June Reading

 As there's no way I'll finish another book before the month turns over, I thought I'd do my monthly reading review tonight. I read seven books in June, and I'm well into another two which should be read by the end of the week. 

So, without further ado here's what I read. The great, the okay, and the well.... yeahs. 

1) The Frozen River by Arial Lawhon - Paper - 3.5 stars

This was our book group read for the month, and while a lot of our group loved this I was left underwhelmed. This is a historical crime novel, based on the life of a midwife, Martha Ballard. As it goes, the book is very readable and the action keeps you going. Where it lost marks with me is that I found the characters two dimensional, and it had the Outlander mentality of having to put in every last detail of the research, making this a little overblown in places. As popular historical crime fiction goes it's great. For me - I prefer literary historical crime fiction. Give me Geraldine Brooks, Hannah Kent or Umberto Eco any day. It certainly wasn't a bad book - it just didn't meet my expectations. 

2) Last One Out by Jane Harper - Audiobook - 3.5 stars

I've read most of what Jane Harper has written. Nobody does the Australian landscape like her. She also writes crime novels. Again, not normally my genre, but going on the strengths of The Dry and The Lost Man, I decided to give this a go. 

Like the last book, it's not a bad book, but she has better. I mean, it's the story of a dying town. Ro, who was the local doctor, has come back on the anniversary of her son's disappearance. The town has been taken over my a large mining consortium and nobody is happy. Ro, of course, is discovering the town's secrets. Maybe it will lead to some answers at to what happened to her son. 

As Jane Harper books go this is middling. I didn't mind it. I certainly liked it better than Exiles, but The Dry and The Lost Man remain my favourites. 

3) Trust by Hernan Diaz - Audiobook - 4 stars

After two middling book, I wanted to read something that might have a bit more weight. Trust was long-listed for the Booker Prize and it won the Pulitzer Prize along with Demon Copperhead. 

It was a good move. The writing is spectacular. It's intricately plotted. The characters are incredible. Wikipedia describes this as such:

"Set predominantly in New York City and focusing on the world of finance, the novel is a metafictional, fragmentary look at a secretive financier and his wife."

I loved this. It kept the brain working while the story grew layers and layers of meaning. It's not for everybody, but it fulfilled my literary needs. 

4) Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes - Audiobook - 3.5 Stars

Another favourite author, but not her best book. Anybody Out There? is Anna Walsh's story. I'm slowly working through the Walsh Family books. I've always loved Rachel's Holiday. Watermelon was good. The Mystery of Mercy Close was not bad. There's still a couple in the series I have to read. 

Anybody Out There? focusses on Anna Walsh, who's moved to New York, has a great job, and is fantastic at faking her way through everything. How she's ended up sleeping in her parent's front room, with major injuries and no idea how she got them is the story. 

In many ways, this is a book about grief and healing. It's also laugh out loud funny in places. You want to slap Anna a lot of the time. 

Otherwise, this was as enjoyable as most of Keyes' other books. It was taken on as light relief after listening to/reading Trust. 

5) I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman - Kindle - 3.75

This took me a long while to get into, and when I did get into it, I was wondering where it was going. Written in French and first published in 1995, its English translation has recently been rereleased.

As short, dystopian fiction, it's great. The synopsis is simple: Wikipedia describes it as such:

"Thirty-nine women and a girl are being held prisoner in a cage underground. The guards are all male, and never speak to them. The girl is the only one of the prisoners who has no memory of the outside world; none of them know why they are being held prisoner, or why there is one child among thirty-nine adults.

One day, an alarm sounds, and the guards flee; the prisoners are subsequently able to escape. They find themselves on an immense barren plain, with no other people anywhere, and no clue as to what has happened to the world.

The women form a community, build dwellings, and one by one mourn the deaths of their group. Finally, only the narrator is left living. In her wanderings she affirms the planet has “almost no seasons,” and decides she is no longer on Earth. After many years exploring, she discovers an underground bunker with lushly-appointed furnishings and a variety of inscrutable scientific equipment, some of which she associates with the bunker’s books on Astronautics. In this luxurious bunker, the narrator sets down her memoirs (the text of the novel), as she prepares to die of uterine cancer."

I can't say much more about it, but it stays with you. Academics write about this. It's stark and bleak. There is no reason why this is happening to the women, but the women are resilient. 

I'll keep thinking about this for a while. I'm glad I had a plane trip to finish this one off. I've been trying to get through it for months. I'm glad I got through it. 

6) The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne - Audiobook - 4.5 stars

This is my pick of the month. I know John Boyne is a problematic author, but his work is amazing. If possible, I like this more than A Ladder to the Sky. The Heart's Invisible Furies follows the life of Cyril Avery. The son of an unmarried girl cast out of her village for becoming pregnant, his birth is fraught. He's adopted by an unconventional pair - a charlatan and an unconventional author. He befriends the love of his life at boarding school, but goes on to marry his sister,

Cyril is also very good and making the worst of decisions. 

This is brilliant. Densely plotted, hysterically funny, tragic, finely drawn and very, very human. 

I loved this. I know Boyne is problematic in some of his views, but I'm choosing to distance the author from his works. This book is amazing.

7) Him by JD Kirk - Audiobook - 4 stars

This was a freebie from Audible - and a very timely and enjoyable one at that. 

From what I can see, this is only available on audiobook.

From the author's website, the story is described as such:

Just because he sounds real, doesn’t mean he is…

"When Sarah’s husband, Nick, is killed in a car accident, her world shatters. Facing a future without him seems impossible.

But maybe she doesn’t have to.

When Sarah discovers EternaTech, the AI program Nick and his business partner have been working on in secret, she is given the chance to speak to Nick from beyond the grave.

It sounds like him. It feels like him…

As Sarah becomes consumed by her connection to this digital Nick, she begins uncovering secrets about his final days. But as she digs deeper, the lines between what’s real and what isn’t blur, and Sarah must confront a chilling, terrible truth.

Some things may be best left buried."

Mostly thriller, part cautionary tale, this looks at how AI can mess with your life. It's highly entertaining and thought provoking. Louise Brealy and David Tennant bring the book to life. It was worth my time. 

And now, I'm off to bed, hoping that the cat doesn't wake me up at 4.30 again.I'm buggered. 

Today's song: