My Year in Books 2022: September

So, I didn't read as many books in September as I did in August, but I'm definitely back on track after a couple of months where I struggled to read anything for pleasure. Weirdly, everything I read this month was from the local library (despite me having far too many unread books of my own). I don't know if that's what's got me out of my slump this time. Whatever it is, I've read some good stuff this month (as well as a couple of less good things!).

In case you're curious, here are my posts from the rest of the year so far: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August

The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing by Mary Paulson-Ellis (2019)

Another library book to start this month. As is a bit of a habit, I only skim-read the blurb first. I knew it was about a man called Solomon Farthing who makes a living tracking down inheritances, and that a WWI soldier would be a significant part of the plot. Haha… I wasn’t prepared for this book at all! And, as usual, I regret nothing! Solomon Farthing is an ‘Heir Hunter’ – he makes a shady living by tracking down long-lost next-of-kin for unclaimed estates (for a ‘finder’s fee’, of course). When he is asked to do a favour for a police officer of his acquaintance, Solomon finds himself tangled up in a mystery that goes back the WWI, and which will touch on his own life in very unexpected ways. The story is told across multiple timelines – Solomon’s ‘present day’ quest in Edinburgh and beyond (set in 2016), the story of a small band of soldiers seeing out the final days of the war in a French farmhouse (in 1918), and others that I won’t spoil here. I was sort of expecting this to be a straightforward mystery with some historical vignettes thrown in, but The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing isn’t like that at all. It’s off-beat and quirky, told with in a vivacious and ‘shaggy dog story’ style that is really quite charming. I loved the character of Solomon Farthing as well – a really memorable creation with a more complex backstory than you might expect. Definitely recommend this one.

84K by Claire North (2018)

The next book I read was another library book. I’d renewed this one a couple of times, and I didn’t want it to go overdue, so I thought I should crack on and read it quickly. Turns out, the library deadline wasn’t really relevant, as I genuinely couldn’t put this one down once I’d started it! I read it in a couple of sittings, because it was just that compelling! 84K is a dystopian tale, set in a near-future (and it’s terrifying how ‘near’ it feels) version of Britain. Privatization has given way to full-scale commodification – towns are sponsored by companies, health and care are run through insurance companies, and all of these companies are owned by other companies that are owned by The Company (who also own the prisons, tax service, etc.). A man who goes by the name of Theo Miller works in the Criminal Audit Office; his job is to assess crimes and work out the ‘indemnity’ due by the perpetrator. If the perpetrator can’t pay the indemnity, they face being sentenced to the ‘patty line’ – indentured labour to pay off the debt to society. This vision of the future is stark and, like all good dystopian fiction, the plot is kicked off by the protagonist realizing (à la Winston Smith) that he can’t be part of this system anymore. However, the storytelling style elevates 84K into a different league. It’s almost hypnotic in its fragmented, lyrical style, but still with a plot that’s an utter page-turner.

Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon by Linda Newbery (2013)

Looks like it’s going to be a library-heavy month for me… this next one is also from my local library. Newbery’s novel is Anna and her sister Rose. At a quarter past two on a Wednesday afternoon in August, young Anna leaves the house to go to the shop. When she returns, her older sister Rose has disappeared without a trace. Twenty years later, Anna still doesn’t know what happened to her sister. As she reaches something of a turning point in her life (a relationship getting more serious, a new job offer), Anna begins to wonder if she’ll ever find out the truth. Quarter Past Two moves at a slow pace, but I’m not sure this always works to its advantage. There’s a lot about Anna’s relationship with her (in my opinion) rather unlikable boyfriend and his ex-wife, Ruth. This is interspersed with vignettes from Anna’s relationship with Rose, and from the aftermath of the disappearance. There are also some sections from another character’s perspective, but I’ll leave you to discover for yourself who that character is. In the end, though, the disappearance itself is remarkably easy for Anna to solve and a bit of an anti-climax. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this one, but I found it difficult to really engage with the characters in any depth. Most of them make decisions and choices that are hard to understand, and their motivations aren’t always convincingly explained. It’s not a bad novel, but it isn’t mind-blowing either.

Little Sister by Gytha Lodge (2022)

It’s library books all the way down this month… I’ve read one of Lodge’s other novels before, She Lies in Wait, and I remember that I quite enjoyed it. I didn’t realize when I started Little Sister that the detective in She Lies in Wait (DCI Jonah Sheens) became a series character for Lodge, and so I was actually jumping back in at book No. 4! This isn’t too much of a problem – and I don’t think it would be a problem if you haven’t read any of the books in the series – as there are plenty of recaps to catch you up on the lives of the detective and his team, and there aren’t any spoilers for the previous three books. In Little Sister, Sheens is confronted by a teenager, Keely Lennox, emerging from the woods near a pub with blood on her hands and clothes. Keely, it transpires, was reported missing from her care home a few days earlier. Her younger sister Nina went missing at the same time, but Keely has turned up alone. As Sheens tries to find out what happened, it becomes clear that Keely is more interested in playing mind games than telling the police what happened to her sister. But as the detectives investigate, a story emerges that’s disturbing in ways you might not expect. I have to admit, I did see most of the ‘twists’ coming with this one, but Lodge is an excellent writer, and Little Sister is a gripping read.

