Miss Marple - The Complete Short Stories - Agatha Christie

There is something about this time of the year - long dark nights, I get lots of colds and want to stay indoors out of the cold - and I turn for my reading to 'comfortable' books that don't challenge me much. I haven't read Agatha Christie for years - after all there are plenty of adaptations on TV. However, I think I may well return to her books from time to time. Sometimes the plots are a bit obvious, unlikely in the extreme, but there is regularly a surprising twist, and once you are used to the formula you can suspend disbelief sufficiently to be drawn in. Miss Marple is by far my favourite Agatha Christie 'detective', she is very smart, and her people watching is the key to all her solutions. She's more of a puzzle solver than a true detective - and that is attractive too. In this collection of short stories dating from early on in her career, and then towards the end (illustrating nothing if not that her author is consistent) of her career. They are typical puzzles about deaths in unusual circumstances and although you often say - 'Well that is obvious' that isn't really the truth - they just illustrate that human behaviour and motivation doesn't change. Each is entertaining - none a dud. I liked them. Rating: 8/10

Fathers and Children - Ivan Turgenev

I'm not sure how appropriate this illustration is - it appears extremely Stalinist in tone and

Turgenev is from a different century - and another age. This story is set about the time of the emancipation of the serfs, and inevitably is concerned with the ruling class who seem to live lives so detached from reality as to make the reader believe that this is beyond fiction - more like fantasy. I suppose the author is attempting to satirise this elite - the peasants spend a great deal of their time making fun of their rulers, the aristocracy spend a great deal of time discussing in theoretical terms the 'peasant problem' 'the agricultural question' or 'the poltical system' - but never actually do anything about it. the sons are all passionate, enthusiastic, scientific and modern - the fathers stuck in the past, clinging to religion and superstition. Both sets of people seem hindbound by convention in all matters (even though one of the characters claims to be a nihilist) especially those relating to romance, family, marriage and love. I found this an immensely frustrating book - full of irritating characters and stereotypes - and I'm not convinced I'll return to Russian C19th literature for some time. Rating 5/10

Southwold Literature Festival & Chris Patten in conversation with James Naughtie

A review of both these 'book related' events will appear shortly on my 'Steve's Journal' blog......

The End of the Affair - Graham Greene

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer

I was really pleased to have this suggested to me - it is a real find and I've given copies to several of my friends. The format reminds me strongly of Helene Hanff's 84

Charing Cross Road - a series of letters and telegrams. Shortly after WWII journalist and writer Juliet receives a letter out of the blue from someone in Guernsey who has picked up one of Juliet's second hand books. This leads her to a whole variety of correspondence with people who lived through the German Occupation of the Channel Islands. Most of them got through the bad times through the Literary Society that begins as a front organisation to fool the German occupiers. Juliet learns so much about these people and soon becomes their friend and supporter and at the same time discovers much about herself and who her true friends are. Rating 8/10.

The Age of Reform - Sir Llewellyn Woodward

This is part of the massive The Oxford History of England series. I was prompted to read it

because I have been listening to the wonderful BBC series This Sceptred Isle. There was a reference to the fall of the Melbourne Government in the 1830s because of an issue over the Jamaican Representative Assembly.

Excellent Women - Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym is one of my favourite authors, not to everyone's taste, but I return to this book regularly, and it always makes me laugh.

The Civil War - Julius Caesar

Books of Poetry

I don't read poetry often, and really find it quite difficult. Is it the lack of a real plot? I quite like (and regularly return to) Tennyson, but envy those who were taught poetry to memorise and can recall appropriate extracts to suit the time and the purpose. These three slim volume caught my eye and sit by my bedside. I pluck readings at random or a title will catch my mood. I'm certain I will derive several hours of entertainment from these books, and would recommend them to others who find poetry an unknown country, unfathomable and too deep. The letters between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett are a welcome diversion too. Rating 8/10

Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death - M C Beaton

The Taxi Queue - Janet Davey

This is just the kind of book I enjoy - all about human relationships and the internal lives of slightly quirky people - leading seemingly normal lives and yet there are undercurrents of behaviour and thoughts. It demonstrates that eternal truth - you really don't know anything about anyone else - even when you're married to them or are related to them - you think you do, and have a central belief in their character - and then they do something that disproves all that you ever thought was correct. Janet Davey has a wonderfully spare style and a light use of description that I like - a few words sets the scene and brings you into the action - a mention of a smell or an emotion, a look or a taste that places you at the centre of the story. The plot is simple. It is winter and snowing. Abe, young, casual and careless with others arrives at Paddington and decides to share a taxi with 40+ Richard, married, but with a history. They share a taxi (is this with Abe's contrivance and Richard's desire for risk and adventure?) and Richard invites Abe to stay the night. This sets off a series of events that affect several people, but leaves Abe (an ace manipulator) unscathed and carefree, whilst others begin to question so much about their lives. Janet Davey sketches the story so effectively and provokes so many thoughts about people's behaviour - why is Abe so selfish and thoughtless, why is Richard so unreliable and containing this empty void in the centre of his being. The only problem is the length - too short to truly develop the plot properly and to examine the characters motivations thoroughly enough. Still I rate it 7/10

How Late It Was, How Late - James Kelman

Nightshade - Paul Doherty

The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman

The Outcast - Sadie Jones

Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage - M C Beaton

Affluenza - Oliver James

The History of England/Lesley Castle - Jane Austen

The Road Home - Rose Tremain

Now Rose Tremain is a good writer - and I've enjoyed her books in the past - and there were many things about this book that I found engaging. It is the tale of Lev, an Eastern European of indeterminate country, who comes to London (like so many others) and discovers that not all his hopes are fulfilled, not all his ambitions realised and it is far from easy to turn up, friendless and alone in a foreign country and expect to succeed immediately. So many cultural differences, so much strangeness - and language is the first hurdle to be surmounted. My enjoyment was somewhat blunted by the constant and relentless use of what can only be termed obscenities. I suppose this is realistic, but it is also distracting and off putting, and this combined with vivid sexual descriptions spoilt my enjoyment of this otherwise uplifting volume. I did find the ease with which Lev overcomes his difficulties a touch far fetched too, and the obsession with food (almost turning some sections into recipes - am I alone in not caring about what I eat or the current addiction to cookery programmes?) was just too much at times. Ms Tremain also seemed to be determined to bring in every possible experience of a recent immigrant - the black economy, the low level badly paid jobs encountered by most new arrivals, the stereotypical conditions in the home country, the isolation. Interesting nevertheless - but I am going to have to take 2 points off for the language! Rating 6/10

Enigma - Robert Harris

This is the first Robert Harris book I've read - and I was extremely impressed - it is a book full of suspense and the kind of plot driven narrative that I enjoy. He's extremely good on constructing believable characters - and their emotions and motivations are well described. This is the story of Tom Jericho a brilliant mathematician, undergraduate at Cambridge recruited at the start of the War for secret work - the cracking of the German Naval communication codes known as Enigma. This isn't really the tale of Enigma and Bletchley Park (the Government's Communication and Code Breaking HQ) more a good old-fashioned thriller,almost a detective story. Tom's ex-girlfriend disappears and Tom uncovers a very murky world of deception and intrigue, and finds that the secrecy of the work at Bletchley Park may well have been compromised, possibly endangering the lives of thousands - the sailors in the ships of the North Atlantic convoys, and possibly the opening of the new front proposed on D-Day. Harris describes the intricacies of code breaking expertly, and without being patronising. Although some of what is discovered is not a true revelation (because with the benefit of hisory these horrors are now in the public domain) the journey towards the conclusion is exciting enough. Rating - a deserved 8/10

Lonely Hearts - John Harvey

A rather formulaic 1980s police procedures detective story featuring Nottingham Inspector Charlie Resnick - a single man of Polish extraction. Something that struck me is the problem that writers have when there is a rapid development in technology. The introduction of mobile phones made an incredible difference to both police and criminal communication speed and reaction. This was also the time before effective use of DNA evidence. Both these changes gave the impression of an almost clunky slowness to the plot. John Harvey is a good detective story writer, but I don't find his Resnick character especially loveable and I don't get the connection I get with a lot of the 'stars' of detective stories. I also don't know a lot about Nottingham either. Anyway this volume is about a murderer who is meeting and killing women he meets through the local paper's personal ads - and that is another change that has happened in recent years - no one writes letters to personal ads columns any longer - it is all done by texts and voicemail messages, not through box numbers. Harvey is a author who develops character sufficiently and the narrative is well paced, but it is all fairly average and competent not exciting and full of suspense. Rating 6/10

The Painted Veil - W Somerset Maugham

I read an awful lot of Maugham books when I was in my twenties, and wondered whether I'd appreciate them today. I wasn't disappointed. Somerset Maugham sums up 'storyteller' to me, all his books are plot driven, the characters so well drawn, his descriptions spot on. I reckon he is so good on human relationships - their spontaneity, their cruelty and deviousness. And yet in all his characters their is just a touch of kindness or goodness. This book is seen entirely from the point of view of Kitty - the 'pretty' daughter of a dull lawyer father and extremely ambitious mother. The latter is determined for a good match for Kitty but when her younger plain sister becomes engaged to an very eligible man Kitty fears being left on the shelf, and she marries in a panic to a man she knows little about and understands less. This microbiologist based in Hong Kong turns out to be a remarkably boring man from Kitty's point of view and although she is probably not intentionally cruel she embarks on a torrid affair with a married man. When this is discovered Kitty's husband presents her with an ultimatum - go with him to a cholera ridden backwater of China (and almost certain death). The alternative is to persuade her lover to divorce his wife and marry her, and then he will divorce her. If she tries to divorce him, then the truth of her affair will come out and both she and her ambitious lover will face shame and humiliation. She goes with her husband. This is a remarkable and very emotional book, with superb realistic dialogue, and confronts the reader with some truly realistic dilemmas. Although we rarely enter into the minds of the other characters we are carried along with the emotional roller coaster of Kitty's life, towards the ultimately surprising denouement. The themes are timeless, and although very much set in a different era and mores very much appropriate to today. Maugham's descriptions are spare but so accurate - his style filmic - you can picture it in your head. My rating 9/10

The World According to Bertie - Alexander McCall Smith

I love this series of books about the inhabitants (and their friends) of a set of flats on mythical

Scotland Road, Edinburgh. The humour is gentle, the events are hardly events in the usual sense of the word - but they are the everyday activities encountered by most (middle class) people. So there is Bertie (the eponymous hero of this volume) a six year old who just wants to be a normal boy, playing sports, having adventures - much against the wishes of his mother - who avidly reads (and tries to implement) all the latest theories of child rearing. There is leisurely painter Angus and Cyril his dog (accused and arrested for biting), art gallery owner millionaire Matthew, remarkably unsuccessful in love, and most of the characters meet at Big Lou's cafe - and she has become involved with a group of latter day Jacobites. Domenica the anthropologist (recently returned from a field trip to a group of modern day pirates in Malacca) has problems with her former tenant, now neighbour Antonia. All light stuff, but very enjoyable, and the episodic style - short, punchy chapters originating from the publication in daily articles in The Scotsman is so appropriate. Rating: 8/10

Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House - M C Beaton

Perhaps I should be reading these books in the right order, but I found this in the library so grabbed it - they are very popular and are rarely found on the shelves! They are very much a series - although satisfying enough on their own. I did get slightly confused though, because between reading this one and the previous one (see below) Agatha has been married (again) and left by her husband, and in this volume a previous lover turned up again - and he'd been married and divorced in the interim too. Hey ho! The love lives of the middle aged! OK, so in this book amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin returns from a spot of PR work in London to find that an elderly woman in a neighbouring Cotswold village has been subjected to a 'haunting' so she and her new neighbour set off to solve the mystery. Shortly after, the old lady ends up dead at the foot of the stairs, and a series of murders are quickly strewn across the countryside. Agatha isn't a very subtle detective and 'blundering upon the truth' sums up her abilities, she's rapidly entangled in two competing (rapidly failing) relationships, and quickly gets put in danger. But its light, its amusing, its entertaining and deserves a 7/10 rating.

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

A slim volume with the first night of a honeymoon in the early 1960s at its centre. Florence and

Edward are innocents in this book about life before the arrival of the permissive society. Like many people they have ended up married and aren't quite sure what is awaiting them. Of course after 1970 couples withour experience were increasingly rare and so the events described in the few hours following their wedding are much less likely. Ian McEwan has written another book describing the minutae of one event and the consequences - how seemingly irrelevant tiny things lead inexorably to an unintended result. He did it almost obsessively in Saturday but tends to do it in all his books. I have several problems with Ian McEwan's writing - I get the impression he thinks and selects each word over carefully, simplicity of language is not his style. His characters, although over described and analysed never seem terribly real. The over obssessive attention to details - in this case, the contents of the food in their meal, details of the rooms in which they are staying, do not really create the atmosphere or conjure the picture of being there - other authors can describe in few words and still bring the image to mind. Rating 7/10

Paying Guests - E F Benson

I was so pleased to receive this book as a present - I'm guessing it is now out of print, and I hadn't heard of it before. It is very much of Benson's Mapp & Lucia style - all about a group of slightly quirky and eccentric people thrown together and reacting to each others foibles in extremely funny ways. Benson's style is very gossipy, almost bitchy, but so accurate in his study of human beings in middle age, dealing with loneliness, trying to get through life, concentrating in a very selfish way about their own problems.

The Amazing Mrs Shufflewick - Patrick Newley

A slim volume about a tragic life. Mrs Shufflewick was a cross dressing comic of the 1950s - the product, like many of that period, of WWII and the training ground in ENSA. Like many others of that time they found difficulty in coping with being a comic in post war Britain, and although superficially successful - appearing at the top venues in the country and on radio - managed to fritter all the profits away in drink and with unsuitable managers, and much more unsuitable relationships. Very much a tragedy, with the inevitability of his fate (heart attack brought on by generalised drink related abuse of major organs) is apparent from the opening page. Rating 6/10

A Turn in the South - V S Naipaul

Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley - M C Beaton

Every now and again (and especially like recently when I've been reading some 'heavier' tomes) I like to just rattle through a quick page turning mystery. M C Beaton's Agatha Raisin mysteries are just ideal for this. OK so they aren't intellectual and thought provoking but they just zip along and there are twists and turns and all the loose ends are tied up. And why not? In this one Agatha has been lured back to London for a brief bit of PR business, but this only makes her realise how much she prefers life in the country. And, of course, someone is killed and Agatha gets involved in 'solving' the mystery - much to the amusement of detective Bill Wong, and the distress of his superior Detective Inspector. Meanwhile Agatha is throwing herself at her neighbour, and the book ends with a cliff hanging proposal for middle aged Agatha. The characters aren't wonderfully developed, the plot isn't too complicated, but it is way above average for this kind of thing, and deserves a 7/10.

The Autobiography - Ned Sherrin

I think there is always a problem with biographies of 'living subjects' - the author must be extremely selective about the areas of the life that can be revealed to avoid hurt, or

possible libel suits. This problem is in a sense quadrupled for autobiographies - in all cases what is important, significant or interesting to an individual may not be the same for the average reader. Often the most sensational things about the famous or notorious will not be the very things that someone wants to delve into when writing a history of their life. OK Ned Sherrin is famous for several things and they are dealt with here - That WasThe Week That Was, Side By Side By Sondheim and Radio 4's Loose Ends. On the other hand there are several things that Ned obviously things are important, but clearly passed me by - several plays and films I really hadn't heard of, nor cared much about, and what a name dropper Mr Sherrin is - trouble is quite a few of the names must be well known to a remarkably small and select number of people. Did we really hear about the true Ned - probably not, this could more accurately termed 'reminiscences' rather than staring into the inner man. Very little of Ned's feelings or true personal life intrude - lovers, partners, emotions are generally overlooked. However, entertaining and engaging and worth a rating of 7/10.

Mr Pip - Lloyd Jones

Notes from an Exhibition - Patrick Gale

Patrick Gale, I tend to think, writes in a mixture of styles - Joanna Trolloppe crossed with Anne Tyler. His books are Aga Sagas but with a touch more emphasis on family tensions and resolutions. In this book each chapter begins with a review of a picture produced by the central character - Rachel Kelly. Through each member of the family the history of this woman's life

emerges. As usial with Patrick Gale things are never quite what they seem. Rachel has a history of mental illness - but is it postnatal depression, or do the roots go deeper. She's married to a Quaker, and has children, each of whom has a story - a man desperate for a child with his wife, a gay son with an older partner, currently going through problems of jealosy, another son who died and a daughter who disappeared suffering from depression or something else. Here are the elements of an Anne Tyler novel but the resolution is typical Joanna Trolloppe. The loose ends are all fairly neatly tied. You do get a real feeling of the bipolar condition, and its treatment, and the reactions of others to it. This isn't great literature, and not particularly taxing - but it is pleasing and satisfying. Rating: 7/10

Michael Tolliver Lives - Armistead Maupin

Now I was really looking forward to this book. I had greatly enjoyed The Tales of the City series written by Armistead Maupin about two decades ago. The earlier books were light, easy reads.

They described the lives of a disparate group of lodgers at the house of grand dame Anna Madrigal in San Francisco - all (including the landlady) have secrets and have come to the City by the bay to find themselves, and escape their past. The lives were bizarre, and the stories, episodic, wry, funny and punchy quickly drew you into the characters and made them seem like your friends. This book (overshadowed as it is by the after-effects and consequences of AIDS) is far more preachy, almost bitter and confronting. It centres on one of the characters from the earlier book - a survivor of the AIDS epidemic, and whereas in the first books Michael Tolliver conducts us through the bitter sweet emotions of falling in and out of love, romance and getting by financially, now Mr Maupin seems to want to flaunt the sexual behaviour in enormous detail, and without much humour. Even his relationship with his unforgiving mother almost has an element of revenge as she approaches her death. All in all a pity Armistead decided to expand a much loved series in this substandard way. What a pity! Rating 5/10

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

Now I don't often read science books - but this at least was relatively short, and I kept asking myself how much of this is science, and how much philosophy? Richard Dawkins is man on a mission - extremely anti religion. So, he starts out by saying that everyone now accepts Darwinism as fact - therefore all religious belief must be erroneous. I get the feeling he is falling into the same trap that he accuses those of faith of having fallen into. A Christian believes that God created the world (and does this belief really exclude Darwinism?) whereas Dawkins believes in the continuing effect of genetic development. What he fails to explain is where, what or who began the process of the development of life. Anyway, having skimmed over all that, he seeks to demonstrate that it is the genetic imperative in all lifeforms (and he isn't neglectful of every possible species - bees, wasps, seahorses, cuckoos, gazelles, urchins, all get a look in) that affects every aspect of life. Therefore, no life form every does an 'altruistic' act, without subconsciously the genes thinking 'What's in this for me?' All genes are thinking about are how do I achieve immortality - passing on through the generations, adapting, intermixing and so on. He fobs off group support as fallacious, a mere mask for genes seeking their survival into breeding and therefore continuous. Parents caring for their children? No - genes ensuring that they survive through to grandchildren. I'm sorry it is too simple - and maybe that was his intention, science for the non-scientific. Rating 5/10

