Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart

 

51%

08.04.21

I would never have chosen to read something so unrelentingly bleak but, hey, this won the Booker Prize, and was the first choice of my new reading group so sometimes the challenge is worthwhile. Not in this case. It was heavy in every sense: weighed down by endless, meaningless adjectives, metaphors and similes, by the interchangeable sex-and-power-hungry men, by the interchangeable weak-and-untrustworthy women, by its lack of nuance, by layer upon layer upon tedious layer of Bad Things Happening. A grim semi-autobiographical novel isn't automatically a good novel.

How to Build a Girl - Caitlin Moran

51%
21.07.19

Being the same age as the narrator, a '90s indie-kid and a long-time fan of Caitlin Moran, I'm basically the target audience for this (officially not but clearly very) semi-autobiographical novel. So imagine my disappointment to discover that it isn't actually very good. Goes to show that pithy journalism doesn't automatically translate into witty fiction, emotional connection and three-dimensional characters.

Heartburn - Nora Ephron

53%
11.06.14

A thinly veiled autobiographical account of a failed marriage, with added humour (this being Nora Ephron after all). Although the main character is my age, her grown up life of dinner parties, rubbing shoulders with the famous and everyone having affairs is alien to me, and not just because it's set in the late 1970s. Although there were a few laughs, I suspect it will be pretty forgettable.

Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld

47%
28.12.06



Very boring, despite its premise as an expose of life at a smart American boarding school. Obviously semi-autobiographical and therefore a self-obsessed narrator tries to make tedious events sound Really Important. And what's worse, everyone has silly names.

Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb

66%
14.12.04




I read this in two hours as an antidote to Dan Rhodes' pessimism. This, too, is a slightly surreal tale of betrayal and revenge, but told with a lighter touch and a sense of hope. It's also a story of racism and ignorance - from all sides - a fable of cultural misunderstanding. So not entirely a good choice to dilute the cynicism.

Frost in May - Antonia White

67%
02.12.03

Evidently autobiographical, this story manages to separate the concept of religion (in this case, Catholicism) from its interpretation. Patchy, but interesting enough to sustain the plot. Were nuns really so cruel?