“The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea lives in a world of books. Working in and living above her fathers antiquarian bookshop, her day to day life is surrounded by them, on top of which she writes biographical works about authors. Author Vida Winter summons Margaret to engage her to write her biography, and in her unique way begins by telling Margaret the history of the March family and their home, Angelfield House. As the story goes on, Margaret realises there is a mystery to solve, which holds similarities with her own, unresolved past.

The opening chapters of this book held such promise (how can an avid reader not be drawn in by the description of someone who lives in a bookshop!), but as the story began to unfold, I became disenchanted as I felt it was laden with cliché and melodramatic. There were parts of the story I thought were completely predictable, while the twists I didn’t see coming seemed to be almost shoe-horned in as if to prove that the author could be unpredictable. I also felt the tone of nostalgia throughout the book made the story slightly cloying.

Having said all that, it’s an easy read and the plot does run along at a spritely pace, keeping you turning the pages. I liked the way Vida told her story to Margaret, and the description of how Margaret chose to record the sessions. Most of the loose ends are tied up neatly at the end of the book, and left with the promise of what is to come in Margaret’s own life.

I know others whose opinion I respect have loved this book, however, it was just not my cup of tea. I did finish it, but I felt it was a bit of a chore at times, but I did want to see how the author resolved the story.

“The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud” by Ben Sherwood

Charlie is a talented, promising student in high school, but when he takes his little brother Sam out to the ball game one evening, it ends in tragedy when they are involved in a fatal car crash and Sam dies. Unable to leave behind Sam, years later Charlie has taken a caretaker job at the cemetary where his brother is buried, but when he meets Tess, he’s forced to choose between the memory of his brother and the possibilities of the future.

I read this book in 2005 when it first came out, but as it’s one of my reading groups books for next month, I thought I’d re-read it to see if it was a enjoyable as I remembered. Thankfully, it was.

It starts with a death, and I’m not ashamed to admit I was sat in the coffee shop with tears running down my face while the story of the car crash that kills Sam unfolds. It’s an emotional roller coaster all the way from here, with moments sadness and joy woven throughout the book, and although it’s a tale of loss, it’s an uplifting experience dealing with the acceptance of the death of a loved one, and finding out how to move on and look to the future.

I thought the sailing descriptions were extremely evocative, and the sense of peril in the ferocious storm was palpable. The small town feeling of the New England coastal town where the book is set gives a feeling of wistfulness and nostalgia, which could make the book feel over sentimental, but the author keeps our feet on the ground with the imperfections of the characters and steers clear of mawkishness.

As much as I loved it, I still preferred Sherwood’s first novel, The Man Who Ate The 747, but I still wouldn’t hesitate to recommend The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud. I’m eagerly looking forward to the authors next book, which I believe is due out next year.

“The Secret Lives of People in Love” by Simon Van Booy

The Secret Lives of People in Love is the second collection of short stories by Simon Van Booy published by Beautiful Books in the UK. Van Booy won the 2009 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award for his first collection which I loved, and I couldn’t wait to read these new stories set in New York City, Wales, Cornwall, Paris, Rome and Greece. As the title suggests, the stories explore the private feelings and memories of individuals experiences of love.

And it is exquisite. There really isn’t a better word to describe the latest collection of short stories. Tales of love and loss are beautifully written, with the emotions flowing off the page and into your heart.

I am in complete awe of the mastery of a writer who can express the depth of a love between a man and woman, and the heartbreaking sadness of loss within the confines of a story that is only a few pages long, but Simon Van Booy achieves just this.

The first book of his short stories I read was Love Begins In Winter, and these ranged from 25 to 70 pages in length. Although there are some longer stories in The Secret Lives of People In Love, they are on the whole much shorter in length, some just a few pages long. In fact, my favourite, “The Reappearance of Strawberries” is only three pages, but heartbreakingly poignant.

A truly wonderful book that has shot to the top of my favourites for this year.

