Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller

Willy Loman is a travelling salesman and a father. At 63 his best days on the road are behind him, in fact he’s now paid on commission only. Times are getting tough and the pressure is showing.

As a father he’s both proud of his two boys, Biff and Happy, and disappointed. Though good looking and well liked their lack of achievement frustrates Willy. His biggest issue is with 34 year-old Biff who was a golden boy at college but since flunking entry to university hasn’t held down a job.

With Biff back in New York for a visit, it is an opportunity for Willy to have another go at getting him on track. Despite all the evidence to the contrary he still thinks his son has what it takes. His frustration is exacerbated by his own decline and a niggling regret at missing an opportunity as a young man to follow his older brother Ben into the jungle where there were diamonds to be found.

For Biff it is another chance to convince his father that business is not for him; all he wants is to work outdoors on the land or with livestock. But Willy won’t listen and can’t understand; he thinks Biff fails just to spite him.

The arguments rage and flashbacks gradually reveal a possible root cause of the fractured father-son relationship, full of contradictory feelings of admiration and contempt, love and hatred, loyalty and guilt, none of which they can openly express. Biff can run away from it all again but where can Willy go? What more can he do to give his son a start?

Reading a play (rather than seeing it performed) can be problematic – but not here. The cast is small and the dialogue realistic; stage directions are informative and set the mood as well as the scene; and the shifts in time are both well signed and seamless.

I have seen the play a couple of times, but not since the 80’s, and following this read through I look forward to seeing it again soon.

Caves of Steel – Isaac Asimov

The caves of steel are the enclosed mega-cities of Earth a millennia or so in the future, where men and women live heavily communal lives with the limited space and food supplies rationed out.

In contrast, just outside New York city limits, is the spaciously laid out Spacetown, a closely guarded transit port for inter-planetary travel and trade with the outer worlds – planets colonised centuries ago, now independent of and slightly contemptuous of Earth. The Spacers are disease-free, technologically advanced, and enjoy a lifestyle that most Earthmen resent.

Another bone of contention between Earth and the Spacers is the use of robots. The sparsely populated outer worlds rely on them for labour and even more advanced operations; on Earth their increasing use is putting people out of work - and out of work means losing status and associated lifestyle privileges such as a wash basin in the apartment and a seat on the expressway.

So when New York police detective Elijah Baley is teamed up with Spacer R Daneel Olivar to investigate a murder in Spacetown, it is a bit of a challenge; because R stands for Robot, and is the only obvious giveaway in his humanoid appearance and behaviour.

The investigation proceeds haphazardly, hampered by political and social barriers. The scientific advances in evidence are interesting but it is the social developments and the unchanging human condition that forms the mainstay of the book. Solving the crime soon becomes part of the bigger issue of fixing Earth – Spacer relations and seeing a way forward for the teeming masses of the home planet.

Asimov writes a good book, deftly combining plot, dialogue, and context. When I first read this aged sixteen it was the futuristic setting that fascinated; now some 45 years later the sociological aspects hold as much interest. And while the whodunit element is secondary it does work at that level too.

Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

This graphic (in the literal, illustrated sense) book relates the experiences of the author as she grew up from a ten year old girl to a young woman of twenty-four in Iran during the troubled years from 1980 to 1994. This edition combines Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood’ and ‘Persepolis 2 – The Story of a Return’.

The only child of middle class liberal parents, Marjane is first affected by the Islamic revolution through the gradual imposition of religious dogma at her previously secular French-run school – gender segregation, cultural indoctrination, and the compulsory wearing of the dreaded veil. Inconvenient as these changes might be to her she soon learns of the more serious effects on her country as friends and relatives who oppose the regime disappear or suffer arrest, interrogation and beatings.

To escape the poisonous, stifling and eventually war-hit environment (and to continue an unfettered education) she is packed off to Vienna, where the opportunities of Western liberalism are almost too much for an unsupported young girl to deal with. The freedoms are all very well, but with no family to anchor her, they are also dangerous. In the end she feels the need to return home.

Back in Tehran the repression continues, but as a resourceful young woman she and her friends find ways and means to subvert the regime and achieve small victories over the Guardians of the Revolution, but not without peril.

Seeing the momentous events from a child’s and then a young woman’s perspective, using stark black and white drawings to support the simple but surgical comments, is very effective. The politics and history provide the context but it is the development of Satrapi as an individual that drives the story. She is candid about her mistakes and while critical of the regime she remains patriotic to her country.

I expected an easy read (this being my first ‘graphic novel’) but found instead a thought-provoking and compelling book with wise words and evocative images.

Widow’s Walk – Robert B Parker

The book is one of Parker’s “Spenser” novels (the first I’ve read) featuring the Boston-based (Boston Mass. not Boston Lincs.) private investigator.

Here he is called in by attractive defence attorney Rita Fiore, and after some flirting (she is available and interested, he is appreciative but otherwise committed) the case is set out. The client is Mary Smith, who is accused of murdering her husband, found shot dead in his room while only the two of them were in the house. The now rich widow seems to be the archetypical dumb blonde – or is she cleverly playing dumb – unable to explain what happened or the whereabouts of the missing gun.

Spenser sets out to crack this variation on the ‘locked room’ puzzle and soon unearths enough murky secrets and dodgy dealing to implicate a rage of ill-wishers, if only he could place them in the room. As he digs up the dirt, people get hurt, some killed, leading to a tense denouement and a clever reveal.

Parker’s style is bright and snappy, dialogue driven and narrated throughout by the wise-cracking Spenser, straight from the Sam Spade / Philip Marlowe tradition. He networks effectively with the cops and the lawyers but takes no crap from anyone else; for back-up he has the mononymous Hawk – big, black and, when necessary, brutal. With these ingredients the story unfolds at pace, but not unrelentingly as time out is occasionally taken for some homely and reflective moments with sassy girlfriend Susan and aging pooch Pearl.

