Summer of '76 by Isabel Ashdown
1976 was a blisteringly hot summer. People celebrated when it eventually did rain and at one point it was so hot that Big Ben stopped working. It would be the summer that Luke Wolff turned eighteen and he planned on leaving the Isle of White and going to poly in Brighton. He had a job at the holiday camp, which was hard work but there was a great social life too and even the possibility of romance. His parents were happy to let him have his independence - after all, he was a sensible, well-balanced young man - and they were rather preoccupied with their own problems. Looking in, you'd have thought that the Wolffs were the ideal family: from the inside there were obviously one or two cracks. Full review...
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
Rituals introduces us to Amsterdam, and to Inni, firstly in 1960, then in 1950, and then in the 1970s. When we first meet Inni, it is when he is a middle-aged man in 1960. Far from responsible and hard-working, we see him as someone who is impulsive and reckless, even to the point of cruelty to his wife - who formulates plans to leave him. It is only after this frankly miserable first impression that we meet the younger Inni, and we see how a chance meeting with a man called Arnold Taads had changed the course of his life. Taads is a man obsessed with matriculating his life down to the last second, letting time dictate what he can do, with whom he can do it with, and, most importantly, when. In Part three, in another chance meeting, the now ageing Inni meets Taads' son, Phillip. Phillip, though having never met his father, curiously lives a life that is an echo of his father's; though as Arnold isolated himself in the mountains, Phillip isolates himself in meditation and the methodology of the tea ceremony. Full review...
The Streets by Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quinn's The Streets is set in London in the early 1880s in the area known as Somers Town, which to those not familiar with London geography is the area around Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross stations. Today, much of this falls under the trendy Camden area, but in the 1880s, was the site of some of the worst slum tenements in the capital. Some 50 years' earlier, Charles Dickens lived in this part of London and although he had died by the time this is set, the depiction of the poverty is not far from what we would term Dickensian. The book is narrated by David Wildeblood, who is a principled but naive young man who finds employment as an 'investigator' for the charismatic Mr Marchmont's The Labouring Classes of London - a strange mix of social geography and journalism publishing regular stories of the poor who reside in the slums of London. Full review...
The Home Corner by Ruth Thomas
When you finish your Highers, you’re supposed to go on to university, especially if you’re a girl like Luisa. But she’s failed hers, so for now higher education is out, and working is unfortunately in. So, she finds a job working as a classroom assistant in a primary school. It’s not something she ever wanted to do, and she finds herself in a weird sort of limbo, at a life stage somewhere between the children in her class, and her proper grown-up adult colleagues. Full review...
The Trader of Saigon by Lucy Cruickshanks
In the Saigon of the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remain. Alexander has deserted from the US army and makes a comfortable living selling girls to local business men. Phuc used to be a business man, complete with mansion and the means to keep his wife and three children in affluence. Now his family live in a shanty hut, afraid of the ruling government that spies through the eyes of children. At last he finds a way out, his luck just needs to hold. Hanh also lives in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with the pittance she earns from cleaning one of the city's many open latrines. Then one day she meets someone who offers so much more. His name is Alexander. Full review...
Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty by Alain Mabanckou
Michel is as carefree as any child can be during that difficult process called 'growing up'. Here in Congo Brazzaville he has his best friend Lounes, a crush on Caroline (his best friend's sister), the hassles of school and a family consisting of two mothers in two houses which seems perfectly normal. He's also being educated about the world by his father; a world that changes daily as it's 1979. Never mind, he can always marry Caroline as long as he meets her conditions: she requires children, a red 5-seater car and a white dog. Full review...
Lessons In French by Hilary Reyl
American graduate Kate leaves the States for a job in Paris, working for a The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger style boss, world famous photo-journalist Lydia Schell. She’s lived in France before, so she thinks she knows what she’s letting herself in for. She doesn’t. So while the title doesn’t refer to the language itself (she is beautifully fluent even before she arrives), there are many lessons for her to learn, from how to act as a go-between for Lydia and her husband Clarence (and his graduate students), to how to handle the handsome Olivier and the bon chic bon genre boys, to where to source the lavish ingredients her employer needs for dinner or how to make a proper timeline. The Berlin Wall is about to fall, the continent is buzzing, and Kate is a part of it, for better or worse. Full review...
