Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus

When we first meet Elizabeth Zott, in the 1960s, she is a single mother hosting an afternoon TV cookery show. In her mind, neither of these roles define her. She is first and foremost a chemist who looks at the world through scientific eyes.

Her route from outstanding chemistry undergraduate to iconic TV housewife is revealed piecemeal in the novel, so no spoilers here. Sufficient to say it is men and male attitudes that have thwarted her vocation in life. But Elizabeth Zott is difficult to thwart as she strives to subvert the roles allocated by those who seek to pigeonhole her.

The message is hammered home mercilessly but entertainingly in breezy style as Elizabeth, armed only with good looks, scientific knowledge, and a 2H pencil takes on the male hegemony.

Enough said; read and enjoy.

Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr

Three narratives, centuries apart; five characters who begin as strangers; and one, or not even that, ancient Greek comedy attributed to Diogenes; are all weaved together to produce a memorable novel.

In the past, mid-fifteenth century Europe, a young girl named Anna is learning to embroider (badly) in a Constantinople sweatshop. She is more interested in the world outside and finds a way to learn Greek, using the skill to earn a crust by raiding a long-abandoned library and selling on the texts. However, approaching the city is the Sultan’s vast army, intent on conquest. With it, conscripted as an oxen driver, is young Omeir, disfigured and shunned, but devoted to his oxen.

In the present, in a local library in Lakeport, Idaho, an old man named Zeno is taking a group of schoolkids through a dress rehearsal of a play he has cobbled together. Downstair, Seymour, a troubled teenager, lurks with a bomb in his rucksack.

In the future, a young girl named Konstance lives with her family and similar volunteers on the Argos, a spaceship on a generations-long mission to a new beginning on a planet of a distant star. All the mission’s needs are met by an all-knowing AI, going by the name of Sybil.

The link, initially and tenuously, is the Diogenes text. Anna steals it in Constantinople and keeps it for herself. It passes through Omeir’s hands and is lost for centuries. Once rediscovered and shared on-line, Zeno makes his amateur attempt at translation / reconstruction. Seymour and Konstance both get involved (to say how would be a spoiler), and the text’s importance to all their lives increasingly emerges.

It is well written and cleverly constructed in narratives spliced in terms of time and space. The nearly six hundred pages race by in engaging prose, full of depth as each character’s back story and future is revealed with compassion and insight.

Up there with the best reads of recent years.

The Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood

We are back in the post-apocalyptic world introduced in the author’s earlier work Oryx and Crake where few have survived the deadly pandemic, Oryx unwittingly unleashed.

Toby has survived and is holed up on a rooftop garden, with access to food and water for now. Ren’s survival is due to a temporary stay in an isolation facility that saved her from infection. It caters to her every need, but the bad news is that she is locked inside and everyone outside seems to be dead.

We get each girl’s back story, Toby in the third person and Ren in the first. And they have a connection – both had spells as members of the ‘God’s Gardeners’ religious cult that preached self-sufficiency (useful now!), environmental awareness, and the inevitable demise of humanity in a ‘waterless flood’, which has come to pass in the form of the pandemic.

Toby and Ren’s pasts teem with characters and action against a backdrop of an all too believable future where current societal trends come to fruition. Global corporations dominate a bipolar society of the haves, who work for them, and the have nots, who don’t.

How Toby and Ren got where they are, and whether they will remain isolated or manage to make contact with other survivors, provide a strong narrative hook that engages the full 500 pages.

Roll on vlume three of the trilogy – MaddAddam.

Emma – Jane Austen

Set in the Regency world of country houses and formality we have, centre stage, Emma Woodhouse. Young, attractive, comfortably off living with her widowed father, and it has to be said, a little spoilt. She acknowledges that, and is bent on self-improvement, almost as much as she is bent on improvement of others.

Such as Harriet Smith, ‘natural’ if inconvenient daughter of some man with means enough to place her out of the way but in a respectable position. Emma soon has plans for Harriet, which do not include marriage ‘beneath her’ to a local farmer. She thinks Harriet can do better, spikes the proposal, and steers her protégé towards the new vicar, Mr Elton.

Emma, herself, is more than eligible, but has declared that she will not marry, as that would entail leaving her home and father, over both of which she has free rein. She is happy in her circle that includes her old governess, now married locally to Mr Weston, her sister married to Mr John Knightly with two children, and her brother-in-law, the other Mr Knightly, an established bachelor who holds the family seat at Donwell Abbey. Also tolerated are two spinsters, Mrs. and Miss Bates. When Emma, for the benefit of Harriet, draws Mr Elton into the fold she miscalculates the effect.

Two newcomers arrive independently to spice up life in the village. Come to stay with the Bates’ is Miss Jane Fairfax, young, attractive, and as equally accomplished as Emma if somewhat inferior in pedigree. She soon turns a few heads. Visiting the Westons, albeit infrequently and briefly, is Frank Churchill, a sociable and engaging young man, who despite the surname is Mr Weston’s son by an earlier marriage. The ladies find him charming, including to her surprise, Emma. Mr Knightly has his reservations.

There is much polite conversation while sat in drawing rooms or walking in gardens; a few letters are exchanged; and fleeting bodily contact occurs during a dance. Some confusion and misunderstanding along with hints of forthcoming proposals, keep the plot alive (just).

All very, well, Jane Austen. Wordy to the modern reader, so rather buries its wit in verbiage, but it is another classic ticked off the Book-et List.Set in the Regency world of country houses and formality we have, centre stage, Emma Woodhouse. Young, attractive, comfortably off living with her widowed father, and it has to be said, a little spoilt. She acknowledges that, and is bent on self-improvement, almost as much as she is bent on improvement of others.

 

Trust – Mike Bullen

Greg Beavis and Dan Sinclair are mates, and rivals, with both working as sales reps for the same IT company in London. They both have long term partners and families. Dan is married to Sarah with a teenage son, Russell; Greg is not married to Amanda, but their commitment is demonstrated in the form of two young daughters.

It all starts to go wrong when Greg and Dan attend a two day conference in Birmingham. The men get talking to two attractive young women, Liz and Lynda, and on the last night as drinks flow in the bar, things get flirty and beyond.

On their return to the family fold, things change. There is incriminating evidence in Greg’s bag. And Dan’s renewed sexual vigour, while welcomed by Sarah, is suspicious.

Events unfold; deception and misunderstandings multiply. The partners, destabilised by suspicion, become prey to temptation and proposition. Revenge is considered. Even adolescent Russell and long-gone Liz and Lynda, and their partners, become tangled in the webs of deceit. Trust is in scant supply.

The prose is sharp and witty, and the plot complexities are well handled and easy to follow. Bullen has a nice line in one-liners and penchant for the ironic use of idiomatic expressions. Unsurprisingly, given Bullen is the creator of the Cold Feet TV series, the book has the same knowing – ‘this is adult life’ – vibe.

A good entertaining read.

The St James’ Park Murders – Frank Demain

Every other Saturday, August to May, Sarah Stephenson sees her husband, George, off to Hexham station to get a train to Newcastle for the match at St James’ Park. Except he doesn’t attend the game, he listens to the radio commentary while in bed with a lady he knows only as Jenny.

Sarah knows nothing of this arrangement, but there again George knows nothing of her own simultaneous fortnightly routine that involves an intimate visit from neighbour and shopkeeper, Tony Raine.

The cosy, mutually oblivious arrangement ends when after a particularly energetic afternoon with Jenny, George returns home to find the police outside his house with the news that his wife is dead, believed murdered,

On the case is DI Elspeth Sanderson, newly transferred to the area and still getting to grips with her new team. Step by step they gather evidence, strip away false alibis, uncover motives, and inevitably crack the case, despite distractions that involve Elspeth’s rivalry with a local DI and a long distance on/off relationship with a policeman in the Gambia where her previous case took her.

The plot holds together with enough twists and turns to maintain interest, and the characters are well drawn and distinctive. An enjoyable introduction to the DI Sanderson series of novels

Untold Stories – Alan Bennett

This collection of writings contains a variety of offerings from a master storyteller.

The title piece, Untold Stories, gives an account of Bennett’s early life and in particular his relationships with his parents. It is followed by Written on the Body, which takes the story forward to his time at university and into the Army to do his National Service. Both these pieces are surprisingly revealing and are coloured by the realisation of his sexual orientation.

The middle of the book is devoted to diary extracts covering 1996 to 2004, commenting variously on items in the national news and events in his professional life (with impressive name-dropping), supplemented by random observations on places visited, sights seen, and conversations overheard.

The rest of the writings include essays on the theatre and plays, radio and TV work, art and architecture, finishing off with accounts of some personal tribulations.

Irrespective of the subject matter, the prose is always spot on, the perspective is invariably off-centre, and the opinions given are subtle and understated to devastating effect.