Demob Happy

The road to salvation 7/10 Rose Tremain’s Orange Prize-winning ‘The Road Home‘ is a compassionate if somewhat conventional novel about a migrant worker from Eastern Europe who seeks a job in England to provide money for his family. Opening with a quote from The Grapes of Wrath, ‘The Road Home’ is a contemporary take on [...]

[Read more →]

“He’ll get by without his rabbit pie … run rabbit, run rabbit, run run run” 9/10 ‘Rabbit, Run‘ is the first in a quartet of novels by the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist that revolve around the varying fortunes of a former high school Basketball champion Rabbit Angstrom. All four novels were written at the end of [...]

[Read more →]

A river runs through it 8/10 ‘South of the River‘ is an insightful and often moving novel revolving around the lives and loves of several inter-connected, mostly South London-based characters. It looks specifically at the changing fortunes of these individuals against the backdrop of New Labour and Tony Blair, from the landslide election night to [...]

[Read more →]

A life in the mind of Mike “Toilet” Engleby 9/10 Setting aside the fact that ‘Engleby‘ is a gripping psychological thriller of sorts, Sebastian Faulks’ new novel is also a brilliant meditation on the unreliability of memory, on the things lost by the fallability of the human mind. It also examines the unattainability or brevity [...]

[Read more →]

Good karma 9/10 ‘Spring Snow‘ is a 1966 novel by Yukio Mishima, the first in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy that concerns itself principally with themes of love, death and reincarnation. It’s an evocative and at times philisophical novel, rendered into English with the apparently painstaking care and meticulous spirit in which it was written. [...]

[Read more →]

The best summation of Murakami’s talents? 8/10 ‘Dance Dance Dance‘ is probably the ideal place for any Murakami novice to start as it is a compelling summation of the author’s singular moods and preoccupations. It combines some of the themes of grief, loss and memory of novels like ‘Norweigan Wood‘, but less oppressively so, and [...]

[Read more →]

Changing places in changing times 7.5/10 ‘Changing Places‘ forms part of a trilogy of campus novels (along with ‘Small World’ and ‘Nice Work‘) by the popular British author that are now available to purchase as an anthology. Reading all three books is further necessitated by the fact they share common characters. ‘Changing Places‘ is about [...]

[Read more →]

Once upon a time in the Midlands 8/10 Nice Work is a clever, well-constructed comedy and social commentary about a clash of cultures in a fictional Midlands town in the mould of Birmingham. Well-paced and meticulously plotted, the novel revolves around the unlikely convergence of Dr Robyn Penrose – a professor of Women’s studies and [...]

[Read more →]

The big post 9-11 book from DeLillo 7/10 In ‘Falling Man’ DeLillo tries to tackle the Big Theme of the 21st century – namely September 11, 2001 – and how it has impacted on the collective psyche. However, there is less of the virtuoso authorial omnipresence of Underworld, for example, but more examination of the [...]

[Read more →]

Reading of responsibility 9/10 The Reader is a subtle, thought-provoking work that continues – but does not quite belong to – a tradition of Holocaust literature. The novel very cleverly raises questions about the nature of complicity and the boundaries of responsibility. It also examines the idea of collective ‘amnesia’ and its consquential twin, collective [...]

[Read more →]