The Virgin Suicides (Audiobook)

Synopsis: The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

Review: A very melancholy and haunting tale told from the viewpoint of the boys who are infatuated with the five Lisbon sisters who had all committed suicide. The boys are all grown men now, but they are still mulling over the facts of the case, still interviewing the people connected, still wondering and coming to terms and trying to find reasons why these idolised girls would take their own lives.

It all began when the youngest Lisbon girl, Cecilia, then only thirteen, plunged to her death, at a party given in her honour at the family home. The boys were attending the party and therefore bore witness to the tragedy. The girls were already objects of interest to the boys and to the neighbourhood at large but after Cecilia's suicide, the Lisbon house and family become the target of neighbourhood gossip and speculation. The boys especially are fascinated, they collect snippets of information and any pieces of Lisbon flotsam and jetsam they can find or acquire. It's such an accurate portrayal of teenage infatuation and the often ridiculous lengths that the lovestruck will go to to glean any small detail about the object/s of their desire.

The Lisbon house gradually falls into a state of complete disrepair and decay. The grief stricken parents who were never exactly liberal in their parenting endeavour to keep a tighter rein on the girls, supressing and suffocating them in their attempts to keep them safe. After Mr Lisbon loses his job as a local schoolteacher, they become reclusive and are rarely seen. A smell begins to emanate from the house as it and the family slowly deteriorates. The boys remain captivated, they study the girls, stalking them almost, spying on the house and fingering their Lisbon treasures. Although their fascination is both creepy and macabre, Jeffrey Eugenides wonderful prose prevents it from becoming too sinister and the boys hapless and hopeless adoration is often scattered with humour.

From the outset you are aware that the remaining girls Therese (17), Mary (16), Bonnie (15) and Lux (14) will eventually follow in their sister's fatal footsteps and so the novel has that slow build of tension where you're expecting to lose another of the girls with every turn of the page, the author exploits this to the maximum. Though the girls were never exactly what you might call gregarious, they were, despite all their quirks and traits, fairly normal vibrant girls, with hopes and dreams and favourite lipstick colours and it's heart-rending to watch them diminish into mere ghosts of girls.

The boys realising that things are perhaps spiralling out of control try to reach out to the girls, they attempt to telephone the house and are successful in reaching them. They play each other records down the phone which they hope will provide comfort and inspiration (though to be honest the records which included Janis Ian's 'At Seventeen' and Carole Kings's 'So Far Away' would make anybody's list of top ten most melancholy songs ever) .. the most touching song of all beloved by the Lisbon girls is (another candidate for the list) Gilbert O' Sullivans 'Alone Again (Naturally)' and this touched me more than anything because it seemed to sum up perfectly their quiet, resigned despair.

One night, at the girls request, the boys creep into the Lisbon house to help them escape. They have obtained keys to a car and they intend to drive the girls to wherever they want to go whilst listening to their favourite soundtrack on cassette. The Lisbon girls have other plans though and the boys dreams come crashing down.

'So much has been said about the girls over the years. But we have never found an answer. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls... but only that we had loved them... and that they hadn't heard us calling... still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms... where they went to be alone for all time... and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together'.

Quite a depressing read (or listen), I didn't love it as much as 'Middlesex' though it is exquisitely written and is a totally compelling and unforgettable read. I thought the narration by Nick Landrum was excellent.

The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam

Synopsis: Nyree and Cia live on a remote farm in the east of what was Rhodesia in the late 1970s. Beneath the dripping vines of the Vumba rainforest, and under the tutelage of their heretical gradfather, theirs is a seductive childhood laced with African paganism, mangled Catholicism and the lore of the Brothers Grimm. Their world extends as far as the big fence, erected to keep out the 'Terrs' whom their father is off fighting. The two girls know little beyong that until the arrival from the outside world of 'the b*stard', their orphaned cousin Ronin, who is to poison their idyll for ever.

Review: This is one of my most favourite recent reads. Told from the viewpoint of nine year old Nyree. It's one of the most evocative, vivid, enchanting, tales of childhood that I've ever read.

Nyree and her sister Cia are inseparable. Great friends and playmates. Being older, Nyree is the natural leader and Cia is the more sweeter and shyer of the two. They don't look that much alike, Cia being the cuter and they have their own individual style even when it comes down to eating.

'The two of us are sitting on the flagstone steps outside the kitchen door eating our peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Cia peels hers apart, as she always does, and slowly licks out the filling, while I squash the slices of bread together between my palms until they turn doughy and ooze peanut butter and jam goo, then gulp it down. Sometimes we take tea like the Afs do, dunking our sandwiches into our green enamel mugs, then taking a dripping bite, followed by a swig, which we swill around in our mouths before swallowing. It's called mixing cement and we aren't allowed to mix cement. If we get caught, Mum hollers at us not to be so disgusting all our disgusting little lives.'

They live in a farmhouse built by their great grandfather. The name of the house is Modjaji which means rain goddess and it's slowly rotting away around them. The terraced gardens which are carved into the mountainside are unruly and lush, as they climb higher they merge and tangle into the virgin forest which is full of tree pythons, insects, slithering and creeping creatures, rotting tree trunks, fungus spores and dead Shangani warriors. Their grandfather Oupa calls it Paradise Lost and it's Nyree and Cia's favourite place to explore.

