THE CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN by Sayaka Murata

Keiko Furukura is 36 years old. She has worked in the same convenience store since she was 18 - half her life. She is beginning to feel the pressure from her family that what she is doing is not quite normal, that here she is with no qualifications, working a blue collar job, no man, marriage or babies in sight. What to do? However nothing about Keiko is normal, so it's hardly surprising that although vaguely aware of her family's concerns, she is not terribly concerned or stressed about. Her life revolves around the convenience store: her personality and skills perfectly matched to the heavily prescribed manual and procedures that keep the shop ticking along. Highly valued, very much liked, Keiko is perfectly happy in her life and in her work. None of what bothers her family bothers her.

Nevertheless, with the arrival and subsequent sacking of a quite awful young man, Shiraha, Keiko weirdly sees a way to make herself normal. And so begins a very peculiar relationship which to the reader is a little alarming and not at all satisfactory. Shiraha is a lazy, misogynistic useless bully, gradually eroding away Keiko's uniqueness and self-possession. Until one day she is out shopping and has an epiphany.

Keiko is most intriguing - is she slightly aspergers? Possibly sociopathic? Does she have some sort of intellectual disability? Her need to fit in with the store culture, her strict adherence to the manual and shop routines, to be the best employee she is expected to be, in fact surpassing the expectation would make many of us uncomfortable and want to fight the system. But for Keiko she thrives in this environment - she is happy, content, recognised, acknowledged and rewarded in her job. Is this not what we all want in our working lives - a job we love, in an environment we love, and with people we relate to and like being with. Who are we to say that Keiko, in the eyes of her family and society is not normal?

This small and captivating book, translated from Japanese, is only 160 pages long, but every page is intriguing. The convenience store itself is a major character - the type of shop we do not really have in the West, much more than a corner store or 7-Eleven. For NZers more like a miniature The Warehouse where you can also buy your groceries, fast food and convenience foods. It's a delicious little book, funny, curious, and rewarding to read. 

TALKING TO STRANGERS by Malcolm Gladwell

When we meet people for the first time - a stranger - we are programmed to want a positive interaction with that person. We greet them courteously, as we have been taught; we look for body language cues and cues in what they say or how they say things that we are familiar with, that we can relate to. We want to be liked by this new person, and have a good exchange of whatever it may be - medical advice, shop assistants, the police, our children's friends, potential work colleagues, love interest. When assessing those we aren't quite sure about, we still look for common threads and characteristics, and when some time later we find that we have been had, that that person is not whom we had let ourselves believe they were... well, then we have that massive sense of betrayal, anger, feeling like we have been a fool of. It happens to all of us and for some the consequences of this, despite maybe a nagging doubt or a little intuition antennae flapping way, can be terrible, heart breaking and long lasting.

In this latest from Malcolm Gladwell, he has taken as his starting point an exchange that occurred between a young black woman from Illinois driving in Texas with out of state plates on her car. She had just left a successful job interview at the nearby university and was on her way back to Illinois to pack up her life and start again. She is pulled over by a white traffic officer and immediately the exchange of words gets off to a bad start. The officer's prescribed list of visual cues for trouble is working overtime as he dealtswith the young woman in the car. It did not end well. Two strangers for a whom a routine traffic stop went absolutely off the rails. But why?

In his usual brilliant narrative way, weaving anecdotes, court judgements, research papers, investigations, high profile news stories, the author makes his case as to why again and again in life we fail to read people properly. Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme; how Castro and his spies fooled their American counterparts; the sad story of Amanda Knox found guilty of murder in Italy simply because she didn't behave like a grieving friend should; the issue of sexual consent being given when one or both parties are clearly very intoxicated; the sports coaches and teachers who are also sexual predators and how they get away with it for years. All this and more the author covers in this fascinating insight into how we behave. In a world where we really do need to be kinder to each other, and yet also more aware and wary of those around us, this book is marvellous and easy reading. I love this author's books, I  have read them all, and own most of them, this is another really good one.  

QUEENIE by Candice Carty-Williams

A true delight of a novel - sparkling writing, original and very diverse characters each with their own wonderfully real voice. Yet beneath the funny and tortured surface plot, much deeper issues, worries and problems claw their way out to the surface. This story could be read by anyone and labelled as a Bridget Jones for black women. But by the sheer virtue of being about black women it immediately opens up numerous challenges that Bridget, in her white middle class world, never even had to look at, let alone deal with. There is a much darker side to being a young, single, smart career woman.

