The Coffin Dancer: Jeffery Deaver

Against expectations - I only picked this up because I couldn't find anything else to read - I was hooked. The book features a quadraplegic detective, Rhyme, his able bodied - and able - assisant Amelia Sachs, a top-of-the-range killer who has an inner voice in the form of an army officer, and an exciting, time-limited plot: the action takes place within 45 hours. The villain is almost unbelievably talented, Rhyme almost unbelievable in his ability to second-guess the villain's moves. But I did suspend disbelief, and was thoroughly sucked in to the plot, rooting for all the characters, even from time to time, the villain. I have a reason for not using his name. Read it and you'll find out why.

Daughter of the Wind: Suzanne Fisher Staples

I was convinced by this moving story of a young teenage girl, Shabanu, raised in a nomadic desert family. Her account of her daily life - it's written in the first person - gave me some real insight into her life, and its real differences from 21st century European life. But her emotions as she confronts the marriage choices made for her as circumstances change around her are ones it's easy to identify with too. She has some very hard lessons to learn which are not the kind of lesson it would be palatable for a young western girl to accept. But as her mother warns, 'Shabanu, you are wild as the wind. You must learn to obey. Otherwise . . . I am afraid for you.'

The Water's Lovely: Ruth Rendell

Ho hum. A bit of a holiday read. I usually enjoy Ruth Rendell's books, but in this acase, there was little mystery, and the outcome was fairly predictable. The characters were usually unlikeable, and cardboard cut-outs at that. Dialogue was stilted. But it was well written enough to keep me turning the pages in the middle of the night when sleep was elusive, and I'll read Ruth Rendell again. Just not this one.

Lost light: Michael Connolly

Every now and then I seem to have the need to read a detective novel, and Michael Connelly often hits the spot.  This book has its hero, retired detective Harry Bosch, as its narrator.  This slightly hard-boiled character finds an old unsolved case has got under his skin, but in post 9/11 America, he finds himself in serious conflict with the FBI who warn him off in no uncertain terms.  By the end, so many disparate threads had been introduced I had a job keeping up, and it seemd to have as many special effects as a James Bond movie.  A good enough read, but a book I was happy enough to come to the end of.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime: PG Wodehouse

I normally enjoy a good PG Wodehouse, especially if Bertie Wooster and Jeeves are involved.  Blandings Castle and That Pig don't get me so involved.  And so it proved this time.  I got thoroughly muddled with all the characters coming and going, and by the end, dodn't much care. I'll always enjoy a Wodehouse turn of phrase, but this time, it simply wasn't enough. 

Memoir: John McGahern

This is an exploration of McGahern's childhood in rural Ireland in the 1940's and 50's.  He deeply loved his mother who died of cancer when he was still very young. Sent with his siblings to live with his authoritative father in police barracks (his father and mother rarely lived together) the children learn to endure cruelty and unpredictabilty and to rely entirely on each other for their emotional development.  McGahern discovered books through the libarary of a sympathetic local priest, and through his education, gradually breaks free of the extraordinary volatile father who endeavours to control his life and that of his sisters and brother.  I've not yet read any other books by McGahern.  I will, to experience again his heartfelt, compelling, evocative writing.

The Apothecary's House: Adrian Mathews

Set in Amsterdam, the story involves 'a looted painting, a secret code, a deadly pursuit....'.  The 17th century painting which exerts such a hold over the two principal protagonists, a young art researcher Ruth, and Lydia, an extremely elderly claimant of the picture, turns out to have a value beyond its qualities as a somewhat mediocre painting, and so a racy mystery story unfolds. 

Lydia is not the only one to want the painting.  We time-travel from 17th century Amsterdam, through the Nazi-occupied town, to the modern city as the plot develops.  Often complicated, sometimes baffling, the plot was less important to me than the evocations of Amsterdam itself in its various guises.  I enjoyed the descriptions of the city and those who lived there and contributed to the story: Ruth and Lydia in particular, but also some of the 'bit parts' - Ruth's colleague Myles, her father, even the cat, Principessa.  The plotting at the end of the story seems somewhat sensationalist and rushed, but I was happy to keep reading for the pleasure of continuing to get to know Amsterdam itself.  The book was in any case, quite a page-turner.

Dark Fire: CJ Sansom

I've read all the Matthew Shardlake books now: all in the wrong order, but it doesn't matter.  I feel as if I know my way round Tudor London, and have a bit of a feel for the sounds and smells of the streets, and the religious and political turmoil that was a part of everyday life then.  

This is a complex two-pronged tale, beginning with a young girl falsely accused of murder, and soon involving Shardlake in another apparently unrelated all-but impossible mission to uncover the secret behind the mysterious Greek Fire, at the behest of Thomas Cromwell.  

This is the book where we meet Barak, the coarse yet astute and intelligent young man whom Cromwell provides as his assistant: herbalist Guy, an ex-monk whom we met in the first book has more than a bit-part to play, and is in many ways the voice of Shardlake's conscience.  Fast paced, intelligently and intricately plotted, this is a novel that is impossible to put down.

Innocent Traitor: Alison Weir

I seem to be having a bit of a Tudor moment, what with CJ Sampson's Matthew Shardlake and all.  I started Innocent Traitor comparing it unfavourably with Sampson's work.  But I found it in due course a real page-turner.  The truly horrifying history of Jane Grey, the nine-days Queen is told through the eyes of many of the people involved in her life.  Their individual voices are hard to distinguish one from the other, but their different views of aspects of the same tale make for interesting reading.  There's Jane herself, quiet, studious but strong-minded, her loyal loving nurse, her dreadfully inhumane mother and the political entourage surrounding her.  The characters are believable, and the story is a true one.  

Alison Weir, an historian, has clearly enjoyed the opportunity, new to her, of fictionalising her account, putting words and thoughts into her characters' mouths and heads that can have no basis in hard historical fact.  But she is so conversant with the period and the characters about whom she writes that the feel of the book is likely to be an accurate refection of this particularly unsavoury episode in English history.  A very good if uncomfortable read.

The Secret Scripture: Sebastian Barry

A wonderful book.  Roseanne McNulty, 100 years old, is a long-term patient of Roscommon Mental Hospital. She's Doctor Grene's patient.  Secretly, she starts to record her memories, shifting, uncertain, lyrically expressed.  Doctor Grene, whose own life is difficult, has access to a different version of her life story, and she does not confide her own to him.  Hers was a life lived against a background of civil war and religious intolerance, of poverty, and the mental illness of her mother.  Though many of her memories are bleak, Roseanne herself is warm, often funny, always sympathetic.  Dr. Grene's losses and hurts are woven into the narrative, and at the end, his history, and that of Roseanne are interlinked in a most surprising way.  This is a beautifully written and tragic novel about damaged but utterly sympathetic characters.

The American Boy: Andrew Taylor

This book reads as a 19th century novel of the kind that Wilkie Collins could have written: its language and tone are largely authentic, and like many books of the period, there is a large cast of characters from all walks of life.  Thomas Shield, a schoolmaster with a troubled past is the narrator, and he introduces us to the wealthy Frants and Carswells, whose lives he becomes intimately involved with.  There's the young Edgar Allan Poe too, though I'm not sure how important his part really is, despite his presence in the book's title.  Murder and skullduggery take place both in London's Dickensian streets, and in rural Gloucestershire .  The fast-paced action and the short chapters make the book an atmospheric page-turner, and while it's not a great book, it's a very good read.

Trick or Treatment?: Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst

A fascinating book.  I've often felt I would like to be more drawn to the treatments of alternative and complementary therapists.  I've had a few experiences over the years but  few of them have been really positive.  

This account, written by experts on both sides of the fence, is the well-researched and thoroughly readable story of the development of mainstream medical science and of some of the main alternative therapies.  The book gives a clear and fascinating account of the history of medication in particular and of the rigorous testing now required for any new drug, and contrasts it with the lack of rigour to which many alternative theapies have been exposed.  Its conclusions are shocking.  I shan't ever choose homeopathy or acupuncture again any time in the future.

