Review of 2019

Have read more non-fiction this year.
Enjoyed Left Bank a lot-a book about the Paris Left bank during and immediately after the second world war. Revolution Francaise was an interesting look at Macrons rise to power.
On the fiction side I have read and really enjoyed the tin drum. Also reread the first two books of Remembrance of things past and Anna Karenina.
The Booker had an interesting list this year. I particularly enjoyed the Elif Shafak and the winner was ok, the Bernardino and not The Testaments, which I was disappointed by. However, my two favourites were Lanny by Max Porter and The man who saw everything by Deborah Levy, neither of which made the shortlist. A mention to for Salman Rushdie's Quichotte a crazy enjoyable retelling of the Cervantes original.
In keeping with the Booker Prize this year I refuse to pick an absolute favourite!

Poor Economics

by Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo
Interesting and thought provoking look at how macro policies work out at the micro level in trying to fix some of the world's fundamental problems. Found the writing style a bit tedious. 6/10

The Man in the Red Coat

by Julian Barnes
Ok so first off, this is a beautifully produced book. The paper is the right thickness, the illustrations are interesting and help draw you in.
The writing is great and you can feel on every page the novelist wanting to get out of this biographers cage that he has placed himself in. Humour spilling over the edges is the result.
The biography of Dr Pozzi-and although I have seen the painting, I confess I did not know who he was-is a wonderful telling of society in the Belle Epoque. Pozzi is one character among many who shines out from the pages. I was amazed at the advances in medicine that took place at the end of the nineteenth century but fear not. This book is not about medicine, it is about characters rich in stories to tell and told in an unusual and brilliant way. 9/10

The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak
Set in Istanbul and America this is a look at the Armenian genocide of 2015 from the standpoint of today through the eyes of Turks, Armenian Turks and Armenians in the diaspora.
It is told through the story of one family over the course of 20 years and with a big secret stuck in the centre of the story throughout. In truth, by half way through we know what the secret is but the tale is well told. I was disappointed with the contrived device of using a medium to inform the current generation of what happened to grandparents but that aside it was an interesting read with engaging characters. 6/10

Faces on the tip of my tongue

by Emmanuelle Pagano
A really interesting book translated from the French in the Peirene press series. It tells the story of a French village from small anecdotal stories that seem unconnected apart from the odd cross reference that gradually makes the whole hang together. No names are used to add to the confusion but the stories are those of any rural setting and beautifully evocative writing 8/10

Steel Boat, Iron Hearts

by Hans Goebeler
This is life aboard a U-boat in the second world war as seen through the eyes of a crewman aboard U-505. It is a candid tale of life on board and ashore in Lorient and Brest in Brittany. Taken as a tale told with hindsight and the removal of time it is a fascinating history told by the losing side and adds some balance to the standard histories of the period. It was a miserable existence in my view but won that Herr Goebeler had immense pride in and his insistence that he was motivated by love of his homeland like most sailors the world over has a ring of truth to it. The relentless bombing of the allies on French civilian towns is as equally abhorrent as the german bombing of London and Plymouth and other cities. It was an interesting read 8/10

The Man who saw everything

by Deborah Levy
I would not recommend Deborah Levy for the pulsating plot line. What I enjoy so much is her writing and the way a story is borne along on the language and beauty of the style.
This book is about Saul Adler who gets hit by a car on the iconic Abbey Road zebra crossing in 1988 and again seemingly in 2016. Once before the Iron curtain fell and once as Britain voted to leave the EU. But this is an unreliable narrator and we slip about in time and many things are not what they seem. What a man remembers is not always truth. I really enjoyed this book and cannot understand why it did not make the shortlist. 9/10

Grand Union

by Zadie Smith
A book of short stories that was a mixed bag as all such collections are I suppose. There were a few that I really enjoyed, Parents morning epiphany, Miss Adele amongst the corsets, Kelso deconstructed, and For the King remain in the memory. Not a great fan of short stories as a type but this was ok. 6/10

