My Year in Books 2023: September

I read a few books this month, mostly from the library. I have to admit, it was a bit of disappointing month when it came to reading, as most of the books I read didn't quite live up to expectations. There was one stand-out though, so that was nice.

If you're curious, here are my reviews from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August

What She Saw Last Night by M.J. Cross (2019)

The first book I read this month was a library book. I checked this one out because I’m a sucker for a train mystery, though I was acutely aware from the design that this was likely to be more of a psychological thriller than a whodunnit (I know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but that font and layout is very genre-specific). According to the blurb, the premise is that a woman called Jenny boards a sleeper train to Scotland. During the night, another passenger is killed and Jenny discovers the body. She alerts the guards, and also lets them know that there’s no sign of the woman’s young daughter. But it turns out… there’s no record of the little girl being on the train. The woman didn’t book for a child to travel with her, and there’s CCTV evidence to show that she boarded alone. Did Jenny imagine the child? or is there something more sinister going on? The set-up is great, but sadly this book really doesn’t deliver what you might expect. It’s actually neither a psychological thriller nor a whodunnit. It’s an action thriller, with much of the second half devoted to chases, violent confrontations and increasingly convoluted and far-fetched organized crime plots. The puzzle of the unidentified dead woman and the mysterious missing child is resolved early on, and the rest of the story focuses on Jenny’s plan to reveal and take down the bad guys. This one was a bit of a disappointment.

Worst Idea Ever by Jane Fallon (2021)

Another library book… and another book I judged by its cover, which I thought looked pretty jaunty. It’s not my genre of choice, but I thought I’d give it a go. The book is about Georgia, a relatively content woman in her 40s who lives with her husband Nick and teenaged twins, and who writes and illustrates children’s books. Georgia’s best friend is Lydia, who is single and very pretty, but lives an unfulfilled life and posts too many aspirational pictures on Instagram. Lydia is a talented artist and writer – indeed, Georgia believes Lydia is far more talented than her – but she’s had no professional success with her work. When Lydia decides to sell some of her art online, Georgia decides to set up a fake Twitter account to praise her and give her some confidence to keep going. Unfortunately, Lydia quickly becomes ‘friends’ with ‘Patricia’ (the fake account) and starts to talk about Georgia. When Lydia reveals a secret about Georgia’s marriage, everything becomes a lot less fun. This one was a lot less fluffy than I thought it would be. Georgia and Lydia’s friendship is a longstanding one, but it’s more complex than you might imagine. Lydia’s parents died when she was young, and Georgia’s family became a surrogate family for her as she was grieving. Although we’re focused on the who-said-what-on-Twitter antics of the present day, there’s a much sadder story underneath about a friendship forged in trauma that was never quite as solid as it seemed.

Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister (2022)

I bought this one in the supermarket on impulse, which isn’t something I’ve done much recently. It looked intriguing, though I’m not sure that instinct has been steering me right this month. The book begins with the protagonist Jen waiting up for her teenaged son Todd to come home after a night out. But something very bad happens. She sees a man approach Todd and then, without warning, her son pulls a knife out and stabs the stranger to death. In the immediate aftermath, Jen is bewildered and her husband Kelly is angry. Todd won’t explain why he did what he did, but no one can deny that he did do it. You’d be forgiven for thinking this book is going to be a mother’s journey into understanding her son’s secret life of crime, or a We-Need-to-Talk-About-Todd exploration of nature/nurture and the creation of a criminal. It’s neither of those things. Because, when Jen wakes up the morning after the arrest, it’s actually the morning before the arrest. Todd is still at home and apparently happy, with no indication of what’s to come. Yes! This is a time-loop mystery novel! And a really good one! Each time Jen wakes up, she’s moved further back in time, allowing her to work out exactly where the root cause of Todd’s crime lies. McAllister does an admirable job of planting backward clues, and the whole thing has a really satisfying resolution. And then it has a tiny epilogue that is awesome. Loved it!

The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer (2022)

And back to my library books… this one is the debut novel by Bob Mortimer, and so I just had to read it. The blurb promised a ‘noirish’ story with the absurd and surrealist humour we might expect from the author. The protagonist is Gary, a rather mundane man who works for a solicitor’s. Gary meets a girl in a pub one day, but she leaves before he can get her name. Gary is quite taken with the girl, but the only thing he knows about her is the title of the book she was reading: The Satsuma Complex. When he discovers that his friend Brendan has disappeared, and that the police believe he’s the last person to see Brendan alive, Gary gets drawn into a rather convoluted mystery, which sees him attempt to track down ‘Satsuma’ and work out what has happened to his friend. There are mystery USB sticks, dodgy policemen and some odd conversations with squirrels as he does so. I really did want to love this one, as I’m a long-time fan of Bob Mortimer’s comedy, but it all fell a bit flat for me. It was absolutely fine, but I guess I was expecting something more than ‘fine’ with this one. The novel form doesn’t really fit with Mortimer’s usual style of comedic storytelling, so it all felt kind of watered down, and the plot was a bit lacklustre. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it. And I guess I wanted to love it.

The Heights by Louise Candlish (2021)

And another library book! I’ve read a couple of Candlish’s other books, so I had a good idea what I was going to get with this one. The book is initially narrated by Ellen, a woman who has signed up for a memoir-writing class for victims of violent crime (and so her narration contains stylistic elements of memoir). Ellen’s world has been upturned at the start of the book because, while working at a client’s property, she spots someone in the window of a neighbouring building and recognizes him. But it doesn’t make any sense, because not only has the young man in question been dead for a couple of years, Ellen was the one who killed him. Obviously, this isn’t possible, so part of the book’s storyline is about explaining how Kieran, the young man in question, can be walking around when he’s meant to be dead. More importantly, it’s also about explaining what happened in the past that took Ellen to the point of wanting to kill a teenager. The second part of the book switches perspectives, so that we now see things from Ellen’s husband’s POV. I think that might have been my favourite bit of the story, as I enjoyed the way we revisited incidents from the first part, but with a very different take. Overall, the story is quite compelling and there are a few surprises, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the author’s other books as it’s just not quite as gripping.

My Year in Books 2020: July

Continuing with my monthly round-up of the books I've read for pleasure, and I think I've definitely got out of the slump I've been in. I read more in July than I've been doing, and it's been a bit of a diverse mix as well.

In case you're curious, here are my reviews from the past few months: January, February, March, April, May, June

Dirty Little Secrets by Jo Spain (2019)

The last book I read in June was Jo Spain’s Six Wicked Reasons, and I decided just to go straight into another of her standalone novels. These posts make it look like there was a gap between me reading these two books, but actually I picked up Dirty Little Secrets immediately after finishing Six Wicked Reasons. The story takes place in a gated community – with the slightly unfortunate name of Withered Vale – where, as you can probably guess, affluent façades hide… well, dirty little secrets. Olive Collins, a middle-aged woman who lived in Withered Vale since before the other houses were even built, is dead. And, possibly worse, no one even noticed. Her body lay undisturbed in her cottage for months before she was found and a police investigation launched. Dirty Little Secrets is told from multiple perspectives, switching between the neighbours (who pretty much all have something to hide), the police officers investigating, and – somewhat unsettlingly – Olive herself, who offers a commentary on her neighbours from beyond the grave. I have to admit, I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as Six Wicked Reasons, though the two books have much in common. I’m not sure the minor subplots involving the police officers really added anything either, and I found those chapters to be a bit of a distraction. I struggled to engage with the characters here, except Olive, and I did find it quite hard to believe that everyone in Withered Vale had a devastating secret to hide!

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (1908)

I fell in love with A Room with a View when I studied it for A-Level. I adored everything about it – and even ended up going for a short holiday to Florence with my mum just after I finished my A-Levels, so that I could visit some of the places in Forster’s novel (with a Baedeker, I’m afraid). I haven’t reread the book for many years, but this month I had an afternoon with some friends where we watched the film adaptation, and afterwards I just had to reread the book. To say that A Room with a View is the story of a young, naïve Englishwoman who is transformed by a trip to Florence (and by an unconventional young man she meets there) is to do the novel a massive disservice. A Room with a View is a book about beauty and the ability to perceive it. One of the things I love is that – ultimately – not very much happens, and nothing very serious occurs, and yet every single incident, every object and place that’s described, feels imbued with an incredible significance and profundity. Buying a set of touristy postcards of famous artworks becomes a transcendent and liberating moment; unfurling a square of waterproof fabric speaks volumes about how we relate to place. Such shallow, mundane things hint at incredible depth and meaning. (I reread my A-Level copy, by the way, so also got to enjoy 16-year-old me’s pencilled notes and remember my first experience of reading Forster’s novel.)

