Four Books I've Loved This Month

Quick thoughts On four titles that I've enjoyed during January

The best advice I ever received about writing was to read, read and then read more. About two years ago I started to take this seriously but I hadn’t realised HOW seriously until I sat down and worked out how many books I had read in 2024. I decided to write little ‘aide-memoires’ about the books which is what I have expanded upon for this piece. Expect more to come soon! If you enjoy reading my Substack, then please like, share and comment or even consider taking out a subscription that will give you access to hundred of articles, reviews, interviews, podcasts, playlists, videos and new fiction. It’s quite a bundle and all for less than the price of a coffee every month. Many Thanks - Jason

The Blue Hour-Paula Hawkins

The Blue Hour is a stunning thriller. A dead artist’s estate has been donated to a trust run by one of her former lovers and gallerists. The artist, Vanessa Chapman, speaks to us from beyond the grave through cleverly written diary extracts while her close friend and carer, Grace tells her own version of the same life story. Untangling all of this is gallery curator Becker, a state educated boy who has worked his behind off to enter the rarified and class ridden clique that is the British art world: a world in which a working class man takes the fall for an aristocrat accidental shooting someone.

Paula Hawkins puts the reader right onto the fictional Scottish island of Eris, Vanessa’s home, which is accessible by a causeway for only a few hours every day. I loved the reflection that Vanessa’s life is ruled by the tides and, by extension, the moon which makes her a lunatic.

We feel the solace and the fear that isolation can bring. The bite of a cold wind off the North Sea cuts through us bringing a disturbing sense of something, as yet unidentifiable, being amiss or wrong. Then we learn that a piece of Vanessa’s work is on display at the Tate Modern and might contain a human bone which leads us naturally to believe that this is the mystery that Becker has to solve. Which it is, kind of.

But then Hawkins throws us into fresh holes left by trees ripped out of the ground by the wind, she dips us in the icy sea leaving us shivering on the beach and sends us up cliff paths on the journey to discovering more about this bone. Along the way we shed preconceptions, and shine a light on dark corners of each character’s life.

There is an importance to Hawkins questions about who owns an artist’s work once the artist is gone and, through Vanessa’s diary, she also asks what exactly constitutes an artist’s work; are their notebooks, sketches and diaries part of their professional or personal life? She condemns the treatment of successful women in the media and cuts open the debilitating and crippling English class system with subtelty and precision.

This book is ambitious, and thrilling. There are two of sets of truth which, like a pair of high speed trains heading for each other down the same track, are heading for a collision. Will they crash? Read it and find out!

Karla’s Choice - A John le Carré novel by Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway takes his father’s most famous creation, George Smiley and gives us so much more. Le Carré fans will recognise the super close 3rd person writing style, the paranoia and pointlessness of much done by the secret world.

Le Carré wrote his original Cold War masterpiece series while the Berlin Wall was a barrier rather than a tourist attraction and while schools carried out nuclear attack drills because the fear of annihilation was very much present. This gave the writing a darker more claustrophobic edge that had us looking in shop windows for signs of people following us or worrying about strange buzzes on our telephone lines.

Karla’s Choice is refreshed by a touch that is lighter than Le Carré’s without being frivolous and the book enjoys the benefit of hindsight: we know how the Cold War ended whereas in the ‘70s we were scared of how it might finish us all.

Harkaway is expert at laying crumbs that guide us towards the conclusion of his story and along the way he builds a more complete picture of the original Smiley series with a fuller chronology.

The story of Smiley himself and his relationship with his errant wife Ann is given enough time, space and attention to help us, if not forgive her infidelity, then to at least understand her motivation. It cannot be easy being married to a spy who is also married to his job - and is not from the same class. Harkaway takes as much pleasure as his father in dismantling the English Public school / Oxbridge / Circus journey that certain young men enjoyed as their birthright. And continues today.

The scenes with Bill Haydon have Le Carré fans hissing in horror: we know his seductive and treasonous tendencies and Harkaway shows us a man who betrayed the abstract concept of a state while also destroying the lives of the very real people around him who had believed in his friendship.

