Faithful

Faithful
by Alice Hoffman
Published November, 2016

The more I read, the less sure I am about what I actually like in a book. Faithful is the kind of book I would never have picked out for myself. Not in a million years. If I'd actually bothered to read the blurb properly beforehand, I would have given this a miss and I would've missed out on an absolute stunner of a novel.

Faithful is the story of Shelby Richmond, survivor of a car accident that destroyed her best friend Helene's life. Wracked with guilt, Shelby goes off the rails a bit and Faithful follows her over the following years as she moves to New York City and tries to get her life back together. To me, this does not sound like the premise for an interesting book. To me, this sounds trite, self-indulgent, sappy and uninspiring. Faithful is none of these things.

In Shelby, Alice Hoffman has created a truly memorable character. Somehow she's spiky and tough, but vulnerable and damaged at the same time. She makes terrible decisions, she pushes people away and she sabotages herself, but you just can't help but like her anyway. I've read very few books where I felt so strongly for a character that I just wanted everything to turn out well for them, even when they were making things difficult for themselves (not dissimilar to the fantastic character of Jude in Hanya Yanagahari's A Little Life). In essence, Faithful is Shelby's story and the reason it works so well is that Shelby is so very well written and completely believable.

Clearly, this Alice Hoffman is a very smart lady.

The relationships in Faithful are complex, nuanced and honest. There is a small but beautifully-written cast of supporting characters made  up of Shelby's friends and family, with every one of them feeling like a real person. Shelby's relationship with her mother is particularly affecting; sweet, sincere and heart-breaking at times. There's also these layers of complexity between characters - the story centres around Shelby, but the supporting characters all have these very believable relationships with each other outside of their relationships with Shelby. There are Shelby's parents, with their complicated, rocky marriage. Shelby's friend Maravelle has plenty of her own issues in raising her three children. Even Shelby's dogs have their own things going on. All in all, it creates this very credible group of people (and dogs) who just feel real.

Faithful is a story of trauma and healing and forgiveness, but never in a Hallmark-movie-of-the-week way. There's no easy fix where Shelby decides to just look on the bright side, and life goes back to how it was before the accident. Instead, Faithful tells a much more honest story about the ways in which we are affected for years afterwards by traumatic events; the strange, destructive and ridiculous ways in which we try to cope; and ultimately the importance of relationships in providing a foundation to rebuild a life. It's an absolutely beautiful story that will stay with you long after you've finished reading.



  

Patient H.M.

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets
by Luke Dittrich
Published August, 2016

I should probably start by confessing that I love brains. Not like a zombie loves brains. More like an obsessive geek who will talk about neuroscience for hours to anyone. Even if that anyone is clearly not interested in the slightest. I spent eight years at university studying psychology and neuroscience, resulting in surprisingly few qualifications but leaving me with a life-long passion for brains.
So, as a history of one of neuroscience's most famous patients, Patient H.M. was always going to be a pretty easy sell for me.

"Patient H.M." was the pseudonym used for Henry Molaison by the researchers and doctors who spent more than sixty years studying him. Affected by severe epilepsy, Henry underwent surgery in the 1950s to remove part of his brain. Following the operation, Henry was left with a complete, debilitating and global amnesia - he was completely unable to form new memories. Henry became the most-studied patient in the history of neuroscience as researchers used his amnesia to better understand the processes of memory and the brain structures involved.

Henry's case is one that many, many people will be familiar with. It's one of the first things covered in any introductory psychology class, along with a few other memorable characters like Phineas Gage (impaled his head on a massive spike and somehow survived) and Walter Freeman (developed the highly inventive and rather disturbing transorbital lobotomy, performed with an icepick).
In some ways this may be pretty familiar ground for a lot of readers, however this book is much more than just another retelling of an interesting amnesia case.

Post-accident Phineas Gage posing with the rod that used to be inside his brain.

Author Luke Dittrich is the grandson of the brilliant (but arguably misguided) neurosurgeon who operated on Henry and caused his amnesia. As such, Dittrich brings a unique perspective to his story, using the H.M. case as a starting point around which to weave an absolutely fascinating history of neuroscience (from the very first references to brain surgery in Ancient Egypt through the lobotomy-obsessed 1930s to H.M's final days in the early 2000s) and relating this back in a very personal way to events within his own family.
This makes for a very, very readable story - I found this book absolutely impossible to put down and for someone who generally avoids non-fiction, that's saying a lot. It's a fantastic blend of biography, history and science writing, all blending into a captivating and cautionary tale of misguided surgeons ruining lives in their attempts to cure psychological problems with a scalpel (or an icepick).
As Dittrich writes,"Neurosurgery, whatever the era, always requires at least two frightening qualities in its practitioners: the will to make forcible entry into another human's brain, and the hubris to believe you can fix the problems inside"

The aforementioned Dr Freeman, lobotomising some poor lady with an icepick. He is thought to have performed this surgery on more than 3,000 patients. 

