Balancing Act by Joanna Trollope

You can't help feeling a little bit sorry for Susie Moran, the matriarch a the centre of this family drama. She's the successful head of her own pottery company with three talented daughters all involved in the family business. But now in her fifties she's eager to keep her finger in the pie and give her sense of creativity a bit of a boost. When a cottage comes up for sale that has connections to her old family pottery in Staffordshire, she snaps it up without involving her daughters, causing ructions that last well through the book.
    Personally, I didn't have a problem with Susie's decision and thought a bit of diplomacy all round would have sorted out her daughters, though I did worry a bit about poor old Dad. Jasper Moran has married a force to be reckoned with in Susie; she has turned a fairly moribund spongeware pottery into a thriving success story. Jasper elected to stay home to raise his daughters in their London house, his sound-proof basement studio a place to meet his fellow bandmates for the odd session, but really his musician career has been on hold for thirty years.
    The girls are just as talented as their mother, and beginning to want more of the business pie. Cara and her husband Dan run the commercial side of things, and have ideas about how to grow the business they are dying to try out. Ashleigh does the marketing, but is exhausted by her young family. When hubby, Leo, suggests he stays at home for a year, she can focus more on her work and decides she should have a more results-based salary.
    That leaves Grace, the artistic one who works at the pottery in Staffordshire. She's a bit beleaguered by a relationship that is going nowhere and tends to be pushed around by her bossy family. When their long-lost grandfather turns up out of the blue, his name being mud for having deserted Susie when she was a baby, it is Grace who feels expected to put him up at her flat.
    With a combination of restlessness, resentment, bitterness and dissatisfaction circling among the various characters, the scene is set for plenty of drama and a bit of a shake-up. The reader knows that no one will want to return to how things were at the beginning of the story and along the way there will be Trollope's amazing way with dialogue, and characters brought to life who earn the reader's sympathy. Even grandfather Morris is appealing with his stories of living hand-to-mouth on the beach in Africa, and his reasons for leaving are weirdly complex.
    Morris and Grace's boyfriend Jeff both deserve plenty of recrimination, but other males come to the rescue: Ash's lovely husband Leo and Grace's coworker Neil, for starters. The three daughters are almost from a fairytale, a modern, realistic fairytale; like fairytale traditions, the youngest is the most interesting, possibly for being more richly drawn. It's all classic Trollope - I didn't start the book with any great expectations, and while it didn't make the earth move, it was very satisfying none-the-less and surprisingly hard to put down.

Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers

I'm not usually attracted by the Christmassy covers found on books published with the festive season in mind, or indeed, Christmas stories in general. However Christmas can intensify family issues that are already there, and as such makes a good basis for drama. Hester and Harriet is a refreshingly different Christmas story, about two widowed sisters, happy to see the festive day out in quiet self-indulgence at home by the fire.
    Hester is the terse, thin one who cooks; Harriet is the dumpy, secret cookie eater ex-school teacher, kindly but occasionally given to the odd socialist rant. The two are hilarious together with their snippy dialogue and enjoyment of Hester's fine cooking, which the reader gets to enjoy as well.
    So, to Christmas Day: the sisters reluctantly haul themselves out into the chill, Harriet driving badly as usual, expected to share the festive meal with cousins, George and Isabelle. Their cousins mean well, but the food will be terrible, the company worse. Fate intervenes when passing the old bus shelter, now home to a derelict ex-classics master named Finbar, they find instead a young girl and her baby.
    Happy for an excuse to turn back home anyway, the sisters take in Daria, who is from Belarus, and her little chap, Milo. Daria is reluctant to tell the women why she is hiding in a bus shelter, and she seems fearful of strangers. Life gets more complicated when George and Isabelle's teenage son Ben turns up on their doorstep, having had a major falling out with his parents about his wish to chuck in school and study horticulture instead.
    The women have no children of their own, so there is a hilarious learning curve in front of them. Fortunately Ben is surprisingly good with Milo and gets Daria to talk, and Hester and Harriet begin to formulate a plan to help her. Ben is so impressed by the food Hester prepares he starts to help in the kitchen and is allowed to stay for a few days anyway until something can be sorted out with his parents.
    Spicing up the novel is the hint of danger in the lurking stranger who seems to be spying on Daria and asking questions around the village. The problem of refugees from political struggles abroad and their exploitation in Britain gives Harriet plenty to get on her high horse about, and even in their tiny village of Pellingham, dark deeds are afoot which the sisters are sure to get to the bottom of.
    The novel is sprinkled with a clutch of humorous characters: Finbar the malodorous hobo with his fanatically perfect grammar, ladies man Teddy Wilson who seems to be in a spot of bother and his wife Molly who drowns her sorrows in drink, to name a few. The plot may take a while to get going, but there is still plenty to amuse with the characters playing off each other, smart and witty dialogue and an atmospheric setting. Quite a good antidote to the usual Christmas fare, but a good read any time of the year.

The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths

I just had to see what happens to forensic archaeologist, Dr Ruth Galloway, in the second book in Elly Griffith's series of mysteries set in Norfolk. By the end of The Crossing Places, Ruth has discovered she is pregnant at 39, and happy about it, though not so keen to reveal her secret to the father, a married man, or her born-again Christian parents.
    At the start of the first book, Ruth was leading a quiet, spinsterish life, absorbed in her work at the university, attending the odd faculty party, but happy at home with her cats and Radio 4. She lives in a desolate spot on the marshes, away from the hurly burly, which suits her fine. Until she meets DCI Harry Nelson who needs her expertise with bones. Since then she's had her life threatened on more than one occasion, as she gets closer to discovering the truth, and her circle of friends has at least doubled in number. There's a lot more of that here in The Janus Stone.
    When builders discover bones at a building site, Ruth excavates the tiny skeleton of a child, minus its head. The large house, which was once an orphanage, is being demolished to make way for apartments, and the burial of the bones at a doorway, implies a kind of ritual sacrifice with links to Roman deities, in particular, Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions, often shown with two faces.
    However Ruth notices that layers of soil indicate a much more recent burial and Nelson questions Father Hennessey, who ran a children's home on the site around fifty years ago. He reluctantly reveals that two children ran away from the home in the early seventies, a boy of twelve and his younger sister.
    The reader is treated to plenty of archaeological information about Janus and Hecate, some of the not-so-nice minor Roman deities thanks to Ruth's friendship with Dr Max Grey, from Sussex, who is involved in a dig uncovering a Roman villa. His insight is useful because of the clues at the crime scene which indicate a murderer with a weird obsession with some of the nastier Roman rituals, such as sacrificing children to place under doorways for good luck.
    Max Grey and Ruth have a lot in common and he is obviously in line for some romantic interest; he's attracted to Ruth, that is soon clear. But how will she tell him about her baby? And is Max hiding a secret of his own? Everyone's got secrets it would seem.
    The Janus Stone is another engrossing mystery, with plenty of factual material to get your teeth into while building up to an action-packed ending. Ruth and DCI Nelson are brilliant characters, each good at their job, but with the personality quirks that make the reader care for them. There are another six Galloway-Nelson novels so far, and this will no doubt become my go-to collection for a relaxing escapist read.
 
 

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

Now this was a difficult book to put down, as right from the beginning it gets is main character, climatologist Adam Kindred, into a growing tangle of murder, conspiracy and the dark undercurrents of London society. Adam is one of those characters that can be tossed about by adverse events because he has just come back from years in America, a broken marriage behind him and the sniff of a new job, a research fellowship at Imperial College, so he has no ties and no one knows he is home.
    Eating alone at an Italian restaurant he meets another scientist, an immunologist, also eating alone, who happens to leave behind a folder. Dr Philip Wang's address and phone number are on the documents, so Adam decides to return the file in person, but discovers Wang's dying body and a lurking murderer at his flat. Adam manages to dodge the attacker, but his name has been left with the concierge and his fingerprints are on the murder weapon. He soon realises he has no choice but to go on the run, and hides out, living rough among the undergrowth at Chelsea Embankment.
    Adam's a resourceful young man, and sets out to clear his name, and that will mean finding out what it was that Dr Wang had discovered during his trials of a ground-breaking new asthma drug that has someone at the pharmaceutical company Calenture-Deutz determined to suppress.
    So begins a convoluted storyline full of odd connections that all tie up cleverly and an assortment of widely varying characters. There's Calenture-Deutz head Ingram Fryzer, full of self-doubt yet determined to maintain control of the company while needing buy-in from another major drug company. He's not a particularly pleasant character, but Boyd somehow makes him to some degree sympathetic to the reader. Not so top nasty Jonjo, the ex-squaddie thug hired to do in Dr Wang who is desperate to track down Adam in order to get his final payout.
    Then there is Mhouse, the prostitute that rips Adam off and then later helps him, suggesting he visit the Church of John Christ, if he ever needs a hot meal. Which he does. The Church of John Christ is a marvellous creation, a testament to the novel ways that a new religion can be invented and in spite of its doubtful theological basis, manages to do a lot of good, one way and another.
    The story bounces from character to character, and Adam's plight is both nail-biting and enthralling - he's a modern day Richard Hannay - and the chapters just fly by. Boyd manages to come up with a thriller that is also immensely well-written and intelligent. The book's title is a reference to the type of storms that have 'the capacity to transform themselves into multi-cell storms of ever growing complexity', like this rich and complex plot. It is lucky that this particular thunderstorm has storm expert, Adam Kindred, on the case to see a way through the layers of conspiracy, with an ending that is both original and immensely satisfying.

