The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin

Four New York siblings visit a Romany fortune teller during the hot summer of 1969. A word of mouth rumour, she is reputed to be able to tell you the exact date of your death. Daniel, Klara, Varya and Simon, all under ten (ish) the Gold children scrape together their pocket money to visit this mysterious woman, drawn by their desire to Know.

They are fascinated and horrified by what they learn. Torn between dismissing it as nonsense and clinging onto the superstition, concealing their dates from one another and never mentioning it until adulthood…the Gold siblings are burdened with a knowledge that hangs over every hour of every day, a knowledge that threatens to make their choices for them and forces them to make the most of every opportunity

.

The book scrolls through the lives of the four Gold siblings in the order in which they die. We start with Simon, youngest Gold and heir to the family’s drapery business. Knowing that he will die young, he runs away to San Francisco with his wayward sister Klara and throws himself head first into living fast; the famous Gay Scene, night clubs, drugs, ballet, sex and hedonism and eventually romantic love. His date turns out to be true.

Essentially estranged from the rest of the family through a mixture of distance and flighty waywardness, Klara dedicates herself to becoming an illusionist and vaudevillian like her Hungarian grandmother. Perfecting her signature death-defying stunt, the Jaws of Life, the trick is that there is no trick, just strength and will and guts. Her secret shame is the guilt she feels at being the one that convinced Simon to come to San Francisco, she feels responsible for his death and that guilt plays a large part in the road to her death.

After Klara's death, unsure if her unknown date was accurate or not, Daniel, the sensible Army doctor sets off to find the fortune teller- gradually  becoming more and more obsessed with making her pay for the deaths of his siblings. This section ends with a slightly out-of character Thriller--esque showdown...The final Gold standing, a genetic researcher and OCD sufferer Varya is the last to narrate, the only one granted the gift of old age. Her life’s work is to extend the natural human life, but the price to pay is that her (long) life is fairly miserable, a grey existence of controlled calories and hermetic environments. Like her sister she too is defying death, but through a microscope rather than on stage. She's probably the hardest Gold to warm to- somewhat passionless and calculated, she resented her siblings their freedom and now finds herself without any of them.

I love multi-narrative books and books about siblings, so this ticked a lot of boxes for me- I loved the themes of self-fulfilling prophecy versus fate, how knowing what’s around the corner might influence and affect the decisions we make and the direction that our lives take. It’s fairy usual to discuss what we’d do if this was our last day on Earth, and we’re all familiar with the saying of “Being here for a good time, not a long time”, and this book asks whether we’d live differently, make different choices, take risks, set goals, try harder if we knew when we were going to die.

It’s concerned too with the idea of free will, and whether by setting a date in stone and obsessing over it, a person inadvertently fulfils these prophecies with their obsession, or whether it is in fact pre-determined, and the only unusual factor is the awareness of the date, a date and an event that cannot be deviated from…

The Immortalists a wonderful story about family and loss and choices, and how we decide on our life’s priorities. Is it better to live a short life full of joy and love and impact? Or is it better to live a long, safe life, controlled and protected. The dynamics of the family as they grow apart and are forced back together, a smaller circle every time is heart breaking and relatable and tragic. They are all so tortured by the awareness of their own failures; failure to act, failure to reach out, failure to try and understand. People are strange creatures and whatever we choose, we can never really win.

Very much recommended.

Broadway Book Club discussion of His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

2016 Booker Prize shortlisted His Bloody Project was our April choice- just a quick summery of our discussion.

Reception of the book was mostly positive, though it was commented that it was a tough book to read for several reasons- the grimness of the plot, various bloody murders and its unhappy ending for one, but also the dense, jargon-filled legal proceedings, the somewhat dry court case, the technical reports from psychologists and doctors. Whilst it was varied and cleverly done, many of us struggled to plough through at least part of it. One person also commented that though they thought it interesting, they weren’t sure if they would recommend it, definitely not sure who to. We agreed that the format was definitely unique, that a unique novel in such a popular, established genre such as crime fiction was an achievement in and of itself. We agreed that the “found documents” style of the book definitely added to the reader’s experience as it placed them in the detective’s chair and allowed them to draw their own conclusions after reviewing the collected evidence.

As you might expect, we talked at length about Roddy Macrae and the type of person that he is. In his own account he is a somewhat naïve dreamer of a boy- a disappointment to his father, a conflicted and unhappy person that seems to get everything wrong and suffers from enormous stretches of bad luck. There are inconsistencies with how he perceives himself and how others perceive him. He is described variously as a gifted student, the village idiot, a dangerous miscreant, a harmless if odd teenager. Some accounts tally with what Roddy himself claims. Some most definitely do not. We talked about how hard it was to wade through the conflicting accounts, how quick we were (or how long it took) to realise that Roddy’s story was merely a version and not the truth, how subjective first-hand accounts can be and how flexible things like truth and innocence can be. His Bloody Project was compared at this point to Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, as that too has a main character on trial for murder, scrutinised by professionals that make declarations about her sanity, motivations and personality, while the narrator too tries to work out who she is and what she has done. Read it if you haven’t, because it’s excellent.

We talked about how damning the coroner’s report was as a piece of evidence. Until the report is read in court, it’s easy to write off other villagers’ opinions of Roddy as prejudice or malice. When the Coroner describes the mutilated, ruined corpse of Flora, Roddy’s crush and supposedly unintentional victim, he claims no knowledge or memory of performing such actions. In his version he simply kills her in a daze and wanders off. We discussed how, in a narrative so dependent on impressions, recollections and perceptions, a coroner’s report describing Flora’s injuries just feels too conclusive to ignore. It proves Roddy as a liar and forces the reader to re-think everything else- the raising of fledgling birds, the startling of the deer to save its life…we decided it cast it all in a new, sceptical light.

We talked about how good and evocative the setting was, how dark, gloomy places seem to evoke a desire to murder. We talked about how the rigid class structure and firm social views regarding aspirations and knowing your place might have contributed to Roddy’s motives. The other crofters seemed fairly unanimous that though Lachlan Broad was an unpleasant bully, the Macraes’ issues with him were minor. WE talked about Calvinism and predeterminism and the idea of fate and prophecy. Roddy’s sister had predicted Lachlan’s death, so Roddy felt compelled to bring it to pass. Very Macbeth.

We talked briefly about the minor characters and how utterly miserable their lives were- how Jetta was driven to suicide by her father’s rage and the fact she was pregnant. Jetta and Flora seemed particularly endangered- there was a nasty whiff of incest about their relationships with their respective fathers- both girls seemed trapped and deeply unhappy. If Lachlan was able to abuse his neighbour’s daughter in the way that he did, we didn’t doubt he’d do it to his own. We talked too about how Roddy’s half siblings might have been Lachlan’s.

I’ve probably missed out quite a lot, but it was an interesting discussion about a unique novel that made a big impression- full of contradictions and mysteries and unfathomable people that see more than they let on and know more than what they say.

Our book for May is Sarah Perry’s bestseller The Essex Serpent, which is luckily on the 2 for £7 in Tesco (and probably other stores). Future choices were discussed; we thought we’ve read a lot of new releases recently, so something a bit more vintage would be welcome. Thanks to everyone that suggested these J

June- Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

July -The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

August- The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

The Call, by Peadar O'Guilin

Ireland has been cut off from the rest of the UK and the rest of the world, trapping every person on the island, Irish or not within its borders. Nobody in, nobody out. No internet, no new technology- nothing. For decades, every adolescent Irish citizen has been ‘Called’, an ordeal that can happen at any moment of the day or night and last for 3 minutes 4 seconds Earth time, but a whole day in The Grey Land- a sulfurous hellscape, a pain ravaged world straight out of a Bosch painting. The survival rate is about 1 in 10, and those that come back are usually traumatized wrecks, psychologically and physically bent and stretched beyond recognition. Each Irish teen must fight for their life against the torturing, flesh sculpting Sídhe, a beautiful, deadly hill-dwelling creature of folklore, banished beneath the Earth by the Irish countless generations ago.