The complexities of the case and the multiple characters are handled without muddle, the twists and turns are plausible, and the outcome is satisfying enough to put Spenser firmly on my ‘good cop’ list.

Moby Dick – Herman Melville

You think you know the story – Captain Ahab and the great white whale – but unless you have completed the full 650 page voyage you probably don’t.

While the hunt for Moby Dick drives the story, on its harpoon spike is hung a treatise on all things to do with whales and whaling: history, mythology and literature; boats, tools and techniques for chasing, catching and killing; the anatomy and economics of dismemberment; and the make-up of the men who do it all - as individuals and as a crew.

Narrated by an old hand (the iconic “call me” Ishmael) the level of detail is obsessive and fascinating. After 100 pages the Pequod hasn’t yet left the port of Nantucket; it is 600 pages before the eponymous fish (sorry, mammal) is sighted. In the meantime, as other whales are chased, caught and slaughtered, we get to know the crew like old shipmates, best summed up in Melville’s own unsurpassable words:

On Ahab – “intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge” (Moby Dick of course having previously snapped his leg off); on his officers’ qualities – “mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and pervading mediocrity in Flask; on the crew – “chiefly made up of mongrel renegades and castaways and cannibals.”

The above gives a flavour of the language: almost biblical, at least Homeric, in its epic moments; Shakespearian in its soliloquies; and always darkly compelling.

Many themes can be read into the tale, and may theories have been expounded on it, but I just read it, and enjoyed it, at face value - an engrossing seafaring epic, a tale of obsession and revenge, and a manual on hunting the biggest game of all.

Three Beds in Manhattan – Georges Simenon

Francois Combe, an actor of repute in his native France, is in New York licking his wounds after his actress wife dumped him for her younger leading man. Bitter, haunted and unable to sleep, he cruises the bars of Manhattan in the early hours.

In one he meets Kay, not young, not pretty, but alluring in a damaged kind of way. They talk; they drink; they walk; they connect; and eventually stumble into the down at heel Ivy Hotel for a night of mutual comfort.

Come the dawn (late afternoon actually) Francois can’t let go, and Kay is content to start all over again with another night on the town. After all she has nowhere to go having been kicked out of her borrowed room.

Kay’s past is chequered and as details emerge of her previous liaisons – marital (she’s divorced), pick-ups (like him), and platonic (as if) – they torture Francois with a mixture of unreasonable jealousy and a desperate need to possess.

A fragile trust develops as she moves into his apartment; and he accompanies her to her old flat to regain some personal effects. However events conspire to part them. It should be temporary but, as both can see reasons to cut and run, who can tell?

Simenon of course wrote the Maigret stories, and a host of other top-notch crime thrillers, and although the setting and premise is different, the style and craft is familiar. The prose is admirably concise, New York is as atmospheric as Paris, and the lead characters are complex and credible (for 1950s New York).

The result is interesting and very readable, but I prefer his whodunits (or as is often the case with Simenon, the whydunits).

The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

The novel has at its centre a bit of a sex scandal at the Abbey Grange high school, though it is glimpsed only through the murky reportage of some of its pupils in their weekly saxophone lessons, then through a drama put on by students at a local, but prestigious, stage school.

The saxophone teacher, up in her attic studio, encourages her girls to open up to her and reveal the secrets they withhold from their mothers, so what they say of the ‘abused’ girl is music to her ears. The pretext is for them to use their emotions and experiences to inject soul and feeling into their playing; the suspicion is that it is her only window on the sensual world.

Meanwhile in parallel, young would-be actor Stanley auditions and gets a place at the drama institute, only to be exposed to equally unorthodox teaching. He too is prompted to reveal and use private and personal experiences to enhance his art. When his class have to devise an end of year production, the school affair is picked as the central theme.

Eventually the two strands come together with potentially disastrous consequences, but though the plot drives the book forward it is the teacher–pupil interaction that grips.

The teachers, significantly known only by their titles (the saxophone teacher, the head of acting, the head of movement, etc.) are, or try to be, manipulative; but is this for their own gratification or for the benefit of the learners? The pupils mainly recognise the attempt but face the same dilemma – is it for their improvement or are they just being used for a vicarious reliving of a long gone youth.

The concept of performance is central to the way the story is told. Time shifts uncertainly; real life events morph into staged performances as, for example, the saxophone teacher projects scenes from her own past onto the intimate conversations with her pupils. This sounds more complex than it reads, because it is done seamlessly well.

This unusual novel (Catton’s first - her second won the 2013 Man Booker prize) is compelling and thought-provoking. The easily flowing prose and the slow reveals keep the pages turning to the end, and the mind turning even after that.

Saints and Sinners – Edna O’Brien

In these eleven stories Edna O’Brien presents not so much distinct saints and sinners but rather the more complex combination of good and bad in most folk. The tales, though varied, can be considered for review purposes roughly in three groups.

First, inevitably, there are those that deal with love between women and men in its several guises: doomed from the start in Black Flowers; lost and regretted in Manhattan Medley; unrequited in Send My Roots Rain; and betrayed in Cassandra. Narrated by women, the language is lyrical and the mood melancholic.

Lighter are a couple of wry observational pieces. In Sinners a landlady takes a dim view of the morals of her latest paying guests, and in Green Georgette a young girl accompanies her mother to tea at the house of a lady of high social standing.

Men do take centre stage in two biographical sketches of working men. Shovel Kings gives an insight to the trials of an Irish labourer in London; Inner Cowboy follows a naive would-be wide boy in Ireland. In both their faults and foibles are balanced by their good nature. But in Plunder the men come out less well as a young girl gives a harrowing account of the invasion by soldiers of her country, her home and her body. In these stories the prose is more gritty and the mood both lighter and darker.

As to be expected from a writer of her reputation, the stories are well written, put together with skill of such a light touch as to be unobtrusive. They are about relationships, emotions and mood, and can be admired as such.

My own taste is for a little more to actually happen: some dilemma or other to torture the protagonists, or some ironic twist to leave me thinking.

Raven Black – Ann Cleeves

Ravenswick, on the Shetlands, is a small community of just four dwellings, a little way out of Lerwick, but far enough to be isolated. And those that live there are about to have their lives hit by tragedy and heartache.

There is Magnus Tait, a strange old man living alone on the hillside, long viewed with suspicion since the disappearance of a young girl some eight years previous. In the school house is teacher Margaret Henry, her husband Alex and teenage daughter Sally. Another teenager, Catherine Ross, lives next door with her widowed father. In the other cottage is single mum Fran Hunter with her little girl, Cassie.

When a strangled body is found in the snow at Ravenswick the local Detective Inspector James Perez tries to keep an open mind on the new crime, while everyone else is pointing the finger at Magnus Tait.

The unfolding story is told from multiple viewpoints, effective in developing the characters and done cleverly enough to unravel the mystery slowly and teasingly. Atmosphere is added in the shape of the icy Shetland winter and the build up to the fiery Viking festival of Up Helly Aa.

The balance of plot, location and character is a real strength of the book, so that even after the culprit is revealed in a tense and twisted climax the reader is left with a desire to find out how the other players’ lives continue.

So the sequel, ‘White Nights’ becomes a must-read.

Men at Arms – Terry Pratchett

There are changes afoot in the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch. Captain Vimes is getting married and retiring and the troop has been swollen by new recruits. However due to the implementation of an ethnic diversity / equal opportunities policy they are a bit of a mixed bunch - Cuddy is a dwarf, Detritus is a troll and, most outlandish of all, Angua is a woman (albeit with an unconventional problem once a month).

Death is not uncommon in Ankh-Morpork; the Assassins’ Guild sees to that. But a rash of unexplained demises offends Corporal Carrot’s moral compass and he is determined to get to the bottom of things.

Carrot’s innocence and decency has novelty value in the city, eliciting cooperation from unlikely sources, and despite his lowly rank he emerges as the natural leader in Captain Vimes’ preoccupied, pre-nuptial, absence. He turns out to be a capable detective too, working out the complexities of the whodunit where most of the citizens have ‘dun’ something untoward.

But it is not all plain sailing. Clowns, civil unrest, a weapon of mass destruction, and a small but talkative dog all intervene, giving Pratchett plenty of opportunity for his trademark satirical comments (Discworld being only slightly distorted version of our own) before climactic events give the new Watch a chance to prove its worth.

This second book in the Night Watch trilogy pleasingly develops the characters from book one, and has a stronger plot while retaining the same level of wit and humour. Which all bodes well for volume three.

Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

Jean Louise Finch, the child narrator of the author’s iconic “To Kill a Mockingbird” returns in this companion piece, recently published but written and set in the 1950s.

Here Jean Louise is in her mid-twenties, working in New York, but back to visit her family in Maycomb, Alabama.

Much has changed in the sixteen years since the trial and acquittal of Tom Robinson. A world war abroad and, at home a civil rights movement that threatens the southern whites’ way of life, while promising more than it can really deliver to the negro population.

Jean Louise is discomforted by the resistance she sees to what she considers progress; more shocking is the discovery that her father, Atticus, and her on-off local boyfriend, Henry, are both attending meetings of the Citizens Council. This self-appointed group discuss tactics to frustrate the diktats of the Federal Government and the pressure of the NAACP (never expanded in the book to its full - National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People).

The book develops into two strands. Jean Louise’s reminiscences fill in gaps from her childhood and adolescence (when she went by the nickname of Scout), and these work well evoking the voice familiar from Mockingbird.

Meanwhile in real time she rails against her father and family; her politics and their pragmatics have no common ground and she is bewildered and disorientated by Atticus’ failure to live up to her expectations. This strand is less appealing, the adult voice lacking both the charm and clarity of youth (such is growing up).

The political arguments are of historic interest now, but the timeless issue is the changing relationship between a daughter and her father, as her childhood hero appears to have clay feet. But appearances can be deceptive.

Watchman (the conscience is the watchman of the soul) was never going to rival Mockingbird, but it still makes for an interesting read.

DJ Tees – John Nicholson

Nick Guymer is a freelance Teesside journalist with a passion for football (the Boro) and music (specifically retro vinyl) and when a local Tees Radio DJ is murdered during the opening of a pal’s record shop, he inevitably gets involved.

Unusually for a crime thriller, he’s not having a mid-life crisis - he’s off the beer, his depression is under control, and he’s in a great relationship with girlfriend Jules.

As the case of DJ Tees develops, most of those involved turn out to be lads he knew at school – the Detective Inspector, a couple of suspects, and a few witnesses (small world, Stockton on Tees). One new face is the charismatic Davey James, local entrepreneur and flavour of the month guy with the media.

Nick and Jules attract his attention for different reasons: Nick is a cool operator with attitude that he could use in his business; Jules just gives him the hots. The attraction is not mutual and their unease with him is strengthened when Mrs James turns up at the women’s refuge where Jules helps out.

The idea of male violence worries Nick, not least as he often resorts to it in a way that later sickens him.

The plot twists and turns, stretching credibility in parts as multiple and mixed up motives provoke characters to unlikely actions. But it moves at a fast pace, and its attraction for Teessiders (I just about qualify) is the geographic and cultural detail that anchors the book firmly in its distinctive location – Stockton, the ‘Boro’, and ‘Darlo’.

This is book four in the Nick Guymer series; the jury is out on seeking out numbers 1 to 3.

