Slipless in Settle – Harry Pearson

Sports columnist Harry Pearson turns his attention to cricket, eschewing the so called first-class test and county game for the grit of the northern leagues.

He decides to visit a representative sample of the hundreds of games that take place every weekend as local teams battle out limited-over matches in the towns and villages of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the counties further north.

These are nominally amateur leagues in which one professional (sometimes two) are allowed per club; and with decent money on offer, at least historically, top test players from round the world have graced the challenging wickets and partisan atmosphere at the likes of Ashington, Blackrod, Bacup, Stockton and Settle.

Each of Pearson’s trips trigger an avalanche of comic observation, cricketing nostalgia and pithy comment on the way things were and the way things are. Players past, and all the greats played up here - Learie Constantine, Gary Sobers, Wilfred Rhodes, Basil D’Oliviera to name but a few – are lovingly recalled along with their sometimes questionable character traits and their epic feats etched into club record books.

Each game visited gets a mention too, with credit (or otherwise) given to the current crop of players, supporters behind the scenes, and spectators.

Funny and hugely entertaining, particularly for those for whom the cricketing names and places resonate.

The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood

It is the 1970s in Canada and Marian MacAlpin is a modern city girl living the bachelorette life and in the first part of the novel she shares that life and her thoughts through a first person narrative.

Her job with a market research company is satisfying enough while hardly stretching her recently graduated status and she rubs along in a shambolic symbiotic fashion with flat-mate Ainsley, united by a common enemy in the shape of the woman downstairs, their landlady. And there is a boyfriend, handsome and soon to be well-heeled lawyer, Peter. All is fine, normal; maybe, when she thinks about it, even boring. Maybe Marian needs a change, but one is coming as Peter stumbles into a proposal that Marian readily accepts.

A change occurs in the second part of the novel. Marian seems to cede, willingly, much of her autonomy to Peter. Much but not all. Within her, unconscious seeds of resistance sprout. Her body begins to reject certain types of food, increasingly and inconveniently narrowing her choice of diet. And her mind dwells on a strange young man she first meets during a survey, then repeatedly bumps into. And her story is now told in in the third person.

The tension between the conventional trajectory of her normal life and the subliminal intervention of her mind and body is played out in typical Atwood style (though this is a very early work). How will it end? In a short part three, but whether told in first or third person could hold the key.

What could have been a standard story of conflicted relationships becomes in Atwood’s hands a memorable, slightly off-kilter, fine piece of writing.

The Riders – Tim Winton

Fred Scully, wife, Jennifer, and young daughter, Billie have left a settled life in Perth, Australia to tour Europe. Jennifer has given up a well-paid job in order to give rein to her creative urge to be a writer, poet, painter or something equally artistic. Scully accommodates her, taking on casual labouring jobs to put food on the table. Then on a whim they (or she) decide to buy a rundown bothy they stumble over in rural Ireland. It is a wreck and while the girls return to Australia to sell up and settle affairs, Scully knuckles down to making the uninhabitable habitable.

That is where chapter one kicks in as Scully spends weeks in the cold wet wilderness working and living hard with only the local postie for company. It’s done by mid-December, but when Scully waits at Shannon Airport arrivals only Billie, an ‘unaccompanied child’ turns up on the connecting flight from London. No explanation from the airline and Billie goes mute on the subject.

Scully is at a loss. Where is Jennifer? Why has she jumped ship? Through choice or necessity?

To find her and get an explanation or at least closure, Scully sets off to check out their few contacts in Europe – Greece, Paris, Amsterdam – dragging Billie along with him. There are adventures and misadventures; and some hidden truths emerge. Questions are asked though mainly Scully asking himself did he really know his wife at all.

The trip around Europe, necessarily on a tight budget, is uncomfortable and hectic; and the writing brings that out in breathless style. There is also a couple of mystical episodes that have allegorical significance (and provide the title).

Does Scully track down his missing missus or find any answers? It is a page turner to the end to find out.