'Though we live in a world laced with threads of magic, triflings like tooth mice and firefly fairies pale next to the powerful magic that dwells in the forest. When Cia and I enter it's unending twilight, the earthly gives way to the unearthly, to the ethereal. As the canopy of trees close over us we can hear the heavy boughs whispering ancient secrets to one another, just as they do in the tales of the Faraway Tree, and we can feel hidden eyes on us with every footfall. Shrouded in the forest, we are lifted above the grubbiness of chicken slaughters, of peanut butter and jam, and are allowed to enter another world - one where things flit on gossamer wings and anything is a mere wish away'.

Mum is often busy with her farming accounts and Dad is off fighting the Terrs and so to a large extent Nyree and Cia are left to their own devices. Oupa is meant to supervise and help them with homework but more often than not he sit's on the stoep, swilling gin and tonic, sermonizing about duty and damnation, cursing his dead brother Seamus and bragging about his cast-iron constitution. They have a secret hideout and have plans to take a night flight to Fairyland, midnight explorations are a favourite thing and so is anything forbidden like riffling through Mum's dressing table drawers and snooping in the attic. Cia claims to have seen the Wombles climbing the house drainpipe one night, but they were Wombles-Gone-Bad and were coming to get her. Their dad once told them that when he was a child he awoke to find that his toys had come alive. Nyree wishes for this very much and prays to Jesus, she suspects that Cia has jinxed it though because she is terrified of her beloved toys being bewitched and has probably prayed accordingly. They spend summer days crocodiling through the waterhole built by their Dad and basking like hippo's. And all of this is played out amongst the backdrop of the political unrest in Rhodesia.

Life seems fairly idyllic to Nyree and Cia, They would prefer it if Oupa didn't sermonize so much and father wasn't off fighting the Terrs but on the whole everything is peachy ... until Ronin comes to stay. They are told that Ronin is their cousin and is boarding at school but will, from now on, stay with them in the holidays. Initially they are pleased ... 'There are few things as interesting as strangers on the farm, and none so interesting as the ones who look like Prince Charming, are sodden with scandal and disgrace and are real live descendants of Great Uncle Seamus' ... but Ronin's behaviour soon unsettles them. He is aloof, resentful and impolite (except to their Mother who he seems intent on charming) and his Prince Charming looks fade until he resembles nothing more than a blonde Barbie doll, girlish and vacant. His behaviour worsens becoming spiteful and sadistic but although this is witnessed by Nyree and Cia they are threatened with violence into keeping quiet.

The only part of the book that I felt uncomfortable with, was the shocking poverty of the local black Africans, and the racist viewpoint of most of the white people including Nyree and Cia. But Nyree was only repeating things she had learnt or overheard and she obviously had great affection for the family's black servants. Plus I imagine that this is a fairly accurate portrayal of how most white people thought and felt back in 1970's Rhodesia and it would have been disingenuous to represent it in any other way. There is a glossary at the back to help translate some of the slang Rhodesian/Afrikaan words used.

A magical, enchanting story of childhood.

Gypsy Boy

Synopsis: Mikey was born into a Romany Gypsy family. They live in a closeted community, and little is known about their way of life. After centuries of persecution Gypsies are wary of outsiders and if you choose to leave you can never come back.
This is something Mikey knows only too well.
Growing up, he rarely went to school, and seldom mixed with non-Gypsies. The caravan and camp were his world.But although Mikey inherited a vibrant and loyal culture his family’s legacy was bittersweet with a hidden history of grief and abuse.
Eventually Mikey was forced to make an agonising decision – to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere he could truly belong.

Review: An incredibly difficult story to read because it's so upsetting. Your heart just goes out to Mikey and even though you know he's only little and has only known Romany life, there are times that you just want him to make a break and run for it. You feel that any situation he may find himself in if he runs away would have to be better than the living hell he's encountering at home.

This is a true account of Mikey Walsh born into a Romany Gypsy family. Apparently his family are fairly notorious amongst the Gypsies, known, amongst other things, for their strength and prowess in bare knuckle fighting.

In each country, there is one man that wears the crown in the sport most favoured by Gypsy culture: bare-knuckle fighting. This crown is the Holy Grail amongst Gypsy men, but whether they go for the crown or not, all Gypsy men will have to fight as part of their day-to-day life. It would be impossible for any Gypsy man, no matter how much he might wish for a quiet life, to be in the company of other Gypsy men without being asked to put his hands up. And when he is asked, that is what he must do. No matter how little chance he has of winning, he must defend his honour, even if he will simply end up a bloddy and battered notch on the belt of an aspiring fighting man or, more often, a two-bob bully.'

That bare-knuckle crown had been in the family since Mikey's great-grandfather had won it but Mikey's father had stood no chance against his more powerful brother and 'with his own hopes frustrated, he pinned them on his son'. Mikey was from a very early age (four years old) forced to undergo daily training sessions with his father, which basically consisted of his father punching him as hard as he could repeatedly. He was also made to fight boys much bigger and older than himself, if he failed to beat them, which was nearly always the case, he got a further beating from his father. His mother did her best and would regularly intervene but only earned herself a beating for it. As he grew up though and it became obvious that he wasn't going to grow into the prize winning champion his father was hoping for he was beaten for every slight perceived misdemeanour The abuse and violence shown towards him was so relentless and shocking that you wonder how his little body was able to withstand it. And when he thought he had found solace with a sympathetic Uncle, things turned even more ugly. Naturally he grew into an anxious, bedwetting child, terrified of his father and dreaming of escape.

The book is full of larger than life colourful characters, salt of the earth types, rogues and villains. It was disappointing to read that some of the stereotypical characteristics that some Gorgias (non-Gypsies) taint all Gypsies with are, by and large, true. Shoplifting and theft is rife and so is the extortion of money from (mostly) elderly people for odd jobs and badly laid tarmac drives (which were basically just the thinnest skim that would turn to sludge once the rain came.) Most disturbing though was the revelation that they pick up homeless people (or Dossa's as they call them) and get them to work for them, as slaves practically. Perhaps this is just Mikey's experience amongst the people he knew, there are good and bad types in all society, I hope so anyway.

