This is my review of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

You may ask how 150 pages can justify the Man Booker Prize. This may be on the basis of "less is more", and the author's ability to condense so much insight and provoking thought into a novella. The award may have been for the concise skill of his prose compared to the other less experienced writers on the long-list.

Retired and in his sixties, Tony Webster has played safe, telling himself he was being mature when in fact he was just careful, and missing out on life in the process. The first part of the book recalls his friendship with the precociously brilliant schoolmate Adrian, and his attraction to the enigmatic Veronica. I like the portrayal of the more innocent and sexually uptight world of the 1960s which were in some ways less "Swinging" than people may now imagine. The "too-clever-by-half banter of Tony's public school sixth form is a little pretentious, but may be realistic.

The second part becomes more of a psychological thriller in which Tony tries to explore and come to terms with the repercussions of his triangular relationship with Adrian and Veronica. Barnes arouses a strong sense of tension and expectation but, although I did not manage to guess the denouement, the double twist at the end was something of a letdown. I was too unmoved by the characters to care about them enough.

For me, this book is about how time may distort memories, how in both history and private life, people may delude themselves to make life more bearable. It is also about how, as we approach the end of life, we tend to assess how we have lived – to this extent perhaps it will mean most to older people who have known irrevocable disappointment.

You need to read this book twice to grasp the care with which it is constructed and the full significance of many sentences, but I found the denouement did not satisfy me enough to want to do this. There is a rich field of debate as to what really happened to Adrian and Veronica and why, together with an assessment of the degree of Tony's guilt. I agree with those who argue that Tony's actions are never bad enough for him to bear a heavy blame, but perhaps it is one of the main points that quite trivial events may have disproportionately serious effects.

It could make a good A Level text, both as regards how the facts are revealed, and what they mean.

I would say this deserves praise for quality of prose and ideas, but loses its edge through a needlessly rather weak plotline.

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⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Doctor Thorne (Classics) by Anthony Trollope.

Telling that more than 150 years after its publication, no Amazon reviewer to date has given this less than 4 stars.

In this entertaining soap opera of life amongst the Victorian upper classes, Trollope creates what is still for the most part a page turner through his detailed exploration of the thoughts and motives of characters who come alive on the page, his realistic, lively dialogues and creation of ludicrously comical situations offset by occasional scenes of real pathos.

It is interesting to learn from Ruth Rendell’s introduction to the Penguin Classic version, that Trollope cared only for creating “personages impregnated with traits of character which are known…..in a picture of common life”. For him, the plot was of lesser importance, merely providing a vehicle for the cast of players.

The plot is straightforward, apparently suggested by his brother: the Greshams are proud of their “ancient lineage” but the current Squire has managed his finances badly, aggravated by the extravagance of Lady Arabella, the mixed blessing of a wife from the aristocratic De Courcy family. The heir, Frank Gresham, is expected to save the situation by “marrying money” and duly sent off to court the heiress of an ointment manufacturer, but Frank has fallen in love with his childhood playmate Mary Thorne, the penniless niece of Dr. Thorne, with the added guilty secret of being the bastard daughter of his renegade deceased brother.

This is the framework for a social drama which exposes the snobbery and hypocrisy of the Victorian middle and upper classes. It was vital to have “good blood” to be accepted, but a bootmaker’s daughter could marry into an aristocratic family if she brought enough money with her. Ironically, their extravagance and parasitic lifestyle made many “great” families dependent on the very lower class people whom they despised for making their money from industry or trade.

Although the characters often seem very modern in their expression of emotion, we see how the now largely neglected concepts such as honour governed their lives. Dr. Thorne knows that his niece will inherit great wealth if a certain young man dies before he is 25, but is bound both to conceal the fact, so that Mary may be loved purely for herself and to do everything in his power to keep that young man alive, thus possibly denying Mary of her route to happiness.

You may criticise Trollope for ultimately accepting the values of his society, yet it is clear that he questions them.

