Meek J The heart broke in

Dreadful title! It comes midway through the book in an odd little anecdote. Neither anecdote not title work for me. Get past that: it's a book worth reading. But set aside a few weeks. It's a hefty commitment. If I were this book's editor it would lose none if its length and complexity. But it would have a new title. I'd call it: A Moral Foundation. That's better. If publishing houses want exclusive rights to  my natural talents feel free to get in touch. Money talks.

What's the book about? It's about morality (hence: better title). There is much immorality in this book. It's also about family, love, and posterity. Please note: this book contains scientists doing science. They are also portrayed as people, with lives and everything. How novel!

First line

The story doing the rounds at Ritchie Shepherd's production company was accurate when it appeared inside the staff's heads, when they hardly sensed it, let alone spoke it.

last line

After all, had her father fought his way back to her, she wouldn't have begrudged him the longing for his own freedom, the longing to feel the wind and sun on his own skin again, if only it  had helped him get home.

Barry B The lace reader

***As endorsed by the Daily Express***

Do not be put off by the company this book keeps, or by the dreadfully written blurb. It's not disposable crap about the supernatural. It's a very readable, but thoughtful, novel of women and lives torn apart by male violence. Several of the characters are broken, but there's hope.

I really enjoyed reading this one. I also learned something of the geography and history of Salem and its coastline: a town we all 'know' and which is a distinct character of the book.

Recommended.

First line:

My name is Towner Whiney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

Last line:

The words I say back to her are the same words she said to me that day so long ago: The spell is broken. You are free.

Scott Card O, Ender's Game

Picked this up on impulse in the library, after hearing lots about the current film that, let's face it, I'll probably not bother going to see. An odd little novel, where the threat of global destruction makes an all powerful government reliant on the abilities of children. Ender is six when his adventures start. You can't tell from the characterisation,  so occasionally the author clunkily reminds you.

Readable. Disposable.

First line

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get.

last line (spoilerish, but this book is nearly as old as I am, so fair game, I reckon)

 And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for the world where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time.

Block L 2008 Hit and run

Our hero is a hit man on the verge of retirement. This is from the 'one last job' genre. It's a hell of a read, and if life hadn't intervened Id have read it in one sitting. It's very much a - What Happens Next? I must know! - type of book.

On reflection though, there are questions to be asked about the love interest. Appearing about a third of the way through the book this sensible, kind, middle aged teacher / carer is a bit too accepting of her mister's habit of shooting strangers for money. Seriously? She's very decent. Not one wobble about shacking up with a mass murderer? No concerns at all about moving in with a mobster? Perhaps my standards are higher than most women's, but Id like to think that this is a back-story that would make me think quite hard about a new boyfriend.

Fun read.

First line

Keller drew his pair of tongs from his breast pocket and carefully lifted a stamp from its glassine envelope.

Last line:

"Bifocals, and I have to tell you I can see the improvement when I work on my stamps"
"Well," she said, "that's important."

Stross C 2005 Iron sunrise

I am sated by Stross. As a greedy reader, that's a quite remarkable thing.

A fun novel, with a satisfying ending and an epilogue that doesn't distract. Very little sci fi. Oodles of plot. Strong female characters. Worth the time.

First line:

Wednesday ran through the darkened corridors of the station, her heart pounding.

Last line:

And they'd be there to help her when she said goodbye to home for the final time and turned her back on the iron sunrise.

Wakling C 2011 What I did

Shock news: the Daily Mail is not always wrong. There's a Mail quote on my paperback copy of this book which I found really off putting, but this book just goes to show that you shouldn't judge a book by the company it keeps on the cover.

I loved this novel, sweetly narrated by a six year old who gets his long words mixed  up, doesn't understand what's scaring the adults and talks in metaphor that they fail to notice. Much like the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the reader has to work for the truth behind the narration, and I found this so much fun.

On reflection I'm not sure what I feel about how the author creates plot tension towards the end. While reading I was gripped (confession: I fall into novels hard). Afterwards it felt like the actions of Dad weren't in keeping with what we knew about him. I'll say no more, because I'd hate to ruin the story for others.

