For book nineteen, I was given the choice between:

‘The Forever War’ by Joe Haldeman

‘The Third Policeman’ by Flann O’Brien

‘Alone In Berlin’ by Hans Fallada

Having been one of the oldest books (in terms of how long I’ve had a copy) in this whole project, I felt I needed to go with ‘The Third Policeman’. A recommendation from a good friend many years ago, it has sat unread for too long.

Goodreads summary: The Third Policeman is Flann O’Brien’s brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to “Atomic Theory” and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby’s view that the earth is not round but “sausage-shaped.” With the help of his newly found soul named “Joe,” he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.

The last of O’Brien’s novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O’Brien’s other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland’s great comic geniuses.

How important is the ending of a novel to our overall enjoyment of it? Can a well realised final page make up for what had otherwise been a confusing mess of narrative and character development? More importantly, can the denouement of any story help to explain away some of the more confusing choices made by the author?

This was the conundrum that I was left with after reading ‘The Third Policeman’ by Flann O’Brien. A book that was both included in and cites as an influence on the programme ‘Lost’, the story begins with a botched robbery that becomes a murder. For our narrator, the fallout after the crime is what we are shown as he tries his best to both get away with the crime and maintain the cash that had been the initial lure for him and his co-conspirator. Through this, he grows closer to his soul, named ‘Joe’, meets three strange policeman, and is unwittingly subjected to a raft of weird and wonderful experiences that he can neither make head nor tail of.

Naturally, the desire to avoid spoilers makes a discussion of the importance of the novel’s ending difficult, but it does help to tie up what had otherwise been a confusing mess of increasingly unrealistic exchanges between the narrator and the world around him. What was once fantastical is made sense of by the final page, but that doesn’t necessarily excuse the confusion that came before. The argument would be that we experience that which the main character is experiencing – his confusion becoming our confusion – but it is left up to the reader’s interpretation of events as to whether the ending makes up for the rest. The more cynical might question a take on the ‘but it was all a dream’ cliché, yet this was just far enough away from that trope to be effective.

Some of the better bits tended to be the exposition and footnotes surrounding the narrator’s passion for the works of de Selby, a man who is both the recipient of a lot of academicals discussion as well as stark raving bonkers. It is these asides, so farcical in nature, that provide the most humour for the reader, especially as the initial crime is due to the narrator’s desire to create a review of de Selby’s work – the real irony being that each footnote only leads to further suggest that this has already happened many times before.

There is also some brilliant set pieces that are farcical in nature and do provide humour for the reader. A policeman who builds ever increasingly smaller boxes to the point of non-existence, discussions of how much bicycle a human who rides one eventually becomes, and a room that bestows whatever a person wishes upon them with one pretty significant caveat all generate genuine mirth. It is just a shame that not everything hits with the same effectiveness.

The fantastical nature and seeming lack of forward progression from chapter to chapter after the narrator enters the police station may cause some to waver in terms of their enjoyment. An argument could also be made that the finish itself doesn’t necessarily make up for any uninspired or less engaging moments throughout the novel. However, for me it did just enough to make it a worthwhile recommendation, even if the clear brilliance of O’Brien’s ideas are spotty in their execution.

For book eighteen, I was given the choice between:

‘The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet’ by Becky Chambers

‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

‘The Bone Clocks’ by David Mitchell

With a classic sitting in the middle of two more modern choices, I finally decided to take the dive and check out the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Goodreads summary: The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel that tells the story of the Buendia family, and chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love—in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as “magical realism.”

Have you ever wanted to enjoy a book so much that you almost manage to fool yourself into believing it is better than it actually is? Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an author who has been lauded for many years and ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ is one of his supposed classics. As always with a book like this, my lack of enjoyment is not due to Marquez’s writing ability – he wouldn’t have needed me to tell him that he can write. It is instead that the plot itself, what should be driving me forward in an engaged reverie, which felt all too much like a confusing slog for the majority of the novel’s length.

To what extent Marquez meant for it to be confusing is up for debate. With the narrative telling the story of the Buendia family over the course of several generations, and with a central thematic idea of history repeating itself, the decision to name many of the characters the same name is clearly designed to disorient the reader. One character bleeds into that of his uncle or her mother; characters share similar infatuations and foibles as those that came before. However, just because something is designed to be in a particular way, it doesn’t make it good.

