Holly Bourne - How Do You Like Me Now?

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me 

I thought Holly Bourne’s Am I Normal Yet? was absolutely outstanding, but I’ve tried three times now with How Do You Like Me Now? and I just can’t get through it.

Its narrated by the unhappy Tori, who has an apparently perfect life with a partner whom everyone admires and a very successful career, but who feels lost in her life and finds her partner considerably less perfect than everyone else does. She is also very aware of being subject to the pressures and sexism experienced by women everywhere in our society. The descriptions of all of this are as penetrating and as vivid as you’d expect from Holly Bourne and it’s an angry and thoughtful analysis of very important subjects...but I’ve had to abandon it, I’m afraid.

I think the problem is that it’s pretty unremittingly bleak and that I felt that I was rather being beaten over the head with issues while finding it difficult to empathise with the narrator. In Am I Normal Yet?, Bourne managed to deal with some very difficult, often uncomfortable topics and a rather tormented narrator with both humanity and humour which made it compulsively readable for me but which are both in shorter supply here.

To be fair, as a man in late middle-age I’m not really the target audience, but this one just didn’t work for me. Sorry, Holly.

Carol O'Connell - The Man Who Lied To Women

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Another fine instalment

Kathy Mallory, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

This second instalment in the Mallory series is a brilliant development of Mallory’s history and character. Carol O’Connell has created a wonderfully enigmatic, dark, often terrifying heroine and is developing and enriching the character with every book in the series. There are some chilling revelations about Mallory’s history here, and her present-day behaviour means that I would probably run away from her very fast, but she’s a wonderfully complex character whom I love to read about and always want to get to know better.

The story is good, involving a difficult murder case with some high-profile suspects and a dysfunctional family who bring their son to Kathy and Charles’s consultancy for investigation into apparent paranormal activity. It’s all well done with some vivid characters and sordid secrets, while Mallory’s unorthodox (and often illegal) methods are darkly entertaining.

I found one aspect of the story rather hard to accept (I won’t say more because of spoilers) but this is another fine book from O’Connell, who both revels in the genre and sometimes subverts it by blurring lines between good and bad and refusing always to provide a “just” resolution to each strand. It’s a great read and I can recommend it (and the whole series) very warmly.

Michael Simkins - The Last Flannelled Fool

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Very enjoyable 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Flannelled Fool. It’s not as out-and-out hilarious as Fatty Batter, but it’s often very funny and also makes some fine, sometimes poignant observations about cricket, the people who watch and play it and the way society is moving in general.

In the summer of 2010, Michael Simkins was prevented from playing any cricket at all by a foot injury. Instead, he spent much of the summer visiting places of cricketing significance either to him personally or in the history of the game. This involved watching County Championship matches, often in the company of the proverbial three men and a dog, as well as larger, more popular events. He meets some interesting, quirky people, reflects on how things have changed since his youthful obsession with cricket and has some well-informed and thoughtful things to say about all of it.

I found it a delight. Simkins writes very well and, while pointing out sad developments like the commercial vandalism which has destroyed a lot of lovely, history-laden grounds, has a willingness to be pleased with the things and people he sees. There’s plenty of engaging history and anecdote, and it’s a little as though Bill Bryson or Stuart Maconie were fanatical about cricket and went on one of their travels in search of its soul.

Obviously, you need to have an interest in cricket to enjoy this book. It may help if, like me, you are of a similar age to the author, who was born in 1957, and who therefore talks about a lot of the cricketers I saw when I was an enthusiastic watcher as a lad and after, but whatever generation you belong to I think any fellow cricket-lover would also love this and I can recommend it warmly.

Donna Leon - Give Unto Others

 

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Review:

Not one of Donna Leon's best

I have enjoyed the Brunetti books I have read, but for me this one wasn’t all that good.

Brunetti is approached by a woman who knew him and his family long ago, asking his “advice”; she is worried about her daughter because of the behaviour of the daughter’s husband. Brunetti allows old loyalty to draw him into an “unofficial” investigation, which slowly - very slowly - begins to uncover possible malfeasance.

