Literary fiction
The Christmas Books by Charles Dickens
I'd just like to say at the outset that after reviewing mainly contemporary authors, it's a refreshing change to have the chance to review one of 'the classics'. (I hope I do the great man justice). Personally, I love the classics and I've read a number of Dickens' - including 'Bleak House' and 'Hard Times' but I haven't actually read 'A Christmas Carol.' I couldn't help but smile when Michael Morpurgo (who writes the short introduction to this book) says 'It is very difficult to sit and read Dickens' Christmas Books in a Devon garden on a sunny day ...' Well, would you believe my luck when I say that, as I'm writing this review, it's snowing hard outside? Everything is, well, Christmassy. Full review...
Beer in the Snooker Hall by Waguih Ghali
Waguih Ghali's only novel, first published in 1964, is set in 1950s Egypt where the English have just left and the country is in great social and political change, and is under Army rule. Ram is an English educated, Copt Egyptian of aristocratic background, but his side of the family are penniless and dependent on the good will of manipulative, rich aunts. Ram and his best friend Font (who works in the eponymous snooker club) struggle to come to terms with this emerging Egypt. These are the facts of the plot, such as it is, but in reality this book is as ambiguous as the situation in which Ram finds himself. The book is like a delicate soufflé; it appears light on the surface but is deeply measured and brings out a myriad of conflicting views. Full review...
If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes
If He Hollers Let Him Go, first published in 1945, is written from the perspective of Robert Jones, an African-American working in the defence shipyards in California. The book is full of anger about racial inequalities and Himes pulls no punches in his depiction of the life of a young black man in a white world. It must have been shocking at the time of publication, but how does it stand up in today's more racially integrated world? Full review...
Silent Night by Charles Ellingworth
The front cover describes this book as 'astonishing' and has 'the mark of a classic.' We're introduced to one of the two female characters, Mimi: a young, German woman. It's 1944 in Eastern Germany and if I say that things are grim, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it is an understatement. Mimi is obviously an intelligent and curious individual and she's certainly not happy to be living in the back-of-beyond. But then again, things could be ten times worse for her. She could be living in Berlin picking through the rubble. Out of the blue, she encounters a man - a French national, as it happens and things change dramatically. We learn that along with his fellow countrymen, Mimi's husband is absent, not at home. So when she acknowledges her attraction for another man - and someone who is not German at that, she seems exhilarated, shocked and perhaps just a little repelled, all at the same time. Full review...
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Erika is a single woman in her thirties, who, despite the best efforts of her mother, did not succeed as a concert musician, but instead works as a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. I say best efforts, I mean outright pressure. Erika and her mother make for an unusual relationship - the older relying on the glory, company and complete obedience of the younger, the daughter sharing a bed with her mother even at this stage of her life. All this is until a young student at the school decides he will be a younger lover for Erika, and forces his will into the household. But who, should such a relationship actually form, is going to be the power-maker? Full review...
The Auschwitz Violin by Maria Angels Anglada
In Poland in the early 1990s, a violin sings. The maestro who owns it produces such a music from it, people are forced to take note. They'd be even more amazed if she could bring herself to state exactly how the instrument came to be. For this was the work of Daniel, suffering in a subsidiary camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Stumbles, chances, half-lies, all conspire to allow Daniel to take time off his enforced labour and engage in his real-world career. But is there a price to pay in doing something you love, just for a man you can only hate? Full review...
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi
The summer of 1938 was particularly hot and oppressive in Lisbon and Dr Pereira was suffering. He was overweight to start with and the situation wasn't helped by the amount of sugary lemonade which he drank. He was the cultural editor of an undistinguished newspaper and felt over-burdened by the amount of content he had to produce but this was better than the political side of the paper as he was sure that he wanted nothing to do with European politics. Something of a recluse, his closest, indeed only, confidante was a picture of his dead wife. All that was about to change when he met Francesco Monteiro Rossi - a strangely charismatic young man who would bring Pereira to the point of committing an act of reckless rebellion. Full review...
Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjis
We first meet the main character (she's mentioned on almost every page) Tatiana as a newish resident of Berlin. She's Mexican so quite a difference in cultures for her to deal with, as well as the weather aspect. Many episodes in her life seem to take place in a Berlin which is bitterly cold. Aridjis chooses the first person for her novel, so we hear everything from Tatiana's perspective. Full review...