They Were Counted – Miklos Banffy

Set in Hungary in the first years of the 20^th century, this is an epic of love, honour and duty that captures the mood of the junior partner in Austria-Hungarian dual monarchy under the Hapsburgs.

The narrative is driven through the lives of two aristocratic cousins, Balint Abady and Laszlo Gyeroffy. As the book opens they are on their way (separately) to a sumptuous ball at the stately home of a relative. It will not be the last ball described and there will be no shortage of relatives either.

Both men are young and ambitious. Abady is interested in politics and is returning from a spell in the diplomatic service in Vienna to help run the family estate, and to stand for the national parliament in Budapest. Gyeroffy is a talented musician, a popular performer at parties, and keen to compose great works.

But they are subject to distractions of their social whirl – mainly in the form of attractive young princesses, countesses and heiresses.

Thus Abady is drawn, dangerously, to a childhood friend, now an attractive woman, for whom his feelings have deepened; but Adrienne Miloth is now married to the coldly unstable Pal Uzdy. Her perceived unavailability drives him back towards an old flame, the lovely, and also married, Dinora Abanyi.

Meanwhile Gyeroffy is smitten with Klara Kollanich, who is young, pretty, rich and single. Three thing stand in his way of a successful courtship: her Mama has her earmarked for a better match; he is targeted as a lover by the older but alluring Countess Beredy; and he is falling under the spell of the gaming tables.

Banffy unfolds events in unhurried fashion, interspersing the action with lyric descriptions of the Transylvanian landscape and architecture, but all the time building anticipation for the final climactic episodes. Except that they are not the end of the story, for this is just volume one of the Transylvanian trilogy.

Although likened to Trollope’s political novels, this, though equally readable, has more gravitas and passion (some tastefully explicit).

Very enjoyable and those loose ends dangle tantalisingly, pointing the way to volume two.

Eating for England – Nigel Slater

This is a collection of bite-sized thoughts on food by the renowned chef and writer.

No highfalutin culinary extravaganzas here, just a melange of homage to household staples, nostalgia for brands now departed, side-swipes at pretension, and affectionate finger-pokes at the peculiarities of English ways of eating. The range of subjects is vast, but to give a few examples:

We are treated to praise of victoria sponge, ginger nuts, rhubarb & custard, and sherbet lemons. There  are rose-tinted recollections of Spangles, Fry’s five centres, Tunnocks‘ tea-cakes, Berni Inns, and aniseed balls. Pointed remarks are made on modern trends in shopping, cooking and presentation, including the corner shop, the post-Jamie cook, and supermarket fish. And finally quirky comments abound on such as the Polo mint, the pink wafer biscuit (always the last in the tin), and my favourite – how to eat a Toblerone.

The book is less personal than the author’s excellent ‘Toast’, which had an added biographical depth, but it is still a good read, well-seasoned with wit and insight, and cooked up with no little skill with words.

A New York Christmas – Anne Perry

It is 1904 and Jemima Pitt, independent-minded daughter of Inspector Pitt of London’s Special Branch, has secured a position as companion to business heiress Delphinia Cardew. Her main duty is to accompany ‘Phinnie’ to on a transatlantic trip to marry Brent Albright, the son of her father’s business partner.

Phinnie’s father can’t make the trip due to illness, and when a baby she was deserted by her mother, so there is only Jemima to help her settle in with the prospective in-laws and prepare for the wedding.

With everything well in hand Jemima accepts the offer of Brett’s brother Harley to be shown the sights, but this turns out to be a pretext to involve her in a confused but secret mission to find Phinnie’s mum (who he thinks is in New York) and thwart any plans she may have to spoil the wedding by turning up.

When the mysterious mother is found the circumstance are unfortunate, particularly for Jemima, but luckily a handsome police officer is on hand to aid her efforts to extricate herself from trouble and solve what have by now become multiple mysteries.

In fact the solutions are glaringly obvious well before they are revealed, obfuscated only by the flimsiness of apparent motives for much of the criminal activity. The dialogue is stilted, the characters are paper thin, and turn-of-the-century New York has never been painted so dull.

The book’s saving graces are its slimness (154 pages) and lack of any hard words to slow down the reader.

A Day at the Office – Matt Dunn

Not just any day, but Valentine’s, which has varied connotations for Sophie, Calum, Nathan, Mark and Julie who all work at Seek Software’s office in Soho.

All but Nathan have hopes and plans for romance, half-formed in some cases, half-baked in others, and with unsigned Valentine cards left on desks there is much scope for confusion and misunderstood messages.

As for Nathan, once bitten (or savaged) twice shy (or monastic); he organises an annual Anti-Valentine night out to provide the singletons in the office an antidote to the unwelcome reminder of their status. Sophie, Mark and Julie agree to go, but Calum has an internet induced blind date.

Matt Dunn takes us through their day, hopping from character to character, from the morning commute, through coffee and lunch breaks, taking in hushed conversations in corridors and smoking shelters, and culminating in the after-work activities (some planned and some unexpected). He does it with wit and style, capturing the goldfish bowl nature of life, work, banter and gossip in a small workplace.

The plot lines are cleverly interwoven, as complicated as needed to provide his characters with rising levels of anxiety, self-doubt, jealousy, hope and eventually (no spoiler here) some redemption.

The humour is good, even old chestnuts are well delivered, and by the end I did care how Sophie’s, Calum’s, Nathan’s, Mark’s and Julie’s day at the office concluded.

The Radleys – Matt Haig

Peter and Helen Radley live in the quiet village of Bishopthorpe near Thirsk in North Yorkshire, with their two teenage children Rowan and Clara.

They live a quiet life; one deliberately chosen by Peter and Helen as they seek to distance themselves from the excesses of their past and the temptations of the present. They have become abstainers, foreswearing their natural addiction, as vampires, for blood.

