My Year in Books 2023: May

I'm a bit late posting this one, but here is my monthly blog post with mini-reviews of the books I read in May this year. There are only three this time. And wouldn't you know? They were all library books!

In case you're interested, here are my review posts for the rest of the year: January, February, March, April

The Last by Hanna Jameson (2019)

So I started the month (as I often do) with a library book. And this one had such an intriguing and original premise that I just couldn’t resist it. The Last takes place in a remote hotel in Switzerland… shortly after nuclear war has broken out and destroyed the world as we know it. Most of the guests and staff of L'Hotel Sixieme fled when news of the apocalypse broke – some even ended their own lives rather than draw out the inevitable. A small group, though, have chosen to stay, deciding that the hotel is as safe as anywhere else. One of the survivors is Jon Keller, an American historian who decides to document their experience in case anything of the human race survives. However, this is all derailed somewhat by the discovery of a body – a young girl has been murdered, and her killer could well be among the small group of survivors sheltering in the hotel. It’s like Z for Zachariah meets And Then There Were None! Okay, it turns out it’s not quite like that, but Jameson’s novel is certainly a compelling read and very much to my taste. I couldn’t help but notice the inspiration for L'Hotel Sixieme (it’s clearly modelled on the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, with the discovery of the girl’s body bearing grim similarities to the tragic death of Elisa Lam). But the story doesn’t quite go in the direction you might be expecting, and the denouement comes as quite a surprise!

Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka (2012)

Marina Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian must rank among my favourite novels of all time. I also loved Two Caravans and We Are All Made of Glue, though the latter was a little bit more heavy-handed in its humour, which makes for something of a challenging read. I don’t know why it took me so long to read Various Pets Alive and Dead, but I’ve finally got around to it! It was a little bit of a surprise after the other three novels, but not necessarily in a bad way. The thing about this novel is that, compared to Lewycka’s earlier novels, it’s really rather gentle! The story revolves around Marcus Free and Doro Marchmont, radical left-wing activists who chose to raise their children in a commune. The novel is actually set years after the commune’s demise, when their daughter Clara is working as a secondary school teacher in Doncaster, and their son Serge (who’s told them he’s finishing up his PhD at Cambridge) has become an evil capitalist banker. Marcus and Doro are also raising the amazingly named Oolie-Anna (actually Ulyana), who has Down’s Syndrome and is the abandoned daughter of another commune member. The novel takes place during the 2008 financial crisis, with the family navigating the present, while remembering some of the things that happened in the commune to bring them to where they are now. It’s very readable, and really very charming, but it lacks the sucker-punch of some of Lewycka’s other writing.

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan (2016)

And next… another library book! I got this one out because last month I read another of Ruth Hogan’s books – Queenie Malone’s Paradise Hotel – and really enjoyed it. Even though it’s not my usual genre, I thought Hogan’s writing was so good that I wanted to read more of her work. The Keeper of Lost Things is the story of Anthony Peardew, a man who collects things that people have lost (a single glove, a child’s hair bobble). Anthony has lost something himself, you see, and this is his way to make up for this. I say this is Anthony’s story, but it’s really the story of Laura comes to work for Anthony and to whom he leaves his house and his collection when he dies. Anthony’s bequest comes with the condition that Laura must do everything she can to reunite the lost things with their owners, and in this she is helped by Freddy, Anthony’s attractive gardener, and Sunshine, a young woman with Down’s Syndrome who lives nearby. Intertwined is the story of Eunice and Bomber, but I won’t spoil that story too much or reveal how the two tales intersect (you’ll work that out as you read it!). The Keeper of Lost Things is definitely a bit of a lighter read that I would normally choose, but Hogan’s writing really is excellent. The central premise initially reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, but the story unfolds in quite a different (less painful) way.

My Year in Books 2018: February

So I managed to stick to my New Year's Resolution for another month. Yay! I'm still making time to read for pleasure (even if I didn't read quite as much as last month), and I'm still sticking to my 250-word limit for my reviews.

If you missed it, you can click here for my reading list in January. But here are the books I read in February...