So young Queenie has the double whammy really - not only is she 25, highly career minded, looking for love and failing dismally, with the best bunch of girl friends one could ever hope to have. This gorgeous young woman is also dealing with being a black woman and all the challenges that can bring.  How dark she is, how white on the inside she is, how her hair is, how her figure is, how she dresses, how 'involved' her proud Jamaican grandmother and aunt are in her life, and most damaging and appalling really the ghastliness she has to deal with from men - none of whom are black like her.

The novel opens with Queenie undergoing a gynaecological  exam, the outcome of which plus the  recent dumping by her long time boyfriend tips her into a cycle of self-destruction, the root of which would appear to be her troubled mother abandoning her at the age of 11 to the care of her grandmother and aunt. Throughout the story we anxiously follow the self-destruction, her on-line dating, her sabotaging of her job as a writer for a newspaper, her wonderful friends always on the fringes giving her advice and support with delicious wit. Over a number of months Queenie does find her way out of the mire - after all in true Bridget Jones' fashion there is nothing like the optimism and energy of youth to keep one going, and we have to have a happy ending.

The deeper themes however hover over the exuberance and crazy path Queenie finds herself on. #blacklivesmatter makes an appearance, the awful men she encounters, how crucial it is to know and like one's self before finding love with others, and how white the world is that black people have to live and function in. It is humbling to read that the daily struggles of educated and smart young black people can be burdens and experiences that their white co-workers and friends will never have to cope with or overcome. 

THE SILVER ROAD by Stina Jackson

From the title and the cover the reader immediately knows that the landscape is going to feature heavily in this novel in the Scandi-noir genre of story telling. Unlike most Scandi-noir novels, this is not narrated from the police point-of-view, but it has all the bleakness, greyness, long periods of low light with  murder, misogyny, violence and moral corruptness that we have come to associate with novels, films and TV series coming out of the countries of Scandinavia. The setting for this novel is Sweden, in a rural area north of Stockholm. Towns are few and far apart, forest is everywhere, houses/hamlets are scattered, often hidden down narrow windy roads, surrounded by trees, silence, and the long silver road cutting a windy, lonely and endless track through the landscape. There are many secrets, everyone seems to have a dark side to their nature.

Lelle is a father, for the past three years haunted by the sudden disappearance of his only child, 17 year old Lina who went missing at a bus stop. Full of self blame, he has spent these years driving up and down the roads of the area looking for his daughter. Unable to do much over the winter, he spends all summer, day and night, driving, searching, asking questions, stalking Lina's boyfriend of the time. Nothing. He is beyond caring about himself - his diet, his personal hygiene, his wife - he is a mess. The third anniversary of Lina's disappearance is looming, and he is almost at the end of of his tether.

Meanwhile there are two new arrivals in the area. 17 year old Meja and her mother Silje arrive from Stockholm to begin a new life with Torbjorn, a man Silje met on-line. Silje herself is a mess and has been for many years. There is no doubt she loves her daughter but she has very few parenting skills and is almost incapable of looking after herself. Meja's life has been one of upheaval; she is well used to her mother's wild fancies and destructive life style. But being stuck out in the middle of nowhere with her crazy mother and this strange man is almost a step too far for her. Left to her own devices much of the time, she soon gets to know a family in the area who take her in, and treat her as one of their own. Then another local teenage girl goes missing.

There is slow build up to the menace and the danger that the reader knows is going to happen at some stage. Some on-line reviews have not liked this lack of action for much of the book, but I loved it - the ominous dark and dangerous landscape, the numerous men including Lelle himself any of whom could be responsible for these disappearing girls. Meja's curiosity and need for normalcy as well as friends in her life, the compassion of the local detective, the menacing presence of Lina's ex boyfriend. And always that sinister setting - very unsettling and ominous. I loved it. 

