Books round-up of 2023: the good, the bad and the ugly

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?History: Dangerous Nation by Robert Kagan

This is the first in a trilogy on American history and was as fascinating as it was well-written. It explains a lot about US foreign policy and attitudes towards intervention and protectionism. This volume takes you up to 1900.

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Fiction: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

A massive hit at the time it came out, I was intrigued to read this tale of feminism in the worlds of chemistry and cooking. But while I wanted to like it, something in me didn’t quite buy it. A miss-hit and now a TV series.

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Fiction: A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

A tale of prostitutes in frontier America getting out from under (ahem!). Strangely written and again, not quite convincing. Despite their desperate plight the book held almost no tension.

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Memoir: A Place in Italy by Philip Mawer

A satisfying and true tale of Mawer’s two-year sojourn to a small village on the outskirts of Rome. Immersive, everyone should do this, but how many of us are brave enough?

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Fiction: Pasquali’s Island by Barry Unsworth

Intrigue on a fictional island off the coast of mainland Turkey around the time of the failing Ottoman empire. Conradian in style and a little unfinished.

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Fiction: My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor

Concerning an Irish priest residing in the Vatican during the German occupation and his resistance activities. Based on a true story, it should have been hair-raising but wasn’t. And not because I’m almost bald neither!

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Biography: Never Give an Inch by Mike Pompeo

The hawkish Pompeo (Trump’s ex CIA chief) gives his worldview on how to deal with practically any regime in the world. The clue’s in the title. However I was quite taken with it, not reflected by other members in my – mostly - liberal book group.

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Fiction: Damascus Station by David McCloskey

An awful airport espionage pot-boiler. I hardly ever read stuff like this but was taken in by the reviews. Broadsheet press criticism in the genres of Sci-Fi and Thrillers is in such a parlous state that I have since given up reading them.

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Memoir: The Secret Heart by Suleika Dawson

This is her account of life as the lover of David Cornwell (John le Carre). Her writing raises what is really a tawdry tale to a higher level and she emerges with integrity. Well done that girl!

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Fiction: Other Women by Emma Flint

Based on an actual crime that held the country enthralled in 1924, this book gives a voice to two women missing from the lurid reporting in the press. This is a dark, Dostoyevskian world where each of the characters’ lives is fated and yet the outcome is no certainty. Flint keeps us guessing right up to the end. A page-turning and exceptional piece of historical fiction.

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History: The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire by Ryan Gingeras

This is a fascinating piece of history not least because of Turkey’s strategic position in the world. Well-researched and even-handed, Ryan Gingeras gives us a clear view of the complexities in a way that you wouldn’t find in a guide book or through superficial reading of the subject.

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Biography: Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn

While you might baulk at reading this account of Fred and Rose West’s murderous spree you will never read anything quite like it. As a piece of writing, Happy Like Murderers is up there with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. The style Burn takes is one that you might find from a stranger met in a dingy boozer, repetitive, mildly hectoring and informed by local knowledge. Highly recommended.

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Fiction: Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken McLeod

Sci-fi, life ruled by a benevolent AI and not one of his best.

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Memoir: Cary Grant’s Suit by Todd McEwen

Bordering obsessive film fan’s essays on some of my favourite films including North by Northwest and Chinatown. You have to be a film buff yourself to get most of this.

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Fiction: Robot by Adam Wieswieski

Weird, wonderful and re-released sci-fi on what it means to be human. In the advent of AI this subject will become a prescient discussion.

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Fiction: Kick the Latch by Katherine Scanlon

Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan recounts the life of a trainer on the horseracing circuits of the American Midwest. Sonia’s life story, stated flatly and in staccato bursts, describes the hardships - and the hard-won highs - of a woman determinedly struggling to make it in a very masculine world. Clever writing which Scanlon makes look simple.

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Fiction: The Humans by Matt Craig

Not really my slice of gateau. All a bit YA in its wide-eyed telling of an alien, beamed down to earth to prevent the discovery of a mathematical proof, for which the human race is not ready. Haig is one of my daughter’s favourite authors and she has read everything he’s written. But one is enough for me.

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Fiction: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

A contemporary of Henry James, Wharton is far more straightforward and amusingly observational in her writing, and regularly flings open the windows to relieve the tension and claustrophobia. While this book summons a clear evocation of America before the crash, it is timeless in its storytelling. Highly recommended.

