Nathalie's (Deern's) Booker Books

2012 was the first year I joined the Booker Prize Frenzy, and only after the shortlist had been out. I managed to read all shortlisted books before the winner was announced and planned to do the same in 2013.

When the longlist 2013 was published I thought "never will I be able to read those 13 books in time", but here I am: of the 11 books available for me, 7 are already read, 1 is being listened to and I'll order the next one later today. Time to open an own thread, and also time to check if I read any of the earlier winners/ listed books.

List of winners read:

1969: Percy Howard Newby: Something to Answer for - av. on Kindle, not in library
1970: Bernice Rubens: The Elected Member - ordered, tbr
1971: V. S. Naipaul: In a Free State
1972: John Berger: G
1973: James Gordon Farrell: The Siege of Krishnapur - av. on Kindle, not in library
1974: Nadine Gordimer: The Conservationist - av. on Kindle, av. in library IT
and Stanley Middleton: Holiday - av. on Kindle, not in library
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Heat and Dust - av. on Kindle
1976: David Storey: Saville - av. on Kindle
1977: Paul Scott: Staying On - av. on Kindle
1978: Iris Murdoch: The Sea, the Sea
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald:Offshore
1980: William Golding: Rites of Passage 2018 read
1981: Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children
1982: Thomas Keneally: Schindler's Ark
1983: J. M. Coetzee: Life & Times of Michael K - NOT av. on Kindle, lost in library
1984: Anita Brookner: Hotel du Lac
1985: Keri Hulme: The Bone People - BOUGHT, TBR
1986: Kingsley Amis: The Old Devils
1987: Penelope Lively: Moon Tiger
1988: Peter Carey: Oscar and Lucinda - av. on Kindle
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day
1990: A. S. Byatt: Possession - own paperback
1991: Ben Okri: The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient
and Barry Unsworth: Sacred Hunger
1993: Roddy Doyle: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - av. on audible
1994: James Kelman: How Late it was, How Late
1995: Pat Barker: The Ghost Road
1996: Graham Swift: Last Orders
1997: Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan: Amsterdam - av. library DE
1999: J. M. Coetzee: Disgrace
2000: Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (read in 2016)
2001: Peter Carey: The True History of the Kelly Gang
2002: Yann Martel: Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre: Vernon God Little - av. on audible
2004: Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty
2005: John Banville: The Sea - av. on audible
2006: Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright: The Gathering
2008: Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger
2009: Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
2010: Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question
2011: Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending
2012: Hilary Mantel: Bring up the Bodies
2013: Eleanor Catton: The Luminaries
2014: Richard Flanagan: The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2015: Marlon James: A Brief History of Seven Killings
2016: Paul Beatty: The Sellout
2017: George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo


Read pre-LT: ZERO of 14!

List of shortlisted books read:

1971:
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
LOVED this book! Only now realized it was published in my birth year.

1981:
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
Liked it, but not my favorite Spark
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
Very disturbing

1986:
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
My favorite Atwood so far, but I don't really like dystopean

1988:
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
I liked it better than Midnight's Children although it was quite confusing as audio book

1996:
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
An okay read for me

2001:
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Best McEwan of those I read.

2003:
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
I don't remember much, but I liked it.

2004:
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Great book!! Could have won imo.
The Master by Colm Toibin (read 2018, 4.5 stars audio)
Thoroughly enjoyed as audio, now want to read some Henry James!

2005:
Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Not Ishiguro's best, but good enough for the SL.
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
I preferred White Teeth
The Accidental by Ali Smith

2006:
Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn
I read the whole series. This one stands out in style.

2007:
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Good, but not good enough to win. (Still must read the winner)
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Can't deal well with child narrators.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
I liked this book very much.

2012:
Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
Poetic and depressing
Umbrella by Will Self
Art in literature? Very demanding book.
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil
Good drugs vs. bad drugs.
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
I liked it then but it becomes ever weaker in my memory
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twang Eng
Beautiful writing, but a little too polished. My 2nd favorite after the Mantel.

2013: (all reviews on this thread)
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth L. Ozeki
The Testament of Mary by Colm Toíbin
Harvest: A Novel by Jim Crace
We Need new names by NoViolet Bulawayo
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri - Kindle - EN - 352p - 4 stars

2014: (all reviews on this thread)
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
J by Howard Jacobson
How To Be Both by Ali Smith

Read pre-LT: 2

2015:
A Little Life: A Novel by Hanya Yanagihara
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

2016:
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
All That Man Is by David Szelay

2017:
Autumn by Ali Smith - 5 stars
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders - 4.5 stars
4 3 2 1 A Novel by Paul Auster - 4.3 stars
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid - 4 stars
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund - 3 stars
Elmet by Fiona Mozley - 3.5 stars

List of longlisted books read

2003:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
I'm among the very few who didn't like that book.
2005:
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
Okay, but not great.
2008:
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
I quite liked that book.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (review on this thread)
2009:
Me Cheeta by James Lever
One of my worst reads ever!
2012:
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
One of my worst reads in 2012...
2013:
The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris
The Kills by Richard House
Transatlantic by Colum McCann
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
Unexploded by Alison MacLeod
2014:
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
History of the Rain by Niall Williams
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
The Dog by Joseph O'Neill
Orfeo by Richard Powers
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
"Us" by David Nicholls
2015:
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami
The Illuminations: A Novel by Andrew O'Hagan
Did you ever have a Family? by Bill Clegg
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
The Chimes by Anna Smaill
The Green Road by Anne Enright
2016:
Hystopia by David Means
The Many By Wyn Menmuir
My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
The North Water by Iain McGuire
The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee
Work Like any Other by Virginia Reeves
Serious Sweet by A.L. Kennedy
2017:
Days without End by Sebastian Barry - 3.5 stars
Reservoir 13 by Don McGregor - 3.8 stars
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie - 4.8 (5) stars
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arudhati Roy - 4.3 stars
Swing Time by Zadie Smith - 4 stars
2018:
Sabrina by Nick Drnaso - 3.5 stars
Snap by Belinda Bauer - 3.5 stars
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner - 4 stars
In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne - 4.2 stars
From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan

Read pre-LT: 3

This year's and last year's challenges:

2018
1. In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne
So far the best of the bunch...
2. From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan
3. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
It is a good book, but made me so tired of that Booker list...
4. Snap by Belinda Bauer
A solid thriller with some flaws. A typical holiday read.
5. Sabrina by Nick Drnaso - 3.5 stars
If I ever have to live in a world so devoid of any expression I'll run my head against a wall.


2017
1. Autumn by Ali Smith - 5 stars
Read almost a year ago and needs a re-read. Appealed to me on what I call "the art level" of my brain, not the rational part, like Virginia Woolf books and David Lynch films, I don't even remember the plot, I was somewhere else, and I loved it.
2. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie - 4.8 (5) stars
Totally unexpected favorite, it broke all my (strong) inner resistance, read it in one day. Politically courageous!
3. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
I just love good magical realism, and here it's mixed with so much cruel truth. The book makes me think of a beautifully gold-embroidered blanket spread over a maimed body.
4. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders - 4.5 stars
This was fun although it felt like it should have been less fun with such serious subjects. I almost felt guilty.
5. 4 3 2 1 A Novel by Paul Auster - 4.3 stars
Long and good and full of variations and vast and boring and too alike. Conflicting feelings throughout my read, but then I like my Bookers to be a bit demanding.
6. Reservoir 13 by Don McGregor - 4 stars
Just great! Not a style I ever need to read again, but this first time it was original and beautiful.
7. Swing Time by Zadie Smith - 4 stars
A long and often tedious read. All head, all important issues, any possible flow willfully disruptred by very frequent time jumps with each chapter change. A book that doesn't want to make it easy for the reader which is basically okay for me. I thought the ending was quite weak (the last 10%), that's why I didn't rate it higher.
8. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid - 3.8 stars
2 great halves that didn't really fit together.
9. Days without End by Sebastian Barry - 3.5 stars
A bit like The North Water last year - entertaining, adventurous, for me maybe one dramatic twist too many. Can't judge the language as I was fighting with the slang, but native speakers loved it.
10. Elmet by Fiona Mozley - 3.5 stars
Very strong debut in style and power, less so in the plot. Way too much horrible violence and anxiety for my weak nerves.
11. History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund - 3 stars
There is much depth beyond the shallow-looking surface, and for me it wasn't in the religious/ cultish upbringing, but in the alienation from love. A good debut, but compared to the other books on the list I read so far it lacked something.

Copying my reviews from the 75 thread. I tend to write terribly long reviews...

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Booker 2013 SL)

On a beach stroll near her home on a Canadian island Ruth finds a package with a “Hello Kitty” box. The contents are an old wrist watch, a couple of old letters in Japanese and a diary, written in English by the teenager Nao. Everything is well-preserved, packed in layers of freezer bags, so it seems the box has been set out to the sea intentionally, it should be found. The diary even addresses a potential reader. Ruth’s husband Oliver assumes it’s part of the flotsam (or jetsam?) from the Japanese tsunami. Ruth starts reading the diary and over the distance of continents and many years starts building a connection to young Nao.

Nao had grown up in California during the dotcom bubble years when her father was a contractor with one of the big computer companies. When the bubble burst he lost his job and the family returned to Japan where Naoko was never able to fit in, being extremely bullied by her classmates and even teachers, neglected by her parents, her father being suicidal. At some point her parents sent her to spend the summer with her grandmother, a Zen Buddhist monk living in the country. Naoko learns Zen meditation and very slowly gets a new grasp on life. Ruth starts living along Naoko’s diary, connects to her to the point where she takes an active part in the story.

This is a wonderfully written book with high ratings, and I couldn’t put it down. But in the end something didn’t work for me, didn’t feel coherent and after much thinking I guess I finally found the reason: I always have a problem with books where you can feel they are partly invented story and partly autobiographic. It feels like they play on two different levels in my conscience while I am reading. There are long parts, especially in the beginning, when this book is fully ‘in line’. That’s when the author made herself part of Nao (the Ruth part is autobiographic anyway), when she is able to put so much of herself into her characters that you just know she is telling you ‘the truth’. But then there are the other parts, not bad in themselves, where she develops her characters away from what is her own self, but with those parts the whole of the book loses some of its coherency.

I enjoyed this book, but it started with a 5star feeling and then slowly declined. Something wasn’t “round”, felt unfinished. But it also moved and inspired me, and it is still my second favorite book on the Booker longlist after having finished 5 of 13 with 2 more going which will both not reach it.

Maybe I should add that this book will probably mostly appeal to us middle-aged women.
Younger readers might connect to Nao, but not to Ruth and Oliver. And other readers might be annoyed by the spiritual element, so better test-read before buying.

Rating: 4 stars

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris (Booker 2013 LL)

This could be interpreted as mere chick-lit and the reader could wonder why the book was longlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize. I haven’t read any of the books that fell short this year (like the new Zadie Smith or After Life or Americanah), so I don’t know if this book fully deserves its nomination.

During the first 25% I was quite bored with the long set-up, but then the story got decidedly better. There were many scenes that felt like watching a romantic comedy. It clearly has the ‘potential’ – take away the deeper, more critical bits, and what remains is your usual chick-lit in Jewish Orthodox environment. And while it also describes the woes of an Orthodox and nervous bridegroom and the desperation of an ageing rabbi who helplessly sees the foundations of his private life fall away, this is a book that mainly addresses women.

In my opinion it is an intelligent concept to use the chick-lit style here instead of the usual dark brooding lamenting tone that accompanies stories about women trying to break free from traditional roles. It made the reading easy and still I learned a lot.

The story: Chani is 19 years old, the 5th of 10 daughters of an Orthodox family living in Northern London. She is as much a free spirit as can be possible in her circumstances. She has already refused several marriage offers because she wants her life to be “different”, not knowing yet what that might mean. However, marriage is the only way for her into a still very restricted Orthodox freedom, so she chooses a husband who promises to be a little different as well. Not really knowing each other, they steer towards a wedding that will bring a wedding night – and both have absolutely no idea what that means. (I absolutely had no idea that you can grow up in London and not learn “the facts of life”. Orthodox life for me meant “something stricter” and I knew about the beards, the long clothes for women and the Mikvah, but I had no idea how far it really goes.)

But this book isn’t only about Chani and her husband-to-be, it’s also about other members of that small and tight community and their struggles with their conscience and the keeping of the ever-present rules. I much preferred those more serious side-stories and they brought the book to a

rating of 3.8 ( ==> 4) stars.

The Kills by Richard House (Booker 2013 LL)

This is said to be the big challenge on this year’s Booker Prize longlist. A 1,000 pages chunkster, formed by 4 separate novels which are more or less loosely linked. The action taking place in Europe, the US and the Middle East, with constant time jumps and ever new characters and different styles of narration. Add to this the ‘multimedia content’ – every couple of chapters my e-book provided a link to the book’s own website where I could watch short films or listen to some audio content. As my basic Kindle doesn’t provide this function I tried some links from my notebook, but that old thing always overheated after a minute and the bits I saw weren’t that interesting. So I did what the booker jury did: I ignored the multi-media and concentrated on the story. Or better tried to.

I might have found it more original had I not read and adored 2666 2 years ago. A book consisting of 5 separate novels which are more or less loosely linked, the action taking place in Europe, the US and Mexico with many time jumps and ever new characters and different styles of narration. Another parallel was the overall atmosphere of doom. But while in 2666 there also was something disturbingly alluring, here I felt more and more repelled and disgusted and, yes, manipulated. All through my read I couldn’t shake off the impression that the author is trying really hard to create a cult around his book. But can there be a calculated cult? Isn’t that something that should grow with the time, just as it does here with the novel in the novel, “The Kill”?

2666 has the famous overlong part IV “with all the kills”. The Kills has its book III, titled “The Kill”, describing a murder that might be a hoax. Or a copykill. Or something completely different. And yes, it was quite a fascinating part, something the reader has been waiting for since the mysterious murders in Naples are first mentioned by Eric in book I “Sutler”. Part IV, “The Hit”, takes it even a little further, but by then I had started creating an emotional distance to all the characters and didn’t care about their fate anymore.

The books (only small spoilers):

“Sutler”: Set in Iraq, Turkey, Malta, Germany, Switzerland:
We are in the middle of the action. There’s an explosion in an office building, then a man on the run. The man is believed to have stolen many millions of government money, but he is only a scapegoat for some bigger conspiracy. Will he escape his persecutors?
I really enjoyed that part, and I don’t remember much violence. An easy start into something that later becomes darker and crueler by the page.

“The Massive”: Iraq and the US
Starts on several levels of the future by telling us how everyone from Camp Liberty is going to die (in past tense). Then it goes many years back to a time before “Sutler” and tells the whole back-story. Quite confusing with many time jumps. Other readers claimed this part to be boring and useless and the weakest of all 4, and but I liked most of it.

“The Kill”: Naples, Italy (don’t read if you’re sensitive…)
A story that has been mentioned in books 1 and 2 about two brothers renting a basement room in Naples, killing (better slaughtering) someone and letting the body disappear except for the tongue and some teeth in a bag and buckets of blood on the basement walls. It’s almost a 1:1 copy of a case from the Naples postwar period. Then we learn about the ensuing cult including book and movie. And there’s another murder. Maybe. Very dark and quite well done, especially the structure with many different characters who might become victims or manage to escape, and the afterword explaining the motive for the very first murder. Or the first hoax? The word “brothers” will never be the same again for me.

“The Hit”: mainly Cyprus, also Naples/Italy
A couple of Germans living in Cyprus after having been evacuated from Damascus/ Syria are looking for Sutler from book 1. Did he die under a train in Naples? Is he the burned and half-dead man found in the desert? Or are the rumors right that he made it into Switzerland? How many Sutlers do exist? Parallely Rike starts giving English lessons to a mysterious yet attractive German man (Michael? Fassbender would be the perfect actor for that role imo!). Traumatized by an assault he leads a secluded life, watching his neighbors, passing their secrets on to Rike as an exercise in English. One secret deals with a basement room and what happened there …

People die all the time in this book, and often their deaths happen in a nightmare-inducing way. I think no-one is cleanly shot here, the kills are either messy and violent or long and torturous. And very, very cruel. Not too graphic, the most horrible details will be played in the readers’ heads.

I wrote on the book thread in the BP group that this is like “100 people do 1000 stupid things to make the story work”. In the end that is exactly what the book is about. How a chain of unfortunate decisions taken by yourself and others (you don’t need to know them) might lead to you getting killed. I don’t think you need to fill 1,000 pages to come to that conclusion.

Already in the first book I got irritated by some extreme acts of irrational behavior because most of our characters are otherwise extremely smart. Let me say if a certain code number is so extremely important for me and I spend days and hours just sitting around waiting for transport, why not simply memorize it? Or write it down in at least 2 places? Even in the last part I could understand one character’s stupid acts up to a certain point (acting although your body sends you warnings simply because you don’t want to seem paranoid), but towards the ending it became absolutely impossible.

Rating: 3.5 stars. It is a gripping book most of the time, and it is clear in the end where the author wants to go with it. And people do enough stupid things in RL. But half of the people in this book behave in a way that you can only wonder how they ever managed to get to the point where their story begins.

And: I NEVER want to read it again!

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín - contains spoilers!! (Booker 2013 SL)

I read this very short book (104p) on Saturday evening. I feel very bad for giving a bad rating and writing a negative review, so I'll try to explain why the book didn't work for me.

I often have issues with historical fiction. There's a certain type of books that all sound similar for me, usually written in a woman's voice, someone looking back on her life (also Lavinia, The Dovekeepers, the famous-hero-turned- housewife Patrocles in The Song of Achilles). The language is always poetic, but I either miss some expression of true feeling or something else rings false in my ears. Usually it's women that have been through horrible things and the author wants to show that the narrator is bitter, broken, sad or simply very old and therefore distanced. For me it always feels like the easy way out - write about horrible things in a calm steady voice ("...and then my husband was killed and I mourned him and then all my children died and then everyone else died or left me but I knew I had to survive to be able to tell our story..")..

I tried not to get influenced by my personal dislike for the style while reading this book and to concentrate on the story instead to do it justice. And well, there wasn't that much of it. The idea that Mary describes Jesus as a delusional show-off with useless bad-smelling unkempt loser friends was original and sometimes made me laugh (I don’t think I was supposed to laugh), and I guess it is a courageous step for an Irish author to write a book like this one. It must be perceived by many readers as pure blasphemy and I am convinced that the jury will put it on the short list just for the courage.

But I had hoped for a little more than what I found. In the end, Mary was simply never present when "the important things" happened, when water was turned into wine, when Lazarus was called back from the dead, when Jesus finally took his last breath and then returned. She had just conveniently turned away, gone into hiding or had not been there at all, so Tóibín never had to use the word “lie”. The book tries confrontation, but then finally avoids it by using the “they told me he had walked on water but I doubt it” option.

Even the crucifixion scene didn’t do anything for me. Maybe because the idea of a physically suffering Jesus seemed natural for me. Again that scene was too distanced for my liking, and the Pilatus part imo was done almost “sloppy” (sorry, I don’t find a better word!!) and hasty – just to be done with it. In Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita the encounter between Jesus and Pilatus is much better worked out, Pilatus’ regret becomes believable - but that’s just my opinion. I know this book here is written from Mary's point of view, she can't see what happens in the palace, but I believe it could have done better.

Maybe I should add that I grew up Protestant, but it’s a very liberal branch – I think I’m Lutheran, but it’s a bit regional. We learned that Jesus most certainly had siblings, probably had relations with women, there was never a doubt about his suffering terrible pain and Mary was “just his mother”. There’s no cult around her at all.

I believe this book works much better as the theatrical monologue it had been originally. A Mary on stage or an audiobook Mary can put something into her voice, can convince me of her pain. This paper copy Mary remained flat for me.

Rating: 2.5 stars

Transatlantic by Colum McCann (Booker 2013 LL)

I loved this book. By now, after having read 5 longlisted books for the BP 2013, this one is by far my favorite – and that although I listened to the audio version where I usually lose much of the subtleties. I believe however that it will “die in beauty” on the shortlist, it’s probably to idealistic and too well-composed to be a winner.

The Ireland conflict plays a main role in this book and there are interesting sidelines about racism and female rights.

Three important historical Atlantic crossings build the basis of this book. The characters are male and their real stories are independent. They are here intelligently interconnected by a line of fictional women, mothers and daughters, spanning from 1846 to 2011. Those connections become visible only slowly, and I wish I had the paper copy and could reread the relevant sections.

I can only guess the spelling of the names of the fictional characters as I listenend to the AB.

Story - spoiler-free:

The book begins with the first non-stop transatlantic flight by Alcock and Brown. They start in Newfoundland and land in Ireland.

Next up is the story of Frederick Douglass, set in 1845-1847 in Ireland. Douglass had escaped slavery in the US and became a leader of the abolitionist movement. He is heavily confronted with the great famine and realizes that there exist different forms of slavery in the world.

In 1998 US Senator George Mitchell takes leave from his wife and baby son to travel to Northern Ireland for the final negotiations in the Northern Ireland Peace Process. He meets many women from both sides who have lost sons and husbands in the conflict.

The majority of the book is filled with the story of a young woman crossing the ocean in 1846 and her line of daughters, ending 2011.

Story containing Spoilers that might take away some of the enjoyment of discovering the interconnections in this book.

The book begins with the first non-stop transatlantic flight by Alcock and Brown. They start in Newfoundland and land in Ireland. Brown makes the acquaintance of the journalist Emily and her daughter Lotty and takes a letter with him on the flight, to be delivered in Ireland, should their trip be successful.

Next up is the story of Frederick Douglass, set in 1845-1847 in Ireland. Douglass had escaped slavery in the US and became a leader of the abolitionist movement. On his tour through Ireland he encounters Lilly Doughall, a young maid, and inspires her to take her life into her own hands. He is heavily confronted with the great famine and realizes that there exist different forms of slavery in the world.

In 1998 Senator George Mitchell takes leave from his wife and baby son to travel to Belfast for the final negotiations in the Northern Ireland Peace Process. He meets many women from both sides who have lost sons and husbands in the conflict, among them very old Lotty and her daughter Hannah.

The fundaments set, the book goes back to 1866 and tells us what became of Lilly Doughall. She crossed the Atlantic on a “coffin ship” and built a life in the US. Despite some horribly sad experiences she continues to strive for a better life for her children.

In 1929 Lilly’s daughter Emily and her own daughter Lotty cross the Atlantic again to go on a journalist trip through Europe. They encounter Arthur Brown, 10 years after his non-stop flight, and he confesses he never delivered the letter they gave him.

In 1978 Lotty is mother to Hannah and happy grandmother to young Thomas and lives near Belfast.

In 2011 Hannah, alone in the world except for an old and sick dog, with all her money gone in the middle of the banking crisis, tries to sell the old “transatlantic letter” to save her cottage.

End of all spoilers

I found the writing extremely insightful and got immersed into each of the different stories. I was also fascinated at how the stories interconnect. Sometimes it took me a long while until I thought “but could that be the person X from chapter Y?”

It is a quiet book that also has many drastic scenes, worst certainly those describing the great famine and the hospital in the American civil war, but the writing treats everyone with respect and sympathy.

The people in this book are good people with good and just thoughts and motives – readers might complain about that and call it unrealistic. I found it encouraging, especially after a book like “The Kills” which was filled just with the opposite: greed, violence, cruelty, egotism.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Harvest: A Novel by Jim Crace (Booker 2013 SL)

I haven’t read any Jim Crace yet (in fact never heard of him before). It seems he announced this to be his final book and looking through reviews most readers regret that. Many also say that Harvest is not his best work, so I’ll have to read something else by him to get a better feeling for his writing.

For now I can say that the book impressed me. It is also one of the very few books where I feel they need a reread before I can really make up my mind about them. It certainly was different from anything else I ever read, and only after 70% was I able to find an access to it. Before that the story didn’t do much for me and neither did the writing. I was actually surprised that the “poetic style” was praised. The beauty for me, as a non-native speaker, wasn’t as obvious as it is with writers like Virginia Woolf. I saw short sentences, many unknown words. And then I had the idea to read a passage aloud to myself – and I was absolutely enchanted. Not only sounded everything wonderful spoken out, the speaking itself was enjoyable, because the language flows wonderfully, no tongue-twisting required.
I continued with the reading aloud for the rest of the book and enjoyed those remaining 30% immensely, although the story still didn’t work for me and the biblical allegories were laid on too thick for my liking.

So I will reread and see if I can get something more out of the story.

Rating: 4 stars because I believe I will love it on my second reading

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Booker 2013 LL)

I was less impressed with this book than I had expected. It has been called the “greatest Irish novel of recent years”, but if this really were so, it would be sad for the state of the Irish novel.

Not that I disliked it, I just didn’t find it great, quite average to be honest. So yes, it deals with the Irish building crash, using the example of a building company in a small village closing down. But the story is so normal that it almost isn’t a story. You could as well set it in the German village where I grew up in any year. Because building companies are likely to go bankrupt easily all the time, crisis or not. And the result is always the same: a couple of unemployed people, unfinished houses, frustration.

The story is told in the voices of 18 or 19 people somehow affected by the failing of the company. Bobby the foreman is the central character. His father (whom he despises to a point he plays with the idea of killing him) is dying. He regrets a fallout with his mother before her death, loves his wife although he feels a bit inferior to her. He’s also the good guy, the good conscience in the book. People trust him and he tries to make up for the losses by repairing the damages in the houses, employing some of his ex-colleagues, etc.

