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.