YOU WILL BE SAFE HERE by Damian Barr

The author is a British columnist, playwright and writer. He has a NZ connection, last year receiving a University of Otago Scottish Writer's fellowship based at the Pah Homestead in Auckland.  I wonder if this is where he put the finishing touches to this outstanding novel. He says on his website he is a story teller, and oh my goodness, he certainly knows how to tell a story, weaving fact into fiction, creating characters and a story that will stay with you long after reading.

The setting for this novel is another sad chapter in British colonial history - the Boer War of 1899-1902. I wonder how many times people are ashamed of the history they have come from, because this is certainly a shameful time, with the forced incarceration of thousands of Boer women and children into what were the first concentration camps, and which were the blueprints for the Nazis in the 1930s. The novel opens with Sarah van der Watt and her 6 year old son Fred being taken from their farm which is burnt to the ground in front of their eyes, to a camp where they are told they will be safe, well looked after and cared for during the course of the war. Like that is going to happen. The reality of course is quite different, awful really. Sarah manages to keep a diary, forbidden by the camp officials, over the months she is there. In reality, there was a woman who did manage to keep a diary during her internment and this part of the novel is based on those writings.

Part II of the novel has moved to the present day - 2010. A teenage boy, Willem, is being sent off to a training camp, to be made into a man. He is a quiet boy, loves his books and his dog. But his mother and her new man are finding him increasingly difficult to get on with, so see this as the only way to fix him. His grandmother is dismayed at what is going on, but has little say in the matter. The camp is an appalling place, run by a pair of sadists. It takes a while for the connections to be made between the present and the past, but it just goes to show one can never run away from the happenings of years previous. Again, much of this part of the novel is based on fact. These training camps did exist, the character of Willem and another boy are based as well as  the camp leaders on real people. You can google all this - names etc are given in the acknowledgements section at the back.

This is an outstanding book, powerful in its story telling, compelling and believable characters, dealing with shocking situations. The characters may all be based on real people, long since dead, but the author has made them so life like and real - such a skill. I loved this book, and despite its subject matter, it is definitely a favourite recent read.

MOONLIGHT SONATA by Eileen Merriman

Successful author of teenage/YA fiction has branched out and written her first novel for adults. I have read two of her YA novels and really liked them in their story line and character development, as well as being very relevant and current in dealing with issues so important to our teenagers. In this novel, designed for adults, she tackles incest - consensual rather than abusive which is a Pandora's box all by itself. I did a bit of googling on the subject and it would appear to be more common, though not at all accepted, than one would think. By the way I am not giving any plot spoilers in revealing that the core of this story is sexual love between family members and the taboo that it is. The last lines of the first chapter are a dead giveaway, as is the setting of a family reunion with a plethora of teenage cousins staying together at the beach over the summer holidays.

Widow Hazel has opened her home on a Northland beach - I visualise somewhere like Coopers Beach or Cable Bay - for New Year holidays to her adult children - Sully, Anthony, twins Molly and Joe, and their families, come together from around NZ, Australia and Middle East. Like all families there is bad history, the most momentous thing that has happened to this one being Hazel leaving her husband and the three sons, moving to Christchurch with Molly when she was only six for a six year period, during which Molly had no contact at all with her father and brothers, the separation from her twin Joe being especially traumatic.

The story is told in alternate chapters by Molly in both the present and in her past; 15 year old Lola who is Anthony's daughter, only very recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes; and Noah who is Molly's 18 year old  son. The story only covers a few days over the New Year period, but a lot can happen in even just one day. The author has captured that unique NZ phenomenon - the family summer beach holiday where everyone is in close quarters, alcohol is involved, bit of cabin fever, childhood sibling issues resurface, set against the stunning background of the beach, the surf, the sand, running out of supplies, sunburn.

I am not so sure about her characters. Although quite distinct they are fairly one dimensional, with little development. They are all self absorbed which you can appreciate for the teenage characters, but not so much for the adult characters. For example Molly and her mother Hazel I did not like at  all,  both far too stuck in the patterns and behaviours of the past, unable and it would seem unwilling to make peace with each other. Molly is a smart woman - professor at a Melbourne university -  yet she has very little self awareness of how she behaves with her husband, her son and her siblings. So much rage there for a grown woman to be carrying around with her. Brother Sully I found annoying too - his wallowing in self pity, his awful daughter and unpleasant son; then there is Joe who is a bit like Peter Pan - never grown up and blithely unable to take on the responsibilities of being an adult. I did find the ending unsatisfactory.  Aside from being too neat and tidy, I am not sure it is sending out the right message as a way to deal with problems.

