A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

A Spool of Blue Thread is the story of the Whitshank family, and to begin with it is mostly about Abby Whitshank and her husband Red in the later stages of their marriage. Abby has become confused, sometimes wandering off and forgetting why, so it's time for the younger Whitshank members to return to the well-proportioned house their grandfather built to discuss their parents' future.
    It is an awkward gathering, particularly when it is suggested that Red and Abby might be happier in some kind of retirement home. We already know that Red is the stubborn one, and still turning up at the family building business every day, he isn't likely to accept change easily. Abby is the opposite, an overly caring mother, with a habit of bringing home waifs and strays connected with her social work. But even Abby doesn't see the need for any fuss.
    They have raised four children, no-nonsense Amanda with her sharp business suits, Jeannie who works for the company business along with younger brother Stem who has taken on its management and is so much like Red in many ways. Which is a little strange because Stem is adopted, while Denny, two years older, drifts from job to job and never manages to keep a relationship. He disappears for months and sometimes years without anyone knowing where he is. The story of Stem's adoption is quite heart-breaking but also reveals what an incredible softy Abby is.
   The baggage which is hinted at between Stem and Denny is a story slowly unravelled, like the blue thread of the title. There is also the story of how Abby fell for Red  that creeps in towards the end of the book, and after that the peculiar courtship of Red's parents Junior and Linnie Mae. The blue thread is subtly there in odd corners - the blue of the shirt that Abby makes Red for their wedding, also the colour Linnie Mae requests for the porch swing of the Whitshank family home.
    There are enough disturbing secrets and revelations to keep the reader interested in the plot of the novel. But what Tyler is so wonderful at is the way she describes families. I found I could relate to events she describes, and even her characters sometimes reminded me of my own family members in a different country and hemisphere. It seems families are alike the world over. And like many families, the Whitshanks have come through some difficult times, but Tyler leaves us with the hopefulness of new beginnings and the promise of continuing generations.
    Throughout the novel there is the humour of Tyler's dialogue and her talent for capturing characters through tone of voice and idioms: Red's 'What the hell!' rejoinders; Linnie Mae's mispronunciations that indicate her humble origins. It is altogether a rich tapestry of American and family life, and another classic from the author of favourites like The Accidental Tourist and Searching for Caleb.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Lila is the third novel in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead trilogy, the first of which tells the story of John Ames, an elderly minister who is writing his family story for his young son. He has married for the second time late in life and he may not live long enough to see his son grow up.
    Lila is his wife's story. Told from Lila's point of view, it is at times a harrowing tale, but also one of those stories where the human spirit triumphs over adversity, which Lila experiences in spades.
    Lila is a neglected child, rescued if you can call it that, some would say kidnapped, by a passing drifter. Doll lives a hand-to-mouth existence, moving from town to town and picking up odd jobs. She has a scarred face and is illiterate, but no one can doubt her love and devotion to Lila. The two make a strong bond, but times become tough indeed when the 1930s Dust Bowl hits. They team up with a family driven off their farm and the group pool their resources, though Doll and Lila are barely tolerated.
    I have never read a novel where I recall such vividly recounted poverty - a lack of food and shelter experienced by ordinary folk who are just trying to get by. But somehow the two pull through and Doll even manages to stay in one place long enough for Lila to get a smattering of education. We learn that Lila is surprisingly bright, but fear drives them on again, Doll always looking over her shoulder and hiding her distinctive face in the shadows.
    These early years in Lila's story are recalled in flashbacks. Now a mature young woman, perhaps in her thirties, though this is never clear, Lila has made her way to the town of Gilead and meets Reverend John Ames. The two strike up a friendship and share interesting discussions about God and his purpose.  Lila helps herself to a bible from the church and alights on the grimmer texts from the Old Testament which resonate with her own struggles. She completely lacks what you might call social graces, but her intelligence and questioning nature have Rev. Ames scratching his head.
    Robinson is writer who stands out for her empathy and her ability to create an extraordinary character who has been through so much and who can think so deeply about it all. The love story that underpins the plot is delicately done, running parallel to the story of Lila's past, it all coming seamlessly together. She is also wonderful at creating a sense of time and place, the small town of Gilead, the Dirty Thirties, rural life in Iowa. It reminded me a little of Harper Lee, and Steinbeck with a hint of Pygmalion.
    For a book that really makes you think, Lila is also a pleasure to read, and I shall be hunting out the previous books in the trilogy, both of which have won literary awards. No surprises there!

