89. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Deepa Anappara
Jai is 9 and lives with his family in a basti - a semi-permanent slum neighbourhood on the edge of a large city in India. His family are loving and his parents both have work, but there are worries, about unsympathetic bosses, religious tensions between neighbours, high-handed police and the threat of losing their home to bulldozers. Jai is a cheerful, oblivious boy - his favourite thing is to walk through the busy market and watch the stalls and their customers.
One day a boy from his class goes missing and together with his two best friends, Jai sets out to solve the case (he's a fan of the police shows that his father sometimes lets him watch on TV). Jai is our narrator and from his point of view, the adventure has a jaunty Famous Five feeling - he's confident that between them, and with the help of a stray dog he befriends, they will outperform the local police and find the missing boy.
This book is working on two levels, though, and underneath the childish narration and vivid descriptions of street life lies a much darker story. Jai's world is not a world where children are safe. Anaparra is a journalist and this book developed from an article she was writing about the horrifying numbers of children who go missing every year across India.
Funny and deeply sad.
90. Me, Elton John
And now for something completely different - an unexpected pleasure and one I would never have picked up if not for recommendations here. I only knew tabloid Elton - the strops and tantrums, the attention-seeking and the addictions. All of that is in here along with genuinely witty, self-skewering humour and a level of insightful introspection which presumably comes from many years of expensive therapy.
If you've seen "Rocketman" you'll know the early parts of Elton's story. The book takes us past his successful stint at rehab, to meeting his now-husband, becoming a dad and going through a number of health scares. In my edition we even hear how Elton passed lockdown.
A really candid, gossipy, emotional story of an extraordinary life of hard work, music, success and excess. Much more fun than I would ever have thought.