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
Many of us will know of the release of the film of the same title back in the 1960s. I haven't seen the film so I started reading with no ready-made opinions about the book. Likewise, I had no idea how the attention-grabbing title bore any relation to a book about dance. I was about to find out. It's both arresting and simple. The book cover and also the inside front cover are littered with praise for this book. 'The first existentialist novel to have appeared in America' says one writer. 'Takes the reader into one of America's darkest corners ...' from another source. So, I was expecting a terrific read. But did I get it? Full review...
Caribou Island by David Vann
Irene and Gary went to Alaska many years ago and somehow they stayed there, probably through inertia, and they raised two children. Rhoda loves animals and is keen that her boyfriend, Jim the dentist, should marry her. She half knows that he's not that reliable but it's what she's set on. Irene and Gary's son, Mark, lives with his girlfriend, Karen and it seems that the only thing they're serious about is not taking life too seriously. It's probably understandable when you look at Gary. He's self-involved, selfish and dishonest with himself. Irene has her problems too. She's never really got over going home when she was ten years old and finding her mother hanging from the rafters. Full review...
Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones
Ines – although it's a little while before we know her by that name – has quite a story to tell, but we don't hear it from her. We listen to the stories told by people who knew her. They might have worked with her at a hotel on the Arabian Sea or in Tunisia. They might have known her name, but nothing quite so personal as her birthday. She was a good worker, used to anticipating what the guests would need but otherwise being invisible. This might have gone on indefinitely, but she met Jermayne, black like Ines, who taught her to swim. He also gave her what she thought was love and a child, which he then abducted. Ines' story is her journey to Berlin to retrieve her son. Full review...
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Olivier de Garmont is a young, French aristocrat who is drugged by the enigmatic Marquis de Tilbot, a close friend of Olivier's monarchist mother, and dispatched to the safety of the emerging United States to avoid the 1830 July Revolution, and the threat of the dreaded guillotine, in his native France. At least nominally his task while there is to prepare a report on the American penal system on behalf of the French government, a task for which he has little interest or indeed talent. Tilbot also dispatches his servant, an older British man, John Larrit, known to everyone as Parrot, to act as Oliver's secretary, servant, translator and to spy on Olivier for both his mother and Tilbot. They are an ill-matched pair, from opposite sides of the social spectrum but in democratic America, this relationship develops in ways that neither of them would expect. The story is told in alternating voices of these two main characters. Full review...
A Russian Novel by Emmanuel Carrere
We meet Carrere as part of a small film crew. One minute they're in France, the next they're in the midst of poverty, freezing temperatures and the utter desolation of a Russian town, miles from anywhere. Carrere back-pedals for the sake of his readers, explaining that he has family connections with Russia. But, as an intelligent and educated man, he also wonders what the hell he's doing here. He's relinquished the comforts of his life in France for what - grey sheets and terrible food. He must be mad. Full review...
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
In the near-future USA that they call Gilead, society has changed. For the worse, of course. The population is dying out, and people who are capable of breeding the next generation are given a cherished status of Handmaid - gifted to any male of enough esteem, called a Commander, who balances the household with his wife and what is practically a walking womb. Other women get drudge work, or run horrid finishing schools for the Handmaids, or are packed off to what are reported to be polluted hellholes abroad, for laborious work for life. Men are restricted too - Handmaids are off-limits to everybody but their Commander, and those households are patrolled carefully by other eunuch types. It's up to our nameless narrator and main character, however, to show us just how cherished the status of Handmaid feels. Full review...
Beginners by Raymond Carver
One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver is that he was an alcoholic. Carver's characters tend to drink excessively, and his stories often examine the negative impact of drinking on his central character's relationships. But nowadays, what we talk about when we talk about Carver is the role of his editor, Gordon Lish. Full review...
The Homecoming Party by Carmine Abate
Every year young Marco eagerly awaits his father's return, when he can for a few months spend precious time with him before he leaves again. Marco's father Tullio is a migrant worker forced through poverty to work in Northern France doing hard manual work. In this way he manages to earn enough to help his family have a decent living. The family, his eldest daughter Elise now at college, Marco his only son and a younger sister known only as 'la piccola' along with his wife and elderly mother live in Calabria, an economically depressed area of southern Italy. They belong to the minority Arberesh community, descended from Albanian immigrants settling small villages in the mountainous regions of La Sila. Just as the Calabrian people are looked down upon by other Italians the Arberesh people are even looked down upon by the Calabrians. Full review...
