The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith

The fact that it took me almost a month to read this book is a sad representation of how little I am reading these days. But it will change over the summer, I promise! And then child number 2 will make me nearly completely illiterate, but there's still time for that as the due date is December 5th...

The Talented Mr Ripley is an absolute delight despite the fact that it's quite dated and, can one say "Orientalist" in its depiction of Italy? There are pretty laughable mistakes in the Italian sentences, the stereotypical descriptions are a bit over the top at times, and the depiction of Italian society is a bit superficial at the very least...

Yet the book is compelling, the reader wants Ripley to escape justice and have a half-decent life, and one is bound to think about how easily he would get discovered in the 21st century...

Middle England - Jonathan Coe

A rare Jonathan Coe book that I didn't enjoy, and yet one that I think serves an educational purpose (at least for non-British writers).

The characters that I loved so much in The Rotters' Club, and that I still enjoyed in The Closed Circle are back for a third time and, at this point, it's just a bit much: with age they've lost a lot of their charm and too many of them have turned into allegoric representations of the sections of society they belong to.

While some of the new characters that are introduced are interesting enough, most of them are rather one-dimensional. The themes discussed are so widely covered in the media these days, and in rather similar ways, that they don't really add anything new. And the ending of the book is not one of the typical chaotic and rocambolesque ones that Coe usually goes for, but rather a flat one that reminds the reader of a cheap romance.

Yet, for someone who doesn't live in the UK and knows little about the current political landscape, this book can be a really good introduction to Brexit and the awfulness of the current political discourse in Britain.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh

If only the student who gave me this book as a Christmas present had submitted an essay all year (though he actually was one of the best students I've ever had, and I hope he got his act together for his exam!).

Despite taking place mostly in the narrator's own flat, this book is so clearly a "New York book". The plot is so disturbingly believable that I wondered whether the author hadn't gone through similar periods herself (maybe not quite a year's worth of drugged up oblivion, but a few weeks).

It's very well-written and (in a twisted way, obviously) pleasant. Yet it raises so many questions about our society, access to medicines, self-medication, depression etc., and a number of the answers are fairly cringeworthy...

Summer Crossing - Truman Capote

Apparently Capote was rather unhappy with this novel(la?) and that was one of the reasons why it wasn't published during his lifetime. Man, did he have high standards...

Summer Crossing is not exactly the best book of the 20th century, but that doesn't mean that one cannot spend a couple of enjoyable hours reading it. Again, this is a typical "New York book", inclusive of holidays in the Hamptons, inter-class romance, parties, garages etc.

It's not going to change your life, and it surely didn't change mine, but it can be good company on a lazy (early) summer afternoon.

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

Is it bad of me to say that I didn't particularly enjoy this book?

As far as the graphic aspects of graphic novels go, I wasn't blown away by the visual aspects of Persepolis.

And as far as novels go, the personal story of Marjane is extremely interesting (though I suspect not too dissimilar from that of a lot of people in a similar position in the 1980s), but I didn't learn much that I didn't know already about the big historical issues that frame the book.

At times the book appears to me to be a bit too raw, but maybe that's because it is ultimaltely written and drawn through the eyes of a young woman still trying to find her way into the world.

The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark

I struggle to believe I didn't even know who Muriel Spark was until about a year ago (in case anyone needed further proof of how far behind I am in terms of English Literature 101!).

Like the other books by Muriel Spark that I have had the pleasure to read, The Girls of Slender Means is witty, accessible and deep. The fact that the lives of the main characters remind me of my years as a student on a tight budget makes the book even more endearing to me.

As usual, one of the big strengths for me is the way in which Spark paints the lives of common people with an ironic (and at times slightly surreal) take. Because of the size of her books and the themes covered, Spark very much reminds me of Beryl Bainbridge.

The book also achieved something seemingly impossible: it made me like (at least the fictional) West London!

Il Bell'Antonio - Vitaliano Brancati

Further proof that, on occasion, you can get really good books from the book-crossing shelves at Turin airport (though way too often there's nothing at all, or something that looks way too spiritual and in a language I can't understand).

I honestly thought I had watched the movie version, then two chapters into the book realized that I probably didn't. Like a number of other books by Brancati, it is an "old" story that doesn't look dated (and probably, sadly, is not too far from what still happens in some settings in the 21st century).

It reinforces so many stereotypes about Italian culture. Yet, stereotypes are not always inaccurate (actually, at least in the Italian case, they're very often spot-on despite not being exactly pleasant) and this book says quite a lot about standards of masculinity in my country...