Fascinating, disturbing and memorable, this is the best non-fiction book I've read in years.

10/10

The Girls

The Girls
by Emma Cline
Published June, 2016

The Girls is probably not the best book I've read this year (which is not to say that it's not good, just that there's some pretty tough competition), but it has some of the best writing I've read in years. Emma Cline is an incredibly talented writer - she's like some kind of crazy talented word-magician with a real gift for bringing language to life.

Set largely in late-1960s California, The Girls follows naive fourteen-year-old Evie Boyd as she encounters a glamorously free-spirited group of older girls and is drawn into their lives in a seemingly peaceful sect, led by the charismatic (if slightly creepy) Russell. Evie starts to spend more time with the group and less time with her family and friends as events start to spiral towards ominously familiar consequences.  

I can't over-emphasise just how good the writing is in The Girls. I started out by highlighting the especially good passages but quite honestly, I'd given up on this by half-way through the book because there's just so much in there that's just beautifully written. The writing is particularly good and wonderfully insightful when it comes to the teenaged narrator's perspective. The Girls sums up so perfectly what it's like to be a teenaged girl - things that I'd forgotten I ever thought or wanted or believed - but reading this book brings it all back like it was yesterday (it wasn't yesterday. Scarily enough, it was a good 20 years ago).
"So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play".

Throughout The Girls, Evie makes some pretty stupid decisions. The plot of the book hinges on her doing these really dumb things (like hanging out with a cult, for one) and this would not be credible at all, except that these are exactly the kinds of decisions a star-struck teenager would make. The Girls reminds you of just how desperate teenagers can be - desperate for company, desperate for experience, desperate to be understood and desperate to be noticed - and in this context, everything makes perfect sense.

The Manson girls going to trial in 1970 - Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel & Laslie van Houten.

There are obvious parallels to the real-life Manson murders and while The Girls is not exactly a retelling of real-life events, it provides some fascinating insight into how such horrific events might have come about; it goes a long way towards explaining the seemingly unexplainable, which is a pretty impressive achievement.

Emma Cline's writing is beautiful, subtle and incredibly insightful. The Girls is very readable, fast-paced and never boring, providing a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a teenager going a little off-the-rails at a very unique time in history.

8/10

Different Class

Different Class
by Joanne Harris
Published April, 2016

Let me start by saying that I think Joanne Harris is fabulous. Her earlier books (Five Quarters of the Orange, Blackberry Wine and of course, Chocolat) were some of my absolute favourites back in the early 2000s but I'm ashamed to say that since then, I'd kind of forgotten just how fabulous she is. Different Class serves as a timely reminder that I really need to find copies of everything else she's written, immediately.

How's that for creepy..?

Set in the fictional North Yorkshire town of Malbry (also featured in her novels Blueeyedboy and Gentlemen and Players), Different Class revisits St Oswald's Grammar School, where Latin master Roy Straitley is entering his thirtieth year of teaching. With the school in academic and financial decline, a new headmaster is brought in - complete with Powerpoint, computer literacy, management-speak and a Crisis Management Team. As if this wasn't bad enough for the decidedly old-school Mr Straitley, the new head is also rather familiar to him ("The arrogant, sullen little boy has been reborn as a smiling, smooth-voiced politician"), stirring memories of a twenty-year-old school scandal, when a St Oswald's boy did some very, very bad things.

As chapters alternate between Straitley's present-day narration, Straitley's twenty-years-ago narration and some very disturbing historical diary entries, the story of the scandal becomes clearer and suspense builds beautifully. The unique setting of St Oswald's is beautifully brought to life in all its dusty, scholarly glory, as the world of chalk-covered, gown-wearing Straitley collides disastrously with the dawning age of education-as-business. The characters are wonderfully memorable and Joanne Harris writes with incredible insight, from the perspective of everyone from elderly gentlemen, to tormented adolescents, to a complete psychopath, all of it completely convincing.    

Admittedly, this is completely unrelated but this is also one of the BEST ALBUMS EVER.

Different Class is dark, creepy and incredibly compelling - the characters and the story will draw you in so quickly that a relatively lengthy book becomes a single-sitting read.  It's shadowy and disturbing but it's also genuinely funny in parts, Joanne Harris bringing a wry tone of humour to a story that might otherwise take itself a little too seriously. This comes largely through the wonderfully sardonic tone of narrator Mr Straitley, who is just fabulous. For example: "Penny once went on a course entitled Kids in Counselling, which left her under the delusion that she is approachable and relates well to 'youth issues'", or "Bob Strange seems impressed by the fact that, under the new regime, all St Oswald's current problems will be transferred to a series of policy documents, and will therefore completely cease to exist in the real world", or (on the subject of Parent Teacher evenings) "I shook their hands and invited them in (much as folklore dictates we should invite a vampire before he can feed)".

