54. The Blank Wall, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding
Psychological thriller written in the 1940s and reprinted by Persephone. ESH seems to have a bit of a cult following amongst lovers of noir fiction and lovers of forgotten female writers - Raymond Chandler was a huge fan apparently. Lucia is a suburban American housewife. Her husband is away in the army (the book is set during WW2) and she lives with her elderly father and two demanding teenage children (interesting that this is before the concept of "teenagers" was established, but the behaviour of the children is so teenager-ish that we can see that teenagers have always teenaged, before we had a word for them). Lucia's student daughter is having an affair with an unsuitable older man who she has met in New York, and who comes to the family house wanting to see her. Lucia is trying to get him to leave them alone. Before the end of the night, there's a dead body to be hidden and so begins an incredibly tense psychological thriller in which Lucia tries to protect her family and keep herself together while the police and the associates of the dead man pay them increasing attention.
I'm not sure I would recommend this book other than as a fascinating period piece. Chandler said about ESH "For my money she's the top suspense writer of them all. She doesn't pour it on and make you feel irritated". My reading experience was the opposite - while not much happened in terms of action, the tension is ratcheted up to 10 all the way through, not least by the children who are constantly popping up saying "Mother? What are you doing? Mother! I need you!". The claustrophobia is recognisable to anyone who's been stuck at home with a needy child, even if you're not trying to hide a body or evade the attention of the police. Lucia's inability to get away from the home for even a short time without her family noticing and questioning her is very marked and the book paints an interesting picture of the life of the respectable 1940s housewife. I just found it too stressful, too tense, too (I hate to use this word but can't think of a non-gendered alternative) hysterical.
55. Take Nothing With You, Patrick Gale
Typical gentle offering from Patrick Gale about a sensitive musical teenager discovering his own sexuality and the secrets of the adults around him. You know where you are with Gale and he does this stuff well - if you've been a sensitive, slightly lonely, musical teenager then you'll know how well he captures that experience. Unfortunately the book was marred for me by the snobbery that runs throughout - Eustace's longing to go away to public school and his horror at the thought of the local comp, which is mirrored by the adults around him who obviously view the prospect of going there as some kind of disastrous tragedy. To some extent this is character voice rather than authorial voice, but when Eustace does get to the comp, he finds that his classmates are kind but stupid, he has to hide his cleverness, the lessons are uninspiring and no-one is musical. I'm afraid that once this started pissing me off I lost sympathy with the book as a whole, which is a shame as otherwise it's a very nicely told and sweet story.
56. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
This was THE book to read a few years ago if I remember correctly, and I didn't read it then. Set mainly in New York and San Francisco, though in other places as well, it takes the form of a series of standalone chapters, each describing an episode from the lives of a group of interconnected characters. The narrative focus shifts back and forward, each chapter has references to other chapters so an incident will be mentioned in passing in one chapter then fleshed out later from another perspective. I wasn't blown away by this but it was enjoyable enough.
57. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
I know this has been much reviewed and discussed and I think I might have enjoyed it more if I'd stumbled across it before the hype. I know others here liked it a lot. Some slight spoilers in my review below so beware if you haven't read it before.
Roy and Celestial are an ambitious young black couple living in Atlanta. They've been married just over a year when Roy is arrested for a crime that he didn't commit, convicted and sent to jail for 12 years. It's both about the impact of wrongful incarceration, and also not about it. Roy's arrest and time in prison are deliberately kept surprisingly small within the narrative - we hardly hear of his time awaiting trial or about the trial itself - and the book explores wider issues about identity, race and relationships. But Roy's prison experience - and the experience that he has of being seen as something that he is not, of being regarded as a criminal when he is an innocent man - are never not present, even when the focus seems to be on something else.
I really enjoyed the first part of the book. However, the later part of the novel is given over to the (to me) over-long and convoluted question of how their broken marriage will resolve itself once Roy is free. I just thought that Jones raised so many interesting points, and the question of whether Celestial would end up with Roy or with the third person in the love triangle was by far the least interesting of these.