Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

There are authors whose name you hear enough times that you think, 'I must've read something by X, surely?!', but then you're forced to conceded that in fact, you've done no such thing. Sebastian Faulks is a perfect example of this for me. It's weird - he hasn't won loads of awards or anything, but there was a period early on when I was in London that his name was just everywhere. I guess it's not about winning awards, it's about having a marketing team who get your name on everyone's lips. And to that end, well done Sebastian Faulks' publishers.

Not that this is undeserved, however. Birdsong is a very well-crafted novel with round, whole characters and an unfaltering sense of place. It's ambitious, but successful in its breadth - there is an intelligent conversation in this work about violence, betrayal, loyalty and love. Each of these is laid before you both on the scale of the individual and the global, and it's curious to see that they are both equally devastating.

This is a very moving saga/drama/war bonanza and I highly recommend it.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller

You know those books that once you put them down, you take a step back and think ‘That shit was whack”? This, dear friends, is one of those books. There were some deeply disturbing and disquieting scenes that hinted and suggested deep dysfunction rather than told you everything, and that sometimes is more effective than spelling out the awful truth.

It’s a book that dismantles the notion of fulfilled relationships, and looks under the carpet where people sweep their disappointments and deepest regrets to create a big stinking pile of sad dust. Pippa Lee is a complex woman, married to an older man who has ‘tamed’ her – but is it just an act? Is the whole wife and mother act just pretence? And the bigger question is – do all women feel this way, trapped and dishonest in their roles as wife and mother? Do their real selves cease to exist once you have children? Yep, told you it was whack.

There are some fascinating relationships and characters in Miller’s debut work, and while not all are fully formed (the ending for example is wrapped up in a ridiculously short fashion – a sign of an over zealous editor or an out-of-ideas author?) it’s very commendable for going to some dark and interesting places when it could have quite easily become chick lit twaddle.

The Two Mrs Grenvilles by Dominic Dunne

This book is the literary equivalent of ordering a dirty martini from an old school Manhattan bar (yes Amber, I’m thinking of The Algonquin and that chilli martini and the old men in their ties with the napkins. Take me back NOW).

Dunne is totally old school, a writer who wrote for Vanity Fair for decades when there was no demarcation between the stars and the writers, and paparazzi was not a dirty word. Set in 1940s New York, showgirl Ann Arden mets Billy Grenville, a young rich and directionless heir who falls in love with her mystique and wild ways. They marry, much to the disdain of Billy’s family who can spot Ann’s social climbing ways a mile off, and simultaneously bring her into the family while keeping her at arm’s length. Ann is a willing student of the school of snobbery, and turns into the very person Billy thought she was not. Throw in some fabulous parties and the mother-in-law from hell and you have a very absorbing read.

It’s full of bitchy comments and snarky observations on the elite, and those who compromise themselves irrevocably to join them. Like a good martini, this has a delicious kick to it.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

I actually read this about six months ago, but think I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t quite put my thoughts in order enough to write about it. Then I saw it on the bookshelf and realised it had slipped through the C.M.L cracks.

Mr Eggers is feted as a saviour of modern literature, who burst onto the scene with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which I am ashamed to say have not yet read – I blame his second novel And You Shall Know Us By Our Velocity which I could not make heads nor tails of for putting me off), edits slightly wanky McSweeney’s and the more useful Voice of Witness series that uses the written word to highlight human rights atrocities.

This is the story of Valentino Achak Deng from Sudan, and his journey as a refugee and boy soldier. It’s told in first person, but Eggers, who has ghost written it, inserts a clever caveat at the start of the book classifying it as a novel – the main events are true but conversations may be ‘as remembered’. There are many parts in this book where you think that this must be fiction, but it’s horrifying to realise that so much of this book is true. The idea of millions of people living in an arid and desolate refugee camp for decades, children being eaten by lions on their three month long walk across Sudan, seeing family members macheted to death; it’s more than my brain, and even the most fertile patches of my imagination, cannot conjure up and would not want to.

Just as heartbreaking is the obstacles that Valentino faces once he does achieve his dream of being sent to America to start his new prosperous life. He becomes one of the ‘Lost Boys’, a term to describe the thousands of young men like him who have been displaced by war and cannot settle in their new lives. The modernity and bureaucracy of the United States is too much for many, who rack up thousands in mobile phone calls to Africa because they can’t read their phone contracts; menial jobs are the only ones on offer; well meaning volunteer sponsors quickly tire of the Lost Boys constant and sometimes unreasonable demands.

But Valentino never gives up. His unwavering optimism and grit to keep going when everything seems hopeless is absolutely awe-inspiring and really gave me some perspective on the hipster saying ‘first-world problems’. I challenge anyone not to read this and then complain about their lot in life.

You Only Live Twice Ian Fleming

Oh, the one where he is on the island in Japan and chick swims naked - I remember!

Right, so the bad guy (a foreigner, no less) has a fort thing on the coast in Japan full of dangerous plants and man-eating fish. Since the Japanese have a predilection for self-directed dying, this place is pretty popular with visitors. Anyway, clearly this isn't great news for Japan and the Brits are pretty sure he's up to no good on a more global scale.

Enter Bond.

It is decided that Bond will swim up to this joint, bust in a kill the guy. Shocker. Turns out the best way to do this is by setting out from this little island off the coast, which just happens to be populated by chicks who dive for abalone in, essentially, the buff.

Now, I don't want to spoil the story, but I will say that this is one of Bond's most tender, domestic relationships, and I couldn't help but wonder whether he might've made the wrong choice by returning to work. But I guess that's where we differ, Bond & I. But that's pretty much the only difference, obviously ;)

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

One of my favourite sayings is ‘Too many freaks, not enough circuses’, and both are abundant in this tale of the travelling American circuses of the 30s. This book seems like it would have written itself – lions, tigers, carnies, dwarves and bearded ladies travelling through post-war America on a rickety old train lorded over by a schizophrenic ringmaster and a villanous boss, with obligatory love story and not so commonplace murderous elephant – and I feel like the author herself shouldn’t get too much of the credit, as the writing is plain and the story is the star.

It’s no surprise that the movie version of this book is about to hit screens, as reading it you actually got the sense of almost watching the action (ok so perhaps I do need to give Gruen some credit). A perfectly pleasing mid-week read.

Life by Keith Richards

An interesting one this – on the surface of things, you’d think Keith Richards sitting down to write his memoirs would be the most titillating read on the shelf (and indeed, the publishers have been rubbing themselves in gold since its release) but there’s something a bit….well, slightly boring about the whole caper.

Firstly; how does a man who took more drugs than a war torn hospital remember enough to fill 500 pages? The answer I reckon, must have been to make some shit up along the way. There’s a lot of ‘here’s how I remember it’ – no doubt to negate any potential lawsuits – and there’s a lot of ‘I was a functioning addict’, tales where everyone around him goes down in a drug induced stupor, EXCEPT for him. Which is maybe how it actually happened, and I’m just such a lightweight that I don’t understand how someone can drink three bottles of bourbon, five tabs of acid and a tab of heroin and not sleep for five days and live to tell the tale.

So the excess is there, and people around him turning into monsters on drugs (his long-time missus Anita Pallenberg is depicted as an unreasonable, sex crazed violent psycho), characters dropping dead left right and centre, but there’s not a lot of true introspection. Even his philandering is wrapped up in this warm, fuzzy ‘there were women I cuddled along the way’ dialogue, when really he was cheating on his partner.

What IS fascinating is the rock and roll cultural history along the way, and how some honky English lads managed to take a blues R&B sound and scare the living beejusus out of a God fearin America. And the depiction of a music scene that truly was organic and for rabid music fans – people hunting down rare records, one ‘black’ station and hearing new music at underground parties – no internet, no publicists, no regurgitated hit makers and a population so surrounded by crap music that when something awesome and original comes along, you’ll just as likely hear it on Nova as you will on Triple J.

And if you want to examine a complex and deeply dysfunctional band relationship, look no further than the brotherly hate displayed by Richards and the Stones frontman, Mick Jagger. I think Keith spends a whole lot of this book trying to sound aloof and disconnected, when you get the feeling underneath he's just simmering at a life spent to the left of the man in the spotlight. Also, I can't finish this review without mentioning Richards' fierce mullet and unfortunate above the neck situation - really one of the most unattractive musicians going round.

If anything, it made me a little bit sad that our generation will never have a Beatles or a Rolling Stones to hold up as the marker of better days gone by. And on that old lady having a rant note….