Life After Life – Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson loves playing with time. Most straightforwardly her Jackson Brodie books use teasing flashbacks to enhance the narrative, while her debut novel ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ was full of inter-generational echoes. In Life After Life it gets more complicated.

Ursula Todd is born on 11 February 1910 but dies immediately as the doctor, held up by the snow, fails to arrive in time to deal with a tangled cord. Then Ursula Todd is born on 11 February 1910 and the doctor, held up by the snow, arrives just in time to deal successfully with a tangled cord and present a healthy baby to mother Sylvie.

Thus Ursula begins a lifetime (or several) in which she grows, succumbs to perils, regresses to 11 February 1910, grows again, survives perils, only to meet new ones. The perils are both personal – a beach, a high window, puberty, domestic violence – and epic – two world wars and their aftermath.

Though Ursula experiences discomforting feelings of déjà vu and premonitions of danger, it is only in later cycles that a more conscious realisation dawns and provides tempting opportunities to ‘put things right’.

In less assured hands the repetition could be wearing, but here nuanced variations and filling of gaps make for an enthralling account of Ursula’s life and times. The Todd family members and their relationships are wholly believable; the period pieces, particularly the London blitz, have authenticity; and even the surprise appearance of a dark figure from history does not seem out of place.

It is not a quick read at 600 pages, particularly as there is a temptation (to which I gave in) to read several of them more than once to check whether it is your memory or Atkinson that is playing tricks. Within those pages are comedy (Ursula has a dry wit), tragedy (people die, often more than once), and no little history – a veritable Shakespearean canon in the one brilliant volume.

Joyland – Stephen King

Devin Jones looks back on the summer of ’73 with mixed feelings. Twenty-one, two years into college in New Hampshire, with a steady (if unconsummated) relationship with girlfriend Wendy, he finds himself abandoned for the summer when she goes off to work at some dream job with a friend. On a whim he answers an advert for summer help at Joyland, a North Carolina coastal amusement ride park, successfully interviews and moves south for the season.

The location is idyllic (it’s a stroll along the beach from his seaside town digs to the park); the work is hard, particularly “wearing the fur” in a hundred degree heat as the park’s mascot “Howie the Happy Hound”, but fun - ensuring the visitors have an enjoyable day. He makes good friends with the other casuals, including Tom & Erin at his digs, but the regular ‘carnie’ folk are a mixed bunch, some suspicious, some supportive, some hostile and all unconventional.

He is soon intrigued by two mysteries. First the ‘Horror House’ dark ride is reputedly haunted by the ghost of a girl found murdered therein a couple of summers earlier, the crime still unsolved. Second, more personal, involves a disabled boy and a young woman whose opulent beach house he passes each morning and evening; the boy waves, the woman doesn’t. Their names, he later discovers, are Annie and Mike Ross, mother and son.

The narrative (it is Devin looking back) and the mysteries unfold over the long hot summer. Devin’s emotional highs and lows would be at home on the ‘Delirium Shaker’ – Joyland’s roller coaster – as dumped at long distance by Wendy he finds himself attracted to both digs-mate Erin and the distant Annie. At work his performances in the fur (and competence in first aid) make him a hero with the kids, but the harsh realities of Mike’s condition are a constant worry. Then Erin’s digging into the unsolved murder provides both danger and the opportunity to unmask the killer. As the southern end-of-summer heat builds to thunderstorms, so his summer of adventure builds to an exciting climax (or two).

Stephen King is of course a master of storytelling and I particularly like his shorter and less supernatural work such as this. Strong on character, plot, tension and atmosphere this is an exceedingly good read.

The Last Battle – Cornelius Ryan

The third book in Cornelius Ryan’s World War Two reportage trilogy (following on from the better known ‘The Longest Day’ telling the story of the D-day landings and ‘A Bridge Too Far’ which covered the ill-fated attempt to take Arnhem) takes for its subject the final days of the war in Europe, leading to the fall of Berlin.

As in the previous volumes, events unfold through the lives and experience of the survivors – named British, American, Russian and German soldiers, politicians and diplomats, and also the (mainly German) civilians caught in the crossfire. Ryan weaves their testimony, acquired through numerous interviews, with military and governmental records of the time to produce a coherent and compelling narrative.

