Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"
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| + | |author=Martin Amis | ||
| + | |title=Lionel Asbo | ||
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| + | |summary=Martin Amis can be relied upon to create some pretty nasty, self-centred central characters. Usually they are upper class cads and bounders but in Lionel Asbo his central character is at the polar opposite in terms of class. He's violent, uncouth and ignorant. He's a criminal whose usual sidekicks are a pair of vicious pit bulls. His 'manner' is a fictitious down trodden area of London called Diston Town where he lives in a tower block with his nephew, Des, who in fact is the central character in the book. Des, in contrast is far more sympathetic - intelligent and kind, that is if you overlook the fact that as a 15 year old he had an affair with his grandmother, Lionel's mother. Hey, no one's perfect. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096206</amazonuk> | ||
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|author=Ben Fountain | |author=Ben Fountain | ||
Revision as of 14:46, 21 June 2012
General fiction
Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis
Martin Amis can be relied upon to create some pretty nasty, self-centred central characters. Usually they are upper class cads and bounders but in Lionel Asbo his central character is at the polar opposite in terms of class. He's violent, uncouth and ignorant. He's a criminal whose usual sidekicks are a pair of vicious pit bulls. His 'manner' is a fictitious down trodden area of London called Diston Town where he lives in a tower block with his nephew, Des, who in fact is the central character in the book. Des, in contrast is far more sympathetic - intelligent and kind, that is if you overlook the fact that as a 15 year old he had an affair with his grandmother, Lionel's mother. Hey, no one's perfect. Full review...
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
In Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Billy and what is left of his Bravo troop colleagues are back from the war in Iraq following a brave firefight caught on camera by embedded journalists. The US army, keen to gain PR from the event has brought them back on an optimistically titled 'Victory Tour' despite the fact that they are all to be re-deployed the next week. The majority of the book takes place on the last day of this tour when Billy is in his home-state of Texas, where the Bush link makes it even more pro-war, as the boys are invited to attend that most American of PR events, the Thanksgiving football game at the Dallas Cowboys stadium. Accompanying the troop is a veteran Hollywood producer who has promised the soldiers that he can sell their story to a movie studio for mega-bucks. If only it were that simple. Full review...
The Year from Jahannam by Shams Uddin
The Wright family begin a blog in January 2011. They all want to celebrate a new start after the turmoil of recent years. Father Richard had been a casualty of the financial crisis, working for Lehman Brothers at the time of its collapse, and the ensuing chaos had affected the entire family one way or another. But Richard retrained, secured a new job and has recently earned a huge bonus. At last the family are back on track and enjoying the fruits of hard labour. Full review...
Strindberg's Star by Jan Wallentin
Just as he is preparing for an appearance on a television show, a stranger approaches Don Titelman and asks for his help. This man, Erik Hall, has recently discovered a mysterious body at the bottom of a flooded mine shaft. Whilst perfectly preserved, medical checks confirm the man had been dead for nearly a hundred years. The deceased apparently committed suicide whilst holding on to a metal ankh with some strange writings on it. Full review...
Every Day, Every Hour by Natasa Dragnic and Liesl Schillinger (translator)
Dora and Luka meet and become firm friends. In normal situations one might add and a whole lot more to that sentence, but Dora and Luka are in Kindergarten, which makes their intense relationship hard to define. As they grow into adults, however, it becomes obvious that there is something between them and no matter how much they, or their circumstances, try to fight this it is there and is not going to fade away. Dora’s parents move her across the continent, careers develop and flourish, out of nowhere they are enveloped by family lives, but still there is an invisible bond that draws them back to one another. Full review...
Kicking the Hornets' Nest by Gerry Wells
WWII books about the RAF and the Navy are quite common. Books about Special Operations Executive and similar organisations proliferate. Stories about the army are fewer and try as I might I really couldn't think of one which was other than incidentally about tank crew, so when the opportunity came I had to read 'Kicking the Hornets' Nest' particularly as it's written by an author who crewed a Sherman tank in Operation Overlord, back in June 1944. I had just a couple of nagging doubts. It's a book of short stories. Would I find it easy to pick up - and out down again? The big worry was whether or not this was going to be a macho action story, which wouldn't really be my cup of tea at all. Full review...