Throughout though, it's clear that Mikey is immensely proud of his Gypsy heritage and despite everything loves his family dearly. He's never self pitying or resentful and writes with great humour and understanding. The language is pretty ripe as you would expect and the content often harrowing. I would have liked to have read a bit more about the adult Mikey but knowing that he is now settled and happy is enough.

A truly compelling tale, I couldn't put it down until I had read him into a happier life.

A Star Called Henry (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Born in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing and begging, often cold and always hungry, but a prince of the streets. By Easter Monday, 1916, he's fourteen years old and already six-foot-two, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike.

Review: 'My mother looked up at the stars. There were plenty of them up there. She lifted her hand. It swayed as she chose one. Her finger pointed. There's my little Henry up there. Look. I looked, her other little Henry sitting beside her on the step. I looked up and hated him. She held me but she looked up at her twinkling boy. Poor me beside her, pale and red-eyed, held together by rashes and sores. A stomach crying to be filled, bare feet aching like an old, old man's. Me, a shocking substitute for the little Henry who'd been too good for this world, the Henry God had wanted for himself. Poor me.'

This is an account of The Easter Rising and the subsequent War of Independence as told by Dubliner Henry Smart. The writing is brutal and shocking but also at times poetic and darkly humorous. It's not an easy read, although having Roddy narrate it brought a real authenticity to the story. It's totally unflinching and intense with, as you would expect given the subject matter, copious amounts of violence. The language is explicit and colourful and so is the graphic content but somehow Roddy threads the story with so much wit and absurdity that it doesn't feel as bleak and savage as it otherwise might and it is studded with absolute gems of characters like Miss O'Shea and Granny Nash. Also he writes so evocatively that you feel like you're there experiencing it first hand, which is fairly disturbing as, on the whole, they're not situations you'd like to find yourself in. Being one of the evil English it did have me wincing a bit and some of the depictions of violence were hard to swallow but all in all it's an incredibly accomplished piece of writing. It has the ability to shock you to your very core and make you laugh all in the same paragraph. I just loved the ongoing piece of business involving his fathers wooden leg .. genius.

I'd quite like to find out what happens to Henry Smart and so I probably will seek out the sequels at some point.

Mr Golightly's Holiday (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Fiction readers with a sweet tooth and a high tolerance of Anglican whimsy are offered much beguilement in Sally Vickers' new novel Mr Golightly's Holiday. Set in the Devon village of Great Calne, it records the events observed, and in part precipitated, by Mr Golightly, the author of a work once famous but now tending to be overlooked, who has elected to settle himself in this community for a while. Mr Golightly himself, a rumpled, elderly figure arriving in a half-timbered Traveller van, is a familiar enough version of "the male author"; Great Calne, an apparently idyllic village with a wide range of carefully differentiated characters, but underneath seething with unseen discontents and rivalries, is itself another easily summoned trope--the kind of community now perhaps most commonly encountered in fictional terms in TV shows. This is handy, for Mr Golightly decides that the best way of dragging his great work into the limelight of popularity and relevance is to recast it as a soap opera. In the event, he makes little headway with this project because, of course, the affairs of the village become all-absorbing and gradually draw him in. And so things unfold, as the characters carefully established by Sally Vickers work out their destinies in a mixture of social comedy (some of it very sharp), melodrama, nature mysticism and visionary redemption that delivers far more than the opening paragraphs can suggest. Moreover, the precise identity of Mr Golightly, while not exactly part of the plot, is disclosed gradually and may come as a surprise to some.

Review: Deliciously addictive. To begin with I thought it was just an ordinary tale about village life, the writing is so subtle that at first I entirely missed the subtext. Mr Golightly, a polite, affable and fairly ordinary middle aged man, is renting a cottage in Devon whilst trying to write a sequel to his bestselling book of many years ago. He has decided, as befits modern times, that he will attempt to write a soap opera using the same cast of characters, the only trouble being that he has hardly ever watched a soap opera. At the same time he is trying to get to grips with his new laptop and learn the incredibly complicated and convoluted art of sending and receiving e.mails.

The village of Great Calne is teeming with people who all seem to need Mr Golightly's help and assistance, they have a way of swallowing up his time (although he seems more than happy to oblige them) and he finds it hard to focus on his writing and seems to get no further forward with it. The villagers are a bit of a bunch of scheming, dishonest, immoral, self servers and at one point in his life Mr Golightly would have taken a pretty dim view of them, he is inclined to be more benevolent now though, age and experience has made him more charitable. He has at some point in his life known tragedy, his son died and it's something which is still very painful to him. He finds it hard to accept and understand it.

The writing is just sublime, it's very witty and gentle but also at times whimsical, dark and revelatory. I had listened to about three quarters of the book before I realised that Mr Golightly was really someone else altogether. When I finished listening I started listening all over again and felt embarrassed that I hadn't noticed the clues to his identity which had been there all along, but it is so subtly done and the author kind of drip feeds the info in at a time when you think you've got his character sussed out.

I loved it and thought that Michael Maloney did a fantastic job with the narration.

The Rapture

Synopsis: In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in 'interesting times'? A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, "The Rapture" is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in a world on the brink.

