Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is the 2nd novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. The main story is narrated by nine-year-old Oskar Schell whose father, Thomas, died on 9/11. Some years after his Thomas’s death, Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet. His determination to find the lock that the key opens is fuelled by his desire to find out exactly how his father died. One small clue with the key leads him to touch the lives of many people and the idea is the six degrees of separation is brought to mind. Oskar is clever, funny, aware, quirky, somewhat precocious, earnest, thoughtful and very resourceful. As he tries to beat his grief-related insomnia, Oskar invents amazing things in his mind, like a birdseed shirt so birds will save the wearer falling from a great height (like the WTC). Interspersed with Oskar’s narration are replies from famous people to letters Oskar writes them, photographs Oskar takes with the camera that belonged to the grandfather who left 40 years before he was born, and pictures he downloads from the internet. Adding to the intrigue are the thoughts that Oskar’s paternal grandmother sets down in letters to him about her life and unsent letters from the long absent grandfather to his now-dead son. This novel examines how people react to tragedy in their lives, what they do to cope, and what they do to protect those they love from facts they believe will harm them. The ultimate message seems to be to live life as if each moment is your last, and tell the people you love that that you love them. This novel made me laugh out loud and it made me cry. I loved the characters and the private codes they used. A moving and brilliant read.

from an uncorrected proof
Albert of Adelaide is the first novel by Howard L. Anderson. Albert is a platypus who, sick of his imprisonment there, has escaped from the zoo at Adelaide, and has taken the train to Tennant Creek in search of the “old Australia”, a land of liberty, promise and peace that the other animals in the zoo kept whispering about. Albert is hoping to find a world like that of his childhood in the muddy banks of the river Murray, or at least, something that’s better than Adelaide: what he finds is a very long way from those expectations. Albert seems innocent and a bit naïve, but he turns out to be not entirely helpless, especially when someone makes him angry. Whilst he chances upon some generous friends, Albert also encounters ignorance and prejudice (he’s not a marsupial!), and soon finds he is a platypus with a price on his head, wanted for arson and cheating at two-up. Anderson gives the reader a rich cast of characters: an insane possum, a wallaby with megalomaniacal tendencies, a pair of alcoholic bandicoots, an ex-champion wrestling Tasmanian Devil, a singing pyromaniac wombat, marsupials playing two-up, one kangaroo working as a bartender and another as (fittingly) a bouncer, a surprising snake, several dingoes with deceptive qualities and a gun-happy foreigner in red long-johns with a black eye mask. And it seems they are all armed: pistols, rifles, an Enfield carbine, knives, rockets, a cannon, shotguns, muskets, and swords all feature. Anderson’s very original plot includes fires, highway robbery, bribery, betrayal, ambush and more than one battle. He gives his characters some wise words that will have the reader thinking about loyalty, mateship, justifying one’s actions and just how far one would go for a friend. I loved Albert’s thoughts on being lost. I was interested to see how Anderson, a resident of New Mexico, USA, would acquit himself with a story filled with Australian native animals: I was very impressed with the result. I laughed a lot, I cried, and I heaved a sigh of satisfaction at the end of the book (although I would love to read more of Albert’s adventures). A captivating tale.

Blue Latitudes is the 4th book by Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist and writer, Tony Horwitz. It has been described as part-travelogue, part-history and in it, Horwitz follows, to some extent, the three Pacific voyages of British explorer, navigator and cartographer, James Cook. Horwitz compares points of interest from Cook’s journals with their current day state and comments on contrasts and similarities. Observations from Cook’s diary of the peoples and lands he discovered, which might have made for dry reading, are made more interesting when related to Horwitz’s own present-day experiences in those places. Horwitz admits that it is difficult for him to faithfully follow Cook’s travels when he is not doing so in a wooden ship sailing to inaccessible, inhospitable and antisocial places like Antarctica, which he expediently omits. Horwitz starts his experience with a short stint on HMS Bark Endeavour, to give him a taste of a sailor’s life in the 18th century. He then travels on, by more modern means, to Tahiti and Bora Bora, New Zealand, Australia, Niue and Tonga, Yorkshire and London, Alaska and, finally, to the scene of Cook’s death at Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaii. His companion is cynical, drinking, swearing, Aussie (ex-Yorkshire) Roger, whose wry reflections add plenty of humour. Horwitz comments on the changes wrought to peoples first discovered by Cook, because of that discovery, and the impossibility of Cook’s missions: terra australis and the North West Passage. If the eyes begin to glaze over in the Tonga chapter, the mention of Cook’s descendants soon remedies this. Amid the dearth of authentic Cook relics in Yorkshire, Horwitz finds a clue to Cook’s character in an unlikely place. It was interesting to learn of the derivation from Polynesian of certain words and expressions now in common usage in the English language, among them tattoo and taboo. Bougainvillea and kangaroo also had surprising origins. An interesting and informative read.