First line:

This is the first bit and shall I tell you why? Okay I will. It is to make you read the rest.

North A 2011 America pacifica

A dystopian novel where the dystopia is fully imagined and the plot has holes that need attention.

A generation from now the new ice age has made America uninhabitable. We learn, through memories and story telling, how civil behaviour collapsed as cold and hunger became commonplace. Visionaries fled to a new island home, and slowly others joined them. We meet this new society some twenty years after  it was founded, and it's not a great place to be poor. The teenage protagonist knows little about how things got to be as they are, and cares little about changing them. She's focused on the rent, dinner, staying safe.

I found the descriptions of how a marginal society gets by to be compelling. There is filth and hunger which reflect every refugee camp and shanty town you've ever read about, and turned your eyes away from. And the privileged classes - mostly the Mayflower first boaters - hold their privilege by deception and firepower, which also reflects every ailing society you've ever read about and turned away from. The plot, which at first had me gripped when a main character goes missing, lost me for the final third of the book. The final chapter? Meh.

I'd read another novel by this author though, and she seems to have set up a sequel.

First line:

The trouble started when the woman with the shaking hands came to the apartment.

Wilson P 2012 The visiting angel

Do you believe in angels?  For the afternoon I spent reading this novel, I believed hard.

I also believe in good people, and the support worker protagonist Patrick is good people. So is sexual health nurse Sarah. As Patrick, Sarah and Saul tell their stories they also tell the sad and upliftng stories of people whose lives could use some help from an angel.

Flashbacks to Patrick's childhood give vivid and believable vignettes of the cruelties children inflict on each other, the naivity of a boy trying to fit in, and the fierce protective love of his big brother who can't protect him when their world shatters.

Particularly enjoyed the penultimate chapter: crossing the void was beautifully written and nailbitingly tense.

First line:

His brother, as a boy, was unafraid of heights.

Last line:

He is not comfortable in the water himself, but sitting high in the rafters of some anonymous municipal pool, with the light bouncing off the walls of the polished tile and his son nestled beside him, he is happy to worship her diligence, the steady strokes, the accrual of lengths, the way she smiles unselfconsciously at nothing in particular when she climbs fresh from the water, and the beauty in her face that she has won, that this unexpected life has bequeathed her.

Whitely A 2008 Light reading

Apart from the murder, suicide, abuse and adultery, this actually is a light read. I took it at a gallop and finished in a day. Interesting structure too.

Shepherd L 2012 Tom-all-alone's

This is good! Witty, literary, arch, engaging. I read the first 200 pages at a gallop, then slowed down to savour the writing before it was over all too soon.

It's not quite a detective novel, although the hero is a detective. It's not quite a historical novel, although it's firmly set in Victorian London.

The only aspect of the book I'm not completly sold on is the references to authors who weren't writing at the time the novel is set. It's smart - but maybe a bit too smart? - every time I spot one I lose my immersion for a moment. As she says:

'Only connect' is proving a difficult aphorism to follow.

Yet I defy you to read this and not revisit Dickens.

First line:

The young man at the desk puts down his pen and sits back in his chair. The fog has been thickening all afternoon, and whatever sun might once have shone is now sinking fast.

Davidson MJ 2007 Drop dead gorgous

Dreadful.

Don't do it. You wouldn't like it.

Davies DK 2011 True things about me

From the beginning the author plays with the reader's feelings. On the one hand, here's a silly and self obsessed girl who over emotes about a casual fuck. Woman, get a grip and move on. On the other hand, the sense of developing menace makes you worry for the frivolous and vulnerable girl and hope that with her family and friends she finds the strength to stop the descent which is overwhelming her.

Ths is Bridget Jones without the laughs. But the charming bastard who turns her life upside down is less charming and much more bastard than Darcy. Much more bastard.

He took me down the steps into the car park, and led me to a dark area. I could smell damp concrete, oil, exhaust fumes. He backed me up against a pillar. Take your underwear off, he said, and grinned, showing his teeth.