Rowan and Clara know nothing of their heritage, accepting their pale skin, aversion to sunlight (and garlic), and general malaise with adolescent angst. But adolescence is a dangerous time, even for vampires. Clara’s decision to become a vegetarian deprives her of her only legitimate blood substitute; and Rowan’s under pressure at school, attracting the attention of bullies who call him a freak and failing to attract the attention of a new girl in class who he covets.

As Peter and Helen debate if it is time to tell the kids, the decision is made for them in dramatic fashion. Suddenly Bishopthorpe is no longer quiet. Peter’s brother Will (by no means an abstainer) is called in to help. It doesn’t help; it makes everything worse as his past misdemeanours stir up more trouble for the family.

What starts as an amusing domestic comedy with a twist gradually darkens in humour and then plunges into a bloody and gory, but still domestic, drama.

Well enough written to give an air of disturbing credibility, the book provides an entertaining read and a worthy precursor to the author’s excellent “The Humans”.

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart – Peter Swanson

George Foss had never quite got over his brief but intense relationship with Liana Decter in his first semester at college, which finished abruptly with her disappearance and an unsolved murder (or two).

When he sees her, twenty years later, in a Boston bar he thinks at first it is just another of the fleeting resemblances that have plagued him over the years, causing a double-take before disappointment kicks in. But not this time; it is her, and she’s here looking for him.

She needs his help to get out of a pickle - to return some money she has stolen from the man who employed her as a PA (and mistress). It’s dirty money so the police aren’t after her, just an apparently homicidal private investigator.

George knows he should walk away, but can’t. The old attraction is still there, still strong, and anyway his current life is uneventful, and this meeting has highlighted how empty he has felt since he lost her.

So he steps into an unfamiliar world of escalating lies, violence and double-dealing. As he did twenty years ago - the story, in the classic fashion, intersperses events of those undergraduate days that also led to danger and deceit.

The twists and turns are well crafted and the book is a real page-turner as the reader, who throughout is privy only to George’s movements, thoughts and actions seeks, as he does, answers and the truth (which are not always the same thing).

This is Peter Swanson’s debut novel and I for one will look out for his next.

Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

This unusual book showcases the author’s versatility and ingenuity: the versatility with six writing styles deployed in six different settings; and the ingenuity by the structure, as each story unfolds in succession with tenuous but compelling links to its predecessor.

The first story starts, then is suspended midway and another begins; then it too is interrupted to start the next, and so on. It is nested like a set of Russian dolls, but I think of it more like a necklace. Each component is its own polished gem, cut in half and strung symmetrically around a central pearl. Thus:

A nineteenth century diary relates the experiences of a South Seas voyager; years later, between the world wars, it is discovered in a Belgian country house and mentioned in letters from an itinerant rake of a composer who is working there to his student friend in Cambridge; the friend becomes a top nuclear physicist and a key character in a sixties thriller; the manuscript of which is sent years later to a current day vanity publisher and read while comically incarcerated in a home for the elderly; his attempted escape becomes a cult movie in a global corporation dominated future, which is mentioned in the account given by a cloned worker of the transcendence of her destiny and the consternation it caused to the ruling elite; this is recorded on a futuristic media platform which, as a relic, turns up further in the future within the final tale, related in the oral tradition, by a post-apocalyptic survivor in Hawaii.                    

You get the idea; the tales are then completed in reverse order – having climbed the mountain and been left with five cliff hangers, the descent is massively satisfying.

Whatever the simile – nested dolls, strung necklace, or mountain journey – it is a master work by a master at his craft.

Stone Mattress – Margaret Atwood

These nine tales are a mature piece of work from Margaret Atwood in more ways than one. As well as demonstrating her well-honed storytelling craft her narrators and protagonists are mainly men and women in their later years.

As is the wont of the aged, the day to day concerns over the inconveniences of getting older jostle for attention with the accumulated recollections of their youth and prime to provide an entertaining cocktail.

The first three stories, Alphinland, Revenant, and Dark Lady, make up an intriguing literary triplet with crossover characters turning up unexpectedly and giving different perspectives on shared events.

The next two stories buck the ‘oldies’ trend: Lusus Naturae is a ghostly telling of the fate of a freak of nature; while in Freeze-Dried Groom a dealer in second hand goods  buys the key to an auctioned off storage unit and finds it contains a complete wedding including a shrink-wrapped groom – then the bride turns up.

The last four tales revert to the old folks - looking back on the adventures, mistakes and triumphs of earlier years – including the title story. In Stone Mattress a thrice married professional widow now finds herself face to face with the man who, as a boy, deflowered her mercilessly; she suffered then and his failure to recognise her in maturity gives her an opportunity for revenge.

The final story looks a little forward in time – and uncomfortably; in Torching the Dusties the residents of a retirement home watch on with growing anxiety as a militant group ‘Our Turn’ protest at their gates at the resources deployed to maintain the old in comfort at the expense of the unmet needs of the productive generations.

It is a fine collection of stories and a good introduction to an excellent author.

Guards! Guards! – Terry Pratchett

The Night Watch in the City of Ankh-Morpork has been run down to skeletal proportions - Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, and Corporal ‘Nobby’ Nobbs – mainly due to the eminently sensible arrangement between the city leader ‘the Patrician’ and the Guild of Thieves whereby only licenced crime is permitted, within an agreed budget, with the Guild itself responsible for ensuring that “unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in”.

For those unfamiliar with Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’, it is a revolving disc that moves through space supported by four giant elephants standing on the back of Great A’Tuin the Sky Turtle. Other than that, it holds an only slightly distorted mirror to our own world, with technology replaced by wizardry.

For example, secret societies with arcane rituals abound, including the Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren, whose Grand Master has a cunning plan to overthrow the Patrician and install a puppet king. Not on Captain Vimes’ watch!