Next up is the father of his ex-boss, describing his point of view – how he built the company and passed it on to his second son who then blew it all up and ran away with the money. He remains in the village and has to live with the shame. Then there’s the “wanton woman” with the golden heart, the neighbor of Bobby’s father Frank, giving insights to the ongoings next door. There’s the unmarried woman who moved with her child into a half-finished estate, the other ex-employees, etc.

I enjoyed this for about 30% (about 45-50pages), then I got quite bored – because it is all so normal, not specifically Irish except for the extreme amount of drink (I've never been to Ireland but it's a recurring motif in Irish books) and the frequent mention of mass. At around 50% something surprising happens (because the story moves also forward on the timeline after the beginning with Bobby), but isn’t followed up the way you’d expect. The penultimate testimony adds a level I didn’t think was necessary.

If you grew up in a small village somewhere in Europe (maybe it’s different elsewhere), that’s exactly the life you’ll find, that’s exactly the gossip you’ll encounter, nothing special here at all, although the different voices are well done. To get the story rolling you don’t even need a company failure, this could be anything. The people would still be the same and react similarly. The failure gives the gossip a direction, but none of those people would be any different in a different situation.

What I wanted to say with this: well-observed realistic and timeless story, good structure, believable voices. Not a BP winner imo, I wouldn’t even put it on the shortlist, the BP should be awarded to something more special.

Rating: 3.5 stars

copying reviews of other Booker winners and candidates:



The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch (winner 1978, read and reviewed April 2013)

This book has been on my shelf for years but something always kept me from reading it although I was convinced I’d like it. Maybe it wanted to be a milestone, that’s what it waited for. It is very difficult to review because it is so complex. Giving away the main storyline, I’d leave out the Eastern philosophy; putting my focus on the themes of age and death, I’d neglect the question of how you perceive yourself and how others do. And then there’s the sea-monster, where should I place that?? There’s so much in this book, and maybe that is also its little weakness which kept me from giving 5 stars. It wants to touch everything without delivering answers, and towards the ending it becomes a bit confusing and blurred – though maybe that was the intention.

While its main themes are timeless, the setting is nicely outdated and I often thought ‘yes - those were the 70s’. It was possible to buy a house in England with no electricity, no telephone. Food was not delivered to your doorstep, the pub didn’t sell wine, not everyone owned a car. Letters play an important role here. It felt strange that those characters with their very modern identity problems were so dependent from the services of the Royal Mail instead of just making a simple phone call. But then I remembered that even in my own village, which is not located on some remote cliff, many families didn’t own a phone in the 70s and you could see them queuing (and chatting) at the one public phone booth. Reading this book I felt a bit old and nostalgic. And I don’t think it is a book that can be fully enjoyed at very young age. You need to have had your own regrets and missed opportunities to be able to connect with the characters.

So after all this introductory babble, I should come to the review I guess?

Charles is a retired stage actor/ stage director/ stage writer, a big celebrity in London (this alone may be difficult to understand nowadays). He has bought a house by the sea, “Shruff End”, set on a rock, miles away from the next small village, without electricity, telephone, hot water and therefore free of all the amenities we need nowadays for our survival. The first quarter of the book is a kind of diary, Charles tries to write his autobiography, and flashbacks alternate with descriptions of his new simple life by the sea. This part is very slow and reflective; we get to know him as a mostly well-balanced man who has made his peace with the past. Someone liked by all his friends, who has made some mistakes with the women in his life, but whom no-one bears a grudge.

Then slowly we get to see the other side when suddenly those friends make appearances – first by sending letters, then by turning up more or less unannounced – and show us what they really think of him, finally confronting him with all the damage he has caused over the years in many lives.

The main element in the foreground however is Charles’ old flame Hartley, the one big love of his teenage days. She lives quietly with her retired husband in a bungalow in the neighborhood and Charles quickly convinces himself that their marriage is a miserable one and that Hartley needs rescuing. He becomes absolutely obsessed with his over-romantic ideas which, like a veil in front of his eyes, blind him for the harsh realities.

So much happens on so many levels, I’d say it is among those books that can do well with a reread. The build-up from the slow reflective diary-part to the absolute frenzy of the Whitsunday weekend back to reflective mode, the overall writing, the characterizations are exceptional. The book demands some patience from the readers but highly rewards them.

Terribly long review, but I haven’t half covered what I wanted to say. Did I mention the sea-monster?

I should add that I had a look at the reviews on LT after finishing it, and some readers complain that it’s ‘all the same old Murdoch again’. As it was my first Murdoch book I could fully enjoy it. I’ll certainly read more, and then I’ll have to see for myself how soon I’ll tire of ‘all those delusional old men characters’.

Rating: 4.5 stars

* In this story some dreams get shattered forever. The book also shattered one of my own comforting and romantic dreams: the one of winning the lottery, buying an old stone house on a cliff in England or Scotland with a nice fireplace and spend my old age there reading. One of my friends had already booked a second armchair (with a blanket for her knees) in that dream. 
Now that I learned about damp sheets, drafty windows, moldy wood, imagined ghosts, the noise such a lonely house can make during a stormy night, I decided I’d better opt for something less solitary and a bit more modern for my library dreams.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (SL 2007, read May 2013)

Great book with a stupid ending (would anybody care to explain the ending to me in a PN – I really didn’t get it).
The story is told in the voice of the Pakistani Changez who approaches a mistrusting foreigner (presumably an American tourist) on the bazaar of Lahore. Over the course of an afternoon and evening Changez tells the stranger the story of his life – how he won a scholarship in Princeton, fell in love with a typical American girl, after graduation got one of the most prestigious traineeships available and basically lived a well-adapted American life until the day when the WTC fell and when he suddenly discovered ‘something’ in his soul that changed his life forever.
I liked this book and found most of it absolutely believable although I could have done without all the love drama and it’s not clear how much that influenced Changez’ development. And then came that last paragraph…

Rating: 3.5 stars

78. Atonement by Ian McEwan (SL 2001, read June 2013)

I’ve read a couple of McEwan books by now and I’d say this one is my new favorite. I didn’t like Enduring Love very much, The Comfort of Strangers was somewhat fascinating but suffered from what felt like a mediocre translation (must read that one in English one day… problem is I don’t really want to reread it), there was something strangely alluring about The Cement Garden (though I feel soiled just thinking about this book), and I really liked On Chesil Beach. This one I dreaded, having seen the movie once and never been able to rewatch it. That’s the general problem with McEwan – the writing is beautiful (it even was quite successfully transferred into the movie), but I never want to revisit his stories. They make me feel overall bad and most of all desperate and hopeless. Here it is even worse: usually in his books some adult takes a wrong decision and suffers the consequences. This time it’s a child who ‘commits a crime’ and so destroys the lives of her sister, a family friend, more or less the whole family. Unlike The Comfort of Strangers where the protagonists take some hair-raisingly bad decisions (why???? did they follow this guy? Twice??), in this book you can’t shrug and say “well, it’s their own fault in the end”.

So the book has now been standing on my shelf for years and I had to force myself to finally read it and be done with it. I am glad I did, because even though I believe the movie couldn’t have been realized better, now I see what a gap there still is. The book gives so much additional depth to the characters, most of all to Briony whom I fully hated in the movie and for whom I now feel also pity and sadness. Still none of the characters was very likeable. But I liked all of them a bit more than in the movie.

McEwan with his destructive honesty can easily spoil your mood for days. There are those times in life when we are so fully content that we might think “this would be a good time for life to end”, because it can’t get any better. Or we are so utterly miserably that we think the same, because it can’t get any worse. But Robbie’s situation when his life is destroyed from one minute to the next is none of both. It’s one of those moments when you feel enlightened because you see clearly all the roads that are open to you, when you just feel that nothing can go wrong now. McEwan reminds us that we are never ever safe. It’s honest, yes, but I kind of hate him for it. I wondered what it would have been like to read this book without knowing what’s to come. I would have been devastated. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to finish it. The film had to be flatter in this respect and so it was easier to digest the later events.
McEwan IS good, yes, but why does he use his gift to make me feel bad and take away all those little illusions that help me to get through life?

And still, in all the sad greatness of the book, there is something I find irritating and therefore I couldn’t rate it with 5 stars. In the end I didn’t buy the story. With all the set-up McEwan created to convince us, to prove how all the different elements (heat, summer, lust, migraine, puberty, divorce, class differences, etcetc) combined to create that fatal incident, I still cannot believe the final result. I believe the events of ‘the day’ - I had some doubts, but later in the book he gives some more references - , but not the outcome. Okay, on the last pages I learned that the novelist is a God and can do what (s)he wants with characters and story. I actually liked this last part very much. I loved all 4 parts separately, but maybe not so much as a complete novel.

(Btw. I found it interesting that Robbie became ‘Turner’ in the second part of the book, set in France and Dunkirk. In part 4 it is hinted that Briony got the Dunkirk events from Sgt. Nettle, and McEwan even makes them sound like partly written by a different person. )

Imo this book could have won the Booker. I haven’t read the 2001 winner yet, I should do so soon to be able to compare. If there hadn’t been this feeling of ‘a little too much’ it would have been perfect. McEwan knows he can write and it feels a bit like he wanted this one to be his big masterwork, the one to win all prizes. There’s something slightly overdone…

Rating: 4.5 stars

Schande / Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (Winner 1999, read June 2913)

I’ve always avoided this book. I hated just the look of that famous cover, and after having read some reviews I was sure I’d also hate the story. So I didn’t want to spend money it (it wasn’t available on Kindle for me anyway and I absolutely didn’t want to listen to the audio – you can’t escape the audio as you can escape the written word by skipping ahead) and got the German version from the library.

The language sounded weird at first, it needed some getting used to. Either the translation is bad (as can happen, this one offered also spelling and grammatical errors – daß instead of das!, ihm instead of ihr) or Coetzee’s style doesn’t sound good in German. I assume both is the case. There were expressions that gave me an idea that the original could have a certain beauty.

The story: a man falls in disgrace and doesn’t get out of this state until the end of the book because he fails to understand /empathize with other people and their motives, because he is ‘out of his time’.

Well… Repeatedly Coetzee gave the impression that the protagonist David Laurie doesn’t understand ‘the female side’ and is blamed for it. I am a women and I didn’t understand that female side either. And believe me, I tried!

After having removed several paragraphs of fat story spoilers and personal ranting, I want to say that this was a very good book for me. I didn’t like it – is there anyone who likes it?? – but it’s weeks now since I read it and it’s still in my head. The horrible scene everyone talks about was not given in as much detail as I had feared, I was very grateful for it. The worst part for me in this book was the behavior of the two female ‘victims’. Using the ‘ ‘ because Melanie wasn’t a victim for me. She used Laurie for her own purposes just as he used (not abused!) her. Lucy was a victim, no doubt, but after the crime she sacrificed herself much more than she needed to, and I don’t understand what she calls her reasons.

My reaction altogether seems to be quite different from what most other readers think about the book. I felt sorry for Laurie and saw him as being ‘in disgrace’ just for one act, and maybe that is very German of me: his meddling with Melanie’s grades was highly unprofessional and had to have consequences. But apart from that, why was Laurie disgraced? I saw disgrace almost everywhere else. Not that I liked him much, he’s not exactly a character to like. But dislike him more than others? More than Melanie, her bullying boyfriend and her scheming father, the ex-colleagues, the ex-wife, Lucy, that horrible neighbor Pedro? No, absolutely not. Maybe I am like Laurie and this is not my world anymore. I wouldn’t have done what he did on the last page though and can’t see it as ‘atonement’ (again: atonement for what exactly?).

Rating: 4 stars, mainly for still being in my head after weeks

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes – contains many SPOILERS (Winner 2011)

I’d been meaning to read this for a while now, but whenever I held it in my hands, in the library, in a bookshop or as Kindle sample, and read the first paragraph, I decided for ‘later’. ‘Later’ finally came last week, when once again I saw it in a book shop and bought it along with 5 other books. Back home it was also the first of the six that wanted to be read.

The quality of the writing and the brilliancy of the first part made the reading overall an enjoyable experience. But then I was completely disappointed by the second part. I see this book on the BP longlist, but if it was was 2011’s winner, the other candidates must have been quite weak.

In part one, the narrator Tony remembers his youth, especially his friendship with Adrian, an over-intelligent, promising and serious boy who committed suicide at the age of 22. Before his death, Adrian had started a relationship with Veronica, Tony’s first girl-friend, but only long after after she and Tony had split up. Part of Tony’s memories is an awkward weekend spent with Veronica’s family and some unusual remarks her mother had made regarding her daughter’s behavior.

Many quietly and averagely lived years and an amicable divorce later, Tony receives a letter from a solicitor, informing him he has inherited 500 GBP and Adrian’s diary from Veronica’s mother. But the diary is with Veronica who refuses to hand it over. So Tony meets her again, and slowly ‘the big secret’ comes to light.

The big secret totally underwhelmed me, as did most of part 2.

While it was obvious in part one that the narrator Tony was not 100% reliable and was holding back parts of the truth (especially ‘that second letter’ he had sent to Adrian), he sounded like quite a normal person.

In part 2 I once again had to confront the ‘old helpless loser guy’ who reminded me much of the protagonists in Harold Fry and The Lighthouse who are unable to buy a bottle of water on a hiking trip. Clueless, unwilling to communicate, like someone who has completely given up on life years ago and is just waiting for its ending, part-2-Tony annoyed me endlessly.

As did the two main female characters. Was I expected to feel anything positive for young or old Veronica? Pity, sympathy, compassion? I didn’t. Was I supposed to like Tony’s cool ever-present ex-wife Margaret? She came over as one of those ‘sensible’ women who can’t stop giving away subtle bitchy and jealous comments on other women. What gives her the right to call Veronica ‘fruitcake’ or to decide that women should take ‘the cut’ (cut their hair short and stop dying it) at a certain age? Why does Tony feel the need to tell her everything about his life so many years after the divorce?

I read you’re supposed to read the book twice, but after the secret had been revealed I was so fed up with the characters that I didn’t want to know if I’d missed any hints.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Winner 2012, read June 2012)

I have no idea why, but when this book was published I was absolutely convinced that the whole Boleyn story had already been told in Wolf Hall. Maybe this false memory came up because I was so glad it had not been part of WH, and thinking WH was a stand-alone book it was as if I was done with Boleyn.

It is a story that has been told innumerable times, so often that even I knew it although the Tudors are not part of the German history syllabus. Henry VIII, 6 wives, Anne Boleyn was the 2nd and was beheaded - thats what everyone knows, even outside the UK. When I learned ButB would cover that part of history I wasn’t much looking forward to reading it. I knew I would eventually, but only in order not to have a gap between books 1 and 3. But then I too quickly got infected by everyone else’s anticipation and bought the book much sooner than I had intended to.

Contrary to the Powell books, this here is great audio material. Mantel uses short yet concise sentences that sound good when read aloud. By being forced to listen closely I got all the details which I might have missed had I too quickly eye-read the book. The narrator did a great job with the voices, so that the “he, Cromwell” often was not needed.

I don’t need to say much about the story here. I am very impressed once again by all the research effort Hilary Mantel must have put into this book. And I just love how she works with the characters. She manages to make them alive and credible for the readers, yet leaves them in their historical social background, doesn’t modernize them too much just to make it easy for the readers. Sure, some of the minor characters remain mere shadows, which is normal. But her King, her Anne, her Jane and above all her Cromwell become real people. I found it very interesting to see the change she let her Cromwell undergo. At the end of WH, while I desired a sequel, I wondered how she’d manage to get this quite likeable man to the place where he’d be a couple of years later. Now she’s put him well onto the road to his final destiny, and it wouldn’t even have needed all the (almost too) obvious foreshadowing in the scenes where he himself thinks about his future.

Little spoiler: it can’t take a good end with this man who seems to be the prototype of all the people who have ever done bad things ‘just following orders’. He has become a man who needs to have his punishment and he will get it. I’d be interested to know if it is just Mantel’s theory that he used the Boleyn affair as an act of revenge for the fate of the cardinal or if there’s something official that backs it. I do hope that the “revenge for Wolsey” motive will not be used too much in book 3. While I believe that Cromwell acts out of egoistical motives to gain and secure his power and wealth, I don’t think he’d plan anything against the King to avenge the injustices against the cardinal.
And it’s interesting that Cromwell is starting to change his view of his father.

Rating: 4,5 stars

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (SL 2012, read September 2012)
What a strange little book. When I read all the Kindle samples for the shortlisted Booker Prize candidates I was immediately captured by this one and had to order and read it right away. It is set on the French riviera, in 1994, during a hot summer . Two British couples (one with a teenage daughter) are spending their holidays in a villa when they make the acquaintance of excentric Kitty Finch and invite her to stay in the villa's spare room.

The reading was quite an intense experience. The language tries and often succeeds to be poetic, though sometimes I felt it is trying too hard. At times you look at the plot from far away, then you are just drawn into it, you feel the grass, smell the water of the pool, are annoyed by the heat and the insects around you. There's typical Riviera glitter (the chapters set in Nice and at the Negresco hotel) and there's decay (often things, mainly food, start rotting or are stolen by ants, there are rodents in the house, etc). There's a feeling of failure and depression in most of the characters, sometimes out in the open, sometimes well hidden.

I am not sure if a person actually suffering from depression would enjoy the book. The issue is simplified (it needs to, otherwise the poetic beauty of the writing would have been lost) and the conclusion is not satisfactory.

I'd say it is a very promising book, written in a style that reminded me often of Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation, but the latter book has a better structure. It deserves to be shortlisted, but I don't see it winning the Booker Prize.

Rating: 4 stars

I would now rate this one lower - 3.5 stars. I had also posted quite a rant on the lack of research done before chosing the setting, unrealistic names and situations in the German Middle Rhine region.
The protagonist's last name, pronounced in German (sounding exactly like "foot") a dialect form of the c-word, makes the book almost untranslateable....

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (SL 2012, read September 2012)

I've already posted some thoughts on this book, but I don't want my criticism on the location have a negative impact on my rating. Maybe Moore chose the Rhine area because it is such a landmark and so well known, but it doesn't play any role in the story which could as well be set anywhere else.

What did influence my rating was the ending which I found unsettling and not really being in context with the rest of the story. Therefore 4 stars instead of 4.5.

The plot: Futh is a middle-aged guy, recently seperated from his wife Angela.
His mother has left the family when he was still a kid, she simply disappeared, just after a holiday by the coast where Futh had learned some things about lighthouses from his father. The next holiday had lead Futh and his father to the Rhine area in Germany, for a hiking trip. Now after having been left by the other important woman in his life, Futh wants to repeat that trip, and while he is on his way, his memories take him back to his childhood, to the last holiday with his parents, to his meeting Angela. Some critical memories come back to him more than once during the trip, he arrives there from different starting points, which I found very interesting and realistic.

Futh starts his tour in Hellhaus and the hotel of the same name, a fictional German place whose name translates into 'light/bright house' but seems to be closer to a 'hell house'. The hotel is managed by Ester, a German woman in her 40s, and her bad-tempered and violent husband Bernard. The book also follows Ester's story and her thoughts during Futh's circular hiking trip which will eventually end where it began - in Hellhaus.

The writing only seems to be simple at first glance with its short sentences. I loved how present (Futh hiking) and past (his memories) interchanged almost imperceptibly. Often I had to reread a sentence to check whether it was written in past or present tense because I had lost orientation, just like Futh does on his trip with losing the track, losing buses, not being able to find any food...
Then there are all the symbols and images, the various lighthouses, the smells of violets and oranges... I am sure there are many elements which I'd enjoy even more on a 2nd read.

Really, this is a very good book and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it - with the one reservation that you please shouldn't read it if you are feeling low and depressed. It could be subtitled 'pointless lives of middle-aged people'. Those are characters whose lives are completely (and I mean it) irrelevant for those around them. They exist, but they seem like shadows, unable to make a home in the world they live in.

Rating: 4 stars

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (SL 2012, read September 2012)
Old India vs. new India. Bombay vs. Mumbai. Opium, slowly consumed, vs. a quick shot of heroin or a crack pipe. Lots of dirt. Religious and political riots. Pointless killings. The characters in this book experience the outside world mostly through drug dazed eyes, but change is merciless and doesn't stop at the old opium dens. I found this book very well written and couldn't put it down for long, although I didn't like the almost glorification of the opium world.
Rating: 3.5 stars

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twang Eng (SL 2012, read October 2012)
I liked this book and I couldn't put it down. It is slow-paced and still I read 25% on day 1 and all the rest on the second day. It is quite an irresistible mixture of many elements I've encountered before, with the exception of the history of Malay(si)a which was all new to me.

I couldn't get rid of the feeling though that the book was maybe just a little too calculated, sometimes almost a bit clichéd. I could always predict the next step, nothing really came as a surprise. And as I said above, it always stayed on the surface and looked pretty. Even the dreamlike writing at times seemed as if it had to give the impression of a zen-like state of meditation, and therefore there are all the typical short and sparse sentences.
But as I wrote - I enjoyed it a lot and therefore I rated it with 4 stars.

Umbrella by Will Self (SL 2012, read October 2012)
I think it was the guardian's review that called the style 'old school modernism'. Not sure if Will Self likes this classification and wouldn't prefer to be 'modern modernism', but that's what it is. Virginia Woolf and James Joyce all mixed up and on three time levels. 400 pages, no chapters, long paragraphs and sometimes the transition between two time levels happens within a sentence so for a while you might not even notice that you are no longer in the 1970s but already in 2010. In my opinion the book was brilliant when the Virgina Woolf style prevailed. It would have been a worthy Booker winner, but it's not as groundbreaking as it maybe wants to be.
Rating: 4 stars

This one would now get no more than 2.5 stars from me, I must have been in a generous mood in 2012:

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (LL 2012, read October 2012)

The first half is amusing, but feels like being copied from numerous 'clumsy Englishman hiking in England' books I've read in the past. And the second half is over-the-top wannabe spiritual with a very cheesy predictable ending. But I respect that many people enjoy the book and possibly I just read it at the wrong time in my life. And it had 'something' (?) that kept me reading, I never felt like abandoning it.
And want to add: if H.F. is that helpless (in the beginning) in England, I can't really hold Futh's( The Lighthouse) extra clumsiness in Germany against him. According to these 2 books it clearly is a problem for a male English hiker to procure something as simple as a bottle of water for the day.
Rating: 3 star

Until today, Wolf Hall remains unreviewable for me, although it's one of my favorite books ever:

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Winner 2009, read March 2011)

I am really sorry, but the task of writing a review for this one is too demanding for me right now. I might add something later, but for now I can just say that I loved this book, although reading it felt like hard work at times. Especially in the first quarter before I got used to the style and to the many characters, half of them having the first name Thomas.
I used wikipedia a lot to get some more information on the characters and I even enjoyed that (usually I avoid it and only get the most important information, but in this case I read much more than what is covered by this novel). I am hoping for a sequel!

Rating: 4,5 stars

*******

Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally (Winner 1982, read November 2011)

I read this one for the 1001 November group read, and though it was a bit of a depressing read (as could be expected from a Holocaust book) it was also quite entertaining. The writing style is a bit unusual, sometimes it felt like reading non-fiction, then again it was all novel-style. I liked the way Oskar Schindler was portrayed, as a man with numerous faults, who for whatever reason (it is never explained why) suddenly decided to do his utmost to save as many Jews as possible from death in one of the concentration camps.

As everyone else I watched the movie, though not in a theater - I just couldn't bring the idea of a realistic Holocaust movie and the usual movie night together. It has been shown on German TV several times, and always without the usual commercial breaks. In my opinion, the movie is a very good adaptiation. Spielberg shortened the bits that would have lead to confusion, combined some characters into one, but otherwise remained true to the book. In fact, he even 'undramatized' some things, which made the remaining parts still more impressive. He just found the right measure.

Oskar Schindler was a Sudetendeutscher - a German grown up in Sudetenland, a part of the Czech Republic that once belonged to the Austrian empire and where a big share of the population was of German descent. Half of my family has their origins there, my mother was born Sudetendeutsch, but the family settled in the West after the expulsion of all Germans by the Czech. Unfortunately the Holocaust has never been an issue discussed in this part of the family. Basically they had suffered too much during and after the war and never wanted to be reminded of those years. My grandmother left everything behind and escaped with 4 small children and a suitcase (my mother as the youngest just being born), all alone, as her husband (an ex soldier) had been taken as a prisoner and both her brothers had died on the East front.
It's weird, but you just didn't ask that kind of questions, unless people talked voluntarily. I am quite convinced that antisemitism in the East and also in my family was a 'normal' thing and that there was much more knowledge about the death camps than in the far West (where the other half of my family comes from).

In the book it is often mentioned how voluntarily some Polish and Czech people participate in the dispossession and ghettoisation of the Jews. Many Jews actually believed in the beginning that moving into the ghettos was a rational thing as they would be safe from assaults. I wonder how the Holocaust was dealt with in those countries where parts of the population actively supported the Nazi actions. Was it covered up and is antisemitism still existing to some extent or has it improved?

Anyway - time for rating: solid 4 stars

Thanks for posting all these reviews. I've enjoyed wasting time here this morning!

