Juliet, naked

I completely missed the fact that the fabulous Hornby had written another book! I loved About a boy, and especially A long way down. Wow. Who knew suicide was quite that hilarious? Juliet, naked is very Hornby, as in funny, weird and slightly unsettling.

The main character in this book is not Juliet, as you might expect, but Annie. She lives in a dull seaside town with the even duller Duncan.
They have drifted together and stuck together basically because nobody else seemed to want them. Now Annie is hitting forty and she is angry about unborn babies and throwing away her life on a guy who’s obsessed with another guy.
You see, dull Duncan is a hardcore fan of Tucker Crowe, a singer from the eighties.
And so holidays are spent visiting toilets where the great man has gone before and Duncan runs a website devoted to Tucker. Not a lot has happened in the past 20 years, but the eleven or so hard core fans from all over the world manage to spend hours and hours chatting about rumors etc. And then suddenly a new album appears…

I enjoyed it immensely, but I was rather disappointed by the last four chapters. Tucker has chucked his career for some dark secret and I must admit that it took me ten minutes (literally!) to vaguely remember what it was. It’s not that dark at all really.

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Deal Breaker, Myron Bolitar

I am a bit of a Bolitar fan. I’ve read all of sports agent Myron’s adventures over the past few years. However, Harlan Coben’s latest addition to the series, The Last Song, isn’t his finest hour.

Myron isn’t a real detective, but he does solve crimes. He’s a failed NBA basketball player, who got his knee smashed to smithereens during his very first ro game and ever since then he’s been struggling and solving crimes. It started out simple enough, Myron and his friend Win (scary, WASPy, very rich guy) help out his sports clients who always seem to get into serious trouble.
I’m not big on sports myself, but the combination of the unlikely hero (unlucky with women, drinks yoo-hoo and still lives with his adoring parents) and the dry humor got me hooked. So I read Back Spin, and Fade Away and Del Breaker. All of them funny and exciting. The plot is usually so complicated that I lose track, but hey, never mind. Most of it’s about Myron getting his ass kicked until Win comes and kills everyone in sight. Fun, fun, fun.
So do read them, all of them!
Skip The Last Song though. Self serving, unbalanced and way over the top, even in this series, it breaks out terrorism, toruture and it was oddly boring. One minute Myron is ready to move to Arizona to be with the woman he loves, the next he’s in Paris with another love of his life.
She’s called him in after her ex-husband disappears. I’d explain the rest of the story, but it’s way too convoluted. But if you start with Deal Breaker, I can guarantee you a great time.

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Sparkles Louise Bagshawe

With the weather like it is and many of the roads still closed I decided to read some nice trashy beach novels, starting with Sparkles. And I quite enjoyed it.

Mousy Brit Sophie married fabulously rich Pierre Massot when she was only 19. He was her prince charming, complete with a castle near Paris, a private jet and loads and loads of sparkle, as he owns a very chic jewelry house. Then one day he simply disappears and Sophie has to decide what to do with the empire.

Within its genre Sparkles isn’t that bad. Cliched, all the main characters are gorgeous, from dull Sophie to her husband’s unhinged mistress. The abundance of descriptions of food made me hungry, and wonder whether the writer was perhaps on a diet and working her cravings into the story, the way the hungry medieval peasant dreamed of Cocagne where fried hens fly into your mouth.

I doubt miss Bagshawe thought this was her best work when she had finished, it lacked surprise, passion, all the characters were flat, and there wasn’t even any sex in it!

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Authors’ photographs. Is it me, or are they just a very bad idea? I am a huge Guterson fan. Not so much though since I accidentally saw his picture. He looks more like some guy from Baywatch than the amazing writer I had in mind (elderly, grizzly). Disappointed! Still, East of the mountains is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

So far, I have loved every book Guterson’s ever written. Snow falling on ceders, Our lady of the forest, and I hope to love The drowned as soon as I get it. Best one so far remains East…

Ben Givens isa 73-year-old retired surgeon. His wife has dies a year ago and he has just been diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer. Givens sets out on one last journey, to the rural, apple-growing region of Washington State, where he grew up. His plan is to kill himself and make it appear to be a hunting accident. Crossing the mountains into eastern Washington, his real journey begins.

