I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

At the tender age of eighteen, Nazeen's life is turned upside down. After an arranged marriage to a man twenty years her elder she exchanges her Bangladeshi village for a block of flats in London's East End. In this new world, where poor people can be fat and even dogs go on diets, she struggles to make sense of her existence - and to do her duty to her husband. A man of inflated ideas (and stomach), he sorely tests her compliance.

But Nazeen submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes her life to raising her family and slapping down her demonds of discontent. Until she becomes aware of a young radical, Karim.

Against a background of escalating racial and gang conflict, they embark on an affair that finally forces Nazeen to take control of her life ...

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

From an interesting beginning, Ali's story disintegrates into cliches and unsympathetic characters. At no point did I ever manage to empathise with Nazeen or her plight and there were times when I felt that Ali took a somewhat condescending attitude towards people who lack education. The vast majority of male characters in the book are hypocrites, rapists, abusers or useless, something that made me feel very uncomfortable. Rather than an examination of women in Bangladeshi culture, I felt that I was being subjected to cultural stereotypes that were poorly drawn. Structurally the book didn't work for me - the letters from Hasina really needed to be in chapters of their own as they served to at times confuse timelines (in fact, the only time where I felt they worked was when Ali did put them in their own chapter). There were times when the timing felt incoherent as Ali jumps around between Nazeen's past and stories from her childhood and what was happening to her in the 'present'. I did like the storyline with the evil Mrs Islam, who I felt was well portrayed and Razia, Nazeen's friend was well drawn but they weren't enough to engage my interest for the last half of the book.

The Blurb On The Back:

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge.

By the end of that day the lives of all three will have changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

If it wasn't for the fact that the first half of the novel is really slow and a labour to read, I'd think this to be one of the best books I've read all year. The second half is very well written and evocative of the time, with some heartbreaking characterisation and a good twist at the end. Unfortunately, you have to get through the first half to get there and I suspect that the ponderous pace and the fact that so little happens for such contrived reasons will put people off.

The Blurb On The Back:

Tales of the DeCongested, Volume One, contains the best stories from the first two years of the Tales of the DeCongested short story reading event. Among the 34 superb tales included in this volume are stories by Ali Smith, Nicholas Royle, Ray Robinson and Frank Goodman.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Intelligent and enjoyable - this is a short story collection that's definitely worth a look. I look forward to reading the next volume.

The Blurb On The Back:

It is the summer of 1983, and young Nick Guest, an innocent in matters of politics and money, has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious new Tory MP, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their children Toby and Catherine.

As the boom years of the mid-1980s unfold, Nick becomes caught up in the Feddens' world, while also pursuing his own private obsession, with beauty - a prize as compelling to him as power and riches are to his friends. An early affair with a young black council worker gives him his first experience of romance; but it is a later affair, with a beautiful millionaire, that brings into question the larger fantasies of a ruthless decade.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:
Disappointing, shallow, superficial - a lot like the 80s themselves, really. Didn't enjoy it (although I concede that it's written in an easy to follow manner), surprised it's won awards and wouldn't be interested in reading other works by the same author.

The Blurb On The Back:

Investigating other people's tragedies and cock-ups and misfortunes was all he knew. He was used to being a voyeur, the outsider looking in, and nothing, but nothing, that anyone did surprised him any more. Yet despite everything he'd seen and done, inside Jackson there remained a belief - a small, battered and bruised belief - that his job was to help people be good rather than punish them for being bad.

Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet - Lost on the left, Found on the right - and the two never seem to balance.

Jackson has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, he attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected ...

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

This has an interesting plot but it's stifled by stereotypical characterisation and some appalling dialogue. It's a well paced novel that would suit the beach for those too snobby to take an Ian Rankin or P. G. James or Karin Slaughter, but I'd suggest that those authors give you a more rounded detective experience.

The Blurb On The Back:

There is no descriptive Blurb on the Back, instead we get the following quotes:

Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a perfect novel - just a great one.
SIMON SCHAMA, New Yorker

An amazing book - among the most stirringly erotic I have read for years ... I have read it and re-read it and can think of no othe rnovel for many, many years that has so moved me or stimulated in me so much reflection on the human spirit.
QUENTIN CREWE, Daily Mail

This book is so powerful that as I finished it I turned to the front to start again.
ANDREW JAMES, Sunday Express

One of the finest novels of the last 40 years.
BRIAN MASTERS, Mail on Sunday

This is literature at its very best: a book with the power to reveal the unimagined, so that one's life is set in a changed context. I urge you to read it.
NIGEL WATTS, Time Out

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

This book wasn't for me and it was a chore to read. However, I'm well aware that I am in a minority on this and I suspect that my failure to enjoy it is more to do with my failure to empathise with the female characters than the author's overall ability as a writer. If you're interested in World War I fiction, then I think there's a lot in there for you in terms of the daily experiences. If you're interested in well-rounded female characters, then there's not so much.