The result is a riveting read. Although the outcome of the battle is history, how it unfolded, how the key strategic and political decisions were arrived at, and the effects of these on individuals, be they combatants or civilians, ensures interest is maintained to the bitter end.

Light is shed for example on why the Western Allies left Berlin to the Russians, what the fate was of ordinary Berliners once the defences were breached, and on Hitler’s mind set and actions during those last days in the bunker.

Troop manoeuvres and combat are covered, but the main thrust is not military tactics but the impact on individual men and women. Like any cross section, these individuals include heroes and cowards, saints and villains, as well as those who just kept their head down or took their own lives in despair.

A good book in its own right and a fitting final volume to the trilogy.

Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan

Clay Jannon, late web-master of the recently defunct NewBagel Company, is pounding the streets of San Francisco in search of new employment when he spots a sign in the window of a bookshop: “Help Wanted, Late Shift, Specific Requirements, Good Benefits”.

Inside it is dark, cavernous with shelving stacks disappearing into the gloom above and beyond. Behind the desk is an old man, thin, grey but with sparkling blue eyes, Mr Penumbra himself. The interview, conducted immediately, is short and unconventional and sees him installed on the night shift (10 till 2).

Purchasers are few and far between, and stocks for sale are limited to a few bookcases front of house; but there are a select band of ‘members’ who borrow volumes from the ‘waybacklist’ housed on those vertiginous shelves. Other than being punctual for his solo shift there are two other golden requirements: he must not read any of the books, and he must record all transactions in detail – including the customers’ physical appearance and state of mind.

All very strange, but it pays the rent on a flat-share, and with plenty of time on his hands overnight, he passes it working on a couple of techie projects: a computerised 3D model of the bookstore to enable ‘data visualisation’ and a small scale hyper-targeted advertising application to snare any potential customer passing by. The latter, completed first, lures in a young woman via her smartphone. She is unimpressed with the bookstore but clocks the 3D model on his laptop and takes a professional interest.

The relationship develops, both personally (she is cute) and professionally (she is a Google programmer) and when they apply cutting edge techniques and geeky networks to the mystery of the waybacklist and its users, things get interesting. A secret society is unearthed and powerful reactionary forces are unleashed.

But it is not too heavy or scary, more light and frothy. Clay’s friends, joined in the enterprise, are bright, witty young things showing a frighteningly comprehensive (real or fictional) knowledge of IT and a belief that all problems are solvable. The older generation pitch in with some OK - ‘old knowledge’ – wisdom, but this is a book that looks forward not back.

It is written for the young but can still be enjoyed by an oldie like me.

The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

With the blurb including the phrase “a Dickensian dazzler” the expectation was for a nineteenth century setting in smoky London town, so it was a surprise to be pitched instead into twenty-first century New York.

The narrator is Theo Decker, thirteen as the story opens, and on his way with his mother (currently his only parent) to a school disciplinary meeting. They are early, it starts to rain, and they pop into the art gallery to shelter, taking the opportunity to have another peek at their favourite work – the Goldfinch, barely more than a miniature, painted by a Dutch master, and priceless. On the back of such a coincidental chain of circumstance, disaster strikes, leaving Theo bereft of his dear mother but in secret possession of the painting.

To whom will his care be entrusted? Initially it is the family of his geeky friend Andy Barbour, in their swish Park Avenue apartment, where he gets a taste of the high life and refined society. But it is temporary and when his absentee father turns up to claim him he is whisked off to Las Vegas where the paternal business of gambling is based. There, left to his own devices, he is befriended by the other loner on the school bus, Boris Pavlikovski, similarly neglected by his Russian/Ukrainian mining engineer father. The two boys largely fend for themselves; largely with alcohol and drugs.

His third “loco parentis” is Hobie, surviving partner of Hobart and Blackwell, dealers in and restorers of antique furniture, befriended due to Blackwell having perished in the same disaster that claimed Mrs Decker. Hobie’s workshop provides a retreat when the Barbours get too overwhelming and an escape when his Las Vegas life finally runs off the rails.

