a few more reviews from my list
26 Jenni Fagan The Panopticon
I picked this up as I was so impressed with her contribution to the Darklands Tales novellas. It is the story of Anais, a girl growing up in 'care' in Scotland, who is placed at the Panopticon, a former asylum now in use as a communal home for troubled children. Anais struggles with drug addiction and exploitation whilst trying to establish a sense of who she is. Meanwhile her fate hangs in the balance as she is blamed for a violent attack on a police officer. There is a wooziness to the story as Anais conjures magical and alternative realities and it is not clear whether she is the victim of an experiment, delusional or something else entirely. This is very good and the writing bounces along. I've not bolded as to me it felt like something was missing.
27 David Grieg Columba’s Bones
A band of vikings raid Iona in search of goods, wealth and relics. After a brutal attack one Viking is left behind with the few remaining servants of the monastery, and no way off the island. He must find a way to survive until his comrades return, but along the way he plays a key role in the reconstruction of the monastery and the survival of the island. Great characterisation, wonderfully descriptive, gory absolutely, but the story of the viking and the meadwife is anything but trite. I felt a better sense of the Celtic church from reading this and what it must have been to struggling to reconcile different beliefs.
28 Pearl S. Buck The Good Earth
Wow! Buck won a Pulitzer for the trilogy which this volume opens. In part this was because of the relative lack of common cultural exposure between the US and China in the early part of the twentieth century. The story is a multigenerational family saga which follows the lives of the Wang family through prosperity and poverty. Buck's style both describes and explains the peasant customs and ways of life of people in China at this time but does so in a way which is never didactic or expository. Rather the action of the story moves through and by the customs and practices she depicts and she allows the world views of her characters to speak for themselves, or in the case of one main character, O lan, not speak. Central characters are brilliantly drawn, complex and fully realised, though the peripheral 'baddies' who haunt the family's security are more 2D. Buck herself was the child of missionaries who were posted to Zhenjiang in Eastern China and so she grew up immersed in the environment she describes. Interestingly in later life she herself did a lot of charitable work around international adoption and Chinese and mixed race orphans. Her daughter suffered from an intellectual disability and one of the characters in the Good Earth, never named, is likely based on her much adored daughter. I'm not usually a fan of family sagas to be honest, and the ground the Buck broke in introducing Chinese history to a popular audience has been well cultivated since by authors like Jung Chang (biography, non-fiction) and Anchee Min (historical fiction) but this is a wonderful detailed depiction and well worth a read.
29 Leonard Cohen Book of Longing (poems)
Not for me I'm afraid. The poems were written over a long period of time and Cohen fans will get a lot out of it. I just can't find the rhythm in the pieces, the poetry itself feels forced and the subject matters often self indulgent. He dwells on relationships, his sex, his faith and sometimes friendships. There are a few pieces that stood out for me 'A Thousand Kisses Deep' is spectacularly moving for example, but by and large this felt like desk jottings.