rachbxl in 2016

Better late than never, here I am for another year in Club Read. Last year I read 36 books, way down from what I used to manage - but on the plus side, quite a few of them were excellent, most notably A God in Every Stone, Life after Life, The Bees and El boxeador polaco (The Polish Boxer), and my big discovery of the year was Barbara Comyns, so 2016 will certainly bring more of her work.

Other reading plans for 2016? I hope to read at least a little more than in 2015, and I'd like to read from my TBR shelves more, as I'm sure they're full of hidden treasures. And I really want to get back to my literary round-the-world trip, which I started years ago in the Reading Globally group, but which (like my real travels) has been at a bit of a standstill for a couple of years. I want to get back to it because it led me to lots of books I'd never have read otherwise, and made me excited about my reading. I know I can't keep up with 2 LT groups, so I'm going to keep track on this thread rather than in Reading Globally.

Books read in 2016:

1. Broken Harbour by Tana French (Ireland)
2. Restless by William Boyd (UK, off TBR)
3. The Falls by JCO (USA, off TBR)
4. Garnethill by Denise Mina (UK)
5. Still Midnight by Denise Mina (UK)
6. The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina (UK)
7. Gods and Beasts by Denise Mina (UK)
8. When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen (Finland, translation)
9. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Mari Kondo (non-fiction, translated)
10. Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne (Sri Lanka)
11. Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst (Norway, translation)
12. Granta 132
13. El desorden que dejas by Carlos Montero (Spain, in Spanish)
14. Constance by Rosie Thomas (UK)
15. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (Norway, translation)
16. The Book of Chameleons by JE Agualusa (Angola, translation)
17. Ours are the Streets by Sanjeev Sahota (UK)
18. In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda (Spain, translation)
19. Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indridason (Iceland, translation)
20. All Days are Night by Peter Stamm (Switzerland, translation)
21. Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan (Indonesia, translation)
22. Mersault, contre-enquête by Kamel Daoud (Algeria, in French)
23. The Vegetarian by Han Kang (S. Korea, translation)
24. Ceux qui vont mourir te saluent by Fred Vargas (France, in French)
25. Mr Mercedes by Stephen King (USA)
26. The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth (UK)
27. Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian (China, translation)
28. The Dark Road by Ma Jian (China, translation)
29. Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe (non-fiction)
30. Field of Blood by Denise Mina (UK)
31. Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin (UK)
32. Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin (UK)
33. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya, translation)
34. Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin (UK)
35. The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood (Canada)

Reserved for my reading around the world.

Broken Harbour by Tana French

Having enjoyed The Secret Place so much last year, I bought this as a treat for myself to take on holiday to Lanzarote over New Year. My daughter obliged by having a lengthy nap on me every day so I had lots of reading time (she needed a long nap to make up for refusing to sleep at night). It was a little odd to look up from a book about a windswept ghost-town on the Irish coast and see a volcano and palm trees.

A father and two small children are found murdered in their home, alongside the severely (fatally?) wounded mother. Who would do this to this perfect family, and why? It's the detective brought in to investigate that narrates (interesting that Tana French should choose, as in The Secret Place, a male narrator. I think for the most part she pulls it off, but just now and again in both books there's something that's a little off-key. And I found the narrator here a little irritating at times, though that's the character rather than the writing). There are lots of different threads and themes here - the murder investigation, of course; the rookie detective the narrator takes under his wing; the narrator's sister and her mental health problems; families and friendships; a tragedy that took place when the narrator was a teenager; how the past has a hold on the present. But almost a month on, what has really stuck with me is the economic crisis in Ireland - it's the backdrop to the whole book, but it's so omni-present it's virtually the main character, together with the desperate people and their shattered dreams.

Not an uplifting book, but a great read.

Restless by William Boyd

This has been on TBR for a couple of years since a friend passed it on, and I grabbed it on a whim the other day. I was immediately gripped by the tales of World War II espionage. I felt that Boyd tries a bit too hard sometimes - in places it's over-written, almost as if Boyd had replaced all the simple words in certain passages with fancy synonyms he found in the thesaurus. Why? What's wrong with simple? I'm trying to block out the memory of a sex scene which used the phrase 'gleaming tumescence'. Please.

I'm sure I'll read things of greater literary merit this year, but this was a real page-turner, and I got really caught up in it. Boyd really knows how to create and maintain tension, and at times I could hardly breathe.

Saying that I was going to read from my TBR shelves had a predictable result. Within minutes I found myself placing an order worth €100 with The Book Depository. Oh well.

I am now looking forward to receiving:
Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh these 2 had already been on my Book Depository wishlist for ages.
Kinder than Solitude by Yiyun Li because I loved The Vagrants.
The Italians by John Hooper because The Spaniards was excellent all those years ago, and I'm supposed to know about Italians too.
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson because I can't wait any longer.
Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst because Lois (avaland) just recommended these police procedurals, and when avaland recommends...
L'amica geniale by Elena Ferrante because my local Italian bookshop only ever has the later books in the series and I never get round to ordering it.
The Woman from Tantoura by Radwa Ashour because I had a sample on my Kindle and liked it.

>5 rachbxl:. I appreciate your restraint, Rachel. :)

>5 rachbxl: You make me laugh out loud!

Welcome back!

So nice to see you again, rachel! From your list, I have read only the Ferrante and liked it a lot. Now starting book 2, which I hope lives up to the expectation set by book 1.

My take away from Broken Harbour was also the Irish economic crisis. It helped that I also read The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright the same month. Very different books, but the recent economic woes are important to both.

Thank you for introducing me to Lanzarote. I've never heard of it, and I just can't stand not knowing of a place. Of course, it's very rare for people from Vancouver to visit the Canary Islands, so that's my sad excuse.

Of the books you purchased, I've only read Brixton Beach. I thought it was excellent, but then I like anything by Roma Tearne.

>6 NanaCC: and >7 Simone2: I'm afraid I forgot to mention that I'd already bought a book earlier that day - well, who could resist something by a writer with the fabulous name of Scholastique Mukasonga (Rwanda)?

>8 rebeccanyc: Thanks Rebecca!

>9 deebee1: I've heard a lot of good things about the series, so I look forward to seeing what you think of the second one. I've been dying to read the first, but I told myself I had to wait until I saw it in a bookshop - I couldn't wait any longer.

>10 Nickelini: Joyce, pleased to be of service. I can confidently say that we didn't run into anyone from Vancouver! On a different note, you're indirectly responsible for my purchase of Brixton Beach, because it was you that put me on to Tearne in the first place, with Mosquito all those years ago.

Welcome back, Rachel!

>5 rachbxl: Wow. I thought I had no will power...

>11 rachbxl: Which book did you purchase by Scholastique Mukasonga? I read Our Lady of the Nile late last year, which was good.

>12 kidzdoc: Hello Darryl, good to see you. I've got your thread starred but haven't read it yet (it's so long already!); I'll be along shortly. On the willpower front, in my defence, I never get to visit good, big English-language bookshops any more (other than Waterstones in Brussels, which is very expensive and not huge), and I really miss that. I regualrly used to return from trips to the UK with hauls at least as big as this one, whereas now my bags are full of children's clothes (much cheaper in the UK). Buying books online isn't the same as browsing in a good bookshop (I don't know about anybody else, but I get butterflies in my stomach in a good bookshop) so I don't do it often either, unless I'm after something specific. And the result is that my TBR shelves, whilst groaning, and full of things that I do want to read at some point, are lacking in books that demand to be read NOW. I think I've rectified that with this week's splurge - for a while, at least...

I got Ce que murmurent les collines by Mukasonga, which doesn't appear to have been translated yet. I hope to get to it soon as it looks good.

>13 rachbxl: Your Book Depository splurge was quite understandable, Rachel, but it was amusing to see how little time it took for you to succumb to temptation! You're in good company, though; I've had several book splurges that were far worse than yours, and whenever I travel to London or San Francisco I make sure to pack my tote bag to bring back literary loot. Several LTers I meet regularly in the US or UK are notorious for purchasing large quantities of books while saying that they don't need any more of them as well.

I don't know about anybody else, but I get butterflies in my stomach in a good bookshop.

Yep. Daunt Books in Marylebone, the London Review Bookshop, and City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco all make me weak in the knees (and wallet).

>14 kidzdoc: Daunt was always my first stop right off the Eurostar when I used to spend regular weekends in London. It's just how a bookshop should be. (I was thinking about your trips to City Lights as I wrote my last post!)

>15 rachbxl: Exactly. Daunt, even more than City Lights, has a lot of character and it just feels right. I love the London Review Bookshop, as it offers books that aren't as prominently displayed elsewhere (and its Cake Shop is excellent, if you can get a table) but Daunt has now become my favorite bookshop in central London.

Just stopping by to catch up and say hi. Glad your back again for this year.

Thanks, Dan!

I seem to have bought two more books. I'm in The Hague for 24 hours for work, and during my lunch break I found a big bookshop with a very reasonable English section, including a shelf of Dutch writers in translation, from which I bought The King by Kader Abdolah, a political refugee from Iran who writes in Dutch. I also bought Berlin Noir, a collection of the first three Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr (I'm sure someone here has recommended them, and my colleague happened to mention them this morning).

Would that be De Slegte, rachel? When I lived for a short while in NL (whose fantastic bookshops were, for me, one of the high points of living there), I would sneak into any branch I happen to be passing, go up to the 2nd hand English section, and would always come out with a much heavier bag. I've read Berlin Noir -- it's quite entertaining and rarely flags. Do let us know what you think of The King when you get to it. It seems fascinating.

>20 deebee1:, >19 rachbxl:
De Slegte has gone from Den Haag, unfortunately - they only have a few shops left, mostly in Belgium. In fact just about all the bookshops in Den Haag have closed, merged, and/or moved in the last couple of years, some of them more than once. The ABC is just about the only one in the city centre that's still in the same place it used to be. Rachel is probably talking about Van Stockum, which used to be opposite CS, and now shares premises on the Spui with a café.

