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