Hilary and David by Laura Solomon
Hilary, a single mother of two troublesome boys meets David, an elderly writer with problems of his own, through Facebook. It’s an odd beginning – they have a mutual friend, so one adds the other, and then they start chatting quite spontaneously – but sets the scene well for their atypical relationship. Hilary’s in New Zealand, David’s in London. They are many decades apart in age but are clearly both quite lonely and looking for someone to talk to. So, with the vague anonymity of social networking on their side, they reach out to one another. Full review...
The New Republic by Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver adds a beard-shaped appendage to Southern Portugal in The New Republic and immediately has it fighting for independence, taking a wry look at terrorism as well as the ethics of the international press corps. After a series of international terrorism acts, the Os Soldados Ousados De Barba, or the SOB for short, have gone quiet at the same time as charismatic journalist Barrington Sadler has vanished without a trace. Insecure former lawyer Edgar Kellogg steps into Barrington's post: Kellogg on the hunt for serial killers, as it were. Full review...
Breathless by Anne Sward
There are those who say that, on an individual level, books are like Marmite: you love it or you hate it. Oh, if only it were so easy.
Breathless is one of those that I neither love nor hate, and yet am not totally uninspired by either. Full review...
Gold by Chris Cleave
Novels that feature sport often put people off reading them, particularly if you are not au fait with the sport in question. However, while the characters in Chris Cleave's Gold are athletes, specifically cyclists aiming for the 2012 London Olympics, it's more about the characters themselves. In fact, if you are looking for a book to read to avoid the brouhaha of the Olympics this year but still want to get a taste of what all the fuss is about, this would be a superb choice. Full review...
Joy by Jonathan Lee
Very stylish, observant and oh so spiky, this is an incredible, often uncomfortable novel that you just can't put down. Full review...
That Summer at Hill Farm by Miranda France
If you were to pass Hill Farm you would think it the perfect country idyll with lambs in the fields, children playing and the farmhouse nestled in the folds of the hills. The truth though is different. Farmer Hayes loves the land, but he's no farmer. His wife is neglected and it's not that long since Isabel miscarried her fourth child. She loves her children but she's not a particularly good housewife - or wife. She and Hayes were rather bounced into marriage by her aging and doting parents. Now she's trapped in a house with death-watch beetle and a husband who is struggling to keep the farm going. Full review...
The Other Side of Silence by Sylvie Nickels
Pippa Eastman went to Australia to get away from her domineering father, the historian Joseph Eastman and it was there that she met Jude, the son of two Ten Pound Poms. Their relationship was good, but not exactly committed on either side. It was about having fun. Familial ties were surprisingly strong though and when Joseph Eastman developed Alzheimer's Disease Pippa returned to the UK to care for him. Slightly to her surprise, Jude followed her - determined to track down the alcoholic father who had left him and his mother in Australia. It's only after her father's death that Pippa finds herself in search of her father's life - and trying to establish that he wasn't a murderer. Full review...
The Golden Hour by William Nicholson
Maggie is nervous about committing to a live-in relationship, terrified by the idea that there must be something better out there. Dean is terrified of losing the love of his life and old Mrs Dickinson is just, well, terrified. Henry is frustrated by rabbits in his garden, Alan is frustrated by work, and Liz is frustrated by old Mrs Dickinson, who is her mother... Full review...
Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer
When Emmi sends and email to cancel a magazine subscription, she has no idea what a slight typo in the email address will lead to – a life-changing, potentially marriage-wrecking, all-consuming online love affair with the man whom she emails in error. What starts as an insignificant, casual message quickly becomes something much more important to both her and Leo as two people who have never met start to share their secrets and wishes, dreams and fears with each other, not just because they can but, it seems, because they have to. Full review...
