The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru


At once fascinating and disturbing. One person is traced through several personages but no matter how hard he tries to integrate into his new world, he remains an outsider. This is a gripping study of mixed race set in colonial India and class-drenched England where acceptance is tantalizingly near yet never actually achieved. The characters are finely drawn and eminently believable with echoes of Kipling, Waugh and Conrad. It is the Conradian ending that is the most disturbing and, to an extent, inspiring. Fortunately. the story never quite descends into magic realism but this reader frequently worried that it might. Well worth reading in spite of its density.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

A masterpiece of the genre, one of the great espionage thrillers of all time, and a compelling portrait of the characters of spymasters with all their flaws and vanities. Having seen the BBC TV adaptation and listened to the BBC radio one, I can now face viewing the recent film version and hope I'm not disappointed. It is the detailed portrayal of character here that raises the book above a genre novel and allows it to be classified as literary. Superb in so many ways.

Theodora by Stell Duffy

Theodora Actress, Empress, Whore by Stella Duffy

An intricate, historical novel that grows in stature with the political advancement of its subject. A fictional biography that is both entertaining and plausible and is clearly the result of painstaking research. Being a huge fan of Robert Graves' Count Belisarius, I was heartened to find a novel in which he is a relatively minor character and one much admired, and this sets the reader up for the sequel and the continuation of this compelling tale. If, like me, the late Roman Empire is an interest of yours, you'll enjoy this novel immensely - I did.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

An ingenious retelling of the nostos of Odysseus from a feminist point of view. Myth wouldn't be myth unless there are many versions of the same story and this one is as valid as any other. Like all good myths it is both entertaining and thought-provoking and well worth engaging with. Above all it is told by a master storyteller with a clever and subtle use of a chorus in a nod to classical Greek tragedy, and a fine appreciation of the nuances of Homer's original. Very good indeed.

The Looking Glass War by John le Carre

The Looking Glass War by John le Carré


A story that explores vanity and an awkward nostalgia for war time glory during the height of the Cold War. Control seems to be embroiled in some dirty business and is abetted by Smiley, a minor character in this volume. Deep psychological angst on several sides yet there is a kind of honour among spooks in spite of 'war rules'. There's no glamour here, just men behaving badly and engaging in subtle betrayal, a peculiarly English past-time. A gradual build-up of suspense and a very grim picture of life in the DDR, nevertheless, it makes a compelling read.

The Broken Road by Patrick Leigh Fermor

The Broken Road: Travels from Bulgaria to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor



Like many others I'm sure, I've waited a long time to read of the completion of the journey and am grateful to Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron for editing this, the final part of this wonderful journal. PLF's descriptive prose is a delight and his boyish enthusiasm for people and place shines through. A glimpse of a now, long-forgotten world of Balkan and Central European kingdoms recovering from one disastrous war yet anticipating another, this account of a wandering on foot with all its range of varied emotions, embodies both youthful optimism and hints of a kind of world-weariness that belies the author's relative youth and inexperience. It is a fascinating account of a journey from the Iron Gates, through Bulgaria, Romania and back through Bulgaria again to the iconic Constantinople. PLF's subsequent wandering through the monastries of Mount Athos complete the adventure. Travel writing at its very best.

Desert by J. M. G. Le Clezio

Desert by J.M.G. Le Clézio



A moving story of colonial barbarity against an uncomprehending people, a true clash of civilizations in the name of greed and power. Within it are incredibly striking portraits of children: Nour, Lalla and Radicz, victims of circumstance and possessors of an indomitable spirit who negotiate a cruel, callous and brutal adult world with courage and equanimity. It is at once a story of great sadness, of humiliating defeat, yet at the same time it is a story of triumph, of humanity, and determination. It is both uplifting and tragic, a true epic. Its overwhelming message is that steadfastness and hope will conquer adversity, eventually. A book to be savoured and then reflected upon, time and time again. Thoroughly recommended, but not for the faint-hearted.

Tomorrow by Graham Swift

Tomorrow by Graham Swift



A mother's reflection on her life, loves and the nature of relationships, and the secrets. Not quite what I expected of Graham Swift, but well-written all the same. The reservation I have concerns the narrative and it's telling. A middle-aged woman lies sleepless at home alongside her snoring husband. She's unable to sleep because they have to impart something to their sixteen year-old twins, something of great import - or is it? The first person narrative seems overly long yet it is difficult to imagine it being quite as convincing if it were any shorter. Its particular relevance to me is, that like the two principal characters, I was born in 1945, and was thus also a member of that lucky generation. It is that that is worth dwelling on, just how fortunate we of that generation have been. And that's what I would thank Graham Swift for, reminding me that I have much to be grateful for.