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

OK - lets start with the positive - this is quite an easy read - I managed to finish it in just over a week. It also seems to be a reasonable translation - fairly free rather than literal, and only the occasional strange use of words. Now I come to the negatives - and I wonder if I have a difficulty with Japanese culture - perhaps these kinds of story are common in that country. I had trouble working out whether this is a fantasy, soft porn, crime thriller, suspense, horror, some kind of spiritual, mystical musing, or a study in psychosis. What is the plot? Well here I had trouble getting to grips with the story line. The central character 'Kafka' (a 15 year old) seems to live in a world of his own - is hearing voices, or having conversations with an imaginary friend. He runs away from home and then has a series of 'incidents' involving a quest to find his mother and sister, a visit to a strange library, several sexual encounters, a flying saucer. an old man who talks to cats, a journey into a secret land in the woods, a mystical entrance stone, some obviously hallucinatory experiences. I found some of the scenes unpleasant, others irritating, and yet more totally silly. Another week of my life I'll never get back.... Rating 5/10

Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens

One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson

The second in the series begun with Case Histories (see a blog entry below). I'd really enjoyed the first book featuring Jackson Brodie so looked forward to this volume immensely.

I have to say it doesn't start in a sparkling way - it seems to meander and you begin to wonder where the whole thing is going - but not in a good way. Rather like in Case Histories this book looks from the viewpoints of several characters, linked very loosely to Jackson Brodie, ex-army, former policeman, previously a private investigator and by this time independently wealthy (as explained in the previous book). He is also going through complicated (and not smooth ) personal relationships. This time there is one incident that each character is involved with, (road rage in Central Edinburgh) but as you would expect in a thriller (and this is in many ways a traditional thriller) there are many twists and turns, and nobody (and nothing) is quite what it seems. So after a shaky start Ms Atkinson gets into her stride, and this proves to be a real page turner - she is so good at developing characters without over writing, you care about what happens to even the minor and fleeting people - you want to 'good' guys to succeed and the 'bad guys' to lose - and some do spectacularly. The author is much better at female characters than male - and I wonder if she'll need to look at Jackson Brodie a little more closely to make some of his actions and emotions more credible. Still a worthy 7/10

The House by the Thames - Gillian Tindall

Absolutely my kind of book. It is history - but the true lively history, revealing so much about life over the centuries, and centred on people - at all levels of society. Superficially this is a book about a house - number 49 Bankside, located on the River Thames in London directly opposite to St Paul's Cathedral, and next door to what is now Tate Modern, in the old Bankside Power Station. Number 49 was built close on 300 years ago. But this book is really a study of the changes that have totally overwhelmed the whole of this area, from the time that the original Globe Theatre was in use, when this area outside the City of London, but linked to it by London Bridge, was a pleasure zone. Using the house as a hanger the author clothes the area through personalities and industries that inhabited this essentially rural district from the Middle Ages to today. We hear about lightermen and watermen, hatters and skinners, the pike ponds and bear pits. It is scattered with well known people (actors and writers, poets and bishops) but equal value comes from the often obscure inhabitants of this house. It was fun, educational, instructive and oh so interesting. Thankfully the volume was not weighed down with footnotes and obscure tangents, and generally meandered at the right pace. In many ways it is a miracle that this house survived when so much of this area has just disappeared. I knew so little about this area, but now I know so much. Rating: 8/10

