Sophie Hannah, Kind of Cruel
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Caoilinn Hughes, Orchid & the Wasp
Very ambitious; loosely combining ideas from Deleuze and Guattari, Isaiah Berlin and others. Rereading required. I enjoyed it very much but I think I prefer her short stories, some of which I’ve written about in the newsletter.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, which is essentially a love story, though an unusually nuanced and analytical one. (At least that’s how it seems to me, no expert on the subject.) I hope she’s writing more.
I think this is the first thing by Daphne du Maurier that I’ve read and it came as a very pleasant surprise. I love the characters’ uncertainty about each other’s motives and actions. I immediately ordered a copy of the author’s The Scapegoat (1957) and I’ll be reading that soon.
Peter Abrahams, Lights Out: A Novel
I’ve reread this for the first time in more than 30 years. Hilarious and clever. I don’t remember Adams’s second Dirk Gently instalment, The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, being as funny or as good but I still want to reread it.
Well plotted kidnap story. The missing young woman is a student, daughter of an influential couple who are friendly with the Home Secretary, which is awkward for the investigating detectives. Susie Steiner died young, but not before writing two more books in the series. I’ll probably read them too eventually.
ALAN GLYNN, Paradime
I was very tempted to abandon this novel. The opening chapters, in which a man with PTSD flounders hopelessly, were painful to read. But it really takes off about halfway through, so I’m glad I stuck with it.
Andrew Taylor, Blacklist
A spy story written in the late 1980s, shortly before the end of the cold war. For a while the plot seemed overstuffed, many minor characters being blackmailed, threatened or killed, but the ending ties it up neatly enough. I glimpsed the final twist early on but my attention was skilfully misdirected and I forgot.
James Plunkett, The Trusting and the Maimed
Highly entertaining but very contrived plot. The identity of the murder victim is revealed only near the end of the story — but comes as absolutely no surprise. Some great female characters: I particularly like Hannah and Aoife. The writing’s a bit careless in places but I soon stopped noticing.
Most of these stories have elements that I like very much — for example, the title story is in part a brilliant analogy to the 2nd law of thermodynamics — but in other respects they often seem more like fables or parables than what I think of as stories. Entertaining and stimulating but sometimes a bit (gently, unobtrusively) preachy.
I read all but one of these stories in a library ebook. The exception is “Who’s-Dead McCarthy”, which I read in a (printed) anthology, Being Various. I felt that I grasped/appreciated the printed story better. I don’t believe the difference is just that it’s a better story.
I bought it because it seemed the most interesting book that didn’t make it from the Booker longlist for 2021 to the shortlist. It’s a powerful, moving story but some of the storytelling is inert. I’m on the fence: I’m likely to reread it but not soon.
Rosemary Jenkinson, Lifestyle Choice 10mg
The title of this collection should have given me a clue, but I was surprised by the amount of drug-taking in these stories. So, not what I was expecting, but some very good stories that I’ll go back to.
When Germany invades Czechoslovakia in 1939, a 13-year-old English boy is left behind in Prague. He spends the whole war there, first with Communist partisans and afterwards labouring in the gardens of a Nazi colonel, leading him into a maze of conflicting loyalties and opportunities for betrayal.
This is described by the publisher and author as a novel but we may need another term. It seems too episodic and disunited to be a novel, yet the episodes are too connected and intertwined for a collection of short stories. It has made me think again (for the first time in years) about structure, on which I may have more to say soon.
John le Carré, Smiley’s People
I think this novel is about the way impending childbirth can distort someone’s perceptions, not to mention priorities. The “ironic” ending left me feeling (not in a wholly good way) that the rug had been pulled from under me.
Some of these stories are extremely bleak, even despairing. They’re likely to stay with the reader — whether s|he wants them to or not. I expect to return to this collection.
I didn’t enjoy the early chapters of 56 Days, where boy (29) meets girl (25) just before pandemic restrictions are imposed: too much of the writing here has the tone and style of social media posts. Once the plot developments get going, though, it’s a blast.
Mission: Impossible meets Smiley’s People. Who said the Cold War is over? Reviewing Box 88, I said it was “a secret, rogue intelligence-and-assassination outfit”. I was wrong: we learn here that they stop short of assassination. Highly enjoyable.
I read this because it was recommended by Andrew Taylor on Twitter. It’s very enjoyable, with credibly interesting characters in unusual and often dangerous situations. I’d like to read the same author’s The Girl on the Stairs (2012) soon.
I’m unexpectedly impressed though surely Christoph’s and Karen’s legal action would be statute-barred? We find out what Smiley had on Mundt, and how both Mundt and Karla ended up. One sentence in the last paragraph, not plot-related, hit me like a punch.
Fairly compelling but I think I’d have liked it better if Ryan Howard hadn’t already done the serial killer plot in The Liar’s Girl. Maybe this is best seen as a second, more effective bite at that particular cherry.
I loved this book and may eventually write about it; even if I don’t, I intend read it again. LeAnne Hogan is certainly one of Peter Abrahams’s “impaired heroes” — the ones I wrote about in my newsletter. A couple of mysteries are solved, but they’re not very mysterious ones: the book is much more concerned with how LeAnne comes to terms with what has happened to her and with the people (and dog!) around her.
This surprised me: the reviews had led me to expect something rather different and much less enjoyable to read, so I put it off for far too long. I’ll be returning to it — soon, I hope.
A book like this, about intrigue, betrayals and bad behaviour, needs a compelling plot, which this doesn’t have. Characters who aren’t as smart, cool or transgressive as they think they are show exactly the combination of stupidity and selfishness you’d expect. Pointless.
I read this twice, with more than a 20-year gap between the readings, and found it quite a different experience the second time. I hope to write something about it eventually, after I’ve read it a third time.
The first-person narrative of a long-term homeless man whose memory is damaged and who is sure he witnessed a murder that can’t have happened when he says it did. The brilliance of the start isn’t maintained.
The third in a series set in Restoration London but the first I’ve read. I’m not going to write about it till I’ve read the others. Contemporary with last decade of Marvell’s life, though he isn’t mentioned in this one.
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
S J Watson, Final Cut
Peter Abrahams, End of Story
Sarah Hall, Madame Zero
Kate Atkinson, Transcription
Tana French, The Secret Place
Tana French, The Trespasser
Louise Nealon, Snowflake
Tana French, Faithful Place
Scott Turow, Limitations
Tana French, Broken Harbour
Emilie Pine, Notes to Self
Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
Ian McEwan, The Children Act
Michael Dibdin, Dark Spectre
Peter Abrahams, Oblivion
Peter Abrahams, Delusion
Peter Abrahams, Nerve Damage
Salman Rushdie, Fury
William Empson, Milton's God
Michael Dibdin, End Games
Michael Dibdin, Blood Rain
Alice Munro, Runaway
Saif Rahman, Archipelago
Sophie Hannah, The Carrier