This is my review of The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan.

This is oddly reminiscent of "Under Milkwood", perhaps because it uses the poetical yet often also earthy voices of a variety of characters to capture the spirit of a rural community. A short intense and condensed novel, with all the flesh of scene-setting and background information stripped away, it comprises twenty-one internal monologues which combine to show how the collapse of the building boom in Ireland wreaked havoc on the already sad and dysfunctional lives of many ordinary people.

Pain is piled on by the shovel-load, and it would all be unbearably bleak but for the author's ear for the poetry and droll wit of the Irish way with words. There is continuous entertainment in not only the language but the links between the various characters, their different readings of situations, and the poignant plot which gradually emerges around the ever-present figure of the charismatic but troubled Bobby Mahon. Donal Ryan is prepared to take risks: one "voice" is a ghost in limbo, and I was unsure for a while if another was not a "split personality".

If there are flaws in this original book, one is that some of the "losers" portrayed are a little too similar and so seem superfluous, another that many characters share the same streak of repressed violence plus a fundamentally introspective, articulate, self-aware voice that is probably too much that of the author. At times, I felt I was being told too explicitly what to think about a particular person, as in the case of Bobby's embittered father Frank, rather than left to deduce it for myself. The style is less convincing when Ryan abandons his Irish patter, as for patriarch Josie Burke's educated liberal lesbian daughter Mags.

Although my interest flagged a little in the middle of a book which seemed to have "made its point" about the state of Ireland quite quickly, what proves to be a carefully constructed tale twists to an effective ending.

Overall, it is an impressive first novel, which repays a second reading.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Laidlaw (Laidlaw Trilogy Book 1) by William McIlvanney.

Curiosity over the recent revival of interest in a crime writer said to have inspired Ian Rankin, led me to read the first in his trilogy on DI Laidlaw. Prickly, sardonic, subversive, a maverick with a rocky marriage and a boss who only tolerates him because he gets results – all this sounds like a stereotype of fictional detectives we have come to know, but Laidlaw was one of the first, appearing in print back in 1977.

This investigation of the brutal murder of a young woman is less of a whodunnit- we are catapulted into the murderer's confused psyche in Chapter 1, and more of a whydunnit, exploring the personalities of the main characters against the background of gritty gangland Glasgow. The images are often striking and original: "A Glasgow sun was out, dully luminous, an eye with a cataract", Laidlaw is described as "looking terrible with a right eye like a roadmap", or a man watches "a blackbird balance its beak like a nugget of gold". The language is often quite poetical and repays reading slowly, but the pressure is on to find out what happens next.

Some scenes read almost like a play, as when Laidlaw's young sidekick Harkness asks how they can begin to relate to the murderer. Laidlaw's unusual view is that, "This murder is a very human message. But it's in code. We have to try and crack the code. But what you are looking for is a part of us. You don't know that, you can't begin."

When we first meet Laidlaw, he is "feeling a bleakness that wasn't unfamiliar to him….doing a penance for being him." Since this negativity, combined with great intensity, often oppress both Harkness (driven to ask "who wants to be batman to a mobile disaster area") and Laidlaw's long-suffering wife Ena ( she's looking after the three kids he claims to love whilst he is out philandering), you may wonder how the author expects his readers to put up with his creation. Yet, the gloom is offset by wry humour and tight plotting. Although I sometimes found the style of writing contrived (and could not get some sentences even after several readings), this novel stays in one's mind longer than the usual monosodium glutamate thriller, and leaves you with the sense that it is both gripping and worth reading.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The Son by Philipp Meyer.

This saga covering five generations of the McCullough family portrays the creation of the state of Texas as an example of a central theme of history – survival of the fittest as a succession of invaders seize and exploit the land for themselves, often destroying the landscape in the process. In this case, "the dry rocky place it is today" was once a green land of deep black soil, trees, tall grass, "even the steepest hillsides overrun with wildflowers".

The viewpoint switches on a three chapter cycle: Colonel Eli McCullough, tough and vengeful, even psychopathic, made acquisitive by harsh experience, who survives capture by the Comanche Indians as a teenager to become head of a major cattle and oil dynasty; his granddaughter Jeanne Anne, a "chip off the old block" who carries on his work; his son Peter, sensitive and introspective, so dismissed as weak, his whole life blighted by the guilt of the family's casual massacre of an old Mexican family, rivals for land. Ironically Ulises Garcia, a descendant of both families, may prove a worthier inheritor of the Colonel's wealth than his pampered great-great-grandchildren who have lost their fighting spirit. Running three main threads in parallel may confuse the reader, and for me it detracted from the dramatic tension of some key events, but it helps to remind one continually of the connections between the characters, the causes and effects of their actions.

Although at times it may seem little more than a swashbuckling western or prequel to a Dallas-type soap, this is raised above the average by the depth of Meyer's research. Too often, chunks of this are planted in the middle of the drama, but some passages are fascinating, such as the detailed description of how Indians made ingenious use of every part of a buffalo, leaving only the heart within the rib-cage to show the gods they were not greedy, or the chilling account of exactly how a teenage white boy turned native would set about preserving his first scalp.

The well-knotted ending enhanced my opinion of the story after some lengthy periods of frustration in which I wished Meyer had worked a little harder on his dialogue and character development – inevitably thin at times with so many players, and that he had been more ruthless in leaving out some minor scenes to leave more space for "showing" rather than the "telling" which is often too dominant. These shortcomings, such as the corny Hollywood-style of communication adopted by Eli's Comanche companions around 1850, place this book closer to airport blockbuster than literary fiction. I'm sure it will sell very well, it is impressive but not in the same league as Cormac McCarthy with his mindblowing prose.

This will inspire many to revisit the history of the development of the west, but in the meantime a glossary of e.g. Mexican terms used and of some historical characters mentioned would have been useful.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

When unemployed computer geek Clay Jannon takes on the night shift at Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore, he soon suspects it is a cover for some other activity, and so the mystery begins. This is a quirky blend of imaginative tecky inventions, such as a Google project to develop a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris (it is not always so easy for a non-tecky reader to know where to draw the line as to what is feasible), and nostalgic harking back to a Lord of the Rings fantasy world. The bookshop is archaic, with shelves ascending into what reminds Clay of the shade cast by dense trees in some magical forest.

Apart from a highly creative imagination, Robin Sloan writes with continual quick-fire touches of humour. Still unsure as to whether I could cope with what I suspected was intended for a 20-something male computer geek readership, I was won over early on by the image of the aged Penumbra tottering to the solid shop-front desk, "you could probably defend it for days in the event of a siege from the shelves".

Despite my admiration for all this, I fear that it could not sustain my interest. The main characters are two-dimensional, the explanations often tedious, the writing-style too often banal, the basic mystery ludicrous, the denouement which I cannot reveal a bit of a corny cop-out. I only read to the end for the sake of a book group meeting which included a skype chat with the author- a charming and humorous man with a very positive attitude to life.

I could have done with more of the occasional original insights such as that, "we imagine things based on what we already know and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century."

So, I am torn over my assessment of a work that is original and funny in parts, yet also has a juvenile quality, an implausible non-mystery at its heart (try explaining it to someone!) and some dull passages to wade through.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars