Scan barcode
claire_fuller_writer's reviews
1027 reviews
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.5
Beautiful, tragic, moving. This is Samantha Harvey's (winner of The Booker Prize 2024 with Orbital) debut and it really deserves to be better known. The book starts as Jake, in his sixties, has a trip in a plane given as a present by his adult son, Henry. Jake's plane flies over the prison where Henry is incarcerated. Four years later, at the end of the novel, when Henry has been released, the two men, and Jake's girlfriend / carer look through a book of photographs. In between these two events we see, feel, experience the unraveling of Jake's mind as Alzheimer's takes hold. We learn about Jake's life with his parents, his birth, his affair, his marriage, the birth of his children, and his tragedies in a series of spirals that change and fracture each time Jake remembers them - are they even memories or are they simply taken from the photographs he looks at? It's a wonderful novel but also sometimes difficult to read - not just because of how this man loses so much as he loses his mind, but the writing is dense, sometimes unfathomable, complicated and twisty, which of course befits the subject. Recommended.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
3.0
Clearly something in this collection of short stories that everyone else can see that I can't. I've tried one of her novels too and I felt much the same, so perhaps she simply isn't for me. I found the ones that used the first person plural particularly problematic, like the 'we' was an archetype, and my brain kept saying, a whole apartment block of people would not feel the same way. I think it must be my problem, except that my husband (we read them to each other) felt more or less the same.
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
4.0
A group of interconnected friends and companions, now elderly, each receive telephone calls telling them that they must die. Not so much a warning that they are about to be murdered but that they, and of course everyone, will one day die. Memento Mori is littered with eccentric English characters, suspecting each other, bitching behind backs, planning little schemes. It is hilarious in a kind of Ealing Comedy kind of way. It was also fascinating to read about London in the early 50s, and the care of the elderly: it was always so easy for Godfrey to drive into London and park on the Kings Road, or sometimes on a lane off it in case he car was recognised; and how the elderly and the demented were kept in bed in hospital wards. The back of the book says it's a mystery that the recipients of the telephone calls set out to unravel, but really that's just the thing that links them.
Beyond the Sea by Paul Lynch
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
I love a disaster at sea, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, there's something about it being the ultimate survival story. This is not so different to many I've read, and while I enjoyed the dynamics between the two storm-surviving South American fishermen as things gradually get worse, at times towards the end there was just a little too much 'am I going mad, am I seeing things' sections.
All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between by Mike Parker
adventurous
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard
4.0
I was surprised to like this as much as I did. A family saga? Normally, I'd say 'no thanks'. But my step mother-in-law posted me the whole series, and since nothing is nicer than receiving an unexpected parcel of books, I thought I should read the first one.
I loved how we got to dip in and out of the characters' heads, sometimes for only a couple of paragraphs. Although I would have liked to see inside Edward's head more to understand what he was thinking about the things that he did.
Other reviews have said 'but nothing happened!', but I liked that. Wealthy domestic lives between the wars: suet puddings, kippers for breakfast, affairs and falling-outs.
One complaint about the edition I read: The end of the book looked a way off judging by the number of pages still in my right hand, and then suddenly - bam! - it was over. What I had thought was the last section, was in fact a teaser for the next book. Frustrating.
I loved how we got to dip in and out of the characters' heads, sometimes for only a couple of paragraphs. Although I would have liked to see inside Edward's head more to understand what he was thinking about the things that he did.
Other reviews have said 'but nothing happened!', but I liked that. Wealthy domestic lives between the wars: suet puddings, kippers for breakfast, affairs and falling-outs.
One complaint about the edition I read: The end of the book looked a way off judging by the number of pages still in my right hand, and then suddenly - bam! - it was over. What I had thought was the last section, was in fact a teaser for the next book. Frustrating.
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson
4.0
Smith Henderson can write. Wonderfully. Flawed people who I loved despite all the things they did wrong; the rural Montana landscape; complex personal relationships - all of it so well drawn. And plot... a lot happens in this book, perhaps almost too much, but Henderson knew how to keep me staying up late turning pages.
Jeremiah Pearl and his son, outlaws living in the woods, were really interesting characters, and Henderson very cleverly led me to believe something about Pearl and then in within a page spun that around.
