Small Hours – Bobby Palmer

TITLE: SMALL HOURS

AUTHOR: BOBBY PALMER

PUBLISHER: HEADLINE

ISBN: 9781035402656

PUBLICATION DATE: 14.03.24

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:

If you stood before sunrise in this wild old place, looking through the trees into the garden, here’s what you’d see:

A father and son, a fox standing between them.

Jack, home for the first time in years, still determined to be the opposite of his father.

Gerry, who would rather talk to animals than the angry man back under his roof.

Everything that follows is because of the fox, and because Jack’s mother is missing. It spans generations of big dreams and lost time, unexpected connections and things falling apart, great wide worlds and the moments that define us.

If you met them in the small hours, you’d begin to piece together their story.

NO SPOILERS

This is Bobby Palmer’s second novel, his first being Isaac and the Egg, which I previously reviewed. Now, the fox is no egg and it feels as though Palmer is wanting to repeat a successful formula. I was very fond of the fox, just as I had been the egg.

But here’s my big but (not literally, just a figure of speech and no pun intended) – whilst I liked the fox I did not like the book. It is simply too cozy for me.

However, there are passages I absolutely love. Being someone who is up at 5.00am (at the latest) and takes a mug of coffee into the garden, no matter the weather, to hear and breath in the morning, I was right beside Gerry as he did this. I love Gerry – he is the only character I did like. I cared not one jot for the rest.

The plot and story move along well enough but the end is rushed and a bit messy.

Still, the book is worth a read for the nature aspect. I suspect Palmer could write well in that genre.

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive  Blackwell’s  Kobo

Thank you to NetGalley and Headline for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Just One Thing – Dr Michael Mosley

TITLE: JUST ONE THING

AUTHOR: DR MICHAEL MOSLEY

PUBLISHER: OCTOPUS PUBLISHING

ISBN: 9781780725512

PUBLICATION DATE:

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:

We all want quick and easy ways to improve our health, but when it comes to diet, fitness and wellbeing it can be hard to separate the facts from the fads. And harder still to find changes that fit easily into our daily lives.

Based on the popular BBC podcast, Just One Thing, this book brings to life Dr Mosley’s mission to find things you can introduce into your daily routine which will have a big impact on your mental and physical health. Did you know that eating chocolate can help your heart, that singing can give you a natural ‘high’ and that having more house plants can improve your mood and boost your productivity?

Dr Michael Mosley unearths a range of Just One Things whose impacts are so surprising and intriguing you will be desperate to try them out. He chats to experts, road tests all his tips and enlists some special guests to help you find that one small thing that could really make a difference to how you feel.

 

Firstly, I apologise for this very short review but I have  been unwell for some time and am beginning to catch up with books, food, dogs and everything else!

I am aware of Dr Mosley’s media presence so was curious to see how his “Just One Thing” radio program would be presented in book form. Of course, an ebook is never so convenient as a print for this type of book but I can see how good the print edition must be.

Short chapters cover each “thing” with simplicity and humour. No condescension, no patronising, just good, clear advice. I’m not a fan of self help books and usually avoid them and I suppose this is in that genre but I enjoyed it very much.

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive  Blackwell’s  Kobo

Thank you to NetGalley and Octopus Publisihing for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Blessings – Chukwuebuka Ibeh

TITLE: BLESSINGS

AUTHOR: CHUKWUEBUKA IBEH

PUBLISHER: VIKING/PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

ISBN: 9780241618257

PUBLICATION DATE: 22.2.24

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:

When Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and the family’s apprentice, newly arrived from the nearby village, he banishes Obiefuna to a Christian boarding school marked by strict hierarchy and routine, devastating violence. Utterly alienated from the people he loves, Obiefuna begins a journey of self-discovery and blossoming desire, while his mother Uzoamaka grapples to hold onto her favourite son, her truest friend.

Interweaving the perspectives of Obiefuna and his mother Uzoamaka, as they reach towards a future that will hold them both, BLESSINGS is an elegant and exquisitely moving story of love and loneliness. Asking how we can live freely when politics reaches into our hearts and lives, as well as deep into our consciousness, it is a stunning, searing debut.

NO SPOILERS

The publisher’s description tells you all you need to know about the plot, story, themes and veracity of Blessings. What it doesn’t tell you is how beautifully it is written. Ibeh’s skill evokes empathy, outrage, and a feeling of hushed tones which had me whispering this book in my head as I read.

The love story is joyous, though unbearably sad, and this quote stood out for me. I think it sums up the entire book and probably the lives of many of us.

“All along Obiefuna had never felt like he was searching, but with Miebi he felt the peculiar relief of having finally been found”

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive   Blackwell’s   Kobo

Thank you to NetGalley and Viking for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

This Plague of Souls – Mike McCormack

TITLE: THIS PLAGUE OF SOULS

AUTHOR: MIKE MCCORMACK

PUBLISHER: CANONGATE

ISBN: 9781838859329

PUBLICATION DATE: 26.10.23

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:

Nealon returns to his family home in Ireland after a long time away, only to be greeted by a completely empty house. No heat or light, no furniture, no sign of his wife or child anywhere. It seems the world has forgotten that he even existed.

The one exception is a persistent caller on the telephone, someone who seems to know everything about Nealon’s life, his recent bother with the law and, more importantly, what has happened to his family. All Nealon needs to do is talk with him. But the more he talks the closer Nealon gets to the same trouble he was in years ago, tangled in the very crimes of which he claims to be innocent.

Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls is a story for these fractured times, dealing with how we might mend the world and the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together.

NO SPOILERS:

I gave This Plague of Souls 4/5 for the writing and only the writing. The plot, story and characters held little interest for me but McCormack’s skill with words had me re-reading passages in awe. He writes with such understanding of being human, such observation of emotions. The scenes where Nealon stands in his empty house, makes coffee, looks out of the window…all these had me captivated. Tis brilliant stuff.

So if you like a thrillerish book and enjoy skilled, crafted writing, then you are in for a treat.

Thank you to NetGalley and CanonGate for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive   Blackwell’s   Kobo

Nutshell – Ian McEwan

TITLE: NUTSHELL

AUTHOR: IAN MCEWAN

PUBLISHER: VINTAGE

ISBN: 9781784705114

PUBLICATION DATE: 2016

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION

Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She’s still in the marital home – a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse – but not with John. Instead, she’s with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb.

NO SPOILERS

This is my third book by Ian McEwan, my prevous two being Lessons and On Chesil Beach, both of which I enjoyed.

Nutshell, though overworked, started well but the unborn child is merely McEwan’s mouthpiece for his xenophobia, transphobia and bigotry. I am disappointed as I had no idea he was like this. Still, art and artist are apparently separate but in this instance, I think not.

Baumgartner – Paul Auster

TITLE: BAUMGARTNER

AUTHOR: PAUL AUSTER

PUBLISHER: GROVE ATLANTIC

ISBN: 978 0802161444

PUBLICATION DATE: 7.11.23

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:

“Paul Auster’s brilliant eighteenth novel opens with a scorched pot of water, which Sy Baumgartner — phenomenologist, noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor – has just forgotten on the stove.

Baumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next forty years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.

Rich with compassion, wit, and Auster’s keen eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient moments of ordinary life, Baumgartner asks: Why do we remember certain moments, and forget others? In one of his most luminous works and his first novel since the Booker-shortlisted tour-de-force 4 3 2 1, Paul Auster captures several lifetimes.”

NO SPOILERS
I have only read one previous Paul Auster book, 4321 and I loved it; so I was pleased when I was sent an eARC of Auster’s latest novel, Baumgartner.

The publisher’s description tells you all you need to know about the plot/story so I will not add to it. What it doesn’t tell you is this is a lovely, lovely book, beautifully and sympathetically written. Reading this feels like sitting down for a long chat with an old friend. It’s not gripping or fast paced but it is very compelling. I need to read more Auster and so should you.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic, Faber & Faber for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive   Blackwell’s   Kobo

On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan

TITLE: ON CHESIL BEACH

AUTHOR: IAN MCEWAN

PUBLISHER: VINTAGE

ISBN: THIS EDITION 9780099512790

PUBLICATION DATE: 2008

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:
It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come and, unbeknownst to them both, the events of the evening will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

NO SPOILERS
Last year I read Ian McEwans’ Lessons, which was my first of McEwan’s. I thought it was excellent (my review is here) and wrote I would read Atonement which I already had. Well, I didn’t. I read On Chesil Beach next which I think is also excellent. My preferred genre is Literary Fictin and I think  McEwan’s style sits well within it.

Every so often I want to read a short book, 200 pages or less and it takes a very particular skill to say so much in so few words and McEwan has that skill. (Claire Keegan also is a master of this with Foster and Small Things Like These (my thoughts are here) On Chesil Beach tells the indiviadual stories of Edward and Florence along side the moment they are at and how they have come to this point of crisis. Such a situation of its time and one which could have been so easily resolved.

Along with Atonement I have Nutshell waiting to be read. Don’t let me down. Mr M!

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive   Blackwell’s   Kobo

The Short End of the Sonnenallee – Thomas Brussig

TITLE: THE SHORT END OF THE SONNENALLEE
AUTHOR: THOMAS BRUSSIG
TRANSLATOR: JONATHAN FRANZEN AND JENNY WATSON
PUBLISHER: 4TH ESTATE/HARPER COLINS
ISBN: 9780008559311
PUBLICATION DATE: THIS TRANSLATION 4TH APRIL 2023

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:

Thomas Brussig’s classic German satire, translated into English for the first time and introduced by Jonathan Franzen, is a comedic, moving account of life in East Berlin before the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Thomas Brussig’s slim novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a satire set, literally, on the Sonnenallee, the famed “boulevard of the sun” in East Berlin.