I can’t describe how this book moved me. The great love between Ben and his wife, the longing, the memories from World war 2 when they were in Italy together. The relationship with his daughter and his dogs. The description of hunting small birds.

Old age, loneliness, cancer: actually, it’s also a good case for euthanasia. If there was a good, decent way to step out of life then men like Ben wouldn’t have to drag their old bones of into the wilderness and pretend to have a hunting accident to spare his daughter’s feelings!

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One Day David Nicholls

I went on a bit of a pub crawl and somewhere along my third caiperovska I lost the rather tepid book I was reading, Hidden Talents. A lucky thing as it turned out, because when I schlepped my hangover to the English Bookstore the next day I picked up One Day.

As the title of this post suggests, I REALLY liked it. It’s lad lit, or whatever Mike Gayle and Nick Hornby’s stuff is called. A genre I like, as it’s generally about a time I was out drunk, sad and single as well and it’s often recognizable and very, very funny.

One Day uses a trick that could have worn thin very quickly: it describes the same date, more or less, for twenty years and uses this day, St. Swithin’s Day, to describe the lives of a boy and a girl. Bolshy Emma and posh Dexter hook up for a one night stand after graduation and then, miraculously, turn into best friends. Over twenty years they struggle with life and with each other through failed relationships and awkward careers.

In a way, it’s a shame (here be spoilers) that Dex starts working in tv and ends up addicted to drugs and booze and sensitive Emma only has ONE real boyfriend, the very unfunny stand up comedian (which I thought was a hoot and a half). Here’s a very pretty girl and she chalks up one boyfriend and one affair? In about TWENTY years? While Dex gets to have sex and do drugs all the time, but of course he’s not happy. What red-blooded twentysomething boy wouldn’t be unhappy with unlimited sex and drugs and rock&roll?

Also, the actual start of the friendship isn’t that believable. They have a one night stand and then all of a sudden Emma is staying with Dex’s posh parents and calling his dad a fascist and voila, they’re best mates for life? I didn’t get it.

However, the most important thing, I guess, is that I finished this book in two, very long, sittings and I’m still sorry there wasn’t more because it was a memorable ride.

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I’ll fess up to begin with: I don’t particularly like Nicolas Sparks. Books like The Notebook seem too contrived to me, and to lack any real feeling. However, I am living on a Spanish mountain and it’s been raining so badly that most of the roads are cut off, so I’ll pretty much read anything! And to be fair, it wasn’t all bad.

John is a soldier, who falls in love with a devout southern belle. They plan to spend the rest of their lives together while he goes overseas to soldier on, but just as he’s ready to get out of the army 9/11 rolls around and he feels he has to stay in the army to serve his country.

I guess what intrigued me is that the story hinges on 9/11. That reference made me feel like I, too, was part of history, like people who lived through the second world war, also a topic of many a book. Other than that, this is not a very interesting tale. John himself is an oddly sensitive guy, for a hardened soldier, and we get to hear a lot about his motives, so though I didn’t really like him, I did get, sort of, why he did the things he did. Savannah, his love interest, on the other hand is one big cliche: she’s very, very nice. Builds shelters for the homeless, goes to church, loves and honors her parents, wants to teach special needs kids. I felt like slapping her. But that’s just me. All in all, not that bad a way to spend a Sunday afternoon in front of the fire.

I just saw that there’s a movie as well. Wonder if they kept the ending? Maybe ditched the brother? Curious!

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Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein

Winner of the booker Prize, rave reviews (among others “a truly great English novel”) all over the place and a historic novel: how could this possibly go wrong?