Kader Abdollah's De Kraai was the Boekenweek gift a few years ago - I really liked that, and made a note to read more (of course, I haven't...).

>20 deebee1:, >21 thorold: I don't remember the name of the bookshop, but it's on Frederik Hendriklaan. On the same street I found a little second-hand bookshop; in both cases the English section was small, but full of books I might want to read, rather than just bestsellers and chick lit.

>21 thorold: Good to know you enjoyed it. I struggled to choose yesterday between this and My Father's Notebook, which looked interesting too.

The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates

This was the first JCO I attempted, years ago (before LT, even), and I gave up very quickly; I just didn't know what to make of it, and I found the frequent use of italics (often used for a character's internal, unspoken reaction) unsettling. In the meantime, I've read a further four JCO novels, and I found The Falls perfectly accessible now. And I really enjoyed it.

Within a few pages, a young honeymooning husband throws himself into Niagara Falls, fleeing a wedding night which was nightmarish for both sides. Clearly gay, even if he doesn't know it himself, Gilbert is unprepared for and deeply shocked by the sexual desires of his new wife Ariah, whose shame at these same desires is compounded by his rejection of her, and by the note he leaves her telling her he cannot love her. She hides the note.

Stuck between shame and relief, Ariah becomes known as the 'Widow Bride of the Falls', as she waits for Gilbert's body to be given up by the river. Once that happens, she returns to her home in Troy, and that would have been that, except that Dirk Burnaby (I was unconvinced by the names of several of the characters in this novel), a rich lawyer from a poweful Falls family, who had become her protector during her wait, cannot forget her, and goes to Troy to bring her back to Niagara Falls and marry her.

They marry and have children and are very happy...until Dirk takes on a case unlike any of his previous cases - an early environmental class action in what came to be known as the (real-life) Love Canal case, representing poor families living in a working-class area built on what used to be a dumping ground for toxic waste. This case is to be the undoing of their marriage and of Dirk himself, and their children are left by both parents (in different ways) to deal with the consequences.

So much for the plot. Flimsy as it is, I don't think many other writers could turn that into a convincing novel, let alone one 500 pages long. JCO gives us layer upon layer of detail, apparently irrelevant incident after apparently irrelevant incident (rather in the manner of Dickens)...but all the irrelevant details pile up to give us a picture which very gradually gets bigger and bigger, and clearer and clearer. The characters got right under my skin (I feel like I've known them for ever, and it's a shock to remember that I only met them a few days ago), and the recurrent descriptions of the Falls are so vivid that I can feel the mist in the air, and hear the constant roar.

>23 rachbxl: Great review of The Falls! It's one of my favorite JCO novels.

Excellent review of The Falls

Great review Rachel. Interesting how your reaction to JCO (or was it just this book) has changed over time.

Thanks, Chris, Barry & Dan. >26 dchaikin: I think it was JCO in general. Some of her books are a better way in to her work than others, I think, and this one isn't one of them. By chance my next attempts were Middle Age and We Were the Mulvaneys, both much more accessible to the uninitiated. At least my first go at The Falls didn't put me off JCO altogether, which I think would have happened if I'd tried The Tattoed Girl first.

Denise Mina, where have you been all my life?

Garnethill
Still Midnight

Now that I've discovered her (thanks to CR she'd been on my wishlist for a while), I've devoured 2 of her books in a few days, and can't wait to get my hands on more. The plots are gripping, but what makes these books un-put-downable is the truly sympathetic characters - sympathetic because they're real, a mixture of good and bad like everyone; Mina has an extraordinary understanding of what makes people tick. This isn't a black-and-white world of goodies and baddies; it's a rich world where all the colour is in the grey. And what fantastic female characters! (And not at the expense of the men...)

Glad you like Mina!

I have The Falls in my tbr pile and I've never been much interested in it (maybe because of the length?). You've encouraged me to pick it up -- it sounds interesting. I like JCO and I think one has to read a few of her books to get what she's about. I read We Were the Mulvaneys first, and realized I didn't really get it until I read other stuff by her.

Catching up, and enjoying your reviews. I found The Falls a bit clunky at the start, but agree it's great once you get into it.

I've been enjoying Mina too. It really is fun finding a new series that you like.

>29 rebeccanyc:, >32 NanaCC: You two headed my list of possible suspects of who had got me looking out for Mina! I've read another, and I'm well into a fourth. After this one I'm going to have a break though.

The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina

The second Alex Morrow book, just as gripping as the first (Still Midnight), just as well written, and with the same disturbing moral ambiguity running through it - there are the obvious goodies and baddies (this is a police procedural, after all), but actually everyone here is on a spectrum of good and bad, from the criminals through to DS Alex Morrow herself. I don't think for a moment that Mina wants us to forgive the criminals their actions (in this case the vicious murder of a young woman in her own home), but I did come to feel real empathy for the killer.

I like the way Mina deals with Morrow's private life; it's the key to understanding why she is the way she is, but it doesn't take over the novels.

And another...

Gods and Beasts by Denise Mina

The third Alex Morrow book. Another great story, although I found this one a bit less gripping than the previous two; the strands did all come together in the end, but for a long time I wondered how that was going to happen. In particular, the story about Kenny, a celebrity politician in Scotland (with a fair few skeletons in his cupboard), didn't seem relevant; I knew it must be, but the link only came quite close to the end. As well as the morally rotten politician, there is police corruption, gangs, money laundering...and a good dose of dark humour to leaven it all.

I don't usually read books in a series back-to-back like this, and actually this third one was probably one too many for me in a too-much-of-a-good-thing kind of way, and I'm going to have a break now.

Well, now you've read as much of the Alex Morrow series as I have. You've made me want to get to another soon.

>23 rachbxl: Of all the JCO novels I've read, I've not read The Falls, so I enjoyed very much your review. And because of my past reading the book seemed familiar somehow!

I enjoyed Mina's Alex Morrow series very much and you remind me that I should check if there is a new one out.

When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen
translated from the Finnish by Lola M. Rogers

This is, I think, an excellent, gripping novel, but one which circumstances prevented me from enjoying as much as I should have done. When I started it I had the 'flu, and the small print made me head ache, quite apart from the fact that the first section really required a degree of concentration I wasn't up to giving it. I would normally have set it aside and come back to it when I felt better, but as it was a library book I was under time pressure (no immediate renewals at our work library). I say it calls for concentration, and that's because this part is set in 1941-42, with Estonia being fought over by Russia and Germany. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the historical details to let it wash over me - so I got a bit lost at the start. As I say, I'm convinced that had I felt better, I'd have been able to follow it.

Once I did feel better, I loved this book and every time I put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. The narrative flits between 1941-42 and the 1960s, with Estonia very firmly under Soviet rule, and with the events of 1941-42 still very relevant. I was captivated in particular by the character of Juudit, and the poignant contrast between the young Estonian woman, given a second chance at happiness after the failure of her marriage when she falls in love with a German officer, and the tragic figure of the alcoholic wife trapped in the original failed marriage. Her husband Edgar, slipping and sliding and changing with the wind, is the embodiment of the petty surreality of everyday life under the communists, as he carries out orders and adds endless useless detail to the files of his victims, whilst worrying about who, in turn, has been instructed to spy on him. In one sense the despicable Edgar is the only person in the novel who comes out unscathed - but the price is the loss of his integrity, perhaps even of his humanity.

Unfortunately, the book was due back on Tuesday, and I had ear-marked part of my lunch break to read the last 50 or so pages before taking it back. Given that on Tuesday I was no more than 200 metres from the now sadly infamous Maalbeek metro station (the 'bxl' in my username is for Brussels), that didn't happen. I was safe, I was (locked) inside, my family were all miles away - but we had no idea what was going on out there (we could hear it all), and it wasn't a day for sitting around reading. I finally finished the poor book last night, but I wish I had read it at some other time to better appreciate it.

On my way to bed for an early night last night, desperate for some escapism, I grabbed Roma Tearne's Brixton Beach. I just thought it would be a good read! I had no idea that it opened with the London 7/7 bombings. How ironic.

As I have said elsewhere, I'm glad you were safe! It must have been nerve-wracking. It was mentioned that the station was near several EU buildings and I thought of you.

So glad you enjoyed When the Doves Disappeared, which I did also. I agree about it requiring concentration at the beginning, and I had to resort to Google for some historical background at one point (what did I know of Estonia in WWII?) I have thought about seeking out her first work, Purge, which we reviewed in Belletrista a few years back (but I hold off because I'm buried in books at the moment).

>37 rachbxl: On my way to bed for an early night last night, desperate for some escapism, I grabbed Roma Tearne's Brixton Beach. I just thought it would be a good read! I had no idea that it opened with the London 7/7 bombings. How ironic.

That is ironic! The incident bookends that novel, so I don't think this one is escapism for you.

I too thought of you when I heard the news. I can't even imagine going through that. So glad your safe.

Glad to hear you are safe - I had forgotten that you were in Brussels.

Glad you are safe too. i didn't know you lived in Brussels.

>37 rachbxl: I was frustrated by Oksannen's Purge and so haven't read anything else by her.

Glad to see you posting, I was hoping you weren't too close and were just distracted by the chaos to come posting around here! Such craziness for this little country. :(

Thanks, everyone. We got away from it all for a long weekend over Easter, which was lovely. Things at home are just as normal, but at work it's all quite subdued. A friend lost a friend, and a family friend was at the airport, and, whilst physically fine, is struggling mentally. Brussels is so much smaller than Paris or London, and I don't know how many times this week I've stood in queues in the canteen, or been waiting for my train, hearing someone near me talk about a colleague, a friend, a neighbour who was involved - not hurt, usually, but there when it happened. But then, it happens somewhere in the world nearly every day, sadly.

