The Quarry

by Ian Banks
This is the story of Kit and Guy. Kit is Guy's son and is somewhere along the Asperger's syndrome. Guy has brought Kit up from the time he was left on his doorstep as a baby. He has never told Kit who his mother is, or he has told him many times but each time he is given a different story. Guy is in the latter stages of cancer.
The story is told by Kit and takes place over a winter weekend, when a number of Guy's old university friends have come to visit, with the purpose of trying to find a compromising video tape they made when they were media students at the nearby university, and lived together in this same house.
On this simple plot Ian Bank's crafts a very funny, poignant novel. The characters are few but are brought to life wonderfully in a way that left me wanting the story to continue beyond the ending of the novel. The book is given more edge by the fact that the author died of cancer before publication.
A word of warning. The book makes liberal use of the F-word and C-word, so don't read if this will put you off. Otherwise enjoy! 9/10

The Testament of Mary

by Colm Toibin
I read this as it is on the Booker longlist. It is by far the shortest book at barely a hundred pages.
It is a retelling of the gospel story from Mary's point of view and it borrows so heavily from those works I am surprised it made it to the list. It is written well but I was not very impressed 4/10

Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn
A thriller about a woman's disappearance where the clear suspect is the husband. His position is made more untenable by the fact that he tells the readers early on that he is lying to the police.

The story is told in alternate chapters by the husband Nick on the one hand and his wife Amy on the other. The story is further broken up by the fact that the two protagonists tell there story on different timelines so Nicks first chapter is on the day she disappears wheras Amy's first chapter starts 7 years earlier.
The timeframes get closer and closer as the book unfolds and adds to the mounting tension.
It is a pageturner and uses some great devices to arrest the readers attention, but I think the central device has been done better by Sarah Waters.
I enjoyed reading this book but I did feel a little dissatisfied with the ending. 7/10

May we be forgiven

by A. M. Homes
I enjoyed this. If you like Dicken's I think you would like this book. It is peopled with marvellous characters, some more comic than others. It has a young heroine character, a baddy or two and a happy ending. Perfect Dickens territory but set very much in 21st century America.
The narrator is Harold Silver and the story unfolds over a very eventful and wild year from one thanksgiving to the next. The story starts with his sister in law kissing him at the annual thanksgiving dinner, followed closely by his younger and somewhat bullying youger brother being at the wheel of his car when two people are killed. Harold ends up picking up the pieces that leads to further disaster.
There is always something happening which keeps you turning the pages. I felt the last quarter of the book rather coasted to a soft landing but that aside it was a fun read 8/10

The Third Industrial Revolution

by Jeremy Rifkin
This is a thought provoking book. It maps out a vision for a way through the current climate change problems facing the human race. It does not shy away from the enormity of this challenge and neither does it descent into a doomsday mentality. It is founded in practical case studies that Rifkin is involved with around the globe and the five pillars that he sets out as the bedrock of the third revolution are practical and in many cases well on the way to fruition.
I did have problems with a couple of issues. The first was in chapter eight where Rifkin examines education and changes that need to be made. He suggests that there needs to be a change to collaborative thinking and a working for the common good(my interpretation). There seems to be a belief (hope) that the younger generations will adopt this as a normal way of working. I have trouble reconciling this with my experience which is that there will always be somebody who will see a chance to maximise personal return, albeit at the expense of the majority. I readily accept this may be due to a dose of Calvin in my youth tempered by later Darwin!
Secondly, Rifkin alludes to but did not deal with the problem of the North-South divide. It is a great aspiration to state that the developing countries may leapfrog the developed nations in the roll out of renewable energies etc. but it is hard to see the developed nations letting that happen without a fight. The step back from committment to a green agenda-see recent cuts by the UK and French governments in these areas-suggests that GDP growth will remain the driving force of these nations at any cost.
I applaud the ideas of this book but find it hard to share Mr. Rifkin's optimism for the future of our species. I hope to attend the World forum in Lille later this year and will be interested to hear an update from Jeremy Rifkin on the current state of our planet. I would thoroughly recommend reading this book. 9/10

Felix Holt-The Radical

by Geaorge Eliot
I listened to this book after thoroughly enjoying Middlemarch and I am not so enthusiastic about this. There is still Eliot's enjoyable humour and her fantastic descriptions of nineteenth century life.
However, my main problem was that I did not like Felix Holt or Harold Transome. Part of me is glad about this but at other times I found it hard to engage with these characters. We were promised so much mystery surrounding Harold that was never delivered upon.
The story is set around the Reform Act of 1832 and the book is a great way of looking at social tensions around at that time however, some, like me, may find that there is a little too much detail on this front. 7/10