Ninepins

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

The charaters are alive and easy to relate to. The descriptions of the countryside bring the place alive. It's clean enough to let my teenage daughters read.

Cons: 

The romance was a bit predictable, but still okay, as it wasn't the main point of the book.

Although I have never been to that part of England, I feel like I would recognize it if I saw it. Ninepins is an old tollhouse in the Cambridgeshire fens. In it, live Laura, a single mother and her twelve year old daughter Beth. They struggle as Beth is growing more independent and Laura tries to protect her. They rent out the old pumphouse near Ninepins to students. 

Our Man in Havana (Vintage Classics)

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Wonderful writing makes this satirical spy story a cut above the rest.

Cons: 

None.

Graham Greene is one of those authors I’ve avoided for most of my life, thinking that he would be too issue-driven, too dark, too steeped in whisky-drinking priests and complicated political problems for my taste. When it comes to reading, there’s nothing I like more than having my assumptions shown up for the unjust prejudices they are.  Graham Greene is called a modern classic today because (even if there weren’t other pressing reasons) he is a remarkably good writer.

Straight Man

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Hilarious story about an English professor trying to sort out his life.

Cons: 

None!

This is the story of Hank Devereaux, temporary Chair of the English Faculty from Hell at West Central Pennsylvania University. Devereaux is a man with a sense of humour where his sense of responsibility should be, and if he’s been forced to lead the squabbling, neurotic bunch of no-hopers he calls his colleagues, he’ll do so as the Lord of Misrule, whipping up vituperation and dissent to epic proportions. He just can’t help himself when there’s perverse pleasure to be had, which is odd because helping himself seems to be the one thing that Hank generally can’t do.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Reviewer rating: 

4

Pros: 

How to live knowing what the future holds? Tender and tragic love story.

Cons: 

Inevitably requires some serious suspension of disbelief!

It took me a long time to get around to reading this novel, as the things I'd heard about it suggested a situation so romantic and ridiculous I was afraid I'd hate it. But when I finallly did pick it up, I was pleasantly surprised. 

Anatomy of a Disappearance

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Powerful tale of a young boy's longing for his abducted father

Cons: 

None

Hisham Matar’s novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance is a cool and elegant appraisal of loss, whose surface lucidity does not conceal the dark enigmas on which it is based. Nuri is twelve, the cosseted son of a rich and important dissident living in exile in Cairo, when his mother dies. He is old enough to feel his loss, but too young to understand the circumstances of his mother’s death. Left alone with his aloof father, the two holiday in Alexandria, where Nuri develops a powerful adolescent crush on a woman in a bright yellow bathing suit.

Last Evenings On Earth

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Brilliant short stories about what life is like for bad writers.

Cons: 

None!

Roberto Bolaño is a Chilean writer who spent a significant portion of his life in exile in Catalonia, and his short stories feature dispossessed and marginal people who often seem exiled from their own lives. Quite a lot of them are writers or artists of some kind, but they are rarely successful, lacking the talent, or the drive, or the good fortune to consolidate their aspirations into a career. If this makes the stories sound dreary, then think again.

A Month in the Country (Penguin Modern Classics)

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

A brilliant novella - can't imagine how I missed it until now.

Cons: 

It's only 85 pages long.

Somehow or other I managed to reach the age of 47 without ever reading J.L. Carr’s brilliant novella, ‘A Month in the Country’, or seeing the film-of -the-book. Half of that deficiency, at least, has now been rectified.

The Other Side of You

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

An unusual story about love and psychotherapy.

Cons: 

If you hate psychotherapy and think it's rubbish, don't try this - or only try it if you've still got a chink of an open mind.

I think it was the clever essayist Adam Phillips who asked the somewhat blunt question: What use are other people to us? And answered it with the salvationary statement: To make a difference. He was describing the strange alchemy that can take place when one person tells their story to another and finds it strangely altered in reflection.

Nights At The Circus

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

A sumptuous feast of language.

Cons: 

Take your time reading this one - it repays attention.

I finished Angela Carter’s Nights At The Circus a couple of weeks ago but it’s taken a while for me to decide what to say about it. There aren’t many books that overwhelm me, but Carter’s epic, picaresque, bawdy, monstrous novel just about managed it. I felt almost bilious with words by the end, for Carter’s style is scandalously generous with brilliant descriptions, stunning word portraits that pack every event out with jewel-bright glimpses into the different layers of her fictional world.

The Flying Troutmans

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Bittersweet novel finds the comedy in dysfunctional families.

Cons: 

None!

This entertaining novel centres on the tragic question of what can be done for children who have never known stability. It’s odd, isn’t it, how funny novels are so often built on heartbreaking premises? Canadian writer, Miriam Toews has carved herself a niche for dealing with the problems of adolescence and in The Flying Troutmans, her fifth novel, she rewrites the buddy road trip to moving and amusing effect.