Our protagonist is Donegal girl Nessa, a fifth year student at a college that trains teens to battle the Sídhe. They learn hand to hand combat, hunting skills, how to hide, bushcraft, folklore and study the testimonies of those that survived their Call. It’s almost easy to forget sometimes that this isn’t a normal boarding school, with the usual teen dramas and friendships and teacher-dodging going on- but there’s those little reminders that Ireland is not a thriving nation; the terrible food, the lack of resources, harsh punishment and the fact that adolescents will disappear regularly leaving behind a pile of clothes until they return dead or alive three minutes and 4 seconds later. There's a decent cast of supporting characters, ever dwindling as they are Called, that populate the school. Conor, a swaggering, treacherous 'Elite' has assembled a round table of followers, ego strokers and minions to parade himself in front of. His story arc is an interesting  study of the power hungry types blessed with physical strength, confidence and charisma, and how sometimes it can be their undoing.

Detail from The Last Judgment, by Hieronymus Bosch, 

I really liked Nessa as a character; she was resourceful, focused and had just the right amount of sass. Nobody expects her to survive because she has weakened, malformed legs and feet from Polio- so cannot run fast or walk without crutches. This just makes her more determined to survive, and she has upper body strength that puts the rest of her school to shame. Nessa comes across as cold and aloof, but it’s only because she knows that as the weakest combatant in the college, she cannot afford to be weakened by personal relationships, attachments and worrying about others’ welfare. Having said that, best friend Megan and would-be-more-than-friends-but what’s-the-point Anto have found a chink in her armour.

I loved the questions the book asked about conflict, colonialism and conquest. It asks; what are the consequences of war? What is the cost of victory? Who pays that cost? How do we determine who is responsible for actions of the past? What does it mean to be guilty or innocent? Who inherits that guilt? It’s so insightful and so subtle. The book refrains from taking a stance on the matter mostly, but it’s made clear that the Sídhe are not mindless destroyers of nations; they are trying to claim back what was stolen from them. Their vengeance is a consequence of displacement. They are a conquered people desperate to be restored to land they consider their birth right.

I really, really liked this and read it in one sitting. I really had to force myself to not skip ahead to see who died- an unusual show of self-restraint from me there. As with the best speculative fiction, The Call delivers us metaphors that force us to examine our world and question our actions, perspectives and opinions. In Britain, now especially, we have a tendency to romanticize our horrendous colonial, genocidal, tyrannous history- erase whole periods in some cases. I loved that this novel used a combination of Irish legend and mythology, poetry and language to create this tapestry of history that was kept alive at a horrible cost. And wrapped it up in a haunting, heart-pounding, breathless action narrative of death, trauma and merciless continuation.

Broadway Book Club Discussion of All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr,

Everyone in attendance had enjoyed the book; we talked about the readable, engaging prose style, the interesting central characters and the fact that Occupied France and the campaigns on the Eastern Front as World War II narratives that seem to be less common.

Most people agreed that the interweaving of the two plots  was well managed and each strand was equally interesting, but that the jumping backwards and forwards in time and location added nothing to the book. We thought that a chronological narrative would have been easier to follow and would have told the story just as competently. We could never remember if Werner was in the basement of the hotel, in the Orphanage, on the Eastern Front, back in the basement again or at Nazi school because it seemed to change too often and didn’t feel particularly consistent.

We talked at great length about how well the author portrayed the gradual rise to power of the Nazis and how sympathetically Werner and Frederick (poor, poor Frederick- he confirmed what happens to people that don’t fit the fascist mould)  were depicted despite technically being Nazis. How Germany was ruined after the First World War, its citizens struggling to survive- then jobs began to emerge and prosperity gradually returns, thanks to these apparent saviours. People are eating meat again, manufacturing is thriving and gradually more opportunities become available…a frenzy of nationalism emerges, where you are either part of the frenzy or an enemy of the state. We really felt for Werner, whose intelligence and ability bring him to the attention of the Party and he is taken away for training at the most horrific soldier school. We talked about how many ordinary Germans there must have been that were either indifferent to the emerging Nazis or quietly opposed to them, but how ineffective and dangerous this opposition must have been- so they just went along with it. It’s frighteningly familiar. One day it’s not defending a neighbour or keeping quiet when a foreign accent is derided. Pretty soon you’ve got full blown fascism and we all know the rest of that story.

We talked a lot about the book’s other characters; we loved the PTSD suffering Etienne, trapped in his house with the badass resistance leader and long-time maid Madame Manec. The impressive, brutal super-German Volkheimer, a legendary, ruthless giant that trained and posted with Werner. Though he seems so unsympathetic, we really felt for the post war Volkheimer who had sank from Nazi notoriety to a solitary, grim anonymous life of a radio installer. We were universally disgusted by the gross gemologist von Rumpel and his disgusting overflowing neck fat and his obsession with the Sea of Flames

We discussed the diamond and all the coincidences that it had encountered since its ejection from the earth- unable to decide if it was a supernatural object or just another reason for people to fight each other through history- another trinket to own. Fate, coincidence and free will are pretty consistent themes throughout the book , exemplified quite well via the mysterious diamond.

It was a really enjoyable book that prompted a lot of discussion about the tragedy of war, good and evil, doing the right thing, virtual and literal entrapment and the generally interesting things about the French Resistance and other lesser known aspects of the Second World War. We seem to know all about the Blitz and Evacuees and D-Day, but it’s easy to forget the hundreds of thousands of other stories that exist of that time.

Broadway book Club Discussion of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

As with all the best books, or at least the ones that make for the best discussions, feelings were very much mixed about Jeffrey Eugenides’  Middlesex. Those in attendance were split pretty evenly- 3 for very much yes, 3 not so much, and 1 undecided. We were universally disturbed by how quickly Desdemonda and Lefty, brother and sister, in 1922 decided that they’d get married. Obviously this is the Big Bang moment of the whole story, and everyone’s lives are subsequently affected by this decision- but we all agreed that they were both far too up for it far too quickly. Just no. When your Husband is your brother and it looks like your son is about to propose to his cousin, one needs to intervene. More grandparents are necessary in a family.

Firstly we talked about the narrator, Cal, and their omnipotence- the way they could confidently and with detail tell a story in 1922, 60 years before their birth, how they could definitely impart the thoughts and feelings of characters they were nowhere near, divine reasons for behaviour known only to the person involved. We discussed why this could be off putting, even annoying, and on the other hand why it might separate Middlesex from other multi-generational family sagas that we’ve read. We also talked about the narrator’s Dickensian, flowery language and their choice to address the reader directly, float up and down stairs and point out that this is what they are doing. Also could be considered annoying.

One of the most consistently voiced and agreed upon faults was the book’s odd pacing. Cal spends literally hundreds of pages building his backstory, then undergoes the transformation from Callie to Cal in about a page. The book from that point- San Francisco, the Father Mike debacle, the tying up at the end- seems very rushed for such a lengthy, epic narrative. Even those of us that loved it could not deny that this is kind of the case. The transformation itself we discussed briefly, and it was raised by one member that there was a concern that the intersex/trans experience might not really do justice to such an experience and that it wasn’t handled particularly sensitively- the San Francisco section in particular felt a bit box-ticky “This is the exploitation bit, this is the bit where they’re beaten up in the park” etc. The idea of the intersex experience was barely discussed in any depth- but then Cal does make it clear that he isn’t very involved with the movement and tends to keep away from the whole thing. We had all expected gender identity and intersexuality to be a more fundamental part of the story. We all liked how Cal, as adult Cal, could look back on their life as Callie without any anger or disgust or bitterness. Callie was kind of allowed to live on in memory and was recalled quite fondly by Cal. He allowed Callie to sort of exist in her own time and context, which we all thought was a nice touch.