The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton

Here's a story that pits human will against one of the harshest imaginable environments, the icy wastes of Alaska in winter. Yasmin arrives with her daughter, Ruby, at Fairbanks Airport to meet up with husband Matt. He's a wildlife film-maker who has become completely besotted with the Inupiaq people who inhabit the village he has made his base, causing some friction in his marriage. The family are due to spend Christmas together, hence the girls' wintry arrival.
    But Yasmin and Ruby are greeted with the news that the village of Anatue has been destroyed by fire, probably from a gas explosion, and there are no survivors. A wedding ring found with Matt's initials suggests that he is the unexplained additional victim, and a search party for him is called off. Yasmin is not convinced, as a call from Matt's satellite phone was made after the fire, although the signal died before Yasmin could hear his voice.
    She decides to make the difficult journey north to find him, her daughter in tow, as there is nowhere else to leave her. Ruby is deaf and suffers separation anxiety. While this may seem a burden, it becomes a bonus as well, as Ruby sees things that others don't notice, and her sign language gives them a means to communicate in secret.
    This is particularly useful because like any good thriller, there is evil afoot. Yasmin is fortunately both smart and determined as she will have to trek across a cold and wintry Alaska, half out of her mind with anxiety for Matt, while a storm is coming, allowing only a small window of opportunity to make it to the airstrip closest to Anatue.
    There will be obstacles upon obstacles, with the last flight cancelled, and none of the truckers heading north wanting to take Yasmin and Ruby with them. Fortunately Yasmin is able to twist the arm of Mr Azizi, who owns his truck and isn't hampered by company rules about taking passengers. At first this looks like a blessing, but when Azizi falls ill at a truck stop, Yasmin decides to drive the truck herself. At once the story gears up a notch, as of course Yasmin has no knowledge of ice road trucking or the rules of the trucker fraternity, who turn out to be surprisingly helpful in the end. As if this isn't exciting enough, she has the feeling of being followed.
    The Quality of Silence is a nail-biting read which has a lot to say about the difficulties of growing up different - Ruby is just as gutsy as her mother, which is just as well as she has a tough time at school - and also the fracking industry and the danger it poses to a fragile and once pristine environment.
    The novel packs in a lot of ideas and while these are all very worthy, it does at times risk seeming a little preachy. I would have been happy if Yasmin wasn't so devastatingly beautiful that she immediately feels men are becoming obsessed with her. Call me cynical, but is the author imagining her book might be snapped up by Hollywood and her protagonist assigned to the latest glamorous A-lister? This is a small gripe but for me it detracted from an otherwise excellent novel.