Rory's Boys by Alan Clark
Rory Blaine, grandson of Lady Sybil Blaine is gay, free, single and loving it, as he tells himself a dozen times a day. He may be middle aged but he's still got it. He's a partner in a successful advertising firm and so, so over having been thrown out of home when he was a teenager; yes, over it – totally and completely. When he hears his grandmother is dying, he decides it's time to remind her (and her considerable wealth) of his existence. The tardy but intensive attention seems to pay off when he's left the ancestral pile. But the stately home wasn't left to him quite in the way that he thought. There are so many strings attached it resembles a marionette: if he wants to keep it he must transform it into the first retirement home for elderly gay gentlemen and he also seems to have acquired his first resident, whether he's wanted or not. Full review...
End Game by Allan Hendry
A decade ago arms dealer Peter Rossi and Bill Rawlings, theologian, were in rough terrain two thousand feet above the Dead Sea. Rawlings was looking for something, but what, or where? It still wasn't entirely clear to Rossi when it was necessary for them to make a dramatic escape from a group of men - and the resulting carnage would be the stuff of nightmares for Rossi for many years to come. A decade later and at the other side of the world Bradley O'Connor, billionaire computer scientist, was forced to land his vintage plane on a mountain track in heavy snow and in the cold and lonely night which followed found his plane surrounded by a group of men eerily similar - had he but known it - to those Rossi and Rawlings had encountered. Full review...
The History Room by Eliza Graham
The novel begins with a key scene from Meredith’s childhood and then springs forward to the present day and the incident in the history room. The prank sets the tone for the whole novel – sinister in many subtle ways and having several layers of meaning. The cast assemble around the fall out from the prank and each character is beautifully drawn. Hugh, Meredith’s husband, is suffering the results of horrors he experienced in Helmand. Meredith’s immediate family are also traumatised by the death of her mother. In this highly charged atmosphere, it’s hard to know whether they are taking the prank too seriously or if it does indeed imply worrying occurrences within the school. Add in the presence of strangers in the form of new pupils and new staff, and before long even the most long-held relationships begin to suffer as a result of all the suspicions that are brought out by the prank. Full review...
Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk
'Don't expect this to be the kind of story that goes: and then, and then, and then.' And yet... Once upon a time I collected a couple of Palahniuk books, upon his first, Fight Club-inspired flush of British success, and never got round to reading them. And then the book reviewing gods conspired to give me Pygmy, Tell-All and Damned to peruse. And then I still didn't go back through his past works. But then he revised Invisible Monsters, his second-written and third-published novel, and I got to look at it after all. Full review...
Memory of the Abyss by Marcello Fois
We are on Sardinia, over a hundred years ago. It is a land of legend, where storytellers can see a different nature to the moon each night and convey that in their earthly stories. It's a world of wonder, where sheep can fall from the skies for more than one reason. It's a poor land, where lads are expected to be responsible shepherds by the time they are ten. As a result people look after each other - except, while returning from a Christening Samuele and his father are refused basic hospitality. Later when the boy runs away one night the land falls away beneath him - yet he finds a girl to ground him to this earth. Which is most relevant when he goes to war, and particularly when he comes back and finds himself a wronged man, and in need of vengeance... Full review...
The Crabber Stories by Francis Bennett
John White was known to everyone as Crabber - a nickname which he once earned and which then stuck - and he grew up on the shores of Long Island in the nineteen-fifties. It was a close-knit community and a time when children had more freedom than they are likely to be allowed now. We watch as Crabber grows from being a boy still suffering from the death of his elder brother when we first met him through to a time when he's old enough to go on a hunting trip on the mainland with a local family. He tells his own stories, as truthfully as he can and with the sort of insight which children have before life injects its cynicism. Full review...
The Beautiful Truth by Belinda Seaward
There are two parallel story lines in Belinda Seaward's The Beautiful Truth: one set in the present day and one in wartime Poland. Both involve love stories and personal struggles, and there are repeating themes such as horses and the stars that effectively provide links between the two in this clearly well-researched and engrossing narrative. Full review...