A very strange thing happened a few weeks ago. I was overcome by the sudden urge to get rid of some of my books. I didn't act on it at first, but the feeling didn't go away. I decided that I didn't want to go on being surrounded by books that hadn't really set my world on fire, or by books I know I'll never read. So I started going through my shelves, and I've put lots aside to go - and it's surprised me how easy it's been. I can't say my shelves look better for it because everything is in the process of being packed up to prepare for the work we're about to have done, but that just strengthened my resolve - how many times have I packed and unpacked some of these books? Obviously I'm keeping a lot too, but only ones that mean something to me, either because I loved them, or because they remind me of where or when I read them. Or because they're beautiful. And then most of my TBR as well...

I happened to mention this to a friend, and she said, 'Oh, that's the Marie Kondo approach, but it sounds like you worked it out for yourself.' I'd heard of Kondo, but I decided to read her book:

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo
Translated from the Japanese

Marie Kondo's whole (sometimes quite eccentric) approach to tidying can be summed up by the phrase 'if it doesn't spark joy, chuck it out'. I read somewhere that the term 'spark joy' is perhaps a mistranslation, and that 'resonate with you' would be more faithful (so the refrain, 'ask yourself if it sparks joy' becomes 'ask yourself if it resonates with you'). I'm normally quite sceptical about this kind of book (self-help books, I suppose), and I consider myself to be fairly ruthless when it comes to throwing things away, so I read the book just out of curiosity.

And yet...

The 'spark joy' approach is completely liberating! Yes, it's exactly what I did with my books, and I've now done it with my clothes too - last week I threw out 6 or 7 black bags full of clothes that just don't do it for me, but which I was keeping - just in case. You know, for that day that will never come when I might just need to wear that old jacket to work, or for the day when I've done so much gardening that I need that third pair of old trousers.

I have a couple of problems with Kondo's approach, although of course (despite what she says) you can pick and choose from it. Firstly, everything gets thrown away; there's no talk of recycling, reusing, etc. Part of the philosophy is that once you've decided it's going, it has to leave your house as quickly as possible - but my old clothes went to charity, not in the bin, so they had to wait a while. And my other gripe is that Kondo is clearly NOT a reader! Not that she uses the term, but she basically argues that TBR shelves have no place in our homes, because (I paraphrase) 'the right moment for you to read that book was the moment it first came into your life, and if you didn't read it then, get rid of it'.

>44 rachbxl: 'the right moment for you to read that book was the moment it first came into your life, and if you didn't read it then, get rid of it'.

Obviously clueless.

But she does know how to fold really well.

>44 rachbxl:

...or for the day when I've done so much gardening that I need that third pair of old trousers

Sometimes it seems I have whole closets devoted to gardening/cleaning/painting clothes, or clothes that could be recycled into other projects; well not really that many, it just seems like it. While I am working my way through them gradually, there are far too many. Someone told me the other day she disposed of "anything I would be embarrassed to open the door to my neighbours in". If only I knew my neighbours that would be a good approach.

This past winter has been a good one in terms of letting go, and I am even extending it to books, but they are perhaps the hardest. But do away with the TBR... Kondo isn't winning any converts here.

>45 Nickelini: But she does know how to fold really well Ouch, but definitely funny.

>46 SassyLassy: Hey! I'm addicted to her folding technique. Not only is it efficient, it's relaxing.

I've been skeptical (to put it mildly) about the Kondo approach largely because of my TBR but also because my closet is daunting . . . not to mention my desk, and files, and . . .

>48 rebeccanyc: I'm with you, Rebecca. I know that I should really embrace some of her approach, but, my closets, ugh! where to start......

Not noted for my sartorial elegance - I have never worn a suit - sometime back I was chatting to my girlfriend at the time about clothes and of course I remarked on how well dressed she always was. She replied "you know Bas whenever I come out with you I wear my gardening clothes."

>37 rachbxl: glad to hear that you are safe and I hope that you are soon able to put those dreadful events behind you.

>50 baswood: Gardening clothes are the best, as I'm sure you know. Maybe she could see the future?

> 50 That's a funny story!

>44 rachbxl: I was following Kondo's advice and removing everything from my bathroom cupboard prior to sorting/discarding. I put everything on a tray (held in one hand) and just as I filled it to capacity, dropped it! With an enormous crash, hair products, talc, dental floss, toothbrushes etc. etc. were scattered on the floor. My husband asked "Is that what the book said to do?"

Edited to correct "everyone" to everything!

>44 rachbxl: I had to giggle thinking of you reading the Kondo book while I'm reading the book on hoarding (not because I have a hoarding problem, but because I can recognize myself in some of thinking---and the authors claim that we all will recognize some part of ourselves).

In my great purge of 2013, there were no rules but I donated books that: 1. I knew I would never read again 2. Classics that weren't big favorites, and that I can get in any library should I ever wish to read them again. 3. TBRs that no longer resonated me (resonated is a good word for it). But, if they still peaked my interest I kept them. A good thing as I did just read two books I bought 10 years ago!

After reading the book by Kondo (finished March 21), I threw out quite a lot of stuff, particularly stationary, CDs & cassettes, souvenirs & gifts, tea & tea tools, books (!) and papers.

I am still not done. More stuff has to go...

The Kondo book was hit and miss with me, too. I did like her comments on gifts - we do have some things that we could easily live without, but as they were gifts, it seemed ungrateful. I'm preparing for the move back to the US and getting rid of things before the larger house and actual closets makes getting rid of things unnecessary.

Haven't been here for a few days as I've been too busy Kondo-ing my house! We've had to move out of our ground floor (big renovation starting tomorrow) so I've been busy packing boxes. Kondo has been hugely helpful, actually - I saw this as an opportunity for a sort-out anyway, but thanks to her, I've been ruthless. It's such a shame she advocates NOT Kondo-ing other people's belongings, as I'm itching to throw away some (most) of my husband's stuff (he is a hoarder anyway, but on top of that, over the years he's become the depository for all the junk his family don't want in their own homes but refuse to throw away).

>45 Nickelini: 'But she does know how to fold really well.' That made me snort my coffee! Did you watch videos on YouTube (or elsewhere)? Because I can't quite get it from the book (or maybe it's just me). I'm sure my new technique is not quite what she intended...!

>46 SassyLassy: Oh yes, it's not just the gardening clothes here, either. I too have painting clothes (when did I ever?), DIY clothes (don't do much of that either - but you never know!), etc etc. And there's very little of it I would want to be seen in!

>50 baswood: That's very funny!

>53 VivienneR: As it that! (And even better to think of all the people you keep in your bathroom cupboard...)

>54 avaland: I shall have a look for the hoarding book. Hoarding is more interesting as a phenomenon than tidying, I feel.

>55 edwinbcn: I've come to a standstill because of the work on the house, but there's definitely more to go here too (I'm behind you anyway, as I haven't even finished round one yet).

>56 RidgewayGirl: Yes, I wonder about the gifts. What she says makes logical sense to me, but it's so cold and unemotional that I struggle with it. (I was on a training course recently on giving feedback, and the trainer told us about someone on the previous course, a French lady, who had talked about how she had given a gift to a Dutch friend, who examined it, then pronounced it not to be to her taste and not something she wanted to have in her house, and gave it back!)

>58 rachbxl: On the subject of gifts, I've decided to keep those from people who we see regularly. So the platter from the in-laws stays in the back of a cupboard until they visit, when I move it to a visible space, but there are gifts from people we don't see much or we've lost contact with that I can put in the box to go to the donation center. The nice thing about unwanted gifts is that they do stay in perfect condition.

Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne

This beautiful book made a huge impact on me, and I've been thinking about what to write about it since finishing it several days ago.

I had forgotten, or maybe I never knew, that Roma Tearne is an artist (art came before writing for her). Art certainly plays a big part in this novel (the main character, Alice, and her grandfather Bee are both artists), but that's not why I mention it. Rather, it's because I think this explains why Tearne's novels have quite the effect on me that they do. She almost paints rather than writes some parts of her books - her descriptions of her native Sri Lanka in particular, and the descriptions of people too (I struggled with one character, Stanley, Alice's father. He didn't ever seem very real to me, although he got more real once he left Sri Lanka for London. Now that I think about it, I have no idea what Stanley looks like because I don't think he is ever described, or not in much detail, unlike other characters; it's as if Tearne uses physical descriptions to bring her characters to life - and the others are VERY much alive).

Anyway, I find Tearne's novels devastating. I remember several years ago sitting on a plane with tears rolling down my cheeks as I finished The Swimmer (books often bring a tear to my eye, but they don't usually make me sob), and so too with Brixton Beach; there were several passages (particularly Alice's farewell to her grandfather when she and Sita leave Ceylon, and the days and weeks leading up to it) which made me howl. In fact, even a few days on if I think about the book much I just want to curl up in a ball and cry - for the lost beauty of Alice's childhood home, for the lost innocence of childhood, for the lost relationship between Alice and her grandfather, for the loneliness of life in exile, for the pain of those left behind and the inability of each to understand the other, for lives destroyed by war...and on, and on. I think some readers might find Tearne's style a bit overdone, a bit rich, but it works for me.

I have several more books by Roma Tearne to look forward to (I have only read Mosquito and The Swimmer in addition to this one), and look forward to them I will - but she isn't a writer whose work I rush to devour, despite being, I would say, one of my favourites.

>58 rachbxl: Hahahaha, that sounds quite like a typical Dutch! I'm sure the person had no idea they sounded rude/insensitive to them, and would not like to think they had hurt anyone's feelings. Dutch people are just very blunt and straight forward, no sugar-coating or beating around bushes. It's not meant to be offensive, and they tend to be rather perplexed/irritated by encountering what they consider to be "fake" behavior in those from other cultures. My husband was rather horrified on his first visit to the US and never did get comfortable in all his visits with the people working in stores, with the smiles plastered on their faces and their perky "Hi how are you!" etc spiels. XP

>61 .Monkey.: Ha! Those culture clashes are interesting. The German company my husband works for bought an English company and the relations between the two were a disaster. It ended up costing the German company quite a bit - they only began cultural training sessions once it had all fallen apart. I was lucky enough to get to go on a cultural training course before we had to move back to Germany in a hurry after the merger collapsed. Basically, German is a very direct language, and German translated into English can be rude when spoken by someone without a good grasp of how the two languages differ. And the English are the masters of indirect communication. So the best people quit as they were sure they were about to be fired, and the Germans had no idea why people were leaving when they were very happy with their work.

Lol, yeah, cultural differences can be quite troublesome in particular circumstances!

>62 RidgewayGirl: >63 .Monkey.: I went on one of those "intercultural communication" courses once, and I wasn't very impressed. All through the course I was catching myself thinking "yes, people from country A do tend to behave in that way, except for the ones I know".

They're probably good for the sort of situation Kay describes, where a cultural difference reinforces a touchy difference in status (the feared bosses from the parent company are also foreigners), but when you're in a typical international organisation where people from different backgrounds are mixed up together doing the same job long-term, it doesn't work like that. You very soon adapt both your behaviour and your expectations of other people.

>64 thorold: I'm of the opinion that those of us in situations where we are often adjusting to a new place or have lived in other countries end up with a culture of our own. I know that I've read a few books about how children raised in a global environment differ from their less-traveled peers. And I've noticed that my husband and I make friends most easily with people who have either lived in different places, other expats, or those who would like to live in other countries. And this includes the stretches we are in the US.

>60 rachbxl: Wow, what a fabulous reaction to a novel. I really like Roma Tearne as well, definitely one of my favourites. Mosquito and Brixton Beach are probably her strongest novels, but I also really enjoyed The Road to Urbino. All of them, really. I still have her 2015 The Last Pier to read.

>61 .Monkey.:, >62 RidgewayGirl: - Interesting comments about the Dutch. Although I'm born and raised in Canada, going way back my heritage is Dutch. That abruptness can describe me. I always thought it was because I'm an INTJ. Now I have another excuse. Thanks!

>67 Nickelini: I'm the same way, lol, it's one of the things I quite like about Dutchies! :P

>65 RidgewayGirl: Yes, I think that's true. I work with people from all the EU member states, plus the odd non-EU national, and we interact with each other within some kind of meta-culture, within which the things we share (being expats, speaking foreign language, constantly making an effort to meet each other halfway) are more important than national differences. I can make small talk with just about any of these people (in my service alone there are hundreds of us) because even if I don't know the individual, I know how to relate to them (and them to me)...but unlike most of my colleagues, I'm married to a local, and I go home at the end of the day to a non-expat environment...and there I find it much harder, because try as I might, I just don't get a lot of the people around me, and they don't get me either (nobody there has ever lived abroad, or even left their home region). So at home I am foreign and weird and a bit difficult, and at work I am completely normal and actually quite sociable.

>60 rachbxl:, >66 Nickelini: Great review of the Roma Tearne, And I wasn't surprised to see Nickelini over here to comment on it.

>70 avaland: Ha ha, me neither - as far as I'm concerned, she was the original Roma Tearne fan.

Nice review of Brixton Beach, Rachel. I loved that book, but I was considerably less fond of The Swimmer. I also own Bone China and Mosquito, but I haven't read them yet.

Interesting observations about Germans and the Dutch. My closest LT friend (Bianca) is a German who works as a neonatal ICU nurse in London, and she has talked to me about the differences in cultures and how she had to adjust to working with families, colleagues and physicians. I'll be in the Netherlands for a week and a half in early June, so I'll keep these comments in mind while I'm there!

>71 rachbxl: :-)

>72 kidzdoc: You haven't read Mosquito? You have a treat in store.

I have to say, I love The Netherlands (I go regularly for work), and the Dutch are wonderfully uncomplicated and complex-free, and blessedly straightforward. I find them really easy to deal with.

Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst
Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce

The sixth book in the William Wisting series, and the first to be translated into English, this was an enjoyable-enough police procedural, although it never really grabbed me. That may have been because I was preoccupied whilst reading it (though I was hoping for something to distract me), and perhaps because of that I found the plot quite hard to follow. I also found the translation a bit clunky at times. However, I liked it enough to be fairly certain I'll try more in the series at some point (not least because I really warmed to the character of Wisting himself).

>74 rachbxl: I visited Amsterdam for about five days last June, and I enjoyed that city and Utrecht, and meeting two Dutch LTers who were new to me. I found the people there very friendly and easy to talk to, and I felt very comfortable there.

>60 rachbxl: Great review of Brixton Beach. I took a bullet on that one and ordered a copy right away. My local library has other titles by Tearne that I've added to my tbr list.

Thanks too to >66 Nickelini:.

>77 VivienneR: I hope you like it!

Granta 132: Possession

I'm getting a bit behind with my Granta subscription, and this one, from summer last year, took me ages from start to finish. Not because there's anything wrong with it (on the contrary, there's some fine writing in here, as ever), but because at the moment I want to get my teeth into longer things, get wrapped up in a novel, rather than read shorter pieces.

This issue covers the human need to possess (other people, things, money), and the way we become possessed by various things (other people, compulsions, addictions, ideas, etc). I particularly enjoyed Molly Brodak's memoir of her feckless father, a compulsive gambler and Bella Pollen's chilling account of being visited by an incubus.

El desorden que dejas by Carlos Montero

This recently published (March 2016) Spanish novel won Spain's Primavera prize this year, so I had high hopes for it...which weren't entirely met (though they were in part).

Most of the novel is narrated by Raquel, a 30-something literature teacher who is sent to a small town in Galicia (NW Spain) to replace someone. Only once in the post does she discover that the teacher she is replacing, Viruca, killed herself a few weeks previously. What's more, the first set of homework she collects from her pupils includes a message for her: 'when will YOU die?'. And hęre my problems with this book start. Raquel tells no-one, not the headteacher, not the police, not even her husband, and I found that incredible. Shortly afterwards the blackmail starts, at which point her silence becomes credible, given the consequences she is threatened with, but her initial lack of reaction is inexplicable - although without it there would be no story. This isn't the only occasion when I felt that I was being required to accept things without question in order to make the story work, and I resented it.

Having finished reading the novel, I read a few interviews with the author, who says that he loves reading, but needs to be gripped immediately by the plot, and then constantly re-gripped and emtertained. I can only conclude that I'm a different kind of reader. Reading this novel felt like watching a low-budget TV series - not big on content, but never mind, fill the space with special effects instead. And keep your audience on the edge of their seats with one increasingly far-fetched twist after another. So Raquel embarks on a one-woman quest to discover the truth behind Viruca's death (WHY? What on earth is in it for her?), fending off threats from her blackmailers and generally proceeding like a very amateur sleuth. She starts to uncover a murky underworld in which she gets completely embroiled. Nobody is what they seem. It certainly gripped me, but I often felt that I was being manipulated.

What did I like about this novel, then? The dialogue - Montero is a screenwriter who has worked on some very successful TV shows in Spain, and it shows. I also liked the way he captures the spirit of the age; he calls it a 'very contemporary novel', and it is, tackling issues like how freely we disclose personal information on social media, and how easily this can have consequences. Montero also says that this is a novel about, amongst other things, his native Galicia, and this is what I most enjoyed. This is a novel with an amazing sense of time and place - small-town Galicia in the wake of the financial crisis, portrayed in such a way that I was transported there whenever I picked the book up.

Constance by Rosie Thomas

Years back, in the original Club Read, the lovely Akeela and I read Rosie Thomas's beautiful Iris and Ruby at the same time as each other, and we both loved it. Every now and again I try another of Thomas's books, hoping it will live up to that...but I'm always disappointed. I enjoy them all, but none has ever lived up to the haunting and evocative Iris and Ruby. I'm afraid Constance doesn't either.

Constance is a 40-something composer, living in Bali - ostensibly living the dream, but actually running away from her family and her past. When she gets an email from her estranged sister to tell her that she is dying, she is forced to confront her past. It's a nice story with some likeable, believable characters. I assume Rosie Thomas to be a keen traveller, because each book of hers that I have read is at least partly located somewhere exotic (in this case Bali & Uzbekistan). She clearly does her research thoroughly, and her novels have a lovely sense of place. So a good story, good characters, good sense of place, and I did enjoy it...but I don't expect I'll remember much about it by next week.

Bummer, two misses in a row. I wouldn't mind finding a really good book on Bali.

>81 dchaikin: Yes, Dan - I feel like I'm due a good book now. And I suspect I may have found it in Out Stealing Horses, which I got from my work library at lunchtime and managed to read a few pages of. I can't wait to get back to it, so am particularly peeved that a rail strike means I'm in the car today, cheating me out of my reading time.

I still think about OSH. Glad you're enjoying it.

I thought I remembered you liking it. I was excited to see it in the library, because it's a book I know various CR people have really enjoyed, but I knew nothing about the book itself, which is quite unusual, I think. So I picked it up expecting to enjoy it, but with no prior ideas about it.

I've been thinking of you this week, Dan. This train strike has been going on for a week now, so I've spent a lot of time in traffic jams. Thank goodness for podcasts! I've listened to some great things this week, in particular 'This American Life', which you nudged me towards. On my way in this morning I listened to the latest episode, 'The Middle of Nowhere', part of which is the story of the most important place nobody has ever heard of, the South Pacific island of Nauru - 'the middle of nowhere and the centre of everything'. This tiny island made its fortune as a haven for money laundering, and by selling off its rainforest. It also hosts detention centres for refugees Australia doesn't want, in which, as the jourmalist says, our allies are held in conditions not vastly dissimilar to the detention conditions of our sworn enemies in Guantanamo. Fascinating stuff.

