The Constant Gardener by John le Carre is a cracking read. Justin Quayle is a British diplomat in the High Commission in Nairobi. His wife Tessa is investigating, along with her Dr friend Arnold Bluhm, the use of a drug for TB which is causing the deaths in many people. The drug is effectively being trialled in Africa, on people ‘who don’t matter’ so that it can be released in the Western World with no side effects. However, Tessa and Arnold are murdered and Justin sets out to investigate their deaths, whilst trying to avoid being killed himself. This is a great read, very exciting and a real page turner. My only complaint is that it is sometimes hard to know who is narrating the story and I had to re-read a couple of bits to make sure I was understanding. I have also seen the film of this novel and have to admit that it was really well done and worth a watch.
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The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty is a quirky and charming book and I really enjoyed it. Connie Thrum is the rather determined matriarch of a very unconventional family who live on the rather gorgeously named Scribbly Gum Island. For years she and her sister and other relatives have hid a huge secret. When Connie and her sister Rose were children the found a baby in an abandoned house. The parents had just disappeared and a marble cake was cooling on the kitchen table. Over the years they have used this ‘mystery’ to make lots of cash and the baby grew up in the care of the sisters and she was rather aptly called Enigma. When Connie dies she leaves a few rather surprising bequests, including leaving her house to Sophie, the ex-girlfriend of her sister’s grandson.
The reason I loved this book is that it was easy reading and had really gorgeous characters. The story was quirky and random and really quite unexpected. I loved it.
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At A Time Like this by Catherine Dunne is quite a slow read. Four women gather together for a meal to celebrate their 25-year friendship. The book jumps about between time periods and is narrated by all the different women which made it both quite annoying to read, but also quite disjointed. I think sometimes this style works and sometimes it doesn’t – unfortunately it was the latter in this case. I found the characters shallow and selfish and I just didn’t feel that I would want to be friends with any of them!! Anyway, it passed the time of day whilst I commuted. It will go back to the charity shop now!
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The Infidelity Chain by Tess Simpsonis a pretty good read. Two married people (married to each other I mean!), Jackson & Ella are having an affair with each other. In their opinions all is going well until Ella’s husband dies and things change dramatically. This book is narrated both by Ella and Jackon, but also by Jackson’s wife and daughter. It’s a clever book in that you find the same conversations repeated in the next chapter, but from another person’s perspective. It quite clearly shows that infidelity is not only a bad idea, but that it affects so many more people than just those directly involved in the affair.
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Where Rainbows End by Ceclilia Ahern is a sweet little book. The whole book is written in the form of letters, emails and msn messages which makes it really quick to read. Starting with the friendship of Rosie and Alex whilst they are still at primary school the book follows their friendship and their love lives right through until they are 50. All the way through it I spent my time wondering why they didn’t pull themselves together and have a relationship… finally it all works out in the end. A very typical chick lit book but I like the way Ahern writes – she is one of the better authors!
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The Secret Friend by Chris Mooney is crime fiction, in the same ilk as Kathy Reichs and those sorts of authors. Two girls go missing and many years later their bodies are found. No-one knows where they have been and who might have killed them. Another girl goes missing and the race is on to try and find her before she has the same fate as the other girls. Add to that one renegade ex-FBI agent and it makes it all even more exciting. A good book, not quite in the same league as some of the other crime writers, but a good story all the same.
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The Good Guy by Dean Koontz is a thriller and a bit of a page-turner which made it quite a quick read!
Tim Carrier is sitting in his local bar having a beer when a man comes in and clearly thinks he who someone who has been hired to kill a woman called Linda. Being the model citizen he is he decides to warn this woman and there starts a game of cat and mouse. Pretty exciting read and I enjoyed it.
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Brother Odd by Dean Koontz is, quite frankly, an odd book.
Set in a snowbound monastery the main character is a man called Odd Thomas. He has a psychic gift and sees all sorts of evil and demons and to be honest they seem to follow him all over the place! He gets the sense that something dreadful is about to happen and he is in charge of stopping it. It was a very exciting story, but also very, very peculiar. At times I found myself really confused by what was going on. The cross-over between what was the real world and what was the spirit world was sometimes not so clearly defined, but it was a fascinating book.
Apparently this was the third in a trilogy about Odd Thomas, so maybe I will read them in reverse order!
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The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton by Catherine Alliott is good chick-lit. I know some people might think that is an oxymoron but it really is good chick-lit. So often books in that category are predictable and the characters are either nasty or nice but nothing in between.
Evie Hamilton is a privileged middle-class mother of one daughter, married to an Oxford don living a rather charmed and easy life. Things get complicated when her husband finds out that he has another daughter, conceived after a one-night stand when he was engaged to Evie. The book shows Evie spectacularly losing it, but also eventually coming to terms with the situation and the characters are lovely. I feel like they could be people I know. I enjoyed it. A good read!
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The Cellist of Sarajevo is a truly beautiful book. Whilst the book follows the fictional lives of three people living in Sarajevo during the siege the cellist is based on a the real-life story of the cellist who sat and played in the burned out mortar crater for 22 days following the deaths of 22 people who were queuing for bread. He played the beautiful and haunting Albinoni’s Adagio, risking his own life but serving as a memorial for the dead. The book is sad, and, I suspect, shockingly accurate with regards to the atrocities that happened in the city. Well worth a read.
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I thought the book Anyone Can Do It by Duncan Bannatyne would be really quite annoying and I would just found him very arrogant. I have to admit that at some points this thought did cross by mind, but the book also made me laugh and I found him very inspiring. One of the things I was most taken with was that Duncan Bannatyne was still bumming about on a beach in Jersey in his thirties and he didn’t actively start pursuing a business profile until after that. He is a true entrepreneur and he has invested in many different businesses over the year – he sees a gap in the market and gets on with it. One his most impressive investments was his business in the nursing and care home market – he wanted to build homes that were efficient but also compassionate. He also briefly mentions his charity work but didn’t dwell onto it too much. One of the only complaints I had about this book is that the grammar is dreadful and he needed a decent proofreader! Think I might move on to reading the rest of the books written by the Dragons.
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I can decide whether Bee Season by Myla Goldberg is an extraordinary book or a strange one. Maybe it is both.
The book is about the Naumann family. A Jewish family whose daughter, Eliza, enters the school spelling bee and ends up going to the national competition. The first half of the book is about her journey from being fairly ordinary to a spelling genius. She always feels second place to her older brother, but her talent for spelling gives her some sort of kudos.
The second half of the book shifts to becoming a story of the individuals who are trying to find enlightment. Her older brother Aaron turns against the religion of his birth and joins the Hare Krishnas and spends his time chanting whilst wearing saffron robes. Her father introduces Eliza to the writings of a Kabbalist mystic and she begins her only journey, chanting on words. Their mother is a kleptomaniac who has a breakdown.
It really is an interesting book but I found it quite hard going in places. An interesting read in lots of ways. The Jewish aspects of family life were interesting and it was quite a deep thinking book. Good stuff.
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The Dead Room by Chris Mooney is a pacey crime novel. It sees the return of Crime Scene Investigator Darby McCormick. She is called to investigate the murder of a woman in front of her 11 year old son. He doesn’t die but tells Darby that he knows that his grandparents had been murdered too and he knows who did it. Then he tries to kill himself. The book is the unfolding of this case but also involves police corruption on a grand scale. A fairly straightforward but good read.
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