The Sense of an Ending is the 11th novel by Julian Barnes. In his sixties, retired, Tony Webster sees his life as pretty ordinary: career, marriage, amicable divorce, one child, two grandchildren. So the letter from a lawyer, informing him of an unexpected bequest of money and some documents, is surprising and intriguing. A blast from the past, it has him thinking back to high school friends, Adrian Finn in particular, and his first girlfriend at college, Veronica Ford. As Tony examines his memories of 40 years ago, present day events have him wondering just how true his memories are, and how justified his actions really were. Quotes from his sixth form History class come to mind: “Is history the lies of the victors? Or the self-delusions of the defeated?” Tony decides it’s the memories of the survivors, who are neither victorious nor defeated. Barnes has given the reader a clever plot and realistic characters. I found the suicide philosophy (life is an unsolicited gift you can refuse to accept) thought-provoking and the twist at the end left me gasping. I found it very reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s writing. This is a short but very powerful read.

March is the second novel by Australian author, Geraldine Brooks. It tells the story of Mr March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, Little Women. But as well as giving the reader an idea of his experience “at the war” (the noise, smell, blood, cold and death are almost palpable), Brooks provides background on the Civil War: attitudes to slavery in the north and south, behaviour of soldiers on both sides of the war, and the experience of the civilian population. She touches on the North’s mixed record of high idealism, negligence and outright cruelty regarding the contraband (slaves who came within Union lines) and vividly illustrates the moral dilemma faced in war by pacifists who were also ardent abolitionists. A multitude of facts is incorporated into the story in a way that renders them easily absorbed. By having March narrate the first two thirds of the book, Brooks also gives the reader some of Mr March’s history: his youth, his career, meeting Marmee, his involvement in the Abolitionist cause, the reason for his reduced circumstances. Marmee’s thoughts and feelings about her husband’s actions are detailed when she takes over the narration: this wise, dignified, compliant woman is shown to have unspoken opinions while remaining the strength of the March family. All this Brooks meshes seamlessly with the events in Little Women. While Alcott would have been able to write from personal experience, the vast amount of research that Brooks has had to do is evident on every page. March adds some darker adult resonances to the voids of Alcott’s sparkling children’s tale. An outstanding read.

First Among Sequels is the fifth novel in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. The narration starts in 2002, some fourteen years after Something Rotten. Thursday, now 52 and feeling her age, is working at Acme Carpets, Spec Ops having been disbanded soon after the Commonsense Party came to power. Her sixteen-year-old son, Friday, destined to lead the ChronoGuard and save the world, is a typically teenage smelly, grunty bedslug. Landen and Thursday have two daughters, Tuesday and Jenny, and Landen writes at home whilst Thursday secretly runs her own Spec Ops branch and, in the Book World, trains cadet agents for Jurisfiction. Reality TV shows like Samaritan Kidney Swap have become popular, and read rates are dropping dramatically, a cause for great concern in the Book World. Tension is mounting between some of the genres in the Book World, and the Council of Genres is proposing to make books interactive. As things come to a head, Thursday finds herself, unthinkably, going to Goliath Corporation for help. While some of the pieces about time travel and the ChronoGuard almost had my eyes glazing over, things I loved in this excellent novel were the book refitter’s own language, the fictional Thursdays, the Stupidity Surplus, Schrödinger’s Night Fever Principle, the good ship Moral Dilemma on the Hypothetical Ocean, Aornis Hades timeloop prison, books whose genres change, piano exchange, the serial killer pun and the cheese smuggling. Landen has previously been very much in the background, but in this instalment his character is developed and we see more of Thursday’s family life. Fforde is always inventive with names and this book is no exception: Mrs Berko Boyler, Daphne Farquit, Aflredo Traficcone, Anne Wirthlass-Schitt, Cherie Yogert, Hedge Moulting, Cliff Hangar, Irritable Vowel Syndrome, and the various cheese names; Salmon Thrusty’s “The Demonic Couplets” is worthy of Rushdie himself. Thursday makes a lovely speech about the importance of the reader. The cliff hanger ending will send readers in search of the next Thursday Next novel, One of Our Thursdays is Missing. Reminiscent of Douglas Adams, this is another excellent dose of Jasper Fforde.

