The Girl with the Louding Voice, Abi Daré

A novel with a really distinctive voice, it is written in the dialect and vividly from the point of view of our heroine, a young girl from a small Nigerian town. We find Adunni a year or so after her mother's death and follow her as she tries to escape towards an education. I enjoyed the novel, but it also bothered me. I couldn't help thinking it was a sort of fantasy. It shows 'real life' and hardship (I'm not sure whether it could be seen as poverty porn) and a determined girl with the idea that with an education all will be well. 

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K Dick

A cultural great, I had images and an atmosphere in my head that I was expecting to find, in the end it was quite different from what I had imagined. Less cool, affected sci-fi, more thoughtful, quiet thriller. 

We find ourselves in a world where a large proportion of the population have left earth and live with human-idential android slaves. In some off-world colonies androids rebel and come to earth to live in hiding. We essentially follow a police contractor as he tries to find and 'retire' androids masquerading as humans. Meanwhile we get a look into his world, the way of life and his hopes and worries. 

It as similar themes to Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, but less clear, there are lots of different ideas swimming around; categorisation of people, slavery, animal/human/sentient life. It's a thriller with a lot to unpack, I guess that's why it's part of the cultural consciousness.

Spring, Ali Smith

 This was brilliant, genuinely unlike anything I have ever read. Part dream-like and then unexpectedly connected to the modern world. Intrigued to see how it will fit with the other 3 in the series.

The Things We've Seen, Agustín Fernández Mallo

From reading the blurb was really excited to read this, it's described as 'a mind-bending novel for our disjointed times' The novel itself is both disjointed and connects and refers to itself repeatedly. It feels trapped inside the format of a book, like it should cover a whole room with the reader able to draw lines connecting the various threads and thoughts which are continuously picked up and dropped. 

It's somewhat self obsessed and egotistical, both the the narrator and the book itself in a way. It feels like walking through someone's thoughts while they are asleep, seeing their dreams and the associations they spark. It's sometimes confusing and hard to follow, but I think that is the effect the writer was going for. 

These two pictures were from when I received the book from a friend, after carrying it about for weeks it now has a lovely scrubbed white patina. 

Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag

I loved this, it was fascinating and very applicable to so much we see in art and media. 

Regarding the Pain of Others is centred on the representation of suffering in photography primarily, but also painting and cinema. Sontag questions why these images exist, what they try to achieve, what they do achieve and the act of creating and looking at them. It is really readable and understandable and verbalises a lot of the discomfort and questions I think we have all sensed when presented with images of the pain of others, whatever the cause.

The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks

I bought this because I'd seen the book around so much I was curious as to what it was like, it has a mysterious sort of title and blurb, not horror but certainly not cheerful. 

Frank is a dangerous sixteen year old who lives on a small island off Scotland, linked to the mainland by a bridge, he lives with his father, has one friend in the town and a collection of relatives with strange stories. He is our narrator, showing us his world and describing his history.  

It draws you in and the breadcrumbing and reveal of backstories is really successful. As is the way Banks describes and shows Frank's way of seeing the world and the macarbre rituals and totems he creates to control and predict it. Banks has created a complex inner world and creates atmosphere effortlessly. My only complaint is the ending, which I wasn't a fan of, and even less of the page or so of rationalising from Frank. Well worth reading, but better without the last chapter. 

Brújulas que buscan sonrisas perdidas, Albert Espinosa

I loved this, I bought it at the airport on a whim and I' very glad I did. It's the story of someone trying to come to terms with death and remembering their childhood. It is written in a really distinctive style and feels powerful.

 

If This Is Home, Stuart Evans

This was a great novel, easy reading, intriguing and a great sense of place. Evans writes the feeling of returning to a town you have outgrown but that is full of nostalgia really well, as well as the teenage experience, naively vowing never to ‘end up like that’ with the naive, surface level view of life that adolescents seem to have. 

The protagonist left his hometown at the age of 18 with the intention of never returning, around 15 years later he is compelled to go back and deal with the reasons and people he left. It isn’t either a thriller or a mystery/crime novel but it has touches of both. It manages a slow reveal while still questioning how much home and roots affect who you are.

This was a proof copy from 2012 when I worked in Waterstones

Around the World in Seventy-two Days and Other Writings, Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly was a stunt journalist in the late 1800s / early 1900s, in the days where there were hardly any female journalists, let alone women who were employed/allowed to do the type of investigative journalism she did. A friend told me about her and I was intrigued enough to buy this collection of her writings. It is fascinating and eye-opening.

Bly became famous for her exposé of the treatment of women in New York’s asylums at the time. She managed to write the account by getting herself committed for 10 days to experience the treatment first hand. Her most famous stunt is that of the title - she travelled around the world in 72 days, aiming to beat Phileas Fogg’s fictional 80 day trip. The newspaper she was writing for really milked the publicity, and kept highlighting the fact she was a woman, emphasising her youth and generally conveying that it was extraordinary for a woman to be undertaking such a trip. 

In writing she comes across as very self congratulatory and incredibly racist and judgemental, ‘normal’ for the time I suppose but uncomfortable reading. It is really clear that the more someone was similar to her in background, the more sympathy and understanding she had for them, if not she was prejudiced, unforgiving and in some cases totally unfeeling. 

The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste

 

This book was a gift, and isn’t one I would have bought myself, mostly because of the suggestion of sexual violence that is in the blurb. It was however a pleasant surprise, yes there is violence, sexual and otherwise, but it doesn’t feel gratuitous and isn’t a cut and paste situation. 

Further to that the framing of the story was really interesting, I knew nothing about Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia before reading this, let alone the role of women in the conflict. In general I didn’t find the writing and story amazing, but it was worth reading.

From the Cradle to the Grave, Short Stories, Various

Every time I read short stories I realise how much I love them. This is a great collection, some of the stories are a little dated, as you would expect, but well worth a read. 

 

Kim Ji-young, Born 1982, Cho Nam-Joo

I really enjoyed this, it was written in a really interesting way, fiction and part fact. It is simply about the life of Kim Jiyoung, born in 1982. The story is backed up by statistics and evidence, in a way that isn’t jarring, it makes the fiction all the more real. I always think that there is a very thin line between fiction and reality. There are so many stories and people in the world and throughout history, that surely each fictional story has an element of truth? That someone somewhere must have lived something very similar? This book seems to work on that theory too, it is the story of an entire generation of women. It is familiar and the ending is a little hopeless, resigned to the sexism that pervades societies. Though actually I don’t think that is the case with the author, maybe it was written expecting change, and as a push in the right direction. 

Tiny Moons, Nina Mingya Powles

This is just the sort of book I've come to expect from The Emma Press. It is a small, beautiful but unassuming book which is a complete and utter delight to read. 

Nina Mingya Powles is of mixed Malaysian-Chinese heritage and was born in New Zealand. She seems to connect to her heritage particularly strongly through food and the rituals and memories surrounding food from that part of the world. 

Tiny Moons is just what it says on the tin 'A Year of Eating in Shanghai'. The material comes from essays and/or blog posts written when Powles was studying in Shanghai. So they are vignettes or scenes which are loosely hung together. All revolve around food, but bring out stories and thoughts of family, tradition, heritage, language, being a foreigner, being female and the satisfying joy of eating. I can't exaggerate how beautifully written it is and how vividly she draws her experiences. It is completely beautiful. 

El Principe de la Niebla, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This was perfect reading for my level of Spanish and was a lovely reminder of teen-fiction books I was reading when I was a kid. It is atmospheric and it's a good story, but there are definitely bits that don't quite add up. 

Machines Like Me, Ian McEwan

I loved this, It's a really beautiful, thoughtful and entertaining look at artificial intelligence. The premise is a bit of a feckless young man, Charlie, who is interested in AI and anthropology, comes into some money and decides to splash it all on a new 'robot'. A 'living' 'breathing' machine who is almost impossible to tell apart from people. Only twelve Adams exist, and 13 Eves.  The story is how Adam and our protagonist live together, along with the young woman who lives upstairs who soon becomes Charlie's girlfriend. 

The story is set in the 80's, but in an alternative history, where the UK loses the Falklands war and Alan Turing has helped advance AI so as to make the creation of the Adam and Eves possible. I found the whole plot original and fascinating. There are so many ideas explored in a way which is deep, but not forced or laboured. The main theme being morality in many forms, and how it fits into the criminal justice system. It leaves the reader with lots to think about, and at the same time is a good read, a real mastery of writing. 

Short Stories in Spanish, Various

I have been reading this little by little since the summer. It is still a struggle for me to read in Spanish, way more than listening to something, basically because I don't do it enough. Reading in Spanish is a bit like watching something happening through fog. You can see the shapes and what is happening, but you know you're not getting the full picture. 

I think this is also why I don't do it as much as I should. Watching a film or listening to something you get so much from the images and body language. You can still understand the emotion and nuance. This is also something I love about reading, the nuance and ideas that come just through the language. I find it a bit heartbreaking and frustrating that I can't read between the lines like I can in English.

Anyway, this book I found really useful, it is short stories and the pages on the left are in Spanish, on the right in English. So I could read the Spanish and check that I had understood by looking at the English. 

The stories themselves are varied and all are very good, some are more interesting than others but all have something to say. From a woman who trains her dog to go and weep at her graveside to a study of people in a sinister waiting room. 

Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh

 A great, looming and tense novel, slowly building up to a crime and hardly dwelling on the crime at all. A portrait of a small, sad and angry woman and her circumstances. 

The novel is written from the point of view of Eileen as she is looking back at her youth and when and why she finally left her hometown. Moshfegh manages to convey both her personalities, that of the young, bored and rejected girl and that of the older, even elderly woman having changed her life. The older Eileen seems both a reliable narrator and untrustworthy, she is healed but sinister, there is such distance between her and the younger Eileen that we don't really have any reason not to trust her. 

The portrait of the younger Eileen is deeply saddening, she is squashed and sad and has no sense of self worth, punishing herself through not eating or washing, dressing in her dead mother's clothes and drinking with her alcoholic father. We do not root for her, neither do we want her to stay in her circumstances. We watch with a detachment, aware that she is unlikeable and difficult.