The Man on Hackpen Hill by J.S. Monroe (2021)

Ah… it seems me run of great library books has come to a bit of an end with this next one. This isn’t going to be a strong recommendation, unfortunately. And I think I’m going to have to give a couple of spoilers in order to explain. So, this was another library book, and I did read the blurb this time. The Man on Hackpen Hill is described as a thriller. The story – as hinted in the blurb – is about crop circles. A particularly mysterious example is discovered on the eponymous hill in Wiltshire… but there’s a body in its centre. Some of the (generally very short) chapters are from the perspective of DI Silas Hart, who has responsibility for investigating the murder, and then investigating two subsequent crop circles/murders. Other chapters are told from the perspectives of Jim – a young man who works at Porton Down, who believes he can reveal the truth about the crop circles – and Bella – a young woman who has just started working at a newspaper after finishing university. Now, here comes the spoiler: this book isn’t really about crop circles and secret experiments at Porton Down. The big reveal is that this is a story about mental illness and, specifically, psychosis and antipsychotics. And it’s one of the most egregious depictions of psychosis I’ve read in a long time. Not only is the presentation of schizophrenia and its treatment utterly unrealistic, the idea of psychotic delusions is romanticized to an extent that’s almost distasteful.

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce (2017)

Even though I didn’t really enjoy the last one, it’s another library book next! I’ve read (and enjoyed) two of Rachel Joyce’s other books – Perfect (the first one I read) and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (her debut novel and her most famous one) – so I had an idea of what I might be getting with The Music Shop. What I loved about the other two novels was the way Joyce combined an off-beat tale of eccentric and flawed, but ultimately hopeful, characters with a harder core, exploring themes of mental illness, grief and lost time. The Music Shop has a lot of this too. The story begins in 1988, in the music shop of vinyl-loving Frank. Frank is a typical Rachel Joyce character: an eccentric oddball with a sad backstory but a strong connection to other people, or rather to other people’s stories. Frank’s world is disrupted by Ilse Brauchmann, an enigmatic woman who faints outside his shop one day. In many ways, though, Frank and Ilse’s scenes are stolen by the setting and the glorious supporting cast of characters. Frank’s shop is on a vividly-evoked near-abandoned street (Unity Street) in a run-down city, alongside an undertaker, a tattoo parlour and a religious gift shop. Although there’s a cruel blow at the end of the book’s first half, The Music Shop doesn’t quite have the punch of Perfect or Harold Fry. But it’s still a moving, funny and compelling story, and the ending made me cry a little.

My Year in Books 2020: January

I've decided to carry on with my monthly book review posts (can you believe this is the third year now!). I'm finding it a good way of keeping track of the books I read for pleasure - much more useful than using an external site - so you're kind of stuck with these posts for now!

First post of the year, so it's my short reviews for January! Here's what I read...

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (2018)

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while, as I really like Robert Galbraith’s fiction. (Weirdly, I don’t like any J.K. Rowling books – a fact that baffles me.) Lethal White is the fourth book about private detective Cormoran Strike, and his secretary – then assistant – now partner – Robin Ellacott. The story opens with a prologue that follows on directly from Career of Evil, but then it jumps ahead to the following year. After the events of the earlier book, Strike’s detective agency has been thrust into the public eye (well, even more so, as the events of The Cuckoo’s Calling also brought it some notoriety). As well as juggling multiple cases, Strike is offered two intriguing puzzles to solve. Firstly, an apparently mentally ill man called Billy arrives at his office claiming to have witnessed a murder when he was a child. Secondly, an MP asks for Strike’s help, as he’s being blackmailed. Of course, it’s not long before there’s a hint that the two cases might be connected somehow. I will admit, I was dubious about the length of the book before I read it. The paperback is a bit of a doorstop, and way longer than is usual for the genre. However, as with the other Strike novels, it’s incredibly readable, and so it really didn’t feel overlong. Yes, perhaps, some of the sections about Strike and Robin’s relationships could have been cut down slightly, but there’s an excellent mystery (with well-placed clues) at the book’s heart.

Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas (2016)

This next one is a book I picked up in a charity shop in Aberystwyth when we stayed there last November. I thought I’d read another book by the author, but I realized afterwards that I’d got confused about that. Still, the blurb was intriguing enough, even though I had a suspicion it might be a domestic noir-type thriller (and I’ve still got a strange relationship with that genre). Local Girl Missing is the story of Francesca (and it’s partly told from her perspective), who grew up in a small seaside town in the South-West. Twenty years ago, Francesca’s best friend Sophie fell off the old pier, in an incident that has haunted her ever since. Now Sophie’s brother has called Francesca to drop the bombshell that Sophie’s remains have finally been found, and he wants her to return to Oldcliffe to help him find out what happened. Francesca’s narration is interspersed with entries from Sophie’s diary in the run-up to her disappearance. As she and Daniel speak to Sophie’s old friends, Francesca feels increasingly (and almost tangibly) haunted by the past – is there something else going on here? I’ve got to admit, I did twig what was going on a bit before the end, but I still enjoyed Local Girl Missing. It’s a quick read, but it’s well-paced and Douglas builds the suspense effectively, plus I found some of the flashbacks to Francesca and Sophie’s relationship both nostalgic (as I’m roughly the same age as the characters) and convincing.

