by Paul Auster
The musings of a man in his early seventies who lost his wife ten years before in an accident.
He is still dealing with grief and is having to handle getting older and falling down stairs and forgetting things.
I imagine the book would only resonate with people over sixty but I enjoyed it with its at times rambling nature. I also wish somebody would write Sy Baumgartner's book, Mysteries of the Wheel! 8/10
by Georges Simenon
Maigret gets approached by an old prostitute when her safe breaking husband disappears after finding a dead body in a house he was burgling.
A long investigation takes place involving the dentist and his mother who live in the house. A good story but we never found out if the safebreaker came back to Paris! 8/10
by Colin Walsh
A fast moving mystery about an old case of a girl who disappeared in Ireland 15 years ago, but some bones have been found just as some of her old friends are returning to the home town. Is it Kala? If it is what happened all those years ago. Good story 7/10
by Robin Ince
Subtitled An Obsessive's tour of the Bookshops of Britain, this is a diary of that tour which did what it said on the can. It is tiring just to read but what a trip that must have been. It leaves you with a list of shops you want to visit and another list of books you want to buy.
A good book to read when you don't want to be concentrating too much and are happy to let the references you don't get float off into the ether 7/10
by George Simenon
One of Maigret's officers is shot and wounded on a stake-out. As Mme Maigret is away, Maigret stays in a small boarding house on the street where the shooting took place and as ever the plot is more complicated than first appears. 8/10
by Edouard Louis
A bleak French tale of growing up poor and gay in a small northern manufacturing town. It was a tough read and drew comparisons with Shuggie Bain-a book I preferred. 6/10
by Richard Mullen
This book, published in 1990 is clearly written by a Trollope enthusiast and is none the worse for that. It is a very readable and comprehensive introduction to the man and his writing. It quotes widely from the novels showing how his writing is drawn from his life which was lived at a crazy pace. As well as writing 80 books he had a 30 year career in the post office and travelled widely around the globe and Europe.
The writing is very readable and the author's asides (mimicking Trollope?) are very amusing. A very enjoyable read. 9/10
Another interesting year but no totally stand out books. I read three Rushdie novels of which Shalimar the Clown was good and the Enchantress of Florence fun. His latest book Victory City, I did not enjoy so much.
On the Booker front my two favourite books did not make the shortlist(Sebastian Barry and Tan twe Eng) but the winner Prophet Song was ok but not standout.
In non fiction Technofeudalism was interesting and tied in well with Runciman's How Democracy Ends, but my favourite was probably writers and revolution about 1848 as seen through different writers eyes.
My standout book of the year. There were some good new books from Barbara Kingsolver, Zadie Smith and Sebastian Faulks but the most memorable book was a Simenon book. Not Maigret, although Maigret's Memoirs was great fun, but The Man who Watched the Trains go By. It was scary and compelling. This probably was followed by The Wide World, the first in a new trilogy by Pierre LeMaitre.
by Florian Illies
The sub-title of this book is Art and Passion in the shadow of War, 1929-1939. It is a wide ranging look at numerous artists during that period and their complicated love lives. That said the vast array of people covered is also the books weakness as it becomes impossible to keep up with who they are all as we jump in and out of stories. 6/10
by Sebastian Faulks
Seth was the seventh son of Adam and also the name given to the hero of this book who is born to two London based people via a surrogate mother supposedly using their eggs and sperm. However, the rich entrepreneur who runs the clinic has some problems of his own regarding the dementia that is killing his father and he uses his clinic to carry out some "research" that impacts on the child born in 2031. It is a thought provoking story as we follow Seth and his parents and surrogate mother over the next 25 years with some twists and turns along the way. 8/10
by George Simenon
One of the best Maigret novels as this is Maigret writing about Simenon and filling in some of the gaps and correcting some of his minor errors, It is very funny in places but also quite poignant in others when he talks about real issues of society seen on a daily basis by the police. 10/10
by Nolwenn le Blevennec
A french book about an affair. The affair started three years before the time of the book and lasted three months but then spent three years coming to an end and we get taken through it on a self absorbed retelling of the time by the narrator.
The saving grace of the book is that it is very funny in places and made me laugh out loud. Otherwise too introspective for me. 6/10
by Zadie Smith
I think this is Zadie Smith's first historical novel but it is a lot of fun. It is based around real people and events, but the main characters have been largely forgotten by history. Characters such as Dickens and Maclise also make an appearance, and we don't always see their best sides!
The story follows Mrs Touchet and her cousin Ainsworth through their colourful lives and their interaction with a celebrated legal case over the identity of Roger Tichborne and whether the claimant of an inheritance is actually him. Great larks! The story moves from London to Jamaica to Australia and my only disappointment is that the story ran out of steam about two thirds of the way through. The earlier parts of the book I really enjoyed 7/10
by Yanis Varoufakis
A book examining the rise of the big tech companies. The argument is that the rise of cloud capital has brought about the death of capitalism as we know it and that power now lies with a few cloudalists for whom most of us work for free.
YV loves to come up with new terms-indeed, one chapter of this book is devoted to explaining why the term used in the title is important- and we have many in this book including cloud proles and cloud serfs.
I found the argument difficult to follow at times but this is a very thought provoking book that will leave me wondering about the way this will move. The most sobering part of the book was his chapter looking at China and the USA and the new cold war. The most disappointing was the last chapter which paints a utopia that we are unlikely to ever reach and left to many questions unanswered 6/10
by Paul Lynch
A dystopian vision set in present day Ireland but could be anywhere in the western world. The country descends to civil war as a far right party takes over the country and bit by bit clamps down on dissent. A depressing but captivating read as a mother tries to keep her family together after the husband is arrested.
Some of the characters were a bit unbelievable but still powerful storytelling 7/10
by Pierre LeMaitre
The first in a planned trilogy of the post war years but there is a surprise appearance of characters from the previous trilogy of the interwar years!
This story revolves around the Pelletier family. The father runs a very successful soap company in Lebanon but his four children are still finding their way in life with mixed results. This is the tale of how it unfolds, which takes us from Lebanon to Saigon to Paris and in true LeMaitre style is peppered with surprises along the way. A bit gruesome in parts, along with a smattering of humour this is great storytelling 9/10
by Paul Murray
The longest book on this years list it is set in a small town in Ireland a couple of hours from Dublin.
It tells the stories of the four members of the Barnes's family as the family faces up to various challenges such as bankruptcy, mid life crisis, marriage breakdown, male rape, bullying, transition to college life, climate change etc etc. It is very funny in places and exceedingly dark in others and I felt it ran out of steam by the end with an ending that left you guessing. I enjoyed the structure as the four members took it in turns to be central stage and tell their story. Not sure why the mother had to do this without punctuation but no doubt it made sense to some! 6/10
