Book-review post!
And some slightly shorter reviews of the grown-up books read over the last while.
Gillian Flynn – Sharp Objects
From the lady who brought us the twistedness of Gone Girl, here’s another tale of twisted dysfunctional ladies. Our heroine is a journalist revisiting her home town after the murder of a young girl, and revisiting the messiness of her home life. This is compelling and as elegantly written as Gone Girl, and is well worth checking out.
David Nicholls – The Understudy
Very very funny story about a struggling actor with the misfortune of having a famous name – Stephen McQueen is no hero, but someone who winds up in awkward, cringe-worthy, and eventually unpleasant situations. I love Nicholls’s other books, and this is a treat.
Jojo Moyes – Honeymoon In Paris
A prequel to The Girl You Left Behind, and certainly worth reading in advance – I got a lot more out of the book because of it. This is short but satisfying – two newly-married women, ninety years apart, struggling with their husband’s other passions.
Jojo Moyes – The Girl You Left Behind
And the book itself! The story moves between the present-day and the First World War, and is a fascinating look at ideas around art and ownership (especially as a lot of stolen-artwork tales focus on the Second World War), as well as the things people do in wartime. The portrayal of a woman waiting for her husband in an occupied French village is really well done, but the modern-day story – which is all about grief and trust and loss – is also fascinating. Just a great read.
Alissa Nutting – Tampa
This book’s been getting a lot of attention – it’s the story of a female sexual predator, a teacher with an obsession with eighth-grade boys. It is unsettling and compelling and fascinating and beautifully written and very dark indeed. (Most of my thoughts on this are how it’s been marketed – how almost every article has reassured us the author is nothing like her narrator, as though female writers are incapable of imagination and writing dysfunctional characters. Sigh.)
Matthew Quick – The Silver Linings Playbook
A guy just out of a psychiatric hospital teams up with a widow for a dance competition and in the process gets over his ex-wife. Also, sports. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the movie and – dare I say it – not especially overwhelmed by the book either. The narrator just seems too – simple. Perhaps that’s intended to be part of the charm, but the way he writes and phrases things sometimes felt like it was someone very childlike putting pen to paper. I was not charmed. I do hear good things about this author generally, though, so would be interested to read some of his other work.
Sophie Hart – The Naughty Girls’ Book Club
Oh, dear. So this is a story about a book club, a group of women (and one man) meeting to discuss erotic fiction of both the present and past, but the way they talk about sex is just so coy and ‘oh gosh did you just say that!’ that it is a little wearying. I can understand the desire to write something that is romantic but not explicit, but the title and the premise are perhaps not quite fitting. It is interesting to see some of the debates about erotic fiction and why people read it, definitely, but there is nothing extraordinary there.
Maeve Binchy – A Week In Winter
The final Maeve book. I’d been saving it for when I needed it. This is more one of those interlinked-short-story collections than a novel, but done beautifully; I wanted it to go on for longer but I did get caught up in all the different characters’ lives and the overall cosy-but-not-too-cosy feel of the book. A very comforting read.
Sophie Kinsella – Wedding Night
Not as mad about this one as I am Sophie Kinsella’s others, but I did enjoy this dual-viewpoint story about an impulsive romantic who decides to marry her first love – who’s just come back into her life after fifteen years – and her in-the-middle-of-a-messy-divorce older sister, who’s scheming to prevent the wedding from being consummated. It’s a little bit zany, but it is clever, and very funny.
J. K. Rowling – The Casual Vacancy
Read this post-reveal of Galbraith, which I meant to read and then realised I still hadn’t got around to this one. Or rather, I’d started and then been put off by the large cast of characters – even when returning to it I did find it tricky to keep track of who was who at first. This is the tale of a small town and the nastiness within it, as played out through the revelations after the death of local councillor Barry Fairbrother. It gets quite dark – there’s a lot of neuroses and dysfunction and all that jazz, and she’s particularly good on how teenagers can be utterly horrible to one another (as well as how messed-up families can be). It’s a bit of a grim read, and lacking some of the humour you’d hope for – I liked it, but probably wouldn’t have picked it up had it been by another author.
