2008 in Review

Alex – My resolution to read fewer, but better quality, books went the way of most resolutions: of the 300 books I reviewed this year, 250 were fiction and 50 non-fiction (another year with no poetry), which is neat but coincidental!
Favourite novel: Underground – I read it early in 2008 and it stayed with me for the rest of the year, something of a measuring stick, and now (in the wake of political change both in Australia and the US) a reflection of a time that’s passed.
Favourite non-fiction book: this is far more difficult than picking a novel! I'm torn between Why We Buy, Better, How Doctors Think (by Jerome Groopman not Kathryn Montgomery), and the re-read The Tipping Point.
Favourite newly encountered author: a tie between the prolific Elizabeth Berg, the breathtakingly amusing Christopher Brookmyre, and Robert Muchamore, though I'm sure I'm forgetting several writers.
Most disappinting novel: Sandra Scopettone's Too Darn Hot: I love her contemporary stuff but this just left me cold
Least rewarding non-fiction book: a tie between Anything Goes by David Stove and An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David: my mother loves her work but it just didn't speak to me at all
Most disliked read: Will Self's Great Apes, and I barely made it to page ten.

And what does 2009 hold? I’d like to tackle some of the novels I’ve had on my To Read list for a while, including Anthony Powell’s 12-part A Dance to the Music of Time (my mother’s favourite books), Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (huge, but apparently worth it), and make some inroads in my own backlog of books, 2008 being the Year of the Library. I also plan to write my reviews contemporaneously, rather than saving them up for one mammoth reviewing session.

Lynn
When it comes to choosing a worst book of the year, my 2008 reading list leaves me spoilt for choice. Over the past twelve months I have been seduced by many a promising plot only to be disappointed by cardboard characters, poor writing, clichés and disbelief so suspended it snapped.
It has been a difficult decision but I have finally narrowed it down to my top, or should that be bottom, three books of 2008.
Coming in at number 3, the most boring book I read this year was L A Banks' Minion. How Banks manages to make a vampire huntress action adventure dull I don’t know. But she does. This book makes it no higher (or should that be lower) on my list because I read it with no expectations and so I was disappointed rather than annoyed.
At number 2, with possibly the worst ending to a book ever, was M J Rose, The Reincarnationist - A Novel of Suspense. I enjoy reincarnation as a plot device and could have forgiven a lot in my desire to like this book but somehow Rose manages to take a fascinating premise and turn it into a flat, convoluted mess. Going into this book actively favourable to its content yet still finding it annoyed the crap out of me, earns this book its number 2 position.
And with the dubious honour of being the worst book I read this year, coming in at number 1 was Allan Massie's Arthur the King. I am a fan of all things Arthurian and couldn’t count the number of retellings of the legends that I have read, from a wide variety of perspectives and with some wild interpretations. I am fairly forgiving of flaws in Arthurian works. I can tolerate a lot in the name of a new Arthurian variation. But I couldn’t even finish this book. When writing is so bad that I walk away from one of my favourite subjects that book deserves the title of Worst Of My Reading List for the Year.
Choosing a best book of the year was no easier. As I scanned my reading list there were several titles that brought a fond smile of remembrance to my lips but not many that had me thinking I would be sorry if I missed reading this book.
Naturally the superlative Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series features highly on my best books list but I have decided that the best book I read in 2008 was Phil Rickman’s December. While it was not perfect, indeed in some ways it was quite lacking, it was the one book that I recall coming to the end of and wishing wasn’t over quite yet.

Better – Atul Gawande

Subtitled A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, this second collection of essays by the brilliant author of Complications doesn’t disappoint. As he did last time, Gawande explores a range of topical and relevant medical themes, beginning with an individual situation or case, expanding out to encompass the wider aspects of the issue, then bringing it back to the starting point. Each section articulates an aspect of good practice and positive deviance – the qualities that distinguish an ordinary practitioner from an extraordinary one.
Gawande’s exemplary qualities are Diligence (“both central to performance and devilishly hard”), Doing Right (the issues and conflicts that arise as a consequence of being a flawed human being), and Ingenuity (“a willingness to recognize failure… and to change.It arises from deliberate, even obsessive, reflection on failure and a constant searching for new solutions.”). Each section contains a number of thematically-connected essays that between them cover topics as wide ranging as the problems of hand washing in hospitals, the participation of health care professionals in applying the death penalty, medical litigation, and what separates a good cystic fibrosis service from a great one.
Gawande writes in an accessible, lucid and vivid manner that appeals as much to lay readers as health professionals. Tags and annotations distort my copy, because I found something valuable on almost every page – he articulates complex matters clearly and concisely, illustrates the macrocosm of medicine with vivid personal stories of individuals, and left me inspired. He is also refreshingly honest about his own failings, as an intern (in the introduction) and practitioner (particularly in the opening essay, about the difficulty of translating the acknowledged importance of vigilant hand washing into action). A valuable companion piece to How Doctors Think in terms of medical philosophy, Better should be required reading for all undergraduate medical students, as well as anyone who wants to write in the health care field. - Alex