Magpie by Sophie Draper (2019)

The next book I read this month was one I gave my mum for Christmas, and which she lent me after she’d finished it. I read Sophie Draper’s novel Cuckoo at Christmas in 2018 and loved it. Magpie is a slightly different type of story, though it has much in common with Draper’s debut novel. Magpie is the story of Duncan and Claire, an unhappily married couple who have a teenage son called Joe and a dog called Arthur. The story moves back and forth between Duncan and Claire’s perspectives, and also shifts in time, with some chapters marked ‘Before’ and some ‘After’. From the beginning, it seems clear what ‘Before’ and ‘After’ refer to – Duncan and Claire’s marriage is falling apart, and Claire is about to take action to end the relationship – but as the story develops, it seems there is more to it than that. I have to say, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as Cuckoo. The story’s set in Derbyshire, near a reservoir (that was created by flooding a village) and an abandoned hall and estate. I enjoyed the glimpses of the reservoir and the dilapidated hall, but there just wasn’t the same sense of pervasive atmosphere as in Draper’s first novel. My favourite part of the book was Joe, Duncan and Claire’s son, and the bizarre, understated menace of something he finds while metal-detecting. However, the main story of Duncan and Claire moved slowly, and I was a bit frustrated with it at times.

Phoenix in Obsidian by Michael Moorcock (1970)

And now… a little bit of a change… The next few books on my list are a bit of a mixed-bag – and deliberately so. In May, when I was struggling a bit to enjoy reading during the lockdown, I ordered a book bundle from Lyall’s Bookshop in Todmorden, who were offering to put together genre bundles or selections based on readers’ preferences. I decided I wanted something a bit different, though, so I simply asked them to ‘Surprise me’ – I wanted to pay my money and take my chance. And they did not disappoint! What arrived was a selection of eight wildly different titles (only one of which I’d read before), and I’ve finally had chance to jump in and get started. The first book in the bundle was Phoenix in Obsidian, one of the stories in Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series/cycle. I’ve read at least one Moorcock story before (when I was a teenager), but this is the first story I’ve read set in his ‘multiverse’ (and Moorcock was the first author to use that word, by the way). Phoenix in Obsidian is very much early-70s SFF, made all the more disorienting by the fact I’ve not read the preceding book. It’s kinda trippy futuristic stuff with some almost-Arthurian heroics in the mix. I won’t say that it's converted me to the genre, but it was a fun read (if weird) and definitely not the sort of thing I usually choose. All-in-all, a good start to my random reading selection.

Moll Cutpurse: Her True History by Ellen Galford (1984)

This month is obviously a month for rereading books I loved when I was a teenager. The second book from my Lyall’s Bookshop bundle was one that I’d read before, and unbeknownst to Lyall’s (unless they’re doing some black magic over there) was one that swept me up in a wave of nostalgia. Moll Cutpurse – real name Mary Frith – was a seventeenth-century ‘character’. She was undoubtedly a thief and a fence, probably a drunk, possibly a madam, and almost definitely not (no matter what the legend says) a highway robber. She was also a pipe-smoker who was known for dressing in men’s clothing. I had a bit of an obsession with Moll Cutpurse when I was a teenager, and spent a lot of time reading historical records and contemporaneous stories of Moll’s notoriety (she was mentioned by Shakespeare, and was the eponymous character of Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl). I was, admittedly, a weird teenager. And of course, I read Galford’s novel about Moll. The book is a romanticized imagining of Moll’s career through the eyes of her (fictional) love Bridget, the apothecary. Galford’s Moll rampages through Elizabethan – and then, later (and less joyously) early Stuart – England, meeting with travelling actors, criminals and Romanies, and exercising her own dubious (but rigid) moral judgement on witch-hunters, plague-profiteers and bad men. I loved this book – and I loved Galford’s version of Moll – when I was younger, and it was an absolute joy to revisit as an adult. I’ve missed Moll Cutpurse.

The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish (2020)

Slight pause on my Lyall’s bundle now. The next book I read this month was by Louise Candlish. I’ve been meaning to read one of her books for a while, and apparently my mum’s friend has also recommended them to her, so we’re accidentally in sync! I got the eBook edition of The Other Passenger, because the blurb looked intriguing. It’s the story of two London couples – Gen X Jamie and Clare, and Millennial Kit and Melia – who become friends when Melia gets a job at the high-end estate agent where Clare works. Really, though, this is Jamie’s story. He and Kit make their daily commute together on the Thames riverbus. One morning, just after Christmas 2019, Jamie is intercepted by the police as he leaves the boat. They want to talk to him about Kit, who’s been missing for several days. The interrogation makes Jamie reflect on his relationship with the younger man, and the story flashes back to the beginning of their friendship. And there are secrets that will unfold… obviously. Candlish has been credited with creating the sub-subgenre of ‘property noir’, and that’s certainly an apt descriptor of The Other Passenger. Property – and jealousy about property – looms large throughout, but the book is also heavy on the noir. For all its modern concerns about property prices, income and the rat race, there’s something quite old-school about Candlish’s tale. Yes, it’s a bit larger-than-life at times, but I guess the best noir always is. I enjoyed this one.