In books read on January 25, 2011
The Accidental by Ali Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book has turned up in every list of recommended books I’ve come across in the last few years, eventually I had to get around to reading it. Was it as good as everyone said it was? Possibly, but it didn’t really do it for me. I mostly read it a handful of pages at a time and didn’t really get into the flow of it. The couple of times I picked it up and read 50 pages or so at a time I really enjoyed it – it’s obviously very well written but you need to get under it’s skin to like it – but most of the time I could easily put it down after five pages and the fancy writing techniques and drawn out narrative don’t work on that scale.
I will remember it for the following verse, taken from a section where one of the characters talks in verse, (I thought they were sonnets but I don’t think they are)
and everything but he felt nothing at all.
He felt- awful. Her name-badge said ‘Miranda’.
Brave new world. He felt bad, utterly small.
He magicked all his cash into her hand, a
small fortune. She straightened her overall.
It was nylon. He dropped her, as if planned, a
little away from where she worked. She waved.
Brave new world. Dr Michael Smart, depraved,
Having spent six years rhyming Miranda (my daughter’s name) and coming up only with ‘veranda’ and ‘Uganda’ I’m pleased to have found a new approach!
But basically, I can see it’s a great book, but it didn’t work very well for me.
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In books read on January 22, 2011
13 1/2 by Nevada Barr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I used to love Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon series but stopped reading after Hunting Season in 2003 after a run of several books that had become rather boring to me. I look her up occassionally to see if anyone thinks one of the new ones is a really good one but most people seem to think the same as me so I haven’t picked any of the more recent books up. When I saw that she’d written a standalone thriller though I thought it was worth giving her another try.
I enjoyed this but it’s nothing especially brilliant. It’s fairly easy to see where the plot is going and I was never particularly worried for the main characters. I’d latched onto the ‘twist’ early on but as is often the case that just made the book more fun to read as you spot the misdirection.
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In books read on January 16, 2011
The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I liked the first in this series, but completely loved this second book.
You’ll be disappointed if you like your crime novels to get everything resolved and tied up neatly by the end; this is in many ways more of a family saga that happens to feature a policeman and his work. I like it that way, it goes off at all kinds of tangents with minor characters which I found a really entertaining read. I could barely put it down, not because it’s a page-turning thriller but because it’s well written, interesting and I always wanted to know what happened next to the characters, even the nasty seeming ones.
I’m not really sure to be honest why they bill them as ‘Simon Serrailler’ books as he’s only really one of the cast, a central character here more than in the first book but not the only one.
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In books read on January 14, 2011
A Corpse in Shining Armour by Caro Peacock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I decided to read the third in the series shortly after the second before I forgot about it again. Disappointed to find no sign of a fourth book in the series yet.
Early Victorian London; jousting is the latest craze among young aristocrats & a paternity question arises between the two sons of a dying Lord. Liberty Lane steps in to investigate. Fun. I guessed one of the twists but it’s well plotted and that didn’t matter. Occassional anachronous-ish foresight by the characters – as when they think it would be nice to have a test for paternity like scientists test for acids & alkalis – just adds to the entertainment.
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In books read on January 14, 2011
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Tracy Chevalier is one of those authors that people ask me if I’ve read, who pop up on recommendation lists, who generally seem very popular despite seeming a bit literary, who sounds like someone I should like, and therefore, contrarily, I’ve never read. I picked this up in the library and fully expected to put it down by page 20 and send it back unread.
Of course I didn’t do that, I loved it.
Set in Lyme Regis in the early nineteenth century this is the story of the friendship between Mary Anning, a young fossil hunter from the working classes, and Elizabeth Philpot, a slightly older fossil hunter from the upper classes. I knew that Mary Anning was a real historical figure as I knew of her from visits to Lyme, I was surprised to find that Miss Elizabeth was also drawn from life – the fossil museum in Lyme Regis is the Philpot Museum apparently, I didn’t remember that.
It’s a great story about the relationships between the classes at the time of Austen. Mary and Elizabeth really shouldn’t be friends; neither of them should take gentlemen fossil hunters out onto the beach with them. There is also much revealed about the relationship of Elizabeth as a slightly down at heel spinster to the higher echelons of society. And also about women in scientific circles at the time: Mary Anning is now considered to be one of the most influential British women in the history of science but few of her contemporaries saw that.
I liked the book for the subject matter but it was a far smoother read than I was expecting and I’ll have to try another of Chevalier’s books and see if I enjoy it as much.
