Maigret and the Madwoman – Georges Simenon

When a little old lady turns up at the police headquarters at the Quai D’Orfevres demanding to see the famous Inspector Maigret (actually Chief Superintendent Maigret) she is fobbed off to a minion. She is sure that someone is searching her flat while she is out, and sometimes she feels she is being followed. Has she seen anyone? No. Is any property missing? Again, no.

Inspector Lapointe reports to Maigret that there is nothing to report; the woman is a bit eccentric, that’s all. But a day later, as he leaves the office, Maigret is accosted in person. He gives the lady five minutes and promises to call round to her apartment as soon as he has the time. Before he finds the time, the call comes in. The madwoman has been found dead in her home.

There are not many clues, but Maigret pieces together the old lady’s life and goes ferreting in the hope his nose for criminality will turn up something.

The Maigret stories are concise little gems. Characters are swiftly but comprehensively drawn, and the police procedure does the job. The motivations and behaviours of the perpetrators are key drivers of the story rather than plot intricacies. Unlike more contemporary sleuths, Maigret has no tortured past or current demons to deal with. He goes home for lunch with his wife, or pops into a bistro for a glass of wine and a smoke of his pipe while he ruminates on the case.

The Paris setting is persuasive, and the mid-century vibe is now period. Maigret has to use a shopkeeper’s phone to contact HQ, he browbeats reluctant witnesses, and happily harasses suspects. It all flows very well to a satisfactory conclusion, albeit with a moral dilemma for the Chief to resolve.

Snow – Orhan Pamuk

The book-packing journey makes its exit from Asia via this novel set in Turkey.

A poet, Ka, has made the two day journey from Istanbul to the far flung eastern city of Kars, close to the Armenian border. The final leg of the journey, by bus, is along roads made perilous by heavy snow. The bus gets through just before the roads are closed by drifts. The forecast is for more snow; Kars will be isolated for days.

Why has Ka made the journey? He tells everyone he is here to write about the rash of suicides by young girls in the city. Some say they are due to civil authorities banning the wearing of headscarves to college – a lightning conductor for the ever-present tensions between western liberal ideas and traditional religious orthodoxy. But there is another reason. Kars is the home of a couple of friends from university days in Istanbul – the beautiful Ipek and her husband who, Ka has learned, are now separated.

Once in Kars, things get complicated. As Ka moves around the snow filled streets, meeting the movers and shakers, it is clear that power struggles abound within and between the civil, security, religious, and political players. Thrown into the heady mix is a recently arrived theatre group whose lead actor/manager has his own agenda.

Ka ricochets from meeting to meeting, sometimes as a pawn, sometimes as agitator. He has deep thoughts and discussions on the true nature of religious faith, on what constitutes love, and of course on the headscarf issue. And the snow keeps falling.

Ka examines his faith, falls in love, gets involved in politics, and is stimulated to write a collection of poems based on a snowflake’s structure. A coup of sorts is staged, people get hurt, killed. It keeps snowing.

The prose is wordy, the setting is oppressing and atmospheric. Along with the Byzantine motivations and machinations of the characters, this makes for a Kafkaesque reading experience, for good or bad according to taste.

Notes from a Big Country – Bill Bryson

In 1996, American journalist Bill Bryson, after a couple of decades living in England, returned to live in the United States. His stay in the UK had culminated in the publication of his ‘Notes from a Small Island’ giving his pithy outsider’s view of how the British live their lives. Back in the USA he turned his attention, freshened by his absence, to his homeland and countrymen, reporting back to the UK in the form of a weekly column for the Mail on Sunday magazine.

The format dictates that the pieces are short; Bryson’s talent ensures the quality is top notch. The subjects range far and wide – air travel, commercials, rules and red tape, shopping, and holidays, to name but a few. Each provides a mixture of humour, indignation, and wonderment at the nonsense so often encountered.

Twenty-five years on, remarkably the pieces don’t seem dated. Many observations still apply and remain relevant. When they don’t, they merely provide interest as a slice of social history or nostalgia, and remain well worth the read.

Slow Horses – Mick Herron

Slow Horses is the disparaging and possibly unfair term that the favoured secret service operatives have given the less favoured agents located at Slough House. Not that that is the building’s real name, just another disparaging term applied to reflect the dead-end nature of the careers of those placed there, due to cockups, errors of judgement, personality defects, and malicious rivalry. The service hope that the misfits will resign saving the cost and embarrassment of sacking them.

River Cartwright is at Slough House following a monumental cockup during a training assessment, which he thinks, but cannot prove, was engineered by a rival. No doubt the other inhabitants have similar cases to plead, but only deaf ears to appeal to. They spend their days on routine, low priority, and seemingly meaningless tasks, sifting obscure data dumps or, in River’s case, sifting rubbish from a journalist’s bin.

Then an opportunity arises. Labyrinthine service politics means deputy head of service, ‘Lady Diana’ Taverner, needs some work doing off the record, and reckons Slough House can be relied on to do it to the required level of incompetence. However she has made a misjudgement; the Slow Horses shake off their torpor and rediscover a thirst for action.

The plot is the plot, too convoluted to precis here, but the strength of the book is in the half dozen or so Slow Horse characters and their back stories, and how they develop from a disparate, distrustful bunch of individuals (who each think the others deserve to be at Slough House) into a workable team.

It is the first of a series, so resolution is partial, leaving scope for further books to continue the ebb and flow of office politics and its effect on the fate of River Cartwright and his colleagues (who now are at least on speaking terms). And as the style is pleasing, if a little edgy, requiring the reader to pick up subtle hints, there is much to recommend delving into further episodes.

Letters to my Husband – Stephanie Butland

Elizabeth’s letters are her way of dealing with the tragedy of her husband Mike’s recent death. Despite the support she gets from Mike’s friends Blake and Andy, his mother Patricia, and her sister Mel, who has flown in from Australia, it is only in the letters that she lets her grief flow.

Mike was a policeman and off duty when he plunged into Butler’s Pond to save eighteen-year-old Kate Micklethwaite. He saved her life but lost his own. Kate recovers slowly, frustratingly for Elizabeth and Blake (a police colleague), who both want to know how the accident occurred, for emotional and professional reasons, respectively. Kate’s parents, Rufus and Richenda, are protective of their daughter; they are grateful for Mike’s actions in saving her life but regard Elizabeth and Blake’s badgering for details as harmful to her mental recovery.

There is tension between and within the camps as the novel unfolds in three timelines, punctuated by Elizabeth’s heartfelt letters. There is Now, as events develop in a not unexpected way; there is Then, which relates how Mike and Elizabeth fell in love, married and came to terms with childlessness; and there is Between which slowly reveals what only Kate knows but isn’t saying.

It is a nice construction, and well executed. The eight characters (nine with Mike, deceased) are well drawn in the main, though Blake and Andy tend to merge (becoming Blandy, according to my Reading Group). The moral choices and actions each adopt are recognisable and entirely reasonable. Though it takes a little too long to address the questions that the reader has asked early, the answers are satisfying enough.

Grief, marriage, childlessness, sisterhood, parenting, each get a good airing. So not just a page turning story but an emotional workout too.

Hag-Seed – Margaret Atwood

The story opens in 2013 at a production of The Tempest by the Fletcher Correctional Players, the culmination of the latest course run at the prison by the English teacher, Mr Duke. It then rewinds thirteen years to when Mr Duke, then known as Felix Phillips, was the renowned lead actor and artistic director of the prestigious Makeshiweg Festival.

Felix is on a professional high, set to deliver a ground-breaking production of The Tempest, a project he has thrown himself into following personal tragedy – the death of his wife in childbirth and within three years the loss of his daughter (Miranda, naturally) to meningitis. This will be a tribute to them. However, the show is pulled, and he is ousted from his job by his more-than-able lieutenant, Tony Price, who takes over, usurps even, the role.

Felix, bereft of purpose, drifts away, goes off-grid, eventually re-inventing himself as Mr Duke. He gets a job in the education service at the local prison, establishing an acting class, which is surprisingly successful. So successful that the new Minister for Culture, one Tony Price, is coming to visit. An opportunity for revenge! thinks Felix.

The clever parallels to Shakespeare’s Tempest are deftly worked, while the play within the play gives scope for exploration of its themes (and their linkage to Felix). There is more, much more than can be outlined here, to admire and enjoy in this re-telling of the Bard’s play, written as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project.

There’s Only Two David Beckhams – John O’Farrell

Football writer and England fan, Alfie Baker, lands his dream job at his paper, reporting on England’s tilt at the 2022 World Cup. But as the team progress, not without a glitch or two, through their qualifying group and into the final tournament in Qatar, Alfie begins to spot something odd about the crop of young players in the squad. They are good, but good in a way that is mildly disturbing. He starts to dig deeper.

Meanwhile his personal life is more straightforward but challenging in its own way. He is separated from his ex-partner and sees his son, Tom, only on a weekly basis. Football is key to their interaction, Alfie taking Tom to play for his under-8 team or to watch AFC Wimbledon. These are places to learn life’s lessons about winning and losing, and about sportsmanship and gamesmanship.

Alfie’s fatherly advice on these issues comes back to haunt him when, against expectations, England make the final of the World Cup in December 2022. At the same time, Alfie’s research finally bears fruit, and he is confronted with a dilemma: break the story of a journalistic lifetime and scupper England’s chances of glory; or spike the exclusive, be complicit, and savour a likely England triumph. What would he tell Tom to do?

Written with evident love for, understanding of, and frustration with the modern game, it is packed with knowledgeable jibes for the football fan. In addition, it has plenty to say about the responsibilities of fatherhood in the modern world, mostly funny with a dash of bittersweet.

Though the central premiss is spotted early, there is dramatic tension to the end and a splendid twist to finish. Great fun!

The Best of Me – David Sedaris

This collection of short pieces by the American humourist showcases his talent for observation, wit, pathos, and language. The ‘pieces’ (how else to describe them?) are neither short stories nor essays but share features of both.

While some are pure imagination, most are autobiographical, leaning on his sizeable family who are mercilessly mined for comic effect. He does not spare himself in that regard, self-deprecation abounds, and as gay, Jewish, and of Greek heritage, there is plenty to go at.

The tone is conversational. Those familiar with his broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 will be able to project his distinctive voice onto the page – otherwise think Billy Crystal delivering a Dave Allen monologue.

The quality of writing puts him up with the likes of Alan Bennet and Bill Bryson. Praise indeed but justified by a collection such as this.

The Farther Corner – Harry Pearson

Harry Pearson’s classic, The Far Corner, was published in 1994 and written as a journalist and recent returnee to the North-East. This follow-up, twenty-five years on, feels more personal than its predecessor.

The humour is still there, often laugh out loud in its observations of the characters who come together at a non-league football ground – players, staff, officials, and more memorably the spectators (generally too few to be termed a crowd). But in addition, Pearson shares elements of his changed circumstances and explores how and why just attending a game on a Saturday afternoon can provide solace, companionship, and a place to feel at home with other like-minded souls who have no better place to be.

As for the content, there are twenty-three games visited and many more referred to and reflected on. Facts (probably), figures, and anecdotes burst from the pages. Even when completed, the index provides a chuckle-filled bonus.

It is warm and funny, and for any follower of the beautiful game in its purest (or rawest) form, it is a gem.

When the Apricots Bloom – Gina Wilkinson

The book-packing journey reaches the Middle East with this novel set in Baghdad in 2002, where the story centres on the lives of three women and their relationship.

Rania Mansour is an artist, granddaughter of a sheik - not that that counts for much in the new Iraq ruled by clerics and the mukhabarat (secret police) thugs. She finds herself in gentle decline, selling off the family assets to maintain the appearance of a lifestyle. She has a teenage daughter, Hannan.

Huda’s origins are humbler. Though she and Rania were friends as girls they have since moved in different circles. She has a husband, Abdul Amir, and a thirteen-year-old son, Khalid, and works at the Australian Embassy.

Ally, ten years younger than Rania and Huda, is the wife of Tom Wilson, Deputy Ambassador at the Australian Embassy, but (keep this quiet) she is American by birth and cub journalist by previous profession. Either of these facts could get her thrown out of the country, or worse. But she has a personal reason for her risky presence in Baghdad – to find out about her mother’s life there before she married, had Ally, and died young.

The shadow of Saddam Hussein lies heavy on the land. Rania and Huda have their own reasons to live in fear. Huda is instructed to befriend Ally and pump her for diplomatic titbits; Rania is commissioned to paint a portrait of the glorious leader. Worse for both is the potential fates of their children – Khalid to be conscripted into a brutal cadet force, and Hannan to be ‘spotted’ and ‘taken in’ by Saddam’s notoriously lecherous son, Uday.

It is Ally who brings Rania and Huda back together when she requires Huda to accompany her on a visit to Rania’s gallery. It turns out there is a reason why the childhood friends are now distant, but as things progress needs must that they forget their differences and work together on an audacious plan to save their children.

It is atmospheric and menacing. The point of view switches between the women as each of them work to their own goals, weighing up the amount of trust they can give and receive. Thus, Wilkinson sensitively illustrates the dilemma of everyday life in Iraq (or any totalitarian state) – to accept the wrongs of the regime and survive, or work against them and risk ruin, torture, or death.

A decent, if workmanlike, read.