It starts out well. Thomas Cromwell as a young blacksmith’s son who gets beaten up by his dad on a regular basis. He flees, maybe killing a man, maybe not: it’s all part of the legend he will soon be as he rises far beyond his class and turns into Henry VIII’s closest adviser.

Henry is trying to rid himself of Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn and Cromwell is just the man to lend a hand.

To be honest: it’s kinda boring. I’ve been reading Samson’s series on the (post) Cromwell era and it’s just so much more exciting! Mantel’s tale drags on and on and the promise of Wolf Hall, where exciting, stuff is happening, never actually materialises. Of course Wolf Hall symbolises the end of Cromwell: it’s where Jane Seymour lives and most of us remember what happened to Henry VIII’s wives. Brave or boring? Well, I’ll go with brave to end the story as if it were open ended.

However, though I never liked Thomas Moore, I find the goody two shoes-version of Cromwell, who never carries a grudge, is kind to dogs, women and children and works disinterestedly for a better Britain where men can worship in freedom rings false.

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Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love

The Radletts of Alconleigh are the pinnacle of fashionable, aristocratic eccentricity, from scary (& barmy) Lord Alconleigh (who, like Mitford’s own papa, likes to hunt his offspring with bloodhounds, much to the amusement of the children themselves), to his wife, absent minded Sadie, their flamboyant daughter Linda, and the other six lively Radlett children. Seen through the eyes of steady cousin Fanny, we follow this family through hasty marriages and Great love affairs, as World War II closes in on their vanishing world.

The four Mitford sisters have had a lot of books dedicated to them. Fun, daring and aristocratic, they were the subject of lots and lots of gossip between the two wars, not in the least because two of them were openly fascist. Nancy Mitford was an accomplished novelist. This is my personal favorite.

Linda is the kind of cousin you either love or hate. Her cousin Fanny adores her, I’m not sure I would have as well, cause she’s charming but also very, very exasperating. Still, I would have loved to spend afternoons in the hon’s cabinet and even being hunted by bloodhounds sounds so much fun!

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When will there be good news?

Private detective Jackson Brody is back for yet another misadventure. Kate Atkinson is one of the few people in the world who can make dreadful crimes funny, interesting and almost poetic. Jackson doesn’t catch a break this entire book, poor lamb, must be hard work!

On a sunny summer’s day, a little girl called Joanna walks through a wheatfield with her mom, her baby brother and her sister. Out of nowhere a man comes up who kills everyone but Joanna, because she ran. And ran. Thirty years later, that man is about to be set free.

I adore Kate Atkinson. Haven’t read anything quite like it, ever. However, I was slightly disappointed by When will there be good news?. She does knit together an awful lot of coincidences in this book, even more so than usual. And the weirdness seems to spin out of control. And will Jackson and Louise finally get it together? For Pete’s sake?

In short: Not nearly as good as Case Histories, but even a less than excellent story on Jackson Brody is ok by me. Let’s hope there’ll be more!

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The plot revolves around the marital problems of father and son, Hugh and Randall Peronett. Both are faced with an identical situation at different points in time. They both have to decide whether or not they should leave their dull wives for their more exciting and attractive mistresses. While father, Hugh, made the decision to stay with his wife, some twenty-five years before the events of the novel, the son, Randall, leaves his wife for his mistress, inflicting heavy damage on his 14 year old daughter, and breaks up his family.

Basically, men having a midlife crisis and thinking that the grass is greener. And it aint! Randall’s lover (hardly a spoiler) is only in it for the money (from the sale of his dad’ Tintoretto), Randall’s only in it to bang her. Not really the road to happiness. And Ann, Randall’s wife, is coveted by half the neighbourhood, so she can’t have been that boring.
I know it is supposedly about Murdochs Platonic view of the soul, but all in all it’s a strange and rather boring book. The usual ill assorted group of acquantances, an evil child, lots of love lost. Made me want to shout “Get on with it!”.
Read Under the net instead, is what I’d say!

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