This is my review of The Siege Of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell.

At first, this 1973 Booker winner seems too much of a conventionally structured "good yarn", a kind of Somerset Maugham with humour, to gain the prize today, but as the plot darkens and becomes more bizarre, I revised this initial view.

Inspired by the 1857 Indian Mutiny, the novel covers the siege of the "Residency" of "the Collector", a senior representative of the East India Company at the fictional although authentic-sounding Krishnapur. The Collector is the only person to foresee the rebellion, but his insistence on constructing security walls is dismissed as evidence of eccentricity, even madness. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a range of distinctive characters, members of the British expatriate community, in the main complacent, ignorant and contemptuous of Indian religion and culture, casually exploiting the locals as a source of cheap labour to support a luxurious lifestyle. There are moments of droll comedy, as when Lieutenant Cutter gallops on horseback onto a friend's verandah, spearing feather cushions to alarm and delight the ladies. Similarly, the culture clash is shown with amusing irony when the self-absorbed Fleury, obsessed with poetry, fails to grasp the bitter sarcasm of the local Maharajah's son, who finds himself frustrated in the attempt to discuss technical inventions with a westerner. Throughout this scene-setting, the reader anticipates that the peace is about to be brutally shattered.

With the siege in progress, I felt the book started to lose its way. A major flaw is that it seems utterly implausible that such an inexperienced and inadequate bunch of defenders could possibly hold out against a band of determined sepoys for more than a day. Also, the callous, facetious tone used to describe brutality begins to grate after a while, and certainly inures one to shocking and poignant events. I was unconvinced by the contrived nature of some of the philosophical debates which Fleury, or the doctors, or the padre are prone to launch into despite the pressing ongoing need to fight off the enemy.

The story begins to rally, ironically, as we see the characters reduced to starving skeletons, stripped of many of their former prejudices and worldly preoccupations. This is one of those books peppered with arresting insights as applicable to us today as to the Victorians, and with striking descriptions, such as the Collector's admiration for vultures for which he had grown fond: "by their diligent eating of carcases they had probably spared the garrison an epidemic" whilst, in flight "they ascended into limitless blue until they became lost to sight…. They more resembled fish than birds, sliding in gentle circles in a clear pool of infinite depth".

Tension is aroused in the final pages, since the eventual outcome is unclear. One senses Farrell is all too capable of wiping out at the end every character who has survived against the odds. He was a daring risktaker of a writer. Some passages are brilliantly original and quirky, others miss the mark with an element of Boys' Own fantasy. And underlying all the thud and blunder, there are perceptive comments on the meaning of life.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld.

There is endless potential in the theme of how men may be damaged when drafted to fight in distant lands for causes which do not arouse their allegiance, like the Korean or Vietnam Wars. Unable to express their emotions, they may drift into abusive relationships and neglect their children, damaging them in turn without meaning to do so.

If this sounds bleak, it could be made gripping and moving by the quality of the prose. Many reviewers have found this to be the case here, but after struggling with this book I had to admit defeat. I liked the evocation of an unfamiliar Australian landscape and culture. It did not bother me that the key points of the story are revealed only gradually and in some cases remain unclear. I did not mind its initial slow pace, but, in terms of structure it is too meandering. Also finding the opening pages so preoccupied with mundane aspects of daily life and the inner thoughts of Leon who seemed to me to be mentally ill, I felt the need for a touch of underlying humour, even of the wry or black variety.

Although the images used are at times striking and original, I agree with reviewers who have found the writing often banal – it really irks me when an author keeps using "like" instead of "as if".

Again like some other reviewers, I found the introduction of large numbers of minor characters together with frequent switches of time and place not so much confusing as irritating. Certainly, this contributed to my not feeling as much for the main players, Leon and Frank, as I think was intended.

I was left feeling frustrated: "here's the skeleton of a good novel, but this isn't it". Having read a number of classics recently, perhaps I have set the bar too high. In view of the quite polarised reaction to this book, I wonder whether it tends to appeal more say, to young men, than to older women like me.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Impostor by Damon Galgut.