Northern Lights – Nora Roberts

Reeling from the death of his partner, a shooting for which he blames himself, Nate Burke’s left his job as Baltimore cop to be the first Chief of Police in the tiny town of Lunacy, Alaska, population 500 and change, including the sort of eccentric characters small towns are known for – the aging beauty who’ll sleep with any man passing through, and a pair of twins who’ll fight each other half to the death over any disagreement. Nate half expects to pull out before his probationary time is up, but from the beginning he sleeps through the night for the first time since Jack was shot, and he is instantly attracted to fiercely independent pilot Meg Galloway.
An Outsider from the Lower 48, Nate knows it’ll be some time until he’s accepted, especially as he makes changes the town aren’t all happy about – he refuses to kowtow to the town’s wealthy resident, banker Ed Woolcott; he locks up Drunk Jim, the town dipsomaniac, whenever he goes on a bender. As he expects, most of the crimes in town are relatively minor, but when a group of college students (local boy Stephen and some friends) find the body of a frozen man in a mountain cave while getting lost winter mountain climbing, Nate finds himself investigating a murder, and the crime, committed sixteen years earlier, continues to ripple through modern-day Lunacy.
Lynn and I have not had great success with Nora Roberts thus far, but a friend highly recommended Northern Lights. I was initially irritated by the writing style, primarily by the short paragraphs (no longer than three sentences, and often only one), but as the characters and the plot - both interesting, absorbing, layered and coherent - began to engage me this faded until I didn’t notice it at all. I particularly liked that Meg was able to fend for herself, a fact respected by Nate, but that this was tempered by restraint, so she didn’t brainlessly dart into danger (except when her dogs were threatened). The ‘physical love’ scenes were well executed, with enough detail without being unnecessarily explicit, and the attraction is plausible.
The mystery adds a framework for the series and mercifully obviates the need for artificial obstacles to the romance, and the Alaskan environment (where winter shades into summer in sync with Nate’s recovery), including the Inuit characters, create a subtle but distinct background. I won’t be rushing to read everything Roberts has written (a task which would occupy most of 2009 in any case) but I’m open to another novel. – Alex

24 Hours - Greg Isles

24 Hours opens with the kidnapping of a young boy, who is safely returned to his family after a ransom is paid, with the warning that they'll be back to kill the child if the police ever hear of it. The kidnapping itself is polished, performed by a team who clearly know what they're doing. A year later it happens all over again - Abby Jennings, also the child of a Mississipi physician, is kidnapped while her father's out of town at a conference. This time, though, things don't go quite as well as the kidnappers (cold leader Joe Hickey, his girlfriend Cheryl and his loyal, large and mildly retarded cousin Huey) expect.
Fast-paced, relatively plausible if a little predictable, 24 Hours is an absorbing read primarily because of the interactions between the characters - Will and his wife Karen, whose marriage is already a little rocky; Huey and Abby; Cheryl and Joe; Cheryl and Will; and Will and Joe. Isles has imbued all his characters with a level of multidimensionality that made me eager to see what would happen next, and why they behaved the way they did. - Alex

The Wrong Sort of Wife? – Elise Chidley

Lizzie Buckley’s life looks perfect – she has two beautiful twins (one of each), a gorgeous husband, upper crust in-laws, and a beautiful house. But she’s exhausted from having barely slept in the three years since Alex and Ellie were born, women ignore her marriage in their rush to drape themselves over James, she knows she’s not close to good enough for her snobby titled mother-in-law, and the perfect house is on the grounds of her husband’s family home – perfectly and immaculately furnished and decorated before she was on the scene, Lizzie feels more like a tenant than the woman of the house.
In an outburst of frustration, exhaustion and angst, Lizzie spills everything in an email to her sister –her appreciation of her husband’s business trips, her seething resentment every time she has to get up during the nights while he fails to stir, and her utter lack of interest in sex. Perhaps she needs a break from marriage. Instead of sending the email to Janie, though, Lizzie realises (as soon as it’s gone) she sent it to James. Before she knows it, Lizzie and the kids are living in a squalid house in the country, while James works out the fastest way to get a divorce.
The Wrong Sort of Wife? is the best kind of chick lit – Lizzie is engaging and real, and Chidley has done a strong job of conveying the unacknowledged labour of motherhood, and the effect this has on women. In her intermittent therapy sessions with the apparently unhelpful Ivana, Lizzie begins to discover the deeper issues running through the fabric of her marriage, and how it could be that James has reacted the way he has.
There are certainly some irritating elements, particularly Lizzie’s transformation from dowdy and fat hausfrau into a lean, sun streaked marathon-running machine. The exercise is fine, it certainly does create endorphins, and this alone doesn’t magically transform Lizzie’s life, though I can’t help but see disempowering subtext (attention all women: you’ll never get or keep a man without being physically perfect – lose the weight, shave your legs, colour your hair!). However, this is something one comes to expect in the genre, and I can let it go.
Letting it go is made easier by the character creation – Lizzie’s friends, her new love interest, Ivana, and the children – Chidley has their voices just right, a realistic blend of toddlerish insight and destruction, with not quite enough cuteness to be twee. In many books the pragmatic aspects of young children are sidelined in the interests of the greater plot; in The Wrong Sort of Wife? they are integrally woven into the fabric of the text. The plot is fresh and more firmly grounded in reality than most, the obstacles between Lizzie and the husband she still loves are not too forced, and there are some nicely tied up secondary plots (that rely only slightly on coincidence). This is Chidley’s first novel, and I’m very interested to see what she writes next. - Alex

