Finch – Vandermeer: Once in awhile I get it in my head that I’m going to get back into SciFi as passionately as I did as a teenager. So I try a book like this every couple of years and then quickly put aside the thought. This novel went closer than many though – I loved the original bio/fungal setting and could imagine a film based on it, but it did go on a little long and felt grindy in parts. I’m glad I gave it a go – wouldn’t it be great to swallow a memory bulb oneday? 3.5 stars.
Yesterday’s Weather – Enright: Short story collections can be hit and miss for me, and I was probably not really in the mood for this book in January when I’m playing on my phone till late and then trying to squeeze in 1 story before bed each night. I was reminded of Joan Didion when reading them, but I think the moods/styles (no consolation, bitterness, subtle revelations) work better in a novel instead of the clever, quirky short stories here. I finished some of them barely knowing what had happened! 3.5 stars.
The Old Wives Tale – Bennett: Despite it being a long read, I have little to say about the book – it was certainly not a chore to work through, my chief pleasure not necessarily being the contrasts between the two sisters, but instead, the contrasts between life 100+ years ago and now. This is why I read the classics thesedays it seems! There was something rhythmic and methodical about the book which I liked. Having to read all about one sister’s life to old age, before even beginning the other sister’s story was a wonderful piece of delayed satisfaction in an era where a writer nowdays couldn’t help but leap frog back and forth every second chapter to satisfy our ADD. 4 stars!
Stoner – Williams: Boy I wish my Op Shop paperback copy had this pensive cover, as I probably would have read the book years earlier. The 1965 novel follows the life of a farmer’s son turned tenured university lecturer as he moves through life – his marriage, his parents, his daughter and work colleagues all proving difficult, but somehow he manages, despite so much sorrow and disappointment. There were times when I couldn’t suspend disbelief (could a wife just be so awful and odd?) and it felt perversely maudlin and engineered, but on the whole it soared. Who’d have thought the academic achievements of a middling professor and his minor goals in life would make for such a quirky interesting story. A sad and moving novel. 4 stars.
Sellevision – Burroughs: It’s been awhile since I finished a book in 4 days, and whilst that’s normally a good sign, in this case it took about the same before I’d forgotten about it completely. There’s some showbiz satire here, but nothing that made me laugh really -mostly caricatures and storylines that ended predictably. I don’t really know how it ended up in my To Read pile, but it still made for a pleasant diversion. 3 stars.
The Abstainer – McGuire: God I was looking forward to this one. I considered The North Water probably the best book I’d read in the past year or two, and this one began with similar promise. A troubled Irish cop pursues a would-be assassin in 1860s Manchester, where treachery and torture are part of everyday life. It was a cracker of a page turner really, until the last chapter, which was the ultimate gut-punch after a series of blows. Could there be a less Hollywood ending to a book? Devastating! 4.5 stars.