Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams

Posted on by
Reply

Have you ever loved reading something so much you deliberately slow down so you can savour every word? That’s how I felt about Queenie. I keep seeing reviews which hail her as the new Bridget Jones and that’s such lazy commentary. Queenie isn’t the ‘new’ anybody, she’s uniquely herself and all the better for it.

This is a book with a big heart and a protagonist who is utterly relatable.  There were times when I just wanted to reach into the pages and give her a massive hug, she became so real to me.  I mean, honest to God, we’ve all made hideous mistakes in our twenties, that’s part of growing up, but Queenie is so painfully vulnerable, so brave, and in the midst of everything still so much fun, you can’t help but love her.  Her experiences as a young black woman resonated massively with me, because her struggles are both universal and unique.  Some of it made uncomfortable reading, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing – the best writing will do that to you.  In that respect it was a window into a world I knew nothing about.

It’s not just Queenie herself I loved, her gang of female friends were so well realised too, like the mates I had in my twenties, there for you all the way. Her grandparents’ tough love when she needed it, and Queenie’s gradual realisation of her mother’s vulnerabilities were beautifully drawn. And, I liked the fact her story wasn’t about girl meets boy, girl loses boy, yada yada yada, that would have been far too trite an ending. This book was about how she found herself more than anything else, it was funny, moving, emotional and uplifting all at the same time. An absolute triumph.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

Posted on by
Reply

I kept seeing this book mentioned on Twitter, and then it won the Costa First Novel Prize, and now it’s popping up on all sorts of novel prize lists, including the British Book Awards and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel Awards. Part of me almost rebelled against buying it and once I had I kept putting off reading it, I’d seen so many rave reviews.

Is it a crime novel? Well, sort of. It’s not as though you don’t know who the victim is right from the beginning, or even who the murderer is supposed to be, so there’s no mystery there. It’s the marmite of fiction, so far as I can see, because you’ll either absolutely adore it or you’ll end up chucking it across the room in frustration, there’s no room in between. I found it quite heavy going to start off with until I got to grips with the pattern and structure of the novel, but it is definitely worth persevering.

There’s a richness to the way it’s written, not just the ingenuity of the premise and plot, which make it a rewarding read. The characters are absorbing and the detailed historical research that the author must have done is worn lightly throughout, just enough scattered imagery and sensory colour to root you clearly in the period. He breaks all the rules you get taught when you’re first starting out trying to write a novel – multiple points of view, a plot that’s upside down and back to front, and a genre that’s hard to pinpoint. Yet it all works incredibly well, and it does have the pace and suspense of a thriller even though you already know whodunnit. Or you think you do. Kind of.

I’ve seen this book described as Quantum Leap meets Agatha Christie, but I think that leaves out the slight feeling of mysticism coming through the narrative. It’s ancient and modern all at the same time, and it made my head hurt to read (but in a good way).

The Road to Grantchester, by James Runcie

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve watched and enjoyed the TV series (although not so much now that James Norton aka Sidney Chambers no longer features, sorry to be so shallow), and long wondered whether it would be worth reading one of the books. It can be challenging going from adaptation to original, which is why I’ve hesitated. The discrepancies between book and screen sometimes stand out too much, or you get frustrated because you already know how the story ends. This was different though, a prequel to the series designed to tell the story of how Chambers finds God and changes his life. Or, you could look at it the other way round, and say it’s about the way his life experiences lead him to God.

What I liked about this book most was its hard edges, the way in which the author was unafraid to show the impact of war and loss, and the nature of the friendship forged between men who go through the worst of times together. It is ultimately about forgiveness and redemption, and although there is a bit of a twist towards the end, to me that wasn’t the point of the story. Religion and religious choices can be difficult to write about because there’s a risk of alienating believers and non-believers alike. What I think James Runcie did so well here was to make his protagonist’s journey entirely credible, showing us how deeply and over what a long time period Sidney had thought about what he wanted to do with his life after what he’d experienced.

Don’t misunderstand me about the hard edges though, this isn’t a difficult or challenging read, but neither is it the soft-focus, warm-bath experience that Sunday evening TV can be (nothing wrong with it, if that’s what you fancy at the time). It’s well-written and satisfying to read. And it’s not all about religion, some of it’s about the dance between Sidney and Amanda – and if you have watched the TV series you’ll understand the significance of that relationship. Reading it enables you to piece together the clues to future behaviours, full of “so that’s why he/she/they did x/y/z” moments, which I really enjoyed.

Good writing is often about not noticing the craft, you’re so taken on the journey with the author, and I’d say that’s the case with this book. It’s made me wonder whether or not it’d be worth starting at the beginning of the Grantchester novels and working my way through them, so that’s got to be a good thing.

The Mystery of Three Quarters, by Sophie Hannah

Posted on by
Reply

Sophie Hannah is a writer I admire. I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything she’s written, starting with Little Face and, most recently, Did You See Melody. But it’s one thing to build your own world in fiction, to create your own characters, and quite another to breathe new life into someone else’s creation.  With Poirot and Agatha Christie, that’s a very tall order indeed.

As a teenager, I devoured all the Agatha Christie books I found in my grandmother’s house, loving the descriptions, the pace and the language.  As an adult, like everyone else, I have been absorbed by different TV adaptations, and believe David Suchet’s performance caught Poirot better than anyone. You know, when you read a book and then see it on screen, and the person on screen is exactly, completely, the person you had in your head.

