December
Agent Running in the Field John Le Carré
Interestingly he seems to be writing a corrective to Nick Herron’s Slough House series…also it seems to be about the agent runner being seduced. One might say penetrated. But hard to tell so far.
The Two Faces of January Patricia Highsmith
So often her novels concern two characters (usually men) circling each other, the one trying to murder the other. The would-be victim usually triumphs, often by killing his assassin, but in this particular long and complicated dance of death set in Greece, a young American aids and abets a rather nastier American in covering up a murder because he looks like his father, the intended victim saves his would be murderer from the Police.
Those Who Walk Away Patricia Highsmith
A study in no revenge. Set largely in Venice, a man will not kill or expose his father in law, after his very young wife has committed suicide in Majorca.
It’s Only Life Ash Carter and Sam Kashner
Mike Nichols in quotes from his 150 closest friends. Witty, brilliant and I wrote notes all over it.
Talking to Strangers Malcolm Gladwell
Misunderstandings and how to understand them and what they tell us about how we work. Or don’t. Another fine book from the finest current essayist.
Grand Union Zadie Smith.
What can I say? I adore her. Favourites: Downtown is wonderful and Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets is wonderfully funny.
Maigret’s Patience Georges Simenon
A recurring character is bumped off.
The Madman of Bergerac Georges Simenon
A very good one. Maigret jumps on a train and is almost bumped off. Who is the madman??
November
Winter Ali Smith.
Some discussion about how good we think this quartet is. I didn’t finish this one.
Pity The Reader Kurt Vonnegut & Suzanne McConnell
On writing with style, from a master, nicely interpreted and linked. Finely chosen and edited. Excellent advice for writers.
Dark Places Gillian Flynn
An early novel about the sole survivor of a massacred family, as she grows up and deals with just what happened that night when her brother may have murdered her entire family.
A Small Town Thomas Perry
What joy to have a writer friend who sends you his latest thriller every year? He always has a great premise. Here a Prison Break devastates a nearby local town, and sets in motion a female cop with a million dollars bounty to destroy the twelve who plotted, murdered the officers, escaped, invaded the local town with murder rape and mayhem. And he returns to his Jane Whitefield books theme with a powerful female, tracking, hunting and in this case eliminating some really nasty people.
Everything happens Jo Perry
How fortunate to have a writer friend married to another writer. I loved both the Perry books. Stepping away from her excellent Dead Dog series, this is a fine novel where everything happens at the end. It’s very short and I could have taken a lot more.
Queen Lucia. Part 1. Make Way for Lucia. E.F. Benson
Re-reading these wonderful books. Lucia and Georgie are surely two of the greatest comic inventions in literature. The book is exquisite, hilarious, and a delight. A Curry cook appears as a Guru to fool Miss Map and her rival acolytes. Exquisitely bitchy novels about life in home counties rural England.
Camino Island John Grisham
I’m not a big Grisham fan. To me he writes like a lawyer. I abandoned this. I wrote earlier (1995) about him the rather cruel line that he is “The MacDonald’s of writing.” But see later. I really enjoyed one.
October
The Library Book Susan Orlean
I’m afraid I put it back on the shelves. I might give it another go, a) because I was on pain killers and b) I think it should be better than it is and I don’t want to misjudge it. For me it’s always about the writing. Are they good at writing a sentence? Compare any page of this to Salman Rushdie’s latest novel and you’ll see the difference. Salman’s prose sparkles. It feels effortless, which of course indicates a great deal of effort went into it. I know that’s not fair because Salman is a genius. I think it’s the shape that she’s chosen and I might dip into and see why it doesn’t grab me when I like everything about the story.
Maigret’s Anger Georges Simenon
Maigret is perplexed by the murder of a nightclub owner, which threatens his reputation.
The Captain and the Glory Dave Eggers
The rather wonderful Dave Eggers sent me a copy of his latest book. He dispatched the text to me in the summer and I giggled happily through the entire, though rather short, fable, about an ignorant, vain, hopelessly inadequate, newly appointed Captain of a ship. I can’t imagine who he had in mind. I found it hilarious, and I sent him a quote, not just because he wonderfully interviewed me about my Sortabiography in San Francisco last year, but because I thought he successfully lampooned the Idiot in Chief where many I think have failed. They allow their hatred into their writing. Here he just gently, mildly mocks and it is so much more deadly. He had me laughing out loud. Not an easy thing to achieve. I hope it does well. The Trump Presidential Library will be a room filled with books about what a useless, treasonable, shite he is. A new book drops every day. Dave’s is different. It’s funny. I think Trump is funny, though dangerously so.
Quichotte Salman Rushdie
An exquisite read. Salman at the top of his game. His writing is delightful. His take on Quixote is brilliant. I shall re-read it soon.