The Chemical Detective – Fiona Erskine

Dr Jaq Silver, industrial chemist specialising in explosives, and a keen skier, is in her element. Her new job with Snow Science is based in the snow-covered Slovenian mountains. Being far from England, and Teesside in particular, is a bonus, enabling unhappy memories to be left behind (though not for long). Alright, her boss is a dick, but aren’t they always? She’ll put up with that and enjoy the skiing and the party life that surrounds it.

But then a delivery from Teesside arrives at the Snow Science complex, and when Jaq takes the routine quality control samples, something doesn’t look right. From then on, an avalanche of events carries her on a breathless charge criss-crossing Europe, sometimes in pursuit of a lead, often fleeing a villain or two. Sexy men are involved, for good or ill. A back story begins to be revealed (but not in full – a sequel is likely) involving marital break-up and professional blame shifting.

In addition to Jaq’s point of view, the reader gets to see what the other characters are up to. To name but three: Boris, long haul lorry driver with villainous aspirations; Frank Good, the inappropriately named chief executive of Teesside based chemical firm, Zagrovyl; and Paul Polzin, international fixer nicknamed the Spider for his ability to spin webs of deceit.

Erskine peppers the narrative with scientific method and titbits, which works okay given her heroine’s occupation, but it is the exploits that stretch credibility. Any film adaptation would need Tom Cruise in drag to do them justice. The plot is complex, held together with coincidence, leaps of faith, and an alarming lack of common sense in Jaq. But we get there in the end.

And by the end I was glad it was all over.

Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari

Self-proclaimed (and accurately) as a brief history of mankind, this book seeks to explain how homo sapiens came to dominate the world, before even more briefly speculating on how sustainable that dominance may be.

Interestingly, it identifies four key developments that marked seismic shifts in history. First, and most important, was a ‘cognitive’ revolution in which Sapiens came to recognise, value, and label in language intangibles (things we cannot touch or see - the products of imagination) that we now take for granted. Second came the agricultural revolution, whereby for the first time Sapiens gathered in greater numbers than could be individually known to each other, requiring social organisation and cooperation (voluntary or coerced). The third development was the unification of the world when its disparate parts became connected, enabling global trade in goods and ideas, not to mention conquest and exploitation. Fourth came the scientific revolution whereby the pursuit of knowledge and the admission of ignorance became something valuable, something to enhance rather than threaten those in power.

As we are taken through these stages, insights come in a steady stream, blindingly obvious – except you had never looked at it like that. Too numerous to mention individually but each a building block in Harari’s analysis.

Despite the enormous concepts in play – religion, economics, money, war, empire, ideologies – the prose is clear, concise, and very readable. Though sure in his own mind, Harari persuades rather than harangues. He admits the possibility of doubt but provides the evidence to put it in its place of low probability.

A most satisfying read with so much food for thought that you can dine on it for weeks after and digest its truths slowly.

Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart

The book opens with fifteen-year-old Shuggie Bain living hand to mouth in the South Side of Glasgow in 1992, but swiftly rewinds ten years to place him in his family home in the Sighthill area of the city.

It is a blended, multi-generational family shoehorned into a high rise flat. Shuggie’s mother, Agnes Bain, is the lynch pin: Lizzie and Wullie Campbell are her parents, and it is their flat; taxi driver Shug (Hugh) is her second husband; teenagers Catherine and Leek (Alexander) are the leftovers from her first marriage; and Shuggie (little Hugh) is the product of Shug’s loins. The household shows the strains inherent in the situation with fraught relationships and alcohol the go-to remedy.

Big Shug finally has enough. He relocates his family (stepchildren included) to a housing scheme in the Glasgow hinterland, built to house miners who are now jobless, hopeless, and invisible. Agnes is dismayed, and immediately the family begins a slow disintegration that lasts seven years. Agnes’ drinking gets worse, and the slow motion car crash of her life begins in earnest.

Shuggie grows up in the chaos, not helped by his self-awareness, reinforced by his neighbours and peers, that he is ‘not normal’. Despite the neglect by Agnes and abuse from the rest of the world, he remains good-natured and develops a creditable self-sufficiency.

Although Shuggie has the title role, he shares the spotlight with his mother. Agnes is a mass of contradictions: obsessive about keeping up appearances when sober but grossing out when drunk; her love for Shuggie is evident but her neglect is shocking. Only Shuggie sticks with her, to his cost.

The writing treads the fine line between harrowing and heart-warming. It is insightful on alcoholism and a testimony on how some communities were affected by the de-industrialisation wrought by the Thatcher years. That the author emerged from a similar upbringing to produce a fine book like this, gives us hope for Shuggie too.

American Wife – Curtis Sittenfeld

Alice Lindgren relates her life story that takes her from suburban obscurity in 1950’s Wisconsin to the White House in the new millennium. Over the five decades she has only four addresses, and these provide the structure for the book. At each location, key events happen that are told in detail, while the years between are covered in broader brushstrokes.

1272 Amity Lane, Riley, Wisconsin is her family home where she lives with her parents and grandmother. Alice and her best friend Dena grow up, go to school, get their first jobs and boyfriends. A tragic event befalls Alice, compounded by an unwise reaction that need her grandmother’s discretion and experience to deal with.

Ten years older, wiser, and still single, Alice has an apartment at 3859 Sproule Street, Madison. She works at a local elementary school as librarian, a job she loves, inspiring children to read. She and Dena move on the fringes of affluent society, which is how she meets Charlie Blackwell. The Blackwells are Wisconsin royalty, meat packaging magnates and political movers and shakers – Charlie’s father was governor, his brother is a congressman. Republican, naturally. And Charlie has ambitions in that direction.

The Blackwell’s politics and the riches and sense of entitlement that go with them, are a turn-off for staunchly Democrat Alice, but Charlie is attractive, charming, and as far as Alice is concerned, persistent.

Alice swiftly becomes Mrs Blackwell and moves into the new marital home at 402 Maronee Drive, Milwaukee. She has to cope with her husband’s ambition, his compulsion to create a legacy and so prove his worth in the family. It is no easy ride, despite the material comforts enjoyed. Eventually, Charlie makes Governor.

No spoiler this, but the next address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, as Alice, with a sense of unreality, lives the life of a FLOTUS, her democratic leanings sitting uncomfortably with US invasions abroad and Roe v Wade under threat at home. And then someone from her Amity Lane past, who knows a secret, gets in touch.

It reads like the autobiography it could have been. Interesting rather than compelling but written well enough to make light of its 600 page length.

Runaway – Peter May

2015; London; someone gets bumped off, and the news report in a Scottish newspaper prompts a dying man to summon two childhood friends to his hospital bed in Glasgow. They must, Maurie explains to Jack and Dave, go back to London to where they ran away as sixteen-year-olds in 1965.

Five of them left that night, suddenly and secretly, and with mixed motives. They were a band, The Shuffle, and London was the place to make it big, but equally they each had their reason to quit their homes and families.