The House of Slamming Doors by Mark Macauley
My name is Justin Alexander Torquhil Edward Peregrine Montague, but my father calls me 'you little bollocks', or ‘you bloody twit’ or when he is in a really good mood, 'old cock'.
With this opening line, Mark Macauley clearly establishes his tone. Just entering his teens, Justin is the youngest of three children in a dysfunctional Anglo-Irish family. It is June 1963 and the US President, John F Kennedy, is visiting Ireland – his parents and their servants are very excited, although Justin is wrapped up in his own preoccupations, including a growing sexual awareness and his best friend Annie. Full review...
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell
So, what is a novel? Does it need a plot, climax and resolution? Characters who grow? A setting? Themes which explore the human condition? And must it entertain? Padgett Powell challenges our perceptions of fiction with a book that explores what it is to be a novel, but without any preconditions. How far he succeeds is down to the individual reader. But I thought I'd give it a go. Full review...
The Empty Family by Colm Toibin
In his first book since the pitch-perfect Brooklyn, Colm Toibin once more examines the great Irish theme of exile and homecoming in his new collection of short stories, 'The Empty Family'. As the title suggests, many of the stories also revolve around family relationships, and their sweet and sour Nature. Full review...
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
July's tale, The Long Song, opens with her mother Kitty's rape by Amity plantation's overseer, Tam Dewar. Nine months later, we find him striking the midwife who can't keep Kitty quiet during labour. And Kitty doesn't keep hold of her daughter for very long. Spotted by Caroline, the plantation owner's widowed sister on the side of the road, July is taken away from her mother to become a lady's maid. Deprived of both parent and name - Caroline renames her Marguerite - July learns how to avoid her mistress's needle stick punishments and finds a place among the other house servants. Full review...
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
Julian Treslove is a middle aged former BBC radio producer now working as a professional look alike but quite who he looks like varies. Although never married, he has fathered two sons, neither of whom he sees regularly. Dismissed from the BBC for being too morbid on his late night Radio 3 programme, he is given to depressing levels of self-analysis in his small flat that's not quite in Hampstead. What Treslove lacks is a sense of belonging and this, he notes his Jewish friends have in spades, particularly his old school friend and rival, the best-selling philosopher and TV personality, Sam Finkler. Treslove, by contrast, always feels on the outside of life. Full review...
As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong
This lyrical novel is set in Wellington, New Zealand just over a hundred years ago. In this country of then recent immigrants, there was a racial hierarchy, with those of British origin considering themselves superior to others, and an active Anti-Chinese League. Full review...
The Dogs and the Wolves by Irene Nemirovsky
Ada was part of the Sinner family. They lived in the sort of Ukrainian city which was rigorously divided by wealth and status. At the bottom of the hill lived the people who scratched a living; at the top were the wealthy whose businesses provided most of the livings and in between were those who struggled for a better existence. Ada's mother died when she was a child and her father did his best, but he was frequently hampered by having to take Ada with him as he worked. The arrival of Ada's widowed aunt and two young children in the household meant three more mouths to feed, but there was at least some care for the motherless child. Full review...
C by Tom McCarthy
C follows the life of Serge Carrefax. Set in the early part of the twentieth century, the reader encounters Serge at various key moments in his life and each of these is quite fascinating and engrossingly related. It's one of those books that is like Dr Who's Tardis - so much happens that when he recalls an earlier part of his life, I found myself thinking 'oh yes, that was in this book too, wasn't it?' The book has been described as post-structuralist but don't let that literary labelling put you off. Yes, it's a complex book that can be read at many levels, (and one which I know I'll come back to), but it's completely readable and not at all 'difficult'. Full review...
The Companion by Lorcan Roche
Closeted away in the opulence of his parents' Madison Avenue apartment, Ed, bound to a wheel-chair because muscular dystrophy has laid claim to his body, spends his days veiled from the outside world. Ed's sadness manifests itself in curious ways, though largely, via spectacular, spoiled-brattish outbursts designed to get the parental attention he craves but that is palpably absent from his confined life. Then he meets Trevor. Full review...
