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. 

Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, Yanis Varoufakis

I loved this, I've folded over so many pages it would have been better if I'd folded over the ones which didn't have something to remember on them. It is straight forward, left leaning and written with a passion and lightness which makes it easy to absorb the ideas and understand the way the economy works in practical terms. It is also unusual in the Varoufakis points out the problems with the economy and then provides ideas for solutions, or multiple ideas for different ways of doing things. It should be required reading in high-school maths classes all over the world. 

They Came to Baghdad, Agatha Christie

 

This was exactly what I wanted to read just before Christmas when my head was full of work and I had no room for anything else. It is completely how you would expect, some views are dated but it is a brilliantly satisfying mystery novel. 

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

I had a lot of curiosity about this book, having heard so much about it and having seen the film 'Capote', about Truman Capote researching this book. 

Capote expertly tells the stories of the murders of the Clutter family, it's impact on the town and the lives of the murders Perry Smith and Dick Hancock. 

I am not sure how much of the stories of the men's lives are true, though they seem very plausible and unromantcised. Capote seems to get to the bottom of what was a completely incomprehensible crime, the family were murdered apparently for no real reason and with no real thought by two lost, cruel and unthinking, unfeeling men. For this reason the murders were so shocking, the town and the US at the time were searching for an explanation, and it seems that the explanation there is is completely unsatisfactory. It goes against everything common sense and culture tells us.

 

Different Class, Joanne Harris

I love a Joanne Harris. She writes such good, satisfying stories and food always plays a huge part even, as in this case, just as symbols and tools to show the character's attitudes. Having said that there is always something that annoys me about the way she writes, if all the rhetorical questions were edited out her novels would benefit hugely.

This novel is very different to any of the others I have read though. It is a real mystery with plot twists and slow reveals. It centers around a boy who seems to be a sociopath and an ageing and well meaning Latin teacher at St Oswald's Grammar School. Harris touches on what feels like a thousand different themes in the book. I am not sure that I agree with her conclusions on some of them but it is compelling and readable. IT reminded me something of Harry Potter in places, but I think that was mostly down to the setting in a fairly well to do and very traditional school. 

To Throw Away Unopened, Viv Albertine

This is an incredible memoir, it really is uncompromising, and is written beautifully. The evening of Albertine's mum's death is slowly revealed, paragraph by paragraph in between the telling of Albertine's family life. We are shown a window into the lives of her mum, dad and to some extent her sister's lives. Albertine is shockingly honest and uncompromising, when talking about her own experiences we feel like we see the ugliness and the best of her.

I am amazed that Albertine could write this book and convey so clearly all the contradictory feelings of complicated families (and isn't every family complicated on the inside?) She makes us understand how much she loved her mum, but that she also saw her flaws and really problematic behaviour with long lasting effects. 

Her writing on men is also illuminating and sad, at one point she writes: 

'I've never regretted the loss of any man -or cat- I've known. I have regretted losing women though. Every woman, good or bad, who's gone from my life has left a hole.'

I found this eye-opening, and from her writing you can completely understand why, a mixture of the time (being in a successful female punk band in the 70's, you can imagine) and her family experience. She continues:

'I was on tenterhooks for years anticipating my mother leaving the biggest hole of all. I expected her to leave a crater. A crater can be beautiful, I kept telling myself. People go to Iceland and America especially to see craters' 

The book is whole and vital and funny and sad and cutting and galvanising.

Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid

 Heartbreaking, as Annie John gradually hits puberty her relationship with her mother breaks down. Kincaid artfully tells the story from Annie's point of view, we see cracks appear and watch as neither mother or daughter know how to repair them. Despite themselves they drive wedges between each other and the rift becomes too big to cope with.