The Sledding Hill – Chris Crutcher

Eddie Profitt isn’t much regarded by his teachers or classmates, but his father and his best friend Billy (the smartest kid in school) see the intelligence lying behind the questions Eddie asks, questions that nobody else thinks of. When, in short succession, both his father and his best friend die, traumatised by finding both bodies, Eddie shuts down – he eats and sleep and attends class, but he stops talking. Billy, dead but present, tries to communicate with him, and with detached dispassion narrates as Eddie peacefully subverts the system, countering the attempts at censorship lead by local minister (and would be new father) Sanford Tarter.
All Crutcher’s excellent novels explore similar themes of power, abuse, hypocrisy, bigotry, honesty, honour and truth, somehow managing to avoid repetition or staleness. In The Sledding Hill he uses an imaginary novel, Warren Peece (which I'd like to read, if only it were real), written by controversial YA novelist Chris Crutcher, to explore grief, and to dissect censorship, and while it’s strongly slanted to opposing repression he portrays the characters who want to prevent impressionable youths from reading damaging works as having good intentions (though far from being pure).
Crutcher is strongly present through the novel – his background, website, other texts, opinions and strategies to counter censorship (including attendance at schools every year) is explicitly discussed, and he makes an appearance as a character.
To avoid The Sledding Hill itself being opposed by censorship groups, Crutcher has ensured that there's nothing (except for discussion of censorship and it’s opposition) that can lead to it being banned – no offensive language, underage sex, homosexuality, drug use or abuse. There are also some helpful extras, including an interview with the author about the book, contacts for those interested in learning more about censorship, and Crutcher’s response to an attack on another of his novels (where he articulates the position that while people focus on issues in the book, the truly offensive fact is that the abuses he writes about really exist).
An interesting and worthwhile read in itself, in addition to the strong message it sends, I think this book should be required reading for all teens, their parents, and those who promote censorship. - Alex

Tangerine – Edward Bloor

Paul Fisher’s older brother Erik is a star – big in high school football, he dominates wherever they go. Paul, a soccer player, somewhat weedy and bespectacled (because of a mysterious eye issue) is a non-event. When the Fisher’s move to Tangerine, Florida, Paul expects everything to be the same – he’ll be alternately ignored and bullied, and Erik will shine. It’s worse than he expects – thanks to his protective mother’s meddling, Paul’s forbidden to join the soccer team because he’s ‘visually challenged.’ But when an unforseen problem with the school grounds arises, Paul has the option of moving from Lake Windsor Middle High, the well-funded school for wealthy residents, to Tangerine Middle School. Poorly funded, attended by a large non-white population, target of daily lightening strikes and underground fires, Tangerine has a strong, co-ed soccer team. As Paul’s perceptions start to adjust, he learns more about himself, the world and, shockingly, the deep secrets festering in the heart of his family.
This is a strong, compelling novel about secrets, repression and justice, wrapped in a compelling plot with a sympathetic protagonist who grows considerably in the course of the novel. This aspect of the review would be more reviewy if I’d written in shortly after reading Tangerine instead of waiting til the end of year catch up, but it’s now several months later, so all I can give is a general impression – very good. I know, not helpful, and it’s a great book that deserves a more articulate and useful response. - Alex

Dream When You’re Feeling Blue – Elizabeth Berg

Kitty Heaney, oldest daughter of three girls and two boys, is a little disappointed when her beau, Julian, is shipped overseas to fight without proposing, particularly as her younger sister Louise is engaged in all but name to Michael. As the impact of the war hits America increasingly hard, Kitty begins to transform from a self-absorbed girl into a woman who thinks before she acts and is aware of her impact on those around her. She leaves her office job to work in a manufacturing plant, to the ruin of her nails and the shock of her mother. She discovers that if letter writing is hard it may be because the feelings you think you have don’t really exist, and that other people can have feelings (and do things) you never guessed at. And she discovers that you can make sacrifices for those you love at great cost to yourself, sacrifices nobody else is ever aware of.
Opening in the early months of America’s entry into the Second World War, Dream When You’re Feeling Blue mirrors the nation’s loss of innocence with Kitty’s journey. Fiction is often a more resonant way of learning about the past than non-fiction, and Berg has woven substantial facts about the era into the prose, incorporating them into the substance of the text, so that (for example) the reader comes away with an impression not just the reality of rationing, women transitioning into non-traditional parts of the workforce, or changing mores, but the affects of these on the day-to-day lives of people. One aspect that I’d never really considered was the unrelenting impact on young children – as Kitty says,

the children’s programs on the radio offered no relief [from images of war and reminders to contribute to the war effort]: the Captain Midnight oath exhorting young listeners "to save my country from the dire peril it faces or perish in the attempt." Superman, with his long distance hearing and X-ray vision and supersonic flying speed, was now tracking down spies, as were the Green Hornet and Tom Mix.

Berg’s characters are real and rounded and complex. The Irish Catholic love of and for family resonates through Dream When You’re Feeling Blue, and informs the somewhat unexpected conclusion some sixty years after the novel opens. Lynn and I don't usually look at other people's opinions about the books we read, but I was interested in how others felt about the ending. I went to goodreads.com, where the response was indeed mixed. One review, cyears, articulates the issue perfectly:

Yes, if this were a romance, the ending would suck. But it's not. It's a character study of how an Irish-American family coped during the war. Life isn't fair, and it doesn't always end with orange blossoms and tulle veils.

Berg's novels sometimes contain romantic elements, but they're in no way romances, and I found the ending satisfying, for all the (articulately worded) reasons cyears gives. This was one of my favourite of her works thus far encountered. - Alex

A Place Called Here – Cecelia Ahern

When Sandy Shortt was eight her neighbour and schoolmate Jenny-May Butler vanished without a trace from the smallest county in Ireland. Sandy was one of the last people to see the vivacious blonde, and it changed her life as profoundly as it did Jenny-May’s parents – in the past twenty years Sandy cannot rest if something is missing. Every sock, pen and roll of cellotape had to be feverishly sought, a compulsion that drove her parents to despair, thwarted her academic career, and has been the death knell of every tentative relationship – even the most sympathetic of lovers can only be patient for so long when an amorous encounter is aborted by the hunt for a pen cap, or lunches alone because something inconsequential needs to be found before Sandy can leave the house. Despite years of therapy, Sandy cannot shake the rightness of her quest to find every lost thing, and she works to find the hundreds of people who go missing in Ireland every year. That is until, while on the way to meet with a new client whose brother has been missing for a year, Sandy herself vanishes. Jack Ruttle, the client, knows Sandy is the only hope he has of finding Donal, but he can’t get anyone, not even her parents, any more interested in searching for her than in helping him find his baby brother. As for Sandy, she’s found her way to the place where lost things go – and now she’s searching for the way home, but it seems as though this is a one-way trip.
I borrowed A Place Called Here on the strength of my previous Ahern encounter, PS I Love You. This is a very different novel – a significantly more idiosyncratic cast, more complex plot and, at 387 trade paperback pages, substantially longer. However, in common with
Like Grace, the protagonist in Addition, the other novel I recently read about OCD, Sandy has her own take on her reality. Though she perceives her focus as dedication, there is no question that she has a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which distances her from her bewildered parents and interferes with every aspect of her life. The underlying reason for it, more profound than the disappearance of Jenny-May, is satisfyingly explained toward the end of the book.
Also satisfying was the idea of finding everything that’s ever gone missing – for Sandy this includes homework her teacher didn’t believe she’d done, a beloved childhood companion, a diary, and all those unpaired socks; I couldn’t help but think of the wallets, coin purses, books (Telling Moments, where are you?), documents (I cannot possible have lost the AGM minutes, yet they just aren’t here) and favourite clothes (that white Swiss cotton wrap around skirt with brown wooden buttons) that have vanished from my own life. All in all, a unique and highly readable novel that combines psychological exploration, mystery, fantasy and understated romance in an exquisitely paced plot people by interesting and believable characters. A Place Called Here owes something to Alice in Wonderland, but it is a creation of its very own, and I look forward to seeing what else Ahern has written, particularly recent work. - Alex

Into the Storm – Suzanne Brockmann

As Navy SEAL team 18 prepare to go head-to-head with Troubleshooters Incorporated, a private industry organization headed by the SEAL’s ex-commander and manned by former operatives and cops, snow is falling in the remote woods chosen. Deliberately isolated, out of easy communication, designed to reflect real-life operations, the challenge is a way of honing both teams’ skills. On standby for real missions in the Middle East, the SEAls are pulled mid-way through the practice run; it’s not until they leave that anyone realises the ‘hostage,’ a particularly pretty and dippy Troubleshooters office worker, is really missing. With no survivalist skills, inadequately dressed, and unpredictable, things look bad for Tracey Shapiro. Then the searchers discover she’s been abducted by a serial killer, and the pressure’s really on.
A second arm to Brockmann’s highly successful SEAL series, the Troubleshooter novels operate on a more domestic front, but are no less absorbing. The extensive case combines buff bodies, distinctive personalities and humour with enduring character arcs and romance. Her heroines are as gutsy and resilient as the men, genuine respect and affection are a constant, and I always come away feeling satisfied. I realised though, when I checked through the reviews here, that I haven't read a Brockmann novel since Lynn and I first began writing the reviews, which makes me feel a little better about my planned frenzy.
Though Into the Storm could be read as a standalone, a significant part of my satisfaction is anchored in familiarity with the series and the characters – we’re given glimpses at the chief protagonists of previous novels, the beginnings of romantic entanglements for stories to come, and there’s always something going on behind the scenes. Unlike many romance writers, you often have to wait for the pay-off – in the original SEAL series, one romance was fed along as a secondary plot line for six or so books. I have a need to read series in order, which is the only thing stopping me from diving into the next book I have from the library, as I impatiently wait for my reservation on the intervening novel. Watch this space. - Alex

