Phil James

Over the space of one night a woman gives her confession to the policeman she's known from childhood. Slowly the history of the island sugarcane plantation, slavery and intertwined, incestuous, ambiguous relationships come to light.

If you read a quick synopsis of this, you might think it was a bit grim. Middle-age desperation and colon cancer among musical nostalgia.
But this isn't just a re-hash of the Commitments story, just aged, it's as if the characters have been living real lives all this time. So real I feel I knew them.
This book made me laugh and cry, and left me with a warm glow. I love it when I enjoy a book so much.

[ Lots of swearing, of course, it is Roddy Doyle]

Quote from TV comedy “Father Ted”
Father Dougal: I wouldn't know Ted, you big bollocks!
Father Ted: [astounded] I'm sorry!?
Father Dougal: I said I wouldn't know Ted, you big bollocks!
Father Ted: Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal!?
Father Dougal: I have, yeah Ted, you big gobshite!

I loved this book.

I loved “White Teeth” but with genius debuts you never know if the experience will be repeated. Her second “Autograph Man” I didn't really enjoy, too much abstruse Kabbalah and obscure symbolism, trying too hard.
The third “on Beauty” i enjoyed but found a bit of a slog in parts, maybe again writing too many words, too much Writing.

This one is a masterpiece.Dialogue driven, every word counts to drive the story on. Each part, as in poetry, has resonances and undercurrents, but none of it seems contrived, it looks effortless. A joy.

I would recommend this book to anyone who desires to inhabit a character, to really sink their mental mandibles into some good meaty writing and to almost sense the world described.It makes no difference if you're not attracted to historical fiction, this is just top level lit, and amply rewards a little patience, in getting into the style of the first book.[b:Wolf Hall 6101138 Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall, #1) Hilary Mantel http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1336576165s/6101138.jpg 6278354]

One of the most entertaining reads I've had in a long time. It reminds me of “Midnight's Children” by Salman Rushdie. That one I read almost 40 years ago so I suppose I was ready for another to equal it.

Tom Sharpe wrote brilliant farces, David lodge writes campus novels, here frayn mixes them up and sets the result on a Greek Island. Very competent and readable , but light holiday matter.

It's becoming a personal tradition to undertake a winter brick challenge. Around the time of the shortest days I'll try and distract myself and semi-hibernate with a book that's either very long or otherwise forbidding by it's reputation.
This one fulfilled these requirements: it's very long and complex. The first third is many short views from individual lives lived in Northampton at different times. There's a connection with William Blake, Jerusalem and Angels but this only becomes clear (er) in the second third. Some other readers on this site didn't make it this far, but the vision and philosophy makes it worth it.
There are some emotional story pay-offs in the end of the last third but by that time they're a bit of an anti-climax. Alan Moore, the author of “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” graphic novels is to be applauded for his ambition, but he would have benefitted from a fiercer editor.
Ground-hog day is over, now onward to lighter days.

I was tricked into reading this, but I'm glad because why else would I have started in on this 2700 page trilogy? Years ago Neal Stephenson intrigued and thrilled me with his cyber-punk classic "Snowcrash" so that I could see where he was going with "Diamond Age" a neo-victorian culture in an incredibly futuristic world. By the time I read "Cryptonomicon" I had enough trust in him as an author to take me through a lot of reading involving multiple characters and time periods and to know it was going to come together satisfactorily.

He goes through a lot of history and technical details in these books but the main story and the excitement is sustained all the way. I can't put it any better than the inside jacket blurb from Entertainment Weekly “...he might just have created the definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-comedy-punk love story. No easy feat that.”

Although it took me a long time to read, (this is a very dense book, well written but full of examples of statistics) I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Steven Pinker proves that our world is getting less violent. This is flatly contradicted by our senses and experience every day. Any person alive now will be inundated with news of terrible violence around the world and believe that it's getting worse.
All the proof is here. Examined from all sorts of angles, with doubts and attempts to disprove thrown in, as in all good science. But the proof still stands.
It doesn't shy away from reality and includes all the atrocities and massacres but puts them into a greater context of all of humanity's history.
This is one book that truly has changed my life, and it continues to protect me from tendencies to total cynicism and pessimism.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book; perhaps the first of Chabon's that I've enjoyed unreservedly. I think it helps that I am already often preoccupied with obscure music and films. the references to Tarantino were obvious before they became explicit.
But don't worry there's very little gore here and that is in a childbirth related storyline. And unlike Tarantino films the substance wins out over the style: friendship beyond dividing lines of race, gender or blood.

I found this supremely well written, balanced between the smooth telling of a suspense (who-done-it?) and just enough grounding in science history to keep both strands readable.
He kept the human context alive with the patients he followed and he showed humility in the way he never presumed to be more than a learner even after he became a qualified specialist.
The best science books are those that kindle the feeling of awe at life and the universe. Here there is awe at the perseverance of many to find cures and even awe at the incredible wily supreme survivor, the disease itself.
The only reason I didn't give 5-stars was because there wasn't enough of the patients perspectives, but perhaps I'm being unfair, the subtitle is “a biography of Cancer” after all.