It's a tale of domestic violence. There are strongly written consensual sex scenes, and there are strongly written non-consensual scenes that are hard to read. It's a compelling book. Saying I enjoyed it seems like the wrong word. But I am glad I read it. I won't read it again.

First line:

I pressed the buzzer for the next claimant.

Last line:

So I left him in the bedroom.

Bateman, C 1995 Divorcing Jack

This is how to write a crime novel. Set your book somewhere vivid. Create a flawed protagonist who has enough virtues that the reader cares. Have interesting times happen to your hero, and lay the clues to the mystery so your reader always wants to read just one more chapter.

Bateman works this formula wonderfully. I thoroughly enjoyed spending a couple of days in Belfast with a disreputable journalist.

If anyone out there's writing Bateman fan-fic I'd be equally happy to spend more time with the Mrs, who takes no shit. Mess with her; she melts your record collection. And, in my opinion, she's well within her rights to do so. Unfaithful husbands have lessons to learn.

First line: I was upstairs with a girl I shouldn't have been upstairs with when my wife whispered in my ear, "you have 24 hours to move out".

Last line: "No", she said.

Butcher, J 2011 Ghost story

Confession: I gave up on this one. I did read to page 466 (of 611), so I suppose I could have powered through, but by then I couldn't remember who the characters were, I didn't care, and it was convenient to take it back to the library.

If you like the Dresden Files series, this is another one. You'll probably like it. But, for me, too long, over complicated, bit dull.

The last few books I've read have been 600 page marathons. I think I need a few quickies.

First line:

Life is hard. Dying's easy.

last line (yes, I peeked!)

There is much work to be done

I'm guessing that means there's another sequel coming soon?

Stross, C 2013, The Traders' War

"It's never treason if you win"

Had I realised in the library that this brick of a book was part two of a trilogy (more accurately, parts three and four of a sixology), I'd have put it back and started at the beginning.  But I didn't realise, and the first thirty pages had me intrigued enough to read on and work it all out as I go. My way requires concentration, but it is doable. I imagine that linear types would be less confused by starting with book one.

The story? Modern Miss finds herself living a luxury medieval-ish life on a parallel earth. Time passes, more worlds ensue. There is a War. This isn't a spoiler: the set up is in book one (I guess), and the war is in the title.

I'm already a fan of Stross' excellent Laundry series - although the stories often confuse me and I only get about 3% of the geek references - he's a writer I enjoy. The Traders' War is a different genre, and I'm delighted to discover I'm a fan of this Stross too. So much a fan that I'll be reading books one and three as soon as I can lay my hands on them.

Handy hint: it's a brick. Buy on Kindle or get in some training with light hand weights.

First line:

Nail lacquer, the woman called Helge reflected as she paused in the antechamber, always did two things to her: it reminded her of her mother, and it made her feel like a rebellious  little girl.

Last line: SPOILER ALERT

'I think we might be able to deal with the enemy without mounting a frontal attack on those guns: and in the process, inconvenience the pretender mightily...' 

Paretsky S 1998 Bloodshot

Tough detective VI is tough. She adored her mum: Italian, loving, but tough.  She remembers her neighbour: flighty, but tough. She leans on her Dr friend Lotty: caring, but tough. She meets an elderly lady: unfulfilled, but tough. Tough women are tough. In a tough town. That's the theme of the book. It's one note, over 399 pages. Possibly, if there'd been less authorial focus on being tough, the book could be a little shorter. That wouldn't be a bad thing. 

Do you think I may be mistaken? I'm not:

"She hung up on my incoherent protest. I smiled a little - gruff to the end. I hoped I was that tough forty years ahead."

The plot? Who's the daddy? Why is that woman murdered? It takes a while to find out, and you have to be TOUGH to take the pace. 

I thought I remembered liking the VI Warshawski series. I misremembered.

First line: 

I had forgotten the smell. Even with the South Works on strike and Wisconsin Steel padlocked and rusting away, a pungent mix of chemicals streamed in through the engine vents.

last line:

 I knelt next to her chair and put my arms around her. 'Till death do us part, kid'.