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

I wasn't entirely convinced by Mr Hosseini's first offering (The Kite Runner) - a review you'll find in this blog. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a much better novel - the writing has improved tremendously, there are far fewer scattered untranslated terms, and the plot line is much clearer, the characters more developed, and it is less of a polemic. It is obvious that the author is beating a drum about the horrors of Afghanistan, and the terrors of every form of government since the overthrow of the monarchy (and why not he is a refugee of sorts himself), but the characters are not entirely stereotypes. The book looks at the history of two women - beginning with Mariam in the first section, Laila in the second, and then the two together in alternating chapters. Mariam is the lovechild of a successful businessman, who is forced into a marriage with an older widower. As the soviets invade Mariam's life goes downhill in line with the fortunes of the country. Laila (much younger than Mariam) comes from an academic family, with brothers who are in the anti-Soviet Jihad. She becomes the second wife to the widower. Throughout the rise and fall and recovery of Afghanistan mirror the fates of the characters. Compared with The Kite Runner this is a more successful story - there are fewer incredible co-incidences and shortcut solutions to problems, the politics are more easily woven into the tale, and the last few pages are genuinely moving, and thought provoking. Rating: 8/10

If you can walk You can dance - Marion Molteno

Now I didn't think there was a book I couldn't finish, and normally I get through a book in a week maximum, but I have to admit this book defeated me. I'm not sure what it is, because the subject matter superficially attracted me - a politically active South African in the appartheid era escaping persecution - should be the recipe for a real page turner, but this is just tepid nonsense. The central character Jennie is so self obsessed and has an unrealistically romantic view of life that I felt like phoning the South African police and turning her in. A bit like the member of the audience at a particularly bad theatrical rendition of the Diary of Anne Frank who shouted 'She's in the attic' when the Nazi soldiers turned up. Anyway, Jennie has a feeling for music and sees it as the solution to everything - 'slow' children are cured through clapping and drumming workshops, Jennie meets an equally self centred composer called Neil who teaches her to play the viola without reading music - just being at one with the instrument. Even when she goes to Lusaka her notion of aiding the freedom fighters is to teach refugee children to discover empathy with the pulse of Africa through music. Please give me a break - overwhelming oppression? Take up a gourd and rattle some seeds. And oh the sentimentality about the purity of the African natural soul. Pass me a sick bucket! Rating: 3/10

Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy

I was gravely disappointed with this book. I was in turn irritated, annoyed, appalled (by the sloppy plotlines and characterisation), and depressed (by the fact that there was so much potential in this feminist science fiction (!) novel. The central character is Connie who is on the edge of society (I don't know about time) and going downhill and leading an increasingly dysfunctional life.
As the book opens Connie is desperately trying to save her niece Dolly from her pimp/fiance. At the same time she is receiving visits from Luciente - it turns out that Connie has the ability to 'catch' people from the future, and soon Luciente transports her to this place in the future where a New World has been created - where women have given up breast feeding, giving birth and gender lines are blurred. Nuclear family structures have disappeared and political structures transformed. Meanwhile Connie has been institutionalised and subjected to a welter of treatments within a variety of hospitals in New York.
The trouble is the book is a mess, it is neither one thing nor another. The Utopian Society Marge Piercy creates is flimsy and confused, there is a pathetic attempt at a developed different language. The characters are stereotyped - all the men bad and power crazed the women (in the present at least) are victims. The descriptions of the hospitals are superficial, and the denouement is no real surprise. Surely this book is poor feminism and bad science fiction - if it is true science fiction. Rating? 4/10

Something of Myself - Rudyard Kipling

I had a problem with this autobiography of the great (even Nobel Prizewinning) author of the late Victorian/Edwardian era.