Loitering with intent:Muriel Spark

Fleur Talbot is an impecunious novelist who takes a job working for upper class pompous twit Sir Quentin Oliver, who founded the Autobiographical Association to encourage its members to record their memoirs. Fleur's job was to revise and spice up these otherwise dull recollections.

Life begins to imitate art as members of the association begin to act out events already recorded in Fleur's as yet unpublished manuscript Warrender Chase, and the skull-duggery and derring-do that fairly races through the pages is quite reminiscent of a '50's farce.  In fact the 1950s are well-painted, as are the characters, from the deliciously loopy Lady Edwina, Quentin's mother, to the many and varied men in Fleur's life.  

This is a crisply written book, with a plot that fairly zips along.  It's something of a period piece, which I enjoyed, but was happy enough to finish and set aside in favour of some plainer fare.

Plainsong: Kent Haruf

This book remained unread on my bookshelf for months, because, I think, of its dismal cover: I have a proof copy.  What a mistake.  This beautifully written, spare, stark book takes as its theme the loosely intermingled lives of various abandoned souls who live in the imagined town of Holt, Colorado.  

There's teenage Victoria, pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend;  Tom Guthrie, who wife has retreated into deep depression, leaving him with his solemn and perforce self-sufficient young boys, Ike and Bobby; the elderly McPheron brothers, orphaned young, who take Victoria in; infirm Iva Stearn, to whom the young boys deliver the local paper.  Thse isolated people display dignity and stoicism in their difficulties, and struggle towards some sense of connection and community.  

Holt seems a pretty bleak town, and the landscape that surrounds it too.  Haruf's descriptions are always understated, always telling.  His characters maintain their privacy, whilst allowing us to care about the ultimately optimistic conclusion of the book.  It's a book that lingers in the memory.  Read it

The Cellist of Sarajevo: Steven Galloway

The siege of Sarajevo lasted some four years.  Steven Galloway invites us to experience it for 3 weeks, through the lives of Kenan, a young man whose life seems to revolve round the hugely difficult and dangerous task of getting water for his family: of Dragan, an older man whose family have fled to Italy, and who works, when work is there, in a bakery: and of Arrow, a young female sniper, who kills only soldiers, not her fellow-citizens.  Theirs is a life of drudgery, deprivation and extreme and daily danger.  

Like everyone in the city who experiences it, they find the cello player who plays, despite the risks, every day for 22 days to commemorate the 22 lives lost as they queued for bread becomes a compelling presence in their existences. I found the book compelling too, a stripped down narrative that invites a comparison between the formerly civilised and cultured city of Sarajevo, and the squalid frightening place it had become, with little food, transport, comforts or amenities of any kind.  There is no plot as such.  The unremitting sameness of the struggle to stay alive and to defend the much-loved city is the story.  A good book. A thought-provoking book.

Revelation: CJ Sansom

I'm a huge fan of the Tudor detective novels (if that's the right term) involving the hunch-backed lawyer Matthew Shardlake, and its large cast of characters, imagined and real - Cranmer and  Henry VIII for starters.  

Apart from the cast, the plot is complex, terrifying and thoroughly enthralling, involving multiple murders and a study of passages in the Book of Revelations.  Tudor London is conjured up so that I can smell the streets and see the urban scenes that Sansom brings to life.  I sense the religious turmoil, the unease and fear in this period of upheaval and change.  I enjoy the company of Shardlake, of his assistant  Jack Barak; of the doctor and former monk Guy who is Shardlake's friend; of Barak's wife Tamasin; of the widowed Dorothy, whose husband's death begins this bloody, complex and horrifying murder hunt; and so many others.  

Sansom wears his considerable learning lightly and uses it to great effect in weaving his complex and fast-moving  tale.  Above everything though, this book's a great page-turner.  It was hard to put it down until I'd read every single one of its almost 550 pages

The Prince of Mist: Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I didn't enjoy this book at all.  I found the translation didn't read fluently, and were the names given to the character in the book the original ones?  They sounded for the most part rather British.  More than that though, I simply couldn't believe in the story at all - yes, I know it's a fantasy, but for me, it simply didn't hang together.  

On the plus side, there is descriptive writing that is atmospheric and involving: I can feel the stinging rain and the wind in his account of a storm, and clearly see the buildings he describes.  But this strange adventure that involves few adults is a sort of Super-Scary Enid Blyton Famous Five adventure.  Maybe that's why I didn't like it

The Deposition of Father McGreevy: Brian O'Doherty

The setting: a small Irish village in the middle of nowhere: a stark, dreadful winter in which all the younger women die, leaving their menfolk and children to battle on.  Their priest narrates much of the story.  He's an unlikeable, inflexible man.  He tells a tale of poverty and hardship, old-fashioned faith, superstition, suspicion.  There's the village idiot and sheepshagger. This is the story of the death of a village and a way of life, and of lives transformed and ruined in two dreadful years.

For all he's a nasty, small-minded old man, Father McGreevy is sympathetically portrayed.  The picture of small town life, spiteful and unforgiving, is eloquently drawn.  It's a chilling narrative, and an engrossing one 

The White Masai: Corinne Hoffman

I've read 83 pages.  Out of 307.  That will have to be enough.  

This book is the testimony of a young Swiss woman, who narrates her own story.  She's a victim of 'love at first sight' with a Masai tribesman whom she sees across a crowded room whilst on holiday in Kenya with her boyfriend.  She gives up everything to be with this man and join his tribal existence.  

While the accounts of life with the Masai are interesting, and while Hoffman is undoubtedly brave, I became increasingly irritated by her.  Hoffman seems to be the victim of a lustful crush.  She pursues her 'warrior' as she calls him, with an intensity that shows little understanding of him, or his culture. She's willing to live with him in his village, but seems to have litle inkling of the impact her appearance in his community has on either him or his community.  

I've skipped to the end.  I know it will all end in tears.  I just don't want to spend any more time in Corinne Hoffman's company to find out where and how it all goes horribly wrong.  

Zennor in Darkness: Helen Dunmore

1917:  DH Lawrence and his German wife Frieda have taken refuge in Cornwall, in Zennor, surrounded by local mistrust and vilification.   The sickening anxieties of the First World War cause upset and difficulty even in rural communities far from the metropolis, as more and more men from the village are called up and disappear to fight, and people feel tense and suspicious. Clare Coyne and her extended family live in Zennor too, and it is Clare's story and her short love affair with her cousin that is most fully narrated.  

Cornwall itself, and its coastal landscape, are poetically described, as are certain relationships: that between Clare and her cousins, her father, DH Lawrence and Frieda.  This might be an imaginary story, despite having elements of fact in the narrative concerning the Lawrences, but it seems a very true one.  This story shows us  lives often difficult, challenging,tedious and impoverished too: but described with tenderness, subtlety and delicacy.

He Kills Coppers: Jake Arnott

I had a slightly love-hate relationship with this novel.  More hate really.  I had read The Long Firm (the two books form part of a trilogy) with some - um - not enjoyment; it's far too grungy for that, and expected to react similarly to this one.  He Kills Coppers spans three decades from the 1960s to the 1980s.  There are stories of corruption, in the Police service principally, but also in the world of journalism: it reminds us, in the section recording developments in the ‘80’s, of the sheer nastiness of much of Thatcher's Britain.  

The three main characters, who take turns with the narrative, are hard to warm to and are somewhat two dimensional, while all other participants in the narrative remain strictly one dimensional.  Each, in their different ways, has an interest in small time criminal-turned-murderer Billy Porter.  

I remained fairly unengaged by the story.  But as a memorial to country going though profound social change, corrupt in many of its institutions, it makes an interesting if rather horrifying read..