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Fiction: Redemption Falls by Joseph O’Connor

A family saga, set in the years of reconstruction after the American Civil War. This particular quote I noted as worthy of relating:

‘[dear] Reader…a truly compassionate marriage is as rare as the platypus…and as doomed to the museum. Should you be blessed with such an alliance cease reading these time-wasting lines, shred the volume and cast them into the hearth. Then fly to the lips of your tolerant conspirator to ask if there is anything you can do. For who among us would not rather be making love than reading?’

?Enough said?

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Fiction: The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd

Not one of his best, Boyd sets himself three main obstacles. He narrates in the first person as a woman…which he isn’t. He makes that character a modernist architect, a subject - it is obvious – about which he knows little. And he makes that woman an American, leading to some awkward dialogue gaffes. It is all a little self-conscious and if you haven’t read any Boyd I wouldn’t start here.

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Fiction: Dr No by Percival Everett

What an oddity of a book. A mathematics professor is recruited by a self-styled Bond villain to capture ‘nothing’ and turn it into a weapon for world domination. This lacks the sparkling dialogue evident in his previous novel ‘The Trees’. Everett has ideas but seems unable to exploit them for a full-length read. He’d write great screenplays and I hope he does.

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History: Picasso’s War by Hugh Eakin

In the early years of the 20th century the market for modernist art rested almost entirely with Germany and Russia. As the latter turned to communism and the former to fascism, modern art fell out of favour. One man, a lawyer in New York, bought almost everything he could, but died before the works were appreciated. What could have been the finest collection of modern art in the world was broken up sold off to overseas buyers. Tantalising.

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History: This is Europe by Ben Judah

Interesting essays about the ordinary and not so ordinary lives of Europeans in the present day. But perhaps too many of them?

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Memoir: Turning Over the Pebbles by Mike Brearley

Cricketer and psychoanalyst Brearley put out this book which covers a lot of old ground. It is repetitive and baggy and could have been better edited.

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Fiction: G by John Berger

Bergert was once one of the brightest intellectuals on TV with programmes like the Art of Seeing. But his writing I have never been fond of. G was a departure into fiction. I was not fond of it.

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Fiction: A Piece of My Heart by Richard Ford

Before he created Frank Bascombe and found his literary feet with The Sportswriter series, Ford wrote a few thrillers. This is one of those and is interesting for being so. A slice of American gothic from an American master.

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History: Homer and His Iliad by Robin Lane Fox

Lane Fox takes apart Homer’s masterpiece and asks the tough questions. A remarkable piece of literary erudition.

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Fiction: Appliance by J O Morgan

More sci-fi, this time a mordant tale of teleportation and the effects that has on societal breakdown.

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Fiction: The Well of St Nobody by Neil Jordan

Lyrical and magical, Irish film director Jordan writes a beautifully engaging tale of family and place. Put together in a few acts with reveals and cliff hangers this is much more than a disguised screenplay. But I hope he turns it into a film

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Fiction: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Readable fantasy that I kept thinking I would tire of but never quite did and finished it with a wistful sigh. Its structure is annoying and takes you out of the narrative making it all feel a bit self-conscious. A difficult book to bring to the screen which I realised when I subsequently watched the movie with Tom Hanks.

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History: Picasso and the Art of Drawing by Christopher Lloyd

Sounds academic and dry? Well it wasn’t, but you need to have more than a passing interest in Picasso to read this.

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Fiction: The North Light by Hideo Yokohama

This was trailed as a slightly spooky tale concerning a Japanese architect. Just the sort of Murakami-esque stuff I would go for usually but didn’t really hold together for me. Lost in translation perhaps?

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Memoir: Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzernegger

Part life story, part self-help manual, I wish I hadn’t read this and had just watched the three part documentary on him instead, which covers the same ground more entertainingly.

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Fiction: Closer by Dennis Cooper

Cooper does his best to shock with this tale of sex, torture and scatological deviancy, but I wasn’t shocked and found his writing style tough going.

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Biography: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis

Concerning the wild ride of Sam Bankman-Fried and the meteoric rise and fall of crypto exchange FTX. The numbers are astounding and so unreal-world that it’s difficult to get your head around. Ultimately…exhausting.

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So readers, 2023 a bit of a curate’s egg. There were plenty of others that I started and didn’t/couldn’t finish. This round-up covers the ones I did. My weekly blog will be back in the New Year. Here’s to a cool Yule…Nic