Difference between revisions of "Newest General Fiction Reviews"
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| + | |author=Olga Grushin | ||
| + | |title=The Concert Ticket | ||
| + | |rating=4.5 | ||
| + | |genre=General Fiction | ||
| + | |summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows the lives of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the father, is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk> | ||
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{{newreview | {{newreview | ||
|author=Julie Cohen | |author=Julie Cohen | ||
Revision as of 11:56, 21 February 2010
General fiction
The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin
The Concert Ticket follows the lives of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the father, is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother. Full review...
Nina Jones and the Temple of Gloom by Julie Cohen
A sign of a good book, for me, often relates to how easily I can put it down. And then how much I want to pick it back up again. Nina Jones was a particular challenge for me as after reading it for an hour whilst my toddler napped I kept my thumb in the page whilst getting her out of bed, snuck her downstairs still saving my page, put on Cbeebies, and then sat next to her on the sofa to carry on reading for at least another hour, if not a little bit more than that. I then kept it in the kitchen so I could sneak a few more pages in between stirring the spaghetti. And then once my daughter was in bed I went on to absently ignore my poor, tired, over-worked husband (who got bored and went for a bath) so that I could read on to the end of the story. I found myself mentally yelling at a fictional character (I hope it was mentally and I wasn't actually shouting out loud...we have very thin walls), I swooned over the hero, sniggered often and I even cried a little bit too. So, a book that induces such family neglect and an emotional roller coaster of emotions is definitely a good read! Full review...
The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller
Laurence Bartram has survived the war, but his life has changed dramatically. It will never be the same again. It's almost as if he doesn't recognize himself. Domestic life is now non-existent and he has no-one to please but himself. He is unsettled and edgy. War has obviously left its mark. He retreats graciously and wonders what he'll do with the rest of his life. Full review...
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
A clever, comic delight, pitch-perfect, astutely observed, particularly insightful, must-read. Crumbs. Whatever else is there to say about Nick Hornby's latest book that isn't already plastered on this newly-published paperback edition? I can only report that Juliet, Naked bowled me over with yet another Hornby strike. Full review...
Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes
The first character to mention in this book is a moth. It's a human moth, drawn to the flame that is a museum of suicide - a supposedly cautionary, life-affirming, memento mori, somewhere in Germany. Its curator is an old hand at lonely, unloved museums, fresh from an art gallery in an airport - it didn't take off - who notices the noise of the latest suicide to happen in the museum, and goes right back to sleep. A spider crawls into his mouth and gets eaten. Full review...
Intervention by Robin Cook
Although Robin Cook has written many books, Intervention is the first one that I have read - I'm a Robin Cook 'virgin.'
This is a big book in many respects. It's a classic, glossy 'coffee table' edition; it's a big, satisfying read and it's a multi-layered book in that it covers many current-day topics which have their roots in history. In fact, this book is so multi-dimensional that, you could argue, there are several books within this book. Full review...
Family Planning by Karan Mahajan
Mr Rakesh Ahuja is Delhi's Mister of Urban Development and so far, has managed to do well in his career. However, his family life is beginning to take over - he already has thirteen children and a fourteenth is on the way. The eldest, Arjun, now a teenager was born to Mr Ahuja's first wife, but up til now, Arjun is unaware of this fact. Sangita Ahuja, the long-suffering wife, is aware that her relationship with Arjun may never be the same again. Meanwhile, Arjun is only interested in one thing - how to attract the attention of the gorgeous girl on his school bus. What will happen to the family when Mr Ahuja finally tells the truth? Full review...
American Adulterer by Jed Mercurio
I've often wondered how history would have viewed Jack Kennedy if he'd died a natural death rather than by an assassin's bullet. As an extension of that I've also thought that he might not have lived that much longer had nature been allowed to take its course. He's one of the most-written-about Presidents of all time and finding a new angle – even a fictional one – is not easy, but Jed Mercurio has looked at Kennedy's adult life through the prism of his sexual peccadilloes and his health. Full review...
