books
What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn. There's a certain kind of writing that captures a little too vividly the boredoms, injustices and insecurities of childhood; when I encounter it I can never quite work out where that feeling comes from, but it works well here, where it's important you both feel protective and respectful of Kate, the little girl who roams around on her own detecting. Who gets lost. It takes a while to see how the story of Kate can be continued by the second half, which moves forward some time to talk about characters working in a shopping centre, and the shopping centre itself, really, but it ties in well by the end. Usually I find things about consumerist culture very heavyhanded, but this worked better. It's all believably mundane and O'Flynn is, as she needs to be, good at observing to make it pertinent and interesting. One thing that baffled me is the use of "mom" instead of "mum" in a novel set and published in England. Maybe it's some Birmingham thing I'm unaware of.
Our Precious Lulu by Anne Fine. Underhand emotional battle between two stepsisters. It offers the appeal of petty gossip. I was always fond of Fine's style. The thing is, though, that this completely falls down on its end of the bargain. You can't just have "Sisters don't get on. One isn't very nice and the other decides not to bother with her anymore." You have to find out that they both think the grass is greener and learn to appreciate each other's qualities and grow etc, or that things are more complicated in the family than you think in some way. That sort of thing seemed particularly called for here when you realise the main character is a happily married scientist and the sister who makes her miserable has nothing real going for her at all. You finish it waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant. YA mystery of child disappearances in a small town in Germany. I found this novel's choices puzzling. It's YA (and it does get rather grim at the end, so I can't just say it should have been categorised as childrens') and the main character is ten. She's an annoying, young for her age ten, too. And boring. It was like reading a book from the point of view of the sidekick, who deserves to be the sidekick. Her friend Stefan is the one who gets to do things and exhibit personality at crucial moments. And then there's the setting. Grant used a real small German town, and one kind of expects it to be something of a tourist's tribute, but it's more of a hatchet job, seeing as pretty much everyone who lives there is a cut-out German/vicious gossip/child murderer.
The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall. The life story of a tattoo artist, mostly set in the twenties and thirties, I think, set first in the English coastal town of Morecambe and then in Coney Island. Interesting but imperfect. Very stylised, literary writing style that was sometimes quite exhilarating and sometimes made me think, you don't really mean that. Also Hall went through bouts of repetitiveness; she'd make a point and then seem anxious that maybe she hadn't really made it so she'd say it again. She lavishes the worst of this on the Coney Island descriptions, being tiresomely insistent on how weird and wonderful it was, telling rather than showing. But yes, it was inconsistently good. Most aspects worked for me sometimes, and the book had a distinct, lingering atmosphere to it, kind of morosely relishing.
What Maisie Knew by Henry James. A child of divorced parents is both innocent and knowing beyond her years as she has to deal with the impact all their intrigues have on her. Not so enjoyable as The Portrait of a Lady. By its nature it's quite a mean, confined novel, with the feeling that you're having to strain to eavesdrop. I can't quite decide whether I thought Maisie didn't get enough characterisation. She's quite a boring child, but somehow I think it would have been hard to do the rest of the novel if she hadn't been; it would have been different. I suppose it makes her seem more squashed. I liked that the parents/step-parents/governess complications ended up in such a silly situation, with everyone taking everything so seriously and Maisie and Mrs Wix having constant crisis talks.
Things We Didn't See Coming by Steven Amsterdam. Follows a male narrator through his post-apocolyptic life, starting when he's nine. It's told in bursts, jumping forward and catching up with what's happening now without much context. What I like most about this is the scale; the person by person day by day version of life after the apocalyptic disaster. There's no big shiny concept or plot. All that's on offer is the concept of constant coping amidst battering or uncertainty, and how that shapes an ordinary person's life. I liked the cynicism of the tone and the occasional moment of moral panic that still came across as cynical to me. I thought the writing style was confident, but still could have really made the novel if it had been a bit more something, more lyrical, had a bit more lyricism, maybe, or had some sharper humour. I didn't like the protagonist much, but that wouldn't have mattered if I hadn't also felt we didn't really get to know him. Despite the fact that the novel is made up of isolated snatches of his life without much context, it should have been possible to get a better sense of who he was. Perhaps really what accounts for the sense of something missing is all the apocalypse aus I've read; it was really hard not to expect the big climax to an emotional arc when someone finds themselves and learns to love in the midst of it all.