Review of the year 2024

 A busy year and some good reads amongst them.

On the non-fiction side I found Goodbye Globalisation thought provoking and helpful in understanding what is going on in the world. Also Salman Rushdie's reflections on his attack and its aftermath was interesting. Andrew Martin's book on the Paris metro had me hooked in a way I did not expect.

On the fiction side there was an interesting Booker prize but as ever my favourite -My friends- did not make the shortlist. Also enjoyed James and Enlightenment and Playground.

In other fiction Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq was good and the latest Jackson Brodie from Kate Atkinson was crazy but fun. I read Paul Auster's last book and his New York trilogy both of which I enjoyed. Again on the wacky side, was The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers guild but an enjoyable read. 

Crime has included a number of Maigret's and a series set in Hamburg by Simone Buchholz featuring a prosecutor called Chastity Riley. 

My best books of the year are probably My Friends and The Annual Banquet but a hard choice this year!

Maigret's Mistake

 by Georges Simenon

The lowly mistress of an eminent surgeon is found dead by gun shot to the head in the apartment paid for by the surgeon and in the same building as he lives in with his wife. 

Maigret spends a long time talking with everyone but the surgeon, who eventually contacts Maigret himself. Good story 7/10 

Goodbye Globalisation

 by Elisabeth Braw

Through various interviews, press publications and research this book traces the path of globalisation through the past forty years and examines why it may now be coming to an end. Actually, it postulates that it is coming to an end. It explores the rise of China and western businesses love affair with China which now is cooling significantly. It looks at Europe's interactions with Russia that came to a juddering halt after the Ukraine war started. You leave the book thinking, with the benefit of hindsight, how could we have been so naive as to think such massive growth could be achieved without harming the planet, to think that trade would trump ideological stances and desire for power or that people would think cheaper goods were fair recompense for losing their jobs. This is a very readable and thought provoking book 9/10 

The Stranger in the Seine

 by Guillaume Musso

A young woman is found in the river but escapes on her way to a secure hospital. DNA matches her to a pianist who died 12 months before. Who is she and what is her connection to an older police officer who has had a fall and his son? Enter Roxanne, a police officer with her own problems.

This is a fast paced thriller for which you have to suspend belief at times but doesn't stop you turning the pages. 6/10

Shy

 by Max Porter

Shy is a troubled teenager and this book covers one night of his life as he sets out from a special residential school with a rucksack full of rocks.

Max Porter's books are refreshingly different and this one is no different. It was a lively, sad, funny engaging story. Loved it. 9/10

Gliff

 by Ali Smith

Two abandoned children, a horse destined for the knackers yard, lots of red lines and a society under seeming totalitarian rule. Nothing is fully explained as we gradually piece together what is happening in two time slots five years apart and sometime in the near future. 

For all this I enjoyed this book, typically witty and playful but I was left frustrated by the unresolved endings. I wonder if Glyph will help when it is published. I am not holding my breath! 8/10

Cards on the Table

 by Agatha Christie

A Hercule Poirot novel centred around an evening of bridge at the murder victim's house. Which of the four players at table 1 killed him and which of the four sleuths at table 2 will uncover the killer. Good stuff 7/10

Metropolitan: An ode to the Paris Metro

 by Andrew Martin

Who could have thought that a book about trains could be so interesting and amusing.

I finished this book while on a short visit to Paris and I have to say that as a result of reading this book I was looking at trains and stations in a much more interested way. Martin takes us through the history of the metro before diving into a line by line description and it is readable at every stage-well maybe not the details about the different types of train. Loved it 9/10

The Waste Land: Biography of a Poem

 A voyage through Eliot's sources and his friendships and his marriage as he spends 1917 to 1922 developing what will become the Waste Land. 

I found it fascinating and at times a fraction overlong but a good read. There is much about Ezra Pound which I found informative and he also spends a considerable time on Eliot's attitude toward the Jews.

He is sympathetic toward Vivian and recognises how she and Eliot both struggled in their marriage. Well worth ploughing through 8/10

Scaffolding

 by Lauren Elkin

I like Elkin's writing and this, her first novel, is no different. The title refers to the scaffolding that surrounds Anna's Paris apartment for the duration of the novel-set in the year following lock down.

