Ghostwritten – David Mitchell

Billed as a novel in nine parts, this reads more like nine novellas loosely linked.

The settings move east to west with the sun – Japan, Hong Kong, China, Mongolia, Petersburg, London, the Western Isles of Scotland, and the east coast of the USA.  In each location a different lead character engages the reader in their life, sometimes a single day and at the other extreme, lasting cradle to grave. There is some overlap of characters in the stories, though this is incidental and teasing rather than necessary for plot development.

If there is a common theme it may be the need to escape, physically or mentally, from a situation, or to search for a solution.  If there is an overarching resolution it is left to the reader to fathom.

Nevertheless the assemblage provides interesting reading, skilfully employing a variety of styles to address a variety of modern themes.

The Mirror World of Melody Black – Gavin Extence

Melody Black appears late in the book; the actual narrator is Abby Williams and the reader lives in her skin throughout.  She is bubbly and lively, not to mention quirky as evidenced by her reaction to finding a neighbour dead in the flat next door.  That incident is the catalyst to a rise in her article-writing fortunes, and her mood with it.

But with a bi-polar diagnosis such rises are a risk and Abby goes into a manic phase inevitably followed by a depressive slide.

Extence deals with both sides of the coin with apparent authenticity and the settings – home, therapists, institution and remote retreat are convincingly drawn.  Abby is an engaging and vulnerable character, making her easy for the reader to empathise with and root for.

Oh, and Melody Black turns up eventually with an unfortunate link to Abby’s past and with an interesting theory on why people ‘go nuts’.  Apart from that, the book manages to be both informative on bi-polar disorder and an entertaining read.

I Am Malala – Malala Yousafzai

“The girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban” is not only the sub-title of Malala’s autobiographical account but probably the sum total of what most people know about her.  This book puts that right by providing not only her own background but that of her young country and its brief troubled history.

Though the book starts with a prologue describing the dreadful shooting it quickly shifts into a conventional time line as Malala describes her family and early memories in Swat, a princely state that was absorbed into the newly formed Pakistan making up its northwest frontier with Afghanistan.  As well as her daily life in her home, she describes the political context in a clear and balanced manner (perhaps credit here to the co-writing support of foreign correspondent Christina Lamb).

It is an eye-opening account of life under threat from both the Taliban and the Pakistani military authorities who vie for control of the valley.  Civil government is a fiction in these parts.  Despite that, her father’s passion for education defies the odds by founding, developing and maintaining a school that, whatever the risks, allows girls to attend and learn.

Malala is an ace student and a vocal advocate for her and her gender’s right to education.  Her profile on the country rises, along with her father’s, and both know the dangers that entails but refuse to kowtow.

Events take their course.  The prologue has given away the strike, and the book’s existence testifies to her recovery.  Not just recovery, but triumph; of which this remarkable book, written by a sixteen year old (albeit with support), is part.

Transcription – Kate Atkinson

The book starts in 1981 with the end; Juliet Armstrong, aged 60, knocked down by a car and lying in a London street.  The part of her life that flashes back to her is the last time she was in England in 1950 working for the BBC producing schools programmes for the radio.

That has its challenges, particularly for a woman, but Julia is good at her job and usually gets her way.  But she is troubled when Godfrey Toby, a colleague from her job ten years previous, blanks her in the street.  Then other strange things happen that causes her to reflect back on those times.

That was in 1940, the early days of the war, when as a nineteen year old she volunteered and like many young educated women was recruited as a clerk in the intelligence service.  Godfrey Toby was a double agent running a ring of Nazi sympathisers in London; and when they met to talk sedition in his flat their conversations were recorded next door by Cyril the technician and transcribed by Juliet the clerk typist.  When Juliet is given the opportunity to participate in some low risk field work she jumps at the chance and does well, discovering a talent for dissimulation and lies.  But even low risk operations and transcribing have potential for cock-ups and danger.

And still in 1950, as well as the day job at the Beeb, Juliet is pressed into a favour from time to time by her old bosses.  She is no longer a teenage ingénue, but when a minor op again goes awry danger of a different sort raises its head.

The narrative is light, the plot arc deceptively simple and the time shifts, for once, are straightforward.  That leaves plenty reader attention available to be paid to the period nostalgia and the charming interplay between Juliet and the (mainly male) hierarchy in the secret service and the BBC.

But how much of all that is a front; and what is it hiding?  