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

I like novels when characters venture out of their normal habitat and have to establish themselves in a new one that isn't quite what they were expecting. You know this will be a good foundation for adapting, self-discovery and perhaps even unexpected happiness.
    Which is pretty much what happens to Rebecca Winter, who at fifty-nine finds she simply cannot afford to go on living in her upmarket New York apartment. There are the maintenance costs for a start, as well as the monthly fee for her elderly mother's nursing home, plus the New York lifestyle she has enjoyed for years. As the photographer famous for her 'Still Life with Bread Crumbs' she has had a good income in the past, in spite of a divorce that left her to provide for her young son alone.
    Now, however, that income stream has dwindled to a trickle. In an effort to live more simply and cheaply so she can save for retirement, Rebecca lets out her apartment and heads for the country, taking up a year's lease on a cottage in the woods she has seen only in photos on the Internet. Big mistake.
   The cottage is cold, dark and lacking in creature comforts - a bed that sags and a lack of blankets, to say nothing of a tiny electric range. Can you really cook without gas, and how to fit the Thanksgiving turkey into the tiny oven? There's no phone signal and she can't get the Internet either, which might turn out to be a good thing. Then there's the racoon in the ceiling.
    Jim Bates, the helpful roofer, sorts out the racoon and between Jim and Sarah, the chatty anglophile who runs the Tea for Two cafe, Rebecca slowly settles in and makes a life for herself, adapting like anything. And the rustic woodland environment inspires new photographic endeavours. She grows her hair out of its chic New York bob and buys cheap but practical clothing from Wall Mart.
    On her regular walks she spots some unusual shrine like crosses here and there, each with some memorabilia of childhood, a photograph or a high school year book, that make oddly interesting photographs. Caught up in their pictorial potential, Rebecca doesn't take time to question who might have put them there, or the reason they strangely disappear soon after she finds them.
    You can be sure the significance of the crosses will be important later on. And Rebecca will learn a lot about herself, her art and people in general. By the end a whole new set of possibilities beckon and she will have some decisions to make. Not that the reader should be surprised, as we know that it's that kind of book pretty much from page one.
    Anna Quinden is an elegant and observant writer, and this is a charming, witty and wry kind of story, balancing humour with moments of poignancy. She doesn't really break any new ground, but her characters are interesting enough and I enjoyed the jokes that are at the expense of the chattering classes. After all, deep down, who among us doesn't want to escape all the silliness of everyday life for a cottage in the woods?

Cold Flat Junction by Martha Grimes

Cold Flat Junction follows on from Hotel Paradise which was a mystery novel complete in itself, but leaving enough for its young detective, Emma Graham, to uncover in a follow-up book. If you remember, Emma's curiosity was piqued by a photograph showing a family of stern looking aunts, their pretty younger sister, Rose, and their niece, Mary Evelyn, who drowned in mysterious circumstances forty years before.
    It is also the story of two murders, the first twenty years ago, when Rose was discovered stabbed in the chicken house. Taking the blame for her killing, her husband, Ben Queen, has just been released from prison, when their daughter, Fern, is shot dead near Lake Noir.
    Taking up where her inquiries had left off, Emma is determined to prove Ben Queen innocent, while also discovering the identity of the mysterious pale girl, who looks exactly like Rose. She is pretty sure that the key lies way back in the past, before the drowning of Mary Evelyn, who she is certain was killed by her aunts. But what reason would they have to hate her so much?
    The novel meanders its way around Emma's interviews with a wide cast of characters - many of whom we've met before: Sheba and George Queen, Miss Landis the schoolteacher and the regulars at the Windy Run Diner at Cold Flat Junction. Much closer to home, she teases out more stories from nonagenarian Aunt Aurora who reveals a potential scandal.
    Dwayne the mechanic will help out with transport to Lake Noir, and the spooky Brokedown House, while Ulub and Ubub and Mr Root will be among those few who take her seriously. Meanwhile Emma's mother, her martini guzzling business partner, Lola, and Lola's daughter the vapid ReeJane, all take a holiday leaving the hotel's few guests in the hands of Emma, her brother Will and the dishwasher dogsbody Walter. Good old Sheriff DeGheyn is patently upset on Emma's behalf, but the holiday gives Emma more chances to slip away and investigate in places that would appal her mother if only she knew.
    But DeGheyn is reluctant to heed Emma's concerns when it comes to Ben Queen's innocence and he remains a person of interest. This gives the story enough urgency to keep us all on our toes as things move along to a very surprising ending.
    Blended in with the story are some nice literary touches such as the deus ex machina, which is a crucial part of the musical production of Medea that Will and his friend Mill (Brownmiller) are putting together. Then there are the references to William Faulkner, a favourite author of Dwayne's, particularly the novel, Light in August, which gives Emma a clue to her mystery. There's also a lot of cigarettes and alcohol - truly Emma doesn't have a typical childhood - and endless meals. This gives the book plenty of colour as clues to the past slowly unfold.
    This is another satisfying read from Grimes, who is a whizz with atmospheric settings and quaint small-town characters, producing an imaginative story that shows just how the present can be mired in the past. But then the best stories so often do.

Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes

Martha Grimes writes the Richard Jury detective novels, which regularly see its charismatic Scotland Yard detective sort out a complicated murder mystery, the plotting of which would have done Agatha Christie proud (high praise from me indeed!), aided by his good friend, the reluctant peer Melrose Plant, and set around a quaint English hostelry which also lends its name to the title. Somewhere in the mix there is often an intelligent and quirky kid.
    When Grimes decided to write Hotel Paradise, she began a series of novels where the kid is the sleuth, in this case the quirky and intelligent Emma Graham. Emma is twelve, and lives in an old hotel at Spirit Lake, once the site of several hotels that have long since closed up shop, as holiday makers found other, brighter spots to visit instead.
    The Hotel Paradise is still hanging in there, with Emma's mother running the kitchen, her wonderful cooking its main attraction. Her business partner manages drinks and accounts, but mostly drinks, while her ditzy daughter swans around as if she owns the place, much to the disgust of  Emma's great aunt Aurora Paradise.
     Aunt Paradise lives on the top floor, drinking cocktails and reliving the past, which comes in handy when Emma begins to look into a forty-year-old tragedy, the drowning of another twelve year old girl, Mary-Evelyn Devereau. Brought up by aunts, it has long been a mystery why Mary-Evelyn took a leaky boat out onto the lake one evening, her disappearance not noticed or ignored until it was too late.
    Emma is similarly ignored by her own family, her mother too busy with the hotel, her brother and his pal writing and performing plays, so that apart from her regular stints waiting tables, she has a lot of free time. No one knows what she gets up to or where she goes, which is convenient for investigating a possible murder. Her friendship with the local police chief, the handsome, dependable Sheriff DeGheyn also comes in handy as well as her talent for cultivating friendships with older people. When another mysterious death occurs which is connected to Mary Evelyn's family, it seems even more likely that Emma is on to something.
   Emma is a wonderful narrator, who never gives up, telling the most outrageous porkies to worm out the information she needs. She is so solitary, and put-upon at home, she has the reader's sympathy in spades - it just well people around town look out for her.
   Grimes has created some terrific small town characters, too: the speech impaired brothers, Ubub and Ulub, and their fellow bench mate Mr Root, who is always happy to translate. There's Maud at the Rainbow Cafe who would be perfect for the sheriff, if he wasn't already married. There are the elderly shopkeepers, Miss Flyte who designs spectacular candle arrangements and her neighbour Miss Flager who provides wonderful morning teas at the back of her gift shop, to say nothing of  the butterfly collector, Dr McCoomb who signed Mary Evelyn's death certificate all those years ago.
    The plot meanders through numerous amusing conversations and richly described meals as Emma slowly gets closer to what happened to the drowned girl. As a child of the same age, the reader is only too aware that Emma could also be in danger, and more than one character is a little sinister. This gives the book just enough tension to keep the reader up at night.
    When it comes to wry characters, droll observations, and the recreation of a place where time seems to have stood still, Grimes is second to none. By the end Emma has made some stunning discoveries that the police are not even close to finding, while there is still plenty of backstory to develop in the next book, Cold Flat Junction. What a joy!

The Martian by Andy Weir

Andy Weir sure puts the 'science' into science fiction with his first book, The Martian. Hooking you in from the page one, the Martian of the title is quickly revealed as astronaut Mark Watney, who six days into a mission to Mars with five other astronauts, finds himself abandoned by his crew-mates and believed dead.
    While the rest of the team escape what could have been a disastrous storm, Watney wakes up and begins the difficult task of saving himself in the short-term and making plans for his long-term survival. Another Mars mission is scheduled in four years' time and he's determined to be ready for it.
    It is lucky that Mark is a trained botanist and that NASA thought that the crew would like some real potatoes to enjoy for Thanksgiving. Using a mixture of Mars dust, faecal matter and lots of water - he figures out a way to produce this in abundance - plus the potatoes, Mark builds a mini market garden inside the Hab, the dome that was to house him and his colleagues for a month.
    The science gets a lot more complicated than that as he figures out how to contact NASA to let them know he is alive - though a smart young scientist had spotted activity already when watching some satellite images. He also has to figure out how to get himself several hundred kilometres from the Hab to the site of the next mission using an exploration vehicle which has been designed for short trips only. There are lots of technical details which I did my best to keep up with, and for someone who doesn't really know a lot about chemistry and physics (I could kind of keep up with the botany), it made for oddly exhilarating reading.
    But Weir doesn't just throw a lot of science at the reader. He knows about how to keep the plot boiling along as Watney encounters numerous setbacks and NASA breaks rules and argues about what to do and somehow his old crew-mates come on board the story as well. And you can imagine how they must be feeling.
    Though the star of the show is really Mark. He is a terrific character: funny as well as clever, determined and vigorous. There are plenty of comic touches, including the seventies music and old tv series that Captain Lewis thought to bring along and which Mark resorts to for the sake of something to break the tedium of his aloneness.
    The overall effect of The Martian is a tribute to human inventiveness and the will of people all over the world to help out someone in trouble. It is also a bit like watching a cross between Kerbil Space Programme and Mythbusters. Not many writers could pull off a book like this and make it work. And it's not surprising that Ridley Scott has plans to turn the novel into a movie starring Matt Damon. I can't wait!