She is recovering from a miscarriage and has been signed off work. She is a shrink. The book explores through the lens of Lacan primarily, issues of desire and selfhood. The central section dwells on a couple from fifty years previous who lived in the apartment, who were exploring the same issues. There are various hooks that tie the two parts together. 

Did I enjoy it? I don't know. I found the characters very annoying and very middle class self absorbed twenty first century types -but I guess that is what Elkin was aiming at. It was interesting subject matter but at the end I was not quite sure it worked. I need to muse some more 6/10

City of light, City of shadows

By Mike Rapport

A history of Paris in the Belle Époque. Very readable, I found some parts flowed, whereas others-a long section on the philosophy of Bergstrom - dragged. 

It was at its best talking of the press and of the artistic scene. 7/10

Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good

By Eley Williams

A short story collection.  I don't really like short stories but the author loves playing with words and language so I did enjoy the process. The title story and 'The Horticulturalist' were my favourites 6/10

River Clyde

By Simone Buchholz

The fifth book featuring Chastity Riley.

There is a crime lurking in the background but this is a story about grief and coming to terms with loss of a friend. It is sad and funny, hopeful and despairing all at once. The wierdest in the series,  I loved it for it's sketches of Glasgow and it's quirkiness. 7/10

Annihilation

 by Michel Houellebecq

Well that was a cheery little number. The clue is in the title I guess.

We follow Paul, a high flying civil servant who is preparing with his boss-the finance minister-for the 2027 presidential election. We follow the story from the end of 2026 through 2027.

Apart from his career, his marriage and family are not in a good place and there is a wierd string of cyber/activist/terrorist attacks going on which nobody can fully explain.

It's a while since I read a Houellebecq novel but I really found this one interesting and as ever I was left with many unanswered questions-but you know that when you take one of his novels on 8/10

Balzac's Paris

 by Eric Hazan

A book about a man who loved Paris by a man who loved Paris. This book is full of interesting detail but you do want a map to hand to locate streets and areas that he mentions. Really enjoyable if you like Paris or Balzac or both 8/10

Wild Houses

 by Colin Barrett

A story of rival families caught up in small town drug dealing in Ireland. The characters were generally well drawn but it did engage me greatly. 5/10

Playground

 by Richard Powers

I so enjoy this author. His imagination and cast of characters are Dickensian in scope.

This story is about a couple of friends who meet at school and play a lot of games together but get absorbed by the game of go. One of them goes on to become a tech billionaire, the other does not. There stories intersect and fly apart and along the ways we meet a host of characters, learn about the oceans and AI and climate change and French Polynesia. It is capped off with a fantastic twist in the tale. 

The biggest surprise though is how this book did not reach the Booker shortlist. 9/10

Death at the sign of the Rook

 by Kate Atkinson

Jackson Brodie is back and he is on good form.

This is a very funny and entertaining book with multiple deaths and multiple reasons in true Agatha Christie style. Brodie stumbles into the mystery almost by accident and meets up with some old friends! It is great larks and written in a way that keeps it the right side of daft. Loved it 9/10

A Simple Intervention

By Yael Inokai 

A nurse involved in a pioneering surgical procedure falls in love with her room mate and has her world shaken up. I really enjoyed this book. 8.5/10

Maigret is Afraid

By Georges Simenon

Maigret calls in on an old friend on his way back from a conference in Bordeaux. He gets involved in a murder enquiry involving three dead bodies, a suicide and a rather dysfunctional family. 7/10

Orbital

 by Samantha Harvey

This is a very short book at just over 100 pages and deals with one day -or I should say 24 hours on board the International space station and the interactions and lives of the astronauts aboard. I did not expect to enjoy it and yet it was strangely absorbing as well as being informative about life in space. 8/10

Creation Lake

 by Rachel Kushner

A spy story with a difference. Sadie Smith is sent to infiltrate a commune in South West France as well as keep an eye on a low ranking government official. She used to be employed by the FBI but her current employer remains unknown. 
The book never really got going for me and although I enjoyed some of her fun one liners to end various sections I was yearning for something to happen. By the time it did happen it all felt too late. 6/10

Wandering Stars

by Tommy Orange

Another family saga. This time about a twentieth/twenty first native american family in Oakland. A look at life for the underprivileged and discriminated against in modern America. It was well written but left me a bit cold 6/10

The Duke's Children

By Anthony Trollope 

The last of the Palliser novels. Glencora has died and the Duke is left trying to come to grip with the love interests and various misdemeanours of his three children.  Still amusing in places and painful in others I enjoyed it and will miss the various characters we have met along the way. 8/10

Held

 by Anne Michaels

This is a book told in fragments over the course of a century, beginning in the first world war when John, a soldier loses his leg in an explosion. From then on we are given fragments of stories as he and his descendants are shown to us fleetingly before we move forward -or back-to the next episode.

