Some of my friends don’t like lists, and I can understand why. Lists are inherently exclusive – that is, some things are are bound to be excluded from them. And so it is with this list: for every book I’ve included there are two or three others that I’ve read that are probably just as good but which I’ve had to exclude. Because otherwise you’d just get everything I’ve read this year – forty seven books according to Goodreads, and likely a few more than that (not everything I read gets recorded on-line).
But I still wanted to make this list because there are certain books and certain authors that I wanted to give special acknowledgement to, and special thanks. Some have opened up the past, some have portrayed the future, some have simply given a deeper insight into people and human life in general. Several have highlighted particular skills and techniques in writing – always good to see how someone else does it, especially when they do it superbly well.
And all have been deeply captivating and enjoyable reads!
The list includes some old friends and some new discoveries (my thanks to Steve Andrews at Waterstones in Bath for introducing me to some of these). I can fully recommend every one of them.
Little Gidding Girl by Vivienne Tuffnell.
It’s got to be one of the most common daydreams that people indulge in – that idea that life could have gone so differently if only this had or had not happened…
It might only be a passing thought, or we might spend hours elaborating on the possibilities of this alternate history of ourselves, but most of us have been there.
No harm in that, of course. It’s just personalising one of the most common themes in storytelling. The fallacy is to believe that such an alternative life would have been better than the one we have – and it’s in that little niche that Vivienne Tuffnell grows this story.
Verity (the name is significant) never quite got over Nick’s death. She’s gone on since, to live another life – yet not, somehow, fully living it. Not totally involved.
Then, one day, her un-lived life intersects with her actual one, and sets events into motion that will force Verity to face the past and deal differently with the present.
One of the great strengths of Tuffnell’s writing is her ability to seamlessly weave the otherworldly into the everyday, so that the joins are not always apparent – which leads to some jaw-dropping moments when Verity finds reality has shifted. But there is more in this novel than just the ‘wow’ factor – there’s also some deep and serious thought about the issues raised by Verity’s experience.
Add to this a cast of colourful and well drawn characters, and you have a deeply absorbing and very satisfying story which left me with a lot to ponder on.
If you twist my arm, I’d admit to a few issues with it. Some sentence constructions that I would have done differently, some places where the word flow wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. In other books, such things might become major issues. But such is the strength of the narrative that these were never more than minor annoyances, quickly brushed aside in my desire to pursue the story.
From the title, it’s no surprise to anyone who knows anything of T.S. Eliot that ‘Little Gidding Girl’ has strong connections to his poetry and thought. As I know very little of Eliot, I was concerned that I might miss something crucial. Of course, it’s possible that I did! But my lack of knowledge was no real hindrance to reading and enjoying the book, and a side effect was to introduce me to some of the power of beauty of Eliot’s work.
I’d definitely recommend this book, especially for anyone who wants to walk the shady line between what is and what might have been.
After Atlas by Emma Newman
‘After Atlas’ is a stand-alone story, but it follows on from ‘Planetfall’. I was fortunately able to read them consecutively, which helped me appreciate the linkages between them.
Whereas ‘Planetfall’ is about the Earth’s first interstellar colonists, ‘After Atlas’ is set back on Earth many years after the colonists left. Both have a deep mystery at their hearts, the unfolding of which drives the plot forward very effectively. But with ‘After Atlas’ the mystery is wrapped up in a hi-tech police procedural and what seems to be a bizarre murder.
I especially enjoyed the criminal investigation aspects of the story, being both a reader of crime fiction and having been a Crime Scene Investigator myself. (Or, at the beginning of my career, a Scenes Of Crime Officer, which is how the they are referred to in ‘After Atlas’. It was nice to see the term ‘SOCO’ resurrected: there never was a good reason for us to become ‘CSI’s – but no one asked my opinion!). The way that advanced technology, especially information retrieval, effected the investigative process was well thought out and had a very authentic feel to it. I was particularly pleased to see that the author had properly accounted for cross-contamination issues, something that some mainstream crime writers fail on.
Much less pleasant – but still fascinating – was the way in which advanced technology made possible a new kind of slavery. I found that much more disturbing than the future reliance on ‘printed’ food (fresh food is an expensive luxury). Both ideas were integral to the plot, both were all too plausible.
The story was completely absorbing from start to finish. The murder mystery proves to be only the beginning as the main character, Detective Carlos Moreno, digs deeper. No spoilers, so I won’t mention what he finds. But, as in ‘Planetfall’ the ending was powerful and unexpected yet totally consistent with the rest of the story.
This is one of the few books that really did keep me up till the small hours, and made me resentful of anything that got in the way of my reading! I easily gave ‘Planetfall’ five stars – if I could I’d give ‘After Atlas’ five and a half. I suspect that there may be at least on other book set in the universe – it feels like there’s more to be said – and I certainly hope so! I shall be watching out for it.
The Long Firm by Jake Arnott
There's an almost nightmarish quality to the opening pages of 'The Long Firm', in that you know that something really, really bad is going to happen. Something involving a white hot poker and a man tied to a chair. But you can't look away: you can't stop reading. It's that good, and that powerful - a level of writing which is maintained throughout the book.
The book chronicles the career of Harry Starks, a London based criminal and gang boss. Tough, intelligent, homosexual and with a talent for creative violence, Harry is no stereotyped villain but a complex and vividly drawn character, who seems as just as real as the historical gangland inhabitants who his rubs shoulders with - people like Jack the Hat and the Kray twins.
But as well as captivating prose and brilliant characterisation, the author uses a very clever structure that makes this book outstanding. Each section is written from the point of view of a different 'minor' character - one of the people who knew and interacted with Harry. This is difficult to pull off - the author has to create a different 'voice' for each person - but it's done superbly well. And the technique enables us to see Harry much more clearly than we could if we had only one point of view - as well as seeing his life in a wider context. There was more going on than even Harry knew, and we get to see it all.
Jake Arnott could have written this as a straightforward, conventionally structured novel and it would still have been good. This approach makes it great.
Coastliners by Joanne Harris
‘Coastliner’s' is a gritty novel. Not so much in the normal sense that ‘gritty’ is often used in literature - i.e. dark and harsh, with a lot of vividly depicted violence and bleak outcomes all round. No, this book is gritty in a different way. It is gritty with sand and salt and the raw wind that comes in off the Atlantic, driving the waves and the spray inland. It’s damp with the surge of the tides that ultimately govern life on the island of Le Devin.
That atmosphere pervades everything, and everyone. And it is against that background that the story evolves. Mara, the main character, comes home after a long absence to find her village in a sad state of decline. In her struggles to reverse that, she find that she’s fighting a lot of adverse currents – both in the sea around the island in in the people on it. There are a lot of secrets hidden there, a lot of memories well buried, but the tides have a way of bringing things to light.
Looking at other reviews, I see that a lot of people have found ‘Coastliners’ a bit slow. It never seemed that way to me. Indeed, I thought it was perfectly paced to match the rhythm of life on the island and of the tides themselves. An excellent example, in fact, of how an author can use pace to accentuate the background and mood of a story. Like the tides, it moves at it’s own speed, and does so with great depth and power.
Song Hereafter (Troubadours 4) by Jean Gill
A good historical novel gives you the opportunity to explore a distant and all but unknown world, not as a tourist, not as a scholar, but as a native – seeing and understanding and living in that world.
That’s what you get from Jean Gill’s ‘Troubadours’ series. With her characters Estela and Dragonetz we explore a tumultuous world of colour and danger, cruelty and beauty. A world where superstition and bigotry rub shoulders with brilliance and nobility. It all comes alive in Gill’s writing and when you put the book down you are amazed at how people lived in those times.
Of course, this is not just down to historical accuracy, or even to vivid descriptions. What really draws you into these books are the characters. Both the major and the minor players are well developed and believable, but in Dragonetz and Estela we meet people who are complex, passionate and engaging. They are people we come to care about. After following the course of their lives and their love through all four books and across half the world of their time, we want to see them settled and at peace: they’ve certainly earned it!
But it’s not guaranteed. There are too many enemies, too many uncertainties. ‘Song Hereafter’ takes them to the wild and barbarous lands of Gwalia – Wales. Far from home and caught up in a war that is not their own, they nevertheless discover amazing beauty: and other things less welcome.
I don’t wish to include any spoilers here, but for those who have read the previous ‘Troubadours’ novels, ‘Song Hereafter’ is a fitting and satisfying conclusion. For those who have not – you should! You will not find any better historical fiction, nor a more powerful evocation of a vivid past than in Gill’s brilliantly written series.
