bookswelike

bwl 8 - April 2001

Fiction

Anita Brookner - The Bay of Angels

Zoë's mother, an early widow, is one of those women who never worked and Zoë, despite a university degree, is not very successful in her professional or social life; so what's going to happen to mother and daughter? In fact nothing much, but the book makes us ask: what makes life worthwhile? What is an interesting, happy or full life? And that's where the interest of the book lies. (Laurence Martin Euler)

Anita Desai - Fasting Feasting

A close-knit, middle class Indian family with three children: Uma, the plain spinster who has failed to find a husband, Aruna, the pretty one who brings off a 'good' marriage' and Arun, the precious but nonetheless disappointing son who is at university in Massachusetts. Here he is surrounded by the bewildering self indulgence of American family life while, back home in India, Uma is stifled by her parents with their petty traditions and silent disapproval. (Caroline Winstanley)

Victoria Glendinning - Electricity

What strikes one especially about this subtle novel is its construction, which places a complicated love story against life in Early Victorian England - just reaping the benefits of the Industrial Revolution. With more than a hint of the Gothic novel, the relationships in her life are portrayed by the narrator in a clinically objective, sophisticatedly modern manner. Rich in detail and colour, it's a 'must', even for those who don't usually read fiction. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

Linda Grant - When I Lived in Modern Times

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2000, this novel, set in Palestine in 1946, is about a young Jewish woman from England with romantic ideals about the Israeli state in the making. After tasting life in a kibbutz, she goes to the Bauhaus city of Tel Aviv where she falls in love with Johnny who, she discovers, plays more than a peripheral role in 'persuading' the British to leave. (Jenny Baker)

Kazuo Ishiguro - When we were Orphans

It could have been a detective novel: you have the clever detective, international settings (London and old Shanghai) and the 1930s. The clever detective is going back to China to try to discover the truth about the long ago disappearance of his parents and he will discover it but then the book ends in a poignant tragedy. This is a classic, beautiful and moving. (Laurence Martin Euler)

Alan Isler - Clerical Errors

Isler has created a world which seems almost real, but which has enough insanity to make it compulsive. The main character was born a Jew, but given to a Catholic as a child, to save him from the Nazis. He grows up to be a Catholic priest. And an atheist. Very funny (although I have a feeling I didn't get all of the jokes and allusions) and heart-breaking. I will read it again with relish. (Julie Higgins)

John le Carré - The Constant Gardener

In my view quite the author's best since the Smiley series. The story revolves around the murder of the wife of a British diplomat on the staff of the High Commission in Nairobi provoked by her discovery of unscrupulous goings-on in the international pharmaceutical field. Unlike Le Carré's previous novels, this one intertwines a movingly described love story. As well as in Africa, the action takes place in London, Cambridge, Germany, Italy and Canada. (Jeremy Swann)

Doris Lessing - Ben, In the World

In this sequel to 'The Fifth Child', Ben becomes the main character and we don't learn anything new about his family. Ben is very lonely, not equipped to deal with life in general: he's very strong physically but very naïve, more an animal than a human being. It's a quick but deep read. (Laurence Martin Euler)

Ian McEwan - Enduring Love

After witnessing a balloon accident, a man's life is turned upside down by a very disturbed person - or is that the case? We find our man questioning whether he is imagining things, which is what his female partner thinks, and he has a hard time convincing others that HE is the normal one. Under McEwan's spell, we begin to wonder if what we read is what is really happening. I couldn't put it down. (Polly Sams Plant)

Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass

(Volume III of His Dark Materials trilogy) If you've read the first two volumes of this trilogy (see bwl 7), you won't need any encouragement to read the third. I found these books thought-provoking and extremely challenging and, as with Harry Potter, definitely not just for the children. In following the adventures of Lyra and Will, the reader is faced with all sorts of fundamental and often uncomfortable questions about life, death and religion. These books deservedly have already become classics. They are dazzling. (Jenny Baker)

J K Rowling - Harry Potter: Philosopher's Stone; Chamber of Secrets; Prisoner of Azkaban; Goblet of Fire

Despite the world-wide acclaim and meteoric success of this amazing series, I think the critics have missed the most important point: these books should not be categorised as Children's Literature. They are based on all the constants of life, whether that of adult or child, such as old vs. young, evil vs. good, strong vs. weak, innocent vs. guilty, rich vs. poor, as well as on a strong bias as to people's reactions to differences in class and race - universal values, universal appeal, in fact. In my view, Harry Potter belongs with Milne, Peake, Carroll, White, Adams and Tolkien. Rowling's genius is that she takes the classic subject of an ordinary orphaned boy who goes to a school every English child (and adult) will recognise, and gives it a magic, and with every successive book, a more Gothic twist, which is utterly believable. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

Jane Shapiro - The Dangerous Husband

This is a book about a marriage, an American marriage. The couple meet at a Thanksgiving party, fall in love and marry a few weeks later. Then, they try to live together. How do you live with a man who shares his flat with a frog in a bucket, a messy dog in his bed and a burnt cat hidden in a cupboard? How? I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to read it. (Laurence Martin Euler)