Fifty Shades Freed by EL James
When the first book in a trilogy is outstandingly awesome, and the second is pretty darn excellent, to read the final instalment is a no-brainer really. And, I suspect that is why this book is selling so well, because while it’s a mildly interesting reading, in my mind it didn’t come close to the first two offerings in terms of intriguing characters, a suspense filled plot or general kinky-fuckery. Full review...
Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
Weddings are always a potential source for intrigue and drama. In Maggie Shipstead's debut novel, Seating Arrangements, there's plenty of that going on. Set in a New England island called Waskeke, Winn Van Meter's eldest daughter, Daphne, who is already heavily pregnant is about to marry Greyson Duff. The problems start when Daphne's retinue of bridesmaids, who include her sister, Livia, who has had her heart broken by her first love to the son of Winn's social arch rival, and the flirtatious Agatha mix with Greyson's brothers. Add in the fact that Winn has always had a yearning for Agatha and things get decidedly messy. Full review...
Catching the Sun by Tony Parsons
Tom Finn had been a builder, but bankruptcy intervened and taxi driving provided some sort of living for him, his wife, Tess and twins Rory and Keeva. And so it might have continued but for two burglars in his home. Tom 'confronted' them - and nearly went to jail, but his conviction mean that taxi driving was no longer an option. Then a chance encounter brought him the offer of another driving job - but this one was in Phuket in Thailand - and included accommodation. There's a saying that if something seems too good to be true then it probably is, but when you're as close to the bottom as Tom Finn there comes a time when you've got to take a chance and hope that this is your lucky day. Full review...
Pictures at an Exhibition by Camilla Macpherson
A story designed around the display of individual paintings at the National Gallery during World War Two held immediate appeal for me. Alas, Claire and Rob, the central characters in the novel, did not. Claire’s extreme irrationality is jarring even within the context of the ordeal she has endured. Rob seems inconsiderate, clearly due to the barrage of irrationality he is having to live with on a daily basis. But while that is understandable, I did worry that I might be reading a novel that contained no likeable characters. Full review...
Fifty Shades Darker by EL James
Not a lot of time has passed since the first instalment of Ana’s adventures with the man she calls Fifty Shades. Perhaps unusually for a follow up it’s not months or years later, in fact just a few days have gone by. Lots of things have changed, though. Successful businessman Christian is still our tortured hero and Ana, now in her first proper job, remains our befuddled heroine but they’re not Christian-and-Ana any more having parted ways at the end of book one. At the same time, a lot has stayed the same. They’re not having quite as much dirty sex as they were but the tensions are still there. He’s still incapable of letting her get on with things without interfering (you’ve got to love a guy who buys the company you work at, just to keep an eye on things). And he still has, let’s say, particular preferences when it comes to his bedroom antics. So, it seems, does Ana. With what were increasingly becoming her regular nocturnal activities now off limits, she’s started craving them. Craving things she didn’t know were possible a month or so ago. Craving things she’s aware nice girls wouldn’t…unless it’s all one big unspoken secret in the sisterhood. Craving things that, let’s be honest, a massive number of readers probably quite fancy themselves after the literary foreplay that was book 1. Full review...
The Good Wife's Castle by Roland Vernon
We start with a father's suicide, a child watching as he steps of the chair in the milking room with the noose around his neck. A father who died for shame. Full review...
Home by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison's Home is simply a beautifully crafted novella. Set in post Korean war America, it features some familiar Morrison characteristics. Veteran Frank is suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder, but is released from service with no treatment as so many were, especially if they were black no doubt. But at least he has survived unlike his two friends whom he grew up with. Frank is troubled and has his flaws, but also has dignity. He finds himself returning to the Georgia home, Lotus, he longed to escape from as a child, another typical Morrison settlement with nothing going for it apart from the goodness and dignity of the people who live there. What draws him back is the news that his younger sister, Cee, is suffering from the aftermath of some medical experimentation. It sounds grim stuff, but while life is hard, it's not a traumatically difficult read. Full review...
