Just Like You by Nick Hornby

 

Gosh, this was a good read! It was my first Nick Hornby although I have read The Hive by his sister, Gill Hornby, about an English village choir, which I loved (and which I’ll have to read again now).

Back to Just Like You. The main characters, Lucy, Joseph and Lucy’s sons, Dylan and Al, are all terribly likeable and self-aware. The social and political issues at the basis of the story are shown from different sides skilfully and sympathetically. There is much warmth and humour as well as clear eyed observations of the real and difficult problems being experienced by them all.

Nick Hornby obviously has a great understanding of his fellow humans. I loved the two worldly-wise little boys, they were perfect! Lucy and Joseph, so very different yet sharing such honesty with each other and within themselves,  made reading this book an absolute pleasure.

I will have to read more of Nick Hornby’s books and I recommend this one for its true to life, unforgettable  characterisations. You can’t read it and not love it!

It has to be 5 out of 5 again. I am on such a roll.

Published by Penguin Random House.

The Other Woman by Daniel Silva

The Other Woman is the first of Daniel Silva's books I've read, but it won't be the last.

Fans of Le Carre and Forsyth will easily slip into Silva's world - in this series that of his fictitious head of Israel's secret service, Gabriel Allon. What sets Silva apart from his predecessors, in a good way, is the quirkily realistic appeal of his characters.

Gabriel Allon, as well as being his country's top spy and an assassin of note, is an art restorer and a very likeable chap.

Even the baddies in this story aren't all that bad - I wouldn't kick any of them out of a dinner party. When agents are compromised into giving up their secrets they do so, in this story at least, with a pragmatic 'fair cop', and start planning their lives under new identities in witness protection. I'd like to think it's like that in real life.

That's not to say there isn't the occasional extra judicial killing in The Other Woman. The ambushes and hits are unexpected and keep the pages turning while the reader contemplates the book's central question - who is the Russian mole hidden somewhere in the highest echelons of western intelligence.

It's an old story which, cleverly and ironically, is given new life by linking it back to one of the oldest and best-known true stories of the cold war. 

If there was one thing that rankled me, slightly, about my first Daniel Silva book it was the few-too-many references to Gabriel Allon's previous lives and loves in preceding books in the series - I now know how some of them end.  That started me wondering if I do the same thing, too often, in my Sonja Kurtz series of novels, so my only criticism of The Other Woman is a positive - for me at least.

I don't pretend to be the sharpest sleuth as a reader, but I guessed the mole fairly early on. I wonder if that, too, was a trap laid by this clever bestselling author. As I coasted towards the end, full of self-satisfied smugness, I didn't see the final twist coming. 

The Other Woman is a Cracker. 4.75 out of 5.

Published by Harper Collins

Tony Park

Just Ignore Him by Alan Davies

 

Alan Davies has written a brave, unflinching memoir of his childhood. His honesty is staggering at times; it is vitally important for him to identify the causes and effects of everything that happened in his life from the age of six when he lost his mother and he is doing this from his perspective as a man with a wife and children of his own now.

It is too sad to think of how Alan’s life would have turned out had his mother lived. He accepts that his childhood memories will never leave him and I am sure he has written the memoir in the hope of helping other survivors to see a way through to a good life. His own brilliantly successful professional life is testament to his remarkable strength of character and he appears to have a warm and loving personal life as well.

I read this book in one day. Alan was baring his soul in remembering his past in as much detail as was possible for him and I needed to know that he is going to be able to  keep going and find happiness in the love he gives and receives, and deserves. I got to the end and it looks like he is doing just that.

Just Ignore Him is a story which had to be told and must be read. 

5 out of 5.

Published by Little, Brown.

All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny

 

Louise Penny is a crime writer like no other. To the uninitiated her prose may seem, at first, a little flowery, a little naive, more suited to a romantic novelist, but that is only softening you up for the introduction to her world of bad guys doing bad things. The crimes you will come across will introduce you to the often horrific goings on outside the picture perfect fictional world of Three Pines, Quebec, a village close to the Vermont border.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec and his wife, Reine Marie, inhabit the two worlds of Three Pines and Quebec City. This story, All the Devils Are Here, however, takes place in Paris where the Gamaches have come to stay in their Paris apartment while they await the imminent birth of their granddaughter. Their daughter, Annie, and son-in-law, Jean Guy Beauvoir, have a son, Honore, and are looking forward to the arrival of their little girl. Annie and Jean Guy have taken up residence in Paris as have the Gamaches’ son, Daniel and his wife, Roslyn, and two daughters.

All the devils really do seem to be hovering in the form of corruption on a grand scale in the big business world in Paris. Armand and Reine Marie have their brilliant intuitive powers working overtime, separately and together, and Jean Guy reverts to his former role of investigator (he was also an inspector with the Surete du Quebec) to get to the bottom of the foul play taking place in his new chosen environment.

There are murders and betrayals and it is hard to know who can be trusted and who relied upon. The action becomes, as is usual in a Louise Penny book, heart stopping, nail biting and riveting as the mystery unravels and the story reaches its denouement.

The story would not have been complete without Three Pines and the Gamaches’ friends and neighbours making their respective presences felt: Gabri and Olivier, Clare, Myrna, Ruth and the duck and the Gamaches’ two (or is it three?) dogs. Snippets of Ruth’s poems are scattered throughout the book and are, as usual, exquisite. There are liberal sprinklings of love, hate, greed, envy, mistrust and redemption and a bit of schmaltz. Quite satisfying really.

I don’t ever like Louise Penny’s abundance of full stops. I don’t need the point hammered home so relentlessly, the words do that very well by themselves. 4 out of 5 for this one.

Published by Minotaur Books.

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood

 

Before I started reading Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend I revisited two of her earlier works, Animal People and The Submerged Cathedral to remind myself of how warm and true her writing is. People, places and animals are beautifully real and it becomes important quite quickly to follow their steps through to their individual destinations. 

In The Weekend although the author is writing about three women a generation older than she is she understands all of them (this from my perspective as one of the older generation). Wendy is a respected academic who has written several successful books and is contemplating another; she misses her late husband terribly, worries about her relationships with her adult children and is devoted to her old dog, Finny. Jude has also had a successful career as a restaurateur and has been involved with a married man for the last forty years. Adele misses her life as a respected, and employed, actress and although in her seventies is still to find stability, both personally and professionally. 

The three old friends meet up to spend a Christmas weekend clearing out the house of a late friend and getting it ready to be sold. It is impossible not to become deeply immersed in the lives of the three friends, poor old Finny the labradoodle and the stunningly imagined Hawksbury area where the story takes place. It is a weekend when hurtful truths surface and friendships are tested to their limits. 

I love Charlotte Wood’s books. It is hard to place this one in order of preference. I felt personally connected to the locations and situations in The Submerged Cathedral and it has a place in my heart so I can’t be objective enough to say it is her best, even though I want to (if you know what I mean). Animal People takes a day in a man’s life and makes for compelling reading which, once again, creates a vibrant atmosphere in which I truly felt I was spending the day with him. Charlotte Wood’s imagination is a thing of wonder. 

 5 stars out of 5 for The Weekend.

Published by Allen & Unwin.