Book #13 Her by Harriet Lane

Her

What I like very much about both Harriet Lane's novels, this and its predecessor Alys Always is that they are psychological thrillers with women at the centre. This isn't the fare of a man stalking a woman, or of a spy on the run; but stories very much set in real world terms, in ordinary lives, about the havoc one woman can wreak if she sets her mind to it.

The story splits its narrative between Nina, a successful artist and Emma who had a great career in the media before leaving it to look after her children. Nina encounters Emma and knows at once it's HER, but Emma doesn't recall Nina at all.

The beauty part of Her, is that both Nina and Emma are tremendously relatable to female readers.

At some point everyone in their life has been Nina, a girl dissatisfied with her own life who becomes angered by another girl whose life seems perfect, who seems to have everything you yourself wish you had but who even more gratingly, neither recognises or appreciates their luck.

The world is also full of Emmas, women who sacrificed a career to be a stay at home Mum, and feel themselves slowly disappearing into the monotony of meal prep, and tantrums and Mums and Tots.

Nina inveigles herself into the world of Emma in much the same fashion as Frances Thorpe (Alys, Always) does before her, and as she digs her way through possessions and photo albums whilst babysitting, in many ways this feels like an excess in nosiness rather than anything very sinister.

Emma becomes very quickly dependent on the glamorous Nina, and this too is understandable. Nina genuinely does see the Emma she used to be, and Emma climbs aboard that life raft like the drowning woman she feels she is. But Nina doesn't want to save Emma, Nina wants to destroy her.

The descriptions of daily life, and the human condition in general are very much spot on, at times razor sharp in their accuracy, so much so that as someone who writes myself, I found myself thinking 'but that description is just perfect' and started to envy Harriet Lane's prose skills.

The real jaw to the floor moment is when you discover exactly what Emma did to make Nina hate her so much, to be consumed by a psychopathic need for revenge; and this discovery, just turns the book from a toxic friendship story into something very frightening indeed.

Reminiscent of Notes From A Scandal by Zoe Heller, this book will make excellent beach or plane reading this summer, I suggest getting a copy to stash in your carry-on bag.

8/10          

Book #45 When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman

When God Was A Rabbit

Length Of Time In Possession : Roughly 8 months 

Two years ago, Amazon must have emailed me suggesting I buy When God Was A Rabbit more than ten times. I got annoyed, and decided never to read it on that basis. I also thought its title was incredibly twee and irritating.

If one should not judge a book by its cover one should also not judge a book by its title, a friend insisted on my lending it, promising it was good, and actually, though it almost embarrasses me to admit it, given how ill disposed I was to it, it is!

I've seen complaints around the internet that it was disappointing and didn't live up to the hype, but, as I entered it with incredibly low expectations, the novel had the opposite effect on me.

It is a coming of age story about Elly, a quirky off beat damaged little girl who feels she doesn't belong anywhere or to anyone except her brother Joe. Their father struggles with depression, believing he is cursed and their mother is openly in love with both their father and their aunt.   

Both Joe and Elly have one special friend in Joe's case Charlie and in Elly's, Jenny Penny and for them, that is enough. The novel moves through their childhood into adulthood, and, like Elly's later newspaper column is about 'Lost And Found' that which we lose and find again, in the best of ways.
It is about love too, and love in all the forms it exists within. I felt envious of what Elly and Joe had within each other, a relationship special and vital to each.

Throughout the prose there is this sad nostalgia, but a kind of beautiful sadness if that makes any sense? Thoroughly engaging, I'm not sorry I read it, and perhaps ought to have listened to Amazon's automated recommendations, damn you for knowing me too well!!!

Verdict : 9/10

Destination : Return to Owner
  

Book #43 Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller

Notes On A Scandal

Length Of Time In Possession : 12-18 months

Like 1984 before it, the reason I came to Notes On A Scandal after a waiting period was because I had been significantly spoilered by media coverage of it, and already knew the ending. I'm not sure if this is because it featured in 'Faulks On Fiction' or if it's because I was accidentally spoilered during the time the film, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench was around. I avoided the film, wanting to read the book first, as is the correct way to go about it!

Knowing the ending meant that I didn't want to pick it, but on my big List For 2013 it was nestled in between several books that had already been crossed out. Therefore it looked like it was lonely and had no friends so I picked it. (Yes, that's how my mind works....)

In Notes On A Scandal, respected but lonely teacher Barbara hopes that with the arrival of new art teacher Bathsheba she may have finally found a "Kindred Spirit" and hopes they will be "Bosom Friends" just this alone offers an insight into Barbara's psyche as it's all very 'Anne Of Green Gables' the difference being Anne is 11, and Barbara is in her Fifties.

Barbara eventually inveigles her way into Bathsheba's life and becomes her confidante, but the secret  Bathsheba entrusts to her leads to Barbara slowly wielding total power over her "friend". 

Like Ian McEwan's Enduring Love before it and recent offering Alys, Always from Harriet Lane - Notes From A Scandal offers an insight into the mind of the dangerous obsessive who fixates on one individual. I'm sure we've all had at least one friend in our time who proved to be just that bit "too" intense.

Barbara is just the right amount of sinister, without it becoming melodramatic, but there is a lot of pathos in her situation too. There is an excellent paragraph on how sometimes the perceived freedom of a single person can be it's own kind of jail. Able to spend money on going to theatre whenever you want, for example, yet always going alone.

There is no twist to this ending, it is quite open ended, yet the ending shows how completely Barbara's machinations have succeeded and in some ways the plain, unremarkable sentence upon which the novel closes is quite terrifying.

This book was massively easy to read whilst remaining intelligent and compelling, way better than a lot of books out there directly marketed as psychological thrillers and ultimately way more creepy.

I really enjoyed this novel.

Verdict : 10/10

Destination : Passing to a friend 

Book #89 The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly

The Poison Tree

The Poison Tree, sharing its title with a a William Blake poem which I will also shortly post, is a novel which has finally broken what has been a lengthy reading hiatus for me. I have attempted unsuccessfully to read Frank Herbert's Dune in this period and have struggled, aiming to return and complete it before the end of the year.

The Poison Tree is a novel which has some shortcomings and flaws yet even with that is strangely addictive. Our protaganist is Karen Clarke, a girl from a humble background who goes to university and is settling in to what promises to be a very ordinary very boring very middle class future alongside similar girls when her life collides with that of Biba, a "Bohemian" carefree spirit in whose world she not only becomes entangled in, but willingly and deliberately becomes an essential part of, so in love is she with what she sees as an extraordinary world.

The story flashes between Karen in the present day, a single mother struggling to readjust to her partners return from prison, and in Karen in the past when she first met Biba and subsequently Biba's brother Rex. I felt like I'd read a tale of "enigmatic, slightly strange, brother/sister who enthrall people whilst living in a state of shambolic decadence" before, but I am still unable to pin down which novel it was in my head, suggestions welcome


I identified with the situation of meeting someone whom you so admire and want to emulate that you are blind to their faults and failings in not a sexual sense but in an inspired sense, almost as if you had been hypnotized by them, because part of you sees the person you would like to be in them. Like being in love, yet not quite. So, I understood Karen, yet to the reader as bystander Biba is an utterly obnoxious egotist, for whom people cease to exist when no longer physically present or no longer useful or interesting. I understood this too, and so ultimately does Karen. I liked this, I thought there was very strong characterisation throughout the novel I could clearly picture Biba and Karen both.

The problem with the book is that the writing isn't perfect, I've read so many much better written novels, it is only slightly above average in the actual quality of prose department yet the plot is very enjoyable, and there were parts I didn't see coming, although perhaps I should have. The final and the largest flaw really is the way in which the initial prologue of the phonecall in the middle of the night hangs together with the end, though it is what feels like a fitting outcome, it is unbelievably quickly done, too quickly, in a sense that makes you doubt the ultimate likelihood of it happening. It is satisfying though.

This, a book about intensity in friendship, loyalty, rivalry and deception would not automatically spring to mind if asked for a recommendation, yet with that, it has stayed with me in a sense, after I finished it. It is enjoyable and not at all heavy. It is easy to see why it was on so many summer reads lists. I wouldn't say, run and get this book or your life will be incomplete, but if you are humming and haa-ing in a bookshop, you could do much worse than pick this, and ultimately I don't think you'd be sorry  7.5/10