The twin track narratives unfold fifty years apart. In 1965, there are first tastes of sex, drugs and rock and roll; and bad company that leads to discord, disillusionment, and disaster. In 2015, the old guys, who again have reasons to get out of their current domestic settings, face different problems as they attempt to retrace their route to London, aided by Jack’s socially awkward grandson, Ricky.

The juxtaposition of youthful exuberance, attitudes and exploits with the frustrations and limitations of old age, is nicely done (at least viewed from my position in the latter camp). The writing is easy on the eye and both narratives move forward at pace, each to an exciting climax. By the end, secrets held for five decades slip out, providing a moving dénouement.

After my last May read, the disappointing ‘A Silent Death’, this is more like the quality of his excellent Lewis trilogy.

The Miniaturist – Jessie Burton

In Amsterdam, late in the year 1686, Nella Oortman arrives from her rural home to take up residence with her new husband. The unceremonious wedding, a month since, paired the eighteen-year-old girl with merchant Johannes Brandt, twenty years or so her senior, and now she has come to commence her wifely duties.

Johannes is out on business, so she is received, rather than welcomed, by his unmarried sister Marin, the manservant Otto, and the housemaid Cornelia. Nella takes refuge in her room. She waits nervously for her husband’s return but gets no more than a cursory acknowledgement. She waits at night for his attentions but gets none.

With Marin keeping house and Johannes distant, Nella is in limbo. All she gets from her husband is a cupboard-sized replica of her new home. Is it a toy for his child-bride or compensation for not allowing her to manage the real house? Whatever, it is beautifully made, and Nella contacts a miniaturist to enquire about furniture. Almost immediately exquisitely carved miniatures begin to arrive – items of furniture and doll-like figures that accurately and eerily reflect life in the real house.

As Nella settles in and begins to poke around her new home, she suspects that the household is not as stable or prosperous as it seems. Or that the stability and prosperity is fragile, teetering on some brink, held together by shared secrets and shared lies. Secrets and lies that she does not know, but the miniaturist seems to.

The writing is atmospheric and engrossing. Seventeenth century Amsterdam is revealed in all its period detail, its citizens treading a fine line between the twin drivers of puritanical god-fearing and capitalist profit-making.

As the narrative unfolds, over just a few months, Nella finds herself sucked from the household’s periphery to the centre of events. Events that lead to more than one climax. It makes for a dramatic and compulsive read.

The Searcher – Tana French

In coming to rural Ireland, Cal Hooper has put an ocean between himself and the life left behind – his job with the Chicago PD, an acrimonious divorce, and a grown up daughter he cannot connect with. On a whim he has bought a run down cottage in need of renovation, a bit like him.

He is an outsider in the close knit community, but he is slowly being accepted by his neighbour, Mart, the local shopkeeper, Noreen, and the regulars at Sean Og’s pub. But someone, he feels, is less welcoming and is spying on him at the cottage.

It’s a kid, it turns out, clearly troubled. But once trust of sorts is established, Cal is asked for a favour. The kid’s brother went missing a few months back and nobody is bothering to look for him. The police reckon he’s a bad un they are well rid of, his mother thinks he's gone off like his daddy did, and his friends all have different theories. To Cal none of it adds up. His professional interest is piqued, and his young friend’s concern leads him to investigate.

But when an incomer to the town like him begins to ask awkward questions, ranks are closed, and it is not answers that come his way so much as warnings off.

The steady rhythm of the book reflects the pace of life in the location. The relationship between the landscape, weather, and people is particularly well drawn. It is idyllic in a rough and ready way, which makes the menace, when it comes, all the more threatening. Without his gun, badge, and back-up, Cal has to rely on his wits, experience, and bluff to get to the bottom of things. On the way he earns a little about himself and his failed relationships.

The plot has twists and turns, there are hints of romantic interest, and a resolution of sorts by the end, which makes for an atmospheric, enjoyable, and satisfying read.

Anxious People – Fredrik Backman

This story is about … Well take your pick from the author’s many suggestions as it unfolds. Easier to say where it takes place – at an apartment viewing in suburban Sweden; and when – the day before New Year’s Eve; and under what circumstances – potential purchasers held hostage by a bank robber on the run.

Outside the siege is conducted by two beat policemen, Jim and Jack, who to complicate things are father and son. On the way from Stockholm HQ, but stuck in traffic, is a hostage negotiator.

The narrative has three elements. The main story unfolds in the apartment as the prospective purchasers, strangers to each other, become better acquainted whether they want to be or not. Outside, we get a taste of Jim and Jack’s relationship as both father / son and old cop / young cop tensions are played out. Within these strands, back stories emerge to provide context for the characters’ states of mind.

The third strand reveals early on that the situation is resolved without harm, to the hostages at least, comprising interspersed transcripts of their witness statements taken on their release. The interviews are conducted, less than expertly, by Jim and Jack, so give little away but serve to amuse and tantalise. It is also soon apparent that the perpetrator, the bank robbing hostage taker, is nowhere to be found. So not so much a whodunnit as a where’d they go.

Actual events in the apartment are revealed in a slow, teasing manner, and in the familiar Backman style where the author converses with the reader. Whether the reveals are tantalising as intended or tortuously frustrating depends on taste. Either way it is clever, with misleads and twists aplenty. But forget the plot, it is really about how folk, given the time and opportunity, can help each other through the difficulties life throws up. Do these hostages, and their captor for that matter, forced into close proximity for hours on end, take that opportunity or not?

So, it’s a clever, well-meaning, mildly amusing, mildly irritating, potentially Marmite of a book. And probably my last Backman for a while.

The Rotters’ Club – Jonathan Coe

They are not Rotters, but Trotters. However, at school thirteen-year-old Ben Trotter inevitably becomes Bent Rotter; his older sister, Lois, does little better as Lowest Rotter. It’s harmless, there are worse nicknames around, and as they get on well, they are happy to form an exclusive Rotters’ Club. Youngest sibling, Paul, is excluded; his name doesn’t lend itself and, anyway, he’s a pratt.

Ben’s life unfolds between 1973 and 1978, taking him and his schoolfriends from adolescence to the brink of university. There are schoolboy pranks, embarrassing moments, unrealistic ambitions, sexual awakenings, and awkward encounters with the girls from the adjacent school. The parents also get a slice of the action, and the late 1970’s involves some interesting political events – the winter of discontent, the Grunwick lockout, the Birmingham pub bombing, Thatcher’s rise to power, and the miners’ strike.

The coming of age stuff is very good, while avoiding the obvious clichés. The setting is Coe’s familiar suburban Birmingham. The characters are believable, and the period detail is on point. It is real life that Coe depicts, where seemingly small incidents mean much to Ben, his friends, and his family. That means when bigger character defining events happen, the effect is all the greater.