The confusion surrounding the names often meant that the events that occurred to each character rang hollow for me. Someone got married, someone else had a lot of sex, another character flew off into the sky and never came back. Nearly all of the set pieces that were designed to highlight the eccentricities of the family (alongside what I’m fairly sure was multiple incestual relationships, unless I completely misread it) just washed over me and nothing felt like it stuck. Even now, a week or so removed from finishing the book, I struggle to genuinely remember what happened to who.

Where ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ is at its best is during some of the darkly comic moments that exist across the narrative. Unfortunately, Marquez often overdoes these humorous scenarios to the point where they become too farcical to be enjoyable. I know that the style is ‘magic realism’ and there is always going to be an element of the weird and wonderful, but all too often it felt like something strange happened for the sake of it.

There was a time when I think ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ might have appealed to me more, the more experimental nature perhaps fitting in better with a younger me when I desired to challenge my reading ability as much as enjoying a good book. Also, I can see why people like this book. If you can get past the confusion and buy in to the Buendia family’s story, the writing itself is beautiful in its evocative nature. However, it just wasn’t for me, no matter how much I might have wished it was.

For book seventeen, I had the choice between:

‘Hyperion’ by Dan Simmons

‘Ring’ by Koji Suzuki

‘The Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison

Sticking with narratives of a slightly more fantastical nature, I decided to check out ‘Ring’, the original source for the film that I remember enjoying many years ago.

Goodreads summary: A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure.

Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece’s inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan Tokyo teeming with modern society’s fears to a rural Japan–a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic–haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape’s mystery before it’s too late–for everyone–assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.

When reading a book that served as the basis for what became a successful film adaptation, one that you particularly enjoyed (the original Japanese version), there is always concern as to what ‘damage’ might have been caused by watching rather than reading first. Especially given the thriller-esque nature of ‘Ring’, there was a danger that knowing the ending beforehand could kill any joy that was to be gained from the novel itself. Thankfully, this is not the case as Koji Suzuki’s best seller retains a taut sense of uncomfortable engagement from start to finish.

Many will already be aware of the overall narrative of ‘Ring’ due to the many remakes and outright impostors that followed in its wake. It is worth lauding the central concept – anyone who watches a certain videotape will die in seven day – even if the oversaturation of the idea has maybe lessened its impact. It takes the somewhat jocular and ridiculous world of chain letters, an idea that will often spark a notional feeling of ‘what if?’ when we choose to ignore them, and takes that kernel of fear and blows it wide open with the additional twists and turns afforded by the use of the fantastical and the macabre.

In the blurb, there are references made to Haruki Murakami: whilst this may be a stretch, Suzuki’s Asakawa and his best friend, Ryuji, are both presented as slightly odd, even excusing Asakawa’s marriage and child and Ryuji’s popularity. It is this weirdness that the characters seem to share that helps to create a believable relationship that is required as Ryuji goes out of his way to help Asakawa, even exposing himself to the videotape. His somewhat nihilistic character, not presented in the film version, is at odds with his helpfulness towards Asakawa, although a scene later on in the narrative does seek to address the disparity between these dual natures.

As was to be expected, there are elements of the book that don’t find their way into the film – or at least from what my memory recalls – but the very focused structure and tightly paced narrative means the adaptation is pretty faithful. It is the strength of the novel itself that unsurprisingly gives the film an excellent starting point to build upon.

The ending also leaves things in an engaging fashion. It would have been easy to have the main protagonist defeat the curse and things return to normal. However, Suzuki leaves a significant ethical dilemma at Asakawa’s doorstep – how far is he willing to go in order to save his own family? The cynical reader will probably see this as an easy way into a sequel, but it does raise interesting questions about how Asakawa might go about resolving the issue. Does he try and save everyone, or just those that he loves?

‘Ring’ is well-written, legitimately scary in places, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Can’t ask for much more than that.

The options I had for book sixteen were:

‘Ancillary Justice’ by Ann Leckie

‘The Fifth Season’ by N.K. Jemisin

‘The Sisters Brothers’ by Patrick deWitt

Although Ancillary Justice showing up once more did make me think I should chose it, I ended up going with ‘The Fifth Season’. Having first got into fantasy with the Game of Thrones series of books, my desire to branch out has seen Jemisin’s work recommended to me. Thus, I was excited to give it a try.