The Provence of Estela and Dragonetz is long gone, though it has left its mark in the world. Their native Occitan is still spoken in some parts, but the famous troubadours no longer delight the courts of the great with their powerful voices and clever lyrics. Gill’s novels bring them back and give us a sense of what it was like to live and fight and love in those distant times.
But I still wanted to make this list because there are certain books and certain authors that I wanted to give special acknowledgement to, and special thanks. Some have opened up the past, some have portrayed the future, some have simply given a deeper insight into people and human life in general. Several have highlighted particular skills and techniques in writing – always good to see how someone else does it, especially when they do it superbly well.
And all have been deeply captivating and enjoyable reads!
The list includes some old friends and some new discoveries (my thanks to Steve Andrews at Waterstones in Bath for introducing me to some of these). I can fully recommend every one of them.
Little Gidding Girl by Vivienne Tuffnell.
It’s got to be one of the most common daydreams that people indulge in – that idea that life could have gone so differently if only this had or had not happened…
It might only be a passing thought, or we might spend hours elaborating on the possibilities of this alternate history of ourselves, but most of us have been there.
No harm in that, of course. It’s just personalising one of the most common themes in storytelling. The fallacy is to believe that such an alternative life would have been better than the one we have – and it’s in that little niche that Vivienne Tuffnell grows this story.
Verity (the name is significant) never quite got over Nick’s death. She’s gone on since, to live another life – yet not, somehow, fully living it. Not totally involved.
Then, one day, her un-lived life intersects with her actual one, and sets events into motion that will force Verity to face the past and deal differently with the present.
One of the great strengths of Tuffnell’s writing is her ability to seamlessly weave the otherworldly into the everyday, so that the joins are not always apparent – which leads to some jaw-dropping moments when Verity finds reality has shifted. But there is more in this novel than just the ‘wow’ factor – there’s also some deep and serious thought about the issues raised by Verity’s experience.
Add to this a cast of colourful and well drawn characters, and you have a deeply absorbing and very satisfying story which left me with a lot to ponder on.
If you twist my arm, I’d admit to a few issues with it. Some sentence constructions that I would have done differently, some places where the word flow wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. In other books, such things might become major issues. But such is the strength of the narrative that these were never more than minor annoyances, quickly brushed aside in my desire to pursue the story.
From the title, it’s no surprise to anyone who knows anything of T.S. Eliot that ‘Little Gidding Girl’ has strong connections to his poetry and thought. As I know very little of Eliot, I was concerned that I might miss something crucial. Of course, it’s possible that I did! But my lack of knowledge was no real hindrance to reading and enjoying the book, and a side effect was to introduce me to some of the power of beauty of Eliot’s work.
I’d definitely recommend this book, especially for anyone who wants to walk the shady line between what is and what might have been.
After Atlas by Emma Newman
‘After Atlas’ is a stand-alone story, but it follows on from ‘Planetfall’. I was fortunately able to read them consecutively, which helped me appreciate the linkages between them.
Whereas ‘Planetfall’ is about the Earth’s first interstellar colonists, ‘After Atlas’ is set back on Earth many years after the colonists left. Both have a deep mystery at their hearts, the unfolding of which drives the plot forward very effectively. But with ‘After Atlas’ the mystery is wrapped up in a hi-tech police procedural and what seems to be a bizarre murder.
I especially enjoyed the criminal investigation aspects of the story, being both a reader of crime fiction and having been a Crime Scene Investigator myself. (Or, at the beginning of my career, a Scenes Of Crime Officer, which is how the they are referred to in ‘After Atlas’. It was nice to see the term ‘SOCO’ resurrected: there never was a good reason for us to become ‘CSI’s – but no one asked my opinion!). The way that advanced technology, especially information retrieval, effected the investigative process was well thought out and had a very authentic feel to it. I was particularly pleased to see that the author had properly accounted for cross-contamination issues, something that some mainstream crime writers fail on.
Much less pleasant – but still fascinating – was the way in which advanced technology made possible a new kind of slavery. I found that much more disturbing than the future reliance on ‘printed’ food (fresh food is an expensive luxury). Both ideas were integral to the plot, both were all too plausible.
The story was completely absorbing from start to finish. The murder mystery proves to be only the beginning as the main character, Detective Carlos Moreno, digs deeper. No spoilers, so I won’t mention what he finds. But, as in ‘Planetfall’ the ending was powerful and unexpected yet totally consistent with the rest of the story.