Sex is Forbidden by Tim Parks
Tim Parks's Sex is Forbidden is narrated by twenty-something, Beth. She's working as a volunteer server at a Buddhist retreat called the Dasgupta Institute where she has been for the last nine months although the book covers one ten day cycle of retreat. The Dasgupta Institute imposes bans on attendees, although the conditions are slightly less onerous on the servers who, nevertheless are expected to join in the meditations. There's no talking, no writing, no mingling of the sexes and no physical or even eye contact. One day Beth, still a rebel at heart, wanders into the men's side where she discoverers an attendee is keeping a diary where he is contemplating his moment of crisis and she is hooked. The revealing of the past that has driven both Beth and the mysterious diary keeper to such an austere retreat is part of the intrigue of the book, but while there is an inevitable focus on introspection and new age thinking, Beth's tone is delightfully sceptical and feels very authentic. It's almost impossible not to feel for her plight and to admire her approach. Full review...
Flight by Adam Thorpe
The past is catching up with Bob Winrush. His marriage is over as a result of his inconsiderate arrival home early when weather cancelled one of his jobs as a cargo pilot to find his wife in bed with another man but when an investigative journalist starts to dig into some of the content of Bob's previous cargo trips, his life is quickly placed in grave danger. His problems stemmed from having walked away from a particularly morally dubious trip to transport arms to the Taliban some years ago, although it turns out that his moral line in the sand is somewhat blurred. He has knowingly transported guns and military personnel in his time. He's sort of the aeronautical equivalent of white van man. Full review...
Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace
In his early books, Danny Wallace was the new Tony Hawks, taking on silly challenges and recounting them in amusing ways. With Charlotte Street, his first entirely fictional work, he seems to be moving into territory inhabited by Mike Gayle, that of bloke-lit. It seems a decent fit, as his book Yes Man had elements of bloke-lit, despite being based on actual events. It may have suffered from a twee ending, but it offered enough to suggest that this is a field Danny Wallace could work well in. Full review...
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
This powerful narrative bears witness to the experience of economic migrants. Not just black Africans coming from Zimbabwe, like NoViolet Bulawayo, but more generally, those several generations of hardy, resourceful immigrants driven to the USA in search of a better future. Such people leave behind less courageous family members, but not their emotions towards those they have loved or their nation of birth. Full review...
My Life in Black and White by Kim Izzo
My Life in Black and White starts off in a police station in England. The film noir theme that permeates the novel begins immediately. Clara Bishop is dressed in a gold evening gown, and treats the police officer who is interviewing her just as a femme fatale would. This girl has sass. But when she begins to recount her tale, it is clear this is a new development. The old Clara describes her life as something from a screwball comedy, not a film noir. How does a screenwriter-slash-gossip-columnist from LA end up being interviewed about an assault in England? Full review...
Chaplin and Company by Mave Fellowes
In 'Chaplin & Company', Mave Fellowes takes a quirky look at life on London's canal boats. Yet, while her story is full of eccentric characters, not least the main human character of Odeline Milk, who moves to the boat that shares the title of the book after her mother passes away to pursue her dream of becoming a mime artist in the more culturally enlightened big city after a lonely life in provincial Arundel, the book is delightfully free of sentimentality. I say the main human character, because this is also the story of a boat with a remarkable history of owners, and also a story of the strange life on the canal which somehow exists beneath the city through which it flows. Full review...
The Deception Artist by Fayette Fox
This story is all about the characters. Plot-wise, it is set in 1980s suburban America. There are no explosions or even fairy tale adventures in this book. It’s just the simple adventure of life when you’re a child and learning new things every day. Ivy accounts her day-to-day life with an extreme attention to the strangest details, just like a child. As well as explaining what she has learnt in school, she describes her daydreams, her friends and her family. When her dad loses his job, her parents start arguing and she is worried they might have to get a divorce like sad Sara in her class. And not only that, they might have to return their new TV. Full review...
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison
Ben hasn't worked for a while and so, deciding on a career change, trains to become a caregiver. His first client is Trev, a 20 year old Duchene Muscular Dystrophy sufferer who hasn't the sunniest of dispositions. In fact Trev is angry, self-centred and goes through caregivers like a knife through milk. However, Ben, needing a job, holds on tight and tries to encourage Trev to live a little. Eventually Trev complies and dictates a way forward: a road trip. A road trip with a housebound, ill, angry person is not what Ben had in mind at all. Meanwhile it gradually becomes clear to us that Trev isn't the only one who has to learn to live a little differently. Full review...
A Wolf in Hindelheim by Jenny Mayhew
Germany, the 1920s. Whatever that old proverb is about an ending of something merely being a beginning of something else in disguise, this novel is an evocation of it. In the rural habitation of the title a father and son pair of policemen is called to a remote house by news that a newborn baby is missing. In the house is an awkward combination of families – elderly matriarch, her son and daughter and both their spouses – two couples living on top of each other, with a disabled boy and maid in the mix too. We soon are given an explanation for the child being dead – a terrible instance of clumsiness, but like I say, this is only the beginning – of several things, including the older policeman's infatuation with the grieving mother's sister-in-law… Full review...
