I’ve read more than a thousand books since I started this book blog back in 2011. By now, I’ve forgotten what I wrote in most of the reviews and am left only with an residual emotional memory of the books, like cooking smells clinging to my clothes after a meal. So, I’ve decided to do a little time travelling by book blog and re-read some of the reviews I’ve posted.
This month I’m travelling back fourteen years to August 2011. I’d started this book blog four month earlier, so all of this was new to me. I was living in Switzerland and working mostly in Geneva, Brussels and Paris. I was working long hours, travelling too much and wasn’t home often enough. You can get a sense of what my life was like then and how I felt about it from this blog post about an unplanned business trip to Paris.
Even so, I made the time to read a book a week. I cherished my reading time. I only reviewed the ones that made an impression on me. In August 2011, there were three of them.
One was my first encounter with Kate Atkinson, one was a debut novel set in Lausanne, close to where I lived, written by a British journalist turned author and one was the latest Harry Dresden book.
I’ve shared my impressions of them below. If you’d like to time travel with me, follow the links to the original reviews.
A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a shocking impulse purchase. That one moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy’s humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.
Witnesses to Tracy’s outrageous exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.
‘Started Early, Took My Dog’ (2010) delighted me. It was my first Kate Atkinson book. I bought it on a whim because I liked the title. I knew it was Kate Atkinson’s latest book. I didn’t realise that I’d bought the fourth book in a series, something I wouldn’t normally do. I was just looking for a new detective story. I got a lot more than that.
Here’s how I started my review:
“If there was a way of giving this book more than five stars, I would. It is breathtakingly good fiction.
It works as a satisfying crime novel and as a mainstream examination both of how we live with the consequences of the choices that we make and the mores and attitudes of Britain now and in 1975.
The prose is beautiful. The voice of each character is distinct and believable. Time and place are evoked with an almost clinical clarity. The interior monologues, particularly that of “Silly Tilly” who is slipping into dementia are intimate, accurate and yet easy to read. The shifts along the timeline and between characters’ point of view are well crafted so that the reader’s understanding of the story and characters of the people evolves into something richly textured and authentic.
Despite the gritty nature of some of the themes and the gruesome start to the chain of events that the novel unravels, this remains an optimistic book that can make you laugh as easily as it can make you cry.”
Looking back, what I remember most about the book is how vividly drawn the women were. The retired detective, the actress starting to suffer from dementia and the enigmatic young girl with her thumbs ups and star hand waves. They felt real to me. The plot has faded in my memory, but they’re still there.
So far, I’ve yet to read a Kate Atkinson book I haven’t liked. I’ve read three more Jackson Brodie books: ‘Case Histories’(2005), ‘When Will There Be Good News?‘ (2008) and ‘Big Sky‘(2019). I have ‘One Good Turn‘ (2015) and’Death At The Sign Of The Rook‘ (2024) on my shelves. Her standalone historical fiction novel, ‘Life After Life‘ (2013) was challenging but deeply satisfying. I have ‘Transcription’ (2018), another historical fiction novel, on my shelves.
To read my 2011 review, click on the link below.
Meet Marc Rochat, a man-child who has devoted his life to being the bell ringer at the gothic Lausanne Cathedral, one of the great architectural structures in the world. Strange things have been going on in and around his church, including tremblings in the underground crypt and a variety of gruesomely murdered bodies showing up in nearby streets. Across the square from the cathedral lives Katherine Taylor, a beautiful young American woman who is making a phenomenal living as one of the highest priced call girls in Switzerland; she’s a bit too introspective for her own good, and, unfortunately, much too observant of her clients’ peccadilloes for theirs. Their lives collide with Jay Harper, a British private eye, who has been hired to investigate the killings and other strange doings; alas, he has no memory of who hired him or precisely why he was chosen for the joball the clues are pointing skyward, where fallen angels are said to haunt Lausanne.
When I bought ‘The Watchers’ (2011), I was living twenty-five kilometres away from Lausanne, where the novel is set. Part of my delight in the book was how it made places that I knew well seem magical. Lausanne Cathedral, The Lausanne Palace Hotel and the apartment building in Ouchy were all familiar to me but Jon Steele invoked their inner magic.
Here’s how I started my 2011 review:
“In a market flooded with novels dealing with supernatural themes, “The Watchers” stands out for strength of its characters, the originality of the plot and Jon Steele’s remarkable ability to make magic visible in the familiar.”
I was deeply engaged with the characters in this book: the American who sold her beauty for the use of rich men, who loved to watch herself in the mirror but could not push aside the glamour she casts to see what she has become; the Brit detective who could not sleep but was not yet truly awake; the Québécoise cripple with with a damaged mind, brilliant imagination and the heart of a lion.
This book has become embedded in my memory of living in Switzerland and I will always cherish it.
To read my 2011 review, click on the link below.
When an unknown someone shoots him and leaves him to die, Harry Dresden hopes he might be heading to a better place. Unfortunately being dead doesn’t make Harry’s life any easier.
Trapped between life and death, he learns that his friends are in serious trouble. Only by finding his murderer can he save his friends and move on – a feat that would be a lot easier if he had a body and access to his powers. Worse still are the malevolent shadows that roam Chicago, controlled by a dark entity that wants Harry to suffer even in death.
Now the late Harry Dresden will have to pull off the ultimate trick without using any magic – or face an eternity as just another lost soul….
I pre-ordered the hardback version of ‘Ghost Story’ so that I could read it as soon as it came out in 2011. I’d been reading the series for nearly a decade by then, having discovered it in a Barnes & Noble store on a business trip to the US, so this was an automatic buy for me.
‘Ghost Story‘ was the thirteenth Harry Dresden book. It was pivotal in the series. Harry Dresden was no longer the rebellious, slightly angry, sometimes mischievous, always righteous wizard I’d met in ‘Storm Front‘ (2000). Life (and death) had happened to him. He’d become someone the younger Harry might not have recognised.
What I remember most about the book is that it made me cry. That wasn’t the reaction I’d expected to have to reading an action-packed Urban Fantasy book. So I asked myself why the book made me cry. The answer has as much to do with me as it did with Harry Dresden. Click on the link below to read my answers to why Harry Dresden made me cry.
Mike Finn's Fiction 