One Hundred Years Of Solitude

After two long dictionary riddled weeks I finally finished this modern classic by the Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's a book about a family, the Buendias, that tells their story through several generations and that of the town Macondo that the family founds. There is a lot of tragedy in the family and the same mistakes are made with each generation to give this feeling of history being rather cyclical. Although this sounds like it's going to be a bit miserable to read it's actually very funny. There are many characters in this novel, seven generations worth and the main problem I had was keeping track of who was who; all the men are named some derivative of Jose Arcadio or Aureliano for their fathers/grandfathers/great grandfathers. Luckily the copy I read had a little family tree on one of the early pages so I could have a look at that when I lost my way again! The female characters where my favourite probably because their stories where easier to follow with their diverse names and each of them where very different, whereas the sons in the family all seemed to inherit similar character traits, which again strengthened the whole theme of history repeating. You just have to go along with this book, there's a lot of supernatural bits in it that are just portrayed as run of the mill everyday occurances, like one character Remedios the beauty is folding a sheet one day when she just up and floats off to heaven, as she's too pretty to be confined to Earth. I think it's called magical realism when a book is written like this, so you just have to take it all in, Marquez makes it easy to do this though and the physically impossible things don't stick out or seem that odd which I suppose is odd in itself. This book has been called required reading for the entire human race, the author won the nobel prize for literature, and it's on all of those 'books you must read' lists so should you? Well it's not the easiest read, honestly if I managed to read a page without looking up a dictionary I felt a massive sense of achievement/relief, Marquez really has some vocabulary on him but it was worth the effort. It just takes a LOT of effort but you put that in and it's a very good book, it's a classic that's really actual is a classic, bring a dictionary though. 5 stars.

Every Last One

I thought I was going to hate this book by Anna Quindlen. In all honesty for the first half I was a little bit bored and then as I'm sitting in waterstones cafe with a pot of tea trudging my way through it (ok that's a little harsh) something so shocking, so unexpected happens I gasp loudly enough that at least two people turn round to look at me. In hindsight the author had done the work in the first half to build up to the shocking thing that happens so although fairly extreme it was completely plausible, I absolutely did not see it coming though! Like my last review I can't give much of an overview of the story without spoiling it for anyone who might fancy reading it. It's about a family, well essentially the mother of this family and how she copes when things start to unravel. I'm being very vague and I'm not making it sound like much of a story but it is, trust me the second half just knocks you right over. Also I have to warn you this book will make you cry, and I don't usually cry unless I'm really angry (which is inconvenient in an argument). I seem to be having a streak of luck with my choices of novel at the minute, this one gets 4 out of 5.

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn has managed to something quite impressive with this her third novel. Thrillers generally are the book equivalent of an action film; always enjoyable but without a great deal of substance. Flynn however has written a thriller with actual characters not the usual good guys, bad guys and red herrings. And she's written it well, the writing is absolutelyon par with that you'd normally find in literary fiction. The plot makes sense, the twists, the reveals they are all suprisingly believable. I can't really give a useful synopsis without giving something away, essentially Nicks wife Amy goes missing and its sort of about the hunt to find out what happened, that's the thriller bit but it has this whole other layer to it about relationships and marriage and love and hate and everything inbetween. The twist in it really is something and Amy's a character that will loiter with me for sometime, it's excellent, and I'm afraid I can't say much else except if you like thrillers read it, actually if you like reading anything read it, it's one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year.

The Shipping News

There are really two main characters in this pulitzer winning novel by Annie Proulx; a man Quoyle (pronounced like coil) and Newfoundland (which is not somewhere in England, my ignorance of geography really knows no bounds, but in Canada or rather in Canada but kind of independent of it I think). A little synopsis of the story would be Quoyle, a man who has never quite fitted in or felt comfortable in himself is living in New York with his 2 daughters bunny and sunshine and wife Pearl who he loves inordinately but it's all rather unreciprocated, when she dies (it's ok though she's entirely unlikeable). He ends up packing his life and kids up and under the influence of his Aunt Agnis moves to Newfoundland where all his ancestors are originally from. It is a rugged harsh place and it's really about how he finally finds himself at home in this bleak environment, finds friends a place in this odd little fishing community and going from a man who wouldn't set his foot on a boat to writing the shipping news for the local paper. Newfoundland comes quite alive in your head through Proulx's portrayal and she uses a lot of wit in her writing. A warning though, if your squeamish about fish this might not be the book for you, not that there's graphic descriptions of the gutting of fish or what not, it's just that being a fishing town they eat a lot of squid and such things which isn't my idea of fun. It's a good book well, very good really and some of the things the author touches on are dealt with very wel, Quoyle's sense of unease within himself rang very true plus it really is pretty funny, 4 out of 5 for this one.

The Small Hand

Susan Hill, who wrote the woman in black (not that i've read it or seen the film due to my aversion to a certain Daniel Radcliffe) is the author of this little ghost story. Like Kelly Clarkson this is short and perfectly formed. A brief synopsis would be a man, a dealer of rare valuable books stumbles across an old dilapidated house while driving to a client. Drawn to the house and its gardens he gets out and has a look around. He feels as though a child is holding his hand ('the small hand'). He leaves the gardens but throughout the novel this small hand continues to haunt him, gripping his hand in different situations trying to lead him into danger. The story twists and turns and the 'big reveal' is shocking but entirely believable. It's a very well written book, I think one of the comments on the front from a newspaper review is that it's subtle and masterly, and that's exactly what it is. It kind of sneaks up on you, reading the first few pages I wasn't at all interested but once I got into it I enjoyed it very much. If you're in the mood for a creepy story with plausible twists and good writing to pass a rainy afternoon with you could do a lot worse than this book.