Funny in parts, occasionally moving, always interesting with cleverly woven narrative threads interacting and complementing each other. In addition, a nostalgic read for those of a certain generation.

American Dirt – Jeanine Cummins

When Lydia Perez takes her son, Luca, to the bathroom during her niece Yenifer’s fifteenth birthday celebrations, they avoid a murderous bloodbath that kills the other sixteen extended family members present. The hit, in Acapulco, is the work of the Los Jardineros cartel, ordered by its leader, Javier Crespo Fuentes, in revenge for a press exposé penned by Sebastien Delgardo, Lydia’s husband, Luca’s papi.

It is a shock, but not a surprise, for Lydia who knows what she must do is flee before they too are mopped up. Easier said than done in Mexico when there is a price on your head and the country is controlled by the cartels that have the police in their pockets and operate with impunity, imposing levies on businesses and tolls on the roads.

Lydia and Luca pack a bag, empty the bank account, and run. Safety means leaving the country and the only viable option is the United States. If that means joining the stream of migrants heading to ‘El Norte’, so be it. The best way to travel, they learn, is on top of freight trains, but getting aboard is perilous. As is dodging the cartels, vigilantes, and corrupt border guards who pray on the desperate, keen to extort every last dollar, peso, and sexual favour. Even if they get to the border, a successful crossing requires the expensive services of a ‘coyote’ to find a path through the desert.

Much of the narrative is told in the present tense, giving it immediacy and a heightened sense of peril. Some relief is provided by morsels of the back stories of Lydia and her fellow travellers, though they are no less harrowing for being survived. Lydia’s transformation from middle class bookstore owner to ragged, moneyless refugee is swift and entirely believable. The trials endured by the migrants are both heart stopping and heart wrenching.

Emotional investment in Lydia and Luca is total. Some books cannot be put down; at times this was one I was reluctant to pick up, such was my fear for their wellbeing.

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – Andrew Miller

Late one dark night, Captain John Lacroix is delivered to his family home, more dead than alive. The chaotic retreat from Corunna, the voyage to Portsmouth, and the overland haul by carriage have left him unconscious and barely recognisable. But not to Nell, the last remaining servant, who makes it her job to bring back to life the man she nursed as a boy. It works, but to Lacroix his recovery is not all good news, a return to his regiment and the Peninsular War is unthinkable. There is a darkness there he could not bear.

In Spain, two military men, a Spanish Lieutenant and a British Corporal, meet at a roughly convened tribunal, held jointly by their respective authorities, allies at least in name. An atrocity has been committed during the British retreat. Corporal Calley can testify to the events; can point the finger at the officer in charge. The Spanish want justice; the British do not want a public shaming; the outcome is a death sentence to be served covertly. Calley is to be the executioner, Lieutenant Medina is to bear witness to the deed.

Back in England, Lacroix is recovered physically but, worried about unspoken events in Spain, decides to make himself scarce. A trip to the Scottish Highlands and Islands to recuperate and study the folk tunes is the excuse, and it is off to Bristol to catch a ship north.

Calley and Medina are not far behind, extracting information on their quarry’s progress by any means, preferably violent. But they travel by land allowing Lacroix to pull ahead. Both hunted and hunters have eventful journeys. When Lacroix ends up on a remote island and falls in with the delightful Frend siblings – Cornelius, Emily, and Anne – he settles easily into their free-thinking community. It is idyllic, with the prospect of romance, but the bounty hunters are closing in.

It is a slow burner that subtly builds plot from hints and things unsaid. The period detail is excellent, and the romantic and violent episodes are equally well handled. Lacroix with his guilt, Calley with his brutality, and Medina with his detachment, make three interesting and contrasting lead characters, providing depth to the narrative.

The climax is tense, and all possibilities remain open to the last. Who will end up free, and what will that freedom entail?

Ariadne – Jennifer Saint

Ariadne’s main claim to fame is the assistance she gave to Theseus in escaping the labyrinth wherein the minotaur dwelt. How the creature got there, why Theseus went in, and what happened when he got out is a good tale, a classic Greek myth in which Ariadne plays a bit part. But in Saint’s novel, Ariadne takes centre stage, princess daughter of king Minos of Crete, who sells out her father’s kingdom and throws her lot in with Theseus and Athens. No spoilers, but let’s just say it doesn’t turn out well, at least initially.

Saint fleshes out Ariadne’s story, and that of her younger sister, Phaedra. They mix in exalted company; in addition to Theseus, the god Dionysus, genius inventor Daedalus, Amazonian scion Hippolytus, and rival hero Perseus all pop up, along with their back stories.

Between the godly and heroic deeds of the menfolk, Ariadne and Phaedra flip flop between adoration of their physique and contempt of their attitude to women. The new lover always seems to promise different, better, but turns out just the same.

Being Greek, we expect it to end tragically for most, only the gods get off Scot free. The prose is pitched between modern and archaic and makes for an unchallenging read.

If putting Ariadne centre stage was meant to be a feminist statement, I am not sure it works. She is rather passive, Phaedra less so, and both remain defined by their romantic attachments and domestic circumstances. This is perhaps why the Greek myths have little to say of the women. There is, however, a lot of moaning about a woman’s lot and whinging about men in general and heroes in particular.

The Appeal – Janice Hallett

Roderick Tanner QC presents a file of information to two of his students, Olufemi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd, with the challenge ‘see what you think’.

The collection of recovered e-mails, text messages, transcripts, and assorted printed material is incomplete but in rough chronological order. At the heart of the correspondence, initially, are the plans of the Fairway Players for their next amateur production, which will be Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.

The Players are led by the wealthy Hayward family. Patriarch Martin is chair and director in chief; his wife, Helen, is secretary and perennial leading lady. Their son, James, and daughter, Paige, both take key roles. Of the rest of the group, Sarah Jane MacDonald is to the fore as a serial organiser and favoured gofer, while Isabel Beck is no more than a willing wannabe.

However, for this production, events off stage are distracting the Haywards. James’ wife is expecting twins, and news has broken that Paige’s daughter, Poppy, is seriously ill with a rare form of cancer. Expensive private treatment abroad offers her best hope. The Players respond by setting up a funding appeal, the proceeds of All My Sons will be donated and further events are planned.

Despite all this, the show must go on. And Issy Beck introduces some new blood into the cast – new arrivals and health workers like her, Samantha and Kel Greenwood.

Events unfold. Olufami and Charlotte periodically exchange notes, which help to keep track of the complex relationships revealed by the file, and Tanner drops in the odd additional nugget to help them (and us) along. The students realise this case is for real, not an exercise. Someone has been convicted of murder, and Tanner is working on an appeal.

It makes for compulsive reading as message follows message, unfolding events that go well beyond the play. The plotting is deceptively complex with sufficient misleads and blind alleys to keep the solution to the murder hidden in plain sight.

