Hello St Marks

I'm not usually a fan of Irish 'chick lit' (a term Keyes dislikes as pejorative) but Marian Keyes can write a cracking story. In 'The Woman who Stole my Life' Stella Sweeney has a car accident, gets sick, becomes famous and loses her way. There's a dreadful husband and a lovely new man. It's Marian Keyes, so we know it'll end well after a cleverly plotted, emotionally rewarding rollercoaster ride. Jojo Moyes calls this one "a brilliant, unusual, brave, sexy book" which is nonsense, but fair play to Keyes. 

'Small Acts of Defiance' had made its way through three satisfied readers before me and will be gone from my street library within an hour, guaranteed; it's exactly the kind of popular historical fiction that does well without anyone feeling embarrassed for having enjoyed it. Sixteen-year-old Lucie arrives in Paris from Australia in January 1940; she's painfully naive—of course she is, she's 16—but step by step she finds the small acts of defiance that are within her power. Others choose differently. Australian author Michelle Wright's debut novel is a winner. 

Comparisons with Oliver Sacks are inevitable and right there on the cover. 'The Nocturnal Brain' is 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' for sleep disorders. It's gripping, naturally, with that Sacks-esque (Sacksian? Sacks-like? Sacks-adjacent?) combination of neuroscience and intimate storytelling. There's the teenager with Klein-Levin syndrome—bouts of extreme sleepiness combined with hypersexuality and morbid hunger. The bloke sent to jail for attempted rape, later diagnosed with sexsomnia and having to deal with the horror of realising he had actually committed—while sleeping—the crime he had vehemently denied. Sleep-related eating disorders. Extreme sleepwalking (and, memorably, sleep-driving). Sleep paralysis with hallucinations. Life-threatening insomnia. 'The Nocturnal Brain' is a very nicely written cornucopia of sleep-related horror stories, with few happy endings. As Leschziner says, "sharing a bed with someone is an act of deep trust...

Happily I have a wretched memory, so reading 'The Power' for the second time was a perfect combination of familiarity (to new characters: I love you already) and surprise (good god, I can't believe that just happened). There's too much to say about Naomi Alderman's provocative feminist dystopia. In a time about now, across the world, girls electrify—literally, not metaphorically—delivering electrical shocks with their hands. It's weird, it's shameful and playful and then almost immediately deadly, and the balance of power between men and women is fundamentally shifted. What do you think would happen if women had real power? Read it, then read it again.

This is Deborah Rodriguez in memoir mode, not author mode (see review of 'The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul') but it's absolutely the same voice. 'The House on Carnaval Street' begins as Deborah flees Kabul with her son, leaving a wannabe warlord Afghan husband and a beauty school. Completely shattered, she lands in Napa, falls into another relationship (his mother dumps her) and finally catapults into Mexico. It's exhausting spending time with Debbie—she's scatty, erratic and often infuriating—but her life is full, really just exploding with people and colour and mad moments, so we love her. 

Expectations were high, because I loved 'What a Carve Up' and 'The House of Sleep'. But 'Mr Wilder & Me'—Jonathan Coe on film director Billy Wilder's later years, told from the perspective of a very young Greek composer—was pretty, clever and contained, and left me wanting something sharper. Regardless, it's worth reading for the beautiful prose, delicious observations of the movie industry in the late 1970s, and - for which it should be famous—a brilliant Wilderesque screenplay slipped into the book two thirds of the way through; an unexpected treat. 

"No child, still less a foetus, has ever mastered the art of small talk, or would ever want to." Ian McEwan's 'Nutshell' is true crime narrated by a foetus with the voice of a middle-aged English don. So arch. No-one else but Ian McEwan could get away with it; it's painfully, immodestly, gleefully clever. But it is very, very clever indeed and you won't have read anything quite like it.  The precocious narrator on identity politics: "Feeling is queen. Unless she identifies as king. I know. Sarcasm ill suits the unborn." 

I didn't know there was a book, which is a little embarrassing as it's one of Australia's most notable works of fiction, apparently. 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' was published in 1967, with Joan Lindsay then in her early 70s. It's 'Australian Gothic' (also apparently), and reads like the cracking murder mystery it is, undimmed by time or fashion. It's a wonderful book, certainly moody but not pretentious, with strong narrative momentum, and a keeper for the home library. Don't Google it until after you've read it; a final chapter—excised before the book was originally published then released posthumously—explains the mystery and is best left unread.

This copy of Lee Child's 'Bad Luck and Trouble' got caught in a storm (my fault entirely) so reading it meant carefully peeling apart each damp page... but such is my passion for Jack Reacher that I couldn't wait for it to dry off. This is the 11th book of roughly 25 (and may Christmas 2021 bring another one as it has for time immemorial, amen). 'Trouble' reunites Reacher—former badass Army MP special investigator, now enigmatic drifter—with the remnants of his former unit. Cue the bad guys and gun sales and fist fights and corruption at the highest levels, etc. 'Trouble' isn't classic Jack Reacher—way too much self-reflection and teamwork for that—but it sits in my personal top 10 for Reachers, largely because of the central role of scary/awesome former sergeant Frances Neagley, one of the many hyper-capable women that populate Lee Child's quietly feminist fictional universe.

'Choices' appealed because of its retro 1990s cover, plus the blurb says 'female doctor' and 'small town practice' and 'masterpiece' so I'm giving it a go. It's dated, for sure, but the theme—a woman's right to choose—remains sadly topical. 'Choices' is big, warm-hearted, old-fashioned, popular fiction. I didn't know how popular until I googled Noah Gordon—now 92 years old and the most successful novelist you've never heard of. 'Choices' is the final book in a trilogy in which the first book, 'The Physician' had sold 10 million copies (as at 2015) and has been made into a movie, a musical and a Netflix series. I suspect 'Choices' is the weakest of the set—'The Physician' is set in 11th century Persia, so I'm off to track it down.