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