Hello Kitty Must Die by Angela S Choi
It all started with a missing hymen. If you think that’s an odd way to start a review, bear in mind that’s exactly how this book starts. Very first line in fact. Fiona Wu is a 28 year old lawyer living in San Francisco. Successful, self assured but still living at home thanks to her Chinese roots and her over protective parents. She’d rather hang out with her pet parakeet than nice Asian boys, but since her parents are desperate to get her married off to one of the latter, she doesn’t always get her own way. An appointment at a doctor’s office with a view to sorting out the aforementioned missing hymen leads to a chance reunion with a criminally-minded old school friend (last seen setting another pupil on fire), and then the fun really begins. Full review...
The Sea On Our Skin by Madeleine Tobert
'Amalie Matete woke up alone on the first day of her life as a married woman…her battered body…the bruises on her thighs'. Amalie had scarcely been prepared for this. Only sixteen, she'd spent all of her time in the village and was marrying a stranger, a man who had seen her only once. But she was lucky. With no father to give her away, she was lucky to be being married at all, her mother tried to tell her. On her wedding day Amalie had been frightened by the storm. It was a bad omen she said. Just a storm, her mother said. Full review...
Fifty Shades Of Grey by EL James
When college student Ana steps in at the last minute to cover an interview of a local tycoon for the uni paper, she never imagines how what is supposed to be a one off meeting will change her life completely over the months to come. She has no plans or expectations to see him again, but Christian Grey knows what he wants and takes great pains to get it, so with Ana now next on his list of target acquisitions, she has very little hope of escaping unscathed. Swiftly realising that he is not your average wealthy bachelor, Ana falls head first into a foreign and confusing new world she has no clue how to navigate. With pressure on to sign on the dotted line or leave and never return, Ana has to decide how far she’s willing to go to follow her heart, and when she should listen to the screaming voices in her head instead. Full review...
In One Person by John Irving
In One Person is a sensitive story of sexual identity, narrated by a bisexual writer who is now in his later years, recalling not only his own coming to terms with his sexuality and attraction to men, women and transgenders while at school in a New England school, but also his later years and the devastating impact of the AIDS virus in 1980s America. At times the content is quite graphic, but John Irving captures the outsider's feelings beautifully in this tale of secrecy in a confusing world of identity. Full review...
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
In a small town in western North Carolina there was a storefront church with newspapers across the windows so that no one could see in. Adelaide Lyle remembered to days when it was a store, as well as the days when she used to attend the church regularly, but after a woman died in a 'healing' ritual which involved a snake and her body was left in her garden she decided that she couldn't attend and nor could she allow the town's children to run the risk. For a while this separation worked reasonably well until a series of incidents, many quite small in themselves, provoked a tragedy. Full review...
If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead by Andrew Nicoll
The story at the heart of Andrew Nicoll's If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead is bizarre but not entirely of Nicoll's own creation. It is narrated by German-born Otto Witte, who is rapidly recording a strange time in his life while Allied bombs are falling in World War Two Germany, although the events that he relates go back to 1913 when Otto was an acrobat working in a travelling circus currently in Buda, or perhaps Pest - he's not quite sure. In addition to his acrobatic skills, he is also blessed with an impressive set of whiskers which make him the dead ringer for the newly appointed Turkish King of Albania. If only he can get there before the claimant to the crown, perhaps he can steal the country and complete an unlikely rise in status. In the company of his pal, Max, a strongman, a blind mind-reader and his beautiful daughter, an exotic dancer and a purloined camel, what could possibly go wrong? Full review...
The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg
We're in the family home of Erik, in Finland, in 1809. It's large enough to have been the most impressive farmstead when his mother was taken there as a young bride, and she still lives there, with an elderly retainer, Erik, Erik's untrusting wife and some other servants. One night the brother of the family, Henrik, returns, and all the bad blood gets spilled. Not just about a neighbour's horse and hotheaded plans for it, not just over a marriage, and not even about the fact that when Sweden and Russia fought over Finland and the territory changed hands, the brothers were on opposing sides. Full review...