Audio has been a great find for me. It's like I have been given a whole other alternate reading world with no (self-imposed) expectations. It's been awhile since I've caught This American Life. My loss. Glad you're enjoying, but hope the train battle gets resolved soon.

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born

This has been on my mental wish list for a while, thanks to enthusiastic reactions from so many LTers, so I was delighted to find it in the library last week. (This is one of the libraries at work that I'm entitled to use. It's quite large, but as it has sections for each of the 24 official languages of the EU, the individual sections are relatively small. Quality, not quantity - in the English section at least. There are so many books there I want to read (including a small collection of Joyce Carol Oates, which I shall be working my way through), and I'm feeling quite excited. I've been trying to read off my TBR, but it doesn't work for me, especially given my limited reading time. I just want to read whatever I want to read.

I digress. Out Stealing Horses is a fabulous book. An older man, Trond, living a reclusive life with only his dog for company, discovers that his nearest neighbour is someone he knew decades earlier. The encounter with his neighbour submerges the narrator in memories of one particular summer, when he was 15 and the neighbour 10, a summer which has shaped his whole life, and which he has tried not to think about. That summer, a couple of years after WWII, huge events occurred in Trond's life, including death and betrayal, but he presents them through the eyes of the boy that he was - the boy who saw everything, but didn't quite understand. Understanding only came to him later, with age and maturity. In the same way, I'm finding that I am gradually grasping the enormity of it all, as I revisit the book in my head after finishing it a couple of days ago. Today I find my thoughts returning to Trond's relationship with his father. Yesterday it was his friendship with Jon that I kept thinking about, and the way Jon disintegrated in front of Trond and then disappeared. Tomorrow it will be something else.

ENjoyed your thoughts on Out Stealing Horses. I loved it too.

I also enjoyed your thoughts on Out Stealing Horses. I have read it but it was so long and so many books ago.

I'll be interested to hear what JCO is available to you in your work library. Might read along with you if it's something I haven't read (and there is MUCH I haven't!)

>88 avaland: I'll let you know!

Just catching your OSH review, which brings it back. I'm surprisingly stuck on the last scene, with him in the suit. It's anticlimactic, but yet says a lot about youth, his limited awareness, and a lot if other things that are difficult to name. It's not where I imagined I would dwell when I finished the book.

And I enjoyed your digression. You are living in an interesting world.

>86 rachbxl:

Nice review. I need to get to that book one of those days.

And I would be very curious on what they have from Bulgaria in that library of yours. I wish my library had more international titles (ILL works for that pretty good but still...) :)

Oh dear, over 2 months since I last posted. And I had composed a review of a great book (The Book of Chameleons) in my head too, but I can't remember it now. That blasted referendum (I am British) got in the way...

I often feel mildly frustrated that I don't read as much as I used to, but I know it's because of my 2.5 year-old daughter, so I don't mind that much. What does bother me, though, is that I don't get as excited about books any more (which doesn't encourage me to read more), and I have been coming to understand that this is because to get really excited I need to go to a good bookshop (i.e. a good ENGLISH bookshop), which doesn't happen often because I live abroad. Recent trips to the UK haven't offered many bookshop-browsing opportunities either. This week I spent 3 luxurious child-free days visiting friends in the UK, and I went to Waterstones in Cambridge. It's not huge, but what an amazing bookshop - lots of translated lit, global lit, non-mainstream stuff. At first I thought I wasn't going to be inspired because my friend was waiting for me (she said she didn't mind, but that hardly makes for optimal browsing conditions), but I got sucked in, and ending up with a haul which I am truly excited about:

All Days are Night by Peter Stamm, translated from the German
The Blue Fox by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic
The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean
Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated from the Norwegian
Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan, translated from the Indonesian
In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda, translated from the Catalan
Ours are the Streets by Sunjeev Sahota

Other than the Rodoreda, which I've been wanting to read for ages, and the Sahota, which I read an excerpt of in Granta, I hadn't heard of them - but that's my personal rule for buying in bookshops abroad; I don't waste space in my case for things that I'll probably get next time I buy online. So I felt like a bit of a fraud when the nice man at the till got all excited ('I don't know when I last had a customer buy such interesting books'), as these books are hardly representative of my recent reading!

The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
Angola

This had been on my wishlist for ages, so when I spotted it in my workplace library I grabbed it, and it certainly lived up to my expectations. Narrated by a chameleon, who lives on the wall of a house owned by a man who sells pasts, with post-colonial Angola as a backdrop, it was fun and quirky, but far from light and frothy. My first Agualusa, and I'll be on the lookout for more.

Kinder than Solitude by Yiyun Li

I reviewed Yiyun Li's first novel, The Vagrants, for Belletrista. I knew I had been impressed by it, but couldn't remember details, and I held off looking back over my review until just now. I'm struck by the similarities, not in the novels, but in my reaction to them.

The central event in Kinder than Solitude doesn't actually appear in the narrative at all - the poisoning of Shaoai. Accident? Suicide attempt? Attempted murder? We never find out, and Shaoai lives on, almost brain-dead, for a further 20 years. Her death (at last!) is the trigger for the novel, as Ruyu, Moran and Boyang, teenagers at the time of the poisoning and all three of them suspected of involvement, and now in their 40s and not in touch with each other, take stock of their lives now, and look back on what happened. Ruyu and Moran fled to the USA, whilst Boyang remained in Beijing, but each is stuck in their own way, hostage to the past.

The narrative is sparing, almost breathtakingly stark, but it really drew me in, as did The Vagrants. Looking back over my review of The Vagrants, I see that I said that I felt that I couldn't get close to any of the characters, which worried me until I realised that Muddy River (fictional Chinese town) was the main character - and it's the same here, only this time it's Beijing, or at least an old Beijing neighbourhood. Another striking similarity is the general ambiguity - who is right? Who is wrong? What is right and what is wrong? We're left to make up our own minds (or not), and the effect is deliciously unsettling.

Ours are the Streets by Sunjeev Sahota

I had made a mental note of Sunjeev Sahota's name when I read an excerpt by him in Granta Best Young British Novelists. He lives in Yorkshire, the grandson of immigrants from the Punjab.

This novel (a quick but by no means easy, actually very thought-provoking, read) takes the form of a journal addressed to narrator Imtiaz's estranged (white) wife, his daughter, his late father and his mother, which they will read after he has blown himself up as a suicide bomber, charting his journey from being a 'normal' Sheffield teenager who happens to be brown-skinned, to this - a journey which I didn't think I'd find credible, but which convinced me completely. Imtiaz had never left the UK until he accompanied his father's coffin 'home' to Pakistan. Home is Sheffield, surely? And yet in a small village outside Lahore, he comes to feel part of a community in a way he realises he never did in Sheffield. When one of his new friends suggests a trip to Peshawar and on to Afghanistan, he doesn't so much leap at it as go along with it, but is seduced by what he hears in what turns out to be a training camp. The whole novel is narrated with a grammatical error common in Sheffield (and in the area where I grew up, which isn't far away) - 'it were', and that and a couple of other idiosyncrasies ('it sempt' for 'seemed', for example) make Imtiaz sound very familiar to me. Familiar, and local - very much a Sheffield boy. And yet... For me it's the juxtaposition of the 'very Sheffield' with something totally alien and appalling which makes the novel so successful.

Next up, In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda, which I'm already really enjoying about 30 pages in.

Edited to try to fix touchstones, but In Diamond Square still comes up as The Complete Works of Shakespeare!

Glad you have got your excitement for books back. Enjoyed your excellent reviews of Ours are the streets and Kinder than solitude

>95 baswood: thanks!

In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda
Translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush

Beautiful and unputdownable. This opens during the confused yet heady months of the Second Spanish Republic, with the charming narrator, Natalia, working in a fancy cake shop and dating the steady, stolid Pete, whom she breaks off with, having been swept off her feet by handsome carpenter Joe at a dance on Diamond Square. Joe immediately gives her a nickname, Pidgey (from 'pigeon'), as she twirls around, free as a bird in her white dress. They marry and have two children, and Joe fills their roof terrace (and even the flat) with the pigeons he always dreamed of keeping.

Life is hard, and gets harder than Pidgey could ever have imagined when the Civil War breaks out, and Joe and his friends go off to fight. They all die. The pigeons fly away one by one, or die of hunger. Pidgey and her children teeter on the brink of starvation.

Rodoreda's style reminds me of Barbara Comyns - a likeable narrator recounting the most awful things without a scrap of self-pity. The passing of time is similar too - years can go by in a single sentence, and a brief moment can last for pages. The ending is hugely uplifting, not in a happy-ever-after kind of way, but with Pidgey's understated understanding that happiness is still possible.

A word about the translation, which in general I loved. As a rule I'm against translating names as I believe it removes local colour, so I was disappointed to find almost all the names translated here, although I immediately realized why, and it's fascinating (this being close to my professional field; others may be less riveted). In fact I was so interested in this that I sought out an article by the translator about translating In Diamond Square in which he mentions the names (it's such a big deal that he could hardly fail to) and the problems they caused him, starting with the nickname Joe gives Natalia, Colometa (the diminutive of pigeon or dove) in the original. Bush is probably right to assume that the average reader of the English translation wouldn't understand the meaning of 'Colometa' and would miss the associations, hence his decision to translate the name into something which evokes the birds. But I didn't immediately connect 'Pidgey' with 'pigeon'; I just thought it was a very odd name (and clearly not the original), and in addition it bothers me because it makes me think of both 'piggy' and 'pudgey', which are not at all what's suggested by 'Colometa', which is small, light, graceful, flyaway. (Incidentally, Bush was adamant that the birds in his translation should be pigeons, whereas two previous translations, including The Time of the Doves, had them as doves - both are possible). After Colometa/Pidgey, Bush had to decide what to do with Quimet (diminutive of Joaquim), and he became Joe. And then I suppose if you start translating names, where do you stop? So other characters become Anthony, Mathew, Ernie, Julie, which didn't ring true in a novel (and translation) with such a strong sense of place. I'm not saying I could have done better than Peter Bush; I'm saying that I'm fascinated by his dilemma. But I shall stop now and go and discuss it with my colleagues, because we love this kind of thing.

(Late comment after long absence)

Yeah, hihi, I'm Dutch, but woud find *that* type of behavior shocking (i.e. refusing a present);

I have grown used to throwing out presents: my students, both as groups and individually give me many presents. I keep most, eg books, tea, tea wares, wine, etc, but must get rid of a lot of a lot of stuff, too, like oversized teddy bears, paintings, etc.

Yep, we Dutchies are very direct. I've seen people speechless upon comments I made ...

Noting Kinder than Solitude. Sounds like a great read.

>97 edwinbcn: Well, as what we call a 'straight-talking northerner' where I come from (NW England), I like that directness. I was in The Hague again last week, and am going again tomorrow, and I find everyone so refreshingly straightforward.

>98 AlisonY: It was! I keep thinking about it.

I have been puzzling for months over why I wasn't all that keen on reading any more - it was really bothering me. I have the answer, and I can't believe it took me so long: I needed glasses! Last week the penny finally dropped so I went for an eye test. I just need non-prescription reading glasses, but the difference is like night and day. On my way to and from The Hague this week I devoured an Arnaldur Indridason with quite small print which I had put aside a few months ago (I told myself the story wasn't grabbing me, but I think it was actually that I was struggling to read it).

Reykjavík Nights by Arnaldur Indridason
translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

In this prequel to the Jar City series, Erlendur, in his late twenties, is a rookie policeman who is yet to become a detective. In fact he hasn't even considered becoming one, though the raw material is clearly there; Erlendur is conscientious in his work in Traffic (the novel, as the title suggests, focuses on his night shifts, which bring him into contact with Reykjavík's murky underbelly), but his passion is disappearances (we learn that there is a very personal reason for this interest of his). Here we see him investigate two recent unresolved cases in his own time, and the novel ends with the head of CID suggesting that Erlendur might consider a move...

Erlendur (as an older man) is possibly my favourite literary detective, so I was wary of meeting him so young. At first I didn't recognise him at all, and I decided just to enjoy the novel for itself, as if Erlendur just happened to be the name of the main character. And yet...it IS him, and I really warmed to the younger man - even if some of the characteristics which are endearing in the older man made me want to throttle his younger self (his apparent lack of commitment to his very patient girlfriend, which is in fact an inability to communicate). The personal details form a nice backdrop without ever dominating, and I like that.

I also like being transported to another time and place by a book, and here I certainly was. It was never spelt out (Indridason is good at not spelling things out), but there were lots of little reminders that we were in the 1970s - and in 1970s Iceland to boot. I was puzzled for a while about the hot water pipes (outside, and clearly huge) which figure prominently; I couldn't picture them at all, nor work out what they were for (hot water pipes to me are domestic, and not of a size that fits with what was going on around them here - it would take a very small tramp to set up home alongside the hot water pipes that I know!), until I realised that of course, this is Iceland. Iceland...hot water springs. I just checked and 90% of Icelandic homes are heated using geothermal water.

There are a couple of the later books I haven't read, and Reykjavík Nights has made me want to get on with them. I also have a couple of unrelated works of Icelandic fiction, which I'm keen to read as well.

Yay! for reading glasses, although it does initiate you into the cult of growing old.

>101 RidgewayGirl: oh, I know! I caught sight of my reflection in the train window the other day - grey hair and glasses. What on earth happened? Where did I go?

We're spending the weekend at the coast (unfortunately the wonderful Indian summer we've been having stopped abruptly just as we pulled up in front of our sea-front Airbnb place). Anyway, I've sent my husband out to forage for breakfast and insisted he take the toddler with him. I'm lying on the sofa with my book and a coffee, the sound of the sea all around -and when I look up from my book the sea is right there. What a perfect Saturday morning.

>102 rachbxl: Sounds wonderful. Enjoy!

>103 Nickelini: Thanks!

All Days are Night by Peter Stamm
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

This wonderful novel by Swiss writer Peter Stamm was one of my recent haul from Waterstones in Cambridge. I picked it up entirely on a whim as I hadn't heard of Stamm, but several of his works have been translated into English, and I'll be reading more.

Gillian is in her late 30s, has a glittering career as a successful TV presenter in the arts field, and is apparently happily married, when one New Year's Eve, after an argument, the couple's car crashes (he was driving, over the limit). He dies, and Gillian is left with a wrecked face, facing months, if not years, of operations to rebuild her features. She flees from contact with people, giving her plenty of time to reflect on her life so far.

The second half of the novel focuses on Hubert, an artist who is very indirectly responsible for Gillian's husband's death (the argument was due to Mathias's discovery of some nude photos of Gillian taken by Hubert from which to paint her). Life brings Hubert and Gillian back together several years after her accident and they achieve real happiness...briefly. But after the happiness comes freedom, which is possibly even better...?

I haven't made it sound very exciting, but it's not really about the plot. One thing I loved here was how Stamm fairly concisely manages to convey what his characters are feeling. Gillian's compulsion to hide herself away after the accident; Hubert's artist's block when faced with a forthcoming exhibition. I never make notes when I read but here I wished several times that I had a pencil to hand to underline some of the sharp, incisive sentences that say it all in just a few words.

Good to see you here, Rachel! I have four of the seven books you bought in Cambridge, and have read them all, namely The Vegetarian, Man Tiger, The Time of the Doves (the US title of In Diamond Square), and Ours Are the Streets; I enjoyed all of them.

I thought I had read The Book of Chameleons, but my LT library says otherwise. I'll move it higher on my TBR list.

>105 kidzdoc: Thanks! I'm over halfway through Man Tiger, which I'm really enjoying.

Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan
Translated by Labodalih Sembiring

I'm on a roll! Another great book. This one was something of a surprise, as I hadn't heard of it (though I've since learned that it was long-listed for the Man Booker International this year), and bought it really only because it was Indonesian. (I was an enthusiastic member of the Reading Globally group here on LT for several years, and was passionate about my project to read my way around the world. That's been on ice for a couple of years, but I want to get back to it because it was such fun, and it enriched my reading enormously. I knew I hadn't read anything from Indonesia (despite having had This Earth of Mankind, the first volume of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Quartet, for years)). I wasn't all that convinced by the cover blurb - (I paraphrase) a tale of two interconnected village families, including Margio, a young man who is totally unexceptional, except for the fact that there's a female white tiger living inside him. Or by the fact that the introduction was by someone I'd never heard of (to be fair, I haven't heard of a lot of people, and that's not a problem. It's more that I'm always dubious of glowing introductions from 'Joe Bloggs'. Here it's Benedict Anderson - why it doesn't say who he is at the end of the introduction, I've no idea, but I had to google him to discover that he was Emeritus Professor of Asian Studies (amongst other subjects) at Cornell, and that his work debunking the myths surrounding political events in Indonesia in the 1960s led to his expulsion from the country).

Anyway, this is a beautiful, magical book. I particularly loved the way it is put together: it opens with an event which makes no sense, and the narrative circles round it, getting tighter and tighter, until finally we understand - and at that point it makes so much sense that it is shockingly clear. I feared (from the cover blurb, and also from the cover itself, which is quite lurid) that this novel might be quite sensational, but it isn't at all; it is restrained and measured, magical realism at its best. I expected the tiger to be much more present, whereas in fact it's the tiger's ABSENCE which creates tension, and which makes her eventual appearance so effective.

It's lovely to see you here, Rachel, and, unlike me, posting nice reviews of the books you've read. I've been reading, but not posting. I can't believe your little girl is 2.5 years old. Where did the time go?

>92 rachbxl: I agree with the bookstore cashier, your haul was indeed an interesting collection!

I've enjoyed reading your excellent reviews and have taken note of several titles, particularly Kinder than solitude.

Nice review of Man Tiger, Rachel. There are several very good books that were chosen for this year's Man Booker International Prize longlist, and that was one of them.

>108 NanaCC: Thanks Colleen! I know, doesn't the time fly by? She's such great fun, though, and a real little bookworm (I'm so proud!) Every evening she says, 'One more story, Mummy, just one more story' (and she gets it).

>109 VivienneR: Thanks. That haul was indeed interesting - so interesting that I've read more than half those books already! I'm planning my next trip to a good bookshop (I'll be in the UK next weekend but the logistics won't be easy).

>110 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl. I'll be off for a look at that list later.

Mersault, contre-enquête by Kamel Daoud
(available in English as The Mersault Investigation)

I was fascinated by the premise of this short novel when kidzdoc posted about it recently - the story of the brother of 'the Arab' killed by Mersault in Camus's L'Etranger. I loved the idea (and the daring!) of taking one of the most famous stories of the twentieth century, and looking it at from another point of view - the other point of view being the other side of the colonial coin, as well as another human point of view.

I guess many of us here start composing what we're going to say about a book before finishing it, and up to about halfway though I was planning to say that the idea had grabbed me much more than the book itself. And yet...it crept up on me. I seem to remember Darryl saying he'd read it in one or two sittings, and it's true that that's perfectly feasible, but I kept it in my work bag and read it on the train in 20-minute bursts over a week or so, which I think made me appreciate it more. Had I read it in one go I think I'd have dismissed it, whereas over the week the story had the chance to unfold slowly - as it does in the novel, actually, as the brother is now an old man who spends his time sitting in a bar, and this is the story he tells to a visiting stranger over the course of several days.

The reason I didn't love it (much as I enjoyed it) is more to do with me and my tastes rather than with the book itself - it's these endless pages of dense text and no dialogue that put me off. Granted, the form this novel takes make that unavoidable, but it's just not my preferred form. To my mind it's the opposite of 'show, don't tell'; Daoud tells everything and shows virtually nothing, but he nevertheless manages to create a real sense of place and atmosphere (both now and at the time of the murder, as well as in between), and some very real characters (my favourite, not because I like her but because of how well he portrays her without her ever actually 'appearing', is the domineering mother, who in a bid to avenge the death of one son ruined the life of the second).

>112 rachbxl: 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversations?' :-)

Interesting - I've got the Daoud on my list as well, but I want to make time to re-read L'étranger first, so keep putting it off...
Opinions seem to be pretty evenly divided.

As mentioned in >109 VivienneR:, I checked the library catalogue for Kinder than solitude but the only book by Yiyun Li in the collection was Gold boy, emerald girl, a collection of short stories. A melancholy read, but I enjoyed it. Thanks for the recommendation.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

Fabulous. Another from my Cambridge haul in August; I bought it just because it looked intriguing, never having heard of it. (Somehow I had missed the fact that it won this year's Man Booker International). I've since read several glowing reviews in CR, and all I can do is add my voice to the chorus of admiration.

In a nutshell, this novella is the shocking, violent story in three parts of how Yeong-Hye's decision to turn vegetarian leads to her disintegration, and to that of several members of her family, and her family itself. Hitherto totally unremarkable in her absolute conformity, Yeong-Hye steps out of line, and the line crumbles - how fragile is the glue that holds us together and binds us to each other. I say the book is shocking and violent, and it is, but there is also great beauty, poignancy and huge sensitivity. More, please.

>115 rachbxl: Another one for my wishlist. I've seen many good reviews of this book.

>115 rachbxl: hmm. I'm interested now.

Great review of Man Tiger backup there a little.

>116 VivienneR:, >117 dchaikin: thanks! I look forward to seeing what you both make of it.

Ceux qui vont mourir te saluent by Fred Vargas

My very first Fred Vargas, and also the first novel she wrote (though it was only accepted for publication after the success of several others), this is a well-paced thriller with lots of unexpected twists and turns, set in Rome and The Vatican, peopled with archbishops, art dealers, some very privileged Parisian students, a Roman policeman and a French investigator. I'm delighted to have learned the French for 'hemlock' (ciguë) (there is a poisoning in the first few pages), which so far has failed to crop up either at home or at work (lots of French in both). At least I will now be prepared when it does.

I have mixed feelings about the novel as a whole though. I suspect I would feel more positive about it had the characters been fleshed out more. It felt like Vargas didn't quite dare go there, and as a result the characters are quite shadowy, in the background even when they're in the foreground.

On balance, I enjoyed this enough to want to try more Vargas (handy, as I have two of the Adamsberg novels, including the first one), and I look forward to seeing how her later work compares.

>118 rachbxl: Interesting - I didn't know about that one. I read her first-published novel Les jeux de l'amour et de la mort a few months ago and it struck me as very Patricia-Highsmithy - yours sounds as though it might be more like something out of André Gide...!
The Adamsberg novels are definitely worth the effort.

Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

Until now I've had a Stephen King blind spot, but having seen several very positive reviews here by CR members whose tastes often overlap with mine, I thought I'd give this thriller a go, and I'm glad I did. I was totally and utterly gripped from page one, and was pleased to learn from Vivienne's thread yesterday that I have two sequels to look forward to.

>118 rachbxl: It did make me think of Gide, actually. A strange combination of that and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

The Shepherd and The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
Actually it was just The Shepherd, but I couldn't find a touchstone for that alone.

It's fairly rare for me to remember exactly whose post in CR makes me want to read something, and when, but I remember Vivienne posting about this early last year very clearly. I don't know why, but it just caught my interest, and I've had it at the back of my mind ever since. I wasn't looking for it, but when I saw it in the library yesterday I grabbed it.

Christmas Eve night, 1957. A 20-year old RAF pilot takes off solo from a base in Germany, aiming to join his family in England for Christmas. It's a beautiful cold night, and as he flies he imagines the Christmas scenes below him. Somewhere over the North Sea he discovers that his radio has gone dead, and mentally goes on to automatic pilot as his training kicks in; he has been trained to deal with an emergency of this kind, but his training has also made him aware of how limited his options are and what little time he has. He knows his only chance is to engage in non-standard manoeuvres, which he hopes a nearby RAF base will pick up on their radar screen; his triangle pattern will be understood, and they will send up a plane to 'shepherd' him in. His triangles go un-noticed, though, and as time and fuel run out, with immense sadness he accepts his imminent death, imagining the men on the bases, celebrating Christmas Eve and neglecting their stations. Then, at the very last minute, an aircraft appears, an old Mosquito, as used in WW2, and guides him through the dense fog which lies over Norfolk.

This is an incredibly beautiful, and very moving, short story. My one regret is that I read it now; it begs to be read in a comfy armchair in front of a roaring fire, the Christmas tree lights twinkling in the corner.

>122 rachbxl: This story is read every Christmas Eve on CBC radio, halting activity in untold houses and cars across the country as people sit and listen to Alan Maitland's reading:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/fireside-al-maitland-reads-frederick-forsyth...

Have a listen this year.

____________

Edited to add for those unfamiliar with Alan Maitland that this is a recording. Mr Maitland died sometime ago, but CBC has kept the tradition.

>123 SassyLassy: I couldn't resist having a little listen right away, but only a minute or so. I'm going to save this for a Christmas treat. Thank you. What is it about this story, I wonder?

Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian
Translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew

It was only when I saw this in the library last week that I remembered that it had been on one of my vague mental TBR lists for a while, and I read it in one sitting this afternoon. Born of the (Chinese) author's impressions from an extended visit to Tibet, the book was banned in China, and ultimately led to Ma Jian's banishment from his homeland. The Tibet he portrays is beautiful, violent, harsh, desolate, a place where old traditions die hard, and where too many people are still destitute. Not quite the myth of the rapidly-developing miracle that is Socialist Tibet, as peddled by Beijing (and a much more interesting place for it).

These are wonderful stories, all but one narrated by a Chinese writer who is travelling in Tibet having just split up from his wife, include an eye-witness account of a sky burial - utterly compelling, but so graphic that I physically turned away from the page a couple of times. Much less romantic than Xinran's Sky Burial. In another story, the writer shares a tent with a nomad who spends the night recounting his sad tale of double incest. Another is the story of a young female Buddha incarnate, another sad but beautiful tale. Out on the vast, remote steppe, people lose their grip on the difference between fact and fiction, while others blindly follow the old ways, with devastating results.

I've had Ma Jian's novel The Dark Road on my TBR shelves for a while, without it really pulling me towards it. I enjoyed Stick Out Your Tongue so much that that has changed now, and I plan to get to The Dark Road in the near future.

Interesting to note that the translator, Flora Drew, is Ma Jian's long-term partner.

(Edited to correct a terrible spelling mistake!)

I just discovered this thread so have read through your whole year in one go. It seems that you've had some excellent reads recently, which is great to see - whether it's down to your reading glasses or something else!

>125 rachbxl: This is on my TBR. I read Beijing Coma, which is on my all time list of favourites, and followed it with The Dark Road which is dark indeed.

>127 SassyLassy: dark indeed, indeed - but I'm 200 pages in and keep snatching opportunities to read a quick page or two, and when I'm not reading, I'm thinking about it.

The Dark Road by Ma Jian
Translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew

Meili, a young peasant woman, and her husband Kongzi, have a certain standing in their village thanks to Kongzi's job as a schoolteacher, and to the fact that his father-in-law is the former leader of the village. But good standing doesn't exempt them from China's one-child policy (only money can do that), and when the family planning teams announce a crackdown in the region, the couple decide to flee with their toddler daughter, Nannan, for Meili is pregnant again. This dark, angry novel tells their story over the next nine years.

My edition is 452 pages long, and for the first 200 or so I was totally and utterly gripped. It is bleak and uncompromising, but even as I turned away in horror I was desperate to read on. Of course I knew about the one-child policy (now on its way out, thankfully), but I had only ever read about it in factual articles and text books - bad enough, but it kept it at a safe distance. This novel spells out the consequences and implications, not just for Meili and Kongzi, the brilliantly-drawn main characters, but for their family and friends and neighbours (one neighbour's house is demolished because she 'should have' denounced Meili and Kongzi's plans to flee, of which she knew nothing), for whole villages, for scores of 'family planning refugees', and by extension for an entire country. It's not easy to read, with its descriptions of enforced abortions and sterilisations, enforced insertions of IUDs and other horrors, but it tells a very important story (and thank goodness that someone is brave enough to tell it (at a high price, of course - Ma Jian's books are banned in China,and he himself is banished)).

I enjoyed the second half too, but I felt it lost its focus. There is more than enough material here to have produced a novel which is essentially an indictment of the one-child policy, and it would have been an outstanding novel. However, it's almost as if Ma Jian was so angry with his country that he couldn't stop there, so he throws in episodes which allow him to rail against other Chinese ills: the fact that peasants have a rural residence permit and aren't allowed in cities; peasants found in cities can be summarily arrested and sent to detention centres (they are then sold on, and have to work their way out); corrupt police and authorities; pollution; China's role as a dumping ground for the developed world's electronic waste... I could go on. These issues are all fascinating, and Ma Jian writes so well about them (and Drew translates so well), but I couldn't help feeling that, whilst they were all connected to the main story, sometimes they detracted from it.

>126 wandering_star: hello there! I'm glad you've found me.

>129 rachbxl: sounds good, if depressing.

I recently read a very dispiriting news story about how the relaxation of the one-child policy has made it more difficult for working women to find jobs - previously an employer would know that once they had a child, they wouldn't be taking maternity leave again, but now they don't have that certainty and so they would rather not employ women of child-bearing age.

You have me thinking that maybe I should check out Ma Jian. Enjoyed your reviews. I didn't know anything about the second child punishments (although I always wondered how you could enforce such a rule. Apparently this wasn't a humane way. )

>131 wandering_star: Dispiriting indeed. I hadn't heard that, but I suppose it was inevitable .

