Small Things Like These

By Claire Keegan 

Furlong is a coal merchant in Ireland. He was born out of wedlock in 1946 but his mother was allowed to stay with her employer and he was brought up in the house never knowing his father.

The story is set in 1985 and Furlong is happily married with five daughters. He delivers to a convent which is the site of a Magdalen laundry. The story reflects on Furlong's past and a young woman He comes across at the convent.

It is a short but poignant story, beautifully told. 8/10

Treacle Walker

By Alan Garner

A strange mix of dreamworld, comic caper and philosophical musing  who was Treacle Walker, who was Jo. Not sure I got this at all 5/10

After Sappho

 by Selby Wynn Schwartz

So the first question I have is whether this is a novel. The author of course answers this by referencing Orlando as biography.

It is a fascinating journey through intellectual, artsy lesbianism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, referencing real life people and events. The unnamed narrator seems to be the lesbian corpus looking and cheering on.
It uses this looping device so the characters keep coming around again. This does mean you want to read it quickly or you can lose track easily.
I really enjoyed the book, although i haven't answered my question but it sent me scurrying to discover more about people like Romaine Brooks and Natalie Barney and that's got to be a good thing. 8/10

Nightcrawling

 by Leila Mottley

This book is set in Oakland and is a fairly depressing tale of poverty in the US and survival against the odds. Despite the grim story line of a young girl, Keira, getting pulled into prostitution this book has an underlying hope and resilience that keeps you hanging in and desperate to see how it ends. 8/10 

Oh William!

 by Elizabeth Strout

A well told story about William and his ex-wife, Lucy Barton.

William's third wife is leaving him and he has discovered he has a half sister he didn't know existed. This is a third book about Lucy Barton and maybe if I had read the previous two I would have been more engaged but this did not really do much for me 5/10

The Trees

 by Percival Everett

So every so often a book hits the Booker longlist that doesn't feel like it belongs there.
In some ways this is such a book. It is a crime novel and it is very funny in places. It is also a book about racial tensions and hate crimes and the history of black Americans. All in all a strange mix that works and in true Booker style is less unresolved at the end with questions dropped into the readers lap to deal with. A great book but I will be amazed if it makes the shortlist. 9/10

Trust

 by Hernan Diaz

Always difficult to score the first booker book of the year but this novel grew on me and I enjoyed it.
It tells the story of a rich financier and his wife in the inter-war years but uses a great device which undermines the telling of history and biography. The story unfolds in 4 different books written by different people, the last being the diary of the financiers wife which unlocks the truthfulness-or does it- of the previous three. Great storytelling either way. 9/10

Maigret's Dead Man

by Georges Simenon 

I much prefer generally(maybe with the exception of The Yellow Dog) the novels set in Paris. This novel is very much set around the streets of Paris - although the crimes have largely taken place in Normandy.

Maigret is his normal obsessive self, enjoying the Parisian way of life while fighting crime. Marvellous 8/10

Fire in the Thatch

 by E.C.R. Lorac

Subtitled a Devon mystery this crime novel was excellent. Although writing as a man ECR was actually Edith Caroline Rivett and she died a year before I was born. This novel was published in 1946, and concerns a man invalided out of the army who rents a farm cottage and works hard renovating it and the garden with it. When he dies in a fire the mystery begins and many false trails are laid. I will try and find more of her writing 9/10