This is an in-depth portrayal of the evolving relationship in the four life-changing years from leaving school to starting on a career of two young people in present-day Ireland. It is perhaps inspired by George Eliot’s observation, quoted at the outset,  and no doubted garbled here into plain English, on the profound  and unexpected way in which one personality may influence another.

The bright but troubled product of a well-off yet dysfunctional family, Marianne is a loner and misfit at secondary school, continually provoking rejection and bullying by her peers. The one exception is Connell whom she can meet in a neutral setting outside school because his mother cleans for Marianne’s family. Supported by his poor but well-balanced and tolerant single mother Lorraine, the charming, athletic and academic high-flier Connell is the complete opposite of Marianne in being very popular, a situation he is afraid of sacrificing by the admission that he not only likes her but they are in a sexual relationship.  In his immaturity he behaves callously, despite the sensitivity which feeds his love of English and leads Marianne to encourage him to apply to study literature at Trinity, her university choice.

Once at somewhat exclusive middle-class Trinity, the tables are turned: with the chance of a clean slate, it is Marianne’s turn to become accepted and sought after, whereas the working-class Connell feels out of his depth, judged by his thick regional accent and cheap, unfashionable clothes. Yet through indications of her lack of self-esteem and sexual masochism in her relations with men, the degree to which Marianne has been physically and mentally abused is revealed: although details remain sketchy as to her dead father, they are painfully clear as regards her cold mother, and brutal, manipulative brother, both themselves the victims of abuse, but not portrayed with any sympathy like Marianne. Throughout, she and Connell may no longer be lovers but share some deep bond, yet not always with complete openness and self-knowledge. Though highly intelligent and perceptive, immaturity and lack of experience inevitably plunge them into frequent uncertainty and confusion, unable to express their complex, shifting emotions.

This is an insightful and often moving page turner, with the tension of knowing that matters could end in tragedy. Born in 1991, Sally Rooney has the advantage of being close enough to her school years to write with authenticity about the pressure to conform and bullying aggravated by social media. She gets inside the head of the two main characters to create a convincing stream of the changing and conflicting emotions of being on the cusp of adolescence and adulthood.

It may well be that this novel has been over-hyped, although I would not criticise the simple style which is probably  harder to write than it seems and serves to convey  the characters’ thoughts more effectively than  many a self-regarding literary turn of phrase.  I agree that apart from Marianne and Connell, the characters are mostly two-dimensional caricatures, with no indication of their inner motivations and thoughts. The main flaw for me is that periods of mental illness, which figure strongly in the book, seem to be slipped into, or recovered from rather too abruptly, with insufficient development of the situation. However, I was satisfied by the ending which seemed a well-chosen point for conclusion, leaving it open to the reader to decide what happens next in their lives. This is not a depressing read for there are moments of humour despite the emotional intensity.

It is 1549, with the boy-king Edward VI on the throne and his ambitious uncle Edward Duke of Somerset the virtual ruler in his role of Lord Protector. People are already beginning to voice regret over the passing of Henry VIII and England is ripe for rebellion with the grim imposition of fanatical Protestantism and acute poverty aggravated by the cost of on-going wars and the debased currency, but in particular by the accelerating pace of enclosure by wealthier landowners of the common land  vital for the survival of their poorer neighbours.

In the seventh novel in this series, courageous, persistent, incorruptible, liberal-minded lawyer Matthew Shardlake is asked to investigate discreetly a murder charge against John Boleyn, a relative of the king’s sister, the young Princess Elizabeth. Since the Boleyns are out of favour, he may have been framed.

This plot-line is side-lined by the eruption of Kent’s Rebellion on the fringes of  Norwich. Workers who have been subservient all their lives gain confidence and determination in the new-found freedom of the camp on the sandy heath above the city, where they are trained to fight in the event of the Protector failing to accept their demands for reform.  Tension builds with the news of the approaching the army sent to quell their resistance. As the prospect of failure and reprisals grows, some begin to question the decisions of their charismatic leader Robert Kett.

