nocto

The second book featuring Paddy Meehan, a young investigative journalist in 1980s Glasgow. This looks like being a series where the ongoing relationships outside the main story are worth coming back for; I'm interested to find out what happens to Paddy's family, especially her mother and her ex-fiancee Sean, over the years. Probably more interested than I am in the individual mystery actually.

Borrowed.

This was a great book that I raced through and couldn't put down. I've read about a hundred good reviews of it and no one seems to have a bad word to say about it - at this point I would be disappointed if it doesn't at least make the shortlist. It's the third book I've read from this year's longlist, and so far it's my favourite.

The setting is the end of the second world war, the location is a small remote village in Wales and the central character is really Esther, the Welsh girl of the title. Esther's holding the small family farm together, looking after her father and a wayward Liverpudlian evacuee, and being romanced by an English soldier. A lot of the narrative takes place in the mind of a German prisoner of war held nearby.

There is also a second story in the book involving Rudolf Hess and one of his interrogators who seem to be in Wales at the same time. There's not much in this book that you could call weak, but I did find myself wondering why the book had started with this story and then moved away to the story centred on Esther. The first story does become relevant and the ending ties together very nicely, but I did feel that this thread of the book was left hanging in the air for a long time. That was pretty much the only negative thing I can think of to say though.

This is also a first novel (Ho Davies has published short story collections before) and on the basis of how well written and enjoyable it was I'm very much hoping he can keep up the quality and provide me with great books for years to come. If I were the Booker Prize committee I'd worry about what happens if he gets given the Booker at the first attempt and then proceeds to produce fabulous novels over the next few decades. Good problem to have I guess!

Borrowed.

When the Booker Prize longlist came out I ordered a couple of the 13 books from the library. I didn't really look very deeply into the details of the books, in fact I pretty much ordered them blind hoping that being on the longlist would be enough to give me something interesting to read.

I didn't bargain on the first book that turned up being an over 800 page doorstep. (No, not a doorstop, I do think you could use this as a doorstep!)

My first impressions weren't great and I struggled through part one not really having any clear idea of the characters or the story that was being told. The structure changed in part two and we stayed with a single character for longer and found out more about them and I began to enjoy the book more even after the structure changed again in part three. In the end I found it quite an easy book to read, lots of white space, prose that was easy to take in and I found the pages to turn pretty fast.

I believe that no really good book should ever tell you every little detail - as a reader I want to be left feeling that I saw more than what the author wrote. I don't want every clue and connection between different places in the story to be pointed out to me.

At the end of the book I felt that I had hundreds of jigsaw pieces in my head. A lot of them (not all of them) were well crafted and interesting to read. What I didn't have was quite enough to manage to piece them together into a coherent whole. I was left feeling that I wasn't quite clever enough for the book.

There's obviously a lot of "second reading" life in this book; I suspect I'd find it a better read second time around but there are too many good books waiting to be read first time around and I don't read many books again, and I don't think this will be one of the few.

Although I found most of the book a good read, my first, and last, impressions were that it wasn't a good book to win the Booker Prize and I hope that there are books more worthy of the prize on the longlist.

Borrowed.