Wow! Splendid job, Nathalie! I think you've read more books from this year's longlist than anyone else I know of. Let's see...of the books we've both read we are in agreement about TransAtlantic, Harvest and The Spinning Heart, but I liked The Testament of Mary far more than you did. I skimmed your review of The Kills, as I'll start reading it tomorrow, and I suspect that I won't be that fond of A Tale for the Time Being and The Marrying of Chani Kaufman. I missed a word of your review of the last book, and as a result I initially thought you described it as "your usual chick-lit Jewish Orthodox environment", which surprised me, needless to say. :-)

Which longlisted book are you planning to read next?

Although I've only read five of the 13 longlisted books, I'd have to say that this seems to be a bit of a down year for the Booker, with several books that are good but not great, and books that were IMO far better choices for this year's longlist, such as The Hired Man and Americanah, were excluded.

I'll come back to read your reviews of books not on this year's longlist later this week.

#23: Thank you! There are 4-5 more somewhere on my older 75-threads which I'll post some time later.

#24: Thank you, Darryl!
Well, I always get a little obsessed with certain reading challenges. The Booker is also the only prize I want to follow in real-time, it's also quite a costly experience. I must buy all books anyway, so I don't have to wait until it's my turn at the library. It's a luxury, but I have no alternatives.
The only obstacles are the publishing dates - both Unexploded and The Lowland won't be available for me before mid-September, so my BP reading will come to an automatic halt very soon.

Which are left now? I am listening to We Need New Names which so far I don't see on the SL, although it is not a bad book. Then I'll have to get to Five Star Billionaire of which I loved the Kindle test chapter and hated the high price. But that makes only 12... oh yes, maybe I'll get to Almost English next although I am almost sure I won't like it much.

I just finished the second big book, The Luminaries, which is in most parts a brilliant work (if you enjoy classical adventure mysteries), but which towards the ending took a direction I found somewhat disappointing.

Finished Almost English which made me crave for a good old classic. I'll now take a short break from LL reading while finishing listening to We Need New Names. The only remaining published book in my region would be Five Star Billionaire which also has the "culture clash" motive like AE and WNNN, so I'll wait a bit with it.

I finished We Need New Names, so all I can do for now is buying Five Star Billionaire while waiting for the other 2 to be published in 2-3 weeks.

I rated WNNN with 3.5 stars. It gets rank 6 on my "personal liking" list and I don't expect it to be shortlisted.

Edit: Unexploded suddenly became available today, yay! So now there's only The Lowland left unpublished in my region.

Just updated my stats of previous winners and listed books and I found that of the winners I read only 13 until now but ZERO before I joined LT in 2008! The language is no excuse, the winners are usually published in Germany as well and I started reading English books more than 20 years ago.

Of the shortlisted books I had read 2 (out of now 19) in pre-LT times and of the longlisted books since 2001 I had read 3 (out of now 5).

LT and the 1,001 list have definitely improved my reading! :-)

I must continue to copy my reviews from my 75thread to the Booker thread:

A surprisingly short review for such a long book with such a complex story. Too complex to review. My recommendation is to testread the first chapter. I don't like adventure stories much, even despise stories in a cowboy or gold-mining setting. But by the end of the test chapter this story had me hooked and I couldn't put down the book for the remaining 800+ pages.
Give it a try!!



The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (SL 2013)

In short:

Good things:
- Amazingly talented young writer – I am in awe!
- Extremely well-done research
- Great setting
- Gripping old-fashioned storytelling for about 70-75% of the book

Less good things:
- The overall astrological motive has been done well, but the book doesn’t really need it
- The same goes for the idea that each chapter is half as long as the one before, it gets too hazy towards the ending
- The funny idea with the chapter introductions getting longer and longer while the chapters are getting ever shorter also was unnecessary
Spoiler alert:
- Star-crossed lovers??? Really??
Spoiler end

Hopefully Eleanor Catton will give us many more great books, I’ll soon read her first novel.
The nomination is deserved, I’d also put the book on the shortlist without thinking twice. Here’s a writer who loves her job, not a writer set out to create a success (The Kills).

But the book suffers in its last 25% a bit just from its author’s over-ambition. It ends in the past, before its starting point, and I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Only a couple of pages before the ending I realized I should have said goodbye to the characters a while ago because we wouldn’t return to their present time in 1866. I would have liked to see some side threads fully worked out, but that wasn’t possible within the limits of the given structure of stellar constellations and chapter lengths. It feels like the strong and lively story wants to break out of the restraining structure.

I would be quite happy if this book won the Booker, but I don’t think it will.

Rating: 4 stars

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson (LL 2013) - contains many spoilers!

I don’t like to write negative reviews for books by beloved and talented authors. I would also greatly doubt my own judgment here had not Darryl (kidzdoc) read the book at the same time and expressed a very similar opinion.

There are glimpses of good writing to be found, and for that reason I’ll try another book by the author soon. But overall this wasn’t a good book for me.

For a beginning, there’s the structure: it is told from the viewpoints of 16year old Marina and her mother Laura, but their narrations switch too often, and it seems Mendelson tried to end each one in a kind of cliffhanger (usually the beginning of a new embarrassing situation for the respective character). So the reader jumps from what is meant to be peak after peak = annoying scene to annoying scene, and the reading becomes increasingly hectic.

Then the two voices are almost identical, it’s quite impossible to make out a difference between the equally immature emotional states of mother and daughter. If their names had not been mentioned early in each new passage, I often wouldn’t have known which of them was speaking now.

Then the story itself is weak. The premise was that it should deal mainly with Marina, daughter of British Laura and Hungarian Peter and her difficulties in her traditional English boarding school. Peter has left the family 13 years ago and since then Laura and Marina have been living with the in-laws (Peter’s mother and two aunts) in a 2.5 bedroom basement apartment in Bayswater. It is suggested that Marina’s upbringing in a Hungarian immigrant environment is the main reason for her problem of “feeling lost and foreign”.

My impression however was that Marina’s main problem was her immature mother who was not able to give her any self-confidence (how should she if she hasn’t any herself?). In her boarding school in Dorset Marina feels less foreign in the sense of “Hungarian” than foreign in the sense of being extremely timid and self-aware to the point of self-hating. And - haha! - extremely clumsy which makes for countless “funny” scenes which were so embarrassing that I just didn’t want to read them anymore. We all had to go through that stage in life and many will remind similar scenes. But so many in such a short time frame? That’s where the book felt like bad YA.

Then there’s Laura who has lived on the in-laws’ couch for 13 years, who has no life of her own except for a sad affair with her married boss. When Peter suddenly comes back, she doesn’t inform anybody which makes no sense at all. Instead she brings additional chaos into her own life and proves she didn’t learn in thing in the past 13 years. That’s where the book felt like bad “chick"-lit (are you still a "chick" at 41 years?).

Grandmother and the aunts would be funny to watch in a movie, but are, as Darryl expressed it, overbearing and suffocating. This is not exactly the warm, loving, homely atmosphere contrasting with a cold loveless school environment the author probably intended to show us and which I expected. I’d run screaming from that Bayswater house and happily instead spend a year or two in Combe. Where was that school exceptionally awful anyway? It’s a boarding school with a majority of male students, what should you expect?

The culmination of the story is ridiculous – we get supposed war crimes no-one wants to talk about, supposed cancer no-one wants to talk about, almost-rape no-one.… and a “funny” display of self-liberation. I can almost promise: if you managed to feel with Marina throughout the book, you are going to lose her on those last 10 pages. I’ve been a somewhat repressed teenager myself, but why should I have done THAT as a proof of my freedom??

Overall very painful read.

Rating: 2 stars

We Need new names by NoViolet Bulawayo (SL 2013 )

The story is told from the view of young "Darling", the first half describing her childhood set in Zimbabwe, the second half her teenage years living with her aunt's family in the US. The Darling of the first half is about 10/11 years old and in the audio version the narrator tried to speak with a child's voice and an African accent (which made the listening often difficult for me). It's no coherent story, each chapter covers a certain theme: child pregnancy/ abuse/rape, HIV/ AIDS, poverty, elections, rebellion against the white people, the futility of the gifts aid organisations bring (sweets and plastic guns). It's all overshadowed by the extreme poverty with Darling and her friends roaming the town's streets unsupervised looking for food. In the second half we see Darling growing older, the narrator's accent slowly turning American. She now faces completely different difficulties and life is far from what she expected.

Contrary to others I liked both parts equally, but maybe this was influenced by the much better understanding of the US episodes.

The child's voice as usual wasn't fully convincing (child's language, but too often adult thoughts) and while I liked the book it isn't exactly something new in a sense that it could be a BP winner. While I enjoyed it I don't really see it on the SL.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (2013 LL)

When this year’s LL was published I ordered Kindle samples of all the books then available. I liked this one best, but the price was so high that I decided to wait with the purchase. Now that I read it I found that it didn’t fulfill my high expectations, although it is a good book.

It tells the story of 4 Malaysians trying to become successful in Shanghai. There’s Phoebe, hoping to find a rich husband by pretending to be a successful business woman. Gary has won a talent competition and has a great career as a pop-star until he can’t take the pressure anymore. Yinhui has successful left her first business failure behind and made a restart with a chain of lingerie shops. Justin is different – he starts out as the rich heir of a family dynasty making their money with real estate, but when the family loses their money in the crisis he struggles to find a new way for himself. The four stories, told in episodes, are interrupted first by extracts from a “how to get rich” self-help-book, then with background information of the author Walter, told in first person. It quickly shows that there are interconnections between the now 5 characters, some paths are due to cross or already crossed in the past.

I had some difficulties with the timelines here – characters often remember experiences from the past, and also their “now” is not simultaneous. This becomes difficult when we start seeing their interrelations – for example 2 characters briefly meet in the narrative of the one, but in the narrative of the other one it is already a memory. In fact I saw this as a strength of the book, it shows there are no simple solutions, how easy it is to miss something/ someone that might be good for you.

On the other hand I would have preferred it if the stories had not been linked at all. So it was just another book of fates crossing and each character lost a bit of their own strength as soon as it was clear how they were related to the others.

I have to say something about Walter: FAT Spoiler warning:
He freaked me out from the very first moment, because he reminded me very much of a person I know from RL and who caused considerable damage in my personal life. So early on I had a clear idea where this was heading. It also slowed down my reading speed and I wasn't able to finish the book in August as planned, starting to squeeze in other books where possible.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Unexploded by Alison MacLeod (2013 LL)

Booker rant:
Maybe I’m Booker-weary, but the more candidates I read the more I just want to return to the classics section of the 1,001 list. Most of the candidate books are so exerted (?), they want to tell me too much on too few pages, want to be original and stylistically special. Can anyone please just give me a decent, well-told story? The Luminaries’ first 75 - 80%, before the structure took the reigns, were a great example for what I miss in the other books. The seemingly effortless balance of fiction and history in Transatlantic was another great experience, and – although that book should not have been listed at all!! – The Marrying of Chani Kaufman is a clean-cut romance story, enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t pretend to be more than it is.

With this book I already had issues when I read the Kindle test chapter, although I couldn’t say what it was I disliked. Now that the book is finished I know what it is, but the explanation will be a bit lengthy. Sorry in advance!

I am reading Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time and just started the third of three books set in Britain during WWII. It is certainly strongly influenced by Powell’s own experiences. The books manage to remain quiet yet are impressive. There’s Powell’s special beautiful language and he knows how to set his effects. When a bomb finally falls with devastating results, the stage has been prepared perfectly and the impact on the reader is very strong.

Then I just finished Siegfried Lenz’ The German Lesson and rated it with 5 stars. In a very limited setting (a tiny village on the German North Sea coast) Lenz succeeds to place everything that made WWII and the Holocaust possible, without even once mentioning the words “Jew”, “Hitler” or “Führer”. He takes two opposed characters and a “Malverbot”, a painting ban. Then he gives those elements all the room they need and the whole conflict of the German population is laid open.

Now Alison MacLeod tries to squeeze the following into her 337 pages:
- fear of invasion
- Blitzkrieg
- anti-Semitic and/or Hitler-friendly British people
- the British anti-spy program (the terrible prisoner camps for foreigners)
- cyanide capsules as last exit
spoiler warning for later chapters
- marriage crisis
- double “cross-racial” cheating
- degenerate art
- concentration camps
- medical experiments with children
- Mussolini mention
- counterfeit money
- neglected bored British children
- a story from the old testament (which yay!! unites the Christians and the Jews) as pattern for the whole private drama.

She must have been checking off a list (I had the same suspicion with the author of We Need New Names in the first half of that book). The whole look on the history is modern and therefore judgemental, and nothing remains subtle or is hinted at, she throws everything at our feet and we have to wade through it.

While the characters don’t speak with each other, the reader always knows who feels and thinks what and when. There’s nothing to discover as in the books mentioned above, nothing that gives you that sudden chill, makes you think “oh dear, now I understand… I had not expected that…”.

Btw. this is the second point I often don’t like about historical fiction, next to the “woman’s voice” – authors can’t let their characters be the way they should be in their historic setting without judging them. The hero/ine is usual a modern thinker with the correct values.

Another issue in this book is “Virginia Woolf”. Early in the story Mac Leod’s writing reminded me much of Mrs Dalloway and then I saw that her main character Evelyn is in fact a great admirer of Woolf, always schlepping her books around, reading from them, even visiting a lecture at some point. But MacLeod can’t keep up the Woolf-like writing, because that style simply doesn’t go well with too much action and all those dramatic feelings. Now it is courageous to play with an admired author’s style, but it is also risky. It works okay here in the quiet beginning but is then mostly abandoned and the remaining parts clash with the rest of the writing. I’d assume that Woolf went endless times over her texts until they sounded right for her. This should have been done here as well.

I rate the book with 3.3 stars because it wasn’t bad, it was just another case of wanting too much.

On the day of the announcement of the longlist, I finished the first book, yay! Okay, it took me until 11:45 pm, but I made it.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (2014 SL)

KJF is the author of The Jane Austen Book Club, one of the very few books I ever abandoned, and that was during a romance novel phase. God, I hated that book!
Many people expressed surprise that this book here was selected, but comparing it to last year’s list and not yet knowing any of the competitors, I see it as a possible SL candidate, a bit like 2013’s Ruth Ozeki book A Tale For The Time Being. Definitely not a winner though.

If you want to read this book, here’s a warning: Don’t read detailed reviews, don’t read spoilers and I heard you should better also not read the back of the paper copy. There is a big twist which is unveiled about 30% in, and if I had known earlier what it is about, the book wouldn’t have worked well, I would have been biased from the start. You can read on here, because I am not going to tell the big secret.

The book begins like your usual coming of age story. It starts in 2012 when Rosemary Cooke, aged 40, prepares the reader for her story by saying she will start in the middle. The middle is 1996, when young Rosemary is a somewhat aimless university student with “behavior issues”. She is quiet, has no friends, something is weighing her down. On the first pages the reader learns that her brother Lowell disappeared 10 years ago and is wanted by the FBI, and her sister Fern 17 years ago, both never to be seen again, and you can only wonder in what kind of family Rosemary grew up. What comes next still sounds like your typical YA story. Rosemary meets Harlow, a fellow student who shows some extreme behavior by making a scene in the cafeteria and thrashing furniture. Accidentally both girls get arrested by the campus police, and Rosemary starts befriending Harlow. Later in the book the reader will easily understand the attraction.

Small spoilers:
Then there’s a time jump to 1979. Five year old Rosemary is sent to her grandparents during summer for no apparent reason. When she returns, the family has moved into another house. And one member is missing, her sister Fern. In the next chapters the close relationship of the sisters is explained by the retelling of memories, but it also slowly becomes apparent that there’s something strange about Fern. I had a very clear idea at that point and that idea was completely wrong. And this is where I’ll stop with the plot.
End of small spoilers

I enjoyed the writing. It seems simple, and the book really is a quick read. But it’s insightful, well-structured (in my unprofessional opinion) and Rosemary’s voice is overall believable.

The last part of the stories for me had some flaws and unnecessarily dramatic developments for some side characters. Some readers might complain about the peaceful ending that’s probably less realistic than the rest of the book, but this is a book I didn’t want to be completely saddened by, so for me it was okay. It isn’t a book that makes you work hard as last year’s Harvest or 2012’s Umbrella, but it’s not the flat feel good novel you might expect from this author. I really enjoyed it and it was a good start.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Next up might be the Australian candidate, the Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanagan.

To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris (Booker 2014 SL)

I read a couple of reviews after starting this book. The first Kindle test chapter was full with dentist details, mainly about the importance of flossing, and I wanted to make sure not all the book would be equally repulsive. Some comments compared the story to Mr Penumbra, others recalled The Finkler Question. The one I disliked, the other one I quite enjoyed, so I gave this book a go. Well, it has certain similarities with TFQ and appealed to me in the same way for a short while. Thankfully, this is no Penumbra/ Harold Fry/etc. “how becoming a better person/ trusting the nice people at Google changed this solitary man’s life for the better” stuff.

It is difficult to write this spoiler-free, because there isn't much plot and all lines are set very early in the book and then just fleshed out. So what follows is really just the basis - no ending, nothing about the love life or if he finally buys the story of the Ulms or not.

The protagonist is a successful dentist in Brooklyn. He is single, having separated from his co-worker/secretary Connie just a couple of months ago. His dental hygienist Mrs I-forgot-her-name-already is a devout Catholic and from time to time tries to lead him onto the “right path”. While his professional life is quite a success, Paul’s private life is a different story. His father, an ardent fan of the Red Sox, committed suicide when Paul was nine years old, and he never processed that experience. He clings to his own fanship of the Red Sox in an unhealthy way, rewatching old games every night while having take-out, because he tells himself: “games night is an excuse to be solitary and if every night is games night, life can’t be too bad”. Since early childhood (since his father’s death) he tries to find a sense and real companionship by intruding into religious (warm, family-like) communities by falling in love with women belonging to it. He loses himself in those relationships and his attempt to become part of “something” he can’t grasp. Connie has been his Jewish “experiment”, and like the Catholic one before, it went wrong because Paul has no basic belief. He wants to be part of the group, learn the history, participate in the rituals, but he can’t share the faith in the respective form of god and his words.

It might have been interesting to see how Paul finds a (hopefully sugar-free) way out of his misery. But no, Ferris had a different idea. Early in the book Paul notices that “someone” has hijacked his online life. Someone started a website for the dental practice, someone is leading discussions in his RL name in the Red Sox forum, and that someone uses him to spread information about an obscure stone-old Palestinian cult, the “Ulms” and even makes anti-Semitic remarks in his name. The identity hijacking and manipulation of someone’s personality via internet could also have been an interesting story (especially given recent events), but no – Paul quickly gets involved in the idea of the Ulms, a religion believing in god, but at the same time doubting his existence.

I disliked everything about the cult, I disliked the way Paul and other (non-)believers handled it, I disliked the ending. I really got his need to belong and all his mechanisms repressing his feeling of solitude. But what do I learn from this book?

The book gets 3 stars because I could relate to Paul and because it wasn’t sugary and funny enough to make me laugh out loudly several times and because it made me think about my own religious experiences. But a Booker candidate? Well, I liked it better than 2013's Almost English and The Kills and 2012's Harold Fry fluff. Maybe there will be a discussion on the book's thread and someone will explain what I missed... :)

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt (Booker 2014 LL )

What a book! I must warn you that I might have taken this story far too personal and that this surely has influenced my rating and my interpretation.

The book pretends to be the authentic story of the deceased artist Harriet “Harry” Burden, but it’s fictional. The introduction is already part of the story and should be read (I usually skip introductions which are often full of spoilers). Harriet, it should be mentioned, was never a conventional beauty. A big women over 6 ft tall, voluptuous, with “crazy hair” and a loud voice, with a fondness for hats and colorful clothes, she never really fit into the artists’ world, at least that’s what she’s been feeling all her life. She has been married to super-successful art dealer Felix Lord and during her marriage completely neglected her own work. After his death she re-emerged, but decided to present her art not under her own name but to use instead 3 different men as “masks”. All three shows were successful, but when she tried to go public with the truth, no-one believed her, and one of her masks, extremely handsome Rune, turned against her. This is what the reader learns already in the introduction. The book then follows Harriet’s life, using extracts of her various notebooks, interviews with partner and children, friends and enemies, newspaper clips, etc.. What emerges slowly is not a simple black and white story about “that poor woman as a victim of the male art world”. There are many layers to Harriet and to her fears and I am sure there are many ways to read and understand this book.

I read the few comments available on LT. One reader got really worked up, saying that Hustvedt did bad research because modern art has in fact been dominated by women since the 1990s. For me, the art absolutely wasn’t the point, Harriet might as well have written poetry or theater plays.

I understand this as the story of a woman who tries to find her voice in a world that she is convinced (and that is the point imo) doesn’t want to listen to her.

In my personal stuff posts on my 75 books thread I wrote about self-sabotage. I believe that this is exactly what Harriet is unconsciously doing. Her parents gave her the feeling of being “wrong” in some way. She grew up and took the first hesitant steps into the world she has in fact been made for, because she did have an incredible talent, a “huge voice”. And then she fell in love with a much older man who was like her father and who had a profession that would automatically be an obstacle for her development as an artist. And the first thing he demanded was that she cuts off her wild hair! How symbolic is that?? And when she finally discovered her freedom after his death, she still didn’t dare stepping out, because for 60 or so years she had internalized that no-one wanted to see or hear her, and so she used those masks, unable to face another rejection.

Some spoilers following which were merely my interpretation – I wrote this before finishing the book and in the last 10% Harry herself gets there – so I was right, and better skip if you are planning to read the book!
Rune clearly was a mirror-man. With him she created her best art, based on her deepest fears, but from the start it was clear he’d betray her and turn her into exactly the ridiculous person in the eyes of the world that she still believed to be. Because that’s what she instinctively chose him for. I was really wondering why her childhood-friend-turned-therapist Rachel or her regular therapist she has been seeing for years were not able to make her notice that. There was all that helpless rage in Harry against all those people/men who reduced her, but in the end it was rage against her father and against herself, because once her childhood was over she always took care not to speak out/ to have someone around who cut her off. Then, oh so symbolically, when she was at her worst ever and bursting with rage after the Rune letdown, the cancer diagnosis arrived (there is that esoteric theory that resentment can be an element in the development of tumors, Harry even addresses that as “bad irony”).

Self-sabotage aside - is this book feminist, just looking at the plain story? Yes, but Hustvedt’s misogynists are not so much in the public, they are in the families. It all comes back to Harry's lack of self-esteem and poise. If you have lots of it, you can sell trash. If you have none, the most brilliant work will be rejected. She was also convinced to be ugly (while some male voices in the book call her pretty) and the 3 young men she selected as masks were all very handsome in different ways. If she just wanted to prove the gender problem, why didn’t she select a 60 year old man in bright dungarees as mask at least for one of her shows?

Smaller Spoilers: So what if a self-confident Harriet had stepped out of her box? She might have been rejected, yes. At first. But a liberated Harriet, with her financial background, most probably wouldn’t have cared. She would have trusted her art and her voice and persevered. She would have been able to create without using a man as a tool (not to be confused with a muse!) to unleash her art. And the world would have embraced her eventually – because her art isbrilliant - if she had made herself a constant presence, if she had claimed and taken the place she deserved. After her husband’s death she had all the money and all the freedom and was ultimately unable to escape her own boundaries. There’s an interesting counterexample in the book in the character of that esoteric aura-seeing Pinky girl. With a much worse upbringing she managed to follow her path and while she meets with open rejection all the time, she shrugs it off and just walks on. I loved it that she and Harry meet again in the end, and those scenes around Harry’s slow and painful death of cancer are heartbreaking.

Rating: 4.5 stars

You're off to a great start on the Booker longlist, Nathalie! Do I remember correctly that you were the only member of this group that read all of last year's Booker Dozen?

>37 kidzdoc: Hi Darryl! Yes, I read them all (don't know if I was the only one) and I believe even before the SL announcement, at least all the then published ones.
I have an annoying tendency to overdo when I take those challenges, that's why I try to avoid them (like that bingo bullet thing that everyone's doing this year).
2012 I got into the challenge only after the SL was out and managed to read at least those 6.
Can't do that every year though. This year's August will be busier, so I doubt I'll get the other 10 read in time.

The Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanigan (Booker 2014 SL )

This was a hard fight because this book belongs to a genre I normally avoid: contemporary fiction looking back on some terrible real events and mixing in romance to add drama or to attract more readers. In the movies it’s "Titanic" (only seen on TV and never completely) or "Pearl Harbour". I simply don’t get it: you have all the drama in the historic event. Everything that’s added will be too much. For me, at least. Because I found that 2star comment on amazon, saying something like “didn’t interest me, at least there was the romance”. So there are readers attracted by that, just not me.

Plot: many Australian POWs of the Japanese in WWII were sent to build the Burma railway in the middle of the jungle. The pace was murderous, add the climatic circumstances, severe hunger, monsoon, no showers – the men were dying like flies of ulcers and other injuries, cholera, malaria, they were just wasting away. Dorrigo Evans is one of the POWs, he’s the camp doctor and does his possible to save at least some of them. I guess the descriptions of life in that camp couldn’t be more graphic and it has certainly still been much worse. But the camp scenes make just about 25% of the book. There’s also old Dr Evans, confronted with his memories again when he has to write the foreword to a book about the railway camps. Over the years he has become an icon of humanity in the worst circumstances and yes, in Flanigan’s camp narrative he often enough behaves like a saint among many weaker humans. Then there’s the Japanese, and I liked it that Flanigan gave their thoughts and post-war lives some room. We also see that it’s not the officers in the camps who later get punished for their cruelties, it’s mainly the low-ranks, often not of Japanese origin. And then there are the chapters about the ex-prisoners returning to normal life and their various experiences.
I thought those parts were well written and gripping and I would have rated this with 4 stars.