Without giving anything away, the Jeremiah Pearl strand of the novel was resolved a little too neatly for me, whilst another, that of what happens to the daughter of the protagonist (Pete Snow), was handled beautifully with just the tiniest possibility of resolution.
Highly recommended.
Jeremiah Pearl and his son, outlaws living in the woods, were really interesting characters, and Henderson very cleverly led me to believe something about Pearl and then in within a page spun that around.
Without giving anything away, the Jeremiah Pearl strand of the novel was resolved a little too neatly for me, whilst another, that of what happens to the daughter of the protagonist (Pete Snow), was handled beautifully with just the tiniest possibility of resolution.
Highly recommended.
Schroder by Amity Gaige
4.0
I loved this. Erik Schroder / Kennedy is so human, so fallible. He makes so many mistakes, the worst of which is absconding with his daughter, but I still cared so much for him; kept wanting until the very end for it to come right for him.
Amity Gaige's seeming to address the reader,(the novel is a letter from Schroder to his wife) works really well, and can be a difficult thing to carry off.
And I really liked the ending. He's writing the letter in prison to his ex-wife about their relationship and what happened during the road trip he took with his daughter, not just as an explanation but for see whether she will ask the courts to be lenient. But of course the letter is sent before they go to court...
And the scene of Schroder's final encounter with his father is particularly moving.
Will Collyer read it very well, but my criticism of the audio version is that the acknowledgements came too soon after the book ended, so I wasn't even sure it had ended!
Amity Gaige's seeming to address the reader,(the novel is a letter from Schroder to his wife) works really well, and can be a difficult thing to carry off.
And I really liked the ending. He's writing the letter in prison to his ex-wife about their relationship and what happened during the road trip he took with his daughter, not just as an explanation but for see whether she will ask the courts to be lenient. But of course the letter is sent before they go to court...
And the scene of Schroder's final encounter with his father is particularly moving.
Will Collyer read it very well, but my criticism of the audio version is that the acknowledgements came too soon after the book ended, so I wasn't even sure it had ended!
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece D'J Pancake
4.0
As I read this short book of very short stories my love for it crept up and up. It maybe started at 3 stars or even two. The language (or terminology really) was sometimes so specific that it was difficult to let the stories flow over me. I'm not sure if these were words from the time Pancake was writing, or North American, or even just specific to West Virginia, but at times they made the writing too dense.
But then I did start to get into the rhythm of it, and just fell in love with the penultimate story: In The Dry. As soon as I had finished that one I re-read it - so many layers and meanings that I only understood on the second read. Perhaps that would have been the same for the other stories, but I won't know (yet) because my husband has stolen it away from me to read for himself.
But then I did start to get into the rhythm of it, and just fell in love with the penultimate story: In The Dry. As soon as I had finished that one I re-read it - so many layers and meanings that I only understood on the second read. Perhaps that would have been the same for the other stories, but I won't know (yet) because my husband has stolen it away from me to read for himself.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
5.0
I read this in two days at The End of Road Festival, when I probably should have been listening to the music, but I just couldn't put it down. I loved the nostalgic tone, and Tony, the central character was perfect. Not perfect in that I liked him, but in a man getting on a bit way, repetitive (loved how his daughter says to him when he tells her he's going away for a few days, 'yes, Dad you've told me that already), a rather dull man really, who often gets things wrong. The biggest of which is his own memory. He tells us about the letter he sent to Adrian and Veronica (his friend and ex-girlfriend)which, when he receives a copy back from Veronica it is nothing, just nothing, like he remembered.
The shock of the ending was amazing and my only grumble is that this revelation was given to Tony by someone who didn't know him, and in reality wouldn't or shouldn't give so much information away to a stranger.
The Sense of an Ending was a book I wanted to go back to beginning and read again immediately, and I would have if there hadn't been music to listen to and more books on my 'to be read' tower when I got home.
The shock of the ending was amazing and my only grumble is that this revelation was given to Tony by someone who didn't know him, and in reality wouldn't or shouldn't give so much information away to a stranger.
The Sense of an Ending was a book I wanted to go back to beginning and read again immediately, and I would have if there hadn't been music to listen to and more books on my 'to be read' tower when I got home.