Books Of The Year: 

 

"Outside of a dog, man's best friend is a book" wrote Groucho Marx.  Adding "Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."   

 

We are always surrounded by darkness at Christmas.  This year the match of the festive spirit seems difficult to ignite.  Never mind, a book is the perfect pressie that informs, educates and entertains.  It rarely needs charging and generally delights the soul.  I read a lot of books and blog about them so you can make an educated guess as to what a distant relative might like.  It's kind of my thing.   

Christmas is always good for a ghost story, so I would recommend Small Angels by Lauren Owen, by a long branch the best thing I've read this year.  I read a proof copy in May, three months ahead of its publication and it was enough to give me nightmares then.  Sam and Kate plan their wedding in the eponymous church in Sam's childhood village and are terrorised by the spirit of the woods, Mockbeggar.  Partially about the sacrifice of love, partially about love on your own terms, but eloquently terrifying all the same.   

Marian Keyes returned with Again, Rachel.  A sort of sequel to her 1998 novel Rachel's Holiday.  Our heroine is now counsellor at the rehab she attended, and she has settled for life on her own terms. All that equilibrium is blown by the return of her ex, Luke.  Keyes has a lightness of touch that few novelists possess.  She is a comic novelist with a mellow side. The Walsh family are a deft creation of lunatics, but there is also the sense of wisdom that comes with loss. 

I'm going to cheat here, which is appropriate as Christmas is a time for mischief.  The Stranding by Kate Sawyer was originally published in 2021, but this year saw its paperback release.  It's a sadly overlooked work, which is often filed as CliFi.  But it has a growing reputation - a Radio 4 Book At Bedtime and it’s currently being adapted for the big (or small) screen.  Set at Christmas and ending at Christmas, Ruth escapes the apocalypse with a photographer in the belly of a dead whale.  The narrative is split in two, meeting at the end of the novel.  By which time, you'll probably need a lie down and a good cry.  Possibly both.   

In non-fiction, let's start with The Slow Road to Tehran, Rebecca Lowe's journal of her bike ride across The Middle East.  It's full of delicious details, but tautly written enough to make the mouth gape at bike crashes and broken laptops.  It's expansive enough to explain the politics and culture of the area, but with the human touch of people just wanting to be happy.  

Anthony Beevor's book take roughly four years to write and research.  They are always grimly fascinating, but with a strangely addictive quality.  Russia suggests topical connotations but looks at The Russian Civil War following The October Revolution. Beevor doesn't stint on the gore and lunacy of conflict, but also throws details into his prose that are incredible - such as The Tsar having a military band in one room of his palace, which played The National Anthem when he walked in.  

Janina Ramirez is the smiley face of TV history.  Feminina looked at the woman of the Middle Ages, erased from history by The Reformation (the title was written on documents created by women).  In some small part, Ramirez is returning them to our collective consciousness. It's well-researched enough to stand as an academic work but is engagingly written to work as something that can be read in chapters, with one woman, lost from history in each.   

Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries was everything I thought it would be.  Rickman is a still a great loss to the acting world. Alan Taylor edits his thoughts and elegantly scripted journals into a cohesive whole.  A man who is quietly proud of his films, but actively hates the boy wizard who conjures up the fame and fortune he secretly craves.  It's a classic of the genre, up there with the diaries of Richard Burton and Alec Guinness.  

Finally, A Pocketful Of Happiness is Richard E Grant's account of losing his wife Joan.  It's easy to dismiss it as a light, frothy, insubstantial read.  But there is real weight in here.  He's starry-eyed as ever, but it portrays grief and loss in a more deeply personal way than Kubler-Ross ever could.   

Merry Christmas.  Buy your books locally.  Know that better, brighter times and days are coming for us all.   

 Book Review: Wildest Hunger by Laura Laakso 

Crime novels.  Everyone is either writing them, or reading them.  Personally, in this age of constant content I'm addicted to the idea of a morally-conflicted individual, dressed in charity shop donations entertaining me on Sunday night TV.   

Yannia Wilde is your atypical, defective detective.  She has an on/off boyfriend, a fixer and a snout. She has a contact in the police, but her methods are regarded as both eldritch and unconventional.   Her cases are gory, steeped in sex, mystery and murder.   

So far, so-so.  Now, let’s flip the script. Wildest Hunger is set in a world where supernatural beings co-exist uneasily with humans.  Wilde is one such, her beloved Dearon is another.  Her fixer is Karrion, a bird shaman.  Her snout runs a magical shop.  This is Wilde's third case and a series of dismembered bodies lead to a conspiracy at the dark hearth of the magical world.   

Wildest Hunger will tick a lot of boxes for crime fans.  It's also got enough sleaze and gore to satisfy Scandi crime fans.  Wilde is certainly as dysfunctional and damaged as let's say, Rebus or Holy.  What raises it, is the purely realised and well thought-out magical world.  There is a bare minimum of my own personal hate: info dumping.  That is real skill, even when reading the third book in a series out of sequence.  

There are also sudden and thrilling shifts, particularly when Wilde can "borrow" the abilities of animals.  There is a thrilling and gory dénouement between Wilde and the killer. There's also dashes of dark humour - Karrion loves a fried breakfast, but don't give him eggs.    

It's an involving read and enough to sink you fangs into, even if you haven't read the other two books and the novella that Wilde features in. Plus, the novel finishes on a blue note tha will lead into the next one.     

What is surprising is that Laakso has created a magical world that is acceptant of sub-culture, diversity and difference.  In a world where fantasy can be... shall we say, divisive - Laakso has created a fictional world where everyone belongs.  As society grows ever darker, it's a mystery why some magical kingdoms (both spiritual and temporal) seem less diverse than others.  Wildest Hunger is a thrilling, magical ride.   