It is an unusual vehicle for a whodunnit but one that works very well.

The Dying Day – Vaseem Khan

The bookpacking journey arrives in the subcontinent, albeit seventy years ago when Mumbai was known by a different name

Bombay 1950: post-war, post-independence, post-partition, and the scars remain, as do a raft of white men, hanging on with their colonial attitudes. But Persis Wadia is a symbol of the new India, its first female police inspector, complete with uniform and gun. Not that she wants to be a symbol, she just wants to get on with the job of solving crimes and serving justice.

The case looks simple enough, a missing British academic – John Healey – and a missing rare book he was working on – an early edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It turns out to be nothing like simple as Healey has left a trail of cryptic clues, riddles, and puzzles. The hardest question is why has he bothered? Particularly when he turns up dead quite early in the chase.

Persis tackles the case with ingenuity and dogged determination, picking the brains of experts and drawing on the resources of her father’s bookshop. She also has the assistance, and close attention, of Archie Blackfinch, forensic criminologist on loan from the English Police. He is one of few who don’t treat her as a curiosity. She appreciates that and likes him – but it is complicated. He is white, which does not sit well with her anti-colonial views

As Persis criss-crosses Bombay seeking answers, the backdrop is brought to life with interesting historical nuggets about the buildings and the people of her city, some relevant, some not. Her character – spiky and flawed (a necessity for fictional detectives) – is nevertheless appealing, and we root for her as the investigation spirals into unexpected territory.

Once the artificiality of laying a convoluted trail of clues is parked, the chase is engrossing and pacey. There are enough sub-plots involving professional jealousies, a fractious family, and a previous boyfriend to add variety. And though the minor characters remain that way, that of Persis is strong enough to carry the book.

This is the second book in the series featuring Persis’ police career, and I could be tempted to sample the first, “Midnight at Malabar House”.

Things in Jars – Jess Kidd

It begins (though it has long since began) with the abduction of a girl (if it is a girl) from Maris House, ancestral home of Sir Edmund Berwick, baronet. Also missing is the child’s nurse, Miss Bibby; has she been taken too, or did she do the taking?

Mrs Bride Devine is engaged to investigate. Private investigation is one of several strings to her bow, along with minor surgery (esp. Boils, Warts, Extractions) and the occasional consultancy for Police Inspector Valentine Rose. Bridie works alone, supported at home by her seven foot tall housemaid, Cora Butter, and in the current case by newly acquired, insubstantial, assistant, the ghost of Ruby Doyle, tattooed seafarer and champion boxer (deceased). Bride does not believe in ghosts but doesn’t let that stop her discussing the case with Ruby, nor of developing affection for him.

The book moves forward in two timelines: the current (1863) where Bridie soon gets on the trail of the abductors; and the past (1841) that tells of nine-year-old Bridie’s purchase (for a guinea) and training as apprentice by Dr Joshua Eames, physician and collector of jars of unusual specimens.

No spoilers here. It all moves forward splendidly with spells of tension, action, and reflection, set in an atmospherically seedy London both wary and dismissive of a female dabbling in medicine and detection. The prose is unhurried, delivering measured portions of gothic locations, colourful characters, and twisting plot. The resolution is uncertain to the end, but credible and satisfying (though Ruby Doyle remains an enigma).

There is a hint of a sequel, which would be welcome.

Mayflies – Andrew O’Hagan

The summer of 1986, James is eighteen, between school and university and unencumbered by parents having responded to their separation by ‘divorcing’ them from his life. Instead, he dips into his friend Tully’s family life. Tully’s ambition is shaped by his father – he wants to be nothing like him, crushed by Thatcherism and still sulking.

Where Tully leads, others follow, and this summer that will be to Manchester for a music festival celebrating ten years since the Sex Pistols played the Free Trade Hall. Friends - Tibbs, Limbo, and Hogg - come on board and soon the five of them are heading south on the bus from industrial Ayrshire to sample the delights that 1980’s Manchester holds for those into their music: The International, Piccadilly Records, The Hacienda, and the GMex Festival.

It is an innocently hedonistic weekend of music, drinking, drugs, and women (if not sex). I was in Manchester in the 80’s, but a decade too old for that scene, which means for me the references to groups, songs, and drugs are obscure and frankly interchangeable. Not that it matters, you still get the drift – youth at one of its magic moments, ending sat on the roof of the YMCA with the city spread out below.

From that night the book skips thirty years. The boys have gone their separate ways but remain in contact, so it is no surprise for James to get a phone call from Tully. The shock comes with the news that his friend is seriously ill and needs to ask a favour.

The book is a perceptive portrayal of male friendship at both ends of adulthood. It is full of contrasts: the feelings of invulnerability in youth and mortality in age; the love of life and the poignancy of realising its limits; the joy of friendship and the pain of letting it go that sometimes requires selflessness.

The first half is written with great joie de vivre; the second half with heart-wringing sensitivity. All well worth the emotional investment.

The Shining – Stephen King

The first tick off the Booket List.

Jack Torrance is down on his luck, at least he thinks so, having lost his teaching job in New England due to an unfortunate incident with a student. Of course, if he could just finish writing his play, all would be fine, but now he has writer’s block too. It’s not all bad, he has a wife, Wendy, who is attractive but recently distant, and a son, Danny, whom he loves ferociously but with whom he sometimes gets frustrated.

Truth is, Jack’s drinking (now paused) and anger issues are the problems, as Wendy and Danny (oddly perceptive for a five-year-old) know all too well.

But there is a solution. Jack’s ex drinking buddy has pulled a few strings to get him a job on the other side of the country – off-season caretaker at the Overlook Hotel. The hotel is high up in the Colorado Rockies, snowed in and inaccessible in winter, so it closes down from October to April, but needs someone to maintain the heating and keep an eye on things. The bar is cleared of stock (and therefore temptation) and there will be plenty of free time to finish that damned play, so it is perfect. Wendy and Danny are not so sure, but accept that what is best for Jack, is best for them too.

As soon as Danny arrives his heightened perception goes into overdrive. Dark deeds have occurred in the Overlook’s seventy year history. Stains remain, invisible to most but indelible to Danny, who has the ‘shining’. Among the departing staff is Dick Hallorann, the chef, who recognises Danny’s psychic awareness and shares it to a lesser degree. He warns Danny off certain rooms and areas of the grounds, telling him to ‘shout’ if he needs help. He will be in Florida but will hear anyway.

Alone at the Overlook Jack, Wendy, and Danny settle, along with the snow that cuts them off completely. Jack finds the basement full of archives and delves into the hotel’s history; he finds himself drawn to and even into its past. Things go bump in the night, and worse. Danny sees more horrors, Jack fears for his sanity, and Wendy fears for their lives. Will Danny’s ‘shout’ for help be heard in Florida? If it is, could Hallorann get to him in time?