But then there was the love drama. I mean – it’s okay, that Evans doesn’t really love his fiancée Ella. It’s okay for the story that their marriage isn’t that great and his constant cheating is something that doesn’t touch me. But Amy seemed like someone from another world. And the more I read, the more she became an add-on. If you read the almost Amy-free parts and then part 2 which is all Amy, it feels like you’re reading two different books. Everything in that part screams “worst of Hollywood”. There is that indescribable “magnetism” between them, and oh my – how long do they resist the temptation! And then she’s his “uncle’s” wife. And then she stumbles over some wire and has a scratch ON HER THIGH and he SUCKS OFF THE BLOOD (this became sexy with the Twilight books I guess, but in the 1940s wasn't it just "eeeew"?), and oh god, it’s magic and still they resist and don’t do it, that happens just an hour or so later, but then it’s WORLD-CHANGING!!. Well, after reading the first 3 chapters with the time jumps, you just know that Amy is “cannon fodder”. She has to die on the way, because otherwise, why wouldn’t they be together in old age? Well, the truth is much simpler and not dramatic at all and makes Amy even more seem like a late add-on following publisher directions.
And I also wonder if THE REVELATION (which has nothing to do with Amy) Evans’ brother makes on his death bed was added and why, because it leads nowhere at all.
Zero stars for the extra drama.

I really don’t know what to do about the rating now. I could rate with three, but at times I was so angry with this book and really close to abandoning it that I am inclined to go below the three.

For now: 2.5 stars

*********

Edit October 15th: I still don't know where the beautiful writing and the compelling story were hidden except of course for the chapters dealing with the war events. Of the whole LL (and this includes Ferris!) I thought it was the most traditionally or should I say conventionally written book without freshness or courage in the storytelling.
With all the unnecessary romance drama and the frequent scene cuts it was like reading a Hollywood movie I wouldn't want to watch. And then - even I know Ulysses by heart and I love it, so just because it is so popular I wouldn't put it into the focus so much and instead challenge my readers with something less known.

Yes, overall I am quite disappointed that this book won. I knew Ali Smith's book had too many flaws, doesn't appeal to many and isn't harmonious, but I just love it when writers dare to bend the traditional novel form, trying to move writing forward instead of remaining in a comfortable safe place.

It's also interesting that one of the books with the least actual political relevance has won, the only other one (with no relevance at all in any direction) would be "Us" by David Nicholls. The Flanagan book at least covers a historical episode which so far has been neglected. But even Mukherjee ends his book with an unpromising look into the present. Flanagan's story is one you can easily put aside because it doesn't have to do anything with your personal life.

History of the Rain by Niall Williams (Booker 2014 LL )

Ruth Swain is young, under 20, and she is very ill. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it sounds like some type of leukemia to me. She has to stay in bed, in the small attic room of the family home, where she’s watching the never-ending rain falling on the roof light.

Her Nan is over 90 and can't come upstairs any more, so they have to communicate by screaming through the house. Then there’s Mam, and slowly we learn that there has been a Dad as well for a long time. And there has been Aeney, Ruth’s twin brother, her golden second half. Ruth is an extreme reader and from her Dad she inherited all his books, over 3,000, which she is determined to read during her lifetime and in which she hopes to find the father she has lost long ago, while he still was physically there. Ruth’s narrative is filled with book references and she has a perfect memory of characters and events. She writes down her family’s story and gives it to her critical ex-teacher Mrs Quinty to read. As Ruth didn’t really know her father’s part of the family, the Swains from England, she uses the classic novels she has been reading and some Irish mythology to spin her own version of the events – the way her father did by using motives of Moby Dick when he told her and Aeney about his life before coming to this remote Irish village.

This is meant to be writing by someone who doesn’t get out, who lives in an inside world of thoughts and stories, and imo Niall Williams has done this perfectly. I especially loved the way how Ruth weaves recent real events like the financial and building crisis into the story, with half-sentences and side remarks, but when the book is finished you have a good idea of how strong the community has been affected. To stay with the metaphor, if Ruth’s story is a fabric, the thread that holds it all together is love. Real warm affectionate love for friends and family, and that’s why Ruth and her Mam and her Nan, despite everything that happens to them, remain positive and accepting. Over the book Ruth’s health situation deteriorates, but the book ends differently from what I had feared. That last part, last sentence moved me so much that I really started crying over the book, but it was some sort of happy crying, like my heart needed more room and I couldn’t breathe.

The “worst” thing about the book is that you’ll drop whatever other modern book you’re reading, just to turn to Dickens, Stevenson, Austen, Hardy, Melville and all the other great classics.

For me, this is a serious candidate for the prize. And therefore I fear it won’t even get shortlisted, like last year’s Transatlantic which still remains my favorite of the 2013 LL.

Rating: 4.5 for now

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth (Booker 2014 LL) - contains only small spoilers

I had some problems with the pseudo old anglo-saxon Latinism-free English Paul Kingsnorth has invented for his novel, but I quickly got used to it. I checked the glossary twice and in both cases I didn’t find the words I was looking for – probably because they were close to some modern English expression I don’t know. Instead I found easy-for-me words like “fugol” (bird, Vogel in German) or petersilie (parsley, Petersilie in German until today). I read many passages aloud, most probably mispronounced most words, but enjoyed this half-poetic language enormously. Paul Kingsnorth writes in his notes that he used it because for him modern language in historical fiction feels fake. Yes, it gave a new authentic feeling to the book although it also simplified the protagonists thoughts and the characters’ dialogues in a way that I was wondering if those people might have been that “simple-minded”. Let’s see…

The protagonist is Buccmaster of Holland. That’s a name, not a title. He is the richest landowner in his ham/village and while he has no official functions like the thengn, he is used to be consulted in all questions. He lives with his wife Odelyn whom he beats when “necessary”, i.e. when she gan agan him (= doubts his decisions) as sadly was the custom then. There are also two teenage sons plus two male and one female geburs (servants). One day he sees a strange fugol/ bird, and from then on things are starting to change. King Harald calls an army against a supposed attack from the Normans and Buccmaster’s sons both join the party against his will. They return after 6 weeks without action, but after a couple of days are called again, this time against the Danes in the North. While the army is up North, Normandy attacks from the South and the battle of Hastings is fought and won by the French, Guillaume becomes king. Buccmaster’s sons don’t return from the battles and he then loses everything when he and others from his ham refuse to pay the new taxes (geld). He goes into hiding in the woods, is joined by two other men and they begin planning an uprise against “the frenc”.

This sounds like a lot of action, but in reality nothing much happens. The whole big battle happens far away and is later retold. For Buccmaster this isn’t just a war between anglisc and frenc, it is also a war between gods. Like his grandfather he is a pagan with a spiritual connection to nature, always seeing signs and hearing voices speaking to him. The sword his grandfather gave him is said to have been made by Welend the Smith, a mystical character who often whispers orders into Buccmaster’s ears. He starts to believe he’s the ceosan one, the one who’ll lead England back to old Anglo-Saxon glory and back to the old faith. At the same time he is strangely hesitant when it comes to fighting the frenc or joining other usurpers. Towards the middle of the book the reader begins doubting Buccmaster’s reliability, and for a while I felt stupid and thought I just wasn’t getting it. But those doubts are intended and reflected in the feelings of his followers. Sometimes I had to laugh about a certain “clumsiness” the ceosen one demonstrates, for example when he tries to kill a pig – something he should be used to do as a landowner, but clearly isn’t. No, he isn’t the brightest one, but he is filled with an indestructible arrogance against all those anglisc people he believes to be in a lower class. Two years after losing his house and land he still calls himself a great landowner and refuses to listen to an ex-gebur. I liked him less and less, and for a while believed that I was supposed to root for him as the story’s hero.

That’s a great trick Paul Kingsnorth plays on the reader: the language is simple, the narrators thoughts are simple, so the reader supposes the story must be simple as well. It isn’t, and discovering this made me finally love this book which is now among my top 3 on the LL. I’ve now finished just 6 of 13 and already rated 3 with more than 4 stars. On last year’s LL I had just one 4.5 star book, Transatlantic which didn’t even make it onto the SL and then The Luminaries with 4.25.

If you want to give it a try, I suggest you read a couple of pages in the library/book shop/ ebook test chapters and see how you cope with the language. Take your time, this isn’t meant to be a quick read. In my opinion it’s absolutely worth the effort - and I have been doubting this for a while, thinking it was just another mediocre historical novel with a language gimmick. This is a great composition and (what happens rarely) I’d like to reread it soon.

Rating: 4.3 stars (==> 4.5)

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee (2014 SL)

Two quotes first:
“Poetry, I bid you goodbye today.
The world is prosey with hunger
The full moon is like a piece of singed bread.”

“… that all this talk about ‘the outside world’ turned round to one thing only: what the outside world made of your own life. You were forever at the center of things, the subject of the sentence; it was not the outside world you were thinking of, but where you stood in the regard of that world. He wanted to say to his father that others thought about their own lives too, perhaps more often, more deeply, than they did of his fathers’s”

“He” is Supratik, the book’s protagonist, the oldest grandchild in the house of the Goshes in Kalkutta. The book is set in the late 1960s until 1970, with numerous jumps far back to the youth of Supratik’s grandparents and the following generation.

On retrospect, this might become the greatest book for me on this year’s Booker LL. Certainly not the nicest one and by far (so far) the most uncomfortable one. It hits you on the head, over and over again, and just when you think you can lean back comfortably, thinking “well, those were the bad times, but now everything has changed”, the book makes a last jump into 2012 and you’ll lose that illusion as well. I love this book, but should you set out to read it, be prepared for lots of desperation, some graphic violence especially towards the ending and then something really disgusting I don’t think was necessary for the plot. This isn’t an important spoiler, so I’ll warn you: When Priyo sets out to a brothel, or when he opens the bathroom door to find his sister inside… don’t eat, put all food aside. Or maybe skip altogether the next couple of paragraphs. That’s a sexual practice I’ve heard of, but wasn’t planning to read about. Be also prepared not to especially like anyone, although Mukherjee will make you feel at least some pity or sympathy for most characters.

The book begins with an intro that for a long time seems unconnected to the rest of the story and sets the tone for some harsh scenes the reader has to expect in this book. A poor farmer, after 3 years of drought and days and days without any food, in an act of desperation kills his wife, his three little children and commits suicide.
Then, with chapter 1, the book turns into a classic family saga, rich in words and with a vast list of characters. The Goshes have made a nice fortune with paper mills and are among the best-respected families in their part of the town. From the first chapters on however, Mukherjee makes it obvious that the opinion of the ‘outside world’ is what counts most. In the first couple of chapters the family members are introduced by showing them doing some typical tasks on a certain day at the same time while one of the daughters-in-law calls her teenage daughter Buli back from the terrace “because what should the neighbors think”. That call is the connecting element in those scenes, and I liked the idea.

The family story is then regularly interrupted by diary entries in a different print. Those are linear while the family story jumps back and forward in time. At first the reader doesn’t know who is the writer of the diary and only much later he learns for whom this diary is written and why. I won’t give away much when I say it’s written by Supratik who sets out with two friends to a remote village to spread communist messages and to lead the rice farmers against the oppressive land owners and the corrupted police. He experiences almost two years of extreme physical hardship, living with the farmers, learning their work and starving with them, before planning the first attack.

I was annoyed at each interruption of the saga with diary entries and then again when the diary was interrupted with more saga. Both parts are equally captivating in different ways. Reading the diary, I grew more and more desperate with the hopelessness of the farmers’ situation. Reading the saga, I felt more and more oppressed by the traditional family structures and the impossibility to escape, like being in a box with the walls coming closer. The structure can be confusing in the beginning, but it makes sense and it works. In the family part I felt sometimes reminded of One hundred years of solitude, I can’t say why, maybe it was that growing feeling of doom.

The list has been accused of not being international enough and I can say that so far “navel-gazing” (as Darryl calls it) novels, set in some comfy Western world environment, dominate. Fortunately for me, I liked most of them. This book falls out of that category. It's 100% India, and comfy it might look only in the first chapters. Supratik tries to make “the (improvement of the) lives of others” his main concern, but at some point has to question his own motives and his priorities.

I have no doubts it’ll make it onto the shortlist, if not win the prize. Great and intelligent storytelling and important as well. Maybe my new favorite.

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Dog by Joseph O‘Neill (2014 LL)

My 3.8 (4) stars rating is a temporary one because I feel I should read O’Neill’s lauded earlier work Netherland before deciding. Readers often criticize a prize jury’s selection a certain author’s work, claiming that his earlier (overlooked) novel(s) is/are better and usually I don’t care and just look at the one book before me. Here however I was surprised that all of the amazon reviews (until a couple of days ago) were negative and referred to Netherland as a great work and to this one as a shallow plotless copy although most of them admit the writing is great.

That the writing is great was my impression as well, but I guess it’s not for everyone’s taste. I love pagelong sentences and I LOVE brackets. And O’Neill’s non-hero does what I never dared doing: he puts brackets in brackets, like in maths, and takes great care to close them all when the argument is finished which might look like this: )))))). He also loves argumentative lists and formulates e-mails and comments in his head without ever really writing/ sending them, we have that in common. That writing style + all the navel-gazing (have to use Darryl's expression again) and you got a result I really enjoyed but many will hate.

“He” (his real name is never mentioned) is an American with Irish and Swiss roots who after a very bad break-up from his colleague Jenn after a 9year relationship follows the call of his Lebanese ex-school friend Eddy to work for the family corporation and to move to Dubai. In Dubai he leads the typical expat life, or at least what all non-expats expect to be typical. Work isn’t hard, is paid well enough and he asks no questions. As everyone is constantly on the move from one expat destiny to the next, real friendships can’t be built and no-one seems to need them. Contact to the locals is almost impossible. Money is easily earned, great apartments are available in impressive buildings, even alcohol, porn and prostitutes are easy to find in that Muslim country. But he has the ambition to do things “right”. If there’s slave labor in the building industry, he makes sure to donate some of his earnings to Human Rights Watch. If he sleeps with prostitutes, they must be “friends” of a friend, and what he wants from them more than everything is that they are nice. This guy clearly is deeply unhappy and has been so all his life. He has been unhappy throughout the relationship with Jenn, and while some readers might think “what an a**hole” while reading about the breakup, I thought the woman was just as delusional as him. You can’t expect happy married life if being in the same room has been such impossibility for so many years.

Some little action comes up when Ted, one of the expats and a guy who lives in the same building, goes missing. It quickly comes out that Ted lead a double life with one wife in the US and one in Dubai. Well wishes and condolences on his facebook page quickly turn into a shitstorm and “he” wonders about the power of social networks that can build you up and destroy you in a minute. He stays away from all that but in the end has to realize that nowadays you can’t hide, that everything is manipulable, that an existence can also be destroyed offline and that no-one is to be trusted in the end.

So yes, it’s another self-centered novel about a wealthy single guy in his 30s. I have no issue with that, everyone is entitled to have problems, independently from their earnings and to think about them a lot. Why not? But it’s also a novel that doesn’t tell the reader anything new. The expat life in Dubai with all its temptations and risks, the results of the building crisis, the power of social media… it was a bit like reading a book (or at times a lifestyle magazine) from 2010, not 2014. The observations are sharp, it reminded me of a more moralistic modernized American Psycho or Money, without all the violence and the drugs.

Rating for now 3.8 stars

Orfeo by Richard Powers (2014 Booker LL)

I read up on RP today on wiki and wasn’t surprised to see that he “is into” science and music. I was however surprised that he is into IT as well because there are some inconsistencies late in the book where you’d expect the contrary.
I listened to this book on audio which is always quite a different experience and I am not sure I got all the musical references.

The story has multiple levels:
First there’s the today story. The protagonist Peter Els, ex-teacher, ex-composer, now in his early 70s, calls 911 when his beloved dog Fidelio suffers a stroke. The police arrives and notices his private lab. A day later, new investigators turn up, take a look, notice more suspicious stuff like the print of an Arab song text. When Els returns from his jogging the next morning he finds his house surrounded by police and his apartment being stripped of everything. He understands he is suspected of bio-terrorism and goes into hiding, but not before giving a last and most impressive music lecture in a retirement home. His escape and confrontation with the three most important people from his old life frame the story. And yes, it’s another take at the ‘our democracy is fragile and we are in danger to destroy it from within’ theme. I believe the book wanted to be finished together with the Roth I read parallely for the American Author Challenge in the 75 group. (Now I am wondering which approach to the same theme Howard Jacobson’s dystopian J will take)

The second level is the usual looking back on his life (yay, navel-gazing again!). Blessed with an incredible talent and ear for music, young Peter concentrates on the avant-garde movement although it would have been easy for him to write the odd pop song to make some money. But he decides to stay true to his ambitions although that costs him everything in his private life. He spends most of his life in solitude, composing pieces no-one will ever hear. Around 1990 his old friend, the dramatist Richard Bonner seeks him out and together they realize an avant-garde opera about the 1530 siege of Munster. The premiere coincides with the Waco siege and again Peter retracts from the world of composing. (I had to look that up, it’s an event that’s not exactly burned into my European brain. And tbh I absolutely didn’t get Els’ scruples here. Those things happen, you certainly didn’t wish for them, but doing what he did? Why?).

Level 3 is where Powers inserted into his story what I believe were prepared analyses of musical pieces that influenced him. Those were the brilliant parts and I’d buy the paper/e-book just to use them as references when I’ll have the occasion to listen to the original music.

Where the story didn’t really fit for me was Els’ mega talent. Where would it have gone if he hadn’t been encouraged to follow it by the women in his life and by Richard? With all his solitary working away and extreme ambitions I wondered if he hadn’t developed a mania? The purpose of his genetic experiments and what he does in the last 2 audio chapters proves that for me. This was for once a self-centered protagonist to whom I didn’t find a connection, I stayed detached from him and his strange decisions throughout the read. Another thing I wondered SPOILER wouldn’t it be a question of minutes to locate a smartphone, especially if the holder twitters away??

Rating: 4 stars

J by Howard Jacobson (2014 SL )

What can I write about this book without spoiling the story and without doing what I absolutely refuse to do: serve the author’s intent? Not that much, except for a short preview of the setting.

Dystopian novel, set in the not too far future around 2085 I’d say. Decades after WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED happened. WHIIH are the events that lead to the UK now being a cut-off, unhappy place where thinking about history is not wished for and where happiness and love for everyone is prescribed but not followed. Violence abounds, mostly against women as the weaker ones and because an object for real hate is missing. Jacobson’s idea is that mankind needs a “necessary opposite”, otherwise the rage and hatred that is innate in them finds no outlet and will be lived out with the nearest and should-be dearest. In this world, in a remote village by the sea, Ailinn and Kevern are thrown together – by fate or by some strange plan – and fall in love. Both are different, both are not popular, not part of the village community, although Kevern has been born there. Both are orphans and know nothing of their family history. Ailinn lives with Ez, an older woman she met not long ago, after having left the Catholic orphanage where she spent her childhood. Kevern lives on his own after his parents’ deaths, in a small cottage that holds far more antique furniture and family heirlooms than the law permits. He believes to be watched and follows some strange rituals to make sure he’ll detect eventual visits by intruders into his home, without knowing what nourishes that feeling. From his father he also took over the habitude to pronounce words beginning with “J” only by placing two fingers on his lips, again not knowing why.

Kevern is right, he is being watched by a neighbor who provides long reports that bit by bit give the readers an insight into WHIIH. The neighbor has no idea why he is ordered to watch Kevern and who is behind it all.

For the first 50% I felt intrigued by this book. There are subtle hints, but they seem so far off that I thought I was on a wrong track, and I wish it had been so. At around 55% Jacobson stops with the hints and starts throwing bricks at the reader and doesn’t ever stop again.

Now while there is much that speaks for this book and while the bitter-sweet love story was so touching, there are many things I don’t buy of which I can mention only two. I don’t believe we need objects for hatred in our lives. And I don’t believe Jacobson’s “vehicle” here would be the trigger for the big "apocalypse". Maybe he should get out more.
If I wrote anything more about the reasons why I strongly disliked the second half, I’d be jumping on the wagon he so lovingly prepared and I refuse to do that. At least for now. Among other things I feel personally offended by this book and if I told you why you’d know more than you should about WHIIH before even starting the book.

I rate with unobtrusive 3 stars because I refuse to show my opinion in my rating.
I’d say a safe candidate for the SL, I hope not a winner. Why I hope so? Because – independently from my issues – some of the other books I read were simply better.

Maybe Jacobson has succeeded in writing a book that's uncriticizable.

Netherland by Joseph O‘Neill (2008 LL)

It’s like I thought – when you read both Netherland and The Dog, you’re likely to prefer the one you read first and see the other one as the same story in a not too different dress. I read the guardian’s lukewarm review for The Dog, and in the last paragraph they say as well they would probably have loved that book if Netherland didn’t exist.

Here we have a Dutch expat in New York instead of an American expat in Dubai. This expat was lucky to be given a name, Hans van den Broek, while the Dubai guy remained nameless. Both have gone through a difficult break-up. Hans makes an effort to be more social, he plays cricket in a team and works in a bank, so has some colleagues. 9/11 automatically adds some depth to Netherland and the character of Chuck was an interesting addition as well, as was Hans’ reaction to him, although I wish O’Neill had explored that a bit further. It’s as if O’Neill had thought “now I’ll take Hans and strip him off everything that connected him to the world – colleagues, wife, kid, friends/ (cricket) team buddies and a cultural surrounding that reminds him of home, and let’s see what’s left”.

I myself prefer The Dog – probably because I read it first, but also because I like the reduced setting and the writing. In comparison Netherland felt crammed with side stories and side characters that had not much influence on the development of the protagonist. And really – I have no connection whatsoever with either cricket or baseball and so the repeated droning on turf quality was tiring for me. Over long parts of Netherland I was just bored and I can see how readers who know and like this book will have the same problem with The Dog. You just know the guy already and in book 2 you’ll stop caring about him. I rated with 3.5 stars because it's not this book's fault I didn't read it first.

Rating: 3.5 stars

> 45 What a dilemma. You make me want to read this book now, triggered by your review, while I can imagine I'll crititize it afterwards just as you do.

How To Be Both by Ali Smith (2014 SL)

The book consists of 2 parts, called “Eyes” and “Camera”. The reader can decide to either read Eyes or Camera first and then the other part. The Kindle has both versions – Eyes, Camera, then starts again with Camera followed by Eyes. I don’t know how it’s done in the paper version or for the audio. I read Eyes before Camera and was quite happy with the result, but the links between both parts probably work better if Camera is read first. Camera ends where Eyes starts and Camera prepares for Eyes, but the other order has an own charm, it’s more fragile and I am very glad I read it that way.

In “Eyes” the first person narrator is Francesco del Cossa, an Italian painter in the 1400s. He wakes up in a museum in today’s London in his own painting and from then on is forced to follow one of the two people who have been watching his picture at the exact moment. The narrative moves between his confrontation with the modern world and memories of his life in Italy. He sees the work through his eyes mostly as an expression of colors and tries bring those into his paintings, with the difficulties that meant at his time. Colors were expensive, good colors were difficult to get. The person he watches uses a tablet camera to take pictures (so we can guess s/he will be important in “Camera”). Francesco describes himself as “both” and I don’t want to spoil here what that means.

“Camera” starts at an earlier point. Here the first-person narrator is Giorgia, called George, a teenager from Cambridge. Her mother has died some months ago and George remembers situations that in retrospect seem important, among those a trip to Italy last summer to see del Cossa’s frescoes. George is traumatized by her mother’s death and has no-one to talk to. She gets counseling at school but doesn’t open up. She has to look after her little brother and often also after her dad who copes with his wife’s death by going to the pub every night (the absence of the father for me was an element I must criticize, it wasn’t believable for me, just convenient – it made George’s part more of a construction than it needed to be). George might also be “both”, but doesn’t know yet where to place herself.

To be honest – if the book hadn’t offered many elements which I personally found inspiring, I’d probably say that this is a book where concept/ construction dominate storytelling to a point where the stories have some flaws and you can often see the scaffolding that holds it all together. Although it's a great scaffolding to look at! It reminded me of the 4th chapter in There But For The where another precocious child/teenage girl was too obviously used less as a character than as a stylistic device (not finding a better expression here, sorry).

For me this is a book I’ll certainly read again and probably find new inspiration again and again, but it’s nothing I’d wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.

Rating: 4 stars

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (2014 LL)

This is the quite spoiler-free review. I posted my thoughts on characters on the book's page here in the group.

Mitchell’s book consists of 6 parts, set between 1984 and the 2040s. All parts are written in first person narration, diary style with dates, and we have 5 different narrators. It won’t be surprising that the parts are connected. The book starts with the narration of Holly Sykes, a 15year old girl from Gravesend in England. After an argument with her mother she runs away from home and has some strange encounters which at that early point are unexplainable, but are slowly and almost too completely explained later in the book. The supernatural mystery element is strong in this first part which I really enjoyed. Holly was a character who came to life for me, from the first page on. For once not a super smart wunderkind, but a real teenager, with all the black-and-white thinking and the exaggerated reactions. I liked the narrators of parts 2 and 3 considerably less, and while #4 was basically unlikeable as well, there was a bitter-sweet element that made me enjoy that part. Part 5 is the longest and the one that explains everything. Part 6… the less said the better.