Offshore Penelope Fitzgerald
The Booker Prize winner from 1979. A perfect short novel. Entirely built up with close character observations of all the outsiders who live on the boats at Chelsea Reach. Delightful, less is so more. I was happy to read it again, and would again.
Joe Country Mick Herron
A Slough House novel. The 8th in this series about the losers at Slow House. Great characters. I think I’ve read every word he wrote.
The Beginning of Spring Penelope Fitzgerald.
A Moscow novel set in 1913. Interesting but not perfect.
July thru September
My Purple Scented Novel Ian McEwan
Short, little novella. About revenge. Of the literary kind. A tiny book which packs a punch.
Hapgood Tom Stoppard
A play about Nils Bohr and Quantum Theory. first produced in 1988. It is mainly about espionage, focusing on a British female spymaster (Hapgood) and her juggling of career and motherhood.
Jean de Florette Manon Les Sources. Marcel Pagnon.
Lovely French novels about the search for spring water in the south of France.
(Read in French.)
Written on the Body Jeanette Winterson
A very fine writer. I love her work.
City of Light, City of Poison Holly Tucker
Abandoned. Rather been down this Louis XIV a lot track recently. See Versailles on TV.
The Cartel Don Winslow.
Part Two of the epic trilogy. Totally gripping.
White Teeth Zadie Smith
I love her. This was the first. Happy to catch up.
Ravelstein Saul Bellow
Ravelstein is Saul Bellow’s final novel. Published in 2000, when Bellow was eighty-five years old, it received widespread critical acclaim. It tells the tale of a friendship between a university professor and a writer, and the complications that animate their erotic and intellectual attachments in the face of impending death. The novel is a roman à clef written in the form of a memoir. The narrator is in Paris with Abe Ravelstein, a renowned professor, and Nikki, his lover. Ravelstein, who is dying, asks the narrator to write a memoir about him after he dies. After his death, the narrator and his wife go on holiday to the Caribbean. The narrator catches a tropical disease and flies back to the United States to convalesce. Eventually, on recuperation, he decides to write the memoir.
The Smiley Trilogy.
Great re-reading.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. John Le Carré
The Honourable Schoolboy. John Le Carré
Smiley’s People. John Le Carré
The Unsteady Captain Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers sent me this book. “Mr. Idle —Hope the summer’s been good to you and yours. No obligation to read this, but given your interest in politics and humor I thought I’d send this. After trying many thousands of ways to address this horrible time, I wrote a sort-of satire. Maybe it’s some kind of distant cousin to Hello Sailor. Do not bother with it unless you are very bored or somewhat medicated.
In other news, I hope you are well.”
I replied: “It’s fucking hysterical. I was concerned at the beginning because a writer I admire failed to make a funny Trump book work. There was too much hatred. I think what you got exactly right and why it works so well is the tone. The form of the narrative. It doesn’t seem to comment while delivering hundreds of brilliant back handers. It’s a kind of naive narrative “Oh and then this happened” as if it were all perfectly normal. For instance when we find out they haven’t yet left port. Both the metaphor and the story play perfectly together. You manage to conceal every gag, which means for example, when you deliver the daughter gag, we hadn’t actually seen it coming. The first essential with comedy. I laughed out loud so frequently I was amazed because I’m not that easy to make laugh out loud.
Hotel World. Ali Smith
Hotel World is divided into five sections. The first section, “Past” tells the story of Sara Wilby The second part, “Present Historic”, is about a homeless girl (Else) begging for money outside the Hotel. The “Future Conditional”, the third section of the novel, Lise, a receptionist. The fourth part is “Perfect” with its far from perfect character Penny. The fifth section of the novel titled “Future in the Past,” is entirely Clare’s memories on the life and death of her sister Sara. “Present” is the title of the last part of the novel.
The Constant Gardener John Le Carré
is a 2001 novel by British author John le Carré. The novel tells the story of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose activist wife is murdered. Believing there is something behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the truth and finds an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucracy and pharmaceutical money. The plot was based on a real-life case in Kano, Nigeria. The book was later adapted into a feature film in 2005.
Ripley Underground Patricia Highsmith
Instantly addictive. Binge novel reading. I downloaded the next on Kindle. I needed it now. She writes about the killing in the same low key uncommitted way she does about everything. Brilliant. Only now and again she lets Ripley’s underlying hysteria and madness bubble through, like a barely controlled manic episode. In this he has a French wife and lives just beyond Orly. She repeats her themes of killing and impersonating here, with a twist, when Tom disguises himself as a dead painter, whose work they have been forging, with the legend he is in Mexico. An American collector suspect his is a forgery. Actually they are all forgeries. The painter makes an assault on Tom. There is a whole second story about the German fence.
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