This Poison Will Remain

by Fred Vargas
Commissioner Adamsberg gets called back from Iceland to solve a case in the first few pages of this book but then gets sidetracked into examining a case of poisoning by spider bite. With its normal twists and turns and eccentricities of the team this was another enjoyable read, albeit the crimes uncovered were horrific. 8/10

The Testaments

by Margaret Attwood
The last of the five Booker shortlisted novels I am reading. I did get 150 pages into Ducks, Newburyport but found it too in love with the art of novelty than with storytelling.
This was a good follow up to the Handmaids Tale but not as good as its predecessor. The story is told through three characters. One of these, Aunt Lydia, was a key character in the first novel but we get to hear her side of the story. The other two narrators are new but it soon becomes clear they have links to the previous book. The first part of the book was good but the later part had elements of an Enid Blyton adventure which seemed out of keeping. Still a good read 8/10
I know while typing this that this book won the Booker Prize last night jointly with Girl, Woman, Other. Given Lanny had already been eliminated I can't argue with that decision.

Girl, Woman, Other

by Bernardine Evaristo
I did not like the format of this book. It is 12 short stories about black women/trans living mostly in the UK but they all have a link to each other somehow.
This grew on me as the book unfolded and I got caught up in the working out of these lives across different time periods. 7/10

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood
This famous post apocalyptic novel has a sequel 30+ something years later. I wanted to read this before I read the Booker listed sequel. It is fairly grim stuff but totally engaging. What was going to happen to our heroine at the end of the book as she stepped in to the van? Can't wait to find out 9/10

Quichotte

by Salman Rushdie
Magical, funny, topical, this was a really good book as long as you are prepared to suspend reality.
The story revolves around a man in America addicted to TV, who falls in love with a TV talk show host, who like him hails from India.
He takes on the name of Quichotte and invents a son for himself called Sancho who materialises into reality (for a while at least).
However, the story of Quichotte runs alongside the story of the author, one Sam Duchamp who also has a son. Confusing it is at times but you have to marvel at the imagination who can dream up this stuff. 9/10

An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma
This book is different in that it is narrated by a chi-the guardian spirit that is joined to a human from birth. It tells the story of Nonso, a chicken farmer in Nigeria. He saves a woman from jumping off a bridge and eventually they become lovers. In trying to win the approval of her parents he goes off to Cyprus to get a degree. This turns out to be a scam and he ends up imprisoned for a crime he did not commit.
The language of the book is great but to be honest I found it really bleak and devoid of hope. I did not like it. 5/10

Lanny

by Max Porter
I did not expect to enjoy this book but I loved it. Lanny is a young boy living with his parents in a commuter village in the home counties. He also seems to be in rouch with dead papa toothwart, who can and does take the form of all sorts of things in the surroundings of the village.
When Lanny goes missing the blame focuses on a local artist, as the outsider, the not like us. It is a great fable for our time and written in a challenging yet engaging style. A potential winner of the Booker prize? Would that be that bold? 9/10

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

by Elif Shafak
On the face of it this does not offer a promising premise.
A prostitute is found dead in a waste bin in Istanbul. The 10 minutes 38 seconds of the title refers to the time from when her heart stopped beating to when her brain died.
However, Leila uses that time to tell us her life story and introduce us to her five dearest friends. The latter part of the book takes us on a slapstick journey of how these friends demonstrate their friendship and also how important friendship is. In danger of getting a little twee toward the end I really enjoyed this book and hope it makes the Booker shortlist 9/10

Within a Budding Grove

by Marcel Proust
The second book in the Remebrance of things Past septology(?) on Audible.
This book takes our narrator and us to Balbec where we meet Elstir the painter, and Albertine and her gang of friends. I love the description and his understanding of the human condition but it has to be said-and I know it is sacrilege-but he does go on a bit at times! 8/10

