‘The Dinner’ by Herman Koch (minor spoilers)

Paul and Claire Lohman are meeting Paul’s brother Serge and Serge’s wife Babette at an expensive restaurant.  The evening starts off normally enough, but it becomes clear that the meeting is more than just a social engagement.  The teenage sons of the two couples have been caught on CCTV, committing a horrific offence, and while they have not yet been publicly identified, their parents have recognised their children as the perpetrators, and have met to decide what to do.  Serge is concerned about the effect it will have on his own future, as he is a popular candidate to be the next Prime Minister, and all four are concerned about the futures of their sons.

The premise of this book fascinated me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I felt that some parts were somewhat unrealistic.  The story is narrated by Paul, who, it becomes clear, has significant anger management problems, which may be genetic, and which he may have passed on to their son Michel.  As he described the restaurant with disdain (understandable at times), he also described the events that had led up to the discovery of his son’s crime, and talks about things in the family’s past.

All four characters, with the possible exception of Babette, were to me, extremely unlikeable.  Initially I liked Claire a lot, but towards the end of the book her actions become perhaps unbelievable, and certainly inexcusable.  Neither she nor Paul seems particularly horrified by their son’s actions, and in fact seem determined to cover them up and excuse them by any means necessary.

The over-riding thing that I noticed about the story was how many secrets the characters kept from each other, and even from the reader.  This became clearer the further I read.  The writing was insidious – it got under my skin and I genuinely found this book hard to put down; there is a kind of sinister undertone running through it.  At first, the narration is innocuous – you might even say banal – with Paul talking about the things that irritated him about the pretentious restaurant they are eating in, but then things take a turn, and we are plunged into something much more shocking.

I’m not sure that the ending was one I liked, but it was certainly one that I didn’t expect, and it is a book which I continue to think about.  I can imagine that it may polarise readers, but I would certainly recommend it.

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‘Annabel’ by Kathleen Winter

In 1968, in a small town in Labrador, Canada, Treadway and Jacinta Blake have a child.  But they find that their baby has both male and female genetalia, and make the difficult decision that their child should have surgery.  They raise him as their son and call him Wayne.  Only Treadway, Jacinta and a friend named Thomasina know the truth and Wayne is not told.  However, as Wayne grows, he discovers an emotional part of himself – his female character, who he calls Annabel, after Thomasina’s deceased daughter.

As Wayne grows older, he and the three adults who share the secret are all affected in different ways, and each faces their own struggle to come to terms with the truth.

When I started this book, I was not sure whether I would like it or not, but as I read on, it pulled me in, and I found compelled to read more about Wayne and his family.  The writing is spare, and very beautiful in parts, with the loneliness that the four main characters each feel reflected in the remote and sparsely populated land where they live.

Each character’s struggle manifests itself in different ways, as the book takes us through Wayne’s childhood, school years and beyond.  In many ways, very little happens, but there is so much strangeness in the normalcy of their lives, contrasted with the unusualness of Wayne’s body.  The story is haunting in parts, and I really felt that all of the characters were realistically and believably drawn; sometimes their behaviour seems questionable, but it’s hard not to wonder what any other ordinary person would do in their situation.

It’s hard to believe that this was a debut novel – it was so emotive and yet under-stated, and treated Wayne’s condition (for want of a better word) with delicacy and compassion.  A book which I would definitely recommend.

 

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‘Driving Over Lemons’ by Chris Stewart

When Chris Stewart flies to Spain and on impulse buys a farm in the Andalucian mountains, he has no idea what he’s taking on.  The farm has no electricity, no running water, no easy access, and to cap it all, the former who sold it to him does not seem prepared to move out any time soon.  However, Chris and his wife Ana set about making the farm their home and their livelihood.  This book tells the true story of Chris and Ana’s move to a different country and lifestyle and how they created their home out of the remote farm.

This book is charming throughout.  Chris is a thoroughly likeable narrator, and I really liked his wife Ana too.  The way of life in the Andalucian mountains is amusingly and affectionately described, and there are a cast of wonderful characters, in the friends and neighbours who become part of Chris and Ana’s lives.

Stewart is very self-effacing and happy to admit to mistakes made in the early part of the rebuilding process, and as hard as some of the tasks they set themselves undoubtedly were, he somehow managed to make the whole process seem extremely inviting.

I wasn’t sure that this would be my kind of book, but I actually found it to be a gentle and sweet story, that was hard to put down.

Author’s website can be found here.)