Goodreads summary: This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

The three things that help to make a fantasy novel work are the author’s ability to create an interesting world, peopled with interesting characters, and build it upon systems that are engaging in and of themselves. In ‘The Fifth Season’, N. K. Jemisin absolutely delivers on all three counts in a novel that had me almost immediately reaching for the second book to find out what happens next to Essun. I mean, when you start your story with the world ending, you have really set your stall out to provide your reader with an excellent experience.

It is difficult to talk about structure and the narrative voice without giving too much away, but the story is initially split into three separate arcs. By utilising the second person for Essun’s chunk of the story, the one that starts the reader off and carries the bulk of the later part of the narrative, it feels immersive from the opening page. It helps to place us in a world that is falling apart and very different from our own, whilst we also experience Essun’s very real confusion and awe as some of the more fantastical elements of the world around her come to life and the reality of a ‘Fifth Season’ taking hold.

Though the three different narratives that we follow, we get a chance to explore a richly realised world that Jemisin has created. The Fifth Season itself is a process of dramatic climactic change, one that threatens the lives of all who inhabit the Stillness. They include Orogenes, powerful creatures who can control the earth around them, the central ‘system’ that is explored within the novel. Rather than being magicians who can produce lightning bolts out of thin air, this manipulation of the planet’s power is at once fantastical, yet believable – of singular importance to the reader ‘buying in’ to Jemisin’s world.

With great power comes great responsibility and we are shown several difficulties of life as an orogene, including the difficulty in controlling that which burns within in such a volatile fashion. This also helps to somewhat humanise the experiences of Damaya and Syenite, the two other narrative strings that run alongside Essun’s story. Through their trials and tribulations as powerful outcasts in this society, we are left in a position to legitimately sympathise with them as things go wrong…and boy do they go wrong from time to time.

Perhaps it is the fact that this is a trilogy, but ‘The Fifth Season’ is more often than not bleak in its outlook. There are moments to savour, yet Jemisin doesn’t shy away from presenting the darker side of humanity as it exists in the Stillness. Around every corner, there is the possibility that things won’t work out for our main protagonists the way they might hope for. At times, it reminds me of Joe Abercrombie’s work: Jemisin takes tropes and ideas from the fantasy world, gives them a modern twist, whilst maintaining a consistently black tone, whether for comic purposes or to highlight a more difficult reality about this world.

Naturally, it would be churlish to give away details about the ending, but suffice to say that it had me immediately seeking out the second book in the trilogy. The plot is masterfully paced and intricately crafted; there is no doubt that I will be enjoying more of Jemisin’s work in the months to come.

For book number 15 (1/5^th of the way through the project), I was given the choice of:

‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk

‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ by John Irving

‘Red Mars’ by Kim Stanley Robinson

I decided to go for the most recent book that was to offer, as well as being an International Man Booker Prize winner – ‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk.

Goodreads summary: A seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist discovers the Achilles tendon by dissecting his own amputated leg. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveller, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveller. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer.

There are certain books that, whilst you can admire the quality of the writing and the scope of the ideas presented, just don’t resonate with you. Tokarczuk is clearly a very gifted writer and I could understand why someone might absolutely love what she served up in ‘Flights’, but it never fully gripped me like some books do. It had its moments, but all too often it felt like a fragmented slog.

‘Flights’ is interesting in terms of its structure because it reads like a series of small extracts that occasionally give way to longer set pieces. Ostensibly, we follow the main protagonist in her journeys – hence the name ‘Flights’ – which then spark off into longer narratives away from the narrator that tend to explore ideas around movement or travel. There also is a consistent focus on the body, mainly explored through stories about the plastination or dissection of bodies. Outside of being interesting narratives that allow for some long form pieces to hold the book together as a whole, I’ll freely admit to not entirely getting the link.

When the book is good, it is very good. Some of the brief asides about travel and the world of airports in particular are humorous, shared moments of understanding between the author and the reader. Alongside this, some of the longer chapters present interesting slices of life. Particular favourites for me included a woman travelling to see a dying ex-partner, as well as an aging man who gives lectures on cruises as seen through the eyes of his wife, looking beyond to a future when he no longer is apart of it.