This would have been a quick read if I hadn’t slowed it down deliberately, knowing I had a week before the SL was out. Up to part 6 I enjoyed the book, but it never felt like “high literature” in any way and if I were a jury member I wouldn’t have put it on the SL either. The only other Mitchell I ever read was Cloud Atlas which I loved. I tried to read some of the others, but never even got through the test chapters. This book has some references to the older works which are even obvious for me who hasn’t read them, but that trick didn’t feel smart, it just felt unnecessary for me. I still don’t know where to place this book, I have no idea what was Mitchell’s intention. As I posted in a response to Peggy, this is “either a (wannabe) satirical approach to popular literature, a sad desperate try to be fully critically acclaimed again or just a lazily written work to keep a deadline. “

What annoyed me was that there were no surprise elements in part 5. The way it is constructed I had this list of elements in my head which might become important later. And they were then in part 5 all cleanly checked off that list.

Before part 6 I would have rated this with 3.7 or 3.8 as a fun read and because I loved Holly. With part 6 it just makes it to a weak 3.

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (Winner 1979)

This 1979 Booker winner hasn’t aged very well. It’s a short book about several people living on Thames barges anchored on “the Reach” in Battersea in the 1960s.

It’s an irretrievably lost world the reader is confronted with and s/he’s thrown into it without preparation. When I had finally found my way and recognized characters, remembered their story, knew to which boat they belonged, the story was already and very abruptly over again. The setting is wonderful and I would have loved to remain on those barges for a hundred pages or so longer, or I should say I would have loved to have started 100 pages earlier before the big meeting on the “Lord Jim”. Contrary to St Aubyn’s book, here I liked most of the characters and didn’t get to know them well enough to change my mind at any point. Post-war limitations are still present, men are old-fashioned and don’t let women carry things, (Catholic) single mothers don’t go to work and the kids’ teachers pray for the return of the estranged father… Even the language was different. It reminded me much of the Muriel Sparks and Iris Murdochs I’ve read so far, so it seems there was a typical “female author’s voice” in the 1960s and 70s.

Well, the book was very nice and as I said I wish it would have been longer, but I wonder if its literary value lies merely in the fact that it allows us just a coincidental glimpse into the lives of those people. Was that seen as fresh and modern in 1979?

Rating: 3.5 stars

"Us" by David Nicholls (2014 LL)

As soon as I had finished this book today during my lunch break, I walked to the supermarket to get something to eat. Standing there at the counter for ready meals confronted with the extremely boring and bland selection of food (yes, Italians still prefer home cooking over takeaway), I thought my lunch would be like the book I just finished and I was right.

David Nicholls does his work well in this genre of which I don’t know the name. At some point I got angry with story and characters and started arguing with them in my head – which is a good thing – but as it is typical for this genre he cleanly smoothed off all the edges in time for the ending, so that I don’t really have anything to complain. Siding with one character against the others? Not before having read all those scenes in the last third where he acts like an idiot. Disliking the kid and thinking he’s a spoiled brat? Then wait BIG SPOILER until he’s saved his dad’s life and found out he’s gay which of course explains all the earlier bratty behavior away as “insecurity” and altogether becomes so insightful from one day to the next. But if there’s nothing to complain about, there also isn’t anything to praise.

On page 1 or 2 Connie the wife tells Douglas the husband after 20 years of marriage that she might want a separation. Despite that new situation, they decide to set out on the long-planned family holiday with their 17year old son Albie who will leave for college after the holidays. The holiday will be a grand tour by train, taking them to Paris, Amsterdam, Munich and several places in Italy. In the course of this journey Douglas at length and in detail reminisces about his completely unremarkable relationship with Connie, from how they met until today.

Some unimportant spoilers following:
We read from Douglas’ pov and I quite liked him before Nicholls gave him some useless embarrassing scenes (Siena!) and then added some flashbacks where he shows some exceptionally anal behavior. However I never got why he’d ever believed a family grand tour through Europe might be a good idea with that (then) immature and unwilling teenage boy. I travelled a lot with my parents, but because we all loved doing those things together. I planned the routes and spoke the languages (English, French), my dad did the driving and paying and my mum just enjoyed. But with a boy as difficult as Albie and the separation looming above Connie’s and Douglas’ heads it was a stupid idea before the book even starts. And no, it isn’t normal to allow your son who isn’t of age yet to get out in Paris until the early hours, return drunk and with a girl 9 years older, then start a jam session in his room with accordion and guitar and loud singing. To let this girl for whom the room wasn’t paid strip the breakfast buffet the next morning and even pack food for later. I would have kicked her out when the accordion started (or at least asked her/Albie to pay for the stay); Douglas was far too nice and too understanding (which doesn’t fit in at all with those later memories)!
It is normal to expect some interest from your son when you show him the Ardennes from the train window and tell him that’s where his great-grandfather died in WWII. It is not normal to have to apologize to said son after you expressed your disappointment on his total lack of interest. For all reactions that seemed absolutely normal or even extremely liberal to me, Douglas is permanently either scolded or derided by Connie and Albie. Okay, the later flashbacks turn the cards a little, but the effect was that I disliked all three.
What Connie does in the end was zero surprising.

I’ll post something about the longlist and why I believe it shouldn’t have been there separately. If it hadn’t been listed, I wouldn’t have read and rated it. The 2.5 stars reflect my honest opinion about the book and aren’t any form of punishment for undeserved list status. It’s not the book’s fault if the jury put it there.

Rating: 2.5 stars

In A Free State by V.S. Naipaul (Winner 1971)

This is one of those highly uncomfortable books which you want to shake off you like a biting insect while reading it.

It consists of 2 short stories, one novella and two short framing pieces in first person writing. It starts nice and easy with some observations on a ship full of travelers and emigrants between Greece and Egypt.

The first short story also was easy to follow: an Indian diplomat is sent to Washington and decides to bring his servant along. The servant has a hard time adapting, but finally finds a way to grab a hold in this new “free state”.

The second story was somewhat cryptic. Again it’s about emigrants from India, this time two brothers moving to England (another free state) , the younger one to follow his studies, the older one (the narrator) then following to look after him. The older works two shifts and manages to save some money which he invests into a roti shop. He finds out the brother’s studies don’t exist. Then some things happen and if I interpreted it correctly in the end the younger brother makes his way despite his initial problems while the narrator is ‘lost’.

The novella with the title “In a Free State” reminded me much of Coetzee's Disgrace. In an unnamed African country (not South Africa) that’s recently become independent, a tribal war is rising between the people of the president in the north and those of the king in the south. On the day of the first uprisings, a British government employee travels from the capital towards the king’s town in the south after a conference, and he takes a colleague’s wife with him. Gradually they are confronted with the new situation up to the point where they experience physical violence. Both characters are for a modern reader highly unlikeable as they express two very opposite opinions re. “the African Question”, both in their own way highly condescending and racist (the man’s racism being of the “next time I’m born I want to be black” type). But I as a reader had to ask myself how I would behave in their place, how I’d talk. Those were the late 60s/early 70s, they had a certain upbringing and are mixing in their own experiences. What would have been the chances that I, the mighty reader, would have been any better? And what remains open is the question what would in fact have been right in their situation? This is a case of wrong place, wrong time and I doubt anyone could have done well.

The book closes with another couple of pages by the first narrator who has now made it to Egypt where he witnesses some awful treatment of local beggar kids by both tourists and Egyptian people.

The book begins with stories that convey a kind of hope, then gradually moves into an atmosphere of despair and disgust. I thought the title was well chosen, as it can be interpreted as "free country" or "free (personal) status", both alternatives applicable to all 5 stories.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Hm... thinking about this year's BP I can say:

- WWI/II historical fiction doesn't work for me in 95% of the cases*
- great longlist, some wonderful, even life-inspiring discoveries
- I still wonder who managed to smuggle "Us" into the mix and how. And why.

*definitely very sensitive about that and probably over-critical. Maybe being brought up with "the Guilt" has caused it. I read much literature that was written during or shortly after the war years and imo it often manages to leave a strong and lasting impression without becoming too graphic - the terror was real for the writer and somehow that translates into the work. Just think of how Remarque described the fascination of the front. Or the chill when Powell, after a long introduction, lets some of his characters die in the London bombings. We aren't even with them, but we knew them and just saw them and the way they are just gone in the next instant gave me a chill that hasn't weakened since I read it.

Most of the contemporary fiction on the WWs I read wants too much - as last year's Unexploded or Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong or this year's winner. I almost always feel attacked with too much extra drama that's piled on top, with too much graphic detail and extra cruelty that strangely don't have the desired effect on me and instead make me turn away. When I learn sth new - like about the Burma railway in this case - that's okay. But for me the characters of those books remain book characters and never turn into people. But that's just me.. :)

****************

My own awards go to:

The one that has it all: The Lives of Others
Historical fiction + Commonwealth setting + family story + sadness and violence + switching of perspectives + challenging style + 500 pages + actual political and social relevance

Best romantic love story:
the one in "J", as much as I disliked other parts of the book. I kept thinking of the fragility of butterflies. Heartbreakingly beautiful and believable (independently from the back story)

Best love scenes:
The whole book is about love for books and love for others, but the hair-washing scene in Niall William's History of the Rain stands out.

Let's Bring The Novel Forward Award: How To Be Both
Maybe Ali Smith would have needed a bit more time to straighten out some of those parts that made "the construction" too visible. I was happy with it as it was, but can see why others weren't

The "Books as Know-Thyself-Helpers Award": the overall extremely smart (and challenging) novel The Blazing World with its self-sabotaging heroine. Thanks for showing me where that may lead - and where I sure don't ever want to go.

The book that made me laugh most:
The dentist novel had its moments when Paul has his conversations with his assistant, but for me The Bone Clocks wins that category with its part 5.

Most challenging read:
I want to see "challenging" as something positive and rewarding, so the Flanagan book can't win that category although I almost gave up on it during the Amy scenes.
It's The Wake, of course. That's historical fiction for me! :)

Although only Lila is a Booker nominee, for me it made sense to review the trilogy together.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Home by Marilynne Robinson
Lila by Marilynne Robinson (2015 LL)

I am very grateful that the Booker nomination of Lila “forced” me to read that complete trilogy now and that I didn’t read Gilead earlier and separately from the other two. None of them is a five star book for me, but together they reach a harmony and balance that’s almost unblemished. The quiet observant writing is beautiful and while the reader is in the head of a different protagonist in each book, it didn’t disturb me that the voices sounded similar.

Gilead is a kind of diary the old reverend John Ames writes for his young son Robert, knowing he won’t be around for him much longer. He writes about his own life in the small town of Gilead, that of his father and grandfather (all men of the church), about his meeting Robert’s mother late in life and the wonder of experiencing family when he had long given up on that hope. There’s of course much talk about faith, different Christian denominations, about some of his own issues and doubts. And then the memories get more and more dominated by recent events, the return of his best friend’s “long lost son” Jack (John Ames) Boughton, the black sheep of that family. Jack is the reverend’s godson and their difficult relationship unfolds in the second half of the book. Following Ames’ doubts and fears was quite fascinating.

In Home we read the story of Jack’s return once again, but this time told by Glory, the unmarried younger sister who recently moved back home to look after their old and frail father. We see a different Jack in her memories, a good-hearted boy, but different from the very start. Driven by something that makes him deeply unhappy and unable to follow the standard path of the rest of the family. Slowly he gets closer to his sister, another “family failure” due to her broken engagement and unmarried status. When we wonder in Gilead why Jack doesn’t open up more to his understanding father, we see in Home a different side of that father as well and understand the extreme pressure Jack is under during his stay.

Lila is the story of reverend Ames’ wife. It switches between the book’s present (Lila’s pregnancy which means it is set 7-8 years before Gilead when the marriage was still fresh and both partners full of doubts and insecurities) and all of Lila’s earlier life in the form of memories. There are some inconsistencies here which I explained away with the fact that in Gilead Ames writes to his son and probably wants to leave an unblemished image of his mother. Yet it felt like there were some add-ons to Lila’s life which Robinson hadn’t planned out yet when writing Gilead. Altogether Lila is a wonderful character and her feeling of being undeserving and not trustworthy is totally believable.

As stand-alones I rate Gilead with 3.7 stars, Home with 4.2 stars and Lila with 4 stars.
Together 4.8 (=5) stars

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015 Booker SL)

Well… what to say about this book? It’s a Booker candidate this year and deservedly so. It’s only the second book I read off the LL and so far I’d see it as a possible SL book though not as a winner. With 740 pages it’s a chunkster, but it’s also a captivating read and I finished it in two days. And it is, I have to add, a book that contains very strong triggers and maybe shouldn’t be read by anyone with self-destructive tendencies which currently sadly includes me. Still, at a certain point the main elements – the protagonist’s past, everyone’s careers and subsequent wealth, the unblemished everlasting friendships – became so extreme in my eyes that I was able to create the distance I needed to finish the book without jumping out of the next window. No, of course I wouldn't have done that, but believe me, there are bits that are that terrible that you will react very strongly. I guess it was important for me to read it and from it I went directly to a self-help book to get things back into perspective.

The book tells the life of four college friends: Willem the actor, Jude the lawyer, Malcolm the architect and JB the artist. In the book’s first part they’re in their early to mid-twenties. Jude and Willem are looking for an apartment in Manhattan, Malcolm still lives with his parents, JB lives in an artist friend’s loft. In each of the following chapters our characters have aged a little and when the book ends they are in their early fifties. Interestingly, the world around them doesn't change at all. The whole book feels set in the "now".
With one exception, their friendship remains strong and unassailable and that for me was the strongest element of the book. Two more important characters are added soon: Harold and his wife Julia, about 20 years older than the friends. They come to know Jude during his law education (Harold being his main teacher) and they become something like the parents of the group and even more to Jude. From the first pages on it is clear that Willem and Jude form an extra-strong bond, with the other two, especially JB, sometimes feeling a bit excluded, but accepting it. Slowly it emerges that Jude has “issues”. The apartment needs a functioning lift because he has trouble walking. He has terrible “pain episodes” (enter Doctor Andy, another steady character). He never wears short sleeves. He apologizes constantly for everything. He doesn't want to be touched. And he never talks about his past.

The chapters are written from different viewpoints: Willem’s, Jude’s, JB’s and Harold’s (those in forms of a monologue directed towards Willem). As each chapter change usually also means a time jump and chapters often end with cliff hangers I sometimes lost orientation a bit, also because you never know at once which character tells the next part of the story. The narrative is a strange mix between past and present tense which I had to get used to as well, but generally it is easy to follow and the tension was kept up very well this way.

My issues in spoilers: Jude’s story is unbearable. It’s so unimaginably horrible that I assume some people will be unable to read it. I think the subsequent psychological issues (narcissism, self-hatred, unworthiness) are absolutely "normal" given the circumstances. The co-dependency the group around him develops is worked out fantastically although it is never named for what it is and is just called “loving friendship”. No, I’m sorry, it’s more and it’s not all “good”. The friends, including Dr Andy, become Jude’s accomplices in their own helplessness. What I absolutely didn’t get in this story was why none of those around really discussed the issues with an own therapist. We know Willem is seeing one, but more in the sense of “every actor sees a shrink regularly”. I was becoming angry while reading about the way they are all sheltering Jude, very well knowing where his path might eventually lead. And Jude himself – there is a point when you should try and get professional help. Yes, you want to suppress those memories. But if they literally “kill you” and you are as extra super smart as he is, why not even give it a try?

I would have preferred reading this story toned down. Less “past”, less critique-free friendship, also less professional success and less wealth everywhere. The thing is that to react like Jude it needs far less obvious past. This felt a bit like he was given so much extra “justification” for his behavior. It could have ended after Brother Luke because that was the point where his trust was truly and forever broken. And you can even have all that, all the self-hatred, aggressiveness, hiding from the world, helplessness, depression without a single physical reason and it is always justified because the emotional damage is done in a trusting child and his/her perception of it is what counts.
The friendship: we don’t really see how it begins because the book starts later. But how likely is it that a mix of characters like these 4 with such different backgrounds (and one of them so extremely disturbed) would really form such a bond and not change rooms on first occasion? I mean realistically? I have no college dorm experience, but I felt that this was somehow avoided in a book that’s so full of memories. Everyone is liberal, open and loving from the very start. At 16 or 17 - really??

This is a very good book. Read it if you can take it! But for those with a healthy mind: please don’t take Jude’s experiences as a measure of what someone must have survived “to have a right to be disturbed”. That's the one danger I see here. Trauma and pain are individual experiences that lead to similar consequences.

Rating: 4.2 stars for now

The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami (2015 Booker LL)

I start with two links for historical background for the main character and the Narváez expedition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevanico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narv%C3%A1ez_expedition

This is historical fiction and I don’t like historical fiction. But it’s a 2015 Booker candidate, was a a nominee for the Pulitzer and I absolutely craved something that wouldn’t depress me and still be intelligent. My 3star rating doesn’t look great, but I’m quite sure that someone who likes that genre will it enjoy much more. The background sounded interesting enough: in 1528 a Spanish expedition of about 600 people started towards Florida. Once arrived they quickly split – one half stayed on the boats (and disappeared) the other half started exploring the country, looking for gold. 8 years later, after fights with natives, various illnesses, drownings and enslavement, the only 4 survivors made it to a Spanish settlement in Mexico. One of them, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca wrote down his memories in “La Relacion” where one of the survivors gets exactly one mention: the Moorish slave Estevanico. Laila Lalami set out to write the story of this presumed first African who ever touched North American ground (which I read isn’t exactly the truth). As Cabeza de Vaca cut him out of the story she had much freedom and also lets him tell his own life pre-expedition in Marocco and Spain (which of course is completely fictitious and which I found quite flat).

I most enjoyed the expedition part that was based on the existing records. I like it when historical fiction teaches me something I didn’t know yet. But apart from that I had my usual issues: Estevano’s (whom she gave the birth name Mustafa) voice was decidedly female and of course detached in the usual way. The only death that really touched me in the story was that of his master’s horse. And as usual the narrator, a male Muslim Maroccan slave, shares the values of a modern liberal Western woman, another issue I always complain about. The Castillans of course are all rough, and a bit of fighting, raping, killing is all normal. But Mustafa is a liberal pacifist for whom a woman must be a companion.

The story never really drew me in and towards the ending I was almost bored. I looked through the Lt reviews later and saw with some relief that I’m not alone with that reaction. It’s a solid HF, but so far I wouldn’t put it on the SL.

I explain the Booker nomination with the Pulitzer nomination and that one with the fact that the story deals with a widely unknown part of American history and gives a good account on the various native tribes then living around the Gulf of Mexico.

Rating: 3 stars

The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan (2015 Booker LL)

Hm. I remember my complaints about A Little Life where I wished everything were a bit toned down to make the characters look more like normal people with a normal life (of course except for Jude’s past). Here I have only normal people living very normal lives for about 90% of the book (which includes the army chapters) and I feel that something “more” is missing.

The book starts with Anne, an old lady living in a sheltered accommodation. She is in the early stages of dementia and in danger of being sent to a special-care home, but her younger neighbor Maureen helps keeping the façade up. Anne had a career as a photographer earlier in her life and her big love was Harry with whom she spent much time in Blackpool. Harry was in the airforce during WWII, a photographer as well and her mentor. With him she had her daughter Alice who also married a soldier who died young in a bomb attack in Belfast. Their son Luke tries to follow his father’s traces by joining the army and going to Afghanistan. Anne’s relationship with Alice has always been difficult, but she has a special connection with Luke. The first chapters switch between Anne/Maureen/Alice in Scotland and Luke and his general Scullion in Afghanistan until Luke returns.

The book feels important in the Afghanistan chapters that describe an anti-heroic army life the public doesn’t want to read about. The chapters about Anne, Maureen and Alice are quiet and sometimes charming and certainly honest. The last chapters that concentrate on Luke and Anne reveal some of Anne’s long-kept secrets and now again I was wishing there would have been less. I know I’m contradicting myself.

I can’t really put my finger on it, but when I recently went through the list of Booker candidates I read in the last years I found that many of those I liked didn’t leave a lasting impression, like Swimming Home or The Lighthouse or even Umbrella. I feel the same will be the case here. It’s well written, partly important, partly charming, perfectly likeable. No fluff. A fine LL candidate, but I wouldn’t see it on the SL.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Did you ever have a family? by Bill Clegg (2015 Booker LL)

The only book not yet published everywhere when the LL was announced, it was among the critics’ favorites from the start. I bought it without test reading when it was out on September 1st.

The story starts with a fire that destroys June’s home in Connecticut and kills all her family: her daughter Lolly, her future son-in-law Will, her ex-husband Adam and her partner Luke, on the morning of Lolly’s and Will’s wedding day. After a couple of days spent with arranging the most necessary things (basically giving her lawyer power of attorney), June leaves town with only the clothes she's wearing and her credit card she had in her jacket pocket and sets out to the West, without a clear destination.

There are numerous characters giving their side of the event or telling something else that seems unrelated at first until you’ll see a connection either to June, her family, or Luke’s mum Lydia. We read the florist, the caterer, a young boy who worked in Luke’s small landscaping company, the owners of a small motel by the coast near Seattle. Lydia is a bit like June’s counterpart – she can’t leave, is stuck in the town and exposed to the town gossip. Lydia had been estranged from her son Luke for many years until June came along and we learn why. And we also learn that Lydia’s relationship with Lolly has been similarly fragile and had improved just recently.
There are time jumps between chapters. June’s and Lydia’s narrations are linear, starting with the fire and moving forward from there. But the others are strewn in seemingly randomly. The motel owners wonder about their strange guest long before June in her own narration takes the decision to go to the Moonstone.

I wondered if it all wasn’t a bit too well-composed and if I should feel manipulated by it, but I didn’t.

However there’s one element I feel undecided about. Up to 75% this was a very believable story. Such horrible senseless things happen and can’t be explained and have to be somehow survived, although it seems impossible. But then there comes a development that I felt turned the story into clear fiction. It won something this way, but it lost something else, and I’m not sure which I’d prefer.

Spoiler not about any story details, but about the general vibe: the book becomes life-affirming in a way that I personally found helpful and I was very grateful for it. Without the turn of events it still could have gone this way or taken the road of total desperation. I’m sure there will be readers who’ll criticize just that and I see their point. I can only say that for me Cissy’s (the room maid’s) chapter, the last one in the book, made me hope once again that things are interconnected. Not necessarily for my personal best here and now, but maybe for someone else.

Rating: 4.5 stars, maybe I’ll update to 5.

Edit 03/09/2015: 4.5 stars it is. There was one character whose role disturbed the balance a bit. Not in a terrible way, but it added "artificial" drama where up to that point the drama was very realistic. There were more points where Clegg used unneccessary clichés that gave me the feeling of reading a movie.
There's a strange thing: when I'm thinking of the separate narrators, there's great observation, great writing, but also lots and lots of clichés. The complete picture however is harmonious. It's the mix that makes the whole thing work.
I wonder if Clegg wrote them all separately and then tested different patterns before deciding on the final order.

Sleeping on Jupiter by Anyradha Roy (2015 Booker LL) CONTAINS SPOILERS!!

I didn’t like this book and I admit my rating is a coward rating. Why? Because I felt I couldn’t give 2.5 stars to a book that deals with PTSD and child abuse. And also because I recently looked through my Booker ratings of 2012 - 2014 and saw that overall I had been very generous and that of many books that got more than 3 stars I can’t remember much. So I’ll have to rerate the whole list I read and then this one might be changed as well.

Looking at the book page I noticed everyone else liked it more than me but until today there wasn’t a review posted yet.

The main story thread is Nomi’s. She’s an Indian girl who lost her parents early, grew up in an ashram where she was beaten and abused until, aged 12, she was able to run away and was finally adopted by a Norwegian woman. I would have loved to know more about Nomi, also about the years in Europe and her relationship with her foster mother because all that might better have explained her reactions when she travels back to India a couple of years later, looking for... what? The asram? People she knows? Her family? Her friend Piku she left behind?
Instead there are side stories about three older women who meet Nori on the train and later turn up again and again. Or there’s Nomi’s photographer colleague, who coincidentally is also connected to the three women. Or the tea seller. Or the guide. Or the man the guide loves who’s also the tea seller’s helper and might be someone else as well.

The author takes up many, many threads, interlinks them and then doesn’t lead them to a cohesive ending. When the book ended I was way past caring about anyone, including Nomi and her doubtful quest. There’s so much potential for more, but the story stays on the Surface and ends there.

Rating: 3 stars to be reviewed

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (2015 Booker SL) CONTAINS SPOILERS

After reading the sample I thought this might be this year’s The Dog – single and lonely white guy with analytical mind working for a big corporation doing navel-gazing. But it’s about a half-single and lonely white guy with analytical mind working for a big corporation thinking about the world which (for me) made some difference (although I also quite enjoyed TD).

U. ( =you?) is anthropologist and works for “the Company” on a project of which we don’t learn any details, just that it will greatly influence everyone’s life in a way we won’t notice. Governments are involved, of course. Yes, there is social media and surveillance criticism hidden, although U. himself is almost completely unemotional about it all. He just observes - in life, in the papers and on the various screens and only rarely valuates the things he sees. He works not only on the project, but also on the Big Report, a comprehensive explanation of human behaviour.

U. is able to see things from a different, less popular angle. In the first chapter he’s stuck in transit at the Turin airport where he reads about an oil spill. Later he learns about someone dying when his parachute didn’t open and then Petr, an acquaintance (he seems to have no Close friends), falls ill. In his lonely basement office, in his lonely apartment or late at night at his lover’s place when she’s already asleep he tries to interprete those events in the great context. He's able to do that because he doesn't give them the usual "oh my God how terrible!" reaction in the first place.

