Category Archives: Book

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Read: The Cut Up by Louise Welsh ★★★★ 📚

Cat slipped off her jacket. Her arms were decorated with tattoos not yet dense enough to be considered sleeves but numerous enough to declare commitment. She saw me clocking them and gave me a want-to-make-something-of-it stare.

Another crime novel about Rilke, an auctioneer, Glaswegian & nice take on the compromised but conscience driven hero in the criminal borderlands. The novel chases along at a great rate. Especially enjoyed the Glasgow setting. Lots of places I know.

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Read: The Spy and The Traitor by Ben Macintyre ★★★★ 📚

On the morning of 4 July, a dishevelled couple in tattered clothes could be seen lounging aimlessly at the end of Victoria Road, Coulsdon, in the South London suburbs. One was Simon Brown, of P5, MI6's head of Soviet bloc operations; the other was Veronica Price, the architect of Gordievsky's escape plan. A Home Counties creature from her pearls to her twinset, Price was not suited to this sort of subterfuge. 'I've borrowed the char's hat,' she announced, as they climbed into their disguises.

I've not read much spy fiction but this true story of a KGB man who betrayed Russia & helped cool Cold War tensions only to be first caught & then escape from the USSR to Britain was quite a trip.

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Read: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng ★★★★★ 📚

Somerset Maugham is collecting material in Malaysia, visiting an old friend & his wife. Layers: a murder, affairs & Sun Yat Sen gathering funds for revolution. Details & the unfolding of all sorts of complexity of characters, relationships & situations involved me completely.

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Read: Watershead by Percival Everett ★★★ 📚

Geologist, Robert, becomes involved with fictional Native Americans exposing pollution plot. Mixed in with quotes about geology & legal treaties. Details of Robert childhood & his families involvement with the Black Panthers fits well with the Plata tribe fight for water rights. His awful relationship with a 'mad' girlfriend less so.

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Read: Spring by Ali Smith ★★★★★ 📚

It is, she says. You’re right. We are a fairy story. We’re a folk tale. I don’t mean to sound in the least fey. Those stories are deeply serious, all about transformation. How we’re changed by things. Or made to change. Or have to learn to change. And that’s what we’re working on, change. We’re serious, too. She pours him another whisky…

Rilke & Katherine Mansfield appear along the artist Tacita Dean. The declines of television & our treatment of refugees. A cast of characters include a magical 12 year old refugee, an old TV director with an imaginary daughter & a worker at an immigration centre. Rabbit holes galore. Finally a we bit of springlike hope.

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Read: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy ★★★★ 📚

Northern Ireland 1975 Cushla young RC teacher starts an affair with a Married Protestant Lawyer & gets mixed up with a mixed family of a pupil. Spent the whole book tensed against the expected end.

While in Dublin:

They walked up Grafton Street. Buskers were playing guitars, huddles of youths standing about watching them.
Something was wrong. She looked up and down the street and didn’t know what it was until she was in the doorway of Switzers, sliding her handbag off her shoulder and holding it open. Michael laughed. You’re not in Kansas any more, he said.

I remember in the 70s my aunt on a visit to Glasgow going up to the security guard in M&S & opening her handbag.

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Read: Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson ★★★ 📚

Last summer there was a rogue patch of phosphorescence at Cloughkeel beach, a psychedelic wreath. Tonight, in the dark swell there is only the sound of a lone whale, and Danu above. How lonely to be always reaching out for someone who isn’t there.

An artist living on the island she was born on. Lots of intriguing ideas: the descriptions of her art work; a weird sound that not everyone hears; a colony of women who have left the world; a local lover; a dead whale & a visiting film star. Not all quite tied up.

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Read: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller ★★★ 📚

This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool. This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool.

Post apocalyptic, few survivors left, mostly killing each other. The main character loves fishing & the outdoors, handy skills to have except all the trout died too. The descriptions of what is left & what has been lost are poetic. Mixed with adventure, murderous action & brutality in a fractured storyline without much punctuation, not in a bad way.