Mailman, E 2007 The Witch's Trinity

This is a book of desperation. Desperate cold, desperate hunger, the fears and superstitions of early 16th  century Germany. You'd have to be so brave to bear the trials of the elderly narrator, Güde. As a reader you fully understand why the village has become so cruel, and you fear that, in their world, you would be so cruel too. Cold, hungry and frightened: you'd want to punish someone.

So, a book to be read with seriousness. Chapters are headed with the Malleus Maleficarum, to remind readers that the cruelties are not fiction. We should remember, and I believe fictional representations of a dark time are as good a way to do that as any other. Or, maybe I just like good stories, well told.

First line:

It was a winter to make bitter all souls. So cold the birds froze mid call and our little fire couldn't keep ice from burrowing into bed with us. The fleas froze in the straw beds, bodies swollen with chilled blood. We were hungry.

Last line (at least: this is where the book would have ended if I'd been the editor)

I kissed my son goodly on each cheek and put him from me. I was too distressed to bear his distress as well. I walked away from the square but I did not send my steps home. I knew home had gone up in smoke like Künne, like Fronika.

A cut at that point makes sense to me. It maintains the mood of the novel and you're left to imagine for yourself how - if - Güde can get by. But author and editor didn't ask my advice, and so they carry on for a couple more chapters, a couple of years into the future. For me, this brought forced optimism to a dark tale. Read on still further (at least in the paperback edition I read) and there's a very clunky family history from the author determined to share in her ancestor's tribulations. Trust me. Get to the line where I make the cut, and then ... stop reading.

Cumming C, 2012, A foreign country

Before opening the book you've got a Big Clue. The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

 Spy thrillers are places you've visited before: you'll have fond memories of how it was before the tourists started coming,  and a basic grasp of the language. Ths spy thriller won awards, which got me to read the first few pages even though I'm not a fan of the bullets n bullshit genre.

By page 30 you've got the set up: top spy disappears, disgraced ex-spy brought in on hush hush terms.

By page 30 you've also got a very cynical view of marriage. Is there really so much shagging around in Vauxhall?

First line

Jean-Marc Daumal awoke to the din of the call to prayer and to the sound of his children weeping.

Last line

"Jean-Marc, there is somebody I would like you to meet"

Ryman, G 2004 Air

Just a few pages in and I was thinking this author doesn't like women. At least, he definitely doesn't like his lead character Mae: a shallow, bitchy wannabe who isn't. I like her though. Creating her space in the village selling fashion and cosmetics, she reminds me of the many women entrepreneurs listed on Kiva. If she needed a $25 loan, I'd cough up. Mr Ryman: I think you could write Mae more sympathetically.

I don't know why, but something in this book makes me think of Roberts' The Land of the Headless. When I've finished Air I'm going to read other reviews and find the connection. And then I might reread Roberts, although I remember the concept being more interesting than the story. I do hope that's not the connection...

First line:

Mae lived in the last village in the world to go online.

Last line:

[redacted for possible spoilers] , all of them, turned and walked together into the future.

Update: Mae is written more warmly as the story unfolds. I was interested to note that I had no believability problem with the surprise pregnancy (spit: don't swallow) but for me a talking dog was a an innovation too far.

Grisham J, 2004, The Last Juror

We're in Mississippi in the early 70s. The protagonist is a hippie with enough family money to buy the local newspaper (lucky boy) and enough commercial acumen to turn this into profit. He's also Not A Racist,  developing an unconvincing close friendship with a middle aged Black woman who likes to feed him and tell him stories.

There's a murder, there's a trial, there are legal shenanigans: it's a John Grisham. You know what you're getting.

You'll keep on turning the pages though. If you think death is the wages of sin you'll be fine with how the plot turns out. If you'd rather a more subtle legal system, with a more nuanced view of the world, you're probably better reading something Swedish.

Word of warning: do not read before dinner. You'll eat everything in the house after reading about Miss Callie's carefully tended veg garden and her amazing three-hour lunches. Or is that just me?

First line:

After decades of patient mismanagement and loving neglect, the Ford County Times went bankrupt in 1970.

Last line:

Eventually, slowly, with great agony, I began the last obituary.