It's biggest problem  for me however is that it is neither an adult novel nor a teenage novel. It is not complex and nuanced enough for the former, but with teenagers as lead characters it certainly falls into the teen genre. And yet due to its subject matter with so much of the perspective being from the adult Molly is probably not what I would imagine teenagers would be engaging with.

ALLEGRA IN THREE PARTS by Suzanne Daniel

Allegra is 11 years old, living in suburban Sydney in the 1970s with her dad Rick and grandmother Mathilde at number 23, and grandmother Joy at number 25. Narrated by Allegra, she has little understanding of why this situation is so, only knowing that she constantly feels herself torn into two between her loving but vastly different grandmothers, and the emotionally distant figure of her father. She is a smart wee girl, extraordinarily sensitive to those around her, in the process navigating the classroom ghastliness of 11 year old girls and keeping her grandmothers happy.  Not easy when they can't stand each other.  Her growing friendship of fellow outsider young Aborigine girl Patricia further sets her apart from the rest of her class, but not from her teacher Sister Josepha. 1970s Australia is not an easy place for women, and the growing awareness Allegra is finding of the world around her puts her and those she loves on a collision course. Could leave you with a tear in your eye. This novel is marketed as teen/YA fiction/coming of age fiction. But is equally enjoyable and meaningful for everyone else. I loved this - all about what it means to belong to a family and to be loved.

A SPARK OF LIGHT by Jodi Picoult

The queen of novels with ethical issues at their core, this is classic Jodi Picoult, taking on the abortion debate, possibly the most fraught of them all. And boy, does she cover some ground in this story. She must have brainstormed every single argument, medical fact, scenario where an abortion may be considered, laws,  religion, every everything in putting together a story around this issue. Centred on a clinic in the middle of the US, a tiny weathered island in a huge storm, where women and staff run the gauntlet of protesters, militants, crazies. Even her descriptions of these scenes, before people make the entry point, are raw and passionate. In the clinic on this particular day, a man has taken staff, patients, and supporters hostage, his rage and despair overwhelming him following his own daughter having an abortion. Told from varying viewpoints of those mixed up in the hostage taking - a doctor, a patient, a anti-abortion militant  pretending to be a patient, a nurse, a young girl wanting contraception, her aunt accompanying her, the local police hostage negotiator, a young girl arrested for having an abortion, a woman who became pregnant after being raped - all these many and various scenarios are thrust in front of the reader. To her credit, the author is very good at raising both pro and anti arguments/dilemmas, giving the reader a very comprehensive education in the politics, the social, economic and emotional impacts of pro and anti. It is overwhelming, to the point where the plot gets lost at times, especially seeing it tells the day of the hostage taking in reverse - starting late in the afternoon, working hour by hour back to early in the day. I am and always be pro-choice, but this novel does raise some very good points and with Jodi Picoult's ability to always throw in twists and surprises. The only right answer of course is choice. What you do with that choice must always be respected and encouraged, whether it is to continue with the pregnancy or not.  

THE SEVEN SISTERS by Lucinda Riley

Also on the list of NZ's top 100 reads, this is the first novel in a series about seven sisters, although there are actually only 6 novels. Now young women, they were all adopted by an extremely wealthy philanthropic man, and brought up on an island on Lake Geneva. In this novel, the sisters , now adult and living around the world, are together again on the island, their father having recently died. He has left each woman a letter with the latitude/longitude coordinates of the place in the world they were born in, so they can explore for themselves where they came from. First up is eldest daughter Maia, who finds out she was born in Rio de Janeiro. Off she goes in search of who she is. We immediately jump into 1920s Rio de Janeiro high society, her great grandmother Izabella being a stroppy teenage girl, rejecting her father's arranged marriage plans to cement his place in Rio's social circles. Moving between Paris and Rio, the story of where Maia comes from is told. Wonderfully romantic, lots of history, beautiful people falling in love, it really is quite gorgeous to read, certainly setting the scene for the next novel in the series. The Moon Sister, number 5 in the series, was published in time for Xmas 2018, which is when I first heard of these books. The last one, The Sun Sister, is due for publication 31/10 and it will fly off the shelves, just in time for Xmas and summer holidays.

A MISTAKE by Carl Shuker

NZ novelist Carl Shuker is a former editor of the British Medical Journal. He knows his medical procedures and the opening pages of this novel graphically illustrate the drama, the tension and intimacy of an operating theatre. This is the story of highly respected, hard working, well and truly smashed the glass ceiling surgeon Elizabeth Taylor aka Loco Liz. During an operation on a young woman, a mistake is made, which may or may not have lead to her death some hours later in ICU. In the world however we live in, where blame must always be apportioned, Liz finds herself the target of the cause of the patient's death. At times she is intensely unlikeable, which also raises the question of would we have liked her the same or more if she was a top male surgeon? I doubt you can be 100% nicely-nice to get where Liz has got in her profession, having sacrificed a future of relationships and children along the way, again unlike many of her male co-surgeons. Incredibly competent and confident, she finds herself beginning to unravel as the shock that she may be held accountable for the death begins to hit her. In the world of the operating theatre where there is so much mechanisation and reliance on technology,  the scalpel is still held by a human being, and whether this is the cause of death or not, the human error is the natural scapegoat. Threaded through the novel is the real life disaster of the 1986 Challenger explosion, which in the end was due to the tiniest of human errors. I felt this thread was probably not necessary, it didn't really add to Liz's story, and I found it took away from urgency and immediacy of what was going on in Liz's life. A great read, important too in this society of ours where we are constantly looking for others/anyone to be made accountable for things that go wrong.

HOME FIRES by Kamila Shamsie

Stand out read, the best of my recent reading, so so good.  Such a dreadful cover does nothing for what a great book this is. Long listed for the 2018 Man Booker prize, this is modern day reworking of the Greek myth of Antigone, which I read a summary of on-line before starting this. Just so I knew what I was dealing with! Unlike many other Booker nominees/prize winners, this is not a literary monster, too clever for its own good. Isma, her younger twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz are London born of Pakistani descent. Both parents are dead, the shadow of their father who disappeared on his way to Guantanamo Bay always over them. Isma is smart, having won a scholarship to a US university where she meets a young man Eammon, mixed English/Pakistan. Eammon's father is the Home Secretary in the government, barely treading the tenuous path between his Pakistani roots and his Englishness. The disappearance of Parvaiz to the ISIS cause in Syria and Eammon's return to London with a parcel for Aneeka throws these two together, Aneeka seeing a way to bring her brother home. Forces greater than the lovers gradually build, the reader, with the story of Antigone in mind, knowing that this will not be a happy ending. Outstanding story, the tragedy of modern day politics no different from what it was in the days of Ancient Greece.

THE THREE EMPERORS by Miranda Carter

Not everyone's cup of tea, but I have been wading my way through this since the beginning of the year. I love history, and this being the centenary year of the end of WWI - the Great War - it is more than appropriate to find out some of how it all came about. I remember in school learning about the origins of WWI, which focussed on the politics of the times and not much on the monarchies of the countries involved. WWI crushed and destroyed all the monarchies of Europe, not just Germany and Russia,  the king of England being the only one to really survive. These three kings were first cousins, this book focussing on the relationship between the three, how their destinies and the inevitability of war were shaped by their inability to move with the times. Yes it is long, best read in bits and never at night.  Large chunks of the minutiae of politics and machinations I skipped over, enjoying more the lives of King George V, Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II, their families, the spider's web of connections, and how it all came crashing down.

THE DOLL FACTORY by Elizabeth MacNeal

Look at that cover - so beautiful. Set in Dickensian London, the East End of all places, where there is very little beauty and daily life is one horrible, grubby, desperate slog. Iris and her twin sister work long hours for a doll maker, hand sewing exquisite clothes for the dolls. Iris dreams of becoming an artist, and in her few spare hours with her meagre savings paints and draws. Noticed by a talented young artist of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists, she sees a way for her and her sister to escape their dreary hard life. With her unusual looks and beautiful red hair she quickly becomes the artist's muse, then creative collaborator, well timed for the 1851 Great Exhibition. At the same time, she is being stalked by a sinister character called Silas Reed, a taxidermist who makes his living by sourcing and preserving dead animals - birds, cats, dogs, what ever he can find to satisfy the demand from the wealthy for real life decorative ornaments or models for artists. His obsession with Iris is horrific to behold, as are his means to obtain her for himself. This is a wonderful and compelling mixture of love story, and thriller, set against the brilliantly rendered back drop of Victorian London. I can just imagine this as a movie or mini series using all the remarkable talents and resources of the BBC and others - imagine the costuming!