This third novel in the “Barchester Chronicles” is distinctive in having few clergymen as characters, and forms a bridge between “The Warden” with its parochial focus on the lives of a small circle of people, and the later “Palliser novels” which present a more glittering world of aristocrats and public life. I find Trollope most compelling when he is describing the trials and dilemmas of ordinary people, like Septimus Harding and his little band of almsmen in “The Warden” or in this case Dr. Thorne, full of integrity, down-to-earth, but proud to a fault, scandalising foolish snobs by mixing his own medicines like a “common apothecary” and pragmatically charging a fixed fee for a visit, struggling to manage the alcoholism of his old friend Roger Scatcherd and his pathetic son Louis, or engaging in affectionate and surprisingly frank and equal exchanges with his niece Mary – although, being at heart a man of his time, he does not take her into his confidence over the truth of her social position, in its good or bad aspects.

The opening “scene-setting” chapters of this book are needlessly heavy going: Trollope apologises for them without seeing the need for a simple rewrite. The happy ending is never really in doubt, although we know Trollope is capable of occasional harsh fates for essentially good people. However, it is the development of the story outlined above that carries you through a book which you may feel a little sad to finish. I for one prefer Trollope to Jane Austen – perhaps because he had more experience of life, his characters seem more real flesh-and-blood.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale.

Earnest, well-intentioned, bookish and almost comically impractical, unconscious of the good looks which attract women to his aid, Barnaby Johnson has probably become a vicar for the wrong reasons.

This is the kind of tale that relies heavily on the way in which the facts are revealed, often through small hints and clues. Moving back and forth in time, each chapter focuses on one of the seven main characters at a given age, so that we gradually learn about their interrelationships, insights on life, and different perceptions of certain events and of each other. There is pleasure to be gained from "knowing more than the characters" at many points in the story, being aware, for instance, that two people are fated to have an affair, or to drift apart.

Frequently very funny, the narrative may turn like quicksilver to move or even shock the reader. When you analyse it, not that much happens, yet this is unarguably a page turner, which gives pause for thought, as to the way in which events have often profound and unforeseen effects and as regards human resilience and the capacity to survive and feel quite positive despite adversity.

Unfolding against the background of a vividly evoked Cornwall, the author apparently describes real villages, churches and old tin mining areas in the vicinity of Penzance. By contrast, real events are only hinted at. For instance, we know that when 11 year old Carrie goes up to London with her father Barnaby on a tin miners' demo against Margaret Thatcher, the news is full of the American space shuttle disaster, so it must be 1986….So, you find yourself working out the dates of other chapters. Just occasionally, there is a small glitch. For instance, when Barnaby is 29, Carrie surely cannot be more than four and so seems unlikely to be capable of making the wooden birthday gift as described.

Although generally very entertaining, the characters tend to be caricatures or stereotypes, and some of the minor players, such as Carrie's friend Morwenna, are too thinly sketched. I was struck by the feminine tone of the male writer, his insight, for instance, into the thoughts of Barnaby's stolidly practical yet privately sensitive wife Dorothy, and realised that Patrick Gale must be gay – I felt that the book strikes an overly sentimental note only when he touches on topics which must be dear to his heart, like the church blessing of a civil union between two young women.

Overall, any reservations are quite minor. Although I agree with reviewers who have thought that the story could have probed deeper and the ending may seem a little too "feel good", it is very readable with a no doubt deceptively easy flow of words over which Gale has probably laboured with great care.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman.

I avoided this novel for a while, fearing it might be exploitative of the recent Damilola Taylor tragedy, another example of truth being more searing than fiction. I have now read it for a book group, with an eye to deciding where I stand on the controversy over its shortlisting for the Man Booker.

As far as I can tell, Stephen Kelman makes a good job of getting into the mind of Harrison Opoku an inquisitive, impressionable, well-intentioned but vulnerable eleven-year-old boy uprooted from Ghana and thrown into the life of a tough inner London suburb, complete with grafittied tower blocks, menacing teenage street gangs and comprehensives ineffectual in the face of dysfunctional youth culture.

Harrison is both shocked and fascinated by the police crime scene marking the fatal stabbing of a boy at his school. As clues about the identity of the killer begin to emerge, Harrison naively sets about playing the part of a juvenile detective, unaware of the fact that many people already know or suspect who the attacker is, but are too scared to say anything.

