Hello St Marks

My mate Wayne recommended Tana French's 'The Searcher' to me, and so—thanks Wayne—it was fabulous, as promised. It came on the heels of Cate Kennedy's 'The World Beneath', both notable for brilliantly realised voices of people unfamiliar to me but which felt entirely authentic. French's protagonist is a retired Chicago cop seeking peace in a tiny Irish country village; instead of a caricature, French gives us an intelligent, worldly man weighing the risks of probing too deeply into the tightly-knit community he's joined. Kennedy's cast includes a maddening, hippyish single mum, deluded photographer dad and emo 15 year old daughter. I don't know anyone like these people, but the brilliant writing and characterisation took me right there, up close. 

A few embarrassing admissions today. Yes, I re-read Lee Child's '61 Hours'. Again. The perverse advantage of rarely remembering a plot is being able to re-discover books like lightly recalled acquaintances: ah yes, how lovely, hello again. It's the 14th Jack Reacher novel by order of publication, somewhere in the middle of the almost 30 of them in the series, and—yes again—I've read them all.   Just finished is Helen Simpson's 'The Summer Before the War'; the war being WWI. This is a tricky piece of publishing marketing sleight of hand, because the cover is a perky, hand-illustrated, cutesy job, promising English country garden witticisms and light romance. Inside the cover is quite a dense, surprisingly complex and really quite dark account of English village life in the first years of the war. Sold a motsa, apparently.  Also read (via Audible) an utterly daft thriller 'Elevator Pitch' by bestselling hack Linwood Barclay, which asks what would h...

My beautiful Street Library just keeps on giving. Among the recent deposits: Jane Harper's 'The Lost Man', which I immediately whipped out of the box and set on the pile for holiday reading... then almost dreaded reading it. I loved 'The Dry' (2016), but another outback noir? Yeah nah. But when I finally got to it, it was a cracker. Taut, grim but deeply satisfying; set in an otherworldly landscape of radical isolation fraught with logistical complexities as fascinating as the unfolding plot. I'll happily send this one back out into the Street Library for another reader's pleasure. 

It's not fair to compare the next two books although both have white, gay, male protagonists. Actor and comedian—and novelist—Graham Norton's 'Home Stretch' is a good book, heartfelt and with an engaging storyline. But 'Less' by Andrew Sean Greer is a whole different order of excellent. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2018, so. Greer's book is both funny and clever and absolutely beautifully written—hence the Pulitzer. Norton's book caught my interest early with a tragedy and a mystery. But I took 'Less' on holiday expecting to abandon it once read; expectations were low despite the Pulitzer sticker on the cover. That sticker keep me reading despite disliking the main character, but then it caught me and held me and the book came back from the beach having earned a permanent slot on my shelf. A marvellous book. The Norton goes back to Mum. 

I'm back, lightly committed to recording every book I read this year. Sadly, I'm a year too late. 2020 was the noteworthy year for me; as COVID-19 changed everything, I read like a demon, at full tilt. Two or three books a week and—after I was sodden with mostly forgotten novels—remarkable for a line up of really good non-fiction. So last year was, in the end, a year of reading to be proud of. All now unrecorded, unremarked and (recall my Swiss cheese memory) largely un-remembered. Neverthless. I'm starting badly because it's 13 January and I can't recall everything I've read so far. Working backwards: 'American Dirt' by Jeanine Cummins. Best book of the year by far. Really, it's a keeper; I'm confident it'll make my Best Of list for 2021. 'Longbourn, The Servants' Story' by Jo Baker, a re-telling of 'Pride and Prejudice' from the servants' perspective. Now this one sounds like trash, doesn't it? But wasn't a...