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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
