Category: Books

Life after Life (2013): Kate Atkinson

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★★★★

Ursula Todd dies at the moment of her birth, strangled by a cord around her neck. She dies in the cellar of a London house, taking shelter from an air raid during the Blitz. She dies falling from a window as a child. She dies in the Spanish flu epidemic. And each time she finds herself back on that cold, snowy February day in 1910, waiting to be born again and to see whether the tiniest shift of chance or design can change her future. Kate Atkinson’s much-admired novel poses the question: what if we could live over and over again, until we were able to design our lives in such a way as to create the best possible future, not just for ourselves, but for the world?

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The People in the Trees (2013): Hanya Yanagihara

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★★★★½

As you probably remember, I was deeply moved by Yanagihara’s recent novel A Little Life, and was keen to read her first book, The People in the Trees. This received equally rave reviews when it came out in 2013 and at first glance suggests a tale of old-fashioned adventure, lost worlds and hacking through jungles. It focuses on an immunologist who, while on a field trip to a remote Micronesian island, makes a thrilling discovery. Evidence suggests that the members of a primitive, forgotten tribe may have found the Holy Grail of medical science: the key to eternal life.

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The Wonder (2016): Emma Donoghue

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★★★★

A new novel by Emma Donoghue is always cause for celebration, and The Wonder takes us into yet another vividly realised snapshot of history. It is 1859 and Elizabeth (‘Lib’) Wright, a veteran nurse from Florence Nightingale’s army in the Crimea, has been called to Ireland on a curious mission. She knows little about her job except the name of her patient – O’Donnell – and the fact that she is required for only two weeks. Only on her arrival in an impoverished Irish village is she given her commission: a strange task that will force Lib to weigh up faith and reason, to face the griefs of her own past, and to confront the possibility that miracles may genuinely exist.

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Boudica: Dreaming the Hound (2005): Manda Scott

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★★★★

Boudica: Book III

And so to the third instalment of Manda Scott’s Boudica quartet, which I’m eking out so as not to finish it too soon. Dreaming the Hound takes us deeper into the story of Breaca, the flame-haired warrior whose leadership against the invading legions has earned her the title of the Boudica, ‘bringer of victory’. It also follows the life that runs parallel to her own: that of her conflicted, troubled half-brother, once named Bán, and then Valerius, who served as decurion of the Thracian cavalry under the aegis of Rome and is now, unwillingly, back among his own people.

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The Miniaturist (2014): Jessie Burton

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Jessie Burton

★★★★

I’m one of those awkward people who likes to be different and usually steers away from books on the bestseller tables. In several cases I’ve got round to reading such novels months or years later when, generally speaking, they definitely live up to their hype. Jessie Burton’s entrancing tale of secrets and commerce in 17th-century Amsterdam is a case in point. Crafted with as much care as the doll’s house that takes centre stage in the plot, the novel is a tantalising thriller which conjures up all the textures and colours of the Dutch Golden Age.

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Tremontaine: Season 1 (2016): Ellen Kushner et al.

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★★★

with chapters by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Racheline Maltese, Patty Bryant and Paul Witcover

Apologies to all the authors I wasn’t able to show in the photo above, but it seemed a good idea to stick with Ellen Kushner. This ambitious project takes place in her world after all, unfurling the intrigues and romances that act as a prequel to Swordspoint. Here we see the city in all its familiar shades, from the dangerous alleyways of Riverside thick with thieves, rogues and swordsmen, to the elegant decadence of the Hill, where fashions, plots and chocolate are the order of the day.

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Geisha (2000): Lesley Downer

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★★★★

The secret history of a vanishing world

In the West we’ve developed a romanticised view of the geisha, largely thanks to Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha and the related film. The geisha have become one of the defining images of old Japan for many of us, like samurai or cherry blossom, but Downer takes us beyond the picture-perfect gloss into the complex histories and modern incarnations of this fascinating profession.

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The Museum of Things Left Behind (2015): Seni Glaister

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★★★★

Somewhere on the border between Italy and Austria, in a deep gorge shielded from its neighbours’ eyes, lies the pretty little city-state of Vallerosa. Life in this sleepy country continues much as it has for decades: every evening the men gather at the two bars in the main square – the clientele of each dictated by long tradition; the women work hard out of sight; and Vallerosa’s chief glory remains the plantations where they grow their famous tea. And yet the President, Sergio Scorpioni, is troubled.

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Sorcerer to the Crown (2015): Zen Cho

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★★★½

Sorcerer Royal Trilogy: Book I

This was another recommendation from Heloise, and proved to be another delightful piece of escapism. Set in London in an alternate version of the early 19th century, it reads like the love-child of Georgette Heyer and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The story unfolds in familiar territory, among the fine houses of St James’s and Mayfair, with White’s and Almack’s constant presences in the background. However, there are also lesser-known institutions, such as the Theurgist’s club, where frivolous youngsters fritter away their talents, and the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers. For this is a London where magic holds sway.

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Anna and the King of Siam (1943): Margaret Landon

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★★★★

This wonderful little book is a reissued classic first published in 1944, which tells a story made famous by the Rogers & Hammerstein musical The King and I. Having neither heard nor seen that musical, I had no real idea of what to expect from this novel. My vague notions that I’d picked up here and there turned out to be completely mistaken and perhaps the result of confusing The King and I with The Sound of Music (musical governesses, you see). This book is not a love story at all, but something far more interesting: the tale of a confrontation between two worlds, two belief systems and two indomitable personalities. Based on Anna Leonowens’s own letters and other documents, it lures the reader into the exotic world of mid-19th-century Siam.

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