Chernobyl – Serhii Plokhy

The whole disaster of 26 March 1986, the build-up, the flare-up, the clean-up and the cover-up, is brought into focus in this ‘History of a Tragedy’.

It starts with the ill-planned and poorly conducted test shutdown and moves swiftly onto the desperate but futile efforts to quell the unquellable runaway reactor. That is followed by the failure to recognise or admit to the scale of the escaping radiation, with the safety of the population a mnor consideration compared with the need to maintain the fiction that the Soviet nuclear power stations are safe and protect the reputations of politicians, engineers and scientists involved. When that becomes clearly problematic, the scapegoating begins, and blame is apportioned where politically convenient. But in vain, the disaster and its effects are too big to cover up indefinitely and Plokhy is convinced it plays a big part in the eventual break up of the Soviet Union.

These components are all explored in forensic detail, and detail is the word; this is no sensationalist overview. The reader is provided with the frightening science of radioactivity and the oppressive politics of the soviet state where jobs and party position go side by side in an unhealthy mix. It inevitably involves some heavy reading, not so much the science as the politics, with unfamiliar Russian names populating unfathomable national, regional and local regimes that operate at the Party, government and industry level, all having a finger in every pie.

Plokhy does his best and brings out the broad themes effectively, and while he gives a balanced account he does not sit on the fence as to where he feels the faults lie. So, it makes for an authoritative, interesting, informative account, as digestible as such an account could be. But best not read it within fifty kilometres of a nuclear power station, unless you live there, in which case read it soon.

Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The book-packing journey reaches Nigeria, in the early sixties, a time of post-colonial optimism and promise for the lead characters in this novel – two Nigerians and an Englishman who has made the country his home.

Ugwu has just landed a plum job as houseboy to Odenigbo, an academic at the regional university, and sees it as a great opportunity to make his way in the world. In and out of the house is the beautiful Olanna, Odenigbo’s girlfriend; she comes from a wealthy and well-connected family who think she is slumming it with a lecturer when there are richer suitors available. Richard Churchill is a would-be writer obsessed with the ethnic artefacts of the country, who finds himself at odds with the ex-pat community he has landed in.

That social sphere overlaps the Nigerian elite, which is how he meets and falls for Kainene. Olanna’s non-identical but equally striking twin sister. Ugwu is not without love interest too, as he reaches adolescence and dabbles with the local servant girls while holding a torch for an old friend in the village. All in all, things are looking good for the trio, and any wobbles are of their own making.

But ethnic and religious divides in the new republic cause tension, envy, suspicion and eventually violent revolt, civil war and the secession of East Nigeria. That is where Ugwu, Olanna and Richard live, and they soon take up roles in the newly declared state of Biafra, flying its flag featuring the eponymous half a yellow sun.

We know how that ends; not well for Biafra. For the likes of Ugwu, Olanna and Richard the initial inconveniences and shortages soon give way to life changing events, brought vividly to life by the author (Adichie drawing on her family history).

The characters are well drawn, there is investment in the well-being of the trio, and the setting convinces as authentic, which all makes for a compulsive page-turning read.

Uncommon Type – Tom Hanks

Thirteen stories, some linked, and a series of small-town newspaper diary pieces (‘Our Town Today, with Hank Fiset’), form this collection by actor, now author, Tom Hanks.

The subject matters are generally slices of contemporary American life, though some take the author’s showbiz world as their milieu. The stories are well constructed with authentic characters, plots that lead somewhere interesting and conclude satisfactorily. And while that may be unfashionably old school, it works for this reviewer; the newspaper pieces, less so. The reference in each story to an old model of typewriter (Hanks collects them) is forgivably unobtrusive and serves to provide a title for the anthology.

A pleasurable and varied collection inevitably read with Hanks’ distinctive voice in mind, which does no harm to the experience at all.

The Wicked Boy – Kate Summerscale

The boy in this Victorian true-crime story is thirteen year old Robert Coombes. For over a week in July 1895, with his father away at sea, he and his younger brother, Nathaniel, maintained the fiction that their mother was away visiting relatives. But as they pawned family valuables, visited the test match at Lords cricket ground, and played cards with a simple-minded family friend the smell from the upstairs bedroom was getting worse and worse.

Kate Summerscale takes the reader steadily through the fateful week and then through the discovery and investigation of the murder (for such it is), and the trial and punishment of the perpetrator, combining a forensic approach to the detail of the case with a rich contextual analysis of the social history of the period in London’s East End.

The title should maybe have a question mark appended as Summerscale weighs the evidence on the boy’s actions – wicked by nature or by the circumstances of his upbringing and environment. And the story continues well after 1895 and far beyond London as surprising new evidence comes to light on Robert Coombes’ later life.

The writing sucks in the reader, hungry for detail and resolution yet happy enough to be taken off at interesting tangents that never outstay their welcome. A fascinating and enthralling read that engenders wonder at Kate Summerscale’s depth of research, so lightly worn.

The Visible World – Mark Slouka

This novel, and it does purport to be a novel, is in three sections: ‘Memoir’, ‘Intermezzo’ and ‘Novel’.

In the memoir the narrator tells episodically of his childhood growing up in 1950’s America, the son of Czech parents. The comings and goings of other émigrés, the stories told, the chat overheard, and secrets eavesdropped indicate a family history of drama, romance, tragedy and an aftermath that still echoes down the years into his own life.

In the intermezzo he travels to Prague to investigate wartime events. The details of Czech history, the facts, are in the national record to be uncovered, but unravelling the part in them played by his parents defies his efforts.

Not to worry, the novel section re-imagines it all anyway. In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1942 there is the palm-sweatingly tense drama of the resistance struggle; romance, bitter-sweet enough to tug the heartstrings; tragedy, inevitable but in an unexpected way and all the worse for that; and an aftermath, articulated with more difficulty but still thought-provoking.

It is reasonably well written, particularly the third, novel, section that in truth could stand alone.  Is the preceding memoir Slouka’s own? The dedication references his parents ‘who lived the years and half the story’ but the standard disclaimer says it is all fiction.

Two Brothers – Ben Elton

Two boys are born on the same night in the same hospital in Berlin in 1920. One is the only surviving twin of Frieda Stengal; the other is an instant orphan, his single mother, estranged from her family, dying in childbirth. Could, would, Frieda - after all she was expecting to go home with two babies - give the orphan a home?  She and husband Wolfgang agree and it is all done above board, paperwork completed and lodged officially. What could go wrong?

Only one thing – Frieda and Wolfgang are Jewish while the cuckoo in the nest is pure Aryan; and as the Nazis come to power in the following decade and unveil their hateful credo, trouble brews for the Stengal family.

Into their teens the boys are unaware that they are not twins. Yes, they are different; one thoughtful and bookish, the other wilful and looking for action, but that’s just personality isn’t it? They also have much in common – a determination to fight back against the Nazi oppression and, more personally, a shared obsessive love for the same rich Jewish girl and a shared indifference for an adoring poor Aryan one.  Never mind love triangle, this is a love tetrahedron.

It all plays out over the decades. The Jews are dead men walking; the Aryan boy could be given up and saved, but that means him giving up a culture, parents, a brother and the girl.

The main strand is the straight chronological account of the Stengal family up to and including the Second World War. Interspersed is the narrative of one of the brothers (which one?) in 1956 London, who has received first word in ten years from one of the girls (which one?).

It is a rattling good yarn (though it takes inspiration from Elton’s own family history), well plotted and well researched, which gives an unsettling account of drip fed anti-Semitism in pre-war Germany while presenting individual Jewish resistance in a more positive light than the norm. Some of the dialogue rings a tad modern for the era, but that may be unconventional rather than inaccurate.

It is long at 500+ pages, but reads a good deal shorter being both informative and entertaining.

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – Jon McGregor

The scene is set – a summer day in a suburban street in any town; the cast is as varied as to be expected. The old coping with their age; the middle-aged caring for their assets, painting the house, washing the car; young married couples snatching time while the kids play out, or play up; students killing time while they pack up to move on.