Indeed, there is a fascination with life, aging and death that does occasionally engage, but the lack of cohesion hurts the narrative, if there indeed is one. It just seems to meander from place to place, artfully and stylishly I’m sure to some, but losing any sense of power in whatever message Tokarczuk was trying to convey – again, if there is one. Therein lies the problem: if I’m leaving a book and I’m left with a lot of ‘why?’ or ‘what?’ questions, most notably ‘why was this written?’ and ‘what was the point?’, it doesn’t bode well.

What carries this novel to an average rating rather than outright panning is that Tokarczuk is clearly a very skilled writer. I could only wish to have her ease and control of language, which feels adeptly translated into English by her translator. However, being a good writer and writing a good book are two very separate things, and this is ultimately where the disconnect comes for me.

For book number 14, I was given the choice between:

‘Titus Groan’ by Mervyn Peake

‘Children of Time’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky

‘Anno Dracula’ by Kim Newman

Within these three are two books I had already started to read but given up on – ‘Titus Groan’ and ‘Children of Time’. Fancying a read of a book that won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke award for best science fiction, it was Tchaikovsky’s novel that won out in the end.

Goodreads summary:

A race for survival among the stars… Humanity’s last survivors escaped earth’s ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?

WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age – a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

The last humans in the galaxy are desperate. Having left a dying Earth, to stumble across a perfectly terra-formed planet seems too good to be true – and it is. On its surface, evolving and developing for millennia, is a species that won’t be so willing to give up their planet, even to the humans that feel it rightfully belongs to them. This collision course, played out over many years, is the central narrative of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s ‘Children of Time’, yet it manages to explore ideas about society, religion and what truly is out there with aplomb.

In the opening chapter, an act of terrorism sabotages a human experiment designed to terraform a planet. Within the spaceship were monkeys as well as a virus designed to allow the primates to develop and evolve on their new planet. A plan developed by Avrana Kern, the explosion caused by the terrorist kills the monkeys and sends the virus out into the atmosphere. A last ditch attempt by Kern to escape sees her upload her image into her escape ship’s computer, essentially forming a computer/human symbiote, one that would eventually be reunited with the planet which her plan had helped to form.

What works really well throughout the novel is that the story is told through two different narrative threads. The Gilgamesh, the ship which carries the hopes of a planet, and its story are seen through the eyes of Holsten Mason, a classicist. Down on Kern’s planet, it isn’t the primates that she had hoped for who benefitted from the virus, but spiders. Whilst the human struggles of trying to find a place in the galaxy play out on the Gilgamesh, the evolution of the spiders and their world adds another layer to the engaging storyline as each generation builds upon the experience of the last.

Tchaikovsky uses some clever narrative techniques to allow the narrative to last the thousands of years that we see play out over six hundred pages. Rather than overwhelm the reader with names, the focus is only ever on three spiders (Portia, Bianca and Fabian), each of which is the name also bestowed on the next generation. As for the humans, stasis sleep and cryo-chambers mean that Mason, as well as Isa Lain (the main secondary character) and other key figures on the ship, can be frozen and woken as the narrative requires it. Whilst this might otherwise feel a little bit forced, Tchaikovsky works the story in such a manner that it never feels too knowing.

Though the human arc is fascinating, including mutinies, in-fighting and a love story, it is definitely the spiders’ story that is more interesting. Presumably chosen for the phobias they engender in many people, the spiders create a society, fight off potential enemies, develop what effectively amounts to religions and conduct experiments. The intelligent way that they are presented, all the way through to the end collision between the two species that serves as the ending to the book, makes them a consistently empathetic group, especially when contrasted with some of the more egomaniacal characters that are involved with the running of the Gilgamesh.

‘Children of Time’ is the very definition of a page turner – its six hundred pages fly past as Tchaikovsky effortlessly takes us through a tale that lasts many thousands of years with verve and panache.

For book number 13, I was given the choice between:

‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ by Thomas Pynchon

‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

‘My Brilliant Friend’ by Elena Ferrante

Though this was the second time that ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ had been chosen at random, I again passed over it to go with ‘My Brilliant Friend’. Primarily, this is due to the numerous plaudits the Neapolitan Novels have garnered in recent years, though it is also due to a work friend of mine waxing lyrical over the series at the end of last year.