He finds an “aesthetic and honesty” in the swirls and lumps of oil and even in the dying birds. He tries to find the solution to the question who manipulated the parachute, a solution that leads to total satisfaction because it leaves no open questions. He notices a connection between his Petr’s illness and the dirty windows at the hospital.

This isn’t a book that gives you hope for the worst times as did Clegg’s. It’s a book about the total insignificance of our experiences and the values we add to them. And about buffering. I loved his thoughts on buffering! :)

The writing was good though there were some lengths. I liked the structure. And I’d read another McCarthy. I don’t think we’ll see this one on the short list though.

Rating: 4 stars (I like it when books force me to leave my normal path of thinking)

The Chimes by Anna Smaill (Booker 2015 LL)

The story sounds more complicated than it is. Young Simon travels to London after his parents’ death to look for some old friend of his mother’s, Netty.
This is a world without memories, or better: a world where memories are lost within a day and where people communicate in music. People also try to remember important events by linking them with objects (object memories) they carry in bags around wherever they go. Basic functions like walking, speaking, cooking are saved as body memories and aren’t lost. When Simon finds Netty he can’t answer her questions and is sent away. He joins a group of young people who spend their days “running in the under”, in the channel system under the Thames, looking for the “Pale Lady” which are pieces of palladium, to trade in against tokens (money). Will Simon find access to the memories he needs to connect with Netty again and to fulfill his fate?

This is a difficult one for me to judge. First of all it’s dystopian – which I usually don’t like, but in this case I didn’t mind it which must mean something good. The world as we know it was destroyed in Allbreaking which reminds me of a bigger Reichskristallnacht and I can’t get rid of the thought that the beauty of the word “Kristallnacht” (crystal night) might have influenced the author – don’t you automatically connect the sound to wonderful crystal clear vibrating music and the stars in the night sky? And what horror hid behind that name, including book burning as in Allbreaking? And what horror lies behind the Chimes – the great musical work that’s played every night on the Carillon, for everyone to hear?

It also often read like YA which here means that the protagonist’s conclusions are often behind those of the reader, but also that we’re in a black and white world where things are right or wrong without nuances. My main problem however was my lack of understanding for musical composition. I want to believe that the endless runs “in the under” that I found terribly boring are an equivalent to some form of composition. Maybe that’s what made the book so difficult for me – the simplicity of the plot with its logical holes, the simplicity of the narrator’s thoughts, opposed to the high level of musical understanding that might be required to really enjoy the construction of the setting and the importance of the communication in melodies and songs. It’s two different levels and where they have to meet to bring the book forward, there are cracks.

Rating: 3.5 stars, no SL candidate for me, but a book I enjoyed more than I expected.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (Booker 2015 SL)

My first Tyler, and if she doesn’t change her mind, her last work. I mostly enjoyed it very much and think it deserves to be on the SL, although many others say it’s far from being her best. It’s a family saga, written in a voice that sounds light, and easy-going – a first impression that’s quite deceptive. Because of course the perfect surface the Whitshanks present the world has some scratches, and I loved how casually Tyler introduces those family secrets to the reader before starting a new chapter and giving us the necessary background.

The story is centered on the Whitshank house that great-grandfather Junior Whitshank originally built as contractor for a client but made his own already during the building phase when he was overriding many wishes of the future owners. When that family moves out some years later, he can finally buy his dream house in his dream location – the place from where the fate of the family should take a turn for the better. After the death of Junior and his wife Linnie Mae, their son Red and his wife Abby raise their four children there and later one of their sons moves in with his family. The story isn’t linear – it starts with a phone call in the mid-90s, then gallops ahead on the traces of Abby’s and Red’s third child and oldest son Denny. It then follows Abby and her family through several years into the now, jumps back to the time when Abby fell in love with Red, to go even further back into Junior’s and Linnie Mae’s youth, to finally return to its conclusion in the present. This is about family dynamics, long-held secrets, about getting old and having to deal with it, about responsibilities and also about resignation. “Don’t ever tell anyone…” is saidd quite often in this book. The one steady element that has to deal with all of that is the house.

I was enchanted by this book until it lost its light tone in the chapter on Linnie Mae and Junior and the last chapter made me a bit sad although it has a nice notion on the meaning of “home”. In the end, “home” isn’t a house – it’s the people we love.

Rating: 3.8 (=4)

Now that was an exceptional ride! I enjoyed the first 10 or so percent of this very long book, then I got stuck, took break after break, had language issues and almost no idea what was going on. I was terrified by the violence and confused by the mass of characters and the time jumps. And just when I was despairing because there were still 35% to read after almost 6 weeks and I was wondering if I could rate an obviously great book with less than 3 stars because I simply didn’t get it – I suddently (quite) got it, read those 35% in one day and wanted to start all over again. This book is now even my favorite on the shortlist.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2015 Booker Winner)

Okay, so here’s the list of warnings: it’s as explicit as a book can be in the areas language, violence and sex. All kinds of body fluids flow in almost every chapter or some other dirt (like the inside of a crackhouse) are detailed, so this isn’t exactly the book you want to read while having dinner. And most of the time the reader is either in the head of a culprit or a victim. One spoiler: at least(!) I didn’t have to “witness” a rape. It’s talked about and happens in the background all the time it seems, but at least “I” wasn’t involved. But “I” was killed more than once and don’t know how many “I” killed. I was grateful that the suffering victims swore and pleaded in patois, so I could hide a bit behind the language barrier.

For a while I thought amazon had smuggled in another of those “let’s replace words where it makes no sense” things as in last year’s The Narrow Road to the deep North where what must have been “normal(ly)” or “ordinary(ily)” were replaced by “copyright/ly”. But then marietherese here on the book's thread explained to me that “bombocloth”, “r’asscloth” and “bloodcloth” are in fact words, but words as I won’t find in an online dictionary and better don’t add to my spoken vocabulary. :)

The story… it starts in Jamaica in December 1976 shortly before “the Singer” (Bob Marley) does his “Peace Concert”. We get viewpoints of various gang members and leaders from the two main ghettoes, from a writer for the “Rolling Stone”, a CIA guy and a woman called Nina, an ex-groupie of the Singer. Not to forget the ghost of the former prime minister who has just been thrown off a balcony. Someone (who?) plans to kill the singer and to prevent the concert and the peace treaties between the two main Jamaican parties. The assassination attempt fails and in the following parts of the book most of the presumed 7 killers meet their horrible fate. At some point the book jumps from the Jamaica of the late 70s into New York of the 80s (and at the end into 1991) where “the Jamaicans” are doing drug business and fight their competitors from Miami. Much of the storyline is historically correct (with changed names) including many side characters, with the exception of Nina, the only woman with a voice in this book. Nina is present on the sidelines of all scenes, with changing names and IDs, running away from something she witnessed back in 1976, but not able to really escape.

I like to go into books completely unprepared, in this case however reading up a bit on Jamaica and Bob Marley might have helped to get into the story.

The changing viewpoints, action scenes and time jumps aren’t usually something I like very much, because it’s like reading an action movie and often it’s used to hide an author’s inability to create a gripping coherent narrative. But in this case the subject and the style fit perfectly and of course this will be turned into film. Yet I don’t know if I’m ready to read another Marlon James in a similar style any time soon.

And re. coherent narrative: I at once switched to The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells to relax my brain a bit after this tour de force.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Great review. I'll start at once!

The Fishermen by Chogozie Obioma (Booker 2015 SL)

Up to maybe 60% I was positively surprised with this book, but then it really fell down (as other had mentioned), and abruptly so.

The story is set in 1996 Nigeria, the narrator is 10 year old Ben, the 4th of 6 children of a comparatively wealthy and stabile Christian family. The book starts with the father’s forced transfer to a remote town where he can’t take the family because of religious riots against Christians/ Igbo people. He’s the classical patriarch, keeping up order with the whip. He has also dictated every boy’s destiny long ago – the engineer, the professor, the lawyer, etc. He makes the four older brothers promise to “be good” during his absence, but it doesn’t take long until they start doing small forbidden things in secret. They play being fishermen and spend the afternoons (while their mother is working) near the river, in traditional beliefs a place where evil spirits dwell. During one of those trips they encounter the town’s madman Abala who’s known for his horrible prophecies that too often come true. He tells the oldest brother Ikenna his future, and from there on nothing remains as it has been.

I liked how the author used images of nature to describe the different characters of the four brothers and their strong bond and sense of responsibility for each other. There are flashbacks to earlier events with strong political relevance which were wonderful to read. That first half was really strong and bordering on magical realism, but it was hard for me to believe what happens in the second half of the book.

Obioma is a promising author and I can see how this book found its way to the SL, now that I read 11 of the 13 LL books, but I’d be very surprised if it won.

Rating: 3.5 stars

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota (Booker 2015 SL)

This year’s SL is quite the suffer-feast, I’m really wondering why they didn’t select the Clegg along with this one, the “7 Killings”, A Little Life and The Fishermen.
This here is a very credible and extremely depressing book. Depressing in its terrible honesty. How can politicians believe for just a minute that walls, closed frontiers or fences will keep people out who are as desperate as some of the characters in this book? I've read so many refugee accounts over the past months, and it's obvious that as long as life doesn't get any better in their home countries they will do whatever it takes to try and find a better future elsewhere.

The story starts in Sheffield, I thought in the present time, but the epilogue shows it must have been around 2003, close enough to 09/11 to explain at least some of the reluctance of employers to hire “brown muslim people”. Avtar and Randeep work half-illegally for a builder. Avtar has a student visa and Randeep a marriage visa, but officially they aren’t allowed to work. They live with some illegal Indian immigrants in a small house and save what they can. Randeep’s wife Narinder, a very religious Sikh woman born in the UK, moves to Sheffield as well, to prepare for the immigration control of their marriage status. Another illegal immigrant arrives, Totchi, who comes from the lowest Indian caste and doesn’t speak to anyone. We get long flashbacks, explaining how each of the four characters came to find themselves in this situation. Totchi’s sufferings are almost impossible to read while Randeep is the one with the “softest” background and as a result with the most difficulties adapting to the hard life in the UK. Narinder’s story was quite fascinating for me as it shows how someone can grow up in the West, but be completely determined by the traditions of the root country, without feeling oppressed.

The interaction between the four characters was very well done imo. The book absolutely doesn’t shy away from conflicts between immigrants and shows that in the end everyone has to provide for themselves first.

The epilogue didn’t fit at all, but boy was I grateful for it.

Rating: 4.1 stars – and I completed this year’s SL!

Congrats on completing the short list!

>67 thornton37814: thank you! :) I still have to read one from the LL, the Green Road, which I got as audio. Saving it for a long drive or a rainy weekend.

The Green Road by Anne Enright (Booker 2015 LL) CONTAINS SPOILERS

I loved this book for a long time – and then I lost some of my love for it in the last part, I’m sorry. A little bit returned during the last 5 minutes for the avoidance of more drama and a quite realistic ending.

An Irish family – 4 adult children and their widowed mother – gather for Christmas 2005 for the first time after many years, when the mother announces her wish to sell her house. This is a popular theme in books and movies, and what Enright did exceptionally well were the things left unspoken where the reader can insert their own family issues and explanations and really empathize with the characters. What I liked less was the drama in the last part, after the unavoidable (though small) escalation.

The book is cleverly constructed. It starts with 5 long chapters where the reader is introduced to each of the 4 children and Rosalyn the mother with an important episode from everyone’s lives in the years between 1986 and 2005 (when Rosalyn sends out the invitations). I could connect with all of them except for Emmitt/Emmett (spelling? I had the audio book) whose episode about a dying dog in Mali I found extremely repulsive and whom as a consequence I didn’t like throughout the book. I felt sorry for both Hannah and Constance, in the same helpess way you feel sorry for RL people who are trapped in their lives. The Dan chapter was fantastic as were all his scenes!

In part 2, in much shorter chapters, everyone prepares for Christmas 2005. And then they are all together and it doesn’t work at all, of course. Things escalate when Rosalyn confirms her wish to sell and announces to move in with her oldest daughter Constance, the only one who stayed in the neighborhood and has been looking after her for years, the only one with a solid family life.
In the last part things escalate in a way I found unnecessary. I could still relate to them all, even to Rosalyn who was glorifying her youth and her marriage as my grandma does it now. I was very relieved that Anne Enright didn’t take the last step and avoided a movie-like happy or tragic ending.

This isn’t a feel-good book. You’ll feel as trapped and suffocated as the 4 children. It wasn’t entirely clear how Rosalyn’s behavior (of which we learn most in the first Hannah chapter) had lead to everyone’s individual situation, why Hannah was an alcoholic in an abusive relationship and I would really have liked to know why and when Dan decided against becoming a priest, but they all blamed her manipulative ways yet kept tiptoeing around her like she was a raw egg. Even in the very last chapter when Constance’s husband in a really critical situation says “it’s all about her”, meaning Rosalyn, Emmett’s first reaction is to defend her against that “outsider”.
Often painful to read, very well observed and beautifully written.

Rating: 4.1 stars – and I’m done with the 2015 Bookers! :)

>69 Deern: You managed to read them all, impressive!

The Accidental by Ali Smith (Booker 2005 SL)

I’m really happy that March is Ali Smith month in the British Author Challenge (BAC) in the 75 group. I liked the two books I read so far very much and with this one I can tick off a 1,001, a Booker candidate and this month’s BAC.

I liked this book more than many other readers did (judging from the reviews), maybe because I read it a bit differently. I love the experiments Ali Smith takes with her writing and I see her in the tradition of Virginia Woolf. I don’t know however if an AS book will ever be a 5star read for me because (imvpo) either her narrative skills can’t hold fully pace with her experiments – or she does it willingly. Either way, I can’t sink into her books as I sink into The Waves or To The Lighthouse where the beautiful language carries me through the book and only when I emerge again I notice the super-clever construction. In AS books I climb along the construction that’s filled with narrative, but in a way that the construction usually dominates or at least clearly shines through. Her books make me think while reading, her stories are never real stories for me and her characters aren’t RL characters from the beginning. Btw. are there 12-year-old boyish-looking super-smart girls (sometimes with cameras) in all of her books?

The plot: a family of 4 – mother and writer Eve, her husband and English lit professor Michael and her children from an earlier marriage Magnus (18) and Astrid (12) - spend their summer holidays in a run-down rented house in Norfolk. There’s next to no communication, the family is on the verge of breaking apart. Astrid “suffers from” puberty big time, tries to fight it with sarcasm and watches the world through the eye of her camera. Magnus is weighed down by the guilt of having participated in a bullying prank that resulted in the suicide of a classmate. Michael has started the umpteenth affair with one of his students and struggles with the realization that he’s no longer the seducer he used to be. And Eve has writer’s block, hiding in the garden hut all day pretending to write the next book. Into this non-idyll walks Amber, a young or old woman (depending on the person watching her). No one knows her, but everyone believes another family member has invited her, so they let her into the house and into their lives. She quickly connects with all 4 characters in different individual ways and, it seems, makes their lives immediately better. The story is divided into The Beginning, The Middle and The End, and in each part each character has a say. The voices are believable; the styles are different and creative. I loved the bit where Michael’s thoughts become poetry. Beginning is the day when Amber arrives, Middle is the long period of time she spends with them and End is after she has left their lives again and everything has changed.

I’ll put this in spoilers for those who know the book: I didn’t care much about the “empty house” and the question whether Amber was a criminal who had planned all that from the beginning, etc. In the end she was a bit like a modern Mary Poppins and she even hints at that. She heals all family members from their individual maladies, she joins Michael with Eve’s children and when she’s gone they find a place and a situation (with all the hidden secrets out) where they can start again without the option of clinging to their old lives. She gave them the most fantastic gift! I have my doubts about Eve though. I would have preferred an ending where she throws the phone into the Grand Canyon and that’s it. The idea of her becoming (or trying to become) a second Amber didn’t ring true. And I also wouldn’t have needed the short bits where Amber herself gets a voice.

Rating: 4 stars, and I think it will get better the more I think about it

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Winner 2000 )

This is a case of “don’t judge a book by its sample or author”. After very mixed experiences with Atwood I wasn’t keen on reading another one. It helped that it’s also a 1,001 and a Booker Winner and that almost everyone seems to like it. So I got the sample. It took me 3 days to finish it and I only got the book because… well, 1,001 and Booker Winner. If it had been for the CAC (Canadian Author Challenge) only, I wouldn’t have bought it.

I mean, really, the beginning is so confusing, I checked more than once if I was reading the right book. But how shouldn’t I, when the book in the book was called “The Blind Assassin” as well? So what I got from those first 6% was a newspaper clipping, saying that a certain Laura Chase, sister-in-law to a certain businessman Richard Griffin, accidentally drove her car off a bridge in 1945 or 46. I got from other clippings that said Richard Griffin died shortly after, that his sister Winifred died many many years later, that Laura’s sister Iris was to give a short-story prize in honor of Laura to some high-school student, that Laura had written a book before her death that was posthumously published and quite successful and (from book extracts) that it dealt with a woman having an affair with a man who told her science-fiction stories. Totally confusing, as I said.

But then a new part started, told by 85year old Iris, and from there the book took a strong turn up. Iris’ memories of her childhood, the story of the rise and fall of her once very wealthy family, the effects WWI had on veterans and their families, the years of depression, her marriage and what followed after were interspersed regularly with extracts from Laura’s book and old newspaper notices. Once I got used to the mix and had realized that the sci-fi was quite unimportant and could therefore partly be skipped, I got so into the story that I could hardly put the book down. It’s a sad story, and Atwood lets Iris say some smart things about the impossibility of happiness on the last pages. But it’s also so credible and touching. Memories and loss, decisions we would take differently if we had a second chance. Maybe because I’m such a passive person myself who usually did what others told me, I could connect with Iris very well. I can understand if others lose all patience with her though. She isn’t a modern character, Laura is/ would have been. The book also shows where the passivity might get you, though you don’t know if the alternative would have made you happier.

Okay, it’s a bit too long maybe, the “big secret” is very obvious very early, and although “The Blind Assassin” was an interesting idea, the whole sci-fi thing meandered out without getting anywhere, as often is life. At one point the woman asks the man why he’s telling her that stuff, and he asks back if she’d rather hear true stories from the mud in the WWI battlefields. From there on, like her, I liked his stories better.

Rating: 4.5 stars

You bring the book back to life to me, I read it a long time ago and loved it, but forgot a lot of it, I realize when I read your review!

>73 Simone2: Thank you!

Forgot to post this one in January:

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth - FULL OF BIG SPOILERS!! (one of two winners 1992)

Yay, I liked a historical fiction book! And I’m sure that BU absolutely deserved his Booker Prize for it though I haven’t read any of his competitors. Unsworth found a fascinating plot, he dared breaking some of those unwritten historical fiction rules that make this genre so successful (and make me dislike it so much), and he constructed his work very intelligently, thus avoiding a couple of traps in a way it was hardly noticeable.

I admire him for:
- writing a likeable owner of a slaveship
- writing a believable captain of a slaveship
- avoiding a romantic love story at least 95% of HF writers would have added
- writing a believable colony that’s not at all paradise but clearly doomed anyway. The only way to deal with the situation, but nonetheless nothing that would have worked much longer than those twelve years.
- forcing the reader through some (for me!) hardly understandable pidgin English instead of letting the Africans speak the King’s English perfectly after those 12 years (thinking of Little Bee here where the narrating Nigerian teenager had conveniently learned the Queen’s English to absolute perfection from the radio or newspaper before writing down her story).
- inserting a break at the most crucial moment and continue the book 12 years later. This way he avoids an action scene full of dramatic traps and the reader will follow the second part eagerly to find out what really happened.
- creating a complex character with Erasmus Kemp who was much more interesting than his cousin Matthew Paris.

And that’s where I saw some (very small) weakness: Matthew's ethical concern and his passivity fit in well together - he didn't become a hero as I feared. He was accepted in the colony but not loved. Erasmus Kemp however had to become a hatred-driven villain at some point to make the story work. I wish there had been a slightly different motivation. For example I would have fully believed him to make this trip to retrieve as much as possible of the ship and to reclaim the slaves - for the honor of his family! Because he sees the ship as the reason for his father’s downfall (although such a cool business head should have noticed during those 12 years that his father’s business was long past saving when the ship was lost).
But making the hatred for his cousin and the wish to see him hanged his sole motivatior wasn’t believable for me. That strenuous journey and all the effort to see someone hanged who might well be dead? Why not in the same way suspect the crew, even the captain or the mate? That one letter they received spoke of illness and problems, it wasn't totally unlikely that landing in Florida was the only way to survive. That extreme hatred is exactly the drama level of HF where some other author would have Paris and the slave woman (names..) fall madly in love with each other.
I liked Erasmus evil, but not in such a personal way. He’s someone who cried his eyes out for his lost love for days, but then was coolly able to tell her goodbye.

And the second weakness was the ending. Given EK’s quest for revenge, I could have well lived with Paris unfairly being hanged. That was a solution a bit too clean and easy for me. I wasn't sad that I didn't have to read a trial though and some heartbreaking last look on his family.

I absolutely loved the first third of the book. So much that I sometimes lifted my head from the book thinking “It’s HF and I’m loving it!!!”. The middle part felt a bit bumpy for me for me.
Of course from the moment on when the slave trading begins, BU couldn’t avoid the confrontation of his characters with ethical questions. He did that very well imo, not at all exaggerating into a too modern way and treating the captain with his view on the “living merchandise” honestly. He also avoided going too far into the human misery. He didn't emotionalize too much, something Hilary Mantel imo has perfected in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. I think both don't have future movies or TV shows in their heads while writing their novels.

During this 2nd part my reading slowed down and I even took a longer break. I guess I was scared of what I saw as the unavoidable drama approaching – and when I continued reading I was positively surprised that it was mostly avoided. So yes, it was a great read! But I'm unsure whether to get the sequel.

Rating: 4.1 stars

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet (2016 LL) - only light spoilers

Hm… Okay, I’m ready to consider that my reading faculties are still somewhat disturbed. I saw a great review for this book (linked in a guardian forum), but it didn’t move me at all. I don’t want to know if this is all fictional or if there has been some real case. I don’t have the wish to google it, and that shows I wasn’t attached to the story at all.
The plot: in 1869 17 year old Rodney Macrae from a tiny Scottish village close to the Western coast takes some tools of which I already forgot the name, walks over to his neighbor’s house where he kills the neighbor and “others” (the identity of the other victims is given later in the book). It looks like a cold-blooded revenge act as the neighbor who also had the function to watch over the tenants, had been bullying and suppressing the boy’s family to the point of financial destruction. This isn't a spoiler, it's the premise.

The book starts with a (fictional?) preface of the author who claims to be a remote descendant of the Macrae family. Then comes a short chapter of voices of neighbors and the local priest. In a very long chapter then Rodney (who is described as extremely smart) gives us his own version in writing, beginning with his mother’s death to the final act of the killings. He’s writing this story on request of his lawyer Mr Sinclair who wants to achieve a verdict of insanity. The next part is a bit of a book of the famous psychologist who examined Rodney, and then follows the trial.

While I really enjoyed Rodney’s story, mostly for his descriptions of the dreary dull life in such a remote and poor community he had no chance to escape, I never really cared about the verdict. Rodney is obviously a highly unreliable narrator and people’s impressions of him range from “stupid” to “very smart”, from “harmless” to “wicked and violent”, from “totally normal” to “out of his mind”. This could and should have been gripping, but for me it wasn’t. It wasn’t bad either, I’m just not sure if it’s Booker material, especially in a year where it seems everyone expected different books on the list.

It was quite an easy read and a pleasant entry into this year’s LL, and one that will certainly not let me lose sleep.

Rating: 3 stars which is not as bad a rating as it may sound. I want my ratings to become a bit stricter again, and this 3 means "okay, but not exciting".

Hystopia by David Means (2016 LL) – many spoilers!

If I hadn’t known from the blurb that this book is set in a world where Kennedy wasn’t killed and enters his third term as president with the Vietnam War going on, I would have had no idea what I was reading for the first 20%.

The first part consists of two story threads. There’s Rake the killer, clearly out of his mind. He’s kidnapped a girl, Meg, from some rehabilitation centre (or so we think at first). He’s feeding her drugs and makes her witness his killings. This thread is a super-violent road movie. The second thread is about Singleton, a young guy working for an organization that seemed to be something between FBI and NSA. Something has been done to his brain, he has no memories of the past couple of years and much of his childhood. He starts a forbidden affair with another agent, Wendy.

SPOILER:
In the second part it becomes apparent that in this world traumatized Vietnam veterans (who are not too badly damaged physically) receive a new kind of treatment called “enfolding”. With the help of a drug all their war memories are suppressed, but not only those. Everything that relates to the war gets enfolded as well, so if you saw a childhood friend die in Vietnam most of your early memories will be suppressed as well. Suppressed, not destroyed, because it is possible to become “unfolded” again, by almost drowning in very cold water, some drugs and by intensive orgasms. An unfolded enfolded subject is seen as double-traumatized and is likely to become totally violent.

The enfolding clearly has been created to free people from trauma (not just war) to turn them into functioning members of society. However, there’s a constant conscience of something missing and enfolded people try to get their memories back. Seriously, would a president who allows for that be elected 3 times?!? With veterans on killing sprees all over the country and violence waiting everywhere?