All of them watching each other with mild curiosity, observing superficial comings and goings without realising what lies beneath, things held inside, things not spoken to friends, partners and parents, never mind neighbours. It is just a day, unremarkable until late afternoon when something happens to stun the residents and send them all out onto the street in alarm.

One resident we get to know better. The day on the street is interspersed with her life in the few years afterwards. And that too is riddled with things not said; by her and to her.

It is a device that draws the reader in, generating an oscillating desire to get back to the street or to the girl’s story. The secrets of both are slowly and skilfully revealed. Signs are there, but can be misread.

Ironopolis – Glen James Brown

The book consists of six narratives spanning five decades of life in a struggling Teesside community.  It is struggling with poverty, poor housing, declining industry, unemployment, crime and anti-social behaviour. At least that is the external face; within the community are some decent folk making the best they can day to day with vibrancy and undue optimism.

In addition to location other threads link the narratives: common characters (at various stages of their lives), legendary events (seen from multiple perspectives), even a mythical creature that haunts the subterranean waterways and misty banks of the Tees (and the imagination of the locals).  The threads weave into a beguiling tapestry that may, or may not, reveal hidden truths.

Though the nature of truths and facts is a theme too; whose truth, whose facts?  The unreliability of memory and the existence of an ever-evolving local folklore underlie each engrossing tale, each told with a different, convincing yet articulate, voice that makes for effortless reading.

The only problem is the compulsion to keep reading and the conflicting desire to never reach the end.

Leonard and Hungry Paul – Ronan Hession

Leonard and Hungry Paul both lead lives that for their thirty-odd years have had little impact on the wider world.  For Leonard that is accidental whereas for Hungry Paul it is more of a policy decision.  Both, if not self-sufficient, are happy just interacting with their own immediate family and each other.

But their steady state universe is changing.  Leonard’s ménage a deux with his long-widowed mother, which is all he has known, has ended with her sudden death.  Paul also lives at home with his parents but his sister, Grace, is about to get married and she worries about the family she will leave behind; particularly her brother who she sees as both adrift personally and a drag on their parents.

Leonard has a job writing content for children’s encyclopaedias; Paul does casual work as a relief postman.  Both enjoy a relaxing evening with a board game, over which matters of the day are discussed.

Stuff happens; small stuff in global terms but big for the boys.  A girl shows interest; a competition is entered; voluntary work is undertaken; Grace’s wedding looms.

It is gentle fare.  Situations are well-observed and characters and relationships well-portrayed.  There is a bit of humour and plenty of quirky ideas in the protagonist’s easy conversations; but the closest to peril is the possibility of mild embarrassment.

So what is learned by the end of the book?  The quiet life has merit, particularly in this helter-skelter world; and nice inoffensive characters can still be interesting enough to carry a novel.

Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally

Oskar Schindler is a bit of an enigma and remains so even after this biography in the form of a novel.  As Keneally says, such a medium seems suited to tell the story of such an elusive and ambiguous character.

The facts at least, are known – how a German businessman, to all appearances one of many looking to maximise their war profits on the back of military contracts and interned Jewish labour, contrived to keep safe over a thousand workers first in his factory in Krakow before then transporting them wholesale to a new location in Czechoslovakia as the Russian army crossed into Poland.

The motivation is more difficult to fathom.  Readers are left to draw their own conclusions from the narrative pieced together from information gleaned from the survivors and their personal recollections and testimonies.  It is clear that Schindler is no saint; he was a womaniser who liked the good life and knew how to grease the palms of the powerful.  But what drove him to use his charm, money and influence to save the lives of strangers rather than exploit them to enhance his fortune?  Was it a dislike of the Nazi mind-set and its thuggish proponents or an anti-establishment streak in his entrepreneurial soul that drove him to undermine, frustrate and ultimately defy the powers that be?

Keneally provides the evidence – clearly and largely unemotionally - leaving the verdict to the reader.