The plot thicken to the consistency of the city’s pestilent river, seasoned by characters ranging from the eccentric dragon-breeder Lady Sybil Ramkin, through Carrot the naive new night watch recruit (who was taken in as a baby by dwarves but at six foot plus is proving a bit of a vertically challenged liability in the family gold mining business), to the unfortunate librarian of the Unseen University (home of the wizards) who, since a spell backfired has been trapped in the body of an orang-utan (yet continues unhindered in his post).

What happens is mayhem, and is largely irrelevant as it is in the telling of the tale that the book’s strength lies. The language is expansive and witty, with the footnotes alone worth the reading.

Cat Out of Hell – Lynne Truss

Alec Charlesworth, recently retired librarian, and even more recently made a widower, takes a holiday cottage in Norfolk with his dog Watson. When he opens an e-mail from a Dr Winterton (vaguely remembered as a library user) he is presented with an attached folder containing files that set out a far-fetched account by an actor named Wiggy of an encounter he had with a talking cat named Roger.

At first Alec is dismissive (and critical of Wiggy’s literary talent) but some preliminary research corroborates some aspects of the tale and, on returning home and meeting Dr Winterton, he realises that not only does Roger exist, but that his powers go beyond talking, and that knowledge such as that is very, very dangerous.

So a tale that begins light and whimsical turns more serious with the humour darkening several shades as Alec is drawn inexorably into Roger’s mysterious and somewhat horrific world.

As befits the author of ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’, the story is well written (once Wiggy’s narration is left behind) and mischievously presented, making for a quick light read that, intriguingly, can be equally appreciated by both cat-lovers and cat-haters.

The Quick – Lauren Owen

Charlotte Norbury and her younger brother James spend their early years in a fading country house in Yorkshire. Isolated and soon orphaned, their close companionship lasts until James goes off to school and Oxford. On graduating he heads to London where, through sharing accommodation with a Christopher Paige, he begins to make his way into society. Meanwhile Charlotte moulders in Yorkshire subsisting on her brother’s infrequent correspondence.

Separately the reader is presented with the notebook of Augustus Mould, running from 1868 to 1893, recording how he was drawn into contact with, and began the study of, members of the mysterious Aegolius Club, whose remarkable longevity is based upon a terrible secret process – the Exchange.

The two strands of narrative come together when Christopher’s brother (an Aegolius member) becomes concerned that the room mates are becoming too chummy. This has dire consequence for James, as Charlotte discovers when she decides, as James’ letters dry up, to travel to London to visit.

It is not much of a spoiler to reveal that the Club members are, literally, a blood-thirsty lot, against whom a small resistance movement exists, and it is from them that Charlotte gets help in her quest to rescue her brother from his predicament. It won’t be easy and it won’t be pretty.

So a book that started with the genteel upbringing of two orphans gradually escalates to a violent and gory climax studded with death, destruction and dismemberment.

The writing is good enough to keep the attention for much of its 500 pages; interesting characters emerge but for me fail to fully engage; and the diluted drawn out ending is, perhaps inevitably, ante-climactic.

An interesting take on a staple of the horror genre but for me a trifle disappointing.

Writing Home – Alan Bennett

This collection of Bennett’s writing covers the 1980’s and 1990’s with the bulk of it being in the form of diary entries. Some are lifted out of the general chronology and presented as concentrated narratives, notably the section on ‘The Lady in the Van’.

These episodes relate his brushes with the eccentric old lady who took up residence in his garden where she parked her decrepit mobile home after Camden Council banned it from the streets.

Similarly entries covering periods of rehearsals for his plays or filming of his screenplays are separated out to give an interesting insight into how each moved forward and how the process affected his relationship with the work.

Even in the other (non-diary) works – prefaces to plays, reviews of books and authors, and eulogies of friends and celebrities – much of the content is as much a reflection on his own life and times as that of the subject.

The content is witty, wise and whimsical, sometimes bitter and bitchy, and never conventional. Bennett always has an unusual take on things, tending to bring the overblown back down to earth and raise the mundane to meaningful.

The 400 pages provide a treasury of prose that is a pleasure to dip into, with every word conjuring up the author’s flat North-country vowels and dead-pan delivery.

On the New, the Tried, and the Trusted

No review this week as I wade through a couple of thickish books that are proving a little viscous (coincidentally also a little vicious). Both are by authors new to me and prompt some observations on the movement from new author, to ‘second book’ status, then ‘tried and trusted’, with some achieving ‘must read’.

I began the year with a need for tried and trusted, so headed for William Boyd (now 8 read), David Nicholls (4), Ian Rankin (14), Kate Atkinson (6), and Ian McEwan (4); as well as four other safe bets – Jo Nesbo, Hilary Mantel, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and Jim Crace – who moved to second book status. All were predictably good.

As for the newbies, they have been the expected mixed bag. The non-fiction choices generally turn out well, but often they are one-off books by authors unlikely to feature again. In fiction, of the five sampled two were a bit disappointing, one was OK, with only JM Coetzee and Andrey Kurkov likely to move up the rankings.

I don’t think that is a bad strike rate, and reading the odd turkey is a price worth playing to discover new favourites.

Harvest – Jim Crace

It is harvest time in the village – no name, location or period is given, but it feels like medieval England – and the tight knit isolated community are due a day off to celebrate ‘gleaning day’ when they can pick up the leftover grains for their personal rather than communal use.

But the villagers wake to see two plumes of smoke rising. One is dark, as produced by new cut green wood, signalling the arrival inside the boundary of strangers, whose roughly made hut and smoking hearth gives them squatter’s rights to stay but does not guarantee a welcome. The second plume though is paler, produced by old dry timber, which draws them to the Master's house where the hay barn and stables are ablaze.

Conclusions are jumped to and the newcomers are confronted, condemned and have punishment meted out; the two men are put in the stocks for a week while their female companion (wife, daughter, sister?) has her lustrous locks shorn.

To add to the unaccustomed turbulence, the Master’s position as landowner is under threat; now a widower, his title through marriage is disputed by a cousin with a bloodline claim. The latter has arrived with new agricultural ideas that need more sheep than men on the land.

The next seven days sees some lives lost and all lives irrevocably changed; a concentrated narrative allegorising the longer term decline of the rural workforce.

That narrative is provided by Walter Thirsk, a newcomer himself many years previous so still somewhat of an outsider. His delivery is spare but lyrical; his measured words rooted in the village – the land itself and the people – drawing the reader into the village microcosm, enclosed but never claustrophobic.

This is every bit as good as the author’s acclaimed “Quarantine”, possibly better with a stronger plot and a more familiar (to me) landscape and period.

Casino Royale – Ian Fleming

Having not read a James Bond thriller for about forty years I picked this one as part of my 2015 reading challenge, to tick off the ‘published in the year of your birth’ box.

So it is 62 years old and was Fleming’s first novel. To be honest both of these are evident. The prose is clunky, the dialogue strained, the structure unbalanced and the attitudes dated.

The plot is simple but still hard to credit. The top Russian agent in France, Monsieur Le Chiffre, has been borrowing Leningrad funds, supplied to support French communist trade unions, for personal investments; these have gone pear-shaped so he’s heading for disaster unless he can generate some cash quick.

His cunning plan is to win big at the high-roller card games at the Casino Royale. MI6’s equally implausible response is to send in James Bond, not to kill him but to beat him at cards – 007 licenced to bet – and so deprive him of his winnings and seal his fate with his Russian paymasters.

After introducing the secret agent, his world, and his martini, the first half of the book is devoted to Bond first playing roulette against the house (to warm up his gambler’s instinct and increase his stake money) then baccarat against Le Chiffre, who has ‘bought’ the bank. It reads rather like a useful primer on the two games, until the stakes rise and with them the tension.

The aftermath of the game is more typical 007 action – damsel in distress, car chase, violence, mayhem and teeth-gritting resilience from Bond.

Damsel (Vesper Lynd) rescued (surely no spoiler that), James extracts his due and it his attitude to her throughout that is hard to take in these enlightened times, but sadly is probably accurate for then.

So it is a quick easy read; uncomfortably violent and sexist in places but good to tick off the original Bond book, and that box in the reading challenge.

The State of Africa – Martin Meredith

Part of the ‘Into and out of Africa’ reading journey, this ambitious single volume (albeit 700 page) history covers events in Africa since its emergence from colonial rule in the 1950’s.

While each chapter forms a self-contained account of a state or region over one of its significant periods, they build up (roughly chronologically) to form a continuous narrative for the continent.

From the narrative, themes emerge: the successful efforts to achieve self-rule; the emergence in power of the ‘Big Men’ (often those who had led the fight for freedom); the same Big Men’s slide into corruption, the feathering of nests, and in some cases the near bankruptcy of the country as immense natural resources were plundered for personal gain. Tribal strife, religious conflict and the conduct of the cold war by proxy also contributed to the disorder and violence. These all exacerbated the effects of natural perils such as poverty, drought, famine and AIDS.

Unsurprisingly it is a bleak picture and Meredith pulls no punches apportioning blame; but he backs up his views with compelling evidence and mind-boggling statistics. Key events are related in fascinating detail and black & white photos are provided of the main protagonists, yet the broad sweep is never lost.

It may have been an ambitious project but it succeeds magnificently.

The Banks of Certain Rivers – Jon Harrison

Neil Kazenzakis’s life is back in equilibrium. It has taken a few years for him and his son Chris to recover from the shock of losing their respective wife and mother. Wendy is not dead, nor missing, but is in a vegetative state following an accident, lying unresponsive in a long term care facility.

Neil teaches high school where Chris is in his final year and considering college options. Neil runs; Chris is keen on basketball; both like to sail on Lake Michigan adjacent to their house. They get on well but Neil has found a new love – Lauren – about whom he feels some guilt and so he is keeping it a secret, especially from Chris. He knows he should tell him soon – but why rock the boat just yet?

To extend the metaphor, the boat gets rocked for him: relations with Lauren take an unexpected turn; and his intervention to break up a fight on campus gets misrepresented with potentially serious repercussions. If he loses his job he loses his health insurance that is funding Wendy’s care. Under these pressures even the father son bond begins to crack.

In classic style the present day events are interspersed with Neil’s memories – courtship, marriage, family life, the accident and the aftermath. And while the first half of the book is fairly bland fair-weather stuff, the second half is stormy weather with drama and tension.

Apart from the engaging storyline the book has plenty to say about secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, mistakes and forgiveness, and fathers and sons, providing a decent read for 99p on kindle.

The Red House – Mark Haddon

The Red House, tucked away in the Welsh border hills, is a holiday cottage where a week’s vacation without TV, internet or mobile phone reception can seem a long time.

For this week the visitors are the families of semi-detached siblings Angela and Richard, who have only been in each other’s company for one afternoon in the last fifteen years - at their mother’s recent funeral.

Angela brings husband Dominic, teenagers Alex and Daisy, and eight year-old

Benjy; Richard brings second wife Luisa and step-daughter Melissa, sixteen going on twenty-one. They all bring their secrets and hang-ups, destined to spill out in the struggle between good intentions and bad behaviour. By the end of the week things – relationships, attitudes, even lives - have been changed if not resolved.

Haddon speaks for all eight characters, giving a multi-faceted account of the week. It works well, giving each a distinctive and authentic voice; in particular he captures the adolescent psyche convincingly (not surprising from the author of ‘A Curious Incident …’). The only discordant notes are the occasional flights of fancy he indulges in when setting a scene.