With the Kisses of his Mouth by Monique Roffey

With the Kisses of His Mouth: A Memoir by Monique Roffey


I've been reading this memoir on and off for a year or so. In a way it explains why books get remaindered, potential readers are unsure about them, and they tend to put them back on the shelves rather than take them to the cash desk. Moreover, I'm left with two questions: why did the author decide to publish this self-centred, self-indulgent, hedonistic account of her sexual adventures? I can understand why she wrote it, after all writing about experiences, good or bad, can have a cathartic effect, but to publish this intimacy? Presumably, an agent or an editor thought it might be a good idea based on the author having been shortlisted for the Orange Prize. The second question is why did I bother to read it to the bitter end? Simple curiosity? literary voyeurism, titillation? I honestly don't know, but what I do know is that reading this book I entered a metro-sexual world vicariously, and it's a world I would not want to enter in reality. It's a world I feel that I don't need to know and would be wary of. Easy to dismiss it as New Age twaddle, but that does a disservice to Roffey whom I think, wrote from the best of motives. Having said that, public catharsis carries obvious risks and Roffey was brave to accept such risks, but courage alone is not enough to justify the publication of this rather mediocre memoir. Nevertheless I look forward to reading The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, the novel that was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010.

Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński


A difficult book to classify, it is a memoir of a Polish foreign correspondent of high repute and an homage to Herodotus, author of The Histories. I came late to Herodotus, probably as the result of a too narrow an education. The Anthony Minghella film of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient was my first experience of the profound effect that The Histories has on the lives of people who are fortunate to come to Herodotus early in Life. Minghella himself has said that 'The Herodotus is the novel's metonym containing as it does the souvenirs, kind and cruel, of a love affair, of an expedition, of the necessary lyrics and maps.'.

Kapuscinski vividly describes his first encounter with Herodotus. He has just been told that he is about to take his first ever trip outside Poland: 'Tarlowska [his editor-in-chief] reached into a cabinet, took out a book, and handing it to me said: "Here, a present, for the road." It was a thick book with a stiff cover of yellow cloth. On the front, stamped in gold letters, was Herodotus, THE HISTORIES.' From that moment on, Herodotus is his constant companion on journalistic assignments throughout the world. A source of constant delight and a perceptive guide to human nature. And it is this delight that drives this memoir through India, China and his beloved, Africa.

Last Christmas I treated myself to a copy of Tom Holland's new translation of The Histories, after all, my Penguin Classics edition of the De Selincourt translation is getting somewhat worn.

The Radetzsky March by Joseph Roth

The Radetzky march by Joseph Roth

A distinctly central European novel that is at once strange yet familiar. Strange because I know very little about Austria-Hungary and its empire, and familiar in the sense that the relationship between monarchies and their militaries are not very different at different times and in different places. Written in the early 30s and set just before WW1, the style and story have echoes of 19th century French literature. Descriptions of genteel affairs could have come directly from the pen of Balzac, while the descriptions of peasants and peasant villages could have been written by a young Zola. There is acute observation of imperial administration with all its pathos and absurdity that can only have been written by an outsider. The reader is beset throughout by a deep sense of foreboding. War is clearly coming, it is inevitable, yet its actual arrival at the remote eastern garrison is a shock and the resultant chaos and bloodlust quite incomprehensible.

The dissolute lives of the soldiers in remote garrisons is depressing to read and makes the loss of the empire understandable, and the innate snobbery across the military is made clear by the hero’s eventual transfer from the cavalry to the infantry. He has a minor barony but he can’t ride. But the greatest burden he has to bear is that he is the grandson of the ‘Hero of Solferino’, his grandfather had saved the Kaiser’s life in battle and was both promoted and ennobled in the field. The assumption that he has necessarily inherited individual military prowess is a terrible load for a barely competent officer to bear, he is only three generations removed from peasant stock and it is among peasants that he is clearly more comfortable. His final act of heroism is both surprising and mundane, and curiously satisfying. Reading this novel a hundred years after it is set has a certain poignancy. The book feels much older than that and having recently read Boyd’s ‘Waiting for Sunrise’ set at around the same time and having Vienna as a common location, it is difficult not to make comparisons. Boyd’s novel is very modern in style and make’s ‘The Radetsky March’ seem positively antediluvian. Yet for all that, it is a wonderful book, evocative of both the time at which it is set and the time when it was written.