Bonk – Mary Roach

Following explorations of death and scientific investigations into the afterlife, Roach turns her attention to sex, specifically the “curious coupling of sex and science” – what research has discovered, where researchers are heading, and an insight into the lives of sex researchers. Sparked by a random finding while procrastinating in a university library, Roach started thinking about the fact that sex (like other aspects of human physiology) has been investigated scientifically but “I’d just never given it much thought. I’d never thought about what it must be like, the hurdles and the hassles that the researchers face – raised eyebrows, suspicious wives, gossiping colleagues.”
This last is a persistent theme – getting approval to perform many of the experiments is difficult, with many researchers resorting to obfuscation, describing the work as non-specifically as possible. If the death researchers were seen as ghoulish, that’s nothing to the prurient voyeurism projected on to sex researchers.
I discovered a number of fascinating facts about sex practices around the world: particularly interesting – Roy Levin’s paper “Wet and Dry Sex,” comparing Western preferences for vaginal lubrication with the perception in parts of Haiti, Indonesia and Africa that extreme dryness indicates a disease-free state, resulting in women inserting “all manner of drying agents” – ouch!
Roach beautifully combines strongly grounded data and meticulous explorations of the literature with a highly readable style and embarrassingly amusing observations (often as footnotes) that lead me to splutter with laughter in public on several occasions. Her writing incorporates her reactions, as a layperson, to the research, the field, and the results of data, often reflecting the impressions of the reader.
After reading Bonk I’m no aware of research being done across the field – high tech and medical, from MRI imaging of what happens during ejaculation and orgasm, treatments for erectile dysfunction (and how Viagra reduced the condition’s social stigmatisation), surgical extension and reattachment of male genitalia, to the real functions and dimensions of the clitoris; lab work looking at what happens to lower-order mammals at the moment of male ejaculation; historical investigations into hysteria and the medical role of inducing female climax; biochemistry involving how hormones affect arousal in both primates and humans (the oral contraceptive pill mutes sex drive, but this is not a listed side-effect and most women aren’t told about it when it’s initially prescribed); and why lesbians have better sex than gay men and straight couples. - Alex

Bones – Jonathan Kellerman

LA therapist and police consultant Alex Delaware is with Milo or, as the LAPD have recently titled him, Special Case Investigator, Lieutenant Grade, when his friend is called to a marsh where the body of a young woman has been found, following an anonymous tip. Selena Bass, her right hand amputated and missing, was the piano teacher of gifted child Kelvin Vander, son of a wealthy and doting father, product of a second marriage. Investigating the deaths of Selena and three other women, whose variously decomposed bodies are also found in the marsh, Alex and Milo discover that Kelvin and his parents are also missing, and the case becomes interesting.
The twenty-something addition to a usually strong series, this is classic Kellerman – deepening mysteries, wheels within wheels, believable but twisty characters, and subtly nuanced attention to the underlying arcs of his main protagonists. Though not formulaic exactly, there weren’t any truly unique elements, but Kellerman’s writing reads effortlessly, his descriptive characterisation is deft, and the pace is believable and just shy of hectic, so the reader is drawn in and engaged.
I suspect familiarity with the author and his characters’ somewhat complex back stories add a strong dimension to the series, so if you’re just starting out with Kellerman you really are better off starting at the beginning. If you like the genre, particularly the novels of White and McDermid (creators, respectively, of psychologist investigators Alan Gregory and Tony Hill) then you’ll like Kellerman – I prefer them, and Kellerman's wife's novels, but he’s still pretty good. And unlike other writers I could mention, he’s managed to maintain a believable, involving and interesting character without jumping the shark. Plus there’s a nice section and coda on eyedness (sinister and dexter), and area that, like footedness, I’m interested in, and expanding ones’ miscellaneous knowledge base is always a pleasant incidental plus to reading for enjoyment. - Alex

Life’s Too Short to Frost a Cupcake – Rosie Wilde

Ever since the death of her mother, when Alice realised that bad things could happen, she’s played it safe. She works at Carmichael Music, where her boss Graham is friendly and approachable, and she lives in an adequate apartment with her adequate boyfriend, low-powered lawyer Stephen, who she met in an anxiety therapy group. Okay, her family life isn’t perfect – largely thanks to younger sister Teresa who, married with twins, never misses an opportunity to belittle the status of Alice’s life – but all in all Alice’s life is drifting along satisfactorily enough.
When Graham’s replaced by highflying Phoebe Carmichael, daughter of the company’s founder, with a reputation for right sizing, Alice is concerned. But instead of being fired, Alice is sent to the New York head office to persuade Wyatt Brown, a once successful but now reclusive (and alcoholic) recording artist, to record a new album. Only “New York” turns about to be Wyatt’s small town home in Ohio, she breaks up with Stephen before she even leaves London, gets off on totally the wrong foot with her target, and encounters a local bitch who makes Teresa look like an amateur. And that’s just the beginning.
I initially found Alice’s voice grating, for three reasons. The first is the emphasis on brand names, so that a random paragraph near the beginning has:

They are both in head-to-toe Boden… I follow the, squeezing past the red Bugaboo Cameleon… In the kitchen – redone last year in cream Smallbone units…

The second is chunks of geography scattered about:

I turn into Replington Road, walk up past Budgen’s and hasten past Starbuck’s, less I’m tempted to grab a hot chocolate. Then I go into the Tube station to wait for a District Line train to Kensington Hight Street.