In a Real Life by Chris Killen

In a Real Life is the story of three characters, Lauren, Paul and Ian over two time periods: 2004 and 2014. The novel cuts back and forth between these two critical years, using a lively mix of alternating view points, past and present tense and first and third person narration. The chapters are short so in no time you are swept into the novel which opens with the break-up of Paul and Lauren This happens when Lauren goes to bed having left a list of PRO's and CON's about Paul on the living room table, which of course he happens to see when he comes home from his bar job.
    His bar job is one of the CON's - there are seven in total - while there is only one PRO: that he would never cheat on her. Fast forward to 2014 and there's Paul, having published a novel, teaching creative writing, so no longer working in a bar, but contemplating infidelity with a nineteen year old student, which means he seems to have swapped around some of his good points and bad points.
    Lauren goes off to Canada on the spur of the moment, but begins an email correspondence with Ian, Paul's flatmate. Ian is in the music industry, playing in a band, writing songs, but by 2014 he has lost his job in a record store and has to move in with his more successful sister, Carol. It's a crumby box room and he has to sell his guitar to pay his board. He's also lost touch with Lauren, after a stream of emails that promised more than friendship. All three characters seem to have lost touch, in fact.
    By 2014 Lauren is working in a charity shop, still looking for Mr Right with little hope of finding him. The course of the novel fills in a few of the gaps: what caused the falling out between Lauren and Ian for starters. We have sympathy for Ian in particular: he seems a nice guy but his life has struck rock bottom, Lauren has a knack for getting into situations with men without really thinking them through, while Paul seems to be acting out a role in 'Men Behaving Badly'. It is a toss-up who is worse, Paul or Carol's boyfriend, Martin who gives Ian a job in telemarketing. This is a particularly unpleasant industry and it says a lot for Ian that he is so bad at it.
    The novel highlights the way we communicate/fail to communicate using social media and the Internet, and is an interesting snapshot of Generation Y. There is plenty of humour in the little messes each character gets into, although at times this made me cringe, particularly Paul's hopeless acts of deceit towards his girlfriend, his younger lover, his boss and even his publisher. And surely characters like Paul and Ian should steer clear of Facebook or at least should think rather than drink before posting a status.
    What kept me going with the story was the obvious 'unfinished business' between Ian and Lauren that lurks in the background. Paul shows a willingness to make amends to all and sundry, but seems to be hellbent on picking up more bad points than before. In Paul, Killen has created a classic example of literary pretentiousness reminding me somehow of that Groucho Marx saying: 'Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book - and does.' I am glad however that Chris Killen wrote this book - it is so refreshingly honest and good fun.

The Language of Others by Clare Morrall

The Language of Others is the story of Jessica Fontaine, tracing her life from her childhood at Audlands Hall - the crumbling mansion her biscuit baron father bought to please her mother - through to her present day struggles with her grown-up son and her estranged husband.
    As a child Jessica's mother found her daughter unfathomable, possibly even retarded, unlike her sociable and attractive younger sister, Harriet. While her mother organised treasure hunts and parties and Harriet ran about the estate with their cousins, Jess would sit at an upstairs window reading or skating down the long gallery. Until she discovered music.
    Jess is in fact smarter than she looks, and takes to playing the piano with a huge amount of commitment, enough to get herself into music school where she meets Andrew. She falls in love with Andrew the moment she first sees him, playing the violin. Andrew has a bucketload of talent but lacks the emotional maturity to use it. He resents his pushy mother for the path his life has taken and all the hours he spent practising as a child. Clearly, both have mother issues.
    The story weaves in threads from Jessica's growing up and the early years of their marriage with her present-day life, working at a library part-time and playing piano duets to small audiences with her good friend, Mary. At home Jess's twenty-three year old son, Joel, still expects his mother to house and cook for him in spite of Joel's success in the computer gaming industry. To Jess's knowledge, Joel has no friends or ever had a girlfriend, and this worries her.
    But her peace is completely shattered when Andrew gets in touch after seven years of no communication. Andrew has always been difficult, and refusing to play his violin for years, has never settled to any particular career path.
    How Jessica comes to understand her son and Andrew while she is coerced into considering events from the past is the main thrust of the story. There is a lot of detail of a musical nature and Morrall recreates the house of Audlands with a finely imagined pen. This is a quiet story, that nevertheless builds to a dramatic finish, as friends and family come together one last time for a final barn dance at Audlands Hall.
    But really this is a novel about self-awareness and how when you understand yourself, it puts into perspective your interactions with other people. Like previous books I've read by this author, she has created some unusual characters, who nevertheless engage the reader's sympathy and are carefully drawn.  What stands out for me is the wisdom present in Morrall's novels, which though pleasurable, also leave you feeling enriched. What more could you ask for?