COME BACK FOR ME by Heidi Perks

A thriller! This is an action packed page turning read. Stella and her family live on the island of Evergreen, population approx 100.  She has lived her entire life there, until one stormy night in 1993 when she is 12, the family suddenly up and leaves. No explanation given. Fast forward to the present, Stella is now a counsellor, her older sister Bonnie is an ex-alcoholic married with children, and brother Danny disappeared some 10 years prior. Her mother has died, and her father is suffering from dementia. The news reveals that a body of a young woman has been discovered on the island of Evergreen, buried on the boundary of the property Stella's parents lived at. Iona, was a huge presence in the lives of the family the summer they hurriedly left. Stella is instantly thrown back into the past, especially when the police come calling wanting to know why Iona was wearing a bracelet that Stella had made all those years ago. Moving back and forth between the summer of 1993 and the present, Stella is determined to find out what really happened and why her brother Danny is being sought for the murder of Iona. Surprises galore are revealed, and you are kept guessing right to the very end.

BRIDGE OF CLAY by Markus Zusak

Who didn't love The Book Thief? And how many years have we waited for this writer's next great novel? Too many, but don't for a minute think this is anything like the other! This has made the latest list of top 100 best reads in NZ, which is why I include it here. For me personally it would not make that list. Firstly it is very long, very drawn out, and at times I thought it would never end, never be resolved. I had trouble making all the connections with the author's meanderings and musings at the expense of the story. I just wanted him to get on with it! The writing is amazing, if you love reading for the sake of how words are put together and pictures they make then this is for you. If you have the patience to focus on the story, and the relationships between the characters as well, then you will also enjoy this. Briefly, Clay is a teenage boy, one of the 5 Dunbar brothers, ranging in age from 18 down to 11, living alone in suburban Sydney following the death of their mother and desertion by their father. Oldest boy Matthew is the prime narrator, although the story does move back and forth telling the story of each of the parents and the family in its early days. So much love there, and heart ache and sadness. Clay is the son who is determined to somehow fix everything, the physical bridge he builds with his dad also being symbolic of the bridge being built between the boys themselves and with their father. It is outstanding.

Allegra is 11 years old, living in suburban Sydney in the 1970s with her dad Rick and grandmother Mathilde at number 23, and grandmother Joy at number 25. Narrated by Allegra, she has little understanding of why this situation is so, only knowing that she constantly feels herself torn into two between her loving but vastly different grandmothers, and the emotionally distant figure of her father. She is a smart wee girl, extraordinarily sensitive to those around her, in the process navigating the classroom ghastliness of 11 year old girls and keeping her grandmothers happy.  Not easy when they can't stand each other.  Her growing friendship of fellow outsider young Aborigine girl Patricia further sets her apart from the rest of her class, but not from her teacher Sister Josepha. 1970s Australia is not an easy place for women, and the growing awareness Allegra is finding of the world around her puts her and those she loves on a collision course. Could leave you with a tear in your eye. This novel is marketed as teen/YA fiction/coming of age fiction. But is equally enjoyable and meaningful for everyone else. I loved this - all about what it means to belong to a family and to be loved.

Who didn't love The Book Thief? And how many years have we waited for this writer's next great novel? Too many, but don't for a minute think this is anything like the other! This has made the latest list of top 100 best reads in NZ, which is why I include it here. For me personally it would not make that list. Firstly it is very long, very drawn out, and at times I thought it would never end, never be resolved. I had trouble making all the connections with the author's meanderings and musings at the expense of the story. I just wanted him to get on with it! The writing is amazing, if you love reading for the sake of how words are put together and pictures they make then this is for you. If you have the patience to focus on the story, and the relationships between the characters as well, then you will also enjoy this. Briefly, Clay is a teenage boy, one of the 5 Dunbar brothers, ranging in age from 18 down to 11, living alone in suburban Sydney following the death of their mother and desertion by their father. Oldest boy Matthew is the prime narrator, although the story does move back and forth telling the story of each of the parents and the family in its early days. So much love there, and heart ache and sadness. Clay is the son who is determined to somehow fix everything, the physical bridge he builds with his dad also being symbolic of the bridge being built between the boys themselves and with their father. It is outstanding.

