John Lanchester

A first novel by a literary journalist, which looks suspiciously as though it was written in response to a drunken challenge to incorporate the essential elements of as many stereotypical British bestsellers as possible into a single story. Cookery with recipes and menus, middle-class English people in rural France, artists, romance, servants, boarding-school, cottages in Norfolk, social snobbery, food snobbery, and — oh yes, I nearly forgot — a body-count that would put Midsomer to show more shame. All ruthlessly sent up via an appalling, unreliable narrator, very clever and often wickedly funny. The only thing Lanchester seems to have forgotten is that a novel like this should have a clergyman in it somewhere. Purists might also be disappointed to find that there's only one small scene of canine interest.

I'm not much of a foodie, so I suspect I missed some of the more subtle jokes, but this is obviously meant as a parody of those novels where you get a recipe in every chapter: our helpful narrator Tarquin never quite gets all the way through the essential details of a recipe before being distracted into telling us about something else, and you would probably get into a terrible mess if you were so silly as to try to reproduce any of his menus.

When it first appeared, this would have been an ideal Christmas present for those pretentious friends or relatives who are always going on about their cottage in France and the little restaurants they have "discovered" there. By now they've probably read it already, unfortunately, and they are more worried about Brexit and their 90 days than about aubergines or cheeses, but it's still good fun for a couple of hours. show less

We're probably going to see more of this gender: the post-climate change dystopia. There was already Bacigalupi's Water Knife and others. This novel (not really sci-fi) takes its place squarely within that genre. In the post-climate disaster, The Change, era, England has built a Wall around itself to protect itself from The Others, the environmental refugees from other parts of the world, now underwater or uninhabitable. Young men and women now have to serve time on the Wall, as military show more service, for two years, to try and prevent the Others from getting through. If the Others succeed, they are offered a choice between euthanasia or becoming Help, that is, slavery. And the Wall Defenders who failed to stop them are put to sea, with close to zero chance of survival. As such, this system has created major generational hostility between the generations that did nothing to stop climate change and are still around, and the younger generations who have to live with the consequences, the loss of food diversity, the loss of beaches, and then, of course, the Wall.
The novel follows one such young man as he starts his Wall service.
This is rather bleak, with limited hope. Nevertheless, it is a page-turner, and clearly meant as a warning of things to come. show less

Summer was around the corner! Not real summer of course, but its British imitation. Then the sun would go in, the wind would rise, and all would be dark and grim, wintry, another British imitation, not snow and ice and wolves and drama but just dark grey cold.

The story follows the lives of a group of people linked to a residential street in London called Pepys Road, and takes place over the course of nearly a year, starting a few days before Christmas with city trader Roger's anticipation show more of his annual bonus and ending as he says goodbye to the street the following November, after selling his family's house. Apart from Roger and his wife, the point of view characters include their Hungarian nanny, a Polish builder who is often employed by the residents of Pepys Road, a Zimbabwean traffic warden, an old lady whose grandfather bought a house on Pepys Road off-plan and who has lived on the road all her life, her daughter and artist grandson, the artist's assistant, several members of the family who run the shop at the corner of the road, Roger's second in command at work, a Zimbabwean traffic warden, a football club fixer, a seventeen-year-old footballer newly arrived from Senegal and his father, and the Detective Inspector who is investigating the a hate campaign against the residents of Pepys Road, which begins when they receive postcards featuring pictures of their houses and the possibly sinister message "We Want What You Have".

My favourite parts of the story are about Roger and Arabella, Quentina (the traffic warden), Smitty (the artist) and Detective Inspector Mills, but I was less keen on the parts about football. I liked the way it was just a slice of life, and although the mystery of "We Want What You Have" was solved by the end, not all the strands of the story were so neatly resolved, so I felt that the characters' stories would continue past the end of the story, just as they would in real life.

I liked this book more than I expected, given that it was one of the reads for for my book club that I had decided I would only read if I could borrow it from the library. I ended up downloading it as an audiobook and found it easy to follow, as the narrator was good at voices and accents and didn't speak too quickly. show less

Kate and Jack have a happy middle class life and marriage until the day that Jack dies. Coming from the depths of grief Kate becomes aware of a popular Netflix show and is horrified to find that details of her marriage are portrayed in it. Phoebe is the writer of the show, relishing her success but worried about a follow-up. There is a link between them and it goes back many years but will Phoebe get the last laugh?
How fabulous a read is this? It starts as a portrait of a marriage, the smug show more middle-aged and middle class, then descends into a lovely description of grief and than blows up. Very cleverly plotted with a lovely twist at the end, I just felt that there was a real victim here and it wasn't either of the two protagonists. It's deliciously dark and very pointed. show less