The final element was Alice’s propensity for drifting into wish fulfilment daydreams, many of which centre around proposals and career success.
However, all of them decrease as the novel progresses, and as Alice becomes better able to discover who she is away from the familiar surroundings that reinforced the limitations of the person who had been she becomes significantly more interesting. I liked Alice’s evolution, the varied sub-plots, and Wilde’s characterisation, particularly of Theresa. The budding romance, as is so often the case in the genre, culminates in a profession of love from the hero, who heretofore has given only minimal evidence of his interest, but this was a relatively minor quibble.
The title was clearly chosen to attract interest – one of the subplots involves a cupcake competition that Alice participates in, and the frosting component takes considerable time (and description in the text), which doesn’t seem to be a problem for any of the characters. Alice, in particular, seems to have not much better to do. If I come across another Wilde book I’ll probably pick it up, and Life’s Too Short was fine, but I have no burning desire to track down her next (or previous) work. - Alex

The Last Hope of Girls – Susie Boyt

Martha Brazil (rhymes with frazzle) has a lot on her plate – her brother’s a manipulative (is there any other kind?) drug user, her mother takes in any and every stray in need of nurturing, and her writer father is supercilious, superior and remote. As a child Martha and Matt were shuttled between their parents’ very different homes – the ramshackle, crowded-with-strangers home of their mother and the immaculate, aloof apartment of their father. When Anthony Brazil recommends her to a friend, Martha is able to leave the share flat where her every move and motivation was analysed, to caretake an apartment building in the process of being renovated. With no tenants, her job includes accommodation and primarily consists of cleaning and letting in tradesmen. When Mr Quinn, the owner, leaves a copy of Anthony Brazil’s latest literary work, Martha finds herself compelled to read it, after a life time of avoiding his critically acclaimed work, and finds everything in her life shifting.
Apparently. I was clearly reading a different book than the one all the raving reviewers read. For a start, the great revelation/s that “offer[ed] Martha a view of her world, and of her wayward family, that she [could] only ignore at her peril” wholly passed me by. Perhaps, like Anthony Brazil’s own work, it was just too subtle and complex for me, though (unlike a journalist interviewing him) I didn’t feel “stupid, vulgar, garish and brash,” just dissatisfied.
Certainly it contained a great description of Literary writing – when I read “the basic premise that life was worthless…the universe it painted was so horrible, the days lived out so bleak and useless…” I immediately thought of Praise.
Spoiler warning:
The Last Hope of Girls isn’t unremittingly bleak, but it is certainly bleak-heavy: the apartment owner is mired in misery and cries himself to sleep lying on the floor of one of the abandoned apartments; Matt might be in rehab but there’s a long and winding road ahead; her father has remarried, to a woman as obsessed about her art (she’s a musician) as he is, to the extent that their newborn is only an obstacle to her artistic fulfilment; and Martha, though she has the promise of a new and healthy romantic relationship, doesn’t come out the other end filled with hope and happiness. Eh. - Alex

Man vs Beast – Robert Muchamore

Cherub agents James and Lauren Adams are on a mission together – along with close friend Kyle Blueman and controller Zara Asker, James and Lauren will be posing as the children of a woman convicted animal rights activist Ryan Quinn was fallen for. Quinn headed up a peaceful but effective animal liberation organization, Zebra 84, which was responsible for shutting down a number of fur farms and labs. Their technique combined persistent harassment of the site itself with tactics designed to make life too difficult for their suppliers to remain involved. In 2001, while attempting to shut down their most ambitious target yet, a multinational animal experimentation organization, Zebra 84 combined with a number of other animal rights groups to form Zebra Alliance. Before they made any progress Quinn was charged with attempted arson and jailed for six years. While Quinn was inside his group was taken over by a more radical group – the Animal Freedom Militia. The Home Office fears a devastating attack from this security-conscious group, and infiltration by Cherub agents may be the only way to get any information.
As with the rest of this series, Man vs Beast contains elements that are inappropriate for younger readers, in this case including sexual themes (both underage and gay, though nothing graphic), multiple scenes of violence, one of torture, and fairly confronting (though factual) information about non-criminal animal abuse in both food production and experimentation.
This use of adult themes is consistent with the way the characters are portrayed – the antithesis of how children are usually depicted, Muchamore’s creations are flawed, imperfect and complex. Lauren blackmails her brother to help her do something against the rules, James is more ruled by hormones than fidelity to his girlfriend, and he is also homophobic and short-tempered (though this last is improving). They are all nonetheless likeable, and there are real life consequences for inappropriate behaviour, another aspect that grounds the series.
As with the five preceding novels, the fast-paced plot is involving and compelling. Man vs Beast continues at theme evident in the last couple of Cherub novels – at what point does a just cause or good idea go too far? For readers old enough to reflect on grey areas, this is a fantastic addition to a strong and recommended YA series. - Alex

