Suggestions for World Book Night 2013

My suggestions are given below. All are great books to encourage people into reading - immediately engaging with a strong narrative thread, exciting or funny, not too long and covering a range of genre. None of the authors have featured in previous WBN lists.

Check out the WBN website www.worldbooknight.org for the 100 most popular suggestions to date (none of mine are in there) – and to add your own.

 

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

Atmospheric modern day thriller set in London – one man with a secret hunted by both the police and a corporate hit man.

The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth

 

The original Nazi-hunting novel and still the best – compelling, action packed with grains of truth.

Spies by Michael Frayn

Evocatively told story set in WW2 England that shows how childish imagination can misread adult behaviour with dangerous results.

The Kon Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl

True but hard to believe story of oceanic exploration and bravery in the days before satnav, mobile phones and an accompanying reality TV crew.

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

The most accurate portrait of the modern metropolitan male predicament, as hero Rob tries to come to terms with his disintegrating personal life and failing record shop business.

French Revolutions by Tim Moore

One bike enthusiast’s hilarious account of his attempt to ride the Tour de France course.

Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin

The first novel in the brilliant Inspector Rebus series – sharp, crisp with a tense ending.

Holes by Louis Sachar

Nominally a book for young adults but much too good not to share wider – Stanley Yelnets being sent wrongly to “juvie” is just the start of a sequence of strange events that eventually, bizarrely, resolve themselves in a satisfying conclusion.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend

Witty, engaging and accurate account of adolescent angst with laugh out loud moments and now with added nostalgic appeal.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim’s chronologically mixed-up life story includes WW2 and interplanetary travel, but provides a fascinating narrative and some universal truths.

The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas

The slap occurs early in the book as a parent deals out some instant punishment to a misbehaving child, but crucially not his own.  The incident brings a barbecue for friends and family to a premature and fractious end.  As the characters disperse we follow some of their lives giving a selective perspective on modern Australian, or at least Melbourne, life.

 

These lives, if representative, give an unflattering picture of booze and drug fuelled infidelity, abuse and selfishness.  As the narrative moves from one person to another the differences between what they think and what they say, and what they know they should do and what they actually do, are laid bare.

 

What will be the outcome of it all? Who, if anyone will get their just desserts and who will get away with it all and emerge unscathed?

 

The structure of the book is unusual and interesting - offering sequential slices of the unfolding storylines from the different protagonists. The narrative maintains interest but I found the dialogue crude at times; both in relating the many sexual encounters and in references to racial origins. This may of course be normal in the antipodes.

 

Indeed it is normality of it all that is most unsettling. Is this tolerance or a less positive shoulder-shrugging acceptance of imperfect behaviour – this is how real people live their lives so just get over it and move on?

 

The exception to this tolerance is the slap itself which reverberates through the book, destined to have a more serious effect on relationships than all the other, more premeditated, misdemeanours.

We Need To Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver

The reason is clear from the start – 14 year old Kevin has murdered several of his school colleagues in a Columbine-like attack.  Much less clear is why and how.

The back story is related through a series of unanswered letters written by his mother Eva, to the estranged father, between her fortnightly visits to the Claverack Juvenile Correctional Facility.  Through these letters Eva examines her relationship with her son from conception to and beyond that fateful Thursday.

Is it her fault, what did she do wrong or fail to do right?  What can happen to the husband and wife relationship when a child is added to the family, and how does this then affect the child?  Did they create a monster or was there an evil that would not be denied?

Eva’s letters are well written, precise, almost forensic.  Events are related dispassionately, the understatement making them all the more horrific.  There is a voyeuristic appeal that keeps the reader engaged as Kevin’s devilment develops and is revealed incident by harrowing incident.  Indeed one of the motivations mooted for Columbine killings is the notoriety they generate, fuelled by public interest, even fascination, with them. The theory is tacitly supported by the reader’s investment of time and money in the book.

Considering that Kevin’s fate is known from the start the final chapters are surprisingly tense and revealing and left this reader both emotionally drained and intellectually satisfied.

Overall this is an excellent book that explores uncomfortable issues with controlled emotion, within a well-constructed storyline, that teases the reader steadily through its 400 plus pages.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

Read as part M of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey

Chosen because

I am a bit of a sucker for such a hardback with an interesting retro cover. The Japanese woodcut effect sets the scene as the Dutch trading station off Nagasaki, the only point of contact permitted between 18th century Japan and the western world. History and a clash of cultures beckon, and the blurb promises duplicity, love, guilt, faith and murder, so what’s not to like?

The Review

Jacob De Zoet is clerk to the new Chief Resident of the Nagasaki outpost of the Dutch East Indies Company, come to clean up the ledgers and clear out the corruption and private profiteering. On a tiny island, joined to Japan by a gated bridge, the small colony lives in a morass of intrigue, shifting loyalties and eggshell treading protocol revealed by interpreters of variable quality and uncertain motive.

Jacob meets the unusual Miss Aibagawa, but before his constancy to his betrothed in Holland is tested, she is spirited away to a ‘House of Sisters’ on the mainland. What fate awaits her there and how can Jacob rescue her when he cannot even cross the bridge to the mainland.

To complicate matters, Europe is at war and the English are coming to contest the Dutch monopoly.  Will captain Penhaligan’s Royal Navy frigate be a threat or an opportunity for Jacob?

The book moves effortlessly between the main characters, portraying their motivations and machinations with a light but deft touch. Always atmospheric, occasionally touching, and tense and exciting during climactic incidents, it is a rewarding account of a (by me) rarely visited setting –eighteenth century Japan – the Land of a Thousand Autumns.

Read another?

I have been warned off Cloud Atlas, but having enjoyed Thousand Autumns I think I probably will look at Ghostwritten or number9dream.