Annalena McAfee - Nightshade

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me 

I’m afraid I gave up on Nightshade fairly early, which I seldom do. I just couldn’t be doing with a somewhat self-consciously “literary” novel about wealthy, arty people in London and there wasn’t enough content here to keep me going.

Eve is a successful botanical artist who was married to an extremely successful (and therefore rich) architect before things began to go horribly wrong. She is walking through London at night, thinking abut things...and walking and thinking and reminiscing and walking. I found it a forced device which became increasingly irritating. Not only that, what Eve was thinking about didn’t interest me much, either. Her life in New York, her gorgeous little place in Wales and so on, and then the rather self-obsessed way she destroyed it all and the “excesses of the contemporary art world”, as the blurb has it. None of it engaged me at all, nor did I find much original in what was being said.

The prose is just that bit too mannered and has a sense of giving the reader coy little glances every so often to make sure we’re noticing how terribly clever it is. For example, Eve stopping thinking about gardening in Wales is described as “Eve cast herself out of the garden, like her original namesake, turning her back on Arcadia to walk naked in the wilderness…”. It’s overdone for me, and I know it’s a metaphor, but “naked in the wilderness” doesn’t really work when she’s actually walking in London, warmly dressed at midnight near Christmas, does it? Or, in a paragraph beginning “There are so many ways of measuring a life,” we get this: “Velocity was another calculation – from the langorous slo-mo of childhood, cranking up to the adolescent’s brisk, bright Super-8 narrative, accelerating on to the breathless blur of old age, swift as a blink-and-you’ll-miss it credit sequence.” There’s a lot of this, and although I see what she means, it’s not very original and seems very contrived to me, from the unsubtle alliteration to “Super-8 narrative.”

Enough. I didn’t like it. I tried it partly because of warm endorsements from some fine writers; this was before I discovered that Annalena McAfee has been a literary editor at both the Guardian and The Financial Times, which may mean that the endorsements are possibly not quite as disinterested and objective as one may wish. Anyway, it certainly wasn’t for me.

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

Bill Fitzhugh - Heart Seizure

 

 Rating: 4/5

Review:

Very entertaining

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Heart Seizure. The plot is completely crackers but is still engaging and entertaining and there is some blazing satire of several aspects of life in the USA, most notably healthcare, politics and the media.

The story concerns Spence and his brother Boyd who have very different views of the world, and their mother Rose who is elderly and in immediate need of a heart transplant. She and the President have the same rare blood type and it turns out that the President suddenly needs the heart allocated to Rose. An imbroglio develops which snowballs to immense proportions as various security agencies and political interests become involved and Spence, Boyd, Rose and a growing number of others go on the run.

It works, in the way that completely silly plots sometimes can, and it’s buoyed by real wit, engaging characters, good dialogue (which is sometimes very funny in itself) and the aforementioned scathing satire. I found it a very enjoyable read indeed which also had some important points to make – some of which have become even more important in the almost 20 years since the book was written. I can recommend this warmly and I’ll be looking out for more in this tetralogy.

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

Laura Lippman - Dream Girl

 

 Rating: 3/5

Review: 

Rather disappointing

Dream Girl began very well but began to pall, I’m afraid. Around half way through there is a thoroughly ridiculous decision by Gerry, the protagonist, and after that I skimmed a good deal without missing much, I think. I found the ending contrived and far too much of a deus ex machina and I wasn’t sorry to finish the book.

The set-up is good. A successful novelist is confined to bed after an accident and, while pretty doped-up on pain killers, begins to receive odd phone calls from someone claiming to be the “real” version of a character he made up in his most successful book. Laura Lippman writes very well and for a hundred pages or so I was intrigued and involved. However, I began to find the story predictable, rather familiar and increasingly implausible. What begins with some rather sharp insights into Gerry’s attitudes to women moves on to some #metoo issues, which are well handled but which don’t say much which is new and the thriller plot didn’t do it for me at all.

There is enough here to make me want to try another of Laura Lipmann’s books, but overall I found this rather run-of-the-mill and hence quite disappointing.