>132 dchaikin: Dan, that's exactly it. I knew about the policy but it was easy enough not to think too much about the consequences. Anyway, The Dark Road will certainly fill you in, but don't say you weren't warned...

Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home by Nina Stibbe

A collection of the letters sent by nanny Nina Stibbe to her sister over a 5-year period in the 1980's, starting when she takes up a post with a London literary family (divorced mother Mary Kay Wilmer being the co-founder of the London Review of Books). 'AB' (neighbour Alan Bennett) is a visitor for supper most days, and other friends and neighbours include many shining lights on the London arts scene. It's all quite bohemian, and whereas I imagine many a nanny would have had trouble fitting in, Nina is in her element, largely because she is a little eccentric herself (constantly barefoot in London? There's a lovely account of her opening the car window to talk to a policeman, then remembering she's driving without shoes - so she locks her gaze on to his and smiles manically (far better that he think her odd than notice her feet)). She sought the permission of all those she mentions before publication, as her letters are quite revealing. Apparently (I read this in an interview she gave to The Guardian) Alan Bennett took exception to the way she portrays him...because she reveals him as a handyman. That really tickled me.

The famous people are not what make this book, though; Nina's ear for dialogue does that. She transcribes snippets of conversations, on which she doesn't comment, and they are perfect snapshots of family life, often very funny.

Not the greatest book I've ever read, but a gentle, enjoyable one. Nina and friends were good company before I went to sleep each night for a week or so.

Us by David Nicholls

Hmm, divided on this one. One of my pet reading hates is books which make me think that the writer was already seeing it on the silver screen (so just write a screenplay!), and I definitely had that feeling here. And to be fair, it would make quite a watchable film. Probably better as a film than a book, in fact.

Douglas, a scientist in his early 50s, is shocked when his wife of 25 years, Connie, says she is considering leaving him because she feels their marriage has perhaps run its course. She will decide, she says, once their son Albie has left for university a few months hence (very unfair of her, surely). So they decide to go ahead with their summer holiday plans, the two of them and Albie, a kind of cross between a 'grand tour' and an inter-railing trip, planned in excruciating detail by Douglas, the narrator. Naturally, it all goes horribly wrong. As the trip unfolds, in parallel we learn about Douglas and Connie's relationship over the years.

Particularly in the early chapters, this book really made me laugh at times...but not often enough for it to be a 'funny' book. I found the history of the couple's relationship quite tedious, and I considered giving up several times, but each time I would be struck by some little insight into the way we humans tick, and I stuck with it. I also found Douglas quite insufferable much of the time; some of that was intentional, I think, as we are shown how he slowly realises that if he has no relationship to speak of with his son, it's because he drove him away by being too strict, but I couldn't find much to like, which made it hard to sympathise.

For a couple of weeks I've been busy reading Wizard of the Crow. It's quite a tome, at 766 pages, and I've got just under 200 to go. I'm enjoying it, but I'm ready to finish it because I'm impatient to get on and read other things. Not that I haven't been reading other things at the same time, of course ;-) :

Field of Blood by Denise Mina

The first in the Paddy Meehan series. I had planned to finish the Alex Morrow series before starting on Paddy Meehan, but I found this in a second hand shop, and a bit of Denise Mina was just what I needed to counteract my Kenyan doorstopper. Mina creates such fabulous female characters! The men are good too, but the women...strong, competent, and entirely human (just like Alex Morrow, Paddy has her faults and makes mistakes).

Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin

I started this, the first Inspector Rebus book, as an audiobook, which I listened to during my runs. Unfortunately I started it at roughly the same time that I started the Paddy Meehan book, and I ended up expecting Paddy to run into Rebus as they both went about their business in some strange amalgam of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and I was utterly confused (I don't think I'd have had this problem had I been reading them both, rather than reading one and listening to the other). The confusion disappeared when I realized, on finishing the Mina, that I had Knots and Crosses in book form too, so I read a couple of chapters, and I was off (for the remainder of it I alternated between reading and listening), and I enjoyed it so much that I've already started the next in the series.

I loved the voice and style of the narrator, James Macpherson; I could hear him in my head even when I was reading.

These are the kind of reviews that make me want t try mysteries.

Curiously I have Wizard of the Crow on my wishlist but I don't recall it. I added in 2009! So, I'm looking forward to your review, even if just to remind myself why it's there.

>138 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. Mysteries are quite a recent thing for me, actually, certainly well post-LT, and in fact I used to be a little sniffy about them, but I couldn't imagine life without them now. Oh, there are some turkeys out there, as with any genre, but there's also some excellent writing. I use them, to borrow avaland's term, as literary palate cleansers, or, which is more the case at present, as my lighter reading when I'm reading something 'big' alongside.

And here's another:

Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin

I have the first three Rebus novels in one volume, and as I said in an earlier post, I enjoyed the first so much that I went straight on to the second. And in the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I'm now well into the third. I've done this in part because normally I don't do it; when I've enjoyed one book in a series, I like to save the pleasure for later. But this time I thought, what the heck? I enjoy them so I'm going to carry on. I'm not bored yet, which can only be a good sign.

I'm glad you enjoyed the Paddy Meehan. And you're fine reading dozens of Rebus books in a row - there are plenty of them.

Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Translated from the Gikuyu by the author

This is a book I've been meaning to read for several years, and I'm glad I've done so. It's a huge achievement (the book, I mean, not the having read it, although that might apply too), and one for which I have vast admiration...but I'm not sure I actually enjoyed it, and not being sure you're enjoying a book that's over 760 pages long turns reading it into a bit of a slog.

The novel is set in the fictional African country of Aburiria - fictional, but easily recognisable as one of any number of corrupt dictator-ruled African states, including the author's native Kenya, where his work has seen him imprisoned (he now lives in exile in the USA). As everyone dances ever-more obsequiously around the Ruler, allegiances shift almost daily, and almost everyone would do anything to curry favour. Ngugi wa Thiong'o sets up a glorious, riotous farce peopled with ridiculous characters who are sometimes not even sure themselves which side they are on (the Ruler's, yes, but who best to side with in order to please the Ruler?) The hapless Kamiti, perhaps one of the few people in Aburiria who isn't on the make, stumbles into the role of 'Wizard of the Crow' (a witch doctor) by accident. He invents his magic to save his life, and that of his girlfriend, and though it is obvious to the reader that there is nothing in it, everyone in Aburiria is taken in, right up to the Ruler himself - a great opportunity for satire, and the author goes to town (with frequently mordantly funny results). It's not all amusing, though; the scenes of torture are hair-raising.

I'd say that for about half of the novel the pages flew by, a hundred at a time.The narrative swoops and swirls, and the reader has to give in and go with it; but Ngugi wa Thiong'o always knows where he's going - extremely impressive. So why didn't I enjoy it more? I've given a lot of thought to why The Dark Road, another searing critique of a regime from another writer who has been imprisoned for his work, worked much better for me, and I think it's because satire isn't as effective for me as matter-of-factness. I like magical realism (present in both novels), but the satire, at least in a novel of this length, is too much. I appreciate that it does work for others, but for me I think it comes between me and the characters. I felt much closer to the characters in The Dark Road than I did to those in Wizard of the Crow.

Notwithstanding my personal reaction, I do think that this is an amazing novel, and one I'm happy to have got to at last.

> yes, I was delighted to see just how many of them there are!

And here's another:

Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin

The third Rebus novel. Like Wizard of the Crow, I finished it a couple of weeks ago, but I'm only just able to catch up now. This one sees Rebus seconded briefly to London, 'expert in serial killers' that he is (his boss is keen to get rid of him for a while, and the London cop that requested him doesn't realise that the serial killer case he solved in book 1 was entirely personal in nature), and is every bit as good as the first two. There is plenty of gore and suspense in these novels, but there's much more to them than that, and I like the quiet character studies, the measured development of relationships, and the observation of the world around the characters. More, please!

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

Ah, Atwood, my old faithful; I knew you wouldn't let me down. I've read just about all her books apart from the most recent one, and what really impresses me is her regularity and reliability. Oh, of course I've liked some more than others, but there's always that brilliant writing, concise, zinging dialogue, and that way she has of pushing the reader to look at things in a different way - to open our eyes, if you like. And the humour, obviously.

I'll confess to having enjoyed the Maddaddam trilogy less than some of her other works (but this is still Atwood, so 'enjoyed them less than others' isn't really much of a slight), which I suppose is why it took me so long to get to this one, though I always knew I would. The Heart Goes Last sees us once again in a dystopian future, but what is chilling is that, unlike with the Maddaddam books, or The Handmaid's Tale, this could be tomorrow. Charmaine and Stan are living in their car as the novel opens, their good jobs and nice life swept away by the economic downturn. Not only must they search for food, they also live in fear that they will be attacked, or their precious car stolen - it's dog eat dog on the desolate streets. So when Charmaine hears about Consilience, a project/community where everyone has a job, a house, three meals a day, she is understandably tempted. Stan hesitates over the idea (no going back? One month in the town of Consilience, and one in the Positron Prison as an inmate, for ever more - seriously?), but Charmaine is adamant: it has to be better than life on the streets. And so it is, at first, but the project's murky underbelly soon starts to appear, and with it the moral issues - what would you do to save yourself?

Not the best Atwood I've read, nor the best book I've read this year, but a really enjoyable read.

Wizard of the Crow is probably my favorite African novel, so I'm glad that you also enjoyed it, Rachel.

I'm a Rebus fan too, Rachel. And I still have a long way to go. After the new year, I'll have to ask my library to get the next couple for me. The selection at my library is rather slim for the early books in the series, so they need to go to other libraries to fulfill my request.

interesting about The Wizard of the Crow. I seem to be far from Atwood at the moment, not drawn to her, but enjoyed your review of The Heart Goes Last.