Skios - Michael Frayn

55%
01.01.13

I'm keen on Michael Frayn but not so keen on farces, which is a pity because Frayn is regarded as the master of British farce. I just can't be doing with all those mistaken identities and misunderstandings and ridiculous coincidences but if anyone can move them from the superficial to the philosophical, it's Frayn. Well, maybe. There's nothing really deep here, unless it's so deep that it's buried beneath the comic awkwardness. There's nothing noticeably insightful but it's diverting enough - for a farce.

The Runaway Actress - Victoria Connelly

51%
03.05.12

Normally I'd have to be paid to read escapist chick lit but I won this on Twitter... so I sort of was. Of course I didn't have to read it, but any book billed as "sunshine on a rainy day" is more than usually tempting this wet spring. And it was more or less as I imagined - too many adjectives, stereotypical characters and nothing at all threatening, challenging or cruel. The last of which is actually a refreshing change from my typical reading choices - it is an unusual author to be without guile - and a little sunshine never did much harm.

The Case of the Missing Books - Ian Sansom

47%
06.08.08

Bad in a different way to the Coelho. Not pretentious - quote the opposite - but written too much with an eye to conversion into a Sunday evening family drama series. Underdeveloped characters, and too many of them, and an unpleasant 'anti-hero'. At least it only took 3 or 4 hours to read so not too much time wasted.

Finding Myself - Toby Litt

56%
14.10.04




I haven't read a really good book for ages. This one, like the other recent ones, was OK - it tried to be clever but ended up tedious and silly. Too self-conscious to be really involving.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

57%
25.08.03




This is a book about Botswana. An interesting country, and one that's not often described in novels. But that doesn't make it a good book. It doesn't make it well written, or the characters three dimensional, or the story unpredictable. The editorial standards are also pretty shoddy and distract from the already-shallow narrative. Botswana seems nice, though.

Goodnight, Steve McQueen - Louise Wener

60%
24.05.03

I bought this because the author was the lead singer of a successful band (Sleeper) and I though her knowledge might provide some insight or plot twists. Unfortunately not. It's really yer typical 'turn of the twenties' crisis story - a few engaging, or at least original, characters but nothing much else to make it stand out from the crowd.

Backpack - Emily Barr

59%
10.01.03

This isn't actually a very good novel - the characters are inconsistent, the plot (such as it is) is laboured, the narrative is patchy and there's only one murder suspect, which rather reduces the tension.  However, it's good fun and I did, guiltily, quite enjoy it. Give it a few years and she might write something worth reading. [Ed: it's now been a few years and she's written plenty more novels, mostly on a travelling theme, and I haven't felt inclined to find out whether any of them are worth reading. However, I do still regard it as a classic of the 'obvious whodunnit' genre.]

Lola Comes Home - Claudine Cullimore

 40%
04.12.01




I had hoped this would be better than the run-of-the-mill chick-lit rubbish saturating the bookshops. I was wrong. The quality of plot, characterisation, writing and editing was all dreadful - no adverb was left unused, no utterance left untheasaurused ("she quipped innocently"). It's amazing this ever got published. But at least I finished it.