The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom

You never know what you will find among your library's ebook collection. I discovered Ian Sansom's madcap novel, The Case of the Missing Books, the first in a mystery series featuring overweight, half-Jewish, half-Irish librarian, Israel Armstrong.
    When Israel fetches up at the Northern Irish township of Tundrum, he is already grumpy. He has had a long, nauseating journey involving bus and ferry. To cap things off, he finds on arrival that the library he has been employed to manage has been closed by the Tundrum council.
    Having qualified as a librarian some years before, Israel has never had a library job - instead filling his days working at a discount bookshop in Essex. His ambitious girlfriend, Gloria, has encouraged him to take the Tundrum job, suggesting this will kick-start his library career. It is a case of disappointment upon disappointment.
    Linda Wei, Israel's boss at the council, is more optimistic. It is all merely a resource reallocation and she has another plan for Israel; in effect he will drive the mobile library, with the new title of Outreach Support Officer. He'll be assisted by belligerent ex-boxer, Ted Carson, who runs the local taxi service and knows about engines. It was Ted, after all, who has been hiding the old library bus in a chicken shed.
   The bus's revelation to Israel, rusting and redolent of the hen-house, is yet another disappointment, as is Israel's billet with a feisty redhead named George who thinks nothing of hosing him down while she's cleaning her farmyard, and housing him in a one-time chicken coop that still boasts a rooster.
    Also in the household is George's tee-total, Bible quoting father and her student brother, Brownie who at least attempts to be helpful, lending him his combat trousers and t-shirts with questionable slogans. Israel seems to have packed more books than clothing.
    Discovering that the old library is missing its books and that Israel must track them down is a core part of the plot. As he visits his customers in an attempt to find items from the collection, Israel meets a marvellous cast of odd-ball characters, including Dennis the carpenter and the wealthy hermit, Pearce Pyper. All this is interspersed with hilarious dialogue between Israel and Ted, who certainly make an odd couple.
    The story of a stranger from the city trying to make his way in a remote country town he can't wait to leave and where he is frequently the butt of jokes is not a new one. Israel's bumbling and oversensitive character makes him perfect for the slapstick misadventure that befalls him. Sansom's writing is sharp and weirdly quotable. His summing up of Israel early on says a lot about his character - how books had spoilt him so that 'his expectations were sky-high and his grasp on reality was minimal'.
    It seems Israel has a lot to learn about Tundrum, himself and life in general. I shall enjoy picking up where The Case of the Missing Books leaves off to see how he gets on.

An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas

You can tell a lot about a character from how they handle a simple event such as making a journey. Fred Vargas's novel, An Uncertain Place, begins with Commissaire Adamsberg late for a train. He has ironed his shirt for once as he is to attend a conference in London.
    While his sidekick, Danglard, paces the platform waiting for his boss, impeccably attired as always, Adamsberg is bailed up by his neighbour, a one-armed Spaniard, demanding help with the birth of a cat's kittens in the garden shed. It's all a bit messy, and makes Adamsberg even later.
    On the train, while the Commissaire remains unperturbed, Danglard is unnerved by the train's passage through the Chunnel, resorting to drinking champagne and telling stories - he turns out to be amazingly erudite - while their wide-eyed young sergeant, Estalere, listens with amazement.
    The conference gets barely a mention, but a tour of the sights by English policeman, DCI Radstock, turns up a weird mystery outside the entrance to Highgate Cemetery, where someone has deposited a collection of shoes, seventeen altogether, complete with severed feet.
    At first this seems an odd digression, for soon the French police are back on their home turf, investigating the particularly brutal murder of a rich and unpleasant elderly man, Pierre Vaudel. His body has been completely reduced to blood, splinters of bone and viscera. Initial investigations point to two suspects: the gardener and odd-job man, Emile, who has a record for GBH, and Vaudel's son, who was for many years disowned by his father.
    However, we all know that there must be a more convoluted solution to the mystery, one that will take in the dismembered feet from Highgate. There will be a conspiracy at a very high level of the judiciary system, Adamsberg will make another journey, into eastern Europe this time, to uncover the importance of the name 'Plog', and a rogue young man known as Zerk will intrude on Adamsberg's usual nonchalance in a way he could never have foreseen. Meanwhile, Danglard becomes distracted by the unusual interest he has aroused in a woman he met at the conference and there will be several cats and dogs that are key to the plot.
    If that isn't enough to keep the reader entertained, there is Vargas' wonderful dialogue, which makes her characters so interesting and often laugh out loud funny.  Danglard is the Commissaire's go-to man for his encyclopaedic knowledge of history, old cases and who's who in the police force. But other police officers are just as gifted, such as the former Vietnamese colleague who talks in Asian proverbs, often made up, or Veyrenc with his striped hair and habit of breaking into poetry.
    Somehow all these attributes become important to Adamsberg and his way of making odd connections to solve a very unusual series of crimes. One can only sit back, enjoy the ride and marvel at the intricate mind that has created the story - and look forward the next Fred Vargas novel, of course.
 