Fascinating, tragic and uplifting by turns, the book provides a rare microcosmic insight into the darkest times in modern European history.

The Wrong Boy – Willy Russell

This book, though no travelogue, describes two journeys made by young Raymond Marks.

The first is simple in conception and purpose as he tries to get from Failsworth in Manchester to Grimsby to start a job on a building site organised for him by his uncle.  But it is anything but straightforward in execution as his efforts to hitch-hike there fall foul of bad luck, poor decisions and a sketchy grasp of geography.  Happily for the reader it is also extremely funny.

It is all recorded in real time by Raymond in his ‘lyrics book’ in the form of letters written (never to be sent) to his musical hero, Morrissey.  But his letters go further than his current misadventures as he takes the opportunity to share his longer, troubled, journey from boyhood to adolescence.  That has been neither simple nor amusing, though there is plenty of black humour there.  Rather it is engrossing and moving as the reader roots for Raymond as he battles against fate, hostile adults, the system and his own inherent ‘differentness’.

No spoilers here; the unfolding journeys need to be into the unknown, though Russell plants seeds and bait along the way to tempt progress and add a sense of foreboding.  The five hundred pages are full of text but the prose is easy to read having a deceptive simplicity that manages to sound both authentically ‘young’ and articulately clever - believably so as Raymond is clearly a born writer.

As is, of course, Willy Russell.  If further proof was needed it is here in this carefully plotted, well revealed, funny, tragic and thought-provoking book.

A Question of Blood – Ian Rankin

Three dead bodies at a public school in South Queensferry on the edge of Edinburgh – two pupils (and a third wounded) and an ex-SAS serviceman.  Add a fourth body, this one an ex-con, killed in a suspicious house fire in the inner city.

The two crimes are unrelated, apart from their respective connections to DI John Rebus.  One of the dead school kids is the son of his cousin; the ex-con had been threatening Rebus’s protégée DS Siobhan Clarke and now he is charred to a crisp and Rebus has burns to his hands serious enough to warrant bandages that severely impair elements of his lifestyle – such as holding pint glasses and lighting cigarettes.

He cannot drive either, so when he is called in to give his own ex-SAS (failed) insight into the school shooting he enlists DS Clarke as his driver and factotum.

The two cases unfold in tandem, or maybe that should be entwine, as neither is as straightforward as they first seem.  As is the tendency in these later Rebus books, Siobhan Clarke gets at least an equal share of the action, which does no harm by giving some relief from the curmudgeonly DI.

It is no spoiler to confirm that Rebus gets to the bottom of it all in due course, despite the fact he is officially barred from both investigations, as a near relative of the victim in one and a prime suspect in the other.

Well up to standard for the series.

The Sewing Machine – Natalie Fergie

1911, Clydebank in Scotland, and Jean Ferrier and Donald Cameron are working in the burgeoning Singer sewing machine factory; but not for long.  Union man Donald falls foul of management, loses his job and becomes a marked man in Glasgow necessitating a move across to Edinburgh to work in the Leith shipyards.  Jean goes with him but as she leaves she secretes a message in the last sewing machine she works on.

1954, Edinburgh, and Connie Baxter helps her mother, Kathleen, thread the needle of her old sewing machine and teases her for the notebooks she compiles detailing all the jobs she undertakes on the old Singer, whether for profit or pleasure.

2016, Edinburgh, and thirty-six year old Fred Morrison takes possession of his recently deceased grandfather’s flat.  He also inherits several cupboards full of junk, including an old sewing machine.  He is out of work and out of a relationship so with time to spare he tries his hand at sewing.

Their three stories are told in alternating episodes, the sewing machine providing a common thread; but it is not the only one.  Family histories unfold; a patchwork of relationships builds up; long held but little understood mysteries begin to be unpicked.  Enough of the sewing metaphors - although with the book itself brimming with them they are hard to avoid.