Pure: Andrew Miller

Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a well qualified yet naïve young engineer, is sent to oversee the removal of the many thousands of bodies from the cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris, some 4 years before the French Revolution.  This is the story of the unsettling year he spent there, dealing firstly with the foul conditions engendered by the over-spilling burial ground, the locals who despite everything, remained attached to the staus quo, the hard-to control and understand Flemish miners hired to do the work of exhuming and moving the cadavers, and the - to Baratte - wholly unfamiliar world of personal relationships particularly with women.

Miller conjures a vivid picture of the daily round in this little part of eighteenth century Paris: the smells, whether of sour breath or rotting vegetables or a dusty church; and of a world about to change, in the destruction of the cemetery and church which has for so long been at the heart of the community Baratte finds himself in.  Violence and death are ever present.

Unsettled by the narrative, the reader is left with an mpression of a world about to change, a world which is already changing in ways its citizens cannot comprehend.  Uncertainty is what draws the reader in.

The Kitchen Diaries II: Nigel Slater

I haven’t finished this book yet.  I shan’t till December.  But I’m enjoying reading Nigel’s Kitchen Diary one month at a time.  That way, there’s every chance I’ll be making some new seasonal dishes in the course of the month.  It was my new year’s resolution to make at least one, preferably two new dishes every week, to broaden my repertoire.  Nigel Slater’s writing is so good there’s no problem turning the pages and feeling as greedy and eager as he about the meals he has in mind, and that enthuses me to try them too.  I love the fact that he’s opportunistic, seizing upon ingredients that interest him, and only later wondering what he could do to bring out the best in them.  This book will be with me all year long.

When we were bad: Charlotte Mendelson

I struggled at first to get into this book.  So many characters, all equally important as the story unfolds.  All so flawed.  All so Jewish.  That isn’t a criticism.  Just an observation that understanding the Rubin family (and all the characters are family members) means getting to grips a bit with what it means to be Jewish too.

I persisted.  It was worth it.

The lives of every family member begin to unravel as son Leo’s life very publicly does, the day he leaves his wife-to-be some 4 minutes before they take their vows. It turns out that he isn’t the only one in inner turmoil. 

By turns funny, touching and embarrassing, I was engaged with every character, despite their many and obvious flaws, long before the conclusion of the book.

Arlington Park: Rachel Cusk

Five mothers who live in prosperous Arlington Park are the subject of this book.  We look at their lives during a single rainy day.  Their husbands are shadowy, their children pretty ghastly, and the women themselves seem, for different reasons, to be a pretty grim bunch.  They have lives that are pretty dreary, choked with unpleasant routine.  

And yet it’s a book to read with satisfaction and pleasure.  It can be funny, despite everything, and its real joy is the detailed yet telling descriptions of familiar things: a shopping centre, a bedroom, a kitchen the morning after, and in its evocation of mood. 

I wouldn’t want to pass much time with any of these women in real life, but between the pages of a book, they were definitely worth getting to know.  

Small Wars: Sadie Jones

I loved this book.  Mainly set in occupied Cyprus in the late 1950’s, its subject is a young couple: Hal, a bright young officer who hasn’t been taught to have any kind of real emotional life, and Clara, his young and dutiful wife.  

The book divides itself between looking at Hal, appalled and yet brutalised by the conflict he is a part of, and Clara, bored, frightened and powerless.  As Hal's military involvement increases, the couple become increasingly unable to communicate. Cyprus itself is beautifully evoked, but it casts no spell over the protagonists.  

I was unconvinced by the faltering reconciliation at the end of the book, but as an examination of Englishness, and the effects of war on everyone involved, as well as a portrait of a country I’ve never visited, it was a gripping and involving read.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: Amy Chua

As John Crace said in the Guardian in his Digested Read, 'Never has mediocrity seemed so appealing.' 

I read the book in a day appalled and fascinated in equal measure at this true story of an American mother of Chinese ethnicity bringing up her children the Chinese way: no sleepovers, no drama clubs, and no down-time in front of the TV.  Schoolwork, perfecting their Mandarin and music practice dominated her children’s out-of-school time……  If her children were forced to work hard, Chua herself had a punishing schedule fitting her demanding job in with the demands she placed on her children. 

Glad I read it, even if it exhausted me.