Frankissstein

by Jeanette Winterson
As you can guess by the title this has echoes of Frankenstein throughout.
The book starts with Mary Shelley in Italy where she first gets the idea for her famous book. Switch abruptly to a tech show in Memphis for adult toys and robots and enter Ron Lord. He is a very funny character and if Dickens was alive now I can imagine him conjuring up such a character along with his soon to be partner Claire, Enter also Ry Shelley, a doctor who is trans and used to be called Mary. Enter also Victor Stein a very intelligent academic in the field of AI who falls in love with Ry-or does he?
As well as being funny in places it is also a book that provokes you to think about what it means to be human as well as gender patterns.
The end was not perfect, a little too contrived and clunky but a great read none the less. 9/10

Night Boat to Tangier

by Kevin Barry
This book is set in the Spanish port of Algeciras as two middle aged drug dealers from Cork wait in the hope of finding a daughter, Dilly who disappeared three years earlier. It is funny in places, sad and melancholic in others but has a lovely lilting flow to the language that made it a really enjoyable read. 8/10

My sister, the serial killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Set in Lagos what do you do when your sister starts killing people?
This was a good read, presented in a deadpan sort of way we learn how a nurse looks out for her sister and why she reacts to men the way she does. 7/10

The Pale Criminal

by Philip Kerr
Second in the Bernie Gunther series and Bernie is forced to rejoin the police force to solve a crime intricately involved with the politics of the time. A good read for a train journey. 7/10

March Violets

by Philip Kerr
The first novel in a crime series about a detective called Bernie Gunther. Set in pre-war Berlin it is given an added twist by being set alongside the rise of national socialism, A good story 7/10

Machines like Me

by Ian McEwan
Very well written as you would expect.
I am not sure about the device of setting the book in the eighties and playing with political outcomes following the Falklands war, alongside a technology world set some years beyond where we are now. However, the story provokes thought about morals in an AI world and how sentient a being a robot can be. I finished the book quite drained and needed to plug myself, recharge and muse about what it all meant. 8/10

Swann's Way

by Marcel Proust
The first book of Remembrance of things Past which I first read 30 years ago. Listening to it as an audiobook is different but enjoyable, The descriptive passages are faantastic and although they can get drawn out for far too long at times his capturing of human emotion is brilliant 8/10

The confessions of Frannie Langton

by Sara Collins
Frannie is a mulato slave brought up on a sugar plantation in the West Indies. She is involved in some weird experiments her owner is undertaking to try and show that slavery is justified.
The book starts at the Old Bailey where she is on trial for murder. The book is her tale of what happened and how she got to the position she was in. I loved the ending but I think not everyone will. 7/10

Tangerine

by Christine Mangan
Tangiers 1956 and newly married Alice is deeply unhappy and a long way from home. Out of nowhere her best friend from college turns up-a friend she does not want to meet. This book promised a lot and I read it very quickly but somehow it did not quite do it for me. A good train read 6/10

Maigret takes a room

by Georges Simenon
Back in Paris and a really enjoyable novel, as Maigret sets out to find out who shot and wounded one of his detectives. He checks into a boarding house and meets a great array of characters. Oh and along the way he solves the case! 8/10

Spring

by Ali Smith
The third in a quartet looking at the state of Britain today.
I really enjoyed this book with a good balance of anger v humour and some great characters. Particularly liked Paddy and Richard (nickname Doubledick after a Dickens character).
I got a little bit lost at times in the second half of the book but didn't really mind this as I knew the direction we were heading in and that we were unlikely to arrive by the end-which we didn't. Still a great read 8/10

Revolution Francaise

by Sophie Pedder
The author makes clear that she is not writing a biography but she does write about Emmanuel Macron and his dramatic rise to the role of French President.
The whole book is fascinating as it tries to unravel what drives this unusual character and what it is he is trying to achieve. The best parts of the book were in chapters nine and ten examining the deep fractures that divide France and the French education system which is controlled from the centre to the point of stifling good teachers from developing those most in need of it.
Both society and the education system need attention. As I write this the yellow vest protests continue(they had not started when the book was written), and you feel the next 12 months are critical if the Macron presidency is going to deliver any of the hope promised during his election campaign. 9/10

Left Bank

by Agnes Poirier
A very readable portrait of the Paris arts scene during and after the war.
Sartre and de Beauvoir feature a lot but so do Mailer, Koestler and Camus, Saul Bellow and Miles Davis, and a host of others. It paints Paris in such a way as to be attractive, but also realistic about the realities of a post war city and leaves the reader wanting to explore the city and the works of the various people mentioned. 8/10

The Wall

by John Lanchester
A novel set in a post climate disaster world where are narrator is doing his national service on a massive wall that runs all the way around the UK to keep the others out.
At one point our hero tells us nothing much happens on the wall and he is right! Nothing much happens in the novel. The story that is told is told well but there is not a lot to tell. Life is boring, something major happens followed by a period which is dramatic but actually not much happens, the end. 5/10

Journey to a War

by WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood
This is a fascinating book written in 1938 and tells the story of a journey around China at the time of the Sino Japanese war.
The language is politically incorrect at times and their behaviours from a different age, but the writing is superb and the poetry is intoxicating-especially the sonnets. 9/10

The Accordionist

by Fred Vargas
Back with the three evangelists as ex special investigator, Louis Kehlweiler, is asked by an old friend to prove that a young accordionist is not guilty of a string of murders.
Quirky as ever this was a good fun, fast paced crime thriller and very enjoyable. 7/10

The Tin Drum

by Gunter Grass
This is a lodge in your brain type book.
I started reading it because of it's reputation and the fact that it was published in the year I was born. Despite this it is an amazingly fresh and modern book.
It follows the life of Oscar, who narrates the book swapping between the 1st and 3rd person.
He is a surreal character who was born fully developed mentally but stopped growing at the age of three-by his own choice he would have us believe.
It is set largely in Danzig (modern day Gdansk) in the period just before the second world war and takes us through Oscar's experiences and introduces us to a panoply of amazing characters.
Apart from his physical attributes, Oscar is unusual in that he can shatter glass at will with his voice and always has with him his tin drum. His drumming eventually makes him very wealthy but it gets him into and out of a lot of scrapes along the way.
This is one of those books that makes you wonder at the imagination of the author. Although I found it totally bizarre in places and frustrating in others I will relish and as one of those book reading experiences that stays with you long after the last page 9/10

Lullaby

by Leila Slimani
A psychological thriller where we learn from the first page that two children have been killed by their nanny. We spend the rest of the book examining how she got there and the effect she had on the family she worked for. It is well written and keeps a tension throughout but, and for me it was a big but, I don't think we will ever know. Maybe this was the point, as it is echoed by the detective on the case. The frustration of modern fiction. No escape from the real world! 7/10

The Misty Harbour

by George Simenon
Excellent Maigret, set on the Normandy coast it is the tale of a mystery man who turns up in Paris not knowing who he is. The trail leads to the coast and an old love problem. 8/10

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy
It is probably 30 years since I last read this book but I still really enjoyed it.
My love for Levin was tempered on this reread as I found him bloody annoying at times.
As for Anna-I am still not sure. In many ways this is the beauty of the book, its refusal to endorse or condemn the characters. Tolstoy lays them out in full and almost challenges the reader to decide. 9/10

Children of the Cave

by Virve Sammalkorpi
A Finnish novel told in a series of diary entries from a nineteenth century explorer's assistant about a strange group of animals/humans who are discovered living in a cave in the Russian wilderness. It is a compelling read as we gradually find more and more revealed about the children and the group of explorers. 7/10

A Political History of the World

by Jonathan Holslag
In 560 pages this book covers 3,000 years of history around the world so it is always going to be a fairly superficial look. Having said that he does it really well demonstrating the way that war follows peace as certainly as sunshine follows rain. Each chapter covers 250 years and put empires and political powers in a clear context. There were a few points that grated such as using the apocryphal "let them eat cake" when talking about the French revolution, but overall I found it really engaging and interesting. 8/10