77. Peter James - Perfect People

When I started reading Peter James' Perfect People, it felt as if I was reading something by Michael Crichton or Stephen King. The way the novel sets out is very strong. You start when a couple are on a ship, which seems to be a medical ship. Then you find out it's because they want to have a genetically modified child. But why? 

Peter James eases us into the story. He shows us what the parents have gone through with their first born son, so the reader understands why they are getting these extreme measures done. 

I believe James is not able to uphold Crichton's and King's writing style though and that's why the story is sagging towards the end. He cannot really hold the reader's attention. I also believe he went into the wrong direction with the religious cult chasing the genetically enhanced children, but King could've gotten away with that because he would've been able to tell it so that even though it is so absurd we still want to keep reading. 

It's unfair for James that I'm comparing him to these two amazing authors, because in his own right he is a good writer and this was a very entertaining novel.  

76. Alison Moore - The Lighthouse

This novel was a very close call. Until page 165 I couldn't really say where the story would lead, but the last 20 pages are very intense. I'm talking about Alison Moore's The Lighthouse, which was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2012.

It reads like a short story and it's about Futh, a newly separated man who is on his way to Germany to go hiking for a week to get away from everything. When he arrives in Hellhaus, his first stop, he has an awkward encounter with the hotel landlord and his wife. From then on, the story moves back and forth between the wife of the landlord Ester and Futh. 

Retrospectively, I can say that it's worth reading it. The story's strongest moving force are the consequences of things not done and Moore shows great talent by controlling this force. I would read this novel again just because of the strong ending, and as you may have noticed in previous blogs; I don't say this often.

75. Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis

I returned from my holiday in Dubai and Holland yesterday, and I have to start work in a few minutes but I wanted to quickly say something about Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis. It's a very powerful book. I can see why it was nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2012.

According to the main narrator who only speaks about himself during the start and finish of the book, this is a story spoken through a pipe. An opium pipe. It's telling is at times quite confusing, but while you're reading you won't notice you've actually read another 100 pages. That's how fluent the story telling is and how well it flows.

The story sees the lives of a few people who basically always hang out at an opium den unfold. There is the eunuch, Dimple, her Chinese friend, Lee, the Muslim owner of the den, Rashid, another customer, Rumi. We hear their stories but the stories never find solid ground, they are told and they float in the air, like the opium that is smoke abundantly. As the story progresses the protagonists starts using heroin and that's where we crash and the book ends.

Very powerful story telling, somewhat similar reminiscent of a much more lyrical Trainspotting and I hope to see more books after this début by Jeet Thayil.

74. Victoria Hislop - The Thread

I was surprised twice when I read The Thread by Victoria Hislop. The first surprise started very early on when I found out in the acknowledgements that Victoria is married to Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye and team captain of the TV programme "Have I Got News For You". This might not be the biggest surprise you have ever been presented with, but it just amused me since I've read her first novel The Island seven years ago without knowing.

The second surprise came half-way through the novel. I found out that I loved it, just as much as I loved The Island. I never really buy sappy love stories or even historical novels. However, judging by how much I loved her first book about the Greek/Turkish leper island Spinalonga; I thought this one might disappoint, and how better to find out than to read the book?

Hislop has the ability to drag you into another time and pull you into the characters lives so deeply that you don't notice time is flying by. We start at Thessaloniki, Greece in 1917 and we go through all the tumultuous times of two World Wars and the effects this has on the city and the lives of a handful of people, until we reach 2007. We only stop at this year for a seconds, but it's enough to fully grasp the thread that we've followed in the other 450 pages. 

73. John Grogan - Marley & Me

Marley & Me by John Grogan is not a book I would normally read. I won this book at my previous job and I decided to give it a go this week. I've seen the film, of which the poster is on the book (I hate that!); but the book is just so... Simple.

It's a cute true story about a columnist who writes about his family's rambunctious dog, Marley. Nothing big really happens though, he takes us through Marley's puppy years and ends, very fittingly, at his last breath. It's no literary masterpiece. It's just a story about a guy and his dog.

What annoyed me, was that I watched a few episodes of The Dog Whisperer on YouTube and John and Jen Grogan were on it because they couldn't control the dog they had after Marley passed away. This annoys me, because it's quite clear that they just can't raise a dog. The second thing that I found a bit too much was the few pages at the end of the book where John Grogan suddenly starts talking about 9/11. The below passage doesn't add anything to the story, especially since he contemplates the below while visiting the site of the crash in 2003:

"I felt something else, as well - an amazement at the boundless capacity of the human heart, at once big enough to absorb a tragedy of this magnitude yet still find room for the little moments of personal pain and heartache that are part of any life. In my case, one of those little moments was my failing dog. With a tinge of shame, I realized that even amid the colossus of human heartbreak that was Flight 93, I could still feel the sharp pang of the loss I knew was coming." (Grogan 299)

72. Sophie van der Stap - En wat als dit liefde is

This book En wat als dit liefde is, was written by Sophie van der Stap who is famous for her book Meisje met negen pruiken in which she describes living with her cancer treatment. When I say famous I mean famous in the Netherlands, although I believe it has been translated in quite a few languages. I've never read her bestseller, but when my mum visited me in Edinburgh she brought the book I'm reviewing here, so I decided to give it a go.

People who have been reading my blog may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of Dutch literature. I often find it either contains too many explicit sex scenes, or it describes the Second World War, or it just mixes both these topics. This weeks' book though is nothing like that. I'm not sure I want to describe it as literature either though. No reason to get sucked into a debate about which term to use for this novel, let me just quickly describe what it is about (don't worry, this won't take long as I know that there are no translations for this book and only my fellow Dutchies may find this interesting).

The book is about a blind woman in Paris Marianne de Grenelle who likes to be thought of as invisible and likes to spy on her neighbours without anyone noticing her, and her friendship with socialite Tara who has one lover after the other and likes to describe all these events in her blog. This novel is about what love really is and the fact that everyone always thinks the grass is greener on the other side. Marianne has left her boyfriend 25 years ago and is not sure if this was the right decision and Tara cannot chose between her abundance of men. Both of the women are jealous of the other's situation.

71. Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

A few days late and all I can say about this Man Booker Shortlisted novel called Swimming Home by Deborah Levy is that it's not my style at all. I think I stopped paying attention from page 5.

It's about a girl who is found floating in the pool of a group of people vacationing in France. They take this strange girl in their house and she destroys the whole family dynamic, or actually she brings on the destruction that seems to have been pending for a long time.

I'm not so sure about this description, because I really did faze out when I read it. When pages go on like the below, you've lost me. Not a success in my opinion and I'm happy this book didn't win.

A woman with a helmet of permed hennaed hair stopped her to ask if she knew the way to Rue Francois Aune. The lenses of her big sunglasses were smeared with what looked like dried milk. She spoke in English with an accent that Isabel thought might be Russian. The woman pointed a finger laden with rings at a mechanic in oily navy overalls, lying under a motorbike, as if to suggest Isabel ask him for directions on her behalf." (Levy 28)