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

In her acknowledgments at the back of the book author Helen Simonson passes on her thanks to the writer that first taught her 'to appreciate the beauty of the sentence'.  One of the things I particularly liked about Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is that Simonson writes such beautiful sentences which not only capture the tone of Major Pettigrew so well, but have a rhythmical cadence that shows you an author who cares about her craft. These sentences are also imbued with a lovely wry humour, and one reason it works so well is because of the pitch and rhythm of the syntax. This is something I first discovered in P G Wodehouse when I was a girl, and possibly even Jane Austen, and have rediscovered in other masters of comedy from Kingsley Amis to Bill Bryson.
    Actually Jane Austen is the first author I thought of as I read this book, because it is a novel about the trials of true love especially in the context of the expectations of society. Major Pettigrew is a widower of sixty-eight, when his younger brother dies suddenly. He is so upset by the news that he answers the door in a floral housecoat that belonged to his late wife, to find himself almost collapsing on the tiny shoulder of of Mrs Ali from the village shop.
    So begins a friendship, and maybe it took such a moment of weakness for it to blossom because Pettigrew is such a traditional, stiff-upper-lip army type that he would never have thought of openly courting the attractive Pakistani widow who sells him delicious loose tea and other comestibles. In spite of their different cultures they find they share a joy in reading and both have a similarly ironic sense of humour.
    But we all know that the course of true love is never easy and both the major and Mrs Ali have problems to deal with first. For the major, there is the issue of the Churchills, a pair of beautifully hand-crafted hunting rifles that were given to his father by a grateful maharaja in India just after the Partition. The major's father left one rifle to each of the boys, on the proviso that they be reunited upon the death of either one of them, and then handed on together to the next generation.
    But the Churchills are of course worth a lot of money and Bertie's wife, Marjorie, as well as the major's son, Roger, would like some extra cash. The major loves his Churchill and the thought of collecting its pair has been one consolation at his brother's death. How will he stand up to Marjorie and Roger, with whom he has an awkward relationship at the best of times?
    Meanwhile, since the death of her husband, Mrs Ali has been slowly handing over the reins of her shop to her scowling nephew, Abdul Wahid. He's a devout Muslim who has been trying to reconcile his soul with the disgrace he has thrust upon his family, some years ago. Mrs Ali is keen to smooth over the difficult waters that prevent his happiness. While the major wants his family to uphold tradition, Mrs Ali wants to encourage her various relatives to break a few rules so that people can live and let live.
    These niggling difficulties are complicated by the coming events of a dance at the golf club, a shooting party hosted by the local lord of the manor, and the arrival of a wealthy American businessman. The usual village characters are all there too: the vague vicar and his busy-body wife, the blushing spinster, the golf club cronies of the major. If there's one fault in this book it is that these characters are so classic that they verge on cliche.
    Luckily the story hums along towards a magnificent climax, where we get to see the major in the action he has trained for, with some lovely touches of irony, of course.

