Recent Books

“Widow for one Year” Quite a thick book, with the usual Irving themes, disfunctional people and families trying to live the best they can etc. but very very good! his best book in a long time, imho. Follows a group of people around a person (as a child then an adult) at 3 different points in her life.

“The Forest of Hours” Kerstin Ekman - poetic and haunting book which sweeps through the history of Sweden.

“Timbuktu” Paul Auster - it’s a really short book, and very very good. Over too quickly, really. Great trip in a dog’s head.

“Ghostwriter” - loosely connected tales around Asia, its people, its past present and future. Quite nice, very trendy in form, theme and style. Touches of “magical realism”, which of course suits me fine. (Independant: Not so much one book, but ten: a planet-hopping circle of tales that begins with the Tokyo subway gas attack and moves, via China, Mongolia and Ireland, to a DJ and his spectral caller in New York. Mitchell plays one extraordinary riff after another – in a rainbow coalition of styles – on the idea of what it means to be “haunted” in our global village. Technically accomplished, but consistently funny and affecting: if you want to know what the distinctive literature of the 21st century will look like, begin here)

“Countrymen of Bones” - interesting novel of two researchers at and around Los Alamos and the trinity test site. Strange too.

“The intuitionist” - a really odd thriller in an alternative future around elevator inspection. It’s a nice book but somehow I didn’t quite get into it.