Joanna Trollope - Marrying the Mistress

Like all Trollope's books, this is a deceptively easy read. Judge Guy Stockdale at 62 decides to leave his wife and marry the young woman who has been his mistress for the last seven years. All the characters and family situations are spot on, my only reservation is with the rather unsympathetic portrayal of Laura, his wife. (Jenny Baker)

Barbara Vine - The Brimstone Wedding

Do read this story of Jenny, the superstitious young care assistant, and frail elegant Stella, awaiting the ending of her days in the home. Their love affairs, thirty years apart, touch in a curious way. Stella has a very tragic mysterious past, the full story of which can only be told after her death. When you close the covers, this book will linger on in your memory. Such is the spell of a master story teller. (Sandra Lee)

Non-Fiction

Peter Ackroyd - London - the Biography

Ackroyd argues that London's particular character sets it apart from any other big city. Mixing myth and legend with historical facts, he draws a compelling picture of a sprawling metropolis that, in its buildings and in its people, is unique. Frankly, much of the evidence he cites as quintessentially London could well apply to Paris, Berlin or Rio. You can't fault the depth of his research, though, only some of his conclusions. The narrative is vivid. (Hugh Pearman)

William Dalrymple - From the Holy Mountain

This is the interesting record of a journey undertaken by the author in the mid 1990s in the footsteps of John Moschos, a great Byzantine traveller-monk, who crossed the Eastern Byzantine world during the 7th century A.D. Combining reflections on things he saw both ancient and modern and in particular describing the various monasteries in which he stayed, he includes anecdotes that prevent it from being heavy-going for the non-erudite like me. (Jeremy Swann)

Keith Floyd - Out of the Frying Pan - An Autobiography

You love him or hate him, the old reprobate. This poor West Country boy made good has never forgotten his roots. His life story, all highs and lows but never boring, takes in his days at the Bristol Evening Post, the army, his restaurants and his TV career. Always a lady's man, always the "bon viveur", he now lives in Spain, peacefully - perhaps? Read with a glass in your hand, and enjoy. Bon Appetit! (Sandra Lee)

David Hamilton-Williams - Waterloo, New Perspectives - The Great Battle Reappraised

The trend nowadays is to re-assess, with new information constantly becoming available, familiar and well-worn historical issues. This book refreshes the memory about Waterloo and gives excellent background information. Unfortunately, the author constantly refers to books as yet unpublished, which will follow this one as a trilogy. Frustrating if you read and follow-up footnotes and academically unsound. But for those who think this is quibbling - a dramatic and exciting read with the promise of more. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

Christopher Lee - This Sceptred Isle - Twentieth Century

At school in the 1950s even A-level history ended with the causes of World War I. This year by year account of 20th century British and world history accompanies the Radio 4 series and has plugged many gaps in my hazy knowledge of the next few decades. Wide ranging and objective. Lots of facts. Some events get one sentence, others are interpreted. Truly more unputdownable than one might believe a history book could be. (Wendy Swann)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - News of a Kidnapping

Quite apart from the vivid description of the sufferings of a number of Colombian notables kidnapped in 1990 by the henchmen of drugs baron Pablo Escobar, this reconstruction by the 1982 Nobel Literature prize-winner paints a horrendous picture of violence and anarchy in a country where law and order had broken down. (Jeremy Swann)

Gwen Raverat - Period Piece

A perceptive and extraordinarily amusing recollection of her Edwardian childhood in Cambridge by Charles Darwin's granddaughter. Gwen's instinctive rebellion against the absurdity of middle-class social conventions of the day - particularly for girls - was confirmed at her Belgian finishing school where a fast new friend whose mother 'had short hair and smoked cigarettes' took her to a den and explained that conforming was no longer the done thing. Probably out of print - try a library. (Michael Fitzgerald-Lombard)

David Sweetman - Toulouse-Lautrec and the Fin-de-Siècle

The crippled Lautrec's brief adulthood was spent mostly in the cafés and brothels of Paris, his suffering alleviated by absinthe, 'fun' and hard work. He never flinched at recording what he saw with penetrating insight and compassion. Sweetman does him proud, putting him and his art into the context of the challenge to entrenched attitudes about sex, politics and women's place in a man's world, exemplified by the trials of Oscar Wilde, Dreyfus and the anarchists. (James Baker)

Irene & Alan Taylor - The Assassin's Cloak

Subtitled 'An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists', this massive volume contains a wide selection of extracts for each day of the year. The 150 or so diarists range from John Evelyn and Pepys in the 17th century to Andy Warhol and Alec Guinness in the 20th. Excellent entertainment in small doses and, when you have finally finished it, its weight could make it an excellent booklover's doorstop! (Jeremy Swann)

Poetry

Chris Sykes - Having an Osprey about the House

Sudden beauties observed: the diverse but shared troubles of our lives, the strangeness and quaintness of things, expressed in a language voiced so that we notice anew, recognise an affinity and can laugh - or cry. Who after all hasn't had an Osprey about the house? This is poetry for all who can read and love which leaves a lingering afterglow. The hauntings of childhood are particularly poignant. (Joan Jackson)