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.