The Collected Works of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

If you adore reading, a novel set in a bookshop has instant appeal. If you like good, literary fiction, you will warm to the curmudgeonly owner of Island Books, the A J Fikry of the title.
    A.J. has lost his wife in a tragic car accident, and while she was happy to stock popular titles, talk to book reps and hold author events, A.J. is too much of a purist for all that. So he does't like postmodernism, post-apocalyptic settings, post-mortem narrators or magic realism; or for that matter children's books, especially ones about orphans, young adult fiction or anything with vampires. He explains all this and more when he is being mean to Amelia, the book rep who will later play a major part in his life.
    Obviously, A.J. is doomed not to prosper, even if the tourists that arrive on Alice Island every summer frequently boost sales. But he isn't too worried as he has a copy of a rare edition by Edgar Allen Poe as his insurance policy.  About the same time that a desperate mother leaves her baby in the bookshop, with a note asking A.J. to take care of her, his Poe rare edition is stolen. These catalysts drive A.J. to cut back on his drinking and interact more with the outside world.
    There is a bunch of interesting characters in this book for him to interact with. There's Officer Lambiase, the divorced police chief who used to read nothing but Jeffery Deaver, and starts a book group called Chief's Choice - it's mostly police procedurals read by other cops. A.J.'s friend, Daniel, is a womanising novelist who has never written a best seller since his first break-through novel. He's married to Ismay, A.J.'s sister-in-law, who teaches drama at the high school. She's tough on the outside but a softy on the inside, and quietly makes sure A.J. is OK. The little girl, Maya, is bookishly quirky, rather like you'd expect A.J.'s natural daughter would be.
    This novel could be saccharine, but is far too witty and smart, and with enough ups and downs and reversals of fortune to keep you interested. Each chapter begins with A.J.'s notes to Maya about a particular piece of literature he values in one way or another - another nice little extra for bibliophiles. Roald Dahl, gets a look in as well as American greats such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Flannery O'Connor, while there are a few obscure enough to have you searching Wikipedia.
    The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry is a short, Sunday afternoonish sort of novel, but it has a lot of heart and is a good reminder about the pleasure and sustenance to be found in books, and friends as well, of course. Though for some of us, they may be the same thing.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Early on in Fowler's latest book you know something is seriously amiss in Rosemary's world. In 1996 she's a fifth year university student who is still trying to find out what she might be good at. Early on she tells us she used to be a great talker. As a child she talked so much that her father would tell her to begin in the middle.
    Which is how We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves starts off - with Rosemary describing a family that has dwindled to just herself and her parents. A family whose members scarcely talk to each other. And we learn that seventeen years ago, Rosemary's sister, Fern, disappeared and a year later her brother left home.
    The story see-saws between the middle - where there's an interesting scene in which Rosemary finds herself charged with disruptive behaviour and assaulting a police officer alongside a flamboyant drama student called Harlow - and the beginning, filling in the gaps of Rosemary's childhood that will lead us to discover the elephant in the room - the story of Fern.
    The middle describes Rosemary's sort-of friendship with Harlow, who has a talent for getting in and out of trouble. Rosemary doesn't usually have friends because she has never been able to trust herself to talk, not wanting to reveal too much of herself, which is usually the foundation for friendship. It is lucky she has a nice flatmate or she would be seriously alone.
    And the reason why she is so alone, so adrift and unable to settle on one particular course or another, is that she was from a baby a part of an experiment, and her sister wasn't really her sister but a chimpanzee. From the 1930s to the 70's, behavioural scientists were fascinated by primates and their similarity to humans and in particular whether or not they could be trained to communicate with people using sign language.
    While much was documented about the animals at the heart of such projects, the story of the children raised with them was not. Taking up the challenge, Fowler has created a well-researched and believable novel that is also hugely original. Rosemary is a quirky, sensitive narrator with a dry sense of humour, when she could so easily have been self-pitying and too damaged to be sympathetic. It is obvious that the experiment that has made Rosemary the way she is has done some harm, but it has meant she has a very original view of the world. At the back of her mind is the thought that Fern and her brother, Lowell, are out there somewhere and it is surely her destiny to try to find them, and this creates a powerful storyline.
    While the novel has a lot to say about the cruelty associated with scientific experimentation on animals - and there are some startlingly haunting images here - there's also plenty of warmth and humour. Fowler creates such interesting characters, and the scenes she throws them into - the bars, cafes, student apartments and even the police station - are entertaining particularly when seen through through Rosemary's eyes.
    It takes a real talent to produce a book that has a powerful message and is also fun to read. And Fowler just keeps getting better and better; this is an author who is definitely on my watch list.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge is a kind of novel in short stories. Some of the stories are about Olive or her husband, Henry, while others - quite a few- are about fellow inhabitants of Crosby, Maine where they live, but Olive sneaks into all of them somewhere.
    Olive is a retired school teacher, formidably big boned and not afraid to speak her mind. Her husband, Henry, is a pleasant pharmacist who wants people to be happy: his son, Christopher, who suffers from depression, his assistant Denise, who loses her husband. He'd like Olive to be happy too, but the reader learns early on that this is a tall order for Olive.
    Olive is a difficult character - she's not easy to like - she can be rude and prickly, often to the people she loves most; Henry has our every sympathy. As a teacher, she was feared by some and remembered fondly by others - either way she is certainly memorable.  She is outlandishly truthful, but also very aware of what is happening around her and the difficulties that people are going through.
    In the second story she somehow steps in at the right time to prevent a suicide.  She has a peculiar kind of empathy for the troubled young man who is part of an armed hold-up attempt at the hospital. But does she do enough good to make up for her frequent rudeness?
    The stories themselves are rather similar to Olive herself. Some are quite disturbing - there are suicides and several deaths from natural causes; people who have a loved one in prison as well as the armed-hold up story; there are plenty of people, especially women, living unfulfilled lives. But one or two have something approaching a happy ending.
   Oddly enough it is Olive herself who makes this collection eminently readable. In spite of the dour themes that run through the book, Olive is a breath of fresh air. Her own problems - her son moving away; Henry's illness, loneliness and regret - are all tackled with that trademark matter-of-fact bluntness of hers, while there's an undercurrent of humour in many of the stories. She can be a bit naughty too - especially with regard to her daughter-in-law, whom she plainly dislikes.
   Olive is kind of insensitive but sensitive at the same time and the stories likewise both harsh and sympathetic. It's an accomplished collection, worthy of it's 2009 Pullitzer Prize.