Although sometimes bearing too close a resemblance to a schools’ history documentary, this theme is quite gripping with a range of well-developed characters and certainly raised my interest in a significant happening of which I was unaware, despite having studied A Level History. The lengthy essay at the end shows the book to be remarkably faithful to known events, as well as indicating what some have criticised as the author’s obsession with the theme. One caveat: would the shrewd and cautious Shardlake really have agreed to act as Kett’s legal advisor with so little apparent internal doubt and fear?

I found the details and handling of the Boleyn murder mystery less satisfactory, with an over-reliance on coincidence and a somewhat implausible denouement. Too many of the characters seem to be caricatures, or two-dimensional, the villains ludicrously villainous. The two threads of murder mystery and rebellion are welded too crudely together.  The novel is hard going by reason of its unnecessary length, padded out with repetition or superfluity of detail, or simply verbosity. However, it seems that famous, successful authors are no longer required to spend time editing, and no one else bothers if it is a “guaranteed” best seller.

This is my review of “A Glass of Blessings” by Barbara Pym.

With her coolly  ironic appraisal of well-heeled middle-class life in 1950s London, Wilmet Forsyth could be a reincarnation of Jane Austen.  Married to Rodney, a conventional civil servant slipping prematurely into a dull rut of middle age, who feels that it reflects badly on a man if his wife works,  Wilmet has no children, plenty of domestic help,  and so has too much time on her hands.  A situation which was commonplace amongst young middle-class women fifty years ago sounds dated and odd now, indicating how much life has changed.

Wilmet is made to seem more appealing by her humorous self-deprecation: imagining the two local clergymen in need of home help attempting to boil eggs she concludes, “I wondered if they would know what to do if they cracked. I never did myself”. Wilmet is a mass of contradictions. Her religious piety seems like a social habit acquired alongside her elegant dress-sense, her liking for good food and wine, and her disapproval of men in duffel coats and women wearing nail varnish. She seems untroubled over having a husband and mother-in-law who are “non-believers”, and shows a broad-minded tolerance to acquaintances who turn out to be kleptomaniac, or living in a gay relationship at a time when this was still illegal. Her religion does not prevent her from basking in the admiration of her best friend Rowena’s  husband,  and playing potentially dangerous games  with  the intriguing Piers Longridge, Rowena’s  possibly disreputable brother with a hint of the ne’er-do-well.

On the surface, this is an entertaining read if one can avoid feeling irritated or in the case of younger readers even offended by the total lack of political correctness: the snobbish class-consciousness with its sense of entitlement and privilege; the stereotyping of working class characters; sexism and intimations of racism- although no one belongs to an ethnic minority to put this to the test. I am fascinated by this type of novel which recreates the sense of a past way of life, to some extent parodying it, but with the writer herself a product of the period, unconsciously voicing accepted prejudices of her society.

Barbara Pym was an Oxford graduate, who never married, despite many close relationships with men, and who earned her own living apart from writing novels. Although she is too subtle to make it explicit, she portrays Wilmet as an intelligent woman who does not fulfil her potential because of the attitudes of the society in which she has been raised. Publishers were apparently reluctant to print Pym’s novels which even at the time were considered old-fashioned.  Yet in her lifetime, she was considered underestimated as an author, who remains worth reading not merely for her clear, pithy style and wit, but also for the poignancy and depth of observation of human nature which lie beneath the surface.

This is my review of Himself  by Jess Kidd

In the late spring of 1976, roguish Dublin charmer Mahony saunters into off-the-beaten track Irish coastal town of Mulderrig, “a benign little speck of a place…pretending to be harmless”, “his trousers…ridiculous…wide enough at the bottom to mop the main road”. After years spent in a bleak orphanage, he has discovered his true name and identity, and comes in search of his mother, or at least to find out more about her, the bewitching, wayward teenager Orla Sweeney. So begins a tale of detection with a difference.

Since Mahony has inherited Orla’s powers of clairvoyance, and sees ghosts at every turn, he is likely to glean more information from them than the sly locals with much to hide. Yet it seems that having the second sight does not enable Mahony to see straight away the truth which is partly revealed to us in the brutal hook of the prologue, in which a young girl is savagely murdered by an assailant, but her baby son is mysteriously spirited away while his back is turned.