It is a classic for a reason. King is the consummate story-teller who creates real and complex characters and puts them through hell for our entertainment. In his hands the tension ratchets up degree by degree, the unbelievable becomes all too credible, and pages turn fast and furious.

The Booket List

Not a review but the name of a new reading journey.

The next birthday being of biblical significance concentrates the mind on unfinished business, in this case unfinished reading. Hence the new reading journey, the Booket List, to be started at once to give it a chance to finish. That means an overlap with the dawdling Bookpacking journey, which is not a problem as both are virtual and can co-exist.

Unlike the other reading journeys, which encouraged new reading experiences, the Booket List will tread some familiar paths, pushing some to their natural conclusion. Trilogies, longer series, and some full works will be completed. Books whose fame demands that they should have been read by now will get their opportunity. An initial fifteen, in no particular order are:

The Mirror and the Light – Hilary Mantel; completing the Wolf Hall trilogy.

Testament of Friendship – Vera Brittain; companion to Testaments of Youth and Experience.

The Labyrinth of the Spirits – Carlos Ruiz Zafon; completing the Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet.

Exit Music – Ian Rankin; the seventeenth and final novel, seeing DI John Rebus into retirement.

The Duke’s Children – Anthony Trollope; the sixth and final volume of the Palliser novels.

Barnaby Rudge – Charles Dickens; the only unread long work of the master storyteller.

Last Things – C P Snow; outstanding from the Strangers and Brothers series, avidly read in the 1970s.

The Shining – Stephen King; one I never got round to, and a film avoided for that reason.

Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier; have seen this film, but the book is on the shelf.

Emma – Jane Austen; the last of the big four unread (but would still leave Persuasion and Northanger Abbey).

Notes From a Small Island – Bill Bryson; been holding out for a hardback copy but will go paperback if necessary.

Dubliners – James Joyce; been reading it for ten years but still not halfway through!

Emotionally Weird – Kate Atkinson; an early work to catch up on, having read the rest.

Adrian Mole, the Prostrate Years – Sue Townsend; never got round to this last diary.

MaddAddam – Margaret Atwood; concluding part of the trilogy of the same name.

Becoming Inspector Chen – Qiu Xialong

The bookpacking journey visits China, where Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police is in retrospective mood. He has been told his state medical insurance no longer covers the nursing home fees for his mother. She needs care but instead of moving in with her son, she insists on returning to her own tiny apartment. That puts Chen in the cramped attic bedroom of his childhood, prompting a night interrupted by dreams that both echo his life and reflect his current insecurities. He worries that the cancelled insurance is a first sign of political disfavour.

As he wakes from successive dreams, he recalls key incidents in his education and career that led to his appointment in the police service and his rapid promotion to inspector. This was despite his ‘black’ family background due to his father, a Confucian scholar, being labelled and persecuted as a bourgeois intellectual and class enemy during the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

The incidents illustrate that Chen’s talent for investigation started early but had to be combined with carefully treading the minefield of political correctness, that correctness forever changing over the decades as the Party continually reformed and reset the rules.

The criminal detection element takes second place to the historical context in this, the eleventh book of the Inspector Chen series, though one early case provides a meaty chunk in the middle. The Shanghai setting, particularly the Red Dust Lane community, is atmospheric and the impact of unfolding politics on such individuals is interesting enough to sustain attention over the two hundred pages.

A reader more familiar with the series may get more from this delve into the character’s development than I did. Am I tempted to pick up an earlier volume, more representative of the series? Maybe, but not any time soon.

Bright – Duanwad Pimwana

The book-packing journey visits Thailand, and a working class tenement community.

Kampol Changsamran, five years old, lives with his mother, father, and baby brother in Mrs Tangjan’s collection of rented tenement houses. It is a close-knit, urban, working class community where folk rub along together and support each other. That is just as well as when Kampol’s parents split up and go their separate ways, vacating their house, Kampol gets left behind.

Someone invites him in for tea, someone else beds him down for the night, all expect that he will be picked up soon. But no, and he soon falls into a peripatetic existence as a community responsibility. Through him, we get to know the local characters: Chong, the grocer; Tia, the fisherman; Bangkerd, the mortician; Dong, the bicycle repairman and drunk; and schoolfriends Jua, Oan, and Samdej.

Episode by episode, the everyday lives of the community are revealed through Kampol’s eyes. Sometimes he is centre stage in events, getting up to mischief or into trouble; other times he is observing the adults, often misinterpreting events hard to comprehend through by young mind.

There is no harm in Kampol, so we cheer his little wins and feel his occasional pain. The portrayal of life in working class Thailand is interesting and has an authentic feel. The reading is easy, but it is not lightweight, as Kampol’s insecurity is always a worry.

The name Kampol means Bright, hence the title, and in a potentially dark situation, he shines as best he can.

Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn

The eponymous Miss Minnow Pea lives with her family on Nollop, a self-governing island off the coast of South Carolina (though do not expect to find it in the atlas). It does not need much governing, as the residents are law-abiding and settled in their somewhat conservative ways. Over the years the leadership has fostered a devotion to the arts, particularly the written word, and an aversion to modern technology. There is not even a telephone system, the islanders communicate by the exchange of letters and an efficient postal system.

In the circumstances it is no wonder the nation reveres their only famous son, Nevin Nollop, creator of the celebrated pangram (a phrase utilising all the letters of the alphabet) ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’. As well as re-naming the island after him, they also raised a statue in his likeness on which his famous phrase is proudly spelt out in individual letter tiles.

All well and good, but when a tile falls, the letter Z, the ruling council meets in emergency session and concludes that it is a message from the high and mighty Nollop, and that message is that Z is no longer part of their alphabet. It should no longer be written, read, or spoken. Draconian penalties are put in place for offenders. It is zero tolerance; or would be if only a Z was available!

The community adapts, some better than others. Then the Q falls, followed by the J and K. When more ubiquitous letters follow, things get serious.

The story is told, appropriately, in epistolary form with letters criss-crossing the island, notes to family pinned on fridge doors, and edicts from on high issued by the council. These, of course get progressively harder to compose as the available alphabet shrinks, testing the inventive linguistic skills of the Nollopians to the limit. There is one way out – if a shorter pangram can be found, the god-like status of Nevin Nollop can be refuted, and life can return to normal. It is a challenge Ella, and a few other rebels, are willing to take up.

The simple but devastating premiss provides ample opportunity for absurd comedy, political allegory, and witty use of language. Mark Dunn takes it to the limit, creating a great little masterpiece.

Killing the Shadows – Val McDermid

This is a serial killer novel to end serial killer novels.

