As a voracious devourer of novels I can get through two or three
a week, in my end-of-the-day, mandatory wind-down two hours reading by the fire.
Crime, spy and historical mainly.
Since it’s that time
of year I thought I’d look at the ones which have
stuck in mind over the years. I adore Robert Harris, Mick Herron, John Le
Carre, Charles Cummings, Abir Mukerjee, Mark Billingham, Philip Kerr, Lee Child,
Sarah Dunant and buy every new one which appears.
But of the ones I can’t
get out of my head, top of the list has to be Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for
Stone. It is set in Ethiopia about English-Italian
twin brothers cast adrift when their mother dies in childbirth and their surgeon
father abandons them. One brother studies medicine in the States, the other
stays to help women suffering internal damage from forced early pregnancies and
female mutilation. It’s a poignant story about exile, the search for a missing
father and forgiveness between brothers, conjoined at birth but separated by
the chaos of a civil war. Lyrically descriptive, it left me with indelible
images of place and people.
Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, which eventually won
the 2013 Pulitzer, I approached with caution. 450 pages on the hell of North
Korea wasn’t that enticing but it was well reviewed, so I started and couldn’t stop.
It is Orwellian-noir about the brutality of a beyond-Stalinesque regime, but,
bizarrely, also funny and heart-rending about love, life and death in the Dear
Leader’s gulag. 
Kashuo Ishiguro’s
Never Let Me Go was another surprise since I tend to avoid horror and science-fiction.
But it didn’t read as dystopian, more an allegory on the loss of innocence in childhood,
a search for connection and meaning in a manipulated world. The haunting
characters facing impossible dilemmas out of their control linger on.
As you can tell, I’m
not big on reading straight comedy, though Mick Herron is laugh-out-loud, as is
Abir Mukerjee. John Niven, a fellow-Scot, however, made it over that hurdle
with his scabrously funny Kill My Friends, about a hedonistic A&R man in
the music business. It did go on a bit and the humour may well be too Glaswegian
for some tastes. His The Second Coming didn’t quite work though has some
treasured one-liners. His Straight, White Male about a Kingsley-Amis-ish novelist/screenplay
writer was the best of them.
And who wouldn’t adore
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion about a high IQ academic crafting a theoretical
strategy for finding the perfect wife? Blissfully witty.
Character,
character, character is what leaves the deepest impression. A gripping plot
helps but without the human element it lacks glue.
Read more on my
blog about Memory versus the Truth; Books Better Comforters than Parents; and
How to Cook up a Successful Novel - joke.
Follow me on:
BUY: www.marjorieorr.com
No comments:
Post a Comment