I shouldn't have waited so long to write these reviews - I suspect I am not going to do them justice, especially the ones I read a couple of weeks ago!
38. The Finishing School, Muriel Spark
Disappointing. I haven't read any Muriel Spark since I was a teen and I keep hearing people talk about how wonderfully witty and cutting she is. This was a book about unpleasant people doing very little and while apparently other people found it funny, I didn't. Apologies to any MS fans on the thread!
39. East of Hounslow, Khurrum Rahman
I heard the author speaking on the radio a while back and was interested to seek this out. It's a fairly bog standard thriller, but our hero, Jay, is a young Muslim man living in contemporary London. At the start of the book he's living with his mum, attending mosque on a Friday and selling drugs to finance his flashy car. Events in his local neighbourhood lead him to become more involved with a charismatic man who he meets through the mosque. But other people also have their eye on Jay and he gets an approach from the security services who want his help in infiltrating a jihadi group.
The story isn't hugely original and of course it's suspend your disbelief stuff. But Jay's voice and the setting are well done, they feel authentic. I hope the book gets a wide audience as Rahman has done a good job of portraying the pressures on young Muslim men in a very human way - if you only know Muslims from reading the tabloids this would hopefully be an eye-opener.
40. Winter, Ali Smith
I liked Autumn and I really liked this. It's superficially more conventional than Autumn, with a clear narrative focus - the story of a man going home to spend Christmas with his mother. He's promised to bring his girlfriend, but they've rowed and he thinks he'll lose face showing up alone, so he gets talking to a young woman he meets and asks her to come with him. A small cast of characters, a Christmas setting, a mystery, maybe a bit of romance - but of course, this being Ali Smith, the story roves all over the place, through art,
and history, and politics, and feminism, and nature and all kinds of other stuff. There's a nice link between this and Autumn though I had to read a few reviews before I found one that confirmed my suspicions. In that review (by Neil, on Goodreads), I also found this line, which I think is a perfect summing up:
'It seems to me that one of the things Smith is trying to do in her quartet is ground or embed the events and attitudes of our current time in their underlying history. She wants to unite “now” and “then” because “now” means very little unless you understand “then”.'
41. Foolish Mortals, Jennifer Johnston
I can only say, I read this, I liked it well enough and I have already forgotten almost everything about it. A middle aged man has an accident and loses his short term memory. As his relatives and loved ones visit him and talk to him, he (and the reader) start to piece together his rather complicated family relationships.
I do remember thinking that it reminded me of Colm Toibin's Blackwater Lightship, in being a sideways look at social changes in Ireland through the lens of a family drama - but I preferred the Toibin.
42. Old Baggage, Lissa Evans
Most of you have probably read this by now. I loved this. Set in the late 1920s, it's the story of two former Suffragettes, sharing a house together in Hampstead. Both are clever, capable, and brave - neither really has a suitable role to play in society. Women have fought for the vote, and won, but does it really mean anything? Are there not more battles to come?
I loved this because it's genuinely funny, warm-hearted (though not quite sentimental - certainly don't expect happy endings all round) and clever. A joy to read.
43. To Throw Away Unopened, Viv Albertine
I only picked this up becuase of the reviews here. I'm the least punk person in the world - I'm a conformist, a rule-follower. I thought I would dislike Viv Albertine, and if I'm honest I didn't really like her that much, but not for the reasons I expected.
She's been a famous musician but this isn't a vain pop-star autobiography - she's very much a living, breathing, human being (not averse to telling you about her bowel habits and other bodily details). She can write like a demon but she's a complete drama queen and if the incident at the centre of the book is actually true then she is capable of appalling behaviour. But then I read
"I've got thirty years left, if I'm lucky, and the thing I most look forward to is all the books I can read in that time"
Or
"It [her bed] is the best piece of furniture in the house and I spend too much time in it. I even talk to it: 'See you later', I say, and pat it as I leave my bedroom. I smile when I see it again at the end of the day......... I'd rather lie in my bed and stare at the wall than go to a party".
And then I think we have huge amounts in common, Viv Albertine and me.
This is mainly a horribly sad family memoir, told with a heartbreaking bravado. Her parents had a dreadful marriage, they messed up their daughters emotionally, and both girls carried that forward into adulthood. Albertine views both of her parents with compassion, and, like with the Ali Smith, she knows that to understand the present you must understand the past. She's brilliant writing about women of her mum's generation and about the complex relationships between men and women.
I still can't work out if I would like or hate Albertine if I met her, but I am so glad I read this.