(First book-review post of the year, although these are all 2011 reads.)

Tom Perrotta – The Leftovers
I love Tom Perrotta. A lot. A lot a lot. I was slightly wary of this one – a depiction of a post-Rapture society – but actually it’s classic Perrotta. The small details and secrets and neuroses of everyday life, with gorgeous sentences and nifty characters. Perrotta’s previous book, The Abstinence Teacher, explored the power of religion in American society; The Leftovers asks what would happen if the Rapture – or a Rapture-like phenomenon – took place. The focus is on the small scale – what happens to a particular town, a particular couple of families. Nora lost her husband and her two children; while Kevin’s family has split apart – his wife’s joined a cult called the Guilty Remnant, his daughter’s grown distant, and his son’s followed a preacher, Holy Wayne, who’s recently been at the centre of a scandal. The story moves quietly through these lives, focusing on moments, small events, even as the plot twists and turns in ways sometimes surprising, sometimes chilling. There’s an element of social satire here, but it’s more wry-smile and knowing-nod than laugh-out-loud funny. A hugely enjoyable read, though I’d have loved for it to be longer.

Elizabeth O’Hara – Snobs, Dogs and Scobies
Originally written in Irish, now translated into English this year. Ruán, Emma and Colm are about to sit their Leaving Cert exams, but an accident changes everything. There’s a lot happening here but it’s never melodramatic, and the characters are all well-drawn. The gaps between the well-to-do and the working classes are explored, and it’s a really authentic South Dublin setting (some nice details in there about buses, colleges, etc). She has a new book out as Gaeilge this year too, but as someone still scarred from the last full-length text she read in Irish (An Triail), I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for a translation of that one, too.

Cathy Kelly – Past Secrets
It’d been a while since I’d read Cathy Kelly, but this one doesn’t disappoint (I’ve also caught up with Once In A Lifetime and Lessons in Heartbreak recently – both excellent). The residents of Summer Street all have secrets – middle-aged Christie, keeping something from her devoted husband; respectable Faye, hiding the truth about her past from her daughter; insecure Maggie, haunted by the bullying she experienced at school. Secrets have a way of coming out, though, and what happens when they do shapes this warm and page-turning story.

Nora Roberts – River’s End
As someone who is consistently rubbish at guessing the identity of the villain, I was very pleased to guess something early on that turned out to be right. Yay! Anyway. Olivia is the daughter of two film stars, and age four she goes downstairs to find her father, bloody scissors in hand, hovering over her mother’s dead body. Angst ensues. She goes to live with her grandparents, keeping in touch with Frank Brady, the policeman who found her that night, and his family, including his son, Noah, who remains fascinated by the case – and Olivia – throughout his life. Olivia is a marvellous tough cookie, and the dynamic between her and Noah is excellent. One to curl up with and get sucked into.

Sinéad Moriarty – Whose Life Is It Anyway
Also published as ‘Keeping It In the Family’, I have recently discovered. This was the first of Sinéad Moriarty’s books I’d read, having heard very good things about her. And while there’s a lot to like – the voice, snappy dialogue, the flashbacks to a convincingly self-absorbed teenage self – this book struck me as fairly problematic. The story shifts between the protagonist’s adolescence, in the mid-eighties, and the ongoing crisis in her life, in the late nineties – namely, that her fiancé, Pierre, is black and her parents won’t approve. There are some potentially interesting points made about culture (Niamh’s background/upbringing is Irish/English, Pierre’s is Martinique/French/English), but all-in-all it comes across as deeply, deeply screwed-up without ever being acknowledged as such. It’s accepted by all the characters – including Pierre himself – that it’s okay for Niamh’s family to find it problematic that she’s found a black fiancé rather than a good Irish Catholic. Now, racism does exist, still, obviously, but it tends to be a little more subtle and insidious than is presented here, where all the characters gasp and go ‘Oh, he’s not black, is he? Why did you have to find yourself a black husband?’ Niamh’s extended family are also deeply screwed up, but this is played oddly, not quite for laughs – her teenage cousin pushes her drunk father down the stairs to his death and this is covered up, her dad’s family manipulate him into giving them money despite not needing it. And I can’t see how anyone living in Ireland could not find it deeply cringeworthy that their family is so over-the-top leprechauny. And it’s played straight – she hears about Irish history from her grandparents and becomes pro-Irish, and her reconciliation of two cultures is talked about towards the end. I’d be interested in trying out another of her books, but this one made me distinctly uncomfortable and not quite convinced.

Heather Morrall – Shrink
Eloise is sixteen, about to sit her GCSEs, and anorexic. She has a troubled, tense relationship with her father, whose nervous breakdowns after the deaths of his son and wife (Eloise’s little brother and her mum) have meant that Eloise has spent much of her childhood worrying about him. Most of the book focuses on various meanings of the word ‘shrink’ – Eloise’s English class are looking at Gulliver’s Travels and the tiny people of that are mentioned, but also the shrinking that Eloise is trying to do to herself, and the ‘shrinks’ she deals with in her quest to get better. I found her therapists deeply upsetting – she sees three in total, and the first two are utterly horrible people. Now, there are useless therapists around, certainly, but I found it difficult to believe that two separate therapists could be that awful and mean and unprofessional and for it not to be an issue, for there not to have been countless complaints (even if nothing was ultimately done about it). There’s a hint of that from a girl Eloise meets, Abigail, but the comments don’t even get close to the complete and utter screwed-up-ness of these women. For me this was less a novel about anorexia as it was about deeply, deeply problematic issues with the treatment of it in ‘the system’, but the book focuses more on the former.

Melissa Hill – Please Forgive Me
Leonie leaves Dublin for San Francisco, and along with a new friend, becomes fascinated by a set of unopened letters all ending with a plea for forgiveness. Another great Melissa Hill title with a twisty mystery at the centre.

Joanne Horniman – About a Girl
Australian YA novel about Anna’s first love – the beautiful Flynn, a musician with a secret or two up her sleeve. Introspective, beautifully written.

Liz Kessler – A Year Without Autumn
Gorgeous novel for 9+ about growing up, friendship, family, and time travel. Jenni is twelve, on holidays with her family at the same resort as her best friend, Autumn. When she steps a year into the future, she learns about a tragedy that alters both of their families forever – can she prevent it? I’m a sucker for time travel stories that focus on characterisation rather than adventure and sci-fi-ness (see also Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, for the same age, or Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife for grown-up types), and this didn’t disappoint.

Damian Dibben – The History Keepers: The Storm Begins
And speaking of time travel… This first volume in a new series features time travel through history, in order to save it from the bad guys. Our hero, Jake Djones, discovers his missing parents are members of the secret History Keepers organisation, and joins the quest to find them and discover what’s going on in sixteenth-century Venice. The book is packed with fun historical references (some more accurate than others) and nifty ideas; the trouble for me was that the supporting characters (the style-conscious young agent Nathan and Jake’s aunt Rose get some of the best lines, for example) consistently outshone Jake. He has a couple of endearing moments, but his shift from passive to active hero didn’t feel particularly convincing. Overall the book feels like something waiting to be adapted for the screen (which it will be shortly, I believe) rather than a novel; so many of the scenes have sudden viewpoint shifts or things that would just work better on screen. There are also a few too many characters introduced here to get a handle on all of them (there’s a lot being set up for future volumes). A bit disappointing, but I like the premise an awful lot and will probably check out the next book in the series just to see how it goes (out autumn 2012).

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