With Gentlemen and Players (set before Different Class) and Blueeyedboy (set afterwards), Different Class completes a trilogy of novels set in and around Malbry. Many of the characters appear in all three books and there are common settings and themes across the three. While I have now read all three books, I must confess to having completely forgotten everything about Gentlemen and Players (except that it was set at St Oswald's school) and Blueeyedboy (except that the main character was decidedly creepy). This very minimal understanding of the background story did not impact on my enjoyment of Different Class in the slightest. Haven't read the other two books? No problem at all. Different Class works beautifully as a stand-alone book, with no previous reading required. Having said that though, I plan to go back and re-read the other two books ASAP, because I loved these characters so much that I really want to find out more about them.

Different Class is a subtle, masterfully written psychological thriller with a rich backstory and a darkly humorous tone. Like everything Joanne Harris does, it's a great read - give it a go and I guarantee you won't be able to put it down.

9/10

All the Missing Girls

All the Missing Girls
by Megan Miranda
Published June, 2016

Obviously, it can be difficult to find a truly unique book, but one of my pet peeves is the tendency of publishers to declare that each and every new suspense novel is "the next Gone Girl" or, more recently "the next Girl on the Train". According to the blurb, All the Missing Girls is "Like the spellbinding psychological suspense in The Girl on the Train and Luckiest Girl Alive, Megan Miranda's novel is a nail-biting, breathtaking story about the disappearances of two young women..."

Let's be clear here - All the Missing Girls is nothing at all like The Girl on the Train; it's set in rural Cooley Ridge in the southern US, rather than London. The stories are different. The characters are different. The timelines are different. There is one real similarity between the two though - they are both very, very good.

All the Missing Girls follows Nicolette Farrell as she returns to her childhood hometown, ten years after her best friend Corinne disappeared without a trace. In town temporarily to fix up her childhood home for sale, Nicolette is swept up into spookily familiar events as another local girl is reported missing. Through various twists and turns, Nicolette starts to shed light on events long forgotten as the truth comes out about the two disappearances, a decade apart.

Starting out in a fairly straightforward manner, the narrative of All the Missing Girls takes a sudden U-turn once Nicolette arrives in Cooley Ridge - we jump forward in time to fifteen days after the second disappearance and the rest of the novel is told in reverse, from Day 15 to Day 1.

This is an original take on a suspense novel and could go really badly wrong - and it almost does. This is not a novel that you can put down for a few days and come back to; you will be completely confused about where we're up to, what bits have already happened and what on earth in happening. It requires quite a bit of concentration to follow the story and it is frustrating at times, but ultimately Megan Miranda pulls it off nicely, turning a potential narrative gimmick into a unique way of building suspense.

I'm guessing that Cooley Ridge looks a bit like this

 Every character in All the Missing Girls is more than they seem, with both flaws and redeeming features coming out of the woodwork as more of the past emerges. Nicolette herself is a great character, equal parts strong and vulnerable with her desire to stay far away from Cooley Ridge conflicting with her affection for her hometown and family. Her high-school boyfriend Tyler is likeable and sweet, but the missing girl is his girlfriend and he doesn't seem at all concerned. Nic's brother Daniel is sensible and family-focused but has an apparent history of violence. Even Nic's dementia-affected father is three-dimensional, his years of alcoholism and history of poor parenting conflicting with a devotion to his children and a need to protect them. This cast of complicated characters adds a certain depth to what would otherwise be a fast-paced but not-particularly-meaningful story.

All the Missing Girls is original,gripping and complex. To follow the story properly, you really need to read it all in one sitting but that's really not asking much - the cracking pace and twists-and-turns narrative mean that this is a hard one to put down.

8/10

Before the Fall

Before the Fall
by Noah Hawley
Published May, 2016

Noah Hawley is a successful TV writer and producer - with Peabody, PEN, Emmy and Golden Globe wins to his name, Hawley is the creator of the fabulous Fargo TV series and now (just to show that he can apparently do everything) he's released a fantastic new novel.

Before the Fall begins with a tragedy. En route from Martha's Vineyard to New York, a private plane crashes into the sea. On board are ten members of New York's wealthy elite and one near-penniless artist, hitching a ride with his wealthy neighbours. There are only two survivors - one is artist Scott Burroughs and the other is the four-year-old son of the plane's billionaire media-mogul owner.