Usually, I would avoid like the plague a book run through with so much ghostly magic realism. Yet in this first novel, Jess Kidd proves to be a kind of female, Irish Dylan Thomas, sustaining such a vivid imagination, and spinning her blarney with such easy skill, mixing humour with poignancy, that I was won over. This novel is not merely a page-turner to see how it will all end, but a joy to read for the sheer language: when the unpleasant local priest is punished for his worldly cynicism by the appearance of a spring in his library, he tries to look “rigidly unperturbed” as “near the fireplace…a thick layer of frogs seethe in heathen ecstasy where the hearthrug used to be”.

Since the story is “off the wall” from the outset, although managing to convey a good deal about tight-knit, isolated rural communities given to superstition, I found the build-up to the denouement a tad too ludicrous. References to some of the ghosts, like the eccentric ageing actress Mrs Cauley’s long-dead lover Johnnie become a bit repetitive, and phrases including “arse” too tediously frequent, but overall it is a surprisingly good read.

Although somewhat flawed in certain respects, this is a remarkably talented work, more entertaining, humorous and moving by turns, and in fact better written than many a more hyped and “literary” novel.

This is my review of  Ghost Wall  by Sarah Moss

This novella packs a more powerful punch than many a longer novel, with never a word wasted as it grips us with the sense of menace building beneath its wry humour, the strong sense of place on the moors and beach below Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, the characters and situations revealed through the observation of the narrator Sylvie, named by her father Bill after Sulevia, the Ancient British goddess of springs and pools.

A bus driver to earn a living, Bill is a self-taught expert on Iron Age life and survival skills. He is also a working-class racist, male chauvinist bigot, a control freak who dominates his downtrodden wife and teenage daughter with verbal sarcasm which tips into physical abuse, often as a means of releasing his own frustration when he feels criticised or undervalued by other people. “He didn’t always like it when people laughed”.

This and more becomes slowly apparent as Sylvie describes their family “holiday” taking part in an exercise to re-enact Iron Age life, alongside three students of the ebullient Professor Slade who drops by each day to see how they are getting on as self-sufficient hunter-gatherers, spending hours foraging for bilberries, burdock root, garlic “greens” and mussels at low tide, skinning rabbits for “mum” to stew in a cauldron over an open fire, when not washing a student’s filthy smock after he has slipped into a bog.

Dressed in a coarse, shapeless tunic and thin skin moccasins rather than what would seem like essential hiking boots, Sylvie can “feel the texture, the warmth, of different kinds of reed and grass in your muscles and your skin. The edges of the wooden steps over the stile touch your bones, an unseen pebble catches your breath. You can imagine how a person might learn a landscape with her feet”.

Having delegated the drudgery, the Professor and Bill have time to turn their minds from mundane to mystical matters, and get carried away planning the Iron Age-style “ghost wall” of the title, a palisade of willow lattice and skins, decorated with animals’ skulls in the absence of human ones. When dusk falls, the desire to drum on the skins and chant proves irresistible, and from this it may be only a short step to the “play-acting” of some darker ritual.
Silvie is shrewd enough to recognise that her father is “a show-off given to brutality” and has not had too much spirit beaten out of her to argue. Yet she seems tied to him in their appreciation of a natural world free from the false pressures and values of modern commercialisation. She appears trapped in childhood, frightened of venturing out into independence – even her attraction to the student Molly seems like a kind of adolescent crush, perhaps the dawning of an awareness of how she might become a liberated young woman, perhaps a rejection of the maleness which has so far crushed her, rather than an indication of lesbianism.

Apart from the sheer enjoyment of reading this book for the quality of the writing and the tight, entertaining plot, many issues arise for consideration: prevailing class differences, the north-south divide, male versus female relationships, how we have lost touch with nature, how values have changed over time in some ways, and in others perhaps essentially remarkably little.
My only slight reservations are over the formulaic, over-used device of a prologue with a dramatic, violent hook to catch the reader and the very abrupt, anti-climactic ending. Yet I can see that there is strength in leaving matters open for the reader to decide what happens next.