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

Audition

 by Katie Kitamura

This novel felt like a product of a creative writing class with a technically clever twist half way through but did not work for me. The narrator is a middle-aged actress, who at the start of the novel is rehearsing for a new play which in the second part is up and running very successfully, but the story is about her personla life with husband and family.

There is a reference in the first half to a phone app which seems incongruous given the timeframe referred to and this may have put me off early on, but while I enjoyed some of the style I did not enjoy this book. 6/10

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

 by Kiran Desai

Slow moving but wonderfully told tale of two young Indians at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, initially living in the US and whom there grandparents and parents try to arrange a marriage for. They both reject this but do eventually meet after 250 pages. The characters are well drawn and the story unfolds. Sonia's early abusive lover-an artist-is the only character it is hard to come into land with but this was a novel that was like a lovely cushion you could relax into 9/10

Gabriel's Moon

 by William Boyd

A really enjoyable spy caper set in the early 1960's. The characters are brilliantly drawn, although with an annoying habit of always telling us what they are wearing. Le Carre it is not but a page turner it most definitely is 7/10

Seascraper

 by Benjamin Wood

The story of Thomas, set in the late fifties in a Northern coastal town, where he plies a thankless trade scraping shellfish with a horse and cart and nets at low tide. His life is interrupted by a film director wanting to employ him. The story plays out over a few days but has implications for longer. It is a short novel but beautifully told. Should have made the shortlist but did not 9/10

Flashlight

 by Susan Choi

A story told from the perspectives of four main characters over a period of several decades from the end of the twentieth century to the present. Louisa is found nearly drowned on a beach near her house. Her father, who left the house with her is missing presumed drowned although his body is never found. Her mother is suffering from MS although at this point it has not been fully diagnosed. The story of their lives unfolds over time and through Japan and Korea and America. It is beautifully told and after a slow start it's pace picks up toward a poignant ending 9/10