Harrison's take on the world is by turns both very funny and poignant. I enjoyed his sparky exchanges with his sister. His frequent forgivable misreadings of situations alternate with some astute observations of the grim urban world which is "the norm" for too many children. An innocent "clean slate", he is singing hymns in church one minute, hanging out with an alcoholic thief and longing to own his dangerous dog "Asbo" the next, never seeing the incongruity of this. As teenage gang members bully and goad him to prove himself prepared to break the law, we fear he will be sucked into their sick world of knives, guns and gratuitous violence, but a basic decency always seems to return him to a better path – we even see him maturing a little from his experiences as the book builds to a possibly unexpected but on reflection inevitable conclusion.

Like some other readers, I was quite irritated by the occasional but increasingly frequent appearance of the philosophising italics-using pigeon who seems invested with some kind of all-knowing spirit. The little pictures of signs, and double page spread of T-shirt slogans are a little too gimmicky.

A more serious reservation is that I am unsure how authentically Ghanaian Harrison's language is, and I agree that many of the other characters are caricatures, and there could have been more backstory about Harri's family, which could have been skilfully implied in his account of various scenes.

I do not mind that the story proceeds in a series of disjointed episodes, since overall they carry the story forward to a finale which leaves a few loose ends on which readers are left to speculate.

This often feels like a book for teenagers rather than adults. It would make a powerful tool for raising awareness through class discussion, although the frequent swearing would probably get it banned for this purpose. However, I am not convinced it has the quality of prose, or originality to deserve a Booker-type award.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Absolution by Patrick Flanery.

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, "Absolution" focuses on the celebrated but prickly novelist Clare Wald, who has permitted the little-known young Sam Leroux to interview her for a biography on the thin basis that "I've read your articles and don't think you're an imbecile".

Flanery succeeds in building up a sense of suspense and secrets to be revealed. Born to a liberal family, how did Clare manage to stay in South Africa and continue to write without falling foul of the authorities? For what sins does she crave absolution? She is clearly haunted both by the death of her sister Nora and the disappearance of her daughter Laura, for whose terrorist leanings she feels in some ways responsible. Does she recognise Sam, and what is his role in her past? What is Sam's ulterior motive in seeking her out? Why do these two find it hard to ask each other the questions which they need answered?

The story unfolds against a background of disappointing yet perhaps inevitable ongoing corruption and violence, with a vivid portrayal of the insecurity felt by whites in modern South Africa combined with a residual excessive privilege, the continual fear of robbery and elaborate security precautions which make them virtual prisoners in their luxurious homes.

The core of the book is an examination of the difficulty of knowing the truth about events, on both a personal and a political level, despite the work of the "Truth and Reconciliation Committee". This is due to people's differing perceptions of the same event, the gaps in memory caused by trauma, the desire to cover one's tracks, or to spare the feelings of others.

What other reviewers have seen as deep and impressive complexity appears to me to be unnecessary convolution. The use of four main parallel plot strands, combined with the device of describing the same event in different ways, makes for confusion at times. There is too much repetition of certain thoughts and memories, whilst details of some key events are left vague – perhaps this is intentional. Ironically, after leaving so much open to interpretation for so many pages, the end seems to spell out too prescriptively what the reader is supposed to think.

The important political and moral discussions between Clare and Sam often seem too wordy, earnest and stilted. I grew tired of Clare's endless tortured dreams and visitations from ghosts. Overall, there seems to be too much reporting or recalling of events, not enough acted out as scenes.

I agree with the reviewer who felt that this first novel has been written with literary awards in mind. The result is a little uneven with some striking, if studied, descriptions alternating with passages which seem slipshod and in need of further editing. I also agree that some of the philosophising about the nature of truth at the end is a little lame.

To conclude on a positive note, for an American to absorb and convey a sense of South Africa, the scenery, vegetation, lifestyle and atmosphere, seems quite an achievement.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Weekend by Prof Bernhard Schlink.

Christiane collects her brother Jorg from gaol where he has served more than twenty years for Baader-Meinhof-style terrorism in Germany. She takes him straight to a week-end in a rundown country mansion with an assortment of old friends. This seems such a bad idea as to be highly implausible, but it is of course a device to enable the author, a lawyer by profession, to explore all the moral arguments associated with terrorism designed to overthrow a corrupt capitalist system and related questions of guilt, how our views and the situations themselves change over time.

In what I found the most interesting chapters (35 and 36), group members discuss to what extent "the truth makes you free" or rather that "freedom makes things true" which means "there are as many truths as people freely living their lives" – but also the "life lies" which people need to be able to keep on living. I wondered if the theme would have worked better as a play, but this would have made it harder to show the characters' thoughts.

Schlink introduces quite a large cast of characters, so that I understand why another reviewer felt the need to note them down: Ulrich, who abandoned his youthful radical leanings to become a respectable and law-abiding dentist, Henner who came from a similar privileged background and flirted with revolutionary ideas before taking up journalism, Karin the female bishop who conceals from her husband the fact that she had an abortion in her "wild" youth and rather enjoys playing the part of a respected member of the community, and so on.

Although I found the ideas and plot potentially very interesting, I nearly gave up on the book at several points because of the clumsy style of writing which may have been due to the translation. Many conversations seem very artificial, a crude vehicle for presenting ideas. Likewise many of the recollections are a heavy-handed way of filling the reader in on past events. Some potentially dramatic scenes go off kilter, such as Ulrich's unbelievably crass interrogation of Jorg at dinner on the lines of, "What about your first murder?" A young girl's attempt to seduce Jorg (Chapter 8) is another example of a confusing and poorly written scene. Some of the descriptions are very clunky e.g. "The residents of the village who have work don't have it here".

Schlink seems to be producing novels fairly frequently, but I wonder if he should take a little more time to hone his work in order to do justice to his deep concern with issues of guilt and morality in modern Germany, now extended to broader post 9/11 global conflicts.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Soul Of Kindness (Virago Modern Classics) by Elizabeth Taylor.

Beautiful, indulged, emotionally immature with a childlike reluctance to face up to the grimmer realities of life, Flora does not prove for me to be the manipulative monster implied in the publisher's blurb, but her good intentions certainly cause other people grief, if not exactly leading to hell.

Each chapter in this well-crafted novel reads like a short story in its own right, providing sharply observed descriptions of the characters, their thoughts and relationships and the socially conventional, class-conscious, uptight world of Britain around 1960. Everyone except Flora knows a man is gay, but cannot discuss it. If a man has a drink with a lonely female neighbour it should be concealed as evidence of an affair.

The book is perhaps more interesting now than when it was written because it captures a lost world of dense London fogs, middle class women who do not work once married, and have live-in housekeepers in the basement, a safe, dull society on the brink of being shaken by the Swinging Sixties, fast food, pop culture, media manipulation and rampant commercialisation. Yet, some things have not changed, like the tatty sights and smells round an underground station, or a typical English seafront.

Perhaps Elizabeth Taylor is no longer widely read and known since her largely middle class characters seem rather snobbish and dated, there is no overt sex and violence and the drama is subtle and understated with a focus on the ordinary events of daily life. However, the power of her deceptively simple prose is very striking – a satirical Barbara Pym meets Dorothy Parker, by turns funny and moving.

She is also brilliant at creating in a few words a sense of place and nature and how they affect people's moods: starlings tearing up crocuses, gardens in the rain, the sadness of caged animals at the zoo.

It is intriguing to know that the intensely private Taylor may have been a person of hidden passions – respectably married to a businessman, her life said to be too uneventful to induce a friend to write her biography, she had communist sympathies, was a labour supporter and possibly intimate letters to a male friend were destroyed after her death.

I hope to read more of her work, but savour each novel as a model of how to write.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The Cove by Ron Rash.

This short novel, which has more real content and lasting power to move the reader than many much longer works, has introduced me to Ron Rash whose writing I shall make a point of seeking out in the future.

The prologue – a device which I normally find superfluous – holds many of the keys to his power as a writer: the clear, economical, unassuming prose; the ability to create a sense of place and people; a suggestion of mystery or menace to hook your interest. There is the rural wilderness of some Tennessee backwater, the isolation and superstition of the local people, who have hung protective charms at the entrance to the dark cove into which the sun never shines, where bad luck strikes the inhabitants, the one spot where locals are happy to see a Government official survey prior to flooding it for a future TVA reservoir.