Those who like family sagas or sewing are most likely to enjoy the book.  I count myself as neither of these but still found it a good read with a satisfying resolution.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie Ford

The eponymous establishment is the Panama Hotel in Seattle, located at the juncture of the old Chinatown and Japantown areas of the city.  For Henry Lee, Chinese American, fifty-six and still grieving his wife’s recent death, it is a familiar landmark from his childhood, but it has been boarded up for decades.

Now, in 1986, new owners have moved in and are renovating.  They have made a discovery in the basement – suitcases and boxes of belongings stored there by families of Japanese heritage who were shipped out of town and interned in the post-Pearl Harbour panic of 1942.  For Henry it both brings back memories and holds out the prospect of finding a long lost treasure.

Cue the flashback to 1942 where twelve year old Henry Lee is the only Chinese kid in a white middle class school.  There is one more outsider there, a Japanese American girl.  Henry knows (his father tells him every day) that China and Japan are implacable enemies at war on the other side of the Pacific; but here at school Keiko is his only ally, and soon a friend.

The novel twin tracks Henry’s 1986 search for his hidden treasure and his 1942 cross cultural experiences, though the latter increasingly take prominence.  Both trajectories are a little predictable and the characters rather one-dimensional, but the historical context is interesting and informative.

It is an easy read, quicker than its 450 pages threaten, and it provides the reader with the promised mix of bitter and sweet.  But it is bitterness and sweetness rather than tragedy and passion, so all a bit restrained; which is maybe as it should be to reflect the culture of the protagonists.

By Night the Mountain Burns – Juan Thomas Avila Laurel

Read as leg 8 (Equatorial Guinea) of the Bookpacking reading journey as it makes landfall in Africa.  Or not quite; as this book is set on a remote Atlantic Ocean island off the continent’s west coast.

It is a story told of a boy’s experiences growing up there.  And told is the key word as it is reads as a monologue from skilled storyteller with the rhythms and repetitions that give that style its distinctiveness.

What happens matters less than how it is told and the various events within the narrative intertwine and are frequently, if temporarily, abandoned whenever a tangential happening or thought interrupts the storyteller’s mind to distract him.  But he returns to them all eventually and loose ends are tied up by the end.

The culture of the Atlantic Ocean island and its inhabitants suffuse the narrative giving a richness that draws the reader in.  There are no chapters and precious few breaks in the text, but that matters not as the narrator’s voice is beguiling.  He is in the room with you and to walk away almost seems impolite.

A different and memorable reading experience.

Beartown – Fredrik Backman

Beartown: a Scandinavian town slowly dying in the northern forest, its industry in decline and the glory days of its ice hockey A-team well past.  The one bright spot is the youth team, spearheaded by a rare talent, backed by teammates willing to put their bodies on the line, coached by an ex-player with an unquenchable thirst to win, supported by intimidating fans, and financed by the few local businessmen still making money.

Then there is general manager, Peter Andersson; another ex-player who made good, getting into the NHL in Canada before injury and a personal tragedy brought him back to take charge of the club he loves.  He has to respond to all those competing interests; keep the lid on the pressure cooker; balance current needs with past loyalties and future prospects.  Quite a task, but he is not the only one with such choices.

The book starts slowly; there is no need to rush in Beartown, unless you have your skates on.  So we meet a large cast of characters, but it is done at a steady pace and with such skill as to enable easy assimilation.  Each has distinctiveness and depth.  We come to understand the players and their roles on and off the ice; the coaches, parents, friends and teachers who, push them on or pull them back; the movers and shakers in the boardroom with their manoeuvring and plotting; and others on the fringes, resentful at their exclusion from, or dismissive of the folly of, the town’s obsession.

But these undercurrents are suddenly brought to the surface when a shocking incident polarises opinion.  Compromise and accommodation goes out of the window as sides are taken and violence threatens to spread from the rink to the streets and the forest.

It is atmospheric and absorbing, told mainly with the immediacy of the present tense with the odd flashback and occasional foreboding future reference.  By the end the reader knows Beartown as well as anyone living there, and cares just as much as anyone about the fate of the town and the prospects of its residents.

