Fixing France

 by Nabila Ramdani

This is a very frustrating book.
It has editorial errors-claiming the returning Bourbons were on the throne until 1848 for instance-that could easily have been fixed. It is very repetitive, telling us the same thing in different chapters. The author also seems enamoured with the Anglo Saxon world and the UK in particular. She highlights institutional racism in the French police but forgets the problems of stop and search in the London met and the ongoing reports of racism there. Also, while berating the French education system it would have been helpful if she had outlined how she managed to beat the system.

Having said all this, the book is well structured, looking at different facets of society in different chapters and it is great to have the anger of ethnic minority groups spelt out. The call for a sixth republic is heartfelt and well reasoned. I also found the final chapter on foreign policy informative and scary. 7/10

Maigret, Lognon and the gangsters

 by Georges Simenon

Almost by accident Maigret gets involved with a US organised crime gang playing out some grievances on French soil and ends up clashing with the FBI. Good story with normal Maigret ambivalent ending. 8/10 

Cassandra Darke

 by Posy Simmonds

A graphic novel-shock horror!
A short story really, involving a grumpy old woman, a gun, her niece, an actor and some ne'er do wells. I enjoyed the drawings and, for me, the novelty of a graphic novel not written in French. The story was quite light though and not sure I will be embracing the genre to the exclusion of all others! 6/10

When we were Orphans

 by Kazuo Ishiguro

Set in 1930's London and Shanghai this is the story of Christopher Banks and his lifelong search to find out what happened to his parents who disappeared when he was ten years old and living in Shanghai.

He has been brought up and educated in England and has become a famous detective but this story is more than a detective story-in fact it is never really that. It is about chasing dreams, obsession and disappointment. It is about unreliable memory and about growing up an orphan. It keeps giving but never answering the reader's questions. I loved it 8/10

Alphabetical Diaries

 by Sheila Heti

In 1960 Raymond Queneau and others founded the group OuLiPo which in French is short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle. It translates as workshop for potential literature. The authors who formed the group would write under certain self imposed constraints. So for instance Georges Perec wrote a novel which never used the letter 'e'. Queneau wrote a novel telling the same episode in 99 different ways, each one using a different style.

This book reminded me of this group in that this supposed diary has been culled from 10 years of the authors journal and rearranged in alphabetical order with each letter providing a chapter (with the exception of x). 

As an exercise in style it is an interesting idea. As a read I found it tedious, with the occasional piece of humour or beautiful sentence. As with any journal I guess, it was all rather self-absorbed. 5/10 

The Widow Couderc

 by Georges Simenon

This is a story of Tati, who is the eponymous widow of the title. She lives an unusual life looking after her husband's family smallholding as well as her father in law. She meets Jean on the bus and takes him in to help look after the property. The relationship that develops between them is fraught with tension from the start and you know it cannot end well. The tension holds throughout but I felt the story unravelled towards the end. 7/10

The Old Devils

 by Kingsley Amis

This book won the Booker prize in 1986 but I do not think it has aged well. Very much of it's time many of the references seem a bit off nowadays. Having said that a lot of the humour is very funny and the last 50 pages are a very good read. Much of the rest of the book I found hard to follow as the characters were quite shallowly drawn so it was hard to differentiate one ageing drinker from another. 5/10