We talked about Eugenides’ prose and about the bits that really worked that the reader could see came from personal experience- for example, he’s from a partially Greek background, so the big, busy Orthodox Greek family and the 2^nd and 3^rd generation immigrant element was really believable and immersive. We felt that the city of Detroit was rendered really well (despite the not particularly involving riots), as Eugenides hails from Detroit himself. However, the parts that he obviously had no personal experiences with really stood out as being a bit out of his depth. Namely the intersex experience, which felt a bit haphazard and his borderline hilarious depictions of menstruation, or anxiety about unforthcoming menstruation. It’s not exactly uncommon though- male writers just can’t do periods properly and it’s perhaps unsurprising.

We briefly talked about the very indistinct sexual encounters that Callie has with the Object and the Object’s brother, neither of which seemed particularly consensual. Like many of the book’s other themes, it was very ambiguous.

One of the aspects of the novel that was considered universally effective was the author’s use of duality as a theme throughout the book, demonstrated in a number of ways. Most of the characters experience displacement and duality at some point- Cal/Callie belongs within neither gender. They are neither one thing nor the other. Lefty and Desdemonda aren’t wholly husband and wife, nor are they brother and sister any longer. Ancestrally Greek, born in a part of Turkey contested fro centuries by both nations, the Stephanides family is not wholly Greek, nor are they Turkish. The whole immigrant experience is shrouded in Duality- first generation immigrants rarely feel fully at home in their adopted nations, but neither can they remain completely loyal to their old world. 2^nd and 3^rd generation immigrants belong to their home nations more successfully, but are obliged to feel the tether of the ancestral home. Sourmelina lives a dual life as a wife and mother, and as a closeted lesbian. Middlesex is a novel full of duality, and we all agreed that this was done particularly well throughout. One member suggested that it’s more realistic for a person to be composed of contradictions, to be fluid and changeable that it is to be the same, unfaltering person day after day, using the disastrous Father Make and his permanent niceness and geniality as an example. He was definitely the worst character.

It was mentioned that the book was very dense, the characters and the themes sort of fighting for space with too much going on. Some readers wanted more time spent on Milton and Tessie’s courtship (cousins, uh-oh) which seemed to jump from having a clarinet played on her to marriage. One member mentioned also that for a book about family and relationships, it was lacking in feeling and actual emotion, perhaps because of the over ambitious timescale or the disjointed structure.

I think there were elements of this novel that impressed everyone (not always the same ones) and elements that frustrated. Though opinions were mixed, we mostly liked Cal as a character and the dense, tangent ridden, meandering Greek epic of his family narrative. Though in places it was missing details, and in places embellished with far too much- though we were occasionally frustrated by his style or his insight, Cal wasn’t the worst storyteller. Though some readers will not be rushing to pick up JE’s other books, Middlesex (despite it's bad punny title) made for an interesting discussion about structure, family, gender, consent, duality, identity and, unavoidably, the very Classical Greek ingredient of incest.

We took the opportunity to select the next four titles which will take us up to the end of 2016(!) and have gone for a nice mixture of sci-fi, war, historical fiction, YA fantasy and book club classics.

Just in case the picture won't load, they are;

September- Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut (given a C grade by its own author)

October- All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (Pulitzer winning)

November- Half A Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Orange Prize winner of winners)

December/January- His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman (Whitbread, Carnegie and Guardian Prize Winning)

The latter of which is the only series that has ever come close to dethroning Harry Potter as my most beloved series of all time. Can't wait.

We will be meeting on Thursday September 29th at 7.00pm to discuss Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

The Ghosts of Heaven, by Marcus Sedgwick

Four interconnected stories, centuries apart, that can be read in any order. But it's hard to break the habit of a lifetime, so I read them in order.

The first quarter features a nameless, almost language-less girl from about 40,000 years ago. The story concerns a hunt and the ritual magics that must be performed by The One Who Goes To The Cave to ensure that the hunt goes well- magics that include painting on the walls of caves- buffalo, spear-bearing hunters, uniquely marked handprints to claim your magic. Written in a beautiful, ethereal verse (because language is still rudimentary to the characters, the jagged, halting pace of verse suits well) we see the Girl miss out on her destiny but try to fulfil it anyway, in a somewhat unofficial capacity with tragic consequences. The life of an individual in 40,000 BC is short- the Girl does not fear death. What is perhaps more affecting is the death of her potential legacy. In her last moments the girl thinks up the idea of writing, but takes her invention with her to the darkness. How different could history have been if she had lived? If the written word was conceived so early in human history, where would we be now? It's questions like this, ostensibly simple but actually mind-rending questions that set Sedgwick's writing apart from his peers. He's able to pinpoint the exact moments and locations that underpin humanity, the foundations of history and just give them a little shake. The last time a book made me feel so impotent against the path of fate and time was Midwinterblood, his should-totally-have-won Shortlisted title from 2013.

The first quarter introduces us to the recurring, essential theme of the spiral. In the fronds of a fern, the coil of a snail shell. The spiral is infinite and continues its ceaseless turns- changing, closing, but never stopping. Over the next thee quarters we see the spiral occur in the 1630s when a beautiful, spiral haired woman is accused of witchcraft, in an apparently progressive 1920s Long Island asylum and eventually in the far future, in the final quarter about a man travelling through space to find the New Earth on a ship called the Song of Destiny. I loved how the new doctor's daughter discovered an account of Anna's witch trial in a book in the asylum library and I especially loved the final quarter. It reminded me partially of David Jones' brilliant film Moon and a bit of Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem,- a claustrophobic science fiction nightmare of lies, discoveries and horror that demonstrates the dangerous isolation of space and asks whether such exploration is essential or essentially pointless.

The quarters aren't long and complicated, but each one is filled with questions, realisations, unbearable tensions and sad inevitabilities. The characters are brief flashes in time, but they are solid and memorable- the lunatic patent Dexter who is terrified of the spiral, the mercenary Father Escrove who vows to purify Godless villages by scapegoating the innocent. Each story is engrossing and so ridiculously vivid, but together they make up a whole that is simply incredible- a bitesize summary of our species' need to either fear or to conquer the unknown.

So much of this book feels so primal, like the reader carries memories of the long-dead (or far away) characters in their unconscious. The cave paintings, the madness, the capacity for violence, the helplessness- it makes you realise that for all our supposed sophistication and progress there's only a couple of lucky flukes separating us from apes, or from extinction. Sedgwick is able to cast an eye over the whole of human experience, sift away most of it, and thread together the parts that seem so fundamentally essential; the need for legacy, exploration, our talent for persecution, the double edged sword of knowledge, the idea that any individual that has ever existed. The idea of the spiral being the core of the Universe is so compelling and seems so reasonable. I don't want to sound melodramatic but this book feels like an epiphany. I got chills, seeing the bigger picture emerge.

I loved it. In my humble opinion, it's an utterly flawless novel. To jump from one setting, one voice, one time to another so fluidly is impressive, to do this whilst subtly lining up the themes of all the quarters, slowly building up to almost an equinox of discovery and revelations. It defies genres, it defies conventions, it's insanely ambitious and it takes no prisoners when it comes to keeping up with what's going on. Incredible.

This is my winner. I am formally and officially nailing my colours to the mast, and those colours are Marcus Sedgwick colours. The Leonardo di Caprio of the Carnegie- this is the 6th time around on the Carnegie Shortlist, I hope 2016 is the year that it happens.

In the Unlikely Event, by Judy Blume

I sort of never got around to In the Unlikely Event- Judy Blume's first adult novel and first release in 15 years. I saw her in conversation with Partick Ness at YALC, which was incredible, and bought this novel on release day but have not picked it up until now. Like an idiot.

JB talked in the summer about how  In the Unlikely Event is fiction based on fact- if you didn't know these events actually happened it would be way too easy to write it off as unlikely, far-fetched impossibility, but Judy was a teenager living in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1952 and lived through the events of her novel. She saw for herself the three separate crashes within three months, saw the aftermath of the disasters and knew some of the victims, some of the families that were broken by those planes. She writes an ordinary, intricate spider's web of community happily going about its business before the first crash and we follow the fallout, the repercussions that are still felt over three generations.

It reminded me in some ways of Stephen King's Under The Dome (which I loved) because it's the story of a town as much as its inhabitants, and many of those inhabitants take a turn at narrating. They offer their own perspective or eyewitness account, usually preceded by a clipping from a newspaper to provide context. We witness the last moments of some of the victims; as soon as these voices describe the departure lounge we know they're doomed. There are at least 20 recurring perspectives and initially it's quite hard to keep them all separate in your head, to remember who is related to whom, who's 'going with' whom and so on. As the story goes on, the characters get more familiar, they grow into their personalities. Miri Ammerman, the first character to appear, provides a sort of anchor for the whole novel. She's a sharp but awkward 15 year old girl, not yet comfortable in her own skin, yet with all the standard life accessories- a 'perfect' boyfriend (they're in love) a 'perfect' best friend whose 'perfect' family she fantasises about being part of. Raised by a head-turningly beautiful Jewish single mother Rusty, grandmother Irene and Uncle Henry, she has a stable and loving home, but with quite an unconventional set up. Miri is our principal narrator, guiding us through that winter and through her own adolescence, her first love and the first life-changing secrets she ever has to keep. She's brave enough to reveal (much to her headmaster's fury) the slightly more unusual theories circulating around the town- three planes in three months? Sabotage? Aliens? Zombies? Communists? The tensions of the time are subtly woven into the characters and their reactions to the events they can't explain.

I loved the 1950s detail of the novel- Miri coveting cashmere twinsets and 'Finished' basements, the Volupté compacts and the glamorous novelty of air travel.  The hamburgers and the department stores. JB does such an incredible job of creating the atmosphere and dresses the set of a small 1950s town beautifully, populating it with real life people whose lives we catch tiny glimpses into. They are all connected by the crashes, and always will be, no matter how much they resolve to carry on with their lives. The atmosphere is often quite claustrophobic, fearful and confused- living under Newark Airport seems to be a death sentence, but the action and the helplessness is always undercut with JB's time honoured trademark humanity, relateability and humour.

Whilst the three plane crashes, each one different but equally as tragic, provides the main thread of the book's plot, there's also a distinct focus on the drama of everyday life. We see characters that are manipulative, deluded, filled with secrets. We see friendships crumble and romances begin. There are people in denial, mental health struggles, divorces, hidden relatives, secret marriages. Even small towns have their dramas. It really mixes up the mundane and the extraordinary- there really is no such thing as normal and no perfect lifestyle. Blume has skilfully created this jigsaw puzzle of stories and events, overlapping lives and secrets against the backdrop of one of the biggest peace time aviation disasters. It's a very human novel that encompasses life in its entirety.

I was incredibly impressed with this novel and like Judy, I'm glad she wrote it before Phillip Roth, another Elizabeth native, got the chance to. I loved how the drama of such an extraordinary situation was contrasted with the drama of the everyday, domestic dramas that can be every bit as life-altering as a plane crash. I was completely gripped by Miri's narrative and loved her as a character. Seeing her in her 50s at the end of the novel is kind of bitter-sweet- she's made a comfortable life for herself and her family, but she's still tied to the events of that winter, like everybody else. Blume is a writer of such talent and heart. I really would recommend this book to fans of Anne Tyler and Kate Atkinson, for people who enjoy narratives that encompass the emotional complexity of multi-generational family dynamics but offer something more than scandal and soapy drama.

The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma

The Fishermen is a biblical Cain and Abel type story of prophecy, fate, grief and brotherhood, set in 1993 Nigeria against a backdrop of political upheaval and disappointment, broken promises and extinguished hope. The plot follows Ben and his brothers, 4 promising young men from a middle class background, as their aspirations, hopes and entire lives start to crumble. It's the first title from 2015's Booker Shortlist that I've tackled so far, and I quite fancy its chances.

The story is narrated retrospectively by an adult Benjamin, the fourth brother of 6 siblings, as he recounts a chain of events that began when he was 9. The family's eventual collapse is set in motion when the father, an intimidating and ambitious man with high hopes for his sons is transferred to a different branch of the Central Nigerian Bank, 'camel distance' away. As a result he is forced to leave the family home. He leaves his wife to look after the four older sons and 2 toddlers. Without the long arm of the law wielded by their father, Ben and his brothers Ikenna, Boja and Obembe take advantage of this disciplinary lapse to take up fishing in a forbidden and possibly cursed river. Over the course of six glorious weeks, the four brothers get much joy from fishing and delight in their catches; singing songs, dancing dances, bonding. Though they know they will be severely punished if caught, fishing becomes an addiction to them and the danger seems almost abstract. Ben, the youngest of the four is in awe of his stronger, bigger brothers, and his love for them is obvious. On the afternoon that changes their lives, they meet the village madman Abulu, sprawled naked under a mango tree near the river. Feared by the superstitious residents of the town due to the accuracy of his predictions, Abulu's prophecy foretells that Ikenna, the eldest, will be killed by one of his brothers; will be killed by a fisherman.

It's this prophecy that begins to erode the bonds of brotherhood between the four. Ben talks with fear and sadness about the 'metamorphosis' of his brother- the prophecy, combined with a vigorous beating from his retuned father (with extra lashes for being the eldest ad therefore most responsible) Ikenna's whole personality begins to change. He becomes surly and argumentative, fights with Boja constantly; he becomes disrespectful to his mother and spends all his time holed up in his room- not eating, not washing. Scared of his increasingly erratic behaviour, Boja moves in to the room shared by his younger siblings, away from Ikenna. Their struggling mother despairs at her eldest son, convinced he has been possessed or affected in some way by evil spirits. As Ikenna continues to assert his dominance, the three brothers are pushed to the limit of their nerves, and it ends, predictably and inevitably in tragedy.It's quite Macbeth-esque, the dwelling over the prophecy, the fear and paranoia it creates. It escalates and escalates, until death and revenge and grief is all that's left. It makes the reader wonder about the nature of free will, and our ability to make decisions, about whether or not we are actually the authors of our own misadventures or whether they were in store all along.

There's the contrast between tradition and the modern that seems to be at the core of so many African narratives present in The Fishermen too; the Christian faith upheld by many of the characters is forgotten at times, replaced with superstition and folk-stories; the switching between English, Igbo and Yoruba languages, depending on the topic at hand. Then there was MKO, a symbol of the hopeful future, compared with the dictator of the present. The contrast between the real, logical world of science and the folkish world of curses, demons and spirits. The characters, like Nigeria itself are trying to forge their own identities- it's a coming of age story for the brothers and for their homeland.

I thought this was an evocative narrative that was skilfully spun; the dust of the roads and the acrid heat of the Nigerian summer were incredibly real, and the tension was very skilfully maintained throughout. Even from early on the book has a foreboding inevitability to it. It was hard to read about a family being so thoroughly destroyed, even if it seemed like the only way that events could play out. I loved too how the political situation that forms the backdrop of the novel reflects the fates and fortunes of the Agwu family; promising, hopeful, then ruined.

All in all it was an engaging and tense read that really transported me to its time and place. I became really invested in these characters, particularly Obembe, who seemed so full of rage and sadness. The transformation of the family towards the end of the book is pretty heartbreaking, and it's easy to see what effect shattered dreams have on the mental and physical well-being of a family. A really accomplished debut.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton

Leslye Walton's début novel The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender is first and foremost a family saga, the winding and tragic story of four generations of the Lavender family. We start with narrator Ava's great-grandparents, Beauregard Roux and "Maman" who emigrate from France to a squalid "Manhatine" tenement in the early twentieth century. After a hefty bout of tragedy, Rouxs' daughter Emilienne (Ava's grandmother) marries a deformed baker in heartbroken haste and moves to Seattle. There, she settles into a blue-painted house with an infamous, if slightly mythical history, becomes a witch in the eyes of the neighbours and takes over her newly-deceased husband's bakery (and makes it better than ever). Emilienne is haunted by her dead siblings and believes her heart to be broken beyond repair. She gives birth to a daughter, Viviane, Ava's mother. Viviane's life is no less tragic, filled with unrequited love, betrayal and single-parenthood, wasted potential and isolation. She has twins, Harry and Ava, and none of them leave the house for years.

We dip in and out of the three women's lives, living together in the blue house. We find out more about the emotional wounds that they've suffered for love, but it’s Ava who is at the heart of this story- she narrates, though doesn't appear herself until about half way in. She’s a normal girl, but born with wings sprouting from her shoulder blades. Whether this makes her an angel, bird or girl, nobody seems to be sure. What it does make her is different, so Viviane hides her away. She hides herself away too, out of the way of the man that loved her but spurned her for a more socially acceptable bride.

The novel explores love in all its countless and destructive forms: unrequited, lost, forsaken, brutal, selfish, abusive, desperate. If there's one thing the Lavender family have learned it's that "Love makes us such fools". But there's hope there too; familial love, passion, unwavering love and love that is thoroughly trampled on but refuses to die. Even if sometimes it would be better off doing so.

Quite an epic and mythology-filled narrative, the book is full of the passage of time, the nature of mortality, drama and woe, odd encounters and quirky characters. There's a sort of fatalistic streak to it too- the idea that lives are preordained and will unravel as intended, regardless of a person's intent or decisions. It certainly seems that the Lavender family are doomed to repeat the same mistake- being rejected by men that they are too quick to commit themselves to, men that don't appreciate them. Ava, thankfully seems able to have broken the cycle, but at a horrific and brutal cost.

It's beautifully written prose, lyrical and filled with sensory description and beautiful, mystical imagery. An absolute joy to read, despite some pretty horrific scenes that jar with the coming-of-age narrative of the rest of the book. But people do so like to destroy the things they love. Ava really is a compelling little narrator; headstrong, brave and never defeated. Her voice is strong and clear, she accepts her fate without submitting to it in a way that's characteristically stoic, but she's incredibly warm and funny in places too. A very memorable character.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, by Joel Decker (translated by Sam Taylor)

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair starts one summer's evening in 1975 with a phone call from a witness to the police- a young girl has just been sighted, running into the woods pursued by a man. She is never seen alive again.

Marcus Goldman is a successful writer, the new kid on the literary block basking in the success of his first novel. He is America's hottest young thing. But now he's suffering from crippling writer's block. Unsure whether or not he can continue to be a writer and desperate for a solution, he gets in touch with his mentor, ex professor and friend Harry Quebert for the first time since his success. Harry invites him to his beach side house in Somerset, New Hampshire. It is here, on his self-induced writers' retreat that Marcus learns that HQ, retired academic and successful novelist, at the age of 36 had a relationship with a 15 year old girl.

Putting this out of his mind, Marcus tries to write. He returns to New York. He's at his wit's end when Harry calls, distraught; Nola Kellergan is dead. Her skeletal remains are excavated from Harry Quebert's garden, along with a leather bag containing the handwritten manuscript of Harry's most successful novel, The Origin of Evil. It's swiftly pulled from stores and libraries as America reels from the revelation that this giant of American literature, this lauded book is inspired by a love affair between a 36 year old man and a 15 year old girl. Things are not looking good for Harry.

Marcus is not convinced. Determined to clear the name of his only friend, he sets out to investigate the murder. It's gripping, page turning stuff; we watch as Marcus feverishly goes over the evidence, talks to witnesses and townspeople, goes off-piste in the houses of suspicious millionaires, trying to understand what happened that night in 1975. Alienating a whole town in the process, Marcus uncovers some shoddy police work, statements that don't add up, people that did inexplicable or odd things that night 36 years ago- every answer leads to 3 more questions and the more he pulls at the thread, the more secrets come tumbling out into the open.

There's no denying that this is a compelling detective investigation. There are red herrings around every corner, and more twists and cliffhangers than is probably healthy for a reader. The small-town tight-knit community comes alive effortlessly; the supporting cast of this novel contributes so much to the novel. There are comedically toxic mothers, useless husbands, pushy parents and deformed chauffeurs, reclusive millionaires, beauty queens and corrupt cops. Somerset is a town that nobody ever seems to leave and so everyone knows everyone else's business. Or so they think. The Edward Hopper painting on the cover sums it up beautifully. On the outside it's all apple pie, community barbecues and picket fences, but every resident hides a secret, a part of the puzzle that on its own means nothing. I was really impressed with Decker's ability to conjure up this inward-looking small town- it all felt so real; its normalcy was so convincing that its seedy secrets became all the more shocking.

It's also a book about writing. Each chapter starts with a piece of writing wisdom from Harry; the master imparting the rules of the craft. Only there aren't any rules, not really. Marcus' investigation fuels his next novel The Harry Quebert Affair and then The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. The book in the reader's hands contains excerpts from its main character's book of the same name, and excerpts from the fictional The Origin of Evil. Marcus wrestles with his creative demons throughout, dedicated to truth but not sure of his ending. It also lambastes the vultures and schemers of the publishing and legal worlds, those that want scandals and monstrous exposes whatever the cost. Truth or fiction doesn't matter- as long as it makes money.

There's an abundance of themes explored in the novel; love, lust and obsession, fame and infamy, murder, madness, religious mania, theft and duplicity. Marcus delves into the past and learns more about the people around him. As the characters' lives are filled in, they become easier to understand, but harder to trust. Every character is a mystery- what seems concrete and believable can crumble in a moment. Essentially the book is about the extent to which appearances can be deceiving. A perfect beach-side town can prove to be a sordid hotbed of lust, lies and bitterness; Nola Kellergan is not what she appears. Neither, apparently is Harry.

Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it to be an engrossing, intelligent thriller, I did find the final 100 pages a bit of a test. The tension has been piled on for 500 odd pages, it feels like it's coming to a natural and satisfying end much earlier than makes sense...but then Decker undertakes a narrative key-change and the plot twists itself into knots, lobs in the kitchen sink and a handful of odds and ends and depends, just that little bit too much, on the reader's willingness to totally suspend disbelief. I don't think that's enough to condemn it though. Some readers might enjoy the novel's bonus-round, but I found I lost patience a little. I would definitely recommend this to thriller and murder mystery fans- I imagine it would make an exceptionally good plane-ride book- you need some serious chunks of time at your disposal to get properly immersed in this novel if you're going to de-tangle it properly.

Tinder, by Sally Gardner, Illustrated by David Roberts

One of only a handful of titles to be shortlisted for both the Carnegie and the Kate Greenaway medals in the award's history, Tinder is an illustrated retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairytale The Tinderbox. I'm not massively familiar with the original, but this has all the elements of an old-school spine tingler- blood and gore, evil queens, a mysterious trickster, enchanted objects, a dastardly prince and a beautiful maiden.

In a nutshell, an injured and deserting soldier named Otto stumbles across a werewolf deep in a forest and escapes whilst the wolf devours some cutthroats. Shortly after, he is nursed back to health by a mysterious trickster and given some enchanted dice that will direct him on his path. This path leads him to a beautiful girl destined to marry a loathsome prince, with whom he falls instantly in love, a wicked Lady of the Nail and her magical Tinderbox, complete with three guardian werewolves and eventually to a village ravaged by sudden werewolf attacks after being immune for so long. Otto, recklessly in love and in possession of more wealth and power than he has ever dreamed of vows to rescue Saffire, his flame haired love from the prince. Who is apparently sleeping with Saffire's step-mother, the sister of the wicked Wolf-Lady.

The illustrations that accompany, anchor and contain the story are absolutely central to this book. They become crucial to the format of the story, separating dreams and reality throughout the story. Beautiful landscapes and portraits, in dusky charcoals and inks- sometimes they look hurried and frantic, sometimes painstakingly detailed and precise. My favourite was definitely the fruit and bread feast that's laid out for Otto in the castle of the Lady of the Nail. The drawings lead the narrative really, the simple black, white and red is more than just an accompanying image, the plot depends on them.

