My Year in Books 2024: April

I didn't think I'd read much this month until I sat down to write this post. It feels like I haven't had any time for reading for pleasure, but it turns out I did read six novels. Who knew?

Reviews of the six books I read in April are below, but in case you're curious, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March

Martin Harbottle's Appreciation of Time by Dominic Utton (2014)

The first book I read this month was a library book (of course!). It’s got quite a simple premise: a tabloid journalist called Dan is frustrated by constant delays and disruptions on his daily commute, so he decides to start writing emails to the Managing Director of the train company (the eponymous Martin Harbottle). His intention is that the emails he sends will take up as much Martin’s time as Dan has lost through delays to his journey. But then, Martin Harbottle starts to respond to the emails and a weird correspondence begins. I enjoyed this book on the whole, but it did have some slightly irritating qualities. The positives: the character of Martin Harbottle is very charming, and his emails to Dan are both funny and surprisingly touching. The format of the book (entirely told through the emails) is something I enjoyed a lot. The negatives: Dan is not a likeable character in the slightest. His attempts at humour are grating, and he lacks self-awareness about how his behaviour impacts on those around him. While Martin does attempt to gently correct some Dan’s worst tendencies, this doesn’t get through to him in any meaningful way. There’s a whole load of background about the demise of the News of the World (or a fictionalized version), Dan’s wife’s post-natal depression, and Dan’s grief for his father, that doesn’t really go anyway. In the end, I found myself gleefully hoping that Dan’s trains would be delayed even further, just to annoy him.

Final Cut by S.J. Watson (2020)

I got sucked in by the blurb of this one, even though it’s a genre that I’m trying to avoid at the moment. A filmmaker called Alex travels to a small Yorkshire seaside town called Blackwood Bay to make a documentary. Alex wants to make a film about the town itself, which is a ‘ghost town’ due to economic decline and diminishing tourism, but her production company push her to investigate the town’s darker secrets, particularly the story of a teenage girl who’s gone missing. Alex (who, in case you hadn’t guessed, has dark secrets of her own) knows that there have been a couple of girls who’ve gone missing from Blackwood Bay over the past decade, and one of them (a girl called Daisy) is believed to have killed herself. Given that Watson is best-known for Before I Go to Sleep, it wasn’t a surprise to find memory issues being part of the plot in this one as well. This time, it’s fugue states and dissociation, and as with the previous book, you have to suspend a bit of disbelief about whether memory really does work in such a neat and narratologically convenient way. The story that’s revealed about Blackwood Bay isn’t mind-blowing, and some of the reveals are easy to guess. My favourite part of the book was the setting, and I enjoyed the moments when Blackwood Bay itself became the main character. Overall, an easy and enjoyable enough read but not the most exciting book I’ve read.

The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee (2011)

Not sure why journalism ended up being a mini-theme this month, but here’s the second book I read about nefarious Fleet Street journalists (although the first one wasn’t explicitly about Fleet Street, of course). McAfee’s novel juxtaposes two different types of journalism – and two different types of journalist – both of which are now a thing of the past. The main story is set in 1997, in the final days of print’s supremacy (there’s a subplot about the rise of a newspaper’s website that’s rather entertaining). Tamara Sim works for The Monitor, a respectable broadsheet, but finds herself stuck writing fluff pieces for the paper’s gossip and lifestyle section. Out of the blue, she is asked to write a 4000-word article about veteran correspondent, Honor Tait, whose stellar career has included reporting on (among many other things) Nuremberg and the Korean War. Tait is very reluctant to engage with Sim, and Sim is comedically out of her depth talking to Tait. This is interspersed with drafts of Tait’s own attempt to reformulate her memoirs, which hint at the possibility of another side to the feted journalist’s life and work. The pace is a bit slow, and the humour is uneven, but there’s something quite engaging about Sim and Tait. The ending is pretty clever too, though I won’t give anything away about that. Reading the book in 2024 is interesting too, as you’re looking at a 2011 take on a 1997 take on journalism through mid-2020s eyes, which is oddly fascinating.

The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan (2022)

Another psychological thriller now, and I chose this one because I’m a sucker for the ‘cottage in a remote location’ setting. Three couples are due to stay at Dark Fell Barn, a holiday cottage on a remote farm, for a get-away. On the first night, only the wives arrive at the cottage, as their husbands have all been delayed for different reasons. When they get there, a gift is waiting for them – a bottle of champagne, with a card warning them that one of their husbands is about to be murdered. Cue storms, stumbling around looking for mobile reception, running down an uneven country track in the dark, and generally distrusting one and another (and the absent husbands). A fourth figure – Edie – looms large over the story, though she is not at the cottage with the others. The women’s husbands have all been friends since school, and Edie has been an integral part of their group since then. They were a bit in love with her, but it was Rob who Edie chose. The story takes place after Rob’s tragic death, with Edie staying away from the group in her grief. But is she somehow behind the sinister gift? Does she blame someone in the group for Rob’s death? This one is a quick and easy read. There are a few surprises, a few games being played with first-person narration, and a few red herrings, but ultimately it doesn’t go much further than that. I enjoyed it well enough though.

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton (2024)

I got this one as soon as it came out, because I absolutely loved Turton’s debut novel (The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle) and because the premise looked intriguing. The story is set after the apocalypse (or maybe during, if things don’t go to plan). Humanity has been nearly eradicated by a mysterious fog filled with dangerous flesh-eating insects. The last few survivors have made it to an island, protected by a shield that can keep the fog at bay. The island is run by ‘Elders’, three scientists who are desperately working on a solution, and inhabited by villagers, who maintain a highly regulated lifestyle under the command of the Elders, aided by an AI (a sort of post-apocalyptic Siri). Or so it would seem… All this is thrown into question when Niema, the leading scientist on the island is murdered, and her death causes the island’s security system to begin to shut down. On top of that, everyone’s memories of the event have been erased. One of the villagers, Emory, is tasked with solving the murder, and she has just 107 hours to work out what has happened or the shield will drop and the fog will engulf the island. But as Emory tries to work things out, she discovers far far more than she bargained for – the truth about the island, the Elders and even the villagers themselves is much more complicated than she could have imagined. I really enjoyed this one, and I couldn’t put it down!

My Throat an Open Grave by Tori Bovalino (2024)

This was the last book I read this month, and I finished it just at the beginning of May. I thought it would be a good one to read as Beltane began. And it was, but I have mixed feelings about it. I got the novel in my Abominable Books horror subscription box, and it had all the hallmarks of folk horror. The protagonist is Leah, who lives in small-town Winston, Pennsylvania. Leah tries to be good, going to church and school, and taking care of her baby brother Owen. The girls in the town know that if they aren’t good, then they will be taken by the Lord of the Wood (as others have been). But Leah is tired of being good – and she harbours a secret – so one night she asks the Lord of the Wood to take her baby brother away. (And yes, this is all as Labyrinth-y as it sounds, which is only lightly lampshaded.) The town turn against Leah and demand that she retrieves her brother… and this is where I started to have mixed feelings. It turns out, it’s not actually folk horror. The bigoty of the town is painted with such heavy-handed stokes, and there is absolutely no menace at all to the Lord of the Wood or his domain. And when you find out how sexy and sweet the Lord of the Wood is, you realise this book belongs to a very different genre. It’s an okay read – but it isn’t horror.