Day of the Accident – Nuala Ellwood

When Maggie Allen comes out of her coma, ten weeks after the day of the accident, her memory is hazy.  Two things she learns quickly: her child is dead and buried and her husband has cleared off leaving her homeless, penniless and at the mercy of the welfare state.

That is not a good place to be when in a fragile mental state and there are lots of tears amid feelings of loss, guilt and recriminations.  She knows she is in some way responsible for Elspeth’s death but the chain of events leading to it has more links missing than in place.

Her condition is all the more frightening for her as it brings back to mind an earlier period of mental ill-health that followed an incident in her youth.  Is that connected to the accident somehow?  This is a novel, so probably yes; but how?

The twin mysteries unravel slowly with a third added for good measure by the periodic insertion of letters written from a daughter to her mother, neither named.  Are they real or imagined; genuine or a fabrication; who are they from and to?

Maggie’s frustrations at her inability to remember or even function effectively in her new circumstances are vividly portrayed, but possibly overly so.  The unsympathetic reader may say, just get a grip, woman.  This means when events unfold and clues lead to a dramatic conclusion, Maggie’s transformation from quivering wreck to clear-thinking heroine is remarkable.

Nevertheless the plotting is clever with the obligatory twists and turns and the ending, though not entirely convincing, works well enough.

Touching the Void – Joe Simpson

A constant reminder is needed when reading this book that it is non-fiction as otherwise the tale would consistently fail the ‘as if’ test.

For mountaineers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates the attraction of the 21,000 ft. Siula Grand peak in the Peruvian Andes was its isolation and the consequent knowledge that there they could rely only on each other.  No-one waiting in an Alpine village down the hill, no mountain rescue poised to help, at their camp only a hiker they had picked up in Lima, along for the walk not the climb; and of course in 1985 no mobile phones.

After some acclimatisation and reconnaissance climbs Joe and Simon set off for the unclimbed west face of the mountain.  The ascent is full of challenges – snow, wind, altitude, ice, rockfalls, difficult terrain – but nothing unexpected, nothing unprepared for.  It is the descent that goes wrong, terribly wrong.

Joe has a fall, is badly injured and Simon’s efforts to get him down are truly heroic.  But bad goes to worse and when you are being pulled out of a melting snow seat by the crippled man you are roped to, and he is hanging over a yawning crevasse 150 feet below you, what do you do?

The moral dilemma is central to the book; its resolution and outcome is astonishing.  Time and again the author’s name on the cover has to be checked as the odds of his survival lengthen, page by page, from unlikely to impossible.

There are climbing terms used but there is no need to be a climber to appreciate the writing.  The emotions are raw but the prose is polished; and even if it were otherwise the resilience of the man would deserve a reading.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson

The Thunderbolt Kid, of course, is Bryson himself, the young boy living in Des Moines, Ohio during the 1950’s.  And life and times is what we get with recollections of his early life growing up in the Midwest and reflections on the social trends and national events of that formative period in the USA.

The recollections are often funny, laugh out loud funny, helped by childlike exaggeration that fits the voice and tone of the memoirs.  And the reflections are insightful ranging across race relations, nuclear armament, consumerism and communism to name but a few.

Why the Thunderbolt Kid?  That is his alter-ego after joining the ranks of the superheroes that populated the comic books of the day.  His superpower – that of blasting those adults, and there were many (teachers, neighbours, shopkeepers, cinema managers), that he found frustrating, obstructive or unpleasant, into oblivion.

Bryson at his brilliant best.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest – Stieg Larsson

This is the third book in Larsson’s Millennium trilogy and picks up exactly where volume two ended, which is just as well as “Played with Fire” left a lot of loose ends not to mention badly damaged bodies.

There is less mayhem here, more intrigue as several agencies try to unravel the mystery that is Lisbeth Salander.  A couple of police forces, two factions within the Swedish state security organisation, a corrupt psychologist and of course Millennium magazine’s Mikael Blomkvist after a good story, are variously trying to get her locked up, shut up, eliminated or rescued from herself. Meanwhile Salander lies in hospital under guard with only her lawyer allowed to visit; not that that stops the hacker extraordinary from getting involved remotely once she gets illicit access to the internet.

