Here's the list of books I read last year, and what I felt about them:
THE
WOMAN IN WHITE, Wilkie Collins, 1860 long
and wonderful, its suspense maintained very vividly across most of
the novel.
THE
SEED COLLECTORS, Scarlett Thomas, 2015
pretentious & self-regarding.
THE
GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY, Mary Ann Shaffer &
Annie Barrows, 2008 despite
the awful title, dual authorship & horribly perky first 20 pages
or so, this becomes a wonderful, moving book that works as fiction
and as a documentary portrait of wartime occupied Guernsey;
exceptional.
THE
OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE, Mary Lawson, 2006 an
even more admirably clear-sighted and deeply affecting novel than her
"Crow Lake"; too short, though.
THE
CROSSING, Andrew Miller, 2015 vital,
poetic prose &
a compelling
heroine.
CHARLES
DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY, George Gissing, 1898 to
my surprise (since I loved "Grub Street" and love a lot of
Dickens) I had to give this up after five chapters; far too stuck in
the agonies of late-Victorian moralising.
GRAY
MOUNTAIN, John Grisham, 2014 many
GoodReadsers have moaned about it being an "issue book",
but it's deeply researched about strip mining, black lung disease &
the corporate trashing of the Appalachians; commendable & timely
ROAD
ENDS, Mary Lawson, 2013 a lesser
work & even shorter, but recommended; I wish there were more of
her work - three novels aren't enough from this great writer (though
there's another one written in French, which I wouldn't be able to
tackle; there seems to be no English translation).
THE
TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL, Anne Bronte, 1848 both
narrators (speaking as letter & diary writers plagued by total
recall) seem foolish early on, and the ending is too pat, but the
portraint of the heroine's dissolute husband is absorbing.
The book never explores or questions reliance on and exploitation of
faithful servants, but it does examine the double standards in law &
marriage between men and women.
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE,
Philip K. Dick, 1962 patchiest
book ever read; fresh sentences, long tedious passages, improbable
characters, one great character.
GEORGE
GISSING: A LIFE, Paul Delaney, 2008 diligently
researched sympathetic study of an affecting, hopelessly wretched
life & of a fascinating literary novelist; few people can ever
have shot themselves in the feet as repeatedly as Gissing did.
THE
ABORTIONIST'S DAUGHTER, Elisabeth Hyde, 2006 third-rate
crime novel with implausible plot detail; manages to be both glib and
clunky at the same time.
TRAVELS
WITH A DONKEY In The Cevennes, R L Stevenson, 1879 a
rare delight.
MRS.
DALLOWAY, Virginia Woolf, 1925
an absolute masterpiece.
THIS
SIDE OF BRIGHTNESS, Colum McCann, 1998 a
gruelling read: such sordid lives, such compelling & tragic
characters, such powerful prose.
TESS OF
THE D'URBERVILLES, Thomas Hardy, 1891
passionately written tale of tragic characters; a then-progressive
foregrounding of the rural working-class (though hardly Zola).
THE LAST
DETECTIVE, Peter Lovesey, 1991
superior whodunit of original construction and decent prose, though
the culprit perhaps too easy to guess.
THE
PACT, Jodi Picoult, 1998
gives readers no sense of whether her cringeworthy adults are meant
to be seen as awful; riddled with creativewritingschoolitis; but when
it becomes a courtroom drama it gets moderately compelling sub-Grisham.
DISSIDENT
GARDENS, Jonathan Lethem, 2013 a great
novel: of wide-ranging genius & lapidary intelligence; historical
accuracy fused with alert imagination.
THE
DIVIDE, Nicholas Evans, 2005 nature well described, people almost entirely one-dimensional &
self-regarding, as promised crime novel becomes long, tedious
family-agonies story; humourless & witless throughout.
THE
GIRL ON THE TRAIN, Paula Hawkins, 2015 mystifyingly compelling page-turner early on, when the two main
narrators seem creepy yet not sinister; develops into something
extraordinarily clever as the tension is racked up. Brilliantly
plotted. No wonder it was such a mega bestseller. Finest thriller
I've read since Gone Girl, but so beautifully English instead of
American.
PLOT
29, Allan Jenkins, 2017 a
beautiful, sad book about the agonies of his unknown antecedents &
his & his brother's abandonment, and of trying to uncover it all
and adjust to it, interspersed with a journal of his cathartic life
planting & growing veg, fruit and flowers. The first non-fiction
book I've read for months.
THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE
HOUSES, Kate Tempest, 2016 probably
in the top ten greatest novels I've ever read; truly contemporary,
wide-ranging yet concentrated, wholly distinctive voice, moving &
funny & impassioned & so shrewdly observant, and pins down
situations we've all lived yet have never found in fiction before.
MR.
NICHOLAS, Thomas Hinde, 1952
at first I thought it just a very inferior Elizabeth Bowen, but it
grew on me. A bit.
THE GIRL
WHO KICKED THE HORNETS' NEST, Stieg Larsson, 2007; English
translation 2009 my
first read from Larsson; mind-bogglingly well-planned & plotted;
an intelligent, substantial page-turner; and it reads well in
English.
One
oddity: it's set in Sweden yet there's never any weather...
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS: A Memoir
of Life & Love in Hamburg 1945, Harry Leslie Smith, 2012 &
2015 should
be interesting re life for a British soldier staying on in Germany
when WWII has ended - but he's no writer so it isn't. I gave it up.
WHEN WE
WERE YOUNG: A Compendium of Childhood, ed. John Burningham, 2004 a
fresh, tremendously well-chosen range of childhood memoir pieces with
an admirable literary bent & no dumbing down; full of quotable moments.
ENGLEBY, Sebastian Faulks,
2007 compelling
story, dark humour, intellectually sharp; near total-recall of 1970s
minutiae; crucially, the tranparently unreliable narrator (an almost
common current device) comes within a highly inventive form of the
novel that is ingenious without postmodernism (ie without being
irritating).
ROBINSON CRUSOE, The Life and
Strange & Surprising Adventures of, Daniel Defoe, 1719 [1808
edition] I'd
read it as a child, but had no idea how ruthlessly this immensely long
book had been abridged for children; in this edition he doesn't see
the footprint till 27% of the way through, doesn't meet Friday till
almost 40% of the way through and has returned to Europe by 50%,
after several hundred pages. I gave up after that; the edition I read
(on Kindle) seems to have added in all Defoe's far less popular
follow-up novels. The original full-length novel, interesting &
skilfully done, was enough.
AGAINST
MISERABILISM, David Widgery, 2017
posthumous collection of his brilliantly prescient, wide-ranging essays
written 1968-92: admirably relevant on politics and soberingly good
(and affecting) on his experience as an NHS doctor in London.
A LESSON
BEFORE DYING, Ernest J. Gaines, 1993
a short, likeable novel compelling through its detail as well as its
quiet humanity; a portrait of racial injustice in the Deep South of
the 1940s, set in a rural black community full of its own tensions; but told
calmly.
WINTER
IN MADRID, C.J.Sansom, 2006 a
highly researched historical-adventure novel of politics &
intrigue set in 1930s-early '40s Spain; a page-turner through
accretion of detail long before it becomes one through tensions and
twists of plot.
IN COLD
BLOOD, Truman Capote, 1966
what a book! The perfect template for a historical crime non-fiction
case, inspirationally structured from its calm, detailed, intelligent and humane beginning to
its forgiveably sweetened end.
THE RED
BADGE OF COURAGE, Stephen Crane, 1895 uncanny maturity of tone & humour from a
21-year-old writer, and so innovative: the first Civil War novel
about ordinary soldiers instead of great generals. An easy read too.
THE VINYL DETECTIVE, Andrew
Cartmel, 2016 goes
on too long, many implausibilities but great fun for anyone who's
ever been or befriended a hi-fi freak or obsessive record collector.
A RIVER TOWN, Thomas Keneally,
1995 admirable,
vivid, unhurried novel from a major writer, and one of those
rare authors whose books truly differ from each other & are
unified only by his robust, engaged imagination. His adjectives dance
but are never showy.
HERE I AM, Jonathan Safran
Foer, 2016 provoking
in both senses, this unfunny "hilarious" novel is so
wearingly clever, so delighted by its own cutesy introspection and by
its self-absorbed main characters (a drippy couple and their
precocious children). It's also far too long, but that's another
outcome of its shouty self-indulgence. (And boo to Penguin for a UK
paperback with such a small typeface that they don't even admit what
it is on the copyright page.)
THE
HOUSE IN PARIS, Elizabeth Bowen, 1935 a
re-balancing after the horrors of "Here I Am": forensic
quiet intelligence in place of clever shouting, and that rare but
special pleasure, a striking child character (Leopold).
HNY Michael,
ReplyDeleteRe. Defoe and his 'far less popular' later novels, surely Moll Flanders has lasted pretty well: still in print, a staple of academic courses and multiple TV, movie, theatrical adaptations to this day. Also, his Journal of the Plague Year remains a terrific book and a sort-of predecessor to the nonfiction novel of Capote et al. All the rest of his books are worth exploring; no one-hit wonder.
Hi there, Unknown. I didn't mean those Defoe novels, which I'm aware of and read many years ago: I meant that follow-up Robinson Crusoe novels, which were never half as popular as the original. I didn't suggest, or certainly didn't mean to suggest, that Defoe was a one-hit wonder.
ReplyDeleteAh, my misinterpretation - sorry. Thanks for the reply. Even in those days the temptation to cash in was great... Blonde On Blonde 2, anybody?
ReplyDelete"Blonde On Blonde 2": yes please!
ReplyDeleteMichael
ReplyDeleteA fascinating and very varied list. Have read some of the books here and would generally agree with your comments. Willkie Collins a personal favourite since I read 'The Moonstone' as a teenager. Was pleasantly surprised by 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' which I read on the recommendation of a student of mine. Given that Anne is often damned with faint praise, I found it a really excellent - if at times somewhat inconsistent - novel. Also very brave for its times in its choice of subject matter. Also admire Gissing - read John Halperin's book before the Delaney one and still think it is better in its treatment of Gissing's books. Also like Stevenson, who is such a fine prose writer - and Elizabeth Bowen, who is such a brilliantly subtle one. Didn't know about the David Widgery book which I will check out immediately. Also look forward to catching up with some of the other books here...