Wool by Hugh Howey

You have to be in the right mood for a distopian novel, but with the right kind of distopian novel, you know you'll be in for a ripping yarn that's hard to put down. Which was what I anticipated with Wool.
    The first of a trilogy, Wool describes a world that has destroyed itself, the air too toxic to breath, the earth a barren landscape blasted by caustic winds. Survivors live a passably normal existence, going to work or school, growing their food, making what they need to ensure their future, but living inside an enormous underground silo.
    Within the silo there are floors upon floors with a seemingly endless staircase, so people gravitate to a particular profession, living and working in a particular section of the silo. The Mechanics which maintain the silo's power supply live in the 'down deep', further above them are Supply, a kind of large warehousing unit. There are gardens, which connect people to a kind of religious veneration for the circle of life. Towards the 'up top' is IT, who have the technology to keep tabs on the workings of the silo as a whole.
    The story opens with the death by 'cleaning' of the silo's sheriff. Three years before, Holston's wife was sent out to clean and he has been distractedly morose ever since. There are flashbacks describing material his wife in IT has found on her computer - dangerous ideas that challenge the accepted way of thinking.
   'Cleaning'is a kind of exile from the silo, the condemned wearing a specially designed suit that will protect the wearer from the toxic air outside for a short time, just long enough to clean the sensors that project a view of the world to the silo inhabitants, and to walk a short distance towards a crumbling city beyond.
    Mayor Jahns watches with dismay Holston's cleaning, before turning her attention to appointing a new sheriff. She and Deputy Marnes make the long journey down to meet their top candidate, Juliette, a mechanic who had once helped Marnes on a murder case. Juliette is a terrific character - she's tough and can turn her mind to any problem to figure out a way to fix it. She is reluctant at first to accept the role of sheriff, and accepts only if she can do an overhaul of the silo's power generators first. She is, after all, a fixer.
   While she might be Jahns's top pick, Bernard, head of IT, is unconvinced. He has a curious grip on how things work in the silo and has his own man in mind. What happens next is a power struggle, involving murder, rebellion and a threat to continued life inside the silo. And Juliette will have her work cut out if she wants to fix that.
    This is a gripping story that lives up to its promise as a great distopian read rather like The Passage. It has drama and political intrigue in spades and sequences of thrilling action. Then there is the technology, described in depth, which makes the mechanical workings of the silo clearly imagined and fascinating.
    Like The Passage, Wool is the first of a trilogy and I will be keen to dip again into the world Hugh Howey has created - it is such a wonderful piece of invention.

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

There's more than a hint of 'chickens coming home to roost' in Elizabeth Strout's novel, The Burgess Boys, where a thoughtless incident throws a family into turmoil and stirs up the past.
    Bob Burgess has grown up under the cloud of an event that happened when he was four years old. Carrying the burden of blame for an accident that killed his father, Bob has never reached the heights of success of older brother Jim, a cut-throat defence lawyer. Instead he has remained a legal aid attorney, who cannot cope with the stress of the courtroom.
    Now in their fifties and living in New York, the brothers are drawn back to their hometown of Shirley Falls, Maine, when their sister Susan phones for help. Her nineteen-year-old son Zach, socially awkward and unpreposessing, has apparently hurled a pig's head into the mosque of the local Somali community. The DA's office, social groups and the police are all baying for blood, leaving Zach feeling terrified and isolated.
    Zach's problem brings the family back together, but there is blame, scorn and acrimony flying around as issues from the past are slowly revealed or bubble beneath the surface of the interactions between these three very different siblings.
    Bob is kind-hearted but also bumbling, slobbish and inclined to drink too much. Susan is unfulfilled and bitter over her failed marriage and unable to provide a welcoming home for her son or the lodger, Mrs Drinkwater. And Jim is arrogant and unfeeling, so pleased with himself he misses all the danger signs that show he's making matters worse.
    There's also Jim's wife, posh and fussy Helen, restless now her children have left home for college. And Pam, Bob's ex-wife, who still meets Bob regularly for a good chat about things, mainly her problems, and who will always be a part of Bob's 'family'.
    The storyline intersperces scenes with the Burgesses with those concerning immigrant, Abdikarim Ahmed, one of the small but very visible group of Somali refugees now living in Shirley Falls. He feels a nagging fear after the mosque incident, and is full of regret for the loss of his son during an act of violence back home, but somehow it is Ahmed who could make the difference to how things turn out.
    In spite of their flaws, these are all wonderful characters, and oddly sympathetic, revealling through natural, passionate and sometimes quirkily comical dialogue so much of what it is to be an ordinary human being caught up in events that are larger than ourselves. But mostly this is a book about family - how relationships can weather even the most difficult storms and how family support at its best can help you be the best you can be. I loved this quote from near the end of the book when Jim is going through a rough patch:

