Category Archives: 5

October 14, 2024 · 3:21 pm

Big Sky – Kate Atkinson

Big Sky – Kate Atkinson

Sadly, I have now finished all of the Jackson Brodie books. Number six – Death at the Sign of the Rook, has just been released, so it will be a while before another one is published.

Here’s the blurb …

Jackson Brodie, ex-military police, ex-Cambridge Constabulary, currently working as a private investigator, makes a highly anticipated return, nine years after the last Brodie, Started Early, Took My Dog.

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It’s picturesque, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes.

Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network—and back across the path of his old friend Reggie. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking novel by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.

This was excellent. Different strands coming together in a beautiful tapestry. All of the good literary Atkinson things – literary references, great sense of place, fabulous characters (I particularly liked Harry and Bunny). A return of old characters – Reggie and Julia. Julia seems to live in Brodie’s head – always making comments on his thoughts.

Guardian Review

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October 3, 2024 · 1:37 pm

When Will There Be Good News – Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News – Kate Atkinson

I am making my way through Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels – this one is number 3 (and I have read number 6, so just two more).

Here’s the blurb …

Three lives come together in unexpected and thrilling ways in Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News?

On a hot summer day, Joanna Mason’s family slowly wanders home along a country lane. A moment later, Joanna’s life is changed forever…

On a dark night thirty years later, ex-detective Jackson Brodie finds himself on a train that is both crowded and late. Lost in his thoughts, he suddenly hears a shocking sound…

At the end of a long day, 16-year-old Reggie is looking forward to watching a little TV. Then a terrifying noise shatters her peaceful evening. Luckily, Reggie makes it a point to be prepared for an emergency…

These three lives come together in unexpected and deeply thrilling ways in the latest novel from Kate Atkinson, the critically acclaimed author who Harlan Coben calls “an absolute must-read.”

Kate Atkinson writes what I am calling ‘literary fiction’. There are references and quotes to other novels – Austen and Henry James for example. The characters are great, funny, annoying, kind. We get inside the heads of various characters and I love their internal monologues. I found myself inventing tasks so I could listen to this story.

A review.

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October 2, 2024 · 2:54 pm

The Safe Keep – Yael

The Safekeep – Yael Van Der Wouden

This is my fifth book from the Booker short list (2024).

Here’s the blurb …

‘A house is a precious thing…’An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge – for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan’s AtonementIt’s 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season… Eva is Isabel’s sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house-a spoon, a knife, a bowl-Isabel’s suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to desire – leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.

I bought this solely because it was on the short list. I knew nothing about the author or the novel – I didn’t even read the blurb before I started.

At first I thought this novel was probably not for me, Isabel is a very unsympathetic character (rude and judgmental). She seems to be paranoid – is the maid stealing things? And then Eva moved in, and gradually things changed. However, it was Eva’s diary that really captured me – and made me realise the background history of the house (I was a bit slow there). In the end I was enthralled and this novel needs to be read by more people.

It made me think about things I had never considered before, about houses and ownership, but also about the limited opportunities for women, and what happens when your life (and education) has been disrupted by war?

This one might win, I am now torn between James and this one.

A review

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September 23, 2024 · 5:40 pm

James – Percival Everett

James – Percival Everett

I am back on my Booker shortlist reading task – three down and three to go (and I am halfway through Creation Lake). I was loathe to read this one, I thought it was ticking too many boxes, but I read it (listened to it) and it was very good.

Here is the blurb …

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Brimming with electrifying humor and lacerating observations, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

I think I had to read Tom Sawyer when I was at school, but I haven’t read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

First, I just want to say that this was beautifully narrated by Dominic Hoffman,

As I mentioned above, I came to this as a new story with no pre-conceived notions of the characters; the judge, Mrs Anderson, etc. I think this is beautifully written – the setting, the characters and the dialogue are all fabulous. James is articulate, witty, intelligent, principled and determined to find a better life for himself and his family.

I am sure if you are familiar with Huckleberry Finn, you will get even more out of this novel.

As an Australian, I hope Charlotte Wood wins, but I think this will be the winner.

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September 19, 2024 · 11:53 am

One Good Turn – Kate Atkinson

One Good Turn – Kate Atkinson

I enjoyed reading Death at the Sign of the Rook and I thought I would read the Brodie novels that I had missed. I listened to the audio version (it was very good).

Here’s the blurb …

Kate Atkinson began her career with a winner: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which captured the Whitbread First Novel Award. She followed that success with four other books, the last of which was Case Histories, her first foray into the mystery-suspense-detective genre. In that book she introduced detective Jackson Brodie, who reopened three cold cases and ended up a millionaire. A great deal happened in-between.

In One Good Turn Jackson returns, following his girlfriend, Julia the actress, to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. He manages to fall into all kinds of trouble, starting with witnessing a brutal attack by “Honda Man” on another man stuck in a traffic jam. Is this road rage or something truly sinister? Another witness is Martin Canning, better known as Alex Blake, the writer. Martin is a shy, withdrawn, timid sort who, in a moment of unlikely action, flings a satchel at the attacker and spins him around, away from his victim. Gloria Hatter, wife of Graham, a millionaire property developer who is about to have all his secrets uncovered, is standing in a nearby queue with a friend when the attack takes place. There is nastiness afoot, and everyone is involved. Nothing is coincidental.