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‘Death at Wentwater Court’ by Carola Dunn

In the first book in this series, set in the 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple, junior reporter for Town and Country Magazine, is sent to Wentwater Court, for the first in her series of articles about stately homes.  However, her visit turns into a murder investigation when a guest at the Court, Lord Stephen Astwick, is found drowned.  Just about every member of the Wentwater family had reason to want Lord Stephen dead, and Daisy finds herself helping Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, as he tries to work out what happened.

Fans of cozy English mysteries should thoroughly enjoy this book – I found it delightful from beginning to end.  Daisy herself is a loveable character; her tendency to stick her nose into matters could become annoying, were she not also extremely endearing.  The rest of the characters consist of the Wentwater family and some of their staff, and DCI Fletcher and his two assisting Officers.  They were all distinctive and the DCI was especially lovely – a fact not lost on Daisy herself!

I had fun trying to work out who was responsible for Lord Stephen’s death, and there were enough twists to keep me guessing.  The aristocratic way of life of the Wentwater family was well depicted, although there were a few turns of speech that struck me as a little contrived.  This book was just so damn likeable though, that any little niggles paled into obscurity.

This is not a dark or gritty story (despite the subject matter), and not really a book to be taken seriously, but I definitely enjoyed meeting Daisy, and look forward to reading further books in this series.

(Autor’s website can be found here.)

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‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell

This book was published in 1949, and set in 1984, in a nightmarish dystopian world.  Our ‘hero’ – and I use the word loosely, as Winston Smith is in many ways the complete opposite of a hero – works for the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite the past in order to support the governing body, Big Brother’s, version of the past.  London is now part of Oceania, which is turn is one of the three superpowers in the world, the others being Eurasia and Eastasia.  In Oceania, conformity is essential, not only in behaviour, but also in thoughts.

Outwardly, Winston is compliant and obedient, but inside, he rebels against the world he lives in, and when he starts a relationship with fellow citizen Julia, both of them are risking their lives.

I am in two minds about this book.  Dystopian fiction is a favourite genre of mine, and I loved Animal Farm, also by Orwell, so I expected to thoroughly enjoy this.  However, while it undoubtedly raised some scary but important issues, and certainly provided food for thought, I found myself plodding through it, and not always enjoying it.  The third part in particular left me quite cold.

That said, I would almost certainly recommend this book to others, because the points it raises, while exaggerated to a very extreme and unrealistic degree, are still matters which should concern us.

Overall, it was a worthwhile read, but I would personally recommend a book such as The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as a better novel in the genre.

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‘The Hypnotist’ by Lars Kepler

This book – one of many to emerge out of the Scandinavian crime genre – is the first in a series featuring Detective Joona Linna.  Linna is investigating the brutal murder of a man, his wife and their daughter.  The family’s son, Josef,  has also been extremely badly injured, but the police need to speak with him to find out what happened, and possibly to prevent more bloodshed.  Josef however, is in no condition to talk, and Linna decides to bring in Erik Maria Bark, a former hypnotist who, ten years earlier, swore that he would never practice hypnosis again.  He reluctantly agrees to hypnotise Josef, but his decision leads to disaster, placing Erik and his family in danger.

I’m not really sure what to think about this book.  On the positive side, it was an easy read, with a sense of tension throughout.  I did find myself changing my mind about what had happened, and it was only towards the end when things finally came together.  I also really liked the Joona Linna character; he had a nice amount of heroism, balanced with a weariness brought on by the things he has witnessed in his career.

However, I was somewhat surprised when the perpetrator of the initial murder as mentioned above, was revealed early on, and it became apparent that that murder was not in fact the focus of the story, but more the catalyst for the events that followed.  There also seemed to be an unnecessary subplot, which muddied things slightly, and I felt that it could quite easily have been edited out, which might have tightened up the narrative somewhat.  The story is all a bit fantastical as well – I always think that the best thrillers and mysteries are the ones which you could actually imagine happening, whereas this one stretched the boundaries of credibility quite often.

I was quite surprised to find that the main character in the series was in fact Joona Linna, because for the most part of this book, he seemed a secondary character to Erik.  (I actually felt quite ambivalent towards Erik (and his wife Simone.)  However, maybe this explains why even though Erik featured more prominently than Joona, I didn’t feel as though his character was well developed.

All in all, something of a mixed bag.  I won’t be rushing out to buy the next book in the series, but because I liked the Linna character, I may well read further books at some point.

(Authors’ – Lars Kepler is actually a couple – website can be found here.)

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‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn

On the morning of Nick and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears and foul play is suspected.  As the police investigate, fingers are pointed straight at Nick; all the evidence suggests that he has hurt Amy (or worse), and as he protests his innocence, nobody, including the reader, is sure who to believe.

There is a split narrative, with Nick describing events on the day of and the days following the disappearance, and also talking about his marriage to Amy, and through Amy’s diary entries leading up to their fifth wedding anniversary.  Through their two voices, a tale is told of two people who meet, fall in love and get married, and seem to have it all – until they don’t.  Until job losses, financial worries and parental problems threaten their happiness, and slowly but surely, the truth is revealed.

It’s really hard to review this book, because I think it is absolutely essential that there are no spoilers for anyone reading it.  However, I will say that I really really liked the first part, where it was never quite clear what had happened.  Then comes a twist, and a change of pace, which I initially was quite disappointed by, and I thought that the book would suffer because of it – but I was wrong.  The level of tension was kept up, and I found the book hard to put down.

I thought the characters were really well written, even if I didn’t particularly like some of them.  (Nick was not that likeable, and Amy’s parents were vomit inducing!)

My only gripe with this book was the ending, which, while well written, and which was actually very clever when I look back at it, didn’t satisfy me,  but I can’t say why without giving away important plot points.  Overall though, this book was a terrific read, and I will be seeking out Gillian Flynn’s other works.

(Author’s website can be found here.)

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‘My Judy Garland Life’ by Susie Boyt

Susie Boyt has been a fan of the legendary Judy Garland – who died five months after Boyt was born – for as long as she can remember. In this book, she talks about her own life (although this is not an autobiography) and how her love of Garland has affected her.

WARNING: This review is probably going to become a rant!

I expected to like this book. I wanted to like it, I really did. But I couldn’t. Not only did I dislike the book, I actually got annoyed and irritated with it. I had expected an amusing memoir about fan-worship of a star, with a metaphorical rolling of the eyes by the author at the lengths she would go to in the name of that fan-worship. What I actually read was a lot of self-indulgent, over analytical wittering. (Perhaps I should partly blame myself for not realising beforehand what type of book this was.)

Lets make no bones about this – the author is not just a fan of Judy Garland, she is obsessed (something which she herself acknowledges). Baking a pie? She instantly thinks of a speech from a Garland film where Garland likens herself to a pie, and recites the speech over and over in her head, desperately making sure she has the words right. Washing up? Remember that scene where Judy Garland washed up? And it’s not enough to just remember the scene – Boyt analyses the scene and breaks it down – what did it mean? What was Judy conveying? Boyt mentions kind words spoken by characters played by Judy Garland and attributes them to Garland herself, seemingly unable to distinguish between Garland and the character. She also sends out questionnaires to other Judy-fans (the hyphen is important; Boyt mentions her Judy-work, her Judy-friends, etc.) asking such questions as ‘What has Judy taught you?’ ‘What qualities do you share with Judy?’ ‘What would you have done to help Judy if you could?’ ‘What would you say to Judy if you could?’ and so on.

She also divides Garland’s fans into bad fans (apparently those who dare to make a point about Garland’s drug use or other personal problems), good fans (those who only focus on the positive aspects of Judy Garland’s life) and crazy-good fans. She mentions one ‘crazy-good fan’ who wrote to Grace Kelly’s family shortly after Grace died tragically young and unexpectedly, and demanded that Grace’s Oscar which she won for The Country Girl, be sent to the Garland family where it truly belonged (Kelly and Garland were both nominated for the Oscar and Kelly, controversially, won). Is that a good fan? Not to me – crazy maybe; rude, spiteful, downright insensitive, definitely.

The author acknowledges her own obsession with Garland, and also acknowledges that other people may have different obsessions. On which subject she says, “It is possible that the object of your obsession is unequal to your heroic feelings, as mine will never be and that you are a tiny bit (and I whisper this) misguided in your choice, but your feelings are good and true, I see that.” Blimey! Patronising much? I recognise that Boyt was perhaps saying that to the obsessive, nobody else’s obsession can ever match up, but all the same, this was the point where I almost abandoned this book. (Later on, she describes doing ‘Judy-work’ in a library and looking round at the other patrons, who are doing their own work. They are swiftly dismissed with “it’s clear they just don’t love their work as I do….”)

Boyt also met with Garland’s daughter, Liza Minelli, to whom she complained that people were only ever interested in her father (Boyt’s father is the late artist, Lucien Freud). Minelli said that she understood exactly how that felt, in an obvious reference to people only being interested in Judy Garland. “But, but, but….” I thought, “Isn’t that exactly what Susie Boyt is doing? She is only interested in Liza Minelli because of who her mother is, and yet she complains about that behaviour in other people.”

Everything was taken so personally in this book; after Garland’s death, her friend Mickey Rooney said that if people had taken her to their hearts a bit earlier, she might still be alive. Boyt says that she takes this as a personal reproach, although she acknowledges that she was just five months old when Judy Garland died.

Boyt hates it that people exploited Judy Garland, but yet this whole book felt slightly exploitative. Garland is used an excuse for Boyt to wax lyrical about her own thoughts. Garland’s addiction to drugs is the basis for Boyt writing about sympathy, the nature of sympathy, when sympathy should be given and who by, and what form it should take (what is bad sympathy and what is good sympathy). This confused me – doesn’t the giving of sympathy depend on a lot of things? What kind of person the sympathiser is; what kind of person they are sympathising with is, what has happened to elicit sympathy, the relationship between the two people, etc. etc.

This is not the book to read if you want to find out more about Judy Garland – I would recommend you find a good biography instead, if that is your aim. There are aspects of Garland’s life contained within, but it seems to be written for people who are already very familiar with her life.

Sorry for the rant. We all have books we like and don’t like, but it’s rare for a book to actually annoy me to this extent. I never give up on a book once I’ve started it, so I did see this one through to the bitter end, but unfortunately I don’t feel able to recommend it to anyone else.

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‘The Lost Years’ by Mary Higgins Clark

Biblical Professor Jonathan Lyons has discovered a parchment which he believes to be a letter written from Jesus to Joseph of Arimathea.  However, before he can return to the parchment to the Vatican Library, he is murdered – shot dead in his own study.  The Police believe that his wife Kathleen, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease is responsible, as it was known that she was jealous about his affair with another woman.  However, the couple’s daughter Mariah refuses to believe that this could be the case and sets out to find out the truth.  Who would really want to kill Professor Lyons, and why?  And where is the mysterious document that he talked about to his friends?

This is the first book I have read by Mary Higgins Clark, and will almost certainly be my last.  It may not have been a good choice of hers to read (I have read reviews by fans of Higgins Clark, who have said that this is not one of her best), but it has pretty much put me off venturing further with her novels.

Don’t get me wrong – I actually quite enjoyed parts of it, and it’s certainly a book that doesn’t require too much thinking, but even while reading it, I found myself shaking my head and thinking what a load of hokum.

There was very little characterisation – there was nothing particularly distinctive about any of Richard’s close circle of friends, around whom much of the story revolves.  The only characters who were quite distinctive were Mariah’s friends Alvirah and Willy – and frankly, Alvirah was a complete nightmare.  I would imagine that she would be a neighbour from hell, going around recording people’s conversations on a brooch that was really a microphone, and sticking in her nose everywhere.  (I can’t imagine that this was even remotely realistic; I am sure that the Police would have told her to stop interfering with their investigation, as she seemed to be doing more enquiry and investigation work than they were!)  I am told that these characters have appeared in previous novels by this author, which is another reason no to read them.

So overall, while this was not a book I hated, I certainly couldn’t say that it was a good or believable read – I was unable to care about any of the characters, even remotely!  Higgins Clark is a hugely popular author, and certainly doesn’t need my recommendation, which is fortunate, because I am not able to give it.

(Author’s website can be found here.)

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‘The Madonna of the Almonds’ by Marina Fiorato

In 1525, Simonetta di Saronno is a young widow who has lost her husband Lorenzo to the Italian wars.  After his death, she discovers that Lorenzo has spent all their money, and she must find a way to make more if she wants to keep hold of her grand home.

Bernardino Luini is a highly talented apprentice of Leonardo da Vinci, who is hired to decorate a church, and offers to pay Simonetta if she will be his model for the Madonna.  Although they initially feel hostility towards one another, they soon end up falling in love,  but their love brings disgrace upon them, as people feel that she has disrespected the memory of her husband.

In a further bid to save her home, Simonetta enlists the help of Manodorata, a Jewish money lender, who helps her to create a drink from the almond trees that grow on her estate.

Will Simonetta and Bernardino ever find happiness together, and will Simonetta manage to save her home?  And what effect can a mute, almost dead soldier have on Simonetta’s future?

I was not sure what to make of this book.  Initially I thought I was going to struggle with it, but I did start to enjoy it.  However, I never felt that the characters were particularly well drawn, and I was not able to connect on any level with them.  The story was interesting enough to hold my attention, but I did guess the twist very early on.

The most interesting and shocking part of the story was the ill-treatment of Jews by the Christians at the time.  Although this was something that I was aware of, it is portrayed very strongly in this book, and for me, this was far more effective than the romantic aspect.

I think most fans of historical fiction would probably enjoy this book, and although I wasn’t as captivated by it as I might have hoped, I would probably read more by this author.

(Author’s website can be found here.)

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