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

Swimming Home is the second novel I have read from the 2012 Mann Booker Prize short-list and so there are no surprises that it is taut, finely written, with an evocative setting and an intriguing cast of characters. 
    At first glance, Deborah Levy's new book could be seen as just another story about the middle classes behaving badly on holiday. Joe is a famous poet and emigre Jew who escaped the Holocaust as a child. He arrives at their rented Riviera villa with his war-correspondent wife, Isabel, and their teenage daughter, Nina, to find a beautiful and quite naked young woman swimming in the pool. Actually, she is floating motionless at the bottom which causes consternation in the family and also for their guests, Mitchell and Laura.
    Isabel is the only person with the presence of mind to jump in and see if the girl is all right. The young lovely turns out to be Kitty Finch, a mentally fragile young woman that Isabel invites to stay. Unfortunately, Kitty turns out to have an unhealthy obsession with Joe's poetry, seems to be anorexic, and is the walking embodiment of the kinds of demons Joe has been battling for years. 
    Both are afflicted by depression, and it is depression that is the lurking evil in the book, ready to destroy the lives of its characters. Isabel also has her problems - her career has seen her witness terrible things, she has missed out on being a mother to her daughter, and has put up with her husband's repeated infidelity.
    Mitchell spends money like water, money he doesn't have, while Laura frets about their shop and the likelihood that they'll have to close it.
    Meanwhile the sun always shines, there are orchards and beaches to explore and Nina is growing up. The feeling of being young and on holiday in a beautiful place is very real here -  you can almost hear the cicadas and feel the sun on your face. Nina is a sensitive girl who dotes on her father, while worrying about the interloper, Kitty Finch. 
    Tension builds when Kitty insists Joe read her poem, 'Swimming Home', which Joe tries to ignore for as long as he can. He knows he will have to read it eventually, just as he knows he can't ignore her beauty and youthfulness, or their shared affliction.
    It seems the characters are headed for disaster. Can Isabel come to the rescue yet again, or perhaps Nina, who seems so sensitive to what is happening? 
    Swimming Home is a slim volume - you can read it in an afternoon - but there is a lot going on beneath its impeccably crafted surface. I'm sure it deserves its place on the Booker short-list, but if I were you I would skip Tom McCarthy's gushy introduction, which might make you imagine the book to be rather more high-brow than it really is.
    By the way, The Guardian supplied a set of six compelling video clips, explaining why each of the short-listed titles should win the Mann Booker Prize, as it did for this one:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2012/oct/11/swimming-home-booker-prize-video

The Light of Amsterdam by David Park

I felt like reading a Christmas book and was attracted by David Park's The Light of Amsterdam with it's blue Delft cover art. This is a novel about three sets of characters from Belfast who visit Amsterdam just before Christmas. All are anxious or depressed and find a change of heart and new resolution from their time away.
    First off, there's Alan who teaches art at a university. He's recently divorced and feeling sorry for himself for making a mess of his marriage and because he's been told by his boss to improve his act. To top it all off, he has to take his teenage son, Jack, with him to Amsterdam because his ex is going to Spain with her new partner, whom Jack can't stand. Jack is a sort of Goth/Emo who is making a mess of school and dabbling in drugs and self-harm. How is Alan supposed to talk Jack into going to the Bob Dylan concert which is the main purpose of his visit?
    Then there's Karen, who has low self-esteem perhaps because she works as a cleaner in a rest home, has been 'asked' about the missing bracelet belonging to one of the patients, and is struggling to pay for her share of her daughter's wedding. This is the daughter she raised single-handed, after the father dumped her when she was three months' pregnant. She is going to Amsterdam with her daughter's hen party and she is particularly unhappy about having to dress up as an Indian squaw for the duration.
    Richard and Marion are a couple with grown-up children who are taking a well-earned break from their busy garden centre. They plan to visit the flower markets and can afford a nice hotel. However Marion has been worried that Richard is drifting away from her, and imagines all kinds of goings-on between her husband and one of the pretty Polish girls they employ at the shop. She decides to take a bold step while they are in Amsterdam to help rekindle their relationship.
    So none of our main characters are very happy, in fact the book begins in a rather gloomy fashion, perhaps reflecting the setting of Belfast in December. Once they arrive in Amsterdam, the weather is unseasonably warm and the characters slowly thaw in an enchanting city where anything seems possible. Karen and Richard make a small, tentative connection, while Richard and Marion are seen occasionally in the distance. But mostly the three main characters are shown through their thoughts - thoughts that are often going round in circles of anxiety, with odd bursts of hope and determination.
    As you can see, this is not a book where a lot happens. It has a particularly slow beginning. However David Parks is a great creator of atmosphere and builds drama and tension cleverly towards a mildly cheerful ending. Amsterdam shines through his prose. But most of all, he has huge empathy for his characters who are ordinary folk the reader can identify with. I don't know if the book was released just in time for Christmas, but for anyone going away to recharge the batteries, this is a timely reminder of of how getting away from it all can give you a bit of perspective. Which reminds me: there is some nice stuff about art as well.

