Hi everyone. Good luck to anyone awaiting exam results tomorrow including the teachers on this thread!
I'm back from a wonderfully relaxing holiday in which I have managed to read 13 books. I'm afraid the reviews may be a little terse! Read a couple of really good ones along with a few stinkers..... Haven't caught up on the posts either so I will hopefully have a read through this evening. Here's the first batch of reviews:
61. Miller's Valley, Anna Quindlen
This hasn't made a strong enough impression for me to write a proper review. I remember it was gentle and Anne Tyler-ish. I remember it concerned coming of age, and the complexity of family ties, and some environmental issues. I am sure I would have had more to say if I'd written my review more promptly after reading - sorry.
62. What Red Was, Rosie Price
Kate, a shy girl from a difficult family, is drawn into the orbit of a bright popular boy (a fellow student at an unnamed prestigious university) and his glamorous, artistic family. As she becomes more involved with the family, she is raped (I don't want to say more and spoil the book) and the story follows her as she attempts to cope with the assault, and its consequences.
This has had brilliant reviews but I struggled. I didn't find either of the main characters engaging or believable. I don't know if this was what then led me to struggle with the rest of the book. Although Kate's story is told in direct and visceral language, it didn't come alive for me. I couldn't understand or believe in her behaviour or the reasons assigned to it. That's not to say it was bad - as I say, it's had incredible reviews and I could certainly see skill in it (the scene of the rape itself is horribly vivid, with echoes of Cat Person in the deft handling of the awkward-becoming-gradually-menacing interaction between a woman and a man who is starting to scare her) so I am sure there will be other readers here who appreciate it more than I did.
63. Ordinary People, Diana Evans
Set in south London, this is the story of two couples hitting a bit of a mid-life crisis. They get frustrated, eyes wander, one of the blokes has a crush on the other's wife. They wonder if they've sold out ("Why did he marry her? Why did he live on the outskirts of Dorking?”), and search for their lost identities.
This one grew on me. I wasn't that fussed at the beginning, although I liked the humour and the south London setting, but what sucked me in was a subtle and spooky is-it-isn't-it ghost story, in which Melissa, stuck at home with two young children, senses an unwelcome presence upstairs in her house. For me it was that subplot, never overdone, which drove the story forward, but at the end the book left me with lots to think about - marriage, aging, race, identity - which had snuck up on me and made for a much more interesting book than I anticipated.
64. Hired: Sixth Months undercover in Low Wage Britain, James Bloodworth
You may have heard of Bloodworth - he worked undercover for Amazon in one of their mega-warehouses, and the information about what it's like to work there is certainly interesting (and not very nice if you're a regular Prime-r like me). He also does care work, answers phones in a call centre and drives a car for Uber, all of which make interesting reading. He's a good author for this kind of book - socially aware, on the side of the workers without pushing any particular political agenda. This makes an interesting companion to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickeled and Dimed, in which she took on a similar project in the US in the early 2000s - before the gig economy took off.
65. Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie
Reviewed everywhere especially since winning the Women's Prize. It is a retelling of Antigone, which I think I must have read as an undergraduate but shamefully remember NOTHING about - rest assured this didn't ruin my enjoyment of this book (although it was very interesting to read afterwards about the links between the two). There have been numerous books recently about British muslims watching relatives or friends get radicalised by Jihadis, and while this one is well done and vividly written, it wouldn't have been enough on its own. What makes this come alive, to an almost spooky degree (with life imitating fiction) is the character of Karamat Lone, a charismatic muslim politician who rises from a Wembley family to become conservative Home Secretary, turning his back on islam in the process. The exploration of the connections and tensions that run between the family of Lone and that of the young Jihadi, Parvaiz, really bring this book to life.
66. Crooked Heart, Lissa Evans
Lovely sequel to *Old Baggage. Lissa Evans is bloody clever - she creates these characters and really makes you care about them. She tugs your heart-strings like a virtuoso without being too sentimental. I will admit I shed a few tears at the end of this.
67. The Psychopath test: A Journey Tgrough the Madness Industry, Jon Ronson
An interesting idea but poorly focussed IMHO. Ronson meets the psychologist who created a checklist of characteristics used to identify psychopaths. Armed with this, Ronson sets on a quest to interview people who may be psychopaths from a long-term resident of Broadmoor to a captain of industry famous for his lack of remorse when cutting peoples jobs. All of this skims along the surface with jokes and strange behaviour until you find yourself feeling deeply uncomfortable. is Ronson using personality disorder as entertainment? Is he having a laugh at these people's expense? Or at ours?
Eventually he settles to some more important questions: can a checklist be used, seriously, to diagnose a mental illness or condition? How easy is it to overdiagnose such conditions, and could this be being encouraged by the pharmaceutical industry? These are interesting and important issues which deserve more than Ronson's faux-naive shtick - I've enjoyed his other books but this felt like an inappropriate topic for a lightweight and jokey treatment.
I've nicked a good quote from a Guardian review of the book: "He skates when you want him to dig; he does that amazed, disingenuous thing, when a little old-fashioned anger and indignation would serve him far better; he makes peculiar connections between things that are not really connected at all. His subject is huge and tragic and terrifying but there is something tinny and unfinished about his investigation. "