Just realised I haven't listed or reviewed any of my 2023 books yet!
1 Quite, Claudia Winkleman
Her views on the more trivial (pairs of boots; eye make-up) to the profound (looking after your friends; family; the wonder of nurses). Basically, if you like her on telly you'll like this; it's absolutely her voice and her humour. I thought it was highly enjoyable, but then again I'm a fan anyway.
2 The Button Box, Lynn Knight Much reviewed on these threads, so I'll just say that it's very informative and wide-ranging.
3 The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett About the residents past and present of a home for unwed mothers in small-town Kentucky. It's about secrets and personal legacies; the good in people and the difficulties about them. It's quite good, but it's not Bel Canto! I was left with a slight sense of 'Why have we been shown and told this?'
4 Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
Again, much reviewed on these threads. Initially daunting (I have a knee-jerk reaction against things set in futuristic settings and across multiple times and locations), but I'm glad I persevered. It didn't grab my heart in the way All the Light… did, but it did turn out to be about people and love and goodness in a similar way to that novel. I think it may have one layer too many of artifice – the translation of the ancient Greek story by one of the characters in the novel was a bit much for me (although I do understand it works, in a mechanical sense, for it to be there, and why the author chose to have it).
5 The Other Side of You, Salley Vickers. A weird one. A psychiatrist sees a patient who tried to kill herself. Eventually she tells him the story of how she got to that point. It's VERY talky (I know, it's largely set in a psychiatrist's treatment room, what did I expect) and the protagonist is a bit pompous and a bit of a male chauvinist IMO. As is another male character, who we are I think supposed to like or admire or find interesting. I just thought they were both quite tiresome and boorish. I finished it though; she is a good writer and nice to read in that sense.
6 Rudolf Nureyev: The Life, Julie Kavanagh Another male chauvinist, I suppose! This is a long book, dense, full of names and dates and places (obviously) and takes a bit of focusing on. It's well written though, exhaustive in its detail. She doesn't shy from Nureyev's unpleasant elements, but reading about his background as a poor child and in the oppressive Soviet culture, I could understand him somewhat. He was also kind ,encouraging and generous to many people. A complicated individual then, and he basically came from one oppressive world to another: ballet is full, it seems, of petty rivalries, massive egos, people just waiting to cut each other off at the knees and criticise one another for infractions like putting an intervening step into a sequence or having a different training style. I found it fascinating.
7 House of Glass, Hadley Freeman Again, much discussed on here. A story remarkable for its ordinariness and at the same time its remarkable specificity, told with attention to the historical and cultural context and intelligent interrogation of the likely motives and psychology of those involved. Heartbreaking at many points, and always gripping. I hesitate to call it a masterpiece as some have, though; the writing is a little plunky at times in the journalistic way of adding in all the detail and accuracy, sometimes at the expense of readability and flow. It was also slightly marred by some editing and proofreading clangers (overuse of a person's name in a short para, bad punctuation and grammar, misspelling Helena Rubinstein's name not once but twice).
Now on 8, Sovereign by CJ Sansom. I am coming to love Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak and their odd-couple fondness and resect for one another. This is set over a period in York when Henry VIII came on a great progress to, basically, remind people who was boss after an attempt at a Catholic rebellion. Great detail about the frantic buying-up by the King's 'people' of all the provisions in York, the mad round-the-clock building of facilities for him and his entourage etc.