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore

The Lighthouse, by Alison Moore, is one of those books you read not because it is going to be fun, but because you know it will be cleverly done and probably quite different from anything else you've read before. You know it will be clever because it was on the Mann Booker shortlist this year. And it won't be fun because early on in the book you can tell that the two main characters are doomed.
     First of all, there's Futh. (Don't ask me how to pronounce his name, but as his grandfather came from Germany, I'm guessing it rhymes with 'tooth'.) Futh keeps stick insects as pets and works as an industrial chemist creating nature-identical smells.
     Not surprisingly he is socially awkward and poor at relationships - probably something to do with the fact that his mother walked out when Futh was a boy. And perhaps this is why he is haunted by his mother's perfume. Smelling of violets, it came in a small lighthouse-shaped bottle which he carries around with him. 
    Scent descriptions linger on the page with everything he does - there's camphor, oranges, steak and onions and of course, violets. There is also some potent imagery connected with the lighthouse - is it a sign of welcome or a warning of the dangerous rocks below?
     At the start of the book, Futh has recently separated from Angela and has decided to go on holiday by himself in the country where his grandfather came from. He is quite hopeless - he gets lost when he is driving and gets blisters and sunburn when he is walking. Mealtimes come and go while he stumbles on.
     Propping up the bar at the guesthouse Futh checks in for the first and last nights of his walking tour is Ester. She runs the inn with her husband and is quite shamelessly a floozie, luring male guests into untenanted bedrooms, and flaunting her aging body in clothes too young for her. It is not a pretty picture. Husband Bernard is fit and muscled. Glowering at his wife over his crossword puzzles, he is a time-bomb waiting to go off.
     Throw these characters together into a story, and the book seems to be a catalogue of disasters waiting to happen. I found myself galloping through the chapters hoping for some kind of redemption as the suspense mounted. I wanted Futh to find out he was good at something that people would recognize and applaud him for. I wanted Ester to see herself as her husband sees her and for them to repair their marriage.
     I won't tell you what happens. This is a short book, and definitely clever - subtle and spare enough to leave much to the reader's imagination - and how that imagination bubbles and seethes. I found myself thinking that not only is the author playing with her characters in an 'as flies to wanton children' sort of way. She is also playing with the reader.

The Essence of the Thing by Madeleine St John

The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St John managed a nomination for the Booker Prize in 1997. (It competed with the truly superb Europa by Tim Parks, and both of these lost out to The God of Small Things by Andurati Roy - I have a copy of this that I have never managed to read.)
    Essence is the third of St John's novels, and since I have been reading them in order, there is sadly only one to go. There is something to be said for the smaller novel, in this case a mere 235 pages - you can finish it in a day or two and there isn't time for the story to get too flabby. St John's novel has no spare words. It remains sharp and witty and leaves a lot to the reader's imagination. I for one appreciate the faith the author has in the reader to fill in the gaps.
    The story concerns a couple, Jonathan and Nicola, and what happens when Jonathan tells Nicola he doesn't want to live with her anymore and that he will buy her out of their Notting Hill flat, originally her flat, and can she leave as soon as possible please. Of course, Jonathan is a prat, but he happens to be, as Nicola points out to her best friend, Susannah, the prat that she loves.
    Nicola is desolate and the book is mainly about how she departs the flat, talks to friends, and because she isn't a prat they are happy to help out, and how eventually she pulls her life together again. There are scenes with each of the unhappy couple's parents who have hopes for their children. His parents think it is time they settled down. Nicola is perhaps not quite what one might have hoped, but nice enough. Nicola's parents likewise hope for a wedding. 'Why doesn't he have done and marry her?' declares her father.
    There are clever comparisons between different sectors of the middle classes. Jonathan's friends, Alfred and Lizzie are well-off professionals and too busy to have another child. Nicola's friends, Susannah and Geoff, are liberal, academic types and 'too poor' to produce a sibling for nine-year-old Guy. Geoff's friend, Sam, borrows his power tools, and does some amusing mental comparisons of the 'keeping up with the Jonses' kind.
    All this is achieved in short chapters, often containing a single scene using dialog and little else, which makes it a bit like reading a play at times. The dialog is pitch perfect - natural but able to move the story along nicely. And often laugh-out-loud funny. The ending is thoughtfully open-ended.
    St John's novels achieve a lot in a small sphere - ordinary people just thinking and talking, which can be a breath of fresh air if you've just been reading an epic fantasy novel as I have. In this sense, she is a kind of modern Jane Austen and reminds me a lot of Barbara Pym, and I am at a loss to decide which I like best.