Looking for the good life.

The Midnight Library 

Matt Haig

(Cannongate)

 

Nora Seed has had it with life, literally, physically and in every way, she wants out. Resolved to end it all, she takes an overdose and wakes up in a mysterious library run by the one person she feels has shown her kindness.

 

 Only this is no ordinary imagined library, if such a thing is possible, it is one where all the books tell different versions of the same story. That of her life with all the disappointments and regrets that have brought her to this point. Nora has the unique opportunity to choose the life that will make her happy, but if she makes the wrong choice, she, the library, and everything else will disappear.

 

Although less awkwardly preachy in tone this novel is reminiscent of those Victorian novels where the protagonist goes on a journey to self-improvement. Along the way facing improbable challenges and meeting outlandish characters, all of which has a message to convey to the reader.

 

Appropriately for our individualistic times Nora is faced with endless iterations of herself, each of which has part, but not all, the ingredients of the good life. The message being that there is no ‘good life’ as such, only ways of making the best of the one you’ve got.

 

Matt Haig has delivered a warm, positive and in its best moments inspiring book that addresses honestly one of the biggest questions haunting modern humans. How are we to live in a way that is bearable? Instead of bland reassurances or easy answers instead he suggests that all we can do is the best we can. That isn’t, he admits, easy; but as this modern allegory shows, it is possible.

 Good Reads, Monday 29th May 2023

Ashes to Ashes

 

The Burning Men
Will Shindler
(Hodder)

When an expensive property development in South London catches fire, a team of fire fighters enter the building to save a man reported trapped inside. They come out without a body and soon after they leave the service and go their separate ways.

Five years later, one of them is burnt to death on his wedding day. Then, a second team member is found dead in a burnt-out sports car. Did something happen on that night five years ago that has made them targets now?

Piecing together the truth from the ashes of the past presents DI Alex Finn and new partner DC Mattie Paulsen with a difficult case. One made all the harder by their own private troubles.

This debut for Finn and Paulsen (for Shindler as a writer of fiction too), doesn't break much ground in the way of originality. Old crimes casting long shadows and cops with complicated back stories are recognisable tropes to anyone with an even passing familiarity with the genre.

Despite this, Will Shindler has delivered a satisfying police procedural that has the potential to build into an equally pleasing series. His prose style is appropriately direct, and he has a strong feeling for character. Both of which are useful crossovers from his day job as a journalist.

The Burning Men might not be a book that shimmers with originality, but it delivers everything a reader of crime fiction could want. This reviewer will take that over disappointing pretention every time.
Good Reads, Friday 19^th May 2023

 

The First and Cruellest Colonisation

 

The Inheritors

William Golding

(Faber & Faber)

 

Lok and his tribe think of themselves as 'the people', inheritors of an unchanging world. Then, as they follow their migratory pattern, they encounter a new race. The first in a long and brutal history of colonisations has begun.

 

William Golding is rightly lauded for writing The Lord of the Flies. It's a novel that, thanks to being taught to generations of school kids, has wormed its way into popular culture. Even if most of the people citing it have never read the book itself all the way through.

Success at that level can overshadow the rest of a writer's work. That is what seems to have happened to Golding, in the case of this novel, first published in 1955, and it is rather a shame.

 

In The Inheritors, Golding uses Lok and his clan to show creatures who relate to the world in a way that is totally different to ours. He does so in a way that is both strange and sympathetic. These aren't stereotypical "savages" dragging their knuckles down the road to perdition.

 

He also touches on issues of colonisation that are still pertinent today. The doomed Neanderthals being swept away by Homo Sapiens are the ancestors of all the indigenous peoples usurped by the West.

 

This is a brilliantly conceived novel telling one of the oldest and cruellest human stories. One, we are still, sadly, repeating to this day.

 

Good Reads, Monday 1^st May 2023