A thriller! This is an action packed page turning read. Stella and her family live on the island of Evergreen, population approx 100.  She has lived her entire life there, until one stormy night in 1993 when she is 12, the family suddenly up and leaves. No explanation given. Fast forward to the present, Stella is now a counsellor, her older sister Bonnie is an ex-alcoholic married with children, and brother Danny disappeared some 10 years prior. Her mother has died, and her father is suffering from dementia. The news reveals that a body of a young woman has been discovered on the island of Evergreen, buried on the boundary of the property Stella's parents lived at. Iona, was a huge presence in the lives of the family the summer they hurriedly left. Stella is instantly thrown back into the past, especially when the police come calling wanting to know why Iona was wearing a bracelet that Stella had made all those years ago. Moving back and forth between the summer of 1993 and the present, Stella is determined to find out what really happened and why her brother Danny is being sought for the murder of Iona. Surprises galore are revealed, and you are kept guessing right to the very end.

Look at that cover - so beautiful. Set in Dickensian London, the East End of all places, where there is very little beauty and daily life is one horrible, grubby, desperate slog. Iris and her twin sister work long hours for a doll maker, hand sewing exquisite clothes for the dolls. Iris dreams of becoming an artist, and in her few spare hours with her meagre savings paints and draws. Noticed by a talented young artist of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists, she sees a way for her and her sister to escape their dreary hard life. With her unusual looks and beautiful red hair she quickly becomes the artist's muse, then creative collaborator, well timed for the 1851 Great Exhibition. At the same time, she is being stalked by a sinister character called Silas Reed, a taxidermist who makes his living by sourcing and preserving dead animals - birds, cats, dogs, what ever he can find to satisfy the demand from the wealthy for real life decorative ornaments or models for artists. His obsession with Iris is horrific to behold, as are his means to obtain her for himself. This is a wonderful and compelling mixture of love story, and thriller, set against the brilliantly rendered back drop of Victorian London. I can just imagine this as a movie or mini series using all the remarkable talents and resources of the BBC and others - imagine the costuming!

Not everyone's cup of tea, but I have been wading my way through this since the beginning of the year. I love history, and this being the centenary year of the end of WWI - the Great War - it is more than appropriate to find out some of how it all came about. I remember in school learning about the origins of WWI, which focussed on the politics of the times and not much on the monarchies of the countries involved. WWI crushed and destroyed all the monarchies of Europe, not just Germany and Russia,  the king of England being the only one to really survive. These three kings were first cousins, this book focussing on the relationship between the three, how their destinies and the inevitability of war were shaped by their inability to move with the times. Yes it is long, best read in bits and never at night.  Large chunks of the minutiae of politics and machinations I skipped over, enjoying more the lives of King George V, Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II, their families, the spider's web of connections, and how it all came crashing down.

Stand out read, the best of my recent reading, so so good.  Such a dreadful cover does nothing for what a great book this is. Long listed for the 2018 Man Booker prize, this is modern day reworking of the Greek myth of Antigone, which I read a summary of on-line before starting this. Just so I knew what I was dealing with! Unlike many other Booker nominees/prize winners, this is not a literary monster, too clever for its own good. Isma, her younger twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz are London born of Pakistani descent. Both parents are dead, the shadow of their father who disappeared on his way to Guantanamo Bay always over them. Isma is smart, having won a scholarship to a US university where she meets a young man Eammon, mixed English/Pakistan. Eammon's father is the Home Secretary in the government, barely treading the tenuous path between his Pakistani roots and his Englishness. The disappearance of Parvaiz to the ISIS cause in Syria and Eammon's return to London with a parcel for Aneeka throws these two together, Aneeka seeing a way to bring her brother home. Forces greater than the lovers gradually build, the reader, with the story of Antigone in mind, knowing that this will not be a happy ending. Outstanding story, the tragedy of modern day politics no different from what it was in the days of Ancient Greece.

