Lion – Saroo Brierley

At five years old, Saroo lived in poverty somewhere in India with his mother, brothers, and sister. He had no education, barely any vocabulary, did not know his family name, and had only vague phonetic notion of where he lived. Not that unusual in his situation but when he gets onto a train that deposits him over 24 hours later in Calcutta (as it was then known) such ignorance is problematic.

He can’t get a train back (where to?) nor ask someone to contact his family (what name?) so he wanders the platforms of the vast Howrah station and surrounding streets, begging and scavenging, and narrowly avoiding the fates lying in wait for such as he.

Eventually he falls into the hands of the authorities and is soon classified as a lost child whose origins cannot be traced and is taken in by an agency that facilitates international adoption. Within weeks he is in Hobart, Tasmania with Mr & Mrs Brierley. Talk about culture shock! But Saroo thrives and soon takes to the Aussie lifestyle.

However, he never forgets home, his mother, his siblings. Periodically, at university with access to the internet, then as a young professional with a laptop and Google earth, he searches for places that might fit the few clues held in his childhood memory. It is a needle in a haystack task, but he is dogged and methodical and he finds it. (No spoiler – the prologue reveals this before flashing back.) He takes a trip back to see if any of his family remain.

What has it to do with a lion? It is explained in the book, and a 2016 tie-in film used that title. However, the original title of A Long Way Home fits better.

It is a good story, and a true one, a biography remarkable enough to make the simply told narrative an interesting read.

The Railway Viaduct – Edward Marston

1852. As a train on its way from Manchester to Liverpool rumbles over the Sankey viaduct, a figure falls from a carriage into the canal below. It is a long way down, but the man was dead before he hit the water, as evidenced by the stab wound in his back.

It is clearly a job for Inspector Robert Colbeck, the ‘railway detective’ - a soubriquet earned in book one of the series (this is book two) by bringing some violent train robbers to justice. He is a bit of a dandy but with formidable (if rather intuitive) detection powers, single but semi attached to the dependable Madeline Andrews whom he rescued in book one and now seems unwilling to let go. Colbeck works out of Scotland Yard, but his specialist knowledge means he is called in when the crime has connections to the new but booming industry.

Back to the case. Aided by Sergeant Victor Leeming (who loathes trains as much as Colbeck loves them) and hamstrung by his stick-in-the-mud boss, Superintendent Tallis, Colbeck intuits, due to the profession and nationality of the victim, that the key to the crime lies in France. So he hops across the channel to where a British industrialist Thomas Brassey’s attempt to build a new railway line for the French government is suffering from a rash of sabotage. Could the murder of his engineer be part of that, or is there some motive in the Frenchman’s personal life?

Colbeck works his way through the case. The plot, characters, and settings in Victorian London and a navvy camp in Second Empire France, work well enough. But the prose, possibly to reflect the period, is stilted, heavy on dialogue and light on atmosphere. So, no work of art but a decent story that simmers along to its neat and tidy conclusion. Easy if unrewarding fare.

North Woods – Daniel Mason

The place, and it’s all about the place, is found first by illicit lovers fleeing their fledgling puritan community in New England. It is remote, to the north (obviously) and in the woods (ditto). It is well off the beaten track then; and remains so for the next 400 years.

A succession of ‘owners’, some legal and others mere squatters, provides the subsequent episodic narrative. Early bloody struggles set the tone but then follows a period of calm as a veteran of the French and Indian wars sets up a commercial apple orchard (though the sweet tasting variety he discovers has sinister origins). His daughters remain after his demise in the War of Independence, and their antics echo down the years.

No more spoilers. Suffice it to say that each episode delights (or horrifies) and adds to the place’s spooky aura that lies heavy over would-be residents.

The style varies by episode reflecting the life and times. Third-person narratives are mixed with some first-person testimony, including newspaper reports, letters, and a psychologist’s case notes. There are even ballads in the voices of the dead daughters making light of unsavoury events.

It is a bit of a mishmash but none the worse for that. A smorgasbord of styles, events, and characters that work pretty well together. The passage of time and effects on the landscape and natural world are particularly well done. The location of the yellow house and its grounds in the north woods is, at the end of the day, the main character.

An unusual book that makes for a rewarding read.

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

August 1944, two months after D-Day, but the Germans hold onto Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast. They, and the French inhabitants, brace themselves for the coming Allied bombardment. Eighteen-year-old Werner Pfennig is holed up with his unit in a hotel. Close by, in a seafront apartment block, is sixteen-year-old Marie-Laure LeBlanc, blind and alone.

The perilous hours that follow are interspersed with their respective narratives, beginning in 1934 when Werner is in an orphanage in Germany destined for a working life down a coal mine, and Marie-Laure is coming to terms with her blindness in Paris, where her father is a curator / locksmith at the natural history museum. Even then they have a tenuous connection neither is aware of - Werner repairs a discarded radio and listens in secret to a Frenchman broadcasting scientific lectures; that radio ham lecturer is Marie-Laure’s great uncle in Saint-Malo. That connection will prove crucial ten years later.

Werner, inspired by the broadcasts, develops a precocious talent in radio communication that saves him from the pit but propels him early into Second World War combat. The war affects Marie-Laure too as she flees soon-to-be occupied Paris with the father, ending up in Saint-Malo. Their trajectories converge to dramatic effect, but only after they each experience trials and tribulations, losses and minor victories, which shape these formative years.

