a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘Montmorency on the Rocks’, Eleanor Updale

A trip down memory lane to rejoin Montmorency on his swashbuckling escapades as former crook-turned government agent. This time an Irish bomber and a medical mystery on a Scottish island keep him and his companions busy. The neat closure at the end of the novel, its happy end and the ease with which past wrongs are forgiven are reminders that this is a children’s book. But who’s to say that children can’t deal with moral dilemmas and emotional complexity?

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘Four: A Divergent Collection’, Veronica Roth

A addition rather than a prequel or sequel to the ‘Divergent’ trilogy, this time told from Four’s perspective. Although interesting to see events through the eyes of the impassive, enigmatic Four, this novel doesn’t tell the reader anything we don’t know or can’t guess already. Introducing a new event or story line would have made for a more engaging read in a novel that by the end I was reading more out of duty than actual interest.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘Brave New World’, Aldous Huxley

Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ depicts a dystopian, totalitarian society. Yet absolute state control is not achieved through violent repression, but rather more insidious means: brainwashing, drugs, genetically manipulating babies. Its citizens are happy, healthy consumers - but only because they have no other choice. It is interesting how sci-fi from the 1930s predicts advances in genetics and flying as the transport of the future, yet cannot imagine telephones without wires.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘A Clockwork Orange’, Anthony Burgess

This coming-of-age novel follows the misadventures of juvenile delinquent Alex and his subsequent journey through a morally questionable rehabilitation programme. It is a story defined by contradictions: a serial rapist-murderer with a penchant for classical music, a dystopian setting that could easily be today or a hundred years in the future, and a fanatical justice system intent on reducing crime statistics no matter the human cost. By far the most interesting aspect of the novel is its language, written in the peculiar Slavic idiolect of ‘nadsat’ teenage slang, which, quite impressively, manages to appear simultaneously futuristic and Shakespearean.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘The Essex Serpent’, Sarah Perry

This slow-burning novel charts a village community’s reaction to the malign influence of the so-called ‘Essex Serpent’. Although this mythical beast would appear to be the focal point, the narrative focuses less on the creature itself and more on the tensions between science and religion, reason and superstition, and desire and decorum that it seems to have unleashed in the protagonists. Generally beautifully written, the prose at times feels forced and there is an annoying overuse of colons.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘Animal Farm’, George Orwell

A simply yet pointedly written tale of a farmyard rebellion gone wrong, in the genre of the fable that lends it a timeless quality. The narrative perspective is that of the less intelligent animals, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps and condemn the ruthless new leaders, the pigs, as they chase away the opposition and violently put down any sign of rebellion. The glorious revolution was perhaps not so glorious after all, since the oppressed become the oppressors and hypocrisy reigns supreme. The author’s political point on the doomed failure of Communism is clear for all to see.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘Lullaby’, Leila Slimani

The how, what and where of it is clear from the first page, but it is the reason why the nanny killed the children that forms the basis of the novel. Ultimately, it is the story of the growing tensions between a guilt-ridden working mother and the hired help. The enigmatic Louise turns out to be not quite practically perfect in every way, as she struggles to hold together the threads of a disparate life and fiercely defends the little kingdom she has created to the very bitter end.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘Look who’s back’, Timur Vermes

Berlin, 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up, inexplicable alive and well. This first-person narrative from Hitler’s perspective charts his controversial yet undeniably meteoric rise to fame (again), as he bags his own TV show and signs a book deal. What results is a cutting satire on today’s culture of celebrity and society’s collective historical amnesia - people find Hitler ‘cool’ rather than horrifying - whilst also managing to be hilarious. Had this book been written seven years later, one wonders how Vermes’ Hitler would react to the migrant crisis and rise of the far-right AfD.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘The Sense of an Ending’, Julian Barnes

The past catches up with this novella’s now-retired protagonist, revealing new truths and old memories of the circumstances surrounding the suicide of his old school friend some forty years previously. Although ostensibly the story of a will and a diary, it turns more into a painful and at times poignant musing on the unreliability of memories, aging and the pretentiousness of youth. The final ‘twist’, however, felt anticlimactic - ironic that the novel itself finishes with no real sense of an ending.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘My Brilliant Friend’, Elena Ferrante

A beautifully written coming-of-age novel following the angst-filled adolescence of the central character Elena and her best friend Lila. Ferrante does not shy away from depicting the violence and cruelty of a childhood spent in the grinding poverty of a poor Neapolitan suburb. The plot is driven by the tension between the suffocatingly restrictive familial home and the academically brilliant protagonist’s need to escape it.

[a-book-a-week-or-thereabouts]

‘Women and Power: A Manifesto’, Mary Beard

An engaging, easily digestible account of the silencing of women’s voices through the centuries, from Penelope in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ through to the Mrs Triggs cartoon a few centuries later. The afterword sets the book in the context of the #MeToo movement, giving poignant relevance to the age-old topic of women’s oppression.