a word. He creates a bleak, harsh world with the occasional flash of humanity which makes it all the more stark by contrast. There is some cutting back and forth in time as we get some of Driver’s history, but the narrative drive (sorry) is extremely strong and I found it utterly involving.

This is a brilliant, haunting book which gripped me from the first and never let go. Very, very warmly recommended.

Katy Brand - I Carried A Watermelon

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

I loved I Carried A Watermelon. I am most definitely not the target audience; I’m a bloke in his mid-60s and I have never seen Dirty Dancing (I had no idea what the title meant). I only tried it, with some trepidation, because I really like Katy Brand and her work – and I still loved it.

Katy Brand has had a lifelong (well, since she was about 12) obsession with Dirty Dancing. This is a long love-letter to the film, which she uses to make extremely intelligent, thoughtful and humane points about all sorts of things. These include the effects of dancing; father-daughter relationships; sexism; what is good, consensual sex; class (she’s brilliant on this) and a lot more. There is also a lot of autobiographical stuff, which I found very interesting, too.

The thing is, Brand is such a good writer with such an infectious enthusiasm for what she is writing about, that it’s immensely entertaining throughout. I even thoroughly enjoyed parts I would expect to be excluded from, like her superb analysis of the adaptations and remakes in which she absolutely nails what is so often wrong with modern, “bigger and better” versions of classics, or her description of a fan weekend at “Kellerman’s,” the setting of the film. I was right there with her, feeling every nuance of excitement and friendship, even though I’d never seen any of what she was talking about. The book is a pleasure from beginning to end.

This is a hugely entertaining book about so much more than a classic movie. If I enjoyed it, I think anyone would and can recommend it very warmly.

(My thanks to HQ publishers for an ARC via Netgalley.)