This book is written alternately from the view of Mary and from the view of Elizabeth Philpot, a name who very few people would remember, but who was hugely instrumental in Mary’s success. One of the things I loved about this novel is that the author didn’t just revive a poorly known figure, she also saw to it that she gained some of the credit for her work at a time when she was almost invisible.

The problem with both Elizabeth and Mary is they were both women who had a fascination with something scientific and who never married. Elizabeth was a sad case of an unattractive woman who, having been unable to find a husband by 22, was rendered a spinster who would never marry and would only ever be a burden to her brother. She and her two sisters were moved to Lyme Regis to effectively get them out of the way of society, and it was there that she met Elizabeth – uncouth, uneducated, but with an incredible ability to spot fossils.

This book pokes at a lot of things which I really loved. From criticisms of 19th Century society to criticisms of Jane Austen, Chevalier strips the romanticism of the period bare. Elizabeth Bennett was truly privileged in comparison to Elizabeth Philpot – and I suspect the story of the latter was far more prevalent than Austen’s dewy eyed romanticism would have you believe. Also, of all of the men who appear in Remarkable Creatures, not one of them presents well. From the ignorant patronising airs of the churchmen who refused to acknowledge anything which could cast doubt on the Bible, and scorned the questioning of a mere woman, through to the arrogance of the other fossil hunters and the cruelty of characters like the Captain, who’s privileged status as a male gave him licence to do what he liked without any particular thought for the women he affected living beneath onerous societal conventions.

This is as much a book about science, Darwin, the shaking of belief, determination and passion as it is about feminism and success against all odds. I found myself at times angry, at other times saddened (and feeling very lucky to live when I do), and still at other times cheering for Elizabeth’s determination and Mary’s skill. I am so pleased that Chevalier thought to bring these two women to life, as they have both touched me in their separate ways.

The fascination with fossils and the questions they raise is one which ought to be done and dusted in the 21st century and it amazes me that there are still people with the ignorant attitude of the pastor in Remarkable Creatures. When something like nature is so beautiful and breathtaking in its age and development, why would anyone want to deny it? It just makes no sense. Oddly, reading this historical novel makes you realise that although we have come a long way since Mary and Elizabeth scoured the beaches of Lyme Regis for ‘curies’, we still haven’t come far enough.

The strength of this story is in the fact that every line and paragraph is infused with emotion. There is an almost dream like quality in the narrative which is highlighted by feelings of sorrow, realisation, loss, euphoria and helplessness. The tragedy of it is that the characters, particularly Elizabeth but also David to an extent, only acknowledges the emotion after it is too late to do something about it. As such, the emotions are all suffused with a sense of regret and what if, which ultimately makes the whole feeling of the book one of sadness.

Unfortunately, I found myself frustrated by the unwillingness of Elizabeth to actually open her eyes and see what wonder and chance of happiness she had before her with Thomas. Why did it take until it was too late before she actually recognised what it was he was offering – love, life, acceptance, happiness? I wanted to shake her because of her insistence on returning each time to an evil, manipulative mother-in-law and an emotionally absent husband. She had the opportunity for life and she chose stagnation. But perhaps I shouldn’t have got annoyed – perhaps we all do that in our lives at some stage, most often out of fear, and only realise we have done it later.

I think Vickers shows incredible skill at understanding people – not surprising due to her own career as a psychoanalyst as well as her own experiences of loss and heartbreak in marriage. The language is restrained, refined and yet powerful and although I did feel that sometimes the emotion was a little too intense and therefore started to feel a bit heavy or contrived, I do recognise that this wasn’t a story about people, it was a story about the human condition and those parts of ourselves which we struggle to control. With hindsight, or if you could stand outside of yourself, you can see it. But otherwise you are almost powerless against the pull of feelings and reactions to others.

It is not an uplifting book, but it is one that makes you assess your own life. Elizabeth made a mistake which she no longer has the ability to rectify – by hearing her story, you may prevent it happening for yourself.

Rating: 7/10
ISBN: 978-0007165452
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 7 January 2010
Pages: 320

The main character of this book – or series of books, as I am led to believe – is a man with a pretty abrasive personality. I don’t think I have ever read a book where the main character managed to anger so many people. But he did it in a way that created arguments and unpleasantness. The result was several slightly artificial but nevertheless unpleasant. Can one man really have such an effect? Particularly when he first met his new ‘employer’, Junior Willis. Within several hours he had managed to hack Willis off so much that when Janeway threatened to leave without taking the job, Willis never stopped him and never really came back. The author explained it away by saying that Willis had a bad temper. Perhaps politeness in society is different in Idaho, but that just didn’t ring true.

Characters were picked up, developed to a point, and then just as quickly dropped again. Janeway’s fickleness when it came to suspects was highlighted by how thinly the author tried to point the fingerat one person after another (not very convincingly, unfortunately). Granted, I didn’t pick who was to blame until later in the book, but the guilty party had been introduced quite awkwardly earlier in the book so that when it turned out that it was that person who did it, I felt pretty unsatisfied.

The biggest problem with this book was that it just didn’t flow. It was like a series of hiccups with a bit of harmony in between. I can see what the author was trying to do and I liked the fact that he tried to do something a bit different with the subject matter, but it just didn’t work for me. I want to find out a bit more about the difference between a bibliophile and a bibliomaniac (it wasn’t a distinction I had ever heard of, so one good thing is my curiosity has been piqued) but I just couldn’t buy it. I couldn’t buy the fact that everyone had been in love with the ‘bookwoman’ of the title, and I couldn’t buy the fact that Janeway managed to make his way into the racing circuit without so much as a hitch. I couldn’t buy the amount of time his girlfriend, Erin, spent on the case when she was supposed to be a lawyer, and I struggled with his career change and indecision. Basically I found Janeway arrogant and blundering in a not particularly nice way. I gave it a go, but I won’t read another one of these. They weren’t for me.

Rating: 4/10
ISBN: 0-7318-1307-3
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2006
Date finished: 6th January 2010
Pages: 337

I took One Shot with me on the flight from London to Adelaide, packing it in my little on board case with several magazines, another book and an iPod, worries that I might run out of things to do on that long haul journey. I always do that – my biggest worry is that I might get stuck somewhere with no reading material. Although I have read another Jack Reacher novel and I knew this one would be good, I hadn’t remember how un-put-downable it actually was. I was completely gripped from the first page.

The story starts with a cold, insane killer who sets himself up in a car park and shoots dead five people who are doing nothing more offensive than going home from work. Five people dead, six shots fired. The police are on to it immediately and with the almost textbook evidence left behind by the killer, the perpetrator is found and apprehended within a matter of hours. Under questioning he says nothing. It is only after he is put in prison and a lawyer visits him that he makes a short statement. He wants to see Jack Reacher.

The clever thing about this novel is that at the beginning, you too are convinced that this is a cut and dried case. Indeed, when Reacher arrives, that impression is compounded when he relates his experience with the accused. As the story goes on, you begin to doubt. Perhaps he did it under duress? Perhaps he was forced? Perhaps…perhaps he didn’t do it? This is what Lee Child is so skilled at – he takes you on a journey where you don’t even realise you are being led, but when you look back, all of the signs are clear…in hindsight. I can’t remember what point I figured it out, but it was very late on in the book – in fact, one fundamental player I didn’t work out until the author actually revealed who it was. He had constructed the story so well without putting in any obvious diversions or false trails that you felt like you were an invisible member of the team who had come together to figure out what was going on.

Reacher is a true hero. Because he is a flawed character, you can’t help but love him. I love the fact that if he is being followed for several pages, you are reassured to discover that actually he knew he was being followed and had already devised a plan to lose his tail. You want him to win – you just can’t help it. He is the ultimate good guy without being irritating, smarmy or artificial. Couple that with a story that is well written, a plot which is complex and gripping and an outcome which is intensely satisfying despite being surprising, and you have escapsim at its best. You can’t help but put the Jack Reacher novels up there with the benchmarks of good popular crime fiction.

Rating: 9/10
ISBN: 9780553815865
Publisher: Bantam Books
Year: 2005
Date finished: 2nd January 2010
Pages: 495

Mr Malik is rather taken with Rose Mbikwa, the leader and guide of the Tuesday Ornithological . Walk. Unfortunately, Malik isn’t the brash type – in fact, he is shy and incredibly polite and although he has been going on the walks regularly, every week, for several years, he hasn’t yet summoned up the courage to ask Mrs Mbikwa for a coffee. When the Annual Hunt Ball comes around, he sees it as his opportunity and writes a polite invitation to Mrs Mbikwa to ask her to accompany him to the ball. However, he doesn’t send it – and before he gets a chance to, who should walk onto the scene but Harry Khan.

Unfortunately, Malik knows Harry from their time at school together some 50 years before and despite them all being old men now, things haven’t changed. From the time of his arrival, Harry has his eye on Rose and before long, a competition between Malik and Khan is called for the right to ask Rose to the ball. The one who spots the most types of birds in a week will be the winner.

Harry uses money, influence and time to scour the country. Malik takes a slower route and seems to hit trouble after trouble – from being robbed and having his car stolen, to almost being kidnapped by Somali terrorists. Throughout the week though, Malik is soon reminded about what is important in his life and as the competition draws to a close, he has to weigh those things with his fondness for Rose.

I won’t give a spoiler, but it is a delightful ending – both happy and unexpected. This story is a fairy tale of goodness, laced with humour and beautiful imagery, while still touching on the things which continue to plague Africa – AIDS, poverty, kidnapping and corruption. I loved it because it provided such a delightful balance, and was written with so much imagination and lovely, flawed, likeable characters.

And look out for the chicken

Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 978-0-670-91757-0
Publisher: Viking
Year: 2007
Date finished: 9 December 2009
Pages: 202

Rather than going into the detail, I wanted to put forward a thought which was raised by this book. Interestingly enough, just before I finished it I was listening to a podcast which was talking about the first mass murder of the 20th Century – the 3 to 4 million Africans who were killed either directly or indirectly by the colonial rule of Belgium in the Congo and the subsequent drive for rubber. Reflecting on that and all of the other racist cruelties which occurred on account of colonialism, on the surface of it one can almost understand why, when the blacks seized power, they felt the need to treat the remaining whites with equivalent cruelty.

However, is it just me, but when has a problem ever been solved by straight revenge? When has treating the old oppressor in the same way as they treated us been an appropriate and effective tactic? There could be argument that fighting back against the actual oppressor might be justified, but what if the people you are fighting and second generation, third generation, removed from the act of oppression by years? Unfortunately, the world is such that humans have long memories when they choose and amnesia when it suits them. And in the melee, ordinary people who are just trying to get on with their lives have to suffer.

Godwin’s story of his parents is heartbreaking in so many ways, and yet they maintain their spirit and try to maintain some semblance of life. The tragedy is, the author discovers that his father had already had his fair share of loss – he was a Polish Jew who lost his mother and sister to the hell hole of Treblinka. Another time, another oppressor, another cruel period of history. Does it ever end?

I am very grateful to the author for telling us his story and allowing us to see Zimbabwe from someone on the inside. You can’t help but feel the same sense of betrayal and bitterness which his parents must have felt, and fury at the corruption which meant that the poor, who had supposedly been oppressed by the whites, remained poorer than ever as their black leaders stole even more from them.  Once again, I finished this book thinking ‘what hope is there in the face of human greed?’. Perhaps I should take hope from the individual stories that the author offers – the people who help one another, irrespective of colour, the people who support one another because there is need, not because there is gain, and the sense that perhaps, just perhaps, something can be done.

Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 978-0-330-43369-3
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 23 December 2009
Pages: 342

I honestly believe that this book should be mandatory reading for everyone who has ever picked up a newspaper, or regurgitated an argument which they have read in a headline or heard on Sky.

Davies sets out to expose the corner-cutting, biases, falsehoods, lies and deceit which underpins much of today’s media. He explains why the ‘news lite’ we receive each day is selective, repetitive, sensational and often very poorly researched. He demonstrates that true investigative journalism has almost been completely wiped out, and that truth and exposure are the least of the considerations in many of the news organisations. And his thesis puts most of it down to the fact that news is now a corporate profit making exercise, and like all capitalistic institutions, money and profit is paramount, political advantage (leading to profit) is secondary, and no longer on the radar is informing the public, and exposing the truth.

That may seem like a pretty dire assessment to make, but his arguments made perfect sense and were backed up with a lot of evidence and case studies. I was told on Twitter that he didn’t actually carry out most of the research – be that as it may, he published it and in my opinion, an expose like this needs to be made public irrespective of who does it, so I am grateful that he went out on a limb to do so.

The problem with this book was that it ended with very little hope, but then, perhaps that is reality. Our society is so driven by profit that the chances of philanthropic newspaper owners, journalists willing to go out on a limb to get to the truth and impartial reporting ever returning are slim. That is not to say you can’t find that somewhere, but it isn’t in the instant, 24hour news. One could argue that the BBC shouldn’t be a corporation battling with the likes of NewsCorp, but because the bar has been set, the BBC simply has to keep up. As a result, their journalists (or ‘churnalists’ as the author calls them) are under as much pressure, with as few resources and as little leeway as their corporate, profit driven counterparts. And the only real result is that the ignorant public remains ignorant.

I finished the book wondering how on earth one was supposed to discover what the truth was in the world when we are numbed daily by the flat earth news cycle? Do blogs and the internet help? Partially, but it takes some time and effort to weed out the good writing on the internet from the dross. How about quality, independent publications? Yes, but sadly they are only read by a cultural ‘elite’ of sorts who have the time, education and motivation to seek them out and read them. Your average person going home on the train, who has spent the past 10 hours of their day working desperately hard so that they can pay their mortgage and meet the next payment on the new car as well as the kids school fees, is not likely to sit down with anything more taxing than the Metro. And therein lies the problem.

I do lament how driven our world is by money, profit, greed and competition. In fact, since reading this book, I have read another about Zimbabwe (which I will review shortly) which just reconfirmed this. This is human nature, and the way of the world. But that shouldn’t stop every thinking person from asking questions, challenging the loudest voices and making the decision to make up their own mind.

You can read more at Nick Davies website, Flat Earth News

Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 0099512688
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2009
Date Finished: 15 October 2009
Pages: 320

Two severed hands were discovered beneath a waterside restaurant in Bristol by the police diving time. What starts out as a routine investigation soon delves into the world of African muti, witchcraft, superstition and belief which touches upon all levels of society – from middle class restaurant owners and academics through to the underworld of heroin addicts and council tenants. Jack Caffrey, Mo Hayder’s regular character, solves the case along with Flea Marley – a police diver with a tragic secret. The characters come together to solve the crime and in the process, start to deal with some of their own issues.

I do like books which you can fly through, like this one. I can forgive the shallowness and lack of character dimension because I understand these have to be sacrificed to produce a quick on-the-train read. As such, I try not to be too dismissive of these ‘factory’ produced novels which are churned out on schedule and sold in Tescos for £3.99. I don’t see this as saying the author isn’t talented or doesn’t have skill – she produces what the publishers ask her to produce and provides us with CSI or Law and Order in book form which we can use for a bit of escapism when the rest of the world seems a bit too tough to take.

Rating: 6/10
ISBN: 0553820435
Publisher: Bantam Books
Year: 2008
Date Finished: 19 December 2009
Pages: 560 (but it was pretty much large print!)

I wonder, if the crowds with such enthusiasm for buying books had been in Borders a few months ago, perhaps such a scene might not have occurred? Of course, I like a bargain as much as the next person, but my 11 books for just over £8.00 left me more with a sense of sadness than triumph. My bagging a bargain has happened at the expense of one less place to browse for books, one less shop to disappear into and not come out of for hours, and one less place that I can escape the world and indulge my passion.

Of course, I hold my hand up – I do most of my book shopping either at second hand places or on Amazon. The cost of living in London is pretty expensive and so I need to watch my pennies where I can and books aren’t exactly cheap. But with the world moving online, coupled with a pretty dire recession, it is little wonder that a place like Borders couldn’t survive. I wonder what this says for the future of high street retailers? What with price cuts from the massive supermarket chains, internet retailers and a general reduction of how far money goes, it will be interesting to see.

I, for one, am still hunting for a local independent bookstore, although they are becoming rarer and rarer by the day. I am happy to give my loyalty to a small bookshop over and above Amazon or Tescos, but the reality is, if a large chain like Borders UK can’t survive, what hope has an independent got? Does anyone else pine for the experience of walking into a bookshop and being greeted by the owner or shop assistant who says they have just finished a book they know you will love? Perhaps that is what social media is supposed to replace? I don’t know – it just doesn’t quite feel the same.

This is going to sound sentimental, but I lovingly removed those 11 books from the Borders bags when I got home and carefully took off the SALE stickers which they were festooned with. I then placed them in alphabetical order on my library bookshelves, ensuring each one was snug and visible for when I next wander in to find what I am going to read. I see it as my tiny rescue mission for 11 books which had been left on the sinking ship.

The novel is unusual because it is written backwards. We first meet the characters when the war is over. It is 1947 and although it should be a time of happiness because of the relative peace after so long at war, every character is troubled for some reason or other.  The author provides enough information that you can start to form a picture of why each person is where they are, but not so much that you can guess at what befell them during the war years. Kay is very much alone, Viv remains loyal to her married lover but shows signs of disillusionment, Duncan is now free from prison, but living with one of his prison wardens and Helen, in love with and living with Julia, is torn apart by her own jealousy and insecurity.

The tragic section of this book is the middle section which covers the events of 1944. It is during this section that we find out the reason for Kay’s sadness, and the roots of Viv’s disillusionment. We discover when Helen fell in love with Julia and the impact that that had on others. And we share prison with Duncan, and begin to learn why he is there. In the final, short section of the book – 1941 – some final answers are provided, causing you to think back over what you have read to put the pieces together and explain the atmosphere which pervades the first part of the book.

I really enjoyed the novel, although I was a little frustrated by the reverse narrative, not because I found it difficult to follow, but because when I had discovered the causes, I wanted to know what happened after 1947 and I kept reminding myself that I wouldn’t know because I had already read that part! I thought the descriptions of the relationships between the characters were very tender and unselfconsciously written, and I really liked that. It isn’t always that you get to read about lesbian relationships with such candour and it helped you to understand just how difficult it would have been during a time where any kind of unorthodox relationship was frowned upon, whether it was same sex, or simply an affair out of wedlock. As a result, every single character experiences something of the forced secrecy which they have to endure as an added stress to the difficulties everyone faced.

I think this was a well written novel which brought to life the Blitz in London. It successfully showed that not everyone who went through it fitted the archetype of the Londoner which you see on the old newsreels or read about in history books. Then, as today, there were ‘outcasts’ – who had to show perhaps greater bravery and strength to make it through.

Rating: 8/10
ISBN: 978-1-84408-241-4
Publisher: Virago
Year:2006
Date Finished: 6 November 2009
Pages: 503