This is my review of One Summer: America 1927 (Bryson) by Bill Bryson.

At a talk to promote "One Summer", Bill Bryson identified the "twin pillars" of this book as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in the "Spirit of St Louis", a cue to describe the initial development of US air travel, and "Babe Ruth's" impressive score of home runs in baseball – a perhaps somewhat incomprehensible theme of limited interest for non-Americans readers!

However, his research revealed many other intriguing activities in progress at the time: the controversial executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, who may or may not have been murderous anarchists; botched attempts to enforce prohibition, including the state's instructions for wine meant for industrial use to be "denatured" with poisons like strychnine, leading to the manslaughter of respectable citizens; the carving of presidents' heads in Mount Rushmore, too far from any road to be readily visible; the filming of Al Jolson in "The Jazz Age", the first major "talking picture" that marked the death knell of the silent movie age; the bankers' decision to reduce interest rates, claimed to trigger the 1929 Crash, and so on.

Still on form with his gently mocking humour, Bill Bryson demonstrates again his gift for unearthing quirky details. For instance, he cites an architect's impracticable idea for elevated aircraft landing platforms supported at each corner by a skyscraper. It is salutary to be reminded how dangerous air travel was, with many aviators dying in explosions in failed take-offs or disappearing without trace into sea fogs.

Some disturbing insights into American morality lie beneath the jolly surface, such as the Detroit-based Father Christmas dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member complete with fiery cross, which did not seem to spark violent protests at the time. This foreshadows the bigotry which paved the way for the development of McCarthyism post World War 2. Then there is the ready acceptance of "negative eugenics", queasily apparent in the racial superiority implied by the portrayal of Tarzan in the popular stories of the day.

The text seems padded out to extend rather thin material for one summer to fill 500 pages, as for the rather tedious details of a murder case remarkable only for the extent to which a new mass media managed to create such interest in it. To explain an event in 1927, Bryson often goes back even to the previous century to provide further details. I was irritated by the continual breaking off from say, coverage of Lindbergh, to ramble into a different topic for a while. I would have preferred a more thematic approach to give an appreciation of 1920s America in general.

Also, you would think that Bill Bryson of all people would realise that non-Americans aren't that interested in baseball……

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of A Delicate Truth by John Le Carré.

Fergus Quinn, an ambitious New Labour Foreign Office minister, picks a biddable Whitehall bureaucrat to oversee "Wildlife", a sensitive counter-terrorism operation – an odd choice, since "birdwatcher Paul Anderson", does not have a clue what is going on, before, during or after an exercise that goes badly awry. So, after accepting a clearly undeserved promotion into a sinecure followed by lord-of-the-manor retirement in a decaying Cornish mansion, what could induce "Anderson" to become a whistleblower? The same could be asked of the hardbitten commando employed in the secret operation, and of young Private Secretary, Tony Bell, whom Quinn tries to keep out of the loop altogether.

This is the basis for a gripping modern thriller with a mission to arouse our consciences over such issues as the erosion of democracy, the corrupt involvement of corporate power in government e.g. for defence contracts, the frightening power of intelligence organisations to spy on ordinary people in the name of national security.

My problem was an inability to believe in much of the dialogue – artificial, with too many characters speaking in the same upper crusty old Etonian voice, or in some Monty Pythonesque portrayal of "a working man". Le Carré gives the impression of being slightly out of touch, as with the school teacher who talks of teaching "arithmetic up to A Level". Most characters are thinly developed, and heavily stereotyped. Frequent placing of important conversations in flashbacks reduces the potential dramatic tension. There is too much "telling", often repeating what the reader already knows. Plot content is slim, and as other reviewers have said, even the wrong at the heart of the novel, although shocking, seems insufficient to awaken consciences to the extent of creating whistleblowers prepared to stake all. Is Le Carré resting too much on his laurels in this latest work?

Chapter 2 provides a lengthy telling of Tony Bell's rapid rise, mentored and advanced by the caricatured éminence grise mandarin, Giles Oakley. At one point, Tony acts out of character, also giving a hint of things to come, with an inward diatribe against the immorality of the Iraq War, including special condemnation of Tony Blair, whose "public postures are truthless". This sounds like Le Carré indulging in a personal rant of his own. Truth being stranger than fiction, it might have been more effective to produce a non-fiction analysis.

I could only cope with the first part of the book by treating it as a parody of upper class, or would-be establishment figures fudging truth and sacrificing principles for the sake of a cushy life.

In the final chapters, where the key players belatedly try to take responsibility and expose the truth, Le Carré creates a real sense of menace and tension. Is struggle futile or will they be able to have the last word? If so, at what personal cost? With the end in sight, the quality of Le Carré's prose improves to what one has hoped for. "What the gods and all reasonable humans fought in vain wasn't stupidity at all. It was sheer, wanton, blood indifference to anybody's interests but their own".

Although style and structure often make for an irritating read, it seems a good choice for a book group, both as regards discussion of issues, and exchange of what are likely to be conflicting opinions on the quality of the writing.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Appointment by Herta Müller.

Herta Muller never tells us specifically that the setting is Communist Romania under Ceausescu's brutal dictatorship, so this could be the model for any repressive regime. From the opening words, "I've been summoned" to the concluding "The trick is not to go mad", this novella traces a woman's tram ride, largely given over to her stream of internal thoughts. Her mind flits from the sinister Major Albu who always start his interrogations by giving her hand a wet kiss, to her partner Paul who drinks too much, memories of her childhood, her first marriage, her beautiful friend Lilli who has died and observations of the other passengers. Gradually, we learn the reasons behind recent events.

The rambling quality of her thoughts detracts from their dramatic impact. Some points are a little repetitive, such as the fact that there is a touch of teenage incest in the lives of both Lilli and the narrator. The narrator sometimes seems amoral and calculating, but can you blame her in view of the experiences which have shaped her? The novella is generally bleak and unrelenting, yet it is salutary to be reminded how the lives of an individual and those close to her may be blighted by a single abortive attempt to escape to a freer life abroad.

Although some passages are very powerful, such as the suppression of Paul's attempts to produce aerials, an illegal activity since it assists the forbidden process of free communication with the outside world, I suspect the quality of the writing has suffered a good deal in translation. Also, Muller builds up a sense of anticipation which is not borne out by the ending as is the case with, say, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist".

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of American Rust by Philipp Meyer.

This impressive American "debut" novel must have flowered from the diverse influences of growing up with book-loving bohemian parents in a tough working-class suburb, dropping out of school to gain raw experiences but somehow getting to college, avidly reading Joyce, Faulkner and Woolf, and carrying first-hand research to the extent of riding freight trains and interviewing men on trial for murder.

Set against the backdrop of the crumbling American dream, as foreign competition knocks the heart out of once thriving steel-making towns, Meyer explores the drama of an unlikely friendship: on one hand, puny and eccentric but brilliant Isaac English, haunted by his mother's suicide and burdened by the task of caring for his cranky invalid father, on the other athletic but indolent Poe who has thrown away the chance to train as a football champion. Both share a confused desire to escape the depressed backwater of Buell, mixed with inertia and a love of the area's natural beauty. When one commits a serious crime, acting on impulse to save the life of the other, who will be blamed and with what outcomes?

After a dramatic opening, the story slips into a slow-paced cycle round the inner thoughts of six linked characters: Isaac, his favoured sister Lee who has managed to escape to Yale and a wealthy marriage, his crippled father Henry, Poe, his long-suffering mother Grace and Harris, the local police chief who fancies her, himself a survivor of the Vietnam war. Sometimes, Isaac's streams of consciousness become too obscure and tedious, the boozy sex between Grace and Harris a little repetitive, the minor scenes, as when Lee or Harris is socialising, too corny or banal. The strongest charge is that the denouement seems a little rushed and underdeveloped compared with the rest, although I liked the upbeat but open ending. Yet overall, this is gripping, with sufficient tension and unresolved drama to keep you reading in the belief that Meyer is ruthless enough to opt for tragedy, although it will never be unrelieved.

Less ambitious and "epic" than its successor "The Son", for me, "American Rust" is a technically better novel since the structure is tighter and the characters are more fully developed and therefore you care about their fate, with the possible exception of Lee who is the only one who might be regarded as successful, which perhaps is perhaps intentional on Meyer's part.

A good choice for a reading group as there is so much to discuss, it bridges the blurred gap between literary and popular fiction.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes.

This quirky biography of Flaubert wrapped up in an eccentric almost plot-free novel from the viewpoint of Geoffrey Braithwaite, an uptight retired English doctor obsessed with the French author is unusual, often amusing and, as some reviewers have commented, at times too clever by half.

If I had not read in French "Madame Bovary" and "Un Coeur Simple", I would have found it much harder to appreciate this book, which further restricts an appeal already limited by its status as a "literary novel".