Review: Oh dear, I thought it was too good to last. This is the first book this year that I really didn't like at all and thought about abandoning. It may not be entirely the book's fault, I don't really like psychological thrillers that much and so from the start I was regretting my choice. I loved 'Ark Baby' by the same author and had read excellent reviews for 'The Rapture' so I threw caution to the wind and bought this on a 3 for 2 at Waterstones. Ah folly, thy name is Poppyshake.

The narrator, psychologist Gabrielle Fox, must be one of the most dreary lead characters I've ever come across. She has been confined to a wheelchair ever since she lost the use of her legs in a devastating car accident so you can understand her being vulnerable and insecure. She has no spark though, she is all resentment and negativity and this begins to wear you down after a while, I found her hard to warm to or care about. She also makes some shockingly appalling decisions regarding the care and treatment of Bethany, in fact nearly everyone surrounding Bethany makes appalling decisions, decisions that stretch credibility to breaking point.

Bethany's character was another problem, she is so relentlessly aggressive, crude, insulting and self centred that, coupled with the fact that she killed her mother with a screwdriver, you really can't like or have empathy with her. Again her behaviour became tedious and even after you find out what caused her to go so wildly off the rails (even I could suss this out after reading that her father was an evangelical hellfire and brimstone preacher) she never really changes in character at all. Bethany claims to have a gift for predicting natural disasters and though this is poo-pooed by most as the ramblings of a megalomaniacal attention seeker, the accuracy of her predictions begins to interest and alarm Gabrielle and her love interest, physicist Frazer Melville (and this was another annoyance, Gabrielle always refers to Frazer as Frazer Melville, throughout the whole book, despite sleeping with him and having chocolate based sex, he is never just Frazer .. but always Frazer Melville .. it's not as if there are any other Frazer's to get him confused with, it was just so irritating) and then there is Joy, Bethany's previous psychotherapist, who believes that Bethany is not only predicting these events but causing them.

The book is set some time in the future and global warming and natural disasters have been increasing rapidly (and to be fair to the author, the attention to detail concerning eco and geological matters is meticulously researched and well written) along with this there has been a 'Faith Wave', with a growing group of Christian fundamentalists believing that 'the rapture' is fast approaching. Bethany has predicted that a devastating tsunami will hit Europe and place most of it under water and it's up to those that believe in her predictions to try to alert as many people as they can.

The last third of the book just got increasingly sillier and sillier, and this was the part where I felt like giving up on it. If you took all of the disaster movies that you've watched or seen the trailers for and put them in a big melting pot you'd probably come up with a plotline very much like this one, complete with a countdown to catastrophe, corruption, a zealous and hostile religious mob, a disturbed and unpredictable teenager, unheeded scientific evidence, a helpless woman and a small band of flawed but incredibly plucky heroes. I can't believe she didn't have the president of the USA rescue them whilst piloting some sort of combat aircraft, ok so the story takes place in the UK but given every other implausible development, it wouldn't have seemed out of place. She did manage to place the climax in the 2012 London Olympic Stadium though so hats off for that.

It wasn't for me, it might be for you if you loved 'The Day After Tomorrow' and '2012' but even then I doubt there's anything new here. I knew what was going to happen at the end and that's a sure sign that it had been painted in three feet high letters long before the final chapter. It will probably be made into a movie or TV drama .. oh dear!

Mudbound

Synopsis: When Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, she finds herself in a place both foreign and frightening. Henry's love of rural life is not shared by Laura, who struggles to raise their two young children in an isolated shotgun shack under the eye of her hateful, racist father-in-law. When it rains, the waters rise up and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud. As the Second World War shudders to an end, two young men return from Europe to help work the farm. Jamie McAllan is everything his older brother Henry is not and is sensitive to Laura's plight, but also haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the farm, comes home from war with the shine of a hero, only to face far more dangerous battles against the ingrained bigotry of his own countrymen. These two unlikely friends become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale.

Review: I really enjoyed this one, great storytelling and a good cast of characters. From the first paragraph I was hooked.

'Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep. Any shallower and the corpse was liable to come rising up during the next big flood: 'Howdy boys! Remember me?' The thought of it kept us digging even after the blisters on our palms had burst, re-formed and burst again. Every shovelful was agony - the old man, getting in his last licks. Still, I was glad of the pain. It shoved away thought and memory.'

The story is told from the viewpoint of six characters - Jamie, Laura, Ronsel, Florence, Henry and Hap and they each have their own alternate chapters. It starts with the burial and then we go back to find out what happened to bring them to this point. Laura is city born and bred, at 31 she thought she was on the shelf forever, 'a spinster well on my way to petrifaction' but then she meets Henry McAllan. They marry and have two children but Henry's love of rural life soon leads him to buy a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta and Laura is given two weeks to prepare for their new life. Unfortunately, it won't just be the four of them, Henry's Pappy is to join them there. Pappy is the most snide, sly, malicious, hate filled old man that you could ever be saddled with as a father in law. They christen the farm Mudbound ... 'When I think of the farm, I think of mud. Limning my husband's fingernails and encrusting the children's knees and hair. Sucking at my feet like a greedy newborn on the breast. Marching in boot-shaped patches across the plank floors of my house. There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown.'

Whilst Henry is nothing like as bad as his Pappy, he does share some of his unphilanthropic views. Henry's younger brother Jamie however is entirely different, he's charming, handsome and just that little bit wild and unpredictable. Despite the differences in their temperament Henry idolises his brother and Laura too finds herself attracted to him. Jamie's been away fighting in WW2 and has only lately joined Henry, Pappy and Laura at Mudbound. Hap and Florence are sharecroppers on Henry's farm, their son Ronsel has also been away fighting in WW2 but when he comes back home to Mississippi he finds nothing has changed. He finds black folk are still picking cotton, begging white folk's pardon and riding in the backs of buses. This is at odds with the relative freedom he has become used to in Europe, people were curious there because they were not used to seeing black people but once they became accustomed to him he was treated as an equal.

As well as racism of the dirtiest and most bigoted kind there is also polite racism, Laura comes to like and respect Florence but there are limits ... 'This is not to say that I thought of Florence and her family as equal to me and mine. I called her Florence and she called me Miz McAllan. She and Lilly May didn't use our outhouse, but did their business in the bushes out back. And when we sat down to the noon meal, the two of them ate outside on the porch.' ... The racial tension builds and builds in a land where the Klan are still very much in operation. Because of their shared wartime experiences Jamie and Ronsel become friends but this ultimately put's them, Ronsel especially, in great danger.

The ending is shocking and unsettling but you really do feel it coming and so it's not entirely unexpected. The author really breathes life into her characters and places, I felt like I knew the people well (all of those that narrated anyway) and could envisage Mudbound in all it's mud soaked, storm battered, soul sucking glory. A difficult read because of the subject matter but a totally engrossing one.

Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (Audiobook)

Synopsis: 'I see murder in this unhappy hand...' When Mrs Robinson, palmist to the Prince of Wales, reads Oscar Wilde's palm she cannot know what she has predicted. Nor can Oscar know what he has set in motion when, that same evening, he proposes a game of 'Murder' in which each of his Sunday Supper Club guests must write down those whom they would like to kill. For the fourteen 'victims' begin to die mysteriously, one by one, and in the order in which their names were drawn from the bag...With growing horror, Wilde and his confidantes Robert Sherard and Arthur Conan Doyle, realise that one of their guests that evening must be the murderer. In a race against time, Wilde will need all his powers of deduction and knowledge of human behaviour before he himself -- the thirteenth name on the list -- becomes the killer's next victim.

Review: Despite loving Oscar Wilde and murder mysteries I had put off reading/listening to these books because I'm not particularly a fan of Gyles Brandreth (and that's putting it mildly). However, the library was pretty low on choice and the title was attracting me like a magnet, and also I remembered seeing these books recommended on the book club forum so I made the choice to bring this one home.

I'm glad I did, I loved everything about it. Gyles obviously knows his stuff and I had no problem whatsoever believing that I was reading about true events in the life and times of Oscar Wilde. I loved the way in which he used a cast of both real characters (Oscar, Bosie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Sickert, Bram Stoker & Robert Sherard etc) and fictional and the way in which he fleshed out the lesser known characters. Also loved the way in which Gyles's Oscar was a kind of mixture of Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes, deducing everything long before anyone else, being incredibly witty and insightful and making almost everyone else around him seem quite dim and slow on the uptake.

The plotline is a delicious one, Oscar proposes a game of 'murder' in which all of his fourteen dinner guests are asked to write down, on a slip of paper, the name of the person they would most like to murder. These names are then drawn from a hat and read out one by one. Of course, it's not long (barely a few hours) before the person first out of the hat is murdered, and this murder is followed by several others all in sequence. Oscar has a particular interest in solving the crime quickly for as well as feeling a bit guilty about proposing the game in the first place, he himself has been named as the thirteenth proposed victim and his wife Constance is fourteenth.

I loved the dénouement, I had made some half guesses and was correct in a couple of instances but on the whole I was as in the dark and blinkered as most of Oscar's companions. I believe I felt as much wonder as they did as the truth was revealed. Yes there is a big nod to both Conan Doyle's and Agatha Christie's stories and probably any murder mystery fan worth their salt will be able to work out whodunnit long before the end but I'm always incredibly obtuse when it comes to unravelling clues and I'm thankful for it because I can usually read detective novels in complete ignorant bliss.

Oscar is portrayed as incredibly intelligent and witty and also neglectful, selfish and self absorbed which is probably a fairly accurate portrayal. You get the feeling that he could be both delightful to be with and dispiriting, depending on his mood or the affection in which he held you. I loved spending time with him and his companions at Tite Street, The Socrates Club and London in general, so much so that I must read, or listen to, the others in the series asap.

Buddha Da - Anne Donovan

Synopsis: In her hugely acclaimed debut Anne Donovan tells an endearing, humorous yet unsentimental story of a working-class Glaswegian man who discovers Buddhism, rejects old habits and seeks a life more meaningful, only to alienate his immediate family in the process. Moving seamlessly between three family members, Donovan's clear-eyed, richly expressive prose sings off the page. Each character's voice has its own subtle rhythm and the conclusion is a poignant mixture of hope and lingering reservations. "Buddha Da" is a delight from one of Britain's best writers.

Review: Very readable in a Roddy Doyle sort of way. The book focuses on three members of a scottish family, Dad Jimmy, Mum Liz and daughter Anne Marie (who's 12) and they alternately narrate each chapter. To start with I was a little bit daunted by the broad glaswegian dialect, it took some getting used to and I thought I wouldn't be able to understand it enough to enable me to enjoy the read but after a few pages I began to get their voices in my head (or in ma heid to be precise). This is a taster of what you're in for ....

'Ah'm just gaun doon the Buddhist Centre for a couple hours Liz, ah'll no be lang.' 'Aw aye, is there free bevy there?' 'Naw hen, ah'm serious. Just thought ah'd go and have a wee meditate, try it oot, know?' Mammy turnt roond fae the washin up, and gied him wanny they looks, wanny they 'whit's he up tae noo?' looks ah'd seen a million times afore. 'Jimmy, d'you think ma heid buttons up the back? Yer a heathen. The last time ye set fit in a chapel wis when yer daddy died. the time afore that was when ah'd tae drag you tae Anne Marie's First Communion. And you're tellin me you're gaun tae a Buddhist centre on a Tuesday night, quiz night doon the Hielander? Tae meditate? Gie's a break.'

