If only all holidays proved as idyllic as the scene depicted on this page! The reality for you may be somewhat different: perhaps a truncated five night camping stay in rain-sodden Rutland, under threat of redundancy. However you choose to spend your holiday time – even if it is at home – the provision of good reading material is essential. Finding the right novels, in spite of the information we have at our fingertips, is not the easiest task and it is usually left until the last minute. Both online and high street book sales are dominated by just a few names (Amazon, WH Smith and Waterstones) and there is increasing homogeneity in the way books are packaged and sold. It takes time to get beyond the novels these retailers want to sell in bulk to realise what hidden depths are on offer. I know I struggle with this, so here are my favourite four novels of 2009, if my choices mean anything to you. |
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The Believers by Zoe Heller (Penguin, 2009)
A wonderful depiction of the dysfunctional life of a family of right-on, East Coast socialists whose flaws are credible because you have seen them again and again, in spite of the exalted position this fictional posse commands in liberal America. I have often observed the way that a sense of religious cause and passion is secularised in the next generation. Here the reverse happens, as a woman infused with achingly trendy commitments by her parents turns to Orthodox Judaism, among other micro-plots. This is a bitterly funny book with a sympathetic look at the dilemmas of a modern person when turning to conservative religion.
We are now beginning our descent by James Meeks (Canongate, 2008)
The author draws on his experience as a war correspondent in Afghanistan to craft a love story set during the war on terror. He brings authenticity both to battle and to the boredom and privations which surround it while in central character Adam Kellas the author has created a complex anti-hero fit for the age. The middle class north London dinner party from hell will live in your imagination for a long time to come.
The Siege by Ismail Kadare (Canongate, 2008)
Kadare may be my favourite living author, without peer as a storyteller of myth and fable. His novels contain many carefully constructed parables of life in Albania under the reactionary communist dictator Enver Hoxha, most of which were sufficiently allusive to pass by unimaginative censors. Today he lives and writes from Paris. This story of the siege of an unidentified Albanian fortress by the Ottoman army is full of foreboding and dread and depicts the reality of a medieval siege with extraordinary perspicacity.
Sashenka by Simon Montefiore (Bantam Press, 2008)
Writing as Simon Sebag Montefiore, the author has established a glowing reputation as a scholar of Stalin’s Russia. I was initially sceptical about how well he would make the leap from historian to novelist but this book is breathtaking in its scope and ambition, weaving real and nasty characters like Beria, Yezhov, Molotov and Uncle Joe himself into a haunting and beautiful narrative about an impeccably orthodox Bolshevik family’s disintegration in the Terror.
Meanwhile I am beginning my search for the summer novels. Chief among the candidates are The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher, Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, Deaf Sentence by David Lodge and A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre.
Happy hunting!
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