(My thanks to Faber & Faber for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Louise Penny - The Madness Of Crowds

 

Rating: 3/5

Review:

Disappointing

 

 The Madness Of Crowds was better than All The Devils Are Here, but that’s not saying much and I wasn’t keen on it.

Back in Three Pines (thank heavens!) Gamache is, implausibly, given the job of policing a talk by a very controversial academic. This leads to lots of moral dilemmas, violence and ultimately a death. He and his team/family then have to find the killer, which involves a lot of historical delving, some thoroughly unlikely coincidences and yet more moral soul-searching.

Frankly, I found much of it it pretty stodgy and not very well done – something I am surprised and very sorry to have to say about a Louise Penny novel. For example, she keeps the nature of the “shocking” views of the academic from us for so long at the start that it would be a significant spoiler to reveal them, even though all the characters know what they are and react strongly to them. This went on for so long that it became ridiculous and I eventually found it very annoying. I’m afraid I found her dealing with the moral issues clumsy throughout, with some very unsubtle moralising and a disappointingly underdeveloped study of one morally abhorrent but personally charming character and another who is morally noble but personally repellent. Needless to say, everyone learns Important Life Lessons in a conclusion which I found positively cloying.

Gamache is now so saintly that there is a distinct odour of sanctimony about him, the characters of Three Pines are reduced to a thin backdrop and there are some quite absurd scenes. I can just about live with the idea that two of Canada’s most renowned academics and a Sudanese contender for the Nobel Peace Prize would all be in a tiny, unknown village for New Year, but other things were too much. For example, Gamache and Jean Guy need to leave the house for some privacy for a difficult conversation...so they go to the bistro where the whole village can hear the argument. And so on.

Even this I could just about have coped with, I think, if it weren’t for Penny’s increasingly irritating prose style. She will insist on making a clause. Into a sentence. For no reason. And it made me cross. Very cross. Indeed. It’s a cheap trick which lesser writers use to try to heighten tension. Not only is Louise Penny better than this, she does it so much and often about such trivial things that it loses all impact, save making me mutter “For heavens sake” (I paraphrase) a lot.

I did read to the end, which is more than I can say for All The Devils, but I was quite glad when I’d finished the book, which is never a good sign. I’ve rounded 2.5 stars up to 3 out of respect for an author who has written some very good books, but I think I may have reached the end of the road with Louise Penny.

(My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for en ARC via NetGalley.)

John Batchelor - How The Just So Stories Were Made

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Readable and rewarding 

 

I enjoyed How The Just So Stories Were Made. It is interesting, readable and beautifully illustrated.

I was raised on the Just So Stories and The Jungle Books and have maintained an interest in Kipling all my reading life and I’m impressed with what John Batchelor has done here. He manages to interweave some fascinating references to influences on the Stories and their influence on others with biographical detail which is pertinent to the writing of the Stories themselves. A good deal of the biography was familiar to me, but there is much here that wasn’t and I found it all interesting in this context.

Batchelor’s analysis is well-informed and fair, I think. For example, he deals with racism elsewhere in Kipling’s writing, but also contrasts it with How The Leopard Got His Spots in which Kipling is “fully in accord with the Ethiopian.” These contradictions are a feature of Kipling’s work and it is good to see them acknowledged and analysed. (He also points out the clever and rather subversive way in which Kipling uses the verse from Jeremiah, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” and the book is full of these insights.)

Many of the wonderful original illustrations from the book are reproduced here, along with other drawings by John Lockwood Kipling and photographs illustrating Kipling’s life. It is, quite rightly, rather scholarly in tone but it’s written in a very accessible way so, especially taken a couple of chapters at a time, I found it a rewarding read.

I think anyone who has ever read - or had read to them - the Just So Stories will enjoy this and get a great deal out of it. I can recommend it warmly.

(My thanks to Yale University Press for an ARC via NetGalley.)

James M. Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Very well done but tough going 

I found this a tough read, to be honest. It’s exceptionally well done, but so bleak that it’s pretty hard going.

The narrator is Frank, a drifter and hustler who blows into a roadside diner near the Mexican border. The owner, a Greek called Nick, offers him work and treats him well, but there is a powerful attraction between Frank and Nick’s wife, Cora. Cora is repelled by her husband and eventually she and Frank agree between them to kill him. Frank’s narrative is largely about how they go about it and how they deal with the aftermath of what they do. There is trust and betrayal, plenty of tension and an involving story.