It is only a slim volume, and yet it was very hard to read. Written in 1935, towards the end of his life Kipling reveals virtually nothing of himself (ironically in view of the tile)- and for an autobiography it is remarkably impersonal. It could just as easily have been written in the third person. We get nothing of his wife or children (his wedding day is referred to in a one sentence aside). Paradoxically Mr Kipling is sentimentally almost gushing about the debt he owed to his parents. The book also finishes effectively before the First World War and so makes no reference to the tragedy of Rudyard's son - medically unfit (extremely bad eyesight) for service and yet the rules were circumvented to enable him to be sent to his death in Flanders. There are the odd glimpses of life in India at the height of British rule, some fascinating comments on South Africa at the time of the Boer War, and interesting vignettes about life in America at the end of the nineteent century. But really this book is a curiosity rather than an entertainment. Rating: 5/10

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death - M C Beaton

Every now and then I enjoy a quick light read and this (first in the Agatha Raisin series) is

certainly a nice easy light read. M C Beaton establishes the principal recurring characters - Bill Wong a mavarick (but only slightly) police detective, the Vicar's wife, Agatha Raisin herself - irritable and irritating - and her former colleagues at her PR firm, and the various inhabitants in the Cotswold village Agatha has 'retired' to. In a way the story is fairly incidental, but it is vaguely from the whodunnit genre. There are various believable red herrings, and a nice twist in the tale, so all in all it deserves a rating of 8/10

Trio - Cath Staincliffe

Now I was recommended Cath Staincliffe as a crime writer worthy of attention. I, however, didn't read the blurb on the cover of this book - this isn't one of Ms Staincliffe's crime novels. I was pleasantly surprised and would heartily recommend this thought-provoking story of three women and their three baby girls put up for adoption. The mother's are very different, and their tales vary considerably, but they are all extremely moving and without being over sentimental examine in depth why someone might feel compellecd to give away their child, and how that child reacts once they find out that they are adopted, and whether they wish to find out the truth of their origins. Of course the babies are born in the early 1960s when alternative choices were lacking, contraception was fairly non-existant and attitudes far less liberal than today. All three mothers are from Catholic families - and this affects the decisions that are taken by the women - and their families. What is interesting is the thought processes of both the mother's families, and the families into which the babies are adopted. The moment of conception has a permanent effect on the lives of so many people.
I was especially interested because I was a Registrar for nearly 30 years and regularly found I had to tell people that they had been adopted - when they applied for a birth certificate. Many parents who adopted would not tell their adopted children that they were not blood relatives. Sometimes I would be faced with the situation of adopted adults searching for their natural parents - and sometimes there was great joy, but sometime terrible sadness when the natural parent did not want to know - their lives had moved on. Recently I got a phone call from a woman who had been told that she had had a sister who had died at a very young age, and wanted to find the cause of her death. In fact the sister had been adopted out of her family. The woman started on a search, and found her sister was living in Canada. They have now met - after more than half a century. Remarkable.
This book is worth reading - very well written, without toppling into mawkishness. Rating 8/10

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

As seen in a famous film with Dirk Bogarde - but any film of a Charles Dickens' book always misses out far too much. Now I reckon this is Dickens at his best - the long over convoluted sentences are rare, the plot is tight, the characters believable. Oh the suspense! This is one of the few historical novels from Mr Dickens, set just before and in the early years of Revolutionary France it is mixture of love story (Carton/Darnay battling over the lovely Lucie Manette) pure history - details of the horrors of the Ancien Regime and the effects of the Terror, and a study of the psychological effects of wrongful (and solitary) imprisonment in the person of Sr Manette - victim of the infamous lettres de cahier. The opening scenes at Blackheath and the political trial of Darnay set the novel off in an appropriately sinister way and establish ably the time of rumour and fear of the late eighteenth century. The descriptions of life in France are so vivid, and unrivalled. This book is how most of us get an impression of the French Revolution and the mass executions. A true classic - and well worth reading. Rating: 9/10

Books of 2007

I'm going to list the top ten books I've read in 2007 - in no particular order.

E Annie Proux - The Shipping News

Helene Hanff - 84 Charing Cross Road

Jane Smiley - Duplicate Keys

Daphne Du Maurier - Rebecca

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half A Yellow Sun

Simon Brett - Death Under the Dryer

Jed Rubenfeld - The Interpretation of Murder

Patrick Marnham - Wild Mary - A Life of Mary wesley

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories

Alexander McCall Smith - Love Over Scotland