Edge is the 12th stand-alone novel by Jeffrey Deaver. Set in Washington DC, this gripping tale starts with a prologue in which a lifter, Henry Loving, tortures and kills a government personal security officer, Abe Fallow, for information about locations of people in the witness protection scheme. Fast-forward six years, and Loving has targeted DC police detective, Ryan Kessler and his family; Fallow’s protégé, Officer Corte is the one assigned to protect (shepherd) the family. Under Corte’s care are Ryan, his daughter, Amanda, his wife, Joanne, and her sister, Maree. Matters are complicated by the fact that no-one can quite figure out what information Loving is intent on “lifting” from Kessler and for whom, but Corte has the able assistance of Claire duBois, his own protégé. He also has mostly useful help from FBI agents and interference from the Attorney General’s department, as well as a Senate Enquiry into unwarranted wiretaps threatening. In this riveting novel, Deaver gives the reader a plot with plenty of twists, lots of tension, convincing characters and credible dialogue. He provides a wealth of interesting information about witness protection: the nicknames used, like hitter, lifter, clone, principal, primary and shepherd; the use of behaviour psychology, observation and communication; the resources used, like electronic devices, technical backup, accommodation, vehicles, weapons and surveillance equipment. Deaver also touches on game playing and tactical moves. Corte is perhaps a little too unemotional, but the plot ensures this is a page-turner.

Chesapeake Blue is the fourth of the Chesapeake Bay series by Nora Roberts. It is the story of Seth Quinn, who as a ten-year-old , was bought from his mother (Ray’s estranged daughter, Gloria deLauter) by Ray Quinn and raised by Ray’s adopted sons, Cam, Ethan and Phil. After years of promoting his art around the continent, Seth Quinn wants to come home to St Christopher, to the security of the place he grew up in. When he arrives, he meets Drusilla Whitcomb Banks, granddaughter of a Senator, who has come to St Chris to get away from life in Washington and the stifling demands of her parents. She’s running a flower shop and loving it, and Seth wants to paint her, and more. But everyone has secrets in their past, and Seth’s is insisting on turning up like a bad penny, threatening everything he holds dear. Is there any way someone as sophisticated as Dru can be with someone like Seth with his history? Is Seth underestimating Drusilla’s strength? Has Seth forgotten he is a Quinn, and Quinns stand together? This final chapter in the Chesapeake Bay series will please fans who wanted to know how Seth turned out. Roberts knows how to create characters to love and hate, and a plot that is original. An entertaining read.

The Lost Art of Gratitude is the 6th novel in the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith. In this installment, Isabel has to deal with an accusation by Christopher Dove of plagiarism in the Review of Applied Ethics, has to break the news of her engagement to Jamie to her prickly niece, Cat, is coerced into mediating with the father of Minty Auchterlonie's baby, meets Cats new boyfriend (a tightrope walker), engages a professional to capture Brother Fox and has lunch (a salad) with Professor Lettuce. As usual, Jamie is the voice of reason when Isabel feels action is needed, and Isabel's musings on many and varied subjects are a continual source of humour. And despite everything sent to try her, Isabel finds she has much to be grateful for. Alexander McCall Smiths novels are filled with gentle philosophy, charming characters and laugh-out-loud humour. This audiobook, skilfully abridged by Katy Nichol so that no relevant parts are omitted, is beautifully narrated by Hilary Neville. Truly delightful!