 The Bat/The Snowman:  

Jo Nesbo's books have sold somewhere in excess of 50m copies.  Before he became a best-selling author, he was footballer, a rock-star in his native Norway and worked in finance.  His books are dark, nasty, cynical and possibly illegal police procedurals.  My thanks to Katie Ellis-Brown at Harvill Secker for the review copies.  

Our hero is Harry Hole.  The surname is pronounced "holy", but there is nothing sanctified here.  He's a recovering alcoholic, borderline sociopathic cop; but he's also Oslo's finest.  The Bat is his first adventure, as Holy is despatched to the other side of the world to solve the murder of a Norwegian backpacker in Melbourne.  The Snowman is set ten years later, with a serial killer placing the body parts of their victims in the first snowmen of the Oslo Winter.

By this point, Hole has become a celebrity on talk shows.  He's found love, lost it and has a flat full of damp for an encore.  This new case piques Harry's cynical nature, but the fact that the killer references Harry's first case makes things that more complicated.

It's easy to see why Nesbo is such a best-selling author.  The cases will be dark, nasty and gory for hardcore crime fans.  What he has got is the control of a Christie or a Rankin.  Those who think they can predict the killer in the first half of the book will have a hard-time.  Nesbo's killers are generally not whom you think you are, hiding in plain sight. 

And you can definitely see a jump in quality between book one and book seven.  The character of Hole is much more rounded, liveable and believable in The Snowman than he is in The Bat.  He is literally a young buck in the first book.  By Seven, he is literally beaten down by life and by the end of the case he has literally lost a body part in the cause of justice.  He can't find any kind of happiness and a bottle is only a step away.  

Credit should also be given to Don Bartlett, who translates his books from Norwegian.  The flourishes and dark humour of Nesbo's writing is still intact and that is a rare skill.  

So, crime fans.  Are you ready to step into a world of blood, ice and mordant humour?  Tread carefully - The Nesboverse is sixteen novels long - it can be a dangerous place.  

 Small Angels by Lauren Owen:

You're all invited to a wedding. Sam and Chloe are getting married in Small Angels, the church of Sam's childhood village.  His sister Kate is along to help. But something is not happy with the imminent festivities at the edge of Mockbeggar Woods. It's angry, manipulative and eldritch at the same time. 

Small Angels is a patchwork of a book.  Beneath it is a general, creeping, lurking terror of what will happen on the day itself.  Beneath that is the history of the village, it's myths and fables and how Sam and Kate's childhood affects what is going to happen.   And when it does, you'll be genuinely terrified. I say that as someone who doesn't "get" horror.  But be warned, find something to hold on to.   

There is the odd hint of the modern world, and where the unnamed village might actually be. But there is nothing to really tie it to one particular time and space - other than the fact that the hard drive of Sam's laptop keeps wiping and he can't get a mobile signal.  There is also the internal logic that the villagers accept that Mockbeggar is haunted.  Not just by the spirit, but also in the ghosts of angry dogs and a lost goose which plays with the children.

I should also mention that The Gonnes are a family of women, guardians of both the woods and Small Angels.  They are depicted at one point as cooking meals of random ingredients thrown into a pot and you can make of that what you will.  

There's more than enough in Small Angels to make the jaw drop and the flesh creep.  There is that tick and drip of information about what is going to happen.  One, involving Chloe's wedding veil is so horrifying I had to stop reading for a few minutes. She also acquires an unseen voice which narrates her wedding preparations and manipulates her into setting something loose.  

I'm not going to say whether there is a happy ending.  What I will say is it ends of a definite, unsettling minor key.  Things might be normal (or as normal as they can be in a haunted village), but there is great uncertainty with it.  It depicts perfectly the great leap of faith of deciding to give your heart and soul to someone.

I read this book three months ahead of publication and it was enough to give me nightmares then.  Published on August 2nd, it will make your flesh creep as the light seeps out of Summertime.  

 Shape Of a Boy by Kate Wickers: 

Kate Wickers is the truly seasoned travel journalist.  There's nothing you can tell her about how to behave in exotic climes.  And this book is a summary of her and her families' adventures since the Millenium. Her husband Neil and her boys Josh, Ben and Freddie are as much characters in this narrative as she is.  

So, this is not the traditional travel book.  There is no over-arching narrative, or geo-political discussions.  And in a way, you don't really miss those.  This is as much a book about the "joys" of travelling with children; whilst trying to have a decent holiday on your own terms.  Those of us with children will tell you that this is reconciling two entirely disparate/Panglossian notions.

In a sense, you watch the three boys grow up, within the narrative frame of annual holidays.  Her children are millennials, in every sense of the word.  But over the course of twenty years, the author has had some fabulous trips to places like Egypt, Mallorca, Borneo and Japan.  

Whilst there though, the author's adventures/misadventures have included retrieving a "little message" left in a hotel pool by one of her sons, being interrogated by Israeli police, trying to enjoy a yoga lesson with grumpy teenage children and possibly, best of all: giving the complimentary rum from a Cuban hotel room, to the cleaners to supplement their wages.

The writing is light and frothy, but slightly arch at the same time.  The author is constantly looking for relaxation, berated by her own kids for being a "Helicopter Mum"… but each chapter of their travels is used as lesson learnt; in bringing up well-adjusted, empathetic, decent human beings. Who also sell those rare Pokémon cards for £90 on eBay when they get older.

Plus, there is also the regret that her children are now (possibly) too old for family holidays.  Plus, the fact that Covid brought the idea of those to a temporary halt.   

It's not a long book, but the kind which is perfect for your own - hopefully less fraught - holidays.  Let your mind drift, whilst you congratulate yourself on being a good parent and asking the koan: What would Kate Wickers do?