If you read that fine then you'll have no problems.

Dad Jimmy is in his thirties and works as a painter and decorator, he likes a bevy and a bit of a laugh in fact he once 'went doon the shops wi a perra knickers on his heid, tellt the wifie next door we'd won the lottery and were flittin tae Barbados' so when he suddenly starts taking an interest in Buddhism, his family are a little bit perplexed. They think it's probably a passing phase and so at first just humour him but they soon come to realise that Jimmy is serious. In a very short space of time he gives up eating meat and drinking alcohol, but it's when he misses Anne Marie's school play in order to visit the centre and then decides to become, for now at least, celibate, that his wife Liz finally loses patience with it all.

Even though it's a fairly serious subject there are lots of laughs, the characters are all warm and likeable, Jimmy especially. It's an interesting subject too, it's not only Jimmy's life that changes radically it's everyone around him too. The effects of some of his choices are far reaching, Liz is not ready to become celibate or to make the great lifestyle adjustments needed and Anne Marie, who has always been so close to her dad, is struggling to understand what exactly is going on. I didn't feel as if the Jimmy we were getting to know would turn his back on his family or cause the hurt that he did but then who knows what any of us would do in the same situation, also the ending seemed just a tad predictable but they are only small criticisms. It's a lovely, funny, warm and enjoyable read.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Here is Bill Bryson's entertaining and illuminating book about the history of the way we live - complete, unabridged and read by the author.Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way, he researched the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets. And he discovered that there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement - and even a little danger - lurking in the corners of every home.Where A Short History of Nearly Everything was a sweeping panorama of the world, the universe and everything, At Home peers at private life through a microscope. Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose, and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade.

Review: I have a great affection for Bill Bryson and have read or listened to nearly all of his books, my absolute favourites being Notes From a Small Island and Notes From a Big Country. I was a bit bamboozled by A Short History of Nearly Everything though as it was far too scientific for me and I got lost amongst the atoms and subatomic particles. It was just way way over my head.

I was hoping that this would be a return to some of his earlier books (clearly I didn't read the blurb properly) and thought from the title that he would be talking, in his affable way, about the humdrumness of life in rural England. What it actually is is a book exploring the rooms in the rambling rectory where he lives in Norfolk, looking at the history behind such rooms and their objects. Though the content isn't always that straightforward, the chapter about the study turns out to be a chapter mostly about rats and mice. Similarly in the bedroom we learn all about illnesses and death and bed mites and the like (did you know that 10% of your pillows weight, after six years of use, is dead skin, dead bedbugs, dust mites and their faeces). It's like one big QI episode with facts and figures coming at you from all directions.

There are too many facts to recall but some of my favourites were the anecdote about the unimaginable extravagance of some super rich americans during the golden age whose dinner guests were presented with piles of sand and little shovels at their place settings and invited to dig for the diamonds that were sprinkled in there (which makes my most extravagant place settings of posh christmas crackers from John Lewis look a bit pathetic) and the many anecdotes about the virtues of closing the toilet lid, one of which was that if you don't, when you flush the loo, the microbes fly about for two hours settling on anything within reach .. like your toothbrush! (if that doesn't cure you then the one confirming that most rats enter a house via the toilet will .. though to be honest my loo seat is so flimsy that I'm sure a rat would have no problem with it .. note to self ... buy a heavy wooden loo seat).

Though initially I was disappointed, I soon became engrossed and Bill has a lovely laid back way of reading which made it a pleasure to listen.

Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

Synopsis: 'An astonishing feat' - "The Times". A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive - a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find turns all their worlds upside down.

Review: You're either going to love this book or hate it, there's no middle ground. It's a book essentially about the holocaust but approached from an unusual angle.There are lots of main characters but the two that you are mainly focused on are a young American writer called Jonathan Safran Foer (which was odd .. this caught me out straight away, because of course it's the name of the author and I kept trying to get my head around that) and Alex Perchova, a young man from the Ukraine. Jonathan is travelling through the Ukraine on a journey to find out what happened to his Ukranian ancestors during the German occupation. In particular he is looking for a woman called Augustine, who he believes saved his grandfather from the Nazi's.

Alex, is to act as Jonathan's guide and translator, along with his crusty old grandfather who, despite claiming to be blind, drives the vehicle across the Ukraine cursing and swearing at the Jew (Jonathan) and refusing to believe that his dog ... Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior .. is named after a Jew. Alex never entirely passes on his grandfather's outrageous comments to Jonathan, he tries to pass them off as something else. Alex has his own problems with the English language, frankly he murders it (think Borat) .. 'I am not first rate with English. In Russian my ideas are asserted abnormally well, but my second tongue is not so premium'. Alex is fantastic, I loved his character, he's like an eager to please, overly enthusiastic, puppy dog, but one who is suffering ill treatment at home despite all his bravura and crassness. Later on in the book, as Alex learns more about life and his own ancestors, we see a different side to him, the side he's been covering up with brashness and boasting but to begin with he has all the enthusiasm of youth and hopeful expectations. He thinks that the world's greatest documentary is 'The making of Thriller' and claims to have had many lovers. He has also 'given abnormally many thoughts to altering residences to America when I am more aged' in order to train as an accountant. He keeps mentioning how his grandfather is 'retarded', only it turns out he means retired. And he absolutely adores his little brother who he calls 'little Igor'.