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is the first novel by Kiran Desai. In the town of Shahkot, in the shadow of the Himalayan foothills, lives Sampath Chawla, a bored, dreamy Post Office clerk distinguishing himself with lacklustre career ambitions. When he manages to lose his job, his father, Mr Chawla, despairs that his son will ever amount to anything; his mother, Kulfi, says little, but then, she did come from a mad family; his sister Pinky finds him irritating and exasperating; his paternal grandmother, Ammaji, however, is convinced he will come good. Overwhelmed by the attention, Sampath decides to climb a tree in the Guava Orchard to be alone, to clear his thoughts, a deed that, unfortunately for Sampath, has quite the opposite effect. Convinced he is a hermit, people gather to hear his thoughts: this sets in motion events that will affect not only Sampath and his family, but the people of the district, the Chief Medical Officer, the Superintendent of Police, the Army Brigadier, the University researcher, the District Collector and even a spy from the Atheist Society. This novel has a cast of amusing characters, a plot with a few surprises and is filled with wonderful prose like: “A passing car sent its searchlight-glare crazy and liquid over the sides of the buildings and into the trees, revealing not the colours, the daylight solidity of things, but a world of dark gaps cut from an empty skin of light”. Desai is skilled at creating atmosphere and this novel has a uniquely Indian feel. This novel was a pleasure to read and it is easy to see why it won the Betty Trask Award in 1998.

Port Mortuary is the 18th book in the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell. As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Centre, Scarpetta has been away for 6 months at Dover Air Force Base training in CT-assisted virtual autopsy. She is rushed back to the CFC by Marino and Lucy to handle a bizarre case that could shut down her new facility, an apparent arrhythmia victim who may have been alive when he was locked in the centre’s cooler. While she has been absent, her second in command, Jack Fielding, has been behaving very strangely. Her husband, Benton, is involved in a case where a young man with Aspergers has made a patently false confession that he murdered a young boy with a nail gun. And a young footballer was shockingly tortured and dumped in the nearby harbour. It seems these events are all connected. After 6 novels narrated in the third person, Cornwell returns to first person narration by Kay Scarpetta for this book, which I found easier to read, although the constant analysis of Kay’s feelings and borderline paranoia did become tiresome. As with previous Scarpetta books, Marino is still doing and saying stupid things; Lucy is still acting willfully; Benton is still being evasive about what he tells Kay, and Jack is letting Kay down, once again. As with many James Patterson books, the text of the first chapters is littered with brand names, something that might have the reader wondering if Cornwell profits materially or financially from this. What was interesting information: the concept of CT scanning autopsy; blade wounds; MRI scanning and metals; posthumous sperm harvesting; nanotechnology applications for surveillance and drug delivery; GSR testing for different types of bullets; robotic vehicles and flybots. The plot was original and thought-provoking so it is a pity Cornwell chose to pad the text with technical details of things like helicopter flight procedures and CT scans, which might only be of interest to technophiles, as well as trivial minutiae of driving a car and walking on icy surfaces. Some of the information was delivered by one character to another lecture-style; some of the dialogue between Benton and Kay was so wooden, they could have been casual acquaintances instead of husband and wife. The story was very slow-moving and the book would have been much improved by having the padding edited out.

Escape is the 41st stand-alone novel by popular author, Barbara Delinsky. One Friday morning, New York lawyer Emily Aulenbach takes stock of her life and realises it has strayed so far from her dream that she needs to escape. She takes off her watch, turns off her Blackberry, leaves behind her laptop and, without telling anyone or having any firm plans, heads north. After a few days, she finds herself in Bell Valley, New Hampshire, a place where her life changed radically one summer, ten years ago, and a place where she hopes to, once again, find herself. In Bell Valley, she renews a neglected friendship with Vicki Bell, submits to the healing powers of the Animal Refuge and reconnects with the mystical coyote of that long-ago summer. But an old lover, Vicki’s brother Jude, has also returned to Bell Valley; Emily is wedded to James, but the problems she ran away from include her fulfilling job, her demanding family and friends and her dysfunctional marriage, so is Jude’s presence a help or a hindrance? In this novel, Delinsky gives the reader characters with depth, spirit and integrity and a plot that is original and unpredictable, with an exciting climax. Delinsky touches on a range of topical subjects: the pressure of modern-day life; damage claims against large corporations; animal refuges; trust funds; intimidation and stalking; infertility and life balance. I had not read any Delinsky novels for quite some time, so I had forgotten what a pleasure these are to read. I really enjoyed this one.