The Wych Elm by Tana French (2018)

I was looking forward to this next one, but ultimately it was a teeny bit of a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, The Wych Elm is excellently written and has a compelling story. It’s just that I’m such a huge fan of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad novels that this one had a lot to live up to. The Wych Elm is a standalone –a mystery thriller rather than a detective novel. The central character is Toby, a privileged (and rather charming) man in his late twenties, looking forward to a happy future with his girlfriend Melissa. One night, everything changes, as Toby suffers a life-altering and traumatic assault. In recovery, he returns to his old family home (now his uncle’s), as his uncle has developed terminal cancer. Toby needs to heal, but he also needs to take care of his relative. However, a chance discovery in the garden upends Toby’s life even further – a skull is found in the eponymous wych elm tree. Perhaps Toby’s happy conception of his life – and his family – aren’t strictly accurate. As I say, the story is pretty compelling, but I found it didn’t grip me quite as much as the Dublin Murder Squad novels. Some of the revelations are a little far-fetched, though I did like the way in which Toby’s patchy memories become tangled and uncertain. The idea that a family history might be misremembered or experienced differently was definitely interesting, but there was something a little flat about this particular family.

The Guesthouse by Abbie Frost (2019)

I picked this one up (as usual) on a whim at the supermarket. The blurb looked like it might be a bit like And Then There Were None – seven guests check into a guesthouse, but it looks like they might not all survive. And… I was right. The Guesthouse begins like a millennial version of And Then There Were None. The central character, Hannah, is a twenty-five-year-old woman who is dealing with some stuff. She checks herself into the eponymous guesthouse for a week’s holiday to take her mind off things, and also to reconnect with her past. The guesthouse is in a remote location in Ireland, and the access is not as easy as the website promised. And there’s a storm coming too… I’m in two minds about this one. I loved the way Frost updated the central conceit of And Then There Were None for the twenty-first century, and the way the guests were brought to (and kept) in the guesthouse was definitely pretty cool. I also found Hannah – in the first half of the book – an engaging and relatable character. However, the plot isn’t quite as classy as Christie’s (and I shouldn’t keep comparing the two books, but it’s impossible not to). Rather than ramping up suspense and suspicion, The Guesthouse instead ramps up the backstory to the point of (almost) implausibility. I became less invested as the story went on, and the eventual reveal(s) really stretched my credulity. It’s a shame, because the book starts well.

The Family by Louise Jensen (2019)

I bought The Family in a charity shop in Truro at Christmas. I didn’t realize until part way through that I’d chosen to read a book with almost the exact same image on the cover as The Guesthouse – that was a complete coincidence. And, cover art aside, The Family is a bit different to The Guesthouse. Laura and her daughter Tilly are left grieving and in debt following the death of Gavan, Laura’s husband. A chance kindness from a woman called Saffron (someone Laura vaguely knows through her work) leads the women to a farm in Mid Wales that’s being run as a community/commune by a mysterious young man called Alex. As the book hints from its very first page, bad things are going to happen on the farm. And they do. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t really enjoy this one. I struggled to sympathize with the characters, mostly because they weren’t plausible for the ages they were meant to be – Laura doesn’t feel like a 34-year-old, and Alex isn’t believable as a 28-year-old. I also found I was drawn out of the story a lot by little anachronisms and inaccuracies, and by a timeframe that doesn’t quite make sense. No spoilers, but the ending was probably the best part of the plot, as it moved the story back into the realms of the believable. However, it was hard to get too enthused, as I really hadn’t engaged with the characters. Overall, this one probably needed much tighter editing.

She Lies in Wait by Gytha Lodge (2019)

The next book I read this month was one I picked up at the supermarket because the blurb looked intriguing (I probably have to stop doing that!). She Lies in Wait is a cold-case detective novel. Teenager Aurora Jackson disappeared thirty years ago, after going camping with her older sister and her friends. When a body is discovered in the woods, it quickly becomes apparent that Aurora has finally been found. A murder investigation is launched by DCI Jonah Sheens, and Aurora’s sister Topaz and her friends are the prime suspects. She Lies in Wait is a fairly standard cold-case story, with a bit of Secret History-esque conflict between the rather privileged bunch of suspects (in fact, one of the characters actually draws attention to the similarity in an explicit reference to Donna Tartt’s novel). It’s a very readable story, and there are some interesting interactions between the police team, but I found the actual mystery at the heart of the book to be a little disappointing. The problem is that there are clues implicating all of the suspects, and nothing that points to any particular one of them. By the time the reveal came, I felt like it could have been any of them, and I felt a bit cheated as a reader, as I could only guess the answer, not solve it. Nevertheless, Lodge is a good writer, and I did enjoy the way the story unfolded. Not the best mystery, but definitely not the worst one either!