Dr Fiona Cameron is an academic psychologist who is consulted from time to time by the Metropolitan Police to profile serial killers. But her last assignment did not end well when her advice was rejected, meaning the wrong man was put on trial and subsequently acquitted, leaving the real serial killer on the loose. Recriminations all round, but Detective Superintendent Steve Preston, a long time friend of Fiona, unjustly bears the brunt of the blame.

Dr Cameron remains in demand, though. There is a serial killer plying his trade in Spain and Fiona is persuaded to fly in to help the Spanish police. Her live-in boyfriend, Kit Martin, goes along for the trip. He is a writer, of crime novels, including one featuring a serial killer.

That occupation is not good news, as the mutilated body of a crime writer has just been found in Edinburgh. Then another is discovered in Ireland, and it begins to look like there is yet another serial killer (that makes three) on the loose, this one targeting authors who write novels featuring serial killers.

Fiona’s offer to help (fuelled by concern that Kit may be next on the list) falls on deaf ears. When a third death is confirmed, and Kit goes missing, she takes matters into her own hands. She has sussed that the killer mirrors the MO used by the murderer in each author’s book, and that sends her off to the Scottish Highlands on a rescue mission.

The book takes a while to get going (the sojourn to Spain seems an irrelevance) but once the Kit hits the fan, the pace picks up and accelerates to a tense climax. However, for me the characters did not convince, the relationship between Fiona and Kit too lovey-dovey, not to mention strange given that Fiona’s motivation for her career is the murder of her sister at the hands of a killer, the like of whom her boyfriend arguably glamourises in his work. A sub-plot involving Superintendent’s Preston’s love life also stretches credibility.

A bit of a pot-boiler, engaging enough if you don’t think too much about it.

The Far Corner – Harry Pearson

If England was a football pitch, then the top right hand corner flag would be firmly placed in the far northeast, and that is where Harry Pearson spent the 1993/94 season criss-crossing the region to watch football. Geographically, the grounds span Middlesbrough to Ashington. In terms of league profile, the spread is much wider, from Newcastle in the recently formed Carling FA Premiership to Willington in the Federation Brewery Northern League Division Two.

The match reports are incidental. It is all about the match day experience – the travel to the towns, impressions of the grounds, interaction with the fans – and the rich history connected with the clubs. That history includes West Auckland’s historic world cup win in the 1900’s, the ‘Crook affair’ that exposed the shamateurism of the 1920’s, and a multitude of characters that graced the game in the region. Some are legends – Raich Carter, Jackie Milburn, Len Shackleton, Don Revie, Brian Clough, to name but a few – others are only legendary as local heroes for the fans of the minnows.

Whatever he is describing, Pearson’s turn of phrase is often laugh out loud funny, puncturing egos and exposing all too familiar stereotypes. But underneath the grade-A northern humour is a deep affection for the traditional culture of the game, nowadays found nearer the bottom of the football pyramid than the money-grabbing top.

Funny, informative, perceptive, and nostalgic, this is a book for the grassroots fan who enjoys the game whatever the level.

Review of 2021 Reading Year

Reading continued to benefit from the lockdown and social distancing effects of the pandemic with 37 books read in the year. An increasing proportion (59%) were by ‘new to me’ authors. The gender balance remained even with male authors edging it this year by 19 to 18. However, men dominate the best reads list by 6 to 3. The lack of a reading group enabled the ‘bookpacking’ reading journey to progress with three books, hopping from Africa via Australia and Hong Kong to Japan (though none of them get a place at the top table).

My nine best books of the year are by authors either new to me or for whom this is only a second read. (Month of full review in brackets.)

 

Into the Silence – Wade Davis: Comprehensive and fascinating account of the first three attempts to climb Everest between 1921 and 1924, covering biographical backgrounds, motivations, and characters of those who took part, and in some cases did not return. (Mar)

 

Elizabeth is Missing – Emma Healey: Sensitively written tragi-comedic tale of dementia-suffering Maud, concerned for a friend she is convinced is missing, and whom she gets confused with someone who similarly disappeared decades earlier. (Apr)

 

The Last Thing to Burn – Will Dean: Increasingly horrific but nuanced story of control, imprisonment, and cruelty imposed on an immigrant woman by a reclusive farmer in deepest Norfolk. (Jun)

 

The Bell in the Lake – Lars Mytting: Atmospheric slow-burner set in late nineteenth century, rural Norway, where Astrid Hekne finds herself in a love triangle with the new young priest and an architectural student; at the centre of the triangle are the church’s iconic bells. (Sep)

 

Heroes – Stephen Fry: Masterly re-telling of the exploits of Heracles, Perseus, Theseus, Jason, and their ilk, treading the fine line between archness and erudition. (Sep)

 

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini: Harrowing story of two women caught up in the maelstrom of events in Afghanistan between 1960 and 2001 that despite tragedy galore also manages to be uplifting. (Sep)

 

Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout: Retired teacher Olive’s role as wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, friend, hostage, and airline security hazard all feature in this charming, humorous, and perceptive collection of episodes that hang together beautifully. (Dec)

The Girl with All the Gifts – M R Carey: Eerily believable post-apocalyptic science fiction that examines familiar human traits in a new challenging environment where five characters must put their differences aside to work for mutual survival. (Dec)

The Five – Hallie Rubenhold: The five women whose murders are attributed to Jack the Ripper become more than nameless victims in this fine piece of non-fiction writing that reveals them as rounded, if flawed, daughters, wives, and mothers caught in spirals of deprivation common in their social context. (Dec)

 

The Cranes that Build the Cranes – Jeremy Dyson

The nine short stories that make up this collection are notable for their diverse subject matter and style of delivery. Though grounded in everyday life, mainly contemporary, they generally have a supernatural element that raises them out of the ordinary and engages the attention.

In ‘Isle of the Wolf’ a super-rich businessman indulges his obsession with personal security to an extraordinary degree with unforeseen consequences. Similarly, a man who strives for membership of the exclusive ‘Challenge Club’ finds acceptance comes at a price.

Two stories feature superpowers: ‘Yani’s day’ features a man who can kill with a glance; in ‘Come April’ a woman sex worker’s ability to transport punters into raptures attracts an unusual client.

There are spooky stories: in ‘Out of Bounds’ boys in a deserted prep school explore a forbidden cellar; in ‘The Coue’ a collector of macabre artifacts acquire one he wishes he had not; in ‘Michael’ a shy seventeen-year-old boy is lured to a sexual encounter by a strange girl in the woods; and in ‘The Bear’ an up and coming young executive’s determination to make an impression at a corporate fancy dress party succeeds at some cost.

Finally, ‘Bound South’ is set in 1913 when a man on a train journey from Edinburgh to London is told a tale by a fellow passenger that leaves him chilled.

The stories are uniformly good. Well told and interesting enough to lead the reader on to their conclusions, some surprising, and others foreseen but still compelling as an inevitable end-game unfolds.