Iron Kissed - Patricia Briggs

When shape shifting mechanic Mercy Thompson’s mentor (and former boss) is arrested on murder charges, she can’t help but investigate the case; a case that’s complicated by the fact that Zee is fae, the case involves the murders of other fae in a community gated ‘for their own good,’ and most of all because Zee seems not to want Mercy’s help. It doesn’t help that the two men in her life and rapidly losing patience with Mercy’s inability to choose between them, and when she learns her indecision is going to tear the werewolf pack apart the pressure’s on to pick.
This is the third in a strong series – in each book we’ve learned a little more about Briggs’s universe, the fae, werewolf dynamics, and Mercy. As Lynn has pointed out, Briggs does werewolf culture better than anyone in the genre – human intellect doesn’t overrule nature, hierarchies exist in and out of changing, and they’re genuinely a related but separate species to us, and having Mercy be both an insider (raised by a pack) but also an outsider (shapeshifting coyote) allows her to explore, explain and have explained some of the intricacies. It also allows Briggs to introduce new aspects of intra- and inter-pack politics that Mercy can credibly not have known about before the reader does. Unlike other series (both paranormal and other genres), Briggs has managed – at least thus far – to navigate the fine line between new and the familiar, introducing elements that enhance rather than overwhelm what has gone before. What I mean by this is that, unlike Dexter, she hasn’t introduced an unexplained supernatural twist that completely changes the flavour of the work, and unlike the Sookie Stackhouse series, she hasn’t used so much sexual tension to add interest that she needs to introduce a hitherto unhinted at aspect to a character to justify a random excess of allure.
The dialogue is natural, the writing accessible but mature, the characters are layered, and the plot is intricate but clear. Briggs avoids ladling out information in indigestible chunks and writes in an unobtrusive manner that allows the reader to focus on the characters and plot.
The standout element of Iron Kissed is Briggs’s masterful depiction on the aftermath of rape. Nothing I could write would do justice to the complex, lucid, resonant passage toward the end of the novel. The subject matter is distressing, and brilliantly handled; Briggs uses it not only to resolve points of the plot, and create new nuances in the characters and their relationships, but adds a retrospective dimension to an essential element. If you read only one paranormal series, make it this one. - Alex

Murder on a Midsummer Night – Kerry Greenwood

1929 has begun with a heat wave, particularly ferocious even for Melbourne, and Phryne Fisher’s not enjoying her first real experience with an unrelenting Antipodean summer. However nothing can faze this most poised and composed specimen of womanhood – not even the search for an illegitimate child, one of several heirs to a tidy inheritance, and not the unrelated investigation into what the police consider to be the suicide of a young man on St Kilda beach. Augustine Manifold was an antiques dealer, skilled and reputable, by all accounts, and his distraught mother does not believe he would have left her. In her quest for the truth, the redoubtable Miss Fisher glides through it all without hesitation, through “terrifying séances, ghosts, Kif smokers, the threat of human sacrifices, dubious spirit guides and maps to buried pirate treasure,” to cite the back blurb.
As always when it comes to the magnificent Ms Greenwood, my amateurish fumblings cannot convey the perfection of her prose – though perfectly accessible if read on its own, the pleasure of Murder on a Midsummer Night was considerably enhanced by my familiarity with Phryne, her extended household, and her catholic array of friends and acquaintances. It is through the sensibilities of Greenwood’s more orthodox characters – from her companion Dot, and married couple Butler and Mrs Butler – that she is able to combined both a believable period setting and attitudes comfortable for a modern reader.
Also as always, Greenwood conveys a strong sense of place (“She lived in St Kilda, I think, from what she says about going down Acland Street for cakes”) without hitting you over the head, and she has without question mastered the art of being so familiar with her mountainous research that it is threaded almost invisibly through the text.
Her descriptions are complete and detailed, seamless and interesting. For example:

Gerald Atkinson was tall and skinny, with a haughty arch to his brows which might easily have been accentuated by skilled plucking and a rosebud mouth with just a trace of lip rouge. He was dressed in a very nice tweed suit which was just a bit too new and a cravat which was just a smidgen too bright, with a stick-pin in which the diamond was just a soupcon too large. If he was not a friend of Dorothy, Phryne considered, he was a relative. That was no bar to Miss Fisher’s regard. She had many friends whose interest in young men was just as fervent as her own.

The plot was detailed, absorbing, redolent of the era, and the only criticism I have is that it was all over far too quickly. Planning her twenty-ninth birthday as Murder on a Midsummer Night opens, the action all takes place in under two weeks (her birthday is mid-January and has not occurred by novel’s end). Greenwood has been clear that Phryne will not continue past the twenties, to which she is so admirably suited, into the dowdy thirties, so while there is hope of as many as another two dozen adventures, for me each novel is tinged with the sad awareness that it could be the last. In the meantime there’s always the option of rereading Phryne’s sixteen previous excursions, and the anticipation of the fifth (though I somewhat presumptuously, or hopefully, initially typed ‘fifteenth’) Corinna novel. I have no words, except: perfection. - Alex

Good Girls – Laura Ruby

Good girl Audrey Porter has decided to break it off with her sometime hook up, school hunk Luke DeSalvio – she’s madly in love with him, but he ignores her at school and flirts with (and hooks up with) other girls, and she’s had enough. Besides, it’s senior year and in eight months they’ll be heading off to separate colleges anyway. When Audrey, dressed as a Goth for the night, gives him an intimate farewell… kiss in a secluded bedroom at a costume party she expects that to be the end of it, but on Monday people at school start acting weird.
Then she gets an image sent to her phone, a digital photo that’s spread like wildfire from phone to phone: “Luke’s head is cut off, but the pale skin of his chest hips glows in the dark, and his hands clutch fistfuls of the bedspread. Between his knees, a cascade of waist-length blonde hair striped with black.” And nothing’s the same.
Ruby has a great voice – she combines strong characterisation, a firm grasp of the world of adolescence, authentic dialogue, and a genuinely compelling plot with an economy and purity of language. The first time Audrey sees Luke after The Photo, he cuts her dead and “he speeds up, passes me, and keeps rolling, like a wave that jumps the beach and takes you out at the knees.”
She uses Good Girls to explore not only sexual double standards, the girl as defender of her own virtue and not assaulted by hormones as much as boys, and the pressures exerted on young women, but the transition from seeing your parents as parents to people, the way it changes the way they see you, the difference between sex as a concept and as reality, the way sex (especially when you’re younger) changes things you didn’t expect, the things that can get in the way of formalised worship providing spiritual succour, how rumour gets in the way of truth and how judgement gets in the way of friendship. And how friendships can be forged and strengthened by adversity, how women can band together, and how individuals can take control of their lives.
I have to include a quote I particularly liked. When Audrey’s mother tells her about waiting “as long as you can. Until you find someone you love,” and Audrey voices her assumption that her mother waited for her husband,

My mother looks extremely uncomfortable, like she’s just be stricken with intestinal cramps. ‘This is not about me. I’m just one person.’
Whoa. ‘You didn’t wait?
‘What I did or didn’t do is beside the point”…
Now that we’re talking, I realise I don’t want all the sordid details… I mean, yuk… For something that’s supposed to be all God-given and Song of Solomon and comfort-me-with-apples fabulous, it feels about as beautiful as drinking from a toilet bowl. At least that’s what it feels like afterwards, when someone’s taken a picture of you and decorated the world with it…

I love that last part, I love the sentiment of Audrey’s pastor that sex is about expressing, not creating, intimacy, and I want to read anything else that Ruby’s written. - Alex

Praise – Andrew McGahan

Gordon’s life is going nowhere fast – an insecure asthmatic with a small penis and a newly acquired tobacco habit, he quits his job in a drive-through bottle shop when the new manager fires the rest of the crew. Now unemployed, living in a run down house with a bunch of old men, he hooks up with ex-heroin addict Cynthia, a casualty of the mass firing. She has bad eczema, a tattoo she regrets, and loves penetrative sex. The woman Gordon has loved and lusted after since he was thirteen isn’t interested in him, but Cynthia will do in the meantime. She introduces him to drugs – acid and heroin – and how they combine with sex and alcohol; he introduces her to the temporary high of nitrous.
That, in essence, is the plot. This is quite clearly Literature – existential angst, alcohol and drugs, non-erotic sex (lots of it), ennui, desultory excursions that go nowhere and achieve nothing, relationships that are the same, and tormented but essentially boring characters. 1988, the prequel (written later and set earlier), really was a taste of things to come.
I kept reading it, which may say something about the superior qualities of the writing, but I felt like a friend of mine who, switching from Coke to Diet Coke, said she kept drinking it by the bucket load because her tastebuds insisted that there must be sugar there, somewhere. Between that sense and the memory of how much I enjoyed McGahan’s later work, I persisted to the end.
Lauded by critics (short listed, prize winning, “throb[bing] with intensity,” “one of the few Australian novels of the 90s that really matter,” “a bracing slap in the face to conventional platitudes and hypocrisy,”) it left me cold. Actually, no – it left me depressed, flat, and a little grey. Partly because of the subject matter and the depiction of the meaninglessness of (some people’s) life, but mostly because I’ll never get back the time I spent reading it. Perhaps my response was coloured by the fact that I started reading it on the way home from a funeral, but I don’t think so. This is the kind of Literature that ruins reading for neophytes; it almost put me off books, something I wouldn’t have thought was possible. - Alex

True to Form – Elizabeth Berg

Katie Nash’s story, begun in Durable Goods and Joy School, continues - it's 1961, and Katie now lives in the mid-West with her warm stepmother and cold military father. Keen for a summer job and a little independence, Katie's unhappy but resigned when she discovers her father's already picked out a job for her - working as a carer for an elderly woman. The highlight of her summer is winning a radio contest - she can take a return flight anywhere, and choses Fort Hood, the home of her former best friend, the older and more experienced Cherylanne. The summer changes many things for Katie, most of all her awareness of the fragility of friendship and the enduringness of love.
The style is gentle and nostalgic, like a written version of an episode of The Wonder Years. The Katie trilogy is largely uneventful, and her voice is calm and deliberate, so that it's not until I reflected on the series that I registered how many life changing events its characters have gone through, and with what degrees of grace they have survived. - Alex