Tomorrow There Will be Apricots by Jessica Soffer
Lorca is in her early teens and struggling to get attention from her mother. She's resorted to self-harming and even her obvious abilities in the kitchen don't seem to be enough to merit some of her chef mother's time. Her last chance to make an impact before she's sent away to boarding school seems to be to find a way to make Masgouf - an Iraqi fish dish - which her mother has described as her favourite meal. Along with her only friend - a young man who goes by the name of Blot - they discover that some Iraqi Jewish cooking classes are being offered by a chef. Full review...
The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs by Nick Trout
Dr Cyrus Mills only intended to return to Vermont for long enough to sell the veterinary practice which his father had left him, collect the money and get back to South Carolina where he was trying to sort out the little matter of having his licence to practice suspended. He had never got on with his father who had - somehow - managed NOT to tell his son that his mother had died until after her funeral. The first snag he encountered was quite a big one: his father had been equally forgetful about dealing with his financial affairs and the Bedside Manor practice was dying on its feet. Cyrus didn’t have the money to prop it up and it looked as though he would have to hand everything over to the Bank and walk away with nothing. The second problem was an aging Golden Retriever by the name of Frieda and an owner who’s very keen to see her put to sleep. Full review...
Flowers From Fukushima by Clive Lawton
In 2011, Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. That and the subsequent tsunami caused level 7 meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Flowers from Fukushima riffs on this in a post-apocalyptic story of a Japan devastated by even more and even bigger natural disasters. It follows two main characters as they pick their way through the devastation, each trying to make sense of this new and very different world. Full review...
First Aid Kit Girl by Lynsey Rose
Steph hates her job. She hates her colleagues. She likes the work first aid kit, a lot. She’s trundling along, doing not very much, finding her release where she can. To me it seems like she loves to hate her life. Takes great pleasure in despising it, in fact. Full review...
The Hive by Gill Hornby
There's an old joke that, for parents, there are only two good days in the school holidays - the first and the last, but in St Ambrose the real work begins when the children go back to school at the start of the new school year. There's a new head at the school (and he'll have to be knocked into shape) but the real power is Beatrice - 'Bea' to those whom she elects to call friends for the time being - who rules the parents, decides who is in or out and what status they should have in the community. And how does she do it? Well, she's the queen. Full review...
A Bright Moon For Fools by Jasper Gibson
Jasper Gibson’s debut novel, A Bright Moon For Fools, tells the story of Harry Christmas and his drunken escapades in Caracas and the small villages of Venezuela. Harry Christmas is nowhere near as jolly as his name suggests, in fact Harry is drunken conman. He has pushed his luck too far and is forced to fly to Venezuela to evade William Slade, the irate son of a woman Harry fleeced out of £27,000. Harry’s life is defined by booze and where to get the next drink; he is having a major breakdown. Slade is no better off and is also having his own mental crisis: unfortunately for Harry, Slade’s breakdown is of a much more psychotic nature. Full review...
Come Home by Lisa Scottoline
You divorce a partner, not a child, so although Jill and William’s split meant she was no longer legal step mum to his daughter Abby, in some ways she never stopped seeing her as a daughter. Now, years after they last met up, Abby shows up on Jill’s doorstep with some devastating news about Jill’s ex-husband. News that will unsettle both their lives, and the lives of Jill’s new fiancé Sam, and of her own biological daughter. While Abby wants to pull her into untangling a mystery, Sam is reluctant to encourage this investigation, and the family reunion it will bring, leaving Jill torn between her new family and her old one. Full review...
The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain
The milliners' advertising used to say 'to get ahead, get a hat'. They would very much approve of this book. Daniel Mercier is a Mr Average - or perhaps a Monsieur Mediocre. He's a lowly accountant until one evening he finds himself dining next to French President, François Mitterrand, who leaves the restaurant without his hat. When Daniel decides to keep it, his life starts to change and he feels somehow more confident. In other strands of the story, Fanny Marquant is having an affair with an older man who clearly has no intention of leaving his wife while celebrated perfumer Pierre Aslan has lost his ability to detect smells and to create perfumes. Bernard Lavallière, meanwhile is struggling to live up to the right wing standards of his wife's friends and starts to read the more left wing papers. At some point, all will come into contact with the President's hat and it will have an impact on all of them. Full review...