    'What am I going to do, Bob? I have no family.'
    'You have family,' Bob said. 'You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be a kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That's called family.'

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

A Patchwork Planet is the first novel I discovered by Anne Tyler and I enjoyed it so much that I have devoured everything of hers I've come across ever since. As in many of her books, it features a main character who is a little on the edges of society, in this case, family black sheep, Barnaby Gaitlin.
    Barnaby has a failed marriage behind him and before that a stint at a reform school, having been caught breaking into other people's houses. Unlike his mates who looked for money or alcoholic consumables, Barnaby would sit in people's living rooms and go through photograph albums or pocket small ornaments.
    Being a Gaitlin, there was money to pay off the victims of his crimes but the years following his early misdemeanours have done nothing to earn back the respect of his well-to-do family. He lives in a bedsit, sees his daughter only once a month and works as a manual labourer for Rent-a-back, a company that does odd jobs for the elderly and lonely.
    But maybe it is just that Barnaby hasn't met his 'angel' yet. All the Gaitlin males have encountered an 'angel' who has put them on the right track towards prosperity. Grandfather Gaitlin's angel told him that what women wanted was a model of themselves which they could dress in the outfit that they were to wear that day. The Twin-form launched what was to become the business that made his fortune.
    But Barnaby doesn't seem all that bothered about what his family hope for him. As we know he is insatiably curious about people - he follows a woman at the train station who agrees to deliver a package for a stranger. He becomes so obsessed with her that he strikes up a relationship with her, particularly after she somehow helps him when his ex-wife decides he shouldn't see his daughter Opal any more. Could this Sophia be Barnaby's angel?
    As we wait to find out, we see how much of an angel Barnaby is himself. His long list of clients can be demanding, calling the agency at all hours to clear the snow from driveways, collect groceries or put up Christmas trees to impress visiting grandchildren.
    Tyler spins a terrific yarn about a man trying his best to be a good person yet is held back by his obligations to family and his tendency to disappoint. Her characterisation is nothing short of brilliant - Tyler has a talent for quirky old people and Barnaby, who narrates the story, is a warmly entertaining companion. There is plenty of humour too - Tyler has that knack of being able to write a feel good novel that is also poignant and has a lot to say about family expectations and how society regards success. This isn't the first Anne Tyler novel I have been happy to revisit, and I am sure it won't be the last.

The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

'Layered with ambiguity' is one phrase in Hilary Mantel's glowing recommendation on the cover of Charlotte Rogan's novel, The Lifeboat. Perhaps one of the most glaring ambiguities is the title itself.
    The story is that of Grace Winter, who is seen into a lifeboat by her rich banker husband, just as the passenger liner, the Empress Alexandra is about to sink. It is 1914, World War One is just getting going, and Grace is returning to Boston with her new husband to a comfortable life, having avoided the necessity of becoming a governess. She is 22, beautiful and with everything to look forward to.
    We know early on though that Grace is a survivor. When we first meet her, it is some time after her rescue, and Grace and two other women survivors are being tried for murder. What could possibly have happened on the lifeboat, the reader wonders? And so begins a tense tale that reels you in.
    There are thirty-nine people on the lifeboat, mostly women, under the stewardship of Mr Hardie, a grim-faced, weather battered ship's officer who makes some tough decisions and quickly organises the group's seating to balance the perilously laden boat. The ship's owners have cut costs and there were not enough lifeboats for the number aboard. Hardie works out a roster for bailing duty, but if the weather turns rough, someone will have to go over the side.
    Mrs Grant, however, disagrees with Mr Hardie on most questions of survival right from the start. Should they stay near the ship in hope of rescue or should they try to row for land? There are disputes over the rationing of water and ships' biscuits and then there is the question of whether Mr Hardie is hiding something? Is Grace on board because her wealthy husband was able to bribe him?  
   Mrs Grant is a commanding woman with a captivating manner - Grace would love to win her approval, but never quite seems to. Mannish Hannah, who throws long intense looks at Grace, will do everything Mrs Grant says and soon the two are thick as thieves. Grace however sides with Mr Hardie. She recognises his superior knowledge in things maritime and besides, he's quite good looking in an odd sort of way. She gives him looks of encouragement when Mrs Grant is at her most undermining and hopes she has won his trust.
    In no time at all, Charlotte Rogan has set up an intense situation within the claustrophobic confines of the lifeboat. It is a harrowing story, and of course we know that there are soon going to be deaths. Some of the survivors are in poor shape. There are older people on board and even a child. We know things can only get worse, this is a survival story after all.
    And that is probably the crux of the novel - just what does it take to survive a disaster? Grace has already dodged the prospect of a less genteel existence, she is determined and resourceful. Will this be enough? On board there is a vicar - will God save him? Mrs Grant often leads the group in a hymn, but perhaps this is to galvanise the group's spirit and therefore her obvious strengths as a leader.
    The Lifeboat is the kind of book you can read in one sitting, the tense situation it describes makes it hard to put down. But you probably won't forget it in a hurry. As with many survival stories, you can't help but take a good look at yourself and wonder how far would you go to ensure you are a survivor.