The thing is, Frank is such an amoral, almost emotionally blank protagonist (with something of Camus’ L’Etranger about him) that I found the whole thing rather repellent. There is sexual passion and self-interest but little else evident in him, so while he is a very believable character, it is hard to engage with him at all. This is quite deliberate on Cain’s part and he does it very well indeed, but it’s not easy to take. There is some pretty naked racism, although it is a part of the illustration of the characters of Frank and Cora. There is also a persistent and very disturbing notion (not uncommon at the time) that women are sexually aroused by being physically abused. All of this, especially in difficult times, doesn’t make for an easy read.

So, I’m ambivalent about this book. I can see that it is a fine work, but I can’t say that I enjoyed reading it.

Christopher Fowler - The VIctoria Vanishes

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Hugely enjoyable 

This is yet another hugely enjoyable Bryant & May novel. It has all the ingredients we know and love: a seemingly impenetrable mystery, superbly drawn characters, real humour and a wonderful delve into the intricacies of London’s diverse history. Oh, and the Home Office trying to close down the Unit, of course.

The Victoria Vanishes is largely about pubs. The plot is an intriguing one involving a number of murders in pubs, and Arthur actually seeing one of the victims entering a pub...which ceased to exist over half a century ago. It is, as always, engagingly eccentric, excellently written and actually very thought-provoking about both the nature of pubs and about their history, including the history of some of their more eccentric names.

I found it a pleasure from start to finish. It’s one of the best of the series so far, which is saying a lot. Warmly recommended.

Lucie Whitehouse - Risk Of Harm

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me

I’m afraid I got very fed up with Risk Of Harm and gave up.

A young woman is found murdered in a derelict factory in Birmingham. DCI Robin Lyons and her team investigate but have great difficulty in identifying her. And, for a long time, that’s the story, except for the usual tropes about The Press Being All Over This and so on. The rest is all about Robin’s Involved Personal Life and Personal Demons. In the first four, shortish chapters we get: a terrible recent trauma in which her daughter was nearly murdered and which may threaten her objectivity on this case; an immediate boss who is an old flame; a pantomimically useless and sexist Deputy Chief Constable who hates her and insists that she gets a “nice quick solve”; and a difficult relationship with a DI whose case she solved previously and whom she has now beaten to the post of DCI. I was already wondering how much more of this was going to be trowelled on, when – surprise, surprise – there’s her racist brother who has hated her since she was born and is making life very difficult with her family.

I’m afraid this was the point at which I began to crack. Good writers can give us detectives whose personal lives are interesting and believable but which don’t dominate the story with endless, overblown “issues.” (John Rebus, for example, or Manon Bradshaw, to name but two). This sort of heavy-handed stuff just annoys me, I’m afraid. It drowns out the plot with implausible conflicts and pressures everywhere and takes the place of real insight into the human problems which crime causes.

It’s possible that I’m being too harsh and that I have missed a classic piece of crime fiction in the later parts, but I doubt it. I do know that plenty of people will enjoy this and my irritation is a matter of personal taste. Nonetheless, I really couldn’t be doing with Risk Of Harm and personally I can’t recommend it.

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

Susanna Clarke - Piranesi

 

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Exceptionally good 

 

I loved Piranesi. I approached it with caution but I was wholly captivated and, by the end, enthralled.

It is very hard to say much about the story without giving too much away. The narrative is in the form of entries in a journal by “Piranesi” whose world is a labyrinth of halls, populated by statues and through which the sea runs and sometimes floods. These entries are dated “The first day of the fifth month in the year the albatross came to the South-Western Halls” and so on, which gives a flavour of the style and the setting. Piranesi’s only human contact is with the Other, a mysterious person who appears sometimes and who seems strikingly 21st-Century British. The truth of the situation slowly emerges as new information comes to light, and Susanna Clarke tells it in a beautifully paced and wholly engrossing story.

