Tender is the Night by F.Scott Fitzgerald

Let me admit from the outset: I found this book hard work. I then felt less intelligent for it being hard work, as it was loaned to me by someone who I think is really smart, henceforth putting more pressure on my poor brain to both understand and like this book. Which I kinda didn’t, because I resorted to the famed high school skimming technique, just so I could finish the thing.

Phew. There I said it. There was just SO MUCH detail for really quite little plot – like how a quail is more bones then meat, and while that meat is juicy and delicious, you just wish that you had bought a chicken.

The Great Gatsby is a chicken. Tender is the Night is a quail.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Expectation is a funny thing. Expect too much, and you’ll be disappointed. Expect nothing, and be surprised. Not really a life motto I want to adhere to (‘hey, I didn’t get punched in the face today. Tuesday has been good to me’) but as a book reading ethos, actually quite helpful.

Case in point: this book. Penned by the author of one of My Top Three Books of All Time, We Need to Talk About Kevin (Matilda by Roald Dahl and Dirt Music by Tim Winton also make this list), expectations were first date high. And I knew deep down that it was going to take one crazily well-written, engaging and complete humdinger of a book to beat the mind bending heart crusher that was Kevin.

Not surprisingly, Lionel failed with TPBW. If this had been the first of her books that I had consumed, then very possibly I would have liked it more. But like a difficult second album, it just didn’t deliver for me. The premise is interesting; there are two chapters that run parallel documenting the life of children’s book illustrator Irina, and what happens when she does/doesn’t kiss another man.

Basically in one stream of the book she’s in a somewhat happy nine-year relationship with her partner Lawrence; they’re not married, they like the same things but are in a bit of a rut. Oh; also he won’t kiss her on the mouth and only shags her from behind while she faces a wall in their bedroom. Happy times!

In the other, she leaves Lawrence for a professional snooker player, Ramsey – an immature, egotistical Brit whose doodle drives her wild, but ultimately she questions if she shouldn’t have just stayed with Ol’ WallBanger Lawrence.

And that’s what kind of pissed me off. Why does she only have the choice between two douchebags? Why is it believable that an intelligent woman would stay in such a crappy relationship just because of crazy sex? (If actual women did this, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be friends with them). Why is another woman writing a female character like this? And I’ve heard of “original” occupations for your book characters to have, but professional snooker player? That is just a bridge too far really.

Everyone’s had a ‘what if and who if’ moment in their lives, and have questioned if their happy relationship isn’t going a bit stale, so parts are relatable. There is no doubting that Shriver is a fantastic writer – I think in this case she let herself down with her own material.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

"Bob Munroe woke up on his face." So begins 'The Brown Coast', the first in this delectable collection of short stories from Canadian author, Wells Tower. The implication here is that Bob has fallen on his face and spent the night there, but it turns out Bob may have fallen on his face quite some time ago, and as in the paragraph that follows, finds that getting back up off it isn't straight-forward. The theme of this story, of finding the bottom with your face, isn't the only one in the collection, but we do see it a few times: Jacey certainly goes there in 'Wild America', and it's pretty much the forwarding address for the characters in 'On The Show'.

The characters in all these stories are bulging - bursting, engorged, overflowing, even - in a masterfully understated way so that you never feel like you're getting to know them, but rather that they just are. Never is this more obvious though than in the title story, the last in the collection. Here, the protagonist, Harald - a Viking, naturally - is just another guy, tired of raping and pillaging, with ambitions to spend some time with his common law wife, Pila, 'hoping to get through some lovemaking before the Haycutting Month was underway and see if I couldn't make us a little monkey.' Oh, cute Viking!

There's a slightly corrosive sexual undercurrent in almost all of these stories, though. Harald might be bang up for some lovemaking, but he's done his fair share of raping, too, one suspects. Sometimes this malevolent sexuality is latent, like in 'Executors of Important Energies' - classic 'dad takes up with younger woman who young son then proceeds to fantasise about'. Mostly thought, it's overt, and with one exception - the old man in 'Door In Your Eye' who is prompted to go and visit his neighbour because he thinks she's a prostitute - sex is never a good motivator. And it's almost never pretty - take the child who, with the permission of her mother and step-father, will, on long journeys, wrap her lips around the gearstick because 'the vibrations relax her' - thanks 'Down In The Valley', for that heart-warming image. And, while uncomfortable, it's believable that your affable, everyday peado in "On The Show" is just an opportunist with a knack for timing, much like the other bloke in that story who darts in and out of the spaces you and I don't consider. It's seedy, without being dark. And it's illuminating, without being nauseating. Cue applause.

From the first story to the last, this collection is a joy and a triumph. Of course, saying that, it could be quite dispiriting in terms of the reality of the world it reflects, but also it could not. It's up to you, really, what you chose to do with 'Leopard' - the story of a teenage boy, told in the second person, on the art of pulling a sickie when your assholish step-dad is watching your every move. And you can make what you like of 'Retreat' - where the real estate investor brother, exiled by property tax law to a mountain in the country, extends an invitation to his music therapist brother to spend sometime with him there, where beautiful things are sometimes sick but killing them will only poison you.

There are so, so many memorable, share-worthy sentences and passages in these stories, but I will leave you to discover these for yourself. Because, at some point, you will read this book, and you will wish to God you were Wells Tower, because that would be so much better than being in the confusing position of being you - loving him on the one hand, but also hating him for being so much more awesome than you - it's confronting. You'll read these stories, and you'll think, 'Yep, thems some words smooshed together in pleasing, smarty-pants kinda ways, no? Oh, yesssss.' And then you'll consider the words you've just thought and think, 'Oh yeah, I see the contrast now: Screw you, Wells.'

Thanks for the HOTT tip, Soph.

Three Act Tragedy, Hercule Poirot's Christmas and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case by Agatha Christie

Exactly what it is about Agatha Christie that I love so much is, well, a mystery (PUN I), and one which I will now turn my attentions to solving in a very non-Christie kind of fashion.

Based on approximately zero detective work, I think the attraction is 3 fold:
1. I love the incredibly well described inanity of the 2 dimensional, caricature-like characters;
2. I love the order that reigns throughout, be it social order, or just the order in which the books themsleves unfold, or the orderly way everything is tied up at the end; and
3. I love that I never bother trying to outwit the story, I'm happy to be as bamboozled as the police and let Hercule or Jane explain everything to me at the end. Ignorance = bliss.

More than anything though, what I reall, really love, is the genius way Christie probes social norms, interrogates stigma and brings out, in such delicate ways, the prejudice of her times. It's masterful. For example: Having outfoxed the murderer of Sir Bartholomew Strange (yes, that's right: Sir B Strange the distinguished Harley Street nerve specialist) in Three Act Tragedy, Poirot is engaged in an illuminating dialogue: "Why do you sometimes speak perfectly good English and at other times not?", asks one of the few people left standing at the end of the novel.

'Poirot laughed. "Ah, I will explain. It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. The say 'A foreigner? He can't even speak English properly.' It is not my policy to terrify people - instead I invite their gentle ridicule. Also I boast! An Englishman he says often 'A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much'. That is the English point of view. It is not at all true. And so, you see, I put people off their guard. Besides", he added, 'it has become a habit."'

See? She mercilessly takes the piss out of everyone. Genius. Foreigner = retard = can sneak around the place gettin' all up in peoples' business and solving murders and shit. Likewise the spinster: what the hell would that undersexed, bespectacled old lady know? EVERYTHING, bitches.

And with all this, there are moustaches, and characters with names like 'Boyd Carrington'.

Poirot isn't my favourite, but he was excellent company this festive season. Thanks, old chap.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

One night in June, 1860 in an gentleman's house in Wiltshire, 3 year old Saville Kent was taken from his bed and murdered. When the house awoke the next day, and it was discovered that the child was missing, the family, staff and neighbouring villagers began searching for him. His body was found down an outdoor toilet. His throat had been cut and he had several stab wounds.

It's a totally engrossing story - house, servants, neighbours, mental illness, questionable officials, etc - and complete with a floor plan and a list of 'characters', you the reader are invited to solve the crime yourself. It's about 100% up my street. Tick!

The really fascinating thing about the book though, is the details of the history of the birth of the police force and, more specifically, detective work as a type of police work. The detective branch was reasonably new in the 1860s, and the art of detection completely captivated the public.

This crime then, completely brutal and horrific as it was, as you might imagine, was the talk of the town. With so much public interest and so much pressure for an arrest, the detective in charge, Mr Whicher, to pull one out of the bag. But with no one in the family talking, a far from undisturbed crime scene and the science of detection in but its infancy, solving this case was no easy task. Mr Whicher, in spite of the arrest and conviction recorded, was never quite the same after this case, and went into a kind of semi-retirement for a while.

This true crime spawned an entire generation of fiction - country house, brutal murder, village gossips, long carriage rides - and similarities between this and classic detective works by the likes of Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan-Doyle are obvious. So, yes, it's sad that this poor kid was gruesomely put to death, but we did get some stella writing out of it, if that's any consolation.

I sincerely doubt you're ever going to read this, but I'm absolutely not going to tell you who done it, since that is still a matter for conjecture anyway. I will say that the two prime suspects went on to reside the better part of their lives in Australia and led rich and productive lives, and Mr Whicher didn't do too badly for himself, either. Except for Saville, and his his dad (who kind of deserved what he got anyway), everyone who lived lived happily ever after, the end.