In the interests of positive discrimination, Adam loses his job to the young black intern he has trained. I was looking forward to a South African writer's take on the reality of the curdled idealism of life in the post-apartheid system. Certainly, there are telling observations of a corrupt policeman, a beautiful young black woman now able to make her fortune as a white man's wife, older black servants whose lives situations remain remarkably unchanged, and a thug in fear of reprisals from former colleagues he has sold out in his confession to a truth and reconciliation committee. Yet, the book turns out to be more of a psychological drama involving Adam's dealings with a former pupil at his school who seems to have become an unlikely successful entrepreneur.

I admire the clear, uncluttered prose which provides vivid impressions of the South African landscape, some convincing dialogues which reveal, say, Adam's uneasy relationship with his brother, and an insight into Adam's complex state of mind as he goes through a mid-life crisis. I also like the way in which most of the main characters are to some degree "impostors".

However, I agree with the reviewer who finds Galgut's writing somehow "bloodless", promising more than it delivers. In this case, I just did not believe in Adam's ill-judged friendship with Canning, his acceptance of the old nickname "Nappy", nor in Canning's enigmatic wife, nor his magical estate of Gondwana. There were some tense and moving moments, but the ending left me underwhelmed. There are all the ingredients here for a good novel, but the whole ends up less than the sum of the parts.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

"Everyone knows it's always the husband": Nick is the obvious main suspect when his wife Amy disappears on their fifth wedding anniversary. Yet what kind of a mixed-up mess is she, after a lifetime of providing the model for her parents' money-spinning set of stories about "Amazing Amy", a modern Pollyanna designed to entrance both children and parents?

Gifted with a rampant imagination, Gillian Flynn has devised an intriguing situation with a labrynthine plot which hooked me because I sensed both that what I was being led to believe was false and that what I thought I was being clever in anticipating would prove a red herring as well. I like the gradual revelation of events in which truth and lies are hard to disentangle, the shifting relationships between the main characters, some sharp script-writerly dialogue, moments of real comedy in what seems to be mainly a black farce, and the continual parodying of the media-driven, hokey, faddish side of American culture. I liked it less when I started to suspect that the author herself might be too much part of this so that some of these parodies were imagined on my part.

Too often, the style lapses into a cheap magaziny tone, abetted by the author's love of creating adjectives ending in "y". I became irritated when the spate of quirky wit and imagination sank into slapdash banality. Are the false notes of trashiness unintentional or part of a plan to lure readers along with just enough but not too much violence and soft porn?

Although the commonly used device of alternating chapters between first person Nick and Amy works well, they both indulge in too much "telling" of their self-knowledge. Then, there is the continual underlying voice of the same caustic-tongued yet also often tweely sentimental female – incongruous for Nick in the midst of all his macho lingo and activities culled by the author from an obliging husband. I learned the latter in the acknowledgements at the end, which I mistook at first for Amy's play-acting of what an author's falsely modest, saccharine sign-off should be.

The nature of the final twist seems quite apt to me, but I was disappointed by its execution. I agree with reviewers who have found the final chapters too rushed and weakly developed – including some major flaws on the plausibility front.

Overall, I can see why this is a best-seller, probably one in a run of many. It is a page turner, good distraction for an economy airline flight, and a trigger for lively discussion at a book group if this does not cause an irrevocable rupture between the pulp fiction addicts and blue stocking readers, but with a little more care over style it could have been brilliant.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Cassandra at the Wedding (New York Review Books Classics) by Dorothy Baker.

How do you react when your identical twin sister announces her intention to get married? Particularly if you have spent your entire childhood in the self-contained bubble of a rural backwater, with an academic philosopher for a father, encouraging you to dissect every thought, and a novelist mother to feed your preoccupation with words? What if your parents have laboured to make you different in superficial matters, overlooking the fact that you differ in the deep sense that one twin wishes to share the same life forever whilst the other wishes to break free into adulthood?