“Flyaway” by Lucy Christopher

The second book from Lucy Christopher that I’ve read in as many weeks, although this time aimed at a slightly younger audience – probably 10-13 year olds – but another fantastic book.

Isla finds herself in a distressing situation when her father is taken seriously ill while they are out together looking for the migrating swans arriving at the lake near their home. Through Isla’s story we find out how the different members of the family deal with his illness along with the longstanding feud between her dad and her grandfather. A young cancer patient at the hospital befriends her and an art project gives her the inspiration to try to help a young swan, while all the time the family find ways to cope with the trauma of her fathers health.

The characters in this book are all utterly believable, each having their own ways of dealing with the worry and uncertainty of illness, and Isla is a convincing, sympathatic narrator. Although the story of the swan teeters on the brink of fantasy, it is also wonderfully written and brings together the many threads of overall plot.

I can’t wait to see what the next book from Lucy Christopher will be, but I know that I will be first in the queue at the bookshop to get it.

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky

Told as a series of letters to an unknown recipient, Charlie tells the story of his freshman year in high school. It’s the late 1980s and he’s recently lost his friend and doesn’t seem to fit in to any of the social groups, and gradually we learn about his family, the new friends he makes, first dates and mix tapes and all that goes with growing up.

This book perfectly evokes what it is like to be a teenager. It’s a time when we all desperately struggle to fit in, yet all feel like we never quite manage it, and this book sums that up magnificently. Woven through the letters there is an underlying sense of tension with Charlie’s story unfolding to an unsettling revelation, but there is also the joy and fun of growing up and first experiences of drinking, drugs, relationships and sex.

This book was a joy to read, yet made me feel sad and melancholy as well, and in fact, made me feel exactly how I remember as a teenager, trying to find my place in the social hierarchy at school, testing the boundaries with my parents and beginning to experience life as an adult.

A touching, heartfelt coming of age story, beautifully told.

“Nocturnes” by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is a collection of short stories on the theme of music by Booker Prize winning author, Kazuo Ishiguro, who others have recommended to me in the past.

There is an art to writing short stories, every word is important and needs to be considered due to the brevity of the text. Unfortunately, I don’t think the stories in this collection worked; they all feel as though they are an extract from a novel, incomplete and have not encapsulated the essence of the story or characters successfully for me.

As the author was recommended on the strength of his novels, I would like to try more of his books, but I definitely won’t be bothering with any more of his short stories.

“Martin Lukes: Who Moved My Blackberry?” by Lucy Kellaway

When I worked for an insurance company, one of the few perks was having access to a free copy of the Financial Times. Not because of any of the business news, but because of the brilliant column from Lucy Kellaway. I had no idea she’s started writing novels, so when I came across this one in Waterstone’s, I just had to pick it up.

For anyone who works in an office this is a must read. Even as I sit here writing the review, I’ve got a huge grin on my face because this was a screamingly funny book, but a sometimes cringingly too close for comfort look at the politics of modern business.

A year in the life of Martin Lukes, a director at A-B Global (UK), this story is told purely from emails and text messages sent from the man himself. The reader gets occasional glimpses of company wide messages, but never gets to see responses to Martin’s mails, only the replies he sends, so you have to work out the other side of all the conversations, but it’s fairly obvious and actually adds to the enjoyment.

Office politics, work life balance and the aspirations of a man in full mid life crisis mode give so many opportunities for anyone who works in the modern business world to identify with someone in the story. It’s like a literary version of buzz word bingo!

I absolutely adored this book, and it did make me laugh out loud a lot, as well as sit grinning like a Chesire cat while reading. Kellaway has lost none of her observational or satirical skills since I last read her column, and I will be definitely be looking for more of her books.