Goodreads summary: A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.

Growing up is hard. It isn’t exactly a deep philosophical statement, but it is a truism that is at least explored with verve by Elena Ferrante in ‘My Brilliant Friend’. In the novel, we see the world through the eyes of Elena “Lenù” Greco, a young Italian girl coming of age in a time of upheaval as the traditions of the past give way to the material desires of the modern world. More importantly, we see her relationship with Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo, a firebrand of a youth who both serves as the inspiration and chief sparring partner of Elena.

The book is split into three sections: one that is set in the current as an aged Elena heard about the disappearance of Lila; one exploring their initial relationship; the latter part looking at adolescence with all of the boy troubles and acne that comes along with it. The framing of the story as one that has Elena seeking to establish the type of person Lila is to justify her disappearance is one that is interesting, but never returned to. It isn’t to be held against Ferrante as it seems to serve as the overarching narrative for the series as a whole. Within the other two sections of the story, Ferrante brilliantly explores what brought them together in the first instance, before charting the occasionally meandering nature of their relationship amidst a backdrop of physical and emotional change for Elena.

What Ferrante gets so accurately in the narrative is the competing emotions that can be created by juvenile friendships. Elena is as much inspired by Lila as she seeks to engender jealousy. What initially sparks competitiveness is the desire for academic success that appears to drive both girls on, even if Lila takes to things with an ease that often feels beyond Elena. In time, it even becomes a question of who had their first period, or which of them had received a declaration of love first. Fundamentally, however, there is a feeling of the necessity of the relationship, especially going the route from Elena to Lila, though there is a tender moment late on in the novel which not only gives the book its name, but implies that it works both ways.

Alongside the girls and their own concerns growing up are all the other layers that add to a boiling pot of adolescent confusion. Set in a country that is known for its deep family ties, displays of passions and outpourings of emotion, the girls find the need to navigate the travails of Italian life. We are rarely more than a few pages from an angry word or a harsh blow, whilst there is some early blood spilled as the violence escalates into cold blooded murder. In particular, the men are often represented as liable to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation; that, or declare their undying love for you and promise you the world.

The ending also does a brilliant job of making you want to read the next novel. Though things are left unresolved, I didn’t feel at all cheated by what occurred. Having had so many pages invested in the comings and goings of Elana and Lila, the final denouement got a genuine emotive response and a desire to find out what happened after – if that isn’t the mark of a good story, I don’t know what is.

Believe the hype – ‘My Brilliant Friend’ by Elena Ferrante is a genuine modern classic and well worth investing time in.

For book twelve, I was offered the choice of:

‘Offshore’ by Penelope Fitzgerald

‘The Prestige’ by Christopher Priest

‘The Forever War’ by Joe Haldeman

Having been one of the last books I brought pre this project, as well as her oeuvre getting a lot of plaudits from Andy Miller at the tail end of last year, I chose ‘Offshore’ by Penelope Fitzgerald as my next book.

Goodreads summary: On the Battersea Reach of the Thames, a mixed bag of the slightly disreputable, the temporarily lost, and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the great river’s tides. Belonging to neither land nor sea, they cling to one another in a motley yet kindly society. There is Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by happenstance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, a buttoned-up ex-navy man whose boat dominates the Reach. Then there is Nenna, a faithful but abandoned wife, the diffident mother of two young girls running wild on the waterfront streets.

It is Nenna’s domestic predicament that, as it deepens, draws the relations among this scrubby community together into ever more complex and comic patterns.

Several years ago, a friend of mine bought a boat to live on. Always someone who was happy to get along outside the more conventional tropes of life at the best of times, it wasn’t the most surprising thing he could have told us. He fit…well, whatever you might expect someone who owned a boat to be like. It is this that Penelope Fitzgerald primarily seeks to find out in ‘Offshore’, a story about a collection of people who live on the Battersea Reach section of the Thames. Whether wedded to the water, or lost and in a state of flux, it is the relationships that spring up around a group of outsiders who exist in the very heart of the capital that creates such a captivating story.

