I blow hot and cold with novels by Julian Barnes. I just loved 'Arthur & George', but was left dulled by 'The Sense of an Ending' and 'The Noise of Time'. But I wanted to give him another chance (aren't I kind!), so tried this one. I loved it - well, most of it. The book is split into 3 parts, and I think Part 3 could have been edited much more thoroughly. There was much repetition, and I was a little bored, but not enough to put me off the book.
The story is set in the 1960s in Surrey. Paul Casey is a 19 year-old student who is told by his parents to join the local tennis club. There he meets Susan Macleod, 48, married, mother of 2 children the same age as Paul. They fall madly in love and start an affair. Part one of the book is narrated by Paul as an older man, looking back at the start of the affair, and describing their feelings, and the reactions of those around them. Part two recounts their running away and starting a new life together, but the slow breakdown of their relationship as Susan becomes depressed, turns to alcohol, and starts to lose her mind. Part three is set in the present day with Paul describing his feelings now, and whether he feels guilt about what happened to Susan.
It's such an emotional read. It shows that love can jump out at anyone at anytime, and how strongly it can affect us. But also when it goes wrong, it affects us just as strongly - we can be scarred for life. There is so much of life that Paul/Julian is commenting on, you start to question whether he is right. What is the meaning of love? There is one thing for sure though - your first love stays with you for the rest of your life.
Any new psychological thriller that comes out nowadays always seems to get labelled 'the next The Girl on the Train'. Now I haven't read that book, nor seen the film, so luckily I can't make such sweeping comments. Surely an author wants to be plauded for their work for the right reasons, not to comment on whether they live up to a different author's bestseller?
Anyway, that aside, The Woman in the Window is brilliant. I read it in a day and a half - the usual case of 'I couldn't put it down'. The plot twists and turns, there are surprises around every corner, it's dark, and to churn out another overused phrase, it kept me on the edge of my seat. Anna is a child psychologist. She lives alone in a large house, apart from a tenant who rents out her basement. She has a husband, Ed, and an 8 year-old daughter Olivia, but they live away from her, although she speaks to them everyday. Anna is suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) which has led to acute agoraphobia. She has not left her house for ten months. To pass the time indoors she keeps herself busy: she plays online chess; is taking an online French course; she gives out advice on an online site she has set up for other sufferers of agoraphobia; she watches many film noir and Hitchock thrillers; and she drinks many bottles of red wine, often until she is in a stupor. She also likes to people watch from her windows, especially her new neighbours across the road - the Russels. But one day she witnesses a terrible act that will change her life forever.
The best psychological thriller I have read in some time.
I think at the moment I'm definitely liking stories involving characters with quirky personalities - slightly oddball, perhaps on the spectrum. I recently read 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine' by Gail Honeyman, which I absolutely loved, and then more recently 'Three Things About Elsie' by Joanna Cannon, which was also delightful. 'The Cactus' is along a similar vein, and it did not disappoint.
Susan Green likes order and logic; she does not like time-wasters, mess or emotions. She lives alone, but has a very pleasant, no-nonsense agreement with Richard, who she sees once a week for theatre, dining and ...other activities. But soon Susan's order and routine are thrown into disarray as she finds out a)she is pregnant; b)her mother has died and left the family home to her awful layabout brother Edward. Sensing something sinister is afoot, she decides to try to contest the will while at the same time going through the stages of pregnancy. All she needs to realise is that help is closer to hand than she thinks.
I loved it.
Joanna Cannon's previous (and debut) novel was 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' which I absolutely loved, so I was looking forward to reading this next book.
Florence (Flo only to her friends) resides in the Cherry Tree retirement complex. She lives alone in a ground floor flat, but she's never lonely as she has her best friend Elsie to keep her company. Elsie also helps Flo through her moments of forgetfulness and confusion. They team up with fellow resident Jack when Flo realises that a new resident is someone from the past she'd thought she'd never see again. With the manager of Cherry Tree threatening to move Flo to 'Greenbanks' - a more suitable home for her needs - Flo and her two friends have a race against time to solve the mystery of the new resident before Flo may be forced to leave.
This quirky second book does not disappoint. It has Joanna's same style of humour mixed with pathos with an underlying serious storyline. All the characters are realistic and rather adorable. But it's also very moving, knowing that most of us will end up being a Florence, frustrated at realising that we're slowly losing our faculties, and there is only one ending for us all.
A delight to read.
Maud Drennen is a plucky, no-nonsense Irish care worker, whose latest client is Cathal Flood, a cantankerous elderly man, widowed and living alone in Bridlemere, a Victorian Grade II listed mansion in West London. Cathal is also a top-notch hoarder, a dealer in curiosities, and a keeper of secrets. Despite Cathal's efforts to frighten away Maud and her attempts to clear up his mess, he begins to soften and open little doorways into his life. But he holds too many secrets and Maud wants to know too much - what happened to his wife Mary and their daughter Maggie? Why is part of the house blocked off? Why won't he let his son Gabriel into the house? As Cathal starts to close up again, Maud finds herself taking on an investigative role, with the help of her transgender landlord, Renata, and Cathal's previous care worker, Sam Hebden. However, is Maud following red herrings, and is everyone telling the truth?
I did enjoy this book, although I found the author seemed to be trying too hard to get some laughs in. Maud is followed around by ghostly Irish saints who keep trying to point her in the right direction, and I'm not sure I like this detail - they got in the way of the story. I've previously come across the use of Irish saints as characters in a children's book (A Boy Called Hope by Lara Williamson), so this was nothing original to me. I found it took me a while to get into the story, the detail getting in the way too much, but once I'd got used to all the characters, I found it readable and enjoyable.
I kept hearing about this book, so just had to read it myself to see if it lived up to all the hype. Always dangerous of course. It's a good thriller, but loses its way towards the end. The story follows James, an MP and junior minister, his wife Sophie, and barrister Kate. James is a high flying political figure and close friend of the Prime Minister - they went to Oxford together, having already been friends since childhood. However, a scandal is soon to upset James' and Sophie's world when he is accused of a heinous crime. Kate is the barrister who is trying to prove him guilty, but James is adamant he is innocent. With flashbacks to their Oxford days (Sophie was James' girlfriend back then), we are built a picture of characters and relationships, and realise that everyone has secrets to hide and skeletons they'd much rather were left in the cupboard.
The story runs at a good pace, and you don't get confused with the alternating of time periods and character's viewpoints. There is a twist in the story which is obvious from early on, and I got a little bored with Sophie's character as the 'dutiful wife'. It was interesting that Kate's story is told in the first person, but everyone else is in the third. Is that showing importance of the character?
A good courtroom political drama.
These stories were my first introduction to Chekhov. They are a selection of 13 short stories - the cover describes them as 'Essential stories', so I don't know whether that means that someone has selected these as superior or more important than others of his? I always love to read the blurb in books about the author and his background, but there was nothing at all in this, just a photograph of him, and then straight into the stories. So I've googled him and, in short, he was born in 1860 in Russia, the son of a grocer. He started writing short pieces for a magazine under a pen name, and then went on to write major works such as 'The Seagull', as well as continuing his short-story writing. He died from tuberculosis at the age of 44.
I'm not usually a fan of short stories, I like to get my teeth stuck into a plot and see characters grow, but there was something calming and untroubling about these short stories. Sometimes I thought characters from one short story were appearing in another because of the similarity of some of the Russian names, and I quite liked that idea, even though I think I was mistaken about it. All the stories are, I believe, set in Russia and cross all classes. There are stories of peasants, stories of aristocrats and of soldiers, but in all cases it is made obvious that of course everyone is human and has the same feelings. The stories are romantic, moving, real. Chekhov has a definite art of describing emotion, whether the person in question is male or female. Even though you obviously assume the stories are set in the time of writing, ie the late 1800s, because they are stories of human emotion and feeling, they could actually be describing modern day characters.
A wonderful collection.