I had a really hard time working out who the target audience was for this book. Incredible though the illustrations are, I can imagine older readers mistakenly dismissing this as a children's book. To all intents and purposes it looks like one. I'm not saying that books for adults can't be illustrated (as a regular graphic novel reader objections to such ideas seem absurd). However, certain elements of the story (an incitement to rape, some sleazy innuendo, a bit of a May-December royal romp...) makes me think that this book isn't aimed at the audience that it would probably appeal the most to visually. That's before we even take into account the complexity of the story and the M. Night Shyamalan EVERYTHING YOU'VE KNOWN IS A LIE! twist at the end. Or at least I think it was.

I love how Guernica this double page spread is

I think I enjoyed the book, though I struggled to tap into the magic reserves that have so impressed other readers. It didn't captivate me and it took me quite a while to read because I didn't find it difficult to put down. The prose held its tone admirably, I really believed that this could have been a tale from olden times- it never broke that thread and never gives the reader a cheeky wink of modern day acknowledgement. I suppose it became laborious and a little ploddy in parts and were it not for the illustrations being as arresting as they are, I think I might have given up on this one. I wouldn't be outraged if it won the Kate Greenaway as the artwork in Tinder is truly marvellous, but I would feel cheated if it won the Carnegie.

Say Her Name, by James Dawson

A brilliant, spine-chilling take on the Bloody Mary-lives-in-the-mirror legend that is genuinely scary and ridiculously tense. This is the first James Dawson book I've read and I ordered the other two straight away and put the 3rd on pre-order. That's how good it was.

The novel starts 13 years ago with 15 year old Taylor Keane rattling around in her family home- just out of boarding school for the holidays. Alone in the house, she goes to investigate a persistent drip, drip, drip noise in the bathroom and is never seen again.

13 years later, Bobbie Rowe and her prestigious girls' boarding school friends have snuck some local boys in for Halloween and are sharing ghost stories in the hut at the end of the sports field. As ever, the legend of Bloody Mary comes up- they argue about the details, but they know that Mary was once a Piper's Hall lady like them, that she was a weird loner and seeing a boy from the village- and that she killed herself.

Out of her depth with the elite kids of the rich and famous, Bobbie keeps quiet, sticking to best mate Naya, the glamorous American, like glue. Bored by the same old stories and well aware of the illegality of the company, she wants nothing more than to go back to her room and finish off her book. So she's as surprised as anyone when she finds herself volunteering, along with local eye-candy Caine and Naya to prove to mean-girl Sadie that the legend is kid's stuff, nonsense. Saying "Bloody Mary" five times into a mirror, surrounded by candles at midnight cannot possibly summon Mary into the real world. It's kid's stuff.

Needless to say, Mary is very much a reality, leaving threatening notes for her three latest victims, visiting them in dreams, sharing her life and her misery. Haunting them, getting stronger and more dangerous as the days tick by, testing their sanity and their nerve to the limit. Pursued by an anguished and occasionally corporeal spirit, Naya, Bobbie and Caine are embroiled in a furious race against the clock to uncover the secrets surrounding Mary's disappearance in the 1950s in order to set her spirit free and hopefully to avoid meeting the same fate.

James Dawson is a ridiculously talented author- not only does he write realistic teens (more difficult than it seems), but he also treads an unbearably enigmatic line between benevolent misery and malevolent fury when it comes to the character of Mary. Is she a tragic, forsaken victim or a vengeful and merciless killer? The reader knows as much as Bobbie does, as she begins to dig into Mary's past. Her findings get creepier and creepier, and even though the reader is never sure how they should feel about Mary, it's clear she's pretty bloody terrifying.

I loved sassy, carefree Naya, she complimented Bobbie's logical, methodical investigation well. Bobbie and Caine are really relatable, easy to read characters- they're incredibly solid and really believable as regular teens against the world. They're so likable; half resigned to their early demise but still going all out to fight to the end. I liked how they switched between being goofy and flirty, then being annoyed with themselves for flirting in such a life or death crisis...then giggling about it. I loved how normal they were and how realistically they reacted to being in a paranormal, unchartered territory situation. Their dialogue and reactions were absolutely spot on, which I find I always look for in books for teens. When authors understand teens, it really comes across in their writing; their characters don't seem awkward or forced, there's no cringey slang or try-too-hard modernisms. I spend all day every day surrounded by teens so it's easy to catch out teen characters that don't really work.

Say Her Name is a credible combination of The Ring and a traditional ghost story slash detective tale, with added bullying issues, schoolyard politics and position-of-trust abuse thrown in. It's a breathless, tense and brilliantly pacy read that has an absolutely huge appeal. I loved the ending, which I don't want to give away...but the idea that doing the right thing, the thing that anybody in their right mind would consider the noble and brave thing, and it possibly turning out to be horrifically dangerous and wrong is terrifying.

Students ask me for horror books all the time, and much of the time I'm stumped, because they're often not actually anywhere near scary. I think this book is going to be getting checked out a lot in future. I'd definitely recommend it to horror film fans, or readers looking for a good supernatural chill.

Gone, by Michael Grant

On an ordinary day in November, every resident of Perdito Beach over the age of 15 vanishes. Poof- into thin air. The students at Perdito Beach middle school don't know what to make of it initially. One minute their teacher is talking about the Civil War, the next the chalk is falling through the empty air and he's gone without a trace.

It's the different reactions to this brave new world that drive the story. How do 14 year olds cope when they're given the reins? To some the reality of a world without adults means unrestricted fun, every kid for themselves and no responsibility. To some it's a death knell; with no police, teachers or grown-ups the tyranny of 14 year olds is unstoppable. To protagonist Sam Temple it means that everybody is looking to him to sort it out, to lead, to make decisions and tell everyone it's going to be okay. Just because of the one heroic thing he did once, the rest of the town looks to him for answers.

When Perdito Beach is suddenly taken over by the charismatic and smooth talking Coates Academy student Caine Soren, social order quickly starts to disintegrate. To begin with he assigns jobs, looks like he's the guy to keep Perdito Beach ticking over until the grown ups return. But as the hours tick by, Caine reveals his paranoid, power hungry self, and it becomes clear that the supernatural powers that some of the teens are starting to develop are going to land them in grave danger. Caine cannot have challenges to his authority and the Perdito Beach kids (even the Coates kids) are either with him or against him.

When Sam discovers that the town is encased in an impenetrable electrified barrier, he has to ignore his impulse to run and take his rightful place as the leader of the resistance. With his group of friends turned fugitives, Sam, Quinn, Eldilio and Astrid the Genius (along with her severely autistic younger brother, Little Pete) have got to find the cause of the FAYZ, the origin of the strange mutations that seem to be giving them mysterious and dangerous powers and stop Caine's reign of cruelty and terror.

What I liked most about this book was its sheer accessibility. There are no long sections of description, no philosophising and no extra baggage weighing down the plot. It's fast paced, relatable and full of realistic, funny characters that act in ways that are both believable and understandable. It's proof that you don't need to make things complicated to produce a breathless, exciting story. Each chapter begins with a countdown until Sam turns 15 and "poofs". Throughout the whole book, there's a frantic, desperate feel that genuinely prevents the reader from putting the book down. Its pace is kind of phenomenal.

I loved how relatable the kids in the book were. The panic, the fooling around, the sarcasm all felt completely genuine. The 'bro' relationships and the sometimes tense, sometimes inseparable links that that sort of friendship means. The potential for good and evil that exists in everybody was really well realised and the author did an excellent job of showing how the characters found out what type of person they were in the heat of the moment; hero or coward, leader or follower, traitor or ally. I loved how the characters struggled with themselves when their true self was revealed trough their extreme circumstances. It's not until your mettle is tested that you really know who you are.

In summary then Gone is an exciting and frantic action story that looks at how people cope with extreme situations, how they manage to rise to the challenge or disappear under the pressure. The book looks at the behaviour of bullies and of heroes and how gang mentality works in the face of a situation that seems to have very few real consequences. It looks at how far some people will go to get what they want and how far some people will go to do what is right. There are some giggles, some really good characters and lots of really authentic 'best mate in crisis' dialogue. Fans of Alex Rider and The Enemy would love it. It's basically Under the Dome meets Lord of the Flies. But with X-Men style mutations...

Survive, by Alex Morel

After almost a year in a mental institution, Jane has saved up enough good will points from the doctors and nurses for a trip home. She's planned her trip down to the finest detail- she'll catch the supervised shuttle, board the plane, sit quietly for takeoff, then slip to the bathroom and take a fatal dose of pills. "Flicking her own switch" she calls it, killing herself like her father and her grandmother before her...

But Jane's flight does not go her way, despite all her careful planning. During her scheduled trip to the bathroom, the plane encounters turbulence and everything goes black. Waking up wedged inside a plane toilet cubicle, surrounded by charred bodies and smoking wreckage on top of a snowy mountain changes Jane's plans dramatically. Together with the only other survivor Paul, a boy whom Jane had found incredibly annoying during their short pre-flight interaction and later discovers dangling over a cliff anchored to the Earth only by his jammed seat belt, Jane learns that she doesn't want to die, actually.

I thought this book was absolutely gripping- not just the survival element, which was tense and brutal in its own right, but also the emotional transformations that both characters undergo. The loss that the characters have sustained, the pent up grief and anger that has festered inside them for so long is brilliantly captured and it's right that this common experience is what brings them together. The reader can really sense the weight that lifts from the shoulders of both Jane and Paul as they abandon comfortable lies and defences and begin a truly honest relationship- each depending on the other for survival. The book deals sensitively with loss, suicide, depression and the tangled mess of human psychology. Jane's battle with survivor's guilt, feelings of abandonment and resentment are really illuminating and the complexity makes her a very appealing character- she shows the strength and bravery that's required in the struggle with mental illness, and proves how extraordinary and resilient people can be when it comes to weathering adversity and experiencing trauma. She's also sulky in places, and occasionally frustrating and grumpy, which makes her seem all the more real.

Jane narrates in the first person, and I think the author does an excellent job of recreating a teen voice that's both sympathetic and realistic. Jane's crippling self doubt, her anger and her insecurity are evident in her style of speech- she's a good narrator, swearing in appropriate places, experiencing credible doubts and displaying justified fear in places without lengthy chunks of exposition.

A very strong debut with broad appeal- really tense and thought provoking and handles a whole host of difficult subjects in a way that shows the sufferers of mental health issues to be fighters, not victims. I'll be keeping an eye out for future novels from Alex Morel.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison

A young adult classic, product of the 90s and prototype for so many sassy teens coping with the hormonal obstacle course of adolescence. Young Bridget Jones or female Adrian Mole, child of hilariously inept parents and attempting to enter the state of graceful womanhood as unscathed as possible.

Georgia Nicholson is going back to school (snore) in a week. But she's just shaved off her eyebrows by accident and her cousin is hitting on her, which is both unexpected and disgusting. Plus her baby sister keeps pooing in her room and her pet cat Angus is spitting at her and trying to murder the poodle next door. Really inconvenient time to discover the Sex God in the greengorcer's that she's got to subtly and alluringly convince that she is the girl of his dreams.

We might not be the target audience any more, but any female human that went to school in the late 90s or early 00s will relate to this book, probably more than it would be appropriate to admit. The hair mascara, the Feng Shui, Zoe Ball, Big Breakfast, crop tops and PVC. All the things that you thought were forgotten for good. Getting through school with no phones and no Facebook, managing to survive anyway.

There are elements of this book that are universal to the secondary school: the constant running analysis and speculations about what goes on in the heads of the opposite sex- guessing and then second guessing; feeling crap about how you look when everyone around you looks so blonde or so thin, or so confident; being inseparable for your school best mate and falling out with them anyway; getting through boring assemblies and horrific lessons are all common to school-goers of any era. Worrying about the first big party, first proper boyfriend, first kiss...parents standing in the way of any of the above. Reading as an adult it reminds you how impatient teens are to grow up, and it's a bit sad to be able to see (from the learned perspective of 'the other side') just how daft that it. It makes you despair for your younger self, really and all the younger selves of everyone.

It's brilliantly funny, warm and easy to relate to in a real-life but crazy sort of way. The narrator is likable and her heart is in the right place, even if her brain has some catching up to do. Rennison really captures the agonising uncertainty of growing up- the drama, the conviction that you're the only person that such bad things have ever happened to in the history of the world and the quandaries of life when everything is happening for the first time for everyone, and so it really is the blind leading the blind. Her style has been copied often and never really beaten. Can you really recommend a book that is as popular as this one? People already know it's good! It certainly had me laughing throughout, would very much be enjoyed by readers of Georgia's age (14) and for anyone else that has ever been that age in the past. I'd love to see how she ended up in 2014. What became of Georgia Nicholson?

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

My Graphic Novel education continues with Watchmen. I'm not a massive superheroes fan, and haven't seen most of the DC/Marvel films, so wasn't really sure what to expect from this. As it happens I enjoyed it immensely and it leaves the reader with a hell of a lot to think about.

Watchmen is set in a sort of alternate future (possibly 1980s?) New York. From the drab, graffiti filled streets and the uneasy aura of depression and fear that infects the location and its inhabitants, it's not hard to surmise that it's not a happy place. In this reality, superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s to national fame and adulation, helpfully assisting the United States in its Vietnam victory. Nowadays tensions are rising once more and the USA are on the verge of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Hence the unease. Freelance, costumed vigilantes have been discredited and outlawed and many of the former superheroes so decorated and applauded in the past are either in hiding, retirement or working for the Government. Think the concept of Pixar's The Incredibles, but set in the oppressive world of Batman's Gotham City.

The plot starts with the murder of a government-employed superhero. His death pulls the remaining superheroes out of retirement in order to investigate and to prevent themselves or their colleagues from being the next victim. Each of the former heroes has to come to terms with their altered place in the world and many of them struggle with their responsibilities to themselves, each other and to the public. Some hanker for the thrill of the chase, some believe they were never truly themselves out of costume. The novel spends a great deal of time developing the unique traits of the characters, giving them motivations, heroes, backstories and inner conflicts. This is done in a variety of ways; through interactions with each other, flashbacks and most effectively through miscellaneous documents that are injected into the narrative. These include ephemera (favourite word alert) such as extracts from characters' autobiographies, newspaper articles, interview transcripts and so on. Watchmen definitely suggests that the life of a superhero is more guilt driven duty than heroism. Personally I found the fictional documents structure really added a great deal to the plot- it gave it more depth and really allowed the reader to understand the complexity of the characters and their seemingly impossible daily conflicts.

The way that the book mirrored real life, but took a few well selected alternate paths was excellent. I've no doubt that's why the tension and the unease was so strong and the fear so prevalent. Most noticably, rather than developing nuclear weapons during WW2, in this reality the US accidentally created Dr. Manhatten, a radioactive superhuman that can pare the world back to its elements and sees all of time at once. He's the main cause of the US/Soviet tension and the only true suerhero in the novel. It was genuinely interesting to see a character with all the Universe's secrets be so disillusioned and sulky.

I loved the structure of this book, its murky purple/brown/red palate and how clever and thought provoking its messages were. The recurring images (the blood soaked smiley face, the five-to-midnight clock, the intertwining of the narrative with the horrific fictional comic Tales of the Black Freighter) really effectively contributed to the sense of time ticking down. It always felt like there was some huge, disastrous even that everything was building up to, a nihilistic speeding towards the inevitable from the very beginning. It's rarely as simple as good versus evil, and I think that that awareness is perhaps what elevates Watchmen over much of its comic series contemporaries. It's having a bit of a dig at the superhero concept, as well as commenting on the ethics of scientific progression, weapons development and the cost and effect of fame. Questions are asked about the validity of war, and the price of peace and for that conflict alone it's worth investigating. Brilliant stuff.