Zero History by William Gibson
It's almost obligatory when writing anything about William Gibson to recall that in an earlier short story, he invented the term 'cyberspace'. Gibson remains at the cutting edge of what is 'cool'. Like most of his books, Zero History is a thriller, but at its core are issues surrounding technology, how we interact with it, branding and marketing. It would be easy to criticise much of his content as being too shallow and concerned with 'nothing' - but then that's part of his point. Full review...
The Island of Sheep (John Hannay) by John Buchan
Richard Hannay is feeling old. He looks at himself and his contemporaries and sees a spread of complacency. Luckily - or perhaps very unluckily - an old pledge will come to haunt him. His earlier career in Africa saw Hannay and his friends swear to protect a man from others - and now a second generation of animosity is ripe for Hannay to step in and be a protective detective. Add in a supposed treasure hoard, and who knows where his last journey might end up? Full review...
The Vera Wright Trilogy by Elizabeth Jolley
The Vera Wright Trilogy contains three novels – My Father's Moon, Cabin Fever and The Georges' Wife - in one beautifully presented edition. First published about 20 years ago, they are apparently partly autobiographical, telling the story of a woman's life from the 1940s onwards – work, children, parents, romantic and sexual relationships and friendships. Full review...
To the End of the Land by David Grossman
This is a sweeping narrative about one Jewish family and how the various members deal with the ongoing Arab-Israeli war. The mother, Ora, is the lynch-pin of the family, but her resolve is tested to the limit when her younger son is about to be released from his stint in the army. Full review...
Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson
Iceland, somewhen about a century ago. Five men and a young lad set out in their tiny oar- and sail-powered fishing boat, for cod. On board are people with the strength to take part in a solid twelve-hour shift - rowing four hours to the fishing banks, staying there stably for the lines, then hauling them in and rowing home. And that's not to factor in any temperament of the weather. Unfortunately it's not only knowledge of fishing these people have taken on board, for Icelandic men still like to dream of love, gaze nightly at the moon at the same time as their belles, and read stories of gods, romance and legend. It's a pity then these distractions will be fatal for one of the boy's five companions... Full review...
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Slapping your own child is bad. Slapping someone else's child is worse. This is the event at the heart of Christos Tsiolkas' Man Booker-nominated novel, set in Melbourne, Australia, when at a barbeque for friends and family, the host's cousin slaps the child of the best friend of the host's wife. Full review...
Kissing Alice by Jacqueline Yallop
Arthur Claythorne, a decorator by trade finds himself out of work and back home in Plymouth as the First World War begins, along with a stolen copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, a book full of powerful imagery. After being injured in the war Arthur returns home to his wife Queenie May and two daughters, Florrie and Alice, a changed man, deeply affected by his experiences in the trenches and desperate to find religion. Despite Florrie's interest in following her father into Catholicism, it is Alice who suddenly finds herself the object of her father's unusual and inappropriate attention. Full review...
Room by Emma Donoghue
It's the morning of Jack's fifth birthday, but Jack is no ordinary boy. He and his Ma have been imprisoned by the character known only as 'Old Nick' in a single room for all Jack's life. True he has a television, but his mother has convinced him that those people are not real. The room is all Jack has ever known - and in it he has developed his own attachment to things like Bed, Rug, Table, Skylight and Wardrobe where he sleeps. The first victim of incarceration, it seems, is the definite article. Full review...
The Good Angel of Death by Andrey Kurkov and Andrew Bromfield
Kolya cannot possibly expect what the act of moving flat, and finding a book among what the old folks who move out leave behind, might lead to. I can hint that it involves a trip of several hundreds of miles, involves a couple of pieces of anatomy the average man does not fancy leaving behind, a chameleon, Kolya being given as a husband-cum-present to a lovely young lady, and a lot more. The find involves Ukraine's national author, Taras Shevchenko, and a hunt for something he might have left behind in a desert abutting the Caspian Sea. Full review...
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
Meet Jeff. He's a journalist living in London, with a fine line in delaying his work effort and a keen eye for detail. He can see how the world is made better by a smile from a random shopkeeper - yet seems too grumpy to try it himself. Instead he suspects his habit of walking round, mouthing or speaking out his own inner thoughts is making him seem a scary old man. He can partly address this, by dying his hair. And he can stop walking round London when he gets commissions to report back from the modern arts Biennale in Venice. Soon, however, the only work of art he's at all worried about goes by the name of Laura... Full review...