Minding Frankie is the 16th book by popular Irish author, Maeve Binchy. When Noel Lynch, an alcoholic in a dead end job, is told he is the father of Stella Dixon’s baby daughter, Frankie (Frances Stella), it turns out to be a major turning point in his lacklustre life. He makes some big decisions and, with the help of his American cousin Emily, his parents and a multitude of friends, he is determined to raise Frankie to the best of his abilities. His friend from night college, Lisa Kelly, needs to escape from her family home and helping out with Frankie seems a small price to pay for sharing the flat with Noel. Of course, Moira Tierney, the unfriendly social worker, is convinced that it will all end badly and maintains a dogged surveillance on Noel, Lisa and everyone involved in Minding Frankie. In this novel, Binchy illustrates beautifully that saying “it takes a village to raise a child”. While this story can be enjoyed without reading Binchy’s prior novels, fans will be rewarded with appearances (some cameos, some major) of characters from previous novels including Scarlet Feather, Evening Class, Tara Road, Quentins, Nights of Rain and Stars, Heart and Soul and The Whitethorn Woods. This novel has births and deaths, weddings and funerals, long lost sons, major bequests, happiness and heartache. Reading a Maeve Binchy book is like coming home: it feels comfortable and you’re coming back to people you know and love. Binchy must have been close to seventy when she wrote this novel, but her characters and plots have moved with the times: she has lost none of her magic.

Born on a Blue Day is a memoir by Aspergeran, Daniel Tammet. Daniel’s Asperger’s is an extremely rare form, Savant Syndrome, which means he sees numbers as shapes and colours, and is able to perform extraordinary maths in his head, as well as being able to learn to speak languages fluently in a very short time. What makes this book remarkable and worth reading is that Daniel is high-functioning and able to live independently, as well as articulating clearly how his mind works. Daniel’s analysis of his own behaviour and reactions shows tremendous insight and makes his story interesting and compelling. The reader is left with nothing but admiration for this determined individual and his very supportive family and friends. A fascinating read.

Something Rotten is the 4th of the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. After 2 years as Bellman for Jurisfiction, Thursday has begun to miss the Real World, and decides to go back to Swindon with her two-year-old son, Friday, to see if she can get her husband Landen Parke-Laine, currently eradicated by the Chrono-Guard, un-eradicated. But life is never straight forward for Thursday: she is low on funds and needs her Spec-Ops job back; she wants to return a troublesome bookjumper, Yorick Kaine, back to the book he came from, before he succeeds in his campaign to leap from Chancellor and leader of the Whigs to Dictator of England; and she needs to organise Play Group and a speech therapist for Friday, whose first two years spent in the Fiction world have him talking Lorem Ipsum, the dummy text used by printers. Soon enough, Thursday also discovers she had an Officially-Sanctioned Stalker, Millon deFloss. On top of all this she has been saddled with Hamlet, on leave in the Outland to see if people really consider him a ditherer: rather untimely as Kaine is agitating for war against the Danish. Goliath Corporation, meanwhile, is attempting to switch to a faith-based operation management system. As always, Fforde peppers his narrative with wonderfully imaginative names for characters (Fawsten Gayle, Adam Gnusense, Commander Braxton Hicks, Brik Schitt-Hawse, Piarno Keyes, Tork Armada, Julie Aseizer, Alf Widdershaine, Ernst Stricknene), for bureaucratic entities (the Apologarium in Goliathopolis, St Septyk’s Hospital) and for TV game shows (Evade the Question Time, Celebrity Name That Fruit!, Toasters From Hell, You’ve Been Stapled!). The titles of the journals quoted in the chapter introductions are similarly clever (New Oppressor, The Toad, The Mole, Gadfly, Portsmouth Penny Dreadful, Swindon Eevening Blurb, Arboreal Times, Swindon Daily Eyestrain) and the context is hilariously inane. In this instalment we see more of Thursday’s family and learn more about the Chrono-Guard. Thursday survives several assassination attempts, smuggles banned books out of the country, plays World Championship Croquet, searches for cloned Shakespeares and makes a startling discovery about Granny Next. The Whigs, with their idiotic policies are way ahead in popularity, of the Commonsense Party, so in that aspect, Thursday’s world is not so different from ours, although re-engineered Dodos, Mammoths, Thylacines and Neanderthals are unlikely to ever abound here. As always, Fforde provides many laugh out loud moments in a plot that is original, thrilling and totally unpredictable. I look forward to First Among Sequels.

Mockingjay is the final exciting instalment of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Katniss Everdeen, having survived her first Hunger Games and been plucked out of the Quarter Quell by the rebels living in District t13, is now required to become the symbol of the rebellion, the Mockingjay. But while her mother and her sister Prim were rescued by her best friend, Gale, her own District 12 has been destroyed and Peeta Melark is a captive of the Capitol. It takes a reminder of President Coriolanus Snow to cement her resolve to become the Mockingjay. But while the revolution gains strength, Katniss is torn by the number of people dying for the cause she is heading: she is beginning to wonder if the regimentation of District 13 and President Alma Coin are any better than the Capitol and Snow. In this thrilling finale, Collins uses her main character to comment on: the power of the media and those who control it; how circumstances can turn gentle people into warriors; how power corrupts; the futility of war; and how those who develop weapons have no control over how they will be used. Collins gives the reader believable characters and an electrifying plot with plenty of twists. This may not be capital L literature, but it is nonetheless a gripping and thought-provoking read.

Luka and the Fire of Life is the 11th novel by Salman Rushdie, his second children’s novel and the sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. He dedicated this book to his second son, Milan, born 18 years after Zafar, to whom the first was dedicated. The story centres around left-handed Luka, second son of storyteller, Rashid Khalifa, and younger brother (by 18 years) of Haroun. Now that he is 12, Luka longs for an adventure like his big brother had 18 years ago, and, through casually cursing a cruel circus owner, he suddenly finds himself in the World of Magic, on a quest for the Fire of Life, needed to save Rashid, comatose and close to death. Soon enough, he realises that he is in the middle of a life-sized video game, amassing lives, losing them, reaching higher levels and saving his progress. Throughout his quest, he is accompanied by Bear, his dog, and Dog, his bear, as well as Nobodaddy, a being resembling Rashid, which is waiting to take Rashid’s life force and implode. Luka travels along the River of Time, towards the Lake of Wisdom and the Mountain of Knowledge, surmounts terrifying obstacles and meets a myriad of magical beings including Elephant Ducks, the Insultana of Ott, Prometheus, the Old Man of the River, Respecto-Rats and the ancient ex-gods of a great many civilisations. Rushdie is a master of clever word play, riddles and delightful puns; he makes thinly-veiled references to many well-known time travelling icons of film and TV like Dr Who, Time Bandits and Back to the Future. He has Luka watching a Beauty Contest of a very different kind, berating former deities, riding a magic carpet and battling the Lords of Time. We learn how Karaoke began and how Slackweed overran the Waste of Time. Ultimately a story about the love between a father and his son, the book is aimed at adolescents, but any adult who enjoys fantasy will find it a pleasure to read.

The Forgotten Affairs of Youth is the 8th of the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith. As always, Isabel’s life is full: she has articles to read for the Review if Applied Ethics, an instance of nepotism by Professor Lettuce to deal with, decisions to make about rising journal production costs, and 2½ year-old Charlie has started swearing. Learning of her niece, Cat’s latest liaison and wondering how many boyfriends is too many, Isabel mulls over her own forgotten affairs of youth: this segues neatly into the main plot, tracking down the long-lost parents of visiting Australian philosopher and adoptee, Jane Cooper. This time, however, Isabel’s “intermeddling” is, surprisingly, encouraged by Jamie, even though he wants her to realise she is not always right. Ultimately, she recognises she has once again done the right thing for the wrong reason. Along the way, we are treated to Isabel’s philosophical musings on many diverse subjects: being polite, or saying what you really feel; landscape painters taking artistic licence; the purpose of art; adoption; head lice; which bodily afflictions are too personal to talk about; sarcasm; swearing; wind turbines; jumping to conclusions; religion; children’s literature; dogs dreaming; metaphors; how to end arguments and knowing who you are. Cat is her usual superficial, difficult self; Isabel finds herself in the Emergency Department at the hospital; some humorous crossword clues are conceived; Isabel learns more about Professor from his nephew, Max; and, finally, a long-awaited event occurs. My favourite quote is “It’s very therapeutic for men to iron. Therapeutic for women, that is.” Plenty of gentle philosophy and bon mots like “people seek your advice only to confirm they are doing the right thing”. The dialogue between Isabel and Jamie and between Isabel and Grace is a wonderful source of humour: I almost had a coffee accident reading about Max Lettuce. I wonder, each time I start reading another McCall Smith book, if he can keep up the incredibly high standard he has set: so far he has not disappointed me.

