Room - Emma Donoghue

The sleeve notes of this book include a quote from Audrey Niffenegger saying 'is a book to read in one sitting' - how right she is! I couldn't afford the time to read it in one sitting, but I did read it in two days, and found it very hard to put it down.

I guess the main thing that kept me hooked was the narrative, the story is told by Jack, a five year old who, with his mother is kept captive in Room. 'Ma' was abducted by 'Old Nick' as a teenager, and later gives birth to Jack.

All Jack knows is the world inside Room, but just after his fifth birthday 'Ma' admits that what he sees on the TV is real, and that they have to escape.

I couldn't stop reading, the early part of the book deals with Jack's descriptions of life in Room, followed by their escape and subsequent re-establishment into society.

If I have one criticism it is that the escape was too easy, and fast; but that does not detract from the novel or my enjoyment. The fact that its loosely based on the Josef Fritzl case in Austria, meant little to me as I didn't follow the case, but having now read about it on the web I can see the similarities.

This book is compelling, read it.

January 2011

Bought in Waterstones.

Miss Smilla's feeling for snow - Peter Hoeg

My Dad read and enjoyed this book back in the mid 90s, I know this because not only did he lend me his copy (which I still have), but because the book mark he used is still inside printed with a competition with the closing date of 1995.

Knowing that I had enjoyed reading thrillers before, he had recommended this, but I never could 'get into it'. It's sat on various bookshelves ever since.

The current fashionability of Scandinavian crime fiction made me go looking for this book, the first to come to the UK and be successful.

Although I did finish it this time, it's taken a while and I'm still not convinced it lived up to all the hype. But it did keep me reading nonetheless.

I've always had a problem following story lines in which I'm unable to pronounce the names of the characters, I find myself skim reading the names and then can't work out what is going on. This certainly happened at points, as well as getting a bit lost in the plot half way through.

The story starts with the death of a young boy who lived next door to Miss Smilla, a death that the police believe is an accident, but which due to her feeling for snow, Miss Smilla knows was something more.

By the end of the book Smilla is running around on a ship in the Arctic, trying to work out where it is going and fighting with baddies!

I'm at a loss to see why the book won a crime novel literary prize, it's not so much a crime novel, as the story of a woman who is bored with life and has lost her way. The descriptions of the different types of snow and ice start off interesting, but after a while become almost overwhelming. The reasons and circumstances of the boys death become lost and irrelevant so that by the end I no longer cared. In fact I found the end to be rather abrupt and very unsatisfying - like Hoeg couldn't work out or decide where to go next, so just stopped.

Lent by (and subsequently inherited from) my father.

Mid December 2010 - 16 Jan 2011

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, who played with fire, who kicked the hornets nest - Steig Larsson

Firstly I should say that I didn't 'read' these three books, I listened to them on audio CD.  I've always had a problem with books that contain a lot of foreign words and names, and since the original language of these was Swedish I knew I'd struggle to keep up with the characters.

So, I bought the abridged versions (10 CDs each, unlike the unabridged which would have taken me forever to get through!), and started listening to them in the car......sometimes staying in the car long after the journey had ended to keep listening!

All three stories centre around two main characters; a journalist named Mikael Blomkvist, and a troubled, goth teenage computer hacker called Lisbeth Salander, and all are thrillers but with slightly different focuses; the first is a murder mystery, the second and third build on the theme with international crime and politics brought in for good measure!

I don't want to give the stories away, but I'd certainly say read them in order.  The first is sort of 'stand alone', and it's would be possible to read the second and third together; but the whole trilogy works so well, and the stories all come together so well it would be a shame to miss that dimension.

One thing I will say is that they are not for the faint hearted, there is violence (lots of it), and explicit sex, most of it violent.  But don't let that put you off.

The characters are great, you come to care for them, and Salander is like no other book heroine I've ever come across before – victim and heroine at the same time.

The shame of these books is the fact that the author died (suddenly and very young) just after delivering the last one to his publisher – so he never got to see the success, and we'll never get to read another story by him.

Inevitably they've been made into films, with the first and second already out – I want to see them, but haven't had the opportunity yet.  Of course they are unlikely to live up to the books, but should still be enjoyable none-the-less.  I'm sure that the character of Salander will pop up again!

Bought on Amazon - CD Audio books
April - May 2010