Trust - Hernan Diaz

I probably should stop reading novels just because they won a prize, though in this case Trust had won the Pulitzer, not a random local award handed out in the courtyard of a primary school!

What the novel doesn't lack is ambition, as it tackles the Great Depression from the perspective of four people deeply connected to the events and - each in their own way - rather influential in shaping the experiences and perceptions of their fictional contemporaries. 

What it lacks, however, is something truly gripping. The conflicts - open or tacit - between the various forces and characters often feel petty, and the final chapter, with tokenistic surprise element, is rather uninspiring and doesn't leave the reader (or at least it didn't leave me!) with any particular desire to find an answer to the last unanswered questions of the novel. 

Love, etc - Julian Barnes

A very solid 30p buy from the Barbican's library. Shame they only appear to have gigantic hardbacks on sale these days...

As a demonstration of the fact that I read (and buy) books more or less at random, I read LOVE, etc without having read its predecessor (Talking It Over). In spite of that, I really rather enjoyed it - the story is very easy to pick up (to be fair, Barnes does offer what I believe is a pretty substantial recap through the words of the three main characters), and the London setting is, as usual, very appealing to me. 

The biggest selling point for me was the decision to allow the characters to "speak for themselves" in an almost theatrical way, something that appears so smart and so simple, and something that surprisingly other authors (to my very limited knowledge!) haven't decided to imitate.