The story takes on many different forms and bounces back and forth between eras. Firstly there is the road trip mentioned above, secondly, and quite separate, Jonathan is narrating a fictional history of his ancestors from Trachimbrod stretching right back to the 1700's. This part has a touch of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez's about it, it's very lyrical and surreal (one of the chapters is called 'The Book of Recurrent Dreams 1791'. The congregation of 'The Slouching Synagogue' or 'slouchers' as they were called, are now on volume IV of the book of recurrent dreams and adding to it all the time .. during this meeting they add the following ...

4: 512 The dream of sex without pain
4: 513 The dream of angels dreaming of men
4: 514 The dream of, as silly as it sounds, flight
4: 515 The dream of the waltz of feast, famine and feast
4: 516 The dream of disembodied birds
4: 517 The dream of falling in love, marriage and death
4: 518 The dream of perpetual motion
4: 519 The dream of low windows
4: 520 The dream of safety and peace
4: 521 The dream of disembodied birds (again)
4: 522 The dream of meeting your younger self
4: 523 The dream of animals two by two
4: 524 The dream of I won't be ashamed
4: 525 The dream that we are our fathers

... some of these dreams, in fact most of them, are elaborated upon.) Thirdly are the letters that pass between Alex and Jonathan which are perhaps amongst the funniest parts of the book, though they become more poignant with time. It's not necessarily written chronologically, you sometimes read letter's referring to events that happened on the road trip before you have actually read about that part of the road trip and also Alex's letters refer to Jonathan's novel, Alex reads the pieces as we do and then comments on them. For bears of very small brain it can be confusing and I did find myself re-reading parts on a regular basis.

I enjoyed it immensely and would recommend it to those who like something a little bit different. Not everyone is going to enjoy it, it's hard going in parts and some people may feel that it's a touch pretentious or overly ambitious. Also it contains lots of graphic content, but overall I thought it was well worth the effort.

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite

Synopsis: The debauched celebration of the cabaret era. The magical ascent of cinema. The deprivations of World War I and the build up to World War II. Set against the rise and fall of Berlin and the innovations in art that accompanied it, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite brilliantly weaves together the story of orphan girl Lilly Nelly Aphrodite's remarkable journey from poverty to film stardom.

Review: Overall I quite enjoyed listening to this, though I struggled with it at times. It is relentlessly bleak. I really liked the young orphan Lilly (or Tiny Lill as she is called to begin with), after an ill-fated beginning (her real parents are irresponsible and her adoptive parents find that she cannot, after all, replace their own dead daughter.) Tiny Lil is sent to an orphanage to live amongst the nuns. Despite being eager to please, she finds it hard to settle and is often in trouble with the nuns for bad behaviour. She's a great mix of vulnerability and high spirits, and, at the beginning of her time at the orphanage, spends most days sitting in a chair in silence, or eating meals alone as punishment. She has an overwhelming desire to be loved and to love, she adores and idolises Sister August but is often in trouble with her, Sister August advises her to look to God for guidance and comfort.

'Sometimes Tiny Lil looked for God. She explored every inch of the orphanage, from the spaces between the eaves in the attic to a secret cupboard behind the coal bunker in the basement, for evidence of his presence that she could offer to Sister August. And yet she never found anything, nothing but dead spiders and single socks, balls of dust and small locked suitcases that former inhabitants had forgotten'

Another person she comes to love is Hanne, who has recently come to the orphanage with her brothers. The friendship between Hanne and Lilly lasts for the entire book which is fairly surprising as Hanne would test the loyalty of a saint. Desperate to earn money in order that she and her brothers can escape to a better life, Hanne is soon encouraging Tiny Lil to climb over the orphange wall and accompany her to sell roses, filched from the nun's garden, to men at the 'tingle-tangle's'. Needless to say this leads to trouble.

The adult Lilly didn't quite live up to my expectations, she just didn't seem to come alive for me. Some of the books minor characters seemed to be more well-drawn. For a book so detailed in many respects, I didn't feel that enough detail was given to this stage of her life, she lost most of her feistiness and became quite downtrodden which was understandable given the circumstances but made for dreary reading (or listening in this case) and I couldn't quite believe in her eventual movie stardom. Her life was one long series of unfortunate events, she often found love, or was on the brink of love, only to have it snatched away. Hanne fared worse, being a 'good time girl' for want of a better phrase (though she hardly ever had a good time) and perennially picking up with what can only be described as the 'wrong sort'. Her character though had more spark and bite. Having said that I did become very fond of Lilly and constantly hoped that she would find the love she craved.

The real star of the piece is Berlin itself, gloriously described in detail, evoking all the seediness of the cabaret nightlife, the poverty and hardships of it's people during the period between the two world wars and the fear for some, and passion of others, evoked by the rise of the Third Reich.

The Still Point

Synopsis: At the turn of the twentieth century, Arctic explorer Edward Mackley sets out to reach the North Pole and vanishes into the icy landscape without a trace. He leaves behind a young wife, Emily, who awaits his return for decades, her dreams and devotion gradually freezing into rigid widowhood. A hundred years later, on a sweltering mid-summer's day, Edward's great-grand-niece Julia moves through the old family house, attempting to impose some order on the clutter of inherited belongings and memories from that ill-fated expedition, and taking care to ignore the deepening cracks within her own marriage. But as afternoon turns into evening, Julia makes a discovery that splinters her long-held image of Edward and Emily's romance, and her husband Simon faces a precipitous choice that will decide the future of their relationship. Sharply observed and deeply engaging, "The Still Point" is a powerful literary debut, and a moving meditation on the distances - geographical and emotional - that can exist between two people.