Frankly, I found it something of a slog, certainly for the first two-thirds. It seems to take Brunetti an age to spot some pretty obvious pointers, there is almost no Brunetti family life and even Venice itself didn’t seem the essential character it usually is and I found the descriptions of it a bit laboured and familiar. Donna Leon has always been good at character depiction and rounded description, but there’s a difference between that and a lot of superfluous verbiage; here there is far too much of the latter, I think. There are some long, tortured metaphors, likening the case to a pinball machine and then to the pandemic, for example, which I found frankly absurd, and I think if I'd read just once more about Brunetti waiting for answer in silence with yet another laboured explanation of why he didn’t speak, I might have said some rude words. Later, things picked up a little as Elettra, Vianello and Claudia become more involved in the off-the-books investigation, but in the end the denouement didn’t convince and relied on what I thought was some pretty thin psychology.

I did finish the book, with a little skimming, but I found it a disappointent. It’s not bad, but it’s not that great either, I’m afraid.

(My thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Sarah Caudwell - Thus Was Adonis Murdered

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

A delight 

 

I loved Thus Was Adonis Murdered. It's a decent mystery but the main pleasure is in the language, which is made me laugh out loud regularly.

The story is narrated by a pompous, pedantic and self-regarding Oxford Law Professor who is joined by four barristers in the investigation of a murder in Venice of which Julia, a rather hapless colleague, is accused. We spend very little time in Venice itself, but rely on Julia’s (extremely funny) letters to the group in their London chambers and other second-hand accounts.

The resulting correspondence and conversation plus the narration is genuinely funny. There is a good deal of amusing use of lawyer-speak, plus some flights of courtroom-style rhetoric applied to the everyday, which I loved. As an example of the narrative voice, one of the colleagues says that Julia is going on holiday "after a bit of the other." The narrator explains that "It is a Cambridge expression signifying, as I understand it, the pursuit of erotic satisfaction." Well, it made me laugh.

In short, this is a delight; it is funny, erudite and engaging. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

Natasha Pulley - The Bedlam Stacks

 

Rating:5/5

 

Review:

A very good read 

 

I agree with the large number of enthusiastic reviews here; I enjoyed The Bedlam Stacks very much. It is exceptionally well written and very involving

The story is set mainly in the mid-Victorian period and involves Merrick Tremayne, an expert plantsman and ex-East India Company fixer who is now quite disabled, who ends up being sent to Peru to try to smuggle out quinine cuttings against all sorts of opposition. It sounds like a pretty standard historical adventure, but Natasha Pulley writes so well and creates such a brilliant, slightly magical world that I found it original and gripping. The “slightly magical” aspect is often a complete turn-off for me, but again she handles it so well and creates such believable characters and situations that it worked extremely well. My one reservation is that it felt slightly over-long – but only slightly.

Enough has been said about this book for me not to go on too much. It’s probably enough to say that it’s an excellently written, enjoyable and engaging read which I can recommend warmly.

 

Antoine Wilson - Mouth To Mouth

 

 

 

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Interesting and gripping, but... 

 

I found Mouth To Mouth rather compelling reading, but I’m not quite sure what it added up to in the end.

The book is narrated by a not-very-successful author who coincidentally meets Jeff, an old acquaintance from college while waiting for a delayed flight. Jeff tells the narrator the story of how he once saved a man from drowning and how he subsequently tried to find out about the man he had saved. This leads him into both the man’s art-dealing business and then his personal life, making him think about the consequences of having saved a life when that life may not be a very commendable one.

It’s a very well written and involving tale which is also lent a certain Hitchcockian creepiness by the chance encounter and the other-worldly airport lounge setting. There is some interesting discussion of Jeff’s internal response to his altruistic act and whether he needs or deserves reward or recognition, plus a well-drawn picture of the art world and its wealthy and often amoral milieu, including some neatly-turned descriptions. For example, at the opening of a show “...a few men and women in their forties or early fifties, looking as though they had through wealth escaped into a world without consequences. Funky eyeglasses, a striped jacket, and one woman’s cape made it clear to anyone who saw them that they were nonconformists, people of taste, art-world cognoscenti.”