NZ novelist Carl Shuker is a former editor of the British Medical Journal. He knows his medical procedures and the opening pages of this novel graphically illustrate the drama, the tension and intimacy of an operating theatre. This is the story of highly respected, hard working, well and truly smashed the glass ceiling surgeon Elizabeth Taylor aka Loco Liz. During an operation on a young woman, a mistake is made, which may or may not have lead to her death some hours later in ICU. In the world however we live in, where blame must always be apportioned, Liz finds herself the target of the cause of the patient's death. At times she is intensely unlikeable, which also raises the question of would we have liked her the same or more if she was a top male surgeon? I doubt you can be 100% nicely-nice to get where Liz has got in her profession, having sacrificed a future of relationships and children along the way, again unlike many of her male co-surgeons. Incredibly competent and confident, she finds herself beginning to unravel as the shock that she may be held accountable for the death begins to hit her. In the world of the operating theatre where there is so much mechanisation and reliance on technology,  the scalpel is still held by a human being, and whether this is the cause of death or not, the human error is the natural scapegoat. Threaded through the novel is the real life disaster of the 1986 Challenger explosion, which in the end was due to the tiniest of human errors. I felt this thread was probably not necessary, it didn't really add to Liz's story, and I found it took away from urgency and immediacy of what was going on in Liz's life. A great read, important too in this society of ours where we are constantly looking for others/anyone to be made accountable for things that go wrong.

Also on the list of NZ's top 100 reads, this is the first novel in a series about seven sisters, although there are actually only 6 novels. Now young women, they were all adopted by an extremely wealthy philanthropic man, and brought up on an island on Lake Geneva. In this novel, the sisters , now adult and living around the world, are together again on the island, their father having recently died. He has left each woman a letter with the latitude/longitude coordinates of the place in the world they were born in, so they can explore for themselves where they came from. First up is eldest daughter Maia, who finds out she was born in Rio de Janeiro. Off she goes in search of who she is. We immediately jump into 1920s Rio de Janeiro high society, her great grandmother Izabella being a stroppy teenage girl, rejecting her father's arranged marriage plans to cement his place in Rio's social circles. Moving between Paris and Rio, the story of where Maia comes from is told. Wonderfully romantic, lots of history, beautiful people falling in love, it really is quite gorgeous to read, certainly setting the scene for the next novel in the series. The Moon Sister, number 5 in the series, was published in time for Xmas 2018, which is when I first heard of these books. The last one, The Sun Sister, is due for publication 31/10 and it will fly off the shelves, just in time for Xmas and summer holidays.

The queen of novels with ethical issues at their core, this is classic Jodi Picoult, taking on the abortion debate, possibly the most fraught of them all. And boy, does she cover some ground in this story. She must have brainstormed every single argument, medical fact, scenario where an abortion may be considered, laws,  religion, every everything in putting together a story around this issue. Centred on a clinic in the middle of the US, a tiny weathered island in a huge storm, where women and staff run the gauntlet of protesters, militants, crazies. Even her descriptions of these scenes, before people make the entry point, are raw and passionate. In the clinic on this particular day, a man has taken staff, patients, and supporters hostage, his rage and despair overwhelming him following his own daughter having an abortion. Told from varying viewpoints of those mixed up in the hostage taking - a doctor, a patient, a anti-abortion militant  pretending to be a patient, a nurse, a young girl wanting contraception, her aunt accompanying her, the local police hostage negotiator, a young girl arrested for having an abortion, a woman who became pregnant after being raped - all these many and various scenarios are thrust in front of the reader. To her credit, the author is very good at raising both pro and anti arguments/dilemmas, giving the reader a very comprehensive education in the politics, the social, economic and emotional impacts of pro and anti. It is overwhelming, to the point where the plot gets lost at times, especially seeing it tells the day of the hostage taking in reverse - starting late in the afternoon, working hour by hour back to early in the day. I am and always be pro-choice, but this novel does raise some very good points and with Jodi Picoult's ability to always throw in twists and surprises. The only right answer of course is choice. What you do with that choice must always be respected and encouraged, whether it is to continue with the pregnancy or not.