While Theo’s care is fragmented and chaotic, his care of the painting is meticulous and of course unknown; his ownership (and the circumstances of it) having an importance to him that far outweighs its monetary value.

Having survived a traumatic childhood and adolescence, stability beckons – as a respected partner in Hobie’s business and engaged to a Barbour girl – but someone is on his case, digging up his past and making waves.

Dealing with it makes the upheavals of his youth seem child’s play; he is soon embroiled with the big boys (including, for good or bad, his old friend Boris) who deal not in dodgy furniture but drugs, guns and, tellingly, stolen art.

So not that Dickensian, except Theo could easily be a modern day David Copperfield or Pip of Great Expectations, also orphans left to grow up in an unfamiliar world buffeted by adults who are kind, cruel and indifferent (some of them all three). These characters that surrounded Theo (more than mentioned above), and in some way define him, are well drawn and pleasingly complex.

It is as long as a Dickens novel at 850 pages, but the prose is easy on the eye, making each of them a pleasure to read.

Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 into a family well-connected to the Thembu royal house of the Xhosa nation that had for centuries inhabited the Transkei region of South Africa. His early childhood mirrored that of countless previous generations, centred on subsistence farming in the rural hinterland, and was largely unaffected by the white dominated government.

But at seven years old, as befitted his station in life, he was kitted out in a cut-off pair of his father’s trousers and sent off to school to commence a British style education, on the first day of which he was allocated a British name – Nelson.

Though not a brilliant student he was studious and hard-working, and so progressed through the black education system via boarding school to university. It was there that early brushes with the relatively benign white establishment started to build a consciousness of an ingrained assumed superiority among the whites.

While questioning that oppression he also found himself at odds with the traditional tribal authority that among other things threatened him with an arranged marriage. In limbo between out-dated tribalism and stifling white supremacy, he ran away to the city – Johannesburg – to make his own way in the world as best he could.

With a good (for a black) education he found work as a lawyer’s clerk, eventually gaining sufficient qualifications to take on his own cases, often fighting for the rights of those suffering from the discriminatory race laws. More significantly he found like-minded political thinkers in the African National Congress, through whose ranks he rose.

What followed - demonstrations, arrests, banning orders, internal exile, trials, prison and long-delayed release – is familiar; but it is no less interesting as it reveals its gradual imposition on a man trying to balance his love for and need to support his growing family with his deep felt duty to his people.

Written with simplicity of style, clarity of moral purpose, and self-effacing modesty, the book reads less that its 600 pages and places on record the life of an extraordinary man whose remarkable ability to embrace his oppressor and gaoler enabled the rainbow nation to survive a transition from apartheid to inclusive democracy that few would have believed possible.

White Nights – Ann Cleeve

In this, the second of Ann Cleeve’s “Shetland” series, the year has turned and it is midsummer in the northern isles, which means long days and “white nights” during which darkness never really falls. Even for locals like police detective Jimmy Perez it is unsettling; for visitors off the newly docked cruise liner it is a tourist attraction to be experienced.

An alternative attraction is the Herring House gallery at the remote Biddista hamlet where an exhibition by the owner Bella Sinclair and fellow artist Fran Hunter (now an item with Perez) is on offer. However the gala opening is disrupted when a stranger throws a wobbler, claiming memory loss and leaving in apparent confusion. He is later found hanging from the roof of the boathouse on the beach.

Suicide by a crazed mainlander? Perez has his doubts, and the post mortem confirms murder – but who is he, why did he come to Shetland, was his distress real or an act and, most importantly, whodunit?

Again Perez is joined in the investigation by Roy Taylor from the mainland and once more they work in uneasy alliance to solve the riddle, Taylor digging into the stranger’s ID and background while Perez seeks to find his local connection to the tight knit highland community.

There is an initial lethargy to the proceedings, reflecting the white nights’ mood of the island, but this gets ramped up as the investigation unearths events long buried but not forgotten.

The plot is tight and twisting with a pleasing but fathomable complexity typical of the author; Perez’s romance moves on but does not intrude; and the topographical detail remains authentic, but subtly different under those long days and short white nights of the “summer dim”.