I have learned a good deal about Flaubert, which I wish I had known when studying him for A Level decades ago, only no doubt his penchant for whores, young foreign boys and smutty jokes would have been considered unsuitable by my teacher. I can see that he was an original and truly independent thinker, probably still don't quite grasp the contribution he made to the modern novel, but do not find him very likeable as a person. He comes across as immature and opinionated at times, perhaps because his epilepsy isolated him, although he seemed to think he needed to be set apart, an observer looking on, to be able to write.

With his quicksilver intellect, Julian Barnes lets slip in passing a host of fascinating details and anecdotes. Flaubert wished he could afford to burn every copy of the very successful but deemed scandalous Madame Bovary. Did he mean it? Flaubert was bothered by his tendency to use metaphors. Was the famous parrot one of these and, if so, was it meant to be a symbol of the writer's voice, his obsession with "the Word"? Sartre, in what I find a surprisingly intense desire to attack Flaubert, rebuked him for, as Barnes cleverly puts it, being the "parrot/writer" who "feebly accepts language as something received, imitative and inert".

Barnes's mouthpiece Braithwaite lambasts the critic who claimed that Flaubert was so careless about the outward appearance of his characters that he gave Emmma Bovary three different eye colours: deep black, brown and blue. Instead, he shows how Flaubert subtly described her eyes in different lights and situations. Barnes uses some entertaining devices, such as three different versions of the chronology of Flaubert's life, the first very positive, the second negative, the third a series of striking quotations from different years of his life – or I think it is, but it's hard to know when Barnes is quoting and when he is making things up, which the novel format permits him to do.

I particularly liked the chapter written from the viewpoint of Flaubert's longsuffering mistress Louise Colet, who seemed to want to be his wife rather than his Muse and confidante, although she must have had "better offers". In the excellent chapter, "Pure Story", the narrator Geoffrey Braithwaite explores with great poignancy his relationship with his wife, managing in the process to draw comparisons with Madame Bovary.

Although I found some of the middle chapters tedious and rambling to little purpose, the book contains so many sharp insights it deserves to be kept and read more than once.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Honour by Elif Shafak.

Elif Shafak is a born storyteller, who knows how to hook the reader in a first chapter which ends, "He is my brother. He, a murderer". Although appearing to give so much away early on must detract from some of the dramatic power of later events – you could also argue this gives you the thrill of anticipation – a few red herrings and twists are left to the end.

I do not mind that the story of Turkish Adem Toprak, damaged sins-of-the-father style, and his beautiful Kurdish wife, Pemba Kader, or "Pink Destiny", flits between multiple viewpoints over five decades, but accept that this may confuse some readers. The author often seems to digress, caught up in her own fertile imagination, but most characters and incidents have some bearing on the complex plot which proves to have been carefully thought through. For instance, the forbidden lover Elias, a man of great tolerance, moderation and adaptability, symbolises the ability to survive in any culture since he does not belong to a particular one.

The scenes in Kurdish villages near the Euphrates are too unfamiliar for me to assess their authenticity, but I was convinced by the portrayal of a community held together by superstition and tradition which also have the power to destroy those who do not conform. The folktale aspect which Shafak likes to employ, a world of ghosts, spells, binding customs, unbending beliefs and unlikely coincidences is easier to accept in rural Turkey.

The culture shock of the Toprak family's move to London is well drawn, although too many of the sub-plots struck me as unrealistic with weakly developed or stereotyped characters: Roxana in the Chinese gambling den, Iskender's English girlfriend Katie, Yunus's escapades with the squatters – it seems implausible he is only seven, but I suppose at a more realistic ten plus he might be too old to share a room with his sister Esma.

With fewer characters and incidents to distract the reader, there might have been the space to develop the core of the book: the nature of honour in different societies and its implications, particularly for women in intensely male-dominated communities.

The author does not shrink from scenes of great cruelty, nor from the tragedy of misunderstandings and lack of communication, yet the story is saved from harrowing bleakness by her humour and warmth – which occasionally becomes a little too cloying for my taste. The soft centre irked me, as this potentially powerful book winds to a somewhat subdued anticlimax. Some passages are so insightful – for instance, the casual way British people say, "It's a shame" – that I wished the author had spent a little time editing weaker patches – continuity errors, cringe-making dialogue, etcetera – to make this a great piece of literature (like "Life and Fate" or "A Fine Balance") as well as a "good read".

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

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