This recipe for high drama is a gripping page turner. I could not wait to get to the end, knowing that I would need to go back later to milk Baker's keen prose for the full sense of all her sharp and original observations. It often reads like the plays for which the author was well-known, with the advantage that a novel gives scope for the deeper introspection and exploration of the characters' inner thoughts.

The book is written from the alternating viewpoints of the two sisters: Cassandra and Judith, which gives you in time their very different takes on the same situations. Cassandra is neurotic, manipulative, a keen observer of others, with a biting wit, but an utterly unreliable narrator who lacks a sense of proportion, a source of huge irritation but also great sympathy to the reader. This is a tragi-comedy with many moments of great humour, and a light touch which adds to the pathos of the sadder events without making them too heavily dreary or depressing. Unlike some reviewers (including Lowri Turner in the introduction to my copy, which was a total spoiler so I am glad I did not read it beforehand), I did not find the ending disappointing – rather neat yet also satisfyingly ambiguous in some ways.

It is surprising that such a modern-seeming novel should have been written fifty years ago by someone born in 1907. It does not seek to shock, because it does not need to do so to stand out, with its subtle and distinctive approach. I am sure that, if written today, it would be on all the major prize shortlists.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder by Evelyn Waugh.

Vivid and original descriptions, sparkling streams of consciousness with perfect grammar and impeccable punctuation, telling observation of character, sharp dialogue, and high comedy mixed with bitter irony – all the evidence for Waugh's reputation as one of England's greatest novelists is here. I can appreciate his nostalgia for a no doubt rose-tinted view of a past way of feudal life and the novel also provides some intriguing social history of the lives of a privileged few between two World Wars, as when an Oxford undergraduate casually expects a friend's drunken vomit from the night before to be cleaned up by a servant.

On the other hand, the snobbishness, treatment of "the lower classes" as a lesser breed, and frequent racist and chauvinist comments which seem to be a product of his own prejudice prevent Waugh from seeming a great novelist in terms of vision.

The most interesting aspect of the novel for me is the parallels to be found with Waugh's own life, despite his attempts to deny them. The bored Captain Charles Ryder doing his war service is Waugh stuck in England on petty exercises rather than seeing real action. Ryder's infatuation with Brideshead and the Marchmain family is Waugh's with Madresfield and the Lygons. Sebastian Flyte is partly the captivating, alcoholic drifter Hugh, and Julia is modelled on his beautiful sister Maimie, denied the opportunity to marry royalty because of a family scandal. Julia's fiancé Mottram's comical attempts to convert to Catholicism at any price are reminiscent of Waugh's own rather bizarre exchanges with the priest he had to satisfy to achieve his own conversion. The flamboyantly gay, precociously effete Anthony Blanche is, on Waugh's own admission, two-thirds Brian Howard and one-third Harold Acton, reciting poetry through a megaphone.

A weakness in the plot seems to me to be the scandal of the Earl's flight to Venice with his mistress Carla – his offence does not seem "bad" enough to justify the blight on the Marchmains. In this, truth was more dramatic than fiction: Earl Beauchamp (William Lygon), a major Whig politician, was forced into exile to avoid an Oscar Wilde-type humiliating trial when his officious brother-in-law threatened to make public his rampant homosexuality.

The part I find hardest to understand is Waugh's treatment of Catholicism which he saw as crucial to the work. He suggests to me that Hugh and Julia are "screwed up" by a religion that tortures them with a sense of guilt over the "sins" they are too self-indulgent to deny themselves. Using Ryder as mouthpiece, Waugh does a pretty good job in sending up Catholicism, exposing the confusion and illogicality of its practice. Yet, he clearly implies that, like him, Ryder converts to this faith, but Waugh does not supply a clear explanation as to why and how this occurred.

Whilst being a compelling read, this is one of those novels which need to be revisited to appreciate it fully. It is also ideal for a book group, since there is so much to discuss about style, structure, plot, characters and aim, plus it is likely to divide opinion quite sharply.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars