Review of the Year 2025

 So, I started the year with a Dickens and as I write this I am reading another one both of which are good festive reads.

The rest of the year has included twelve Maigret's -he is still drinking a lot and still enjoyable.
The Booker list was ok this year with my favourites being The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and from the longlist Endling. I also enjoyed Seascraper.

Elsewhere I read Midnight's Children which I enjoyed and the Magic Mountain followed by the Empusium which was inspired by it. 

In terms of my favourite book this year it would have to be shared between The Magic Mountain, Going to the Dogs and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.

Jean Barois

 by Roger Martin du Gard

Not a well known author in the UK but winner of the nobel prize for literature in 1937. This book was written in 1910-1913 and is part novel and part musings on the battle between scientific reasoning and religion, in particular the Catholic Church. 

It gets a bit bogged down at times but I enjoyed it and could recognise similar battles in myself over the years. The end is left beautifully questioning the reader as to where Jean Barois ended up in his thought process and which side he fell on. 8/10

Maigret in Court

 by Georges Simenon

Maigret is working on a bank hold-up but the story reflects on an earlier case of murder which has now reached court. A husband has to face the truth about his wife as his life unravels in the witness stand. 8/10

Venetian Vespers

 by John Banville

Still mulling this one over. 

From the outset we know this will not end well as our narrator tells us he is writing to try and explain what happened during his honeymoon in Venice. The author paints an eerie Venice with the accommodation much as I remember a hotel I stayed at on my first visit.

The characters too are constantly shifting so that nobody can be trusted or taken as they first appear. There was so much to love about this book and yet I was not quite sure the ending was right. I can't put my finger on what perplexed me about it. Still an enjoyable read. 8/10

Midnight's Children

 by Salman Rushdie

The novel that probably established, and keeps, Rushdie amongst the list of great living authors. 

Saleem is born with one thousand and one others at midnight on Indian independence day. Those that survive all have some unusual power and the book is Saleem's sort of autobiography as well as a potted history of India and Pakistan since independence. It is very absorbing and in places very funny; for me it is the closest I have come to a twentieth century Dickens. The book had me regularly reaching for Wikipedia to check out people and events from history. It is not an easy read but definitely worth keeping going through the 650 pages that make it up. 8/10

The Acupulco

 by Simone Buchholz

Good to see Chastity Riley again but this book was not great. A serial killer targeting dancers in a nightclub. As you would expect it raced along but didn't really take me along with it 5/10

Eugenie

 by Desmond Seward

A life of the last empress of France by a not totally unbiased biographer. He clearly is a fan and has a remote family connection back to the second empire.

That aside, I enjoyed this book and it gives a good introduction to the workings of the second empire and the contradictions it contained. She is painted as a formidable woman but with a love for France that was never wholly accepted by its citizens. The book discusses but reaches no clear conclusion on the thing that drove her. Was she swayed more by her desire to see her son as emperor or by her love for France? 8/10

Maigret's Secret

 by Georges Simenon

This story starts brilliantly with a rice pudding being enjoyed by Maigret while dining with his wife at their friend's house. After dinner Maigret starts to reminisce on a previous case which was taken out of his hands by the examining magistrate but about which Maigret always had doubts. A man was accused of killing his wife but he maintains his innocence even as evidence mounts against him. 9/10

The Library Thief

 by Kuchenga Shenje

A mystery set at the turn of the nineteenth century involving a young woman who is an expert book restorer. As we start the novel she has been thrown out of her home by her father for some unseemly goings on with a young anarchist friend of hers and the rest of the story is about how she makes her way,

Full of twists and turns, highlighting the precarious position of a woman alone at this time, it is a real page turner to the end. I found the writing style a bit laboured at times but enjoyed the tale itself. 7/10