Novel

As much as I wanted it to, Satin Island by Tom McCarthy did not win the Booker Prize. Having read it all I realise it was a long shot. However it is an interesting book that deserved consideration, even if it does have some flaws.

"Satin Island" is my pick for the Man Booker prize, announced tomorrow. I've not managed to read all of it yet. Also, I've only glanced at the others on the shortlist.

I recently finished reading All The Birds, Singing, the second novel by Evie Wyld. It’s about a woman called Jake who lives alone on a farm with a dog called Dog on an island somewhere off the coast of Britain. She has sheep to look after but something keeps coming in the middle of the night to kill them.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage is the latest novel by Haruki Murakami. It comes with free stickers. Perhaps that tells you everything you need to know about this book, which is slimmer than Murakami's recent efforts. The plot begins with an intriguing premise. Tsukuru is part of a group of close friends and is one day expelled from the group for no reason. Unfortunately, the development of the plot is uncontrolled and by the end of novel too many holes have developed for it all to hold together.

After a few false starts I managed to finish "High-Rise", the next in my collection of JG Ballard novels. For a book that I had trouble getting into, it turned out to be a pretty good read - even if it was also a pretty unpleasant one. Published in 1975, "High-Rise" is perhaps ahead of its time in exploring the effects of social breakdown in stylised and artificial situations where people are in close contact. You might think the plot, about a luxury high-rise that goes to hell, is in some way political or sociological but it really isn't. It's just a big playground in which Ballard throws around some of his most twisted ideas, all the while remarking on the very artifice of the situation.

"The Ocean At The End Of The Lane" is the new novel by Neil Gaiman. I was so intrigued by it that I bought the hardcover, which is unusual for me because I prefer paperbacks. I'd been excited by reading the first chapter online at the Guardian website and from reading a blog post about the novel written by the author's wife Amanda Palmer. I'd not read any of his novels before but they had long been on that "to read" list that is typically as long as your arm. I also enjoyed the movie adaptation of "Stardust" though I have no way (yet!) of knowing whether the film is as good as the original book.

There were no mornings or afternoons. It was one seamless day, every day, until the sun began to arc and fade, mountains emerging from their silhouettes. This is when we sat and watched in silence.

This week I read “Skios” by Michael Frayn (who was born in Mill Hill). It’s another book from now customary pile of books that tends to develop around this time of year. "Hawksmoor" and "The Marriage Plot" were on the same ever-increasing pile. “Skios” is something of a change from what I normally read: it’s a comedic farce about stolen identities set on the (fictional) titular Greek island. Amusingly, the wikipedia page for the novel currently reads “Praise for Skios was entirely misplaced”, probably thanks to some curmudgeon who doesn't like the novel. Cue a ‘misplaced’ blog post about it, something that most people would consider to be business as usual for my blog.

Peter Ackroyd's "Hawksmoor" was first published in 1985. I bought a recent reissue that forms part of Penguin's decades collection whilst on a spree in Waterstone's. It appealed to me as I recently realised that despite growing up in the eighties and nineties, I had read very novels that were either written or set in the eighties. Happily "Hawksmoor" is both of these, sort of. It also appealed to me because it is (again, sort of) a detective story and I've found myself getting into those lately. John Squire's excellent artwork for the cover and the nice binding also helped to seal the deal: you don't get that with an iPad or a Kindle.

"The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides is a novel about love and growing up set in the privileged world of US academia in the early eighties. The main plot concerns a love triangle involving two guys and a girl. Madeline Hanna, the girl at the apex of the love triangle, is the main focus of the novel and the majority of the novel is told from her standpoint. I think her sections are incredibly well written but I'd love the thoughts of a female reader, in case it is actually all a horribly male way of seeing through a young woman's eyes. In love with Madeline (and the guy that we meet first) is Mitchell Grammaticus, an overly deep guy who is terribly concerned about whether he is doing the right thing in the world. He thinks that religious studies is for him but later finds that it is harder to live up to your ideals than you first imagine.