Through a labyrinthine plot which is hard to follow because the points of view are constantly changing, the real story is played out, complete with Russians, false and mistaken identities, dead bodies, betrayals, and all manner of violent encounters. Jackson gets pulled in to the investigation by Louise Monroe, a police detective and mother of an errant 14-year-old. There might be yet another novel to follow which will take up the connection those two forge in this book. Or, Jackson might just go back to France and feed apples to the local livestock.

I think these novels should be read in the published order. There were a couple of references in Death at the Sign of the Rook that passed my by when I was reading it, but I understand more now.

I enjoyed this. Atkinson is a fabulous writer who has a soft spot for her characters. It’s told from various perspectives, Jackson, Martin, Louise, Paul Bradley (although not much from him) and Gloria. Then there are the other characters, ‘Honda man’, Tatiana, Pam, Archie. It’s funny, but also moving, and it ends in a satisfying way.

I am definitely going to read the rest – in the right order!

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September 12, 2024 · 3:12 pm

Held Anne Michaels

Held – Anne Michaels

I set myself the goal of reading the Booker Prize long list (I am not doing very well). I have read Stone Yard Devotional and Enlightenment and now this one.

Here’s the blurb …

The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces : a soaring and luminous story of chance and change

1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand .

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.

Held is a novel like no other, by a writer at the height of her affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom and compassion.

This was beautifully written, poetical with beautiful sentences. The structure reminds me of Jenny Offil – seemingly unrelated paragraphs and chapters, but somehow all connected and telling a story. Having only read three of the longlist, I am going to go out on a limb and say this one is going to win. Not because I didn’t like Stone Yard Devotional or Enlightenment (this is one of my favourite reads of the year), but I think the structure and the writing will appeal to judges.

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September 10, 2024 · 3:22 pm

Tell Me Everything – Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything – Elizabeth Strout

I love Elizabeth Strout. I think I have read all of her books.

Here is the blurb …

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her “extraordinary capacity for radical empathy” (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

I enjoyed reading this novel. I enjoy the intimacy of Strout’s novels – we get to know the inner thoughts of many of the characters. And just when you’re thinking badly of someone you get their perspective and your opinion changes. Salutary lesson (for me at least) about not judging people. The writing is lovely, and although it is a reasonably short novel, by the end I felt a lot had happened to the characters. What I mean by that is that Strout manages to convey a lot with little.

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· 3:12 pm

Death at the Sign of the Rook – Kate Atkinson

Death at the Sign of the Rook – Kate Atkinson

I do like Kate Atkinson novels and I managed to get this one as an ARC.

Here’s the blurb …

The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize – a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick – except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the ‘sidekick’ is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house – Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton – suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve.?And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.

This is told from various different view points – Jackson, Reggie, Ben, Lady Milton, the Vicar, an escaped psychopath, and they all converge at the big house. It’s by turns funny and moving.

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August 22, 2024 · 3:59 pm

This Is How You Lose The Time War – Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This is How You Lose The Time War – Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The theme for my book club this month is ‘letters’. I wanted to read an epistolary novel and this one seemed to come up in everyone’s list. (I’m also reading Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie – more on that another time).

Here’s the blurb …

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.

I loved this novel. The writing is beautiful, poetic and moving. The plot is a confusing at first, but stick with it, it will all come together and make sense.

A review.

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August 11, 2024 · 12:53 pm

Enlightenment – Sarah Perry

Enlightenment – Sarah Perry

This is my favourite novel (so far) this year. I am glad it has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. I have read other Sarah Perry novels – The Essex Serpent (which I loved and the TV series), After Me Comes the Flood (not my favourite), and Melmoth.

Here is the blurb …

Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley are fellow worshippers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love. Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria Veduva, said to haunt a nearby manor, and whose startling astronomical discoveries may never have been acknowledged. Inspired by Maria, and the dawning realisation James may not reciprocate his feelings, Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love? Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former who represents a different, wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together, but quickly pulled apart, casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas. In time, the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed, bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a richer understanding of love, of the nature of the world, and the sheer miracle of being alive.

I loved this book. The talk of physics and comets, but also God and grace, the nature of time, and human connection. It is beautifully written and the descriptions are superb – I could see Grace’s outfits, and the comet dress, and the little church (with the sea drenched Harmonium). The characters were complex and their situations intriguing.

Some of my favourite quotes…

Everything still happens within me – how else can I make sense of time? How else can I explain that I am lonely, and never lonely – that I despise my friend and miss her – that James Bower causes me the worst pain I ever knew, and no pain at all?

It was small, strange, curtailed and poor, but every day made new by the beauty she detected in torn table linen, dying stems of forecourt carnations, silk ribbons sold for a pound in charity shop baskets: she was free to think as she liked, to say what she liked, to do as she pleased…

I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I’ve been faithless, devout, indifferent, ardent, diligent and careless; full of hope and disappointment, bewildered by time and fate or comforted by providence – and all of it ticking through me while the pendulum of my life loses amplitude by the hour.

A review.

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