It’s Easter time. The sun is occasionally breaking through the clouds, chocolate eggs are on special at Countdown, and we’re looking forward to our after Easter break. Ahhrrr how I love the quaint tradition of Dominion Day! What better time to catch up on some reading? Here are some short-ish, new-ish paperbacks our secret readers group has enjoyed over the past couple of years — just the right length for a glass of SB. Oh alright then, it’s only 2.00pm — a cuppa tea and a sunny couch.
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron (2023)
I love Mick Herron’s funny and twisty Slough House spy thrillers. The Secret Hours — which came out in paperback a couple of weeks ago — can be read as the origin story of the series. The story revolves around an official inquiry (Herron is superb on the pointlessness and hidden purposes of most bureaucratic activity) into an illegal intelligence operation that took place in 1994. There’s great pleasure to be had in identifying some familiar Slough House characters who appear here under other identities.
Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz (2022)
You think life is bad, just wait for the afterlife. It’s the pits. In the Aussie writer Steve Toltz’s book, the hapless main character is done away with by a man who has fallen in lust with his pregnant partner — how will our dead hero tell her about this crime? Well, it’s not that easy learning to be a ghost; and it’s even harder to know how to deal with death if you’ve missed the orientation class for the newly dead. And Heaven itself (or is it Purgatory?) is pretty crummy too. Bad sex, boring jobs, terrible water pressure and so much paperwork. It’s not a happy place — the dead are buzzing with anger about all these recent arrivals (blame a global pandemic) putting pressure on the afterlife’s creaking infrastructure. Toltz is a one-off; his imagination is wonderfully batty.
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (2022)
I can’t make up my mind about Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton series, which concluded in 2022 with Lucy by the Sea. I tend to read them on planes and trains because they’re quick and somehow cosy, narrated by a character whose gentle tweeness sometimes seems to verge on parody. Wholesome fodder. But they’re also desperately melancholy, tapping away at some deep reserves of human misery. Richard Osman for pretentious people or a subtle, four-book tragedy? Idk. Maybe just stick to Olive Kitteridge, Strout 2011’s linked short stories about a gobby middle-aged Maineite, and a work of genius.
The Lock-Up by John Banville (2023)
The latest crime novel set in 1950s Dublin by the mighty Booker-winning John Banville, who these days is more interested in dead bodies than boring literary prizes. DI St John Strafford, investigating the death of a young Jewish woman found in a Dublin garage, finds a twisty trail leading back to the dying days of the Second World War, the birth of Israel and, naturally, some very dodgy Church dealings. Or start at the beginning of the series, with a country house caper (of sorts), Snow.
The Trio by Johanna Hedman (2022)
Susie tells me I may have recommended this novel last year too — but I present it here again, unashamedly. Hugo arrives in Stockholm as an outsider, and rents a room in Thora’s large family home. But as he tries to fit in with Sweden’s elite, he also navigates his shifting relationships with beautiful Thora and enigmatic August, who have been friends and lovers for many years. Prepare, like Hugo, to be seduced by the glamour and cool of this elegant, sexy debut novel. I’ve got about a million books I should be reading, but I’m tempted to return to this one again.
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (2022)
Or leave Europe behind and settle down into an American campus novel, with a twist. Our narrator is a female professor whose husband (also a professor) has been caught out for having affairs with students. But this is no simple tale of a long-suffering wife. Our narrator is fine with her husband’s flings and is furious with the young women who have accused him of wrongdoing. When their enraged adult daughter asks her, “But didn’t you understand there was a power dynamic?” she responds: “Of course, but aren’t we attracted to power?” Soon, she’s nurturing an obsession of her own. Watch out for the twist