Solar – Ian McEwan

Michael Beard, physicist, a Nobel Prize winner twenty years ago for his ‘Beard Einstein Conflation’, has carved himself a comfortable career lending (more accurately hiring) his name and reputation to academic institutions and research projects in the UK and abroad.

As the book opens in 2000 his latest sinecure is Head of the National Renewable Energy Centre where he turns up a couple of times a week to see and be seen by the researchers. A throwaway line of his has sent them down a blind alley of domestic wind turbine development, but one researcher, Tom Aldous, has a better idea – improving solar – which he badgers Beard to take a look at (in vain).

Beard has other priorities. A serial womaniser on his fifth marriage he finds himself for the first time on the receiving end of infidelity. When he returns home from an incident packed sojourn in the Arctic Circle, events conspire to produce a farcical situation with a potentially serious outcome, but he uses his sharp wits to turn it into an opportunity to move on in both his personal and professional life.

The book fast-forwards to 2005 to get an update on both these. He’s left the Centre under a bit of a cloud but is working with commercial partners making great strides in solar power. Romantically he is in a new relationship which he thinks is nearing its sell by date until Melissa drops a bombshell.

Another five year jump to 2010 and, on the eve of the public launch of the new technology in the heart of New Mexico, some of Beard’s chickens hatched in 2000 and 2005 are coming home to roost. Can his nimble footwork carry the day or will he crash and burn?

The use of three snapshot periods enables McEwan to tell the story while lingering over some well-constructed comic set pieces. Beard – clever but a bit pompous, overweight, aging but still a charismatic presence – is a fine butt for the humour.

The author’s prose is a precise and flowing as ever, the scientific context is handled lightly and confidently (who knows how plausibly), and the unfamiliar humour sits comfortably within, producing an entertaining and enjoyable read.

Heart Shaped Box – Joe Hill

Judas Coyne, heavy metal rock star, past his prime and sole surviving member of his self-destructing band, now lives in comfortable seclusion on his ranch with his latest Goth rock-chick, Georgia, and his two German shepherd dogs, Angus & Ben.

At his ranch Judas has assembled a private collection of macabre items, so when his PA Danny spots a ghost for sale on an internet auction site, Judas just hits the ‘buy now for $1,000’ button to seal the deal and enhance the collection. The ghost is purported to be that of Craddock McDermot, deceased spiritualist stepfather of the vendor, and what arrives in a heart shaped box is his favourite suit to which his spirit is expected to be attached.

And it is, but the initial curiosity value soon turns to unease, discomfort, fear and dread as the ghost not only materialises but shows he can still use his powers of hypnotic persuasion to manipulate the living to do his will.

Danny does a runner but Georgia hangs on in. It is not her real name; Judas re-christens his procession of trophy girlfriends after the states he picks them up in. Her predecessor was Florida who when dumped and sent back home killed herself. Thinking back Judas recalls that she had a step-daddy, and the penny drops that he has been targeted for revenge from beyond the grave.

Judas, Georgia and the dogs (who seem to offer some protection) go on the run which turns into the road trip from (or rather to) hell, during which there is death and destruction, slashing and shooting, blood and gore, as they follow a high risk strategy to end their nightmare.

I am no connoisseur of the horror genre but this seemed good to me with convincing descriptions of the unearthly and the terror produced; the action only pausing briefly to take a breath before taking the next ramp up in the spiral of fear.

Started Early, Took My Dog – Kate Atkinson

Here, Jackson Brodie, itinerant and now semi-retired private investigator, washes up in Yorkshire. He has just the two cases on the go and one is into his own missing ‘fake’ second wife, Tessa, who has gone off with most of his money. On the plus side he has gained a son, now confirmed as his, though resident with mother Julia, who filled much of the gap between Jackson’s first wife (Josie) and Tessa.

Jackson, a bit of a loner, often finds himself having imaginary conversations with Josie and Julia, although he soon widens this circle to include ‘Jane’ his satnav voice and a small dog that he unexpectedly acquires.

But his professional case is the current focus - an antipodean request to trace a woman’s origins. Adopted in Leeds 35 years ago, she cannot find any record of her birth or adoption, so has asked Jackson to investigate.

As to be expected in the Jackson Brodie novels (and it is a great strength) he does not hog the spotlight; there is an ensemble of interesting, wonderfully filled out characters who criss-cross the stage taking the reader off in seemingly diverse directions albeit with a common theme emerging of losing and finding.

A big presence, in all ways, is Tracy Waterhouse. She has lost her sense of purpose having retired from the police force and taken up a job as head of security at a shopping mall in Leeds; and not lost, but missing, is someone or something to love, which leads her into a risky and impulsive action.

What aging actress Tilly Squires is losing is her mind, as creeping dementia causes her to drift between the past and the present, and between her TV role and reality.

And then there is Barry Crawford, ex-colleague of Tracy’s, nearing retirement himself and in a different way to Tilly, nearing the end of his tether. He’s effectively lost his family with his grandchild killed, his daughter in a two year coma, his son-in-law serving a two year sentence for the drunk driving that caused both, and a wife with whom he has no relationship other than sharing an address.

When Jackson Brodie comes asking questions about a baby who materialised from nowhere in 1975, Crawford realises that a secret he helped to bury 35 years ago could be found and blow up in some important faces.

Kate Atkinson weaves these threads (and more) together with great dexterity, mischievous wit, sly social comment and comic observation. I also love, in a self-torturing way, how the characters bump into each other, blissfully unaware of each other’s identity and how intertwined their lives have, or will, become. It is difficult to avoid shouting helpful comments at the page.

How it all turns out remains a hook right to the end; and though with Atkinson the dénouement is never simple, it is always satisfying.