63%
26.04.26This was well researched and compelling with a great two-word hook - Jesus's wife! - but I wondered at the choice of exiling her while he was doing all the messiah stuff. Then I realised that it was really about the first-century female experience and the biblical Easter eggs (ha!) were just for decoration.
20.03.26
Epistolary stories might be the original novel format (see the amazing Clarissa, 1748) but that doesn't mean they successfully build emotional engagement or a gripping plot. This, to me, did neither. What was it actually about, other than an unrealistic woman writing letters? Yeah, I know it's all in what is not said but it was so introspective - and yet also so performative - that it ultimately didn't reach its destination.
12.03.26
Anne Tyler's extensive output can be patchy (or maybe patchworky?) but this is a jewel of a novella, every word carefully placed, every thought and action and memory contributing to the shining whole. Nothing much happens, but it happens so engagingly. If you don't like the best of Tyler's novels, do you really like reading? Or life?
57%
06.02.26You can tell from the title that this is ridiculous in almost every way but Hazelwood is good at what she does and somehow it's still cute and engaging and relatively unpredictable (and quite educational about chess) if you don't think too carefully about the Cinderella fantasy of it all or the disappointingly flat ending.
01.12.25
Well, this certainly didn't keep me awake at night, in fact, quite the opposite, what with the slow pace and boring characters.
23.10.25
Wry humour, sharp observation and a strong sense of place and time - yes, it's a Clare Chambers novel. I have a few to read and this was engaging and interestingly structured, if not ultimately memorable or profound.
13.08.25
The only engaging and empathetic character in this mildly amusing but entirely plotless novel was New Zealand. I wanted less of the twentysomethings behaving like tiresome children and more of the secretly complex country.
06.02.25
What is it with all the telling and not showing in family dramas? This could have been a fascinating insight into an unfamiliar world, but it - the characters, the plot, the dialogue - felt cold and flat because everything was exposition. It really needed another edit - but would make a good TV show.
03.02.25
A competent first novel. Dent seems pleasant and erudite in real life, and this comes across here - it's obviously more than a little autobiographical (apart from the murder bits, I assume). Oxford was the main star but the plot was unusual, if a little confused by the end, and the characters fairly well drawn. It might be Dent's speciality but most of the distracting and irrelevant etymology could have been edited out.
15.01.25
This was better than Ralph's Party but it was still poorly written (can't an item of clothing be described without naming its brand?) with a lot of unquestioned assumptions about what makes a family. Lots of babies, apparently, which, well, yeah, taken literally, it is. Oddly for a novel of this type, found family, while valuable, came much further down the value chain than blood relations, even if those relations failed you.
30.10.24
You wouldn't want to meet any of the horrible, entitled characters in this book (especially the sanctimonious 'main' character) but that's OK, because nobody actually behaves like them in real life. It was all tedious telling and not showing, with no real emotional engagement. And it didn't actually address the ultimate point - even if (spoiler) the cash was not ill-gotten, the rest of the estate probably was.
When I gasped and rolled my eyes, and shouted a silent 'No!', it wasn't because of bad writing, for once - far from it. The time-hopping and head-hopping structure worked well in slowly revealing the full - and awful - implications of these three brothers' selfishness, even if it was pretty hard to tell their voices apart. I'm not sure the story was totally satisfying in the end but it was certainly well constructed.
46%
06.06.24
This was clearly semi-autobiographical, and took an unusual lens to important cultural issues that the author clearly feels passionate about. But worthiness doesn't make it a good novel. The poor writing undermined any emotional, political, psychological or spiritual points the author was trying to make. The main problem, of many, was the relentless telling not showing - pages and pages of exposition with very little to ground it, set the stakes or to make the reader engage with the narrator's predicament. Apparently, it has been edited but you wouldn't know it.
64%
The emphasis in this quirky and engaging novella was really more on the "sister" aspect than the "serial killer" aspect. It's a very clever deconstruction of loyalty, relationships and the legacy of trauma - but still manages to be generally upbeat. I also liked the Lagos setting, the casual feminism and the microworld of the hospital. The plot (such as it was) could be confusing at times, and the resolution rather odd. But generally a good read!
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.
12.11.23
This was an engaging family saga, and the historical and cultural details gave it an extra layer of interest. It was a shame, then, that most of the characters seemed only to be there as cyphers, and that several elements of the plot were either unconvincing or just didn't make sense. And there was a weird sense of mythical history about events that only took place 50 years ago. So, as usual, more editing might have moved it towards the 'Masterful' promised on the cover but it remains a reasonable read.
50%
I don't really get on with tragicomedies. A couple of things in this raised a wry smile but, while marketed as being a funny story about a midlife crisis, it was more about ongoing mental health issues and grief, which aren't particularly funny, and there wasn't even much of a plot. It wasn't so much 'rich people drama' as 'middle-class angst' (and the negative attitude towards only children was irritating).
29.04.23
Anne Tyler at her best is superlative. This was not her best, or even her middling. As a narrative covering the ebbs and flows of family dynamics over time, it worked fine, but the story and characters just weren't worth caring about. And enough of the pointless pandemic epilogues!
59%
I quite enjoyed this, and its theme of communication (or lack of it), but it could have been... more. Some readers didn't warm to the main character, and it's true she spent most of the book crying, but my problem was more with everyone else - the awful husband and boring love interest, the token autistic brother, the obligatory quirky yet supportive best friend, the played-up Irishness that didn't really ring true. (I can imagine the publisher urging the writer to 'make it more Irish'.) The details about the undertaking of undertaking were interesting - although I presume the dead don't normally chat so much.
10.01.22
This was the Moriarty book I should have been reading (for book club) over Christmas. As much as I resented having to pay £9.99 for the Kindle ebook, it was infinitely better than Nine Perfect Strangers. The characters were vividly drawn, and every detail of the story became satisfyingly relevant in some way - until it was spoiled by the silly pandemic chapters at the end, which not only made the book 50 pages too long but also read as if the publisher had asked the author to shoehorn them in at the last minute to make the story 'current'. It was a shame as, until then, the delicious unlikeliness of almost everything in the novel had been what made it so enjoyable.
Side note: I plan to avoid the current pile of pandemic-set stories. I understand publishers like current affairs, and authors like the challenge of deciding how their characters might react to lockdown, but I read novels to experience other worlds - if I wanted contemporary realism, I'd read the news. Still, I've started a new pandemic label, in case I can't avoid it.