The Lowland, by Jumpa Lahiri

Though Subhash is technically the older of the two brothers, he can barely remember his younger brother Udayan not being at his side. Growing up together in the outskirts of Calcutta, Udayan has always been the adventurous, brave and fun loving type, whilst Subhash has always been thoughtful, quiet and studious. Exceptionally close despite their differences, they take divergent paths in life. Subhash chooses a career in academia (out of a sense of family duty) and Udayan drifts into the new and dangerous Naxalite movement and political activism. The Lowland centres on the lives of different family members as they struggle with themes of identity, duty and unfulfilled expectations.

This book was very evocative and made me feel quite reflective. I read it in one day, such was the appeal of the sweeping, melancholy family saga. I just wanted everybody to be happy and for their conflicts to be resolved. Many characters try so hard to do the right thing, and though they have the best intentions in the world, it just doesn't always work that way. I'm sure most people can relate to that.

The language in the novel was quite unusual, but for reasons that I've struggled to identify. It's quite sparse, but it really reflects the tension and the delicacy that emerges in the story. There aren't really huge, lengthy paragraphs full of emotion or description, but these elements are not non-existent. I can see why some readers might be disappointed by this lack of poetic-ness, but I found that the prose had a sort of mysterious voiceover feel to it that was unique. It felt quite deliberate and helped greatly in creating the almost confessional style that the story adopts later on as the lives of the characters become more complex and their decisions become more difficult.

Though it is a bit of a slow starter it does not take long before the reader is absorbed in the intense relationship between two very different brothers. The story certainly gathers pace once the young brothers decide upon their separate futures- the narrative switches back and forth between India and the US so the reader can keep tabs on each sibling. Whilst Subhash tries to stay as close as possible to traditional values, what he thinks will make his parents proud, he ends up alienating them much more than his charismatic, rebellious brother by moving to America to pursue a PhD. Udayan feels less obliged to follow the path wished for by his parents, falling in with a dangerous revolutionary faction. Though his parents are blind to his rash behaviour, refusing to believe that he is treading a destructive path- they still appear to prefer him over his dutiful brother.

Lahiri’s characters are so expertly crafted, and full of shifting thoughts and complexity. They really did feel real- flawed and desperate in some cases, and full of love and good intentions in others. Always conflicted. Thought the plot spans three generations The Lowlands has a relatively small circle of characters. The novel is full of sadness and disappointment and is really quite haunting. Misguided but well-meaning decisions, selfish decisions and genuine mistakes lose their distinctions as the effects are the same. Choices made a long time ago can have huge, unknowable effects on the lives of others, even years later and the ways in which family members can still pull and break one another from continents away is very clear throughout.

Overall, an evocative, sombre novel about the various ways that families can pull themselves apart. Beautifully written (though sparse in choice of language) with excellent, tragic characters with a great deal of strength and resolve.

Black Lake, by Johanna Lane

Dulough (Black Lake, in English), a rundown estate on the exposed and craggy northwest coast of Ireland has been owned by the Campbell family for over 150 years. Built to be intimidating and spectacular but in keeping with Presbyterian ideals by the tyrannical Philip the First, it has divided opinion throughout the family's history. Some would be heirs have despised the property, so it has found its way to more loving hands through the generations, to owners that could never imagine living anywhere else. Current owner John Campbell is of the latter category, his brother Philip is of the former.

John lives at Dunogugh with his Dublin-born wife Marianne and their two children, Kate and Philip. Their lifestyle is isolated, somewhat shabby, but husband and wife are utterly devoted to the estate. With the estate in financial trouble and the maintenance cost of the house and grounds soaring, John has decided to enter into agreement with the Irish government, opening the house to the public. He and his family move to a damp and unappealing cottage on the estate and are as good as barred from the 'big house' during tourist season. They still own it though. Just.

The virtual loss of the house affects the family deeply- particularly Marianne and Philip. John retains his study at the big house, but Marianne is at a loss to explain what he does all day, shut away by himself. Struggling to cope with their change of lifestyle and preoccupied with the crowds and obligations of opening day, a tragic accident occurs fueled by change and confusion. Already paper thin relationships are pushed to the absolute limit.

Philip, absent at the story's start is perhaps the novel's most interesting character. Dragged from his bed by the removal men, he struggles to make the transition from the big house to the cottage, escaping every day to build his own space- an isolated den on an outlying island, among the graves of his ancestors. He's cheeky and independent, and the chapters that he narrates have a brilliant insight into childhood and the triumphs and tragedies that make up the life of the under 10s. He demonstrates how important personal space, solitude and legacy are, even to children. 

Black Lake begins slowly, starting at the end and tracking back to the key events that led up to those opening scenes. The story unfolds through the alternating  voices of John, Marianne and Philip, and the reader is increasingly drawn into the lives of the family, learning of the emotions and pain that they keep hidden. Marianne talks of hers and John's courtship and marriage, their ever more distant friends and her concern for her boarding school educated daughter, who does not get a chance to narrate her own piece. 

It's a moving story, well told in delicate and intricately constructed layers and in a very elegant style. The sense of foreboding is strong, leading up to the accident and the repercussions wrought on the family. Lane brings the damp and rugged majesty of Dulogugh to life and evokes the connection between person and place very successfully.

Black Lake by Johanna Lane is published by Tinder Press, and is out in May 2014. Thanks to @FrancesGough at Headline for the review copy.

Butcher's Crossing, by John Williams

Butcher's Crossing takes its title from the town in which the book starts. A town in only the most rudimentary sense- barber's, tavern, dry goods, stables...It's pretty basic, but it's hoped that when the rail road passes through, it will become a large and flourishing town. 

Harvard Graduate Will Andrews arrives in Butcher's Crossing, aiming to find his"Unalterable Self". After making his enquiries about how a young man tired of the city might find adventure in the West, he falls in with a  man named Miller, an experienced hunter that has been looking for a financial backer for an epic enterprise. A hidden valley in the Colorado mountains, teeming with Buffalo- herds of a size that haven't been seen for decades. At $3 or $4 a hide, these skins would fetch a pretty decent fortune for the men mad enough to attempt to collect them.

Recruiting an experienced but cagey skinner and an alcoholic one-handed cart driver (lost to frostbite on a previous Colorado jaunt), Andrews and Miller set off into the wilderness with nothing but Miller's decades old memories for guidance. It becomes a fish out of water narrative- a city dweller unfamiliar with the moods of nature, with horses and with slaughter.

I like the idea of Butcher's Crossing- the Holy Grail of expeditions. It's tense in parts, a bit disgusting in others. The scale and the majesty of the Middle Western landscape is simply but effectively written- the mountains feel fresh but deadly and the plains feel never-ending. I like the idea that best laid plans can go wrong, and when they do, men are being pared back to the bare essentials of survival and experience; the cold, the heat, the thirst. The months of isolation and the squabbling and resentment that four people cooped up together against their will are bound to eventually descend into. It's a harsh story of survival against the odds in appalling and treacherous conditions. It's about obsession and loneliness and chance. I also liked the idea that fortunes can be made and lost in a day, that it's all down to luck rather than enterprise or skill, and that it just depends what hand you're dealt on the day.

I do like Westerns. Cormac McCarthy gets two thumbs up. I like survival narratives and I don't mind books where nothing mush happens. I really should have liked this. But unfortunately this novel just failed to strike a chord with me. It's not a bad book, by any stretch. It's atmospheric and stylish. I feel like I could pretty much skin a buffalo and that I'd know what to do if I got caught in a blizzard or had to cross a bridge-less river, but I don't feel satisfied with what I got from this novel. I skipped bits, which is unheard of. I don't know what it was. Maybe the characters just failed to ender themselves. Maybe they weren't supposed to. Maybe the characters were supposed to be as transient as the fortunes they were seeking and as forgettable as the frontiersman's way of life.