The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas (2006)

I’ve been meaning to read Thomas’s novel for some time now, as it was recommended to me a couple of years ago. The person who told me about it really enjoyed it, and the blurb sounded right up my street. Ariel Manto, a PhD student working on nineteenth-century thought experiments, stumbles upon a copy of a supposedly lost and cursed work by obscure writer Thomas Lumas (the eponymous The End of Mr Y). The only person Ariel knows who has read Mr Y is her PhD supervisor, but he disappeared eighteen months earlier. As Ariel begins to read Mr Y, she discovers the secret that (presumably) drove Lumas to his death and her supervisor to disappear. I really wanted to like this book, as it’s a fabulous premise. But sadly, The End of Mr Y left me rather disappointed. I know I’m going to sound like a bit of a snob here, but, for all its academic pretensions, it just wasn’t quite clever enough. There are casual mentions of various ‘classic’ thought experiments (from Schrödinger’s Cat to Einstein’s theory of relativity) and philosophical principles, but these are never really treated in much detail. There’s also a tendency to stick to the famous examples, which makes Ariel’s PhD research seem a wee bit superficial. Strangely, for all Ariel’s insistence, Lumas’s novel doesn’t seem to be a thought experiment at all, in the end. However, for all that, I really liked the book’s ending, which is presented with a wonderfully light touch.

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (2017)

I read McGregor’s debut novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things about ten years ago, on the recommendation of a Yr 10 lad I was tutoring at the time. I completely fell in love with the book and read So Many Ways to Begin shortly afterwards. I loved that McGregor’s first (and, to a lesser extent, second) book was, essentially, a prose poem, and that the narrative isn’t constructed in a particularly easy way. You sort of let the fragments wash over you, until you somehow know (without really being told) what is going on. I was hoping Reservoir 13 would do something similar – and I wasn’t disappointed. The book has thirteen chapters, and each one tells a year in the life of an English village, moving from New Year through the seasons until it reaches Christmas. But, as with McGregor’s first two novels, the thread of the story is strung on a communal tragedy. The first chapter tells of the first ‘new year’ since the unexplained disappearance of a young teenager who was visiting the village with her family. As in Remarkable Things, this is the story of how life continues around the hole formed by a devastating event, with characters and events presented through fragmentary and semi-objective snippets. The pace of the novel constantly reminds you of the unstoppable march of time and change, but the use of repetition and echoed phrases suggest that, perhaps, things aren’t changing as much as you think. I really enjoyed this one.

We Are All Made of Glue by Marina Lewycka (2009)

Some people don’t get Lewycka’s work, which blends madcap and often absurd comic writing with serious themes and references, but I really like the way that this works, as there’s something so human and so hopeful about the way life unfolds in her books. In her third novel, the protagonist is Georgie Sinclair, who is a copy-writer for a magazine called Adhesives in the Modern World and an aspiring romance writer. When Georgie’s husband walks out, she decides to chuck his stuff into a skip. She’s surprised to find her odd elderly neighbour, Mrs Shapiro, rooting items out and taking them away in a pram. She’s even more surprised when, a short time later, she is called by the hospital because Mrs Shapiro has listed Georgie as her next-of-kin. A quirky kind of alliance forms between the two women, with Georgie stumbling into taking care of Mrs Shapiro’s rambling, squalid home and assortment of earthy felines. She begins to get a glimpse into her neighbour’s past – taking in the Holocaust, Jewish diaspora, and the foundation of the Israeli state. A chance encounter with a Palestinian shop assistant with a side line in home repairs, the underhanded behaviour of a social worker of dubious morals, and the predations of an array of estate agents fixated on acquiring Mrs Shapiro’s house add further absurdity and trauma to the mix. I didn’t find this mix ‘glib’ as some reviewers have, but rather a testament to the extraordinary resilience of the survivor.

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (2015)

Okay, this one is a reread. I originally read Career of Evil when it first came out but ended up rereading it after the first episode of the BBC adaptation on 25th February. I knew the TV version had cut a lot of subplots out/down to fit the format, so I wanted to remind myself what was missing! Career of Evil is the third Cormoran Strike novel by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling). As I’ve said to too many people (I’m such a hipster), I’ve never read anything by J.K. Rowling, but I do love Robert Galbraith. I couldn’t put The Cuckoo’s Calling or The Silkworm down. Career of Evil is a longer read – not so easy to finish in one sitting! – but it’s still a real page-turner. Galbraith’s detective, Strike, is a man out of time. He’s part hardboiled P.I., part whodunnit-unraveller. Like the rest of the characters who surround him, Strike is a larger-than-life figure, with enough quirks to keep a fleet of fictional detectives going. But there’s something so enjoyable about the novels, and I think it’s the story-telling. Galbraith sure can weave a yarn. Career of Evil sees Strike facing a figure from his past – someone who has sent a severed leg to his office, with a cryptic note that can only be meant for him. The mystery is: which unsavoury character is out for revenge? Strike gives us three suspects, the police offer up another, and there’s always a chance it’s someone else entirely. A really fun mystery novel.