Chapter by chapter, Before the Fall skips back and forward in time, following the survivors and the victims' families in the weeks after the crash, then going back to uncover more of the lives of the plane's passengers and crew beforehand. The narrative focuses on one character at a time, painting a rich and detailed background for each of them and adding more layers to the mystery of what went wrong. The controversial newsman; the ex-cult-member pilot; the businessman being investigated for fraud; each chapter adds another piece to a fairly complicated puzzle, with the cause of the crash seeming less and less obvious with every page.

Apparently Martha's Vineyard looks like this. Not a bad spot, really...

At its heart, Before the Fall is a whodunnit (Why did the plane crash? What happened? Whose fault was it?) and it works well, building layers of backstory throughout and creating more questions than answers around the various characters and their potential involvement in the crash. But there's more to it than that - I found that I'd largely forgotten about the whole who-caused-the-crash question, because I was so caught up in the stories of each of these characters and so interested in what would happen next.
There is certainly an element of suspense, but Before the Fall is less of a thriller and more of a sophisticated mystery, full of complexities and well-developed characters. The movie rights to the book have already been snapped up, but I'm not sure how well it will translate to the big screen - the storyline of Before the Fall is really quite simple and it's the strength of the characters that really set the book apart. It will be interesting to see how this is handled on film, but I'm sure Noah Hawley is more than capable of figuring it out.

Before the Fall is sure to be popular. It's well-written, suspenseful and compulsively readable - I would be very surprised if it's not a best-seller. But there is more depth to Before the Fall than what you'd normally find in this kind of novel - there are questions posed about the intrusiveness of the media into the stories they report on and the sensationalisation of the news as the lines become more and more blurred between news reporting and entertainment television. Questions about what makes someone a "hero" nowadays and what we expect from the people put on these pedestals. Even questions about the relationships between people and the meaning of family. It might read with the pacing of a lightweight mystery novel but there's also some substance there to really sink your teeth into and the characters will stay with you long after you finish the book. Finding out what happened to the plane - well, it's almost beside the point.

This really was a great read - highly recommended.

9/10

The Blade Artist

The Blade Artist

by Irvine Welsh
Published April 2016.

I've been a quiet fan of Irvine Welsh for years - quiet in that I tend to forget about him completely for years, only to randomly stumble across one of his books and remember just how much I enjoy his writing. The Blade Artist is quite possibly his best one yet.

Irvine Welsh has an undoubtedly unique voice and a way of bringing Edinburgh's seedy underbelly to life in all its dark, gritty glory. The Scottish accent is thick throughout (every now and then you need to read a sentence out loud to figure out exactly what it says) and the atmosphere brilliantly expressed. It's like the Scottish equivalent of what Marlon James does so well in A Brief History of Seven Killings - both authors can take a time and place that I know absolutely nothing about, but somehow make it feel very real and even a little familiar.

 What's unique about The Blade Artist is the somewhat jarring juxtaposition of the rough neighbourhoods of Edinburgh against the much softer (and arguably less interesting) privileged lifestyle of main character Jim Francis, an acclaimed artist living a quiet family life near a Californian beach. Successful, comfortable and apparently quite content, Jim has turned his life around, leaving behind a jailbird past to become a redeemed character far from his home town of Edinburgh.
A sudden death in the family sees Jim back in his old neighbourhood and he is quickly pulled back into the same old social circles and the same patterns of drunken violence.

Like the best of Irvine Welsh's novel, The Blade Artist is funny and dirty and dark in parts. It's fast-moving, graphically violent and action-packed with never a dull moment. It's jam-packed with vivid, memorable characters, many of whom are making return visits from earlier novels - to enjoy The Blade Artist, you certainly don't need to have read Trainspotting, but there are some beautiful little gems in there for readers who loved the earlier book and wondered what became of the characters...

Where are they now..? Wouldn't you like to know...

The Blade Artist proposes that even the most irredeemably violent and horrid of characters can be saved. But then it turns this idea completely on its head - has Jim Francis really changed? Is a talent for art and an overseas move enough to change a person from bad to good, or has he just gotten better at hiding his real nature? In trying to prove that he's changed, is Jim only fooling himself? Considering that the story is largely told from Jim's point of view, Irvine Welsh does a beautiful job of keeping these questions up in the air throughout the book; Jim's character seems constantly in flux and this grey-area mentality is seen in many of the other characters too. Most of the people in The Blade Artist are neither good nor bad; they're people who've done terrible things but they're more than just the drugs they've taken or the fights they've started. These are fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional characters and they bring some real weight to what could otherwise be a fairly simple story of murder and revenge.

The Blade Artist starts with this quote from Camus - could not be more appropriate, really.

I knew nothing about this book before I read it, so I don't want to say too much and ruin the fun for anyone else. Don't worry about the plot of The Blade Artist or where you've seen these characters before - just get yourself a copy as soon as possible (it's available from the 7th of April) and read it. I promise you'll love it.

10/10