“Dead Witch Walking” by Kim Harrison

The first of a supernatural series, Dead Witch Walking follows white witch Rachel Morgan, who quits her job as a runner working for Inderland Security (IS). No-one gets to walk away from their contract at IS without paying a price, usually with their life, so Rachel has to find a way to outrun the assassins and set up her own agency in order to make a living. In order to do this, she decides she’ll find the necessary evidence to out one of the city’s most respected businessmen, Trent Kalamack, as the drug lord she believes he is.

I hadn’t been intending to start another supernatural series of books, as I’m already engrossed in far too many, but I was out for the day and close to finishing the book I had with me, and picked this one up from a charity shop to tide me over until I got home.

Although it is set in the US, there was something about it that made it seem more global than the other series of books I’ve been reading. I think perhaps it’s because the Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake series are both set in southern states, whereas Harrison has set her book in a big city, Cincinnati, and it gave it a more urban and cosmopolitan feel, which I liked a lot.

However, on the whole, I though the story itself wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in this genre and the characters didn’t really grab me.

One thing that probably also put me off was the typeface and the size of the book. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I found it difficult to read, and the book was slightly smaller but thick, which I found made if hard to hold comfortably, and I think this had an adverse affect on my enjoyment of the book in general.

I certainly won’t be dashing out to by the next one, but if my TBR pile ever diminishes to next to nothing, I might consider picking up more of the series.

“The Gathering” by Anne Enright

This book is essentially about how the unreliable narrator, Veronica Hegarty, tries to make sense of and come to terms with, the death of her beloved brother. Through her own imagined history of her grandmothers life and how she came to meet and marry her grandfather, and the gradual revealing of an incident she witnesses when just a young child, Veronica takes us through the history of her family.

I didn’t enjoy this book much at all. Although she’s meant to be unreliable as a narrator, Veronica’s almost infatuated imagining of Ada’s relationships made the story pointless for me. Her fantastical recounting of her grandmothers sexual encounters told as if relating actual events felt like a waste of time, and when the revelation of the incident is eventually told, it had long ago been guessed by this reader.

None of the characters were properly fleshed out for me, and I think that was the main failing. If I could have believed more in the various members of the Hegarty family, I could maybe have invested more in Veronica’s story and tried to understand her story, but as it was, they were all just names on paper.

There were some good points though, and I did chuckle a couple of times during the final few chapters when the gathering of the title actually takes place, and the members of the family come home for their brothers funeral. There are some nicely observed moments of the various brothers and sisters, but it was so close to the end of the book, that it was too late to make sense of them as individual characters.

One of my other reading group members felt completely the opposite to me, and thought that it was a beautiful, honest description of a large family. She comes from a large family herself, and could identify with the various bonds and connections within the family hierarchy, so maybe I didn’t have the same sympathy with the characters coming from an only child family, but part of me says that it is the authors responsibility to make me believe and empathise with the situation, and not to feel alienated from it.

I wouldn’t be looking to read any further books by this author, but having said that, if I was given another of her books to read for a book group, I would probably give her another chance.

“The Red Queen” by Margaret Drabble

This was one of my reading group books for this month, and something I probably wouldn’t have picked up on my own, but I thought the blurb sounding promising and was looking forward to reading it.

Unfortunately, it was one of the most disappointing books I’ve read in ages. The story is split into two parts, the first part being the memoirs of a Korean princess in the eighteenth century, and the second part following an academic who reads the memoirs and the impact they have on her life.

Firstly, I didn’t like the style – apart from the two halves to the book, there are no chapters, and the first part was a first person narrative, while the second part was third person/reportage, but I never felt engaged with either of the characters whose tale was being told. I also felt that the memoirs were actually quite sketchy and vague, fitting the whole of her life story into 150 pages. I’ve read a couple of other books based on Chinese women in this era, which were detailed and explored the society of the time, but this one was particularly lacking in detail and atmosphere.

I have to admit, I only read 50 pages of the second part of the book before I gave up. I didn’t care about any of the characters or where the story was going, and decided that I have far too many other books demanding my attention to both reading another 150 pages of a story I just wasn’t interested in.