This is one of the few books that really did keep me up till the small hours, and made me resentful of anything that got in the way of my reading! I easily gave ‘Planetfall’ five stars – if I could I’d give ‘After Atlas’ five and a half. I suspect that there may be at least on other book set in the universe – it feels like there’s more to be said – and I certainly hope so! I shall be watching out for it.
The Long Firm by Jake Arnott
There's an almost nightmarish quality to the opening pages of 'The Long Firm', in that you know that something really, really bad is going to happen. Something involving a white hot poker and a man tied to a chair. But you can't look away: you can't stop reading. It's that good, and that powerful - a level of writing which is maintained throughout the book.
The book chronicles the career of Harry Starks, a London based criminal and gang boss. Tough, intelligent, homosexual and with a talent for creative violence, Harry is no stereotyped villain but a complex and vividly drawn character, who seems as just as real as the historical gangland inhabitants who his rubs shoulders with - people like Jack the Hat and the Kray twins.
But as well as captivating prose and brilliant characterisation, the author uses a very clever structure that makes this book outstanding. Each section is written from the point of view of a different 'minor' character - one of the people who knew and interacted with Harry. This is difficult to pull off - the author has to create a different 'voice' for each person - but it's done superbly well. And the technique enables us to see Harry much more clearly than we could if we had only one point of view - as well as seeing his life in a wider context. There was more going on than even Harry knew, and we get to see it all.
Jake Arnott could have written this as a straightforward, conventionally structured novel and it would still have been good. This approach makes it great.
Coastliners by Joanne Harris
‘Coastliner’s' is a gritty novel. Not so much in the normal sense that ‘gritty’ is often used in literature - i.e. dark and harsh, with a lot of vividly depicted violence and bleak outcomes all round. No, this book is gritty in a different way. It is gritty with sand and salt and the raw wind that comes in off the Atlantic, driving the waves and the spray inland. It’s damp with the surge of the tides that ultimately govern life on the island of Le Devin.
That atmosphere pervades everything, and everyone. And it is against that background that the story evolves. Mara, the main character, comes home after a long absence to find her village in a sad state of decline. In her struggles to reverse that, she find that she’s fighting a lot of adverse currents – both in the sea around the island in in the people on it. There are a lot of secrets hidden there, a lot of memories well buried, but the tides have a way of bringing things to light.
Looking at other reviews, I see that a lot of people have found ‘Coastliners’ a bit slow. It never seemed that way to me. Indeed, I thought it was perfectly paced to match the rhythm of life on the island and of the tides themselves. An excellent example, in fact, of how an author can use pace to accentuate the background and mood of a story. Like the tides, it moves at it’s own speed, and does so with great depth and power.
Song Hereafter (Troubadours 4) by Jean Gill
A good historical novel gives you the opportunity to explore a distant and all but unknown world, not as a tourist, not as a scholar, but as a native – seeing and understanding and living in that world.
That’s what you get from Jean Gill’s ‘Troubadours’ series. With her characters Estela and Dragonetz we explore a tumultuous world of colour and danger, cruelty and beauty. A world where superstition and bigotry rub shoulders with brilliance and nobility. It all comes alive in Gill’s writing and when you put the book down you are amazed at how people lived in those times.
Of course, this is not just down to historical accuracy, or even to vivid descriptions. What really draws you into these books are the characters. Both the major and the minor players are well developed and believable, but in Dragonetz and Estela we meet people who are complex, passionate and engaging. They are people we come to care about. After following the course of their lives and their love through all four books and across half the world of their time, we want to see them settled and at peace: they’ve certainly earned it!
But it’s not guaranteed. There are too many enemies, too many uncertainties. ‘Song Hereafter’ takes them to the wild and barbarous lands of Gwalia – Wales. Far from home and caught up in a war that is not their own, they nevertheless discover amazing beauty: and other things less welcome.
I don’t wish to include any spoilers here, but for those who have read the previous ‘Troubadours’ novels, ‘Song Hereafter’ is a fitting and satisfying conclusion. For those who have not – you should! You will not find any better historical fiction, nor a more powerful evocation of a vivid past than in Gill’s brilliantly written series.
The Provence of Estela and Dragonetz is long gone, though it has left its mark in the world. Their native Occitan is still spoken in some parts, but the famous troubadours no longer delight the courts of the great with their powerful voices and clever lyrics. Gill’s novels bring them back and give us a sense of what it was like to live and fight and love in those distant times.