The quality of the writing and storytelling, plus the book’s commendable brevity made this a rather gripping read for me, but in the end I wasn’t sure whether it had said anything really new. Certainly the claim by one distinguished reviewer that it “interrogates the very nature of identity, destiny and storytelling” seems to me very overblown, rather akin to some of the pretentious vacuity purveyed in the art world. Mouth To Mouth is good, it makes some interesting observations and it’s certainly worth reading, but I’m not sure it’s quite as brilliant or profound as it’s made out to be. I can still recommend it, though.

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

John le Carré - Silverview

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Classy le Carré 

 

I thought Silverview was very good. I’ve found le Carré’s non-Smiley books rather variable, but this was definitely one of the better ones; not an absolute classic, perhaps, but with much of le Carré’s real class in evidence.

It’s hard to say much about the plot without significant spoilers as apparently separate stories gradually merge. A new, somewhat naive bookseller in an East Anglian coastal town is befriended by a rather odd but knowledgeable local man. Meanwhile, there appears to be some near-panic in the Secret Intelligence Services, although it takes some time to piece together why. It gradually becomes clear how these things may be related and we get some vintage le Carré on the workings of the SIS, the psychology of those involved and the motivations of an agent.

It’s all done in beautifully restrained, poised prose which wastes no words but manages to imply so much, so an apparently spare and simple story is rich and involving. I found it engrossing and very readable, but slightly let down by a somewhat transparent ending with some over-explicit exposition at one point. Nonetheless, this is in a class above most contemporary espionage fiction and it stands as a worthy farewell from a genuine master of the genre.

Elizabeth George - Something To Hide

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me

I’m badly out of step with the majority of reviewers because didn’t get on with Something To Hide at all, I’m afraid. I found it long-winded, slow and very overdone.

The main story, when we finally get to it, involves Lynley, Havers and Nkata investigating the murder of a fellow detective, which eventually leads to an organisation committing female genital mutilation. This is a very important issue, but I found the storytelling so slow and turgid that I simply couldn’t get into it at all. I’m all for thorough research, a well-painted background and carefully developed characters, but Elizabeth George tells us so much in painstaking (and for me, pain-giving) and repetitive detail I began to skim and didn’t feel I was missing much. I think the book, at 600-odd pages, could have done with some severe editing down.

Others have plainly loved this book, so do read more reviews before being put off by mine, but it wasn’t for me.

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

Bill Fitzhugh - Radio Activity

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Very enjoyable 

 

I enjoyed Radio Active, as I have all of Bill Fitzhugh’s books. This one does have some flaws, but it’s still an involving and amusing read.

Rick Shannon is a jobbing radio DJ with a passion for classic rock. He accepts, out of necessity, a job on a local radio station in a small Mississippi town, run by a thoroughly dodgy slimeball. Here he comes across a hidden tape, leading to clues about some possibly serious crimes, which he begins to investigate out of fascination. A tangled and colourful web of intrigue and suspects emerges in a well told, amusing and rather gripping story.

Fitzhugh is really good at this sort of thing; he tells a very well-structured and involving tale peopled with well drawn characters and with observations on all sorts of things including small-town politics, the corporatisation of local radio and lots about classic rock music. I’m keen on classic rock and found a lot of the references and discussions entertaining and amusing, but the lengthy monologues about music inspired by Patty Boyd or involving Todd Rundgren, for example, got a little much even for me, so if you’re not into 60s and 70s rock music this may not be the book for you. Also, having really enjoyed the book, I found the ending a little rushed and unsatisfactory – but only a little.

Those small reservations aside, I can still recommend Radio Active as a very enjoyable and entertaining read.

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