It is the cast of characters that Fitzgerald so deftly creates that carries the narrative along apace. Seen primarily through the eyes of Nenna, a woman whose marriage is on the rocks over her choice to buy a houseboat during her husband’s absence, her confused state of mind over her relationship, her strange yet uplifting friendships with others on the river, and her two relatively carefree daughters add together to create a tangled web of emotions and desires. Nenna feels somewhat like the boats on the Thames that are written about so evocatively: at the whim of the tide that at once keeps her afloat whilst at the same time an encroaching danger.

The narrative itself is simplistic, yet every description and piece of information about a character, major or minor, helps to build a world that feels fully lived in. No better is this seen during the time spent by Nenna’s daughters searching for treasures on the banks, before attempting to sell their wares in one of the antique shops nearby. The interactions between a couple of strong headed girls and the wary shopkeepers brim with life, as the two cultures clash in a battle of wits over the question of value.

There is a sadness about Nenna that is hard to deny as she initially voices the concerns over her marriage as being the one reason she doesn’t want to visit her husband; if she doesn’t see him, it can’t end. Whilst somewhat true if logically a bit of a stretch, her eventual decision to see Edward does create one of the more humorous set pieces of the novel as Nenna’s expectations of a romantic reuniting of the couple fall several feet short of what she gets. The hint of romance between herself and Richard at least offers some sense of a happy ending for her, though even that is not for certain.

To some, the openness of the ending may be somewhat off-putting, as well as the relatively thrift of the tale itself. However, it works for me as a slice of a lifestyle that is alien to many, giving us a chance to sample the whys and wherefores of a choice that is outside of the realms of convention for whole swathes of society. We meet, we briefly explore, we disappear. It is almost Coen Brothers-esque in that it gives us a notion of what is occurring at a very specific place and time, yet not necessarily giving us the beginning or the end. From that, you are allowed to make your mind up as to what has happened and that is part of the charm.

For book eleven, I was given the choice between:

‘Anno Dracula’ by Kim Newman

‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing

‘Look Who’s Back’ by Timur Vermes

Having sat on my (electronic) book shelf for a long time, as well as being a favourite film of my stepdad (he doesn’t read books), I choose ‘Look Who’s Back’, a book that I believed would be too competently satirical to encapsulate a lot of what is wrong with modern society.

Goodreads summary: Berlin, Summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up from a 66-year sleep in his subterranean Berlin bunker to find the Germany he knew entirely changed: Internet-driven media spreads ideas in minutes and fumes celebrity obsession; immigration has produced multicultural neighborhoods bringing together people of varying race, ethnicity, and religion; and the most powerful person in government is a woman. Hitler is immediately recognized . . . as an impersonator of uncommon skill. The public assumes the fulminating leader of the Nazi party is a performer who is always in character, and soon his inevitable viral appeal begets YouTube stardom, begets television celebrity on a Turkish-born comedian’s show. His bigoted rants are mistaken for a theatrical satire–exposing prejudice and misrepresentation–and his media success emboldens Hitler to start his own political party and set the country he finds a shambles back to rights. With daring and dark humor, Look Who’s Back skewers the absurdity and depravity of the cult of personality in modern media culture.

‘Look Who’s Back’ is somewhat of a thought experiment – what would happen if Hitler came back to life in 2011, a Hitler that still maintained all his Hitler-y notions of the German Volk, Lebensraum and massacring millions of people who didn’t fit his ideal of the Aryan race. The answer? He’d become a successful media star who commanded millions of views both on television and on the internet. What this suggests about modern society, the cult of celebrity and the value of shock is concerning in its all too scarily accurate representation by Timur Vermes.

Before exploring the social and moral message of the narrative, it is worth mentioning that the book is genuinely funny. Your mileage may vary depending on whether you feel a book involving Hitler as the main protagonist should allow to exist at all, not least in the realms of comedic fiction. Naturally, this is not something that necessarily perturbs me, especially as his role is to shine a light on wider issues about celebrity and the media rather than to champion anything he was involved in within real life. However, if that is not something that concerns you, the confusions caused by a near-seventy year hiatus from the world are legitimately funny and for the most part, Hitler is often played as somewhat of an idiot; it is the media at large who are what gives him power beyond that which his old fashioned world view deserve.