Karla’s choice is about the dying of the wartime generation’s light. The fuel that fired the post Second World War desire for a more progressive and peaceful society is almost down to one last glowing ember, fighting its way out from under the ash at the back of the country’s grate. The old ways, and realities are out of hibernation and, like ivy taking over a tree, are gripping mercilessly at society.

Women are finally present in a Smiley book and not just as sexual conquests but again, they are being edged out by the Eton boys, their wartime work and heroism forgotten because …well you know.

Karla’s Choice is much more than a prequel cashing in on a famous character: it expands our knowledge of the Smiley universe, deepens our immersion into the hidden world of the Circus and leaves the door open for much more.

So Late In The Day - Claire Keegan

A small hardback that looks like a Ladybird book and packs a very powerful punch. Keegan writes from a male point of view and absolutely captures the limiting beliefs that many men are brought up with.

Lead character Cathal is not unique and in many ways acts as a cypher for the type of man who might look back on an incredible woman as ‘the one that got away’ rather than ‘another one I really messed up.’ In this case the woman is Sabine, who was generous with her love and cooking skills but reduced by Cathal to a cost.

Keegan’s writing is spare and precise and full of emotion and, like the literary equivalent of the best New Year’s DJ party set, every sentence is a total banger

The story is ostensibly about Misogyny (its original title) which Keegan links with meanness, with frugality of money and spirit and maybe even love. If misogynists cannot be generous to or respect women then can they really love them?

I’m not sure if the writer intends to say that misogynists are tight with money or using Cathal’s ability to only see the price and not the value of everything as a metaphor for his attitude towards women. Keegan is an excellent writer who cleverly folds the political into the personal in her work but this one, although still excellent, felt like the mixture needed a touch more blending.

Let It Bleed - Ian Rankin

Let It Bleed is the seventh of 25 Rebus books created by Ian Rankin. Edinburgh Detective John Rebus is obnoxious, drunk and not much fun to be with but Rankin’s writing keeps you reading. Let It Bleed contains the usual motley crew of Edinburgh petty thieves, drug addicts and twisted coppers with a tapestry of crooked establishment figures who are silently and invisibly screwing everyone over in the name of the ‘general good.’

In Rankin’s world the public is made to feel upset and angry about the criminality they can see day to day and this rage is used to mask the real criminals who are operating out of sight in Government, business and law enforcement. It is this political edge which makes the Rebus books so enjoyable together with Rankin’s language, sense of character and place which perfectly set up the propulsive plot.

Rankin wrote this book in 1995 which gives the story an added tautness because we know what happened next in the country; a Scottish Parliament was built, and the computers that are being installed across the Edinburgh Police force in the book became ubiquitous and vital. By capturing what might be called ‘period details’ so clearly, Rankin unintentionally reminds us of how much change has taken place over the last 30 years. And can a book set in the ‘90s now be termed a period piece?

I wasn’t sure how the story would end but I wanted to find out. So much was stacked against Rebus as his moral compass was sat next to a magnet which spun it faster than a fairground gravity wheel.

The last few pages of the book felt much like what Ken Follett describes as “Tell me Inspector”: this is the part when the ever-so-clever investigator explains to the awed dinner party Guests exactly how he deduced who had killed Lady Mawdsely from some seemingly insignificant and easily missed clues about a tea cup, the door to the pantry and the gardener’s habit of leaving his fork outside the potting shed on a Wednesday afternoon. I have always found this style of ending frustrating which is why I can’t get into Poirot. Who likes a know it all?

Despite this clumsy and not quite believable ending, the sheer audacity of bringing together such a group of disparate characters to carry out a crime which solves all of Rebus; problems is wonderfully handled by Rankin. However, we are still left asking how far the Rebus will flex his values to achieve his aims without becoming part of the corruption that he rails so violently against.

I hope that Rebus can get the help he needs before he too goes the way of Shug McAnally and is no longer able to fight injustice or his own demons.

Thanks for reading and please like, comment and share this piece. Taking out a subscription would be a wonderful way of supporting my writing and giving you access to hundreds of articles, interviews, reviews, podcast, playlist, videos and new fiction.