The Blazing World - Siri Hustvedt

Oh, Halcyon books and its wonderful finds...For a change, my mom read this book before I did and liked it despite struggling a bit with it. Possibly because of my greater familiarity with academic writing (sigh?!?) I actually found it really quite accessible.

The book has absolutely everything from my point of view - art, mystery, bizarre love plots, a number of different writing styles and registers, tricky gender dynamics and a wonderful setting in Brooklyn.

Of all the questions the book raised for me, the biggest ones probably regard Siri Hustvedt herself: how does it feel to be considered the wife of a creative genius, when you yourself are an incredibly talented writer (possibly more than your better half)? And is there any chance Siri Hustvedt might have written chapters, if not whole books, for which Paul Auster got credit?

Shroud - John Banville

A book taken from the book-crossing shelves at Turin airport that manages to be so delightfully Turinese (even in its title) despite being written by an Irish author.

I didn't know anything about Banville (bad me, I mean, the guy even won the Booker Prize) and my mom, right as usual, persuaded me to read this book despite not having even read it herself.

The book is beautifully written, though at times it is possibly a bit too deep and ponderous even for me (or maybe I'm just not as good a reader as I think I am!). The shadowy identity twist from the main character's WWII years, and the decadence of the contemporary setting, however, made this an excellent read. Though, after consecutive books with big WWII discoveries, I really needed something solely focused on the contemporary world and without Nazis around!

Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

One of the last "big" buys at the local farm - nowadays I'm not 100% sure if most of the half-decent books they sell are old ones of mine, or whether there's simply another reader somewhere in the area with a similar taste in books who discards virtually the same titles.

I went in with big expectations, having watched the movie a few years ago, and it really didn't disappoint. Actually, it was in many ways better than the movie itself - the grandfather an even more complex character, Alex's writing even funnier than his spoken English (and also, Alex himself is quite a lot deeper), and really rather interesting description of Ukraine and its 20th century history.

If not one of my all-time top-10 books, then definitely one of last year's top-10. It now is in the hands of a couple of friends who went to Ukraine for a trip a month or so ago. 20p say the book will never land back on my shelf. Oh well, at least I really like those guys...

Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow

Behold, a book by Saul Bellow that I didn't fully and thoroughly adore! And my last acquisition from the £1 Halcyon Books store in Greenwich before its closure.

What I liked were Henderson's back-story, his sheer size, and a number of his inner thoughts and dialogues with himself. Then again, all of these things - except the size! - are the things I normally love in Bellow's books.

What I was far from being comfortable with was him going to Africa and playing (an arguably well-intentioned) god. When he does get things epically wrong and blows up the village's cistern, I wasn't happy that he was being put in his place. I could only think about the lives destroyed by his act and about the (very) rich white man who would then move to the next village (with all the guilt in the world, obviously, but also with his millions).

Had I read this book when it was first published I would have probably reacted differently. But it would have been quite hard, because, well, that was 28 years before I was born...

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.

The Mars Room - Rachel Kushner

Another of the Booker-longlisted IKEA books, and one for which I really wouldn’t have gone for had it not been for the fact that Don DeLillo was listed in the book’s acknowledgement. According to Oddschecker, it is now the second least likely book to win the award. In spite of that, it’s my own favourite for the year.

The Mars Room is a prison book that manages not to be bad, mean and aggressive. Yet, I believe it does give the reader an actual idea of the daily life in a woman’s prison. It is also about gender (and very much non-binary) and the challenges that women experience when facing unwanted male attention.

Yet again, for interesting that the above things are, what resonated the most with me is the hopelessness of a mother who doesn’t want to accept the reality of having lost her child.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré

As a result of my attempts to limit the number of books that clutter our flat, a few months ago I donated a dozen novels to the LSE Library. One of the librarians congratulated herself on most of my books, except for Le Carré’s The Russia House. Granted, I didn’t love it, but I thought that was excessively snobbish (and that’s coming from me!) and prejudiced against a writer who only made the mistake of creating some of the greatest spy stories ever written and did so in a way that ensured popular acclaim.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldiery Spy was first suggested to me by my old boss (I really do miss her at times) and she was right – though I still need to see the movie that she recommended just as wholeheartedly.

George Smiley is absolutely awesome, and it is clearly not surprising that he is the protagonist of a whole series of novels and not just one. His problematic love life adds a layer to the novel. The plot, in its twistiness, is gripping yet complex. And the way in which the chapters cross space and time is done in a way that keeps the reader interested and, crucially, confused. Desperately trying to figure out who the mole is, the only thing I knew for sure is that it couldn’t be the “obvious” culprit. And “obviously” I was wrong…