Ron Rash has already begun to hook me with the yarn of this outsider unravelling some tragedy from the past, when he shifts back in the main body of the story to the life of Laurie Stanton, doomed to grow up in the cove after her father's unwise purchase of cheap land where the chestnut woods prove diseased. Shunned by the nearby townsfolk because of an unsightly birth mark, even regarded by some as a witch, this sensitive, bookish girl gives up any thought of education and escape to run the domestic side of the small farm. Her brother Hank, returned wounded with a lost hand from the First World War in distance Europe, is bent on doing up the farm prior to his marriage. He is only too glad to use the services of Walter, the young camper whom Laurie finds lying sick in the woods, after being drawn by his skilful flute-playing. Walter's inability either to speak or to read and write do not prevent his becoming a companion to this lonely young woman.

And so the framework is set up for a tightly plotted, often moving yarn with some moments of high tension. All the threads are brought together for the dramatic climax, which leaves you guessing over some major points to the last page, and even after that with a good deal to reflect on about say, the nature of loss and of life, in which intense personal relationships may be of great value, whilst they are also in the scale of things – the dark, massive cliff of the cove – of no significance at all.

The story is an interesting take on how the lives of ordinary people can be affected by a war on the other side of the world. Rash is good on what sounds like the authentic period detail, including life on a fairly primitive farm. He is very convincing in getting inside the head of a young woman, and his main characters are mostly well-developed with strong, realistic and varying emotions. Perhaps Walter's thoughts remain unclear and some of the minor players tend towards stereotypes, but overall this is a gripping story which succeeds both as popular and literary fiction.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The Devil’s Beat by Robert Edric.

Since "In Zodiac Light" caught my imagination, I have persevered in attempting Robert Edric's novels, which have also appeared on the shortlists (or longlists) of several literary prizes.

Set in 1910, this story describes a public investigation into claims that a group of teenage girls have been possessed by the devil. Clearly, this echoes the Salem Witch Trials, but compared to the fireworks and high drama of Miller's "The Crucible", it is a damp squib.

A few scenes are quite dynamic, as when the investigator Merrit and Doctor Nash (perhaps the liveliest character) are pursued by journalists on their way to view some graffiti related to the case, but most of the chapters make turgid reading, with very stylised, unnatural exchanges.

Chapter 6 begins, "The opening of the inquiry proved to be the disappointment Merrit always knew it would be." And so this proves to be the case for us as well. But why tell us this and then prove it with a laboured description? There was no hint beforehand that Merrit expected to be disappointed. Wouldn't it have been more dramatic if this had come as a surprise?

Although earlier books like "In Zodiac Light" or "Gathering the Waters" contain passages of striking, finely observed prose, I could not find many further examples here. The characters are developed as distinct personalities but one is told too often what to think about them, as opposed to deducing this for oneself. Individuals are portrayed as weak, domineering, clever, stupid, devious as the case may be, without much opportunity for the reader to sense any nuances in behaviour, or to note any changes over time.

They also all talk in the same highly articulate fashion. Since the setting is an imaginary Nottinghamshire town, I would expect the local characters to have more of a regional turn of phrase.

As in previous books, Edric creates a sense of anticipation, but the plot fails to deliver much action or insight. Unlike other reviewers, I found the ending quite subtle and effective, but the business of getting there required too great an effort. There is too much plodding detail to engage one's interest.

I had to suspend disbelief over the clumsy operation of the inquiry, with Merrit asking leading questions and getting wrong-footed like a novice. The way the other panel members were allowed to interrupt and pontificate made the whole process into an elaborate word game rather than a realistic inquiry.

Other reviewers have spoken of the background of interesting social change, but this did not seem to me to have been developed much.

Edric comes across as a deeply committed writer but for me, this novel lacks the vital spark, deep purpose, quicksilver wit , power to move or original idea, any one of which would set it apart as a good novel. Yet, on reflection, there is the framework for a gripping story, calling for a lighter touch, more ambiguity on the way rather than at the end, and scope for the reader to speculate, to be misled, and then be drawn, along with some of the main characters, to reassess the situation, rather than have prejudices confirmed.

I would recommend instead his previous "A London Satryr" as being more original and better plotted.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars