The Night Manager - John le Carré

Like with a little black dress, I guess you can never go wrong with a vintage le Carré. And to think of the snobbish look of our librarian when I donated my copy of The Russia House...

For me The Night Manager ranks a bit below Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy and Agent Running in the Field, but it remains a heck of a story. The troubled Pine is one of the most entertaining spies (well, is he a spy or a volunteer?!?) that I've ever come across, and seeing him struggle with his own conscience is absolutely gripping. 

Yet, it's Roper that steals the show. A villain who is always in plain sight and at the centre of the action, not a Palpatine-like figure in the hazy background, he undoubtedly elevates the novel. 

And one is left to marvel at how well some of  le Carré's books - including this - have aged. 

La Malnata - Beatrice Salvioni

And - finally! - a recent Italian book that I actually enjoyed. 

Maybe (actually, surely) not a work of art that is going to land its young author the Nobel prize, but hey at least it's a ray of light in the rather dark landscape of Italian literature. 

La Malnata is the story of two young girls in Fascist Italy. Written in a dry style that at times reminds one of Fenoglio, it features a plethora of secondary characters that are more or less developed (and more or less monolithic), but the two protagonists are neatly thought-out and brought to life. 

It is all a bit predictable, but I can live with that as Salvioni, unlike many of her contemporaries who know how to write (and just don't have any interesting ideas), doesn't seem to be madly in love with herself and allows her prose to roll quite freely. 

Recitatif - Toni Morrison

Is this just a short story, or does it count as a book if you consider Zadie Smith's intro? 

Either way, this is not something that left a permanent mark on me, probably because I didn't spend most of the book wondering which character was black and which was white, as Toni Morrison intended. And that's a huge limitation of mine, obviously, but very often - no matter what an author tells me to imagine! - characters in my head have extremely vague features (so much so, that at times for me Twyla is white, and other times Roberta is the white one, at times they are both white, and at times neither one of them is). 

Also, I most likely can't get into something that can be read over the span of an hour or two (short stories, novellas, etc.) as by the time I begin to find my stride is time to close the book. 

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

A novel that I meant to read for ages, and one that I only just recently got around to reading. 

On the one hand, it remains a poignantly moving book, one in which - despite not being able to identify with the main character at all, at least in my case - the reader truly comes to care for the narrator and wishes her a smoother future than her present. 

On the other hand, however, I am ashamed to admit that it's a novel whose plot I found, ultimately, forgettable: mixed in my head with what I know of Sylvia Plath's own life, I actually had to look it up on Wikipedia to remind myself of Esther's personal history and her love life. 

Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood

Frankly, I would have never believed that a contemporary revision of Shakespeare's Tempest (with all its meta aspects) would have been such a hit with me. 

Instead, man did I enjoy this book. Theatre in prisons is something that has fascinated me since Caesars Must Die by the Taviani brothers. Plus, the wider setting reminded me of Bob Smith's The Boy Who Loved Shakespeare, just in a fictionalized way. 

And I do love, in this case, a revenge against petty career-advancing characters. Add to this the fact that, for once, I was able to see Margaret Atwood in all her quirky humour, and you end up with a book that I enjoyed well beyond my expectations. 

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

An almost great American novel. Which is both high praise and highly frustrating. 

What makes it great is the eponymous protagonist, his relationship with the family of the narrator, and the chapters set in school and the New England backdrop. 

What doesn't make it great is the dull narrator (and the decision to dedicate so many pages to his contemporary life), the allegorical/metaphorical/mystical parts (just not my thing), and the fact that the ominous presence of the Vietnam War in the background has worked better for other authors (Auster, for instance). 

And from what my mom was telling me of John Irving I was expecting more fireworks in the plot, but this is probably one of his (relatively) sober novels. 

Capolinea Malaussène - Daniel Pennac

I spent months waiting for this book. Not an "edge of your seat" sort of wait, just a "I reserved it, but it'll take months before my library actually lends it to me" kind of wait. 

And it wasn't worth it. I thought that its predecessor (and in essence, the first instalment of this two-part novel) was arguably the best Pennac book I had ever read: wacky, but in touch with contemporary issues and trends, an interesting portrayal of the criminal underworld and a rather realistic generational conflict. 

This book still tries to have all of that, but with much diminished wackiness it just doesn't deliver. And if one removes so many of the comic aspects of Pennac, at that point all is left is a crime novel that really cannot match in any way, shape or form the best in the genre. 

Also: can a single contemporary writer close the circle of a multi-book story successfully? Pennac, Veronesi, Ali Smith, Coe (just the first four who come to mind)? Only Margaret Atwood has been able to write a sequel that left me completely satisfied based on recent memory.