Clueless Dogs by Rhian Edwards

I drove thirty miles yesterday evening to attend a reading at Brecon Guildhall. I say reading but in fact it was a recitation for Rhian Edwards was adamant that a poet should be able to recite their work without reference to a printed page. She was reading from her first collection, 'Clueless Dogs', which had won the John Tripp Award 2011-2012 and was Wales Book of the Year 2013. it was an exhilarating performance of barely restrained energy. Rhian is, after all, a performance poet of great vitality. She seemed to be reliving the experiences that had prompted the poetry as she recited, and some of those experiences were clearly far from painless, especially where former lovers were concerned. It was confessional poetry that seemed particularly raw. 'Marital Visit' - a married lover shoos her out of the house in readiness for a visit from his wife, I've selected, what were for me, the particularly poignant verses:

It's her visiting time
which presses the pause,
makes you follow me downstairs
and shepherd me out of the door...

...The ritual begins with the clearing
away of my face: foundation, lipstick,
powder, concealer, the wooden brush
cobwebbed with my unyielding knots...

Your wife lets herself in,
carries herself across the threshold,
she smiles at her hallway,
sniffing me everywhere.

There are two other poems that extend this story of an affair that is inevitably doomed, 'Suitcase' imagines the poet packed in a suitcase and lying on the upper shelf of the wife's wardrobe, and 'Pinchbeck' mocks the man's attempts to return the house to its bachelor status and ends with the stark:

Your bedroom has lost its bottles.
There are no trinkets scattered
around the mirror and no face powder
dusting the wood. Her hanging rail
has been picked to the bones
and wears only the white wall behind it.

A long-distance courtship is evoked with all its frustration in 'Skype'; and 'House Key' reveals the apprehension of a boy who knows how to grab the latchkey on its string but is terrified of entering the empty house.

The collection is full of poetic gems that evoke odd scenes and incidents peripheral to love, both requited and unrequited with a subtle humour and often a sense of joy. 'Pest Controller' is a fine example of a lively woman succumbing to the temptation to flirt in totally improbable circumstances. Intriguing and captivating, 'Clueless Dogs' must surely be only a taste of the brilliance yet to come.

A Concise History of Switzerland by Clive Church and Randolph Head

An excellent introduction to the complex history of this tiny and frequently misunderstood country. It has long been Switzerland's devotion to neutrality that has been the least appreciated aspect of foreign policy, and yet historically, that has been the most important, given the country's geographical location and topography. It may no longer be as important now as it was in the past, but it needs to be understood. Few other countries with inherent religious and language divisions could have survived as long as the Swiss Confederation, but the future of this tiny country is difficult to predict. Much will depend on how the European Union develops and is thus out of Swiss hands.

The Late Monsieur Gallet by Georges Simenon

Tortuous and improbable plot. I had trouble visualising the scene and therefore I'm sure some of the technical detail was lost. Too many loose ends for my liking and are we to believe that Maigret connived in an insurance scam? Surely not. Somehow the lesser characters remain invisible and unimaginable. The question remains: is this the fault of the original writing? Or is it the translation? And this raises an interesting issue, viz. to what extent should a modern translator 'correct' the sloppy writing of a work written over 80 years earlier? Your views are welcome on this, no doubt, thorny issue.

An Army of Judiths by C J Underwood

An interesting and lively re-imagining of the siege of the city of Haarlem in the winter of 1572-73 from the point of view of Amarron, a fictitious sister of the real-life Keanu Hasselhaar. Its almost exclusively female point of view of the tribulations of the besieged is both novel and thought-provoking. Particularly impressive is the lively and sustained pace of this fictionalised history, and the descriptions of the people within the landscape under extreme distress. There is a very earthy feel to this story and we are not spared the brutal treatment of prisoners on both sides, nor the mud, blood and squalor of conditions inside the town during the seven-month siege. Particularly frightening for the women in the ‘Army of Judiths’ is the gradual collapse of order leaving them to the constant threat of theft, rape and worse from both the mercenary and local troops every time they leave the house. Well worth reading and reflecting the abomination that is war and the inevitable fate of those who end up on the losing side.

Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Afforded the opportunity to read along with Jeremy Irons on BBC Radio 4 was just too good an opportunity to resist. The first time I’ve read all four poems from beginning to end in one go. It is an impressive work full of variety and with wonderful plays on words from the beginning-

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
(Burnt Norton)

How can anyone read this without going on to contemplate the concept of time? It reminds me of one of my father’s favourite quips: ‘Time flies, we cannot, they are too elusive.’ I have always presumed it is ‘elusive’ and not ‘illusive’, although either is possible. What is important is the concept of time, what is it? Did it start and, if so, when? Will it end, and when, and what precisely do we mean by ‘the end of time’.

…In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
(East Coker)


How moving is this tribute to those who served at sea: the fishing fleets; the convoys; and those who were left behind:

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.

Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyages on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell’s
Perpetual angelus.
(The Dry Salvages)

In a curious way, I find this contemplation of the end curiously comforting:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
(Little Gidding)

These extracts are, for me, simply the most thought-provoking parts of an eclectic collection that speaks of England at a particular time when the war was being lost and hope in the future was rare. The quartet has a settling effect, a putting of things in perspective, a taking of the long view that offers a kind of consolation, and may yet again be called upon to console future generations.

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre

A pacy, intense thriller that holds the reader in a vice-like grip throughout. Three parts, three aspects of a complicated tale of kidnap, murders and abuse with a strange twist that leaves us begging for more. This is the second of the Commandant Verhoeven series, others of which are promised in English translation from the spring of 2014. Lamaitre is a master storyteller who won the Prix Goncourt last year for Au revoir là-haut the translation of which I await eagerly. If that is not available by the summer, I’ll just have to read it in French when on holiday. Together with Penguin’s new translations of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels, all 75 of them at the rate of one a month, it looks like French noir is mounting a rearguard action in the face of the recent advances of Scandi-noir and Mediterranean noir.

Crime fiction throughout Europe seems to be in a very healthy state, even in Britain. But one can’t help but wonder if many of these books are written specifically with the intention of transposition onto the small screen. In Wales we are currently enjoying the television series Hinterland, set in Aberystwyth and its surrounding countryside. It is an English translation of a Welsh production previously shown on SAC. Nevertheless, with its snippets of Welsh language, and its dour and damaged hero, Matthias, it has all the features of Scandi-noir with their occasional lapses into English and a dour and damaged hero, be it Wallender or Lund or Salander. Curiously, Hinterland is rumoured to have been sold for transmission in Scandinavia. Such is the dominance of our screens and bookstalls by crime fiction that, although I enjoy consuming it, I can’t help hoping that authors will develop a new and startling genre as an alternative to the now rather formulaic diet of crime, crime and more crime.

EXPO 58 by Jonathan Coe

A sure but very light touch characterises this story that is especially evocative of a time and place – Brussels in 1958. A wealth of factual detail is mixes with an ever so slightly implausible tale incorporating a couple British spies adopting the persona of the Thompson twins, the dialogue between them is wonderful. Each time they appeared I was sub consciously expecting to meet Tintin and Snowy, but that would probably have been too much. The ambivalence of Belgium and the Belgians is woven into what are essentially Cold War spy games and US/UK technological rivalries set in the fabulous event that was EXPO ’58. As a twelve-year old boy I passed through Brussels that summer stuck in the back of my parent’s Hillman Husky on our way to Italy via Heidelburg and Zurich. Heidelberg so that my father could visit someone at the university whom he hadn’t seen since the late ‘20s, and Switzerland to call on relatives who had looked after me for eighteen months or so, three years earlier.

It was summer of awakening for me as much as it seems to have been for Thomas, an escape from buttoned-up Britain and alive to the possibilities of a vibrant and recovering Europe – a wonderful time before package holidays, when going across the Channel was very much an adventure. Jonathan Coe describes what that felt like with surgical precision and a kind of self-deprecating humour. After some fifteen years of war and austerity, Thomas’ journey into colourful, exotic Belgium is both exciting and profound, and his search for his mother’s family’s farm, destroyed during the war adds a curious touch of poignancy. Another superb book from a master of subtle satire.