Review: The story takes a day in the life of married couple, Julia and Simon, and juxtaposes it with a detailed account of Julia's great-great uncle, Edward Mackley, who was an Arctic explorer. The house that Julia and Simon now live in is the crumbling old ancestral home and it's stuffed full of ancient photographs, taxidermy and memorabilia including the diaries and ships log from Edwards ill fated attempt to reach the North pole. The story is legendary amongst the family, Julia and her sister Miranda loved hearing stories about the expedition when they were little (with the unsuitable bits taken out) and now Julia is attempting to archive the collection and make sense of the last few years, months and weeks of Edwards life.

When Edward set off in 1899 he was a new bridegroom, his bride Emily sailed with him as far as she could as part of their honeymoon, and then returned home to wait for his triumphant return. We follow Edward, his crew and the dogs as they make their way towards the North pole on board the Persephone. Along with Julia, we read Edwards diary entries which are at first wide eyed with wonder and full of hope of a triumphant return to Emily but becoming more and more despondent as he and the crew, having abandoned their quest, track through icy inhospitable wastes trying to find their way back to Franz Josef Land where they may be able to overwinter at Cape Flora. His diary entries at the end were incredibly moving as the crew gradually descend into abandoned polar expedition hell. They become lost, starved, ravaged, disabled, desperate and, in some cases, mad. In the end death is almost welcomed. Then there is Emily, unaware of the real situation, waiting, waiting, waiting for her beloved husband's return, haunted by nightmares of his frostbitten blackened features and gripped by fear.

Although nothing has been openly discussed, Julia and Simon's marriage is in danger. Julia is a a bit of a dreamer, locked in the past and struggling to be the sort of wife that she perceives Simon wants, and Simon, frustrated and irked by her, is one step away from doing something that will probably kill the marriage stone dead. A visitor also brings some news to Julia that challenges all of her pre-conceived notions about Edward and Emily's relationship and throws her into a state of insecurity.

One of the things I liked most about it was the mixture of Julia and Simon's sultry hot day which just builds and builds, stormlike, along with the tension between them, and Edwards icy Arctic conditions. It worked really well. Julia is the sort of free spirited, dreamy, cool, ethereal, beautiful-but-doesn't-know-it, looks-good-in-a-bin-bag, sensitive soul that would normally make you hate her immediately, somehow I didn't, but I did prefer the passages about Edward and Emily. It's skillfully written and beautifully descriptive, I thought at first overly so but soon came to appreciate her use of language.

Beautiful cover too, like paper cuttings.

The Information (Audiobook)

Synopsis: How can one writer hurt another where it really counts? The answer: attack his reputation. This is the problem facing novelist Richard Tull, contemplating the success of his friend and rival Gwyn Barry. Revenger's tragedy, comedy of errors, contemporary satire - The Information skewers high life and low in Martin Amis's brilliant return to the territory of Money and London Fields.

Review: This is a really dark satire about life in the literary world, practically everyone is unlikeable. The main character, writer Richard Tull is definitely unlikeable, he's absolutely riddled with envy over his friend (and I use the word 'friend' in it's loosest sense .. you wouldn't want a friend like Richard) Gwyn Barry's recent literary success.

Richard's own literary career is somewhat depressing, he is now reduced to vanity publishing and reviewing biographies for 'The Little Magazine', biographies about long dead and largely forgotten people. He has written quite a few novels and early in his career he was moderately successful, but he wasn't able to build on that success and for a few years now his career has been on the downward slide. He lastest book is actually called 'Untitled' (amongst other titles Richard thinks it may just as well be called 'Unread'), indeed as far as he knows he has a readership of one (there is a running gag about his latest book giving anyone who attempts to read it a crushing migraine, no-one can get past the first few pages). The worst part of all is that the novel that has made Gwyn so famous, rich and successful is the biggest pile of politically correct horsesh*t that Richard has ever had the misfortune to read, it's absolute tripe. And it's mystifying because, in Richard's view, he is the more intelligent and creative of the two. They have known each other since university and it was always supposed to be he that went on to greater things.

To say that Richard is bitter is an understatement and his greatest desire now, far outweighing his previous desire to write a bestseller, is to screw up Gwyn Barry's life. He hits upon various schemes, he tries to seduce his wife, he tries to discredit him with the judges of a literary prize, he arranges to have him beaten up (and rather helpfully Richard's readership of one turns out to be a screwed up sadistic ex-con), found with a prostitute, found guilty of plagiarism, he will in short stop at nothing, until he has covered Gwyn in dishonour and disgrace and seen him stripped of his prizes.Now you may think that you'd feel sorry for Gwyn but you don't because he is an obnoxious, jumped up, puffed up little twerp who believes all the hype.

It's viciously dark, Richard is going through a bit of a mid-life crisis (to put it mildly), apart from his jealousy regarding Gwyn, he has problems at home ... his wife is exasperated by his lack of motivation (for anything involving work), he's impotent, he's middle aged and feeling it, he smokes, drinks and takes drugs and now he's involved with a gang of extremely ruthless people. But for all the spite and vitriol it's also very funny (in the blackest way), you can't help laughing at some of the scrapes Richard gets himself into or at some of his innermost thoughts which are scathingly cruel but hilarious.

For the most part enjoyable, I always enjoy Steven Pacey's narrations, but, though it is undoubtedly clever, I though it was too wordy and verbose at times and at 17 hours and 19 mins ... too long.