My Friends - Hisham Matar

One of the many books suggested by my mother, and yet again one of her many on-point suggestions. I greatly enjoyed reading this, but for me it was very much a story of two halves. 

The first half, with the main character's walk from King's Cross to his home in Shepherd's Bush was a work of art, introducing me to something I didn't know about (the shooting from the Libyan embassy in 1984), talking about something that I feel I know so well (that part of London, in particular the shout-out to the caryatids of St Pancras New Church, right outside my beloved undergraduate student hall), and making me think about some of my favourite London writers (Kureishi obviously, given the period being discussed and the immigrants' stories). 

The second half, however, was just a bit much. While it is true that wars are being increasingly fought by middle-aged men, I found it a bit far fetched and hard to buy into that two semi-intellectuals would find themselves at the forefront of the violent actions of the initial phases of the Libyan Civil War, and  reading about their discovery of Ghedaffi in hiding really appeared excessive to me. 

The Emperor's Babe - Bernardine Evaristo

Well, if you want to (re)write history, might as well go all the way. Seriously. 

I'm still not a major fan of Evaristo, but it is undeniable that she does breathe fresh air in contemporary literature. It's obviously not just the way in which she tackles race (in this case with a plot that is ultimately not so hard to believe as I initially envisaged), but also the panache and style (pulling off a verse novel is not exactly easy, I'd assume). 

So while she might not be my favourite contemporary British writer, I will most likely keep on reading her books as and when they become available at the Southwark library. 

Fury - Salman Rushdie

  

Another one of those books that I don't remember well (just a few weeks after having read it) and that have left me more with a vague feeling than with any specific recollections. This can't be a good sign, either for the book or for my growing forgetfulness...

Out of the few images that I can recall are the terrifying picture of a father looking at his wife and child sleeping with a knife in his hand, the creation of a doll called Little Brain (that I kept on mis-reading as Little Britain, probably another not-so-good sign), and a series of more and more problematic intercontinental phone calls. 

I actually don't even remember whether the main character ends up returning home or not, which again can't be a good thing. And I've by now decided that it's a problem with the book, and not with my memory.

The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith

  

This is not White Teeth. This is not even NW. It's a pretty average and innocuous novel, but its distinct lack of ambition made me like it more than On Beauty, and way, way more than Swing Time. 

At times I went so far as to find it endearing as it actually shed a light on a very unique community (like Whitehead's John Henry Days), and I actually do find kind of touching the quests for former celebrities - major or minor - that you see here, or in Auster's The Book of Illusions and also in the movie Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, which I was one of the seven people in the country to see in the cinema...

East of Acre Lane - Alex Wheatle

  

Oh what pleasure it is to read Alex Wheatle! Much like with Brixton Rock, I loved the novel already from its title (only difference being that I had liked East of Eden much better than Brighton Rock). 

And again, this is clearly a novel about a good kid in the middle of a (hopelessly?) tricky situation. And Brixton is loud, dangerous, interesting, buzzing and musical. It's also sad to hear Wheatle talk in recent interviews about what the place has (in part) become, though it's people like me that have contributed to its transformation. 

I can think of movies that capture contemporary South London in the way in which Wheatle's books capture that of the 1980s (Attack the Block being the most obvious example), I just hope that with time we'll also find authors - and not just filmmakers - capable of doing the same for 21st century Brixton.

Nothing Like the Sun - Anthony Burgess

  

I wouldn't have read this book had it not been for the fact that I'm now running out of titles from the Southwark electronic library that I'd consider reading...

Maybe I'm dumb, or maybe my English is not good enough yet, but man I struggled with this book. Granted, it is, unsurprisingly, like watching a Shakespeare play for me: I understand nothing for the first 15 minutes, then slowly things start to fall in place. The problem here is that reading for me is very much a start-stop thing, in particular these days, so I never really got in the flow of the supposed-16th century prose. 

On the plus side, I checked the Wikipedia entry for the book after I finished. Apparently I got all the main points, but that's hardly a sign of success, and that's not really the reason why one reads a book in the first place.

Swing Time - Zadie Smith

  

Years ago, a colleague of mine carried Swing Time into work every single day for a whole term. I didn't know her then, and I assume that if she carried the same book around for three months she couldn't have been reading it. 

I later found out that she carried it around for so long because because she had loved Zadie Smith's other books, but found this one an absolute slog. 

Having finally read it, I can now officially agree with her. Swing Time has nothing of the brilliance of White Teeth, or even of NW. Yet, it's not an effortless uncommitted read like The Autograph Man, and I even liked On Beauty better than this. 

For me, this book was proof of the fact that good (actually, often great) writing can't save a bad novel, and I don't really care about the bickering of dancing friends who have an unresolved rivalry since their school years.

There but for the - Ali Smith

A novel that I started to read on my return journey from Bolivia this Christmas.

I highly doubt that one can appreciate a novel, or a movie, or anything really, while on an intercontinental flight in economy class on New Year's Eve while travelling with two young daughters. Also, I've probably read too many Ali Smith novels recently (more on those later, as I work my way backwards through the list of the books that I've read over the last three years).

There but for the is a typical Ali Smith novel for me, but its witticisms fell flat for me, and I've probably started to have enough of some of her likeable smart misfits. Yet, the book is set in Greenwich and along roads and buildings that I can see from my flat, and I now won't be able to enter the foot tunnel without thinking about Ali Smith, so after all it was worth the read.

And obviously there's a really good chance that if I hadn't read this book while on a flight, or if this was my first Ali Smith novel, I would have found it wonderful. Sadly, I read this book while on a flight, and it was the latest in a long list of Ali Smith novels for me.

London Observed - Doris Lessing

And this was the first book I read after we left the hospital with our baby daughter. 

It was ideal, London-based, touching and not dated at all despite being made up of stories published over a number of years (for that, I guess you have to thank London and it's ability to remain true to itself even in moments of dramatic change). 

A perfect read for a hectic time in my life, and one of the few collections of short stories to make it onto my bookshelf. 

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. 

Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell

And to think that there was a time when I thought very little of Orwell. That was because I had only read Animal Farm (and didn't exactly love it) and heard an old member of the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War label him a "fucking tourist" when asked about Orwell's contribution to the war (an absolutely priceless moment!).

Much like everyone, I'm not quite sure how much of what Orwell tells in this fictional work of non-fiction actually happened or not, but it surely is thought-provoking and compelling. It is also probably one of those books that won't leave a permanent mark on me, but one whose overall sense will remain memorable.

And I don't know why, but I have the feeling it will remain on my shelf for longer than the very similar The Road by Jack London will (disclaimer: I did like The Road, but it's now with a pile of other books parked in my wardrobe as they are looking for a new home - with the second child coming around I'm now more determined than ever to have books only on my IKEA Billy and nowhere else in the flat!)



London Fields - Martin Amis

Another of those books that remained on my bookshelf for century because of their intimidating size. And another that I thoroughly enjoyed in the end.

I have to say I was actually kind of happy to find out that London Fields was not actually set in London Fields, as I struggle a fair bit with how fashionable the "hipsterland" between North and East London is.

The premise of the novel (a narrator, a murderer, a murderee and a foil) is genial, at least in my humble opinion. The prose is virtually flawless, and some passages might be among the best in recent British literature.

Sure, Nicola Six is an improbable character (to say the least!), and I could have done without the dystopian elements (not quite sure whether they really need to be there, to be honest), but London Fields remains a great book.



London Belongs to Me - Norman Collins

One of the last few novels that I had bought with my job's "book allowance" two years ago. And one that had remained on my bedside table for a long, long time because of its scary size. And yet a novel that, once started, I was able to read in a few days as the prose flows so effortlessly, and the South London setting makes the plot immediately interesting for me.

London Belongs to Me is a wonderfully ordinary story. It tells of the various families inhabiting a house and their daily challenges. It tells, ultimately, of London. There is (British) humour aplenty, there is drama and there is love.

Who knows, maybe if it had been published in 2017 I would have simply written it off as banal, but the WWII aura around London always goes a long way with me, just as it did when I read The End of the Affair.

In Our Mad and Furious City - Guy Gunaratne

I'm kind of surprised I even remember the password to my account. Well, the positive is that, despite the months of hiatus, I don't have a pointlessly crazy amount of books to catch up on because I didn't read that much (not quite sure that's a positive actually, but hey!).

Life, in the shape of an upcoming second child, is getting in the way. And I'm also helping my father-in-law translate his book from Portuguese (a language I don't speak) into English (a language that is not my first).

Anyway, back to a book I remember relatively little about, except that I got it at the IKEA Booker Prize event, and that I thought it was a Northwest London story that was well-written and interesting, but little more than that (if both the plot and the location remind one of Zadie Smith, then your work is really quite likely to pale in comparison). Also, I got it because its author had actually worked at the IKEA in Neasden...

So the overall rating would be "good enough": I liked the kid hoping to turn his life around by running for Brunel (a long shot, but I have great memories of playing basketball there and of their sports centre), and the depiction of the riots in the estate was quite compelling (but even here, nothing too new when one thinks of some of the biggest British books of the last few decades).

Moses Ascending - Sam Selvon

Much like with The Lonely Londoners, I very much loved this novel, its vignettes and Selvon's propensity for the vernacular. 

It doesn't have the same significance of its predecessor, but it's arguably funnier. That said, it is really nice to see Moses's life come full circle, and the two books allowed me to understand why one of the characters in the book I talk about above is named like that.

Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge

How many good (and at times great) novels has Beryl Bainbridge managed to write? I don’t know, but surely enough to force me to remove some of my favourites from my bookshelf because I can’t have ten books by her if I’m just allowing myself the space of an IKEA Billy for my books.

Injury Time to me ranks among her very finest works. It is different from most of her other works in that the arrival of the criminals in the second half is a plot twist that the reader doesn’t see coming, and Bainbridge’s humour flows freely without ominously bleak premonitions.

As usual, all the characters are troubled no matter how normal their lives look, and as usual the book develops perfectly over just over 200 pages (has she ever written anything of a different length?). And, as usual, it makes me wonder how she never won the Booker prize despite being shortlisted five times.

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

Oh, how I would have liked to love this book – but fantasy is just not for me.

No matter how charming the Marquis is.

No matter how deep the allegories on the world of homelessness are.

No matter how much I love reading about London (above or below).

I still can’t like fantasy books. No matter how good Gaiman is in his own field.