The nature of this book also makes me wonder as to whether my views would be altered if I was German, rather than English. Some of the political and social references probably passed me by, but the narrative also gave a feeling that an underlying racial tension stills exists in Germany, as it does in many a country. Hitler’s rise to prominence in the novel is a combination of being perceived to having a nationalist view that speaks to some, as well as being edgy enough to get traction in a world of soundbites and streaming video.

Without wanting to spoil the ending, there is a moment as the novel draws to its conclusion that spoke volumes about the world of politics in the world of modern media. One incident that occurs to Hitler is suddenly claimed as being representative of every ideas promoted by each individual political party, no matter the ideals that Hitler meant to embody. That popularity triumphed moral values feels all too on the nose today and is all too indicative of a broken system.

‘Look Who’s Back’ is a thought provoking read if nothing else, whilst those who can get past the perhaps questionable choice of topic should also find a genuinely funny book that is also worrying in how very little of this seems out of the ordinary or impossible. Well, apart from Hitler coming back from the dead…I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.

Book ten was a choice between any of these three:

‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri

‘Alone in Berlin’ by Hans Fallada

‘Ancillary Justice’ by Ann J. Leckie

Having already been an option for book eight and a hangover from a time when I desired to read all of the Booker Prize winning novels, ‘The Famished Road’ ended up being the next book in my attempt to drastically reduce my TBR pile.

Goodreads summary:

In the decade since it won the Booker Prize, Ben Okri’s Famished Road has become a classic. Like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature.

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro’s loving parents are made destitute. The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus’s story.

In recent years, some of my most favourite novels have been written by authors born in Africa. From the vivid imagery of different cultures (all too often plagued by violence and war), to protagonists that struggle to find meaning within forever changing circumstances, they’ve felt like a fresh perspective and an urgent voice that I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to explore.

This exploration of a markedly different culture to my own is one that means I won’t outright pan ‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri as there are many pages of wonderful description, brutal aggression and a hint of dark humour that are worthy of mention. Unfortunately, the magical realism that at times brings the most evocative moments also leads to a feeling that the book is often spiralling around a central point more so than making narrative progress. To some, this wouldn’t be an issue, but to me, it felt that the novel only got going in fits and starts, though the second and third Book (with the story being split into three) do go some way to build towards an effective conclusion.

Azaro is the main protagonist and he is an abiku, or spirit child. Having chosen a life on Earth that is manifestly predicted to be one of sorrow over time in the spirit world, we primarily follow Azaro, his parents and local bar owner Madame Koto as increasing modernisation and politics begin to impact upon the lives they lead. As was suggested from the get go, Azaro’s family’s life is rarely one of great triumph, though it almost feels somewhat repetitive the eventual outcomes of many of the chapters. Things spiral out of control; violence occurs; Azaro witnesses something magical; he is told off by his parents – all of these things seem to happen on a loop that offer fairly diminishing returns.

Whilst the spirit world and moments within reality are described in very poetic fashion, a lot of the workaday elements of the novel are presented fairly staidly. It begins to feel like a list of events that are being narrated rather than an engaging narrative at times. Charitably, it could be suggested that this aims to mimic the drudgery of the lives of these characters, especially when transposed against the world that Azaro could have chosen, but it doesn’t entirely work for me.

That is not to say that ‘The Famished Road’ doesn’t have its positives. As aforementioned, the final Books in the story finally feel like the story is moving forward, as well as leading to some of the better set pieces as Azaro’s Dad trains to be a boxer and gets involved in several high profile fights. With his new found popularity, a desire to make a real change to the lives of others follows, leading to a feeling that maybe things might make an upturn for the better.

The cast of characters outside of Azaro’s family also help to carry a prolonged story that inches forward in places. Madame Koto in particular casts a significant shadow over the narrative, a formidable woman who is also seduced by the power and money inherent within the political sphere. A photographer and a blind old man recur alongside several others, each with their eccentricities adding a healthy dose of flavour to support the occasionally dreary storyline.

‘The Famished Road’ is a book that I can see why people loved at the time and will still hold in high esteem today. However, all too often the flights of fancy that the genre can entail felt forced and confusing more than magical, whilst the narrative thrust came a little too late for me.