How much harder and more daunting must it be, then, to be tasked with continuing the story of someone who is so familiar to us all? Now, I don’t know if Sophie Hannah binge-watched back to back Poirot before she sat down to write this latest Poirot adventure, but I tell you what, I could hear his voice in my head as I read it. Wonderfully done, she has captured the rhythm and cadence of Poirot’s speech and thought processes, whilst creating a suitably tangled plotline. Three books in, the relationship between the two key protagonists is rounded and well-realised, and it was a smart move on her part to create a new sidekick in the shape of Edward Catchpool rather than setting herself the additional hurdle of writing Inspector Japp and Captain Hastings into the story.

It’s not a bonkers grippy read, it has the same pace and slightly soothing quality of an original Christie, ideal for a quiet Sunday afternoon (which is when I read it), or a long train journey. More please.

To Kill the President, To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne

Posted on by
Reply

I binge-read both of these books in a sprint over a couple of days, and I have to make a confession here, I originally read the first one “To Kill the President” quite some time ago. Then, I started reading the new one, “To Kill the Truth”, and fifteen pages in realised I needed to go back and re-read the first one if the second one was to make any sense. That’s both the advantage and disadvantage of being someone who reads very fast. You can read a book over and over again, getting something new every time, but equally you don’t retain that much after each read – otherwise there would be zero room in your head for anything else.

Sam Bourne has definitely got the knack of a gripping first chapter, that’s for sure. As an aspiring writer, I found myself admiring the way he ratchets up the stakes until you are desperate to know what happens next. To be honest, I don’t know how much I want to say about the plot of either of these two books, because I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t read them. Both of them are extremely timely. In each, he’s managed to build a plot which is highly relevant to what’s going on in the world, touching on key political and social themes. He’s a clever writer, if that makes sense, because in the middle of some racing plotlines, he makes you stop and think about bigger ideas and issues than those which simply live on the page.

The protagonist, Maggie Costello is likeable, fallible and real – there have been a number of excerpts doing the rounds on Twitter from male authors writing female protagonists, where they’ve got it horribly wrong, but that’s not the case here.

If you want a couple of thrillers that’ll glue your eyes to the page, these are highly recommended. Made me want to go and look up Sam Bourne’s back catalogue to see what else I can read.

This is Going to Hurt, by Adam Kay

Posted on by
1

So, Adam Kay’s best-selling book about his experiences working in the NHS was this month’s Book Club pick. I’d read it before, and I wondered how much it would stand up to a second read, because it had such a huge impact first time around. I’m not going to say I needn’t have worried, because it was different reading it knowing what was coming. That wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but it did remove the visceral impact of the moment when he finally reaches the end of his tether. What a loss to the medical profession.

One of our number is a consultant paediatrician, and the group spent quite a lot of time quizzing her on whether the stories he told were true to life. Having myself worked with many healthcare professionals over the years, it didn’t come as a surprise to me when she confirmed them – oh, not specifics, but the generalities of working in the health service. As before, I came away from reading this book believing even more strongly that we must support people working on the front line – our NHS is a precious thing and worth protecting. The disconnect between asking people working in health to act as though they have a vocation (thereby continually going above and beyond), and then treating them as units of time delivering units of service, as opposed to human beings, is vividly brought to life in this book.

Also, easy to read, well written, made me chuckle, but also made me stop and think. It’s no wonder it not only became a best-seller but has stayed a best-seller.

Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce

Posted on by
Reply

I thought I’d start with this book, as I finished reading it over my lunch today. Not entirely sure its graphic imagery goes that well with a mug of chicken soup, but it was certainly gripping. It was one of those books you almost end up reading in spite of yourself, probably because I found the protagonist initially quite unlikeable.

Alison, a barrister, is unappetisingly drunk at the beginning of the novel and clearly obsessed with Patrick, an equally unpleasant character with whom she ends up having rough sex on her office desk. She’s married to a man who appears the epitome of patient husbandhood, with a daughter she clearly dotes on, and to start off with she makes a series of what read like wrong choices, driven by drink and overwork. Yet, like many of us, she wants to do the right thing most of the time and that really saved her for me as a character.

One of the things I particularly liked about Blood Orange was the clever way in which the writer built the suspense. There were places where I was certain Alison was being gaslighted by her husband, and others where I wanted to shake her for being so naive. I never understood what she saw in Patrick throughout the whole thing, but I loved the parallels between her life and that of one of her clients. Her sympathy for a victim of domestic violence threw up interesting questions that were only resolved right at the end.

Speaking of which, I did wonder whether the prologue was written as an afterthought to echo the ending, especially as it was written from a different point of view from the book itself. If so, I think it worked as a device, but having said that I kept wondering throughout about its relevance and where the scene described was going to pop up in the story. Or, was it written to give the book its title? Sorry to be so cynical. Either way, it worked for me.

I read this book quite quickly over the course of three days (train journeys, over coffee, and before I went to sleep), because I was gripped by the story as it unfolded. So, although I didn’t particularly like the protagonist, I did want to know what happened to her – even though sometimes I felt as though I would have been better reading it from behind the sofa, almost wincing as Alison’s life disintegrated. Some of the descriptions were very vivid, not just visual but sensory too. And her dawning realisation about what was really going on in her life was very well done.

Books like Blood Orange are great because they are very satisfying to read. There’s definitely a beginning, a middle and and end. The story is resolved in full and you can walk away from them not wondering what’s next for the characters. And for me, because I raced through it to get to the end, that means it’s a book I can go back to at some point and read all over again on the basis there’s bound to be things I missed. Would I buy another book by Harriet Tyce? Yes, I think I would. Good experience all round.