What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty

 62%

24.10.24

Moriarty's tenth novel is about to come out so finding the only other one I hadn't read in the library was serendipitous. This was a fun yet surprisingly complex read - a woman forgetting the last ten years was almost like time travel but it cleverly stopped short of 'young her undoes the mistakes of older her', examining all the implications. Talking of mistakes, I enjoyed it all the way up to the ending(s), which were hugely disappointing, considering what had gone before.

Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde

 62%

24.05.24

Billed as an eccentric futuristic romance, this was actually more of a terrifying dystopian satire - funny at times, certainly clever and inventive, but neither cosy nor reassuring. Which isn't a bad thing, especially as some of the ideas are oddly plausible, but it suffered from a lack of emotional connection to the characters' rather desperate plights.

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

 62%

09.02.24

This was just as ridiculous and inconsistent as other books I've read recently and yet I am much more willing to forgive its flaws. Why? I think because, unlike Cockleberry Bay or Lessons in Chemistry, it wasn't cynical. The characters were actually people you might want to spend time with, and the antagonists were not people at all - they were time and grief and the pressures of everyday life. It was very silly but also very engaging, and that's a win for me.

Truly Madly Guilty - Liane Moriarty

62%

18.05.23

I've now read most of Moriarty's novels and it's clear she sticks to the formula that works for her - various narrators from white, middle-class Australian families experiencing low-to-medium level trauma. She will tease you with what might have happened for most of the book, and then throw in a few twists that have been hinted at earlier on, and then continue with the story for rather longer than is necessary. In this one, I liked the portrayal of different marriage dynamics and the realistic sense of obligation that people have to each other over time. I doubt I'll remember much about it in a year, though.

Small Angels - Lauren Owen

 

62%

31.03.23

This could have been cringingly cliched. It was slow, so slow - creating more impatience than psychological tension - and the characters didn't behave like real people, and the introspection about storytelling was rather too meta, but the strong world building, clear sense of place and the fact that there was never any question that supernatural forces were at work made it feel like a surprisingly fresh take on gothic / horror / folklore.

Quartet in Autumn - Barbara Pym

 

62%

27.06.21

This late Barbara Pym novel is as sharp and occasionally as funny as her earlier ones, but it's shot through with the poignancy not only of the regrets of old age but also of relentlessly changing times. 

The Case Against Sugar - Gary Taubes

62%
02.05.19

Well, sure, Taubes is biased and selective in his facts, but that's how to make a case against something that is inexplicably not generally accepted as being as dangerous as it is. And the case is pretty conclusive - I didn't want to consume sugar for at least a week after reading this. (Full disclosure: I don't eat much sugar these days anyway, so he's preaching to the converted.) But, still, it's an important and persuasive book.

Clock Dance - Anne Tyler

62%
14.07.18

I love Anne Tyler's writing so much that I got this as soon as it was published (the UK cover isn't as appropriate as this one, presumably the US version). Her books are wise and quirky and well-observed... and this was... yet it seemed unremarkable, even inconsequential. It's really a series of short stories about the central character but doesn't quite hang together as a novel. If it wasn't Anne Tyler, I probably wouldn't be so indulgent.

The Bellwether Revivals - Benjamin Wood

62%
09.07.18

This was on my 'to be read' list for, literally, years. So was it worth the wait? Well, it's very readable, the prose is strikingly lovely at times, and the descriptions are often uniquely evocative. The characters and the plot, however, are vague and ill-defined. Stuff happens; people react; it tails off to a whimper.

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

62%
07.05.16

Beautiful and terrible - that's the world of the admirable Patrick Ness and a painful mirror on the real world. This fable is spun from delicate words and difficult circumstances - a tour de force, I suppose, but lacking a core emotional engagement that would really have drawn me in.

The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd

62%
01.02.15

We're asked to believe that the 11-year-old daughter of a slave owner, brought up in that strict culture with no outside influences, is an abolitionist. A modern mind in an historical body doesn't quite ring true, and many of the characters are ciphers. But get past that and it's an engaging, if rather educational, story of a shameful past, certainly better than Monk Kidd's previous novel.

The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson

62%
04.01.13

An entertaining hurtle through the nature of psychopathy, padded with insights into some aspects of "the madness industry". It's the sort of book that you read very fast, while boring whoever happens to be near with fascinating soundbites. It's also the sort of book that, on reflection, seems patchy, never getting to the heart of (or indeed anywhere near) the central hook: whether psychopaths actually run/ruin the world. The copy-editing was equally patchy, despite the long list of acknowledgements at the back.

The Philosopher's Apprentice - James Morrow

62%
23.05.11

Another random choice from the library. The premise caught my eye: a conscience tutor is hired for a girl without one. The first section lived up to the promise - a distinct voice and an intriguing, satirical story. Unfortunately, once events moved beyond the initial defined world, the ideas weren't as convincing, and it ended up more as a political polemic than a satisfying novel. But marks for originality and brio.

Somewhere Towards the End - Diana Athill

62%
29.10.09

Wors of wisdom from a delightfully acute 90 year old. Her self-awareness and joie-de-vivre takes this into another, more pleasurable, category than the equivalent memoirs of fellow author of advanced years, Doris Lessing.

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

62%
17.01.09

An important, angry account of how science data is abused for audiences of non-scientists. Goldacre has an engaging journalistic style but his assumptions often come across as arrogance - but maybe the point is the mutual incomprehension of scientists and non-scientists.

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break - Steven Sherrill

62%
04.02.08

Well, this was weird. But once I got over that, it was actually a moving story of weakness, loneliness and the nature of humanity. Carefully written pathos.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J K Rowling

62%

20.07.05

I was one of the two million who got a copy on the day it was published - just so I could join in the debate, of course. Readable and literate as usual, but not as good as the previous one, needing a decent edit more than ever and with nothing much actually happening for the first 500 pages. It's becoming harder to keep track of all the characters, or to establish why some are there at all - length doesn't equate with effort or quality. I still cried at the end, though.

To the Nines - Janet Evanovich

62%
30.07.04




Perhaps I'm being more lenient because I read this after so much po-faced High Literature. It's not a particularly good novel but it's fun escapism, as usual.

Tick Bite Fever - David Bennun

62%
22.05.03




More uninvolving non-fiction, this time the promising tale of an ex-patriot British boy growing up in Kenya. He never pretends to be an authority, nor, refreshingly, to have been a particularly interesting or charming little boy, but his amusing anecdotes somehow fail to really catch the imagination. A pity - it would have been better as a novel.