The Help is the first novel by Kathryn Stockett. Set in the early sixties in Jackson, Mississippi, the story is narrated in three voices: two black maids (“help”) and a young white woman. Aibileen Clark is a wise Negro woman who has raised 17 white children, and lost a son of her own. She works for Elizabeth and Raleigh Leefolt and derives great joy from their Baby Girl, Mae Mobley, although she is under no illusion that this will last. Minny Jackson is a sassy young Negro with a talent for cooking who has trouble keeping her opinions to herself, a trait that has seen her fired from a great many positions. Her latest job is for newcomers, Celia and Johnny Foote, whom she hopes won’t hear of her reputation; Celia, though, is too busy keeping her own secrets. Eugenia (Skeeter) Phelan has just graduated from college, where her Mama hoped she would find a husband, but Skeeter wants to be a writer much more than a wife. She misses her beloved Negro maid, Constantine, who has disappeared and no one will tell her where. When Skeeter’s writing ambition crystallises into a book about the experiences of black maids in white households, Aibileen and Minny decide to become involved despite the enormous risk.
This novel touches on many topics, including racial segregation and civil rights and the relationship between Negro employees and their white employers. The feel of the sixties is beautifully evoked with the inclusion of many icons like the Pill, Valium, space exploration, ring pull cans, the Vietnam war, the introduction of Zip codes and sex before marriage. The characters are multifaceted and the dialogue is pitch-perfect. There is humour and heartache, cruelty and kindness, romance and suspense. We learn that revenge is sweet, especially in the form of Minny’s Chocolate Pie. The prose is, on occasions, luminous: “If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constantine’s voice singing.” The ultimate lesson is that the lines between black and white, between quality and trash, between employer and employee are not as definite as they might at first seem. And, as Aibileen says” Kindness don’t have no boundaries”. One of the dangers of reading a novel with so much hype is the very real possibility that the reader’s expectations will be too high, and disappointment follows; the exception is, of course, when the novel lives up to the hype, as this one assuredly does. I loved this wonderful, moving story.

The Expats is the impressive debut novel by American author, Chris Pavone. Set mainly in Europe, the action switches between Paris in the present day and Washington DC and Luxembourg two years previously. Kate Moore quit her undercover job with the CIA, a job that was secret even from her husband, Dexter, to move to Luxembourg with him and their young sons, Jake and Ben. There, Dexter’s job as a systems security expert for banks could afford them a better income and an enviable lifestyle which included weekends in places like Paris and Amsterdam. As expats, they socialised mainly with other expats, and had soon formed a friendship with Julia and Bill Maclean. But Kate’s CIA training leads her to suspect that Julia and Bill are not what they first seem and she begins to wonder: are they are assassins? Are they investigating her for unlawful actions in her CIA career? Or are they after her husband? Which leads her to start wondering if Dexter has been completely truthful with her. As Kate makes certain discoveries in the present day narrative, she flashes back to two years ago, her exit from the CIA and their early months in Luxembourg, and certain events and conversations suddenly become startlingly clear.
This novel has a superbly clever plot full of twists and turns that has the reader guessing to the last line. Without giving away too much of the story, Pavone uses the present day narrative to sow enough seeds of intrigue to keep the reader engrossed in the action two years previous. Interestingly, Pavone writes from Kate’s point of view, something he does very competently. As the suspense built, I found myself more and more on the edge of my seat. Proof of Pavone’s excellent descriptive talent is that as I sat reading the window ledge scene, my legs were aching, my body’s usual involuntary reaction to being at unsafe heights. Occasional lighter moments are provided by the children and social interactions with other minor characters, but for most of the novel, the tension is high. Pavone’s first-hand experience as an expat is apparent from the way he effectively conveys the atmosphere of European cities and expat life: his characters are realistic and his dialogue, credible. The novel poses a few pertinent and topical questions: When is it OK to steal 25 (or 50) million euros? Are we deluded in thinking that our money can ever be safe? Who guards the guards? Is anybody ever what they seem to be? Does anyone ever tell the whole truth? This novel has been described as “Brilliant, insanely clever, and delectably readable.” I wholly concur.