It gets complicated.  But at least the timeline is simple and events race along so it reads less than the 750 pages.  In truth it could lose two hundred pages if Larsson cut down on the spurious detail, particularly geographic; those familiar with Stockholm may find the street level information interesting, but those not can either ignore it or spend time with the maps provided.  There is also a side story concerning Blomkvist’s lover Erika Berger that could be omitted without any loss.

As usual, Blomkvist gets his end away and runs rings round everyone, but Lisbeth Salander remains the star turn in a typically violent finale.

And finale it will be for me.  Although the series has been continued after Stieg Larsson’s death by David Lagercrantz I have had my fill thank you very much.

Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood

After a long career, painter Elaine Risley is back in Toronto where a gallery is mounting a retrospective of her work.  Her return prompts memories of her childhood and youth spent in the city.  With unconventional parents and a brilliant older brother her upbringing left her ill-prepared for the schoolyard, neither able to form friendships with the other girls nor deal with their spite and cruelties.

It seems she’s been dealing with it ever since – in her art and in her relationships with the men in her life, which both seem to attract the opprobrium of other women.

As the past and present intertwine a personal and vivid picture of life in post-war and baby-boom Canada emerges, illuminated both by the clarity of youth and the wisdom, or is it world-weary cynicism, of age.

Even filtered through Elaine Risley’s off-kilter narration, Margaret Atwood’s prose flows beautifully, and as ever her articulation of the human condition hits the mark.

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

To start at the end is only sensible, for this is the imagined back story of Antoinette, the mad wife of Mr Rochester in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

Before then she is the attractive stepdaughter of a Mr Mason, with a large dowry designed to get her off his hands.  Edward Rochester takes the bait but soon regrets it as Antoinette comes with a lot of baggage: a Jamaican estate denuded due to the emancipation of the slaves; a handful of house servants, some faithful, some resentful; an absent mother reputed to be crazy; and mixed race relatives that date back to the indiscriminate philandering of her dead father, ‘old’ Cosway’.

The Caribbean climate is oppressive, as is the poisonous social sphere where complexities of race, nationality, class and wealth conspire to confound both characters and the reader.

We know how it ends, and Jane Eyre fans will probably enjoy this spin-off telling how it started.  The general reader less so?

Review of 2018 Reading Year

A good year’s reading saw 30 books read and reviewed with a high proportion (80%) by ‘new to me’ authors.  The standard was variable with a new random element introduced by joining a reading group at the local independent bookshop.  However this diverted resources away from the ‘bookpacking’ reading journey leaving it becalmed somewhere in South America; no matter, onward to Africa in 2019.

Five ‘new to me’ authors, a reading group choice and a familiar favourite all feature in my seven best books of the year, which are as follows. (Full review month in brackets.)

A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan: An eccentric cast of characters pop in and out of a disconnected but entertaining and invigorating narrative. (January)

Sixteen Trees of the Somme – Lars Mytting: Great locations, deeply involved plot, and engaging characters make this a richly satisfying tale of intrigue and self-discovery. (April)

Educated – Tara Westover: Jaw-dropping autobiography of a girl who self-educates herself out of the backwoods of Idaho and her isolationist patriarchal family. (June)

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep – Joanna Cannon: Set in the oppressive heat of the summer of ’76 this multi-layered mystery tale is rich in period detail and has a young main narrator whose simplicity of telling provides great insight. (June)

Transcription – Kate Atkinson: Told over three short periods, decades apart, the deceptively light tone hides dark deeds, violence and betrayals first in WW2 London then post war in the BBC. (November)

The Kind Worth Killing – Peter Swanson: A cleverly plotted and unusually structured thriller that starts with a chance encounter at an airport and ends up in mayhem. (November)

I Let You Go – Clare Mackintosh: Another cleverly plotted and unusually structured thriller, this one starts with a tragedy and ends in a headlong rush to avert another. (December)