Saturday by Ian McEwan

Synopsis.
Saturday, February 15m 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window and filled with a growing unease. As he looks out at the night sky he is troubled by the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat.

Later, as Perowne makes his way through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors, a minor car accident brings him into confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance as the Perowne family gathers for a reunion that Henry's earlier fears seem about to be realised.

I'm glad I didn't read the blurb on the back of the book before reading it as it gives away so much of what happens in the book, I hate that!

I've read 'Atonement' and 'On Chesil Beach' by Ian McEwan and liked them both. Sadly, I can't say the same of this book. Perhaps it's because I grew to dislike Henry the more I read about him. He doesn't like reading much, and worst, dislikes my favourite genre, magical realism! I don't have to have anything in common with the characters in the books I'm reading but it helps if I like them. There are pages and pages inserted in the book dedicated to the outpourings of praise heaped on it. It makes one feel quite the philistine!

I was interested to read about the brain surgery Henry performs on his patients and felt in my bones that the accounts would include the brain surgery I have had and eventually, there it was, the very operation he performs on Rosalind is the one I had. It was a very strange feeling to read the somewhat gory details knowing that it has all happened to me.

I feel even more of a philistine when I say that I found the whole book dull, even the exciting bits were dull! Even without having read the blurb on the back of the book I knew that the confrontation with Baxter in the street wouldn't end there, the outcome was predictable and added to the dullness. No, not may favourite McEwan, but I'll keep reading his books because I enjoyed the other two so much.

The Land of Laughs by Jonathon Carroll

Synopsis
For schoolteacher Thomas Abbey there was no writer to equal Marshall France, a legendary author of children's books who hid himself away in the small town of Galen and died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four. Tom and his girlfriend Saxony, wanting to write France's biography, arrive in Galen, where they discover the writer's fiercely protective daughter Anna is waiting for them. Before long, they realise that this idyllic little town and its inhabitants - both human and animal - are not quite what they seem: France's magic has spread beyond the printed page ...

Magical Realism is one of my favourite genres. Basically it's where something magical and other wordly happens in a very ordinary setting, as opposed to Fantasy which is usually about some made up planet in a galaxy far far away where dragons still roam and Lord someone or other is trying to defeat the evil wizard whatchamacallit.

The Land of Laughs in written so smoothly, so flowingly, that ones eyes just glide along the page and eat up chapter after chapter. For most of the book you have no idea in the direction the story it's going in (I never read the synopsis on the backs of books, I like to be surprised) but once Thomas hears a bulldog talking in his sleep (yes, really talking) you know that things in the town of Galen are not what they seem.

Fortunately for me Carroll has written lots of books because I got so much enjoyment from this one want to read all his others.

No Tigers in Africa by Norman Silver

This is the story of 15 year old Selywin who has recently moved to Bristol from Apartheid South Africa. He has a hard time adjusting to the climate, culture, to school and to making friends.

Apart from having to deal with the disintegration of his family, he has a dark secret he's holding on to. The pressure build and eventually things come to a head.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

I enjoyed The Woman in White by the same author so much, I thought I'd read this one too. It isn't quite as riveting and suspenseful as The Woman in White but is an engaging and absorbing all the same. The plot is very complex but centres around a diamond stolen from a sacred Hindu statue, in the days when the British still ruled India, by an English army officer. It is passed down through inheritance to Miss Rachel Verinder who only has it for one night before it is stolen from her room. It is the discovery of how and whom stole the diamond that makes up the plot of this book (all 500 plus pages of it).

In the foreword it says that T.S Eliot described the book as 'the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels'. I don't agree it is the best, like I said before The Woman in White is a better book in my view, but if it is the first detective book written,then as a first attempt at a new genre Collins excels himself.

What I particularly like about the way Wilkie Collins writes is the fact it is so easily accessible to the modern reader. I've read other books written in the 1800s that are written in a language style so idiomatic, so archaic, so far removed from today's modern language to be virtually indecipherable to me. The fact that these books are so easy to read means I shall certainly read more by this author.

Skating to Antartica by Jenny Diski

Jenny Diski craves complete whiteness and where, logically, could she go but Antarctica?? She books herself a cruise on a former scientific ship and meets (but mostly avoids) her fellow, largely American, passengers. She writes about the penguins (which stink!), Elephant seals, icebergs and her fellow ship-mates in an amusing and engaging way.

This is far from being a straightforward travelogue. The Antarctica trip is just part of the book, the rest is taken up with thoughts on her hysterical and unkind mother (whom she hasn't been in contact with since the 60s), her unstable childhood and and her life in general. She seems to be exorcising ghosts through her writing which does make compelling, though sometimes quite painful, reading.

The Whirpool by Jane Urquhart

A poetical and lyrical story set in 1880s Canada.

I don't think everyone will like Urquhart's style of writing, it's very descriptive, of light, sound, nature in general, I've seen it described as 'lyrical' and 'poetical'. Personally, I like the way she writes. She has the ability, when describing nature, to make you long to be among woods or some other place among the flora and fauna. The novel is set in Niagara Falls in the 1880s and features four main characters. There's McDougal, the military historian, obsessed with a battle that had taken place in Niagara seventy years earlier. Then there's Fleda, his unconventional wife who's living in a tent with her husband by the river until their house is built. Patrick spies on Fleda with field glasses. And Maud Grady, the Undertaker's widow who collects the possessions of those who commit suicide in the river, and her strange little boy.

I liked the book very much, the people interested me and so did the setting, Niagara Falls. It's gentle, meandering through the lives of these four very different people.