Landed by Tim Pears
I have hesitated to write this review because, truthfully, I am not entirely sure that I know what happened at the end. I read it all. I actually read the end several times. And then I skipped back to the middle, just to check something, before trying the end again. I have decided to just believe in what I think happened, and since I don't want to spoil it for other readers then I don't have to make a complete fool of myself writing down what it is I think! And actually, that mysteriousness is part of the charm of the story. So, slight confusion aside, I still gave this book four stars, and this is why... Full review...
Secret Son by Laila Lalami
Secret Son is the story of Youssef El-Mekki, the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, so when he finds out his mother has lied to conceal the fact that he was born out of wedlock, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wanted. Full review...
Playground by Samuel Bonner
Jonah grew up in London but his mother, getting increasingly worried about social disintegration and increasing crime, has moved them up to Nottingham. Jonah is a bright lad and halfway through a media course, but he's finding it difficult to fit in. He's also finding the new racial mix a problem - there's palpable tension between black and brown-skinned people on campus, and he often feels alienated and a bit like a fish out of water. Full review...
Venom by Joan Brady
David Marion isn't used to finding hitmen standing at his front door, though you wouldn't be able to tell that such a thing might be true, given the speed and competency with which Marion dispatches said hitman and then disappears, seemingly, off the face of the Earth.
Dr. Helen Freyl is a physicist working for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. She is also, up until his disappearance, David Marion's sometime lover and is grief-stricken to the point of distraction by his sudden absence from her life, as she believes him to be dead. Full review...
The More You Ignore Me by Jo Brand
Alice is growing up in a cottage in Herefordshire with her gentle, hippy father and her mother, Gina, who spends her days standing around like a chain-smoking zombie because she is kept on medication and has been for years. Gina's first psychotic episode occured after Alice's birth. Then there was the episode Alice remembers, the day her mother climbed onto the roof, naked, holding Smelly the hamster, and refused to come down. From that day, the old Gina, boisterous and unconventional as she was, fell silent under the numbing impact of constant medication. Jo Brand tells the story of how Alice coped with the loneliness and worry of growing up with an ill mother. Most importantly, as I'm sure the teenage Alice would see it, we are shown the birth and life of her obsession with Morrissey of The Smiths. In his music she finds escapism and comfort and in him she finds a figure to adore. Her friends can't understand her fixation and her mother understands fixation a little too well (the local weatherman having been the object of one of her fervent obsessions). Morrissey sings with such sensitivity and angst that surely, Alice thinks, if she could just meet him and tell him her story he could help her and she could help him... Full review...
A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin
No one had anticipated that Labour would win the election, not least because the party leader was Harry Perkins, a former steel worker. His manifesto included promises to remove all American bases from British soil, public control of finance and the dismantling of media empires. There were a few other things too – but they'll do for starters. The establishment – to a man – was appalled. Press barons, media stars, bishops and civil service mandarins knew that, for the good of the country (not themselves, of course) something had to be done and obviously the end would justify whatever means they had to take to achieve their aims. Harry Perkins had to be removed from office. Full review...
The Finest Type Of English Womanhood by Rachel Heath
It was just after the end of the Second World War and seventeen year old Laura Trelling was at a loose end in her Sussex village. She didn't really fit in with the other young people and her eccentric parents were becoming more and more isolated, to the extent that Laura was embarrassed by their carelessness of her welfare. A chance encounter with Paul Lovell was to change everything and before long she was on her way to a South Africa not yet burdened with apartheid. Full review...
Truth Games by Bobbie Darbyshire
The central theme in this book is sex - and lots of it. We're introduced to a group of mainly twentysomethings and thirtysomethings. Men and women. Most of them are attractive and hold down glamorous jobs and careers. All in rude health, with wonderful social lives and trendy homes. They all appear, on the surface, to be a bunch of shiny, happy people. What on earth could be missing? Full review...
The Rescue Man by Anthony Quinn
This love affair tale with the city of Liverpool is mostly told through the eyes of architect Tom Baines. With the Second World War looming, Baines is desperately working on a book to capture the memory of buildings that are at risk, and appears a man more in love with the past and solid, cold structures than mankind. Full review...
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days there, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunky, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos to them. The female of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next door, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school disco. Full review...
Precious by Sapphire
Precious Jones is a sixteen year old black girl from Harlem – well she's never actually been out of Harlem – and when we meet her she's pregnant by her own father for the second time. Her first child was a girl and she was born with Down's Syndrome. With unconscious irony Precious calls her Little Mongo and leaves her to live with her grandmother. When her second pregnancy becomes obvious she's expelled from school and joins an alternative education programme. Precious really wants to learn and the book is the story of her journey from illiteracy to maturity. Full review...
A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman
A Disobedient Girl follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future. Full review...
The Convent by Panos Karnezis
Our Lady of Mercy is a small convent on the Spanish sierra made up of a handful of devoted nuns who live their lives simply, carrying out their daily duties like clockwork. However things change when a suitcase containing a newborn baby is left mysteriously outside the convent doors. The Mother Superior, Sister Maria Ines, believes the baby to be a miracle and plans to keep him in the convent, but the other sisters do not agree. During the events that follow the true characters of the nuns inside the convent are revealed and the peace that the sisters enjoy is stripped away to show the tension that has been bubbling away under the surface. Full review...
Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper
Area 51 is not what you think it is. No - all that UFO kerfuffle is a smokescreen for the powers that be to hide even better the most unusual manuscript known to (a handful of) mankind - the most unearthly, singular, and unsettling book, in thousands and thousands of volumes. All except one, which is about to come under the hammer in a London auction house. Our hero Will Piper must go very reluctantly on the trail of it and its secrets, a trail which will force him and others to become entangled with shadowy agents, who in turn know the very day of all their enemy's deaths. Full review...
Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings by P Robert Smith
Sunday Daffodil and Other Happy Endings is the sort of book you finish with the feeling that you've just read something with a million different meanings. Don't be surprised if you feel like you should start the whole thing again but with your brain more fully engaged, and perhaps that's the whole point. Full review...
Glasshopper by Isabel Ashdown
Thirteen-year-old Jake is just like any other boy on the cusp of puberty: new music and Saturday jobs are at the top of his agenda, while girls are the strange exotic creatures that must be looked at but not touched (particularly his pretty Classics teacher). But behind closed doors, Jake struggles to cope with his mother's ongoing battle with depression and alcoholism. His father moved out a few weeks ago. So has his older brother, Matthew. That leaves Jake as the man of the house: the one who must remember to get him and little brother, Andy, up in time for school in the morning; the one making toast for dinner; and the one keeping a watchful eye over his mother to make sure she doesn't get herself into any serious trouble. Full review...
Beyond Reason by Keith Colquhoun
Beyond Reason is a deceptively complex novel - a black comedy about the conflicts within religion. The main focus of the plot, Edward Bunyan, is a radical within the Church of England who is trying to take religion in a new (and rather amusing) direction in order to get the public interested in it again. Bunyan claims to have a direct link with God as well as spiritual powers, such as being able to levitate and read minds, which leave his colleague and old college friend, Reverend Ralph 'Marmy' Marmaduke, unsure about both his friendship with Bunyan and his own religious beliefs. Full review...
Contact by Jonathan Buckley
Dominic Pattison's life began to veer off course badly on a Tuesday in May. It's a fairly banal Tuesday. The kind of Tuesday that Dominic probably experiences quite frequently. He feels the need to tell us about it.
In detail.
And, sadly, not in a particularly engaging style. Full review...
Sins of the Angel by Wayne J Harris
Dr Gideon Matthews, a shouty hellfire and damnation preacher, has just delivered a sermon all about the evils of women being allowed into the church hierarchy and, on his way home afterwards, he is murdered. The following day however he wakes up in hospital or, actually, an angel called Gabriel finds himself inside Dr Matthews' body, able to recall Dr Matthews' memories and thoughts and feelings but acting now as himself. Gabriel goes a little bit wild, finding himself overwhelmed by the new feelings and desires he experiences in this body, sinning left, right and centre and causing scandal at his every move. He is also wondering for what purpose he has been brought into this body and finds that he is dreaming about a demon, someone who is persuading an unknown monk to commit murders in God's name and who seems to be getting closer and closer to Dr Matthews in order to kill him too... Full review...
The Darkening by Stephen M Irwin
This book has the 'S' word written all over it. No, not sex - supernatural. So, it's got all things a bit spooky, not-quite-right, strange coincidences. They are sprinkled throughout like rock salt. I must admit that when I read the blurb on the back cover with its supernatural theme, I gave an inward groan. Not really my cup of tea. But I'm open-minded and I'll read anything once. I'm glad I did. Irwin is Australian. For some reason I haven't read too many books by Australian authors, so I was keen to get reading. Full review...
Me and Orson Welles by Robert Kaplow
Richard Samuels sees everything in terms of a performance, through the rose-tinted lens of the theatrical celebrities he listens to on the radio. So when he stumbles onto the Broadway stage through a chance encounter with Orson Welles, it seems as if all his dreams may be about to come true. He goes from being the guy that all the girls see as a friend, one of the bookish kids at school, to the glamour of mingling with stars of the stage. We follow Richard's struggle to balance this newly discovered wonderland and his school life, not to mention his disapproving mother. Full review...
The Man on the Moor by John Van der Kiste
In the summer of 1913 relations with Germany were deteriorating steadily, but there didn't seem to be any connection with the international situation when a London clerk, George Stephens, was found dead in a country lane on the edge of Dartmoor. The moor had been his passion and he'd always been keen to escape London and return to Devon. It was an odd death but in all probability it would have been put down as an accident if George's mother had not announced that George was the son of the Kaiser. Despite her fondness for gin the story she told was oddly compelling and when it was linked up with the fact that two German officers had been staying at a nearby farm George's death seemed less and less like an accident. Full review...
Dead Cat With Firelighter by Frances Day
We're in the world of modern art. A couple who met at art college are on the verge of breaking up, as her success at fine arts is only bettered by his sudden rise to fame in the world of his conceptual, pompous bits of (almost literally) rubbish and nothing. We're also in the world of the wannabe stars and starlets, trying to make the jump from well-thought of provincial comedy theatre to Hollywood. And in the background in both instances, are guru-type Svengalis, pulling strings, and aiming to do as much as is morally justifiable - and a lot more - to get their charges to fame. And a bit of contract killing and murder on the side. Full review...
Tommy's World by Billy Hopkins
Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of Manchester. His father had quite a good job and there wasn't a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughter. He was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in the form of worldly goods. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgings. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years old. Full review...
The Bay at Midnight by Diane Chamberlain
The story starts properly when a letter is discovered. It will have devastating consequences for several families - and life will never be the same again. Apparently, the wrong person was convicted for a murder. Moreover, the writer of this letter appears to know who did commit this crime. Unfortunately, the writer dies before able to make contact with the police. Full review...
Right to Die by Hazel McHaffie
It must be hard enough watching your partner die just once, but for Naomi, Adam's death is just the beginning. Coming across his personal, private diary of his time from diagnosis to subsequent demise, she is forced to relive the awful months during which his body began to betray him and his will to live was replaced with a will to die...on his own terms. Full review...
The Night Following by Morag Joss
Distracted by the discovery that her husband has been having an affair, a middle-aged woman loses concentration while driving along a quiet lane, killing Ruth Mitchell, an elderly cyclist. The woman doesn't wait for the police to arrive; she goes home and parks her car in the garage where she smashes it almost beyond recognition. When her arrogant husband sees the damage he believes it's been done to punish him and he packs his bags. After a few days the woman goes to the home of the dead woman; she doesn't go to the door, but from a hidden spot nearby she can see the widower, an elderly gentleman who is clearly not coping well. Wracked with guilt, the woman makes a decision: the only way she can atone for her actions is to step into the shoes of the dead woman. Full review...
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
There was a time before Stephen King. There was time before The Shining. There was a time when 'horror' was not rooted in blood, guts and gore. I owe a slight apology to Mr King, because along with the gutsier side of the genre, I will own that he is a master at suspense. Full review...