Honestly, I thought this was all a bit “unoriginal”. I even had a “Buffy” moment. The vampires in Buffy are soulless bodies possessed by a demon (here trauma). A gypsy curse can give them their soul back and turn them into “good guys” (enfolding process). But a “moment of true happiness” (very intensive love-making in book and TV show) will bring the demon/trauma back and the good guy turns into a monster.

Anyway, I liked the book best between 25 and maybe 60% when it gives some explanations. The ending and the second ending didn’t make it any better for me.
SPOILER END

I feel a bit bad for not liking it. Someone probably tried to process his own trauma this way, and who am I to say it isn’t good? So I don’t say it. I just say I didn’t like it, and I don’t have to. It wasn't the violence, and I liked the general idea. I was looking forward to reading it. And then, surprisingly, I found myself bored during about half of the text and especially all of the last part. I'm sorry.

Rating: 2.5 stars

The Many by Wan Menmuir (2016 LL) - contains SPOILERS

My new realistic reader’s brain had quite a fight with this short book until the symbolism became so obvious that it gave in and said, “okay, it’s clearly not meant to be real life” and accepted the plot.

I spent a good half of the book arguing with the plot. Timothy, a young man “from the city” moves to an extremely remote village on the coast of Wales. Everything, absolutely everything there is cold, grey and dreary, and I was asking myself over and over again why the **** he decided this would be the place to raise a family. He’s bought a house that has been empty and neglected for 10 years since the owner Perran died, presumably committing suicide. During his first weeks Timothy has no contact at all to the locals – something that seemed totally incredible for me. They might be closed people, but please… at least the women in the shop would try to initiate a chat and find out as much as possible. Neighbors would offer a hand during renovations, just out of curiosity. There’s a wife or partner for whom he prepares the house. Their contact is difficult, because that fantastic place has no cellphone connection.

The second character is Ethan, a fisherman in his 50s. Ethan is in constant mourning for Perran, more so than everyone else. His is one of 4 remaining active fishing boats, after “the state” restricted the fishing grounds and some big company anchored two huge ships in the bay, guarding the exit. There’s also talk about chemicals in the water, and the little fish that’s caught seems mutated and close to death. Enchanting place...

For the locals, Timothy’s arrival brings a mix of hostility (because he occupies Perran’s house) and hope, as if the fish and the good old times might return with him, as if he were a kind of second Perran. But people don’t talk about Perran, and when Timothy asks too many questions, hostility breaks out openly.

There’s repeated mention of text that’s not readable, connections to the outside world that can’t be made…
Well, in the end I got it and I “liked” it as far as it’s possible to like a book that makes you feel like you’re dead inside. Not that the remote place with no obvious way out is a Motive never done before, and in the end the symbolism really hits you on the head, but overall it’s well done. The cold really gets you and creeps into your bones and heart.
It’s a first novel by a promising author, I hope we’ll see more of him.

Rating: 3.8 (4) stars

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (2016 LL)

I started so many books where the Kindle sample was intriguing and the rest of the book couldn’t hold up. Here it was the contrary case – I hated the title and strongly disliked the sample when I read it months ago for the Orange Prize list. I was a bit annoyed when I saw it on the Booker list, but hey – it was short and I should be done with it quickly. I admit I didn’t care much for it for about the first half. It was nice, but I kept asking myself how it had made it on any list. She got me in the last third, when the mother is already leaving the hospital and the narrative becomes a sequence of short meditations. Things get wrapped up I hadn’t even noticed were open threads. There are half sentences that tell a whole story. And strangely enough, by the end of the book I loved that woman and just wanted to hug her and thank her for telling her story that isn’t really a story.

A winner for me? I’m not sure, there are 9 left to be read. It has “something different”, it has honesty and despite its construction doesn’t feel constructed. And I think it’ll stay with me. It’s the first book I’d happily put on the SL.

Rating: 4.1 stars

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (2016 LL)

This was quite a surprise. I liked Levy’s Swimming Home okay in 2012, but it wasn’t perfect and had a disappointing ending. I didn’t expect anything this time after Darryl’s review, but while I was sitting there and reading and waiting that it turned into chick-lit, I realized what Levy was trying to do. I’ve read a couple of books usually by female authors who try to translate the sensation of being into words. The language turns seemingly poetic and the plot disappears behind surreal scenes. The problem is that what works for the author, a combination of images that for her convey the sensation of a certain moment, don’t necessarily trigger the same reaction with the readers. So I constantly fell in line and out of line with this book, but I enjoyed watching the experiment and let the plot go that isn’t really one. Forget about mother and daughter in Spain trying to find a cure for the mother’s walking problems. This isn’t about an illness with a name, this isn’t about actions and rational thoughts. In the end it is also about mourning, not the loss of a person in this case, but the absence of something we always wanted to have, we thought we’d have a claim on. It also has a disappointing ending on its last 2 pages by the way, but I’m ignoring it, the damage isn’t as bad as in 2012.

It’s fascinating that the jury selected this book and also The Many by Wyn Menmuir which I now see a bit differently. I believe he tried the same thing from a male perspective, and interestingly it’s also about mourning (though in that case it’s deaths), there’s also the sea, there are also stinging medusas, but it’s two totally different worlds.
If you read the one, make sure to read the other one as well.

If however you mostly enjoy plot-driven novels where normal people behave half-rationally, and dislike “egocentric” books, both aren’t for you.

Rating: 4 stars

The North Water by Iain McGuire ( 2016 LL )

While this was quite an enjoyable book, imho it shouldn’t be on the list. What it lacked was (quoting from charl08 form the 75 group) meaningfulness. This is an adventure story set in the 1800s, mainly on a whaling ship. The bad guy is really bad and remains bad, the good guy is quite flawless, even his past despite some bad records. Thanks to a prophetic dream you know early on how it's going to end. Most of the other characters are just that – meaningless. Those that can’t be sorted to the good or bad side are just a number of interchangeable people who in the worst of moments just sit and play cards and the reader wouldn't even notice if they weren't complete anymore.

I realize this sounds more negative than it is. This is a clean-cut homage to books like Treasure Island, Moby Dick, some readers mentioned Jack London books which I haven't read yet. It’s not a “new take” as was Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries or Barry Unsworth’s book I read this year about the slave ship. I guess the author was quite surprised to find his work on this year’s list.

While I think it shouldn’t be there (that’s the German in me who insists on “serious literature”, not in genre, but in execution, so no holiday books), it doesn’t make me angry as other listed books did in previous years (Almost English, The Kills, Howard Fry, “Us”, Me, Cheeta). Because this one is unpretentious, it doesn’t try to be more than it is.

I’m glad I read it, it was fun except for all the animal killing and I could have done with a bit less of body fluids. But this is something I’d happily read by the pool or beach and leave (thanks again Charlotte!), not something I’d award with a major literature prize.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Eileen by Ottessa Meshfagh (2016 LL)

This is the story of a total miserable youth told in a style that reminds of chick-lit (sorry, don’t have a different expression). The narrator is the now quite old ex-Eileen (she mentions she has changed her name) who looks back on those bad years, half mocking her old self. You can’t really say anything against Eileen as a character because old Eileen already does all the “oh yes, I felt SOOO self-important” and “I kind of enjoyed my misery” and “my self-chosen ugliness was an expression of my vanity”. So yes, you can’t like Eileen and Eileen agrees with you. This creates a distance and keeps the reader from developing too much sympathy and to identify while it’s also an extra security mechanism against critics. I can’t decide if I find that smart or not.

Anyway, Eileen lives with her alcoholic father in a messy household. She wears the clothes of her dead mother and does everything to be invisible while dreaming to be saved by young Randy (whom she stalks) who works with her in a detention center for young criminal boys. Eileen herself drinks way too much, it is basically her only way to connect with her dad. In the evenings, after getting his daily gin supply at the liquor shop, she retires to the attic in order not to be confronted with her drunk father. Her life changes drastically when Rebecca starts working at the center. She’s lively, pretty and courageous and immediately makes friends with Eileen.

No, I didn’t like this novel very much. The book has some Jelinek The Piano Teacher moments, but it’s not as smart and witty and the sarcasm isn’t half as biting. The book is full of early and repeated announcements (“until I met Rebecca”, “this would be my last week with my father”, “this gun is going to be important”…). Then there was a really unexpected surprising twist from where the story could have taken a turn into a different genre. And then… disappointment.
I fear to see it again on the SL.

Rating: 3 stars, just so (more like 2.8, 2.9)

All That Man Is by Davis Szelay (2016 LL )

I don’t like short stories, so I wasn’t happy to see this one on the list. But then I read it quite quickly, in 3 days in bundles of 3 stories. I liked the construction very much. Each story is about a man, starting with 17year old Simon, ending with Simon’s 73year old grandfather (theirs is the only connection). From story to story the men get older. They’re all “away from home” – travelling Europe like Simon, in the holiday apartment in Italy, on business in Switzerland, on business in Germany, a journalist in Spain for an interview, an iron tycoon on his yacht in the Mediterranean, there’s also a British expat in Croatia. And all of them are in some kind of crisis, in some cases existential. About their sexuality, a loss of money and power, the realization that old age means the end of opportunities. I thought all characters were very well observed. Many of them aren’t likeable at all, totally egocentric and full of self-pity and I was happy to leave them where they were. Of others I’d have liked to know more. This is a very mixed bag in a good way, taken from life and served in portions small enough you’d also have some more.

Rating: 4 stars and I hope to see this one on the SL - so I guess they won't select it. :)

You are on a roll! I enjoy your reviews a lot.

>84 Deern: Thank you! Booker-obsessed as ever, although I'm quite disappointed this year.

The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee (2016 LL )

One thing you learn when doing „yoga and all that spiritual stuff“ is looking closely at everything that goes totally against you, because it will tell you something about yourself. Very clearly Coetzee is trying to tell me something about myself, I wish I knew what it is - I hate reading his books so much!

The Jesus books are strangely abstract. They have been compared to Yann Martell’s which I didn't like either. Should I reread Life of Pi?

If you read this book, prepare to forget about the plot or you’ll go crazy. Davíd and his strange parents Inés and Simón have arrived in the town of Estrella. After a short period of fruit picking on a farm they find sponsors for Davíd’s education and he enrolls in a Dancing Academy where he learns to dance the numbers 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11 (1 cannot be learned). Then there’s a crime at the academy and a character named Dmitri, the caretaker of the Art Museum, gets a big role in the second part.

I would never do anything to a child of course, but this not at all Jesus-like Davíd would force me to leave the room, he makes me want to slap him. He makes me aggressive, in this book more than in its prequel, and I absolutely don’t get why so many characters like him. He’s totally spoiled and insufferable. Maybe I’m jealous of him because he claims his place and gets it?
The book is told from the eyes of his stepfather Simón, a rational man in a confusing world, maybe the reader or maybe Coetzee’s alter ego, and we basically see Davíd’s irrational behavior towards him, so of course it’s possible he’s much more likeable with others.

Yes, it is a philosophical book and it has some brilliant moments. There’s deep thinking in it and deep searching. Maybe I’m still too immature for this series, maybe it needs repeated reading as some commenter in the guardian wrote. Sometimes it’s clearly over-constructed, there was that moment when I thought “Are you kidding me? He's totally not Jesus and now you give me a lamb???"”

I could easily tear it to pieces. I could almost as easily decide to convert to Coetzee’s way of thinking and give this book 5 stars. However I feel such a resistance against him and also don’t want to condemn something I don’t understand. So I won’t rate it for now. Strangely I believe I’d read the next one. This has to lead somewhere eventually?

I was wondering if the introduction of “He, Simón” is a friendly or mocking bow towards Hilary Mantel? He didn’t do that in part 1, I would have noticed, it jumps at you.
I was also wondering if Coetzee maybe doesn’t like people, especially women. He doesn’t understand them, so much was clear from the earlier works I read. That’s where I feel with him, so far I didn’t understand any of his female characters. If that’s how he perceives us it might explain something.

My dislike extends even to his pictures (poor man). Whoever he reminds me of must have left a negative impression on me. He definitely triggers something. Maybe I should force myself to read all of his works now to find out?

Okay, Booker: quite a safe SL bet. And I could live with it winning though it won't. At least it’s different, and reading it at various stages of your life might give you some answers. I just told someone that you have to grow into getting help from singing bowls. Maybe I still have to grow into Coetzee, right now I’m not ready for it.

Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves (2016 LL)

OMG I’m so glad I finally found a book I loved! And it was so unexpected! I hated the cover and disliked the blurb. But this is so well written and so well-crafted in the plot development… there were a couple of occasions where I thought “oh no, now it’s going to take this or that direction”, but it never did, not once!

Starting in the 1920s in Alabama, this is the story of Roscoe Martin. The only son of a miner, he early decided to escape that mining world and to learn everything possible about electricity. But when he met his future wife Marie, a schoolteacher and well-read daughter of a farmer, his life took a turn and now he finds himself on the loss-making farm Marie inherited. Roscoe is no farmer and he loses Marie’s love and respect with the farm of her childhood going more and more downhill. When the book starts he has the idea to tap the electricity line, and by providing farm and thresher with current to get an advantage on the corn market. As you’ll learn in the books first sentence, this undertaking will cost a man’s life, and Roscoe will find himself in prison.

The last part had many occasions for cheesy moments, and even those possible traps were handled very well. I was glad earlier in the book that also Marie was given a voice, at a moment when I thought her behavior was totally exaggerated and unexplainable. I didn’t change my mind much, but I know people like her, and there isn’t much you can do.

By far the best book I read from that list.

Rating: 4.5 stars

That one is on the library's order list, but I have to wait until next week to order it because of the renewal timing.

Serious Sweet by A.L. Kennedy (2016 LL ) - contains spoilers

Okay, I (grudgingly) admit that I liked the writing in this book most of the time. I love stream of consciousness writing, and after a difficult start this got better and better.
The observations of people in the streets, on the tube are great. Many of the thought experiments that clearly are the author’s were at least interesting and I even highlighted some. I also admit that I believe it was written with the best of intentions.

But as someone who can relate to many of the characters’ issues and who fights like crazy to get her own take on life changed, I can absolutely not support this plot. I suffered throughout it. I was at first impatient and annoyed (that cake! Berlin! Those pants!), then creeped out (waaah, those “gentle letters”!!!!), then sympathetic, then confused about Jon’s weird side-plot, and in the end I was just hoping that horrible day would finally, finally end (that bathroom scene!!).

I'm intentionally not spoiling the following, because I'd be interested to know how the book reads with that information - feel free to skip this paragraph:
Something that really angered me was that the reader is first made to believe this is kind of a blind date. This would half justify Meg’s reactions when it gets postponed again and again. But then I learned that hey, they have already met and had coffee. 10% later I learn they had also lunch and kissed. A couple of % later I learn they’ve been on a day-trip to Dorset together and that they have already said “I love you”. So why freaking out because of a delay? On a work day when anything can happen? At their mature age? Not to speak of what sense an ILY makes if you don’t know the other person at all because you’re both too scared of each other to really speak and are clearly enchanted simply by the expectation that this other person might maybe, hopefully not hurt you.

I still have my own weakness for weak and frightened men (they seem safe) with whom every minute is like walking on eggshells, so you forget your own issues and make his your own. Men who in the end will hurt you more than you could ever imagine. So of course I hated that in Meg and that was one reason why I really tried to sympathize with her. But the way Jon is described, the way he talks, to everyone, not just to Meg – so evasive, fearful, constantly ducking, there’s nothing, nothing at all in this man I’d find attractive. I feel sorry for him, sorry that he’s so broken, sorry that he doesn’t function any more at all on any level (which does not fit with that side-plot), but that’s all. He has to get his act together, and not “because he’s in a relationship now”. It won’t work!

Meg’s character however is developing during those 24 hours to a point where I said “Go, girl! You’re doing great!”. So a relationship with Jon might hopefully lead her to the point where she learns she doesn’t need an egocentrically weak man.

I have to contradict the ending: this is not love, this is need.

Rating: 3 stars

>87 thornton37814: I really hope you'll like it.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2016 LL )

I don’t have much to say about this book. I liked it, but didn’t like reading it and needed over a month for it. Of course I didn’t “get” most of it, too many of the certainly sharp cultural references were totally lost on me. What I enjoyed most was almost all of Hominy (and that “Little Rascals” theme has since not left my brain, a real “ear-worm”) and the mention of all the delicious fruit. What I liked least were the childhood memories and the Supreme Court scenes at the end (those at the beginning were quite funny). The middle part about re-introducing segregation had some very funny moments like career day or Hominy’s birthday party, but it was all too much for me.

Rating: 3 stars. It might well be SLed if the judges this year want to show their understanding of un-pc satire. I’m disappointed because it’s a genre I like and because the plot idea was great. I understand however that I’m not the intended reader.

12 down, one to go! One which I’ll hopefully like! 

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien (2016 SL)

Of course this review reflects only my personal opinion. And that is, very strongly this year, that this is the only book from the shortlist (and also the longlist) that should win the Booker. I’m also quite convinced that it won’t. My guess is The Sellout (we’re SO unconventional AND we can show this way that we care about all those racially motivated crimes in the US (better not talk about our own issues, especially since Brexit) and isn’t it time that an US author wins?).

Anyway, there was much in this book here that went against me, especially in my current tired state of mind. Several levels of narration, historical fiction, family epic. And yet, once I had finally picked it up again at 12% on Saturday at the hairdresser's, I was almost unable to put it down again, especially once I was over the 40% point and the historical events reached a time I could half remember.

I don’t think we learned anything about Chinese history at school. While it’s a good thing to be overfed with WWI/II and the Holocaust as a German, other regimes – in the 1980 still very actual – shouldn’t have been left out. Russia at least got some mentions – after all there was a border in the middle of our country that needed some explanation, but China was a big taboo. Sometimes I wonder if the generally leftwing teachers left out the crimes of communism because they still had so much sympathy for it. A sympathy I can understand when it comes to the theory, but even they should have seen that the realizations were as far off the utopic dream as they could be.

Actually, I was shocked. There was much I didn’t know yet, especially about the famine and the cultural revolution, and it is told in a way that the reader can’t escape. At times I thought the narration was confusing and not free of flaws with strange jumps between characters, but that didn’t matter much. This is another example of the horrendous things humans can do to other humans – and not to strangers, to neighbors, friends, relatives – to either make themselves feel superior or to save their own lives. The struggle sessions, the self-criticisms, the denouncments (the memory where Sparrow helps his little daughter writing her accusations of her father as a “demon” and a “snake” because she doesn't know all the characters yet!) – this is much closer to 1984 than everything I know about the Third Reich. Okay, it also lasted much longer. And then I was very moved when the student protests of 1989 began and the very people who had taken an active part in the cultural revolution and felt guilt for it, at once took the side of the students and supported them.

For once this was also a historical family story where I cared about most of the characters, even about Kai. Imo this is not a book about the failures of communism at all, this is a very relevant book for our times that shows what happens when fear rules and when false enemies are created.

Way too political (in contrast to The Narrow Road to the Deep North that was really just closed history and therefore could win the price in a year full of brilliant and very relevant books), and so I dare predicting that it won’t win.

Rating: 4.5 stars

I already read two of this year's Booker longlist and am copying my reviews to this thread.

Autumn by Ali Smith (2017 LL 1/13)

I can’t review Ali Smith anymore, just like I can’t review Virgina Woolf, and that’s a good thing! It means that plot and construction have now receded behind the more (introduce the smart word here that I can’t find – I tried visceral and ethereal and according to my dictionary they don’t exactly mean what I want to say. A mix of both?).

So. This is Britain post-Brexit referendum, and AS has really, really greatly worked this in. There are simple scenes that show the alienation in interpersonal contacts/ dialogues, but there are also scenes like paintings. AS is finally able to paint with words, and you don’t see the canvas anymore. I’m SO happy!

Elements (some of them): autumn, friendship, independence, backward thinking, political lies now and then (Profumo affair), feminism, love, imagination, pop-art, the small daily abstrusenesses, civil disobedience, hope.

I rated earlier AS books with 4.5, and this one is my new favorite, so yay for 5 stars and I can't wait for the other 3 paintings in this new series!

4321: A Novel by Paul Auster (2017 LL 2/13)

Okay, this is, imo, a very good book. Still it was at times a dull read. The basic idea – telling the first 20 years in the life of a promising author growing up in the 50s and 60s in/around New York in 4 variations (what if...) is fascinating and Auster’s writing brings it home. There were moments when I loved it and couldn’t put it down, but then there was also the unwillingness to take it up again after a break. It’s difficult to explain, as it seems everything that’s a strength is also a weakness. I liked the “chunks” of life I was given – Archie Ferguson I.’s first 6 years, then Archie Ferguson II.’s first 6 years, etc. It was nice to see how small differences in the upbringing, the parents’ relationship or the bigger family dramas lead to bigger gaps between the Archies in the later parts of the book, or how the same people like the ever-present Amy Schneiderman managed to make an entry in all 4 variations, yet take on different roles. On the other hand, after every break I had quite forgotten which events belonged to which Archie. So when I was reading Archie-the-teenager I wasn’t always sure if he was the one who had spent all his holidays in a camp or the reckless one or the one with a single parent who might turn into an alcoholic or the one with the accident (to spoil as little as possible).

A great strength was certainly the detailed elaboration of the years 1967-1970, viewed from an always in some way political engaged Archie. And yet, it was repetitive. Very much so, sometimes too much for me. Oh, and not to forget all the useful details on how to become a writer, that was a part I really liked, even 4 times!

And then, in all the greatness of the work, there was such a self-complacency, also in the writing. I’m easily annoyed, as I recently learned, by people who take much room for themselves without asking. Auster does just that. It’s said that Archie is based on him and it’s not enough to tell his story once, but no – we get it 4 times. Okay, maybe buying the book qualifies as having been asked and having agreed, but I can just wonder at the chuzpe (we use that word in German btw) to do it. I mean, even 3 or 2 Archies would have brought it home - and did, in a way. And in all 4 variations, Archie is a genius, a bit of a wunderkind! And then the writing – of course it’s very good, but I feel a note of “I don’t have to make an effort anymore as my writing is already perfect”. I like it when writers work with language, and this is in a strange way a very conventional style. And then again it’s a style that fits the period, the 1950s and 1960s.

Okay, you see, I can’t put in words what irks me, but whatever it is, it keeps me from giving 5 stars.
Rating: 4.25 stars

Great reviews and good to see you back, it's been a while - I think since the last Booker Prize :-)

>94 Simone2: Thank you! I had a terrible reading year so far and made no progress on the older books. But I started two former winners before this year's list was published and just finished one. I'm still determined to read all winners at some point.

Review from my 75 thread:

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (Winner 1984)

This is not a happy book and it isn’t a book for the young. For most of the time, while quite enjoying it, I was wondering how it could ever have won the Booker, it was so "unremarkably nice". The last part made it a bit clearer and then I guess it just wasn’t a great year – I haven’t read or heard of any of the shortlisted books.

Edith, a woman “in disgrace” arrives in Switzerland in the half-empty Hotel du Lac where she is to spend some time after a still unknown “scandal”, until society has forgiven her. She is a writer of romance novels, and during her last lunch with her publisher she develops an interesting idea about the hare and the tortoise. In her novels, she says, the tortoise always wins the prize – the eligible bachelor, while in real life of course the hare is winning. But hares are too busy living to read, and so her books are a consolation and branch of hope to the tortoises. She herself is seen as a tortoise, 39 years old, unmarried, and not very attractive, everyone seems to know what she should ideally do (marry, and anyone) before it is too late.

In the hotel Edith makes the acquaintance of several lonely women travelers and of Mr Neville, a “man with delicate ankles” (this would be about the last thing I’d see as attractive in a man). The women befriend Edith, using her however mainly as an echo wall. There’s something sinister about Mr Neville who seems to look right through her and he surprises her with a suggestion.

The writing was beautiful, the atmosphere came over as lonely and sad and isolated and yet calm as it was meant to be. Atumn in life and autumn in the surroundings. I was wondering about the setting re. time. Women wear pants, color TVs can be ordered for the rooms, but everyone’s view on what a woman should do with her life are almost Victorian. Also, the “scandal” and public outrage for what Edith had done seemed totally exaggerated. Yet color TV in Switzerland hints to the 70s at worst. I don't want to believe this is set in the 80s?

Rating: 4 stars

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (2017 Booker LL 3/13)

Just finished my first unread Booker. Everyone says we have a strong list this year, so I'll be careful with predictions. Last year it would have been a safe candidate for the SL.

My usual historical fiction annoyance made an appearance, but I told myself to calm down and accept that it's fiction after all. I thought the Civil War part was the strongest bit, but overall it was so packed with terrible events that it felt too much for me. You know that feeling when you look at the remaining pages /% and think "oh dear, there's still room for at least two more dramatic turns, couldn't it please instead end right here and now?" It helped that the half-slang writing gave the whole thing such a light-heartedness, it reminded me a bit of Huckleberry Finn. The language was an element I didn’t like much in the first half, but it helped me enormously in the second part when I was actually hoping the narrator would finally jump off some cliff to end all the suffering.

Oh – the plot. It’s about a young Irish boy who's escaped the potato famine and made it to the USA via Canada. He meets his friend for life, John Cole, and together they earn their first money by acting as dancer girls in a saloon in a miners’ town. When they start growing beards and looking too male, they sign up for the army and are sent to some terrible missions even before the Civil War starts. I liked it that a typical drama trap was avoided and a character I was sure would be sacrificed made it through the story.