This is brilliant in lots of ways. It has important things to say about identity, exploitation, the nature of reality and our experience of it and much more – and it’s all done without lecturing or hectoring. Piranesi’s voice is enchanting; it has a childlike innocence and an almost Zen-like approach to existence, combined with language which I found beautiful and almost compulsively readable. I found echoes here of Z For Zachariah and of Room, but this is it’s own book with Clarke’s wonderful ability to create a vivid, wholly real-seeming world as well as showing genuine insight and humanity in her character studies.

Piranesi is one of the best things I’ve read for quite some while. I hope it wins some major prizes, and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

Ian Moore - Death and Croissants

 

 

Rating: 2/5

Review:

Not for me

I’m afraid that, despite warm endorsements from a lot of comedians whom I like very much, I didn’t like Death And Croissants.

Richard, a middle-aged ex-pat Brit, runs a small B&B in the Loire Valley. A guest disappears mysteriously, leaving some bloodstained clues and Richard is reluctantly strongarmed into investigating by a forceful and glamorous Frenchwoman who is also a guest. It’s mildly amusing in places (with the occasional strong whiff of A Year In Provence), but I’m afraid I found it slow and rather tedious with some very laboured humour. Richard himself is an insipid protagonist which is intended to fuel a lot of the humour, but it just didn’t for me so I was left with an uninspiring character in slow, not-very-interesting story which wasn’t nearly as funny as it wanted to be.

I’m sorry to be critical, but I just got fed up and gave up around half way through. It’s possible that I missed a comic masterpiece in the second half, but I doubt it somehow. Farrago do an excellent job in bringing us a lot of both new and neglected humorous writing, much of which I have enjoyed very much. This one, though, wasn’t for me.

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

Oliver Harris - Ascension

 

Rating: 3/5

Review:

Rather disappointing

 

I was rather disappointed in Ascension. I thought its predecessor, A Shadow Intelligence, was very good; this wasn’t in the same class, I’m afraid.

After his traumatic time in Kazakhstan, Elliot Kane has left the Intelligence Services and is quietly lecturing on obscure subjects in Oxford. He is, naturally, dragged back to investigate the suspicious suicide of someone he had worked with previously. This was on Ascension Island, a small, bleak island in the South Atlantic which has great significance for international communications and hence for intelligence agencies. A frankly rather mundane plot develops in which Kane, very clumsily for an experienced undercover agent, looks into dodgy goings-on on the island.

It’s fine in its way, but unlike A Shadow Intelligence, this seemed like a pretty run-of-the-mill whodunnit with some espionage stuff thrown in. Oliver Harris doesn’t quite manage to develop a sense of place as he did so well before, nor does he give such a good picture of the messy, murky world of geopolitics. They’re there, but far less convincing this time, as Kane blunders about drawing attention to himself and it ends with a race-against-time climax which left me pretty cold.

This is a perfectly decent beach read, but I was expecting far more from Harris and I can only give this a rather lukewarm recommendation.

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

Lisa Jewell - The Night She Disappeared

 

 

 Rating 4/5

Review:

Good, after and unpromising start

In the end, I enjoyed The Night She Disappeared. It is the first Lisa Jewell I have read and while I thought there were some very good things about it, I had some reservations.

The narrative is in three timelines: it opens with Sophie moving to live next to a boarding school in the country where her partner is starting as Headteacher. I emerges that two young people went missing 18 months earlier and Sophie, a writer of cosy detective fiction, becomes involved in trying to solve the mystery of their disappearance. The other time frames are immediately after the disappearance and, intermittently, events leading up to it.

It’s a decent story, well told. Lisa Jewell writes well and unfussily, and she is especially good at creating believable characters and relationships. For example, I thought her depiction of an increasingly controlling partner was very good and seemed fresh, even though it’s a pretty well-worn idea in fiction now. The psychology and motivation of her characters was good, too, and far more plausible than is often the case. No-one came up with absurd reasons for not going to the police, nor went into obvious danger without telling anyone, which was another big plus.

The thing is, I almost gave up about a third of the way through because I got pretty bored and it seemed like some rather tired tropes were being introduced to build up tension. In fact, I went back to the book, which had picked up very well by half way, and I enjoyed the second half very much; it was thoughtful, tense, plausible and involving

So...overall a good read, but be prepared for a bit of a turgid start.

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