The writing is beautiful at times-the author comes from poetry, but I enjoy a book with more plot than this. 

If asked whether I enjoyed this book I would probably respond, "Maybe". 6/10

Enlightenment

 by Sarah Perry

I found this an unusual book and as such really enjoyed it.

Thomas is a reporter on the Essex Chronicle, homosexual and a member of a local baptist church. He is a close friend of Grace, thirty years his junior and daughter of the church pastor. 

Reluctantly, Thomas gets drawn to astronomy while Grace is drawn to a young man. The story unfolds over the next twenty years as they each pursue their passion. The characters are beautifully drawn and will stay with me for a while. 8.5/10

This Strange Eventful History

 by Claire Messud

A family sage covering much of the twentieth century and much of the globe in its reach, as we move from Algeria to the States to Australia to Greece, Lebanon and France among others. 

However, it is the story of one family in which nothing remarkable happens and yet the writing is such that I was drawn in to these lives and shared their pain-there seemed more pain than happiness. I loved the writing but less so the story. Was it that strange? Was it that eventful?  7/10

The Safe Keep

 by Yael van der Wouden

The first Dutch author to make the longlist. The story revolves around a house and Isobel who has lived in it since a child. The book is set in the early sixties but refers back to 20 years earlier when the family acquired the house. Isobel is very closed and possessive now that she lives alone. Her parents are dead and her brothers have left. Then one day her brother turns up with his new girlfriend Eva and leaves her to stay for a month. Isobel's life is about to change forever! Suspenseful, erotic tension and an ending I found surprising make this a really enjoyable book. 8/10

Hotel Cartagena

 by Simone Buchholz

Fourth book in the series featuring Chastity Riley based in Hamburg. In this novel she has more of a background role as she part narrates the story of a drug related payback cum hostage situation in which she is one of the hostages. 8/10

The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild

 by Mathias Enard

This was a book that is hard to categorise. It starts and ends with David Mazon who is supposedly carrying out fieldwork for his Phd in anthropology in the west of France in a small village that is struggling with all the problems of rural France. His diary entries are very funny. However, not much work on his thesis gets done. The central sections of the book are crazy as we explore the interaction of the wheel of life and its impact on the inhabitants past and future of the village. In the middle of this we have the banquet of the gravediggers which is magnificently described and dotted with stories and speeches by those in attendance.

My biggest gripe with this book which was published by Fitzcarraldo, is the glaring typos throughout the book where words are duplicated or appear in the wrong order. Dreadful.

As for the book itself I enjoyed this madcap trip 9/10 

Brooklyn

 by Colm Toibin

The story of an Irish girl, Eilis who in the 1950's is encouraged to emigrate to New York by her sister.

The story of her preparation for this upheaval and her arrival and setting in New York I really enjoyed. The story of her return visit to Ireland seemed a bit less believable to me and so lost a bit of the edge that occupied the earlier sections. Having said that the ending was interesting. I will read the sequel at some point. 7/10

The New York Trilogy

 by Paul Auster

Fascinating book. It is three short stories set in New York with characters who slip between the tales even though they have little connection in time or space - other than being set in New York and involve people being looked for by private detectives or old friends. It was enjoyable because it was so different but I am still trying to make head or tail of bits of it. 8/10

Boulder

 by Eva Baltazar

A book translated from the catalan about a lesbian relationship that comes under pressure when one of the couple decides after several years that they want a baby. The pressures of IVF and adjusting to a new baby are captured really well but I didn't enjoy the book. The author has published a lot of poetry and this book is loaded with metaphor not all of which worked that well and in the end I just found this distracting. 5/10

James

By Percival Everett 

A retelling of Huck Fin by Jim. Very amusing in places, it gets darker as the book moves on and swerves away from following the Mark Twain path. A really interesting read 9/10

Mexico Street

 by Simone Buchholz

The third novel featuring prosecutor Chastity Riley in Hamburg.

A man is killed in a car fire in Hamburg. He turns out to be part of a middle east mafia family based in Bremen and worse, was in love with a girl from a rival family. Romeo and Juliet for the 21st century? Is this family warfare or is something else going on? Another quirky chapter in an intriguing crime series 8/10

Un Amor

 by Sara Mesa

A woman turns up from the City to a small village in the middle of nowhere, trying to escape her past.

She has one guy who tries to befriend her but who is almost too friendly. Throw in a creepy landlord, annoying neighbours and a man who makes an unusual proposition to her and the tension is never that far away. 8/10

Maigret and the Man on the Bench

 by Georges Simenon

A seemingly gentle, respectable man is found murdered in a Paris alleyway. 
However, he had another side to him. 

Intriguing story amid a wet and soggy Paris. 8/10

Beton Rouge

 by Simone Buchholz

The second book featuring Chastity Riley, the Hamburg based public prosecutor.

Men from a certain media company start turning up in cages badly beaten up. The links take the case back to a school in Bavaria and a complicated past. Quirky 7/10

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 by Mark Twain

Described by many as the great American novel and still taught widely in their schools I came to this novel as a result of wanting to read James by Percival Everett. 

The story of adventures down the river is fun and full of farce at times but the portrayal of slaves and the continuous use of the N-word came as a shock and made reading the book difficult. The entry into the story of Tom Sawyer at the end of the book was disappointing and undermined the tension that had been building before. For me I can think of many better American novels-it seems very much of its time. 6/10

Knife

 by Salman Rushdie

A look back on a horrific knife attack that cost Rushdie the sight in one eye and multiple stab wounds that nearly cost him his life. The book is mesmerising in places and although it went a bit flat for me when he started an imaginary conversation with his attacker, it did sort of make sense.

I assume it was all true but he is such a good story teller that you feel in the middle of a plot of some novel at times. Enjoyable is probably the wrong word to say how I found this book. Fascinating works better 9/10

Maigret's Revolver

 by George Simenon

Book 40 in the Maigret series and somebody steals a gun that Maigret has been given as a memento of his visit to the US. It leads to another murder and a visit to London, and he gets his revolver back unused. 7/10

Caledonian Road

 by Andrew O'Hagan

A long novel set in London in the early 2020's it tells the story of Campbell Flynn a celebrity art historian and his family over the course of a year in which Campbell and those close to him slowly unravel as they face up to the new realities of the age we live in. While it kept me hooked the story never really got going for me with the characters almost walking cartoon like out of current news stories. They were interesting but never became totally real. 6/10

Blue Night

 by Simone Buchholz

The first book in a series featuring a quirky district prosecutor based in Hamburg, called Chastity Riley. We soon learn she has been sidelined for stepping out of line but she is soon involved in a major drugs case as well as mixed up in her retired bosses attempts to bring down an Albanian godfather. A good relaxing read. 8/10

My Friends

 by Hisham Matar

The story of three Libyan friends, Khaled, Mustafa and Hosam brought together in Edinburgh and London by events in their homeland and the shooting of a police officer at the Libyan embassy in 1984.

Khaled has just said goodbye to Hosam at St. Pancras, probably for the last time. On the six mile walk back to his flat in Shepherds Bush he reflects on their friendship over the previous 30 odd years and on other friendships that have come and gone. It is a moving book, a sad book but also a life affirming book that is beautifully written. 8/10

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

Baumgartner

 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

Maigret and the Tall Woman

 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

Kala

 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

Bibliomaniac

 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

Maigret Takes a Room

 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

The End of Eddy

 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

Vanity Fair

By WM Thackeray 

Brilliant.  Very funny in places and peopled with interesting characters.  Becky Sharp is complex but great. Some of the names are ridiculous but I really enjoyed this. 8/10

About Uncle

By Rebecca Gisler

A strange short novel set in Brittany about a brother and sister and their ill uncle. Funny in places, wierd in others,  I was never sure I was getting what was going on. 6/10

Anthony Trollope - A Victorian in his world

 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