This was an original and – except for the detailed violence – easy-to-read take on that period of history and I would have rated it a little higher, had there been maybe one massacre/ revenge act less.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Sorry I'm posting this with all the bla, but it explains a bit why half the review is in spoiler tags... Feel free to start (if at all) where the title is in bold:

Obsessions or How I make a Booker review all about Twin Peaks *sigh*

I’ve been a spoiler person for all my life – 3 examples:
• I read who’d die in Harry Potter 6 on the way from the shelf to the cash register after having waited in the queue for the early opening on publishing date
• I didn’t watch “The Sixth Sense” before someone had finally told me “the twist”
• The same went for “Kill Bill 2”

Actually, (and here we are!) I blame “Twin Peaks” season two and the last scene in the last episode. This freaked me out in such a way that I never ever wanted to be that terribly surprised again. So like with “Westworld” and basically everything (even “Friends” and “SatC”) since the early 90s, when the new series started, I never watched the episodes without first having seen a couple of recaps (which, in case of episode 3 and my emetophobia wasn't a bad decision). But then came episode 8, and I’d pay some money if I could watch it again unspoiled. What an experience it must have been, and now I can never have it!

So now I’m setting my alarm clock to 4am every Monday – and from next week on to 2am – and watch the latest episode in real-time. The experience is SO much better! And so for this year’s Booker I decided not even to read the blurbs for the books that are new to me.

And in case of Lincoln in the Bardo this was a great decision, and the rating might be at least half a star lower if I had known more about it beforehand. So I’m hiding everything interesting in spoiler tags and you can decide how much you want to know, okay? I’ll still try to avoid as much as possible, I guess there are countless reviews out there that will give you a plot overview if that’s what you want.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017 Booker LL 4/13)

Negative things that could possibly be said about this book:
• It is sometimes quite vulgar
• It is full of pathos (I understand that “pathetic” has a different, more negative meaning?). You could also say it doesn’t avoid kitsch.
• It (almost) rides a great idea to death more than once and I half-skimmed the odd chapter. You could also say a couple of “characters” and a couple of newspaper/ book quotes too many
• The plot’s logic doesn’t always make sense ( why do children suffer more? What about those diamond halls, what about hell?)
• The final conclusion is dubious (and cost it half a star, I’m a pacifist)

Good things:
• I haven’t read anything similar, so for me it was an original take on the extremely serious themes (death of a child, mourning a beloved person in general, slavery/ racism, the justification of war).
• I loved the different voices and their stories
• I liked how new themes were woven in whenever I was getting a bit tired
• As I said earlier, I loved being unprepared and feeling around in that setting, basically just like “the boy” for whom everything is new.
• I liked the short chapters and the switches from more linear narration to short quotes to voices.
• The basic idea is totally transferrable into the here and now. BIG SPOILER This deals with souls that can’t give up life although their bodies are dead. They hang on to the idea to return to their old lives better and worthier people “if only…”. And that applies too well to life situations, and I guess this is what made me so sad yesterday. You can hold on to something, an idea, a person, a self-image, during life and doing so, you miss life, the time that was given to you. It’s not just the question of accepting death, but also to accept this very situation in life and finally give up the idea that something that’s lost could still be saved and make you or others happy.

I read this almost in one go and I’d be happy if it made the SL – however I doubt it. We had “fun” last year with the Beatty book, so probably we’re back to a serious SL in 2017?
Rating: 4.5 stars

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid- contains SPOILERS(2017 Booker LL 5/13)

This was a surprisingly quick and quite easy read. It also turned out to be quite a different plot from what I was made to expect after the first couple of chapters. Actually I’m not sure if the author really got to where he wanted to go with this book, the second half seems very inspired, but also a bit rushed and blurry.

The book starts with a love story between two young people in an unnamed big Middle-Eastern city at the beginning of a Civil War. Of course Damascus springs to mind, but overall names are left out and also certain expressions like “extremist” or “Islamist”. The attackers with strong minds on how a beard must look like or what a woman should wear are just “militia”. The beginning is slow and bittersweet and I felt like being there, but once the first bombs fell, I was propelled out, a visitor seeing the events almost on fast-forward on a TV screen. Very much happens in just a couple of chapters and the characters’ feelings almost disappear. Then comes the next stage – the escape. The author avoided describing the existing escape routes and instead developed the charming idea of “doors”. Doors open into safe places, and only then did I understand earlier chapters where anywhere in the world people suddenly slip out of mysterious doors and disappear into the night. Sayeed and Nadia pay a lot of money and make it through one of the few remaining doors outside, landing in Mykonos where they spent some time in a refugee camp. From that point on, the plot moves into the unreal. Through yet another secret door they make it to London, to a huge mansion in Kensington, and it seems that doors all over the world lead there, as the mansion and the whole neighborhood are soon flooded by refugees from the Middle-East and Africa. Hamid mixes a bit of Brexit angst into his plot at that point, but towards the end his idea becomes visionary in a more positive way. However, the whole thing also becomes more abstract and conflict-evasive, and I felt he didn’t dare writing where he wanted to lead it ( BIG SPOILER basically a world without borders – nations, gender, religion, sexuality – where people organize themselves, the natives help the migrants and in the end (50 years later) it is implied the world as we know it has become permeable in all directions). I just wish he had taken a bit more time to work this all out, and maybe also a couple of more pages.

Rating: 3.8 stars

Reservoir 13 by Don McGregor - not entirely spoiler-free (Booker 2017 LL 6/13)

This was a new-for-me take on a mystery and another good read which I’d possibly see on the shortlist. The story starts in a small town in wherever is that region in the UK where there are lots of moors and where tourists come for hiking. Around the town there are 13 artificial water reservoirs where once stood villages, and there’s lots of nature.

Some day between Christmas and New Year, a 13 year old girl goes missing. Her name is Rebecca or Becky or Bex (this and a description of her are repeated often throughout the book). She’s the daughter of a tourist couple, and a big search starts that involves many of the townspeople. Chapter one then begins with New Year’s eve/ day, starting the first of 13 years/chapters, separated in 12 paragraphs each for the months. This is a bit like someone had installed cameras on 50 places in and around town (wildlife included) and had taken daily snapshots of which he’d then collected and assembled the most interesting ones. The readers follow a number of citizens (plus the foxes and the dogs and the pheasants and the badgers) through the seasons of 13 years. Sometimes we take a closer look and read an actual conversation, sometimes it’s just a glance. Sometimes I got emotionally involved, but most often not very much, however enough to look forward to the next month or the next year when there was a cliffhanger situation, like the physical abuse in a family (will the victim take some action?) or the question if a couple will get through the stress of raising twins. I mostly loved watching the numerous kids grow up, dogs getting older and the changes of the seasons which differed from year to year. Watching the ageing of adult characters was sometimes sad when it lead to an increasing loneliness, however there were cases when it also lead to new ways of life. In the beginning I often thought “I wish those people would gossip less/ worry less about gossip and talk more”, but this is a typical element of village/ small town life.

The missing girl is always in the background, she is remembered often in thoughts or gossip or the story turns up in the news again when new hints are found, but will there be a conclusion?

I really enjoyed this book and thought it was original, but as someone else said in a review, it’s not a style I’d like to read frequently. It worked very well here.

Rating: 4 stars

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (2017 Booker LL 7/13)

Here is this year’s first Booker candidate I totally disliked. It’s hard to explain that feeling, as the book isn’t badly written or offensive. Generally, it’s a book I don’t really see on the list as I don’t think it does anything new. It’s a coming-of-age story, it’s another teenager growing up in some remote place, this time in Minnesota. Her parents are ex hippies, she spent her first years in a commune before it broke up, and now they live in a kind of cabin in the woods by one of the lakes, in poverty and without any friends. Winters are endless and cold, summers are endless and unbearably hot. There’s much description of nature, but in a way I found either boring or extremely uninviting. Actually, I found much of the book very, very boring, even when about one third in finally something happens and Madeleine, called Linda, befriends the new neighbors, a woman and her 4year old son Paul, later also the husband Leo. Something isn’t right (of course), but the glimpses of the future we get from time to time often have nothing to do with the events of that summer. Maybe the main issue of the book is just something I don’t “get”.

(In my original review I have a big spoiler part right here with my feelings about "the events", a bit too personal for this Booker thread, sorry).

No matter what, I was bored and annoyed through most of my read and I felt like the book was sucking all energy out of me. Linda’s head was quite a dull place to be in.

Rating: those 3 stars I give when a book technically wasn’t bad but I didn’t like it and don’t want my personal dislike to influence the general ratings too much

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (Booker 2017 LL 8/13)

Warning: it is impossible to review this book completely without spoilers (except for saying “GREAT – read it!”), so please decide yourself if you want to continue here. Spoilers are relatively small though

This is a phantastic and courageous book, and on so many levels. The author used the Antigone drama as a scaffolding for her plot which is set in today’s London within a community of British citizens with Pakistani roots (there's a reason for this complicated expression which I won't give here). The book is divided into 5 chapters for the 5 main characters, but the story is moved forward almost without repetitions of Scenes, so it's not 5 viewpoints on the same story and it doesn't get boring for a second.

We start with Isma, a 28 year-old woman who’s held in the interrogation room at Heathrow airport while on her way to the US where she plans to finish her studies. Many years ago she had to interrupt those studies when her mother died and she had to bring up her twin siblings, Aneeka and Parvaiz, much younger than her. We don’t kow yet why she is held for interrogation, this will be explained later in the chapter. Finally in the US, she makes the acquaintance of Eamonn, a fellow Brit with a Pakistani-rooted father and an American mother. His father has just been elected Home Secretary, and he takes a strong stance against “Un-British” elements and isn't terribly popular among the Muslim community. The second chapter sees Eamonn, returned to the UK, where he meets Isma’s beautiful younger sister Aneeka and falls in love with her on the spot. There is some secret around her brother. The later chapters concentrate on that brother, Parvaiz, and are set in the past before Isma’s departure for the States and during her absence. When his chapter ends we turn to Aneeka and finally to the Home Secretary.

My first impressions of the book were good, but not great. It all seemed too obvious, and also the book itself seemed just published in time for the Booker. By the middle of the Parvaiz chapter I was annoyed. But then after all that careful preparation the book takes a turn into full-blown drama, but also into full-blown honesty. The characters are exaggerated, after all this is the analogy of a Greek drama. Love, loss, hatred, grief, desperate loneliness – everything is extreme and you can almost see all the shrill colors and hear the sounds and the wailing of some Background choir. But just below the theatrical surface there’s all the real human dilemma of the world. And the conclusion of the book is that no, sadly there are no easy answers at all.

I must re-read the Ali Smith to see if I have a new favorite. But this book would be a great winner and deserves a big readership.

Rating: 4.8 (5) stars

>101 Deern: Can't wait to receive my copy. BookDepository van be so slow at times!

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (Booker 2017 LL #9/13)

I finished this one early last week and took too much time to write the review. I forgot ALL the names and some of the plot. But I liked it much more than I had expected and I think I liked it more than her previous Booker Winner The God of Small Things. This might partly be because back then I read several similar books on India in a short period, while now it has been several years since my last encounter with “Indian magical realism” and so I could fully enjoy it again. I thought the writing was beautiful, and I didn’t mind the fragmented plot that only comes completely together in the end. There are connections throughout between the parts, I have read many books that were much more confusing. Yes, there is almost unbearably much violence. “Almost”, because the MR style wraps it in a beautifully embroidered blanket. Which isn’t bad, as this way the reader can digest more of it than in a more factually written book as 2015’s The Year of the Runaways or 2014’s The Lives of Others (which I thought were both great books).

Personally I don’t have anything against the author as I don’t know anything about her. I’m going to read up on wiki to see why so much of the negative criticism was directed at her person and less at the book, but I didn’t want to do that prior to reading. What I take from the novel is that she quite equally accuses all politicians/ parties and all religious groups of violence and manipulation, it didn’t feel one-sided. From Home Fire I took that there are no simple answers, from this book I take that sometimes, sadly, there are no answers at all. People just do all that, and yet small places and short moments of happiness can be found.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Seriously impressed by how many of the longlist you've read so far! What's up next? I'm about to start Home Fire.

>104 Cait86: I hope you'll enjoy Home Fire, it was quite a ride!
I might need another couple of days to get over the "Twin Peaks The Return" experience which feels like it occupies 99% of my mind, and then I hope to finish the Zadie Smith. I started all the remaining ones a while ago and will eventually get through them, though maybe not in time for the winner announcement.

Swing Time by Zadie Smith (Booker 2017 LL 10/13)

I like being challenged by books and I really like Zadie Smith although (or because?) her books are what we call a “Kopfgeburt” in German, a “head birth”, i.e. something is all good and smart and right and logical, but lacks the spark or passion that makes you turn to it happily.

Basically there are two main story threads and the narration jumps (too) frequently between both which makes for a stumbling read: the nameless narrator’s childhood and youth with her friend Tracy, much of which is spent with dancing lessons and watching Fred Astaire movies, and her life as a young adult and personal assistant of international pop star Aimée who’s modelled on Madonna. ZS was influenced by the Ferrante books, and similar to Lenu and Lila, our narrator (ON) and Tracy seem two sides of one coin or mirror images. Both from mixed marriages (Tracy with a white mother and ON with a white father), growing up in the same neighborhood. Tracey is talented and determined but lacks the stable familiar background while ON with a strong and smart mother and better opportunities doesn’t know what to do with her life. As luck changes for ON with her first job in media, so it changes for Tracy for the worse.

Many chapters of the adult years are located in West Africa (I guess the Gambia?) where Aimée founds a girls’ school. I liked those chapters very much, they are achingly honest, and they can’t leave the reader with much optimism, which maybe explains why so many readers prefer the first part set in London. We don’t really want to know when our good intentions towards other countries/cultures/ people bear different fruits than those we had in mind for them. The development of the Hawa character left me very sad.

I was disappointed with the ending and wished ON had handled that situation a bit more maturely. However this is a good and important book, maybe more ambitious than ZS’s older ones, looking at the Africa chapters and Tracy's later life. Just don’t expect a quick or easy or fun read.

Rating: 4 stars

Elmet by Fiona Mozley - CONTAINS SPOILERS (Booker 2017 11/13)
Done with the short list, yay! Two more longlisted books to go which both absolutely don’t call me, so for now I’m rereading Ali Smith’s Autumn where once again I stumble over the question why a country like Britain can’t have registered addresses and identity cards like so many other countries when passports are voluntary and so often photo IDs are required.

But anyway, this is about Elmet. First of all: it’s a very interesting debut and I can see why it was listed although it started out as just another coming-of-age-in-remote-place-with-no-friends-and-strange-parents story of which we already had History of Wolves (why is that one shortlisted again?).

The writing is beautiful and manages to make you doubt the time setting. So much man and nature, at times it feels like reading something medieval. But then jeeps are mentioned and phones and we’re clearly at the very least in the 80s or maybe 90s. Don’t think we’re in the now though or are there still public phone booths in Wales? The narrator is very young Daniel who might be 14, who moves with his father “Daddy” and his older sister Cathy (16?) into the nothing – they claim a piece of land in the woods that many years ago used to belong to his (disappeared) mother. With their bare hands they build a hut, they lay traps for animals and hunt birds with a bow. Daddy, a tree of a man, used to earn his life with illegal fights and money squeezing, and he’s still very strong. Cathy seems to have inherited his physical strength and tendency for violence despite her frail-looking body, while Daniel follows his mother’s genes and is overall more sensitive. The kids don’t attend school but receive some private tuition from Vivien, an old friend of their mother’s where Daniel for the first time learns the comforts of a real home with soft chairs and heating. All would have been well, had the (evil!) landowner Price who years ago also bought this part of land from Daniel’s and Cathy’s mother, not turned up with his two (evil!) young sons to claim his legal rights and to get “Daddy” to work for him again. (Actually, I absolutely didn’t get why “Daddy” who knows Price very well, absolutely had to get that part of land, knowing his wife had sold it legally and what was to be expected of Price. “It feels right” isn’t really convincing, especially as he did it to grant his children a “safe home”.)

Actually, most of the plot is totally predictable, also because the chapters are preceded by Daniel’s stream of consciousness narration set in some later time when he’s on the road, looking for his sister. There’s growing dread, things won’t end well and they’re likely to end in total violence. For me, in the second half there came the point when I would have dropped the book if it hadn’t been a Booker. My mind begged me to please make it not witness what was to come, reminding me of the agony after reading Mr. Pip and Little Bee. I turned to skim reading and made it through it. I was very shaken for half of Sunday, but maybe it helped that the characters here “had it coming”, unlike the victims in the other two books.

This will certainly be among the Booker candidates I won’t forget, but I don’t think I’ll ever touch it again.

Rating: 3.5 stars. 4 for the forceful writing, 2.5 for the plot that had to be bent several times

Still 2 books short of last year's LL, but I finally finished another early winner. Quite impossible to review, because the good parts were read with a different part of my brain and the not-so-good parts were confusing.

G. A Novel by John Berger (Winner 1972)

I started this last year in July as Booker preparation, put it on hold when the 2017 longlist was out and then quite forgot about it until I saw it fit this month’s BAC. G. is the illegitimate son of a rich Italian and his English mistress, born in the late 1800s. He spends his childhood years in England on the farm of his mother’s relatives, later meets his father in Milano during the big riots, but returns to England to conclude his education. Later episodes see him again in Northern Italy (Milano, Domodossola) and finally in Trieste during the first days of WWI. This was for me – for the most part – a great book, but the last 30%, set in Trieste, were totally lost on me, and it wasn’t the flu. Berger uses G., whose name is never spelled out, as a Don Juan character. He experiences his life mostly sensually. How does it feel to drink milk or to touch the rough fabric of a skirt? How do we feel inside our body, and inside our clothes? Later, in the Domodossola chapter, I really liked the portrayal of his lover Camille and highlighted complete pages. But the last chapter, the conclusion, somehow doesn’t fit.

Not an easy book, and certainly a courageous and non-traditional choice as a Booker winner.

Rating: 3.8 stars

The Gathering by Anne Enright (Winner 2007) (audio)
Actually, I quite liked The Gathering, a bit more than The Green Road. The audio format might have helped, there was actual singing! I read 3 others from that year's shortlist and can't say which one I'd have chosen, all good, none of them exceptionally so. I like Enright's writing and her insights and often felt a personal connection, but I thought in the end it wasn't such a great story. I'm getting a bit weary with novels about large Irish families, convoluted sexuality and religion (guilt) and alcohol abuse. It feels like there have been so many of those on the Booker lists and the 1001 list.

For most of the book I didn't know what all the Ada stuff was about, but it served the purpose to show how wobbly and blurry memories become. What was real, what was imagination? I didn't buy the "this is the reason for Liam's misery" story, he was different from the start it seemed, and might have gone down that road anyway. Glad I got this one checked off in a month with so far no other reading (June 2018).

Rating:3.75 stars

Hi, again Nathalie

Reading your comments, I thought I'd read the Gathering but just didn't remember the details. Nope, I see I read The Forgotten Waltz, which I remember enjoying on audio book during chilly winter walks. Your review sounds similar to what I remember, and maybe I'll read the Gathering if it crosses my path when I'm in a mood for that.

Time to copy my reviews of this year's LLed booky over...

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (Booker 2018 LL 1/13) Very small spoilers only...

I try not to feel influenced by the very uncomfortable process of reading a graphic novel on my ipad mini and my smartphone or by my dislike for reading longer texts in capital letters. I read less than a handful of "adult GNs" so far in my life - except for the Ralf Koenig gaycomix which are sometimes very serious, but a different genre.
I can't say I liked this one although in the second half I finally started reacting emotionally to the story. In the first half, despite the theoretically exciting events, I just felt numb, and that's due to the very reduced graphical style with no mimics in the faces of the characters and the very bland dialogue. I'd say "it's all trauma", but we get a scene of before Sabrina's disappearance, and it's just as bland. My first reaction was that I wouldn't want to be there, not of a loving sisterly relationship between Sandra and Sabrina. Maybe if those first couple of pages had conveyed some warmth, I would have felt the contrast to the other scenes more. But even then - let Sandra the sister and boyfriend Teddy be traumatized and numb and the army friend Calvin numb and lonely, but total numbness in the journalists - really? "um... maybe call the police?" with expression-free face? That's all?
The second half is scary, but not new. This sadly is our world. Contrary to others, I liked the ending.
I don't mind there's a GN in the Booker bunch, at least it's a quick read, and I doubt I would have liked this one better as text only.
My clueless rating is 3.5 stars for now.

I know I'm using "bland" and "numb" too often, but that's what I felt. I cancelled "dull", at least.

In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne (Booker 2018 LL 2/13)

Something strange happened with this book: I found it extremely strong while I read it, and then its ending which I’m sure was meant to make it only stronger (a BIG event and what you feared early on really happens) basically removed it from my focus. I was captured by the strength of the often poetic language, I loved how the two older characters Caroline and Nelson who had witnessed earlier periods of seperation and hatred in Northern Ireland and London added their voices. I loved looking at each of the three young main characters, the three boys who are really just that – boys who want some fun and play football together. Somehow I didn’t like how it all comes together in the end. A good contender for the SL in any case and with its strong intro end epilogue a real and believable declaration of love for London.
Rating: 4.2 stars

Snap by Belinda Bauer (Booker 2018 LL 3/13)

One of those books that were certainly not written towards a possible Booker nomination, so I won’t say much about its flaws. I don’t like thrillers, especially when they deal with women home alone hearing an intruder when I’m reading them while alone in a big house (even the company has moved out!) for the weekend. Yes, I had nightmares. Anyway, the main plot: 11 year old Jack and his 2 young sisters are left in the car by their pregnant mother on a hot and sunny day, near the motorway, when the car breaks down. She goes for the next phone to call for help and never returns. 3 years later, Jack and his siblings live alone in their house. Their father left, unable to cope with the situation (the mother’s body had been found a week after her disappearance). I didn’t want to believe that setup at first, then I remembered there’s no registration in Britain as in Germany or Italy, so maybe it’s possible that 3 children can live in house alone and no-one notices. At the same time, heavily pregnant Caroline hears an intruder in her home and finds a knife and a note, saying “I could have killed you” and decides not to call the police. Okay… People take strange decisions here all the time. Policemen are eccentric. It was a very quick and entertaining read if that includes fear. I’m okay with it for the LL, would rather not see it on the SL.
Rating: 3.3 stars

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner - SPOILER WARNING (Booker 2018 LL 4/13)

Hm. I feel quite sure that this one’s a candidate for the SL. Not for the win, simply because I really don’t think they’ll give it to a US author yet again. I liked it and at the same time it made me very very Booker wary. I need a break!

Romy (who used to work as a stripper/ dancer in the “Mars Room”, a club in San Francisco) has been sentenced to two times life plus several years for killing her stalker. The focus of this novel is on Romy’s experiences in prison, then there are flashbacks to her life and what led her to the crime. Sometimes the narrative switches to other characters in prison – Sammy she shares a cell with in the first weeks, then London, another cell mate, then a woman on death row and her partner in crime (an ex cop) in a different prison, a teacher who gets Romy books, there’s even the viewpoint of the stalker. I thought the book had its strongest moments when it stayed in prison. I didn’t really want to know what led Romy there, if the verdict was fair or not, if she was smart or not. I didn’t need all that effort to sympathize with her. The prison and what it does to people stands very much for itself and I didn’t want to be distracted from my anger. We sure don’t have the world’s best system in Germany (and it’s worse in Italy), but what happened to Button or to Romy’s son left me speechless and very sad, and I’m glad we have a different law and prison system for minors and that the question of children is handled differently nowadays.

Rating: 4 stars, and I need some non-fiction now.

From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan (Booker 2018 LL 5/13)

I returned to the Booker sooner than I thought, but this book confirmed me that I’m weary with contemporary fiction. I liked Ryan’s The Spinning Heart, and this book confirmed that he’s great in writing many believable voices. But are they really important voices? The Spinning Heart which I read was called “Irish novel of the decade” and won many prizes, was a very good book, but I remember saying it could just as well have happened anywhere else. The problems weren’t particularly Irish, they were typical for a small community that depends too much on one employer, and I could have transferred those voices without difficulty to the village where I grew up.

This is also the case for young Lampy here, the second voice in this novel, I've met many Lampys in my life.
Farouk, the first voice, is from Syria and his story is as heartbreaking as you’ll fear after the first page. The third voice, John’s confession of the sins committed in his life, was somewhat ruptured and inconclusive. There are two more voices that bring it all together. This is a well written novel, that for some reason, except for Farouk’s story, failed to touch me. Many reviewers mention they were shocked when the three threads come together in the last pages. I wasn’t. Okay, sorry for Lampy and what it means for his life, but the other connections? Were they necessary, did they really add something to my understanding of the characters? I mean – we know what happened, we just didn’t know who was who until that point. And when that point is reached, is it really still important? Heartbreaking as Farouk’s story was, he felt like an add-on. Not an unwelcome one, but the story ends before we see what contribution he will really make to the story of Lampy and his family.

I am currently in my usual low summer mood (I'm a summer-depression person), thinking much about loss, mourning and what is it that makes so many of us suffer/ feeling emotional pain constantly while we're having good lives. Ryan is a very good observer of that dullness, emptiness in the average life. His characters are recognizable for me, and I believe I would rather read them without a plot that "brings it all together". Just random voices, they are his strength.

I will continue with my other books now, mainly non-fiction.

Rating: 3.8 stars