The lead characters demand empathy so we root for them. The more minor characters too, are well fleshed out and satisfyingly complex. The toxicity of the Nazi regime is portrayed but not overtly judged; the realities of sightlessness are laid bare but without mawkishness.

Overall, a very good read.

The Herd – Emily Edwards

Elizabeth Chamberlain and Briony Kohli became friends at university, an attraction of opposites with Elizabeth outgoing and popular, and Briony quiet and content to stay in the background. The friendship survived career moves and marriages, and now they have both settled in well-to-do Farley, in houses opposite on Saints Road.

Elizabeth has the better house, full of designer chic, but husband Jack struggles in his city job to finance the lifestyle. Briony’s house is less showy but there are no money worries as husband Ash sold his business for a packet and still picks up lucrative consultancy work. And now they both have daughters. Elizabeth’s six-year-old Clemmie and Briony’s four-year-old Alba have become fast friends. Perfect. Perfect?

The fly in the Chamberlain ointment is that Clemmie had fits as a baby and as a result is unable to be vaccinated against the usual childhood risks of MMR, polio, and meningitis. No problem; as long as all her friends are vaccinated there’s herd immunity, right? Elizabeth won’t take any risks though. Ahead of Clemmie’s birthday party she e-mails the other parents, please confirm your child is up to date with their vaccinations (subtext: if not don’t come).

The wasp in the Kohli jampot is that Briony is a closet anti-vaxxer. Understandable due to what happened to her older brother, who developed a fever after a jab and has been institutionalised since, a blight on her childhood and a guilt-ridden burden to her mother, who since has campaigned on the issue.

No spoilers, but the plot develops as expected, with tragic consequences that explode the friendship and pitches the families into a legal battle. The story arcs steadily from mundane domestic niceties, through the tension of polite conflict, then harsh recriminations, to end in a dramatic courtroom climax.

It is a page-turner that gives a sympathetic (if not necessarily even) airing to both sides of the vaccination issue. The narrative switches between the parents and is interspersed with anonymous observations from the courthouse. A decent enough read, though maybe one to be avoided (or not) by those who have children due for their jabs.

The Fraud – Zadie Smith

A rich tapestry of a novel set in nineteenth century England; consider the threads, the characters:

Central – Mrs Eliza Touchet, abandoned and quickly widowed at age 24, rescued from penury by her husband’s young literary cousin, William Harrison Ainsworth. Over the coming decades, she rescues him right back.

Adjacent – The same William Ainsworth, would-be literary giant who rubs shoulders with, and hosts dinners for, the likes of Dickens and Thackery, but whose prolific output rarely gains the critical recognition he craves.

Fleeting – Anne Frances Ainsworth the attractive but unappreciated wife of the author and mother of his four children, who calls in Eliza Touchet for help running the house. She introduces Eliza to the Abolitionist cause, and shares her passions, before departing all too soon leaving Eliza holding the fort.

Intrusive – Sarah, ex-housemaid, now the new Mrs Harrison thanks to bearing William’s child. Her obsession with the Tichborne Claimant case draws Eliza into its murky controversy.

Eccentric – The said Claimant, lately returned from Australia to claim a fabulous inheritance. Whether it is the shipwrecked Sir Roger Tichborne (as Sarah believes) or a fraudulent ex-Wapping butcher, Arthur Orton, the courts will decide.

Charismatic – Andrew Bogle, slave in a Jamaican sugar plantation, then servant of the master back in England, who knew the young Sir Roger as a visitor to the big house and supports his candidature, whose dignity and colourful backstory fascinates Eliza Touchet.

Woven together these strands, going backwards and forwards in time, give a vivid picture of Eliza Touchet’s life and times from literary London to exploitative Jamaica. The subject matter is serious, but Smith narrates with a wry humour and a style that whips along using short chapters to keep the 450 pages turning rapidly.

The Twyford Code– Janice Hallett

Here is the set-up. Professor Max Mansfield, an academic, receives a package from Inspector Waliso, containing the transcript of some two hundred audio files retrieved from an old i-phone. The enclosed letter asks if he will assist their murder investigation by reviewing the transcript.

We then get the transcript, garbled in places and with phonetic misinterpretations. As well as phone calls and conversations, many recordings are in diary form, spoken by Steven Smith, an ex-con seeking reconciliation with his estranged son as well as an explanation for a schooldays incident that left him scarred.

As the transcript progresses, both of Smith’s quests unravel in both sense of the word, as events, characters, theories and conspiracies emerge that leave the reader, not to mention Smith, a little bewildered. At least until the denouement sheds more light.

The rat-a-tat of short transcripts makes for quick and compulsive reading, at least to start with. But things don’t quite add up, don’t make complete sense, so there is a temptation to bale out. However, perseverance gives some reward.

That the narrative comes exclusively from Smith makes the novel a tad one-dimensional, over-dependant on one unsavoury character. As such it suffers in comparison with Hallett’s earlier (and better) The Appeal, which presented evidence from multiple sources and an occasional recap by the legal eagles reviewing it.

In conclusion, it is clever, possibly too clever by half, but with little else to recommend it in terms of characterisation, atmosphere, and empathy.