The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan
Set in 1978, 18-year old Phoebe is living with her mother in San Francisco. Her father died some years ago, before her elder sister, Faith, a charismatic idealist and true child of the 1960s left for Europe where she died in 1970. Faith was always her father's favourite, While Phoebe's older brother, Barry, is now a computer millionaire, on leaving high school Phoebe decides on a whim to follow her sister's path to Europe in the hope of finding what happened in Italy and to finally understand her beloved sister's actions. Full review...
A Common Loss by Kirsten Tranter
There were five friends - Dylan, Brian, Tallis, Cameron and Elliot - but then Dylan was killed in a road accident and the remaining four had to come to terms with how the dynamics of the group had changed. Dylan had always been the fixer, the solver and the mediator. He'd been the one the other four had gone to when they had problems because he'd always come up with something and it was usually an ingenious solution. It wasn't until after Dylan's death that the four friends realised that Dylan knew their dirtiest secrets - and that someone else had access to all the information. Full review...
The Bankruptcy Diaries by Paul Broderick
In 2000, Paul Livingson graduated from university and got his first proper grown up job. By 2007 he had filed for bankruptcy. With no failed businesses, unfortunate property depreciation or poor stock market investments in between you might be at a loss to see how he ended up there, until you read his diary of those years and it all becomes crystal clear. Full review...
The Last Day of Term by Francis Gilbert
It's the last day of term at the Gilda Ball Academy, and English teacher Martin can't wait for the holiday to start. Shaken by the death of his friend Jack in a riot at the school, he's failed to notice his marriage falling to pieces and his relationship with his son deteriorating. Just when he thinks things can't get any worse, an anonymous pupil accuses him of inappropriate sexual conduct. Full review...
Never Coming Home by Evonne Wareham
Kaz Elmore has almost come to terms with her daughter's death. She died while on holiday in America with her father (Kaz's ex husband) and her ashes have been scattered on the river. As tragic as it is, Kaz has no alternative but to accept that her daughter is never coming back. However, one day she receives a visit from a man called Devlin, who witnessed the accident and was holding Jamie when she died. His sole intention is to provide some comfort for Kaz by telling her that her daughter was not alone but when he spots photographs of Jamie, he realises that she is not the child who died in his arms. Full review...
The Cry of the Go-Away Bird by Andrea Eames
'The Cry of the Go-Away Bird' is the debut novel from Andrea Eames. It revolves around Elise, a white Zimbabwean girl living through her teens on the eve of the Mugabe-sponsored farm invasions at the beginning of this century. The author herself grew up in Zimbabwe before moving to New Zealand with her family at the age of seventeen and there is a strong sense of memoir and personal experience in the novel, which has both positive and negative effects on the narrative. Full review...
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith makes it look so easy, churning out book after delightful book that continue to delight and amuse his loyal readers. His writing seems effortless, and in this story, once again, the characters remain the wonderful friends we have always known and expected them to be, as if they really are alive and living these stories somewhere and AMS is simply transcribing them for our pleasure. Full review...
A Small Fortune by Rosie Dastgir
Harris Anwar is truly a man who is split between two worlds. He's a British Pakistani, proud of his Eastern roots, but when he came to the UK he changed his name from Haaris - with a long, flat vowel - to the more acceptable Harris and his clothing was that favoured by an English gentleman. He's proud and he would say many reasons to be proud. Some of the things of which he's proud are relatively small - the vacuum cleaner which he's had for twenty years might not work particularly well, but he's proud that he's hung on to it. He's proud of his car, the central heating which he installed himself and most of all he's proud of his daughter. Full review...
One Day by David Nicholls
I knew within the first ten pages that I was going to love One Day. It is the only book that has kept me up at night, distracted me throughout the day and woken me up early in the morning. I couldn't put it down, and didn't want to either. I have always found it difficult to settle on a favourite type of story, or even a specific genre that I like, but this novel made me realise that what I want in a book is realism. As Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley enjoyed their late night conversation in the opening moments of the book, Nicholls pulled me into his world. Full review...