The Kind Worth Killing – Peter Swanson

Ted Severson meets Lily in an airport bar, shares a drink; then more, as the flight is delayed.  He also shares his recently discovered marital problems, finding Lily sympathetic to his position and surprisingly supportive of a solution he is considering – to kill the cheating bitch.

In alternate chapters Lily’s back story and Ted’s preparations are revealed in unhurried chilling detail.  It takes nearly half the book before the first twist upends the reader; then more follow in an accelerating spiral to the end.

It is cleverly plotted with interesting main characters who narrate their own intersecting contributions to the unfolding drama.  For those who like their thrillers dark and twisting this is definitely one of the kind worth reading.

Fall of Giants – Ken Follett

This gigantic book, and it is just volume one of a trilogy, aims to whizz the reader through a dozen pivotal years of the early twentieth century that encompasses the First World War.  Follett uses a relatively small cast of main characters, spread geographically and sociologically to make this manageable.  As a result these few representatives of the millions caught up in the maelstrom have experiences and encounters to rival those of Forrest Gump.

Lord ‘Fitz’ Fitzherbert is landed gentry; his land included coal mines in South Wales and a big manor house there.  He sits in the Lords so has the inside track on British war preparations, and his wife is a Russian Princess so he has aristocratic connections there; but he is not above slumming it with his local chambermaid.  Once the war starts he takes up his role as commander in chief of the local regiment and sees service in France and (oddly) Russia.

Lady Maud Fitzherbert, sister of Fitz and of independent mind, is a keen suffragist and political activist not shy of bending the ear of her brother’s influential houseguests.  Pre-war these include young diplomats from the US and Germany, and inconveniently she falls for one of the wrong nationality.

Billy Williams is a young collier in Fitz’s mine, then a young soldier in his regiment; a thorn in the side of the bosses in both cases.  His sister Ethel is a bright-eyed and capable chambermaid at the big house before being shipped out of harm’s way in London.  There she teams up with Lady Maud to promote the suffrage cause.

Gus Dewar and Walter von Ulrich are the junior diplomats from USA and Germany who attend the pre-war unofficial gathering at Fitz’s house.  They may be young and junior but they both have important connections.  Gus is aide to President Wilson and Walter’s father is high up in the German military.  Back in the US, Gus is engaged to Olga Vyalov, daughter of a Russian émigré businessman/gangster.  Walter, having met Maud is keeping his matrimonial powder dry.

Over in Russia the revolution is brewing.  That means trouble for Fitz’s brother-in-law Prince Andrei.  At the other end of the spectrum, it hints at the end of oppression for the likes of Gregori Peshkov, a metal worker who gets active in the soviets that are starting to exert influence.  His brother, Lev, is more interested in getting to America, which he achieves via South Wales (and a brush with Billy).  Once in the USA he gets work as a chauffeur with the Vyalovs and unwisely takes a shine to Olga.  Meanwhile as war and revolution take hold in Russia, Gregori rises high enough to get involved with Lenin and Trotsky.

As the war spreads, characters share meeting rooms in London, battlefields in France, and political manoeuvring in Russia.  Confusing? Not really; it is pretty well put together and the broad sweep is well enough known.  Suspend disbelief in the coincidental nature of the characters’ inter-connectivity and enjoy the insiders’ view of the cataclysmic early years of the century.

And there is more to come for those who need to know how the next generation fare.

The Sellout – Paul Beatty

Where to start?  With the narrator; black, educated – home educated by a social scientist father with his own take on race and street educated by dint of living in the city suburb of Dickens, albeit on an urban smallholding.  Or with Dickens itself; a ghetto community on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, whose twinning overtures are turned down by Juarez who see it as too violent, Chernobyl as too polluted, and Kinshasa as too black.  Or with the alleged crime: violation of the thirteenth amendment through the ownership of a slave.

It matters not as once the machine gun prose of Paul Beatty starts everything gets shot at as the narrator seeks to explain how he ended up in front of the Supreme Court despite his well-meaning efforts to recreate the self-respect and community spirit of Dickens.  OK, his methods were unconventional and counter-intuitive, not to mention often hilarious.

With each paragraph packed with meaning (and peppered with expletives) it is not a quick read, but in the main it is a fun read.  Sure, serious points are made but more in exasperation than anger.

Readers not black nor American (like me) may miss some of the jokes and references but that still leaves plenty to laugh at and think about.