Lessons – Ian McEwan

The novel opens in 1986 with Roland Baines halfway through his life and coming to terms with his wife walking out on him and their baby son. His first task is to convince the police that he has not killed her, or maybe that is second after the demands of the seven month old infant.

From there the narrative spills out forwards and backwards, sporadically chronicling Roland’s life of paths chosen and opportunities missed. Prominence is given to pivot points that he realises shaped him and his place in the world: an unsettled childhood; a relationship with his school piano teacher; meeting, marrying, and losing Alissa; then his love and ongoing care for his son. Everything revolves around and comes back to those things.

Slow, languorous Ian McEwan prose makes the five hundred or so word-packed pages a pleasure to read, get immersed in, and ponder. There are instances of passion, tension, and humour set against the background of key world events of the period, from the aftermath of the Second World War, through the Cuban missile crisis and the fall of the Berlin wall, to Brexit and COVID.

Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara is an AF – an artificial friend, solar powered hence sensitive, almost obsessed, by the movement of the sun and the effects of its rays.

At first, she is in the store window from where she hones her understanding of humans by close observation of scenes in the street. At last, she is acquired for a young girl. Josie is thrilled with her AF and Klara is even happier to have been chosen. But Josie is a sickly child, seemingly adversely affected by being ‘lifted’ – gene edited to boost her intelligence and learning capacity.

Klara, who narrates, slowly gets to grips with her new household – Josie, the working mother, the absent father, the housekeeper … and the boy next door. He and Josie are firm friends, but he has not been lifted so his prospects are limited. Stuff happens; the strange near-future world makes for an intriguing backdrop, and Klara’s otherness gives a skewed perspective on events.

There are multiple threads weaved into the narrative: Klara’s conviction that the sun is all powerful and can cure Josie (mimicking religious faith?); the extent to which an artificial object like Klara can equal a human as a receptacle for care and love (like a superior pet); the risks and rewards of gene editing; and the life cycle of consumer goods, even ones as treasured as Klara (remember Woody’s fate in Toy Story).

So, Klara, composite friend, priest, pet, and appliance. Her story makes for a thought-provoking and enjoyable read.

Becoming – Michelle Obama

This autobiography of the former FLOTAS takes the reader from her humble beginnings on Chicago’s South Side to the opulence of Washington DC’s White House.

It is a strength of the book, and of the lady, that she lets neither of these extremes define her. She is her own woman. Supported by a close knit family unt, Michelle Robinson does well at school and defies the odds by landing a place at Harvard, then a job back in Chicago with a prestigious law firm. She is given the job of mentoring a new intern named Barack Obama, and the rest is history.

But it is her history here – how she became herself, how she overcame setbacks, coped with work and then an increasingly politically distracted husband, and two daughters, both in the run up to the presidential election and during the two terms in office.

It is told in a straightforward fashion, chronologically ordered, and not over-stuffed with name-dropping. She gives credit to her role models and takes deserved pride in becoming one herself.

It is interesting for its unique perspective and insight into American society and politics in the years spanning the millennium.

The Corpse Bridge – Stephen Booth

The Corpse Bridge provides a crossing over the River Dove for a couple of ‘coffin roads’, old footpaths that facilitated the final journeys of the dead of remote villages, in this part of rural Derbyshire, to the burial ground at the parish church. When a body is discovered at the bridge, DS Ben Cooper is sent to investigate.

The body has been in the water overnight, so forensics are scarce, but the appeal for witnesses generates a handful of responses from people who were in the vicinity, and from locals who knew the deceased woman. Items of evidence turn up that indicate strange things were afoot that night, which after all, was Halloween.

DI Cooper and his team, supplemented by a rival DS, Diane Fry, follow leads, grill people of interest, speculate on motives an, in the case of Cooper and Fry, annoy each other, before it all gets resolved. There is clearly history between Cooper and Fry, indeed it turns out this is the fourteenth book in the series, but it reads fine as a stand alone piece.

Booth works hard to give a sense of place, invoking all aspects of the Derbyshire Dales landscape, both natural and man-made. It adds interest to the tale but with much zipping about by Cooper, maybe a map would have helped. The wide cast of both suspects and police officers gives little scope to develop characters in depth, though maybe in the case of the police team this occurs slowly throughout the series.

As a crime novel it works well enough but, unless its geographical setting strikes a chord, there is nothing to make it stand out in an overcrowded genre.