Within this boulevard lives Michael, an adolescent who faces daily ridicule whenever he steps out of his apartment building and comes into view of the observation platform on the West side. “Look, a real Zonie. Can we take your picture?” Hopelessly in love with the most beautiful girl on the street, Michael is batted away in favour of the Western boys who are free to cross the border. What chance does Michael have, and how much trouble will he get into by pursuing her?

Laugh-out-loud funny and unabashedly silly, Brussig’s novel follows the bizarre, grotesque quotidian details of life in the German Democratic Republic. As this new translation shows, the ideas at its heart – freedom, democracy and life’s fundamental hilarity – hold great relevance for today.

NO SPOILERS

The publisher’s description tells you all you need to know except this is absolutely superb. I didn’t laugh out loud but I did chuckle plenty and read this very short book (just over 100 pages) with a constant smile.

The everyday lives of a group of teenage boys (everyday for them being life in East Berlin) making the best of everything. It’s charming, so beautifully observed, funny, absurd and just brilliant. The perfect way to show the restrictions and failings of the regime.

Please, if you have an afternoon to spare, put the kettle on, put your feet up and read this. All humour aside, it’s a rather important read.

Thank you to NetGalley and 4th Estate, Harper Collins for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive   Blackwell’s   Kobo – not yet available

Kala – Colin Walsh

TITLE: KALA

AUTHOR: COLIN WALSH

PUBLISHER: ATLANTIC BOOKS

ISBN: 9781838958602

PUBLICATION DATE: 6.07.23

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:

“Sometimes I think of who we were back then, when she was with us. We were such a force. What happened to her?’

“In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They – Helen, Joe and Mush – were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot centre. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.

Now it’s fifteen years later: Helen has reluctantly returned to Ireland for her father’s wedding; Joe is a world-famous musician, newly back in town; and Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the counter of his mother’s café. But human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. And as past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance, and to try to stop Kinlough’s violent patterns repeating themselves once again…

Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smoulder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.”

NO SPOILERS

I have given this book four stars even though I didn’t enjoy it. This is not a genre I ever enjoy. I find it too contrived (I guess it has to be for a book/TV/film to work), too long winded and too obvious, at least to me.

So why did I accept it for review? People have been praising it, especially the style, so I thought it might be the book to change my mind. And oh, my word, the writing is superb. The vividness of the characters, their interactions, the “show don’t tell” is masterful. I liked the plot but the story didn’t interest me at all. Writing like this though…

“The nicotine glamour of an unmade bed”
“No point in lying to people when you can say nothing”

I know many readers love this genre and those who do should read Kala…you are in for a very special treat but I’d like to read a different fiction book from Colin Walsh.

Thank you to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.
Hive   Blackwell’s   Kobo

Family Meal – Bryan Washington

TITLE: FAMILY MEAL
AUTHOR: BRYAN WASHINGTON
PUBLISHER: ATLANTIC BOOKS
ISBN: 978183894444
PUBLICATION DATE:

This is not a critique, analysis or essay but quick, overview intended to give you some idea whether or not you might enjoy an author’s work.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:
“Growing up , TJ was Cam’s boy next door. When Cam needed a home, TJ’s parents – Mae and Jin – took him in. Their family bakery became Cam’s safe place. Until he left, and it wasn’t anymore.

Years later, Cam’s world is falling apart. The love of his life, Kai, is gone: but his ghost keeps haunting Cam, and won’t let go. And Cam’s not sure he wants to let go, not sure he’s ready. When he has a chance to return to his home town, to work in a gay bar clinging on in a changing city landscape, he takes it. Back in the same place as TJ, they circle each other warily, their banter electric with an undercurrent of betrayal, drawn together despite past and current drama. Family is family. But TJ is no longer the same person Cam left behind; he’s had his own struggles. The quiet, low-key, queer kid, the one who stayed home, TJ’s not sure how to navigate Cam – utterly cool, completely devastated and self-destructing – crashing back into his world.

When things said – or left unsaid – become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Nourishment has many forms: eating croissants, sitting together at a table with bowls of curry, sharing history, confronting demons, growing flowers, showing up. This is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love, and by their necessary presence, create a family.”

NO SPOILERS

If you loved Bryan Washington’s Memorial, as I did, you will love Family Meal. If you haven’t read either then do it now!

Family Meal is a brutal but beautifully written sympathetic, astute portrayal of the grief Cam feels at losing his parents and Kai, and the grief his friends and family feel at losing him as he was. And the grief we all experience at losing the status quo.

Washington’s writing, though complex and skilled, is effortless to read and set out in such a way that gives natural pauses for thought. Aspects of this book will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Below are the links to purchase the book from Hive (which gives a percentage of every sale to independent booksellers and FREE delivery), Blackwell’s (because it’s Blackwell’s and FREE delivery) and Kobo, for those of us with ereaders.

Hive   Blackwell’s   Kobo