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In books read on January 7, 2011
The Perfect Lie by Emily Barr
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Chick-lit-ish kind of thriller. Nothing special, but not dreadful though predictable at times. Kept me entertained and turning the pages.
I got hugely annoyed by the enormous paragraph spacing though – I read it on the Kindle but I guess this feature is carried over from the print edition. The Kindle lets you adjust type size and line spacing but doesn’t have a “Please remove the two blank lines between each paragraph” option. It’s ok when there are long paragraphs, but quick dialogue sections – often one of the fastest moving bits of a thriller – get slowed down by page turning. I guess someone thought it made it “faster” that way. It doesn’t!
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In books read on January 6, 2011
The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ll file this one under “quite good but could have been better”.
The majority of the book is set in the second world war and told from multiple viewpoints. The major characters are Anna, an eight year old evacuee send from London to Yorkshire – shades of Carrie’s War here for me (can’t really remember it, must reread it with Miranda sometime!); Anna’s mother, Roberta, who remains in London living a more or less single life without husband or daughter; and Thomas Ashton who runs the temporary country house school for evacuees where Anna ends up. Other characters appear and disappear from the narrative at various points: a Polish artist, a young schoolteacher, Thomas’s unhappy wife, Thomas’s diplomatic friends the Nortons who turn out to have been real people. On the whole it’s a good story with a great sense of place but some of the characters never came fully to life for me – there’s the occasional fabulous bit of characterisation but then a lot that seemed somewhat generic.
At the end of the story the war is over and the book quickly skips through “what happened next” to bring the surviving characters up to the present day. Although I could see how this tied the plot up by showing the effect of the wartime events on the rest of the characters lives it still felt a bit of an extended epilogue rather than a full part of the main book.
I think this is Rosie Alison’s first book and I’d certainly try another even though this didn’t quite deliver for me.
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In books read on January 4, 2011
Passionate Man: A Novel by Joanna Trollope
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve read Joanna Trollope’s novels for years and generally think I liked the earlier ones more than the later books. When I was adding all my reading & book records to Goodreads & LibraryThing recently I was surprised to find this book popping up as unread as I thought I had read all of the earlier books at least. I expected to suddenly remember the story part of the way through and realise that I had read it before but I’m pretty certain this one was new to me. Or completely forgotten which is just as good!
Despite reading all of them I always start off these books thinking they are going to be rubbish… they are full of characters who appear at first glance to be rather stereotyped examples of the upper middle classes, people with big houses, good jobs, stable relationships, long family histories verging on the aristocratic, perfect children effortlessly kept in private schools etc. But what I enjoy is that things are never quite as they seem and that Trollope plays with the stereotypes and rather makes fun of her characters along the way. She nearly always writes about women and despite the title this book is mostly about the women surrounding the men. I never did figure out which man was supposed to be the passionate one, there are two obvious possibilities as far as I can see; and Liza Logan, wife of one of them, and daughter-in-law of the other was a far more interesting character than either.
Published in 1990 this feels rather like a period piece now.
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In books read on January 3, 2011
The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An enjoyable uncovering of secrets as a housemaid, Grace, employed at Riverton from the time of the first world war looks back at life at the house from her old age. I liked it despite finding it all a bit predictable in places. The characters aren’t really the strong point here, some seem very cardboardy, marched onto the scene to display some aspect of early twentieth century history. I’d have liked to have cared more about the family and the servants. The slow realisation of what is happening is well written though. The device of having Grace looking back in time and being astonished by her own lack of knowledge about what is going on around her works well. And subtle hints of what happens after the main story are littered through the book to make the reading continually interesting, and the big reveal at the end of the book might be disappointing if the reader hadn’t basically guessed it all long before.
Thinking about the book too much would probably ruin it, so I won’t do, but it’s an entertaining read.
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In books read on December 30, 2010
Death of a Dancer by Caro Peacock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’d forgotten about this series. This is the second book by Caro Peacock – the author is a literary reincarnation of Gillian Linscott. By the looks of it I really enjoyed the first in the series when I read it a couple of years back but I’d since forgotten about it. This story took me a little while to get into but I romped through it after that. The central character is Liberty Lane – a feisty young lady in early Victorian London – I suspect the author has thought it all through and Liberty isn’t completely anachronistic, though even if she is it doesn’t change the fact that this is well written and entertaining. I think I’ll read the third in the series soon before I forget about it again!
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