Watchers of Time by Charles Todd

I don't know if it's just me, but it seems amazing how many American authors there are writing period or cosy murder mysteries set in England. With some of them, you're hard pressed to tell they're not English themselves.
    One of these is the American mother and son team that writes under the name of Charles Todd. They have a couple of series on the go. The Bess Crawford series follows a plucky young nurse during World War One with connections, through her father, with British Intelligence (spies, that is).
    The other series, which I particularly like for a bit of light reading, is the Inspector Rutledge series, set in the years just following World War One. Ian Rutledge is a police officer with Scotland Yard, recently returned from the front. He's youngish and one assumes, fairly attractive, but unable to get close to women because his relationships are marred by the fact that he is always accompanied by the ghost of a fellow officer, a Scot by the name of Hamish McLeod.
    This is the officer he had shot for disobeying an order - the kind of order that had men sent 'over the top' into a barrage of machine-gunfire. Rutledge had to fire the 'coup de grace' from his own revolver. So not a happy memory. And now, whether real or imagined, Hamish is always there, lurking in Rutledge's head, passing on his opinions about whatever Rutledge does and the cases he handles.
    In spite of all this, Rutledge is an excellent policeman - tenacious and sensitive to the nuances that make different people tick. But Rutledge isn't the only star of the show. The small towns and distinctively British landscapes that feature in his cases are lovingly described in vivid detail.
    In Watchers of Time, Rutledge investigates the bludgeoning of a parish priest in a small town near Norfolk called Osterley. This is marsh country with farms and old country inns and big open skies.
    The locals are so upset by the death, they cannot believe the murderer is to be found among the townsfolk, so a scapegoat - in this case a dodgy fairground strongman, who was just passing through - is hauled in. He supposedly was after the money taken at the fair - a burglary gone wrong. But the clergy are not so sure, and Scotland Yard is called in to check that they have indeed caught the culprit.
    Rutledge soon uncovers more potential motives. Father James happened to hear an unusual confession from an aging coachman on his deathbed. There is the disappearance of the pretty young wife of the local squire's son. There is the erratically eccentric woman who is the only person to admit to hating the priest. And what is the secret of the attractive yet haunted looking holidaymaker, who spends a lot of time in the church?
    It is all classic whodunnit stuff, in the great Agatha Christie tradition. Thrown into the mix is a bit of social comment and grim ruminations on the horrors of war. Fortunately these don't interrupt the plot too much and Rutledge gets on with the job of solving the crime, and there's a bit of action at the end that beefs up the pace. Which is how these Rutledge books usually go. You probably wouldn't want to read this sort of thing all the time, but every so often, it's just the ticket.

The Case of the Imaginary Detective by Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler is well known for The Jane Austen Book Club, a quirky novel where each of Jane Austen's books finds an echo in the lives of its six main characters. (The novel was so popular it was made into a film, which I didn't enjoy so much, but that's another story.) I found Fowler's The Case of the Imaginary Detective at a book fair and being a big fan of detective fiction, I had high hopes for it. And for the most part, I wasn't disappointed.
    The Case of the Imaginary Detective is the story of Rima, who after the deaths of her father from leukaemia and her very dear brother in a car crash, needs to crawl away from the world for a bit to lick her wounds. She is taken in by her godmother, Addison Early, famous for writing detective novels featuring the charismatic Maxwell Lane, which have been made into movies and TV series. Addison is a brittle, bristly and secretive woman, who is none the less kindly.
    Addison inhabits a rambling house by the beach in Santa Cruz, along with two dachshunds and a recovering alcoholic housekeeper named Tilda. There are two visiting university students who help out with dog-walking duties as well as attempting, at Addison's request, to take Rima out of herself. Scattered about the house are doll-house models of the murder that takes place at the start of each of Addison's novels, some of which are particularly grisly.
    But the underlying mystery of this novel concerns Addison's past, which she is quite tight-lipped about: her relationship with Rima's father, and their connection with Holy City, a religious community run by the autocratic William Riker, which was also the scene of a suspicious death. Then there is the mystery of why Addison named a murderer after Rima's father, and whether this was the cause of the rift in their relationship.
    These mysteries are certainly intriguing and keep the plot ticking along nicely. Rima does a lot of snooping, in Addison's attic and at the now derelict Holy City, as well as on the Internet. She's not the daughter of a prize-winning journalist for nothing. In doing so she starts to come out of her shell. She begins to face up to her feelings for her family, especially her adored brother, and interacts more with other people. The ending is just as much about Rima getting her life back on track as the solving of mysteries.
    I apologise if this makes the books seem altogether too worthy, because the whole thing is packaged in a pleasantly wry narrative style. The setting of a seaside town in winter adds a ton of atmosphere - a suitable canvas for the bunch of oddbods that inhabit it. And being rather fond of oddbods in literature, I liked this novel a lot.

San Miguel by T C Boyle

San Miguel by T C Boyle is the kind of novel that takes an intriguing setting, in this case a windswept island off the coast of California, throws at it a few interesting characters and then sits back to see what happens. There's also a historical element to add some atmosphere. 
   But really, most of all, it's character all the way, because I guess that's what islands do: they strip away all the appendages of civilized life - the social obligations, fashion, career prospects and class interactions, and so on. What is left is the islanders themselves and how they relate to their immediate families and natural surroundings.
    You have to be good with characters to make a novel like this work, and Boyle is supremely good. He copes admirably with writing from a female point of view - in this case three women - over two different periods of history.
    The first begins in 1888, when Marantha arrives with her husband, Will, her teenage daughter, Edith, and their Irish servant.  The island is Will's idea. Vigorous and determined, he's a veteran of the Civil War, needing a chance to be his own man, optimistic about the potential the island's sheep station offers. He has convinced Marantha to invest the last of her money in the venture, promising the clean air that will cure her tuberculosis.
    When cheerful optimism turns to bitter disappointment and worse, Edith is coerced into helping out. But she has her heart set on a more glamorous life. How these two women leave the island drives the plot for the first half of the book. 
    The rest of the novel concerns Elise's story. She has been swept off her feet by Herbie, who is exuberant and charming, just when she thought she was a spinster for life. It is 1930 and Herbie, too, is traumatized by his wartime experiences, but covers it up with his passion for Elise and for their island adventure. Elise soon becomes immersed in life on the island, and her marriage seems truly blessed, until the outside world and the rumblings of another war start to intrude.
    San Miguel may not be the happiest of novels, and it might even put you off the dream of getting away from it all. But this is a terrific story - inventive and captivating, at the same time giving the reader plenty of food for thought. Boyle is an accomplished writer, his prose is both elegant and natural - I shall certainly be seeking out his previous novels.
   

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

Just so you know, I have never been a great fan of fantasy fiction. And I tend to steer clear of books about vampires – sorry, really not interested. But every so often along comes a book that you can't ignore.
   Justin Cronin's novel, The Passage, was a huge hit a couple of years ago. In case you've forgotten, The Passage is a dystopian story where North America is almost annihilated by a disease that came about when some scientists tried to breed a super-soldier, but instead turned a bunch of death-row inmates into hugely powerful vampires.
   I still wasn’t convinced it was a book for me, but suddenly, The Twelve was due to be published with glowing publicity, and I thought, oh help, I've some catching up to do. Then the characters were so engaging, the plot was riveting, and the world Cronin describes was so vivid, I couldn't put The Passage down. 
    And here I am, having just finished The Twelve - named for the very twelve vampires that evolved from that first fateful experiment. Most of the old gang is still there: Peter, now a soldier, is still driven to finish what he set out to do in the last book: see all of the twelve destroyed so that mankind can rebuild and live freely again. Comrade Alicia (Lish) is a fellow officer, while Amy – the girl who can save the world – is back in Kerrville, looking after children, including Peter’s nephew, at a convent. Michael the Circuit works as an oiler in Texas, and Sara is missing, presumed dead. The original crusade against the twelve seems to have hit a roadblock.
   Meanwhile at the city of Homeland, humans in the form of ‘red-eyes’ defy old age and manage to survive without the fortress set-up of other settlements, living a luxury existence at the expense of slaves captured from outlying areas. What is their secret? And what really goes on in the basement of a building known as the Dome?
   There is plenty to keep the reader avidly engrossed in The Twelve, which begins with a few back-stories from the first apocalypse. This gives the book both a compelling plot to keep things ticking along towards a grand showdown full of guns, explosions and dramatic tension, as well as providing a few more useful chunks in the trilogy jigsaw. Somehow in the next book we know there will be another nail-biting storyline, as well as a resolution that ties up all the loose-ends that have been left to maintain our curiosity.
   Indeed, The Twelve is a very satisfying read. What carries it beyond your standard apocalyptic adventure yarn is the surety that Cronin can craft a world that lives and breathes in our imagination. There are the wonderful descriptions of an America littered with ghost-towns and the detritus of a lost civilization (ours). The characters are complex and interesting. Even the not-very-nice ones do what they do because of reasons we can identify with. Guilder, the dictator running the show in Homeland starts out just trying to stay alive, but look at the devastation he wreaks. And let’s be honest, how can any of us know how we would behave in an extreme situation like this one?