In my book blog, I review my favourite fiction genres: comedy, community, crime. I enjoy all three equally, but I’m always delighted when I find new books where they overlap.
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A single dreadful event, on a summer day in 1996, changes the lives of the inhabitants of a city tower block forever. Some of the residents have been living as strangers in neighbouring apartments for decades, others are connected by long gone family traumas and their continual struggle to ‘get by’. No-one affected by the disaster will ever be the same again.
Read MoreAttila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist visiting London to deliver a conference keynote speech, is an internationally respected expert on PTSD. Jean, an American, is a biologist, studying urban foxes on a short-term EU contract. They bump into each other, literally, on Waterloo Bridge in London. By coincidence, they meet again a few hours later, through their joint efforts to help a homeless man and his dog. After that, the two strangers go for a drink and their stories begin to intertwine.
Personally, I was more drawn to Attila, ‘a man so tall he appeared to be wading through the crowd’. His physical stature is matched by his big heart. When it becomes clear that he must take responsibility, not only for finding his missing niece and her child but also for rescuing his former lover, Attila steps up without hesitation. A childless widower, he is alone in life through circumstance, not by choice. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the horrors he has witnessed in theatres of war, he loves to laugh and passionately enjoys the good things of life. He relishes flavours, and asks to be seated close to the kitchen in restaurants, so that he can enjoy the appearance and smells of the dishes being carried past. Whenever an opportunity offers, he dances.
Read MoreForty years on, a wealthy but broken family must relive the dreadful events surrounding a young married woman’s alleged suicide. Although Cetin Ikmen has retired from the Istanbul police force, he is persuaded to investigate this not-so-cold case. A historian has discovered, in a ruined seaside villa, the Ouija board that predicted the bride, Deniz, would be the first of those present to die. While Ikmen delves deeper and deeper into the circumstances surrounding her violent death, both past and present are obscured and illuminated by dynamics motivating the surviving relatives.
Read MoreDisrupting the reader’s complacency is what Sara Collins does best. Identifying with Frannie, we face the historical realities of slavery, but there’s also plenty of humour, passion and adventure in her story.
Collins’ description of Frannie’s passionate relationship with her aristocratic mistress is only one brilliant facet of this exciting, unsettling book. In addition, there are colourful accounts of life below stairs and on the streets of London, recounted by Frannie in response to her defence lawyer’s desperate plea, ‘For God’s sake, give me something I can save your neck with!’
Read MoreThe Stepney Doorstep Society is a heartfelt and entertaining celebration of strong, intelligent, working-class women who took on not only poverty, but also Hitler’s Third Reich, in a never-ending struggle to care for their families and support their community.
A Boomer friend of mine, born a few years after WW2 ended, spent his childhood playing on London bomb sites and has the scars to prove it. I know the district this book is about and in the past I met many elderly people who had been through the kind of experiences described. While I was reading it, I wondered if I might have encountered some of the old ladies who shared their memories with Kate Thompson, because their voices came across as genuine and familiar.
Read MoreA House of Ghosts crosses genre boundaries to create an original story that I found both touching and exciting. Set in 1917, the cataclysmic losses families and communities across Britain suffered during WW1 are presented sensitively in the context of a strong plot that involves crime and espionage.
Read MoreThis book, and indeed the series, is illuminated by the personality of Inspector Chopra, a detective whose motto in life is ‘honesty, integrity, decency.’ In spite of every distraction that the underbelly of Mumbai life can throw at him, he adheres to these principles. He is a family man of great tenderness but also immense toughness. If his ‘maudlin silences’ occasionally annoy Poppy, they are understandable in the context of the corruption and greed he faces every day. ‘In our country, honesty is like the scent of blood in shark-infested waters,’ he complains.
Read MoreThe reader can learn a lot from Bonnie Garmus’ brilliant debut novel - and not only about chemistry. The story of Elizabeth Zott, scientist, tells us how ambitious women in America struggled to make their voices heard in the 1950s and 60s.
